陈凯博客： www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

从黄河恋到黄河怨
A Chinese Complex of Self Loathing

价值一语： Words of Value:

If you can not hate evil, you cannot love good. --- Struthers Burt

如果你不憎邪恶，你就不可能爱良德。 --- Struthers Burt

************************************

By Kai Chen 陈凯 （Written 5/8/2006, Reprint 9/27/2011)

Dear Pingli 答平里：

I used to sing proudly in praise of the Yellow River, (and believe me I had a great voice) until I started pondering about meaning in life. I used to feel my blood is boiling and goose-bumps all over when I see the Chinese National Flag and hear the Chinese National Anthem, until I started pondering about what China stands for. I used to think with my Chinese skin and Chinese language and Chinese sensibilities, until I started thinking with my human brain. I used to see only the dragon and the Great Wall, until I started to see my own soul.

Believe me, as a Chinese National Basketball Team player representing China for many years, my metamorphesis is so profound that I wrote my memoir "One in A Billion". I have decided that though I was born a Chinese, I choose to be an American, not just in deed, but in meaning. I hope through my own experience expressed in my works, many Chinese will experience the same deep and profound transformation and metamorphesis. I still remember the desperate yelling from my team leader when I decided to quit basketball at my peak:

"Kai Chen! Don't forget it is this country that gives you your meaning. It is this country! It is the Party Organization that reared you! It is the Big Family that protected you and nurished you! It is the Chinese People you are leaving behind!"

I looked at him without saying a word, and I left the room, for I realized that every word from that nihilistic being is a lie, an illusion, a deceit, a potent narcotic drug intended to incapacitate me and confuse my moral clarity. I realized profoundly that this China is not only where I have never belonged, it is the embodyment of evil I will fight against with every ounce of my energy, with every bit of my life force, till the day I die.

Yes indeed, China's (the Han) culture started around the Yellow River basin. It used to be a green land covered with forest and lives two thousand year ago. Now it is a waste land with soil erosion and human pollutions. It has never been the pride of China, but a single most deplorable source of sorrow for the Chinese. Despite all the songs written in praise of it and all the propagada the Communists can summon to force feed the Chinese people, anyone who visits Yellow River only finds desperation, degradation and human misery. Most of the year, the river is actually dry to the bone. You cannot get water to irrigate, nor can you use it to navigate, nor can you swim in it to enjoy for the water is so muddy, nor can you fish in it for there is no life...

Yet the Chinese somehow worship it, for it is the only legacy their ancestors left for them, and ancestor-worship is the only form of Chinese belief system. There is no God, no conscience, no dignity. There is no value of life, joy, liberty, dignity, happiness. There is only Chinese Yellow River. There are only Chinese ancestors. Yet we worship it, not for what it has become and stood for, but for the appearance of a destructive legacy. Humans became attached not to values, but to physical soil and water. And they will fight to the death not for values, but for borders. And they will defend with their lives not for humanity, but for superemacy.

Yellow River has never symbolized life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, it only reflects human confusion, destruction of nature and humanity in the struggle for power, human degradation of values and morals for Unity, and the ultimate power of the collective. The potential of the destruction from the Yellow River is immense, since its riverbed is already higher than all the farmlands around. No one bothered to plant trees in the upper reaches to contain soil erosion, everyone is worried about building the dikes higher and higher to contain the muddy water. But Chinese have never been able to eliminate the disasters caused by the Yellow River when the raining season begins. Year after year, thousands of people died from the flood. Yet people somehow worship it. Does this mean people worship death? Worship destruction? Worship the devastating power to devour human lives? Worship their ancestors' stupidity to destroy their own environment? Worship the pain and suffering inflicted by it?

What is it that the Chinese people revere and worship about in the Yellow River? Just because their own ancestors started around the river? Just because Yellow River has never been subdue to serve the Chinese people? Just because there is some unconstrained power, directionless power demonstrated by the Yellow River? What is it?

The Chinese complex towar the Yellow River is the same of the Chinese toward themselves, toward foreign countries, toward everything else: They mix love with hate, mix worship of pain and death with yearning for happiness and life, mix pride with detest, mix despotism with progress, mix water with oil, anti-matter with matter, morality with oppression, freedom with collecive, rights with power, good with evil... So on so forth, till the end of time.

You tell me what Yellow River stands for, and why Yellow River's water is so muddy. Only when we see the truth about the Yellow River and have courage to face what it stands for, we can finally join the Human Race, not just separate ourselves into a mysterious "Yollow Race". Then and only then, Yellow River may start to have some meaning, some value, some hope, may start to have some vitality to sustain life, not cause death.