Beijing Ethnic Minorities Park

Originally this was attached to this post. It has been slightly edited to stand alone.

Chinese views of skin colors are fascinating and diverse. For examples, girls buy skin whitening lotion and rock umbrellas on sunny days to avoid tans (and wrinkles). Central to Chinese understandings of ethnicity are the famous 56 which supposedly make up China's ethnic fabric. The majority, Han, make up 91% of the population and live along the Eastern seaboard and fertile provinces inland. The other 9% are 55 minorities which are supposedly all Chinese and part of the colorful harmonious nation China purports to be. These ethnicities were categorized in the 1950’s by Han scientists using four Stalinist criteria: economic life, language, geographic location, and culture. Despite severe overlap and a complete lack of distinction in some areas, 56 ethnicities were determined. No more. No less. So today we have Tibetians who don’t want to be Chinese, Manchu who completely indistinguishable from the Han by the four criteria yet still receive five extra points on their college admissions scores (similar to our Affirmative Action statutes), Hui who are just Han Muslims, and yet no Jewish ethnicity though there are many in China. The system has many noteworthy faults, but questioning it is futile because the Chinese Communist Party has spoken. This is how it has been since 1960, this is how it is now, and how it will be in the future. No new groups are being added, and if makes Americans mad they are forever foreigners even though there is a Korean ethnicity, then tough beans. Today, these ethnic divisions fantasy or not, are as good as real. They have been etched in stone.



Each ethnicity has its own cute logo, ostensibly designed by a Han party member. Here you can see the Hui icon on the left. Of course it’s nothing more than a big mosque since there’s nothing else which could uniquely identify them. Then some other Muslim ethnicity also has the crescent but a bird as well. Each minority also has a picture which gets used whenever the government publishes concerning the famous 56, like the map I have with the fancy minorities all around the border. Only 3 of the 55 are represented by males; instead they are mostly women in colorful bright ethnic costumes. In fact ,the feminization of the minorities is part of a larger discourse which aims to construct the Han as the center of China’s modern progress--humorless, asexual, suit wearers--while treating the minorities as the other which is more pastoral, quaint, primitive; and thus more free sexually, emotionally, and perhaps creatively too. It’s all pretty fascinating.

If you can imagine the US proudly proclaiming it’s 32 (or some other arbitrary number) ethnic minorities, you can probably understand China’s minority situation. We’d have African tribals with orange and red traditional garb, speaking click languages while dancing around beating drums. During halftime shows and New Years celebrations they’d come on stage and do spear tricks. Hispanics would be represented by a sombrero, and we’d often recount their rich history of innovative cuisine involving cheese. Inuit would be represented by a fuzzy jacket because all we’d care about--wherever they’re from—is that it’s really cold. Native Americans would always have huge feathered headdresses, and their primitive, aboriginal existence would lend legitimacy to our identity as a modern, progressive, unbeatable American force. Men would lust after Haitian babes because they’re so much looser than white women. Irish would be renowned for their ability to drink. So on and so forth. The whole thing would be a mythology based on some historical traditions, perverted, exaggerated, and molded to fit what white Americans want to see. All we’d need to be set is an ethnic theme park where we could traipse around gawking at the minorities in their natural habitat.

Which China has.


Welcome to the Beijing Ethnic Minorities Park.



It’s quite a beautiful park. The scenery is a great escape from Beijing which is largely grey with pollution and bland soviet-styled housing blocks.









Now that we’ve got the good out of the way, here’s what’s interesting about the park.
All of the 55 minorities are represented, meaning there’s a section with authentic housing and ethnic themes for everyone! Of course, most of these sections are depressing because the minorities who work there, which Beijing apparently went out and got from the actual minority region, just sit there looking depressed at their status as a human zoo animal. That’s just my guess though.





The more civilized an ethnicity is the closer it generally is to the entrance. The wilder the ethnicity the more rope bridges and dirt trails you have to cross to get there. And it’s great, because you can really tell which of the minorities are more dirty and primitive. They have pretty contrasting sections:







Most of the plaques read something along the lines of “{ethnicity} people are famous for their ability to sing and dance and their colorful style of dress. They are from {some place} and the {size rank} ethnicity in China.” It’s really clever the way all these minority cultures have such great singing and dancing. The Han must be very entertained.

As cynical as this is getting, it actually is a very well-designed park from an aesthetic and entertainment standpoint. So lets watch some singing and dancing, and some beautiful and exotic girls flinging water on each other. Hell, we may as well even participate, go primitive for a moment.
If you get a "movie no longer availible" message just go to youtube by double clicking on the video. All the videos are viewable, just maybe not more than 3 at a time or something










If you’re like me, you can’t really get to into any of it because you realize you’re watching ethnicities perform for a mostly Han audience so the Han can feel superior, much like animals at a zoo. So if that doesn’t make you angry, maybe this pathetic, shit-eating goose will:



Beijing Ethnic Minority Park has it all.



As easy as it is to accuse the Chinese of being naive, perhaps this is one place where we’d be unaware of our own naivety. America has a history of exoticizing its minorities as well. Think about the Washington Red Skins, Kansas City Chiefs, or the Cleveland Indians with their big red faces, feather dresses, and tomahawk chants. Only instead of a colorful costumes our urban black wears baggy clothes and gold chains. But man can negros dance. How about those pastoral Mexican laborers—“they work so hard!”

In the end I suppose we can pat ourselves on the back because we don’t have any ethnic parks, and our educational system takes time to defeat stereotypes, even requiring “difference, power and discrimination” credit in colleges. But as those courses teach us, we still have work to do to create a more inclusive and merit-driven society.

The popular dimension of Chinese nationalism

The following quote is from a Facebook wall post:

The bottom line for the government is their continued economic growth, and they need normal relations with the rest of the world in order to maintain it, but the contradiction that poses with the hate propaganda they keep spewing is bound to blow up in their faces at some point.

The so-called "hate propaganda" does blow up in their face. Not dramatically, but enough that it's becoming more common for the government to issue calls for restraint in the media than to try and fan nationalistic flames. Nowadays the Chinese themselves are carrying the torch. The boycott of Carrefour here was allegedly started over phone text messaging, as well as it’s ongoing support by people adding “(l)China” to their MSN names. This is grassroots action, not government nudging. When these grassroots efforts start to put political pressure on the party, or strain international relations the Party asks people to stop.

It also did so in 1999 after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by American forces. When the government didn’t do anything hasty or drastic, popular outrage was expressed in letters to newspapers and on the internet. “The [Americans] know that our government policy is one of merely lodging ‘fierce protests [qianglie kangyi].’ Premier Zhu….Our government’s weak stance has created a distance between itself and the people….You are so capable…and we need you….But without the ‘people’s confidence [minxin]’ how can you lead China’s economic construction!” Surprisingly critical of the government wasn’t it? Instead of the typical support of the government, this kind of expression asks it for action. As a response Hu Jintao gave a speech which urged everyone to get back to work and study. So they (mostly) did.

This is a change from 1996 when the CCP didn't ask the people to do anything, they just outright banned China Can Say No for arbitrarily criticizing party policy. Of course, this is after the book was approved by party apparatus, like all paper publishing is, to this day in China, and after it instigated a lot of nationalist zeal against Japan and the US. Earlier that same year, Japanese boyscouts built a lighthouse on the Diaoyu islands and got China into a flurry. The government response then was just as decisive. They dispersed demonstrations in the street and took away students access to the internet for 10 days when students took their proesting there.

Patriotic actions require guidance.

The public must be dissuaded and prevented from organizing spontaneous meetings, demonstrations and protests.

The publicizing of activities by…printing or distributing documents, or using various means of communication is prohibited.

As you can see by comparison with the 1990's, the policy appears to be changing. This could be a sign of the political reform that the party sees as necessary, or in the words of Peter Gries whose work I borrowed heavily from in the above paragraphs, a sign “The CCP is losing its control over nationalist discourse.” So, if an incident were to "blow up" it wouldn’t just be in the face of the CCP but the people too. Both are responsible for the current nationalism.

With regards to the other part of the original quote, I disagree overall that there’s any threat to China’s economic interests, despite the fact that nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment is on the rise. The government might be vacillating, but I still think it’s at the reigns and not so stupid to jeopardize China’s rise by letting university students actually piss off the world. Besides, whiney students would have to do a lot more than boycott Carrefour for the world to turn its back on Chinese industry and markets. Never underestimate the power of money, or the degree to which the West can write off the views of Chinese people.

Honking Horns...

...Usually mean "hey, I'm passing."　And since people drift in and out of the lanes like they're quaint suggestions, there is a lot of honking. As a result, drivers generally don't check before they turn or change lanes because they expect someone will beep at them if a collision is imminent. Which then necessitates drivers to honk for 10 seconds in Morse code if they see someone getting on a bicycle in a parking lot 9 seconds away. Gotta be safe, because the cyclist is probably not going to look.

They also honk to clear traffic jams and increase the flow of traffic.

But today I was awoken from a nap by the sound of every car in Beijing honking simultaneously. When the air-raid horn started I became a little alarmed and kept looking into the sky half-expecting Japanese bombers to suddenly emerge from the pollution cloud.

Not knowing what to do in the event of a Japanese surprise attack, I did as all college students do when faced with a problem of modern life, I ran a quick google search:

China will begin three days of mourning with a nationwide silence at 2.28pm this afternoon, precisely one week after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck.

Air raid sirens and horns of vehicles, trains and ships will be sounded in grief at the end of a three-minute silence and national flags will fly at half-mast across the country and at Chinese embassies worldwide.

Source

I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought the horns and sirens disrupted the silence. Here’s a youtube video of the scene here in Beijing since the Shanhaiist’s video was removed.

Ah, the earthquake in Sichuan. A public relations officer wet dream. The timing for such a catastrophic geologic event was so precise. How did the Earth's crust know to fracture now, during this decade, and this year, and this month, just two weeks after a natural disaster leveled Burma and brought worldwide condemnation of its government's failure to respond? China, unlike Burma, has allowed and encouraged press coverage of its relief efforts, which has everyone here getting warm fuzzies about the their government’s vigour and effectiveness. The president Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao have been rushing around from PR opportunity to another, looking concerned, saluting troops, and likely kissing any baby boys pulled from wreckage.

Contrast this with America, where if there was similar press coverage of a disaster response some of today’s college students would be alleging the government planned it. Many Americans thrive on flinging hate at the government. That fact always mystified me since I knew that people ran the government, and those people were elected by American voters. Nonetheless, it’s probably good somewhere in the world the people hate their government unconditionally so that yin and yang are in balance.

The earthquake helped shift everyone’s focus away from the fact that protests during the Olympic torch tour have been so severe security officials have frequently needed to make unscheduled changes to it’s route or stage the relay in areas restricted from the public. The full story of the tour’s path through protest after protest makes for a fascinating read. If China hosts the Olympics again sometime soon we may need to create a separate event just for the world tour considering the amount of foot speed and dexterity required by its bearers to hurdle demonstrators and juke their water balloons of protest.

So is China’s response to the earthquake actually having an effect on how the West is reporting on China? Maybe, if the recent cover of Time here in China is an indication.

The outpouring of support has been a revelation. For years, China's citizens couldn't watch the evening news without being reminded of their darker sides, of the grasping, reckless self-interest that has characterized China's headlong rush to become wealthy and powerful: stories of slave labor and child-kidnapping rings, rampant government corruption, counterfeit products, tainted food, dangerous toys and, lately, a crackdown on dissent in Tibet. But from a monstrous humanitarian crisis has come a new self-awareness, a recognition of the Chinese people's sympathy and generosity of spirit. The earthquake has been a "shock of consciousness" as scholar Jiang Wenran puts it, a collective epiphany when the nation was suddenly confronted with how much it had changed in two decades of booming growth — and liked what it saw.

Actually, last time I watched the evening news it was 20% about actual events in the country—which I guess you could construe the Shanxi slave scandal as, 40% about the growth of the economy, and 40% about the NBA and Yao Ming. Of course, now that the NBA has joined Sharon Stone and Carrefour on China’s shitlist, I suppose the dramatic description could be more accurate.

It's not just China's self-image that has changed. The quake has altered, at least temporarily, the world's perception of China, whose growing economic and military might is viewed with suspicion and fear in many quarters. China's relationship with the West has been particularly strained after March's bloody demonstrations in Tibet and the chaotic protests that dogged the Olympic Torch relay. But the quake, coming just 10 days after Cyclone Nargis ripped into Burma, has cast the Chinese government in a different light. By blocking foreign aid, Burma's paranoid military junta demonstrated just how impotent and callous to the suffering of its citizens a repressive autocracy can be.

Remind me to fully read all the articles I plan to reference in a post so that I don’t discover everything I’m saying has already been published somewhere. Nonetheless, here it is clear as day, by not being completely evil and mercilessly denying relief to your suffering population the world will forget all the shit they’ve been talking for the past 30 years and embrace you, at least temporarily. I hope it’s very temporary otherwise my faith in the free press will level out next to Xinhua news.

"The Olympics seemed destined for disaster and that would have been a major setback for China's emergence onto the world stage," says the diplomat. "Now many people will be cheering for the Chinese and hoping they pull off a good show. That will be pivotal for China self-confidence and its perception of its place in the world."

I suppose if a blizzard can save Christmas an earthquake can save the Olympics. He makes another point though, that people should cheer for China to win big at the Olympics. I hope they smoke the US and Russia in Gold medals. Why? Because the Chinese are the only people on the planet who think the world respects countries who win Gold Medals. They’ll swell up with pride, just like a kindergarten kid getting a smiley sticker on his worksheet. And, like a child, maybe they’ll stop being so insecure if they get enough positive reinforcement. There you go, good China. Look, the world thinks you’re way strong, and my, how many 1st place ribbons you have!