China as an Issue: Artistic and Intellectual Practices Since the Second Half of the 20th Century, Volume 1 — Edited by Carol Yinghua Lu and Paolo Caffoni 1 China as an Issue is an ongoing lecture series orga- nized by the Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum since 2018. Chinese scholars are invited to discuss topics related to China or the world, as well as foreign schol- ars to speak about China or international questions in- volving the subject of China. Through rigorous scruti- nization of a specific issue we try to avoid making generalizations as well as the parochial tendency to reject extraterritorial or foreign theories in the study of domestic issues. The attempt made here is not only to see the world from a local Chinese perspective, but also to observe China from a global perspective. By calling into question the underlying typology of the inside and the outside we consider China as an issue requiring discussion, rather than already having an es- tablished premise. By inviting fellow thinkers from a wide range of disciplines to discuss these topics we were able to negotiate and push the parameters of art and stimulate a discourse that intersects the arts with other discursive fields. The idea to publish the first volume of China as An Issue was initiated before the rampage of the coron- avirus pandemic. When the virus was prefixed with “China,” we also had doubts about such self-titling of ours. However, after some struggles and considera- tion, we have increasingly found the importance of 2 discussing specific viewpoints and of clarifying and discerning the specific historical, social, cultural and political situations the narrator is in and how this helps us avoid discussions that lack direction or substance. We can consider the contributions here as documents of an ongoing conversation within their own historical circumstances. Even though these talks were original- ly addressed to a Chinese audience, through the process of translation and the editorial work on this English edition, we made room for further discussion and clarification with inserted footnotes that expand on certain concepts and references. We aimed to chal- lenge the idea that the subject matters presented here are only relevant to China “experts” or “sinologists.” We hope that readers will think beyond each author’s narrative presented in the article’s concept itself and also consider the author’s individual starting points and cultural positioning. Readers are expected to take a multidimensional and flexible perspective when en- tering into these dialogues. 3 Why Seek Out Asia? — Sun Ge This paper was composed from a lecture presented at the Beijing Inside- Out Art Museum on October 20, 2019, with slight revisions made by the author. It was presented on the occasion of the book launch for The Asia Moment: Creating an Alternate Mode of Understanding the World (Xun- zhao yazhou: chuangzao lingyizhong renshi shijie de fangshi, Guizhou People’s Publishing House, October 2019) with Sun Ge as the speaker and Li Zhiyu as the guest interlocutor with the book’s editor, Fan Xin moderating. The text is translated by Carrisa Fletcher. 4 I am very fond of the Inside-Out Art Museum. Though it is just an art museum, I feel that its contents are manifold. We know that art is rather remote from the observed forms of real life, because it is not possi- ble to see reality placed on a stage or displayed in a gallery. It must be transformed by means of imagina- tion to create new forms, thus establishing a fractured connection with our experiences in real life—only then will the audience find it worthwhile to visit. I like the atmosphere here, and I have long felt that intellec- tual history should be handled in this way. By “han- dled in this way,” I mean to say that the issues which intellectual history must discuss are in fact separate from those practical problems which we ordinarily see in the newspapers, in broadcasts, or online, and they too must be transformed; intellectual history does not directly address practical problems, and is not respon- sible for giving out prescriptions for practical prob- lems, but intellectual history certainly has concern for practical problems, which is then presented in another fashion. The relationship between discussions of intellec- tual history and reality is thus similar to the relation- ship between art and reality, a kind of fractured con- nection. My search for Asia in fact involves a similar- ly fractured pondering and seeking. I had a student in 5 Shanghai many years ago, who has now become a teacher herself: she bought this book online, and two days ago, she sent me her post-reading response on Wechat. She said: I thought that reading this book was like entering a forest filled with brambles—in it, there was nothing but thorny plants that tripped one up and looked quite troublesome. I felt that the forest of Asia was filled with all kinds of problems with no easy so- lutions. I thought she expressed it quite well, and I wrote back to her saying that I was still struggling in it now. She responded, Professor, I see now. This is my real predicament, as well as the mes- sage which the title of this book seeks to convey: Where is Asia? Actually, I am still looking, and I be- lieve that we are all looking together. This book was, to a very great extent, a product of collaboration between myself and my editor. By collaboration, I do not mean that he and I wrote it to- gether, but rather that he took my less-than-conscious trains of thought in the writing process and fed them back to me through his selection of pieces and arrangement of each chapter. This is what shaped the book, and in fact I had not conceived of this format at the beginning. For me this was an amazing experi- ence. Some of the essays were previously included in other books, and some were published in journals and 6 then thought no more of; actually, there have always been these texts which I have quite sporadically flung everywhere. I have pursued various problems, or rather I have been pursued by various problems, writ- ing about them and then putting them aside. So it is in this sense that this is a product of collaboration be- tween myself and my editor. But this process also prompted me to retrospectively consider that, although the writing process was not designed in advance, in looking at the results, it has taken the first steps in achieving one thing, which is to regard “Asia” as an issue requiring discussion, rather than an established premise. Why did I want to do this? What transforma- tions did I experience in the process of doing this? Answering these questions is an opportunity for self- examination, which is actually quite meaningful. I ran into this problem last year during a lecture course at Tsinghua University. In the mid-1990s, I wrote three book reviews for Reading (Dushu)1 on Thinking from Asia (Cong yazhou chufa sikao)2, a set of seven volumes in a collection of essays by the Uni- versity of Tokyo Press. The titles of these three books reviews consisted of three questions: The first piece was called What Does Asia Mean (Yazhou yiwei zhe shenme), the second was called What Do We Seek in History (Zai lishizhong xunzhao shenme), and the 7 third was called What Is the Carrier of Universality (Pubianxing de zaiti shi shenme). I have to honestly admit that, after completing the book reviews, I forgot about them. Why? Because as far as I was concerned in the mid-1990s these three questions were essential- ly hollow. These three questions represented my true feelings at the time and represented the problem awareness stimulated by this collection of Japanese essays. But apart from a feeling there was no sub- stance, and I did not have the corresponding store of knowledge. So they were hollow, and after writing the book reviews, I set this matter aside. I did not think that I would later continue to follow the path of these three unanswered questions. After that, I completed a few concrete empirical studies which touched upon different aspects; but looking back from today’s per- spective, I am still in the midst of these three ques- tions. However, where I am now, these three questions have all become substantial. They have been trans- formed into real problem structures that can be devel- oped, and are furthermore closely related to one an- other. But none of this represents a plan that I inten- tionally designed in advance—I certainly didn’t think through these questions and then found ways to gather materials to argue them, it wasn’t this kind of process. I didn’t set this out for myself in the mid-1990s as a 8 thing that I must do in this lifetime. How did it take shape? Even I cannot say, and this is a point that I wish to share with my young friends: Whether or not you pursue academic research in the future, I think that there are certain fundamental questions in life which may arise when we are unprepared, or haven’t thought things through. As long as we are willing to confront them, you will discover one day that these questions may have defined your life. In terms of my experiences, these initially insubstantial questions lat- er developed substance, and that substance helped me to write books, and publish an array of arguments— but in fact, none of these are important.