Maxine & America vs The Chinese

Ishmael

Here's Yue Fei the source of Kingston's tattoos for Mulan, as translated by Sir T.L. Yang, the Chief Justice Hong Kong . There's a biblio at the end,

It may be a waste of my time, but somebody CA ... a CA writer has to stand up for the Chinese children's story and the Chinese story. You're right no CA writer will touch the Chinese children's story.

Frank Chin

Frank,

You're wasting your time, because American academics don't give a flying f- and the ethnic ones aren't all that interested in literature; they get degrees merely as a way of joining the middle class.

I've tried to defend myself from charges of misogyny for years even pointing to article and texts where black feminists agree with me( but the white feminists who are pushing minority feminists don't care about that- feminists who are silent about how white men treat them- they see joining in an attack on us as the cheapest way to express solidarity with the minority sisters who accuse them of excluding them from the movement.

Ishmael

•

There used to be an English course for college students deprived of what they needed to know about their own language. English 1-A was designed to bring students the knowledge and ability to manipulate English up to the minimum level required by college English courses. In English 1-A , deprived students learned, among other things, the importance of the European and American children’s stories like JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, CINDERELLA, THE UGLY DUCKLING.

This is the minimum knowledge of Chinese children’s stories that should bek required for students of Asia-American writing.

WHAT’S KINGSTON’S BEEF WITH YUE FEI?

WHO’S YUE FEI?

KINGSTON’S BEEF

IS AGAINST

THE WOMAN WARRIOR MULAN

NOT YUE FEI.

OR IS IT?

WHAT’S CLINTON’S BEEF

WITH CHINESE CHILDREN?

It’s been 35 years since Maxine Hong Kingston’s THE WOMAN WARRIOR spread a lie American white racists found sweet. A lie about Mulan, the heroine of the children’s BALLAD OF MULAN bearing the tattoos of Yue Fei on her back. A few Chinese complained that her Mulan was an offensive fake. But the white press using Ornamental Orientals and “feminists” as “reviewers” praised the book for revealing the misogyny at the heart of Chinese culture.

After being listed as an expert of Chinese folk culture in one encyclopedia of American Literature, after the other, and fooling at least four American universities into exposing their racism by awarding her honorary degrees, she confessed in a 1986 interview with Kay Bonetti, that she racistly changed the facts of THE BALLAD OF MULAN for feminist purposes:

Oh, yes, the myths I change. I change them a lot, and I’ve been criticized for that by traditionalists

[“Traditionalists” her Orwellian Newspeak for “Ugh! Chinese!” ]

because they

[ the Chinese ]

don’t understand that I have no intention of recording myths. I mean, I’m not an archivist

[Orwellian Newspeak for “Ugh Chinese!” ].

I want to give you an example of the myths that I’ve changed. When the woman warrior has the words carved on her back, that’s actually a man’s story. It’s about a man named Yüech Fei who had a vow carved his back by his mother. Now, I took that and gave that to a woman. I gave a man’s myth to a woman because it’s part of the feminist war that’s going on in THE WOMAN WARRIOR, to take the men’s stories away from them and give the strength of that story to a woman. I see that as an aggressive storytelling act, and it’s also part of my own freedom to play with myth. and I do feel that myths have to be changed and played with all the time, or they die.

She sounds like Ford talking about Mercury the car, not Mercury the myth.

The problem with doing all that is the way to inform people and at the same time play around with them

[ the people or the myths?]

I think at that point I decided not to tell anybody the original stories, and then tell them how I played around with them because I just wanted to get on with the story, and I just figured, well, let the scholars

[the, ugh! Chinese!]

figure it out later,

[She doesn’t sound like Ford, the John who saw the whole story. We know THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE and agree with the editor who burns his notes and says. “I’ve learned that when the legend becomes the fact, print the legend.” But we’ve seen what Jimmy Stewart saw after shooting his little pistol and we saw what John Wayne saw. John Ford was out RASHOMONing Kurosawa’s great movie RASHOMON. He was giving a tip of his hat to Kurosawa by playing with the form and style based on RASHOMON. Lee Marvin, the Liberty Valance of the piece is Toshiro Mifune, the electrifying bandit throwing sparks and spit from RASHOMON]

but they’ve actually attacked me for not sticking with the story.

Actually Kingston’s “they” attacking her are really just me. Her counting me as many is being too generous. I am the one Chinese traditionalist, the one Chinese archivist, the one Chinese scholar, out of all the Chinese-American writers of the last 35 years that calls Kingston, a white racist fake.

Kingston admits using and violating one hero to change another. White racists are protecting her lies against me by presenting only Ornamental Orientals boohooing about being born to a people so immoral they have to die, as the “real Asian-American writers.”

White Americans love the people that admit they’re inferior. I am dismissed as “jealous” by Amy Tan and writers in white favor, and banned from the teaching of Asian American lit.

What do I pose, jealously against the Ornaments? The anonymous text of THE BALLAD OF MULAN and GENERAL YUE FEI a hero that the white racist Americans have never heard of. I pose the Chinese children’s story and the hero she admits wronging, as the proof of Kingston faking Mulan.

Whites reading this see nothing wrong with not wanting to soil Kingston’s prose creation of Mulan with anything like the text of THE BALLAD OF MULAN or traditional texts or the archived text, or the only Chinese text capable of being scholarly. Why limit her creativity? If she wants to say George Washington was tattooed the night before he went to fight in the French and Indian War, that’s her right, right?

THE WHITE WARRIOR a girl’s autobiography of dreams of George was published in China, and a hit! THE WHITE WARRIOR came to America looking to be published. I like to think, American publishers would cut the Chinese version of George Washington down for not sticking with the facts of George Washington’s story. Or would they buy Kingston’s Mulan argument that “myths have to change or they die?” Would the same Whites that can understand Chinese forgetting who Mulan was, also understand that Washington had to be tattooed or his myth would die? Think of all the American hero’s that can use Max’s refreshing tattoo treatment! Custom worded Revenge Tattoos. Choose your language. Choose your script. Choose your enemy.

Kingston had freed the know-nothing priests of sociology from knowing what they were talking about. So AAS after AAS raged against what they didn’t know. Ugh! Asia and ugh! Chinese! Anyone speaking for the Chinese children’s story and Chinese lit was a misogynist. Kingston was the first woman with the feminist truth about China in 1976. Everything the Chinese had written in history and lit, was a man’s lie, and should be spat out of memory and washed out of the mouth. Kingston revived the 19^th Century Missionary stereotype of rateyed Chinaman, licking their teeth and cruelly fingering and molesting the depths of women. She was second only to Jade Snow Wong in giving that stereotype an authentic Chinatown tremble.

Asia was a sociological misogynist fact, based on Kingston. The “Asia” of “Asian-American Studies” was pure theory. Asian lit was removed from Asian-American lit. Asian lit was no longer a part of Asian-American lit. Starting with an Asian blank slate and their racist dogma of sociology, high school and college AAS programs enshrined Kingston as the truth of Far Mulan and my insistence that Mulan was the first poetic embodiment of male-female equality and not Kingston’s victim of traditional parental abuse, was dismissed as a “personal attack” on Kingston and AAS’s reason for being.

And so it is.

Back to literature based on text. In RASHOMON, have you noticed the temple where the three men take shelter from the rain, and have a different eye on the same event, is the same dark shape of the railroad station in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. Too bad that both Kurosawa and Ford are gone. Did either of them have a sense they talked to each other in the film’s they made?

Kingston’s WOMAN WARRIOR raised the question of Mulan and were there tattoos in the BALLAD or did Kingston carve them on Mulan’s back? It was a question every Chinese-American writer should have been able to answer. They could tell the difference between a real and a fake Chinese children’s story, couldn’t they?

Some men of literature like John Goshert, wonder why I am the only writer banned by AAS. The answer exists in two works. But even he ignores the texts that answer his question and compares me to a woman of a markedly different culture and issues. She wages an argument based on her idealism. Mine is based on text.

Two texts of 2 works of known Chinese lit that Kingston has admitted were the source of her Mulan. THE BALLAD OF MULAN and GENERAL YUE FEI. My difference with Kingston is the differences between the real Mulan of THE BALLAD, the embodiment of sexual equality on the battlefield in war and in peace, on the farm, and Kingston’s freakily tattooed victim that whites like. She admits she took the story of the tattoos from Yue Fei. She’s proud of having fucked with the facts of Chinese history. I think I’ve proved she’s a white racist hoax in American literary history. But Goshert’s forgotten the question that began his piece and manages to avoid throwing any light on any question related to me or the Sociological- AAS advocacy of Kingston’s fake Mulan.

Akira Kurosawa and John Ford are not sociologists. They directed with the eyes of a poet and shot through the twisted minds of their characters. Their stories of the real and the fake turned on an open mouthed and glaring likable bad man, the bandit Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance who everyone but themselves sees as bad. The people writing about Asian-America can’t hold the real and the fake, on the same screen. The Christians in disguise can’t tolerate lesser cultures having books. Every Chinese children’s story published by a New York house is a Chinese Red Riding Hood or a Chinese Cinderella, always a Chinese story self-consciously like a familiar white story. Never a favorite Chinese children’s story among the Chinese. Always a story pre-told by whites. Kingston could not tell her white readers that her Mulan was a temper tantrum against a Chinese name. Surprisingly Sociology and AAS forgave her.

•

If you haven’t noticed, Chinese-America has been taken over by Sociology. Not History, not Literature. And unfortunately, Sociology defines Asian American Studies as taught at the big three Yale, Princeton and Harvard in the East to the U. Michigan in the Midwest to the multi-campused University of California and Stanford in the west. And even AAS at San Francisco State U is founded on the fake science of Sociology.

History and Literature can handle the differences between the myths concocted by love or hate of, say George Washington and the facts of Washington’s life that Sociology can’t.

Take the story of GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREE [1]intended to emphasize the positive, not negative, qualities of The Father of His country to American children.

"George,'' said his father, "do you know who has killed my beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?''

This was a hard question to answer, and for a moment George was staggered by it, but quickly recovering himself he cried:

"I cannot tell a lie, father, you know I cannot tell a lie! I did cut it with my little hatchet.''

The anger died out of his father's face, and taking the boy tenderly in his arms, he said:

"My son, that you should not be afraid to tell the truth is more to me than a thousand trees! Yes - though they were blossomed with silver and had leaves of the purest gold!''

This story is always acknowledged to have been made-up by M. L. Weems, based on his American love of Washington and not based on fact. There is the mythical love of Washington’s believers, and there are the facts of the Washington’s life.

One of Kingston’s literary axioms is myths have to change or die. Weem’s told a story of Washington’s honesty that wasn’t true to encourage white kids to tell the truth? Why hasn’t Sociology changed the text of the myth of Jesus Christ? If they can change THE BALLAD OF MULAN they can change the myth of Christ or Hitler before the myths die, right?

Kids learn the difference between the facts of a person’s life, as told in the histories, and a romantic story based on history. If a Chinese historian was wrong in any of his facts, he was killed. Every Chinese knows the story of Sima Qian (Ssuma Chien) (C.145 bc) the Grand Historian who judged the facts of a battle, against the emperor. The Emp couldn’t argue with the facts, but demanded Sima to change his opinion, or have his balls cut off. He was expected to commit suicide rather than suffer the humiliation of having his nuts lopped off. Sima closed his eyes, suffered his manhood getting offed, became friendless and continued to write honest histories, including the RECORDS OF THE HISTORIAN.

Chinese-American writers either know the Chinese children’s story or they don’t. Those that know the stories, either because they had a Chinese childhood, or they learned the 100 Stories and the heroic tradition, to teach their children and save them the ignorance of those that don’t, are Asians. Those that don’t and dignify their ignorance as white approval, are white racists or, White Ornamental Orientals. The Ornamentals have killed the Chinese children’s story to please the whites. All their knowledge is pre-known by whites.

Asian American Studies is really Ornamental Oriental Studies because they teach an invention of sociology, the AA “identity problem,” and ban the teaching of the Chinese story. The identity problem is simply the missing Chinese children’s story in the Chinese-American childhood, and experience.

Kingston has accurately identified the problem and the solution. All AAS has to do to get rid of the “identity problem” is teach the Chinese children’s story. Jeff Yang the publisher editor of the short lived white racist mag A. Magazine, sloughed off the importance of the Chinese children’s story, as the stories known by criminals. I dare say Billy the Kid and Paul Newman’s Billy the Kid, in THE LEFT HANDED GUN knew JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, as did John Wayne, and Pres. Bill Clinton and all Americans from embarrassing crackpots played by Timothy Carey to the exalted silver tops of Washington.

Why all the excuses to withhold the teaching of the Chinese children’s story from the Chinese THE BALLAD OF MULAN? Why deny the Chinese children’s story exists? In 1976 before the children’s stories of the world became available on the Internet, AAS could get away with being stupid, but no more. It’s a new day.

WHERE HAVE THE CHINESE STORIES GONE?

The Chinese children’s story begins with the creation myth of POON GOO and NUR WAW. Two separate stories. One: The giant Poon Goo stops in space, dies and his body parts become the sun, moon and earth.

Two: Nur Waw a woman arrives on Poon Goo’s body and creates the six animals that serve humankind, then creates the humankind that populate the earth.

The child’s sex wakes up. At twelve the accumalation of experience and knowledge pumped into the child by the first trip round the 12 animals of the zodiac pops the child into a new state of being as Confucius plainly says will happen again and again, and if you live long enough again and again.

The 12 year old will see that the two stories are really one. Poon Goo is a man. Nur Waw his sister is a woman. If they weren’t brother and sister Poon Goo and Nur Waw wouldn’t be a creation myth. Man and woman, two parts of creation and two parts of the Taoist two part circle.

You are born into a world of war, you are born in war, you’ll die in war. Only your mother and father cared when you were born, and only your family will care when you die.

American whites rage Mao said “feeding the people was the first priority,” and snap, “Do any of your stories feed any people in war?”

“Yes,” I answer.

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THE RABBIT AND THE JELLYFISH

A memory of being a five year old girl

as told by

KYUNG-JA LEE

THIS IS THE STORY of the only fairy tale my father ever told me.

I grew up right after the Korean War. Everybody was so poor. Korea was still virgin to Santa Claus chocolate, banana, and chewing gum. And we didn't have any toys. This was the time when my father decided to sell roasted yams. He took an abandoned steel drum, and layered it with charcoal. And he put in three grills. The bottom section was for the least cooked yams. Middle section for little cooked yams. Top section for the yams that are already cooked. And he got himself a pushcart with two handles and two wheels on it. And he put the steel drum on it. He would push it around on the streets and he call out, "Roasted yams! Roasted yams!"

And it was a wonderful thing to eat in winter, because the roasted yams would warm your cold hands while you ate. You didn't want to eat it up because it felt so warm, but it's so great and so delicious.

I remember every morning, he got up before sunrise. He wore this all leather and sheepskin US paratrooper's suit. Very large. American men are much larger than Korean men. He must have been a huge paratrooper. My father couldn't even get a belt around his waist. So he improvised suspenders. He then put the large heavy leather jacket over it. Then he finished it off with the paratrooper hat. I watched him bury himself in this leather paratrooper's suit, lined with wonderful sheep-skin It looked like he was wearing a clown suit. Now he was ready to go sell yams.

While he was out selling yams at lunch hour we would have to stand in a long line near the relief center. You took the biggest bucket you could find at home and carried it there, and they filled it up with cornmeal mush and you carried it home and that was your meal for the day.

But we were happy because everybody was just as poor. Your neighbor's were poor. Your friend's were poor. Nowadays some people are so rich, and some people are so poor, and nobody's happy. But in those days everybody was happy being poor together.

So this was a happy thing to do: get in a long line with your bucket, get a bucketful of this cornmeal mush and come back and eat it with kimchi. And you couldn't believe how delicious it was. Kimchi is very spicy, pickled cabbage. If you haven't tried it yet, please, once before you die, try kimchi.

One winter day the snowfall was so heavy nobody dared go out. My father prepared to go out with that paratrooper outfit, and realized that even if he went out selling yams, no one would come out and buy.

We knew that day we could not go out and get our cornmeal mush either. So we knew that day, we were going to be hungry all day.

He wouldn't give up. He took off his hat. He took off his jacket. But he kept on his pants. So he was walking around the house with his paratrooper's pants on all day, hoping that by noon it would get a little warmer so he could go out. But it was still snowing.

My younger brother was three. I was five. And we got to crying and weeping because we were hungry. Then he put us on his lap. He was sitting on the floor. I was lying on his paratrooper lap, and younger brother was on the other side. He started a story.

He said, "Once there was a rabbit who felt that he owned the field where he lived. And he hopped all over the place to the mountains beyond and stuffed himself on grass endlessly. He was a happy fella who knew all the land, knew every corner, every ditch.

"One day the rabbit was bored with his routine life and surroundings. A jellyfish came up from the sea and asked the rabbit, 'Do you want to see the wonders of the ocean?'

"'Yeah! That would be great!'

"'Okay, hop on my back, and I'll take you down.'

He hopped on and went down under the sea, and was mesmerized by the wonders of the ocean. But, when they arrived at the Palace of the King of the Sea, he was suddenly grabbed and strapped down by fish soldiers.

The jellyfish said, 'We're sorry we have to do this. The king is very ill. The only way he can be saved is to have a live rabbit liver. That's why we brought you down here.'

"'Oh my god! My liver?' he said, thinking fast, "It will be my honor to die for the mighty king of the sea. However, on earth, whenever we animals have lunch, we take out our livers, and hang it on a tree. So when you came by I forgot to put it back. Believe me, I'd like to die for you. I can't think of a better way to die, than to be honored by the rest of the generations of my offspring.' He was in tears. 'Take me back to shore and I'll get it.'

"'You must be lying! Kill him,' the jellyfish said. As the fish soldiers closed on him the rabbit desperately plead, 'Wait! What if I'm telling you the truth? If you kill me then you wouldn't know where my liver is.

"The jellyfish thought for a moment. 'Hmmm....You have a point there. Okay, Let's go and get it.'

"'Yes, let's go right now.'

"The jellyfish took him to the shore. But when they reached the shore, the rabbit leaped off and said, ' What fool hangs his liver on a tree? Boy, are you stupid!' Then he hopped away."

That was the story my father told me. And I forgot my hunger. And I felt the old leather of the paratrooper suit. All riddled with cracks, and I thought for sure, the texture was exactly the same as the turtle's skin. And then I looked out the window, there was the push-cart covered with snow, with these two handles sticking up just like rabbit ears.

•

Luo Guanzhong was born under the hooves of the Mongol Yuan. His ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS was written at the beginning of the Chinese Ming to arouse a sense of China Chinese would fight for. Or over. The Chinese of the Ming were extraordinary cowards. If the chicken Ming wouldn’t fight, the people would. Martial arts families, started martial arts clubs. The clubs started publishing theories and strategies.

Luo’s THE ROMANCE THREE KINGDOMS, and THE WATER MARGIN both begin in war and end in war.

Mulan already abroad the land since 550 ad as THE BALLAD OF MULAN. Xu Wen turned the BALLAD into a five hour play MULAN JOINS THE ARMY. He created a scene of Mulan challenged by her father to a match with wooden swords, that ends with him charging her with the defense of the family and bowing to her.

Xu Wen added a family name “Far” for “Flower” to Mulan, and it has stuck’

An anonymously published novel attributed to Wu Cheng en, about an ape named Monkey leading a priest of the bygone Tang Dynasty on a PILGRIMAGE TO THE WEST appears in the market. Given: the time MONKEY was written: science fiction fantasy, and anonymity was a strategy designed to keep the writer alive.

When the Manchus came and went through the open gates of the wall, as freely as the crows with more and more horses, the people looked up from the novels and said, “I told you so!” The Ming would not lower themselves army up. They were smarter, prettier, and all around better than the horsemen.

The next century saw the collapse of the Chinese Ming and the rise of the Manchu Qing. But the heroic tradition that began with the THE BALLAD OF MULAN cointinues with Qian Cai’s publication of GENERAL YUE FEI, in the first 91 years of the Qing. It is declared an insurrectionist work. The difference between the money and agricultural stay put Chinese and the nomadic territorial defines the Chinese heroic tradition.

This is the Chinese story of the Chinese children’s story’s sweep of stories into stories of the heroes of Chinese history, and the creation of novels of the heroic tradition that pervades all of Chinese writing.

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Kingdoms rise and fall, nations come and go.

The children’s story THE FOX AND THE TIGER STRATEGY enters the mind and develops into China’s first novels. The first novels establish the Heroic tradition. The heroic tradition are the novels written in the late Ming, when Luo Guanzhong adapted the language of the marketplace storytellers and the conversation between the audience and the opera that occurs during performance, wrote THE ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS and invented the “vernacular novel.”

The novels are the Chinese people’s favored versions of Chinese history that begins around 1000 BC at the beginning of recorded history with the story of the fall of the Shang Dynasty, THE CREATION OF THE GODS, also known as THE CANONIZATION OF DEITIES. Stories of history collected from the people and edited into today’s form during the Ming. China was ruled by Chinese and the Ming had the printing press to spread the news of Chinese writing.

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THE CREATION OF THE GODS

The Buddhists and the Taoists combine to bring down King Zhao of the Shang Dynasty (1766-1045 bc).

King Zhao is fresh to power. He goes to the temple of Nur Waw, the Mother of Humanity, as a gesture to the people. In the temple he is overcome with a gush of lust at the sight of Nur Waw’s life sized statue and assaults it. He leaves splashes of his gummy stuff on the statue, and flicks stuff off his fingers while stuff’s still wet and puts away his meat in front of his shocked court.

Tai Kung is the Prime Minister King Zhou inherited. He hopes to be dismissed after seeing this King Zhou boldly risk offending the Mother of Humanity and the people that love her just for the fun and yuck of it.

Nur Waw, the Mother of Humanity returns to her temple for the night and sees the splashes on her statue. If King Zhou has a taste for beautiful women, he will have beautiful women. She sends a fox spirit, wearing the decaying corpse of a freshly dead beautiful woman as a mask to old King Zhou to rouse his lust. The popeyed drooling King Zhou digs a deep pit, throws in every variety of poisonous snake found in the kingdom, adds several of fathers of ugly daughters and tempts his beauty with their fruitless cries and wails.

The Taoists seal their deal with the Buddhists to wipe the Shang off the world, by giving their Immortal of Merciful Navigation, a man, to the Buddhists to turn into a woman and rename Kwanyin, the Buddhist Goddess of mercy. A graceful figure of a standing woman looking especially feminine as glazed white poreclain. A vase in one hand. Eyes downcast. A child by each foot of the larger porcelain statues. Chinatown curio shops have their Kwan Yins of different sizes in military formation on the display shelves. You break. You pay. Watch your children!

In the novel characters from the Taoist and Buddhist military and civil orgranizations meet, deal and clash with each other and spark tales tall and short that have become separate and whole children’s stories, and symbols in their own right. For instance, Nah Jah, a Buddhist story from India that evolved into the Chinese story of a boy born out of a lotus who goes against his father, the commandant’s orders and fights the Dragon king who dines on children, under his father’s command. NAH JAH is a children’s story told in children’s books, and figurines of a boy with three heads and six arms on sale today in a Chinatown curio shop.

Tai Kung the old Prime Minister retires from King Zhou’s service moves out of the capital and disappears into oblivion with his bamboo pole.

Shoppers will find among the figurines an old white bearded fisherman with a line and a pole and no hook. He wears a Chinese straw hat. This is Tai Kung in oblivion.

The man who would be king stops at the sight of an old man fishing without a hook and asks, “Why?”

“I’m fishing for a man not a fish,” Tai Kung responds.

“I fish for a man who will be king.”

Tai Kung becomes the strategist for the man who will be King Wu, the founder of the Chou.

Nur Waw, the Mother of Humanity is a figure from the folk, from the low, not the high thinking Taoists and buddhists. She uses her fox spirit in the body of a bodacious corpse, that’s obviously dead in the noses of all except King Zhao, who breathes her stench and is in ecstasy. He ignores the business of the kingdom and turns his people against him to please the beautiful corpse.

King Zhou bankrupts the treasury, kills the fathers of ugly daughters, delights in creating new tortures of his people to entertain his lover with the cries and screams of people in pain in their evenings of love. His beautiful gore wants a palace made of nothing but pearls.

When Tai Kung now the strategist for King Wu the founder of the Chou, arrives to bring King Zhou down, the old man comes out of his burning pleasure palace of pearls with his sword in hand, and fights mightily. But he is brought down. The Shang falls. And the Chou rises. And the kingdom of Korea is created, but that’s another story. It is 1045 BC.

The rule of King Wu and the strategies of Tai Kung are cited by Confucius and strategists, like Sun Tzu and Wu Chi.

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BI SHENG’S INVENTION OF MOVABLE TYPE

500 years before Gutenberg

JUST IN TIME TO TELL THE STORY OF

“THE OUTLAWS OF LEONGSAHN MARSH”

A CHILD’S BLOODY CLASSIC

Bi Sheng invented movable type made of fired clay that enabled multiple printing between 1041-1048 AD, during the Northern Song. An industry was born. The Northern Song (Sung) was a period of one selfish, cowardly, arty emperor after the other. All of them more interested in art than the life art depicted, and all served by a corrupt court that outlawed the good and talented and confiscated their property and art. The clerks, teachers, officers, Taoists, Buddhists, the male or female martial champions of the families amount to 36 individuals who became known as the Heavenly Spirits when they were outlawed by the emperor and joined gangs of the crazy, the criminal, the blood lusting 72 Earthly Fiends.

They go into the marsh in boats when Yellow River is in flood and times the tide is in and establish a stronghold on Mt. Leongshan a mountain hidden in the maze of shifting waterways and quicksands of Leongshan Marsh.

Did Bi Sheng’s invention of movable type and mass printing help spread the legend of the 36 Stars of Heavenly Spirits, and the 72 Stars of Earthly Fiends who came to be the “outlaws of Leongshan Marsh,” or “The Water Margin?” Of course it did.

The first novels of the Ming were in print and distribution for two hundred years when finally, 500 years after Bi Sheng, Gutenberg got around to inventing printing in the West. His first printed book was a fictional version of the ethnically biased account of the distant distant past.

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THE FOX AND THE TIGER

YOU ALL KNOW what a fox is. Looks a little like a large house cat. Looks a little like a medium sized dog. Sharp-nosed. Sharp-eared. Bright-eyed. Bushytailed. It is a nice day. Fresh. The little fox is out for a little walk, through the woods, minding his own business.

Out of the shadows jumps the tiger. "All right, little fox, say Goodbye! to the world, for I'm going to eat'ya!"

"Now, hold on there, Tiger!" the little fox says. "You just can't jump out of the shadows with bad manners and threats! You can’t interrupt my pleasant nice little walk around the charms of my woods!"

"Your woods?"

"You don’t know that I am the King of the Woods?

"You! The King of the Woods?" The tiger laughs, "You? You? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. You can't be King of the Woods! You have a teeny kitty cat body, and I have this beautiful, (Ooh, I love it so much) magnificently sculpted musculature! You have these little itty bitty kitty cat paws. Me, I have these magnificent ripping, terrifying claws. You have little toy teeth that can't get around one of my toes. And I have a mouth full of these pointed big teeth to puncture hide and muscles, break bone, and bite meat. Teeth that break! Teeth that gnash! Teeth….!” Suddenly the cat purrs, “! How can you be King of the Woods?"

"Tsk.Tsk. Tsk.," the Fox shakes his head, "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.. I don't want to hurt you, Tiger."

"Hurt me?"

"I know you are just a big dumb guy. But I am willing to give you a chance to see for yourself."

"Huh?"

"I am going to walk down this road here.”

“You’re going to walk?”

“We are going to walk down this road here. And we’ll see how the first three animals we meet along the way treat me with courtesy and respect.”

“What?”

”If just one of these three animals talks bad manners all over me, or spits on me, or makes threats… I’ll let you eat me."

"Hmmm,” the tiger thought a moment, “You’re going to walk down this road?”

“Um hmm.”

“The first three animals we meet…”

“Un hmmm.”

“And if just one of them treats you with bad manners, spits, or makes threats, you let me eat you?”

“I’ll let you eat me.”

"Hmmm," the tiger thought a moment and said, “How do I know you won't just run away, Little Fox?"

"To make sure I don't run away, Tiger, why don't you just follow me as close as you can?"

"Hmmm," the tiger says, and thinks, "Hmmm.” And thinks some more, and says. “To make sure you don't just run away, I get to follow behind you as close as I want?"

"That's right."

"Sounds good to me, let's go."

The little fox rattles along on his little feet. And the tiger follows close behind with his big shoulders rising and falling and his big pads silently separating the grass and settling into the earth.

"A little fox!" A buffalo comes snorting and charging out of the grass, “Stomp! Stomp! Stompity! Stomp! Gonna stomp on a Little Fox!” The buffalo screeches to a stop. “Oh ho, Little Fox!” he shakes his huge head chews his cud. “How are you today Little Fox?”

“Fine Buffalo. How are you?”

“Fine! Fine! I was stomping along and saw you, and just had to stop and say it’s such a beautiful day, isn’t a beautiful day?”

"Yes, it is Buffalo."

"The birds are singing." The buffalo blinks and shudders a bird off his flanks. “And the bees are buzzing.”

“Yes, they are Buffalo.”

“Well, it’s such a nice day, I’ll just be stomping along. If that’s okay with you.”

"Nice seeing you, Buffalo," the little fox says, and walks on.

The tiger follows, and says to himself, "Hmmmm. Interesting."

They walk on, come to a river and walk by the river awhile.. Suddenly an alligator comes leaping out of the water and snapping its jaws toward the fox. "My, my, my …!" the alligator sees the tiger, "Ooops! …friend! My pal. Ahhh." The alligator smiles, "Beautiful day. My good friend, Little Fox.”

“Hello Alligator.”

“Have you noticed the sun is shining, the grass is so green.”

“Yes, I have noticed that.”

“The water sparkles.”

"Yes, it does."

"Yes, it does. I just had to say it to somebody.."

"Why, thank you, Alligator. That’s very kind."

"Yes, it is, isn’t it. Well, see you later."

"See you later, alligator," the little fox says and the alligator slinks back into the water. And the little fox walks on.

The tiger follows, saying to himself, "Hmm. Interesting."

Next a huge snake, a python comes dangling out of a tree and sticks its thin black forked tongue out and in, fast several times without licking its lips. "Haaaa, Little Fox say..." and the snake sees the tiger, "Hi-i-i-i! Say, Hiiiiiii there!"

"Hello, snake, how are you?"

"Oh? Oh, I'm just fi-i-i-ine, just fine thank you," the snake says. “Well…I mustn’t keep you. I’d hate to do thaaat.”

“Well, I should be going.”

“Yesss. Welll…” and the snake slips around a tree trunk and disappears.

The little fox walks on a few steps, then stops and turns to the tiger. He dusts his fur and asks, "Well, tiger, do you feel like eating me now?"

The tiger shies back and gulps and looks down at the little fox with awe, "Err. Oh, Little Fox. I lost my head. I obviously did not know what I was doing. You are, indeed the King of the Woods. With your permission, I'll withdraw now, and leave you to enjoy your walk alone."

The tiger back steps away, turns and disappears into the shadows, and the little fox walks on.

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THE HEROIC TRADITION

All the works of the heroic tradition were written during the 250 years of the Chinese Ming.

The Ming were superior and complacent. They depended on the Wall and lost touch with men and the art of war. The heroic tradition was written in a more accessible form and language to get the urge to fight for China into Chinese thought. The writers were right. The Ming fell in 1644. The Manchu Qing. The heroic tradition continued with a Manchu-baiting novel referencing all the previous tales of the heroic traditon in GENERAL YUE FEI.

The first and most popular novel in China, THE ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS, is the story of the Chinese fight for control of China at the end of the Han (220 Ad).

THE BALLAD OF MULAN— an anonymous children’s ballad published in 550 in the contentious limbo of the 5 Dynasties period (220-589) where the fragmented Chinese rule invited incursions of nomadic rule from the north, till the Chinese unified under the Tang (618-907). Later in the Ming, Xu Wen enlarged the BALLAD into a rousing bloodthirsty play including a scene of father Far and Far Mulan in combat with wooden weapons, Mulan winning and father Far passing the defense of the farm to Mulan. A scene that stunned the Chinese audiences.

The Tang begins to go bad and desperately changes direction to Buddhism parodied in MONKEY’S JOURNEY TO THE WEST attributed to Wu Cheng-en. The first science-fiction-fantasy novel that ended too early and missed the Tang’s fall to the totally corrupt Chinese rule of the Song (Sung) in the 9^th century.

The Chinese emperors of the Northern Song (Sung) give up their capital to the invaders from the north and shift their capital and give up land and shift because they are cowards. They’ll shift so far, then quit the title to the north and become the Southern Song. But they like the stillness of Chinese art. The imperial court outlaws the people who have the land, riches and art they want.

The heroes of the nation are not the emperor and his government but the men the government outlawed and stole from, in the novel THE WATER MARGIN.

The outlaws ultimately fail because the first star of Heavenly Spirits, the county clerk who leads because he recognizes talent and is not jealous, refuses the pleas of the people to kick the emperor out and take over. He is too dogmatically Confucian. He refuses to rule. The Song amnesties the outlaws and kills them off one by one. Years go by.

The nomads take bites out of China, declare themselves a Chinese dynasty, the Jin (Gum in Cantonese) meaning “Gold” Dynasty, and have crept up to the northern banks of the Yellow (Wong) River.

Then a baby, Yue Fei and his mother survive a flooding Yellow River. A situation worthy of myth, but Yue Fei is a figure from history. His tomb is on the west side of Westlake in Hangzhao. Qian Cai, the “insurrectionist” author admits he took from fictional, legendary accounts on a solid spine of facts. Yue Fei and Mother Fei mother are washed up on the shore of another place.

Individual loyalty in war is the heroic issue in GENERAL YUE FEI. Does Yue Fei fight for the rights and possessions of his family, or does he fight for the right of Emperor to rule all under the sky, including his family and himself? Mother Yue solves the problem with the tattoos she lays on her son’s back. Or does she?

The sons of the sons of Water Margin and the sons of the sons of the sons 3 KINGDOMS seem to think so, as they drop by to fall to their knees and bow to Mother Yue before they mount up and defy imperial orders to stay away from Yue Fei’s grave at Westlake.

Yue Fei’s strategic mind was recognized by two women who were commanders, and became heroic novels in their own right, Liang Hongyu (the Liitle Drummer Girl) and Mu Gwahying (the Shantung gang leader who married the youngest Yang Famiy General ). Linked by Yue Fei’s big thinking they repelled the Jurchen invaders along the Yellow River, defeated the them repeatedly all along the Yellow river, in the mountains by the river Yue Fei humiliated the horsemen, and when the horsemen became boatmen Yue Fei humiliated them again. The celebration of multiple defeats of the Juerchins in a book was too much for the Manchu rulers of the Qing to bear. Everybody knew the 10^th Century Juerchins were the Manchus that ruled Qing Dynasty China. The very titile of the book GENERAL YUE FEI was a provocation. It was a way of showing Chinese contempt for the Manchu capitulation to British Christianity, opium and guns.

The novel GENERAL YUE FEI was published in the Manchu Qing 18^th century while Qian Cai lived and when the emperor he lived under died, he was already dead, but the incoming emperor banned the book. That showed the upppity author!

In the 19^th Century the novel was available again and went through several printings in China during the first Opium War. T.L. Yang had a version by Qian Cai’s novel published during the Reign of Emperor Tongzhi (1862-1874) the period of the Second Opium War. T.L. Yang began translatiing the 79 chapters of his version of Qian Cao’s novel thirty years, ago through his law career and his seat as the Chief Justice (1988-1996) of the Hong Kong Supreme Court. Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd. published it in 1987.

The name of Yue has risen from the low of an emperor’s contempt, to an Emperor’s apology and posthumous elevation of position in society to today’s high and one of the Yue’s has recently been accused of some kind of corruption the nature of which I don’t understand.

Yue Fei’s name spread among the middleclass with stories of his martial skills and strategic genius and his invention of a system of kung fu fighting with hammers and fists and further developed by his sons.

Now a Yue charged with corruption plus the unusual flurry of angry letters to the editor scolding the government for daring to suggest the hero Yue Fei be demoted from a “hero” to a “prominent person” indicates the meaning of the name Yue is still alive and rising and falling like China itself.

YUE FEI (NGAWK FEI) IN 2003

Los Angeles Times-January 28, 2003

By: Anthony Kuhn

BEIJING—“Give us back our territory!”

Yue’s blood campaign against northern peoples—who are now, in fact, Chinese citizens—doesn’t exactly fit with current officials’ desire to promote harmony among the nation’s 55 officially recognized minority ethnic groups.

So Chinese authorities have decided: Enshrining Yue as a national hero is no longer politically correct.

…indicates one way or another Yue Fei’s reputation will suffer a change.

Kuhn goes on to note:

But China’s deeply rooted folkloric traditions are not easily discarded.

Negating Yue’s status as a national hero “implies denying that wars between nations and peoples occurred in China’s history. Isn’t that absurd?” complained Zhai Ruofu in a letter to the Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper.

Chinese children around the globe learn about how the young patriot Yue, born 1103, knelt as his mother tattooed the characters for “Repay your country with utmost loyalty” on his back.

Yue led the Song armies against the invading Jurchen tribes of Manchuria. He was on the verge of triumph when Prime Minister Qin Gui, who considered the war too costly, had him recalled to the capital, imprisoned and executed on trumped-up charges in 1142.

Kuhn describes Chinese doughnut based on the traitor Qui Gui, that in America are called “Yow jow gwai,” or “Oil fried ghosts.”

Qin has been despised ever since as a national traitor. He is figuratively boiled in oil and eaten every morning across China in the form of a breakfast dough strip that bears his name.

The long fried doughnuts that come doubled, are eaten with a thick rice soup, or juk. The doughnuts are called “yow jow gwai” or “oil fried ghosts”

Kuhn found in Canada, a university expert on Yue Fei in China:

“Over time, Yue Fei has become not just a symbol of Chinese culture—he has become a Chinese culture.” Said Leo K. Shin, a historian at the University of British Columbia who is writing a book of Yue.

He’s writing a book?

LEO K SHIN

Departments of

History and Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

The Uses of a Chinese Martyr:

Yue Fei (1103-42) in History and Memory

Comments and suggestions are most appreciated.

Outline

To even the most casual observer of China, the images of Yue Fei (1103—1142) loom large on the historical horizon. As every child in China would learn, it was Yue Fei the heroic general who led the Song-dynasty (960—1276) armies to repel the Jurchens and to rescue China from obliteration in the hands of the northern “barbarians.” In so doing, Yue Fei is deemed to have embodied the highest quality of courage and tenacity. But as every student would discover as well, it was Yue Fei the tragically-flawed minister who, on the brink of victory, allowed himself to be recalled by an cowardly emperor, imprisoned, and executed on the basis of trumped-up charges. As such, Yue Fei is seen to have exemplified the fundamental paradox in the Confucian ideals of loyalty and legitimacy.

That the story of Yue Fei is more complex is well known to historians. Yue Fei’s heroic image, scholars have argued, has been carefully cultivated both by himself and by observers of later times. Throughout his life, as Hellmut Wilhelm pointed out in an early study, Yue Fei “constantly and consciously worked toward producing an image of himself as a hero of mythological proportions, rigidly patterning himself after the myths of the past.” In part following Yue Fei’s script, scholar-officials of the Ming dynasty (1368—1644), who were themselves constantly concerned with the threats posed by the Mongols from the north, not only led efforts to construct and renovate temples dedicated to the Song-dynasty general but also attributed (falsely) to him the stirring piece “Redness All Across the River,” in which the author, with great poetic finesse, expresses his desire “to eat the flesh of the nomads” in order to “recover our old rivers and mountains.” Even Qing-dynasty (1644—1912) emperors, who traced their ancestry to the Jurchens, deemed it desirable to let stand in the imperial capital a temple devoted to Yue Fei, the one person who would no doubt have been their mortal enemy.

But even though historians have long recognized the significance of the uses of Yue Fei, they have left unanswered two central questions: how had such uses transformed over time, and how did the changing uses of Yue Fei reflect the shifting structure and dynamics of later imperial China? Although scholars interested in the practice and process of cultural transmission have focused on one aspect or another of the changing images of Yue Fei, a more complete and satisfactory investigation, this study argues, would need to take into consideration more broadly the intersecting worlds of politics, religion, literature, and lineage organization.

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Kuhn’s L.A. Times article on the reaction of the people to the gov’s demotion of Yue Fei appeared in March. In September the gov issued 3 stamps of Yue Fei. The first stamp portrays Yue Fei on his knees, offering his back to his mother, and his wife standing by.

2003-17 Yue Fei, a Famous Ancient General --- Commemorative Stamps

Yue Fei (1103 - 1142), alias Pengju, was a famous general of the Southern Song Dynasty. Born in a farmer's family in Tangyin, Xiangzhou Prefecture (today's Henan Province), he was diligent and eager to learn when he was young. Being adept in Kung Fu skills, he volunteered to join the army in the first year of Jingkang's Reign. It is said that before he left home, his mother tattooed "Loyalty to the Country" on his back, which was the principle he followed till the end of his life. As he was concerned about his men and set a personal example before them, his troops were highly disciplined and valiant and skillful in battle. During the war against the invading Jin army, he gained one after another victories and recovered lost territories, winning high esteem among the army and the people, and even arousing the admiration of the enemy. Later he was framed by the treacherous minister Qin Hui and executed in Lin'an (today's Hangzhou) on trumped-up charges. He has been and will always be respected and admired by posterity for his unyielding integrity.

China National Philatelic Corporation will release an FDC.

Technical Information

Serial number:2003-17

Date of issue: 25th Sep. 2003

Values in set: 3

Denomination: 3.60 yuan

Designer: Meng Fancong

Size of stamps: 30 * 40 mm

Perforation: 12

Sheet composition: 20 for Sheet I, 9 for Sheet II

Printing process: offset

Printer: Shenyang Post & Telecommunication Printing Works

(3-1) J Loyalty to the Country 80f

3-2) J Unyielding Integrity 80f

(3-3) J Remembered Forever 2y

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Where do the politics, religion, literature and racial lineage intersect? In the novel, a biased form of opinion commenting on and portraying moments in history, that, though convincing, should be approached with skepticism, not to be believed until proven, as Prof. Shin says:

By tracing and analyzing the political, religious, literary, and socio-economic processes through which Yue Fei became a national icon, this study aims not only to offer the first systematic and multifaceted account of its development but also to contribute to the lively debate surrounding the creation and transmission of beliefs and practices in later imperial China.

T.L. Yang, the Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Supreme Court, began translating Qian Cai’s novel GENERAL YUE FEI from Chinese into English shortly after the publication of Kingston’s THE WOMAN WARRIOR. She’d demoted Mulan from “The first poetic statement of male-female equality in war and peace,” to The victim of parental knives bloodying her back with ‘carved’ tattoos. I’m sure the beginning of the translation GENERAL YUE FEI the tattooed general in 1976, was a coincidence.

Sir T. L. Yang is retired and teaching at the University of Hong Kong now. His thoughts on Prof. Shin’s concerns would be a valuable contribution to the debate. Shin continues:

As such, this project should be of interest not only to scholars of Chinese studies but also to a wider audience interested in the relationships between history, memory, and cultural identity.

Ugh! Sounds like sociology. The only “science” based on proved fakes and fools. Margaret Mead of the U. Chicago was fooled for two weeks and her pioneer work on Samoa appeared. The girls confessed. They’d lied and laughed. What a hoot! Then Ruth Benedict got all of her “data” observiing the behavior of the Japanese animals held in observable community at Poston, a concentration camp where the Navy ran a study of what Ruth Benedict observed and wrote THE SWORD AND THE CHRYSANTHEMUM the book used as a manual of Japanese culture by the US Occupation Forces in Japan. No lit. Only whites have literature. I hope Shin doesn’t make the same white racist assumptions made by, S. Frank Miyamoto in his Master’s Thesis in Sociology “JAPANESE SOCIAL SOLIDARITY” ( He got his PhD from the U of Chicago after being a Jr-G Man camp spy on his own people.[2]) Rose Hum Lee, who faked her interviews in her PhD Thesis. Her fake work drove her crazy trying to make it real. She committed suicide rather than admit her fakework. She used members of her family as interviewees, and palmed them off interviews off the street. I hope Shin’s not an alumnus of the illiterate church of the U. of Chicago. If sociology but not Shin rejects Chinese lit, I’d hope they’d count Jackie Chan, kung fu star as one of the folk taking and giving inspiration from Yue Fei, processinng Yue Fei in what the sociologists call “the folk process.”

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Jackie Chan starring in Yue Fei biopic

Posted on Tue, 23-Mar-2004

According to Monkey Peaches , Jackie Chan will star in and produce a biopic on Yue Fei, a legendary Chinese general.

Chan expects to begin the film shortly, with his son in the role of the general in his younger years. The script is almost complete.

Production is expected to commence in 2005, once Chan wraps his next feature.

"I think Yue Fei is a man with great sense of loyalty, so am I. I am blindly loyal to Golden Harvest,to friends and to my country", says Chan.

According to the site, During the Southern Song Dynasty, Yue Fei commanded the army against the invasion from Jin, a state established by the nomadic Nüzhen. He won great victories and recovered many lost territories. However, General Yue's war effort made him the enemy no. 1 of Prime Minister Qin Hui, who only wanted peace with Jin. The emperor was also afraid that two former emperors, captured by Jin, might be freed and take his throne away. Finally Yue Fei was jailed and later executed, with fabricated charges. Traditionally, Yue Fei is the most talked symbol of patriotism among the Chinese and he is one of the most popular heroes in many Chinese folklores.

Chan's also interested in doing a film based on "Genghis Kahn" - something Steven Seagal is currently working on too.

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KUNG FU IS A MARTIAL ART

Yue Fei lived as if he were a mythic hero and that’s the way Qian Cao writes him. Yue Fei’s example, his spirit, his story as told by Qian Cao, brings together descendants from Luo Guanzhong’s 3 KINGDOMS and WATER MARGIN, the Ming novels of the heroic tradition, in a Taoist circle of kingdoms rising and falling and nations coming and going.

An article on Yue Fei the martial art and not the man, tells me his fighting form was designed to contain the motion of opposites, in balance, was central to the kung fu he founded and furthered into styles by Yue Fei’s two sons:

the Yue-family Chuan [fist] is based primarily upon the principles of combining inner and outer bodies, theory and application. Its various tricks stem from its principal philosophy of the positive and negative and the five elements of the heart, liver, lung, spleen and kidney in the human body.

The five elements in the body have their counterparts in the Chinese five elements of Gum, mook, faw, sir, toe or Gold, wood, fire, water, earth. Yue Fei is a name in Chinese martial arts known for putting things together.

There are many styles of Chuan named after General Yue Fei of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) These include Yue-family Chuan of Hubei, Henan and Anhui provinces, Yue-school fist plays of Hunan and Sichuan provinces, Yue-family martial arts of Guangdong Province, Yue Fei Sanshau and Yue-style chain of fist plays. These different Chuan styles have been influenced by local culture and practices as well as individual styles. Although it has combined the old and new Chuan theories and practices,

YUE FEI IS SO FOLKING DEEP IN CHINESE POP

HE’S BROKEN OUT IT COMIC BOOKS

In 1991 C.C. Low produced the Canfonian three volume edition of comic book novels telling the story of YUE FEI. Two panels of quickdrawn action, four lines of Chinese Four lines in English per page.

The first volume begins with line drawings and words that describe Yue Fei a baby in his mother’s arms, both of them inside a large largemouthed jar, being guided through the flooding river by his father whose fingers slip from the lips of the jar and is lost. Yue Fei becomes the favored student of one of the former 108 outlaws of Liangshan marsh, goes to a blow by blow description of Yue Fei’s killing of the emp’s son in a martial arts contest, the corrupt contest judge’s descision to kill Yue Fei being overruled by another judge who’s a respected veteran of a famous battle, the kidnapping of one emp after the other by tribal nomads from the north and the third emp summoning Yue to fight the invaders. Mother Yue steps in and tattoos Yue Fei’s back and his wife holds the candle. All of this told in, two drawn panels with four lines of captions in Chinese and English per panel per page, of the three volume 300 page long set.

On page 216 Yue Fei rides off with his spear blessed or cursed but powerful, dangerous and doomed because of his mother’s tattoos down his back. I turn back to the beginning before page 216. The tattooing sequence.

The visit from the pirate, and followed by the summons from the emperor climaxing with mother Yue tattooing her son’s back while Yue Feis wife gives her mother-in-law light with a candle leads me to suspect that each would have demanded loyalty. Loyalty to the pirates, or the emperor, or the Yue family. A reading of the novel might clear or satisfy my suspicions.

GENERAL YUE FEI by Qian Cao.

Translated by T.L. Yang

In the novel Yue Fei shows his stuff in a martial arts contest. The emperor’s son is set to win. Unfortunately Yue Fei kills the emperor’s son. An honest judge saves Yue Fei’s life. Yue Fei’s martial arts rep grows among the people he protects. People call on him.

Behind the walls of his private city the emperor is alone with his traitorous Prime Minister, his corrupt that seethes sympathy for his hatred of Yue in the silence the emperor’s active apprecition of his art.

The Juerchins a nomadic tribe on horses out of Manchuria has taken larger and larger bites of Chinese land. They’ve taken the emperor hostage, beyond the borders of China. His son takes over the throne, and the Juerchins ride in and kidnap him.

An incompetent effete grandson is the next chicken emperor of China under the influence of a traitorous Prime Minister, Qin Kuai. (Pronounced “Chin Kway”). Twenty years ago Qin Kuai was the judge that fixed the contest for the emperor’s son to win. Unfortunately for Qin, the Emp’s son was killed in spite of the hidden weapons on his Imperial person that all failed, and Yue Fei won. The new emperor moves the capital south and lets the horsemen take over the old.

Yue Fei is approached by a gang that occupies an old hideout of the legendary 108 Outlaws of the Water Margin. The Water Margin is a huge marsh with quicksands and mountains hidden in its waters and mists off the Yellow River. The new outlaws are fed up with chickenshift emperors. They want Yue Fei to lead them against the invading horsemen, and with Yue Fei leading them, the bandit army would attract the emperor’s soldiers to fight off the horsemen invaders at last!

Yue becomes blood brothers with the bandit, and as the brother, turns down the offer to be leader, and returns the bandit’s gifts as a brotherly gift to pay the bandits way home.

Yue will not become a criminal to fight the invading nomads from the north. But he will not offend the pirate’s good intentions.

He receives a summons from the emperor to accept command of an army to defend China.

He has been asked by criminals, and the third and youngest chickenshift emperor to defend China. His mother goes into action:

“So this is it,” observed the old Lady. Then she paused for a little thought and called, “My son, you go out and set up incense sticks and candles and put them on the incense table in the middle of the hall. I have a personal reason for doing this.”

“Yes,” said Yue Fei, and he went out, obtained the incense and candles, went to the central hall, placed the table in the middle, and placed a pair of candle sticks and an incense burner on it. Having arranged everything in its proper place, he entered to inform his mother that the incense table was ready and he invited his mother to go out.

Lady Yue came out with his (sic) daughter-in-law. There they burned incense and lighted the candles in front of the scared family shrine. They paid obeisance to Heaven and Earth and to the ancestors, and the Lady commanded her son to kneel whilst the daughter-in-law was told to prepare the ink.

The famously described and often drawn, painted and cartooned scene of mother Yue tattooing her son’s back should be read in a good translation by the Chinese boy who grew up with Yue Fei and became Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Supreme Court. That scene by the man who was that boy begins here at the bottom of page 247.

Kneeling down Yue Fei asked, “What command does Mother have for me?”

The Lady said, “I, your mother, saw that you did not accept the recruitment of the rebellious thief, and that you willingly endure poverty and are (not) tempted by wealth and status, this is of course extremely good. But I fear that after my death, there may be some unworthy creature who will come to entice you. And if you should momentarily lose your principles and do something disloyal, will you not have destroyed in one day your fragrant reputation gained in half a lifetime? For this reason, I have prayed to Heaven and Earth and to our ancestors, because I want to tattoo on your back the four characters ‘Utmost’, ‘Loyalty’, ‘Serve’ and ‘Nation’. I only hope you will be a loyal official, so that after your mother’s death, people going to and fro will say, ‘What a good lady, she has trained her son to achieve fame by serving his nation with the utmost loyalty, and so his reputation will continue its fragrance for a hundred generations’. I shall then smile even in my grave under the nine springs.”

Yue Fei’s mother tattooed her son’s back. She knew what everybody knew from martial arts: Only criminals wore tattoos. She tattooed her son as if he were a criminal, and wrote “the four words” that declared loyalty to the “country” not only a criminal offense to the emperor, but a capital crime inked down his spine. She wrote the word for “country,” the land, “Gawk” or “Kuo,” in Mandarin. In deference to the emperor she should have used the word Kwun in Cantonese, meaning “Commander” or “emperor.” The Kwun was synonymous with the “nation” no matter what the nation thought. Mother Yue disagreed.

Yue Fei however suggested, “The sage said, ‘One does not harm his body, hair and skin because all these he has received from his parents’. I shall of course accept and obey your solemn instruction. Please refrain from tattooing me!”

“Balderdash!” said the Lady. “If you should do something unworthy and are brought before the court under arrest, and if you should be beaten and knocked about, are you still to say to the official, ‘Having received the body, hair and skin from my parents I do not dare cause them any injury?’”

“What Mother says has reason. Please tattoo the characters” – thus speaking, he half-undressed himself. The Lady picked up the brush and wrote out on his spine the four characters for “serving the nation with the utmost loyalty”. Then she picked up a sewing needle and gave his back a prick. She saw the lord Yue’s flesh ‘gave a jump’ and she asked, “My son, does it hurt?”

Yue Fei said, “Mother, you have not even begun to tattoo me, so why ask me if it hurts or not?”

With tears in her eyes the Lady said, “My son, you fear that my hand will go ‘soft’ so you say it does not hurt.” So saying she bit her teeth, and started pricking. Having finished, she painted the characters with ink mixed with vinegar so that the colour would never fade.

Yue Fei got up and bowed to his mother in gratitude for her instruction. Each then returned to the room and nothing more need be said.

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The novel ends after Yue Fei’s mother has led the rebels born of the rebels of 3 Kingdoms and Water Margin that defined China and the Chinese out of the sequential history of dynasties, and took the Chinese across borders to be Chinese. She was escaping China when she refuged up out of the country. Behavior reminscent of the WATER MARGIN’s five Nguyen brothers leaving the 108 surrendering to the chickenshift Song, heading south and founding Siam. The enraged travellers from China to Cheuk Kwan’s CHINESE RESTAURANTS on TV that finds them in every country in the world. Most think of where they are as home, and at home they are Chinese. Some have created all that’s needed to keep the engines of Chinese civilization putt putting where they are. I find their relaxed way of saying where they are being home and Chinese very satisfying. I watch CHINESE RESTAURANTS, a series of 30 min episodes on Link Tv on the sattelite, as the only real Chinese on all of American tv.

Mother Yue is nowhere around the back jacket attracting the heroes of the old books to riding by her house. The writing is not punchy short phrases, but is mostly just the facts strict law clerk writing. Or a judge’s writing for control of his translation?

He [Yue Fei] was about to cross the Yellow River and make a decisve assault on the Jin Capital (called the Yellow Dragon City) when he was urgently summoned back to the Chinese Capital. In order to make peace the Prime Minister Qin Kuai was prepared to cede all the territories north of the Hua River to the Tartars. So impatient was he for Yue Fei’s withdrawal from the front that he despatched twelve decrees in the name of the Emperor. When Yue Fei arrived at the Capital Qin Kuai immediately had him arrested and incarcerated on a false charge of treason. Two months passed and there was no evidence against Yue Fei. Qin Kuai than handed his secret instructions to the prison guard. The next day Yue Fei was found dead. He was only thirty-nine. Qin Kuai’s crimes were eventually exposed. Emperor Xio Zhong (1163-1189) bestowed posthumous honours on Yue Fei, who has been loved and respected by people of the whole country as a national hero ever since. This book was written by Qian Cai, a scholar of the Reign of Emperor Kangxi (1644-1731). The translation was made by T.L.Yang, now Chief Justice of Hong Kong.

C. C. LOW THE SCHOLAR WHO TOOK THE HEROIC TRADITION AND MADE IT A COMIC BOOK

The comic book novel, came into being during the Tang (618-907 AD), as a “Script book” illustrating the staging, costumes, and faces of specific operas for the illiterate to use as guides for production.

Art or commercialism keeps the Chinese comic book companies going. Or is it idealism? Or passion?

C.C. Low, founder, owner, editor, and artistic director and artist of Canfonian publishers of Singapore has been publishing comic book novels of the heroic tradition for twenty years.

What sets C.C. Low apart from other yellows publishing comic books of the heroic tradition is he’s more than an interpreter of the heroic tradition, he is an activist, a player in the definiton of the Chinese heroic tradition, like the “scholar-officials of the Ming dynasty” that used printing and the novel to declare China was ruled by Chinese. They displaced the 100 year rule of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in 1368. They needed a hero stand for a China opposed to Mongol efforts to take China back.

The Ming built and renovated temples dedicated to the man most recently feared by the northern tribes Yue Fei. Leo K. Shin of the U. of British Columbia quotes Hellmut Wilhelm and joins his opinion that the Ming knowingly ‘attributed (falsely) to him [Yur Fei] the stirring piece ‘Redness All Across the River,’ [MAN JIANG HONG] in which the author, with great poetic finesse, expresses his desire ‘to eat the flesh of the nomads’ in order to ‘recover our old rivers and mountains.’

Yue Fei a character or a man shouted for blood to gush out every chew of the bite Nomad flesh he had in his mouth. Each book of the heroic tradition was more and more bloodthirsty till Yue Fei sounds raging crazy. That’s how snug in their smug high fallutin theory of walls the Ming was. It drove Luo Guanzhong to translate the strategies of Sun Tzu into lessons for the people, as it drove Qian Cai to create a pugnacious meat eater from an already provocative character. Government Chinese were hard to move, but were the people the heroic tradition was aimed at?

C.C. Lowe in 1991 scholar unofficial and a publisher of comic book novels, also attributes the bloodthirsty MAN JIANG HONG to Yue Fei, and prints the poem on the inside cover of YUE FEI, one of the “Pictorial stories of the great Chinese national hero in Chinese & English.”

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The Famous Poem of Yue Fei

MAN JIANG HONG

I am so angry my scalp prickles under my hat

I grip this rail until my knuckles turn white

Waiting for this pouring rain to stop

I stare straight up

And howl at the sky

Uh I am torn to pieces in my gut

Here I am thirty years old

And for me honour and fame are so much mud and dust

I have fought for this dynasty

Eight thousand miles under the clouds and the moon

And I tell you you can’t just sit here do nothing

What value are regrets when your hair goes gray

When are we going to make good the insult

The jin invaders gave us when they captured our emperor

When are those of us in power going to avenge

The disgrace of losing our dynasty [?]

We should take to the war chariots

And careen through the passes in the halen mountains

And grind the bones of our enemies under our wheels

We wought to be eating their flesh when we hunger

Drinking the bloood down to slake our thirst

We have to beat this war white hot again

Raise our banners in the lost territory one more

The old capital bainjing waits for us to rebuild it.

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C.C. Low has published volumes of dramatized histories of the Opium Wars of the 19^th Century without a fiction to shape it but with documents to prove his account of events. He has logically extended the heroic tradition in time and history to include the invasion of the British and 2 Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion way beyond the novels. His documentary rather than fictional treatment of history pointed up the fact that the the Chinese haven’t written of their heroes as Chinese since the 18^th Century.

The Revolution of 1911 realized Plato’s dream of creating a republic from scratch in Dr. Sun Yat sen’s Christian head and the heads of other Chinese who saw the same dream of founding a China started from nothing. In the name of their competitive dreams they all drove out all the artists opposed to their pie in the sky. Plato understood the artists power to rouse and persuade the people to action, without regard for the truth or the effects of their work. Control art then get rid of it. He liked Homer’s work mythologising the Greeks, but once he finished the ODYSSEY Plato would have taken him tho the border, heaped him with farewell gifts and said goodbye Homer.

Those that were kept were deballed and no threat to Plato’s Republic and their arts were servants of the state, 20 th Century Christians and Communists. Individuals, individualiity, personalities were gone, forbidden.

The Cultural Revolution erased the Chinese family, the Chinese children’s story and the heroic tradition as backward in the cities from 1966 to 1976.

In the tenth and last year of Cultural Revolution, 1976 the year of the big wipeout of that old time Confucius non-religous Taosim and Buddhism and all the children’s stories in China. That same year, by coincidence Maxine Hong Kingston’s THE WOMAN WARRIOR appeared boasting of exposing Confucius, and discovering tattoos on the girl warrior’s body. Shocking! How could a responsible publisher print such lies! What next, they find exactly those same tattoos on Joan of Arc’s body?

Maxine Hong Kingston boasted she took the tattoos off a man born till 500 years after Far Mulan, the heroine who stood as proof of female equality with men in the children’s chant that closed with the lines:

The he rabbit tucks his in his feet to sit.

The she rabbit dims her shiny eyes.

Two rabbits hopping side by side.

Who can see which is the he and which the she?

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

DEFINED BY CHINESE COWARDICE

Asian American Studies at San Franicsco State and UC Berkeley said Kingston was probably wrong about Mulan being tattooed but she was a womAN and should have her chance at white fame. What kind of chickenshit is that? Would the French give license to a Franco-American to change Joan of Arc to 255 lb man with a sex change operation for a chance at American Yankee fame?

The hero known as the tattooed general was a man whose allies along the Yellow River included women of history who’d grown up on THE BALLAD OF MULAN, but no matter, Kingston didn’t tell the whites, the readers that counted. Four American big name universities co-signed her racism and gave her four honorary degrees, and Asian American Studies awarded her awards named after her Woman Warrior. It’s was as if Leni Riefenstahl attended the Premiere screening of her TRIUMPH OF THE WILL at the largest moviehouse in Israel.

Maxine Hong Kingston admitted her Mulan was a fake, “I want to give you an example of myths that I've changed,” she said to Kay Bonnetti, “When the woman warrior has the words carved on her back, that's actually a man's story.”

She said it. And whites from the university AAS to Pres. Bill Clinton are deaf, dumb and blind to her:

“It's about a man named Yüch Fei who had a vow carved on his back by his mother. Now, I took that and gave that to a woman. I gave a man's myth to a woman because it's part of the feminist war that's going on in THE WOMAN WARRIOR.”

I likened Kingston to Leni Riefenstahl, the brilliant Nazi film maker who made the film that mythologised Hitler and his helmeted men wearing and carrying the swastika in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. A film so effective it was banned from American screens until 1949.

“That’s unfortunate,” the editor of the only Asian American magazine available to AA scholars to make their publishing requirements, says enigmatically. Does he recognize the aptness of my comparison? I ask him to reprint the Bonnetti interview in his, the only excuse for an AA magazine that’s sort of respected. He gets mad in front of the whites and Chinese-American writer, and charges me with favoring the torture of women. The whites turn away from me. He obviously has not read THE BALLAD OF MULAN. I shut my mouth rather than wreck the dinner for another Chinese-American writer. He musters up all his cowardice and impresses everybody, by saving AAStudies, and refusing to publish Kingston admitting she lied about Far Mulan.

AAStudies across the country, is based on Kingston’s sacred word, and the chicken publisher is not about to use her own words saying her word on China is a joke, and her joke on the Asians.

As Riefenstahl appearing with her film in Isreal would signal the end of Israel, the AAS awards to a confessed white racist was the end of Asian American Studies as an intellectual study. AAS is Sociology which is Christianity, a religious dogma.

In 1997, Kingston’s racist contempt for Chinese culture was made US policy when Pres. Clinton awarded this brave woman a US Humanities Medal.[3] Then China itself proved it had given up being Chinese by joining the white racist Kingston and Amy Tan in falsifying the Chinese children’s story and streamed them both to Fudan University in Shanghai. They were freed of any responsibility to Chinese lit by embracing white racist beliefs of America and their insisting they were not “Chinese–American writers,” but American writers. And American lit and media and bookfests reciprocated. It was as if Isreal had invited Riefenstahl to show her TRIUMPH OF THE WILL in every Jewish home.

Where have the Chinese stories gone? To Asian American Studies? No. Asian American Studies has turned its back on Chinese children since it’s birth for forty years ago. To the AA and CA press? No. The AA press has turned their backs on Asian and Chinese children and the children’s story since it’s birth.

The stories have gone to Singapore. To C.C. Low’s house, Canfonian PTE. Comic book novels drawn to the from of 5^th century opera scriptbook drawings of full stage action. To Asiapac PTE’ that sees the same stories as shattered glass in the eyes of the beholder. Jagged, irregularly framed panels. Close ups. Extreme close ups. Close-up jumping out of the borders, out of the panel. To Hong Kong, to Taiwan, to Korea, to Japan and isolated storytellers America.

CHINESE DON’T NEED CHINA TO BE CHINESE

I detect a veiled criticism of China dumping it’s Chinese culture in C.C. Low’s online “Our Publishing Objectives”

However, among the younger generation, few have the patience or interest to read the original works which cover lengthy volumes. As a result, they never have the opportunity to absorb the quintessence of the valuable Chinese cultural heritage.

In his description of the three gods Fu, Lu, Shou, (Fook, Look, Sow in Cantonese) the teacher tips into the storyteller troubled by the white man’s concept of God as superhuman, invulnerable and one. He takes to reducing the word the whites applied to their translation of “sun” (in Cantonese) to “god,” and pleads for a white demotion to “mascot.”

Fu Lu Shou and Cai Shen (God of Wealth) are the most popular targets of worship. Not many people, however, know clearly their backgrounds. Based on the widely circulated folk legends, this book intends to give our young readers a brief account of the origins of these deities. It is presented, for the first time, in the form of pictorial series with explanatory notes in English and in Chinese. Today, with the development of science and culture, people generally feel the legends of these fairies are ridiculous. However, pondering from another aspect, they will feel that man-made sculptures of gods have added a sense of pursuit and hope in life. In various distinguished gatherings, such as Olympic Games, "mascots" designed to represent the auspiciousness of such events are always set up. Judging by this practice, a society regarding gods and deities as "mascots" in life should give no cause for much criticism.

This was to explain characters written for Chinese children. Kids, the 108 Outlaw Stars had it right. What whites call “gods” are really Stars. Stars like Mickey Rooney and John Wayne. Our 36 Stars of Heavenly Spirits, and 72 Stars of Earthly Fiends are the stars of a football team.

His working for a precision of meaning in the difference between “god” and “mascot” may take awhile to strike the non-Chinese. He counts on the Chinese children of Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Canada and the USA to understand.

Some of us cringe. He’s letting too much show. The fool thinks he can speak for all Chinese? And he dares say “Yes.” He’s right. The children’s story is digested and redigested history gone to legend, to myth, to children’s story.

The smell of Ming gone bad is in the air again. It reminds me of George Woo[4] who said people were likening him to Kwan Kung behind his back. Where is George now? I have the itch to write a book about him, but ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS has been already written, hasn’t it. Hasn’t it?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTERVIEW WITH MAXINE HONG KINGSTON. 1986. By Kay B Bonetti. PP 33-46 in CONVERSATIONS WITH MAXINE HONG KINGSTON. Edited by Paul Skenazy and Tera Martin. University Press of Mississippi. Jackson. (1998)

CREATION OF THE GODS. Translated by Gu Zhizhong. New World Press. Beijing (1992)

TAI KUNGS SECRET TEACHINGS, in THE SEVEN MILITARY CLASSICS OF ANCIENT CHINA, translation and commentary by Ralph D. Sawyher with Mei-chun Sawyer. Westview Press . Boulder (1993)

THREE KINGDOMS A Historical Novel. Attributed to Luo Guanzhong. Translated from the Chinese with Afterword and Notes by Moss Roberts. Foreign Languages Press/U of California Press. Beijing/Berkeley. (1994)

THREE KINGDOMS China’s Epic Drama by Lo Kuan-chung. Translated and edited by Moss Roberts. Pantheon Books. New York. (1976)

ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS. San Guo Yan Yi. Luo Guan Zhong. Translated by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor. Kelly & Walsh. Shanghai (1925) Graham Brash. Singapore (1985)

OUTLAWS OF THE MARSH by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong. Translated by Sidney Sahpiro. Foreign Languages Press Beijing. (1980)

WATER MARGIN. Written by Shih Nai-an. Translated by J.H. Jackson. Commercial Press Ltd. Shanghai. (1937)

JOURNEY TO THE WEST, by Wu Cheng’en. Translated by W. J. F. Jenner. Foreign Language Press. Beijing. (1982)

JOURNEY TO THE WEST, translated and edited by Anthony C. Yu. U of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1980

GENERAL YUE FEI. A novel by Qian Cai of the Qing Dynasty. Translated by T. L. Yang. Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd. (1995)

Comic book companies that have printings of all titles and more

ASIAPAC BOOKS PTE LTD

629 Aljunied Road

#04-0,6 Cititech Industrial Building

Singapore 1438

CANFONIAN PTE LTD

Thomson P.O. Box 16

Singapore 9157

Film

CHINESE RESTAURANTS, Director-Narrator Chuek Kwan. 15 half hour episodes. TISSA FILMS, Toronto, Canada Tel: +1.416.804.1527 Fax +1.416.231.7532 E-mail: films@tissa.com

Frank Chin , by John Goshert. Boise: Boise State University Western Writers Series, 2002.

"Frank Chin Is Not a Part of This Class! Thinking at the Limits of Asian American Literature." By John Goshert. Jouvert 4.3 (May 2000): unpaginated article (39 paragraphs).

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[1] A parson named Mason Locke Weems published two biographies of Washington after his death. A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits, of General George Washington (1800) and The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen (1806), Weems’s story of the cherry tree was debunked by biographers intent on the real truth of Washington's life. Some favored dismissing the myth from Washington’s record. Others, however, intended to portray the story as apocryphal. A woman who remembered the story from her school days was quoted as saying, "If the tale isn't true, it should be.” The woman’s quote anticipates the editor tearing up his notes after listening to Senator Jimmy Stewart’s tale of not shooting Liberty Valence, in John Ford’s, 1962 film, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE. The editor says "When the legend becomes fact," the editor says, "print the legend."

[2] Miayamoto to Peter Suzuki, April 23, 1981; “First, the community analysts were the only people on the WRA staff with any hope of finding out who in the centers were engaging in terrorist activities. The center police were all evacuees and were not helpful. Second, the community analysts, I feel quite certain, had Nisei friends in the centers who felt threatened by the terrorists and all but pleaded for the WRA action to remove the terrorists from their midst. I recall discussions among a number of Nisei at Tule Lake, in which I felt personally involved, about our organizing vigilante groups to deal with the threats against us.”

[3] On September 29, 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded Maxine Hong Kingston his National Humanities Medal. Clinton praised Kingston's talent for revealing "a world we've never seen but instantly recognize as authentic." Through her work, he said, she had "brought the Asian-American experience to life for millions of readers and inspired a new generation of writers to make their own unique voices and experiences heard."

[4] George Woo & Kwan Kung. Read more in Tom Wolfe's The New Yellow Peril (Esquire, Dec. 1969)

David Ishii Bookseller - 212 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104

(Shot and directed by Doug Ing)

A review of "What's Wrong With Frank Chin?"

COURTESY HIFF

...

Film praises trailblazer without ignoring faults

"What's Wrong with Frank Chin?"

...

4 stars

Review by Nadine Kam
nkam@starbulletin.com

With a title like "What's Wrong with Frank Chin?," Curtis Choy's "novel documentary" may win over an audience of more than just a handful of literary and activist types.

The work turns out to be a respectful homage to Asian-American literature's original angry young man. While striving for balance, Choy makes a case for what's right with Frank Chin, even while detailing his run-ins with actors, producers, publishers and fellow writers throughout a career in which he's never achieved the mainstream renown of those he despises.

As a young writer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I had my own encounter with Chin, the author of such works as "Bulletproof Buddhists and Other Essays," "Donald Duk," "Gunga Din Highway," "The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R.R. Co." and "Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese
America, 1889-1947," when he visited our campus in the early 1980s. I was too naive to tremble with fear at the thought of interviewing the Chinese-American bad boy with the Fu Manchu mustache.

I listened to him spit out his desk-pounding tirades about Asian-American stereotypes and Hollywood's emasculation of Asian men. What I remember most was the conviction and vitriol of a man certain of his rightness, establishment's wrongness and frustration with others' blindness or indifference to his truth.

I reported the message but didn't embrace it, attributing our differences to geography and gender. Maybe things were different for him in San Francisco, but I had grown up in Hawaii as part of an Asian-American majority. What did I know of discrimination? I was an Asian-American female, a double model minority in an era of equal opportunity.

I look back and wonder why he didn't reach across the table and shake me awake. It must have been hard for him to be perceived as forever railing at invisible demons. But my reaction was typical and I imagine many of my generation are just beginning to realize Chin is getting the
last laugh.

As he says in the documentary, on teaching a course in Asian-American Studies in the late 1960s: "I wasn't prepared for Asian-American Studies. Students were taking it as a Mickey Mouse course, easy grades. They had no idea of where they were in Asian-America, except they were above it. They were, each and every one of them -- this was common -- the first Asian of their kind to be accepted as white among whites. They call this assimilation."

When students asked, "What's wrong with acceptance?," Chin's response was "On whose terms?"

At the time, no books dealt with Asian-American history or culture, so Chin started oral-history projects, speaking to old actors and immigrants about their experiences. With writer Shawn Wong and San Francisco State College Asian-American Studies chairman Jeffery Chan, Chin searched for earlier Asian-American writing and what they found became the basis for the seminal anthology "Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers" and its successor "The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature."

Choy's documentary follows Chin's experiences as the founder of San Francisco's Asian-American Theatre Workshop, an experiment that did not end well when the group's aims diverged from his vision.

One of the most entertaining segments involves a long-running feud between Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston, author of "The Woman Warrior," whom Chin describes, along with Amy Tan, as being "Pocahontas yellows" delivering a "mixed-up East-West soul struggle" in works that "falsify Chinese culture." Never mind that little thing called literary license.

When Choy poses the question of whether such writers are sell-outs, Chin initially sounds as if he is trying to be diplomatic, before reverting to his belligerent tone. "I don't think writers are selling out," he says. "All writers really believe what they're doing is right. It's just that they're stupid."

"That's Frank," explained Frank Abe, one of the original members of Chin's Asian American Theatre Workshop. "He draws clean lines. It's black and white, yes or no."

Another interesting aspect to Chin's work is his little-known role in recognizing the "Day of Remembrance" for Pearl Harbor and his pursuit of redress for Japanese-Americans who lost civil liberties and property during World War II. Chin organized one of the first rallies for the
cause in Seattle, explaining to Abe in urging him to go north: "The Japanese-Americans are making their move. They're going for redress but they don't know how to do it. If you lose redress you lose your history; if you lose your history you can kiss Japanese-American art
goodbye."

If the status of Asian-Americans has improved over the past 30 years, we have Chin to thank for some of the initial volleys. Through his theatrical and printed works, he opened himself up to society's slings and arrows, while opening eyes to continuing inequities.

Consider Choy's work a belated thank-you.

Searching for Frank Chin

[The following article comes from A. Magazine's March 1995 edition]

Searching for Frank Chin

"[Maxine Hong] Kingston, [David Henry] Hwang, and [Amy] Tan are the first writers of any race, and certainly the first writers of Asian Ancestry, to so boldly fake the best-known works from the most universally known body of Asian literature and lore in history. And, to legitimize their faking, they have to fake all of Asian American history and literature, and argue that the immigrants who settled and established Chinese America lost touch with Chinese culture, and that faulty memory combined with new experience produced new versions of these traditional stories. This version of history is their contribution to the stereotype." -- Frank Chin

By Terry Hong
A. Magazine
March 1995

Last summer, I spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time and effort searching for Frank Chin. Frank Chin, the controversial literary figure, the co-editor of the seminal Asian American texts, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers and The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature -- the self-appointed leader in the Asian American literary war between what he calls "the fake" and "the real."

I had been assigned a freelance project -- a short biographical profile for a research publication -- and I had hoped to interview him. Getting his phone number was no little feat -- I had to swear and hope to be burned alive before my ultimate source begrudgingly revealed it to me. I spent about a week calling at random times trying to catch him in (no machine). When I finally got in touch with him, he politely refused to give me an interview, but agreed to send a biographical statement he had written to use as background for my profile.

The promised materials arrived promptly. I wrote the profile and sent a copy to Frank Abe, a close friend of Chin's who had been one of the original members of Chin's Asian American Theatre Workshop in San Francisco. Abe, who is currently director of communications for the Office of the King County Executive in Seattle, Washington, was extremely helpful. He made a few corrections, and I sent the piece on to the publisher. I thought that was it for my little experience with the enigmatic Frank Chin.

Then I get a call from my editor, who wants me to interview Chin. I think long and hard before I agree to give it another try. At least this time, I already have the number. I call Abe for advice and he gives me a whole spiel to give Chin, of which I take careful notes: "Tell Frank that I said that the readers of A. Magazine represent the constituency he wants to reach, regardless of his opinion of the magazine. These readers are the as-yet-unformed consciences he wants to reach," Abe coaches me. He even gives me a rundown of Chin's daily schedule so I'll know the best times to reach him.

I'm armed and ready. I dial the phone. Chin picks it up on the second ring. I have the notes in front of me and Chin listens patiently before he again politely refuses. "No, I'm not doing interviews. No interviews at all," he says evenly.

"But Frank Abe says that the reason you refuse to give interviews is because you think most reporters haven't done their homework. And Frank Abe says to tell you that I've definitely done my homework. And Frank Abe says..." I stammer. But he interrupts me with an astounding offer.

"Okay, I'll do your interview if you'll complete an assignment I give you," he counters. Silently I listen. "I want you to determine the existence of the story of Fu Mu Lan, the woman warrior whose body is supposedly mutilated with words engraved on her back. I want you to determine the existence of a fairy tale about the kitchen god's wife, or the kitchen queen as she is sometimes referred to, who was abused by her husband. I want you to determine the existence of a fairy tale that measures the worth of a woman by her husband's belch. I want you to find out for yourself that there are no versions of such myths, I want you to prove for yourself the nonexistence of these stories. Then I'll give you your interview.

"This is my gripe with Christians like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang," he continues before I can agree. "What they' re doing is faking text. They claim insights into the Chinese culture, but it's all a fake. If the original works don't exist, then they don't exist. If they do exist, then I'm all wet. It's a black and white issue of text, not of opinion. Anyone can determine the existence of these myths without the involvement of my rotten personality or the scintillating personality of others not like me. That's what you have to do for yourself. Find their nonexistence. Then I'll talk to you."

When I hang up, I'm frantic. I take down all my Chinese literature in translation books from classes I took at Yale. I look at bibliographies. I take notes. I call a friend who puts me in touch with a Chinese literature professor at the University of Texas at Austin who provides more names and titles I can look up. I try the libraries in Dallas, have no luck and go down to Austin and spend a day at the university. I come back with a pile of Xeroxes with which I can report back to Chin.

"I've done my homework," I announce when I call him again a week later.

"And what did you find out?" he says with encouragement. And I'm thinking to myself how surprised I am that this is Frank Chin most often described as "acerbic" that I'm talking to.

"I have a translation of the Ballad of Mu Lan that is different from the version in your essay in The Big Aiiieeeee! In it, there is no mention of the engraving of Mu Lan's back. But I did find out about Yue Fei, a Sung Dynasty military hero whose back was tattooed with battle messages," I report. "I could not find anything about a woman' s worth being measured by the loudness of her husband's belch. I asked a Chinese literature professor at U.T. Austin who also checked with some of her associates and no one had heard of any tales like that."

"Because it doesn't exist, of course," he adds.

"I found out the the myth of the kitchen god comes in many versions, that he is a minor god," I continue. "The basic story is about a man who is so poor he must give up his wife. The wife, newly married, tries to help her ex-husband by baking gold pieces into cakes which she gives to him. The poor man does not eat the cakes but sells them hoping to make a little money, thus losing the gift his ex-wife prepared for him. He eventually becomes convinced that there is no point to his existence and kills himself. The gods take pity on him and make him a small deity. I also found some engraved images of the kitchen god, pictured with the wife," I tell Chin.

"So you found out that he is a local, regional hero. That means he has no influence on the Chinese culture, because no one version dominates. The story itself is a series of fairy tales that are not influential. He's like Santa Claus, a figure manufactured as an excuse to give kids candy at the end of the year. And you found out the kitchen god' s image is always depicted as part of a double poster with the wife, that both the husband and wife are honored, and therefore the wife is not denigrated," he says. "In Tan's book, she asks why the kitchen queen is not honored. But she is. That means the whole premise of Tan's book is wrong.

"That's my gripe," Chin says, and I realize that my interview is beginning. "All those works are based on fabrication, on false text. If this were a white issue, say a book that asked why George Washington was never elected president, if there was a whole novel based on that, it would never be accepted. That crime is equal only to plagiarism. These false books are great literary flaws that only work in the western language, that only appeal to those who believe in the western stereotype of the Chinese. It's white racist text. I mean it. There is no justification for falsifying text.

"Their defenders are trying to drum up justifications to save their reputations. But there are no such justifications. It's racist work. And to enjoy it, you have to be a white racist, someone who believes that the white race's culture and literature are the only morally acceptable, universal literature and that everything else is evil and doesn't deserve to survive. Their version of Chinese America wants to be white, to think white, to marry whites, and therefore become culturally and racially extinct," Chin warns.

With all this talk of "the fake," I ask Chin about how, in his opinion, writers and readers can be "real." What does this whole question of "realness" and "fakeness" mean, anyway?

"The only way," Chin replies, "is to read. The empirical method. Call your local Asian language and literature departments. Take courses. Go by the library, check out Edward Werner's Dictionary of Chinese Mythology or read reliable sources like Anthony Christie. You could almost pick up any non-fiction book and start working from the bibliography. You could even go to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology and check the bibliography in back. Some of the information you'll find will be wrong, but that will lead you to other sources, the contradictions will lead to other knowledge and you go on until the confusion gets cleared up. You can talk to people who know about the subject, then check their sources out. Do as I had you do. You'll find the information you're looking for. This stuff {Chinese literature} is not that inaccessible. It exists in good translations," Chin encourages.

When I ask him specifically about Asian American literature, he advises, "Start with The Big Aiiieeeee! It has the Asian American history and literature, it has comparative literature, it has the history of where the stereotypes come from, it has the comparisons of Asian and Western philosophies. The philosophies are the core. Asian philosophy is much more individualistic. Western philosophy is founded on religion as a system of social conformity to create the perpetual state. Asian philosophy is founded on struggle for perfection of personal individuality; there's no concept of original sin, no dialectic thinking, no social contracts. In Asian philosophy, you would never give up the individual to the state; that's sissy philosophy. Western philosophy says we' re all losers and sinners and victims. In Chinese philosophy, we're all soldiers; if we're not fighting for personal integrity, then we deserve to be victims, we deserve to die.

"What's happened is that Asian Americans don't know how to fight. If they did, they would be fighting, not whimpering. They would not be asserting the Chinese as victims. They would not be asserting phony literature as being literature that perpetuates the victimization of women. There were more women heroes in Chinese history and literature than in the West!"

There is a noticeable silence and I wait for Chin to continue. But when he doesn't, I take the hint and realize that my time is probably up. I look at my watch and am surprised to find that my 15 minutes have become 40.

"Is it okay with you to publish parts of this interview?" I finally ask.

Another pause, before Chin answers, "Yes. Yes, you can publish it."

More Asian Than Thou?

Frank Chin responds when challenged about his right to call himself "Asian" (forgive the video/audio quality):

THE CHINESE THAT DON’T NEED CHINA TO BE CHINESE

I am a Chinese Orphan. We are all Chinese orphans. I happen to come from California. I have children’s stories my people from Kwangtung have been telling since 1849, the year we left a corrupt and corrupted corruption of China to search for a place to live as Chinese. Every language in the world was a dialect of Cantonese.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty and the Brits gave the Opium War to the Chinese in 1840. By 1842 the brag was that 27% of Chinese manhood annually was being consumed by the cultivation, processing and consumption of opium. Consumption goes around and consumers comes around, in a perpetual motion of Chinese making white money. Business was so good that the Church took it over. In 1849 there was a lull in the Opium War.

Who knew when the Brits would fall on the Cantonese again? Like and unlike the people that abandon centuries of crops and home to follow Lowe Bay, a ruler they liked, but he was running out of the country in search of another, before the cruel genius Cho Cho rode into town and took it over. The people of the town chose to trust their fate to the unknown future of Lowe Bay. He represents Heaven. He is served by Kwan Kung who represents men, and Chiang Fei, a rich farmer who represents the earth. The Three Stars, the triad of Earth, Man and Heaven. Our first ancestor set off for new lands or failure.

Kwangtung province, the port of Canton, and boats were the only way out. Chinese didn’t need China to be Chinese. They had the stories. The stories led to money from the Chinese to the family waiting in China. Each Chinese sooner of later chose a place to settle, and sent for family. Sons, daughter, wives, parents. One by one, member by member from baby to grandma and grandpa the families reassembled as their first ancestor saved the money to buy the papers legal and otherwise and paid the fare their passage, one by one, to the Gold Rush in California, to the Gold Rush in New Zealand, to someplace new.

Dinky Chinese restaurants became family empires of restaurants, dentists offices and car dealerships. They were Chinese because of the stories they told. If you know the Chinese stories, you are Chinese. If you were told the Chinese stories, you are Chinese. If you tell the stories you are Chinese.

Among the stories still told in languages all over the world, is the Fox and the Tiger.

And now, I’m going to tell it to you.

THE FOX AND THE TIGER

YOU ALL KNOW what a fox is. Looks a little like a large house cat. Looks a little like a medium sized dog. Sharp-nosed. Sharp-eared. Bright-eyed. Bushytailed. It is a nice day. Fresh. The little fox is out for a little walk, through the woods, minding his own business.
Out of the shadows jumps the tiger. "All right, little fox, say Goodbye! to the world, for I'm going to eat'ya!"

"Now, hold on there, Tiger!" the little fox says. "You just can't jump out of the shadows with bad manners and threats and interrupt my pleasant nice little walk around my woods!"

"Your woods?"

"You don’t know that I am the King of the Woods?

"You! The King of the Woods?" The tiger laughs, "You? You? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. You can't be King of the Woods! You have a teeny kitty cat body, and I have this beautiful, (Ooh, I love it so much) magnificently sculpted musculature! You have these little itty bitty kitty cat paws. Me, I have these magnificent ripping, terrifying claws. You have little toy teeth that can't get around one of my toes. And I have a mouth full of these pointed big teeth to puncture hide and muscles, break bone, and bite meat. Teeth that break! Teeth that gnash! Teeth….! How can you be King of the Woods?"

"Tsk.Tsk. Tsk.," the Fox shakes his head, "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.. I don't want to hurt you, Tiger."

"Hurt me?"

"I know you are just a big dumb guy. But I am willing to give you a chance to see for yourself."

"Huh?"

"I am going to walk down this road here.”

“You’re going to walk?”

“We are going to walk down this road here. And we’ll see how the first three animals we meet along the way treat me with courtesy and respect.”

“What?”

”If just one of these three animals talks bad manners all over me, or spits on me, or makes threats… I’ll let you eat me."

"Hmmm,” the tiger thought a moment, “You’re going to walk down this road?”

“Um hmm.”

“The first three animals we meet…”

“Un hmmm.”

“And if just one of them treats you with bad manners, spits, or makes threats, you let me eat you?”

“I’ll let you eat me.”

"Hmmm," the tiger thought a moment and said, “How do I know you won't just run away, Little Fox?"

"To make sure I don't run away, Tiger, why don't you just follow me as close as you can?"

"Hmmm," the tiger says, and thinks, "Hmmm.” And thinks some more, and says. “To make sure you don't just run away, I get to follow behind you as close as I want?"

"That's right."

"Sounds good to me, let's go."
The little fox rattles along on his little feet. And the tiger follows close behind with his big shoulders rising and falling and his big pads silently separating the grass and settling into the earth.

"A little fox!" A buffalo comes snorting and charging out of the grass, “Stomp! Stomp! Stompity! Stomp! Gonna stomp on a Little Fox!” The buffalo screeches to a stop. “Oh ho, Little Fox!” he shakes his huge head chews his cud. “How are you today Little Fox?”

“Fine Buffalo. How are you?”

“Fine! Fine! I was stomping along and saw you, and just had to stop and say it’s such a beautiful day, isn’t a beautiful day?”

"Yes, it is Buffalo."

"The birds are singing." The buffalo blinks and shudders a bird off his flanks. “And the bees are buzzing.”

“Yes, they are Buffalo.”

“Well, it’s such a nice day, I’ll just be stomping along. If that’s okay with you.”

"Nice seeing you, Buffalo," the little fox says, and walks on.

The tiger follows, and says to himself, "Hmmmm. Interesting."

They walk on, come to a river and walk by the river awhile.. Suddenly an alligator comes leaping out of the water and snapping its jaws toward the fox. "My, my, my …!" the alligator sees the tiger, "Ooops! …friend! My pal. Ahhh." The alligator smiles, "Beautiful day. My good friend, Little Fox.”

“Hello Alligator.”

“Have you noticed the sun is shining, the grass is so green.”

“Yes, I have noticed that.”

“The water sparkles.”

"Yes, it does."

"Yes, it does. I just had to say it to somebody.."

"Why, thank you, Alligator. That’s very kind."

"Yes, it is, isn’t it. Well, see you later."

"See you later, alligator," the little fox says and the alligator slinks back into the water. And the little fox walks on.

The tiger follows, saying to himself, "Hmm. Interesting."

Next a huge snake, a python comes dangling out of a tree and sticks its thin black forked tongue out and in, fast several times without licking its lips. "Haaaa, Little Fox say..." and the snake sees the tiger, "Hi-i-i-i! Say, Hiiiiiii there!"

"Hello, snake, how are you?"

"Oh? Oh, I'm just fi-i-i-ine, just fine thank you," the snake says. “Well…I mustn’t keep you. I’d hate to do thaaat.”

“Well, I should be going.”

“Yesss. Welll…” and the snake slips around a tree trunk and disappears.

The little fox walks on a few steps, then stops and turns to the tiger. He dusts his fur and asks, "Well, tiger, do you feel like eating me now?"

The tiger shies back and gulps and looks down at the little fox with awe, "Err. Oh, Little Fox. I lost my head. I obviously did not know what I was doing. You are, indeed the King of the Woods. With your permission, I'll withdraw now, and leave you to enjoy your walk alone."

The tiger back steps away, turns and disappears into the shadows, and the little fox walks on.

###

WHAT KEPT THE TIGER from eating the Little Fox?

THE REAL NAME OF THE STORY is: THE FOX AND THE TIGER STRATEGY. Do you understand strategy? Or tactics? The difference between the tactical and the strategic will come clear to you in the next story, if not immediately, remember it for later, Confucius says, it clear up like the sniffles when you’re older.

STUPID THE SCHOLAR & THE WOLF, also known as THE NORTH COUNTRY WOLF, or THE WOLF OF SERNGDOONG or THE WOLF OF SHANDONG. Do you know where Serngdoong (Shandong) is?

( Draw a map of China on blackboard. Begin with the chalk in the upper right, and draw the part of the body that dangles, that’s Korea, come around to draw the inland sea to China, come around the camel’s head of Shandong, around the belly of China, past the island of Taiwan, to the underside past Hong Kong, the entry to the Pearl River to the port of Canton, past Macau, past Hainan Island to drawing the armpit of the Bay of Tonkin and on down the long armlike coast of Vietnam.) Shandong is the camel head pointing its nose at Korea.

STUPID THE SCHOLAR & THE WOLF
(THE WOLF OF SHANDONG)

A SCHOLAR HAS failed the Imperial examinations, "Oh me, I failed the exams. I'm stupid, stupid, stupid!" The failed scholar mopes along on the road of life with his bag of books over his shoulder. "How can I go home? Hi folks, I failed the Imperial exams?" He groans. "I'm just another failed scholar on the road of life.” He kicks himself. “Oh, me. Oh, my. I failed.” He slaps himself on the forehead. “I'm stupid. I don't know nothing."

A wolf dashes out of the woods and falls down at the failed scholar's feet, and looks up into his eyes.

"Please! Save my life! Save my life! Save my life!"

"Who? What? I don't know nothing!"

"I'll give you silver," the wolf says. "Silver!"

"Ooh, silver?"

“I'll give you Gold!"

"Gold!"

"Just hide me, and save my life! And I'll give you silver and gold," the wolf says.

"Err, uhh, how? Where?"

"What do ya have in the bag, man?"

"Books!" the scholar said.

"Books! You don't need books! No one’ll give you silver and gold for carrying books in a bag! Dump the books!"

"Right," the scholar says and dumps the books. The wolf climbs into the bag. His body is tight fit. His neck sticks out. Off in the distance barking dogs are heard. The wolf is frantic. "Come on, man, stuff my head down in this bag. Come on!"

The scholar shoves and pushes, and pushes, "Come on, get me in the bag!" The scholar shoves the wolf's head down into the bag.

"Now tie the bag up! Hurry, man!"

The scholar ties the bag up.

"Now pick the bag up and start walking, come on, hurry!"

The scholar heaves the bag full of wolf onto his back and staggers into a walk.

Hunters on horseback break out of the woods and rein up by the scholar. "You there! Have you seen a wolf come by this way?" the leader of the hunting party asks.

"Wolf? No...."

"You're sure you haven't seen a wolf come by this way or cross this road?" the hunters ask.

"A wolf?"

“The dogs sniff the wolf on your trail, and then nothing, no wolf spoor.”

“Well, I haven’t seen a wolf. If one were around, I certainly would have noticed.”

“Would you?” one hunter asks and laughs.

“You seem a stupid, for a scholar,” the other says. The hunters back their horses and the scholar finally looks up and sees they wear imperial colors. They are the emperor's hunters. They ride off the road where the dogs are sniffing for a trail.

The scholar walks on carrying the wolf in his book bag for one mile, two miles, six miles till the wolf cries out, "Hey, lemme out here! I can't breathe! Put me down. Let me out of here!"
The scholar stops and sets the bag down, unties it and helps the wolf slip out.

"You know, while I was in your bag," the wolf says, "I got awful hungry. I'm so hungry from being in your bag, I am going to eat you up. Don’t look at me like that, it is your fault I'm hungry."

"Now, wait a minute, Wolf. That's not fair. You promised me silver…”

“Yes, I know. And I promised you gold.”

“And you promised me gold if I hid you in my bag and saved your life," the scholar says.

“If you saved my life, yes. That’s what I said.”

"I kept my part of the bargain, and now instead of silver and gold you tell me, I owe you a meal, and I'm it? That is not fair!"

"Sure, that's fair. Anybody will tell you that's fair," the wolf says. "What’s unfair about it?"

"Come on, nobody will say that's fair! I'm not that stupid."

"Ask anybody. Anybody!. And they'll tell you, I'm being fair."

"Anybody?"

"Ask anybody. Ask any three living things, and I bet, they'll tell you it’s fair to eat you for saving my life."

"That’s crazy!”

"Yes. Ask three old things and if one, just of them says it's not fair of me eat to eat you…I won't eat you," the wolf says.

He chuckles. "Stupid!"

They walk a bit and come to an old withered apricot tree. "Talk to the tree," the wolf says.

"Talk to the tree?" the failed scholar whines.

"Talk to the tree," the wolf says.

The scholar stops by the old apricot tree, and bows. "Old Apricot Tree," the failed scholar says, "I beg your pardon, I'm nobody, I don't mean anything, but I would like the benefit of your instruction in a personal matter."

The rickety Old Apricot Tree rattles and sighs, "Hummmm."

"Old Apricot Tree, I was minding my own business moping along the road of life after I flunked the big exams and this wolf runs out of the woods begs me to save his life. He makes me dump my books, and promises me silver and gold to hide him in my bag and carry him, and I do, and the Imperial hunters ride up, and ask me if saw a wolf, and I tell them I didn't see any wolf, and then when the wolf gets out of the bag, he tells me he got hungry inside my bag, and it's my fault he's hungry and he's going to eat me," the scholar says on a long breath. "Is that fair, Old Apricot Tree?"

And the Old Apricot Tree sighs and rattles his rickety twigs and says, "I was born and the rain watered me. And the sun shone on me. And you protected me from the birds and made sure I got water and sun, and I grew and grew. And then I sprouted fruit and you humans picked my fruit and ate it and threw away the seeds. And you carved your initials in my bark and you let your kids climb into my branches and break them. Then you cut off my branches and you burned them for firewood. And, yeah, it's fair for the wolf to eat you!"

Oh, oh, the scholar thinks. This isn't good, and thanks the Old Apricot Tree and walks on.
They come to a field and in the field is an old horse. "Talk to the horse," the wolf says. And the scholar approaches the old horse, bows and says, "Old Horse, I'm nobody and don't mean anything but beg the benefit of your instruction in a personal matter."

"Oh, boy, here we go again," the Old Horse says.

"Old Horse, I was minding my own business just walking along the road of life after I flunked the big exams and this wolf runs out of the woods and begs me, to save his life. He falls on his knees at my feet, and begs me to save his life. He promises to give me silver and gold if I'll hide him in my bag and carry him, and I do, and the Imperial hunters ride up and I tell them I didn't see any wolf. And then when the wolf gets out of the bag, he tells me it's my fault he's hungry and he's going to eat me," the scholar says on a long breath. "Is that fair, Horse?"

And the Old Horse says, "I was born. I suckled on my mother's milk and ran and played after her. And you humans gave me good grass and good grain to eat and lots of water to drink and lots of room to run. I was out when the sun shone and sheltered from the rain. Then you let your kids ride on me, and whip me, and you tie me up to things. You made me pull for you round and round or back and forth back and forth. And then you whipped me to make me pull harder when your plow hit hard ground. And the work and the harness left sores on my body. And biting flies buzzed and birds came to eat off my open sores and I got a little older and you stopped feeding me. You only whipped me and then when my back gave out, you turned me out without food. You no longer let me in out of the rain after all the work I've done for you and, yeah, it's fair for the wolf to eat you."

"Whoops," the scholar says to himself, "I'm in trouble."

Next the scholar sees an old teacher asleep on the road. "Old Teacher. Wake up. You’re sleeping on the road.”

“What?” the Old Teacher says waking up. “What ma I doing on the road? I was asleep here? Who are you? Did you rob me?”

“Ask the Old Teacher,” the wolf says low so the old teacher won’t hear.

“What?”

“Ask him,” the wolf says with threatening show of teeth.

The scholar bursts into tears, falls on his face in front of the old man and whimpers, "Old Teacher, I wasn't hurting anybody I was just walking along the road of life after I flunked the big exams, minding my own business. And this wolf runs out of the woods and begs me to dump my books and promises me silver and gold to hide him in my bag and carry him, and I do, and the Imperial hunters ride up and I tell them I didn't see any wolf. Then when the wolf gets out, he tells me he got hungry inside my bag, and it's my fault he's hungry and he's going to eat me!" the scholar whines. "And he says that's fair! Is that fair, Old Teacher?"

"There are many sides to every question,” the Older Teacher says. “I want to understand this before I decide. Is this what happened, Wolf?"

"Yes, I thought he told it very well," the wolf says.

"Hmmm. There's something I still don't understand," the Old Teacher says. "Where did you say this happened?"

"Oh, back this way along the road about, maybe six miles," the scholar says.

"Can we go back there and let me have a look at where this all happened?"

"Sure, we can. Let's get this over with fast," the wolf says and leads the way.

They reach the spot where the scholar and wolf met and the Old Teacher paces around this way and that with his stick and shakes his head. "No, there's still something I don't quite understand," he says, "You say you dumped your books and this wolf here climbed into that little bag?"

"Oh, I understand your problem," the wolf says, "You don't believe a big magnificent wolf like me can fit into that little bag! Here we'll show you!" The wolf turns to the scholar and snaps, "Come on, stupid, help me get in the bag!"

The wolf and scholar huff and puff and grunt and groan stuffing the wolf into the bag. And the Old Teacher laughs. "I can still see your head, Wolf. What kind of hiding is that?"

"Well, I had Stupid shove and push on my head till it was stuffed in the bag too."

"Well?" the old Teacher shrugs.

"Come on, man," the wolf says, "Stuff my head down into the bag!"

And the scholar uses all his strength and shoves the wolf's head into the bag, and stops to catch his breath.

"Then what did you do?" the Old Teacher asks.

"I tied up the bag."

"Aha!" the Old Teacher says.

"Tie up the bag!" the wolf says from inside the bag.

The scholar blushes, "Oh, how stupid of me!" and ties up the bag. "Now what?" he asks.

"Walk on," the Old Teacher says.

“Walk on?” the scholar asks.

“Walk on?” the wolf asks inside the bag.

###

What is the Strategic problem in the STUPID THE SCHOLAR & THE WOLF? Stay alive, Stupid. That is the only problem in this story, whether Stupid knows it or not. Luckily the Teacher knows what the problem is. He uses the tiger’s own strategy for trapping the scholar against him.

The tiger is so busy outsmarting Stupid he forgets to eat him. The teacher’s talk and walking the wolf back step by step into the bag is a distraction and a tactic that works.

Talk about STUPID THE SCHOLAR & THE WOLF with the Chinese storyteller in your family.

Ask why THE STUPID SCHOLAR & THE WOLF was told as if the wolf being tied up in a bag was nothing? Why are the children listening to the story relieved that the teacher did not tell the scholar to bag the wolf, tie up the bag and toss it in the water?

The stoyteller will say some children’s stories are told with the age of the listener, in mind, and some are written for the ages.

Listen to THE STUPID SCHOLAR & THE WOLF or THE NORTH COUNTRY WOLF, or THE WOLF OF SHANDONG. You know though it is never said, that for as long as this story, you are safe from killers, killing and kill.

When the listener has knowledge of killing the Confucian brain kicks in, and the older listener will see that killers, killing and kill are in the story.

The children’s stories are distillation of a people’s dreams. Dreams that teach how to hold yourself together and live a in raw, bloody, and very scary world. Stories boiled out of a life that was war, where families were the only reality and didn’t legally exist. Family members were property of the king pretending to be an emperor, and the family had to pay taxes to the corrupt emperor, and tribute to the gangs, tribute to the horsemen every fall as sure as crows, in order to stay on their land, that no matter who ruled, who trampled on it, it was their family’s land. Only the rule of a monster, could drive the family to give up the land they’ve held for generations. Only the promise of a land ruled by a king of their dreams, would lead them to follow the good, kindly ruler to a land he would rule. That’s a story only told once, in Lo Kuanchung’s THE THREE KINGDOMS and, unfortunately, not here. The landbound Chinese trying to farm vs the horsemen who follow the seasons and live off the land come every year like crows at harvest time. Might the Chinese have been nomads themselves, before taking up agriculture? Clues are in the children’s stories. Our’s and their’s. Why don’t we know their’s? Might the nomad’s family keep what came from the family inside the family? I don’t know. The answer is in the stories.

The reduction that occurred in the stories makes the link between the children’s stories and the psychological images of self-inspiration that writers these days try to convince the reader are real experiences.

In modern times the children’s stories have been scrubbed of all and anything that might disturb a nation’s particular definition of “socialization” and “assimilation” leaving bland and incomprehensible, cute and utterly meaningless shells of stories that were once Chinese.

The people cared so much about the survival of the family, the body of knowledge and ethics the family treasured, and members valued above themselves, that they warned their children to defend themselves against adults of their family who sold children for the good life. The children responded by keeping certain stories close to their original forms. I’m going to tell you a Chinese story and a Japanese story where kids are the teachers of adults.

NAH JAH & MOMOTARO

DO YOU THINK YOUR PARENTS love you? Would they sell you to me, for food? For $100. American? For $5000. American? How about you? I will pay $ 1 million American to your parents for you! Not enough? I will pay your parents $5 million for each of you. Oh, they’ll miss you. But 5 million buys a lot of grief. They won’t take my 5 million dollars? They’ll take my $ 10 MILLION. OK, a few of you have the kind of parents that won’t sell you at any price. But most of you go home with me.

And five, maybe six, maybe ten years later I come back with another big hunger and a lot of money to buy all the children of Auckland, New Zealand.. And ten years later I come back again….

What would happen to Auckland?

To stop grownups from selling their children to monsters, for the good life, the Chinese have a story about a child like you, who comes to a family in a boat, in this case a lotus bud, and the Japanese told a story about a boy born out a peach, to teach the adults to look on their children as their future.

NAH JAH

WE ARE IN CHINA, in a beautiful green place where a great mountain pass opens and a significant river runs from the heart of China out to the sea. Chentang Pass. A beautiful place, with a beautiful fortress city, under the command of handsome Commandant Li.

People here live a good life. No famine. No flood. No drought. No disease. Nobody starves. Nobody gets sick. Nobody works hard. Nobody goes without. Everyone has more than enough. This place is protected by the Green Dragon King of the Eastern Sea.

And all the Green Dragon King of the Eastern Sea asks in return for the good life, is children, to eat as party food. There a recipes for chicken in THE JOY OF COOKING he uses on children.

Commandant Li's wife is pregnant with their third child She goes into labor. She stays in labor for three years. The commandant is losing his patience. At last she gives birth. But it’s not a child.

Who is going to tell the commandant he is father of a flower bud. A closed lotus!

A cute smiling servant carries the Third Prince in the palm of his hand. He rolls it off his hand onto a stone tabletop, and backs away.

“The Third Prince is a flower?” The Commandant is not happy with what he sees.. He draws his sword and slices the lotus bud open. Golden light brights out and blinds everyone in the room. Right in the center of the light is a tiny little naked boy no larger than a thumb.

The women attending the birth go, "Ooooh!"

The Commandant takes the little boy in his hand, and examines him closely. "Ahhh. He's a cute little fella, isn't he!" he says. "But he's so small!"

The Taoist teacher flies down from the mountaintop on the back of a crane, dismounts, covers his right hand with his left and. congratulates the Commandant on the birth of a son.

The tiny little boy jumps into the teacher's hand and the teacher asks, "Allow me to name your son, and I will restore him to full size."

"Please, teacher," the Commandant says covering his right hand with his left, “Name my son. And please restore him to full size.”

The teacher names the little boy "Nah Jah."

"Nah Jah," the Commandant says. “My son.”

The teacher takes a lotus seed from his gourd, puts it into Nah Jah's mouth. The little boy swallows it, and grows to a full sized boy before everyone’s eyes. The teacher says, "Nah Jah will continue to grow as a normal boy," and, "I give Nah Jah his magic weapons. Hoops of heaven and earth. And a red ribbon." Then the teacher sits cross legged on the back of the crane and the crane spreads its wings and silently flies the teacher back to the mountaintop.

Nah Jah grows very fast. He plays on the beach with his friend the magic deer and children.
There is a reason the heros of the Asian children’s stories are orphans. Orphans force the people who decide to become their parents, by word, or deed, to promise to raise the child stranger as their own.

MOMOTARO

We are in Japan. The story is MOMOTARO. An old samurai and his wife have packed up the sword, and picked up the plow here in a beautiful mountain region that slopes down to the sea. They are old and childless. They grow rice.

One day he's out cutting firewood and the old woman goes down to the river to beat dirty clothes on wet rocks.

The old woman looks up from beating clothes to see a huge peach, larger than a beach ball, bobbing down the river.

"Oooh," the old woman says, "This is going to be good to eat tonight after the same old rice."

After dinner the old man picks up his knife and slice! "Whoops, what's this little naked baby boy doing standing up in the middle there? This peach has no seed, only a little boy! He's perfect. He's the child we have always wanted."

Peach is Momo, and Taro is boy in Japanese. Life is good where Momotaro, the Peach boy, lives by the sea. The weather is always perfect and the crops always full. And there no pirates no marauders. That’s because this part of Japan is protected by the Oni. The people have a deal for the Oni’s protection, all they want are a few children.

The oni are demons with horns growing out of their heads, and monsters who eat children.

Momotaro does not think giving up children to the oni is such a good idea. His parents tell him, “It’s politics, son. You’re too young to understand politics.”

Momotaro insists. “I’m going off to fight the oni.” His parents relent and make him kibidango rice cakes to eat along his way to war. They give him armor, a long sword for fighting, and short sword, the unmentionable, an iron fan for gesturing. They give him a flag with the peach crest on it and the slogan "Nippon Ichi" "Japan First!"

On his walk to the sea, Momotaro sits on the ground to eat a kibidango. A big chested dog with a curly tail woof woofs for attention in the woods and asks for a kibidango, to eat. “I can help you. I have a huge bite and sharp teeth and strong jaws. I can bite through trees and fell them.”
“I won’t give you a whole kibidango, but I’lll share one with you.”

On their walk to the sea, the dog senses a monkey, up in a tree. The monkey yip yips and laughs at Momotaro and the dog. “Momotaro. Momotaro! Take me with you. I can climb. Just give me a kibidango.”

“I won’t give you a whole kibidango, but I’lll share one with you.”

““Momotaro. Momotaro! Up in the sky” Momotaro looked up and saw a green headed ring necked pheasant, winging circles in the air. “I can fly high and scout from the sky. How about a kibidango?

“I won’t give you a whole kibidango, but I’lll share one with you.”

Momotaro, the dog, the monkey and the pheasant, build a boat, cross the sea. They surprise the oni. They tear off the oni’s horns. They kill the oni. They massacre the oni. Oni tear their own horns off and surrender.

Momotaro and his friends free the children, and return home with the treasure.

Momotaro goes home because the old man and old woman kept their word. They did not sell Momotaro to monsters for the good life. And everyone who'd had it so easy for so long, had to work for a living again. They had to raise their children instead of selling them to monsters for the good life.

DOWN IN THE UNDERSEA KINGDOM, in the crystal palace of the Green Eastern Sea, the Dragon King wakes up from a long sleep and licks his chops. "It feels like party time," he says.

He sends a Sea Devil on the back of a sea turtle to the surface of the sea after children A few children happen to be playing on the beach with Nah Jah and his friend, the deer. Nah Jah whips his red ribbon and drives the devil back empty handed.

"What? No children?" Dragon King says. The Sea Devil slimes into a toad in a puddle of itself at the Dragon King's feet. The Dragon King is angry. Instead of children his Sea Devil shows up empty handed and an expression of sorry trembling on his face. The Dragon King is disgraced. His guests are hungry for children. The undersea tea and wine, all the sauces, bits and tidbits in dishes on the palace table have been shaken into the laps of his guests the Dragon Kings. It’s that boy Nah Jah, the son of the Commandant who should be keeping his deal and feeding the choicest children to the Dragon King.

He sends his own son, the Dragon Prince armed with two round hammers, up to the surface to pound Nah Jah into mush and grab children to fry, to boil, to steam, to smoke and eat!
The Dragon Prince breaks the surface of the sea and shouts, "Who dares rough up my father's palace guard and stir up the sea?"

"I do,” Nah Jah answers.

The Dragon Prince clangs his round hammers together and attacks.

Nah Jah kills the dragon prince with his hoops of heaven and earth, then reaches his hand down inside the dragon's mouth, grabs his gut, and pulls the dragon inside out. He throws the limp gutted, body, into the sea. He keeps the dragon prince's gut. "A nice present for my father," Nah Jah says.

The body of the Dragon Prince settles to the bottom of the Eastern Sea at the feet of the Dragon King. The Dragon King of the Eastern Sea is angry.

The Dragon King walks into the Commandant's castle, with his sword drawn, and yells, "Your son! Your son killed my son. We had a deal. I gave you good weather. I gave your people the good life. Your people were supposed to give me children. My son comes to collect a few children, and your son kills my son? You take care of your son, or no rain. No green growth. No good life."

“This is news to me,” the Commandant says. He's at loss for words. Nah Jah walks in with the little dragon's gut. “A present for you, father.” The Green Dragon King seeing his son’s insides, lunges at the impudent boy with his naked sword. Nah Jah laughs, slips and dodges the Dragon King's strikes and slashes. The Dragon King swings down to split Nah Jah, and breaks his sword on a large incense burner and Nah Jah smiles.

“You broke my promise to the Dragon King made before the Jade Emperor in heaven!”

He takes away Nah Jah's magic weapons. He ties his son to a pillar.

"Give me your Third Prince!" the Dragon King screams.

The Commandant draws his sword and approaches Nah Jah. He raises his sword to strike Nah Jah down.

Nah Jah snaps the ropes that hold him, snatches the sword out of his father's hands, says, "I give you back your flesh and blood," and the boy slits his own throat and dies. Dies.
Dies.

Nah Jah’s father does not keep his promise to the boy born from lotus. Does the Commandant give the Dragon Kings children to banquet on?

Nah Jah's friend, the deer comes to Nah Jah's side with his magic weapons, and lays them by the dead boy's side and licks his hand. Nah Jah and his weapons turn into a glowing lotus seed.

The crane flies down from the mountaintop, picks up the seed and flies back up the mountain. The teacher takes the seed, tosses it into the pond. After awhile a new lotus blossoms, and inside the new lotus is a new Nah Jah.

"Thank you, teacher," Nah Jah says, covers his fighting hand in salute, and drops to his knees.

The teacher helps Nah Jah to his feet, “I didn’t bring you back for nothing. You want to fight the Dragon Kings? You will fight dragon kings. All four dragon kings.”

To celebrate the victory over the Third Prince, the Green Dragon King of the Eastern Sea has collected all the children of the Commandant’s Chentang Pass and plans to serve them prepared four ways at a great banquet for the three other dragon kings.

The teacher restores the hoops of heaven and earth and the red ribbon to Nah Jah.

Again Nah Jah drops to one knee, bows his head, covers his fighting hand and says, “Thank you, Teacher.”

“Here I give you a duster that turns into a spear with a shake, Also I give you wind and fire wheels to place under your feet and fly through the sky. And here also I give you the power to sprout two extra heads and two extra sets of arms. With three heads and six arms you can fight in all directions at once.”

Nah Jah drops to one knee, bows his head, covers his fighting hand a third time, and says, “Thank you, Teacher.” Then flies off on his fire wheels. He crashes the Green Dragon King's party before before the cooking for the banquet has started. The outraged dragon kings rise to fight the smart aleck boy.

The red dragon tries burning him. The white dragon tries freezing him in outer space. They fight Nah Jah every way they know how and nothing they do stops the three headed boy with six arms. Nah Jah throws his spear. It skewers the Green Dragon King and grows into a pillar planted in the earth and fixed in the sky, with the dragon pinned at the top, high and dry as far from the sea as Nah Jah can keep him.

Nah Jah frees the children and sends them home to Chentang Pass. The children wave and the people cheer the sight of him flashing in the sun as rides a deer across the sky. There is no more selling of children to monsters for the good life, people have to work for a living again.
But because the Commandant broke his promise to care for Nah Jah as his own, Nah Jah never goes home again.

There are more adventures of Nah Jah in the folk novel THE CREATION OF THE GODS. But I direct your attention to the statues of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist Goddess of mercy, you will find for sale in curio shops in Chinatowns and around the world, or displayed in Kwan Yin temples and shrines.

Look at Kwan Yin's feet. In some of the larger statues, a child by each foot can be seen. A little girl by the right foot. And by her left foot, a little boy with a red ribbon and hoops of heaven and earth, standing on a lotus.

The children’s stories define China by acclamation and authority of five thousand years Chinese storytelling. They define of the Chinese people as Joan of Arc and Degas and the Eiffel Tower define the French people, as Greek myths define the Greeks, being Chinese by definition means you know the stories I ‘ve just told and up to a hundred Chinese stories more.

Chinese that haven’t enjoyed the fruits of a Chinese childhood, have no reason to pass their ignorance on to their children and guarantee they “suffer” the same “lack of identity” and the silliness of the “identity crisis,” that afflicted their parent acting like Hans Christian Andersen’s THE UGLY DUCKLING. The Ugly Duckling parent can give their children the Chinese childhood they never had, simply by reading a book of stories and telling the ones they like to their kids, while they’re still kids, if you please.

THE BIG CHICKEN

I need three brave volunteers to help me tell a scary story of my own. Hands go up. (I hope) I choose three. They give me their names. In the meantime, I’ll use the names of children I know.

And nowwwoo…

time forrr…

THE BIG CHICKEN

ONCE UPON A TIME, there were three little children. One was named Benin (my granddaughter). And two was named Garrick (my son’s friend). And the third was named Sam (my son).

Late one day, their mother called them into the bedroom, where she was brushing her hair. She said, "Sam, Garrick, Benin. Your daddy and mommy are going out dancing tonight. But before we go, would like you to go down to the grocery store and buy us some peanuts.

"And make sure you get home before it gets dark outside, because tonight is the night, the Big Chicken comes out!

"And whatever you do, do not take the shortcut home, through the graveyard, because that is where the Big Chicken lives."

Benin, Garrick, and Sam went down to the grocery store, found the aisle with the peanuts and got into a big argument. Mommy did not say what kind of peanuts to buy. And there were peanuts in bags, peanuts in sacks cans, peanuts in jars. Salted peanuts. Unsalted peanuts. Peanuts in the shell and peanuts out of the shell. There were roasted peanuts, salt roasted peanuts, honey roasted peanuts, and boiled peanuts. There were even raw peanuts.

There were Texas peanuts, and California peanuts. There were Georgia peanuts and Carolina peanuts and Florida peanuts. Peanuts from Mexico even peanuts from Africa. Fancy peanuts and cocktail peanuts and peanuts mixed with peanuts from other places and other kinds of nuts.

Finally they decided to buy a can of salted cocktail peanuts. And when they got outside the store, it was dark!

"Let's take the shortcut home through the graveyard," said Sam.

"But the big chicken lives there," said Benin.

"Ay yay yay yah," said Garrick.

"Don't be scared. There's no big chicken," said Sam.

So, Benin, and Garrick and Sam went walking in the graveyard. The moon was up, and they could see their shadows stretch from their feet and slip over the grass and the headstones and the graves in front of them, as they walked down one hill and up another.

Then they saw this big shadow come up behind them and cover their shadows. And they heard, "Buck-Buck! Buck-Buck!"

"What'd you say, Sam?" Benin asked.

"I didn't say anything. It must have been Garrick," Sam said.
"I…I…I didn't hear anything," Garrick said.

And Sam, Garrick, and Benin looked in front of them and still couldn't see their shadows. And they heard, a little louder, "BUCK-BUCK! BUCK-BUCK!"

"Did you hear that, Garrick?" Sam said.

"I…I…I" Garrick said chattering his teeth.

"Turn around and see what it is," Benin said.

"I'm not turning around!" Garrick said.

"Sam? Would…would you turn around? And see if there's anything behind us?"

And Sam slowly turned around and took a look over his shoulder. And he saw the BIG CHICKEN! It had toes as big as Cadillac's. It's legs were as large as telephone poles! Its body was as big as a McDonald's. It's head was as large as a UPS truck. And it had an EYE as big around as a manhole cover! And Sam said, "Run!"

And they ran. Ran up the hills and down the hills. Ran out of the graveyard and into the street. Ran down the street and into their house. They put the cocktail peanuts in the kitchen and ran up the stairs, into the bedroom. They hid under Benin's bed. And waited. And listened.

They heard the Big Chicken walk into the house. "BUCK-BUCK!"

They heard the Big Chicken walk into the kitchen. "BUCK-BUCK!"

The Big Chicken ate the peanuts. "Buck-buck."

The Big Chicken ate everything in the refrigerator. Then the Big Chicken ate the refrigerator! The Big Chicken ate the cupboards, the stove, the sink. "Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken ate up all the furniture in the living room.

They heard the Big Chicken climbing the stairs. "Buck-buck!"

They heard the Big Chicken walk into Mom and Dad’s room. It ate up Dad’s golf clubs. “Buck-Buck.” It ate all Mom’s shoes. “Buck-Buck.” It ate their big bed! “Buck-Buck.”

They heard the Big Chicken walk into the bathroom. "Buck-Buck!"

It ate up the toilet! "Buck-Buck!" It ate up the shower, and the tub, and the sink. "Buck-Buck!" It ate up the medicine chest. "Buck-Buck!"

Then they heard the Big Chicken walk the into Benins' room. "Buck-Buck!" It looked at the Benin's dolls. "Buck-Buck!" And ate them up. It looked at the Benins' chest of drawers. "Buck-Buck!" And ate that. "Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken saw Benin's bed! "Buck-Buck!" It came closer, and looked.
"Uhhhh!" Benin said.

"Shhh!" the boy's said.

The Big Chicken ate the quilt covering the bed. "Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken ate the blankets. "Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken ate the sheets. "Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken ate the mattress! "Buck-buck! Buck-Buck!"

The Big Chicken ate the box springs! "Buck-buck." There were the kids under the bed. "Buck-buck!" The Big Chicken looked at Sam! "Buck-Buck!" The Big Chicken looked at Garrick! "Buck-Buck!" The Big Chicken…Boo!

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