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®ion=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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