intellectual history – Clear Word Drops

Exploring the Meanings of the Great Wall of China Today

May 19, 2015 ClearS1 Comment

The concept of the Great Wall as a national symbol and the ideas based on or derived from it constitute a myth for Waldron. From a negative symbol to a national pride, the meanings of the Great Wall are very fluid. It is given different connotations in accordance with the needs of the group of people in the process of nation building, or the process of transformation from culture to nation, as Waldron would possibly agree. But to which extent does these meanings matter today? Geographical, social and economical factors are crucial to understand the precise significance the Great Wall embodies in current Chinese society.

The Great Wall of China, as noted in the text, is by no means one single wall with one unified story, as it is always generally understood. It is a combination of several walls erected over thousand of years; it is a set of histories, instead of only one. Extending from Shanhai Guan in the east to Jiayu Guan in the west, these walls, complementary to natural landscapes, served as northern frontiers dividing agrarian civilization and the steppe tribes. Today, however, it is said that thirty percent of the Great Wall is in ruins, and another twenty percent is in “reasonable” condition, according to a survey of a hundred sections of the wall carried out by the Great Wall Society of China in 2006.1 And the remaining fifty percent has disappeared. While the parts close to Beijing and other cities (such as Jiayu Guan city) draw attention from the government, and protected by law; some other parts of the Wall at those places where they are remote from population-condensed areas and tourist sites, are loosely protected. Geographical locations of the ruins of the walls play a role here. But if the government wants to protect the Great Wall for its archeological and historical importance, why does not it protect every meter of the Wall in the same manner?

What relates to the geographical factor is how different social groups perceive the Great Wall, whether it is a national symbol or not. In Waldron’s text, the alterations of meanings occurred mainly among Chinese and Western literati. Even though literature and folklores might influence general opinion on the Wall among the common, the degree to which it has impact on is hard to distinguish. In distant places, many local villagers even consider the ruins of the Wall as “only a pile of earth”, and for some tourists, drawing and carving on the Wall are not a behavior to be ashamed of. For these who are also Chinese, is the established Great Wall still a symbol of national pride or even important at all to their national identity? If part of the nation do not feel the national significance of the symbol, how can this symbol be important for “national” identity? Or is it just for the part of people who can be vocal and represent the nation in the world?

Last but not least, economic reason also drives to the restoration of the Wall, which links to the geographical factor previously discussed. Economic concerns matter much to the local governments, if less so to the central government. Tourism attracts more capital and further lifts local economy; not to mention the Great Wall is not only a domestic traveller attraction, but also an international tourist magnet. The symbolic and ideological meanings of the Wall exist and become significant because of national leaders and intellectuals (linking back to the social factor), who identify themselves as part of the imagined massive community called China/Chinese-culture-sharers, in front of “others”, feeling themselves different and special, if not better (proud).

There are different reasons to preserve what is considered “old.” I do not agree with Waldron on the “authenticity” of the Great Wall recognized by “Chinese people”. Various parts of the Wall have been torn down, rebuilt, surrounded by recreation parks, and then charged for entrance fee. These “Great Wall(s)” are of anything but authenticity. Thus preserving the authentic is hardly one of the reasons for restoration; and restoration with other purposes create nothing authentic.

Tearing down the “old” and building up the “new” is a desperate move to search for recognition and self-identification. Comparing to the parts of the Great Wall, which are “lucky” enough to be preserved, the old towns of some other cities in China was less fortunate. Lanzhou, a city filled with architectures from Ming and Qing dynasties, was gradually and completely destroyed and rebuilt. In recent years, the city officials started to realize the loss of uniqueness by completely discarding its past. But it is already too late. The special city structure “double city” nowadays can only be seen in old photos and a newly built sculpture in the city park. At the places where the original buildings were, some black stone tablets stand, giving basic information of the “deceased buildings”, looking ridiculous.

Old double-city structure in City Park:

“Gravestones” of the old town in the lost memory:

Buzzing 20150118: Othering and Study of Materiality

January 18, 2015 ClearSLeave a comment

Life of the Objects and The Silent Story-Teller

Objects are born as an “empty space” (according to Pinney). Any discussion on an object must associate with cultural interactions and must not end on an object-level. The notion of separating object and the meaning given to it, as I understand, serves as a precondition of art historian/anthropological research on materiality.

Besides, the original idea for the creation of an object already prepares a certain purpose for it, thus a meaning is given to this object before its creation. Eventually the “empty space” is appropriate only for describing the material(s) before the moment when the idea comes about, not after the creation of the object.

Therefore, born with a meaning, an object is endowed a life by “othering” of human’s natural, self-reflection. The fact is, more than we expect, objects do work not only as an “other”, but also as ourselves. The point for writing biography of an object is to tell stories of the people who create it, pass it on, receive it, and more. Every person appears in the life of an object leaves trace of himself on it, seeable or not. Men make objects to feel subjectivity, and label objects with meaning so that the same objects could be seen, from “the other”‘s point of view, as indicators of themselves. Some agents are visible in the story, some are not. Finally, the materiality exceeds the mere concrete form of itself and serves as a carrier of history, with a life that given by the people around it, becoming a story-teller of cultural interactions.

Most of objects with historical stories to tell we saw today outlive people of their own time. “The other could speak” is not a simple personification.

Buzzing Buzzing…20150116 Time to Socialise?

January 15, 2015 ClearSLeave a comment

Perception of Time
Is it really like we always say, today in this capitalist world, we are so occupied that don’t have time to socialise, don’t have time to leisure. What has changed in our life comparing to hundreds years ago? Has humans’ perception of time changed?

In the era of internet, do we have more time to social or less? If we should call communicating with others online as being socialising?

Using internet contains always, and only information input and/or output. News reading, movie/video watching are mostly input process. Writing Emails is counted as the newest form of writing letters. Writing instant messages can happen at the same time when you do other things or a single thing you do. You can also writing messages with several people at the same time. People can group chat. Isn’t it “hanging out”? Some video chatting with friends and families for hours, or watching the same TV programs while skypping, just like they are “hanging out” and spending time with them. Can’t all of these activities be consider as “socialising”?

Has internet changed the meaning of “social”?
If one talks about “social space”, most young people today would instantly think of the virtual social space. “Social networks” as they call it. On Google plus, one can add friends’ accounts into his own “circle”, and then one can see if they are online, if so, ask them if they want to “hang out”.

i think, whether or not an activity can be called socialising should be defined by how the participants feel, instead of how it looks like, how “weird” it might be. Feeling is always a tricky and unrecognised way to define and to measure. But isn’t it an ultimate criteria or everything we do? Maybe this is a possible topic for sociologists and phycologists, to find out how we can develop a system to measure if we are “feeling” ourselves socialising, as if we can’t tell by ourselves.

Coming back to perception of time, I believe, if we modern humans carefully count how much time we devoted into professional tasks or studies, the truth is, not so much as we imagined. Working from 9 to 17 is 8 hours in total. If 8 hours sleeping time not calculated, we still have 8 hours to do whatever we can and want — socialising, meditating, eating (for some who say them being too busy to eat), exercising, and reading and writing.

But why don’t we feel the 8 hours? Comparing to Bengali men sitting everyday 5 hours together and chatting, we live in a seemingly much stressful way.

In fact, we still have the 8 hours, but we only have them as small pieces, instead of hours of time chunk as people have living in pre-modernity.

Urbanisation of cities make people spend more and more time on transportation. So much junk and useless information on the internet and television distract us every day for one or two ours. involuntarily and voluntarily we give away so much time a day. And still feeling lack of time.

We are living in a completely different world than our ancestors. They faced big chunk of time a day, from dawn to dawn. Later, specialisation of labour re-decided the world’s resource distribution; while for individuals, specialising certain activities and distributing them into small sections of time is a favoured way to solve this problem.

BUZZING 20150103: “Networks” or “Flows”?

January 3, 2015 ClearSLeave a comment

Networks or Flows?

I loved using the term “cultural flow.” In fact, I have been using it during my whole studying time. I liked it simply because it matches with how I understand the dynamics of cultures works. Today I was pointed out, that the shortages of this word “flow” are subtle but to some extent, also obvious.

When describing a cultural phenomenal movement as a “flow”, it implies that the process resembles to liquid motion, without obstacles. While if there are two similar motions of the same object, the two processes are also implied being even, which, in reality, is always not the case. Vasquez makes this quite clear in the text “Studying Religion in Motion: A Networks Approach.”

Instead of using “flow’, Vasquez prefers “network”, which successfully avoids anti-structuralism conveyed by the metaphor of liquidity. Networks of cultures (and in this study, religions) demonstrate better and more structural system which we can still hope to study the complex dynamics of cultures.

But I have a further question: if the “network” is also a metaphor (comes from already applied fields of social and natural sciences), then is it also necessary to analogise the formation and construction process of this network/networks?

The introduction of the concept of osmosis within the system is a very smart move: the network in the context of biology is also capable of containing metaphor of “flow”. And osmosis also conveys the fact of selectiveness in the transmission and transferring procedure.

Still, I don’t think the limitation of the term “flow” when it is used in the context of cultures and their motions so problematic. The imagination of “flow”‘s non-obstacleness based on, well, imagination. While the word itself does contain “smoothness” and “continuity”, it does not convey the evenness of the quality and speed if there’s another similar flow. As blood in veins, obstacles can always be there, various with levels; thus the motions can be slow and fast. The fact is, when power comes in, unevenness of the cultural zones provides exactly what needed to create cultural flow. It can be stopped, but will always have the tendency to continue, as long as the unevenness exists.