Vol. 2, Number 1	Spring 1999 issue

 

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Last summer, during my seventh trip to China, I realized that I had no understanding or appreciation of the place. On my previous trips, I had concluded that China consisted of nothing but pollution, filth, and crude, backwards, money-mongering people who saw me only as a rip-off target. Faced with the prospect of a three-month stay in Beijing, I decided to give the country a second chance. In retrospect, it was actually a first chance, for only after ceasing to compare China with suburban Chicago did I appreciate China and start towards an understanding.

As I read Jonathan Spence's latest book The Chan's Great Continent, I saw that my former outlook on China was strikingly similar to those of my Western predecessors. From Marco Polo and Mark Twain to Montesquieu and Karl Marx, Westerners have faced two barriers to understanding China: a comparativist attitude and selfish motives. I have found in my own experiences and seen confirmed in Spence's work that because of these barriers, the truth of China is yet to be told or even found by the West. But based on my recent time there, I can say the attempt to find it might not be completely worthless.

When I accepted that I had to learn how to like China or else face a summer of hell, I began to see an entire world that I had blinded myself to before. I had spent my previous six visits rotting in hotel rooms, pretending not to see prostitutes and junk sellers, whining about boredom while standing in the Forbidden City, and pining for the States. This time, I practiced Chinese and feigned shock with merchandise sellers with co-workers and friends, stuffed down platefuls of good Chinese food for less than a dollar, and learned about the Chinese world view. Reading Spence's account of Daniel Defoe's approach towards China reminded me only too much of my earlier trips:

"Virtually every previously described positive aspect of China is negated, and every negative aspect of China is emphasized for Defoe's British readers: 'But when I come to compare the miserable people of these countries with ours, their fabrics, their manner of living, their government, their religion, their wealth, and their glory, as some call it, I must confess I do not so much as think it is worth naming, or worth my while to write of, or any that shall come after me to read.'"[emphasis added]

I too had overlooked the positive aspects of China in favor of the negative ones; I too had compared and found China inferior to the West. What had caused this betrayal of my Chinese ancestry? I could blame it on Galeote Pereira, who according to Spence, began this habit of contrasting China with the West in the 1500s: "By comparing Chinese legal flexibility favorably both to Roman law and to what one might expect at home in current Europe, Pereira was introducing a comparativist approach to Chinese culture that was to become a central part of Western thought." But while Pereira used comparison in China's favor, in the other anecdotes Spence describes and in my own experiences, it has caused only ill-will and blindness. Best to blame it on ourselves, then-or, at least, on our selfish motives.

I compared China negatively with the States because I figured if I hated it enough, my parents would let me leave. Similarly, the reporters on China Spence describes were motivated by political or social interests back home. Few, including myself, were fueled by a desire to help other Westerners grasp Chinese culture.

Take Marco Polo's Travels. "One ingenious explanation of the book's existence is that Polo wrote it to gain preferment...thus the long descriptions of Mongol court politics and Polo's bureaucratic and traveling experience were designed to present him as an able and experienced man of the world...in this view, we might see his book as a kind of resume or vita," explains Spence.

Seven hundred years later, our Western version of the Chinese is still skewed . I first became skeptical of the American media when I discovered that I could talk with my local Chinese friends freely, unoppressed by the government, contrary to American media reports. I turned to journalists for information-but reportedly, even the Pulitzer Prize winning accounts of contemporary China I read were exaggerated to sell books. When I found that Chinese conversation never broached politics, that people seemed content with their rights, I concluded that I could trust little of my previous "knowledge" of China.

Although Spence concludes his book saying that the Western understanding of China is "in the ear, the ear that hears both what it wants and what it is expecting," I remain hopeful. Perhaps because I recognize the barriers to understanding China, I can find some way to pursue the truth of China in my future trips and studies. Spence, I suspect, would argue that my Western upbringing, my Chinese American heritage and biases, and perhaps even some hidden motive for glory will prove to be my downfall. But if we really do pursue China with a blank slate, I would like to think that we could help the West forget past biased messages and create a newer, truer picture of China.