This is a small operation, a modest blog.  I do not attract the kind of attention that the big blogs get; if I have 200 unique visitors a day, that’s good for me.  So it was somewhat surprising when a message from CNN Marketing, from London, appeared in my mailbox today.  They had somehow noticed The Useless Tree and sent along some material about a story they just produced about Zhang Dali, an artist in Beijing.  They obviously want me to post about it as part of a blog-based marketing strategy.  I will oblige, but with some meta-reflections as well.

      Zhang Dali does some interesting stuff:

"Dialogue," his defining work, is an ongoing piece of over 2,000
heads spray-painted across Beijing, predominantly on buildings marked
for demolition. Later, Zhang returns to the heads and chisels out
portions of them. These voids offer a new perspective on the changes
sweeping through Beijing as its leaders bulldoze traditional
neighborhoods to make room for modern apartments and shopping malls.

Throughout
his career, Zhang has aimed to document the changes sweeping through
Chinese social culture and highlight the effects of globalization on
the fringes of, and most vulnerable groups in, society. His work has
aimed to open a discussion with his compatriots about these issues.

      In the little video clip on the CNN site, "The Scene," he says that what he is trying to do is call attention to the changes that are happening around Beijing, to bring reality to light so that people will, at least, notice and – I think this is crucial for him – question the physical transformations of old hutongs being flattened for new, modern buildings.

     As I thought about his work, I wondered what sort of connection there might be to Taoism (it really doesn’t strike me as a Confucian project).  At first, I thought he did not really embrace a Taoist detachment from change.  After all, change is inevitable, Way is in constant transformation, so why should we be surprised or offended by change?  And he seems frustrated, to a degree, or at least that was what I sensed from this passage:

The
Scene: What was it like for you in Beijing
as a young man?

Zhang Dali: I liked Beijing a lot then because it was cultural, but now it’s
hard to say because
has changed so much.  Maybe there are new
Beijingers, a new Beijing
forming. Twenty years ago people were living a very slow lifestyle; it’s very
hard for me to tell what’s going to happen in 20 years

TS:
What are the people of Beijing Like?

ZD: There were real Beijing people 20 years ago,
but now there are no real Beijingers because people are coming from all around
the world to Beijing.

       Of course, Beijing has always attracted people from many different places (The Manchurians were quite interested in it about 400 years ago!).  Whether there was ever a "real" Beijing – something outside of the constant transformations of Way – is doubtful (though I understand his feeling, from the perspective of a single life-time, that the Beijing of the past was somehow more authentic than the present Beijing).  From a Taoist perspective, one that understands the fluidity and impermanence of all physical things, today’s Beijing is as real as the 1980’s Beijing, and the 2025 Beijing will be as real as today’s Beijing.

    So, it seemed that Zhang was missing the Taoist point.  But then I thought further about it, and realized that there was a parallel between his notion of "calling attention to reality" and the very act of writing of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.

      A paradox of Taoism is why these books were written in the first place.  If the authors truly believed in "doing nothing," or minimal intervention in the natural unfolding of Way, why would they take the time and effort to write?  The books, in and of themselves, are products of a very conscious desire to influence human action.  The presumed audience was those who could read, who, in the time of the writing of the books (The Warring States Period) were clearly the socio-political elite.   Thus, on the face of it, it seems that the Taoist authors did not really mean it when they said "do nothing," or were somehow exempting themselves from the general advice.
 
      Taoism, of course, is perfectly comfortable with paradox so, on one level, this is not such a big deal.  But, when we think about it a bit more, we can see that what the authors were up to was, rather like Zhang, "calling attention to reality."  If we do not apprehend Way (while accepting that we can never really understand it), we will fail to see its wonders and embrace its messages (at least those that are discernible).  So, some knowledge of it is necessary to realize there can be no knowledge of it.  Also, if we have a sense of Way, we might then understand the futility of human efforts to push against it; we might be able to turn away from the "twisty paths" that we adore.  But it takes a certain human effort, writing a book, to call attention to the futility of human action.

     This, then, is the Taoist connection to Zhang.  He is obviously skeptical of the promise of the Modern Future.  He can see the costs, both physical and human (his project on body-casting migrant workers gets at the human costs) of rapid modernization.  He is inviting us to see the effects and think about them.  As an artist he can likely do little else.  But maybe that is something.  His artistic interventions will not stop the bulldozers, though they might put them in a different perspective.  And that’s what the Taoist books do.

     Let’s turn back to the meta question: why is CNN noticing Zhang now?  And why are they contacting me? 

     Zhang has been doing his graffiti-demolition thing since at least 1998.  He is still doing it, but this is not really "news."  CNN’s attention might tell us something about the avant-garde nature of the artist: he was able to see something, and was attempting to create a dialogue about it, before most others noticed.  It cold also tell us something about the timing of what foreign audiences see, or want to see.  In 1998 we were more prone to seeing the shiny sky-scrapers and marveling at the "new China."  Only now, as the new has come to dominate, do we ponder the fate of the old, and the costs of the change.   

      Zhang’s resistance is more urgent than mere nostalgia, but the globalization of his work and images takes on a new life when it connects with the West’s nostalgia for a world it never experienced. 

     And how does The Useless Tree figure in all this?  In a small and insignificant way, obviously.  But that only goes to show the reach of globalization.  Someone in London, looking to circulate a "lost Beijing" nostalgia meme, finds me, someone who circulates ideas on how the ancient is relevant to the modern (am I only about nostalgia here?), and we link on the web. The giant and the minuscule connect.   Does this somehow sully my project here?  Not really.  Even if money had changed hands (and it didn’t), as long as I describe for you, dear reader, the context of the interchange, you yourself can judge whether my momentary dance with a media giant somehow contradicts my purpose. 

     I guess, in the end, blogging is all about what Zhang and the Taoists are doing: calling attention to reality.