Main Index; Self-As-Method – a book-long interview with Xiang Biao

I found the stunning intellect in the director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle, Germany. Book in the format of 3 long interviews in Chinese, with Journalist Wu Qi. Pub 2020.

I apologize for the 10-day delay in posting.  But preparing this book was so impactful that it inspired the launch of another project that some of us had been talking about last month, (and thinking about for years).  We now have a model for that “Discussion Community”.  I will introduce this new project first, and then below I will outline our December upload schedule for Self-As-Method – in 10 chapters.

(This is the Index Place Holder Index for the Xiang Biao book, and all the content chapters will be stored in here.)

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A Discussion Project:

What’s missing on the web, (and in life)?  We can present our ideas, and accept or reject other people’s ideas, but where is it that we can talk about them?  In the public discourse I think it doesn’t exist.  You’re either “with us, or against us” type of arm-twisting, any suggestion to talk it over is treason.  How about in the family – Ha.  How about in business?  On the main stream web you get censored for anything too far off of the standard narrative.  Here, in our little niche, we are hopeful.  But we also know we are being watched.

Everyone reading this, lives in some society.  Therefore, we think, act, speak and listen from our cultural embeddedness.  That allows us to relate to our fellow men and women, so it is a necessity.  Another society, in either space, or in time, has, or had, their own code-speak.  It is not so unified here either, and lots of people, maybe even our next-door neighbor, function through a different context.  The mixing of world-wide stereo-types of thought and behavior is definitely today's trend.

WHAT IS DISCUSSION?

If you are the professor you are paid to get this interchange going; OR for us, we want to learn something for ourselves.  Learn what? Learn not from a new authority, but learn maybe, that someone else's ideas, (even if they are not fully consolidated as of yet), can be a catalyst for my own thinking and my understanding process.  You can call it synergy.  There can be more discovery through dialog than merely through my own subjective musings. (And of course, I think about things by myself continually.)

Dialog is a kind of Scholarship.

Brain-Trusts are part of the academic world.  We may think professors are political animals just spreading the university's narrative, and building university funding.  But there are independent collaborations among academics, that express some "sovereignty of thought".  Wow, these men and women are lucky.  They have built an independent platform to "think" whatever, and wherever their process will lead them.  I don't have any academic credentials, so I can't join.

But wait a minute; why can't you and I do it? Have our own brain trust right here?

We have started a project toward that end, and made tremendous progress in these days.  I think the Substack platform is a good base.  I learned that One Site can have a team of multiple hosts.  That means discussions are not only confined to one person’s vision, nor to linear comment fields, (that go down and down and have no attachments, no graphics nor text enhancements).  Team members are enabled to express their concerns with their own main-posts on the one-same-site.  (They all retain their other separate sites and projects.) Then, other team members, subscribers, and visitors can discuss those concerns in each particular comment field.

So far, a few of us have posted a couple of things, mainly about how to form this group into an "International Community".  International is not pretentious, it only means it is a writing exchange, and not confined to real-time nor real-local-space. It is not about a community of "like-minds".  We are all different. But a collaboration based on homogeneity can’t take you very far. Our major similarity is our pledge to mutual respect.

I don’t see flooding the site with posts, although we all are full of ideas.  So, there are only a few posts on there now, and it’s easy to survey them.  It is just the beginning. Let’s just see what comes up through your, and other people’s reactions, and then take it from there.

Our model is on:

2 wnt. Main Index file: Our purpose is to create a discussion community based on writing.

Please check it out.  I think it holds great promise.  And you can be on the team.  That can make it a deeper participation than with other sites.

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Back to Self as Method, “Thinking through China and the World.”

Do you know David Ownby?  He chairs a department in the Université de Montréal Montréal, QC, Canada, now retired I believe.  They funded his huge site for years. https://www.readingthechinadream.com/people.html

He is a Chinese specialist at the university and has translated about one text per week on Chinese contemporary intellectual life on this, his own site .  There are 100’s as you see on the above link.  I don’t know what he will now after retirement, just since maybe this summer.  I think he has travel plans, and maybe will write travel-logs.

He translated and edited this Xiang Biao book in its English version.  He has licensed it under Creative Commons, anyone can upload it.  (I will put the license below.)

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Here I am filling out the Index, and we will start with the content shortly.  Frankly, I am stunned by this book.  Everything about our project mentioned above, Xiang Biao has already manifested in his life.  When I said above “Intellect”; Well, what is that?  It is just that he is so grounded, so careful with semantics, blows no hot air of lofty concepts, and skirts around those people who do.  He always attaches his cultural anthropology to what can make a difference in someone’s life.  He is a committed mentor to his students and to the younger generation.  Like many great masters, he practices that deep teaching usually must be one-on-one, like with thesis management.  Otherwise, you are going to remain drowning in your own nations’ self-narrative.  I can’t give this book enough votes or thumbs-up!

REALLY, I CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS GUY. But let’s move on.

I reformatted from book size to 8 ½ x 11 with size 11 font, so I have less pages, about 130.  The original book has about 263 pages, but nothing has been modified. I am going to upload shorter segments than I usually do, because maybe, each are worth some comment or discussion.  About 13 to 15 pages each, with 10 uploads.  Here is the upload plan:

Contents (and my page numbers)

1^st upload from p 4

Introduction, by David Ownby

2^nd upload from p 16

Beijing Interview, March 2018

Setting the Stage

A Childhood Picture

The 1980s Culture Craze

3^rd upload from p 30

Beida After 1989 

Researching Zhejiang Village

4^th upload from p 43

Youth Melancholy

The Center and the Margins

Personal Crisis

5^th upload from p 54

Globalization and Anti-Globalization

Using the 1980s to Critique the 1980s

What is Criticism?

Empathetic Scholarship

6^th upload from p 71

Oxford Interview, August 2018

Setting the Stage

Impressions of Oxford

A Sense of Distance and Directness

Anthropologists and Their World

Non-Fiction Writing

7^th upload from p 86

Academics Is Not a Vocation

Nationalism and Populism

Singapore Enlightenment

The Importance of Community

Building Your Own Cross-Border Worlds

8^th upload from p 99

Universities Should Look for the Exceptional

Problematizing Individual Experience

New Research

Common Ideals

Local Gentry as Method

9^th upload from p 113

Wenzhou Interview, December 2018

Setting the Stage

Social Reproduction

The Paradox of Class Mobility

10^th upload from p 127

Looking for a New Discourse

Anthropology as Intermediary

The Local Gentry: Once More with Feeling

The Index

Chinese-language Glossary, - special terms are written in the original Chinese characters, so you can better search them on the Chinese web.  Then translate your Chinese results.  I’ll put them below the license, in this file.

Xiang Biao’s Selected Publications, this I’ll put this somewhere.

Index I can’t use it, because I didn’t use the original page numbers. (in fact, I don’t use any page numbers on Substack.)

Open Access License

This chapter (and all others) are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

The images or other third-party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Glossary

Accepting fate without giving up 认命不认输

Appreciation of Masterpieces《佳作欣赏》

Banyuetan《半月谈》

Beida 北大

Beiyang militarist 北洋军阀

Center for Research on the Chinese Economy 中国经济研究中心

chaxugeju (differential mode of association) 差序格局

Chen Yueguang 陈越光

Chen Kuan-Hsing 陈光兴

Chen Yun 陈云

China on the Edge《山坳上的中国》

Chinese Peasants《中国农民》

crisis consciousness 危机意识

Cultural Revolution 文化大革命

Dai Jinhua 戴锦华

danwei 单位

Deng Xiaoping 邓小平

diaosi 屌丝

Didi 滴滴

Dong Furen 董辅礽

Drifting with the Beggars’ Gang《丐帮漂流记》

Du Ying 杜鹰

Fan Gang 樊纲

Fei Xiaotong 费孝通

Fan Yusu 范雨素

gaitu guiliu 改土归流

Gan Yang 甘阳

Gao Jianguo 高建国

Gao Pingzi 高平子

Gazetteer 地方志

Guo Yujie 郭玉洁

Great Leap Forward 大跃进

great unity 大一统

He Bochuan 何博传

Hu Feng 胡风

Hu Shi 胡适

Huang Jisu 黄纪苏

hukou (household registration system) 户口

Indentured Workers《包身工》

jia (false) 假

Jia Lusheng 贾鲁生

Jin Guantao 金观涛

Li Kang 李康

Li Meng 李猛

Li Siguang 李四光

Liang Shuming 梁漱溟

Lin, Justin Yifu 林毅夫

Liu Qingfeng 刘青峰

Liu Shiding 刘世定

Liu Zaifu 刘再复

Lü Xinyu 吕新雨

Lu Xun 鲁迅

Luo Danni 罗丹妮

Mao Zedong 毛泽东

mass line 群众路线

Minzu University of China 中央民族大学

national studies 国学

Northern Expedition 北伐

Peking University 北京大学

Peng Pai 彭湃

private plot 自留地

Qian Gang 钱钢

Qian Liqun 钱理群

Qin Hui 秦晖

qiuji (right to exist on the planet) 球籍

River Elegy《河殇》

root culture 乡土文化

shangfang 上访

Shen Honglie 沈鸿烈

shengnü 剩女

Shenzhen Special Zone News《深圳特区报》

Shi (Propensity) 势

shi (real) 实

Sun Liping 孙立平

Sun Yat-sen 孙中山

Sun Yirang 孙诒让

suspension 悬浮

suzhi 素质

Szeto Wah 司徒华

Taijiquan 太极拳

Takeuchi Yoshimi 竹内好

The Dream of the Red Chamber《红楼梦》

tianxia 天下

Tong Dalin 童大林

Toward the Future (book series) 走向未来 (丛书)

Tsinghua University 清华

tuantigeju (organizational mode of association) 团体格局

Uniting the Three Traditions《通三统》

Wang Hansheng 王汉生

Wang Hui 汪晖

Wang Shaoguang 王绍光

Wang Sibin 王思斌

Wang Xiaoqiang 王小强

Wang Yuanhua 王元化

Weiming lake 未名湖

Wenhui Monthly《文汇月刊》

work hole 工作洞

World Economic Herald《世界经济导报》

Wu Qi 吴琦

Xia Yan 夏衍

Xiang Biao 项飙

xiangshen (gentry) 乡绅

xin qimeng (new Enlightenment) 新启蒙

xu (fake) 虚

Xu Bing 徐冰

Yu Changjiang 于长江

Yu Luojin 遇罗锦

Yuan Shikai 袁世凯

Zhang Jiasheng 张家声

Zhang Taiyan 章太炎

Zhang Zai 张载

zhanyou 占有

zhen (true) 真

Zheng He 郑和

Zheng Yefu 郑也夫

Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎

Zhongshan University 中山大学

Zhou Enlai 周恩来

Zhou Feizhou 周飞舟

Zhou Qiren 周其仁

zhua 抓

Zhu Ziqing 朱自清

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