Oracle - Chapter 12

The artifact interlude preceding Chapter 12 introduces Chen Mengjia, a scholar of ancient Chinese bronze who killed himself after being labeled a Rightist for resisting the change in Chinese characters. There are some discrepancies surrounding his suicide attempts and extra-martail relations.

Chapter 12 continues the story of Polat, an Uighur who immigrated to US because of the declining black currency market in China. The chapter serves to contrast the relative promise of the most prominent city, Beijing, to the poverty and urban blight of the US captial, Washington DC. This contrast is brought in full relief with the retelling of a mugging Polat endured.

The artifact interlude that follows Chapter 12 is probably the most thought provoking yet. After a brief history of Chen Mengjia, Hessler meets with a prominent US oracle bone scholar who discusses the differences in ancient Chinese and Westerner worldviews. Chinese thought boils down to order, regularity and organization. Chinese ancestoral worship (as opposed to hero worship of the West) tends to foster bureaucratic thought as wisdom and power accrues with age. In classical Chinese literature, the hero is essentially a bureaucrat whose achievements are derived from the decisions and plans made instead of actual fighting (as opposed to the gory details of Iliad and the Odyssey). Additionally, whereas Greek literature and mythology is rife with chaos, antiheros, tragedy and mischievous gods, the Chinese equivalent is far more ordered and patterned (interestingly, its suggested that the rash decisions of Western heroism may naturally produce war, and has been equated to particular Europeans rushing into WWI).

Echoing Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel", the scholar believes this is derived from geographical determinism. The central plains of China have very predictable climate patterns (compared to the Mediterranean). Additionally the Yellow and Yangtze rivers have little change in latitude, thus crop patterns are very similar across the region. This didn't foster much trade between regions and people were therefore less likely to exchange new ideas and technology. The result is a China that has been far-sighted into the past for knowledge and who's first attempts to appropriate Western thought has been feeble at best (Marxism).