This Generation (4 page)

But that's just fine, for in my experience those so-called education experts are all too fond of sounding off about moral issues while they themselves behave quite unscrupulously. Whatever meets with their approval can't possibly be any good, just as it's unthinkable that any movie that passes the censors could be at all worth seeing.

Age eighteen is, in legal terms, when one becomes an adult. But often I hear people exclaim, “I didn't start dating till I was nineteen.” And then everyone is surprised by such a late start. What's strange about the situation in China is that most parents won't allow their school-age children to date, and many are even opposed to their children dating when in college, but as soon as the kid graduates, the parents pray that all of a sudden someone perfect in every respect and—if possible, with an apartment of their own to boot—will drop out of heaven, and their child must marry them right away. Now, that's well thought out, isn't it?

There are actually no such things as “premature romance” or “eating forbidden fruit.” At whatever age, so long as both parties are willing, any kind of attachment or sexual activity is an intrinsic human right that should not suffer any interference or obstruction. That's my view, radical and ridiculous though it may be.

May 28, 2007

In my last essay I
made the point that there are actually no such things as “premature romance” or “eating forbidden fruit”; that at whatever age, so long as both parties are willing, any kind of attachment or sexual activity is an intrinsic human right that should not suffer any interference or obstruction. To my mind, this is a remark that in the broader international context would be considered entirely normal and would not excite any controversy. But here a lot of people are criticizing me, telling me that once I have a daughter of my own I'll realize what a stupid thing I said. Some argue that it's a mistake to promote Western-style sexual liberation, for that will destroy China's tradition of a moral and ethical culture.

Actually, all I was doing was telling you what is your right. If you're convinced that this is not your right and that other people are entitled to interfere in your romance, then I'm not going to insist. I simply hadn't realized that it counts as Western-style sexual liberation if I say you can go to bed with the person you love. Or maybe it is just your daughter to whom you are denying this right? That's the way lots of men are: when womanizing, they're always hoping
their partner will be young and uninhibited and ultra-liberated, but as they have their way with someone else's daughter they remain firmly committed to the idea that no one should ever put a finger on their own. This I understand.

The virtues that we celebrate here in China—modesty, sincerity, diligence, simplicity, helpfulness, warmth, unity—are, in fact, the qualities that we most lack. We're actually quite hopeless at these things. Just take sincerity—when does this nation ever have a social environment that encourages real sincerity? You can, if you like, give me a hundred positive examples of these qualities in action, but I can easily give you ten thousand examples of the opposite. The reason why we have so many historical anecdotes promoting these values is precisely because, if you look at the larger picture, they are so thin on the ground. We have to rely on this tradition to create a fake image that is peddled about for us to study and get our kicks from. The so-called traditional Chinese virtues are just things fantasized out of history—all the more so these days, when we have fantasized for so many years about these virtues that really have nothing to do with us. But these virtues are certainly appealing and, to put it politely, they represent the ideals that our people should work toward, given that we range from low-caliber to borderline-defective.

Of course, we Chinese always rate the Chinese people very highly. We should be content with that. After all, a full one-fifth of the world's population thinks we're wonderful. If you dare to differ, you're a traitor, and we'll spit on you until you drown in a sea of sputum.

And don't you forget—our land is vast, our resources are rich!

June 2, 2007

Today I read in the
news that one of our filtered keywords has died.
⁴
No evaluation of his successes and failures was provided. But I was reminded of when he was top dog in Shanghai during my middle school years and I used to hear his name every day.

It's only when the state's filtered keywords pass away, I realize now, that our nation will fly its flag at half-mast. No accident, however major, that affects ordinary people ever seems to prompt the lowering of the flag to half-mast. The only time I can really recall seeing a flag at half-mast was when the flag was raised at school one day and got snagged half-way up, but that was a case of the flag raised to half-mast rather than lowered. I notice that in capitalist countries (where, we know, people suffer wretchedly under conditions of cruel exploitation), whenever there is a major loss of life the government will lower the flag to half-mast to register its grief.
Of course, you may argue that they're just putting on a show, but we Chinese can hardly claim to be averse to play-acting, can we? So I hope that one of these days China can put on a performance for its people. Of course, we follow rigorous scientific principles, so we need to decide in advance how many casualties will be needed to trigger this event, and in our country, this figure needs to be set very high—at least ten times what you'd find in other low-quality nations—partly to show that our half-mast has more significance than other people's half-masts, and partly because, given the current scale of our industrial accidents and traffic fatalities, if we set the figure too low, our flag would hardly ever make it up to the top of the post.

Because it has never flown the flag at half-mast for ordinary folk, our government may well find it difficult emotionally to come to terms with the idea. I have a typically Chinese solution to address the problem: If we replace regular flag posts with new ones twice as high, that would make everyone happy, for then a flag flown at half-mast would still be at its normal height. Another advantage is that this would provide enormous gratification for our people's pathetic national vanity—oops, national pride, I mean. Other countries' flags rise to the top of the pole in the time it takes to play their national anthem, but with our extra-tall flagpole and our lofty national stature, our national anthem will need to be played twice before our flag reaches the top.

Of course, I hope the day will never come when we need to lower the flag to half-mast in mourning for ordinary citizens, for that would mean a terrible disaster had happened—at the very least, the collision of two jumbo jets.

June 15, 2007

As a reasonably competent writer
in school, I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event I had first to brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion at the time. In the days when there was great concern about the “Seven Improper Behaviors,” for instance, you would need to cook up a story related to this theme. If I told how somebody was about to spit and how I dashed over, stretched out a hand, and caught the gob of phlegm just before it hit the ground, and threw in some praise of our great country for good measure, I'd be sure of getting a high mark. Unfortunately, I only ever won second prize, because there was always somebody who succeeded in singing China's praises even more effusively than I did. Even today I still feel like saying to those first-prize winners, “I really scraped the bottom of the barrel with my essays—how did you manage to be even more shameless?”

In recent years a number of no-hopers in the university entrance examination have submitted essays that were awarded zero points. I've had a look at these essays, and what they all have in
common is this—they truthfully express the author's opinion. But our educational system does not permit the truthful expression of opinion—what it tries to do is discourage you from having your own views, and then, using teaching materials that are decades old, tell you that
this
is right and
that
is wrong. If you don't agree, it's not as though you're taking your life in your hands—all that will happen is that you will be expelled or will get no points. Or maybe you will pick up a few—as long as you make an attempt to answer, the grader is not supposed to give you a zero. But the only real difference between the successful essay and the failed one is that you think this way and I think that: What's the logic in you getting full points and my getting none? Even if I haven't bought into the master narrative, I should at least qualify for a consolation prize, no? And for an essay—something that lacks an objective grading criterion—to be evaluated on the basis of the appraiser's personal tastes and incorporated into a university entrance exam that professes to be fair: This in itself is unfair.

Fortunately, though students care about the marks they get for their essays, they have little interest in the essay assignments. It's things written off as junk culture that enable them to salvage a few shreds of imagination and creativity.

It's fair to say that many people's experience of telling lies starts with writing essays, just as their limited experience of telling the truth starts with writing love letters. From an early age, model essays and essay-writing textbooks convey to students that the function of an essay is to eulogize and extol—to expose and censure, on the other hand, is considered negative and downbeat, dark and bleak. Some people may like to use Lu Xun as an example of how to get a point across,
⁵
but the role he plays in the school textbooks is eulogy and extolment too, with him as the lead vocalist. Praise and appreciation are good things, of course—who doesn't like praise
and appreciation? The problem is that the subjects we can praise and appreciate are dictated to us. You're not allowed to eulogize a girl's butt, for instance, or extol a hooker's technique. All kinds of restrictions force our essays into a straightjacket, until in the end everything we write is fake.

Naturally, loyalists of the old guard may well say that no matter the quality of the essay, this kind of writing does develop a student's ability to deploy language and create sentences, just as mathematics, though it has limited application after a certain point, fosters skill in logical analysis. Such people exemplify exactly the kind of blinkered and defective thinking that Chinese education fosters. They are simply underestimating their own intelligence. The ability to write develops hand in hand with skill in logical analysis: After you learn to read and accumulate some experience in reading, you are naturally capable of writing essays—if you can talk, you can write. Of course, some people can write better than others, and there's not much one can do about that. At the same time, the ability to analyze things logically is not something one can acquire or enhance just through working on a few math problems—that's just self-deception. Many scam artists capable of meticulous thought and impeccable logic have never had much education, whereas most people taken in by a scam will happily tell you the area of a shape in trigonometry. Our education system likes to give the impression that people have no natural talent and get everything from education. That way, after you leave school, you will naturally accept that human beings have no inherent rights—that rights are something only conferred by the government.