Fifty years of Chinese rule in Tibet

Technically, today is the 50th anniversary of China's invasion of Tibet that brought that country under Communist rule. Of course, for several years prior to that, Tibet had been dominated by the Chinese, and 10 March 1959 was just the beginning of active rule after the Tibetans got a bit peeved by the fact that the Chinese were encroaching on their affairs. The fact that the United States, which went to war in Korea and Vietnam to stop tiny Communist countries from expanding, ignored this breach of international boundaries is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like we "learned" our lesson in Korea - we went to war in Vietnam after this. The Americans believed that Tibet was Commie, too, although they didn't do much research into it, which is probably why they ignored the invasion. I don't mind realpolitik at all, because it's all that states really practice, but I do mind when it's dressed up as ideological concerns, which it usually is. The U. S. should have said, "Tibet is of absolutely no strategic use to us, so what do we care if the Chinese take it over?" At least that would have been honest.

Some cultural differences should remain that way

You know, I'm all for experiencing other cultures and trying to understand them. Viva la Difference! and all that. And I can't say for certain I wouldn't do what two sportwriters covering the Olympics do in this video. But I'd probably have to have a few beers before I did. Fret not, it's not gross. It is, however, interesting. To say the least.

What I've been reading

Nanjing 1937: A Love Story by Ye Zhaoyan. 355 pages, 1996 (translated by Michael Berry, 2002), Faber and Faber Limited.

Before I get into this, I should point out that this is my last book in the alphabet. I read my books in alphabetical order by author, because I'm weird. Well, actually, it's because I buy so many books (and yes, I know I should stop, but I love books) that I found I would read books I bought more recently and ignore books I bought further in the past that I hadn't gotten a chance to read yet. So I decided to simply read my books in alphabetical order. I break the pattern occasionally, but for probably a decade I've been doing it. This is my second time through the alphabet, and now I have to go back to the beginning. I've already started a new book by an "A" author. It's oddly gratifying finishing the alphabet and going back to start over, even though it's a somewhat arbitrary way to read my books. But I feel good. And isn't that all that matters?

So let's delve into this book. As you can tell by the subtitle, it's a romance, and it's one of the odder ones you might ever read. It's certainly not bad, just ... odd. I'll get to that. I should say something about the writing style. I'm not sure if it's the translation (probably), but Ye's prose is often difficult to get through. Obviously, the story of Nanjing in 1937 is well known, especially to the Chinese, so Ye doesn't feel the need to explain some of what's going on in the grander scheme of things with the Japanese and the Chinese. We do get plenty of historical context, but there are some odd references to events that we're expected to understand, and I assume if we were Chinese, we would. The prose itself is occasionally turgid, and again, I have no idea if it reads differently in the original language. The heavy hand of the third-person narrator is evident very often, and sometimes it feels as if Ye is guiding his characters through the narrative rather than letting things play out naturally. It's a fairly dense novel, so Ye has to keep track of several main characters, so it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would as I kept reading, but it's tough to get into. There's your fair warning!

Nanjing 1937 tells the story of Ding Wenyu and his strange love for Ren Yuyuan. Ye begins his story on the first of January and follows Ding throughout the year. Ding first sees Yuyuan at her wedding to Yu Kerun, a rising star in the Chinese air force. This is, naturally, a problem, but Ding is an unusual person. He's 20 years older than Yuyuan, and spent several years in Europe after lusting after Yuyuan's older sister two decades before. He has a amazing ability to learn languages, and has spent his life womanizing and wandering around the world. When he returns, he becomes a professor in Nanjing and builds a reputation as a eccentric fellow who ignores all social conventions. This is evident from the wedding, where he stares inappropriately as Yuyuan for several minutes while gossip swirls around him. This begins the strange romance between the worldly professor and the naïve young soldier (Yuyuan is a confidential secretary in the army).

It's not what you think, though. Ding becomes more and more obsessed with Yuyuan, but he doesn't pursue her. He begins writing love letters to her, usually more than one a day, and delivering them to her. Yuyuan is the model of propriety, however, and she never responds to the letters. She simply reads them and keeps them, but the fact that she never leads Ding on and, in fact, tells him whenever she sees him that she isn't interested and finds him ridiculous doesn't deter him at all. His father forces him to marry the daughter of an important steel magnate, but Ding ignores her and the story of their divorce forms part of Ding's attempts to form a relationship with Yuyuan. Yuyuan's own marriage is far from perfect, as Yu Kerun is immature and besotted with the fame of being a star pilot, using his celebrity to pick up whatever woman he chooses. Ding also has an interesting relationship with a rickshaw driver, Monk, whom he always used to search the city for prostitutes. Once he meets Yuyuan, however, he swears off his former lifestyle and dedicates himself to his love for her.

Ding is a fascinating character, because of the cultural differences between the 1930s and today and between China and the U. S. Ye continually narrates how ridiculous he is, sending two, three, or even four love letters a day to Yuyuan, staring at her inappropriately whenever he sees her, telling her how much he loves her and how his love is totally spiritual and beyond the realm of the flesh. Everyone in the book feels that he's ridiculous, too. However, we come to realize how noble he really is - yes, he wants to divorce his wife, but only because it was an arranged marriage, and he never cheats on her anyway. He's speaking truly when he says that his love for Yuyuan is totally spiritual - he never tries to pry her away from Yu Kerun, and he never makes any moves on her. The other characters in the novel act far worse than Ding does, yet in the eyes of society, he's the one who acts horribly. Yu Kerun flaunts his affairs, even moving in with a girlfriend late in the novel, but because he's a hero, his poor treatment of his wife is overlooked. What makes Ding fascinating, as Yuyuan comes to realize late in the book, is that instead of worrying about everyone liking him, all he cares about is making sure that Yuyuan is happy. Everyone else is concerned with their image, but Ding simply doesn't. This makes him seem ridiculous, when in fact he is the most steadfast person in the book.

Ye introduces several subplots that help illuminate the main relationship. Monk, the rickshaw driver, is besotted with a young girl, and her mother (with whom he's having an affair) offers her in marriage. When she rejects him, he reacts far differently than Ding does, and the subtle commentary is that the low-class Monk is less deserving of love than the upper-class Ding. This also shows the two ways obsession can turn - ugly, like in Monk's case, or ethereal, like Ding's. Yu Kerun, who cannot relate to Yuyuan in any meaningful way, falls in with Qu Manli, a teenaged girl who traps him into a more tightly-knit relationship than his own marriage. She doesn't want to marry Yu, but she does want him to divorce Yuyuan so that she can toy with him without guilt. It's ironic that Yu Kerun, who treats his wife so poorly, finds himself ensnared by a woman with far more guile than Yuyuan. Only then does he begin to realize what a fine woman she is, but by then it's too late.

As Yuyuan's marriage falls apart, she can't help but be drawn to Ding and his abiding love. Ye continues to refer to the political events in China during 1937, as the year saw the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Yuyuan is in the army, so when the government abandons Nanjing (it was the capital of China at the time), she must stay behind as part of the last-ditch effort to stop the Japanese advance. Ding, naturally, stays with her. Ye refers to the major events of the year, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, and several historical personages appear in the book. As the book moves toward its conclusion, we keep wondering how Ye will write about the horrors of the Rape of Nanking. Ye, however, chooses an interesting way to end the book that allows him to avoid it. Ding and Yuyuan must make horrible choices, of course, and any book set in this city in this year can't really end well, but the ending is unusual in that it's far more "real" than what we might expect, in that it's somewhat random. That's the way life is, after all.

This is a difficult novel to get into, mostly (I think) because of the translation. Once you do get into it, however, it's a rewarding love story, because it's unlike most romances you read. In most love stories, something is keeping the lovers apart, but in this book, the obstacles aren't contrived, like they often are in romances. In this novel, the culture itself is against the lovers, and Ye does a marvelous job showing how oppressive that culture is. We can wonder why these people couldn't get together, but we're approaching it from a different cultural perspective. As we read, Ye makes it clear why this romance is so difficult for the two of them. It's a tragic story, yes, but it's also somewhat inspiring. Nanjing in 1937 wasn't torn by war until the very end of the year, so it's not like Ding and Yuyuan are struggling through violence, but they are struggling to find something more than war, and almost everything is against them, including everyone they know. As we move toward the inevitability of the ending, we can't help be caught up in the nobility of Ding's feelings toward Yuyuan and Yuyuan's struggle to accept them. It's a wonderful romance and a powerful novel about a desperate time in Chinese history.

What I've been reading

God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan by Jonathan D. Spence.
400 pages, 1996, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Man, it's been a while since I finished a book. I was trying to read some of the magazines that I subscribe to, and then, of course, there was my spectacular failure to get far in The Gulag Archipelago, so it's been some time. I finally decided to move to the next book in my alphabetical list, and I was glad it was this one!

Spence is a bit of a China expert, and I read his book The Gate of Heavenly Peace, which was about the revolution, and liked it, so I figured this would be a good read. For those of you who are weak on your Chinese history, the Taiping ("Great Peace") movement was a millenarian Christian movement led by the charismatic Hong Xiuquan in the mid-nineteenth century. Hong believed that he was Jesus' younger brother, hence the name of the book. It's a fascinating time period in Chinese history, as the Western Powers were encroaching on Chinese soil and fighting wars to force the Chinese to import opium, while the Qing dynasty, ethnically different from most Chinese, were holding onto power by the slimmest of threads while rebellions mushroomed all around them. The Taiping rebellion was the most successful of these, but even with God's blessing, it could not displace the ruling dynasty and usher in Hong's Heavenly Kingdom. It went down in flames, but not before making a huge impression on China and the way the West dealt with the Chinese.

Spence traces the roots of Hong's movement back to apocalyptic movements predating Christianity, but quickly brings us to Canton in the 1830s, where Hong Huoxiu (his given name) takes the Confucian exams that is the gateway to civil service in the vast Chinese bureaucracy and always fails them. Canton, Spence tells us, is a place where several Western powers have their trading depots, and it's a strange melange of Western thought and Chinese traditionalism. In 1836 he met Edwin Stevens, a missionary from New England, and got a hold of several Christian tracts by Liang Afa, who had attempted to distill Christian thought into a form the Chinese would understand. Hong at first didn't read the tracts, but in 1837 he fell ill and had a dream. This dream would inform the rest of his life and lead to countless deaths. In his dream, Hong goes to heaven. While there he learns that he is God's son, and Jesus is his brother. God wants him to return to earth to destroy "the demon devils" that have wrecked the world. He also has to change his name, because "quan" means "completeness," and this experience has left him complete. So Hong Huoxiu becomes Hong Xiuquan. When he woke, he initially lashed out at his family members, but eventually calmed down.

Hong's revelation lay dormant for years, and in the meantime, the British fought the Opium War. This strange war with China, forcing the Chinese to accept shipments of opium even though they tried to ban it, leads to several things, not the least of which is the founding of Hong Kong, but it also leads Hong to finally read Liang's tracts with a critical eye. As he read them, he came to believe that Liang was talking specifically about China and the situation as it now exists. The "demon devils" are obviously the ruling Manchus, foreigners from the far north, and Hong is supposed to cleanse the country of them. It all becomes clear!

Hong left his home and went west into the mountains of southern China, where he met up with some relatives and other Chinese Christians who called themselves the "God-worshipping Society." They attacked traditional Chinese gods and Confucius, and were often persecuted, but they managed to recruit several powerful families in the area to their cause, which shielded them from the worst punishment. Hong was also able to bring bandits - the Triads - into the fold, because they were also outlaws in the eyes of the Qing and the British, and were also good fighters. For several years the Taiping movement remained localized, but Hong gathered a great many people to his cause. Two men, Xiao Chaogui and Yang Xiuqing, became part of his inner circle, and Xiao began channeling Jesus and Yang channeled God. Their proclamations when they are speaking with Jesus' or God's voices became part of Taiping law. The Qing were largely disorganized in the area and Hong's power grew until he was able to challenge the army directly. He spoke of a Heavenly Kingdom where all his followers could live in peace, but he was very careful to never say exactly where this kingdom would be nor when it would come about.

In 1850 the situation changed - the Qing forces were able to root out the Taipings, and Hong was forced into action. In a great march north, he led his now large army from Guangxi province to Changsha, outwitting and outfighting the Qing but for one disaster in northern Guangxi. They were thwarted at Changsha, but they simply continued north to Wuchang on the Yangzi River, and then downriver to Nanjing. It was a spectacular campaign of coordination, covering thousands of miles and involving tens of thousands of people - men, women, and children. In 1853 the Taiping army broke in to Nanjing and founded their Earthly Paradise. It lasted until 1864.

The Taiping didn't want to stop in Nanjing. They tried to seize Shanghai, but were rebuffed by Westerners. They sent armies north to strike at Beijing, but the campaign fell apart. Hong, meanwhile, set himself up with his various sub-kings and ruled his Paradise. The Taiping, like all fundamentalist movements, wanted to control every aspect of life, and while they did not succeed throughout the areas under their control (a great swath of central China in the 1850s), they were able to dominate life in Nanjing. And, of course, the various factions began squabbling with each other. One of Hong's oldest friends, Feng Yungshan, died on the march north, and Xiao, the voice of Jesus, died outside Changsha. Yang became more and more powerful, as God spoke through him constantly, even going so far as to criticize Hong. In 1856, during a power struggle, Yang and his entire family and several thousand of his supporters were slaughtered by Wei Changhui, another sub-king, and Qin Rigang, who were in turn put to death, despite having acted under Hong's orders. Nanjing became a ghost town, as Western merchants were refused entry and commerce came to a halt. Hong did allow Westerners to visit the city, because several of the Powers - the British and the French most notably - were interested in his brand of Christianity, but they were never allowed to meet with him and they came away disgusted by his "blasphemy" of equating himself with Jesus. Finally, in 1864, after years of fighting, the Qing army was able to attack Nanjing directly. Hong had gotten ill, and passed away quietly on 1 June 1864. His son and heir, along with the last remnants of his advisers, fled the city, but they were all captured and executed. His son was not yet fifteen.

The story of Hong Xiuquan is certainly compelling, and Spence tells it with an interesting twist. While he goes over the events of the Taiping movement well enough, he is much more interested in Hong's proclamations, his relationship with God and Jesus, his hierarchy, and his exotic brand of Christianity. Therefore, the book is filled with quotes from Hong's many writings, which attempt to forge a new kind of religion from the Bible and Chinese folk religion. Hong is even more strict than the Bible, and when he reads something he doesn't like - Lot's incest with his daughters, for example - he simply excises it from the published work. Spence does a good job explaining the context of southern China in the 1830s, when Hong began his mission. Once the Taipings arrive in Nanjing, he focuses less on the political events and more on the society that Hong attempted to build and the power struggles inside the movement. It's a good way to tell the story, because even though we lose some of the exterior drama of the downfall of the Earthly Paradise, we still get a good sense of why it fell apart and how the hubris of humans - imagine that! - gets in the way of building a utopia. Another interesting thing Spence does is never comment on the actuality of Hong's visions. They are presented as fact, without irony, and Xiao and Yang are never said to be faking it when they speak with Jesus' or God's voices. It's interesting, because we in this cynical age might be tempted to tear down the artifice of Hong's vision and call it delusion, and certainly others at the time did so. Even if we think Hong was mad, Spence does not say so, and it is up to us to interpret what is going on in the mind of Hong Xiuquan and his followers. How much did they believe? How much did they claim to believe but didn't? How many of them were opportunists? Some might think this is a weakness in the book, but there's no way to tell exactly how cynical Hong and his followers were - if they were at all - so it's best to present their written statements and leave it up to us.

The book is written in a slightly jarring style - it's in the present tense, which feels weird at the beginning but becomes more natural as you read. It also ends poorly. Spence ends the book with the execution of Hong's son and then a very brief paragraph musing about the influx of Westerners into China. The Taiping movement is not placed in any historical context, which is strange, because it lasted for 20 years and dominated Chinese politics for ten. It also weakened the Manchus considerably, and forced them to turn to foreigners for assistance, which led to a whole host of other problems. It's a strange way to finish, because it leads people to believe that this entire movement occurred in a vacuum, which is untrue. It's a minor complaint, however, because the book is pretty gripping - Spence has access to Taiping documents, obviously, and we get deep into the movement and experience the rapture and the horror of this deranged - my word, obviously, because I'm cynical - man. It's a fascinating book.

If you're interested, Caleb Carr wrote a book about the Taiping movement, too: The Devil Soldier. His book, however, is about Frederick Townsend Ward, an American mercenary who was hired by the Manchus to fight the Taiping. Ward was killed in 1862 but became a Chinese folk hero. That's an interesting book, as well.