China Diary, Part III
Nationalism trumps everything.

Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor
July 12, 2001 3:10 p.m.

Editor’s note: Click here to read the previous installment of Derbyshire's China dispatches. Stay tuned tomorrow for another installment.

Changchun, NE China, Week of July 7th to July 14th, Part I
The high point of our first day in the Northeast — which, by the way, nobody in China ever refers to as "Manchuria" — was a visit to pay our respects to Taiye (pronounced "tie-yeah").  The literal meaning of "Taiye" is "Ultimate Grandpa".  Our particular Taiye is Rosie's father's father, progenitor of the whole paternal side of Rosie's family, which now numbers 34.  Taiye was born in the lunar year called yi shi in the old style, most of which fell in 1905.  By the traditional Chinese reckoning, according to which you are one year old at birth and two when your first lunar New Year comes around, he is 97, and that is how he was advertised to me.  However, Taiye first saw light of day on the third day of the twelfth lunar month, which most likely means in the early days of 1906, so we would consider him only 95.  We found him sitting on his bed:  He has had much difficulty walking this past couple of years, though he was riding a bicycle well into his nineties.  Still a thickset ox of a man, he is perfectly bald and has a plump red face glowing with qi — the vital force in traditional Chinese physiology, pronounced "chee."  He looks, in fact, exactly like Shouxing Lao, the old man with the bulbous forehead you see in collections of Chinese porcelain figurines, the embodiment of longevity.  Though somewhat deaf, Taiye is clear-headed and still reads his newspaper every day.  He invited me to quiz him on current affairs.  I asked him to name the current president of the United States.  "Bu-shi!  Difficult election!"  The British prime minister?  "Bu-lai-er!"  Russia?  "Pu-ting!"  Then he asked me if Soong May-ling (Chiang Kai-shek's widow) is still alive.  I said I thought she was, and 102 years old the last time I checked.  People of these very oldest generations like to keep careful track of each other.  Taiye has had two wives and ten children — five boys and five girls.  (Oddly, his given name in Chinese is "Jiwu," which means "lucky five.")  His second wife died this last February in fact, but no one has told him yet.  Husband and wife had been living apart for some years, since his physical attentions became too much for her.  In his late eighties, Taiye was still insisting on his conjugal rights, an aspect of the marriage in which his wife had by that time lost all interest.  The last straw was when Taiye broke down the bedroom door she had locked against him.  Talk about vital force!  At the dinner table he invited me to arm-wrestle him — Chinese style, the arms straight and unsupported.  I felt embarrassed to take up the challenge, but the company, all knowing smiles, insisted.  Taiye beat me in less than ten seconds.  The Ultimate Grandpa.

Some dinner-table talk on politics.  Taiwan?  Nobody can see what the difficulty is.  "Hong Kong and Macao came back to the Motherland with no trouble.  Why should Taiwan be any different?"  The Communists?  The late Deng Xiaoping is credited with the tremendous improvement in living standards this past 20 years, but the present leadership seems to inspire little affection.  The thing Chinese people want above all else is to be a normal nation, like Australia or Germany or Japan.  At some level just below the verbal, even quite unintellectual people like my relatives understand that this dream cannot be attained while the communists are still in power.  Nationalism trumps everything else here though, and the people will rally behind even the present lackluster leadership if their patriotic sensibilities are pricked — which they very easily are.