BEIJING's LANDMARKS

To simply say that all treasures and culture have been lost is true, more heart-aching is the spirit of the younger generation is also lost. When we visited last in winter of 1996, the whole nation was still counting down to the handover of the colonized city of Hong Kong. An atomized clock constructed right in the middle of the Tiananmen Square. There were flying banners and slogans reading "one country two systems".

It's ironical to see the whole nation adopting everything about the west. Just like the professor I have met - an expert on Chinese opera, once China's most popular form of entertainment, all but destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. Now it can be performed again, although most Chinese would rather go and see "Titanic". Opera audiences are dwindling and fewer and fewer artists are prepared to take on the years of training required.

I asked the question again and nobody can answer the basic question: What does it mean to be a Chinese nationalist? This is not a new problem. It is a question that has been asked ever since in the 18th century. The assumption then was that China was the center of civilization and had no need to explain herself further. That assumption crumbled in the face of expanding Western power. New China is an empire in search of a modern identity and a coherent ideology, and it has failed to find either.

One sure landmark that has changed: the poet was still a hero and thousands would turn out to attend a reading in the 70s and 80s. Now young people think poets are crazy. Most writers are thinking about what it means to be Chinese today, but they are at a loss, theoretically. For instance, this is how the younger generation thinks when one talk about postmodernism here, which is a totally different meaning from in the West. In North America people think that post-modernists are in crisis because the whole theory is so intellectualized it is bad for creativity. But here younger generation think postmodernism just means not writing in the style of a newspaper article. They just go to extremes, cursing others, using dirty words. It seems that this is postmodernism. Is this the Chinese way or is it part of globalization? I wonder.

Another radical landmark, when one hears someone talking about Chinese culture, I assume that they are either very rich or foreign. As a senior citizen I have met mentioned, "Rich people and some foreigners, they live a much more Chinese life than ordinary Chinese people live. If you want to live in a Chinese way today, you need money to buy antique furniture, and traditional courtyard houses are very expensive. Poor people have to move into tower blocks. So when people stress Chinese culture I know they are not typical Chinese." I was flabbergasted by his remarks, but how very true.