 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Today is our last episode of A Nation of Immigrants in 2022. Last week, this show received the Show of the Year Award from Singtan, Hawaii. We want to thank our colleagues, Mike in particular, and Jay and Hailey and Eric at Singtan, Hawaii for your hard work and recognition. Every other week, we started this show with this famous quote from President Reagan. You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany, Germany, or Turkey, or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or Japanese, but anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American. This program features the lives of immigrants, knowledge, diversity, and inclusion. Created by Singtan, Hawaii and the Kingsfield Law Office. We invite renowned immigrants and a descendant of immigrants to discuss their life stories, immigration adventures, and the contributions to cultural diversity. Today's guest is our very good friend, Professor Varyn Mercy. Welcome, Varyn. Thank you for having me on the show. Oh, it's our honor. And if you don't mind, I'm going to read a very short bio of you, and I will have some questions for you. Sure. Dr. Varyn Murphy is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches transnational Asian history and researches Chinese and Japanese intellectual history. He's the author of the political philosophy of Zhang Taiyan, the resistance of consciousness, and co-editor of the challenge of linear time, nationhood, and the politics of history in East Asia, and co-editor of our companion to global historical thought. He has published articles in modern intellectual history, modern China, frontiers of history in China, and positions Asian critique, and is currently working on a project, pan-Asianism, and the conundrum of postal colonial modernity. By pure serendipity, Professor Murphy received his MA in philosophy from the University of Hawaii and his PhD in history from the University of Chicago. Thank you so much for agreeing to be our distinguished guest, Murphy. This is our last episode in 2022. I'm so thrilled to have you because you are my favorite historian who studied intellectual history of China. We will get to that part momentarily, but please tell us how your family settled in the United States. Okay, so my father and mother both were from South India, right? So my father grew up in Hyderabad. My mother is from originally Tamilian, but grew up around India in various places. But my father came to the United States as a postdoc at Columbia University in mathematics. He's a mathematician. And my mother went to Columbia to do her master's in nutrition. And so they met over there, and that's how they met. And then eventually, they moved to Chicago where my father got a job. I remember Matthew Perz and in Chicago. And I remember you borrowed your father's car and drove me to from Champaign to Chicago or Hero Airport. And it was an implicit snowstorm. I still remember that. I think I'm deeply in your debt. And I hope I can repay your generosity and tremendous friendship, you know, sometimes so. Well, and I think I met you in Champaign-Urbana, right? And but when I met you, we were both, you know, grubs, but I was curious about your childhood. What was it like to grow up in Chicago? And as an Indian American second generation, so, but your parents are academics. So what was it like to grow up in Chicago with our academic parents as a second generation immigrant? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a little bit sometimes a little confusing because I did not, Jessica, I was born in Chicago. We moved back to India when I was about two weeks old. And then I came back. I came back when we were, came back when I was five. I think we moved back around when I was 10. And then I came back when I was 16. So I think there was a constant sort of negotiation between the two cultures. And I think that was really what characterized, I mean, often feeling that you don't fit in in either place, right? And I think that I think was the, I think what often characterized my childhood. Yeah, that's what we typically say living in parallel universes. And it could be an advantage because you can see, you become the sort of a bridge between these two cultures, at least in your own circle. On the other hand, I fear that people like you and I, I didn't move back and forth when I was a kid. But in my 30s, I just spent half time in China, half time in the United States. And I end up like, you know, this joke, self-deprecating joke, I always tell my friends, including you and Yuhang, that my Chinese friends think I'm too American to be Chinese. And my American friends think I'm too American to Chinese to be American. And what's your comment on that, living in parallel universes? No, I think that's very much how I felt. But I think with India and the United States, there might be a slight difference. I think because when I went to India and I went to high school in India, being American came with a certain symbolic capital. You know, a lot of people want to know about America. Oh, yeah, what's the new thing? You know, what's the new music they're listening to? And this and that. And so I would have, and I didn't always fit into American society, but I was trying, I became more American when I went to India. Because, you know, once I go to India, I got it, I tried to, you know, use that. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, I know all about America, you know, that kind of thing. And then, and then I come back, right. And so because we really moved back when I was 16, and we didn't go back again to India. Then, you know, what I noticed, I mean, in the US, and this was the 1980s, it might be slightly different now, there wasn't that among the high school students and so on. There's not no one really is interested in India. I mean, so you're so old, anything that you have, like I'm, I'm, yeah, always had an interest in Indian music. And nobody's interested in that. I mean, there's no, so that I think is a very, the global inequality is quite, quite significant. China today is a little bit different, because there are, there is an interest in China from the, from the side of the government for various reasons. But still, I still think it's different. Like you go to China and you can find, you know, a lot of stuff on, you know, American culture and so on, this and that. But you can't really find, it's not the same in, in terms of the US, right? In terms of their, you know, popular culture and so on. I don't think it's, it's China plays that big of a role. Yeah. Very, very good comment. Last week, some of my, some of my students were debating whether or not China could replace the United States as a number one or superpower. And the debate inevitably leads to the discussion of soft power, meaning the cultural power. And it appears that at least in the United States, the Korean culture is much more powerful and, and it's super than the other Asian cultures. And, but I would see it also argue that the Indian culture has played a very significant role in the American society right now. And it probably is quite different from when you were a child. Do you agree? Indian culture has more and more. Could you say a little, could you say a little more about where you see the Indian culture playing a role? I mean, I can see a little bit of Bollywood and stuff, but I don't know. Bollywood and politics and well, obviously that will be Indian American, but I, I see Indian restaurants everywhere. And would that be, yeah, there's Indian restaurants. That is not really. Yeah. But I mean, that is nothing like, I mean, think about when I was in 90 in China in 1995, think about the amount of people who went to see the movie Titanic. You know, I just don't think you have that level. I think China would love to have that level of influence in the United States. But I think we're still, it needs a long more, a lot more time. There's something about Hollywood because it's not just, it's not just one country like China, but it's the rest of the world too. Like certain things like Madonna and so on. It's just all over. You go to, you know, Hong Kong, India, you can hear that name. But I don't think we have something similar with respect to like a really important singer or something like that in, in China. I mean, who would be the similar, I mean, Wang Fei or someone like that. I mean, I don't think you, you act in most Americans. Who's that? I don't know. I agree. Yeah, that's true. Well, you met, you have a strong interest in China. Obviously, his wife is a Chinese American professor, a terrific art historian. And we've been family friends for decades. But tell me how you two met and what shared academic interest you have and brought to you together? Well, so we met in around, I think, 1992. And I was in Beijing as an exchange student. And at that time, that was when I was in Hawaii, actually. I was in Hawaii and in, in, you know, philosophy department at, at the University of Hawaii. And I got a fellowship to go to China to study, I think, both Chinese and about Chinese philosophy. And so I was there in Beijing University. And she was working at the Beijing Art Museum, you know, Wang Shousu, which is not too far from, from Beijing University. And, and so we met, we met there. The actual circumstances was I was actually there was a class for, you know, people who wanted to learn like conversational English. And I was teaching that. And she came, she came to just sort of see what it was like. And so we met over there. Lovely story. I love the museum. The museum is just absolutely fantastic. And I remember, and your wife worked at the Nature Field Museum in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Give us a fantastic tour. Well, let's focus on your research. And you had a master's degree in philosophy and a doctor's degree in history. And could you just tell our audience? And what was your main focus? And what project you're working on? So you did publish a book about Zhang Taiyan. I thought that many educated America ever heard of Zhang Taiyan before. Yes, yes, yes. So, so, so my first degree was in philosophy, right? My master's, I took a master's in philosophy at Hawaii. And there I was very interested in comparative philosophy. So China and, and the West. And then I, you know, and I guess, so I was trained as a philosopher, and then I switched to doing history. And I did, I went to Chicago to do my PhD in history. And I did intellectual history, because in many ways, I'm like a philosopher, masquerading as a historian. So I'm in a history department now, but what I, what I often do is basically more philosophy. And so yeah, I worked on, I did my dissertation. And my first book was on Zhang Taiyan, who is a revolutionary thinker in the, you know, early 20th century leaching period. And what I found really interesting about him is his reading of Yogachara Buddhism, which he used in order to develop a kind of critique of Western modernity, right? So, and he was also of course, very influential in terms of the 1911 revolution, which is often called the Republican revolution. So, you know, the more famous person there, of course, is Sun Zhongshan or Sun Yat-sen. But he was also part of that. And that's how people know Zhang Taiyan. But I wanted to uncover really his more philosophical side, you know, his critique of one of the institutions of modernity, such as the state or evolution and so on. So I've always been interested in sort of, you know, Asian intellectuals using their tradition to sort of reflect critically on modernity. So my next, my second book, it was Aizan, which just came out this year. It's called, I think it's called The Politics of Time in China and Japan Back to the Future. And there also I talk a little bit about Zhang Taiyan. But I mean the basic idea when I use the term back to the future, of course, making reference to that old movie. But also this idea that, you know, all these people who want to go back to tradition, I mean, they're going back to the tradition, but they're often doing so to go to a different future, a future that is better than the one that they see today. And that's often connected to, you know, issues of capitalism and so on. Yeah, that's fascinating. That's absolutely fascinating. You know, Zhang Taiyan was obviously a very important figure in modern Chinese history. And there are a huge influence in modern China. So same as Zhang Taiyan, there were Liang Jichao, there were, you know, Hu Shi, there were Lu Xun, and there were many, many intellectuals in China and, you know, clustered during the May 4th new cultural movement. And so I do have a question. Did these influencers really make a difference in Chinese history or the direction of China? Because looking back 1919, the May 4th moment, the two major goals were democracy, Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science. And a hundred years later, we are still trying to invite these two gentlemen to show up. Did this group of, may I add, true patriots, you know, Zhang Taiyan, Liang Jichao, Hu Shi, they are true patriots, try to make a difference, try to lead China out of this vicious circle. But a hundred years later, what's your judgment? Did they really make a difference? Well, I think that we have to realize that it's not just these intellectuals, right? Because I mean, did they make a difference? Of course, they made a difference. I think the question is what difference did they make? I think is the issue. Because if you think about it, I mean, the 1911 revolution actually happened. We can't say that that wasn't a revolution. And I think if we go even further, we can say you then go to Mao Zedong and the whole 1949 revolution. Now, that's also a major event in history. You have land reform, you have all of those things. And you have the attempt to create a different type of system. And that, of course, is the whole socialist experiment that China is so well known for. And the question then becomes, yeah, where is democracy? I mean, because science, I think there's very little doubt that China has done quite well in terms of science. There's so much, many great scientists, I mean, even just mathematicians. That's, my father was a mathematician. And so you could, there were a lot of Chinese, very famous Chinese mathematicians and same today. But democracy is another story, right? I mean, democracy is, of course, the problem of you know, you know, it's that democratic centralization is what they often talked about it, right? In the in the in the in the Communist Party. And it's very interesting to see Mao himself sort of wrestling with that, right? Because some would, you know, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao himself is saying, oh, no, no, we want big democracy. And people don't have enough, you know, rights to criticize their superiors, and you had all kinds of criticisms going on, you know. And yet, the whole idea of radical democracy that is there in Mao couldn't was never actually institutionalized, right? And so then we're now back to today where, you know, we're still asking the same questions. But I think it's very important to put this in a global context, because I don't think that the problem of democracy has been solved around the world in other places either, right? You know, if you think about the one of the fundamental problems of democracy is precisely that, you know, the common people don't always have the power to govern the conditions of their lives, right? They what they have to do is delegate that to politicians, but they can't often choose which politicians run for for government. And so then there, there becomes what, you know, a kind of lack of interest in democracy and voting and so on, right? Very insightful. And that leads to the fundamental question we have, is modernization equals westernization? And because some of the history books I read, you probably disagree, that argued that China is trapped in this pre-modern state voluntarily or you voluntarily. And because China refused, totally rebut the idea of total westernization. And what was your comment on that? Well, that's a very interesting question. And it actually gets to another book that I'm working on and quite pretty close to finishing and should be out next year. And it is called Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution. And one of the key figures in that book is a person by the name of Takeuchi Yoshimi. And one of the things he really writes about is precisely this problem of Chinese modernity. And, you know, I mean, and it also gets to the question that you're talking about in terms of, you know, his modernization, westernization, and he wants to say no, I mean, one hopes that it isn't. Because if it is, then all countries have to become western, even the Asian countries. So that what he ends up saying is that what happens in China is a kind of dialectic that, you know, the refusal for western modernity and so on or towards in the beginning leads to a different path of modernity, right? But I think another part of that is the danger of thinking about modernization as a linear path. Because what that's saying is that until you're westernized, you're not modern. And then who's going to get you to be modern? Well, the westerners, right? And that was, of course, what the ideology of imperialism was all the time. I mean, think about India and so on. Britishers are there, we're going to help you become modern, we'll help you become civilized, right? And I think the whole thing that, you know, the whole anti-colonial movement shows is precisely that there could be another version of modernization. Now, of course, part of this is cultural, but part of it is also material conditions, right? When we're talking about India or China, we're talking about much poorer conditions. And so a big and a larger population, all of these kind of things then come in to the modernization story, right? And so it's obviously a story that's ongoing, right? I agree. I very much look forward to reading a new book. It sounds extremely, extremely interesting. The Japan, I would argue that Japan's modernization has been quite successful, and even they maintain the monarchy. But anyway, at 10 years, we have only five, six minutes left, and we normally conclude our show with two general questions to our distinguished guests. The question number one is time travel permitted. If you can travel back to your early twenties and what kind of advice you want to give yourself, a younger version of you, and both you and I are the same generation and we have some gray hair in our heads. And I'm very eager to hear what's your advice you want to give me to a younger self. Well, I think that's a very difficult question, because there's so many things that I could tell. I mean, because when I'm 20 years old, I'm still in college. And I think to put it in a large kind of phrase, just to be open to the opportunities that present themselves to you, I think that's one of it. The other side is to also partly say that, you know, because the thing is when we look back, we often say there are all these mistakes we made and so on. But I think it's through the mistakes that I became who I am today. So there's a sense in which it's almost that you can't change it. It's so difficult to change it. Because if I changed who I was when I was 20 years old, I wouldn't be who I am now. And so it becomes a little difficult to even think about it. That's true. Good advice. Your advice does remind me that one philosopher once said, if we were given the choice to relieve our life again, we're going to do exactly the same thing. Exactly the same life. Exactly. And I think that is Nietzsche, his idea of the eternal return. That's true. You always have to do the same thing again and again. If you're willing it, you will one thing, you have to will the whole thing. So you will is an illusion, basically. Is it? Yeah. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, we can always say that things could have been otherwise. And we now have all these choices we can make. But once we start looking back, we can begin to say, see how there was a logic to where we where we ended up, right? Very good. Last question. What books and or movies you're enjoying at this moment? You want to recommend it to our audience? In addition to your books, I will highly recommend your books, particularly the book on down time yet. Absolutely fascinating. And what you read? Well, I've just been reading some things lately. I think I've been reading a book by Terry Pinkard called Practice Power and Forms of Life, such as Appropriation of Hegel and Marx. I've been looking, I've been sort of looking at that. I've also been reading in the China field, a thinker named Jiao Ting Yang, who was who was written as his recent book is just been translated into English called All Under Heaven. Apart from that, I've been interested in the the Indian Marxist Ajaz Ahmed, who's got a book, which is actually interviews with him and Vijay Prasad called Nothing Human is Alien to Me, which is quite interesting. All of all these books sort of touch on my interests in different ways. Anything a little bit lighter? Well, one TV show is the German TV show called Clio, which tells the story of an agent. That's right, during the Cold War. Yeah, it's quite a good show, I thought. All right, good advice. I think that most of our audience will go to watch the TV show first, that created the Hegel and Me. But it's fantastic. Well, what a pleasure to have you on the show. Yeah, it was great to have you as well. It's a talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much. And we very much look forward to continue our discussion. Again, as I said, this is our last episode in 2022. And in 2023, we will continue to hear the stories from you, from the immigrants, from descendants of immigrants, and how your contribution to the fabric of American life. Thank you so much. Aloha. Thank you. Okay. Aloha. Bye. Bye.