Demon Box

FINDING DOCTOR FUNG

"Oh, by the way," is how the question was usually broached, whenever I encountered anybody able to understand enough English, "have you any information regarding the fate or whereabouts of your nation's renowned philosopher, Dr. Fung Yu-lan?" This usually received pretty much the same response – "Fung Yu Who?" – and usually prompted some wordplay from one of my three American companions, such as "Yoo-hoo, Yu-lan?" when they saw me drop back to quiz some citizen.

This trio – our magazine editor, the sports photographer, and Bling, the Beijing-born Pittsburgh-raised student of Chinese law – had all concurred days ago that the object of my inquiry was, at his earthly most, a mist from China's bygone glories. At his least, just another hoked-up curiosity in Dr. Time's seamy sideshow – like the Cardiff Giant or D. B. Cooper. The quest did lend a kind of Stanley-looking-for-Livingstone class to our tour, however, so they weren't impatient with my inquiring sidetrips.

Nor was I discouraged by all the blank stares the name produced. I had learned of the missing doctor only a couple weeks earlier myself, on the trip down from Oregon. Instead of flying down to San Francisco to catch our China Clipper, I decided to drive. I had some back issues of our little literary magazine, Spit in the Ocean, that I hoped I could maybe unload in the Bay Area. A whole packed trunk and backseat full of back issues, to be honest. My swaybacked Mustang whined and hunkered beneath the weight so I left Mt. Nebo a good two days before our plane's departure in case the big load or the long haul should delay her. But the old rag-topped nag covered the 600 miles of dark freeway nearly nonstop, like a filly in her prime. When the dim swoop of the Bay Bridge came into view I still had more than a day and a half before our flight, so I swung off at Berkeley to visit an old minister pal of mine that I hadn't seen since Altamont.

I had a tougher time locating his church than I expected. I found what I thought was the right backstreet and corner but with the wrong building; that, or the defunct woolen mill which had always seemed so suited to the shaggy flock that my friend shepherded had been completely changed. Instead of a drab cement block there was a cute little church fronted with bright red brick. Wire-mesh factory windows had been replaced with beautiful stained glass, and where a grimy smokestack once angled up from the roof there was now a copper-spired steeple shining in the morning sun. I wasn't sure it was the same place at all until I walked around back: the tin-roofed garage that served as the minister's rectory was the same ratty rundown trash pile from five years ago.

The vine-framed door was ajar and I went in. When my tired eyes adjusted to the messy gray gloom I saw the man sound asleep and completely naked on a raised waterbed. The huge plastic bladder was as much a mess as the rest of the room, a Sargasso Sea of clutter, with my friend floating peacefully amid the rest of the flotsam. I gave a bare patch of the gray plastic a slap that sent a shimmying swell coast to coast. I saw consciousness slowly rising to the surface of the bearded face. Finally he raised up on a wobbly elbow, causing books and bottles and beer cans and pizza boxes and tarot cards to undulate around him while he squinted at my face. His hard night had left his eyes redder than my long haul had mine. At length he grunted hello, then flopped right back down and drew a turtleneck sweater sleeve across his brow. I pulled up the nearest orange crate and set down to fill him in on all the Oregon gossip. None of my news got more than an occasional grunt out of him, not until I mentioned the reason I happened to be passing through. This heaved him sitting full up like a seismic wave. "You're going where to cover what?"

"To Peking. To cover the Chinese Invitational Marathon."

"To Beijing China? Why Godalmighty, mate, you can find out what has become of Fung Yu-lan!"

"Who?"

"Dr. Fung Yu-lan!" the minister cried. "Master Fung Yu-lan! Merely one of the most influential philosophers in the modern mother world! Or was…"

He waited a moment for that shock wave to subside, then began Australian crawling his way toward the shoreline.

"I'm not exaggerating. Twenty-five years or so ago Fung was considered the brightest star in the East's philosophical firmament, a beacon for panphenomenalistic voyagers for fifty years! Then, one day, suddenly – foof! nothing. Not the dimmest glimmer. All trace of him blotted out, buried beneath that black cloud known as the Cultural Revolution."

I told him that it was supposed to be my primary task to cover a live race, not uncover some buried fossil. "At least this is the opinion of the shoe manufacturers who own the sports mag that's sending me to China. I better stick to their schedule. They are footing the bill, so to speak."

"That doesn't mean you have to toe their line every step of the way, does it?" he demanded. "You can work it into your story. A little extracurricular shouldn't give them any gripe. If it does, tell the capitalistic shoemongers to go bite their tongues. Tell them to look to their soles. Tracking down Fung is more important than some bourgeois bunion derby. And this isn't just any old fossil, this is a rare old fossil! He, he's a – wait! I'll show you what he is."

The minister released my hand and stepped back up into his waterbed. He waded through the swell to the bedside wall of orange crates he had nailed up for shelves and bookcases. He began pawing among the books, hundreds of books, checking titles, tossing them aside, all the while keeping up a running rap over his shoulder as he searched.

"Sixty-some years ago the youthful scholar Fung observed that all of his philosophical peers seemed to be either stubbornly stuck in the Eastern camp or obstinately in the Western. The twain of which are never to meet, right? The Transcendental versus the Existential? The bodhisatva digging his belly button under the bo tree as opposed to the bolshevik building bombs in his basement? These opposing camps have been at each other for centuries, like two hardheaded old stags with horns locked, draining each other's energy toward an eventual, and mutual, starvation. Our hero decided that this was not his cup of orange pekoe. Or oolong, either. Yet what other alternatives were being served? It was either go West, young Fung, or go East. Then, one bright day, he caught a fleeting flash of a third possibility, a radically new possibility, perhaps, for the mental mariner to try. Radical enough that even back then Fung knew better than to go blabbing it around established academia, East or West. He would continue to honor those two classic ways of thought, but he resolved that he would never join either camp. Instead, he would dedicate himself to what I term 'The Way of the Bridge.' He would construct an empirical concept that would span those opposite shores of outlook! Some complicated job of construction, right? This dude was Frank Lloyd Wright, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Marco Polo all in one -- get the picture?"

Not very well but I nodded, always impressed by the extent of my friend's rambling expertise.

"From that day on he has labored at this colossal bridgework. And get this: Fung's family name means 'power to cross a wild stream' – a mythical river of the barbarian tribes of Manchu, to be precise – and his given names mean 'elite friend.' So this bridge-builder's complete monicker means 'Stream-crossing Elite Friend.' Get it? He lived up to the name, too. For nearly half a century this stream-crosser traveled around our globe, lecturing and publishing and teaching. And learning. In the late thirties he guest-chaired a year at Harvard without pay, claiming all he wanted was the chance to learn about our modern Yankee music. The only reward he took back to China was a footlocker full of swing band seventy-eights his students gave him. Ah! Here he is…"

He had found the volume he was seeking. He waded out of the waterbed's welter, blowing dust from a black leather cover. Back on the floor he opened the book and bent over a random page in reverent silence for a few moments, as oblivious of the ludicrous picture he presented as one of those nude bronze statues of Rodin's. Then he closed the book with a sigh and raised his eyes to mine.

"It is so goddamn important to me, old buddy, to enlist you wholeheartedly in this cause, that I am going to break one of my most cardinal rules – I am going to loan a hardbound."

He let his fingers trail across the worn cover a final time, then handed me the book. I carried it to the orange crate nearest a dirty window so I could make out what was left of the gold letters on the spine: The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy. Inside the musty cover I read that the work had been translated by E. R. Hughes of Oxford University and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., of London, England, in 1947. The front flyleaf had an embossing that said the book was the Property of the University of California Library Rare Book Room and the date slip at the back indicated it was nearly sixteen years overdue. While I leafed through the yellowing pages, my friend searched the room for his scattered clothes, talking all the while.

"You're holding volume three of his four-volume History of Chinese Philosophy, a work that is still considered out there in the forefront of the field. Way out. Revolutionary. Because instead of couching the prose in the customary Mandarin idiom of the elite, Fung wrote in common street vernacular, thereby availing the loftiest thinking in China's incredibly long history of cerebral pursuit to the common coolie! An impertinence that continually had him in Dutch with the Manchu feudalist powers-that-were. But, with what must have been some pretty foxy footwork, Fung was able to keep a step ahead of the ax and maintain his position at the university, and to keep on writing his opus.

"Then, right in the middle of volume four, the Japs take over Beijing. Naturally a wise old fox teaching Mencius and listening to Glenn Miller is soon seen as a potential thorn in the rump of the Rising Sun. One night after class Fung gets wind that he's in Dutch again, this time with the Japanese. He hurries out of his office. Bootsteps approaching down the front hall. Sentries posted at the rear. Trapped! So, thinking faster than Mr. Moto, Fung borrows a charwoman's babushka and broom and sweeps right past the Nip dragnet sent to snare him. He sweeps on off the campus and right on up to the hills, where he joins Chiang Kai-shek and his band of Chinese resistance fighters.

"By the end of World War Two he is so highly esteemed by Generalissimo Chiang and the Nationalists that he is made chairman of the Philosophy Department at the U of Beijing – permanent. At last, he thinks, he is in harmony with the mighty song of state! Then, out of nowhere, up to the conductor's podium comes Mao Tse-tung and down goes Chiang's band, and Fung realizes he's out of step again and marching right back toward that old doghouse. Not only has he been tight with the Nationalists, he's also published essays that seem to praise China's feudalistic past. In the eyes of the new regime this is a big strike against him. Worse, he hails from a 'landlord background' and has an 'elitist Mandarin education.' Strikes two and probably three. He's already seen a lot of his colleagues sent to the Shensi cabbage collectives for less. So, thinking fast again, Fung decides to make a move before he's cornered. He writes to Mao personally. He confesses his bourgeois background, sops on the self-criticism, and begs the Honorable Chairman to accept his resignation – 'I feel it is in the best interests of our great country and your mighty revolution et cetera that I resign my chair here at the university and go to work on a rural commune, to better acquaint myself with the glorious roots of socialism.' Didn't I tell you he was – oops, watch it – foxy?"

I looked up from the book almost in time to catch the card table he had knocked over trying to hop into his too-tight Levi's. Pens and pencils and paper clips scattered among the peanut shells and paper cups on the floor. He kept right on hopping and rapping. "As you might imagine, with that kind of hat-in-hand approach, it wasn't long before Fung was back at his position at the university – simultaneously teaching his new works and at the same time denouncing his older efforts as mere maunderings of a misled mind. Mainly trying to keep his profile low and that doghouse distant, if you get the picture."

I nodded again. I actually was beginning to get a picture of the man behind all this fancy scrimshaw of history, an image faint but fascinating.

"Then the old maestro, Papa Mao, begins to lose his grip on the podium, not all at once but enough that Mama Mao and her quartet can grab the baton. And, merciful God, the tune that they strike up! It's so erratic and discordant and downright heartlessly juggernaut cruel that even old Fung the Fox can't figure how to stay out of its way. It's like a thundercloud of noise and confusion blasting out in all directions, a poisonous black cloud, boiling with terrible bolts of power and gouts of gore and shrieks of agony, rolling bigger and blacker until it closes over all China, over art and music and the modern sciences, over the poor nation's history as well as its future, and over Dr. Fung Yu-lan."

The preacher had delivered this diatribe while balancing on one foot and trying to buckle a Uniroyal-soled sandal on the other; now he seemed to give up. He stood barefoot, the sandal dangling and his face downcast, strangely weary.

"Anyway, nobody has heard from the old teacher in more than fifteen years. Nary publication nor postcard. Foof. Not even an obituary. Foof and nada. Intriguing, huh?"

"Does anybody suppose he's still alive?"

"Nobody in the philosophy department of Cal, I can assure you! They've already got him comfortably catalogued and shelved away in the minor-league stacks along with all the other nearly-made-it-bigs. He was probably offed ages ago, everybody supposes, and even if he wasn't rubbed out by that first big purge of intellectuals – I mean big like millions, we're just now finding out; maybe not more than Hitler but right up there with the likes of old Joe Stalin – they maintain that the chances of a man his age surviving that time of turmoil are slim and nil."

"How old would he be?"

"I don't know." He raised his foot and slipped on the sandal. "Old. There must be a bio in the book."

I found it in the introduction. "Born in Canton, during the Chino-Japanese war, in 1894. That would make him… eighty-seven! Slim, nil, and none my supposition, in a country with the shortest life expectancy in the world."

"Oh, no, not anymore! For whatever misery he caused, Papa Mao's reforms have practically doubled the lifetime of the Chinese citizen. So Doc Fung could still be around somewhere, still waffling, still trying to reconcile the undeniable logic of Marxist dialecticables with the un-pin-able-downness of the free spirit."

"Still in Dutch in China?"

"Almost certainly still in Dutch in China. By now he'd probably be branded a booklicking toady by the new gang, see?"

"I see," I said, beginning to get yet a clearer picture of this old oriental fox. "Yeah, it is intriguing, but I don't see how I could work it into my sportswriting trip. Where's the pertinence? What's the meaning? The moral?"

"Hey, I don't know," the minister answered from inside the black turtleneck he was pulling over his head. His face emerged from the frayed collar shadowed by that look of weariness and defeat again. He heaved a heavy sigh. "Maybe it means that He Who Waffles East and West Waffles Best. Maybe that's the moral. But, shit, shipmate, I don't know what it all means. That's why I want you to find old Fung. Then you can ask him. Answering questions like that is what he's trained at."

He headed for the door, his face down.

"C'mon, let's hit the streets. I need a beer. And I know a couple bibliophiles around the Telegraph scene that might have information more recent than mine."

Trying to cheer him out of his downcast mood, I complimented his pretty new church as we passed. He wouldn't even turn to look at it.

"I hate the prissy pile of shit," he said. "It looks like some kind of chapel boutique. No spirit, no spirit at all. The woolen mill maybe didn't have a fancy fucking spire but it did have some spirit. Remember? We used to get some fierce stuff spinning in that old mill. Marches. Sit-ins. But no more. No more." He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked faster. "I liked it the way it was – funky but fierce."

"Why'd you get it refurbished then?"

"I didn't! It was my bosses, the California Ecumenical Council and so forth! Did you happen to see a couple years ago when I got awarded the Presidential Commendation? For our Runaway Ranger Program? That's what started it. The AP ran a shot of our kids on the back porch. When the diocese daddies saw what an eyesore they had representing their faith in Berkeley, they all shit bricks. I think they used some of those very bricks on that facade back there. If my backhouse hadn't been hid by all those morning glories they'd have shit another pile and bricked it over too. It's all part of the city council's integrated policy for the beautification of Berkeley – brick those eyesores over. It might not heal the sore but at least it hides the pus, is the policy. You'll see what I mean."

I did, as soon as we reached Telegraph district. There were as many patch-pantsed street people as ever, but the pants were cleaner, and the patches seemed more a product of fashion than necessity. Coffeehouses that once seethed with protest songs as black and bitter as their espresso now offered sweet herbal teas and classical guitar. I saw panhandlers buying Perrier water and Hari Krishnas wearing pantsuits and wigs to aid them in their pitch for donations. Nondescript doorways where spectral dealers with hooded eyes once hissed secret questions – "Assid? Sspeed? Hashisssh?" – now were openly decorated with displays of every kind of absurd apparatus, and the dealers sung out their wares like carny barkers: "Bongs bongs bongs! Freebase without fuss when you buy from us! Our paraphernalia will never fail ya!"

Even those pitchy clots of young bloods you used to see playing bongos back in alleyways had been cleared up. Now the clots coursed right along with everybody else in the mainstream, carrying big chrome-trimmed ghetto blasters that played tapes of bongos, I had to shake my head.

"I see what you mean, yep."

The minister gave me a wry grin. "Fruits and berries, brutes and fairies," he sang in a sad voice. "Hot and hysterical and hopin' for a miracle. Did you hear that Cleaver is Born Again? Did you hear that they are trying to change the name of Earth People's Park to Gay People's Gardens? Oh, what has become of our Brave New Berserkeley of Yesterday, comrade?"

I couldn't even guess; and the Telegraph bibliophiles had no more information about what had become of Fung the Philosopher than I had about Berkeley the Brave. And these citizens here in Beijing have been just as little help. Since landing in China more than a week ago I have hit on every English speaker I could collar, but the name hasn't struck the slightest spark. Our smiling guide, the very faithful and conscientious and ominous Mr. Mude, even denied having ever heard of any Chinese citizen with such a ridiculous name.

Then, ironically, this same Mr. Mude furnished the first ray of hope that the old man still lived. Exasperated by my continued inquiries after the missing teacher, Mude had stood in the door of our little tour bus before allowing us to get off at the main gate of the University of Beijing, where we were going to check out their athletic department. Frowning darkly, he had advised that it would be better if such questioning were curtailed during the remainder of our sojourn through the People's Republic. Better for all concerned. Then, smiling again, had added -

"Because Dr. Fung Yu-lan is not for anyone beneficent to meet with – ah? – even if such a personage is."

– indicating that such a personage must still be in disfavor somewhere. But in what doghouse, in what province? Mude probably knew, for all the good that did; he had driven off to other inscrutable duties before I could pursue the point. Yet if he knew, others must. Who else? It was after we had left the shabby little gymnasium and were following Bling back across the campus that an obvious possibility suddenly occurred to me.

"Hey, Bling. What say you we swing by the philosophy department?";

"To ask after your fossilized egghead?" Bling laughed at me. "Man, I've spent weeks trying to track down profs I know live on this crazy campus, asking everybody. These Beijing bureaucrats don't know, don't want to know, and wouldn't tell you if they did."

Yet the first woman behind the first desk we came upon in the stark old building had lit up with delight at Bling's translation of my question. After listening to her chatter a moment, Bling turned to the rest of us, his eyes unslanted by surprise.

"She says yes, by golly, that he's very much alive, still on the faculty, lives about two blocks away, practically next door to the gym we just left! Furthermore, she wants to know if we'd like her to phone and see if he is amenable to a visit from some foreign pilgrims?"

So, at last, I was standing with my three companions before a small cottage hunched back under a grove of looming gum trees, waiting for a little girl in pigtails to go tell her great-grandfather that his visitors had arrived. We all stood in a foolish row, our Yankee banter hushed by the neatness of the small swept yard and the nearness of a man we had barely believed in and were yet to see. Beijing's afternoon pollution was still. The only sound coming through this undersea murk was a scratchy tune being played on a phonograph somewhere, faint and vaguely familiar.

"Say, isn't that a Goodman solo?" the photographer wondered in a whisper. "Benny Goodman and the Dorsey orchestra?"

Before anyone could wonder further, the screen swung wide and was held back by the girl. For a long moment there was nothing; then the old man was standing there in the gray Sun Yat-sen Maoutfit and gray felt bedroom slippers, as spectral and dim as last month's mildew.

Except for the eyes and the smile. The eyes came slicing out of a pair of wire-rimmed lenses, sharp as two chips of jade. And there was a gleam in the smile both mysterious and madcap – something between Mona Lisa and Mork from Ork. The old man let this expression play across the four of us for an amused pause without speaking, then held a liver-spotted hand toward me, standing nearest. One might have expected to see a pebble in the palm and hear him say, "So, Grasshopper… you have come at last."

Instead he said, in English as musty and precise as the pages of that old book back in my hotel room, "Gentlemen, please… won't you come in?"

I took the hand. One might have hoped I'd have the wit to reply, "Dr. Fung, I presume?" Instead I stammered, "Yeah yes we'd be happy to, Mister You Lawn… proud."

The child held wide the door and bowed slightly to each of us as we followed her great-grandfather into his home. We passed through a small foyer and into the room that was obviously his study and parlor. The windows were nearly covered by the drooping gray-green foliage of the gum trees, yet the room was by no means dim. The air in fact seemed brighter than it had outside. Light appeared to glow out of the ancient furnishings like foxfire from humus. It shimmered along the old troweled plasterwork and glistened between the tiny network of cracks on the leather upholstery. Even the dark wood of the kitchen door and the bookcases shined, rubbed to a rich luster by years of dusting.

No decorations adorned the walls save for a long calendar, hand-penned, and a framed photograph of students posing in a black-and-white past. Nothing obstructed the polished floor except one floor lamp, one empty urn, and three pieces of furniture – a leather divan, a two-person loveseat, and a stuffed chair that would have looked at home in any living room in middle America in the twenties. This was clearly the Doctor's chair. He stood beside it, smiling, nodding the editor and little Bling onto the divan and the beefy photographer into the wide loveseat. To me, as to a student called to his professor's office for a little tête-à-tête, he assigned the ceramic urn.

When we were finally situated to his satisfaction, Fung Yu-lan lowered himself into the stuffed chair, folded his hands in his lap, and waited, smiling at me. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks and my head go empty. I began gibbering awkward introductions and explanations and stuff. Babble. I don't think I would have recalled a word of what was said in that room if I hadn't happened to nervously thrust my hands into the pockets of my bulky safari jacket and come upon filing's cassette machine. I still had enough journalistic presence of mind to surreptitiously fidget it on.

And now, weeks later and thousands of miles away, as I try to type up a transcript of the taped encounter in the privacy of my own study – to have some little sample of the wisdom of the Orient to send down to my minister friend in backsliding Berkeley – I still find the exchange almost too embarrassing to abide:

FUNG MEETING – BEIJING CAMPUS -

DAY BEFORE MARATHON

DR. FUNG: May I request you gentlemen some tea?

AMERICANS: Oh, yeah. Yes. Of course. Please.

FUNG: I shall do so. Pardon me.

An order is given in Chinese. There is the sound of the little girl's clog sandals on the floor, and the kitchen door spring creaking. For a moment, as the door swings, a big band can clearly be heard swinging through the jazz classic Sing Sing Sing.

FUNG: So please tell me: what brings you all to China?

BLING: Sir, me, I live here… a student at this very institution.

F: Ah? Studying what, may I ask?

B: Chinese Law and Track and Field.

F: Very good. And the rest of you?

DEBOREE: Sir, the rest of us are journalists.

F: Please. The years have made me somewhat deaf.

D: The rest of us are journalists! Here covering the big race! The Beijing Invitational Marathon? It happens tomorrow. Paul there is the editor of our periodical; Brian is the photographer. I am the writer.

F: Ah. A sportswriter…

D: Not really. Fiction, usually. Stories, novels. Actually, back home, I'm quite a big-time writer.

This evokes muffled Yankee snorts: Oh boy, will ya listen to that? Big-time Writer back home.

D: Also, I am a very big fan of the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. I have been consulting the Ching oracle religiously for more than ten years, throwing it every day.

More snorts, low and inside: My, my, him also Big-time Ching Thrower, too.

D: But what I essentially came to China for, actually, was to find out what has become of you, Doctor. Perhaps you are not aware of it but for many years in our country, scholars of philosophy have been wondering, "What has become of Dr. Fung Yu-lan? What is Dr. Fung Yu-lan doing now?" I mean, those of us who have been seriously influenced by your work… have been wondering -

This is mercifully interrupted by the sound of the door swinging back open and the tinkle of the tea service.

AMERICANS: Thank you. This is very nice. You bet. Just what we needed…

F: You are all welcome.

Fidgeting. Sipping. Clink of china on china. And a kind of patient, silent amusement.

D: So, ah, here we are. How are you then, Doctor? I mean, what have you been doing all this time?

F: I have been working.

D: Teaching?

F: No. I have been working on my book.

D: Very good. And what book have you been working on?

Again, that subtle moment of amused silence.

F: I have been working on my History of Chinese Philosophy. As always. On what else would I be working?

D: Oh. Of course. I guess what I meant was on what aspect. A revision? For a new edition?

F: No. Not a revision, a continuation. Volume five. It is an attempt to examine the Cultural Revolution, a task for which I fear I am woefully inadequate. But I feel that these last fifteen years must be examined and understood.

D: These last fifteen years? I should say! Boy, we will all be very interested in reading that. That's terrific. Isn't that terrific, you guys?

Much agreement, and more slurping of tea and rattling of cups on saucers. Then more silence.

D: This tea is very good. What kind of tea is it, anyway?

F: Chinese.

See? Embarrassing. Disquieting, even before this chance to review the tape. Back at the hotel that very evening the Big-time Writer couldn't get the humiliating encounter off his mind. Unable to sleep, he dug the borrowed book from the bottom of his luggage. He opened it beneath a bed lamp and found himself immediately captured by the clarity of the prose; it had been swept as clean as that bald yard…

Two hours later, the Big-time Writer lays the book down and bows his head, finally beginning to get some inkling of the stature of the mind he had found in this far-off keep.

He discerned that Philosopher Fung had arbitrarily fashioned four views of man, as a means of observing the gradations of evolving ethical human awareness. These four views, or "realms" as Fung calls them, are (1) The unself-conscious or "natural" realm, (2) The self-conscious or "utilitarian" realm, (3) The other-conscious or "moral" realm, and (4) The all-conscious or "universal" realm.

The first two realms, according to Dr. Fung's canon, are "gifts of nature," while the second two are realized only as "creations of the spirit." That these two conditions must sometimes necessarily be in conflict was taken for granted by the old Doctor; that either side should ever completely triumph over the other was considered the most dangerous of folly.

The writer looked up from the closed book, recalling the walk through blighted Berkeley and the question to the minister concerning the old man's pertinence. Here was how he pertained, this teak-jawed Chinaman, to the Telegraph of today as well as to last season's idealism. Wasn't he trying to light up the very dilemma the sixties had stumbled over? the problem of how to go with the holy flow and at the same time take care of basic biz? Sure, you can to thine own cells be true and liberate parking lots from the pigs, but how do you keep them free of future swine without turning into something of a cop yourself? There was the block that had stumbled a mighty movement, and Fung Yu-lan pertained because he had tried to light it with his intellect, without bias, from all sides. And is still trying, bright as ever. How does he manage it, in this dim comer? How does he keep the faith and keep ahead of the ax at the same time? And for so many years?

The Sharp Old Fox would have had answers to such pertinent questions, had the subjects ever been touched on, but all our Big-time Writer could think to ask were things like "What kind of tea?" Embarrassing…

It is only at the end of the tape, after the visitors have slurped their way to the meeting's end and are once again outside in the shifting Chinese twilight, that he asked a question that was remotely close:

D: One more thing, Doctor. There are some pretty grisly – I mean we've heard a lot of accounts, stories, about how quite a lot of teachers and intellectuals were… I mean how did you get through that dreadful time of turmoil?

F (shrugging): I have been a student of Chinese philosophy for more than three quarters of a century. Thus – (he shrugs again, flashing such a jaunty, devil-may-care grin that one might almost expect him to say, It was a piece of cake. Except for a sharpness that one senses beneath that jaunty flash, a carnivorous quality that suggests the toothy old smiler is not only capable of biting off and swallowing any time of turmoil -- any period of upheaval or downfall brought about by any single dictator or by any Gang of Force with their rinky-dink revolution whether cultural or dreadful -- but that he can thrive on it! As though the turmoil had not only been a piece of cake, easily downed and digested, it had been savored as well) -- I have become very broadminded.