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The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever
Method of Madness:
I'll read the story tomorrow, but what's the artifact and how is it racist?
Is it cold in here?:
"The Flower of Forgetfulness", a unique artwork, which General Services extracted from a museum and traded to a physicist in exchange for inventing antigravity.
Now that Akima reminded me of the story, it really would have been a better story if the physicist had been Chinese and motivated by a desire to put it in a Chinese museum rather than hoard it in his own collection.
Akima:
Specifically a unique piece of Ming porcelain that was in the British Museum (how did it get there in the first place? The looting of the Summer Palace perhaps? Might the Chinese government have been trying to get it repatriated? Who cares? Not anyone in the story, that's for sure) was obtained by some corrupt means so that the British (again, who cares about China, right?) might not be upset by its disappearance and make a fuss, and then dangled as a prize to persuade a wealthy physicist to work on gravity control.
At no point does anyone exhibit the smallest doubt that they're entitled to do this, or that a rich guy's personal collection isn't an appropriate place for the bowl, or that China might have the smallest say in the matter, or indeed have any importance in world affairs generally. Oh, and at the end, our heroes demonstrate that they're not really just a bunch of mercenary jerks, but refined and civilised people, by asking for the right to view the artefact from time to time. The worth of a Chinese artwork is, you see, established because a bunch of rich white people think it is beautiful. After all, they're the only ones who'll ever get the chance to see it!
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 11 May 2013, 01:00 ---it really would have been a better story if the physicist had been Chinese and motivated by a desire to put it in a Chinese museum rather than hoard it in his own collection.
--- End quote ---
It would, but a non-white scientist in 1940s American science fiction? The makers of 2010: The Year We Make Contact couldn't stomach that idea in 1984! The Chinese space-mission they cut out of that movie (along with the Indian computer scientist), in the book flew a spacecraft named after Tsien Hsue-shen, who actually was working in the American rocket program in 1941, but I can't think of any fictional equivalent from the period. I would have settled for the physicist leaving his collection to the Beijing Capital Museum in his will. A bit patronising, yes, but the most that might have been expected then, I think.
ZoeB:
--- Quote from: Akima on 11 May 2013, 03:37 ---Specifically a unique piece of Ming porcelain that was in the British Museum (how did it get there in the first place? The looting of the Summer Palace perhaps?
--- End quote ---
That's where most such treasures came from. Grand theft. So much was lost though, burnt or destroyed... and then that that survived sometimes got trashed in the Cultural Revolution. *SIGH*
--- Quote ---Might the Chinese government have been trying to get it repatriated? Who cares? Not anyone in the story, that's for sure) was obtained by some corrupt means so that the British (again, who cares about China, right?) might not be upset by its disappearance and make a fuss, and then dangled as a prize to persuade a wealthy physicist to work on gravity control.
--- End quote ---
In 1941... there was no China as a nation. There was the Kuomintang regime, but even there it was a gaggle of warlords who sometimes fought Mao's group, sometimes fought the Japanese, sometimes fought warlords who weren't part of the regime in the west (Sheng Shicai of Xinjiang comes to mind), and sometimes fought each other.
In 1941, thinking of China as a nation once more would be like thinking of the resurgence of the Holy Roman Empire today. Beyond imagination.
In early 1941, the Burma Road shut down, the railroad from Haiphong likewise, Russia a de-facto ally of the Axis, no longer supporting the Nationalists.. it was likely that what we call "China" today would be effectively extinct, replaced by a patchwork of successor-states in the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere a la Manchukuo. Any request for repatriation would likely be to Tokyo. If anything, Heinlein was a bit daring stating it was in the British Museum, and not in Berlin.
Tell me... if a Roman artifact was found in England - who should it be repatriated to? France - if it was made in Transalpine Gaul? Italy, since Rome is in Italy? The Vatican Museum perhaps?
I think it fair to assume that in this future history, there was no "Chinese government" as such. Any more than there's a "Roman government" today.
Then add the layers of culturally ingrained racism, cultural imperialism, treating the balkanised "central land" and its many nationalities as some kind of joke... yes, it's pretty bad. Insulting. Wrong. (Also sewing the wind, with the whirlwind to come in the 21st and especially 22nd centuries. If I was Chinese, I'd be seriously pissed, if you'll pardon the expression).
So although I feel you're wrong in detail, you're right in practice. The issue may have occurred to Heinlein - but never his readership. It, like "Huckleberry Finn" is a story of its times, and we should feel shamed that things were once like that.
ZoeB:
--- Quote from: Akima on 10 May 2013, 16:45 ---The depressing thing is that this is still true to a considerable extent, as demonstrated by the behaviour of Western museums
--- End quote ---
Yup.
I think they'll be sorry in a hundred years. Maybe they'll be treated better than they treated others.
Or maybe something unexpected will happen to upset the applecart.
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