You Want It Darker — Farewell 2023, Roll in 2024 – China Heritage

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium

Appendix LVIII

蠅營狗苟

In 2024 will probably be 100 years since Lu Xun revealed ‘The Shadow’s Farewell’ 影的告別, a darkly mesmeric prose-poem in regards to the dilemmas of the age. The somnolent narrator of the piece rejects the compromises demanded of on a regular basis tedium, whereas refusing additionally the attract of empty guarantees and delusional hope.

In our sequence Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, we quote from ‘The Shadow’s Farewell’ to mark the top of 2023 and, together with ‘You Need It Darker’, the title monitor of Leonard Cohen’s final studio album, a poem by Jiang He and the artwork of Lao Shu, we anticipate the 12 months 2024.

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It’s 4 a long time since I sat at my mom’s eating room desk in Murrumbateman, rural New South Wales, composing an account of my understanding of the boundaries of China’s reforms. Revealed in two elements below the title ‘China Blames the West for “Cultural Air pollution” ’, that essay noticed within the Communist Occasion’s purge of the Marxist humanists in its ranks and the renewed assault on Western values, a warning about what  was to return. And are available it did — in 1987, 1989 and within the mini cultural, educational and political purges as much as 2011.

In March 2011, when addressing the Nationwide Folks’s Congress, Vice-premier Wu Bangguo excoriated anew Western ideas of human worth, democracy and freedom. It was an adumbration of the Xi Jinping period.

My 1983 essay on the Non secular Air pollution Marketing campaign was solely a distraction from my important concern on the time. Earlier that 12 months, on the encouragement of Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys), I had returned to Australia after almost a decade in mainland China, Hong Kong and Japan, to pursue a doctorate below his supervision. I used to be curious about what I might subsequently name The Different China, that’s the cultural concepts, creators and historical past that existed, and generally even flourished, within the shadow of the political and social dramas of recent China. The ensuing thesis finally appeared below the title An Creative Exile (2002).

The Different China was additionally featured in Seeds of Hearth: Chinese language Voices of Conscience (1986), a ebook that I compiled with John Minford that was about each hope and foreboding in post-Mao China. We used ‘The Shadow’s Farewell’ because the ‘envoi’ or leave-taking on the finish of Seeds.

Three a long time later, I prefaced Reducing a Take care of China, the speech I made to launch China Heritage in December 2016 with Lu Xun’s ‘The Shadow’s Farewell’. As 2023 attracts to an finish, it displays a extra common sense of dread and foreboding. Doom and gloom is not going to, nonetheless, overshadow our future.

Though we are going to proceed so as to add materials to Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, a sequence launched in early 2022, the main focus of our consideration will likely be The Tower of Studying, a venture that highlights what we name ‘intersections with eternity’ — essays, poems and artwork from the Chinese language custom that talk each to the fashionable situation in addition to to broader humanistic issues.

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In a Phrase —苟 gǒu

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Figuring out the ‘phrase of the 12 months’, neologisms or expressions that characterise the earlier twelve months is an annual train favoured by media retailers all through the world. China is not any totally different. Since lexical listicles produced by the mainstream media are, by their very nature, upbeat, we suggest the compilations of independent-minded glossarians

SlowChinese, a venture run by Andrew Methven that has its finger on the linguistic pulse of the Folks’s Republic, prompt the expression ‘calling a rat a duck’ 指鼠為鴨 was notably noteworthy in 2023. ‘It was’, Methven famous, ‘coined following a meals security scandal at a university canteen when a pupil discovered a rat’s head in his soup. The school, native police, and authorities insisted it was a duck’s neck.

‘The brand new phrase is now broadly used to precise a mistrust of the authorities.’

The up to date expression ‘calling a rat a duck’ 指鼠為鴨 is a remodeling of ‘calling a deer a horse’ 指鹿為馬, an historical phrase that also means purposeful obfuscation or bare-faced dissemblance. It comes from the Chronicles of the Grand Historian 史記, composed by Sima Qian within the Han dynasty, as does our personal selection of time period of the 12 months, which is 苟 gǒu. This time period options within the Chinese language rubric of our farewell to 2023, 蠅營狗苟 yíng yíng gǒu gǒu, that’s, to maintain a low profile whereas making an attempt to take advantage of a scenario for one’s personal profit.

Though 蠅營狗苟 yíng yíng gǒu gǒu seem in ‘Farewell to Poverty’ 送窮文, a relatively drole essay by the Tang scholar-official Han Yu, 苟 gǒu and 苟活 gǒu huó had lengthy loved literary prominence after having appeared in Sima Qian’s ‘Letter to Ren An’ 報任安書, the place the maligned and hard-pressed historian declared that:

所以隱忍苟活，幽於糞土之中而不辭者，恨私心有所不盡 …

The explanation I suffered in silence and dwell on in shame, refusing to retreat even when mired in filth, was that I might have hated to not totally specific what I held in my coronary heart.

— translated in Stephen Durrant et al, The Letter to Ren An & Sima Qian’s Legacy, College of Washington Press, 2018, p.28

Thus, 苟活 gǒu huó means to ‘dwell on regardless of one’s dire circumstances’ or, in trendy parlance, ‘to only get by’, or ‘dwell below the radar’. In China right this moment, the traditional expressions 苟活 gǒu huó, in addition to 苟且 gǒu qiě, as in 苟且偷生, ‘to easily get by unnoticed’ and 随俗苟且 suí sú gǒu qiě are all nonetheless in on a regular basis use. The expression 苟且 gǒu qiě additionally seems in Viral Alarm, Professor Xu Zhangrun’s highly effective critic of Xi Jinping’s mishandling of the Covid-19 epidemic in early 2020, during which he wrote:

… 豈能「豬一般的苟且，狗一樣的奴媚，蛆蟲似的卑污」？！

… how can we let ourselves proceed to “survive no higher than swine; fawn upon the power-holders like curs; and dwell in vile filth like maggots”?!

A variation of the expression 蠅營狗苟 yíngyíng gǒugǒu additionally featured in Land of the Rakshasas & the Sea Market, the hit music of the northern summer time of 2023. For extra on  this topic, see The Artwork of Survival within the Age of Xi Jinping, Chapter 19 in Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, 4 Could 2023.

Though it’s a private favorite, 苟gǒu doesn’t characteristic in any mainstream lists of phrases of the 12 months. For different standard phrases of 2023 and collections that replicate the Xi Jinping period extra broadly, see:

Writing in Language Log, Victor Mair says of the plodding efforts of the Shanghai primarily based 咬文嚼字 yǎo wén jiáo zì, a linguistics/ socio-political publication, to provide you with a listing of standard phrases that replicate ‘optimistic power’ that they quantity to:

A panoramic tour of the Chinese language WOTY scene for 2023.  I feel that the Yaowen Jiaozi editors who needed to current these phrases to the general public have been below a variety of stress to convey the joy they engendered.

In comparison with Oxford College Press’s horny “rizz” (quick for “charisma”) and different full of life WOTYs of the English-speaking world, one may effectively suppose that English and Chinese language occupy two totally different linguistic universes.

The gaping chasm between New China Newspeak and the ‘parole’ of The Different China additionally highlights the totally different, though intertwined, linguistic universes of Chinese language.

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On 18 December 2023, we witnessed with grim horror the primary day of the present trial of Jimmy Lai, a person who has come to symbolise the demise of free expression in Hong Kong. Then on 26 December, we acknowledged the a hundred and thirtieth birthday of Mao Zedong, a person whose spectre continues to hang-out China. In 2016, Xu Zhangrun summed up the Excessive Reform period as 毛體鄧用 — the Mao-Liu party-state tailored to up to date wants by Deng. Since then 毛體習用 — the previous Mao-Liu party-state up to date by Deng and repurposed by Xi — has been the order of the day.

The twenty eighth of December was Liu Xiaobo’s birthday. It additionally occurred to be the tenth anniversary of Xi Jinping’s meal on the Qingfeng Steamed Bun Inn in Beijing. That meal, a political efficiency staged to display the chief’s frugality and customary contact, gave rise to among the hottest satirical nicknames 綽號 used to explain Xi. They embody Dumpling Xi 習包子, Emperor Dumpling 包子帝 and Emperor Qingfeng 慶豐帝. Subsequently, when the Chinese language Structure was revised in March 2018, making it potential for Xi Jinping to take pleasure in ‘terminal tenure’, the transfer was mocked in non-public with a double-entendre: ‘the dumpling spilt its insides/ Dumpling Xi revealed his constitutional ambitions’ 包子露餡/ 包子露憲。

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This farewell to 2023 is devoted to the reminiscence of 圈兒 and in gratitude to the companionship of 虎皮牆, my cats.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
31 December 2023
New Yr’s Eve

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Suggestions:

Wanting Out on the Snow

老樹

The friends have lengthy gone and
In my loneliness I
Stare out blankly at an enormous
Panorama of fluttering snow

— Although a brand new 12 months approaches Covid remains to be with us and issues are eerily quiet, so totally different from the previous.

One other 12 months has handed, as if in a flash, and I’ve spattered some paint on an previous scrap of paper, only for one thing to do [dated winter 2022]

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You Need It Darker 

Leonard Cohen

In case you are the seller, I’m out of the sport
In case you are the healer, it means I’m damaged and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine have to be the disgrace
You need it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy title
Vilified, crucified
Within the human body
1,000,000 candles burning
For the assistance that by no means got here
You need it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m prepared, my Lord

There’s a lover within the story
However the story’s nonetheless the identical
There’s a lullaby for struggling
And a paradox responsible
But it surely’s written within the scriptures
And it’s not some idle declare
You need it darker
We kill the flame

They’re lining as much as prisoners
And the guards are taking intention
I battle with some demons
They have been center class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission
To homicide and to maim
You need it darker

Hineni, hineni
I’m prepared, my Lord

Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy title
Vilified, crucified
Within the human body
1,000,000 candles burning
For the love that by no means got here
You need it darker
We kill the flame

In case you are the seller, let me out of the sport
In case you are the healer, I’m damaged and lame
If thine is the glory, mine have to be the disgrace
You need it darker

Hineni, hineni
Hineni, hineni
I’m prepared, my Lord

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Singing into the Darkish

黑之歌

— Jiang He, 20 December 2023
江河，2023年12月20日

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It’s a nightmare on the market,
assholes wherever you go.
I’ll simply grasp at residence and
benefit from the firm of a cuddly cat.

— Lao Shu, painted to whereas away a winter’s evening, 2022.
Three years of Covid revealed the villainy that lurks in individuals’s hearts.

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