Let me begin with a story. Here’s how it went: this morning I went to campus to watch the formation training, and stood outside the fence around the gymnasium watching. Beside me was a middle-aged man who seemed to be visiting Peking University; he picked up his camera and took two photos, and immediately a thug-looking fellow came running from far away, yelling for him to delete the pictures. The man obediently complied and left. Seeing this, I then took out my own camera to shoot as well, and sure enough that fellow immediately charged over again, shouting for me to take out my camera and delete the photos. Of course I refused, so the thug rushed up and shoved me around. Fortunately I’m fairly big, so he couldn’t push me, and then he threatened me, saying there were soldiers inside and that he could bring out three or five soldiers to deal with me; I said, please go ahead and call them—it’s not that I want to make trouble, but if you want to make a big deal out of it, I have no objection. I asked why photos couldn’t be taken: was this some kind of shady business? Was this a military base? The fellow said with great finality: yes, we are doing something shady! This is a military base! He kept pushing me, and I kept standing my ground. In the end he went back to call for help. Of course, in the end the thug still didn’t manage to summon the army; what came out was a fair-faced, soft-spoken young man, who tried to reason with me kindly and did not make me delete the photos, only repeatedly warned me not to post them online. Meanwhile, the shop owner at the little stall nearby was also pleading on his behalf, saying that outsiders weren’t supposed to be let in in the first place, and that I was the one who had opened the gate, and so on. In short, I’ve always been one to submit to softness and not to force, so naturally I didn’t keep at it any further and tactfully left.
This small incident reflects a keyword in the current Chinese character: “self-doubt.” Behind this self-doubt, the most crucial problem is “the wrong name.” If, as the National Day *youxing* is said to be, it is something students participate in voluntarily, and if concentrated training during the summer vacation is indeed reasonable and necessary, then why the secrecy? What is there to be ashamed of? It is said that some leaders compared it with the secrecy of the Olympic opening ceremony; then it becomes even harder to understand. Could it be that some people think the brain-dead choreography of marching in step can be compared to the issues of the Olympic opening ceremony? If photos are not allowed when joint training is conducted at a military airport that is itself a heavily classified location, that is still understandable. But why should photography be refused when it is just taking place on the Peking University campus gymnasium grounds? What exactly are they afraid of, and of what?
It seems to me that the key point is not that they fear I might photograph some confidential information, but rather that they fear I might take the pictures home and post them online. It is not that the photos themselves might reveal some secret; rather, it is that the very act of photographing and posting the pictures makes them uncomfortable. No matter how many grand-sounding reasons they find for “why secrecy is necessary,” the deep psychological root is probably a single word: “shame.” Perhaps it is not necessarily *modesty* or *shame* in the moral sense (though I do in fact think so), but at least first of all it is a kind of shy, self-conscious state of mind, as if some people either lack confidence in their own appearance, or lack confidence in whether their appearance can be properly conveyed by a photograph. In such a case, it is only natural to dodge and refuse being photographed, and to that extent such “self-doubt” is rather healthy. But there are two other kinds of “shyness” that may be even more relevant here. The first is when what is being photographed is the image closest to one’s essence, like naked genitals, or else the act of sex or some other private activity, where the most primitive desires are being uncontrollably revealed, and one instinctively does not want outsiders to see it. The second is, of course, when one is doing something guilty and does not want outsiders to see it.
The reason I was forbidden to take photos here probably involved all of these shame-related psychological factors. In particular, the commander’s own desire to dominate and control. In my view, unless one’s desire to dominate or control is badly unrestrained and even tending toward sadism, a person is not likely to enjoy pointing fingers and barking orders in front of several thousand people. Of course, some people may say: it’s not that I like being a commander; it’s that I have to complete the task that must be completed, and we must obey… And so we see once again that sadism and masochism are often closely related and mutually permeable. The masochist finds pleasure in obeying orders, and the more one is shouted at and resisted, the more deeply one becomes invested, and the more one becomes self-righteous.
Of course, as before, when I speak of concepts such as sadism and masochism, I am not saying that their character is wrong, bad, or evil. Things like SM, homosexuality, fetishism, and other different “orientations” can at most be called quirks; they make the world and human nature richer and more wondrous, and there is nothing inherently blameworthy about them. The key point is that whatever kind of personality you have—you should not treat other people as if they were just like you. You may be homosexual; that’s no problem. But when you interact with me, you cannot simply assume that I am homosexual too. You may be a sadist/masochist; that’s perfectly fine. But you cannot treat me as if I were the same, and you cannot assume that because you find domination or obedience delightful, I too ought to be perfectly at ease in these activities. There is no right or wrong in personality; there are only appropriate and inappropriate ways of relating to others. There is nothing that all, generic, universal “people” are “supposed” to learn to “enjoy.”
I’m told that when a certain psychological counselor at the school was comforting the students participating in the formation, he cited a theory along these lines: “If you can’t resist rape, then enjoy it.” Now if the participants were all “voluntary,” then where would any rape come from? Clearly people were all “voluntarily forced,” and there’s no need to dwell on that too much. In addition, the fact that such a helplessly ironic saying could be so openly deployed by a counselor is itself astonishing, but I won’t say much more on that either. What I want to say is that this sentence does indeed lay bare some of the subtle characteristics of today’s Chinese system: namely, carrying out rape under a grand and righteous façade. The rationalization of rape only requires a few simple steps of reasoning:
Reason 1: If rape cannot be resisted, then the most rational approach is to enjoy it;
Reason 2: Doing things that are both reasonable and pleasurable is of course beneficial;
Reason 3: It is of course proper for the government to make the people benefit;
Fact: The force of the current government makes its rape something people are powerless to resist;
Inference 1: Rational citizens ought to derive enjoyment from the government’s rape, and therefore the rape is proper;
Inference 2: If you are still complaining, it is because you are not rational enough.
In propaganda and debate, one can also provide support by reasoning from more angles, for instance that the custom of rape maintains overall stability, that breaking with custom will lead to turmoil and unrest, and so on…
If one continues this line of reasoning further, and then adds the principle that “something the other side willingly accepts and happily enjoys is not rape,” one arrives at the result that “rape is not rape.” Given that “contradiction implies everything,” all statements then become reasonable.
If my reasoning just now was a joke or nonsense, then many “grand and righteous” lines of reasoning are certainly no better.
It is not only the most basic logic of reasoning, and not only matters like Article 35 of the Constitution, that need to be “properly named”; phenomena of “the name is not right, so the words are not fluent” are everywhere. Rather than saying that name and reality do not match, it would be more accurate to say that first of all there is a mismatch between nomenclature and legal principle. For my philosophy, my argument does not particularly care about “proper naming.” I am willing to use more ambiguous and shifting terms without immediately giving clear definitions. However, for the operation of a society, “proper naming” is the foremost matter. “Proper naming” is not a prerequisite for “reasoning,” but it is a prerequisite for “law.” If terms and concepts can be interpreted arbitrarily, then no matter how rigorous the law is, it will become a dead letter.
If a society does not respect law but instead relies on rule by persons, and constrains itself more through invisible rites, perhaps that is not impossible either. However, “proper naming” is still the first thing that must be done (and this was originally Confucius’s view). I will set aside the deeper principles. At the very least, because speech and reason do not flow properly, either those issuing commands become self-doubting and repressed, or else the orders fail to be carried out smoothly, and the entire society becomes twisted and deformed from the inside out. But here I cannot make myself even clearer for the moment.
There is also a whole series of questions of nomenclature surrounding the National Day *youxing*: first, why does the National Day need *youxing*? Second, why must *youxing* involve university students? Third, why must the student formation march in step in a square formation? Fourth, why is it shameful if the formation cannot march in step?
In my own view, it is acceptable for university students to participate in the *youxing*. *Youxing* is a kind of ritual; whether one says it is to express patriotic enthusiasm, or to display confidence and self-strengthening, or simply to find a chance to celebrate and make things lively, *youxing* is a pretty good form. But why marching in step? Why is it that most leaders, and a fairly large number of students as well, take it for granted that *youxing* is “supposed” to be done in step, and the straighter the better? Behind this matter-of-course mindset lies some of the profound mysteries of Chinese political culture.
Marching in step and assembling in square formations are uncommon things, and it is easy to imagine that they are products of the military camp. But for us, marching in step as a kind of “ritual” seems to have become utterly commonplace, and something to which we are long accustomed. Where did we get used to marching in step and forming square formations? — In primary and secondary school.
Starting from first grade, during more than ten years of school life, lining up every morning and doing calisthenics in neat, orderly fashion has become the most everyday of routines. How many people ever realize that this is actually an utterly bizarre thing? At the same time every day, tens of millions of people across the whole country, moving to the same tune and performing identical motions, this vast-scale performance art has been deeply implanted into our daily lives—of course many people will complain about why they have to do exercises, but just as people often complain about why they have to go to school, complaint is complaint, and in their hearts they still feel this is something perfectly taken for granted—look straight ahead, align left and right, keep the movements orderly… Yet this “daily” experience, whether seen in historical comparison or in comparison between China and the West, is an extremely singular phenomenon. In ancient times, and in the West, such a spectacle of thousands of people lining up in formation and doing morning exercises in unison would probably only have been possible in a military camp. Only in a very small number of countries such as China and Japan, in the most recent era (perhaps there were ancient exceptions such as Sparta?), did this spectacle become so everyday.
What is the significance of calisthenics for the whole society? On the surface, it reflects the Chinese emphasis on physical exercise, but on a deeper level, beneath the surface of the iceberg, the larger mystery is that it is a kind of discipline, a wondrous discipline. It subtly, even in a way that those promoting it may not themselves be aware of, implants into generation after generation of Chinese children the habits of the military camp—marching in step is taken for granted, keeping the formation aligned is taken for granted, obeying commands and observing discipline is taken for granted… No one questions the meaning of “orderly neatness.” Even those mischievous rebels and troublemakers often agree that “orderly neatness” is authority, they just happen to want to rebel a little against that authority. Very few people question whether “orderly neatness” itself may in fact be extremely absurd, a collective madness, something inconceivable, something shocking to the world…
Just as the political system of the modern West arose only through a combination of ancient Western legal traditions, mercantilism, and the printing press, the political system of modern China became possible only through the combination of the cultural inertia of China’s traditional bureaucratic-paternalist order and certain key modern technologies. “Calisthenics” is precisely where this mystery is most concentrated. The mass-media technology represented by “broadcasting” facilitated the rise of the “mass” and the homogenization of society, and also made it possible to unify pace on a large scale (and thoughts as well); while “calisthenics” contains within it the traditional militarism, authoritarianism, and paternalism. This is why calisthenics via broadcast is such a distinctive feature of countries like China and Japan.
Such a wondrous discipline causes the habits of thought and the habits of the body to reinforce one another. No extra indoctrination is needed. As long as daily calisthenics via broadcast become an utterly natural habit, an entire mode of thinking is planted in children’s minds—“keeping up with others” is taken for granted, doing things differently from everyone else seems embarrassing and shameful, and people who deliberately disrupt order look annoying… These ideas do not need to be taught through words; all that is needed is to do calisthenics every day, and the discipline is achieved.
I’ll stop here for today.
2009-08-11 1:40 a.m.
Latest Comments
- Unieros
2009-08-30 18:02:43 Anonymous 115.155.143.75
I finally got back to a place where I can get online. Damn, the internet in Xinjiang has been shut down for more than a year; the earlier rumor that it would be three months was pure nonsense.
Out of less than ten of my high school classmates from Beijing, almost all of them are now preparing for the *youxing*. Some are in the dance formation, some in the Olympic volunteers formation.
I heard that the students from Minzu University have even been mobilized en masse…
Everyone has been casually mentioning the rape theory these days.
Come to think of it, in this day and age, even getting into Peking University isn’t really getting into Peking University; actually it’s being gotten into by Peking University. - Gu Chi
2009-08-31 00:26:21
What on earth is the dance formation… Peking University has three thousand toughs on the march..
- unic
2009-08-31 01:15:17 Anonymous 115.155.143.75
Apparently they are working for Zhang Yimou, and can earn 40 or 50 yuan a day! It’s from Beijing University of Science and Technology or Central University of Finance and Economics.
- *
2009-09-07 11:58:55 Anonymous 125.35.1.42
No one is forcing you to “feel” that it is “shameful.” Think about the kind of “enframing” you yourself have already fallen into.
A Miscellany on Marching in Step, Part Two
Gu Chi 发表于 2009-08-11 23:52:46
A Miscellany on Marching in Step, Part Two
In the previous post, I wrote that this discipline of calisthenics via broadcast makes the “neat formation” the standard of excellence, and our formation ended up dead last, making everyone from the leaders to the students feel extremely ashamed.
What is “discipline”? Rules and training. Perhaps words like “conditioning” would also do. However, aside from many conscious, explicit forms of guidance and training, cultural “discipline” often operates in much more concealed ways. Take calisthenics via broadcast, for example: on the surface, it is training for physical health, but what is implied within it, and what happens unconsciously between the trainer and the trained, is a kind of discipline of aesthetic judgment. This is what is meant by “subtle influence.” People who grow up in such a culture are not only mentally, but also aesthetically, given a specific kind of “domestication.” This kind of cultural domestication through constant exposure may even make things that seem extremely perverse and inconceivable to others become a perfectly natural standard of beauty.
As people who have already been deeply domesticated by calisthenics via broadcast, even if we can think of this possibility, it is still not easy to actually feel how strange this custom of “orderliness” really is. Let me instead cite a few examples from other cultures to illustrate the power of this aesthetic discipline.
It is said that in southern Myanmar there is a Kayan people, whose custom is to value long necks as beautiful. Women of this tribe must, from childhood, continually wear copper rings around their necks to lengthen them; reportedly as many as twenty or more rings can be stacked on.
And then there is said to be a tribe in Ethiopia that values large lips as beautiful, and among them only the children of nobles are allowed from childhood to stuff copper rings into their mouths to make their lips protrude. There, women with cherry-sized lips cannot get married.
Of course, in ancient China there was also the custom of foot-binding, which can serve as another example.
As outsiders belonging to different cultures, when we look at people with long necks and big lips, we will probably feel incomparably astonished—how can such a perverse appearance be considered beautiful? And yet, could it be that the people of those ethnic groups are forcing themselves against their own feelings in order to uphold the custom? Probably not. They probably truly and sincerely identify with that aesthetic standard—longer necks are more beautiful, larger lips are more beautiful, smaller feet are more beautiful, more perfectly synchronized marching is more beautiful… They really do think: a child with small lips is shameful to the family, and a formation that marches in a scattered, uneven way is disgraceful.
How should one rebut people who live within a certain perverse culture? How can one consciously discover the perverse aspects of one’s own culture? Perhaps culture itself is destined to be a kind of perversity, a distortion and remolding of the natural state. However, can we not make some deeper judgments about these forms of distortion and remolding? How should a person in a lip-plated tribe face his or her own culture and customs? Even if we still respect our own culture, we can strive to continually transcend the limitations of our thinking.
2009-08-11
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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