My Manchurian Candidate

In the winter of 2004 an old friend paid me a visit to my then-home in St. Petersburg, Florida, and made me an offer that, while I didn't refuse, took me four months to accept. It was an offer to come to China and teach for a year at a public university in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, of the People's Republic of China. For those of you who are not of the Boomer generation, you may not recall a movie, based on a book, that was a mega-hit thriller in the 1960s: The Manchurian Candidate. Manchuria was a nation in and of itself prior to the British occupation, consisting of today's three northernmost (and eastern-most) provinces of China, of which Heilongjiang is the largest and northernmost of the three, the capital city of which is Harbin (pop. 7,000,000). The Manchu were the native race of this region, who had their own language, and also their own emperor who, not satisfied with their confinement to the north decided to expand southwards.

This decision, by the future Quing Dynasty, was in part provoked, no doubt, by the building of the Great Wall of China by the rather paranoid Han emperors in Beijing, 700 kilometers to the south. No doubt feeling compelled to test the waters, so to speak, or at least the Wall, the Manchu armies swept south, swept over the wall (reminders of the Magineau Line in France), took Beijing, and finished out the era of Imperial China (the last Emperor was the last of the Quing line).

Then the Japanese showed up. They are still bitter about the Japanese invasion in Dongbei (Northeast China, the former Manchuria). In the late 1920's the Japanese decided they, too, deserved an empire, selected Manchuria, and invaded the north, met little resistance, and renamed it Manchukuo. There remain Japanese-style neighborhoods to this day in Harbin, as well as an entire underground city similar to a network of New York City subways, except no subways (it's all shops, now, and very trendy). There is also a Jewish district complete with Synagogue (in the Russian style, whence they originally came). All that is missing, and has been since the Japanese invasion, is the Jews.

Which brings me to The Manchurian Candidate. Because Richard Condon's bestseller, made into John Frankenheimer's 1962 film was based on no actual historical or factual basis whatsoever, was entirely a work of fiction, written by a man who never set foot in China.

I, who having just been nominated as a Manchurian Candidate in reverse, of sorts, would soon spend the next 30 months of my life in that region, hired by the PRC to help educate their promising young business students (mine was a business university, Harbin Shanda University--Shang da meaning, literally, 'Big Business.'). So I was to be hired to teach future Chinese MBAs, basically how to communicate with the West, using primarily American, rather than stodgy British English, because they most definitely wanted to communicate with us and we, it seems, were not about to learn Chinese any time soon. The Chinese have always admired America, as it turns out, since we, unlike the British, didn't attempt to turn it into an Imperial colony or render half its population addicted to opium, as they did. We even helped chase the Japanese out of the former Manchukuo, for which they remain grateful (the Manchurians, not the Japanese) to this day.

Two tidbits: Harbin has the most beautiful women in China. And also makes some of the best beer. It also used to be part of Russia, and was, for a time, a station stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad of Dr. Zhivago fame. Siberia does lie to both the north and east (I've been there) and another former imperial state, Mongolia, lies due West (so Genghis Khan was probably heard from once or twice too, in his time). So Heilongjiang Province and the other portions of the former Manchuria have had their share of propoganda and foreign will forced down their throats.

For myself, I arrived under the radar, was given a 'Foreign Expert' I.D. which got me into all the best parties, and pretty much a blank check as to what to teach and how to teach it. So I, being by nature subversive, began to have fun. Taking advantage of a vast market of cheap DVDs of virtually every movie ever made, I started showing films in class. The Chinese versions had Chinese subtitles (the accuracy of which I cannot attest) but anway we had a blast, and my charges even learned some English. I had them write reviews (in English), and critiques, and eventually had them make their own films (being a one-time filmmaker). I showed them 'The Red Violin," which they loved (still a favorite of mine) and 'Farenheit 911' (which they didn't get), and 'The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,' which they totally got, and 'School of Rock' to which I could relate very well, plus dozens of other hits new and old, not including 'The Manchurian Candidate' (that would have been pretty hard to justify).

All of which brings me to a plug for my book Inside the New China. This is my first memoir, ethnographic or otherwise, about which I want to say simply this: no journalist on assignment has ever gotten as embedded as I did into daily Chinese culture (I eventually married into a local family, in full disclosure) for anywhere near as long a period of time as I did. This is true in large part because I was not known to the government as a writer, someone to keep an eye on, or to provide accompaniment and escort services to, all of which clouds the vision. I rode the buses with the peasants, dined with the governor, traded 'ganbeis' with the generals, and taught the freshmen directly out of compulsory military boot camp (ever since Tienanmen Square). Many of my former students and colleagues remain friends on Facebook and via email. Some have even been to the States (where my Chinese wife and daughter now live). I still miss the warm welcome and freedom to move about and do and teach what I wanted there. I've never had any such freedoms here.