September 16, 2008
Dear Colleague:
At last I saw the NBC presentation of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. It is, as children say, awesome—a spectacle that Cecil B. DeMille couldn't have thought feasible in his wildest dreams. In his time, there just wasn't the technology and, of course, no Hollywood mogul could match the money that the Chinese government poured in. What do I think of the show? Awesome, as I have already said. But I also have mixed feelings in regard to both the performances and to the Western media's response. My mixed feelings begin with the very first offering, which is two thousand drummers moving, to the sound of drums, in perfect unison. From it, I feel an erotic charge that is similar to watching military marches, only much more so: in military marches, the stiffness of the steps makes the soldiers seem like marionettes—not quite flesh-and-blood. The drummers' movements, by contrast, are strong rather than stiff, like rippling muscles in an athlete multiplied two thousand fold. The drummers are all young males. Young females aslo move in perfect synchrony, but gracefully and to project beauty rather than power. As for the children, they are dressed in colorful ethnic costumes and they saunter across the arena with not a care in the world. That's a nice touch. If the children also do a precision march, a totally wrong message would have been projected.
Now, to the Western media's response. It is, to say the least, ungenerous. The perfection itself is turned into sinister militarism. Pundits do not attack head on: they attack by comparing, over and over again, the Beijing Olympics of 2008 with the Berlin Olympics of 1936. There seems to be a fear in the West that China, the world's wealthiest country and super-power as recently as the 18th century, migh re-establish its proper place under the sun in the 21st. The West's uneasiness is understandable. What did Beijing have in mind when, in one of the performances, it showcased China's maritime might in the 15th century? Is it the not so subtle message that China ruled the waves once and just might do so again?
Western pundits emphasize the negative whenever they can. They are not doing this because they are anti-Chinese. They do it from habit. The basic idea is, You show how smart you are by attacking another. Praise is déclassé: only female teachers in elementary schools do that. Note how the media repeatedly pick on the Chinese for having one little girl sing with the voice of another little girl, who does not appear because she is considered not cute enough. The girl with the voice is said to be humiliated. But, in an interview, she says, "I have the voice, my friend has the face. You may as well say that my friend is humiliated beause she is not allowed to use her own voice!" The one true hero of the entire opening ceremonies is, so far as I am concerned, the nine-year-old boy who marched with Yao Min, the giant basket ball player, at the head of the Chinese team. The little boy escaped from his collapsed school during the Sichuan earthquake and then returned to the scene in an effort to rescue his friends. When asked why, he replied, "I am the class leader. I have to help." Absolutely amazing. Yet the Western media choose not to focus on this story, preferring the one about the "mistreated" little girl.
Best wishes,
Yi-Fu
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