Keeping China Connections Live !

First of all let me send festive good wishes to us all.

I thought I’d try to bring some seasonal joy to this particular blog by celebrating the fun and merriment of live performance. I think this is particularly poignant since this is the first festive period since the end of COVID. I hope that all of you will enjoy the opportunity to cheer yourselves up by joining the audience of a show or performance.

At this time of year I always look back with a merry tear in my eye to the christmas shows in the school where I was Headteacher for many years. The students organised a show, the canteen staff cooked up a traditional christmas dinner with all of the trimmings and staff went out in their cars to chauffeur older members of our richly diverse community into school to join in joy. The evening always ended in a communal sing-song led by the school canteen staff, all local members of our community. We always managed to respect and celebrate diversity and at the same time come together in peaceful harmony. And live performance was the elixir which made this alchemy possible. The power of laughter and song to dissolve differences can be that magical.

I was reminded of this chemistry by a recent event I joined in Chengdu. I was part of the audience for a traditional Sichuan Opera, Chuanju. I’ve been to both Beijing and Shanghai Opera performances in the past and to be honest found them a taste quite difficult to acquire. I guess it’s that thing where you’re passionately interested in a culture or a cultural event, but still feel like an outsider, looking in, not quite sure what to make of it, despite all of the careful research you’ve done.

I needn’t have worried, this time I became an insider in a way I never expected.

We had only just taken our seats in the large, beautifully decorated auditorium, when someone I could only assume was theatre staff beckoned me to follow her. Was I sitting in the wrong place? Had I broken a centuries old etiquette? A colleague came with me as a translator and we followed her, not to the exit, but to the area where the performers were getting into make-up. I’m sure you’ve all seen photographs of Chinese opera characters and know that part of the magic of the show is the elaborate make-up and colourful costumes. Maybe you’ve seen ‘Farewell My Concubine’, the Chen Kaige film set in a Beijing Opera House. Can you guess what happened next? Believe it or not I was offered the chance to be made over as an opera character and to go into costume. For this once in a lifetime opportunity there was a minimal charge. I invited any interested teachers and students to join the experience.

We talk in English about ‘the smell of the grease paint’ to express the sense of excitement and anticipation amongst the performers about to go on stage. I did have to ask, ‘You’re not going to put me on stage are you?’ but even after I’d been assured that we ‘extras’ would gather on a private stage, not the public stage, I felt totally a part of the whirl of preparations around me. A rainbow of masks were being carefully painted across the faces of the performers around me. All around the walls were wardrobe rails emblazoned with the myriad of character costumes. One by one the costumes floated down from the rack and transformed the caterpillar actors and actresses into dazzling stage butterflies. And in the mirror I watched myself transitioning too.

When my transformation was complete I was shown to the small private stage. By complete fortune my character was paired with that of one of my students. We went on stage together and we were walked though the basics of a scene. We were shown the poses to assume. We were shown the expressions needed to tell the story of the scene. I was presented with a fan and shown precisely the finger-grip and angles at which to hold it. Everyone around me was incredibly patient and kind.

It was all over in about ten minutes, but within that short time I had the wonderful feeling of being an insider in the traditions and artistry of ‘chuanju’, like an apprentice who has a glimpse of the creativity she or he aspires to. And I felt echoes of what performers in every culture and every age must feel, the goose-pimples of taking on another identity. For that short time I was neither foreigner, nor Chinese, I was the magnificent Wensheng!

Sadly I had to remove my gowns before re-joining the audience, but I was allowed to keep my make-up which drew astonished exclamations of appreciation from audience members and students alike. I wasn’t quite an opera star, but I had a flicker of insight into their stage-lit world. The show itself was a magnificent melange of styles and emotions. It was a variety performance to show-case the talents of Chengdu’s finest, not dissimilar to Victorian music-hall.

There were poignant and passionate musical interludes. There was a shadow puppet show which is such a deep thread in Chinese tradition it is inscribed in the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. There was a breathtaking show of acrobatics and tumbling, cleverly constructed around an episode from the ‘Journey West’, the Xiyouji, better known as the story of Monkey King. There was a satirical comedy played out between an all powerful wife and a Chaplin-esque woeful but endearing husband which was delivered in pure Sichuan dialect, but hilariously punctuated with comic attempts to use English.

The excitement and wonder of the show all built towards the spectacular ending, which is a performance totally unique to Sichuan called ‘changing faces’. The performers flow across the stage in entrancing movements, wearing colourful, decorated masks. Magically, mysteriously, often mid-flight, one mask disappears to be instantly replaced by another. Each actor might change 5 or 6 faces. As the face changing proceeds, fans are introduced and the performers start to play with the audience anticipations in a delirious ‘will he, won’t he’ display of breathtakingly invisible illusions.

It seems to me that this sense of play and performance is deep in the heart of English and Chinese civilisations. Perhaps its something to do with the theatricality of both languages that have such tremendous range and depth. Perhaps there is an innocence in both cultures that can readily accept the wonder and enchantment of storytelling, what academics call ‘the suspension of disbelief’. If you’re looking for a modern example you need look no further than an audience of young Chinese faces under the spell of Harry Potter, every bit as bewitched as their British peers.

As one year closes and a new year beckons, let’s cherish what is both unique and shared in the diverse eco-system of cultural traditions between China and Britain and continue our noble work to share this understanding with wider and wider audiences.

I wish you all the joy of the festivities and beyond into the new year!

*A dramatic moment from the ‘Journey West’ performance*

(All of the photos are originals taken by the author)

December 11, 2023December 18, 2023

The Unsung Heroes — Reflections on Participating in the 2023 Armistice Day Ceremony (中英双语)

Weien Zong
Master of Global Media Industries, King’s College London
Bachelor of Communications, South China University of Technology
Freelance Media Person, Cultural Influencer, Chinese Cultural Event Planner

On November 11th, I had the chance to participate in the Armistice Day Ceremony organized by the Western Front Association at Cenotaph London. Despite several days of continuous rain, the weather turned sunny on this particular day, gradually dispelling the chill of early winter. Coming out from Charing Cross station, I felt a surge of people heading towards the monument commemorating the end of World War I. Crowded streets were adorned with individuals wearing poppies, symbolizing the remembrance of international fallen soldiers.

As a Chinese, I was a little out of place in the crowd. The occasional sideways glances seemed to inquire, “Why are there Chinese people participating in Armistice Day?” This was the reason why we, as a group of Chinese representatives, gathered here — to commemorate the 140,000 Chinese labourers who participated in this most brutal war in human history. Due to China’s weakened national strength, the impact of the ‘Chinese Exclusion Act’, and various stereotypes and prejudices against Chinese people, the contributions of the Chinese Labour Corps to World War I are seldom mentioned in mainstream British society. For a long time, discussions about World War I marginalized the Chinese Labour Corps, and few representatives were advocating for them. In recent years, thanks to the tireless efforts of a group of dedicated individuals who have been collecting information and organizing activities, the stories of the Chinese Labourers’ contributions to World War I have gradually come to light. Their contributions are gradually gaining recognition and appreciation in European society.

White Chrysanthemums Wreath for CLC
Photo by Iris Yau (SACU Trustee)

CLC mostly consisted of farmers from northern China and also included hundreds of students serving as translators. In 1916, facing a shortage of wartime labour, the British Cabinet approved the recruitment of Chinese labourers. This marked the beginning of a tumultuous journey for China seeking international status and for ordinary individuals trying to make a living in turbulent times. Each Chinese labourer toiling on the Western European battlefield carried the expectations of a family and a struggling nation. What deeply moved me was that their journey to the West was not driven by noble reasons, but rather by a practical desire for survival, prosperity, or a chance to see the world while bringing honour to their country.

The 1918 British military report stated, “Most labourers are proficient at their work, consistently demonstrating high efficiency in railway, ordnance factories, and tank workshops.” A French officer also remarked, “They can handle any job, be it as a merchant, shoemaker, blacksmith, or engineer; they are almost indispensable.” The Chinese labourers, known for their endurance and willingness to work, engaged in the dirty and Labourious tasks that even British and French soldiers were reluctant to undertake. Despite promises from the British and French governments that they would not be sent to the frontlines, many of these commitments were cast aside once the war erupted. According to recollections from Chinese labourers, there were instances where the trenches they dug were only 50 meters away from the German forces. Sometimes, after completing the trenches, British soldiers would enter the battlefield in combat with the Germans. In a battle in Picardy, France, in 1917, when the German forces broke through the British and French Allied lines, hundreds of Chinese Labourers working at the frontline were unable to retreat in time. Armed only with shovels and hoes, they had to confront the German forces. By the time the British and French Allied forces arrived for support, most Chinese labourers had already perished. Additionally, the contracts for Chinese labourers stipulated a mandatory 10-hour workday, seven days a week. In the British military’s Chinese labour units, leaving the camp to interact with locals was strictly prohibited.

After the war, the contributions of the Chinese labourers, who played a crucial role in helping the Allies win the war, did not receive the respect and recognition they deserved. Before the war’s end, the painting “The Temple of War,” commemorating World War I, was displayed in Paris. However, due to the United States’ entry into the war in 1917, the original depiction of the Chinese Labour Corps was replaced with Americans. The hardworking and enduring nature of the Chinese labourers contributed to the Western stereotype of the Chinese as diligent but was also seen as a means of resource acquisition.

CLC Representatives at the Cenotaph
Photo by Weien Zong (the Author)

A similar situation unfolded in post-World War II Britain. After the outbreak of the war, the British government needed a large number of merchant sailors to transport food and weapons, leading to the recruitment of 20,000 Chinese sailors in 1940. However, their wages were only half of what British sailors received. After the war, around 2,000 retired Chinese sailors remained in Liverpool. However, with severe post-war unemployment and inflation in Britain, Chinese and local sailors faced intense competition. Shipping companies, eager to rid themselves of Chinese workers, reduced wages and reclaimed war risk bonuses, making it difficult for them to survive. On October 19, 1945, the British Home Office decided to act, “forcibly repatriating unwanted Chinese sailors.” Some were even arrested while buying milk for their daughters on the street, without the chance to bid farewell to their families before being deported. These Chinese sailors, known for their diligence and affordability, were expelled after being exploited.

Wreaths for CLC at the Cenotaph in London
Photo by Iris Yau (SACU Trustee)

Diligence and affordability have perhaps been a double-edged label for underdeveloped countries and regions since the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries, during the Age of Discovery and the Industrial Revolution. Countries that did not achieve capital accumulation through colonization could only engage in resource exchange with colonizers through labour-intensive industries. In a conversation with a British mobile phone retailer, he proudly mentioned his frequent trips to Shenzhen, China, to purchase phone components. He found factories there to process and assemble the components. He told me about the significantly lower cost of producing imitation Apple phones compared to the genuine ones, allowing him to make a substantial profit. However, shortly afterwards, he expressed a sense of “sympathy” for the exploited workers and criticized the harsh working conditions. Intrigued, I asked him, “Have you ever considered the fundamental reasons behind the cheap labour and poor working conditions in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia?” He began analyzing the government, corporate exploitation of workers, and the work ethic of Asians. I couldn’t help but interject, “Have you never thought that it might be due to the original accumulation of capital obtained through colonization by Western capitalist countries? This drove progress in industrial and technological revolutions, leaving formerly colonized countries unable to compete in the post-colonial era, forcing them to rely on cheap labour and natural resources for development in the age of economic globalization. While you profit from the cheap labour and resources in China, seeking benefits, you then shift the blame to the government and corporations, claiming that the thinking pattern of hardworking Chinese people is rigid. Don’t you find this hypocritical?”

Chinese representatives for CLC
Photography by Gu Hongyan (Mother’s Love of Bridge)

Standing at the site of the memorial ceremony, I was deeply moved. On this day, I witnessed over fifty Chinese representatives organised by the Meridian Society laying wreaths in tribute to the Chinese Labour Corps. Proudly, they reclaimed their rightful recognition—even if covered in mud, they are still heroes, still “hidden dragons.” At some point, diligence became stigmatised, discriminated against, and even used as a weapon for political attacks. As Chinese, we might have, to some extent, felt displeasure with phrases like “you work very hard,” associating them with the stereotypical image of low-level labourers. Nobody prefers to be labelled in this way. However, it was this group of labourers who earned China its victorious position in World War I and gained a little confidence to refuse to sign the Treaty of Versailles in Paris, rejecting the transfer of German privileges in Shandong.

They achieved all this through their quality of enduring hardship. Today, more and more people are learning about the Chinese Labour Corps. Our memory and respect for them are the best comfort to their spirits, as well as a modest effort to advocate for fair media exposure and treatment for the Chinese community.

About the author
Weien Zong graduated from King’s College London with a background of 5 years of media and documentary education and work experience. She has extensive media experience, interning at Guangdong Radio and Television Station, NetEase Games, the United Nations Youth Leadership Development Program, and with independent documentary filmmakers. Currently, she is dedicated to creating original videos of Chinese traditional culture and medicine on major social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili. Additionally, she organizes offline Chinese cultural events to promote traditional Chinese culture and wisdom.

那些“吃苦耐劳”的无名英雄

——参与2023一战停战纪念仪式有感

宗蔚恩

伦敦大学国王学生全球媒体产业硕士

华南理工大学传播学学士

自由媒体人、文化博主、国学活动策划发起人

11月11日，我有幸参与了由Western Front Association组织在Cenotaph London举行的Armistice Day Ceremony战停战纪念仪式。连续多日阴雨绵绵却在这天阳光明媚，初冬的寒意在暖阳之下逐渐消散。从Charling Cross出站后，便感受到一股涌向一战停战纪念碑的人流。人头攒动的街道上，人们胸前佩戴着象征国际纪念阵亡将士的罂粟花标志。作为一个中国人，我在人群中显得有些格格不入。周围时不时投来的斜视仿佛在疑惑： “一战停战纪念日为何有中国人在凑热闹？”

然而这正是我们这群华人在这里汇聚的原因——追忆那14万参与这场人类历史上最残酷战争的中国劳工们。出于当时中国国力衰弱、《排华法案》的影响，以及对中国人的刻板印象和偏见等各种原因，中国劳工旅对一战的贡献鲜少被英国主流社会提及。长期以来，中国劳工旅在关于一战的讨论中被边缘化，为中国劳工旅发声的组织代表也鲜少。近几年，在一批有志之士的不懈努力下，不断地收集资料、组织活动，以文字和影像讲述他们的故事，中国劳工在一战的贡献才逐渐浮出水面，渐渐受到了欧洲社会了解和重视。

中国劳工旅大多是来自中国北方的农民，其中还有数百名学生充当翻译。为了弥补战时劳动力的不足，1916年英国内阁批准征募中国劳工。一个风雨飘摇的国家寻求国际地位的道路和生活在动荡时代的普通人的谋生之路就此启动。每一个在在西欧战场上出苦力的中国劳工背后，都背负着一个家族和一个挣扎的国家的期望。令我深感触动的是，他们并非出于多么高尚的理由而远西欧，却为国家和国际社会都做出了不可磨灭的贡献。这些“下里巴人”出于最朴实的想法——这是一份既能赚钱又能看世界又能为国争光的活，为什么不干呢？他们有的人为了生计和发财，有的人因为好奇想去看外面的世界，背井离乡，踏上这趟危险又未知的旅程。

1918年的英军报告中指出：“大多数劳工都能熟练地工作，而且他们一直都在铁路、兵工厂和坦克车间高效率地工作。”一位法国军官也指出：“他们能胜任任何工作，商人、鞋匠、铁匠、工程师，几乎无所不能。” 华工以吃苦耐劳、任劳任怨而著称，在这场并非属于他们的战争中，他们从事着英法士兵都不愿意做的脏活累活。尽管出发前英法政府承诺他们不会到前线参战，但战争爆发后许多承诺都被抛诸脑后。根据中国劳工的回忆，有时他们挖的战壕距离德国人仅有50米，经常是挖好战壕后，英国士兵再进入战壕与德国人交战。1917年，在法国皮卡的一次战斗中，由于德军突破了英法联军防线，正在前线挖战壕的数百名中国劳工来不及撤退，只能靠手中的铁锹、锄头与德国人搏斗。等到英法联军赶来支援时，大部分中国劳工都已阵亡。此外，中国劳工的合同规定每日必须工作10小时，每周7天无休。在英国军队的华工中，甚至不允许踏出营地与当地人交往。

战争胜利后，一战华工的贡献出于各种原因并未得到应有的尊重和承认。战争结束前，《战争的圣殿》这幅纪念一战的名画在巴黎展出，但因为1917年美国参战，为了在画中加入美国人，创作者将原画中的中国劳工旅抹去，换成了美国人。华工靠着吃苦耐劳的品格帮助同盟军赢得了战争，吃苦耐劳却也成了西方对中国人的刻板印象，甚至被视为抢占资源。类似的情况在二战后的英国再次上演。二战爆发后，英国政府需要大量商船船员运送食物和武器，于是在1940年招募了2万名中国海员。然而他们的工资仅为英国海员的一半。战后，约2000多名退役中国海员留在利物浦生活工作。但战后英国失业率和通胀严重，中国海员和当地海员面临着竞争。航运公司急于摆脱中国工人，削减工资收回战争风险金。1945年10月19日，英国内政部决定采取行动，“强制遣返不受欢迎的中国海员”。有些人甚至是出门上街给女儿买牛奶就遭到抓捕，来不及与家人告别就被遣送出境。这些以勤劳和廉价著称的中国海员在被利用完毕后遭到了驱逐。

勤劳和廉价或许是自18-19世纪大航海时代开始、工业革命发展以来，欠发达国家和地区既爱又恨的标签。那些未通过殖民获得资本原始积累的国家，只能通过劳动密集型产业与殖民者进行资源交换。我曾与一位英国手机零售商交谈，他说他常常去中国深圳采购手机配件，并在那里找工厂进行加工和组装。他自豪地表示，这样生产出的仿冒苹果手机比正版便宜许多，他能从中赚取可观的差价。但不一会他又面露“同情”之色，为那些剥削严重的工人打抱不平。我一听觉得很有意思，于是反问他：“那您知道东亚、东南亚、南亚的劳动力都这么廉价，工人待遇恶劣的根本原因吗？”他开始分析起了这些国家的政府模式、资本运作的企业对工人的压榨、亚洲人喜欢吃苦耐劳的思维模式。我却已经坐不住了，“您就从未想过是因为西方资本国家通过殖民获得的原始积累，推动了工业和技术革命的进步，导致曾被殖民的国家在后殖民时代无法产生竞争力，只能依靠廉价劳动力和自然资源来谋求在经济全球化时代的发展。您倘若从这个角度看，剥削劳动力的真的是政府和企业吗？您一边从中国的廉价劳动力和资源中赚取差价，谋取利益，一边却将矛盾指向政府和企业，说着中国人吃苦耐劳的思维模式很僵化，您难道不觉得这很虚伪吗？”

站在纪念仪式现场，我感慨万分。这一天，我看到由子午社组织的五十多位华人代表为中国劳工旅敬献花圈，自豪地为他们正名——哪怕污泥满身，也仍是英雄，仍是“潜龙”。不知从何时起，勤劳被污名化，被歧视，甚至成为政治攻击的武器。作为华人，或许我们多多少少都曾对“你工作好努力（hardworking）”这样的说法感到不悦，因为它让我们联想到那些底层劳工的刻板印象，我们不希望自己被贴上这样的标签。然而，正是这一群劳工为当时的中国换来一战战胜国的地位，挣得在巴黎和会拒绝签署《凡尔赛条约》，拒绝将德国在中国山东的特权转交给日本的一点资本和底气。他们凭借着吃苦耐劳的品质成就了这一切。而时至今日，越来越多人了解到中国劳工旅。我们对他们的记忆和敬意，是对他们在天之灵最好的告慰，也是在为华人群体争取更加公平公正的媒体曝光和待遇尽绵薄之力。

December 8, 2023December 8, 2023

Changing faces of Chengdu

*The ‘Changing Faces’ show, from Sichuan Opera*

For the last week I have travelled with Grade 9 and Grade 10 students from my school in the city of Chengdu, which is the capital of the south-westerly province of Sichuan. You’ll be familiar with the name from countless restaurants in England claiming to serve ‘Szechuan’ dishes. It is not my job to act as an advertising agent for ‘Travel China’ so I’ll get the publicity out of the way immediately. If you have the chance to visit this fascinating location, please do so!

In this blog we are in the business of building bridges of understanding between the people of China and the people of Britain, so let’s explore links and connections between Chengdu and England.

Du Fu Caotang

First the poetry! Thanks to the tireless and inspiring work of our SACU President, Michael Wood, the great poet 杜甫, Du Fu, is getting better known to English language readers. Du Fu lived in the Tang Dynasty era from 712 to 770, but he is a living presence in Chinese culture today. I first came across his poems being recited and discussed by my students. One of the key characteristics of Du Fu’s work is that he is a ‘poet of exile’ whose art was refined by years of living as a misplaced refugee during the time that the violence of the An Lushan rebellion (755-763) destroyed the peace of the Tang and effected the lives of Chinese people at all levels of society.

In his excellent new book, ‘In the Footsteps of Du Fu’, Micheal expertly locates Du Fu’s writing in place and time, following his wanderings in central and southern China. How excited and humbled I was as I rolled south on the luxury of the modern high speed G308 train from Beijing to Chengdu, to follow almost page by page, the poet’s journeys, experiences and their expression in poetry.

In Chengdu the students and I visited 杜甫草堂, Du Fu Caotang, a park and museum dedicated to the poet, in an area where Du Fu built a cottage in 760 and found (temporary) sanctuary from the war. Michael Wood’s chapter on this is particularly memorable because he emphasises that many Chinese people, and not just the ‘intellectual elite’ still feel a living connection to the poet and his works. My version of this was to organise a bilingual reading of two of the poems, enthusiastically supported in Chinese by one of my students, at two particularly evocative locations in the park. Not only were there no disapproving or cynical looks, but even a small and appreciative gathering of Chinese visitors who politely applauded at the end of our improvisation. I hope the poet himself would have approved. As to the beauty of the surroundings, if I were the spirit of Du Fu you would find me there every balmy dusk evening, drinking a tea and performing my verses for anyone with the time to listen.

Personally I think to talk of Du Fu as the ‘Chinese Shakespeare’ or the ‘Chinese Dante’ is irrelevant and even patronising. Du Fu deserves to be recognised as a profound poet of the human condition on terms at once Chinese and universal. It is scandalous that his poetry is not more widely appreciated in western schools and universities.

*Exquisite gardens that mirror Du Fu’s artistry*

Sanxingdui

The second connection concerns history. Chengdu is home to one of the most fascinating Bronze age cultures in the world – the Sanxingdui, which flourished in this area in the eleventh and twelfth century BCE. This year an amazing modern museum opened on the site of the Sanxingdui excavations, a museum whose own beautiful design seems to have been inspired by the artistry and ingenuity of the Bronze Age ancestors. The museum is expertly curated with audio tours and signage in English throughout. The range of artefacts on display is spectacular, displaying an artistry capable of creations from minute but detailed bronze animals to a soaring nearly 4 metre tall ‘holy tree’.

Two thoughts struck me as I wandered and wondered, both with an international dimension. The first was how much of the creativity here was inspired by connections to the natural world. Animal forms are everywhere, birds, snakes, buffalo and tigers, sometimes twisting together with human bodies. Anyone familiar with Bronze Age art from across the world will recognise a similar motif, perhaps born from a renewed fascination with nature as city lifestyles replaced older agricultural modes of thought.

The second is the way that the malleability of metals such as bronze and gold seemed to fire the imaginations of a generation of smiths across the Bronze Age globe. Exhibits such as the ‘Standing figure holding a dragon shaped sceptre’ or ‘Figure riding a beast with a Zun on top’ (‘zun’ is a religious vessel) are Dali-esque in their imaginings. In the Aegean, in the near-East and closer to home in the expression of British Bronze Age metal-workers we can find similar inspirations from the liquid flow of molten metal into the solid forms of a mould. There are masks of fine beaten gold which seem to connect directly to the gold work of the mask-makers of Mycenae.

Just like the artistry of Du Fu the diverse faces of Sanxingdui culture should be more widely recognised.

Pandas!

No article about Chengdu can be complete without pandas. Panda pictures, panda fashions and panda accessories are inescapable everywhere in Chengdu because it is the site of the China Panda Research and Conservation Centre. I approached the visit with some trepidation because I’ve had a visceral hatred of zoos ever since reading Ted Hughes’ fierce poem ‘Jaguar’ at school. I needn’t have worried. Pandas are natives of the dense wooded forests in the bowl of mountains surrounding Sichuan. In particular they need bamboo because 90–98 percent of the panda’s diet consists of the leaves, shoots, and stems of this grass. And that is exactly what the conservation centre consists of, a landscaped bamboo forest threaded with the paths that city dwelling humans need to move around. In fact so successful is the natural environment that the notoriously shy pandas are quite difficult to see, often nothing more than a glimpse of black and white fur bobbing up and down, munching contentedly behind dense leafy screens.

Furthermore this place acts as a highly effective scientific research centre, funds boosted by the flocks of adoring panda fans and has produced scientific findings on topics as diverse as panda ecology, management, nutrition, behaviour, breeding, disease and heredity. The research has benefitted not just pandas but success in preserving the rich bio-diversity of the whole area.

And here is another connection from Sichuan to the world. It is one of the top 25 most biodiverse areas on Earth, with more than 10,000 alpine plant species and 1,200 vertebrate species. It’s no exaggeration to say that the work of places like the Panda Research Centre to conserve this local biodiversity is of critical importance to us all.

*Sichuan is one of the top 25 most biodiverse areas on Earth*

The Spice of Life

And so to food. It’s humbling to think that while the panda survives all its life on just one source of nutrition, we humans have developed culinary systems with a dazzling array of flavours, textures and ingredients. The sales pitch of popularised ‘Szechuan’ dishes in the west is that they are ‘spicy’. There’s a toehold of truth in that, but it doesn’t do credit to the range of flavours that constitute the spice. To start with there’s not a single Sichuan spice, but combinations of fennel, pepper, aniseed, cinnamon, clove, chilli and Sichuan pepper. Broad bean chili paste called ‘dòubànjiàng’, shallots, ginger and garlic are also commonly used.

The spice is complemented by the quality, freshness and range of ingredients used. Due to its climate, crops and livestock range from those of subtropical climates to those of a cool temperate zone. One of the best ways to appreciate this is through the culinary phenomenon that is Sichuan ‘huo guo’ or hotpot. Reduced to its essentials the hot pot experience consists of a shared bowl of broth where diners collectively boil and consume a range of fresh ingredients. It’s common for the broth pot to have two sections – one non-spicy, often mushroom based and the other fiery crimson with spice, including the humble but mouth numbing ‘málà’ peppercorns that are absolutely characteristic of Sichuan cuisine.

Hot pot is healthy and nutritious because the ingredients are all boiled there and then, preserving their vitamin content. There’s a rich range of oils to flavour the foods you fish out of the pot, but those are to your own taste. And above all it’s a wonderfully communal experience, unlike any western dining that I know. One of my favourite Chinese phrases is ‘xiāngpēnpēn’ which very approximately can be used to describe a rich confection of food flavours and fragrances and I defy anyone to eat hotpot without being drawn in to an equally ‘xiāngpēnpēn’ conversation.

Which allows me to conclude with a person to person anecdote. Most of the ingredients for hot pot are easily available in Chinese supermarkets in England, including the broth bases. You can also buy electric versions of the hot pots themselves. In summers in England, in bbq season, I would set up my hot pot in the garden on a table outdoors with the prepared ingredients ranged around it. It wasn’t long before the ‘xiāngpēnpēn’ drifted up over the garden fences. Nor was it long before the fascinated faces of my neighbours would pop up over the fence tops, noses twitching. And so I had bowls prepared to pass to them over the fencing, for our own English back garden version of the Sichuan communal dining experience. A little corner of north London that is forever Chengdu!

Let’s finish with a few lines from Du Fu, describing his Chengdu home:

“ I’ve chosen

this quiet woods and river bank

outside the city, well away

from business, dust, entanglements

here where clear water,

rinses away a traveller’s sadness.”

‘Siting a House’ ~ trans David Young, 2008.

*The author at Du Fu’s Cottage in Chengdu*

December 3, 2023December 3, 2023

China catches a cold

My phrase of the week in my rather limited Chinese has been ‘ni leng bu leng? which translates as ‘are you feeling the cold?’. Chinese has this wonderful way of using paired, balanced phrases like this way of asking questions which are not only elegant but wonderfully convenient for struggling foreigners to remember. The answer to the question can be given in another classic Chinese phrase – ‘leng si le’ – ‘cold enough to die, but reduced to three terse, emphatic characters.

After an incredibly idyllic, balmy autumn which lingered deceptively on into late November, temperatures have taken their inevitable plummet this week. The azure of the autumnal skies has ebbed away to paler shades of blue, backlit by weak winter rays. And yes with the change in weather has come an increase in coughs and colds. I feel sorry for any children and their families suffering from the winter flu. However, contrary to the hysterical headlines in some western media, nothing out of the ordinary is going on, that is apart from the standard panic about ‘Chinese secrecy’, as if the COVID Inquiry in Britain isn’t showing where our concerns about government accountability in periods of genuine emergency ought to lie.

If anyone one should know about this so-called ‘pandemic’ it’s me, from my position as a Headmaster. Everyday for the last few weeks two or three students per class have been ‘bu shufu’ or as we might say in English ‘under the weather’. And yes it’s also true that they may have been to hospital, but that is simply because hospitals, not GP surgeries are the front line medical service in China. My teachers tell me complaining stories about waiting for hours with their child to be seen and I swap them exactly the same stories from the NHS!

And yes it’s true that you will see many more Chinese wearing masks than in England. But to panic would be to completely misunderstand mask wearing in China. In the west we’ve become used to a ‘reactive’ view of health. If something goes wrong we’re used to reacting to the illness by popping a few pills. No wonder pharmaceutical companies make such massive profits! China has a much more preventative approach to health care. Since the cold weather began my colleagues have been pressing a rich variety of herbal recipes on me to keep away the flu. And so it is with masks. The point of wearing a mask is not to protect you, but to protect friends, colleagues, fellow citizens from the infection you might be spreading!

This talk of the cold weather gives me the opportunity to tell one of my favourite people to people stories about China. This incident happened during my first Beijing winter. Like a stubborn foreigner, I laughed away the efforts of my students to persuade me to wear two layers of clothing or a hat to cover my ears.

Then one particularly biting day I was in the centre of Beijing with a Chinese friend. We boarded a bus and got separated. I ended up sitting next to a ‘laobeijingren’ – an old Beijing man. Almost as soon as we sat down he reached over his hand and placed it on my leg. Can you imagine this happening in England! Even without gender anxieties, we all value our ‘personal space’ far too much to accept contact like this from a stranger. Of course I didn’t want to offend him and his face was too wrinkled with smiles to mean me any harm.

I called over to my Chinese friend for reassurance. She is also ‘beijingren’ and she slipped comfortably into conversation with him in dialect. She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it’s his way of telling you your trousers are too thin. You need something thicker for the Beijing winter. He wants you to be comfortable here.’ He gave my knee one last friendly tap and with a broad grin said ‘welcome to Beijing’, a phrase made popular by the 2008 Olympics.

I wonder if those responsible for the hysterical headlines about every little cough that comes out of China could manage the simple, sublime humanity of this compassionate man, a 君子, a junzi, in the Confucian tradition of a gentleman. His wisdom outthought any amount of ideology. What was I to him? Not an enemy, not a capitalist, not even a foreigner. I was a fellow shivering human animal with whom he could feel both empathy and sympathy.

Wherever you are now my friend, I hope the Beijing winter is kind to you. It would be an honour to meet you again now I can at least thank you for your kindness in my stumbling Chinese. Your kindness and the memory of your welcome has been better protection against the icy winters than any layers of extra clothing. Your kindness played a part in persuading me to dedicate ten years of my life to education in a country that could produce such human warmth in the face of the gathering chill of fear-mongering headlines.

*Shichahai Lake in the centre of Beijing becomes a winter skate rink*.

November 25, 2023November 25, 2023

Beijing – A Simple Life

The author outside his Beijing suburb home

In this blog I will talk about the sheer, simple ordinariness of my life in China. If you haven’t been to China you might have all sorts of ideas about what it is like to live here, as I have done for ten years. Maybe you have some slightly negative views of a limited or restricted life here. Maybe you have romantic or exotic illusions of life in an ‘oriental’ country. The outstanding feature of my life for the last ten years has been its wonderful stability and everyday ordinariness. In the UK I live in a perfectly normal corner of Bournemouth. In China I live in a northern suburb of Beijing called Changping. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the approximate 5000 miles in between, I could walk down Bellevue Road in Southbourne and turn the corner into Beishahe Road in Changping, without batting an eyelid.

We can stroll freely around the local area, just exactly as if we were in Britain. Join me.

I live in a simple apartment in a cluster of six medium rise blocks in landscaped gardens. I’m the only foreigner here, but no-one treats me any differently. Let’s be clear that there are many reasons why the Chinese should be suspicious of or even hostile towards me. In the past, particularly during the nineteenth ‘century of humiliation’, the British behaved appallingly towards China. With my students I once visited the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing which in 1860 and then again in 1900 was pillaged and burned down by French and British armies. My students shook their heads and reflected sadly on the events, but there was no anger towards me and no anger from the curious Chinese gathering around to listen to our conversations.

In my employment here I could be seen as an economic migrant, you could even accuse me of taking a headmaster’s job that should by rights be for a Chinese. You could further accuse me of representing colonial and elitist foreign education in China. You could say all these things and more, but the Chinese never have. They smile at me shyly and prompt their children to try out whatever English they can with me and respond warmly when I manage a few phrases of broken Chinese.

I live opposite two perfectly ordinary Chinese schools, one middle and one primary. The children have a uniform of a simple blue tracksuit and a yellow cap. As I leave to go to school in the morning, children are streaming to school with parents or grandparents, some excited and happy, others as Shakespeare wrote ‘toward school with heavy looks’.

I meet families with students sometimes in the lift on my way home and when I ask about ‘作业’ ‘zuoye’ or ‘homework’ I get the same resentful looks I got working in London schools for 20 years. So much for the stereotype of the Chinese nerd. In the evenings streams of bikes race excitedly around the landscaped gardens and from the basketball courts come the same cries of victory and defeat that would decorate the evening twilight in Britain.

Next to the two schools is a park. Sit on a park bench with me and look around. You could be anywhere in the UK. Everyone’s dressed in exactly the same high street purchased clothes. The range of colours and styles is exactly the same. The passion of young people for trendy sports gear is precisely the same. It’s only the details that suggest difference. For a start over there is an ever open and always clean public toilet. Not many of those left in our parks in the UK are there? There are public toilets throughout Beijing, all of them with attendants who keep them meticulously clean.

And in the evenings the ‘dancing queens’ take over their corner of the park. The evenings in England always seem to me to belong to the young and the wealthy, flitting from pubs to clubs to restaurants and cinemas. In my local park, and indeed in public spaces across China, older citizens, especially middle aged and elders, gather to spend an hour or two dancing the evening away together, exercising to a heady mix of music, traditional Chinese, Chinese electronic dance music and a few treasured western disco tunes. The phenomenon is called 广场舞, guang chang wu – which can be translated as ‘square dancing’.

Let’s go for a stroll through the local streets. The streets are tree lined, just now they are in golden autumnal glory, like those in the UK. The climate in Beijing is very similar to that in Britain, except that the extremes of chill factor in January/ February and heat in July are greater than south-east England. And forget all of those stories about Beijing smog. Resolute policy enactment and shrewd investment in sustainability by the government has put an end to pollution entirely and reduced the days effected by dust and sand storms to a few per year. More cars on the road are electric powered than on the roads of Bournemouth. There is a well developed infrastructure of charging stations everywhere. The buses are all either electric or hydrogen powered.

Just round the corner from my apartment is a small parade of shops, exactly as you might find in Bournemouth, even including a McDonalds and a KFC. Coffee is just as big business in China as England. Costa and Starbucks are everywhere, although Chinese chains are hard on their heels. In fact just this year the Chinese brand, Luckin Coffee, opened their 10,000th cafe and finally overtook Starbucks. Fast food, convenience and snack stores are ubiquitous. Instead of fish and chips you might pick up a portion of 包子, bāozi, the steamed stuffed buns beloved of Beijingers. Instead of a curry, you might choose a take away 兰州拉面 – Lanzhou beef noodles, fragrant and spicy, a favourite comfort food.

One thing you will not see on the streets anywhere in China are homeless people or beggars. In fact I’m quite certain that compared to the UK, you will probably see much less of the extremes of inequality that are unfortunately a feature of British high streets currently. I have travelled all over China, and purposefully visited some of the still developing areas in the rural west of the country. While I have seen people living without the material comforts of Beijing or Shanghai, nowhere have I seen people marginalised or left behind.

China prides itself on the fact that in 2021 it was able to state that all absolute economic and social disadvantage had been eliminated and that 98.99 million people had been lifted out of poverty. China has a word for this – 小康, ‘xiaokang’ or ‘relative prosperity’. We might call it ‘levelling up’ or even ‘socialism’.

Let’s finish with a visit to the school where I’ve worked for ten perfectly ordinary years. The primary and middle school deliver the Chinese national curriculum but with a license to adopt more experimental teaching and learning strategies than public schools. This means an eclectic range of teaching strategies as diverse as Project based learning and traditional Chinese memorisation techniques based on recitation. You will feel perfectly at home in the High School section where I am based because we teach international versions of the GCSE and A Level courses students follow in the UK, except that our teaching is bilingual.

The wonder of schools worldwide is that they are perfectly ordinary places where the most extraordinary things happen – the development of young characters and the cognitive growth of young minds. If you take a walk with me past the classrooms you’ll see the rich range of teenage characters you’d meet in any English school. There’s Lu You, the rebel with streaks of red dye in her hair who set up a debating club to enjoy the controversies. There’s Yu Yanrui, the insidiously intelligent outsider, who dreams of being an indie rock poet. There’s Cui Hanhaoyu with his love of American fashion and all things NBA ( national basketball association). There’s Xu Xinran who adores The Great British bake-off and Gordon Ramsey and who runs a student cooking club every Friday afternoon.

They all cultivate their Chinese root and talk excitedly of the future contributions they’ll make to the ‘中国梦’, the ‘China dream’ of a harmonious and shared future. And just as excitedly they talk of their passion to live and study in Britain, even if only for three years of undergraduate education. They see Britain as I see China, a place at once familiar but with much to see, admire and learn from. They believe the United Kingdom is somewhere they can fit in, be comfortable and safe and learn from some of the world’s best teachers. They all want in their own ways to be small ambassadors for China, to share whatever they can of China’s culture, science and technology with the British. So far none of them have been disappointed with their experiences.

Just as China has made an ordinary, extraordinary home for me in Beijing, I hope that Britain, that you, will make a home for my students in the ordinary, extraordinary common sense of our island’s international heart.

*Students in the author’s school study English to realise their dream of graduating to an English university*

November 17, 2023November 17, 2023

To travel a thousand miles beats reading a thousand books

行万里路胜读万卷书

(xíngwànlǐlùshèngdúwànjuǎnshū)

*Lusheng Festivals of the Miao Community in Guizhou*

For this week’s Chairs Blog let’s get our hiking boots on and head out of town to the remote mountains of the south-western province of Guizhou. It’s a good time to head south from Beijing where temperatures are dropping to freezing.

Go, go, go Guizhou

Guizhou for me is one of the most fascinating places in China, second only to its neighbour Yunnan. It is still a largely rural province but thanks to government investment it is also fast becoming a digital technology hub of China. Its terrain is folded into mountains and valleys where now high speed rail and motorways fly over spectacular, dizzying bridges. I can depict the way Guizhou is poised between two worlds by painting the picture of a state of the art motorway, wheeling its way to the horizon, which is utterly empty bar a small group of Miao ethnic minority in festival costumes driving their buffalo patiently down the central high speed lane.

Now is the time of an event in Guizhou called ‘The Lusheng Festival’. The Lusheng is a wind instrument made of bamboo. It is beloved of the Miao Ethnic Minority who live in areas across south-west China, but principally Guizhou. I haven’t taken part in the November festival, however I have lived in a Miao village during the equivalent events of the Spring Festival. So come with me now and I’ll try to give you a flavour of what it’s like to watch and even be part of this event.

Who are the Miao?

The Miao are a diverse cultural group who live in mountainous regions across south-west China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar. There are 9 million Miao people in China itself, who characterise themselves into four groups, linked by loose cultural and linguistic ties. We should say that the rights of the Miao ethnic minority group is given legal protection in China and many of them live in what are called autonomous townships or counties where they have forms of local control.

I stayed in a village called Langde, which is about 40 kilometres out on the mountainside near the city of Kaili. It is almost entirely traditional and unspoilt. The houses are all timber built and constructed on stilts so that there is a storage area under the house, often used for livestock. The road to Langde does not enter the village so it is vehicle free-except for the ubiquitous small motorcycles that frequently transport whole families at a time . My grandfather, who was a village carpenter would have loved the houses which are built without the use of nails, through a complex of ingenious joints. The house where I stayed was entirely natural, including a lack of glass in the windows which on chill February nights took a bit of adjusting to.

Walking through the village you are immersed in the rich diversity of sights, smells and sounds which anyone raised on a farm will be familiar with. Chickens peck freely around your ankles. The village has two centres. One is a small theatrical square where people gather for festivals. The second is the pond where crystal clear water splashes down from the mountain sides and where families gather to wash vegetables, clean a freshly killed chicken and generally enjoy the gossip of the day. The lifestyle of Langde is definitely one of the open air.

Miao Culture 1 : Embroidery

I don’t think we can describe Miao society as matriarchal, yet from my short stay it is evident that, to use a Chinese phrase, ‘bànbiāntiān’, that is ‘women hold up half the sky’. Women were in the fields farming, women were labouring on construction sites, women were holding forth at the local markets obviously running their own businesses. In their creation myth all Miao are descended from a female ancestor – the Butterfly Mother, who mated with the pure mountain waters of Guizhou to lay the egg that gave birth to the first man – called Zang Vang. And it is women who are responsible for the embroidery which literally stitches Miao culture together. Miao grandmothers and mothers create some of the most dazzlingly beautiful costumes you will ever see.

But the importance of this needlework goes far, far beyond surface beauty. Traditionally the costumes are hand prepared by mothers for their own ‘butterfly’ daughters. Each stitch is an act of love. One of the key functions of the Lusheng festivals is to bring the young together to offer opportunities for relationships and then marriage. There’s no doubt that an impressive piece of embroidery is an investment in your daughter’s future happiness. At the start of each festival you see the beautiful bonds this brings between mothers and daughters as they work together to get each piece of the intricate costumes absolutely perfect.

A speciality of the Miao costumes are the pleated skirts. These can be of varying lengths according to local cultures. The needlework changes according to the thoughts of each mother. Many designs reflect the beauty of local plants and animals. Others may depict local myths and legends. They are part of the intangible and utterly tangible heritage of the Miao.

It’s worth noting that these skills are starting to become an important part of the local economy. Miao women have realised that there is considerable demand for their needlework both in China and internationally. They are learning to exploit the tools of e-commerce. In 2012 a Miao woman called Long Laoxiang sold an award winning piece for 2,500 dollars. Following this local women have organised themselves together to set up local businesses that are contributing significantly to poverty alleviation. Very importantly the money earned in this way means that families can stay together without either or sometimes both parents having to live away from the children working in a far off city such as Shenzen. In one village I visited in 2019 there were no parents at all, only children and grandparents because all of the mothers and fathers were remote workers. It’s wonderful to think that the Miao heritage is making tragedies like this a thing of the past.

Miao Culture 2: Silver work

Miao silversmiths deserve to have world wide recognition for the artistry and intricacy of their craft. Silver is highly valued and worked into exquisite and expressive jewellery. Every village has its own silver artists. In some villages every man strives to develop these skills. Just as the embroiderers keep Miao culture alive through needlework so the silversmiths preserve the culture through incorporating ancient totems and motifs from historic legends in their work. When the Miao dress for festival they really do become history, alive to the past, wearing their culture elegantly into the future.

For the women perhaps the most distinctive parts of their costumes are the headwear. Common motifs for the silver hats are a magpie stepping on plum, a golden pheasant calling out, a peacock spreading its tail, and a male and female phoenix perched together. These motifs can vary in appearance from region to region. For example, the phoenix hat of the Huangping region features hundreds of silver flowers, four birds and one phoenix. The silver pieces at the back of this hat are meant to imitate the phoenix’s tail feathers. In some Miao villages, such as the ones near Kaili, Leishan, Danzhai and Taijiang, the silver horns are the most important adornment. They vary in thickness and are meant to look like the horns of a bull. The horns are each typically 50 to 70 centimetres long. They normally have patterns hammered into them, such as phoenixes or dragons holding pearls, and are sometimes decorated with feathers or tassels.

To see groups of women swaying in time to the Lusheng music, with silver ‘moon horns’ glistening in the light, is a liminal experience.

*Ethereal silver moon-horns in Langde village*

Miao Culture 3 : Festival

Let’s join a festival. You are here at the annual lusheng festival of the White Miao. This place and this event are so remote you are the only foreigner here. From villages across the area families have been on the move since breakfast, tongues singing with anticipation. Mothers and grandmothers look suitably stressed about details of costumes; boys and girls look equally relieved that the chiding and licking into presentability has stopped; dads slip to the back of the circling crowd, distant, impassive, drawing deep on cigarettes in secret pride. And so it starts, naturally, organically, without speech or ceremony. With lungfuls of clean mountain air, the lusheng burst into rhythmic call and respond, the boys swaying elegantly as they play. The butterfly girls emerge from the cocoon circles of mothers and grandmothers, adorned in the cascade of multicoloured costumes maternal hands have been hatching all winter. With elegant simple steps the lines of girls circle, jingling bells and fluttering aprons. With choreographed kicks, the lines of boys rotate, lowing and bellowing like little buffalo. In the cacophony, in the deafening wheel the laws of nature unfold as simply as winter revolves into the fresh buds of spring.

What is festival?

This is not an exotic spectacle. Like the story of the butterfly mother herself, born from bubbling water, this festival folds the people again and again back into the rhythms and cycles of nature. It is a festival of the fierce love of the butterfly mothers and daughters. It is a festival of past and future, a child looking back from the swirl of the dance to catch her mother’s anxious, loving eye.

*looking back to catch her mother’s anxious, loving eye.*

November 12, 2023November 12, 2023

双十一, Double Eleven, more than just a shopping festival?

李佳琦***, Li Jiaqi, ‘the lipstick king’, a very successful and sometimes controversial live-streaming celebrity.***

Double Eleven!

One of the most important events of the year for many Chinese people is taking place right now in November. It’s called Double Eleven and it’s the biggest shopping festival in the world. It’s a bit like Boxing Day and the January sales in the UK but on steroids. And curiously it takes place at almost the same time as the western shopping festival called ‘Black Friday’, which this year is on November 24th.

In this article I’ll share information about the Double Eleven phenomenon and some thoughts about what it means for the Chinese people.

What is Double Eleven?

Double 11 only came into existence in 2009. Really it would be better to describe it as a festival of e-commerce. The person behind Double 11 is Zhang Yong, the founder of an online retail giant called Tmall. He was looking for ways to boost the Tmall brand and hit on the idea of an on-line shopping event.

We need some background on Tmall. Tmall operates as an on-line platform for branded products, both domestic and international. By 2020 Tmall had grown to become the largest authorised mobile and online trading platform for brands and retailers in the world. We can understand Tmall as an online digital market place where retailers can set up an electronic market stall, without the costs of a physical infrastructure.

Double Eleven is not just about consumerism.

From an economic point of view Double Eleven is also about innovation. It offers a platform not only for new products but also for new services. E-commerce platforms encourage a whole economic eco-system of growth. Many of the businesses can be categorised as small or even micro enterprises. An important aspect of Double Eleven is the way it supports the development of finance, logistics, technology and even training for the skills of e-commerce.

I think it’s also important to understand the role of e-commerce for what in China is called ‘小康’, xiaokang, or making sure there is a level of moderate prosperity across the whole society, without ‘left behind’ areas of inequality. The on-line market places can be joined from anywhere in the country, bringing benefits to enterprises and consumers who live outside of the highly developed urban centres. A new platform called Pinduoduo, believes that every year it is seeing 167 per-cent growth in China’s much smaller fourth and fifth tier cities.

Seen in this way Double 11 begins to have cultural as well as economic significance. It is a critical part of opening up the Chinese economy to international producers. In 2022 Double 11 brought more than 2,600 overseas brands to the attention of Chinese consumers. Products and services were on sale from 79 countries and regions of the world. We should understand this in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative which is improving connectivity to China from across the world. Retailers from any part of the globe can now open doors to trade in China through the Double Eleven platform.

The phenomenon of Live-Streaming

The second cultural phenomenon that is markedly different from traditional patterns of shopping in the west is the emergence of live streaming. Again comparison with a physical market can be made. If you’ve ever been to a marketplace you will have had your attention caught by the show-woman or showman, attracting you not only by the quality of their wares, but the quality of their entertainment.

Live-streaming at Double Eleven is the commercial equivalent of the Olympic Games for the celebrities of this skill. In 2022 live-streamers generated more than 15 billion US dollars of sales. At the peak of the 2022 , 583,000 orders were being placed every second. Live-streaming brings opportunities for new entrepreneurs from across China, especially the still developing economies of the rural west and south-west. One of the most lucrative and valued corners of the live-streaming market is held by farmers and agricultural workers who can use the platform to sell organic produce and cultural products such as textiles directly to the doors of city dwellers.

Li Jiaqi, the live-streamer pictured above, sold so many products on line that he earned the nick-name ‘the lipstick king’. Then he notoriously risked his reputation and market share when he concluded an on-line argument with a customer by implying she was too lazy to earn the money to buy his products. The strength of on-line opinion in China can be seen in the fact that he has since apologised for his lack of values, “I should never forget where I come from and shouldn’t lose myself.” Social media in the West is not particularly known as an arena for public apologies.

Shopping and Culture

While we may have all kinds of reservations about consumerism, that shouldn’t blind us to the cultural importance of shopping. If we read Michael Woods’ ‘The Story of China’ he paints vivid pictures of places like 12th century Kaifeng where shopping was the engine of a renaissance of art, culture and life-styles. In his wonderful social history ‘Empire of Things’, Frank Trentmann (2017) opens with an account of shopping fashions from 1808 written by the Chinese poet Lin Sumen. Part of this different perspective is to shift the focus away from the seller to the buyer. As Trentmann puts it ‘it was the values these societies attached to things that set them apart’.

How to join the Double Eleven users community

My students are of course expert users of Double Eleven. They explained to me that a co-operative sub-culture has developed around the event. The volume of information about potential on-line bargains is simply far too much for any one person to manage. And so they work together almost like a team of hunters to guide each other to catch what they need.

They taught me two essential internet catch phrases for this activity. The first is ‘种草’ or ‘zhongcao’ which literally means ‘to plant grass’. However it is internet slang for recommending a bargain to a friend. I guess in English we’d say planting the seed of buying a product. And then there is its equally vivid opposite, which is ‘拔草’ or ‘bacao’ which means ‘to pull up weeds’. If someone tells you this then it’s a signal that you should avoid this product or seller.

Things like this go beyond linguistic ingenuity. The slang binds you into a group of knowledgeable consumers, clubbing together to make Double Eleven work on your terms.

It’s estimated that by 2025 the digital economy could be contributing 12 trillion dollars per year, which is 55% of China’s economy, so we’d be foolish to ignore its economic value. However we should also be wise to the ways in which Chinese citizens make use of shopping events like these to develop their own sense of value and community.

As one of my students said, ‘ Everyone will be immersed in pleasure on November 11th, that’s why the Chinese like this day very much, because a joyful day is what we need most. Double Eleven not only meets our material needs, but it also meets our spiritual needs, for Chinese, this cheerful day can also be seen as a festival, Double Eleven has taken root in our hearts!’

清明上河圖, *Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú, ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’,artist Zhang Zeduan (*張擇端*, 1085–1145),a celebration of Song Dynasty shopping culture.*

November 10, 2023November 10, 2023

We Remember them All

*Chinese Labourers at the Western Front, 1917*

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, Britain will respectfully remember and honour those who fought in and those who sacrificed their lives in the two world wars. This is personal to me, as it is to many of you. My maternal grandmother risked her life nightly with the artillery teams defending Southampton from bombing raids. My maternal grandfather was in the Royal Hampshire’s in North Africa and in Italy including the carnage of Monte Cassino. My paternal grandfather was a pilot in the RAF during the Battle of Britain.

Both 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 were world wars. Millions struggled and lost their lives around the globe. This includes China which supported the Allies in both conflicts. In this article I’ll remind us of the scale of that Chinese contribution.

China’s Contribution to World War 1

China first offered military support to the Allies in 1915, but the British government turned the offer down. China had every reason to oppose Germany, which was then occupying areas of China’s Shandong Province and virtually running it as a colony.

Chinese labourers support the Allies

Starting in late 1916, China began sending thousands of men to support Britain, France and Russia. These labourers repaired tanks, assembled shells, worked on transport supplies and munitions, and helped to dig the trenches. By the end of the war, Chinese workers would rank as the largest and longest serving non-European contingent in World War I. France recruited 37,000 Chinese workers, while the United Kingdom took in 94,500. Altogether 3,000 of these men lost their lives. A notorious incident took place in February 1917 when a German submarine sank a French ship called the Athos, leading to the death of 500 Chinese workers on their way to support the war effort in Europe.

China and the Versailles Treaty

Shamefully, China was very badly treated at the Versailles Peace Treaty. China was only allowed two representatives at the conference. The Chinese request for the restoration of Shandong to Chinese rule was ignored and an integral part of China was placed in Japanese hands. The Chinese people were outraged by this injustice, an anger which found expression in the famous May Fourth movement.

China’s Contribution to World War Two

Although the story of Chinese resistance during World War Two is little known in the West, it was possibly only the Chinese peoples’ refusal to submit to Japanese forces that prevented the victory of Fascism, especially in Asia.

The war in China broke out in 1937, although hostilities had already started. The Communist armies led by Mao Zedong and the Nationalist armies led by Chang Kai Shek fought against the odds, tooth and nail, to defend every inch of Chinese soil. From 1941 to 1945 Yunnan Province in south-west China was one of the most vital theatres of the whole war. The Japanese Army threatened to advance up from Myanmar and overrun the whole of China. This in turn would have meant the Soviet Union having to send vital troops and resources, then locked in the struggle against the Nazi advance into Russia, eastwards to protect the border.

It’s at this point that our own Joseph Needham got involved, helping to ensure vital supplies of equipment and scientific knowledge to the Chinese war effort. It’s the point at which American and British pilots formed the famous Flying Tigers along with Chinese comrades to keep the skies over Yunnan safe for supplies to be thrown in.

On a visit to Tengchong, a large city in Yunnan, near the Myanmar border, I had the privilege to meet the gentleman here. His name is 卢彩文 , Lu Caiwen. He is a veteran of that war. In 1944, almost exactly as my grandfather was inching up the mountainside at Monte Cassino under murderous fire, he was crawling up another mountain near Tengchong, with the China Expeditionary Force, determined to dislodge the Japanese army from this strategic stronghold. At the foot of the mountain is a 53,000 square metre cemetery where rest the 10,000 CEF soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice. Even now, decades later, Lu’s voice shakes with emotion, as he remembers the comrades who fell around him. Every few days, veteran Lu Caiwen visits the graveyard to lay chrysanthemums in memory of his fallen comrades.

China endured one of the longest and bloodiest campaigns of any nation fighting in World War II, with 30 million Chinese citizens dying, including 2.2 million soldiers, a war which 100 million more Chinese finished as refugees.

The War to end all wars

My grandfather died after a well deserved full and happy life. When I sat next to Mr Lu in his Tengchong home in 2019 I knew my grandfather was there in the room, listening to his stories as attentively and appreciatively as I was. They shared the same slightly mischievous twinkle in their eyes, maybe the light in the eyes of those who have looked on the brutality of war and know better than us, the precious everyday beauty of peace.

Old comrades across the world, we, to whom you gave the gifts of life and love, salute you and thank you for your sacrifices, brothers and sisters in arms!

*Chris Nash and* 卢彩文*, Lu Caiwen, 2019.*

November 2, 2023November 2, 2023

Halloween & Strange Tales

This week it has been Halloween in the UK. The origins of Halloween are seasonal. It is a festival that marks the end of summer and the coming of winter. It is also a liminal time, when the divide between the material world and the spiritual world grows thin and porous. It is a time when the ghosts, goblins and ghouls of our fearful imaginations come out of the darkness into shared stories around the protecting flames of a hearth fire.

There is no direct equivalent to Halloween in China. However there is a popular folk imagination which is just as full of the wierd and the wonderful. The Dao philosophy in China has two strands . One is a tradition of wisdom, best understood through the ‘Daodejing’ the writings attributed to Laozi. The second is a rich collection of ancient beliefs – animism, mysticism and the occult.

Once, climbing a mountain with a friend, I was amazed to see a carefully constructed shrine and inside a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of ‘baijiu’, the powerful white alcohol of China. ‘Are they there in case someone gets lost on the mountain?’ I asked. ‘No humans should touch them,’ I was told, ‘They belong to the mountain spirits.’

If you want to get a flavour of Chinese ghost and horror stories this Halloween I would recommend you to the book ‘Strange Tales of Laozhai’ or as it’s known by a slightly different title ‘Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio’. The author of these tales is called Pu Songling. He lived from 1640 to 1715, the time of the Qing Dynasty in China.

Pu Songling was born into a poor merchant family and struggled to pass the imperial examination system and gain financial security all his life, without success. His loss was our gain, because he devoted several decades of his life to collecting and retelling in charming Classical Chinese, over 500 accounts and tales, many of them with spooky supernatural themes.

For a detailed introduction to the book, I would recommend you to the excellent ‘Great Books of China’ by Frances Wood. I’ll offer a more humble flavour of the collection.

What I admire about these stories is exactly the quality I talked about in Halloween, the thin, porous dividing line between the natural and supernatural worlds. In a story called ‘The Taoist Priest of Mount Lao’, the main character Wang is dumbfounded when the priest makes an ordinary piece of paper into a dazzling moon, which is also a portal for supernatural beings to cross over. Wang begs to be taught the secrets of opening doors between worlds only to be brought crashing down to Earth when he charges at a wall believing he too can cross over, only to be left with a sore head when the physicality of the wall stands in his way.

Perhaps the most famous of the tales, and the most appropriate for Halloween, is called ‘Painted Skin’. We can appreciate this story in movie form. It has been brought to the screen many times, but the most recent version was made in 2008 by the director Gordon Chan. It’s a credible film in its own right, but it substituted the horror of the original story for a strong romantic element. However the same idea is at the heart of both versions, the thinness of human skin and how easily it can hide horror. I won’t spoil the effect of reading or watching for yourself, but suffice to say that the tale is a warning for anyone, especially a bookish scholar, who doesn’t believe that a beautiful exterior might not be disguising the vilest of monsters within.

I’ll finish at the beginning – with the poetic Preface that Songling wrote for his work:

“Those who know me

Are in the green grove,

They are

At the dark frontier.”

As both Halloween and ‘Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio’ show, the human imagination seems to be haunted by the need to visit and revisit, time after time, this ‘dark frontier’.

October 28, 2023October 28, 2023

Send for Mother in Law

I talk all the time to the Chinese teachers in my school about the things that matter to them. They suggested that I should write this article to share something of real importance to their lives.

The question of who takes care of the young is a key issue for every family. Having spent my life working in education I have met all of the joys of getting this critical relationship right and equally the damaging consequences of inadequate or inappropriate care in these formative years. In every school I worked in in the UK, we provided breakfast clubs for those young people in school early because the adult or adults in the house had left early for work and after school provision for those where no adult would return to the house until the early evening.

Underlying this is the modern phenomena whereby it is almost impossible for mothers and fathers with new families to take extended absences from the workplace. The percentage of women in employment in both the UK and China is roughly the same at 72 % in Britain and 62% in China. Young families in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzen face the same financial struggles as their counterparts in London, Birmingham and Manchester. City life is expensive and two steady incomes are needed to keep the family going.

Under new laws introduced in 2019 in some areas of China, either parent is entitled to up to one year of paid leave following the birth of a child. In addition in most large cities either parent is permitted up to ten days of paid leave for child care. This certainly helps, but Chinese employers notoriously have demanding expectations of long work hours for their workers. Mums and Dads need a back up system.

That back up comes in the form of extended family support. Traditionally of course families lived close to each other so support was always available on the doorstep. However over the last few decades more and more young Chinese have moved out of their home towns to where the jobs are, in cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzen. Sooner or later a baby comes along. As soon as the happy event is announced, almost always without being asked, an in-law or a grandparent will arrive in the family home to act as support or an extra carer. Typically this support will be on hand throughout pregnancy and at least until the child completes primary school education. And it’s an almost instinctive act, you don’t need to go through the embarrassment of asking your mother in law or grandfather to ‘try and help us out if you can’.

This is not without sacrifices for the carers. Bonds of community and friendship are very strong in China, the smaller the home town or home village, the stronger those bonds will be. It is quite a wrench for someone in their older years to give up a warm network of friends and habits to come and stay in a strange city. Sacrifices have to be made. And the opposite is true when the family no longer needs support. As 5 to 10 years have gone by the in law or grandparent will have grown accustomed to the comforts of the city. For example, a city like Beijing has central heating in most homes, whereas smaller towns and villages might rely on more traditional forms of heating. When you live in a partially heated home all your life, you don’t notice the cold, but coming back from an apartment kept at a constant temperature, it’s a different matter.

To appreciate the sacrifices made by all in this family arrangement which is so different from the typical nuclear family in Britain, you also need to understand that most city dwellers in China live in apartments, rather than the typical British ‘upstairs, downstairs’ house. The whole extended family may easily be sharing two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. In modern Britain, I think many people value their privacy and ‘personal space’ too much to be able to live like this, even if it did bring benefits of stability and togetherness to family life.

The benefits in China are significant. Bonds are made across generations which bring deep advantages of stability and calm. I happen to live in an area with large public primary and middle schools. In the mornings almost every child walks to school chatting away happily to a carer other than Mum or Dad. In the evenings those same carers will gather in happy throngs around the school gates to walk them home again. There’s always someone there to say, ‘Have a good day in school today’ and ‘How was school today?’, without Mum or Dad having to make a stressful dash home from work.

In my opinion the importance of a child’s hand nestled securely in the wrinkled hand of a grandparent ripples far beyond the school gates. However much a child tries to put anxiety or stress to the back of her or his mind while in class, the effect on learning is corrosive. Although it could be imperfect, the reassuring voice of a caring relative, who after all may have already been through the challenges of the parenting process, might make the difference between coping and chaos.

The majority of women teachers in my school have this form of family support network at home. Not only does it give them the peace of mind to do an excellent job, but it also brings great stability to the school, because the days needed for sick leave are minimal. It also helps to reduce the level of childhood obesity because the extended family relative usually squeezes a visit to the local stores into the day, so that there is fresh food waiting on the table, not supermarket convenience food, which has a minimal market in China, even in the busiest cities.

Of course there are arguments, tears, slammed doors and angry silences. Nothing is perfect. Families make sacrifices to make it work. But if the calmness, confidence and concentration levels of the children from age 5 to 18 in my school are anything to go by, the benefits for young people are enormous. Let’s finish with a popular Chinese saying:

‘家和万事兴’, or ‘jiāhéwànshìxīng’

which means , ‘if the family lives in harmony all affairs will prosper.’