WEI, Jian’s blog

Recently my wife and I watched online a few episodes of a sitcom from China called “My own swordsman” (Wu3 Lin2 Wai4 Zhuan4), which is something similar to the mix of “Friends” and “Buffy the vampire slayer”. It was very popular in China among young audience when it was first aired in 2006, and we also laugh a lot watching it.

The playwright of this show (http://blog.sina.com.cn/ningcaishen) is almost at the same age as me, but he is kind of “star” (Wuan4) now and has many fans. Many plots of his show were initially from online novels, and online jokes which the playwright was very familiar as a website content editor. From this show and his blog, I can see why this sitcom was so popular: there are a lot in common among him and others at my age group, e.g., the attitude towards kids’ education, and the general attitude towards happiness etc, which the playwright intertwined with traditional swordsman stories into this 80-episodes sitcom.

Interestingly, from the sitcom it is possible to characterize the typical thinking of young people in China and that may even tell us about the future of the country, here are some of my thoughts:

This sitcom was again put in a historic background and adopted a lot from those novels and plays of swordsman/ martial artist (by the famous novelist Jing Yong and others, see e.g. http://www.spcnet.tv/readingrooms/default.php ). Although the playwright mixed a lot materials from modern society and even some foreign elements, but it is still a very traditional Chinese story, in the sense that eventually it comes back to the idea that after all the struggles people realized that the best life is to live is the life of an ordinary people, an honest worker, and there is nothing you can gain by competing/fighting with others. This is probably very comforting for most people, and helps to build a harmonious society. But for a country, it will definitely leads to failure of competition in world market.

There is also nationalism, or ignorance of the outside world. This is especially clear in one episode where a young guy who chosen to immigrate to other country was made fun of, just plain jokes without any deep meaning. This actually reflects some general sentiment toward people who have overboard experience. There are many reasons for this, I believe one of them is related to the depreciation (or lost of trust) of the foreign degree holders because many of them brag a lot but couldn’t deliver real results. In his blog, the playwright also mentioned that he does not like the aggressive style of Japanese sitcom where the hero always vows to be the best. He and probably many young people in China may think that aggressiveness is too narrow-minded, and want to avoid such cruel competition.

The problem is, in the 21^st century, we can not avoid the competition (there is a bestseller book: the world is flat). Why in China we lack the healthy spirit of competition, I do not know the answer. Some general reason could be that we do not have the right rules for competition, and it could ultimately relate to the old question: why it is not China, see also another bestseller: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Whatsoever, I do believe it is useful to import/project a healthy spirit of competition to the young audience, e.g., try to be the best of yourself, earn a lot experience even from your losing, make friends during competition, and understand that healthy competition (like in sports) can actually leads to a win-win situation, and is crucial for the development of a country. It is easier said than done, but I wish that those playwrights, especially those with overboard experience, can come up with something in this direction.

Another observation, a little annoying, is that the police officers (or government officials) were always made fun of. They were always depicted as stupid and heartless, e.g., they eat in the hotel/restaurant without paying money, and they kiss ass of their boss, although they are not very bad. One sad thing is probably most people may agree it is close to the real situation in China. This is probably similar to the old American “Godfather” movies, where policemen are usually bad/stupid people. One might worry the quality of future policemen/government officials in China if such impression prevails.

In fact, it is noticeable that this kind of “unhealthy” sarcasm towards specific groups is popular in Chinese culture. Even in the national grand gala of the spring festival, some people pointed out that some talk shows (Xian4 Sheng1) and short comedy shows (Xiao3 Pin3) are made funny due to the sarcasm/discrimination towards poor people/uneducated people/handicapped people etc, which should be considered as “politically incorrect” in US. However, probably like talk shows in US, if you do not make fun of yourself or others, then there is no fun. There might be a subtle line between political correct and incorrect. In this sense, the sitcoms with historic background have advantages because there is no direct complicit with current administration. In those Hollywood style films, there is also a similar problem about demonization of the administration. Since in China most imported films are those Hollywood style, while those more realistic programs like PBS etc were rarely imported, the audience in China may not have enough comparison to distinguish the exaggeration from reality, which is not good.

Our own movie directors in China like ZHOU Xinchi (or Stephen Chow) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0159507/, who is very popular among young people, we see that they were struggling to present something different and deep. However, probably because there is no good novels, or no such culture background for asking deep questions (or for healthy competition in that matter), it seems hard for them to come up with something resonating deeply, and something close to a masterpiece, even if they are rich and do not need to worry about the box. Sometimes the playwrights and producers are just making some story up from nowhere or probably from their day dreaming (stories like Kill Bill), which can not be much different from what they already familiar.

Since I am a physicist, I noticed a remotely related discussion about the influence of media on Science education. In one of last year’s Physics Today, there was some column saying that right now since the Cartoonists in U.S. always portrait bad/mad Scientists, probably fewer and fewer kids would be interested in Science career. For me, I think the situation is not that serious in U.S. because there are still a lot public TV programs like Discovery, history, Animal, NOVA etc besides the cartoon networks, which many kids would like to watch. But I do think this is a problem for the developing countries like China (and India maybe), where there are not many interesting programs for kids. So again, I wish there are stronger governmental supports and maybe more private foundations for this sort of programs. We can’t rely on commercial program producers for this purpose (probably we can think Yang2 Lan2’s sunshine satellite TV program as one unsuccessful try in this direction).

In summary, people at my age in China, many have the good will for a peaceful society, but may be haven’t thought too much about the balance between the competition and collaboration, and about improving the relationship between people and the administration, etc. And as always, I am hoping the government can do better.

A few months ago, one friend brought to my wife a few books from China. One of them is Peter Drucker’s “Adventures of A Bystander”, already translated into Chinese (my wife is doing accounting, so I have the opportunity to meet people and read book outside physics). It is really a lot of fun to read this book, although I know that sometimes when it is easy and fun to read, it could mean the book is not deep or just used some exaggeration to attract attentions. Anyway I like this book very much, probably because I haven’t seen many books that could explain how the society evolves with time in such clarity and at such a high level and from many first-hand materials.

I hope some Chinese thinker/economist can write down something similar for the past century of China. However, I doubt it is possible because it is a sensitive topic. Most people at my age already knew the history we’ve leaned in school is not objective, and there are very few books out there on this topic. This is understandable since the government worries about its legitimacy and wants people to focus on developing economics. In a society emphasis “harmony”, deep and critical thinking is not encouraged. However, without reviewing the history, it might be difficult to find the right way to lead the country as well as to shape the society norm. (Another bad thing as suggested by one of the best economists in China Heng-fu Zou, http://zou.hengfu.blog.163.com/ (his blog in Chinese),  http://www.bjreview.com/newsmaker/txt/2007-06/25/content_67194.htm  is that most economists in China are not independent, they work for big companies or government and busy with making moneys.)

In Drucker’s book, there is a story about a girl named Mousie Polanyis, who initialed “rural sociology” and influenced many countries (like Croatia and Rumania etc. even later “kibbutz”), but after her marriage in her middle twenties she just quitted politics.  When describing the story, Peter  Drucker is really like a bystander, he just described how this little girl affects the history without pondering too much about the reason why she quitted.  

A sharp comparison to this bystander attitude is presented in a recent film Se, Jie (Lust, Caution) http://imdb.com/title/tt0808357/ by the famous director Lee Ang. (Btw, this film is again suggested to me by my wife, I wouldn’t know that by myself.) The director is trying to touch the prohibited topic of the love between a traitor and the girl who wanted to assassinate him. This topic could be considered as untraditional or even unethical for people both in Mainland and Taiwan. Ang wanted to try to show in that special time when China is invaded by Japan, there is the mixed feeling between love an hate, the always there humanity and the unpredicted and sometimes ridiculous reality. Although this film has a prototype based on a real assassination. But Ang modified a lot the story and eventually the history is just a background for this film.

In fact, people say that in Hollywood films the real history is always modified to enhance the plots of the film and to get audience emotionally involved, e.g. “the brave heart”. I think Ang is better than that because what he wants to express is the “true” feeling of some people at that time and he is very careful about the details. He hopes the audience will remember the scene of the film as a record of history, which I think he did pretty well.

Over, I must confess that as an ordinary person, I enjoy watching Hollywood films although I would definitely encourage everyone to read books like Adventures of A Bystander, which is closer to true history.