The Council of Ten

I seem to always return to the secret and the mystery within history.

I don't know why.

Some very pleasurable days ahead, wandering in Venice's sestieres, inventing the canals at dawn through the eyes of Antonio da Parma, my main character. In this flurry of research, underneath the silks and draped turbans, beyond the Venetian merchants, the glittery world of artisans and the orgiastic madness of Carnivale; past the putrid den of a Jewish physician who mulls over the sores of a decaying man, I am losing myself in historical works by masters before our time.  Victor Hugo's Angelo.... Lord Byron's The Two Foscari...
And a more sinister joy surges in me, that of encountering those I know. Or rather, I feel I know them well.

The Three Capi and those others...the Consiglio dei Dieci, who we call The Council of Ten.

Am I ready for the evil? The evil of Venice.

Why, yes. Of course.

"

‍Keep

Those maxims for your mass of scared mechanics,

Your merchants, your Dalmatian and Greek slaves,

Your tributaries, your dumb citizens,

And masked nobility, your sbirri, and

Your spies, your galley and your other slaves,

To whom your midnight carryings off and drownings,

Your dungeons next the palace roofs, or under

The water's level; your mysterious meetings,

And unknown dooms, and sudden executions,

Your "Bridge of Sighs," your strangling chamber, and 

Your torturing instruments, have made ye seem

The beings of another and worst world!

Keep such for them: I fear ye not. I know ye;"

                    - Marina, wife of Jacopo Foscari, to the Council of Ten,
                                                                in Lord Byron's The Two Foscari

When the Mongols Invaded Vietnam - A History of an Independent People

For those who do not know my grandmother, Phuong Lan and who misguidedly fall into the trap of their own prejudices or else employ irreverent condescending language towards a 'little old Vietnamese' woman, you are in for a BIG surprise.

There is nothing seemingly fierce about this peaceful, broad-faced, soft-skinned five-foot woman who enjoys the company of her little cubs (aka, her grandchildren) and demonstrates artful patience in the kitchen. But show her an ounce of disrespect or else badmouth her ancestors and you will find a woman who can defend herself. You will be subjected to a well-timed repartee whose wit is as admirable as its ability to cut to the core.

Appearances are deceptive.

When people encounter peaceful, non-boisterous others, they are tempted to judge them as weaker or else attribute their retiring demeanour to lack of ability.

In Eastern cultures especially, this attribution could not be further from the truth. Recall Lao Tzu's emphasis on seemingly soft, flowing water and its ability to carve rock over time. Strength has a different meaning in the East where one's flexibility, one's ability to 'bend' is a marker of strength.

But this should not be seen as a sign that those who bend will bend forever. The decision of whether to bend, to 'let it slide' or to fight back comes with wisdom. It comes with an evaluation of the right action to take for the greater good.

When does it become necessary to fight back?

If it is only your ego under attack: Bend. Bend.
For what is ego? Why does it matter? And would you ruin your relationships to preserve your ego?
(Though one has to discard relationships that are toxic...)

But what if your country is under attack? What if it is more than your own petty preoccupations at stake?

Since I began this post about my grandmother, I want to reflect on an impressive Vietnamese battle.
This is a battle that was fought by the Vietnamese people in the 13th century. The Battle of Bạch Đằng. It took place when the Mongols tried to invade the Vietnamese land, just as they had previously invaded most of the world and were at the time, the rulers of China.

In this battle, Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, who had since conquered the Chinese and led to the collapse of the Song Dynasty, sent the Mongol fleet to take Vietnam or what was then called, Đại Việt.

It was a mighty fleet that Kublai sent. It had 500 vessels, manned by one hundred thousand men. Please note that the Mongols did not build this fleet. They appropriated it from the Song Dynasty Chinese and initially, the Mongol navy consisted of Chinese defectors.

 Let us see what happened in this battle, when the might of the then world, came ploughing at the Đại Việt's door...

The Battle of Bạch Đằng
The painting above shows the distressed Mongol fleet after it was lured into a Vietnamese naval ambush.
It does not look good.

It turns out that The Battle of Bạch Đằng was the third invasion into the Đại Việt by the Mongols. The Mongols had been defeated twice before but they were at it again. For this third battle, Kublai Khan had entrusted victory to his general son, Toghan. "Son, do me proud!" And for the third time, the Mongols were militarily defeated by the Vietnamese Tran generals.

In a period where the Mongols stood as the uncontested leaders of the world and had subjects across many nations, the Vietnamese successfully resisted them for thirty years.

Kublai Khan was so furious upon learning of this defeat, that he banished his own son, Toghan, for life. I suppose Kublai Khan's ego was severely trampled on at this point and his reprisal is a perfect example of someone who cannot 'bend' gracefully.

In the end, however, the Tran rulers officially agreed to pay tribute as Kublai's 'subjects' if only to avoid further war which was ruining their own people. Resistance, no matter how successful, was costing lives and so the Vietnamese accepted the loss of face and chose to 'bend' for the greater good.

I enjoyed highlighting the Mongol-Vietnamese war for two reasons. On the one hand, it illustrates what happens when we undermine our opponent. In this story, the Mongols undermined the Vietnamese. Surely, it should have been easy to take the Đại Việt given their other conquests? But it was not.
This is a reminder of the strength of what we perceive as 'little' things. It is also a reminder of the endurance and determination of those who feel self-righteous in defending their own land.

The other reason for this post is that I think the Vietnamese people are not given credit for their strategic genius and their fighting spirit. I sought to highlight their amazing achievements. They are peaceful people who for years have suffered invasions and or colonialism. Yet they have proved time and time again that they will fight, and successfully so, for their independence.

The Vietnamese resistance to the Mongols in the 13th century is only one example of their spirited rise in the face of invasion. In later years, during the 15th century Ming Dynasty, Chinese emperor Zhu Di was fully aware that the Chinese invading army was not faring well in Vietnam. He ought to have known, given that his army had since appropriated samples of Vietnamese-made firearms, known then to be technologically superior than the Ming cannons. He knew long before his death that the Vietnamese would eventually win and reclaim their independence.
And he was right. In 1427, three years after Zhu Di's death, after 10 years of battling the Chinese, Vietnamese leader Le Loi defeated the Ming army and proclaimed the Đại Việt’s independence.

There is another story along those lines... The story we are all familiar with. A story where Vietnamese soldiers were pitted against the French imperialist force and then later against the greatest army in the modern world: the US military.

Of course, there were no real 'winners' in the Vietnam-US war, since war is a harbinger of loss and tragedy for all sides. But having said that, it is clear that the US, just like the Mongols before them and just like the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty, did eventually retreat.

Sometimes 'bending' is good for all.

I leave you, now with these two strong Vietnamese sisters.

The Trung sisters. Two Vietnamese women, amazon-like figures whose story you may Google, a story that was originally passed down orally for generations in Vietnam's early history. Distrust of oral tradition has given their story a legendary reputation. But we know better.

It is not legend.

The Ming Storytellers - Sexuality

Issues of sexuality, sexual frustration and sexual obsession are an important undercurrent of the historical novel, The Ming Storytellers.

At the very core we have a world, the Forbidden City, where the only male population consists of an impotent emperor, Zhu Di, and his hundreds of castrates. Both ironically feel their inadequacies and both look to other worldly ambitions to compensate.

Zhu Di knows that he is unable to perform and in an attempt to dupe the world that he is still a virile man, continues to supplement his harem with yet more beauties from as far as Korea. Zhu Di persists in rubbing himself with aphrodisiac ointments and consulting with his physicians to improve his condition. Finding himself unable to perform, he assuages his masculinity on the military field.

Meanwhile the eunuchs who have sacrificed their manhood in order to accede to an imperial position understand that they will never have other means to succeed in their life than to serve their emperor. Maimed, conscious of their differences, plagued by lifelong health problems and sexually frustrated, they direct their ambitions, finding self-esteem and meaning in ascending the echelons of eunuchism, competing for roles and or often driving themselves to complex and illicit affairs with concubines.

For the hundreds of bored and sexually unfulfilled concubines in Zhu Di's harem, relief is found in forbidden literature. The women secretly indulge in the printed tales of the Ming storytellers, renown for their dubious virtue. They devour lascivious erotic vignettes, a Ming equivalent for pornography which arose during this period with the development of the printing industry.
In much the same way, Kareem, an envoy from Zanzibar is himself not foreign to the use of literature to compensate for the lack of spice in his bed. While his highly obsessed partner, Shahrzad, whiles her journey aboard the Ming fleet compiling theories about her idol, Admiral Zheng He, Kareem plunges ever deeply into the classic Persian volumes of One Thousand Tales (Arabian Nights).

Back in the Inner Palaces of the Middle Kingdom, bored and unfulfilled imperial concubines like the main protagonist, Min Li, become trapped in a form of fantasy, where they pine for unrequited forms of love. They become obsessed with eunuchs, perhaps men who believe themselves to be so inadequate that they shut themselves in a protective shell, convinced that they are undeserving of any adoration.

One such eunuch, Zhijian, will have to bear the frustration brought upon by castration all his life. He fills his time with the senseless completion of routine chores, without so much of a career goal, having abandoned all motive for life. The only escape from his torment is the obsession that he will develop for Min Li. His only joy following the castration that has deprived him of all he wanted from this life, is to seek every rumour concerning this one woman that he knows he can never have and who belongs to the emperor.
Zhijian will project his anima onto Min Li believing her to be pure and faultless, convinced that she is like him, a victim about to be slaughtered. Unable to function sexually, Zhijian elevates Min Li to muse status. He places her on a pedestal, relishing his platonic devotion as a welcome refuge because if he were to see her as a woman and desire her, he would ultimately need to face the 'villainy' of his physical condition.

But returning to the women of the palace, we find in the Ming Storytellers, another brand of sexual frustration one which perhaps would not be so problematic today, at least in many parts of the world.
It is the frustration of women who love other women and who are either forbidden to publicly meet due to social constraints or who entertain a secret passion for a loved one, a passion they hide, for fear of rejection.
The Ming dynasty is not foreign to sapphism. Palace women were known for having affairs with each other and wooden dildos have been found in the ruins of ancient Han palaces.

At the other extreme, there is another complex character who embodies a man completely at peace with castration yet who nevertheless suffers the frustration of remaining a man. Ji Feng is a eunuch, criminal at that. My conception of this character can be read in many ways. At the simplistic level he is a sexual criminal. At a more twisted level he is a man who has not 'come out' with his homosexuality. He experiences every woman as a threat, seeing them as creatures he can never compete with and whose form he can never hope to achieve.
Yet Ji Feng remains completely unaware of his own sexuality and of his seething jealously, nor is he conscious of his motivations for wanting to hurt women and see them under his power. Ji Feng's criminal impulse and his voyeurism, compound to produce a perverse individual capable of the worse crimes towards a gender that he cannot attain.

One salient undercurrent of The Ming Storytellers is the common theme of frustrated sexuality and soul-consuming sexual obsessions. It depicts a contrived world with extreme social taboos and physically maiming traditions, a world where eunuchism and forced concubinage combine to produce frustrated human needs that more or less contribute to the characters' journey.

10 Things You Didn't Know about The Ming Storytellers

1. It has eunuch characters - The main male character is a Muslim eunuch with a turbulent childhood. He existed. Yet in contrast to what is known of his role in Ming diplomacy and naval history, little has been written about his personal life or for that matter, about the many eunuchs who suffered and whose lives were violently transformed.

Today in many parts of the world, notably the West, there is much outrage over female genital manipulation in African and Middle Eastern communities, and how this scars women physically and psychologically. Conversely, the maiming of countless men over the course of history and even today is not dwelt upon with the same psychological and human rights perspective. It seems we have become disensitized about the practice of castration.

Whether through literature or film, we have come to accept that say, Romans, Turkish Sultans and Chinese emperors enslaved eunuchs, without dwelling on what being a eunuch meant for the victims. There is no memorial to acknowledge the lot of these men as eunuchs. There is little empathic study or recognition of what they endured, relative to our recognition of what slaves, in general, endured.

There are exceptions in literature. For example, I recently read the graphic novel, Habibi, and found it a truly respectful, eye-opening story featuring a eunuch as central character. It is a wonderful work of art and literature.

2. It contains torture scenes and a castration scene and offers the rudimentary outline on Chinese footbinding - history has its realities, however grim. I do not like to overlook the truth no matter how hard this truth. 

3. It presents a realistic portrayal of the life of Ming imperial concubines - What do bored women get up to, do you think? Yes, there is much plotting and scheming in secret, just as there are broken rules, bitchiness and much brooding. At the very least, readers can discover what it takes to be selected for the emperor's Royal Chamber and how to become a fashionable imperial courtesan. You can read more about this in my previous post, The Secret Life of Ming Concubines.

4. One of the great joys in writing historical fiction is that of giving a voice to those who have been overlooked or forgotten and offering a re-balance of perceptions through storytelling. And this is what The Ming Storytellers sets out to do. 

There is a magic realism element and as such, the novel slightly advances the cause of Shamanism. Long before the feudal Buddhist system headed by Tibetan priests, the old Tibet religions were rooted in shamanism. There was a deep reverence for animals and nature, and the belief in female seers or shamans. This root religion is explored and lends a magic realism aspect to the story.

The Ming Storytellers invites further contemplation into the history of Chinese minorities, notably those of Yunnan province, and the complex power systems that existed between China, Tibet and Mongolia in the 15th century.

5. It references Hazar Afsanah (One Thousand Nights, now known as 1001 Nights) - The Ming Dynasty is after all, the period where volumes of One Thousand Nights were being published in both Arabic and Persian editions.

6. It is set in a period where Arab and Chinese trade dominated the Indian Ocean, a time preceding the arrival of the Portuguese navigator, Alfonso d'Alburquerque, and his systematic takeover of Arab, Indian, South East Asian and East African trading ports. The Ming Storytellers is actually set just prior to a pivotal point in global trade history. The years following the novel's period mark a major historical shift from Chinese and Arab-dominated naval trade to European-dominated naval trade.
Today we find ourselves in a similar period of change but in the favor of China. From a political and economic perspective, the idea underpinning The Ming Storytellers is that empires, economies and military/trade supremacies rise and fall, and are also fraught by the same prejudices, fears, paranoia and delusions time and time again.

7. It is set in various places around the world including Nanjing, Lijiang in Yunnan, Beijing, Baidu in Sichuan, Deqin in Yunnan, Zanzibar in Tanzania, Calicut in Southern India, with general references to Mongolia, Tibet, Venice, Melacca, Oman, Mecca, Persia, Siam, Vietnam, Korea and of course, there are many passages set aboard the Ming fleet.
During the 15th century, these latter foreign places were all known by the Chinese. China was engaged in global trade with representatives from these parts of the world. It also received tributes from them as a form of allegiance and in exchange for naval protection and trade benefits. There was also a complex relationship between Tibet and China for both political and trade purposes.

8. The Ming Storytellers is transcultural - it embraces all religions and beliefs, and is divorced from all of them - There are references to Taoism, Buddhism, Tibetan Shamanism and Islam. There are references to several superstitions, together with the rejection of these.

Mazu, Celestial Goddess of the Seas guiding sailors

There are references to the Goddess Mazu - the Celestial Goddess of the sea for the Southern Chinese - together with references to the Nakhi ethnic group's frog worship.
The historical figure, Admiral Zheng He, on which the main male character is based, is believed by some historians to follow a harmonious integration between religions. The Ming Storytellers tries to be faithful to this notion and presents Zheng He as highly tolerant, with his attitude remaining quite fluid to integrate belief systems.

9. It deliberately features no White characters - In the story, when white foreigners are mentioned, they are commonly misjudged or treated as backward barbarians- this may be misconstrued to mean that Asian-centrism was the norm across all Ming Dynasty subjects (or that the novel endorses any existing Ming Dynasty racism). This is not the case. A couple of years ago, I wrote that this novel is an experiment in social psychology. It is a paradigm shift and nothing else. It is an exercise in human relations. It illustrates what often happens when an economically and politically powerful group of people, regardless of origin, looks upon the 'other'. 
I have always floated between East and West influences. It is my fluid background (Lebanese, Vietnamese and French) which allows me to setup this paradigm and remain...transcultural.

10. It contains both sexual references and sex scenes. Nothing coarse or pornographic, but I thought you might want to be aware of this. The Ming Storytellers features both homosexual and heterosexual sex scenes, including sex scenes between female and eunuch.

But in the words of my storyteller character, Jun: "Everything is important to the story."

On Prometheus and the Creator-Creation Dynamic

I had not seen Aliens and so for me, Prometheus stood apart as an original cinematic creation. The highly anticipated answers it was presumed to bring to thousands of Aliens fans were far from my mind when I watched and enjoyed it last week.

As to the questions it raised, they were many. The Guardian's take on the film's unanswered questions is thought-provoking but mostly hints at the superficial deficits in the production.

I decided to blog about Prometheus to offer a different interpretation. To begin, call me dense, but I glossed over those 'unanswered questions' in the film. I gratefully indulged in suspension of disbelief allowing myself to- in Ben Walter's words -endow the miracle medicine pod with strength-endowing, pain-suppressing supercharger qualities. Therefore it did not surprise me if Elizabeth, who by the way happens to be a highly trained astronaut living in futurescape, was running around after having her impromptu Cesarean.

The Eight Tenets of Prometheus
But putting aside the superficial, I want to blurt it out here. I saw Prometheus as rhetoric. I saw it as a set of philosophical possibilities, an exposition of what the film suggests as universal tenets, namely:

1. creations are arrogant, they inevitably come to believe that they are equal to or surpass their creator
2. creations are rare, and the act of creation is a miracle, a difficult process
3. creations want to live, they fear death
4. curiosity and scientific approach are two requirements for a creation to become itself a creator
5. creations will eventually desire to topple their creator, partly due to arrogance
6. a creator does not necessarily create out of a sense of benevolence or goodness, this is a myth; they may create out of personal ego, to defend themselves, to prove themselves or out of accident
7. considering the accidental and sometimes undesired effects of creations, a creator may destroy without feeling remorse
8. a creation may have an incessant, cult-like curiosity towards their creator that is often misplaced given the accidental nature of creation and given that creators destroy without remorse


These tenets- which I will say define the Creator-Creation Dynamic, -if accepted by the audience, can then be applied across all character relationships in the film solving all questions that concern them:

CREATION -> CREATOR
Meredith -> Father
David ->  Father
Newborn Alien -> Elizabeth
Meredith's Father -> Alien Ancestor
Humans in general > Alien Ancestor
and at the audience level we would have:
Audience ->   Unknown Universal Creator vs Known God

Resolving Prometheus
Seemingly, the primary preoccupation of the film's narrative is with the questions of where the Aliens come from, why they created us and why they would want to kill us.
But if we ignore the narrative and instead, readily accept the film's discourse with regard to the Creator-Creation dynamic, then it is possible to use the above tenets to easily answer the last two questions.
The problem with embracing those tenets, is that the answers they formulate invariably create much discomfort in the greater part of the audience.

This is because:
No one who believes in a divinity wishes to accept a tenet that human creation might have been the result of some defence-related, experimental and other non-benevolent motivation.

No one who believes in a divinity could readily accept the tenet that a lifelong search for one's creator would eventually bring us face to face with a soldier-minded tyrant and that this quest is therefore meaningless and wasteful.

No one who believes in a divinity would be happy to believe that their creator destroys remorselessly.

And, no one who believes in a divinity would accept that their clinging to life is an arrogant pursuit, that in the scheme of things, they are an accidental rarity that does not deserve the special attributes we give ourselves.

The Core of Prometheus
I would not rule out Prometheus as decidedly anti-creationist or anti-religious. But it does present tenets that are outright incompatible with many religions in the world and shake our sense of belief in the divine. They shake our sense of belief in the sacred nature of life itself. 
However, the interesting thing about the tenets presented by Prometheus is that they are not absolute. They are suggested as the way things might be, not as how things are or ought to be.
Some of these tenets are important because they lead to the core meaning of the film which I will now argue.

The Unjust Death
For some of us, like Elizabeth, death is seen as an 'unjust' happening, one that raises questions about the motivations of the creator.
Alluding to the alien 'ancestors', Elizabeth questions "What have we done wrong, why do they want us to die?" But ironically she kills her unborn alien child. There is this theme of an experiment (arguably David's) gone wrong. She saw no other means but to remove it from her womb. Yet is she not, like the newborn alien, in fact, a result of an accident? Are we then also an experiment if this parallel is true? Are we the accident?


Yes, we are.
Remember: Creations are rare, and the act of creation is a miracle, a difficult process


Based on this, is the life that we self-righteously prize and hold dear, the life that we believe we deserve and should not be taken away from us, in fact, just the result of extremely unlikely probabilities? Consider the revelation Elizabeth makes earlier: I cannot create life. At this, she cries, leading to pathos in the narrative but also at a discursive level, she highlights the fragility of life and the difficulty that is creation.


Consider too how improbable creation is beyond the film: the difficult sperm trajectory, even the universal creation process as a rare event. Yet when it happens, this rare event, this accident is perceived by us as normal. So normal that its product, life, should not, ought not to be taken away from us, hence our fear of death.
But going back to Elizabeth's questions. The same old questions are asked and have been asked for the entire humanity by those who believe in a creator: How can a god possibly send diseases, natural disasters and otherwise cause the death of people who 'seemingly do not deserve it' and who he/she has, after all, created?


Again, remember: 
Given the accidental and sometimes undesired effects of creations, a creator may destroy without feeling remorse


The film suggests that maybe we are being destroyed because we have become too dangerous and are a threat to the creator. Consider at another level, the threat David- himself a creation -poses. How much mischief can his curiosity cause to the crew? Has caused so far? Albeit at times, he shows genius but it is his arrogance-in-knowing that is cause for concern.
Does it recall our own curiosity? It should.


By setting out to highlight the heroism of a selfless ego-less death and contrasting it to the clinging for life, the narrative hints to something else beyond its tenets: it does not really matter if we die. It is inconsequential. If we cast our arrogance aside, death matters little.


Contrast Meredith's fear of death and the pilot's eagerness to give up his life in order to save Earth and the remaining crew. How quickly Meredith dons her suit and ejects herself while the pilot and his colleagues fly Kami-kaze into the Alien vessel. He shows no arrogance about living, does not cling to life as a God-given right, sees his own life as incidental, a commodity he can disregard for the greater good.
Death for him becomes a necessity, not a personal tragedy.


Ultimately, through the pilot's heroic death and the sense of goodness that this evokes- especially in comparison to Captain Vickers' jealous guarding of her own life, -there is a sense that the fear of death, self-interest and arrogance of living, all those things which Captain Vickers displays, is to be frowned upon.


Humility in Living
Might not Prometheus be suggesting that unlike the main characters in its narrative, and perhaps more like the pilot of the Prometheus, if we are to find true peace- and this, whether we happen to be 'creations' of either love, nature or some God, -we should remain humble about Life. True humility for this rare event that is Life ought to make us grateful, less fearing of death, less inclined towards dissatisfaction in relation to our creator, less indignant about the difficulties that are thrown our way.


Because death is an inevitability. It is Life that is the miracle. Because death does not necessarily mean that we have done something wrong or that we did not deserve to live. Even Life when we had it, may have only been just an accident...


Might not Prometheus be suggesting that we have become arrogant about living? And that it is our arrogance, the perceived injustice of our death, and our complete incomprehension that death should happen to us- us the special ones -which makes us fear Death in the first place.
An interesting message given the age of the director. Perhaps Ridley Scott might himself feel more at peace embracing its meaning.