Conference Finale

Hangzhou, Tuesday, 9 November 2010

The Life and Development Conference would wrap up today at noon.

There were more panel meetings first. Here’s what mine looked like.

The final panels were followed by a plenary session at which both Robert and Evelyn
were to speak. I must say, the speeches by my “celebrity journalists” were the best
prepared and the most professional of the conference.
Robert argued that freedom of the press is not a benefit of a stable state but a
precondition for it.
Evelyn compared the Hangzhou she had visited 30 years ago with what she was
seeing now. And then out of the blue, she delivered a socko line. “I am tired of
listening to colleagues talk about cultural differences on human rights. And diplomats
do it at the UN all the time. Some standards apply to all. Torture is wrong, whether in
Abu Ghraib in Iraq or elsewhere. There are international norms, declarations of
human rights that all countries have approved and that need to be honored.” Then she
mentioned the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner. Gak! I saw my ambassadorship go
flying out the window, but “Good for her,” I thought.

Afterwards, she got a pat on the pack from one of the Western conferees, but her
Chinese hosts were curiously silent. I wondered if the line had been interpreted.
We now had free time. In the afternoon, I planned a museum tour with David Wang
as a guide. I had met David at an exhibit opening the week before. He had lived in
San Francisco for about 15 years before returning to Hangzhou a couple of years ago.
He teaches at the Chinese Academy of Art in town.

We started at the Zhejiang Art Museum, where I had seen a stunning exhibit the week
before. It was called “Sunflowers”, and it was by the Director of the Art Institute, XU
Jiang.

Xu has a poetic and philosophical streak in him, and his text accompanying the
paintings and sculptures of sunflowers intrigued me.

At the entry to the exhibit, he writes:

Painting sunflowers,

and painting the people of our generation.

We are a generation who have survived in the thorns and thick grass.”

And then you enter the main hall of the museum and are blown away by a huge brass
sculpture of sunflowers.
“A generation of people turns
toward the sun just as the
sunflowers do.”
“How much pain can a person endure? How heavy a flower disc can a sunflower
support? The fate of human beings is just like the fate of the sunflower. People of this
generation have turned into sunflowers, the sunflower after autumn, which gradually
becomes older but purer with each passing day, bravely facing a certain kind of spirit
mark, and a certain kind of life expression. Has the sunflower known the news about
the fate of her own?”

“What is important is not whether she knows it, but whether she can face it. The disc
is supported by the sunflower and a generation of people was forced to bear that
history without any explanation at all. Therefore, the fate has become history and the
future has become history too. The sunflower still stands there alone heart and soul.”

Robert noticed that there were dozens of stumps of sunflowers in the sculpture.
Members of a generation cut down?
It is a remarkable exhibit, also including dozens of paintings, some mammoth.
There was also sculpted glass.
And more brass.

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