The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Anxieties, Hopes, and Moral Tensions in Everyday Life
200
The Chinese Pursuit of Happiness: Anxieties, Hopes, and Moral Tensions in Everyday Life
200Paperback(First Edition)
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520306325 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 09/24/2019 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 200 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
The Changing Notion of Happiness
A History of Xingfu
LANG CHEN
Xingfu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) means happiness, or to be happy, in Chinese. The word drew tremendous public attention in China in October 2012, when the party-state television channel (China Central Television, aka CCTV) aired a special program on the 7:00 p.m. news every day during the weeklong National Day/midautumn holiday. CCTV reporters had approached about two thousand people and asked if they are xingfu. The program, Reaching the Grass Roots: People's Voices from Within (Zoujin jiceng, baixing xinsheng), dedicated itself to "joyfully anticipating" the eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party, which was to be held approximately one month later. What may have been most impressive about the program, and what people still recalled five years later, were some of the eccentric answers to the reporter's query. The question was "Are you xingfu?" and it seemed to puzzle or confuse some rural or working-class people.
"What were you saying?" asks a woman vendor, laughing. "Am I xingfu? Of course, I am! I'm selling things — of course, I'm xingfu." She turns to another vendor and says, "She asked me if I'm xingfu. How funny this sis is!" "Xingfu?" replies a young migrant worker in a train station, frowning and thinking seriously. "This is knotty — It's hard to say."
An older migrant, relaxing in the sun, tells the reporter, "I just came to work from the province. Don't ask me." When asked again, he takes the question "Are you happy?" (Nin xingfú ma) to mean "Is your family name Fu" (Nin xing fù ma); he answers nonchalantly and innocently, "My family name is Zeng."
Answers like these immediately became memes; the most nonsensical example, "My family name is Zeng," was praised online as the best answer ever. Parody videos of the interview popped up on the internet, with people giving deliberately funny answers or being sharply critical of the question. Weibo, the Chinese version of Tweeter, became a carnivalesque playground for people to mock the survey.
In including such amusing footage in the program and broadcasting it during the normally poker-faced evening news, CCTV seemed to be trying to make a gesture of humor and candidness. The network even included a few negative answers to the question. Broadcast three months after the UN General Assembly proclaimed March 20 the International Day of Happiness, the program also seemed to be a response to criticisms of China's blind pursuit of an ever-larger gross domestic product, as well as the country's attempt to follow the global trend of promoting national happiness. However, these efforts were not at all appreciated by most of the audience. Beneath their laughter one could discern irritation, dissatisfaction, and even harsh political criticism. A well-known public intellectual posted on Weibo: "The word xingfu is rather popular recently. ... It is because some people want to use 'Xingfu China' as the new slogan of governance. ... This, just like [the slogan of] 'Harmonious China,' only shows the government's lack of [real] political tenets, which should have been impartiality, justice, democracy and legislation." Ren Zhiqiang, an even more high-profile public figure, condemned the CCTV survey as a "very stupid hoax."
This incident, labeled "Xingfu gate" by some dissident media, clearly demonstrates the specifically political nature of the word xingfu, which other Chinese words denoting happiness lack. Despite the utterly disastrous outcome of the CCTV interviews, xingfu has continued to play an important role in the ideology of the party-state. A search of party organs such as People's Daily and Guangming Daily reveals the boggling frequency with which the word appears in political articles. In this essay I am conducting an archeology of the word xingfu, in order to better understand its connotations and applications in the contemporary context.
While xingfu is a very common word with a seemingly straightforward meaning in both written and spoken Chinese, just like the English word happiness, it has a loaded history. Before the twentieth century, the word xingfu rarely meant happiness, and happiness was conveyed through other words. One of those words in classical Chinese is fu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which mostly refers to material prosperity; unless specifically indicated, it carried hardly any moral connotation. Cultural elites often despised amoral passion for material prosperity and labeled such an attitude xingfu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The antithesis of this attitude was the pursuit of le ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII?]), the inner joy derived solely from being virtuous, transcending one's material desires and conditions. Le and fu may be regarded as opposite ends of the spectrum of how happiness was understood in China, and various efforts have been made to harmonize the two, such as the karma theory and the Confucian idea of the "interaction between heaven and men" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). I consider the new use of the word xingfu in the early twentieth century another attempt to harmonize fu and le, as the means previously used to tackle this issue became unsatisfactory. This may well have been the first time this harmonization was attempted by using a single word. Yet, because of the intrinsic ambiguity of its meaning, xingfu has been constantly redefined since its modern debut.
My goal in this chapter is to elaborate new understandings of happiness in early twentieth-century in China as embodied in the change of meaning of the word xingfu. Xingfu had been used mostly pejoratively, except when it was used to describe someone's humble gratitude toward a superior, especially the emperor and other members of the royal family. The change in its meaning was not merely a linguistic one but involved and embodied clashes and negotiations of conflicting views of history, social hierarchy, and so forth. How is xingfu different from other traditional Chinese expressions of happiness? Does it carry any special connotation that the English word happiness does not? Is it considered to mean the satisfaction of desires for external things or the inner joy transcending such desires? A human right or a gift bestowed by the state? A concrete "good feeling" about this very moment or a utopian vision of the future? If happiness could be all these things, how are such contradictory definitions related or reconciled in Chinese contexts? These are the questions that I address here.
EXPRESSIONS OF HAPPINESS IN CLASSICAL CHINESE
The Sinologist François Jullien, studying the Daoist philosophy of Zhuangzi, has asked why Chinese thought "never made the idea of happiness explicit" and why "it showed so little interest in happiness." By using happiness, Jullien refers specifically to that of the Western tradition, a tradition that, according to him, associates happiness with finality and telos. Other scholars, such asWolfgang Bauer and Koon-ki Ho, nonetheless point out that the search for happiness has been enduring and ubiquitous in China one need not be a well-trained anthropologist to observe the fervent pursuit of a happy, prosperous life in temples or during festivals in a Chinese community. So what is (or are) the Chinese kind (or kinds) of happiness, if there is such a thing?
One of the words indicating happiness in classical Chinese is fu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which is the second character in the term xingfu. The character fu appeared as early as the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE) in bone scripting used for divination. Its radical (the left side of the character) indicates its original relationship to sacrifice. The right side may explain its connection to fu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which means abundance and richness. The original meaning of fu may well be the meat that is used for sacrifice, whereas the most authoritative premodern dictionary, Shuowen jiezi, defines fu as blessing or divine protection ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). While fu is definitely related to heaven, it also must be embodied on Earth. Fu is specifically defined in the Book of Documents (Shangshu) as including longevity, prosperity, health, cultivating virtue, and death by a natural cause. Around the beginning of the Common Era, these "Five Fu" were redefined as longevity, prosperity, high social status, an untroubled life, and plenty of offspring. The character fu appears in various forms of folk art such as print and paper cutting, which are often posted on walls, doors, and windows of Chinese households, especially at the time of the Lunar New Year. It is also the name of a deity, the first of the "Three Stars," which collectively symbolize a complete bundle of good things in life and have been enjoying great popularity in China. The two other stars, Lu and Shou, refer to rank and longevity, respectively, whereas Fu refers to an untroubled, happy life in a more general sense.
Although cultivating virtue had been listed as one of the five fu, it was hardly considered an important element unless specifically mentioned. A great amount of evidence — most dating from the eleventh century on — shows that the worldliness and amorality of fu has been criticized by cultural elites. Obviously, the concept of fu is far from adequate to define happiness in the Chinese context. Cultural elites considered people to be ignorant if they took worldly fu as the primary or only pursuit of their life, and the elites regarded a religion to be misleading if it taught people to do so. For this reason, in sharp contrast to its modern usage, the phrase xingfu ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], also written as [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) when used before the twentieth century usually describes an ignorant, blind pursuit of fu. The character xing means luck, often with the connotation that people do not deserve the good fortune they experience or do not receive the punishment they deserve. As a result, when xing and fu are put together, xing functions as a verb that takes fu as its object, and thus the whole phrase usually would be translated as "obtaining fu by luck" or "indulging oneself in fu, which is obtained by luck."
For example, in commenting on a sentence from The Analects of Confucius, "The unrighteous avoid their due punishments by mere good fortune (xing)," the famous philosopher Zhang Zai (1012–1077) wrote: "If one's life is righteous and follows the Principle, then he accepts both the good and bad that happen to him. For the unrighteous, even if he does not indulge himself in the fu that he obtained by luck from his unrighteous deeds ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), he would try to avoid suffering by giving up his moral principle." Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692), another renowned scholar who lived in the seventeenth century, further commented on Zhang Zai's words, stating that for the unrighteous, "when having a smooth life, they merely obtain such fu by luck (xingfu, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]); when harsh situations occur, they would certainly give up their morality in order to be safe. There are people who fortunately obtain fu by accident."
Here, both Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi use xingfu pejoratively. Confucians like them value morality more highly than fu. Sacrificing moral righteousness to obtain fu is particularly despicable. Being upright represents an end in itself, not a means to obtain fu. This attitude is praised as "having no heart/mind of xingfu" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) by a twelfth-century writer commenting on an instruction in the Book of Rites (Li ji) about the proper attitude toward sacrifice: when conducting sacrifice, the virtuous person serves heaven as a son serves his parents with filial piety, in the sense that he does not expect to gain anything for himself through his service. This is echoed by a text that dates to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century: "The purpose of being virtuous is neither to xingfu (i.e., to obtain fu by luck, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) nor to bring fame to oneself; I just act according to my conscience and capability." The person who followed this principle would be extolled by others as a "noble man" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]).
According to these cultural elites, although fu is a kind of good or happy life, it is not to be pursued as the goal of life, as it is predicated upon so many contingencies. In the eyes of some Confucians, religions that promise fu to their devotees as a reward for their devotional deeds are misleading and even deceptive. In fact, the earliest and perhaps most well-known use of the phrase xingfu described the Emperor Xian of the Tang dynasty, who worshipped Buddha relics but still died at an early age. The New History of the Tang, compiled in the eleventh century, comments on this case: "As for trying to enjoy fu but ending up with suffering ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), there is no better example [than this]." Another text, written in the sixteenth century, explicitly charges that Daoist and Buddhist practices — such as fasting, giving alms, and performing rituals — are attempts to acquire profits through deceit and to pursue fu, which is in fact mere good fortune ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The author condemns these practices as causing ignorance, says they are as evil as robbery, and urges Confucians to refrain from them.
Notwithstanding the common pejorative usage of the word xingfu, there is a riveting exception in classical Chinese. On some rare occasions when one is interacting with a superior, especially royalty, this prejorativity is replaced by a connotation of self-deprecation. The word xing expresses one's humbleness, indicating that the speaker does not really deserve such good fortune but merely got lucky. For example, in a memorial written in 778, the author, a Buddhist monk, expressed his feeling of being fortunate ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) to have been commissioned to perform a fire ritual for the emperor; the success of the ritual, he suggests, should not be attributed to the author but to the virtues of the emperor, which matched the virtues of heaven and brought fu to his subjects. This example draws our attention to two things. First, in some special contexts the word xingfu could have a connotation of indebtedness and gratefulness, which may have survived in the word's modern transformation. Second, as I have shown, while many cultural elites were fully aware of the potential conflict between following moral principles and obtaining worldly fortune (fu), they considered the virtues of the emperor and the prosperity of his country congruent. I will return to this discrepancy later and discuss how it was justified.
For the elite who criticized the blind pursuit of fu, the antithesis was the search for le ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Etymologically related to sounds of music, this word emphasizes the subjective side of happiness. It could refer to any pleasures, no matter how transitory or physical they are, a meaning that is preserved in the modern word kuaile ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). However, traditional literati often used le to signify inner joy, the kind of happiness that they regarded as more reliable than fu. Modern scholars have noticed this usage of le and defined it as "attainable enjoyment/contentment," which is "expanding, absorbing and lasting" and thus "carrying with it a moral tone," or as "pleasures that one can rely upon" and "that sustain rather than consume." Of course, le does not always have a moral connotation, nor is it the only Chinese word that refers to a kind of happiness that transcends hedonism or material satisfaction. Nevertheless, le is the word used most frequently in contrast with fu as an alternative ideal of happiness, especially under the influence of neo-Confucianism.
The extolment of le goes at least as far back as Confucius's Analects, which says: "In eating of coarse rice, drinking of plain water, and using of one's elbow for a pillow, joy [le] is to be found. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means have as much to do with me as passing clouds." Here, le is contrasted with things like "wealth and rank," which belong to the domain of fu. By the same token, Confucius highly praises his disciple Yan Hui for his genuine joy (le) in spite of poverty. Unlike fu, le is much more subjective, requiring only minimal external conditions. In the eleventh century, the philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073) highlighted this virtue of Yan Hui's, and his words served as the basis for the famous phrase "joy of Confucius and Yan Hui" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and became a classic expression of the Confucian ideal that literati were expected to follow from the eleventh century on. In one essay composed in the twelfth century, the author reflects that he named his house "Thinking of Joy" (le, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) to warn himself not to become attached to fu, which is gained only through luck and would eventually bring suffering ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). This essay very explicitly contrasts le and fu. The former has a much more reliable foundation than the latter; this foundation is one's inner feeling, unaffected by external, unpredictable fate or other conditions.
(Continues…)
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