On Bilingual Education in Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew is publishing a new book this month, the title of which suggests that bilingualism in Singapore has been the ‘challenge of his life’. Much controversies have spawned over the years on the issue of bilingual education here, but LKY seems reluctant to drop the argument that bilingualism will add or have added a crucial competitive advantage to this tiny country which thrives on global connections, especially with China’s ascendance and the opportunities it brought about. So, initially in the 60s and 70s, local tongues were to be suppressed, in order that the Singapore workforce could took advantage of Western capital; later, Mandarin was to be promoted, also in order that Singapore could better ride the rising tide of China. First Chinese had to be suppressed because of its connections to Communism; later it was to be promoted because it was said to contain the Confucian values that Singapore needed. Hardcore pragmatism begets erratic policies that irritated many, and achieved…who knows what?

Here is thus my naught cents’ worth of opinions on the matter. In my opinion, bilingualism in Singapore had problems, but perhaps not the ones people usually associated with it.

Firstly, it depends on how one defines bilingualism. If it is defined as general comprehensive functional proficiency in one language and a rudimentary proficiency in another, then the average Singaporean Chinese student in NTU seems to be an archetype of this kind of bilingualism. He reads textbooks and newspapers in English, answers exam questions and prepares job interviews in English. In daily conversations with his mates, depending on their family backgrounds, he might speak more or less short or broken sentences of Mandarin, sprinkled with the occasional Army Hokkien. He might speak completely in Mandarin with his parents back home, but the topics are naturally very limited. In fact, as a rule, he is not able to express complicated thoughts in Chinese, and the chances are he won’t be able to understand were the contents of his studies to be delivered in complicated and sophisticated Chinese. Even on more general intelligent topics, he would find his Mandarin put to great strain, though this is partly due to language and partly due to the limitations of his general intellectual horizon, particularly for the students in engineering and science studies.

This forms a stark contrast with some of the European bilinguals that I have met. Privileged as they are by experiences of elite education and cross-cultural exposures and mobilities from early ages, they are comprehensively and sophisticatedly proficient in both or all the languages they claim under their belt. Much as it might sound counter-intuitive, I have even met Americans who speak Mandarin better (not just pronunciation) than the average Singaporean Chinese.

I guess I can render my doubt about bilingualism in Singapore more specific and explicit by asking this question: how many truly elite people in Singapore are truly, i.e. comprehensively and sophisticatedly, bilingual? The local ministers, the CEOs of large GLCs, the very rich business men and women, and LKY himself… Invariably, they are only comprehensively and sophisticatedly proficient in one language—English—and then speak perhaps a smattering of Mandarin, which they might have picked up or cultivated later on. LKY started to learn Mandarin properly when he was in his 70s, and one wonders if he can really comprehend all the contents of, say, ‘新闻联播’.

In case I start to sound chauvinistic or somewhat contemptuous toward Singapore—which as people who know me will know is certainly not true—I will now lay my cards bare. My speculative position is: an unnaturally fostered bilingual education (as it seems to me the very case of Singapore, and as opposed to the natural absorption and internalization of those privileged multilingual Europeans) might become an impediment to the development of the intellect.

Bilingualism seems to have the inadvertent effect of preventing deep and complicated cognition. People schooled in monolingual environment have had more leisure to master all the concepts that they need to think with, and can then dive into thinking itself. They don’t have another language and anther set of vocabulary to confuse them, to interrupt with their thinking. They can think purely and deeply. Whether they succeed in doing this is another matter.

Bilinguals, on the contrary, easily stand the danger of being alienated from knowledge. Bilingualism in Singapore, which seems to bungle both languages, makes the student a linguistic homeless. He is at home in neither language, because he is not used to expressing anything purely and sophisticatedly in one tongue. At home, he uses pidgin Mandarin Chinese, and at school, he learns knowledge in English with difficulty. Knowledge, conveyed in English, becomes like a Goffmanian front stage, just as school is the formal side of his life; at the back stage, he uses his pidgin Chinese which is the language of the informal side of life. When he doesn't understand Knowledge in English, he seeks help from his Mandarin, which reinforces his sense of alienation from Knowledge; but the worse problem is, his Mandarin doesn't help him much either, because it’s only a pidgin Chinese! So he ends up with thoughts like: ‘Then你拿这个subtract from那个, then你cancel X, then你就拿到Y loh, right?’

This constant shuffling back and forth from the back and front stages makes a shallow subjectivity not disposed towards depth and sophistication. Like not a small portion of NTU’s half-hearted engineering students, he hates his studies because he is alienated from it; and when he is not studying his thoughts are confined to the narrow range his pidgin Chinese has defined for him.

What I said above is all quite dramatized, and probably sounds overly harsh. And it has to be qualified, as we know very many Singaporeans are more than academically competent and achieve great excellence; but the point is, those who do so tend to have either been educated comprehensively and sophisticatedly in only one language to start with, or have at some stage switched to this de facto monolingualism. The talent, the depths of thoughts, and the sophistication of the intellect that have been lost due to the shallow bilingual education cannot be measured.

Lastly, if my speculative position on unnatural and bungled bilingualism is correct, then a more important question is at stake here, one I wonder how LKY will respond to, namely, should the intellectual development of a class of people be inadvertently jeopardized for making Singapore a better bridge between East and West, so that the de facto monolingually educated elites can reap the economic fruits?

Manifesto for a Great Humanist Educational Revolution: Or, my theory of Chinese students’ difficulties with the humanities and social sciences

Students schooled in the Chinese educational system apparently encounter great difficulties when studying Western humanities and social science subjects. The issues of language barrier and unfamiliarity with terminologies are only peripheral, as compared with the structure and mode of thinking that their Chinese pedagogy has inculcated in them.

The study of humanities and social sciences is a complicated affair, which gets ever more and seemingly endlessly complicated as one delves deeper. Such studies often demand the cognitive capabilities to relentlessly refine categories, differentiate, dialecticize and, not least of all, to keep track of protracted arguments and extended chains of developing/evolving ideas.

These cognitive capabilities are precisely the ones that Chinese school training almost completely neglects. Chinese literacy/literature textbooks comprise of short articles or short excerpts from longer pieces. Students are expected to study these small pieces pretty much without paying attention to socio-historical or intertextual references. Each piece stands as if self-sufficient, on which students are expected to arrive at some definitive interpretations. Worse still, there are always a set of standard answers that students are expected to conform to, and this is reinforced through standard exam marking.

Learning through open-ended and self-driven research, no matter how mini-scale, which are normal in Anglo-American educational contexts, is virtually non-existent in Chinese education; and even when such experiments are attempted in the name of ‘educational reform’, they remain hypocritical perfunctory window-dressing. In any case, such a model of learning would present an impossible problem for the mass examination system which is ultimately based on the logic of standardization.

Here, I am not rehearsing the cliché though true critique that Chinese education suffocates creativity and independent thinking. I am more concerned with a structure or mode of cognition that makes dialectical reasoning virtually impossible.

The Socratic mode of questioning, which investigates a problem ever more deeply, by relentlessly unpacking and reinventing the terms of the discussion, until some satisfactory state is reached just seems absent in the Chinese literary pedagogy. Students are expected to arrive at simplistic and clear-cut statements, with little tolerance for ambivalence. Soon enough, they start to understand and welcome only those statements that are simplistic and clear-cut. Thus, America bombs Libya just for oil; non-Caucasians cannot say they are from Britain.

Studies in other subjects such as mathematics and physics further reinforce the aforementioned tendency. Chinese students are often praised for their fantastic mathematical abilities, as reflected in their good performance in problem-solving tests. But one effect of being used to solving mathematical problems is a relatively short attention span, and a belief that every question must have a short and beautiful answer, like the affirming sound of ‘QED’. The fact that mathematical and physics problems in school education are often set (or perhaps ‘concocted’ would be a better word) in such a way that they have ‘perfect’ solutions further entrench these beliefs. All Chinese students probably remember from the mouths of their maths teachers phrases like ‘clever and elegant solution’ (“巧妙的解法”).

All these above, which are characteristic of Chinese school education up to at least high school level, I argue, incapacitate the Chinese students to deal with open-endedness, with uncertainty, with complex arguments that defy closure.

The fierce academic competition that prevails at all levels of Chinese school education leaves little space for students to develop those neglected cognitive capabilities outside the school system. There is little time to read complete works of sophisticated literature. The slightly more ‘slack’ students might read some of the so-called ‘ancient classics’ (“古典名著”) and ‘world classics’ (“世界名著”), from a list dictated by some long-dead modern Chinese authorities on literature. But it should be a non-brainer as to how a stressed-out student might choose between Plato’s Repubic and the Harry Potter series during the meagre time of relaxation in his summer holiday, if indeed he gets any.

This, thus explains the common response Chinese students give when they encounter Western humanities and social science studies: ‘Durkheim is so difficult’, ‘Bourdieu writes in such long sentences’, and ‘Foucault is like dream-talk’… I used to be, and still am one of them.

But the problem is much greater and more serious than just an academic incapacitation, for what is incapacitated is also a humanistic reflexivity and self-awareness that China seems to be desperately in need of at a time of dizzying and confusing social transformations such as now. Envisionings of democracy and imaginations of a good human life might well have been sacrificed in the instrumental and one-dimensional school education that only teaches students to solve one problem after another, analyze one article after another, with the expectation of giving the standard correct answers.

Education (should) stand(s) in a dialectical relationship with society. At present, the former seems to have become a totally passive function of the latter. But we must not loose faith, for if anything is capable of changing the face of a nation or even the world, it is education!

China needs a Great Humanist Educational Revolution!

Protracted hangover from handover: Seeing the schizophrenic Hong Kong identity through Overheard 2（窃听风云II）

As a non-Hong Konger, I hesitate to write on this topic. But if I may indulge myself in a bit of speculative cinematic psychoanalysis, I propose that the recently released Hong Kong crime thriller Overheard 2 (written and directed by Alan Mak and Felix Chong) offers us not just an exciting story, but more than that, a neat allegory of the schizophrenic sense of identity and belonging of Hong Kong, projected against the background of the tumultuous global financial events in recent years, – a schizophrenia that this 'pearl of the Orient' still seems to be struggling with after she was officially returned to the PRC nearly a decade and half ago.

The plot of the film is not too complicated. It essentially tells the story of the 20-something son (Sima Nianzu/司马念祖) taking revenge for his father, a titan (Sima Xiang/司马祥) in Hong Kong’s finance scene who was the head of a secretive financial syndicate (known as dizhuhui/地主会 or 'Landlord Club') back in the 1970s. The syndicate, though aimed mainly at profiteering from the stock market through illegal/quasi-legal means, had done something significant and good: it vigorously defended the interests of the indigenous capital and firms during the 1973 stock market crash during which evil foreign financiers attempted to play havoc on HK to make profits. (The 1973 crash was based on historical facts, but the narrative of this event in the film is more reminiscent of and most probably modeled on the storyline of the more recent 1997 Asian financial crisis, during which global financier George Soros was said to have had a hand in speculating in the HK markets, though eventually the HK Monetary Authority effectively warded it off.)

Apart from this heroic and patriotic act - it is interesting how this foreigners-vs-us narrative is repeatedly accentuated in the film - the syndicate, of course, carries on making 'dirty money'. When things broke loose, Sima Xiang, the eldest and the leader of the syndicate, was betrayed by his syndicate fellows and had to serve a prison sentence. Furthermore, the second-in-line in the syndicate, and currently the head, Uncle Tong, ordered Sima's assassination in the prison, presumably to secure Tong’s own safety and that of the rest of the gang. Sima's wife, suffering from dementia, now lives in a care home and relies on their son, an accomplished martial art fighter, who now attempts to expose the syndicate by spying on their illegal dealings which have carried on well into the 2010s.

So, straight to my point, how is this finance crime thriller film a neat allegory of Hong Kong's schizophrenic sense of identity and belonging? Well, 'not very subtly' is perhaps the answer.

The unsubtle nationalistic theme underlying the stock market wars is the first thing that gives a clue about the subconscious subject of the film. The derogatory term 'Lao Wai' (meaning ‘foreigners’) was frequently used to refer to the global financiers whose sole aim seems to be to bring down the HK economy. The phrase 'before 97' was also very often heard in characters' memory narration, indicating the momentous significance of this date in Hong Kong's social chronology. There is little doubt that the film directors intended the viewers to pay attention to the socio-historical background against which the story is set.

The choices of the names of the characters were also interesting: Sima, as people with some knowledge of Chinese history will know, easily invokes Sima Qian, the revered author of Shi Ji（《史记》）, who is considered to be the greatest historian in China at all times. Also, in the ancient bureaucratic system in China, Sima used to be the title of the high-ranking official who is in charge of the whole country's military affairs. In a sense, it is difficult to find a Chinese surname more heavily loaded with historical and cultural Chineseness than Sima. Sima Xiang, who, at a time of crisis brought by the evil 'foreigners', led the syndicate to defend the local, the Hong Kongers, the Chinese...is thus clearly constructed as a patriotic quasi-national hero who is loyal to his people, his Chinese identity/belonging. His son, named Nianzu, which literally means 'to remember ancestors', is hence the inheritor of this loyal Chinese identity. He is seen in the film as a 'cool' character, alternately wearing a sexy leather jacket and a tight-fit white t-shirt in addition to a ‘cool’ hairstyle; but he remains extremely filial and kind to his mother, and very determined on getting the justice that his father is owed. We may speculate, then, that this archetypal good Chinese son (--the superficial coolness only further accentuate just how filial or 孝 he is) that Sima Nianzu is refers to that element or section within contemporary Hong Kong society who believe that although they have adopted western appearances and superficialities, they, however, have not forgotten their Chinese roots, their ancestors, and their ultimate belonging. It is interesting and very important that this element is in this film represented by a fierce rebellious-looking young man, which perhaps alludes to the recentness and constructedness of resurgent Chinese patriotism and identification in Hong Kong.

Uncle Tong, on the other hand, is perhaps the speaker for an older and conservative strand of Hong Kong identity/belonging which aligns itself more closely with the island’s colonial past - and not a short past at that: more than a century and a half under the British rule, which is about ten times of the length of time which the new HK Special Administrative Region (SAR) has been under Beijing. In the first scene of Uncle Tong in the film, he sits in an armchair in a beautiful house in Europe (presumably Switzerland), with the snowy mountain ranges (presumably Alps) sprawling outside the window. This is, thus, an old man, though keeping all kinds of Chinese objet'd art in his HK residence, who spends most of his time in Europe. He is already more comfortable with the West than the East…

As the film develops towards the climax, Nianzu was captured by Uncle Tong's able bodyguard cum henchman, and the two of them finally confronted each other face to face. Here, we also get a full elaboration of the underlying theme of the film, which is the clashing claims of sovereignty and belonging. Nianzu accuses Uncle Tong for being disloyal, for 'returning favour with malice(恩将仇报)', not only to his father personally, but also to the patriotic cause. Uncle Tong is thus accused as someone who has betrayed his elder brother (he calls Sima Xiang 'big brother', as is often the case in HK business world), his own people, and ultimately, his identity. Uncle Tong ridicules Sima's naivety (both Simas) and suggests their patriotism was stupid, and it was he, who by bumping off Sima, that has really saved Hong Kong. He fiercely claimed, if he hadn't done what he did, 'the whole Hong Kong would collapse!' Sima and Tong’s competition for the spokesmanship of Hong Kong could hardly be any more obvious.

Towards the end of the film, Nianzu dropped his trump card by revealing that he has got hold of spy recordings of the syndicate's conversations which could incriminate all the people in the syndicate, not least Uncle Tong. The livid Uncle Tong asked Nianzu (rhetorically):

'Doesn't that mean that the rest of my life will be controlled by you?'

The triumphant Nianzu beckoned. And after that came what is perhaps the most unexpected (at least for me) scene of the film: Uncle Tong turned around suddenly, a gun in his hands, and shot at the restrained Nianzu (he had been captured, handcuffed, and presented to Uncle Tong) multiple times, and killed our cool and handsome hero. Having done this, Uncle Tong said calmly and devilishly:

'My life. I have to control it.'

And this leaves us little doubt that this film, more than anything else, is really about a bloody clash between on the one hand those who feel that Hong Kong should have the autonomy in deciding its own fate, which has been shaped by a prosperous colonial past which many in Hong Kong by now are more than comfortable with, and on the other hand, those either who quest for a more ‘authentic’ Chinese belonging or impose such an identity upon her.

Not only is the above major storyline a metaphor for Hong Kong's struggling over its split identity, the ancillary threads/leads in the film have a same echoing to them. For example, Inspector Ho, a very honest policeman who sent his law-breaking wife to the jail, meets her when she is released. She, however, felt that she wasn't able to carry on the relationship with Inspector Ho. She questions him in tears:

'I thought we could begin from scratch as soon as I'm out... But we both know we can't. How can I forget the day when you came to arrest me, and dumped me in jail with your own hands? How can I forget that?...'

We can almost imagine a similarly teary Hong Kong, speaking to her motherland China (or perhaps the current Beijing) in very much the same way: how can you expect me to recognize you now, after separating me and giving me away to the British for a hundred and fifty years? How do you expect we can begin our relationship again?...

So, eventually, what's the film's final word on the subject of identity and belonging? Insofar as there really is any word on his, that word has to be ambiguity. In one of the final scenes, Inspector Ho finds to his great relief that his abducted wife was kept in nowhere other than the old flat that the couple had owned. His wife, much terrified, cries out to her husband in relief after he removes her blindfold:

'For all this time I didn't know where I was - who'd have thought I was actually back home...'

This, needless to say, is a voice of little ambiguity, and with a great deal of optimism too. But when we look into the ending of the main conflict in the film, things become far less clear. Eventually who won? Who lost? Nianzu is dead, his father long dead; Uncle Tong is put behind bars too, and the syndicate will undoubtedly be crashed. There is no winning party in a game such as this…The last scene of the film, an imagined one, in which, Sima Xiang, his wife, and Sima Nianzu, a united core family, sitting together on the sofa, beaming with heavenly happiness, is of course, the ideal situation that is now literally only possible in the heavens.

So I guess what the film directors have in their mind regarding Hong Kong's identity and belonging is ultimately something tantamount to a deep sigh of resignation and an nihilistic sense of powerlessness - what has been done cannot be undone; what is split cannot be reunited; and for that, perhaps Hong Kong will continue experiencing a schizophrenic sense of identity and belonging in its protracted hangover from handover.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams/同是天涯沦落人

"I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known"

Yesterday, I spent almost the entire day in Jurong West public library reading Plato's Republic, and my miserable record was having gone through just 140 pages, or the first five books.

It was totally a shock to me that a public library in Singapore could actually become so crowded during the weekend. From about noon, not only were all the seats taken, but even on the floor sat groups of three or four students doing their homework and lonely readers burying their heads in books. Later I was to be reduced to be one of them - and I assure you that sitting on the ground and leaning against cement wall was not the best position to read The Republic, even though it wasn't Benjamin Jowett's translation, which was unfortunately the one that I first read several years ago.

In any case, seven hours of reading was not to be unpunctuated by toilet and/or meal/cigarette breaks, and therefore I walked in and out of the library several times. I noticed this PRC-looking guy in his early 30s sitting on an area not far from the toilets on the third floor of the library, and he sat there alone almost the entire day too, only to disappear after dinner time. In the morning and early afternoon, he was reading a Chinese language tabloid, but did not look very engaged with the reading. Around dinner time, when I passed by him again, he was eating a self-packed dinner, while playing loudly some very mainland-China sounding pop song with his--I can tell--shanzhai mobile phone. He didn't have very much of a facial expression - in fact I would say he was totally blank, just eating the dinner from transparent bento boxes, on the floor, with the Chinese music coming out from his mobile phone. But, looking at him, tears suddenly filled my eyes. It was, of course, the pathetic tears of self pity, as I felt, at the sight of him on the floor, eating alone and listening to music, that I have seen my very self.

My guess is that he is what in Singapore is called a 'guest worker', or temporary immigrant worker. Sunday is perhaps his only day off in a week, and he is alone, so he sits on the floor in a public library, seeing, I'm sure as he does, busy families, student couples, noisy children passing him by. Many would have thought that his playing music loud was bad manners and annoying, though where he sat was outside the glass wall bounded library area.

We are not really different... We are going through very much the same thing in our totally unrelated and non-intersecting lives. In a place which is not home, all by oneself, fighting and struggling at the moment, hoping to make life a little bit better in the future. That, of course, is the heroic narrative. The reality for him, let me guess, is that there is little he can do on a Sunday, as he does not have money, that's why he is here to make it. Neither does he know many people here, and perhaps he hasn't made friends from the workplace - who knows, his workmates might be indian  or Bangladeshi guest workers with whom he cannot converse, or even Chinese people from different parts of China. He has nowhere to spend his Sunday - I suppose his dormitory is not very comfortable either. So he finds the public library, a space that belongs to ostensibly everyone. There is free air-conditioning here, you see, and it's much easier to pass a day's time - at least he doesn't need to sweat. He doesn't want to read anything serious - after a week of what must be quite tiring work. He knew he'd be hungry at meal times, so he had brought packed meals, to be eaten while playing music that comforts him - those music had been in his phone before he came here. They travelled with him to Singapore. They were memories and comforts from home....

As for my reality: university libraries don't open on Sundays, and where I live - a room rented from a local family - has no aircon either. I have been working for an entire week too...Two weeks in fact! since I arrived in Singapore....read articles to revise an article draft, and then read for writing another piece. I'm tired too, but I can't rest, as I have set myself the task of reading for a module on literary theory on weekends- they have to be finished with in the weekend, they mustn't interfere with my main work, but I want to learn literary theory too. I couldn't help falling asleep at one point  in the afternoon on the sofa in the library, but after that I gorged on a super thick sweet kopi and carried on with Socrates's unending discourse.

We are just the same, really, the two of us. Working reasonably hard, hoping life will turn better one day, meanwhile compromising to get whatever little bit of comfort that is within our reach: he by listening to music from motherland, I by inhaling cigarette smoke and hearing the familiar sounds of British accented English from the BBC world service. We are doing substantively different things, but I can recognise myself when I see him sitting on the floor, bearing whatever life means. Our days, this ordinary Sunday spent in a community library in the west part of Singapore, are negligible drops in the deluge of human history; but we each, in our dogged naivety and doomed optimism, believe that we are walking towards our dream goals.

"I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

关于人类学与文化的保护/传承

云南大学很可以代表的一种传统的民族人类学，似乎有一个默认的价值观，即少数民族的文化要尽力保护，尽力传承，仿佛文化的剧烈变迁是不好的，更不要说文化的消亡。

但是我的后现代主义价值观（这点reflexivity我还是有的）让我不能同意这一默认，于是乎也就不太能与大多数云大派人类学家的学术精神产生共鸣。

自然，文化的消亡就像物种的消亡会降低我们人类社会生态系统的多样性，由此也就会带来很多弊处。可是不要忘记，古老、偏远的少数民族文化不可逆转地消亡的同时，新的亚文化、支文化也在我们的现代/后现代社会中不断地诞生着。这些应运而生的文化往往比古老的原生态的文化更加radical，更加能够有效地与权力抗争—而不是我们想象的：似乎全世界都被全球资本主义这一力量同一化、简单化。全球资本主义同一化的力量越大，各种亚文化反抗的接触点、反抗的策略也就越多。文化的多样性不一定是减少了。

文化在历史的洪流中诞生、发展、繁荣、变异、衰弱、消亡。。。这些都是亘古以来就一直发生着的过程。以保护和传承文化为默认价值观的人类学也会因此而变得无力、无趣。

当然，作为一门学科，我觉得坚守它的一些学术传统还是有好处、有必要的。当今学术界有名气的“现代人类学家”（anthropologists of the contemporary，例如：Paul Rabinow, Aihwa Ong）很多原来受的都是最传统、最严格的人类学训练。他们现在move on了，但有义务让下一代人类学家受到同样好的anthropological pedagogy。这就是为什么剑桥牛津的人类学在doctoral阶段的训练上还有非常大一部分传统的成分。这是好事！云大的传统/经典人类学教育也是非常好的事！但是！常常造成的结果却是很多人类学家自从受了这种训练后，眼界就变窄了。借用邵京博士（南京大学）的话来说就是，这些人类学家只会平视，而做不到俯视和仰视，而这后两种视角才是我们全球化形势下真正有趣、有意义、有关联性（relevant）的分析角度。真正有能力的社会学家/人类学家应当做到能在这些不同的视角中游刃有余地穿梭、切换。

最后，当然还有一个很重要的一个维度，即历史的眼光。这样也就是一个四维的观察框架。（如上图）

滨江实习期间的迷你讲座：通过看电视想到的关于中国社会的几点

无所不在的法治节目

从至少十年前起,中国的电视就充满了各类“法制/治”内容的节目。最有代表性的应当是央视的“今日说法”和现在的“法制在线”、“经济与法”，其时收视率是很高的。但仔细看这些所谓的法治节目，我发现它们的内容日益趋向猎奇和讲故事，而偏离了解释法理、普及法律常识的初衷。叙事的语调也从辨析法律上的疑难点移向平俗的感情化的叙事。这里一个很简单的原因当然是，世上没有那么多法理角度上复杂的案例，可是节目还是要每天每天办下去，于是不得不什么案子都播。但更深一个层次，中国目前充斥着“法制节目”的现象可能也正是国家处于法治建设进行时的一个表征。有趣的是，法制建设本来应当通过普及一些法律的概念和法理学的原理，而现在的节目做的是感情化的说教：用惨状来吓你，用眼泪来煽你，用语重心长、用忏悔来戒你。。。。避开冷静、超脱的分析，而依靠感召的力量，似乎是我们中国人思维的一个特征。至于这到底是多年来共产主义式的宣传方式造成的，还是有更深层次的“文化”解释，则是一个更难回答的问题。


广告中的奥秘

一般我们看电视，看到广告就觉得boring。有些拍得稍微有创意一点的广告，我们则会欣赏一下。但是，从“社会符号”的角度来说，广告其实蕴含了非常丰富的社会信息。因为广告的目的就是要抓住人的注意力，而后打动人心，所以广告中的一些主题和叙事方法力求反映消费者乃至整个社会的欲望、理想和追求。而且，通过 一个国际比较的视角，我们更看出不同国家和社会在文化和在追求上的不同。

我第一次有这个体验是一年多以前在印度做社会学调研。那时在旅馆里看电视，发现印度电视广告里最大的一个主题就是野心（ambition）和憧景（aspiration），大多数广告都围绕憧景美好生活，而后实现美好生活这一主题展开叙事。比如信用卡MASTER CARD的一个广告，几个朋友在一起追忆当年穷的时候，一起聚餐后互相不肯付账，想推到别人身上，时过境迁，现在这些朋友们个个事业成功，西装革履，都有信用卡，吃完饭后抢着用MASTER CARD付账。

印度的广告中还有一个特征就是个人主义比较突显。叙述成功通常是个人成功，偶尔会有三口之家的情景，但从来没看到三代四世同堂这种叙事主题。这与中国的广告产生鲜明对照。我们常常在中国的广告里看到成了年成了家的孩子买一些产品送给高堂老母，来尽孝道。比如说买补品，或买一个空调，让父母开心。所以家庭观念在中国文化中的中心地位就在这个对比之下突显出来。

印度的广告中也有“家”这个话语元素。但是它的作用方式比较不同。他们主要把家看作一个美好生活的代号，所以很多整体厨房、家具和家居装修的广告都是在“家”（home, not family）这个主题下开展的。中国也有这类，比如说最近我常常看到的一个除甲酫空调的广告，这反映了我们国民对拥有一个属于自己的温馨舒适的家的追求，也从另一个侧面表现了中国房地产和私家购房的热度――大家都买新房，所以甲酫才是一个问题。

最后还想说一个批判一点的观点：广告中我们还可以看到社会上的不平等和压迫。还是以印度为例。印度是一个多民族、多文化、多语言的国家，各个地域的人其实长得很不一样，习俗、习惯，经济发展程度也不一样。比如说印度东北部几个邦的人长得像中国人，南部泰米尔邦的人皮肤则非常黑，而北部新德里附近的人皮肤相对颜色浅一些。印度的广告里我从来 没有看到皮肤深黑或是长得像中国人的面孔。演员青一色的是英俊漂亮的皮肤白皙的印度人――比平均还要要白皙很多。这就说明，在印度人的想象中，皮肤白皙也代表高贵和美。虽然他们自己国家的其实肤色很深。这种对白肤色的向往和欲望，其实与全球范围内的肤色政治不谋而合。总而言之，广告虽小，但它往往是解读一个社会和一个文化的一扇窗户。

杂感几则

一。关于“真理”

真理是碰撞的火花，转瞬即逝。真理在任何一个话语体系中都找不到，而应该由一个思想自由的人通过自己对各种思想、理论的比较和相互批判中去寻找。比较和批判的过程是无止境的，“真理”的形态也是永恒变化的。在这个永恒的动态中，我们可以不停地逼近真理，但永远不要认为我们可以抓住真理。你认为你抓住真理的瞬间，其实已与它相去十万八千里了。

二。社会发展阶段的问题

中国现在处于社会主义初级阶段暨资本主义初级阶段。与此相对，欧美西方处于资本主义高级阶段。主要体现是目前中国的个人资本积累在很大程度上还依赖于不法、违规、和不道德的经营或敛财方式。中国的新闻媒体，特别比如新闻频道，可谓充满了各式各样五花八门的明察暗访，来揭露公私部门中各种各样的违法缺德资本积累方式。这与马克思描述的资本主义原始积累相呼应。在西方社会中，多数这样的积累方式早已是过去时。盈利活动都是规范化、合法化的，也因此，经济活动中的技术革新、创意的重要性尤为突出。而在初级资本主义中国，由于经营活动中的社会秩序没有内化到人，从不法行为中有利可图，于是互相效尤。与此相对，西方资本主义中现在的不法、违规或非道德通常发生在一个非常高和不透明的层面。一个很明显的例子就是次贷危机和由此引发的全球金融危机。其他可以想到的例子还有基因和医药领域科技创新的商业化。这些都是资本主义通过技术革新开疆辟土，强化和升级资本积累的做法——故谓之资本主义高级阶段。

三。The Chinese Rhetorical Habit

有时候我真觉得中国人就是要被忽悠才高兴！这就是为什么有“外国专家”一来，英文一说，他们就诚服了，因为听不懂嘛。这跟天真的中国家长追捧“外教”是一个道理。探讨一个问题，你要说得他们听得懂了，而且用一个谦虚的语气跟他们说，他们反而觉得你底气不足，没有权威。他们喜欢听荡气回肠的高谈阔论，对于论据的虚实却不多过问，逻辑的严密也无所谓。对于事实了解不足就高谈阔论、传教布道，这不只是一个学术态度和习惯的问题了。不过我们对中学教师可能也不能要求太多吧。

The Unimportance of Being Oxford

This is an experience I had after returning to my home town in China.

Although people generally lavished praise on me upon hearing that I am now a doctoral student at Oxford University, in private they have actually very specific and already formed idea of success. The Chinese society (or perhaps East Asian societies in general) is now satuated with a cultic attitude towards personal financial success. And the dissemination/circulation of discourse therein seems a point of interest. Students who have gone abroad to study (usually in the U.S.) are typically viewed as having absorbed the advanced technological expertise, capitalist concepts, ideas, and innovative/entrepreneurial spirits. Thus, the successful entrepreneur returning from the US with advanced concepts and who makes fortunes based on the application of those concepts in China is the archetypal heroic overseas-educated student figure in the Chinese imagination.

From their reading of news papers, listening to news and browsing the Internet, many halfwitted Chinese people have become very familiar with such a figure, and can usually list examples, sometimes even among their own acquaintances.

If another academically successful individual who has gone abroad to study in prestigious institutions does not conform to their conceptual stereotype, instead of moderating their views, the Chinese actually view this atypical individual, such as myself, with suspecion.

So, when I disclosed that I was interested in no more than becoming a university academic, I was immediately greeted with ambiguous smiles, and sometimes downright disapproval, for 'lacking ambition' or for 'being complancent with petty comfort and security'--that they don't know inseurity is in fact rapidly becoming a hallmark of the academic profession is, of cousre, not their fault.

Fair enough, what I usually do not disclose is my academic ambitions, which I admit are rather hollow and unrealist but not necesssarily more so than most entre/technopreneurial ambitions, but I doubt they would understand even if I did. Perhaps an 'academic ambition' is a contradiction in terms for them, because, in these Chinese people's mind, being an academic teaching peacefully in a university is a sign of mediocraty, if not prima facie failure. Ambitious people, in contract, go out into the world and make billions. Of course, such a misconcpetion is forgivable, because these people themselves have never in their lives met a truly brilliant academic, nor have they ever actually opened their eyes to the world of ideas and contemplation, which is almost a spiritual world, if we are talking about a sufficiently high level. Their myopia is a historically determined condition, which is not to be blamed. But I am at least glad that I have a more open mind, thanks to a broader vision and experience of the world -- on in certain senses, of course.

But my point remains, that people DO actually have their already formed ideas of success and achievement and, speaking more broadly, of normativity. They won't easily alter these ideas, if at all. One of the attendant merits of being intelligent should be the capacity of imagination--imagining alternative forms of living and meaning, and sadly they aren't capable of it.