Meet Lao She (Shu Quingchu)

Beneath the Red banner is book I bought from second hand book seller on the pavement (probably in Pune) for 20 odd rupees some years back (original Chinese, Panda publication!!). Lao She is modern china’s most loved writer and significant figure of 20^th century Chinese literature. This book is an autographical novel published after his death (he died in 1966). It is an account of Beijing at the turn of century, told in wit, candor and sympathy, intact despite translation. Lao She once said “During my childhood, I didn't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother's stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family.” As one reads through the book one can easily get transported into the life of ordinary Chinese people, their aspirations and fear. Like these lines:

Duofu prized the ‘freedom’ which allowed him to do whatever he pleased, believing that this ‘freedom’ has been bequeathed to him by his ancestors and would be passed on forever, ‘for the enjoyment of his children and his children’s children’. Therefore he believed that Fuhai by working as an artisan had lost his Bannerman’s sense of self respect and that calling himself a member of White lotus sect smacked of sympathy with rebels. Duofo knew the White Lotus sect had rebelled at some time in the past, in what year he couldn’t tell.

Several months before I was born, my maternal uncle, Duofu and his father were all in a state of great agitation. They fervently opposed the reforms of 1898. My uncle had simplest and most convining reason: “we must not change the laws established by our forefathers!”. My eldest sister’s father-in-law couldn’t find anything better to add than the comment: “any change is change for worse”.

From another page of the book: As she washed me, Granny Bai recited the blessing she had used on innumerable occasions, leaving out not a single word:
First of all your head we rinse,
And know someday you’ll be a prince.
We next proceed to clean your back,
Good fortune your descendants will never lack.
Next we wash your ‘eggs’ in haste,
You’ll join the county magistrates.
Last your buttocks to my washing succumb,
And rule a province under your thumb.
…Although I never became a county magistrate or a prefect, I am still extremely grateful for the way Granny Bai washed me so spotlessly clean, cleaner perhaps, than any county magistrate or prefect ever was. Next, Granny Bai applied a burning mixture of ginger slices and moxa to my forehead and to all the critical joints in my body. As a result, I didn’t begin suffering from arthritis until I was sixty years old. She also soaked a brand new piece of blue cloth in fresh tea and vigorously massaged my gums with it. At that moment I burst out crying. Unintentional as it seemed, that crying was a most propitious omen!.

Later in the book there is description of preparation for Chinese New Year: …father didn’t buy anything special for New Year, the main reason being he had no money. He did not neglect Gods or Buddhas, however, and respectfully bought paper images of the God of wealth and the God of hearth, long sticks of incense, large and small red candles and five plates of half baked moon cakes .He also cooked some New Year rice and put it in special small ricepot. …he expressed the joy in his heart quite simply. “What we eat isn’t so important. But we mustn’t treat the Gods and Buddhas shabbily!....”. And continued “….For generations our family had very strictly maintained the custom of staying up all night on New Years eve and ‘sitting out the year’. Father just muttered and went back to wrapping dumpling. He took out a small coin, polished it, and stuck it inside a dumpling in order to determine which member of family would enjoy good luck…”. “at midnight, the sounds of firecrackers exploding increased as shop owners began sacrifice to the gods. My father chuckled again. He wasn’t sure if Yunnan was located to the east or the north, and he had less of an idea whether England bordered United States or was close to Yunnan but as soon as he heard the dong! dong! of firecrackers exploding in Beijing, he felt sure that there was peace and happiness on earth.

These lines on names I found very interesting: “…. in those days the more Bannerman desired to remain Bannerman and perpetuate themselves for countless generation the more they tried to imitate the Han Chinese. At first the upper crust intellectual sought out poetical and musical nicknames to add to their regular first names. Gradually this spread downwards until even colonels and captains in the Imperial Army had their own poetic names. For them this was height of sophistication.
I came across names which translated meant ‘pavilion of clouds’, ‘studio of abundance’!!. Amazing!!

Lao She’s acclaimed and popular work included Camel Xiangzi (Rickshaw boy- it was a best seller in US) and the drama Teahouse, which was made popular through Chinese theatre. This blogger had the fortune to watch traditional Chinese theatre sometime back it is spectacular- a visual treat, I particularly liked when they delicately emulated butterflies, it was brilliant.

Another book I read about China was sometime back, Pearl Buck though not a Chinese had spend most her life in china during the most tumultuous part of its history. Most of her writings are based in China (New York Times said: if ever, in one life, East and West met, it was in Pearl Buck). I happen to find My Several World, her autobiography few years back on the pavement of Bangalore. She being an insider to Chinese society is quite insightful and sensitive in the way she writes about its people. These lines about Chinese people’s ideas on governing interested me “…as a matter of fact, the Chinese had always governed themselves. They distrusted and even held in contempt governments. They were cynical to the last degree about official honesty and considered it inevitable that every official was corrupt. Their ancient adage is that the best government is the one that governs least. A country folk song runs thus:
When the sun rises I work;
When the sub sets I rest.
I dig the well to drink;
I plow the field to eat.
What has the Emperor to do with me?

And the Chinese people were quite capable of self government. Their traditional family system, wherein every individual man, woman and child belong to a clan and each clan was responsible for all individuals in it, was a sound basis for a new kind of modern democracy. It is hard for Americans to realize the soundness of the family clan as unit for democratic government, but indeed it is so. In china before communism began its destructive work on the family system, there was no need for example, for the expense of institutionalism which lies so heavily upon our own democracy. There were no orphanage……nepotism it is true, tended to be a problem, since it was natural that a man would try to get jobs for his relatives. Yet I do see the difference between family nepotism in china and political nepotism in the United States, and of the two, family nepotism in China seems less dangerous to society because the family remained morally responsible for each of its members, and the disgrace of any member was a family disgrace.

Could Sun Yat-sen and his followers, and this includes the later Nationalists governments under Chiang Kai-shek, have understood the value of the family system and have built upon its responsible democracy, there is little doubt that Communists would be ruling in china today. One proof of this theory is that the communists, wishing to establish their political theory, have made their main attack upon family system, and the measure of the length of their stay will be to the degree to which they are able to separate the members of the family from each other and thus destroy the fabric which has kept china alive, functioning and vital for centuries after her contemporaries in history were dead”.

How communists in China organized the society will help us understand contemporary China and its xenophobic reactions better, Ms Buck gives an insight:
..the communists had organized the forces and they were the leaders. Even Chiang Kai-shek was with the communists, we were told….something new and dangerous had been added. The communists were building upon hate, the hate for foreigners, the injustice of the past. Never before had the old hatreds been organized.

This blogger is not entirely against communist, provided they are just another Party in a multiparty democracy. Communism as state ideology is dangerous, it is dictatorship of few against majority and they have the tendency to mutate into worst kind-Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot created much misery. I have great admiration for many ex leaders of Left in Kerala (contemporary commies of Bengal are the worst. The CM of the State probably the most incompetent CM ever). At the international level Lenin and Gorbachov tops my list.

Pearl Buck writes on her influence of China in her upbringing and thinking, that I found similar to the elderly people around me used to think.

“...thus it was from him in those days of my early youth that I learned the first axiom of human life, and it is that every event has its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate Mr. Kung taught me, is not blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if does not resign himself to ignorance. Mr. Kung liked to quote also from the Bible, partly, I imagine, to prove to me his liberal Confucian mind, and he reminded often, in his lofty manner, that one could not expect figs from thistles”. “….but the important lesson which he taught me was that if one would be happy he must not raise his head above his neighbor’s.
‘He who raises his head above the heads of others’ Mr. Kung said ‘will sooner or later be decapitated.’
It was true in china as in other democratic nations that when a man becomes too famous, too successful, too powerful, mysterious forces went to work and the earth began to crumble under his pinnacle. The Chinese are a proud and envious people, as a nation and as individuals, and they do not love superiors…they never believed that superiors could exist…..the fact partly explains the present anti-Americanism, this and the attitudes of missionaries and traders and diplomats, all white men indeed, who consider themselves whether consciously or unconsciously superior to Chinese, so that a smoldering fury has lived on in Chinese hearts for more than a century and this fury, which white men could not or would not recognize, is the chief reason why Chiang Kai-shek lost his country and why communists won it. Had he been wise enough he would expressed boldly his own anti-western feelings and had he done so he might held the leadership. But he thought he could win by American force and this his people could not forgive him, and sadly for us, Mao Tse-tung seized the opportunity that Chiang threw away…….it is hard for Americans to believe that American charm …ready smile and outstretched hand, does not win the Chinese. What then can the American do? He must read history afresh.…”

The intentions of Pearl Buck were benevolent but it seems that the reading history may not save the Americans, so much has changed in last few years that things have become only complicated. Unless Americans don’t behave more responsibly to world community, and that policies are extension of corporate needs things are going to get worse. Hilariously the worst of Corporate are finding something common…Coca Cola is having a strategic alliance with Beijing!!!.