Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Word Groovy Itself




Rolling faster and faster now out from the Hong Qiao railway on the high-speed train back home to Beijing.  Its hazy out there but the murk occupies the atmosphere differently in the south, as there is a hint of moisture in the air.  The ground is wet.  Off to the right is the train yard for the high-speed trains.  I’m disappointed, as somehow they all look dirty, even though they’re only five years old or so.  The forty-year-old bullet trains in Japan never look dirty. 

I was stuck in some raw elevated highway traffic on the way out this morning.  Saturday morning at 11:00AM, who knew?  Packed solid.  The clock in the Buick I was traveling in was said I had only twenty minutes to go.  We were progressing at bicycle speed.  I was envisioning leaping and dashing with my big old bag, until the guy clarified that the car 's clock was twelve minutes fast.  The mind moves on to other worries. 



John King Fairbank in his work “The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800 to 1985” took it upon himself to patiently explain China to an average American mindset.  The difference between northern wheat growing China and southern rice growing China was something to be viewed from the air.  Flying in, he described how one could see the rough, arid planes, the yellow earth of the north descending towards Beijing.  Landing in Hong Qiao, which would have been the only airport Shanghai had in JKF’s day, moist verdant aquaculture comes into view.  He would have enjoyed the view from this high-speed train.  I wonder if he’d have been surprised to learn that Beijing South Station would provide high-speed transport but his own Boston South Station, would still be saddled with Amtrak.  Out to my right must be lake TaiHu.  It’s a huge body of water that looks as if nearly every inch of it is being cultivated for fish or snails, or shrimp or anything possible that conceivably be harvested. 

Big John Patton is someone who’s name I wouldn’t have recognized, but I know these tunes, like the one on now “Latona” from some Blue Note Samplers that were released in the 90s.  Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935, this album of his, “Let Em Roll” from 1965 sounds like it was in gestation at the same time as the word “groovy”, itself.  I can’t verify but that must be Grant Green on guitar.  ('tis, w. Bobby Hucherson on vibes and Otis Finch on drums.)  John Patton’s organ seems to fill out the space deliberately, gently, calmer than Jimmy Smith before him and Larry Young after.  The Beatles would have released “Help” this year.  I wonder what they made of this groove, at that time?

The byzantine manner in which China has always transferred and continues to transfer governance was on display again this morning, reminding us that the medieval soap operas which every Chinese watches on TV are as good a guide as any to how Xi Jinping will buttress rule in his waxing regime.  Wang Qingliang, the local boy Party chief of Guangzhou, has been put under investigation for anti corruption.  This is akin to putting the fat goldfish that keeps to the corner of the tank under investigation for utilizing his gills.  There is simply no way to rule in contemporary China without facilitating favors.  If someone was somehow pure, if someone asked for nothing and provided nothing, and studiously stuck to selflessly “serving the people” they would be treated as an antibody, isolated, and denied opportunity to rise within a system built on patronage networks.  So these big, bloated goldfish eat while the eating is good, and rise, because its better to rise than fall, 损公肥私[1] of necessity. And they swim about the tank, hoping to survive without being identified as useful to crush. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/world/asia/chinas-anticorruption-campaign-moves-to-a-powerful-party-seat.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHeadline&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Wang Qingliang gained attention a few years back for suggesting he was too frugal to afford a house.  I hear you man.  Now he is cited as one of the most flagrantly corrupt officials nationally and a lightning rod of public ire.  Who knows?  More likely it is simply time to smash a local power block as it was in the 90s when Beijing mayor Chen Xitong was smashed or in the naughts when Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu was smashed.  But brought low because he was particularly corrupt?  Do educated Chinese really believe any of this?  According to the New York Times, in the article that resulted in them being blacklisted domestically, Wen Jiabao’s auntie received stock in Ping An insurance worth about $1.5B.  Where is the benchmark set for particularly egregious corruption?  What could the public ever really know that it isn’t packaged up and fed as fish food?   

 

The culmination of the Dream of The Read Chamber has the protagonist Jia Bao Yu’s complicated; comfortable, scholarly family suddenly fall under a cloud of imperial scrutiny.  Once the family is under investigation by the Emperor, by the center, nothing that they ever had, nothing they had ever done is secure.  The entire family line will fall.  And Richard the II was killed by Henry IV,  Henry the VIII killed his wives, and it is amusing to consider the rough way the Plantagenates or the Tudors, maintained power just like it is the Qing.  And we are rightly proud of both the regal tradition and of the fact that we’ve moved on from it as an acceptable standard for how to transfer power. 

China should be sublimely proud of their medieval tradition.  And today, who can argue that order hasn’t been more productive than chaos?  I’m glad to be riding on a high-speed train and I’m glad that 450 million people have miraculously migrated from poverty.  But China cannot be singularly proud and satisfied by this means of governance.  Suggesting that this is all that China can expect from leadership; capricious, opaque, courtly deal making wherein power itself is really all that matters, is an insult to this nation.  A middle class majority will increasingly call this out.  Privately I hope the Party acknowledges that it must lead the nation away from rule by fiat or accept that it will be done on someone else’s terms.

I am pulling into Nanjing South Station now.  This is our third stop.  I appear to be on the high-speed, local.  I thought I got on the 4 Train but I’ve wound up the 6 Train, the Lexington Avenue local.  It has to be said that even when one travels at 185MPH+, local trains, and the useless time spent stopping and starting makes the face sour.  Well, at least I know where on the journey I am.  Have I ever been to Xuzhou?  I’d never be able to read the signs before at 185+MPH.  Sit back and enjoy the ride that John King Fairbank never had a chance to take.





[1] sǔngōngféisī:  to damage the public interest for personal profit (idiom); personal profit at public expense / venal and selfish behavior

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