Here 183 4 - Iron to Rust 219

Contents Editorial 5 At the Edge of the Empire Red Dust 21 The Capitalist Transition in China Introduction - Hermitage 22 1 - Pacific Rim 41 2 - Borders 89 3 - Sinosphere 183 4 - Iron to Rust 219 A State Adequate to the Task 283 Conversations with Lao Xie Picking Quarrels 361 Lu Yuyu, Li Tingyu and the Changing Cadence of Class Conflict in China The Awakening of Lin Xiaocao 425 A Personal Account of the 2010 Strike at Nanhai Honda Spirit Breaking 485 Capitalism and Terror in Northwest China by Adam Hunerven Eternal Enemies 525 The 20th Century Origins of Vietnamese Sinophobia by J. Frank Parnell At the Edge of the Empire Editorial At the Edge of the Empire The Palace that Splits the Sky Thick, slate-colored smog presses through a towering maze of identical apartment blocks, a half-living ocean ebbing below: people hunched over carts and scooters, faces covered by dingy surgical masks, often little more than silhouettes backlit by the haze-dulled throb of glowing ads broadcast on wall-size screens. The smog is like a skin of concrete melded through the image, broken here and there by masked faces or the fleeting 5 Frontiers blue glitter of cellphones held aloft like fragile torches. This picture—or something equally gargantuan and brutal—is the spectral shape that China today takes in the public imagination. It’s familiar because it emerges almost automatically upon mention, in the same way that the mist-wrapped karstic cliffs and tranquil waterways of shanshui painting might have arisen in the minds of previous generations. And yet it seems somehow ominous, as if there were a monstrous, barely-visible giant obscured somewhere in that suffocating smog, looming over the mass of anonymous lives shuffling below. The smog-choked city is one half of a pair, its counterpart the glittering skylines that symbolize the “Chinese Miracle.” Together, they define not only a certain national character, but a planetary crisis and the many specters that are returning to haunt the world in an era of unprecedented luxury and unthinkable collapse. In a way, though, the image is also consistent with classical themes. During the Buddhist- inflected Tang Dynasty, also considered the golden age of Chinese Poetry, a similar pairing existed, symbolizing both the gargantuan power of the dynasty and the building crisis at its heart. Rather than black smog and glimmering cities, however, poets illustrated a civilizational battle between “red dust” (hongchen, 红尘) and cold, idyllic mountains, rendered in blue or green. The urban, mortal and barbaric were denoted by reds and yellows, in images that simultaneously invoked the dust kicked up by street traffic on unpaved roads in bustling cities and the swirling sandstorms of the desert frontiers, both notable features of a dynasty that saw unprecedented urbanization (producing some of the largest cities in the world at the time) and rapid imperial expansion westward along the silk roads cut through the Central Asian desert. At the same time, the breadth of the term hongchen grew. It could be used to describe small, fleeting moments of lust or the expanse of imperial luxury at the height of the dynasty. At its 6 At the Edge of the Empire most expansive, the words took on a cosmological character, symbolizing the ephemeral world of mortals. The opposing image was one of distant cold mountains and the recluse-officials who populated them. These were, after all, poems often written by wealthy “hermits” who were not really hermits, living in a “wilderness” that was hardly wilderness, the poetry itself both a pastime of the ruling class and a way of securing imperial recognition.1 The invocation of rustic shacks hidden in thick forests of mountain pine was a way of emphasizing the poets’ own clear-sightedness and moral purity—essential traits for aspiring advisors. Similarly, we can imagine today’s journalists perched in some office in the glittering skyline of Shanghai, writing the latest story about how the smog is so vast it can reach across the ocean to brush the face of North America. But the very polarity of such diametric pairings often obscures the truth that lies beyond their two dimensions. Only the most skilled poets were able to use these poles to triangulate that world beyond the purely symbolic—and often only after the vast tragedy had already begun to play itself out. Du Mu (杜牧), born to the Tang Dynasty’s final century of decline, offers a somber example. His entire life was lived in the midst of an empire that had been crippled by the An Lushan rebellion, but which had not yet undergone its final collapse. The century was instead one of slow, persistent crisis—a world already ended, in which everyone seemed to know that things were over and that the glory of the empire could not be regained, but were unable to imagine any world to come. Instead, the entire culture was one with its eyes turned backward, reveling in a luxury that was even then slowly 1 For more on the exact nature of the eremitic tradition in Chinese literature, see the Introduction to our article, Red Dust, included in this issue. 7 Frontiers rotting away, carried forward only by the inertia of the imperium settling to its death. Du Mu’s “Passing by Huaqing Palace” captures the feeling in a triad of musical quatrains: 2 I From Chang’an looking back at the embroidered folds of the city The mountaintop’s many gates open one by one A rider kicks up red dust and the concubine smiles No one else knows he comes to bring her lychee II In Xinfeng, yellow dust rises through the green trees Several riders have returned from their investigation in Yuyang The song “Raiment of Rainbows and Feathers” plays on a thousand peaks Until dancing feet shatter the central plain III Music and song have left every nation intoxicated with peace The towering palace splits the light of the moon Lushan dances to a reckless beat struck between the clouds Wind passes down the layered peaks carrying the sound of laughter Each quatrain requires some minor contextual translation. Overall, the poem is looking back at the dynasty on the eve of the rebellion, under the reign of the Xuanzong Emperor. This was an empire at 2 We know of no consistent, quality translation of this poem in English. The translation that follows is therefore our own (although it must be noted that we are not professionals in the translation of ancient Chinese poetry). It should be taken as a haphazard bricolage of direct translation and existing fragments, and is not designed as an attempt to capture the original (we think untranslat- able) lyrical qualities of the quatrains, but instead to emphasize the bittersweet tone underlying the meaning of the piece. 8 At the Edge of the Empire the height of its decadence, enjoying a cultural renaissance, helmed by a thriving metropolis, with bustling trade across a vast geographic expanse. Despite the building crisis, society was lulled into placidity. Du Mu begins with a symbol of imperial decadence: Emperor Xuanzong’s favorite concubine, Yang Yuhuan, had a taste for lychee, which could not be grown in the arid north. Xuanzong therefore mobilized massive resources to establish a relay-network of the fastest riders to gather lychee from the far south and transport it to Chang’an, the imperial capital, before it would spoil. The city itself is characterized as heaping (堆) and embroidered (绣), but the red dust kicked up by the rider takes on an ominous character, signaling something beyond just the bustling of a metropolis at the peak of its glory. The next quatrain places emphasis on this suspicion, as another set of riders are described kicking up dust on their return from Yuyang, the domain of An Lushan and the location that would soon be the epicenter of the rebellion. These riders are, in fact, the imperial officials sent by Xuanzong to investigate An Lushan’s loyalty. Bribed by An, the officials returned with reassurances that all was peaceful. Du Mu therefore pairs the return of the investigators with the playing of a popular song renowned for its heavenly sound across the heights of society. The song, meanwhile, is accompanied by an image of dancing, but now even more clearly ominous: it is a dancing that shatters (破) the central plain—a symbol of the dynasty itself and, notably, the site of the most violent battles of the rebellion. The disaster, however, is elided. The final quatrain jumps forward to a bittersweet series of images, recognizable only to those who have lived through the catastrophe: a false peace had settled on the dynasty as An Lushan dances for the emperor. The space of the poem is now defined by stark inequality, the moon split by the palace, the laugher of the oblivious ruling class drifting 9 Frontiers down the city’s peaks and palisades to the reader—and echoing forward in time to Du Mu himself, living in the ruins of that ended world. The poem thereby exceeds the traditional coupling of red dust and lofty, cloud-touched mountains so common in the pre- rebellion golden age. Instead, Du Mu uses these polarities to triangulate the looming disaster sitting behind the dust and the clouds—even though its true breadth is so unimaginable from his own position (in a dynasty that had collapsed but not yet ended) that it can only be communicated through elision. Something of this persists in the contemporary proliferation of smog and skyline. The alternately ecstatic and apocalyptic tone of such images masks reality under an oversimplified polarity, even as this polarity seems to signify the crisis and inequality of our own era.

Load more