Alternative lifestyles in old China were not necessarily always a closeted affair.
Admit it. When you look at old photographs and portraits from the past, you think the subjects were nothing like you. They had no cars, no Net, and funny hairdos. Tradition-bound, their souls stagnated in a dark world yet to be enlightened by Queen Oprah. Thank goodness for social progress!
Ah, 1976, a simpler time. Who amongst you has the fullness of years to remember it? Hair was feathered and bottoms were belled. Barry Manilow was singing about writing the songs that made the world sing. Rocky was inspiring the autistic underdog in all of us, while Mother, Juggs & and Speedgave us race-related fodder for thought.
Everything in China was hunky-dory, too. I know. I picked up a copy of “China Pictorial 1976” that says so. Here ya go. You’re welcome.
What is the greatest gift you could hope for? Poor people wish for riches; rich people wish for love. People with understanding wish for enlightenment, the power to live each moment with wonder, free from judgment and fear. This is the story of how Huineng found enlightenment, and left a legacy whereby any can have it, without a lifetime of study and seclusion.
Remember when fighting piracy meant bending over backwards to make sure the Chinese had to pay $29.99 for a Zoolander DVD? Somali gentlemen of fortune are reminding us that real pirates hold weapons, not camcorders, and put lives at risk, not movie revenue projections. To the rescue, a posse including two Chinese navy destroyers.
China has a much larger stake in fighting these pirates than protecting the sacrosanct coffers of Hollywood. More than 100 ships have been attacked this year in shipping lanes off the coast of East Africa, seven of them Chinese-owned. Not that Chinese sailors are completely helpless without military assistance. Last week the brave crew of the Zhenghua 4 used beer bottles and a home-made water cannon to fight marauders to a standstill. A warship and two helicopters later chased the brigands off.
At the risk of sounding glib, Chinese sailors have faced greater dangers than a speedboat full of desperados wielding third-hand side arms. Any warship within five kilometers can turn a boat-load of pirates into fish food with the press of a button. Matters weren't nearly so disproportionate in the Ming Dynasty, when Japanese pirates harried the East China coast as cruelly as Norsemen.
Known as Wokou, Japanese pirates were menacing the East China Sea during the Yuan Dynasty, although a bigger threat at the time to the kingdom of Goryeo on the Korean Peninsula. The first raid on Chinese territory came in 1302, but the Wokou turned particularly rapacious between 1358 and 1363, taking advantage of China's political instability. Merchant ships plying even the South China Sea faced the threat of pirate attack, and Wokou were not above raiding a defenseless port or two for easy plunder.
Official history usually promotes a theme, rather than understanding. Regarding the history of opium in China, the official line is correct, but by no means thorough. Yes, England bankrolled its empire-building on the sale of opium to China. Resistance culminated in 1839, when Emperor Daoguang dispatched an official to hold a Boston Tea Party, dumping 20,000 chests of the drug overboard. England concluded the resulting Opium War in possession of Hong Kong and treaty-ports in what today are Mainland China's great coastal cities. China was left facing a century of humiliation, a period that colors its people's attitudes and foreign policy to this day.
But that's all social studies. Any expat with an ear for the past has heard of the rampant drug abuse in China during its subjugation, particularly as part of the excesses of pre-WWII Shanghai. And only the uneducated or incurious (usually the same people) swallow whole the theory that millions of people could succumb to drug addiction solely through the avaricious scheming of a foreign agent.
Unsurprisingly, China's relationship with opium is older than its relationship with Great Britain. The following is no apologia for England's drug-foisting on China, only a brief survey meant to fill in some of the many blank spaces left by official stories.
Well, it's official; the Shaolin Temple is officially corporate. I was hoping this could be an all-hands meeting, but we're time poor today, so I'll have to go offline with the hermits who couldn't be here. There's a major disconnect that we all have to action if we're going to go forward. Our core competency is no longer spiritual devotion. We deliver integrated kung fu solutions.
From the deafening silence department: a pagoda recently unearthed in Nanjing has been identified as one that could well contain fragments of Buddha's skull. Obama and Somali pirates currently enjoy a higher Q rating than the Enlightened One, but a hundred years from now, he'll still be giving lives meaning, while high school students struggle to remember whether Barack Hussein was the American president or the deposed Iraqi dictator. Regardless, the discovery failed to grab any large-font print.
No headlines for Buddha's head only confirms his message, anyway: we create our own misery, with ego-gratifying distractions. Long ago an Indian king got the message so loud and clear that he clicked from textbook tyrant to benevolent ruler. Like Jesus' Paul, from conversion on he spent the rest of his life promoting the faith, the first monarch to do so. Nanjing's pagoda was his gift, one of 84,000 he sent across Southeast Asia. Tirelessly campaigning for moral, spiritual, and social renewal, he transformed Buddhism from a modest Indian sect to Asia's dominant cultural influence. Such is the legacy of King Asoka.
Observe, please, the gentleman on the right side of the above picture. Although he stands in the Forbidden City, the nexus of Chinese imperial majesty, there is no mistaking the expression on his face. It is one of disappointment. Despite the towering blood-red ramparts, the diverse historical treasures, and the profusion of goofy-looking foreigners to stare at, he feels let down.
How can this be? And he's not the only one looking less than enthralled. His cohort on the left of the picture wears an air of defeat, and the young lady by the brim of his jaunty cap may as well be sitting on a bus.
How has this World Heritage site failed to inspire them? Every effort has been made to accommodate the ahistorical tourist: modern toilets, sugary snacks, knick-knack shops, even a Starbucks, since closed by overwhelming consensus. To understand the blasé reaction to such undeniably exotic splendor, please observe the picture below:
On December 23rd, 1915, the dawn of the winter solstice, Yuan Shikai arrived at the Temple of Heaven in an armored car. Carried into the building on an imperial sedan chair, he donned the sacred robes of an emperor performing a sacrifice, and prayed that Heaven show mercy to his people.
Had Yuan been a legitimate Emperor, the ceremony might have met with approval. However, Yuan was the President of the new and besieged Chinese Republic. As such, the ritual proved Yuan's imperial aspirations, and his betrayal of the hopes that so many Chinese had fought and died for. Yuan's subsequent move to have himself enthroned catalyzed the breakdown of an already tenuous government, and ushered in the dark Era of Warlords. His story embodies China's agonizing transition from ancient to modern precepts of authority.
Even in these globetrotting times, getting from Shanghai to the Gobi Desert is seen as an arduous haul. Now imagine getting there from Rome, on foot, more than two thousand years ago. As unlikely as it seems, such a migration is the most plausible explanation yet for the fair hair and eyes of Gansu's Zhelaizhai villagers. We didn't say airtight, mind you, but plausible.
True or not, it makes a heck of a story, Chinese villagers genetically linked to Roman soldiers. So does the body of evidence. You be the judge.
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