In his review of Andrew Walder’s Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement, John Gittings discusses the July 1966 murder of Bian Zhongyun, deputy principal of the Beijing Normal Girls’ High School. Gittings mentions that Bian’s story has been told in a moving documentary that features interviews with her husband, who shares photographs that he took at the time of her death. The entire movie, Wo sui siqu (我虽死去 Though I Am Gone), is available on YouTube; below, we’ve embedded the first section of the film (in Mandarin with English subtitles).
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Tags: Cultural Revolution
By Maura Elizabeth Cunningham
At the beginning of March, Rae Chang and Adam Tow came to UC Irvine to show their docudrama about the life of Qiu Jin, Autumn Gem (see here for their blog post about the UCI event, and here for a list of upcoming screenings around the country). The movie traces the life of “China’s first feminist,” Qiu Jin (1875-1907), who was a leader in both the nationalist and women’s movements and was executed at the age of 32 for her involvement in a plot to overthrow the Qing government. Hailed as a revolutionary martyr in China, Qiu Jin is little known outside the country, but the Autumn Gem screenings are bringing her story to American audiences. After seeing the movie, I wanted to learn more about its development, and conducted this brief interview with Rae Chang by e-mail.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham: How did Autumn Gem come into being? Why did you pick Qiu Jin as the focus of this project?
Rae Chang: As a Chinese American born in the U.S., I had never heard of Qiu Jin until I came across her in a book, Writing Women in Modern China, about twelve years ago. It was an anthology that included English translations of her work, as well as a brief biographical sketch. What caught my attention was that she was described as a “radical feminist” from China, which came as a surprise to me because I didn’t even realize there was a feminist movement in China, much less a radical one! That led to doing more research about her life, and after collecting more material I thought she’d make a great subject for a documentary.
MEC: Why did you choose to include so many of Qiu Jin’s poems, essays, and speeches in the movie’s script? Aside from Qiu Jin’s own writings, what other sources did you consult when researching Autumn Gem?
RC: Qiu Jin was certainly a prolific writer, composing over 200 pieces throughout her short life, and I wanted to use her own words as much as possible to tell her story. I felt the act of writing was such an integral part of her life, and helped shape who she was in both public and private. Her political speeches and essays were fiery, passionate diatribes meant to stir up the people, while her poetry revealed this intensely turbulent inner life. Listening to her own words, we wanted the viewer to have a more intimate sense of who she was.
I unfortunately can’t read Chinese, so I relied mostly on English translations of her work. The scholars we interviewed for the film – Hu Ying from UC Irvine, Amy Dooling from Connecticut College, and Lingzhen Wang from Brown University – had written excellent works on Qiu Jin in English and were wonderful resources for us. We also had assistance from the Qiu Jin Museum in China, as well as Qiu Jin’s grand-nephew, who has become a caretaker of her legacy.
MEC: What was the most surprising thing you learned about Qiu Jin, or about China’s early women’s movement, as you made the film?
RC: While she was remarkably ahead of her time in her feminist actions, speaking out in public, dressing up in men’s clothes, leaving her husband and children, she was also a very traditional Chinese woman in many ways. She had bound feet and had been set up in an arranged marriage, and was living the life of a gentry wife until her political awakening. Even the act of sacrificing herself for the modern revolution was based on the traditional notion of heroic self-sacrifice. She had so many contrasting aspects of her life, which made her especially fascinating.
MEC: As you’ve shown Autumn Gem at colleges around the country, what kind of reaction has the movie provoked?
RC: Most people in the U.S. have never heard of her, and were surprised to learn about this historical figure who was part of the extraordinary women’s movement. People from China knew about her story, although they generally were more familiar with her political revolutionary aspect and were not as aware of her feminist side. We also met people whose grandparents or relatives knew Qiu Jin personally; some had studied with her in Japan, others had participated in the revolution themselves. It was incredible connecting with them through the film.
MEC: What sort of legacy do you think Qiu Jin has left to the women of China?
RC: While she wasn’t the first women’s rights advocate, she was inarguably the most prominent, as her martyrdom brought national attention to the women’s movement. I think her image resonates strongly with feminist activists today. It’s been over a hundred years since her death, and she’s still ahead of her time.
Tags: Chinese Women, Qiu Jin
This essay is based on the script of a talk Ying Zhu gave at Google’s New York offices on February 12, 2010. Sections in bold were not part of the original talk, but have been added by the authors to tease out some of the issues that were left without further elaboration due to time constraints.
By Ying Zhu and Bruce Robinson
Editor’s note: This piece originally ran with Ying Zhu listed as its sole author. After it appeared, Ying Zhu informed us that it should be described as a co-authored commentary, in recognition of the extraordinary contribution to it by Bruce Robinson, with whom she had collaborated closely on a related project; we have followed her wishes; and both Ying Zhu and China Beat ask that in further attributions or discussion both authors be equally credited for this work.
I have recently been reading new books about China with titles like What Does China Think? and How China’s Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China’s Reform and What This Means for the Future — good books that give us genuinely valuable insight into the thinking of many of China’s leading political and intellectual lights. But what they make me think is that we may not be thinking enough about what Chinese society thinks, so I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the concept of China’s emerging “critical masses,” and the power that the critical masses have in shaping the future of China.
I would like to propose that the Chinese people are more and more the masters of their own destiny, and maybe yours. As you know, sometime in 2008 China surpassed the U.S. as the country with the largest number of Internet users. That’s the same year that it became the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. It is also the United States’ leading creditor, owning, by most accounts, over 1 trillion dollars of U.S. debt, and it will soon pass Japan as the world’s second largest economy. So as Americans, as citizens of the world, and especially as Googlers, you all have something riding on China’s choices now and in the future, even without the current controversy. And speaking of that controversy, naturally, I should factor Google’s recent adventures in China into the overall scheme of my take on Chinese media and society.
I want to say first that I am thrilled to be here at the reigning search engine of “Life, the Universe and Everything.” Thrilled, but I might also say “in thrall,” since in my line of work it has become nearly impossible to operate without constant resort to the little magic box that transforms keywords into the raw material of articles and books. Maybe you could get it to do the writing too, in addition to dating?
Once, of course, there was no Google. Back in the days before Google, say 30 years or so “BG,” communications scholars used to give too little credit to audiences, who they regarded as mostly passive recipients of messages contained in a one way flow of mass mediated communication.
We are repeating the same pattern today in paying too much attention to China’s leaders and intellectuals, and to the surface content of media messages, without considering how Chinese audiences use and interpret media and produce their own mediated information. We also tend to emphasize government control and censorship of the media and the Internet, citing the “Great Firewall of China” without considering either the real extent of information available, or what people do with it. We are not alone in this. The Chinese state may also be giving audiences too little credit, persisting in a deep-rooted conviction that national unity and political stability can only be maintained through paternalistic management of culture and information.
Tags: Google
By Alec Ash
The film Confucius premiered in Beijing last month, to a backdrop of controversy over Avatar being dropped from cinemas to make way for more patriotic fare. I saw the film last weekend with Chinese student friends, and we couldn’t hold back the occasional open snigger: in a word, Confucius is cornier than maize. It also raises interesting questions about the selective interpretation and political uses that modern China makes of its ancient Confucian tradition.
I put some of these questions to Daniel A. Bell, Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University, who has written widely on Confucianism (including pieces for The China Beat), and is author of China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton, 2008; new edition 2010).
I’ll preface with one comment of my own. As well as being an entertainment and commercial beast (though if it will be a successful one remains in doubt), I would say that Confucius serves a clear political agenda. Namely, presenting an appealing humanitarian philosophy and nudging audiences to link that with the CCP’s modern China. Within China, there’s an added emphasis on the “put your country before everything” side of Confucianism (the film reminded me in its style and hyperbole to The Founding of a Republic). And overseas, it’s a weapon of China’s ‘soft power’.
Finally, a spoiler alert for what follows – for whatever it’s worth, the ‘ending’ of Confucius’ life story is given away. And Professor Bell has confirmed that no new academic information has come to light to support the film’s idea that Confucius’ fabled meeting with Laozi happened not in an inn, but atop a mountain shrouded romantically in clouds at sunset.
***
Alec Ash: Anyone who has seen Confucius was no doubt groaning over their popcorn at its kitschier moments. But within the obvious constraints of film, how accurate was it to the reality of Confucian teaching and the history of his life?
Daniel A. Bell: The film is not an effort to accurately present the history of Confucius’s life. As Annping Chin notes in her book The Authentic Confucius, he had only a weak link to the powerful men of his time and a minor role in their political adventures. As such he was rarely mentioned in their records. Yet he is presented in the movie as a major military commander. There is even less known about his marriage – early sources were written three hundred years after the events, and they simply say his marriage ended in divorce. So the scenes with his wife are mainly fabrication (or imagination). The Analects of Confucius is of course the work most closely associated with him, and it was compiled within the hundred years or so after Confucius’ death. The work does provide telling insights of the relationship between Confucius and his students, so the second part of the film on Confucian teaching may be closer to historical reality. I did like the part about dancing and drinking with his students. If it were up to me, I’d have made the whole movie about Confucius and his students. There’s a lot in the Analects about Confucius’s most talented and virtuous student Yan Hui and it’s certainly true that Confucius was deeply moved and affected by his death. But the movie doesn’t really build up their relationship, and when Yan Hui dies trying to retrieve scrolls from icy waters, it’s hard to be moved.
AA: In particular, what of Confucius’ ‘love interest’ in the film, the seductive Nanzi, who’s advances he resists? Is Confucianism compatible with sex, lifestuff of the movies as it is?
DB: I actually thought that scene was well done and it sticks more or less to what we know about Confucius’ visit to Nanzi. It also makes sense of a seemingly puzzling statement attributed to Confucius that appears twice in the Analects: “I have never met anyone who is fonder of virtue than of [female] beauty.” But again, it’s hard to be moved by the death of Nanzi because we don’t know enough about her in the movie, and there is no effort to explain why she is killed. Since we’re going to take interpretative liberties anyway, it’s best to develop the characters in greater depth. And why not give a greater role to the beautiful love interest, it would also help from a marketing point of view!
AA: In an early scene, the film makes a big show of Confucius saving the life of a kid fated to be buried alive with his dead master, arguing to change this antiquated tradition. Is this accurate, or does the movie over-emphasise Confucius’ progressive side, deliberately glossing over his conservatism to make him seem more relevant to 21st century China?
DB: As far as I know, that scene was not based on what we know about Confucius. Could it have happened given what we know about Confucius the man and his ideas? To me, Confucius seems more like Socrates in that scene, taking a principle and showing that it would challenge conventional understandings if it is applied in a consistent way. It’s a bit too clever. And the way Confucius deliberately sticks it to his opponent at the end of the scene, almost gloating in his verbal victory, again makes me think of a somewhat arrogant Socrates provoking the jury at his trial. Confucius the man valued humility, he was a seeker of social harmony, he would not have engaged in such unnecessary provocation that his antagonist is not likely to forget. Having said that, I’m quite sure Confucius would have objected to the practice of burying slaves alive with their masters if only because it seems so at odds with the Confucian value of ren 仁, which we can translate as humanity and compassion. Confucius is indeed attached to rituals, but the rituals are morally defensible if and only if they serve the purpose of promoting humanity and compassion in the social world.
AA: What are the key distinctions between this cinematic re-appropration of Confucius’ life and teachings (which one might harshly describe as watered-down, pick-and-choose Confucianism) and the ‘new Confucianism’ about which you write?
DB: Confucianism is a rich and diverse tradition and to a certain extent we’re all picking and choosing. The question is what drives the picking and choosing. For the film, it appears to be mainly a concern with entertainment value, why else spend so much time on military battles? Personally I could have done without the blood and gore. Today, different people in China draw upon Confucius’s life and teaching for different purposes. The most famous case is Yu Dan’s book on the Analects which is more like a self-help book designed to make people feel better about themselves. I’m more sympathetic to the work of social critics in China who seek inspiration from different parts of the Confucian tradition for thinking about political reform. Those with a more political agenda won’t limit themselves to Confucius the man.
AA:In a forthcoming piece for the History News Network, Jeffrey Wasserstrom suggests that an “unstated goal” of this movie may be “to persuade overseas Chinese that they can identify with and invest in today’s People’s Republic 2.0, even if they hated Mao”. Does this ring true to you? Will they succeed?
DB: I’m not sure about that. Wealthy overseas Chinese do not usually need to be persuaded to invest in China; if they’re reluctant to do so it’s mainly for economic rather than moral or political reasons. Most people know China’s Maoist days are long gone. You may still have a few with horrible memories of the Maoist era who refuse to invest on those grounds, but I doubt a whole movie needs to be made to persuade that (tiny) constituency. Yu Ying-shih is the only intellectual I know of who refuses to visit China because of what Maoism did to the country, but his knowledge of the Confucian tradition is deep and broad and his mind won’t be changed by this movie. In any case, I would guess that China itself is the main market for the movie, and that the movie is trying to cash in on the Confucian revival here. But to be honest, I don’t think it will do well at the box-office, if only because it doesn’t succeed at tapping emotions. I saw the film when the whole theatre was filled with people who got discounted tickets by the teachers’ “union” at Tsinghua; the young woman sitting next to me spent her time on the cell phone and left before the end.
And to the extent that the movie has a political agenda, it is designed not to rock the boat. At the end, Confucius returns to his home state of Lu and we are made to believe that this was his true life goal, that what he really cares about is patriotic attachment to his native land. But exemplary persons are supposed to be attached to a life of virtue above all (in this sense Confucius and Socrates are on the same side) – at the end of the day it may not be so important where they lead that life. To be fair, Confucius (in the movie) does impose a condition for his return: he says that he will only accept to return to Lu if he is freed of political responsibilities. But that is even more implausible: according to my understanding of the Analects, Confucius would serve the political community if it’s possible to bring about morally desirable results; an academic life, so to speak, would be a second choice. The movie seems to be telling academics that we should just stick to our books rather than seek to involve ourselves in politics. But maybe I took it too personally.
AA: And how about the Western world? Do you think that the guarded attitude of the West towards modern China can be successfully offset by the soft power of China’s past, presented in such palatable and relevant form as it is in Confucius?
DB: In that sense, I think the movie may have something to offer. To the extent that people in the Western world view Confucianism as authoritarian, feudal, backwards, and so on, the movie may help to dispel such myths.
AA: Would you like to see the movies Laozi or (god forbid) Han Feizi come out in China? Or are these figures of immense influence on China’s identity best left alone, for school textbooks but not the silver screen?
DB: We know even less about Laozi the person, and there is even some doubt as to whether he was a person, so any movie on Laozi would be almost pure fantasy. Han Feizi is of course the most famous defender of Legalism, but a movie about Legalism already came out: Zhang Yimou’s Hero, which glorifies the ruthless king of Qin who drew on Han Fei’s advice to conquer and rule all of China under the title of First Emperor of the Qin dynasty. But I’d still like to see a movie about Han Feizi the man, that develops stories based on his sayings, like in Confucius. Han Fei’s sayings are so extreme in their cynicism that they would have great entertainment value. But the movie should not have a happy ending.
Alec Ash writes the blog Six, following the lives of six young Chinese in Beijing, whose generation he also wrote about for The China Beat.
1. While quite a few writers have discussed the Avatar-versus-Confucius battle currently going on in Chinese cinemas (China Beat posts on the subject can be found here and here), the December 2009 issue of China Heritage Quarterly includes a piece by Gloria Davies and M.E. Davies on another attention-getting film, The Founding of a Republic. The authors point out that the movie, released to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s founding, is notable for setting forth a new narrative about the events leading up to October 1, 1949:
It is a cliché to say that history is written by the victorious, but in this era of Party-generated harmony a corrective is necessary: never has history on film been so generous to the opponents of the winners. The Founding of a Republic offers a version of the bloody Chinese Civil War as little more than an ideological disagreement between otherwise noble Chinese antagonists—indeed it is hard to find a villain on either side of the conflict, rather just passionate Chinese patriots who disagreed to the point of armed conflict as to what political system was best for the country. Hence, Chiang Kai-shek 蒋介石 (中正) and Chiang Ching-kuo 蒋经国 are both portrayed as valiant, principled and sincere men who simply chose the wrong path. Chiang Ching-kuo, in particular, is presented as behaving in a virtuous manner at all times. He is depicted as a paragon of unbending integrity in his confrontation with his corrupt cousin, David Kung (孔令侃). This humanistic rendering of the Chiangs, père et fils, in a film made to celebrate the founding of a socialist people’s republic is evidence of a new foundation myth in the making. It also confirms in no uncertain terms that the worker-peasant-soldier dream, once the clarion truth and raison d’être of the People’s Republic, has been consigned to the archives of irrelevance. It would appear that the new message is: although the Communists and Nationalists may have had their differences they have always been able to pursue their alternative visions in a principled manner. More to the point, principled opposition and conflict resolution is, regardless of the political hue, innately Chinese.
2. William Callahan, who previously contributed a piece to China Beat titled “China: The Pessoptimist Nation,” now has a book by the same name. An excerpt from Callahan’s book can be found at Danwei.
3. The Winter 2009/2010 issue of China Ethos magazine is available online for free, and features articles on a wide array of topics. Jeffrey Wasserstrom offers “Five Things Worth Knowing About the 2010 Shanghai Expo”; Duncan Hewitt writes about “China’s Feminism and Internet Activism”; and Paul French describes the “completely unqualified yet eminently readable” Peter Fleming, author of One’s Company and News From Tartary, in “With Fleming to China.”
4. At Global Voices Online, Andy Yee has a post on “China’s Orwellian Future,” which includes short translated excerpts from “China’s dystopian novel,” The Fat Years, China, 2013, by John Chan.
5. Finally, to end where we began, two interesting pieces about the continuing Avatar v. Confucius story. Sam Crane asks “Confucius, the movie . . . where is the love?” at his blog, The Useless Tree; “Confucius vs. Avatar: And the Winner Is . . .” by Mary Kay Magistad appears at YaleGlobal Online. Magistad writes of the lengths that state officials and movie promoters are going to in an effort to attract viewers to Confucius:
. . . state enterprises and government offices have been block-booking “Confucius” tickets for their employees. Some theaters are giving away free “Confucius” tickets with “Avatar” tickets. Others are enticing those who buy “Confucius” tickets with the opportunity to purchase much sought-after Avatar tickets.
A thought-provoking parallel between The Founding of a Republic and Confucius is that both Chiang Kai-shek and Confucius were figures vilified during the Mao era — meaning that the Chairman would certainly not look kindly on the sympathetic treatment that each receives in these two state-supported films.