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btw the book you're looking for op is The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village
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Apr 24, 2024 12:38
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AFancyQuestionMark posted:IIRC there's an entire genre of Chinese literature describing intellectuals being persecuted during the CR, so this isn't a nieche viewpoint, as far as I understand "CR was bad and a mistake" is the mainstream view in China yeah there's no need to rehabilitate the cultural revolution. the red guards paralyzed dengs kid. a small civil war being fought over what decades of Chinese policy would agree was dumb poo poo is p bad
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Apr 24, 2024 12:40
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This might merit a post later where I pull up the literature, but the Cultural Revolution has another, I guess more dry and academic use? I don't know if people know this, but when British and French troops plundered the Summer Palace in 1860, over a million objects were taken. A large part of this was organized by James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin. His father was the one who stole/saved (more on that in a moment) the Elgin Marbles from Greece. The items taken from the Summer Palace are some of the most prestigious and significant in the holdings of major western museums, it's a fairly big deal. More was taken during the Boxer Rebellion where after the Peking Legations were relieved, Beijing was looted and punitive expeditions organized all over central and northern China. Many of these were planned with the participation of western diplomats, missionaries and army officers who dabbled in archeology, as educated men did at the time, so either expressly aimed at demonstrating their authority over the Chinese through cultural vandalism (the German expeditions organized in one province zigzagged between the oldest temples and palaces) or did so incidentally as anything interesting recovered along the way was sent back. Through this, the Royal Ontario Museum added to its collection an entire Ming tomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPGjR6ghHic   and as a provincial museum (literally) that pales in comparison to the British Museum and the great museums of Europe. There is lots and lots of Chinese stuff in Western Museums. Now, Greece and Egypt have fought for many, many, years to have culturally significant objects repatriated. It's a whole field of study, with books, conferences, papers on international law. Until like 1960 the argument against doing so made by the British, French, and Germans was vae victis. The holdings in European museums were the prizes of imperialism and colonialism (which is good). Then, until maybe 2000 or so, the argument was these countries were too stupid/primitive/poor to really have custodianship over some of the finest pieces of art and history in the world. Yes, it's awfully sad that our globe bestriding Empire rifled through the pockets of prostrate Egypt, but that was then and this is now, and can we really trust them with the Rosetta Stone? After 2000, it's a bit more sophisticated, in part because Egypt now trains at least among the world's greatest Egyptologists, who are fluent in French, English and German as well as their native tongue, and has invested in some of the greatest research institutes and museums of Egyptology in the world. It's much harder to say they couldn't do a good job when they've taken the lead on all digs in Egypt since the 2000's or so, or at least, have experts overseeing them. This had started in part because of what may have been archeology's greatest hour where international politics are concerned - The Rescue of Nubian Monuments and Sites, the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. It was a big deal, like immeasurably so, and removed any reasonable belief that Egypt couldn't protect its own history, it did more than any country in history in the world's largest and most ambitious program of archeology ever. It's never been rivalled. Greece, however, remains broke, and they keep losing/breaking/corruptly selling on the international art market, so their chances of getting anything really important are slim. With Britain quitting the EU, ironically, they're less able to run interference for the Elgin Marbles, so we'll see. Anyway, this led to a movement in Britain in the 2000's to say, this is world history, it belongs to the world. The British Museum is a global tourist destination, London is a global city, so if Greeks want to see Greek objects, the best place to do so is in London. Actually, it would be unfair for the rest of the world for these collections to be in Athens. This is showcased in how they talk about the issue in the hugely influential BBC Series A History of the World in 100 Objects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbFAi-jj4xE You can extrapolate this to how liberals talk about the world at the End of History generally. We feel pangs of guilt over plundering the world, but we have the plundered artifacts, and the wealth from colonialism and imperialism, so we're just best positioned to preserve and share these objects to the world. We're doing everyone a favour, if you really think about it. History is over, we happened to have all of this stuff, but we're enlightened and think at a multinational, multicultural level, so no, West Africa is not getting any of the poo poo the British and French stole, and it's for their own good (though we feel bad about taking it). I won't get into it here, but this will drive you crazy when you see how they talk about the destruction and plundering of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities through ISIS, and though less sought after on the art market, on a larger scale in Libya. They're bemoaning poo poo they did as a reason why it's important that we preserve the Rules Based International Order, who can take care of history, unlike tragically failed states. What happened to Libya in the first place? Either it's not mentioned, or it gets the same passive voice as events in 1860. That's history, what we care about is preserving objects now. Okay, so that sets the stage. This post has gone on longer than I like and I have a meeting at 830 so I'll very quickly explain how this relates to the Cultural Revolution. Because of the Century of Humiliation, pretty much nobody is allowed to dig in China. And, because the tomb of some minor princess or whatever was opened in the 70's and all of the artifacts destroyed, which you will read about everywhere, China is pretty conservative about digging themselves. They have reasons, like they'd like the science of archeology to advance to a place they're comfortable with, since you can only dig a trench once, right? They have left most of the terracotta army un excavated because they haven't been able to preserve the pigments from fading once exposed to air, so in the future they'd like to make sure they can do it right. Considering how much stuff you go through in the Near East that was discarded or broken in some dig in the 1860's because people were focused exclusively on treasure, you can hardly blame them. Even Pompeii and Herculaneum have suspended all new digs (since 2006 iirc), because of how much is destroyed each time. Crete is the same, where you can dig in minor sites but the prizes are being left covered up because the site of Minos was treated haphazardly in the past. English barrows, I believe same deal. Yes, Sutton Hoo was impressive, and produced treasure, but if we want to be scientific, nobody is risking losing this stuff forever. Okay, but - what gets taught here, and is in the books, papers etc. is that the Cultural Revolution proves China is too deliberately and carelessly destructive to be entrusted with their own history. I really have to dip but it's worth discussing.
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Apr 24, 2024 13:12
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I'd imagine that someone of Chinese descent living in Ontario may appreciate not having to go all the way to China to see an entire Ming tomb.
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Apr 24, 2024 15:36
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Fish of hemp posted:I mean, what were the good sides of cultural revolution? if u think about it it was kinda the ultimate giving the nerds a swirlie of modern times
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Apr 24, 2024 15:53
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Cerebral Bore posted:if u think about it it was kinda the ultimate giving the nerds a swirlie of modern times
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Apr 24, 2024 15:57
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War and Pieces posted:I'd imagine that someone of Chinese descent living in Ontario may appreciate not having to go all the way to China to see an entire Ming tomb. and I get that, for sure, but there are things that China has asked for back from more august museums that got better loot, and they get the same answer about the British Museum bringing Chinese history to them. Like “Land Back”, it’s stilly to demand absolutes that rapidly become appeals to blood and soil, but if China is asking that specific collections be repatriated, can we say they don’t have good enough museums or that tourists don’t visit Beijing as a world city? I think probably exchange is a fair option, that German museums can keep their holdings while providing Chinese museums with equivalent German antiquities. DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 16:43 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 16:40
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War and Pieces posted:I'd imagine that someone of Chinese descent living in Ontario may appreciate not having to go all the way to China to see an entire Ming tomb. This might be a good reason for the state of China and/or its museums to lend some of their artifacts to foreign museums.
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Apr 24, 2024 18:10
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Fish of hemp posted:I mean, what were the good sides of cultural revolution? it's already been linked in the thread, but Dongping Han's The Unknown Cultural Revolution is very good, and Dongping Han is not a raving maoist but a levelheaded Chinese academic who grew up in the period and then returned to do research about his home province during the CR before settling down as a professor in North Carolina. Basically, his book joins his own experiences with statistical research to point out 1) while universities were closed, modern primary and secondary education were expanded exponentially - and in many rural areas including his home district, basically established for the first time 2) agricultural mechanization continued to proceed, and many rural industries and farms were receiving their first modern (or secondhand, which was still a huge improvement) machinery 3) the cultural status quo that young people were rebelling against really was bad. modern observers retroactively apply their own gripes about ultrawoke students complaining about microaggressions or w/e, and forget that lots of Chinese teachers before the cultural revolution used pedagogical methods that we would correctly identify as abusive, including hitting kids or shaming them or just generally acting like unaccountable despots also, isabella weber's How China Escaped Shock Therapy establishes a pretty interesting consequence of the GPCR -- those young party functionaries and intellectuals who were sent down to the countryside in the late 60s really did make bonds with their rural hosts, and really did learn about the intricacies of rural life and production. So, when they were back in universities in the mid 80s and thinking through the problems of market reforms for rural markets, they specifically did not listen to the foreign (Eastern European "reformers"/North American neoliberals) economists' ideas about trying to destroy all price controls at once, because they knew that specific rural systems they were personally familiar with would be disrupted tatankatonk has issued a correction as of 22:41 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 18:12
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:and I get that, for sure, but there are things that China has asked for back from more august museums that got better loot, and they get the same answer about the British Museum bringing Chinese history to them. Maybe they can trade the Mayan Codex
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Apr 24, 2024 18:13
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Bro Dad posted:btw the book you're looking for op is The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village I think this is exactly what I was looking for. Added to my reading list.
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Apr 24, 2024 20:55
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The most rancid reason museums have for not returning objects is that other countries won't keep them safe somehow. gently caress off, like London is really any safer than anywhere else, in the long term.
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Apr 25, 2024 03:07
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The UK is a fifth rate country that is quickly devolving into absolute poo poo. And I say, let it sink into the mud.
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Apr 25, 2024 03:08
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Xi Jinping spent almost the entire cultural revolution down in the countryside and this reportedly helped him develop a deep empathy for rural people in China. I don't think it's a stretch to say this led directly to the recent extreme poverty elimination campaign focused on the countryside. So I suppose in atleast this most prominent case, the cultural revolution resulted in the ideological hardening it was supposed to.DJJIB-DJDCT posted:I think probably exchange is a fair option, that German museums can keep their holdings while providing Chinese museums with equivalent German antiquities. Lol, what are they going to offer them, a particularly interesting clod of mud?
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Apr 25, 2024 04:16
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Weka posted:Xi Jinping spent almost the entire cultural revolution down in the countryside and this reportedly helped him develop a deep empathy for rural people in China. I don't think it's a stretch to say this led directly to the recent extreme poverty elimination campaign focused on the countryside. So I suppose in atleast this most prominent case, the cultural revolution resulted in the ideological hardening it was supposed to.
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Apr 25, 2024 04:24
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Iriscoral posted:Liu Cixin's not a communist, and a lot of his writing is written from a very technocratic prespective, so its not surprising that he implicitly lamppoons the CR - for the modern intellectuals of China, especially those living in the coastal cities the CR is a bit of inconvienient truth to deal with. Liu has interesting politics that used to be alot more common in the Anglophone world before WW2. Like HG Wells. Wells was into socialism when it was the domain of the salon set and liked the broad material prosperity socialism could bring, but only when it was brought top-down by far-seeing benevolent intellectual technocrats. Once it was clear actually existing socialism needed to compromise with the mass populace or even *shudder* be led by them, Wells backed away.
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Apr 25, 2024 04:31
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Weka posted:Lol, what are they going to offer them, a particularly interesting clod of mud? There is this one particular mummified cat that froze to death under someone's porch in I think Leipzig that I've seen displayed in at least 3 museums in 3 different countries across 2 different continents. They should send that to China.
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Apr 25, 2024 04:52
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