Today was our day off. I had originally planned to meet with an old friend of a lawyer I work for back in the US who owns an art exporting business in Beijing. I was able to get in touch with him by 13:00, but he told me that today would not be a good day to meet because of potential clients who were visiting, and that his boys wanted to go for a bike ride. So since I had not planned anything else for the day and this plan had fallen through, I did not have any ambitious hopes for what I would get accomplished. I spent this time off catching up on emails, chatting with friends back home, going for walks through the neighborhood and relaxing in solitude after being surrounded by people for everywhere I went.
I also spent some more time thinking about what Yun He had said about the Cultural Revolution and its devastation of Chinese culture. Though I cannot be as sure as she is about the blame for the problems of modern Chinese society lying so largely with the Revolution, I do continue to see the signs that she spoke of. To an outsider, it is very hard to see evidence of a China older than 60 years in day-to-day life. Of course it is easy to see ancient China when we visit the various palaces and temples that we see on our tours, but these are isolated preserves, which were indeed attacked and sometimes destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. But I think the Chinese people themselves do appreciate their history, but simply do not incorporate into their modern culture as much as countries like India or Britain may. Instead I think that pre-Communist China is viewed as a very distant time, and as more of a curiosity to be glorified on TV. The many Mongolian soap operas I've seen on our hotel TV seem to be a more interesting picture of that era than a historical documentary would be. This kind of mystification of a historical period reminds me of the modern image of Native Americans as sage, simple people living in teepees. There is very little truth in the image, but it makes for good movies. The authentic story of the Native American peoples cannot speak for itself because they have been thoroughly exterminated and the rest moved to isolated reservations where they can spend their days in abject poverty, not speaking for their storied histories. Similarly, the Cultural Revolution sought to drive away and marginalize those who could speak for China's history, like academics and monuments themselves. The rapid capitalization that followed under Deng Xiaoping furthered this separation, pushing the people of China continuously forward towards making money, not worrying about the past.
Which brings me back to the Mongolian soap operas I have seen on TV. Surely every country is embarrassed by their TV dramas and does not want them to be seen as any measure of their society. But the differences between Western and Chinese soap operas are quite striking. While American and Hispanic soap operas focus on the social struggles of modern life, all the Chinese soap operas are set in times past. Whether they star the Mongol Horde, Prohibition-era American mobsters, Western cowboys, or a matriarch struggling to preserve traditions in her modernizing household, it seems that a segment of the population in China is searching for a past of some sort which they can connect to.