Revising History Belongs to the Victor

September 8, 2010

The Economist has a Blog called Asia view that reported the Chinese Communist Party is planning to celebrate the 90th anniversary of its founding in 2011.

It seems that John Woo, the director of Mission Impossible II will be involved in shooting a film called The Great Exploit of Building the Party.

I am sure that surviving Chiang Kai-shek’s purges will be there along with The Long March and Deng Xiaoping’s Getting Rich is Glorious.

However, China’s Sexual Revolution will be absent.


American Revisionism – Who will win?

The Economist mentions that thousands are working on a book, the publication of the second volume of A History of The Chinese Communist Party. Since the victor always writes history, I wonder if China’s George Washington chopped down a fictional cherry tree too.

What’s interesting is that Communist officials say they will propagandize the valuable experiences the party has accumulated through a long struggle, etc. etc. 

Asia view says, “Nothing new there,” but doesn’t bother to explain that it isn’t very Chinese to act like an American and share the dirt while going to therapy so he or she may learn to forgive his or her parents for being human.

I’ve written before that most Chinese do not like to share embarrassing news with strangers.  This has nothing to do with Communists and everything to do with being Chinese. When history is revised in China, it is Saving Face.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Mao’s Last Dancer

August 20, 2010

I saw the movie, Mao’s Last Dancer today.  Unlike most Westerners, I went with two people who grew up in China and survived the Cultural Revolution.

As we left the theater, my Chinese friends made these comments. “Great movie. Well done. It shows what China went through. If American audiences don’t see this movie because the lead is Chinese, they don’t want to learn about China.”

Evidently, the movie’s distributor agreed since Mao’s Last Dancer was only in one old theater near us that plays serious, artsy movies.

However, for the first showing of the day, it was a nice audience—several hundred at least.

Mao’s Last Dancer was a great but misleading title.  How could Li Cunxin have been Mao’s last dancer when there are ballet troupes all over China (even today) as in Beijing where Li learned ballet?

The Huffington Post review said the movie was middlebrow and rises above the pack if only by a little.  The film critic was Marshall Fine, and I disagree with him.

If Fine knew more about the Chinese and China’s history, he might understand why I disagree. 

When Li was a child, China was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, a form of national (or collective) madness that lasted about a decade and ended after Mao’s death thanks to Deng Xiaoping.

Mao’s Last Dancer does a subtle but good job showing what rural life was like during the Cultural Revolution and afterward as attitudes started to change in China.

The movie also shows how tough the Chinese are when it comes to education. Working to gain an education is serious business in China—even today.  What you see while Li and the other children are learning ballet reveals the Chinese mindset.

The New York Times review was kinder but still off the mark.  Mike Hale, writing for the Times, says, “Mao’s Last Dancer is a story of a young and flexible Chinese man who comes to America, where he’s seduced by disco, creative freedom and a honey-haired Houston virgin…”

Can anyone blame young Li for being seduced by a glitzy party country build on debt while the early 1980s China is a drab, colorless place just emerging from its shell? At that time, China’s metamorphosis was just beginning.

If Li had gone home to China and married the Chinese ballerina he was sweet on, today he would be living a lifestyle similar to what he saw in America then. China has changed that much. 

What took America more than a century to achieve, China accomplished in the thirty years since 1980. In fact, I was disappointed that there wasn’t a scene near the end showing one of China’s modern cities that compares to the Houston Li saw when he first arrived in America.

Hall’s conclusion was wrong. Mao’s Last Dancer is not “strenuously brainless”.  If Hall knew more about China, he would understand why my two Chinese friends believe the movie is worth seeing for its story and its educational value.

See The Home Song Stories

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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The Long March Part 2 (1/4)

July 28, 2010

In June 1935, eight months and over three-thousand miles into the Long March, Mao’s Red Army moved into Western Sichuan Province.  For a time, Mao’s troops were safe from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. 

Meanwhile, the Japanese launched an attack on another northern Chinese province.  The Japanese now occupied most of Northern China and the Chinese there knew little about the struggle between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek. Feeling abandoned, they were alienated from the Nationalist government.

However, the Red Army had to cross the Snowy Mountains with peaks as high as 15,000 feet.  Because these mountains were so rugged and dangerous, the Nationalist Army stopped the pursuit and waited for the mountains to kill Mao.

Some historians believed crossing these mountains was a blunder, but Mao had no choice. Only defeat waited behind him. There was no turning back. 

The thin air and the steep, snow-covered mountains exhausted the troops. A shortage of food, lack of firewood, snow blindness all contributed to the challenge. While crossing the mountains and linking up with the Fourth Red Army, thousands were lost. Once joined, the combined armies number 100,000 troops.

The next challenge was the deadliest obstacle of all—a high-desert grassland. There was no choice. All the easy routes were controlled by Chiang Kai-shek’s troops. Then heavy rains came, which turned the grassland into a swamp.

Return to The Long March – Part 1/6 or go on to The Long March – Part 2/2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Mao Zedong, the Poet

July 27, 2010

Many outside China think of Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) as a brutal dictator. Yet, he was fifty-six when he became the ruler of China and seventy-two at the beginning of The Cultural Revolution.

In fact, while commanding the Red Army during The Long March (1934-1935), we see a man who respected China’s peasants proving he was more of a nationalist than a Communist. Then there was the move away from Communist Russia after Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, when Mao said, “Our common old friend, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, doesn’t approve of this.”

In 1935, Mao’s poem, “The Long March”, reveals an awareness of the sacrifice and the willingness to suffer to accomplish great things.

The Red Army fears not the trials of the March,
Holding light ten thousand crags and torrents.
The Five Ridges wind like gentle ripples
And the majestic Wumeng roll by, globules of clay.
Warm the steep cliffs lapped by the waters of Golden Sand,
Cold the iron chains spanning the Tatu River.
Minshan’s thousand li of snow joyously crossed,
The three Armies march on, each face glowing.

Mao was a complex man, and it wasn’t until after the failure of the The Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1961) that the fatal attraction and power of leadership corrupted him leading to the horrors of The Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), which Mao’s critics in the West use to define him.

Anyone who follows all of Mao’s life instead of relying on his last decade would understand that he cared deeply about the common people while punishing the landowners and wealthy, who abused them.  On the other hand, his foe, Chiang Kai-shek, supported the landowners and wealthy while crushing the peasants and workers.

There is a post on About China.info that says, “Mao’s poetry exhibits a spirit of boldness and power, weaving together history, reality and commitment… Bold transformation of myth and literary quotations are a distinct feature of Mao’s poetry.”

At Mao Zedong Poems, Two Birds” A Dialogue (1965), reveals what Mao may have been thinking about as President Johnson increased America’s involvement in Vietnam. Was Mao also warning us of what he was about to do in 1966, when he launched The Cultural Revolution?

Two Birds: A Dialogue (1965)

The roc wings fanwise,
Soaring ninety thousand li
And rousing a raging cyclone.
The blue sky on his back, he looks down
To survey Man’s world with its towns and cities.
Gunfire licks the heavens,
Shells pit the earth.
A sparrow in his bush is scared stiff..
“This is one hell of a mess!
O I want to flit and fly away.”
“Where, may I ask?”
The sparrow replies,
“To a jewelled palace in elfland’s hills.
Don’t you know a triple pact was signed
Under the bright autumn moon two years ago?
There’ll be plenty to eat,
Potatoes piping hot,
Beef-filled goulash.”
“Stop your windy nonsense!
Look, the world is being turned upside down.”

Through Mao’s poetry, we learn more about the man—not the modern emperor.

Discover China’s Privately Passionate Poetry

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The Long March – Part 1 (5/6)

July 27, 2010

Mao’s army began to win more battles. One of Mao’s battalions marched 85 miles in one day and night to seize a Nationalist fort without firing a shot. The fort commanded an important river crossing. When Chiang Kai-shek discovered what Mao’s forces had done, he was furious. Meanwhile, Mao was gaining new recruits and support from the peasants.

Chiang’s KMT army did not have the support of most peasants since his army supported wealthy landowners. The KMT also had a reputation for dishonesty, corruption, and heavy taxation—all the wrongs that had collapsed the Qing Dynasty.

Most peasants trusted the Communists, who treated them with respect and refused to take any food while the Nationalists confiscated all the food and supplies they wanted without paying.

One challenge stood in Mao’s way—the Yi minority, who had stayed free of Chinese rule for decades due to their fierceness. Mao sent an envoy to negotiate and an agreement was reached. In fact, many Yi warriors joined Mao’s army.

However, there was another river to cross and Chiang’s army was moving to trap the Communists. A bridge built in 1701 was the key. The race toward this bridge would lead to the most important battle of the Long March.

Return to The Long March, Part 1/4 or go on to The Long March – Part 1/6

________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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