Xinhai 100 – Ultimately Beijing Just Couldn’t Handle It – even in operatic form!!

The ups and downs of Beijing’s attempts to deal with the hundredth anniversary of Xinhai and 1911 have rather collapsed. The opera based on the life of Sun Yat Sen (see previous post) that was due to debut in Beijing got cancelled (for “logistical reasons”) while a major conference in Beijing involving scholars from around the world was also kiboshed at the last minute. If you ever needed to see evidence of why 1949 was a major step backwards then just turn up and ask about 1911 in 2011!! What a mess – but not unexpected. I did rather see this coming and anyone who enters into any discussions with Chinese historians won’t be surprised. While many are trying to honestly reassess the final decades of the Qing and the republican period the heavy hand of the CPC restricts and serious work getting done. When you’ve built so much of your education system and national myth on falsehoods about the republic it’s not easy to just let people go find out for themselves!!

Anyway – two pieces worth reading I think on this. David Pilling in the FT has a basic rehashing of the debate while Jonathan Fenby has a more thoughtful and in-depth piece in History Today that comes with slightly unnecessarily gruesome pictures (would it be churlish to say that editors shy away from equally gruesome pictures of communist atrocities when discussing 1949 – it does seem to to me). And finally, Lung Ying-tai author of Big River, Big Sea about families split in 1949 (and predictably banned on the mainland!) talks with the WSJ about 1911 and attempts by scholars to reassess the period in the face of communist intransigence.

Apparently these musicians peforming the Sun Yat Sen opera were just too much of a threat to Beijing!!