Happy Chinese New Year!!
Today I’m going to post about China, as it is still time for Chinese New
Year celebration, but actually this article had started a month ago with a
strange beginning….
The
Start of the China Story Idea
When I started writing this article, I was barely out of 2016 New
Year celebration mode. It was when I
received news through social media that the legendary music icon, David Bowie,
had passed away. He and family sure did
a good job at keeping his 18 months fight with cancer private until Sunday
January 10. Like me, who celebrated
pre-New Year birthday, he celebrated his January 8th birthday with
the release of his last album, aptly called “Lazarus” (according to the story
in the Bible, Lazarus was a close friend of Jesus whom He raised from the dead.) Bowie even had his last public photo shoot on
January 8th, just two days before his passing. With this New Year/ Birthday celebration, and a time of
remembrance of 10th year’s anniversary of my late husband’s passing due to complications from Parkinson disease, I felt some close affinity with him
about life and death. I started to pay
more attention to the stories of his life and did some research on his music,
since I missed out on this side of brain activities earlier on in my life.
Bowie was famous for his musicianship and for being an
innovator/entrepreneur in music business.
When Bowie became famous in 1969 with his song “Space Oddity”, and during
his four decades of inventing and re-inventing music, I was still a nerd and
did not listen to most of his music. I
became interested only when I watched the 1977 video of his duet with Bing
Cosby singing Christmas song, “Little Drummer Boy.” It was quite a different kind of Christmas
music presentation, a combination of the young and the old, which I found
interesting and refreshing. As a new
student of music, I loved to explore, so I Googled to listen more of his songs,
and found two videos that were shot in Sydney, Australia, where I used to live
and had my college education. The first
video that I found was “Let’s Dance”, depicting young Australian Aborigines
couples in a dual economy of the poor natives along side the opulent white
society. The second video I found was “China Girl”, which was in line with my
concerns from the other side of my brain, regarding the economy, investment,
and China. I took great interest in the
meaning of the second songs because of what happened lately in the development
of China, and the turmoil in China’s stock market, economy, and currency.
China
Cry
I had an affinity for China because my family origin was from China
with lineage going back may be 4,500 years..
By my father’s last name, I might have come from the same village and
family tree as Priscilla Chan, American pediatrician and philanthropist, wife
of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.
Also, I love to study ancient history as well as biblical archeological
research papers and literatures. After
these studies, reading, and listening, I became convinced that the ancient
Chinese believed in one God like the Israelites. It is even a high possibility that 4,500
years before Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and multi deity worship, Chinese
people were direct descendants of Noah.
But that deserves another discussion some other time. If you are interested to learn more about
this view, watch this video from Reverend Hong Kee from Singapore:
My point about this is that like Israel nation, ancient Chinese has
a special place in God’s heart and His-story, dispersed all over the world with
lots of hardship wherever they go, but yet prevail against the odds. Like lost sheep, they have wondered away from
God’s way, but when it was time, very many would be called to come back to His
fold….
After Communist Party gained
control of, the “Cultural Revolution” was in full force. Chinese intellectuals in the mainland had to
undergo “reeducation”, which was actually a penal system of hard labor. Many religious organizations including
Christians were persecuted and many professionals and elite families were put
through the reeducation program. I heard
of the harsh persecution that endangered the lives of Christians. The story of Sung Neng Yee in the movie “China
Cry” helped me understand the treatment of the Communist Party and officials
towards Christians during the Red Guard period.
Sung Neng Yee, or Nora Lam who later escaped to the U.S. became the author
of “China Cry.”, a real life story. You
may read about the detail of this 1990’s China Cry movie in the review by
Christiancinema.com through the link here:
Despite harsh persecution and torture, the persecution turned out
to be a breeding ground for underground Christians that have grown to 23
millions. The Bible there used to be
very scarce, yet these strong faith Christians were determined and some even
recite the whole Bible and were able to share with others. The underground churches grew like wild fire,
and I believe that God had blessed China because there were so many people with
Christian ethics that were workers.
China
Girl
Then came the era that China opened up again and had diplomatic
relations with western nations. That was
in the early 70’s when President Nixon first shook hand with China’s first
premier of the People Republic of China, Zhou Enlai, after the death of
Chairman Mao. The former President’s
Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and his diplomatic staffers, whom Nixon
called “China Boys” entered into the daily life of Chinese people both in the
cities and country side. There were not many automobiles then, only seas of
bicycles, as Nicholas Platt, one of Nixon’s “China boys” staffers described in
his standing room only seminar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
in 2010. Corydon Ireland, Harvard
staffer described in Harvardgazette’s article, “When China’s Door Reopened
(June 11, 2010), that later on Platt published his book called “China Boys”
(Vellum, 2010). The book, as mentioned
in the article, described details of the end of old China and the beginning of
the new China marked by “generations of friendship” from the groundwork laid
during those visits in the 70’s.
China Girl Edition of Yours Truly
David Bowie music video of the song “China Girl” depicted the same simplicity of life in the early new China that was told by Platt. In the beginning, he showed how he loved the
naïve and childlike China Girl, who rose from being a lifeless girl in Red Guard
uniform. But as the West became
influential in the life of China, China girl was to become something else as we read toward
the end of the song lyrics, when Bowie added prophecy like notes in the lyrics:
I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastica in my head
Plans for everyone
It’s in the white of my eyes
My little China girl
You shouldn’t mess with me
I’ll ruin everything you are
I’ll give you television
I’ll give you eyes of blue
I’ll give you man who wants to rule the world!
Gee Ling, who was the model and actress in this David Bowie’s Award
winning MTV video, mentioned in her recent interview from New Zealand that "I didn’t
realize the song was a political statement" at the time of the video shoot in Sydney, Australia. But it was such a brilliant statement almost like a prophetic one about
China today!
For your reference you can see the 1983 MTV China Girl video here:
China Today!
In the past decade, we can see that the economic growth of China had
been quite explosive until recently.
When I went to China for a tour in 2007, I could see construction works everywhere for hotels and other enterprises to accommodate the Summer Olympic
in 2008. For the rest of the world, merchandises that were “Made In
China” were Ubiquitous in the US and worldwide.
When my friends and I visited, there were many high-end department
stores that were built and stocked up with designer brand named merchandises
from Western countries. Those groups of
people who were consumers of these expensive goods must have a lot of money to
indulge in such luxuries.
With development like this, it comes with a high prize tag of
pollution. The air quality of such city
as Shanghai is alarming. Some
expatriates who work and do business there have to move to nearby countries
such as northern provinces in Thailand to escape the pollution.
In recent years, leaders of China wanted Yuen to be part of the
basket of international currencies, and when International Monetary Fund (IMF)
added Yuen in its elite basket of global reserve currencies in late November,
2015, officials at China’s central bank patted themselves in the back for
“Mission Accomplished”. But the exuberant
mood was short life, because the officials in China were not used to free currencies
market that might move the value of the Yuen in an opposite direction from how
it would benefit China’s trade. Same
with stock market: to be like Western Nations for investment, China has stock
markets to raise capital for business and industrial investments. For a stock market to work, there should
not be an artificial control, but one has to leave it to the forces of demand
and supply. I guess China government is
still not used to releasing its grip of control to the market yet.
Another factor that forces the government to interfere is that, a
lot of these investors in the China stock market are acting like gamblers
rather than investors. Herd sentiment
becomes the norm there, causing the market to swing from one end to another,
and causes it to go south rapidly. There
is no clear answer now for the question of “What’s Next?” Hopefully, the sentiment about the New Year,
the year of the Monkey, denoted as Ambitious and Adventurous, could calm the
market for the better. Also, a few of
these fortune cookies quotes of Chinese Proverbs from Bustle.com might help
releasing people from greed and panic:
1. If you
want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else
2. A smile
will gain you 10 more years of life
3. Do not
fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still
4. Learning
is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere
5. A great
fortune in the hands of a fool is a great misfortune!
With these wise words from the Chinese sages and with God’s help,
I hope you all have peace, happiness, and true wealth this Chinese New Year!!
Hi Stephanie! It's my pleasure to share the China stories, because they are related to my root. It's good to know where we came from, where we are going to, and enjoy the journey while we focus on the destination. Thanks for the comments that are encouraging to me. :)
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