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daughter they remain firmly committed to the idea that no one should ever put a finger on their own. This I understand.
    The virtues that we celebrate here in China—modesty, sincerity, diligence, simplicity, helpfulness, warmth, unity—are, in fact, the qualities that we most lack. We’re actually quite hopeless at these things. Just take sincerity—when does this nation ever have a social environment that encourages real sincerity? You can, if you like, give me a hundred positive examples of these qualities in action, but I can easily give you ten thousand examples of the opposite. The reason why we have so many historical anecdotes promoting these values is precisely because, if you look at the larger picture, they are so thin on the ground. We have to rely on this tradition to create a fake image that is peddled about for us to study and get our kicks from. The so-called traditional Chinese virtues are just things fantasized out of history—all the more so these days, when we have fantasized for so many years about these virtues that really have nothing to do with us. But these virtues are certainly appealing and, to put it politely, they represent the ideals that our people should work toward, given that we range from low-caliber to borderline-defective.
    Of course, we Chinese always rate the Chinese people very highly. We should be content with that. After all, a full one-fifth of the world’s population thinks we’re wonderful. If you dare to differ, you’re a traitor, and we’ll spit on you until you drown in a sea of sputum.
    And don’t you forget—our land is vast, our resources are rich!

On flying the flag

    June 2, 2007
    Today I read in the news that one of our filtered keywords has died. 4 No evaluation of his successes and failures was provided. But I was reminded of when he was top dog in Shanghai during my middle school years and I used to hear his name every day.
    It’s only when the state’s filtered keywords pass away, I realize now, that our nation will fly its flag at half-mast. No accident, however major, that affects ordinary people ever seems to prompt the lowering of the flag to half-mast. The only time I can really recall seeing a flag at half-mast was when the flag was raised at school one day and got snagged half-way up, but that was a case of the flag raised to half-mast rather than lowered. I notice that in capitalist countries (where, we know, people suffer wretchedly under conditions of cruel exploitation), whenever there is a major loss of life the government will lower the flag to half-mast to register its grief.Of course, you may argue that they’re just putting on a show, but we Chinese can hardly claim to be averse to play-acting, can we? So I hope that one of these days China can put on a performance for its people. Of course, we follow rigorous scientific principles, so we need to decide in advance how many casualties will be needed to trigger this event, and in our country, this figure needs to be set very high—at least ten times what you’d find in other low-quality nations—partly to show that our half-mast has more significance than other people’s half-masts, and partly because, given the current scale of our industrial accidents and traffic fatalities, if we set the figure too low, our flag would hardly ever make it up to the top of the post.
    Because it has never flown the flag at half-mast for ordinary folk, our government may well find it difficult emotionally to come to terms with the idea. I have a typically Chinese solution to address the problem: If we replace regular flag posts with new ones twice as high, that would make everyone happy, for then a flag flown at half-mast would still be at its normal height. Another advantage is that this would provide enormous gratification for our people’s pathetic national vanity—oops, national pride, I mean. Other countries’ flags rise to the top of