Response to Deng's Crackdown

After reading two articles regarding Deng's response to the Tiananmen Square Protests, one from the Financial Times and the other an interview of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, my opinions regarding the massacre were not the same. Initially after watching the documentary Tank Man, I was shocked by how violently Deng reacted to the protesters. The documentary made it seem like the government was completely overreacting and that there was no need for violence. The articles however, made me slightly more sympathetic towards Deng. After reading the interview, I realized that for China "there is no alternative to strong central power". The nation is so vast and contrasting, a strong central government is needed to keep control. They need to keep an image of power and stability, so they decided to "flex their muscle" by reacting to the protesters with violence. I agree with the fact that they need to show whose in control, but outright murdering thousands of protesters, many of them students, was way too extreme.

To Live Part Two

After the death of Youqing, To Live jumps another decade into the future, where China is undergoing Mao's Cultural Revolution. We really see how paranoid the people have become of not upsetting Mao, claiming anything suspicious to be counter-revolutionary. Fugui's shadow puppets are supposed to be burned because they represent the culture of Old China; shadow puppets are considered dangerous! The Chinese made sure nothing they thought could cause any harm to Communist China was left unchecked. I was shocked how thorough the Chinese communists were; it was obvious that Mao held the respect of the people. We also know that the Communists are cracking down on any remaining capitalists, another part of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Fugui's old friend Chungseng is charged with being a capitalists, and a threat to the People's Republic of China. It is clear that anything or anyone that might dispute Mao's ideas will be destroyed or killed, making sure that Mao remains in power. However, at the end of the film, we see evidence of how much damage the Cultural Revolution is causing. When Fugui's daughter is so supposed to give birth, all of the doctor's at the hospital have been taken away as they have been accused of being reactionary. When Fugui's daughter's start severely bleeding, the students that are now in charge of the hospital have no idea what to do. Had a doctor been there to help, the mother could have easily been saved. This is a perfect example of how much damage the Cultural Revolution did to Chinese society. One thing that I found interesting online about the movie was when the doctor that was brought to help Fugui's daughter eats to many buns and can't help with the birth. It said that each of the seven buns grew to the size of sevens when he drank water, so it was like he had 49 buns in his stomach. 1949 was the year the People's Republic of China was formed, so its quite interesting that the director or writer was able to sneak that bit of trivia into the movie.

To Live Part One

The Chinese film To Live centers on a family during Mao’s transition into power. The story tells the family’s personal story whilst intertwining aspects of the events at the time. The earlier parts of the film show the Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists. Fugui, while traveling as a puppeteer, is forced to fight for the Nationalists. They are then captured by Communists and become entertainers for the soldiers. He is eventually able to return home, where he is reunited with his family. When they return, we see the reform against the rich, with the wealthy Long’er being pressured into giving up his belongings for the People’s government. He refuses and is declared a reactionary. The story then jumps ten years into the future, during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. We see evidence of the national drive for the steel industry, with the family being forced to donate all of their steel. Fugui’s wife asks how they’ll be able to cook without any of their metal pots. They are then informed of the communal cafeteria. They eat together as a town, rather than as a family.  The people don’t cook their own food, but rather they have people cook food for the entire community.

Themes of the Ming and Qing

            I found the Fourth Wave to be very interesting. It is the start of modern China, and the two dynasties (Ming and Qing) were two of the most important dynasties in help shaping the face of the China that we know today. Throughout the Wave, we can see themes that continue on throughout most of the almost 600 years of the Qing and Ming. Two themes that I found to be both prevalent were those of foreign policy (China's interaction with Europe) and religion (introduction of Christianity).

             The Ming Dynasty is the first real dealings with Westerners. Ever since the two hemispheres started trading with one another, the Chinese had called them "sea barbarians", which really shows their opinion of the Europeans. Having seen how Westerners spread religion and develop trade by wiping out entire villages during the Age of Exploration, the Chinese saw the Westerners generally as lower beings that they didn't see as a threat. After Zheng He's voyages, the Chinese didn't have any major reaction with the West until the Rites controversy, which I'll talk about in the next paragraph. This incident really cast a negative light on the West, and the Chinese didn't really enjoy dealing with the Westerner's brutality. So during the Macartney Mission in the late 1700s when the Chinese were asked to open up trade, the Chinese respectfully declined. This refusal of British demands is important, as it shows that up to this point China still had power of the Europeans in the West and the West could not do anything about it. China still had the tribute system, and they believed they Westerners were like vassal states who needed to pay respect to the Middle Kingdom. A prime example of this would be the Canton policy, where the Chinese had complete control over whom Western merchants traded and where. However, this all changed during the Opium War. After the Chinese banned the sale and even use of Opium, Britain reacted very differently to China's defiance. Rather than accepting China's decision, like they had during Macartney, they got very aggressive, bombing ports and towns all up and down the East Coast, and even into the Yellow River. China was no match for Britain's weapons, and thus started the beginning of foreign dominance in China. After both Opium Wars, China lost more and more control over the foreigners in China, with things such as extraterritoriality (exempt from Chinese law) and gunboat diplomacy (using military might to get their way) developed. Until the Second Unified Front halfway into the 20th century, the "foreign devils" would always have power over the Chinese.

       Another thing the foreign devils affected greatly was religion in China. Ever since foreign religion had come to China, the Chinese were infamous for their tolerance. There were accounts that in a single city, there would be places of worship for 8 different religions. We wouldn't see acceptance like this in Europe well into the 20th century. As Christianity had already been introduced to China, the Jesuit missionaries were first welcomed when the came to China. Mateo Ricci, probably the most important Jesuit, gained the respect of the Chinese as he had learned about their culture before trying to spread his religion. Other missionaries, however, were not as civilized, which ended up sparking the Rites Controversy. The Chinese couldn't believe that foreigners would come to their land and explain to them that they couldn't practice rituals, such as praying to ancestors, which had been part of their culture for thousands of years, just because the Pope believed it to be heretical. The Chinese just couldn't comprehend why the Chinese should listen to some religious leader thousands of miles away, who hadn't even been to China. However, after Europeans began dominating the Chinese, they no longer had any say in how religion was treated in their own country. One interesting thing that I noticed during this unit was how much violence religion can create. During the Taiping rebellion, Hong Xiuquan convinced his followers that he was the brother of Jesus. Using this to rally support, Xiuquan started one of the most violent military campaigns in history, with over 30million people killed. The Crusades 800 years ago used religion to justify violence, as do the Israelis and Palestinians today in the Middle East. I think that if everyone was as accepting as the Chinese once were, we would live in a much better world.

Top Five Most Interesting Things about the Third Wave

5. Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, or SSBG, was a group of Chinese scholars, writers, and musicians that came together to drink wine and write poetry. They were a very unique group of people, really similar to the hippies of the 1960s. Both what they wrote and the Sages themselves are very interesting. I found the story of the SSBG’s drinking game involving writing poetry and passing wine down a river to be almost too peculiar to be real. A story about how the different sages came to be and how they met each other would be really appealing. However, I found their work to be a tad boring, so I’d like to focus on the characters themselves rather than what they wrote.

4. Buddhism
I’m much more interested in the spread of Buddhism to China than the actual beginnings of the religion. I found the legend on how Buddhism was first started to be very confusing, so I’d like to write a story that is about a different part of the religion. I was fascinated by the fact that loads of different religions such as Christianity were found in the capital of Chang’An. It’s quite impressive how open the Chinese were at the time. I think a story about a Indian or Tibetan Buddhists traveling to China could be both informative and interesting. It would also be a perfect example to show the similarities and differences between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.

3. Martial Arts
This is a topic that most guys will find interesting. Everyone has seen or heard about the intense meditating that monks do that allow them to accomplish near inhuman feats, such as breaking bricks with their heads or even lowering their body temperature  . The fact that a type of fighting could be considered an art shows a lot about the Chinese. Like calligraphy, the Chinese take much more thought into things that most Westerners think nothing about. Also, there are so many movies that explore almost every aspect of the art that it would be hard not to find one part that is not interesting.


2. Chang’An
Chang’An was the capital of Ancient China during the Tang Dynasty, and was the capital of more than ten dynasties. Chang’An still exists to this day, though it is known as Xi’an. Chang’an was one of the biggest cities of its time, supposedly having a million inhabitants in 750AD. What is great about Chang’An is that we can learn so much about Chinese culture at the time, as metropolitan areas are usually the home of culture. There are records on fashion, art, religion, sport; so much can be discovered about the Chinese by learning about Chang’An. I would really like to write a fictional story that would show some part of the culture. Like for example, write a story about an athlete struggling to survive in the city that would show how sport affected the people of China at the time. I actually just visited Xi’an over break, and feel like actually being there could make writing a screenplay much easier and realistic.


1. The Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms was caused when three different Han generals, sent to 3 different parts of China to subdue the Yellow Turban extremists, each believed that the current emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven and believed that they were the most fit to become the new emperor. China split up into the empires of Wu, Shu, and Wei. This period, lasting from 220AD to 280AD, is one of the bloodiest periods in Chinese history. I'm really interested in this topic as it is really relevant to my project goal of a screenplay. There have been hundreds of operas, folk stories, novels, films, television series, and even video games about the Three Kingdoms, meaning I have a lot of different sources that I could base my screenplay off. In fact, one of China’s biggest blockbusters, Red Cliff, was based off the Battle of Red Cliff in 208AD. A screenplay was based off one battle alone during an 80 year period, so there is definitely enough material to write a good, informative, screenplay.