Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage

1. The First Steps

Not only on 5 May 2002 is Nanjing hopeless; Nanjing is always hopeless, because there is nothing, really nothing that is more hopeless than Nanjing: the endless millions of people, the dark, shabby streets, the pitiless, coarse, crazed traffic, the merciless minibuses with the exhaust streaming out onto the passengers — who can only find a place to sit at the back which, for some mysterious reason, is raised — the exhaust streaming out with such strength that only the most hardened can bear it, or the very exhausted who assume this sacrifice so they may sit down; the whole thing is hell, and the chilly metallic atmosphere on these buses is hellish too, the grimy face of the bus drivers and their filthy white gloves, their immovable, merciless, unshakeable indifference, just hell and hell and grime everywhere, on the walls of the barracks-like houses, on the tables in the restaurants, on the flagstones, on a doorknob, on the side of a teacup, the litter and sticky filth in the back kitchens of the restaurants and the small canteens, the back kitchens that a customer or foreigner is never allowed to enter because they would never believe their eyes if they saw where the meat and the vegetables were being chopped, and they would never eat again; and horrifying as well is the spirit of the so-called new China: as one of its most characteristic signs — in the form of the world’s most dispiriting glittering department stores — stands here on the main street, disgorging the most aggressively nauseating Chinese pop music, it relentlessly attacks from the loudspeakers, and as if every single street and corner in the city has been shot up, really, as if every single nook has been amplified with this sticky, infectious, loathsome phonic monstrosity, and this is only the earth, which is below — because this has not been mentioned yet: the sky, not a word has been said about the sky, that grey block-like heaven above them, heavier than lead, through which the sun never, but never, breaks through, and, even if it does, so much the worse because then it just makes so much more visible what is here on these streets and in the millions and millions of buildings on these streets, in the millions and millions of wretched flats inside, and what is inside this world of innumerable multitudes of writhing, rushing, hurrying, impassive faces — always ready to sell something — and for what are these countless men and women living, indeed, so unfortunate are they — who now, in this era of slackening political pressure, in the indescribable construction-fever of China striving to become a world power — can now be blinded, with the greatest delight, into mistakenly believing that, after the decades of misery, the liberation of selling and buying can bring happy redemption to them — that even if the sun would break through that heaven above, heavier than lead, it would simply bring into the light just what kind of life the people of Nanjing are living, hence the hour of arrival becomes as well the hour when the visitor immediately begins to plan where, but where to go to get out of here; he sits down on the bed in one of the ‘Biedermeier’ rooms in the prohibitively expensive, many-starred hotel, intended as elegant but in every respect counterfeit, he looks out of the window, he sees what is moving down there, and he has already taken out the map, he is already trying to figure out how to get the nearest taxi to the train station, because nothing helps, in vain does he suppress within himself the instinctual desire to escape created by the first impression, deciding to inspect that which according to his knowledge still ‘remains’ of the city after the destruction following the Taiping Uprising[13] — comparable for Europeans only with images of Berlin in 1945—what remains of this city, nearly 2,000 years old; and he finds nothing, in the entire God-given world, nothing, because everything that can be inspected on the basis of its having been restored — from the famous city walls including the Beiji Tower,[14] miserably rebuilt, and the Jiming monastery,[15] in an even more pathetic state, to the renowned Mochou Lake[16] hailing from the Song[17] and Ming[18] dynasties, as well as that copy, built as part of a miniature empire in times past to protect the grave of Zhu Yuanzhang,[19] the most famous emperor of Nanjing — all this causes Stein to fall into the deepest of apathies, for everything is so sad: sad that the monstrous devastation proved, after the Taipings, to be so irreparable; and sad, what the Chinese, murdering one another in the course of civil war, and, chiefly, the unprecedentedly bloodthirsty Japanese[20] did here; but what the man of today had made of this heap of ruins is sad as well, because the countless lies and deceptions and counterfeits are sad, the countless imitations, the ceaseless attempts by the spirit of the present age, in the name of reconstruction, to dredge something up from the illustrious past, to which then the unsuspecting visitor, coming to the city as to a great spectacle, can be led by the unscrupulous and peremptory tourist trade, so it can say to him: So, have a look, here is Nanjing with its 2,000-year-old history — so fatal, and disastrous, because no one can stop this course of development any longer, and no amount of strength can turn it back any more, because what is going on here cannot be remedied, what is happening right here and now cannot be remedied, and it doesn’t help when someone, thanks to unmistakable happenstance — just because, sitting slumped on the bed, he absent-mindedly poked at the Linggu Si monastery[21] on the map in that Biedermeier hotel room — picks himself up and goes there, just as the Linggu Si, destroyed and rebuilt many times over, can be grateful to exactly that same happenstance, for the fact that one part of it, a few hundred metres behind the Wuliang Dian,[22] still exists, just as happenstance earlier led the finger of that person to this exactly distant point in the city; and if possible, it renders — let’s refer to this as the Nanjing experience — even more oppressive, even more dispiriting, for this tiny fragment of the Linggu Si stands there, in the middle of this fraudulent and crumbling modernity built upon a heap of ruins, like a tiny child on the battlefield at twilight, where everyone around him lies dead — they too just stand there, László Stein and the interpreter, they stand in the cold torrential rain, immersed in the undisturbed peace of the inner enclosed courtyards of the monastery, they look at the dainty arches of the pavilion trussing, the ancient, dried-out cypress trees with their peeling trunks, they listen to the quiet steps of the monks appearing now and then on the flagstones, and how, in the centre of the courtyard, even the steady cold rain cannot completely extinguish the tiny arches and smoke of the short incense sticks placed in the enormous sacrificial bronze cauldron, then they return to the city, they pay the bill at the hotel, they head out to the station and, without even thinking about it, they get a ticket for the next train, a train which will take them away from here but which will never erase from their memories that place where, on this occasion, exactly 2,000 years came to an end.

The next train goes to Yangzhou, but this is still not completely coincidental, because the choice is swayed not merely by the plaintive haste of ‘away from here!’ but also by an idea born of despair that if here in Nanjing this early May eternity is so dreadful, then they should not proceed with exaggerated and preliminary caution but immediately try their luck with the opposite extreme, so they try the city of salt merchants, in the one-time economic and cultural centre of South China, at the meeting place of the Yangtze and the Grand Canal,[23] in the memorable flower garden of the Sui,[24] the Tang[25] and the Song dynasties, they try to uncover something that is alive, a few tiny intact fragments will be enough, a few tiny fragments where the light of the spirit of classical culture might have shone across the centuries, where scholars, painters, poets, calligraphers, gardeners and architects, where the ‘Yangzhou pinghua’,[26] the popular storytellers of the street, where the most exquisitely refined figures of Chinese erudition, its bulwarks, supporters and beneficiaries, Ouyang Xiu,[27] Su Dongpo[28] or the saint of Buddhists and the Japanese, Jianzhen,[29] came upon a place and found a home in such a memorable fashion. And it cannot be said that they don’t find anything, not even considering that here everything is also in ruins and the wretchedness is the same as in Nanjing, no, exactly the opposite is the case, in Yangzhou, in the city of canals and bridges, the first thing that strikes them is that unmistakable scent of the wealth of New China, of recent wealth, where they have to hunt out the places of memory of former times but where they are also confused, although at first they think of it as a kind of beneficial relief, as the conspicuously huge mass of places of former renown practically topples onto them, because in the first hours, as in a friend’s car — made available to them with the inconspicuous assistance of Tang Xiaodu — they traverse the city from one end to the other, the feeling arises that surely here everything still remains from the sought-after past: even if cordoned off, in a sense, into a ghetto by the new, modern world, the Wenfeng Ta,[30] its original form a thousand years old, and rebuilt towards the end of the Ming dynasty, still remains; the seven-storey brick pagoda, now covered with graffiti, and maybe a little too far to the south from today’s city centre but formally serving as an emblem of the city, still remains; the Shisong Si[31] — once the memorial shrine for Shi Kefa,[32] the heroic commander who fought against the Manchus — now the City Museum and maintained with uncommon beauty, still remains; and the famous gardens too: the He Yuan, the Ge Yuan and the Xi Yuan[33] all remain, and they rush from the Daming Si temple,[34] from the beloved Jianzhen monastery to the recently excavated graves dating back to the Han era,[35] they dash from the Shou Xihu, the smaller West Lake[36] to the Tang-era city wall-remains, from the Guanyin temple to the Ouyang memorial temple,[37] so that the first hours — right until mid-afternoon — are filled with this running around, with this unexpected joy; it’s still here, says Stein to the interpreter, this is still here, and this, and this, they take themselves all over, here and there, in the car arranged from Beijing, so that, after twilight has set in, it begins to be obvious: in the back seat of the car, they are becoming quieter and quieter, that is, they begin to go back again, in order to thoroughly examine the places of these renowned monuments, and they begin everything anew, and they go everywhere now, and Stein feels that there is some problem, there is some problem with these well-preserved gardens, with these neatly ordered temple buildings, there is some problem with the Daming Si, something is not right with the Ouyang temple, with the bank of the Xihu glimpsed only from afar, with the so-called White Stupa,[38] with the Tang-city walls, with the Guanyin temple, there is some kind of problem with all of old Yangzhou, Stein finally is able to state that evening in the hotel room, from which, by the middle of the night merely one bare sentence rattles around in his brain: there is a problem with Yangzhou, by the middle of the night this is what remains from the unclouded happiness of arrival; because of the anxiety — why can’t he figure out what has to be figured out here? — he can’t fall asleep. It still hasn’t been determined, and they say nothing, but in the morning, when he and the interpreter look at each other over breakfast, both are thinking the same thing: that what is to come will not simply be the following day, nor even the next, in Yangzhou but perhaps the last, thinks Stein, and they begin everything again, but differently, not running here and there and all over the place but going to what is considered the most captivating garden in Yangzhou, they go to the He Yuan, and they stay there for hours, they stroll along the garden paths, they admire again the dazzlingly refined beauty of the pavilions, as the light glints on the tiny panes of glass of the glittering windows set like gems in the deep burgundy wooden structures, curved and polished with the sensitivity of lace-work, and they gaze at the lake in the garden, they observe the whole of it, and they try to understand what is missing here, because something is missing, this is glaring, but neither Stein, nor the interpreter, can figure out what it is, so it doesn’t even occur to them to return to the Daming Si, then to the Guanyin temple and finally to the garden of the City Museum, the beautiful pavilions of the former Shisong Si — because they now are determined to avoid everything which they discovered last night to be false, fraudulent, fake, not original, rubbish, just a bad copy — it doesn’t even occur to them to go back again to the Daming Si, to the Ouyang temple, to the Jianzhen Memorial or to the Xihu, it doesn’t even occur to them to go back to the White Stupa, to the remains of the Tang-city walls or the so-called recreational park in Wenchang Street,[39] built where a Taoist temple used to stand, no, they decisively avoid drawing conclusions from the tourist spectacles, newly built in the spirit of the coarsest enterprise, out of crude mercantile interests and camouflaged as authentic: they only seek out again the places that seem real, but the puzzlement, particularly within Stein, increases, and in the end, by early afternoon, they do not move away from the red facade of the City Museum, the amiable driver of the friend’s car doesn’t understand what’s going on, so they send him off with a thank you, remaining by themselves in front of the museum, on the banks of the canal, and they begin to stroll along the banks of the canal, because they decide that this is the most beautiful, as this little narrow-bedded canal winding here and there just flows towards the west, it begins to rain, soon there are no people around them, on the two sides of the banks, beneath the swaying grasses and the plum trees and the linden trees and the wild chestnuts, they encounter not a living soul on the narrow walkway, just a dead dog, as the rainwater slowly washes, soaks through the carcass, they walk for about 400 or 500 metres, then they turn back, and walk those 400 or 500 metres again — stepping over the sodden dog cadaver again — to the museum, and it is clear by then that the interpreter would like to get out of the rain which is now falling more steadily, and of course it’s getting chillier again, but Stein still cannot bear to do so, because he would like to find out what is missing here, to finally discover, well, what is the problem with Yangzhou — and he is certain that it can only happen here, here on the narrow banks of the canal, but he is mistaken, because nothing comes to him, well, then, later on the bus, he thinks to himself, then they take the taxi to the bus station, later on, when they are leaving, and they look back, and they see Yangzhou, then, in that moment of farewell, it will occur, he thinks — but no, nothing like that happens at all, no kind of clarity comes to Stein, evening arrives, they poke at the map again, and they say: Let the next stop be the unknown Zhenjiang, and they get onto a bus, and they set off, and Stein looks back, but nothing — there is Yangzhou behind him, the famous city of salt merchants, the centuries-old centre of art, but nothing is happening in his head, because he has to wait for something to happen in this inert idiotic head of his, he has to wait until Yangzhou has disappeared completely from sight, because all this — as to when and where — was prescribed in advance, because it was all prescribed that as he sits there in the rearmost seat, and gazes out of the bus’ grimy window onto the dark highway, and thinks back upon Yangzhou, it has all been prescribed, he must wait for this precise moment of thinking back, because then he thinks back, and he understands that Yangzhou, well, that wasn’t even it, that Yangzhou doesn’t exist any more, we were not in Yangzhou, he realizes, and he takes out his little notebook, which he bought in Beijing for 8 maos,[40] in order to note down more the important events to come, and on that page where Yangzhou is written he crosses out the word with his pen and, after thinking a little, crosses out the date above that, he crosses it out with force, so that it cannot be seen, so that it will never again be possible to decipher from the contours of the pen strokes that Yangzhou had been written there nor 2002, and 7 May and 8 May.

It’s evening again, and the goal of the journey is Zhenjiang, and now, by all appearances, they can really attribute their having come to Zhenjiang to coincidence, if coincidence exists, and if it has been the one to guide their fingers along the map, but it doesn’t exist, says László Stein to himself, and it is not coincidence that has led his fingers, as will be completely clear in a moment, because after a good hour, cutting across the Yangtze, they head into Zhenjiang, and in the dark they see the first streets and the first people, and they no longer believe in any kind of coincidence, only in an unbending, malicious, brutally just and — to them — inordinately unfriendly spirit which, in fleeing from Yangzhou, led them to this place, so they could see, after the wretchedness of Nanjing, after the disappearance without a trace of Yangzhou, that there was still farther, farther to go, that is: farther to go downward, to sink ever lower in the experience of disillusion which this time bears the name of Zhenjiang, the trading city with a population of 2 million, at the crossroads of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze, which this time is known as the place where Wang Anshi[41] was born, and where Mi Fei[42] died, and about which it is bruited that here stands the Wenzong Ge pavilion[43] where the people of bygone times, guarding their treasures with such care, kept watch over the famous collection of volumes, the Siku Quanshu.[44] An evil spirit is following them and guiding them, and, no matter what they try to do against it, the struggle is futile, Stein perceives this towards the end of the first hour, futile, he sums up — and in subdued tones! — his feelings to the interpreter: not only are they in the wrong place with their useless interest but also, since their first steps here, nothing but evident ill fortune could be their companion, and behold, they wave down an indescribably filthy taxi, and begin to hunt for a hotel, picked out earlier from some travel guide and the only one in that district designated as ‘acceptable’, an adventure in which the problem is not that the taxi driver cannot locate the hotel but, rather, that he does locate it, as the hotel — which now, in 2002, as the travel guide emphasizes, is the only acceptable choice — is unequivocally closed, and it is how it is closed that is so horrifying, standing there mutely and darkly in its assigned place, in wholly infernal abandonment: above, on the facade, the name can still be deciphered, according to which this is the Dahuangjia Jiudian, or the ‘King Hotel’, but the windows are crudely boarded up, the entrance barricaded with sheets of iron, wooden boards, plastic sheeting, as visible as the clearly hopeless attempts to break in again and again, because this barricade is already half smashed apart, and, even though you can neither see nor go in, it’s as certain as death that there is nothing inside any more, absolutely nothing which could be stolen: the building’s fate of being broken into again and again — perhaps to the point of its complete destruction — is completely senseless, yet these break-ins will occur, continuously and indefatigably; they stand there, silent, as behind their backs the taxi’s ailing engine, like the breath of a dying man, falters for short periods, they cast a glance at the infinitely indifferent face of the taxi driver and it is clear he knew that there was nothing here, that the best they could do right now would be to make themselves scarce, to leave this place today, to go back to where they came from, but if they want to, they can pester him some more, he’s in no hurry and he will take them wherever they tell him to go, and he does, to the closest hotel which is open, and they pay him two-thirds of the amount they had bargained for — which, however, was doubled in the end — so they lose out, and they gain, as here in New China most often occurs with foreigners, then they take a mangy room, which cannot be bargained down to less than 150 yuan, on the second floor of the Fenghuang Ling hotel, originally vainly conceived as glittering but where everything is penetrated with misery, and from this point on they don’t speak a word to each other, they just make an attempt at washing in the water stained with brown rust, then they give up and eat the remains of their food purchased at the bus station in Yangzhou, then they lie down on the beds, like people who have been knocked down by sheer physical exhaustion, and they sleep until next morning. The Wenzong Ge pavilion no longer exists, nor does the renowned Siku Quanshu; the house where Wang Anshi was born is completely gone, just as on Beigu Mountain,[45] not a single genuine component of the monastery remains, but this isn’t as horrifying, as they began their baneful foray into Zhenjiang, as the fact that there is no longer any sun, it’s around nine o’clock in the morning and it’s as if the sun never even rose, nine o’clock and there is darkness in Zhenjiang and in the taxi which, after the first dismaying appraisals, they take to the city’s most renowned site, to Jinshan[46] (because they would like to see for themselves if those temples — or at least some part of them — still stand on Jinshan Hill, temples which in former times almost completely covered this spot), they just stretch their necks out and they cannot believe their eyes, save that the whole thing is as if they were the ones exaggerating in their outburst of grief, because it is simply unbelievable, absurd and fairly frightening, as if there were an eclipse of the sun, a nearly total eclipse of the sun, for as the taxi writhes forward in the crushed-together mass of tiny streets, as it honks and brakes and turns and honks again and again, and it turns, and it brakes, and it goes on like this for a long time, even for an entire hour, and nothing can be seen, as they move forward at a snail’s pace in the near night-like obscurity in which however there is plenty of time for them to seek an explanation as to what this nightmare is, and of course there is an explanation, and of course, after a bit of time it becomes clear what is happening: that on the one hand — as a kind of Zhenjiang specialty — above the narrow streets, the thick foliage of trees on either side has grown into each other so densely, forming a single perfect dense roof, and in a completely unprecedented way, not allowing even the smallest of fissures and so completely closing off the view of the sky; on the other hand, this sky hardly permits any light to descend this morning; heavy, thick, threatening, storm-grey, motionless clouds loom above them and yield no clarity, they proceed through Daxi Lun and the surrounding streets, reminiscent of a thronged, chaotic rag market, perpetually open for business, they turn, they honk, they brake, they swerve around the people wandering into view. . and maybe the people are the most frightening of all, as seen from here, from the interior of the crawling taxi, as now and then a suspicious glance is cast at them from outside; this darkness at nine o’clock in the morning is completely natural to them, it means nothing, come on, what is so strange about it, what is so out of the ordinary? — these staring indifferent gazes are discharged onto them, and for that matter: Why? What’s the difference? — they read this in the people’s eyes: for it to be evening in the morning, or to see nothing, doesn’t bother them — while in this partial withdrawal of the light it is nonetheless perfectly clear: not only is this unnatural fact incapable of throwing them off but also that nothing, but nothing, in this entire godforsaken world ever could; the grimy, distrustful, morose and immovable faces convey this in their own communicative way, they are going about their business, for surely they have some kind of business to attend to, if they are going somewhere, but whether it is nine in the morning or twelve at noon, whether there is darkness or light, whether the sun has come up or not, for them, for these 2 million people here in Zhenjiang, Stein and the interpreter determine as they gaze out of the car window, there is no significance at all. Jinshan and the entire area in the north-western corner of Zhenjiang is actually an island connected to the shore by a thin strip of earth, with the Yangtze flowing around it; on the island itself are the innumerable temples from the time when the Jiangtian monastery[47] flourished, their enormous significance and widespread popularity commemorated in a proverb that can be heard even today. And yet they are not surprised when it turns out that this is no longer true, and they are not surprised by only being able to reach the entrance to Jinshan by ploughing through an enormous ocean of mud, today, on this morning bereft of sunlight — what they experience once they are inside, however, causes not surprise but something which never figured in their most bewilderingly nightmarish apparitions. Before all else, after paying the arrogantly high entrance fee, immediately to the left they stumble onto an extensive playground. Dumbfounded, they stare: yes, the first thing you see at the Jinshan monastery is a playground, a playground in which everything is made of plastic, from Snow White to Donald Duck, the entire Euro-American fairytale world is present, if one can add that never on this earth has human effort ever created such a degenerate Snow White or such a vicious Donald Duck. So, here is a playground, they establish, and they quickly cut across it, then try to make their way to Zhongleng quan, ‘First Spring under Heaven’[48] which they suspect could have the greatest chance of at least partial survival: because after having been brain-stunned by the brutal idiocy of the playground, they lose their sense of direction and contemplate whether something may have remained, and what the water from this well, considered by the one-time imperial guards to be of the most excellent qualities, could be like, and they even find, with great difficulty, the route that leads there, where the last 150 metres have to be made by boat across an artificial lake, but there is no one there, just a dilapidated rowboat tied to a plastic buoy in the shape of a lantern; but the person who would take this boat across the lake to where the spring is supposed to be is nowhere in sight; they yell, they make a racket, they try and call attention to themselves, until after a while a sullen old man emerges from somewhere out of the dim uncertainty, and, although they greet him politely, he does not return their greeting, he doesn’t speak a single word but gestures, as if he were dealing with idiots upon whom words are wasted, he gestures irritably for them to get into the boat, then he rows them across to a perfectly forlorn island; here, everything has been built to the tastes of tourists, a lifeless, repugnant garden and a few recently-slapped-together repugnant pavilions, but everything is closed, they wander around in puzzlement until they unexpectedly come upon Zhongleng quan, that is, they come upon what has become of it, because what disillusions is not even how it is surrounded by an unwieldy enclosure carved out of fake marble, or that the original quadrant has been diverged from, or that the dimensions—20 by 20—have been changed, but that the water disillusions, as it dribbles there in the basin, it is so filthy that it wouldn’t be good even for watering grass, let alone as water for making tea, for which purpose it was employed with great esteem for centuries, as the very finest water which could exist; there are air bubbles on the surface, clearly this could have been the water of the source in bygone times — but already they are turning away, they return to the banks of the island, again they begin to shout, the old man comes, again they try to greet him, at least for this second meeting, but it’s hopeless, he doesn’t reply, he just rows them back to the far shore and is visibly relieved when they disappear from view; they return — across the inexplicable playground — to the main street of the monastery grounds, and set off onto the slopes of the Jinshan. At one time, according to the descriptions, the accounts and the drawings, the temples here were magnificent, and although only a fragment of the buildings still stand, looked at from afar, they appear to be in the best of all possible conditions; as Stein and the interpreter draw closer, however, once again they are confronted with the infinite damage done by the system of reconstruction in New China, the monstrosity of crudely vulgar taste, the implacable lack of understanding and the plethora of ignoble results, so radically at odds with the refined sensibilities of the authentic Chinese spirit; more and more they fall into a kind of enraged despair which then is transformed into the deepest repugnance; as they pass through one pavilion and then another, it rapidly becomes obvious that they are not viewing a monastery, and in particular they are not viewing Jiangtian but, rather, that they have been dropped into a safari park where nothing is real, where everything has to be paid for, because here every building is new and fake, every luohan,[49] every Buddha and every bodhisattva is new and fake, and every wood join in every column and every centimetre of golden paint is new and fake, in short, the whole thing is fraudulent, so that wherever a person goes he will encounter a vendor dressed up as some kind of Buddhist priest and who in every corner of the temple buildings will try to get him to buy — aggressively and expensively — some kind of dreadful religious junk, a pearl rosary and a Buddha necklace and a paper Guanyin, buy incense, they chant in place of sutras, buy a postcard, buy a pilgrimage bag, buy a certificate stating that you were here, a big stamp on it costs 5 yuan, the little stamp costs 2 yuan, but if you don’t buy anything, that’s ok, the monks corrupted into merchants snarl at the visitor, even then please pay, pay for everything, pay for stepping over here, for stepping over there, pay because you’re looking at this or that ‘sacred’ relic, pay at the entrance, pay at the pavilions, pay and we’ll ring the gong for you once, and buy something if you’re hungry, and buy something if you’re thirsty, of course at three times the price, the main thing is that while your yuans are decreasing, ours are increasing, so that, in the end, when it is really time to escape, and they hurry towards the entrance, it occurs to them that perhaps the evil monk Fahai,[50] who lived in this monastery more than a thousand years ago, did not bring such memorable harm only to the famous married couple in the legend but that he is also doing harm today, for it is as if he had left his spirit here and ruined this place for all eternity: for a mockery is made precisely of those who make a pilgrimage here to see the Buddha and to pray to him. In vain do they again get into a taxi, in vain do they drive across the rag market, inert in the silence of the wretched alleyways, back to the north-eastern periphery of the city, and in vain do they cross with a small ferry to the island of Jiaoshan[51] — overshadowed by the presence of the virulent tourist industry — to try to find something there among the trashy amusement parks and the trashy lookout towers, to find at least one monument which might safeguard the classical past, and there they realize: this is even more painful — in the crude modernity of an entire city, the ruinous ‘preservation of tradition’ dominated by the thirst for profit, the general clearance sale, the annihilating fraudulence, the mindless commerce mired in a counterfeit eternity, in short, in the extreme moral deterioration of the Armageddon of New China, a monument which has remained intact, here on the island of Jiaoshan, is much more painful than its absence would have been; for to walk into the entrance gate of the one-time Beilin,[52] moreover with the knowledge that this too can only bring fresh disappointment, to walk in and to look around the gardens and to begin to stroll, seeking the inscriptions of the stone tablets built into the walls, to walk in here and to comprehend just what kind of treasure they have happened upon immediately gives rise to the greatest anxiety within them — because how long can this last, the interpreter asks, how long until the absolute commercialization, the absolute debasement in this treacherous storm, he looks, plunged into anxiety, at the immortal inscriptions on the simple, well-maintained, whitewashed limestone walls, to which of course what else can Stein do except remain silent, silent in agreement, because what is going through his head is this: it cannot last even for a moment, this is the last day, the last hour, because the spirit of the age will immediately appear at the entrance gate, and will immediately begin the ruinous process of making this place earn its keep, and it is really much more grievous to see that it has remained, this monumental ensemble of gardens, this magnificent museum of classical calligraphy carved into stone, than to resign oneself to its absence, or to its renovation according to the criteria of the spirit of New China, and it is hard to explain why they should rejoice and not grieve that it is here, they say to each other, and just what kind of absurd figures are we in this entire escapade, for days now, for the entire week we have been searching for what might have survived from what is, to us, the only living precious order of Chinese classical culture, we set off in the entirely unfounded belief towards the traditional centres of high culture, south of the Yangtze, because we believed the original spirit of China to be alive somewhere, in the depths, as our European friend, Yang Lian, formulated it, and when we happen to find a piece of it — as we have right now — we weep for the fact that it is here, we weep for its defencelessness, its endangeredness, but, well, that’s how it is, they share the same anxiety, and in this common anxiety they sidle up to the walls, and they stare at the magnificent creations in Beilin, the Stele Forest, or, more elegantly phrased, the Grove of Stone Tablets. The entire complex is made up of many courtyards placed symmetrically around a central axis; the individual courtyards, however, are separated by fences, into which moon gates[53] have been placed to make them accessible to one another. The individual courtyards themselves are clearly ordered according to the same principle: that everything — the walls, the gates through which one passes from one courtyard to the next, the lawn and moss gardens, the bamboo and dwarf trees decoratively arranged, the pavilions and the columns of the corridors protecting the walls, the ridge-tiles on the roofs of the corridors — everything, including the plaster on the walls and how it is applied, everything must be regularly repeated as well as subordinated to a single goal according to which every element in Beilin must emphasize the reason for which it was created, that is, the 400 stone tablets — as they immediately find out from the director of the garden, a lanky, sympathetic youth with protruding eyes—400 stone tablets, protected with sheets of glass, enclosed in brown wooden frames and placed onto the white walls, that is, as the young man explains, one’s gaze — that of the esteemed guests — should be directed so that, wherever they happen to look, their gaze will rest unobstructedly on the inscriptions engraved on the steles, and they do rest there, that is what they experience, they say to the young man with recognition, then they sidle along the corridors of the square courtyards covered with tile, and happily discover — thanks to a certain knowledge of classical Chinese on the part of the interpreter — that here is the introduction Mi Fu wrote to the Orchid Pavilion,[54] as well as the inscription of Zhao Mengfu[55] and that of Su Shi,[56] and the words of Wei, the famous Taoist master, there are many renowned inscriptions here from all these authors, as the young man, coming again and again into view, reminds them, but then he mentions just one, and he takes them over to the stele, dating back 1,500 years, of Yi He Ming,[57] for which a special pavilion has been built, he shows them only this one — the garden, however, is filled with the masterpieces of classical Chinese calligraphy, built into the white walls outside along the corridors, and inside, within the vitrines of the various smaller pavilions, and they just wander from one courtyard and one pavilion into the other until they suddenly realize that they’ve been there for three hours, and for that entire time not one other person has set foot there, of course the weather is bad, they say consolingly to the young man, of course it’s about to rain, they finally bid him farewell by the exit where he has accompanied them: yes, he says, tianqibuhao, bad weather, yes, he waves goodbye with a single brief movement at the gate, with a wry expression, and says as they leave: jiuyao xiayu le, yes, it really looks as if it’s going start raining any moment now.

He’s wearing a shabby, cheap, dark-blue suit, and because he is so tall he has to stoop a little and bow his head when he stands underneath the entrance of the moon gates, and he just stands there, sometimes looking up at the sky, to see if the first drops have fallen yet, sometimes casting a glance after them, as they depart, glancing as they depart, so that they will never, ever forget.

2. Yao, Why Are You Lying?

In Shanghai, the metropolis of indeterminate dimensions, the pride of New China, the Land of Dreams of Great Possibilities, its proprietors of wealth as was earlier unimaginable in this country, one thing is important: here, in perhaps China’s most significant residential area, there is nothing for them to seek — for there is no past here which would have to be made rotten with sweaty labour, there is no monument in need of protection: this is a modern and young city in the strictest sense of the word, where the past is represented by the former French district created in the nineteenth century and a few European buildings scattered here and there, and the Yu Yuan,[58] this particularly splendid, gigantic private garden from the time of the Ming dynasty — the future doesn’t exist here, which also means that not only does Shanghai not have a past but also that it doesn’t have a present; blinded by its future, it has no time for the present — so that altogether they have no expectations, indeed, they even feel a kind of relief when on one of the first evenings they stroll onto the famous boulevard, swaggering with its hundred-year-old European facades, onto the Bund[59] where, above River Huangpu,[60] they can glimpse, on the far bank, the skyscrapers of the ultra-modern district of Pudong,[61] an exhilarating sight for so many millions of New Chinese, yes, they feel relief, as they stand there by the railing on its bank, amid the mass of cheerful, thronging young people, and as they look at this Pudong they even feel a mild satisfaction, because it is good to see, Stein remarks to the interpreter, that this time it is not the illustrious past but the illustrious future that has been closed into a ghetto: for Pudong is a ghetto, an enclosed district where New China can prove to itself that it has succeeded, it has succeeded in constructing the first kilometres of the symbolic Super Expressway, clearly an object of ideology for New China and which can only lead back to the compulsively long awaited ‘Middle Kingdom’,[62] comprehensible only to the Chinese.

They are trying to make their way to a meeting, so that after the embittering experiences of Shanghai — acquired in the course of numerous dialogues with well-known intellectuals leading only to bad memories, the daily combat between an ostentatiously prosperous few and the decisive predominance of the struggling downtrodden, as well as a long sought-after kunqu[63] performance in Yifu Theatre[64] — so that after all this, they can share their thoughts with someone about the situation of traditional culture: they are on their way to a dinner with Yao Luren, a young, well-dressed and well-to-do university instructor who teachers literary history somewhere in a college in greater Shanghai. The meeting place is in front of the Peace Hotel; from there he leads them into a horrifically clamorous and thronged multistorey modern restaurant. They make their way with great difficulty to the reserved table, they sit down and, after introductions through the interpreter, László Stein reveals that he is devastated, and that in this conversation he has prepared for something he usually never presumes to do: to speak of his agitation frankly, disregarding the usual courtesies, without dissimulation and, if necessary, to contradict his partner, to dispute and to try and enlarge upon his thoughts until he has felt that the other has understood. Stein does not even wait for the hors d’oeuvres, he has already begun to talk to Yao with particular frankness, as if he were sitting with a good friend.

Stein could not have committed a more grievous error.

As an introduction, he begins to relate to Yao: since he has been travelling here, in this province of China most renowned for its precious traditions, he has acquired only bitter experiences. He sees the new life of New China — the locus of a monstrously vehement desire for money and things that can be gained with money, he sees the masses of tourists inundating the so-called cultural monuments, but he also sees that these people have no connection with their own classical culture, for their cultural monuments no longer exist — in the name of restoration, their essence has been annihilated, annihilated by the most common of tastes and the cheapest of investments as well as by the terrorizing principle of the greatest gain. Stein asks if this impression coincides with Yao’s. He asks if he sees things at all correctly in thinking that the position of classical culture in China has been completely laid to waste.

yao. That is certainly not the case. Indeed, in my opinion, classical culture is in a much better position than it has ever been. I mean to say that, in a historical sense, when at the beginning of the last century the process of modernization began in China, it never condemned classical culture to annihilation. Moreover, this wasn’t necessary because a very important aspect of classical culture is that it is very adaptable, very open towards other cultures, it creates connections very easily and does not reject other cultures when confronted with them. The best example of this is how in China, before the Han era, there was no religion, in the sense of believers and their one god, or many gods — a religious concept such as that appears only with Buddhism, a foreign religion which was explicitly made the state religion in the period between the Han and the Tang dynasties. This is just one example, which we can enlarge upon, and we can confidently state that the encounters with the surrounding peoples in China’s cultural sphere were always quite cordial. So why be unfriendly today to the modern civilization of the West? If you look at the twentieth century, superficially you could think that modernization was a movement aimed against tradition. This is not true. The true goal of modernization is for tradition to live within it but to live in a renewed form. Those whom we respect as the outstanding figures of this movement, such as Lu Xun, were as well versed in classical culture as the literati of the eras before modernization.

Stein interrupts, and he says that, leaving aside what Yao just said about irreligiosity in the pre-Han era, inasmuch as he can judge, at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the idea of modernization — namely, the unconditional demand for the renewal of culture and society — was fundamentally and precisely brought about by a deep dissatisfaction with tradition. Of course the greatest figures of this movement, he adds, received their classical erudition through traditional instruction, as other forms of instruction did not exist, but the entire goal of the movement they initiated was the creation of a modern culture in place of the traditional. And not some kind of combination of the two.

yao. I acknowledge that the process towards a modern Chinese culture was at the expense of traditional culture. But that didn’t mean, and it doesn’t mean today, that the relationship of Chinese intellectuals towards traditional culture has changed. The basis of the culture of Chinese intellectuals is traditional classic culture, even today.

But Yao Luren can’t really think this, Stein looks the interpreter and indicates for him to translate precisely. Here is Shanghai, he says. We look out of the window, we walk along the streets, we talk with people. Everyone, with no exceptions, toils ceaselessly. . for the sake of the creation of a modern China. He, Stein, sees only masses of people who are curious about the consummated processes of the modern world — this is what they study, imitate and conform to. In his experience, he continues, going by the statements of intellectuals, they are fundamentally interested in what is going on in America, Europe and Japan. And you, Stein looks at his partner in dialogue with the most candid of gazes — like someone trying to encourage the person sitting across him to a similar expression — you say that intellectuals here live in a traditional culture? That the basis of their culture is tradition? His impression, says Stein, after every single meeting, is that intellectuals no longer have any connection with their former culture, they only react to it with meaningless statements. He feels that this is so obvious, especially here in this gigantic city modernizing at such hideous speed, that he doesn’t know what to say! He apologizes — Stein starts to make excuses — for he knows that he is upsetting the rules of polite behaviour in contradicting his host, but to say to him that these intellectuals — who clearly fill their days with the practical acquisition and the psychological assumption of all the values of the modern Americanized world — respect tradition, is not something that he can leave unmentioned! They really know classical Chinese culture as their own?! They really live it as their own?! He can only imagine that Yao would say this to someone who he thinks doesn’t understand anything about Chinese culture or Chinese modernization, but he can’t imagine that Yao himself believes what he is saying.

The interpreter is clearly in anguish, but he translates accurately. Yao hears him out, but he can hardly wait to speak.

yao. You make no difference between the culture of the educated classes and that of the wide stratum of the population. And you have not taken into consideration that there were always mutual influences and connections between the two layers of classical culture. I’ll give you an example. It is not just the intelligentsia who are fond of the kunqu theatre — the population at large also really enjoys it. And you can see not only older people in the audience but young people too. There is a Kunqu Research Society which was founded after the Cultural Revolution.[65] This is just one example. Classical Chinese culture can be researched from very many angles.

Stein is thinking that if he continues to refrain from polite circumlocutions, eventually Yao will be forced to open up. And so, after apologizing again, he continues by saying that Yao has not answered his question. Otherwise as well, he adds, living and researching a culture are two very different things. In China, just a few decades ago, it was fantastic, even formidable, how a person could feel that classical Chinese culture was truly a daily reality, because in its depths it was indestructible. And he, Stein, started off in this secret hope — because, he says, one always starts off with some secret hope in this country — but, well, these few weeks since he has been here have made it thoroughly impossible for him to nurture this hope within himself any more, because to state today about this society — that it would have any sort of connection at all to its own traditions, that this would be its daily reality in the depths — is simply absurd. The unbelievable hunger for the creation of a market economy in recent years, the hunger for the acquisition of money and possessions renders such statements ridiculous, even retroactively. And as far as Yao’s example goes — Stein looks at him more decisively — surely he does not wish to prove, by citing the founding of the kunqu societies, that the kunqu theatre is alive and flourishing? The kunqu societies are dying out because neither the intelligentsia nor the ‘wide stratum of the population’ is sitting there in the audience. No kind of wide stratum of anything sits there at all. It’s a miracle if there are even a few spectators. If there is even a performance being held somewhere.

yao. Classical Chinese culture lives on in the depths. On the surface it may seem that while the construction of an industrial society is in progress, classical culture has been pushed into the background, but if this indeed has occurred, then once again classical values will regain their significance — these will be the values to which people reach back, because they will have need of them, we will have need of our own culture, the essence of which cannot be anything but classical culture. This cannot change.

Stein asks Yao what he actually means by the term ‘Chinese classical culture.’

yao. For me it signifies a belief. Others think that it is the practice of life according to the highest principles. You cannot understand this, but that’s how it is, and the young people of today endeavour to not just live an everyday life.

Why couldn’t I understand, Stein spreads his hands apart. He would like nothing better, he says, than to encounter some facts which would allow him to think the same thing. But he doesn’t find any such facts, he lowers his hands. The young people of today? — He echoes the expression. For surely Yao himself is one of these youths, and he knows very well how young Chinese people spend their time in the cities. So why is he saying something different? They are endlessly dangling at the teats of the computer or the television, in the much better cases in the bookshops and libraries, trying to become acquainted with Western mass culture, amusing themselves with that, or, in the very loftiest of instances, trying to become acquainted with the more valuable accomplishment of Western culture and adapting it to the apparatus of their own intellectual lives.

Stein looks at Yao who, he senses, is eyeing his arguments with an ever-chillier glance. As a matter fact, here is where he should stop, but he doesn’t give up, trying to retreat a little, seeking some principle, some point in common, and he begins to interrogate Yao: What does he see in general as being the essence of culture?

yao. Culture is that strength which helps one discover the essence of life. It is enchantment. Chinese culture was always a continuum, it never became Westernized. Nor will it now. Because tradition is stronger than you realize.

Stein feels that their conversation is a kind of free fall where, however, he is the only one who is falling. He begins to lose his patience; he begins to forget that this is exactly what he should not do — if he wants to make himself understood — so that, well, he confides to Yao that he would be ecstatic if he could sense the strength of this tradition. It’s just that, he answers woefully, he only experiences the opposite. Everywhere. It is so obvious here in the big cities that there is no point in even trying to demonstrate it. And in the villages, well, what else do people want, especially the young people — and again he looks at him with that sincere gaze — what else do they want than to be big-city dwellers in this modern mass culture, because that’s what we’re talking about here — or in the case of the intelligentsia, to form connections, amid the advantages of the big city, with the elite culture of the West and to assimilate that culture fully? And, moreover, as quickly as possible and in ever-greater numbers. . In every city, with every acquaintance, every friend, in every conversation, Stein raises his voice, this is his experience. And as Yao knows, he adds, the goal of his journey is not to find out if the Chinese intelligentsia respect their tradition with their words but to see if they live it. It goes without saying that they respect it. But do they live it? Or if this is no longer possible, what would you do, practically speaking? Do you stand — Stein flings out the question in bitterness — in front of the temples when these know-nothing ‘preservationists’ show up to protect the treasures with your own bodies? Do you safeguard artistic objects all over China? Take them into the museums so that they can find refuge? And then go with children into these museums to look at them? No, he shakes his head, Stein doesn’t think Yao does this. These original artistic creations were destroyed by the civil war, or the Maoist era, or the tourist gangsterism of today, or by time itself or, worse, they have been counterfeited and sold as if they were real. What he has seen, Stein points to himself, for the most part during the past 10 years, as he has travelled through the provinces of China and viewed temples and monuments, is nothing other than the destruction of these exquisite objects in the hands of those who are not worthy. Wherever he has gone, he has met with forgeries and fraud. Because, he continues bitterly, temples are counterfeited in the name of reconstruction. Ancient monuments are ‘saved’ but they are not — these monuments are needed, so instead they are destroyed on the basis of purely material considerations stemming from a cheap dilettantish approach. And so he perceives — he slows down, because he can sense that he’s speaking too quickly for the interpreter — that the only goal is to sell something that used to be an authentic temple, an authentic sacred place, an authentic statue of the Buddha; to sell it as a counterfeit, whether made new ‘like magic’ or daubed up again — and, sadly, even to unsuspecting Chinese tourists. This is what’s happening, this is his experience — and Stein now feels he has been able to regain a calmer tone. And so, he explains, trying to persuade Yao of his good intentions through his glance, what the Chinese are annihilating is their very own culture which they could, in fact, be living. But you don’t want to live this tradition, you and your compatriots, says Stein, and he gestures, pointing to the clamorous room, you and your compatriots live the second-rate mass culture that goes with the so-called modern market economy as well as so-called elite culture, dredged up from the squalid vortex of the market; and you do so of your own free will — just like us, by the way, in Europe. And he asks the interpreter to once again, and continuously now, add an apology. And the interpreter says that he’s been doing so constantly. Practically after every sentence. But he signals to Stein that there is no way now to get the conversation onto a more friendly level. And he is right. Yao’s face is rigid, his voice descends from ever-greater heights. It is clear by now that he hardly has any statements to make that this European would be worthy of hearing.

yao. You are mistaken. Traditional culture plays a decisive role in the life of China today — despite capitalistic tendencies.

They remain silent for a few moments, Stein thinks, Yao eats. What should he do? Continue? Stop? Stein decides that he will not stop, and so he asks if in the conditions of today the intelligentsia has any opportunities to take part in any decisions? Do the intelligentsia have any kind of importance in terms of influencing what happens in China? Because he knows — he tries to draw the other’s attention to what is unconditionally shared between them — in the world’s other, so-called developed societies, the situation is tragic: the layer of society known as the independent intelligentsia has collapsed, it has no influence on anything at all, what it has to say is not important, it writes about the state of the world, but no decisions are made with its influence or input, things are decided on a level with which the independent intelligentsia — in the former sense of the term — has no connection whatsoever. The overwhelming majority of them have chosen a non-critical role in terms of the structures of power in order to have some access to real decision-making. And when that idea occurs to him, it’s as if he could engage Yao in the conversation again: erudition itself has disappeared, Stein says, and with that the concept of erudition itself. And — if even for a brief moment — some kind of interest finally glimmers in Yao’s eyes.

yao. This is a specific question. The opinions of the intelligentsia, its judgements, its influence, do not affect the processes of society directly. The intelligentsia can affect reality through the transmission of culture and education. In imperial China, for example, the intelligentsia were themselves the emperor’s instructors. They were able to influence rulers by founding schools and through the instruction that took place there, even if they did not have a direct political role. There are no examples similar to this anywhere in the world, this only existed in China, and since then there has never been any kind of similar institutional mechanism. .

Stein concurs approvingly, saying that, yes, this past was truly wondrous. This is why, he says, the entire world respects to such an extraordinary degree the former societal order of Confucianism[66] or, more precisely, the role Confucius himself intended for moral precepts. The image of such a system, which could even be said to be ideal, can be seen in China’s millennia-old past where erudition in its essence meant a life lived according to moral precepts which had the highest possible value and which were built into the structure of society: society was a structure built upon the belief in morality. Stein doesn’t continue on this point, for surely — he indicates with a movement of his hand — Yao is aware of this much more precisely and profoundly; so Stein only poses one question: What has remained of this? Nothing, Mr Yao. Do you agree?

yao. No. Absolutely not. The role of the intelligentsia is just as important today. You have conveyed to me what happened to the intelligentsia in the developed Anglo-Saxon countries. This, however, will not happen in China.

It is clear from Stein’s disappointed countenance that he was not counting on this reply. And he expresses his disappointment or, rather, his incomprehension, wondering if Yao can really think that the constellation into which China entered with the authorization of market relations is not everywhere the same? Does Yao really think that the effect of the legitimization of investment, currency markets and the laws of global finance could somehow lose its potency in China, and only in China, and somehow function differently?

yao. China is not the same. China is different. China cannot be compared to any other country. Legalities are different here, specific. For example, the tradition of the social relevance of the intelligentsia, their extraordinary significance, the vitally important and well-known role of the literati, is very strong.

It is clear that Yao wants to expound upon this unconditionally, so Stein merely interrupts in a helpful manner, indicating that he shares Yao’s opinion, and he asks how this prestigious societal role can be explained.

yao. Chinese writing — with its outstanding role — cannot be compared to anything else. Ever since writing has existed, Chinese writing and the lettered have possessed decisive relevance in the history of the Chinese spirit and society. Never in the world has writing or a system of writing had such crucial significance. It is only thanks to the innate respect for writing inherent in Confucianism that caused China to be governed according to Confucian principles and to be built upon Confucian tradition — a tradition that remains until today. Chinese writing was sacred, irrevocable, absolute respect towards it was mandatory, thus the tradition of classical culture, preserved in writing was exemplary and indisputable. I do not claim that there are not and were not damaging influences stemming from Confucianism — it made society too rigid, everyone recognizes this. But its stance of respect for writing, and through it the creation, unique in the world, of a culture extant in writing is important — it has always been and is still highly worthy of recognition. .

Stein interjects that he, along with many others, does not see in Confucianism or, more correctly, in the teachings of Confucius, an instrument by which society is made overly rigid but, rather, a theory of society which can assure continuity to that society. It did not make it rigid but offered it continuity. Or perhaps it did not even offer this continuity but simply articulated and codified the idea that society was something continuous. And he asks Yao if in his opinion any kind of renascence of Confucian thought could be possible?

yao. The state of change today is immeasurable. But I feel that these changes are external. Tradition is at work in the depths. And one of the most decisive elements of this is Confucianism. I do not believe, however, that it could be revived in an unaltered form. It is indisputable, though, that it will have a crucial role in the future. Society today is restless. If tranquillity returns, then China will return to its own traditions as well. In my opinion, the opposite will occur here in China in relation to what happened in Eastern Europe, in the former Communist societies. In Hungary, the intelligentsia played only a trifling role, there is no way to compare that with the role of the Chinese intelligentsia. In China, this role can never diminish. Because it was always very strong.

Stein has serious doubts about such an argument but, in order to not disrupt what has begun, he asks if the intelligentsia of today has not distanced itself too much from the so-called wider stratum of society.

yao. Traditionally, this relationship wasn’t too wonderful — that is, it was always bad. The intelligentsia always thought that the fate of the world, that is, China, was in their hands. This was one of the most negative traits of the Chinese literati. They didn’t bother with any kind of real connection with a broader spectrum of the public, they believed themselves to be unique and so they looked down upon the lower classes. This will have to be changed in a democratic renascence.

This last sentence, and its obvious empty demagogy or, rather, its immeasurable deception, once again defeats Stein, so he quickly tries to move on to another topic, or to approach the same topic from a different angle, because Stein can’t give up, he can’t stop, he is plunging down the hill now, and so he just asks and asks: he asks, for example, what kind of hope could there possibly be for a young person who would like to become acquainted with his own classical culture. Because from where, from what kind of sources could this be acquired? For classical culture is not a real, living element of everyday life or festivals — instead, there is the culture of modern China. So where can a young person find out anything at all about his own original culture? Is the situation not impossible? All the artworks are fake — instead of restoring ancient monuments, a kind of fraudulent trade is going on, so that whoever wants to understand classical Chinese culture by contemplating its material objects has no chance. As for the knowledge of classical writing and classical erudition — it seems very apparent that it is not the centre of interest for the younger generations. They are interested in completely other things, no?

yao. There are certain requirements if someone wants to become acquainted with classical culture. It’s true that the historical chronicles always mirrored the worldview of a certain dynasty in an extraordinary manner, and so the individual dynasties were continuously rewriting the past. But there was always one part of the intelligentsia that preserved its independence and wrote the truth in secret. These works are available for any young person who wants to read them.

But, Stein asks, can they actually read those old texts? Indeed, he raises his voice a little: Do they want to read these works at all? If we go into a library, will we see these classical works prominently figuring on the list of borrowed volumes?

The resignation which can be heard in Stein’s voice makes it clear to Yao just what this European visitor thinks of him. His response is as cold and as short as possible.

yao. They are more and more involved in reading these ancient writings.

Stein asks him if he means this seriously. The interpreter, turning red, translates his words. The evening cannot be salvaged.

yao. Yes. More and more. And there is ever-more interest in classical culture as a lifestyle.

Stein feels another outburst of grief, so that he no longer feels it necessary to try to save what could be saved. And because he feels himself to be impotent, he begins to mock, and he mentions that his, Yao’s life and lifestyle does not appear as if it would confirm everything that he just said. At least, looking at him, everything about him is reminiscent of an intellectual living well in a modern, industrialized society.

yao. That is just the appearance. Now I’m wearing jeans. But at home I have traditional Chinese clothes.

And do you wear them sometimes, asks Stein.

yao. Yes. And when I’m at home I always drink traditional Chinese tea.

So, not Cola, like now?

yao. No, tea.

And what do you read? The classics? When you lie down at night, do you take out some classic from the Tang era and go to sleep with that?

yao. I do have classical books. And I do read them sometimes, if not every day. Or I could say something else — I travel a lot. Very often I’ll stop in the middle of a beautiful landscape, and then I feel the same as those who were raised in the classical culture. A classical line of verse always comes to mind. And I love traditional music and theatre.

The interpreter tries to stop him but this is no longer possible, so Stein interrogates Yao, asking him: Just how does he keep alive the connections with all of this? Does he find concerts to go to, classical performances? Because you really have to hunt these down in Shanghai, they are so rare. .

yao. I don’t go to such events so very often. But sometimes I do.

Doesn’t that exactly prove that he himself could not live according to the principles of classical culture, as a truly living world, even if he wanted to? At the very least, from reverence, he could try to just not give up on a relationship of acceptance and deference to these traditions, no?

yao. It is not possible to live according to classical culture in every sense of the term. This is modern China.

Stein already feels joy that at least Yao has stated this. He would like to know if his acquaintances are just as faithful to tradition as he.

yao. Not my acquaintances, no. The Western way of life is more convenient. At the present time, it is the ideal. It is not certain that a traditional lifestyle can be adequate for modern times today. This has to be understood. That’s why we cannot speak of the usage of classical culture in the everyday sense of the term. For example, there is the traditional, long black coat, once much loved by the literati, with its characteristic buttoning. Traditional Chinese buttons. This is inconvenient, isn’t it? It’s hard to button up. The Western style of dress is much more simple and convenient. So why shouldn’t we take it up? But that doesn’t mean that I don’t admire the old way of buttoning as a tradition.

Hearing this example, Stein tries hard to keep a straight face, and asks instead if this does not prove that tradition is already dead, in the best of instances it is something for the museums, the reason for a Sunday excursion with the children who 10 minutes later want to go to McDonald’s. Otherwise: How could such a dialogue take place? Does he raise his children according to the principles of the classical tradition?

yao. Of course that is not possible today.

So then where can the viewpoints formed through classical culture — his own culture — be validated? Can he transmit it to his students in the university, if not to his children?

yao. My sense is that ever-more students are interested in traditional Chinese culture. In my view, there are very few who are not.

Once again there is silence at the table. The clamour in the restaurant is getting louder and louder. For a while they eat silently. The interpreter secretly nudges Stein to say something. He wipes his mouth, puts aside his chopsticks, and not worrying about whether what he is about to say has any connection to what they have been talking about, or if he has even mentioned it already, he says that he’s been in many Buddhist monasteries but every single one has been handed over to incompetents who have ruined the structures and created forgeries in the name of restoration. They have made trash out of the sacred. And there is no place for the Buddha in a building like that.

yao. You, sir, have only been here a few days, and you only see the surface.

Stein replies that he has been here for months, and not for the first time, and that he didn’t even begin the past few years but that he has been coming here since 1990, and he sees an unrelenting process, in addition to the destroyed monasteries he just mentioned there are, for example, the expensive entrance fees, the uncommonly aggressive merchandising, deception and lies. And the Chinese are doing this in the name of their own culture.

yao. That is just the surface.

Stein looks at him with innocent eyes. So what can he do so as not to see just the surface, if that’s what it is?

yao. There is no chance for you at all to understand anything about Chinese culture.

So — Stein hangs his head in resignation — nothing.

yao. You would have to live here, and you would have to know Chinese life. And something else: you do not know Chinese writing. The foundation of Chinese culture is the knowledge of Chinese writing. You will never know anything at all about Chinese culture.

It’s as if this thought had come to Stein from time to time, he concurs, and he acknowledges to Yao that what he has just said is very thought-provoking. Because he too feels the consequences of this lack. And he has even begun to study. Maliciously, he asks whether Yao is familiar with European culture.

yao. Of course I am. I’m seen as someone who knows European culture extremely well.

How much time have you spent in Europe?

yao. I’ve never been there.

Stein now frankly doesn’t understand, but propelled by a new idea he poses a further question: How many languages does Yao speak?

yao. Japanese and Chinese. That’s enough. Everything that is important is translated. Especially in recent years.

Cautiously — so as to not risk obliging their host to bring the evening quickly to an end — Stein asks him whether he does not consider that in getting to know Europe and European culture, Yao would not have to follow the same principles as he has just pointed out to Stein?

yao. No. A Chinese intellectual is different than a European one. And China has at its disposition a rich and tremendous cultural background. So what we understand from other cultures is quite enough for us to form our own opinions. China is interested in China, and our task is to lead China back, through its own traditions, to its former prominence in the world.

And this is the point from where there is no going on. Stein senses that if he does not want to irrevocably offend Yao, it would be better for him to stop. The clamour of the hordes of guests in the restaurant almost causes him physical pain. They have hardly touched their food. And clearly Yao has had enough of this conversation. Through the interpreter they discuss the weather, the unbelievable speed of Shanghai’s development, Yao asks if they have seen Pudong yet, yes, of course, we’ve seen it, he asks if they have bought any fashionable clothes or electronics yet, because this is the place to do so, the interpreter says, no, we haven’t; you should buy something, at least something for yourself, Yao banters with the interpreter a little, he is a young man who would definitely be interested in the goods of Shanghai, known all over the world. The interpreter answers that he is very grateful for the advice.

He lives here. He knows it’s hopeless.

3. In the Captivity of Tourism

In the province of Jiangsu, south of Taihu,[67] roughly in the territory bordering Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shaoxing and Taihu, exists an enormous, timeless empire. It is entangled with canals and rivers and innumerable villages, and the entire area is so densely interwoven and so complicated that, apart from the locals, no one can find their way. If a foreigner sets off in this region, he immediately encounters these canals winding back and forth, and the tiny lakes turning up here and there, so it is no wonder if after the first few kilometres he loses his way and, after a short time, he has absolutely no idea where North and South are situated: he has no idea, which means that — due to the unbelievably complicated bus routes, incomprehensible to the uninformed — only quick perception can come to his aid; not to force any earlier-planned destinations, whether gleaned from maps or friendly advice, but to be content with whatever happens to fall into his lap: because behind nearly every third bus station is concealed a little village, and that village is evidence that time is not continuous — László Stein and his interpreter gaze upon the first such village, dating perhaps from the time of the Ming dynasty, and having remained there; because, as the saying goes, time has stood still for this village, so they can arrive at about six in the evening, twilight is falling, the weather is uncommonly mild and. . there, right in front of them, is the end of the Ming era, Stein thinks to himself, and my God, he says to the interpreter, as they gaze at the roofs of the tiny houses snuggling up to one another — seen as yet from a distance, from the bus station — they gaze at the rhythm of the densely set blue and grey of the ridge tiles, my God, he keeps repeating, but he can’t bear to continue the thought, because he simply cannot find any words, because he can’t believe that this is possible, that here is Shanghai only 80 kilometres away, here is Shanghai 60 and 40 and 100 and 120 kilometres away, because Shanghai is everywhere, the empire of Shanghai is all around, with its dazzling speed and its distressingly incorrigible corruption, and yet this is here: they set off on a well-trodden footpath along which a young local woman with a little girl by her side amiably guides them; here is the Ming dynasty — or ‘at the max’, the interpreter says, correcting his enthusiasm, the beginning of the Qing![68] — come this way, the woman shows the route smilingly and then says something which the interpreter doesn’t completely understand, but never mind, the two Europeans are incapable of engaging with this friendly young woman and even more friendly sweet daughter who is enchantingly shy, because there is the Ming dynasty, frozen in time, or ‘at the max’, the early Qing. This world had existed only in Stein’s imagination, as for him there never could have existed a place — down to the last minute detail — such as he is looking at right now: it existed only and exclusively in his imagination, constructed entirely in his head, building by building, gate by gate, street by street — constructed from the fairytale vistas of novels, poems, stories, drawings and paintings — so that, as a matter of course, he never believed that it could be possible that one day, taking the bus from somewhere, as it happens from Shanghai, because he happened to hear from Yang Lian at one point that, not very far from where they were staying, the so-called water-town pearls could be seen tucked away amid the canals, he never believed that this could all just suddenly emerge from reality, and he is hardly able to grasp this, they make their way among the little houses, and they set off on the narrow walkway, and, really, it isn’t as if they had simply arrived in a village of the Ming or Qing era but as if they had wandered into a marvellous dream taking place exactly at that time, the time of the Ming or the Qing, because nothing has changed here, says Stein to the interpreter who is just as astonished, well, how is this possible? — they look at each other and then they say goodbye to the young woman and the little girl who have just arrived at their own house, and who amicably invite them in for a visit, but for now they decline the invitation, since they want to remain outside, that is, remain inside the dream, because that’s what it is — no matter how much they touch the saltpetre walls, no matter how much they sense the smell of the water from the canals running through the middle of the narrow streets, no matter how much they see the locals lingering in front of the houses, or as a woman, just now, washes clothes down in the canal, because even then it is only a dream: László Stein looks at these enchanting tiny streets on either side of the narrow canals, he looks at the strongly arched, tiny stone bridges under which long black small boats are borne away, real and yet not of this world; he looks at the decaying doorways, the open gates and the corridors inside, not even a metre wide, yet unbelievably long, dark and enclosed, in which light appears only as a tiny rectangle at a distant end, so tiny and so distant, light coming from a courtyard or who knows from where; he looks at all this and he immediately informs the interpreter that they should stay here, every other plan is senseless, they are not going anywhere, yes, they will stay here, replies the interpreter in the greatest agreement — and they just walk on and on in the long evening in this village known as Zhouzhuang, and they fall into the sweetest kind of melancholy as a woman comes out from one of the houses and calls out to her children playing on the banks of the canal that dinner is ready; there is some kind of inexplicable unearthly peace in Zhouzhuang, old people sit on a bench, and not with the usual suspicion but, in the friendliest of cases, they take a good long look at the two Europeans, as perhaps could only be natural in a dream such as this, they look at them, then serenely acknowledge their greeting — Where are we? Stein asks the interpreter, is this possible? and they go on, evening begins to fall, the streets slowly begin to empty, and they too are left to themselves, but it is still not completely dark, the sky is clear, there is a full moon above them and a mild breeze is blowing, they can see well in the obscurity, and they cannot stop looking and looking at the end of the Ming era, or, as the interpreter now banteringly adds, ‘at the max’, the early Qing. They find only one place open, a teahouse where, instead of walls, a wonderful glazed latticework wall, varnished crimson-brown, faces the canal and the walkway of the tiny street, and inside an old couple sits idly behind the counter, watching television, and they look up as soon as the guests come in, and then place a pot of excellent, if expensive, Longjing tea in front of them, and the two guests happily sip away from the beautiful teacups and listen to the owner, Zhang Jihan, as he begins to relate: Zhouzhuang, well, yes, Zhouzhuang is in its essence untouched, they can see — he points all around — that this doesn’t mean his little teahouse but the entire village, no one here would think of damaging what is old, ever since the time of Shen Wanshan, that was a long time ago. But still, since when exactly? interjects Stein. Well, a very long time ago, the old man smiles, so this Shen Wanshan began to supply grain and this and that on River Baixian to the northern part of village — the old man points to the north — well, since then our life started up here, he nods a little wearily, as if he has been sitting here since then, then people diverted the water from the Great Canal to the west, he continues to relate, and the water from River Liu to the north-east, and that is how we got going here, that is how the Ancients founded Zhouzhuang, and so it is until this very day, he says, and very great gentlemen built such houses here that they came from Yangzhou and Suzhou to admire them; Shen, isn’t it, he says as if to himself, then the Zhang family, then the Xu family, then came Liu Yazhi or Chen Qubing, or famous scholars such as Zhang Jiyang, the old man fluently narrates, as if he were the local chronicler familiar with every detail, the two guests happily sip the steaming, aromatic tea, the old man gestures that there is no need for them to pay this time, and brings new leaves and fills the cups again, and they don’t have the strength to get up, and he leaves them to themselves, for they have no strength to leave this person here with his wife, with his stories, to leave this magical building with its doors open onto the canal and the village, darkness has fallen now, and they dare not budge an inch lest it should emerge that the tiniest movement is enough, that this is all just a dream, and — poof! — it will be gone.

The first air-conditioned luxury bus arrives at eight o’clock in the morning from the main highway, and then the buses pull in and pull in and pull in, one after the other, without stopping, they begin to stream outward as if from some bottomless sack, and tourists begin to flood in, inundate, fight their way inside, as hundreds and hundreds of newer groups, arriving relentlessly like an attacking army, in an unbelievably short amount of time they occupy the end of the Ming era, or the beginning of the Qing, and the tour guides begin to yell, they begin to yell in that loathsome, thin voice into their megaphones and, by the time the two visitors realize what has happened, Zhou-zhuang is already full, so full that by eight-thirty it is impossible to move in the narrow streets, they are terrified, they don’t know what is going on, they’ve hardly woken up, they are sitting in the same teahouse as last evening and suddenly they are struck by a hideous clamour: the tourists are cheerful, they are yelling and screaming and making a rush at whatever they can, descending upon the marvellous little houses, completely denuded now of last night’s tranquillity, and it seems that they are happy to see daytime arrive, inside there are shelves and countless goods: food, sweets, souvenirs, genuine pearls, dried fish, folksong cds, hundreds and hundreds of trinkets: What has happened here? — the two visitors look at each other, and then say goodbye to the elderly teashop owner who urges them not to miss out on the Zhen, Zhang and Shen residences, they will be open very soon, he says, but they are trying to struggle through the dense crowds to somewhere outside, they haven’t the slightest idea exactly where this outside is, in any event, they try and push themselves forward against the crowd, because they have deduced from the crowds’ movements that they must go to wherever they, the crowds, have come from; Zhouzhuang is small, so they reach the highway in a relatively short time, they stop at one point and, as they have seen the Chinese do, they wait there, they wait patiently for something to arrive, a bus which they can wave down and which will then take them onward, even if they are not able to say right now when a bus will come or where this onward is; the interpreter is asked: Where are you going, and he has to say something, so he looks at Stein — where? — and Stein pronounces the single place name he can recall from Yang Lian’s account, Zhujiajiao, at which the bus driver shakes his head, he doesn’t go there, that’s not in this direction, but if they want he can take them to Tongli. Tongli? — the interpreter looks at Stein unhappily, and he says fine, let’s go to Tongli, so that after half an hour they’re in Tongli, the bus lets them out again by the side of the highway, and for the time being everything is quiet, the region seems relatively uninhabited, this is a good sign, they reassure each other, Zhouzhuang is like a prison, it opens at eight in the morning and closes at six in the evening — they had gleaned this from a sign as they were fleeing — and maybe, the interpreter adds, that woman who led us into the village last night was trying to explain to us that we had come at a good time, because it was after six o’clock, and Zhouzhuang is completely different then, maybe that’s what she was trying to say, the interpreter suddenly realized, but maybe Tongli is different, he says, maybe Tongli is just a simple village and we won’t have to encounter any kind of barbarian attack as in Zhouzhuang — Stein is silent; 200 metres away from the road a few tile-ridged roofs can be seen, so they set off in that direction, and they are not mistaken as far as the direction is concerned because it immediately emerges that Tongli is indeed that way; the direction, however, is the only thing in which they have not made a mistake; as for their own selves, they are very mistaken because, after 200 metres, the brutal truth swoops down upon them that here too there is nothing for them to seek, once again they have miscalculated, once again they have rushed into something, because if they would have to state that Zhouzhuang — left in peace only at night — was firmly in the hands of the tourist industry, then Tongli — this little water-town, just as enchanting — is manifestly the general headquarters of every tourist office for all of Jiangsu as well as the centre of touristic dreams of the province and half of China, once again a wondrous settlement from the past, the same narrow streets, the same narrow canals with the same black, slowly drifting boats, the same saltpetre walls and the same gateways and teahouses and the same enthrallingly carved crimson-brown lacquered pavilions, facing the water, but the swarming hordes seeking entertainment, the sheer havoc-wreaking number of tourists surpasses every conceivable measurement here, surpasses even the ruinous crowds of Zhouzhuang, and what they at least did not have to perceive while escaping from that latter place here surrounds them: that everything here is for sale, and this everything must be sold, this can be seen on the hunted expressions of the locals, or whoever they are, as at the same time from the other side comes the response that everything must be bought, that we will buy everything, this is what radiates from the expressions of the tourists, what is taking place here is unspeakably repugnant, so they decide to take a look at the three residences mentioned in the tourist guide vitrines, which they had failed to do in Zhouzhuang, so they pick themselves up and conclude their excursion. What they see is exquisitely beautiful again, the wondrous Tuisi Garden, the wondrous Jicheng and Feigong residences, the wondrous canal banks, the houses, the bridges, everything is just as dazzling as it could possibly be, but they must escape because they cannot bear what is happening here, they cannot bear the unspeakably repugnant merchandising of these wondrous enclosed strata of ancient times; once again they stand by the highway, once again they don’t move from that spot, and then they begin to think a little bit, and then they both reach the same conclusion: that there is no mercy; if this is how it is in Zhouzhuang, if this is how it is in Tongli, then this is how that will be in Wuchen, in Lili, in Xinshi, in Linghu, in Doumen, in Nanxun, in Xitang, in Dongyang and in Wujian and everywhere in this formerly enchanting landscape, so then they slowly trudge across to the other side of the highway, they begin to watch the buses going back, then they get on to the first vehicle returning to Shanghai, and in the days to follow they do nothing but gape at the ultra-modern buildings of Pudong from the railing of River Huangpu, and they try to remain awake, to clutch at reality, and to forget, forget — to forget what they saw, to beat out of their heads the fact that they saw anything at all.

4. Requiem in Hangzhou

In one of the world’s most beautiful cities, in the unparalleled administrative seat of the Southern Song dynasty,[69] from the first moment until the last, they never feel any sort of disappointment. Hangzhou does not lie. It can be seen that there was splendour and brilliance here, there was erudition and intellect, it can be seen that the current conspicuous and exceptional wealth of the city is not due simply to the new era of Deng and Deng’s followers but that it follows upon former wealth; Hangzhou, nonetheless, does not claim for itself, among all this new prosperity, any connection to the past which, of course, is indestructible in the same sense as the scene of a murder or an obstinate memory in the brain — no, Hangzhou announces, you won’t find that here, no point looking for anything — and the fact that people keep coming is due simply to the present of the past that was once here, but Hangzhou doesn’t say anything like that, it doesn’t deceive because it has no need of deception, it propagates its new name in place of the old, and it has the right to do so from pride, from self-esteem: here is the new, the wealthy Hangzhou, and it does not wish to display itself in any kind of role that would tie it to the old, it has accepted that the old is gone, and it is happy for whatever residue has remained, this is Hangzhou today and, thanks to this, they feel above reproach for the first time, that is, they would feel above reproach if the rain were not constantly pouring down, if it wasn’t cold, if the sky wasn’t eternally cloudy, meaning that the other side of the lake was never visible, not even for a single hour, but fine, in spite of all this everything is fine because they have no expectations, and they are not obligated to take anything to task here, because in the Hangzhou of today there isn’t anything to take to task, they enjoy the former splendour dimly glimmering here and there, they enjoy it, and they are satisfied with that much, and if in the meantime the thought arises in Stein: God Almighty, what astounding beauty there must have been once in this city, if after so much definitive destruction you can still sense something of it, like a draft of air where an amputated leg used to be. Because that’s what he feels, László Stein corrects the explanation of the interpreter who has got entangled in this, when after a few days he asks what the problem is: he finds it unusual that Stein is so silent — he tends to feel, Stein says, that it was beautiful, that it was so incredibly beautiful here, that China’s most eternally famous lake was beautiful, the Xihu[70] or West Lake, celebrated by the greatest poets more beautifully than anything else, that Gushan island (‘Orphan Mountain Island’)[71] was beautiful, and the two dams, Bai Juyi,[72] in the lake, that the Chan Buddhist[73] Jinci temple[74] was beautiful, that Feilai Feng (‘The Peak That Flew Hither’),[75] and Yuhuangshan (‘Jade Emperor Mountain),[76] and Leifeng Ta (‘Storm Peak Pagoda’),[77] and Yuquan (‘Jade Spring’),[78] and Hupaquan (‘Running Tiger Spring),[79] and the tea plantations of Longjing[80] were beautiful, indeed breathtaking, and that something has remained of everything here, like a kind of hint, is beautiful as well; in fact, they could even say that many things have remained and, with the help of a tour guide, contacted through Tang Xiaodu, they are seeking out these many things, although they don’t feel any amazement at all when their guide takes them first to his own secret lookout, in the freezing rain, to the slippery cliffs atop the mountain in Gushan, promising that from there, from above, from that height which he has loved greatly since his childhood, they will see all of Xihu and all of Hangzhou, and it never even occurs to them to ask him where these things are, because from up there nothing but nothing in the entire God-given world can be seen, the lake and the city are enveloped in thick fog while the sky is covered by heavy clouds; their newly found friend is sad, Stein, however, is not, because he is aware that to see Hangzhou would not be possible even in bright sunshine, but he does not try to explain what he is thinking, he just consoles his friend that even like this it is beautiful, and that he is being very kind and what they can see from of the lake is very pretty: the fog, and the clouds above Hangzhou, this is enough, enough just to be here, and to be able to see the former Longjing tea plantations and the little village where the tea planters lived and live even today, just as they realize with joy that they can see the city’s most famous temple or, rather, what has become today of Lingyin Si temple,[81] a soulless place of pilgrimage, victimized by its restoration, because that was the place where. . but chiefly what makes them happy is when their enthusiastic guide takes them to the magical Feilai Feng, the mountain known as the Peak That Flew Hither, he takes them into what is undoubtedly one of the most significant — and hardly known — works of Buddhist sculptural art in the world, and it has an enormous effect upon them, here and now, beneath the earth, standing face to face with them: no one was able to destroy these Buddhas and bodhisattvas and luohans and monks, carved, in their immortal beauty, into the walls of the interconnected watery caves, but — and this is the thing that is really breathtaking — no one was even able to disturb them, maybe these statues carved into the walls of appallingly hard rock could have only been detonated, but no one got around to it, and now it’s too late, now they are protected by the so-called dominant trend of the preservation of national culture as well as by the significant proceeds originating from the armies of tourists flooding this place, in short, here they are, perfect, undamaged, drenched in the water dripping from the ceilings of the caves, and nowhere else, not in any other temple cave, can such terrifying faces be seen, nowhere else can such uncanny suggestive gazes be seen, such an unearthly radiance from the eyes, not in Longmen,[82] not in Datong,[83] nowhere else, just here, beneath the earth, in the depths of the mountain, so that when at twilight their young guide takes them to Gushan to see a friend, Ge Youliang, who, as the owner of the renowned Louwailou pavilions,[84] opens up the magnificent lacquered doors, looking onto the lake, and in his teashop graciously invites them to sit down and offers them a cup of the very best Longjing tea, Stein’s happiness is genuine, because he wasn’t hoping for anything from old Hangzhou, and he didn’t get anything, it was good on that cliff peak, though, he reassures his companion later on, it was good in Longjing, it was good below Feilai Feng and it was good in the tea pavilion on Gushan, and Xihu, says Stein, was beautiful, as its motionless mirror-like surface, from the breath-like touch of the thousands and thousands of raindrops, glittered in the twilight thousands and thousands of times; so that everything is perfectly fine, he reassures the interpreter, and in a few days they set off to meet one of the most outstanding figures of artistic life in Hangzhou, the deputy director of the kunqu theatre, they set off in order to somehow entangle themselves back into reality, back into forfeitous reality, back to where they had been led by their own superfluous interest and their own faulty presumptions, back into disappointment, the disappointment that what they believed to exist, to be alive, is gone, is not alive, back to the feeling — in the embittered words born of human dignity and serenity — that for them here, in this China, with their own great love for the exquisite treasures of this culture, there is nothing, but nothing for them to look at any more.

The theatre is situated among bare, prefabricated housing estates with cracked facades in a remote, hidden street which the local taxi driver can barely find — kunqu theatre? he asks, irritated, twisting the map in his lap; they are almost late because it is so hard for him to find the spot, and finally, after much meandering and an exorbitant fee, he discharges the two foreigners at the requested location. They are in a cul-de-sac, of course if this little stretch of road leading to the front entrance in the middle of a soulless housing estate could even qualify as such, and if a cul-de-sac can be something that leads inward, but behind the ugly concrete building of the theatre some kind of abandoned electric works or transformer essentially closes off the road and does not permit any further passage.

The deputy director of the kunqu theatre is a skinny person of average height, wearing — even today — the uniform of impoverished public servants, a dark-blue suit, shabby, worn through at the elbows and the knees, a crumpled white shirt, a knotted tie; a smouldering cigarette is eternally in his hand. He smiles, and offers tea to his visitors in the rundown office in which there is only a ramshackle table and a few chairs. The walls are grimy, hardly any light comes in; a thick set of bars closes in on a tiny window. They listen closely, but from the outside, from the building, nothing can be heard, from either the floor or the corridors — something, anything, a bit of noise, human speech, a shout, something that would confirm that they are not here alone.

But — they are alone, says the deputy director smilingly. Just at this moment — he clears his throat, embarrassed — there are no rehearsals. Maybe later on there will be some. Maybe? — Stein looks at him questioningly. He just smiles, listens to the introductory words of the interpreter, why they are here, what they are looking for, how they happened to find him, what they wish to accomplish with this conversation, that is, they would like to know if it is possible that — in this era of the final dying gasps of Chinese classical culture — the kunqu theatre, as a forgotten, neglected genre, might have preserved something from this culture precisely because it is forgotten and neglected; perhaps — through its methodology or its special means of conveying tradition — perhaps hidden away, concealed in some minuscule fact — is the whole. . Because an era, says Stein, or if you will, a succession of eras, can eliminate the kunqu theatre from the face of the earth, can annihilate the kunqu texts, can expel or retrain the kunqu actors and musicians, but maybe what it can’t do is to beat the knowledge out of the master’s head, knowledge which — if he can survive the difficult times — he can transmit to his disciples. The deputy director nods, he understands, but he does not say anything for a long time. He pours the tea, and then he pours it again. He is preparing not for a dialogue but for a performance. He clears his throat again, and begins to speak.

lai guoliang. The kunqu is not only the oldest kind of Chinese theatre but is also, next to Greek tragedy and the Sanskrit drama, one of the three most ancient theatrical forms. The Greek and Sanskrit theatres have not existed now for over 2,000 years but the kunqu has, and so it is one of the sources through which the Chinese spirit has been preserved and safeguarded. We refer to it as ancient, and we consider it one of the fundamental forms of archaic theatre, although what we know and practice today is a variation in continuous development from an ancient original, directly created during the Ming era by Wei Liangfu[85] in Kunshan, to the north-east of Suzhou. The connection between the novels of the Ming and Qing eras and kunqu is extraordinarily close. You could even say that the classical Chinese novel came about through kunqu. For example, Mudan Ting (‘The Peony Arbour’)[86] by Tang Xiandu,[87] Chang Sheng Dian (‘The Palace of Eternal Life’)[88] by Hong Sheng[89] or Feng Zheng Wu (‘The Kite’s Mistake’)[90] by Li Yu,[91] well, these famous kunqu plays are all part of classical Chinese culture. We must always approach kunqu through the classical Chinese novel, through classical Chinese literature, because kunqu itself represents the most exquisite classical literature.

They look at his crumpled dark-blue suit, they listen to this skinny individual and they sense a kind of elation behind his words, a kind of mirth for all his seeming broken down. They can see that he would very much like to continue talking, to say more about what he started, but they need to try and bring him back to the concrete question, so they repeat that almost nothing has been able to remain today from all that was classical culture. And yet here is a kunqu theatre. Kunqu was a part of classical erudition. How is it possible that it survived?

lai. I’m not sure that it has! In any event, in terms of the preservation of the genre or, rather, its resurrection, it is precisely this theatre of ours, right here, which always played a very important role. We are the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province. And this place, where you are now sitting, is the director’s office. Well, the deputy director’s, because we have no director right now, just a deputy director, and that’s me. Well, so, you understand now. In 1956, the Zhejiang Provincial Society performed a traditional piece in Beijing, the title of which was Shiwu Guan (‘Fifteen Strings of Copper Coins’).[92] After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, this was a tremendous event from the viewpoint of kunqu — because the entire country took notice of this performance of ours in Beijing. Zhou Enlai[93] convened a special conference to debate the success of this performance. Zhou Enlai! And then an article appeared about it in Renmin Ribao.[94] Our society became the first state Kunqu Company. Honour was restored to kunqu.

Stein senses that the conversation is beginning to meander away from a promising path, so as a way of trying to get back to the subject of the ways of transmission of tradition, he recalls Lai’s words: that kunqu is a very ancient genre. It cannot be taught just like that but must be transmitted in a special way. How does the instruction of kunqu take place?

lai. Kunqu is passed on from generation to generation, as you very correctly noted. In the 50s, the greatest master, Chan Zibei, was still alive. All his students performed in our society. That is why the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province was the most renowned. The performance of Shiwu Guan and the pieces that followed were all filmed. Our activities were very highly valued.

But how did the instruction take place? How did Chan Zibei teach?

lai. In the ancient manner of transmission of tradition. Like artisans, or Chinese doctors. Look at traditional Chinese medicine. How does that work? There are medical prescriptions, or acupuncture. Your head is hurting but the needle is stuck into your leg. How do they know? There is no interconnected theory, as in Western medical science, but the accumulation of experiences which leads to an interconnection of practice. It is not possible to master Chinese medicine at a university. A master is needed, a master who knows. And this master transmits his knowledge to his students through practice, who then become masters and continue in the same way. Kunqu too can only be taught this way. A master is needed. He is the one who shows, rehearses, practices, enacts; and at the beginning, the students do nothing but imitate the master. They don’t ask any questions, they don’t read books, they don’t go to kunqu school, they don’t write papers on the theory of kunqu nor take exams in it, they only watch and imitate. After many years, their individual styles begin to emerge. The modes of performance change, of course: these change with the era, the circumstances of life, peoples’ sensibilities towards the beautiful and with the material at hand. All these changes are reflected in the history of kunqu. In the instruments of its expression. But I must say that kunqu does adhere to tradition very strictly, to the texts of the written plays, to the continuity of characteristics manifest in those works, and if the individual eras have always — as they continue to do — left their stamp upon the genre, there still remains that which never changes and never can change — the kunqu concept of space and time. Western theatrical performance is very highly respected here, but bear this in mind from your perspective. Think of Shakespeare. The action is taking place in a castle, so on the stage a castle is built. And this creates a definite idea of time and space in the mind of the spectator. But this limits the actor — in our tradition. In Chinese theatre, in particular on the kunqu stage, you won’t see any castles. The kunqu actor has to create it by his own means. He uses every instrument, every skill, every movement, every modulation of voice at his command, and the public experiences and understands that the action is, at that moment, taking place in a castle. The actor creates time and space. This is the foundation of kunqu and all Chinese theatre. We call it xuni, ‘empty mimicry’. And kunqu is the only tradition which has preserved this ancient essence. It has preserved the colours of the costumes, the regulation of the movements, the order of the gestures of expression, the symbolism of the face painting. . Let us take face painting. Why did it develop like this? And why did it develop at all? I am not a professor of kunqu, I am just a deputy director at the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province, but I have thought a lot about this while taking care of the theatre’s affairs. I am in charge of the lighting at our performances. And maybe it is precisely because of that — I know something about lighting — that I came to the following conclusion. In the old days, across the many centuries of kunqu, there were no spotlights. There were only flaming torches, and the performances took place by torchlight. The light of the spotlight makes it possible to see the tiniest quiver on the face of an actor. This is not possible by the light of a torch. The tradition of kunqu also took into account that, in our civilization, people always attribute definite meanings to certain colours. Look at red. Red is the colour of honour, of smouldering feelings, of passion. White is the colour of intrigue and unscrupulousness. When the kunqu actor stepped onto the stage, people immediately knew from his make-up that this was a good person, this was an evil person. This was visible by the light of the torch. Now we use spotlights but we remain loyal to our face painting. The spotlight does not change anything of the essence. Nor does it change anything about kunqu. Nor does it alter anything in the meaning of the make-up. If it changed it in any way, then we would still be performing by torchlight. .!

Do you perform exclusively old pieces here?

lai. We perform new pieces too. In a new piece, there is no longer any meaning to the make-up. You know, comrade, the conceptual abilities, aesthetic sensibilities and intellectual capacities of the people today are much more advanced. Because our predecessors lived somewhere among the mountains or in a river valley. And they never left, they never travelled, so they never knew the outside world. Things are no longer like that. People travel. The public is very well acquainted with the outside world, so their faculties of discernment are on a much higher level. So that theatre will also be different, will demand something different now. Only one thing cannot change — kunqu. I understand that theatrical performance has to change with the modern world, because people have changed, but there is one very important thing which I would like to emphasize — kunqu cannot change. It cannot become jingju[95] — the Peking Opera. Kunqu originates from Kunshan, kunqu is Kunshan opera, it cannot be anything else. Because then it will no longer be kunqu. That is my opinion.

Lai fills the cups with tea, nodding, hemming and hawing, then nodding, hemming and hawing again, then he clears his throat and looks deeply into Stein’s eyes.

lai. All of Chinese culture is facing tremendous challenges. I am in charge of this theatre, but I could also say that I am just a lighting technician at the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province. However, I do have an opinion, because I think about these things. And I see that it is not only traditional culture that is endangered. I believe that we do not even know now what kind of role culture can play in people’s lives. We do not know, no one knows. And there is a great need for this problem to be solved.

We here, and maybe you too, in Europe — maybe everywhere in the world — are living through a very difficult time of economic development. And this era of economic development, in my opinion, presents the gravest of problems for national culture. What happened in Japan after the Second World War? Kabuki went through a very sad epoch, as well as noh. Later on, standards of living improved in Japan and the sense of responsibility towards their national culture arose in them. So there is hope that this will happen with us as well. Right now, it is truly difficult. Today, we do not know how to grant status to culture. For kunqu, this is the most difficult of times. You know, Comrade László, I do not say that there is no hope. Culture in Japan has thrived, and now a ticket for a performance of kabuki or noh is very expensive. A kabuki piece can run for weeks and months. That could happen here as well. But we must be aware of one thing — kunqu will never be a theatre for the masses. Kunqu was always for the few, for the erudite. Now, and perhaps never again, can we wish for young people to come flooding into the kunqu theatre. They envisage entertainment as something and someplace else. This is fine, we cannot deny them this. But we can expect one thing from them — not to deny the culture of their ancestors. At least a few of them.

Stein now asks about his personal life. Mr Lai is silent for a long time; he turns his cigarette around in his hand.

lai. I originally did not study to be a kunqu actor. Before 1979, I was a part of the Zhejiang Song and Dance Ensemble. I wanted to be a dancer. I studied dance, and my wife studied kunqu at the provincial art college. And in Zhejiang I was very lucky — at that time, they taught dance according to the traditions of the Russian ballet school. They also placed great emphasis on a complex training, so I had to learn kunqu too. So I learnt traditional singing, traditional music, even anatomy. My wife and I had the same master. How did this work? A person had to observe the master, observe the pieces, then imitate the master until, without any instruction, in the recognition of his own personality and among the givens of his own cultivation, he could somehow, step by step, understand the figure that had to be created. This is the decisive thing — the comprehension of the figure to be portrayed; the rest is theatrical performance and so on. It helps only partially. What that figure — which a person will create across an entire life — will be like depends on many things. First, it depends on his age, his talent, his education, his sensitivity and other accidental factors. And an actor, in kunqu, does not simply play a man. As you perhaps know from jingju, from the Peking Opera, there are differing male roles. For us as well there is the xiaosheng, the young man; there is the laosheng, the old man; there is the man with a painted face, the da hualian; the clown, the xiaochou; as well as the wusheng, the warrior. During basic training it doesn’t matter what kind of role you are playing or will play, you must learn the most important theatrical abilities. You must learn the theatrical steps, the practice of the ‘bent shoulder’, the lowering of the long silk sleeve, the basic modes of singing. Everyone learns these. Then if, let us say, you will be a wusheng, from that point on you will complete the training necessary for that set of roles, or if you will be a xiaosheng, you train for that. So we say that the wusheng follows the wusheng master, and the xiaosheng follows the xiaosheng master. And it is always the given master who decides if you are suitable for this group of roles. He picks out his students.

Should it really be imagined as such, that there is really nothing: Neither book, no description, nor secret handbook, nothing at all, just the master?

lai. The student learns from the master. Naturally, certain pieces have to have their own texts. There are role books as well. And each kunqu drama text contains, of course, dramatic instructions. It looks something like the texts for the noh pieces in Japan. Where, for example, a single book contains the score and the text. In the old days, this was known as the gongchi[96] score.

They have been sitting for more than two hours in this shabby office, listening to this bitter, cheerful person. They make their excuses and, slowly, their farewells, but as Lai leads them out of the office he offers to show them the theatre. He has two rooms at his disposal, which in Europe would serve as a rehearsal room for a studio theatre: at the front is a stage of a few square metres, a spectators’ area also of a few square metres by the entrance, for five rows of chairs, and in between certain empty places, the function of which is unclear. Lai jokingly shows them everything they have, it is not too much, he says, still, there’s plenty of room for the public, he winks at his visitors with his own bitter serenity, then stops before the pictures on the wall in the miserable, half-lit, chilly corridor, points at them and recites the names of each famous kunqu actor, and finally accompanies them to the front door. They do not leave immediately because they would like to know something.

Mr Lai — Stein leans in close to him — would you permit a confidential question? So much has been said about kunqu, but what does kunqu mean to you, personally? He has been truly moved, Stein says, by what he has heard and what he has seen of the theatre but he has also grown rather sad. Mr Lai — Stein gestures, to the outside. There are so many rich people in the city. . You could do so many things to make a lot of money. . You sit here in this office, you take care of the affairs of this poor kunqu theatre, and in the evenings, if there is a performance, you do the lighting. Tell me, why?

lai. I am a kunqu actor. And I am not completely alone. That is, I speak in the name of those with whom I can say that this is the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province. Of course there aren’t too many of us, but all of us work for kunqu. And if I say that I am proud of our culture, proud of classical literature, music, painting and of course theatre, then that is true as well. But I believe there is something else. I love kunqu. I love classical culture. And I love China. So what does it matter if I am poor, that I will never have even a penny to my name?

He shakes the hands of his visitors, closes the door after them, turns around and disappears from sight.

The next day they leave Hangzhou.

5. If Forgotten, It Will Be Saved

In their hands is a slip of paper from their friend Tang Xiaodu, and on it is written the eight things they must see if they are really serious, and so they go there; then there is the page in the unbelievably crappy Lonely Planet guide to China from which nothing at all can be discerned about the place they are preparing to visit; nor have they been able to obtain any serious information, from Yang Lian or from Tang Xiaodu or from anyone else, as if all their distant and less distant advisers implicitly wished to talk them out of this destination, so that when they sift through and examine the scanty materials at their disposal on the highway leading to Shaoxing, they take it for granted that Shaoxing will be exactly like Yangzhou, or exactly like Nanjing or Zhenjiang, because why would it be any different, there will be a few monuments in this or that specific stage of restoration, there will be a few dreadful hotels according to this or that woefully starred standard, there will be 10,000 tourists, and everywhere there will be high entrance fees and cheap junk and the swarming masses of vendors, unavoidable and unbearable, in a word, there will be everything; and so their friends try to persuade them that to come here, to Shaoxing, really isn’t worth it, they should forget it and go somewhere else, anywhere else, just not here, because not only is there nothing here, there never has been anything interesting here — they, however, go there, Shaoxing is nonetheless the subsequent goal of their trip, Stein has absolutely no idea as to why he is insisting on this so much, why he isn’t changing his mind at the last moment, when he could have, in the eastern bus station of Hangzhou, maybe because the sun began to shine? — he really does not know; in any case, there they were in the bus station, standing in line in front of the ticket counter; suddenly the skies, which had been overcast for weeks, cleared up, and the sun came out so quickly it was as if it had been switched on, it began to shine outside, and inside as well, they noticed it while standing in line, because the rays of the sun suddenly burst in, falling obliquely across the glass windows of the bus station, Stein pointed it out to his companion: it was like a bundle of kindling, like a fine, lukewarm rug that spread out before their feet for a couple of minutes, then it withdrew and faded away into the grimy flagstones — in a word, nothing, but nothing else came up which could have influenced his decision, only this sudden sunlight in front of the ticket counter; so he got the ticket on the basis of a feeling, two for Shaoxing, he said, gesticulating, just one way, the interpreter explained from behind him, smiling apologetically when the women at the ticket counter really didn’t want to understand why the European with the big nose who knew how to ask for a ticket refused to answer the question: just one way, or round-trip; yes, just one way, one way, he kept repeating when he understood the question; then they got onto the bus, and set off from the single slum in Hangzhou in a southerly direction, and the route was to Shaoxing, the one-time Shanyin, the definitive name of which was settled upon by Emperor Gaozong[97] — in his happiness, as is rumoured, at the victory he had reaped over the Jurchens: Let the name of this place be Shaoxing, he proclaimed, and the imperial clerks were writing it down with their wondrous brushes onto the wondrous imperial documents, let its name be ‘Resurgent Prosperity’, dictated Gaozong in 1230 ce, and so it became, from then on, the name of the city, to which — for reasons unknown, in the characteristic good cheer of aimless, careless, thoughtless decisions — he became so attached, suddenly, just like the sunshine, explained Stein, but, well — the interpreter asked — What do you want so much in Shaoxing? and Stein just pointed outside, through the bus window, at the sun that was shining, and spoke not a single word, like someone who knew something; he did not, however, know anything, he just kept smiling, and enjoying the warm sunshine after the torturous weeks of cold and dark, enjoying the fact that the sun was shining at all, and warming him up, as he said happily when they arrived and asked enthusiastically, Can you feel it? he asked his companion who also was growing ever-more cheerful, can you feel the warmth? — and, really, it has grown warm, so that when, having picked out a hotel and settled down, they quickly start off towards the city, to Jiefang Bei Lu, they slowly begin to take off the outer items of clothing, at first the raincoats which no longer make any sense, for the pure sky was shining above, then the sneakers, intended for mountain climbing and against the cold, which they have been wearing for the past few weeks, since their arrival in Nanjing and the exasperating experience of the unusual May conditions, so that when they reach the first significant structure near the city centre, both are wearing T-shirts, and to their greatest surprise, as far as the residents of Shaoxing go, all of them are dressed just as lightly, as if it were May; they look around happily, as if it were really finally May here, to the south, quite a distance below the Yangtze. That certain first significant structure is hardly 200 or 300 metres from that point where they had just turned out onto the main street, having left their fairly shabby hotel, and it is not merely significant, but they are at a loss for words, they are struck down, as they find the Dashan pagoda[98] — for this is what they see — in a state of perfection, the seven graceful storeys built from brick still standing, have been standing since 1004 ce; they gape at the walls, originally painted white but, of course, due to the city buses continually passing its perimeter — ornamented at a later date — now nearly completely blackened: it stands, they stretch their necks upward, it stands, in the most beneficial neglect, which means that the Dashan is quite simply a part of life here; this will be immediately clear to them: it is not partitioned off, it is not promulgated, it is not cordoned off, there is no ticket booth out in front, and this is betrayed by the fact that, in addition to the bus routes passing right by, the local youth — possibly coming here from the outskirts of the city — have scribbled all over the inner walls, and that these youths, judging by this, possibly spend their evenings here as well, perhaps stroll around here on those evenings or those days, because there is no fence nor is there a doorway on the ground floor, only four openings in the octagonal ground plan where the entrances would be, so one can go in and out freely, everyone, including the local youths from the outskirts of the city, who, without the slightest idea of what they are doing, have scribbled all over the walls — until someone will dare to say out loud, beneath these dense scrawls, what has been carved into the plaster: namely, that the Dashan pagoda has remained a part of everyday life, and, looking at the walls, that this everyday life is full of all kinds of dangers, it has remained a part of this life, they determine, and it withstands those words on its walls just as it withstands the grime of the filthy exhaust fumes from the immediate area, it withstands the fact that anyone can go inside and anyone can roar past at full speed, just as it has withstood, for the past thousand years, how the outer precincts — with its crude emissaries and its grimy and stinking buses — have permeated within and rumbled alongside it, for a thousand years. They go on, and over the next few days they visit everything listed on the piece of paper pressed into their hands at the eastern bus station of Hangzhou when they said goodbye to the friend of Tang Xiaodu: they go to the house where Lu Xun, the great reformer, was born, then to where Lu Xun later lived, and finally to the private school where Lu Xun finished his grade school studies at the end of the Imperial era; they visit the atelier of Xu Wei,[99] the Ming-era painter, they take the No. 3 bus to the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi,[100] they look at the imperial tomb of the Yue Kingdom,[101] recently excavated and to this day the only proof of its existence, then they take the No. 2 bus and look at the presumed burial place of King Yu,[102] the legendary water conservationist, they go up to the roof of the Song-era Yingtian pagoda[103] in the city centre, they stroll through the living alleyways of the city densely interwoven with canals, they examine everything, they look at everything, they go to all the places on the list, and then they lie down in their beds in the hotel at the end of one day or another because, although they are dead tired, they cannot sleep, for they simply cannot believe on the first, on the second or on the following days — although, it is obvious from the very first instant — that Shaoxing has been forgotten, that Shaoxing has been left out of the Great Modern Revival, it has been decided that Shaoxing is not needed — that Shaoxing is intact, that Shaoxing has remained: a very poor, an enchanting, a left-behind, peaceful and modest stratum from the past, sunken into quiet provinciality, Shaoxing has remained, even if it is difficult to determine — as they try every evening in the hotel room — exactly which stratum of the past it is; because when they were outside by Chi Brook, in the valley of Kuaiji Mountain,[104] south-west of the city, where they spent a half day in the shrubbery garden of the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi, the greatest calligrapher of all times, giving themselves over to the nearly natural tranquillity of the unforgettable beauty preserved on the steles commemorating the mountain, the brook and a former poetry competition of world renown,[105] they felt that Shaoxing irrevocably belonged to the fourth century. But on the following day, when they again visited the buildings associated with Lu Xun, and were enchanted by that noble simplicity of Chinese tradition created by the internal order — maintained until the great downfall — of the noble houses in the provincial small towns south of the Yangtze, then they said, no, Shaoxing was the seat of China before its downfall. And it was like that afterward too — if they were in the tiny studio of Xu Wei, with its delightful garden, then they felt that everything had come to a standstill in the Ming dynasty; if every afternoon, as it faded into evening, they walked, until they were exhausted, along the alleyways lurking alongside the narrow little canals, if, on these narrow streets, they mixed in with the thronging multitudes, if during these strolls their hearts stopped at one or another sight, so that they were not able to move on in the crowd for minutes — for example, they could not bear to stop looking at an old man who came out of the door of his wretched little house in his underwear and T-shirt, carrying a wash basin filled with water, because he did not wish to splash around inside, or because inside it would have been too small for splashing around, he began his evening wash, amid the people thronging here and there, and thoroughly, from head to toe, as if he were outside completely alone: that day they had to say that that man with his wash basin had come from the Qing dynasty, and when he finished, he dried himself off with the towel and went back inside — and it was always like that, that is how things were in Shaoxing, because everywhere they went something perpetually occurred that stopped them in their tracks: another time they watched, amid a group of old people, near the mausoleum of King Yu, a performance of an itinerant opera society; they came upon it completely by chance; afterward, these old people from the neighbourhood — as the last aria died away, and the actors began to disassemble the stage — they quickly picked up their chairs, put them on their backs and, bent a little under their weight but with, what was, for Stein and the interpreter, unforgettable tranquillity, they began to trudge home in the twilight; yet another time they observed the smaller landing piers of the narrow, oblong-shaped water vessels, half-canopied and covered with tar — originally used for transporting cargo, they somehow seemed more like transporters of souls, and so they referred to them as ‘death gondolas’, and they realized that the sculler lads were looking at them as if they were not used to foreigners, that is, every single day, every single hour they experienced something that brought them joy, the profound recognition of which could be formulated by saying that Shaoxing lives but its life is not connected to the year of the second millennium, not even to the twentieth century, but to the China of old in which, from King Yu until the late Qing dynasty, somehow everything is there simultaneously — and in wholeness, the interpreter says, now having decided to put off their departure, to remain one more day, they set off into the city, but now they do not want to see anything new, only the grave of King Yu and the Orchid Pavilion and the Dashan and the houses of Lu Xun and the scullers and the atelier of Xu Wei again and again, they do not want anything new now, only the old, the things they know already, they traverse the same little streets over and over again, and then one day they are struck by the feeling that they have begun to step in those same places as if they were at home, they nearly begin to turn a corner without looking, as if they do not need to think what is there where they are going — and then Stein says to the interpreter: Time to go, they must pack up, they leave, finally depart, take their backpacks and disappear, but never, never should they speak of this place to anyone, nor should they be silent about it too conspicuously, but they must faultlessly conceal the fact, they must perfectly dissimulate, so that no one will ever realize — that Shaoxing exists.

6. Redemption Omitted

Standing amid the natural beauty of Tiantai Mountain[106] is the Guoqing Si monastery,[107] founded during the Sui dynasty; it takes its name from the mountain and belongs to the Tiantai school as well. The Tiantai school was established by an extraordinary individual, a monk by the name of Zhiyi,[108] who — with the help of a particular doctrine, according to which everything in the world is of equal significance, and this equal significance is comprised of minuscule elements all containing the Buddha — recommended an unusual solution to the problem of Chinese Buddhism, already in profound crisis at the time of the early Sui dynasty: how to trace the confusing multiplicity of the remaining texts, often diametrically opposed in meaning, back to the Buddha’s actual words. Zhiyi regarded the sacred writings of the Hinayana[109] and Mahayana[110] as connected to various epochs of the Buddha’s life and expressing various stages of his teachings. Hence he put all the sacred writings translated into Chinese at that point into chronological order and, connecting them to concrete points in the life of the Buddha, ultimately laid particular stress on one, the Lotus Sutra, as the sutra most deeply expressive of the Buddha’s thoughts. So it was Zhiyi who was the first to attempt to standardize the scattered variations of Buddhism; in the meantime, he tried to make peace among the different contending schools of thought, as if the question weighed heavily upon him as to whether there could ever be a way to have some presentiment of what the Buddha might have said and thought — in reality. For very many, this remains an insoluble problem: the Buddha’s words were put into writing only several centuries after they were heard. Coming close to that place, where Zhiyi lived, and aware that the founder of the distant fraternal sect, Saicho,[111] who established the Tendai[112] school in Japan, lived here in the ninth century so as to study the spirit and the teachings of Zhiyi, László Stein and his interpreter arrive at this mountain in the hope that chance will lead them to a monk in the monastery with whom they can clear up the question.

So stepping into the inner courtyard of the Guoqing Si, they do not hesitate for long. They address the first young monk they see, and without hesitation ask him if he would have the time and the disposition to talk to them. He gestures for them to wait and then goes off somewhere. Not long afterward he returns, motioning for them to follow. Fate has not made it possible for him to be able to converse with them. Fate has led them to one of the directors of the monastery, Abbot Pinghui. They end up in an office crammed with people coming and going, where Stein is seated in an easy chair and the interpreter in a plain wooden one next to him, slightly to the back. A cell phone is constantly ringing; someone picks it up, perhaps a secretary, says something quickly, then puts it down. But it rings again. And it rings almost constantly as they sit there in the armchair and the wooden chair, it rings eternally while they hope that Stein will be able to get a sympathetic response from the person who is slowly lowering himself into an armchair, padded with heavy blankets, across him.

A middle-aged, serious, severe and, as it quickly emerges, busy person sits across him wearing the orange robes of a monk and enormous metal-framed glasses. His glance is penetrating. During the introductions, which the interpreter transmits in a rather moved state, he does not cease gazing at Stein. Nor does Stein cease gazing at him.

Stein begins by saying that the reason he has made this long journey to Guoqing Si is not because of some kind of poetic task, as one could think due to his occupation. He does not wish to write any kind of poetry here: it is not poetry at all that he is engaged with but altogether another question, a question which is for so many the most troubling or the most tormenting, and to which he hopes to obtain an answer from the abbot.

Once again the din strikes up in the room, the telephone rings, someone runs out, someone else runs in. Stein stops speaking, the interpreter looks at him, confused, what should he translate, but Stein cannot continue, because as he looks into this pair of eyes in the midst of this chaos, he suddenly understands that he has either come at the wrong time or that he will always come at the wrong time, so he must put an end to it now, even before he begins, because these two eyes, the gaze of the abbot of Guoqing Si, in spite of all the implacability of this being, is, in reality, impatient. Stein wants to stand up, wishing only to say that even to have met the abbot is a tremendous experience and, as he sees that he is busy, he will ask him another time. Perhaps he will come back later, on another occasion.

But the abbot, with a gesture that brooks no dissent, motions to the interpreter.

pinghui. Absolutely not. I am listening.

Stein is now completely certain that they must leave. He thanks him very much, he says, but asks the abbot to tell him if he does not have time for a more tranquil discussion. .

pinghui. No, just say it. Say it.

Stein remains seated, trying to find the right words, if after all there might be some hope of a discussion. He starts with numerous courteous formulae, and relates to the abbot, as is necessary on each occasion, by way of introduction, who he is, what he wants, what he is looking for here and what he has not found. He has attempted to seek out every remaining Buddhist temple and monastery. And he is appalled by what is going on so often in these temples and monasteries. Everything reeks of money. High entrance fees are collected — entrance fees! At the gates, impossible things are for sale, fake rubbish, the basest religious kitsch, the faithful are made to throw money into the collection box, and in the evening they spill it out and count it up nicely and accurately, they count up the takings. .! And these are not simple vendors but monks. .! Venerable abbot, László Stein involuntarily lowers his head, this is so sad.

pinghui. Zhiyi was the founding father of the creation of our temple. After he died in 597, his body was buried here. That is why the centre of our faith is here.

Stein looks at the interpreter: What is going on here? — but the interpreter indicates that he is translating exactly what the abbot is saying. Stein tries to interrupt but the abbot does not let the interpreter get a word in; clearly, he views all interruptions as impossible.

pinghui. Zhiyi lived here, and there is a sutra, the Lianhua Jing or the Lotus Sutra which he studied with extraordinary profundity, and it was upon this sutra that he established everything that. .

A cell phone rings again. Abbot Pinghui stops speaking, looks at the secretary, nods once, and the secretary hands him the phone.

pinghui. Hello. Yes, that’s fine. . No problem. If they come, we can talk.

He gives the phone back to the secretary who ends the call. Stein does not continue, and the abbot does not expect him to. He looks at him penetratingly, like someone trying to find his way back to his train of thought, then he pushes the glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

pinghui. Yes. The Guoqing Si, namely, the monastery of the Tiantai school, was built after the death of Zhiyi.

Stein raises his voice just perceptibly and says that perhaps there is a misunderstanding, perhaps due to the difficulties of translation, he does not know, but his question refers to something completely different — he wants to talk about how the meeting with the figure of Saicho and the Japanese Tendai school led Zhiyi to the idea of seeking out the place where it all began, and with the abbot’s permission. .

The abbot does not permit. He motions to the interpreter not to speak.

pinghui. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. Not only Japanese but also Korean monks arrived here. Even during the Sui dynasty, there were Korean monks studying here. During the Tang era, Jianzhen, who had turned up here, first brought the news of our religion to Japan. Jianzhen studied here. His teacher was Hanyin. We venerate Hanyin as the most significant figure of the third generation to follow Zhiyi. Hanyin’s teacher was Master Zhan’en. Well, Jianzhen had acquainted all his monk companions with the numerous sutras he collected before he reached Japan. As a result, the Japanese monks began their pilgrimage. The most important event occurred in 803, when Saicho arrived and began studying. Later, he founded the Tiantai school in Japan. Saicho spent about 11 years here. But Kobo Daishi, another great Japanese Buddhist, the founder of the Shingon school, also turned up here. During the entire Tang era, innumerable Japanese monks came to us, at least two-thirds of all the Japanese monks. This indicates the significance of the Tiantai monastery in Japanese Buddhism.

Stein gives up and, deferring to the abbot, tries to proceed in the direction he is offering. He — lowering his head again — is very preoccupied with the figure of Zhiyi. In Zhiyi, he esteems that singular figure, the very first to confront the question of what we can accept as belonging to the Buddha’s original teachings. . The abbot, as soon as he hears this, immediately cuts short the interpreter.

pinghui. This comprises exactly the most important sutras of our school. Apart from the aforementioned Lotus Sutra, we should include the Daban Niepan Jing,[113] the Dazhidu Lun[114] and the Zhongguan Lun.[115] Zhiyi was the first to collect the essential sutras, and then later, in his footsteps, the great figures of the Tiantai school created the Sandabu or The Three Major Commentaries and the Wuxiaobu or The Five Minor Texts. The first part of the Sandabu is the most important for us.

There is something else which I must say to you. And I will say it now. In the beginning, there were greater differences of opinion between the northern and the southern Buddhists, theological differences of opinion. The northern Buddhists emphasized continual, persistently practised immersion, the unbroken meditation of ever-deeper concentration, the conviction that this lasting immersion, this persistent meditation would one day bring forth its own fruit, and that the monk, at the end of a long continuum, would reach nirvana. In contrast, the southern Buddhists believed they had found their leading principle exclusively in the sudden experience of the essential: they thought that nirvana could only be reached in an unexpected, irrational moment, one that cannot be prepared for. This is the significance of Master Zhiyi — he formulated the essence of this differentiation and combined the two schools. (The abbot writes on a piece of paper) The teachings of the southern Buddhists, who emphasize only sudden experience, is called chan ding,[116] whereas the tendency of the northern Buddhists is called zhi hui.[117] As you can see, each of these concepts is made up of two expressions. Master Zhi En used one character from each, thus expressing that the essence of unity is the equality of access of both the theoretical and the practical. He called this ding hui.[118] And this is how he wrote it. .

He encircles, from each of the two words, the characters for ding and hui, then draws an arrow pointing downward and writes the new word: ding hui.

At that point, however, from the other side of the office, on a desk piled high with papers, a cell phone begins to ring: with a long drawn-out jingling, it shouts to be picked up. Finally the young secretary-like monk picks it up, then, putting it down, says something to the abbot who motions to him to bring it over.

pinghui. Hello?. . Yes. . 16 pieces. . good. . How many?! OK, fine. So, Thursday?

He gives back the cell phone. He looks at Stein, scrutinizing him at length again, and suddenly continues his thoughts.

pinghui. Zhiyi was an extraordinarily important person. Since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, there were innumerable tendencies operating in the name of Buddhism, and order had to be created among them. We can regard the activities of Zhiyi as that turning point after which it was possible to attempt to find unity among the variations. He was the one who indicated the path towards the determinations of the wuji bajiao.[119] Whoever, after Zhiyi, perceived and taught Buddhism within the unity of this guidance was able to easily find his own way and method.

The great problem is — Stein tries to direct the abbot closer to his own question — what is the so-called correct approach to the teachings of the Buddha. .

pinghui. Master Zhiyi summarized the remaining utterances of the teachings of the Buddha and classified them into five time periods and eight stages. The Buddha taught for 49 years. His teachings are immeasurably deep, so that if someone studies this through the system summarized by Zhiyi, he has a chance at reaching the correct approach. That is why we consider Master Zhiyi to be so great.

But how did Master Zhiyi arrive at the thought that there was a contradiction — to put it delicately — between the original teachings of the Buddha and the confusing variegation of Buddhist literature?

pinghui. There is no contradiction. At the very beginning, the Tiantai school came into being. Later on, only the Chan school was in operation. If, however, we look at the teachings of the Tiantai after this development, then we can state that the Tiantai also employs the knowledge of Chan. We must hold Chan in great esteem, because the Chan teachings were directly contained in the original teachings of the Buddha. The situation of today is such that, according to the teachings practised by the Tiantai, Chan and the theoretical basis are mutually complementary. The Chan sect does not respect this, and acknowledges only the experience of Chan. According to their school, it is not necessary to write down anything, the sutras have no significance. Chan has not left behind any writing.

There is no point to the conversation. Various people rush about the office, the cacophony is great. All the while, however, the abbot doesn’t move, as if awaiting further questions — Stein must decide where to go from here. It occurs to him that well, they could talk about what daily life was like in this renowned monastery. Venerable Abbot, he asks, Zhiyi lived here. The monastery was built only after his death. So where did he live? In a cave? Was there some kind of building here already during the life of Zhiyi, which then became the foundation of the monastery? And in general: What was Zhiyi’s life like? Moreover, if it is possible to ask: How did he spend his days?

But there is no hope that this cleric of great authority will ever give a reply to anything he is asked, and it occurs to Stein that there might be some difficulty with the translation, or some misunderstanding due to the dialect. The interpreter signals that he should not worry — whatever the abbot says is being faithfully translated.

pinghui. We wake up at three-thirty. This is followed by prayers in the temple until five-thirty. Then there is breakfast, then each monk attends to his own tasks: some read sutras, some meditate, some look after the affairs of the monastery, some take care of the hall. Lunch is at ten-thirty. From one o’clock to four-thirty the same schedule is followed. Evening prayers begin at five-fifteen. After that there is reading of sutras, meditation, each according to his own preference. In the monastery we also maintain a Buddhist school where, for the most part, we teach the Tiantai doctrines as well as general Buddhist theory.

Stein attempts a kind of forced joking phrase, and interrupts, asking: So do they go to sleep today at the same time as in the time of Zhiyi? The joke elicits a very pale response, because the abbot smiles for a moment but then — as if the smile had been cut in two — that mercilessly administrative severity returns to his gaze.

pinghui. Generally, after seven. . Ah, no, excuse me that’s wrong, around eight-thirty or nine. .

Stein is thinking: What would happen if he would just overlook everything? If he would just ignore the fact that the abbot visibly does not want to talk about why they have sought him out. He speaks to the interpreter softly: Tell the abbot that he, Stein, is not interested in any of this. But ask him, and don’t let him not reply — would he take into consideration what is troubling Stein, what is oppressing him, what is making him feel that he is ruined — would the abbot listen to him then? Would he help him to solve this? Would he help him to find an answer? Would he let him into the monastery? Would he take him in here among the young monks? Is there a possibility of this? How does someone join the order here? How does it work?

pinghui. It’s possible.

Stein has no idea why he got an answer to his question this time. Emboldened, he continues, and asks: How does this work? What are the conditions? Can anyone come? He, Stein, could also stand in front of the gates, wait for three days, get drenched in the rain, not eat, then on the third day the gates will open, they will let him in, and. .

Pinghui raises his hand, silencing the interpreter.

pinghui. To begin with, there are three strict requirements: the applicant must be a believer, he cannot be involved in a court case, and we demand permission from the parents. If all this is in order, then there is a trial period of six months. We say that he can be a monk here whose ‘eyes and nose. . are in their place’.

And then, if these conditions are met and the six months are up?

pinghui. After six months we have a look, to see if all the conditions have been met — if so, we cut the novice’s hair. Then comes the shoujie,[120] then the phase of biqiu[121] for the men and biqiuni[122] for the women.

Stein is completely emboldened, because suddenly it’s as if they were really talking about something. Spurred on by a sudden idea, he says to the abbot that he has met with so many people in China, and he has always observed the forms of courtesy demanded by this country. Here, however, in this Buddhist temple, he does not consider this to be requisite. May he count on the understanding of the abbot? And may he say why he has come?

The face of Pinghui does not flinch for a second. He listens to the words of the interpreter without interrupting. He is thinking.

pinghui. Moments of prayer, when the believer stands in front of the Buddha with a pure soul, are extraordinarily important occasions. We have our festivals. For example, we commemorate the birth and death of Master Zhiyi, and every three years we have the Jiangjing festival lasting several days. Then, on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, there is the Yulan fenghui[123]. .

They have fallen back to that place where they keep falling: Stein is unexpectedly seized by an embittered audacity. He doesn’t know what has suddenly come over him but, waiting after each sentence for the interpreter to render his words into Chinese, he takes no notice of what the abbot has just said and tells him what he thinks: that since he has arrived at this monastery, there has been deep sorrow in his heart. The interpreter stares at Stein. He tells the interpreter, if he can, to translate word for word. He has been full of pain, he continues, because what is important to him, the spirit of Chinese classical culture, its beauty, its strength, has disappeared — it disappeared a long time ago. Because for years he deluded himself that there was a point to his own research here, in modern China, and that he didn’t want to acknowledge how ridiculous it was, how truly pathetic.

The question never really gets to Pinghui, at least not in the form of words, because he’s already waving down the interpreter, this time clearly in great impatience when he gets to the part of Stein’s statement which deals with classical culture. Stein is convinced that the abbot knows full well, in fact knows with dead certainty what he is saying; moreover, that he knows, even without words, what Stein wants.

pinghui. In my opinion, classical culture has not vanished at all. Once again, you can see the buildings, paintings and calligraphy, all from the classical tradition and now restored — from that I draw the conclusion that this culture is still alive. There are the traditional ceremonies as well. These too have remained, even if in a somewhat different form. In the Japanese tea ceremony, the outward forms are the most important. For the Koreans, the taste of the tea is essential as well as the ceremony. In Chinese culture, tea drinking as a tradition has remained but without the formalities. So I would express it by saying that there is no ceremony, no formalities, but there is the inner content, there is prayer.

Venerable Abbot, Stein raises his voice — the clamour in the room abates for an instant — he, Stein, cannot believe what he is hearing! Does he really think that the feelings of the monks of recent times, this inner content, more important than anything else, has remained unharmed? Does he really think that the souls of the ones who live here now are the same as they were in the days of old? His, Stein’s, opinion is radically different. He thinks, says Stein — with clearly unforgivable discourtesy, he leans closer to the abbot — it’s not that these monks of today with their cell phones and their businesses aren’t like the monks from the Sui dynasty. Simply put, their hearts are not the same.

Pinghui doesn’t budge an inch, he doesn’t even adjust his eyeglasses which have slid down his nose a bit.

pinghui. There is an expression, suiyuan, which means something like ‘according to predestination’, ‘according to fate’. During the Sui dynasty, Buddhists lived according to the suiyuan of their time. Today they live according to the suiyuan of our time. The form is different but the essence is unchanged.

So why is it — Stein spreads his hands apart helplessly — that his impressions are so different? Is it because he is European? But, well, Venerable Abbot, he says, lowering his voice this time, everything that occurs in the name of rebuilding the temples, everything that Stein has spoken of so far — the chase after money, even allowing money into the inner world of the monasteries at all, the deluge of tourists and the tourist industry based on that deluge, fully integrated into temple life, all this. .

Pinghui cuts off his monologue.

pinghui. The monks study the same things today, the ding hui and the wuji bajiao. In the modern world, Taoism operates in a similar fashion. We use different words than the Taoists but we are searching for the same thing. That has not changed.

Stein leans back in the easy chair. He has seen the cities, he has walked along the streets, and here is a world which unfortunately he knows all too well. The supermarkets, the mega shopping centres — on the one hand, the fever to buy, and, on the other, the fever to sell, the desire to possess things, the empty rhythms in the temples. Venerable Abbot, he says to him confidentially, as if there were some kind of basis for this confidentiality — he, Stein sees the opposite of what the abbot has just said, that formally everything does proceed in the same way before the altars of the temples, but the inner essence has completely been lost. .

The abbot adjusts his eyeglasses.

pinghui. In the schools, the study of classical culture is accorded an ever-greater role. Here, for example, in the Buddhist schools, we teach the classical Chinese language and the culture of the pre-Qing dynasty. The culture of the Song and Tang dynasties. Here, for example, we teach Lunyu,[124] Yijing,[125] Zhuangzi,[126] Mengzi[127] and Laozi.[128]

Stein says that this is indeed very praiseworthy, but what kind of effect does it have on what goes on in the monastery courtyards? And on the soul of a monk?

pinghui. The goal of classical culture — and within it, Buddhism — is to help people avoid the three evils. These three evils are in a person, and they remain, no matter how much development there is. Only with the help of tradition can we vanquish them.

Venerable Abbot — Stein lowers his voice, and leans towards him across the table as much as he can — he sees that there is a serious obstacle to their discussion. He knows he should get up, he knows it is time to go but he tries one last time, so he says: Yes, he will try one more time, one last time, to say why fate brought him here. . A long time ago, many years ago, he was drawn more and more to everything the historical Buddha could have uttered. This unequalled perspective became ever-more important to him from one year to the next. He would have liked to have studied it, he says to the abbot, almost whispering now, to get closer to it, to turn over the pages of the Tripitaka,[129] but he began to ask people about it and he never got closer to the original thoughts of the Buddha but to the original teachings of Buddhism. And here, he felt was a dramatic tension. As is well known, the Buddha never wrote down his teachings. Despite all the refined, and unparalleled, techniques of oral transmission, what emerged later on were actually translations — into Pali and Sanskrit, respectively, later on into Chinese and Tibetan, then into Korean and finally into Japanese. The question concerns him very deeply — he looks at the abbot with those two sincere eyes — and he asks for help: Where can someone find the right approach to lead him to the Buddha’s original train of thought?

pinghui. It’s true that the Buddha never wrote down his teachings but after his death, at the time of the First Council, his most loyal disciple, Ananda,[130] faithfully quoted the words of the Buddha at the council’s request. The council asked Ananda to say them again, word by word. And then they were noted down, and from that came the Buddhist canon. This cannot be doubted.

In Stein, however, the doubts are huge. As far as he knows, the story about Ananda’s words being written down is of far later vintage than the period immediately following Buddha’s death; and the Buddha’s words were not written down for the first time then, actually not until the first century before the Common Era. And it wasn’t in Magadhi, the language in which these words had sounded from the Buddha’s mouth, but a translation, into Pali and Sanskrit. It is unimaginable that everything that the Buddha said would not have been damaged, perhaps fundamentally! If one thinks of Mahayana Buddhism, Stein explains, innumerable elements differ radically from the material registered in the Tripitaka—which Stein particularly reveres as well.

Pinghui leans back wearily. The words of his visitor have clearly had no effect on him. They have no effect at present, nor will they in the future, Stein realizes, when the abbot begins to speak.

pinghui. Everything that has been put into writing in the canon, from the first words to the last, is as uttered by the Buddha. Both the Hinayana and the Mahayana schools go back to the original statements of the Buddha. It is like that.

Venerable Abbot, Stein points out to him despondently, the most important sutra of the Tiantai school, the Lotus Sutra, was not uttered by the Buddha, this is a Buddhist work from later, centuries later. .

pinghui. Yes, but what it contains, its spirit — that is the original.

It is now patently obvious to everyone in the room that this European has transgressed every last rule of courtesy and is engaging in something everyone knows to be proscribed. He — the European — considers, however, that he should keep on and that he should disagree with what the abbot is saying. The Buddhist literature is very rich, he does not deny this for a moment. But it is completely clear, that these teachings — with the formation as Shakyamuni as a deity, the appearance of other buddhas,[131] the permission of the depiction of the figure of the Buddha, originally forbidden, with the introduction of prayer and so on — are very distant from what the Buddha could have thought and said.

The abbot is now at his most severe.

pinghui. The original teachings of the Buddha are in the Agama Sutra. The four Agama Sutras.[132] And in the Lotus Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra as well as in the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra[133]. .

On the desk near the window an old telephone rings. It jingles, then stops for a moment, then rings again, but no one picks it up. Stein doesn’t speak, the abbot doesn’t speak, the interpreter is in the grip of the most profound embarrassment. Then the cell phone begins to ring and, while no one is interested in the telephone on the desk — even though there are four or five people in the office — the secretary wordlessly hands the cell phone to the abbot.

pinghui. Yes. Thank you, thank you. . No! Absolutely not—16 will be enough. . Thank you. . I said Thursday. Goodbye.

They are standing up in the office, Stein is helping the interpreter with his heavy backpack, and then his companion helps him with his. There they stand, two heavy, unhappy backpacks in the doorway. And at last the abbot finishes his phone call.

Venerable Abbot — Stein bows to him — he and his interpreter will not take up any more of his precious time. Would he kindly allow them to express their thanks for having received them? Now they are departing, as they have not yet seen the temple. There are leaving, he says to the abbot and they shall seek further.

Pinghui is not surprised by their departure. He seems somewhat relieved. He nods with cold ceremony.

pinghui. Take your time. Just go ahead and seek.

They walk around the monastery.

The bus which will take them down from the mountain leaves every hour.

They board the very next one, and leave Tiantai.

7. The Invisible Library

There, where River Fenghua converges with River Yao, and flows towards the nearby ocean under the name of River Yong, there is a city of approximately 6 million souls, renowned for its industry, and its harbour which in former times played a highly significant role in China’s relations with Japan. All Stein’s friends, left behind in Beijing, don’t understand why Stein wants to go there, there is really no point, they admonish him, even Tang Xiaodu, who directs their every move with his own mysterious and benevolent attention, has nothing to say when they tell him that their next stop will be Ningbo, they don’t get a response to their email, even if here, as nearly everywhere else, someone is waiting for them: a friend from Tang Xiaodu’s wide circle of acquaintances, a dear woman writer named Rong Rong and her friend Jiang Yuqing — who makes them think of a half-asleep, clumsy and awkward little owl — who both immediately take them, after their arrival, to a Ningbo radically different from what they were expecting, because they are taken to the magnificent temple A Yu Wang Si[134] (originally named after the great Indian Buddhist ruler Ashoka), into the age of the Sui dynasty, where a piece of the Buddha’s skull is preserved; because they are taken to the greatest and the most captivating Chan Buddhist temple, into the fourth century, towards the Tiantong Chan Si,[135] at the foot of Taipei Mountain[136] — and in the meantime they are fed with an unbelievable amount of genuine southern Chinese food, lunches and evening meals follow one another, the guests, in the surging and eminently congenial company of writers and poets, are giddy with happiness, in a convivial and alluring rusticity, far away from everything that is the world, far away from everything that they want to be far away from.

The greatest surprise of all is held in reserve for the very last moment, a surprise with which they are truly dazzled, even if from this dazzled state they must awaken to bitter sadness. On the day of their departure, the two Europeans are taken to Tianyi Ge, the renowned Ming-era private library, and things are arranged so that the director himself — a thin, tall, serious, learned young man — receives them. Gong Liefei leads the visitors through a gate, turns here and there with them, opens doors before them, then closes doors after them until, at last, they find themselves in a wondrous Ming-era reception hall, among wonderful curved furniture and beauteous paintings. The director has Stein sit in one of the places of honour in the middle of the hall, he sits on the other side while the interpreter and Rong Rong, who is accompanying them, sit off to the side. Stein cannot speak for a few minutes, so surprised is he by all this pomp, so unbelievable is it, that here, in the middle of nowhere, this exists, and he gazes, moved at the person who sits next to him, clearing his throat and waiting for him to ask the first question.

Stein begins by saying: Before one arrives in Ningbo, one gets the sense that even birds don’t fly here. His Chinese friends kept asking him why he was going to Ningbo. There’s no culture there at all, only wealth, trade, industry and a harbour. What he, Stein, is looking for, never even got there. It’s the real South, there isn’t anything there — end of story — and there never was. And then all around this city, Stein continues enthusiastically, fantastic monuments, temples! Now, however, he says, inclining his head upward, here he sits in a gigantic museum, namely, the most particular of museums, because this is the museum of books, as he hears and has read: the oldest private library in China. How did this garden, comprised of wondrous buildings, end up here? How did a private library end up here at all?

In the director is something of the schoolboy who has prepared his homework well. Breathing in deeply like a pupil, he starts the lesson, recited so many times before, with self-assurance.

gong. As you are aware, this is China’s oldest private library. It was built in the Jiajing[137] years of the Ming era. It was created by a government official from Ningbo, the deputy minister of defence. When he was 50, he returned to the region of his birth and he founded this private library. At the time of his death, there were 70,000 volumes here. These are comprised of two main collections. One contains the so-called local historical records — the historical chronicles pertaining to individual locales during the Ming and previous eras. The other is comprised of the archive of examinations. In imperial China, the examinees strived to reach the rank of jinshi[138]—‘presented scholar’—and whoever gained this rank could become an official. This is known as ‘distinction through examination’. And all the successful examination materials, the examination papers were archived. Thirty-five per cent of the Ming-era local historical chronicles are preserved in our library. As for the archive of examinations, 90 per cent of all the collections are located here. Among them are very many unique specimens, which means that there is only one in the entire world.

Here, in Ningbo?

gong. Yes, here, in Ningbo. Due to this enormous value, we here at Tianyi Ge enjoy institutional cultural protection of higher significance, as proclaimed by the state. In all Asia, we are first among the private libraries.

Stein politely makes enquiries as to when exactly the library was founded.

gong. Our archive is 440 years old, and from its founding has operated continually, without interruption. Of course, the Tianyi Ge of today is larger than it was then — even considering that of the 638 volumes lent to the Qianlong[139] Siku Quanshu, only a mere fraction, despite the court’s promises, were returned to us, and thanks to the horrendous chaos and devastation which the Tianyi Ge, along with China, had to withstand during the catastrophic nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the beginning of the 1950s, only 13,000 of the original 70,000 items remained. A remarkably fruitful collection effort has been underway since that time, however, and, thanks to local benefactors, we now have more than 300,000 volumes worth of material. Each a classical, original work, not a contemporary reprint but a woodblock print, bound in traditional Chinese fashion, fabricated from paper, printed without punctuation.

Stein is curious about how the library has been able to remain in existence. So many wars, fires, historical or family conflicts. .

gong. Our library has been able to remain in existence for such a long time because it was preserved, and is preserved, in a particular fashion.

It is clear that there is a choreography to the the answers — determined in advance — so that, while maintaining the requirements of politeness, Stein tries to shift their conversation to the questions that interest him. So for the first time he interrogates the director about how the whole thing came about. At the time, was it common for a government official to found his own private library? What would have been his considerations? How exactly was this library formed?

gong. Well, now a little family story is in order: the owner of the collection, Fan Qin, divided his estate in two. One son could choose the library whereas the other could choose 10,000 silver liang[140] as a monetary inheritance. The father mandated that whoever got the library could not get the silver, and whoever got the silver could not get anything from the library. The books had to be kept together. And so it remained, and from that time onward, no matter what happened to the family, they were not allowed to divide up the books. Finally the entire collection was qualified as a common family fortune, the collective and unanimous responsibility for which applied to all, in such a way that while every branch of the Fan family had a key to the library, it could only be opened if the entire family was present. Or, for example, there existed a law which applied only to the Fans, stating that anyone from this clan who transgressed the rules concerning the library would be excluded from the right to be worshipped in the Hall of the Ancients — and in feudal China, there could hardly be worse punishment. Well, with these kinds of mandates, they succeeded in keeping the collection together for more than 400 years. There were other measures taken too. For example, it was not allowed to take the books away under any circumstance — not only was it forbidden to sell them but also to loan them. Then, every year, after the rainy season, every single item in the library had to be cleaned, aired out, the pages turned and, if necessary, dried out.

To keep a library intact: What does that mean exactly?

gong. We are in Ningbo, and this is south-east Asia, where half the year is the dry season, and the other half the rainy season. It’s called the mildew season. Every year, when it comes to an end, many people have to make sure that the doors and windows are opened wide, the rooms aired out and the mildew removed. Today of course there’s air-conditioning, a ventilation system, shades to protect from light, dust guards as well as protection against insects, but in the old days other means had to be employed. For example, there was a plant, the yuncao. Although a medicinal plant, it proved to be excellent at deterring vermin, chiefly the woodworm, as well as in protecting paper from being damaged by moisture. A piece of this plant was placed between the leaves of every book.

Where? At the beginning? In the middle? At the end?

gong. Anywhere. Between any two pages. They had another method: a white lotus petal had to be put somewhere into the book, it didn’t matter where, and then the insects didn’t chew it up. .

Why is the library called Tianyi Ge?

gong. The name originates from a well-known sentence from the Yijing: ‘Heaven first creates water,’ in Chinese: ‘Tian yi sheng shui.’ The word ‘ge’ means pavilion. The reason for the choice of the first two characters of this renowned sentence is that though many dangers lay in wait for the books, the greatest danger was always fire. Accordingly, word for word, ‘Tianyi Ge’ means ‘Heaven-first pavilion’. A Chinese person, hearing the first two characters ‘tian yi’, will immediately think of the quoted line from the Yijing, and immediately realize that the granting of this name is in itself a way of referring to the importance of protection from fire, fire as an enemy, that is, the necessity of the protection of water.

What should be understood by the designation of ‘private library’ here? Does it contain only books?

gong. Oh, not at all. The greater part of the collection is comprised of books, but there are also 4,000 calligraphic works as well as numerous traditional paintings. Most of these date from the Song, Yuan,[141] Ming and Qing eras.

Four thousand calligraphic works and paintings?

gong. Yes, approximately 4,000! But you should understand that, in addition, the collection contains approximately 1,000 bei — stone inscriptions from the Tang era until the period of the last dynasty.

What does the entire library look like? For there are, are there not, numerous pavilions, wonderful gardens, at times — with alarming suddenness — one encounters ancient statues of animals in the grass. .

gong. Those are from the Han era, and they are truly amazing. Altogether, the space of the library — I know this exactly, because a director has to know this — is 28,000 square metres. Of this, the area taken up by the older-style buildings is approximately 8,000 square metres. . But this isn’t really important. For me, the true importance of this place is not its scale but that this is one of the most significant book collections created across China, and without which — particularly, without the Ningbo library — classical literature simply would not have been able to survive. Every visitor is well aware of this. Because it is the great desire of every literate person of today to come here. And so, well, many do come, every year we have about 100,000 visitors.

Stein is alarmed at this number. A hundred thousand visitors, he repeats the fact cautiously. Won’t this ruin the library?

gong. We are not just some public library — the books can only be viewed by experts. We take the ordinary visitors through an exhibit so that they can get a general idea of the library, but they are not allowed to enter into the real rooms. Only scholars may do so. Not only may they enter, they may work there as well. But only in the pavilions, because even they may not enter where the books are kept, nor come into this hall where we are now sitting — this is exclusively a building for receiving guests of high rank. Before your arrival, I have welcomed ministers and leading politicians here. The last one, for example, to sit in that Ming-era chair, in which you are sitting, was the president of the Romanian parliament.

Permit me, Stein stops him, to bring up the subject again of the history of private libraries in China. Was this custom of creating libraries usual among leading government officials and literati? Should he imagine that, in China, any teacher, literate person, official, worth anything at all, had a pavilion at home with a book collection?

gong. Many literati had libraries at home, but these were not well preserved. Some were able to keep their collection whole for a few decades or perhaps even a century. In the regions south of the Yangtze, we know of the one-time existence of approximately 500 private libraries, but they were not sufficiently protected. Now there are only a few left — the libraries in Hangzhou, in Beijing, and the largest, this one, the Ningbo library.

How widespread was this passion for collecting books, how should Stein picture it?

gong. In traditional society, erudition and, above all, writing was granted extraordinary significance. Whether we are speaking of the wealthy or the poor, every family striving to better its circumstances regarded the acquisition of knowledge as its highest possible goal. Progress, improving one’s societal status, was only conceivable through the means of education and examinations. When, however, these goals were realized, and the candidates became government officials, then — either because they wished to polish up their intellects, or in order, as they say, to accumulate merits — they began to create collections of books. In families of more modest means too, for example, the head of the family would begin to collect books in order to assist with the advancement of his descendants.

As Stein has not even the slightest idea — since he only confronts this later, towards the end of his journey — of the significance of there not having been any so-called market in imperial China, he now feels that he is not getting where he wants to with the director. He is interested in the ‘reality’ of this entire question. Therefore, he tenaciously asks: How did people acquire written works? In what manner were individual volumes purchased? Was there a book trade? Were books exchanged among people? Were they given as gifts? How did the establishment of such a private library take place?

gong. In the case of Fan Qin, the creator of this library, it occurred in the following way. When he had achieved the appropriate rank in the imperial exams, his official career began, and so he completed his service in Shangxi and Henan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan, but he turned up in Fujian and Jiangxi as well, and in all these places he regularly sacrificed time to his passion — book collecting. He dedicated particular attention to local annals, notations of historical events and the documentation of examination papers. But he was also interested in the masterpieces of poetry and prose inscribed in stone. That is how, one step at a time, he brought to life this colossal library. But he was only able to do this because, in China, the printing of books had a very distinguished past. For centuries, hundreds and hundreds of print works had been in operation, where books were printed from wooden blocks. The acquisition of a book within these conditions was a question of money and in what regions the official in question had completed his service in the course of his work. But the essence, I repeat, was money, because a book was very expensive.

Fine, but — Stein interrupts yet again — not everyone could have had so many copper rosaries, or gold, and not everyone could have been of such high rank as Fan Qin. So would intellectuals of his societal status have had enough money to buy books?

gong. A person without official rank could not really collect books in enough quantity to be able to create a library. But, naturally, every literate person could have a library room where on a little table there would be a few books lined up or a cupboard with five or six shelves of books. This general state of affairs cannot be compared to a library of the significance of Tianyi Ge. Because the owner of the Tianyi Ge was a very particular person. He collected the most valuable books, and his goal was undoubtedly to create a large library of unsurpassable value.

Stein stubbornly persists with his original question and he repeats: Fine, all is well, he understands, but how did the literati acquire the desired volumes? Did they buy them? Or did they get hold of them another way?

gong. You could say that the veneration of the book in ancient China was general. Every volume was greatly cherished. Very frequently it occurred that if one or other important volume was in the possession of a certain literati, his friends would borrow it. Or they would say to each other: There is a such a work, I have only half of it. I know you have a copy, so please lend it to me for two to three months. I will make a copy of it, or I will have it copied, then give it back to you. And when you need something from my collection, I will lend it to you. The respect in passion for books not only meant that they purchased them in accordance with their abilities but also that they made copies of them at home. Even Fan Qin did so with a few rare volumes.

What was the value of a book?

gong. Today we say that the most beautiful books are from the Song era. A single page of a book from the Song era is measured in gold. There is a certain kind of calligraphic style, the Song-era calligraphy — well, the value of a calligraphic work such as that can only be measured in gold. As a matter of fact, that is the essential thing — all these books are protected artistic treasures, so it isn’t possible to express their value in terms of money, only their notional value which, however, is determined by innumerable factors: the kind of paper, the quality, printing methods, the era the book dates from, the contents, the rarity of the volume and so on.

The visitor does not give up and once again begins to pester the director: In the old days, what determined the worth of a book?

gong. There used to be printing and cataloguing experts. They were aware of the publication value of a book. These experts worked with the data found in the colophon of books — if the book had a colophon — otherwise they examined where and when the printing blocks were engraved and determined the price on the basis of that. There were cases where the binder, or the person who rebound the book, or the owner could be determined from the seals and marginalia. So a thorough knowledge of seals also pertained to the knowledge of books. For example, if they found the seal of Li Taibai[142] in a book, then they knew that the book was published before the time of Li Taibai. Much is revealed by the so-called system of name taboos. This meant, for example, that during the time of the Kangxi[143] or when Li Shimin[144] founded a dynasty, if a written sign identical to a written sign in the name of the ruler appeared in the book, then, from this data, the experts knew when the book was published, clearly during the rule of a certain emperor or afterward.

Stein perceives by now that his obstinacy is not being crowned with success, and because he naturally does not understand why the director will not speak directly about ‘the goods,’ ‘the book market’ and ‘the book trade’, he tries a different approach, and says that he would like to picture to himself that Chinese literati of old, that Chinese official of old, that erudite literati, and because of that he asks to be excused the naive question: How did they read in the old times? And how does a Chinese intellectual read today? Is there a difference in the modes of reading, the reasons, the forms?

The director lowers his voice now, so that no one else will hear, only his guest, and suddenly the proud and official director becomes a somewhat sad, disillusioned director.

gong. There are things which do not change. Sometimes reading is necessary for work, sometimes it is a requisite of the soul. Sometimes it’s a question of mood — yesterday I felt like reading, today I don’t. It’s like that today, and that’s how it was in the old days too. I think the change does not affect reading itself, but the world in which people used to read, and in which we read today. In the world of old, reading — in a memorable fashion — was conditioned upon perfect tranquillity. This tranquillity — this peace in a garden, in a pavilion, as a person takes a book into their hand, sits down in front of the opened doors of the pavilion, and hears from the silence out there the singing of a bird, or the whispering of the wind — this tranquillity is no more, and never again shall it be. Times have changed, the world has changed, and, as you know, nothing can be done.

After his words there is silence. Amid the confusion that has set in, Rong Rong finally recommends: maybe they should go and have a look at what is possible. What is possible? — Stein looks at her. Rong Rong gestures to him that all will be explained, patience.

And they see everything, the Mingzhou pavilion[145] with the Stele Forest, as the museum of steles is called here, the room of Qian Jin[146] with the renowned collection of inscribed bricks from the Jin dynasty;[147] they see the Bai E pavilion,[148] this unusual shrine carved from stone, with scalloped ornamentation, the site of sacrificial ceremonies, transported here from the Zuguan mountains; they also see the Temple of the Ancients of the Qing Family,[149] they see the open-air opera stage, breathtakingly beautiful, gilded in baroque fashion, decorated with baroque profusion; then they see the rooms where the books and the calligraphic works are displayed, the Zhuangyuan pavilion[150] which belonged to the Zhan family, and the Yunzai building which belonged to the Chens, they see the Northern Garden and the Southern Garden, and once again they see the Han-era animal statues in the grass, which they had noticed upon their arrival, and finally they see Tianyi Ge itself, the former, two-storey library building, built in strange proportions, and they learn everything about it that they possibly can, in brief, they see everything and they come to know everything, everything that could possibly be seen and known — it’s only the books that they don’t see anywhere, and the library that they don’t see anywhere, because inside, in Tianyi Ge, there is not a single volume to be found — Where are they? Stein asks, at which point Mr Gong purses his lips, clears his throat and informs them that, oh yes, the books, they aren’t here, they were moved from here to over there in the back, he points somewhere into the distance, to some spot where modern concrete buildings stand, well, they’re over there, says the skinny director, because over there they can assure the books the greatest possible protection, as you know, he turns confidentially to his guest, the necessary conditions of moisture, the necessary dryness, modern protection against insects, they have been able to keep the books under Western technological conditions — The books? Stein asks in remonstration. So well, the library? So it doesn’t actually exist — but it does, Mr Gong contradicts him nervously, here it is, he points at Tianyi Ge which is empty; but Mr Gong, says Stein, that isn’t the same thing: a library is where the books are in their places, do you understand, Mr Gong, in their places, and Tianyi Ge will be a library when the books, all 13,000 of them that have remained, will be in the bookcases, every last volume in its appointed place, but at this Mr Gong, like a person who has run out of patience, hurries on to discuss the details of the upcoming luncheon with Rong Rong; they go outside, this is goodbye, then Rong Rong, their brand-new dear friend remains behind so Stein can catch up with her, places her hand on his shoulder comfortingly and drags him along to some restaurant next to Yuehu (‘Moon Lake’)[151] — Stein asks her: Why did they do this, Tianyi Ge, the pride of the nation, the last thing that remained, and they lock it up in a safe? — Rong Rong just nods as the interpreter translates, and squeezes Stein’s shoulder even more tightly, they walk in through the doors of a restaurant on the shore of Yuehu where they will be able to bid farewell to all their friends from Ningbo who have gathered to say goodbye, and Rong Rong whispers to Stein: At least it existed — What existed? Stein asks the interpreter, because he doesn’t get what she’s referring to, well, this Ningbo was here, Rong Rong explains, smiling, and at least once upon a time Tianyi Ge was here with its 70,000 wondrous volumes. .

The next day they set off early at dawn; a rusty ‘soul-loser’ takes them across the ocean. Their goal of their journey is Putuoshan,[152] the residence of Guanyin, the renowned, distant Buddhist place of pilgrimage, a true gem, they read in a cheap brochure, the boat is three quarters below the surface of the water but they do not sink, instead, by some miracle, they anchor at the island after more than an hour; on the shore are hotels, strident vendors and taxi drivers with malevolent faces, further inland are luxury hotels and luxury restaurants, and wealthy, elegant tourists, with bored expressions on their faces, amid the luxuriant, wonderful tree-lined alleyways; my God, says Stein to the interpreter, after they find a relatively less-exorbitant hotel, and they set off, this is Yangzhou, this is Beijing, this is Hong Kong, this is the Mallorca of the Shanghai elite, this is the Chinese Riviera, good God, where are they, says Stein at first, then the interpreter repeats it, and they just wander through this tourist paradise named Putuoshan where everything is extraordinarily enchanting, and everything is extraordinarily arranged for maximum comfort: the Jinsha (‘Golden Sands’), the Baibusha (‘Sands of One Hundred Steps’) and the Qianbusha (‘Sands of One Thousand Steps’),[153] the beaches and the restaurants in this built-up gem, in the former residence of Guanyin and in her empire which seemed as if it were eternal — and it is good when they find the three large monasteries, it is good that the colossal Puji Chan Si,[154] with its unsurpassed beauty, still exists, it is good that the placid Fayu Chan Si[155] still exists as well as the Huiji Chan Si,[156] built on the peak of the mountain so as to be closer to heaven, and it’s good that they can find, although with difficulty, to the west from the Fayu, an unforgettable stele containing Yan Liben’s[157] indescribably beautiful depiction of Guanyin, propped against a concealed wall in one of the back shrines of a tiny insignificant temple; it’s good, they keep repeating that they will only be here three more days, because in the end they will forget why they are here, and why they came to this island, because at the end, forgetting about their goals, they too are affected by the pleasant marvels and the unspeakable natural beauty of Putuoshan, and they will just let all this torment and classical this and classical that go straight to hell, as well as their search for the true face of the Buddha, just as the whole lot of tote-bag-carrying, feral and aggressive groups of pilgrims are affected as well by the beauty, this suggestion of this agreeable charm, for whatever they step they meet only people on excursions: dressed in the uniform of pilgrimage, or merely elegant gentleman and bored ladies of fashion lying on one of the beaches; it’s good, says Stein to his companion on the third day, as they embark onto the speed boat which will stream ahead to Shanghai within four hours, back across the undulating ocean; it’s good that they can bear to leave this place, and that later on, no one but absolutely no one will ask them if they saw that Guanyin, the saint of Putuoshan, the Chinese counterpart of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, no one will ask if they saw her, because everyone will only ask — and, really, later on it does happen that way — everyone will only ask, enviously and desirously, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Tokyo, in Budapest, in Berlin and in New York: Oh, how wonderful that they were in Putuoshan! — For, the water there is the most amazing thing in the world, isn’t it?

8. The Empty Throne

When they get back to the flat they have rented in Shanghai, they are so exhausted that for the next few days they only sleep and go for walks, and then, because the first so-called walks seemed perhaps too daring, they only sleep — more precisely, they lie in their beds next to Fudan University,[158] in a flat in the housing estate built in the spirit of international socialist realism, comprised of four-storey buildings, cobbled together from concrete panels — in a place which millions and millions of residents of Shanghai regard as home, their days are filled with sleep or with a kind of half-awakened state, days in which there is no light, not even outside, a massive and unmoving cloud cover hovers over this metropolis of inexpressible proportions, and because there is no change, they lie in their beds in vain, the exhaustion in their limbs does not pass, just as the cloud above them does not disperse; they decide, however, that they will not cancel any of their meetings, so they go to Shanghai Museum, after they have admired the truly dazzling collection of statuary and its careful arrangement, so that Mrs Liu Huali, one of the directors, the chief executive — they read this for the second time, after their meeting in Zurich, from her business card — so that Mrs Liu, who is beautiful and constantly seeking to mask her beauty, can answer their questions: if there are any, she adds coldly, and they descend, taking an elevator, quite a distance below the earth, then, passing through a few corridors, they step into a truly colossal, unexpected space, into an underground grove whose presence could never have been deduced from the modern style of the building; they step into a grove, an air-conditioned garden, one could say; they step into the open air beneath the ground, trees incline over a pleasant tea room, plants bloom resplendent around the tables, birds chirp and, if they look up, they see the bluest sky, a pure heaven above, but to their consternation everything is made of plastic and with the total incomprehensibility of garish Chinese kitsch, so that in the first moments, as a young girl appears with the tea at a silent gesture from Mrs Liu, Stein can’t even tell if he is going to ask anything here at all, but with a sip from the fine bowl he gains strength, and begins, with a somewhat bad conscience by now, for he has already begun in this way so many times.

My esteemed Mrs Liu, you know very well, since I spoke to you about this in Zürich where we met, the deep respect I have for classical Chinese culture. I have been engaged in many conversations with many different intellectuals, I have been in many places now and, as before, now too I have committed a huge error: I have continued to believe that China is still that ancient empire, in this respect the very last one. It is also unparalleled in world history because, somehow, it is still guided by the classical spirit despite the factors of modernity — renewal, opening, as you call it — all indisputable and, in its own way, breathtaking. I believed this, in the course of my travels and my conversations I believed this, and continually called this into account, here in this country, but I have paid bitterly for this stance of wanting to call things to account, because, well, this is clearly no longer the case. I am shattered, if you will permit me such a confidential declaration so soon, but I know that I have only myself to thank. For example, I continually asked if there is any chance for that which held China together, if we can put it that way, for millennia — if there is any chance at all for the teachings of Confucius to return, to be revived, and for China, this new empire, once again to order its life in accord with the teachings of this great philosopher, to adapt morality into daily life. You see, Mrs Liu, how foolish I was, but I still am, a little bit, because I now ask you the same question: What is your opinion of the teachings of Confucius? Is there any hope that anything from the original spirit of these teachings can return to the Chinese society and culture of today?

A reply follows which would be absurd to quote. Surging from the woman’s words are banalities, the reality of which is so crushing and unctuous that already in the first minutes of the conversation, there in the underground garden, Stein begins to wrack his brains, searching among the requisites of courteous behaviour for the one act that would allow him to close the conversation immediately, as — Stein looks at Mrs Liu’s unflinching gaze — it is more than obvious that nothing will come of this. He, however, becomes entangled in another question and, instead of extricating himself from this atmosphere, encloses himself even more within it.

You, Mrs Liu, state that the national culture has entered into a newer and more resplendent age which, however, does not lack difficulties. I understand. Then please permit me to express it this way: if you go out onto the streets, and you look at the people out there, or look at the crowds standing here in line at the ticket desk, with the best intentions in the world you could not say anything else than that these people — for instance — have arrived at a point of perhaps beginning to respect their own ancient culture. But to say that this culture will now be their own, or that it ever could be, is either an error or a lie.

Needless to say, the answer this time does not diverge one whit from the terrible onslaught of banalities launched just a moment ago, so that Stein is silent, Mrs Liu keeps talking, sometimes in English, sometimes in Chinese, he cannot bear to listen, he looks at the interpreter in supplication — can he give him some advice about how to get out of this? — but the interpreter can’t, he just struggles to convey in complete sentences the painfully empty train of thought of the fashionably dressed Mrs Liu who conforms in every measure to the image of the wealthy, world-travelled chief executive, so that Stein, even more clumsily, entangles himself in even more questions.

He speaks of how admiring a culture or respecting a culture is not the same as living it, experiencing it and practising it as a part of one’s everyday life. The Europeans, as Mrs Liu knows very well, are in a similar position, for they truly respect the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome but they would never imagine for a moment, even in their dreams, that their contemporary culture is, in its ‘depths’, identical with the Hellenic or the Roman. What is painful in the case of China, however, is that the extinction of this amazing ancient culture has only taken place in the recent past, when a person could still make the mistake — and as for Stein, he still makes this mistake — could still deceive himself, dupe himself, pamper the belief within himself that maybe this dramatic turn of events had not occurred, that nothing had really been decided, that nothing was final, and that in China that which has been here for millennia need not completely collapse.

But Mrs Liu is cut from too stern a material to be thrown off her rhythm, and Stein feels as if he were listening to a speaker at a Chinese Communist Party meeting, the platitudes gushing out unimpeded and unswayed; but what is even more dispiriting in this plastic paradise is that Mrs Liu doesn’t understand what they’re talking about, Mrs Liu cannot comprehend what they want to say to her because, as far as Mrs Liu is concerned, ‘change is the natural law of historical development’ in which ‘the modern and the traditional must coexist in harmony’—well, from this point on Stein makes no effort to try to force things, and it isn’t even necessary, because the chief executive of the justifiably renowned Shanghai Museum needs no questions in order to say what she has learnt, and Mrs Liu recites and recites her lesson — when suddenly they notice that a single human trait of this highly placed functionary, this inaccessible official, this being whose beauty and femininity are by necessity concealed in the neutrality of the uniform of a high-ranking civil servant, a single human trait remains undisguised, perhaps because it cannot be disguised; that while speaking, like someone occasionally giving in to a bad habit, Mrs Liu takes a lock from her wondrously glittering, ebony black hair, from where it falls above her shoulder near her tiny, fine ear, she takes one lock, more precisely, the end of a completely fine strand, she pulls it in front of her face and places the end in her mouth, evidently unconsciously, and she recites and recites what she has to recite but all the while sucking for a few seconds at this clearly sweet lock of hair. Then like someone who realizes what she is doing, she quickly throws it back, straightens it, then a few minutes later, as she forgets herself, starts the whole thing again.

Not a single sentence remains, not a single word from the so-called conversation which lasts for about an hour, only this one tiny fault in the Liu mechanism; they cannot remember her beautiful noble face with any precision, they cannot recall the colour of her clothes, already after three or four days it is all mixed up if she had two or three glittering diamonds on her fingers, if she was wearing, for example, a bracelet, no, not even that, almost nothing, they can only recall that movement, as she sneaked that little black lock of hair into her mouth and sucked a little bit on the end, only this remains from the beautiful Mrs Liu, one of the chief curators of the famous Shanghai Museum, everything else is swallowed up by time, and they just lie in bed for a few days at home in the dark apartment, then another farewell approaches, and they begin to try and figure out how to bid farewell to Shanghai, they begin to go walking again, and nothing — they can’t find the heart of Shanghai, they wander from Peace Hotel to the former French Quarter, from Shanghai Railway Station to Yu Yuan; when on one of the very last evenings they turn out towards Nanjing Lu[159] from Fuzhou Lu, frequently sought out because of its bookshops, and amid the skyscrapers from the period of the first economic boom, in the illumination of the evening’s neon lights, they suddenly notice a peculiar, tall building — in the first minutes it’s just a feeling, among the glances cast here and there, that one’s glance had come upon something important, they search, again they try to find what it was, and then they see what they had glimpsed a moment ago, they see that high-rise block, due to the other buildings not even its entire mass, only the upper third, but that is precisely enough, because that is what is essential: for them to see the roof against the background of the dark sky.

The building’s architects wanted to create something specific on the roof, something memorable, something that would draw the attention of the people to the form, as it were, the symbol of the new Shanghai, and so they decided that the best thing to display on the roof would be a huge, a gigantic, lotus,[160] painted in gold, and illuminated at night, and really, Stein grabs his companion’s arm in his excitement, as they stand there in the undulating crowds of Nanjing Lu: on the roof of that building, reaching down so far, there blooms a colossal, gold-coloured lotus, its descending petals illuminated in some secret fashion with the most resplendent of neon lights, and there in the heights, a monumental lotus in the dark evening sky, a lotus throne, says Stein to the interpreter, and they stare and they bid farewell, and both of them are thinking that since this kind of sculpture of a deserted Lotus Throne, perhaps with the exception of Sri Lanka, was never too prevalent even during the aniconic period in Buddhism, so that no memory and no kind of tradition of this sort could have really survived, especially here in China, there is no question of there being some sort of reference here; so then why didn’t they think about it, the architects, why didn’t they consider that this throne means that there is no one on this throne, and were they at all aware that they were, involuntarily but perfectly, expressing how this city could designate itself: that in the most skilful way possible, they had found the most eloquent symbol of this new Shanghai, this Lotus Throne of phosphorescent gold, a Lotus Throne upon which no one sits any more, thus creating an image of how the Buddha has left the city, how this gigantic Shanghai is left to itself beneath its own gigantic scintillation, how it blindly rushes ahead with its own horrific speed, and all the while the throne is empty.