Today, we continue our ongoing series on Ai Weiwei’s book, Time and place.
A World Without Honor
By 2006 China had already tapped Zhang Yimou to direct the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. To Ai this was completely unacceptable, and he decided to devote a rather fiery post to the injustice of this decision. It was shortly before this that the once daring director had begun to back away from the line. As a friend who had attended film school with Zhang told me, it seemed to her that the gov’t had finally “gotten” him.
But Ai’s essay is still relevant today, especially as we sit through two more weeks of Olympics. He says, “Every competition has a winner, and the victorious side always uses its success to prove a fact.” This should be kept in mind when debating whether or not America’s “free-market” system of athletic training vs. the Chinese state-backed approach is more successful. It isn’t really something we’re going to learn from a few games of basketball or 110 meters of hurdles (interestingly, if one combines the total number of medals won this year by China and Russia and compare them to the number won by the U.S. and G.B. you find they come out exactly even).
Ai goes deeper into the nature of competitions in the Chinese context and argues that, “A world with no true goodness and no beauty is necessarily this way. In all competitions here, there are only painstakingly arranged victors, losers, and observers. The weak triumph and the superior suffer defeat, and losers defeat those who should be victors. This is already common knowledge, for the theory of evolution does not apply here.” This seems to get more to the heart of the value of competition within a market system vs. the current system in China that tends to give advantages to State companies. This point has been mentioned time and again by a friend whose private company once boomed only to be squeezed out of the market by “losers” who had been handed victory.
As soon as You’re not careful…an Encounter with Idiocy on a Sunny Day
In this blog post Ai Weiwei recounts his participation in a forum that was discussing Chinese culture in crisis. I’m not sure if he even made it to the event before he decided it would be a waste of time, but being who he is, he decided at the very least he could “contribute” to the conversation. This seems to have taken the form of swearing at one of the presenters who seemed bent on devaluing low-culture like Internet writing. The presenter, who began by bashing Yu Hua so violently that Ai believed for a moment that Yu Hua must be some kind of inanimate object, proceeded then to attack Han Han as a fleeting personality. It was at that point Ai called BS.
In a somewhat telling line Ai says, “I don’t understand why “egocentric” people can’t become masters. Does that even really matter? Isn’t everyone self indulgent?” I’ve always wondered whether Ai’s various forms of art were self-less jabs at authority or if they were the attention seeking behavior that the Global Times claims they are. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what Ai’s motivations are as much as what kind of affect his art has on those who see it. This week at a presentation a man asked me why Ai Weiwei was the only dissident that most Americans were aware of. I replied by saying that Ai was simply one of the most fun to watch. So now I’m pondering if Ai’s actions can be called “egocentric” if the result is a global awareness of the ongoing struggle to create a China ruled by law.
Aftershocks
In this short essay Ai compares the devastation of the Tangshan Earthquake to the destructive force of the Cultural Revolution. As he says, “There are two types of disasters: visible and quantifiable natural disasters, and invisible, immeasurable psychological disasters.” He also reminds his readers that the Tangshan earthquake and the death of several Chinese leaders imbued the event with mystical interpretations. This coincidence has been mentioned time and again this year as China ramps up for leadership change.
I think Ai is absolutely right to say there are still “aftershocks” of the Cultural Revolution. One of my Chinese friends says he still shouts criticisms in his sleep, sitting upright in bed and pointing at imaginary class enemies. It also seems to have fueled the current generation of activists and dissidents. What else can possibly come of having your childhood shaped by violence and revolt?
Ai’s final paragraph contains a sentiment I’ve heard repeated often, and it does seem to be true. “The extermination of a nation’s collective memory and its ability for self-reflection is like a living organism’s rejection of its own immune system. The main difference is that this nation won’t die, it will only lose its sense of reason.”
On Friday we’ll continue this series with reflections from Hannah after reading “On The Bird’s Nest” and “The Longest Road.”
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