by Xinran Xue
XINRAN: Do you have any unfulfilled wishes?
YISHUJIA: To see my grandchild. They're all very practical things, I don't have any far-reaching ambitions.
XINRAN: What changes do you think there have been in China in the last twenty years?
YISHUJIA: That's too big a question! It's changing everywhere, everything's changing. Relationships were different when I was young. We were more innocent then, there were conflicts, but they were just small conflicts, not big ones. People these days, they're all trying to outwit each other, it's exhausting.
XINRAN: What do you think was the cause of this?
YISHUJIA: I think it was especially bad after the Cultural Revolution, it wasn't like that before! Now, people's ideas are confused, they've picked up bad habits of mind, and they don't even try to learn good habits, all they care about is money, they don't care about people. This will hold the whole country back.
XINRAN: Teacher Yishujia, do you regret your life?
YISHUJIA: I would have to say no. My father and mother gave me life, this is a part of nature, my life was hard and full of frustrations, but isn't that true for all Chinese?
XINRAN: If you had your time over again, would you follow the same path?
YISHUJIA: I wouldn't want to go over it again.
XINRAN: Why not?
YISHUJIA: I'd want to study properly, to go to school.
XINRAN: If someone were to ask you what kind of a person Teacher Yishujia is, what would you say?
YISHUJIA: I would say Yishujia is a plain, simple, diligent person. Just that.
XINRAN: Thousands and millions of Chinese sacrificed so much for the revolution, they threw themselves into it so wholeheartedly, without a thought for anything else, like when you were young, so naive. Do you think it was worth it?
YISHUJIA: In those times it was just another way of staying alive, it makes no difference whether it was worth it or not. At that time if you didn't behave like that you'd have nothing to eat, you couldn't survive. Some people say that it really wasn't worth it, but I think, what difference does it make? Everybody had to survive those years somehow.
***
I knew what Yishujia was implying by "Everybody had to survive those years somehow." This was a society that was still suffering from shock, but its life and spirit had not perished.
After the interview, Yishujia showed me some photographs of her "survival in that part of history". She chose three family photographs, saying: "My son isn't as handsome as his father. Can you see? He doesn't have his father's spirit." "The child doesn't have the spirit we did!" These words of regret are often to be heard among the elderly in China.
In order to express my thanks for Yishujia's cooperation with my interviews and her unforgettable lessons on how to read her "authentic Chinese" son, I invited her for a meal at a dumpling restaurant. During our meal, I asked Yishujia why she was pining over the son not having his father's spirit, and things being better in the old days. She replied: "Now young people think a lot, they have plenty of ideas, but they don't do that much, and succeed in even less. In my day we were very naive, we obeyed our parents at home, obeyed our leaders at work, everybody obeyed the Party and the Party obeyed Mao Zedong. Everyone had a sort of get-up-and-go about them, we were all like one big family, we might quarrel and fight, but they couldn't break us apart. At that time, it seemed that a man could do everything, mend bicycles, change light bulbs and switches, pull coal in a cart, even make some kinds of furniture." When she spoke of her son Hu, the pride in her voice was mixed with regret: "My son is a filial child, but he's too good-hearted. He's very quick at study, he learned magic, musical instruments and a few acrobatic tricks from me as a small boy; he could do anything he turned his hand to, and some he could do without being taught. He did very well in the city acrobatics troupe, but he was determined to go out and see the world, he didn't want a professional title, wages or a proper home, he was determined to go abroad to drift about, study and do manual labour, with no settled home. He's over thirty, but he still has no plans to find a proper job and start a family. I asked him why he has to live this strenuous life, and he said that he wanted to improve himself and see the real world, he really expressed himself very cleverly."
For Chinese who have barely "explored" their own country at all, it is easy to talk about seeing the real world, but very difficult to actually do it. All Chinese who can leave the country have a definite "reason", whether it is economic conditions, talent, scholarship, language ability or some other cause (often personal). Those who can go abroad simply to indulge a liking for travel are rare indeed.
To the vast majority of Chinese people who live in the countryside, the real, genuine "Chinese history and the world" takes the form of legends of the most fantastical type, whereas in the towns and cities it is found on the Internet, and also the superficial "world tour records" which reckon to cover a whole country in three days.
Whenever I came back to China I often visited bookshops of all sizes in many places, and I saw a good few "records of overseas travel". Some were written by "sea turtles" (a pun on the Chinese haigui, which can mean both "back from overseas" and "sea turtle") who had spent several years studying in the West. In all their wanderings, and all their years of student life, they had never managed to tear themselves away from Chinese food, or their Chinese-speaking circle of friends; they did all their research on Chinese websites, apart from their exam papers, which were written in English; they obtained their degrees while immersed in a Chinese sensory environment. Much of their descriptions of culture in these "tour records" seemed very much like the idea of Western folk culture you might find in children's stories, but this is enough to satisfy the hunger and thirst of Chinese readers for world culture, giving people who don't have the money or time a chance to get their own taste of a different world. In the same way, many children believe that their own mother's cooking is the best to be found anywhere, and almost every mother has made countless meals, but it is very rare to see a mother wearing the big white hat of a professional chef.
I too left China because I wanted to see the real world, a world that was moving out of history and towards today, a world that you could touch, a world that had not been coloured by politics.
But will we see a greater number of young Chinese like Yishujia's son Hu, with both the courage and will to look at the real world, and who can survive and flourish on their Chinese roots? It takes more than sketching a few big characters with a calligraphy brush, or hanging a landscape painting or two on the wall, or putting up a few images of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, or eating Chinese food every day, or a few games of mah-jong a week, to make a Chinese who is still in touch with his or her roots.
On the Road, Interlude 2: Talking to a Chinese Colleague about Tibet, Folk Customs, Tiger Stoves and the Chinese Jews
After Qindao, we flew south to Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu. At the long-distance bus station on the way to Anhui province, I met a Han journalist called Tashi. He had spent over a decade travelling through the Tibetan areas, and had researched and published many books on Chinese folk customs, and I took this chance meeting to benefit from his advice, talent and scholarship. Because we were both journalists, there was no need for too many preliminaries, we came straight to the point, and began with the topic that I had been hoping to discuss.
***
XINRAN: What sort of people are the Tibetan groups you've met in your travels?
TASHI: I haven't seen Tibetans from every single clan, there are too many. Generally speaking, the area can be divided into three groups of people: the Amdo Tibetans, the Kangba Tibetans and the Huiba Tibetans. The Amdo people are mostly those on the high plains to the north of Tibet, around Amdo, Qula and Sangxiong, up towards the uninhabited areas.
XINRAN: So what you're calling northern Tibet is to the north of the Tanggula Mountains? Is that the source of the Yellow River?
TASHI: No, that's in the area to the south of the Tanggula Mountains, becaus
e Qinghai province is to the north, with Tibet to the south.
XINRAN: But a large part of Qinghai is in Tibetan areas?
TASHI: It's Tibet proper I'm talking about now, there are Tibetan areas in Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and even a part of Xinjiang.
***
We were discussing the complex question of the different societies that comprise Tibet. Changes of government through history, and the various branches of religion and schools of thought within Tibet itself, have resulted in many different groupings. It is simply not accurate or helpful to describe Tibet as home to a single society. In the middle of our conversation I suddenly heard a deep, resonant voice reading one of Mao Zedong's poems. For a moment I experienced a strong sense of dislocation, and I found myself wondering where I was, but soon I realised that this was somebody's mobile phone: recently, clever Chinese urbanites have taken to downloading pop songs, recordings of Mao Zedong or slogans from the Cultural Revolution to their mobile phones, to replace the mass-produced ringtones. As well as adding variety to the sounds around us, more significantly, people have discovered a form of humour that "gets close to the edge" of the political restraints that surround them. Tashi plainly had a good head for travel; as soon as he hung up he carried straight on from where we'd left off.
***
TASHI: Amdo people can be found in parts of Qinghai, like the Tongren area, part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, including south Gansu, and also Maqu in Gansu, part of the Ela Grasslands, which includes Lakes Zalinhu and Elinhu. The area we call Yushu has half Amdo people, half Kangba, and there's also a big stretch that is virtually unpopulated, with a very few Kangba people living there. They're rather different to other Tibetans, most noticeably in their funeral rites. They have different language groups as well, for example Amdo people say "jiuduomo" for "hello", but in places like Lhasa where they're mostly Kangba, they say "jiusang". There must be, give or take, seven language groups, but in each region there are variations again. Tibetans are a nomadic people, and there are considerable linguistic differences.
XINRAN: If they don't speak, can you make out where a Tibetan is from?
TASHI: Their clothes give some indication: for instance Kangba wear big red chest decorations.
XINRAN: How about hairstyles?
TASHI: You can tell Anli hairstyles at a glance, from the big pearl Anli women wear, but in another place they'll be smaller; here it's mostly turquoise, there it's mainly agates, they're all different, and their shoes are different too, usually you can tell at a glance.
XINRAN: Can you tell how many husbands the women have by looking?
TASHI: Ah, now that I can't do by looking. [He laughs.] What I respect most about Tibetan women is they way they give birth, there's nobody to help them, they do everything themselves. I actually saw it once with my own eyes: a woman, heavily pregnant, came galloping on her horse to a tent to give birth, and when she'd had her baby she walked outside, carrying the baby upside down, smearing butter on the infant's body as she walked, and when she'd finished rubbing in the butter she put the baby inside her robe, got on her horse and rode off.
XINRAN: What was the greatest number of husbands?
TASHI: I can't say for sure, for several reasons. First, many Tibetans, especially these who have yet to come into contact with outsiders, are even hostile to Tibetans from other clans; second, I couldn't communicate through language. Our daily practices were so different, that I found we had almost nothing in common.
XINRAN: What could you make out from observing their daily lives?
TASHI: I couldn't make anything out. We can't imagine that much, because our attitudes are different. There's a family over there, but how can I know if those men are her brothers or her husbands? It's hard to tell. For example, the unmarried girls live in little white tents that you can't go in; if you do you can never leave, you have to marry her. It's not like in Thailand, where the more water pots there are outside your door the more wives you have. In Tibet there are many different customs and religious teachings, so it's hard to say anything for sure.
XINRAN: Have you heard Tibetan people talk about why the Han people wanted to come to Tibet?
TASHI: I've heard lots of things about that, mostly that we want to steal their gods. That's people for you, they always have too many preconceived notions.
XINRAN: Has anybody mentioned the Han people going into Tibet because of the water sources?
TASHI: Water sources? What water sources?
XINRAN: Tibet is the source of 90 per cent of China's waterways. It's been this way since the Qing and Ming dynasties, hasn't it? The rulers used to say that "if the water higher up isn't clean, the water lower down may cost you your life".
TASHI: There are many different sayings about this among the Kangba Tibetans, and in the ethnic minority areas of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. And throughout history there have been stories of entire villages that were poisoned by their water.
XINRAN: Did you have a local guide?
TASHI: No, I walked with the army, with the logistics brigade that supplied Lhasa. And you?
XINRAN: I was there in 1981, but not in southern Tibet, I went to northern Tibet and Qinghai, that was with the army too. It was really desolate, there were no people.
TASHI: I know. One time I walked for fifty-one days in northern Tibet. I went to Lake Zalinhu, and Lake Elinhu, the sources of the Yellow River. All that walking nearly killed me. It was completely empty, no people, barely a soul.
XINRAN: I've never walked on foot through the Tibetan areas. I have so much respect for those people who pray on the roads, walking from north to south, prostrating themselves on the ground with every three steps they walk, it's really moving.
TASHI: It's very lonely walking by yourself, but you can think; the solitude gives you your own space to muse.
XINRAN: So then you wrote down your thoughts and your feelings from the journey?
TASHI: Yes, I've brought out a few books on the minorities, such as Horse Bucket, and Old Well. But I'm even more concerned about some customs of the Han people that are on the verge of dying out all over China.
I want you to see Linhuan and the oldest tea house in Anhui, so you can see a real, unspoiled "tea culture". The water there is of the very finest quality, the locals have never used tap water for tea; every morning before daybreak they draw water from a spring, to be kept in reserve for a whole day's tea-making.
XINRAN: Is that an underground water source from a tributary of the Huai River?
TASHI: I couldn't say, but the town is built beside a river called the Huanshui – there were military storehouses in that place in ancient times. And nearby there's an old earthen town wall with over a thousand years of history, but now the wall has been almost destroyed and eroded by the wind until you can barely make out what it is. A local cadre called Chen is doing very important work there, lobbying for its preservation at all levels of society. Old Director Chen is quite a story, he's over seventy, but in the county official records they have him down as only a bit more than forty. These days there's nothing people don't dare to do in this country of ours, and nothing that can't be done: no one thinks there's anything crazy about turning an old man into a young man.
XINRAN: Why did the county government allow this cadre's file to be so illogical?
TASHI: Who knows if it's true or false? Those officials expect Old Director Chen to go to battle on their behalf, to be their shield for a few more years, don't they? If not for him standing in front of the bulldozers to obstruct the building team, over a thousand years of Linhuan's ancient tea culture would have been razed to the ground to make room for coffin-like modern blocks of flats!
***
This is a particular interest of mine. I have tried to find a way to draw foreigners' attention to the revival of our ancient culture, to curb those officials whose only goal is the appearance of Western modernisation, and to stop their destruction of these ancient sites.
I did something
once, in a Jewish street in Kaifeng. There are two places in China with Jewish communities: one is Shanghai, where roughly five thousand Jews found shelter among the local Chinese people under the bloodthirsty Japanese occupation; the other is Kaifeng, which is the earliest place where Jews settled, and the place where the Jewish blood runs purest, as many of the Jews who had moved to mainland China before this had intermarried. The Jews I met in Kaifeng said that most of them had fled as refugees to China during the tsarist pogroms before the First World War, first to China's north-east, then in the next few generations they moved inwards and southwards to Kaifeng, and settled there. In the late 1980s, the Kaifeng government wanted to pull down the old Jewish streets, and a listener to my radio programme wrote asking me to enlist the help of the media. A group of us journalists looked into it and, having confirmed the story, we sent a joint letter to the Kaifeng city government, saying that the Chinese Jews were not only a precious archaeological resource for the study of the migration of world populations, but also of great historical and present-day value to China, and to the study of the development of the West's most ancient religion. The old streets of the Kaifeng Jewish quarter were precisely the right kind of material for research in these areas, we maintained: not only should we not destroy it, we should help recover the former glories of its traditional Jewish ways and culture; we Chinese had a responsibility to preserve the world's cultural heritage.
And we succeeded. The streets were saved. Tashi told me that he had heard it was a great success, and he added: "If you visit that old Jewish quarter now, it's very peaceful, incredibly peaceful. Although the people are noisy and lively, you'll feel that the place has a peculiar kind of stillness to it."