Moranbong: Following French Intellectuals to North Korea in 1958

Frame from the French-North Korean film production of “Moranbong,” c. 1958. Image courtesy National Museum of Singapore

As I’ve completed a long article on the subject of Sino-French relations in the mid-1950s with a focus on the 1955 journey of Simone de Beauvoir to the People’s Republic of China, the following press release, sent by Benjamin Joinau, interests me quite a bit: 

Re: Antoine Coppola’s ”Cine-voyage en Coree du Nord”
L’Atelier des Cahiers [link] introduces its latest publication about the fascinating trip of French intellectuals to North Korea in 1958: Chris Marker, Claude Lanzmann, Armand Gatti, Jean-Claude Bonnardot, Francis Lemarque – all of them were to become famous later. Marker brought back his unique photo book “Les Coreennes”, Lanzmann a broken heart after a short love affair with a North Korean nurse, Gatti and Bonnardot the first and only North Korean-French co-produced movie: “Moranbong”…
This book follows their journey in North Korea while assessing the historical context, then proposes a detailed analysis of the movie.

Résumé/présentation — Nous sommes en mai 1958, un groupe d’intellectuels français s’embarque à bord d’un avion en direction de Pyongyang via Moscou. À son bord, des hommes en quête d’horizons nouveaux : Armand Gatti, journaliste, futur cinéaste et dramaturge ; Chris Marker, écrivain-cinéaste; Jean-Claude Bonnardot, acteur-cinéaste ; Francis Lemarque, chansonnier, et Claude Lanzmann, rédacteur-philosophe aux Temps Modernes de Sartre et Beauvoir, et futur maître du documentaire moderne. Gatti et Bonnardot ramèneront de cette expédition un film unique en son genre Moranbong, un film à part, insoluble dans le réalisme socialiste stalinien, trou noir dans l’histoire du cinéma français, une comète chargée de toutes les interrogations et contradictions d’une époque, en Corée du Nord comme en France. Chris Marker ramènera un album de photographies commentées qui fera date (Coréennes), Lemarque, des vues éparses filmées au cours du séjour, et Lanzmann, une histoire belle et triste d’amour impossible qu’il relatera dans ses mémoires (Le Lièvre de Patagonie). Le nord de la Corée est alors sous le contrôle de Kim Il-sung, fondateur d’une république dite populaire alliée de l’URSS et de la Chine.

The book runs about 18€, according to a press release which includes a short interview with the author.  Chris Marker’s work in North Korea is described further here.

For more on the “Moranbong” film mentioned, an article by the French-North Korean Friendship Association gives essential background; the film was most recently screened at the National Museum of Singapore in an exhibition entitled “Visions of East: Asia through French Eyes.”

I’ll be in Paris in a couple weeks to pick up a copy and will endeavour to write at least a short summary/review in this space or on that other space for DPRK analysis, SinoNK.com.

JR’s China Soft Power Summary, July 2012

This guest post comes to SinoMondiale via JustRecently. 

It’s frequently hard to believe for a nationalist that his or her country may not project as much “soft power” abroad as it would deserve, in the nationalist’s view. Besides, the idea that the inconceivable should be seen as a fact may amount to an insult. But that doesn’t help the task of making China “going towards the world”. Two goals – a certain degree of knowledge about the outside world, and a “mainstream opinion” that tolerates, but dislikes the status quo -, may currently define the propaganda mission.

Huanqiu Shibao, a paper that delicately doubles as a government mouthpiece and as an online gathering point for nationalist readers and commenters, is apparently trying to broaden its domestic readership’s horizon about international affairs, and to educate them into a direction of more tolerance for the world as it is. After all, Huanqiu Shibao is Chinese for, basically, Global Times.

Pretty much the Reader’s Digest way of the 1960s in its discourse with the domestic American public, Huanqiu Shibao tries to bring it home to its readers that not the entire globe would worship their country’s societal model – or its ideas on international relations – quite yet.China’s former ambassador to Vietnam, and Asia-Pacific Research Center director, Qi Jianguo, explained late in July why, against the apparent odds, there would be potential in Vietnamese-U.S. relations.

That’s not to suggest that Beijing wants to put up with the status quo. People’s Daily had harsh words of advice for the American hegemon of global opinion in July: play a more constructive role in the Asia-Pacific region (i. e. shut up about human rights), or get used to being marginalized.
This is, of course, advice to a domestic, rather than American audience. In its editorial on July 12, and reacting to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton‘s speech on the human-rights issue in Ulan-Batar, People’s Daily continued a CCP propaganda leitmotif that suggests that human rights, especially American definitions of it, would be a dirty word, and an embarrassment to the global public.

Soft power may be dear to many Chinese bureaucrats, but it probably matters more to diplomats, than to military or economic planners. Some of the enthusiasm in the debate about it appears to have abated more than a year ago – and when  by official media a compilation of platitudes on how to disseminate soft power gets hailed as a “masterpiece” by official media (that happened in June), there may be reason to believe that originality is the last thing that matters for an intellectual’s advancement.

At the top of the political hierarchy, things are no different. Jiang Zemin became a must-read for Angela Merkel when Xi Jinping visited Berlin in October 2009. (At any rate, she had to feign interest while Xi made her familiar with the wisdom of what were Jiang’s latest two books at the time.) If you want to become party and state chairman in China, don’t speak your own views. Praise those of your patron instead. No audacity of hope, and hence no soft power either, in Xi Jinping’s case.

And don’t be surprised if any of Xi next international interlocutors get to read a Concise Chinese History Reader - if it happens, it will be because Jiang did it again (he wrote that concise history, or had it written). It would also suggest that Xi still needs Jiang’s patronage.

The Chinese concept of soft power emphasizes not only its role abroad, but its function at home, too. That said, it doesn’t even seem to work in places as close to – or at - home, as Hong Kong. Beijing’s patriotic concepts certainly have their “fans” there, but tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets on July 29th to protest against a planned “patriotic-education” curriculum. Opinion polls of recent months, concerning the central government’s (or CCP’s) image in Hong Kong, hadn’t been encouraging either.

Chinese intellectual debates meant for domestic use are frequently more interesting than those about image-building abroad. That a bit of it emerged in an internationally-read paper, the New York Times, doesn’t necessarily mean that foreigners were the actual target readership. Jiang Qing, a hardcore Confucian (by his own standards, and depending on what you think Confucianism is about), and Daniel A. Bell published an op-ed on the NYT’s online edition on July 10: “A Confucian Constitution for China”. Bizarre (and possibly funny) stuff from a foreign perspective. Bizarre, too, but also worrying stuff from a secular Chinese perspective. Worrying, because in the last resort, the only readership that really matters is Zhongnanhai.

But the apparent ideological competition for the CCP court’s attention may be worrying for Confucians, too: at least some of them appear to think of Confucianism as a participant in a global civilizational dialog, rather than as a state doctrine.

North Korean Opera in Chengdu

Conservatory students perform Tchaikovsky in Pyongyang, June 2012

Last night I attended the performance of “The Flower Girl” staged by the Pibada Ensemble from North Korea.  (They are better known as the Sea of Blood Opera Troupe.) I met the music director after the show, had some contact with KCNA staff, and am hoping to post a full review of the performance soon either here or at SinoNK.com.

Some information about Flower Girl is here (including information of Kim Jong-il’s personal role in its creation, of course); more information about the ensemble and its previous immense tour of China is available here.

Cultural Power Battle Threads

From the May Fourth Generation to Today

- The Telegraph reports in alarmist fashion about Hu Jintao warning, as the newspaper headline puts it, of “cultural warfare from the West”

- A closer examination of the story indicates that Hu Jintao’s “battle cry,” above, was a speech given on October 18, 2011, that was republished yesterday in the preemminent journal for CCP theory, Qiushi (Seeking Truth / 求是).

In fact most of the speech is not at all about the West, but the need for more powerful socialist culture.  However, the key detonating sentences in this long and rather boring speech are, after a discourse on China’s rising soft power, as follows:

同时，我们必须清醒地看到，国际敌对势力正在加紧对我国实施西化、分化战略图谋，思想文化领域是他们进行长期渗透的重点领域。我们要深刻认识意识形态领域斗争的严重性和复杂性，警钟长鸣、警惕长存，采取有力措施加以防范和应对. At the same time [that we develop our cultural industries and gain international advantage thereby], we must see with utmost clarity that hostile international forces are currently stepping up the implementation of Westernization in China, attempting to do so via in a variety of strategies; their long-term focus is on infiltration [渗透/shentou] in the ideological and cultural fields. We should thoroughly understand the seriousness and complexity of this ideological struggle, remaining vigilant (lit. “always keep the bell ringing“), ever alert, and taking effective measures to prevent and respond to [the challenge of cultural infiltration].

The full text of the article is available in rough English via Google Translate here.

- My own evidentiary contribution to the discourse on Hu Jintao’s retrograde and conservative tendencies with regard his extensive work in “socialist culture” are described in this essay about some materials I found about Hu Jintao in East German archives in 2009.

- As usual, with reference to cultural diplomacy and the soft power discourse, JustRecently is already well ahead of the curve.  His website has the most extensive open-source translation available of the Party’s “cultural document”, a document which stemmed out of the same meetings at which Hu Jintao weighed in above.

- In reading headlines about Hu Jintao’s fear of Western “infiltration,” I think it’s important to note that there are far more nuanced Chinese examinations of soft power out there.  PRC scholar He Zengke published a rather wide-ranging article this past December 23 in a reformist journal surveying French and German modes of exerting soft power, noting:

France was one of the first countries to understand the role of cultural soft power. Napoleon once said that a pen was equal to 1,000 Mauser rifles^*), and a former French minister of culture said that culture and the economy are one and the same battleground. French people believe that a cultural mission can take the place of a country’s military power.[9] In 1883, France established the Alliance Française to promote French culture. Starting in 1959, France began to define the “First Five-Year Plan for the Expansion of French Cultural Activities”, and afterwards, 25- and 35-year plans etc. were gradually developed. From the total amounts spent and per capita, France belongs to the first-ranking countries worldwide.[10] From that, it can be seen that France attaches great importance to the development and use of soft power.

法国是最早懂得文化软实力的地位和作用的国家之一。拿破仑曾经说过，一支笔等于1000支毛瑟枪。法国前文化部长曾经说过：文化和经济是同一场战斗。 法国人认为，文化使命可以代替国家武力。[9]1883年法国就建立了法语联盟，在世界各地讲授法语，推广法国文化。从1959年起，法国开始制定“关于 在国外扩张和恢复法国文化活动的第一个五年计划”（1959－1963），后来又陆续制定了“二五”、“三五”计划等。法国的国际文化交流支出从总数和人 均来看都居于世界第一的位置。[10]由此可见法国对发展和运用文化软实力的高度重视。[Translation here by JustRecently]

He’s essay reminds us again:

-For all the huffing and puffing about Confucius Institutes, the “hanban” is still behind such institutions as the Alliance Française when it comes to enrollments and influence globally, a fact which I reported in July 2010 (from a cafe in Seoul, awash in K-pop, WiFi signals, kimchee and bubble tea) via a translation of a Huanqiu Shibao interview with the Hanban head.

- Finally, the magazine Monocle (which I fittingly tend to read in international airports; this one was in Tokyo) recently did some comprehensive “soft power ratings” in which the US was #1 but France not far behind.  China, by the way, was #17.

Commemorating 9/11 in Berlin

I spent last weekend in Berlin, the main purpose being to perform at the 9/11 Commemoration Service at the American Church in Berlin organized by the U.S. Embassy there.

Along with Andreas Boelcke (who is head of the Piano Academy Berlin and is my partner in the Amitayus Duo), in the middle of the service I played “Prayer” by the Jewish composer Ernest Bloch.

Performing Ernst Bloch's "Prayer" in "From Jewish Life," Berlin, Germany, September 11 2011 -- photo courtesy American Embassy in Berlin

The front-row audience for the event included Germany’s President (Christian Wulff), the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, the U.S. Ambassador in Germany, and assorted other political heavyweights on the political scene in Berlin. [A photo gallery of some of the front-row spectators is here.]

More photographs should be on the way soon, but as this event — and the whole notion of commemorating a trans-national disaster as well as the business of moving on — has been on my mind of late, I wanted to share with readers of this site.    And China was unavoidable on this trip as well, from visits to the Chinese Cultural Center in Berlin to readings by Ha Jin from his unpublished manuscript on Nanking to a visit with colleagues and Sinophone libraries in Frankfurt.  Perhaps there shall be more to come.

“US-China Musical Diplomacy” at the US Consulate in Chengdu

Adam Cathcart and Andreas Boelcke perform Gao Ping's Cello Sonata at US Consulate-General Chengdu, July 2011

 

25 July 2011

Dr. Adam Cathcart

Sino-U.S Relations Lecture at the Chengdu U.S Consulate

[Transcription by Mycal Ford, Pacific Lutheran University]

Part I:

Conflict and Culture:

1. It is often thought that the answer to conflict is culture (wenming). The notion that we should focus on culture to become calm and ease tensions is especially true in China, with its emphasis on “harmony” (hexie), but maybe not throughout the world.

1. “The more cultural exchange the better right!?” However, this is not always true. Cultural exchange and warfare are not mutually exclusive, e.g., Yuan Dynasty (Mongol invasion of China) and, during Ming Dynasty, when Hideyoshi invaded Korea, not only taking captives, but also bringing back with them c artists, musicians, and other cultural aspects.

1. Culture as it proceeds through conflict, seems then, engaged in a cohesive relationship that can ultimately work together toward the desired state of peace (heping).

Sinicization and Westernization

Sinicization-becoming more Chinese

Westernization- becoming more Western

1. In remote parts of the U.S many Americans are increasingly becoming more interested in Sinicization, particularly in the Midwest.

1. However, the U.S should never become complacent with their knowledge of China. China is constantly changing and the U.S needs to abandon ethnocentric sentiment that suggests that they’ve got China figured out. We need to always be aiming towards more sinicization.

(Aside on South Korean [“the Korea Wave”] and Japan as cultural export kings and major competitors with China in the US market and imagination).

Music and Politics

Open discussion/brainstorming examples of “political musicians” and “music and politics.”  All of the examples generated by the audience were American or British.

No one mentions Chairman Mao or the Yanan Forum.  When Cathcart mentions his surprise at the omission, the audience says but “Mao wasn’t a musician!”  A discussion follows of Chairman Mao, Jiang Qing, and opera in the Yanan years, including the visit of George Marshall to Yanan.           

Music as containing something much larger than itself.  Is music inherently political, or is it independent?  Must each piece of music tell a story?

Discussion of two Soviet/Russian composers, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokoviev and how their music reflected the political realities of the Soviet Union.

Part II:

Culture Revolution

1. 1950s –  Great musical and cultural exchange with Soviet Union – positive legacies in Chinese conservatory training today.
2. 1961 China breaks ties with Soviet Union, thus the cultural exchange with the Soviet Union ceases; in 1966 all music deemed Western or reactionary is officially abandoned.

 

Kissenger and Nixon

1. Kissenger prior to Nixon visited China on a secret mission in 1971.
2. China wasn’t quite sure how to welcome Kissenger. However, they ended up deciding to welcome him with Beethoven, which was insisted by Zhou Enlai.

This is important to note because Beethoven had been banned. China presenting Beethoven music served as symbol that transcended its commonly understood purpose which is to entertain.

1. 1972 Nixon goes to China and they welcome him with Beijing Opera.
2. 1973 Philadelphia Orchestra visits China
3. 1974 George H.W Bush the U.S. Liaison Officer in China (essentially the Ambassador to China during this time) engages in extensive talks with China about cultural exchange. i.e Second Philadelphia Orchestra trip is cancelled because Chinese song/dance troupe who planning to tour to US refuses to drop song regarding “liberation of Taiwan by force” from their program.

 

GaoPing

 Chengdu composer’s cello sonata from 1996 fuses Western and Eastern music together terrifically.

Many thanks to Mycal Ford / 黑飞虎 (center, in black shirt) of Pacific Lutheran University, who is presently in Chengdu on a research grant and will be moving on to Taiwan

Documenting Cultural Exchange: Performance at Southwest Nationalities University, Chengdu, PRC / 西南民族大学音乐系邀请了大提琴乐会

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Dalai Lama in Long Beach, California

In the orbit of the greater Los Angeles area, Long Beach serves a peculiar, often gritty, and vital function.  A few months ago I experienced enlightenment in Long Beach thanks to two gentlemen who had just gotten out of prison for “just stabbing somebody” and were on their way back from an appointment to remove the white supremacist tattoos which were all over their faces.  Slightly post-drunk on a wobbly train, they explained to me so beatifically their new lives in a halfway house: “We have meetings all the time, like ‘Dealing with Anger’ and ‘Growing Up Male’,” they said.

Since my father was, when he was living, a slightly post-drunk janitor who introduced me to more than a few ex-cons and societally marginal figures, and who himself ended up in a halfway house (in a way he never left, really), I think I was more open to the wisdom that flowed from these two men in Long Beach, even though they had horns inked on their temples.  Maybe it was because they offered me some fried chicken and seemed understanding that I was, strangely, without a phone on the Long Beach rail line.

And thus, today, I was pleased to learn that another dispenser of wisdom of a sort, he of the ex-con hairstyle, and a man who lives in a perpetual state of “halfway” (between India and China, I suppose, or between mortality and sacred revolutionary immortality) arrives today in Long Beach!

In other words, the Dalai Lama has arrived in California, having just been in Tokyo.

Since I have been reading Huanqiu Shibao and the (ever-more attuned to the world!) North Korean Central News Agency for my foreign news these past few days, the story had almost passed me by.

As to the venue for the Dalai Lama’s arrival:

Your Holiness, Long Beach is indeed a place which is in great need of some spiritual uplift.  The scientists and narcissistic TED fellows (but how would anyone know about them, were they not narcissists and hucksters of the modern age?) who momentarily clotted up its byways and convention halls were unable to transform this slow-chewing and rust-clotted industrial aperture of Los Angeles, but perhaps you, dear sir, having gone forehead-to-forehead with Chairman Mao, are up to the task.

And now for some footage of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama in Beijing, circa 1954-55!

Additional reading: JustRecently on Wang Lixiong, Tibet, and the indefatigable WOESER

Updates on Sino-North Korean Relations

Chinese TV reports that preparations are underway for North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong Eun to visit CCP leaders in Beijing in “late April or early May.”

Accordingly, a rather critical report on the Huanqiu Shibao website asserting that North Korean nuclear facilities in Yongbyon were leaking radioactivity (why else would Kim Jong Il avoid the place so assiduously?) has been taken down in favor of a more innocuous report from the Wall Street Journal about a new Ian Fleming-style airstrip which the North Koreans have been building into a mountain near Wonsan.

The report on Kim Jong Eun’s forthcoming visit comes from the North Korean ambassador in Beijing, whose office, according to a French journalist, has recently been sprucing up their photo montage across from Ritan Park (http://www.jordanpouille.com/2011/04/10/drpk-ambassade-coree-du-nord/ ).

It is worth noting how inclusive the North Koreans were with the Chinese during the big April 15 celebrations of Kim Il Song’s birthday.  The Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang hosted a number of meetings and set up a large cultural extravaganza on April 13.  Pictures from the Chinese orchestra/ballet/acrobat show in Pyongyang can be found on the website of the Chinese embassy in that city (http://kp.china-embassy.org/chn/zxxx/t814478.htm).

However, KCNA still occasionally returns to standard form, noting that a few Chinese “cannot repress their yearning” for Kim Il Song (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news08/20110408-35ee.html).

A few items of note in the Sino-North Korean borderlands.  Kim Jong Il was in Jagang on  April 8 (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news08/20110408-41ee.html) and a new “Martyr’s Cemetary” has been completed in Sinuiju  
( http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news10/20110410-14ee.html).  The lumber industry, that is rafts of logs floating down the Yalu remains a point of pride and production (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news19/20110419-17ee.html ).  While at one time there were rumors of a Chinese takeover of Hyesan Youth Mine, clearly the facility is still a mess (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news21/20110421-46ee.html).  The DPRK minister of electricity did make a courtesy call recently to the Chinese Embassy, however.

There has been more open news about China in the DPRK since last year, and most of it is of the law-and-order, anti-Japanese variety.  A few examples: 
North Korea praises China’s crackdown on “indecent publications” ( http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news10/20110410-08ee.html ) lauds Huanqiu Shibao rhetorical attack on Japanese contaminated water (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news12/20110412-19ee.html), describes China’s efforts to tighten border security with Laos  (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news18/20110418-31ee.html ), a country that has seen more than a few North Korean refugees coming across the border thanks to missionaries like Mike Kim.

In return, China praises North Korean environmental policy, stroking a bit of “Eco-Kimism,” if you will (http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news21/20110421-07ee.html ).

One of the more curious items of praise in the KCNA dispatches of the last couple of weeks was about a 
Chinese businessman lauded for “saving Korean girls” ( http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2011/201104/news12/20110412-35ee.html).

This generously vague bit of praise indicates that Chinese capitalists can be considered friends to the North Korean revolution, when in fact Chinese  capitalists have up until this point been some of the most hated characters in North Korean fiction such as Sea of Blood. 

The Jilin Symphony Orchestra in Pyongyang, April 2011, photo courtesy Chinese Embassy in the DPRK

China’s Cultural Diplomacy Offensive

The growth of Chinese “soft power” in the modern era is one of the great stories of our day.  Why?  Because it inspires fear!

This short clip from the popular American television show “South Park” describes young Eric Cartman’s nightmare of a Chinese-dominated world, a dream which stems from his having watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

South Park

So what if the Chinese are just hearkening back to drumming traditions of the diverse — far from totalitarian — Warring States period?

Meanwhile, ostensible successor to Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping, is in Europe for the next two weeks.  He begins in Brussels, where he helps to kick off an immense cultural festival called Europalia, set to run until the Chinese New Year hits on February 14, 2010.

Unfortunately, the exhibition looks fairly stodgy — there are Chinese avant-garde artists teeming in Francophone Europe, but instead we get Qianlong’s scrolls.  Great?  To be sure.  But to be a truly magnificent cultural power, China really needs to hold up its innovators and its diversity.  Perhaps far, far too much to ask of the CCP, whose idea of innovation is to stage Turandot in the Bird’s Nest while beating up the architect.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (2nd, L) and Belgian King Albert II (2nd, R) watch exhibits during Europalia China art festival in Brussels, capital of Belgium, Oct. 8, 2009. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)

Europalia’s official site explains that this is the first time the festival has focused on China.  Japan won the honor in 1989; today that program is just a grainy scan on a website as China ascends soaring over even Oe Kenzaburo, honored that year.  Today, naturally, there is a performance Xinjiang song and dance ensemble, in which one gets to implicitly celebrate China’s control over that vast region under the warm cloak of the Silk Road.   (Europalia’s mission is available here, in French.)

Meanwhile, the royal family of Brussels can rub elbows with the CCP travelling elite and sing the praises of China.

And Barack Obama wins the Nobel Prize!  Is this man the harbinger of an American cultural counter-offensive in East Asia?  Not if the Goethe Institute and the Alliance Francais (and now the Cervantes Institute!) continue their dominance astride the cultural quarter in Chaoyang!