Pointing fingers

Perhaps surprisingly, 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova has been published in mainland China (as 西方历史上的100部禁书). I held a copy in my hand as late as today, and there is a reference to it here. Note the reference to the publisher (出版) in Beijing, 北京.

But perhaps it is not that surprising after all. A strategy Beijing has recently applied to defend itself against accusations of human right abuses has been to attack the West in its turn for the same thing. If the US can keep people without trial in Guantanamo, why cannot we stretch the laws? is the logic.

Likewise 100 Banned Books shows that the West has a long tradition of banning classical world literature, so why would China be unable to ban literature in its own country?

Whether China's logic is very valid or not, is not that interesting. What is interesting is that it is difficult to take human rights criticism seriously from any country that does not respect human rights itself - no matter which reasons that country has for its behaviour.

Ju ware

In the National Palace Museum of Taipei (台北) there is an interesting exhibition about Ju ware or Rǔ (汝) porcelain.

The Chinese character for Ju/Ru consists of the radicals for water 氵 and woman 女, which together make a beautiful combination. But try avoiding the character when you go to Japan. In Japanese it is one way of writing a not very nice word for you, "unu". The Chinese variant simply is a place name, as far as I understand.

Ju ware was made during just a few decades around the year 1200. One should not be misled to think that it is full of radiant expression. It is striking in its very strict shapes and sobre blue colour. It is actually so discreet that it almost could fit in the porcelain department of an Ikea store, even though it obviously is of a bigger historic interest. If you go to visit the exposition, try to go there early in the morning. In the afternoons the room is full of tour guides explaining Ju ware to their groups like a big Tupperware party.