Thunder of an 'age-old anvil'

"Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing-"- Hopkins

Today, like every day, is history. But today is the kind of history that is printed in textbooks and which college students study as part of the cause and effect leading up to colossal events; the kind of history one does not see every day of the year. Today, news of Kim Jong Il's death was released, plunging North Korea into frantic grief, and the world into frantic trepidation. This announcement has struck the pond of world events like a well-aimed pebble. It is too soon to tell, yet, how far the ripples will go, or when they will strike the shore.
One little ripple which a Chinese friend showed me on Facebook today is this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98lw.
For me, it is the most poignant sight of the year. As I watched, I suddenly realized that the most tragic love, most tragic faith, is that which is utterly misplaced. Men who cry out in despair to deaf idols are not merely guilty of sin, they are the great voice of hopelessness in the universe, they are the blackest depth of soundless grief revolving in the bleakest cell of unapproachable pain. And so, I found myself weeping with this people. An oppressor, torturer, and madman tore terrifying tears today from his people. Not the usual tears of hunger, of fear, of injustice, of pain, of loss which have haunted North Korea for so long, but strange, unnatural tears. Dignified Asian men of solemn ages and high position are here seen sobbing and convulsing before the nation like little children. As I watched the writhing mob, it were as though every woman wept for her child, every man for his beloved, every child for his parents. My heart is still shaking; the emotion, the rawness of it, clawed at me from the screen as the video played.

God have mercy on this people, for they are "...a people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They have become plunder, with no one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no one to say, 'Send them back.'" (Isaiah 42:22)

In only a week we will celebrate the coming to earth of God in the flesh, of the King of eternity who throws off the slavery of the heart and soul, and beckons the world into the kingdom of light. In only a week, well fed and surrounded safely by all we love, we will sing with smug satisfaction the soaring hymns of hope and joy. And while we sing, and eat, and laugh, Korea mourns. While we marvel at the glorious mercy of God, North Korea is dying in starved, brutal ignorance. While we luxuriate in 'holiday cheer' the few people of that nation blessed with the knowledge of, and faith in, Christ, are laying down their lives in starkly joyous surrender, 'That the Lamb who was slain might have the full reward of His suffering.'

May God have mercy not on North Korea only, may God have mercy on us, the sleeping church. My own callousness is hideous to me, my selfishness more than I can bear.

Today, like every day, is a solemn one in the history of the world. Tomorrow, still, is an undiscovered treasure in our hands. Faced with this great and terrible world, swaying in the agony of its pain, how will we live? How must I live my daily life?

Reading List for Christmas Break

The best part of Christmas break is the possession of hours and hours to read. Something tells me that this Christmas break will be a bit too busy for that, as I prepare to fly out for Angers, France at the beginning of January. However, the other best part of Christmas break is creating unrealistic, beautiful goals, so I made a reading list anyway. It is as follows:

'Factory Girls'- Leslie T. Chang (I already started this, and it's so, so excellent. :-) )
'The Gay Genius'- Lin Yutang*
'Le Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Vacances du Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Les Récrés du Petit Nicolas'- Sempé/Goscinny
'Cultural Literacy'- E.D. Hirsch
'Persuasion'- Jane Austen*
'Graded French Reader'-
'501 French Verbs'
'From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya'- Ruth Tucker*
'Too True To Be Good'- George Bernard Shaw*
Assorted poetry with a heavy slant towards Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kipling, and Christina Rossetti.*
'Muslims, Christians, and Jesus'- Carl Medearis
'I Chose Freedom'- Victor Kravchenko*
'At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl- Inge Jens
'The Short Life of Sophie Scholl'- Hermann Vinke*
'The Great Divorce'- C.S. Lewis*

Realistic expectations cannot be too highly applauded. :-P
Marked items are those which I have already read (4-5 times ;-) ), or those which I have nearly finished, and simply need to come back to. These are the 'low priority' listings.

Technically, I could check 'The Great Divorce' off the list, because I read it yesterday in my first act of Christmas Break Independence, but I already want to go back and re-read it.
It offered a lot to ponder, and it helped me come to terms with some ideas I'd been struggling with. Accepting the goodness and justice of God in a world that makes a mockery of both concepts, and, what is even more difficult, applying these known characteristics of God to certain agonizing instances in the Old Testament, has kept me awake... way too many nights this semester. I've felt heart-broken and confused, frustrated and angry as I try to make sense of the world and its Maker.
Seeing though, through Lewis' clever device, just how deceptive and self-serving, how empty and enslaving human arguments are against the overwhelming Holiness that is God, I was painfully broken and humbled. As I listened to the querulous questions and demands of the ghosts, who obstinately refused to enter Paradise, who were unable to recognize how much better God Himself was than the shabby ephemeral concepts of him, and themselves, which they insisted upon retaining, I recognized myself, and my own pride- my own intellectual falsehoods and stubborn, egocentric opinions... and healthy, shamed humility rolled in. It was like a breath of fresh, cool air- sharp, but invigorating and sweet with life.

You should read 'The Great Divorce' too, and if you're not convinced, the following excerpts will prove it to you:

"'Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.'
'The saying is almost too hard for us.'
'Ah, but it's cruel not to say it. They that know have grown afraid to speak. That is why sorrows that used to purify now only fester... [Y]ou and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.'"

"Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken."

"'What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.'
'Ye see it does not.'
'I feel in a way that it ought to.'
'That sounds very merciful; but see what lurks behind it.'
'What?'
'The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should veto Heaven.'"

"Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live forever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty- that will die. It was used as a weapon of bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken."

"[The action of Pity is] a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses."

"Time is the very lens through which ye see- small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope- something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all."

"That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."

"Milton was right... The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy- that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks."

"There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares."

"Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already."

"...no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God's hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods."

I think I'm a little in love with C.S. Lewis all over again... Then again, how could anyone help being so? :-) #christiangirlproblems

Paradox and pain

"Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth"- Jean Paul Sartre.


In my linguistics class, we have been talking for the past week about the relation between language and ideas, the concept of language as a vehicle for culture. Our final project is to construct a message in the medium of our choice which we would choose to send to inhabitants of other planets as a representation of human life on earth.


So, I've been thinking, what is human life on earth?


Actually, all semester, no, even longer- almost, it seems, for as long as I can remember, some such question, vast and indefinable, has been smoldering in my heart, furious as suppressed lava, threatening to erupt and leave me empty and utterly cold.


How to define the human experience, the purpose of human existence? The answers I've accumulated fail to satisfy, somehow. I barely can explain my own past and place in the world, and my story is a pleasantly uneventful one. In those homes where pain is daily nearer and more vital than I can imagine, in those lands "where life is evil now", what is the unifying thread? What pattern can be traced in senseless suffering?


Sometimes, like a fever in the brain, I'm haunted by the contrast surrounding us everywhere in our world- the shining displays in department stores against the crowded disease and filth of a refugee camp, gleeful, laughing children beside tottering skeletal ones, bright eyes smiling beside blank, horror-shadowed faces. Smug materialism beside raw, hoarse desperation. The deep, simple naturalness of love allowed to run its course unobstructed beside the despair of loss, of separation, of sudden devestation. And I ask myself, which is real? Children weaving daisy chains in a May meadow, or a bus blazing in a Palestinian street? Clear northern lakes reflecting the unruffled majesty of mountains, or grass whispering over the nightmare secrets of Babi Yar? Man defying injustice, or Man breaking under torture?


And I wonder, is no one else wondering the same thing? How can we go about daily life so calmly? I have been waiting all my life for someone to snap under the weight of it all- to stand up in the middle of a crowded room, and shout aloud "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nanking, Dresden- Oh, God, let it not be true, or let me die!"


I can't help but feel that, when we think of these things at all, we are instinctively idealists. The nightmare is everywhere, does not have to be searched for, but the happy ending is like buried treasure, sparkling in some secret cache beneath the smoking rubble of earth. Journalists dig for it, optimists paint it in sweeping strokes on the blank canvases of the public imagination. The truth is that we cannot grasp the things that happen in the world every day, especially in nations like the U.S. where life wears blinders and death is neatly sanitized, respectably whisked away from public view. Lurid newspaper articles have the flavor of science fiction; we read them with something that is almost pleasure, because, at our core, we do not believe them to be true. We are ahistorians. We do not believe in history- if we for a moment comprehended it, we would go mad.


And yet the beauty cannot be argued away. The world is fiercely full of life, flourishing, replenishing, dazzling. Vegetation billows and races like green wildfire over the killing fields of Cambodia. In China, the grandchildren of the Cultural Revolution and famine go to the movies, chat online, and discuss sports and celebrity gossip. Normalcy sweeps with merciful rapidity over the indescribable and incomprehensible years of each nation. I am lost in this paradox- the rosiness and darkness of mankind, the cruelty and kindness of nature, the inescapable horror and irrepressible delight of the world. And I have, as yet, no complete answer to my question. What has man done? Why does man continue?


I have always been seized, when faced with the dangerous and fractured state of so many other places, with the desire to leave this semblance of sanity and go there, to face down the lurking nightmare and know, once and for all, what this other half of reality is, if any ointment can soothe it. To effect even a small change for good, to live and die for something difficult and deeply right is a leaping instinct, more powerful than cowardice.


A scene from 'The Robe', a favorite book from high school has haunted me for years. On the road to Jerusalem, two Roman commanders fall into a discussion of the ideal God- what God would be like were they allowed to create Him for themselves. Demetrius, a Greek slave, is listening, and begins pondering the idea for himself. He thinks of the destruction of his home and family, of his enslavement, of the injustice and suffering he's witnessed over the years, and decides:


"This nobler god- if he had any interest in justice, at all- would appear, at such a tragic moment, and sternly declare, 'You can't do that!'"


For me, this has always been the essence of human need. For God to sweep in and disperse evil in one breath, crying out in a voice which would echo beyond the universe, 'You can't do that!'


Western culture is inundated with the chivalrous ideal of the knight in shining armor galloping up at just the right moment to rescue the helpless and imprisoned. Somehow, my vision of God seems to tangle itself inextricably with myths of Camelot and the slaying of dragons.


But the true story is something better, bound in the hearts which accept it with iron cords of loveliness and anguish. All-powerful Creator God, beyond human logic and understanding, made man. This I do not understand. Man sinned, and was divided implacably from God, is falling and sinning still. This, also, I do not understand. This God, this eternally existent I AM did not simply disperse us into non-existence, nor did he prevent our initial act of self-destruction. My mind reels uncomprehending in the face of it. God became man, and suddenly, some irresistable force became clear and evident in the world. How could God become an intimate participant in the strange sordid beauty of pregnancy and childbirth, live as God and child, God and man, in seamless holiness and humanity, embrace in humble, selfless obedience a brutal death, and something deeper in realms beyond human ken? How could the appalling wickedness and screaming agony of every man in every time be concentrated on the willing body of this Son of Man, this innocent one? This story I could not have written, is deeper and more wonderful than the simple, elemental 'You can't do that', which my heart is still hungry for.


At Chinese Bible study the other, night, while discussing a Gospel video, a dear Chinese friend explained to me "Actually, I feel that this cannot be the story of a god. I feel that a god should be somehow great, should be immortal, above man. But this story, it is a man born in shame under shameful circumstances, of ordinary parents, and in poverty, a man who grows up and dies the death of a criminal before he has accomplished anything- how can you call this a god? How can this be God?"
Sweet comrade, how can I tell you in words, this truth that I cannot understand myself- that this God-Man born in shame has taken away the shame of all who love Him, that this God-Man born in poverty, has brought light and hope, waited for in desperation and anguish over thousands of years, to an impoverished world, that this God-Man who, innocent, died the death of the guilty has bought all of us, guilty, the right to His own guiltlessness, His own utter rightness? How can I tell this wonder that dazzles my feeble mind, that the death and suffering and hatred I cannot accept are answered in Him, that dying, He crushed death forever under His feet, that in Him, Life and Love meet at last and are perfect, are conquering forces irresistibly reshaping blood, horror, and weeping. Faced with the question "How do we explain the existence of such suffering in our world if God exists and is good?", another Chinese friend answered, laughing "Obviously, the gods have no power."


It is with hesitation and trembling, but also with confidence, that my searching heart answers: 'No, it is not God who has no power. It is darkness which has no power. It is death which has no power. It is madness, and war, sickness and terror which are coming to an end, while God in His incomprehensible Goodness will go on forever, carrying we weak and foolish ones who were privileged to be His followers into eternity with Him.' This does not silence the tumult inside of me, or the rage of confusion, or the tears which won't stop falling- the instinctive cry of my heart 'But you can't do that'. But it is a rock which life is built on, a wall against endless falling into nothingness.


A message to another world, what would it look like? I search, and I answer, and I can answer only this: "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me'? Can the pot say of the potter 'He knows nothing'?" "Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore, stand in awe of God." Satisfied to wait unsatisfied, resting in acceptance of restlessness, turbulent and soothed, stumbling and upheld, we live in the light of this, or die in the rejection of it. This, at last, is the meaning of man. And so, when torn by the double-edged sword of reality, of beauty and hideousness struggling within one another, we are not disenchanted, but rather enchanted all the more by the Lord who placed Himself in the whirling center of it, and gathered us into the shelter of His arms.

Pre-Culture Shock :-P

If I had to put into words (but which words?) the reasons behind this semester's difficulty, I would have to say that the cause is that every day makes me more vividly conscious of speaking another language- not only in the physical sense, but mentally, culturally, metaphorically. I sit in a room with family or friends, talking with them in English, but in my head, I'm translating to French, with exclamations and scattered words in Chinese. To hear one symphony is exquisite, but three symphonies at once is a cacophany. My ears are ringing at every moment with a cacophany which only I can hear. When I was a five year old entertaining myself by chanting the two or three French words my father taught me in a smug sing-song, when I was eight years old promising with reckless naivette to learn every language in the world, when a three year brush with Latin became a window for me into fairyland, I didn't know what it meant to pursue such a dream over years and years. I still don't. But they never told me, then, what we were giving up- that the price of belonging everywhere was to belong nowhere, that the more we could express to the globe, the less we could explain even the simplest things to the ones left behind at home, what it would feel like to have a head swarming and teeming with thoughts in three tongues, like paints on an artist's palette, mingling and flowing together till colors were formed that exist nowhere in reality, and are invisible to all other eyes. To be fluent in multiple languages has always been for me, the most magical thing in the world, but it's a terribly desolate magic at times- a one way ticket into Narnia. The end, I begin to realize, of persevering through culture shock, and finishing what I've begun, is to dwell on the fringe of multiple universes, and have no part in any of them. After choosing a life of wild adventure, there's no way of trotting cozily back home and returning to normalcy as though nothing had passed.


'That the Lamb who was slain might have the full reward of His suffering', the creations of the culture-creating God choose a lifetime of culture shock gladly. It is because of Him, and not because of this, that we will never be the same. It is a people transformed by joy who choose the agony of transformation across cultures and languages. No retreats- No reserves- No regrets.

The City of Old Hundred Names

I'm not (I promise) behind on my China reading yet, although I certainly am in nearly everything else, and blogging is always near the bottom of the list.


A couple of weeks ago, I finished Peter Hessler's 'River Town', definitely my favorite among the three I've read, and I'd like to share some highlights, as well as things I learned.


First, I loved his discussion of literature and politics:


"There was an intenseness and freshness to their readings that I'd never seen before from any other students of literature, and partly it was a matter of studying foreign material. We were exchanging clichés without knowing it: I had no idea that Chinese poetry routinely makes scallions of women's fingers, and they had no idea that Sonnet Eighteen's poetic immortality had been reviewed so many times that it nearly died, a poem with a number tagged to its toe. Our exchange suddenly made everything new: there were no dull poems, no overworked plays, no characters who had already been discussed to the point of cynicism. Nobody groaned when I assigned Beowulf - as far as they were concerned, it was just a good monster story.


This was the core of what we studied in that cramped classroom, and on the good days we never left. But there was always a great deal that surrounded us: the campus and its rules, the country and its politics. These forces were always present, hovering somewhere outside the classroom, and it reached the point where I could almost feel the moments when they pressed against us, when some trigger was touched, and suddenly the Party interfered. Occasionally students wrote about how Shakespeare represented the Proletariat as he criticized English Capitalism (because of this theory, many Chinese are familiar with The Merchant of Venice), and several pointed out that Hamlet is a great character because he cares deeply about the peasants. Other students told me that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are the most powerful figures in the play, because all power comes from the Proletariat, which is how Revolution starts.


I had mixed reactions to such comments. It was good to see my students interacting with the text, but I was less enthusiastic about Shakespeare being recruited for Communist Party propaganda. I found myself resisting these interpretations, albeit carefully- in light of my students' backgrounds, I couldn't bluntly say that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are powerless buffoons who provide comic relief. But one way or another I always tried to answer the readings that I felt were misguided. I argued that Hamlet is a great character not because he cares deeply about the peasantry, but rather because he cares deeply and eloquently about himself; and I pointed out that Shakespeare was a Petty Bourgeois Capitalist who made his fortune by acquiring stock in a theater company.


For the first time, I came to understand why literature so often slides away toward politics. I had struggled with this before; at Princeton I had majored in English, and after graduation I had spent two years studying English language and literature at Oxford. My original plan had been to become a professor of literature, but over time I became less enamored of what I saw in English departments, especially in America. Part of it was simply aesthetics- I found that I couldn't read literary criticism because its academic stiffness was so far removed from the grace of good writing. And I could make very little sense of most criticism, which seemed a hopeless mess of awkward words: Deconstructionism, Post-Modernism, New Historicism. None of it could be explained simply and clearly- just as my Fuling students stumbled when asked to define Historical Materialism or Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.


But mostly I was disturbed by the politicization of literature in the West: the way that literature was read as social commentary rather than art, and the way that books were forced to serve political theories of one stripe or another. Very rarely did a critic seem to react to a text: rather the text was twisted so that it reacted neatly to whatever ideas the critic held sacred. There were Marxist critics, Feminist critics, and Post-Colonial critics; and almost invariably they wielded their theories like molds, forcing books inside and squeezing out a neatly shaped product. Marxists turned out Marxism; Feminists turned out Feminism; Post-Colonialists turned out Post-Colonialism. It was like reading the same senseless book over and over again.


And I resented the way that English departments constantly tinkered with the canon, hoping to create a book list as multicultural as the fake photographs they put on the covers of their undergraduate brochures. It had always seemed to me that with regard to literature there was some value in establishing and respecting a cultural foundation, and now in China I saw what happened when these roots were completely ripped up. For years the Chinese had mined literature for its social value, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when all operas were banned except for a handful of political works like The Red Detachment of Women. Even today there was much that had been lost. All of my students knew Marx; none of them knew Confucius.


But at the same time I came to see the reason for such politicization in a more human light...It's natural to want Shakespeare on your side- and if he doesn't fit perfectly, you can twist his words to serve your purpose. Or, if he absolutely refuses to come to heel, you can expel him from the canon." (Hessler, 44-45)


Hessler says more, and I want to type it all, because as a literature lover, and, once-upon-a-time English major, something in me was standing up on my chair to cheer as I read this. It cemented for me yet again some of my reasons for fleeing the English department in favor of foreign language study, a choice which many people I know still question and criticize. It also gave me a new burst of excitement for ESL and teaching overseas. I can't wait to be a student of my students, learning from their assumptions, stories, and fresh perspectives, encountering a China I have only caught glimpses of so far in a few of the best books.





'Old Hundred Names':


Hessler makes repeated reference to this group, essentially the peasantry or common people, in his book.


"A woman... told me that she didn't understand the issue, because she was simply Old Hundred Names. That was the best part of being Old Hundred Names- they were never responsible for anything. It was the same way in any country where the citizens spoke of themselves as the 'common people,' but in China there was a much higher percentage of Old Hundred Names than in most places. Virtually everybody you met described himself as such, and none of them claimed to have anything to do with the way things worked." (Hessler, 207)





"The differences between these countries [America and China] interested him. 'All Chinese like Americans,' he said, a while later. 'But many Americans think there are problems with human rights here. In fact, Old Hundred Names doesn't care about that. Old Hundred Names worries about eating, about having enough clothes. Look out there.' He pointed out the window- a dusty village, garbage beside the tracks, a skinny donkey followed by a peasant in blue. Old Hundred Names. 'Do you think people like that worry about democracy?' he said, 'They need to improve their living standard and then they can start thinking about other things. That's the problem with America and China- you can't compare them in the same breath.'"





This last quote brings up another idea referred to throughout River Town, and which I am still mulling over. That is the idea that much idealism and reform are essentially luxuries- that people who are deprived of basic needs and comforts are hardly likely to waste time worrying over lofty definitions of human rights, or the various environmental, artistic, and moral issues of the hour. Discussing the damming of the Yangtze river, which would change its historical course and destroy countless ancient, marvelous monuments and landmarks, Hessler admits that, in the winter when he periodically lost electricity, he also lost interest in the dam's logistics or the need for historical preservation. He simply wanted warmth and light. Hessler writes, "Cold was like hunger; it had a way of simplifying everything." (115)


Can life really be simplified so quickly? From a purely human standpoint, it seems obvious to me that men under duress would feel so. It must take some force beyond the human will, superimposed upon the human nature, to produce courage and sacrifice which disregard hunger, shame, and exposure to the elements. My reckless generalizations about politics and China seem hopelessly naiive and two dimensional in the face of this reality. So, I conclude that I have a great deal more to learn, and, for now, nothing more to write.

'Oracle Bones' and Sinophiles

For some time, I have resisted the urge to make this a China blog. My life has progressed to the point, however, at which this blog could only escape Chinese domination by ceasing to be mine. And since no one else is volunteering to write it, I hope that any readers I have left are interested in the Far East... :-)
This weekend I read Peter Hessler's book 'Oracle Bones', which is intended to capture China's transition into a 'modern society'. Hessler, a St. Louis native, spent two years teaching English in Sichuan province through the Peace Corps, then went on to live and work in China as a student, journalist, and (occasionally) not-exactly-legal tourist.
'Oracle Bones' follows multiple different story threads, but the balance is exquisitely delicate and Hessler succeeds in creating a unified tapestry of life in China today. Some figures which stand out are:

Polat: A middle-aged Uighur man who leaves his native Xinjiang due to political pressure and becomes a black market trader in Beijing. Hessler documents Polat's life in the Beijing underground, and transition to the United States as a refugee, while telling the greater story of the Uighur people, and other threatened ethnic groups who consider themselves 'in but not of' China.

William Jefferson Foster (English name): A fiercely enthusiastic young English student who, with his girlfriend, Nancy, leaves Sichuan to become a migrant worker in a wealthier province. Willy's coarse sense of humor is not entirely palatable, but his intelligence and raw passion for knowledge are both haunting and appealing. Willy and Nancy's story was one of my favorite threads in the book. This excerpt is an example:

"She [Nancy] tried to be patient with his obsessions. Earlier that year, Wenzhou television had started broadcasting China Central Television's Channel Nine, which is in English. Every night, Willy stayed up late, glued to the television, writing down new words. Nancy's sleep deteriorated into a haze of flickering light and Special English [simplified English], and then, just when she thought they might need another room, the broadcasts stopped.

For a few days, Willy assumed that there was a technical problem. After a week he telephoned the Yueqing Broadcasting and Television Bureau, whose representatives told him that Channel Nine had been canceled because of a lack of local interest. After another week, Willy began calling and impersonating a Beijing accent. He claimed that he worked for an international trade company whose foreign representatives often traveled to Yueqing, where they had been deeply disappointed to find no more of Channel Nine. The foreigners, who were investing heavily in Yueqing, would be thrilled to see Channel Nine again. For weeks, Willy waited hopefully- nothing. If Nancy was relieved, she was tactful enough to keep it to herself." (Hessler, 316)

Emily: Like Willy, Emily is one of Hessler's former English students. She too leaves Sichuan to work in another province, in this case, at a factory. A bright and creatively independent thinker, Emily is tormented by depression and a sense of emptiness, feeling a constant vague dissatisfaction with her life. She is disillusioned by the corruption and falsehood that surround her at school and the factory, and with the deceptive political system. In one letter she writes,
"I hate political cant because I used to believe in it.", and goes on to describe the grief of her father who came to realize the unreliability of his adored leaders only as an old man.
She maintains a special friendship with her former teacher, but is haunted by a sense of unsatisfied longings, telling him,

"Your appearance lightened up my college life. It's you that let me know that a teacher could get along with his students that way. You never know how much fun I took in reading your feedback in my journal book. It could ease my worries and make me think. I always enjoy talking with you, you are the one who knows my everything... But everytime you went back to Beijing, I felt the panic of hollowness. As if I had given everything out but gotten nothing in return." (Hessler, 424)

Emily's phrase '...the panic of hollowness...' will stay with me for a long time. I hope to leave my students one day with true peace and fulfillment, not simply an empty, temporary comfort.

Chen Menjia: The pre-eminent scholar and archaeologist involved in the study of oracle bones, bronzes, etc... from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. His tragic suicide during the Cultural Revolution continues to echo throughout archaeology and academia in China, profoundly impacting many students and researchers of his generation.

Jiang Wen: A controversial and flamboyant film maker whose WWII movie 'Devils on the Doorstep' was celebrated at the Cannes festival, but banned in China. Jiang Wen has much interesting commentary on life and art in China, but one thing he said stood out to me particularly:

"In the distant past, the country was peaceful and stable, but now it changes so fast. Certainly that's been the case since Reform and Opening, but to some degree the past two hundred years have been like that. We don't know where we are. We haven't found our road. In the early part of the twentieth century, the Chinese tried; some of them tried to find it in our own traditions, while others looked outside the country. This debate is still going on. Chairman Mao is a perfect example. He often said that he didn't like Chinese history, and the Communists initially succeeded because they were untraditional. But Mao used traditional Chinese language to oppose the old things, and he became a traditional emperor. It's not as if he decided to do this, he just didn't know any other alternatives. He's a tragic figure- the most tragic in Chinese history. He's like a seed that grows big, but in a twiste way, because the seed can't overcome the soil... I want to make a movie about Mao. Mao was more tragic than Hamlet. Mao was an artistic person, not a political person. He should have been a poet and a philosopher; he should have been creating things instead of dealing with politics... I think Mao has something to do with every Chinese person. He represents many Chinese dreams and many Chinese tragedies." (Hessler,349)


Throughout these discussions about the sense of confusion and disconnect felt by many Chinese young people, I'm reminded of Guobin Yang's assertion in 'The Power of the Internet in China' that, "Change is the cause of today's identity crisis, not the basis of hope." (Yang, 37) The generations following the revolution, while disillusioned by communism/authoritarianism, have found no adequate replacement, only new fads to dabble in. One Chinese professor I know says that the high-school and college students in China today seem completely foreign to him; their behavior and culture is unfamiliar, and even their appearance and style are confusing. He suggests, (in what, coming from a Chinese person, is almost certainly not a compliment) that, "They don't really seem like Chinese to me. Maybe they are like Japanese instead."

To conclude, if you would like to know more about China, or the world in general, I recommend this book highly. One thing I especially enjoyed about 'Oracle Bones' was the emphasis placed on ordinary people and everyday life. I felt like my understanding of Chinese culture and history was deepened considerably. Some points of interest for American readers might be:

1. The description of experiencing the aftermath of 9/11 in China, and of the reactions of Chinese citizens.
2. Frequent allusions to Chines perceptions of American people, government, and foreign policy.

A note to the concerned: This is the first of an interminable series of China book reviews, and other Asian musings. This semester I will be continuing to work through the reading list I started on last year, and as I'm now bursting with information, ideas, and sweet quotes, this hijacking of my blog is a necessary step towards the preservation of sanity. You haven't seen the last of Hessler; I picked up his first book, 'River Town' at the library this afternoon. ;-)

'And ah, for a man to arise...'

It is instinctive to blame great evil, like great good, on great men.
In the name of simplicity, Hitler becomes the Holocaust, Stalin the face of Soviet brutality, and Mao the Cultural Revolution. These generalizations do contain a measure of truth, but they obscure the greater terror- the fact of millions of ordinary Germans, Russians, and Chinese who, in the examples above, abandoned the accepted bounds of decency, clawing one another to pieces in the frenzy of fear and self-interest. In every great historical tragedy, the wise observer sees not the transcendant power of an evil man, but the transcendant power of evil in man. It is this that causes us to turn away in horror- because wherever we see the force of human callousness and cruelty surging forward, we find the same darkness mirrored in our own minds, and in the faces of those around us.
The great source of trouble in the world is not a series of malevolent masterminds, but the sin and rebellion against God in each human heart- the pride, selfishness, and lovelessness which surge restless and eternally dissatisfied there. A correct response to evil is revulsion, and hatred of evil; the only just response to the hatred of evil is not self-righteousness, but the most profound humility.
One of the most well known faces of evil and human cruelty in our generation is now dead. Why should his destruction be made a cause for rejoicing? It is only by undeserved mercy and grace that we are any different. Many men of the same stamp are eager to fill his place- like the sea welling up where one digs in the sand.
It is no wonder that Paul cried out to be freed from 'this body of death'. It is unfailingly wonderful that he was able to cry to One who could hear, and who not only heard, but answered! There can be no answer for universal corruption and crippling of the soul save the whole, purifying power of Christ. He is the Light by which we see darkness, and the Conqueror who defeats it in us. Christ remains the eternal image of the invisible God, and the source, the essence, of all that is good in man. What would it look like were we to spend less of our time in wondering when a new hero will arise, or when the previous tyrant will fall, but rather delighting in the one who is able to replace hearts of stone with beating hearts of flesh?

'And ah, for a man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be.' -Tennyson

Matthew 27:45-46

Like a great noise wrung from the ages it rose up within me, men of every nation crying out in a million tongues of anguish, 'Even God has forsaken us!'
But then, over all these voices, came the terrible cry of the Messiah,
'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
And His flesh was torn and His heart was broken as he stood in the place of all mankind- enduring the agony, the shame which should have been my own. And the question consumed me: 'What God is this who has not forsaken us, but has been forsaken for us?'