Absurdity, Allegory and China

There are lots of congrats being passed around on China’s turning 60, though I must say I am not in a “pass around comps” mood right now. In the process of greasing the skids for the happy face of holiday, they’ve gutted access to the internet, and I have an uncomfortable sense of certainty that what has been stripped away for the grand celebration of making Mr. Hu the next TAM idol, will not be coming back this time. And though I could be wrong, this bold upshift of draconian control is more than just a shot across the bow. This has allowed the fixers the opportunity to shut it down for several months and enforce their no-protest mandate as a prelude to keeping it shut.

Here in my neck of Tianjin, along with the historic blockages, we are living through a week of audio overload coming from the square in front of the Olympic-built stadium. Late yesterday afternoon it was banjo music, which I can handle, though five minutes before that it was Chinese female faux operatics. And for four hours prior to that it was all over the place even more, matching the last three days and two nights (I fear we are in-prep for a zhongqiu-ed Night Three) of bits of Nirvana, Paul Simon, random rap and reggae interspersed with odd sound effects and periodic female militarized nationalistic screamers, all in one minute (or less) snippets. It’s like a kid with serious ADHD and a thing for not swallowing his meds has been given access to someone else’s iPod along with a large set of industrial speakers. I have no idea what is going on, though I do know how unpleasant it is living within the fallout zone. I have given up trying to  fathom what Mao, the Great Leap Forward (you know, when everyone became steelworkers) and “serving the people” has to do with amped-up and mostly western music. We tried to watch the Tian’anmen show on Thursday, but when we turned on our television – one that comes with the flat – it didn’t work. The last time I’d turned it on was back in June to watch the NBA final game. Sometime between then and now it went “bad.” Oh well. So, we couldn’t watch the Flamingos (women in pink with Uzis) and Chairman Hu, the architect of the last two decades of the pre-Confucian minority policy, in a Mao suit.

But on a more serious note, all you folks who said something to the effect of, “Ahh, ain’t those colorful dancers just so dawgone cute, Andy?” you need to know that many, if not all of them, were forced into being there. (I’m pretty sure that one of the primary missions of  Zhongyang Minda is to provide extras for official extravaganzas: “Listen kid, you get to go to school for a reduced fee, but when we say dance, you gotta dance. Capiche?”) That would be the only way you’d get Tibetans to dance down Chang’An Jie. Chang’an, Tibetans and the Chinese have a contentious history that goes back to the Tang. And let me tell you, nobody’s forgetting that. It’s like a chapter from deepest Deuteronomy. The symbolic value of “peripherals” dancing like chained bears at the navel of the CCP is akin to making the big guy dance by shooting at his feet. Students who were on the Chang’an dance floor had dramatically foreshortened (or cancelled) summer breaks. Many of the Tibetans dancers barely got home when it was time to turn around again and head back to practice, thereby denying their families their much needed help at harvest. These were not volunteers.

So, we continue to endure the holiday in the blast zone of one of the largest officially restricted “public” spaces in the city, making it difficult for everyone who lives within a one-click radius to have anything that could possibly be misconstrued as a restful holiday. (I know, it’s China and holidays are times for highly magnetized nationwide “attractions,” where great numbers of people hive and are happy to do so. But not everyone. Last night they gave us back our ability to be able to speak in our own home to each other at 9:47 PM. And this morning they tore into it again at 6:42. Or more accurately, Day Three-And-A-Half of idiots with microphones, going for the Guinness record for running sound checks nearly continuously since early Wednesday evening (it is Saturday morning here) and for the last two weeks, off and on. This morning the man at 6:42 AM read from his script: “Wei… Wei…. WEI! YI-ER-SAN-SI. WEI! WEI! WEI! XIEXIE! XIEXIE. SEN CUE! SEN CUE! I don’t think he’s thanking me for waving my finger out the window every hour or so for the last trio of days.

So, am I happy for China and their celebration? Well, if the people are happy then I am happy, but how are we to really know how happy (or unhappy) the people really are as long as there is nothing but the one and only official story. I think everybody’s happy to have a few days off, though the migrant workers one floor below us who fired up their hammer drill and sledges at 8:08 this morning are working like it’s any other day, despite all the official puff-up across the street. Though noise is noise and it all keeps you awake, there is clearly a different intent informing what’s coming at as from below and what’s shoving it’s way officially in through our windows. It’s hard to judge which one is more desperate.
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Eat a moon cake!
Red bean paste.
Mmmmm….