But now, I'm back, hopefully regularly, after mentally listing out a few topics that I have to cover for the sake of my integrity as a history "intellectual" and a blogger. This post started when I caught a televised debate on Phoenix Television about controversial Beijing University professor Kong Qingdong's recent remarks on Hong Kong civility and Taiwan democracy.
Tensions in Hong Kong between mainland Chinese tourists and Hong Kong locals have flared up lately, following an act of discrimination by Dolce and Gabbana and a local man's loud indignation that a mainland tourist would dare to eat food on our subway system (the MTR). Kong was invited for a TV interview to discuss his views on the matter, and in particular the MTR video.
Professor Kong makes his television appearances sporting a Tang-inspired robe, a brightly-coloured, superfluous scarf and a noticeable smirk paired with a noticeable (but unfortunately fruitless) moustache. He said some controversial things on national television:
He provoked just as controversial responses from those offended:
Kong's remarks and subsequent responses have gone viral, unsurprisingly, thanks to the considerable reach and depth of the Chinese social media scene. He's pissed people off all over the place -- last week's edition of Next Magazine in Hong Kong, for example, features a 5-page spread of opinions from local Hong Kong professionals about how they view his comments. However, is what he said really worth debating about?
It's not Kong's first time to make some scathing remarks as such, nor has it been (or will it be) the last. Previously, he had taken a stab at Hilary Clinton. Not long after the Hong Kong comments, Kong was also quoted as being dismissive towards Taiwanese democracy. He has become someone whose fame has been perpetuated by his infamy, and maybe one of only a handful PhD holders out there who is relevant within more than just his small group of nerds.
I just want to offer the speculation that Kong yearns to join the ranks of the nouveau-famous sensations created and aided by the proliferation of internet media, in order to have a platform to share their non-mainstream and highly contested views. My word for this kind of individual is a "scoundrel". Scoundrels do not get famous by working hard or producing quality output that the world actually needs, but rather, they would often resort to unsightly measures for the fame that they crave.
The process of being a scoundrel varies from one fame-seeker to the other. In this next section, I attempt to outline three types of scoundrels to identify Kong's rightful place.
1. The social media opportunist
Charlie Sheen's egotistical quotes on TV interviews and Twitter in early 2011 may have made very little logical sense, but they certainly got a lot of attention nonetheless. Subsequently, Sheen became one of the most followed Twitter users and generated one of the most popular hashtags of 2011. But his diligence to show the world that he was "winning" didn't stop with Twitter -- he shortly went on to launch "Sheen's Korner", a live-stream webcast that was supposed to broadcast his awesomeness.
Kong and Sheen have a couple of things in common -- they were both on TV, and they both offended some people in a very public and racist way (for Sheen, it was his remarks about producer Chuck Lorre). Then, they turned to social media to keep getting their names out there. Although Kong did not engage as actively in self-promotion as Sheen did, he certainly set him self up in just the right way to get shared, retweeted and commented on. He spoke in soundbites, such that his quotes could be re-posted just as easily as "Tiger blood" and "winning". He made sure everyone knows that he's a descendant of Confucius to differentiate himself biologically from the rest of us. Then he became trending.
2. The shamelessly hungry for fame
Okay, so I wouldn't make the point that Rebecca Black's assertion that "Sunday comes afterwards" Thursday, Friday and Saturday is particularly non-mainstream or highly contested, but she is a good example for the careless, shameless type of fame-seeker. Any sensible person re-reading the lyrics of "Friday" would realise the song's certainty of not only tanking but bringing its 'artist' hilariously down with it, but Rebecca forged ahead without caring about the quality of her product. Granted, it may be Rebecca's parents who should be held responsible for their child's output, but the end result is the same.
Was this also Kong's methodology? To get famous despite (or because of?) the awful quality of what he gets famous for? No matter how offensive his comments were, they were hardly sophisticated. His rudimentary and analysis that anyone who insists on speaking a dialect other than Mandarin is a "bastard" can be characterised anywhere between eccentric, rude and downright irresponsible, especially when the video in discussion had nothing to do with language. As a former student trained in the social sciences who would have gotten a big, fat "No Credit" on my report card with this kind of flawed reasoning, I am personally affronted that Kong could be considered to be any kind of scholar -- just as someone like Beethoven might be ashamed to call Rebecca Black an artist.
3. The hyperbolic culture-clash advocate
During my last semester of college I attended a release party for an on-campus Asian-American centric publication. One of the performers, a spoken word artist, stepped up to the microphone at the beginning of his set and expressed his excitement and support for all of us being there. He proclaimed, "what we're doing here: singing songs, writing poems, telling stories, is all resistance to cultural oppression!"
When I heard this, I almost spat out my mouthful of samosas and spring rolls to protest, in spite of the standing ovation that the speaker was receiving from those around me. (Or would it have been more effective for me to protest with my mouth full to reinforce the indignation?) Cultural oppression? Please. It's great that a group of self-identified Asians could come together to write a literary magazine, perform and eat Asian food, but the last time I checked, there were no burly white males breaking down the door to silence us.
A more high-profile example of this kind of scoundrel is Amy Chua, whose recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has already received a telling off from me. These such individuals harshly evoke racial or cultural problems and use these to justify their exaggerated claims, regardless of whether or not these problem actually exist. A few simplistic and rational rebuttals are all that are needed to respond to Kong's ridiculous accusation that Hong Kong's legalistic system has caused its citizens to become uncivil, but his quick, sensationalist words had already done their damage.
At the end of this post, I'm inevitably thinking about whether it's worth the bother at all to write in this much detail about how pointless it is to take Kong Qingdong seriously. The only people who should be feeling terribly angry at his outbursts and appearances should be his students at Beijing University, for having paid school fees to be taught by someone with absolutely no integrity. However, he's caused a stir, and though it's hard to tell all 1.3 billion people to calm down, more people should be realising that he just wanted some attention.
Thoughts?
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