TIANGONG One

October 1-7 is a seven-day holiday in China. The Lunar New Year fest used to be the second of two major family gatherings across the nation, but the transport contradiction that occurs when China is on the move led to the shortening of New Year into four days, and the Qingming, the “heart-goes-on” days for ancestors, into three.

This year’s 10.01 is the 62nd birthday of the People’s Republic of China, PRC. Taiwan across the channel marks 10.10 that launched the Republic of China, ROC, after the 1911 Xinhai revolution. The famed Sun Yat Sen, Sun Zhong Shan to Renmin, was the first President, respected by both the Kuomintang nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and the Gongchandang comrades of Mao Zedong.

Tiangong One, China’s launch of a sky lab (tian gong translate into “sky dwelling” but media insist on using European mythological metaphors and translate it as “heavenly palace” with allusions to Olympian theological qualities) ushered this year’s national week. Applying to join the International Space Station, China’s membership was repeatedly vetoed by the U.S. so the Tiangong charts a separate course while it humbly follows the trails blazed by pioneering Russians and Americans.

Early this year, China’s President Wen Jiabao announced the nation’s intent to put a man on the moon by 2030. President Obama’s administration realigned NASA’s program toward a Mars destination. It has had a lukewarm reception given the current political malaise, the endless wrangling over resource allocation that is grounded on the phantom wealth of the financial market that has heretofore been pegged on the U$ dollar.

There is a universal acknowledgement among space program officials that their efforts are devoid of political coloration and the technical advantage of one is the technological advance of all.

Though China keeps a “low-profile” foreign policy, its economic dynamism keeps it in the limelight so the sky lab launching had all members of the Politburo in attendance either at the launch site on the Gobi desert, or in the Beijing mission control center. Neighbor India’s space program sans the fanfare is focused on satellite commercial needs, China keeps a side glance on “prestige” in the same way it did with the Beijing Olympics and the Guangzhou Asian Games.

2012 marks the centennial of the Republic and though the nationalists locked up the 10.10 (Ten of October) image, mainland China ushers the event with its own aggressive promotions of the Xinhua uprising of 1911 that resulted in the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the abdication of the Manchu throne.

China’s official account of the 62-year-old 1PRC divides into two, with Chairman Mao constituting the first half, and Deng Xiaoping initiating the second half.

Mao’s first half includes the elated and triumphant early years that saw polished stars out of the Korean peninsula, baptized by fire in the ambitious but ill-fated “5-year leap forward,” followed by the disastrous Cultural Revolution of the Gang of Four.

Zhou Enlai and Kissinger’s realpolitick managed to establish China-U.S. relations, which transitioned the ill-fated Tiananmen uprising to Deng Xiaoping’s incursion into regulated free trade, its Singapore partnership in Suzhou and Guangzhou, the invitation for Sino-owned investments from around the world, and finally, opening to free market forces.

Tiananmen Square in Beijing, site of the stillborn “democratic” protests of 1989, is often translated as the “heavenly portal to the Forbidden City,” a euphemism for our penchant to romanticize the mysteries of the Oriental veil. Looked at from the ground, tiananmen means the “safe door to wide open spaces.”

When Apollo 8 in 1968 sent back photos of the Blue Planet including what is now known as the Earthrise image, America discovered its inner space and learned the tunes of the Age of Aquarius. Some regard the current turmoil in the American soul as tragic. We see it differently, more as a consequence of having to face the reality of inner spaces, wart, hoof and all, a sign of maturity rather than doom.

One-dimensional China, preoccupied with its financial standing and the broadening of its domestic consumer base, might actually be propelled by its Tiangong One to the awe and wonder of its inner space, long ago nurtured by the dynamism of the taiji that sees the diversity and ambiguity of life at the pivot point of a swirling center, and the feng shui that organizes space into varied meanings of fate and destiny.

China in crisis is a dreaded metaphor but is also illuminating, for the ideogram of “crisis” combines the characters of “despair” and “opportunity,” so the yin-yang of the Yangtze flood devastates life simultaneously as it brings rich nutrients to nurture new growth.

With the Tiangong missions, China may rediscover its soul, as we are confident the heirs of Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and MLK Jr. will not lose theirs in the turmoil of the age’s spirit unraveling. The door to outer space may just be the same door to the inner one!