by Han Han
Once the expo is over, the pavilions will be removed—do you think this is a waste?
No, I don’t think that’s a waste at all. The original properties in that area had to be cleared in the first place, and then the government funded the construction of the China Pavilion—and helped other countries build their pavilions—so the government has been spending money all over the place. To keep these pavilions in Shanghai serves no purpose anyway—they can’t serve as government office buildings, after all—so they may as well flatten the whole area and sell it off as real estate. That way, in the end, the expo isn’t something run by the government or by business, but by mortgage slaves and real estate speculators.
If that’s the case, why is the government going to preserve a handful of pavilions?
Well, of course they can’t demolish them all—if they did that, they couldn’t call it the “expo parcel” and sell it off at the highest price.
Some people are saying that while the expo is on, cars from other places have to wait in line for inspection on the way into Shanghai—often generating traffic jams several miles long that take hours to get through. Do you think there is a better way of handling this?
No, I can’t help you there, because the government applies uniform security procedures whether they are on the lookout for thieves, terrorists, reactionary forces, or ordinary citizens. Although I have no way of knowing who exactly they are on the lookout for when they search every car and every person, I do know that if I was a bad guy I certainly wouldn’t just stand there in line obediently, waiting to be searched with a bomb under my arm. The demarcation lines between cities are not as clearly defined as the borders between nations, and often a rice paddy is all that separates them, so if you set your mind to it it’s not difficult at all to pass from one to another. I don’t believe these security measures will really detect people who are determined to do something bad. But maybe the government thinks this makes a good deterrent, intimidating the bad guys so that they lose all courage. In that case, everyone just has to do their bit and wait in line.
In any case, I certainly support better security. So long as the government makes a reasonable appraisal of the pros and cons, I am willing to accept any kind of security procedure. Indirectly, in the name of the expo, a number of Shanghai residents have been killed or injured by construction vehicles, and I hope that no other lives will be threatened because of it.
How many visitors to Shanghai do you think the expo will bring in?
That’s hard to say. One needs to make a distinction between people who make a trip to Shanghai specially to see the expo and those who go and have a look since they are visiting anyway. According to official sources, sixty million people will enter Shanghai during these six months. But Shanghai attracts a lot of visitors in any case, and by my reckoning, even without the expo, there would probably be fifty-nine million people visiting Shanghai for other reasons. When I go abroad for a holiday, whether a city is holding an expo does not have the slightest effect on my decision to visit it, but maybe foreigners are so innocent that they’ll all be eager to come. Of course I have lots of friends who are looking forward to going to the expo, and I can understand that. The expo should be a really big scene, after all, and Chinese people have always loved to go to a fair—just think of all the people who turn up at a car show, for instance. Of course, I can also understand why so many Shanghai people are eagerly anticipating the opening of the expo, because if a lot of foreigners and out-of-towners are there, they can put on a nice demonstration for them of what an amazing city Shanghai is: house prices at fifty thousand yuan a square meter, parking spots at twenty yuan an hour, gasoline at more than a dollar a liter, all basic living expenses really high, the cost of living five times yours, and wages a fifth of yours, but we’ve not just survived—we’re all ready to greet with open arms sightseers from all over the place. The Shanghainese have to be the most impressive exhibition objects in this city. I propose that some city residents be selected as art works and put on display in the China Pavilion.
How would you rate the city of Shanghai?
I was born here and will always love Shanghai and hope that it can be one of the world’s most wonderful cities, even though my old neighborhood is now ruined by pollution. It’s fair to say that if you have money, Shanghai is a great place: In terms of dining and shopping, entertainment and getting around, it’s just fine. In more general economic terms, Shanghai is an adventurer’s paradise, but hell for ordinary folks.
But Shanghai has no culture. If you go to a big city in another country, they’ll tell you: We have such-and-such buildings, such-and-such hotels, such-and-such streets, such-and-such villas. . . . Administrators in Shanghai will proudly tell you: We have all that stuff, too. But when the others say: Here we have such-and-such writers, such-and-such directors, such-and-such artists, such-and-such exhibitions, such-and-such film festivals, our leaders go all quiet.
Why the lack of culture in Shanghai?
If you want real culture to develop, you need to loosen controls, and if you loosen controls that means allowing diverse voices to be heard, and if you allow diverse voices to be heard that’s bound to raise the level of popular consciousness—and what a terrible thing that would be!
Officials tell us that on the one hand genetically engineered foods are harmless, but that on the other, these same foods are banned from the expo site, so that foreigners won’t have to eat them. Isn’t this a form of self-denigration?
What nonsense! This is an expression of confidence, confidence in the strong constitutions of us Chinese. Every day we breathe this air and drink this water, and we survive in all kinds of adverse conditions. Those foreigners would die after swallowing a single mouthful of weed-killer, but it takes three mouthfuls to kill us. So you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Children, you’re spoiling grandpa’s fun
May 2, 2010
Now, children at a Taixing kindergarten have suffered a knife attack too.22 Thirty-two of them have been injured; the death toll is still unclear. Because news of this incident followed so closely on the heels of the stabbings at a Nanping kindergarten, I thought at first that this all happened at the same facility.
In recent incidents where disturbed individuals have launched fatal attacks on others, the targets have all been either kindergartens or primary schools: This has clearly become a fashion among those who feel they have a score to settle with society, because in such places one will encounter the least resistance and be able to kill the greatest number of victims and cause the greatest amount of pain and fear—it is the most effective way of exacting revenge. With the exception of Yang Jia,23 practically all these assailants have chosen to target those weaker than themselves. This society has no pressure valves—killing the weakest has become the only way out. I propose that local government security guards be transferred to kindergartens, for a government that can’t even keep children from harm doesn’t deserve so much protection.
A major cause of these attacks is that this society is unjust and unfair. Yes, “to establish fairness and justice makes things brighter than sunlight itself.”24 But the sun doesn’t come out every day. Don’t you think maybe we have too many overcast days and dark nights? So, there’s nothing so wonderful about suggesting that fairness and justice should be brighter than sunlight—the best thing would be to have sunshine all the time.
Concerning this incident in Taixing, there has been a clampdown on news coverage. Not only were these children born at the wrong time, it seems they died at the wrong time too. From the point of view of the powers that be, this incident is a distraction from all the festivities marking yesterday’s opening of the Shanghai Expo. All we know is that there were thirty-two people injured; the hospital and the government keep repeating that there were no fatalities. But unofficially it is reported that a number of children died. So whom should we believe? Maybe we’re inclined to believe the government, but then why is it that parents are prohibited fr
om seeing their children? So far, the hospital and the media remain muzzled, with no pictures or video of the victims. And if a man goes on the rampage with a knife and manages to inflict wounds on thirty-two people but not one of them dies, one has to wonder: Was he trying to kill people, or perform medical procedures on them? He seems to have been way too careful. Maybe we’re inclined to believe the rumors, but rumor is always prone to exaggeration, and without further documentation we cannot place credence in it, either. So I conducted an online search for “Taixing,” and all it gave me was a news report dated April 30: “In Taixing Three Happy Events Coincide.”
What really surprises me is that the Taixing government, by muzzling the hospital and suppressing news and blocking the media and prohibiting visits and distracting attention and so forth, has so successfully converted everyone’s anger with the assailant into anger with itself. This is quite unnecessary. You might think there is some special motive behind their secretiveness, but actually there isn’t—apart from wanting to provide the ideal backdrop to the Shanghai Expo (and its paean to harmony), it’s all just inertia, it’s the government’s ingrained habit when dealing with this kind of incident, the same old ritual in seven stages. Every time something happens when you’re halfway through the feast, you:
conceal,
sequester,
expel,
ban,
spin,
compensate,
and cremate
—then back to the food and wine. Their way of handling issues is not much more refined than that of the slasher, and it’s no wonder that one can now see posted on the Internet a couplet commemorating this incident:
Looking for the source of the grievance you want to vent?
Go out the door, turn left, and there’s the government.
In just over a month, there have been five cases of killings in schools; in just one week, there have been two: on April 29 in Taixing, on April 30 in Weifang. I don’t propose to examine here all the underlying social causes, all I want to say is: A man bursts into a kindergarten in Taixing and wounds thirty-two children, but this cannot be properly reported. If you add the kids’ ages together, it comes to only a hundred years or so, but there’s no place for their story in the papers, because a hundred miles away there’s a big bash going on, where just the fireworks alone cost a hundred million yuan, and at the same time in their hometown they’re getting ready for the International Tourism Festival, Commerce Talks, and Recreational Park Opening Ceremony, three happy occasions all at the same time.
Don’t you see, children, you’re spoiling grandpa’s fun?
Poor children, it’s you who are poisoned by the tainted milk powder, you who are harmed by the faulty vaccine, you who are crushed by the earthquake, you who are burned by the fire. Even if it’s in the adults’ world where things are going wrong, you’re the ones on whom an adult seeks to exact vengeance. I hope it’s true that, as the Taixing government claims, you are only injured and none of you have died. Your elders have failed in their duty, but I hope that when you grow up you can do better, not just protecting your own children but making society protect all its children.
Talking freely, wine in hand
May 7, 2010
Interviews with foreign media are different from those with domestic media, even if they sometimes ask the same questions and I give the same answers: What actually gets printed in the paper differs considerably. Foreign reporters’ questions are relatively more direct—sometimes so direct as to be unanswerable, because if you were to ever answer them, my guess is that you’d only ever be speaking to foreign reporters from then on. If so, I tell them honestly, “I can’t answer that question. It’s not that I won’t, it’s that I can’t. To answer that question would exact too high a price, one that’s not worth paying—at least, not now. At the same time, I’m not willing to lie, so I’m just going to choose to keep my mouth shut. But you don’t need to delete your question, for it’s a good one. Just say that the interviewee dared not answer. Please excuse my weakness.”
To be frank, I tend to be more expansive when responding to questions from Chinese reporters, because I know that however much I say and even if it’s just me and the reporter having a chat, since the transcript undergoes the reporter’s self-censorship there’s nothing that will get into the paper that is not aboveboard. Faced with a foreign reporter, I will talk more in terms of my hopes for the future. An interview I just had with a Canadian journalist is a rather typical example, so here I’m going to quote some exchanges from it, with a few minor changes.
Q. Do you miss Google? If so, why?25
A. No, I don’t miss Google at all. Google is like a girl who one day tells you out of the blue, “I’m leaving you.”
“Oh no, darling, don’t do that,” you say. But she goes ahead and dumps you all the same.
Then you find, however, that you can actually have her whenever you want her. The only difference is that when you had her at your beck and call before, she would give you a carrot if that’s what you asked for, and now when you say, “Where’s the carrot?” she does a disappearing trick.
Q. If you had the chance to live abroad—in Canada, for instance—would you make the move? Why or why not?
A. If it was just a short-term arrangement, for a holiday or a race or business, that’s something I’d be happy to do, but I am not interested in settling abroad permanently. Canada is a beautiful country with a comfortable lifestyle, a good ecological balance, and a high per capita GDP. My country has a high GDP but low per capita GDP, severe pollution, and corrupt officials, and sometimes it takes one step forward and two steps back, but I fully intend to remain where I am, watching my country progress or helping it along a bit—it is my homeland, after all. Another reason is that in my native land it’s natural enough to be surrounded by corrupt Chinese officials, but if I move to another country only to discover that I’m still rubbing shoulders with corrupt Chinese officials, that will really push me over the edge.26
Q. How should other countries, including Canada, view China’s growing strength and its more prominent role in international affairs?
A. That’s really a question you should ask our officials and our leaders. But what I can tell you is this: all you need to do is have a look at how they responded to that kind of question when other people asked it, and you’ve already got your answer. To find out their position on other issues of interest to you, just follow the same procedure.
Q. How do you account for China’s hypersensitivity?
A. That’s very hard to do. All I can say is this: Only an independent judiciary can be a true judiciary. But in our country, the judiciary cannot be independent, because that would be out of line with our national circumstances. What does “national circumstances” mean? They mean that making money is all that matters. What’s the best guarantee of being able to make money? Power. Judicial independence will limit power. If you limit power, how are those people with power—and their families—going to be able to make so much money? So you see, judicial independence isn’t the right fit for China.
Q. What kind of country would you like to see China become? (This question came from a Japanese reporter.)
A. A country that doesn’t resort to land sales and real estate and low-end assembly production to achieve high GDP—and high per capita GDP. A country where good people don’t have to jump over the wall and where bad people end up in jail.27 A country whose culture has an impact on the world, whose literature and art other nations imitate. A country that has as clean an environment and as free an atmosphere as other places, where you can enjoy the spectacle of seeing power confined inside a cage, where you can talk freely, wine in hand, and say everything that’s on your mind.
Those scallions that just won’t wash clean
May 14, 2010
Recently, Fujian Province has come up with ten principles for institutions of higher education. The most eye-catching of them is No. 2: “Those who in the course of educatio
nal work circulate erroneous views that violate the Communist Party’s line, strategy, or policies, or the Party’s basic theory, or the state’s laws and decrees, and who create an adverse environment for instilling in students correct ideals, beliefs, and political allegiance, will be subject to veto power and dismissed from their appointments.”
What’s comforting is that as I was reading the first part of this long sentence, I was anticipating that it would culminate with the words “will be shot,” but actually it is just a case of being “voted out” of office, so this counts as a big improvement over the days of Mao Zedong. As for who has the power to cast this vote, that is not an interesting question—what concerns me is that it’s next to impossible to grasp this “line,” “strategy,” and “theory,” for although those in power expect us to have unified thought, they themselves are often unable to do so. I seem to recall that there was a discussion about the tripartite division of powers in my high school curriculum, and both my politics textbook and my politics teacher said at the time that the division of powers is a good thing, but these days I keep reading official articles and speeches which insist that the division of powers is an erroneous concept. You know that I am someone with only a middle school diploma, and I dropped out of school before I could take my studies of politics any further, but I just feel perturbed—I feel anxious about the fate of those politics instructors and textbook editors who have disseminated erroneous thought. All along they have been regurgitating materials that the leaders gave them, only to find that if they handle things improperly they will be disciplined by the leaders, because those scripts reflect the way the leaders thought last night and this morning the leaders had a different idea when they got out of bed.
