Inside-Out China

Boston Chinese to Collect One Million for Relief Funds

2008-05-15T00:05:00.010-04:00

Cambridge, MA, May 14 – Initiated by the board members of the Sichuan and Chongqing Folk Association in Boston, about fifty Chinese organization representatives met tonight in Building 56 of MIT, to coordinate support and relief efforts in the wake of the earthquake disaster that occurred two days ago in Sichuan, China.

The animated discussion lasted for three hours, from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm, and the attendees reached a confident consensus on raising a million dollars to help the Sichuan earthquake victims. The meeting recommends three relief fund accounts to all who intend to donate, namely the Chinese Red Cross' Emergency Fund (by check), the American Red Cross' China Relief Fund, and Tzh-Chi's Sichuan Earthquake Relief Fund (by check). The organizers will either collect checks to be sent to these organizations, or receive information on donations made to determine progress toward their goal.

Zhu Zhenya, a researcher at MIT, Jiang Hong, chairwoman of Yanhuang Performing Arts, and Tao Kai, principal of the Cambridge Chinese Language School moderated the discussion.

Represented in the meeting were Chinese language schools in various towns and cities, Chinese student associations in colleges such as MIT, Harvard University, and Boston University, Chinese professional societies such as the Enterpriser Society, Internet Society, etc., and several organizations for overseas alumni from China's universities.

The attendees also agreed to report daily to Jiang Hong on their fundraising results.

Sichuan Earthquake Photos

2008-05-13T21:26:00.011-04:00

Click here to peruse a web collection of Sichuan area earthquake photos. So far 193352 readers from other areas of China have left comments offering solace, sympathy, rescue advices, even their blood on that website. A Shanghai woman wrote: "My husband and I have been laid off for two months now. But people in Sichuan are in a much worse situation, so we are still going to donate for them."

There is a notable, and unprecedented, transparency in the official media's news reporting this time, a sharp contrast to the SARS case. A signal that there is movement toward freedom of the press?

(Note: loading a large image from a site in China can be slow, so you will need to be patient to view individual photos.)

Chongqing: "City on Steroids"

2008-05-12T07:25:00.019-04:00

"City on Steroids, " video by Adam Yamaguchi at Current.com

(Added: I was just off the phone with my parents in Chongqing and am relieved that they are okay. The center of the earthquake was near Chengdu. I am still in big shock that so many people died. My heart is with the thousands of victims...)

Over two decades ago, one morning in July 1987, I was awakened by loud shouts from four floors below calling my name, “A foreigner is looking for you!" I had recently returned to my parents' apartment in Chongqing for summer vacation from my graduate school in Chengdu.

I grabbed a hairbrush and ran downstairs. Outside our building, on the sidewalk of River Overlook Road, formed a thick circle of onlookers under the already hot Chongqing sun. In the center of the circle stood a six-foot-tall American man in a red McGill University T-shirt. Those onlookers, the townsmen of mine, silently gazed at the foreigner’s sweaty face and his heavily loaded touring bicycle, as if he were from Mars. The American looked at this person and that in amusement, making inquiries in both English and crude Chinese: “What? Shenmo?” He tried to move in one direction then another; the crowd retreated and advanced with him like a unbreakable giant rubber band.

The young American, who later became my husband, was likely the first foreign tourist who rode a bike across China from Harbin to Chongqing, at a time when foreigners were still exotic animals in my hometown.

Not any more, and this is one of the biggest changes shown (albeit indirectly) in the video "City on Steroids" by Current.com. Now the Chongqing people barely throw the foreign reporters a glance. They don't even bother to stop playing cards. The exotic animals have switched hands. Does this mean significant progress has taken place?

The video tries to find answers to that question and it captures several characteristics of today's Chongqing, one of them the "bang-bang army."

"Bang-bang" in this case means wooden shoulder-pole. Because of Chongqing's mountainous geography, there are too many nooks and crannies that can't be reached by truck or tractor. You don't even see bicycles in the city. Men and their shoulder-poles have always been a necessary means for transporting goods at ports. However the expression "bang-bang army" is new; this name has been bestowed on the throng of migrant workers who have nothing else but a shoulder-pole. When I visited my parents in recent years, I saw those men huddled in groups, standing or squatting outside newly constructed residential enclaves, waiting for the house-owners' call for help to move furniture or other goods. I had never seen such a big "army" carrying "bang-bang" everywhere during my childhood and youth in the city. Those men come from the countryside, because the Three Gorges dam forced their migration, or their farmland was squeezed, or life on the farm was much worse.

"How hard are the roads in Shu / as hard as climbing the sky" – when Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai wrote those oft-quoted lines, was he near Chengdu or Chongqing? I suspect it was the latter. "Shu" (蜀) is the abbreviated name for Sichuan, whose jurisdiction for a long time included Chongqing, until Chongqing became one of China's four provincial-level municipalities (直辖市) in spring 1997, nearly a decade after I moved to the United States. This ascendance – the price of it the Three Gorges migration burden – made Chongqing the world's largest municipality with a population over 30 million. (When I lived there as a child, the population was 8 million.) Now the city no longer needs to fight neighbor Chengdu over funding from the central government. Its construction goes on at an unprecedented speed.

Not only does speeding construction squeeze surrounding farmland, as the video shows, it has also squeezed the two rivers surrounding it. My townsmen have filled in along the rivers to make the "riverside avenues." When I visited home last year, I was brought to a famous scenic spot, a man-made one, on a new segment of road along the Yangtze River, to watch the "beautiful night scene" – colorful neon lights lining high-rises on the other side of the river. The river looked thin and the mountain city no longer looked like it is poised on mountains. I wasn't happy and did not linger, disappointing my jubilant Chinese family and friends in a big way. But my disappointment was even bigger: I could no longer see the beautiful natural mountains and rivers that I have loved since my childhood.

I suppose not all mountains surrounding Chongqing will or can be dynamited and flatted. Otherwise the "bang-bang men" will lose their rice bowl again.

The overheated construction also makes Chongqing's already badly polluted air worse. There is a Chinese idiom, "the Shu dog barks at the sun," describing how rarely the sun is seen in Sichuan, but once upon a time that had not been because of the pollution. In my childhood, fog and rain were what made the city's sky gray. The morning fog hanging on the rivers had been beautiful. Today, as you can see from the video, it is a totally different kind of fog. The Shu dog won't be barking at the sun because its throat hurts.

There is another essence of today's Chongqing captured by the video: the ever increasing gap between wealthy and poor. The contrast of this aspect is well shown. The poor include not only the rural migrants but also laid-off factory workers from the city. In the video, one of the men interviewed says in Chongqing dialect – indicating that he's local instead of a migrant – "Opportunity is never ours."

Aside from policy issues, too high a population density has been a dominating factor in creating the problems. I hope by now those Western human-rights fighters fussing over China's one-child policy has realized their own one-sidedness.

One thing I wish Current.com's reporters had asked is what the struggling "bang-bang men" think of the Beijing Olympics. Do they care about it or do they not? Wouldn't it make better sense for China to spend the huge money instead on raising the living quality of its rural population, hence stabilizing the turbulent migration flow into cities? The city of Beijing itself has already been over-constructed and over-populated. And water shortage has become a huge concern there. The new Olympic construction has made the situation more severe than ever.

Are Overseas Chinese More Patriotic?

2008-05-08T18:17:00.020-04:00

Last Sunday, May 4^th, two counterpoint Chinese activities occurred, one in New York, involving an estimated ten-thousand people, and another in Boston, conducted by one man. The media had counter-counterpoint reactions to these two events: a total silence on the former and enthusiasm, albeit to limited market, on the latter.

I was out of town in Vermont and did not know about the New York Chinese rally until a friend emailed me a video clip two days later. I couldn't believe that there hadn't been any media coverage. I have a daily email subscription to New York Times' "Today's Headlines," and also Salon's news coverage. In addition, despite CNN's biased reputation, it is the easiest venue for current news and I check its website several times a day.

According to a Chinese post on mitbbs.org, the New York Times did send reporters but apparently chose not to publish any report. That the NY Times would smother news on such a huge event in its backyard is oddly surprising. The vast silence from all the US media is simply bizarre. It makes one suspect a sanction or conspiracy. A familiar uneasiness crept through my nerves as I researched this: Am I living in America or China?

The main body of the pro-Olympics rally was overseas Chinese students, but there were also people from all walks of life, including some Americans. Thousands of people shouting "We love China, more than ever!" and singing China's national anthem, "Rise, rise, …use our blood and flesh to build our new Great Wall" can really be blood boiling. Even as I watched the video I felt a slight urge to open my mouth and follow the chorus – what a familiar song can do to you. The friend who sent me the video clip, a high-tech professional in his early fifties, reflected on his participation: "I come to show my support. I just feel I am back to my student time in Chengdu and that is a great feeling."

Nationalism is a strange thing – it is more an emotion than rational thought. I didn't even think I had it. I was a political dissident when I lived in China. In my twenties I nearly went to jail for a "contentious" story I wrote. Two decades of living in the US further opened my mind to all points of view and to otherwise unavailable historical materials. Since I began to write in English in 2002, I've always been critical – if more rationally than when I was young – of things in China. I was becoming more and more American. Once I even asked myself in a diary entry: Am I having deeper feeling toward America than toward China now?

Yet look what the media's overdone bias can do to a person like me: it unearths whatever little Chinese nationalism I'd had. This is called backfire.

Growing up during the Cultural Revolution, I'm usually suspicious of any mass activity. The excitement alone can be an irresistible magnet and rationality need not play a role. Similarly, rampant nationalism, be it American or Chinese, is a double-edged sword. It can unite a nation; it can also be divisive and make inter-cultural understanding that much more difficult. It can even lead to imperialism. In short, I have issues with nationalism. Still, even with all those misgivings, I felt strong sympathy toward the Chinese ralliers in New York. The Western media has shown too much animosity in its reporting related to China. When CNN considers it commentary of the day to describe Chinese as "goons and thugs," perhaps a bit of Chinese's nationalism is called for as a balance.

This said, it is time for the young Chinese to watch out for their overheated nationalism. Things turn to their opposites when they reach the extreme, as the adage goes.

Given this large background, I have mixed feelings toward the other, much quieter, event on the same day, at a different location: the launch of Yang Jianli's "Citizen Walk," starting from Boston and destined for Washington DC. The Boston Globe has a long, enthusiastic report on this titled "A Sense of Direction."

It is a bit ironic that, Chinese who are either pro Beijing Olympics or protesting China's government find May 4^th a meaningful date for action, and both sides claim to carry forward the spirit of the 1919 student movement that began the modern history of China. The holding of the same symbol for opposite reasons seems another example of "four blind men touching an elephant." From an objective point of view, the May 4^th movement in 1919 had both positive and negative impacts on China's development, but when people need a flag to wave they only talk about one side of it.

I learned about the "Citizen Walk" from another friend's email days before. I don't know Yang Jianli personally, but have heard about his arrest and five-year imprison in China. More than sympathy, I admire his courage and determination to protest against injustice. My concern, however, is whether his timing is right in light of the recent events.

The reason that Yang Jianli chose June 4^th as his arrival date at Washington DC is apparent. He had participated in the 1989 student movement, and June 4^th is another symbolic day. (It seems that a symbol is essential to any activist.) I don't know if he is aware of Chinese people's attitude change toward that symbol. When the Tiananmen massacre occurred, I had already moved to the US, and I remember it as the only time that all people I knew, inside or outside of China, Americans or Chinese, had a united attitude. We cried for the students. We cursed Deng Xiaoping. A decade later, when I returned to China for a visit, I was shocked to hear in private conversation that old friends and acquaintances, including participants in 1989, saying the government took the right action in suppressing the student movement. Otherwise, they argued, China wouldn't have had today's prosperity; the students were actually impeding China's economic development, something everyone wants. (Well, I disagree, but my reasons would require another long entry.) They believed that the ends justify the means, and China's economic success has proven Deng Xiaoping's vision.

On the other hand, the June 4^th's gunshots and tanks became a fixture of China's image in Western eyes. This view won't change for a long time even as China's political situation improves.

Given this, I'm not sure whose awareness Yang Jianli's walk will raise. Is it Americans or Chinese? If it's the latter, will a walk from Boston to DC achieve anything? I'm also not entirely clear why his action is titled "Citizen Walk." It is a confusing banner: citizen of what, America, China, the world?

I had planned to report Yang Jianli's walk, but wanted to clarify a few points and gain a bit more understanding. I sent an email on May 3^rd to ask the following questions, but did not receive a response.

- How do you think this walk will impact people now living in China?
- What is the distinction between "Citizen Power" and "people power" as the term used in 1960s-70s America?
- Do you think the strong nationalism among China's young generation today is going to be impediment to archiving democracy in China?
- Why do you need to connect your activity with the Tibetan monks, given that they don't even want to be citizens of China?

I will share his response if I receive it – so far it doesn't look like he will.

The quiet steps of one man echo in the media while the shouts of thousands find no ears. It is easy to impress the Western media with any anti-Chinese government activity, unfortunately that may not be an advantage if Yang Jianli wants to get his message across to the real audience – the Chinese. This is not his fault; rather the complex situation makes his mission a more challenging one. A more thoughtful approach might be called for.

To put things in perspective, let me end this entry by quoting Zhou Shuguang, a 26-year-old blogger who lives in my home city Chongqing at the moment. He is neither elite nor privileged, and he often makes good points. The following is from a post on his blog Zola.com the other day: [In translation]

"I feel overseas Chinese students are more patriotic than us. They attach more importance to their identification possibly because they are discriminated against and experiencing cultural dislocation abroad. For those of us who live domestically, we don't feel what they feel. …they at worst are bullied by a different race; we who stay in the Mainland suffer from our own."

For this reason I give my best wishes to Yang Jianli; meanwhile I hope he will take the time to mull over my questions.

NBCC's Spring 2008 Good Reads List

2008-05-07T10:11:00.005-04:00

Books that get top votes from members of the National Book Critics Circle as well as former finalists and winners of NBCC awards –

FICTION

1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday

NONFICTION

1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD, Penguin Press
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon

POETRY

1. Grace Paley, FIDELITY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, WATCHING THE SPRING FESTIVAL, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A HALF-LIFE OF CARDIO-PULMONARY FUNCTION, Syracuse University Press
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Tuesday Primary: Full Throttle on the Campaign Trail

2008-05-06T10:14:00.004-04:00

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

Another Tuesday. More primaries in a race that has dragged on longer than anyone had expected it to. I am certainly not a typical voter, but the more I get to know about people in politics the less I like them. There have been a few notable exceptions to that experience, oddly enough, and mostly for silly reasons, Ronald Reagan among them, but this campaign has not raised any from either side of the aisle.

More painful than getting to know politicians, is listening to them pander to the short term interests of voters as they try to propel themselves into office. I was not surprised when John McCain, a man who has re-declared himself “very well versed in economics” suggested on April 15^th that the federal tax on gasoline be lifted for the summer. Lowering taxes has long been a mantra of the Republican Party, and lowering them on something that every person who drives can relate directly to is that much sweeter. Some people have complained that such a move is a bad one and they are right. It will do little to help consumers in the short term. The price we pay at the pump will not fall by 18.5 cents a gallon, but probably only by a few cents as oil suppliers take more of the pie. Longer term this action does nothing to address the energy, environment and security problems we face, but will only make them worse. It is a quick would-be fix that will do no good.

Thus, I was surprised when Hillary Clinton grabbed McCain’s play and ran with it on April 28^th. As implausible as it seems, I am still not cynical enough. Barack Obama, and probably some of the would-have-beens are not going along with this notion of taking away the gas tax. Actually, Obama was politically artful in describing this as a gimmick that would only save people 30 cents per day. But the argument about why this is a bad idea is an intellectual one; it does not have the visceral impact of offering someone an extra $2 in change every time they fill up.

All of this is obviously old news, and politics as usual in America, and really almost every country in the world, has a fair bit pandering policy statements (read my lips). What is interesting this time around is that the race is close, and prominently putting forth bad policy may have flipped Indiana into the Clinton column, and even makes North Carolina seem unsure. Clinton has proven herself a tenacious candidate and it would be a mistake to count her out. But wouldn’t it be ironic if clearly bad policy promulgation keeps her in the game. If it does turn out to be a winning strategy, we are in for an absolute treat this fall.

What? Five Chinese Novels in NYT Sunday Book Review

2008-05-04T20:04:00.014-04:00

Did the sun rise from the west today? This week's New York Times Sunday Book Review has five articles, written by well-known authors and critics, on novels from China! Even the current issue of Poets & Writers talks about "literary Beijing," the first time in my many years as a writer.

What has done the trick? Not cheap goods or tainted food, not the trade deficit or politics. It must be the Beijing Olympics then. Otherwise, why would America's predominant publications suddenly be showing solicitude toward Chinese novels, three short months before the Games? If nothing else positive comes out of the summer event, calling the West's attention to Chinese literature is at least one good thing.

This attention is in sharp contrast to a recent complaint from Wolfgang Kubin, one of the most renowned Sinologists in Germany. Kubin, who claimed in 2006 that China has not had any great writer since 1949 and "contemporary Chinese literature is trash," lashed out again in February of this year. In an interview with Oriental Outlook, he says he and Chinese writers have nothing to talk about. Judging from the interviews, he has been too busy to read Chinese books for quite some time. I wondered if the problem was his or Chinese writers'. Personally, Kubin lost credibility in my heart when he dismissed the Chinese classic Three Kingdoms, which happens to be my very favorite.

Howard Goldblatt, America's foremost translator of Chinese literature, disagrees with Kubin. Among the five novels reviewed in NY Times Sunday Book Review today, two were translated by Goldblatt recently. In a March interview with China's popular newspaper Southern Weekend, Goldblatt says it's not that China lacks great literary work; the problem is that there is not enough translation of it.

I happen to agree with Goldblatt. Growing up in China, I read far more translated Western classics than Chinese novels in my youth. Everyone in my generation knew the names of Hemingway and Hugo. In contrast, during my two decades in the US, I met only one American writer who knew something about Chinese classics, let alone average readers. This imbalanced one-way flow used to astonish me, but I've become accustomed to it (it's life).

Now this weekend's NY Times Book Review astounds me again, this time in a pleasant way. Among the five novelists reviewed, Mo Yan and Wang Anyi are definitely the top novelists in China. I have been Wang Anyi's fan since my college time in the early 1980s. The complexity and quality of their works, both in terms of content and art form, are no lower than the best American contemporary authors I've read. I raise my hand to my forehead with relief that their works are being translated into English. Jonathan Spence's review of Mo Yan and Francine Prose’s review of Wang Anyi will make everyone want to read the novels.

Jiang Rong is new to the literary scene, though he's from the same generation as Mo and Wang, and I doubt that he will write another novel. I'm in the middle of reading the Chinese original of his Wolf Totem right now, and from what I've read, I have to agree with Pankaj Mishra that "the novel's literary claims are shaky," despite the international prizes it received. The novel is of a "concept-driven" type; it certainly lacks the level of emotional complexity portrayed in the works of Mo Yan and Wang Anyi. It, however, raises important ecological and racial chauvinism issues. The phenomena that Wolf Totem has become a record best seller – the highest among all books sold in China – seems to reflect Chinese's concern on urgent societal issues.

Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (a great title on a terrible cover) and Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem have both been translated by Howard Goldblatt. While the literary quality gap between these two authors is huge, I do think it is necessary to have both novels translated, and I recommend both to American readers. Wolf Totem, being a best seller in China, will tell the Westerners something about the mindset of contemporary Chinese readers, to say the least.

By the way, in the aforementioned interview with China's Southern Weekend, Howard Goldblatt says that, to understand how unpopular Chinese literature is in America, one only need look at the quantity of Chinese fiction published in The New Yorker: Null. (Goldblatt doesn't think Ha Jin's work counts as Chinese literature, because it's written in English.) This isn't quite accurate – the New Yorker did publish Gao Xingjian's stories after he received the Nobel Prize, and those stories were originally written in Chinese. Other than that one arguable instance (you could say Gao was already a French citizen then), Goldblatt is right about the New Yorker's discrimination.

The New Yorker notwithstanding, now you can read these translated Chinese novels.

Human Flesh Search (人肉搜索): Vigilantes of the Chinese Internet

2008-05-03T08:33:00.007-04:00

New America Media, News feature, Xujun Eberlein, Published: Apr 30, 2008

The first time I noticed the term "ren rou sou sou" (人肉搜索) on a Chinese website, I was taken aback. "Human flesh hunting" is a literal translation, but the term, applied to the Internet, means a search engine that runs on people power – "human flesh searching engine."

Chinese netizens have made up their own cyber vocabulary. Some are "Chinesized" translation of words that Americans have turned into verbs meaning internet acts, such as "spam" and "friend." More are their own inventions that can perplex infrequent web users. A popular new expression, for example, is "very pornographic, very violent," used to describe something that is cool and interesting. Similarly, using the words "human flesh" (instead of, for example, "human powered") to modify "search engine" also reflects a fashion in diction. More>>

Related post: No Conversation on BBC

Finalist Pamela Erens on LA Times Book Prize Events

2008-05-01T08:56:00.012-04:00

by Pamela Erens

(Pamela's novel, The Understory, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. The prize events and the LA Times Festival of Books took place from the evening of Friday, April 25 to Sunday, April 27, 2008. I invited Pamela to talk about her experience during the events. See also an interview with Pamela last month on this blog. – Xujun)

One of the things I was most anticipating about the Los Angeles Times Book Prize events and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was the chance to meet and get to know zillions of other writers. And one thing I learned during the evening and day that I was able to attend (unfortunately I had to fly home early on Day Two of the two-day festival) was that many writers are as fundamentally shy and socially inhibited as I am.

The awards/festival folks did their best to provide us Book Prize nominees with numerous chances to meet-and-greet: a pre-prize ceremony dinner, a post-ceremony reception, an “Authors Green Room” at the festival with an unending buffet of salad and desserts—but as far as I could tell, most of us hung together in small clumps, desperately glomming onto the few people we already knew, or had thankfully gotten introduced to by some mutual acquaintance. Still, with that many writers around, one couldn’t help but meet a few people. So I’ll report on that in just a minute.

There were nine prize categories: Biography, Current Interest, Fiction, First Fiction, History, Mystery/Thriller, Poetry, Science & Technology, and Young Adult Fiction. The pre-prize ceremony dinner mixed the nominees with interested parties from the “outside” (also known as “real”) world who simply enjoy reading and wanted a chance for some book chat. When the time came we all shuttled over to the prize ceremony at beautiful Royce Hall at UCLA. I was startled by the sheer size of the audience, and also by the fact that my face was periodically flashed on a large screen above the stage as a continuous video loop scrolled through the nominees’ books and persons.

I was attending with an old friend of mine, Brian Alexander, a wonderful writer and the author of the recently published America Unzipped (a hilarious and informative read about the state of sex in this country; I highly recommend it). We were seated in the very first row of the huge auditorium—so picture being at the movie theater and having to lean back to see the goings-on. A silver-haired woman was seated to my left and in the tunnel vision engendered by my nervousness I didn’t realize until the ceremony was just about underway that it was Maxine Hong Kingston, the guest of honor that night. Kingston had earlier been announced as the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award, given to a living author who has made a significant contribution to the literature of the American West. By that time it was too late to turn to her and tell her that I’d read The Woman Warrior when I was 15 years old and that it was one of the books that showed me how beautiful and powerful literature could be. I did manage to blurt out a few words to that effect after the ceremony.

The presenting judges did an admirable job of summing up each book in a few brief, smart sentences. The two acceptance speeches that struck me most were Elizabeth Samet’s and Tim Weiner’s. Samet, who won in Current Interest for Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, talked of the challenges of teaching literature to young men and women who may soon be facing combat. Weiner captured the History category with Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and warned that the decline in newspaper readership in this country could result before long in our government becoming the primary purveyor of news and information. “Don’t let that happen,” he urged. In my category the prize was taken by Dinaw Mengestu, who battled jet lag all through the long evening due to his recent arrival from Paris, but who graciously accepted for The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a novel about three immigrant African men in Washington, D.C., and the white woman with a biracial child who becomes a neighbor of one of them.

Afterward we were treated to a reception on a big terrace with the Santa Ana winds blowing over us and a chocolate fountain inside in case we got a serious jones. I stood in my very high heels as long as I could bear it and then crawled back to my hotel for bed.

The next day, the first of the Festival, was very hot, but that didn’t stop the astonishingly large crowds. There was panel after wonderful panel, but I had various obligations to meet and so I’m embarrassed to say I missed all of them except, at the end of the day, my own (again, I flew home first thing Sunday and so had no chance to catch that day’s offerings). I appeared with Antonia Arslan and Ellen Litman, two of the other First Fiction finalists. Antonia’s novel, Skylark Farm, takes place during the Armenian genocide of 1915. It was written originally in Italian and has been translated into well over a dozen other languages so far (a Hungarian version has just appeared). Antonia, who is of both Italian and Armenian background, spoke movingly about hearing fragments of family stories about the massacre all of her life but not feeling as if she could tackle the material until late in her career as a professor of Italian literature at the University of Padua.

Ellen, the craftswoman behind The Last Chicken in America, a story collection about the lives of immigrant Russians in Pittsburg, explained the ways in which immigration changes a family’s dynamics and can make its members feel even amidst American abundance that “there is never enough.” (The panel was supposed to include Rebecca Curtis, a finalist for the story collection Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money, but she got sick and couldn’t attend.) Our panel moderator, Carolyn Kellogg (of the blog Pinky’s Paperhaus), kept thing bubbling along. Each of us read a short excerpt from our nominated work and I tried to make it sound like my book about an incredibly isolated and repressed man was really a ripping good yarn.

All right, here’s who else I did get to talk to at least briefly over the weekend:

*the affable Stewart O’Nan, who was staying in my hotel and with whom I swapped comments about New Haven’s crappy airport. O’Nan was a finalist in the “big” Fiction category for his novel Last Night at the Lobster.

*Marianne Wiggins, a co-finalist with O’Nan for The Shadow Catcher (the winner in the Fiction category was Andrew O’Hagen, for Be Near Me). Wiggins was warm and wonderful and made me feel simply very happy to be at the festivities.

* Daniel Smail, finalist in Science & Technology, who explained what in the world his book On Deep History and the Brain was about (answer: something very interesting).

* Mark Sarvas of the indispensable blog The Elegant Variation, who’s been wowing people with his new novel, Harry, Revised.

* Cecil Castellucci (Beige, The Plain Janes), whose name is pronounced Cee-cil, not Sess-il

* James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, My Dark Places), who opined on how much he hates it when people use the word “like.”

* the poet Stuart Dischell (Good Hope Road, Dig Safe). We talked about Joisey—as in New. (He was born there, and it’s my adopted state.)

* the irrepressible mystery/thriller writer Ake Edwardson (finalist for Frozen Tracks), who explained to my friend Brian and me how the Bronx got its name (it had to do with a Swedish explorer).

* the lovely poet Jean Valentine, finalist for her collection Little Boat, who offered to share her LA Times with me by the hotel pool.

* David Bell, finalist in History for The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. I tried to cover up my complete and shameful ignorance of the Napoleonic Wars by telling him (truthfully, of course!) that recently I had begun reading War and Peace. Bell revealed that Tolstoy is an historically faithful and insightful chronicler of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia.

* Lisa Fugard (Skinner’s Drift), one of last year’s First Fiction finalists and a panelist this year, who was dining with her adorable son.

* Laila Lalami (Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits), who moderated the panel “Not So Ordinary People” with Tony Early, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, and Ann Packer.

* Babes in Paradise and The God of War author Marisa Silver, who was one of the judges for the First Fiction prize and to whom (along with fellow judges Susan Straight and Robert Roper) I am forever grateful.

Oh, yeah, I mistook Charles Bock for a salesclerk at Vroman’s Bookstore. You’d think I might have noticed the tall stacks of Beautiful Children that he was sitting next to and signing. It must have been the 90-degree heat. He was very nice about it, so I’m going out to buy his book tomorrow.

My Friend Alicia Gifford's Erotic Courtyard and Story

2008-04-29T09:07:00.013-04:00

I figured if Susie Bright could publish Alicia's story "Surviving Darwin" in Best American Erotica 2008, I couldn't go too far wrong posting an analogous view of her gorgeous courtyard. The pictures themselves are more exotic than erotic, but I couldn't resist the title. :-)Actually, like the courtyard, "Surviving Darwin" doesn't exactly belong to the erotic genre. It is a much more complex personality story. The female narrator isn't your usual sympathetic character, and doesn't do much to make the reader sympathetic. Still, the protagonist and her brief redemption are treated so masterfully, I was completely drawn in. Alicia wields a poised pen with words flowing from an intelligent and nimble mind. As another writer friend puts it, "I wish I could write that well!"

My question for the reader: Would you like a story with a dislikable main character? Why or why not?

So, bring a cup of coffee, sit in Alicia's spring courtyard, enjoy the company of Jim the handsome dog, and get lost in "Surviving Darwin."

Chinese Cyber Nationalists Hit the West Where it Hurts

2008-04-28T09:58:00.004-04:00

New America Media , News Analysis, Jun Wang, Posted: Apr 28, 2008

(This report has an interesting argument.)

While the Olympic torch may have lit the way for international anti-China protests, it was also the catalyst for Chinese nationalists to develop their voice – especially on the Internet. Now these Chinese cyber nationalists are flexing their power as a nation of consumers by calling for a series of boycotts – proving that the issues might be more about economics than Democracy. Continue to read >>

Dialogue between Karl Iagnemma and Brian Knep

2008-04-26T10:10:00.003-04:00

One is a fiction writer and a scientist at MIT; the other is an artist and a researcher at Harvard. The concept of a conversation between these two is particular attractive to me. I don't know Brian, however I have (sort of) known Karl since I first went to his reading at Newtonville Books in 2001. Karl's stories are often complex, and he has a unique way with language. He is one of the contemporary writers whose writing I truly admire – see my review for his debut story collection, "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction." I look forward to reading his new novel The Expeditions.

Karl is not only talented but also a very kind person. I remember when I first started writing in English after 9/11, I was clueless about story submission and publication, being trained as an engineer. I wrote Karl out of blue and asked many newbie questions, including how his first story was published. He replied to this stranger right away, in a very helpful long email.

One question I asked him was, "Which one do you like more, doing your lab research? or writing a story?" And he said, "Boy, the research/writing question is difficult. I suppose I like writing more, because it's it's just more _fun._ But research is satisfying in a very different way. . .it's a good feeling to solve a problem, and of course I've always been interested in science and technology, since I was a boy. . .which is probably why the characters in my stories are often scientists or engineers! But it's hard to compare the two, since they're very different things." It is hard to achieve excellence in either field alone, and he has succeeded in both.

MCC's idea for having dialogue between artists of different disciplines is a good one, and as the first installment, this one was interesting to read. However, there seems little interaction between the two. It is hard for a discussion to reach certain depth without an interactive discourse. #

Spring Is in My Yard

2008-04-25T11:21:00.005-04:00

Does this have the flavor of a Chinese yard? A little bit? (We planted all those spring-flowering trees by ourselves, one or two every year.)

Iconic Differences between German and Chinese Culture

2008-04-24T15:32:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if I agree with Yang Liu on all her interpretations, but some of these are quite funny. Frog in a Well is also an interesting China-focused blog worth checking every now and then.

No Conversation on BBC

2008-04-22T17:31:00.010-04:00

BBC's "World Have Your Say" called again this afternoon, inviting me to join a "conversation" between Chinese and Tibetan students, with Grace Wang's help in mediating. I was interested, but because they gave me only a 20-minute advance notice, I wasn't able to make it. I did try to listen to the recording on their website later. The program runs for 2 hours; I listened for about 45 minutes and gave up – there was simply no conversation whatsoever, albeit some good questions from the audience.

Among the participants, besides the BBC mediator and Grace Wang, there were two Chinese students, a half-Tibetan, and a Tibet-born Ph.D. student from India, all studying in London. From beginning the panel did not go well. Grace Wang spent too long trying to describe her ordeal, but after 10 minutes still hadn't got to the point how she and her parents in China were harassed. The BBC mediator had to politely (as far as I could tell, he was most polite to Grace) steer her to the point by interrupting and asking whether the Chinese government helped her parents defend themselves against attack. The answer was expected: No, the police knew there was damage done to her parents' house, but did not know who did it. A poor excuse apparently. And again the expected reaction from the BBC guy and the Tibetans – untiredly condemning "China has no basic human rights!"

Then Grace Wang tried to point out that China not only has no respect for human rights, it has no respect for its citizens' rights. She kept saying – whether because of her ignorance of the Tibetans' feelings or her insensitivity – that "We are all Chinese; Han Chinese and Tibetans are all Chinese," which was bound to make the exiled Tibetans furious. ("Well, no," the Tibetan, or the half one, protested right away.) It was so ironical that BBC invited this victim of her fellow Chinese to be the main guest in order to further bash China, though they claimed to have sought her help "for both sides to find a common ground," and ended up only widening the crack. Grace and the Tibetan student got into argument about the identity issue, and the BBC moderator had to interrupt again.

Next, the BBC guy wanted the participants to talk about China's blocking of foreign media, and one of the Chinese students made a stupid (really stupid) defense: "This is for the safety concern of the Western journalists!" (Couldn't the BBC find a more intelligent Chinese student? There are plenty of them.) The same student then began to list the benefits Tibetans received from the Chinese government, including a railway to Tibet. His way of arguing by ignoring the feelings of the other side is quite common in what I see from the Chinese internet.

The Indian Tibetan wasn't being any smarter. He claimed that the railway was built by prisoners of the Cultural Revolution. Such nonsense. Apparently he had no idea when the railway was built.

At one point someone mentioned how Tibetans suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Grace Wang made a good point that all people in China suffered then. "It was the Cultural Revolution," she said.

An audience called in and made comment on China's civil rights (don't remember what he said), and the BBC moderator asked Grace Wang to respond. Grace tried to say that there should be equal civil rights between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans (which I happen to agree), however she stammered and didn't finish the sentence, and the moderator came to her rescue by announcing a break. ("I need to improve my English," Grace tittered. "Your English is fine," the BBC guy said.)

After the break, the students got into arguments on who caused the riots, the Tibetan monks or the Chinese government. The Indian Tibetan (Ph.D student in Economics), who insisted many Tibetans got killed or beaten up by doing a peaceful demonstration, lost his temper and kept shouting, using his voice volume to suppress every feeble attempt at rebuttal from the Chinese student (poor guy, who did not have a higher voice, therefore). "You listen to only the Chinese government!" The Indian Tibetan roared. He didn't seem to realize that, by the same token, he only listened to the Dalai government.

The BBC moderator seemed to enjoy this one-side overwhelming scene for a while. He eventually raised his next question about Chinese's criticism on BBC's biases. "How did they even know we have biases? The Chinese government blocked us!" Well, that was again a stupid one. For a moment I couldn't figure out what was his real motivation – was it a rhetorical question trying to prove the BBC's unbiased? Or was he suspecting China did not succeed blocking the BBC? In any case, didn't this guy even know that there are a huge number of Chinese students studying all over the world, including London? And there are such things exist as email and the internet?

An audience called in and said that he visited China last summer and was able to download files from BBC site. This really annoyed the moderator. He shouted at the caller: "I'm telling you, I'm not asking you! It is a fact that China blocked BBC! Two weeks ago!" This anger took the poor caller by surprise and he mumbled, "Well…I only know about last summer…" and the moderator hung up on him.

Another caller asked about Tibet's serfdom before the 1950s and whether the serf's were better off because of China's action. (A very good question - I wanted to know the answer, too.) The Indian Tibetan replied, "Tibet wasn't perfect, but the Chinese replaced the Tibetan upper class with the CCP upper class!" He said if Tibet needed reform, it should be carried out by the Tibetans, in their own pace, not by the Chinese. That might be the best argument I'd heard so far, however he never did answer the question. But by the same token, if China needs reform on its human rights issues, shouldn't the West let it develop on its own pace as well?

Any how, there was shouting but no conversation, and there were more stupid arguments than intelligent ones. I lost patience and could not go beyond 45 minutes. I do hope the second hour went better, but I doubt it. Good that I wasn't there. #

Extinguishing the Olympic Torch of Hope

2008-04-20T11:15:00.012-04:00

by Larry Mongoss, guest blogger

It is often said that all effects are side effects and that seems to be true for the passage of the Olympic torch. The tradition of running the torch through different countries is intended to promote the games, show the inextinguishable nature of the Olympic spirit and, of course, promote the host country. I have never followed the torch relay very closely in the past, but was still struck by how worrisome it must be for those bearing the torch to not let it go out. I picture myself doing it, falling face first in a mud puddle valiantly holding up the torch only to have it put out by the water splashing up as my face goes under. The whole world gasps and I am the link that breaks the chain that holds together the games.

The pressure, it turns out, is not quite so great. There is a backup plan, a “real” torch that is kept burning in a nice dry place just in case the bearer has a mishap. Likely the backup has been invoked before, but it was not until the recent chaos in France that I found out about the dirty little secret. Symbolism – if it is going to be real shouldn’t it have to be fragile too?

That is a different topic, the side effects I am talking about relate to the goals of giving voice to the “Free Tibet” movement and embarrassing the Chinese government. By striking at that oddly honored Olympic symbol, this primary goal did meet with some success. The embarrassment, however, was not restricted to the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee. Many people in and from China, especially young people, have taken these statements very personally. Intended or not, they see the whole thing as an attack on their motherland, not just the government that controls it. The words “Shame on China” go directly to the heart.

Worse still, and I think this is one reason the anger is so great, they see it as racial statement against Han Chinese. Though many were hoping that the Olympics would be an opportunity to increase freedom and curtail human rights abuses in China, that inclusive goal has been lost. The loud voices no longer carry a global message. Instead, what comes across loud and clear to Han Chinese is that they are being blamed for the conditions of other ethnic groups within China. When perceived in this way it suggests that the rights of those groups, especially ethnic Tibetans, trump any claim that Han Chinese have on free speech or other civil liberties. Given this interpretation, I am not surprised that so many people in China seem to be so mad.

Some, presumably a small portion, of young Chinese activists have become quite extreme in voicing their anger. They are hunting a particular protester and declaring people (including some of their own) enemies in a manner reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, an event they are too young to have any firsthand knowledge of. Whether this worrisome behavior is condoned by their majority remains to be seen. Still, the young people of today are the rulers of tomorrow and the attitudes currently being engendered will be with them when they come into power.

So far, the anger generated seems to be directed at those directly involved in helping mire the torch in the mud. I am relieved at this; the scale of suffering that ethnic retribution within China could cause is overwhelming. But that anger, and its focus on outside influences is still troubling. The Olympics may indeed be the catalyst that aligns the attitude of the Chinese government with that of the Chinese people. Unfortunately, the emerging alignment is that the people are remonstrating against the rest of the world with exactly the same voice that the government has had for decades.

There is a tendency, especially prevalent in America of late, to label countries as good or bad. You can try to finesse that by saying what you will of the people making up that country but what comes across is: America (or substitute your country name) is evil! It is kind of hard not to be upset by such a blanket statement. Such absolutism, absolutely is bad.

I am not sure who will bring home the Golds at the upcoming games, but I have a feeling many of us have already lost. #

Also by Larry Mongoss:

Finding Silver in the Cloud of CO₂
Paterson the Blind New Governor
Also on Literal and Literary Truth
Disagreeing with Smart People
Decreasing Readership among the Corn-Fed

Discussion about the New Generation of Chinese

2008-04-19T12:19:00.005-04:00

This generation of Chinese students, both inside and outside China, is very different from mine. Because they hold China's foreseeable future (they have already played a predominant role in recent political events), the West should try to understand them in order to learn how to peacefully co-exist with each other on the same earth. The following NY Times article and a reader response present two different views. While my own view is with Daniel A. Bell, it is important to hear from different sides.

"China’s Loyal Youth” (Op-Ed, April 13) by Matthew Forney
Daniel A. Bell's Letter to the Editor (April 19)

VSC Open Studios: Artwork-in-Progress

2008-04-17T21:41:00.023-04:00

One thing I enjoy the most about a residency is the interaction between writers and visual artists. The visual artists never fail to impress and inspire me with their sheer creativity. The variety in their choice of art form is so great, it makes me wonder why they have larger freedom of choice than us writers.

Here is a small sample of work-in-progress I saw in VSC's open studios last week.

Right: Laura Scandrett's black dogs (painted with ink on paper)

Left: G Todd Haun's landscape painting

Right: Shari Schemmel's collage

Left: Chihiro Ito and his face on the wall

Below: Cathryn Aison's block print with a real wasp

Below: Lalie Schewadron's digital projection with enamel on clayboard

In Taipei, Chinese Writers Debate about Misery Literature

2008-04-15T21:43:00.007-04:00

by Din Wenling (news.chinatimes.com, April 11, 2008)

[In translation]

TAIPEI – What is the definition of "misery literature"? What form of literature can best convey misery? What belief should be upheld by exile poets and misery literature writers? The "Writers at Taipei" event, led by exile poet Bei Ling, invited Chinese writers from Australia, America, and China to discuss and debate on the topic of misery literature.

"Misery literature shouldn't be grievances only. If a writer has political or ideological mysophobia, is unwilling to gamble his own fate, or is unprepared for exile at any time, then he doesn't deserve to be called a misery literature writer," said Inner Mongolian novelist Yuan Hongbing, author of Freedom in Sunset and Premature Death of Literature.

Yuan said he always reminds himself of such. He fiercely oppugned writer Meng Lang, founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, because two years ago, while in exile in Boston, Meng Lang dared to publish a book in mainland China.

In response, Meng Lang said he never considered himself to have the status of a writer-in-exile, and called himself only "a writer with an exile flavor." Meng Lang said: "Although mainland China does not have freedom of speech, I am willing to use whatever means, including publishing books, to broaden any crack in thought control. I also don't think a dissent writer should relinquish opportunities to publish books in the mainland."

Bei Ling then slammed the Chinese government's literature policy that lauds some writers. He believed that "besides Wang Anyi, Mo Yan etc, there are many excellent writers with free souls. The mainland government's approach is to marginalize those unconstrained writers."

Poet Yan Li, who has been operating an underground literary magazine in China for decades, asserted that "Insistence on independent writing is the most necessary attitude for an intellectual. Literature should not be kidnapped by political interest, much less by the capitalist market economy." He revealed that many excellent poets in mainland China couldn't join the Chinese Writers Association, because the authorities only liked writers who didn't write about contentious subjects.

Fu Zhengming has been concentrating on Tibet issues for a long time, and edited Selected Poems by Tibetans in Exile and Poems from the Snow Land. He jeered at those writers and scholars who frequently showed up in China's TVs as the government's propaganda tools.

The participating writers gibed each other, so sharply it accelerated the pulse. Interestingly, the poets and writers originally planned to walk to Freedom Square and recite their work aloud on the way, interacting with passersby, even intending "not to exclude naked running." However, this interaction did not happen, perhaps because of their introverted personalities. Only their heated arguing attracted some sidelong glances. After arriving at Freedom Square, they read their work for about half an hour and did nothing surprising.

Johnson, Vermont: War Dilemma

2008-04-13T08:41:00.018-04:00

The slogan on the flag reads: "WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS / Hang a Yellow Ribbon for Your Soldier"

I asked a few writers and artists if they thought supporting our troops was the same as supporting the war. The answers were divided.