China is well on its way in the march toward modernization and... increased fashion consciousness?
During the ten year anniversary celebration of Hong Kong reverting to Chinese rule this week, China officially unveiled snappy new uniforms for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the largest standing military force in the world (2.3 million members strong). If you've ever been to China, or if you've seen pictures taken around crowded areas like Tiananmen Square, you've no doubt seen scores of soldiers clad in loose-fitting olive green uniforms. Apparently, the old uniforms only came in one size and one style--ill-fitting and ugly. But, those days are now gone, because Dog forbid a Chinese soldier ever look dowdy on the battle field!
Amidst growing domestic and international concern over food and medicine safety, slave labor, and pollution, the Chinese government has shown where its true priorities lie by spending millions of dollars to reinvent and refashion the aesthetic appeal of their military. The new uniforms will be color-coordinated, tighter fitting, and will be all around more sexy. Nothing strikes more fear in the heart of enemies than sexy soldiers, right?
In discussing the new duds, a government spokesman noted that the female uniform has been refashioned to look, and I quote, "sassier." This translates into tighter waistlines and, by far my favorite revision, higher heels. Yes, that's right, not only are female soldiers expected to perform their duties in heels, but those heels will now be 5 centimeters high. (For those of you who are metric-scale-challenged, that converts into about 2 inches.) After all, if you're going to be kicking ass, you might as well be doing so in high heels. Everyone knows that the best fighters in the world are supermodels and fashionistas.
Deep in the heart of China, a young and dashing American (yours truly), along with his beautiful Chinese girlfriend (Dai Li), find themselves lost in a mysterious bamboo forest in Yi Yang, Hunan. Luckily, someone sent our intrepid explorers a text message, guiding them back to civilization...
A few months ago, Dai Li and I took a day-trip a few hours outside of Changsha to explore a bamboo forest in a small town called Yi Yang. Upon reaching the edge of the forest we wandered for maybe ten minutes before we found ourselves lost deep amongst the bamboo, engulfed in shadows, and surrounded by the whispers of ancient China. There was bamboo in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Stalks as thick as my legs shot up hundreds of feet in the air. A faint smell of dew, and the nearly inaudible sound of beetles and spiders scurrying amongst the thin leaves, toyed playfully with our senses. This is the China I had always envisioned while living in the states. It was stunning. Yet sadly, there were no kung fu battles or rampaging pandas in this forest. I guess you can't win them all...
I've been receiving a lot of hits and feedback on my "China and the Black Man" post, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to better explain some things I said and to point out some new things as well. (For those of you who didn't read the original post, I talked about a popular toothpaste in China that was originally named "Darkie" and whose logo looks like a man in black face. China, I reasoned, needs to be more racially aware and sensitive, especially as it opens to the world and prepares for the Olympics. In any case, I recommend you read the first post it if you haven't already.)
Firstly, I should clarify that during my first few months in China, when I heard the word "niga" being spoken in Mandarin, the reason I was shocked was due to my own cultural and linguistic ignorance and also because of my connection to a country in which a similar sounding word, "nigger", is a a hateful and racist term. The fact that a completely innocuous word in a foreign language could cause such a reaction in me, especially when I didn't have any idea what the word meant, only proves how deeply ingrained issues of race are in the American consciousness. This misperception on my part says absolutely nothing about Chinese people, the Mandarin language, or about China as a whole.
A Chinese person commented on my original post that the term 黑鬼 (hei gui, literally "black devil") is the Mandarin equivalent of the English word "nigger". This is wrong, and actually, it couldn't be further from the truth. The phrase hei gui in Mandarin essentially means a bad, corrupt, or evil black person. While this certainly isn't a nice thing to call someone, it also doesn't carry any racist undertones. The Chinese have had very little contact with black people during their country's long history and thusly, they don't have many stereotypes or prejudices that are black specific. If you ask a modern day Chinese person to candidly tell you what they think of black people they'll probably say the following, "They all come from Africa and they all play basketball well." Not exactly PC or informed, but hardly bigoted.
Additionally, the term hei gui isn't reserved for black people alone and is sometimes used to describe bad people of different ethnicities. My Chinese teacher, Huang Laoshi, describes the ticket scalpers who lurk around train stations as hei gui even though they are in fact Chinese. The term hei gui is also interchangeable with the phrase hei xin, meaning black heart, which is similarly devoid of racial underpinnings. The person who commented on my original post went on to list some country specific insults like 俄国老毛子, meaning a Russian devil . He noted that these terms, including hei gui, are often said lightly, and, I assume, without hate. In fact, he called these terms nicknames.
The only Mandarin phrase I know of that is hateful and racist the way in which the N-word is, is the final term the commenter listed, 日本鬼子, meaning a Japanese devil. In fact, the commenter said that this phrase isn't a nickname, although he didn't elaborate further. There is a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in China (which I will discuss later), and with this sentiment comes deep seated hatred that in some ways parallels racial tensions in America. Yet, to assume that a term like hei gui has a similar meaning to the word "nigger", is to make a big leap. In some ways, making this assumption is choosing a willful ignorance that permits or justifies the usage of American-bred racist jargon and imagery without understanding the real implications of doing so. After all, it's just a nickname, right? There is no equivalent or synonymous word in Mandarin that means anything close to what the word "nigger" implies in English. There simply couldn't be. China was never involved in the African slave trade, and the Chinese never enslaved, debased, or dehumanized Africans on their soil. And therefor, the Mandarin language doesn't have any word that carries the hatred toward blacks that is contained within the N-word. In English, the word "nigger" doesn't simply mean a bad black person, instead, the word carries with it the loaded connotations and history of a land embroiled in the systemic subjugation and degradation of an entire people. It is a word that was created on the broken backs and shattered hearts of a people torn from their homes; a word that devalues another human as property to be owned and used; a word that says that those with darker skin are inherently lessor and without souls. It is a word that carries with it the tears, losses and victories of the civil rights movement in America. It is a word that, to this day in America, has the power to cause hurt and suffering greater than any knife can inflict. The legacy and usage of the N-word is entirely America's burden to bear and there is no single word in Mandarin that means anything similar.
If nothing else, my original post was a plea for Chinese people to try to be more sensitive toward racial differences and to look outside their own experiences and history to understand why the usage of racist iconography for product marketing like Darlie toothpaste is wrong and immoral. I wouldn't expect any Chinese person offhand to know why the term "darkie" or an image of a man in black face are so demeaning. But, I have a huge problem with any company or person who would willingly co-opt racist imagery from another country without first doing a little research to understand the history and potential impact of said imagery. One, that's a terrible business practice and is bound to cause a public relations blowout at some point, and two, it's a plainly immoral and irresponsible way to market a product. If you're going to borrow imagery from another country or culture, you should understand exactly what that imagery means. The makers of Darkie toothpaste apparently, and hopefully, didn't do that research and they ended up using a stereotyped and racist image and term for their product.
The name Darkie toothpaste was changed to "Darlie Toothpaste" in 1985 after the company was bought out by Colgate-Palmolive in 1985, and the incredibly offensive image on the package was downgraded to a less jarring image. However, to this day the image on the front of Darlie toothpaste appears to be Al Jolson in black face, and that is plainly inexcusable.
To help put this into perspective, imagine for a moment that an American company journeyed to Japan and borrowed a grossly stereotyped and offensive image of a Chinese woman (I don't actually know whether or not such imagery exists) and used this image on a product sold in America called "Comfort Women Panties." [A quick history lesson for those who don't know: During WWII, the Japanese invaded mainland China and forced thousands of Chinese women into prostitution to keep their troops happy as they tore through the land. Many of these women were mere teenagers when they were abducted, and they were treated like animals by the Japanese. They were repeatedly raped and gang-raped, tortured, and often killed after their bodies were wrecked by such abuses. Many of the Chinese women who survived this torture became sterile. The Japanese called these Chinese sex slaves their "comfort women."]
Trying to imagine the immoral usage of the term "comfort women" along with a racist image of a Chinese woman to market a product in America exposes just why Darlie toothpaste is so offensive. Chinese-Americans and Asian-Americans would never allow such a product to remain on the shelves, as well they shouldn't. The immorality wouldn't be lessoned if the company took a play from the Darlie handbook and changed the product name to "Comfortable Women Panties" but retained the racist image. It would still be inexcusable, racist, and a blight on American society. This is the closest parallel I can think of to compare Darlie toothpaste in China to a similar product in the west.
All I'm asking is for people, whether Chinese, American, black or white, to look outside of their own sphere and try to understand and empathize with others. This isn't being overly sensitive; it's being human and caring about your fellow man. Whether or not you can personally understand why an image or word has the power to harm, you should at least try to understand the pain and suffering it causes another. Is it really right to sell a product on the blood and tears of a people unlike yourself? I hope the answer for everyone is a resounding no.
You can now add Flickr to the growing list of websites that China has blocked in the past few weeks. Actually, I can access the Flickr website itself, but I can't see any photos (which makes the website pointless) because the server that hosts photos is what has been blocked. Photographers are a rowdy bunch, and my fellow photo enthusiasts who live in China and use Flickr are furious about the block.
Fortunately for us, an industrious Iranian photographer, who found himself blocked from Flickr in his home country, designed an awesome Firefox extension that seamlessly shatters any block on Flickr images. It works like a charm and I can once again browse and post photos! This all further proves my point that trying to restrict information on the web is a futile exercise.
As a teacher, the most frustrating thing for me about internet censorship in China is that it often prevents me from accessing teaching materials for my students. This week I was blocked from downloading pictures of American teenagers for a lesson on American high school customs and slang. The Communist party claims that they want to open China to the world in preparation for the Olympics and for the country's further economic development. And, to this end, every year thousands of foreigners journey to China to teach English and to share their knowledge and culture with eager Chinese students. Yet, the government doesn't acknowledge that opening yourself to the world and learning from other cultures, necessarily requires a free and uninhibited exchange of information. You can't learn much from others if you don't believe in intellectual freedom and allowing access to information. The communist party has taken an intractable position here by saying, "We want our country to learn from the world and to improve. But, you can only learn what we deem permissible." How, I ask, is that learning at all?
If you're wondering whether or not a specific website is being blocked by the government in China you can check out the awesome website www.greatfirewallofchina.org/, which, appropriately enough, is itself being blocked in China. And yes, for those of you wondering, my blog is still blocked in China... I'm honored?
I leave you with this excellent picture taken by my friend, and fellow volunteer teacher, Lance. I feel it pretty accurately expresses the political and intellectual climate in China at present.
Sorry again for the time it's been since I last posted an entry, but, this time, I'm not totally to blame. The powers that be in China--most likely some Communist party lapdog who can hardly speak English, is greatly overpaid and has no idea what he is doing-- have once again decided to restrict access to my blog. I wish I could tell you why they've done this, but honestly I have no idea. I haven't posted anything recently that is even remotely controversial. But, trying to figure out the logic of the Communist party in matters of what speech they ban is tantamount to trying to decipher why people care about Paris Hilton. It simply makes no sense. The Chinese government has a constant internet block of Wikepedia and and BBC news. Meanwhile, the NYtimes, which routinely feature stories critical of the Chinese government, has never been blocked while I've lived here. My friend Vivienne in Shanghai was recently infuriated when her LiveJournal blog was blocked. I certainly feel her pain. The great thing about the internet though, is that there is simply no way to block all access to any site or information without completely restricting access to the web. If people want to know something, and or access a site, they will find a way. There is always a backdoor, and with a little digging and internet sleuthing it isn't so difficult to circumnavigate a block. After all, I am posting right now to my "blocked" blog. Of course, I'm also crossing my fingers that I'll continue to find ways to do so. And, on that note, I'll leave you with some promised pictures of the week. I shot the following pictures at a flower market during my recent trip to Hong Kong about a month ago. Enjoy!
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