The Olympics, The Number 8, and Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda has taken China by storm. Seriously. Everyone I talk to says it's the best China-related movie they've seen, even counting Chinese movies. Everyone feels that it really portrays Chinese culture and society very accurately. Themes in the movie are traditional themes from Chinese life. And it's just a well-done film. Citizens are now pointing fingers at Chinese moviemakers and saying things like "Why can't you make a movie this good! You're Chinese, for Pete's sake!" (Okay they probably don't use that idiom.) They're amazed that Americans could do this good of a job. (As am I!)

I've seen it twice myself and think it's really good. But from my point of view I was like "Oh this is terrible, so stereotypical China, with the pagodas and the martial arts and the mysticism and the dragons and the animal characters and what have you. I can't believe Americans have the nerve to put this stuff out." So elitist. But it turns out that these stereotypes are accepted and embraced by native Chinese, as detailed above. So does that mean they're really stereotypes? After all, that word has a pejorative connotation.

Sooo many interesting things going on there.

***

After years of hype and speculation, the 2008 Beijing Olympic games are finally upon us. The opening ceremony is tonight at 8 PM. For those who don't know, 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Its pronunciation (ba) sounds like another character (fa) which means to get rich, to be prosperous. That's why the most prominent buildings have 8s in their addresses. The Jin Mao Tower is at 88 Century Ave. The glitzy Radisson New World hotel is at 88 Nanjing Xi Lu. The more 8s your phone number has, the more money you will pay for that SIM card. The hotel that my relatives are staying at has a phone number that ends in 8888. I shudder to think what they must have paid for that.

Thus it was inevitable that the Chinese would bid for the games in the summer of 2008. Not only that, because of the year, but because the summer games start in August, the 8th month. And it's beginning on Friday the 8th. Starting at 8 PM.

The Olympics will start on 8/8/08 at 8:08 PM. This is not an accident.

The Games are China's coming-out party. The unveiling. The dropping of all pretense that China is still the China of the past 150 years, the China of the Opium Wars and concessions to foreign governments and the fall of dynasties. China is using the Games say to the world "We are a new world power; before this century is out, we will be the world power. Recognize us. Accept us. Our prominence is inevitable."

It's not in a threatening way. It's not in an intimidating way. It's in a factual way. 1.3 billion people. An economy with a double-digit annual growth rate. Cars. Oil. Internet. Cell phones. Plastic packaging. More skyscrapers in Shanghai than on the entire West Coast of the US. A projected population in this city alone of 40 - 60 million during the next century. If so many people still have an image of China as a backwater, they will soon drop it in favor of the glitz and modernity, the glamour and pomp, that the games will showcase.

At least, that is the hope of the Chinese government, that the world will recognize it must come to terms with what's going on over here. That the US no longer will stand as the world's unquestioned superpower. It can't. There's no way. 300 million people? Pshaw. That's nothing. A drop in the bucket. That isn't even enough people to ensure the quality of the English language. Yes, our standard of living is higher. But it won't be for long. It can't be, given the trajectories of both economies. This isn't malicious or spiteful or aggressive. Again -- it's just a fact: death, taxes, and China has a shitload of people who collectively will soon wield unheralded economic influence.

This isn't the decline of Western civilization. It's important that nobody see if this way. Because that line of thinking lends itself towards grasping, clutching, clawing attempts to hang on to perceived place in the world. That line of thinking leads to violence, which is a nothing more than an outward manifestation of deep-seated insecurity and other fears. We're better than that.

Rather, it is the rise of Eastern civilization, which was well on its way at the turn of the century but was derailed by WWII (as was much of the world outside the US). In the modern age, this rise started 30 years ago with Deng Xiaoping opening up the Chinese economy to foreign investment and a capitalist way of thought. That's why he's revered here. But in another sense, it really starts tonight. Tonight, the world will begin to see what the Chinese have known for quite awhile now. And you can even watch it on TV. How post-modern.

***

Here in Shangers, we feel the Olympics personally. One of my favorite music venues has been shut down until the games are over, actually, until September 6th. (The music will simply move to another venue.) People's flights (including mine to Macau!) are being randomly canceled or moved. I would not even want to THINK about flying to Beijing for the next two weeks. It will be bad enough flying to Macau and Tunxi. Restaurants and other venues near the Shanghai Stadium, which is hosting the soccer portion of the Olympics, also have been shut down. I see uniformed police officers much more than before, especially in the metro and along well-traveled streets like Huaihai Zhong Lu and Hengshan Lu. If you're carrying a large bag or package, expect to be searched as you enter the metro turnstile. And don't even think about shopping at any of Shanghai's 1,080 metro station stores. They're closed for a month. People are acting up. There was an attack in Xinjiang last week, and there was some nutcase with a knife out on Nanjing Dong Lu.

Here's hoping we all get through the craziness of August in one piece.

Little Red Wheaties

prop 008
Originally uploaded by ryry9379

Today's adventure was the Shanghai Propaganda Art Museum. I kind of can't believe such a thing exists, but I'm really really happy that it does :-) I'm assuming that, because you can access the museum's web site from within China, and because the museum sells postcards intended to be mailed, it's kosher to post stuff like this. If you don't hear from me after a week, you'll know I was wrong :-)

The museum has hundreds of posters and art pieces dating from 1949 - 1979. They're displayed all over the walls in chronological order and with English translations of all the captions. The emphasis is on the art and the political/social situations surrounding each decade of posters. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed, so I bought 10 postcards and took them home to photograph. These 10 images are but a small sampling of the museum's treasure trove. The museum is insanely interesting, and the curator (whose face adorns the header of the web site) is really nice and knowledgeable.

There's a lot of anti-US stuff, of course, mostly from the 50s and 70s. You can see a couple of those in my collection here. There was one picture depicting the US as a wolf getting stabbed by the butt-end of flags wielded by the proletariat. Tied to the wolf's tail was a ripped US flag with a dollar sign in place of the stars. There also was one depicting the US as a paper tiger, again festooned with dollar signs. But most of the time the US was depicted as a skinny, craven, hunched man with a big nose and a paranoid or aggressive look on his face. Many times, as in the above wolf example, he was accompanied by a dollar sign and/or a small, pathetic-looking pistol. Throughout the 30-year period the collection covers, the posters advocated support for many foreign countries in resisting US intervention. I was surprised to see a poster, created during the 60s, advocating support for the Civil Rights movement.

Then of course there were the Great Leap Forward posters. One showed a picture of a HUGE pig with many suckling babies. The English caption read something like "Raise pigs to get more fertilizer to increase crop yield." Sounds logical to me. And lots and lots of pictures of Mao: with children, with workers in overalls, and even a couple alongside shadows of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Stalin. Mao often was represented as a big red sun bringing light to sunflowers, which represented the people. There were many pictures that included his Little Red Book of quotations, and you even could buy copies in the museum's gift shop.

So yeah, it was a fun time. The Lonely Planet guide said the place would be hard to find, but it wasn't really. Especially not since I learned numerals this morning, so after getting out at the Jiangsu Lu metro stop, I was able to say to a cabbie, "Huashan Lu ba liu ba", or "868 Huashan Road". That puts you at an apartment complex. Once there, I showed the gate guards the Chinese characters for the museum, and one of them helpfully walked me through an underground parking garage to the museum, which is in the basement of building 4. The ceiling was extremely low, which elicited some chuckles from the guard and a nearby resident. Wo tai gao le, I exclaimed. "I'm too tall."

So it was pretty easy getting there. (I also could have told the cabbie "Huashan Lu ba bai liu shi ba", or Eight-Hundred-Sixty-Eight Huashan Road, but why make life more difficult?)

Rewinding a bit, I'd like to observe how helpful Yao Ming has been in my international interactions here. Whenever anyone asks me where I'm from, I say mei guo which, as we've learned, means "beautiful country" or the USA. If they want me to get more detailed, I just mention Yao Ming. Why? Because EVERYONE knows who Yao Ming is and that he plays for -- what team now, kids? -- the Houston Rockets. Austin is like 150 miles, or 240 km, west of Houston. So I can use Yao Ming to give people a better idea of where I live (assuming they could pick out Houston on a map, of course). Kind of makes me glad I'm not from Duluth, MN :-) Although I suppose I could say, "You know Houston, where Yao Ming plays? I live 2,224 km north of that." Somehow it doesn't have the same impact, though :-)

And speaking of impact, I was joking around with my tutor this morning. We were in my dining room and I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I fixed myself a breakfast of small rice cakes and Pocky. I then exclaimed "Ah, breakfast of champions!" I realized she had no idea what I was talking about, or why I thought that was funny, so I explained about Wheaties, Michael Jordan, and how the phrase has become (at least to me) something funny to say when I have a terrible meal for breakfast. We (by which I mean she) then deciphered the phrase in Chinese as guanjun de zaocan, or "Champion's Breakfast", which I don't think has the same impact, but hey, it works :-)

Seriously, this is how I spend my time. I also taught her "expatriate" and its shortened form, "expat".

Also, re: the haircut yesterday: I want to write about how there were like seven people hanging around my chair most of the time. And the reason was my ear piercings - the industrial and daith. Seriously, the barber and the greeter (every place of business has a greeter, here) called over a bunch of people to look at them. I'm sad I couldn't understand most of what they said. But it was hilarious and I could tell I was the first guy with an industrial and/or daith they'd seen. Not that this is a huge accomplishment - I get the same kind of looks when I sit in an unfamiliar barber's chair in the US - but somehow the fact that this is in China (and I couldn't understand them at all) made it that much more amusing to me. I did manage to point to my industrial and say, through some laughter, "Ni yao zhe ge ma?" Which means, "Do you want this?" Of course I got a very polite bu yao (I don't want) back :-)

I'd like to remark on how many people were there. There was the greeter, then the shampooer/ scalp massager, then the actual barber, then another girl who took me back to wash off all the cut hair pieces. So that's like four people, just for one customer. And again, there were at least 3 other employees who came over to my chair, not to do anything, but just to hang out and chat with the others. Nuts :-)