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NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

While Mao Zedong was radically egalitarian, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was more practical. He helped open China up to the world and convinced its people to let some among them become wealthy first. The rest of China would follow naturally.

Dexter Roberts, a fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, said Deng was very successful over the next several years. Too successful, some thought, to the point his own successor was worried the wealth gap between China’s rich and poor was becoming too big. 

This is one of the main problems that China faces today, Roberts said. China is now tainted with wealth gaps even greater than the United States. 

Roberts reported in China for over two decades for Bloomberg Businessweek, is a fellow at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, where he is also an adjunct instructor of political science. At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 1 in the Amphitheater, Roberts delved into China’s uncertain financial future and the hurdles 300 million internal migrant workers face. His lecture, titled “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: Challenges to China’s Future as a Global Superpower,” was the last presentation of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week One’s theme of “China and The World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

In 2000, Roberts reported on China’s young migrant workers. He met many of these people in Guizhou, often called the factory of the world because it has the world’s highest number of exports, from clothes and toys to iPhones. One of those migrants was Mo Pubo.

Mo left his village when he was 15 before starting high school and spent the next five years traveling around China working at factories. He eventually landed in Guizhou, where he met Roberts.

Roberts talked to Mo’s coworkers, many of which were his distant cousins, and also Mo’s girlfriend. 

“She had been very shy. She had always seemed afraid. When I addressed her, she would look down at the table,” Roberts said. “It was quite the experience to then see her several months later back at her village. She was really transformed. She was actually pretty proud of her village.”

Mo’s girlfriend returned home for two reasons: Her parents needed help during the rice harvest, and her identity card expired. 

This ID is more important than one might think, not only to migrants like Mo, but to the future of the Chinese economy. It states where a person is born within China. According to Chinese law, a person cannot use health care, public education or pension funds outside of their birth area. This means that the 300 million workers must travel back to their homes in order to receive medical care. Similarly, they must send their children back home for their education, or pay high prices for private urban schools. 

And it is a large risk to have an expired identity card. One of Mo’s cousins was held for ransom because theirs had expired.

“In places like Guizhou, the local police often saw migrants as a source of extra income. They would get them on the streets for any infraction they can pick up,” Roberts said. “Certainly an expired card would be one of the classic reasons they would grab someone. They would hold them in what they would call black jails and, in fact, hold them for ransom.”

Mao and his government initially created the card policy as a means of controlling the rural population and restricting migration across the country. Roberts said Mao wanted a “captive” rural population living in communes to produce cheap grains and foods for the urban population. 

“The economic rationale was: Sacrifice the livelihoods of the Chinese rural people in order to support the city,” Roberts said.

Unlike Mao, his successor, Deng, allowed the rural population to travel and live wherever they chose. But, Roberts said, Deng still tied social welfare — like health care, education and pensions — to where each person is born. 

“The issue here probably does not come as a surprise: China’s rural health care, China’s rural education, is far, far inferior to what is available in cities,” Roberts said.

Like in the U.S., the wealthier the area is, the more resources the local schools and hospitals have. With rural areas lacking the factories and foreign investments that urban areas have, villages are usually poor. A lot of the money that these remote villages receive, Roberts said, comes from migrant workers’ earnings and local agriculture. 

In 2000, the average wage of people in urban China was three times the average wage of those in rural China. Today, the ratio is around 2.5 to 1. 

Roberts said migrant parents can spend a high amount of money for private urban schools for children from rural areas, but even these schools are often not much better than their rural counterparts. Rural schools have a very high dropout rate; Roberts said very few actually finish high school in these areas. Furthermore, around 100 million children of migrant workers grow up separated from their parents. 

China and its migrant workers are reckoning with the welfare rules around the identity card, but also with another Mao-era policy lingering into modern times. 

In urban areas, homeowners are essentially free to sell, rent or buy their property and keep most of the profits. Roberts said this has led to an explosion of wealth within the real estate industry.

But, in rural areas, when owners sell their land, they receive very little because the local Party members take most of the profit. 

The policies around the identification cards and selling property leave migrant workers with little money, and the extra money they do have, they need to save for emergencies. This is especially dangerous for the Chinese government because their economy is transitioning from factory- and export-geared to one that needs to be driven by the spending power of its own people. 

China’s old economic model is not working as well, Roberts said, because the one-child policy has left the country with few working-age adults and factory wages have increased. China’s economy initially grew at unprecedented rates partially due to the very low wages the companies paid their workers. Since those wages have grown over time, China’s profits have decreased, and are still decreasing.

Additionally, migrant workers often save as much as 23% of their wages, which is 15% higher than the global saving average. It is either this, Roberts said, or risk going bankrupt.

So, China’s leadership wanted to increase its household consumption, Roberts said, which is at a very low 39%, 15 points below the world average. In comparison, Roberts said American household consumption is between 70 and 75%.

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair of Education, opened the Q-and-A by asking why the Chinese government is resistant to expanding education to rural areas. 

The main issue, Roberts said, is money, as funding for schools and hospitals comes from the local area. Another issue is that there is not much benefit for rural governments to invest in schools. Their reasoning is, Roberts said, if they invested heavily in educating children, the students would still leave for wealthier cities as soon as they come of age, instead of staying within the community. Urban populations also do not want to share their access to welfare, particularly with education. 

“Some of the bigger protests we’ve seen in recent years (in China) have actually been the parents of city kids who have gone and protested against the well-meaning efforts by the central government to try and allow more young people from rural China to also attend these schools,” Roberts said. “We’ve seen parents go march outside of the board of education and say, ‘Keep them out.’ ”

And, Roberts said, President Xi Jinping is not a strong supporter of reform.

“He does not necessarily believe in allowing young people to decide to live where they want to live and to sell when they want to sell,” Roberts said. “So I think there’s a large issue of control by the Communist Party — this perception that it’s socially destabilizing to allow rural people to move around the country.”

With Week One of the CLS ending, Ewalt ended the lecture by asking who the audience should read to learn more about China’s role in international affairs.

Roberts recommended journalists and authors Peter Hessler, Ian Johnson and Mei Fong — a friend of Roberts’ who lectured at Chautauqua two days before him.

SARAH VEST – STAFF WRITER

“Click” goes the shutter of a camera, capturing a moment in time before it passes by. Just like a camera captures moments in time, so does the memory of Sonja Livingston, Week One’s prose writer-in-residence who will be giving a Brown Bag at 12:15 p.m. Friday, July 2 on the CHQ Assembly Virtual Porch. Livingston has written two nonfiction books of memoirs, but she originally began her writing career as a poet. 

“I still love poetry. I think the intensity of it matches memory really well and sort of the mystery of (memory),” said Livingston, an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. “A lot of times we’ll suddenly think of something, and it’s so intense and it sticks with us — and we can’t figure out what it’s about and that lends itself to poetic prose or a poem.”

It is at the intersection of poetry, prose and memory that Livingston came up with her “snapshot” writing technique for her first book, Ghostbread. The book is a memoir of growing up in Western New York and of childhood poverty. 

“The topic was so overwhelming that I didn’t exactly know how to go about it,” Livingston said. “I was also pretty young, and I didn’t know how to really write a memoir. What worked for me was to handle each memory or image as it came to me individually.”

In order to handle each memory individually, Livingston uses the “snapshot” style of writing: borrowing from her days in poetry to write short, but intense, nonfiction pieces to get started on longer nonfiction pieces. 

It is the “snapshot” style of writing that is the basis for her Brown Bag, “The Literary Snapshot: The Wisdom of Starting Small.” Livingston thinks that “snapshots” are particularly good for young writers, or people who are trying writing for the first time. 

“A lot of times, like me, (writers) are overwhelmed and they don’t know where to begin, but they may have a memory that keeps coming to them,” she said. “I think it’s just about giving them permission to explore that singular image and then go on to the next thing and then the next and then see how they connect.”

Livingston hopes that people will get a lot out of her Brown Bag lecture, but the primary thing is that the best way to begin “is simply to begin.” This approach lets people know that there is no right or wrong way to go about telling your personal story. 

“Our stories are really important, even if they seem really small,” Livingston said. “Small moments can tie into much larger questions.” 

DAVID KWIATKOWSKI – STAFF WRITER

In the true crime Renaissance, stories like the Central Park Five have regained mainstream attention. However, there are still stories of injustice that have fallen through the cracks, like the story of the Jena Six. 

The Jena Six were six Black teenagers (Robert Bailey, then 16; Mychal Bell, then 16; Carwin Jones, then 17; Bryant Purvis, then 17; Jesse Ray Beard, then 14; and Theo Shaw, then 17) convicted in the beating of Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, on Dec. 4, 2006. The sentencing of the students was seen as racially motivated and discriminatory as the events of the assault are still not clear, and Jena’s white student population had been treated very leniently in similar incidents. 

Playwright Dominique Morisseau wrote Blood at the Root for the 2014 graduating class at Pennsylvania State University, and uses the Jena Six as a means of which to examine America’s continuing problem in being able to handle differences in sexuality, race or gender.

Blood at the Root is continuing its run at 4 p.m. Friday, July 2 in the Performance Pavilion on Pratt.

Stori Ayers, who is directing Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of Blood at the Root, originated the lead role of Raylynn at Penn State and is coming back to Chautauqua for her fifth year to direct CTC’s production. She has been in contact with some members of the Jena Six throughout the years, including Purvis. He has joined casts of the show in doing community outreach, panels and has even written a book about his experience: My Story as a Jena 6.

“He’s been very much a supporter of the show,” Ayers said. “What’s been really special to me about having him a part of the show, when it’s being produced, is that he gets to tell his story. At the time, they were all advised not to talk to the media. When you research about the Jena Six, you don’t get their account personally. But when you read his book, you get his account. He gets to clear his name because he was never involved. He wasn’t a part of the fight. But he was friends with the gentleman who was in the fight. And they sort of all got clumped together in this sort of guilt-by-association ordeal.”

Once the decision was made by Chautauqua Institution to move all theater and opera productions outdoors, coupled with an overall reduced conservatory of six actors, CTC Artistic Director Andrew Borba knew this show was perfect for the opening of CTC’s season. 

“This show is immediate,” Borba said. “It is connected to the community and the audience. And they are, without a doubt, connecting to what is happening in our world today. Because I don’t think the world right now is looking for escapism, I think they’re looking for a moment of shared connectivity.”

For many people, this will be the first time hearing about the Jena Six, but Ayers wants people to remember that the story is much more about what happened that day in the schoolyard.

“It was about reducing those charges, because these 14- and 16-year-olds should not have been tried as adults for attempted murder for getting in a fight at school,” Ayers said.

SARA TOTH – EDITOR

Over the course of his career, Michael W. Smith has won more than 40 Dove Awards, three Grammy Awards and an American Music Award. He’s been inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. He’s released more than 20 albums; 14 have gone gold and five have gone platinum. He’s an actor, an author, a humanitarian and — perhaps most importantly — a father and a grandfather.

“I put family first,” Smith told Maina Mwaura in a conversation last month on fatherhood and faith for Religion News Service. “(My wife) and I talked about this extensively in the early days, especially when …  things really began to take off, you know, when I was opening up for Amy (Grant) and all of a sudden you got 18,000 people showing up. … It can suck you into this whole thing of entitlement, and you’re a rock star — and all that kind of stuff can take you for a ride. And then I just made some rules and said I’d never be away from my family more than two weeks. That’s just the rules.”

Smith, a celebrated contemporary Christian artist who has experienced success on both Christian and mainstream charts, last performed at Chautauqua in 2005; he returns to the grounds for a show at 8:15 p.m. Friday, July 2 in the Amphitheater. He’ll be joined by opening act Nathan Tasker, another contemporary Christian performer, who will start the evening with a brief set and a short discussion on Compassion International, a humanitarian aid organization that both he and Smith are involved in.

“The writer of the Book of Hebrews speaks of a hope so sure, and so certain, that it holds the soul like an anchor holds a boat in the midst of even the most powerful of life’s storms,” Tasker wrote in a blog post for Compassion International. “This is a hope that brings light to the bleakest of situations, pushing back against darkness wherever it is found — be it Honduras, Nashville or Sydney.”

Since his first album in 1983, Smith has recorded 32 No. 1 hit songs, including “Place in This World,” “Here I Am to Worship,” “Friends,” “Awesome God” and “Great is the Lord.” His 2018 album A Million Lights includes the song “Conversation.” Smith told American Songwriter last year that he “always knew it was a special song,” and was inspired to re-release it in 2020, accompanied by a new music video, filled with images of protests and historical footage of moments from the civil rights movement.  

“I think the urgency of what has happened in 2020, on so many levels, made me rethink about how to actually re-release the song,” Smith told Tess Schoonhoven of American Songwriter. “(I wanted to) strip away the production, make it raw, and hopefully people really hear the song and what it’s really saying, and it would resonate with people’s hearts in the midst of all the chaos and division.”

Looking to the season, Deborah Sunya Moore’s desire to bring Smith back to Chautauqua was about “his larger mission to bring people together.”

“Having sold over 15 million albums, he could sit back and sit pretty, but I was moved when he re-released his song ‘Conversation,’ ” said Moore, the Institution’s senior vice president and chief program officer (interim) and vice president of performing and visual arts. “He did this at a time of racial tension because he wanted to encourage us all to enter into a conversation with someone that thinks completely differently.”

Coupled with his work in helping more than 70,000 children through Compassion International, Moore said, Smith’s work encouraging conversations through his music made him a perfect fit for the summer.

“This is what Chautauqua hopes to do each day, and it’s not easy,” she said. “I appreciate that Smith felt the urgency to be a part of healing division that is so deep.”

Reflecting on the meaning of “Conversation” with Schoonhoven, Smith said it was simple: “that you can sit down and have a conversation with anybody.”

“Especially a conversation with someone who believes completely differently than you do, and you leave with respect for the other that believes differently,” he said. “In the end, love rules the day.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

As a mixed-race Chinese-Jamaican American, Paula Madison says she wants to talk more about the cooperative relations that have existed between Blacks and Asians for many years in the America.

Madison’s maternal mother is African-Jamaican and her maternal father is Chinese, which she said surprises some people.

“Someone said, ‘Well, wait a minute. That would mean your mother was biracial, Black and Chinese, 90 years ago.’ I said, ‘Yeah, they had mixed people back then.’ Then he said, ‘I thought that happened more recently,’ ” Madison said.

Madison is the chief executive officer at Madison Media Management, the former owner and CEO of the Los Angeles Sparks, and the former executive vice president and chief diversity officer of NBCUniversal Media. 

She is the first speaker for the 2021 African American Heritage House Speaker Series, and she’ll deliver a lecture at 1 p.m. Friday, July 2, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. She’ll speak on the Week One theme “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?” and discuss her perspective on China’s global initiatives.

“The G7 has decided to build a narrative around China being an enemy to developed nations by competing in areas of technology, supply chain, et cetera,” Madison said. “How did China become a bigger enemy of the U.S. than Russia, which has been hacking into U.S. government and corporate systems for years now?”

Madison said that Chinese people have been coming to the Americas and Africa since the 1830s. In the beginning, Chinese women and their families were not allowed to accompany the men.

“Most often when you found Chinese women who had also migrated, it was largely because they had been forced into being sex workers, and not for the Chinese men, but for the Europeans who were the captains and the sailors,” Madison said.

One of Madison’s goals is to deconstruct the assumption that usually when a person has Asian and Black parents or grandparents, it is the result of an American soldier being stationed in an Asian nation.

She also wants to dispel the myth that Black people are more responsible for the recent attacks on elderly Asians in the United States. 

She said that less than 10% of Asian hate attacks are committed by Black people, with around 70% perpetrated by white men. 

“Those don’t end up being publicized,” Madison said. “That is why I said I think it’s important that people understand that we (people of Asian and Black diaspora) are in large numbers.”

Madison decided to become a journalist when she realized the stories told about people of color in newspapers and cable news were very skewed.

“Every Black person depicted in the news was a criminal or an entertainer,” Madison said. “That struck me as not only untrue but outrageous.”

When Madison was a sophomore in college in the 1970s, she was walking down a street a few blocks from her house. As she was approaching Lenox Avenue near a mosque, she heard gunshots, then a busload of police officers and a helicopter overhead.

“Having grown up in an environment like that, I immediately got to the sidewalks,” Madison said. “I was actually on my stomach on the sidewalk.”

She then saw a police officer racing out of the tactical bus toward the mosque. Then, the imam of the mosque came out.

“On that block, which I knew to be a haven for drug dealing, I heard windows opening,” Madison said. “And then as I looked up, I could see barrels of guns, pointed out the windows at the police officers. So what I was in the middle of was a near war. Police were attacking the mosque. The neighborhood, in a community that was supposed to be overridden with drugs, was going to defend Muslims.”

Madison then crawled down the street, got to the corner and then saw the imam stand up on top of a car. 

“(He) shouted something like, ‘Brothers and sisters. No. This is what they want you to do. They want to start a war. Please put your guns down. go back in,’ ” Madison said. “That is what happened.”

Madison said she turned around and went back to her mother’s house. 

“My mother was a consummate news junkie. She listened to news radio all day; read all the newspapers. When I told her what had just happened, she said, ‘It’s not on the news.’ ”

At first, Madison figured that the story of solidarity would be on the evening news, but a report never appeared in any news media.

“That’s when I said, ‘OK, so what they’re willing to do is publish stories about Black people in Harlem when we are arrested or tagged with criminal behavior,’ ” Madison said.

As she later learned, two officers tried to force their way into the mosque and shot at the doors, which she thinks were steel. The bullets ricocheted and hit them. 

“Therefore, ‘officer down,’ that call went out,” Madison said. “But there was no way that this was not planned, because a busload of tactical officers were ready, and (there) was a helicopter above. That was what convinced me.”

For the next 30 years, Madison worked in the journalism industry, including 22 years at NBC, where she was executive vice president and chief diversity officer.

When Madison and her family were asked to consider investing in the Los Angeles Sparks, they declined at first.

“Within a week or so, Don Imus called the Rutgers (University) women’s basketball team ‘nappy-headed hoes’ on his CNBC/CBS radio program, and I was outraged,” Madison said. “At that point, as a woman of African descent who wears her hair in an Afro, I went back to my family and suggested we do indeed invest in women’s basketball.”

Her more recent work involves raising more awareness of Black and Asian diaspora. She said both of the TV series she is involved in developing focus on this intersection.

She recommends people pay attention to the pledges of business to support diversity and inclusion.

“I believe that most just paid lip service and reapportioned already pledged philanthropy,” Madison said. “I’m not seeing massive changes.”

In her lecture today, Madison will talk about China’s global initiatives, including how the country has donated one vaccine to developing nations for every two administered in China.

“Biden pledged 500 million doses to (developing) nations at the G7 summit, while China had been doing so for many months. Why delay the donations? Is it because many in the U.S. will not get the vaccines?” Madison said. “China’s role as a global leader is not looked upon with such animosity as the G7 nations are displaying. I, as a Black and Chinese woman, have a different view of my grandfather’s homeland, and I was asked to share it.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

The first thing, Michael Pillsbury said, that President Joe Biden needs to understand when approaching diplomacy with China is the balance of power. During his campaign, Pillsbury said, Biden did not seem that concerned with China.

But Pillsbury is impressed that the president’s sentiment has changed. Biden is now saying that the United States is in major competition with China and has brought up the country multiple times during the recent G-7 conference, for example.

Currently a senior fellow and director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute, Pillsbury has served in the U.S. government for more than 40 years, working with presidents including Jimmy Carter, both Bushes and, most recently, Donald Trump. 

At 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 30 in the Amphitheater, Pillsbury discussed multiple questions he believes the Biden administration needs to consider as they tackle large issues regarding China. His lecture was the fourth installment of the Chautauqua Lecture Series of Week One, “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Biden’s advisers, Pillsbury said, have grouped issues with China into three categories: adversarial, which includes the U.S.’s condemnation of what it considers the genocide of the Uyghur people; competition, which includes Chinese corporations selling technology that rivals the U.S.; and cooperation, which includes both countries working together on climate change initiatives. 

Pillsbury said there is rare bipartisanship in Congress when it comes to diplomacy with China. Most senators, for example, voted for a bill that requires a Congressional review when China buys any small, tech-focused American startups.

The next aspect that Biden needs to consider is how tough to be on China, including in trade, technology and economic investments. Pillsbury said there is a lot of debate around this topic. President Barack Obama and his administration, around seven years ago, called for the arrest of five Chinese hackers, some of whom focused on getting nuclear reactor information from a company in Pittsburgh in order to advance Chinese technology.

Biden needs to consider the great risk involved with letting China steal military technology, Pillsbury said, while also not stoking the flames too much and risking another Cold War.

And what would a cold war with China look like? That was the next question Pillsbury brought up, one which he called “devilishly difficult.”

Despite their history as allies in World War II, within a few years, the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in the Cold War. During this time, Pillsbury said the U.S. government established the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense (which unified the branches of the military), the Air Force (which used to be a part of the Army), and the National Security Council.

Pillsbury said that in comparison, the U.S. has not done much to prepare for a cold war with China.

Pillsbury told a story about dedicated, China-focused offices in each department of the U.S. government. When members of the Chinese military were visiting Washington, Pillsbury was involved in a tour of those offices. At that time, only four people dedicated to China issues worked in the Pentagon.

“The Chinese general says, ‘No this isn’t the real one.’ They were talking amongst themselves: ‘The Americans are deceiving us, they are making us think that they don’t take China seriously,’ ” Pillsbury said. “So we never again did that.”

Pillsbury then transitioned into the next issue Biden must understand: unity within China. To truly understand this issue, Pillsbury said one must know about the four T’s.

The first is Taiwan. Different presidents have taken different positions on Taiwan. President Richard Nixon’s policy was that Taiwan was a part of China, while other presidents, like Bill Clinton, said that it wasn’t, but also that it wasn’t an independent country. Aligning with China would open more doors for cooperation, but not all presidents have taken that tack.

The second and third T’s were Tibet, where the Dalai Lama is in an exile government that has power over the area but is not recognized by China; and Turkestan, the homeland of the Uyghur people, a mainly Muslim, Turkic ethnic group who live in China’s North-Western Xinjiang Province. 

When President George W. Bush was compiling a list of terrorist organizations in the world in the early 2000s, China said that if the East Turkestan Independence Movement was not added to the list, the country would likely not help in the war on terror.

“So everyone rushes to the files. People at the CIA and other places (say), ‘What the hell is the ETIM? There’s nothing on it,’ ” Pillsbury said. “So ordinarily you would have said, ‘No, sorry, we can’t confirm there’s any such thing.’ But some people, and there was really harsh discussion, … some people said, ‘The Chinese say it is a terrorist organization, it goes on the list.’ ”

Pillsbury said that 20 years later, the world learned that Uyghurs were in “re-education” camps. One Chinese diplomat claimed that all the doors in the camp were open, and they were free to leave whenever. The New York Times asked to visit the camps to verify this claim, but China declined.

The last T is Hong Kong — though Pillsbury admitted that there is no T in Hong Kong.

Pillsbury said a question among media coverage is if China’s treatment of Hong Kong has broken the 1984 declaration between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom — an agreement that gave Hong Kong all the rights of autonomy.

“The first year of the Trump administration, the Chinese announced this declaration is null and void,” Pillsbury said. “President Trump did not object at that time. President Biden faces this issue now.”

As he wrapped up his lecture, Pillsbury made one final point: the need for those in the West to better understand China.

“The truth is, my fear is we know way too little about China, especially in the important areas,” Pillsbury said. “So more work with China, and more work to understand Chinese strategy, is very important.”

Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill asked Pillsbury how he thought China would celebrate its 200th anniversary of the Communist Party in the country. Its 100th anniversary was on the same day of Pillsbury’s lecture. 

Pillsbury said many think that China will collapse eventually, either because the Communist Party will break up or because its economy will slow down.

“In a 100 years, you’re looking at the balance of power clearly going towards China,” Pillsbury said. “The China experts who say China is going to collapse, the Communist Party is going to collapse, hopefully they’re right. But I don’t think so.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

It was hard for Dexter Roberts to find an affordable cup of coffee or a good pizza when he arrived in China in 1995. This was before China’s huge economic growth, when there were few cars on the road and the foreign community within the country was very small. 

At 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 1 in the Amphitheater, Roberts will speak about China’s uncertain economic future and the global implications of that future, closing out the first week’s theme of the 2021 Chautauqua Lecture Series, “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Despite the lack of access to Western goods while in China, Roberts noticed the great diversity of China’s geography. He’s stayed in every province, from the mountains of western China near Tibet, the frigid northeast near Siberia, and the semi-tropical areas in the southeast near Vietnam and Myanmar. 

As China’s economy grew, Roberts noticed wealth imbalances along geographic lines. Large coastal cities like Beijing and Shanghai held much of the money, while rural areas teemed with poverty. The country’s large middle class — around 400,000 people who mostly live in cities — is dwarfed by the lower class of almost a billion in rural areas. This inequality shows its face when comparing the schools and health care across regions.

“Particularly over the last couple years, there’s been this tendency to look at China as a monolith: one very big, often ominous power that we need to be worried about,” Roberts said. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be worried about lots of things that are happening in China and with policies of the leadership there. But this idea that it’s monolithic, that there isn’t diversity (is wrong).”

Roberts is an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Montana and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative. As a China bureau chief and Asia news editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, he lived in China for more than 20 years. 

Roberts, like most people in the ‘80s and ‘90s, didn’t realize how far China’s economy would climb. He wanted to travel the world and was fascinated by Chinese culture, so he moved there in the mid-‘90s, right when the country was in the midst of a great transition: more cars on the road, people moving to cities and heavy investment in infrastructure. 

“I like to joke that I looked into the future, that China would become the second-largest economy, on track to becoming the world’s largest economy,” Roberts said, “but that’s completely untrue.”

Roberts lived in China from 1995 to 2018. He saw much of the population move into cities for factory and construction jobs. China currently has around 300 million internal migrants, meaning Chinese citizens who travel long distances within the country for work. 

This large group of migrant workers, he said, often come from poorer areas and are some of the most vulnerable populations. Roberts will discuss this group in his talk today. With China transitioning again, this time from an economy driven by exports and factories to one relying on the spending power of their own people, the group reliant on those jobs may become even poorer.

“If they cannot overcome the issues of inequality,” Roberts said, “then they are not going to be able to build an economy much more driven by the spending power of their own people.”

SARA TOTH – EDITOR

The Glenn Miller Orchestra typically tours 11 months out of the year — 10 weeks on the road, one week off, repeat, playing more than 200 shows along the way. One of those shows came on March 11, 2020, at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

And then the world shut down.

“(That show) felt somewhat normal, even though we knew that COVID was approaching,” Erik Stabnau said. “But in that week, that one week where everything shut down, we went on break, thinking ‘We’ll be back in a week.’ ”

One week became two weeks, became a month, became two months. The orchestra played only one show in the summer of 2020 and tried one or two small virtual programs. But now, with restrictions lifting, the Glenn Miller Orchestra is on the road again. Their next stop is Chautauqua Institution, where the band will play at 8:15 p.m. July 1 in the Amphitheater — good news, Stabnau said, as he would say the Glenn Miller Orchestra is “an experience best had in person.”

“It’s exciting for me,” said Stabnau, the orchestra’s music director for tonight’s show. “It’s been a bit strange to have had this past year, and we’re looking forward to getting back to the grind.”

The Glenn Miller Orchestra, as it currently exists, was formed in honor of Miller, a celebrated big-band trombonist and bandleader, and his original, eponymous Glenn Miller Orchestra. 

Miller volunteered to join the U.S. military to entertain troops in World War II, but on Dec. 15, 1944, his aircraft en route to Paris disappeared over the English Channel. His band was reconstituted following his disappearance and has been playing his hits — “Moonlight Serenade,” “In the Mood,” “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” to name a few — ever since. It’s those hits that Chautauquans can expect to hear tonight, Stabnau said, in addition to some of Miller’s lesser-known works, and other songs from the big band era. That way, there’s something for nearly everyone.

“We have a lot of fans that know and love the music, and they come to hear Glenn Miller’s big hits and big band music, but we have an equal number of fans that are coming to hear the orchestra for the first time, maybe not knowing what to expect,” Stabnau said. “There’s something special about this band, being a jazz big band. … There’s an acoustic sound to the orchestra that most people, and especially people that listen to more modern music, aren’t going to be used to hearing, especially in a live setting.”

That almost-entirely acoustic sound, he said, “is a very neat thing for people to hear. … Sonically, it’s an interesting group to listen to in that regard.”

At the height of the genre’s popularity in the 1930s and ‘40s, Stabnau said, there were dozens of big bands touring the country. They were extremely popular, but because of changing interests and the costs associated with keeping such acts on the road, the numbers dwindled. Now, he thinks the Glenn Miller Orchestra is the last full-time touring big band.

“It’s a rare opportunity to get to play big band music professionally every night for that reason,” he said. “It’s the kind of music that I love. I grew up loving big band music. People will often ask me, ‘Do you get tired playing the same stuff every night?’ And the answer is no. I love it. I really genuinely love this music. … It never gets old. It’s great stuff.”

Stabnau was with the Glenn Miller Orchestra the last time the band played Chautauqua, in 2017. He remembers how large the Amp is, and the size of the stage itself — “It’s massive, so it’s nice to spread out,” he said — and he is looking forward to being back.

“Chautauqua is awesome,” Stabnau said. “That kind of feel is so perfect for the summer, and it’s what a lot of people in the band look forward to. The feel is just right.” 

Especially, he said, coming out of the pandemic. 

“Everyone is excited about getting back together for live events,” he said. “… I think that’s going to be a very therapeutic, very exciting thing for people, to be able to come out and hear live music. That’s going to be a big moment.”

SARAH VEST – STAFF WRITER

George Orwell wrote in his book 1984 “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” This was at the forefront of Ma Jian’s mind as he wrote Week One’s Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection China Dream, and he styled his novel as an homage to Orwell’s 1984.

Ma is the author of seven novels, a travel memoir, three story collections and two essay collections. His work has been translated into 26 languages. Since the publication of his first book in 1987, all his work has been banned in China. He was born in Qingdao, China, but now lives in exile in London. He will be giving Week One’s CLSC presentation, with the book’s translator Flora Drew, on China Dream at 3:30 p.m. EDT July 1 on the CHQ Assembly Online Platform. 

“I hope that readers of China Dream will be able to see through this book that Orwell’s 1984 is not just a work of fiction, but is actually a real-life description of the reality of China today,” Ma said in an interview translated by Drew. “My book is in a way … a realization that his work, that 1984, was a prophecy.” 

Sony Ton-Aime, the Michael I. Rudell director of the Literary Arts, read about the cultural revolution in China, but he had never seen America through that lens until he read China Dream.

“The whole idea of the ‘China Dream’ is to suppress memory, to suppress history, and the moment that we are living right now — with our uncertainty on how to teach history, and what is the place of history in our lives — (ties in) just perfect,” Ton-Aime said.

Ma’s book, China Dream, is a satire of totalitarianism that offers a counter narrative to the sweeping “China Dream” of President Xi Jinping’s administration through the eyes of character Ma Daode, a corrupt party official who has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau. This book is part fact, part science fiction and, at times, autobiographical. 

“I am from (Ma Daode’s) same generation, just as Xi Jinping himself,” Ma said. “We are all victims of those times.”

Like the protagonist, the cultural revolution broke out in Ma’s early teens and, like Ma Daode, Ma yearned to be a Red Guard but was unable to join due to his family background. He was even unable to attend university. However, telling his own story is not what Ma was really interested in focusing on in China Dream. 

“I was more interested in the psychology that this instills in people,” Ma said. “The psychology of those that blindly follow the revolution and those that, through no fault of their own, are denied this so-called privilege, and how that feeling of dejection, of resentment, can boil into something even more negative, or, in fact, can lead to a certain enlightenment and clarity of vision of the dangers of this revolution.”

In the same way that the story is told through both fact and fiction, the messages that bleed out through the lines are varied, and work to deliver not only a psychological analysis but to pull back the veil that has been placed over the public image of China. 

“China Dream is really about what happens to a society when truth is banned, where lies fill the air, where the threat of violence hangs over every individual,” Ma said. “We see the reality of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian ‘China Dream,’ of so-called ‘glory and national prosperity.’ The truth of it means the suppression of people in Tibet, the genocide occurring in Xinjiang, the crushing of all freedoms in Hong Kong.”

The last, and perhaps most important, idea that Ma hopes people take away from both his book and the lecture is a serious warning about the dangerous nature of the “China Dream” and how China is not the only country this “dream” impacts. 

“The Chinese Communist Party I viewed, even before the outbreak of this coronavirus, as a virus of the mind,” he said. “An ideological virus that has mutated over decades and has become now much more sophisticated, more complex and on the surface beautifully packaged the dream of prosperity. But the lack of freedom at its heart infects all that it touches. It has entered every democratic country in the world — this beautifully packaged dream, with the promises of trade deals, but insidiously, it has infected the mind.”

As Ma is giving his presentation, halfway across the world the Chinese Communist Party will be celebrating their 100th year anniversary. While they celebrate the founding of the party that has been in control since 1949, it is important to keep in mind the hidden agenda behind the fanfare.

“My book China Dream reveals that at the heart of this mission to erase thought, to erase memory, is the desire of these tyrants to obliterate all dissent to erase all memories of the sins they have committed against their own people,” Ma said.

MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

In his first visit to Chautauqua, Kelly James Clark wanted to get one key point across: Perhaps China isn’t so different from the United States. 

At 1 p.m. June 29 in the Amphitheater, Clark, the former senior research fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University, held Chautauqua’s first in-person installment of the Interfaith Lecture Series since 2019. His lecture title, “A Spiritual Geography of Early Chinese Thought,” is based on the title of his forthcoming book and was part of Week One’s theme, “21st Century Religion in China: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Clark began his lecture by reflecting on his first trip to China, in 1999.

“I went there believing the propaganda the Chinese created for their own people during the Cultural Revolution,” he said. The Cultural Revolution was a violent undoing of capitalism by its then-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong from 1966 to 1976.

Clark expected to see everyone happy and equal, even having the same clothes and haircuts, based on the propaganda. He was shocked to see that China was actually largely capitalist.

“Beijing, in 1999, was already like New York City on steroids,” he said. 

In addition, Clark expected Chinese people to be non-religious, or atheist, and that they would reject the notion of an afterlife. Clark had previously studied Chinese philosophy, and he said at least 20 other scholars told him China was completely atheist. 

Clark said one sociologist went to the Hall of 500 Gods, a Buddhist temple in China, and was shocked that religions in China believed in not just one god, but sometimes hundreds. 

Clark was equally shocked in his first visit to the country.

Showing a map created by Fenggang Yang, Tuesday’s Interfaith Lecture Series speaker, Clark highlighted the vastness of contemporary China’s religious beliefs.

In the west, particularly in Xinjiang province, is China’s Muslim population, totaling somewhere around 70 million people, Clark said. In the east, where the most populous cities are located, is China’s Christian population, totaling over 100 million people. 

“On any given Sunday, there are more Chinese worshiping in China than in all of Europe combined,” Clark said. 

He noted there are about 10 million fewer Chinese Communist Party members than followers of Christianity, which is the fastest-growing religion in China — a concern for the Party, he said. 

Buddhism came to China from India around 200 A.D. Despite Buddhism originating in India, the largest Buddhist population currently resides in China, Clark said. Furthermore, he said that while Buddhism was originally an atheist religion, Chinese versions can include hundreds of gods. 

Clark warned against generalizing any aspect of China, regardless of whether one was speaking about contemporary or early periods, because the nation has a vast geography and language. Although sometimes called dialects, Clark said China really has more than 100 languages.

“It’s not like the North and the South (in the U.S.),” he said. “In some places, you have to rely on written characters.” 

In early China, there were 10 warring states, Clark said, noting that separate states couldn’t be generalized under one umbrella term like “the Chinese.” 

“We like to say ‘the Chinese’ because we like to put them in a little box, and we like to think they are somehow exotic or somehow different from us,” he said. “But, it’s not true. They are a lot like us.”

Clark said the first text he read that opened his eyes to the importance of religion in China was a poem about King Wen, who may have existed around 1100 B.C. and exemplified wisdom and justice — his name is honorific, as “Wen” means culture.

The poem, which Clark read during the lecture, showed Wen as bringing a god-given culture to the land: traits like justice, harmony and peace. It shows Wen shining in heaven, so whoever wrote the poem must have believed in heaven, Clark said. 

“Turns out there’s hundreds of these texts that unequivocally make reference to God and the afterlife,” he said.

China’s political philosophy for 3,000 years, before communism, was based on the Mandate of Heaven, Clark said. God was said to approve new rulers, but if that ruler succumbed to leading unjustly, then God would search for a new leader and strip the former leader of his mandate. The Western version of this practice, he said, is the divine right to rule. 

King Wen lived 700 years before Confucius, but Confucius’ writings make clear references to God, Clark said. 

Confucius wrote about heaven’s virtue and trust in God when he found himself threatened by another king, Huan Tui. Confucius said he had no reason to fear, essentially saying God was in control so he had no reason to worry, according to Clark. 

“We see an increasing sense of morality and dependence on God with Confucius,” Clark said.

Clark also said Confucius wrote about heaven punishing him if he did wrong, noting that heaven could reward the righteous and punish the wicked.

Confucius also believed in a personal God, although the personal relationship was through deceased ancestors, Clark said. Instead of communicating directly with God, one would speak with spirits of their ancestors, who would relay the message to God. 

“It’s not so dissimilar to God in the West,” Clark said.

Clark then described how archaeologists have dug up thousands of old Chinese tombs, which contain maps drawn for spirits. Some of these maps guide the spirit on how to find flying dragons who will carry them to paradise, or heaven. They also depict strange beings who reside down below in an underworld. 

These tombs would sometimes contain letters written by the living, saying this new spirit was a good person and deserved to go to heaven, Clark said. In addition, he said there might be rooms to host food and persuade spirits to go to heaven, along with rooms to meet other spirits. 

The people who built and maintained these tombs in early China were almost exclusively farmers, like everywhere else in the world, Clark said.

“Life in early China was hard,” he said, describing constant floods decimating crops. 

He said early Chinese hated war and wanted to live in peace, and they wished for a better life for their children. 

“They delighted in a good day of work and a fulsome meal and the love of their family,” he said. 

In early China, people believed in living good lives in order to get to heaven but did not necessarily subscribe to any certain religion, Clark said. 

In contemporary China, there are 90 million communists, but Clark said many of them are members only to get good jobs, such as in universities, so it is out of convenience — not conviction. 

A lesson from cognitive science, Clark said, is that human beings are inclined to believe in an afterlife. He said one researcher expected 0% of Chinese students to believe in an afterlife, and it turned out 60% did.

“The point I want to make about China, the Chinese people, is they want to live in peace and harmony,” Clark said. “They want a better life for their children … They want to share moments and meals and jokes with friends. The Chinese people don’t want war, they want peace. They, the Chinese people, are a lot like us.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

‘Too Male’

China has 30 million bachelors. That’s more than the population of California.

The one-child policy in China, designed to control population growth in the mid-20th century, was a law that mandated families could only have one baby. In a patriarchal society, the law led many Chinese to choose to only keep male babies, often terminating pregnancies or abandoning baby girls in favor of trying for a boy. 

As Mei Fong — a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently an executive at Human Rights Watch — said, the prevailing opinion in China was and is that “raising a daughter is like watering someone else’s flowers, because they will marry into another family.” 

In her morning lecture on Tuesday, June 29 in the Amphitheater, Fong told many stories of how the policy has affected individual people. One man, from a village with 30 adult men and no single women, helped pay and arrange for 30 women to marry the community’s bachelors. Then one day, all the women simply left.

“When I first heard the story, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, good for these women.’ I had these images of brides racing across the paddy fields with their veils flowing in the wind,” Fong said. “The man told me that he couldn’t blame them for this because he knew that they were under a lot of pressure. I thought it was very forgiving of him. This is the problem for many men: they are stuck in a problem not of their own making.”

This man, and the other single sons of his generation, are also feeling the effects of the policy. Because China does not have a strong social security program, a young man will often have to provide for his two parents and four grandparents — essentially becoming six people’s retirement fund. 

As part of her lecture, “Long-Term Consequences of China’s One-Child Policy,” Fong explored the one-child policy and its cultural and financial impacts on China and the global community. Hers was the second installment of Week One’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme of “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?” The author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. For several years she was a staff reporter for the China bureau for The Wall Street Journal, where she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

‘Too Old’

The one-child policy was created in the 1980s, Fong said, by men who worked in the military. 

“These men were primarily, themselves, scientists who envisioned women as machines,” Fong said. “What these men thought was that, ‘Women’s fertility — that is something you can push out and push in like a switch.’”

These men also thought that when they officially lifted the policy nationwide in 2015, Chinese citizens would rush to have multiple children again. Fong said this isn’t that case.

“This is a leadership that has 30-plus years telling you, relentlessly, one child is best,” Fong said. “If you do not believe the power of messaging changes you, then the billion-dollar advertising industry would not exist.”

Despite the two-child policy being in effect for years, and the recent approval of the three-child policy that was passed on May 31, China still has a very elderly population — 40% of the world’s Parkinson’s patients are Chinese. Fong said the retirees of China would make up the world’s third-most populous country.

People outside of China also believe in the policy. After reporting on it, Fong said, she received notes from people telling her that the whole world should have a one-child policy because of overpopulation.

“The question I ask is: Are you okay with if someone takes away your mother, your sister, your wife for forced abortion or sterilization?” Fong said.

‘Too Few’

No one wants to be “shidu parents.” This is a Chinese phrase for a couple whose child has died. While a child’s death is a tragedy for anyone, no matter the country, under the one-child policy in China, this also means no one will financially provide for the parents when they are no longer able to work. Fong said this is why the phrase shidu parent has extra weight to it. 

In 2008, Fong reported on the massive earthquake in Sichuan, China. She interviewed a man whose daughter was crushed to death. The man was 50 and his wife was 45. 

Neighbors avoided them afterwards, Fong said, because they did not want the financial responsibility of taking care of them. Just weeks after his daughter’s death, the man went to the hospital to reverse his vasectomy in order to try to have another child. 

Having working-age children is integral for families like the one Fong interviewed, but also for the economy. With China’s economy still growing rapidly, the country’s youthful population can’t keep up with job demand. 

Fong said that in the 1990s, right when the Chinese economy first started growing at unprecedented rates, the country had high numbers of young adults and a low number of retirees. This was the perfect equation for the economy at the time. As those workers age, however, the next generation is not large enough to effectively financially support them in the customary way.

The United States also has decreased population growth. Fong said almost every developed, wealthy country has this problem. The United States, in particular, supplements its population with immigration, but China has never done this, and Fong said the Chinese government has no large plans to do so.

Shannon Rozner, the Institution’s senior vice president of community relations and general counsel, started the Q-and-A by asking Fong why people at first saw the one-child policy as positive. 

Fong said that lawmakers in the 1980s felt the one-child policy was necessary in order for China to climb out of poverty — the government decided to limit population so that resources would go farther.

Other countries in Asia have approached the problem of overpopulation far less drastically. In Thailand, she said the government encourages women to go to college, have a career and start families later in life. 

She also said that before implementing the one-child policy, China had a similar movement called the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign. The government encouraged its citizens to marry later in life, wait longer before having children and to end up with fewer children. 

“That period was the greatest fertility drop that China experienced,” Fong said. “Average households went from having six children to three children.”

Fong said that some people argue that if China stuck with the “Later, Longer, Fewer” campaign, the country would be seeing fewer negative effects — such as forced abortions, tragedies within the adoption system and burden on a singular male of the family — and still have many positives, such as a decreased population and fewer strains on government resources. 

Rozner then asked if the huge population of unmarried men has opened Chinese culture to nontraditional families, such as LGBTQ+ or single-parent households.

“That has not been the case at all,” Fong said. “By and large, the one-child policy is also very much linked to the issue of control of the kinds of people they want to have.”

DAVID KWIATKOWSKI – STAFF WRITER

Some say their careers come full circle at a point. For Stori Ayers, the associate artistic director of the Chautauqua Theater Company, that is exactly the case.

Ayers is directing CTC’s first theater production this summer, Blood at the Root; she originated the lead role in its debut at Pennsylvania State University back in 2014. At Chautauqua, Blood at the Root will continue its run today at 4 p.m. at the Performance Pavilion on Pratt.

To Ayers, though, coming back to this production is not merely another opportunity — it is a calling. Her mother was a social worker and her father was a police officer; she doesn’t see her occupation as much different than theirs.

“As an artist, I really do feel like I am in a service position,” Ayers said. “My job is to serve this story. And if the story says, ‘You need to breathe life in this character,’ then that’s what I’m supposed to do. If it says, ‘You need to have the bigger vision, and tell the story (a certain way),’ then that’s what I’m supposed to do. It could be the same story and at different times in my life, depending on what it needs, (it changes) how it needs me to serve.”

Her mother, Angela Fields, knew early on that Ayers was different than most kids her age.

“She was a very talkative 5-year-old,” Fields said. “Growing up in a southern background, children didn’t speak unless you were spoken to. Stori was the type who would be very observant and engage adults in a conversation, and by me being a young mom, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I hope she isn’t being disrespectful.’ ”

When Ayers was younger, Fields did not understand the magnitude and capability of her daughter’s gift of performing until Ayers portrayed Captain Hook in a summer camp production of Peter Pan. Fields was shocked at her commitment to the character, almost to the point of embarrassment. 

“I got stopped by moms and other attendees at the play and they were asking me if she took any special personal acting training,” Fields said. “At that time I was a single mom, I couldn’t afford anything like that, and I didn’t even know that was something that Stori was even interested in, but I saw something very different on that stage. I literally thought she was doing the most. I really did. But at that moment, that’s when I realized that she had this ‘It’ factor.”

Ayers earned her bachelor’s degree from Mary Baldwin University, but it was when she was pursuing her master’s degree in acting at Penn State University that she got her big break as the lead role of Raylynn in Blood at the Root. Playwright Dominique Morisseau wrote the play for the 2014 graduating class, and wrote Raylynn specifically for Ayers.

After the initial run at Penn State, Ayers and her classmates raised $250,000 by performing at all of Penn State’s branch campuses — funds which numerous organizations from the university (including the Penn State School of Theatre and the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost) matched. Subsequently, the show was able to tour internationally. Ayers and her class brought the show to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., New York City, Scotland, South Africa and Australia. In Australia, she and the cast won a Graham F. Smith Peace Foundation Prize for the show’s message and themes.

While the show already meant a great deal to the original cast and crew, the continuous headlines of Black men dying at the hands of police pushed them even further, implementing community outreach in the places they brought the show. 

After the first show in South Africa, when the cast and crew looked at their phones, they learned about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. After a show in Scotland, they learned of the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the New York Police Department after illegally selling loose cigarettes.

“Things kept happening that made us feel like we needed to keep doing the work,” Ayers said. “And that’s really what kept the engine going.”

Since the show’s debut, Ayers has been in and directed multiple theater productions ranging from A Raisin in the Sun to past CTC productions of The Christians and Detroit ’67, and even a supporting role in the TBS sitcom “The Last O.G.,” playing Tiffany Haddish’s best friend. She has been coming to Chautauqua since 2017.

“(Chautauqua) is a place where, early in their career, anybody could come and practice their craft,” she said. “It’s a place where you get to find your voice as an artist and as a leader. To be challenged. Be a visionary.”

Ayers got to direct Blood at the Root at the University of Michigan, but she is excited for the opportunity to direct it again, and to try and do things differently. 

“If I’m being fair, the first time I directed (Blood at the Root), I think I did a lot of mimicking what we did in our (original) production,” Ayers said. “And this time, I’ve approached it with my own idea of who these characters are, what the story is, and allowing these artists to bring their interpretations to the room.”

Ayers’ mother appreciates that she is not just creating space for herself, but also making room for the talent coming after her. 

“I respect that she’s not doing it just for herself, but that she wants to create opportunities for others,” Fields said. “She’s trying to position herself where she can give other people opportunities. Even some of the cast members that are doing Blood at the Root right now might not have had this opportunity if she had not positioned herself, so she’s really working to bring the next generation along. I like that it’s not a very selfish act.”

Ayers’ work with Blood at the Root and the events that inspired it is not done yet. She hopes one day to bring the story of the Jena Siz to Netflix in both a dramatization as well as a docuseries. 

“She’s definitely living her purpose,” Fields said. “I’m grateful to be here to see that. To see the beginning and the struggle, and her bringing her contribution to the art. I’m just glad to be one of the people to get to acknowledge that, and to see that it’s a blessing every day to wake up and see her work.”

NICHOLE JIANG – STAFF WRITER

Michael Pillsbury, who has several decades of experience with handling U.S. and China relations, is set to give a lecture at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 30 in the Amphitheater. Pillsbury served as President Donald Trump’s key adviser on U.S. strategy with China and is a senior fellow and director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute. 

Pillsbury is a distinguished defense policy adviser who not only served as assistant undersecretary of defense for policy planning, but who was also responsible for the implementation of the program of covert aid known as the Reagan Doctrine during the Reagan administration. 

He also had a part in President Jimmy Carter’s decision in 1980 to initiate military and intelligence ties with China. 

Additionally, Pillsbury also served as a special assistant for Asian affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush.

Furthermore, Pillsbury has also helped draft the Senate Labor Committee version of the legislation that created the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984. 

He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 

Pillsbury’s experience and credibility have led him to write and publish multiple books and reports on China including The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.

During his lecture on June 30 in the Amp, Pillsbury will discuss the challenges and obstacles that diplomats and politicians face while navigating the relationship between the U.S. and China, and what the U.S. should do in response to China. 

“From his having the ear of President Trump as a top adviser on China strategy, to the influence of his book The Hundred-Year Marathon, Michael Pillsbury is a critical voice in our understanding the history and current state of the U.S.-China relations and, most importantly, why this relationship is perhaps the most pressing foreign policy issue going forward,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. 

Before Pillsbury played a crucial role in politics and U.S. and China relations, he graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in history with honors in social thought. He then attended Columbia University for his master’s degree and doctorate. 

Pillsbury was mentored by various influential and credible people during his time at Columbia, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michel Oksenberg. Both played key roles in many presidential administrations on policy toward both China and Afghanistan. 

NICHOLE JIANG – STAFF WRITER

Wu Fei plays the guzheng, a 21-string Chinese zither with over 2,000 years of history. She has traveled and played all over the world — Beijing, New York City, Belgium, Tennessee — and her next stop is Chautauqua. 

Amid a week of morning and afternoon lectures, the Chinese-American composer, musician and singer will address this week’s theme of “China and the World” through music. Fei is set to perform at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, June 30 in the Amphitheater. 

What makes Fei’s musical style unique is her mixing of traditional Chinese and Western sounds with a contemporary spin. She will perform some original pieces tonight as she dives into Week One’s theme. 

Even though Fei loves playing the guzheng, she didn’t choose this instrument — her parents did.

“It was a typical Chinese kid thing,” Fei said. “You didn’t really get to choose what to study.” 

“My mom was in a music store and by chance found a big guzheng that was much bigger than the standard size,” she continued. “It was nearly twice as big as me when I first started. I really liked it. I thought it was really beautiful, with all of it’s strings. It’s easy to start, but it’s never easy to play it well.”

Fei began pursuing her musical dreams over 20 years ago when she moved from her hometown of Beijing, China, to Texas as an undergrad student studying music composition. From there, Fei began traveling the world to satisfy her curiosity and desire to experience new cultures.

“In China, people make it to their destination in a big city, and then they’re just there for their entire life,” Fei said. 

To avoid this, Fei moved from Texas to the Bay Area of California for her master’s degree. From there, she found herself in Boulder, Colorado, and traveling to France and Italy to record her first album.

“I was shocked to see how different cultures can be after just a couple of hours on a small train ride,” Fei said. “As a composer and a creator, I wanted to have that drama and tragedy. Shakespeare wrote his plays because he was struggling, not because he was comfortable. During those 10 years of living in the States and living part-time in Europe, and still traveling to Beijing to visit my family, it was the most exciting time of my life.”

However, even though Fei was traveling the world playing her music, she felt as if something was missing. 

“I was feeling tired and quite lonely,” she said. “I felt like I needed to recharge myself culturally and to just be grounded. My routine was traveling, venue, soundcheck and then getting on the next flight. I felt like I didn’t have a real story. I needed to have real emotions to let the natural sound come out instead of pretending. I thought about Beijing, my home city. I wanted to reconnect with my parents. I felt like I needed to get to know them again. I gained more appreciation for traditional Chinese art. Just seeing the ancient sites, the beauty and the people, I was very moved.”

Fei now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and two kids. 

“Without living in a new environment, you’re just a tourist,” Fei said. “Not staying in my comfort zone is what led me to be able to travel to all of these places. You just have to want to do it. I slept in my car, I talked to people in gas stations and pulled out my guzheng to show people.” 

“I felt like I didn’t have a real story. I needed to have real emotions to let the natural sound come out instead of pretending … I gained more appreciation for traditional Chinese art. Just seeing the ancient sites, the beauty and the people, I was very moved.”

Wu Fei, musician and composer

Fei has been performing in big concert halls since she was 9 years old. With her life filled with concerts at such a young age, over time, Fei found herself disliking this aspect of her life. 

“However, rediscovering improvisation and learning composition, I think liberated myself,” Fei said. “When I play my own music and tell my own story, it’s effortless. I have endless things to share and tell. I’m so excited to be playing for Chautauqua, and it’s also my first performance since the pandemic.”

Fei hopes to inspire people through her music and has a strong message to send to any young musicians. 

“Just play your own story, and that will give life to whatever it is you’re playing,” she said. “Don’t let the instrument control you, but be the master of that instrument. I feel very lucky to be playing this ancient instrument from Chinese culture. Life is all about improvisation. From the moment you wake up in your bedroom you are improvising. Every time you brush your teeth it’s different from the last time you brushed your teeth. It’s the same with music.”

Tonight, Fei will be performing traditional old school repertoire on the guzheng from the Shandong and Hunan provinces. She will also be including contemporary compositions of her own and singing Peking and Kunqu opera, which are the oldest extant forms of Chinese opera. 

“I will utilize those elements to create new improvisation pieces on stage,” Fei said. “I will make my own Chautauqua story right there on stage. I’m so excited to share these personal emotions that have been brewing inside of me this past year and a half.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping cooperating to combat climate change, Somini Sengupta said, is like a couple in divorce court trying to plan their child’s wedding. 

“In short, this is the biggest diplomatic test, in my view, for both of them — not just for their countries, but also for the rest of humanity,” said Sengupta, the international climate change correspondent for The New York Times.

The two largest economies and militaries in the world have had a complicated relationship, to say the least. Tariffs, trade wars and tensions over Hong Kong are just the tip of this decades-long and trillions-of-dollars-deep iceberg.

Sengupta said the global community, most importantly China and the United States, has to work together to effectively combat climate change. Biden and Xi, the leaders of the two largest carbon emitters, are at the eye of that storm. 

And, Sengupta said, 2021 is the most important year, in the most important decade, in terms of climate change. Many scientists have estimated that the world must take drastic action by 2030 to prevent global temperatures from rising an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius from the industrial revolution, the estimated ceiling that humanity will be able to survive. 

The world is already at 1.1.

As well as being a climate change reporter, Sengupta is the author of The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young and a former United Nations correspondent at the Times. At 10:30 a.m. on Monday in the Amphitheater, Sengupta opened the 2021 Chautauqua Lecture Series and delivered the first lecture in the Amp with a live audience in almost two years. Her lecture, titled “Can China and the United States Save the Planet?” is part of the Week One theme of “China and The World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

“It is really my pleasure and my honor to be seeing your faces, in real life, IRL, and not being reminded to mute and unmute,” Sengupta said.

One of the first topics Sengupta touched on was the inequality around the impacts of climate change. Often, the communities with the lowest carbon footprint feel the greatest impact. She said this could be seen in many Southeast Asian countries, especially in coastal cities. Above her, on the three hanging projector screens, a photo of Manila was shown: the water from the sea ravaged the pictured buildings, an effect of rising sea levels.

“My job is to bear witness to the human experience, particularly the struggles,” Sengupta said, “of those whose stories do not often get told, and need to get told. So, for me personally, it is very important to be there and see and hear and smell.”

One assignment took Sengupta to Kenya, where many farmers’ livelihoods, she said, were no longer possible due to climate change, yet who “had no carbon footprint to speak of.”

She interviewed a man at a food distribution site who was profoundly impacted by climate change. He told her that in his life, one day he might wake up and find five of his cows dead and the next day 10, and then at the end of the year, he might spend money to replace them, only for it to happen again.

Farmers are impacted in the United States, too. Sengupta reported last year during the heatwave and wildfires in California, and focused on farmers, particularly those that pick and pack food. Sengupta interviewed and followed them as they worked in the fields. One young woman, and many others, would pick crops from 4:30 a.m. before the sun had risen, and by 10 a.m. it would be nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and they would have to stop. They were even able to see the wildfire in the distance. 

“I remember the day when I learned about what she was out there harvesting, at such an incredible hazard to her health,” Sengupta said. “She was harvesting dried corn that the rest of us would buy to decorate our Thanksgiving table.”

“As one economist said, ‘We own this problem,’ ” Sengupta said.

While the U.S. has emitted more greenhouse gases cumulatively over the past decades, China emits the most yearly, taking up 28% of global totals. The U.S. has around half of that, as does the European Union. 

Despite other, more vulnerable countries bearing the effects of climate change, she said, the United States holds the most responsibility. The U.S. per capita emissions are the highest.

“Enter these two men,” said Sengupta as a photo of Biden and Xi appeared on the projector. 

Sengupta said Biden is not coming into climate diplomacy with Xi from a position of strength. China dominates production in almost every industry, including sustainable energy. This includes solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. In another milestone, Shenzhen, China, was the first city to electrify all transportation. 

The need for climate action also comes at a politically tense time between China and the U.S., with the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying cooperation depends on how the United States responds to China’s treatment of Hong Kong and Thailand. This minister said that if the U.S. stopped interfering in China’s “internal affairs,” then cooperation would be smoother. Biden’s administration, however, seeks to separate these two issues. 

Sengupta said there were a few tests in the coming months that will be crucial to preventing global temperatures from rising before 2030, including how much the Biden administration can accomplish around climate change within a short time frame.

Biden committed to halving U.S. emissions by 2030, but the current version of the 2021 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill has very little to help achieve that goal.

“That makes this larger budget reconciliation process, in the coming days and weeks, really, really important for climate diplomacy, especially with China,” Sengupta said. “This is something that every major country is watching. What can the U.S. deliver?”

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, opened the Q-and-A by asking Sengupta what some countries are doing well in terms of combating climate change.

Sengupta said that some countries are experimenting with reducing food waste, like Paris requiring supermarkets to donate food that is about to expire to food banks. Another interesting plan is adding seaweed to cow food. When cows eat grass, Sengupta said, they burp a large amount of methane. When seaweed is a part of their diet, this amount of methane is significantly less.

The closing question was a simple one: What can people do to help?

“Far be from me to tell people what should be done,” Sengupta said. “I am a reporter. I find out stuff and try to explain it in everyday language.”

She did recommend that people pay attention to the 2021 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and listen to scientists. 

“Listen to the people who are translating what happened,” Sengupta said. “Now.”

Her second suggestion is to talk about it. She said that the majority of Americans support more action on climate change but hesitate to talk about it out of fear of being divisive. It is also important to talk from a person’s own perspective, on topics like water shortages, food production to rising sea levels.

“If it is extreme heat you are concerned about, talk about it. If you are an elderly person in Portland, without air conditioning, in this heat, that is a hazard to your health,” Sengupta said. “So find out how to talk about it from where you are.”

DAVID KWIATKOWSKI – STAFF WRITER

With months of preparation, weeks of rehearsal and almost two years of anticipation of getting on stage, the time has come.

Chautauqua Theater Company’s first production of the season, Blood at the Root, has its debut at 4 p.m. June 29 at the Performance Pavilion on Pratt. The show was written by Dominique Morisseau and will be directed by Associate Artistic Director Stori Ayers, who also originated the role of Raylynn in the original run of the show in 2014. 

The play was written for the 2014 acting class at Pennsylvania State University to huge success, which led to tours in South Africa and Australia. 

The show is based on the true story of the “Jena Six,” six Black teenagers convicted in the beating of a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, on Dec. 4, 2006. 

However, the play is set in the present day. While it is about the events in 2006, the show’s script allows the director to have it be set in the present day, as well.

“This play is built on the idea of devised production. What this means is that the work on the page is really only half, and the ensemble is intended, along with the director, to put their own signature on the work in a more defined and pronounced way,” Morisseau noted in the script.

Ayers said oftentimes when looking at scripts there will be heavy stage directions. She said this play is not like that. 

“So every production of it you see can look and be drastically different to how people build out the world,” she said. 

The show follows six characters’ journeys, and is less about the events themselves than about the effects they have on the students and how they deal with the racial and social hierarchy of their school.

This is Ayers’ second time directing Blood at the Root and every time she has participated in a production, the show has always been slightly different.

“The first time I directed, I think I did a lot of mimicking what we did in our (original) production,” Ayers said. “This time I approached it with my own idea of who these characters are, what the story is and allowing these artists to bring their interpretations to the room. What I once thought what we originally did with this moment, is now completely different. Because these artists are different. And the time, the moment now, is different.”

Sarah Clare Corporandy, managing director of CTC, said Morisseau’s writing perfectly encapsulates six different perspectives on one singular event.

Ayers believes the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States can be traced back to the Jena Six case and its handling in both the courts and the media. 

“I think (this show) is worth two things: going back and looking at the genesis of this movement, by telling their stories, (and) then there’s also something to getting the truth from the people involved,” Ayers said. “Getting that narrative, adding that to the mix. Because when you Google it, you don’t get their narrative. People understand it as six young Black boys jumped a white boy at school. And that was wrong.”

Corporandy believes this show is the best way to start the 2021 season in engaging with Chautauqua’s principles.

“This play is very much a call to action,” Corporandy said. “This play is not, ‘Just go home and talk about it on your porch,’ even though that’s a really important part of Chautauqua. This play is asking us to go beyond talk. This is the first time we’re speaking on a racial reckoning in our country after George Floyd was murdered, and the whole country stopped and is dealing with it. And our industry is dealing with it in a very direct way. This play is another way for us to help our community deal with it in an honest and vulnerable way.”