The Fat Years (36 page)

inedia:
The ability to live without food, i.e., to fast. Fang Caodi is referring to Buddhist fasting traditions.

Pangu:
There are several myths about Pangu. In the prevailing one, Pangu (usually depicted as a primitive hairy giant with horns) emerged from a cosmic egg that had coalesced from the formless chaos of the universe. He set about creating the world, and separating Yin (the earth) from Yang (the sky).

Yandi:
Another name for Shennong, the Divine Farmer, who was one of the mythological bearers of culture at the beginning of civilization. His main achievement, according to Han historians, was to have led humanity out of a state of hunting and savagery, toward agrarian utopia.

home church:
China’s Christian population has swelled to around fifty million since the government began loosening controls on the practice of religion in the 1970s. Private gatherings have proliferated, and as the government requires Christians to meet only in officially registered places of worship, these are often cracked down upon by officials. The home was the original setting for the early church.

Mencius:
Mengzi (Master Meng) is the Saint Paul of China. He upheld and greatly elaborated the philosophy of Confucius, as Paul did the religion of Jesus, and, in a sense, was the real inventor of Confucianism. He is most famous for the idea that man’s original nature is good, but it has to be taught to remain good.

the people’s Central Discipline Committee:
The Chinese Communist Party’s internal policing organization, put in place because only the Communist Party investigates wrongdoing in the Communist Party.

old Laozi:
Master Lao (the Old One) is the reputed founder of Daoism, an ancient Chinese tradition of philosophy and religious belief.

auntie and uncle:
These words appear in Japanese in the original (
obasan
and
ojisan
) and are meant as terms of affection.

a Petöfi Club salon woman:
Sándor Petöfi (1823–1849) was a Hungarian poet and leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Petöfi circles or clubs were popular among intellectuals before the Hungarian Revolt of 1956. At various times in China, government or leftist leaders have denounced so-called Rightist groups as Chinese Petöfi Clubs.

We are all prepared to see the jade smashed to pieces:
This means being prepared to die heroically rather than live in shame. It is a saying that dates from the seventh century: “A true man would rather be a shattered jade than a perfect pottery tile.”

Han:
The name given to the vast majority (over 90 percent) of Chinese today. It is an ethnic term for a constructed “race” that is essentially, like the Europeans, made up of many “races.” The name comes from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the name of which came from the Han River.

a suspension of habeas corpus:
The emergency situation described here has been the permanent situation under Chinese Communist Party rule ever since 1949, and still is. The British Parliament restored habeas corpus in March 1818. China has no habeas corpus law.

China’s Monroe Doctrine:
The Chinese do not use the term “Chinese Monroe doctrine” (its application is the author’s), but it seems the Chinese party-state’s long-term plan is to surpass and replace the United States and European powers everywhere in the world. They would like to start by ejecting the Americans from East Asia, where they believe they should be the most important power, as they were in the imperial glory days. However, other nations in the area are keen to keep American military might in the area to defend them. The idea that the Chinese would make an alliance with Japan is pure fantasy—it would be a powerful blow against the United States.

Almost all of the economic planning described in He Dongsheng’s speech is accomplished or in the planning. China’s greatest successes have thus far occurred in Central Asia. They are also making headway in Africa and Latin America. Recently, the Chinese have begun to face the sort of anti-imperial, anticolonial resistance that Britain and France faced when they were imperial powers. He Dongsheng’s statements about making the RMB (renminbi) an international currency are, it seems, unlikely to happen.

basic agreement with recent works of nonfiction:
See Mark Leonard’s
What Does China Think?
(2008), Richard McGregor’s
The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers
(2010), and Mark Lilla’s “Reading Strauss in Beijing: China’s Strange Taste in Western Philosophers” (
The New Republic
, December 8, 2010).

“an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one, the opposite of utopia”:
Mac Dictionary definition of “dystopia.”

In a recent interview:
Published in the Taiwan academic journal
Sixiang
(
Reflexion
, No. 17, January 2011). Translated by Josephine Chiu-Duke, from pp. 114 and 115.

China antagonized much of the world:
See Minxin Pei, “2010 Was the Worst Year for Chinese Diplomacy Since 1989,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace pdf.

“Beyond economic and ecological indicators”:
“The China Superpower Hoax,”
Huffington Post
, February 10, 2011.

reaction of the Chinese Communist Party state:
Perry Link, “The Secret Politburo Meeting Behind China’s New Democracy Crackdown,”
New York Review of Books
blog, February 20, 2011.