Read this rant against Han Han on the China Daily. I have to say I didn’t like the tone, it reads like it’s written by an envious loser. But it is the intelligent kind of loser, and he hits the nail on the head several times.

He is absolutely right in the main thesis of the article, as copied below from the lede. And he is also right to say that Han Han messed it up in the interview with Time, and his reaction to that in the Youth Weekend was an embarrassing tantrum that didn’t fix the situation at all.

Frankly speaking, I was not surprised by the article, Han Han has made many enemies in China over the years, and he should expect them to come at him with the axe the minute he has a faux pas. But he continues to be as arrogant as usual. He knows that inside China, with his post 80s public, he is still invulnerable. Which is probably why Mr. Zhou writes this in English in a paper for foreigners, where he is safe from the Han Han fans.

But back to the point that interests us: the image of Chinese writers in the West. We have already criticized the part of Western opinion in this affair, but I think there is a lot to be said about Han Han as well. He acts like he couldn’t care less how the Media sees him. If he was a teenage punk I wouldn’t be surprised, but he is already pushing thirty and judging by his writing, he is not “without a cause”. On the contrary, he has a clear notion of justice and he uses his pen to hit where it hurts in the powers that be.

So WHY doesn’t he give a damn? Any foreign writer, no matter how successful at home, knows that an interview on Time is pure gold to project an image outside the country. It is many $$$ that Han Han could make outside China, many race cars he could pay for, way more than in the Chinese market where he is selling books at 20RMB, and even then losing business to pirates. No, I can’t believe he doesn’t give a damn. He does, and at this moment he is still regretting the day he met Time.

And that’s where I wanted to get. It’s hard to believe that Han Han isn’t smart enough to give the Time journalists the meat they are hungry for. He could have prepared a couple of slogans, some Polar bears and Justice in the World, without necessarily going into details. But he is suffering from the same problem as most Chinese at all levels, from Hu JinTao to the last of the provincial spokesmen: they do not understand how to use Western media. They consistently lose at this game, they don’t even want to learn it, and then they turn into a matter of national pride what was just a matter of technique.

It has to be a consequence of living so long with Xinhua and the People’s Daily, the Chinese were not bad at it before.

Or do you have another explanation?

UPDATE:  See comments below for the reaction on Hecaitou blog (h/t FOARP)

UPDATE2: I just find that the whole thing was translated yesterday by ESWN. There is also some more material, including an interview in 1510, check it out.

I saw on ESWN this Time magazine interview of Han Han, and since I have written before about him, I think it is worth a comment. It is also interesting because it illustrates the scary misunderstandings between East and West that Kaiser Kuo warned against recently. This is, in my opinion, the key passage:

…despite his youthful bravado, Han, who has published 14 books and anthologies, generally stays away from sensitive issues such as democracy and human rights. His calculated rebelliousness, says Lydia Liu, a professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, exemplifies the unspoken compact his generation has forged with the ruling Communist Party: Leave us alone to have fun and we won’t challenge your right to run the country. "He is known for being a sharp critic of the government and the Establishment but he isn’t really," says Liu. Instead, she says, Han is a willing participant in a process that channels the disaffected energy of youth into consumerism. "The language in his novels and the narrative strategies are very easy to read," says Liu. "Basically it’s all the same book."

Before judging the literary value of the writer, Mrs. Liu makes a moral judgment of his rebelliousness: It is not intense enough to her taste, the issues he deals with are not sensitive enough. I think I’m not too far from the truth if I say that this summarizes the opinion of  a large part of the academic community, and by extension of mainstream Western opinion. You may have noted that Ms. Liu is an expert in literature, not in politics. But when it comes to Chinese politics, we ALL know better than them.

Hecaitou’s blog also posted the interview and we can see some Chinese discuss it among themselves. Allowing for the odd troll, it is a fairly balanced discussion, as expected from an intelligent Chinese forum when they don’t feel observed by Western eyes. Perhaps the 2 most significant comments, that give an idea of the atmosphere, are:

- Compared to those who were criminalized for speaking, Han Han has no courage. He only teases, doesn’t dare to speak about the system.

- You mean, he needs to be a martyr? To fight for your rights, even if it is just a bit, to obtain awareness of citizen dignity, all these are matters that require someone to capture them. To be able to speak from within and disintegrate this system, that is the real master.

A large part of the misunderstandings between East and West come from the unreasonable expectations we have of each other. In particular, Western opinion expects of Chinese public figures to fight heroically and even suicidally against their own government. The Chinese political system is so evil, the logic goes, that any public person worthy of our attention should be dedicated to fighting it.

Now, I am the first who thinks China needs political change and respect of human rights, and I greatly admire the courage of some dissidents. But real heroes should be voluntary, like Mother Theresa, and no amount of public pressure can ever create one. Even less foreign public pressure.

In case I have some naïf reader, it is just as well to inform you here that Western policies are as arbitrary and cruel in the international scene as the CCP’s are accused of being in China. And both are equally full of good intentions. Why don’t we apply the same standards with our own public figures?  Do we require of our writers to fight the system? Have they signed a compact to drive us into a consumerist slumber instead of protesting against injustice in the World?

We don’t do that. We act just like the Chinese, satisfying ourselves with he thought that “The World is unfair, but with a bit of patience and faith in the system, it will eventually become a better place”. Substitute “The World” with “China” and you have the mainstream Chinese thought.

“Hypocrisy”, I was going to write. But I don’t think it’s even that. It is simple closed-mindedness,  the inability to see things from the other side.

I was not there and I do not know more than what is in the press. But in the light of the available information, I think it’s worth it to have another look at the events, and see what we make of it. Refer to the NYT diagram linked on the illustration, this paper is hardly suspect of pro-CPC, and the information included (from witness accounts) is about as detailed as has been published concerning the events of 5th May.

It all started with a protest in People’s Square, followed by a concentration along Liberation Road, which was met around 6.30 by the People’s Armed Police. Up to here everything is “normal” in the logic of street rioting: there were clashes and probably some victims from both sides. But Liberation Rd. is very central, many people live there and surely the NYT would have found at least a witness to mention it if hundreds of people had been killed or made prisoner at this point.

But it is afterwards, especially after 8, along the axes of Tuanjie and Dawan Roads, that the events are not normal by any standard of social disorder. Street riots, like other forms of violence, can have collateral damage, but this is not the case. The police was not there, the Han mobs couldn’t have been organized in such a short time, and the only way to explain those deaths is that it was a deliberate large scale massacre of civilian residents and passers by. This is consistent with what was written in other accounts by various newspapers.

The initial count of 123* Han casualties that has been more or less accepted by all sides as minimum is an astonishing figure for actions that happened mostly in the space of 5 hours and in such a reduced area. Looking at other riots in the region, including Xinjiang, Tibet or other Chinese areas, we see this ratio is completely out of range. This was not the heat of the fight in a political riot. It was cold-blooded persecution, the kind of actions that can only be the work of fanatics.

Who was behind the events

In its August 2 issue, the Hong Kong newsweekly Yazhou Zhoukan interviewed Heyrat Niyaz, a Uyghur journalist, blogger, and AIDS activist, the kind of person who is unlikely to be partial to the CPC. Heyrat speaks about the Islamic Liberation Party, Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami, a pan-islamic international political party which is formally peaceful, but which has been accused in the past of inciting violence in Europe. This organization has spread very quickly in Xinjiang in the last decade.

As a witness in Urumqi, Niyaz notes the strong Kashgar accents of many of the protesters and the religious slogans that were heard in the protests. This brings to mind all the times the CPC has spoken of the menace of an Islamist group called ETIM, which might actually exist or not. In any case, some radical groups do exist, as was clearly seen from attacks like this one last year, where 16 policemen were coldly knifed and bombed after being run over.

I will not accuse any group without proof, as I would be guilty myself of the same “solid block” thinking I criticized yesterday. But what we have seen up to now should make any honest observer curious, and it certainly warrants further investigation in the field of radical islamism in Xinjiang. In a region bordered by countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is not at all unthinkable that frustrated youths take example of their counterparts across the border and find an escape in a perverted version of religion.

Response

The Chinese government has handled the crisis relatively well, given the circumstances. Actually, the main objection one could make is the opposite of what most Western readers like to imagine: on Sunday 5th more force should have been used to avoid the murders.

If you think of it, you might agree that the CPC leaders are not precisely idealistic dreamers. When they let the foreign reporters into a place it is because they know they have nothing to lose, and this time they must have been pretty confident that they were not to blame. Also we have to admit that, even when in front of journalists, it is unusual in most armies in the World to exhibit so much discipline and restraint as the Chinese did in the aftermath of indiscriminate racist attacks against their own people.

A large part of the Western media were confused by this attitude, which perhaps explains why they left so early. Indeed, it is some food for thought and it can make some weaker spirits shrink, to consider that for the second time in a row (after the Sichuan disaster) China proves that, sometimes, an authoritarian regime can do things better than a democracy. It takes some solid convictions and some understanding of ones own ideals to be able to look at the World without the mould of good and evil.

In any case, there is little doubt – the Western media has given me no reason to think otherwise – that the Chinese double approach of media control and moderate police action has produced the best results during the crisis. It goes without saying that this only works as a short term formula to curb down the violence, and that much more will need to be done from now on to really solve the problems in Xinjiang. More about long term solutions in the next posts.

Rebiya Kadeer

I will not waste time here to discredit Rebiya Kadeer, because from the beginning she discredits herself. She has provided no basis at all for most of the information she gave to the media, and some of her claims are so absurdly wrong that it actually makes me think she has to be innocent: someone who’s made it in business can’t possibly be such a bad liar. The only explanation is that she is totally clueless.

Click on the picture for one example of her latest claims.

More than anything, Kadeer gives the impression that she is desperate for TV time. She knows her time of fame is running to an end, and she is forced to place ever stronger claims, raising the stakes at each go to attract the tired audiences. As blogger twofish reflected, if she really cared about the future of Xinjiang, she might have grabbed this chance to send a message of peace and try to connect with the rest of the Chinese at a time when they were brutally attacked, earning perhaps the respect of the moderates.

But how has someone like Kadeer, a successful businesswoman in her time, imprisoned and then released by the CPC, ended up as de facto representative of the Uyghur people? Kadeer was called to play a role, and she plays it just fine. It is a role that has been written by the CPC, and by the Western media, and by the audiences and by the American NED, who is funding her. The story was written long before she arrived, a well proven plot that works with the public and will make everyone happy. It is all over again the Dalai Lama saga, and thanks to the copy-paste now the scriptwriters can relax and enjoy their Summer holidays.

Except, of course, that Rebiya Kadeer is no Dalai Lama, and neither her deeds nor her standing among the Uyghur justifiy any such comparison.

The Important Question

And now down to what many consider the crucial question: is Kadeer in contact or even financing the extremist groups who arranged the killings, or is she, as I suspect, totally ignorant of the reality on the ground? I don’t think we will ever find out. It is difficult to believe that the NED, funded by the American Congress, would sponsor anyone connected with terrorism; but if by mistake they did, I am sure they will take good care to hide all the proofs.

Note that, either way, the NED doesn’t come out very well from this story. Sponsoring an opportunist who jumps at the chance to get a name for herself while she coldly observes the killings of dozens is hardly in line with the objectives of a National Endowment for Democracy.

But really, is all this so important? I don’t think so. Kadeer will not last, and whether she is guilty or not, the peanuts that the NED pays her do not really change anything. Kadeer with her accommodated expatriate Uyghurs of the WUC cannot possibly control the operations of a terrorist group on the ground. And, as an inspirational role, I doubt it very much that she – a woman, twice married, business and PC background – could ever work for young islamist radicals. She will most certainly not turn into the new bin Laden.

No, the real questions for China and for the World are others:

Who was really behind the killings of 5th July? How will the prisoners be judged? How are the interethnic policies of the CPC failing? How is this failure feeding the bases of some violent groups? What is the connection of these groups with islamist terrorism and what is the probability of Al-Qaeda joining the party? And why is China the only Security Council country that hasn’t received a large-scale attack from islamists, in spite of the years-long Uyghur conflict?

And finally, where are the people that are supposed to be answering all these questions?

*See my comment below for the basis of this number.

Have you been watching Xinjiang TV these days? I am a fan. It’s the new Love TV, a 24-7 concentrate of all the corniest efforts by the Chinese official media to promote harmony after the events of 5th July. Smiling kids, flowery dances, long meetings of interethnic neighbour associations discussing love and togetherness. Best served with tequila, lemon, and a grain of salt.

But seriously. It’s been a month since the events of Urumqi, and it feels like there hasn’t been much done in the way of analysis. All the channels of the media were red hot for a week, but they cooled down as soon as the blood dried on the streets, and no new insights are forthcoming. Too soon the debate has been hijacked by unproven claims of opportunists like Kadeer, and the predictable responses from China. The peace loving Uyghurs and Han who lost their lives in Urumqi deserve better.

So yes, I am consciously watching XJTV, and I suggest you do the same. For lack of anything better and in protest against the rest of the media establishment, both Chinese and foreign. Because no matter how awkward XJTV’s efforts might seem, at least this TV station is doing its job.

The events of Xinjiang are more important than the bland Summer coverage would lead us to imagine. It is probably the most deadly single political riot that has happened in China since Tiananmen 1989. It is also the only major case of social unrest where the international press has been granted permission to report from the ground. And there are important lessons to draw from the experience, particularly in the fields of 1- Media and 2- China’s policy.

The Chinese Media

I am and I will always be against State-controlled media, and every person I respect here, some CPC members included, agrees with my point of view: without the freedom to blame, all comment is meaningless.

But precisely because we don’t believe in that media, we don’t expect too much from them. After all, it is not the fault of the writers or editors if they live in such a system, not everyone can be a hero. From this relative point of view, we can say that the Chinese media – or the CPC, which is the same in this case - has done a good job.

Indeed, one interesting phenomenon in the aftermath of the July 5th events is the media’s role in calming things down on the Han side. We made fun of all those silly heart warming articles, but probably the love talk was crucial at a moment where ethnic feelings were getting out of control. How many times in the World have you seen interethnic clashes* killing more than a hundred to simply peter out in 2 days with no more than moderate force applied by the State?

By choosing to focus on the positive, turning the blame on external elements and being loyal to the principle of harmony, the Chinese media did a valuable service to their country and probably avoided many more deaths. This might seem obvious now with hindsight, but it might have been just as easy for them to try to appeal to the pride of the Han and disaster would have ensued.

The Free World Media

But what about the media from the free World?

The Xinjiang events were of particular interest for many of us following the debate of anti-China bias in the Western media. In the highest point of the discussion, after the Tibet 2008 events,  the Western media always had the point that, since they had been banned from the area, they couldn’t be held accountable for inaccuracies in their reporting. Now we have the first major riot where this argument is not valid. The time is to evaluate the results. How well have they fared?

In my opinion, it has been disappointing, at least for two reasons.

1- In a large part of the media there was a clear prejudice against the Han and against the authorities. Not all were as extreme or ignorant as this example, but the principle was clear: their mission was to witness how inhuman the Chinese system is. Even if some of them later moderated their reports, the harm was already done, and when travelling in Europe mid-July I found it a common opinion that “China is slaughtering its minorities again”.

2- Fortunately, free media IS to some extent free and diverse, and we have seen some examples of fair reporting from the ground. In particular I was following the Telegraph journalist Peter Foster, who did a great job of reporting honestly what he saw. And then, I got to this article, only 4 days after the events, and to my despair he announces that he leaves on holidays. Like blogger B&W Cat noted, almost all the others soon followed suit and, to this day, nobody has told us what really happened in Xinjiang.

In the meantime, Xinhua and the others stayed at their posts, showing the Chinese and the World who really cares about Xinjiang, and who really cares about China.

Some Conclusions

There is something very wrong with the World media, and it is something much deeper than a anti- or pro- China stance. It has to do more in my opinion with how it is organized. Remember the line:

By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

It is a pleasure to read Adam Smith and imagine that, indeed, the invisible hand is working every day to make our lives better. And yet, this example has made clear that if there is one industry were the hand cannot work it is the media. That is, of course, unless we accept that its role is to produce “the truths we like to hear” in the same way as the role of Apple is to produce computers we like to use.

Because that is exactly the problem. The minute the media sees that there are no obvious CPC crimes, that the police is handling the situation well, and that actually a communist authoritarian regime sometimes does things better than a democracy, this is not interesting. It is not even about political lobbies or advertising companies’ pressure, it is simply that most readers don’t like it. It is more comfortable to live with their solid categories, Islamism bad, communism bad, democracy good. And the invisible hand says: journalist shut up.

There is a lot of talk on the internet about the future of traditional newspapers, and many are analyzing the reasons for their demise. Well, how about this one:

There has been a major political riot, the most deadly in 20 years in the most important rising country in the international scene, and the media has still not even attempted to explain the reasons behind the events, instead working full-time as a mouthpiece for a self-appointed leader in Washington with very dubious legitimacy, and who might possibly be connected with the terrorist group who has organized the killings of more than 100 people.**

I am not so idealistic to think that internet and blogs are going to change the situation. The information lobby will always be powerful, whatever the shape it takes, and in the end the mainstream reader will always read what he wants to read.

For the people who care, the only hope, now as always, is in diversity. And fortunately the internet works in the right direction for this. Visit this link for just one example of how a blog can provide you –if you take the time to read carefully- with better commentary than your Sunday paper.

* Interethnic clashes:  whether or not the initial violence was organized by terrorist elements, by the time the Han mobs went out with bats it clearly became an interethnic clash.

** More about this upcoming.

The mysterious ways of computer science.

Today for example, I completely panicked when I stumbled into one of the bugs of wordpress. For some reason, when you add a “click to read more” tag next to a section in bold, it goes and turns the whole blog to bold, including sidebar, titles and header. So yes, I think I have gone bold for a few hours,  but it was not intended. I hope I didn’t hurt any feelings.

The Goose Huggers

But this bolding effect is nothing compared to the vicious attack that this blog is suffering from an international band of Goose Huggers. 

I have been wondering for a while what is going on with my Goose post. It is attracting more clicking action than anything else around here, and by now it has become already the most popular of my posts. 

Click to continue »

I was a bit reluctant to read “Chinese Gods”.  I never had much of a taste for the mystical, and the rows of whiskered statues staring in the temples fail to arouse in me more than a cautious curiosity. But when I received the latest publications of Blacksmith, the promise of a book that “makes sense” of China’s religions caught my eye, and I thought perhaps this was my chance to jump into it and cover a gap in my education.

You might be familiar by now with Blacksmith books of Hong Kong -  the same Blacksmith that did the Asian edition of Apologies and other gems like King Hui and Business Republic. I am, and I have come to expect good surprises from them;  many things can be said of their books, but surely not “hackneyed” or “banal”. Pete Spurrier, the man behind the company, is not afraid to go with first-time authors, and he seems to have a knack to find intriguing writers with original points of view. Jonathan Chamberlain is perhaps his best find.

Indeed, in terms of surprises, this book delivers from the preface.  First, you discover it was actually written and self-published by Chamberlain 30 years ago, inspired by a series of painted glass figures he collected from local markets. It goes on to describe an unusual interview in Bangkok with British mystical writer John Blofeld, a reference in Asian religions, who agreed to give the book a prologue in articulo mortis. And then suddenly, before you realize it, you are swimming in the thick soup of China’s beliefs, following the author in his daring quest to make sense of  all the Gods. Click to continue »

Chinese ultra-blogger Han Han is starting a magazine. He announced it previously on his blog, and his last post is already giving the details to send in article drafts and job applications. I learned this last night from my friend 2Ting, who was eagerly preparing her CV and intro letter. The literati of the post-80s are very excited, it appears.

Han’s magazine, which still doesn’t have a name to avoid imitations, is presented in this blog post. A very Chinese and a very Han Han announcement, interesting for several reasons. But before I speak of it let me give some background on Han Han. I’ve been planning to write about him for ages, and never found the time until today.

The man

Han Han is 2Ting’s idol. He is also the idol of thousands of others post-80s Chinese, and he has become - in spite of himself-  a symbol of this often caricatured generation. His bio is interesting: while attending middle school he won a first prize in a famous literary contest, then he dropped out of high school and started writing  popular novels and driving race cars. By now he has become one of the best selling authors in China, and, if I got my stats right, the most read personal blogger in the World. Click to continue »

Ever since I opened this blog the problem of credibility has been in the back of my mind. These days, the comments of a tenacious part-time troll, as well as some recent events that shook the Chinosphere have brought back the subject to the top of my agenda.

It is well known that Chinablogs* (defined as blogs about China in English) are only a tiny part of the Chinese internet, and their readership is insignificant compared to their Chinese counterparts. But it would be a mistake to dismiss them as irrelevant. For some time already, especially after last year’s  events - Tibet revolts and the Olympic torch saga were a turning point -  readers from all sides have questioned the media’s impartiality regarding Chinese politics. Just or not, the fact is that these accusations have cast a doubt, and many have turned to blogs to try to find an independent point of view.

Some things make me suspect that the influence of Chinablogs in shaping the World opinion about China is more significant than their size might suggest. The famous #cde affair, where a well known entrepreneur and blogger in China caused the RMB/dollar exchange to move after a post on his blog, forcing the Chinese government to issue an official notice, confirmed this idea. Also, the world media are sending some of their best writers to China, not to become correspondents as used to be the case, but to open a blog and speak about what they  see outside their window - among other things.  Blog sceptics might want to look at this Boston Globe article to see just how influential blogs can become.

And here is where my question comes in: what legitimates  Chinabloggers to give opinions about this country, its politics, economy and other fields that affect the well being of billions of people?  Where does our credibility lie? Are we misrepresenting ourselves as experts in China without any serious basis? Click to continue »

What is the meaning of life and work? How can it possibly be so cold in the same latitude as the Sahara desert? Where did you put the camera’s battery charger? What do you mean “where did YOU put”?

These and many others are the fundamental questions you ask when back to Shanghai after a reinvigorating holiday in the South. It is tough to get back to real life. Anyway, I will get that camera running soon enough, and I hope I’ll be posting some of my fruitiest pics in the coming hours, so do stay tuned. Chinayouren is re-Shanghaied.

Hello all.

One of the most rewarding moments after 5 days of Web Withdrawal is when you sit down at the table and open your laptop with eager fingers. What is even more rewarding is to find that my readers are extremely loyal, so much so that stats actually register MORE views this week, while I was absent, than last week as I churned out 1 post/day. Now there, I am not sure how to take this. It makes me wonder. Feel a bit dispensable, what, if you see what I mean. More about this phenomenon below after my next digression.

Now, one thing I have discovered since I got immersed in the blogging world is the Value of Original Writing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean “original” in the sense of artistic, but just in the sense of “not copy-pasted”.  In this sense I am clearly a Net Original Writing Creator, which explains why I find bits and pieces of my sentences scattered over the Spanish and English internets. I am thrilled. Am I doing literature? Like Moliere’s Jourdain, who spoke in prose ! Or Dylan’s more mundane version: “I am a poet, I don’t know it, hope I don’t blow it”.

Value. Yes, this probably explains why I meet so many people in Shanghai making a living as Copywriters (I am an Engineer, I only recently discovered what “copywriter” means. The first time I heard one guy say the word I though he was a “copyright-er”, as in a lawyer). And I draw my own conclusions from all this. It means that some company guys cannot come up with their own description of their product and need to get “Copy” done by a consultant. I am baffled.

OK, and now to the SEO finding of the day. I am leaving this for the end of the post to make sure readers go through my  chat. Here’s the jewel: I have found an INCREDIBLY EFFECTIVE way of getting your SEO results skyrocketing in days. Which also explains why I got so many hits in absentia: Almost 60% were Google searches.

You can see for yourself on my sitemeter page (link in sidebar). A large part of these searches are in German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. Not coincidentally, these are the languages that my Google Translator accepts.

And here is the secret: last week I was playing with the translation tool to check its accuracy. I can confirm that, in terms of accuracy Google Translator is still short of perfect, but it is in SEOptimization that this baby is a real breakthrough. Indeed, by playing with it, by translating many of my own pages into other languages, I was inadvertently getting them stored in some mysterious cache and indexed by Google. Result: I doubled my Google hits in a week, with star strings: “La Charte 08″ and “El Presidente Obama”. Funny.

Tip of the day: Dear readers keep it to yourselves and don’t tell Google that I told you. Add translation tools to your blog and make sure you regularly translate posts into as many languages as you can. Soon you will have all the peoples of the world, down to the nuttiest Kazakh herder, rambling into your blog and boosting your stats.

In my experience this works miracles, I am just not sure how long Google will take before they notice the use of Google Translator for SEO purposes and penalize you. For my part I will stop playing with the translator, lest I kill the chicken of the golden eggs.

I can’t wait to see the speech tonight. I have spent the whole midday lunch hour (and a bit more) tinkering with the NYT and others speech analysis sites. I have learnt more about the speeches of previous American presidents that I ever knew before. And in particular I have learnt one surprising detail.

Those who have been following this blog from the beginning might remember that initial article I wrote about the Crisis and the Great Wall of China, which was published/linked by a few of the big guys and helped put my English blog in orbit. Well, that post contained the old gag of Crisis and Opportunity -both words sharing one character in Chinese- which was at the core of its reasoning.

The detail I found with some embarrassment today is that this is a widely used rhetorical device in American politics, probably first included by JFK in a few of his speeches. Of course I never pretended I’d invented it myself,  I guess I just heard it somewhere, but I had no clue it was so well known. Following my internet search for the origin of the expression, I ended up in a very popular blog which is an authority in Language use, the Language Log. There I read that my wordplay was just is “a misperception”:  危机 (weiji) doesn’t really originate from “Dangerous opportunity”. Etymologically, that is.

I don’t mind some experts contesting the origin of the expression. Actually I hold my own opinion that, even if the strict etymology of the word is not “dangerous opportunity”, it is obvious to all Chinese that the character 机 of Crisis is part of the very common word 机会 (opportunity). Knowing how Chinese love playing with their language, it is certain that millions of times this parallel Crisis-Opportunity must have been drawn in China. A more interesting question is to know if this expression actually describes the Chinese character, which I hope is properly settled in that old post of mine.

But what I do find a bit embarrassing is to realize that half the World was already aware of my little Chinese wordplay that I thought so clever. To the point that even Homer Simpson knew:

Lisa:  Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use
       the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"?
Homer: Yes! Cris-atunity.
From chapter "fear of flying", 1994

And now, back to the Inaugural speech. I have to be off in a minute to our own inaugural party in Shanghai, but let me briefly comment that there is a slight chance that the Crisis-Opportunity gag will make it into the speech. After all, the time is exactly right, the Crisis is there, China as well, and many are speculating that Obama might echo Kennedy’s famous speeches.

Although, to tell you the truth, I very much doubt it. Obama is a better speaker than that, and beyond those old formulas. I am sure he is going to coin something big instead, one of those phrases that tomorrow people will be muttering in the office, and which for generations to come will be copied by lesser speechwriters (and bloggers) in search of inspiration…

Let’s see what happens.