China and the Monkey King

In western culture, the monkey is a mischevious and entertaining creature. It's a crowd favorite at zoos, performs as a popular circus animal, and occasionally accompanies pirates on adventures overseas. But in China, the monkey has revered status befitting its place as one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac.

Throughout modern tales in the West, a monkey's appearance spells nothing but trouble, whether it's as a Nazi sympathizer in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or one of the chimps in the CareerBuilder.com TV ads. You don't want to have a monkey around when there's serious work to be done.

Don't tell that to the Chinese. They'll simply refer you to one of the most beloved characters in their literature, Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King.

Sun Wukong's legend includes a lot of things, like being born from solid rock, developing mysterious powers like shapeshifting, jumping from cloud to cloud, consorting with demons, getting himself kicked out of heaven, and being thrown in prison for 500 years. But the biggest part of the Monkey King's story happened after he was released from stir. He donned a fashionable headband and joined a trio of other nefarious characters, accompanying an earthly monk on what is known as the Journey to the West, a tale that is acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature. That journey is what powers the Monkey King's ongoing popularity in movies, TV shows, operas, and more in China.

Back in the West, the most-recognized image of a primate-in-charge comes from the ultraviolent Planet of the Apes film series of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A recent re-imagining called Rise of the Apes attributes a simian takeover of human civilization to some wimpy pandemic. But in the original movies, the apes acquire the world by brute force. This is much better. An Apes movie is not respectable unless it includes scenes of primates on the march carrying and using automatic weapons against humans.

Compare the character of Ceasar of Apes fame to Sun Wukong's Monkey King and you've got quite a contrast. My Chinese friends say the Monkey King is "a kind, generous, and charming character. Everyone knows this."

I tell them that I had never heard of the Monkey King before I arrived in China, and that I rather prefer Ceasar, anyway. He leads apes on a killing spree in 1970's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and has no qualms about world domination. At the end of the movie, he gives quite a powerful speech, foretelling regime change from man to ape with the line, "...we will found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty, and that day is upon you NOW!"

Such a forceful attitude is unthinkable to the generations of Chinese who have grown up with the adventures of Sun Wukong. Even Chairman Mao imagined himself as having some of the attributes of the Monkey King, although he enacted policy more in the spirit of Ceasar. But that's okay, because I think even the most loyal Chinese would have a hard time imagining the Great Helmsman wearing a golden headband and flying around on clouds.

Truly Asia

Unlike the vast majority of people in mainland China, I get to watch international television. It's common knowledge in Beijing that a satellite dish is illegal, what with all those radical scenes of democracy, diversity, and Lady Gaga possibly beamed directly into one's home and all. As usual, some of the best stuff on TV is commercial advertising, and you get the sense that Asian tourism plays a big role in this. I watched an international commercial recently, inviting would-be tourists to Myanmar. I mean, really, Myanmar? Where harsh military rule is a standard and, until recently, bloody revolution a constant threat?

The Chinese market is evolving so rapidly that the tourism business cannot help itself. Every Asian country believes that the soon-to-be wealthy Chinese citizen will gladly book a trip to someplace like Cambodia, Thailand, India, or Vietnam.

Wrong. On multiple counts.

First of all, China isn't too hip on giving its citizens permission to travel overseas. Second, it'll take some time before the average Chinese family of three can even think of being able to afford it. The Chinese laborer who is helping manufacture the products that are shipped around the world probably has no visions of taking his family on a trip like that. Ever. Seriously, a sight-seeing journey for this guy is walking down the street to the market and back.

He should want to see China first, anyway. The Chinese government is taking the smart road by encouraging its people to tour domestically. Many museums here are free-of-charge, including the massive and violence-inspired Military Museum in Beijing. I haven't been there, but I'm told they've got weapons dating all the way back to when Peking Man used a club to beat-down a saber-toothed tiger.

I'd like to think Chinese families want to relax on a vacation, and it's tough to do that with a travel itenerary that might include a standoff between Army troops and dissident monks in Bangkok. There are more than enough spectacular sights to see in China, plus you don't need to go overseas to experience the dangerous aspect of travel, especially considering the buses that fall over cliffs and high-speed trains that crash into ravines.

And if you're in Beijing, you would hope the Military Museum is still free-of-charge. You don't have to go that far to see the Stone Age up close, after all.

Year of the Dragon

Chinese New Year 2012 ushers in The Year of the Dragon.

A controversy developed over a limited edition postage stamp in China, which depicted a dragon in the form most familiar to Western audiences: a fire-breathing monster.

The Chinese view of the dragon is entirely different. It's a friendly, if overdressed, symbol of good luck, accompanied by firecrackers and high energy celebration. For people in China, the dragon is less Godzilla than it is Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent.

It is rather easy to see where and how the image of the dragon got twisted internationally.

Blame the British.

It's Great Britain, after all, which developed the idea passed down in stories and fables from the middle ages, of knights holding-forth in castles, rescuing flaxen-haired maidens from winged serpents who were basically flying flame throwers. The Japanese (shame on them) enhanced the image to include a dinosaur-like creature that blasted particle beams of destruction from its mouth, while piling up property damage all over Tokyo.

In the meantime, the Chinese were celebrating their symbol of the dragon for more than 5,000 years. The Chinese dragon excudes so much kindness and hope for good fortune and prosperity, that it should have a guest slot on the Muppet Show. Or CNBC's Fast Money.

Like the Monkey King, the Chinese dragon is one of those characters that Western audiences have yet to really appreciate. On the other hand, many Chinese are very familiar with the cruel, overbearing, Asian female villian.

The Year of the Dragon Lady, that's the one I'm waiting for.

Time To Go Home

Whenever Chinese New Year approaches, television viewers are reminded of the one of the holiday's long-standing traditions. A public service promo shows evocative scenes of Chinese citizens getting on trains and buses, making the annual trek toward emotional homecomings. Strains of violin-heavy, reverent music accompanies the slow-motion sequence, preceding the title line:

Time To Go Home.

Except the actual journey to a Beijing bus depot or train station is not nearly as peaceful and gentle as the commercial suggests. It's more like barely-organized chaos. Time to go home? More like time to give you a fat lip for pushing me in the back while fighting to get to the front of the ticket line.

Spring Festival and the Chinese New Year is well-known internationally for the millions of Chinese who travel across the country to visit their relatives. Unlike the West, where most employees can request and receive vacation time at any point in the year, Chinese workers generally get just one opportunity to put down their tools, pack up their bags, and make the trip over-the-river and through-the-woods.

Many of the subjects of the commercials and stories about Chinese traveling for Spring Festival are the country's migrant workers, a lot of whom battled hard with their employer to get paid and find a way to their hometown for the holiday. Some workers haven't seen their family members for a year or longer, and they occasionally burst into tears while talking to reporters about their upcoming reunion. Their stories are so gripping, that it does not surprise me how some Beijing friends felt when I told them I could travel to visit my relatives in the USA twice in a single year.

TWICE?! During ONE YEAR?! Oh, the unfairness of the benefits offered to the foreign devils!

But seriously, some of the best news for foreigners is that Beijing becomes a lot more civilized during these two weeks of celebration, simply because half of the population's left town, and it's not the better half. Then, there's the special experience of the on-going fireworks displays, Temple Fairs, the Lantern Festival, and all the sights and sounds that make China such a tremendous place to be.

Plus, the buses and subways leading to our favorite McDonald's are less crowded. Why can't we have this kind of holiday when it's time for us to go home?

CCTV Chinese New Year's Gala

This month will mark the start of the Year of the Dragon, and the renewal of a traditional rite of the Chinese family New Year celebration. Hundreds of millions of television viewers will watch the state-run TV network's annual variety show.

The CCTV Chinese New Year's Eve gala is an entertainment marathon, produced live at the China Central Television main studio in Beijing. It is a broadcast that has, over the years, been designed to unite the country in much the same way that old American TV shows like "Sabado Gigante" and "The Ed Sullivan Show" did in the 1960s and 1970s. While the American TV universe has exploded to include a thousand channels of entertainment, Chinese viewers still basically receive around 3 dozen channels, virtually all government-controlled. In the end, people in China watch what their government wants them to watch. On the night before the Chinese New Year, the people are supposed to watch 4 consecutive hours of state-sanctioned music, dancing, comedy, and speechmaking.

For Americans and other foreigners who wax nostalgic for such programs of their youth, the CCTV show isn't so bad. The content recalls Sunday evenings watching mop-topped British pop singers, wise-cracking puppet mice, and acrobats spinning plates on sticks. I happen to spend a lot of time at CCTV and get to see the Chinese performers rehearsing for this mega-colossal supershow, and can't help but admire their hard work and dedication.

Yet each year, the Gala exposes a generational split in modern Chinese society that's impossible to ignore. Young Chinese cannot bear to watch this show. They feel that it's old-fashioned and out-of-sync with their lives, not to mention the expectation that it is required viewing in the family living room next to their parents, grandparents, and cousins. Yuk!

Kids who express their preference to play video games or surf the internet until the midnight fireworks start are harshly reprimanded. The youngsters would rather lock themselves in their rooms in silence rather than watch ethnic dances and lame magicians, or hear patriotic songs. It's roughly like forcing a skater punk in the USA to sit down and listen to Pat Boone and Lee Greenwood, amid the occasional sketch comedy of Red Skelton (if he was still alive) and rip-roaring, down-home bluegrass from Dixie.

Of course, the truth is that when these kids in China grow up to become adults, it's expected that they sit down in the living room with their children, and watch this very same show 20 years from now. And they probably will.

On the other hand, nothing like MTV has ever reached the vast majority of Chinese youth, but music videos on the internet have. One gets the feeling the fireworks have yet to begin.

China and Kim Jong Il

Upon receiving the news of North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il's death, China's leading internet video site, Youku.com, carried a black banner at the top of its home page. It's a mark usually reserved for disasters in China. It showed up during the recovery from the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008, and again earlier this year after the Wenzhou high-speed train crash. But Kim Jong-Il? His departure from the world stage was hardly a disaster. I could not believe that China actually wanted its people to join in the mourning for this knucklehead.

China shares a weird kinship with North Korea, or the DPRK, as we're told to call it. There's a common political and social ideology, but really, that's about it. Yet, a lot of Chinese are envious of the impoverished Hermit Kingdom. Either secretly or overtly, they wish China was more like North Korea, closed to public scrutiny, locked-down from foreign influence, belligerent to its neighbors. When the North Koreans told the foreigners in Pyongyang to take a hike during the mourning period for Kim Jong-Il, you could almost hear Chinese hands applauding the move.

The whole big-brother / little-brother relationship between China and the DPRK would probably be OK, except for the fact that Kim Jong-Il had a few flaws. He starved his people, closed-off all international access, rejected technology that would have helped economic development, backed the kidnapping of foreign nationals, shelled and killed islanders in rival South Korea, exploded nuclear weapons, and launched short-range missiles over Japan. This guy was a wrongheaded deadbeat from start to finish, and the Chinese should have been happy to see him go.

If China wants to be all buddy-buddy with the region's most destabilizing nation, fine. But it's hardly the mark of world leadership, even third world leadership.

China Is Not Japan

It is hard to believe that when I chose to come to China a few years ago, I actually had the option of spending my Far East experience in Japan instead. I even went as far as to learn basic Japanese language skills and became endeared to that country's culture and history. In fact, while factoring-through my decision to come to Beijing, I made the mistake of considering Japan and China as similar in a lot of ways: I thought China was a modern, technologically-advancing, economic powerhouse with cities filled with skyscrapers and people busily moving into the 22nd century.

Living in America, so far away from the region, causes you to think these things. Of course, it turned out that the two countries could not be more different in every respect, and China was more like the Flintstones than the Jetsons.

I could have understood it sooner by looking at the recent history between China and Japan. The imperial Japanese of the early 20th century took over China in a brutal occupation, a fact that today's Chinese will never forget. But then, after Japan was beaten in World War II, the country rebuilt itself into a world-leader in business and economics, something that China could have done if it wasn't for its political system, its huge and fractious population, and its failure to open up to the rest of the world.

But it goes a lot deeper than that. The Japanese are simply a kind, humble people. They seem to value kinship and sacrifice. They are even polite when they crowd each other onto subway trains. They are friendly to foreign investment. Their bullet trains don't crash into ravines.

In short, Japan seems to be everything that mainland China is not. There are no hip Chinese kids getting their radical fashion groove on in the flashy shopping districts. There are no unbearably cute Chinese television programs featuring young female pop singers. There are no cosplaying people randomly performing on the urban sidewalks. There are no computer scientists inventing robots to help the elderly live a better life.

In the end, of course, it will all come full circle. Japan's work force continues to shrink; its birth rate keeps falling, and its elderly population is growing fast. It has newfound qualms about high technology and nuclear energy. China is destined to take over as the region's dominant nation.

It all just points to the obvious fact that China is not Japan. And don't get me started comparing it to South Korea.