Mutant Palm

British actor Stephen Fry, known for playing everything from medieval clerics to alarm clocks, has a blog. And considering that he is so ubiquitous that he’ll even rouse you in the morning, it’s quite appropriate his second post is on Fame, it’s advantages and drawbacks.

I am not famous. Not even a little. And yet, living in China, I experience something akin to Mr. Fry’s fame. Consider this passage:

I get stopped on the street, I get (occasionally) hounded by photographers, I get letters from strangers asking for money, sex, advice, approval, time and so on. Journalists with nothing better to do write descriptions of my personality or offer glancing mentions of me. People who have never met me know that they loathe me, or that they like me. I am asked to be patron of this charity and to be on the board of that good cause and so on. I can get a table at the Ivy restaurant and tickets for premieres and parties. A medium ranking sleb.

In my time living in China, I have been stopped on the street, surreptitiously (and occasionally blatantly) photographed, been offered jobs, interviewed by journalists, and overheard people opine about whether or not they approve of me. But I am not famous. No, my skin, my genetic heritage, my physiology is famous. Because I’m white. I just hang on to those coattails, or rather, I’m dragged by them, since I can’t change my appearance. My phenotype is a medium ranking sleb. I am a distinctly separate entity in these encounters, orbiting the interaction between this Chinese person and my body. Whether they actually are addressing me, or simply the archetype they assume I am, is a roll of the dice.

There are times when it is utterly impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone in China because of my blinding whiteness. I am perceived as a White Man, with all the intrinsic characteristics attributed to that category. Some have been unable to accept that I am not Christian – I have been called a liar for asserting I was not. All white men are wealthy Christian Americans, for some, is a tautology.

Some expats and bloggers in China have argued with me that these are naive and sweet stereotypes, a product of isolation and ignorance, and separate and distinct from Racism™, which is the monstrous creature that burns crosses, enslaves nations and exterminates whole peoples. I cannot accept this argument. Once you are in the habit of placing people into boxes based on something as slight and insubstantial as appearance, it is merely a matter of changing the label on the box from “silly foreigner” to “inhuman enemy”. I am not so quick as to embrace terrified imaginings of a near future in which tens of millions of sexually frustrated, xenophobic Chinese men invade Everything, but I recognize the backdrop that makes such a suggestion imaginable.

Mind you, if I were black in China, I might apply the word “infamous” rather than “famous”. It’s been no secret to those of us living in China that people of different races are painted with a brush as broad as Yunnan, and the recent round-up of black people in Beijing is par for the course. Likewise, other racial categories, including even Southeast Asian Chinese, are further down the totem pole. I’ve witnessed Chinese businesspeople say they will hire a Filipino because they are cheaper. Skills are irrelevant; your market value is determined by ethnicity. As a white man in China, I feel more self-consciously privileged than I ever have before in my life, and simultaneously never felt so discriminated against, objectified. In a strange way, it has been a good thing for me – I don’t think I would be as aware or sensitive to how race is perceived, around the world, if I had only lived in the U.S.. Indeed, recent hysteria over China confirms this belief.

This tendency to define people in groupings like this is not strictly Chinese but all too human. To apply attributes to individual actors because of their membership in an ethnic group or nation, denying their individual choices or self-definition, is something I now prickle at when coming from my own country as well, as toy recalls invoke the dangers of “The Chinese”, as opposed to the dangers of long supply chains and merciless price competition. It’s interesting to read about the newly released Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s movie about three well-heeled American brothers touring in India, and how it casually depicts Indians as essentially exotic props.

I find myself wanting to follow a sort of code of radical individualism, resisting the application of broad categories or stereotypes as shortcuts to familiarity with people I encounter. But it’s damned hard – after all, it can become progressively harder not to stereotype a Chinese stranger who stops me on the street as someone who will stereotype me, becoming a negative feedback loop of stereotyping and distrust.

Like Mr. Fry, I would like people to stop coming up to me in supermarkets because of my face. But I don’t think they will.

I’m planning on blogging with more of a focus on where I live, Quanzhou, Fujian. I have not come up with a catchy title yet for this, like “QZ Bang” or “That’s Quanzhou”. Suggestions welcome.

Cai Guo Qiang is pretty hot stuff in the world of contemporary art. He’s getting a retrospective at the Guggenheim, which pretty much confirms he’s ascended and his stuff is ludicrously expensive. The retrospective will be from February to May 2008, after which it’ll be at the National Museum in Beijing during the Olympics, and then on to Tokyo and the Bilbao. So he’s doing alright. Cai lives where I grew up and I live where he grew up – New York and Quanzhou, Quanzhou and New York. Haven’t run into him yet, but I imagine I might if I stick around, since the New York Sun mentions “Mr. Cai also has a hand in China’s current museum-building boom, collaborating with the architect Norman Foster to build a museum in his hometown of Quanzhou.”

And behold, Norman Foster and Cai hangin’ out with the local attraction “Giant Lao Zi Statue”. Foster and Partners is also responsible for the new Beijing Airport, London City Hall, the Reichstag… big time stuff. Cai’s site says the Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art will open in 2009, though local friends say it might be more like a private gallery. Cai is still not beloved in China because of his replicas of the “Rent Collection Courtyard” sculptures (created by the Sichuan Art Academy) for the 1999 Venice Biennale. It really pissed off alot of Chinese critics who called him things like a “banana artist” who belonged to the “green card tribe”, according to Cai. Legally he stood on firm ground – Chinese courts said that copyright could not be granted to Cultural Revolution era works (which I find really fascinating – anybody know more?).

Cai Guoqiang has kept ties with Quanzhou for a while though. Here’s one of his gunpowder works at a local museum. The subject of both the museum and the artwork is quite interesting, especially in light of some other Cai Guoqiang work. I’ll blog about it later.

This post is a crude attempt to replace the most-trafficked search word at this site, which for far too long has been “Gong Li’s breasts” (worksafe, no worries), driving the administrator to boredom.

Radar Magazine has listed China on its Hype Report, “a ridiculously scientific survey of the most overrated people, pets, politicians and products on the planet.” Also included are Posh and Becks, Brad Pitt, Cupcakes, sex with virgins, Keira Knightly and America Ferrera. Congratulations all. Radar, however, seems to be looking to tweak Chen Shuibian:

CHINA, AS AN ECONOMIC THREAT

Those in college during the ’80s no doubt remember classmates scrambling to learn Japanese in preparation for the Rising Sun’s impending takeover. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to global domination: Japan’s economy imploded, and students went back to studying Spanish in preparation for spring break in Cancun. Today, Taipei has replaced Tokyo as the new Asian bogeyman. The Chinese are industrious! They’re efficient! They’re out for blood! They also have a rapidly aging population, off-the-charts air pollution, and an OTB-style stock market that’s grown 200 percent in just 18 months—a bubble waiting to burst. Better short the lead-painted toy futures market while you still can.

I guess Radar supports the One China policy?

Also at Radar: a profile of Cryptome.