The Sophistication of Art

To show off my urbane sophistication, I took my parents and my 10-year old niece to 798, a post-modern (or modern?) art district transformed from a decommissioned military factory compound.

The three diligently studied the art work in gallery after gallery--a true miracle for my mother who spends all her time cleaning.

She points at a huge oil portrait, hanging on the wall, of a steely and desperate looking girl. "This looks so realistic," she says, her finger following the flow of her neck. "This vein here looks like about to burst open."

In the next gallery, my niece moves from one huge charcoal painting of a horse to another huge charcoal painting of another horse.

"Like it?" I ask her.

"Yeah," she proclaims with her usual 10-year-old enthusiasm. "But why the artist paints the same thing over and over?"

Because the painter uncle has to make money, the easier way?

After an overdose of galleries, we stroll among the pipes and boilers of the factory compound.

"Now this is nice," comments my father who has quietly studied the arts. "It reminds a little of our old danwei, work unit... Remember, the neighborhood you grew up in? It was a power plant so it also had pipes and boilers like this... Except the pipes would be hissing with steam..."

We walk some more, taking in the silence around us. Indeed it looks just like the neighborhood I grew up in, except it was... silent. Too many signs and posters for galleries. Too many young travelers with their eager heads stuck out in all directions. No workers, or children, or freight trains--filled with coal--whistling in the distance, or loud speakers blaring propaganda songs, or pipes hissing with steam.



Now it's no longer alive, life, once simple and vibrant, has become sophisticated art.

"I like this best," continues my father who walks a few steps behind us. "It brings back some memories... Old memories..."

Beautiful Games

The Games, are a beautiful thing. The audience cheered for a forceful US strike on the beach sand transported from Hainan, for the Slovenian who won the first-ever track-and-field gold for his country, and for the Russian woman who broke the world-record in 5000-meter steeplechase.

The jumpers led the crowd to clap for him before he set off. The audience ahh'ed when he failed.

Then there's the Irish lady who fell into the water in the steeplechase. The crowd cheered her on, as loudly as for the Jamaicans after they swept women's 100-meter dash.

The young did the wave they had just learned and clapped until their hands sore. The middle-aged laughed. The old guy sitting next to me, with his white hair under a white humble hat, kept perfectly still and straight for a good hour. Then, melting into the crowd, he smiled gently and mouthed a 加油 (Go! Go!).

My eyes went moist. The Games bring the best out of people. Perhaps the Chinese still don't know how to cheer like a sophisticated Western crowd (How to do the wave again? And can they learn some new way to cheer other than waving the little flags and yelling 加油?). Perhaps the government is bent on all kinds of schemes--dirty or not--to put on a perfect show. Perhaps some citizens have pursued nationalism to the point of xenophobia. But the China I saw at the Games--the old reluctant to show their emotions and the young screaming their hearts out--by so eagerly learning to embrace the Olympic spirit, is already part of the spirit.

To Villainize, or not

One day after I hoped that China not be villainized more than John Edwards, I found out a friend was taken away to make the Olympics more peaceful and harmonious.

It's a tricky business to love this place. For there are always many reasons not to.

John Edwards the Villain

This morning an American friend called from San Francisco. We hadn't talked for a while so we chit-chatted about his job pushing ethnic studies in 9th grade, Obama, and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. He is a school teacher and a big-time Sinophile, having spent a year learning Chinese in Beijing and coming back almost every year during summer break.

Invariably, our conversation turned to America and China. He said that he felt increasing negative sentiment on China in the US. China is a growing threat. China has big problems in human rights and Tibet. China doesn’t deserve the Olympics. And China cheats--just look at those female Chinese gymnasts; they can't be not under-aged!

But the US cheats in other areas--Look at Bush and Iraq! Thus argued my friend.

One wrong doesn't justify another, said his friends.

It was impossible for him to discuss China with his American friends, he said. He doesn't understand the vehemence in their attitude, as if they all know China so well that their opinions are susceptible to no persuasion. When he explained the China he knew from personal experience is a lot more complex, his friends accused him of acting like a China expert, again.

"But that's exactly what I'm arguing against," his exasperation rushed over through the cross-Pacific phone connection, "that even after having lived in China and known so many Chinese, I don't dare to claim to know China. How can they be so sure of their convictions? They have never come to China. They don’t know a single Chinese. They just buy the stories fed to them by the media!”

I laughed. I said that so many people seem to know China nowadays. Even long-time expats in Beijing are handing out digests on how to approach and report on China for tourists and journalists visiting for the Games. Yet like my friend, I find China increasingly complex, and rich, and eluding easy characterization, especially after having lived in Hangzhou without any expat for the past few months.

People need a villain to stamp on, I suggested, just like they need a hero to worship; and China is the new big villain to quench this desire.

My pseudo-psychological analysis seemed satisfactory, but not to have alleviated my friend's worries. After hanging up the phone, I went online. The English-language reporting on the Opening Ceremony has been glowing (now it's the turn of the Chinese netizens to trash the event). For a while, the world appeared to have forgotten the issues of Tibet, Uighur and human rights, and accepted China's message of peace and harmony, just as I was entranced by the TV screen on the opening night and moved to tears on several occasions.

Then I read the detailed reporting on John Edwards's salacious affair and the millions of dollars bestowed on that woman and the recent contrite public apology on such a shameful act as well as the insistence of no knowledge on the millions of dollars having been lavished on that woman.

Even a poster boy of a man self-made through hard work and moral righteousness failed to the human weakness. And I believe Edwards is still doing as much as he can to control the damage--including lying.

So we all have a villain inside. Why villainize China so much?