March 20, 2007

Dear Colleague:   

     On March 10, which was an anniversary of China's occupation of Tibet, Tibetans and their supporters protested on Madison's State Street. They protested not so much the occupation itself as the way the Chinese appear bent on destroying Tibetan culture, leaving only a few temples and monks as tourist attractions. But the protesters forget the obvious—they forget that the Chinese, far from being chauvinistic, are also systematically destroying their own culture! Go to Beijing, Shanghai, or any other flourishing city, and what do you see? Cranes (satirically named the Chinese "national bird") and skyscrapers. In the capital itself, only a few old-style courtyard residences are preserved, and attempts are being made to rebuild parts of the ancient city wall—for what? For the tourist industry.

     Culture has many layers. Most superficial is the material layer that geographers and tourists observe, which include such clearly visible and tangible things as buildings, streets, and means of transportation. Well, the urban China I saw in 2005 has gone completely modern. You have to look hard to find a cobbled hutung, a shaded temple, or a man pulling a cart. Below this layer is a deeper layer, deeper in its emotional resonance: included in it are such things as food and clothing. Well, in the urban China I saw  in 2005, people flocked shamelessly to McDonald's for French fries and to Starbucks for latte, and their clothing is almost wholly Western. At a still deeper cultural level are language and music. Well, the university and middle-school students I met in 2005 are fluent in English and their favorite music may well be rock and even heavy metal!

    In my ignorance, I assumed that there was nothing in culture deeper than language and music. But maybe there is? In China, I was shocked to encounter respect for age and the teacher. Hasn't the Cultural Revolution and now raging Capitalism done away with these traditional virtues? At the five-star Jingshi Hotel, located near the campus of Beijing Normal University, I was addressed by doorman, waiter, and concierge as "teacher." Teacher? Well, apparently every client at the hotel was so addressed. Why? Because "teacher" was more honorific than mere "Sir" or "Madam." As for consideration for the aged, here are three examples out of  several in my brief stay of two and a-half weeks. I walked by a stream in a Beijing park and was about to turn away from it to mount a flight of steps when a man sitting on the park bench said, "Elderly sir! Do be careful." The cab driver, impressed by my 74 years, asked me to watch out for the curb when I stepped out. My student guides invariably gave me a helping hand when I descended the steps, which seemed to be ubiquitous in China. They even peeled the garlic for me at a restaurant famous for its meat buns. To think that, back in America, I have to peel my own oranges!

    If Chinese dress like Americans and Tibetans dress like Chinese, certainly the tourist trade will suffer. But isn't it just possible that the differences in morality, by which I don't mean whether one eats with fork or chopsticks but rather how one human being regards and treats another, will persist? Allow me to end by saying something really rude. Isn't it just possible that those who fear the loss of their culture fear that in things that really matter—morality and ethics—they have little to offer the world, and that it is only as tourist attractions that they can claim any distinction?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu