FWD: CND Books and Journals Review, September 4, 1994
Bo Xiong
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| \/___| |/ China News Digest | |/__/ |/
\_______/ (Books & Journals Review) |_______/
September 4, 1994
CND B&J is part of CND-Global News Service. Broadcast weekly or bi-weekly,
it attempts to bring to readers news and reviews related to Chinese arts,
literature, and articles of interest to supplement daily CND news service.
No. Subject # of Lines
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1. Where the Avant-Garde Meets Mickey Mouse ............................ 85
2. Shanghai's Other Commodity: Sleaze and Sin .......................... 56
3. Chinese Sup on the Sweet and Sour Days of Mao ....................... 72
4. China's Mania for Baby-Boys Creates Surplus of Bachelors ........... 189
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Editor's Note: We welcome all CND readers to contribute to this column. If
you encounter any China-related books or journals that you
would like to share with other CND readers, please send in
comments, newspaper reviews, journal articles, and excerpts
etc to cnd-e...@cnd.org Thank you.
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1. Where the Avant-Garde Meets Mickey Mouse ............................ 85
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Forwarded by: C. Mok
Source: Newsweek, August 9, 1994
Written by: George Wehrfritz
Shanghai's rebirth as a hotbed of capitalism has also sparked a renaissance
in modern art. Led by three avent-garde painters, the movement is
recapturing the spirit of Shanghai's foreign concessions, which before the
1949 revolution were safe havens for radical Chinese novelists, painters and
filmmakers. Known in art circles as Political Pop, the work of today's
painters shares a common subject: the cult of Mao Zedong, father of China's
communist revolution, whose image they debunk as nostalgia for the Great
Helmsman reaches new heights. "I'm yanking Mao down from his godlike
status," says painter Yu Youhan. "I want to relax and have fun."
Yet Shanghai isn't Greenwich Village. While economic reforms have broadened
artistic freedoms, Shanghai's painters rarely exhibit on their home turf for
fear of persecution. Establishing a carefree artists' enclave remains a
fantasy. "In China, everything is political," says Wang Ziwei, 31, who
works in a secluded Pudong studio. Ignored by Chinese art critics, Wang and
his colleagues have won praises from international collectors. Foreign
patronage has made them well-to-do, but they are artists without honor in
their own city.
CULTURAL REVOLUTION: The leaders of Shanghai's avant-garde movement are all
survivors of Mao's 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. An art teacher and
part-time painter, Yu, now 50, was publicly denounced during that period for
his "black class" capitalist background -- his father had once worked in a
bank. Li Shan, 49, once belonged to the radical Red Guards. And Wang --
still a teen at the time of Mao's death in 1976 -- missed years of formal
education as schools closed during the upheaval.
After the rigid Maoist period ended, a rush of artistic experimentation
swept across China. What has since jelled as the Shanghai style is a brand
of pop that is both light and humorous. "It has a light side that
glamorizes the mundane, teases the dogmatic and pokes fun at high station,"
says Chang Tsong-Zung, art critic and curator of Hong Kong's Hanart TZ
Gallery. There's a sharp contrast with Beijing, a rival center of modern
Chinese art. The Beijing school is "about repression and fighting
repression," says Wang. "They think art is too important." Beijing artists
take their main inspiration from the contemporary art scene in Russia, while
Shanghai's painters -- like their city -- are more cosmopolitan. That
sophistication has dulled political sensitivities, allowing for creations
that tickle the ghosts of China's past.
Yu's most renowned work, for example, juxtaposes Chairman Mao with American
pop singer Whitney Houston, depicting both in psychedelic, floral patterns.
Yu always portrays Mao as he appeared in famous historical photographs, much
as icon painters used stock religious images. He adds color as a graffiti
artist might spray-paint a brick wall. The purpose, he explains, is to
reduce Mao to the level of pop icon.
His student and protege Wang Ziwei borrows from another ubiquitous Western
symbol: he grafts Mickey Mouse ears onto Mao's cherubic head. Another of
Wang's works shows rows of tiny Minnie Mouses in Mao suits, and the canvas
has the plastic colors and shiny textures of wrapping paper. Li Shan, who
has painted some 30 Mao portraits since 1988, also likes to flirt with
sexual taboos. In one early work he dressed Mao as a Shanghai dandy. In
his "rouge series" he filled huge canvases with detailed airbrush images of
Mao as a hermaphrodite. And in his most recent Mao portrait, he portrays
himself arm in arm with an androgynous likeness of the Great Helmsman, each
of them grasping a single pink lotus. "In the past we had to affirm Mao,"
says Li. "If I'd painted things like this 20 years ago they'd have cut my
head off."
TRENDY GALLERIES: Today, works by Shanghai's avant-garde painters fetch
upwards of $15,000 in Hong Kong, where they hang in trendy galleries and
adorn swank business clubs. Foreign museums, too, have discovered
Shanghai's art scene. Last year works by the Political Pop trio drew crowds
to the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art for an exhibition entitled "Mao
Goes Pop." Similar shows have been held as far away as the Netherlands,
Italy and Japan. Soon Yu and Li will become the first Chinese painters ever
to contribute to the prestigious Sao Paulo Biennial. Hong Kong art critic
Chang expects the show to further elevate Shanghai's reputation. "Major
critics will see them and take notice," he predicts.
But the Chinese public will hardly notice. There's a virtual ban on
coverage of avant-garde works in China's state media. And an older
generation of Soviet-inspired social realists jealously guard admission to
top academic posts around the country. The Chinese Communist Party's
Propaganda Department approved China's first -- and so far last -- major
avant-garde exhibition way back in early 1989. Today Shanghai's modern
artists make do by sharing their creations with each other and a handful of
art students at private, low-key exhibits.
Even if they weren't so obscure, it's not at all certain that the Shanghai
artists would be very popular. Given the current wave of nostalgia for Mao
and his revolution, it's unlikely that the Chinese would applaud modern
interpretations of their hallowed leader. "After I gave a painting to an
old uncle of mine," recalls Yu, "he didn't get back in touch for a year."
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2. Shanghai's Other Commodity: Sleaze and Sin .......................... 56
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Forwarded by: C. Mok
Source: Newsweek, August 9, 1994
Written by: Matt Forney on Fuzhou Road, Shanghai
"The best brothels hung placards beneath their door lanterns emblazoned with
the name of their finest prostitute," remembers Zhu Lin. Before the 1949
Communist Revolution he lived within sight of the hundreds of bordellos
along what is now Fuzhou Road. At the time, Shanghai enjoyed a reputation
as "the most sinful city east of Suez." The top women entertained only the
business elite. Women lower in the hierarchy serviced crude overnight
millionaires, desperate compradors down to their final sailors. Even if
Chinese police had wanted to halt the decadence, they were powerless in the
foreign-ruled concessions along the Bund. But when Zhu was 20, the newly
victorious Communist sealed the whorehouses, arrested the pimps and
delivered the prostitutes to Party reform schools. "Almost overnight, I
lived in a quiet neighborhood," he says.
No more. Brothels masquerading as karaoke parlors again dot Fuzhou Road,
overdressed young women cruise for drinks in hotel discos and erotic dancers
from Ukraine offer the closest thing to a striptease Shanghai has witnessed
in 45 years. The city boasts the single best dance hall in China, plus
scores of smaller nightclubs and discos. Even pricey restaurants have disco
lights on the ceilings, and after waiters clear the tables, they clear the
floor for a late-night boogie. Investment in afterhours entertainment is
pouring in from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the police are once again
accomplices in the red-light business. Shanghai has reclaimed its status as
the soul of China's demimonde.
Prostitution in Shanghai is discreet compared with places like Bangkok or
Manila -- streetwalkers are rare and sez shows are out. More typical is the
Dong Fang Cheng, a restaurant in the former British concession with private
karaoke rooms upstairs and a hulking barker on the streets outside promising
"pretty girls to sing songs." Patrons looking for sex are assigned a
singing partner who may be willing to strike a private deal, giving the
management deniability.
The arrangement leads thousands of Shanghai women into prostitution. Fan
Minghui, 22, pockets $90 in tips on a good night at the Dong Fang Cheng. She
won't sleep with customers, she says, but admits that many prostitutes
started off in jobs like hers and ultimately were lured into sex by the
hundreds of dollars they can earn in a night. "I quit school, so I have to
repay education fees, and this is my best chance to earn serious money," she
says.
COUNTLESS SCAMS: The rebirth of Shanghai's nightlife has given rise to
countless scams. There's even a local expression for this: _zai ren_, which
literally means "to slaughter"; Shanghainese say it in combination with a
pantomimed karate chop to indicate a hustle. "Did they zai ren?" a
cabdriver asks when he picks up a fare on Zhapu Street, Shanghai's oldest
neighborhood for midnight dining. Unsuspecting customers taken by
prostitutes to a restaurant there can face a bill for hundreds of dollars --
and suddenly turn out to be the owner's cousins. Under the circumstances, a
mere $100 for a few plates of live prawns marinated in rice wine is
considered a bargain. "They only slaughtered you a little bit," says the
cabby.
Police recently launched a crackdown on vice, which has had modest success
in driving blatant prostitution out of high-class hotels. But 45 years
after Mao's army trooped into town, the view from Zhu Lin's windows is
likely to be tinted red for a long time to come.
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3. Chinese Sup on the Sweet and Sour Days of Mao ....................... 72
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Forward by: Dan
Source: The New York Times, July 25, 1994
Written by: Philip Shenon
BEIJING -- Wan Jingfeng is too young to remember much about the chaos of the
Cultural Revolution, but he is old enough to pocket a small fortune from the
memories of millions of others.
Mr. Wan, 33 years old, is part of what must surely be China's oddest
culinary trend. He has joined the ranks of Beijing restaurateurs who are
offering diners the chance to relive the deprivations of Cultural
Revolution, the 10 years in which Mao Zedong solidified his cult of
personality with waves of political terror and forced migration.
"Even though some of the memories of the Cultural Revolution are bad, there
are also good memories," said Mr. Wan, smiling as the first of the evening's
customers pushed through the door. "At least that's what they tell me."
Mr. Wan's restaurant, the Black Earth, is decorated with faded posters of a
portly, smiling Mao, who beginning in 1966 exhorted millions of young
Chinese, the so-called Red Guards, to go into the streets to "make
revolution." In a second stage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
he directed the Red Guards to go to the countryside to "learn from the
peasants," a mass migration remembered in the restaurant's interior
decoration.
The walls are paneled with roughened wooden planks, meant to suggest a
peasant village, while the menu is a reminder of the hardships that the Red
Guards faced when they finally got to the countryside: coarse corn porridge,
corn fritters, cornbread, shredded radish.
In the spirit of the times, the metal tables are unadorned with bourgeois
affectations like table cloths. On one wall, a poster screams, "Follow the
path of the Great Chairman Mao ! "
The restaurant's 26-year-old manager, Liu Feng, had to raise his voice to be
heard over a tape recording of chirping crickets, meant to remind diners of
the sounds of rural China.
" People like to remember this period because it was a time when their lives
were simple," Mr. Liu said. "Now things in China are much faster, more
complicated."
Whatever the reason, the nostalgia for the period is potent. And the food is
decidedly tasty, even if it is about as plain as Chinese food gets. On a
recent Saturday night, the three-story, 260-seat restaurant was jammed, with
a line of eager diners stretching out the door and down the street.
At least three other Culture Revolution restaurants have opened in Beijing
in the last year. Their appeal seems to have less to do with any enthusiasm
for Mao and the tumult of the Culture Revolution than it does with a simple
nostalgia for long-departed youth. Many of the diners readily acknowledge
that they were members of the Red Guards, although it is impossible to find
any who will acknowledge that they took part in the worst excesses of the
period. Hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have died during the
Cultural Revolution from persecution, malnutrition and other mistreatment.
"The Cultural Revolution is such a deep memory for us," said Zhu Khun Nian,
the owner of Laosanjie Restaurant. The name translates as Re-educated
Youths, the term used to describe the first urban teenagers who heeded Mao's
call and left for China's harsh northern provinces, where most stayed for
years of backbreaking farm labor.
"Sometimes when people come through the door to the restaurant, they have
tears in their eyes," said Mr. Zhu, 47, a former Laosanjie himself. Among
the restaurant's most popular dishes is the "Educated Youths Reunion
Platter," a fried mixture of vegetables, seafood and spices. "It's sweet,
sour, bitter, spicy --symbolizing all of the emotions we felt at the time,"
Mr. Zhu said.
With their Maoist motifs and upwardly mobile clientele, the new restaurants
are a meeting place of the old China and the new.
At the Black Earth the former Red Guards are armed with the weapons of
China's new, free-market revolution--cellular phones, black-leather
briefcases and credit cards. (The Black Earth accepts Visa, Mastercard and
their Chinese equivalent: the Great Wall card.)
The prosperity of Luo Lisheng was evident in the electronic pager hooked to
the belt loop of his designer jeans. A 42-year-old Beijing banker, Mr. Luo
was dining with three of his bank colleagues. All had pagers, too. "When I
was a teenager, everybody had to go to the countryside,"Mr. Luo said. "At
the time, I thought this was a very hard life. But my views have changed.
Now I think it was a time of testing. I learned how the peasants lived. I
became self-reliant."
Mr. Luo poked at his plate of venison stew, a meal that he acknowledged
would have been a rare delicacy in the days of the Cultural Revolution. "We
were served meat only once a week," he said.
He could not deny that the restaurant tended to sugarcoat a time of terrible
hardship in the history of China -- and in his own life.
"But that does not worry me at all," he said. "That is not a problem because
we do not need to be reminded every moment of the bad things of the Cultural
Revolution. All Chinese people know what really happened at that time."
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4. China's Mania for Baby-Boys Creates Surplus of Bachelors ........... 189
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Forward by: Dan
Source: The New York Times, August 16, 1994
By: Philip Shenon
BEIJING -- In the free markets of the new China, young men are coming to
realize that there is something even more precious than a new car, an
electronic pager or a Swiss-made watch.
And that rare commodity -- an unmarried woman -- is becoming harder and
harder to find.
There are not nearly enough of them, a situation that is creating anguish
for millions of Chinese men and has at least the potential of
revolutionizing the status of women in this traditionally sexist society.
"What sort of woman do I want?" said Xu Wenyuan, a lonely 30-year-old who
agreed to dress up in a skyblue satin suit and to warble a few bars of "Song
for the Motherland" on a television matchmaking show in Beijing. "It doesn't
matter."
If he had hoped to prove his desperation in the search for a wife, Mr. Xu
succeeded in those two minutes in front of the cameras. "Women are so hard
to find now," he explained. "And I just want one."
For Mr. Xu and other Chinese men in search of love, the offerings of the
Chinese State Statistical Bureau are downright heartbreaking. The 1990
census showed that of a total population of 1.2 billion, about 205 million
Chinese over the age of 15 are single. And of those, there are nearly three
men for every two women.
A 3-to-2 ratio might seem bad enough to most men. But the numbers suggest
that the situation becomes far, far bleaker for a Chinese man the longer he
stays unmarried.
The Government's figures show that while the vast majority of Chinese adults
marry by the time they turn 30, eight million people in their 30's were
still single in 1990. And in that age group, the men outnumbered the women
by nearly 10 to 1.
There is an ugly explanation for the relative scarcity of unmarried women:
the desire among many Chinese couples for boys at almost any cost.
The preference for boys has meant that millions of Chinese girls have not
survived to adulthood because of poor nutrition, inadequate medical care
desertion and even murder at the hands of their parents.
China's strict rule of one child per family, imposed in the late 1970's and
meant to defuse a population time bomb, has only worsened the insistence on
having male heirs. Ultrasound machines and ready access to abortion have
made it relatively simple for parents to guarantee that their one child is a
boy.
Nature's Revenge
But after generations of tampering with nature, nature has begun to exact
its revenge. The numbers suggest that tens of millions of men alive at the
turn of the century will be lifelong bachelors because there will not be
enough women available as wives.
"Of the young people who come into this office, at least 70 percent are
men," said Li Xiaotong, a Beijing social worker whose Government-sponsored
computer dating service is swamped by eager men searching for a mate.
"The girls are very happy with this service," Ms. Li said, "because they can
set their standards very high for a prospective husband -- intelligence,
education, money -- and then have a good chance of finding a man who meets
their standards." Her grin suggested that there was some justice in all of
this.
"The men always ask for beautiful girls," she said, "and I tell them that
they must be realistic. The goals they set must not be too high, because
there are not enough women."
Long Treated as Chattel
Apart from having their pick of prospective husbands, Chinese women may find
another silver lining in the numbers churned out by the Government's
demographers.
In a China newly receptive to capitalism, people are being reminded that in
the free market, scarcity equals value. And so it could be for Chinese women
after centuries in which the supply of potential brides equaled demand, and
they could be-- and were--treated as chattel.
"I do think that to some extent this shortage of women will play a positive
role in improving the status of all women," said Guo Daofu, a senior
economist for the State Statistical Bureau. "I think this will lead to
changes in society. Men will have to become more open-minded."
He said a new open-mindedness could be of particular benefit to older
unmarried women, who have traditionally had almost no hope of finding a
husband. Custom here holds that a man should marry a woman at least several
years younger, and that the bride should have less education. A result is
that even after the age of 30, women, especially educated ones, have few
prospects.
"There is a saying in the countryside that a man who marries a woman who is
three years older has found a bar of gold -- that he can benefit from her
maturity," Mr. Guo said.
"Now, I think many more men will act" on this proverb.
There are several theories about how a badly lopsided sex ratio would affect
-- and probably improve -- the status of Chinese women. A Western diplomat
who has studied the situation said the Government might be forced to offer
incentives, like educational benefits and tax breaks, to encourage couples
to have girls.
Concern About Consequences
"If this Government made it not only acceptable but in some cases preferable
to have girls, you'd see a huge change in the way women are treated
throughout society," he said.
While China's leaders tend to welcome anything that will limit population
growth in the world's most populous country, there is alarm about the
consequences of so many single men in a society that values the family above
all else.
Chinese sociologists and journalists have suggested that with men unable to
find wives as sexual partners, there could be an increase in prostitution,
rape and -- among men -- suicide.
"This discrepancy between the sexes is a matter of serious discussion among
our Government leaders" said Wang Wei a professor of ethics at the People's
University in Beijing. He pointed to a series of kidnappings in which city
women have been abducted by bounty hunters who deliver them to rural farmers
desperate for brides. "You could see more of that," he said.
Although the problem is more serious here if only because of its vast
population, China is not the only country facing a crush of single men.
Figures compiled by the United Nations show that the world's second most
populous nation, India, with nearly 900 million people, has nearly 133
single men for every 100 single women. As in China, Indian custom demands
that couples produce male heirs.
In the industrialized world the ratios are much smaller, and in some
countries single women outnumber single men. According to the 1990 census in
the United States, there were more unmarried American women than unmarried
men, about 54 percent of unmarried adults to 46 percent. A similar ratio was
found in Japan in a 1985 survey.
Perhaps no one knows more about the scarcity of unmarried women than China's
best-known matchmaker: Yang Guang, the host of "We Meet Tonight," the
popular matchmaking television show.
Bachelors Get Bold
For 20 minutes every Friday night, Ms. Yang invites a group of single men
and women to make a televised pitch for a mate in a cross between "Dating
Game" and a talent show.
"We receive very few applications from young women who are willing to appear
as contestants," said Ms. Yang whose show takes credit for 274 marriages
since it went on the air four years ago. "The men are much more bold about
agreeing to appear. And they are bold because they have to be."
During the show, viewers are invited to write in for a date, and the plight
of China's single men becomes all the clearer when the mailbags begin to
arrive in the studio the next day.
"Maybe a man who appears on the show will get 30 letters," Ms. Yang said.
"But a woman will get over 50, sometimes 60. Sometimes many more. Our
record-holder is a 24-year-old woman who got more than 500 letters."
Many Chinese men are being driven to look at what are, certainly by Chinese
standards, unconventional ways of finding a bride.
The first computer dating service, the Great Wall Information Company,
opened in Beijing in 1989, and others have followed. Some provincial and
city governments have stepped in with their own matchmaking services. But
whether high-tech or traditional, the marriage brokers all suffer from the
same problem: a dearth of available women.
Lonely Hearts on Street
The quandary of the lonely Chinese male is evident in the hangdog looks of
the young men who gather on Saturday afternoons to watch the passing crowds
along Wangfujing Street, the heart of Beijing's central shopping district.
Rows of these lonely hearts lean against the storefronts, hoping that some
young woman will return their stares. It rarely happens, they say with a
moan.
"Sometimes the girls are very stuck up very choosy about whether they will
consider a boy for a husband," said Wang Jian, an engineering student who,
at 22, worries that he may never find a mate.
His friend Meng Yuchang, 23, was even more inconsolable. "Without enough
women, maybe we will all become monks," he said, kicking the toe of his
sneaker against the sidewalk. "This whole generation of Chinese men will
become monks. And maybe then the women will feel sorry for us."
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