Absurdity, Allegory and China

Fm. the Feets Don’t Fail Me Now file:

In a grim follow-up to my New Year’s post offering up cautionary advice on resolution making, China’s national football team, (aka Guozu, which literally translates as ‘National Feet’) in complete disregard of my heart-felt warning, publicly promised to qualify for the 2010 World Cup with an oath that included the line: “We swear by death to kill along the bloody road of defending the honour of the motherland and realise our youthful dreams.” I can tell some whoppers, but none this bone-headed, though I imagine I could be suspected of fabrication, since swearing an oath and going public with it supports my assertion that resolution and suicide fall under the same umbrella. So, for the record, I am NOT making this up.

But as everything else goes here there are more and weirder twists to the story. The Feets have promised to not only win, but they’ll do it for $1 million dollars, the bounty posted by the China Football Association as incentive for the men to make the cut. The cool $1 mil is just part of the broader scheme, with lesser, though substantial, amounts offered up for other victories: a team ranked in the Top 50 equals 500,000 RMB (today, 68,000 USD; tomorrow, who knows?), a lesser ranked team bags them 300,000. Agence France- Presse (AFP), who is carrying this story, doesn’t mention how the money will be used or divvied, and I am not about to speculate on who might be receiving the funds.

But no matter where the money ends up I think that this could be ultimately construed as betting on the game you’re participating in, a clear violation of ethical conduct even in China. As far as money goes, all three of their qualifying round opponents could easily scuttle the oath by offering that sort of change to a few key Chinese players, throw in a Benz or two, a house for Mom, and jobs for all male relatives above the age of 14, making that million start looking like a bag of old rice. When money speaks, the one who screams the loudest is the one who commands the most attention and influence. The Chinese deeply know this. Personally, I believe the boys should have gone for more. They too need to think about their Future, one, which I believe is very much up in the air, especially if they all morph into goats.

But let’s assume that these guys actually are doing it for the Chinese equivalent of The Gipper – honor, loyalty, deepest ideal – it’s still a no-win situation. If they don’t make the cut, not only will they have lost, but they will have lost in the face of an altar full of Money. In China, this is a great Sin. But if, in fact they are able to make it through the qualifying rounds, they’ll be seen as have been motivated by greed, not nationalistic spirit and verve, especially if one of the players in a display of overwhelming and nonsensical exuberance, screams into the rolling cameras something along the line of “Hi Mom! We won the lotto!” In a weird twist of tense and time – the future loopingly influencing the past – this seems to be where the saying, “I wouldn’t do that for a million bucks,” comes from.

I want to tell these boys that they’ve got to fess up that they were muscled into Oath. Someone needs to tell them they’ve been meng-ed. Meng, an ancient blood covenant that dates back to at least the early Eastern Zhou (770-221 BCE), was the ritualistic swearing of an oath along with the drinking of sacrificial blood in an attempt to stem the growing Chaos. Though the victim’s blood was generally from an animal lower on the chain, mostly sheep, there were occasions when the blood used in covenants was, in fact, human. The practice was later considered by folks, including Confucius, as being a sign of social decline and moral decay. Hard to argue with that, after understanding just how unraveled things had become during this era, culminating in a period called the Warring States, a 250 year zero-sum gain slaughter as kingdoms battled for the right to be the last one standing and, subsequently the one to make all the rules. The meanest, cleverest, most god-like of them all, Qinshihuang, was that last Man, which truly marked the beginning of unified Chinese culture, 221 BCE. The only thing missing from the National Feet’s publicized oath is the post-meng blood on the lips. But depending on the outcome of the qualifying games, that may very well come later. And they’ll be happy if they’re lucky enough to only end up with blood on their lips.

I’m hoping that there is an escape clause, something like a parachute that will ease them back to earth, since clearly they’ve lost their minds and are caught up in some very dangerous crosswinds. And a parachute may be good for the more practical reason that they may very well need them when they are offered up as crash test dummies and hurled from the roof of the CCTV Headquarters Building, from the maul-head’s wedgy southwest point, the “cantilevered penthouse for the management.”

This public taking of Oath has the potential for great Tragedy. It has all the elements already present – the agonia, hamartia, the attentive chorus, the stage big as the world for them to prance, dance and kick upon. The only thing missing is Katharsis, which I’m afraid we have a while yet to wait for.

On the journey to becoming a colossus no one sets out to trip. A more measured tone for those who head out on the colossal road is to understand that anything can happen, and that, more often than not, the outcome will not be the one ideally expected. A failure to qualify will bring great embarrassment down upon the country, the provinces, the counties and the hometowns of all those oath-swearing boys. Then there are the extended families and all of their futures, and before you know it, faces are falling off. Faces thick as flies littering the Middle Kingdom, enough that it’d be hard to not step on one or several in the normal course of a day. (“See that guy in the subway exit with the tin cup? He’s the third cousin, twice removed of one of those losers from the soccer team.”) It’s complicated. Money Can’t Buy You Love or a lot of other things too. Like victories in soccer matches. There’s a lesson here for all of us to pay close attention to, and chances are this will not be a pretty one to watch unfold. Tragedy has a way of making folks do crazy things. Let’s just hope that, unlike the Achilles’ buddies, no one takes the greater notion to sacrifice young women upon tombs of all those fallen heroes.