#203: "Angry Youth" and the Olympics

• Wasserstrom, 101-104:
  • Why were the 2008 Olympics such a big deal for China?
  • What does the handling of the Olympics say about today’s China?
  • Will grand spectacles continue to be important to China?
• Orville Schell, “China’s Agony of Defeat,” in Newsweek (26 July  2008). http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/25/china-s-agony-of-defeat.html

• Evan Osnos, “Angry Youth,” in The New Yorker (July 2008).
  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/28/angry-youth

Begin with screening the 6 minute video that Tang Jie produced in 2008:

Example of anti-Carrefour protest in Changsha:

​First, let’s start small, with the story of the individual, Tang Jie.

• How is the Tang Jie that appears in Osnos’ profile similar or different from what you might imagine the person to be like who created the video we have seen together?
• Does Tang Jie seem like the kind of person who you might have a close friendship with either if you had gotten to know him in China or if he were a student here at Hotchkiss? Why or why not?
• What do you think motivated him to produce the video?

Who are the “angry youth” (fènqīng 愤青)?

• What values do they see themselves holding? What values do others see them as holding?
• How would you evaluate their actions in protesting Western media and other companies?

Analyze some of the comparisons made in the piece:

• China : Tibet :: America : Cherokee
• America : Kent State shootings :: China : “June 4th”
• America, China, India “You eat bread, you drink coffee. All of these are not brought by democracy. Indian guys have democracy, and some African countries have democracy, but they can’t feed their own people. Chinese people have begun to think, One part is the good life, another is democracy. If democracy can really give you the good life, that’s good. But, without democracy, if we can still have the good life why should we choose democracy?” (Liu Yang quoted in Osnos)

What does it mean to say that the legacy of “Century of Humiliation” (bǎinián guóchǐ 百年国耻) has produced an “inferiority complex” (Schell)?

• Can you think of ways that the “past serves the present” in other non-Chinese contexts? Other groups that rely on the “the moral authority of their past suffering”? How are those examples seen as similar or different than Chinese?

What significance did the Olympic Games have for China?

• What does Wasserstrom mean when he describes the Games as “spectacle”? Is he convincing when he suggests the focus on major events is not unique to China? Why is he trying to emphasize this point?
• How does Lu Xun’s criticism of his countrymen (“We either look up to them as gods or down on them as wild animals”) resonate with the events surrounding the Olympic games?