First day of the Lunar New Year, Xin Chou (辛丑) - the year of the Ox

Hong Kong stamp 1973 - Year of the Ox

According to the Chinese Lunar calendar, to-day is the first day of the Year of the Ox: the year of xin chou (辛丑), may I wish my readers a happy and prosperous new Year of the OX. The above photo is memorial stamps issued in Hong Kong in 1973, the year of gui chou (癸丑) to celebrate the Year of the Ox 48 years ago. Time flies. Those stamps were bought by me to send letters. The unused ones were left behind at the bottom of my desk drawer and now become part of my stamp collection.

In China Lunar calendar, a traditional way of counting years is to associate them with a 60-year cycle. It is formed by combining two sets of counters. One is called 10 stems (十干) and the other is 12 branches (十二支).  In total 60 names of the year are made by combining one stems (干) with one branch(支) in sequence, known as the stem-branch (干支) cycle. It is a system for counting and naming the lunar years and it forms a pool of 60 names for 60 years in sequence. jia zi (甲子) is the first year in this 60-year name pool while xin chou 癸丑and gui chou 辛丑are two names from this pool. That means the name of a particular year will repeat itself once every 60 years. Stem (干)  is also known as tian gan (天干) while branch (支) is called dizhi (地支).

On top of that, about branches, 12 animal icons (生肖) are used to represent the individual twelve branches (十二支). To take the year 1973 as an example, it is the Year of the Ox, so after a twelve years period in 1985, 1997, 2009 and 2021 will also be the Year of the Ox. Each one of these 12 animals will repeat itself in a 12-year cycle. Besides ox, there are the mouse, tiger and dragon etc. Therefore, it can be said that the time concept in traditional China is repeating cycles while the western concept is linear.

In Hong Kong, with the National Security Law recently being put in place in 2020, many things have changed.  The pre-1997 days have become more memorable to me now. In particular the years beginning from the 1970s, Hong Kong gradually became one of the Asia Four Dragons in Asia. The small crown icon at the top right corner of the above stamp symbolizes a relatively free and open governance under the British rule.

 

The Tiangan and Dizhi table

The Ganzhi cycle (note no. 38 and no.50)

Reference

Chinese History – A manual by Endymion Wilkinson, published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2000

劉曉波

On December 15, 2009, the US States Department spokesman Ian Kelly made the following announcement:
"The United States was deeply concerned by the formal indictment on charges of “inciting subversion” of the well-known Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) on December 10, International Human Rights Day. According to all publicly available evidence, the basis for his prosecution is that he has signed and supported Charter ’08, which calls for respect for universal human rights and democratic reform. Mr. Liu has already spent a year in detention while authorities carried out the investigation of his case. We call on the Government of China to release him immediately and to respect the rights of all Chinese citizens to peacefully express their political views and desires for universally recognized fundamental freedoms."
A few days ago I noted in newspaper and in TV that Gregory May, a political officer with the US embassy in Beijing read out a statement outside the court where Liu was being tried. He called on China to respect the rights of all its citizens and release Liu.
Recently, I read about some Chinese history that happened about 80 years ago. In Asia in early 1930s it was obvious that Japan was implementing an expansion policy in Manchuria. The United States, with the purpose of checking Japanese advancement and helping China, began to adopt a policy of non-recognition of territorial changes achieved by military invasion. In those days, China was a feeble republic while Japan was fully modernized. This policy of non-recognition was made known to Japan on January 7, 1932, four months after Japan occupied Manchuria by force.1 The American reaffirmed its sympathy with Chinese nationalism, and used the Nine-Power Treaty signed in February 1922 as the basis in making their diplomatic decisions. US Secretary of State Stimson stated that "this Treaty represents . . . international policy intended, on the one hand, to assure to all of the contracting parties their rights and interest in and with regard to China, and on the other hand, to assure to the people of China fullest opportunity to develop without molestation their sovereignty and independence according to the modern and enlightened standards believed to maintain among the peoples of this earth. At the time this Treaty was signed, it was known that China was engaged in an attempt to develop the free institutions of a self-governing republic after her recent revolution from an autocratic form of government, that would require many years of both economic and political effort to that end; and that her progress would necessarily be slow."2
In view of the above, I begin to wonder that while the present day China, through economic reforms, had already secured its "sovereignty and independence according to the modern and enlightened standards believed to maintain among the peoples of this earth", yet an autocratic form of government still exist in China. Some of the predictions made by the US 80 years ago still hold: it would require many years of political effort for China to develop free institutions, and the progress would necessarily be slow. I hope that more Chinese people could have the wisdom and courage to contribute to that political effort.
Notes:
1.United States, Department of State. The China White Paper-August 1949. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1967, page 13.
2. Ibid., page 14

British Confidential Prints on Opium War

In the field of history, British Documents on Foreign Affairs provides important primary source materials for historians to study the Opium War from the perspective of the British. The title of Volume 16 of this series is 'Anglo-Chinese War and Its Aftermath, 1839-1849'. In total there are 286 pieces of documents, dated from 18th October 1839 to 5th July 1848. The first document of this volume, dated 18th October 1839, carried the Confidential Print number 75/1. It is a secret dispatch from Viscount Palmerston to Captain Elliot, R.N., Superintendent of Trade and is a very crucial document on the Opium War.1 This document is both a situation report and an instrument from the British Foreign Minister to a senior British official posted in Asia. It reflects the intention and thinking of the British government of the day. Major points in this dispatch are:1) Her Majesty's Government feel that it is impossible for Great Britain not to resent the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese upon British subjects, and upon the Queen's officers. 2) Her Majesty's government would send to the China seas a naval, and probably a small military, force. 3) The operation of this force would be decided by the Governor General of India, the Admiral and Captain Elliot. 4) British navy would plan on blockade Canton and the Peiho or Pekin rivers, and as an intermediate point, to seize and occupy one of the Chusan islands, or the town of Amoy, or any other insular position that could be used to mount military operations, and afterwards to be used as a secure basis for the British commercial establishments permanently. 5) Elliot should not interrupt the legitimate British trade in Canton of the year.

Among the many things that amazed me when I first read this dispatch was that as early as in 1839, the British already had the intention of establishing a permanent trading basis in China. It was by destiny that Hong Kong eventually became the pick.

Note:
1. Palmerston, Henry John, 3rd Viscount (1784-1865) was the British Foreign Minister at that time and Charles Elliot (1801-1875) was the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China. In early 1841 Charles Elliot was the administrator of Hong Kong, succeeded by Henry Pottinger in late 1841.

The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(伍)

In my view, the Nanjing Massacre is an important historical event not due to its high death toll. Rather, it is the shocking nature of the atrocity that carries a special meaning in the conscious of political leaders in both China and Japan. In Japan in early 1980s, Japan's economic power was in the ascendancy and therefore its image became a national concern. Right-wing Japanese politicians were eager to erase the negative past record of their nation by down playing the Massacre in textbooks. In mainland China historical events are often used to serve political needs. The Nanjing Massacre is a good tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to arouse patriotism and rally the mass under its leadership (note the lyric of its national anthem). Often in China the same historical event can, in different period or different political climate, be re-interpreted by the government depending on needs. Individuals might also do the same. One example is the Boxer Uprising (庚子拳亂) of 1900. In the first decade of the 1900s, the general consensus in China was to see Boxers' acts of occupying Beijing; burning foreign buildings and churches; and killing Chinese Christians as the result of Chinese ignorance. Scholars such as Chan Duxiu (陳獨秀) in 1918 regarded the Boxers as the product of superstition.1 But he changed his attitude in 1924. He began to perceive Boxers as nationalistic and patriotic peasants, probably because he had just jointed the CCP.2 In the late 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leaders reconstructed the meaning of the Boxers in order to meet contemporary political needs: Boxers were a symbol of nationalism and patriotism.3 In those days, mainland China saw foreigners with suspicion and regarded the US as the number one enemy.


Notes
1. Cohen, Paul. History in Three Keys: the Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. NY: Columbia University Press, 1997, pg 228.
2. Ibid., pg. 244
3. Ibid., pg. 264-5

The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(四)

In 1999 Timothy Brook edited the book Documents on the Rape of Nanking. In the preface Brook pointed out that the stimulus for the Nanjing Massacre to come under attention was Japan's attempt to play down the atrocity of the Massacre in Japanese textbooks. Brook's book is a collection of major English primary source documents on the Rape of Nanjing. It has two parts. Part one is based on two sources: reproducing the details in the book Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone published in 1939, and reprinting the personal letters written by Dr. Robert Wilson. Part two consists of some judgements handed down by the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE). Brook pointed out that one of the judges of the IMTFE, Radhabinod Pal, had held a dissenting view on some of the Tribunal's judgements.


Pal's major disagreement was on count number 55 of the charges against the Japanese war criminals and his argument was about the Charter that was used to press charge. Pal noted the Charter had merely stipulated that 'violations of the laws or custom of wars' was a crime, and therefore such a statement should not be understood to mean that it was also a crime if the defendants had failed to discharge 'legal duty to take adequate steps to secure the observance of and to prevent the breaches of the laws of war'. To charge the defendants for 'deliberate and reckless disregard of legal duty' was a matter outside the purview of the Tribunal.


Pal felt that there was insufficient evident to prove the sixteen Japanese defendants, including Araki, Hirota and Minami had ever ordered, authorized or permitted the crime that had taken place in Nanjing. And in his opinion these defendants, in the capacity of government officials, had no direct duty or power to control the troops in the field. (to be continued)


Reference
1. Timothy Brook ed., Documents on the Rape of Nanking (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)

The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(三)

In 1999 a Japanese journalist Honda Katsuichi wrote The Nanjing Massacre: a Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame. Originally written in Japanese, it was translated into English by Karen Sandness and edited by Frank Gibney. In the Editor's Introduction, Gibney, on several occasions pointed out the inadequacy of the book by Iris Chang. He noted that Chang had given revisionists in Japan a chance to discredit their opponents, many of them were Japanese left-wing writers.


Previously Honda had wrote briefly about the Nanjing Massacre in his book Journey to China published in 1971. Later, as a journalist, he reported about the Vietnam War. This wartime experience drew his attention to the cruelty suffered by the Vietnamese, thus motivated him to write more on atrocity committed by Japanese soldiers during WWII. Honda started his book of 1999 by describing the landing of Japanese troops at Hanzhou Bay in China on November 5, 1937. Thereafter he reports on the atrocity committed by these soldiers along the way before reaching Nanjing a month later on December 13. Honda interviewed victims who had suffered atrocity in the hands of these soldiers: those who survived after being bayoneted, or escaped death from the machine gun firing squad. Honda also interviewed those who had physically involved in the burial work in Nanjing in early 1938. In the end of the book Honda pointed out that for him the most difficult part in writing the atrocity was how to draw the boundaries where atrocity was committed. Should it be started at the Hanzhou Bay or the city wall of Nanjing. Also, there was the question on the start time of the atrocity. Should it be from November 5, 1937 instead of from December 13, 1937. These considerations would have a bearing on how we should gauge the magnitude of the atrocity in general, and the total number of death in particular. (to be continued)

The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(二)

In 1997 Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanjing: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Chang in the introduction of her book put the death toll of the Nanjing Massacre at the range from 260,000 to over 350,000. She claimed that because of the magnitude of the Nanjing Massacre, it represented a mass extermination that was comparable to the Nazi atrocity that killed 6 million Jews. Another claim made by Chang was that 20,000 - 80,000 Chinese women were raped. Chang asked why the Nanjing Massacre victims had not been given due justice, asserting that the authorities in Mainland China, Taiwan and the United States were responsible for their silence on the subject. Chang claimed that the passive attitude of the international community in dealing with the Massacre was the "second Japanese rape", bearing in mind that Japan refused to apologize for atrocity.


She further alleged that in Japan, there was "an atmosphere of intimidation [that] stifled open and scholarly discussion of the Rape of Nanjing". Chang also suggested that there was an academic cover-up in Japan about the Nanjing Massacre because some scholars classified victims as "guerrilla soldiers" instead of non-combating civilian. Chang claimed that in Japan serious research on the Massacre were only done by people "outside the traditional academic communities" such as freelance writers, journalists and even a factory worker.


Chang's book attracted attention from some scholars on the subject. Joshua Fogel, for example, wrote a book review in 1998 in response to Chang. While noting that the dual aim "as passionate polemic and dispassionate history" of the book, Fogel pointed out that it was full of misinformation and reckless explanation, telling the massacre "in X-rated detail" about the horror in Nanjing in 1937. (to be continued)


Reference
1. Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: BasicBook, 1997.
2. Fogel, Joshua. Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, no. 3 Book Review: "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II; Japan's War Memories: Amnesia or Concealment?", 1998.
3. Fogel, Joshua ed. The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

The Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠殺)(一)

Scholarly historical writings on the Nanjing Massacre are many, and some are involved in a debate that has come to light since the last decade. The subject was written from different, if not opposite perspectives: the perspective of the Chinese, the Japanese, the victims, or the perpetrators. Some focus on the calculation of the death toll of the Massacre, some on the implication of the Massacre. In 1990 there were several books in Japan that alleged the Nanking Massacre was factitious, for example the book The Japan That Can Say No. In response, a Chinese scholar Xu Zhigeng wrote the book Lest We Forget: Nanjing Massacre, 1937. One of the many official titles of Xu was the deputy director of the Department of Creative Writing of the Nanjing Military Zone of the People's Liberation Army. Xu refuted the statement made by Shigeto Nagao, the Japanese Minister of Justice who in 1994 claimed that the Massacre was a fabrication. Xu put the number of death in the Massacre at over 300,000 as mentioned in the verdict handed down in 1947 by the China's Military Tribunal of the Ministry of National Defense for the Trial of War Criminals. In 1996, another Chinese scholar James Yin published The Rape of Nanking: an Undeniable History in Photographs. In this photo book Yin says that the denial of the Nanjing Massacre first came to light in the early 1980s when Japan's Education Ministry tried to whitewash aggression and atrocity committed in China by altering history textbooks. Yin pointed out that one person who denied the Rape of Nanking was Masaaki Tanaka, a lecturer at Takushoku University. The latter wrote the book Fiction of the Nanking Massacre to claim that the death toll could not exceed 200,000 because the population in Nanking at that time was less than 200,000. James Yin, quoting statistics, points out that the popuation was in the region of 500,000 to 600,000. (to be continued)

火燒圓明園

圓明園鼠首兔面拍賣的討論已告一段落. 期間不少人提到火燒圓明園 一事. 火燒起因是一八六零年當英法聯軍與清朝談判和約期間 (北京條約), 英國陸軍司令克靈頓(格蘭特)經額爾金 (J.B. Elgin) 同意, 為泄清朝殺死英人質之恨而作出. 清朝是於九月中時扣留了二十六名英國人(全部與條約談判有關的), 這批人質於十月八日被釋放時 只有十三人, 因為期餘十三人已經於較早時間被殺害. 而慶幸生還的人, 如果不是有關清官預先收到咸豐皇帝有意殺死全部人質的意圖, 於聖旨到達前幾十分鐘 釋放人質, 側全部英國人相信都會被處死. 火燒圓明園是於十月十八日發生. 有關歷史可以參考陳志奇著的中國近代外交史上冊(三九零到三九二頁), 一九九三年國立編譯館主編.