Tag Archives: biantong

变通: thoughts from chengde

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This was written on July 23.

Biantong (变通): the ability to apply successfully knowledge about A to B. The two characters constituting this word—bian (变) and tong (通)—suggest an understanding of intelligence as a capacity to adapt past knowledge and experience to and thus pass smoothly through the challenges of the present. At the level of cultural history, biantong simultaneously reproduces and changes tradition, creating new worlds where vestiges of the old not only have salience, but also continue function. Visiting Chengde these past few days has helped me deepen my understanding of the establishment of Shenzhen as an instance of biantong. Specifically, Chinese Emperors and socialist leaders have continuously established new cities to initiate political change or diversify administrative s policies while maintaining stability in the capital.

Qing hegemony rested on obtaining legitimacy within both Han and non-Han ethnic communities. On the one hand, the Qing were Manchurians, but governed an Empire that was primarily Han. Indeed, in the state apparatus that the Qing took over from the Ming, Beijing signified the centrality of Han ethnic identity for state building and identity formation. As a first step to securing their hegemony, the Qing occupied the forbidden city (故宫), the former center of the Ming Empire. However, to redeploy the Ming state apparatus for their own ends, the Qing Emperors mastered Han culture, presenting themselves as the embodiment of the Mandate of Heaven. The Qianlong Emperor’s mastery of Han calligraphy and poetry forms, for example, fueled rumors that he was actually a Han Chinese, rather than a Manchurian.

On the other hand, to appeal to non-Han and non-Manchurian ethnic groups, the Qing court promulgated Tibetan Buddhism (密宗), which was practiced throughout much of the non-Han Empire (Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan, and western Sichuan in addition to Manchuria). In contemporary jargon, the Qing located “minority affairs” in Chengde, where they resided in Chengde for five months a year—from May through October. More to the point of this blog entry, Chengde enabled the Qing to place Tibetan Buddhism at the center of imperial policy, something that could not be easily achieved in Beijing, which was already built to reflect Han cosmology. Once Tibetan Buddhism had been firmly established as the court religion, it could be transferred to Beijing. For example, the Yongzheng Emperor donated his pre-ascension Beijing residence, the Yonghe Palace to Tibetan Buddhist monks.

Clearly, minority affairs not only constituted a key element of Qing administration, but also necessitated what was effectively a second capital, begging the question: how much change can be ordered from the capitol, but not implemented there? Many people, myself included, have ascribed the success of reforms in Guangdong, generally and Shenzhen, specifically as an instance of “the Emperor is far away and the mountains high (山高皇帝远)”. However, the fact that the Qing needed a second capitol to administer a multi-ethnic empire complicates this description of change from below. Instead, it seems that political change in China has also occurred because the constraints that Beijing’s bureaucracy have imposed on the Emperor can be mediated by spatial distance. In other words, the Emperor deployed and the Communists continue to biantong urban space with an eye to transforming Beijing and by extension the country.

I have elsewhere discussed Shenzhen’s establishment in terms of the Maoist policy of “important cities (重点城市)”. While in Chengde, I became aware the extent to which the establishment of the Qing’s “Mountain Resort (避暑山庄: the Chinese includes the idea of ‘summer retreat’)” enabled them to govern the Empire through means that would have been both difficult and ineffective in Beijing. Yet once in place in Chengde, these same policies could be re-imported to the capital as national policy. Suddenly, the establishment of Shenzhen appears to be well within Chinese administrative –both imperial and Maoist—history. Cultural continuity through biantong . More importantly, thinking about Shenzhen through Chengde firmly situates the SEZ’s so-called lack of history within Chinese cultural-political history. From the height of Chengde’s mountains, it seems ignorant to argue that Shenzhen doesn’t have a history. Indeed, such arguments appear to be motivated disinformation; who benefits and how when Shenzhen is described as being without history or culture?

My regrettably fast tour of Chengde included visits to Puning Temple (普宁寺), the little Potala Palace (普陀宗乘之庙; the Mandarin refers to Tibetan Buddhism as Tantric Buddhism), the Mountain Resort, and Sledgehammer Peak (磬椎峰). While there, I enjoyed the cooling beauty of Chengde’s trees.

classical shenzhen

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Last night had dinner with Lai Guoqiang (赖国强), his wife and Miss Liang, a friend, who organized the dinner. Miss Liang is from Hunan, where she was an area (地区) first place (状元) and provincial subject first place in the college entrance exam. She graduated with a degree in French from Fudan University and now works in an international company. Mr. Lai was a Jiangxi district second place, but because his family was poor, he studied IT at a military school and was then assigned a job in Guangxi, where he met his wife. In terms of the gaokao system, both Miss Liang and Mr. Lai succeeded (出成绩).

Nevertheless, Miss Liang and Mr. Lai share a sense that their education failed to teach them how to be human (做人). They said that Chinese classical education prepared students to understand their place in the world, their obligations, and how to handle unexpected challenges. In contrast, modern education only prepared them to handle technical problems, but left them feeling empty. In different ways, both have spent the past decade trying to figure out how they can remedy this situation and help the next generation avoid a similar tragedy.

Mr. Lai’s quest began with the birth of his daughter. When she was three years old, he began having her listen to classical recitations. However, he realized that these recitations didn’t help children learn because there wasn’t a space for imitating the adult. Instead, Mr. Lai transferred these recitations from tapes onto computer and then slowed them down, leaving spaces in which his daughter could repeat after the adult. After nine years, his daughter can recite from memory, the Dao De Jing, the Yi Jing, many Tang poems and Song ci, in addition to many other classics from the four books and five classics (四书五经). Mr. Lai says that when children are young, they can memorize. When they are older they will realize (悟) the rich meaning of these classics. According to Mr. Lai, if students don’t memorize the classics when they are young, they have missed the window of opportunity, and will grow up in a state of ignorance similar to the one in which he finds himself.

This situation motivated Mr. Lai to develop a series of classics on CD that are recorded to facilitate memorization. The accompanying text has characters and pinyin. Importantly, this method of education does not require the students to understand or write the characters of the classics. Instead, the first step to learning is to memorize. And that is all they have to do. Individual lessons are organized to be completed within five minutes. Students listen and repeat (跟读; literally follow recite) for five minutes everyday, each lesson is repeated for one week, and then they move onto the next lesson. There is no pressure to recite, to write, or to interpret the texts. Mr. Lai has divided the lessons into three three-year chunks, so that after nine years, students will have the classics in their hearts, waiting to blossom as students’ understanding deepens over time. His company, 育心经典 is online.

I have been thinking about the implications of this method for pedagogy. It seems appropriate for texts that were originally transmitted orally, and indeed, were written parallel couplets that are easily memorized and beautifully recited. The goal, of course, is 变通 (biangtong: to adapt one method to different contexts) and (by implication) solve problems (处理事情). I remember when I was first learning Chinese in college. My teacher, Mr. Jiang told me that if I memorized poems, reciting them every morning, there would come a day, when I would be sitting on a park bench and a poem would come to mind. I would 悟 (wu) the poem’s 意境 (yijing, a word that has been badly translated as “artistic concept”, but seems to me to be more “the imaginary world” of a poem or painting). This experience would be both the interpretation and fulfillment of the poem; I would truly understand. At stake in this understanding of education is not simply a moral order, but also an understanding of creativity as being able to apply the lessons of the past to the present; this is biantong.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure how easily this pedagogy enables biantong. My uncertainty arises because this kind of learning too easily becomes rote memorization for tests, such as the gaokao and not because biantong isn’t a form of creativity often used in the arts and scientific discovery. Clearly, memorization is an important element of any pedagogy. The question is whether or not it is the only or highest form of learning. That said, the detrimental effects of the gaokao system are part of the problem that Mr. Lai is trying to solve through this turn to the classics.

More significantly, both Mr. Lai and Miss Liang understand memorization of the classics to be a method for rectifying current social problems. They see corruption, disillusion, cynicism, and indifference to be symptoms of a society that has lost its moral bearings. In order to live prosperous and happy lives (幸福), people must understand their place in the moral order. Once they have understood their place in the moral order, any job that they take, any role that they assume will be a vehicle for expressing this truth and society will naturally become harmonious.

I have discussed this conversation with two friends, both of who were educated abroad and have Master’s degrees. They agree that Mr. Lai’s understanding of and proposed solution to the problem of childhood education makes sense (有道理). They agree that to understand Chinese philosophy and history it is necessary to wu and the precondition of wu is having memorized the texts. They also agree that China’s social problems arise from a fundamental failing of the educational system to teach moral values. Generally speaking, they believe that the system succeeds in teaching fundamentals, but fails to prepare students for life.

So grassroots neo-Confucianism has come to Shenzhen, city without recognizable and therefore recoverable history. Ironies abound.