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Unofficial religion in China

I”ve had about two dozen tabs open in Firefox for the last week or so, keeping pages open that I thought might be worth following up on. One of these is the statement of Professor David Ownby to a “Congressional Executive Committee on China”, on the topic of Unofficial Religion in China. I can’t remember how I arrived at this page, though I suspect it may have been via Scott Phillips’s blog.

Anyway, it’s quite interesting. It starts with an account of how ‘modern’ qigong was developed post-1949, by attempting to strip the religious and philosphical elements out of traditional mind-body health and healing practices. It also covers the growth of ‘folk Christianity’ (apparently, Christian villages are easier to control, because they’re more amenable to hierarchical power structures), and of the Falun Gong movement.

Regarding the Falun Gong, they seem to be getting a bit more active here in Singapore lately – I’ve noticed people handing out their newsletters, in Chinese and English, outside MRT stations in the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure what to think about them; they seem friendly enough, but a religious movement that hijacks satellites starts to put me in mind of Aum Shinrikyo a little bit too much…

The growth of new religious movements is one that I find fascinating, though: take a look at this article in The Atlantic on the subject… It’s something that could be worth watching in China. Professor Ownby’s statement mentions that much of the Christian revival in China stems from pre-1949 believers who kept their faith, and are now starting to spread t again. I wonder whether the same thing is happening with traditional Chinese religion, such as spirit-mediums?

Invasion of the history snatchers

The Qianmen district of Beijing is one that is very dear to my heart – although sadly, I now have to write that it was very dear to my heart. It’s gone now, replaced with an identical copy of itself.

I’ve mentioned before why I liked it so much. I spent many summer nights there, getting lost in the narrow, wandering, alleyways, drinking beer and eating delicious food in tiny little restaurants where staff bantered with customers, and everything was great as long as you didn’t look in the kitchen.

On my first trip to Beijing in 2004, my Norwegian friend Stefan and I stood around watching the card games in the street, and stayed around until the only people left were the locals, who would be walking around in their pyjamas because of the heat.

In 2005, I hung out with Fei from Xi’an; we dived into the old courtyard buildings, looking at the different architectural styles, and chatting to the migrant workers who paid extortionate rates for clapboard rooms that had been thrown up in the courtyards. Everywhere we went, we encountered a warm welcome. With her, I had a really enjoyable evening in a tiny dumpling shop, where we were quizzed and teased by the rest of the diners.

In 2007, I went back to find the area reduced to rubble, surrounded by hoardings. The new “walls” were graced with huge pictures of the future Qianmen; it looked like Second Life.

I guess I’ll see the reality for myself next year. It sounds like it’s appalling. I’ve just found an article about it in the online journal China Heritage Quarterly. An area that once was part of the jianghu (in my interpretation of it – see my About page):

he previously privileged occupants of the Inner City during the Ming dynasty were forced to move elsewhere, often to new residences in the Outer City. As a result of this brief southern migration Qianmen flourished, as erstwhile residents of the Inner City relocated their roots and businesses to the south. In addition to its already existing reputation as a mercantile centre, the area also soon became a new entertainment district which residents and visitors, many of them scholars from other provinces who were in Beijing to sit the civil service examination, could dine out at the many restaurants that lined the streets, find lodgings, purchase luxurious goods, or attend a performance of the opera.[1]
Fig.1 The demolition of buildings in Qianmen district in January 2007. [Kelly Layton]

Equally important for social life in Qianmen, and for its status as Beijing’s entertainment district, was the commerce in brothels catering to the varied sexual appetites of their male clientele. Indeed, according to the local historian Zhang Jinqi (and many salacious accounts in ‘apocryphal histories’, yeshi), it was here that the Tongzhi Emperor (r.1862-74), during one of his late night incognito excursions to escape from the frustrations of court life and his libidinally frustrated eunuch retainers, contracted syphilis whilst fulfilling his own concupiscent urges, from which he would eventually die.

has been transformed into a sanitised, commercial zone of shopping malls disguised in “authentic” Qing-style buildings.

OHO’s redevelopment of the area of Qianmen promises to be a new, faux-Qing-style pedestrian shopping mall, a place where Beijing’s residents and tourists may engage in lifestyle practices that dabble with history whilst never really having to come to terms with it.

Of course, the life will all be gone, and the community dispersed. I guess I can only be glad that at least I saw it as it was.

Knowing when to stop

Up until mid-afternoon it was quite a nice day, but then the monsoon clouds hit us hard and the rest of the day was spent with deafening* thunderclaps and pouring rain.

By the time I got home, the last drizzle was petering out, and I decided to chance going out for solo practice. However, the spot that I use in the park is quite low-lying, and there was still a lot of water standing around. The concrete volleyball court that’s my patch was still a bit slick, but seemed to be drying off, so I tried a couple of sets of taiji. I quickly realised, though, that all of the rain evaporating out of the sodden earth into the evening was making the air thick with humidity, cold** and clammy – almost feverish. So I called it quits and came home again.

As I passed through the housing estate next to my apartment block, a big yellow tent was up for a Buddhist wake. The flaps were pulled tighter than is usual – because of the rain, no doubt – so I couldn’t see the coffin. There were lots of plastic tables and chairs around, with a small group of the mourners manning this shift sitting around in a desultory way. At the centre table were three monks: two older, one quite young. One of the two older monks was tapping away on a gourd (is that the name for the thing that goes tok-tok-tok? I’m not sure…) as the other two chanted. Well, one did… The younger monk chanted in a loud, determined and totally flat voice; the older monk kept trying to join in, in more musical way, but stopped each time as if thrown by the sheer tone-deafness of the other…

*Not really. Very, very loud, though.

** By Singapore standards – maybe 23, 24 Celsius? How’s November going for you, anyway?

Cultivation and compassion

An interesting post from Scott Phillips showed up in my RSS feeds overnight: Pretense. Tongue firmly in cheek, he suggests that the real reason we study martial arts is simply because we want to look good. Well, hehehe, that might work for some, but my waistline is proof that taijiquan is not the way for those who want to look buff! Still, there’s something to what he says, though not perhaps in the way he intended.

For me, the study of martial arts is a part of my attempt to “cultivate my person”, in the Confucian sense:

“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy”.

Kong Fu Zi

Through the practice of martial arts, and the internal forms in particular, we learn to govern our bodies as well as our minds. Having learned to govern ourselves, we can treat others with openness and respect since, if we truly can understand and control our own selves, we need not waste  our energy on negative emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, and so on. Having no negative elements in our behaviour towards others, we automatically  become more likeable and attractive: we are, in fact, cultivating “inner beauty”. So Scott’s got it right!

This attitude reminds me of the answer many Buddhist masters give when they are asked how, if they claim to desire to free the world from the chains of attachment, they can justify going on long meditation retreats in which they don’t interact with any other people at all! Their answer is that to help others become free, they must  have compassion for them. To have compassion for others, you must first have compassion for yourself. How can you help others to free themselves if you cannot free yourself? Therefore, being able to understand, and regulate, your own mind and feelings through meditation is the key first step to liberation for yourself and others.

This takes us back to martial arts. As my Chinese tutor explained to me, the term “wu shu“ is derived from the ancient characters meaning “no spear”, and has the sense of “the absence of conflict”. This is very interesting: why is that?

The most obvious interpretation is that if everyone  is trained in martial arts then there will be no conflict; no-one would start a fight because they would know that their opponent could defend themselves. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the martial arts world, of course, will know that this theory simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny! There seems to be an endless supply of meatheads who just love to fight for its own sake…

I think that the answer lies with the aim of the role of martial arts in self-cultivation. Using martial skills to beat up your opponent, to overcome them with strength and leave them crushed, is a very primitive application of martial arts learning, and really is only the beginners. Don’t get me wrong here: I know from my own learning that it’s far from easy even to master this level of skill, to be able to beat someone in a fight. I’m nowhere near even this level of achievement.

I think, though, that we need to aim higher. We need to use the self-cultivation aspects of our martial arts training to reach the  point where, through our skill, our  understanding of ourselves, and thereby our understanding  of our opponent, we can not just defeat them but also transform them – that is, to defeat them but not harm them, thus demonstrating the futility of violence and the value of self-cultivation. Thus, a world “wu shu”, of the absence of war, is one person closer.

I know that we’ve all seen this idea a thousand times in cheesy kung fu movies, and that it  risks losing its force because it becomes a cliche, but it’s a pretty good reason for studying  martial arts all the same!

As the hero of the “Eight Diagram Pole Fighter” puts it:  “Brothers! We monks should not kill – but we must also defeat evil!”.

Surfing midnight with the ghosts

Last night was the final night of the Hungry Ghost Festival. The area where I live was aglow with the flare of joss sticks jammed into cracks in the pavement, or in the borders of gardens. Anywhere with some kind of significance had people burning big piles of Hell Money on the street, and in the housing estates the old oil drums had been brought out to act as furnaces.

I  met my friends from Chin Woo, and watched as they burned Hell Money as offerings to the spirits. As I’m not a member, I didn’t take part, but that didn’t stop a certain person from being rude. Well, it didn’t matter, and like I say, the overwhelming majority of Chin Woo people are really cool Quite a few people took photos, and I also took some shots at one fire where only my friends were present. One thing people like to do is to study the pictures to see whether the flames form observable shapes; quite a few seemed to show lions, dragons, and the like, as well as some human shapes. I got one shot  that seemed to show “snakes” (as one friend put it) looping around the bystanders…

Anyway, tonight I’m off to Wales. I was saying to one of my friends last night, it’s a good thing I’m not superstitious… the ghosts were out in force last night, and – let’s face it – today is a pretty ghost-ridden date to be flying. I take off late at night, and arrive in Europe early in the morning, so my flight is going to be close to the date line all the way… surfing midnight with the ghosts, yay!

Film Review: Summer Palace

Yiheyuan, 2006. Dir: Ye Lou

I can see why this film was received well at Cannes: it has a Gallic approach to questioning love, life, and what’s it all about, in drawn-out sequences of talking, lovemaking, or both.

Four main characters drive the story: a woman who can’t show affection except through sex, a guy who can’t stay faithful, a woman who won’t let anyone show love for her, and a disengaged man who doesn’t show his emotions. Although there is potentially lots to work with here, the film rushes through events too quickly, without really letting us get to know the characters well enough; the result is that we don’t really engage with them, to the extent that a ‘shock’ death late in the film doesn’t really move the audience.

The action of the film takes place in two broad chapters, with a short preamble that introduces us to the character who is the film’s prime focus. In the first section, the four are all young students at one of China’s top two universities, Beijing University [my own university, Tsinghua, is the other, and plainly the better of the two ]. Here, they cope with freedom, new experiences, and exploration of themselves and their own development. This process of growth takes place against the backdrop of a period of debate and political engagement, that eventually ends with the massacre in the summer of 1989.

Graduating that same summer, the foursome split up. The female lead begins a slow downward slide into poverty and emotional isolation; the others go to newly post-Wall Berlin, where they spend most of the next decade in arty, bohemian circles (what exactly they were doing wasn’t clear). Eventually, the male lead decides to return to China in order to seek some stability in his life. This sets in motion a chain of events that leads to a death, and to a new encounter with his unhappy ex-lover.

The film was shot on a small budget, and it shows in several ways. In an effort to keep out anachronisms, many of the outdoor scenes in the Beijing sequences are shot close-up; this has the unfortunate effect of giving us hardly any sense of the city – even the Summer Palace isn’t really shown, except for the lake. The budget issue also shows up in some of the sequences during the clampdown on the student protests; some sections here – such as the burning truck – do look a bit cheap. (To be fair, this may not have been a budget issue: obviously, a film touching on a topic which is still officially taboo would have to be shot quickly and without drawing too much attention).

The biggest problem with the film was the pacing, though; it was a bit too draggy, and spread over too long a time period. The repeated use of subtitles to summarize what happened during several years between scenes was a bit clunky, and not particularly engaging. Even so, the film dragged on rather too long; quite a few people walked out of the viewing I went to, and despite my best efforts, my attention wandered quite a few times.

So was there anything good about this film? In fact, quite a lot. The acting was natural, and I certainly know quite a lot of people just like these characters. Each of the two ‘chapters’ was strong. The university period had a very, very strong sense of place and period when the action moved into the crowded university dormitories, and to the student bars where political talk and activism rubbed shoulders with pool games, 80s disco, and folk music. There was a real feeling of idealistic youth discovering themselves and groping to discover the world. The second, more mature, segment, also had strong settings, and the melancholic feeling of getting a bit older, realizing that life hasn’t turned out as we imagined, and wondering what to do about it.

Unfortunately, neither segment was really given time to develop or breathe, and that’s the real failing of the film. The characters, settings and themes are strong enough to work; ideally, this would be two films – a Chinese version of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (and I love those films, so the comparison is a vote of confidence in Ye Lou’s basic material).

Overall: a good concept, that doesn’t quite work. I think I would like to see it again, as fragments of the music, of the conversation, and faces (especially actress Hu Ling!) keep on resurfacing. Don’t go to see it with too-high expectations, but do see it if – like me – you’re an angsty thirty-something with an interest in China!

Review:251

I went down to the Esplanade yesterday to catch Toy Factory‘s production of 251, the story of the second-most famous Singaporean, Annabel Chong. ‘Annabel Chong’ was the stage name of Grace Quek. I went along with a Singaporean friend who knew Quek at school, though not well. I’ve never seen any of Chong’s “performances”, but I did catch the documentary “The Annabel Chong story” on TV back in the UK several years ago.

The play was  both braver and more moving than I’d expected. Grace/Annabel comes over as an almost tragic figure. From her childhood, she’s manipulated and directed to fit other people’s wishes; she’s gang-raped, betrayed, cheated, ‘exorcised’, and never able to be herself. Even when she resists, and strikes out on her own path, other people leech off her talent, and the betrayals continue. By the end, though, we’re left to recognize her talent, and determination to be true to herself, no matter what.

The ‘story of her life’ aspect of the play pushes a few boundaries for Singapore, I think, in its simulation of multiple penetration and other sex acts. However, when Singapore has allowed Crazy Horse to open up here, and is relaxing its censorship of Hollywood films, this isn’t as radical as it might once have been.

What to me was a little bit more sensitive was the political comment. I was going to say something about this, but in a week when discussion of past political events has been banned, and members of the European Parliament forbidden to speak, I think I’ll choose not to.

I’ll just say that I thought it was an excellent performance. There was some evidence of nerves, as some actors occasionally stumbled over their lines, but nothing that detracted from the message of the play. It was thought-provoking in many ways, and used the story of a troubled Singaporean to shed light on identity,  the struggle for self-expression and the cost and pain it can bring for both protagonist and supporting characters, and where Singapore is coming from and going to.  The cast do a great job, and Cynthia Lee is excellent in the lead role. The sound and set designers should be praised as well, in particular the highlighting of numbers at every stage of the play, which sheds light not just on the record-breaking number of sex acts for which Annabel is famous, but also on Singapore’s obsession with statistics and world records of its own.

251 has been sold out for its entire run – deservedly so, not just for the nature of its theme, but for the strength of the production and its message.

Practising in public, redux once more

Well…

So, last night I was out in Duxton Plain Park again. I’d left work late, so didn’t start practising until after 8, which is later than I prefer. Anyway, same routine: one set of Yang-24, one set of CMC-37. Half-way through the latter, I noticed a oldish guy who was walking past stop, and then settle down on one of the benches next to my practice area. He watched me as I went through the Xuan Xuan broadsword set, then the bagua ba mu zhang that Madam Ge’s teaching, then through the basic bagua set that I learned in Beijing (not Zhang style Dragon Form, a different one).

When I stopped to take a break, he came over to chat, and started by telling me off for drinking water between sets (which, I suppose, is what all of my teachers have told me, but my goodness, in Singapore’s climate if I don’t drink water, I’ll pass out!). His name is Mister Ku, a short, white-haired gentleman, and he knows nanquan, wing chun, and southern baguazhang. He gave me a demonstration of a long set of wing chun, which he says is a different style to that commonly practiced in Singapore. As usual, communication was hampered by my dire Mandarin, but we were able to understand each other to an extent. He also gave a brief demonstration of his bagua, which looks quite different to what I know.

I may be wrong – and perhaps someone reading this will be able to enlighten me – but I think “southern baguazhang” means Fu style. I did some research on this before, because I saw a Master from Hong Kong (one of Fu’s disciples fled China to Hong Kong) performing it at the Singapore Chin Woo Association’s 85th birthday celebration. Apparently, Fu style has four palm sets. This clip shows the Fu Style Dragon Form, which isn’t the style Mr Ku showed me, but has some similarities):

After we’d talked for some time, he went on his way, and I did some sets of thesword form. I’m doing something wrong, because last night I kept on ending up some way to the left of where I started, I’m not sure why. While I was doing this, two men appeared on the rise above me, and lit a large number of big joss sticks, which burned brightly, sending thick clouds of aromatic smoke drifting down towards me.

After I’d finished, I met some friends from Chin Woo at a coffeeshop nearby. As I was tucking into my roti prata (and, hem hem, a Tiger beer), I felt a tugging at my sleeve – and at the next table was Mr Ku! He was with a group of older men, one of whom spoke good English. This was Mr Sum, who apparently also studies Wing Chun, and had seen me working on my sword form on Monday night. We talked for some time; they’re all members of the Cantonese clan house I wrote about almost exactly a year ago (and which we were sitting outside at the time; the drums were beating last night, as well). They offered me a tour of the clan house, which I’ll definitely take them up on when I get some free time. One the Chin Woo members knew them as well; they have an anniversary show of their own coming up, and we may get some tickets.

The caretaker of the clan house passed by; he had a small plastic bag full of marbles and ball-bearings. These are from occupants of the apartments on the other side of the road, who apparently get fed up of the drumming from the Lion Dance practice, and use catapults try to smash windows in the clan house. The drummers are acting legally, and obey the 10pm curfew set by law, so they’ve brought the police in to check the projectiles for fingerprints, and to try to track down the culprits – after all, these things could easily kill someone.

So there we are, another amazing night in the world of Singaporean martial arts culture. Fantastic. And I am simply astonished at how many people here seem to know baguazhang, once you scratch the surface!

Poetry evening at the National Library

Last Thursday night I decided to pop down to the Subtext poetry reading at the National Library. It was pretty good; there were four performers:

• Cyril Wong, who read from his latest collection on the gay scene in Singapore. It  was an interesting view from a not-so-well known side of Singapore, but I felt that he used a few too many cliches in his writing.
• Koh Tsin Yen, who wrote meditative pieces on her New England experiences
• Shamini Flint, a very witty speaker, who read extracts from her locally-set murder mystery
• Ray McNiece, an American Tom Waits soundalike, who gave performance pieces on his life as a travelling poet.

I’m glad I’ve finally got myself together to start attending cultural events like this, although I don’t really have the skillset to really appreciate them, I guess. Who knows, though: perhaps attending a few more will inspire me to try to write something myself…