Notes from the Middle Kingdom: Three Men Make a Tiger

So it’s come to this, unoriginal as we are, that we are now imitating China in terms of looking for easier things to blame for lung-related deaths than our reliance on combustible engines. For in the UK, wood fires have recently caught the headlines as a serious contender to the current state of the nation’s air pollution problem.

It’s already taken me long enough to get used to whippets (arriving back from China and asking ‘What, does everyone just crave desserts nowadays?’) being widespread, to now only find out what most disaffected post-millennials (I refuse to call them Generation Z,) like to do on a bleak and sundry night. They apparently gather together around some kindling, start a good oak fire then huddle around it to tell tales of the ole’ times when a mythical creature called ‘optimism’ roamed these here plains.

I say trailing behind China, because it wasn’t long ago that their own air pollution problem was also blamed on a number of fairly questionable culprits. Chuar barbeques (see NFTMK No.1 throwback!) have been publicly shamed, as have fireworks, international espionage and an overall decline in patriotism, but never car emissions or illegal coal mines and refineries, the former seemingly also centrally to blame here in the UK.

Still I scoff (should that be cough?) loudly and with life affirming bits of lung dislodging themselves, when I read about the dangerously high levels here in the UK. ‘45 PM2.5? Call me again when it gets to 500 and then we’ll throw a WHO themed Pollution Party and I’ll come dressed as a micro-toxin.’  But I digress. I’m not here to criticise either country for their own terrible attempts to bury their collective feathery skulls. It’s all cyclical for sure. In Beijing, I’d often see images of the Great Fog of London trotted out by students, whereupon they’d remark “Britain went through this to reach industrialisation, so why can’t we?” Go ahead…I suppose?

But I do think that we Nottinghamites have a lot to learn here from China in terms of not just stubbornly refusing to accept the, if not exactly clear then certainly obvious, reality but rewriting it accordingly to how we want to perceive things. It’s an incredibly freeing opportunity.

One of the most amazing articles that I ever read in a Chinese newspaper was called "Five unexpected gains the haze has brought." These were that it would protect Beijing from international attack, improve the minds and geographical knowledge of the populace, unite all social classes under the same carcinogenic blanket thereby eradicating social difference and of course, it would give everybody a better sense of humor. What else can you do when the sky looks unbelievably bleak but laugh? Shit was epically satirical, and I can’t believe to this day that it managed to get published. But it’s a good tactic to consider. When ONS places Nottingham low on the list of household incomes, this is not a reason to strike back with disdain. We’re there because we eschew gaudy materialism in place of more rewarding, spiritual gains. We’re just frugal is all, we do more with less. It’s all about how you interpret the evidence.  

Taking this ideological turn, gives us license to rewrite history. Not being able to compete to be a European city of culture was a godsend! For it would have made us weak and complacent. Following the Chinese educational reliance on negative reinforcement, would we have continued to create great music, film and art if we were allowed to waddle like princelings on our backs, stuffing our maws with undeserved cake? No! Better to have our hand slapped rigorously aside, the door of opportunity slammed loudly in our faces. It will make us want it more, strive harder and never tire! Who cares if we develop a crippling inferiority complex in a few years, we’ll be better artistic industrialists until we implode.

It’s just classic spin. Three-eyed fish are better than two etc. Many museums in China have also taken this to heart, installing endless galleries containing nothing but historical replicas that serve to support some rather spurious claims. In the various ages of warring Dynasties, it was common practice after a spate of violent civil war for the victorious clan to take all of the historical artefacts of the previous rulers and destroy them, claiming that they’d never existed. Revolutions of the cultural kind have never been solely 20^th century property. One notable account recalls a newly appointed warlord taking all of the previously sacred scrolls and publicly wiping himself with them. If this sounds absurd, picture how unsurprised you’d be to see on tomorrow’s front page, the physical personifications of deceit, gluttony and bile: Gove, Johnson & Farage doing exactly the same and then revel in just how far we’ve done come.

But license to rewrite history would make the castle museum a lot more interesting. ‘Here is the Starbucks cup used by Friar Tuck before his type 2 diabetes kicked in. In this painting over here we see Alan Rickman wholly supporting the self-righteous, flagellating crusade then known as Brexit, later to be referred to as The Great Clusterf**k.’ Then, when the whole thing turns tits up, we can just re-canvas the painting and rewrite history as if it never happened, problem solved!

Chinese does love itself some idioms. One that comes to mind is: 三人成虎 (san ren cheng hu), or ‘Three people accomplish tiger.” The idiom tells of how when one villager comes running to the gates shouting about feline fearful symmetry, no one takes much heed. But by the third panicked voice it’s best to believe that there really is a Tiger out there. So, the moral of the story is that if enough people say something is true, then eventually it comes to be believed as such. Chinese idioms don’t often pitch for happy endings. During many a conversation between my teacher and I, we’d reach the end of such a lesson and her concluding point would be “Is it better to learn what should be, or what is?” Then I would leave feeling that perhaps if I had a less philosophical language class, I might progress more with adverbial phrases.

However, we could go further with this. Sure we’ve held onto our status as a UNESCO city of literature, but we only won that through irksome hard work and grit. While parts of Edinburgh and Bath might be able to legitimately claim architectural lineage, we could follow the likes of the city of Datong, where in a somewhat ill-fated push demolished vast swathes of the existing city to recreate 200 BC Han Dynasty China.  Never have ancient walls seemed so crispy and full of polyfibre.

Look, we already do it with the cliff face underneath the castle (find that sweet plastic hollow spot yet?) so why not finish what we’ve started? Both to increase those soon to be ever dwindling numbers of international tourists and to really get some of that historical kudos back. Let’s rebuild the castle pre burning of 1831, and then ceremoniously re-burn it again once a fortnight! We could sell tickets, memorabilia...not to mention of course, the combustion of all of those cheap building materials would put us miles ahead on the UK air pollution map! For if there’s one thing that we here in Nottingham understand, it’s that if you can’t be famous, be infamous. Happy castle cremations everybody.