I’m getting ready to read Chuang Tzu with my tutorial students next week.  One thing that always fascinates me with this text is its skepticism toward language.  It so sharply and smartly questions the capacity of words to capture to shifting and complex realities that surround us:

The spoken isn’t just bits of wind.  In the spoken, something is spoken.  But what it is never stays fixed and constant.  So is something spoken, or has nothing ever been spoken?  People think we’re different from baby birds cheeping, but are we saying any more than they are?

How could Tao be so hidden that there’s true and false?  How could the spoken be so hidden that there’s "yes this" and "no that"? How could Tao leave and exist no more?  How could the spoken exist and be insufficient?  These days, Tao is hidden in small realizations and the spoken is hidden in florid extravagance, so we have the philosophies of Confucius and Mo Tzu declaring "yes this" and "no that."  They each affirm what the other denies, deny what the other affirms.  If you want to affirm all that they deny and deny all that they confirm, you can’t beat illumination…."(21-22)

      And then I saw this headline in today’s China Daily – "Media must beware of being manipulated" – and I thought: "wow, some editor there has a Chuang Tzu like sensibility about the use and abuse of language."

      The story is all about spin, especially corporate spin aimed at creating a buzz for a product or a person-as-product.  It brings forth a Chinese neo-logism: chaozuo (literally "fry work"), which means something like, cooking up a buzz, attracting attention, spinning some spin:

The word for fry in Chinese is chao, but you can chao more than food.

You can chao people as well as events, making them hot and big.

For example, you can chao a singer, known or unknown, making the singer hot.

Chao
is now often combined with zuo (work). So chaozuo (fry work), or
cooking or creating a buzz is now being practised by some who are
becoming experts in the field.

They do whatever it takes to ensure that chaozuo can be applied extensively.

They involve themselves mostly in entertainment and news media.

Their manner is loud, attention-grabbing and sometimes controversial, with emphasis on the unusual.

    The story goes on to condemn garish examples of chaozuo, singling out a TV show that has created a competition to cast a new production of A Dream of Red Mansions, which is very much like a recent US "reality show".  It then homes in on Wang Shuo, the "hooligan" writer who has resurfaced of late with an outburst of self-promoting profanity (I actually like Wang Shuo – had my Chinese politics class read Please Don’t Call Me Human last week).

     But then the story turns, and makes the case that we should distinguish between "good" chaozuo and "bad" chaozuo.  The bad is to be found in Wang Shuo types; the good – you knew this was coming – is to be found in the promotion of the Olympics!  That kind of buzz-creating spin is good, because it is promoting wholesome, family entertainment that lifts the spirits of the whole nation (and promotes the PRC’s "soft power").

     That is where Chuang Tzu would separate himself from the China Daily editors.  He would not buy into the good/bad distinction.  It is all "florid extravagance" that leads us away from Way.

     I also thought to myself: who, then, is the biggest practitioner of chaozuo?  Is it the raffish Wang Shuo?  The nefarious capitalists trying to take our money?  No, it is, of course, the Chinese Communist Party.  Here is the bottom line of the story:

First,
chaozuo usually has an agenda, hidden or not. Second, it involves media
as a partner. Third, planning is called for to attract public
attention. Fourth, it causes a sensation or at least makes a stir,
often for commercial gains.

    Just change "commercial" to "political" and you have the basis of Chinese communist propaganda (sorry, we’re supposed to say "publicity" now) from time immemorial.  I know it has gotten more difficult for Party PR men these days, with those savvy consumers more attuned to chaozuo of all sorts (and China Daily warning them about it!) but that just means that they have to get better at it.   Maybe that means dumping poor old Lei Feng and jumping into bed with some naked ladies (hat tip: Roland) 

     Think of the possibilities: Hu Jintao hosts this year’s "Happy Boy" contest (which has replaced the irreplaceable Super Girl).  Or maybe Wen Jiabao can get in touch with his inner funk by teaming up with some Chinese hip hop artists…   C’mon guys, it’s all chaozuo….

      Perhaps we aren’t saying anything more than baby birds cheeping…..