Sitting now in the
same Shanghai Starbucks that I wrote the introduction to my Seven Deadly
Starbuck’s manuscript. It was a rainy
spring then. Middle of winter now. There is the languid, opiated wood cut like
window by Li Shoubai that irked me so much at that time. I was annoyed by yet another representation
of the city’s style as quintessentially 1920s.
I’m sitting across from a finely wrought photo of tropical
Yunnan with mists rolling down the mountain to the farmland below. Beside it is a wood cut map of China and a
plaque that says “Starbucks and Yunnan” in English, but only “Yunnan” in
Chinese. It’s 5:45PM but the morning
rush hasn’t yet abated. I’m lucky to
have found a seat. Nearly everything is
taken.
Characteristically, even in the dead of winter Shanghai is presently
much more moist than Beijing. Leaves are
still notable on trees. I don’t know
when the last time there was precipitation, but it doesn’t feel as though four
months ago, as it does in the north. Dust
is not ubiquitous.
I met some old and even older friends together for lunch in
the former French Concession. They
described the adjacent street as having a bouquet of prewar architecture and
two of us made off along it for a while afterwards. I wanted to snap some photos. Outside of the second ring road, one simply
doesn’t walk around in Beijing. The
civic planning is designed to inspire awe at every turn. Sometimes these efforts are laughable,
sometimes they succeed, but there is little to see between this building and
the next, it is rarely on a human scale and so one only walks if one has
to.
And walking around a city, noting brick or Deco architecture
from the 20s, flashes the mind back to Manhattan and to the time I first fell
in love with this city adoring the same evocations homeward. In the right mood, it can be wonderful to be
here.
Speaking of home, it looks like we lost a towering New
Yorker today. I had a quick look at the
Washington Post to see what the day’s news was.
The VPN I recently purchased seems unable of tunneling out of China with
this fragile Starbucks WiFi connection, so I am prohibited from viewing the New
York Times. Flashed across the front
page of my alternate, unfiltered default is the news that Pete Seeger has
passed.
He was such a constant for so many years; it is hard to
believe that this tall tree has finally fallen.
My parents would have, played his music for me when I was young. We’d have sang him in grade school, I’m
sure. My mother’s dear friend, our
neighbor, was involved early with Pete in the Clearwater effort to save and
revitalize the Hudson River. And as kids
we’d go to the Clearwater Revival and Pete would always be on one of the stages,
his presence somehow, everywhere. In
high school I made a lifelong friendship with Pete’s niece who was a year ahead
of me in school. And in her honor and I
suppose in honor of the school as well, Pete performed at her graduation. And, even as a jaded, hardcore punk kid, it
was lovely.
We were at the Oakwood School, a Quaker School, there in
Poughkeepsie, New York. Oakwood had a
proud tradition of conscientious objection and when Pete was blacklisted in
50’s Oakwood still allowed him to play. This
was all explained to us at the time. And
I remember when he performed he said something that was simple and yes “folksy”, wise and easy to remember, as he talked to the eighteen year
olds preparing to graduate and the rest of us who were there in
attendance. “Remember, that money is
like air. You need it to live, but
having too much of it, is pointless.”
I should revisit and learn more about the people who were
actually summoned to speak in front of the House on UnAmerican Activities
Committee. On Dusty Brine I have already
written about I. M. Finley who wrote “The Age of Odysseus" and compared him to
the sinologist Owen Latimore. Both of
those gentleman fled to England and continued with successful careers
there. But Pete stuck in out in the U.S.
despite the black list and managed to survive, in part perhaps, because simple
places like Oakwood were brave enough to welcome him.
I somehow imagine that time as a comparatively brief
aberration cotemporaneous with the insanity of the Korean War. I really must learn more. I quote at length below from the Post article
about Pete’s time before the Committee two years after the Korean War was over
in 1955. What a sorry, sad, frightened
time if this sort of fear-mongering was the norm. What presence of mind and depth of conviction
would have been required to remain disarmingly friendly and大庸弱且[1]
“I have sung in hobo jungles,
and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused
to sing for anybody,” he told the committee. “I have never done anything of any
conspiratorial nature. . . . I love
my country very deeply.”
In 1955, the House Un-American
Activities Committee began an investigation of Communist influence in
professional entertainment and subpoenaed Mr. Seeger. He volunteered to discuss
his music at length with the committee, and he offered to sing his songs. But
he declined to answer questions about political associations or whether certain
songs were sung at Communist gatherings, and he declined to invoke his
constitutional right of protection from self-incrimination.
“I think these are very improper
questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as
this,” he said.
Convicted of contempt of
Congress, he was sentenced to a year in jail. After a prolonged appeal process,
the conviction was overturned in 1962 because of a technical flaw in the
indictment. The government never retried him.
A different sort of hero than the ones I discussed with my
daughters over the weekend, MLK and Malcolm X.
But certainly another brave American, who never veered from conviction
and who similarly would not have been allowed to continue publically, despite
all the spiteful restrictions he endured, had he been a singer, here in this
world that I and my daughters live in. I have him singing "I Ain't Scared of Your Jail" live, right now, where he which he sings about Dr. King and the civil rights marchers in the south at that time. I
look forward to discussing Pete with them when I’m back home tomorrow and
continuing the juxtaposition and the consideration of the heroes China has and
needs. Certainly this safe, caffeinated
Starbucks, with people anonymously coming and going could use a little sing
along to warm it. Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger.
[1] dàyǒngruòqiè: a
great hero may appear timid (idiom); the really brave person remains
level-headed
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