1950 – Ousted
What is it about the western imagination and the Far East? Even using that term conjures up images of misty precipitous mountains covered in snow, wild river gorges with monasteries and palaces high above the water, extraordinary magical and mysterious events, and exhilarating combat involving warriors and monks endowed with amazing powers and fighting skills, defying gravity, moving faster than the eye can see. It’s a land of mythical heroes, filling our minds with images of a tantalising yet unbelievable world. For film makers, it is a source of dramatic visual images, set high in the mountains in some exotic part of Asia, with danger and drama played out in an inn or on a temple roof. Steven Spielberg understood the power of the East, with one of the best, early moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark taking place in Nepal. Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood runs a bar in the Himalayan foothills, and we watch her win an improbable drinking competition. In your excited anticipation, you know, without doubt, Indiana Jones is about to burst in, ready for another almost impossible fight. If Harrison Ford was the hero of the movie, Karen Allen almost stole the show with that short, gripping scene.
However, that’s not quite right. A white male hero with his beautiful white female accomplice? That’s almost cultural appropriation. No, I should have been thinking of something truly Asian. How about the 1990 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Directed by Ang Lee, a native-born Taiwanese during a brief return to his birthplace in between his years in Hollywood, his film was shot in China, the dialogue in Mandarin (although the film was released with English sub-titles). With a plot that makes Raiders of the Lost Ark seem as simple as a child’s story, this features all those fantastic moments that have made films of this genre famous. Most of the story is set in a mythical Mount Wudang, and centres around Wudang swordsmanship, even though the mountain in the film is actually Mount Cangyan, said to be where Princess Nan Yang, the daughter of the Sui Emperor Yang practiced Buddhism. Spectacular, the buildings seem to be hanging on the mountain, especially the Bridge-Tower Hall, a stone arch bridge spanning a narrow gorge. There are several chases across Chinese rooftops involving extra-ordinary gymnastics, and a stunning and unbelievably fast swordfight, between Michelle Yeoh, who is actually Malaysian Chinese, and Chinese actress Zhang ZiYi. It sets the standard for similar films for the next two decades, pushing the previous popular genre of male kung fu fighter films over to the side. There’s our popular image of the exotic East.
One of the more extraordinary films of this genre was released in 2004. Directed by Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers starred Zhang ZiYi (not a relation of the director). I did enjoy the IMDb summary of the film, which begins “During the reign of the Tang dynasty in China, a secret organization called “The House of the Flying Daggers” rises and opposes the government. A police officer called Leo sends officer Jin to investigate a young dancer named Mei, claiming that she has ties to the “Flying Daggers”. Leo arrests Mei, only to have Jin breaking her free in a plot to gain her trust and lead the police to the new leader of the secret organization. But things are far more complicated than they seem …”. Indeed they are, but for me the film includes one of the iconic scenes of this genre. Zhang ZiYi plays a blind dancer, a member of the secret group determined to overthrow the government. In the Echo Game, she has to listen for a dried bean being thrown against one of some forty or more drums on stands, identify the drum and hit it with one of her long gown sleeves. [i] Astonishing: I can’t really explain, you have to see it!
More than many others, Zhang Yimou knew how to capture the visual and the cultural elements of the mythic universe of ancient China. He made several films drawing on the legendary past, as well as some others on 20th Century topics. Dubbed in English, his films provide a window into this world for a western audience. In contrast, Hollywood has shown an extraordinary ability to misunderstand Asian culture. Having seen the success of films like Crouching Tiger and Flying Daggers, the studio decided the third film in The Mummy series should be set in China. Quite apart from dropping Rachel Weisz, which doomed it from the start (or possibly she sensed this third film was going to be a flop), the combination of dragons, Shangri-La and a terracotta army was a dud. A wise director would realise Hollywood should leave the Far East to the Far East (another example of failure is Disney’s botched Mulan remake). Even when Martin Scorsese leapt into Asian film-making with a biographical film about the Dalai Lama, Kundun, the film was a box office lemon, but it did include scenes showing the dramatic landscape (in this case of Tibet), as well as faithfully following the first 24 years of the Dalai Lama’s life.
Another, rather different perspective on Asia became available when a Chinese children’s television series, Journey to the West, appeared with English subtitles. Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century Ming dynasty, and is considered one of the four great classical novels of China. It is often claimed to be the most popular literary work in East Asia. Long, it comprises 100 chapters which cover the pilgrimage of a Tang priest to India to collect and bring back a collection of Buddhist sutras, while including various incidental adventures. He’s accompanied by three disciples, Sun Wukong, the ‘Monkey King’, Zhue Bajie, ‘Pig’, and Sha Wujing, ‘Friar Sand’, together with a dragon prince, which, for most of the journey, is in the form of Tang priest’s white horse. Journey to the West is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire on Chinese government bureaucracy, and an account of the characters’ journey towards enlightenment. Regarded as an example of ‘shenmo xiaoshuo’, fiction that is based on the deities, immortals, and demons in Chinese mythology, it’s funny, exciting, sometimes heart-stopping, and in case you didn’t guess, I love it!
Journey to the West has been adapted for television many times. That major series seen in the west was first broadcast on China’s national television station between 1986 and 1988, and became an instant classic in China. Regarded as a reasonably authentic interpretation of the novel, it is dearly loved by both adults and children. Monkey is enduring favourite with the young, the perfect embodiment of skill, magical powers, and naughty behaviour. The series runs over two seasons, the first with 25 episodes covers 74 chapters of the novel; the second with 16 episodes, covers another 25 chapters. Continuously available on television stations in China and Hong Kong, the series has been repeated more than 2,000 times. [ii] I guess that puts Dr Who, Coronation Street, The Bold and the Beautiful and Neighbours all in their place!
Leaving on one side the delights of watching Sun Wukong and his friends, the ‘Journey’ draws on a real event. Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk, did go to India (and many other countries to the west of China) between 629 and 645 AD, and brought back some 657 texts, and other relics, statues, and Buddhist devotional artifacts. One of the important contributors to Chinese Buddhism, he translated many important sūtras, records of the oral teachings of Buddha, which are read, repeated and examined as a key element of Buddhist practice today.
Buddhism was founded on the teachings Gautama Buddha, who lived around the 5th or 4th Century BC. His spiritual journey eventually led him to meditative practice, famously doing so under a ‘sacred’ fig, or Bohdi tree, gaining insight into the workings of karma and his former lives, overcoming mental distractions, achieving the end of suffering, and ending of cycle of deaths and rebirths (samsara) to achieve nirvana. Buddhism slowly spread out from India to the east and southeast of Asia. By 1200 it was all but eliminated from India, as Hinduism took hold, followed by Islam, but Xuanzang had gone to India early enough to get the right stuff!
The eastwards spread led to variations. As it began to develop in China, Buddhism was interwoven with Taoism, although the two eventually separated. China became an exponent of the Mahāyāna tradition, which focuses on the ‘bodhisattva’ path to enlightenment, breaking the cycles of rebirth by attaining Buddhahood, using the authority of the many Mahāyāna sutras, (seen as the word of the Buddha), along with numerous other texts. Around 20% of China’s population are said to be adherents of Buddhism, with a similar number following Chinese folk religions that incorporate elements of Buddhism. [iii] The Mahāyāna is one of the two major schools of Buddhism, and other major school, the Theravāda tradition, is considered a more orthodox form of Buddhism, more conservative in doctrine, embodied in monastic discipline. Initially Theravāda flourished in south India and Sri Lanka; from there it spread into mainland urban centres in southeast Asia during the 11th century. By the 13th century, Theravāda was widely practiced in Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, displacing Mahāyāna practice.
Among the countries of the region, Tibet, together with Bhutan and Mongolia, followed yet another variant. This form of Buddhism draws on both Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna paths, of which the latter is sometimes described as ‘Esoteric Buddhism’. It emphasises the importance of emptiness, and sees the world as being fluid, without any ontological foundation or inherent existence, but ultimately ‘a fabric of constructions’. According to Buddhist Tantra, there is no strict separation of the profane (or samsara) and the sacred (nirvana), but rather they exist in a continuum. All individuals contain the seed of enlightenment within themselves, which can be uncovered through meditative practice. In Tibetan Buddhism, followers are not subject to the requirement of many cycles of rebirth but can achieve enlightenment immediately.
Edging the Himalayas, Tibet offers a reality that is close to the imagined world of those heroic stories from the past, with hundreds of monasteries offering training in meditation and in martial arts, and astonishing scenery. A theocracy, it is a land combining rich pastures and forbidding mountains, steeped in Buddhism. Over the centuries, it has been constantly drawn into and then moved out of China’s orbit. In 1912, following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Tibet became independent once more under the 13th Dalai Lama, with its government based in Lhasa.
The locals must have known the wheel would turn once more, just as the Tibetan prayer wheel, the ‘mani chos ‘khor’,always does. That turn began, as Martin Scorsese’s film faithfully documents, when the 14th Dalai Lama was identified in 1937, a child just 2 years old. His education began almost immediately, and when he was four he was taken to Lhasa, spending his time between Potala Palace and Drepung Monastery.
Around him, the region was in turmoil. Since 1927, the Republic of China, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek had been at war with the communists’ Peoples Liberation Army. Chiang’s Republic of China accepted the identification of 14th Dalai Lama. However, soon after Mao Tse Tung had established communist rule in China, his government marched on Tibet. In October 1950 the army came to the edge of the Dalai Lama’s territory and sent a delegation to Lhasa. To consolidate his role, on 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, the 14th Dalai Lama was enthroned formally as the temporal ruler of Tibet, but almost immediately, accompanied by an entourage of select government officials, he left Lhasa and set up a provisional administration near the Indian border at Yatung. In July 1951 the group was persuaded by Chinese officials to return to Lhasa. Eight years later he was exiled for good
It is hard to believe that Lhamo Thondup, born on 6 July 1935 to a farming and horse trading family in the Takster hamlet, out in the Tibetan region of Amdo was destined to become the extraordinary person we know today. In saying so, I must acknowledge the Tibetan monks who first met him claimed they knew by his behaviour he was the next Dalai Lama. Today, in exile, he is a remarkable leader and spiritual guide. Now in his eighties, he still gives interviews and talks, while teaching Buddhism to large public audiences all over the world, as well as to private groups at his residence in India. His best known subject is the Kalachakra tantra, one of the most complex teachings of Buddhism. An author, his essay, “The Ethic of Compassion”, explains that if we reserve compassion only for those we love, we are ignoring the responsibility to share our empathy and compassion with those with whom we don’t have relationships, preventing us from “cultivating love.” For him, such empathy is a key part of humans’ inner strength.
He’s a polymath. Apart from teaching, he continues to spend, time and resources investigating the interface between Buddhism and Science. These activities have given rise books and DVDs on such topics as Ethics for the New Millennium and The Universe in a Single Atom. Above all the Dalai Lama seeks to spread the messages of nonviolence and religious harmony. He sees himself as a conduit for India’s ancient thoughts the world over: “Let the 21st century be a century of tolerance and dialogue.” He also advocates compassion for animals, urging people to try vegetarianism or reduce their consumption of meat. He is an extraordinary human.
What aroused China’s ire? In a country where Sun Wukong is a source of fun while teasing us with the thought that maybe, just maybe, his feats could be real, it isn’t the mystical that bothers the leadership. Rather, China’s fear is of an alternative to its political control. There can be only one government, and the Dalai Lama’s rule over Tibet was, and remains, simply unacceptable. Subservient, yes, independent, no. Having once fled to the Indian border, the Dalai Lama was finally ousted from Tibet in 1959. [iv] His expulsion is a symbol of how China sees its role. The Chinese government rules greater China, and anyone outside must adopt a tributary relationship. Now the West is being ousted, too: China doesn’t want Hollywood versions of its culture, nor the influence of outside leaders, religious or political. The Dalai Lama represents the first of a long, long line of people who are being banned from today’s Middle Kingdom. Trump’s talk about making ‘deals’ with China is as misconceived as people believing in warriors running up walls. To understand China we should study the fate of the Dalai Lama and learn.
[i] One of my favourite scenes, I did track it down on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk9tqFd5sGI
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West_(1986_TV_series)
[iii] Much of the following discussion makes use of Wikipedia entries on Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the recent history of China and the 14thDalai Lama.
[iv] In our social media world, even those who chose to leave can find themselves subsequently ousted: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/how-my-mother-and-i-became-chinese-propaganda
