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The Unseen During The Olympics

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Watching the Olympics in Beijing has got me to thinking about China again.  I’d like to make a point about the legacy of the damage done in the last 50 years.

You might like to read “The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up” by Liao Yiwu.

Master Deng Kuan, abbot of the Gu Temple, established in the Sui Dynasty sometime around the turn of the sixth century, was 103 when the writer Liao Yiwu met him while mountain climbing in Sichuan Province, in 2003, and Yiwu’s oral histories begin with him.

This is from a review of the book by Howard W. French, a former career foreign correspondent for the New York Times, who covered China from 2003 to 2008 and who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

We know the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late 1950s, the party went on a nationwide witch hunt for supposed liberals, reactionaries and capitalist roaders. Relating the Chinese experience amounts to a way of averting one’s eyes from something that may seem too hard to comprehend. It also encourages a kind of blurry forgetting, a storing away of things on a high, musty shelf that has been officially encouraged by China’s leaders, who are most keen to manage this story because they have the most to lose from a more vigorous and thorough telling. Thus the famous posthumous verdict by Deng Xiaoping, who judged that Mao had been 70 percent “correct” and 30 percent wrong. Yes, Mao’s errors, like the 30 million or more deaths from starvation caused by the crash industrialization of the Great Leap Forward, were doozies, but by and large he kept the country on the right path, avers Deng Xiaoping. Deng’s past has also benefited from studious airbrushing to avoid mussing up the standard portrait of him as a kindly, strong and nearly infallible second father to the nation. His enthusiastic role in violently suppressing “rightists” in the late 1950s has been placed out of bounds by the gatekeepers who determine which subjects can be researched and which cannot.

Master Deng’s life, and almost every other oral history in Liao Yiwu’s new book, appropriately subtitled Real-Life Stories, China From the Bottom Up , gives the lie to this entire vision, making this a deeply subversive book. I do not mean the reader should expect a tract or treatise on Chinese politics. Instead, Liao casts aside the official “facts” of events and replaces them with “memories”–with the resulting contrast between the censored record and interior consciousness revealing a post-1949 China that has never stopped being a traumatic place. At their root, all of Liao’s “real-life” stories share something fundamental: a fantastic, dreamy and nightmarish quality. Each story provokes a moment’s thought about its relationship to the truth.
[read on]

China’s Opening

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

With an unlimited budget, China’s most illustrious film director has achieved a lush multimedia feast that I cannot imagine will be surpassed anytime soon. As expected it was embedded with the political…for local consumption as much as for the world.

Images…visions…symbols…and then…mirage…illusion, the ideal…and then…if you pay attention: signs.

In Tai Chi, movement in one direction often begins with a movement in the opposite direction… perfect alignment is created as hundreds and thousands of actors move as one when they have perfect awareness of where their neighbors are…water moves gracefully away from resistance and conflict…but then soldiers march to drumming rumble…

Soldiers? At an Olympics opening?

Great propaganda, China!

19th Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
The world must not forget. China's Grief, Unearthed NYTimes.com June 4, 2008 By Ma Jian FOR three days last month, China’s national flag flew at half-staff in Tiananmen Square to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan. It was the first time in ... [Continue reading this entry]

2008 Chef Olympics

Saturday, May 17th, 2008
My son the chef! abp_5253.jpgHere is a picture of me and my chefs!! Josh says: "The two in the grey are myself on the right, chef de cuisine of "One East On Third" Restaurant in the Hilton ... [Continue reading this entry]

Chinese Logic

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Already, one-third of China's land mass is desert and it is losing 1500 square acres more a year to overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and draught. Looking out the window of my plane from Beijing to Kunming, for the ... [Continue reading this entry]

On To Jinghong

Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Too cold to do anything in Kunming so am flying out today to Jinghong in the south of China where it is reportedly warm. Was in Jinghong in the tropical Xishuangbanna Region in December 2004 when it was much warmer than this ... [Continue reading this entry]

Almost Didn’t Make The Plane To Kunming

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
YUqE3FCf1Hd9CjfG1qqmt0-2006171132705308.gif Hard to believe I was in Beijing for two weeks. But you know what they say about stinking guests if they stay too long. So today I flew to Kunming in Yunnan Province in the south ... [Continue reading this entry]

Almost Lost On The Subway

Sunday, February 10th, 2008
This week Josh and I went to the Beijing Exhibition which is a miniature replica of the city in a huge building. Josh says they have one of these in every major city. Very well done! Then we ... [Continue reading this entry]

2008 Olympic Venues

Sunday, February 10th, 2008
The two most impressive Olympic venues are the National Aquatics Center or simply the "Water Cube" and the "Bird's Nest." The "Water Cube," a palatial structure with an area of 80,000 sq meters that is white in the daytime and blue ... [Continue reading this entry]

Chinese New Year Of The Rat

Friday, February 8th, 2008
Chinese New Year's Eve Wednesday February 6 2008. Words cannot do justice to the fireworks we viewed across the city from the rooftop of the Hilton Hotel at midnight. It was so cold Josh had trouble holding a camera. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Amy’s International School

Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Last Friday I went to the Yew Chung International School of Beijing with Amy, my daughter-in-law. Seventy five years ago an optimistic young woman, Madame Tsang Chor-hang, barely graduated from a teacher's school, emerged from a calamitous time ... [Continue reading this entry]

Beijing

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
In the airport, while waiting for my luggage to show up, I scanned the crowd of people in the waiting area and had no trouble spotting Josh...three heads above all others. Eye candy for me! This is the first time ... [Continue reading this entry]

Happy Thanksgiving From Beijing

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
Email from my son who is chef de cuisine in one of the restaurants in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing...to his friends and family: On Nov 19, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Ryan Goetz wrote: Happy Thanksgiving! I write this now because in two ... [Continue reading this entry]

Family In Thailand

Friday, May 11th, 2007
My sons and daughters-in-law, Luk, Doug, Josh and Amy on Koh Samui in Thailand for a week. Bob, their dad, took the picture. Doug and Luk live on Koh Samui. Greg, in Las Vegas, and I, of course, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bob, Josh and Luk In Bangkok

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007
My son Josh is Chef de Cuisine of "One East On Third" in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing. He was sent by the Executive Chef to Bangkok last week to check out some restaurants there. Luk, a delightful Thai ... [Continue reading this entry]

Chef Joshua Goetz

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
Amy's (son Josh's wife) last blog post: "For the new edition of Timeout Beijing they listed the top 50 restaurants in the city. And, yes, you guessed it - One East on Third was on the list!! It was ... [Continue reading this entry]

The Best Of Amy’s Blog

Monday, December 4th, 2006
My youngest son, Josh and his wife Amy are living in Beijing. Her entries are best read from the bottom up. Nov 25, 01:45 AM The first week I was here Josh had a huge dinner to put on for the ... [Continue reading this entry]

One East On Third

Saturday, August 5th, 2006
On the e-hotelier.com web site a friend found this description of son Josh's restaurant in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing where he is the Chef de Cuisine: Hilton Beijing stars as Lord of The 3rd Ring Jul 31, 06 | 1:57 am Catch ... [Continue reading this entry]

University Contacts In Beijing?

Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
My son Josh Goetz, 33, who has been a chef in Manhattan New York for the last five years has accepted a position opening a new restaurant in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing China. He starts the third week ... [Continue reading this entry]

Coffee Taxis & New Friends

Saturday, October 23rd, 2004
East China.gif I take a taxi to the upscale Lufthansa shopping center in Beijing to see if a bookstore had the Lonely Planet "Shanghai." They didn't of course...there were a few Lonely Planets ... [Continue reading this entry]

Tiananmen Square

Wednesday, October 20th, 2004
East China.gif I had read that Tiananmen was the biggest square in the world. However, Mao's huge Mausoleum takes up about a third of the square...almost right in the middle...so the area doesn't ... [Continue reading this entry]

Great Days Great Wall

Sunday, October 17th, 2004
East China.gif Video E found the website (www.wildwall.com) and the adventure offered intriguing potential...off the beaten track, away from the Chinese tourist groups that follow a guide with a microphone and colored flag held high ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hutongs in Beijing

Saturday, October 16th, 2004
East China.gif Quin-dynasty Beijing was redesigned with mazes of mud and brick walled courtyards after Genghis Khan's army reduced the city to rubble and is "now the stomping ground of a quarter of Beijing's residents. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Far East Youth Hostel

Friday, October 15th, 2004
East China.gif The last time I was in China it was freezing cold in January 2003. The weather is fantastic this October day in 2004. After slogging it out across Russia and Mongolia, we soak ... [Continue reading this entry]