After finishing CHINA ROAD, share FIVE specific insights Gifford makes about Chinese culture that you find important.
And then, describe Gifford's conclusions about China's future - is he optimistic? Pessimistic? A bit of both?
Please use 2-3 sentences for each observation, and cite page numbers, so we can all follow your thinking.
Post your reading response below, as part of this blog thread.
Xie Xie,
Dr. W
1. (pg 197) Chinese people are obsessed with technology and how they can increase their technological horizons. This means watch your iphones carefully!! They are constantly looking over our shoulders and to see what we are doing or wearing. At the start of 2007 there were over 450 million people using cell phones and that number is increasing by 5 million users a month!
ReplyDelete2. (pg 222) Some of the caves at Dunhuang were destroyed during the cultural revolution along with other older things on the Silk Road which were considered treasures. When China had a tragedy they usually came in two. Chairman Mao destroyed China's past by destroying anything that was religious.
3. (pg 239) The Chinese empire had been expanded and there was no longer a necessity for the Great Wall. The Great Wall fell into disrepair because the empire now extended beyond it. This was the first time geographically and culturally the Muslims of Turkestan were brought into the Chinese Empire.
4.(pg 252) The Chinese love to dance. The minorities especially. The Chinese dancing is a stereotype that many people have but it is true. They like to dance with grapes in their hands while they dance and like to think they are one big happy family. I cannot wait to dance in CHINA!!
5. (pg 271-272) The author says that he finally reaches the end of the road and he is sad to see his journey end in China. Will this happen to me? He says that he can leave Route 312 but that route has witnessed so much from poverty of the country to the growing wealth of the cities. I find this powerful because even though he can leave he knows the impact that the road has on the people.
I would say that Gifford is both optimistic and a little bit pessimistic. He feels that China is moving in the right direction except for the government. Every other aspect of China is in the 21st Century except the government is stuck in the 1950s and this is holding them back.
I don’t know the pages because I was reading this as an eBook.
ReplyDeleteThe internet has made a huge impact in China. . In the beginning of 2007, there were 137 million people in China on the Internet accessing information that was never accessible to them before.
People in China think that men from the US act like rock stars. They expect us them to party 24-7 and “ have many mistresses”. I wonder what other stereotypes they have in China for people in the US.
Almost every book we have read has mentioned the drink Baijiu and how awful it tastes. I’m interested in at least trying it once, as it seems like it’s the national drink of choice.
Its hard to hear about how corrupt the officials in the government are. But nothing tops when one the officials did nothing when a towns well was covered in concert, in the attempt to make the village buy water.
Its hard to understand why the Chinese destroyed their old ways of thought and what I would consider their “essence” or what truly defined themselves as a nation. But now people are looking for those old roots to their past. “Enough! We want to be Chinese again. We want to save ourselves as a culture, we want to save our Chinese identity, and perhaps only then can we rediscover ourselves as a nation.”
I think the best way to describe Gifford’s conclusion would be with one of his own quotes. He took the words right out of my mouth “if I seem a little confused about China, it’s because I am. And if you’re not confused, then you simply haven’t been paying attention.”
Ch. 16 (page 195): China is expanding outwards, into its western regions, in a project called “xi bud a kai fa” or “Great Opening Up and Development of Western Regions”. The project’s public plan is to develop areas occupied by ethnic minorities in order to increase their standard of living. However, by developing these smaller western regions the government is essentially paying local residents for their cooperation.
ReplyDeleteCh. 18 (page 216): While Westerners continue to have a romantic image of Chinese culture complete with silk kimonos and teacups, the Chinese are pulling away from the traditional imagery of ancient China and towards a more Western way of life.
Ch. 19 (page 230): Upon entering a new province or region a Chinese cell phone will receive messages from the province/region being entered as well as receive a text message advertisement. “Looking for a gift? Khotan jade is perfect for any occasion. Call this number now”.
Ch. 20 (page 244): One reason China will not likely evolve into Democracy is its size. Another is due to the wide range ethnic minorities that populate China. The government fears a social uprising from the minorities if it were to switch to a democratic political system.
Ch. 21 (page 254): Despite China’s hatred of “foreign devils”, namely Western imperialism, the Chinese are imposing their way of living on ethnic minorities. The Uighurs, for example, are being exploited by larger cities such as Xinjiang and Shanghai who have built a natural gas pipelines that transfer gas to Han Chinese cities even though the pipelines draw from oil wells located in Uighur.
Conclusion: I think despite Gifford’s attempt to draw conclusions about China’s future he falls back into what he said at the beginning of the final chapter, “it’s impossible to be neutral about China”. He talks optimistically about the possibility of China breaking its century long dynastic cycle, then he turns into a pessimist and lists reasons why China might not be able to develop into a democracy. Gifford never really gives an answer as to whether China’s future will be good or bad, happy or sad. Which is alright because it’s clearly impossible to know for sure.
Hen Hao, Melanie, Colin, and Anya!
ReplyDeleteWhere is everyone else?
Boo Hao,
Dr. W
1. Beijing is trying to hook up its underdeveloped west with the rest of the country, and as was the case for the United States, there are problems taming both the wild landscape and the local peoples. The project is called the xi bu da kai fa, which literally means “Grand Opening Up and Development of the Western Regions.” (Some critics say the verb kai fa translates more correctly, and appropriately, not as “development” but as “exploration.” In English it is often referred to simply as the “Go West” Campaign.) It was officially launched in 1999, but the campaign is the formalization of a policy of central government investment in the western regions that had begun earlier in the 1990s. Beijing says its aim is to raise the standard of living of people who live there, especially the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Tibet, and other remote provinces. That is no doubt true. What Beijing does not mention is the political advantage of buying off the local ethnic minorities in order to decrease the possibility of unrest. (page 195)
ReplyDelete2. The Chinese language, in many ways like Chinese civilization itself, has always been self-contained and difficult to get into. That is still true for the outsider. In addition to the radicals and then the characters, there are the arpeggios of the language’s four tones (the flat first tone, the rising second tone, the falling-then-rising third tone, and the falling fourth tone). Characters that are spelled exactly the same way in our alphabet have completely different meanings depending on their tone, the most famous being mai, which when used with the thirst tone means “to buy” and when used with the fourth tone means “to sell.” (This may explain why the Chinese stock market is in such turmoil.) How you write the characters is important too. A man with poor calligraphy is seen by educated Chinese in the same way that educated Westerners might view a man wearing a cheap suit. (page 238)
3. When you see China from the air, you realize the magnitude of what the government in Beijing is trying to do. It is not building a country, it is building a continent. A billion and a half people live in Europe and North and South America, divided up into more than fifty sovereign states. Nearly a billion and a half Chinese people live in one single sovereign state. To speak about building China the nation in the same breath as building Malaysia the nation or even Mexico the nation is, with all due respect to Malaysians and Mexicans, absurd. (page 273)
4. In addition to the economic problems, there are simply too many contradictions in Chinese society. The Party wants to create a modern society. But it doesn’t want to allow too strong a civil society of churches, unions, associations, and other social organizations needed to build a modern nation. It does not want people using Internet to access sensitive information, but it needs technology to become the modern country it wants to be. The Party needs to promote knowledge in order to compete, but knowledge is dangerous. It needs empowered people in order to come strong, but it can’t let the people be too empowered. (page 284)
5. The degradation of China’s land, air, and water has reached critical levels. Deforestation, desertification, not to mention the rising rates of cancer and birth defects from the polluted water and air, are becoming increasingly pressing problems domestically. Pollution has also become a major cause of protest among farmers whose land is near factories. The lack of an effective legal system and the contradictions at the local level of needing the money that polluting factories produce mean that local implementation or enforcement of increasingly stringent central government laws is spotty at best. Once again, this problem comes back to the urgent need to keep the economy growing in order to stave off social discontent--a truth about which both local and central government officials are all too aware. And on top of the population, there is the chronic shortage of water in northern China. How can a country continue without water? Several of China’s major rivers and their tributaries are running dry as smaller cities upstream divert water needed for their own growing industries. (page 289)
ReplyDeleteGifford is both optimistic and pessimistic about the future of China. There are a lot of things that he is worried about, but at the same time he also confused. There is no way not to be confused when thinking about China.