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Life lessons learned from China today
by Will Refvem
Staff Writer
Chuck Heston, in full cavalry garb, leans down from his horse and extends his hand to a dark haired little girl with single-fold eyes. “Come with me,” says the voice of Moses. He pulls her up into the saddle and they ride away into the sunset. And the movie takes place in ... China.
Huh? Rewind.
I had never heard of a Charlton Heston movie about China, but apparently there is one. This was before the damn dirty apes got their grubby paws all over him.
It has been said, and it is worth repeating, that just as a fish scarcely knows it is in water, so we rarely see historical events for what they are while we are living them—something akin to what soldiers call the “fog of war.” The battlefield during a battle is a confusing and chaotic place, and only the tranquility of a battle ended provides an adequate venue for understanding what happened. And by that preamble I mean to do as charitable a service to our immediate forbears as possible when looking at how they saw China. There is much room to debunk, and even some to censure, the attitudes of Americans in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
In one movie clip shown in the documentary, Charlton Heston leads a cavalry unit into Beijing. There is no mistaking that this is Charlton Heston. He is riding a horse and is decked out in true cowboy garb. At the end of the film, he takes a little Chinese girl’s hand and carries her away on his horse towards, we are meant to presume, a better life, one that he, the American, will provide her. The scene is typical. A woman in another Hollywood movie implores Humphrey Bogart, who plays a priest, to stay in China: “There is so much work to be done here,” she says, breathless at her own magnanimity. Charles Kuralt, in narrating, tells us that “our best actors led the Chinese to salvation.” As Kuralt tells it, we took up the white man’s burden with pride in China. We were proud to spread truth, democracy, Christianity and the American way--and we also wanted to fill stomachs, too.
These images are perhaps the most important for Westerners to come to grips with, yet they seldom are wrestled with in even today’s cultural dialogue. We hear endless talk about dispelling racial stereotypes, which is a worthy goal but also a largely accomplished one. Rarely is there talk of how imperial and post-imperial ideology has affected our understanding of China.
Yet it is unfair simply to denounce forgoing generations as thoughtless imperialists, though it is certainly fashionable for today’s left. The hard fact is that China did need something—the people of China needed help. They needed to break the cycle of poverty, to wrest themselves from under a heavy feudal yolk. There were, as the saying goes, starving people in China. (It is interesting to note that while this was, and perhaps may still be, a staple phrase among Americans cajoling the children to eat their vegetables, my English grandparents used to say, “There are starving people in Bangladesh,” which was, of course, once part of the British empire.) And thoughtful and charitable people have always wanted to help the multitudinous less fortunate. While we certainly must commend their love and willingness to give of themselves for others, we must also recognize that every vocation, however noble, can go awry, and those who would serve the poor always walk a fine line between being helpful and being paternalistic.
Unfortunately, post-colonies often remember most vividly the stinging wounds of humiliating paternalism, which don’t simply occur one-on-one but also culture-on-culture and people group-on-people group. It is hard for Koreans to forget that one U.S. official responsible for dividing Korea into two zones, one to be occupied by the Soviets, one by the United States, after World War II had to be shown on a map where Korea was. If this was the case with an intelligent, well-educated man it should come as no surprise how much torment has been inflicted on the South Koreans by our legions of uneducated stationed there. (Until recently, a high school diploma was not required to enlist in the Army.) Old buildings in Seoul are tarnished with the drunken scribblings of American G.I.s. A girl was killed by American soldiers on maneuvers and was tried by court-martial, as per
he guidelines of an outmoded treaty which does not allow American soldiers to be tried in South Korean courts for things they do on duty.
What has been the role of Christians in this? All too often we fool ourselves with the notion that as Christians we can wave a magic wand and rise above our cultural fetters. I believe that Christians right now are perhaps more “of the world” than ever before. Conservative evangelicals have forged their own subculture, complete with movies, music, a recording industry and publishing houses, all of which simply push the standard cultural agenda with a hyper-conservative twist. They send their kids to Christian schools, and why? Because, we are told, education from a Christian perspective is vital to the health of a faith community. It is vital to the health of tribalism, narrow- mindedness and ignorance. Yes, you certainly can explain the world from inside the Calvin bubble. But can you experience it? If you grew up in Grand Rapids, went to Grand Rapids Christian High School, then came to Calvin, you might say that for expanding your horizons you can spend a semester abroad—China, Ghana, Honduras—but can you spend a semester at East Grand Rapids High School? Sure, you can take a mission trip to Appalachia, but can you spend a semester in upper-middle-class society in Savannah? Or are you content to learn all you know of the South from Margaret Mitchell and a few history books?
We are now in a dream from which we may never awake, a fog that we may never see lifted while our society still lives and breathes. 9/11 should have made us less complacent, but instead it has made us more so. The national media, instead of examining why the world hates us—and it does, believe me—simply focus on scare-mongering and talking about protecting ourselves. How much longer will you sleep, Miss America?
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