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Reviews 367 Susan Brownell. Training the Bodyfor China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People's Republic. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1995. Hardcover $49-95> isbn 0-226-07647-6. Paperback $18.95, isbn 0-226-07647-4. In a recent edition ofthe People's Daily there is a photograph depicting four middle-aged and elderly women in Yunnan sitting on a curb, each wearing a large number signifying her registration in an athletic contest. The text beneath draws our attention to the women's small (bound) feet and states that they are contestants in a run around the city. Anecdotal as this photograph may be, it brings into sharp reliefthe encounter between modern competitive sports and Chinese body culture, a topic that has received scant attention from scholars until now. For anthropologist Susan Brownell, "body culture" includes those bodily routines, techniques, dispositions, modes ofperception, moral sensibilities, and forms ofpublic exhibition that are shaped in die changing currents ofpolitical and public culture. The introduction ofcompetitive sports into China by Western missionary schools challenged the paramount culture and body politic of Chinese tradition diat gave slight regard to physical competition. The encounter stimulated reform-minded Chinese to revitalize their culture by promoting competitive sports. This included attempts to incorporate Western sports into a new culture and body politic, which in turn provoked resistance and counter-attempts to revive and raise the status ofindigenous forms ofphysical culture such as martial arts. While competitive sports became popular, attempts to form an occupational class ofathletes that could compete with their Western counterparts was, and continues to be, frustrated by the deeply rooted cultural prejudice mat favors mental discipline over physical discipline. Athletes are thus consigned to a position of "moral ambiguity" in the occupational hierarchy. The implications ofthis classbased moral ambiguity provide a major focus for much ofBrownell's discussion. Chinese communism, especially in its militant or Maoist phases, suppressed die sports establishment, especially that aspect ofit which emphasized competition for medals and trophies. The proletarian body culture ofthe Maoists favored icons that employed brute strength in economic production. In recent decades, however, the proletarian icons have begun to fade behind new icons of fashion and consumption. In the sports arenas, the emphasis on competition is driven widi a new fervor to win medals and bonuses in the quest for honor and wealth. Communist officials who previously rejected boxing because ofits "bourgeois"© 1996 by University appeal to base instincts now accept it for the forty-eight medals available in ofHawai'iPressOlympic competition. New forms ofcompetition include privately sponsored body-building contests that violate official sensibilities, especially when these con- 368 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 tests require female contestants to wear bikinis; but here, too, official China has relented based on the need to conform to international standards. Shaped outwardly by international standards, the new consumer-body continues inwardly to resonate Chinese cultural sensitivities. In one ofher most insightful and provocative chapters, Brownell analyzes the conflict in motivational structures between the Western tradition of "fair play" and the Chinese notions of "face." Brownell cites observations of how "Chinese are often not 'good sports'" (p. 302). There is often trepidation that a sporting event will end in open strife, and there is the constant promotion of "socialist spiritual civilization" and appeals for self-discipline. Generally absent from this discourse are appeals to "fair play," which is difficult in any case to translate adequately into Chinese. '"Fair play' focuses on the morality of the process by which the winner and loser are determined" (p. 302). Chinese, according to Brownell, show less appreciation for the game as an end in itself, and more concern for an end result that confers "face" (mianzi) in the sense of "prestige" on the winner. This focus on hierarchy coupled with the moral ambiguity of competitive sports in Chinese culture means that the "personal morality" aspect of "face" (lian) is not brought into play. Finding much to recommend in Brownell's analysis, I cannot help reflecting on how Americans, supposedly motivated by "fair play," conduct dieir sporting contests in a wash of money, ill-will, litigation, sabotage, and brawls. There is an important point here, however: different...

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