The other "Canon"

[JBI]

But once again it is not a chinese thing, so much as a third world thing. I remember that Moscow and most cities in eastern europe are ridiculously full of prostitutes; if you are a young man they often find you rather than the other way round. I remember being in a club in Moscow and being offered sexual services from half a dozen different girls, that night in the same club.

And keeping a woman on the side is not uncommon in europe, the only thing is that one needs more wealth to be able to pull if of in europe, but it is done. For example a famous Italian actor during the 60's had two wife, and children with them both, and he was open about it. The wife's new about each other and the public didn't overly criticize him for it, it was accepted because he was a rich and famous man and a rich and famous man may very well have several wives.

I guess maybe the shock might be stronger for you as I think that Canada and the USA are much more sexually puritarian and repressed compared to europe which is much more liberal. I mean one of the main attractions of Amsterdam is the prostitutes...And its no secret.

Another common example is that in America, university students don't use prostitutes as it is taboo - in my university and many universities in europe, students regularly visit prostitutes. Though this is more the Italians and French than the english, a middle class English student wont use a prostitute, a middle class french or italian one will, only the upper class english students use them for some reason. I find all these tidbits of anthropology fascinating. But I digress.

It's perhaps similar to other ideas of the developing world, but lets take it back a second.

First of all, if someone frequents a prostitute, it is legal in many countries, or decriminalized. Secondly, if someone has a mistress, it is one thing, if a whole culture has one, it is another.

In general, if you had a second girl on the side, most Western women I think would divorce you for all you have as soon as they found out. Secondly, we are talking about people mostly in politics and business - in China it is illegal, yet all these politicians are doing it. They tell the world it doesn't happen, and they are harmonious, but anyone can see it - that's the real problem.

You say in Moscow you got propositioned at a night club - well, try China. Women are told by society it is not right for them to drink or smoke, or go to bars, so you can assume, unless they are a foreign person, that pretty much everyone in the place who is female and local is a prostitute, and people know this.

Likewise, it is not as systemic and hushed up in the rest of the world, and it is not so restricted to men - for instance, I am sure that women are as likely to frequent prostitutes as men in most modern countries - female sex tourism is also a giant industry, one need only go to Jamaica or Cuba, or Bali, or wherever.

To the next point is, for a university student, it is no big deal. To see a vulgar flaunting of money from people who are driving luxury cars with military license plates (basically means you are above the law and work for the government) loaded with hookers is a whole other story.

You need to see it to understand it - it isn't some old money womanizing, it is there new money vulgarity that says everything is permissible, and it is our right to have women, and it is the same culture that regards marriage as the purchase of a wife, and divorce as an ultimate shame to a woman. It's there on every level - if there are hookers in Moscow, that is a completely different beast - we are talking about whole cities with apartments filled with second and third wives.


The real problem I have with anything is just this propaganda that China feeds the world about how organized, polite, nice, and benevolent they are. They pretty much bought out the American academies now to praising them, and China criticism usually leads to ones career ending by never being admitted into China again. One who speaks out about social issues is generally silenced. The amount of control on what people no is staggering, even as it overlaps into what we know - when people talk about China, they talk of huge development, not of toilets without running water. There is such a facade of bull**** surrounding everything we are told in the west, that it makes us think we maybe are living in China.

Basically China is paying to feed us with this idea that they are these great humane scholars with a long benevolent tradition, rich history, and so on. We are supposed to buy into it, since it upgrades some rich guy's car, and hands him the cash to fill it with hookers.

I spent a year handed textbook after textbook of propaganda. The local textbooks for local students are the same, they also say a great many things about our countries, namely, Canada and Australia are for the taking, the US is a fallen empire because they are buying it, which makes China better than the US, and all sorts of other nonsense. We talk of Orientalism and Said, well, lets reapply it. We want a world Canon, well, who is included in the world - China, as my example, is promoting a national identity, but they know nothing of us other than that they want to rule the world - nobody, despite studying English since the beginning of elementary school, can speak English there - and yet you want to rule the world in English? You cannot even control your own education. Now we read them, call them part of our great books, which they are, but are they reading our great books? Do they even consider us people?


We were talking Jin Yong - What Jin Yong did was mythologize China, and make Chinese culture a universal thing - one can ignore people in the United States because you are Chinese and are better than those "Americans" - you don't think it exists, well minority Chauvinism totally does, and is caught in this whole issue.

If China came saying they want us to appreciate their literature, it is one thing, what they want is us to kiss their ***, since they are insecure about everything and need someone to pat them on the back every step of the way. That's basically what world literature is becoming - everyone pushing propaganda everywhere.

Jin Yong is the international Chinese author, but, by any western standard, he is a racist jingoist who is promoting an idea of China #1 which doesn't fit at all with any concept of history.

[JCamilo]

he isn't married right now, he is just polygamous. There is a difference between a womanizer and someone who is married and supporting 3 other women, and whose wife probably knows everything and has society telling her it is his right.

That is the point, polygamy does not imply in moral decadency, but often implies in marriage.

Anyways, I would just point, Prostitution are not commun in brazil, no more than United States. Obviously big cities present their prostitutes, of course, there is sexual tourism, but this is not a third world thing. Brazil still a high moralist country from the catholic point of view, mysognist to some point. Someone as Berlusconni here would be almost impossible.

I am sure, economic and social unequality is a huge factor for those conditions, but japan had a similar problem simple because the western sexual freedom was not a process that developed slowly in there, but of course, the young generation wanted to it and of course, spoiled it.

[JBI]

That is the point, polygamy does not imply in moral decadency, but often implies in marriage.

Anyways, I would just point, Prostitution are not commun in brazil, no more than United States. Obviously big cities present their prostitutes, of course, there is sexual tourism, but this is not a third world thing. Brazil still a high moralist country from the catholic point of view, mysognist to some point. Someone as Berlusconni here would be almost impossible.

I am sure, economic and social unequality is a huge factor for those conditions, but japan had a similar problem simple because the western sexual freedom was not a process that developed slowly in there, but of course, the young generation wanted to it and of course, spoiled it.

Well, Japan always had a long tradition of sexual markets. Prostitutes and sex slaves were pretty much always there, both male and female. They never really developed the idea of inequality or monogamy, but when women demanded more for their worth, Japan just turned its eyes to China, Taiwan and South East Asia. Likewise when more women got power and economic power, they turned their eyes to male prostitutes.

It's a rather strange system that doesn't value fidelity or monogamy - the culture believes in "pleasure for man" traditionally, with no concept of equality for women.

In the modern era there have been changes, but in general that has come from Western concepts being more and more accepted, especially after the US took over. In China, they have a weird time accepting it, and in Taiwan, which was traditionally modeled on the Japanese idea (since the takeover) they have now come well into embracing a Western idea of equality for women, and of monogamy.

Chinese people do not and seem to will not - why give up male privilege, we all know they kill many females at birth, so why is it surprising that they treat them like merchandise? Jin Yong is a great author, but he promotes this by generally declaring Chinese culture as all good, he promotes it, whereas Mao refuted it, but Mao got twisted, whereas he didn't so the synthesis is strange. You have two generations in China now who have grown up without knowing their immediate history. The country is ignorant, but is self proud, they quote Confucius when 40 years ago they were burning his iconography in the street, it's like they avoided synthesis by simply regressing back into feudalism with a new ingrained class system.

[JCamilo]

But then, Confucious is often burned, no? That is what hold him secure in the "canon", it is impossible to get him out of the game. And powerful groups tried.

I only suppose that China is a proud nation since ever. But not a pratical nation. It may seem to the core, not very pragmatic, a dictomy (like Zhang Zimou movies, for example, the obvious western take he can give, hong kong influence, a political propaganda that ends exotic...) of shorts. I have very few contact with chinese people, in Brazil they are almost "jews", in the sense of isolation, weird costumes, no integration with society and related to considerable criminal activities (more by the hong kong based groups). One of them, a clear smugler was married to a woman which ties to the imperial family, some short of offciial chinese language teacher here, proud of it, greedy for money and high-tech and yet, their two kids were already "sold" in marriage but they had no pretession to return to china due the lack of support...

[lawpark]

The only morality in his novels is "serving the people." or looking out for those caught in the struggles of China - he just lifted the concept from Water Margin and kept rehashing it with his xenophobic outlook on history, and his Han Chauvinist ideology.

This is a long post to reply to - hard to do after several more rounds of back and forth that has already happened. Will try to be as brief as possible.
- "Serving the people" - is actually very ancient, back to Confucius / Mencius etc.
- Xenophobic he is not, can you imagine anyone writing in Hong Kong being xenophobic?
- Han Chauvinist ideology - it was so in some novels, but Jin Yong clearly moved beyond that in his longest novels - Tian Long Ba Bu and Lu Ding Ji.

The Chinese tradition has no morality, Chinese culture has pretty much never had an idea of morality, and Chinese governments, from ancient times to today have always been corrupt.

- Here I would just ask you to use your comparative literature reading.

His father himself was part of the "scholarly elite," and as such, he has nostalgia for the time period, but any half-rate historian can realize the dream of China as a great scholarly country is fallacious, simply put, the scholar class always serves the rich in China, which is still the case, and gives a legitimization to the current government in power.

- That would really be half-rate historian. In Chinese history (vs. some other histories), civil bureaucracy staffed by the scholarly have always OPPOSED the rich getting richer (there is different levels of success at different times). In China, if anything, the "rich" per se was never ideologically glorified until after 1900, or maybe even after 1978.

Now, his obsession with the heroism is always taken with a grain of salt - Guo Jing, the hero of his masterpiece, ultimately fails, though he is noble, as the Heroes in Water Margin do. Half of his other heroes retire from the world, his famed trilogy ends with the hero running off with a Mongol while a fascist regime sets on China. Others just leave the conflict, or kill themselves.

- Why is retiring a failure? Here again comparative literature perspectives is useful. Retiring is a theme with long tradition in Chinese literature. Different from the West, but why a failure?
- And we were comparing Jin Yong with Red Chamber. This point hardly makes Jin Yong worse.

His world is problematic in that it still illustrates the contemporary flaws in China - but he supports a reigning power there. He was, I believe, the first person to meet with Deng Xiaoping from Hong Kong. He supports a regime, and his fiction supports a regime - he is a king sellout politically, and does not hide it.

- Jin Yong novels were all written prior to 1971/72, essentially during the Cultural Revolution in mainland. In his last novel, Lu Ding Ji, "Religious Master Hong" was clearly written as Mao gone mad. He definitely did not support the Communist Government in his writings (if he did, he wouldn't first move to Hong Kong), and as someone who grew up in Hong Kong, you would know that nothing in Hong Kong could have become popular before around 1980s if you were explicitly Communist. Period.
- Many Hong Kong people didn't like what he did during the handover, (I am not one of those). His "sell-out" (if you call it that) and his novels were clearly done in two different periods.

How does that effect his fiction? Well, his fiction promotes the current regime's policy.

- As said before, he wrote before Deng's time. And he was against Mao for sure. He did support Deng's China. Your statement is just hard to support timing-wise; unless you consider Deng's policies the same as Mao's policy - if you hold this view, please elaborate.

He is very much involved in politics in his fiction, his fiction even illustrating development in communist Chinese history - his work is racist, it is xenophobic, and it is self-righteous. He himself even saw that, leading to him writing his last novel, but even that text is just another reaffirmation of how good Chinese culture is.

- He wrote from late 1950's to early 1970's - given those time of de-colonialization, for someone who can transcend nationalistic sense by 1971/72 was really not something to be ashamed of. And in your view, a Chinese writer could not be great if his writings affirm how good Chinese culture is?
- In comparison with Red Chamber, you feel Red Chamber does not think Chinese culture is good in some sense?

World history right now is afraid to touch Chinese people, and Chinese historians are some of the most self-proud, xenophobic bigots around. They still teach that the west is responsible for the decline of China from number one, and we are the bad guys - that is what is taught in school in China.
Why don't they teach how the Wong Merchants got loaded off of selling opium to China at an inflated price, or how the aristocratic class, which existed in China far longer than in Europe pretty much enslaved the local population, or how Chinese polygamy is still practiced to this day?

- I have issues with propaganda Chinese text books, but I grew up in Hong Kong when British was in control. It was hard not to make the conclusion that some European (governments) have been bad guys. China's first defeat vs. Western powers, First Opium War. British had issues selling Opium in China. Were British themselves using Opium at that point? Why would it be an issue if a country decides to control how much Opium comes into its borders? Of course the British couldn't do it alone. But my guess (I am no expert of Qing history) is that the Qing government did not "knight" those merchants, as the British probably did to their own folks who helped in the Opium War.
- How did China "enslave" local population? That seems to be a Communist propaganda.
- On the polygamy point, there are many responses already.

They don't for a reason - it's part of a propaganda model from a culture that is so self-important, and so afraid to criticize itself. The first real thinkers to do so have all been purged, Mao included. Now we have the Deng Xiaoping Jin Yong Model of historical and cultural discourse - China the Heroic, China the Beautiful, China the scholarly, China the fair, China the culturally rich, China the great - where is the criticism?

- Jin Yong was well-liked because most people actually didn't agree with the level of over-criticism Chinese culture starting in the May Fourth movement that extended through Cultural Revolution. Jin Yong didn't side with the overly critical side of the intellectual current is hardly a valid criticism.

Where is the person saying, if you are writing historical fiction, how is that woman able to walk when she would have been bound at the feet and forbidden to go outside just some 60 to 70 years ago, or, by extension, 15 years or so before the book was written. Where is the person saying at this time period, life expectancy was less than 30 for the vast majority of people. That doesn't factor in Jin Yong, and nor does it factor in Deng Xiaopingism which his ideology is matched with.

- You yourself mentioned in one prior post that just because US has feminist and racial past to deal with does not mean that every other cultures in the world need to confront the same issues of the same force to be considered "good".
- Jin Yong wrote wuxia (i.e. imaginary kungfu hero) novels, where men usually were better even female had strong freedom of action and many paths to "the top" so to speak. Why does foot-binding need to come into the picture?

[cl154576]

The Chinese tradition has no morality, Chinese culture has pretty much never had an idea of morality, and Chinese governments, from ancient times to today have always been corrupt.

In ancient times the Chinese were extremely moral (Confucius, for instance). Nowadays because of changing monetary circumstances there is a lot of corruption – many people think it started largely after Deng Xiaoping's 改革开放.

[lawpark]

The real problem I have with anything is just this propaganda that China feeds the world about how organized, polite, nice, and benevolent they are. They pretty much bought out the American academies now to praising them, and China criticism usually leads to ones career ending by never being admitted into China again. One who speaks out about social issues is generally silenced. The amount of control on what people no is staggering, even as it overlaps into what we know - when people talk about China, they talk of huge development, not of toilets without running water. There is such a facade of bull**** surrounding everything we are told in the west, that it makes us think we maybe are living in China.

- Chinese government is no doubt doing lots of propaganda, and paying to get some points across.
- With ability of critical thinking, you can clearly decide what you believe or what you do not believe.
- My personal experience after living in mainland China (on and off for 8 years) is that there is also so much money-backed propaganda behind much of what most normal people read or see on TV every day. Also in the same loudness that discourages truly critical discussions on many fundamental and significant issues.
- If anything, this is a problem of modern society.

I spent a year handed textbook after textbook of propaganda. The local textbooks for local students are the same, they also say a great many things about our countries, namely, Canada and Australia are for the taking, the US is a fallen empire because they are buying it, which makes China better than the US, and all sorts of other nonsense. We talk of Orientalism and Said, well, lets reapply it. We want a world Canon, well, who is included in the world - China, as my example, is promoting a national identity, but they know nothing of us other than that they want to rule the world - nobody, despite studying English since the beginning of elementary school, can speak English there - and yet you want to rule the world in English? You cannot even control your own education. Now we read them, call them part of our great books, which they are, but are they reading our great books? Do they even consider us people?

- When did China want to rule the world? Even now I would say it is not anyone's objectives to do so. China has its own national border claims, and to some people maybe it is more than what it should own - but who decides that? And to rule the world? British clearly had such an ambition once, US also clearly tried to do that (you can see how US tried to set up the HQ of "United Nations" in New York City), but China?
- Chinese tried to learn English - how well they came out is another issue, but clearly not because of lack of efforts or money spent. Why does that consitute a criticism?
- I have the most problem with the us and them mentality. World canon really should be for a contemporary person, who tries to understand great books in the world. What makes you think that they are not reading the Bible, or Shakespeare?
- "Do they even consider us people?" I recalled some British "scientists" at one point did not consider Indians truly "people" ... I would say some Chinese consider any westerners gods ...

We were talking Jin Yong - What Jin Yong did was mythologize China, and make Chinese culture a universal thing - one can ignore people in the United States because you are Chinese and are better than those "Americans" - you don't think it exists, well minority Chauvinism totally does, and is caught in this whole issue.

- How is this different from some US people consider Canadians non-existent? In reverse, would a major author in US be non-canonical if he / she completely ignore the Chinese and/or the Indians?

Jin Yong is the international Chinese author, but, by any western standard, he is a racist jingoist who is promoting an idea of China #1 which doesn't fit at all with any concept of history.

- It comes down to a very important question - to be accepted in the West as a World Canon, one needs to have a political view that is acceptable to some current western standard? Is the same standard apply to even ancient / medieval western writers?

[JBI]

In ancient times the Chinese were extremely moral (Confucius, for instance). Nowadays because of changing monetary circumstances there is a lot of corruption – many people think it started largely after Deng Xiaoping's 改革开放.

I'll pick at this one first - is Confucius moral? Where do we get the idea he is moral from? From reading him, he is an elitist who favors hereditary rights, he is sexist, and he is militant, and has no philosophical basis - he supports an upper class, which was where Mozi got most of his criticism for him from (Confucius being rich (relatively), and Mozi being poor (arguably)). Now, he was part of the hundred schools movement - what of the other 99? Well Han Feizi seems the best example, since he and Confucius are complementary elements - for instance, Han WuDi, the great Confucian emperor was also the most militaristic and expansionist, leading to the collapse of the Chinese economy.

Likewise, the Ming Emperors who come in for the next stage of Confucian government were preaching confucius, and merely imposing the best level of control they could as an authoritative regime - the Qing Confucianists did that further, and better.

Confucius is a nice idea, but it is flawed, it justifies a sort of autocracy that assumes it is benevolent - lets face it, we aren't going to see omens now, and when have Chinese leaders ever led by example? It's a nice funny idea, but it has never been shown to work to do anything other then create a good excuse for autocracy - namely, purging political unrest as "unharonious" or whatever.


I'll reply to the Jin Yong Comment in a moment, just thought I would nitpick that.

[lawpark]

Chinese people do not and seem to will not - why give up male privilege, we all know they kill many females at birth, so why is it surprising that they treat them like merchandise? Jin Yong is a great author, but he promotes this by generally declaring Chinese culture as all good, he promotes it, whereas Mao refuted it, but Mao got twisted, whereas he didn't so the synthesis is strange. You have two generations in China now who have grown up without knowing their immediate history. The country is ignorant, but is self proud, they quote Confucius when 40 years ago they were burning his iconography in the street, it's like they avoided synthesis by simply regressing back into feudalism with a new ingrained class system.

- Back to the original question, how does this aspect make Red Chamber better than Jin Yong?
- This seems to summarize your view: Chinese culture is not good, Mao got it right. But please remember why the country is now ignorant of its immediate history, and why Confucius was burnt in the street, and how earlier China was labeled as "feudal".
- I can understand that in your one year in China, you don't like many things you see. Me neither. Remember several things though:

> In Chinese tradition history was used a lot to criticize the present (which often in history has not been easy to criticize without one being prepared to be sacrificed)
> Chinese literary tradition (before the past couple of generations) did not glorify the military successful, violence, or the material success as much as in other traditions. If you can think more about this point, your year in China might not have been wasted.

[lawpark]

I'll pick at this one first - is Confucius moral? Where do we get the idea he is moral from? From reading him, he is an elitist who favors hereditary rights, he is sexist, and he is militant, and has no philosophical basis - he supports an upper class, which was where Mozi got most of his criticism for him from (Confucius being rich (relatively), and Mozi being poor (arguably)). Now, he was part of the hundred schools movement - what of the other 99? Well Han Feizi seems the best example, since he and Confucius are complementary elements - for instance, Han WuDi, the great Confucian emperor was also the most militaristic and expansionist, leading to the collapse of the Chinese economy.

- Confucius might not be highly "philosophical" in the western sense, but his teachings emphasized how to act and how polical goals should be to make sure the people live (reasonably-)well.
- In what case was Confucius militant?
- Why is someone not "moral" if one supports hereditary rights? And Confucius seems to be keen to get his students educated so that educated folks with the right idea of government would be helping the governing of society. I would say the only thing Confucius was not was "revolutionary" in the military / violent sense.
- Let's look at say Plato or Socrates - elitist? yes; sexist? yes; supports an upper class? yes? Lives in Athens which uses slaves. Clearly not moral in your view.
- They reason you know of Han WuDi as a bad guy, is because Sima Qian, who is a Confucian-scholar, criticized WuDi's policies (not just personally because of the harm he did to Sima Qian himself), which as you say was military, expansionists, and led to economic collapse. Did we find an equivalent critic of say Alexander the "Great"? Did his teacher Aristotle say anything about that?

Likewise, the Ming Emperors who come in for the next stage of Confucian government were preaching confucius, and merely imposing the best level of control they could as an authoritative regime - the Qing Confucianists did that further, and better.

- Those preaching Confucius might not be nice regimes. But here is the danger of conflating the ideas with the regimes. Just like it should be clear by now that Marx's ideas should be separated from the Soviet regimes.

Confucius is a nice idea, but it is flawed, it justifies a sort of autocracy that assumes it is benevolent - lets face it, we aren't going to see omens now, and when have Chinese leaders ever led by example? It's a nice funny idea, but it has never been shown to work to do anything other then create a good excuse for autocracy - namely, purging political unrest as "unharonious" or whatever.

- So Plato is a nice idea? His idea in the Republic not flawed? What has really been shown to work? Dante? Nietsche?

[JBI]

[QUOTE=lawpark;1062867]This is a long post to reply to - hard to do after several more rounds of back and forth that has already happened. Will try to be as brief as possible.
- "Serving the people" - is actually very ancient, back to Confucius / Mencius etc.
- Xenophobic he is not, can you imagine anyone writing in Hong Kong being xenophobic?
- Han Chauvinist ideology - it was so in some novels, but Jin Yong clearly moved beyond that in his longest novels - Tian Long Ba Bu and Lu Ding Ji.

Even Tian Long Ba Bu maybe he is more accepting of non "Han" people, but he still has a wall around China to the last story in Lu Deng Ji, where he has his protagonist and the novels tenure essentially laugh in the face of Russians, and by extension the world. He never really got beyond the idea of China, though he moved away from Han racism (a product really of the Boxer rebellion not really ancient Chinese thought) toward Nationalism in the Jingoist sense, we can trust those Dali people now, and those Liao people (who were absorbed pretty much completely into China) but not those Russians, or Englishmen, or Portuguese, or whatever.

As for China wanting to rule the world - well, right now, for instance, Qin through Han Dynasties definitely, Qing dynasty, most likely, and Tang dynasty, maybe not rule but get tribute from. The general imperial system as set up by Han Wudi is that you give a present to people, and then they run and kiss your bum and kowtow to you. You pay people to kiss your a$$ essentially, which was the system of China up until the Brits decided they wouldn't bow - we are the best, we are the centre of the universe, there is only one son of Heaven and he is me, and you need to rub your face on the ground.

- Here I would just ask you to use your comparative literature reading.



- That would really be half-rate historian. In Chinese history (vs. some other histories), civil bureaucracy staffed by the scholarly have always OPPOSED the rich getting richer (there is different levels of success at different times). In China, if anything, the "rich" per se was never ideologically glorified until after 1900, or maybe even after 1978.

Yes, but in practice? How many got rich? How many wrote the exams for the sake of getting rich? How many fictionalized for power and wealth - aristocrats are one thing, but the Song dynasty saw the power of selfish games - that's where Jin Yong's most famous novel is born from - the fact that Chinese people, including scholarly class people, generals, and emperors, are more concerned with their own decadence and careers than the state of affairs. As for rich never being glorified, well, how many idioms do you know that involve with getting rich? What do people put on their doors every new year? What is Jin Pingmei about? What is the Imperial exam about, and what is blood about? The country developed monetary system quite quickly, do you mean to tell me nobody cared about getting rich? The merchant class of people in Chinese culture are the most ridiculed and loathed, that gestures to a sense of immorality and ruthlessness on their part - the modern equivalent would be landlords, and seeing as how in almost every major Chinese city there is a property bubble, I would think the issue is hardly over.

- Why is retiring a failure? Here again comparative literature perspectives is useful. Retiring is a theme with long tradition in Chinese literature. Different from the West, but why a failure?

They fail, and that is the lesson of the book, 碧血剑 would be a good example - the hero ultimately realizes his country is destroyed, and goes into exile - exile is the ending for almost all his major books, and it is almost always self-imposed. The heroes almost always fail at the end of the book, except in reaching maturity - his books are set in episodes of crisis in Chinese history, and the heroes go on the Good Chinese guys side, and retire when the Good Chinese Guys lose - Mongols, Manchus, Jurchens, even Western people in some cases - the whole idea of the genre of Wuxia fiction is about the Chinese paranoia with the Western enemy - the big white guy who comes to fight the kung fu master in all the movies - big white imperialism coming to destroy merry old China, or what they've disillusioned themselves is Merry old China anyway.

- And we were comparing Jin Yong with Red Chamber. This point hardly makes Jin Yong worse.

To compare them, I think Cao is better at painting the more nuanced concept of traditional Chinese culture - he is far more ironic, and post modern in that youcan look in there, even in the introduction, and find a sort of duality in everything, and a parallelism in everything - for instance, the funeral at the beginning and the funeral at the end, or the contrast between richness and poorness, women and men, there are contradictions which makes it a more rich novel rather than an amateurs work - that's why it's prized, since you can never really hold still with anything there, as it turns and it second guesses itself, and that it lacks an ending.

- Jin Yong novels were all written prior to 1971/72, essentially during the Cultural Revolution in mainland. In his last novel, Lu Ding Ji, "Religious Master Hong" was clearly written as Mao gone mad. He definitely did not support the Communist Government in his writings (if he did, he wouldn't first move to Hong Kong), and as someone who grew up in Hong Kong, you would know that nothing in Hong Kong could have become popular before around 1980s if you were explicitly Communist. Period.

Ok, lets discuss here the serialized editions - lets just say for arguments sake that he is best known not for the serial, but for the reprint in second edition.

Now, to take the first half - his career parallels Mao's Red China essentially. They share the same view. In terms of outward politics, according to a paper I read on the subject, Ming Pao refused to align itself with any viewpoint until really the cultural revolution, where they of course opted against Mao.

Now, to the next point, what is the China lost, and what does it mean to write in exile? Well, the first point, as an exiled author, he is overwhelmed with nostalgia, that is a given. Secondly, as someone living under British Hong Kong, I would argue he essentializes himself as Chinese, and tries to stamp a notion of universal Chinese identity - his forward to his last novel that he penned later about Wei xiaobao would agree with this. But who is he writing for? Well, namely Chinese people, and by extension, Chinese people in exile (be they in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Canada, or Wherever). Seeing himself in exile, he glorifies a Chinese past created out of nostalgia and identity crisis, as well as a slight rejection of modernization (as you insist, comparison, I would bring Soseki's Kokoro into this).

As to your last point about supporting, he remained neutral until the outbreak of the cultural revolution, and even then reported obliquely, besides which, he controlled a nice chunk of the news.

- Many Hong Kong people didn't like what he did during the handover, (I am not one of those). His "sell-out" (if you call it that) and his novels were clearly done in two different periods.

True, but he rewrote them for a mass audience (China). Now we must talk about the second edition - the rewrite, the reconfiguration - he was not silent for the years afterward, there is even a third edition, he changed the novels as clearly to support the regime change - he could get his stuff in, so he polished it, and increased details, like adding a Brunei Chinese exile's return to war torn China at the beginning of 碧血剑. Or by making characters more nuanced and less cut and dry.

- As said before, he wrote before Deng's time. And he was against Mao for sure. He did support Deng's China. Your statement is just hard to support timing-wise; unless you consider Deng's policies the same as Mao's policy - if you hold this view, please elaborate.

No, I think the opposite, I think Deng's views are the same as the views held by such rulers as H. H. Kung, and quite close to those of Chang Kai-shek, or even holding closely with the Manchu court. He basically supported pure capitalism, but with a slow transition, and intense nepotism and corruption. He basically embodied all that Mao warned the party against before calling on the cultural revolution, and ironically, after the revolution failed, that's what happened.

- He wrote from late 1950's to early 1970's - given those time of de-colonialization, for someone who can transcend nationalistic sense by 1971/72 was really not something to be ashamed of. And in your view, a Chinese writer could not be great if his writings affirm how good Chinese culture is?

It is obsessed with it - it is obsessed with leaving historical details out, like how can a woman kick when her feet would have been bound, or how would someone like that have learned to read - these details are called history, a nuanced view would have made the fiction a lot more tolerable. And he never transcended nationalism, he very much encouraged it - he was the King nationalist of new China, meaning, you may be the few % of the population who isn't Han, but you are still within our borders which means you can grow crops for us. The same Han China that is engaged in cultural wars within its own borders but reaffirms them as part of the tradition, after all, Jin Yong's novels reaffirm them, and so does our history (a vague occupation only in name of most of Xinjiang during the Tang dynasty, and then a further vague annexation during the Qing, for instance) or a religious tradition sort of linked to Tibet, or a Buddhist tradition that kind of mirrors the tradition of Dali (who are part of China in most of his novels and he considers Chinese), or a culture that historically loved to absorb by genetics or the sword, causing things like the old enemy Jurchens, or the old enemy Mongols, or the old enemy Liao to not really be conflicting with his Nationalist agenda.


- In comparison with Red Chamber, you feel Red Chamber does not think Chinese culture is good in some sense?

I think Red Chamber is not a novel about China, but a novel about a household and an idea - nationalist ideas hide behind Chinese novels in the 20th century, but at that point I see nothing distinguishing it as "Chinese." As such, it has a cultural criticism, but it has no discussion really of nation, since nation is not a concept local to the time it was written (the concept really gets its shape after the first opium war, but solidifies with Han Chauvinism during the Boxer rebellion).

- I have issues with propaganda Chinese text books, but I grew up in Hong Kong when British was in control. It was hard not to make the conclusion that some European (governments) have been bad guys. China's first defeat vs. Western powers, First Opium War. British had issues selling Opium in China. Were British themselves using Opium at that point? Why would it be an issue if a country decides to control how much Opium comes into its borders? Of course the British couldn't do it alone. But my guess (I am no expert of Qing history) is that the Qing government did not "knight" those merchants, as the British probably did to their own folks who helped in the Opium War.

In essence, the Chinese government set 4 merchants as a council to deal with foreigners, holding a monopoly. Likewise, they cheated, and opium increased in demand. Europeans were at that period mostly eating opium rather than smoking it, but yes there was a domestic market. It's just the Chinese could not get enough of it, and became addicted - I would like to think that the emperor would have had to go through withdrawal if not for the English keeping him in good supply. The Chinese themselves were producing opium locally during that time period, but they couldn't grow enough to support themselves. As for not letting things in, well, they shut themselves off from the world, and the rest of the world said no - as far as history goes, China had ego problems and shut themselves off, so the rest of the world barged in half invited - there were enough people buying the opium, we all know - the market wanted their drugs, it wasn't that they just wanted to sell them - you try putting 30% of the male population of a country through withdrawal.

As for the war itself, the cost was something I believe like 500pounds of silver as a tribute to England for the first one, in compensation for the drugs dumped into the ocean in protest. Nothing much for China to handle. What really off set the population was the local markets undergoing trouble because of a failed feudalism, and, the local bourgeois looking for foreign ideas. England was as much welcomed as anything, but the Qing court could not adapt to a modern world, likewise, the rich folks in China would not let their populations adapt, and the squeeze on money tightened, leading to almost a necessity for immigration, be it legitimate or slavery. The Americans may have Shanghaied people to work on their railroad, but back home they would most likely have starved to death. The traditional feudalism long stopped being supportable, throw in a lack of mechanical advancement and you have a Malthusian situation.

As for the presence of the West, well it is exaggerated on all things but the opium. They were barely there, and had rather minimal influence - what hit China were plagues of rebellion and overpopulation, and they spiraled and their court kept playing polo and claiming to be the Sons of Heaven and the best place on the planet while their upper class kept on cutting from the lower class - I've been to 刘文彩‘s house, I've seen it. Likewise, the Empress Cixi, whose clothing took over a year to stitch, was said to never have worn the same thing twice - there was decadence, and extravagance, and serfdom, not unlike today.

- How did China "enslave" local population? That seems to be a Communist propaganda.

Not really, just read something like Mao Dun's Ziye, for instance. It's like this, there is not enough farm land, the taxes on farms are too high, and people are not really able to do anything but borrow - eventually, their standard of living deteriorates, meanwhile they get no advances. It's an economic diagram - there was clearly a peasant class, which exists today. The population is still more or less enslaved, only now it's harder to enforce (a Hukou is pretty much a ticket of serfdom, especially with the farms now pretty much unowned by the ones who make it). Even wage labour took forever to develop properly.
- On the polygamy point, there are many responses already.


- Jin Yong was well-liked because most people actually didn't agree with the level of over-criticism Chinese culture starting in the May Fourth movement that extended through Cultural Revolution. Jin Yong didn't side with the overly critical side of the intellectual current is hardly a valid criticism.

Didn't agree, no they had a relapse, why give up? Why would a richer class ever give up their right? They didn't exactly have it bad in Hong Kong did they, especially when the mainland free'd up. The May Fourth movement is strange in that it failed completely - it was important, but in the end, there has been a huge reversal. As for not agreeing, he basically tried to take 阿Q and make a new one, his Wei Xiaobao, the cute, overly loyal, overly clever hero of his last novel - he tried to answer to Lu Xun. He wrestled with it clearly, since he was so freaking nostalgic, and patriotic, and heaven forbid this guy criticize. There is no nuance either, no irony, he wrote fiction as if it were written 200 years ago - no irony or metafictional level. It takes itself real seriously.

- You yourself mentioned in one prior post that just because US has feminist and racial past to deal with does not mean that every other cultures in the world need to confront the same issues of the same force to be considered "good".

True, but lets be honest, you saw what happened in 1989 when the tanks rolled in, the whole world did. China has forgotten it, since the benevolent ruler could never harm its population, and everything is equitable, but 16 year old kids roll down the window of their Benz and spit on the poor old vendors selling potatos for less than a dollar a day.

- Jin Yong wrote wuxia (i.e. imaginary kungfu hero) novels, where men usually were better even female had strong freedom of action and many paths to "the top" so to speak. Why does foot-binding need to come into the picture?

He wrote historical fiction. It's like writing an historical novel set in the Southern US during slavery times no racism, let alone slavery to talk of. IT cheapens the historical narrative, which is particularly dangerous given that the books are written with a semi-intention of inspiring nationalism and reaffirming a rich Chinese culture. You would think pointing out the bad things to get away from (things the May Fourth people were writing about) would be at least part of the agenda, but no, he cheats. We never had a sexist past, we are the most equal people in the world. Nothing happened here in 1989, or better yet, there is no inequality in China - yeah right people.

[JBI]

- Confucius might not be highly "philosophical" in the western sense, but his teachings emphasized how to act and how polical goals should be to make sure the people live (reasonably-)well.
- In what case was Confucius militant?
- Why is someone not "moral" if one supports hereditary rights? And Confucius seems to be keen to get his students educated so that educated folks with the right idea of government would be helping the governing of society. I would say the only thing Confucius was not was "revolutionary" in the military / violent sense.
- Let's look at say Plato or Socrates - elitist? yes; sexist? yes; supports an upper class? yes? Lives in Athens which uses slaves. Clearly not moral in your view.
- They reason you know of Han WuDi as a bad guy, is because Sima Qian, who is a Confucian-scholar, criticized WuDi's policies (not just personally because of the harm he did to Sima Qian himself), which as you say was military, expansionists, and led to economic collapse. Did we find an equivalent critic of say Alexander the "Great"? Did his teacher Aristotle say anything about that?


- Those preaching Confucius might not be nice regimes. But here is the danger of conflating the ideas with the regimes. Just like it should be clear by now that Marx's ideas should be separated from the Soviet regimes.


- So Plato is a nice idea? His idea in the Republic not flawed? What has really been shown to work? Dante? Nietsche?

As a simple answer, I do not see any Plato institutes preaching around the world.

As a longer answer, yes, we know Marx is flawed, as is Confucius, an d as are Plato, Dante, and Nietzche's ideas. The problem is, Confucianism is professed as a state ideology, whereas Plato's works are dialogs. Confucius was a rather interesting philosopher, but his works have historical implications - his disciples made a trade off with Han Wudi, for instance, giving them charge over the country in exchange for giving him feudal control (the story goes they said you can be the medium between the world and heaven, but you need us to help you administer).

As for Confucius being militant, it is his conflicting views with Mozi, who was a pacifist, whereas Confucian thought doesn't rule out military command, nor military expansion as long as you are "holding with the will of heaven".

As for hereditary rights, well, true, so, for instance, if you are a woman your job is to birth men, if you are born in the low caste, you are basically worthless. The only way to become good is through education, well, if you work the field, good luck, your father worked the field, he wasn't educated, well I guess you're out of luck - that's Confucian thought tested.

I didn't say Han Wudi was bad, I was just pointing out his contradiction - he practiced Daoism at home (his mother was overly devout), gave Confucianists state control, and implemented policy and expansion of government (the first Han emperor to do so). His most immediate predecessor would be Qin Shihuang, the great militant - the difference is Han Wudi masks it as a benevolent son of heaven, that's what I am pointing to. How the ideology works as a mask.

I was pointing the parallel between that and the current regime. It is easy for Hu Jintao to call himself a Confucian, a scholar, someone for the harmony of the country, and a great humanist, with all the confucian bull**** to back it up, but in practice what is he doing? I am not trying to criticize the regime, namely point out that these things are not without checks, it's the confucian bull**** that irritates and the fact that there is censorship there and they call themselves harmonious.


My point was a direct attack on the propaganda system, and to talk about China's bull**** facade they sell to the world in the form of Confucian crap. We give excuse because they are not western, but if they want to play in the house, they need to be held to the same accountability. If we can call The Birth of a Nation a racist movie, why can't we call Jin Yong's novels? We talk of Orientalism, well lets talk of Occidentalism. We talk about our colonialism, lets talk of theirs. Nobody should be granted immunity, they already don't take criticism from themselves as it is.

We read colonial fiction, we see racism, well lets read Chinese fiction and see racism, lets read policy, lets read poetry. Lets see sexism there if we can see it in us, lets take the dark out - this is a world canon, world literature held to the same standards - you say Plato is a whack, I agree, but add Confucius there. You say Europeans butchered Africa, well add China to that equation. We talk of riots, of fascism, of propaganda, of all these issues that literature is so much a part of, and culture is so much a part of, well lets apply them to everything.

Jin Yong to me is a jingoist, and a chauvinist. You want to say he is a great author, lets put him through my butchering from a non Chinese viewpoint. What does he say about me?

[lawpark]

As a simple answer, I do not see any Plato institutes preaching around the world.

If I don't spend my whole night responding, I would say - support for professorship in Platonic studies do take up lots of professorships in the West, and there are many courses in Philosophy who took up study of Plato. If Plato is in the canon (which he is), and to count Confucius out because he is not "moral" based on some criteria which also applies to Plato does not help.

[lawpark]

As a longer answer, yes, we know Marx is flawed, as is Confucius, an d as are Plato, Dante, and Nietzche's ideas. The problem is, Confucianism is professed as a state ideology, whereas Plato's works are dialogs. Confucius was a rather interesting philosopher, but his works have historical implications - his disciples made a trade off with Han Wudi, for instance, giving them charge over the country in exchange for giving him feudal control (the story goes they said you can be the medium between the world and heaven, but you need us to help you administer).

As for Confucius being militant, it is his conflicting views with Mozi, who was a pacifist, whereas Confucian thought doesn't rule out military command, nor military expansion as long as you are "holding with the will of heaven".

As for hereditary rights, well, true, so, for instance, if you are a woman your job is to birth men, if you are born in the low caste, you are basically worthless. The only way to become good is through education, well, if you work the field, good luck, your father worked the field, he wasn't educated, well I guess you're out of luck - that's Confucian thought tested.

I didn't say Han Wudi was bad, I was just pointing out his contradiction - he practiced Daoism at home (his mother was overly devout), gave Confucianists state control, and implemented policy and expansion of government (the first Han emperor to do so). His most immediate predecessor would be Qin Shihuang, the great militant - the difference is Han Wudi masks it as a benevolent son of heaven, that's what I am pointing to. How the ideology works as a mask.

I was pointing the parallel between that and the current regime. It is easy for Hu Jintao to call himself a Confucian, a scholar, someone for the harmony of the country, and a great humanist, with all the confucian bull**** to back it up, but in practice what is he doing? I am not trying to criticize the regime, namely point out that these things are not without checks, it's the confucian bull**** that irritates and the fact that there is censorship there and they call themselves harmonious.

- Not against the use of force does not mean being militant. So does anyone in the world now a pacifist like Mozi? On a relative scale, my point is that at least the ideals as written in the classical Chinese texts are list militant / chauvinistic than those in the classical western texts.
- So what does the modern western world do in terms of breaking down hereditary rights? Did they just hand off land and money? No, they try to get their public to be educated. Oh, that was just what Confucius did in a broad way. If your father lives in inner-city slump, your chance to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur? Well, I guess you are out of luck too. The real world has not been just - neither Confucius, Marx, Mao, founding fathers of US, whoever have been able to fix. So what is the point?
- Ideology works as a mask - clearly a great problem. Here I would simply say that it does not just happen to China, or Communism.

[JBI]

If I don't spend my whole night responding, I would say - support for professorship in Platonic studies do take up lots of professorships in the West, and there are many courses in Philosophy who took up study of Plato. If Plato is in the canon (which he is), and to count Confucius out because he is not "moral" based on some criteria which also applies to Plato does not help.

It's not the same as China making institutions called the Confucius institute with clear state sponsorship and control.