Fortuitos apontamentos, ou excrementos, de um passageiro sonhador numa viagem em desafio do barqueiro.
The casual jottings, or droppings, of a dreaming passenger on a journey to challenge the ferryman.
Painting by Ahn Gyeon (안견/安堅), Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (몽유도원도/夢遊桃源圖), 1447.
Continuing to post a few morsels on China -- a rather seemly activity on this day, the birthday of the People's Republic --, I discovered this 1607 Chinese mappa mundi, called 山海輿地全圖 (pinyin: shānhǎiyúdìquántú) or "Complete Terrestrial Map".
The image includes a translation of the legends.
On the subject of maps, below is a very interesting and informative one of the Late Qing Empire.
Directly ruled domains are in yellow; the ring of tributary states, protectorates and spheres of influence are in pink. In the latter colour too are the lands of Outer Manchuria, ceded to the Russians in 1860.
Notice the dates of conquest, loss or cession of territory, establishment and cessation of tributary relations, and signing of border (with Russia) and 'Unequal' (with the Treaty System Powers) treaties.
Such dates record the gradual expansion, apogee and contraction of the territory held 'Under Heaven' by the Manchu dynasty.
The last date to appear is 1910 and refers to the formal colonization of Korea by Japan, in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War (another consequence of which was the Japanese annexation of Taiwan in 1895).
Next is a map of the Republic of China and surrounding countries (all of Asia, actually) in 1914:
A forgotten curio: the Government of Taiwan -- the self-styled Republic of China (ROC) of the post-1949 period -- officially maintains extensive territorial claims on behalf of the whole of China, as indicated in the map below (the language of the legends is in bizarre ROC 'legalese', which I'm sure nobody in Taiwan actually employs anymore).
Note that the entirety of (Outer) Mongolia and of the Republic of Tuva in the Russian Federation are still deemed by Taipei to be de jure sovereign ROC territory, together with parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Myanmar.
Incredible, isn't it?!
This map is a veritable dusty relic from the archeology of political history...
For a comparison between reality (the PRC) and fiction (Taiwan as the ROC), see the following map:
To enlarge the maps above, just select and double-click.
Finally, please come to this atlas for more maps of China.
I highly recommend Sinologist Jonathan D. Spence's fascinating oeuvre Treason by the Book.
I've had the pleasure of reading it twice.
Read the following synopsis by John Crace:
"What most Europeans--and Americans for that matter--know of 18th-century China could easily be written on the back of the hand. But that need be no barrier to enjoying Treason by the Book, the latest offering from US Sinophile and Yale history academic, Jonathan Spence. The book starts with a letter written by unknown dissident in 1728 urging General Yue Zhonqi, commander of the Sichuan province, to lead a rebellion against Emperor Yongzheng. Knowing which side his bread was buttered, General Yue declined the offer and reported the existence of the letter to the emperor, who in turn instituted a ruthless investigation into its origins. After a lengthy process involving intimidation of witnesses, torture, deception, isolation and insinuation, a man named Zeng Jing was correctly identified as the leader of the dissidents. So far so normal for the Qing dynasty. But it is what happened next that lifts this story above the ordinary. Rather than opting for the obvious course of action--executing the rebels in the most unpleasant way imaginable--the emperor entered into a prolonged and intimate correspondence with Zeng Jing, who ultimately came to realise that he had made a mistake about the Emperor, whereupon he was promptly pardoned. Furthermore, the Emperor then had the entire correspondence, including the original letter, published and distributed throughout China. Even by today's standards, or perhaps that should read especially by today's standards, this was an extraordinary and unprecedented act of liberalism from a regime associated with formality, rigidity and autocracy. That so much documentary evidence still remains is in itself remarkable. The Emperor ordered the correspondence to be kept in his archive and it has managed to survive countless political and ideological upheavals to the present day and in Spence's hand it doesn't just become a compelling narrative but a metaphor for the power of books to change lives. Unfortunately for Zeng Jing, this power was short lived. When Yongzheng died in 1736, his successor Qianlong promptly ripped up the pardon and had Zeng Jing sentenced to death. For the rest of us, the power is--quite literally--in our own hands."
Thomas L. Friedman, author of the bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Understanding Globalization, discusses here China's pledge to go "green" and its future role as a leading "E.T." (Energy Technology) player.
I am unable to resist posting another video on/of Chomsky.
Enjoy below a great interview in the UC Berkeley series "Conversations with History", wherein Chomsky's background, life, work, dissent and major ideas (and ideals) are outlined, with the endearing simplicity and nobility of spirit that make him a truly remarkable man:
Does democracy need capitalism? And how about the other way around?
Differently from the author below, I submit that democracy does not need capitalism, while agreeing that capitalism does not require democracy.
"Published on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
China: Capitalism Doesn't Require Democracy
by Robert B. Reich
You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists. In fact, visit China today and you find the most dynamic capitalist nation in the world. In 2005, it had the distinction of being the world’s fastest-growing major economy. China is the manufacturing hub of the globe. It’s is also moving quickly into the highest of high technologies. It already graduates more computer engineers every year than the United States. Its cities are booming. There are more building cranes in use today in China than in all of the United States. China’s super-highways are filled with modern cars. Its deep-water ports and airports are world class. Its research and development centers are state of the art. At the rate its growing, in three decades China will be the largest economy in the world. Communist, as in communal? Are you kidding? The gap between China’s rich and poor is turning into a chasm. China’s innovators, investors, and captains of industry are richly rewarded. They live in luxury housing developments whose streets are lined with McMansions. The feed in fancy restaurants, and relax in five-star hotels and resorts. China’s poor live in a different world. Mao Tse Tung would turn in his grave. So where are the Chinese communists? They’re in government. The communist party is the only party there is. China doesn’t have freedom of speech or freedom of the press. It doesn’t tolerate dissent. Authorities can arrest and imprison people who threaten stability, as the party defines it. Any group that dares to protest is treated brutally. There are no civil liberties, no labor unions, no centers of political power outside the communist party. China shows that when it comes to economics, the dividing line among the world’s nations is no longer between communism and capitalism. Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government. For years, we’ve assumed that capitalism and democracy fit hand in glove. We took it as an article of faith that you can’t have one without the other. That’s why a key element of American policy toward China has been to encourage free trade, direct investment, and open markets. As China becomes more prosperous and integrated into the global market -- so American policy makers have thought -- China will also become more democratic. Well, maybe we’ve been a bit naive. It’s true that democracy needs capitalism. Try to come up with the name of a single democracy in the world that doesn’t have a capitalist economy. For democracy to function there must be centers of power outside of government. Capitalism decentralizes economic power, and thereby provides the private ground in which democracy can take root. But China shows that the reverse may not be true -- capitalism doesn’t need democracy. Capitalism’s wide diffusion of economic power offers enough incentive for investors to take risks with their money. But, as China shows, capitalism doesn’t necessarily provide enough protection for individuals to take risks with their opinions."
A very thoughtful analysis, well worth quoting in full below (emphasis are mine):
"When China Rules The World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World
Reviewed by Kerry Brown
Posted September 4, 2009
Just after Hu Jintao's elevation to party secretary and president of China in 2003, Zheng Bijian, a septuagenarian Communist Party stalwart, started producing his "peaceful rise of China" declarations, one of which appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine. There was no question that Mr. Zheng was supported by the highest levels of the Chinese government in his intellectual charm offensive. Suspicions aroused by China's increasing economic might (overtaking Germany as the world's third largest economy and becoming holder of the world's largest reserves of foreign exchange by 2007), and mounting fears over the country's military and political intentions had led to the feeling that someone had to step forward and start explaining China's motives to the rest of the world, if only as a means of reassurance.
"Peaceful rise" did not exactly fit the bill. Many observers saw clear evidence of China's grand ambitions and viewed the world "rise" as sinister, despite the modifying adjective. "Peaceful development" became the more common term until the end of 2008. But perhaps as a result of the "can't win whichever way it falls" outcome of the Olympics, where the Chinese saw their hosting of a great event as marred bycriticism and brickbats from negatively minded people outside the motherland, the word "rise" has made a comeback this year. And this time, "peaceful" is nowhere in sight.
China is a huge, populous and massively influential country. It should not need to be so apologetic about having an impact. Even so, Martin Jacques's important new work about China's global role in the coming future captures one crucial element of why China's "rise" should matter. By his account, China is not just taking its rightful place among the major nations of our era; it is setting out a whole new way of being a nation.
Mr. Jacques, the former editor of Marxism Today, makes clear in almost 500 pages that if we want the world to continue as it is, then we are about to be rudely awakened. China's rise is a fact, but just as important is that this rise will have a radical impact on notions of nationhood, sovereignty and international order.
Mr. Jacques's thesis revolves around the argument that China is not so much a country now as it is a culture, or in his words, "a civilization." Its ability to assimilate and change the cultures with which it comes in contact is the key characteristic of its existence as a uniquely complex nation with a long, multifaceted evolutionary path.
This emphasis on cultural impact is something that is often overlooked. Outsiders view China as doing very well because it plays by economic rules generated by the developed world. But at a deeper level, China's integral feature —its strong cultural self-identification —has remained unaltered. Perhaps it is this that makes the border issues so problematic. Ethnic minority populations such as the Uighurs, Mongolians and Tibetans sense they are being drawn into a massive assimilative process where they risk losing not only their political or economic rights, but their own cultural identities.
While the title might be interpreted as a celebration of China's final predicted triumph and modernization, it is far less reassuring on another level. Mr. Jacques sees enormous ambition in China's development. Such ambition stretches far beyond economic and political triumph into something deeper —a cultural model, an attitude toward the world, a "world view" that will come to assimilate and dominate, post modernity.
Drawing on the work of Frank Dikotter, an academic, Mr. Jacques devotes a lengthy section of his work to Chinese views of race. Race as a term came late to the Chinese vocabulary, but there was a rich and very controversial debate about race throughout the early part of the 20th century. The People's Republic of China was established as a "multiethnic" state, but the attitudes toward other races in the press as well as popular and official discourse were often brutally hierarchical. This is an issue of great sensitivity, but one which Mr. Jacques had to address himself when his Indian-born wife died tragically in a Hong Kong hospital in the 1990s due to what appeared to be deliberate neglect by authorities.
Moreover, China's relations with Africa are now given great importance, though the impression lingers that relations are conducted within a master-servant framework where the Chinese take the upper position. No country is entirely immune from the mouthpieces of crude racial supremacy —witness the election in May of two extreme right politicians from the British National Party to the European Parliament —but Mr. Jacques sees Chinese "supremism" as something that is written deep in the genes of the whole "civilizing" mission in which China is currently engaged.
There is another interpretation for all this. While Mr. Jacques produces plenty of evidence from visits made to China and reading done on the subject, the alternative is simply that the sense of Chinese-ness he describes looks so strong and is shrilly declared by its main exponents largely because at heart it is weak and vulnerable. China's sense of nationhood was deeply traumatized by its encounters with the main agents of modernity from the mid-19th century onwards. Maoism was able to deliver a temporary sense of unity and strength; combined with economic development, the two gave China the brittle confidence we see today.
Is China really creating an exportable cultural model, something that will seep into the rest of the world and change us just as American cultural and economic models have? Beyond its most immediate borders, it is hard to see this. While it is good to have a warning about how we might interpret China's ambitions, it is just as well to realize that far from being a domineering force ready to change our world, China is deeply dependent on outside forces and suffers from profound fault lines.
Though we may all slowly be turning Chinese, it is just as likely that we may be brought down by the collapse of the Chinese model, a concept built on wishful thinking, speculation and fantasy. We will know the outcome within the next decade or so. In the meantime, reading this book is good preparation for that.
Kerry Brown is an associate fellow of Chatham House London and author of The Rise of the Dragon: Chinese Investment Flows in the Reform Period (Chandos, 2008)."
Many scholars now agree that Edward Said was wrong when he touted what he (again wrongly) considered to be Eurocentric visions of the 'Orient' as an enduring by-product of colonialism, tainted by ignorant assumptions about what makes the Orient really 'Oriental'.
The point of view of the Other as the 'Anti-West', in opposition to Us as the 'West', is as myopic as the Islamist view of the 'West' as the infidel 'Anti-East' (to be fair, Said was not an Islamist).
Needless to say, Said's 'Orient' did not venture into India or the Far East. To him, the Orient was the Near East: in fact, Oriens was the name of the easternmost Praetorian Prefecture of the Late Roman Empire, encompassing all the Asian provinces.
The avoidance of the same Manichean fixation should be extended to views held of the Far East by the West and vice-versa. One must be neither 'self-centric' nor completely relativistic. A healthy dialectic towards mutual acceptance of the Other is the only rational course of action.
Christopher Hitchens is one my favourite public intellectuals and I just about agree with him on almost every single issue, one of the few exceptions being his favourable stance on the War in Iraq.
Here he discusses how Yale lost its backbone by refusing to republish some cartoons of a certain Prophet (remember?).
His words ring very true in the ongoing struggle against religion, ignorance and intolerance.
The image in the header is of the fresco Cicero in the Senate Accusing Catiline, painted in 1880 at the Palazzo Madama, in Rome, by Cesare Maccari, which depicts the famous orator denouncing Lucius Sergius Catilina as a traitor, for leading a major rebellion against the Republic in the year 63 BCE.
The Portuguese word catilinária still means, to this day, 'violent and/or eloquent accusation'.
The Romans erected their traditional code of conduct to the forefront of what constituted romanitas, or 'Romanness'.
The Republic, until its decline, expected compliance with core values such as dignity, authority, self-control, self-sacrifice, virtue, prestige, respect.
From such values derived a whole range of norms and guidelines on how one should behave socially. These made up the mos maiorum; literally, the 'customs of the ancestors', a kind of unwritten Confucian ritualistic handbook for the civilized West of Middle to Late Antiquity, during the epoch stretching from the Zhou to the Han Dynasties.
Of course, during Imperial times Roman values were gradually eroded until the arrival of Christianity accelerated the fall into barbarism. But that is a story for another day.
I have named this blog Mos Minorum, in a word play on the Latin expression above, to reflect my interest in discussing the mores of the descendants of the West, as they interact with the East. What metapersonal goals do freethinking people in today's globalized -- i.e. Westernized -- Asia, especially in Macau, aspire to? What values do they believe in or fight for?
It is high time for cynics like myself to eschew any misgivings about joining the free-for-all of cyberspace.
Arguments and values dear to me such as circumspection, low profile, avoidance of anonymous arenas, show-offs, pseudo-opinion-makers and other wanna-be personae, rejection of delusions of grandeur and attitudes of self-importance, and contempt for the futile, shallow, ridiculous or frivolous, are not being abandoned.
Rather, the point seems to be: if anyone can utter crap in public nowadays, why shouldn't I contribute with my own brand of bulls..t?
Jesting aside, I have been made aware that blogging can be, if taken intelligently, an interesting endeavour in communicative action in the public sphere, a way to establish a worthwhile exchange of ideas.
With your help, I hope to achieve a measure of 'elevated' discourse.
I will, from time to time, post a few notes on subjects which I deem to be mentionable, while striving to privilege topics of relevance to my hometown Macau.
In lieu of Portuguese, my mother tongue, I have decided to write in English as a means to reach out to a wider audience.
Please feel free to criticize anything that I post on my blog.
