Social Science

Huns

nomadic and pastoral people of unknown ethnological affinities who originated in N central Asia, appeared in Europe in the 4th cent. , and built up an empire there. They were organized in a predominantly military manner. Divided into hordes, they undertook extensive independent campaigns, living off the countries they ravaged. The Huns have been described as short and of somewhat Mongolian appearance. Their military superiority was due to their small, rapid horses, on which they practically lived, even eating and negotiating treaties on horseback. Despite the similarity of their tactics and habits with those of the White Huns, the Magyars, the Mongols, and the Turks, their connection with those peoples is either tenuous or–in the case of the Magyars and the Turks–unfounded. The Huns appear in history in the 3d cent. , when part of the Great Wall of China was erected to exclude them from China. Called Hsiung-nu by the Chinese, the Huns occupied N China from the 3d cent. until 581. Having swept across Asia, they invaded the lower Volga valley c.372 and advanced westward, pushing the Germanic Ostrogoths and Visigoths before them and thus precipitating the great waves of migrations that destroyed the Roman Empire and changed the face of Europe. They crossed the Danube, penetrated deep into the Eastern Empire, and forced (432) Emperor Theodosius to pay them tribute. Attila, their greatest king, had his palace in Hungary. Most of the territories that now constitute European Russia, Poland, and Germany were tributary to him, and he was long in Roman pay as Roman general in chief. When Rome refused (450) further tribute, the Huns invaded Italy and Gaul and were defeated (451) by Aetius, but they ravaged Italy before withdrawing after Attila's death (453). Their later movements are little known; some believe that the White Huns were remnants of the Hunnic people. The word Huns has been used as an epithet, as for German soldiers, connoting destructive militarism.

Bibliography

See T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I (rev. ed. 1892, repr. 1967); W. M. McGovern, Early Empires of Central Asia (1939); E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (1948); F. Teggart, China and Rome (1969, repr. 1983); J. D. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (1973).

Attila

(symboltĭl´symbol, ăt´symbollsymbol) , d. 453, king of the Huns (445—53). After 434 he was coruler with his brother, whom he murdered in 445. In 434, Attila obtained tribute and great concessions for the Huns in a treaty with the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II, but, taking advantage of Roman wars with the Vandals and Persians, he invaded the Balkans in 441. Peace was made, and Attila's tribute was tripled. In 447 he again attacked the empire and spent the following three years negotiating a new peace. In 450, however, the new Eastern emperor, Marcian, refused to render further tribute as did Valentinian III, emperor of the West. In a bid for power, and without her brother's knowledge, Valentinian's ambitious sister, Honoria, jeopardized his peaceful relations with Attila by attempting an alliance with the Hun. Attila took her proposal as a marriage offer and demanded half of the Western Empire as a dowry, a demand that was refused. Leaving Hungary with an army of perhaps half a million Huns and allies, Attila invaded Gaul but was defeated (451) by Aetius at Maurica. Attila turned back and invaded (452) N Italy but abandoned his plan to take Rome itself. His withdrawal, often ascribed to the eloquent diplomacy of Pope Leo I, appears to have been motivated by a shortage of provisions and the outbreak of pestilence. Soon afterward in Hungary, Attila died of a nasal hemorrhage suffered while celebrating his marriage to Ildico. The fear Attila inspired is clear from many accounts of his savagery, but, though undoubtedly harsh, he was a just ruler to his own people. He encouraged the presence of learned Romans at his court and was far less bent on devastation than other conquerors. Often called the Scourge of God, he appears in many legends, particularly as Etzel in the Nibelungenlied (see under Nibelungen).

See C. D. Gordon, The Age of Attila (1960); O. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (1973)

A Whole New Asian Rap
Jin may be the first Asian-American hip-hop star

The New York Times > Magazine > Just Another Quick-Witted, Egg-Roll-Joke-Making, Insult-Hurling Chinese-American Rapper: "November 21, 2004
Just Ano"

November 21, 2004 Just Another Quick-Witted, Egg-Roll-Joke-Making, Insult-Hurling Chinese-American Rapper By TA-NEHISI COATES he first time Jin Auyeung heard LL Cool J's ''Mama Said Knock You Out,'' he fell in love. It was the mid-90's, the latter years of hip-hop's golden age. But Jin was about as far from the hip-hop nation as you could get. He was 12 years old, growing up in North Miami Beach, the son of hard-working young immigrants from South China who owned a strip-mall Chinese restaurant. Before discovering LL Cool J, his musical tastes consisted of New Kids on the Block and, he says, ''a lot of Michael Jackson.'' Photomontage by Zachary Scott Skilled in the art of one-on-one rap competitions, or battles, Jin faces a different test: translating verbal self-defense into a recording career. But ''Mama Said'' turned Jin into a hip-hop head. In his spare time, he scribbled down and memorized his hero's anthem. Then at parties, whenever the D.J. played ''Mama Said,'' Jin would plant himself in the middle of the dance floor and channel LL verbatim. After he reached high school, Jin expanded his repertory to include the younger artists who dominated hip-hop in the 90's, like Nas, Biggie Smalls and Wu-Tang Clan. At night, instead of doing homework, Jin would sit in his bedroom, transcribing Tupac lyrics and committing them to memory. North Miami Beach was racially diverse; Jin's family lived on a block with blacks, whites and Latinos. Still, Jin's parents made it clear which side of the racial divide they wanted him to come down on. Their restaurant was in a black neighborhood, a dozen blocks from their house, but they tried to keep Jin off the soul train. Asian merchants and their black customers have often been on uneasy terms. Jin's parents were no exception. As Jin put it to me: ''Their view was that some of them'' -- meaning African-Americans -- ''are ignorant to us, so we're going to assume that all of them are ignorant to us. I couldn't explain that these were my friends.'' No surprise, then, that Jin's love of hip-hop didn't go over so well with his parents. ''When I was listening to Michael Jackson, it was like: 'Oh, that's cool. He's listening to music! It's cute,' '' Jin said. ''Conflict didn't arrive until I started listening to rap music, and then it was like: 'Yo, what is this? You really think you're black, Jin? Bottom line -- you're not black, Jin.' '' Jin's parents moved to Queens in 2001, and Jin, now 22, still lives with them. They haven't given up on the idea of him marrying a nice Chinese girl, Jin said, though they have given up on him divorcing hip-hop. They respect the fact that Jin has gone from imitating LL Cool J to competing with him. Over the past three years, Jin has earned acclaim in the hip-hop world for ''battling'' -- a venerable ritual, dating back to the early days of hip-hop, in which two rappers verbally assail each other. Two years ago Jin's pugilistic skills earned him a contract with Ruff Ryders, the record label. In its early years, Ruff Ryders enjoyed success with hitmakers like Eve and DMX, but Eve has left the label, and DMX isn't the platinum-record machine of past days. The company hopes that Jin's first release, ''The Rest Is History,'' will improve its prospects. The record came out last month, and a few weeks before, I had lunch with Jin and his mother, April Auyeung, at Virage, a restaurant in the East Village. Offstage, Jin has none of the battle rapper's occupational arrogance. Baby-faced and 5-foot-6, he talks and jokes incessantly. At lunch, he ordered chicken Parmesan and bantered with his mother, reminding her of the family line about Jin's passion for rap lyrics. ''We used to joke that we'd brought home the wrong baby,'' she said, laughing and gazing over at her son. Jin's mother's admonition -- ''You're not black, Jin'' -- echoed throughout his childhood. But Jin never saw himself as anything but legit. Being Chinese didn't bother him; being confined by it did. So today, Jin accepts his status as the Great Yellow Hip-Hop Hope, but at the same time, he hates being called the Asian-American Eminem. It's complicated: he knows he isn't black, but he has chosen a medium defined by blackness. Which means that whether he's rapping about sweatshops, ladies, Tiananmen Square or partying, Jin is always dancing on the color line. rom the age of 5, Jin helped out in his parents' restaurant. He started by doing small errands and graduated to cleaning toilets, delivering food and counting money. Rap became Jin's escape. He started reciting his own lines, and then he took to making crude demo tapes, recording himself rapping over the instrumental B-sides of his favorite singles. Jin's antics always drew a crowd. His flair for the dramatic made him a natural for battling. At John F. Kennedy Middle School in North Miami Beach, he liked to challenge other fledgling rappers, usually black kids. An adept battle rapper uses his voice, timing, rhythm and wit to humiliate the opposition and win over the crowd. But early on, it was Jin who was humiliated, succumbing whenever his opponents hit him with an Asian joke, which they always did. ''I used to not know how to handle it, and that's how I'd lose,'' he said. ''I'm battling, kicking my rhymes, and he would come out and say something like: 'I'm hot; you're cold. You should go back home and make me an egg roll.' Something that simple, but he would have the crowd in a frenzy, an absolute frenzy. I would fall victim to it and just wouldn't know what to say.'' Battle rappers like to say that there are no rules in the ring, but Jin knew that if he retaliated in kind -- if he made any allusions to watermelon or fried chicken, say -- it would be a grave transgression. Asian slurs, by contrast, ''are absolutely too common for me to get mad at,'' Jin said. ''That's a shame, ain't it?'' Ultimately, Jin did what all sharp-witted children of immigrants do -- he used humor, disarming his opponents with cracks that recast his ethnicity as a weapon. ''Every person he battled had an Asian remark,'' said Cedric Reid, a high school classmate of Jin's now at Miami Dade College. ''He was ready for stuff like that. He would flip it on them so they knew, 'You got to come at me like a rapper, not like a racist.' And he'd have the crowd on his side.'' As Jin raps on his new record, ''In every battle, the race card was my downfall/Till I read 'The Art of War' and used it to clown y'all.'' In high school, Jin honed his battle skills. He won a local call-in radio contest so many times that the station forced him to retire. He was battling at home too, but in a different way. His parents continued to condemn his burgeoning hip-hop career, and they also banned black and Latino kids from their house. The war on the home front escalated when Jin turned 15 and fell for a black girl at school. When his parents heard the news, they threatened to throw him out of the house. ''There was an ultimatum,'' Jin said. ''The front door was open. It was serious. . . . I left the house for two days and came crawling back. I kept seeing her on the down-low. We eventually parted ways, but not because of my parents.'' A year after Jin graduated from high school, his parents closed their restaurant and moved the family to New York City, where Jin's grandparents lived. His father went to work in the family construction business, and his mother focused on bringing up Jin's younger sister. Jin chased battles all over the city, winning small pots of prize money. Two weeks after moving to New York, Jin met Kamel Pratt, who spotted him in an impromptu rhyme session at the corner of Broadway and Eighth Street and not long after became his manager. Pratt introduced him to the local hip-hop scene. He had a lot of time to devote, given that Jin was his first and only client, but he eventually got him his big break, an audition on ''Freestyle Friday.'' ''Freestyle Friday'' is a popular televised battle showcase -- an ''American Bandstand'' for the hip-hop set. The broadcast is a segment of ''106 & Park,'' a music-video show on Black Entertainment Television. Battle M.C.'s like Jin see the show as the fastest route to stardom. In February 2002, Jin was offered a spot on the show in a battle against a rapper named Hassan, the reigning ''Freestyle Friday'' champ. Neither Pratt nor Jin was impressed with Hassan; they figured his main weapon would be the sort of Asian jokes to which Jin was by now well accustomed -- corner stores, Bruce Lee, fortune cookies, fried won tons and, of course, slanted eyes. Since the rules of ''Freestyle Friday'' dictated that Jin go first, he needed to make sure he landed an early crippling shot. He opened with a few standard punch lines about Hassan's name and dress. Then he lowered the boom: ''Yeah, I'm Chinese, now you understand it/I'm the reason your little sister's eyes are slanted./If you make one joke about rice or karate/N.Y.P.D. be in Chinatown searching for your body.'' The crowd went wild. The show's hosts, Free and A.J., nodded and smiled. DJ Fatman Scoop, a New York radio personality, gave the champion a stern look and said: ''Hassan. Get focused. Immediately.'' But Hassan was too slow; he apparently couldn't alter his original strategy. Instead he offered an Asian joke that landed with a thud, and then with 15 seconds still on the clock, he stopped in midflow, sighed into the mike, lowered his head and quit. Jin went on to win ''Freestyle Friday'' for a record-setting seven straight weeks, and by the end of his final week, Ruff Ryders had offered him a contract. The first time I saw Jin, I didn't really see him at all. I was at a friend's house, talking sports, when his wife began frantically gesturing at the TV, which was tuned to BET. ''Have you seen this kid?'' she asked. Jin was by then well into his run on ''Freestyle Friday.'' There was Jin summarily dismantling some stiff unlucky enough to be attached to the opposing microphone. I laughed and shrugged the whole thing off. An Asian-American rapper? I smelled yet another gimmick: the model minority meets the miscreant. ''I think it's a shock for a lot of people to see Jin rap,'' says Serena Kim, features editor for Vibe. And the fact is when you look at Jin, it's hard to separate what is legitimately interesting about him from the sideshow. There's something a little shocking about watching him rap, not only because of specific Asian-American stereotypes -- the nerd, the overachiever, the serious kid -- but also because of the tension that exists in America between blacks and Asians. When I was a kid, growing up black in Baltimore, we had a derisive name for the corner store run by Asians. No one debated it; we didn't think we were being racist. To us, there was only one sort of racism -- the kind that white people perpetrated against blacks. ''As an Asian-American, you're constantly confronted with race,'' says Hua Hsu, a Chinese-American music writer. ''But you don't have that prominent a role in the discussion. You may feel a spiritual kinship with blacks and Latinos, but there's no real feeling back the other way.'' Making his record, Jin had to confront another sort of obstacle -- the infamous curse of the battle rapper. As flameouts like Craig G and Supernatural have proved, the skills that come with being a great battle rapper -- a quick wit, good stage presence and a combative personality -- don't necessarily help make you a successful recording artist. After Jin signed with Ruff Ryders, the label's co-C.E.O., Darrin (Dee) Dean, tried to impress upon him that making a record was different than winning a battle. Jin's wit and charisma would be useful, Dean said, only if Jin could tame them between 16 bars. He would need quality production, musicality, patience and, above all, style -- a persona to set himself apart. Every successful rapper defines himself in a new way. 50 Cent is the gangsta reborn. OutKast's Big Boi and Andre 3000 are the kings of eclecticism. It's not enough for Eminem to be white -- he is also hip-hop's dark humorist. So what is Jin? His first single, ''Learn Chinese,'' was released last year. Like his best battle rhymes, it plays on Asian-American stereotypes while trying to rebut them. But in emphasizing his ethnicity so blatantly, Jin risked turning himself into a oddity. Ruff Ryders delayed the release of Jin's album several times before it finally hit the stores. In that pause -- and with the release of ''Learn Chinese'' -- Jin developed a following that sees in him more things than he ever saw in himself: Jin as Brandon Lee fulfilled. Jin as pan-Asia's hip-hop ambassador. Jin as avenger of fried-rice jokes. ''I think every Asian-American kid with a passing interest in hip-hop knows who Jin is,'' says Jeff Chang, author of the forthcoming book ''Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.'' ''What little image of Asian-Americans that is out there has been focused on West Coast, suburban, usually middle-class or upper-middle-class Asian-Americans. What Jin represents is a completely different kind of thing. He's East Coast and working class, which speaks to what a lot of Asian-Americans see in themselves. He's carrying a lot on his shoulders.'' Asian-American hip-hop enthusiasts, however, do not make for much of a consumer market. White rappers like Kid Rock and Fred Durst could sell millions of albums without having a single black fan, but Jin can't make it big by selling only to the nation's million or so Asian teenagers. ''There's no perception that there is a market out there for a yellow rapper,'' Chang said. ''Not like there is for white rappers.'' In other words, to become a commercial success, Jin has to cast his lot with hip-hop's native constituency -- black people. ''It's extremely important,'' says Serena Kim at Vibe. ''That's the reason the Black Eyed Peas'' -- the Grammy-nominated boho-pop rap group -- ''aren't considered a legitimate group. They're huge, but they don't have a young black fan base. Jin has to develop that audience.'' Jin and his producers are still grappling with how to market him. In conversation, they try to play down Jin's ethnicity, and none of the songs on the album are as self-consciously ethnic as ''Learn Chinese.'' But Jin does venture out of conventional rap territory with pleas for cross-cultural tolerance, something that, in the swaggering rap vernacular, runs the risk of unpardonable corniness. Jin told me that he really wants to be known as a workingman's rapper, and the best song on his album, ''I Got a Love,'' a clever tribute to miserliness produced by Kanye West, the Chicago rapper and hip-hop producer, follows in that vein: That's why my old chick used to clash with me 'Jin why you get this fake Louis bag for me?' Actually you should be happy I purchased that I take this as a sign you don't want the matching hat. ''I can bring to hip-hop that middle-class, hard-working, 9-to-5 average Joe who really doesn't get represented in hip-hop,'' Jin said. ''As much as I love Jay-Z -- his lyricism, his charisma, his presence -- I can't ever truly relate. I'm not drinking Dom. I'm not cracking 500 Cristal bottles. Flying to St.-Tropez? I never even knew that was a real place.'' ne night last June, I went with Jin to the Ruff Ryders studio in Yonkers, where he spent four hours recording a track for ''The Rest Is History.'' Randy (Okre Boy) Williams, Jin's session engineer, took Jin's levels and then gave him the green light. The bass-heavy track banged out of several speakers. Jin stood in the booth nodding, half-dancing and rhyming at his cue. The studio grew more crowded as miscellaneous Ruff Ryders -- as the company's employees call themselves -- filtered in, some to watch Jin, but most to check the score from Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals. Jin finished the track around 1 in the morning, and everyone drifted downstairs to a lounge, to hang out. While the other members of the crew were reading magazines and killing time, Jin opened his laptop on a long boardroom table. He connected wirelessly to the Internet, and he started scrolling through one of his favorite Web sites, a database that archives old hip-hop lyrics. Jin's eyes were glowing as he focused on the screen, scanning through hip-hop's history and his own. He came upon the lyrics for ''Playground,'' a 1991 hit by Another Bad Creation, a bubblegum kiddie group of the day, and offered up an impromptu version of the song. Everyone cracked up. Jin kept scrolling through the lyrics of hip-hop has-beens, a fraternity he surely hopes not to join. Jin's album opened at No. 54 on the Billboard chart, selling 19,000 copies in its inaugural week. But in its second week, sales dropped to 10,000 units, and his position dropped to No. 112. ''I didn't have any expectations,'' Jin said when I asked him about the sales. He said he was much more excited about a battle he had just won at the Mixshow Power Summit in Puerto Rico. He took home a $50,000 pot and a Chevrolet Cobalt. Whether Jin's future lies in battling, making records or both, it was back at that table in the Ruff Ryders studio that he seemed most in his natural element. In the end, Jin's real persona is that of a hip-hop nerd. Even on the verge of potential stardom, or fulfilling his dream, there he was, reciting someone else's lyrics. He was clearly still the same guy who wrote down every word of LL's lyrics, who religiously read The Source and who used to walk through shopping malls looking for battles. It's an identity as real to him as race or class, but not one that will likely make him a platinum artist. As he clicked his way around the site, Jin ran down a few more of his favorites. At first the room was with him, offering responses to his recital -- recalling Another Bad Creation's beef with Kris Kross and other assorted trivia from rap history. But by the time Jin made it to the Wu-Tang member U-God's verse in the group's 1997 anthem ''Triumph,'' the others had grown weary. One of the Ruff Ryders engineers looked up and half-jokingly yelled, ''Yo, can somebody shut this kid up?'' Jin laughed, scrolled down to another song lyric and kept on rapping. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a staff writer for The Village Voice. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B), often cites a quote from Peter Drucker on this topic: "I will tell you a secret: Deal making beats working. Deal making is exciting and fun, and working is grubby. Running anything is primarily an enormous amount of grubby detail work…deal making is romantic, sexy. That's why you have so many deals that don't make sense."


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To get to know someone drive coast-to-coast with them in a broken down VW bug.
Friends and countrymen lend me your ears.
I like work. I can sit and watch it all day.
Familiarity breeds contempt.
If you like this program so much why don't you send more money?
Any computer program once finished will be immediately out of date.
Any computer program once finished will have to be rewritten.
A computer program is only as good as the last bug that was fixed.
If you think lawyers lie try statistics.
Eat drink and be merry and die fat and drunk.
You're a little weird but I like that in a person.
One of the most important features of the commercial version is the # of jokes
If this program doesn't work there's probably a reason for that.
The unexamined time series is not worth recording.
We have met the enemy it is us.
This darned machine won't give me what I want!
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes
I trust you but I'm not sure about your replacement.
Some programs like some people are a waste of time.
We have met the enemy it is us.
AUTOBOX is a triumph of the human programmer
There are more ways to do it wrong than there is to do it right.
Numbers are to statisticans what paint is to artists.
Numbers are to paint what statisticans are to artists.
Paint is to art as numbers are to statisticans.
Art may fade but STATISTICS endures.
This above all: To thine ownself be true.
It's not that I don't trust you but nobody lives forever.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
All I know is that you've been wrong before.
Say the magic word and you'll receive $100.
If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
One man's noise is another man's signal.
If you can't stand the cold get out of the garage.
"Mortals can not become immortal" ...Pliny
The world is 70% water.
Imagination is creativity day-dreaming.
I do not fear statistics I fear the lack of statistics.
Those who make you laugh are the ones you do not love.
Those who make you cry are the ones you love.
Imagination is creativity day-dreaming.
John Bull's other island.
Time series data is ubiquitous.
The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.
Don't get saucy with me Bernaise !
Please don't annoy me with facts my mind is made up.
Confusion creates opportunity.
Please don't annoy me I'm memorizing whats in memory.
Statisticians keep statistics.
Statisticians do it by the numbers and to the numbers.
I'm not enjoying this the least bit.
Freedom is the right to choose your own chains.
You were right but for the wrong reason.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
The untested computer program is not worth using.
In the beginning I wasn't sure about you but now I am.
Better here than in Philadelphia.
If California is the future I'll take Camden.
Are you sure about that.
Statisticians do it by the numbers.
Sorry but your time is up.
ScitsitatS spelt backward is STATISTICS.
My patience with you has reached the critical level.
You never miss the water 'til the well runs dry.
Yours is a face that could launch a thousand ships.
Sometimes it's better to take a small gain rather than a large loss.
Sometimes a bannana is just a bannana.
We have just advised management that you are spending too much time on this
The critical limit on the number of allowable human errors has been exceeded
Stop reading these messages and get back to work.
You really should disable this function as it slows up the CPU.
If you're soo smart why didn't you major in statistics.
You are statistically significant
You are statistically insignificant
Loose lips sink ships.
I never met a statistic I didn't like.
There is no such thing as bad statistics just bad statisticians.
When in doubt use statistics.
Statisticians like all scientists overemphasize the utility of their tools
The real world is always more complex than the simple statistical model.
Always use historical not hysterical data.
Give me a lever and I will move the earth . Archimedes
Give me a computer and I will move the earth .
A trend is a trend until it bends.
The data is never wrong but it could be the wrong data
If you could only see her through my eyes.
It's too bad we can't forecast the future as well as the past.
Hindsite is forecasting in reverse.
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you can't even quit the game.
The place was so crowded that people don't go there anymore.
The Data is never wrong.
Never let data get in the way of theory.
The intermediate steps are obvious.
Live free or die.
The more disks that a program arrives on the better it is.
How come this program is so expensive but only comes on two disks?
If this program doesn't work give it a different set of numbers.
"That's not my job mister"
I'd rather be here with you than the best people.
"Would you like me to watch your car while you are gone ? "
"If the fans don't want to come out you cant keep them home". Y. Berra
Statisticians are to numbers what Ventriloquists are to dummies.
Statisticians do it with numbers.
AFS does not mean A Faulty Software Co. !
Figures don't lie but liars figure.
Farmers do it early in the morning.
Printers do it without wrinkling the sheets.
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Forecasters predict when they can do it.
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There is always one more feature that can be added to a program.
Let him who has taken the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
Your checksum didn't.
Beware of computer technicians who try to write software.
This program has more bugs than a June picnic.
A computer program should be both friendly and firm
Hold on! We will now format your hard disk!
Did you ever notice that disaster is only a keystroke away ?. .
A computer program should be like a wife dependable and loyal.
A computer program should be like a mistress exciting and a little flirtatious
For a good time call DAVE.
It doesn't pay to live in the past there's no future in it.
Statistics are numbers looking for an arguement.
Try everything once and the fun things twice.
Thomas meaning twin.
Forecast spelt backwards is AUTOBOX.
The Irish feel guilty while doing it.
The French word for forecasting: Previon
This game is a cliff-dweller. Y. Berra
Keep smiling. Everyone will think you know something they don't.
Practice moderation in all things but don't overdo it.
Take time to smell the flowers but try not to inhale a bee.
Do a little more each day and soon everyone will expect you to do more.
Laugh and the world laughs with you complain and you will get more attention.
Make etopy day a special day pretend it's friday.
Live life to the fullest fillup on the good stuff.
Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men. Lamont Cranston knows!
Greed is good.
Garbage in Gospel out
Work is good. Max Weber
Covering all your bases : slang: e.g. a dual major in computers and religion.
All David's are not created equal.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Sam.
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. H. L. Mencken
A king's castle is his home.
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
Operations Researchers do it with models.
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
A thousand points of light stay the course...
The mother of all statistical programs. AUTOBOX
Adultery is the application of democracy to love. - H. L. Mencken
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
Allen's Axiom: When all else fails follow instructions.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't sleep.
Allen's Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it- get a bigger hammer.
As goatherd learns his trade by goat so writer learns his trade by wrote.
Berra's Law: You can observe a lot just by watching.
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. H.Hoover
By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.
Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails read the instructions.
Center meeting at 4 pm in 2C-543
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
When you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Commoner's Second Law of Ecology: Nothing ever goes away.
Content of destination lost before copy
Continental Life. Why do you ask?
Crazee Edeee his prices are INSANE!!!
Creditors have much better memories than debtors.
Dan Quayle gaining acceptance...
Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see his face.
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
Don't eat yellow snow.
Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
All models are wrong. Some are useful.
Etorre's Observation: The other line moves faster.
Even a cabbage may look at a king.
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
Every purchase has its price.
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
After things have gone from bad to worse the cycle will repeat itself.
Fett's Law: Never replicate a successful experiment.
Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works something has gone wrong.
Once a job is fouled up anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Firestone's Law of Forecasting: Chicken Little only has to be right once.
First Law of Laboratory Work: Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.
Flee at once all is discovered.
Fools rush in where fools have been before.
CLICK HERE:Home Page For AUTOBOX

I visited the www.aol.com website today. I did so not because I have an AOL account but needing to explored using AOL IM as a communication tool.
Instead of getting the AOL page loaded. I got the following message.

Transfering data from http300.edge.ru4.com

wyciwyg://3/http://www.aol.com/

What is the world is AOL up to? Comments anyone?

World Boxing Council http://www.wbcboxing.com/WBCboxing/Portal/cfpages/print.cfm?docId=568

People throughout the world passionately love boxing February 2004 I received the following message from my friend Steve Crosson, in regard to the mistreatment of the Italian judge Mr. Cavallieri during the telecast of the recent highly competitive Gatti-Branco WBC title bout.

'So what’s new? HBO's self anointed sages cast aspersions on ring officials and sanctioning bodies as a matter of course. One would think that HBO management would insist that their on-air spokesmen refrain from capriciously damaging the network's valuable property, i.e., world class boxing TV rights. Indeed, Seth Abraham once told me that boxing rights were HBO's most valuable property'. I would add that by tolerating the cynical style of these commentators, the TV networks are effective participants in the continual slandering of many people in our beloved sport, by the abuse of their 'freedom ' in the use of a microphone and thus, back-stabbing boxing, while benefiting themselves precisely from those that they attack and who promote, fight and supervise their televised bouts. These actions, during a period that boxing is going through controversy, litigation and ingratitude, have indeed seriously damaged the roots of our beloved sport. However, it is clear that people throughout the world passionately love boxing, as they have since the time that man first inhabited the earth. Thus, in spite of those who work to destroy it, boxing will live for as long as there is hunger in the world and because of the passion, pride, honor , drama, dignity and nobility that it gives to society. Nonetheless, we respect commentators like George Foreman, who consistently teaches his on-air colleagues with their technical limitations. His commentary is excellent, without the need to offend, denigrate or slander. Even with all our mistakes as human beings, the leaders of the World Boxing Council are not happy with the bad faith exhibited in the behavior and actions of those apparently intent upon killing the sport. We shall continue fighting positively, with unwavering determination and passion, in our struggle for safety, opportunities for boxers, human equality and for justice. The WBC validated this mission by strongly ruling to provide an opportunity to Gianluca Branco, in the face of strident opposition. To the good people of boxing in the world, who are the most but least powerful, I invite to continue struggling in benefit of the sport that we love, as well as for the safety, welfare and human dignity. Thank you. Jose Sulaiman Ch. President

Headlines from the year 2029

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia formally known as California. White minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally . . . scientists stumped.

Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon).

Iraq still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.

Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut. (hey! I just sent it. I didn't write it!)

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

Florida voters still having trouble with voting machines.

25 minutes ago

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - This presidential election has been described by many as one in which morality mattered most to voters. But that perception may be driven at least partially by how pollsters asked voters about their priority issues.

AP Photo

Whether voters named "moral values" their key issue partly depended on whether that subject was included in a list of choices provided by pollsters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released Thursday.

When "moral values" was included in poll questions, it was named more often than any other issue. But when voters were just asked to name the issue most important in their vote for president — without being given a list of answers — moral values trailed the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and the economy, according to the Pew survey.

"The advantage of the open-ended question is it tells you what's at the top of mind for voters — what they're thinking," said Cliff Zukin, a veteran pollster and professor of public policy at Rutgers University. "Much too much has been made of the moral values answer."

Many Christian conservatives have sought to portray the election as validation for their emphasis on morality and the reason for President Bush (news - web sites)'s re-election. While it's true voters who picked Bush were more apt to cite morality as the reason, political analyst Thomas Mann said it's too simplistic to say that issue determined the winner.

"It's a big mistake to say it's all a function of religious conservatives being motivated," said Mann, of the Brookings Institution. But, he added, "To say it wasn't a factor is just as foolish."

In exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, "moral values" was one of seven items in a question that asked, "Which one issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for president." The other issues were taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, and health care.

Twenty-two percent chose "moral values," followed by the economy (20 percent), terrorism (19 percent) and Iraq (15 percent), according to the polls, which surveyed more than 13,600 voters and were conducted for The Associated Press and the major television networks.

The Pew Research Center polled 1,209 voters who said they cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election. When those voters were given a list, "moral values" was the most popular choice at 27 percent, followed by Iraq at 22 percent and the economy at 21 percent.

But when they were asked an open-ended question about the top issue, Iraq and the economy moved past moral values. Iraq was picked by 27 percent, the economy by 14 percent and moral values tied with terrorism at 9 percent.

"Moral values was an element in the Bush formula, but probably not the driving one," said Lee Miringoff, president of the National Council of Public Polls.

The Pew poll found that voters' reasons for picking "moral values" varies. Just over four in 10 of those who picked "moral values" from the list mentioned social issues like gay marriage and abortion, but others talked about qualities like religion, helping the poor, and candidates' honesty and strength of leadership.

"We did not see any indication that social conservative issues like abortion, gay rights and stem cell research were anywhere near as important as the economy and Iraq," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "'Moral values' is a phrase that's very attractive to people."

The Pew survey was taken Nov. 5-8 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

___

On the Net:

Pew Research Center — http://www.people-press.org

H U M A N I T I E S A N D T H E A R T S
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1197web/nanking.html

Nightmare in Nanking
By Sue De Pasquale

---

Iris Chang was a young child when her parents first told her stories about a slaughter of the Chinese people so horrible as to be almost beyond belief. She recalls their voices quivering in outrage, as the two university scientists talked of Japanese soldiers slicing Chinese babies into thirds and fourths. Of Chinese men used for bayonet practice. Of pregnant women disemboweled, their fetuses killed.

What Ying-Ying and Shau-Jin Chang were describing for their young daughter was a bloodbath that has come to be known as "The Rape of Nanking"--an eight-week orgy of torture and killing that began in December 1937 and left an estimated 300,000 Chinese men, women, and children dead.

"It was hard for me to even visualize how bad it was because the stories seemed almost mythical--people being chopped into pieces, the Yangtze River running red with blood," says Chang (MA '91) today. Chang's maternal grandparents had escaped Nanking just a few weeks before the killing began; though her parents had not yet been born at the time, both grew up hearing stories of the atrocities--stories that they in turn passed down to their American-born children, Iris and Michael. "It was very painful for me to think about, even then," she says.

As a grade schooler, Iris visited her local library in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to see what she could find in the history books. She found nothing, and remembers thinking: If the Rape of Nanking truly was as gory as my parents have insisted, then why hasn't anyone written a book about it?

Two decades later, someone has. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (BasicBooks/HarperCollins, 1997), by Iris Chang, is due out in bookstores later this month--in time to mark the dark event's 60th anniversary. While Chang's book is not the first to be written on the subject, it is the first narrative history aimed at a mass American market. Advance reviews have been favorable: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes has described it as "a powerful, landmark book"; Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai, calls it a "gripping account" that has been "meticulously researched."

HarperCollins is looking for sales to exceed 70,000 copies, and Newsweek will run a lengthy excerpt from the book in its November 17 issue. Newsweek also purchased rights to run the excerpt in its Japanese and Korean language editions, and its English-language European editions, which means that after more than half a century of relative obscurity, the story of the Nanjing Datusha, or Great Nanjing Massacre, will reach millions of readers. (Chang refers to the city as "Nanking" in her writing and speech because that was its English name at the time of the massacre.)

To Chang, this last news may be the brightest spot to arise out of her labors to write about this somber chapter in history. "This is a book I really had to write," she says. "I wrote it out of a sense of rage. I didn't really care if I made a cent off of it. It was important to me that the world knew what happened in Nanking back in 1937."

As important, Chang says, is that the Japanese government be made to own up to the massacre. "This book is an attempt not only to alert the world to what happened, but to enable the Japanese to look into their consciences and decide what they're going to do about it as a nation," she says. "They have not yet apologized for what happened. They certainly haven't paid any reparations. They have not faced up to their responsibility in the way that the Germans were forced to do over, and over, and over."

ON MEETING IRIS CHANG for the first time in Sunnyvale, California, I'm struck by how young she seems--even younger than the 29 years I know her to be. She is tall and thin, with straight, black hair that she pulls back from her face in a ponytail. As she leads me through a sunny courtyard to her poolside apartment, she is sweet and chatty; it's not hard to see how she wound up a princess on the Homecoming Court during her undergraduate years at the University of Illinois. What's harder to picture is how she spent several years immersed in such horror.

Chang graduated from Illinois in 1989 with a degree in journalism. She did a summer internship for Associated Press and spent a year reporting for the Chicago Tribune before landing in the science writing program at Hopkins's Writing Seminars. There, to the envy of more experienced writers who have spent years trying to get their first book published, Chang landed a contract halfway through her one-year program. She was barely 23 years old.

The fact that Chang was fluent in Mandarin helped immensely, says Susan Rabiner, who was then an editor and vice president at Basic Books (a division of HarperCollins). Rabiner was looking for someone to write a book about a brilliant Chinese scientist who had been a pioneer of the American space age. Rabiner knew only part of his name--Tsien--and that he had been deported to China during the height of the Communist hysteria of the 1950s. Once back in China, to the United States' lasting chagrin, he went on to transform a primitive military culture into one able to deliver nuclear bombs intercontinentally.

Chang faced formidable obstacles in tackling research for the biography. For starters, Tsien Hsue-shen, who still lived in China, refused to cooperate. For another, much of the military information she needed to track down in both China and the U.S. was classified. Then there was the highly technical nature of her subject matter.

The result of her labors, Thread of the Silkworm (Basic Books), was published in 1995. The book was not a commercial success; fewer than 10,000 copies have been sold to date. But Silkworm earned positive mention in The Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Nature, Science, and a host of other publications, both scientific and mainstream. The reviewers uniformly praised the young writer for her solid research and engaging style.

Rabiner, who had taken a chance on Chang, was impressed with the result: "Iris is an indefatigable researcher--very thorough and tenacious. That's her strongest trait," says Rabiner.

When Chang approached Rabiner about doing her second book on the Rape of Nanking, timed to commemorate its 60th anniversary, Rabiner says she and Basic Book's then-publisher "jumped on it right away. We both knew this was going to be extremely big." As Chang remembers it, the deal was signed within a few hours.

Chang sips lemonade as we talk in her writing studio, which turns out to be a room in the modest two-bedroom apartment she shares with husband Brett Douglas, a young Silicon Valley engineer. Her desk holds two of the largest, circular Rolodexes I have ever seen. One bulges with all of her contacts for the Silkworm book, the other her contacts for Nanking, she explains. On the wall across from her desk is a map of the city of Nanking, circa 1936. On it she has used colored markers to delineate landmarks: a pink line denotes "Cheng's Road," a green line traces "Tang's Road." Until recently, the map also held photos depicting scenes of torture and killing, taped to the spot in the city where they occurred. Chang says her husband was more than a little relieved when she had to take the photos down to send off to her publisher.

Indeed, the story of what happened in the days and weeks after Chinese forces invaded the city of Nanking does not make for easy viewing--or reading. To piece the story together, Chang examined primary source materials in four different languages (with the help of translators): Chinese, Japanese, German, and English. She read diary accounts of American missionaries and medical workers who were in Nanking at the time. She looked at photos and film footage that had been smuggled out of China. She combed articles that appeared in Japanese, English, and American newspapers. She corresponded with a former Japanese soldier who had taken part in the massacre. She examined reams of U.S. and German military communications. And she spent more than a month in Nanking, touring massacre sites and interviewing Chinese survivors.

In the days after the Japanese invasion, Chinese soldiers and civilians were mowed down by machine guns, used in decapitation contests, and burned alive. Photo courtesy Yale Divinity School Archives

The Japanese invasion of the Chinese capital of Nanking came at the midpoint of its war against China, which began in 1931 with the seizure of Manchuria and ended in 1945; during that period an estimated 10 million to 30 million Chinese perished, according to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, and Chinese war historians. As Chang lays it out, some 50,000 Japanese soldiers began smashing through the walls of Nanking in the pre-dawn hours of December 13, 1937. Carnage followed almost immediately, as tens of thousands of young Chinese men (both soldiers and civilians) were herded up and led to the outskirts of town, where they were mowed down by machine guns, used in bayonet practice and decapitation contests, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive. A Japanese military correspondent described one such orgy of killing this way: "Those in the first row were beheaded, those in the second row were forced to dump the severed bodies into the river before they themselves were beheaded. The killing went on non-stop, from morning until night, but they were only able to kill 2,000 persons this way." In the days and weeks that followed, Japanese soldiers raped more than 20,000 Chinese women (some estimates run as high as 80,000); many of these women, after being raped and abused by more than a dozen different men, were killed, while others were disemboweled, had their breasts sliced off, or were nailed alive to walls, Chang says. ("Perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman," wrote one former Japanese soldier to Chang in recollection, "but when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig.") And the chilling list of atrocities goes on: Chang documents routine cases of live burial and castration, of fathers being forced to rape their own daughters as family members looked on. Japanese soldiers reportedly hung some people by their tongues on iron hooks, and buried others up to their waists, then watched as they were torn apart by German shepherds.

Thousands of Chinese were saved, thanks to the efforts of two dozen Westerners who set up an international safety zone. The zone was led by a humanitarian Nazi named John Rabe. Photo courtesy Yale Divinity School Archives

Getting rid of all the bodies proved to be a monumental problem. One Japanese general complained in his diary that it was nearly impossible to find ditches large enough to dispose of 7,000 to 8,000 corpses at a time. Some soldiers attempted cremation, but ran out of gasoline and instead left mountains of smoldering corpses. Some ponds in the city actually disappeared because the bodies absorbed all the water. Chang says many of the bodies were dumped into the Yangtze River, lending credence to her parents' earlier stories of the Yangtze running red with blood. The months that Chang spent documenting this horrific scenario took a physical and emotional toll. "I was weak during the whole time I was writing the book, and physically unwell during the month I spent in China," she says. "I lost weight and I lost hair. I got sick frequently. I was very unhappy." During her month in Nanking in the summer of 1995, Chang visited mass execution sites, and videotaped interviews with a dozen or so survivors whom local historians had helped her track down. They were elderly and mostly poor, living in tiny airless apartments tucked into alleyways or high up in concrete skyscrapers. On one such tape, an athletic-looking 83-year-old relates the amazing story of his escape from near-certain death, 60 years earlier. Tang Shunshan had been rounded up with other Chinese men and women and herded to the edge of a giant pit. As one Japanese soldier methodically made his way forward, slicing off prisoners' heads with his sword, other soldiers followed behind, picking up heads and tossing them into a pile as part of a killing contest. Luckily for Tang, when the man standing in front of him was beheaded, the momentum of the body caught Tang and sent them tumbling backward into the ditch. Tang hid himself under the man's body, and waited for over an hour as the contest continued. When it was over, one soldier stayed behind to bayonet the piles of bodies. Tang endured five bayonet wounds before fainting. Later in the day his friends found and rescued him.

"There were times when I really wanted to cry, but I couldn't," says Chang. "There had reached a point where there were no more tears."

In another interview, which Chang pops into her VCR to play while I'm there, a woman tearfully reads from a prepared statement. Chang translates for me as the woman shares her story, which is heartbreaking to watch and to hear. Liu Fonghua was only a year old when she was yanked from her father's arms before he was led away to be executed. Her mother, she says, never recovered. "Blood and tears were her life," Fonghua reads into the camera. "As soon as anyone mentions the Nanjing massacre, she couldn't help but cry uncontrollably and suffer headaches for a long time. I never saw her smile. Because my father's death was so brutal, and also because my mother endured hardship all her life-- hardship that was carved onto her very bones and seeped into the deepest recesses of her heart--my mother could never smile again." By the time Liu Fonghua finishes reading her statement, she is sobbing so hard she can barely talk. Tears drip from her chin. Chang turns off the television set, and we sit in silence for several minutes, drained. Meeting the massacre's survivors face to face, she says quietly, was both the best part of her trip, and the worst. "There were times when I really wanted to cry, but I couldn't. It had reached a point in me where there were no more tears." From the outset of the project, Chang knew she did not want to fill her book with one atrocity after another. So in addition to examining the massacre itself, she also deals with such questions as, What could have motivated the Japanese soldiers--many of them still boys--to behave so heinously? "I wanted to probe the forces by which a government could turn non-violent people into killing machines," she says. "I'm intrigued by the potential for good and evil in our society." In her book, Chang posits several theories to explain how the Nanking atrocities could have transpired. Some scholars believe the seeds for violence were sown by the brutal, humiliating way in which Japanese officers and soldiers were treated by their higher-ups. When these same soldiers were given the power of life or death over the Chinese, says Chang, "it is easy to see how years of suppressed anger, hatred, and fear of authority could have erupted." Exacerbating the situation was the contempt that the Japanese held for the Chinese--the product of decades of propaganda and social indoctrination. Chang says that for many Japanese soldiers, murdering a "sub-human" Chinese was akin to squashing a bug or butchering a hog. Religion also played a factor, she believes. The Japanese imperial army considered itself to be on a holy mission--that it was Japan's destiny to control all of Asia.

For the Japanese soldiers, getting rid of all the bodies proved to be a real problem, Chang says. Some ponds actually disappeared because the corpses absorbed all the water. Photo courtesy Yale Divinity School Archives

But while The Rape of Nanking does plumb the depths of man's inhumanity against man, it also offers a few, shining moments of redemption. While hundreds of thousands of Chinese met their deaths that winter of 1937-38, thousands of others were saved--largely due to the heroic efforts of two dozen Western foreigners who were living in Nanking at the time. They maintained a two-and-a-half-square-mile wide "international safety zone," which at its height served 250,000 Chinese refugees. The safety zone leaders were an odd assortment of individuals, seemingly ill-equipped to stand up against the carnage they saw going on around them: American and German missionaries, businessmen, doctors, and professors. Perhaps the most unlikely hero of them all was a humanitarian Nazi by the name of John Rabe. Chang has dubbed him the "Oskar Schindler of Nanking." Chang knew the barest details about Rabe from her early research: that he was an executive with Siemens Company and head of the Nanking chapter of the Nazi party; that he had led the safety zone and risked his life to save thousands of others. But what happened to Rabe once he left Nanking in February 1938? There the trail went cold. For historians, the remainder of his life was a mystery. Chang set to work digging. After ascertaining that Rabe had been born in Hamburg, she wrote to a well-connected friend of a friend there, who put her in touch with Rabe's granddaughter, Ursula Reinhardt. From Reinhardt, the young historiographer received the surprise of her life: John Rabe had kept a detailed 1,200-page diary chronicling the Nanking atrocities. Reinhardt's family was willing to go public with it. News of the existence of the Rabe diary hit big. The New York Times devoted an entire page to it last December, and the story was picked up by ABC, CNN, and other media. In the Times article, William C. Kirby, a professor of modern Chinese history at Harvard, called the diary "an incredibly gripping and depressing narrative... that will reopen this case in a very important way." In his diary, Rabe writes with riveting detail about being on call day and night to stop rapes in progress, of providing safe haven to hundreds of Chinese women in his backyard, of delivering rice amid gunfire. To the Chinese he became "the living Buddha of Nanking"--the man who gave new mothers in the safety zone a gift of $10 for each new son and $9.50 for each new daughter. ("Girls in China aren't worth as much as boys," he would write in explanation to Adolph Hitler.) Chang has no qualms about describing Rabe as a humanitarian, despite his clear loyalty to the Nazi party. She believes his ardor for the party was based on its socialist program, and that Rabe was unaware of Hitler's intent to commit genocide against the Jews. "Rabe was isolated from what was happening in Germany because he had spent most of his adult life in China," she notes. Rabe did not receive a hero's welcome after he returned to Germany in April 1938, as Chang learned through her correspondence with Reinhardt. Now in her late 60s, Reinhardt was seven years old when her grandfather returned to Berlin. She remembers the ensuing years well. Rabe's initial efforts to publicize the Nanking Massacre through lectures and public appearances were quickly cut short by the German government, which was trying to become friendly with Japan. The Gestapo arrived at his doorstep one day, then interrogated him for hours, making it clear he should keep quiet about what he had witnessed in China. After the war, Rabe was arrested and interrogated first by the Soviets and later by the British. By the winter of 1946, the city of Berlin was in shambles, and food was scarce. The Rabe family was on the brink of starvation, reduced to eating acorn soup and weeds. That spring, Rabe petitioned to become "de-nazified," citing in his own defense that he had been unaware of Nazi atrocities while in China; while he eventually won the suit, the humiliating legal wranglings he endured left him penniless and broken, Reinhardt says. When those in Nanking heard about what had happened to Rabe, the Chinese responded in what Chang describes as "It's a Wonderful Life" fashion. They raised $100 million Chinese dollars (about $2,000 U.S. dollars in 1948), and sent bundles of much-needed food to Rabe and his family every month until China fell to the Communists in 1949. The outpouring of support, John Rabe has said, restored his faith in humanity. In 1950, he died from a stroke. There is interest on the part of filmmakers in doing a movie about John Rabe's life. Chang has already been interviewed for several documentaries, and been contacted by a London filmmaker who is eager to produce an epic movie. "It would be so gratifying to me if my book eventually did inspire some filmmaker to do a truly good movie about the Rape of Nanking," she says. "I want the world to know what happened. I don't want these victims to be erased from history the way their lives were erased." HOW DID IT HAPPEN that an event of such magnitude as the Rape of Nanking was relegated to obscurity? Chang examined high school history textbooks throughout the United States and found that only a handful even mentioned the massacre. The American Heritage Picture History of World War II, for years the best-selling pictorial history of the war, contains nary a word nor a picture about the atrocities in Nanking. Cold War politics was largely to blame, Chang says. "Suddenly, in the 1950s, the two Chinas [the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China] both needed Japan as an ally against each other, so neither one of them really aggressively pushed the issue." In fact, Chinese citizens who stirred things up by lobbying for reparations risked being punished by their own government--a situation that continues today, Chang says. "There were people who ended up losing their jobs, and losing their pensions, and they've been thrown in prison," she says. During the Cold War, the United States also was loath to risk alienating Japan, because it considered its former enemy an important ally in Asia against the twin Soviet threats of China and the USSR. Within the United States the Asian presence was not what it is today, thus attention tended to focus more on the European side of World War II. While American Jews were successful in drawing attention to the story of their Holocaust, their Chinese-American counterparts were much less successful in telling their story. Chang believes that's partly because most Cold War Chinese ŽmigrŽs to the U.S. were like her parents: scientists--not writers, historians, or filmmakers, who would have an inclination and the necessary venues to get the word out and muster outrage. Chang also believes there has been a tendency on the part of some Americans to view the Japanese as victims of World War II. "It's hard for people to see them as aggressors because we have such compelling images of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those images are so gripping that they occupy more space in the public consciousness than images of Pearl Harbor," she says. Relocation camps, which were set up within the U.S. during the war and held Japanese-Americans against their will, further contribute to their "victim" status, she says. Within Japan, information about the massacre has always been closely guarded by the government, Chang says. The result is that many Japanese know little--if anything--about it. In the Japanese propaganda blitz that began days after the invasion, Japanese-controlled newspapers in China reported that the Chinese had gone back to their homes and businesses, that Japanese soldiers were playing joyfully with local children, and that peace and order reigned. "The level of ignorance about World War II throughout Japan is appalling," says Chang, shaking her head. One Japanese psychology professor she talked to said he's been asked by more than one puzzled college student: Who won the war? "Right now in Germany, it is against the law not to teach about the Holocaust. I think something similar should have been implemented in Japan decades ago," Chang says. "Even the media is involved in an unspoken code of silence on this. It's alarming to me how much suppression is still going on." Last winter, she got a call from the Los Angeles bureau chief of Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading liberal paper. Kazumi Mizumoto wanted to break the story about the Rabe diary to the paper's 8 million readers, so he flew to Sunnyvale to interview her. Afterward, she said, "He had unbelievable difficulties getting the story published." Mizumoto, who has since resigned from the paper, says his editors were "too prudent and cautious" about running the story because of pressure from Japan's right-wing scholars and journalists. That movement's main focus, he says, "has been to praise and justify what Japan has done" during modernization. After Mizumoto's interview with Chang, his editor insisted he fly to Berlin to interview Ursula Reinhardt in order to have an airtight case. The story eventually ran, but Mizumoto lost his "scoop," and the article did not appear on the front page as he had expected. "Later," he says, "one of my colleagues told me that there was a tacit understanding among the editors and upper bureaucrats of the Asahi not to publish stories on the Nanking Massacre on the front page unless there are some outstanding historical findings," he says. "They did not regard the existence of the diary and the report by Rabe as an outstanding historical document."

"There are people [in Japan] who are denying that the [massacre] happened, and the government supports the practice of enshrining them," she says.

Beyond the issue of suppression within the media, says Chang, there is the denial on the part of right-wing scholars and government officials. When Chang shifts the conversation to this subject, her earlier sunniness disappears. She is angry, and it shows. "There are people who are openly denying that the [Rape of Nanking] happened, and the government supports the practice of enshrining them," she says, her voice taking on an edge. "It's like building a cathedral in the memory of Hitler, and worshipping statues of Hitler as God." What would Chang like to see from the Japanese? She responds without hesitation. "First and foremost, a sincere apology from the prime minister, issued on behalf of the entire government, for what happened in Nanking and elsewhere in China. At a minimum, they should put in their textbooks a true accounting of what happened. They also need to open up their archives to scholars. And Japan definitely should be paying reparations for [the massacre]." Interest in the Nanking massacre has risen markedly in the last few years; that's partially due to the efforts of a new generation of Chinese-Americans--activists who are intent on getting the word out through books, documentaries, and symposiums. Later this month, Princeton University will host an international conference on the Rape of Nanking; Chang will be there to talk about Japanese suppression of information about the massacre and to share new material (diaries and letters) that she unearthed during her research. Though her book is now finished, Iris Chang has absorbed the pain and horror of the Nanking massacre in a way that is hard to set neatly aside. She's thought hard about channeling her passion into activism, but ultimately has decided to move on with her writing. There are other stories that need to be told. "Political activism is a full-time job, and I see myself primarily as a writer and a scholar," Chang says. "Over time, I may have more impact on the world, I think, as a writer of books and articles than I could ever have as a political activist." Sue De Pasquale is the magazine's editor.

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/02093.htm
http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum109.html

Interview
Iris Chang
Author of The Chinese in America: A Narrative History talks with Robert Birnbaum

Posted: June 2, 2003
© 2003 Robert Birnbaum
Images by Red Diaz/Duende Publishing
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Iris Chang grew up in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois and graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Illinois. She has also attended the graduate writing seminars program at Johns Hopkins University and has worked as a journalist. Iris Chang has published The Thread of the Silkworm, the much celebrated The Rape of Nanking and most recently The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. She lives in California.

The Chinese in America narrates the 150-year history of the Chinese in the United States. In compelling detail Iris Chang provides a clear picture of the lives of immigrant Chinese and she unearths fascinating and disturbing stories about their experiences and some of the root causes for the sometimes torturous adjustment they suffered in this land of plenty.

Robert Birnbaum: This is the 21st Century. How many books have been written about the Chinese in America?

Iris Chang: When you count all the obscure monographic books, there have been many. I probably have most of them in my library.

RB: How about general histories, such as your book?

IC: General histories—there have been a few that have served as pioneering books. The two big ones, one by Betty Song and another by Jack Chen, they came out in the 1980's. This history actually brings us up to the present, and it also ends with a message for the reader that history has to be continually updated and rewritten by future generations. This is by no means the last word on the Chinese in America. This is my personal interpretation of the 150-year epic history of Chinese in this country.

RB: Since we were talking about Howard Zinn before I turned on the recorder, I must take note your history has only one mention of the ruling class, and that was in the last chapter. You've actually suggested the possibly of class conflict in the USA.

IC: Oh well of course there is.

RB: [both laugh] Had you explicitly referred to class before?

IC: The book is replete with examples of class conflict, both in China and in the United States. Many Chinese left China to come to the US to seek economic opportunities in the mid 19th century. Many of them also left because there weren't as many opportunities in a system that was extremely corrupt. The Qing dynasty was just on the verge of collapse at the time. And the taxation was excessive and definitely there was a very heavy class oppression in China at the time.

RB: Right.

IC: And people's fates were often determined not only by where they lived but if they were a member of the intelligentsia. If you wanted to assume some position in the ruling class elite, you had to go through these three tiers of tests, which would determine your future. And these tests were really designed by the Manchus to force the subject class of the Hans into assisting in their own oppression. Keeping their young men busy studying instead of thinking revolution. Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well. As you may remember from some of the earlier chapters, as soon as the population of the Chinese in San Francisco grew into a community of several thousand, class distinctions emerged even within that ethnic community. You had a small elite of capitalists. And you had a much larger pool of wage earners and laborers whose living conditions were impoverished and they were literally often crammed into an apartment on bunks—not too different from how a lot of Chinese illegal aliens are living today.

RB: It seems that it is permissible to talk about a ruling class in this country. It's not part of the historical orthodoxy and in fact in political discourse it raises accusations of divisiveness…

IC: There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

RB: Maybe as an abstraction, not as a political issue. Remember George Bush accused the Democrats of fomenting class warfare. Howard Zinn does point out that Republicans don't like to talk about class warfare--they just like to engage in it.

IC: [laughs]

RB: I was amazed at the events around the Chinese Exclusionary Acts. You might even have used the word 'pogrom' referring to what took place in Seattle and Tacoma and San Francisco.

In 1882 the Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which then prevented Chinese laborers from coming into this country for, really, about the next sixty years.

IC: Absolutely. [The Chinese Exclusionary Acts] emerged as a result of an anti-Chinese backlash that followed a major economic depression in the 1870's. As the Chinese grew in numbers, the immigrant population grew to the extent that it became a huge economic threat, there were efforts among white workers to organize among themselves politically, and what was unfortunate was that both major parties adopted anti-Chinese platforms. California, where the anti-Chinese racism was greatest, became a very crucial swing state during presidential elections, and therefore both parties had to court California. And it was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country because that was where the racial tension was the greatest. And so in 1882, the Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which then prevented Chinese laborers from coming into this country for, really, about the next sixty years. The act was renewed…

RB: And strengthened.

IC: And expanded, that's right. With other acts that would threaten Chinese rights to habeas corpus hearings or even their birth-right citizenship because somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law. The famous Wong Kim Ark case [1894]…

RB: Famous to whom?

IC: [both laugh] Famous to the small group of scholars that study it.

RB: Let's make it famous.

IC: Wong Kim Ark was an American-born Chinese who went to China to visit his parents, and when he came back they tried to prevent him from coming into the country. This case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and to the credit of the Supreme Court, it was ruled that anyone born in this country, even if their parents are not eligible for citizenship, is an American citizen.

RB: The beginning of the struggles of the Chinese in America were about economic issues: whites feared being displaced in the workplace, and certainly the elite and their managers used that fear to foster divisiveness. At what point did it become racist? When did it go beyond fear for livelihood and become hatred for the other?

IC: Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another. But it usually does whenever the economic crisis reaches its peak. That's when you will see these anti-Chinese cartoons in the 19th century vilifying the Chinese as not only taking over jobs but marrying white woman and infiltrating the whole country. It was interesting for me to learn that the Chinese-white interracial marriage was more common than I expected among Chinese men and Irish women during the 19th century, and that posed another concern.

RB: In the last chapter, entitled "Uncertain Future," you anecdotally list a number of instances—like a American Air Force officer sitting with a woman is asked if he is in the Chinese Air Force. Or instances where…

IC: Like Maya Lin? They were saying, "How can you let a gook design the Vietnam Memorial?"

RB: The things you cite took place in the late 20th century. People are still viewing Americans of Chinese descent as foreigners.

IC: That's right, and even congressmen are not exempt from this. Congressman David Woo when he wanted to give a speech at the Department of Energy— ironically to celebrate Asian History month—they stopped him. They wouldn't let him in. This was shortly after the Wen Ho Lee scandal and even after he showed a congressional identification, they wouldn't let him in. The reason I brought up these stories was to show that these episodes of racism occur in cycles. There is a perception that the Chinese started out downtrodden and abused in the 19th century and gradually rose to the top of society as model minorities, and you see them winning Nobel Prizes and getting into our best colleges. But it is not a linear progression. Things don't always get better. Sometimes they get worse. I find that they occur in cycles. The pattern of acceptance and abuse is closely linked with economic and political realities of that era and the state of Sino-American relations. Often when times are good and when the US is on good diplomatic terms with China, the Chinese are viewed as a bridge between the two countries. [Chinese] Americans are seen as honorary whites and as cultural ambassadors. You saw this in WW II, when China and the US were wartime allies. Also, in the mid-19th century when the US had a severe labor shortage and desperately needed Chinese manual labor. You also see backlashes at different times, such as the Korean War, when Chinese forces clashed with American forces. You saw it in the late '90s—not a coincidence that it occurred after the disintegration of the Soviet Empire because China then became the second greatest superpower in the world, and there were concerns in the media of China rivaling the US militarily, economically and intellectually.

RB: It's an oddity that there seems to be this tacit acceptance that we can fuss around about human rights in every place in the world except in China.

IC: The reality is there is an economic reason behind it. There are too many business ties between the two countries.

RB: I have always been fascinated by the role of China in the Red Scare of the '50s. This whole issue of "who lost China?" as if it was an American possession really strikes me as an unacknowledged irony of the Cold War.

IC: That's right and during that time Chinese Americans were caught up in that hysteria. At least one person had his career ruined here. In my first book The Thread of the Silk Worm…

RB: You mention this case in this history…

IC: He [Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen] was this brilliant, Chinese-born Cal Tech aerodynamics professor and the founder of the Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena. He was actually treated quite well during W II when they heavily relied on his brain power, but then in the 1950's he and other scientists—some Jewish American scientists who had been active in socialists clubs in the '30s—were suddenly accused of being Communists and possibly spies despite all of their contributions to this country. Tsien was interrogated by the FBI and then put under virtual house arrest, not really allowed to leave the country and then suddenly against his will deported to China. Because he was swapped for some American POWs. Here is an example of someone who was just a pawn in this whole chess game of international politics. But the story is so compelling because the intent of the government was to heighten and preserve national security, but the irony is that by deporting him they risked national security. Tsien went back and founded the ballistic missile program in China.

RB: You have written three books, one very specific on the case and person we just discussed, one book devoted to the great war atrocity, The Rape of Nanking, and now a more general history. Was this a deliberate pattern of moving from the specific to a larger view? Part of your own education…

IC: I certainly didn't have a three-book plan or a ten-year plan when I worked on the first book. The Rape of Nanking, while it is very focused, is about the massacre and rape and torture of an entire city—we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Here we are talking something even more broad because it covers 150 years of history. It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before. When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out. When you are focused on some small story or one specific person or one city, it is a process of discovery.

RB: Were you surprised that the Rape of Nanking was so well received?

IC: I was, I was.

RB: Shocked?

IC: [laughs] Yes, but pleasantly so. I think that the reason it was so successful was that the same emotions that I had when learning about this were shared by everyone else when they read this book. I learned about the atrocities first from my parents; my family had escaped from Nanking before the massacre began. Then later I remember going to an exhibit of photographs documenting the Japanese invasion of Nanking and other regions and looking at these photos, the decapitations, the torture, the pornographic poses—they would rape women and then photograph them. I remember walking around in a trance. I couldn't believe that people were capable of such monstrous evil. The ones that committed them were really decent, law-abiding people before and after. That to me is the real chilling aspect of the rape of Nanking, the banality of evil…and I found that not just the Japanese are capable of this, every ethnic group is—if certain conditions are in place. Other people just responded in the way I did. And wanted to know why this atrocity occurred.

RB: There is a list of historic atrocities and genocide; the Armenian slaughter by the Turks, the bombing of Dresden, the Holocaust, the dirty little war in Argentina, and so on that represent terrible black marks on history…

IC: The Pakistani rape of Bengali women in the '70s...the single worst massacre in world history…

RB: Please say more. I'm sorry that I don't know about that one.

IC: Many people don't know about it because the perpetrators are still in power. That's why it is very hard to go there and research it. Somebody I know did—who came to one of my book signings—he was very happy that I spoke up and said that the rape of Nanking is the second worst mass rape of world history. And that the worst one was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion. He said, "Look, I have written a book on the subject." And it changed his life because he was trying to publish it and it turned out that some of the perpetrators were highly placed in the Pakistani government and he had to flee for his life. So he was in Philadelphia working as an accountant. He had to start his whole life over again. He is an American citizen now. The book has been written out but not yet translated, and I said, "I would be happy to help in any way that I can." But it just goes to show that it is often very hard to publish in other countries—it's one of the most open and free countries, and yet even here it is often very difficult to have free discourse.

RB: When I spoke to Samantha Power last summer, she mentioned her original editor turned A Problem from Hell down, so who knows?

IC: Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

RB: Another astounding fact presented in your book was that thirty five million Chinese died in WW II.

IC: Yes, 19 million to 35 million is the range of the estimates and millions of other people died across Asia. The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out. And new museums are emerging on a grassroots level.

RB: It seems that a subtler but yet virulent form of racism in the US is against Asians. My reading of the anecdotes at the end of your book is not that these are cyclical. They seem constant. For whatever reason it is easy to hate or at least discriminate against Asians.

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another. But it usually does whenever the economic crisis reaches its peak.

IC: I think it is cyclical because at certain times in US history the Chinese were welcomed in regions where I didn't think they would be welcomed.

RB: Like the South.

IC: Yeah, and I think it has to do with economics and because there weren't as many of them and therefore not as much of an economic threat. Chang and Eng Bunker, those Siamese twins—if you were going to judge people on their appearance alone, I couldn't think of any two people who were more freakish than that. They were connected by the torso. They are Chinese and yet because they were wealthy and because they were not in a region where the Chinese were feared, they ended up marrying white women and had more than twenty children…

RB: I think twenty-seven.

IC: And more than thirty black slaves. They ran a plantation and networked and befriended all the white plantation owners in the area and their sons fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. All of that suggests that if the conditions were right there could be great acceptance. Often it is only when they pose an economic or political threat that it turns really ugly. When the Chinese first came to San Francisco they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them—again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese. At the time they were seen as quaint little oddities, and the first documented Chinese woman in this country came as part of a museum exhibit. So very quickly a move from a sense of fascination for the exotic to real fear. I saw a cartoon from the 1800's in one of the anti-Chinese magazines. And it showed a white family in distress in a rented room, where the father has shot himself, the police are pulling the son out of the room because he has stolen a loaf of bread, the daughter is prostituting herself and when you look through the window there is a building across the street filled with Chinese businesses of all kinds, and there are people on their hands and knees outside begging for jobs. And in the distance you see Chinese people pushing whites out windows and slamming doors on them and kicking them in the behind. That suggests to me that they were really afraid the Chinese were going to take over economically. The Chinese encountered great prejudice in places like South East Asia where they assumed these middle-man minority roles as Armenians and Jews have done in other countries. That group, called middlemen minorities, has suffered the greatest persecution because they take on economic niches and capitalistic function in societies that are feudal in nature, and when things go wrong they are blamed for everything. And there is a tremendous amount of jealousy.

RB: Was there a place in the world that Chinese had not immigrated to?

IC: It's the world's most populous country, they have gone everywhere.

RB: And so their immigrant status relegated them to these niche positions?

IC: In other words, they would handle transactions of goods between producers and consumers assuming the middleman position as agents, as merchants. It's a unique function—as often the Chinese, just as the Jews and Armenians in other regions would go into a country, often without anything. Start out at the bottom of society because of frugality and a respect for education, business skills and ability to take risks—what happens within a single generation—they have dominated or controlled certain industries. What is often neglected is that these middlemen minorities built up these industries. These industries didn't exist before. They created them. Like in the US, like laundries and restaurants and later in a wide variety of fields, high tech among them. These are fields that a lot of native people didn't want to go into. And then it was very galling for the natives to see the Chinese rise so quickly because they were very aggressive in identifying a need in a society.

RB: That would be one of the anomalies of immigration in the US, this anger about immigrants coming here and taking jobs, when in fact they do jobs that no one else will do.

IC: And create jobs for themselves and others. The reason Chinese went into groceries was that it was easy to start them. It required little skill and served an important function. In the South they almost completely dominated the grocery industry after it became clear to plantation owners that they couldn't replace slaves with Chinese.

RB: You mentioned that there wasn't an Asian Barbie doll?

IC: It was the presidential line. They probably do have an Asian Barbie. But what was really insulting to the Asian-American community was they had a special presidential line of female presidents in their Barbie collection and it was supposed to empower young girls to see a little president doll. And there was a white one and a Hispanic one and a Black but there wasn't an Asian one. Somebody should find out why that is. Unless they think that somehow Asian-Americans are such a small number that they are not going to be a viable consumer group. Or could it be something else. The Committee of 100 commissioned a survey in which they found that Asian American candidates are the most unpopular of all the races. They found that people were less likely to vote for Chinese-American than other minorities.

RB: Why is that?

IC: That is going to deserve more research. It was stunning for me to see that because as my group in the '80s was a model minority, I thought racism was soon going to be a relic of the past. I had a unique background growing up in a university community, a very multi-ethnic one, in which everyone seemed to be engaging in interracial marriage and working across color lines. I didn't think the US was racist at all, except I saw the images in popular culture. I thought there were some ignorant people purveying these images to the mass media. I somehow thought that was a relic of the past. Then when I saw these images explode unto the covers of national magazines in the late '90s, I saw this is still a great palpable. All I can say is that from my own experience I have seen it work, people from all different races work together in harmony where there is not as much racism as you would expect. In fact very little of that.

RB: Where?

IC: In Champagne [Illinois ].

RB: Other than Connie Chung, has there been many Chinese American in broadcast media?

IC: Oh yeah, it's almost a cliche now to see Chinese-American broadcasters and anchorwomen. Every major city has them.

RB: No TV series though?

IC: Actually many people are complaining about this. I have friends who are Caucasian who have pitched ideas for a Chinese-American show, and there is great resistance in Hollywood and the networks to support that. I don't know if it is that the numbers are too small. Often what is deeply offensive to Chinese-Americans that they are really well represented in medicine and yet on all these doctors' shows you hardly see any Chinese-American faces. That is not a reflection of reality. Now most of the new immigrants coming to this country are from Asia as opposed to Europe. Perhaps as the racial complexion of this country changes through immigration and intermarriage and all of these trends and China becomes more of an economic power in this country then our concept of what is all-American will change.

RB: Maybe.

IC: I do think that it does come down to something as simple as statistics. Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien. But it becomes less alien when there is more.

RB: Who doesn't have contact with Chinese or Asians today?

IC: It isn't that foreign and not only do people go into Chinese restaurants but people are more likely to work with other Chinese Americans, more likely to marry them.

RB: And there is a growing interest in Asian holistic medical techniques.

IC: Yeah, and so it isn't the lack of contact. Still when it comes to the media they are looking for sheer numbers. Over time that may change. People need to be aware that just because there are larger numbers of Chinese Americans the racism will go away. A lot of their future treatment will depend on the state of Sino-American relations and how the country is faring economically. There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force —then there could very well be a backlash.

RB: What will be the effect of this recent trend of Americans adopting Chinese babies?

IC: It will bring a lot of people closer to each other.

RB: What are the numbers involved?

IC: It was at least thirty thousand. Men all across China are going to have trouble finding wives in just a few years. There is also an epidemic of infertility in this country. There are more women who have put off child bearing in favor of their professional lives. For them the only way they are going to have a family is to adopt from China. It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

RB: The looting of the National Museum in Iraq was a terrible event, but I was reminded in reading your book about the devastation wrought by the Cultural Revolution. It never seemed to get much attention. Was it exaggerated?

IC: No, it was not exaggerated. Of course, treasures and papers still exist, but a lot was destroyed and many priceless treasures are never going to be replaced as a result of the excesses of the Red Guard in the '60s. But it is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history—they often don't survive these current events.

RB: You think Sino-American relations will consciously affect American attitudes toward their Chinese fellow citizens?

IC: It's not conscious. It's often shaped by what they see in the media and often what you see in the media is driven by economic forces. In the late '90s there was a Time cover story suggesting we were facing a new Cold War with China. It seemed that all of a sudden China was slated to be the new enemy. In Washington there was an active group—calling themselves the Blue Team— a coalition of legislative aides, some congressman of the pro-Taiwan lobby and people who were pro labor union who made this an active aspect of their agenda.

RB: Did I read you correctly that Taiwanese operatives were working with impunity in the country?

IC: In the 1990's they were working closely with elements in our own government to punish people who were communist sympathizers and were even threatening subscribers to pro-PRC [People's Republic of China] newspapers. They were monitoring the political activism on campuses. There was one professor who was almost certainly murdered when he went to Taiwan to visit.

RB: What is the status of communism in the People's Republic today?

There is a perception that the Chinese started out downtrodden and abused in the 19th century and gradually rose to the top of society as model minorities, and you see them winning Nobel Prizes and getting into our best colleges. But it is not a linear progression.

IC: It's certainly not a pure communist state.

RB: What is communistic about it?

IC: There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control. You have a form of capitalism that is governed by an oligarchy of people in China. It's an unusual situation, but it is a country in transition and no one can predict what will happen.

RB: Can we predict what is going to happen for you?

IC: (laughs) I have to finish this book tour of almost thirty cities.

RB: So next year when you get back home …

IC: (laughs) June.

RB: So do you have an idea on what you are going to do next?

IC: I have some ideas, but it's best not to talk about them until I have actually decided on one.

RB: You started out as journalist, but your books are far more scholarly than more journalistic accounts…

IC: I started off majoring in math and computer science and then majored in journalism because I knew I wanted to become a writer one day. I felt I needed the life experience and the discipline of daily journalism to get me started. And after working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book, The Thread of the Silkworm, and then I proposed The Rape of Nanking to the publisher. The Chinese in America is a much more ambitious project in terms of its scope, and I have learned a lot even though I don't have any formal historical training. I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills in the process. I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.

RB: Is this the direction you are going to continue on?

IC: I may attempt a novel. (chuckles) I think that no matter what you write it requires being honest with oneself and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life to mediate upon what you have experienced. That's a very difficult thing.

RB: I translate that to you have to sit in a room by yourself and stare at whatever writing utensil you are using.

IC: I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space. What you find is that you are interrupted, that even if you wanted to be a hermit people come out looking for you. I don't want to cloister myself away, but it is important for me to write about issues that have universal significance. One of them that have resonated with me all my life has been the theme of injustice. Some people as they write, they might dwell on love, other people on money or the acquisition of great riches, but for some reason I seem to bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

RB: Maybe the next time we talk it will be for your novel.

IC: Yeah. And not necessarily about Chinese-American matters.

RB: Great, thank you.

IC: Thank you.