"Ah Q Spirit" and "Thinking Positively"

The other day, I was complaining to a very close friend about a few things in my life – as usual, she listened with patience, even though I knew that she did not think I had much to complain about. When her patience finally ran thin, she said, "it's very important to practice the Ah Q spirit, because we all need it. Your problem is that you don’t have any of it!”

For those who grew up in China, Ah Q is no stranger – he’s the loser protagonist in Lu Xun’s novel “The True Story of Ah Q” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Story_of_Ah_Q. To sum up “Ah Q spirit”, it is essentially about seeing the positive side in everything, including the most atrocious, the most miserable and the most unfair. In fact, even when Ah Q was sentenced to death for some minor crime, he still managed to feel good and self-delusional.

Ah Q is well-known for his “spiritual victories”, since in real life he’s a constant loser. By not facing up to the reality and deluding himself to believe that he’s successful, he was an object of ridicule. Lu Xun, the writer who was known for his absolutely intolerant sarcasm, used Ah Q as a metaphor to admonish the Chinese people not to feel good about themselves as their country was bullied, invaded and ruined by foreign powers.

Having been indoctrinated in school as I was growing up about the danger of not facing the reality, no wonder I have an aversion to Ah Q spirit, and constantly check myself to see if I am not seeing the reality as it is. Since I am always quick to complain about things (and very passionately often I might add), Michael has told me that I obviously do not practice the act of “thinking positively” enough. When I told him the Chinese version of “thinking positively” – i.e. Ah Q spirit – he could not help shaking his head and said, “you Chinese are so fatalistic.” “But isn’t it the same as thinking positively? See, Ah Q was thinking positively, hoping that something good might happen as he was dragged off to his own execution!” – I protested. “Well, maybe the major difference is that the western way of positive thinking is a very proactive one in that positive thinking is a premise for doing something, whereas the Chinese version is to be completely passive.”

Later, when I relayed this exchange to my close friend, she said that there was a reason why the Chinese way of positive thinking was so passive. For centuries if not millennia, the Chinese lived under completely totalitarian control without any power. It is in the Chinese mentality to put up with whatever hand is dealt them, because otherwise life would be miserable. By comparison, the concept of justice and demoracy – an entirely western European concept – made the Europeans much less tolerant of pure oppression. What prompted them to mount a revolution, or to migrate to the brave new world like America might have been considered really tolerable condition by their Chinese counterparts. But they decided to ACT, and do something to change their fate. No wonder the western “positive thinking” is always linked with definitive action.

As for me, who is obviously a product of both Chinese and western education, it is inevitable that I could sometimes be more Chinese, and at other times be more American in my philosophy. And Lu Xun’s language was just too visceral for me to ever consider adopting Ah Q spirit for the rest of my life. But I guess I ought to turn around to my western education, and practice more proactive positive thinking. For example, while I am lamenting the fact that I am getting heavier and therefore can’t easily go on trips any more, I should probably savor the peace at home, looking out of my windows to see the blooming spring flowers growing in the canyon. I just complained (again perhaps too loudly) to some friends that my life has been reduced to one of trivialities recently, due to the upcoming move and miscellaneous things that come with it (e.g. hiring an agent, looking for a house to move into in Bay Area, identifying a landscape contractor to fix the front yard, signing up a moving company, organizing the house and donating stuff that we don’t intend to move, going to the numerous scheduled doctor’s appointments for this pregnancy, and not to mention getting ready for this baby, etc). But maybe I ought to “think positively”, and be happy how I am becoming such an “accomplished housewife”! – Indeed this weekend I interviewed 3 prospective tenants, decided on the landscape design as well as the landscape contractor, went grocery shopping, cooked a few times, did laundry, cleaned up the house, and even went hiking several times. My brain, however, remained completely unchallenged and un-stimulated. I remember reading a biography of the architect/poet Lin Hui-yin, in which she lamented to her friend Wilma Fairbank (the wife of the famous Harvard scholar on modern China John Fairbank) that she was swamped by the numerous household chores that she worried that her life would eventually be consumed by one of wife and mother. I can so identify with that anxiety now! But I guess I ought to think “more positively”!