FILM ABOUT HIROSHIMA: "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and the Horror of Forgetting

Have you ever noticed people have
a way of noticing what they want?
 - from Hiroshima Mon Amour

In the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, a Japanese man asks a French woman, "What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?" She sets out six propositions:

The end of the war. I mean completely.

Astonishment that they dared do it,

and astonishment that they succeeded.

And the beginning of an unknown fear for us as well.

And then indifference.

And fear of indifference as well.

No simple answers. And it just gets more complicated from there . . . .

Scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour is a provocation. It challenges us to wrestle with the real possibility that we will only eliminate nuclear weapons when we invest our whole personalities -- our hearts and our souls -- in the project.

In recent days I have been profiling a list of films about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

So now we come to Hiroshima Mon Amour. It is a film jointly produced by French and Japanese studios, set in Hiroshima, with a French director, a Japanese leading actor (who himself starred in an earlier Japanese film about Hiroshima), a French leading actress (playing the role of an actress in a movie-within-the-movie set in Hiroshima), featuring a long opening sequence about the atomic bombing of Japan, and continuing with a tale of forbidden love set in Nazi-occupied France, all in the the context of an affair fated to lapse in a matter of a few hours . . . .

If you are an anti-nuclear activist, you might be forgiven for objecting to the way that the tragedy of Hiroshima may seem to be elbowed into the background by not one, but two, compelling love stories in this film. I know I certainly struggled with such feelings when as I first watched it.

Later as I listened to several interviews with the director, Alain Resnais, I began to warm to his approach. What I heard him saying was: providing the facts about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to people is necessary but not sufficient; to have an impact, we must deal with people as complex, feeling beings, beings in a perpetual whirl of sensing, forgetting, and remembering.

Put another way, people are, at every second, electing where to direct their gaze. That face? The tale of irrational love? (Yes? Never?) Do I like this? Abhor it? Don't ever want to let it go? Will I feel what I want to feel? Or what I should feel? Will I think what I don't want to think?

Real. Genuine. Sordid. Artificial. Forced. Noble.

I can forget it all if I want to.

Hotel room scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

The film scholar François Thomas speaks of "interlaced combs" - the way past and present intertwine in Hiroshima Mon Amour, the way remembering and forgetting intertwine, and ultimately the way personal trauma and global trauma do, too.

In the opening sequence, we hear a woman's voice recount what she has learned about Hiroshima and the atomic bombing, telling about museum exhibitions, victim photographs, newsreels, and other evidence, testifying over and over, "I saw it" -- alternating with the a man's voice contradicting, "You didn't see."

Museum scene from Hiroshima Mon Amour

Having recently visited Hiroshima, including the exhibits at the Peace Museum which are explored in detail in the course of that opening sequence, I can begin to understand both the forcefulness of her testimony and the immediate assault of that voice challenging, "What? What have you seen?"


I will carry two statements from Hiroshima Mon Amour with me:

First, the simple plea of the Japanese man, in his elementary French, to the woman:

Reste á Hiroshima avec moi.

Second, the woman's avowal:

I tremble at forgetting such love.

See also: more films and resources about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.


Please share this post . . . .

Maya Lin: Separating Grief from Glory

Maya Lin's Design Sketch for
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1981.
 (More images here.)

The post I intended to write was a riff on something I read in The Concise Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick: "The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, dedicated in November 1982, contains the names of 58,280 dead or missing Americans. The message is clear -- the tragedy is the death of those Americans. But imagine if the names of 3.8million Vietnamese, and millions of Cambodians and Laotians, were also included. The wall, whos length is 493 feet, would be over eight miles long."

"Eight miles long." That's something to think about.

Before I sat down to write, however, I watched a film about Maya Lin and the creation of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial: Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. It stopped me in my tracks.

Before I talk about where we ultimately need to get to, I need to talk about something remarkable that has already been done.

The memorial designed by Maya Lin did something that hadn't occurred to anyone before: separate the grief for dead soldiers from the valorizing of war.
How could I have failed to remember the magnitude of what she accomplished? The controversy over the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial happened in the period right after I graduated from college. Some people opposed the memorial because it looked like a "black scar in the ground." The film helps make very clear the need they felt to make the memorial about glory.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
(Source: Wikipedia)

But the film's footage of veterans and families also makes it clear what the vast majority of people wanted and needed: help in dealing with grief.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin was 21 when she provided the design for the memorial. Throughout a controversy that became very acrimonious -- including racist slurs against her personally -- she hung in there and reminded people of the artistic intent behind the design. She is a model of courage and poise.

We antiwar activists should watch and learn.


(PS - Happy International Women's Day.)


Related posts

I was back in New Jersey to visit with high school friends in July. It gave me the opportunity to visit the newly opened 9/11 Memorial. Not surprisingly, what I saw made me spend days and weeks thinking about the memorial itself, and the larger issue of 9/11 in our national life. Out of all that I have seen and heard and read and thought about, several thoughts keep rising to the top.

(See 9/11 Memory: Grieving and Celebrating Valor, Leaving Vengeance Behind )


On November 11, 2015, Veterans for Peace had a message about reclaiming Armistice Day that proved itself massively spreadable on social media . . .

(See What will it take to reclaim Armistice Day for peace? )












In a composition suggestive of a yin-yang symbol, a woman in a burka (but wearing audacious red glitter platform heels) is surrounded by genie-ish tableaus of the many male obsessions/pastimes that some of us rail about frequently -- sexualized pop singers, professional sports -- as well as some that we probably should rail about more (such as patriarchy in religion and political violence).

(See VIOLENCE: " . . . and the women must live with the consequences . . . " )







The Last Supper is a staggering collection of 600 plates that the artist Julie Green has painted with images and notations about the last meals of people put to death in states across the US.

(See Communion of a Different Sort: "The Last Supper" at the Block Museum )



I felt Chicago should build a Chinese garden as an emblem of the city's respect for its relationship with China. To my mind, the only suitable way to do this was to build a replica of the garden from Dream of the Red Chamber. (Not a bad idea for a city who's motto is Urbs in Horto - City in a Garden - right?)

(See A Dream of a "Dream of Red Chambers" Garden for Chicago)

REMEMBERING SANDY: Samuel Berger, 1945-2015

Sandy Berger (center) with Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
(Source: Wikipedia)

I was surprised and saddened to read yesterday that Sandy Berger passed away.

I met Sandy in the late '80s during the time I was doing imports and exports with China, and was having meetings with people in Congress about China trade. Sandy was the nephew of the man I worked for, Howard Wagman.

One of the issue at that time was whether the US should impose trade sanctions on China. I believed (and still believe) that more was accomplished by opening up our dealings with China, not shutting them down. (That said, there's a range of advocacy we need to continue doing vis-a-vis China -- see Related posts below.)

After Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, Sandy went to work at the White House.

In the short time I spent with Sandy, I learned a lot. Three things in particular come to mind . . .


They're your representatives: talk to them . . . .

At that time, I chaired a committee of member importers within the US-China Business Council. We mostly represented pretty small companies.  From time to time, Sandy would go in with us to meet with members of Congress, and with key staffers.

I think a lot of us feared that no one would care about what we thought, because we were from small, unimportant places and small, unimportant businesses. Sandy helped us understand it's just the opposite. He helped us think about what we were going to say, and to stress the real people in the actual communities that we came from.

Make no mistake: Sandy was a high-powered lawyer with a high-powered lobbying firm. In that setting, Sandy was a big mahoff. But what made him really big was his ability to help the rest of us have the confidence to raise our voices.


A lot can happen in a year

I have a distinct memory of a group of about a dozen of us attending a meeting with Sandy in DC, talking about policy possibilities. At some point Sandy sensed the need to adjust our expectations about time horizons and the ability to predict the future.

"Oh, right, that Sholem Aleichem!"
Fiddler on the Roof was adapted from Sholem
Aleichem's Tevye stories (with a little added
visual inspiration from Marc  Chagall's "Fiddler".)
(Image: Wikipedia)
.

"There's an old Sholem Aleichem story . . . " Sandy began.  (At the time, I had never heard of the Yiddish author and playwright, but I had a vague awareness that shalom aleichem is a Hebrew/Yiddish greeting. "What's a 'hello how are you?' story . . . ?" I wondered . . . ) Sandy went on to tell us about a swindler who claimed to have a talking dog, a prince-in-disguise who called his bluff, and a one-year reprieve on a death sentence.

Having agreed to come back to the village one year later to the day, and see that the sentence on the swindler was carried out, the prince left with his entourage. The innkeeper looked at the swindler and said, "Aren't you afraid? In just one year, the prince will come back and you will be executed!"

"Oh, I don't know . . . " replied the swindler. "After all, a lot can happen in a year . . . . Who knows? I could die . . . . The prince could die . . . . The dog could start to talk!"

Sandy taught me: it's alright to have culture; it's alright to tell stories; and, most of all, keep an open mind about what's going to develop as time passes.

(And to my friends who keep hearing my shaggy dog stories, blame it on Sandy . . . . )


The power of acknowledging people

Around 1999, President Clinton was preparing to meet with the president of China.  By that time, Sandy was National Security Adviser. I sent Sandy some ideas about possibilities for a little "musical diplomacy" in connection with the visit -- in retrospect, probably the least relevant topic anyone could possibly have put before him at that rather busy moment.

Soon afterward, I received a card from Sandy, thanking me for the idea.

"Joe - Thanks for the material and idea regarding Bright Sheng.
I will discuss it with my colleagues. Sandy"

It may have taken him one minute -- but it meant a lot to me.

Every time I come across that two-sentence note from Sandy with "The White House" engraved across the top, I think, "Sandy really understood the power of acknowledging people. I've got to remember that."


Sandy will be missed.  He was a mensch.


Related posts

"How can it be that no one is speaking directly to what happened?" I wondered. "Should I say something? Is it just me? Can it be possible that most people aren't like me, tremendously troubled by how we should respond to what has happened in China?"

(See Remember June 4)

Despite the difficulties associated with engaging in effective solidarity with dissidents in China, it is important to make the effort. A fundamental tenet of all peace and justice activism is that if we have the power to speak we can do anything, and if "they" succeed in shutting us up, it's the beginning of the end.

(See What is the US Peace and Justice Movement Doing for Dissidents in China?)

It has required years and years of reflection to sort out the good and bad aspects and conclude that the diplomatic and commercial opening of China was part of a massive move away from conflict and toward peace.

(See THE EYES AND EARS OF HISTORY: A Perspective on the Iran Deal)

China is new and different and complicated. Thinking seriously about it may require more of our brains than we have been prepared to devote to it. We may have to get used to ideas that require more than 140 characters to express.

(See Figuring Out China: The Struggle Continues )

Talk With Somebody About Iran Today. (Maybe a Member of Congress?)

Expo 67 - Iran Pavilion

When I attended Expo 67 nearly 40 years ago, it was a time infused with a great deal of hope that ordinary people could really know something about people in other countries, and that mutual understanding could be the basis of peace.

Pretty amazing -- considering that, at the time, we were barely glimpsing the possibilities of modern travel and communications.

I recall that around that time I learned about Iran by reading the article about it in our home set of the World Encyclopedia. (An "encyclopedia" was a book that contained articles on many subjects . . . . )

I also recall that a little more than ten years later -- in the fall of 1978 -- I was working on a story for the college paper about the student unrest in Iran. I looked up a professor in the telephone book (a "telephone book" was . . . well, you get the picture . . . .) and asked for comment. "Look for the return of a guy named Ayatollah Khomeini, who is currently exiled in Paris . . . . " he told me.

All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer

The "hostage crisis" began in the fall of 1979. I remember it clearly because I was studying in Taiwan that year, and my fellow students and I were suddenly aware that, as US citizens in a foreign country, we could be seen by local people as stand-ins for everything they disliked about US policy and practice. (It was until much later that I, for one, stopped to wonder about my actual complicity in US policies and practices.)

Fast forward another 25 years, to the early 2000s, and I finally had a way to get essential background on US relations with Iran, reading All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer. I highly recommend it: "The book discusses the 1953 Iranian coup d'état backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's prime minister, was overthrown by Islamists supported by American and British agents (chief among them Kermit Roosevelt) and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi."

In the past decade or so, I've found the films of Iran to be an especially powerful bridge between our two countries.

February 4, 2012, rallies to say "No War on Iran"

And in the past several years, the citizen's movement to block moves toward war with Iran has opened my eyes to what we need to do to bring about a world beyond war.

It is the easiest thing in the world to paint people in other countries as "scary" and to say that they are the kind of people that we have to be prepared to fight. It takes real effort (and courage!) to do the work required to learn about people, to begin to understand them, to engage in dialogue, and to step forward as an advocate for peace.


The moment of truth

July 14, 2015:  "Landmark deal reached on Iran nuclear program."

The negotiators worked hard to come to agreement. AND . . .

The deal agreed to by our countries' leaders would never have happened without continuous pressure from the people of our two countries.

Now is the time for all of us to recognize that the people -- not leaders -- are the key to insisting that the path of peace be pursued. People must, in large numbers, send a clear message to their representatives that they want this agreement implemented, and they want this model of peaceful resolution of conflicts to replace the resort to militarism and violence. (See "World Beyond War Supports Iran Deal" )

There will be no shortage of members of Congress who see this as an opportunity to puff out their chests and wave their arms and insist on continued conflict.

It will be the work of the people to insist that the path of peace be followed through.


TAKE ACTION

Use the links and phone numbers

on the Peace Action site to tell Congress 

to follow through on peace with Iran.

Update: September 1, 2015

Yesterday, I was one of the people at a vigil outside a Mike Quigley event here in Chicago - urging everyone there (including the congressman) to support the #IranDeal. Based on what Robert Naiman heard inside, he's leaning yes.

Naiman said in his article about the event: "[T]he first question after the talk was: 'What is your position on the deal?' A moderator later said something like: there were 34 questions, and 30 of them were on the Iran deal. . . . The fact that so many questions were on the Iran deal certainly reflects engagement and interest from the City Club of Chicago audience; it may also reflect the fact that people who came to the event were greeted by people with'"No War With Iran' and 'Defend Diplomacy' signs."

Thanks to colleagues all over the country who are showing up in large numbers to urge their representatives to pursue the path of peace. This is what democracy looks like!

August 31, 2015: Vigil outside luncheon event for Rep. Mike Quigley (IL-5):
"Defend Diplomacy" and "No War with Iran!"

Related posts

I often refer to how important the films of Iran have been in helping me open my mind to the possibilities of a peaceful relationship with that country.  I have been fortunate to be able to go see some of the best films from Iran every year at the wonderful Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago. The will be another Festival of Films From Iran showing there in February, 2014.

(See A Force for Peace: Getting to Know Iran Through Film)

As the Obama administration prepares in the days ahead to pivot from its focus on Syria to something truly startling -- talking to Iran! -- it is important that the American public devotes some time and energy to learning and thinking about Iran, the history of the U.S.-Iran relationship, and what the U.S.-Iran relationship means in the larger context of the effort to reduce the risk of war and violence in the world.

(See IRAN: 3 Reality Checks on the Emerging U.S. Narrative)

If we are going to stave off a U.S. war against Iran, we are going to have to have some very difficult conversations with other Americans. Some people are extremely hostile. It's confusing and a bit frightening, but we're going to have to confront it.

(See Why Does Iran Arouse So Much Hostility?)

Here are seven big reasons people should be VERY wary of any and all statements that about how Iran is "asking for it" . . . why they are tweeting every Friday with the #NoIranWar hashtag . . . and why they are reaching out every day to members of Congress to resist the "Iran Threat Reduction Act" . . . .

(See #NoIranWar )






After a call to resist U.S. war moves against Iran went out just a few days ago, the list of February 4, 2012, rallies to say "No Iran War!" is growing FAST.

(See No Iran War Rallies EVERYWHERE! )

"I was an anthracite miner . . . . "

Anthracite mine location - Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe), PA
(Click for full-size map.)

In spring 1972, I was away from the 7th grade for a few weeks while my family went to care for my Granddaddy Melker in the hospital.

He was 77, and his years of working in the coal mines were catching up with him.  I had always heard that he "only had one lung," and now he was fading.

As he lay in his hospital bed in Coaldale, PA, he opened his eyes and looked at me. "Remember, Joey," he said, "I was an anthracite miner . . . . "

Anthracite is the extremely hard and clean-burning (relatively speaking) coal found in Eastern Pennsylvania. (Most coal is that "other" coal: bituminous - see map below.)

Granddaddy Melker on the steps leading
from the house up to the "back street"
(Photo: Patsy Scarry Jones)

Granddaddy Melker probably would have been proud to have mined any kind of coal. But he was especially proud to have been an anthracite coal miner.

Every summer when I was growing up, we would travel from New Jersey to spend time in the Pennsylvania town of Nesquehoning with my mother's parents. By that time, Granddaddy was no longer mining. He would spend all day doing what he loved -- tending the flowers in his garden. Nesquehoning is built on the side of a mountain, and Granddaddy's gardens were in a series of plots at various levels in the sloped yard of the house.

My sisters and I have lots of memories of Granddaddy and his flowers. (You can read about some of those memories in my sister Elaine's essay, "Columbine," in My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love, edited by Jamaica Kincaid, and Patsy's blog post, "Underground Labor".)

But I also have another memory. I had a special job on those summer visits. Every year, Granddaddy would lay in a supply of coal to heat the house. The coal would be delivered by a truck that came up the "back street" and poured it into a room in the basement level of the garage. (Because Granddaddy's home sat on the mountainside, the garage was elevated a full two stories above the level of the house.) Granddady had engineered a sluice that ran beneath the garden into the basement of the house, so that it could be stored adjacent to the furnace. My job was to shovel the coal into the sluice opening, where a stream of water carried it to the basement; then, as the basement room filled up with a coal, I would proceed there and subdivide the delivery among several smaller bins in the basement.

Emile Zola, Germinal

I can still remember the damp, carbony smell of the wet coal in that cramped basement. (And make no mistake, the whole house carried the smell that came from burning coal year after year.)

When I went to college, I discovered that there was such a thing as literature about coal miners. The big project of my sophomore year was a paper on Zola's Germinal. It was probably at that point that I began to slowly perceive how mysterious it is that some of us enjoy a very comfortable life, a life in which  crushing working conditions are an abstraction, and others actually labor away in those conditions with little hope of escape.

I discovered that, besides 1984, George Orwell had written an unforgettable description of being in the mines: The Road to Wigan Pier. It was from this that I came to understand that the cramped conditions in the mines made the mere task of getting to the mine face -- before the actual work of extracting coal even began -- a painful ordeal that most of us could never endure.

Diamond and coal -- allotropes of carbon

Years later, I would honor Granddaddy by taking my children to see the replica of the coal mine at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and to the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton, PA, and on countless rock-collecting expeditions.

In the early 2000s, I worked on patent licensing, including for a patent on something called "diamond-like carbon (DLC)," a super-hard substance synthesized from cheap graphite, and used in electronics and other applications.  As I sat in a comfortable office in the Chicago Loop, tapping away at my computer and underlining sentences in patent documents with a bright yellow highlighter, I remember thinking, "Granddaddy, we've come a long way . . . . "

*  *  *  *  *

Last year, a new work premiered in Philadelphia: Anthracite Fields. A few weeks ago, it was announced that Anthracite Fields won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for music composition.

I'm glad that now more people will know what it means to say, "Remember, I was an anthracite miner . . . . "

Pennsylvania coal resource map - showing anthracite fields in pink.
(Source: Pennsylvania Earth Science Teachers Association.)

Says Phoebe Show: "The miners know / That to hard coal / My fame I owe.
For my delight / In wearing white / Is due alone to / Anthracite."
Lackawanna Railroad
(The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad promoted the clean-burning
attributes  of anthracite coal with the "Phoebe Snow" campaign.)

Related posts

"A terrible disease has struck the area . . . people call it the "flu" . . . many in our own community have fallen to it . . . including someone very dear to you, someone in your own family . . . I'm talking about your sister, Margaret." (See November 11, 1918: Another Veteran for Peace )

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October. They make me think of my mom . . . .

(See Asters for Eva )









Far more important than the historic performance of fossil fuel stocks is the future correlation of fossil fuel stocks to generalized, systemic risk in the market, and their negative correlation to the few sectors of the market that stand apart from that risk.

(See The Feel-Good Folly of Fossil-Fuel Valuation )

Wang Wen-hsing and the Unspeakable: Changes in the Family

Jia - "family"

When I lived in Taiwan studying Chinese language in 1979-80, perhaps the single biggest discovery was contemporary Chinese literature.

I've written about Taipei People -- the story collection by Pai Hsien-yung ... and my love of the stories of Huang Chun-ming. ... and my fascination with the stories and the choreography of Lin Hwai-min.  But the book I knew I loved before I even read it was called Family Change (also translated as "Family Catastrophe").

I loved it even before I read it because its title consisted of two characters I knew -- "family" and "change" -- and the meaning of the two characters combined was one I could immediately grasp.

I loved the fact that the little bit I knew about modern Chinese literature In particular, I thought about Family by Ba Jin -- one of the most important books of the 20th century. Family is about the contrast between traditional Chinese society's ideal of the family vs. the reality of contemporary Chinese family life. I loved the fact that before I even opened the book, I knew that it was part of a critique of the family that had begun decades earlier on the Chinese mainland -- a critique which itself built on landmarks of traditional Chinese literature centered on the family (most notably Dream of the Red Chamber) as well as on modern Western literature (most notably Ibsen).

Family Change by Wang Wen-hsing

I have a very clear memory of getting a copy of Family Change and reading it -- and by "reading" I mean plowing through, comprehending what I could comprehend and shamelessly blipping over whatever I couldn't. I remember lots of impressions that I could only piece together from context ("they're talking about some piece of furniture here, and it's made from bamboo because it has a bamboo radical, but ... ?"), and certainly lots of parts that I was mystified by and/or blatantly misunderstood -- but I also remember over and over again feeling that I completely understood the poignant, humorous, infuriating, embarrassing anecdotes that the book is made up of, anecdotes that trace a child's path from unwavering love for his parents to a state of infuriating frustration.

The frame of the book is the disappearance of a recently-retired father - he appears to have just wandered off one day.


Reality Check: the English-language edition

I went back recently and read Family Change in English translation (translated as Family Catastrophe by Susan Wan Dolling). I discovered three things.

My first discovery was that the poignant, humorous, infuriating, embarrassing anecdotes were just as I remembered them. Of course, there were details that I was only able to comprehend for the first time in the translation, but the gist was the same. And just as painful.

Nothing was as exquisitely painful, for me anyway, than the account of how the boy lost all confidence in his father when it was revealed that his father's readings of quotations from Confucius habitually misread a fundamental character used in classical Chinese. (The father read yue ("said") as ri ("sun").) As you can imagine, once the cracks in the facade are revealed, more and more faults start to appear in rapid succession.

Parental missteps have a way of undermining fundamental Chinese values, such as filial piety.

Family Catastrophe - translation by
Susan Wan Dolling.

The second thing I noticed was something about how I have changed in the course of 30 years.  When I read Family Change in 1979, the anecdotes spoke to me, but I couldn't say on a conscious level why they spoke to me.  In particular, I grew up in a family without a father, so on a conscious level I was sort of naively reading along and going, "Oh, so this is what it must be like to have to deal with a father in the family."

In the intervening years, I've done a little bit of work to think about the difficulties of growing up in a family you love but also that you are desperate to assert your independence from. And so I now found myself smiling in recognition at anecdote after anecdote. (e.g. the son speaking to his mother, who has just come in to inform him that his father has disappeared: "He tapped his temples to punctuate his words. 'Do-not while-I-am-reading come-in-here to-disturb-me.'" Gulp! Guilty as charged . . . .)

Turns out that while I was loving Family Change for the way it explained to me what was happening in families in Taiwan, I was also (or mainly) loving the way it explained to me what was happening inside myself.

And this, in turn, led me to a third discovery. As much as I want to relish the particularly Taiwanese aspects of Family Change, the more compelling truth is the fact that Wang is telling a story that is common to all of us. Two aspects of the book brought this home to me.

One is a single recounting of the admonition of the father to the young boy:

"Shush, shush. Don't say such things. You must never talk like that outside the family. Do this for me if nothing else. Remember what I said, eh, Sonny?" His papa would thus warn him, in great fear for no apparent reason." (p. 114 of the Dolling translation)

"Oh yeahhhh . . . " I said to myself in a state of slow dawning. (Who among us didn't get this instruction growing up?) Is this why there are things that I still won't even articulate to myself?

The other is the accumulated descriptions throughout the book of the rituals of childhood. Bathing ... getting ready for bed ... having fingernails trimmed ... curing the hiccups ... taking family photos ... blowing bubbles ... favorite foods ... staying home alone ... family outing to a restaurant ... wrestling ... ... a new pen ... mending ... the first diary ... worship ... an outing with an older sibling ... bicycling ... shopping (and candy!) .... What one starts to understand is that they are not just instruments of control -- not just parts of the indoctrination to good behavior, compliance, filiality. They are also the building blocks of a happy childhood.

Somehow two things are true at the same time.


So now I have an assignment for myself . . . . There are story collections as well as a second novel by Wang Wen-hsing that are available at the Chicago Public Library (Chinatown Branch). It's time to dust off my Chinese and start reading again.

What I am wondering -- now that I've discovered the way Wang Wen-hsing holds up a mirror to me as much or more than he documents life in Taiwan -- is whether I am ready to bring more of these things about myself up to the surface.

Am I finally ready to speak of "the unspeakable"?



More about Taipei c. 1979 . . . .


Related posts

"Days for Looking at the Sea" is set in a fishing town on the east coast of Taiwan. It's about a prostitute who determines to have a baby, and so selects as the father a likely candidate from among her customers (most of whom are workers in the local fishing fleet), gets pregnant, and heads back to the tiny town in which she was born, in order to have the baby.

(See Days for Looking at the Sea )

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October. They make me think of my mom . . . .

(See Asters for Eva )









Each story in Taipei People is about a person who ended up in Taiwan after the war. More than anything, the story "Glory's by Blossom Bridge" is about the destiny of so many men who came from the mainland to Taiwan: ending up old and alone.

(See Taipei People: Thinking of Home ) 

Taipei People: Thinking of Home

Azaleas on the Taida campus

I have a very distinct memory of an evening on the campus of Taiwan National University ("Taida") in Taipei during the time I was a student there during the academic year 1979-80.

I was a student at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Studies (IUP), usually referred to as "the Stanford Program." Our program was housed in an old two-story wooden building on the southern edge of the Taida campus. The campus had a broad palm-lined avenue running down it's east-west axis, and there azaleas bloomed in the spring. (In China, one nickname for the azalea is the "thinking of home flower" (xiang si shu).)

On the evening I'm thinking of, I was on a walk on the Taida campus with my friend Melissa. Melissa was the niece of my landlady, and she and I would meet to do language exchange. As we were strolling along, enjoying the evening, we encountered an old man, who started to tell his story. I couldn't really make out what he was saying, though I had the impression that he wasn't all there; but Melissa listened to him for a long time, and afterwards she explained to me through her tears that he had been talking about his old home province of Sichuan, a place he had not seen since before 1949 and probably would never see again.  And, she lamented, this was the situation of thousands upon thousands of people in Taiwan.


"Taipei People"

Of course, I knew the history of the retreat of the mainlanders affiliated with the Kuomintang (KMT) government to Taiwan at the time of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) victory in 1949. But somehow I had not grasped the idea that people who had gotten out alive could still be tragic. Nor had I grasped the idea that every individual person's tragedy could have it's own particular flavor.

For a long time I've clung to a book called Taipei People as a sort of talisman. It is a collection of fourteen short stories by the author Pai Hsien-yung, each story about a person who ended up in Taiwan after the war. For a long time I had the book on the shelf, with a vague idea of what was in the stories; perhaps it felt like a violation to delve beneath the surface of each of those stories. I've just now started to study Taipei People line-by-line.

Making noodles

A story that feels particularly resonant for me is the one translated as "Glory's by Blossom Bridge": "'Glory's' is a restaurant, and the noodles it serves could stand as a tenuous link between distant Kweilin—the site of its predecessor—and Taiwan. All of the stories in the collection make use of allusions to particular regions in mainland China; this story's allusion to Kweilin is special, since that is the author's home province, Kweilin (Guilin). Through references to food, landscape, and the unique Kweilin opera, he suggests the particular poignancy of exile from that place." More than anything, the story is about the destiny of so many men who came from the mainland to Taiwan: ending up old and alone.


Noodles, Crimes of Passion, Birdcages

During our time in Taipei, my friends at the Stanford Center and I had a favorite hangout: a park on a back street, a few blocks north of the Normal University campus.

The park was called Yong Kang Park, after the street it was on. (You can see recent images on this blog: My Kafkaesque Life) 

We were fascinated by a small noodle shop, where an old man who we dubbed "Donald" continually made fresh noodles. (I don't know if they were Kweilin style.)

(We also had a nickname for the park, because of a sensational murder that occurred in the vicinity around the time we arrived in Taiwan; the victim had been found . . . well . . . never mind . . . ! But this, too, had echoes in "Glory's by Blossom Bridge.")

We were also fascinated by the morning parade of old men walking their birds.  This was something that we encountered from time to time after passing the night eating noodles, drinking Taiwan Beer, and sitting in the park talking and enjoying the sensation of the heat easing hour by hour.  As dawn arrived, dark shapes would begin to fill the park, and we would realize that a parade of bird owners, holding their cages, had begun. They were walking their birds.

Men and their birds
(Source: China Daily)

As college students in our 20s, we were certainly incapable of understanding the sensation of aging; I dare say most of us were incapable of deep love for a bird, as well. These things change with time . . . .


Kweilin (Guilin)

Years later, when I worked for an import-export company, I traveled quite a few times to visit our supplier in Guangxi province. I made multiple trips to the provincial capital, Nanning; as much as I try now, I can hardly remember the details of that place. But there was one trip to Kweilin (Guilin); and that is unforgettable.

Kweilin (Guilin)

It's only now, when I can think back on Kweilin, that I can appreciate the subtle irony of "Glory's by Blossom Bridge":  although the story's narrator insists that Kweilin is a place apart, more beautiful than any other city in China; and although the author of the collection, Pai Hsien-yung, was from Kweilin and probably felt that way; and although any foreigner like me would probably readily agree that Kweilin is the most visually stunning and special place in China . . . the truth is that every person from China thinks that his or her home town is the most special place in the world. And that is the beauty and the tragedy of Taipei People.


Related posts

Ever since I went there to study Chinese as a junior in college, I've considered Taiwan my "second home."


(See Taipei c. 1979 )








The bright yellow pack was cheerful. The sentiment expressed in the name was hopeful -- if hopelessly ironic. The beautiful seal script in which chang shou was written on the package were a reminder of just how much all of us loved soaking up every beautiful detail of the traditional Chinese culture available all around us at that time in Taipei. But must of all, Long Life contained the promise of connectedness.

(See Long Life, Connected Lives)

Part of what I loved about Du Hai was the way it used large pieces of fabric to convey the sensation of being in a boat among billowing waves, and the multiple uses to which they put the fabric - sea, clouds, sail, and more. Even a newcomer to modern dance, such as myself, could grasp what was going on.

(See The 21st Century U.S. Vocation: Extending hospitality to the next wave of immigrants coming to our country )