Fan x Descartes

One thing that has really stood out to me (and most of us, I imagine) is the passive nature of Fan's character - as we've remarked many times in class, she seems to progress throughout the narrative simply by virtue of existing, her magnetic personality and demeanor magically drawing others to her aid. In addition, the few actions she do perform seem subdued and perfectly efficient, with none of the spray-n-pray or trial and error that we might expect from the protagonist of a 'dystopian', 'post-apocalyptic' novel. This was mentioned in class, but never more fully explored, but cumulatively, these characteristics make Fan seem mechanical - some kind of high-functioning machine devoid of consciousness but otherwise totally human. Let's dub this character 'Fan the Automaton'.

Another thing that we noticed about Fan is that she seems to almost act as a lens or mirror for both other characters and the narrative itself - her one dimensional personality acts similarly to the still surface of a lake - at once reflective and perfectly transparent. This has two primary effects - first, Fan the Automaton acts as a lens through which readers can understand the society and circumstances of the novel at large. Through her somewhat stagnant personality and lack of dynamic action, Fan essentially reflects everything that goes on around her. Her tale is not one in which she acts, but one in which everything acts around her. She becomes an untouchable, unchanging object around which her world is revealed. The second large effect of Fan the Automaton is that it individualizes the experience of the reader. In the same way that the 'Tale of Fan' is made to be simple and idealistic so as to broaden the narrative to encompass as many as possible, Fan as a character becomes a 'mirror' in which we, as individual readers, can find parts of ourselves in. The same emotionless ease with which Fan navigates the many obstacles she face allows the reader to fill in thoughts and feelings where there are none mentioned according to the individuals understanding of circumstances - the 'Tale of Fan' is at once universal and highly individual. 

The whole Descartes piece fits into this because his philosophy gives some serious meat to this analysis of Fan the Automaton. Descartes essentially stipulated about the human mind that individual consciousness is the only objective truth - it's somewhere along the lines of 'I think, therefore I am'. A fundamental part of Descartes philosophy is that perception is false (or at least, can be)- all of the information that we receive from our senses are simply our own minds lying to us: other humans may  not even be humans, as the only 'consciousness' that we can be sure to be true is our own. What if they were simply machines which walked and talked and acted perfectly like humans, but lacked the little voices in our heads that essentially are the only things defining our existence? He called these beings 'Automatons', and they were not individual beings, but instead manifestations of our own consciousness and existence. There are striking similarities between the automatons of Descartes philosophy and our own beloved Fan - read back on the arguments entailed above to see if their significance has deepened with this new understanding of Fan's classification as an automaton. 

Phew! It felt like I was writing an essay - this post was not an easy one to craft and even at this point I'm not entirely sure it makes sense. tl;dr: there's some seriously freaky stuff going on. 

*1/28/16* Edit:
Someone in class just asked - "how do we even know that the story even happened?" - it's a good question, and it plays into the whole Descartes aspect of the ideas listed above: it's unimportant that we cannot confirm the legitimacy of certain parts of the novel or even the narrative itself, because the significance of 'the Tale of Fan' lies in the individual perception of the reader. The power of storytelling is manifested in a meta-narrative in which the story about a story contains an entirely unwritten chapter which we as readers write for ourselves. 

Bo Liwei | Oliver

One thing that we haven't really talked about yet is the power of names and language. In any piece of literature, language is an incredibly important aspect of the narrative, whether it affects the semantic of the piece itself, or alters the syntax in such away that it affects the reading. In OSAFS, it's often used to indicate some form of culture - using pin yin (the Chinese phonetic alphabet) to describe food, or some location or tradition, are all ways with which Lee introduced aspects of Asian culture to the narrative. Names are another way used to subtly hint at this multiculturalism. Names such as 'Fan' and 'Cheung' seem distinctly Asian, whereas 'Quig' and 'Loreen' seem far more European/American.

Even aside from the cultural aspect, names carry powerful associations with characters - 'Mister Leo' and 'Miss Cathy' are immediately disassociated from 'normal' characters because of their titles. 'Reg' and 'Vik' almost seem like nicknames, and feel warm and comforting to use, as if casually addressing a good friend. The girls referred to by their numbers (One through Seven) are quite literally conglomerated by their names - seen as a unified collective distinguished only by their individual integers. So even aside from the multi-language aspect of names in OSAFS, we can see that individuals' titles are incredibly important to their characters.

Returning to the 'Asian' part of all this - Oliver and Liwei are remarkably similar names. There are tons of name 'translations' like this - Our own Lauren's Chinese name is Luo Xun (if it's unclear, they sound similar to each other). Oli-ver, Bo Li-wei. To non-Mandarin speakers this may seem like a stretch but it's actually a very common practice to have English names similar in sound or at least based off of the Chinese one (and vice versa - there are plenty of Chinese parents who give their kids English names first, then choose a Chinese one that sounds similar ex. Allen Li ; Li A lun or Tiger Wang ; Wang Tai Ge). So what's the significance of all this? I think a common experience that Asian American's share is impact of one's name on one's identity. Which is my 'real' name? My Chinese name or my English name? Am I Terrence Xiao orXiao Ting Yan? To my American peers, the answer may seem obvious, yet my legal documents, my Chinese friends, and my own parents refer to me by a completely different title. Cringing every time someone attempts to pronounce my last name, and eventually smiling weakly and saying 'close enough' when my friends try and say it 'how it's really pronounced' is an experience that I feel like most Asian people here can relate to, if not directly share. In essence, multicultural names are another aspect of our identity that we have to confront. It's important to recognize this significance in the novel as well - Oliver and Bo Liwei may be the same people, but there is some distinction to be made between these two labels, and the same can be said for all the other characters we have met or will end up meeting.

福二代 | Kids These Days ...

In China, our generation is known as the 福二代, which translates to "rich second generation". The title refers to declining status of the youth - poor academic performance, tendency to act recklessly and irresponsibly, plain 'weirdness', and above all, disregard for traditional values, usually surrounding Confucian ideals such as filial piety and humility. Mostly you hear stories of 福二代 buying fancy cars and then getting into car accidents, or splurging ludicrous sums of money at night clubs and bars. Even more infamous are the inheritors of parents' fortunes in the form of assets and companies, only to bankrupt their own businesses within a year of ownership. The central dogma surrounding 福二代 is that the Chinese youth of today were brought up in a pampered lifestyle of luxury, reaching the highest standards of living simply by being born - without the trial and hardship that our parents suffered through to reach such a status, we kids are essentially incapable and above all else, spoiled. In the same token, we can never live up to the achievements of our parents.

When Deng Xiao Ping seized power from Mao and opened China's borders (and economy) to Western influence, he gave birth to a new form of the Chinese dream. Education became a surefire way to escape the abject poverty that ravaged post-cultural revolution China. If one studied hard enough, there were scholarships to be obtained abroad, after which students could return to China, equipped with fancy degrees in law and medicine and business and form the vanguard of the economic surge that inevitably followed.

That's what my dad and mom (and most other dads and moms) did. At my age, my dad was literally a peasant - like LITERALLY a peasant. My entire family on my father's side lived in a tiny mud shack (it was washed away by a river flood some decades ago) in the wetlands of Ningbo, China. He had to balance life as a student with the rigors of being a full time farmhand, but eventually earned a place at Oxford, in England. He returned to China as a successful lawyer and started our family in Hong Kong. By the time I was born, we were a few years short of abandoning our apartment in the crowded city and moving to the suburbs of Beijing.

This is a story that will sound familiar to a lot of international students from China - especially those from the mainland. Although cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are considered some of the most well developed metropolises today, it's hard to imagine the history of culture that emerged around them in the past few decades. 福二代 are the first generation to grow up in this 'New China' (now going to connect to OSAFS). It is the generation that reaped the benefits of others' labors, and as a result, has collectively resulted in an overall decline of social caliber. It's a generation that has never experience true hardship or suffering, and is thus 'weak'. Ultimately, 福二代 such as myself have the bar set high - our achievements and indeed, entire lives, are lived out on the shoulders of the giants who birthed us.

Okay, I'm sharing this piece of history because it's scary how contemporary social and historical themes are so well threaded in OSAFS. When Quig's charter friend is describing the failing generation of youth, all I could think about was my own privilege in being born as the equivalent of a charter kid. When the narrator described the citizens of Senecca wearing special clothes and exercising out doors, my mind immediately jumped to my dad making fun of me for going to the gym - 'back in my day, all I had to do to stay fit was hard, manual labor for twelve hours a day (he spent the other twelve doing his homework and getting ahead on his studies, I'm sure). Seriously, OSAFS is quite the experience - I see so much of today's world described in the novel - if anything, it's scary to think that our society could so easily be compared to such a 'dystopian' future. I'd write more but honestly I'm pretty rattled by the self-reflection this book is forcing me to undergo so I'll sign off here.

*high-pitched excited screaming* | Initial Impressions of "On Such a Full Sea" by Chang Rae Lee

Aquaponics!!!

To those of you unaware of what the word means, it is a reference to the same farming system presented in On Such a Full Sea - the fish tanks connected to the vegetation growth platforms. It's a system which combines the biochemical cycles of aquaculture (raising aquatic organisms) and hydroponics (non-traditional agricultural methods, usually involving the direct immersion of root systems into a nutrient solution), into a single symbiotic process in which the individual systems' waste products are used as resources for the other. Basically, you take fish poop and use it to fertilize plants, and in the same process, clean the poop water for the fish.

It's also one of my favorite things in the world - I've spent over a year now conducting research on aquaponics, initially just studying the science behind it, but exploring aspects of it such as it's commercial viability and sustainability as my research progressed. In fact, this term, I'm conducting an IP/Abbot Grant to build an aquaponics system right in Gelb. As a disclaimer, the system described in Lee's novel was never explicitly defined as an aquaponics system, but given the context of food production and the physical set up of the system, it was a reasonable assumption to make.

So why is it significant? First, it's a testament to the speculative aspect of the novel - industrial agriculture, the current norm of food production, is really really bad. Not just in the sense that it's bad for the environment, but also in the sense that we no longer have the resources to sustain production to the point where it can support our rapidly growing population; space and water are two of the greatest limiting factors preventing further industrial growth. Aquaponics has been introduced as a sustainable and commercially viable alternative - it uses less resources, is more space efficient, and concentrates production by simultaneously supporting two streams of income (fishies and veggies). Of course, our agricultural problem still exists because the predominant infrastructure of agricultural production remains industrial - the cost of changing that system is much too high. But the popularity of aquaponics has grown immensely - many smaller or private farms are utilizing it, and it's being incorporated into nontraditional farming spaces, such in abandoned warehouses and buildings in dense urban areas. Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia University who popularized the idea of vertical farming, envisioned a future in which every city had it's own skyscrapers dedicated to aquaponics, hydroponics, and aeroponics, easily supporting the growing populations in an environmentally sustainable way while conserving space and resources. There have even been cute little systems created that can be attached to household aquariums, plastic fittings with space for an herb garden that rest on top of a glass tank. "On Such a Full Sea" proposes a future in which aquaponics is the predominant form of food production (as far as we know). This is hugely exciting for me, as someone who loves aquaponics, because it's not at all a ridiculous idea. It's speculative in the sense that it doesn't employ some foreign, high-tech solution to producing food, but instead a technology that exists today, but has simply yet to become the norm. If you're still not convinced that aquaponics is the way of the future, it was also used by the protagonist in the recent popular movie "The Martian" as the primary form of food production. On Mars.  Trust me guys.

Okay other impressions. In "On Such a Full Sea", the society in which Fan lives is incredibly hard to describe: on one hand, B-mor seems like a utopia - everyone is happy, everyone has a place in society, everyone does their jobs. Darker undertones reverse this image however - the happiness is replaced with complacency and ignorance as people begin to disappear and no one seems to question the society around them. Yikes. Another thing that stood out to me was the whole race/culture aspect - also hard to describe. The mix of geography, cultural elements, and physical descriptions of people totally jumbled my visualization of the described future - it reminded me in a lot of ways of San Fran Sokyo, in "Big Hero 6".

Exciting stuff.

Guys seriously if you're interested in aquaponics or just want to learn more about it just talk to me or message me or whatever, I'm literally obsessed.