I was pleasantly surprised when I booked my last minute flight to Japan, I got a very reasonable price for the 1st October National Day. When I went to Pudong airport I understood why: the streets were empty in Shanghai, nobody flew at that time because they were all at home with the eyes glued to the TV set, watching as thousands of men and women, looking silly in their flowery dresses, marched on Beijing’s Chang An Avenue.

I had the chance to watch the parade for 30 minutes as I waited to board my plane. I have to say it was beautiful. Sure enough there were  cringeworthy moments, like when the TV showed the communist model peasants, workers and miners, shining like Mario Bros in 256 colours. But of course, a good deal of hypocrisy is always mandatory in these State events, in China and elsewhere. And regarding the execution, I have watched quite a few of the famous mass events in Pyongyang, and I am pretty sure North Koreans are white with envy watching this one, if their state channel even cared to broadcast it.

All this display of patriotism reminded me of the conversation I had last week with little Yi. It was after we watched an advert on TV, the one where the little girl stands on Tiananmen Square squeaking in that ghastly toddler tone: “妈妈我爱你!” (mum, I love you), and a similar girl says the same in Tibetan in front of the Potala temple of  Lhasa. The screen then goes white, and a message comes up: “祖国我爱你”.  Motherland, I love you. I don’t remember which was the company announced, but the advert has been showing continuously for months, and it was the eleventh time I watched it.

I had a delicate stomach that day, and pushed to the limits of resistance, I couldnt help bringing up the subject:

“This is ridiculous,” I said bluntly, “you can’t love a country like you love your mother!”

“Of course you can,” said little Yi, “you don’t understand the feelings of the Chinese!”

“Yeah, right.”

Babbling toddlers and feelings of the people. That was about as much as I could take before lunch. I regretted I’d spoken at all.

“Our country is like a mother for all the Chinese, ” she continued, “that is what they mean.”

“Yeah, OK, except that it is NOT the same. A mother gives you life, she will always love you and no matter what happens, no matter what mistakes you do or how stupid you behave, she will be there for you. A country, if you fail to comply, will just abandon you or even put you to death ”

“Well, it is a different kind of mother. If you fail, the punishment is terrible. If you work hard and succeed, the prize is much greater. It is a mighty mother with higher stakes, what is wrong with that?’

“Nothing wrong, just that that is not Love”

“It is,” she insisted. “Or don’t Christians teach love of God, and isn’t He much more terrible, that if you fail to behave even your life is not enough, and you get an eternity of pain?”

“I…,”

I shut up. She had some point there. I don’t particularly believe in the Christian god, and besides, 2000 years ago they invented a mother Mary precisely to deal with the rough edges of the Old Testament. But it is true that, in religion and in politics, many people in the West feel that same kind of loving feelings as the Chinese. So this was not really a discussion about China, but a more general one on patriotism.

My problem is that I do not accept the word love to refer to a country. For one reason, because I understand love as a feeling that can only happen between persons, perhaps sometimes with animals, but not with things. And definitely not with abstract and easy manipulable concepts like “nation”. But granted, this is merely a problem of language, and I don’t have the authority to prescribe how the word “love” should be used, even less how “爱” is employed in Chinese. Still, there is a more compelling argument against love for the motherland:  I think it is not in the best interest of the “loving” party.

Let’s look at the facts. Human society has to be organized some way, and the power needs to be held by someone. In the past it was the tribe, the emperor or the feudal lord. Now it is the nation-state, nothing particularly wrong with that.  All forms of organization require the respect and participation of the citizens to work, and it is in the interest of everyone to treat them accordingly, once their legitimacy has been established. Therefore, I understand it is important to respect and work for the improvement of one’s country, and I try to do it, just like I do for my company or for my university. But love them like a mother?

It might be that I am speaking from a very European perspective-though by no means mainstream even there. Perhaps I am failing to take into account the particular circumstances of countries like China. Europeans used to be the haughtiest and most virulent motherland lovers, until their excessive feelings brought about ruin and destruction. Patriotism in China never caused any catastrophe of even comparable magnitude, and instead worked well to save the people from foreign-imposed sufferings. So the feelings of many Chinese are understandable, if not necessarily beneficial today.

And still, the key question we have to ask ourselves is: are these feelings in the interest of the citizen, and in the interest of mankind as a whole? Can the World really be in peace if the relation between citizens and their countries is one of blind love, like child to mother? When there is a conflict of interests, is the loving child not forced to fight for his beloved to the last consequences? Since conflicts of interests and greedy rulers are facts of life that will not disappear, is not the love doctrine in contradiction with the ideal of World Peace that most of us profess?

I would like to hear opinions about this. Of course, I understand that for many sentimental people the feeling of love for their country is very much alive, and there is little to explain since it is just a feeling . But Chinese tend to be very rational and in control of their feelings, and when they choose to love it is rarely out of blind passion, but rather because they consider it a good option.  I suspect their patriotism is in most cases the result of a prisoner’s dilemma: if other countries act patriotic, the only rational attitude is to do the same.

But I wonder if people are actually following this logic (ultimately a defensive attitude) or are really so in love with their country and their flag that they don’t even think much about it. And if you do think about it, do you actually believe that a peaceful World is possible in the long term?

Perhaps I think too much sometimes. Perhaps the fact that I am writing from Nagasaki, where I have just seen one of the most chilling exhibitions of human-caused horrors, might have some impact on my thoughts today. And still, I stand by all I write here.

What are your views?

(PS. On the same subject, also see this post just published on Chinageeks)

You haven’t really seen a city until you have been to its zoo. I have known this fact since I was 5 years old, and after many years I suddenly remembered it again last Sunday, and I decided it was about time I went to the Shanghai zoo.

When you grow up you realize zoos have a good side and a bad side. I still enjoy watching a tiger as much as before, but now I have more of an environmental conscience, and I can’t help a sense of guilt at the thought that my joy costs its freedom. Fortunately, the clever sign at the entrance reassured me that the animals environment was taken care of.

NOT!

I was shocked by the behaviour of a big part of the Chinese visitors to the zoo. In spite of all the forbidden signs they kept throwing all sorts of food at the animals. Parents encouraged their little kids, and they all made fun when a monkey could not open a sealed packet of chips or a can of soda. Dozens of people watched and laughed, and nobody thought it was wrong, no guards to be seen either.

They were putting the animals in danger of cuts, poisoning, etc, and in the same time they made the cages so dirty that some animals were literally living in a garbage dump. Some kids were also putting themselves in danger by jumping the security barriers or hand-feeding monkeys.

But what made me saddest of all was to see the king of the junkyard, the Lion, who was taking a lazy nap after lunch. The public had come to the zoo to hear it roar, and they would hear it roar. In 5 minutes I saw 3 bottles of water full of water fly towards the lioness head. She was so used to it that she didn’t even move when she got hit in the paw.

What’s up with Shanghai? I am really surprised because I always considered our city a civilized place. How can people have such little respect for those beautiful animals? And how can the council allow this to happen? I hope somebody puts an end to this situation immediately, it hurts the animals, and it gives a sad image of the city for the Expo.

For comparison I add a picture I took in the zoo of Pyongyang, were as far as I know I was the only visitor of the day. I complained that the animals received political indoctrination, but otherwise the place was much cleaner than Shanghai zoo.

BTW: Kim never travelled further than Russia.

This discussion on China Geeks caught my eye, mostly because it is one of the few that has managed to engage the real Chinese blogosphere to interact with us foreign China blogs. And no less than hecaitou, a respected blogger in both the Chinese and Western communities. Unfortunately, the results are rather discouraging.

It all started when some Chinese blogs, including hecaitou, posted this image, which was picked by Chinageeks in a post titled “racism in China”. Hecaitou responded rather energetically to the pingback, writing a new post, and then commentators from all sides joined the party.

The discussion about whether Chinese are racist or not is a never ending one, and it has been commented to exhaustion already, for example in the FM blog.  It usually degenerates into a series of “you worse than me” counterexamples, as American/Chinese national pride quickly takes over any serious attempt of debate.  Rather  than racism, the misunderstanding comes from a different perception on the limits of the socially acceptable (ie PC). Some notes I would like to add to the debate: Click to continue »

These last years we’ve seen many of the big newspapers scanning and digitizing their historic archives, and sometimes even allowing full access to non-subscriptors. Such is the case of the NYT, Atlantic Monthly, Guardian and many others. These archives constitute great tools for research, and provide irresistible eye candy for history nerds like Uln.

But thanks to Spanish blog Chinochano I found yesterday the new archives of La Vanguardia, the newspaper that was my daily read during my 3 years in Barcelona. The difference with other archives is that the interface looks much better, it shows the scanned articles, AND it comes with a cool graph showing the incidence of the search word over the years since 1881. This is in itself a fantastic tool for bloggy research:

The search for “China” gives the following graph:

Number of entries in paper issues containing "China"

Here we can see the rise of China in the European press. It is interesting to see the sudden lack of interest in some periods, for example when Hitler was invading Poland, or when the dotcoms crisis set all the eyes looking to Silicon Valley around 2000. The sudden peaks also make for a good guessing game. Especially interesting to see is the sharp rise from 2000 to 2008, which matches the observations of many China analysts, like Mark Leonard.

2008 is still not over but I’m betting it will beat 2007 by a fair stretch.

Re La Vanguardia: It is a mainstream catalan newspaper that has in my opinion the best Foreign Affairs section in Spain. If you speak Spanish don’t miss “Diario de Pekin”, the blog of La Vanguardia correspondent Rafael Poch in China. His articles are entertaining and he has an original point of view on Chinese affairs. Unfortunately Rafael is leaving China now after 6 years so we’ll have to wait and see if he gets a worthy successor.

PS: Now I have really earned the title of BRIDGE blogger !