From @UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU:owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Thu Jan 13 02:17:17 1994 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 00:48:05 -0500 Reply-To: yaxin wang Sender: China-Net From: yaxin wang Subject: CCF #9401, 1/12/94, "Life on Foreign Lands" Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, January 12, 1994 (Issue No. 9401) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is a journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion and debate on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Table of Contents Author | # of Lines ============================================================================ Theme of the issue: Life On Foreign Lands 1. To Be Understandable and To Be Reasonable --- Commentory on Chinese Life on Foreign Lands..........Lao Wong 53 2. Cultural Diversities in the Coming Global Village --- Redefining America?..................................Luo Ning 81 3. Sublimation, Prudishness or False Modesty: Toward an Understanding of Sex in Chinese Culture........Y.Y. Xu 304 ============================================================================ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== From The Editor +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ This is the first issue of Chinese Community Forum (CCF) in 1994. The theme of this issue of CCF is Life on Foreign Lands. We carry three artilces as the first issue on this theme. CCF will continue the discussion on this topic. Please contribute your experience and lessons learned on foreign lands and share with all CCF readers to make tomorrow better for all of us. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. To Be Understandable and To Be Reasonable --- Commentory on Chinese Life on Foreign Lands..........Lao Wong 53 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Recently, a KSU Chinese student was attacked by a unrecognized person on the KSU campus in the night. The story shocked whole CSS community. The accident was just one of the worsest happened to oversea Chinese students and scholars and Chinese community in large. Everytime when Chinese become the attacking target, or the conflicts occur between Chinese and other ethnic groups, one question always arises: Can Chinese root our culture on foreign land and build our dream home oversea? The answer to the question, of course, is yes. There are numerous successful stories to show how our Chinese can do and do a better job on foreign land. However, all of us, maybe at different time in life for individuals, are facing a simple and basic question: How can we live better on foreign land? No matter how much you are skillful and get used to enjoy the freedom of this country, you hardly can escape from the "trade mark" of a hard worker, and a shy person as the typical characters of Chinese as a group. No matter how much you could excuse yourself for various reasons, you cannot attribute those characters simply to the language barrier, or the difference of culture backgrounds. No matter how difficulty of your situation is, you have to get out of any difficut situation to live happily and to enjoy life in a foreign country to pay off all of your dream when you first stepped on a foreign land. But how? One should be understanding and reasonable. To be understanding is to understand other's situation, other's ability, other's work, other's language, other's behavior and so on. Remember, within the legal limitation, there is no cut between "bad" and "good", only the mark: his/her style. To be understanding is to understand your own behavior, your own ablity, your own style, your own advantages and disadvantages and so on. If you can know others as well as yourself, you will win every battle you are facing.... To be reasonable is to assess the potential impact of your action on others and whole society before taking any action. To be reasonable is to respect other's right and also to show yourself are a respectable person. Be reasonable when you lash out or when you defend yourself. When you are reasonable, you win justice; when you have justice on your side, the whole world is with you, otherwise, you are out of your element. My friends, what do you think of the life on a foreign land? (Received 12/30/93) ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 2. Cultural Diversities in the Coming Global Village --- Redefining America?..................................Luo Ning 81 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The Fall Edition of the Time magazine this year is entirely devoted to the issues related to the multi-ethnic phenomenon of USA. On the cover page there is a close-up picture of a beautiful but mystique woman's face. As you look it more closely, you might find out that she has many unusual mixed features. Indeed, it is not a picture of any real woman, but a creation of computer graphics which combines the elements from 14 models of many different races and ethnic groups around the world. There are twenty articles in this issue. The opening article "America's Challenge" is an overview of the problems that US is facing today which are the results of the unique history of this country. The next one "Not Quite So Welcome" depicts a recent poll which shows the rising public anti- immigration sentiments, which I guess is the impetus for Time to select this topic. Even with the stiffer measures imposed on by recent federal and state legislative moves and strengthened law enforcement, "And Still They Come" tells stories about the newest immigration waves in spite of the change. Will this trigger a new round of stricter control measures and finally lead US to close its door? The history of US shows that there had been tougher times ("Immigration History"). The anti-immigration fervors coincided more with the times of economic depression and rising unemployment rather than with the increase of immigration. They came more often than not in the form of racial discrimination against non-white or non-European people. Besides the now well recognized exploitation of African slaves, the notorious 1882 "Chinese Exclusion Act" of the US Congress spearheaded rounds after rounds of attacks on the immigrants from Asia. America today is, fortunately, more mature, after fighting with the Axis, in which USA was part of the Alliance which included many non-white developing nations such as China, and after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. It is inconceivable that how a country adopting a racial polity could adapt to the world today. Not only the attitude of the established residents, but also the composition itself is changing toward a society which must tolerate more rather than less the racial, ethnic and cultural diversities. In "The Number Game", there are some interesting statistics. In 1940, 70% immigrants were from Europe. In 1992, they were only 15%. Instead, 37% were from Asia and 44% from Latin America. Studies based on several census have predicted that by 2020, Latino-Americans will exceed African- Americans to become the largest minority, and before 2050 the Whites will become less than half of the whole population. Although started with a much lower baseline, the Asian immigrants have been increasing very fast in recent decades. The change of the face of the nation starts first in large cities. For example, more than 10% of the population under 18 years old in LA, San Francisco, Miami, NYC, Houston, etc., is born in foreign countries. The change in the population composition leads to many reorientations of the society. For example, the jury system assumes that the innocence or guilt shall be judged by the peers of the accused. However, if the juries are from different ethnic backgrounds who do not identify each other as peers, would the legal machine still function as it is supposed to do ("Whose Peers?")? Business practice would also have to adapt to the changes due to the diversity ("It's a Mass Market No More"). The effects on culture and religion are no doubt even more direct ("The Art of Diversity", "One Nation Under Gods"). More profound and intriguing than the changes in population composition numbers and the visible responses of people are the readjustment being made in the minds and hearts of people. This is particularly important to Asian- Americans. Many Asian-Americans have been trying hard to forget the Asian part of their history in order to identify and to be identified with "American". However, the new generation declares: "I am 100% American and 100% Asian" (Took Took Thongthiraj in "The Perils of Success"). In other words, the European or Anglo-Saxon heritage is no longer viewed as "the standard". The Asian, African or Latino heritages is as the same as a part of the integral American. They don't need to look for the New World any more since they find that is within themselves. These problems that US is or will be facing today will become worldwide. "[W]hat is in California today is in America tomorrow, and next week around the globe" ("The Global Village Finally Arrives", the ending essay of the issue). For us Chinese, it is therefore very important to learn the lessons from today's America in order to contribute more to the building of the global village. [Luo Ning, nluo@msvax.mssm.edu, 12/7/93] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 3. Sublimation, Prudishness or False Modesty: Toward an Understanding of Sex in Chinese Culture........Y.Y. Xu 304 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ This does not presume to present an exhaustive study of the attitudes of the Chinese toward sex; at most it attempts to provides a few clues for further investigation and exploration on a topic that is as old as (or perhaps even older than) human civilization but that has never exhausted itself. In their initial encounter with American culture, Chinese students are often baffled and embarrassed by the explicit, almost "shameless" display of sexual intimacy on the part of Americans. They turn away or pretend they do not see anything out of the ordinary, that is, out of the norm of the culture they come from. Still they conclude to themselves: "I will never, never act like that." On the other hand, to the Americans the Chinese may appear anything from conservative, cautious to prudish and uptight in their sexual outlook, as if they can't bear to have their sexual, hence animal nature exposed. Are the Chinese generally clandestine about their sexual desire ? Certainly most Chinese couples are not used to walk hand in hand, hug, caress or kiss each other in public, not even when the husband or wife is going away on a long trip. Does this mean that the Chines don't feel comfortable with sexual intimacy? The answer could be no. No matter how they carry it off in the public, they certainly don't engage in less of sexual activities than the rest of the world. The most obvious, but non)too)eloquent testimony is the explosion of population at the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Maybe I am conflatting two things here (as Americans are so fond of making distinctions): isn't there a difference between having sex for its "pure" pleasure and having sex for procreative purpose -- one is of an somewhat "aesthetic" nature (therefore a more civilized approach?) while the other is of a pure biological function? At this point one has to ask the inevitable questions that may, at first, seem like rhetorical questions: do Chinese and Americans have fundamentally different attitude toward Sex? Are the Chinese more "Puritanical" than Americans in this regard? I say these are rhetorical questions only at first glance, as things are not always what they appear. As Michel Foucault, the eminent and revered French historian and deconstruction theorist argues in his History of Sexuality, the alleged Victorian phobia with regard to sexual matters and the outrage againest sexual repression in the West in the post-Victorian era only reveal part of the truth while concealing the other, more significant part of the story, that is, the will to power, which "coincides" with the will to knowledge, an ethos that has dominated the West ever since the age of Enlightenment, or even before, since the age of the "discovery" and the subsequent colonization and exploitation of the "New World." Perhaps, the external expansion in the Western man's control of the earth's geographical area and the natural resources was parallelled by the internal expansion in the Western man's knowledge about himself and consequently the development of the means and mechanisms for control and regulation of human behavior. While sex appeared to be relegated to taboo and the unspeakable, medical/clinical, legal, moral, sociological, psychological and literary discourses on the subject proliferated tenfold and flooded the market. Sex was that mysterious, beguiling and beguiled creature lurking in the dark, but no matter how much it was denied a "legitimate existence," it nevertheless was directly or indirectly responsible for the extraordinary proliferation of modern sciences. Implicitly there was the assumption that sex is capable of delivering up the deepest truth about ourselves we are so desirous of knowing, and it is the elusive force like the mystifying, bewildering tropical islands that challenged the manhood of Western explorers; it is the ultimate frontier in (Western) man's quest for the unknown. In short this pervasive, indomitable will to power underlies the construction of the metaphysical empire of the West. The sex "liberation" in the West did not liberated the middle class and the bourgeois from their obsession with imposing order and establishing control over natural environment as well as over the unpredictable human behavior and the often chaotic unconscious, their assumed, well-assured superiority over the "others," the socially underprivileged, the "masses," the conquered and colonized people of color. When the protagonist in the serial TV show "Wei2 Cheng2" (The Castle? Besieged?) jested that syphilis and drug inaugurated the birth of modern Western civilization, he was not that absurdly far)fetched; he has touched on a more serious subject than he was aware of; in fact unbeknownst to him, he might have taped on a gold mine of dissertation topic ! In the U.S. the readily available assistance proffered by sexologists, psychiatrists and psychics, and the popularity of the 900 love hotlines may not necessarily mean that American are more free to talk about sex, though it is true they seem to have no scruple discussing their sexual life with a total stranger on the other end of the phone. However it does mean for one thing that the instinct of business and the profit motive have penetrated every fabric of social life, down to the most vulnerable spot, into what we used to guard as the most private part of our existence. The public domain somehow has made an easy invasion and conquest of our private domain; the mechanism of control is not contented with merely disciplining our allocation of time and energy in daytime: it moreover seeks and promises to take good charge of the nebulous realm of our emotions and feelings. In this sense, the devil, Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust is a profoundly prophetic figure in his numerous metamorphosis. On the other hand this array of services that promises to adjust the grievances or malfunction in one's sexual life also serve to channel social evils to the responsibility of the individual, and they purport to turn "abnormal" individuals into sane, average, well)adapted, "productive" member of society. Thus following Foucault's footstep, I would argue that while ostensibly American society may manifest an unprecedented degree of freedom with regard to sex, the existence of sex related counselling services, and the relentless duplications of Hollywood)modeled romances testify to the tightening of social control and the (rather frightening) tendency toward standardizing the masses' sexual appetite and behavior. While sexuality as a cultural construct (representation, prohibition, etc.), not a biological fact, has evolved into a control mechanism in Western civilization, the kind of systematic study on sexuality that has flourished in the West is but in its preliminary stage in China. Yet this is not to say that Chinese culture is deficient in the arts of erotica -- after all the marriage and consumation of the principles of yin and yang underlie as diverse fields as ancient Chinese philosophy, medicine, astrology and witchcraft. One can even go as far as to argue that "Qi Gong" is a highly accomplished art of self-arousal or masturbation, though the validity of which claim is debatable. Nevertheless if the prototype of sexuality as a control mechanism exists in Chinese society, it is still relatively crude, eclactic and fluid. It is next to impossible to theorize the basic trends of the Chinese population's attitude toward sex in one way or another, nor, frankly speaking, do I find it desirable, as to do so would involve taking the semi)detached stance and assuming the authority of a sociologist or anthropologist in the process of objectifying his or her subject, perpetuating the peculiarly Western "will to power." Perhaps some randomly selected, incongruous examples might serve our present purpose better -- for whatever hypothesis (repression, tolerance, "emancipation," etc.) we put forward they may either confirm our suspicion or conversely prove an exception to, or even debunk the rule -- it is better to leave it in a state of ambiguity. In the recently released serial TV show "A Native of Beijing in New York," two of the men attempted to start a conversation on sexual life, but both were too embarrassed to go on beyond the hesitant mention of the 42nd Ave. in NY. The very fact that they have problem talking about "it" is revealing. Later the protagonist scrubbed himself thoroughly in steaming hot shower after his one night stay in a cheap motel with a prostitute, as though he has experienced a traumatic rape, not only by the ruthless capitalist society where money can buy everything, but by the blonde prostitutes he picked up on the street. Afterward he also cramped his shirt and pants into the garbage can, as if they were contagious and really stank. Here we have a reversed classic representation of rape. No doubt the shower scene was a symbolic baptism, but one wonders why the sex here was presented so loathsome, invested with inveterate hatred. Scandals of adultery break out once a while in the Chinese students' community. Whether it is the wife or the husband who breaches the matrimonial obligation, they are both likely to receive moral censure from the community. In case the culprit is the wife, most of her neighbors would express sheer outrage at her "immoral" behavior that they think disgraces the Chinese and at her ingratitude in so heartlessly deserting her husband who went all the way to get her where she is now. The underlying assumption is that we are as individuals are responsible for ensuring for the moral health of the community, and in no way should be contribute to its "corruption." The fact that she is distracted by the discord in their sexual life, or the fact that she might be seeking a partner who is more sexually exciting to her is the last allowance we would make. Many of the Chinese dialects are full of vivid examples of people's gut feelings for sex. The so)call dirty words, oath and curses all invoke sexual organ, especially women's in a "profane" way. Sexual metaphors abound in these dialects too and I think they remain some of the most vital, most robust, most accessible expressions, partly because they are not "bleached" or purged of their "vulgarity" by print culture. In a way it is perfectly consistent with people's direct, earthly approach to life, and their almost intuitive awareness of the sexual impulse at the root of their life and of the rhythmic pulsating with mother nature, with its regenerative potential. And literally speaking, sexual organ is indeed the most fecund part of the human body. In the Chinese film "The Gong of Qing-liang Temple" there was a close)up of the deserted Japanese baby boy's genital, as his adopted Chinese "grandma" proudly shows him to a group of unabashed peasant women in the village. It was an extremely daring close)up, one that shocked one out of one's senses particularly because it appeared in a Chinese film. I wonder how it escaped the government censor. Is it because children are considered less sexual or even asexual? Or does it reflect a more wholesome attitude toward it, that is, acknowledging its existence without feeling shame, guilt or uneasiness? If there is one point of convergence for Christian and Confucian morality, it is their injunction against sexual misconduct. Confucius regards uncontrolled sexual appetite as the head of all evils, while among the Ten Commandment is one prohibiting fornification. In the English and the Chinese language we will not find a shortage of vocabulary for sexual transgression, lecherous, licentious, adulterous, promiscuous, incestuous, perverse, to name just a few. More than anything else language often reveals the mentality of a people and the rules of a culture; it tells its own story about repression; it carries its own moral authority and its verdict for transgression. It used to be (maybe it still holds true to some extend today) that sexual scandal can ruin a person's reputation or shipwreck his political career. I am sure we can all recall some of the seedy stories we heard about in our childhood. In the process of enforcing strict code of behavior, some seemingly neutral terms have acquired an insidious connotation that I think can never be washed off. My favorite example is "relationship between man and woman," which in Chinese immediately implies a grave problem, a moral accusation not warranted by the literal meaning of the term one can almost smell the sacrificial blood of a culprit/scapegoat pinned down on the altar. It immediately stigmatizes one and make one unfit for nobler pursuit, whether it is empirically provable or not. For another example how about the sneezing, notorious "life style" which is an understatement for extra)marital affairs? China has produced, with dazzling brilliance and inventiveness, some of the greatest euphemistic expressions in the world. Certainly the image of Chair Mao was much tarnished by his alleged "sexual misconduct," or his "unnatural" lust after younger women. I wonder if Mao might not have been a victim of the moral austerity he helped to propagate. Of course in Mao's case, the matter is infinitely complicated as it is not just a matter of moral perversity or aberrance, but one of using his influence, power and position to gain sexual advantage over women. It is somewhat a miracle that President Clinton managed to survive the scandal unscathed during the election in 1992. The Oregon Senator does not seem to fare so well. Incidentally the Senate Ethic Committee sounds to me like that branch in the communist party that specializes in investigating one's "life style". Again one of its raison d'etre is to remind one of the lurking danger of sex. Ironically, just as I was going to congratulate Mr. Clinton on his triumph over the media's sally, new allegation emerges to attack him for allocating state fund to camouflage his extramarital affairs. The first lady's condescension in passing around Christmas cookies to the journalists who swamped the White House, or her later on impassioned denial that such allegation was ruining their holiday somehow did not appear convincing at all. It would be interesting to follow it through to see what is next. Finally the findings of a survey study on the sexual life of people over 50 in the U.S. are of some interest here. Many who eagerly responded to the questionnaires were well over 70 or 80, and they reported as still being able to derive great satisfaction and pleasure from their sexual life. Side by side with this study, let's see what a report published in People's Daily this year had to say about the secrets of longevity enjoyed by an ethnic group in a remote south)western region in China. In addition to nine points, their longevity was attributed to "abstinence from engaging in pre-marital sex"! It was a most whimsical conclusion, with almost a macabre muddle of scientific evidence and moral censure. For your information and amusement, I offer the translation of some passages from an article entitled "Tendency in the Sexual Behavior of the Chinese in the Year 2000" in the September and October issues of the Chinese journal "Popular Medicine". I hope you will get the drift of the article from this: "Extra marital love is a behavior that jeopardizes the husband-wife relationship and undermines the family; although since the founding of marriage as a social institution in human society it has never been exterminated, society has always considered it in a negative light. ... In the 80s there has been an increase in the number of extra)marital affairs [in China]. According to a so-called `Sex Civilization' survey of 20,000 people, among the married population in urban area 5% of them admitted of having engaged in extra marital activities, though in actually this is by far an underestimation. In term of actual number, there are at least 10 million of them in China. Currently some insignificant number of people attempt to defend such conduct, but this is not the predominant attitude. On the whole, society still treats this kind of behavior negatively, and such attitude will not change in the foreseeable future (in the year 2000 and beyond)." "... In the recent years sexually transmitted diseases spread with an average increase of 30% every day, and it is still spreading continuously. Our government is adopting serious measures to weed out and solve problems such as prostitution and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. However due to various complicated reasons in addition to limitation in manpower and resources, they can not be totally rooted out by the year 2000 or onward. If they are not properly controlled the situation will further deteriorate, which deserves our high vigilance." What characterizes the excerpt here is the author's unmistakably authoritative, almost dictatorial voice, and the author's easy assumption of social responsibility with a touch of evangelical righteousness. What characterizes the other more "technical" articles in this journal is their objective tone, their emphasis on cold scientific, matter of fact anatomical approach to sex, together with the effort to demystify it. Sexual problems are subsumed in the medical discourse, discussed mostly in medical categories, and thus have a clinical sterility, as the name of the journal suggests. Granted that this kind of sex education may help enlighten those who have hitherto been kept ignorant of it, should we not be wary of its social implication, especially its resonance of the "will to power" and the question of whom it dominates and whom it empowers? (Received 1/9/1994) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Yaxin Wang Executive Moderator: Changqing Yang + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++