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.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Me and Mao, Sort Of...

8:04 PM

There was a Mao Zedong long before he was the Chairman. There was a Mao Zedong long before he was the Great Helmsman. There was a young Mao that left Changsha for Beijing to be with his favorite teacher who had recently become a professor at Peking University. There was a young Mao who couldn't be a student there but got a job in Beida's library at the benevolence of his professor.

There was a young Mao that was not studying Marxism abroad as were so many of his later colleagues in those years surrounding the First World War, before there was a Chinese Communist Party. There was a very young Mao Zedong who fell in love with his professor's beautiful daughter. The beautiful young woman who became Mao's beloved first wife. It happened in this house.

My dear friend, Dr. Russell Leigh Moses, author and longtime New China hand, here in Beijing finishing a book on the uses of power in global politics, took the photograph on one of our weekly strolls through Beijing's central Hutongs.

Forget the old man in the hat--I try to constantly--it's the plaques that tell the tale. I will forever treasure this photograph for any number of mostly illogical reasons. Thanks, Russ.

8:04 PM / Editor / permalink 9 comments

Thursday, April 21, 2005

A "Flapper" Turns 96 in Chinatown

6:39 PM

Faye Sander, my incredible mother-in-law, and I were chatting about American literature and somehow F. Scott Fitzgerald came up along with the term he perhaps coined, "Flapper," and after she corrected me on some fine point about Gatsby she concluded with the stopper: "I was a Flapper!" And so she was.

And so she still is, at 96, among so many other distinctive and distinguished personas of the inimitable Faye Sander, artist, author, psychologist, activist, mother, grandmother...

Where did Mom want to celebrate her 96th birthday, the birthday that Ellen and I managed to attend all the way from Beijing? In New York City's Chinatown! What did she want to eat? Peking Duck!

While it was an important trip to the States for us, it was also, as always, a killer physically. It is just too long of a flight and too large of a time differential for me to handle any longer. The next time I leave China, it will be on a slow boat!

But even though it took all of three days after arriving in New York to overcome the almost 20 hours in flight and the 12-hour time warp (after passing through one of 15 hours), it was a bell-weather trip for us in many ways, therefore one not to be regretted.

One thing of great import was a stroll we took to the United Nations one brilliantly crisp spring morning in Manhattan, and our time spent viewing the current exhibits. Particularly powerful was the UN Flag that was flying that terrible day in Iraq when the UN suffered such a personal loss, the shrapnel tears and rips are so visible, so stark, so "local"...

But we are now home.

Yes, I got hit with a bad case of bronchitis the last three days in New York and ended up in Roosevelt - St. Luke's Hospital emergency room. But the several doctors who attended me prescribed some great new meds for the bronchitis I've been losing a running battle with for years.

And yes, the jet lag hurts like hell on the return end too--the flight is considerably longer, for one thing, and flying with bronchitis period is STUPID, but unavoidable not being a rich man.

But, it is home. It is good. It is spring in Beijing.

6:39 PM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Leaving on a Jet Plane

7:05 AM

Folks, we fly off to New York this morning; we will return on the 19th. It has been a little more than a year since we have been to the States. The reason we are going now, in the middle of the semester here at Beiwai, is to celebrate my mother-in-law's 96th birthday. Yep, ninety-six, no typo.

7:05 AM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Twin Giants of Asia: Westerners consider the roles of China and India in global affairs

12:03 PM

[Note: The lead graph and link below is to an article I wrote on assignment to Beijing Review, an English language Chinese news weekly magazine. It is in the current issue.]

With Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India this month, some Western scholars and regular people were asked to comment on the rise of Asia's twin giants--China and India--and the clout they could gain on the world stage as their economies and political strength develop. Continue reading here.