Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster

Yesterday, I went for a walk around Renmin Square while my mom was in her Mandarin lesson. Renmin, or, People’s Square as it’s commonly referred to, is in Puxi. (across the river from my apartment) It is a large public square with many notable landmarks, including Shanghai City Hall, Shanghai Museum, and People’s Park.

For the first hour, I contented myself by walking the streets, stopping now and then to poke my head into a shop or bookstore, and quickly moving on. The one place I spent time in was a foreign language bookstore that was a small-scale version of Barnes and Noble. Several books were tempting, especially for 20 rmb, but I controlled my compulsive book-buying habit, and left to continue exploring.

After an hour-and-a-half on the go, I found myself back in the heart of People’s Square, where a week or so before my dad and I stopped to talk with a large group of Chinese university students. They wanted to practice their English and ridicule our Mandarin, so they invited us to tea; they took us to an authentic tea house where we chatted for several hours. Despite their ridicule, they were very nice, and didn’t hesitate to initiate conversation which, for many Chinese people, seems to be a great difficulty.

Before we were sidetracked a week earlier, we planned on walking through People’s Park, a conspicuous area located in the center of the square, meant to bring some balance to its completely urbanized surroundings. I seized the now available opportunity and strolled through the park, soaking in the beauty of the weeping willows, dropping their long branches low enough to gently rest on the surface of the water. Seeing a bench with a good view of it all, I stopped to glance at my Mandarin phrasebook, intending to practice before my mom’s lesson was finished.

As I sat, reading my book, a wizened old man came and sat across from me. He examined me for several moments before speaking. “You study Chinese?” he said. I told him yes, but that I didn’t really know any. He smiled, showing his uneven yellow teeth, and nodded his head vigorously and said, “You teach me English, I teach you Chinese.” I couldn’t refuse my pontificating friend, and so he proceeded to talk to me in English for the next half hour. It was choppy, and he struggled with pronunciation, but I was able to decipher most of what he was saying.

At first he talked about relatively harmless things, but he quickly launched into a prolonged diatribe against the former chairman, Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution of the 50’s and 60’s. Between furtive glances to all sides, he told me of the terror and injustice carried out by Mao through the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was a movement launched by Mao under the guise of furthering real socialism and wiping out the remnants of the liberal bourgeoisie, but the generally recognized motive now was a deliberate move by Mao to retake control of the communist party. Many groups were persecuted by Mao’s red guards, most notably religious groups, and higher education. The guards burned, pillage, and looted churches, killing or torturing anyone who tried to stop them. Universities were closed, and their students and faculty given a crash course on Mao's zero tolerance of the "Four Olds." The Four Olds were old ideas, culture, customs, and habits. Mao saw these as poison to his new vision of China, and chose to destroy any evidence of their existence.

The man described how horrible the Cultural Revolution had been; at one point explaining to me that anyone caught listening to American radio would be arrested. (He couldn’t pronounce “arrested” and so he put his wrists together and imitated the handcuffing motion.

I was astonished at this man’s bravery in confiding in me. The issue is still a touchy one today, and I’ve heard from others that it’s not a good idea to talk about it. Either way, I was ecstatic to catch a glimpse of Chinese culture, as well as getting a firsthand account of recent history. The man is an artist and told me to come back on Sunday and he would do a sketch of me. So, hopefully there will be a part two to this post...