Does anyone remember this movie? (Sorry, the video above has some issues with the audio.) It was called “A Great Wall,” and I remember seeing it on an airplane way back when in the mid-80′s. I think it was the first Asian American film I had ever seen. What a load of fun! The one scene I remember most is when the father says, “We’re going to China,” and the son turns to his Caucasian girlfriend and says, “Did you hear what he said? We are going to China!” Good times.
Anyway, I saw a comment on Asian Male Revolution’s Facebook that came from Kelvin Han Yee, the guy who played the son, and I was reminded of his movie.
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OK, I know this is somewhat off-topic. But the title has reminded me of a foggy notion lurking within the far recesses of my mind that has never been distilled into words.
I’ve always been ambivalent about the Great Wall as the worldwide symbol of China.
Recently, I had a chance to view on Youtube a 10-part National Geographic series narrated by Mike Yamashita about the 15th century Admiral Zheng He and his treasure ship fleet. Ming Dynasty China was at the height of its power and glory as a civilization, towering over all others, possessing a formidable armada that would not be matched by Western powers until 1910. China was poised to seize the Age of Exploration.
Zhu Di was the emperor at the time. It was under his watch that the Great Wall was constructed along with the Forbidden City and the treasure ship fleet under Zheng He’s command. The fleet was commissioned to establish trade routes in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Yemen, and had ventured as far as the Swahili coast of Africa. On behalf of the dragon throne, the seven expeditionary voyages of Zheng He projected the might of Ming China onto distant kingdoms and absorbing them within the tributary system. One African king presented a pair of giraffes to the emperor as tribute, which the Chinese thought was the mystical creature qilin, a sign of auspiciousness.
Within the background, however, there was trouble brewing. The Manchus were threatening the northern borders. There was a political clash between the eunuch merchant class represented by Zheng He, who favored trade-building maritime exploration and the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats, who looked down upon the merchant class, viewed exploration as contrary to Confucian principles, and thought the ships were an unnecessary extravagance and waste of treasury. Eventually, especially after Zhu Di’s death, the Confucian faction got the upper hand. They destroyed both the massive ships and the shipyards used to constructed them, along with most of the written records of Zheng He’s voyages. They became a distant memory lost in the haze of time surviving today in bits of scattered archeological evidence, rituals performed by Chinese descended diaspora in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and stories told by a few coastal Africans from one generation to the next. A hundred years later, a mandate was erected which forbid any Chinese from going overseas under the pain of death. This mandate stayed in effect until the Europeans arrived. The great treasure ships are gone but the Great Wall still stands today.
I find it ironic that it was a visionary eunuch that spearheaded the beginnings of what could have turned out to have been an alternative history where China, instead of Europe, established hegemony in the world. But the backward-looking, tradition-bound Confucians put into place a policy of introversion that condemned China to decay and decline for the next 500 years.
I think the Great Wall may be a defensive symbol, which may not be a good thing. On the other hand, one might argue that it’s a great feat of engineering achievement, which is a good thing.
Interesting post on Zheng He, btw.
I heard from somewhere that the construction of Zheng He’s fleet deforested large parts of China, leading to drought and desertification soon after. Also that Timur I-Leng was planning to march on China from Samarkand with a million veteran soldiers. In the end the invasion did not happen because Timur died, but that might have motivated the court to recall and retire the fleet in order to divert resources elsewhere.