He Jiahong and His "Detective" Hong Jun--Contemporary Chinese Detective Fiction

After long silence...Happy Year of the Rooster!

This article on He Jiahong and his fictional "detective" character, Hong Jun, will be appearing later in 2017 in Sleuths, Private Eyes, and Policemen: An International Compendium of the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives edited by Eric Sandberg and published by Rowman and Littlefield. Sandberg teaches at Oulu University in Finland.

Hong Jun

He Jiahong, 1953-

“China is different, Mr. Zheng. The rule of law is still young and we have to tread carefully.”[1]

Crime writing in China has an ancient history preserved in gong’an, or crime-case tales, dating back to the 11^th century. Until recently, though, when asked about detective fiction, many Chinese readers would reply ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ Through the efforts of He Jiahong, however, contemporary China now has a home-grown investigator, attorney Hong Jun.[2] Unlike ex-patriate authors like Qiu Xiaolong (USA) and Diane Wei Liang (UK), He Jiahong lives and works in China. He has taught university in Beijing, and practiced law since completing his doctorate in America, an accomplishment he shares with his creation. The Hong Jun series is set in the late 20^th century, a period of accelerated change in China. This temporal context is a significant choice, because rapid social and economic change stresses legal systems; the law changes more slowly than the culture surrounding it. Few characters in the novels are interested in the past, but, ironically, the causes of current problems often lie in that neglected history.

In the 1990s, Hong Jun returned to China from America and set up a private legal practice, instead of following the more common route of becoming a prosecutor and employee of the state. Educated in both Chinese and American law and experienced in both cultures, he is an effective guide to how their legal and cultural practices and expectations differ.  Mature and handsome, with a fondness for American blues music, Hong is only thirty when his career begins in Hanging Devils (2015). In this and the next novel, Black Holes (2014), his character—calm, fair-minded, and moral but not priggish––is consistent. He brings fresh ideas to the practice of law in China, but he is not above flirting with his competent, attractive secretary, Song Jia. When offered a men’s night out, though, including a massage with ‘extras,’ Hong declines because the situation is morally and ethically questionable. His pursuit of justice stems from this moral and ethical sense and, with some difficulty, he holds himself to the standards he hopes will come to characterize the Chinese legal profession.

Much of the excitement of the books comes from the readers’ discovery of a very different system of law, one in which assumptions taken for granted in many nations are simply not applicable. As part of a changing system, Hong must often explain his role to his clients; they express surprise that he is independent of the state and earns his living from clients’ fees. As Hong explains, “the law requires the police, prosecutors and the courts to scrutinize each other, and provide checks and balances,” but attorneys as defenders of the accused or of victims of legal errors are cautiously being introduced into a Chinese tradition that is ‘inquisitorial’ rather than adversarial.[3] Take for example, the question every case involves in some form: “Did the police beat you?”[4]  While the answer is always no, the question signals underlying assumptions in the system. Before accepting any case, Hong investigates whether it is legitimate, because lawyers are expected to argue based on truth, not on allegiance to their clients, and it is this process that aligns him with the detective tradition. He questions witnesses, examines records of prior interrogations, and accepts no physical evidence at face value. In Hanging Devils, he investigates a ten-year-old rape and murder conviction that may have been a miscarriage of justice. In Black Holes, he is hired to defend a young stock trader who is accused of fraud. In the process of investigating both cases, Hong is drawn back to the period of the Cultural Revolution and the Educated Youth movement that sent young people from urban areas into rural districts.

The resentments and crimes of the past may be the initial motives, but when joined with blind ambition or unthinking greed, they fuel present misdeeds. In each case, Hong takes the extra investigative steps that the police skipped, or examines evidence that, when approached with an open mind, yields contradictions and new interpretations. Given his modern education, he is also aware of new forensic techniques such as the analysis of blood types and DNA. He is cautious and sensitive to the implications of his findings, but generally he discovers human weakness––such as greed, ruthless ambition, sexual indiscretion, or errors based on emotion or immaturity––behind the crimes he investigates. He believes that any system based on human action will involve mistakes; for instance, he frequently finds civil servants asleep at their desks or otherwise inattentive to their duties. Then there is the legal system itself, which Hong sometimes compares to American practices “where it was normal to challenge verdicts, and where procedural justice and the protection of individual rights were so revered [. . .]. Hong Jun knew that, under the prevailing Chinese legal system, it was far easier for the courts to allow a wrongful verdict to stand than to get it overturned. Righting past wrongs was a propaganda slogan, pretense being cheaper than practice.”[5] Hong consciously tries to lead by example and model the ethical behavior and concern for justice that he believes eventually will be part of the Chinese legal system at all levels.

Hong Jun allows readers to look into the Chinese legal system, which may seem mysterious and remote to most of them. He too, must navigate the system and, in order to do his job well, he must consider its basis in tradition and the pressure it is under in ‘new China.’ Hong’s cases provide much-needed context for understanding the challenges faced by China in both the past and the present.

Selected Bibliography

Hanging Devils (2015)

Black Holes (2014)

Rebecca Martin

Pace University

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[1] He Jiahong, Hanging Devils, (Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2015), 10.

[2] Jiahong’s Hong Jun series includes five novels, with the first two currently available in English.

[3] He, Hanging Devils, 76; Elisa Nesossi, “He Jiahong: Working Between Law and Literature,” The China Story, September 28, 2012, accessed April 15, 2016, https://www.thechinastory.org/2012/09/he-jiahong-%E4%BD%95%E5%AE%B6%E5%BC%98-working-between-law-and-literature/.

[4] He, Black Holes, (Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2014), 258; Hanging Devils, 91.

[5] Hanging Devils, 97-8.

More Complicated Than You Thought--Leslie T. Chang on China's Factory Workers

Chang's TED talk came around well after the publication of her fascinating and eye-opening book, Factory Girls (See my January 2011 post: My China Road: Town & Country ). In the TED talk, she reprises the major points of her argument which is not that conditions are better than we in the west might think, but that factory work serves a more complex social and economic purpose than we may realize. The workers are not a faceless, suffering mass, but rather individuals, whose lives and aspirations are "complicated, surprising, and funny," says Chang.  For most, the jobs are a tool for upward mobility.  Be sure to read the details about the two profiled workers. Here is the link to Chang's September 2012 TED talk:
http://on.ted.com/LTChang

Penetrating the Great Wall of Chinese Language--TED Talk

Or, more specifically, Chinese characters.  I have attempted to use this mnemonic technique in my own studies and have hardly gotten beyond recognizing "woman" and "house."  These IS a method here but I have not hit upon the right way for my own learning style.  Perhaps ShaoLan Hsueh's method will help me move ahead.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shaolan_learn_to_read_chinese_with_ease.html

Faculty Seminar 2011 Pace University Confucius Institute

Pace graduate student, Yan Zhang, made this video giving an account of the Faculty Seminar (2011) at Pace University's Confucius Institute, our trip to China that summer, and our thoughts upon return.  Hen hao!!

Special thanks to Dr. Yanyu Zhou, our language instructor at Pace (Xie xie, laoshi Zhou!), and Dr. Jianning (Jenny) Ding, our language instructor at Nanjing Normal University (Xie xie, laoshi Ding!).

 Faculty Seminar 2011 Pace University Confucius Institute

Deborah Poe’s Hélène: Weaving in France, Dreaming of China

Deborah Poe's new novella in verse, Hélène, is both exact and dreamy. In powerful, rhythmic words and images of amazing beauty, she draws the life of a 19th-c French factory girl, who is basically a prisoner in a convent where she weaves silken fibers into the silk cloth craved by Europeans. The beauty of what she works on contrasts to conditions of her life. Her escape is through imagination, her fantasy of the life of a young weaver in China, going through the same motions, feeling the same longing for escape.

Poe explores the depth of meaning in common words repeated here: "benefactor," "thread," "falling," "chest." Images of animals--deer, geese, cats, fish, horses--appear creating moments of beauty and escape into the natural world, as in "Orphaned waterscape a flock of sparrows flying over the mind./A thunderstorm rolling in over a family of deer. The horse flying through branches,/landing safely." In the repetition of weft and warp beauty is created from "sticky protein" and the building of bridges through dreams allows lonely young women to travel together beyond the obstacles of geography. The difference in their languages ("Masculin et féminin" or the "Shang-sheng, a rising tone") and geography is overcome through the ideas and meanings that writing make possible and, in the words cited from Chuang-Tzu, "This is called the transformation of things." Poverty, enclosure, the sleazy facts of history, and the abuse of power are alluded to here, but are not allowed to cancel out life and meaning or beauty itself. Poe's work is a significant achievement of balance and beauty.

Louisa Lim on "Bureaucracy Lit"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/books/review/bureaucracy-lit-in-china.html?smid=pl-share

There is obviously crossover appeal since "bureaucracy lit" is a kind of crime literature. As with all crime literature, the cultural context of the crime, the depiction of the function of the law, and the attitude of characters toward the crime tell readers a lot about contemporary culture. Louisa Lim is National Public Radio's (NPR's) Beijing correspondent.

Today's NY Times Book Review also has a positive yet cautious review of Mo Yan's Sandalwood Death and Pow! written by Ian Buruma.

Chinese Hackers: What a Waste of Brain Power

Chinese Hackers Attack the New York Times

Current scene in Chinese pro basketball: follow-up to my August '12 post on Jim Yardley's Brave Dragons

Chinese Basketball (CBA) | Chinese Language Blog


I will have to support the Brave Dragons of Shanxi. They became my heroes after reading Yardley's book.

I've read that Wayne Wang will be directing a film based on the book with a script by Jonathan Prince. The choice of Wang makes me think that the story won't just be played for laughs, which would be a relief.

Peter May's Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers by Peter May

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Inadvertently, I'm doing this series in random chronological order. I read one other novel and I thought I'd give the series another chance, hoping it would get better, but it really doesn't. I criticized the portrayal of Margaret in the first novel I read (The Killing Room) in the series because she was a b***h on wheels and I couldn't figure out how she and Li had ever gotten together. Well, in this one, she whines constantly. Sorry, but it does not entertain me listening to women indulging in self-pity because they have children and have to slight their careers. C'mon. We've got an app for that and have had it since the 1960s. Anyway, this "Beijing Ripper" case was pretty interesting but when the solution finally comes it's quite mundane. Do I want to continue back in time to read the earlier book(s) in the series? Oh, I suppose I will, but I will probably be finished with this series at that point, unless I find out that Li has ditched Margaret and turned his attention elsewhere. Overall, I find this series run-of-the-mill except for its Chinese locale.

Qiu Xiaolong's series is far better with more complex characterizations, more complex political situations and insights, and much more layered cases. And poetry. If you like that in detective fiction!



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Peter May's The Killing Room

The Killing Room by Peter May

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I plan to read more in the series, because I've started with one of the later books, but I am not impressed. The environment (geographical, cultural, political, social) in which the investigation takes place is a draw, but I find Margaret Campbell to be a totally unpleasant character, one about whom I don't care at all. I should go back and read an earlier book in the series so I can figure out what ever made her attractive to Li. I sure don't get it at this point. I think Mei-Ling is a much more attractive character and hope she appears elsewhere in later books.



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China Development Research Foundation: Recommending phase-out of one-child policy

On "Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, An American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing"

I discovered this book in reading an article in the NY Times Magazine ("Away Game," Feb. 5, 2012). That article profiled one American player and his experiences in playing basketball and entering into a new culture in China. It's not simply about NBA players in China, but rather about China and basketball and professional sports in general. It looks at basketball and American players transplanted to China and creates a fascinating picture of part of Chinese culture that I've never read about anywhere else. I'm not even interested in the NBA but the article by Yardley was excellent and piqued my interest in the book mentioned in passing.

Yardley has chosen a very clever way to examine modern China. What he does is pick a subject that most Americans will be somewhat familiar with, the NBA. Then he transplants the subject to China by following an American retired NBA coach who has been hired to coach a privately-owned team in one of the lesser-known (from the Western perspective) Chinese cities (Taiyuan in Shanxi province). We might think, well, the NBA is the NBA no matter where it lives and basketball is basketball. But Yardley quite brilliantly tells us a story that illuminates the culture and aspirations, and to some degree the history, of modern China by placing the known quantity of the NBA into an environment that is, in fact, very foreign and not particularly hospitable to American expectations about sports.

The Miami Heat need to make money by selling tickets and signing deals. Do the Brave Dragons have to make money in these ways? No, because Boss Wang is very, very rich. American NBA players roam around at will, throw their money around and make the headlines in ways good and bad. What about the Dragons' players? They live in a Spartan dorm outside the city center where they are virtual prisoners. But, what if an owner spends a lot of money to hire a new coach because he wants his team to get better, be "American" and play American-style ball? Well, you would then assume that he'd hire the best and give him leave to mold the team (except perhaps if he attended the George Steinbrenner School of Sports Management) using American methods (a wide range of kinds of fitness training suited to individual needs, forging relationships with individual players based on knowledge of their personalities and what works best with each, etc.). Old habits die hard, though, for men of Boss Wang's generation.

The story is frustrating and funny and informative in what it shows us about Chinese sports culture and its growing pains, though there is no doubt whatsoever of Yardley's sympathies with his subjects, particularly the young men who play professional basketball and want to be better players than they are. If you are looking for a book that makes fun of the Chinese, this isn't it. We get a lot of context so that we understand, for instance, why Boss Wang thinks that screaming at his players and telling them what pathetic, lazy failures they are will motivate them to improve.

If you ever thought that sports was a universal language, this book will make you re-think that assumption. You don't even have to like or understand basketball to enjoy this book.

Right now I am watching women's Olympic basketball streaming live from London. The USA and China are playing. Knowing what the experience for male basketball athletes is like in China makes me look at these Chinese women with a great deal of curiosity. That's a book yet to be written.

"Midnight in Peking" review

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I put this book in my "Global detective fiction" shelf, though let me say right away that it is not fiction. I enjoyed every minute of this book and it ended all too soon.

The time is 1937 and the place is the area in and around the Foreign Legation quarters in old Peking. Politics all over the world are in turmoil with events leading to WWII taking place in Europe, and in China the brutal Japanese are invading and the already feeble nationalist government is on the ropes.

A nearly-19 year old Englishwoman, Pamela Werner, is killed, her body mutilated and dumped at the base of the Fox Tower just outside the Legation. The details of the joint Chinese and English investigation, its constraints and its flaws is fascinating in and of itself. When the investigation is unable to point to a culprit, Pamela's father spends the rest of his years in Peking doing the investigation that the police should have done. But his findings fall on deaf ears. Are the British afraid to lose face? Is that why the British powers ignore the findings and call their representative on the team home to Tientsin? Was the original investigation, which seemed fairly competent for the time and place, in fact, undercut by restraints and subterfuge on the Chinese side? Peking soon falls to the Japanese...is it just that everyone has more important things to think about than a dead girl who was a bit of a handful while she was alive and perhaps no better than she should have been?

Historian Paul French has reconstructed the entire case, from the events leading up to the fatal night, to the actions and investigations of all of the parties involved. He quite literally found by fortunate accident a folder of records stored in the British archives that traced the case, including ETC Werner's many letters filled with his additional investigations and pleading for more action on the case. From these records and his other investigations, French puts together a quite believable chain of events and points the finger at one man in particular. This case was unsolved from 1937 to 2011 and quite forgotten, but it is now resolved and there can be little doubt that French's version is valid.

Ok, THAT is the story. It's well-told and reads like an exciting murder mystery. For me, the bonus was the very detailed portrait of Peking during this period and the foreign presence in China's coastal cities such as Shanghai and Tientsin. I can't say enough about the lively realistic (and unsavory) picture that emerges of the Legation area of Peking. I spent half the time I was supposedly reading the book looking for maps online so I could follow the action. It turns out that many of the places and streets that feature prominently in the story are still there (remarkable, considering the construction in Beijing over the last few decades).

If you are interested in that aspect of the story, start with the Wikipedia entry on "Beijing Legation Quarter" and follow links to maps. There is also this Paul French link: http://us.midnightinpeking.com/pdf/a-...

Breaking news, Midnight in Peking Walking Tour! http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/play/ha...

When can I go???!

I could go on and on because I found this book utterly fascinating. The murder mystery was only one part of its appeal, for this reader.



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Li Er at "The Crime Scene"

According to the novel’s prologue, “this novel is based on the author’s first-hand interview with a group of bank robbers. The heroes and the heroine are not born ruthless or evil, nor do they have any particular hatred for society.  However, they take a juvenile approach to life and recklessly commit crimes.  What drives their destructive behavior?” (7)

To say that the three criminals in Li Er’s short crime story “take a juvenile approach to life” tells us only the most obvious quality of their decision-making; the novel itself gives a much more nuanced picture of how each, individually, comes to the disastrous decision to rob the truck that picks up money at several branches of a major Chinese bank. That it is a disastrous decision is probably what you could guess for yourself.  Things will not turn out well.  But I will try to write about the book without spoilers that give away major features of the drama. I also wish to acknowledge upfront that my interpretation may be on shaky ground because though I read the book in a bilingual Chinese-English Readers series (Better Link Press, NY and Shanghai, 2009) my limited command of Mandarin left me to rely solely on the English translation. I could do no comparison or analysis of how the translation rendered the original language.

The three robbers are the major characters: Ma En, the leader of this band of outsiders; Yang Hong, his girlfriend; and Erqing, Ma En’s not-very-bright side-kick. There are two minor though important characters:  Chen Shuanbao, a corrupt policeman who has done some deals with Ma En, and the retired principal of Ma En’s Jizhou high school, Cheng Pu (“Mr. Cheng”), a teacher and mentor who encouraged Ma En to be more ambitious and to continue his studies.

Ma En is a man of contradictions.  He is smart and could have gone to college, but he ends up repairing motorcycles. He took the exam but failed because he helped a friend cheat. He’s not ambitious enough to re-take the exam, which we are assured he would have passed. Of course, that friend’s father shows his gratitude by helping Ma En get a business license.

Ma En is tender and loving with his girlfriend; the novel opens with a scene of him waking up early next to Yang Hong with the melancholy feeling that he might not see her again after the day’s deeds.  We also learn that though Yang Hong has had a morally questionable life since leaving the country for the city, she and Ma En met when he gallantly interceded to save her from a brutish client. On the other hand, we find later that in their time together, Ma En has “given” Yang Hong in various business transactions in which her love for him has made her an apparently willing participant. By recognizing the main chance, using Yang Hong as a commodity, and applying bribes in all the right places, Ma En has become a fairly successful businessman, a “rich boss with two graduates from the Transportation Vocational School working for him” (35).

What brings Ma En to plan a robbery? Here is the place where some of Li Er’s discrete social criticism slips in.  While Chen Shuanbao has managed to get Ma En the motorcycle repair business generated by the local police, the government has not been good about paying its bills, so Ma En’s business has failed (113). When it comes to the motivations for the criminal life that Li Er means to explore, the push given to Ma En by this harsh realism, cannot be ignored.

Other possibly influential factors that are revealed by the robbers include their wide familiarity with American and Hong Kong crime movies and television and, at least in Yang Hong’s case, a fondness for the jokey infantile violence of American and Japanese cartoons. Indeed, the callousness with which the trio plan murders or discuss whether their cab driver should be killed, convey a sense of unreality, as if they are not talking about human beings but about cartoon characters, who may leap back to life after being penetrated by bullets or flattened by a big rock (99, 103).

Though the style is terse and direct, almost without affect, there are some comic moments in the treatment of Erqing who, having finally lost his virginity, in a pre-heist spending spree is convinced he is now married, and who allows himself to be so distracted by women and sex that he can hardly think about the robbery and his part in it.  There are also moments of comedy that convey a kind of hard-edged cynicism, as when the widespread questioning by police after the robbery uncovers the fact that there are a lot of citizens out there who are planning robberies (133). Or when the local police can only be motivated to actually take an interest in solving the crime by being offered a cash incentive (131). And, finally, there is Ma En’s inability to keep his mouth shut.  It turns out that he has talked about robbery to almost everyone he knows and encounters, so the question of premeditation does not have to be explored.

Ma En and Yang Hong can be added to the long list of gun crazy, criminal lovers on the run that includes Michel and Patricia in Breathless and our own Bonnie and Clyde.  In fact, can it be that Bonnie’s vision that she and Clyde would “go down together” is echoed in the romantic and a little naïve Yang Hong’s immediately regretted wish that “We must die together” (11)?

My Review of James Fallows' Postcards from Tomorrow Square

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of articles and learned so much I hardly know where to start describing the book. This is a series of articles written by Fallows and published in The Atlantic Monthly December '06-November '08. The subjects range from China's self-made manufacturing billionaires, to how Macau became the gambling Mecca of the East, to what's really going on with Internet access in China.  Every essay offers fascinating information that I have not come across elsewhere. Here are a few sort of random comments about what made an impression on me.

From "After the Earthquake," about the horrendous May 12, 2008, earthquake in Sichuan province that killed more than 100,000 people and left millions homeless and injured, Fallows reports the comments of a local elder regarding an earlier catastrophe: "Yao Minggao...said that the easiest way to tell city people from country people was by what they thought was the major disaster in modern Chinese history. If they said the Cultural Revolution, it meant they were from the city and viewed losing their careers and being sent to the farms as the ultimate hardship.  If they said the Great Famine [starting in 1958], it meant they were country people who had seen many of their neighbors starve" (237). Fallows also comments that the date "5/12" when it appears in China carries the same punch and shocked recognition as "9/11" in the US.

I think the article I enjoyed most was "The Connection Has Been Reset" about the Internet in China, focusing on the period of the Beijing Olympics.  More than anything else I've read, this article made me feel that I finally had at least a tentative grasp of both the philosophy behind the attempted control of the Internet by the Chinese government and the attitude of the average Internet-savvy Chinese toward this control. First, much is accomplished by the government by simply making it inconvenient to bypass the "Great Firewall."  It can be done, sure, but most people aren't interested in working that hard to get their information. Second, there's this, quoted from a technical analysis conducted by two US universities: "'The presence of censorship, even if easy to evade, promotes self-censorship'" (183).  In other words, while evading the GFW may require technical skills that many Chinese have, most people don't bother because of "nontechnical factors."

The only downside I felt in reading this series of articles, and this is not a criticism, was that developments in China and between China and the rest of the world are moving so quickly that even articles from 2007 or 2008 felt out of date.  So much has happened since then.  But if you want to see the view from January '08 of China's involvement in the world's financial meltdown and, especially, in the debt of the US, you should start with "The $1.4 Trillion Question" (144-68).

Wang Shuo's "Playing for Thrills"--Did Fang Yan Murder Someone Ten Years Ago? Was There a Murder at All?

Once I figured out HOW to read the book and WHAT it was going to expect of me as a reader, I surrendered myself to it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those works of mystery that poses a question to be answered or a goal to be met, and once the main character gets there, the question/goal opens up to more questions and other goals that must be pursued. It's a crazy race of a book with fantasy, dreams, characters with multiple identities, etc. I liked it. It reminded me of Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase but with MORE of everything including confusion and a constantly-digging-deeper narrative. Unlike Oedipus, who learns to his grief that he IS the murderer whom he seeks, Fang Yan is told at the outset that he is a murderer and he feels he must accept this, since he can't remember what happened. To save himself, he must find out who was murdered and why he does not remember doing it. If you enjoy the paranoid, surreal journeys of Murakami or Pynchon, this is a book for you.

If I Stall Long Enough, Will I NEED to Know the Characters?

An article entitled "How Do You Write That in Mandarin?" by Mireille Silcoff appeared in "The One-Page Magazine" section of the NY Times Magazine on January 15, 2012 (11).  Here it is in its entirety.

"Chinese characters comprise the world's oldest in-use writing system, but Chinese kids are forgetting how to get it on paper. The new term tibiwangzi ('take pen, forget character') encapsulates the issue: nobody takes pen anymore.  They type or text, often using Romanization.  The China Youth Daily Social Survey Center says 4 percent of respondents are 'already living without handwriting.'"

I rest my case.

I Wish I Were "Dreaming in Mandarin"

Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language by Deborah Fallows
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Many of the books I've read about China have been fascinating, compelling and informative, but none so much as this one. The author spent time in China in the 1980s and then 20 years later, so she has a valuable double vision of China as it was then and as it is now. What I enjoyed the most about the book though, and what sets it apart from all of the others, is that this is a book about language. It is about the connection of language and culture. It is both deeply intellectual (but easily enjoyed by the non-linguist) and based in the use of language in everyday life, in stores and in the streets, for instance. If you are interested in language you will love this book, even if you have no interest in China. You will end up knowing quite a bit about modern China though, in spite of yourself. The book is short but every page will keep your interest and leave you intrigued and well-informed. Highly recommended!

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The Voice of Treason: Ai Weiwei

The Voice of Treason; China's Most Famous Dissident Artist, Ai Weiwei

This is a very simple article but the point Ai Weiwei makes in the paragraph that begins, "Ai believes the world shares responsibility for what is happening in China," is particularly interesting. The US has abdicated a lot of moral responsibility in the last few decades and continues to do so. Now our "civilian" police are equipped to respond to non-violent protests with military precision and  protected by military armor.

Making new friends and keeping the old

This past Monday, November 21, was a special day at Pace. Several of the friends that we made at Nanjing Normal University this summer visited the Pace--Pleasantville campus. In addition to seeing again the wonderful faculty who were so generous with their time during our visit, people such as Dr. Wu Yidong, Dr. Xu Keqian, Dr. Lin Yipeng and Dr. Tang Huisheng, we met open and interesting new acquaintances such as Dr. Bai Li of the NNU School of Social Development. After a delicious lunch at the Pleasantville Country Club, we met on campus for the Chinese Cultural Seminar. I especially enjoyed the all-too-brief lectures on Contemporary Confucianism by Dr. Xu and on the Dao by Dr. Tang.

I wish that the students in my film theory class had heard the lecture on the Dao, because they would have recognized the seeds of Eisenstein's editing techniques--dialectics--in this brief look at Daoism.

My one regret, other than the brevity of the time we spent together, is that I was unable to go to the NYC campus to hear the lectures from Bai Li and Dr. Ni Yannian. I was especially curious about Dr. Bai's lecture on Contemporary Chinese Muslims after she told me that the form of my surname in Chinese (ma - tone 3) would have indicated in China that I might be Muslim, since surnames of many Muslims begin with the "ma" sound of "Muhammed." I should remember that! Anyway, I am sorry to have missed those no doubt fascinating lectures.

Thank you to our Pace Confucius Institute, as well as Nanjing Normal University, PPMG and Hanban for making this cultural exchange possible. And may it continue! I offer special thanks here, also, to Dr. Weihua Niu, Dr. Zhou Yanyu (Xie Xie, laoshi!), and Dr. Zhu Min and their program assistants for this enjoyable and enlightening afternoon.