Monthly Archives: July 2010

Let the schools do their job

Each Leaf a Bodhi Tree: My Fifteen Years at Dunhuang (一叶一菩提——我在敦煌十五年, 2010) by Xiao Mo (萧默) is a memoir about the author’s career studying the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang, a fifteen-year period that began in 1963 and lasted until after the Cultural Revolution. I haven’t read it yet (it just arrived this afternoon), but a note at the very end caught my attention:

作者赘言

本稿完成后,有朋友说,你说的这些个“文革”中的事儿,好多年轻人早就不知道了,什么“造反有理”、“横扫一切”、“破四旧”、“无限崇拜”、“三忠于”、“早启示,晚汇报”……等等,现在的年轻人听了都哈哈大笑,以为是笑话,不会懂得,不如加上几条名词解释作为附录。我觉得有理,本来已开始做起来,转而一想,这件事本不该由我来做的,绝对应该是中学历史课本和大学政治课的主要内容之一,我来做,岂非越俎代庖?再说,作者还是对此等事保持点距离为好,要是年轻朋友真想知道,而今互联网发达,一查就能查到;要是不想知道,这整本书他都不会读的,便打消了这个念头。

Superfluous Words From the Author

After completing this manuscript, a friend said, this Cultural Revolution stuff you’re talking about — lots of young people don’t know a thing about it. Things like “to rebel is justified”, “sweep away all [monsters and demons]”, “smash the four olds”, “unlimited worship”, “three loyals”, “morning instruction, evening report”….young people break out laughing when they hear them now, as if they’re a joke. They won’t understand. Why not add an explanation of some of the terms as an appendix? I thought this made sense, and I had already started on it when the thought struck me that it really shouldn’t be my job to do this. It should absolutely be a major part of middle school history textbooks and university politics curriculum, so if I did it, wouldn’t I be meddling in someone else’s affairs? Besides, it’s best for an author to keep some distance from these things. If my young friends want to know, the Internet is quite advanced and they’ll find it if they look for it. If they don’t want to know, then they won’t read this book in the first place. So I gave up the idea.

I’m looking forward to reading it, partly for the history, and partly because Xiao is an interesting, opinionated writer. According to one review, he takes some shots at Gao Er Tai, another Dunhuang researcher with a memoir of those turbulent decades, In Search of My Homeland (寻找家园, 2004).


The book A Glossary of Political Terms of the People’s Republic of China by Li Gucheng (Google Books link), which I used for some of the terms Xiao lists, looks like an exceptionally helpful reference for translating texts from the Cultural Revolution era.

On not acting in a Chinese TV show

Back in October 2009, Evan Osnos of the New Yorker blogged about his experiences filming scenes for a tacky Chinese soap:

In the late afternoon, I taped my scene, which consisted of standing at a pay phone and making a call. I was to ask for a girl, and then nod while I was told she was unavailable. Then I was to hang up and gaze at an apartment window, which was, presumably, hers. My delivery needed work, and it took several takes. Eventually, the crew was satisfied enough to declare victory and hand over my lines for the following day. It was then that I discovered that I would be playing a sexual predator.

He ultimately decided to pull out from the gig, ticking off the producers.

The show I didn't appear in

The show I didn't appear in

My own non-experience with a Chinese TV production was pretty similar. In 2001 or 2002, when I was teaching at the Northeast Institute of Electric Power in Jilin City, I was invited to appear as a lecherous foreigner in three scenes of a crime drama. Filmed on location in the city, it would focus on the exploits of northeastern mobsters and the police hot on their track. It would be broadcast on local TV, so I’d be seen by all my students. A middle-aged colleague of mine was cast as a foreign bartender in one scene. The character I was to play was part of a trap set by local mobsters, whose boss had wormed his way into a job with the city police. I was to be bait in an attempt to gain evidence to blackmail the heroine, who had gone on the lam for reasons I can no longer recall.

Before they confirmed my participation, they made sure that I was comfortable with appearing shirtless in one scene: the police would burst into my hotel room and arrest me for soliciting a prostitute, and I would have to dress for the occasion.

Decency is a fluid thing — I’d already adjusted my suburban American attitude to the Speedos of Jilin’s public pools and the dress shoes of its mountain pathways — so I decided I didn’t have a problem. Then the script came. It turned out that my dodgy foreigner would first appear in an elevator casting a lustful eye upon the heroine. Later he would come on to her and react with pervy delight when she claimed to be a college student. That was the deal breaker. Due partly to the conduct codes handed out every year while I was an undergrad, and partly to the stereotype that foreign teachers were only in China to score, student-teacher relationships were off-limits as far as I was concerned. I didn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression in a prime-time soap. My colleague also decided to back out.

The casting director was not pleased. He tried to persuade us to reconsider: “It’s just acting.” “We can erase the college student line.” “It’s going to premiere in Yunnan, and it won’t even show in this city.” Eventually he gave up and went to the other big university across town, where he found two other foreign teachers to fill the roles.

The program did end up on Jilin TV, and everyone had fun identifying where everything was shot. The scenes in question came off pretty much as you’d expect, if you’ve ever seen foreign non-actors playing bit parts on Chinese TV.

The only thing I really remember about the show is a scene where a police officer eating hotpot out on the street is taunted by a mobster and for some reason has retrieve his gun from the hotpot dish. By the time he screws up enough courage to dip his hand into the boiling water, the mobster has already turned a corner. I wouldn’t have minded playing a role like that.

additional stories

A bootleg encounter

From Jajia’s twitter feed:

在《炎黄春秋》楼下的一个流动书摊上,看到《墓碑》、《中越战争》及廖亦武的新书,当然都是盗版,老板说生意不错,并说,有次有个老头过来,翻开墓碑扉页的照片,问老板说,你看看我是谁?老板大惊,杨继绳说,没事,盗了就好。

At a book vendor’s cart outside the Yanhuang Chunqiu building I saw Tombstone, The Sino-Vietnamese War, and Liao Yiwu’s latest. All bootlegs, naturally. The vendor said that business was good. He also said that an old man had come by once, flipped open Tombstone to the flyleaf photo, and said, “Guess who I am.” The vendor was shocked. Yang Jisheng said, “No big deal. Pirated — that’s good.”