311006 scary halloween post: 中国专家和北大 :: on china experts and pku

1: it is important to realize that everyone in china, chinese and foreigner alike, is an expert on chinese culture, politics, and economics; moreover, it is doubly important to remember that when in china, the person you are having a conversation with is not only an expert, but the expert on china — and not just its culture, etc., but on the chinese mind present, past, and future. this expertise occurs regardless of a person’s credentials or specialization. what is additionally peculiar is that in spite of the contrast of prevailing expert truths, no heterogeneity emerges; rather it is always the sudden surge of incommensurate truths like so many corpuses squeezing through the one door on a bus that invariably leads to the greatest chinese myth in the last two-hundred years: the myth of X with Chinese characteristics.

today it’s democracy, tomorrow it may be new media, yesterday it certainly was capitalism, and the day before it was marxism. two years from now it will be the olympics. in the meantime it will be things like face whitening ointments, hair crimping, russian stiletto boots with bright plastic art eye-glasses, a Chinese car with BMW and Toyota decals next to each other, a grocery store with three aisles of only instant coffee and no toilet paper that won’t plug the toilet, a fifty-story glass high-rise with no hvac or emergency fire system except the windows that prop open, red water, benzene water, water thick like the oil slick floating on it, or no water at all, traffic in slow motion — including collisions, television shows where contestants demonstrate their talents (such as Mr. BaiCai head, or dancing to a Rambo song) or the Chinese Antiques road-show where participants bring their items in for an authority to bestow upon them an astronomically high value that has no bearing because they are not allowed to sell them (who can even think of selling one’s heritage?) — except to new wealthy chinese because that is not selling inasmuch as it is voluntary capital redistribution, classism and the fantasy of the 所谓 middle-class, anti-Chinese racism by the Chinese in the same breath of super Chinese nationalism, post-colonial neocolonial racism by the 老外 in the same moment they extoll the virtues of the new China with Chinese characteristics (and perhaps write blog posts about it), and an infinite list of contradictions that can somehow be summed up in the unifying principle of contemporary China — a modernism that is fifty years ahead and fifty years behind (of what, no one is clear), but is best filed under the description already mentioned above, until we face the new mise en abyme of characteristics within and upon characteristics (will it be referred to as the post-characteristic china?).

and i am left with the feeling that either they are all correct in all of their beliefs, or that the conclusion is the result of lazy thinking about poor questions.

it might be a result of hours spent whiling away in the recluse comfort of the tea house, with its partitions of finely carved wood the color of a dim lacquered forest, and the matching bramble of thorn-like surgical tools of degustation and deglutition, each with its own specific purpose (one for each leaf at each stage, from dry to wet to exhausted to discarded); or hours spent whiling away in the community of the tea house with its plush hotel booths, almost countless savory dishes dwelling in micro-climates on a stainless steel island, and the meter-long spouted kettles that keep the 铁观音, 普洱 and conversation going; or hours spent in the new 西方 coffee houses (the new un-tea house) with wireless laptops, and wiring lattes just like back home (it is only ever a drink of personal nostalgia here) with foam in stained dark venation resembling a leaf, which is some occult code for its authenticity. everything reconstructed for your just-like-you-remember-it memory, even if it’s one you thought you didn’t have.

2: 北大, that prestigious institute of higher learning in China, cannot seem to figure how to finalize my contract, or at least that’s what Dr. Wu, the vice dean of my 大兴 campus, explained to me: there’s no contract for invited instructors, so i need to have one made up. i listened to him at 9:15am in his office, where fifteen minutes earlier i was stonewalled by his secretary when she explained to me: he’s not in. but i have an appointment with him at 9am, i told her. so give him a call on his cell phone, she curtly replied. fine, i said, and i began to go through my call-log hoping i could find a set of numbers that trigger my memory as being his. after ten minutes, the secretary, apparently tired of me, called Wu’s office and asked if he was available, gave him my name, and then sent me up. this is one week after a meeting i had with Wu, where he told me that instructors in my position (foreign, invited, non-tenure; in a word, adjunct or whipping-boy) receive this amount (and quoted me a figure in swallowed chinese); and we began to bargain, eventually covering my taxi fare to and from, and setting a meeting for the following week — which is the only reason i had come to this godforsaken place at 9am. but there i was, looking into his slow and shallow eyes, looking at the threads on his poly-navy sport coat that were peeking out from the thin but even coat of white flakes beginning at his white collared shirt, spreading across his shoulders, and then spilling even tumbling like little feather pebbles down onto his lapels.

no contract, is what i report to my lead professor ten minutes after leaving Wu’s big-power little-office. no contract? he mused, distracted by the statement’s obviousness and something somewhere else far more interesting: a bug emerging from a drain, a spot of blue in the always orange sky, an itch on his left foot. no contract no work, he said after a moment. so now i am still left with several no-option options (没有办法的办法). and in the midst of this are the students who are being fleeced by this same system. it is a fortunate thing my fortunes are not tied to this place.