A few days before I left China, a friend handed me two books by Eileen Chang, an author who for a long time had been on my list but who I never actually got around to reading. I read one of them, The Rice-Sprout Song, on my flight home from China nearly a month ago, and a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t thought about it at least once. Although it came out in 1955 and there’s no need for yet another review, I had to put down a few thoughts.

The Rice-Sprout Song is set in China’s countryside during the early days of Mao’s tyranny, when “land reform” promised the rural poor great hope that would soon lead to the horrors of collectivization, famine and death on a scale that was until then unimaginable. It’s a desolate book about a terrible subject we all know about but have, in all likelihood, never truly experienced, hunger. Its metaphor for hunger is the watery gruel the poor eat for every meal as they slowly starve.

That this was Chang’s first English novel is extraordinary, it is so perfectly crafted, its characters so real and the language assured and perfect. The book has two heroes, a “model worker” in the village, Gold Root, and his wife Moon Scent. After many pages of bleakness, we detect the first hints of joy in Gold Root’s longing for Moon Scent, who has gone to work in Shanghai as a maid. He misses her so intensely he travels to Shanghai, his first time out of the countryside, to spend a few days with her, a sad event marked by Gold Root’s sense of isolation and awkwardness, his crushing poverty contrasted by “bejeweled ladies going to parties in their shiny silk gowns and high-heeled gold shoes.”

Chang tells how a cadre from the city is sent down to their village to live exactly as the peasants do and learn from them, and soon he, too, is starving. Only he has the resources to go to a nearby town and stuff himself with tea-boiled eggs, as he denies the hunger in his reports. He notes to himself that anyone who suggests there is truth to the whispers that the poor are starving will immediately be labeled a nationalist spy and put to death. Gold Root and Moon Scent are both doomed, victims of the insanity that grew out of Mao’s policies. Gold Root is outraged that officials deny that the peasants are starving to death. He will soon pay for his insistence on speaking the truth, dragging Moon Scent down with him.

The oddest character in the book is the village’s leading official, Comrade Wong, a jovial, likable man. Chang devotes many pages to humanizing him, telling how he met his beloved wife and how she left him, describing his loneliness and his knowledge that he will never rise from being a low-level functionary. We think Wong is a good man – and he probably is. But when the day comes that he meets with the starving peasants and tells them each must donate a pig as a gift to the army and prepare rice dumplings for the soldiers, we hate him with a passion. Gold Root cries out that they are literally starving, they have nothing. Wong beams with a wide smile and insists that surely they can accommodate this modest request for their country’s brave soldiers. It is the high point of the book and it marks Gold Root’s descent from “Model Worker” to an outraged, infuriated rebel clamoring for justice. Of course, he will soon be labeled a reactionary, and will be shot to death in the ensuing violence.

The words of my Chinese teacher in Beijing kept coming back to me as I read this book: her telling me how her family grew up hungry, and how no matter what the Chinese government did today, she and all other Chinese would feel unending gratitude that the days of hunger were over. Nothing matters when you are hungry; only food. Today, the Chinese people are no longer starving, and that shift, from starvation to having enough food on the table, was a seismic one. For anyone seeking to understand how the Chinese people can accept a government that censors, steals, enriches itself from the poverty of its people and thinks nothing of their human rights, I suggest they read this book. It doesn’t touch on any of these topics per se, but it shows you all too vividly what life was like not so long ago (and Chang’s account deals with China prior to the great famine; the horror was only just beginning). And then you look at China today, my teacher’s China. No matter what we think of the government, hundreds of millions who were starving saw their situations turn around. For some 200 million or so, their poverty stayed the same or became even worse, but for the vast majority, it was a new world: they had food. As you read The Rice-Sprout Song, it becomes clearer just why the government today is given so much latitude, whether it was the CCP that put food on the people’s tables or their own hard work once Mao’s insanities were thrown on the rubbish heap where they belonged. When you have gone from generations of hunger to having food, you’ve undergone a sea change, a miracle. There has been no other turnaround like it in the history of civilization. So I understand what my Chinese teacher was telling me, whether I agree or not.

Corrupt officials still terrorize the countryside, and perhaps they always will; the exploitation of the marginalized by the powerful is history’s oldest story. What this book does is make palpable the helplessness of China’s rural poor, placing the reader in their freezing huts as the government’s absurd decrees destroy their lives, chipping away at their dignity, ultimately killing them wholesale. In one of its most heartbreaking scenes, soldiers ransack their homes, stealing the very last bits of food they have hidden away. The peasants’ calamity is complete; they have no recourse, no hope, nothing but their hunger.

I read a number of books of China over the past few weeks and will try to put up some posts, hopefully briefer than this one, with my recommendations. In the meantime, if you’ve never read this book, which Chang wrote in English (another source of amazement), I urge you to get a copy. It can easily be read in a day or two, and it will leave you furious, anguished, dumbstruck and horrified. You’ll hear the voices of its characters in your head for a long time to come, and no matter how well you already understand the famine and Maoism and land reform, you will feel like you are right there, living the insanity. That is not a comfortable feeling, but one that will make your compassion for the Chinese people richer and deeper than ever before.

I got tired of posting stories on whether China would come out of the crisis faster and in relative better shape than America, but the mass media still find it an irresistible topic. I follow a lot of them and they can be summarized as follows:

China’s stimulus package is working better and faster, because its government can force projects to begin and the infrastructure development program was already well underway. China is definitely looking like it’s rebounding, with high confidence and continued spending and growth (in general). There is now no question that we are seeing a new economic order, with China’s influence growing while that of the US declines – but, that does not mean China can replace the US as the world’s superpower. It can’t and it won’t, simple because it is still too poor, has too may problems (environmental, social, economic, labor, population) and, besides, much of the current euphoria is based almost entirely on government largesse. But still, it’s become a G2 kind of world, even if China is lower down the rungs than the US, and the notion that intoxicated so many Americans during the late 1990s of a world led only by the US (who was thinking of China then?) is totally out the window. China may never be a true superpower due to its staggering challenges, but its influence and its greatness (no, not moral greatness, but its ability to move markets, attract financing and shape global policies) are undeniable.

And now, you don’t need to read any more articles on China and the US and the global economic crisis again, because they are all basically a rehash of the above, some more gloomy, some more buoyant, but all just about the same. It was this brand-new article in Time that caused me to realize just how similar and predictable all of these articles are, no matter which side they take. Here’s a taste:

China faces enormous challenges — a massive shift of population from rural areas to cities, cleaning up decades of environmental degradation, continuing to provide the increase in prosperity that has underpinned political stability. Given their scale, it should surprise nobody that it is still most concerned with saving itself economically — not anyone else. Beijing is most unnerved by the prospect of labor unrest of the sort that resulted in the death on July 24 of a steel-company executive in northeast China at the hands of a mob.

But the resilience of the Chinese economy is no mirage. If Beijing can come through the global crisis without an economic meltdown of its own, its leaders’ reputation and confidence will be boosted. An economic model that survives the worst downturn since the Great Depression will have undeniable appeal in the developing world, at a time when the Washington Consensus is thoroughly shot. Beijing, before the crisis, was already rising, its global reach and influence expanding. As the rest of the world falters, that is truer than ever. China is not yet the leader of the global economy. But it’s getting there.

And there it is. China’s not there yet, may never be No. 1, getting there, shaking the world, progress can’t be denied but neither can impossible challenges, world falters while China rises, not sure it can be maintained, so many people to feed, lots of hope and construction, can’t save the world but can’t be discounted as major player, economic miracle, lots of disturbing unrest, social fissures, Party’s engineers know what they’re doing, US has better fundamentals but.. quack quack quack. It’s actually a good article, but I kept thinking, with literally every paragraph, haven’t I seen this all before?

Strangest thing. I noticed that although I am back in the land of the free, my Mac will not allow me to go to any blogspot or wordpress sites. It also won’t let me get to the NY Times. It automatically changes the url from nytimes.com to global.nytimes.com, and then it says it can’t find the server. China Digital Times opens just fine. This only happens on Safari. It’s okay using Firefox. How is that possible?

Interesting viewpoint on why certain sites that ordinarily would be left alone are now being added to the censor’s list. If the blogger’s hypothesis is true, this site may be permanently blocked in China no matter what I do. Sigh.

The following is a guest post from my friend Bill Stimson.

“The Good News From Iran Today”
by William R. Stimson

It has happened now in Iran like it did in Myanmar a short while back.
Common people, secular and religious, cried out with one voice
against injustice only to have their rulers bludgeon them back into
silence. Today on the internet we hear not a whisper from Iran, save
official lies.

But we know what is happening. It was told long ago by the great
Persian-language poet – Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī – known and loved
everywhere today simply as Rumi. A country’s worse enemy, Rumi hints
in his poetry, lies not outside its own borders but hides within them
in the form of a disregard for what is most sacred and holy – love,
truth, and justice – and a cynical and crafty deployment of so-called
religious law, mere rules of convention, to advance oneself, one’s
kin, and one’s power-base, regardless of how much damage, or loss of
life, this may inflict on others.

This is exactly what we’re seeing today in Iran and the poet Rumi, who
speaks out from the deep root of that country’s religious tradition,
has something instructive to say on this account. He tells us
that those who have grabbed power for themselves by enforcing ways of
behaving and speaking are of one sort and those who are lovers of
truth and who burn with a desire for justice and fairness are of
another sort entirely. The wrong way that the people on the streets
may talk or act is better than a hundred right ways of their corrupt
rulers. Those we have seen beaten into submission may not obey the
code of doctrine their rulers are trying to impose. But they burn in
their hearts with a more sacred truth.

The worst position, according to Rumi, is for a country to have an
enemy that it cannot see and does not know. It is better for the
nation to have a thousand known enemies than to have one which it does
not know is there. The good news from Iran today is that the Iranian
people know the enemy is there and they see now exactly who it is. The
whole world knows it too, and sees it also.

It’s only a matter of time before the fake structure crumbles.

* * *

The following is a contributed post by my friend from Taiwan Bill Stimson.

“Today We Are All Proud Iranians”

by William R. Stimson

Day by day here in Taiwan I’ve been closely following the internet
images of ordinary people crowding the streets of Iran because they
touch my heart and make me know that in these days, around the world,
we’re all Iranian. In Taiwan, China, America – in all countries
everywhere – each and every one of us is having our deepest and truest
nature shown us by these grandmothers, daughters, and sons who are out
silently and peacefully walking the streets of Iran today to protest a
betrayal that is so much bigger than just a stolen election – and
exists in so many places besides Iran.

Their brave action functions as a reminder that in our own countries
we too are united in ways we don’t know but need to honor if democracy
is to work. We exist not as separate voters with different agendas –
but in reality are so much more. At root, we care about more than
just what we can get for ourselves. We have the capability and the
need to live and connect with one another in a freedom that can tap
our entire genius as a people, develop our deepest resource, and
enable it to shine out through our every small action in ways that
benefit the whole. The smallest of us are big in this way; though it
may only be at rare moments in history, and only in some locations,
that this bigness rises to the surface to make itself visible. Today,
thanks to the internet, all of us far and wide can benefit from one of
these miracle moments that reveal us to be one body, wholly
intelligent, unconquerable and free. Our real strength has nothing to
do with what separates us one from another; but comes from what unites
us. It isn’t revealed by what we can get, but by what we can give.

Those who have given their lives in Iran these last days remind us of
this. And, in doing so, they and the tens or hundreds of thousands
out walking the streets there today have done something equally
important for all of us all over the world. They have put their
country, religion, and culture back on the map in all our hearts and
made them stand tall and proud among all the great countries,
religions, and cultures — second to none.

I have to say, at this moment my loathing of the CCP is approaching 2003 levels. Between the block of my site and the ongoing weakness of the Chinese Internet, which I expect to go on through October, from home it takes a full five to ten minutes for me to get onto my site using a proxy. Then ever 20 minutes or so, the proxy insists on directing my browser to its advertisers’ links, each one taking another eternity to load. It just took me about an hour to put up the last post, more than 20 minutes of which were spent waiting and then dealing with the proxy.

In his superb interview with NPR’s Fresh Air a few months ago, Atlantic columnist James Fallows said the firewall worked by grinding people down, wearing them out so that eventually they say to hell with it and go to some other site, one that isn’t blocked. He was so spot on. For the past two weeks I’ve only made occasional spot visits to the site, not wanting to go through all the aggravation. (And for some reason this is true mainly in regard my home connection; at work and at coffee shops with wifi it has been slow but nothing like the way it is at home.)

My heart really goes out to all the bloggers on the left sidebar like Mark in China, Inside Out China, China Beat and all other blogspot sites. Nothing is as irritating as wanting to communicate with the people you know and not being allowed to do so. The fact that there’s no ostensible reason, that the decision to block seems totally random and irrational – well, that’s just salt rubbed into the wounds. Meanwhile, site traffic is down 50 percent from two weeks ago and I feel like throwing in the towel.

That said, I won’t throw in the towel. My plan is to keep posting until the TAM posts drift onto the next page. Then, if the ban continues I have plans in place to move to a new server. If after that they continue to block the site, we’ll know this is somebody’s decision and not just some mindless computer-generated censorship. I try to be fair about censorship here; the truth is, most Chinese are delighted to see all the options the Internet brings them after so many years of isolation and insulation. They see the glass as more than half full. But when it’s you who are being censored, it’s hard to feel objective about the censorship. Whether the Chinese people like it or not, it’s still an insidious form of mind control, and a symbol of the party’s deeply embedded sense of inferiority and helplessness.

Let’s see how long it lasts. I remember all the jubilation over the past five years whenever the government unblocked Blogspot and later youtube, and each time it turned out they were playing cat and mouse. I’m still not sure about Flickr; I can’t get on it right now but some friends say it’s loading, albeit very, very slowly. Blogspot still seems down as well. Just another nuisance designed to wear people down, something the party is good at.

Update: Wow, Bing.com is unblocked again, too. Somebody’s feeling mighty generous today.

About to visit the square as I did yesterday. Talk about anything that has to do with incidents that have occurred on past June Fourths, or anything else. And it’s hot here in Beijing today. A good day to wear white. Not to change the world, but just to show we think it’s better to remember than forget.

[Moving this up to the top of the page.]

Update: Just received this photo a friend took at the remembrance vigil in Hong Kong and had to share. People do care and do remember. They can’t wipe out everyone’s memory by pointing to the economy

Please go read this post that a commenter here just wrote on his own blog. Absolutely devastating. Then read some of his other posts about 6/4 and the day after. He’s been commenting here for a long time; very, very moving.

On another note, I just saw the NYT article about Tiananmen Square with a somewhat sensationalist headline and the tone annoyed me, as “swarmed” implies motion, activity – and there was none. It was just another nice day at the Square, except there were zillions of undercover police and everywhere. Obviously if you tried to bring in a big video camera they’d stop you, but they weren’t checking passports or bothering anybody that I could tell (nor have I heard of any reports of harassment). It confirmed what we already new: this day would pass like any other.

A better eyewitness account of a visit to the Square today can be found here. We were both there at the same time this morning and we agreed, the scene was remarkably harmonious.