Postmodernism (后现代化主义): “The Chinese did it first” is a relatively safe statement to make about any aspect of society – as if having a spherical conception of the world in the 2nd century BC wasn’t enough, the Chinese also managed to beat Foucault to the punch: The Chinese word for history is 历史. The first character has two parts: a factory (厂) and power (力). The power is in the factory, which would indicate that the factory is constructing, or manufacturing power. The second character, 史, depicts a hand with a pen writing at a desk. These two characters are combined in order to create the word “history”. Therefore, history - 历史 - is the manufacturing of power by the hand of someone at a desk. What’s really crazy is that this is the simplified version of the character. Chinese characters, though currently dauntingly complicated, were even more difficult before the Mao era. Mao simplified many of the characters in order to make them easier to remember, which would increase literacy – a good goal for a communist. This change, which happened in the fifties, did not affect the Chinese language outside of the mainland, so Taiwan and the various Chinatowns throughout the US and Canada use the traditional character sets. They do not have such a blatant representation of Mao’s understanding of power/knowledge.

A few days ago, I had considered leaving this program and doing something else with my time here in China. After talking with friends here, calling home, and exploring options with my study abroad advisor, I finally talked with the head of the program. As a result, I am getting an extra hour of tutoring each day as well as ridiculous amounts of moral support. Every time I turn a corner, a 老师 is there to tell me how much I'm improving. So, I feel better now and I'm finally in the mindset that I've made a choice to be here, as I didn't feel that way before. I'd like to thank everyone that helped me through the last week, as I was really not doing well. I'd also like to apologize for this post. I feel as if the academic part of my brain is falling apart, so I was extremely excited to do some mickey mouse scholarship using my Chinese dictionary.