Strangers in a Strange Land

(Some friendly links have introduced me to a couple of blogs I was not previously aware of. First, there is the fascinating blog Supernaut by an occasionally China-based choreographer who also appears to be a double (redoubled?) transsexual, who posted  (reposted) my recent blog on Shi Shuqing’s Her Name is Butterfly. Second, the French-language blog Poxx: Un aire de déjà vu cites
my recent post on Never Let Me Go in the context of a more general discussion of Ishigura’s novels. Speaking of discovering blogs, the following post is about a fascinating Spanish-language blog I recently discovered, and the network of Sino-Spanish blogs which he himself recently discovered).

While living in self-imposed exile in Italy following the June 4th Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Zhang Dali 张大力 found himself feeling lonely and alienated in this foreign culture. As a result, Zhang created what was essentially a graphic "signature" of his own self-image—a minimalist profile with an accentuated brow-line and thick lips drawn with a single stroke of black spray paint—and then started painting this image on public walls throughout the city. In a recent biographical sketch of the artist, the art critic Wen Pulin 溫普林 recalls his old friend's own description of how he originally began to practice this graffiti:

[Zhang resolved, a]t the very least I was determined to have this city remember me. Upon reflection, he decided that his most Asian feature was the "Northeastern" shape of his skull—a large head without a "spoon-like" protrusion in the back. Therefore, he started leaving graffiti images of his profile in streets and alleys throughout the city. "Next to my [Zhang Dali's] drawings, I would also write Chinese characters, to let people know that this had been drawn by a Chinese. I simply wrote anything that came to mind, because in Italy, the significance of a Chinese character is simply to denote the Orient, and my intention was to initiate a dialogue. Two days later I went back to take a look, and found that people had written in Italian over my drawing. Therefore, I took a photograph of the sketched head, and that was how I came up with this idea." The first person had written, "Who are you?" Zhang Dali was very excited. When he went back the next day, he found that someone had written, "Fuck your mother," and "You fucking fascist." Some people thought that he was a skin-head, while others painted a Communist hammer and sickle over his sketch (江湖飄：中國前衛藝術家外傳 (上), p. 17).

As Wen concludes ironically, “It can be said that Zhang Dali's dialogue in Italy was a success.” This initial response to his work, therefore, encouraged Zhang to continue his graffiti, which over the following decade (including after returning to Beijing) not only developed into a highly distinctive and nuanced art-form, but also came to function as a powerful emblem of Zhang's own public identity.

Last week, the expatriate author of the blog Chinochano wrote about some obscene graffiti some children had written on a wall in Beijing, and then segues into an interesting discussion of public wall-writing in China—mentioning, of course, Zhang Dali, among other examples.

The next day, Chinochano published another post on athletics in China, the first comment to which (written by a certain Jorge/Jason Rap) had no direct relevance to the post itself:

你好.我是西班牙出生的中国人.很想跟其它的华人聊天.
我很高兴发现这个网络

［Hello, I am a Spanish-born Chinese, and am very interested in chatting with other Chinese. I am very happy to have found this web-site.]

Coincidentally, perhaps, the sentiment expressed in this comment echoes quite directly Zhang Dali’s sense of cultural alienation while living in Italy, with Chinochano’s blog being used as a sort of virtual “wall” for public expression.

(Jorge/Jason also has a blog himself, consisting primarily of video links, English and Chinese lyrics, and posts in Spanish. The first archived blog post, from last November, reads “si! soy chino y estoy orgulloso de ello!! p.d:  odio a los faxas.” [yes! I am chinese and proud of it!! p.s., I despise the fascists]. This initial post attracted several responses (in Spanish), ranging from, “This very well-put, CHINESE, and furthermore I’m very proud that we’re more intelligent…” (signed Eva Lin), to “Fuck the Chinese. Hahaha. It’s a joke. I’m Spanish, and I shit on the whore fascists, and on the whore mothers who brought them into this world, and… on the Chinese… HAHAHA [….].)

A few days later, meanwhile, Chinochano picked up on Jorge’s comment (and blog), traced out some of the networks of correspondence that linked out of it (just as he had tried to track down the author and subject of the Beijing graffiti), and wrote a new post on the web-presence of Chinese-Spaniards (particularly adolescent ones). He lists a dozen such blogs, including that of the 16 year old Eva Lin (one of the early commentators to Jorge’s blog) and 15 year old Xixi. Most of the blogs are written in Spanish (mostly in adolescent short-hand), but at the same time are exuberantly heteroglossic, frequently including text (particularly song lyrics) in Chinese and English.

As with the Chinese athletics post, some of the most interesting material here can be found in the comments. For instance, a certain “hnh” (a name which would appear to be Chinese, judging by the initials) writes (in Spanish):

And furthermore, many of these youngsters go to schools to study Chinese.
And with respect to the paragraph [in your post] that reads “Perhaps in Spain they have had to put up with shows of racism, and they have suffered from them,” I would remove the “perhaps,” and can tell you that they have had to put up with this, and continue to do so. Particularly in the institutions where they are the cruelest.

In addition to the adolescents, there are also many blogs by Chinese university students studying in Spain, which are also pretty interesting. And, with respect to the 20 or 30, you fall somewhat short; there are many more.
Cheers.

There are quite a few other comments, but the irrepressible Eva Lin has a longish comment which strikes me as particularly interesting:

Well… i never would have thought that my space would end up here… the truth is that I like your page a lot (I had come here before) and it impressed me a lot… and there are many, many more blogs…. And with respect to my defending the Chinese to the death… everything has an explanation…when living in spain in a country that is not completely yours…you must always keep this in front of you and often defend it a little, I suppose this has also happened to you in china….but the big difference, and one for which I am proud, is that at least in china they don’t discriminate against you or look at you badly for being Chinese, and neither do you have to put up with ignorant insults…some of what I discuss in my blog relates to this…all of us consider ourselves, in part, anti-fascist….and I’d like to say that I’m glad you visited my blog, and hope that I didn’t bore you…perhaps it was more an attempt to attract attention by an adolescent who didn't fit into either culture. Kisses!!
“I don’t want to be the same as you, just for you to accept me.”
p.s., the address [author] of “queyonolosabia” [another blog chinochano had listed in comments] is Chinese, a friend who gave me your link… actually, I know them all, and there are many, many more.

Like Zhang Dali in Italy, Eva’s comment here (like many of the posts on her own blog) arises out of an attempt to assert a hybrid identity in the face of a sense of cultural alienation. At the same time, it seems likely that these virtual public inscriptions will continue to develop a life of their own even after (as was also true of Zhang Dali) the cultural alienation which inspired them becomes less of an issue.

Comments

[Jason Chang]

Hello, Naked Gaze. My first time visiting your blog. I really enjoy your playful theorizing and cross-reference blogging. This blog is giving me ideas for a course I'm about to take with Jose David Saldivar at UCB. Do you mind if I link to your blog?

[crojas]

Jason,

Thanks for the message. Sure, link away! What is the course?
p.s. your "inter-face" blog looks very interesting as well.

[Jason Chang]

The course is a required class in the Ethnic Studies PhD program called Cultural Texts and is paired with another course called Social Structures.
Drop by inter-face during the semester, I'll be posting close readings and more on the Series in Critical Security.
Looking forward to more of your posts,
Jason

[crojas]

Jason,
The course sounds really interesting. I'm looking forward to reading more about it.

[Jason Chang]

Yes, the summer break is nice but I'm also anxious to get back to business. Got to go, working on a post about Native American US customs agents in Southern Arizona - naturalizing discourse of policing, essentialization of NAs, and complex "frontier" discourse. I'm having trouble finding a place to start. I'm happy to have found your blog.
Best,
J

[crojas]

Jason,
fascinating. actually, my very first post here, back in March, was also on immigration, though I'm sure my approach was quite different from what you are proposing to do.
take care,
carlos