Destruction and Sorrow beneath the Heavens: Reportage

1. Today It’s Over, but That Didn’t Start Just Now

The interpreter gets a day off, and Stein sits in an excellent Sichuan restaurant with the renowned poet Xi Chuan. They haven’t begun dinner yet, and Stein tries to summarize, to this worldly, erudite artist, the experiences and impressions with which he has returned from the Great Journey. Xi Chuan listens attentively and, after Stein has finished speaking, he thinks for a long time. Then he points at Stein’s bag.

xi chuan. I would like you to take out your tape recorder and turn it on. OK? Are you ready? Is it working? Good. Then listen to me. You said China has lost its traditions, China has lost its culture, China has lost itself. For me, the problem is a little more complicated than that — namely, the story begins a little earlier. First and foremost: it begins in 1919. This is the year we should designate as the year in which China was destroyed by the Japanese and Western alliances. China was forced to open itself. And what followed — the age of Sun Yat-sen[161] and Chiang Kai-shek[162] — was an era in which China could no longer maintain or organize itself as a society. China disintegrated. China died as a nation — it no longer existed. Accordingly, when Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek appeared, their goal was to create order, not freedom. They needed European knowledge in order to acquire weapons against the West. This was the background. Then Mao took power. With that came Marxism. Mao thought that European scientific knowledge wasn’t necessary: Marxism was enough, Marxism would be the weapon against the West. Marxism is a product of the West — but why didn’t anyone say at the time that China had lost its culture? Why didn’t they say it back then, even though Marxism came from the West? Maybe this example is childish, so let me mention another: I know people in the West who collect stamps. They collect stamps from the Mao era with great enthusiasm. And they don’t say that those are not Chinese stamps! On the other hand, they don’t collect contemporary stamps, because they say those’re not ‘Chinese’ enough. They’re happy to collect stamps from the time of the Cultural Revolution. . They like the red colours, the characteristic forms, the shapes. So, to summarize — the Mao era was, therefore, still Chinese. .

Then China changed. And we lost our traditional culture. Mainly that’s what you say, and that’s what other Westerners like you say. It’s just that I see it a little differently. I think that we lost our culture a good one hundred years ago. Not today, that’s mistaken. The entire past century was about the fact that we lost our culture.

Stein says that he understands, fine, but facts are facts. .

xi chuan. Well, yes, in a word. . There are intellectuals who just say: Bye bye, China. Then there are others who say that, in order to preserve traditional culture, you need a lot of money. This is really important. I know foreigners who live here, who buy traditional Chinese houses and renovate them. . And it’s only people like that who can do so, because it’s incredibly expensive. The average Chinese cannot permit themselves something like that.

But, still, Stein tries to interrupt, the preservation of traditional culture is not. .

xi chuan. There is India. Our problems are similar. Our cultures are old. At the same time we have a common need to somehow escape from poverty, from isolation. The Indians too want to know what happened here in the past few decades. What does development mean? Let’s begin with this concept. At the time of the Song dynasty, development was halted. The reason: China had reached maximum prosperity, the ruling class was very wealthy and people simply had no need for development.

So you claim that. .?

xi chuan. Yes, yes, my claim is that from that age onward, Chinese culture began to founder. That was the time of the Mongolian conquest, the arrival of the Manchurians. .

This is really surprising, Stein answers. This entire train of thought is really surprising. But, he admits, at first glance it’s very persuasive as well. So then the ruin of traditional China is not a question of only a hundred years, but. .!

xi chuan. Yes, this is what I claim! That process that began in the Song era led directly to the collapse of the Qing dynasty. This question needs to be examined critically by the Chinese as well. I wrote an article about this once. About how there are different kinds of moralities. One is the morality of culture. Another is the morality of life. And these are two different things. We all must bear the burden that is life. And so you can’t be surprised that, given this burden of life, the people — especially the people of today — want to make their lives easier. In the 1970s, the essence of our crisis was that we needed scientific knowledge in order to change our way of thinking. Today, however, there is another kind of crisis. And one of the signs of this crisis is the attempt to re-introduce Confucianism into Chinese education. There exist, in Beijing, schools in which instruction takes place according to traditional principles. There are professors who say that we really have to return to this: we need to build a new Confucian structure, we need to reject foreign influence. I, on the other hand, think that is difficult.

Many people, Stein says, think the exact same thing, they would agree with these professors, and in his exper—

xi chuan. There are dangers. The biggest danger is that there are moral principles deriving from the imperial times. These moral principles were reinforced by means of the heavens. After the revolutions, people expunged these moral principles from their lives. Now, once again, we have moral principles but we have no way at all of supporting them. We don’t know how to construct them, what to build them on, how to ensure them. . Today, for example, we essentially accept Christian morality, even if we don’t agree with it, but here the danger immediately presents itself that we have morality — but without any assumption of responsibility. We want and we undertake modernity, but we do not want and we do not undertake the burdens of modernity! This is extremely dangerous! Marxism has completely collapsed. It has no influence at all on young people. And they have become really cynical.

And so. .?

xi chuan. But where is the axis of this morality — that is my question. The pace of change is enormous. All the old things have collapsed. I was in India. They greatly appreciate what has happened in China. They appreciate the development, the enormous speed of development. But the reason for that is: we had Marxism! Marxism, though, is gone now, there is only a new modernity with its own specialized morality not supported by anything. The whole thing is just hanging in the air. All the older moral principles, including Marxism, were based on something. Today, principles exist but there is nothing holding them up. That is really dangerous. The problem is not that there are no principles but that behind these principles there is a void.

Accordingly, there is no ideal towards which society. .?

xi chuan. It doesn’t exist. Nonetheless, we don’t want a society which will collapse again. We need something which we can hold onto, something which we can grasp with our hands. But if we open our hands, they are empty. And this is truly dangerous. The solution is horrendously complex. Let’s assume, for example, that Confucianism will be revived.

And you consider that to be possible. .?

xi chuan. No, I’m just saying, let’s assume that Confucianism could be revived. The West is very hypocritical when it comes to this. It criticizes China because China is not a democracy. OK, OK, fine. . it’s just that sometimes I feel that this criticism is contradictory. Westerners love traditional Chinese culture, but that was completely dictatorial! They say that dictatorships are bad. . Well, but dictatorships are also really ancient! So they should love those too, right?

He pauses for breath and sips his tea, and, taking advantage of the brief silence, his interlocutor tells him how he too believes, as many others do in Europe and America, that the organization of society according to functioning democratic principles could not work in China. . China is too big for that. Anyone who has never been here could never understand that. And so he, says Stein — he, who is the embodiment of these contradictions — he too thinks that without some kind of strictness, without which no decisions could ever be made, everything could conceivably fall apart in the space of a minute. .

xi chuan. Take Montesquieu. He criticizes China because it is based on this horrible dictatorship. At the same time he announces that a country this size can only operate in this way. So, in addition to his praise for our democracy and his condemnation of our dictatorship, he claims that a democratic system could never work here. How is that possible?!

Stein interjects that Montesquieu probably didn’t know too much about China — at that time he couldn’t have known more than what he knew. Neither could Schopenhauer who, however, loved China. . One thing is certain: the Europeans have never really understood, and still don’t understand, what would be right for China. He, Stein, however knows one thing: what is happening today with Chinese tradition is definitely wrong.

xi chuan. The situation is very complicated. And it is really very dangerous.

At that moment, Ouyang Jianghe, another renowned figure of contemporary poetry, appears. Xi Chuan turns to him, encouraging him to express his opinion.

ouyang. What’s going on?

xi chuan. What kind of answer can intellectuals give to the crisis that is going on today?

ouyang. What’s with the intellectuals?

xi chuan. What kind of influence or strength do they have?

ouyang. The intellectuals’ what?

xi chuan. Well, their role. .

ouyang. In the New China?

And he comfortably seats himself at the table.

Dinner arrives.

2. Of Course, It’s the End

On the plates are exciting and wonderful foods, full of promise, and brought to them in such great quantities; the waiters suddenly start bringing the plates, so for a while there can be no question of paying attention to anything other than the spectacle unfolding before them. They have partaken of many similar meals with the Chinese, so that they know, for now, there can be no conversation, they must wait until the first, then the second and then the third platters are finished; fortunately the hunger at the table is great, so the locals reach a satiated state fairly quickly, and quite soon there is a chance for them to address Ouyang. Accordingly, Stein begins: Mr Ouyang, after a very long journey he, Stein, has an opportunity to talk with him. And the result of his journey is that he has returned to Beijing in deep disappointment. What has occurred is that where in principle there still might be some trace of classical culture, it has been supressed, in the course of reconstruction, to the inferior values of the tourist industry, meaning that he, Stein, has come upon monuments essentially destroyed: instead of something real, he has seen forgeries; instead of truth, he has taken part in deception, not even to delve into the reasons for his disillusionment. What is Mr Ouyang’s opinion on this? Was it just the accident of bad luck that cast these things in Stein’s path? And if this is not the case — and his experiences have shown him reality in its true light — can anything be done to halt this process? Because it was only in the museums that he, Stein, saw any kind of an attempt at the ‘preservation of values’. But there are too few museums, considering what needs to be done or, rather, what should have been done to save all this from the claws of the repugnant figures of the tourist industry. .

ouyang. The Chinese intelligentsia of today see this entire process differently than the Europeans, and their relationship to classical Chinese culture is completely different than what you think. In my opinion there are not too few but, rather, a huge number of museums in China. Moreover, I do not see this museum culture in as positive a light as you do — I see it as something foreign to us, something which comes from Europe and European thought. The Europeans believe that their culture can be preserved in a museum — but the Chinese don’t think so. Europeans believe that culture is something they can grasp and touch because, for them, culture is comprised of objects, or remnants of objects, and this object, this remnant, conceals within it the essence of the original. For the Chinese, the matter is completely different — for them, the essence of culture can only be preserved in a spiritual form. For example, the Chinese always make their buildings out of wood, and not stone, because the important thing is not how long the building is going to stand. This doesn’t mean, however, that the Chinese don’t wish to preserve their culture or their past, but that they see the manner of preservation completely differently. The Chinese intelligentsia has always felt that the past merits preservation in writing. Chinese writing is an extraordinary phenomenon: a character in the Chinese language is not, in its essence, merely a word, the written form of a concept, but a vision, an apparition — immaterial in its essence. This is radically different from the European languages, just as there is a huge difference between the Chinese and the Europeans who see, and have always seen, the question of the past and the preservation of its values as possible only through its objective forms. The essence of Chinese culture is not graspable in a material sense because, for the Chinese, no material can divulge the essence of the culture which is entirely spiritual in nature and therefore accessible only through writing. . In contrast to European tradition, which preserves its cultural values through objects and thus actually does not preserve the essence, the whole, but only evokes its outer forms, thus dismantling into pieces the entirety of that cultural value, its reality, well, in contrast to this the Chinese are able to preserve the entirety of their culture — and the essence of that entirety — in the spiritual, in the immaterial, hence in the most secure place: in writing, where that essence is exclusively transmitted and preserved, and from where it may be revived and evoked.

The friendly atmosphere in the restaurant, as well as the presence of Xi Chuan, encourages Stein to state frankly that perhaps Ouyang is slightly oversimplifying the essence of European culture. It is not simply a culture of objects, he explains to him, nor is it altogether certain that an objective creation — as, for example, the cathedral in Rheims — would not be capable of conveying the same immaterial essence of which he, Ouyang, is speaking. .

ouyang. Fine, fine, but the difference is not only perceptible in that: for the Europeans — to take one example — the invention of a new object has always been radically more important than to the Chinese. Here, in China, an invention was always esteemed because of its ‘spiritual’ value, because of its philosophical content. Our inventions were therefore, first and foremost, spiritual and philosophical inventions — and that is what a Chinese discerns most of all in his own culture. Once again, therefore, I would say that traditional European culture is a culture of objects whereas Chinese culture is a spiritual culture.

Once I was at Princeton University, and there, in the museum, I saw an old Greek coin which in its time was worth maybe 1 yuan. Today, maybe it’s worth 1 million yuan. The main thing is that today its value can be expressed in money. This cannot occur with a Chinese spiritual discovery or philosophy — its value, naturally, cannot be expressed in the form of material or money.

Stein tries to call attention to the dangers of the faulty comparison: Does he really think that the philosophy of Kant or Plato could be expressed in euros? Or does he think that Europe never created any values in a so-called immaterial form at all?

ouyang. Fine, fine, fine, but I see the problem differently. For example, I think the problem is that modern Chinese culture has become ever closer to European culture. Take modern Chinese poetry, where a contemporary poet does not live in his own past but in European culture, which he considers to be world culture. And, in general, the Chinese intelligentsia of today, as well as the masses, want to liberate themselves from their own objectified past — they tear down the old houses because they are inconvenient, they are uncivilized, there are no toilets, no air-conditioning, why should we live in them? — and yet those are the very buildings that a European seeks out and admires, those are the buildings in which he sees the essence of an idealized past. We — to cite the words of Calvino — are living in Time Zero, neither in our past nor yet in our future, a future presumed to be ever wealthier, so that for us the ancient culture can only be beautiful in an idealized sense. In fact, if anything at all has remained from this ancient culture, for the contemporary Chinese it can only be a burden. I have a foreign acquaintance who no longer likes to come to China because in his view the China of today no longer manifests that exquisite spirituality — which you too admire — of the ancient age. For the Chinese of today, he says, only money counts, they’re only interested in what things cost. The China of today lives in the market economy where the remains of our ancient culture can only be seen in a museum, in exchange for the price of an entrance ticket. . And the Chinese don’t even go to those museums. Because for them, their ancient culture is already a museum — it is no longer identical with their own ancient culture.

Stein intervenes on two points: One, the Chinese, as Ouyang puts it, really do go to the museums, in huge masses — he himself has experienced and suffered from this hundreds of times. . Two, with reference to the cited acquaintance, with Ouyang’s permission, Stein would disclose that, as of this moment, he has yet another acquaintance who is not very happy to come to the New China for even a short while. He sits here before him. . But there is yet another dilemma associated with this greater problem, namely, that classical culture no longer exists; the realization that foreigners who take a strong interest in it are increasingly no longer really wanted here, their questions are not welcomed, they are warned, lectured, told not to seek out what they are seeking; they won’t find what they’re looking for, especially not him, the foreigner — he will find absolutely nothing, nothing at all. For all intents and purposes, he is told to go home. Stein, however, is someone who is feverishly enthusiastic about this ancient culture. Not the culture of today, that is alien to him. What is there to love in New China, what?!

ouyang. This will probably surprise you but I think it’s possible that the China of today is much more beautiful than the China of old. Traditionally, China was always a poor country. But now China is, simply put, a country of enormous potential. The elements of this potential are tangible — such as the immeasurable economic and democratizing political possibilities. These can be numerically quantified and expressed. But there is another aspect of these possibilities which is much harder to grasp, and that is that they lead to a much deeper, more mysterious transformation of reality. It is this aspect of the new possibilities I feel to be the most crucial. Some foreigners say, in response to this, that I’m just fantasizing things into reality. Still I say that this reality exists, atmospherically. And everything in the best of contemporary Chinese literature speaks of this. Two hundred or three hundred years from now, people will be able to tell from these writings what China was like at the turn of the millennium, what the essence of culture was at that time. And so it is so important that you Europeans be acquainted not only with our classical authors but also with the writers and poets of today.

You know — Stein replies — nothing is ever accidental. It is no accident that he, Stein, and others like him come to China in order to admire the culture of imperial times, or its remnants, if its reality and everything else can no longer be admired, because he — Stein points at himself — and others like him are no longer attracted by what he, Ouyang, defines as modern. It is by no means an accident that it has become so crucial for someone like Stein — coming from where he does — to be able to inspect a highly accomplished, highly refined classical culture, because the culture from which he comes — this so-called modernity, directly confronting China and towards which China is rushing — is no place at all for either a highly accomplished individual or a refined one. For him — Stein once again points to himself — and for people like him, the modern appears as a destructive force, annihilating reality, which is itself expressed in an ideal form, mysterious, enchanting, uplifting. .

ouyang. Fine, fine, fine, but here I have to say something. So we allow ancient culture to be, we respect it, we highly esteem it, fine, but we are living in a completely different world today — this fact has to be confronted. We have to address our own problems: ancient culture is finished. But if you will permit me, there is a larger problem connected to this, and that is the question of contemporary literature. In the China of today, there are two major generations of contemporary writers. One of them, the older one, to which I belong, and of which I spoke just now, pays attention not only to literary forms but also to its societal and political experiences, and these are evident in their works. We write in many different genres, I, for example, in addition to poetry, write prose and drama. And it may come to pass that the literature of the future will not know what to do with us, because the other, the younger, generation, which looks only to Europe and America, uses literature exclusively for making money and the attainment of success, quick success. It is conceivable that art will completely lose its true content — and this is the essence of the literature of the future, literature going forward into the future. . So where are we now, in terms of ancient literature? When we ourselves are in danger! And not only in terms of the sense, the meaning, and the content of the ancient but also with regard to every single art form! A new age is beginning, I know.

Stein, in sadness, agrees. Well, that is definitely certain. But he hopes that Ouyang will believe him when he says that something suggests to Stein that Ouyang’s relationship, and that of the Chinese, to their own classical culture and the literary-spiritual crisis of his generation are deeply interconnected.

ouyang. Fine, fine, fine, I get it, I get it, but unfortunately, I have to go.

The last plates are cleared away, he says goodbye and then disappears through the door. And as if this were a sign, almost immediately, clearly thanks to the kindly arrangements of Xi Chuan, another guest arrives: one of the favourites of, and a star among, the contemporary Chinese literati, the amazing, particularly beautiful fashion designer Wang Xiaolin takes a seat at the table. Her face is like that of a sphinx, and her manner is so severe that while she is replying to a question, no one dares speak. Stein, in his entire life, has never met such a hard-edged woman.

3. The End? Oh Yeah, Business

The new guest hardly touches the food. Sometimes she takes a sip of tea. And after Xi Chuan tells her in Chinese what Stein is up to and why he’s here, she doesn’t wait for any questions at all — she does not wish to converse but to declaim. She waits for the tape recorder to be turned on, and, casting her unflinching beautiful eyes onto Stein, she begins.

wang. In 1993, I came up from Sichuan to Northern China, to Beijing. Well, as for these Chinese clothes. . hmm. . Since I didn’t live in the time when they. . wore traditional clothes, traditional Chinese dress had already become a thing of the past, it had lost its meaning. Only a few things remained. For example, we still wore. . some kind of miao, and something else, um, the. . xiao lingzi,[163] clothes from the 1970s. There was another one, aozhao,[164] a little coat with cotton lining, and inside there weren’t any. . of those things. Well, once I saw, at one of those what whatchamacallits, a denim shirt, ordered from abroad and prepared for export, with Chinese traditional buttons on the front, and I was really amazed, I felt a kind of excitement, because denim is a very modern fabric, and how could it have that kind of buttoning on it? I sensed there was no clothing like that at the time, modern fabric with traditional buttoning. . And the two together. .

Then I got hold of a bit of patterned material, something very modern, and I sewed a few Chinese-style lian[165] with it, the kind of clothing I had never seen. And I wore one of them, and many people began to ask me where I’d got it from. So I made a few more, put them in a shop, and they sold well.

At the time. . people. . in China. . if you’re talking about the 1920s or 30s, people weren’t wearing such clothes, at least it wasn’t the usual thing. . well, after the 30s, people wore traditional clothing less frequently, from that point on you couldn’t see things like that. Then, after the people went through a lot and survived, a kind of nostalgia crept in, a kind of thinking back to. . the past.

The clothes you could get at the markets, before the reforms, were all very simple, then after the opening and the reforms, European and Western clothes began to come in, modern clothes. People began to seek those out, because they compared it with the clothes from the 1970s and 80s, they began to create connections between the traditional and the modern, and we had never seen anything like them.

As for my clothes. . briefly put, in the summer I sewed a ma jia,[166] then it got colder and it needed sleeves, then it got even colder and it needed longer sleeves, then people began to ask if it could have a lining, and so on. So I was forced to start thinking, and I thought that I would create a specialized shop just for that sort of thing. So it was the market that spurred me on. . Later on, it became a fashion house, specializing in modern and traditional attire. At first I thought that the market for this was. . small, but then Hong Kong was reannexed, then Macao, then Taiwan — where Chinese culture is taken seriously, the Taiwanese really love traditional clothing — came into the picture. . many Taiwanese jump onto a plane and come here to buy clothes, and so they began to come here, to Beijing, to me.

At first I thought it would last three or four years, and then people would stop liking my clothes and not buy them any more. I’ve been doing this since 1996, but even now people are interested in my clothes. I think it’s because the Chinese have experienced a continual fading of the brilliance of their homeland, its magnificence, and they feel they have to find their own roots, find their own culture in this modern age. And that they have to develop this culture. In designing traditional clothes, I take the demands of the market into consideration, I observe what’s going on from one year to the next: maybe this year blue is fashionable, then next year green. . I try to satisfy people’s requirements for their lives and. . well, you understand. Now I continually connect tradition with the marketplace and the contemporary era. People find their roots in my clothes. At the same time they’re modern. Something like that. I think that is the essence of my clothes.

I want my clothes to become as famous as Peking duck or Wangfujing,[167] or any of those well-known traditional Chinese things, like. . oh. . the Peking Opera, so I want my company Muzhenliao to have a special mission within the world of Chinese attire — to present the coexistence of tradition and modernity. . like something eternally evoking the classical, so that even if we go to Hong Kong or wherever, then tradition and modernity won’t be forgotten — it will be eternal, just like Tiananmen.[168]

Culture is something that I’m continuously developing, and then it turns into something new. I read all the time about traditional architecture, instruments, music. I have a dress, in front, below the neck, there’s a circular neckline with a Chinese button going over it. Now where did I get that from? There’s an old piece of furniture, a large armoire, in the middle of it is a round copper lock. It comes from there.

My clothes are one way of representing Chinese culture. While I’m designing them, I add many original factors. When you look at my clothes, you should not only feel that they are beautiful but you should also see the culture in them. The people who buy my clothes are doing cultural work. You could say that. A lot of French people in particular buy my clothes. There are many foreign embassies here in Beijing, and they come from there to order my clothes. Why? One reason is that these foreigners really like the fabrics in these clothes. For example, you can’t get satin like this anywhere in the world, it’s really bright, the qipao[169] of the waitress (she points) is also made from that. That is something you can find only in China. Another reason is that foreigners don’t like it when something is too old, they want something modern in it as well, they’re willing to pay to wear some kind of ‘culture’ (laughs). .

For me, Chinese tradition — all of these things — because China’s history goes back a few thousand years, all of this. . history, is really weighty, strong. And you can’t compare this with a modern culture that has no past behind it. In the olden times, people took traditional culture so very. . seriously — how should I put it? — they really took it to heart. Not like today, when what you have here is too much of all this and that, all kinds of. . shit. As I see it, in China, after the acquisition of material wealth, spiritual demands became even more important. We don’t need America or Japan, because here, for us. . here culture, classical culture, is the basis of everything. There are, for example, tall buildings here, it’s possible that their upper storeys have been completed by the Americans or the Europeans or the Japanese, but the foundations have been dug by the Chinese. And that is the basis.

China went through many difficulties in its past, but now everything is much better, so that we have to see it like this: China was asleep but has now woken up. In our brains, there is one part in the depths which has not changed, that’s the part we think with, that’s why we’re independent. Just as a person never forgets his parents, the Chinese never forget their classical past. China has gone down many wrong paths: there were many contradictions and misunderstandings between some people and other people, between people and the Party. Anyone who thinks otherwise and who says that today — when we have finally awoken and are returning to our past — anyone who denies this, saying that it’s just some chaotic modern culture that we have now, well, that person is lying, is somehow sick, spiritually. . something like that. And there is nothing to fear in business. The market is the decisive factor. The demand. Yes, the past is really important to me, but in the end? The end is business. That’s the bottom line. That’s where a person can measure up what he’s done. So there is no problem here. Later I’ll give you some clothes (laughs), come to Muzhenliao, we’ll talk about it, it’s here on the Wangfujing, you can pick something out and then you’ll see. OK? Just don’t be afraid of business. (Her cell phone rings and she answers it) Wei[170]. . ah. . just a bit longer, yes, a bit. . about 10 minutes or so, and fine, you wait. . Are you going home? Wait a bit, and then I too will. . Because I’m still talking. . One of Mr Yang Lian’s friends is here. . he’s also a foreigner. . what?!. . Me? Fine. We’ll talk about it later. Aha. OK.

Miss Wang stands up, and, as she extends her hand in farewell, Stein is prepared for the grip of a strong handshake, but it isn’t that at all: it’s gentle, her hand hardly touches Stein’s. During her monologue she looked at her watch maybe 10 times, and she laughed twice. Now she is saying goodbye to Xi Chuan, she is smiling, and in this smile you can see how truly exquisite she is, then the two men escort her to the door, they watch, as she gets into a SUV worth many millions and the chauffeur zooms away with her into the Beijing night. Xi Chuan and Stein return, silent, to their table, neither man speaks a word, they both keep looking towards where she has zoomed away to, as if gazing after the exit of a stern spirit — until at last they slowly come back to life, and, no longer speaking of ‘serious matters’, they eat and drink, their manners are loosened, more dishes arrive, the face of Xi Chuan becomes smooth, at times he leans back, clasps his hands over his pot belly, and laughs, liberated.

4. Mama

When he gets home at about midnight, he finds that Mama is still awake. At first he silently inserts the key into the lock and opens the door so as not to wake her, but then he sees that the light is still on in her room; he softly goes to her door, and calls into the room, Mama, are you still awake? — Of course, she yells out gaily, and says something to the effect that there’s nothing to worry about, for if he, Stein, is coming back to the flat, she would never go to sleep.

Stein really loves Mama.

She is so tiny, so frail, so soft-spoken, that it seems a miracle that she has endured until now, and unbelievable that she, working her entire life as a doctor, has been able to withstand these 60-odd years. And she would be working now, were she not confined to her bed due to illness. For weeks she has not been able to get out into the fresh air; she can’t even leave her room, she is enclosed there. Whenever he can, Stein sits next to her and listens. Mama has an upright piano, which Stein used to play for her sometimes; she was always so deeply affected, though, that Stein stopped doing so. Instead he would tell her about his day, then get her to talk about her life. Just like now.

Mama, there’s one thing I never asked you: What was life like when you were a small child? What was everyday life like back then?

mama. As you know, I was born in 1934, but of course I don’t have any memories directly from that period. The first things I can remember are from the time of the Japanese occupation. The Japanese. . (she tries to recall the word in English, the language in which they are speaking). . war. The whole thing was more of a decisive impression for me, rather than a memory. I might have been three years old. . I heard the sound of a huge explosion. It was horrifyingly powerful. We lived in alley, and in my room I was really afraid. I hid underneath the bed (laughs). Otherwise. . I recall nothing from that time.

And thus, so to speak, my life began. With that huge explosion. Later on, when I was a little older, I already knew about some things, I knew that the Japanese had occupied Beijing, and my feelings were. . they were such that I felt that in my life there was nothing happy. . nothing cheerful. . nothing, not a single happy thing. When the Japanese occupied our country, life was not secure. The mere fact of remaining alive was not secure. Nor was my father’s work. Because my father was 48 years older than me. He worked at the Shifan University,[171] and he was already considered old. So we were afraid he would be dismissed. And prices were really high! At that time the Japanese just left us one single thing to eat — xiliang, millet grains. We could hardly get any rice. For the most part it was cornmeal or barley. Unfortunately, even the grains that we got from the Japanese were ruined, they had a bad taste and a greenish colour. The Japanese gave us whatever could no longer be eaten. So the only thing we could do was to keep hens at home. They laid a fair amount of eggs. I really liked that. We hardly bought anything, we had no money. So we ate mainly eggs. We didn’t eat the grain, but gave it to the hens. That’s how it was.

At that time, life at home was not too good. In a material sense. Because my father was the only one who earned any money. There were four of us siblings. My mother stayed at home with us. She took care of the household. My father always worked, my mother was at home, and their life was quite bitter. They were crushed by poverty in every respect. We were never allowed outside, except to go to school. And there was no place anywhere where we could have played.

What about friends? Was it possible to play with them somehow?

mama. We had no friends! I’m telling you that they only let us out to go to school, and there we only had lessons — of course there were no games in school, so where could there have been any friends? Later on, even when we were older, we couldn’t go to the movies. Because the Japanese soldiers went to the movies for their fun. Not that we could have spent the household money on something like that. We never went to the movies at all. As soon as school was over, they let us out to go home immediately. We couldn’t even stay in the courtyard because there were Japanese living next door. And, usually, the Japanese children bullied the Chinese children. They were always out there in the courtyard, and they could play. Not us. If we went out when they were there, they beat us. So we couldn’t go into the courtyard unless an adult was with us. Either my mama, or the house supervisor. We were even accompanied on the way to school, I remember that. It is easy to beat a child. Because of that, there was always an adult going with us to school. Once we were inside school, there were no problems.

What were the lessons like?

mama. It was just an average school. I have to think a bit. . (laughs). . Oh yes. . There was a huge entrance with a horizontal inscription above it. . I don’t remember anything specifically. What was written there. . Maybe it was something like ‘Li Yi Lian Chi’,[172] a quote from Confucius, it was a quote from him, that is certain. . Then there was the classroom. Well, that was pretty basic. Little tables, little chairs, a blackboard on the wall, the teacher wrote on it in chalk. At the beginning of the lesson, when the teacher came in, the class steward yelled: Stand up! Then: Sit down! During the lessons, we sat with our hands behind our backs.

Were the girls and boys together?

mama. Yes, usually they were together.

How many grades were there in primarily school?

mama. I went to school for six years from the time I was five, until 1945. Then the Japanese surrendered—15 August. The surrender. Then I began middle school.

Wait, let’s not go so fast! Mama, what did you learn in primary school?

mama. Poetry recitation, the national language, mathematics, from Grade Three there was also Japanese. . as for the rest, now. .

How did a class proceed?

mama. . And a little later. . we had history, geography. .

So how did a class proceed?

mama. We were taught from textbooks. The teacher explained. We wrote it down. But when the teacher explained, there was nothing for us to do, we had to pay attention, our hands behind our backs. We weren’t allowed to fidget, to whisper, nothing like that. . (laughs). .

Mama, I don’t understand how it worked. .

mama. Well, in Grade One the teacher wrote something on the blackboard, then we read it aloud, all of us. The teacher wrote, we read aloud. For example: Tian liang le — no, that wasn’t it. . (concentrates). . For example: Tian ping te yi an tian. . In the old days, there was a kind of pinyin, it was called zhuyin zimu. We had to somehow write down the pronunciation until we knew Chinese properly, in fact it’s the same today. . (chants) bo-po, like that, mo-fo. . de-te. . ne-le, it was like that, it’s the same as the pinyin everyone uses today, the transcription with English letters for the Chinese characters. . But we used the zhuyin zimu[173] system. We learnt this first. And after we learnt that, there were lessons and we had to take notes. In Grade One, they called it guoyu.[174] Now they call it yuwen, that is, language and literature. The first lesson was Tian liang le—‘The heavens have become radiant.’ That was the first lesson in my primary school! Yes — Tian liang le! The first lesson!

The first lesson? The very first one? And who says that Mama doesn’t remember anything. .!

mama (proudly). Yes. Tian liang le. Then the second lesson: Didi, meimei, kuai qilai—‘Younger brother, younger sister, quickly rise!’ That was the second lesson! I remember now! And the third lesson: Jie shuo—‘Little sister says’: Wo ai taiyang hong, wo ai taiyang liang, wo ai zaoshang de taiyang guang—‘I love the red sun, I love the sun’s brightness, I love the light of the rising sun.’ That’s how it went from one lesson to the next. Then there was tian as a sound: te-yian: tian — the sky — the teacher read it out, tian, we repeated after him, te-yi-an: tian. . The entire classroom echoed with our voices. Everywhere you could hear only our voices, we repeated it so much! First, that is, we had to brush up on it, then the next time the teacher would call us to come to the black board and write it down. He called on this or that pupil to come to the board. While they were writing, the others could take notes. But if you weren’t writing, you had to keep your hands behind your back. Your hands couldn’t be like this (demonstrates), only nicely behind your back. That was how you had to behave during classes. Also during maths. After the teacher finished his explanation, writing it down and pronouncing it, we chanted the same thing, like this (recites, chanting each syllable) yi jia yi dengyu ji, yi jia yi dengyu er. . ‘One plus one is how much, one plus one is two’. . And that’s how it went until the exams. . During the exams, they handed out a question sheet and we had to fill it in.

Did they teach you Confucius?

mama. I wouldn’t say that they taught Confucius but that Confucius was there in all of our lessons. In the yuwen class.

So they didn’t have you reading the Lunyu right away?

mama (laughing). Of course they did, how could they not have. . But the spirit of Confucius permeated the schoolbooks. And as we got older, there were more and more Confucian texts. But as for what Confucius meant in the old order — before the Japanese came — well, that was taught at home. Because at home we learnt the most basic laws of life, based upon the wisdom of Confucius. At home it was said, for example, that we must respect our parents and that we must help our siblings. And it was at home that we learnt how to do what is necessary. How to be a human being.

Mama, exactly what was it that they taught you at home?

mama. To study hard. To greet people in the proper way. To take care of ourselves. We were very obedient. We were taught to be diligent, so that later on we would be able to work independently for China. . And not to leave.

But what was there of Confucius in that?

mama. Everything. All of it. Actually it wasn’t necessary to teach us. Because we observed how the elders conducted themselves. They didn’t have to say: do this in this way, do that in that way, because we saw how they did it, and we came to know for ourselves what was right: to respect our elders, to help them. . There was also a book in my childhood, Kong Rong Rang Li,[175] and the hero of that book taught us that we must give everything to the elders and to the little ones, that we must not keep the good things for ourselves. We knew the story of Kong Rong from a very early age, and that story, and others like it, taught us how to be good. For example, if you had four apples, you had to give the two bigger ones to your parents, the smaller one to your sibling, and then keep the smallest one for yourself. Parents also adhered to the principle of giving everything to their children. We did everything as we observed. We knew that we had to respect our parents. And we didn’t have to be taught that. We knew by ourselves. We knew.

Mama, were your parents religious?

mama. No.

And your grandparents?

mama. I don’t know anything about my paternal grandparents, I never saw them. I don’t think they could be called Buddhists, although Buddhism did make some impression on them. Some kind of impression on their lives. It influenced them.

What about Taoism?

mama. They didn’t believe in that either, neither my parents nor my grandparents. If they believed in something, then it would have been Buddhism. But we couldn’t really know what they believed in. All I can say is that the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism had a certain effect on them. They were also strongly influenced by scientific and Western ways of thinking. They did not, for example, go to pray to the Buddha. They respected the fact that, in Buddhism, one has to be good. One’s heart has to be good, and one must not do evil. For evil brings punishment in its wake. Not that someone comes and punishes you, but that there will be punishment. .

Mama, who was considered a bad child?

mama. In those days we were afraid of robbery, because there were very many poor people, and there were those among them who had learnt bad ways — the heart of a poor man must remain good, but it happened that some turned into thieves. Every house had a flat roof in those days, and well, one of these bad children climbed up on top of the house, and from there he climbed down into the courtyard, and that is how he stole things. My mother kept chickens at home, and someone stole two yellow chickens! So we were afraid, and at night we had to tightly lock our doors and gates. We were afraid that someone would sneak in. Our teacher told us a story: he had a white shirt which he washed and then hung in the window to dry, but the window only had paper in it, and someone tore the paper and stole his shirt, our very own teacher told us this story. So how could we not have been afraid of thieves?

So, a bad person is someone who steals?

mama. Oh yes, and something else, the Japanese soldiers were also bad. We were afraid of them. They wore leather boots, and they always had a sword on their backs. We were afraid of them. Then there were the beggars. There were so many of them, countless children, they lived there, next to the street, and they begged, and even though we felt sorry for them, we knew that among them were many bad children. We were still able to eat, and so we were not counted among the poorest of the poor, and yet I have many memories of how cold we were in the winter. . We nearly froze to death! The cold came in through the windows and the door!

Were your mother and father strict? Did you love them? Or were you afraid of them?

mama. The educational demands placed upon us children were very strict, but not pitiless. My parents were full of love for us. They were loving and protective. Their principles were important: we had to study well and not waste our time, but they loved us very much as well. .

Mama, aren’t you tired? It’s already past midnight, past one o’clock. .!

mama. No, not at all! Stay! Let’s keep talking! A few hours of sleep is enough for me.

So tell me, then, what it was like in the evenings?

mama. We came from school, we made dinner, nothing special.

Did you eat dinner together?

mama. Many times we didn’t. Because my papa worked a lot, and sometimes we had already gone to bed by the time he came home. My mother always stayed up to let him in. There was no key — the door could only be opened from the inside. I remember, once, in the winter, there was a lot of snow, and the road was very slippery, and I, under the blanket, was really afraid that my father would slip on the way home. At times like that I couldn’t fall asleep, and so I waited with my mother for my father to come home.

What did you dream about? What were your greatest desires?

mama. We didn’t have too many aspirations back then because life itself was very tense. We just hoped that we could always go to school. That we could buy what we needed for school. That there would be enough money for that. I hoped that my parents would remain healthy and happy. And of course they hoped that one day life outside would be secure. In those times you could not dream of anything else. .

But every child has some kind of dream! A nice red dress?

mama. I never fantasized about things like that then. Because I felt it was enough if there was something to eat. And there was no point to daydreaming. We didn’t want to burden our parents with dreams like that! We did not want to make their anxieties worse. During the Lunar New Year we always got a new pair of shoes. Our mother would make us new clothes now and then. Once, I remember, we were taken to our one relative in Beijing, a great-aunt, who gave us all some money. That was the happiest day of my childhood. Each of us got our money in a red envelope. And I never spent mine. I kept adding to it, watching over it, never touching it, until liberation. And then came liberation, and, from one day to the next, my money suddenly was worthless.

How many years did you keep it?

mama. Many, many years. As a matter of fact I was a little sad, because I had been saving it for my parents, to give it to them one day. All my siblings would have liked to buy something, but not me. I loved only my parents. But I’d saved it up for them in vain.

Mama, I’m beginning to get sleepy now. But something just came to my mind. How did children sense the love their parents had for them? Did the parents show it?

mama. Yes, and very much so! But we had to study hard.

And if someone did something bad, what was the punishment?

mama. We were never bad.

Stein looks up at the wall clock above her head, it is really very late now. He sees that Mama’s eyelids are also beginning to close. Stein finally bids her goodnight, and goes to lie down.

We were never bad.

Stein adjusts the pillow beneath his head, and then pulls the sheet onto himself.

We were never bad.

Mama, why can’t you live for ever?

5. The Last Mandarin

Right before his trip to China, Stein meets with Yang Lian in Munich. Yang, aware of his Hungarian friend’s experiences in China in 1998, as well as Stein’s opinion — based upon his experiences — of the situation ‘at home’, does not share Stein’s view at all: in his formulation, the spirit of China is not dead, the spirit of China is still essentially alive in the ‘depths’, and when he finishes this pronunciation in response to Stein’s question, he is silent for a moment, then he looks at Stein with an impish glance, as it were reinforcing his words, and then adds: Wait a minute, just go see my father in Tianjin, do not fail to do so, and then you will see that Chinese classical culture is certainly still alive, you will see classical culture in its fullest dimension, because he, my dear father in Tianjin, is the embodiment of classical culture.

And so now Stein sits with this dignified, marvellous, grey-haired, elderly man in a destitute, tiny flat on one of Tianjin’s housing estates, which reminds Stein of the one he rented in Shanghai in the vicinity of Fudan University; there he sits across from Yang Qinghua, and he immediately begins by repeating what his son has said about him. At this, the elderly gentleman laughs greatly, but does not express his opinion in any other way. Then he becomes serious, he thinks for a while and finally he says:

yang. I am interested in Chinese classical culture.

Then, in order to get to the heart of the matter, Stein asks about Yang’s opinion as to the role — or potential role — of classical culture in contemporary Chinese life.

Mr Yang thinks for a bit, then takes a deep breath. From this it is clear that what is to follow will be a performance. For it quickly emerges that every verbal communication of Lian’s father is a pronouncement. Stein realizes, however, that the articulation of his thoughts demands precisely this mode of expression. There is a structure to everything he says, a kind of noble rhetoric, a very ancient rhetoric, unknown today and emerging from a great distance, the vastness of which Mr Yang himself may not be fully aware. Or of which he prefers not to be aware.

yang. It is my view that the influence of classical culture on modern life, upon us. . upon all of us. . has an effect. We are the most illustrious of ancient civilizations. Unparalleled in the world. For our culture, in the annals of history, is truly singular. Every other ancient civilization, Egyptian, Roman and so on, all came to an end, they disappeared. Ours is the only one which is still living, and that is why our traditions have such an extraordinarily singular character. Our history is a written history, and by that you should understand that this is a culture built upon the unconditional primacy of writing. Chinese history developed under the influence of the written language. Writing was always of the most crucial importance for the Chinese nation. And here I must speak of Confucius. I personally do not like the philosophical system of Confucius, and that is because he over-emphasized the role of authority in society. If you exist in this society, then you are determined by means of authority. You are subjected to the authority of the father, to the authority of the emperor. I do not like authority. I like freedom. Freedom of the spirit. There is a counterweight to Confucius in Chinese tradition: Laozi and Zhuangzi. In my view, it is them and their philosophy that form the highest order in China. They are also the ones who have exercised the greatest influence on us.

But as I pronounced these words in judgement of Confucius just now, I must immediately adjust them somewhat. Of course Confucius is present in my thoughts and in who I am. I am familiar with his works and many of his teachings, especially those dealing with his views on the world: those works have influenced me deeply. The Confucian school of thought does not influence theory but everyday life. If I had a friend who came from a distant land to visit me, that would make me happy. How could it not? And this is Confucius — clearly you know what well-known passage and sentence I am referring to.[176] So, to summarize: we have all lived, and continue to live, in the shadow of Confucius.

Nonetheless, when I was 21 years old or so, when I began to be acquainted with the Western intellectual world, I came across, for example, the notion of democracy. There is nothing like it in Chinese culture. Of course, I understood that this was a very good thing. Equality, freedom, democracy. I thought that all these were very positive, appropriate concepts. And at once these concepts began to be incorporated into my own Chinese culture. And since the basis, the starting point, and the roots of my thinking all originate from Chinese culture, the information and influences I acquired from abroad never really drew me away from my own culture. There came to be a kind of balance within me, and that was possible only because I based my own culture upon that of Laozi and Zhuangzi, both of whom taught us that if your inner world is free, then you too are free. So we can state that whether it be a question of Confucius or Laozi, everyone here is somehow influenced by the Chinese culture of ancient times.

But if you go deeper, then you have to speak about the intelligentsia. In our tradition, the intelligentsia has always been comprised of the best, the noblest part of society. They are the people who protect tradition. Without them, there is no progress and no culture. So they are the most important: they are the brains that think. As for the workers — manual labourers, peasants — thinking is not their strong point. They are under the influence of the wider public. Their thoughts are ordinary thoughts. What they think about is ordinary, and what they do is ordinary. Nevertheless, they live their lives under the influence of our ancient civilization. While they are unchanging and perpetual, the intelligentsia, and only the intelligentsia is rejuvenated again and again in its own spirit: they, the literati, are the ones who turn to the spirit until they begin to perceive the true meaning of life.

Then I would say that I. . I will speak a little about myself. I have children: there is Lian, there is my daughter, there is my younger son, I have three children. Their opinion of me is very good. They love me very much. And I can say that there are no generational conflicts between us. Because I am an intellectual, I have never had and still do not have any great desire to pressure them. I have always spoken to them freely and I continue to do so, not just to them but to anyone with whom I may have had the opportunity to speak. I believe that if one speaks freely and openly, there can be no faults in his speech. And if I am not right, you should interrupt me. My daughter says that I am the best person in the world. She says you can’t find anyone like me anywhere. Someone who lets her speak. Who lets her say what she really wants to say. There are some truths that I say, and some truths that she says: if she is right, I accept it. If she is right, I adjust my opinion. I can even accept that part of your opinion which isn’t right. I never say: I will not permit this. . Do what you like. I know, of course, what isn’t right. There is my younger son. When he was a soldier, around the age of 20, what happened? There is a very bad tradition in the Chinese army — everyone smokes cigarettes. They smoke dreadfully! It is bad for one’s health. But I never said to my son: Stop smoking! He stopped by himself. The correct thing, therefore, is to let a person decide freely for himself.

Maybe that’s why my children love me. They tell me their worries, and I tell them what I think about them. But I do not force my opinions on them. It’s possible that my opinion is not always correct. They must decide. They must think over whether it is correct or not.

Well, now, getting back to the intelligentsia: they are the people who bear the glory of a better world. This is very important for our tradition. That this quality of humanity exists: the quality of the intelligentsia in Chinese culture. This is a huge difference between the Western and Eastern systems. From early times, European states strived to be forceful military powers. A European state always devoted serious attention to the military side of things. The most outstanding people were always those who could kill the most enemies. At the same time, here in China, Confucius tells us: ‘I do not think much of those people who are brave in reaching the eastern sea while carrying mountains on their shoulders. . I do not value such people very much. I like people who think.’ So: those who think, those who teach are important. Well, that is our tradition.

And this tradition is very closely linked to language. Our language is comprised of characters contained in squares — every single character can fit, with perfect proportions, into a square frame. There is great meaning to this. And every cultivated intellectual was and is aware of the significance of this.

The guest interrupts, saying that he, Stein, has a different view of Confucianism, but that he does not live, nor has he ever lived, in China. And that he has as much esteem for Confucius as for Laozi and Zhuangzi. Because, he goes on to explain, for him Confucianism is the only social philosophy which introduces the concept of morality into everyday life. Christianity was not able to do this. And when he has spoken of that here, every one of his interlocutors nodded, telling him he was right and saying that without Confucianism there would be no China. They also told him that although they sensed how much danger there was in the development of contemporary society, they denied that Confucianism had disappeared from the societal order. This, said Stein, was really shocking, because his experience has been precisely the opposite.

yang. I agree with you. The Confucian school of thought had a good effect on people. It always placed morality above success. You can be successful, you can be a successful official, but from the viewpoint of morality this means nothing. Confucius said: Place morality above success. This Confucian influence was without a doubt good. I agree. And in that sense as well, Confucianism had a greater influence here than either Buddhism or Christianity. The Christian and Buddhist religions are both very good. As far as I can see — and I attended a Methodist school, so I know about it — Christianity is a very positive religion, first and foremost, because it devotes special attention to love. It says that you must love other people. This is much more important to me than Confucian morality. Because here in China we never paid enough attention to personal love. There are two kinds of people who are difficult to deal with: children and women, as both are led by their emotions. Confucius never spoke about the love between a man and a woman. He never engaged with the question of love. In Christianity, by contrast, love is at the very centre of things, and this has deeply touched me. In my life, this always meant: love your children. More precisely: show your love to your children. This is more important than anything else. This is what has caused, and still causes, so many problems for us. Everyone tortures their children, saying, study, study, but there is no love! Everyone will say to you: But I love my children! Then my answer would be: So then love them, really! Show them that you love them! The greatest mistakes, the greatest misapprehensions and the greatest lack of understanding all stem from this. So, to summarize, I truly respect Christianity because it emphasizes the importance of love.

Buddhism speaks of emptiness, the emptiness of all that exists, that is, the end of everything is emptiness. I believe that this is perfectly, immaculately true. Everything has a beginning, everyone and everything must live and then must die, everything and everyone must come to an end; the universe too will come to an end. We don’t know what the beginning of time was, nor do we know what the end will be. We know that there are boundaries, but we also know that, in reality, everything is boundless. It is never possible to come to the end of anything. We have knowledge neither of the small nor of the large: neither of the small nor of the large epochs, neither of the small nor of the large domains. And then Buddhism comes along and says that everything is empty, everything becomes empty. And this is irrevocably true. This is the whole truth. I believe we must learn from this. I do not believe that we need to devote too much attention to fate, to the world, because all this will become empty. Our own lives will also become empty. Nothing. This is what Buddhism teaches, and that is why I hold Buddhism in great esteem.

But for us in China, Laozi is the most important. Laozi was a very wise person. If someone reads his books, then he will have the most profound knowledge. Because how did the whole thing begin? The truth cannot be pronounced. We cannot say what is true. Neither can we say what is not true. Truth is something of which you cannot speak.

You cannot get to the end of things.

And now we are speaking of the modern world.

And I am very worried.

I am worried about the future of humanity. Not just about the future of China. But of the entire world. I am really worried.

The twentieth century witnessed as much progress as perhaps all the twenty previous centuries put together. We can be certain that the twentieth century represents the greatest development in all of history. On the other hand: all things now develop with horrific speed, and I don’t know who is going to stop this. In vain will we stand in the ruins, by then it will be too late. I am really worried.

I do not care for the modern world. I do not like speed of things. The spirit is not happy in this world. You have too many things. You have a television, you have a computer. Take, for example, the computer: no one knows what it actually is. Or what we can do with it. Computers bother me. Why? I know that computers are very interesting. I like to play. I can spend hours in front of the computer. But I have no energy for it. It will be the death of me. Well, just wait! Wait, wait a few years, and I’ll catch up with you. But my life won’t be enough for that, and I can’t spend so much time in. . play! I am worried, really worried about this speed, this frightening speed. Worried for all of mankind. Who will stop it? You can’t stop it. What is just a fantasy today becomes — in the space of a few days — reality. And then you’ll be able to connect your brain to the computer. Then you’ll be able to learn everything. All knowledge will be in your personal computer. I don’t know Hungarian but it will be in my computer.

This is truly terrifying. All the cultures of the world will disappear, including the classical imperial culture of China, which I love so much! It will become nothing. Take young people. They are not interested in classical culture in the slightest. They have no time to study. You need to read books in order to know what is what, but you have no time. I want to play computer games, I want to relax, I want to listen to easy music and dance in the evenings. They are not interested in the ancient era, they’re not interested in culture. They have no relationship to it.

And you can’t stop this either. Progress is horrific. When a change like this has taken place, you cannot follow it with your feelings. Nor can you do anything to make it stop.

He expresses himself simply and precisely, and, behind the simplicity and precision of his words, one senses the deep prudence of a harmonious worldview. In more confidential tones, Stein tells him that he seeks a metaphysical force in the background of this process which he too feels to be unstoppable. So he thinks that if evil does appear, no one will be able to do anything against it. Only a new metaphysics can be of help. But such a metaphysics cannot be built on any kind of dichotomy, it cannot be built on contradictions, on duality, on some new kind of enigmatic designation, it cannot be built on expression with its redemptive strength. He does not believe — László Stein propounds at the Tianjin housing estate — that words can have any role in it. Nor, he believes, can concepts. That is enough for now. He is, however, much more curious about Mr Yang’s sincere opinion: Is there any chance at all for the creation of a new metaphysics?

yang. This is a very difficult question. No one can solve a problem like this in a Communist regime. The government can’t do anything. The teachers, the writers, the intellectuals don’t even think about it. They do not sense that there is a problem. Nothing seems problematic to them. They only sense that there is progress, that everything is better than it was 10 years ago: they are happy now. They sense no danger. But, in my opinion, we are at a turning point — and now I am thinking of all of humanity. We have reached the end of one era, and now we don’t know what is all around us. Because we’re already in a new era, and it is very different from the old one. Science and the world of technology are both changing everything so quickly, even our bodies. So the original ancient culture was present here, but to no avail, at this point in history it has come to a stop. It still has some effect, some kind of continuity, but it cannot analyse and reformulate things, it cannot impact things with absolute strength. The age to follow will be full of dangers. It will be full of difficulties. In all likelihood, it will not be a good future for mankind. It is even possible that this new era will mean the end of mankind.

But no one can stop this.

And so what can I do? I try through my own influence to help the lives of those whom I love, the lives of those around me. Many people listen to me. They hear what I say. They love the kind of spirit which is mine. I can have an effect on them. Maybe even a good effect, so that they will try to do good in their lives. Of course I am most interested in my children. The future of my children. What can they think about the world? What can they do for the world?

What? I believe it is necessary to help them so that they can live happy lives. So that they may live happily. This is the most important thing. They must live a happy life. If they are successful, if they earn a lot of money, if they become famous, all of this may occur but it isn’t important. You can be successful, you can be unsuccessful, but you can be happy too. And that is what I do. Many people live in big houses — I live in this little housing-estate apartment. I have nothing. It doesn’t matter. Many of my classmates went on to become successful people, many of them are very powerful. But of all my classmates, I am the only happy one. My strategy is to be happy.

I am not interested in being famous, I am lazy, I don’t like to write. In order to write you need to get your brain together, and I don’t like doing that. My children want me to write something, but I refuse to do so. Even that doesn’t interest me, nor does wealth. Only happiness does. My grandfather was a mandarin, and he was very wealthy but he was never happy. I would not like to be like him. He treated poor people very ruthlessly, and so everyone was his enemy. You must know exactly what is important and what isn’t. Fame is not important, that does not bring happiness. Nor does power. I have friends who became powerful. They have power now: I am a nobody, and I bow down to them. But one day they’ll be tired, and they won’t have any more power, and suddenly no one will be bowing down to them. Is it worth it? Are they happy? They believe themselves to be important, but it’s just a dream, a spectacle, an apparition that will disappear — it will come to an end and that will be that.

What you can do is to tell people what happiness is, and how they can become happy. I have lived my entire life in happiness. Because I have been free.

Something comes to mind — Stein now speaks again — and it always comes to mind when he hears someone speaking about personal happiness. For years now, he’s been wandering around the world, now he’s here in Tianjin, tomorrow he’ll be in Beijing, then in Suzhou, then somewhere in the West, and before this he was in Berlin, then in Zurich and London and Paris and Sarajevo and in the eighth district in Budapest, and before that he was in New York and Barcelona and Kyoto and Tokyo, but it doesn’t matter where he is, he walks along the street and he sees misery, he sees unhappiness, he senses the horrors, there is always evil in front of him and evil behind him, and if he thinks of this then he really doesn’t know what to make of his, Mr Yang’s words, he is confused, because how can he follow his advice, how can he aspire to personal happiness — when he is amid the unhappy, in misery and in the consciousness of the horrors and the presence of perpetual evil?

yang. For me, this is an easy question. You love others, you must love other people. You must represent love and friendship. You must express compassion with those who suffer. That is enough. You must do what you can. You must help everyone you can with the best part of your being. Show compassion for them, and that is enough. There is a horrific amount of suffering in the world, you must try to help those who suffer, but you cannot do everything.

But he, Stein, is not able to feel compassion for the depraved and the hardened.

yang. Of course. You must hate them. You must love those who suffer, but you must hate those who are evil. I too hate certain people, but I cannot do anything against them. They could easily kill me. But I couldn’t kill them. I have no power for that. And I don’t even want it.

Mr Yang is quiet. Stein suddenly realizes how tired he is and he realizes that if he is tired, how exhausted this old man, almost 70 years old, must be. He has to leave, and he thinks for a long time about what Mr Yang said. After a long silence, he finally speaks again.

Mr Yang, he says, never has he found it so difficult to end a conversation. But he has looked at the clock, and he has looked at the face of Mr Yang, and he sees that he is tired. Surely now he would like to go to sleep, and Stein is detaining him. It is night-time already. Please don’t be angry, Stein says, that he has stayed for so long, and has not let him rest.

yang. Nonsense! I never sleep at night. Only in the morning, before noon. I sleep seven times a week, but always just a little bit. But not at night. Never.

I never sleep at night: the words of Mr Yang echo in Stein’s mind, and he cannot move, he does not get up, he does not start off, it is, however, already time, and maybe even necessary that he get up to catch the last train back to Beijing, and it could already be night-time — it’s just that he is incapable of movement, unable to get up and set off, because he just keeps listening to Yang Qinghua who begins to speak again, he just listens as he speaks, he just looks at his grey hair, his noble features, he just marvels at this mandarin on the housing estate in Tianjin, as he just keeps speaking, in his own extraordinarily precise English he just keeps pronouncing and pronouncing his sentences, the most simple sentences in the world, and outside, it is already late at night — very late at night.