Becoming Madame Mao

Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min

"Well, I won't surrender. When I was a child my mother used to tell me that I should think of myself as grass - born to be stepped on. But I think of myself as a peacock among hens. I am not being judged fairly. Side by side Mao Tse-Tung and I stood, yet he is considered a god while I am a demon. Mao Tse-Tung and I were married for thirty-eight years. The number is thirty-eight."

Anchee Min's follow up to the popular Empress Orchid is a fictional account of the life of Jiang Ching, wife of Chairman Mao and leader of the infamous Gang of Four. Although a work of fiction, the novel is based around historical events, and Anchee Min displays great imagination and empathy in portraying a little-known but highly influential historical figure. She presents a character whose constant defiance of Chinese society's oppression of women results in a resentful, angry and proud character who, even unto Mao's death, struggled for recognition and what was invariably unrequited attention. Although not as colourful as Empress Orchid, Min's writing style in this second novel is much bolder. Quick, short sentences reflect the protagonist's temperament, and she continuously shifts the narrative perspective between the first and third person, often contrasting Jiang Ching's own perspective on events with historical fact. The second half of the book is not as effective as the first, partly because the narrative style is difficult to maintain, and because the earlier years are arguably more interesting, despite the fact that the historical repercussions of the later years are far more significant. Nevertheless, this is a highly accomplished and original work.

퐁양 / 深圳 - Pyongyang / Shenzhen

Pyongyang: A Journey in North , by Guy Delisle
Shenzhen：A Travelogue from China, by Guy Delisle

It seems that not even cartoon animation has survived outsourcing. The fact that capitalist economies should outsource to North Korea and China is, however, not without a considerable degree of irony. Pyongyang and Shenzhen are Guy Delisle's animated accounts of his visits to these two countries while working for a French TV channel. The books are full of wry humour, often resulting from the animator's keen eye for detail. Despite being primarily a fun read, Delisle nonetheless deals with a wide range of issues, ranging from the outward idolization of Kim Jong-Il, the restriction on individual freedoms and freedom of expression, the communist perception of Western capitalist culture, the disparity between the treatment of Westerners and natives, the homogeneity of Asian hotel rooms, food, the boredom of months living in a hotel etc. There are moments of extreme hilarity, such as his efforts to demonstrate to Chinese animators how it is physically impossible for a cartoon character to get up from a chair without leaning forward first, or his lending a copy of George Orwell's 1984 to his Korean interpreter when he asks for an English book to read. There are also very touching moments, such as the effort that one of his Chinese co-workers makes to help him celebrate Christmas, despite them not being able to communicate, and the fact that he only begins to get to know his Chinese interpreter in their last half hour, despite having spent some two months together. Pyongyang and Shenzhen are insightful and entertaining accounts of a Westerner's clash with oriental culture and communism.

Since when were we at war with the fish?

Steven Poole's Unspeak is an insightful critique of the abuse of the English language for political use. Drawing on Orwell's concept of Newspeak, through which the State restricts individuals' boundaries of thought through the destruction of words, Poole's Unspeak presents a more subtle concept: the practice of influencing people's attitudes towards a policy or political objective by creating terms that attempt to hide often unspoken, but highly value-laden ideas.

Many such terms are, of course, well known, as in euphemisms designed to gloss over unspeakable acts of violence, such as 'ethnic cleansing' (as opposed to 'mass murder', or even 'genocide'), 'collateral damage' (which sounds more like someone keyed both doors of your car) and 'surgical strikes' (which rather ironically combines the tools of mass murder with the precision of the 'operating theatre', incidentally, a term also used in military circles to refer to an area in which, presumably, 'surgical strikes' are carried out to minimize 'collateral damage'). In Poole's view, the success of Unspeak relies on silencing any opposing view from the outset by re-framing the way in which a particular issue is discussed. Thus, we have terms such as 'tax relief', which implies that you should be grateful for your taxes to be lowered and that what the opposition is proposing constitutes a 'tax burden', or terms such as 'pro-choice', which re-frames the negativity of 'abortion' into the positivity of 'choice', while at the same time implying that if you are not 'pro-choice' then you must be 'anti-choice'. This, of course, is matched by the equally astute 'pro-life'. A common mechanism for Unspeak is to create such artificially extreme dichotomies that only one view can possibly be considered reasonable, much in the spirit of "If you're not with us, you're against us" and "The coalition of the willing", by which any opponents must by implication be unwilling and complicit in terrorism.

Much of the book focuses on propagandist terms that have become widespread in the 'War on Terror', but Poole also analyzes some surprisingly far more subtle (at least to me) terms. In particular, the apparently innocuous term 'community' turns out to be highly charged in political speak. 'Community' harks back to the days when we lived harmoniously in quaint little villages with a common set of moral values. You can thus "Go to any community", in which you'll encounter a sense of 'community spirit', and you can speak of "The biggest threat to our community". 'Community' in the sense implied, however, is rarely applicable these days, so while reminiscing about forms of life that no longer exist, we nevertheless use 'community' to label others whom we deem to be different from ourselves, as in 'the Muslim community', or 'the Chinese community' or 'the gay community'. The Unspeak quality here is that there exist such 'communities' that are, in some tangible way, different from our own, that are internally homogeneous, and whose defining characteristic is that of belonging to a different religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. In this way, we cleverly place abstract boundaries between us and them, while congratulating ourselves on our sense of tolerance, as in "There is a large Chinese community in London" (but note that they're not quite part of our community). Our sense of tolerance does have its limits, however, for while we accept such communities, there are certain people we are certainly not prepared to accept, such as 'bogus asylum seekers' and 'illegal refugees', neither kind of which can actually be legally said to exist, since anyone is entitled to seek refuge and asylum without prejudice. The descriptions of 'bogus' and 'illegal' thus preclude the assumption of legitimacy that constitutes due process and an individual's right. And so it is with 'terrorist suspects' and so on. In fact, the desire of stripping individuals' legitimacy can be so extreme that, in order to remove any association between suicide and martyrdom, people have even attempted to use such blatantly absurd terms as 'homicide bombers'.

Poole's writing style can seem rather self-righteous and his sarcastic quips are at times an annoying distraction from what is, for the most part, an insightful and often unexpected critique of the language of spin. He cleverly links the different sections of the book from one Unspeak term to another, providing a number of interesting historical and journalistic details along the way. But the book is to be admired not simply because of its recording of linguistic abuses, but more importantly for its conviction that the responsibility to resist them rests with us - that to use terms such as 'ethnic cleansing' is to be complicit in acts of mass murder by legitimizing a term historically linked to the treatment of human beings as mere contaminants and a failure to recognize genocide.

So what about the fish? My favourite part of the book comes in the epilogue, in which Poole quotes from a speech during the 2000 election campaign, in which George W Bush rationalized his unwillingness to demolish hydroelectric dams in order to protect endangered fish thus: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully", to which Poole responds: "Since when were we at war with the fish?"

Praise for....

This is something that has bemused me for some time. Who writes those testimonials that appear on billboards for third-rate Hollywood movies and on the inside pages of fiction best-sellers? You can tell much about the likely quality of a movie from these helpful one-liners. For example, "Rocky Balboa is the best Rocky movie yet!", is hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? The word "yet" also warns you that it's not outside the realm of possibility that Sylvester Stallone might appear in one further installment, in which it doesn't matter if the guy is blind and in a zimmer frame, he'll still knock the crap out of an opponent 60 years younger after 12 rounds in the ring. Or what does it say about Final Destination 15 that the best the distributors could do was an endorsement of "Thrilling!" from the News of the World, as if, somehow, a thriller shouldn't be expected to be "thrilling".

Books don't escape this sort of disingenuous advertising either. Take Jacques Pépin's autobiography, The Apprentice, which I'm currently reading. It's a great book describing his early years as a trainee chef, going on to cook for Charles de Gaulle, emigrating to New York, almost becoming JFK's personal chef and eventually becoming a TV personality. Yet, the Washington Post seemingly has nothing more helpful to say than "Fascinating", Entertainment Weekly chips in with "Colourful memories", or how about this from the Chicago Tribune: "Well told", as if somehow they're commending this charming Frenchman on his competent command of English grammar. Some others have clearly read the book more carefully and offer far more useful commentary. Anthony Bourdain, ever-enthusiastic, has this to say: "I've been waiting for this book my whole life!... A well-written, funny, sad, informative, and always enchanting account of an incredible career.... An instant classic." And this brings me to Bourdain's own hefty tome, Les Halles Cookbook, which I recently purchased. This, by the way, is an excellent book, replete with classic French recipes accompanied by Bourdain's odd-ball commentary: "So, let's make fries. But do it right. There's no half-ass way to make French fries." You can almost feel him watching over your shoulder. "No, you f*cking idiot! You're supposed to blanche them first!" That's the kind of thing he might say if you didn't give due respect to your fries. The introduction alone is worth the 9.99GBP (reduced...) I paid for it. Yet the front carries this dubious endorsement from Gordon Ramsay: "A workable, usable book with attitude", which in my impression of Gordon Ramsay, translates as: "Yeah, this book is f*cking sh*t! Usable! I use it as a f*cking doorstop! And I don't care what people say about his attitude, I still think he's a f*cking a***hole!" Of course, that might just be me being unkind....

Here's another book I'm reading: The Tapestries, by Kien Nguyen, a novel set in early 20th Century Vietnam. Now, some people are just full of themselves. What the heck is this?

"The Tapestries stirs and bleeds and blushes, fully fleshed. Its every leaf glimmers with sunlit rain, its every anguish burns the eyes. It breathes... No detail escapes Nguyen's watchful eye, no shape or surface slumps into soft focus... The pictures, thousands of them and almost every one jewel-bright, tell the story... Under the swoosh of the story itself lie the backdrops crafted so exquisitely that their silver blades and lanterns gleam long after the drama fades from view."

I get the feeling that whoever it was at the San Francisco Chronicle who wrote this was suffering from a severe case of post-colonial romaticism. Firstly, the place was run by French people; there were probably bakeries selling baguettes to rich white people all over the place. Secondly, the poor guy was sold into slavery to the household of the magistrate who murdered his father. Thirdly, there were probably rats everywhere, and cockroaches, and malaria. And it was hot, and sweaty, and humid.