Memoirs
From China
Zarthustra
by
Chad Pollock
21 March 2003
As I write this Thus Spoke Zarathustra is blasting
my ears. Zarathustra is one of Strauss’ most famous works,
one which he wrote as an expression of German patriotism, but
Zarathustra is best known for it’s pivotal role in 2001
where Stanely Kubric transformed the artistic power of German
Nationalism into a vision of our mechanized future (Perhaps
you remember the slow moving panorama of space as the music
plays Duuuuuuh Duuuuuuuuh Duuuuuuuuuuh DA DA, Bum Bum Bum Bum
Bum Bum Bum).
These days that deafening tympani sounds more
like a call to war than a call to awe-struck nationalism.
Zarathustra, the Uberman, Behold one crying in
the wilderness make straight the path of God, but wait! “God
is dead, and we killed him.”
I’m sitting in my apartment in Jinzhou,
China. Outside the world has gone crazy. Inside, my world has
been reduced to Zarathustra and whatever meaning I can strain
out of that tune. I’m regretting that I ever took this
job teaching at Jinzhou Normal University.
I’m mad right now. Mad in the classic sense
of crazy, loopy, off-my rocker. I’m mad because I’ve
just finished a marathon four-hour teaching session. The entire
four hours was spent discussing and answering questions about
the American-Iraq War, the war that has been dubbed by the propagandists
in Washington as “The War for Iraqi Freedom.” (Strange
that for the last ten years as America destroyed the infrastructure
of Iraq and killed her citizens with indiscriminate bombing,
no one seemed to care about freeing Iraq from oppression, or
was America killing Iraq’s citizens in order to free them?).
Might makes right. “God is dead, and we killed him.”
All my students are mad. Mad in the contemporary
sense of being angry. They’re angry because they don’t
understand. I’m not talking about a handful of students.
I’m talking about all of them, several hundred students,
all of them mad and driving me mad with their anger. Their anger
and their questions drive me mad because I have no good answers.
“Why is George Bush invading Iraq?”
“Why do Americans hate Sadaam Hussein?”
“Do all Americans support Bush?”
“Why do Americans support Bush?”
“Why does America not listen to the U.N.?”
“What will happen to the U.N.?”
“Why doesn’t Bush want to cooperate with the U.N.?”
Why? Why? Why?
The expressed reason for invading Iraq is to neutralize
the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. claims
Iraq possesses. Strange that the country that possesses the
most weapons of mass destruction is worried about a country
that might possess these weapons. Or that the only country that’s
ever used a weapon of mass destruction would be up in arms about
a country that might use these weapons. What exactly is the
threat? This is yet another question that seems to have no good
answer.
In an attempt to answer the question, the president
and the military machinery paint a picture of a madman with
his finger on the button—the crazy dictator who will stop
at nothing short of the world’s destruction—Saddam
Hussein. My students have been eating up propaganda and regurgitating
it as gospel all their lives, yet not even they will chow down
on this image.
Let him who is blameless cast the first stone.
But…god is dead, and we killed him.
Let’s turn this inward:
I’ve been reading a revolutionary Chinese
novelist named Lu Xun. One of Lu Xun’s most popular stories
is called the “Diary of a Mad Man.” This man believes
that the people of his community are plotting against him. He
believes that they want to kill him and eat him. Every gesture,
every glance, every innocent action from his neighbors becomes,
to his mind, a further indication of their malicious intent.
Lu Xun’s point is that we are living in
a man-eating society and one can see the look of hatred and
loathing in the eyes of men. I’m a hopeless romantic,
though. I believe in the goodness of humans in contrast to the
corruption of institutions. Institutions may be corrupt, but
people are inherently good. This I believe. And I want to believe
that people aren’t out to eat me but that they would like
nothing more than my welfare. But is this true?
Two days ago, I hopped on a public bus headed
for the downtown shopping center. I sat down and looked around.
Directly across from me, an older man with big bushy eyebrows
sat staring at me with his mouth gaping. Was he salivating at
the thought of barbequed white meat? I smiled at him and said
hello in Chinese. He responded by looking me over from head
to toe and then wiping his mouth on his sleeve. I asked him
if he was a Jinzhou citizen and if he spoke the local dialect.
He looked me in the eyes, held the gaze for a second, and then
chuckled. I thought that maybe he was not right in the head,
but then he turned to the woman next to him and started talking
loudly…about me. I couldn’t make out everything
he said, but I could hear my many Chinese titles being bantered
about. Things like “outsider,” “white boy,”
“foreigner,” and my favorite “foreign devil.”
The people in this part of China are not known for being friendly
to foreigners. Did he want to eat me? They killed god here a
few decades before we did, you know?
Zarathustra comes to me at strange times. A squeaky
wheel or plastic bag caught on a tree branch and fluttering
in the breeze might set me to humming Strauss’ masterpiece.
Unconsciously, of course. But then I realize what it is that
I’m humming and the incongruity of humming that particular
piece while doing the daily tasks of life is unsettling.
I took a walk to the Dong Dong Express yesterday
evening. After my experience with the cannibal on the bus, I
was nervous about going out in public, but the Dong Dong is
only a block from my house, and I needed cigarettes. On my way
there, I passed one of my students. We chatted for a few minutes,
and she accompanied me to the store. She’s a good student,
Sabrina, and a good friend. As we made our way to the store,
we came upon Tadamasa, my Japanese friend. He’s a good
fella too, so Sabrina and I stopped and had a casual and friendly
conversation with him. Once we made it to the Dong Dong, I ran
into two other foreign teachers that I know here in the city,
an Australian and an Englishman. I was buying my pack of Camels,
and the clerk Liu Hua Fei asked me very sincerely how I was
doing. She sees me almost everyday, and I think she’s
sweet on me.
Sabrina took her leave of me then, and I started
to light up a Camel. Yes, a Camel cigarette in China. An American
brand name, but it’s made by a Japanese company in China.
Three countries coming together to bring me a good smoke.
Halfway back to my Apartment, I realized I had
been humming Zarathustra since I’d left.
“God is dead,” I thought, “and
we killed him.” But maybe we didn’t need him anyway.
....
Go to Chad's first memoir,
titled:
The Three Types of Traveler
or...the second memoir, titled:
the red guards have never looked so sexy
Chad Pollock has been a lawn-care expert, a pizza delivery driver,
a
teamster, a barrista, a farmhand, a free loader, a preacher,
and a teacher, and from all this he's learned the importance
of a good pair of shoes. He currently resides in China where
the majority of the world's shoes are manufactured.
Chad's online journals can be found
by clicking here.
