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I wish

paleaswater would blog more- even as much as she used to do on pitas. Have just been reading through past entries to find her perfectly worded summation of what I don't like about Barry Hughes.

It is amusing in its own way, but it's so... chinoiserie. There's no denying that this author did tons and tons of research. Left no popular tale unturned in fact -- I can identify a lot of his references, from the blood-thirsty duchess to the proper method of cooking porcupine. But taken altogether the effect is rather grotesque -- reminds of me of these chinoiserie rooms in European palaces where the owner never saw a piece of porcelain or jade that couldn't be improved by a gold chased cover. And it wouldn't be so objectionable if the author wasn't thinking that he was doing such a clever job. Erghhh...

Add that to her remarks about Snake Agent and I think we're left with the dispiriting conclusion that round-eyes shouldn't try to write Chinese stuff unless they've lived there. Or are actually referencing the western tradition of getting it wrong, Fu Manchu and Terry and the Pirates のよう.

It's not that I think Chinese culture isn't fair game for cultural appropriation, even utterly wrong-headed cultural appropriation. Anything that old isn't going to be affected by the idiocies of anything this young. (For slightly similar reasons mainstream fiction about Japan that gets it wrong, and howlingly wrong, never struck me as something most Japanese would take offence at. I think they'd rather approve of it, since it bolsters their basic conviction that outsiders just don't get it. Foreigners (shrug). What do they know? What *can* they know?)

I also think some of our constructions of China are charming-- Anderson's Nightingale or Puccini's Turandot (though any production of Turandot I've seen that references a real China just seems wrong wrong wrong. We're in Mythland, not the real Beijing.) But those works belong to a time when China was a very far away and generally unknown place, when imagination had to supply the deficiencies of fact. (Well, not Puccini, actually.) We've lost that innocence. The information is there now and can't be ignored.

So, OK, why do I get twitchy when people do their research and then use it for their own wrong-headed ends? It's not as if Japanese mangaka do anything different. Kou Josei gets its period costumes and architecture just right, and uses them as backdrop for its occasionally very Japanese characters. But the Kou Josei mangaka doesn't congratulate herself on the authenticity of her historical research. The feeling I get from her detailed drawings and atogaki is that she just loves this stuff for its own sake. Robert van Gulik loved the stuff for its own sake: I mean, he was basically writing fan fiction of Ming detective stories. How much more enthusiastic do you need to be than that? He didn't do research: he just knew the genre that he loved. I'm told he got most of it right to a Chinese way of thinking, but I don't know if it would matter if he'd got it as wrong as he gets the sexuality. (Basic rule: do not write your kinks in too obviously if you're going to publish your fanfic as fiction.) One can forgive humble admiration a lot.

Maybe it's the current attitude to research that I don't like. You must get the facts right because getting your facts right is a virtue in the west. It's a duty: and the author who approaches it as duty tends to give away the fact that she feels virtuous and a bit smug about having done her research in such depth. Look, see, did you notice how I incorporated this folk tale in here, and referenced that chronicle there? I wonder. Maybe Robert Graves is to blame for all this, pastiching Suetonius like that. By contrast Renault digested her sources and then made a seamless fictional whole of them. And got some things wrong, immensely wrong: Athens was not an enlightened philosophical paradise even among its philosophers. But that doesn't matter. The gestalt is right: this is the Athens that a lot of Athenians believed in, going by their speeches and writing. It's when the facts are right and the gestalt is wrong that I start muttering Write what you know, twit.

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Where would Kai Lung come in that, out of curiosity? Far Away Mythland that was deliberately parodying a number of English tropes in any case?

(We had volumes of Kai Lung in the library at school. It was a well-stocked library. I have a few collections on my shelves now, though they're battered volumes collected via secondhand sources.)

Every time I look at that Dragon Noir stuff I'd vaguely got planned, I think "no, I need to research more", then I wander away and don't get round to the research, then I don't get back to it. It's rather depressing. Perhaps I should just stick to trying to write something set in England, except that I can't think of anything to write.

LOL! Do you know, I cringe at Pearl S Buck. It feels like misappropriation to me and stirs up my resentment. And seriously, I can't really accuse that author or misappropriation, can I?

I think facts should be close. Too far of the mark and you might as well be writing fantasy mish mash (which is find, but acknowledge it's fantasy mish mash). But I think you're right, gestalt is more important.

Pearl S. Buck makes me twitch, but Barry Hughart doesn't. Maybe because, to me, what he's writing is so obviously over the top, but never goes into a parody of itself. Each of the three books has a different feel, anyway. They get darker and more elegaic as you go. But my favorite is the one most people seem to hate most, Eight Skilled Gentleman, and I don't like Bridge of Birds *quite* as much as everyone else I know does.

I don't think Hughart is trying to get everything right and showing off his erudition. His China, part High Tang, part Sung, part Ming, part godIdon'tknowwhat, is deliberately anachronistic. It *can't* map onto any one period, and it's not supposed to, it's a grand amalgamation of fantasy chinoiserie. The thing is, I think he gets it right, but he doesn't work for you...different strokes and all that.

It's been so long since I read Kai Lung: I suppose I should have another look at it. Far Away Mythland in its way, like Montesquieu writing about Turks because they were a convenient device, and nothing to do with the reality at all. Just, given Brahmah's dates and what was happening in China at the time he wrote, it feels more than a little insensitive. Sub speciem aeternitatis, a fantasy western China probably doesn't signify much, but if troops from your own country are busy securing your imperial rights in the real China while you create it- yes, well.

I never thought the Dragon Noir stuff referenced anything but noir and, well, a slightly more informed notion of Chinese culture than was present in the noir era, but still, a Tintin-ish/ Mr Moto/ Temptress Moon version of China. The myth, not the reality: though I'm not sure where Temptress Moon falls on the scale. The HK fim makers being as they are, I wonder if there are any period Shangahi-set HK films to suggest how the culture itself plays with its own history? Tsui Hark aside, I mean.

Well, yeah. The whole point of opera is to be unreal. ^_^ But referencing a real Japan drives home, in ways Puccini may not have intended, just what an unmitigated cow Pinkerton is. Leave it all cherry petals and samurai honour and it's about Ciocio-san's personal tragedy. Make it look real and it's about imperialism.

I'm not even sure myself what it wants to be -- the Dragon Noir stuff -- except that, um. I felt it would be fun if it were moderately accurate in historical terms, or at least, not too inaccurate, but then I never actually start it.

Sorry, descending into whine. It irritates me that I can't get it to go anywhere, when I feel that there is something there. But I keep on bogging down on lack of inspiration or what I feel to be lack of reality or, well. I hate getting things wrong and I'm not sure how to get this right.

You're not the first Chinese to curse at the name. Should I read her to find out why? And why not accuse her of misappropriation? She was between cultures but I'm pretty sure she was writing to make China look sympathetic to westerners, which I'd think must inevitably involve a degree of pandering to western notions.

Fantasy mishmash- yes well, that's what I write so I'm not qualified to say much. I guess what irks me is the archness of Hughart's writing. I do not think him as clever as he thinks him, even if he *does* know all the stories and twists them around oh so amusingly.

Sad to hear of the lack of inspiration. The fragment I read I had a lot of energy to it, and looked so good in my head. (sigh)

Oh no! Do not read Pearl S Buck. It hasn't withstood the ravages of time very well. It's a very Christian view of China. As for why it isn't misappropriation, if one is born and raised in a culture, then I don't think one can call it misappropriation, can one. Certainly, she was far more literate in the language and culture than I am ... which is why it's so strange that I found it so grating when I came across it so many years ago.

How born and raised was she? All the entries say she learned Chinese from a tutor, who gets named, and that her mother 'taught her English as a second language' which says something quite chilling to me about how much time baby Pearl spent with her parents. But even if her childhood was spent in the company of Chinese, missionary kids have this set of western blinkers on them, like military kids in the Indian Raj. However much they speak the language and know the culture, western culture is first with them, since it dictated why they were there in the first place.

Thanks. I do value that.

I'll see if having a bit of holiday and a total break helps. I have been running on heavy for a while now (that Exalted assignment I got at short notice) and maybe getting away from stuff for a while will help it resettle in my head.

round-eyes shouldn't try to write Chinese stuff unless they've lived there

and slitty-eyes shouldn't try to write about Bonnie Prince Charlie unless they've roamed the wildness of Dundee in kilts or seen the four liars of dublin with their own eyes, etc.

what I find funny is that when ethnic Chinese write, do they then write about the Stuart Uprisings? No? Difficult market, too many white westerners writing about white westerners' stuffs already? So, they cater to the good ol' occidental love for things oriental and hence (automatically) exotic. And there you have Amy Tan and the likes. I dislike her more than even James Clavell. I can forgive a round-eye putting the words "oh-ko" into the mouth of a vulgar Cantonese, but I have never heard a living Chinese person talk the way Amy Tan's characters do.

and slitty-eyes shouldn't try to write about Bonnie Prince Charlie unless they've roamed the wildness of Dundee in kilts or seen the four liars of dublin with their own eyes, etc.

If the almond-eyed read English and have heard the Scots go on about their history (and on and on and on cause it's a flipping industry) let them write what they please in whatever language they please. They have, as we used to say in uni, looked at the original sources, even if they may inevitably put their own cultural spin on them. If they only know Scotland from what's been written in or translated into their own language, they might be wary of the completeness and accuracy of what they think they know.

Mutatis mutandis, round-eyes who write Japan or China on the basis of works in English, including translations, are still a couple of removes from the reality. And boy does it show, even to people like me who are only one remove closer to the reality.

You're not the first Chinese to snarl at Amy Tan. I'm in no position to judge. I assumed she was writing her own Chinese-American reality and if it doesn't match someone else's Chinese-whatever reality, well, it's a large world. Robertson Davies' academic Torontonians don't resemble anyone I know either, even though we have the same city and the same ethnic and economic background.

I can't see what's wrong with hyphenated-Chinese or Japanese writers writing about their own world as it looks to them. Joy Obata wanted to write about the internment camps, so she did. Wayson Chong wanted to write about his complex family background, so he did. Kazuo Ishiguro wanted to write about declining British aristocrats, and he did, and won the Booker Prize for it. What's the problem?

I know the problem, because

nojojojo has just been talking about it- niche marketing when the publishers think they have a niche market they can sell you to. But that's an outside economic problem, far removed from the issues of how well does an outsider know the culture they're writing about, which is what I'm addressing above. If they're *not* an outsider- if Mr. Hong or Ms. Chan grew up in one of the remnants of Empah with British influence all around, or even in Edinburgh itself- let them write about the Jacobins, by all means. The benighted publishers may even publish it if there's room on their lists for a Scots book- but publishing itself is one of those spit-and-cross-yourself areas I'd rather not discuss because money changes everything, usually for the worse.

Remove money from the question entirely: make it a matter of fanfic. There's no earthly reason why a Chinese woman and Malaysian national shouldn't write a Jonathan Strange pastiche, if she's steeped in the culture that produced Jonathan Strange, and do it as seamlessly as the original: and she did (http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/15/theblest.html).

I suppose the problem with Amy Tan is that whatever her intention, her writing about a very narrow slice of Chinese culture has taken to be representative of the entire culture as a whole. And further more, I can not but suspect that she truly does believe that her presentation is typical of the entire culture. All of this would be perhaps be more acceptable if her slice of the culture happened to more palatable to the Chinese, but of course it just happens that the piece she is most familiar with tends to be the most crass, vulgar and anti-intellectual part of a culture which has always prided itself on great scholarships and intellectual curiousity. Obviously people are going to turn up their nose at her. I want to say it's unfair, since I've learned to appreciate the energy and the vigour of the Hongkongnese and Fukienese, but I feel like she doesn't portray even these groups with authenticity.

her writing about a very narrow slice of Chinese culture has taken to be representative of the entire culture as a whole

Just a question- by whom? Cause you have to be pretty ignorant of the Chinese in general to think her American experience is the whole story. Even I, just growing up in my Canadian cultural bubble, read other NAmerican and mainland Chinese writers before her.

Well, by the Americans I want to school with in Rochester and my nice and very kind host family who gave me the book thinking that I must love it and a great many other Americans from middle America who do not live in a cosmopolitan city and whose knowledge of China is probably limited to a few popular American writers who write about China, Amy Tan and that other equaly tedious writer, something Lord. It's not so much that they think her American experience is the whole story, but that they seem to think her sense of what China is like is representative and authoratative.

It's not so much that they think her American experience is the whole story, but that they seem to think her sense of what China is like is representative and authoratative.

Umm well, I'd call that bad reading more than anything, or possibly just lack of personal experience. As I recall the book, Tan's second generation views of China were derived from her parent's stories that are warped and surreal in the way that stories from another culture are when viewed from the one you're in. Like my Mom's stories of why her family came to Canada and what my grandparents' courtship was like. Probably looked quite different to a French person in 1900, but from here- sheesh.

And I know I'm getting Tan confused with other Chinese-Canadian or whatever writers I've read. (cough- it *has* been 20 years, after all.) But it seems a lot of Chinese-kei have a sharp sense of cultural disjunction when they go back to the old country. There doesn't square up with here and the double vision distresses them. Which may be a universal second-generation thing for all I know, it's probably just less pronounced going from NAmerica to Europe than to India or China.

Well, the way China is changing it's distressing even for first generation people. It's not that. I think you put your finger on it. Because you know how it works her parent's stories look warped and surreal. I think for most of her American readers these stories are not warped and surreal, they're real and authentic, because they are just like the stories told by other Chinese-American writers in America.

And while I have you here- that author in the Aesthe files. author.txt allows me to change details that appear in the sidebar, like emails, but not to delete names from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. I think the list of authors on the drop-downs must be in a different file, because the names in author.txt are slightly different from those in the drop down menu (And of course, deleting someone from author.txt doesn't delete them from the menu.) I can't find a file with those menu names, nor one with all the series names either, which I assume would be in the same directory. Any ideas where they might be?

Hm, hm. (I think) Amy Tan provokes the snarkiness because she makes the almond-eye characters of hers sound like they are of, er, sub-par intelligence. In her books, IIRC, the younger generation come worse off in the end because while they are hating the stupid-sounding FOB parents, their rants are not that smart either. Like you, not in position to judge, perhaps an analogy would be: middle-class professional young African American person (there is such a person, right?) snarls at African American writer who makes *all* of hir Black characters speak outlandish ghetto slang.

The title of the post by

nojojo makes me go *glee*, 'coz, why, Black power is the right to write the white ~~male~~ characters one loves ~~to put into bed together~~. And the same goes for powers of other colors (yellow, red, etc.)

But it's teh afrai of the ol' Good Omens fame! She must never be used as an example or to set a standard - it'd be discouragingly high for us mortals....

(Had a lovely long reply that lj ate and have been working ever since. God hates me.)

Sub-par intelligence? If you say so. I've only read Joy Luck and what I recall is the older generation being survivors, which is admirable, and the younger generation being just not immensely likable, which didn't strike me as particularly odd. All of Saul Bellow's characters are not particularly likable, but that's a function of being a Bellow character, not of being an American Jew.

I mean, I can see if Amy Tan is the only Chinese writer someone living in whitebread land knows, it grates a little. But I still think the problem is with whitebread's reading habits, not Tan for writing what she knows.

There are lots of middle-class professional young African American people- (

nojojojo for instance.) My impression from the ones I know is that they're generally proud of black English, even if they usually function in white English themselves, for reasons that I think come under the heading of Not Catering to the Dominant Culture. (

nojojojo is actually trilingual in American English, which says something about the diversity of American English.) I mean, if all the Black characters are ghetto dwellers they'll all speak ghetto English; but I think it takes a white writer to get black English truly *wrong.* It seems to me the objection to Tan's characters isn't that she got her characters wrong, it's that there's better characters to write about than a bunch of vulgar middle-class women.

I think that list is generated by the title.txt -- if you delete all the in entries for the author from there it'll remove it from the list.

Can't find a doc called title.txt In any case this name has no fanfics associated with it. "It was a matter of me writing a story, and putting two names on it, which in turn were both put on the archive list, one with the story linked to it and one without."

I suppose if I find out what her author name is and the name of the fic I can try deleting it from fanfics.txt, if that's what you're thinking of?

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