Chinese, Me: Reflections on "China Witness" 【“中国人，我”：《见证中国》的反思】

It’s been a long time since I got excited at the thought of blogging.

After attending a “Reader’s Club” session organized by HKU library, where Mdm. Xue Xin Ran came and introduced her new book “China Witness” to an audience that is predominantly foreigners, I was inspired. Thoughts flowed like they’ve never had in a long long while, gushing like the rivers that flow from Tibet to other parts of mainland China. The title of a new article popped up in my mind: Chinese, Me (中国人，我), meant to instantiate a complexity of identity surges that probably wouldn’t strike anybody who has not stayed in mainland China for a long period of time and known the Chinese people relatively deep enough.

Me am Chinese? Chinese is Me? Chinese and Me? Chinese/ Me? Chinese-Me?

The comma simply serves to bring across a relationship that is hard to define, of love and hatred, of familiarity and distance, of history and the timeless, of society and self, of them and us, and ultimately, of Me and Myself.

Mdm Xin Ran touched me, and almost made me tear – not once, but twice. One message was clear, and it was an important message: It just isn’t in the Chinese’s blood to allow the pain and suffering, trials and tribulations of their generation and era to spill over and contaminate the souls of their descendants. That is probably why most parents and grandparents don’t like to tell their own children the stories hidden beneath their sometimes strict, sometimes benevolent faces. Historians may wish for “the Truth”, but as far as many Chinese of the old generations are concerned, they would rather bring all the dark secrets of close to a century with them to their graves.

It also dawned on me that if we were to harbour some form of fear or hatred, and to be inculcated with some form of nationalism – fervent or otherwise, it is usually the work of the State, not our parents.

A little on “China Witness”. It is a compilation of interview transcripts carefully selected from 250 interviews that Mdm. Xin Ran has done in the process of her research of her parents’ and grandparents’ generation over the past 20 years. Her interviewees include a Medicine Lady (who probably is one of the very few) that feels the Cultural Revolution helped her; son-in-law of the famous “Double-gun woman”; families who rebuilt their homes in Xinjiang, where the world’s largest prison for KMT POWs was once situated; pioneers of China’s oil drilling; “new-singers” (like Street Callers in the West) of Anhui, where one can still find original architecture of houses from the Ming Dynasty; survivor of the Long March who has no more toes left; a female General of the People’s Liberation Army who was born in America; a shoe-maker of 28 years who sent her son to US for his PhD and her daughter to Beijing University without a single cent from the Chinese government, and many others. The author even managed to find the sole survivor of CCP’s 26 military leaders, who was once higher than Mao Zedong in the hierarchy. The transcript is not collected in the volume, because it is simply too complex. (I am hoping though to get it from Mdm. Xu Ran through email.)

But here’s what she wrote in her introduction: “When I asked him how he was able to survive the fierce infighting of Mao’s inner circle, he told me the following story. In the 1930s, he often played mah-jong with Mao Zedong, Tan Zheng and a few other fellow Hunanese. There are many different systems for mahjong, but people from the same place play according to the same rules: they did not need to spend a lot of time talking about it, they all understood the strategies, because they had all been raised in the earth and water of the same place”.

I have no time to read the book in depth now, but I think I am inspired to continue writing what I have seen and am seeing of the Chinese people – both young and old. As China moves forward, it will always return to its history and roots for inspiration. The same should apply to Singapore, if we decide to remain multi-cultural and not take the route of “cosmopolitism”, in the negative sense of the word. There is just so much we don’t know. What I do know is, I will continue to assert my Chinese identity the way I think, act and in all, live. There is no point abandoning what has been part of me all my lifetime, for the sake of seeking a nationalistic identity. What’s more, this is what connects me not just to the people of PRC, but also to the greater Chinese Diaspora in this age of globalization.

(To think I have to write in 2 languages just to convey one message to different groups of friends. Just when will Singaporeans wake up their idea and start picking up their rotten Mandarin once again? And just when can my PRC friends finally discover the most effective way of learning English and acquire reading proficiency?)

我很久没有为写博客而感到如此兴奋。

出席了港大图书馆举办的“读者会”，听到薛欣然（好名字啊）介绍新书《见证中国》，我得到了许多启发。身边大多都是老外，但我的思绪却像西藏流往中国内地的河水涛涛。很久没有这种感觉了。突然，一个新标题出现在我脑海里：中国人，我。以这一个句子，我试图囊括各种复杂而多样的身份呼唤。若没有长时间住在中国，或是不够理解中国人，也许，就不会有如此的体会。

我是中国人？中国人是我？中国人与我？中国人/我？中国人—我？

一个逗号，承载一段难以说明的关系：爱与恨、熟悉与距离、历史与永存、社会与个人、他们与我们，以及到最后，我与自己。

欣然女士让我感动，并且不是一次，而是两次差点落泪。有一点很明确，而且是很重要的一点：中国人总不愿意将自己一代人的痛苦、磨练，污染并延续于他们子孙的灵魂。也许是这样，许多父母与祖父母，总不愿意告诉自己的孩子，在他们时而严肃、时而慈祥的面容背后，隐藏着什么样的故事。历史学家渴望寻求“真实”，但对老一辈的许多中国人而言，他们情愿自己背负一世纪的包袱与秘密，并带入坟墓之中。

突然，我又想到，原来，如果我们身上暗藏着某种恐惧或仇恨，或是被灌输某种民族主义——不论极端与否，往往总是国家机制教导我们的，并非我们的父母。

这里，略谈《见证中国》。

二十多年，欣然女士致力于研究前辈们的故事。在这过程中，她访问了250多位受访者。这本书收录的，是精挑细选之后，具有代表性的11个访谈记录。访谈对象，包括一个（极为少数人之一的）觉得文革帮她致富的“药婆婆”；“双枪女”的女婿；在曾设有世界最大的监狱，囚禁国民党战犯的土地上重建家园的人士；中国石油之先锋；保留明代原始民居的安徽某县的“新闻说唱者”；在长征存活了下来，却已经没了脚趾头的老翁；出生于美国的现任解放军女将军；28年来靠补鞋，不拿政府一分钱，独自供儿子留美读博士、女儿上北大的一个女人，等等。

甚至，中共初期26名高级将领之一，曾经是中共领导中位居第三的政客，也被欣然女士找到了。书本没有收这段访谈，因为太长，对外国人来说也太复杂。不过，《见证中国》的介绍是这么写的：“当我问他，在毛泽东为首的权力斗争中如何幸存下来，他告诉我这样的故事：1930年代，他常和毛泽东、以及几个湖南老乡一起打麻将。麻将的玩法很多，但同个地方的人根据相同的玩法。他们不需要花很多的时间讨论，因为大家都是在同一片土地上、喝着同样的水长大的，对各种游戏战术都有所了解。”（雄译）

我现在没有时间仔细阅读这本书，但我却有了更大的动力，继续以文笔记录我曾看到并在看到的中国人的一切，不论老少。中国在往前迈进的时候，将会一直回到历史与根源，寻求灵感。如果新加坡打算继续走“多种族、多文化”的道路，不被过分地“多元化”（以至于变得“无根”而漂浮在空中，像现在的上海），同样的道理也适用于我们。我们不知道的事情太多了。然而，我知道的是，我将延续自己的Chinese身份，不论是思想、举止或生活。没有必要为了迁就国民身份而放弃原本就属于自己的一部分。再说，这也将让我能和中国的子民以及全球华人产生共鸣，特别是在这全球化的时代。

（注：说这种话，在新加坡的历史记忆之中，容易被贴上“反主流”的标签，似乎有“分裂祖国”之嫌疑，而且让人轻易联想到共产主义。这是我们的历史所塑造的集体记忆，也是妨碍我们进一步深入理解中国文化，特别是理解现当代中国的一个心理障碍。）