Ping-Pong Diplomacy

Because of politics, football, and the internet, I've been spending a lot of real time in virtual America lately. Fortunately, bikes with chickens and ping-pong lessons have reminded me that I'm still living in China.

This last week has been kind of strange. Except for the October Holiday when my Mom was here and we traveled to Datong, it was the first time since I've been here that I haven't had to teach. I spent my time doing all sorts of miscellaneous errands: buying our plane tickets from Hohhot to Beijing for our return date of March 1; getting my torn jacket mended; getting my swollen hand x-rayed (not broken!); having lunch dates with friends; exchanging emails with editors and designers at the UW press about my book (which is supposed to finally be published this spring if I am able to index the final galley proofs from China.)

The weirdest--and most surreal--part of the past week has been the "flat-earth" syndrome I've been experiencing. I don't always agree with Thomas Friedman, who seems to be an uncritical cheerleader for American-style globalization, but he does make catchy phrases, and the earth really is "flat" for some people. It certainly has been flat for me this last week. Since August, my teaching duties and travels have kept me place-bound and rooted in the present moment. Yes, I was emailing and Skyping (which itself is kind of dis-orienting, excuse the pun), but I was largely isolated from the American news cycle. I was living in China, teaching in China, reading the China Daily, talking to Chinese people.

All that seemed to change last week for a couple primary (excuse the pun again) reasons: first the caucuses and then the playoffs. I am both a political junkie and a football junkie. Iowa pulled me in like crazy. I found myself parked in front of the computer reading political blogs and watching "YouTube" coverage of debates, press conferences, stump speeches. (We've been told, by the way, that YouTube will no longer be available in China after January 31--we'll let you know if this is true.) Then came Sunday morning when I got up at 5:30 a.m. to listen to a live audio feed of the Seahawks game followed by video highlights for most of the day. Without my teaching duties, I was pulled into the abyss. Media saturation makes me feel weird at home, but it is especially disorienting here. A flat-earth may be great for multinational corporations and global assembly lines, but it messes with your head: China outside my door; America on my computer screen. I felt kind of stretched and disembodied, as if I was straddling the Pacific, a foot on either side, with my brain floating somewhere in between.

It was thus comforting to be pulled back into the here and now by taking ping-pong lessons this past week. I was invited to play ping-pong by Jong Shu Hui (Nancy), one of the teachers in the English department here at IMNU. Nancy is a serious player. She has a coach. She practices in three hour sessions at least four times a week. I told her that I was not a good ping-pong player, but she insisted on inviting me to her lessons and introducing me to her coach. Frankly, I jumped at the chance. My opportunities for cultural exchange are running out. And I also wanted to be able to impress people back home (one of my driving motivations in life, generally) by being able to say things like, "When I was in Inner Mongolia, my ping-pong teacher always told me that...."

Nancy is a serious player.

It's been pretty fun so far, although rigorous. Not at all like having a couple beers and playing ping-pong with your buddies. Most of it has entailed a thorough de-programming of all my previous ping-pong experience, which consisted primarily of playing ping-pong in the basement with my sisters as a child. Sweeping away all my bad habits has been really hard. The back-hand (the only stroke I've been allowed to use so far) taught to me by Ping-Pong Teacher Li is so dramatically different from what I've done before. If I do it correctly (which happens about one out of every 10 strokes), I'm hitting the ball on the bottom of the paddle when my paddle is parallel to the table. My brain keeps insisting that it is impossible to get the ball over the net doing this, so it's been struggle to overcome this mental conditioning.

Ping-Pong Teacher Li tells me to keep my center of gravity low; to crouch, knees bent, on the balls of my feet, ready to spring like a caged lion; to hold the paddle loosely with all my fingers except my index finger and thumb; to pivot at the waist as my arm comes forward; to extend my arm forward and flick my wrist to finish the stroke; and to keep my mind clear and my muscles relaxed.

There are so many things to think about--my stance, my grip, my posture, the mechanics of each stroke--that "relaxation" and mental clarity are nearly impossible.

If I really work on mechanics and don't worry about hitting the ball over the net, I sometimes take a really good stroke. I can feel it. On those strokes, Ping Pong Teacher Li gives me the thumbs up. The rest of the time, he quietly demonstrates where I should be holding the paddle and how I should be flicking my wrist.

Ping-Pong Teacher Li with his meiguoren (American) student. This guy has a tremendous amount of patience. He plays a lot of ping-pong, drinks a lot of tea, and smokes a lot of cigarettes.

Ping-Pong Teacher Li is in his early sixties. He grew up in Hohhot, the third of five children. He has been giving ping-pong lessons for 25 years. He never finished his own education because of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, where Mao sent students and teachers into the countryside to work in the fields and reform their thinking. Teacher Li spent the years he should have been in the classroom laboring in the fields outside the city. Even though he lost out on his chances at an education during those turbulent years, he says he has "no hard feelings towards Mao" or the Chinese government generally.

During one of the many tea breaks we take while playing, I asked Nancy if Chinese people now feel comfortable criticizing the Cultural Revolution. "Is it generally acknowledged as a failure now?"

Truth is, Chinese people don't like speaking openly to foreigners about such issues. And yet, I have heard others openly criticize the Cultural Revolution, so I figured it was a fair question. A common refrain is that Mao was "70 percent right and 30 percent wrong," and it's pretty clear that the Cultural Revolution falls into the latter category. Nancy is a pretty open and outspoken person and we've previously had a lot of conversations about controversial topics, especially in my faculty seminars.

"People still respect Mao," she answered. "Teacher Li still respects Mao."

"I know people respect Mao," I said. "He built the country and liberated China from foreign intrusion. But because of Mao, Teacher Li didn't get his education. Because of Mao, he had to work in the countryside."

She admitted that Teacher Li's generation was China's lost generation: "They were not able to get their degrees. There were no economic opportunities. Even when Reform and Opening came, they could not get good jobs," she said. "But his generation did not complain. They did not need much to be happy. They were happy with what they had. They had a different attitude towards wealth than the young generation in China today, who are more like Americans."

She went on to explain that Teacher Li and his wife will continue working for a few more years but hope to retire soon and begin receiving benefits from the state.

I hazarded another controversial question. "Isn't the social safety net declining? Isn't the pension system inadequate?" I asked. I have read that China's social safety net is largely eroded--that China, a "communist" country, cannot (or does not) provide its people with as much social insurance (pensions, healthcare, unemployment insurance, free education) as Western countries, even including the United States.

Nancy didn't agree. "The system is getting better in the last couple years," she said. "The government now realizes that it needs to improve social programs for the poor, especially in the countryside." She explained that the Party's policies since Reform and Opening have created more wealth but also more inequality. "The Party has begun to address the problems of the poor peasants." (I do know that the Party has begun to direct programs towards the countryside in an effort to quell popular unrest, which has been brewing throughout rural China. There has been a lot of rhetoric directed towards new programs, including an attempt to offer free education to rural residents. To the extent that these new programs have actually been implemented I do not know.)

"You know half of our country lives in the countryside," she said. "And they live in horrible conditions." She told me that Chinese people like herself feel for the poor peasants and hope their situation will improve.

"We have the resources to help the peasants" she said. "But the government wastes an incredible amount of money." She went on to tell me about huge banquets where government officials waste food and luxury cars driven by corrupt party operatives. "The government helps build the country but it also wastes our resources."

This launched us into a conversation about the Communist Party and the one-party state generally. "Government corruption is a problem in all nations," I said. "Without opposition parties, a free press, and the right for citizens to protest and organize then it is really hard to hold governments accountable."

She agreed. "There are other parties. There is not just one party." she explained. "But all the other parties are still controlled by the Communist Party."

"The Chinese people don't always like the Communist Party, but it is impossible for us to have a government like yours. Even people in the government know it is corrupt, but it is too hard to change it because no one can oppose the party. If you want to live comfortably you have to play by the rules. We all participate in corruption because it is the only way to get ahead."

The room was cool. We were starting to get cold. Ping Pong Teacher Li was finished with his tea and cigarette. It was time to play ping-pong again.

It is hard to believe that much will change in a country where most people--in spite of the disasters of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward--still do not openly criticize the legacy of Mao. It does feel like most people in China are resigned to single-party rule, and frankly, who is to say that multiple parties would be better for the majority of Chinese. Who is to say that a single-party is not desirable for holding together the speeding juggernaut of modern China, with all of its tensions and competing forces? (I mean, in the U.S. we've got two corrupt parties--they only have one.)

As we were leaving on our bicycles, Nancy asked me "If someone steals something, whose fault is it?" I offered quickly and simplistically--"Maybe it's the thief's fault."

"But society has made him a thief," she said. "His environment is responsible for his behavior." Our answers reflected the stereotypical ideologies of our respective nations--my knee-jerk individualism and her default environmental determinism.

"Maybe it is both environment and personal choice," I offered. We left it at that.

Yesterday at lunch I told the story of the famous 1971 Ping-Pong Diplomacy to Samuel and Grace . I became unexpectedly emotional and my voice started to crack as I tried to explain the significance of "the ping heard round the world," as Time magazine called it. An innocent exchange of good will and gifts between American and Chinese athletes (whose dreams were much more modest) sparked the most important moment in modern US-Sino relations--and one of the most important moments for modern world history. I especially got choked up describing how the US Ping-Pong team passed from Hong Kong to mainland China and thereby became the first group of Americans to visit China since 1949. It must have been amazing for them to be greeted in the Great Hall of the People by Zhou Enlai, who told them "You have opened a new chapter in the relations of the American and Chinese people....I am confident that this beginning again of our friendship will certainly meet with majority support of our two peoples."

I'm looking forward to more ping-pong and more conversations this week--to continuing my own modest and less consequential brand of ping-pong diplomacy. I'm also looking forward to finally getting that back-hand stroke down and perhaps, if Ping-Pong Teacher Li allows it, trying out my forehand.

At the end of the week--after New Hampshire and before Green Bay--I'll be giving my final examination. After grading I'll be working on my index for the final version of my book, which is supposed to be arriving as a pdf file sometime early next week. Then it is off to Xi’an and Shanghai for a ten-day trip.

Thanks for reading.

Dave