![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mistersandmanHAPPY NATIONAL DAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Think back on the last anniversary of your nation's founding. Maybe you watched some fireworks. You might have kicked back a beer or two with friends. Maybe you got laid, or even ate some apple pie. Well, the People's Republic of China sent up a lunar satellite. Feel free to shit yourself:
Yeah, that's right. The Chang'e-2, carried by a Long March 3C rocket no less, lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province around seven this morning EST.
It is expected to reach the moon in 5 days, which is leaps and bounds more awesome than its predecessor in 2007, which arrived after twelve days. The first Chang'e orbited the moon for 494 days and sent back 1.37 terabytes of data, producing China's first complete moon picture before it... intentionally crashed into the moon. Righteous!
China's space program has received a great deal of attention from the Chinese media, because there's nothing more patriotic than sending your nation's symbolic phallus into the great unknown and if nothing else, the Chinese Communist Party derives its power from being the largest bastion of Chinese nationalism around.
I've met some people who insist that China will arrive at superpower status the minute a Chinese person sets foot on the moon. Others are less enthusiastic. In his 2005 book China Road, NPR correspondent Rob Gifford recalls covering China's first human space flight mission, the Shenzhou 5, in 2003. In Beijing, he encountered the sort of positive response one would expect from such a momentous achievement. Fifty miles out of Beijing, very few of the farmers had heard of Shenzhou 5.
A hundred miles out of Beijing, an elderly couple asked, "What's outer space?"
I really enjoyed Gifford's book. The author's strong Christian background only occasionally irked me and more often than not led to some hugely entertaining anecdotes, such as the time he was surreptitiously pressed into giving a sermon (in Chinese) in a small rural Protestant Christian Church.
From Herodotus to Alexis de Tocqueville to Haruki Murakami to Stephen Fry, people can't seem to resist the urge to examine a foreign nation through the looking glass of their own culture and relate to the world their findings. Should I be in China in the next year or so, I'm certain I will engage in this practice myself on this very blog! It's a subject that I approach with some trepidation .Recently, a friend of mine dealt with this subject during a prolonged stay in Taiwan. In the end, it was decided that there are some very wrong ways to discuss another culture and there is a way that strikes a balance between respect, insight, and entertainment.
An economics course that I am taking this semester assigned Country Driving by Peter Hessler, a book that I feel has no difficulty avoiding the sort of cultural exploitation one frequently finds in books on Asia written by Westerners. Hessler's first chapter details a road trip across the old borders of northern China, parallel to the Great Wall. Along the way, he stops at a town called Ningli Bu, better known by its traditional name, Ningxi Hulu, which happens to mean "Pacify the Northern Barbarians," only more derogatory. Other nearby towns are called 'Overawe the Barbarians,' 'Smash the Hu,' 'Overawe the Hu,' 'Suppress the Barbarians,' and my personal favorite, 'Slaughter the Hu.'
'Hu' was a word used to describe the majority of nomadic northern non-Han groups in a derogatory sense. The word mostly fell out of use during the Qing dynasty when one 'Hu' group, the Manchus, took control of China. Modern sensibilities dictate that on maps, 'Hu' is written as 'tiger.' A lesser author might leave this factoid as it is and be satisfied to say, "lol racism," but Hessler manages to interpret it in such a way that he examines the enormous culture shock that the medieval Chinese must have felt when they realized that there existed a people who rejected their traditional sedentary agriculturist ways. Such was their shock that they built the largest wall in the history of mankind to keep these people out and named a ton of crappy villages after their hate. Then Hessler uses this medieval example of cultures crossing to critique his own work, a moment of self-consciousness that I found extremely gratifying.
Another thing that might not have worked so well in Hessler's first chapter was the way he interspersed his narrative with questions from his Chinese driver's test. Since these questions are nevertheless hilarious they are reproduced below:
223. If you come to a road that has been flooded, you should
a) accelerate, so the motor doesn't flood
b) stop, examine the water to make sure it's shallow, and drive across slowly
c) find a pedestrian and make him cross ahead of you
352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should
a) not tell him
b) reply patiently and accurately
c) tell him the wrong way
81. After passing a vehicle, you should
a) wait until there is a safe distance between the two vehicles, make a right-turn signal, and return to the original lane
b) cut in front of the other car as quickly as possible
c) cut in front of the other car and then slow down
80. If, while preparing to pass a car, you notice that it is turning left, making a U-turn, or passing another vehicle, you should
a) pass on the right
b) honk, accelerate, and pass on the left
c) not pass
353. When passing an elderly person or child, you should
a) slow down and make sure you pass safely
b) continue at the same speed
c) honk the horn and tell them to watch out
269. When you enter a tunnel, you should
a) honk and accelerate
b) slow down and turn on your lights
c) honk and maintain speed
355. When driving through a residential area, you should
a) honk like normal
b) honk more than normal, to alert residents
c) avoid honking, in order to avoid disturbing residents
212. Before driving, a person can
a) drink a little alcohol
b) not drink alcohol
c) drink beer but not other types of alcohol
I need to work on coherence. This tale began with a bang and ended in bureaucracy. It is a metaphor for your life.
Think back on the last anniversary of your nation's founding. Maybe you watched some fireworks. You might have kicked back a beer or two with friends. Maybe you got laid, or even ate some apple pie. Well, the People's Republic of China sent up a lunar satellite. Feel free to shit yourself:
Yeah, that's right. The Chang'e-2, carried by a Long March 3C rocket no less, lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province around seven this morning EST. It is expected to reach the moon in 5 days, which is leaps and bounds more awesome than its predecessor in 2007, which arrived after twelve days. The first Chang'e orbited the moon for 494 days and sent back 1.37 terabytes of data, producing China's first complete moon picture before it... intentionally crashed into the moon. Righteous!
China's space program has received a great deal of attention from the Chinese media, because there's nothing more patriotic than sending your nation's symbolic phallus into the great unknown and if nothing else, the Chinese Communist Party derives its power from being the largest bastion of Chinese nationalism around.
I've met some people who insist that China will arrive at superpower status the minute a Chinese person sets foot on the moon. Others are less enthusiastic. In his 2005 book China Road, NPR correspondent Rob Gifford recalls covering China's first human space flight mission, the Shenzhou 5, in 2003. In Beijing, he encountered the sort of positive response one would expect from such a momentous achievement. Fifty miles out of Beijing, very few of the farmers had heard of Shenzhou 5.
A hundred miles out of Beijing, an elderly couple asked, "What's outer space?"
I really enjoyed Gifford's book. The author's strong Christian background only occasionally irked me and more often than not led to some hugely entertaining anecdotes, such as the time he was surreptitiously pressed into giving a sermon (in Chinese) in a small rural Protestant Christian Church.
From Herodotus to Alexis de Tocqueville to Haruki Murakami to Stephen Fry, people can't seem to resist the urge to examine a foreign nation through the looking glass of their own culture and relate to the world their findings. Should I be in China in the next year or so, I'm certain I will engage in this practice myself on this very blog! It's a subject that I approach with some trepidation .Recently, a friend of mine dealt with this subject during a prolonged stay in Taiwan. In the end, it was decided that there are some very wrong ways to discuss another culture and there is a way that strikes a balance between respect, insight, and entertainment.
An economics course that I am taking this semester assigned Country Driving by Peter Hessler, a book that I feel has no difficulty avoiding the sort of cultural exploitation one frequently finds in books on Asia written by Westerners. Hessler's first chapter details a road trip across the old borders of northern China, parallel to the Great Wall. Along the way, he stops at a town called Ningli Bu, better known by its traditional name, Ningxi Hulu, which happens to mean "Pacify the Northern Barbarians," only more derogatory. Other nearby towns are called 'Overawe the Barbarians,' 'Smash the Hu,' 'Overawe the Hu,' 'Suppress the Barbarians,' and my personal favorite, 'Slaughter the Hu.'
'Hu' was a word used to describe the majority of nomadic northern non-Han groups in a derogatory sense. The word mostly fell out of use during the Qing dynasty when one 'Hu' group, the Manchus, took control of China. Modern sensibilities dictate that on maps, 'Hu' is written as 'tiger.' A lesser author might leave this factoid as it is and be satisfied to say, "lol racism," but Hessler manages to interpret it in such a way that he examines the enormous culture shock that the medieval Chinese must have felt when they realized that there existed a people who rejected their traditional sedentary agriculturist ways. Such was their shock that they built the largest wall in the history of mankind to keep these people out and named a ton of crappy villages after their hate. Then Hessler uses this medieval example of cultures crossing to critique his own work, a moment of self-consciousness that I found extremely gratifying.
Another thing that might not have worked so well in Hessler's first chapter was the way he interspersed his narrative with questions from his Chinese driver's test. Since these questions are nevertheless hilarious they are reproduced below:
223. If you come to a road that has been flooded, you should
a) accelerate, so the motor doesn't flood
b) stop, examine the water to make sure it's shallow, and drive across slowly
c) find a pedestrian and make him cross ahead of you
352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should
a) not tell him
b) reply patiently and accurately
c) tell him the wrong way
81. After passing a vehicle, you should
a) wait until there is a safe distance between the two vehicles, make a right-turn signal, and return to the original lane
b) cut in front of the other car as quickly as possible
c) cut in front of the other car and then slow down
80. If, while preparing to pass a car, you notice that it is turning left, making a U-turn, or passing another vehicle, you should
a) pass on the right
b) honk, accelerate, and pass on the left
c) not pass
353. When passing an elderly person or child, you should
a) slow down and make sure you pass safely
b) continue at the same speed
c) honk the horn and tell them to watch out
269. When you enter a tunnel, you should
a) honk and accelerate
b) slow down and turn on your lights
c) honk and maintain speed
355. When driving through a residential area, you should
a) honk like normal
b) honk more than normal, to alert residents
c) avoid honking, in order to avoid disturbing residents
212. Before driving, a person can
a) drink a little alcohol
b) not drink alcohol
c) drink beer but not other types of alcohol
I need to work on coherence. This tale began with a bang and ended in bureaucracy. It is a metaphor for your life.
