THE SEATS OF POWER, CHINESE STYLE

THE SEATS OF POWER
CHINESE STYLE

One of a Series

© Gwendolyn Stewart 2009; All Rights Reserved

TIANJIN DUO

Zhang Lichang (left), then Tianjin Party Secretary, and Li Shenglin (right), then Tianjin Mayor, at the 16th Congress of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, November 2002.

CHINA THEN & NOW: ON THE GRAND CANAL

ON THE GRAND CANAL

© Gwendolyn Stewart 2009; All Rights Reserved

HANGZHOU, CHINA, 1981

AS THE WHEEL TURNS -- TO CHINA? II

CHINA THEN & NOW II 

NANJING 1981 

AS THE WHEEL TURNS II 

Forbid the ownership of private cars; start allowing for markets, especially in agricultural goods; and Voilà! Chinese farmers hitched up the farm machinery they did have, and drove to the city to sell their wares in town. 

Pictured above, vegetables being driven into Nanjing, China, in 1981.  Outstanding feature of the vehicle of choice (or of the mother of necessity), what I came to call a "naked engine." 

GUARDIAN OF THE DRAGON GATE

A FIERCE GUARDIAN 

OF THE DRAGON GATE 

THE LONGMEN GROTTOES 

NEAR LUOYANG, CHINA 

Luoyang (in Henan province) is one of the ancient capitals of China, and a major locus for the introduction of Buddhism into the Middle Kingdom. For several hundred years beginning in the fifth century, a vast panorama of Buddhist figures was carved out of a kilometer-long stretch of rock face and caves along the Yi River.  These are known collectively as the Longmen (Dragon Gate) Grottoes.  The central section of the ensemble includes an enormous Buddha, whose ears are 6'2".  S/He is identified as the Vairocana (Vairochana) Buddha, a being with a countenance somewhere between placid and passive.  Startling, then, to find among the Buddha's retinue the fierce warrior above, said to be a "'World Protector,' guardian of the Buddhist teachings."  

It was startling, too, to hear this passage from Barack Obama's Inaugural Address: "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers."  To have the new president strain so hard to be ecumenical, to be inclusive, as to include "non-believers" (and to think to pair "Jews" with "Hindus"), and yet leave out one of the great world religions, Buddhism, was, at best, disconcerting. 

SURFACE & SUBSTANCE: HANGZHOU, CHINA

SURFACE & SUBSTANCE 

HANGZHOU 1981 

 
COMPLIMENTS 

TO WEST LAKE AT DAWN

Out wandering in Hangzhou early in the morning on my first trip to China, I meet a man standing at West Lake at dawn.  "It is very beautiful," I say. 

The local sets me straight:  "Yes, but the housing in town is very poor." 

NIXON GO TO CHINA?

NIXON GO TO CHINA?

NETANYAHU GO ??

OBAMA CHIMES IN

Picture this: The cliché heard 'round the media echo chamber.

If Richard Nixon can go to China, perhaps Bibi Netanyahu can -- Fill in your chief wish for an Israeli prime minister.

For a recent example: "Just as it took a Richard Nixon to go to China, it will take a Netanyahu to enforce a peace settlement that will require a withdrawal from most of the West Bank settlements." -- Kishore Mahbubani, Japan Times, Sunday, May 10, 2009

But Benjamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu has been here before, and so have we.

He was Prime Minister the first time from 1996-99. "He wants to be Nixon going to China and still be honored by the John Birch Society," we were told. By Thomas L. Friedman, in the May 19, 1998, New York Times. Friedman was asking, "Who Is Bibi?"

We might ask, why do we keep falling back on this cliché?

Today we learn that Barack Obama is now also on record with the Nixon-Goes-To-China analogy for "Bibi":

"Israeli analysts said Mr Obama had effectively given Mr Netanyahu the choice of alienating his Right-wing coalition allies and imperilling his fragile government or alienating Israel's most powerful ally.

"But Mr Obama, in an interview with regional newspapers, said Mr Netanyahu's Right-wing stance was an advantage. He compared him to the former President Richard Nixon whose impeccable Right-wing credentials made possible his outreach to Chairman Mao's China in the early 1970s."

FACING TIANANMEN II: ZHONGNANHAI

"FACING" TIANANMEN

ZHONGNANHAI 

WITH GUARDS AT ATTENTION 

THE FRONT GATE ("NEW CHINA GATE") 

OF THE SEAT OF POWER IN CHINA: 

BEIJING'S "WHITE HOUSE" OR "KREMLIN" 

On the "Avenue of Eternal Peace" 

To the West of the Forbidden City (Map) 

(Description and some history) 

Who made the decisions that led to the crackdown and the bloodshed on June 3-4, 1989? "Zhongnanhai." 

A QUIET DAY IN TIANANMEN SQUARE

A QUIET DAY 

 IN TIANANMEN SQUARE 

PLA SOLDIERS MARCH THROUGH. 

THE PORTRAIT OF MAO ZEDONG GAZES ON. 

BEIJING 1981 

THE GREAT HALL OF... (BEIJING)

FACING TIANANMEN 

THE FRONT OF THE GREAT HALL OF THE PEOPLE 

FACING TIANANMEN SQUARE, BEIJING, CHINA 

AT THE TIME OF THE 17TH CONGRESS OF 

 THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (OCTOBER 2007) 

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY 

ON THE EVE...  

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY II: YAN'AN, CHINA

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 

ON FARAWAY STREETS

YAN'AN WELCOME 

WITH SHY BOY 

YAN'AN, CHINA 1981 

The small boy hides behind the man's left side (being prevented from flight by having his wrist firmly grasped).  The grown-ups (with perhaps one exception) seem to enjoy the sight of the "very tall" photographer visiting Yan'an, the "cradle of the Chinese revolution," in 1981. 

OTHER WEDDINGS II

TO THE BELL TOWER 

OTHER WEDDINGS II 
QINGDAO, CHINA 

Red is the traditional color for brides in China. But though the young woman in this couple is dressed in white, in a "Western" gown, tradition has not been altogether neglected. Observe the touches of red. 

Here, in 1994, a video camera is also coming up the stairs to the heights of the Bell Tower. 

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS

MET ON A MOUNTAIN PASS

NEAR KUNMING, CHINA

Dressing Up As Soldiers From Other Eras (1994)

ALL RISE: OBAMA & THE FALL OF COMMUNISM

ALL RISE 

The 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 

OBAMA & THE FALL OF COMMUNISM
THE FALL? WAS WHEN EXACTLY? 

Today, in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama made a rather strange statement for someone who is supposed to be so bright, and who is in charge of the national security apparatus of the U.S. 

Here is the wind-up: "Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world." 

Okay. Then: Enemy soldiers… strong alliances …  

Then, "It's the reason why we've been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism and outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free peoples everywhere in the common cause and common effort of liberty." 

"…outlast the iron curtain of communism.…" 

Oh, yes? The People's Republic of China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, has fallen? (and the regimes in Cuba, and North Korea, and Vietnam…?) 

Twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan came back from his first trip to what he had been pleased to call "Red China" and spoke of the "so-called Communist China." This in 1984. 

In the fall of 2007, at the time of the most recent Chinese Communist Party Congress, I showed an American in Beijing a copy of the photograph above, taken at the previous Congress, the 16th (November 2002). He looked at the giant hammer and sickle and said, Oh, Russia. 

Whatever one may think of what has happened since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Communists have not ruled there since December 1991, while in China they go on and on.  So far.

CHINA THEN & NOW: MAID & CHILD

CHINA THEN & NOW

MAID & CHILD, NANJING 1981

In 1981, the People's Republic of China was on the cusp of major change. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Congress late in 1978 had seen Deng Xiaoping's return to power and a new line proclaimed. When I first went to China almost two and a half years later, the new line had begun to be implemented, but ordinary people were not yet sure that it would triumph, and the new policies endure.

The first, sometimes tentative shoots could be seen in, for example, "free markets" -- as in a farmers' market in Yan'an. Under Mao Zedong the exploitation of labor had been frowned on, but in Nanjing I found a lower-ranking cadre who had a maid for his small child (above).

Cremation had been promoted in Mao's "New China." Burial in graves was discouraged as wasteful of scarce land. Yet in Ji'an in June 1981 I came across an early-morning funeral procession, which quickened its pace and tried to escape notice when discovered.

More generally I recorded both the distinctive city scenes and historical sites and the everyday activities of farming and eating and buying and selling and transporting goods to market and living life.

Now these photographs and many others taken in 1981 and since are being collected in a book: HERE BE GIANTS.

AS THE WHEEL TURNS -- TO CHINA?

AS THE WHEEL TURNS --

TO CHINA?

NANJING, CHINA, 1981 

More and more there is talk about China becoming the new giant in the automotive industry (for example, in today's Washington Post). 

So, a look back to the reality on the ground, literally, just over a generation ago, in 1981 in Nanjing. Private cars were forbidden. The blue creampuff above doubtless belonged to one official -- cadre -- or another, or more properly, to the official's work unit. Curtains in the windows encouraged privacy.

Somebody Important must have come in that car.

RED STARS

RED STARS

Twenty years ago today the Communist giants met, in Beijing, for the first time in three decades. Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made the trip to China for talks with Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, and Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

The leaders met in the Great Hall of the People. In the ceiling of its vast auditorium is the red star of communism (above, right). The Soviets were the seniors in revolution, the Bolsheviks having taken power in Russia in 1917; the People's Republic of China was not founded until 1949. As can been seen in the sample of a Soviet red star (left), the USSR placed special additional emphasis on its contribution to the victory over the Fascists/Nazis.

Gorbachev was himself a star when he came to Beijing -- to the outside world, certainly, for the reforms he had undertaken back in the USSR -- perestroika and glasnost'. He also had admirers among the Chinese, including some of those demonstrating in Tiananmen Square, the heart of Beijing, when he arrived.

The story of the Sino-Soviet rapprochement brought the international media, and the Tiananmen demonstrations provided a dramatic story just waiting to be broadcast. The dénouement was the crackdown of June 3-4, 1989.

Zhao Ziyang lost his post, and lived out his life under house arrest. His memoirs are just now being published.

Mikhail Gorbachev went back to Moscow to continue his attempts to reform the USSR. The USSR dissolved into its constituent parts ("Republics") at the end of 1991.

Jiang Zemin was brought from Shanghai to be the new General Secretary, and Deng Xiaoping remained the power behind the throne unto death. The People's Republic of China  is due to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary on October 1, 2009.

Arguments raged about which path to reform was superior, the Soviet or the Chinese. Which was the brighter "Red Star," Gorbachev or Deng?

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE 

THE BEDROOM IN MAO ZEDONG'S CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the final stage of which was a campaign fought north to south by the People's Liberation Army. This was a victory years in the making.

As we have seen with more recent guerrilla movements, weak governments which cannot control their peripheries can be threatened by rebel groups which seize power in the borderlands or "badlands."

So it was with the Chinese Communists, who escaped the "bandit extermination campaigns" waged by the KMT, or Nationalist, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek by making the daring, desperate, Long March (1934-1935), which brought the remnants of Mao Zedong's forces to Yan'an, China.

There a residence could properly be a home in a cave carved into the hillside, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership shared a compound of such houses.

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON 

MAO ZEDONG'S HORSE ON DISPLAY

IN THE MUSEUM IN YAN'AN, CHINA

Yan'an was the site of the revolutionary base Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party established at the end of the Long March (1934-1935). Mao's horse (see above) seems to have been lovingly preserved. A white horse.

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY

STALINGRAD TANK & BOY

May 9 is Victory Day in Russia, the equivalent of V-E Day for the U.S. and Europe, where it is celebrated on May 9 (different time zones).

Pictured above, a Soviet boy playing on one of the tanks in one of the memorials to the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the turning points of "The Great Patriotic War," or World War II. By this boy's time the city had lost the "Stalin" in its name, and as "Volgograd" now honored the river Volga and not the former Leader of the USSR.

It was 1984, and I was wandering around the Soviet Union for seven weeks by myself, exploring and taking photographs. By the time I arrived in Volgograd, I was quite cut off from the outside world.

So it was left to an angry woman in this city in which, as the Soviets saw it, they helped save the world from the Nazis, to inform me that President Ronald Reagan had threatened to bomb the USSR.

It was the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, and the Soviets were staging a tit-for-tat retaliatory boycott of those Olympics. The U.S. had devastated them by boycotting their 1980 Moscow Olympics after they had invaded Afghanistan.

The Chinese in more recent years could not have wanted their Olympics more than the Soviets wanted theirs then, or Vladimir Putin wants the Winter Olympics in Sochi now.

The Cold War had newly heated up. Into this time of tension, Ronald Reagan let fall his "joke," in the warm-up to one of his Saturday radio addresses. He declared "Russia" an outlaw nation and announced that the bombs would fly in five minutes.