China ’85

The first night I dreamt about China as a large house with many floors, each with a different character as the geological levels of the earth.
Reading in my Nagel’s China guide in the city of Quilin in the province of Quang-xi, I got struck by a feeling of total ignorance. Guilin has four directions: North-South-East-West as Chinese tradition in city-planning prescribes, and mythical stories about its origin and history. Walking along the river, a man on a bamboo raft is fishing with a cigarette between his fingers; others on their bamboo rafts move downstream; a man on a horse at the riverbank has his photo taken. Thousands of crickets make a deafening sound. I wonder whether I am really seeing these people or watching a Chinese landscape painting.

I rest and sleep for a while in a cave with a view toward the West. When I wake up, a man is sleeping next to me. I notice the ruins of three large statues: two torso’s with their front down on the floor; a third one leaning backwards against the wall, plants growing around its pedestal. The statues are the silent witnesses of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. The last print of my Nagel’s guide is of 1984, but Annex I mentions the prices of 1966 in Peking (Beijing).
Nagel unwillingly teaches me about China’s Cultural Revolution and its devastating effects. Two of the statues are Buddha statues; the third one a mandarin or perhaps an emperor. The cave, the plants and the mutilated statues transform in front of my eyes into a new kind of beauty: timeless and time-bounded. The statues speak silently and quietly about hate and ignorance. They function in the cave like the canary-bird in its underground cage. When he dies, the miners do know that they are in danger. The aggression against the beauty of the past is an act of Mars without Venus. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (1957-1961) caused 45 million deaths by starvation.
I leave the cave, my neighbor still asleep.

The joy of my fellow travelers reminds me of a letter by Arne Naess to the King of Nepal asking him to declare all mountains above a certain height to be holy: The Great Mountains have since remote antiquity been the objects of religious cults. They have been the symbols of the Highest, the Imperishable, the Unsurpassable and Unreachable, and of course, symbols of the Deity.
Naess wants to strengthen the feeling for the untouchable.

My Nagel guide informs me that during the Bronze Age (1800-800 BCE) of the Shang and the beginning of the Zhou, “the dwellings (of the nobles) faced south and already included features which are characteristic of later Chinese houses; large numbers of human victims have been found in the richest tombs, obviously sacrificed during the funeral ceremonies.”
The guide also speaks about the “fundamental dichotomy” between the nobles living in their “city-palaces” (J. Gernet) and the peasants who worked on their lands, around the walls of the towns.
Mao Tse-tung is never far away.

The following day I visit a bamboo-temple near Kunming. The three Buddhas carry the swastika on their breast. The Buddha at the left holds his right hand open; the left-hand in front of his belly, thumb and middle-finger crossed. The Buddha in the middle holds the forefinger and middle fingers straight, while thumb and ring-finger touch each other; his left hand rests with the palm of his hand on his left thigh-bone. The Buddha at the right holds his hands folded in each other.
Leaving the temple, members of the green militia are entering.

Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan, is a surprise. Markets are full of vegetables, fruits and food products. No better proof for the success of Deng Xiaping’s “contract responsibility system” in which farmers are free to sell their surplus products after fulfilling their food-contract with the government. Chengdu is the powerbase of Deng Xiaping. Chengdu’s ground plan was a square until recently, when it became round.
Visiting a mosque under construction, I notice that the orientation of the mosque is westward in contrast to the orientation of temples and Chinese palaces to the north, the Pole star. The mihrab, a niche in the wall of the mosque, indicates the direction of Mecca. Men with white beards are watching and directing the building activities. Enormous beams are lifted with pulley-blocks and pulley-ropes, centimeter by centimeter until they reach the highest level. The ancient construction techniques are impressive.

There are more women than woman-bicycles in Luoyang, the city of nine dynasties. There are more man-bicycles than men in Luoyang, the city with a statue of Mao Tse-tung. Do the women prefer biking on men-bikes or are production figures for men-bikes fixed beforehand? Or both? Or none?

In the Temple of the White Horse near Luoyang: for a floor-plan of the Temple of the White Horse.

I have been kneeling down
for a laughing Buddha
offering one yuan
for his happiness

Arriving in a city, my first action is not to find a hotel but a map of the city. If possible, one in Chinese, and another one in English. By comparing both maps, I try to find out how I can leave the city. Not being able to speak or to understand or to read any Chinese character, I have to rely on a comparison of both maps. Never in my life have I been so ‘speechless’, deaf, blind and dumb at the same time. My consciousness returns to the age of three: no single sign is clear or evident. I realized how my mind incessantly projects wishful thoughts which have little or nothing to do with the outside world.
The China journey, the hardest in my life, teaches the lesson of mind-projecting, no less important than the one of the Sahara in 1973, about the annihilation of images in that immense silence and space, and the necessity of orientation.

I believe that I have to spend the night outside Lyoyang. It starts to get dark and bus 56 doesn’t show up. The local community surrounds me, while I am writing. An old woman brings her husband, bald but with moustache, a cup of soup. He slurps it with visible appetite. I see the Chinese enjoy their food intensely – no other thoughts. Eating is unification with the crops of the land; the chicken and its egg; the pig and the duck, while I experience distance. But I also see how more and more people in Xian and Lyoyang get up when I am standing in the bus to offer me their place. Is this a gesture towards a bald pilgrim? It becomes too dark to write. Today is the birthday of Karel van der Leeuw who years ago gave me Chan source book in Chinese philosophy.

A few hours later I arrive in the Friendship hotel in Luoyang thanks to a motorcyclist who gave me a free ride without speaking one word. The next day, in Dong Xian, what happens around me, is my consolation for not finding the tombs of the emperors of the Song dynasty. Two old women finish the leftovers of my copious dinner and beer. A man kneels next to me, kisses my arm and shakes it so long that I am shaking on my stool. A beautiful girl gives me her picture with her name. There exist many Chinas. Travelling first class by train and staying in first class hotels, you walk in Dante’s Paradise; second class is his Purgatory, and third class China’s Hell.
The restaurant gives me one yuan back. The man who was shaking my arm, is there too. He reminds me of Buddha. I give him the yuan. Laughing he leaves the restaurant.

July 24, 1985. I visited Liyu Shao, the wife of Dehong Chen. I brought her his letter, and some presents. We had dinner together. She lives in the old city. The Forbidden Palace is beautiful but Beijing as a whole lacks planning. It goes from one extreme to another. Either you are swimming in large-scale squares and streets, or the opposite. After 1949, Tiannanmen Square has been enlarged on such a scale that it serves only a strategy of mass-psychology. It is a square with fascist ambitions.
Actually, Beijing causes a feeling of alienation, not like New York City that attracts and inspires although it also may cause estrangement. Beijing is too big and too provincial. Not enough ‘bourgeois’-citizens. Mao’s mausoleum is a laugh. The peasant is never far away, spitting, laughing, fighting, shitting in a row in the public toilets.

Ah, why does the spring wind, a stranger
Part the curtains of my bed?
Li Bai

People today cannot see the moon of ages past
Yet the moon today has shone on our ancestors
People pass away like a flowing stream
Yet all have seen the moon like this.
My only wish singing and drinking wine
Is to see the moonlight in my golden goblet.
Li Bai

The quality of China is its people, their social relations, their family-life, the food, their love for nature, the ease of walking through water. The old age of cities, provinces and landscapes function as the country’s vital consciousness. In the 21st century the Chinese will claim their place as one of the greatest countries, if not the greatest of all, with more forceful arguments than ever. It will be difficult for the United States and Europe, although Europe remains for me the most beautiful continent because of its nature and its cities; tradition and modernity. Europe maintains a reasonable balance between many extremes. But more joy of life, more energy, more warmth for each other, and less nationalism and less ‘petit-bourgeois’ mentality, if only that would be possible!

There are a few days left to become more empty and more clean. The two qualities complement each other. Both are attempts to dissolve an ego that got stuck in itself, to seduce it to surrender to everything that isn’t ego, thus to whatever exists. The ego is only a construction, a way of seeing, understanding and experiencing. But once it is there, it is stronger than a prison, because it functions for the ego itself fully invisible, non audible, and thus unrecognizable. Oceans, deserts and mountains are good remedies against that blindness and deafness. Perhaps also – but not unconditional – such an intense love that the ego dissolves in it, as sugar in a glass of hot tea.

In de ochtend, de tweede dag op de Jin Jiang, lees ik gedichten van de Tang & Song dynastieën, in het prachtige Engels van Reni Alley. Het boekje is ontroerend. Veel gedichten gaan over het leed van de ‘gewone’ mensen die voor het grote Chinese Rijk keer op keer moeten vechten, veel belasting betalen, enzovoorts. De uitdijende gebieden of de verdediging ervan bepalen honderden kilometers verderop het wel en wee van tienduizenden families. Er is een voortdurende kortsluiting tussen de keizerlijke verlangens en decreten, en de hier-en-nu verlangens en noden van de boerenfamilies. China heeft nooit de democratische stadsontwikkeling gekend, die veel Europese steden kenmerkt met hun ontstaansgeschiedenis in de Middeleeuwen. De schoonheid van de Europese steden met hun eigen specifieke karakter is te danken aan de hechte politieke en culturele eenheid van de Middeleeuwse stad, van hun vrijheidsdrang ten opzichte van het feodale systeem; van hun zelfbewustzijn ten opzichte van het formele machtscentrum van koning of keizer.

Het welzijn van onze steden zal in belangrijke mate afhangen van de vraag, of zij voldoende autonomie kunnen veroveren op de centrale overheid om weer een minimum aan lokaal identiteitsgevoel en dito verantwoordelijkheid te ontwikkelen. Die meerwaarde is essentieel voor een goed stedelijk leven, en voor de ontwikkeling van een culturele en sociale diversiteit, zoals we nu al weten dat Rotterdammers ‘anders’ zijn dan Amsterdammers. Kortom, de wereld van de voetbalclubs op stedelijk niveau. Amsterdam stemt over zijn stadhuis maar niet over het Vierwindenhuis.

Ik hou van de Chinezen. Ik vind hen het tegendeel van enigmatisch of ritualistisch. Hun emoties zijn zo voelbaar dat je ze als het ware met je vingertoppen kunt aanraken. Zij vibreren als een electro-magnetisch veld. De emoties trekken je aan of stoten je af. Ze zijn nooit neutraal zoals onze burgerlijk Westerse cultuur lijkt na te streven in zijn omgangsvormen. Veel toeristen gaan met een cirkel om zich heen de ruimte van de Chinezen binnen. De Chinezen die ik ontmoet heb, de ‘gewone’ mensen, hebben geen onzichtbare cirkel die hen afzondert en beschermt tegenover hun medemensen. Die cirkel bestaat wel als collectieve cirkel in de klassenstrijd van de Culturele Revolutie, of ten opzichte van niet-Chinezen.
De dromen die mij verleid hebben door China te reizen als postbode en onderzoek te doen naar zijn ruimte- en tijdparadigma’s, hebben me niet misleid.