After freshening up at the hotel for a bit, it was only 3:00 PM, so we decided to get a bit of sightseeing in. The major thing that Nanjing is know for outside China is the Rape of Nanking as termed in American history textbooks, now seemingly recognized properly at the Nanjing Massacre.
To this effect, we went to the appropriate memorial, named the Memorial for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression (侵華日軍南京大屠殺遇難同胞紀念館/侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆) after eating at a western restaurant. The food was quite good, there was just too much of it, so we ended up overeating.
The whole memorial was quite somber, as it was designed. The memorial was designed on a black and charcoal gray template, with the death toll on a cross made purposefully dirty juxtaposed with walls across a gray-pebble courtyard (evocative of Zen gardens) from the museum.
One point popped into the back of my head. It probably would have just gone away if my friend didn’t say anything about it. This memorial wasn’t built over any sort of ruins. The museum had fake ruins adorning the materials about the conflict and in no way was this site more historical than the rest of Nanjing.
This friend happened to have seen some of the major holocaust sites in Germany. She said that the Nanjing Massacre Memorial lacked the same authentic feel that Dauchau concentration camp did. I could see her point, but being that most of the museums that I’ve been to in the United States have been built on nothing more than their foundations of concrete and steel, this fact didn’t irk me.
The museum was more informative than anything else. Everything stated was presented as fact, and though the words “Japanese Invaders” were used more than once (or twice), artifacts from the conflict seemed to be displayed in a very impartial manner (though at the same time it was quite clear what country you were in).
It made me realize how much about Asia, and for that matter the world outside Anglophone North America and Europe I don’t know. I construe it as a simple statement on our Eurocentric public educations. I remember that in sophomore year of high school, the state set up a curriculum based on “World History,” but with our class being European History Advanced Placement, we were going to wait until after the AP test in May to cover the rest of the world. Thought it seemed to be a daunting task, covering the rest of the world in less than a month, we failed to accomplish anything at all. Instead, we watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail as well as Forrest Gump.
I do understand that in comparison with the eleven million people (six million Jews) that the Nazis killed, a simple 300,000 doesn’t seem like much by the Imperialist Japanese. The fact of the matter is though that 300,000 people make up still 300,000 lives, each one precious in its own regard.
To make matters special, whereas Germany likes to distance itself from its Nazi past, it is highly questionable whether Japan cares to do the same. Maybe 300,000 is a high estimate; “impartial” observers estimate 260,000; but Japanese historians head down to 100,000. I suppose the number isn’t important, but some Japanese officials say that all the deaths were military-related and that no war crimes occurred (being that you aren’t to target civilians nor attack when civilians are known to be present). Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi decided to go pay respect to the Japanese memorial honoring their fallen soldiers in the conflict.
The fact of the matter was that Japan was clearly the one that violated the well-established international law principle of territorial sovereignty, and in doing so continued to murder innocent civilians. I don’t hold anything against the Japan of today, because what’s past is the history. And though you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, I well understand many Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiment.
I suppose in some ways I’m a product of the whole conflict. Had Japan as well as Germany not started their courses in history in World War II, I, James Philip Jee, as I know myself would not be here today. People like to take guesses at my families’ histories. In Guilin, one American tourist decided to guess without solicitation that I have relatives who moved to the United States to build the railroads. Almost everybody assumes that having parents that are Chinese (meaning ethnicity) means that you can speak Chinese. To them it makes so much sense when I say that my mother’s from Hong Kong yet so much humor when I say my father’s from Detroit.
Because my parents didn’t meet in China, I don’t say my family’s from China, though I am proud of my Chinese heritage. In fact, my father’s never been outside of North America, so to say so would be an inaccuracy. If the conflict never started, would my mother’s parents have moved from Hangzhou? Would I have a much different set of relatives? Would I even exist? Could I be an only child?
Though my circumstances are rooted in a history so ugly, I guess I can say that thanks to my parents I have reestablished my roots in a way that they never would have predicted. In a way, I like to think that no one predicted it would come out this way.
I understand that I am one privileged individual. While I wouldn’t call myself filthy rich, I understand my circumstances well as being well, and it bothers me to see wastefulness in life and in spending.
So there is a reason I went to visit Nanjing, and it’s fitting in a way that it happened to be my last trip out of Hong Kong before my time here. Never should I forget where my past lives have been lived out, never should any one forget the horrors that we people have placed each other under.
I’ve come to appreciate my roots for my culture and my heritage for my traditions. I’ve come to respect my nation as something to subscribe to and my state as something to rely on, and though immigration regulations places restrictions where people are allowed to reside and work (which most notably means that certain places are more prosperous than others), we are all ultimately people, and the future of who we are and where we are lies nowhere else than with us.
Showing posts with label nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nationalism. Show all posts
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Beijing: Culture in a Land without Speech
I’d like to start by saying that I love Hong Kong. It’s become something of a home to me though I’ve only been here for a few months, and as I’ve explained, as much as I’d like to extend into to next semester, I just can’t. Yes, I’ve said my fair share of bad things about Hong Kong, but in my defense, I feel I’ve said some good things as well, and I voiced my criticisms in a respective way with reasons stated. So as a basis for comments voiced thus far on a particular blog post, I still have no regrets in coming to Hong Kong over many other choices of places to study.
In less crude terms, I’ve described many aspects of Hong Kong to be quite hollow. Hong Kong’s culture seems to be the lack of, and in a sense, the business and international finance aspect of Hong Kong is really the culture in and of itself. In many ways I’ve seen an identity problem here, as people acknowledge their British past before claiming to be part of the People’s Republic of China, even in the purely state sense.
So over reading week, I traveled to a city that seems more than proud to call itself Chinese. I’d been there before two years ago, but now, I got to see the nation’s capital in a new light, from a new perspective, having studying in Hong Kong for a while now, seeing how the locals view China and how they view their position in the world.
Probably a month ago now, we had Margaret Ng, a politician, as a guest speaker in my Hong Kong and the World class. At one point, she broke out to explicitly address the local students. “You are not any more special than Mainland Chinese students. Nothing about you having grown up here in Hong Kong makes you superior to students coming out of China.” She went on to say that they were smart and skilled, hinting at their English skills even being better than Hong Kong students. (No surprise there.)
On another note, in California (and probably in the United States), we value highly well roundedness in studies and a balance in life between work and fun. Likewise, majoring in music causes no overt criticism in saying that a major in neuroscience is just better. In the States, it’s about money, but it’s also about interest for most. “Do what you love,” everyone likes to say.
Do I think most Hong Kong students love business and finance? No. Could I be wrong, not likely, but at the same time very much so. Students here seem to lack interest in the arts or life as an academic and it seems like the few that don’t lack find better more conducive environments to their interests outside of Hong Kong.
In my Hong Kong and the World class again, they mention that businesses seeking to enter Asia, and especially China, go through Hong Kong because of the rule of law and free flow of information (which we would call freedom of speech back home). It seems though that for a people that have free speech, they don’t use it. In no way does that mean it should be taken away, but the fact that there is little visible political activism here (I’ve personally only heard whispers), while possibly a cultural thing, means that people here take a lot for granted and expect their business environment to stay open without much maintenance in that arena.
And I find myself more often an observer than an activist, but I think this lack of well-rounded interest, should it not change, may lead to the fall of Hong Kong. And of course it may not, and if I’m wrong, the more power to them. But thinking about their freedom of speech makes you think about places that don’t have it to the full extent that we do in the United States or in Hong Kong.
Take China, where I went to, where the Internet is censored and Tiananmen Square is supposedly monitored for unrest by PLA soldiers dressed as civilians. My friend, in searching for a particular bar in the hotel room, was blocked by the government and he lost Internet privileges to access Google for at least fifteen minutes as punishment.
Beijing just clicked as a city that’s on the right track to something. Yeah, the people spit (indoors too, sometimes) and horns honk as traffic breaks ranks, but the thing is that there’s more to Beijing than just business, or anything else for that manner. I’ve always heard that Beijing is China’s political center and Shanghai its economic, but the thing is that there’s so much more going on that just politics in Beijing.
There are sports and arts highly expressed around the city. Music blasts out of some shops, and Mandarin-language music in much higher quantity than just American music. In Hong Kong, the only places with music open at night and serve mostly tourists and expats looking for a good time. Street food so prominent around Beijing (though ultimately a way to make money) serves to ground the city and give it character, whereas in Hong Kong, non-locals struggle to find good street food, which is noticeably less common here than elsewhere as many people have moved onto restaurants and such.
It seems that to me, as well as my friends, all the little things that made the place more human and less business affected the environment. Beijing just turned into something that I wanted to keep exploring and keep experiencing.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
In less crude terms, I’ve described many aspects of Hong Kong to be quite hollow. Hong Kong’s culture seems to be the lack of, and in a sense, the business and international finance aspect of Hong Kong is really the culture in and of itself. In many ways I’ve seen an identity problem here, as people acknowledge their British past before claiming to be part of the People’s Republic of China, even in the purely state sense.
So over reading week, I traveled to a city that seems more than proud to call itself Chinese. I’d been there before two years ago, but now, I got to see the nation’s capital in a new light, from a new perspective, having studying in Hong Kong for a while now, seeing how the locals view China and how they view their position in the world.
Probably a month ago now, we had Margaret Ng, a politician, as a guest speaker in my Hong Kong and the World class. At one point, she broke out to explicitly address the local students. “You are not any more special than Mainland Chinese students. Nothing about you having grown up here in Hong Kong makes you superior to students coming out of China.” She went on to say that they were smart and skilled, hinting at their English skills even being better than Hong Kong students. (No surprise there.)
On another note, in California (and probably in the United States), we value highly well roundedness in studies and a balance in life between work and fun. Likewise, majoring in music causes no overt criticism in saying that a major in neuroscience is just better. In the States, it’s about money, but it’s also about interest for most. “Do what you love,” everyone likes to say.
Do I think most Hong Kong students love business and finance? No. Could I be wrong, not likely, but at the same time very much so. Students here seem to lack interest in the arts or life as an academic and it seems like the few that don’t lack find better more conducive environments to their interests outside of Hong Kong.
In my Hong Kong and the World class again, they mention that businesses seeking to enter Asia, and especially China, go through Hong Kong because of the rule of law and free flow of information (which we would call freedom of speech back home). It seems though that for a people that have free speech, they don’t use it. In no way does that mean it should be taken away, but the fact that there is little visible political activism here (I’ve personally only heard whispers), while possibly a cultural thing, means that people here take a lot for granted and expect their business environment to stay open without much maintenance in that arena.
And I find myself more often an observer than an activist, but I think this lack of well-rounded interest, should it not change, may lead to the fall of Hong Kong. And of course it may not, and if I’m wrong, the more power to them. But thinking about their freedom of speech makes you think about places that don’t have it to the full extent that we do in the United States or in Hong Kong.
Take China, where I went to, where the Internet is censored and Tiananmen Square is supposedly monitored for unrest by PLA soldiers dressed as civilians. My friend, in searching for a particular bar in the hotel room, was blocked by the government and he lost Internet privileges to access Google for at least fifteen minutes as punishment.
Beijing just clicked as a city that’s on the right track to something. Yeah, the people spit (indoors too, sometimes) and horns honk as traffic breaks ranks, but the thing is that there’s more to Beijing than just business, or anything else for that manner. I’ve always heard that Beijing is China’s political center and Shanghai its economic, but the thing is that there’s so much more going on that just politics in Beijing.
There are sports and arts highly expressed around the city. Music blasts out of some shops, and Mandarin-language music in much higher quantity than just American music. In Hong Kong, the only places with music open at night and serve mostly tourists and expats looking for a good time. Street food so prominent around Beijing (though ultimately a way to make money) serves to ground the city and give it character, whereas in Hong Kong, non-locals struggle to find good street food, which is noticeably less common here than elsewhere as many people have moved onto restaurants and such.
It seems that to me, as well as my friends, all the little things that made the place more human and less business affected the environment. Beijing just turned into something that I wanted to keep exploring and keep experiencing.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Monday, October 26, 2009
You Guys
Last week in my Hong Kong and the World class, we had James Thompson, CEO and founder of Crown Holdings International, as a guest speaker to talk to the class about United States-Hong Kong relations.
As an American businessman living in Hong Kong, he had some good things to say about the place, perhaps too many good things. And before I start getting called a pessimist or what have you, he knew a lot about business—and that was about it. And business is good right now. It’s easy to set up shop with little bureaucracy and maintain profitability with low taxes.
Admittedly, he probably knows more about Hong Kong than I do, but after 15 years of living here, it was pretty clear that he lived in foreigner’s Hong Kong. He seemed to be speaking from the heart, but then again he was a high-profile businessman. The content of what he said suggested that though he spoke with decorum, business and Hong Kong for foreigners was all he knew.
And I could very well be wrong, but out of how he phrased one particular statement, it seemed to me that business was the primary focus of his living—so much so that cultural insensitivity becomes commonplace.
First off, what do I mean by foreigner’s Hong Kong? Well, I’ll preface this by saying that I am still a foreigner to Hong Kong both culturally and officially. I’d be among the first to admit that I do not understand it any meaningful extent—not yet, maybe not ever. When I first thought of Hong Kong, I envisioned the skyline of Victoria Harbour of the skyscrapers alongside the mountains that everyone’s seen in postcards.
That first night I took the taxi to Sassoon Road from the Airport Express Station, I was a little more than surprised to see the buildings behind the skyline. It’s like I knew they were always there, just never how they looked like.
And that’s how I’d describe foreigner’s Hong Kong in the figurative sense. (as Crown Holdings did set up shop in Sha Tin, which is quite far from Central Hong Kong). From the way he described his daughter’s ability to speak Mandarin, he suggested that he himself lacks a significant grasp of Cantonese or Mandarin.
And this makes sense since it’s quite easy to get around Hong Kong in English. Though most don’t speak proficiently, many service workers know amounts necessitated by their work.
So back to James Thompson’s appearance as a guest speaker for one of my political science classes, he did a good job politically in his speaking, acknowledging the widespread presence of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students in the lecture hall.
And he ended his presence with one comment about Asians—not Hong Kongers or Chinese, but Asians. He recounted the story of his daughter (applying as someone from Hong Kong) to the University of California, Berkeley. Though white with a European surname, she and her application for admission were rejected with the memo that they’d already filled the Asian quota for that year (though affirmative action is now officially banned in public settings in California).
That little anecdote was summed up, addressing the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students as, “Well, you guys are doing something right!” Apparently James Thompson doesn’t get the difference between Asians in California (or seeming anywhere else) and those from East Asia. This was met with approval by laughs from most of the class.
They say that you learn something new every day. That day, I confirmed something the same.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
As an American businessman living in Hong Kong, he had some good things to say about the place, perhaps too many good things. And before I start getting called a pessimist or what have you, he knew a lot about business—and that was about it. And business is good right now. It’s easy to set up shop with little bureaucracy and maintain profitability with low taxes.
Admittedly, he probably knows more about Hong Kong than I do, but after 15 years of living here, it was pretty clear that he lived in foreigner’s Hong Kong. He seemed to be speaking from the heart, but then again he was a high-profile businessman. The content of what he said suggested that though he spoke with decorum, business and Hong Kong for foreigners was all he knew.
And I could very well be wrong, but out of how he phrased one particular statement, it seemed to me that business was the primary focus of his living—so much so that cultural insensitivity becomes commonplace.
First off, what do I mean by foreigner’s Hong Kong? Well, I’ll preface this by saying that I am still a foreigner to Hong Kong both culturally and officially. I’d be among the first to admit that I do not understand it any meaningful extent—not yet, maybe not ever. When I first thought of Hong Kong, I envisioned the skyline of Victoria Harbour of the skyscrapers alongside the mountains that everyone’s seen in postcards.
That first night I took the taxi to Sassoon Road from the Airport Express Station, I was a little more than surprised to see the buildings behind the skyline. It’s like I knew they were always there, just never how they looked like.
And that’s how I’d describe foreigner’s Hong Kong in the figurative sense. (as Crown Holdings did set up shop in Sha Tin, which is quite far from Central Hong Kong). From the way he described his daughter’s ability to speak Mandarin, he suggested that he himself lacks a significant grasp of Cantonese or Mandarin.
And this makes sense since it’s quite easy to get around Hong Kong in English. Though most don’t speak proficiently, many service workers know amounts necessitated by their work.
So back to James Thompson’s appearance as a guest speaker for one of my political science classes, he did a good job politically in his speaking, acknowledging the widespread presence of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students in the lecture hall.
And he ended his presence with one comment about Asians—not Hong Kongers or Chinese, but Asians. He recounted the story of his daughter (applying as someone from Hong Kong) to the University of California, Berkeley. Though white with a European surname, she and her application for admission were rejected with the memo that they’d already filled the Asian quota for that year (though affirmative action is now officially banned in public settings in California).
That little anecdote was summed up, addressing the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students as, “Well, you guys are doing something right!” Apparently James Thompson doesn’t get the difference between Asians in California (or seeming anywhere else) and those from East Asia. This was met with approval by laughs from most of the class.
They say that you learn something new every day. That day, I confirmed something the same.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Beijing: Ten Percent Annually
We ended Tuesday at the Olympic Village. Basically, it was an impressive site for an impressive country. Well, what do I mean by impressive? For one, the Beijing Olympics were massive. With everything involved, including the actual events and the trademark stadium involved, there was also the fact that Beijing’s bid including massively upgrading their mass-transit system and that most of the sports venues had to be built from the ground up.
For those who don’t remember, the games ended up costing somewhere along the lines of $47 billion USD. The opening ceremony alone, directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, cost about $300 million USD. With China’s reemergence onto the world scene, the Olympic Village shows all the money put into it.
For one, the grounds are huge. The commonly-called Bird’s Nest that served as the centerpiece of the Olympics and was used to hold many events. The architecture is astounding and bold, with the seemingly crisscrossed beams making their way over the functional part of the stadium. Much like the Coliseum in Rome, the events held inside were as impressive as the façade on the outside.
Across the massive plaza there sits the Cube, which is groundbreaking in its own right. Serving the aquatic events, the building’s frame is filled in with filled, custom-cut plastic sacs and lit on select nights to a variety of colors, the least of which being blue, of course.
The subway system is now world-class and still growing. All but a few of the sites that my friends and I saw we got there by the subway system. It’s clean and efficient, and the voice speaks English in addition to Mandarin (albeit with the most annoying way of saying the [æ] in “trANsfer”).
The second reason I feel China is one impressive country is the sheer economic growth they’ve been experiencing—and it most definitely shows. Before the economic slump, the nation’s economy was growing at over 10% a year, year after year. Now, it’s probably under 10% but still positive, largely because China’s stimulus package was so effective.
When I visited in 2007, we flew into one of the two old terminals of Beijing Capital Airport. They were dingy and dirty and as soon as we walked outside, the rampant pollution permeated every piece of clothing you were wearing and burned the back wall of your pharynx.
Yeah, Beijing is still polluted, but whatever they’ve been doing, it’s been making the air cleaner. Of course, doing so was one of their promises in their Olympic bid, but for a metropolitan population of twelve million, it’s no easy (or small) task.
Most of the days we were there, the air was remarkably crisp and seemingly clean. At the south side of Tiananmen Square in the morning you could see all the way across to the north side and the entrance to the Forbidden City and Mao Zedong’s portrait. At the Summer Palace, it was easy to see the life of luxury and relaxation that the emperors lived in as the wind brushed against your face and the water splashed against the shoreline.
Just two years ago, the weather at the Summer Palace was horrific. After seeing the water in that lake, we decided never to eat fish from China again. Though still polluted, that water has definitely improved; and looking back and pictures from my last time in Beijing, where there were dead plants there are now thriving lilies.
In the Forbidden City, much of which covered by scaffolding being restored for the Olympics, now shone in the clean air. Once temple once rumored to have good views of the Forbidden City you could now see from the Forbidden City. The funny thing that I noticed though was that not all of the intricate painted surfaces were restored. While some were left put all together, others were restored only on the front—the areas that show up in pictures. Much of the roof undersides were left showing their age.
Going through the Forbidden City though, one had to think that on this massive scale how many people were displaced. Going through the Olympic Village as well, how many hutong were demolished and how many people were displaced?
A hutong (胡同) is a more traditional aspect of Beijing. It’s a neighborhood comprise of interlinked buildings house many families, and as of recent, have been disappearing to skyscrapers and more monumental structures. There was a time in Beijing when there was the palace, which was surrounded by hutong. Now, you have to into backstreets to find them. The ones that aren’t in the alleys have had to find their niche (usually alcohol) in some way.
Two years ago, the hutong that our tour group showed us was interesting to say the least. It was rundown and needed a bit of revitalizing. Coming back two years later (and on accident to this particular area), it’s now the bar district. It all came back to me when we crossed this one small bridge over the main canal. In one fell swoop it all came pouring back in. I have no idea what it was called back then, but it was probably named the same thing as now—Houhai (后海).
Just a few years ago, these storefronts were just storefronts. Now they were relatively well-appointed bars with music blasting out of their seams. I’m not going to assert that the change was bad, but it’ll at least say that it was different.
And back to the Great Wall. I visited it two years ago because that’s just one of the things you have to do in Beijing. Back then it was impressive, though the pollution came all the way out there.
And so it turns out that we went to the same section of the Great Wall that I went to two years ago. Badaling (八达岭) is one of the most popular tourist spots on the Great Wall, and when I went there in 2007, there was a dirt parking lot in front of the wall with vendors nearby. For a price, you could dress up as a Manchurian emperor and pretend to be coming through the gate to Ming China.
Today, the wall itself remains the same. The environment changed. Of course, it’s now fall and the leaves were a different shade. It was windy and the air was crisp and clean rather than hot and humid.
I basically had another Houhai moment. I was standing right in front of the Badaling gate and it all came back again. The unpaved parking lot and ground peddler shops was now an elegantly-tiled, well-arbored plaza with a memorial-style retaining wall commemorating the Great Wall. The retaining wall was covered with a bronze relief of a Ming general in the foreground and a mock outline of the Great Wall in the background. The actual Great Wall had flags on the watchtowers with the character 明, as in Ming dynasty.
This makes me wonder, how does the People’s Republic of China view its past? Most people would agree that the Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of history in many regards. Does the fact that they’ve refurbished the Great Wall to suggest the Ming Dynasty show that they venerate the past, or do they do it just for tourism? I can tell you most of my friends didn’t know what the 明 on the flags meant.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
For those who don’t remember, the games ended up costing somewhere along the lines of $47 billion USD. The opening ceremony alone, directed by the renowned Zhang Yimou, cost about $300 million USD. With China’s reemergence onto the world scene, the Olympic Village shows all the money put into it.
For one, the grounds are huge. The commonly-called Bird’s Nest that served as the centerpiece of the Olympics and was used to hold many events. The architecture is astounding and bold, with the seemingly crisscrossed beams making their way over the functional part of the stadium. Much like the Coliseum in Rome, the events held inside were as impressive as the façade on the outside.
Across the massive plaza there sits the Cube, which is groundbreaking in its own right. Serving the aquatic events, the building’s frame is filled in with filled, custom-cut plastic sacs and lit on select nights to a variety of colors, the least of which being blue, of course.
The subway system is now world-class and still growing. All but a few of the sites that my friends and I saw we got there by the subway system. It’s clean and efficient, and the voice speaks English in addition to Mandarin (albeit with the most annoying way of saying the [æ] in “trANsfer”).
The second reason I feel China is one impressive country is the sheer economic growth they’ve been experiencing—and it most definitely shows. Before the economic slump, the nation’s economy was growing at over 10% a year, year after year. Now, it’s probably under 10% but still positive, largely because China’s stimulus package was so effective.
When I visited in 2007, we flew into one of the two old terminals of Beijing Capital Airport. They were dingy and dirty and as soon as we walked outside, the rampant pollution permeated every piece of clothing you were wearing and burned the back wall of your pharynx.
Yeah, Beijing is still polluted, but whatever they’ve been doing, it’s been making the air cleaner. Of course, doing so was one of their promises in their Olympic bid, but for a metropolitan population of twelve million, it’s no easy (or small) task.
Most of the days we were there, the air was remarkably crisp and seemingly clean. At the south side of Tiananmen Square in the morning you could see all the way across to the north side and the entrance to the Forbidden City and Mao Zedong’s portrait. At the Summer Palace, it was easy to see the life of luxury and relaxation that the emperors lived in as the wind brushed against your face and the water splashed against the shoreline.
Just two years ago, the weather at the Summer Palace was horrific. After seeing the water in that lake, we decided never to eat fish from China again. Though still polluted, that water has definitely improved; and looking back and pictures from my last time in Beijing, where there were dead plants there are now thriving lilies.
In the Forbidden City, much of which covered by scaffolding being restored for the Olympics, now shone in the clean air. Once temple once rumored to have good views of the Forbidden City you could now see from the Forbidden City. The funny thing that I noticed though was that not all of the intricate painted surfaces were restored. While some were left put all together, others were restored only on the front—the areas that show up in pictures. Much of the roof undersides were left showing their age.
Going through the Forbidden City though, one had to think that on this massive scale how many people were displaced. Going through the Olympic Village as well, how many hutong were demolished and how many people were displaced?
A hutong (胡同) is a more traditional aspect of Beijing. It’s a neighborhood comprise of interlinked buildings house many families, and as of recent, have been disappearing to skyscrapers and more monumental structures. There was a time in Beijing when there was the palace, which was surrounded by hutong. Now, you have to into backstreets to find them. The ones that aren’t in the alleys have had to find their niche (usually alcohol) in some way.
Two years ago, the hutong that our tour group showed us was interesting to say the least. It was rundown and needed a bit of revitalizing. Coming back two years later (and on accident to this particular area), it’s now the bar district. It all came back to me when we crossed this one small bridge over the main canal. In one fell swoop it all came pouring back in. I have no idea what it was called back then, but it was probably named the same thing as now—Houhai (后海).
Just a few years ago, these storefronts were just storefronts. Now they were relatively well-appointed bars with music blasting out of their seams. I’m not going to assert that the change was bad, but it’ll at least say that it was different.
And back to the Great Wall. I visited it two years ago because that’s just one of the things you have to do in Beijing. Back then it was impressive, though the pollution came all the way out there.
And so it turns out that we went to the same section of the Great Wall that I went to two years ago. Badaling (八达岭) is one of the most popular tourist spots on the Great Wall, and when I went there in 2007, there was a dirt parking lot in front of the wall with vendors nearby. For a price, you could dress up as a Manchurian emperor and pretend to be coming through the gate to Ming China.
Today, the wall itself remains the same. The environment changed. Of course, it’s now fall and the leaves were a different shade. It was windy and the air was crisp and clean rather than hot and humid.
I basically had another Houhai moment. I was standing right in front of the Badaling gate and it all came back again. The unpaved parking lot and ground peddler shops was now an elegantly-tiled, well-arbored plaza with a memorial-style retaining wall commemorating the Great Wall. The retaining wall was covered with a bronze relief of a Ming general in the foreground and a mock outline of the Great Wall in the background. The actual Great Wall had flags on the watchtowers with the character 明, as in Ming dynasty.
This makes me wonder, how does the People’s Republic of China view its past? Most people would agree that the Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of history in many regards. Does the fact that they’ve refurbished the Great Wall to suggest the Ming Dynasty show that they venerate the past, or do they do it just for tourism? I can tell you most of my friends didn’t know what the 明 on the flags meant.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Shenzhen Shenanigans
The day after Mid-Autumn Festival, we went up to Shenzhen. Admittedly, it was a spur-of-the moment decision, but for $20 HKD to get there, it was worth the daytrip.
Shenzhen is the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, sharing its southern border with Hong Kong’s northern border. From what I can gather, it was set up right around when China began opening up to the world. Back then Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony and these zones were meant to stimulate international trade and investment.
My aunt and uncle, who are familiar with Hong Kong as of recent, told me of Shenzhen’s amazing transition. I couldn’t gather whether they thought it positive or negative, but they talked about gutting the mountains to reclaim the sea, skyscrapers popping up from the small fishing village that it used to be. Today, Shenzhen has an official population larger than Hong Kong SAR (8.6 million over 7 million), with many more unlisted and commuting people contributing to its makeup.
In just one of the many examples of China’s massive and impressive economic growth, Shenzhen has two subway lines crossing each other with about thirty stations total. Before 2011, there will be three times that many stations open on five lines.
Heading from Central District on Hong Kong Island, the journey to the border at Lo Wu took about an hour, transferring lines thrice. Alternatives to Shenzhen (that we did not take) were ferries from Sheung Wan and Central Piers, some of which conveniently go directly to Shenzhen Airport. From Hong Kong Airport, there are ferries direct to Shenzhen Airport as well for transfers free of additional security checkpoints.
At the border, we went through Hong Kong exit immigration (which I now know I can use the “Residents” line at) and Chinese immigration, where the woman thoroughly checked my passport and shifted her eyes between my face on my passport and my face in person.
Through customs, Shenzhen Railway Station is immediately to the left. A shopping mall is to the right. We went into the shopping mall, where they persistently kept trying to sell us fake Rolexes and the like. They went so far as grabbing arms to try to drag you into their shop.
From there, we took a bus to this beach area that a local recommended to us. There was pretty much nothing there but some street shops and a theme park that we could see the other side of without entering. We took the bus back shortly thereafter.
On the bus ride both ways, it was apparent that we were no longer in Hong Kong. The streets were three lanes wide in each direction and ran straight as arrows. Each light post on either side of the road had two Chinese flags all the way down each avenue (possibly because of National Day).
The buses themselves were operated differently. There were no money-collecting machines that I am so used to. The buses cost about ¥6 CNY and instead of paying a machine (or metal box), you paid the ticket collector, who in turn kept an eye on who entered the bus, announcing stops as crowds came and went.
Back to where we started, we took the Shenzhen Metro to a park called Window of the World, which I feel turned out to be kind of a waste of time.
Exiting the subway station, you come out of a glass pyramid (hey, that’s the Louvre!) and proceed towards the entrance. While corny, some would say that’s part of the appeal. Entering the park the first thing you see is the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the curb appeal of the property. After buying tickets, you ascend to the park and enter to the main stage, surrounded by different style columns.
Going around the park, it’s divided into different continents. The biggest section of the park is Europe (big surprise). That’s in the center where the Eiffel Tower stands opposed to the Arc du Triomphe as well as Venice, with St. Mark’s Square and Holland with a bunch of windmills. Elsewhere in the park were sites in Thailand as well as the Taj Mahal and a garden representative of Japan. I posed in front of the Sydney Opera House, flanked by “traditional” Maori dwellings. For America, there was a model of the main sites of Washington, D.C., as well as Niagara Falls incorporated into the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. For Africa there was an elephant and the Pyramids of Giza.
Leaving the park, we crossed the road to a mall in search of food. We found some average food and walked outside and saw the street vendors (who kept having to move their carts to avoid the police). With a friend’s assistance, I learned sort of how to eat sugar cane that cost me just ¥1 CNY.
After that it was back to the border and back to Hong Kong Island.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Shenzhen is the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, sharing its southern border with Hong Kong’s northern border. From what I can gather, it was set up right around when China began opening up to the world. Back then Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony and these zones were meant to stimulate international trade and investment.
My aunt and uncle, who are familiar with Hong Kong as of recent, told me of Shenzhen’s amazing transition. I couldn’t gather whether they thought it positive or negative, but they talked about gutting the mountains to reclaim the sea, skyscrapers popping up from the small fishing village that it used to be. Today, Shenzhen has an official population larger than Hong Kong SAR (8.6 million over 7 million), with many more unlisted and commuting people contributing to its makeup.
In just one of the many examples of China’s massive and impressive economic growth, Shenzhen has two subway lines crossing each other with about thirty stations total. Before 2011, there will be three times that many stations open on five lines.
Heading from Central District on Hong Kong Island, the journey to the border at Lo Wu took about an hour, transferring lines thrice. Alternatives to Shenzhen (that we did not take) were ferries from Sheung Wan and Central Piers, some of which conveniently go directly to Shenzhen Airport. From Hong Kong Airport, there are ferries direct to Shenzhen Airport as well for transfers free of additional security checkpoints.
At the border, we went through Hong Kong exit immigration (which I now know I can use the “Residents” line at) and Chinese immigration, where the woman thoroughly checked my passport and shifted her eyes between my face on my passport and my face in person.
Through customs, Shenzhen Railway Station is immediately to the left. A shopping mall is to the right. We went into the shopping mall, where they persistently kept trying to sell us fake Rolexes and the like. They went so far as grabbing arms to try to drag you into their shop.
From there, we took a bus to this beach area that a local recommended to us. There was pretty much nothing there but some street shops and a theme park that we could see the other side of without entering. We took the bus back shortly thereafter.
On the bus ride both ways, it was apparent that we were no longer in Hong Kong. The streets were three lanes wide in each direction and ran straight as arrows. Each light post on either side of the road had two Chinese flags all the way down each avenue (possibly because of National Day).
The buses themselves were operated differently. There were no money-collecting machines that I am so used to. The buses cost about ¥6 CNY and instead of paying a machine (or metal box), you paid the ticket collector, who in turn kept an eye on who entered the bus, announcing stops as crowds came and went.
Back to where we started, we took the Shenzhen Metro to a park called Window of the World, which I feel turned out to be kind of a waste of time.
Exiting the subway station, you come out of a glass pyramid (hey, that’s the Louvre!) and proceed towards the entrance. While corny, some would say that’s part of the appeal. Entering the park the first thing you see is the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the curb appeal of the property. After buying tickets, you ascend to the park and enter to the main stage, surrounded by different style columns.
Going around the park, it’s divided into different continents. The biggest section of the park is Europe (big surprise). That’s in the center where the Eiffel Tower stands opposed to the Arc du Triomphe as well as Venice, with St. Mark’s Square and Holland with a bunch of windmills. Elsewhere in the park were sites in Thailand as well as the Taj Mahal and a garden representative of Japan. I posed in front of the Sydney Opera House, flanked by “traditional” Maori dwellings. For America, there was a model of the main sites of Washington, D.C., as well as Niagara Falls incorporated into the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. For Africa there was an elephant and the Pyramids of Giza.
Leaving the park, we crossed the road to a mall in search of food. We found some average food and walked outside and saw the street vendors (who kept having to move their carts to avoid the police). With a friend’s assistance, I learned sort of how to eat sugar cane that cost me just ¥1 CNY.
After that it was back to the border and back to Hong Kong Island.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Peux ce que veux
I am one disgusted individual and I know it.
Throughout most of my life I had been an incurable pessimist. I don’t know if I can say that I had that childhood sense of fantasy and imagination that many adults so intensely envy. I can say that as an adult, I’m glad that I didn’t have it, because while I’m willing to pick up the slack, I don’t like creating that slack for everyone else to pick up.
Parents say things that they don’t want their kids to hear and they know it. Fights happen, and while many kids would have ignored what’s happening and go back to their plush toys and action figures, I guess I’ve heard everyone argue, least of whom parents.
And therein lies my origin. I’ve been surrounded by more reasonable-sounding pessimists than logical optimists. And in weighing those two options, I joined the pessimists’ side in an attempt to follow reason.
Despite my pessimism, I’ve always had a positive outlook on my life personally. I grew up in a good neighborhood, always attended good schools (and still do), got to experience my share of extracurricular activities, and was given the opportunity to find my imagined niche.
My parents had always said to learn from their mistakes and learn from them the easy way rather than go and make the same mistakes and learn the hard way. I believed them, though the hard way seems to have a more everlasting impact than the easy way.
I had always been told by friends that moved away with family or for college that the world outside of East Ventura County is a different place. I believed them, and for that I prepared myself for an outside world of despair.
I’ve always complained about my hometown. I found drivers abnoxious and dangerous. People too snobby and pretentious, and kids to drowned in their alternative realities of perpetually green grass that cuts itself for $300 a week. The thing is though that I’ve stopped complaining about my hometown because I’ve begun to realize how trivial that is.
Basically, we’ve got bigger problems on our hands. (Well duh, James, you must be thinking.) The thing is that everyone says that. But who actually does anything?
Certainly but a few in the case of Rwanda. The reason I bring this up, first of all, is that we discussed the Rwandan Genocide in my Humanity in Globalization (political science) class. The second is that this topic serves as a catalyst to bring up this aspect of my personality not yet quite mentioned, and worth mentioning now in case circumstances change.
The title of this post comes from Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general heading the peacekeeping force in Rwanda for the United Nations during this conflict, who ended his letter requesting to use force to prevent major loss of life with “peux ce que veux,” translating idomatically to “when there’s a will, there’s a way.”
This has been something of an upswing to me. Though there were other factors in my upturn from a pessimist to an optimist, namely religion, “peux ce que veux” has become something of a motto for me.
And those of you who know the specifics, this sentence did nothing for Dallaire’s efforts. Up to a million people were killed for immoral reasons and no state saw a reason to intervene because of a lack of state interests.
In short, maybe I’m too idealistic. I understand that I’m still young in my years, but some things I hope don’t change; some things I know won’t change.
I feel that money is only worth as much as the people without it, and to live a life past what could be called comfortable is not a goal for me. To spend money on lavish curtains rather than give to those in need is a simple moral dilemma in my view. I study political science and aspire to be a leading academic someday. I wish to attain a law degree to help advance and guarantee human rights, but where would I start?
Not caring so much about money is a start. With all the garbage that I had been fed by people like Bill O’Reilly, I had to re-evaluate my opinions. Yeah, lower taxes would be nice, but if we get see the social services we get in return (which we often look past) would accepting that some things are better than wealth be all that bad? If all illegal immigrants are trying to do is live and feed their families, would it be so bad to view them as fellow humans than non-Americans and see about helping them out as well?
I am an optimist, but not in the current framework. And within my optimism I remain a pessimist. I feel that in our current state system, with the artificial concept of nationality and citizenship now being so engrained in our lives, we have lost our common humanity. This is not a system that is coming apart any time soon in our realist world created my neoconservatives and the like.
I have made the little efforts that I can right now. Of the 44% Asian American population of UCSD, I do not belong. I always check “Other” or “Decline to State.” I don’t care about race and ethnicity statistics. We’re all human, and until we all thoroughly understand that, we as a people are going head-first into a glass wall comprised of seas, fences, and demilitarized zones.
But hey. Peux ce que veux. Y cuando la gente pueda y quiera hacer lo que nosotros, los serhumanos, tenemos que hacer, quizás la Tierra pueda entrar la nueva época.
你们要不要哏我去?
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Throughout most of my life I had been an incurable pessimist. I don’t know if I can say that I had that childhood sense of fantasy and imagination that many adults so intensely envy. I can say that as an adult, I’m glad that I didn’t have it, because while I’m willing to pick up the slack, I don’t like creating that slack for everyone else to pick up.
Parents say things that they don’t want their kids to hear and they know it. Fights happen, and while many kids would have ignored what’s happening and go back to their plush toys and action figures, I guess I’ve heard everyone argue, least of whom parents.
And therein lies my origin. I’ve been surrounded by more reasonable-sounding pessimists than logical optimists. And in weighing those two options, I joined the pessimists’ side in an attempt to follow reason.
Despite my pessimism, I’ve always had a positive outlook on my life personally. I grew up in a good neighborhood, always attended good schools (and still do), got to experience my share of extracurricular activities, and was given the opportunity to find my imagined niche.
My parents had always said to learn from their mistakes and learn from them the easy way rather than go and make the same mistakes and learn the hard way. I believed them, though the hard way seems to have a more everlasting impact than the easy way.
I had always been told by friends that moved away with family or for college that the world outside of East Ventura County is a different place. I believed them, and for that I prepared myself for an outside world of despair.
I’ve always complained about my hometown. I found drivers abnoxious and dangerous. People too snobby and pretentious, and kids to drowned in their alternative realities of perpetually green grass that cuts itself for $300 a week. The thing is though that I’ve stopped complaining about my hometown because I’ve begun to realize how trivial that is.
Basically, we’ve got bigger problems on our hands. (Well duh, James, you must be thinking.) The thing is that everyone says that. But who actually does anything?
Certainly but a few in the case of Rwanda. The reason I bring this up, first of all, is that we discussed the Rwandan Genocide in my Humanity in Globalization (political science) class. The second is that this topic serves as a catalyst to bring up this aspect of my personality not yet quite mentioned, and worth mentioning now in case circumstances change.
The title of this post comes from Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general heading the peacekeeping force in Rwanda for the United Nations during this conflict, who ended his letter requesting to use force to prevent major loss of life with “peux ce que veux,” translating idomatically to “when there’s a will, there’s a way.”
This has been something of an upswing to me. Though there were other factors in my upturn from a pessimist to an optimist, namely religion, “peux ce que veux” has become something of a motto for me.
And those of you who know the specifics, this sentence did nothing for Dallaire’s efforts. Up to a million people were killed for immoral reasons and no state saw a reason to intervene because of a lack of state interests.
In short, maybe I’m too idealistic. I understand that I’m still young in my years, but some things I hope don’t change; some things I know won’t change.
I feel that money is only worth as much as the people without it, and to live a life past what could be called comfortable is not a goal for me. To spend money on lavish curtains rather than give to those in need is a simple moral dilemma in my view. I study political science and aspire to be a leading academic someday. I wish to attain a law degree to help advance and guarantee human rights, but where would I start?
Not caring so much about money is a start. With all the garbage that I had been fed by people like Bill O’Reilly, I had to re-evaluate my opinions. Yeah, lower taxes would be nice, but if we get see the social services we get in return (which we often look past) would accepting that some things are better than wealth be all that bad? If all illegal immigrants are trying to do is live and feed their families, would it be so bad to view them as fellow humans than non-Americans and see about helping them out as well?
I am an optimist, but not in the current framework. And within my optimism I remain a pessimist. I feel that in our current state system, with the artificial concept of nationality and citizenship now being so engrained in our lives, we have lost our common humanity. This is not a system that is coming apart any time soon in our realist world created my neoconservatives and the like.
I have made the little efforts that I can right now. Of the 44% Asian American population of UCSD, I do not belong. I always check “Other” or “Decline to State.” I don’t care about race and ethnicity statistics. We’re all human, and until we all thoroughly understand that, we as a people are going head-first into a glass wall comprised of seas, fences, and demilitarized zones.
But hey. Peux ce que veux. Y cuando la gente pueda y quiera hacer lo que nosotros, los serhumanos, tenemos que hacer, quizás la Tierra pueda entrar la nueva época.
你们要不要哏我去?
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Nationality and Ethnicity
I should start out with an apology. I’m having trouble keeping on schedule with my posts. This one in particular was supposed to coincide with National Day, celebrated October 1 to commend the founding of the People’s Republic sixty years go.
I guess you could say that my style is not that of impulse blogging. I wouldn’t go so far in the other direction to say that I maul over my posts for days on end, meticulously correcting mistakes, wittily adding in bits of symbolism every which way the reader turns. The way I’ve been working with the task that is this blog is to decide what topics I want to write about and queue them up to be expanded and finally published.
For example, this post has been in planning stages since mid-September. I felt that this timing would be appropriate to elaborate on the ongoing topic here of identity and nationalism.
I started out by saying that I would first identify myself as American before Chinese American and never Chinese except in ethnicity or ancestry. Regarding my trip to Italy, I explored the perceptions of those locals towards nationality and how it relates to ethnicity.
Some background—I would be close to the first to tell you that nationalism is an entirely fictitious concept. Ultimately we are all humans, and scientifically speaking there is more genetic variation within ethnicities than among different ethnicities, hence the terms “ethnicity” and “race” have no scientific basis. Nationalism, a concept that I push as a separate from race and ethnicity, then, would be even more artificial, especially since we are taught in primary school that Americans all have immigrant backgrounds (minus the Native Americans) and come from all walks of life.
I also have to say that I follow nationalism quite a bit. I feel I share a great deal more in common with a fellow American than with, say, a Chinese national. With common upbringing and (most likely) a common mother tongue, there just seems to be more to relate to whether there really is or not.
In the hand of irony though, the first person to question my nationality, requiring me to defend myself, was at the opinion of a guy from Massachusetts. Of note is the fact that I haven’t had to defend myself against my roommate, who, in a fell swoop of fabricated statistics, quasi-neoconservative opinions, and resistance to learning a single word of Cantonese, has found my being in the four percent of Americans in the Asian minority an acceptable thought.
And here I present two events: the first in my Traditional Chinese Society class, and the other with a good friend of mine here.
This little discussion in my sociology tutorial actually took place something like a month ago. Usually, it’s an insignificant occurrence when something like this happens to me because it happens more often than I’d like, but this time it was in an academic environment, involving an offensive on my perception of myself.
In discussing nationality and ethnicity as the topic of the week for that class, the topic over overseas Chinese came up. I made my point that while I have no problem identifying my ethnicity as Chinese, I would always stop short of calling myself Chinese in the general sense and overseas Chinese in that it appears that I have some sort of allegiance to China.
I don’t.
To say that I do would imply that I have Chinese nationality or citizenship, that I have the right to be in China, or that I have parents that do. A typical conversation would go like this:
“Why don’t you call yourself Chinese?”
“Because I’m not from China. I was born, raised, and educated here in California.”
“But your parents are from China.”
“Not really.”
“But your grandparents are from China?”
“And where are your grandparents from?”
The answer to that is rarely the United States.
But in class it was a bit different, it was a local student trying to convince me that I could not be anything but Chinese. This was weird, because all my life I have found that Chinese and Chinese Americans hesitate to call me one of them due to my lack of fluency in any Chinese language, yet prototypically perceived Americans refuse to see me as one of them as I look different from them.
If you couldn’t tell already, I identify more with the prototypically perceived Americans, though I like to believe that everyone who wants to call him- or herself American living in the United States is entitled to do so regardless of (primary) language spoken or customs or practices that happen not to be the societal norm. This guy though was using my appearance to say that I could not be anything other Chinese, which, while it happened a few times back home, was less common than not.
So with a different audience I had to defend myself in a different way. I used Chinese nationality law. Being an American both by birth and by blood, I figure to call myself Chinese in the same way, I would be able to be granted Chinese nationality in some form—but I can’t.
My father’s parents were Chinese nationals, though left when the Nationalists were in power. As a result, it would appear to be virtually impossible to find all the appropriate documents to prove that they had citizenship, then that my father had citizenship because of them. But even if my father were to have citizenship, it would likely not be conferred to me. My thinking is that even in U.S. nationality law, a citizen (natural-born or naturalized) must have lived in the U.S. for a certain period of time before his or her citizenship can be given to his or her children born outside the United States. And my father has never set foot outside of North America, much less lived in China for any period of time.
On the other side, my mother’s birth in Hong Kong to Chinese parents makes her a Chinese national in theory as of 1997, when her British National Overseas status was commuted with the handover. However, she was naturalized as an American long before I was born, and has made no effort (understandably) to claim PRC citizenship. In addition, as she has been naturalized, she may be rendered herself ineligible for PRC citizenship.
So me, being born American by virtue of being born in the United States and by virtue of being born to two American parents, makes me ineligible for PRC citizenship under nationality law that makes clear that children born abroad to Chinese parents (which mine were effectively not) are not Chinese if they gain a different citizenship on birth.
And another reason why I hesitate to grant myself allegiance to China is the fact that my mother’s family emigrated from China specifically because of the Communists and what they did to the family that I never met.
So when my roommate bought a deck of playing cards that sported Chairman Mao Zedong on every face, he slammed it down on the desk in front of me to show what he had just done. His motivations behind why he bought that deck of cards, as well as a stereotypical People’s Liberation Army hat I don’t agree with and feel are quite crude, but that’s no matter as long as he doesn’t bring it in front of me.
As I pushed my hand across my forehead, sighing in a miniature fit of displeasure at my roommate’s misguided intentions, he mistook my disgust and assured me that “James, they’re not offensive or anything.”
Yeah, he didn’t get it, nor do I expect him to.
In my second note, we were all at Lamma Island enjoying some seafood after a long hike in hot weather. A good friend of mine asked me about how my family hierarchy works if I claim to be so American.
I think my response satisfied her question.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She said that at funerals, for example, the Daoist priest would call up nuclear families one at a time, in a certain order, based on their family hierarchy. I told her that at the last funeral that I attended, which was my maternal grandmother’s, we didn’t have any of that. The service was presided over by a Methodist leader and at the end we went up to say our goodbyes in no specific order.
This reminds me of when I was little and asked m mother about something to that effect. I brought in family hierarchy in the same manner as the English royal family and she just brushed off my question, because it really didn’t matter.
And so national day is celebrated—this year the sixtieth anniversary of the Communists taking over China, the founding of the People’s Republic. Out in Victoria harbor a half-hour fireworks show of massive proportions started at 8:00pm.
Good luck.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
I guess you could say that my style is not that of impulse blogging. I wouldn’t go so far in the other direction to say that I maul over my posts for days on end, meticulously correcting mistakes, wittily adding in bits of symbolism every which way the reader turns. The way I’ve been working with the task that is this blog is to decide what topics I want to write about and queue them up to be expanded and finally published.
For example, this post has been in planning stages since mid-September. I felt that this timing would be appropriate to elaborate on the ongoing topic here of identity and nationalism.
I started out by saying that I would first identify myself as American before Chinese American and never Chinese except in ethnicity or ancestry. Regarding my trip to Italy, I explored the perceptions of those locals towards nationality and how it relates to ethnicity.
Some background—I would be close to the first to tell you that nationalism is an entirely fictitious concept. Ultimately we are all humans, and scientifically speaking there is more genetic variation within ethnicities than among different ethnicities, hence the terms “ethnicity” and “race” have no scientific basis. Nationalism, a concept that I push as a separate from race and ethnicity, then, would be even more artificial, especially since we are taught in primary school that Americans all have immigrant backgrounds (minus the Native Americans) and come from all walks of life.
I also have to say that I follow nationalism quite a bit. I feel I share a great deal more in common with a fellow American than with, say, a Chinese national. With common upbringing and (most likely) a common mother tongue, there just seems to be more to relate to whether there really is or not.
In the hand of irony though, the first person to question my nationality, requiring me to defend myself, was at the opinion of a guy from Massachusetts. Of note is the fact that I haven’t had to defend myself against my roommate, who, in a fell swoop of fabricated statistics, quasi-neoconservative opinions, and resistance to learning a single word of Cantonese, has found my being in the four percent of Americans in the Asian minority an acceptable thought.
And here I present two events: the first in my Traditional Chinese Society class, and the other with a good friend of mine here.
This little discussion in my sociology tutorial actually took place something like a month ago. Usually, it’s an insignificant occurrence when something like this happens to me because it happens more often than I’d like, but this time it was in an academic environment, involving an offensive on my perception of myself.
In discussing nationality and ethnicity as the topic of the week for that class, the topic over overseas Chinese came up. I made my point that while I have no problem identifying my ethnicity as Chinese, I would always stop short of calling myself Chinese in the general sense and overseas Chinese in that it appears that I have some sort of allegiance to China.
I don’t.
To say that I do would imply that I have Chinese nationality or citizenship, that I have the right to be in China, or that I have parents that do. A typical conversation would go like this:
“Why don’t you call yourself Chinese?”
“Because I’m not from China. I was born, raised, and educated here in California.”
“But your parents are from China.”
“Not really.”
“But your grandparents are from China?”
“And where are your grandparents from?”
The answer to that is rarely the United States.
But in class it was a bit different, it was a local student trying to convince me that I could not be anything but Chinese. This was weird, because all my life I have found that Chinese and Chinese Americans hesitate to call me one of them due to my lack of fluency in any Chinese language, yet prototypically perceived Americans refuse to see me as one of them as I look different from them.
If you couldn’t tell already, I identify more with the prototypically perceived Americans, though I like to believe that everyone who wants to call him- or herself American living in the United States is entitled to do so regardless of (primary) language spoken or customs or practices that happen not to be the societal norm. This guy though was using my appearance to say that I could not be anything other Chinese, which, while it happened a few times back home, was less common than not.
So with a different audience I had to defend myself in a different way. I used Chinese nationality law. Being an American both by birth and by blood, I figure to call myself Chinese in the same way, I would be able to be granted Chinese nationality in some form—but I can’t.
My father’s parents were Chinese nationals, though left when the Nationalists were in power. As a result, it would appear to be virtually impossible to find all the appropriate documents to prove that they had citizenship, then that my father had citizenship because of them. But even if my father were to have citizenship, it would likely not be conferred to me. My thinking is that even in U.S. nationality law, a citizen (natural-born or naturalized) must have lived in the U.S. for a certain period of time before his or her citizenship can be given to his or her children born outside the United States. And my father has never set foot outside of North America, much less lived in China for any period of time.
On the other side, my mother’s birth in Hong Kong to Chinese parents makes her a Chinese national in theory as of 1997, when her British National Overseas status was commuted with the handover. However, she was naturalized as an American long before I was born, and has made no effort (understandably) to claim PRC citizenship. In addition, as she has been naturalized, she may be rendered herself ineligible for PRC citizenship.
So me, being born American by virtue of being born in the United States and by virtue of being born to two American parents, makes me ineligible for PRC citizenship under nationality law that makes clear that children born abroad to Chinese parents (which mine were effectively not) are not Chinese if they gain a different citizenship on birth.
And another reason why I hesitate to grant myself allegiance to China is the fact that my mother’s family emigrated from China specifically because of the Communists and what they did to the family that I never met.
So when my roommate bought a deck of playing cards that sported Chairman Mao Zedong on every face, he slammed it down on the desk in front of me to show what he had just done. His motivations behind why he bought that deck of cards, as well as a stereotypical People’s Liberation Army hat I don’t agree with and feel are quite crude, but that’s no matter as long as he doesn’t bring it in front of me.
As I pushed my hand across my forehead, sighing in a miniature fit of displeasure at my roommate’s misguided intentions, he mistook my disgust and assured me that “James, they’re not offensive or anything.”
Yeah, he didn’t get it, nor do I expect him to.
In my second note, we were all at Lamma Island enjoying some seafood after a long hike in hot weather. A good friend of mine asked me about how my family hierarchy works if I claim to be so American.
I think my response satisfied her question.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She said that at funerals, for example, the Daoist priest would call up nuclear families one at a time, in a certain order, based on their family hierarchy. I told her that at the last funeral that I attended, which was my maternal grandmother’s, we didn’t have any of that. The service was presided over by a Methodist leader and at the end we went up to say our goodbyes in no specific order.
This reminds me of when I was little and asked m mother about something to that effect. I brought in family hierarchy in the same manner as the English royal family and she just brushed off my question, because it really didn’t matter.
And so national day is celebrated—this year the sixtieth anniversary of the Communists taking over China, the founding of the People’s Republic. Out in Victoria harbor a half-hour fireworks show of massive proportions started at 8:00pm.
Good luck.
Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.
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