“The Rise of China” came into common use around 1993. At first, an implicit question mark followed the phrase: Would China make it? The drive to develop became the animating principle in China—you could feel it in the streets and in the Great Hall of the People. (China’s Rise?) was the great question of the era.
Sometime between the 2008 Beijing Olympics and China’s 2016 buildout of militarized islands in the South China Sea, the question mark became an exclamation point. (China’s Rise!) shifted the global focus from the nation’s growing wealth and power to what they would mean for the rest of the world. America stopped clapping and covered its mouth in dread. While hard work continued in China, the heads-down, nose-to-the-grindstone ethos of the question mark period was replaced by an entrepreneurial strut and declarative tone. Pride in having risen became the animating principle. (China’s Rise!) was ominous to the United States, but intoxicating and inspirational to most Chinese.
I spent two weeks in Beijing this past July. It was only a short trip, but it seemed to me the punctuation had changed again: the exclamation point is now an ellipsis (…). Ellipses usually mean you know the rest, same-old-same-old¸ but they can also imply an imminent, agonizing unknown. In most of my conversations in Beijing, friends spoke as though China had somehow settled down before it had been completed. The bounce had gone out of the bungee. It might have been the economic slowdown, the emptiness of consumer culture, or mere exhaustion, but I no longer sensed a great, animating principle at work.
Perhaps this is what the end of China’s long revolutionary period feels like. Generations of Chinese have passed their lives in revolution—in upheaval—and have not had to consider what it might mean to be an ordinary Chinese in ordinary times. Ordinariness is now upon them.
If (China…) means the end of revolution, people will be torn between disorientation and relief. It could be a good thing; ellipses allow people to fill in blanks for themselves.
Here Comes the Cow: Chinese are flocking to theaters for mocking viewings of the dreadful computer-animated film Here Comes the Cow (牛来). You can watch the entire mess here with English subtitles.
This is wonderful news. This bovine non-adventure provides an outlet for two things Chinese popular culture and public discourse lack: irony and wise-ass-ism. Not that China doesn’t have satiric geniuses. Listen to the Grass Mud Horse Song again.
Watch what the Chinese Internet did to XiaoMi CEO Lei Jun after he promoted the Mi cellphone in India. First this, then this. Take another look at Winnie the Pooh memes. Reread Lu Xun and Zhang Leping’s 1930s San Mao cartoons. Irony was the keynote. Today, irony about China is usually banned, like the Grass Mud Horse and Pooh. The points to be made about this are obvious and long-established, so I won’t repeat them. I regret, however, all of the belly laughs that China’s official censoriousness has denied me over the years and note that private eulogies for Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji made it clear that self-deprecating humor can go a long way for Chinese as well as American leaders.
Wendell Berry: Wendell Berry has died. We are poorer for it. The news cycle often reminds me of one of his finest lines: A man with a machine and insufficient character is a pestilence; he shakes more than he can hold.