Shirley MacLaine: Visit to China (parts 1 and 2)
...Can you get there...? ~ She got all the way to China!
I’ll just start with a quick picture of my edition of the book:
Pp. 108-117 of the book is a chapter about what the female delegation led by Shirley MacLaine did, when they make a trip to China.
“In our bright magentas, yellow, and greens, we looked like a Forty-second Street neon extravaganza against the muted grays and blues of the Chinese.”
The next chapter is also on China. As I allow myself to dive in, I find that I like what the ladies’ delegation is doing to me. It leaves me — breathless. Shirley arrives in Canton. China is still a country that valued sharing. And reverence for the wisdom of Chairman Mao. The group visits a school. Here is Shirley MacLaine’s words:
“There was a fifteen-minute play about a girl who comes to school for the first time and loves one toy airplane. As a new girl, she doesn’t really understand the theory of Chairman Mao, and wants to reserve the plane all to herself. Gently, her schoolmates educate her about sharing, according to Chairman Mao’s teaching of mutual conern for one another. She begins to share the plane, and then all the others begin to share their toys with her.”
1973. The people still on board, trying to stengthen China. The cultural evolution was now over. We agree that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake. In 1973 persons were involved in the an attempt to regain balance after that lurch to the exteme. But faith in a socialist China was still present. They still wanted a revolution that would make a more highly evolved people to exist in that country of China. However, it was the leaders who eventually screwed it up, moving directly onto a terible “capitalist road.” Who did that? Who said he didn’t care what color the cat was. Major error, Mr. "Great Leader” number three or four. Started out fairly decent in some parts, this Red China idea. But elites ruined it. As they always do.
Donald Trump said, Fight. Fight. Fight — he should swim the Yangtzee River now.
If you are experiencing cognitive dissonance here I suggest you read MacLain to get a better idea of the sheer diversity of humankind’s attempts to “get it right.”
pt. 2
The China part of the book goes on for a few chapters. On page 143, in grand style MacLaine is faced with, and takes up, the fact that Chinese men would, at an earlier time in history, beat their wives. “Liang submitted to such beatings because she was expected to.” MacLaine also spoke to Liang’s husband, and he declares, “All my friends beat their wives…I was only observing custom.” The book continues:
“I had to ask the question I had waited all my life to ask of someone. “When,” I asked, did you stop beating your wife?”
“Well,” he said. ‘Right after liberation it was difficult for me to adjust to the new teachings of Chairman Mao which forbade me to beat her anymore. I would sometimes lose my temper and raise my elbows to beat her, and she and the children would restrain me, reminding me that Chairman Mao wouldn’t permit it, so I refrained … The women and children had gotten together to remind us that we had to change. They maintained a spirit of revolt and if we mistreated our wives they would all protest. It was impossible’.”
I am not saying that everything in China was perfect. But we may feel the possibilities, when persons are given permission to be open-minded. For me, what makes the book especially worthwhile is that it provides a picture of the open-minded Americans of the 1970s. Compare with how the U. S. is today. I have lived through all of this. I remember in the seventies I would not have read her book!
MacLaine’s committee of women traveled in China as the most diverse group that the organizers could get together. Nobody stopped them or criticized their politics. Nobody worried about whether they were doing the politically correct thing.
All the American women were “doing their thing.” So were the Chinese, at that point in history.
As long as it agreed with the Chariman of course.
Of course, one might say: “that system broke down.” But don’t all systems break down, after awhile?
As a service to the public (and at the risk of the U. S. soon-coming police state "cancelling" me for re-printing this, a.k.a. "sharing," now forbidden in the U. S.) here is somethng I found, which is a customer review of another book by MacLaine.
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Such visions will be off-putting to many rational thinkers, but they should not be so quick to judge. While I personally don't believe there was a real Lemuria and Atlantis with aliens that sank into the ocean, I do believe they are powerful and persistent metaphors of our civilization and the dangers of arrogant materialism. They warn us of the inevitable collapse from living the way we do. They go along with New Age ecological themes of preserving the earth and creating sustainable modes of living, rather than the paradigm of "endless growth." Such themes are constant at the core of mystical lore, and Shirley MacLaine's works are no exception. Indeed, while she avers the reality of having had the visions, she still alludes to them as being instructive imaginings.
In The Camino, Shirley says: "Without the recognition of the soul's journey within us, we are lost and only part of what we were intended to be."
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