7/7 — The Night of the Celestial Lovers — Qixi Festival
In traditional Chinese astrology: on the night of the seventh of the seventh, Niulang the Cowherd (Altair) reaches across the darkness to embrace his lucky star, Zhinu the Weaver Girl (Vega).
“Niulang was an orphan who lived with his brother and sister-in-law. He was often abused by his sister-in-law. They eventually kicked him out of the house, and gave him nothing but an old cow. One day, the old cow suddenly spoke out, telling Niulang that a fairy will come, and that she is Zhinu, the heavenly weaver. It said the fairy will stay here if she fails to go back to heaven before morning. In accordance with what the old cow said, Niulang saw Zhinu, and fell in love with her, and they got married. The Emperor of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, found out about this and was furious; so he sent minions to escort the heavenly weaver back to heaven. Niulang was heartbroken and decided to chase after them. However, the Queen Mother of the West drew a Silver River (The Milky Way) in the sky and blocked his way. Meanwhile, the love between Niulang and Zhinu moved the Magpies; who built a Bridge of Magpies over the Silver River so the couple could meet. The Jade Emperor was moved by the sight, and allowed this couple to meet on the Magpie Bridge once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. That was the origin of the Qixi Festival.”
— Thus Spoke Wikipedia
The New Cold War between the West and China, as Danny Haiphong rightly dubs it, is a disgrace. Click above for his barn-burner of an essay. The sudden whiplash-turn of the National Security State back to Full Tactical Alert On the Threat of China, has amplified indeed weaponized, Pres. Trump’s lazy scattershot calumnies. This isn’t good. The chicken hawks peddle sly, vague hints that somehow China is destabilizing the world, or that China is already on the warpath, a rampant aggressor on the world stage. It is assumed and then circularly re-argued, that they are bent upon nefariously stealing Americans’ future of capitalism by cheats and dodges. It’s the same old prejudice but it is keeping the MIC gravy-train going — though the Pentagon is already vomiting from gorging on the surfeit of its own indigestible sickpiles of previously gluttonized phantom wealth. What’s next, now that Afghanistan is lost?
This New Cold War is cynical and expedient; a gesture, and a Vaudevillian one — a spook-haunted arm-wave from the Deep State meant to distract and decoy from the fact that China and the U.S. are natural allies and partners. The main-stream media children appear to have either swallowed the State Department’s rattling sabre whole; or, and/a, also, just pulled a Big Stick out of their collective ass, by their own little selves. On the wheezing Sunday talk shows, it saves both the pols and the hacks from even having to leak anymore, by endlessly answering the question their non-viewers aren’t even bothering to care to ask anymore: namely, what-the-hell is Bidenism, anyway. Turns out, it’s that He’s Tough On China. He isn’t the One Who Lost It! He told them to Knock It Off! He’s sending gunboats to the Straits of Taiwan. Look, UFO’S!
‘You’ve Got To Be Taught’ The New Cold War is coincident, coincidentally, with a sharp rise in street violence against Asian-Americans. The attacks and the diplomatic fury are emotional steam valves for American people boiling and spoiling for an ugly fight with the Other. But these ignorant fights leave deep scars. A recent correspondent couldn’t recall the song from South Pacific about Anti-Asian prejudice. Hear it again, it still packs a wallop. Oscar Hammerstein took the trouble to introduce the song himself (in a newsreel celebrating “National Brotherhood Week,” believe it or not.)
Economic justifications for bashing China or for distrusting Chinese people as a business culture, are completely non-existent, now or ever. Around the Pacific Rim and the Globe, Chinese trading colonies have been the most efficient and enterprising merchant-handlers of goods in world history. And remember, they’re not even Communists any more, folks, remember? They’re not communists, whatever that might mean today, any more than English are Monarchists whatever that might mean today. That is, psts..psst…they aren’t really anymore. China is our Number One trading partner, manufactory of all our bling, and they own the notes on most of our increasingly worthless, rapidly deflating, paper money. The only threat, really, is that they’ll dump all those debt-junked petrodollars one day soon for a rational trading currency of their own, and…glug glug glug for the American Dream, whatever that might mean today.
ON GOLD MOUNTAIN — One of the most remarkable family and social histories I’ve ever read is Lisa See’s story of her Chinese-Anglo California family, which started in America around the time of the Gold Rush, 1856. Hilarious, shocking, it offers wide windows on revealing subjects — like how really-existing global economics operate at family level, across decades — and the roots of American and Chinese mutual prejudice. Only skim some pages for nuggets that suggest the gold buried in See’s story.
The Valley Village View 