Doing oral history is a potentially dangerous delight. It catapults you into the past, where we project our hopes, aspirations and optimism backwards so we can retell a history and perhaps a future. Whereas the present is a definite moment, the past contains wild, fascinating, and often pleasant possibilities. This in turn helps us maintain hope for a better future, just as the past once was, despite a less-than-satisfactory present. I do not reject the use of history this way; in fact, I embrace it, knowing the faults and fantasies that one may inevitably run into on this course. Still, it is nice to experience hope from truth. And if oral history helps in this way, even in ways that are imprecise and even implausible as a projection into the future, so be it.
Today, we have another episode with the wonderful David Moser, who holds a Master’s and a PhD in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan, with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy. Our last episode with David was truly entertaining and fun stuff. He was one of the first foreigners to perform on Chunwan, the annual Spring Festival Gala watched by over a billion Chinese people around the world each year. He has performed Xiangsheng, promoted jazz, hosted shows on Chinese national TV, written books, and spoken on lots of leading media channels. To me, he is Lao Mo, who is a jolly, thoughtful, musical, idealistic, and kind romanticist thinker, who loves and critiques China for all the right reasons.
We covered mostly his time in Beijing up to his Chunwan performance. Today’s excerpt, which was edited for brevity and clarity, covers the rest of his China stories — the post-Tiananmen life in Beijing, his experience in hosting Chinese TV shows, bringing jazz to China, and crossing the U.S. and China borders for decades. He says China is his “drug of choice.” I cannot completely relate as I had no choice to be born in and involved with China, but I get it. This is a fascinating place with never a boring day, with endless possibilities to ponder upon. In this spirit of exploration and rumination, I hope you like this piece.
Leo
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Podcast music: Mélodie, Kobi Salomon, Artlist Classics, Edvard Grieg, Ezequiel Jait, Artlist Original Music
The Tankman video in a Chinese museum
Last time we talked about your earliest experiences in China, including how you went to Beijing in 1986 to help translate Gödel, Esher, Bach, a book about AI by Douglas Hofstadter. That process took eight years. During that time, Tiananmen happened.
That was so sad. I remember being in my dorm room in ‘87, ‘88, watching the documentary Heshang (River Elegy) on TV, thinking, “Whoa, this is really breaking the boundaries.” It was critical of the government and very much an advertisement for gaige kaifang, the economic reforms.
I was actually in China in ‘89, but just as the protests started, I was going home. I had no idea what was going to happen. And I wasn’t in any danger or anything. Then it happened when I was back in Bloomington with Doug. One morning we got the news and just, oh, it was horrible. I thought I’d never be able to go back.
Because you thought you would be shut out?
I thought China would just be closed off, or it would be in chaos for years, or Americans wouldn’t be allowed in, or who knows what. And yet, Wang Jingshou was still there and lobbying to get me a visa so I could do more research on quyi and crosstalk.
And lo and behold, fall of 1989, I got my visa and was back in Beijing just after the massacre. And I thought, “This is really weird.” It was a changed Beijing. It looked the same, but you could still see bullet holes on the apartment buildings on Changanjie.
It was during that time also that we got some of the translators of the book out (to the U.S.). Anyone who could get out would get an automatic green card. So I went through Doug at Indiana University, and sent these letters to the embassy saying, “I want to invite so-and-so to be in my research group. The research is artificial intelligence, and here’s a biology student.” They knew this was fake. But we got several people out, which was good. It really changed their lives.
I remember going to the military history museum. They had an exhibition about the crackdown. It was glorifying the soldiers for crushing a counter-revolutionary rebellion.
I was going through the exhibit and in one room being projected on the wall is the Tank Man video. And I’m thinking, “Wait a minute. Why is this being shown?” Then I listened to the voiceover, and it said, “This video is proof that the soldiers were not indiscriminately slaughtering people. Look at this one man. The tanks are all stopping for his safety.” So they were twisting the meaning of that video. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
They haven’t put that on TV for a while. They had a choice of telling an alternative version or not saying anything at all. And in the end, they weren’t going to say anything at all. But there was this brief moment when the Tank Man video was shown.
Lots of weird things happened then. But the reforms kept going and things came back to some kind of normalcy pretty fast. What happened was the economic plot went way up fast, and then the political aspect went down. People were still really focused on getting rich. Getting out of the danwei (work unit) system, tiaohai (jumping into the sea — of opportunity).
And as a foreigner navigating these waters, did you have any idea where you were heading to?
I was under pressure from people that said, “You’re really crazy. You’ve got to go back home and get a job in academia. Because the longer you’re stuck in China, the more you can’t go back.” But I thought, “Let’s try this for a few years.”
I taught graduate students translation theory and some other things. I learned more from them than they learned from me because their English was already good. They’d already done translation. Mostly we would talk about examples and they would get English advice from me. But I was getting a lot of Chinese advice from them. Because we were coming at it from two sides, it became more like a seminar where we’re all just solving translation problems together. That was wonderful.
Jamming on guitar with rockstar Cui Jian and jazzing inside a PLA army base
Before coming to China, you probably never thought you would be part of China’s jazz revival. Could you talk about your jazz story in China?
I do all these different things, music was one of them. I don’t think I ever had enough talent to really be a jazz star. I just didn’t have the technique, or the motivation. But I did love it. I wanted to do music, and I still do. So it was a big decision to give up music professionally and go into the China field.
But as one of those serendipities, I happened to be in China at the exact moment that it was opening up, when you began to have Chinese musicians — mostly rock musicians or pop musicians — that were intensely curious about this thing called “jazz.”
The army band was on a PLA base. I couldn’t go in as a foreigner. So they would sneak me in; I would get down in the car. I bought some charts and wrote some songs and directed and then taught them how to do it.
They could tell that there was something special about jazz that was different from pop music, that it was a musical form where you could never reach perfection or even anything like completion. There was always a process. No matter how well you play, you’re never there. You’re always moving forward and making advances. And that’s not something that you really get in pop music. You play the tune the same way each time. But with jazz, each solo is a new attempt at something.
The Chinese musicians were aware of that, because they could hear and feel it. But they didn’t have the technique and the repertoire to get a foothold in it. I said [in the previous episode] that I love being a bridge, and jazz was the perfect place for that. Because, at my mediocre level, I was still at a higher level than they were, at least knowledge-wise. They respected me because it was like, “He’s an emissary from this country” — as if anyone who comes from the U.S. must know jazz.
I taught part-time at a place called the MIDI School that had a lot of guitar players. I was teaching these students about improvisation and the swing feel in the music. I was doing some work with the PLA army band that wanted to set up…
They were interested in jazz too?
The army brass were not interested, but the musicians were really interested. I met this guy at a jam session and he was a soldier with the jiefangjun junyuetuan (People’s Liberation Army Band). He played saxophone. They have all these players, and they’re bored — how many times can you play the national anthem? So he wanted something more interesting. He wanted to do a big band. And he learned by listening to Benny Goodman on the radio, on the VOA.
On the Voice of America? The enemy’s radio?
They still had shortwave VOA broadcasts, which were technically blocked. The army band was on a PLA base. I couldn’t go in as a foreigner. So they would sneak me in; I would get down in the car. I bought some charts and wrote some songs and directed and then taught them how to do it. And that was the first jazz big band.
Once they got repertoire, then they started getting jobs on New Year’s Eve. Foreign hotels wanted to have a big band for New Year’s Eve. Once they started to make money, the generals and the army officers said, “Hey, what are these people…?” They took over the band after that because it became a money-making machine. But things like that were just so wonderful.
I saw this generation going from zero to beginning to understand the music. For the new generation, now born in the late 1990s or early 2000s, it’s their native language. They grew up hearing that music. If you’re 25, 30 years old and it’s the first time you hear jazz, you’re already a mature musician. It’s like learning a foreign language. You’ll never get it. But if you grow up hearing it then you’ll speak it like a native. Some young players now that are just awesome.
How did you meet [Chinese rock star] Cui Jian?
That was the very first time I did any jazz at all. It was this very special night. So I was at Beida (Peking University)…
This was ‘96? ‘97?
Not that late. ‘93, ‘94 probably. This graduate student said, “What do you miss about the United States?” I said, “Not much. Jazz. I miss jazz because it’s not on the radio.” She said, “Oh, I know someone who’s a jazz pianist, and they have informal performances. You want me to put it in touch with him?” She gave me his telephone number. I called him up, “I hear you have jam sessions.” He said, “Yeah, come.”
I didn’t even have a trumpet. I borrowed one from a Japanese guy. The night that I went, it just so happens Cui Jian was there, plus other jazz players that I would later know better and work with. The jazz scene was very small.
During the break, the piano player said, “Mo Dawei, you should meet this guy.” He goes, “He plays pretty well. This is Cui Jian.” What! My mouth dropped.
That night they were all there and they said, “This is David. He’s from the U.S.” “Oh, wow. From the U.S. Oh, cool.” I got the trumpet and we were playing a little bit, and I was thinking, “These people, they play okay, but this doesn’t sound like jazz. The language is not pure. There’s something weird about it.”
But this guy came up in a tie-dye t-shirt and a flugelhorn, and I said, “Ah, this guy has a style. It sounds pretty good.” And actually I knew who Cui Jian was and I’d heard his music.
But you couldn’t match the person.
Yeah, I’d never seen many photos of him.
And you didn’t expect the Michael Jackson of Chinese music to just be there.
No. Exactly. During the break, the piano player said, “Mo Dawei, you should meet this guy.” He goes, “He plays pretty well. This is Cui Jian.” What! My mouth dropped.
We had a little conversation. He’s not shy, but modest, soft-spoken, and also just very serious about the music. He doesn’t act like a star. He’s just concentrated on the music. But he said, “I really want to play jazz.” He actually invited me to his house, and a few times I gave him some harmony lessons and we played a little bit.
Walking onto Chinese national TV (with censors)
You were increasingly plugged into the world of entertainment. Beijing TV asked you to do a show for them. You became a presenter on CCTV. What were those years like?
I got this offer to work at the CCTV educational channel for an English program. It paid well. And so I said, “Maybe I’ll take a break from academia and do this.”
I was doing translation, hosting, everything, mostly revising scripts and things like that. I would propose things that I knew worked well on American network TV, and I would try to explain it to them, and they said, “No, that would never work.”
For example, most talk shows have a regular bit that they do every single night. They said, “Nah, that would get old. No, you don’t understand Chinese audiences. They’d start getting bored. You have to do something different each time.” They never believed me.
A few days later, they said we have to refilm the skit. I said, “Why?” He said, “You can’t make fun of an American president.”
It was fun. But if you know anything about TV, it is so fake and it’s all about appearances and you have to put on a happy face. It’s so shallow. But the people in the program were very nice people, very likable, very funny. And they were having a good time. They felt very proud to be working for CCTV. They were very dedicated. And I just had great fun, I learned a lot from them, really.
There were some interesting censorship things. I found out that, on CCTV, every show has a party official whose job it is to monitor what you do. They don’t actually take part in planning the shows.
Like a political commissar.
Yeah. We did skits for kids. Back then it was Finding Nemo. So they were doing a little skit on that. It was a murder mystery with Zorro, the swordsman. One of the kids said, “Oh, look at this. There's this mark on a pillow. This might be a clue.” And instead of holding it up like a Z he held it wrong. So it looked like an N. He said, “Oh, the killer’s name must begin with N. Who could it be? It could be Nemo, Finding Nemo,” he said. “No, Nemo’s a fish. How about, Newton?” He said, “No, Newton is a physicist. He lived hundreds of years ago. He couldn’t have done it.” He said, “Oh, Nixon. Maybe it’s him.” He said, “No, he was the president.”
So we did the skit. A few days later, they said we have to refilm the skit. I said, “Why?” He said, “You can’t make fun of an American president.”
This was a silly skit, it didn’t mean anything whatsoever. It just had to start with an N. It wasn’t about Nixon. This is when I first realized, “Boy, are they ever overly cautious.” Who would care? But then I thought, “Oh yeah, Nixon is like a heroic president to the Chinese people because he’s the one that brought them together.” So it must be that. I thought, “Oh, this is just so ridiculous.”
You’ve had your share of censorship in China. from the ‘99 New Year Gala, doing TV skits, and doing interviews. I presume by this point nothing is really strange to you anymore.
It’s still strange, but it’s a strange that I got used to.
The ebb and flow of Chinese attitudes towards America
You’ve been teaching in China for 30 years now. Do you notice changes over the years in the education system, in how you teach and how students respond?
A lot of things happened. Young people, and Chinese people in general, began to learn a lot about the West and the U.S. There were no longer these naive questions. By the 2000s, a taxi cab driver knew more than I did about America.
The students also became very knowledgeable about the United States and English literature and all sorts of things, because they could actually directly watch the movie or read the book or listen to the podcast. And they could actually go there, or their friends could go there and come back and forth. So this enormous surge of information flowing in and out of China was a huge difference. It was like night and day.
Is there some sense in which China’s inferiority complex became a superiority complex over the years? Because it feels like it’s different now, right?
It’s different now, but I would say it took a little longer. Because even into the early 2000s, people were happier and they were certainly prouder of their own country than they had been before, but there was still a sense that, “We’re still second fiddle. We’re not as advanced as you are.”
But there was a turnaround. Nationalism surged in the late 1990s. There was this hit series of nationalist books, China Can Say No — Zhongguo Keyi Shuo Bu.
And then, before and after the Olympics, there was pushback against Western countries, especially the United States. But that didn’t necessarily mean pride, a feeling of superiority. They still felt like, “We’re being bullied and we should at least stand up for our own country.”
Maybe come back in another 10 years and let’s compare China and the U.S. at that point. They may be both dystopias.
But later there was a turnaround. Nowadays, even I have the same feeling when I land at Chicago Airport. “God, what a dreary, old-fashioned, dilapidated airport we have here.” And I’m going to Terminal 3 or 4 in Beijing, and it’s like a science-fiction movie. It’s so amazing. For Chinese people, I think, it’s “Hey, we’re not second place now,” in many ways.
This is the world you grew up in, right?
Yeah, exactly. Every few years we moved into a bigger house, we ate at more expensive restaurants, and then we began to travel to more destinations. It was unheard of to go abroad when I was little. And now everyone’s going to all kinds of exotic destinations.
The reality of this takeoff is undeniable. But, for me, there are lingering questions. Is it sustainable? How equitable is it? Whose lives are really taking off? I genuinely think China has a façade underneath which there are a lot of cracks and potholes.
I can’t speak for the Chinese, but Deng Xiaoping’s slogan, fazhan shi yingdaoli — development is the ironclad principle — still lingers today. The kind of development that’s material, visible, and easy to feel. “Gosh, this wasn’t this way 10 years ago. Now look at it. They’re really performing.”
But I think what’s really obvious to a lot of people, and especially the people of your generation and people who are just more aware and maybe more educated, is that there’s more to life than that. They’re still failing in the spiritual sphere, the freedom to expand consciousness and to do things that go against the grain. People feel constrained by that, and they can feel that’s something that places like the United States have more of. But for a lot of people, the material benefits are good enough.
The mutual decay of China and America today
It’s been a good deal. But I’m always hesitant to join this chorus of praising China for how great it has become. Those who can speak are those who have been the beneficiaries of this good ride. The people who have been left out don’t have the channels to speak.
China and the U.S. are not that dissimilar in that, if you go out and just interact with ordinary people, their minds are not on these issues. They’re thinking, “I wonder if I can get a pizza tonight,” or how they can get a better job.
Americans are so privileged. They don’t even have an inkling of knowledge about what’s happening anywhere else in the world. Keep in mind also that we have a president right now in the United States who’s getting pretty busy trying to crush dissent and to make anyone who says anything bad about him shut up, shutting down Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
You go to China, and you think you’re going to learn a lot about China, but for the first few years, you’re really going to learn a lot about yourself.
I would say right now America is almost undergoing as big a change as China was undergoing during the gaige kaifang era, but in the wrong direction. It’s going to a dark place that we thought America was immune to. We thought that our democracy was so resilient that no one could possibly reach that pinnacle. And yet here he is, doing exactly what any autocrat will do, and there’s not much we can do to stop him. Maybe come back in another 10 years and let’s compare China and the U.S. at that point. They may be both dystopias.
For me it’s distressing. Because the China that I was hoping for didn’t really materialize the way we thought it should and could have. But then I’m also looking at my own country, which I thought was going to be a stable, unchanging fact, a reality that was always going to be there — America wouldn’t change all that much in terms of its political system.
But now, both of these countries that I’m so invested in, and spiritually and intellectually tied to, are in very unstable, problematic, chaotic conditions. It’s very distressing.
You’ve basically lived half your life in America and half in China. What is America to you now? Is it still home, a place that you go back to? Is it distant?
I’d say I’m spiritually attached to America, but I don’t feel any need to be physically there. I’m still American. I still have the mindset and the attitudes of an American. I wouldn’t say I’m patriotic, but I’m still at least disposed well to a country which I think has some very good aspects, historically.
China is another matter. It’s more the country that I feel drawn to for various reasons, for self-improvement and self-actualization. You go to China, and you think you’re going to learn a lot about China, but for the first few years, you’re really going to learn a lot about yourself.
The same way Trump is chipping away at democratic norms, China is chipping away at the freedoms and expansions of the ‘gaige kaifang.’
One of the advantages of going overseas, especially to a place like China, is that it challenges all of your assumptions. For me it was not just that I was curious about China, but it was also a learning experience. It was a transformational decision that made me make great changes in myself that I wouldn’t have made otherwise, or I wouldn’t have even thought about.
And now, being married to a Chinese woman, and then having a daughter who’s in the middle there and seeing how she’s grappling with these issues — all I can say is, at this stage I’m so invested in both worlds that I can’t get rid of either of them. I get lots of gratification, excitement, and inspiration from both cultures in different ways. And I don’t want to see either of those cultures collapse as they seem sometimes to be on the verge of doing. So it’s a hard time for me. It’s a little depressing.
In the same way I see Trump chipping away at all these democratic norms, China’s chipping away at some of the freedoms and expansions that were in process during the gaige kaifang in the early 2000s.
That took so long and so much effort to build.
And seemed to be on such a solid trajectory. You can have the highest tech and the best internet and still have a closed-off system that’s spiritually and emotionally in its own little bubble. They figured out how to do that. This is all very distressing. And for me, at the age I’m at, I may not get to see how this all turns out.
China, my drug of choice
You stayed in Beijing all these years. It’s become your home. It’s where your family is. It’s where you’ve spent most of your life. Is Beijing still the Beijing you loved?
Yes and no. It’s changed in so many ways for the better, in terms of convenience. But it’s so big now, it’s gradually becoming unlivable. It’s not really one city. Most people spend their whole lives in one section of Beijing. The traffic is horrible in some places. It’s huge. It’s a little bit inhuman.
But I have to say, the Beijingers, the ones who lived there their whole life, who are just the average people, I don’t think they’ve changed a bit. They still talk the same way. They still act the same way. They’re still funny in the same way. They’re still fearless. They’ll come up and say anything to you. And a lot of them still live in the hutongs (traditional neighborhoods). That part of Beijing still seems to be there, the beating human heart of Beijing.
I’m so used to Beijing. I don’t know why. I just feel nostalgic about it and all the history. When I look at remnants of the Beijing City Wall, they’re so romantic still to this day. All the glory and tragedy of Beijing, the Qing Dynasty and all stuff, is right there in front of your nose.
Then what’s changed? Why are foreigners leaving?
One big reason is that it ceased to be a career choice. They began to localize as the gaige kaifang matured, and you didn’t need the presence of these foreigners. The middle rank workers and executives decided, “I could probably do as well elsewhere.” The package wasn’t as attractive as it used to be.
And then the horrible pollution of 2010, ‘11, ‘12. Those few years were terrible. It was dangerously polluted. To their credit, they’ve solved that in less time than you thought. But any foreigner with kids thought, “We’ve got to get our kids out of here. They can’t live in a polluted environment like this.”
And the U.S.-China relationship soured so badly that people began to feel like they weren’t quite welcome. There was suddenly this political tension that spilled into every aspect of daily life. And then Covid.
But in another sense, we’re not really sure why the numbers of American students willing to go to China and study Chinese language just dropped precipitously after 2008, after the Olympics.
It dropped after 2008, that early?
Yep, right away. The pinnacle was 2008.
Interesting. I would’ve thought it’s Covid.
No it was before then. Covid was just the death knell, the nail in the coffin. People in education had constant meetings about this — “What’s going on?” It is true that gradually Americans probably began to think less of China as a lifetime employment opportunity. Because they lost interest in that, then the language was less important to them. So people stopped opting to take Chinese in college.
But we’re not really sure why exactly. The magic kind of just went away. It was pre-Xi Jinping. So it wasn’t him. Maybe it was a bubble that had to burst at some point.
All the things that made China and Beijing interesting and worth exploring and considering either evaporated or people became disenchanted with it. I’m not quite sure exactly.
I think it’s fair to say that the U.S. and China have been drifting apart. China has been more enclosed than in the past. How much do you think back to the examples of Americans who stayed in China after 1949. Do you see yourself in that image at all?
No. It’s different. They were enamored, living this dream about the Communist Party.
They were diehard Maoists.
Yeah. They were ideological. They were in favor of that. For me, that has nothing to do with it whatsoever. If nothing else, that was a turnoff. I’m very interested in it and like to study it and think about it, but it wasn’t any reason I would want to stay in China.
The fact that China is going back to some of that, for admission into the society, and that in the U.S., at least for the time being, Trump is moving in that same autocratic style of leadership — I don’t know where I’d rather be at this point. For me, there’s something about the culture in China that just attracts me.
What is it?
There’s a joke that I’ve made — but in some sense this is true — China is my drug of choice. And it’s much less harmful to my body than cocaine or ketamine. I’m of the ‘60s generation. You want to have an acid trip, experience some transcendental enlightenment, right? For me, China was like that. I’m the type of person who likes stimulation.
If I’m in the U.S. and let’s say the water heater breaks and I need a plumber to come and fix it, and he comes and he does — that’s the most boring thing in the world. But if it happens in China and the guy comes, he’s speaking with an accent. “Hey, he’s not from Beijing, where is he from?” And I try to talk to him, he talks and he asks me lots of questions and he has some strange ideas I’ve never heard before. It’s a little bit Alice in Wonderland. Everything’s a little bit off. It’s not very comfortable, but that’s what I like.
Recommended readings
David Moser, 2016, A billion voices: China’s search for a common language, Penguin Books
Douglas Hofstadter, 1979, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books
About us
The Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu’s research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.
We also have a Chinese-language Substack. We hope to publish more conversations like this one, so stay tuned!
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