China
>Plasticized bodies
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Peter Manseau explores the ethics of turning human corpses into museum artifacts @ Guernica.
Questions concerning the ethical treatment of the dead have been with us at least since Sophocles, for whom a single act of leaving a corpse unburied brought mayhem that threatened the stability of society. In Antigone, the punishment King Creon gives to the murdered Polynices is so severe that it extends beyond the limits of life. According to Polynices’s sister Antigone, death is only the beginning of the torments a body can face: “As for the hapless corpse of Polynices, it has been published to the town that none shall entomb him or mourn, but leave him unwept, unsepulchred, a welcome store for the birds, as they espy him, to feast on at will.”
For Sophocles, to leave the dead unburied is an insult not just to the deceased or his family, but to the gods. That proper treatment should be given to human remains, Antigone insists, is among “the unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven.” She defies the state and risks her life in the attempt to see these statutes carried out, and calls upon others to do the same, even asking her reluctant sister, “Will you aid this hand to lift the dead?”
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It’s difficult to imagine how Antigone’s plight might play out today. For those with the savings or the life insurance settlement to pay for it, there are any number of ways of dealing with human remains that are considered acceptable, and in every case the state requires, rather than prevents, some form of timely and permanent removal. Burial, cremation, resomation, organ donation, “whole body gifts” to science; all have become legitimate options. Although it is common for the preferred means of disposing of an individual’s remains to be stated before death, often the method is chosen by the family of the deceased. In either case, there are few ethical concerns. Though a corpse has no autonomy, the treatment it receives, if carried out in accordance with specified wishes, can be seen as the last act of the will.
>Our history is no longer ours
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Jason Farago reflects on the opera “Nixon in China” and the promises of the past @ n+1.
At the opera last week, first two boxes down from mine, then right in front of me at the bar, was the former governor general of Canada. As celebrity sightings go it doesn’t beat sitting next to Dr. Ruth once, but a head of state is a head of state. That was not what C. thought, though. “Do you know who that is?” I asked, and he did not miss a beat: “Unless she’s a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, I’m not interested.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Who could blame him? Who else matters? Much has been made lately of the transformed position of Tricky Dick in the American imagination, but what was really inconceivable for John Adams and his collaborators when they wrote Nixon in Chinain 1987 was that, by its Met premiere in 2011, the presidency itself would be approaching global irrelevance. It’s a funny, Egyptian-inflected moment, of course. And it’s perhaps unfair to consider the US (or the President specifically) only in apposition to the People’s Republic—though the Chinese setting of the opera seems almost overkill, as any work of art about America today would be about China by default. But as Nixon sings in Act I, while China lives in the present, in America “it’s yesterday night.” Perhaps the day is not far off when Barack Obama in Box 15 will excite C. just as little.
>Tofu cannot be rushed
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| Philip Gostelow @ Asia Literary Review/ |
We, the people of Chengdu, love to eat. Food is more important than life itself. Su Dongpo certainly thought so.
A famous son of Sichuan who left his mark on the Song
Dynasty as a writer, poet, artist and statesman, he made his real contribution after his political enemies turned the emperor against him and he was banished to Hubei in 1081. There poverty forced him to live close to the land and from that experience came some of his finest poems. Despite his dire circumstances he spent time perfecting his Dongpo pork shoulders recipe. Few today can recite his poetry, but no one can forget the smell and taste of that original dish. My grandpa told me how, in the 1930s, when warlords were battling for control of Chengdu, and artillery fell on the Huangchengba area, deluging streets with debris as houses collapsed, customers in a packed mapo tofu restaurant watched the bedlam creep closer as they waited for their meals, urging the chef to hurry so they might take shelter. The chef maintained his steady pace in the open kitchen, responding, “Mapo tofu cannot be rushed; that would ruin my reputation.”
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>What if China fails?
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Ross Terrill on the virtues of selective failure in the heart of Asia @ The Wilson Quarterly.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Seven decades ago President Chiang Kai-Shek wrote in apreface to his wife’s book China Shall Rise Again, “For the rebirth of a people certain factors are necessary. Of these one is that the people should go through a period of trials and tribulations.” China had already endured a century of turmoil when Chiang wrote those words in 1941, but more was to come. In contemplating China’s future, we should remember that its modern past includes numerous failures. The Chinese themselves certainly don’t forget. For decades before the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China was beset by foreign encroachment and farmers’ uprisings, and, after the establishment of the Chinese republic, it experienced the depredations of regional warlords, an invasion by Japan, civil war, the collapse of Chiang’s regime in the late 1940s, and Mao Zedong’s quarter-century of uneven rule (1949–76).
Initially, Mao cast his lot with the Soviet bloc, but the “everlasting” Sino-Soviet friendship evaporated within two decades. This was a failure. Emerging from Moscow’s embrace in the mid-1960s, Mao announced a “rebirth.” A Cultural Revolution denounced both imperialists (the United States) and back-sliding socialists (the Soviet Union) and promised the coming of Chinese-style revolution worldwide. But the global “countryside” (the Third World) did not “surround” the global “cities” (the developed countries) as Mao had expected, and the Cultural Revolution flopped. Another failure. And another great relief for the West, as China sobered up after Maoism.
Beginning in 1978, Deng Xiaoping used the failure of Maoism as a springboard for replacing class struggle with economic development as China’s top priority. Some in the West exaggerated the degree to which China was becoming capitalist, “just like us,” and amenable to international arrangements made in its absence. We received a warning at Tiananmen Square in 1989 that Deng’s politics were still Leninist, like Mao’s. But soon the American hope in China kicked back into gear. It always does.
>A pioneer of Chinese modernism
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János Gerle @ The Hungarian Quarterly rediscovers the architect who transformed Shanghai in the 1930s.
The Hungarian architect László Hudec (1893–1958) is a name to be reckoned with in China where he settled for a long period, but he is almost unheard of in his home country beyond a tight circle of architectural historians and his extended family. Quite a bit has been written about Hudec outside Hungary: Luca Poncellini, an architecture student from Turin, recently completed a study which is soon to appear as Volume 13 of Holnap Kiadó’s architecture series. It’s odd that he has vanished from collective memory, as tér és forma (‘space and form’), the mouthpiece of modern architecture in the interwar years, featured one of his buildings, and Hudec kept in touch with a number of important Hungarian architects. I first came across his name decades ago when, searching the database of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I stumbled across a newspaper article from the 1930s: a “Hungarian architect designed the first skyscraper in Shanghai, the first in Asia.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Until recently, the Chinese paid little attention to their architectural heritage, particularly the architecture of the “bourgeois era”. The remarkable pace of China’s growth and the radical transformation of its cityscapes, however, have led to an upsurge in interest. As the old urban framework is swept away, much of what remains is now seen as precious. The work of László Hudec, too, is the subject of research, films and exhibitions. He is considered a pioneer of Chinese modernism, the most productive and flexible representative in the process of its Europeanization, or Americanization, between 1920 and 1940.
>Step one toward freedom is often a step into prison
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Nicholas Bequelin @ Foreign Policy writes on the political essayist Liu Xiaobo the prize China didn’t want to win.
Most international awards are eagerly coveted by the Chinese government, but there are exceptions. One of the names being mentioned for the Nobel Peace Prize this year is Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese writer and political essayist currently serving an 11-year prison term for his crusading views. He is one of China’s most famous dissidents, known for his unflinching advocacy for free expression, human rights, and democracy over two decades. In 2009, he was charged with “incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” as a result of his role in drafting “Charter 08,” a political manifesto calling for gradual political reforms in China, and for authoring several other online essays critical of the government published between 2005 and 2007.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Born in 1955 in the northeastern industrial city of Changchun, Liu received a degree in literature from Jilin University and moved to Beijing to continue his studies. After obtaining a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Beijing Normal University, he started teaching there as a lecturer. In late 1988 he became a visiting scholar at Columbia University, but cut short his stay to participate in the 1989 Chinese democracy movement. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, as the People’s Liberation Army rolled into Beijing and closed in on the remaining students in Tiananmen Square, Liu acted as a negotiator between the students and the troops, ultimately brokering a deal that allowed many students to avoid the bloodshed witnessed in other parts of the capital.
>The China Story
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@ n+1 an essay by an anonymous worker who transcribed news conferences for the Chinese government during the Olympics.
During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I worked as a speed typist for the Chinese Ministry of Propaganda. It was my job to type, in English, everything that was said during an endless blur of press conferences where the Middle Kingdom celebrated its logistical triumphs. For the six months leading up to the closing ceremonies, I took my place at the back of cushy hotel ballrooms and chilly glass conference halls. I sat at tables covered with peach linens and drank from glasses of water provided by gloved attendants. I slogged through conferences on stadium construction, on feeding the athletes, on the zigzag path of the Olympic torch. The reporters slouched; the officials droned; the translators whirred. Subjects varied, but the theme never wavered: I was transcribing traces of China’s Rise, delivering ascendance-evidence to an awestruck world. Some might have considered it ethically fraught to shill for an organization best known for driving tanks over students. I thought it was wonderful. I felt like I was at the center of the world, the spot where all eyes were turning. Though a humble conduit for bureaucratic cant, I embraced what seemed like proximity to power. A sentence I typed could end up in a Sorbonne journal, a Thai weekly, the New York Times. There was a cluster of video cameras at the back of every room. Once, a reporter friend nudged me. “Look,” he said. “We’re on TV in Russia.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )My transcripts were destined for china.org.cn, a site run by the Propaganda Ministry’s internet wing—the China Internet Information Center. For all its Orwellian potential, china.org.cn pursued a mandate similar to that of a North American chamber of commerce. No success went unheralded: the launch of a broadcast satellite, a donation made by Jackie Chan, the creation of a baseball league for the children of migrant workers. My transcripts provided easy copy for the 10,000 journalists who swanned into the country, hungry for quotes from government sources that might help clinch a story on what everyone agreed was a breath-taking Rise.
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