Monthly Archives: March 2004

by | 19 March 2004 · 10:16 pm

The Legacy of the 2-28 Incident in Taiwan

Ian Buruma’s chapter on Taiwan describes his trip to the 2-28 Museum.

As told in the museum, the story of Taiwan, including the 2-28 Incident [see below], is as formulaic in its way as the old KMT [Kuomintang] myth of Nationalist martyrdom. A short historical overview explains how the Taiwanese–that is to say the Chinese who arrived in Taiwan three centuries ago–were always oppressed by foreign conquerors: first the Dutch, then the Portuguese, the Japanese, and finally the KMT mainlanders. This, one is told, fostered a unique love of freedom and a rebellious spirit. But the story had a typically Taiwanese post-colonial twist. Hindsight has given Taiwanese a rosier view of Japanese rule, which, though harsh, also brought many benefits, such as universities, science, railways, and electrification. The KMT, on the other hand, brought only violence, poverty, and corruption. The loathing of aliens that once bound Han Chinese together against the Manchu invaders is replicated in the Taiwanese hatred of mainland Chinese.

The story of 2-28 itself, as described in books, comics, videotapes, photographs, prints, posters, and textbooks, invariably goes like this: On February 27 agents of the Monopoly Bureau, who were little more than mobsters on the government payroll, assaulted an old lady who was peddling cigarettes in Taipei. One of the agents beat her over the head with his pistol. Crowds gathered to protest. The agents, panicking perhaps, began to shoot and killed one of the demonstrators. More people were gunned down the next day, with internationally outlawed dumdum bullets, which rip the body open. The rebellion spread all over the island. Radio stations and government offices were taken over. People suspected of being mainlanders, in or out of uniform, were attacked and sometimes clubbed to death with sticks.

In 1947, Taiwan was a province of China, which was still ruled by the KMT. A meeting was convened between Chen Yi, the KMT provincial governor, a brute with Shanghai gangster connections, and members of the Taiwanese elite. Civil liberties were promised in exchange for a return to law and order. But as soon as more KMT troops arrived from China, the “white terror” began: Martial law was declared and mass arrests, torture, rapes, disappearances, and executions followed. Within about two months, much of the native Taiwanese intelligentsia was wiped out. Many people were so badly tortured that they had to be carried to the execution grounds. Eventually, after he had lost the civil war in China and retreated to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek made a gesture to appease outraged Taiwanese feelings: In 1950, after a splendid fireworks display, Chiang’s old friend Chen Yi was executed for being a “traitor.”

SOURCE: Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, by Ian Buruma (Vintage, 2001), pp. 178-179

Leave a comment

Filed under China

by | 19 March 2004 · 9:57 pm

Kim Jong Il: Comic Book Hero

The March 19 edition of Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) carried a story from VOA News that begins thus:

Comic Books on N. Korean Leader a Big Hit in Japan

A series of comic books that portray North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as an evil despot are selling briskly in Japan. The books’ author says he hopes to educate the Japanese public about Mr. Kim and his reclusive Stalinist state, but critics say the books are deeply biased.

North Korea is frequently in the Japanese headlines because of the dispute over its nuclear-weapons program. But many Japanese are getting their information about the isolated North and its leader, Kim Jong Il from a novel source – a pair of comic books.

Combined the two comics: Introduction to Kim Jong Il: The Truth about the North Korean General and The Shogun’s Nightmare – have sold more than 700,000 copies.

Through cartoons, the books relate the history of Mr. Kim, including his relationship with his late father, Kim Il Sung, who was North Korea’s first leader.

The second book also looks at the situation of North Koreans who flee to northern China to escape oppression and poverty at home. In addition, it looks more deeply at the Stalinist North’s drive to build nuclear weapons and predicts the downfall of Kim Jong Il.

via NKZone

1 Comment

Filed under Korea

by | 19 March 2004 · 9:43 pm

Medieval al-Maghreb and al-Murabitun and al-Muwahhidun in al-Andalus

Lee Smith’s backgrounder on Spain in Slate elaborates on al-Andalus mentioned in an earlier post.

The Arabic name for Morocco is al-Maghreb, the place where the sun set on the westernmost limit of the 8th-century Arab empire.

The Arabs conquered the Berbers, a general term encompassing numerous tribes throughout western North Africa, whose warrior ethos they put to good use. It was a largely Berber army, led by a Berber general, that conquered Spain in 711. The Berbers were, by and large, enthusiastic converts to Islam, perhaps a little too fervent for some of the ruling Arab elite. Unlike the Arabs, who fought just for plunder, the Berbers believed that they waged war to glorify Islam.

… when al-Qaida lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri referred to “the tragedy of al-Andalus,” he wasn’t pining for what the Spanish call the “convivencia,” when Muslims, Christians, and Jews all lived together in relative harmony. That picture of Muslim Spain is undoubtedly a little over-gilded, but it’s good that the myth of al-Andalus continues to fund the world’s imagination. Without the legend of peaceful co-existence, a city like New York–where Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others get along handsomely–would’ve been much more difficult to conceive.

At any rate, there was trouble in al-Andalus long before Ferdinand and Isabella banished the Muslims and the Jews in 1492. Two of the more serious challenges came from Morocco in the late 11th and then 12th century, first the Almoravids and then the Almohads, both of them Berber dynasties and Muslim fundamentalists.

Almoravid is a Hispanicized version of the Arabic word “al-Murabitun,” or “those of the military encampment.” As Richard Fletcher writes in Moorish Spain, the Almoravids “saw their role as one of purifying religious observance by the re-imposition where necessary of the strictest canons of Islamic orthodoxy.” They came to redeem a weakened Muslim state against the Christians. Once the Almoravids got soft, the Almohads, still more theologically austere, came north to replace them. Almohad is a corruption of “al-Muwahhidun,” or “those who profess the oneness of God.” It is an Arabic word still in usage; in fact it is the other polite way [like Salafi] to say Wahabbi.

via Michael J. Totten

Leave a comment

Filed under Africa, religion, Spain

by | 18 March 2004 · 8:39 pm

Asashoryu Improves to 5-0

OSAKA (AP) Grand champion Asashoryu posted a hard-fought win over Kyokutenho on Thursday to improve to 5-0, while the ozeki duo of Kaio and Chiyotaikai kept pace with solid wins at the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament.

In his toughest bout so far, Asashoryu took on fellow Mongolian Kyokutenho in the final bout at Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. After a prolonged standoff, Asashoryu eventually prevailed when he twisted his opponent down at the center of the ring.

The burly Mongolian remains tied for the lead with Kaio, Chiyotaikai and lower-ranked wrestlers [Georgian] Kokkai [‘Black Sea’] and [Mongolian] Asasekiryu.

Leave a comment

Filed under sumo

by | 18 March 2004 · 8:31 pm

Morobe Field Diary, August 1976: A Visit to Gitua

Dear Residents,

I have a mind to visit you and compare villages, notes, and diseases before heading for Mosbi. G. wrote and said you were thinking of a panel discussion for us three [fieldworkers] on our language work. I’m a little uncertain how it would work….

The visit might be around the end of the month, after which I’ll head back thru Lae, pick up my materials and get set for Mosbi by the 16th.

The doldrums have hit my fieldwork and a fever has laid me low the past couple of days. Everyone in the village is getting it. It doesn’t seem bad enough to be malaria but it’s no fun.

The [M.V.] Sago goes to town tomorrow. Fishing has been terrible lately. [The 48-hour vivax malaria hit hard shortly after the boat left the next day, so I took a treatment dose of chloroquine but had to wait a week before getting into town.]

Let me know if your plans make mine possible. Did J. pay you a visit?

Tako [‘okay, enough’ = Tok Pisin em tasol]

[Later]

Just got back from a trip to P.’s village. It’s a bloody resort. In fact, only 10 miles down the coast there is a resort (at Sialum) where Europeans come for a weekend from time to time. The beaches are sandy, there’s no jungle, not too much rain, beautiful coral reefs offshore, wide, clear, cold rivers nearby, an airstrip–everything great for a resort but detrimental to easy livelihood for the village dwellers. The flat stony ground can’t be near as fertile as the bushy slopes of Siboma; the reefs hinder access to the ocean by canoe (and there are indeed few canoes in Gitua); coconuts are the only likely cash crop; and the place is so windy (from lack of forest or ground contour windbreaks) that small gardens are frequently protected by [manmade] windbreaks. But there is plenty of room to walk about so you don’t get the feeling of ‘living at the bottom of a well’ (P.’s phrase) as you do in Siboma.

The geology is spectacular. The village is on the north coast and the coastline is terraced from the collision of the Australian plate with the one to its north. It makes the ground very rocky and full of limestone (which may make the rivers so blue) instead of volcanic soil as most of the coastline is (when it is not swamp). This collision is what causes the numerous minor tremors that occur all along the north coast and the periodic large ones as a recent one in West Irian near Djayapura.

P.’s language is unbelievable. Its lexicon is practically Proto-Oceanic itself with very few sound changes. A. picked Siboma for its conservativeness but Gitua outdoes it. P. wants to surprise A. with it when he goes through Auckland on the way back.

J.S. & I flew out there in a 9-passenger, twin-engine plane as far as Sialum and then transferred to a 4-seat, single-engine for the 10 mi hop to Gitua. We flew along the marshy coast on the southern side of the Huon Peninsula at about 2-3000 ft, turned inland and climbed to 7000 to go over the mountain-tops (10,000 ft on the way back to get over clouds as well), then descended fairly quickly when we came out on the north coast.

We brought taste treats to the [fieldworker family] like salami, steaks, fresh vegetables, bread & cheese & butter and beer. They were overjoyed. We also took betel nut, pepper catkins & lime. I was made much of when I chewed and complimented on my Tok Pisin by people in the village.

Leave a comment

Filed under malaria, Papua New Guinea

by | 17 March 2004 · 9:42 pm

"It often takes a lack of education to be able to express things clearly"

Ian Buruma was visiting the island of Hainan in China in May 1998 when news arrived that General Suharto had been forced to step down as leader of Indonesia, partly as a result of massive student demonstrations.

“This is very important news for all Asian people,” said the keen young reporter for a local paper in Hainan. He was greatly excited, unusual in China when it comes to foreign news. We were sitting at the editorial office of a literary magazine. Most of the editors were there, as were some of the main writers. A young secretary passed around paper plates containing bananas and grapes. I was asked for my “foreign” view.

I could only repeat what I had read in the papers in Hong Kong. I said the Indonesian students had been inspired by the example of Tiananmen. This was received with nervous looks and polite laughter. One or two people scraped the floor with their feet. What did I think of the possibility of democratic change in China? It was not a question I relished, for I did not like to hold forth, in my imperfect Chinese, to people who knew the problems of their country better than I ever would. Still, I had to say something. So I said I saw no reason why Chinese could not handle a democracy if the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Taiwanese, the Japanese, and now, one hoped, the Indonesians could.

The usual discussion–usual among Chinese intellectuals, that is–about the peculiarities of Chinese culture ensued. It would take a long time for democracy to develop in China. China was too big. China was too poor. China was too complicated. Chinese history was too long. Chinese people needed to be more educated. They had little idea of democratic rights. If democracy came too suddenly, there might be chaos. And so on. The keen young reporter then asked me whether I could comment on a particularly “sensitive topic.” What about June 4, 1989, the Beijing Massacre? But one of the editors, the most senior person in the room, swiftly intervened, pointing out that I was a “distinguished foreign guest,” who had traveled far, so perhaps I could offer them some insights into the wider world outside China.

Later that same day, I went out on my own for a snack. Opposite my hotel was a half-finished concrete shell of a building. Much of Haikou, the main city of Hainan, was like that. The building boom of the early 1990s had come to a sudden halt, victim of the Asian financial crisis. Parts of Haikou looked as though they had been bombed. A kitchen had been improvised in one of the rooms of the half-finished building. Next door a jerry-built “beauty parlor” was a front for a brothel. A young man, his shirtless back shiny with sweat, was tossing noodles about in a large pot. After some diffidence, he wiped his hands on his trousers and came over for a chat. We were joined by two of his friends and a girl in a filmy evening gown, who worked at another “beauty parlor.” They stared at me and said nothing.

The cook had come down from a village in Sichuan with his sister, who was helping him run the food stall. But he was in debt to the businessman who paid his wages. That was the trouble with the economic reforms, he said. The rich bosses now controlled everything. I nodded, and slowly ate my noodles with garlic and squid. The chef then shifted in his seat and emptied his nose, by first blocking one nostril and snorting in a short, sharp burst, then repeating the procedure with the other nostril. His manners were far from elegant. But he was no fool. “You know,” he suddenly said, “in your country the individual has the right to control his own life. Not here in China. Everything is controlled from above. The Communist Party has complete power. That is why we have no rights here.”

The intellectuals at the literary magazine might well have shared the cook’s view. In fact, some almost certainly did. But one of the oddities in contemporary China is that it often takes a lack of education to be able to express things clearly. Or, to put it differently, it is those who live near the bottom of society who feel the lack of individual rights most keenly. That is why they generally get to the point more quickly.

SOURCE: Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, by Ian Buruma (Vintage, 2001), pp. 232-233

Leave a comment

Filed under China, Indonesia

by | 17 March 2004 · 8:12 pm

Initiatives by Moderate Muslims in Indonesia

The East-West Wire of Honolulu’s East-West Center ran the following story last week while I was away.

MODERATE MUSLIMS IN INDONESIA USE IRAQ WAR PROTESTS, CIVIC EDUCATION TO UNDERCUT SUPPORT FOR ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS

HONOLULU (March 10) — Muslim moderates in Indonesia prevented Islamic extremists from using the Iraq war to gain support by focusing anti-war rallies on peace, a leading U.S. scholar of Islam and civil society said Tuesday at an East-West Center program. They have also helped contain extremism by initiating civic education in Muslim universities.

By organizing mass anti-war rallies like those seen in the United States in the 1960s, moderates “seized the (Iraq) issue from the extremists,” said Robert Hefner, an anthology professor and associate director of Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs. “Iraq, to my astonishment, had little impact. The moderates reasserted themselves.”

Hefner just returned from Indonesia, where he examined communications between the United States and Islamic communities. Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the Bali bombing, moderate Muslims have mobilized radio programming and other networks to help Indonesians understand issues that might be used by extremists and terrorists to build support, he said.

“The moderate Muslims know there is a crisis, a struggle for hearts and souls, and they are looking for political and cultural tools to combat extremism,” he said.

After the Suharto regime collapsed in 1998, the moderates initiated the largest civic education program in Asia and in all the Muslim world. The course is required at all Muslim universities, reaching 18 percent of the country’s university students, and is funded by the United States through the Asia Foundation and by other international governments and agencies. Muslim educators have also started introducing the course into the upper grades at pesantren, Indonesia’s religious schools.

The course, using textbooks written at Muslim universities, looks at how democracy, plurality and human rights are compatible and vital components of Islam. Classes have triggered much student interest, Hefner said.

Hefner noted that Indonesians take great interest in the political process — 93 percent of voters cast ballots in the 1999 elections and a high turnout is expected at this year’s elections as well.

Such efforts are indeed praiseworthy, but this report, like so many purely academic reports, seems utterly to ignore how ineffective the moderates were in preventing the horrendous outbreaks of violence throughout the country–from Aceh to Maluku to East Timor to West Papua–much of it stoked by the brutal Indonesian military and inflamed by well-armed, hardcore extremists from the Laskar Jihad, which reached a crescendo in 1999-2000, well before the Iraq invasion, before 11 September 2001, and even before the U.S. presidential election in 2000.

The Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) needs all the support we can give it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Indonesia

by | 16 March 2004 · 8:56 pm

The Vanishing Breed of Transylvanian German Writers

On 11 February 2004, the Culture section (premium content by subscription only) of Transitions Online carried a feature by Anca Paduraru of Deutsche Welle Radio’s English service about a Transylvanian German writer who has stayed in Romania.

BUCHAREST, Romania–“The commotion of summer 1990 inspired me. Then, ethnic Germans left Romania for Germany in droves, and I was left on the railway station platform helpless and perplexed to witness it.”

Eginald Schlattner, 70, is talking about the experience that prompted him to write two novels in his retirement, bringing him success in the German-speaking world and both recognition and notoriety in his native Romania.

The fall of communism produced at least one unhappy result in Romania: After some 800 years of living together with Romanians and other nationalities in this East European country, ethnic Germans began returning to their ancestral homes.

Statistics tell the story. In the last communist-era census, taken in 1977, 350,000 Germans were recorded in Romania. By 1992, their population had dropped by two-thirds. By 2002, it stood at 60,000–just 0.3 percent of the country’s 22 million people.

“It was indeed an exodus lethalis [deadly exodus], this final exit of Germans from Romania, which produced the last twitches we see in Schlattner’s books,” says George Gutu, a professor of German literature at the University of Bucharest.

Helping Schlattner’s success was the controversy surrounding the subject matter of his novels and his alleged part in sending five of his fellow Romanian-Germans to communist prisons.

Schlattner’s authorial debut, five years ago when he was 65, was Der gekoepfte Hahn (The Beheaded Rooster). His second book, Rote Handschuhe (Red Gloves), came out two years later. They have been reprinted several times and reached the best-seller lists of German-language books. The Beheaded Rooster appeared in Romanian translation in 2001, and Red Gloves is being readied for publication in Romania.

Schlattner says his first book “looks at only one day in our history to describe the situation of the Saxons [Germans] here and their pledge to Hitler.” That day was 23 August 1944, when Romania switched camps to join the Allies.

The second novel, which Schlattner says is autobiographical, “shows the two years of my imprisonment in Stalin City [Brasov]. In this one, I put all my cards on the table and explained what happened during those never-ending police interrogations. I was very tough on myself.” …

LOST LANGUAGE

… Germans in Romania lived in a context that allowed them to preserve their identity, Schlattner says. “As I told [German Interior Minister] Otto Schily, … Romania never forbade us from speaking our language, not even during the last eight months of the war it fought against Germany. So much so that at 12, my only Romanian words were, ‘I don’t know Romanian.’ ”

Schlattner’s praise of Romania for its ongoing publication of ABC books in 12 languages for the minorities within its borders does little to assuage Gutu, who is also head of the association of professors of German literature in Romania. While Gutu acknowledges that the demise of a form of literature is inevitable in the absence of a population to support it, he argues that Romanian and German cultural leaders do little to preserve German-language teaching in Romania.

Once, German-language literature in Romania was placed alongside works from East and West Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Its reputation was boosted by the less-extreme treatment meted out to Germans in Romania compared with those in Czechoslovakia or Poland, millions of whom who were expelled after the Second World War.

But now the community structure has been disrupted in Romania, and German-language teachers are scarce.

“Germany directs its efforts and funding only to the German-language schools for the Germans still living in Transylvania and completely disregards the demand for learning the language coming from Romanian children and their parents outside the Carpathian arch,” Gutu says.

Marina Neacsu, cultural projects coordinator at the Goethe Institute in Bucharest, which is funded by the German state, agrees. She says the government has no specific plans to support the editing of books in the German language.

In 2003, though, Romanian authorities gave 16.6 billion lei ($520,000) to the German community, says Ovidiu Gant, undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Public Information. As part of an across-the-board increase in funding to minority groups, the community’s state support more than doubled over the previous year.

In addition, according to Lucian Pricop, a programs coordinator at the Ministry of Culture, more than 1 billion lei ($31,000) has been spent to edit 14 German-language books, support the cultural supplements to the Carpaten Rundschau (Carpathian Observer) and Banater Zeitung (Banat News) magazines, and help public libraries acquire German literature.

Yet Gutu says Romanian and German authorities are ignoring the demand from Romanian parents who realize that Germany is Europe’s economic powerhouse and see knowledge of the German language as indispensable to their children’s professional success.

As for the future of German literature in Romania, Gutu sees none. “As much as I would wish to be wrong, a literature needs a population base to thrive, and 60,000 people are too few and bound to be less.”

Schlattner shares that skepticism.

The local Lutheran bishop, Schlattner says, “is just here to perform burials. This is what we have come to: a deserted house, emptier than the holy stable of Bethlehem. But that one was soon to be filled up with living beings and gifts as the news of Christ’s birth spread into the world. Our stable is not going to witness that.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Romania

by | 15 March 2004 · 9:41 pm

Morobe Field Diary, August 1976: Deaf Villagers and Home Sign

Dear S,

By the grace of good saint Quinine the Deaf, I have found myself in a village of about 150 people, 4 of whom are deaf. Since your morbid interest in the subject is well known I thought you might be interested. I am also wondering if there might be any questions I could answer or look into on the subject while I’m here.

(There is also a full-fledged crazy who wanders around in a blanket exposing himself from time to time and calmly enduring abuse when he comes where he is not wanted. And then of course there’s that odd foreigner so addicted to books & paper who actually jumps at the chance to do physical labor in between his alchemizing. In a community of only 25 houses the ratio of oddities to normal people is almost as high as that of L.A.)

All of the deaf are men between the ages of about 30 and 45. One, my roommate, is profoundly deaf and his father too was apparently deaf. The two of them used to communicate in sign I hear tell. Now though, the son of my hosts is the only one fluent in his home sign and the only one who communicates with him extensively with much effectiveness. I am probably the second most familiar with his signs and I am so often in the the dark that, if it wasn’t my job to spend a good deal of my time listening to unintelligible conversation like a dog under the table hoping a juicy scrap will be thrown my way, then I would probably give up in despair like most of the village and pay him little heed.

The other three deaf men more recently lost their hearing and people still shout at them from time to time. There is no sense of community among the deaf people and no attempt to develop a home sign of their own. The three more recently deaf can still speak (in a monotone and often too softly) so the ones that suffer the most frustration are the ones who want to communicate with them, particularly the spouse of one of them. Since clearing forest, building canoes and houses and catching fish are not tasks requiring good hearing, except when done cooperatively, all of their lives are less unproductive than increasingly solitary.

Though those three are fairly well acculturated and share pretty much the same reality as the other people in the village (except for one who won’t forsake Pidgin when communicating with me–usually to trade betel nut for tobacco. He irritated me till I found out the reason whereupon my knee jerked and my heart bled but he still irritates me.), but I have recently come to realize that one of the troubles I have in following the really deaf guy is that he makes reference to worlds I do not expect. It hit me rather forcefully one day when he was telling war stories (many probably came from his father or perhaps from people who have signed to him since they match what others tell me about the mountains of food & tobacco of the American troops, etc.; others he got from a trip to the Lae Military Barracks where his manucommunicant worked). He, in the midst of describing weapons of various sorts, described one sort of pliers-like contraption which he indicated was used to snip off people’s noses, ears, and pinch out their eyes (sorry, gentle reader, if thy sensibilities are offended). I looked rather puzzled and asked who. He described their skin color as being, after searching around for some time to find an example of the color, purple! Combining that with another story of a flying submarine I can only conclude that he is a bit too credulous of the comics he looks at (he’s an avid reader but absolutely illiterate) or of whatever movies he’s seen.

I’ve also just come to realize that he has a reputation (well deserved) for thieving. He has been pilfering my stuff shamelessly.

NEW GUINEA COASTAL VILLAGE HOME SIGNS

RAIN – arms raised pointing back over shoulder, fingers spread and hands fall repeatedly in unison facing back as if rain falling on shoulders (never falls on face).

WIND – hands rotate in front of face clockwise blowing air toward face & chest.

EAT – fingers in letter O touch lips as teeth champ several times.

BISKITS (flat, unleavened, hard ship biskits) – B-hand pulled away from mouth as teeth clamp together.

PEPPER PLANT (eaten with betel nut) – single finger (index) pulled away from mouth or dipped into palm of left hand as if dipping into lime powder (culturally transparent) (the dipping into ‘lime’ and putting finger toward mouth also indicates lime itself).

BEATING SAGO – both hands held together as if holding a golfclub (actually a sago beater) and pounded up & down (culturally transparent)

SLEEP, NIGHT, 24 hr period – head inclines toward palm of hand which acts as pillow. Three nites would be SLEEP – 1 – SLEEP – 2 – SLEEP 3

DAY, SUN, TIME OF DAY – pointing at place sun comes up, the hand follows the arc of the sun until the appropriate location is reached. As far as I know, orientation is always to actual sunrise & sunset, not to conventionalized location in relation to body.

STUDENT – writing with index finger on open palm of left hand. (‘School’ in the local language is, roughly translated, ‘house paper’.)

In addition, this congenitally deaf fellow can pronounce two words which, significantly I suspect, both involve labials.

mou ‘none, no’ [mou] (I’m not sure how much actual nasalization)

bamo ‘a lot’ [ba-a] (the [a] ends up creaky voiced and long; it is almost always rather long when hearers say it)

Many signs are commonly used or known, especially those pertaining to work, like line-fishing, beating sago palm and betel nut paraphernalia. But I have never seen any Siboma use an action like his INTENSIFIER. On the other hand his numbers match the Siboma numerical metaphors.

5 = nimateula (‘half hand’) = ENUMERATION + HAND

10 = nimabesua (‘both hands’) = ENUMERATION + BOTH-HANDS-TOGETHER

20 = tamota te (‘one man’) = ENUMERATION + HANDS-AND-FEET-TOGETHER

Let me know if there are any particular signs you are interested in.

Em tasol,

P.S. MORE NEW GUINEA VILLAGE HOME SIGNS

KAUNSIL – indicates badge on chest (which kaunsil never wears)

DEAD – palms facing front, arms slitely bent at sides, bead thrown back turned to one side, eyes closed

WHITES – salute

SAILOR – round hat on head indicated

JPNSE – big head/helmet

CHINESE – flatnose

REEF, ISLAND – circle drawn horizontally at chest level from above

HOUSE – palms parallel or straight w/ fingers making roof

OLD – beard

AFRAID – draws arms into chest and withdraws to one side

REFERENTS-PEOPLE – indicated by house [location] or outstanding physical trait

INTENSIFIER – turns face to one side, drawing shoulder up to chin, and closing eyes. Maintained for about 1 sec or more.

PUNISHMENT, INCARCERATION – one wrist over the other in front of chest as if hands tied, both wrists facing down, hands in fists

CHURCH – hands clasped, fingers interlaced, in front of neck

POLICE – arms come up to chest as if marching

LINE FISHING – arms bent at elbow before chest, raised alternately as when pulling in a handline

M.V. SAGO (the village diesel-powered fishing boat) – hands rotate back & forth an imaginary steering wheel

(M.V. SAGO, LINE FISHING & POLICE are a near-minimal trio: all have alternate arm movement but different end points and orientation)

Leave a comment

Filed under Papua New Guinea

by | 14 March 2004 · 9:00 pm

Imprisoned in a "Democracy Cell"

The book I took along to read on my trip is so absorbing that I fear I shan’t be able to resist quoting numerous passages from it. In the introduction, Ian Buruma describes the role of walls erected to fortify China against the outside world. He describes first the role of the Great Wall in keeping barbarians at bay. Then he sketches a very different kind of wall, the “democracy wall” that sprang up during the thaw after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, upon which Wei Jingsheng posted under his own name the famous essay on the Fifth Modernization. Mao’s eventual successor Deng Xiaoping “had announced four modernizations: in agriculture, science, technology, and national defense. Wei added democracy, without which, he wrote, ‘the four others are nothing more than a newfangled lie.'”

There is also a third wall, fictional, the wall of a prison cell. It was described by a brilliant novelist, Han Shaogong. Like many Chinese intellectuals, Han was forced to “go down” to a remote rural area after the Cultural Revolution. He spent the 1970s tilling the fields in a small Hunanese village. Out of this experience came an extraordinary novel, Maqiao Dictionary, which is a kind of spoof anthropological dissection of village life through the language of its people. Each chapter is inspired by a slang expression. One of these is “democracy cell.”

The story is told by a local gambler, whom Han springs from jail by paying his fine. Dressed in rags, his hair matted with lice, the gambler stinks so badly that Han makes him take a bath before hearing his story. Refreshed, the man starts to whine. He had been really unlucky this time.

Unlucky?

Yes, this time he had experienced the worst: a democracy cell.

A democracy cell?

Well, says the man, it’s like this: In most prisons, every cell has a boss and a hierarchy of henchmen. The boss gets to eat the best food and the best spot to sleep, and when he wishes to peep at the female prisoners through a tiny window in the wall, his cellmates must prop him up, sometimes for hours, until they buckle under the strain. But, hard though it may be, at least there is order. Every man gets his food. You have time to wash your face and to piss. You might even get some rest. Such an arrangement is better than a democracy cell. Democracy is what you get when there is no cell boss. The men fight one another like savages. They all want to be boss. Unity breaks down. Gangs go to war: Cantonese against Sichuanese, northeasterners against Shanghainese. There is no chance of getting sleep. You can’t wash. You get lousy in no time, people are injured, and sometimes even killed.

This vignette of rural prison life is a perfect illustration of a common Chinese attitude toward democracy, or indeed political freedom. Many Chinese–and not just the rulers–associate democracy with violence and disorder. Only a big boss can make sure the common people get their food and rest. Only the equivalent of an emperor can keep the walled kingdom together. Without him, the Chinese empire will fall apart: region will fight region, and warlord will fight warlord. These assumptions rest on thousands of years of authoritarian rule, beginning with the first Qin emperor and his cursed Great Wall. And they are faithfully repeated by many in the West who presume to understand China….

“That Western-style stuff.” It is a recurring theme in China, and other autocracies outside the Western world, the assumption that only Europeans and Americans should have the benefit of democratic institutions. It is of course a theme running through European colonial history, too. But if China has a history of despots ruling over the great Chinese empire, it also has a history of schisms and disorder and disunity, of rebellions, and of brave, mad, and foolhardy men and women who defied the orthodoxy of their given rulers. Of course rebels are not necessarily democrats. But dismissing democracy as “Western-style stuff” would consign 1 billion Chinese to political subservience forever. That is why I approach the Chinese-speaking world in this book through the rebels, the dissidents, the awkward squad that resists authoritarianism. What is their idea of freedom? Or of China? What does dissidence mean in a Chinese society? What makes people try, against all odds, to defy their rulers? What chance do they have of succeeding? Will those virtual walls that make China the largest remaining dictatorship on earth every come down?

SOURCE: Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, by Ian Buruma (Vintage, 2001), pp. xvii-xix

Leave a comment

Filed under China