Trek II: CNSA Logo, and "My Friend is Obviously Chinese"

So, two connected thoughts before my weird, re-invigorated Trek madness evaporates and I incriminate myself and this nascent blog further. 

1. "My Friend is Obviously Chinese" 

Episode: The City on the Edge of Forever (Aired April 6, 1967)

Spock: "You were saying you'll have no trouble explaining it..."
Kirk: "My friend is obviously...Chinese. I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain...."
Spock: "Perhaps the unfortunate accident I had as a child...."
Kirk: "The unfortunate accident he had as a child....He caught his head in a mechanical...rice-picker. But fortunately there was an American...missionary living close by who was actually a ...skilled plastic surgeon in civilian life...."

2. Was Spock Obviously Chinese? 

After an embarrassing run through my Baidu skills, I was finally able to run searches on Spock [史巴克] and Vulcans [瓦肯] "Live Long and Prosper"? "Only Nixon could go to China"? That Confucian combination of altruistic ethics and repression? Striking of the gong before Pon Farr? Plausibly impossible at the height of the Cold War, yet see The Journal of Cold Warstudies, even, for their treatment. 

3. Final exhibit of evidence, the Chinese National Space Administration Logo, as pointed out by this blogger: 

My mind is burnt from work - updates on thoughts on Ai Wei Wei and Mei Lan Fang ASAP.  

The World of William Shatner: Oriental Sex (Playboy)

After a terrible hiatus, and in celebration of the forthcoming disaster of the resurrection of the Star Trek franchise (sex'ed up Vulcan grips and all!), here is a tidbit from Playboy 1959 feature "Oriental Sex."

Covered are productions of The World of Suzie Wong - where Shatner headlined as the love interest of that hooker with a heart of gold (left, not looking so fun now) -  and the Flower Drum Song (below, Nancy Kwan singing in the 1961 film). The news hook

"Gone, happily, are the days when the showbiz idea of Asian beauty was Myrna Loy with upswept eyebrows as the Daughter of Fu Manchu. Now, the legitimate stages of Broadway and the desert casinos of Las Vegas have become truly oriented to the Orient and are featuring Far-East femininity which is (if we may be allowed to shift gears and invoke the name of another Irish gentleman) the McCoy."

Let it be said: UHURA HAD IT BETTER. 

Cigarette Cards and Opera Masks

Waylaid without excuse (attempts: HBO, escalation of stress at work, Bonfire of the Vanities), but here are some cigarette cards from the New York Public Library's collection. The norm of including one of these tradable card series in cigarette packages was a gimmick thought up be James B. Duke in the late 1870s - I tried to dig around (lazily, albeit) but couldn't figure out the first appearances in China, where (I imagine) they must have represented some of those creeping innovations in modern advertising born from more familiar comic-like art (incursion of an internationally tradable unit of graphic design, or something of the sort.) Zhou Xun traces a cultural history of smoking during the early 20th C. in Smoke (one can never have enough cultural histories of single commodities, except, when one has had enough.)

PS

Doing research for Joyce Chaplin, J. Specht discovered a highlight of American cigarette slogans in the 50's: "Blow on her face, and she'll follow you anywhere."

"Who After Mao" Foreign Affairs 1973

Also, blast back to the Cold War. From a Foreign Affairs article, "Who After Mao," Mark Gayn, Jan. 1973;

The great hurrahs of the Cultural Revolution, the slogans, the messianic fervor, the public humiliation of the heretics are all gone. A visitor to Peking is impressed by nothing so much as by the return to normalcy, by pragmatism and-if one could imagine it in a Spartan land-a feeling of relaxation. Indeed, one might easily think that there had never been the awesome upheaval of 1966-69 "to change men's souls." Human frailty is once again understood, and there is at least an implied recognition that man does not live by faith alone.

Sino-African "Relations" - The Chafrica Epic Continues

The string of stories about Chinese investments in Africa that began to perculote out three years ago into the mainstream media continues. Yesterday's story in the NYT, "As Chinese Investment in Africa Drops, Hope Sinks,"describes the usual hawkish investment tactics of Chinese companies waning in the crisis (Breakoff from a major hydroelectric dam project in Guinea was the center of the story.) Photos (which revolve around Jinya Group employees, it looks), here.

Stefan R. Landsberger at Leiden University, The Netherlands, has quite a collection of propaganda available online (most published in a book Chinese Propaganda Posters—From Revolution to Modernization). One page of his site deals particularly with representation of Africans in early PRC materials (posters Landsbergers' scans)- from Landsberger:

"The appearance of colored peoples, and blacks in particular, in Chinese propaganda posters always has been problematic. Before the CCP grasped power, the only attention devoted to colored peoples in Chinese art was of a negative tone. Once the PRC was established, however, this attitude changed. Now that racial problems were seen as class problems, China increasingly discovered similarities between its own traumatic experiences with ‘white imperialism’ and those of other victimized ‘colored’ people in the world. It was time to downplay the traditional and deeply ingrained feelings of superiority. One of the first official steps to gain credibility as a supporter of the oppressed was taken in September 1950, when the Chinese lodged an official protest against the policy of apartheid in South Africa. Africans soon became regular guests in Beijing, where they were entertained at parties and met with the highest state leaders. By the late 1950s, many delegations had passed through Beijing and Zhongnanhai. But the Chinese did not actively spread the gospel of revolution and national liberation yet. They merely positioned themselves as a model that needed to be followed to gain independence."

So thus from the international struggle for rights to the neoliberal imperial clamour.

Related:
Evan Osnos in the New Yorker on Guangzhou's Canaan Market and African merchants -"Nigeriatown" (Audio Slideshow) and "The Promised Land"

And a from "the ground" article translated from the Southern Metropolis Daily: "“Chocolate City” - Africans seek their dreams in China"

And lastly, a story that (I think? Perhaps I was off the beat) was not on the radar of mainstream media during the Olympics as much but was a buzz on the blogosphere - police allegedly told bars to not serve "black people or Mongolians." (Original Shanghaiist piece.)

Later reports contended that "black" may have meant triad members (literally the "black society") - "Mongolians" had few homonyms to fall back on.