REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

How China Won and Russia Lost

Two dissimilar economic paths

On a dark November night in 1978, 18 Chinese peasants from Xiaogang village in Anhui province secretly divided communal land to be farmed by individual families, who would keep what was left over after meeting state quotas. Such a division was illegal and highly dangerous, but the peasants felt the risks were worth it. The timing is significant for our story. The peasants took action one month before the “reform” congress of the party was announced. Thus, without fanfare, began economic reform, as spontaneous land division spread to other villages. One farmer said, “When one family’s chicken catches the pest, the whole village catches it. When one village has it, the whole county will be infected.”

Ten years later, in August of 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev lifted his nation’s 50-year-old prohibition against private farming, offering 50-year leases to farm families who would subsequently work off of contracts with the state. Few accepted the offer; Russian farmers were too accustomed to the dreary but steady life on the state or collective farm. Thus began reform of agriculture in Soviet Russia.

The results in each country could not have been more different. Chronically depressed Chinese agriculture began to blossom, not only for grain but for all crops. As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear. The state grocery monopoly ended in less than one year. Soviet Russian agriculture continued to stagnate despite massive state subsidies. Citizens of a superpower again had to bear the indignity of sugar rations.

As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear.

These two examples point to the proper narrative of reform in Gorbachev’s Russia and Deng Xiaoping’s China. Our narrative contradicts much received doctrine. The standard account is that China succeeded because a wise party leadership deliberately chose gradualism, retained the monopoly of the Communist Party after rebuffing democracy at Tiananmen Square, and carefully guided the process over the years. The narrative says that Russia failed because the tempestuous Gorbachev ignored the Chinese reform model, moved too quickly, and allowed the party monopoly to fall apart. This standard account is incorrect. Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, contrary to popular legend, did not agree on a reform program at the Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in 1978, which installed him in power. A Chinese reform official by the name of Bao Tong later admitted as much: “In fact, reform wasn’t discussed. Reform wasn’t listed on the agenda, nor was it mentioned in the work reports.”¹

Throughout the reform process, the Chinese Communist Party simply reacted to (and wisely did not oppose) bottom-up reform initiatives that emanated largely from the rural population. Deng Xiaoping’s famous description of Chinese reform as “fording the river by feeling for the stones” is not incorrect, but it was the Chinese people who placed the stones under his feet.

Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of his party in March of 1985. By that time, he knew that the Chinese reforms were successful. His reforms, contrary to the popular narrative, closely mimicked China’s. He proposed to lease land to peasants, establish free trade zones, promote small cooperative businesses, and set up joint ventures. The difference was that Gorbachev imposed these changes from above, on an urban economy in which virtually all citizens worked for the state. Gorbachev’s reforms either were ignored or they were enacted with perverse consequences. Bottom-up reforms worked in China; top-down reforms failed in Russia.

Both countries began serious reform after the passing of a leader (or leadership) that abhorred reform. Deng Xiaoping and his allies succeeded Mao in 1978 after a brief power struggle with hardliners. Gorbachev succeeded the initial beneficiaries of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, who rose quickly as young men to replace those who were executed. The forgettable Konstantin Chernenko was the last in line; there was no choice but to turn to a relative newcomer when he died. For Gorbachev, the horrors of the Stalin era were in the distant past. For Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, the excesses of Mao — the starvation of the Great Leap and the “reeducations” of the Cultural Revolution — were recent and personal experiences. Whereas Stalin had physically annihilated independent-minded party officials, Mao permitted them to survive, subsequently to take over after he was gone. Gorbachev worked his way up the party ladder as a typical apparatchik; although touted as a reformer, he had few reform ideas. His Politburo and Central Committee comrades had no real stomach for reform. Deng Xiaoping also had not worked out a reform program, but he knew enough not to oppose reforms that work (“I don’t care if it is a black or yellow cat as long as it catches mice”).

Real reforms, whether dictated from the top or bubbling up from below, require a reform constituency. In the Chinese case, a large percentage of the population was recovering from the catastrophes of the Mao years. Rural dwellers, in particular, had witnessed the chaos of the Great Leap and had seen their parents and children die from starvation during the 1958–61 famine. They learned they had to take care of themselves. The urban elite had been ripped from the cities to a life of work and reeducation in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and a whole generation had been deprived of schooling. In the Russian case, the last famine lay three decades in the past. After the war, few people were executed for political crimes (political dissent became instead a mental disorder); the Gulag had been gradually dismantled after Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech of 1956. All lived under the motto, “We pretend to work and you pretend to pay.”² Surveys show that Russians were basically content with the system, comfortable in the bosom of their state enterprise or state farm.³ China had a reform constituency; Russia did not. Gorbachev had few reform-minded aides. He listened to the bad advice of his economists. He was opposed by an entrenched bureaucracy but supported by enterprise managers eager to cash in on ill-conceived reform.

Read more at Hoover Institution

Food festival in China celebrates canine culinary culture - with 15,000 dogs on the menu

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

The delicacies on offer might not be to everyone's taste, but that didn't stop thousands of visitors attending a food festival in Yulin, eastern China.

For the town is recognised throughout the region for producing some of the most flavoursome dog meat in the world.

More than 15,000 dogs were slaughtered to feed connoisseurs of canine flesh at the week-long festival, which kicked off at the weekend.

                    Slaughtered: A trader in Yulin transports several dog carcasses on his motorbike

Farmers in the region are highly respected for raising different breeds of dog specifically for the table.

Local Lu Hin explained: 'It is just like other meat. Smaller animals tend to be more delicate and sweeter while very big dogs have a strong, muscular taste.

On the menu: A butcher prepares dog meat carcasses. More than 15,000 of the animals were butchered for this week's festival

'Dog is popular as a dish in China but we are the home of it. We proved that when we started the festival a few years ago and everybody accepts that the best dog meat dishes come from Yulin.

'That was why we created the festival and the number of visitors we get is a testimony to the fact that everybody recognises how good the dog meat is from the region.'

Final journey: Dogs look out of their cages from a truck on a motorway on the outskirts of China's capital Beijing. Dog meat is a delicacy in China, especially in the southern provinces (File photo)

Dog flesh - or 'fragrant meat' as it is known in the region - has been a popular food source in China for thousands of years and is believed to provide medicinal benefits.

However, the industry has come under fire in recent years over concerns about cruelty. Authorities are now proposing to draw up legislation banning the consumption of dog meet.

During the 2008 Olympic games, dog meat was taken off the menus of official Olympic restaurants in order to avoid offending foreign visitors.

Mail Online
 

 

Dog eaters, dog lovers spar over animal rights in China

Gruntzooki Flickr

BEIJING — The mutts were destined for the dinner table - all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward waiting restaurants in northeastern China.

Then fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road.

From there, things began spiraling out of control. News of the confrontation hit the Chinese blogosphere, sending more than 200 animal activists flocking immediately to the highway. Traffic on the road slowed to a standstill. Dozens of police officers were called in. Animal activists, however, kept arriving with reinforcements, carrying water, dog food, even trained veterinarians for a siege that ended up lasting 15 hours.

Weeks later, those who were there still talk in disbelief at how quickly things escalated. But in many ways, it was a battle that has been brewing for years between the rural and the urbanites, the poor and the rich - between the dog eaters of China and the growing number of dog lovers.

The standoff last month has sparked the widest ranging discussions to date in China over animal rights. Pictures and videos from the incident have spawned endless arguments on e-mail groups and blogs, Web polls and news stories delving into each sides' points.

And the debate is the latest sign of China's rapidly changing mores and culture. For centuries, dog meat has been coveted for its fragrant and unique flavor, an especially popular dish in the winter when it is believed to keep you warm. But pet ownership has skyrocketed in recent years as China's booming economy produced a burgeoning middle class with both money and time for four-legged friends. And with the new pet stores, a once powerless animal rights movement is slowly gaining traction.

Where to put them all?

The highway incident has been its biggest success thus far. The mob of dog lovers finally won the standoff by pooling together more than $17,000 to pay off the truck driver. But their victory was quickly eclipsed when they soon realized they had no idea where to house the hundreds of loud, wild and decidedly not-housebroken canines.

Even after combining forces, the handful of animal rights groups in the region had trouble handling the overflow from the truck. Most of the dogs they unloaded were strays, and many were dehydrated, malnourished or suffering from deadly viruses. Several have died since the rescue. Dozens this week remained under treatment at animal hospitals around Beijing.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/pets/7587301.html#ixzz1NwoHsJH3

From Chinatown to China proper: How members of a Brooklyn family traveled 8,000 miles for a wedding

Patty Lee/News

At Lee's cousin's banquet, the guests dined on roast suckling pig, a traditional Chinese banquet dish often served at weddings.

Patty Lee/News

Lewis Lee and Coco Wu get married in a traditional Catholic ceremony in Guangzhou.

Nothing brings together a Chinese family like a wedding. So when my cousin Coco and her longtime beau, Lewis, both 30, decided to tie the knot in January, there was no question about it: We were all flying to China.

Despite a few obstacles — some had the unfortunate luck of traveling during the December snowpocalyse — all 10 of us (my mom, brother, cousin, two pairs of aunts and uncles — including Coco's parents — and significant others) made it to Guangzhou ready to dine, dance and celebrate.

A Chinese wedding technically starts the night before all the festivities, with the bride and groom taking part in a series of auspicious rituals at home. They first shower — separately — in water infused with pomelo leaves, a tradition that the Chinese believe wards off bad luck.

In the past, the bride also had her hair styled for the big day. Her tresses would be piled into an elaborate updo, signaling her step into adulthood. It was usually done by a woman with good fortune — that meant someone happily married with kids — but most modern-day brides just have their moms make a few simple strokes with a comb.

The next morning, relatives of the bride, both maternal and paternal, come to give her away. That's when the fun begins.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/04/26/2011-04-26_from_chinatown_to_china_proper_how_members_of_a_brooklyn_family_traveled_8000_mi.html#ixzz1Kf01YSLE

Tong boss "Little Pete" assassinated in a Chinatown barbershop

 

The "tong" secret societies are as American as Chop Suey -- which is to say, invented in San Francisco and completely unknown in China.

The first tong was organized by Gold-Rush era immigrants as a means of mutual support and defense against a mostly-hostile white dominated world, and before long, tongs had popped up in most every city with a Chinese population.

It didn't take long, though, for the money to be made from drugs, gambling and prostitution to attract a criminal element, especially in chaotic Barbary Coast-era San Francisco. The world of tongs devolved into a near-constant state of bloody gang warfare over control of Chinatown's underworld.

"Little Pete"

In the 1880s, a young man by the name of Fung Jing Toy rose to the top of this wild-west gangster scene, and created his very own tong -- a personal army of hand-picked hatchetmen. He was nicknamed "Little Pete", and with this army of boo how doy began violently pushing the other tongs off of their hard-won turf, moving inexorably towards complete control of Chinatown.

After an attempt to bribe one of his soldiers out of a murder rap landed him temporarily in San Quentin -- and made him famous throughout San Francisco -- Little Pete learned to buy protection in the white world.

By forging a cash-based alliance with "Blind" Buckley, the Democrat boss who controlled San Francisco's hopelessly corrupt City Hall, Little Pete became the undisputed king of Chinatown.

Not only was he new immune from the pesky annoyances of the law, but if a brothel or gambling dive failed to pay him their percentage, a "coincidental" raid by the police would shut them down, and Little Pete's boys would take over.

Gambling. Blackmail. Opium. Prostitution. Murder. For a solid decade Little Pete was the most powerful and feared Chinese on the Pacific Coast.

A price on his head

Little Pete had pushed the other tongs too far. They finally set their mutual enmity aside and put a price on the King's head: one thousand dollars.

Read more at sfist

Institutionalization of the Chinese Tongs in Chicago's Chinatown

by Andrew Sekeres III

When you drive east on Cermak Road or get off on the CTA’s Red Line stop, Cermak/Chinatown, you will be greeted by rising pagodas in the sky, Chinese kanji (the written characters that make up the Chinese language), Asian-influenced architecture, and an array of Asian restaurants. You have entered Chicago’s Chinatown. It seems like a nice safe neighborhood to shop in its various shops selling everything from martial arts weapons to ginseng and shark’s fin to Asian food items including the well known soy sauce to eating various Asian cuisines ranging from Cantonese to Vietnamese to Japanese to even Korean food. However, you should be aware of the unfamiliar especially in this neighborhood. This is not due to heavy areas of violence, but rather to the unseen. Beyond the pleasing facade of gift shops, bakeries, herbal medicine shops, grocery stores, restaurants, and fresh markets pandering to locals and tourists alike, Chinatown has a dark side to it.

What does this dark side compose of? This dark side composes of the presence of a major Asian criminal enterprise- the tong. The two tongs that make up of Chicago’s Chinatown are the On Leong tong and the Hip Sing tong. In recent years, these two organizations have been major players in heroin trafficking and operating illegal gambling dens. Unfortunately, this activity is not new for these groups. You can trace the illegal criminal activities of these organizations to the late 1800’s. From that time to the present, the tongs have been involved in the following crimes: murder, prostitution, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, extortion, alien smuggling, blackmail, money laundering, RICO violations, and bribery. These are very dangerous organizations because not only the multitude of their crimes crosses every spectrum of the criminal code. Rather, it is the insufficient research in the field about these organizations. Criminal justice organizations are trying to decipher their unorthodox practices with well-established criminal investigative techniques. However, this is virtually impossible because the tongs do not follow the normal patterns of groups like them. The tongs follow their own criminal patterns. In order for criminal justice organizations to bring these groups into custody, they must understand what they are dealing with. Besides understanding the complex nature of the tongs, law enforcement officials must understand the dynamics of the neighborhoods that these groups originate from. They must understand the complexity of the Chinese communities in this country: the Chinatowns. Also, they must comprehend the history of the Chinese in this country from the first arrival to the present. It is within the structure of these communities and the history of the Chinese in America that make up the components in which it allows these groups to prosper for over a hundred years. No other criminal group can say that they lasted for a hundred years without major setbacks in their ways.

How is this possible? How can a criminal group like the tongs last in power for some many years without being caught? This is precisely what this paper is going to be about. This paper will examine the dynamics of the Chinese tongs and will try to show how the tongs were successful over a period of more than a hundred years in the United States. In doing so, the paper will lay out, also, the history of the Chinese-American in order to show how the history of the Chinese in the United States plays a significant part in the formation and success of the tongs. Plus more then that, this paper will examine the Chinese in Chicago from the first immigrant to the present-day. With the history of the Chinese in Chicago, this paper will examine and try to conceptualize for the reader how the tongs influence the Chinese community in Chicago. The tongs play a major part in the Chicago Chinese community.

Why is this paper going to focus upon the tongs in Chicago? This paper is going to focus upon the Chinese community and the tongs because there is not any research in the field that focuses upon Chicago when it discusses the tongs. Why is that in city like Chicago known around the world for organized crime and corrupt politics that there is little research on Chinese organized crime in Chicago? The Chinese tongs did exist in Chicago primarily among its Chinese inhabitants. The tongs in Chicago were known for vice, gambling, and recently for smuggling drugs. However when you look at the research that was done in Chicago on vice and organized crime, it does not mention anything about Chinese vice or Chinese organized crime. Walter Cade Reckless’s influential and well-researched book titled Vice In Chicago does not mention anything about the Chinese and their businesses of vice. Also, another great book about Chicago when it deals with organized crime is John Landesco’s book, Organized Crime in Chicago, has a great chapter on prostitution and its links to organized crime does not mention the Chinese and the tongs. Finally, one of the profound books on prostitution and vice in the city of Chicago does not mention the Chinese either. The Chicago Vice Commission’s findings in The Social Evil in Chicago does not look at the Chinese prostitutes when they are discussing foreign women in the vice trade. They primarily focus on African-Americans and foreign-born whites when they are discussing immigrants in their research. Why is that there is little research done on the tongs when it comes to Chicago? The Chinese are a viable force in the social fabric that makes up Chicago. Chicago was the catalyst in research when it comes to new views when dealing with criminology and social structures. Chicago was the birthplace of the Progressive Movement with its Chicago School of Criminology based at the University of Chicago. If Chicago was the birthplace of the Progressive Movement, then why is there little research about the Chinese in Chicago. An example of what this is trying of show is that one of the founders of the Chicago School of Criminology, Ernest W. Burgess, discussed the Chinese population when showing his theory of urban growth only in the context that the Chinatown as “immigrant colonies fascinatingly combing old world heritages and American adaptations (Burgess: The Growth of the City: An Introduction to Research Project, 37)”.

Read more at http://www.gangresearch.net/ChicagoGangs/tongs/prisek.html

The Universality of Incest

Like India, China has only recently emerged from the infanticidal mode of childrearing, but reliable research on childhood sexuality is somewhat more limited than for India. Although parents traditionally sleep with their children until they are adolescents,(131) exactly what happens in Chinese family beds has not yet been much investigated, although some observers have reported that Chinese girls, like Indian, have no trace of a hymen, supposedly because caretakers "clean the sexual organs of the little children during daily washings... so scrupulously..."(132)

Like so many early civilizations, ancient China institutionalized pederasty of boys, child concubinage, the castration of small boys so they could be used sexually as eunuchs, the marriage of young brides with a number of brothers, widespread boy and girl prostitution and the regular sexual use of child servants and slaves.(133) Under the popular ancient sim pua system of marriage, parents would adopt a girl during infancy, bring her up as a sister to their son and then force them into a marriage that must be considered as incestuous in every way except genetically. Alternatively, they could adopt a son to marry his sister.(135) Sexual use of adopted girls was said to be common.(135) Parents would send their boys to aristocratic households for sexual use - if volunteered as a eunuch, the parents would have their boys' genitals cut off, which the parents carried with them in a jar.(136) In some areas, male marriage to boys was so popular that there are records of sacrifices to patron deities of pederasty.(137)

As was also common in other early civilizations, extreme maternal symbiosis caused the Chinese to believe that women were so powerful that they depleted men of their strength by taking their semen during intercourse. The Chinese thought women ejaculated a life force (yin) during sex, which a man could absorb and gain strength from, if he could withhold ejaculation himself. Manuals were written describing methods whereby the man could hold back his semen, terminating intercourse - called "the battle" - by inhaling the breath and sucking the saliva of the woman - who is called "the enemy.(138) During adolescence, youths were instructed to have intercourse with young girls who have "undeveloped breasts," but to practice "moderation" by withholding their semen.'(139) Rulers had more life force because they absorbed more of it from their many wives and concubines. Whether this led them to believe that men could absorb the life force from their children through intercourse is not immediately apparent, although this might be indicated by the widespread practice of buying (under the rubric of "adoption") children in infancy under the popular mui tsai system - children who were then used by their "adoptive" parents both as domestic slaves and as sexual objects.(140) Boys, too, were often adopted for sexual use, and had their feet bound like girls-bound feet being considered sexually arousing.(141)

Foot binding was a unique Chinese sexual mutilation practice that was performed on girls of all classes. Like other fetishists, the Chinese were so afraid of the vagina as a dangerous, castrating organ that they could only feel erotic toward the woman's foot - mainly her big toe. As a Cheng Kuan-ying described foot binding in the nineteenth century: "When a child is four or five, or seven or eight, parents speak harshly to it, and frighten it with their looks, and oppress it in every conceivable manner so that the bones of its feet may be broken and its flesh may putrefy."(142) The girl undergoes this extremely painful process for from five to ten years, crying out in pain each night as she hobbles about the house to do her tasks while holding on to the walls for support.(143) As the bones became broken and the flesh deteriorated, her foot became a perfect penis - substitute, often losing several toes as they were bent under her foot in order to emphasize the big toe sticking out.

The penis-toe then became the focus of the man's perversion and of his sexual excitement during intercourse. "It formed an essential prelude to the sex act, and its manipulation excited and stimulated... The ways of grasping the foot in one's palms were both profuse and varied; ascending the heights of ecstasy, the lover transferred the foot from palm to mouth. Play included kissing, sucking, and inserting the foot in the mouth until it filled both cheeks, either nibbling at it or chewing it vigorously, and adoringly placing it against one's cheeks, chest, knees, or virile member.(144) Thus even sex with a female could simulate homosexual intercourse for Chinese males.

Although Chinese literature has many descriptions of the screams of girls whose feet are being crushed,(145) the sources are silent as to whether the little girl herself fully understood the sexual purpose of her mutila-tion. Since she shared the family bed with her parents and presumably observed her father playing sexually with her mother's penis - foot, it is likely that the sexual aim of her painful mutilation was apparent to her.

Read much more at The Journal of Psychohistory

The History of Child Abuse

The Journal of Psychohistory

Psychohistory, the science of historical motivations, combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present. The center of psychohistorical research around the globe is The Institute for Psychohistory, which is headquartered in New York City and has 18 branches in other countries. The Institute is chartered by the State of New York as a not-for-profit educational corporation, the Association for Psychohistory, Inc., and for the past 40 years has published The Journal of Psychohistory, various books by The Psychohistory Press, and has been affiliated with the International Psychohistorical Association, which holds an annual convention. Its director is Lloyd deMause, whose work (see below for full texts) is used in most college courses in psychohistory. This website contains extensive material reproduced from The Journal of Psychohistory and from deMause's books: Foundations of Psychohistory, Reagan's America, The Emotional Life of Nations and The Origins of War in Child Abuse. It also contains addresses of Institute branches and links to the International Psychohistorical Association and other websites and discussion lists.

by Lloyd deMause

Childhood in China has historically had the same institutionalized rape rituals as in India, including the pederasty of boys, child concubinage, the castration of boys to be used sexually as eunuchs, marriage of young girls to a number of brothers, widespread boy and girl prostitution and the regular sexual use of child servants and slaves. So prevalent was the rape of little girls that Western doctors found that, as in India, few girls entering puberty had intact hymens. Even the universal practice of foot binding was for sexual purposes, with a girl undergoing extremely painful crushing of the bones of her feet for years in order that men could make love to her big toe as a fetish, a penis-substitute.

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The crucial relationship in this evolution is the mother-daughter relationship. If little girls are treated particularly badly, they grow up to be mothers who cannot rework their traumas, and history is frozen. For instance, although China was ahead of the West in most ways during the pre-Christian era, it became "frozen" and fell far behind the West in evolutionary social and technological change after it adopted the practice of footbinding girls. Similarly, the cliterodectomy of girls in Moslem societies has inhibited their social development for centuries, since it likewise puts a brake on the ability of the next generation of mothers to make progress in caring for their children. Clearly, different groups have moved different distances up the ladder of psychological evolution, since some contemporary groups still practice brain-eating as our Paleolithic ancestors did, and different subgroups of our more advanced nations still terrorize and abuse their children in ways identical to those that were commonplace centuries ago, producing the "historical fossils" (early "psychoclasses") we now call borderline personalities and other severe character disorders. Your neighbor is as likely to be a result of medieval parenting as of modern parenting, so modern societies contain a full range of childrearing modes and psychoclasses. The "generational pressure" for psychological change is not only an independent historical force--originating in inborn adult-child striving for relationship--it occurs independent of social and technological change, and can be found even in periods of economic stagnation. My "psychogenic theory of history" posits that a society's childrearing practices are not just one item in a list of cultural traits, but--because all other traits must be passed down from generation to generation through the narrow funnel of childhood--instead makes childrearing the very basis for the transmission and development of all other cultural traits, placing definite limits on what can be achieved in the material spheres of history. The main source of childhood evolution is, I believe, the process I call psychogenesis, by which parents--mainly the mother for most of history--revisit a second time around the stages of childhood and undo to some extent the traumas they themselves endured. It is in this sense that history is like a psychotherapy of the generations, undoing trauma and giving historical personality a chance at a new start with every baby born. Only humans have brain networks that allow this miracle to take place. All cultural changes in the past 100,000 years of Homo sapiens sapiens are epigenetic, not genetic. Regardless of changes in the environment, it is only when changes in childhood occur that epigenetic changes in the brain can occur and societies can begin to progress and move in unpredictable new directions that are more adaptive. That more individuated and loving individuals are ultimately more adaptive is understandable--because they are less under the pressures of infantile traumas and are therefore more rational in reaching their goals. But that this childhood evolution--and therefore all social evolution--is terribly uneven is also understandable, given the varying conditions under which parents all over the world have to conduct their childrearing tasks

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That periodic sacrifices are in fact lawful is suggested by the regularity with which they occur, nearly every state producing a major war on the average of about every 25 years throughout the past two millennia. In between wars, periodic economic sacrifices serve to relieve our guilt for too much prosperity and to cleanse us of our dangerous economic and social progress. Depth psychology has shown that in individuals progress toward individuation and success often produces regression, including both fears of leaving mommy and wishes for maternal re-engulfment, along with fears of losing one's self. In nations, the same thing occurs after periods of rapid change and prosperity, and is defended against by the sacrificial ritual called war.

Read more at The Journal of Psychohistory

From the inbox: Is it okay to love China?

I just got this email from a reader, and I wanted to share it, as well as my response.

Dear Richard,

This will seem like a strange email, but if you could answer my questions, then I would be extremely grateful.

How do you find a balance between liking China, for the good things you can find there, and hating China, for all the wrong things that are happening there?

I’m Chinese American. I was born in America, and grew up hearing toned-down, child-friendly, good, nice stories about China. So when I finally realized what was happening over there, I was shocked, and extremely conflicted between pride and disgust. On one hand, it’s where my family and culture came from. On the other hand, everything that happens over there conflicts with my values. I now read blogs about China, hoping to keep up to date about the country, to know everything about it, condemn it for what it does, hope for it’s future…but it seems there’s never anything good. China’s always getting worse, and by now, I’ve pretty much lost hope for the China.

It’s tempting to just hate the country and cut all my ties to it. Go to an extreme and wish for Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, and maybe even Hong Kong and Macau to go independent when it can, and the blood of all its communist leaders. Call myself American and the only thing Chinese about me would be the cultural and traditional aspects of it. But I can’t do that, because that’s not really want I want or believe.

I’ve been reading your blog over two years now. You are disappointed at China, yet still happy whatever something positive happens. (Well, happy’s not the right word, but I can’t think of an appropriate word…) How do you do that? Keep hope that maybe one day, something would change, but for now, bear to watch the humiliation and horrible things China is going through and doing? (is it because you’re not Chinese, and if something happens, well, it’s not your country/group of people/identity that’s doing it? Forgive me if I’m wrong)

Thank you for your time. I eagerly await your reply.

[Name]

Read more at the PEKING DUCK  (also read the comments)

China's Ambivalent Tiger Moms: When in Rome...

There is a lot of truth in Amy Chua's self-congratulatory Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chinese moms, today and in the past, will stop at practically nothing to ensure their children are armed with weapons required to defeat kiddie competition and obliterate barriers of future financial success. That said, in the People's Republic, contemporary mothers, flooded with information that promote a more liberal model of modern parenting, are conflicted: on one hand, they exert tremendous pressure on their (single) kids to excel academically; on the other, they feel guilty for imposing so much stress on cherished dumplings. There is increasing awareness a monomaniacal focus on grades can, in the long run, put young adults at a disadvantage.

Brands have begun to capitalize on this new truth.

The Middle Kingdom: Changes Afoot.

Despite ancient cultural imperatives, China is not static. Several contemporary influences buck against traditional definitions of proper child rearing: a) the rise of the coddled -- i.e., pampered -- single child, b) international media that promote alternative values (e.g., individualism), and c) an expanding economic pie fueled by entrepreneurialism and availability of higher education. Regarding the latter, the sky looks broader than ever before. Booming economic growth has been turbocharged by broadened availability of advanced degrees. In 2000, approximately 1.5 million college graduates entered the labor force. Today, the stream has become a flood, with six million university students, each dreaming of riches, beginning the hunt for professional gold. While Party positions are still rated for stability and proximity to the corridors of power, the most cherished positions are within multinational companies such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, investment banks and consultancies. It is understood these companies value initiative and independent thinking, characteristics at odds with traditional childhood "obedience."

But Traditional Values Endure.

As China hurtles towards 21st century superpower status, however, the gravitation pull of traditionalism, however, is felt everywhere. Therefore, it is unsurprising pedagogical practices have not evolved since economic reform began after the Cultural Revolution. Pupils never -- absolutely never -- question, let alone challenge, their instructors. Father-knows-best patriarchy, the modus operandi of both imperial China and the Modern Middle Kingdom, is alive and well within the Ministry of Education. The gao kao, the nation's all-or-nothing university entrance exam, rewards regurgitation of facts, not critical reasoning or originality. Individuals' ranking vis-à-vis peers are compiled starting in kindergarten. Children do not compose essays, outlets of self-expression in Europe and America, until the seventh grade. China's curriculum is nationalized. Uniforms are de rigeur. Beyond soccer, school-sponsored after school activities do not exist. And pre-graduation dating is still a bit shocking, a signal of corrupted ambition.

Read more at Huffington Post

Rice Terraces of Yunnan

Reddest Red Sun - Mao Badges

World's People Eagerly Seek Chairman Mao Badges

China Reconstructs, May 1968 Proudly we wear the badges of Chairman Mao, The ever-red sun rises in our hearts; With Chairman Mao's call engraved within us, We become pathbreakers in revoluton and production. On the streets of China's cities and towns, in the trolleys and buses, at meetings and public places, in roads and villages of the countryside, wherever the revolutionary people see each other wearing Chairman Mao badges they greet each other with an especially warm smile. Their boundless love for our respected and beloved Chairman Mao draws them together.

Abroad too, in countries around the world, revolutionary people often crowd around a Chinese wearing a badge of Chairman Mao to ask him for one. And when they get it, they shout with joy, "Long live Chairman Mao Tse-tung!"

This eager demand for the shining Chairman Mao badges is an expression of the increasing depth with which Mao Tse-tung's thought has taken root in the hearts of the world's people as the great proletarian cultural revolution in China continues its victorious march. A Malian friend put it this way: "Chairman Mao says that 'The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism'. Today, it is China's great proletarian cultural revolution which has brought to the whole world the Marxism-Leninism of our era, the invincible thinking of Mao Tse-tung the revolutionary fighters' weapon everywhere."

This is why, with great warmth, the revolutionary people not only of China but throughout the world call Chairman Mao the red sun in their hearts. And their sources of inspiration and strength are the writings of Chairman Mao, his photos, and the Chairman Mao badge.

Making the Badges

Chairman Mao badges arose with the cultural revolution, an explosion of the revolutionary masses' deep love for Chairman Mao. The Peking Red Flag Badge Factory began to make them. Then from every corner of China letters began to arrive by the hundreds at the factory every day. In simple, sincere, beautiful language, people across the nation, their hearts filled with love for our great leader Chairman Mao, poured out their faith in Mao Tse-tung's thought. Varied in a thousand ways, these letters made one demand "Make more Chairman Mao badges!"

A medical worker in Kiangsu, about to leave for the countryside in response to Chairman Mao's call to go among the broad masses of workers and peasants, wrote the factory workers: "In the days and nights to come, we cannot depart from Mao Tse-tung's thought even for a second. We especially long for a shining badge of Chairman Mao so that in the hard struggle ahead of us we can draw strength and courage from it. "

The factory workers had personally experienced the people's demand for badges. For example, peasants in out-of-the-way villages had sent delegates to the cities, crossing mountains and rivers with sacks of food on their backs, to get badges of Chairman Mao. When the coveted badges at last lay in the peasants' hands for the first time, their eyes shone with tears.

To deeply moving letters and scenes such as these, the revolutionary workers and staff members of the badge factory responded with a solemn pledge: "More and better badges of Chairman Mao!"

Their factory used to make souvenir pins of scenic spots and ornaments with feudal and superstitious themes. The revolutionaries had suggested many times that they produce Chairman Mao badges, but the idea had always been suppressed by the handful of Party capitalist-roader leaders in the factory.

Then the cultural revolution opened the floodgates, the factory revolutionaries rebelled and began turning out Chairman Mao badges. Their first month's production of 30,000 were snatched up by the eager masses. In 1967, when the "January Revolution" in Shanghai swept out across the whole nation, the factory's revolutionaries fought together and seized the power back from the handful of capitalist-roaders. Monthly production of Chairman Mao badges rose to 6,000,000, with variety increasing from two kinds to twenty. Today, besides Peking, Shanghai and Canton where the greatest quantity and varieties are produced, factories in the provinces are also making the badges, Still, the supply never meets the demand.

Read more at Morning Sun

Breast Models Earn Fulsome Rewards

 

Bustier Chinese women may find photo shooting and modeling jobs for lingerie companies or cosmetics clinics. (Photo/Internet)

The exceptionally high financial rewards for being a "breast model" in China -- over one million yuan a year (US$152,000) -- is luring even middle-aged women to offer themselves for shoots. However, there are also reports that some young women have sacrificed themselves in order to get higher exposure.

 The new phenomenon in recent years seems to confirm the statement that some Chinese women's careers can be determined by the size of their cleavage.

 Asian women are generally not as busty as their peers in the west. Nonetheless, becoming a breast model is still down to the gifts bestowed by nature as no manufacturing companies or cosmetic surgery clinics want to hire artificial breasts to promote their products and services.

There is presently a huge demand for such models because lingerie suppliers and hospitals have to constantly renew the photos for their promotion literature or commercials. In Beijing alone there are several thousand women who draw annual incomes ranging from 100,000 yuan (US$15,200) to over one million yuan per year.

Read more at Want China Times

Map Of Chinese Minority Groups

Family Pictures of China's 56 Ethnic Groups

View more at China Today

Family Pictures of China's 56 Ethnic Groups

Read more at China Today

Nixon in China, the Dinner, Is Recreated

 

WHEN President Richard M. Nixon made his momentous trip to China in 1972, it followed years of diplomacy and advance work. When Michael Tong brought his interpretation of the visit to his Manhattan restaurant, Shun Lee Palace, it took less than 24 hours

One night early in the trip, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai gave a formal dinner in Nixon’s honor. The meal, served in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, was broadcast live around the world and covered by a sizable press corps. Because of the time difference, it was still morning in Manhattan when Mr. Tong received a copy of the menu by Telex. He was sure he could duplicate the meal in his restaurant that same night, so he called Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel, local newscasters at ABC, to ask whether they wanted to film it. And they did.

Mr. Tong served the menu for months afterward at the restaurant, on East 55th Street. for $25 a person. “It was huge news then,” he said. “The Chinese restaurant scene here exploded because of the Nixon trip.” By the summer, at least one other Manhattan restaurant was serving a version of the Nixon dinner menu, at $10 a person, and an article in The New York Times bore the headline, “Chinese Restaurants Flower Following Diplomatic Thaw.”

Read more at The New York Times

Lost in China

DEAR CHONGQING,

To address a letter to a city of any kind is folly. To send a letter to a metropolis of your immensity -- 32 million residents! -- shows, as we say here in New York, chutzpah. Also it's a bit weird. And yet I'm writing anyway, because I don't quite know how else to get a handle on the six days I spent with you in October -- six days in which I felt embraced and ignored, beloved and rejected, entrapped and, in the end, liberated. Please let me explain:

When I stepped off the train from Chengdu, the laid-back capital of Sichuan Province 200 miles to the west, I felt (I imagined) just like one of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants who flock from the countryside to your crowded streets every year: at once energized and terrified, awed and optimistic. All over, skyscrapers were rising, with spindly cranes adding new stories by the minute, their windowless walls vanishing in the mist (O.K., smog). Beyond them, when the sunlight strengthened, I could see the craggy outlines of mountains, and sense the distant dips that heralded the conjunction of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers.

To lighten my load for the first day's wandering, I left my luggage in storage, then went next door to the bus station, where I muscled past the map vendors -- "Don't want," I told them in dicey Mandarin -- to find the No. 601 bus, which would take me into your heart. From my seat at the rear of the vehicle I gaped at your sheer physicality. Your streets curved and climbed, circling around gleaming, Prada-billboarded shopping malls and racing down through construction sites at whose edges I glimpsed neatly terraced vegetable gardens. As the bus crossed a bridge high above the muddy Jialing and curlicued through cloverleaf overpasses and tunnels toward what I took to be downtown Chongqing, I had to admit: You were not pretty, but I was enthralled.

I was also overwhelmed, just as I'd hoped. It had been a very, very long time since I'd felt so dominated by a city -- if I'd ever felt that way at all. Years of living in New York had inured me to the challenges (and wonders) of urban living, but years of travel had taught me that other people were still intimidated by cities: their size and density, their crowds, their dirt and chaos and almost arbitrary rules of conduct. Recently, I'd begun to ask myself: How would it feel to be a migrant abandoning the countryside for the urban unknown, or a small-town tourist facing off against the metropolis?

To find the answer I first had to find the right city -- no, the right mega-city, a place whose very city-ness was its attraction, whose size and structure warped reality like a black hole, whose impenetrability would reduce me to that gawking, dreaming yokel I maybe never was.

And then, last August, I read "Chicago on the Yangtze," an article in Foreign Policy magazine that laid out your brief but impressive history. A century ago, you were but a minor port on the Yangtze, a backwater of south-central China with a slightly different name, Chungking. But by World War II you'd become the Republic of China's temporary capital, and the postwar years saw enough growth that in 1997 you broke away from Sichuan Province to become what's humbly termed a "direct-controlled municipality" -- a heaving, swirling industrial nexus that upends our traditional notions of what constitutes a city. More than 30 million people spread through a mountainous, river-cut, quake-prone area twice the size of Switzerland, and you call yourself a mere municipality? Intrigued, I yearned to lose myself among such multitudes.

And for my first few hours, I did. I got off the 601 ... somewhere, and asked a passing schoolboy where to find lunch. He pointed me down a side street, where I discovered an ad hoc, open-air noodle shop and ordered a bowl, crimson with chili oil, fragrant with numbing, citrusy Sichuan peppercorns, studded with bits of pork and intestine. I added a dash of black vinegar and slurped it down, grateful to have had such a literally warm welcome.

From there I wandered. Up a tower to a defunct revolving restaurant, where I snapped photos of the hazy skyline. Into a shop selling warning signs for construction sites, where I bought a "Danger! High voltage!" placard. Through one of the few neighborhoods of historic and beautiful buildings, where viney-rooted trees scaled brick walls and brass plaques championed the deeds of Communist Party heroes. As afternoon began shading into evening, I arrived by chance at People's Square, a broad plaza where I heard the twanging of guitar and erhu, the two-stringed traditional instrument, and the warbling voice of an amateur chanteuse.

At first, I worried that I'd stumbled into a tourist trap. Then I looked around: there were no tourists. Nor had I seen any all day. The senior citizens making music beneath a sheltering tree were simply locals enjoying their favorite hangout. I sat down, listened to songs from (I think) the 1960s and was utterly charmed. Here in the heart of the sprawl, I'd found, well, heart.

The mood lasted only until the sun went down, which is when I began to make mistakes -- none catastrophic, but together they added up to misery. First, I found a hotel nearby that looked promising -- clean, affordable, well situated -- so I checked in, barely noticing that every other room on my floor was set up to host mah-jongg players.

Hungry, I set off for dinner -- and filled my belly with regret. Down the street, big groups clustered around caldrons of spicy broth, dipping meats and vegetables in to cook them; this was hot pot, Chongqing's specialty, a meal that is absolutely no fun to eat alone. Instead, I ate chili-slathered pork dumplings in the fluorescent glare of a noisy restaurant.

What I needed was new friends, so I grabbed a taxi and asked, in Mandarin, for an area with lots of bars. The glitzy night-life district into which I was deposited was all big, loud clubs (i.e., not my scene), and I resented the expensively dressed youngsters who moved so easily through the neon alleys. At the five-star hotels nearby, I asked concierges about quiet bars where I might meet people; they directed me to places I'd already rejected.

Finally, I returned to the hotel, where I discovered my floormates click-clacking away at mah-jongg. What's more, I could sense a hovering aura of sleaze: you don't play at 2 a.m. without gambling, and the men who bet big often have "company" for the night. (Ah, that explained the condoms in the bathroom!) Trying to make as little contact with the sheets as possible, I slept.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10359/1113613-37.stm#ixzz19ExqLuMU

2,400 year-old soup found in China

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Chinese archaeologists have unearthed a vat of 2,400 year-old soup in its original bronze cooking pot, according to The Discovery Network.

Further tests are being conducted to determine the ingredients found in the cooking vessel, which had turned green from oxidation, but the broth is suspected to have been bone soup.

The site, near Xian's famous terracotta warriors, was being cleared to make way for an expansion of the city's airport.

A container holding an odourless liquid believed to be wine was also found on the site.

"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history," Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology told the Global Times.

"The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)."

nzherald

China's Confucian culture clash

Students top global rankings - at a cost

 School students in Shanghai have proven themselves the top of the class in science, maths and reading, but that has not stopped parents from pouring scorn and ridicule on the Chinese education system.

"What you learned in childhood has nothing to do with your work in the future," says Gao Chunying, a primary school teacher with a 16-year-old son at high school. "Our kids can't create, and they are turning into idiots." 

The deficiencies of China's education system are possibly the No. 1 gripe among the country's middle-class parents.

That is why they are signing their children up for international schools and sending them abroad in their tens of thousands.

Employers are complaining that China's high-scoring children do not necessarily make for well-adjusted employees.

"Proportionately, is there a lot of wasted and misdirected talent here? I'm afraid there is," says David Kelly, who runs the China Policy consultancy and is also associate professor of politics at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Regardless of China's enormous education challenges, this week the respected Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) said students in Shanghai were streets ahead of those from any other country.

Shanghai students scored 600 in maths while those in the next four places - Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taipei - were in a cluster between 543 and 562, according to the PISA report, produced every three years by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Australia scored 514, which ranked it behind New Zealand (519) but comfortably above Britain (492) and the United States (487).

Read more at The Sydney Morning Herald

Shanghai, never previously included in the OECD sample, was also far ahead of anywhere else in reading and in science. It was a stunning result for a developing country.

Wen seeks to win Indians with Tagore, tai-chi, calligraphy

New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) In a bid to improve the public image of China that has taken a beating in recent months due to Beijing's diplomatic postures, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will visit a school in the Indian capital when he comes here next week to project the country's soft power to the younger generation.

Wen will begin his three-day trip to India with a visit to the Tagore International School at Vasant Vihar Dec 15. He will informally interact with schoolchildren where he is expected to tell them about Chinese culture, tai-chi and calligraphy, informed sources told IANS.

 He is also expected to announce at the school about China's decision to provide textual and audio-visual material to Indian schools to help teach Mandarin, a proposal floated by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal when he visited China recently. He is also likely to declare that China was ready to send teachers to teach Mandarin to India if India wanted, said the sources.

 The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has already announced plans to introduce Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language in its 11,000 affiliated schools from Class 6 onwards next year.

 Tagore School has an ongoing exchange programme with a Chinese school whereby Indian teachers impart lessons to Chinese students in yoga through videoconferencing and Chinese teachers teach Indian students about calligraphy.

 During Wen's visit, his second to the country, the two sides will focus on ironing out a host of irritants that has clouded bilateral ties like stapled visas for Indian citizens of Jammu and Kashmir and Beijing's massive investment in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir that New Delhi sees as an inimical move.

Read more at  sify

Communist China on mosque-building spree

BEIJING: In an apparent move to appease its 20-millionstrong Muslim minority, Communist China plans to build mosques across the country to meet their religious requirement.

Authorities are addressing a lack of religious facilities for millions of Muslims who have moved to coastal cities in search of jobs and livelihood, a senior official at the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said.

A large number of Muslims have migrated to cities from inland regions since 1978 leading to a growing demand for religious facilities, primarily more mosques, greater availability of Islamic food and special graveyards, deputy director of the Islamic Department of the SARA Ma Jin was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.

Some coastal provinces, especially the top three in terms of the migrant Muslim population found themselves ill-prepared to cope with the increasing need for religious facilities . Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, has only four mosques to cater for 9,800 permanent Muslim residents.

Construction of the last mosque, with a seating capacity of about 5,000 and situated near the Muslim Sages Tomb, was completed just ahead of the Asian Games which opened in early November in Guangzhou.

Read more: Communist China on mosque-building spree - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/Communist-China-on-mosque-building-spree/articleshow/7074635.cms#ixzz17jAwZS1L

Trawling for the dead in cradle of Chinese civilization

Gansu Province, China (CNN) -- Snaking through the majestic mountains of western China, the Yellow River was once considered to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. Today, 24-year-old Lun Lun combs the very same waters searching not for fish, but for the remains of humans.

He sets out from the shores of his home in Shangping village in far-flung Gansu Province on his rusty, hand-made canoe hunting for corpses, a practice that has become a lucrative, though grisly, industry.

Lun Lun and his fellow fishermen have dragged more than one hundred bodies out of the river this year alone as they float downstream from the bustling metropolis. Body fishermen claim the dead are typically victims of suicide or murder from the bustling western provincial capital city of Lanzhou, just 20 kilometers to the west. Authorities say other victims have drowned or died in accidents.

Meanwhile, Wei Jinpeng and Wei Yinquan publicly advertise their services by spray-painting their mobile phone numbers and the words "body fishing up ahead" on the sides of mountains and buildings along the river and roads between Lanzhou and Shangping.

Read more and view photo gallery at CNN

Chinese Animation

Is China poised to become next opera superpower?

BEIJING—When Italian opera star Leo Nucci set off in 2009 on his first-ever working visit to China, he concedes he felt a measure of excitement.

“I’d heard about the passion for opera that was just starting to emerge in China,” says Nucci. “Some of my colleagues had been there.”

Their reports, however, were no preparation for what Nucci was about to encounter.

As he and soprano Desiree Rancatore finished the aria that closes Rigoletto’s third act, the audience inside Beijing’s opera house erupted with applause.

And it would not stop.

After several deafening minutes conductor Donato Renzetti finally signalled to the performers to do the aria all over again, for pure pleasure — on the spot.

And so they did, to yet more rapturous applause.

In 40 years of performing, the 67-year-old Nucci confides, he had never felt anything like it.

“The reaction of the people, the entire house on its feet, my name being called out in Chinese — honestly, it made you feel like a rock star,” he says, in his glowing baritone.

“This was one of the most powerful and moving moments I have ever felt on stage.”

It was also a clear signal that western opera has arrived in China.

It might not yet have the broader appeal it enjoys in New York, London or Toronto, or in the capitals of continental Europe.

Read more at theStar.com