A history of the East, from a westerner: Professor Norman Kutcher offers first-hand experience of China
Norman Kutcher is blocking a good camera shot – Dan Rather’s, no less.
The CBS news anchor is trying to capture the chaos of the Chinese student movement in 1989 Beijing. The backdrop – Tiananmen Square, soon to be the site of a bloody confrontation between student protestors and the communist Chinese government.
Rather waves Kutcher off camera.
‘We can’t have any westerners in the shot.’
And even though Kutcher’s image isn’t on television screens 6,000 miles away, he’s still in Beijing. Still standing in Tiananmen Square. Still trying to become an insider in a culture he can’t learn enough about, in a place that doesn’t want him there.
Kutcher leaves four days after the crackdown, as ordered by the Chinese government. He becomes so angry with the government, he doesn’t return to research for five years.
But eventually he goes back. He can’t help it.
Kutcher, the first professor to specialize in Chinese history at Syracuse University, has immersed himself in Chinese culture since college and has been an eyewitness to some of the most pivotal moments in Chinese history. And while he now works to connect his students with Chinese culture, Kutcher always has one foot planted in his second home – Beijing.
His passion for China runs deeper than personal interest, he feels as though by teaching, he’s an advocate for Chinese-American relationships.
‘I got a sense of commitment to China as a part of the student movement,’ Kutcher said. ‘Part of what I try to do is tell students how Chinese people think about things and how they look at their history to help Americans understand why Chinese people act the way they do today.’
Kutcher began teaching his modern Chinese history class in 1991, his first year at SU, with five students. While he’s glad more students are taking an interest in Chinese history, he’s having trouble getting used to the larger class size of 95 students.
‘I hate big anonymous classes, I can’t get used to it,’ Kutcher said. ‘I want the students to be engaged. A key point for me is that Americans really need to know more about China, and Chinese people need to know more about the United States.’
It seems there’s no better person for creating that bridge than Kutcher. He’s been teaching Chinese history since the day he arrived at SU, a job he considered the best out of 10 positions in a bad job market. Syracuse was receptive to an Asian studies professor, and Kutcher remained the only Asian history expert until 2006 when a Korean history professor was hired.
His expertise is founded through his experiences in Beijing, where he spends most of the non-academic year. He’s lost count of how many times he’s been there. During his early years of studying in China, Kutcher found himself in the midst of one of the country’s landmark historical events.
While he was visiting for the first time in 1988, he researched under extreme scrutiny at the Number One Historical Archives – a massive library of Chinese historical records.
Kutcher and other foreigners were kept away from Chinese people, and researching was monitored by the government. But he didn’t just learn Chinese history – Kutcher lived it.
In 1989, Chinese students began to protest the corruption of the Communist government. The protests reached a peak on June 4, when the government sent troops into Beijing to take control of the city. Foreigners were ordered to leave the city of China immediately.
‘They moved the foreign students to a hotel right off the Square,’ Kutcher said. ‘There were still soldiers wandering the streets, and they would fire shots at the door, to warn us, ‘don’t come out.’ It’s hard to remember, now but chaos was really reigning.’
Nineteen years later, Kutcher stands in front of 90 some students in Maxwell Auditorium, talking about Tiananmen Square – recalling the fear of the Chinese people.
‘Chinese people hate the word chaos –
Kutcher doesn’t dramatize the fact he was there during the protests. Instead he emphasizes the plight of the Chinese people, trying to get his students to understand a culture that to many Americans, seems exotic and foreign.
He continues his lecture on 1900s China, pacing the auditorium stage. The class is casual, conversational for so many students.
‘He doesn’t really tell that much about his experiences in class,’ said Emily Sax, a sophomore history major. ‘But you definitely know that he knows a lot about China. He’s good at putting you in the shoes of the people.’
Though Kutcher would clearly look out of place in China – unmistakably like a westerner in the middle of a crowded Chinese street – he makes every effort to become an insider while he’s there.
‘A lot of westerners, they go China and just spend their time doing touristy stuff,’ Kutcher said. ‘They don’t talk to people. In China my hobby is talking to people. Which is weird because in English, I’m a very introverted person, and in Chinese I’m very outgoing.’
When he’s not in Beijing, Kutcher teaches all aspects of Chinese history, from ancient to modern day and a research class about western perspectives on Chinese culture. He co-taught a class about Russia and China in the 20th century, which was a challenge for both professors.
‘It was hard to constrain all of our ideas,’ said Ethan Pollock, a former Russian history professor at SU who now teaches at Brown University. ‘It was a little overwhelming for the students because we were so excited. But as someone who was inexperienced at the time, I was impressed by his willingness to entertain my ideas, impressed by his experience.’
And so were his students. Andrew Grady, a 2001 graduate, had Kutcher as a professor for MAX 132, Global Communities. Because of Kutcher’s passion, Grady now teaches English in China. ‘It’s not just how he teaches but what he teaches,’ Grady said. ‘He understands China, that more so than any other country it is very traditional. I see what he taught almost every day in China.’
Kutcher’s experience, it seems, is what it comes back to. He owns an apartment in Beijing now and spends his winter break and summers there researching.
‘He’s a person that really tries to understand the culture from the inside,’ said Karin Rosemblatt, a Latin American history professor at SU. ‘But he also embraces not being a Chinese person so he’s able to offer a critical perspective.’
When Kutcher needs some inspiration back in Syracuse, he just looks at his desktop. On it is a picture of Vera Schwartz, his first Chinese history professor, who ignited his interest in China -by accident.
‘A friend and I wanted to take something besides American history,’ Kutcher said. ‘And we thought ‘Oh, we’ll take Russian history.’ But we read the schedule wrong, and halfway through the class we’re like ‘This isn’t Russian history.”
Despite his American history major, Kutcher pursued Chinese history all the way through his years at Wesleyan University. He continued to study Chinese history at Yale, and during his later years at Yale he began his studies in China itself, in the capital of Beijing.
Maram Epstein, a Chinese professor at the University of Oregon, researched with Kutcher at the archives in Beijing and cites him as an integral part of her getting acquainted with the city.
‘The archives can be quite isolating since the (archive) staff rarely sees it as a part of their job description to explain how the city works,’ Epstein said in an e-mail from Beijing. ‘Norman helped show me around.’
While in Beijing, he doesn’t hang out with other foreigners. He bought his apartment on the opposite side of the city from where other westerners live.
Still, that doesn’t mean he’s disengaged from his American identity while in China.
When the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed in 1999, anti-American sentiment reached a peak in China, and Kutcher experienced the outrage.
‘People wrote ‘murderers’ on my door on my hotel, on my guest house,’ Kutcher said. ‘Some people would even get the maple leaf, the symbol of Canada and put it on their clothes and on their backpacks, and I didn’t do that.’
While Kutcher is unapologetic about his home country, he still wants the bond between China and the United States to strengthen.
With the 2008 Summer Olympics looming in Beijing, Kutcher sees it as a crossroad for the two countries, something that could influence their relationship for years to come.
Kutcher isn’t sure if he’ll be attending the Olympic games, though he’s anxious to get back to Beijing since he couldn’t go as usual over winter break.
For now he’s keeping himself busy – teaching, researching and writing. Today, Kutcher isn’t letting himself get thrown off camera, he’s busy projecting Chinese culture to America uncensored. But Kutcher likes it that way. He doesn’t have time for much else.
‘I don’t know, I don’t really do much else, I’m really busy, and it’s hard to have hobbies,’ Kutcher said. ‘I just really like to talk about history, and I really like to talk about China.’
Published on February 28, 2008 at 12:00 pm
