Author: a24

Cat Country: How Story Mirrors Reality

In Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction, Nathaniel Isaacson discusses the emergence of Chinese science fiction in the early to mid 1900’s. He highlights many different Chinese science fiction stories, but one that especially stood out was City of Cats by Lao She, written in 1933.

The story follows that the narrator crashlands on Mars and finds a city run by cats in “Cat Country”.  The cats in Cat Country have a corrupt economic system, government, and education system, and everyone is addicted to the “reverie leaves”, which are drug-like leaves that are similar to opium. The narrator watches as the civilization falls into greater and greater disrepair, and tries to save it, but ultimately loses the civilization. An army of short people overruns Cat Country and kills all the cats. The narrator later leaves on a French ship back to earth, leaving Cat Country behind.

I found City of Cats more interesting than the other stories Isaacson covered, partially in its symbolism of China at the time by the author, and also from the simple dystopian plotline. In between the strangeness of cats on Mars, and armies of short people, the story boils down to a simple dystopia that reflected the anxieties of a person in China in the 1930s and can represent the anxieties of people around the world today.

There were many themes that were prevalent in Chinese science fiction in the early 1900s. Social collapse, colonial modernity, and the metaphor of the Iron House, popularized by Lu Xun–known as the father of Chinese science fiction– all came together in the anxieties of the writers of Chinese science fiction.  Lu Xun’s popular metaphor of the Iron House was a comparison of Chinese society to “an iron house: without windows or doors, utterly indestructible, and full of sound sleepers— all about to suffocate to death. Let them die in their sleep, and they will feel nothing. Is it right to cry out, to rouse the light sleepers among them, causing them inconsolable agony before they die?”1. This metaphor, along with the others above, is pertinent to the despairing society that cannot seem to bring themselves to shed their skins and work together to revive their society.

The parallels to Chinese society at the time, or at least what Lao She thought of Chinese society at the time are clear. As Isaacson so succinctly puts it “[t]hese observations lead to the diagnosis of social and institutional illness, and the prognosis is devastatingly bleak from the outset,”2. Lao She’s  “suffocating image of Chinese culture” is a human reaction to what he sees as China’s “own cultural decay and selfishness were to blame for the national plight” and is a stirring thought for those of us reading it ages later3.

The anxieties of any person at any time can be translated through writing and through time. City of Cats and the bizarre cats on Mars can be a warning to anyone about working as a community to do better, and can also be an interesting read for someone craving a story of cats on Mars.

  1. Isaacson, Nathaniel. Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017, p. 4 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 125 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 127 [↩]

Westernization of Buddhism: A New Denomination?

Throughout time and within the current of growing globality ideas, philosophies, morals, and religions have all been introduced, interpreted, and shared worldwide.  Notably, from the 1880s and 1890s until the early 1910s, there was a growing fascination with Buddhism in what is known as the West. Europeans and Americans who traveled to Asia brought back knowledge about Buddhism, among other religions. This knowledge about Buddhism began to grow both in the scholarship realm and the populous. Chapter Two of Thomas A. Tweed’s The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, “‘Shall We All Become Buddhists?’ the conversation and the converts, 1879-1912” covers this growing fascination with Buddhism and why it struck Westerners so much. Importantly, the chapter discusses how the Western interpretation of Buddhism led to converts to the religion in America especially, and if that Buddhism was really the same as the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Colonization may have opened the world up, but it also brought many challenges, one of which was the way that religions and their practices were interpreted. Buddhism, in the 1880s and 1890s, was brought to the West through Western scholars who would translate and read Buddhist texts, and then interpret them in their own Western mindset, a mindset that was heavily influenced by Christianity. There was very little conversation with Asian scholars of Buddhism, and thus this interpretation of the religion and philosophy led to a perhaps different Buddhism in the West than what was practiced in Asia.

Religion is something that is very important to many people who practice, and even those who do not. The importance of religion, thus, begs the question of whose ‘denomination’ or whose ‘interpretation’ of religion is the true one. Christianity has gone through many changes through that questioning, and interestingly enough, in the late 1800s and early 1900s in America, there was a similar line of questioning among Americans who were converting to Buddhists.

There were several Buddhists from Asia who immigrated, a “majority” of whom “were Chinese and Japanese living on the West Coast and in Hawaii”1. While there is not an exact number of practicing Buddhists at the time, there were twelve Pure Land Buddhist groups by 1906 along the West coast, and eight more by 19122. This slow growth of Buddhism correlated with the growth of Caucasian Americans who converted to Buddhism. Their Buddhism, however, “combined traditional Buddhist doctrines with beliefs derived from Western sources”3. This blend of Buddhism was informed mainly by the Western scholarship gathered about Buddhism that was not engaged in conversation with Asian scholarship on Buddhism and was heavily influenced by how Europeans viewed the world and their mainly Christian-centered ideals. Can this Buddhism be seen as part of the religion of Buddhism practiced in Asia or by Asian immigrants in America? As the text points out, “the Chinese transformed Indian Buddhism rather significantly”, however, some 19th-century writers questioned the authenticity of the Caucasian American Buddhists, saying they were “expressing, simplicity or explicitly, either competing personal religious convictions or naively self-assured notions about the true ‘essence’ of Buddhism”4.

There are many different ways to view such a complicated subject. On the one hand, there could be the view that most people in the late 1800s who converted to Buddhism “got it wrong, that only a handful were ‘real’ Buddhists” or that they “might have been driven more by love of the exotic or the quest for attention”5. However, the text also argues for self-definition- to trust the definition that each religious person chooses for themselves and that many of the Caucasian American Buddhist converts truly believed that they were Buddhist, even if it wasn’t the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Self-determination is a weighty trust to give, that probably should be given weight, however, does that change the religion, or make it a different denomination? One could argue, certainly, that it does. The globality of Buddhism in the 1880s-1910s certainly argues that westernization of religion was important and that religion, as always, is never simple.

  1. Tweed, Thomas A. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.  34 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 36 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 40 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p. 41 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p. 42 [↩]

Lesbian love in Chinese fiction in the 1920’s

The May Fourth movement in China changed many aspects of Chinese society, and during this time, writers, male and female, used this time to create space in fiction for female same sex love. Because of the lack of prevalence of female same-sex love in Chinese society at the time, female same-sex love or desire was seen, especially in the fiction written by women, in more subtle ways. Female same-sex love was also seen often by Chinese society as a temporary state for young women in same-sex schools. There were many stories of girls in schools having same-sex relationships, but the overarching theme of these stories were that the desire, love, or romantic or sexual feelings for each other would leave when they graduated school and got married. This view of female same-sex love as temporary shaped how lesbian fiction was written in the 1920’s and how different genders wrote about female same-sex love.

Female writers of female same-sex love in the May Fourth movement were more nuanced in their lesbian subtext than men, who wrote predominantly to show their fantasies of female same-sex love and to reassure themselves that it was temporary in order to keep their importance in the growing independent woman’s life. Lu Yin, a writer in the early 1900’s, wrote predominately about the spiritual, ideal and liberating love of female same-sex attachment, which surpassed cross-sex love and marriage1. Her short story “Lishi’s Diary” is a little more overt in its female same-sex love, with the character Lishi feeling more for her female friend Yuanqing than her male friend, Guisheng. She and Yuanqing plan to live together, but when Yuanqing is forced into a (heterosexual) marriage, she dies of melancholy2. Lu Yin also experienced female same-sex desire herself. When visiting Japan with her husband, she remarked on the communal baths. She was self conscious in being naked around other women, but when she finally looked around she “admired their bodies” as she prepared to leave the bath, and her “nerves were excited” on her way home3. Her rapture with the female body is suggestive of female same-sex love she may have felt in her life, in addition to her love of her husband.

On the contrary, female same-sex love fiction written by men was very different. They wrote “more explicitly about female-female physical behaviour” and their stories were seen more as fantasies of the male imagination of female-female eroticism. Yu Dafu, a writer in the early 1930’s, “deployed sexological characterisations” of female same-sex love to “metaphorically represent social disorder and national weakness”4.  His story about a “monstrous third-sexed woman” who seduced young school girls demonises female same-sex love and desire5.  Another writer, Zhang Yiping, writes about female same-sex love with the intention of, again, suggesting that it was simply a precursor to a heterosexual relationship. A woman confides in her boyfriend that she had a same-sex relationship when she was younger and that she had died, but it brought them closer together in the sharing of the memory6.

A notable cross section of the difference of female versus male written lesbian love, a female rewritten story of male written story becomes far more popular than the original. Two female students play Romeo and Juliet, fall in love, and then when one has to get married to a man, the other faints.  Ling Shuhua brings more animation to the “barren” version of Yang Zhensheng’s7. Yang attributes the affair to the “lack of a proper emotional outlet”, whereas Ling proves their love with true intimacy7.

The dismissal of female same-sex love as temporary in many ways in Chinese society in the 1920’s showed the inability for male dominated society to accept that their place in a woman’s life could be unimportant. With the changing world and the rising women’s independence movement in the 20’s there came the fear that men therefore had no place in an independent woman’s life. This is seen overtly and subtly through the constant critique that female same-sex love had to be temporary in order to reassure men of their place in the world.

  1. Sang, Tze-Lan D, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China  (Chicago, 2003), p. 133 [↩]
  2. ibid, p. 140 [↩]
  3. ibid, p. 146 [↩]
  4. ibid, p. 156 [↩]
  5. ibid, p. 153 [↩]
  6. ibid, p. 155 [↩]
  7. ibid, p. 149 [↩] [↩]

“Mr. Earnest”: Shifu and dedication to Anarchism

Liu Shifu grew up in a changing time in China’s history. He was born in the 1880’s and died of tuberculosis in 1915, but was still a major figure in the anarchist movement in China. There were many movements that were slowly forming in the time period of Liu Shifu, and his dedication to the movement helped shape it to continue after he was gone. The chapter The New Beginning: Shifu Launches the Conscience Society in the book Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism by Edward S. Krebs detailed the later years of Shifu when he gains importance in China, started the Conscience Society and a printing press owned by himself and his close friends and family, spread his message through China, and unfortunately died of tuberculosis before his work is done. Shifu was astoundingly dedicated to his values of anarchism that he writes in 1912 with his close group of friends and colleagues, and they guided how he taught and lived anarchism for the three chaotic and jam packed years of his life before he died.

In 1912, Shifu and his close compatriots convened for the spring and summer, during which Shifu created a list of twelve points that were “essential” to his personal brand of anarchism.1 The twelve points were abstinence from meat, liquor, tobacco, servants, riding in sedan chairs or rickshaws, marriage, use of the family name, serving as an official, a member of a representative body, a political party, the army or navy, and religion.1 For the rest of his life, he committed himself to these values. While his colleagues would ride rickshaws to a block before their office where they printed their paper and taught about anarchism, and then walk the last block, Shifu would walk every day back and forth.2 When his doctor suggested that he eat meat in order to help his ailing health that turned into tuberculosis that killed him in 1915, he refused because of his promise to never eat meat, as it was seen as upholding the labor structure of the corrupt government. His values above everything else earned him the nickname of “Mr. Earnest” by his fellows, and was mainly a good way to describe Shifu in his quest for anarchism.2

There are many things that can be said about Shifu’s dedication to the cause of anarchism and his commitment to his values, however, there are places within his life where he seemed to be hypocritical in his values. Shifu’s continued closeness to his siblings and employment of them when printing the Cock-Crow Record in in the face of one of his 12 points, do not use a family name. His belief that family should not be especially important in an individuals life is forgotten when it came to his own siblings and their prominence in his employment of them. One of his sisters married one of his friends who was also intimately involved with his cause. His fathers support and familial monetary funds that went into his printing press also showed his blindness towards his values. “Did he fail to see the irony in this situation?” the text asked, voicing the question that I also had when thinking of his title as “Mr. Earnest”.3 Additionally, Shifu’s partner, Ding Xiangtian, felt no support or affection from Shifu when she was pregnant with their daughter in 1912.2 After she was born, he refused to create a public nursery to raise his child in.4  To him it was compromising his values, but in doing so, he was leaving his child to no education or support from her father.

While Shifu was determined to stay true to his values of anarchism and the twelve points that were made by the group in 1912, Mr. Earnest may have strayed from being totally earnest in his dedication to anarchism.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 102. [↩] [↩]
  2. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 115. [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 108, 115. [↩]
  4. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp.116. [↩]