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Jonguo: As Water Wills
Jonguo is a story that emerges from memories of an architect fleeing from Beijing. His tale starts in the year of Chinese Olympics when he left his homeland of Poland on his bicycle trip, driven by a somewhat naive desire to find a new spiritual path in Tibet. His hopes are dashed by the bloodily suppressed uprising and the authorities who isolate the Buddhist “roof of the world” from the public eye. People blame something called Jonguo for causing all the evil he has witnessed. Unfamiliar with the language and the culture, he begins to find signs that he is dealing with a superorganism that is slowly infecting the Earth.
One day Jonguo’s personification appears unexpectedly at his new job. The elegant baldheaded man gives him an extremely tempting proposition: a 50 million dollar museum and memorial for the recently deceased Juan Antonio Samaranch, the man responsible for the Beijing Olympic Games that lit the flame of selfimmolation in the streets of Tibet. Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, originated from Fascist Spain, a country then ruled by the bloodthirsty fist of General Franco.
His involvement in Franco’s regime gave him the power to transform the Olympics into a great global event full of corruption and doping scandals. Through our narrator’s obsessive monologue, we discover the similarities between Nazi Olympics in 1936 and the Beijing Olympics more than seventy years later. This revelation encourages the architect to refuse the proposal, ostracizing him from those who ally with Jonguo.
He finds asylum in the Raying Temple, a community space run by alternative artists whose remedy for Jonguo is the art of Noise. Possessed by the paranoia of being chased by Jonguo, he flees to Taiwan, the motherland of the museum’s initiator Boxer Wu, runner up for the President of the International Olympic Committee.
Desperate for a salve against Jonguo’s sting, he looks to the guidance of activists in Taipei, Hong Kong, and Central China but none of them gives him hope that he can find a cure. He makes contact with British investigative journalist Andrew Jennings in a last ditch effort, only to find that the man paid for his uncovering of Samaranch’s Fascist past with the threat of a prison sentence.
In this retrospective, the outwardly chaotic pieces gradually merge into a coherent whole. As the story unfolds, the initially impartial tone of an observant reporter gradually takes on qualities of a man obsessed. The narrator becomes a victim of the materialization of his own fears that stem, ironically, from the investigation.
Based on a true story, Jonguo is a unique crossgenre book that challenges the standards of a travel documentary with subtle doses of unreality. By using elements of fiction the author brings forth the issue of research, objectivism, and the presentation of factual information. How do we separate “the truth” from its speaker? How do we unburden ourselves from our biases and convictions?
One day Jonguo’s personification appears unexpectedly at his new job. The elegant baldheaded man gives him an extremely tempting proposition: a 50 million dollar museum and memorial for the recently deceased Juan Antonio Samaranch, the man responsible for the Beijing Olympic Games that lit the flame of selfimmolation in the streets of Tibet. Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, originated from Fascist Spain, a country then ruled by the bloodthirsty fist of General Franco.
His involvement in Franco’s regime gave him the power to transform the Olympics into a great global event full of corruption and doping scandals. Through our narrator’s obsessive monologue, we discover the similarities between Nazi Olympics in 1936 and the Beijing Olympics more than seventy years later. This revelation encourages the architect to refuse the proposal, ostracizing him from those who ally with Jonguo.
He finds asylum in the Raying Temple, a community space run by alternative artists whose remedy for Jonguo is the art of Noise. Possessed by the paranoia of being chased by Jonguo, he flees to Taiwan, the motherland of the museum’s initiator Boxer Wu, runner up for the President of the International Olympic Committee.
Desperate for a salve against Jonguo’s sting, he looks to the guidance of activists in Taipei, Hong Kong, and Central China but none of them gives him hope that he can find a cure. He makes contact with British investigative journalist Andrew Jennings in a last ditch effort, only to find that the man paid for his uncovering of Samaranch’s Fascist past with the threat of a prison sentence.
In this retrospective, the outwardly chaotic pieces gradually merge into a coherent whole. As the story unfolds, the initially impartial tone of an observant reporter gradually takes on qualities of a man obsessed. The narrator becomes a victim of the materialization of his own fears that stem, ironically, from the investigation.
Based on a true story, Jonguo is a unique crossgenre book that challenges the standards of a travel documentary with subtle doses of unreality. By using elements of fiction the author brings forth the issue of research, objectivism, and the presentation of factual information. How do we separate “the truth” from its speaker? How do we unburden ourselves from our biases and convictions?
188 pages, Paperback
First published June 8, 2015
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March 10, 2024
Najciekawsze były przypisy. W nich znalazłam najwięcej ciekawych informacji. które zostały przedstawione w konkretny sposób. Autor jest dobrym obserwatorem, ale historie opowiada w sposób, dla mnie, mało ciekawy. Książka podzielona jest na rozdziały, każdy rozdział przedstawia inną historię. Jest sporo fotografii.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews