A biref interlude - hope without history
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2008
1
16
21
Trip End
Jan 25, 2009
Yangshuo,
China
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
At night, Brent turned in a bit early every night. So I sat down in the hostel's family room with the family who ran it and read and chatted a bit. So here's one for you - one of our teachers in Beijing (keep in mind a highly educated, skilled woman) had never heard of what happened in Tiananmen Square until she met foreigner students. And she was 6, living in Beijing when it happened! It apparently took some convincing, but now she's aware. But still - you know what she says? "What's the point of history? Why worry about what has happened in the past when no one is alive to tell you?" Is this China's modern challenge?
What can it possibly mean to have hope for the future with no knowledge of the past. It seems it's an obvious contradiction - how can you hope for improvement if you don't know what you're improving FROM? Maybe this is some kind of modern religion. But really, it seems like the opposite of a religion. Religion grounds you, locates you in space and time, and in a community. By looking forward it seems like you'd distance yourself from the eternal. I happen to be reading Bulgakov, who's quite intent on reminding us that a loss of persepctive, an overemphasis on the role of man and country can quickly lead to chaos when the more ever-present forces of the world intervene. Could people really forget the nearly unending history of China to a gloss of prosperity? Prosperity, affluence, success, are all essentially bounded by the idea of time, they need a temporal aspect to be understood, but more universal terms, concepts, knowledges do not. History, knowledge, man, community, God, devil - these words all carry the increased weight of a lack of temporal ties.
"Men are mortal, sometimes suddenly mortal." One touch of the immortal and the unbounded makes, schemes, control, plans all crumble, makes prosperity and the hope for it seem nonexistant. My whole time in China I've had this image of a whirlwind, a whirling, terrifying flame wrapping around these ancient buildings and landscaping. Maybe this is an image of history, of the ghosts of generations waiting in the wings while China takes off. The ghosts that only need to casually blow through a life, a city, a country to make us forget the dream of control or hope. But I guess I'm waxing a bit metaphysical and definitely long-winded. I should prolly just paint it and get it over with.
What I really wanted to talk about was, as all these lofty thoughts were banging around in the space between my ears the son and his father who owns the hostel I was in were sitting laughing, watching a Jacie Chan flick and eating peanuts. Seems familiar, right? other than the language, there really isn't too much different than my dad and I when I was a kid. So maybe I put a face on why China, especially in the big cities and affluent areascan be unsettling. I'm sure the sacrilege will work itself it out in China and America alike. What's more important is seeing this humanity. These things that are holding us together. Who cares if they forget history for the time-being. Just like history is immortal (in a weird way) and TV and cranes aren't, the basic way we live doesn't change, only the little details, like Jackie Chan. I really hope the Chinese people, and people of every country, rectify their problems on their own, but what I can actually DO is bathe in just how awesome it is to be here with these people, living their lives in whatever the circumstances in this incredibly interesting time in the world's largest country.
