This blog is moving

Hello everyone. Anyone who discovers this blog which I ended a few years back, some posts here are being imported to my new main blog, heyitsjohnnyc.wordpress.com and you can find information on Asia, Asian-Americans, Third Culture Kids, life hacks, and my personal adventures. See you there!

Chinese Identity: Tradition and Modernity

Will the real China please stand up?

An ancient culture rich with tradition, almost completely lost in a flash with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s: from Confucius to Daoism to the inventors of gunpowder and more, China has centuries of history and ideas that penetrate the interest of the scholarly from intellectual pursuits to myths and traditions that are unfamiliar yet fascinating to the west. Contrastingly, it is also a country whose modern identity is forged upon being seen in economical and business mindsets, as well as a key global force in politics today. Of these two identities, who is the "true" China?

The answer is both and neither.

To illustrate the issue of identity from the external and the internal perspective, I present you with snapshots from different angles of my partner.

My partner is a young lady whose lineage invites people who view her with awe and wonder (at times much to her annoyance) when they see her as the exotic beauty from a land rich with traditions foreign to the wayward westerner, hypnotic and seductive, yet elusive and fragile.

They see the Chinese characters she writes in her notebook as esoteric and full of the same essence which carried on the wisdom of Lao Zi and Confucius in them for centuries.

They hear the language that has been spoken for centuries by high court officials with elegance and authority, understood by over one billion people in the domain throughout the ages.

In the eyes of the fool, this is what a Chinese woman personifies when they imagine her, thinking of a fantastic China that is perhaps more apocryphal and mythic than accurate, yet so prevalent an image amongst the uneducated.

Now in the eyes of those amongst the Washington Consensus and the Corporate Vultures, they see a young woman in a completely different way:

They see a trendy and attractive young girl who is yet another consumer ready to be branded with the newest designer brand, to be torn from the shackles of a former communist ideology into the legions of the consumers in the name of global capitalism.

They see the Chinese characters she understands and try to find symbols to replace the ideograms she knows with far more tempting leanings, from the dollar sign to the logo of the new Louis Vuitton bag she is persuaded to buy, and finally the symbols on the global stock exchange appearing next to the traditional Chinese characters to prove that their investments yield the high rate of return.

The language she speaks is no different from any other person who understands the language of money, and in a land of 1.4 billion mouths, money speaks very loudly there, regardless of the control the Chinese Communist Party attempts to exert over her life. It is her and her kind who the global market will conquer China through rather than through military force as they once did in history when countries went to war for power, which has now changed to clashes in the marketplace for hegemony instead.

Those are two prevalent perspectives that somehow seem to create two very different people that are the same person whose history has fostered a generation that struggles to redefine itself apart from the ancient tradition and the mere consumer statistic.

Regardless of the view from the outside looking in, there is a very different story to be told with few parallels to be found. This is when history becomes her enemy and her pride, conflicting emotions that at times complement the changing face of the new China's generation.

Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Zi, Zheng He, and Qin Shi Huangdi: these names are part of the history many Chinese took pride in before much of it was lost in the Cultural Revolution when literature and art was cleared away to foster the communist ideology and the cult of Mao Zedong, as there could be no other Gods before Mao and no other isms before Maoism.

But the history never went away, it was re-imagined from the communist perspective as it was eventually re-imagined once again when Mao passed on and China liberalized itself under Deng Xiaoping and new freedoms were allowed that disassociated China from its Mao era, but not without repercussions.

Growing up with parents who were told to embrace Maoism and later told to forget about it, influenced by the stories of the Red Guard terrorizing the cities and denouncing counterrevolutionaries; then going to school learning about Chinese history without the Red stain of communism and blood over the histories to learn about the old tradition; and finally being socialized by the gradual opening up of China to the world of consumerism and global prestige as the leaders modernize China without Westernizing (a very thin line, ironically) but trying to remain strictly Chinese without having a clear notion of what they want their China to be, and who this generation wants the world to see them as, and who they see themselves as.

Reading a history that should be her own, being told stories of a past that is still difficult to put completely behind, and an ambiguous future lying ahead as well as a difficult period of transition now, I ask you this: what is the China that exists in your mind, and who are the Chinese who exist in your mind? For whatever you can imagine and read in the millions of pictures and stories of all things China, your questions and answers are no more difficult to understand than it is for the Chinese themselves.

It goes even further: the image the the Washington Consensus and many of the Chinese want to believe is their China is the global leader with strong industries, a growing military and economy, high trade and tourism as well as political prestige, and the metropolitan destinations of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Now imagine how easy it is to think of this as the only China that exists, and realize that the other 3/4ths of China exists out west, where much of the land and people are still barely touched by modernity, but hardly immersed in old Maoism. The same rural countryside where domestic human trafficking, child labor, rampant HIV, and separatist minority groups in Tibet and Xinjiang provinces deal with a Han culture that is unwelcome in what they see as still their own land.

This is where the final paradox takes place: in the same China, what a family earns in a rural village for one year less than 8000 RMB due to provincial official corruption (a sore for the central government that wishes to do away with petty low-level corruption undermining its prestige and image) can be spent in a moment by the same girl who sees a Gucci bag in a Shanghai designer store.

The center cannot hold in this land of paradoxes and duality of identities, but consumerism and global prospects have made it easy for the current generation of Chinese in the eastern fringe to conveniently forget that their world is also defined by the less-fortunate who live in the same earth and land as them, but in completely different world and Chinas for that matter.

Asian Americans: Who Do You Want to Be?

To be Asian, to be American, to be Chinese:

From a sociological perspective and as an outsider, I find the group that is identified as Asian Americans as a complex group with an identity crisis. I mean no offense when I list these observations and opinions, because as an outsider with no attachments to either my American or Philippine heritage, the values of this group vary as one narrows down to specifics.

What I talk about here is how Asian Americans, compared with other ethnic groups in America, are marginalized due to a lack of awareness of cultural diversity outside of the community, and as a means for security within the community. For many I have come across, one is Asian based on the color of his or her skin, the ability to use chopsticks and read Chinese characters (or some variant), or some other stereotype.

The problem with that assumption is that it would decidedly not categorize many Southeast Asians or South Asians as what makes one Asian in the North American context, but in Britain the term usually refers to those of South Asian and Middle Eastern ancestry. An even bigger problem is the term itself is Eurocentric in that Asia specifically refers to all the lands East of Europe. In the North American context, however, the problem lies in the fact that it ignores the diversity of the community and each of their different cultures, histories, languages, and traditions.

What I specifically find interesting is how the larger group itself is one of convenience in terms of buying into the lie of marginalization superimposed upon them by the occidentals.

Let me illustrate in the example of someone I will call "Eric":

When Eric claims proudly that he is Asian American, does he emphasize he Asian ancestry or his American birth privilege?

Why does he fight to be recognized as an American, yet criticizes the society for having a hard time as recognizing his place as a fellow citizen (or in this case, denizen)?

Why does he boast about how proud he is to be Asian, yet when immigrants from Korea come, he does not see them with empathy, but with an air of inferiority for not being American or accusing him of not honoring his ethnic heritage in favor of the American dream?

Moreover, if Eric wants equal rights when he complains about how unfair it is for Asian Americans to always be treated as "forever foreigners", then why is it he does not feel any special passion for the achievements or the sufferings of close communities such as the Japanese Americans for their imprisonment in America during World War II, yet was proud when Gary Locke becomes the first Asian American state governor in the American mainland?

It is disillusioning when I run into individuals like these who represent the extreme case, but I will clarify now are NOT the majority or the norm amongst Asian Americans. Rather, it is subtle characteristics and some of these more obvious than others that appear in people I have observed in the sociological context.

In another example, I ask more questions about a girl named "Ashley":

When she is amongst peers in the academic setting, why does she highlight the struggles and achievements of the community that she believes others virtually ignore, yet feels no special passion (or knowledge, for that matter) for Chicano or African American communities, preferring to superimpose her?

When she talks about how culturally sensitive and diverse her background is, why does she do in a manner that flaunts her ethnicity and culture as more of a fashion statement than an expression of her individual being?

It's the marriage of the American and Asian culture(s) that creates a very vague culture that many of the ethnic groups within the community agree upon unites them:

1) that they come from a region with a few cultural similarities but have similar values based on familial relations,

2) that they are marginalized as one group by an outside group,

3) that their experience as immigrants or children of immigrants who try to hold on strongly to their mother cultures creates brotherhood through shared experience, and

4) that there is strength in numbers for representation of the group as a whole rather than each group trying to fend for themselves.

Those are only a few pillars I have observed, but none of what I say should be taken as absolute. These are, as I stress for the sake of avoiding offense and misunderstanding me, observations from an outsider. From an anthropological and political perspective, yes, there is strength in numbers and people have traditionally gone into bigger groups for security, but the big criticism I have of the homogenization of these different groups into Asian Americans, coupled with the homogenizing nature of American culture (or the melting pot as they say), is that their values and identities don't become absorbed into one collective voice and consciousness that fosters solidarity in the community, but rather a loose confederacy that is unable to meet all the individual needs of each ethnic community as a whole, whereas the individual communities within the group do not have the numbers to meet their needs, especially for smaller ethnic communities like the Hmong and Laotians versus the larger groups like the Chinese and Filipinos.

It's the damned if you are, damned if you aren't dilemma I see here, which is what makes me admire the activists who mean to contribute to the community, yet know that it is a losing battle because it is difficult to please all the sub-communities within the Asian American community. In a nutshell, it's hard to please everyone all the time, and that's what makes me admire the few activists out there, and also helps me empathize with them when it all comes down to them choosing individual gain when giving to the community goes unappreciated and underappreciated, especially with free riders.

Visitors from theworldly.org, welcome to my blog! I must apologize, but my past few articles have not been published here yet, but they will appear simultaneously by the end of this week due to a recovery issue. Check back soon and look around at the archive for now, but stay tuned. - Johnny

Plato, Hobbes, and Confucius: Dialogues and Analects Against Democracy

The Greek philosopher Plato was one of the many Greeks who frowned upon the concept of democracy, which in its original translation, meant the rule of the people-- but in its original context, the people who rule were actually closer to the mob mentality and the chaos that comes out of it. Historically, the old Peloponnesian War of the 5th century BCE had the democratic power of Athens throwing its weight around trying to impose its will on other Greek city-states, whereas the militaristic oligarchy of Sparta was fighting against their empire-building ambitions and for their own sovereignty. This example is often used by critics of democracy when they show how it has traditionally never been the pure and infallible ideal that has been championed by the west (especially the French and Americans) for so long.

Plato believed that people should be ruled by what he refers to as the "philosopher king" who is a just, fair ruler that becomes the leader not because he wants to rule (he actually does not want to wield power at all; he actually avoids it), but because he fears what could happen if an inferior ruler was in charge, and takes the job only to make sure it is done right.

By contrast, the Confucian belief system was that everyone had a role in society based on specific social relations that are often misunderstood in the west, especially when confusing it with the later Neo Confucianism of the Song Dynasty that outlined women's roles as being strictly tied to their duties in the home. In terms of how the relationship between the ruler and his subject in the traditional Confucian philosophy, it was not just people putting their faith in the absolute authority of the ruler, but the accountability and responsibility of the ruler to his people, lest their faith be misplaced.

Looking at these two perspectives of governmental responsibility, how do we assess democracy in an age where the definitions still elude many? To begin with, it is important to know that democracy is not simply entitling everyone the right to vote, as it can happen as an act for show, much like the elections in Iraq that voted Saddam Hussein into power for another term before he was ousted in 2003 along with his totalitarian dictatorship. Democracy-- especially in terms of development-- refers to the institutions and bureaucracies, as well as the accountability of them and officials in charge for their actions and responsibilities.

How much of this has been lost since democracy has been mis-represented as the freedom to express offensive ideas or promoting the process of voting rather than creating actual accountability and representation? When looking at current failures and corruption in governments masquerading as democracies in name only (the fallen Republic Iraq and the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea being prime examples), or the Americans who allow hate groups to exist in the name of their democracy, it is somewhat disillusioning to see what has happened to the idea of democracy.

Under the current (mis)understanding of democracy, the Philippines, after a visit from Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew, earned his comment that it "needed more discipline and less democracy" due to the communication divide. Part of the problem in developing countries is that the criticism of leaders by allowing an excess amount of expression in democracies is that it creates such a level of distrust that governmental support and political aspirants rarely have a chance to work in good faith due to the unfair association of being susceptible to corruption even before committing those acts, which in turn inspires them to achieve their political goals through corruption in order to survive.

Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan a pillar of western political thought, would be disappointed at the way that the allowance of excessive free expression undermines the authority of the government and the respect due, which in turn weakens the relationship between the citizens and the government. After all, the social contract did not just detail the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens, but for the citizens to be responsible for their government as well, meaning that if they expect to have a responsible government, they cannot erode its image by mixing its effectiveness with the personal lives of its leaders, especially if it is no concern of the people to judge whom their leaders are sleeping around with behind their wives' backs, especially if those same leaders are doing a good job.

Perhaps the real issue is not to just let the idea that democracy is about voting and freedom of expression, but to correct that misconception and clarify its meaning of accountability and responsibility, as well as limiting the expression that allows libelous articles from tabloid-level journalists to mistakenly draw connections between state leaders and their extramarital affairs while promoting an image of the government that is consistent with its level of responsibility.

Cultural Imperialism 101: Colonizing the Panties

One of the greater divisions in the cultural gap between east and west is evident in the popular western sexual fetish for Asian pornography. Asian pornography does not necessarily refer to pornography produced in Japan or Korea, but based on the ethnic stereotypes for people who would otherwise all be categorized as Orientals. Oriental here is referring to not actually being from the Orient (as the term is now far too archaic and politically incorrect), but to the idea and concept that those who are perceived as having Asian heritage are forever foreign, exotic, and mysterious, left to the minds of the misinformed and uneducated to fantasize and speculate, thereby objectifying the culture and people they have misrepresented and misperceived, especially in their pornography.

The basic stereotype for women is that she is exotic, forever a foreigner, knows ancient pleasure techniques, submissive, and willingly offers herself to the westerner, whom she finds far more pleasing and greets as a liberator rather than lecher. The stereotype for the male is that he is sexually impotent due to his supposedly smaller body size (and consequentially his penis size as well), selfish, and oppressive to women. Both stereotypes speak more about the racial bias from early or initial impressions that westerners have of the Asian peoples rather than being drawn from factual evidence, as well as a complete disregard for culture.

One of the common fantasies in Asian pornography are usually about how some sexually-charged women are visiting the west in search of sexual partners or encounters with western men, whom they perceive as physically more attractive and capable with larger penises and muscular frames. Parallels to the Nazi Germany ideology of the Aryan as a symbol of human perfection comes to mind when observing this mindset.

Another fantasy involves a young girl lost and seemingly unaware of the environment she has found herself in, to which the lecherous pornographers seek to take advantage of her by telling her things such as how she will be a model and that they simply wanted to get to know her better, which involves much sexual touching and objectifying much like they were inspecting goods, before they proceed to make sexual advances on her.

Dialog also proves to be tasteless: when two performers are discussing the physical differences of each other's anatomy and resulting incompatibility as one example seen on a popular American site specializing in the Asian fetish, the male performer says, "the egg roll does not fit in the take-out box!" Hearing lines like this, one feels more inclined to laugh before shaking his or her head in disbelief.

It is such garbage like this that generates income for the pornography industry at the expense of ethnic groups being misunderstood and the viewers absorbing the misinformation, fostering ignorance in the long run. Surprisingly, some of the people who benefit are the performers, as a number of the female performers are college students earning tuition money. Some could argue that it is no different from prostitution, but one performer in the U.S. said "wouldn't you blame the education system for forcing me to subject myself to this, with student loans and financial aid harder and harder to come by?"

Other people have different opinions. One college student from China at UCLA who was asked about how the stereotype affects people's perceptions of her said that "I feel people are approaching me because they want to try something new instead of actually getting to know me or about my culture, like I'm some sort of new food they want to try for the sake of trying as they attempt to hit on me and tell me how much they like my culture. It's very degrading and disrespectful, and I don't tolerate it." Since arriving in the U.S., she feels that people are constantly trying to take advantage of her the way they do in pornography. "I'm not interested in their approach, their methods, or pornography. I'm just another person not from the U.S., I don't want to fulfill someone's fantasies from what pornography they have watched," she said after the stereotype and the popular fantasies.

If the west wants to start taking other cultures far more seriously, then perhaps some methods of control should be utilized in spite of constantly fighting for creative expression and corporate profits. Perhaps we need to be reminded that such ignorance can be dangerous, recalling specifically the American soldiers in Okinawa, Japan or Angeles City, Philippines where they were charged for raping local girls, under the impression that they can get away with their actions for being men of privilege, coupled with the misconception that these women were helpless and completely submissive-- common misrepresentations of both the western men and Asian women in pornography.

Text messaging: the new tool for democracy?

People power ousted Estrada in the Philippines, and popular protests in China that the government has a hard time controlling how they are organized both share one thing in common: they were organized by text messaging on mobile phones.

As of 2005, 27% of China were the owners of mobile phones, which allows for far more expression than e-mails that are censored or blocked by a regime that closely monitors its critics, who are usually viewed as synonymous with dissenters. As of 2006, the Philippines, a country with only 2 million Internet users and 3 million land phone users, had over 30 million mobile phone users, many of whom can multi-task anything they do while text messaging in one hand without even looking at the screen.

It is this extreme familiarity with the technology that helps people overcome the censorship of the news media, even in places like North Korea where some 20,000 mobile phones are smuggled in and used as a primary source of news about the outside world that the DPRK wants none of its citizens to be familiar with in order to protect its regime. Even the most outspoken blogger cannot compete with international text messaging when his or her blog is subject to being blocked or even shut down with heavy Internet censorship.

But development is not what causes people to resort to text messaging to spread information or organize protests: South Korea, which has over half of its population connected to high-speed Internet connections, still has an obvious divide between the people and the information. According to Cathy Hong of the online edition of Christian Science Monitor:

In South Korea, for example, many experts agree that current President Roh Moo Hyun would not have been elected without the help of the Internet and SMS. Back in December 2002, conservative mainstream media favored his rival Lee Hoi Chang to win the election, especially when a former rival who had endorsed Mr. Roh unexpectedly withdrew his support on the eve of Election Day. But Roh's core supporters, who were of the younger "information technology" generation, launched a massive last-minute campaign. They fired off e-mails and text messages to 800,000 voters on the morning of election day, urging them to go to the polls. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-30-politics-text-tool_x.htm?csp=34

So even with greater access to technology, text messaging is now in of itself a necessary tool for the spread of information, especially with technology like the Apple iPhone which grants Internet access for direct access to news articles online that are complementary to people who have configured their mobile phones to receive news via long or multiple text messages. The mobile phone is an important tool in Africa as it is the one piece of technology that links everyone together, especially when farmers in the rural countryside get actual prices from friends or relatives in the city via text messages so that they do not get cheated out of their earnings from the agents who come to pick up their goods to sell to the city and give their own daily prices.

The downside to people text messaging is the limitations on characters each text message. People do not necessarily utilize the dictionary tool, but their abbreviations sometimes habitually end up in written form, including people occasionally writing words such as "2gthr" under the strains of in-class writing assignments, such as in the Philippines.

Beyond text messaging, mobile phone technology has had its own fair share of scandals, from the Tammy Nyp scandal in Singapore of February 2006 when a student's phone was stolen and erotic movies of her and her boyfriend saved on the phone were sent to multiple people and even uploaded to the Internet, despite Singapore's strict controls and censorship. Furthermore, some debates are going on about having mobile phones with cameras being allowed in places such as locker rooms, and security measures need to be taken into consideration amidst the advent of mobile technology, as it is much easier to snap a photo or record a movie of classified information and send it long before being caught.

Not to totally dismiss the use of the video and camera function of mobile phones however is the video below uploaded to youtube of one of many instances in which students have taken video recordings of abuses by teachers. One case in Taiwan caused an uproar and debates on the subject of corporal punishment in Taiwan, available in BBC's archive at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4378412.stm.



Mobile phones have already penetrated popular culture as much as the Internet has, possibly even deeper considering their ease of use and wider user base. Movies such as Japanese horror film One Missed Call show creative interpretations of mobile phone use, such as its plot about a ring tone that plays and leaves a prophetic message of the listener's own voice and approaching death by supernatural means.

Perhaps in the near-future, there may be stricter controls over the content of mobile technology and capability as governments are wary of their people's creative use of the technology, especially when terrorists potentially use text messaging to organize or plan attacks. There is also the potential for governments to take a page from the Israeli government, who in 1996 planted a bomb in the mobile phone of Palestinian suicide bombing mastermind Yahya Ayyash which resulted in his assassination.

So in the age of information and misinformation, we see a new field that is still in its developmental stages in the form of mobile technology, especially having seen what its potential can already do. Just don't go expecting your phone to explode in your face

More articles about the text messaging phenomenon

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-30-politics-text-tool_x.htm?csp=34

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/25/news/internet.php

http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/11/010591.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401379.html

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1176738,00.html

http://www.bulatlat.com/news/4-25/4-25-texters.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/asiabuzz/2001/01/23/

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Mobile-rings-changes-for-worlds-poor/2005/04/21/1114028473872.html