Xiang Biao (3:18)

Pleasure.

Subi Rauzio (3:21)

So let's get started. How did you and Uqi come to collaborate and work on Self as Method?

Xiang Biao (3:28)

Well, for this I think we really should thank our editor Luo Danny that it was probably 2017, I think it was. I remember it was quite cold in Beijing and Danny contacted me, asked me whether or not I would be willing to write a book for Chinese young people. And I. But this is not something I had in my mind. You know, I have been a quite a conventional academic anthropologist. I did work with young people, but I never thought of writing a public book. So I asked her why, I mean, why she thinks such a book is needed and especially why me? Because there are so many good popular writers around in China. And she told me something like that based on her reading of some interviews that I gave to newspapers. And I think at that time, probably not newspaper anymore, it was our social media sites. She thought that I was able to provide a big picture description of the Chinese society. And in the picture individual young people can see themselves, they can relate their life experiences to the big picture. So therefore there are lots of questions that they face in everyday life, can be clarified, can be explained through the big picture analysis. So I was quite encouraged by that because after all this is what the social science for you provide a picture for people in a way that is meaningful for them to understand themselves and what is happening around them. So then I proposed of the format of conversation in an interview. I said okay, if I just write because I don't know what kind of questions young people are most interested in. And also once I start writing, I may fall into the trap of this kind of quite boring academic reasoning and literature referencing rather than get to the point quickly. And Danny liked the idea and she introduced to me Wu Qi, who is a friend of hers, a great journalist, used to work in Xinhua News agency and later I think he joined the Danxiang Jie One Way Street, a publishing house as well as a cultural, you can say it's a cultural product company. Yeah. So this is how we met Wuqi and we met for that purpose of talking about Chinese society, especially how to lead a meaningful life as a young person in China at that time. And when we met, when we started working, I think that was already 2018. Yeah. So this is how it started.

Subi Rauzio (6:59)

So just to clarify, Piao, you were not, you. You were not aware of the social media responses or of this impact you were having on Chines youth through social media before your editor reached out to you? That's really quite remarkable how aware of you, of the responses you were receiving from Chinese youth before you started working with your editor and with Wuqi?

Xiang Biao (7:33)

I must say I wasn't very much aware. I mean, I was kind of in hibernation. We can talk about that, about the very professional academic life. Sometimes it freezes you away from the real world. I thought I was in hibernation after I did my PhD. I was worried about all these professional goals and etc. Then things changed a bit in 2014. I remember that very vividly because I really felt suffocated. It has a sense of intellectual loneliness and also has a sense of being irrelevant to the world than often just writing for the sake of writing without really deepening the thought, let alone speaking to the public. So in 2014, another journalist, Guo Yujie, a journalist working for the new media called Tian Mian Interface, it is still, I think a very active media, reached out to me for now, I can't remember what was the reason that she reached to me. I mean, was it a particular question or event? I can't remember but we talked about a lot of things and there's point that I made which eventually became quite. Was quite well received was a point about suspension, meaning that many people in China live their life as if they are kind of a hummingbird. They flap the wings frantically just in order to stay still in air. Very deeply worried that if they stop flapping the wings they will drop to the ground. But they work so hard in order to stay still. But the thing itself, I mean the staying still itself has no meaning. You all work hard just to keep yourself afloat. That I think attracted some attention from Chinese youth probably. I received some email messages from my audiences soon after that, but it was not that overwhelming. I must, I mean, I felt very satisfied given how I felt lonely before. So I was satisfied. But I did not regard myself as a. An obvious popular writer. But after that I also wrote something about Hong Kong due to the Umbrella movement which also took place in 2014. And I wrote about the educated youth education who played a key role in the development of social sciences as well as in economic reform after the Cultural Revolution. Because at that time they were in their 30s, 40s in the 1980s, so they were the most active age group in the Chinese society. So I reviewed their kind of life history and how that is related to Chinese politics, etc. That also was widely read. So I was encouraged by the responses. But still I compared, you know, after the book was published, I think it's quite different. So now I'm speaking my memory of what happened in 2016, 2017 from the vantage point of now. Now of course I just. Almost every week there's online discussions or there is public conversations and large number of email from young people in China from different socio economic backgrounds, etc. So now it become a routine part of my life. But that was not the case in 2018.

Subi Rauzio (12:12)

That's really remarkable to hear and I think that's one thing I really personally enjoyed about your book so much. The way that Uchi is able to kind of help you through his questions, help you recite your own memories and how the reader can kind of follow you through your different life journey from Wenzhou to Beijing and then Oxford. This was written, you know, these are interviews in 2018, so it ends in Wenzhou again. But it's so fascinating to hear you now speak in hindsight of this kind of hibernation that you were living in as an academic. And I'm sure anybody who's listening to this show is familiar, familiar with that hibernating, that's, that's not required. But it becomes kind of second nature and just the nature and just the way that you know, academic publishing and then the whole system is kind of structured.

Xiang Biao (13:09)

Yeah, I want to, I wish to use this opportunity to convey a message to all the friends who are listening, who feel that they are in hibernation. I mean the message is very simple. Do break out. There's a great fun and lots of enjoy.

Subi Rauzio (13:25)

Absolutely. That's good to hear. Even for me it's difficult to break out. But just to clarify, so when you were writing these articles in 2014 or when you were working on these projects or these themes in 2014, you were still writing in English or you were using different platforms to write in Chinese that reached out to then these, the wider Chinese speaking youth population?

Xiang Biao (13:53)

Great question. At that time I was still writing Spend most of my time writing English academic articles, hoping to be published, to be recognized, etc. But I use Chinese to write my thoughts. If I see something, if I think something, then I was using Chinese. So it's. The English and Chinese are not only two languages, but they just mean very different way of expressing and the way of thinking. So the 2014, I wrote some long essays in Chinese and as well as I gave interviews to media. So from 2014.

Subi Rauzio (14:50)

Yeah, and that's definitely something that comes out in the book itself, in your interviews. I think that's quite interesting. You know, this, this idea of language and I'm guessing it was just something you were more comfortable perhaps with or something that you maybe wanted to write using Chinese, then other stuff written in English. But. But again, what I really liked about the book was that you basically you're telling Chinese youth to think for themselves and through their own experiences, make sense of the contradictions around them, which. And, and rather than. I mean, you're doing that by reflecting on your own experiences and your own. What you've encountered through contradictions around you through your research, but also through your personal life experiences. I really like this, this reminder of making sense of contradictions, which you do so by. By reminding readers to pay attention to concrete details in. In conflict situations. And you write about the importance of. Or you talk about the importance of socializing with people who might bring up uncomfortable topics as a reminder that these events can also be stimulating. And I think that's something that is quite difficult to do, especially in the current age with, you know, political polarism and just people just becoming more insular and unwilling to be faced with conflict, of course, but also, you know, uncomfortable topics, uncomfortable ways of thinking or seeing the world that doesn't match with our own. But as I was reading your book, it really, you know, this is something I tried to. When I put the book down and walked around city. Something I try to pay attention to is when. When. When I was confronted with something that could have been uncomfortable rather than stepping away to kind of recognizing that this can also be stimulating. But could you talk a bit more about what it means to pay attention to conflict situationers for. Sorry, what it means to pay attention to conflict situations for listeners to understand what you mean by this. Why. Why is paying attention to conflict important for you?

Xiang Biao (17:08)

No, that's. You put it in the very nice context. Sorry, you put it in a current context very nicely. I mean, the current context is not a nice context, but the way contextualize it is very pertinent I mean that is precisely one of the main reasons. I think it is important to pay attention, close attention to concrete problems and contradictions around you. The reason is that one of the problems that we are facing now is precisely the breakdown of a public communication, the polarization of opinions. And one social group regard the other as enemies rather than potential partners for dialogue. And then we think why the situation becomes so bad. I mean people always have different opinions. But why now become such a black and white situation? Not only in. I mean we will think the US probably is the most obvious example of such a polarization. But in China too, especially now after Covid or you can well kind of after the zero case policy. But the COVID itself is far from ended. And you know, in Chinese society lots of groups just accuse each other on a very moralized and ideological grounds. Then if we think carefully, are there anybody who supports zero case policy would say okay, we have to implement that policy regardless whether you are starving or whether you have basic access to medical care, even in the situation or emergency, or you are forced to commit suicide, etc. We still have to carry out the zero case policy. I'm pretty sure there are very few person like that. And on the other hand, okay, people say oh, there's such a group called a coexistence group, basically is against zero case policy. But how many people can you find within this camp who would say oh, we have to lift up all these restrictions overnight without any preparation, without the proper vaccination, without all this medicine being properly supplied. Very few people would have that kind of opinion. So the debates during COVID I'm just taking this example, is very much about the details. I mean the zero case policy could have a point, but the question is that how you are going to implement it, how you are going to explain to different populations why is that needed and how it should be carried out. Same with the lifting up a policy. And then how should we lift up and step by step, what kind of preparations are necessary, what could be possible consequences and how people should be prepared for all these kind of consequences. I mean that is the things to be discussed. But then you ask why people do not spend energy to discuss that very concrete detailed plans and rather people just divide the society into such a two antagonistic black and white camps. So if you are zero case policy, I mean you are a person like this and this, I mean they have profile, you know, the kind of whole profiling going on in discussion and vice versa. So if you belong to the so called, the Coexistence, I mean coexistence meaning coexisting with a virus. So therefore lifting up, then you must be a person who hold this view or that view again have this kind of totalizing profiling each other. So therefore you are no longer debating about policy issues. You are really imagining each other as a type of person. So it become a personality attack. Then why have we ended up this situation? One of the reason is that we citizens, especially young people, lost the capacity to look at social issues in a very concrete way because of social media, because the impatience to examine how things really happen. So whatever happen, people very quickly use abstract categories and often ideologically loaded concept to make a quick package. Okay, this is A, and within A, it's like this, like that and this is B. It's a stance and position about certain things and, and that's the type of person who supported this and that. So it's all about dividing the society and to different lines and then questions about which line you choose rather than look at the more concrete issues. So I think young people, if young people develop, you can say habit of looking at the life in a much more low key but detailed way. And I tried to find something fun, something interesting in details and probably our discussion will be very different. And just a very quick footnote, I mean one of the reasons that I was promoting this perspective was based on my observation of students in Oxford, students from China, but as well as from many other parts of world. And as a student they can talk a lot about global issues and large questions, etc. But then you ask him or her, okay, could you please give me account about your parents life, who they are, what kind of life they have lived through, what are they worried about, where their dreams when we were young and how do they feel about their dreams before? Can you tell me about your neighbors and what do they do, how they make a living and what kind of housing you are living is a condominium or it's an individual house, what is the price, what's the housing market is like and etc. Very few young people can give a clear and concrete account about their own life. So I think that is absurd and I think it turned out to be dangerous. Because if you don't know how you are related to your surrounding and therefore how you are related to the larger society and the world in concrete way, then you will become a person kind of rootless, intellectually rootless and socially without anchor. So you will be easily pushed to certain extreme by all these big messages and emotionally Charging stories being circulated in the social media. So that is one of the reasons that I was promoting that way of looking at the world. That is not only a cognitive question, it is really also a matter of attitude towards life. You know, how you enjoy life through, by, by thinking through all the details and the very concrete connections to people around you, like cleaners, the security guard in your condominium and your neighbors and etc. And don't think too much about these grande issues that far away. I mean it's not a refusal to think, but in order to think big things you have to think through small things first and then try to think through what's the relation between the big things and the small things which most people are affected directly after all.

Subi Rauzio (25:46)

Yeah, that was, that was fantastic. That was not so much a footnote, but rather I feel like quite at the core of the book itself. So thank you for bringing that up. This idea of returning to the local to observe the everyday and its texture, this is something that each of these conversations you have with UQI in the book are kind of brought to the fore. So my understanding as well through, through this idea of looking at the local and understanding who you are also allows for the potential for individual agency. But in order to, as you just clarified, in order to pursue that it requires a problematization or problematiz, one's own personal experiences to grasp where you are and where you stand in society itself. And this mission of understanding one's place in the world can be inter interpreted as a psychological exercise. But rather, which I really, which is why I liked your book so much is you're moving away from that to remind people to look inward in order to look outward to objectify our experiences. And again, this is not a way of following the rhetoric which popular in everyday discourse, especially on social media today, which is, you know, this kind of well being narrative guiding people to love yourself. But instead what you're doing is you're trying to remind, you're trying to. By looking inward and at the same time objectifying yourself, you're trying to guide readers to reach a sense of harmony between historical limitations and their current ambitions. And again, this is so vital in today's age because it's something that gets hidden in the constant so social media content that's being circulated, especially through social media. But of course you know, beyond as well. But I think as you just mentioned as well, I think it's something that anybody who does do something on social media is going to be confronted by and it kind of at the same time we, we forget that who we are and where we stand in society and we do have our own place in society that doesn't just exist in the virtual realm realm. But my question in this and, and perhaps this was my own misunderstanding in your, in the reading of your book. I was left wondering this, this. How. How far should people push for change? Or how far are you, are you claiming to push for change? Because I was. I kept thinking about, you know, the circumstances, the status that people have in society oftentimes are also constrained by that status and they're living condition. And by constrained by their living conditions, for example, people who are living in poverty or you know, economic instability. How does seeking that agency in themselves to work through reflection, how does that. What kind of change should they be pursuing? And it's not my misunderstanding that this change that you're encouraging or the kind of thinking, the change in thinking that you're encouraging is just. It's at the grassroots local level. And I'm pushing this to something much bigger than perhaps what you're doing, what you're pursuing.

Xiang Biao (29:04)

Well, that is a very, very critical question. So we. So probably my thought is not disorganized, is slightly disorganized because it's such a rich question. Let me try. First of all, you said the notion of, you know, problematize our own experiences is very crucial. And in China there's also debates about the method of self as a method people say isn't too self centric. You take a sel so seriously. Is that healthy? The whole point of self method is kind of actually the opposite to that approach. Self as a method. Why do you take self as a method? Because we have a subject matter that is not the self. What is a subject matter? What is our core concerns? It is life, society and the world. But how do you really understand life? How do you really understand the world? And more importantly, what kind of understanding can inform your action, can inform your judgment, can inform how you develop relations with the people around you as well as far away. You have to take a certain method in order to reach the deep and consequential understanding. So that is what self as method means. I mean the landing point is world but not world just out there, but the world that you are part of and the world you will act on this number one. Number two, this is why we talk about problematize yourself. Then you look at okay, I become I. It's through all these childhood experiences and my parents social positions and what my neighbor said and etc. It's all in a very concrete way that I become I. So it's a very complex and, but very rich and real relation between I and the world. So you take that as a method to figure out how the world come into being and how you can interact with it. And then self as a method does not start with a kind of closed self as a coherent entity. I mean, self as a method implies by definition unpacking the self. You have to open up the self, examine the self as landscape, as rivers or the forest. There's lots of dark corners and lots of unsolved questions, questions and then lots of something, it upset you all the time and you can't control, can't explain it, etc. So it is to, to, to open yourself up. So that is, as you mentioned, is very different from the notion of self care and the self assertion and confidence. It's, it's, it's a quite different. And I, the other day I was talking to young people here in Germany. They said one thing kind of characterize how they discuss with friends in social media or even in kind of the physical setting offline is the accusation of how dare you, how dare you? If the person said something you regard as politically incorrect or something offensive. So how dare you? Became a kind of standard response that I thought is interesting. The very fact that we start a discussion, or not necessarily start, but very much, you know, constantly resorting to this line, how dare you? It just very much assumes there is a very closed self and, and very enclosed others. And you and me, we hold very different ideological convictions and we're very different persons. So the most important thing is to classify, to judge who is correct and who is not correct. So then the discussion become a battle over correctness rather than I open myself up and you open yourself and see, oh, why we have different views and how fascinating. You and me are quite a similar age, grow up in similar situations and why our understanding are so different. It is, they become intellectually very stimulating conversation. So that is, I want to say just to follow what you elaborate a bit more what you mentioned earlier, the notion of self. And then you ask a very critical question about the change. If self as method is about understanding. And then what about the critiques? What about if you are unhappy with the current situation, how you're going to change here? This is something that just came to my mind now when I listen to your question, which was not written in the book, I would say there's two types of change. We have to make a distinction. One type of change you can say is self improvement. In Chinese society over the last 40 years, there was no shortage whatsoever of this type of desire for change. Ambition, self motivation, getting better improvement and etc. How do you change yourself in this way? That is what I mentioned earlier. Suspension. You just keep moving from one place to another, sometimes physically through your body. This hypermobility, changing job every two, three or four months, constantly changing and working extremely hard. Try to capture all possible opportunities. But you have no time to confront problems here and now. And you may think it's stupid to spend time and energy to solve any problem right now. Like in relation with your colleague, relation with your dorm mates, and because you may no longer be friends with them because your situation may improve so much that you will be in a different world or their situation may improve so dramatically so you will be different type of person. So all what you do is to make sure that you will not lag behind in the fierce competition. So it's lots of ambition about change. This type one, then there is a type two change is that how can you change the society, the condition, the overall condition under which you have to compete so hard with others? So how do you change the system, the condition beyond you, but yet from which you cannot escape? For that type of type of change, you need very realistic, concrete understanding about relation between you and the people around you, you and the local surrounding. To pursue the first type of change, you are very busy because now you are putting in the system, you know, the pressure cooker or this, you can say the tree, the meal system. You work very hard, exhausted yourself in order to achieve second type of change. Ironically, probably the most radical action you can take now is to not work so hard. I mean this is, I mean the Tang Ping lying flat. I don't think it is a kind of serious social movement yet, but it is a radical sentiment. It's a feeling basically people say, okay, I stop competing with each other, I stop forcing myself to work so hard. It sounds quite passive, but as a sentiment, actually it is very radical because they want to say no to the general condition. So in order to pursue that type of change, we have to start with new understanding about a very concrete relation between yourself and others. And in order to do that, you have to examine your own experiences in detail. Why do I feel so unhappy? Even though I get the rewards, I have good jobs, I may have decent middle class like lifestyle. Why do I feel unhappy? I feel empty in terms of meaning. So if you start paying attention to details, you will get this new type of energy which is kind of low key but more sustained, that may empower you to make small movements every day that started changing the overall condition rather than just improve yourself within the predefined system according to the criteria that are set by other people.

Subi Rauzio (38:49)

Wow. Thank you so much for that clarification. That was, that was really enlightening. Just, just for the listeners who, who have not yet read Self as Method, this is something that BIAO also does reflecting on. On. You're also reflecting on this through your own experiences and I think that's what makes your story so remarkable. It's not this kind of it. You're also opening up that, that honesty to, to who you are and your past and where you are today, which is I think what makes Self as Method so inspiring and, and the easy to relate to or to pursue.

Xiang Biao (39:32)

Yeah, I think that's probably is nothing too remarkable because you can't really examine the world if you don't examine the self. Yeah, I think that is. Actually everyone is doing that, but ironically intellectual academics, sometimes they hide that part if they acquire some magical skills that they can examine the world very objectively without opening themselves.

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Subi Rauzio (40:28)

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Another thing that you do that you return to in your book is this, this idea of the gentry perspective. What is unique about this perspective and why are you drawn to it?

Xiang Biao (41:08)

Oh, probably it's not exactly unique, but I just feel it. I mean first of all is my personal experiences. I feel my temperament is quite close to the temperament of gentry. Who are the gentry? The gentry are of course, I mean we have to understand, recognize the historical limit they are. I mean they're almost exclusively male. Coming from the relatively well off, but still peasantry families. And probably they have certain gift of, you know, can start recognizing characters very early on. So therefore, okay, the family think of this boy could one day study, you know, become kind of scholar or rather than just a pedant. And they studied hard and normally they tried, but in many cases they did participate in civil servants examination. And then if you became successful in the exam and became officials, then that you are no longer gentry. Gentry is normally you don't have official title, you don't receive salary from the state. So the gentry, that person who did not succeed in the civil servants exam, or persons who retired or resigned from the official positions, then they all go back to their country village in the countryside village. I mean, this is, I think I mention in the book, right? It is a turning point in the Chinese history that retired officials no longer went back to the rural home village. Because before it was always a pattern. If you retired from even very high position in the capital city in Beijing or Nanjing, the first choice is to went back to your home village. So there is a very organic, a circular relation between the countryside and the cities and the grassroots and the center of politics. But of course, in modern time, that become unthinkable. And how many people retired senior officials today would go back to their home village? Janjir is that type of person. So what do they do? They are teachers in the village and teaching kids the Confucius classics. And they arbitrated the disputes and they organized public projects such as irrigations and also rituals in different seasons and etc. So there is a cultural core of local community. And of course they also play a role of maintaining public order, but through very cultural natural means and through the teaching of confucius ethics and etc. Another important role that they played is as kind of to intermediate between the community and the state if there is a famine, if the bad harvest in that year. So it was a gentry who would go to the county level government to say, the peasants are really suffering this year. So therefore you have to reduce the levy or agricultural tax. We can think of a way to compensate for that next year when the future harvest is good again. So they prevent the state power from becoming too predatory on the behalf of the community. But also sometimes they also play different role. They still claim their cultural superiority, morality in relation to peasantry by kind of playing up their connections with officials and etc. So all that is the historical role. And the gentry is important in Chinese history because their role explained why China's Empire of such vast territory, huge number of populations, could be maintained through very small bureaucracy over thousands of years. So the social order was not based on the formal bureaucracy, not based on military, not based on coercion, but it's based on a cultural order. But cultural order is not something, it's not something just abstract ideas, etc. You need some people in everyday life to maintain this cultural order. I mean, so the gentry, you can say the foot soldiers of this culture. For me, gentry is interesting not because they are order, they are order keepers. As a person I tend to be kind of slightly anarchic and style, but the gentry is charming for me because of their way of knowing. They know their surrounding very well. And so everything, I mean in the gentry's eyes, everything is a very imperial miracle. Meaning, you know how peasants start the production, agricultural production in the beginning of the year and how do they organize the family relations and if they disputes with neighbors, what makes them really angry and what will calms them down. And the gentry needed to know this because they have to step in to organize all this, this nitty gritty agricultural productions or settle disputes in the community. So they don't start their understanding about life with big categories and such. Because if you do that, you will never understand what the peasants really think. But they are not same as a modern social scientist who believe that everything must come from so called empirical evidence. Evidence. The gentries know the details very well, but then they will give meanings to these details. So they have this kind of normative picture, has certain cosmology to say, okay, you know, the parents, the parents, they know why what the parents want or why do they have disputes, but they will step in to say, I understand you, but you know, there is a set of principles that we should all agree. So you are doing this is understandable in certain sense, but it will violate some general principles, which means in the long run it will be bad for yourself and for everyone. Right. So they have a set of language which is primarily from Confucius ideology, of course, but anyway, so they combine the very detailed, the understanding, very empirical understanding of life with a certain kind of normative cosmology. And then they do it in a very organic way, because their business is not to write a sociological report about their village life. Their business is to coordinate village life to reach harmony within the community. And I think by and large it's for the collective well being of the community. I mean, of course you can say, you know, gentries are not revolutionaries most of the time, but I must say that the very important rural revolutionaries in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s were children of gentries. I mean, if you read the Mao's surveys, early surveys about rural China, and he has a very interesting conclusion. He said that who are the revolutionaries in the countryside? Children of the biggest landlords, the main gentries. They are the revolutionaries because these are the people who are not too worried about their own material well being. And these are people young and they read a lot. And as they went to at that time, Mao's reported Changsha or Shanghai in the big cities where progressive ideas were circulated. And as they got as ideas and became radicalized and came back at the same time, they inherited their parents spirit of being responsible for the peasantry and have the notion of normative cosmology and etc. But now the young people think old cosmology is wrong. So we need a new type of moral compass. And cosmology. What is that? Socialism. You distribute land to peasants and such. It's like this is what Peng Pai did in Guangdong. So the gentries could become revolutionaries. Why? Because they know the situation, the pan's life from inside out out. And number this, number one, number two, they know that life for a purpose is not just knowing for the sake of knowing. They knowing for the purpose of leading a ethical life at the collective level. So all this is very charming for me and I'm not sure it's unique or not, but I think it's very valuable today for young people, people in China as well, in the world, because number one, it is different from as a narrow scientism understanding of the world. You know, everything can be reduced to numbers, figures, and there's no such thing as a moral compass or cosmology. I mean this situation now become almost absurd with the rise of big data, right? Big data tells you don't stop asking about the theories, stop asking about interpretations, stop asking about the meanings, because I'm telling you the reality as it is. Why do you need a theory to interpret the reality? Whatever you want to know. I Big Data will tell you so now, as if we live in a purely scientific world without meaning. So gentry spirit is against that. Number two, the gentry, the spirit, it calls our attention to details. How you see meanings, see interesting things from details inside of the details and the details as lived experiences. It's not like the fixed and the frozen details. So all that is very interesting to me. So therefore the gentry as a way of knowing, I feel it can be be something quite productive for young people to look into Yeah, I think that.

Subi Rauzio (52:57)

Thank you. That was, that was really beautiful. I was smiling the whole time as you were talking and nodding. But I think that really overlaps with what we were talking earlier about paying attention to the conflicts and not, not being, not, you know, not being scared of that. Also I think the charm of the gentry class also my understanding is that it relates to a lot what you write about or talk about with UTI in the book, this necessity to close the gap between concepts discussed in the classroom and in real social practice. So I was wondering if we could kind of move the conversation closer to academia, what it means to you. You write about cross border world, you know, the importance of a cross border world and academic community. How can we, you know, do. Is that description that you just gave of the gentry class, is that in any way applicable to what academia means for you or how you've been able to practice it? And how do you, how do you write about it in your book to kind of inspire your readers to close the gap between what's in the classroom and in real social practice?

Xiang Biao (54:13)

Yeah, no, that's again very rich question here. There's a gaps between knowledge or information as recorded in texts and then there is a life going on in the world and then there's a gap between the life around you and the world that is much larger than what you can immediately see. And then there is a gap between the community that is using one type of language, say national language, and then you have transnational, as I said, cross border academic community with academic community is. I mean this is the 20th century, the major development, I think that is the internationalization of research. Academics normally regard themselves as a cosmopolitan and academic research is increasingly a matter of global conversation. Right. Then the question is that, okay, to what extent do you global conversation reflect local concerns, local reality? So there is a very, in very practical sense there is a gap between local and global. I mean if you turn it to theoretical question is not interesting because you can say whatever you want. Our local and global. You can find the global in local and et cetera. But in a very practical sense, when you go to the US go to New York or you go to London, present a conference paper to scholars come from different worlds and reading French philosophy. And if we in that context, when you speak a migrant workers experiences in South Africa or in India, to what extent it is related to what the migrant workers are really worried about and how they want to change their life, what they are really grappling with now, that gap is quite big. So these Three sets of gaps are all there. That is something we have to face. And if you go back to the gentry as one way to resolve or probably at least point out some potential way to reconcile these contradictions, I think that there's something to learn from Gentry's experiences. That is how you look at big questions through small details. Again, very importantly, small details. Not only something small, but the small details that you lived through. You know what they mean and you know why the details are important. I mean we always say we should pay attention to details, but actually there is a very deep theoretical question to be addressed. I mean, why are details important? You know, the entire world can be reduced to infinite details and then if you just say details are important, then it's basically next to nihilism to say, oh, this is the. After all the world is unknowable. What we know is these details that we randomly run into, certainly not true. So the details must be some details according to your own life experiences, according to your closed up observations that the details that matters and then. And the details that matters, meaning that it touch people's soul and keep people awake in the night and the details that people think again and again, details that will lead to sustained a certain type of effort and etc. And that details will lead you to larger questions. And these questions is abstract. This question is not something you can see in life directly. But if you get the big questions right, for instance, questions like what is dignity? Questions like how people develop their ambition and why some people so ambitious and why not, why others not and how ambition is treated. In some circumstances ambition is regarded as something very suspicious. In other circumstances ambition is very much encouraged. And very simply boys, ambition is encouraged and goals, ambitions are often discouraged. Why is that? And etc. So then this is big questions and it's not something immediately observable in everyday life. We will need that big questions why? When you have these big questions and that will lead to you to meaningful thinking of the larger world in a concrete way. Step by step you have a basis. The basis is a detailed, experienced observations about life itself. But from there you develop big questions. And this is what I meant. The Gentry perspective is charming because it, it combines empirical, detailed, empirical observations with normative cosmology. Right? I mean you can say in older days, Gentry, the normative cosmology is a bit of a frozen because it is kind of based on the Confucius ideology. It is not critically examined, is not sufficiently reflexive. That's very true. And we are living the world much Richer, I mean intellectually much richer than Song or Ming dynasty gentries. Because we have access to all kinds of philosophical traditions, all kinds of ways of lives and all kinds of different cultures. And we can examine life and reflect on our normative cosmologies from so many different ways. So therefore we can really. Which are enrich our own moral cosmology. So go back to the question of gap, gap between knowledge in the book and the knowledge and understanding in life. So if we, I mean, first of all, in addressing this gap, we must pay attention, must stress that it would be stupid if we just throw away all the books to say, oh, you know, the text, they are only surface there or distortion of reality. No, no, no. I mean the knowledge being codified, being recorded, archived in text are very important heritage that we have to carry on because that is a basis from where we can start. We can develop our cognitive capacity and such. But you have to treat them as a part of your nutrition, part of tools. Then you must pay attention to the life in world and try to see the details, as I said. And what you learn from text, from books are often some categories, some concepts that may suggest you to think of certain big questions. So the art of living, art of learning is to very imaginatively and attentively to take some suggestive big categories, abstract ideas from text and mingle with vivid, lively, sometimes ruthless, because for so much life details that you observed and especially experienced in your own life. Yeah, so that is, I think to close up this gap is very, very important. If that gap is not closed. So we will have very impoverished life. Because if the life is just nothing but all the details, you know, as it just. Life goes on as it is, without any normative reflection, some thought to examine it. So the life will be very impoverished. So do textual, theoretical knowledge if there's no new enemies being injected into theoretical thinking and the big category thinking from life itself. And then the textual knowledge is just repeating itself or just looking small holes to say, oh, this text of the 1980s forgot to mention this little hole. So I'm now going to fill it up to make it more complete. I mean that, to fill the gap in the literature and. Etc, I mean, why do you need to feel the. We don't live our life for the sake of completeness of particular literature. Yeah. So that is a way to go ahead, I think.

Subi Rauzio (64:11)

And is this kind of what, you know, what we, what we started this conversation with this feeling of hibernation that you were experiencing, you know, 2014, before, before, before these, before Your editor before other people interested in your work who are more engaged with kind of public discourse or through social media, were realizing that your writing was being picked up across the youth and Chinese speaking countries or environments and encouraging you to kind of step out of this hibernating place that you had gotten accustomed to. Is this kind of by through you becoming more engaged, you know, by engaging with public, with engaging with the public and doing something like this, the podcast, but of course the you know, self as method. The book itself is based around a conversation and it's written in a way that's, that's very readable. At least the English version is and I'm guessing even more so the Chinese. When you're writing to the public, you're writing to the youth. So are these exercises for you as well to kind of close that gap?

Xiang Biao (65:22)

Oh, absolutely. I must say that it has been transformative over the last few years. Having conversation with Wu Chi and producing this book is as a part of a larger kind of transformative period that I am still going through, you can say starting from 2014 and then then which become kind of escalated after the book was published. And also I moved from University of Oxford to Max Planck Institute, which is a research institute rather than university and which is very much encouraged to explore new directions, new way of doing research. So all that also kind of encouraged me to become more daring to step out from the usual mode of thinking. Yeah, so that is very encouraging. I'm very, very grateful to all the readers. I mean I can. One thing I must. I mean that says. Well, I feel slightly reluctant to say that because you can see how disqualified I have been as anthropologist. I feel that now I'm becoming better anthropologist purely because the push from readers. I mean most of the readers, of course non anthropologists, probably the hardest, hardly have come across any material or article publications in anthropology. But they will ask me questions directly related to the life. So they don't ask questions starting with concept. And when they ask a question like that, so there's a very strong emotional dimension or affective dimension, you know, I mean it's about a physical feeling. You have a puzzle about life. It's very often associated with a very strong feeling. You have feeling first and then you start thinking. And when you think you will use metaphors, categories and fragments of experiences. Before I was not a qualified anthropologist because I never paid attention to that kind of very subtle feeling. And this way of thinking about life from inside of experience itself, you can say this way of thinking is not articulated, not Systematic, but is a kind of exploring and it's colored by very deep, often contradictory feelings and etc. When I was writing, you know, academic articles, I always, I always try to be dry, to reduce things into certain formula because that will give a kind of stable and therefore clear contour of certain phenomenon and it make it easy to analyze, to reach certain conclusion, to link it to certain literature and to make a point to say, you see, I'm now saying something that this and that literature did not say, say and etc. So I was quite insensitive towards questions related to feeling, ethics, morality and also that kind of very fragmented and contradictory way of thinking. But that is supposed to be the main thing anthropologists should have looked in, into. But due to all kinds of reasons, I was never the. I was never able to develop that type of competence. But now, you know, it is really through my public engagement, through the interaction with readers, I started paying attention to that. Yeah, I must say, probably it's not my fault. Before when I read literature about the feelings about, I mean, you know, effects and morality of course are big topics in economic academic publications. But I just feel, oh, you know, what can we say about this? It's quite trivial. It is so elusive. And what is. Can we see any big messages here? I don't see much meaning, but now through the public engagement and I can see how consequential and how important these dimensions are for people who are seriously reflecting on their life. So in order to communicate with them, in order to genuinely understand them. So I will have to pay attention to these subtleties. So this is something I just give one example. This is supposed to be a very important part of my own academic training. But now I'm receiving this type of, of training from readers who are probably much younger than me, who are even not social science students. I mean, many are probably study business or study engineering. But as people living through life, they ask questions that demand serious, intellectually deep and theoretically sophisticated answers. If you give them some just, you know, very abstract, vague answers, they will not be satisfied. There's another point I would like add. Somehow I don't know why academics often think, oh, you know, if you want to do public engagement, you have to make your writing or thinking kind of entertaining. There is a fashion of writing in anthropology as well. You write it as if it is not and make it just very easy to read. I think that is a misunderstanding. My experience of public engagement really taught me that public audience welcome at least don't mind difficult theories. Why? Because difficult Theories make them sad, think they want to think. What they need is stimulus, is some tools, some questions that help them to think deeper. Do they have huge desire to think more clearly about their living conditions and their existential questions? So if you just give this sugar can, I mean this sugar coated it, some kind of stuff, it means they would not be happy. So they wanted to be challenged. Of course. I mean, you need to make it understandable and accessible. You know, you raise questions that it's recognizable to them and resonate with their feelings, but otherwise they don't need some simple solution or quick answers. They know that is not real life is complex. And what they need is tools to think further, to think more deeply and to think more clearly.

Subi Rauzio (73:22)

Yeah, I think that's really, really important points. And I wonder if that's also a kind of generational shift and just, you know, when you're saying that you're writing or talking to people who are much younger than you and me, probably there is much more, you know, young people today, I think regardless of where they are in the world, they do want those tools and they're not as afraid of, you know, having. They're not as afraid to take them apart and they're curious in contemplating through them and applying them in different circumstances and kind of using these kind of puzzle pieces. Pieces to somehow paint a picture of the world for themselves.

Xiang Biao (74:07)

Exactly. I mean, you just think of how much our gender notions have changed. So young people are very daring to challenge all these very basic categories. You know, what is being a man, what is being a woman. And now that is a very, very wide, deeply accepted, accepted norms already among the young people, namely, there is no fixed norms. So they are thinking, I mean, without active thinking, you will not be able to tear down such deeply ingrained categories. So they have a very strong desire to think in a very courageous way.

Subi Rauzio (74:47)

Yeah, absolutely. And another thing as you were talking. Well, two things as you were talking just now, I wanted to, to want to mention and lead me to my next question. One, your comment about your writing being dry. I think you're being a bit too harsh on yourself because, I mean, I don't know which years you're talking about, which publications, but I don't think your article writing is dry or even close to how dry academic writing can be. So I think you are being a bit harsh on yourself. You know, I think you, you do have a very. You, you have a. You have this. I guess what makes your writing and your research so, so stimulating is that you, you do take that to, to the context of is if it's policy or, or kind of national society, kind of the wider, wider scope. So my, my interpretations of your writing is that you don't of course you, you have the theoretical foundation there, but it's not for the purpose to make that theoretical claim. Rather it's a very kind of hands on type of research, at least of what I've read of your work. But I wanted to ask you. So the book itself is based on the three conversations in Oxford, in Beijing and in Wenzhou. And I was just wondering, do you have a fourth conversation coming up now that you've moved to Germany to Hal? And on that note, I think it's really insightful that you do write about the different research environments or the cultures of these institutions that you've worked in. Because especially for someone like me as an early career researcher, I think I often overlook these very vast differences in institutions themselves. And you know, we're so, we're expected to kind of be so driven according to the rank system, etc. That we so often forget well, what is the culture of that university? Are they more research oriented, are they more teaching oriented? And that's something that you really do shed light to in your book. You know, coming to Oxford, a much more teaching oriented university and it taught you a lot as well as a teacher. But I'm guessing now it's quite a bit, quite a big change being in a more research institution. So I was just wondering, my question is if I can form it into a question. If you did have a fourth interview with Uchi now in Germany, how would it be, would it be radically different? I was going to ask this in relation to, you know, obviously you were writing in 2018 pre pandemic times and you know, you would write of a completely different social situation, completely different, you know, government pressures, concerns of how to, how to re. Engage with society, especially what happened in November with protests. So of course your conversation, the content would be very different but my question would be more. Would it be different because now you're in hell and you have a different understanding of what self as method is because you're in a different research institution and there's been a change in your thinking and an evolution of your thinking because of where you're based.

Xiang Biao (78:20)

Yeah. So number one, as you said, it's very important to pay close attention to our nearby, our kind of mini universe, what kind of institute, department each of us in and what does it mean for my existence. Existence. So that is what I meant. Mentality clarify lots of things actually it also sometimes I think have psychological benefit. It will calm you down. I mean I guess this have something to do with Buddhist this kind of mindfulness. If you pay a close attention to small details around you and you will calm down and then of course it will have practical benefit as well because it will make you wiser and make better decisions. And we know there is always a gap between your principles and what is demanded on you by your environment. That is not a problem. The problem is to understand very clearly okay, I am. This is my intellectual agenda, my political project and this is my ethical principle. And of course I have to make a living. And I'm not expecting everyone is same as me me and then but in what concrete situation and concrete ways I should interact with them and then I can keep my integrity. All that actually is very very important skills. And this is the jantry skill. The jantry is pre enlightenment. I mean certainly they are not part of the European enlightenment tradition. That is you don't make very black and white judgment because making judgment, that kind of very principle judgment is not the business of life. Life is. I mean Confucius always think life is a matter of regulation. First of all regulate yourself, your feelings and etc. And then you through regulate yourself regulate. Regulate the relation between you and others. So you find a position that will allow you to develop harmonious connections with the world. So that is a kind of pay attention to what kind of institutions we are in. And what it means is very important actually it's a capacity, it's a type of social intelligence and it's both intellectual and the practical question question. So whether or not we will have a fourth interview and how it may look like. It's very interesting because I think just a day before yesterday Wuchi and Tani, the editor of the book who initiated the idea of the book of self as a method. We're just talking online and we think it we need continue the conversation and we may well to have a fourth conversation and which is hoping to visit Germany but probably will be the topic we focus on. I'm just based on what we discussed before yesterday will be less a continuation of what we talked before like self as a method how to understand the relation between self and the world but probably will be more about some really urgent questions. We talk about the question of memory or what I call disremembering which is a big concern in Chinese society not only now but also throughout the contemporary history. People suffer then people try to forget. But you know you cannot forget. So what do you mean you forget, you just don't talk about it. But the scars, the trauma stay in your body, stay in your mind, stay in your psyche. But yet by refusing to talk about it you have no way to articulate said the feelings. So the feeling just accumulate. Then after a while it became fear, became certain type of paranoia or became excessive self disciplining or discipline of others like you know how heavy Chinese parents love towards children. So that is have lots to do with their decent remembering of their own life experience experiences. Then that type of trauma suffering turned into that type of energy which is very loving but it can be very oppressive too. I'm not a psychoanalysis but that is kind of our naked eye observation of what happened right now and is something also we think that probably we should talk about it and remind people maybe we have to pay more attention to what happened last month, last year and to give a proper record of all these kind of emotional tsunamis up and downs that people experienced for instance in 2022. So that will be a conversation and then is this because I changed my job? Probably not, yeah. I mean changing job would be a minor reason for us to change the topic of conversation. I think now I'm more and more shaped by my relation with the public and of course first and foremost the the Chinese Yang public. My position, current position facilitated this engagement. I'm grateful for that but I don't think it's really determining factor. But in a couple of years time we also mentioned that we may go back to the question of self and the world and thinking again, you know what the Marx Planck means to me and so therefore what it may mean to the world go back to a slightly more distanced and more intellectual question and the less urgent but for now our mind is preoccupied by the urgent question. Yeah. So if you don't mind, can I say one more thing? And that is a. Yeah. Resulted from yesterday, yesterday's very heated debate that we had in my department in Max Planck Institute. I was really surprised to see actually how pessimistic many of my colleagues felt about public engagement in different parts of world. I thought, you know what I said like a Chinese young people people, they don't mind the difficult questions actually they want the difficult questions because they wanted to be challenged, stimulated. When you challenge them they are happy because they feel you are treating them as intellectual equal, you are treating them as a serious deep thinking subject, as thinkers. But apparently that is not true at all in many parts of the world. I mean of Course I don't have my firsthand observations and I know some about India, but I think Indian society is quite fragmented. Certainly you have populations similar to the young people in China whom I'm engaged with, but probably not others. So I feel tremendously grateful to the Chinese young people. You know, no matter if people say oh this population is selfish and confused etc. But they keep thinking, they keep asking questions and probably it's true, they're doing much more, they're doing so much more actively than many of their counterparts population in other parts of world. I don't know, probably in Europe. Europe, I mean Germany, you still have a lot of actively thinking youth but again that society is quite divided. But probably the critical mass scale of public thinking in China is something we must cherish because we now have all the impression there's a political oppression and economic stagnation. The things are quite dark. That's all very true, but do not forget, do not forget, under the dark cloud there are millions and millions grass asking questions and they are looking for sunlight and they want to grow and they want to grow in a healthy way. They want to grow in a way that other grass will flourish as well. So that spirit, I actually didn't realize how precious it is. I mean I enjoyed it before but I didn't know actually it is quite special in today's world. Yeah. So probably that is, I mean number one is something we have to cherish. Number two is something now I'm just thinking, talking to myself, thinking about something we, we probably should cultivate and make it spread across the world. You know, that kind of public urge for ideas, for thought, for critically examining their life experiences is something the whole world needs and actually many, many young Chinese people are doing that. So that is, is, I mean not necessarily a gift but certainly is a very precious resources that the world can benefit from.

Subi Rauzio (89:04)

Well, thank you so much for adding that. That was, that was such a relevant point and something I very much also agree with. I also, I loved your metaphor of the grass. That was really beautiful. I also very much look forward to the fourth, fourth interview, whatever version, however it comes out, multimodal form or in book form, I really look forward to that coming out as well as I'm sure our listeners do as well. But what, what other projects have you been working on BJL recently since you moved to Germany, since Self as Method has been published, even though that was just, I mean it's just been published, so that's maybe not such a relevant question, but what, what kind of projects have you been working on in recent months? In the past year?

Xiang Biao (89:56)

Well, the project that really preoccupied my mind is how to develop the intellectual agenda here for the department. Well, I'm very grateful to Max Planck Society that I was given this job. I'm not seeing this just out of politeness because if you look around the world, social science is under threat in many ways. In some countries, like in China, and probably scholars still have decent salaries. But the freedom is severely, severely constrained. And apart from political freedom, I mean, the intellectual environment is also quite distorted for other reasons beyond the political control as well, like this personality relations and this pedigree, etc. And in many other parts of the world, I mean simply there's not much money being spent on social research. But here we have both freedom and the funding. So that is a really feeling that we have the duty to do something not necessarily outstanding or anything, but to do something that is meaningful to the world, not just to prove that we are smart and we are okay people.

Subi Rauzio (91:35)

So.

Xiang Biao (91:37)

I have been worried about what we can do. We develop this approach called the common concern approach. Common concerned approach is not a type of academic research that focus on a particular subject matter question. It is first of all a style of research. So this style of research, we take research as a type of practice, as social practice, right? I mean research is never just a pure intellectual exercise. It's a social practice. You have to first of all to think who you are, why do you do this? And then there's so many different ways to ask questions and why do we ask this question? This is both social, practical and intellectual question. I mean, why you choose this question, not the other? And when you ask how do you define it and how you collect information and then whom all this research is for, that kind of questions isn't cannot be addressed purely on theoretical level. So we want to pay attention to this type, this aspect, the very practical aspect of research and the common concern about approach is a type of research that we don't start with academic concept and certainly don't start with gaps in literature academic knowledge. And we don't aim to accumulate academic knowledge for the sake of accumulation, but rather we start with what the people are worried about in their life, what kind of concern they are grappling with now. Right. So the examples would be like things like uncertainty, the breakdown of public communication in China, excessive competition, the feeling of powerlessness and the increasing pressure. Right. This is a kind of common concern. We start from there, there. And that is sounds okay, kind of common, sensible I mean, just start there. But it's quite difficult to do academic and scientific research because this kind of concerns coming from life, they don't have a clear shape. They're very elusive and they are connected to all domains of life. Just thinking of pressure or thinking of this nature, you know, involution and competition. It's not only about your education, it is also about the job, is about the relation with your colleagues in company. It's about family formation, is about dating, marriage. It's about your age. Once you reach to the age of 34, you feel so scared because if you are working the IT corporation, 35, probably the end of your career, what are you going to do and etc. So I mean then of course age is really special for woman. Is related to the family relations, your status in society, gender relations, your relation with the parents, everything come together. So how can you disentangle all that, give shape to this all embracing concerns? That is a challenge. But for us that is very important and exciting because this is how people perceive life and people. This is how people experience multiple social contradictions. Here, you know, contradictions come back. Multiple social contradictions at the same time. So it's not only to identify contradictions, but also to have to clarify the relations between different types of contradictions. By doing this, we wanted to come up with certain descriptions or pictures about the life, about the world that the readers, young people especially can see themselves in these pictures. And then they start self examination, they start clarifying to themselves what worries they have and thinking through why do I have these worries and because of what kind of assumption or because of social forces and etc. And so therefore, hopefully that will help them to find realistic and concrete solutions in their life. Not necessarily changing society overnight, but at least have a meaningful life, have a meaningful, have an ethical life in a time that is full of uncertainties. I mean you need that kind of intellectual resources to make life meaningful. So that is the main project that we are doing. It's a collective effort. It is. You have to do lots of experiment to see what is the best way to identify the common concerns and how you can define it and how from there you break down into different components in a natural way, you know, but clear way in. Etc. It's a. It's because it's still in attention. Academic research is still serious labor. I believe in that. I believe in labor. You need patience. So that is my main job and personally I worked on quite a lot on actually Covid in all the social changes and related to Covid not based on any theoretical interest simply because it is. It is so overwhelming. I feel just. I have to look at that. And then finally, my new project is probably something about ambition. I think I mentioned that before very briefly. And the question is that how do society organize individual ambition? And what is the consequences of different ways of organizing and channeling individual ambition? So that is the question. And how ambition lead to feeling of powerlessness in for example, current the Chinese society.

Subi Rauzio (97:54)

That sounds so fascinating and a really nice kind of continuation from your previous work. I imagine the listeners of this show really look forward to hearing how all of those projects unfold. But for now, Xiang Biao, I want to thank you for putting time aside and for joining us on the show and to talk about your work. It's been so insightful, so inspiring. I've just been smiling and nodding my head almost the whole time. So thank you so much for. For coming coming to coming on the show to talk to me.

Xiang Biao (98:23)

Thank you very much. That is a really nice praise. You know, a social thought ideas make people smile and nod that because that means the idea has a life and you can touch other people's mind. And so. Thank you, Siri. Yeah, I would also smiling.

Subi Rauzio (98:41)

Okay, good. And thank you everyone who's listening to this show. Thank you for tuning in to New Books in Chinese Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Have a great week everyone, and don't forget to download your own free PDF coffee copy of Xiang Biao's inspiring book, which you'll find on the Palgrave Springer website. Thank you so much everyone. Goodbye. Yo, this is important, man.

Xiang Biao (99:17)

My favorite Lululemon shorts, the ones you.

Subi Rauzio (99:19)

Got me back in the day.

Xiang Biao (99:20)

I think they're called Pace Breakers. The ones with all the pockets. I just got back from vacation and I left them in my hotel room. And dude, I need to replace these shorts. I wear them like three times a week.

Subi Rauzio (99:29)

Could you send me the link to where you got them?

Xiang Biao (99:31)

Oh, also, my birthday's coming up soon, so.

Subi Rauzio (99:33)

Anyways, thanks, bro.

Xiang Biao (99:34)

Talk soon.

Subi Rauzio (99:35)

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