The Hand, Having Writ, Moves On

Jacquelyn Suter

“Peking you simply would not be able to recognize except by its monuments.” Perhaps a visitor
to the 2008 Olympics, astonished at Beijing’s modernity, remarked such? No, this quote is not a
contemporary one. It was actually written in 1916 by a British journalist who, even at that early
date, was amazed by the pace of transformation. It was at that time, too, that the old Imperial
City walls were first breached by new roads, a thrust to the heart of China’s ancient system of
spatial arrangement called feng shui. It wouldn’t be the last.

Tracing the contours of the obliteration of its own heritage and once revolutionary goals is the aim
of an extraordinarily engaging book, Out of Mao’s Shadow by Philip Pan. It is an eloquent and
vivid look at three of China’s transformative events: the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the
student demonstrations at Tiananmen Square (1989), and the current rise of what Pan calls
‘authoritarian capitalism.’

Let’s first imagine Tiananmen Square, where so many of China’s historic events have taken
place. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China atop the
Gate of Heavenly Peace fronting the Imperial Palace. He looked out upon what was then a
simple public park which in due course he would enlarge enormously. Many acres of old
neighborhood were destroyed to create what we now call Tiananmen Square – the world’s largest
public space.

Half a century later, in 2001, thousands of Chinese joyously and spontaneously congregated in
Tiananmen Square to celebrate the announcement that Beijing had been awarded the bid to host
the 2008 Olympics. University students sang patriotic hymns such as ‘Without the Communist
Party There Would Be No New China.’
In between these two events, there occurred another. In 1989, students again amassed in
Tiananmen, but singing patriotic Communist songs would have been inconceivable. They were
demonstrating for democracy and putting their very lives on the line to do so. What makes Pan’s
book such a fascinating read is that he relates history through the stories of people who were
participant to these events.

And in 1989, one of these people was the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Zhao
Ziyang. He sympathized with the students’ cause and accepted their criticism, and as he spoke
to the students in the Square, “his voice trembled with emotion, and there was a hint of the
tragedy to come in his words. ‘We have come too late, too late.’” After he left the scene, he was
not seen again. He was ousted from his post by party leaders who then crushed the
demonstrators by military force.

When Zhao died in 2005, after fifteen years of house arrest, web sites and blogs were instructed
to repress news of his death. ‘The Struggle for the Soul of a New China’ was already in full swing
– the subtitle of Pan’s book. The year 1989 was a pivotal moment for China, but with Zhao’s
death a flickering moment for political change had expired.

Sometimes art imitates life. “Students, don’t stir up any more trouble…If you march to the
Square, it will be the end of the new liberal General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang.” This quote is not
from Pan, not from actual events – but it could be. It’s from a recent novel, Beijing Coma, by the
young writer, Ma Jian.

As Pan relates the historical events of Tiananmen, Ma Jian weaves a compelling story of those
same events in fiction as they very well might have played out in real life. Ma Jian’s novel is
similar to Pan’s history in another way: it looks both backward to the hopefulness of 1989, and
forward to the new China of today, what Pan calls authoritarian, or predatory, capitalism.

In the decade of the 1990’s, Beijing undertook one of the biggest and most radical make-overs in
the world in order to present itself as a modern, capable, forward-leaning country divorced from
its tradition-laden past. This meant eliminating large swaths of property in central Beijing to make
way for newly-widened streets, shopping malls, and buildings of stunning international
architecture. The scope of this upheaval was massive: Between 1991 and 2003, a half-million
families were evicted.

At that time in Beijing, the government held rights to two-thirds of the land in the central city. The
remaining third was held by private homeowners. In order to quickly facilitate development, the
government sold their land rights to private developers who, in the early years, could buy land-
use rights for about 10% of a project’s final value. The incentive was thus strong to quickly
negotiate with current residents to move out and with private owners to sell.

But the price of creating this new China, was destruction of old neighborhoods, called hutongs,
comprising quaint courtyard houses that had defined life in old Beijing for centuries. Michael
Meyer’s The Last Days of Old Beijing is one man’s poignant and often humorous account of how
this transformation took place in his neighborhood.

Meyer, an English teacher – Little Plumblossom by his Chinese name – whose curiosity led him
to live in an old hutong, relates the individual stories of these residents and how their lives
revolved around when ‘The Hand’ would appear on a neighborhood wall. ‘The Hand’ referred to
the Chinese symbol for ‘raze’ which would mysteriously appear on a hutong wall overnight. Put
there by a faceless and unaccountable bureaucracy, ‘The Hand’ determined when a house or a
whole neighborhood would be slated for destruction.

Meyer tells us that the destructive activity during the years of the Cultural Revolution, in which
citizens were indoctrinated to destroy the Four Olds (thoughts, culture, customs, habits), may
have ironically laid a foundation to accept ongoing change and turmoil – “they recalled the
destruction as a positive – even fun – collective act.” On the other had, many of these residents
had a strong motivation to forget the recent past instead of remember it.

A New York Times columnist recently commented astutely, “Everything that starts out as a
cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine.”

Indeed, most Chinese don’t appear nostalgic as they drive their newly-acquired cars to the Happy
Family supermarket chain – none other than the Chinese version of the French-owned Carrefour.
Meyers believes the Chinese associate crumbling buildings with past national decline rather than
as something historical to be preserved. But at least one Chinese in Meyer’s book took
exception, “I often say that on the entire earth, there isn’t a nation that could, in the name of the
Olympics, destroy its own cities, and its own history.”

Ma Jian in Beijing Coma says, “people only escape into the past when they have no where left to
go.” Clearly, China feels it has yet many other places to go.

http://theparhamreader.blogspot.com
parhamw@ymail.com