ching or ming dynasty!!

[meltdawn]

Ming Fai, I take you very seriously. I am aware of how flawed is my own understanding of Chinese civilization. I have not your benefit of experiencing first-hand any other culture in it’s own environment. I thank you deeply for taking the time and effort in writing such a detailed description of the information you have acquired. I’d love to share my own limited point of reference on China as an American capitalist. Maybe some people will agree with my perspective, maybe some will reevaluate their own.

My father flew four tours in Viet Nam. He was stationed throughout Asia, including Japan and the Philippines, as were many officers at that time. Lucky for me, they got all their traveling done before I was born. Note sarcasm. However, they brought back many spoils. I grew up reading Asian fairy tales like "The Littlest Princess" and "The Golden Crane" alongside the collections of Edgar Alan Poe. Next to my Star Wars toys were fully wardrobed geishas with exchangeable wigs for various prescribed social occasions. I had my own kimono and obi at age four and those clunky wooden shoes, complete with toed socks. I was so sad when I outgrew them.

But even then - and I recently pointed this out to my father - 90% of our household came from China. These were things he purchased in other Asian and Pacific Rim nations. That must have been how prevalent Chinese contemporary culture pervaded all but Japan. We had Chinese scrolls, furniture, hand carved chests, bell pulls, mud men, buddhas, porcelain dragons, ivory puzzle balls, jade and metal sculpted trees, silk pillows, wood screens, vases.

In the seventies, the US was heavily influenced by its exchanges with "the Orient". My father loved Japan and taught my family much about it. He imported Asian art, and even brought over a calligrapher and brush painter from Taiwan for exhibition. In the ‘80’s, trade relations with mainland China opened up, the suburban US finally began to get a real taste. Remember the silk pincushions with pony-tailed kids ringing them? Or the tiny pillboxes made of inlaid colored wood? Now we’ve blossomed into a consumer economy not only purchasing Chinese trinkets, but "Made in China" clothing, cups, staplers, scissors, calculators, eyeglasses, telephones… look around where you are sitting right now and read the labels on everything. Search trade and shipping on the internet and you will discover how enmeshed China is in our economy. Never has another country outside of Colonialist England been so pervasive, and none more silently and steadfastly so. How many Japantowns do you know? Germantowns?

Our recent generations have, broadly speaking, only governmentally based knowledge of China. We watched Mao Tse Dong and Tiananmin Square. We saw Nixon get off a plane, and Bill shaking hands with a monk. We cannot, as a society, continue to confuse China with it’s government. One out of every four humans ever born are Chinese, very few of them governors. Even the Catholic church has begun teaching history from the ground up: a society is not regarded as evolving down from her king, but up from her people.

I now am fortunate to spend a great amount of time with a Cantonese/HK family. They’ve been in this country many years. The youngest are their first generation of American-born citizens. They love America. They say everyone wants to come here. But China is where they want to be buried. So I heed example and I listen. I ask respectful questions and my knowledge of a fascinating culture so different from my own grows. And they learn about USA from me. I try to be as unbiased as I can, and the more I tell, the more I learn about my own country. When China’s people had issues between her ethnicities, there was war. The subjugated evolved within the victor’s ethnic imposition, yet maintained vehemently their own identity. It is the same for Chinese in America today. With the undercurrent of intolerance in this country so obvious to the Chinese and so self-blinded to us, I wonder about our solution.

I have asked my master about Mao's revolution. Tonight, after I take the kids to a lion dance, I think I will ask him about the Ming and Ching.

China is like water. It flows through dynasties, cultural revolutions, religious revolutions, invasions, acquisitions. And still it grows, broadens, deepens. It does not stand up and say "Look at me! I have color TV!" It quietly listens, learns and unobtrusively flows on.

"Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break."
Pearl S. Buck, 1972

"Waiting is bad." - Musashi

[Ming Fai]

Thanks Meltdown for your story, very inspiring! I'm not pretending to be a "Chinese-Know-It-All" around here, I have so many things to learn and understand. I've been to China and I think the Chinese have lots to learn from the West too (Ever sat in a cab where the taxi-driver spits a mouthfull of *YUK* on the window of another car?).

Happy Chinese New Year!