BOOKS | Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud I

I thought I wait for inspiration before attempting to write about Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud - but the Muse is avoiding me, so I shall write anyway about the book that was interesting enough when it began with Sun Shuyun reasons for following the footsteps of 7th century Buddhist monk Xuanzang. It was a journey that took her across Central Asia, India and China - and her travel narrative is interweaved with the story of Xuanzang himself, the difficulties he faced, his resolve - and the story of Buddha and Buddhism itself.

Sun Shuyun is not an elegant writer - but her prose is simple, straightforward - which makes her story feel earnest and down-to-earth. The writing felt stilted at times, and the book dragged in its narrative mid-way - only to pick up again when Sun finally reached India. From them on, I was hooked. Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud is a book worth the effort to push through.

For me, the best part of her book is Xuanzang's triumphant return to Tang Dynasty China. I shall write about this later - as it deserves a post on its own. That latter section ignited in me an interest in Chinese Tang Dynasty history.

This post is about Sun Shuyun's personal story - how she came to Buddhism, and her travels.

Sun Shuyun was a child of the Cultural Revolution, brought up on the Communist dogma. She was the daughter of a former officer in the People's Liberation Army - a background that sheltered her in a way from the harsher persecution in the 1960s. However, the family still had to suppress certain facts of their lives in the midst of the madness of the Cultural Revolution: among them was the concealment of her maternal grandmother's Buddhist faith.

Sun's coming to faith has a lot to do with her grandmother, a widow who also lost seven children. She fell into despair, until an itinerant monk passing through her village one day gave her a small statue of Guanyin, and taught her to pray, to recite the name of Amitabha. That saved the grandmother's life, and in spite of the political climate then she tried to instill in her grandchildren the faith that brought her peace.

There was a touching anecdote Sun told of her grandmother. When Sun was young, sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, and the grandmother will always be up, her lips moving quickly but silently as she dropped things continuously into a bowl in front of her. There was always a serenity about the grandmother when she was like this. When Sun asked her grandmother what she was doing, the grandmother replied she was counting beans to pass the time. Only much later did Sun realise her grandmother was praying. Without the prayer beads, the grandmother counted her prayers with beans instead.

This story of the grandmother moved me with its simplicity - her faith was uncrushable in spite of the madness and violence of the Cultural Revolution. That image of an unassuming, harmless old woman, almost blind, but serene and at peace, just counting her prayers with beans in place of prayer beads. This is real faith. I yearn for this simplicity in my own faith.

Sun later entered the Beijing University, the brain-center of intellectual life in China. I believe this was when her view of the world expanded and one realises there is something beyond what we have been taught. In 1986 she was offered by an opportunity to studying in Oxford - the chance to journey to the West, in a manner. When her father sent her off, what he said to Sun affected her immensely:

'Don't worry about me. This is your big chance, you've got to take it. Look at me, look at your sisters, look at what society has come to. Don't get homesick. There is nothing here for you to come back to.' When I turned around and waved him goodbye, I was shocked, and sad. As someone who had devoted his entire life to the revolution, he must have been in total despair.

For Sun and her generation, it was a period of self-examination. As China has started to open itself to a capitialist economy, the young people of Sun's generation had to redefine themselves. The Communist ideologies they were brought up with had proved obsolete. It was Sun's father and his generation that suffered most of all - as they are now old, and they had wasted the best years of their life for an idea that betrayed them, and caused so much pain.

With Father's death and the collapse of his world I lost all that remained of my attachment to the cause he gave his life to. I knew I was lucky, I was free and I had not suffered like my forebears and my fellow-countrymen. But like so many Chinese, I felt strongly that something was missing. The idea of a confirming faith dies hard. I was increasingly unsure of where I was going, why I was doing the things I did; I was at a loss, and pondering.

So she journeyed, on the trail of Xuangzang - the gifted monk who found the teachings of Buddhism that he was taught inadequate, so he set out under threat of death, to the source of Buddhism - for greater understanding, and perhaps enlightenment.

Eileen Chang and How Little We Truly Know

A while back, I was asking a friend about Eileen Chang, and my friend told me this story: It seems Eileen Chang was something of an eccentric and a recluse. She basically did a "Harper Lee" and took great pains to avoid the public eye. But one fine day, Chang decided to make a statement that "She ain't dead" (and perhaps to make a sardonic point about outliving Kim Il-sung).

So she took a picture holding a Chinese language newspaper with the headline: "Chairman Kim Il-sung passed away suddenly yesterday" - for the purpose of dating it. (Kim Il-sung died on July 8, 1994.)

One wonders at this woman's sense of humour. Actually, it makes me want to read her books.

Since NYRB published her English translation of Love In A Fallen City, Eileen Chang seems to be gaining a slow recognition among the English-reading community. As Focus Features releases Ang Lee's (director of Brokeback Mountain) film adaptation of Eileen Chang's Lust, Caution (Chinese Title: 色 戒), I suspect more people will be wondering who is this "unknown" Chinese author. Perhaps more people will actually read Eileen Chang. One can only hope.

From MonkeyPeaches.com, the film synopsis goes:

Based on the Eileen Chang's same title short story, which was inspired by a true event, the story of Lust, Caution is set in the Japanese occupied Shanghai in the early 1940s. It tells a young woman Wang Jiazhi is assigned to approach Mr. Yee, a high-ranking official worked for the puppet government, and tricks him to an assassination trap. Then she realizes their relationship has dangerously grown out of control. The cast includes newcomer Tang Wei as Wang Jiazhi, Leung Chiu-Wai as Mr. Yee, Wang Lee-Hom as Kuang Yu-Min, Wang's comrade and lover, and Joan Chen as Mrs. Yee.

Randomhouse will be releasing the film tie-in for Lust, Caution. Do check it out if you think you're interested.

Of course, this isn't the first time a Eileen Chang story has been adapted for the screen. Stanley Kwan directed a beautiful version of Red Rose, White Rose: where Winston Chao is caught between two women: Joan Chen (Red Rose), who represents forbidden desire, and Veronica Yip (White Rose), his wife - who is supposed to represent virtue. Earlier adaptation also includes Hong Kong director Ann Hui's Love In a Fallen City (which stars Chow Yun Fatt), and Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's Shanghai Flowers (which has Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Carina Lau, both of whom you might have seen in 2046).

I guess my point is: Ang Lee's Hollywood glitter from Brokeback Mountain may rub off on Eileen Chang's stories and earn her new readership. But she has always been known to the Chinese through her writings and the film adaptations. Then again, I realise there are also a good number of ethnic Chinese who have no inkling of Chang either. They have lost touch with their literary heritage, and they may be more familiar with Jane Austen and Fyodor Dostoevsky than any Chinese authors dead or alive - and it depresses me.

It is ironic that Eileen Chang is only gradually being "recognised" by the rest of the world - the part of the world that does not read Chinese. Everytime I read about how "underrated" Eileen Chang is, I just want to laugh in a sad, bitter way, because it tells me how little we truly know about the culture of the rest of the world.

And then it makes me desperate to want to travel more, to read more, to know more about the rest of the world.

BOOKS | Ma Jian

Stick Out Your Tongue
By Ma Jian
[Translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew]
[Chinese Literature]

I first learnt of Ma Jian when Red Dust came out in its English translation several years back. Red Dust is the travel memoir of Ma Jian's vagabonding across China in the 1980s. In those days, he kept his hair long, read translations of Western literature, wrote, painted, had late-night parties with his bohemian friends where they played pop music from their cassette recorders through the night. Ma Jian is the typical disillusioned romantic of post-Mao China — discontented with the emptiness of the Communist society, wanting more — yet powerless. For his views and behaviour, he was suspended from his work unit — pending investigation by the authorities. In a state of existentialist despair, he packed his bag (along with a copy of Walt Whitman) and made a journey on foot to the outer reaches of China. He lived among the indigenous Chinese tribes and ventured into the wildest regions of Tibet. He had hoped Tibet could provide him with a deeper insight into the Buddhist faith in the midst of the inhuman society he was living in. Ma Jian later returned to Beijing spiritually exhausted; the trip brought him not the peace he desired, but knowledge of a different kind. He locked himself up in his one-room shack and wrote feverishly. Stick Out Your Tongue was the first book that came out of his experience. He wrote:

Through the stories that took shape, I wanted to express my confusion and bewilderment, my sympathy for the marginalised and dispossessed, my frustration with blind faith, and my distress at the losses we incur on the march to so-called 'civilisation'. I wanted to write about Tibet as I had experienced it, as both a reality and a state of mind. I let my guard down and wrote without thought of what the repercussions might be.

The subject matter of Stick Out Your Tongue led the Mainland Chinese government to denounce him, and the book was subsequently banned in 1987 as a work of pornography and as an example of bourgeois liberalism. (This is probably why I could not locate a Chinese version of the book.) The editor of his book was sacked and many of his friends were brought in for questioning. Thankfully by that time Ma Jian was living in Hong Kong. His friends advised him to stay in Hong Kong — he risked imprisonment should he return to Beijing.

So, is Stick Out Your Tongue an accurate portrayal of Tibetan life? I wouldn't know. Perhaps like Marco Polo in Invisible Cities, all the tales of the fantastic cities are really about Venice — and Ma Jian is really writing about the China that exiled him.

Ma Jian wrote from the truth of what he felt, and that came from a place of disillusion and despair that was trying to make sense of what he went through. Perhaps this explains the gothic nature of his stories. Stick Out Your Tongue will shatter your picture-perfect vision of an idyllic Tibet with the rolling pastures and peace-loving natives.

In one story, a Chinese writer travelling through Tibet witnesses the sky burial of a woman who had died in childbirth. She was shared as a wife between two brothers. In another story, the narrator shares a tent with a Tibetan man, who later reveals how he had slept with his mother when he was sixteen, and conceived a daughter with her. Later he sinned with the daughter, who then ran away. He has sold his entire herd of yaks and sheep, donated the proceeds to a monastery and was on his way to Gangdise Mountains to pray, and to wash his sins away in Lake Mansarobar. Then there is the story of a ritual cup made from human skull that the narrator had bought on his travels. The skull belongs to a female Living Buddha who died during her initiation.

The stories are disturbing, violent, perverse and mystifying in spite of it all. Ma Jian has included an Afterword to this translation. In it, he wrote:

In the West, I have met many people who share the same romantic vision of Tibet that I held before I visited the country. The need to believe in an earthly paradise, a hidden utopia where men live in peace and harmony, seems to run deep among those who are discontented with the modern world. Westerners idealise Tibetans as gentle, godly people untainted by base desires and greed. But in my experience, Tibetans can be as corrupt and brutal as the rest of us. To idealise them is to deny them their humanity.

I visited Tibet last year and I returned with mixed feelings. I had read up on the country before I left, and I thought I had "educated" myself against the over-idealisation of the country. A friend once remarked with a longing in her voice, that Tibet was a beautiful pacificist country — because of the Buddhist culture permeating Tibetan life, and that was why it could not resist the Chinese invasion. At that time I had been disdainful of her romantic misconception about Tibet, and had corrected her, stating that like most countries that fell to foreign aggression, the fall of Tibet was due to the political incompetence of her leaders.

Yet we all hold our illusions in different ways, and some more subtle and hidden than others. I had my own romanticised Tibet in my mind's eye, only I was not yet aware of it then. A friend asked me, if I have gained any insights after my Tibetan travels. I did not really know how to answer her. I saw poverty, corruption and a savageness I was unprepared for. We were locked in a temple by an arrogant old man because we would not pay him when he demanded tips. I saw wolf-like cunning in the eyes of young boys half my age and I was afraid of them.

Yet in the midst of all these I would wake up in the morning in Lhasa, and see pilgrims who had travelled by foot all the way from the remote regions of Tibet to visit the Potala Palace and the sacred temples. These pilgrims are all around, spinning their prayer wheel, fingering their mala, making their offerings of yak butter into the burning lamps. They have travelled so far, just for their faith, and it was impressive.

EILEEN CHANG | Love

The NYRB published the English translation of some of Eileen Chang's works recently. The collection, Love in a Fallen City, makes available for the first time, her Chinese works to the English readership.

As far as I know, the only other Eileen Chang books available to English readers are the three anti-Communist propaganda novels written by Chang in English, The Rice Sprout Song and Naked Earth, and The Rouge of the North.

A passionate, complicated woman, Eileen Chang was known as something of an eccentric in her time. She grew more reclusive in her latter years, and was found in her Los Angeles apartment after being dead for some time. But she is still regarded as one of the grand dame of modern Chinese Literature today. It is a pity that she is so little known outside of the Chinese readership. And kudos to NYRB for publishing this collection. Love in a Fallen City is gaining good publicity through the blogsphere, and I find it encouraging. I would like to see more people reading Eileen Chang than some other writers that I will not name here.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine was sweet enough to send me something by Eileen Chang that she found struck a chord. I'm not a professional translator, so I shall try not to butcher the original prose too much.

The story is entitled "Love" - it tells of a pretty young girl who was standing at a door one day. The young man next door saw her; he had never spoken to her before. He approaches, and he just said to her, "Oh, you are here too?" She said nothing, and he had nothing more to say. They stood still for a while, and then they went their ways.

And that was it.

Later the pretty young girl was sold as a bride faraway from her home village. She was later resold several times. She suffered through the years. When she was old, she often recalls that moment, at the door, under the tree, with the young man.

Among the thousands of people that crossed in our lives, across the wilderness of time, we meet someone. Not earlier. Not later. Just in time. And when you meet this someone, there is nothing that needs to be said. Only this, softly "Oh, you are here too?"

The last part is the crucial bit. But I guess I blundered on the translation. ;)

The story is included in its entirety below.

***************

From 张爱玲经典散文. Via keep nothing

<<爱>>

这是真的。

有个村庄的小康之家的女孩子，生得美，有许多人来做媒，但都没有说成。那年她 不过十五六岁吧，是春天的晚上，她立在后门口，手扶着桃树。她记得她穿的是一件月 白的衫子。对门住的年轻人同她见过面，可是从来没有打过招呼的，他走了过来。离得 不远，站定了，轻轻的说了一声：“噢，你也在这里吗？”她没有说什么，他也没有再说什么，站了一会，各自走开了。

就这样就完了。

后来这女人被亲眷拐子卖到他乡外县去作妻，又几次三番地被转卖，经过无数的惊险的风波，老了的时候她还记得从前那一回事，常常说起，在那春天的晚上，在后门口的桃树下，那年轻人。

于千万人之中遇见你所遇见的人，于千万年之中，时间的无涯的荒野里，没有早一步，也没有晚一步，刚巧赶上了，那也没有别的话可说，惟有轻轻地问一声：“噢，你也在这里吗？”

(原刊1944年4月《杂志》月刊第13卷第1期)