›› BEHiND THE SUN
From the Sun vaults, January 11 - 17, 1985
The China syndrome Bolinas man returns from forbidden kingdom to the east... and we don’t mean Mill Valley by Jason Wals h
25
‘In waking a tiger, use a long stick’—Mao Tse-Tung Marin’s stick stretched
years ago from Bolinas to Beijing 25
years ago this week. Orville Schell, one of Marin’s most prolific writers and a partner in Niman Ranch beef at the time, had just released his third book about China, To Get Rich Is Glorious, which chronicled his decade-long adventures in the post-Mao Middle Kingdom. A quarter century before China would stand on the verge of becoming the world’s foremost economic superpower, the Dogtown local— and future dean at UC Berkeley—chronicled a Western culture-starved nation emerging from a failed Cultural Revolution that left the country in economic disarray and facing an uncertain future. This week in 1985, Pacific Sun writer Eve Pell sat with Schell—whose current bookin-progress, according to orvilleschell.com, is an “interpretation of the last 100 years of Chinese history”—to ask him about the cultural awakening of the great tiger of the East. O O O O
What first got you interested in China—back in the ‘50s when it was still closed off from the West? I think it was the inaccessibility. China was to me what I think outer space might be for children now. You couldn’t get there; it was just romantic. And having been interested in politics, this enormously startling revolution was very attractive to me. My second year at Harvard, I took a famous survey course nicknamed “Rice Paddies,” about China, Japan and Korea. I used to study down in the stacks in the Harvard-Yenching Library, an old library that had been brought over from China, surrounded by books written in these strange characters. I kept wondering what they all were saying. Was your Chinese pretty good then? I had hardly scratched the surface—learning Chinese is like learning to play the violin; you could learn it forever. Did you have any idea then that China was going to open up later on? No. But that’s what made it interesting; China was such a tough nut to crack. You’ve written three books on China. Your most recent, To Get Rich Is Glorious, is more observations of changes in the country and its economic system. I was fascinated with the whole Maoist vision of a country that tried to develop in a way unlike any other, not kissing the boots of big Western powers and not relying on them for technology, capital or whatever. It turned out to be a very tough row to hoe. What 8 PACIFIC SUN JANUARY 8 - JANUARY 14, 2010
Schell snapped this shot of a Chinese man and his daughter testing the private enterprise waters in the early 1980s.
interested me with the book was the way the whole Maoist dream is over; the vision has crashed and burned and the people are more accessible. Now what interests me is the question of what is China becoming and how is it going to view itself. It’s not Maoist, it’s hardly socialist, it’s barely revolutionary. The Chinese have always had a hard time with their identity. That seems odd because they’re the oldest civilization on earth. That’s it, because they are so used to having a clearly imprinted sense of who they are and culturally what they stand for and of being great and preeminent. In the last century and a half, as the West has become more in the foreground, they tried to shut it out—to maintain that old identity—and it failed. Then Mao came along, closed the whole place down again and tried to generate this new revolutionary identity, and now that’s sort of failed. And other powers interfere... Which may be very benign at first. I think we fail to appreciate what a dazzling, powerful, seductive and interesting society we are when seen from the outside. That’s why the Chinese have gotten at this new change with such vigor: they’re not officially able to express themselves in terms of getting wealthy, getting ahead, and they are just so tired of being held back by egalitarianism. You mention that after the revolution, the average life expectancy of the Chinese jumped from 35 to 68 years. Yes. The revolution was not a complete and unmitigated failure, and the way the Chinese talk about it today you’d think it was just a complete pain in the neck which did nothing. It certainly had a bitter end, but in many ways what it did accomplish was the heart and soul of China’s success: large
›› TRiViA CAFÉ
by Howard Rachelson
1. The name of what city in Marin County, where redwood trees were turned into lumber for construction, means “chopped wood” in Spanish? 2. Just released in December 2009, what film has produced over $1 billion at the global box office and become the fourth biggest money-making film of all time? 3. Which of the eight wives of King Henry VIII was the mother of Elizabeth I? 4. In golf, what is a “mulligan”? 5. According to their order of entry into the new United States, what were the first four states? 6. Name the only country that borders both Bolivia and Venezuela. 7. Pictures, to right: Identify these musical instruments named after people: 7a. Named after a Belgian designer of musical instruments 7b. Named for the band leader and composer who popularized its use in his band. 7c. Created by a pioneer of electronic music 8. The Academy Award statue was simply called “the statuette” until 1931, when librarian Margaret Herrick announced that it resembled whom? 9. What Shakespearean play contains the line,“To be or not to be, that is the question”? 10. 1 In his song “Trenchtown Rockers,” Bob t Marley says,“One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no...” what?
#10
BONUS QUESTION: What country, located in the continent of North America, was the first nation to formally abolish military forces?
Howard Rachelson, Marin’s Master of Trivia, invites you to a live team trivia contest at 7:30pm every Wednesday at the Broken Drum on Fourth Street in San Rafael. Join the quiz—send your Marin factoids to howard1@triviacafe.com.
hydraulics projects, the literacy campaign, healthcare, more or less universal education, these things are not to be pooh-poohed. But in many ways they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yet four years ago there were communes [notorious peasant farm collectives created to rapidly increase production during the Great Leap Forward; this Maoism ideal led to widespread famine]. They don’t even have words for communes anymore, they’re called something else, townships. The present leaders are like Mao, who thought he could pick up Chinese society, shake it upside down and refashion it after several thousand years. It seems like he did that, though. But he didn’t, you see. That’s what we have to conclude. Are the anti-Communists going to be considered right all along?
#7a
#7b
#7c
Answers on page 28
No, and that’s the message that must be underscored. Even though Mao’s revolution did not succeed, you still have to be careful to sort out what worked from what didn’t. And that is not being done now. People, Chinese included, and particularly the intellectuals, who had it really rough, are very willing to jettison the whole damn past. The changes seem to be happening so fast. I never cease to be amazed now when I am in China. There’s a Maxim’s of Paris in Peking. One of my gauges of how China is going is to count espresso machines. Are they going to have yuppies next? They really aren’t far away. < Discuss the Five Year Plan with Jason at jwalsh@pacificsun.com
Blast into Marin’s past with more Behind the Sun at ›› pacificsun.com