The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Coming Full Cycle In the Taiwan Strait

1:36 AM

(Xiamen, P.R. China) "It's so close!" the Xiada post-graduate student said excitedly, gaily, of the little island inhabited only by men with guns and binoculars. She was right; it had taken less than 45 minutes to chug slowly out of Lundu Harbor and then traverse some 3 kilometers to Little Jinmen, the closest territory to the mainland still under Taiwanese control. And as tour boat 007 made two slow passes across its southwestern shoreline it all seemed close enough to touch: The steel and reinforced concrete defenses that bristled from every inch of the rocks, cliffs and narrow beaches of this still living relic—shrine, perhaps—to geopolitical irrationality.

"Wave hello to the soldiers," the tour guide said over the loudspeaker.

"There is one!" Someone yelled, as if spotting a celebrity.

"Where?" Someone else cried out. Soon it was a chorus: "There!" "Over there!" "I see them!" "There are two of them!" "Yes!" "They're all over!"

"The soldiers—they're watching us watch them," with binoculars to my eyes, I quietly said to Yang Jie, my student and invaluable assistant from the English Department of Xiamen University. She nodded silently, taking it all in—the surrealism of the ominous island set in the middle of a peaceful bay, the dead-serious KMT soldiers, but especially our disparate boat companions and their reactions to it all.

For all of them it was just a fun boat ride, a festive Sunday afternoon excursion to a place of anachronistic curiosity provided by Mr. Lin Yong Qing, the proprietor of the Wonderful English Chatting Pub in Xiamen. This activity was the first of many bilingual, bicultural events he has planned to promote good will between his patrons.

"It's too close," the post-graduate student said.

"Close? Yes, but also so very, very far," I said quietly into the wind. How could I explain that for me it was a trip that had begun almost 50 years ago and spanned many thousands of miles. How could I explain that though I had never been there before, it had changed my life—that in the course of that short boat ride my life had come full cycle?

How could she understand that what happened there almost fifty years ago could have so affected a middle-aged Loawai from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, USA? Jie knew, of course, which was why she was also carefully watching me along with her keen observations of the enveloping spectacle.

I would have had to explain that the words I had whispered into the wind were words to my long dead father, who at that moment was once again at my side—and only a fool would try to explain such a thing to a stranger.

Frank A. Bosco, my father, was a writer, a scientist, a thinker, but above all, a teacher. Fifty years ago, when a little boy, on a black and white television set, the first one in the neighborhood, watched the flickering images of real bombs and real artillery shells exploding on islands then known as Quemoy, Amoy, Matsu, and wanted to know why, his father cared enough to tell the truth, starting a process that continued until he passed from this world some twenty years later.

He explained the truth, not the slogans popular with many men in the United States government he worked for. It was the same kind of truth that often got him into trouble, and occasioned more than a few concerns for the well-being of our family. He particularly explained why the most populous nation on Earth, the oldest, continuously governed and civilized nation in the history of nations, should not only be allowed to join the UN, but also to determine its own fate free of interference.

And every night during those months in 1954-55, and again in 1958-59, when the events of Quemoy and Amoy led the nightly TV newscasts in America with dire predictions of World War III, even of nuclear holocaust, he truthfully answered more questions, and suggested where together we could find answers to questions he could not answer: Books, first from his library, and when those were consumed, every public library within range of a curious, growing mind.

That was the beginning of a life-long dedication to objective, intellectual curiosity, fairness, and truth—even as perpetually elusive as it will always be. It was also the beginning of my life-long admiration for the People's Republic of China and the Chinese people. It is why I spent my first year teaching in China at Xiada, and not Fudan, or Zhejiang University, or Tsinghua, or any of the other great schools in China that offered me and my wife a position. I came here, to Xiamen, old Amoy, where for me it really all began.

"Wave goodbye," the tour guide, speaking of the Taiwanese soldiers, said over the loudspeaker as 007 revved its engines and turned towards Xiamen.

"It's so close, I don't understand why we don't just take it back," the Xiada post-graduate student said rather blandly considering the complex enormity of what she was suggesting.

Pierre, a young man from France working here in Xiamen because of the scarcity of good jobs back in his country, and Kent, a young man from California here teaching oral English, had already lost any interest they might have had for the opportunity to see the "Front Lines" of the Taiwan issue—happily for all of us they were talking about more important things: the economy, dating, the value of learning about life in another country, another culture, than their own.

1:36 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Monday, July 28, 2003

Mississippi Sorrows

2:21 AM

I wish I could just simply be angry at Trent Lott, even after all these months. It should be easy enough. I have been angry at Trent for most of my life, the first couple of decades of which were spent growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast way too close to that dangerous neat-freak and everything he believes in. While my house and his house fronted onto the same warm, rich waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we weren�t next door neighbors. That dubious distinction belonged to my uncle; and still does, whenever Mr. Lott returns to Pascagoula, Mississippi from his benighted labors in Washington.

No, I have an overwhelming sense of sadness rather than my usual anger at Trent Lott because of all the Mississippians everywhere who despise racism and who had, until Strom Thurmond�s 100th birthday�and now his death�almost quit being ashamed when asked that most basic conversational question: Where are you from?

Believe it or not, there were more than a few native white civil rights activists in Mississippi during those old days Mr. Lott is so nostalgic for. Nowhere near a majority, surely; sadly not even a significant vocal minority. The fear of lethal retaliation was too real. It must never be forgotten that people died in the name of those �Dixiecrats� for which Strom Thurmond was the standard bearer and over which Trent Lott waxed so yearningly. For hundreds of blacks�and a number of whites�the �Mississippi way of life� was maiming, mutilation and murder, and it wasn�t just �54 years� ago either. Trent knows this as well as I do, because we most certainly weren�t children when it was still routinely happening! But, still, there were plenty of us who were more ashamed than afraid and we tried to fight Trent and his cowardly majority.

Yet even when our side finally won�at least within the institutions of the Republic, if not in the majority of its hearts and souls�we saw in Northerner�s eyes that the stigma of being �from Mississippi� was still too palpable to attempt an explanation about �good Mississippians.� Some of us actually hid from it. I worked hard to lose my Mississippi accent when I lived in New York City during the 70�s. For those who knew the truth I used the excuse first of being a theatre major, and then a working stage actor, for the affected, stilted dialect I foisted off on the world. I also started saying I was from New Orleans instead of Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

Of course, young Trent didn�t hide anything and he was going places fast by toadying to and parroting some of the most notorious segregationists of that blighted era. So well did he booster the grand old cause that in short order one of the champion racists of all times, Congressman William Colmer, mentored the right-thinking young Trent right into the seat he�d been holding onto until just the right young bigot came along.

Soon my anger towards this �friend of the family� became more personal and focused. With great embarrassment for my district and State, I watched our Congressman cry out the actual innocence of Richard Nixon on national TV only moments before he resigned, waved wanly, and then boarded that waiting helicopter for his final ride into infamy, leaving a sputtering, stuttering Trent Lott speaking his empty trash to an empty house. And once again the world saw Mississippians as not only morally degenerate, but every bit as ignorant as the stereotypical slurs said we were.

So, when Congressman Lott was running for re-election in 1974 virtually unopposed, and certain principled people asked if I would manage the campaign of the first woman to ever run for national office from Mississippi�against Trent�I couldn�t say yes fast enough. I didn�t do so because I thought there was any chance of winning. That we, or anyone else, had no chance of defeating a racist incumbent holding that particular seat was so obvious that the Mississippi Democratic Party chose not to waste its time or resources. This did not deter a brave young school teacher, Claudia Mertz, and a few good citizens who believed that at least Lott should be forced to defend his voting record. Perhaps we could even make him spend some Republican campaign money.

While we received a tacit nod from the Mississippi Democratic Party, that was all; basically an acknowledgment that Ms. Mertz was running as a Democrat. No money. No volunteers. No politicos making appearances. So with what funds we could raise amongst a small but dedicated group, I was able to load up my car with Ms. Mertz, the printed campaign material we could afford, and gasoline and start touring Southeast Mississippi. We went to every radio station that would let us in the door. Which wasn�t many, since very few wished to displease their constituency�white folks who knew only that Lott was against colored folks, and all women folk in politics. But we did get into some, and we got into all stations that had predominately black audiences. And we kept doing it, stopping to talk to every gathering of people we could find who would listen to us without pointing shotguns.

Then came a godsend. A generous white man with vision gave us enough money to buy TV time! We shot a couple of clever spots and things got interesting. Too interesting for Trent; he had counted on not having to spend a dime to stay on the public dole uttering his old-time meanness. His strategy? Very Republican�he cornered my father at a cocktail party at my uncle�s house, jabbed his index finger towards his chest and barked: �Frank! You�d best tell that boy of yours to cut this nonsense out�I�m startin� to get mad, and he�s gonna get himself into a bunch of trouble!�

My wonderful father, long deceased now, a very principled man of grace and conscience stared at that jabbing finger until it withered back to its cowardly place and answered: �Trent, Joe�s a grown man and doesn�t ask for my advice much anymore. But, if he did, I would tell him to keep up the good work.� Trent stammered and my uncle glared at his older, wiser brother.

Claudia Mertz lost the election, but it wasn�t the complete landslide Trent had counted on and he did have to spend Republican dollars. My father wasn�t asked back to his brother�s house as often as before. But he was proud of me; and I was proud of him. Perhaps as important, I started the long process of overcoming my shame at being a Mississippian.

I was also a good deal more angry with Trent Lott. And I have stayed angry with him�futilely so, to be sure�as he climbed higher and higher up the political and public ladder. And every minute, hour, and day of that climb he has never changed the racism and xenophobia that is at the heart of him and his brethren. His constituents know that�both the racists and the good people of Mississippi. That is why he will always be re-elected no matter how much he periodically embarrasses Mississippi; because, to our great shame, there are still more white Mississippians who believe what he believes and he knows that.

Which is why he could eat Jim Crow while also being defiant, even brazen as he did his patented verbal wink-wink shorthand to his arch supporters at his Friday the 13th press conference at the LaFont Inn in Pascagoula, Mississippi. This is the same LaFont Inn where too many years ago I attended my junior and senior proms�all white affairs, of course. Neither Trent nor I ever went to school with black kids; the difference is he thought that was a good idea. He still does, no matter what he says publicly.

This overwhelming sense of sadness, this darkness that hangs on me like a shroud, even here in China, is because no matter the down-home political consequences of Trent Lott's loss of his Majority Leadership position, many Mississippians are again faced with the choice of being ashamed or lying when asked: Where are you from?

You see, even my Chinese students and colleagues give me �that look� when I tell them where I am from in America. They know what Mississippi is most famous for�and to our great shame it is not William Faulkner, Leontyne Price, Tennessee Williams, or Mississippi John Hurt.

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