Thanks for posting the article on the Falun Gong movement and the thumbnail sketch of anti-Confucianist rebellions. Like many articles in English on the subject of the history of rebellion and revolution in China, it belittles any revolt which weakened the Authoritarian systems, especially those systems which the West has traditionally like to see fortified in China. The article vividly illustrates the thesis of Edward Said in his book, Orientalism. Namely, that the historical, cultural, and journalistic explication of the "EAST" by Western scholars follows a narrowly defined pattern, almost always in keeping with Western imperial interests. Some additional information might be useful for clarifying the record regarding rebellion in China, especially as it is connected with the works of Ezra Pound. The main point in what follows is not to prove conclusively that one interpretation of Chinese history is the right one, but to show how Pound deliberately excludes certain facts and interpretations of Chinese history which fall out side of his ideological purview. Scholars may disagree on the reasons for the failure of the T'ai P'ing government of 1851-1864. Among these are listed 1) China's insufficient economic development, 2) the direct intervention of European military forces, 3) the inexperience and corruption of various T'ai P'ing leaders. Yet, all are agreed that, whatever its causes, the uprising was one of the most significant events in Chinese history during the last several centuries. Pound's use of the phrase T'ai P'ing to evoke a Confucian maxim ("The Peace of the Empire depends entirely upon the existence of good manners and customs") must have unintended consequences. It is virtually impossible for the scholar of Chinese history to see the phrase without reflecting on the massive mid-19th century rebellion. When Pound admonishes readers to "get a dictionary and/learn the meaning of words" he encourages them, whether or not he has such an intention, to discover the events of the T'ai P'ing rebellion. For instance, in Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary, mention is made of "the Taiping rebels" under the entry for T'ai (M 6020, 20). A more modern dictionary, such as The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary, edited by Beijing Foreign Languages Institute professor Wu Jingrong, notes under the entry Taiping, "the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1851-1864), established by Hong Xiuquan during the Taiping Revolution, the largest of peasant uprisings in China's history." Sample sentences are provided in this dictonary such as, "Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace [Taiping] prevail." But certainly the overall historical meaning of the rebellion was something Pound did not wish to allude to, given the Taiping's opposition both to imperialism and to Confucianism. The rebels denounced the unequal treaties which the Ching government had been forced, at gunpoint, to sign with the Western Powers and Japan. Also, as Wu Tien-wei explains, At the very beginning, the Great Peace move- ment assumed an anti-Confucian stand, attacking the twin authorities of divine power and the Confucian way, the cornerstones of feudal society. When the revolutionary army swept north it burned Confucian temples and destroyed all idols . . . Judging from their iconoclastic spirit and their practice of discarding Chinese tradition, the Tai-pings probably did more to destroy the Confucian social order than any other group and movement, either before or after them. (Wu Tien-wei, 72-73). Such a heavy blow to Confucian society and thought was something that Pound ignored at his peril, since it rendered his whole view of Confucius socio-politically anachronistic. The T'ai P'ing rebellion was not an isolated anti-Confucian moment, but the culmination of a historical trend which served to pave the way for the successful anti-Confucian campaigns of the 20th century. The writings of the movement's founder, Hong Xiuquan, were an indirect negation of monarchical dictatorship, opposition to which became a key point in the bourgeois democratic revolution in 1911. The Taipings had the courage to depose Confucius, the spiritual idol eulogized as "Ultimate Sage and Foremost Teacher" by the feudal ruling class in the past dynasties. They said that the Confucian code was worth nothing, and condemned the "Four Books" and the "Five Classics" of the Confucian school as "books of sorcery." They condemned feudal literature on the teachings of the "sages" and so, in a sense heralded the new culture movement in the May 4th period (1919) with its slogan of "Down with the Confucian Shop." (Compilation Group, Taiping Revolution, 174-175). Pound refuses to take such movements seriously, and in fact, ignores all post-18th century Chinese historical events, because they cast doubt on his assumptions concerning Chinese social stability. He likewise virtually ignored the peasant rebellions which occurred throughout the periods of Chinese history covered in the Cantos. Whereas Mao Tse-tung1 saw peasant revolts as a manifestation of class struggle which, together with the peasant wars "constituted the real motive force of historical develop- ment in Chinese feudal society," the Confu- cianists viewed the peasant revolts as reflecting moral decay and the loss of social equilibrium and harmony in the cyclical process of decline and regeneration in history (Wu Tien-wei, 63). It is useful to contrast Pound's view of Chinese history with Mao's. Mao held that successful peasant revolts became revolutions which were, in turn, followed by newly established dynasties. Since the dynastic changes usually sprang up in response to such revolts, Mao maintained that mass movements, and not the actions of individual monarchs and their advisors, should be the subject of history. There were hundreds of uprisings, great and small, all of them peasant revolts or revolutionary wars -- from the uprisings of Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang in the Qin dynasty, those of Xinshi, Pinglin, the Red Eyebrows, the Bronze Horses, and the Yellow Turbans in the Han Dynasty, those of Li Mi and Dou Jian-de in the Sui dynasty, those of Song Jiang and Fang La in the Song dynasty, that of Zhu Yuan-zhang in the Yuan dynasty, and that of Li Zi-Cheng in the Ming dynasty, down to the uprising known as the War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the Qing dynasty. The scale of peasant uprisings and peasant wars in Chinese history has no parallel anywhere else (Mao, Works, 2:308). Pound mentions none of these rebels or revolutionary movements. He takes the Confucian stand, refusing to dignify any anti-Confucian movements by including them in the Cantos. Thus, his technique of treating Chinese history would seem to be non-dialectical, certainly in the Marxist sense, because he ignores the "motive force" of class contradiction. [continued in next post] ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com