Will China move to a "Two-Child Policy"?

On July 23 this year, China Daily reported that the National Health and Planning Commission of the People's Republic denied media suggestions that such a policy would be implemented by 2016. (See chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-07/23/ and, the Great Firewall willing, you can read the article for yourself.) In 2013, there was a relaxation of the one-child policy to allow couples of which one spouse is a only child to have a second child. Eleven million couples qualified.

The debate around this Chinese policy has centered, among Westerners, on issues of human rights and reproductive freedom. I have a j'ne sais quoi feeling about this.

Among Chinese policy makers, one suspects, it has to do with how the nation proposes to feed its people and, lately, how its society will take care of its aging population. The chart to the left of China's estimated population by age group shows the stark truth that in 30 years, those currently aged 40 and above will be much larger than those currently aged 70 and above while their replacements, those currently aged ten to thirty-nine will be much smaller. The math is inexorable and the social prospects grim. A much smaller working population will have to support a much larger number of seniors.

[An acknowledgement is necessary: The image is by the Pardee Center for International Futures [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.]

There is another dimension of this issue that has not surfaced but which is alluded to in a passage in The Ninja and the Diplomat, vol. 2 of The Chinese Spymaster, expected to be published in September this year. One character addressed another as "uncle" as respectful Chinese traditionally did (perhaps still do) when speaking to someone older and/or of higher status. The man thus addressed is touched because -

"As an unintended but ineluctable consequence of the one child policy, he and his wife, like most of his generation and those succeeding, consisted of only children; hence his family included no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and no nieces or nephews. The Chinese family had lost an immeasurable dimension of comfort."   

Revision to The Chinese Spymaster - adding an image

In view of the forthcoming publication of The Ninja and the Diplomat, vol. 2 of The Chinese Spymaster, and in anticipation of renewed interest in volume 1 itself, I recently revised the text of The Chinese Spymaster.

The revision consisted primarily of eliminating typos and formatting issues as best I could. I have learned of course from reviewers about aspects readers found wanting. Several wished for more action and/or a faster pace; others thought the flashbacks and asides in the narrative or the dialogue distracting. I have taken these comments to heart, but I did not revise the book to reflect any of them. Flashbacks and asides need to be handled more adroitly, and I hope to have accomplished these matters of style in volume two. More or faster paced action, however, are not only a matter of taste but also a result of the author's vision. I did/do not wish to write with James Bond or the Bourne books/movies as my models. It is simply not how I visualize the Chinese spymaster and his colleagues. 

The Ninja and the Diplomat will be tighter in narrative and action. Readers will soon learn that I have not written to a formula, although I hope the thoughtfulness and awareness of geopolitical as well as national political and security issues of the main characters remain. The areas of geographical interest have also changed. Volume 2 takes on China's maritime interests to the northeast and southeast of Asia. I have found maps to accompany the text that I hope will make those contentious areas visually clear to the reader.

In The Chinese Spymaster, volume 1,  the intrigue was centered on Afghanistan and the ramifications were envisioned to spread through all the Central Asian "stans." It seemed desirable to include an image of the area to the book. Doing so for the Kindle version was more difficult than for the print version or in other e-book formats. I tried to follow Kindle's formatting style guide but failed initially. The Kindle community/forum, the last time I checked, did not have a thread discussing my problem although I find it hard to believe that I was the first to experience it. Fortunately, "Contact us" led to a very useful email exchange that cleared up the mystery for me.

For the benefit of other authors, the text (saved as a web-filtered file) and the image should not be upload in a single folder, nor in such a folder that has been compressed (zipped). The trick is to place the image in a folder and then to send both that folder and the (web-filtered) text to the "zip" function in Windows 7. (Sorry, I have no idea if this would work for other versions of Windows or for Macs.)

The map, originally called the Political Map of the Caucasus and Central Asia is a product of the CIA's work and is in the public domain. It is available from Wikimedia Commons.

The Ingenious Judge Dee gets an airing

Some years ago, I asked around about Chinese detective stories and discovered that these were immensely popular in the vernacular literary form. In the eighteenth century, for example, stories were published about a Judge Dee. A print version was found by Robert van Gulik. During WW2, he used his leisure to translate them into English as The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, first published in 1949. He wrote then in an essay appended to that translation that he could easily imagine the Judge in new detective stories.

Thus he wrote The Chinese Maze Murders, The Chinese Bell Murders, and The Chinese Lake Murders. He had these translated into Japanese and Mandarin and published in the early 1950s before publishing them in English in 1957. These stories and several more subsequently attracted a loyal following fond of the cozy murder stories with the clever judge.

The Ingenious Judge Dee, a play, is an adaptation of The Celebrated Cases. I published the play in 2013 thinking that this would bring fresh appeal to the stories and also with the fond hope that fans of Judge Dee might some day be able to attend a performance and, as often ensues after such a group experience, be able to share their experience of the performance. I understand that a movie or two have been made based on the character and am aware that a video game featuring the Judge has recently been introduced in to the market.

To my knowledge, the dramatic reading of Judge Dee will be the first such performance. It will take place in Nevada City, CA, on Thursday July 23, at 6.30. The venue is the lovely Miners Foundry.

I have immodestly cast myself in the title role (pictured on the right) but have been fortunate that some friends from the local theater community will help playing the other roles in the play. Some of them will have more than one role, hence the various colored stoles or belts that we wear.

Photographs were taken by David Wong of David Wong Photography.

From left to right, Rene Sprattling, Dinah Smith, Brett Torgrimson, Hock, Drue Mathies, Lois Ewing and Eric Tomb.

Revisiting Agamemnon Must Die

Agamemnon Must Die tells the story that Aeschylus did in his Oresteia. This was a work that belonged very much to Athens in the fifth century B. C. It was written in lyric form as a drama that followed rules governing such works. The playwright made some innovations but not many. The actor declaimed and the chorus explained the "action." Even so, it was based on stories that belong to the cycle of songs or stories about the Trojan War. Archaeological remains from Mycenae during that era (about 1200 B. C.) strongly suggest a rich, perhaps a heroic culture.

Two artifacts belonging to that time and place and now in the possession of the Louvre are here reproduced, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The first is of a "sauce-boat" and the second is of an earring. They do not prove the existence of Agamemnon or the reality of the Trojan War, but I accept them as strongly indicative of a society that could very well have waged such a war. 

The Homeric poems and similar stories cannot be dated with certainty any earlier than the eighth century B. C. They do suggest to me a continuity of oral tradition that informed Aeschylus. What is certain is that Aeschylus did not himself make up the stories as other playwrights also used the same materials. Euripides criticized sections of the Oresteia, and Aristophanes made fun of it. Sophocles is said to reflect, in his plays, knowledge of the Agamemnon stories.

My own telling or retelling of the story takes as given that Agamemnon was murdered upon his return from Troy and that he was avenged by his son Orestes seven years later. I felt it necessary to change some of the characters for what I considered to be sufficient cause. 

Clytemnestra appears almost shrewish in Aeschylus' drama. This I find impossible to accept. If the legends guide us correctly, Agamemnon and his brother were taken to the house of Tyndareus, king of Sparta and father of Helen and Clytemnestra. As the older brother, Agamemnon's claim would surely have superseded that of Menelaus. Yet he chose Clytemnestra just as Odysseus declined to compete for Helen because his heart was set on Penelope. I concluded that Agamemnon was not totally clueless about his choice and saw something beyond Helen's beauty.

Similarly, Aigisthos was portrayed as weak and effeminate by Aeschylus and other retailers of these tales. It seemed inconceivable to me that Clytemnestra would have chosen such a person to allow into her chambers.

Menelaus is said by Homer to have made his way back to Greece in the eighth year after the Trojan War. I could not resist changing that to six years so that I could place him in an argument with Orestes over whether or not he should pursue the path of vengeance against Agamemnon's killers.

For more, I encourage readers of this blog to read my book.

Target Audience for Judge Dee

Some time ago, I wondered about the existence of detective stories in Chinese literature.

Many friends told me that they were fans of the Judge Dee stories, rather like being fans of Agatha Christie, or of "the cat who" series, or of Nero Wolfe. You get the picture. I looked into this and soon discovered that there were more than two dozen Judge Dee stories from the clever pen of Robert van Gulik. I discovered among them The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, published in 1949 by Dover Press, that he did not write but translated from an eighteenth century edition published in vernacular Chinese.

I learned also that there was a historical Judge Dee, a Di Renjie, who served the Tang Empire in the seventh century. His title was not literally a judge and certainly not a judge in the same way that Rumpole of the Bailey or Judge Judy were "judges." You might be closer to the truth to compare his position to that of judges under the Napoleonic Code/Continental System who often served as prosecutor, judge and jury. His real position was that of an imperial official much like the thousand or so men with whom the English boasted they ruled India. They represented the Empire and fixed whatever was broken--fences, water supplies, domestic situations, as well as actual crimes against society or the state.

The Celebrated Cases impressed me enough to lead to the adaptation that I wrote and published as The Ingenious Judge Dee, a Play (this is described more fully in the tab for Books in this blog). Despite the eighteenth century "original" that van Gulik worked with, I chose to set the play in the seventh century. There isn't anything that is historically linked to that time in the play, but it seems a fitting tribute to the historical person. I imagined him as lean and athletic unlike the figure on the left, but his clothing might have looked similar. (This is a genuine Tang dynasty artifact, excavated in Xi-an, the capital of the Tang Empire and its image has been downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.)

Then the thought intruded: Who would make up the "target market"?

Much of a writer's motivation, I believe, is internal. At least mine is. I write because something has piqued my interest or challenged my understanding or demands resolution between conflicting ideas or beliefs. This is very different from the writer who scopes out a target audience and develops a formula to appeal to it. Nevertheless, as a writer, I am grateful to be read even if I do not set out with an audience in mind; the main purpose of writing, I find it necessary to remind myself, is to be read. Reviews, even negative ones, are gratifying indications that one's work is making some sort of impression.

I imagine that the audience for this play will be those who are curious as I was about Chinese "detective" stories. No doubt, there will be fans of Judge Dee. (A video game has recently been released, I understand, but this runs outside the limits of my activities.) I hope also that those who are interested in Asian plays will look for my take on Judge Dee. Fans who have experienced a performance have one more aspect of the Judge Dee experience to share.

Muriel Spark, The Only Problem, a review

Norman Mailer dismissed Muriel Spark’s writing as belonging to what he called "dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish" women's writing. The man had his problems.

Spark is perhaps now best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and most likely because that was made into a successful movie, starring the young Maggie Smith. Spark herself had attended James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh (from 1923 to 1935) which was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in the novel.

The Only Problem was published in 1984 and drew my attention because its main character, Harvey, was trying as I am to understand the Book of Job. He and another character had discussed this Book since they were fellow students in university and agreed that it was the most important part of the Bible, that the problem it presents—why suffering is visited upon a man who has been pronounced righteous—is pivotal, is in fact “the only problem.”

The two men are married to sisters and matters do get complicated. Both marriages fail, though in very different ways. Harvey left his wife after she had shop-lifted two bars of chocolate and defended this action by arguing that stealing from big corporations that exploit their customers was acceptable. Her sister agreed with Harvey that stealing only makes it worse for everyone, besides which, “it’s dishonest.” The wife, however, continues in her wayward ways, contributing to a surrealistic drama involving the French police.

Meanwhile the sister leaves her husband and winds up with Harvey, though this is not as simple as it sounds. “Her being there … astonished her to the point of vertigo.” Harvey is independently wealthy and lives in France near the painting shown above of Job’s wife visiting her distressed husband. The painting is by Georges de la Tour, possibly done in 1625. Harvey visits it for inspiration from time to time. He is convinced that Job continued to suffer even after his health and wealth have been restored for “he [Job] not only argued the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable.” Ultimately, he [Harvey] finds “We are back to the Inscrutable. If the answers are valid, then it is the questions that are all cock-eyed.”

In an obituary that appeared in The Weekly Standard, May 1, 2006, Kelly Jane Torrance wrote: "The world has lost a singular voice with the death of Dame Muriel. Her short, sharp novels … have something of the biting wit of Evelyn Waugh and the intellectual Catholicism of Graham Greene; but in her ability to make the absurd seem everyday, and the darkest deeds deliciously droll, Spark was in a class of her own.”

The image of Georges de la Tour' painting was downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

The Ninja meets the Girl with sad eyes, another fight scene

(The Ninja fights to obtain the antidote for his master who has been poisoned by an extract of wolf's bane. The small images are of the poison and its antidote, a variety of bella donna, both highly poisonous. This is another extract from The Ninja and the Diplomat, forthcoming.) 

Again the ninja attempted to attack the Boss and again he was confronted by the woman with sad eyes.

The two champions knew then that they would have to square off against each other; the ninja if he was to obtain the antidote from the Boss, the woman with sad eyes would do whatever she had to to thwart him. Briefly they inspected each other and then bowed before launching into the attack. The ninja faked a high kick and swung a hard jab at the woman. She blocked his jab partially and pivoted as she appeared to absorb the energy from that jab. From her pivot she emerged to kick him viciously in the crotch.

***

Katya, where is that girl?

The boys have surrounded and attacked her.

What has she done now?

She did nothing, but they did not like it when she beat Anton and Vasily. They thought together they could get her and pull her pants down.

What? I know she is fast and strong but they are each twice, three times, as big as she.

Anyway, she is getting a beating now.

We’ll see about that.

Twelve boys stood around kicking a young girl lying on the ground. They were careful not to get too close as she kicked back and already two of them were sitting by the side nursing bruises and perhaps broken bones.

They were young teens in a special school for gymnasts. Katya had begged her coach to let her learn what they boys were doing as well as what the girls had to. The coach had laughed then grudging agreed to let her try to climb the rope.

He was astonished at her strength. She pulled herself up hand over hand as she had seen the boys do. She did not climb all the way to the top on her first attempt or her second. But it took only weeks for her strength to develop so that she climbed and kept a correct form as she had observed the boys perform.

Eventually she learned all their floor exercises, the pommel horse moves, the uneven bars routines and even the rings.

It’s something genetic, pronounced the team doctor.

Male pride provoked many instances of bullying. Attempted bullying would be the more correct term, as no boy was able to defeat her in a boxing match or a brawl. Those who tried to pair up against Katya discovered her natural aptitude for dodging, squirming, kicking, lashing out with elbows, fists, knees and head butts.

She outgrew her preteen grace and appeared less svelte as her body showed more muscle than women gymnasts do. But she became an awesome fighting machine. Her straight blond hair and sad grey eyes were her best disguise.

***

The ninja took the blow on his left thigh as he turned clockwise, spinning swiftly round to lash a leg sweep. He barely connected before the blond began a cartwheel that ended with her trying to stomp on his left leg. Moving more swiftly than the eye could follow, the ninja had recovered and engaged the woman in a furious series of kicks and blocks.

They broke off only to return immediately with arms flailing, slashing and jabbing, blocking and twisting. An opponent might appear to have an arm locked only to kick or twist free. Neither combatant appeared to weaken or tire. Two or three times, the force of the ninja’s strikes or jabs enabled him to hit his target despite a block or deflecting move by the woman. Several times, her quickness and flexibility, bending over backwards to a handspring resulted in her heel reaching the ninja’s crotch or solar plexus just before he could parry the blow or twist away.

The ninja stepped back, appearing to slip and pivoted off his right arm on the floor to lash his legs against his opponent’s hips. Though she certainly felt the blow, she reacted instantly by swiveling her hips away to her left while launching herself into a handspring to her right.

“They are very good,” said Wang, more to his companion than to the Boss or the Yakuza.

“On a good day, I would not be sure of myself against either of them,” replied Li. “But today, the ninja is distracted.”

“Enough of this Boris,” declared Wang. “Would you please give him the antidote?”

“What antidote?” responded the Boss.

“No matter, Mr. Yamato,” offered Wang, addressing the Yakuza directly. “It would appear that your alliance with the Boss has been terminated, but I do have the antidote. I need, however, some information from you.”

“Ha,” coughed the Yakuza. “You want to know where the other eleven nuclear devices are headed. I shall never tell you!” He coughed again but it became a whoop and then he convulsed.

“It is a simple proposition, Mr. Yamato,” related Wang. “You have been poisoned by what is called in your country torikabuto. Wolf’s bane is its common English name. I don’t think it really has the power to ward off vampires as some legends have it, but it does impair the ability of the heart and the lungs to function properly. You will be dead in two hours without the antidote. So tell me, where are those devices?”