China Witness

by Xinran Xue

  21.

  29/30 April 1992

  My dearest friend,

  This morning I headed back to my office after three happy classes with my research students, and I spotted a thick letter from you on my writing desk. This added a further warm glow of happiness to my already good mood. It's that head-over-heels-in-love feeling that you described! I never thought that as an old woman I would get back those feelings of my youth – and what beautiful feelings! And if my true feelings for you enable you to shake off the misery of loneliness, then that is wonderful. I sometimes think that it would really be worth a psychologist doing some in-depth research into this new-style relationship which we have created between us! (You call it love, but I feel that it seems to go beyond the common concept of love, because it is purer, more lofty, richer in poetic feeling.) We could joke that we've unwittingly created a new and original way of loving, don't you think?

  I savoured your so-loving letter over and over again, and it gave me much food for thought. I recalled our feelings for each other right from beginning to end. I think the affection between us dates back to 1949, when we had just joined the army, but from my point of view this was just a "diffuse" sort of affection, because I was only eighteen years old. My mother had instilled into me the need to be extremely prudent where love and marriage was concerned, and not to get involved too soon. I did what she said, and pushed love right to the back of my mind. Of course that didn't stop me being attracted to friends of the opposite sex, so I knew the difference between those whom I liked, and the rest, but it never went beyond that. Then we went through ideological reform at the Foreign Languages Training Unit, and I thought even less about things like that. Even so, there were some students from among so many whom I was especially fond of, and wanted to be closer to, and you were one of them. Then, later on, a number of chance meetings brought Comrade Xiaoda into my life. Marrying him was a natural outcome to that, and we had a happy and fulfilling life together. After Xiaoda died, I buried the love he had given me deep within myself – it is hard to forget a love like that. But he had, after all, passed away, and I was still a woman with what Buddhists call feelings and appetites. I longed for my feelings of love to be reciprocated, and this was especially true because I was living completely on my own. But I never realised that I had this longing, because I had a very fulfilled emotional life: I had my job, I am very close to my brothers and sisters, and have a wonderful relationship with my children and the deep and enduring friendship of comrades, both old army friends and my students. So I felt I needed nothing more emotionally – until I bumped into you again this Spring Festival and was bowled over by the depth of your feelings for me. It all seems rather different to what I talked about above. It's more refined, more moving, more constantly present, very like the ardour of youthful passion. And yet not like that (which is why I think I can't describe these feelings as ordinary love) because youthful love brings with it sexual love and longings for happiness in one's future life together. But we're old now, and have had abundant experience of life, so our feelings are more rational, more mature. We don't want the feelings between us to have any kind of outcome, we just hope we will always be able to feel the communication between our hearts. It's even hard to find the language to describe this, but it makes us feel both happy and very fortunate. These feelings are so pure that they do not allow us to be troubled by the least unhappiness, which is why I described them as "diffuse". Even more essential is that our feelings have been nurtured through our correspondence, because letters can express the most beautiful, most heartfelt feelings. Our feelings are beautiful so the language we use is beautiful, and we can read the letters over and over, and constantly savour the words. Do you think I'm right?

  I also think that it's not just anyone who can achieve this level of emotional communication. Firstly, it needs to be based in mutual love; secondly, the couple have to be relatively well matched intellectually, educationally and culturally; and thirdly, and this is even more important, both have to share the same sublime aspirations, constantly exploring aspects of human life and constantly rising, through study, to ever higher realms of the soul. It is, I believe, only under such conditions that this kind of love can be firmly grounded and can gradually evolve towards a degree of perfection.

  Perhaps because of my career as a teacher, I have always been willing to look for the answers to many questions in books. Since I became aware of these special emotions between us, I've been exploring and researching it a great deal, and have even read On Love by Vasilyev. This is a rather serious book, which I bought because many of my young friends were reading it, and I wanted to know what it was about so that I could set them some ideological tasks. I brought my own questions to it and read through the relevant chapters; but although I found the book inspiring, it didn't quite accord with our own reality. That's why I wrote above that somehow our feelings seemed in some way "original", still to be researched! I hope you're not going to laugh at me for being too bookish!

  You asked me if I could go to Shanghai after I retired. In theory, yes, but it's a bit late now, as I have already been fixed up with a place at the Cadres' Retirement Institute. Actually I really do prefer Beijing. Wherever I am, it won't make any difference to us. The main thing is that we should be able to write unlimited letters to each other. I'll definitely come to Shanghai every year, so we can always see each other, and after I've moved to Beijing, you are welcome to take a trip up here whenever you have a chance. You can stay here, and I can take you to see other old army friends or we can go sightseeing in Beijing. I've rambled terribly in this letter, so I'll stop now. I hope you won't fret any more about not getting letters from me. Believe me, I will write to you sooner or later, so don't worry.

  With best wishes,

  Phoebe

  24.

  10 May 1992

  Dearest Phoebe,

  Let me throw restraint to the winds, and shout out my feelings vehemently! I got your letter of the 6th yesterday, and having my dear distant one's letter to read at the weekend was a great stroke of good luck for me. At dinner I like to drink a glass (about three fluid ounces) of locally brewed liquor, and so I warmed up my tipple, quickly sat down and gently tore open my love letter. As I read, I sipped the wine; only you can share these tender feelings! In the evening there was the weekend dance at my old workplace, and so I went out. I generally go dancing two or three times a month – it's free of charge. Too bad I'm such a country bumpkin from a foreign school that I don't dance very well. If only my valiant and gentle Phoebe were in Shanghai, my dancing prowess would no doubt soon attain postdoctoral level.

  After the dance I came back home, and got your letter out to read it for the second time. I marked in red pen such memorable phrases as "Dear Lou" [in English], "In any case, you are already at the centre of my affections". I read and read, and marked and marked. My eyes were wet with tears, and my heart trembled. Such true joy! To be able to receive so much true, fervent and constant affection from you fills me both with excitement and contentment, and is even rather flattering, because I'm really a rather mediocre and superficial person, even though my love does run true and deep. But here too you have infected and inspired me. I rejoice that I can have your deep love for myself, I must do my best to reciprocate and, just as you do, irradiate and deepen life and everything around me!

  Now it's eight o'clock on Sunday morning and I've finished my various chores. I have "shut myself up away upstairs to become one with you", as Lu Xun put it, and to perform my sacred task – writing a letter, to you. My daughter-in-law has taken my six-year-old grandson, whose name is Erjia (his baby name is "Jimmy") to see her parents, and my son is sleeping late. In such an atmosphere of warmth and gentleness, I open my heart to my dear, faraway one and make a reading of its rhythms. First I take out of the drawer all those much-treasured letters you have written to me, and read them again. In the forties, I saw the Hollywood film Review of Lovers' Dreams [19] and, although I've long forgotte
n what it was about, I remembered its name while I was doing this because, just as if I was watching the film, I replayed in my mind our love, from that early spring day in February to the fiery heat of May. How amazingly quickly time has passed, and how very logically things have progressed. Let me quickly sketch in how things have developed: the happiness of our deepening feelings as we met again – I, far below you, probing; you, from your high position, enlightening me; then re-establishing relations on the basis of "good friends" – "letters between the two of us" linking us together, bringing us the closeness and happiness of intimate friends – further reminiscences and further exchanges, filling the voids in each other's souls, and "feeling abundantly enriched by life" – having the pleasure of reading each other's letters, and "getting boundless satisfaction from our love" – quantitative changes bring with them qualitative changes, leading to "deep, deep love", which "is pure because it reveals trueness of heart; noble because it rises above this vulgar world; beautiful because it can excite the most beautiful feelings in the reader" – now we are increasingly "in love", a new form of love, full of originality, pure, noble, filled with poetry, we have become lovers, in a "diffuse" yet real sense. Let us sing of the spring of our love, of this rush of longing, we are each at the centre of each other's love, "we want to clear away all obstacles" – and make the future all roses! Let vulgar people mock at our passion – some great writer may one day immortalise this rarest of feelings in a work which will amaze the world!

  Let me now revisit an old dream: just as you were fond of me in the past, so your loving image never once faded from my mind in forty years. Although you weren't constantly present, you were with me almost every night and morning. This is not something which I've just made up – I can prove it. Every time I thought back to when we joined the army together, your beautiful image came naturally to mind. When I looked at photos of that time, especially, I thought of you; there was that photo of me in an army helmet with a chin strap, taken when I got a new army uniform, and you laughed at it and said I didn't look anything like a PLA soldier, I looked more like an English one! So whenever I turned up that picture I thought of you, and seemed to hear your tinkling laugh again. Then, in the summer of 1956, I bumped into you and Xiaoda at the entrance to the Shanghai Park Hotel when I took my niece for a drink in their fourteenth-floor restaurant. I was not yet married, and seeing you brought so many feelings back, as if a multi-flavoured bottle of seasoning had upended and the flavours gushed out, predominantly unbearably bitter. I wrote recently to you that if I had not left the Foreign Languages Training Unit, then perhaps it would not have been our departed friend who had the good fortune to marry you. The instant I bumped into you both at the Park Hotel, that was the thought that occurred to me. Another example: on 26 December 1989 (I now know it was two days before your birthday) about a dozen of us from the office took a trip to Nantong, and stayed at the Youfei Hotel. The manager told us the hotel's name commemorated a group of eminent scholars of old, but – as if I had had an electric shock – I thought of you because the "Fei" was the same character as in your name. That night, what with thinking of you and being in a strange place, I hardly slept. In the autumn of 1978, I met our Director again in Shanghai, and in the following three or four years, until he retired and went back to Beijing, I paid frequent visits to his house. Every time he mentioned old friends from the Foreign Languages Training Unit, I would think especially of you, but I dared not ask him how you were because I harboured ulterior motives. Then a month before the Spring Festival this year, he came on a trip to Shanghai and I went to see him at the Yun Feng Hotel. He told me that you came to visit your brother in Shanghai every Spring Festival, and gave me his address, and that was what first sparked the beginning of our romance.

  When you were good enough to advise me to look for a life companion to care for me, I couldn't be angry or take it the wrong way, because you really meant well. But I won't accept it. I'm sure it's easy to find someone to look after one, but a true lover is hard to find. I will not be so foolish as to desert my soulmate – my true lover! You say "We can dissociate ourselves from our feelings", and I respect your opinion. It wouldn't be the first time this has happened, especially outside China. But if we dissociate ourselves from our feelings, all that's left is carnal desire; I'm afraid even sexual love is not enough. I am also still me, my darling, so let our future be all roses…

  I will stop now. I grasp your hand!

  Louis

  25.

  13 May 1992

  Dear Louis [in English],

  The photo of you holding your grandson is lovely. I can see that you've completely recovered, you look about the same weight as when I saw you at the Spring Festival, and you look younger in spirit. Being in love keeps you young, that's true! Who would believe from that picture that you will soon be an old man of seventy! Your grandson looks adorable, what a good-looking boy! Those great big eyes are so appealing, and he's a sturdy little boy. I hope you'll give him a good upbringing; his parents' generation want to make life easy for their children because of the hardships they suffered as children themselves. But then, because they're the only child in the family, today's children end up spoilt rotten and that's actually harmful to their health. As a grandfather, you need to spend a bit of time on scientific child-rearing, which will turn him into the ideal, able young person, don't you think?

  The depth of the love and affection in your letter made me read it over and over again, as if nothing less than this would enable me to assimilate your true love in its entirety. I didn't stop there – in spare moments, I read all the letters you have sent, from beginning to end, savouring them as I do so. Feelings of immense happiness wash over me – that's what's called being "madly in love". I always used to laugh at the "madness" of young people in love, and I certainly never imagined that I'd be "madly" in love myself in my old age. I think that we are really very fortunate to be able to enjoy being madly in love at our age. As soon as I've retired, as long as nothing bad happens, then we can really make this into a topic. We can write about it and the effects may be sensational! Of course, I just can't put things into words the way you can.

  When you told me candidly in your letter how you had thought and felt about me during all those years, I felt very honoured to have made such a profound impression on you. I really had no idea; if it had not been for our chance meeting, all this would have been buried forever, which would have been a terrible pity. I find your love very pure and precious. As for me, Xiaoda and I were so very happy together that I didn't think about you much, even though I had been fond of you. But after Xiaoda had passed on, that fondness was the basis on which you kindled the flames of feelings which had been hidden deep in my heart, and new and intense emotions were born, miraculously, out of our feelings all those years ago. You never can tell how life will turn out. Maybe we're destined to be together! I think that staying "madly in love" as we are now is probably the best way to deal with things, as it's the only way to keep the flames of our love alive forever.

  I think you are one male comrade who is really capable. I've always felt that the more capable one is, the better, and the less one depends on others, the happier one will be. I always make a point of impressing this on the younger generation, especially the girls. It's fashionable nowadays for young girls to think that if you're "helpless", you can "use men" and so "manage men". That's a complete lie! If I was a man, I would find it unbearable to spend my life with a girl who couldn't do anything for herself, depended on me for everything, and just chattered away, no matter how pretty she was. Beauty on the outside diminishes for everyone as the years roll by. But inner beauty is much more important. It's what really fascinates, and it's everlasting [in English]. Of course, I still approve of people dressing themselves up in suitable outfits when they're middle-aged or elderly. At the moment I wear a uniform every day and I've got a bit sloppy about my other clothes. When I've retired, I'm planning to come to Shanghai to get a tailor to run me u
p a few things that fit nicely. The last time we met at Zhu Nan's, from the way that everyone joked about you being just a municipal cadre but you couldn't tell by the way you dress, I realise you're a bit of a dandy!

  The story you told me about your name was really interesting, typical of the feudal society of the old days. My name was different from yours, because it reflected Western influence in the old society. You know I was born in Columbus, Ohio, and was given the English name, Phoebe (pronounced fee-bee). Phoebe was the goddess of the sun, so my parents wanted me to spread joy and warmth like the sun. Perhaps the name achieved something of this, as my philosophy of life has always been to give people warmth and happiness. If you turn Phoebe into Chinese characters and pronounce it in Shanghai dialect, it sounds very like the English. Either way, both your name and mine bear the stigma of the old, semifeudal, semi-colonial society. People are creatures of society, so people's names most clearly reflect social changes.

  I'm glad to hear that you have a busy life. Dancing is a great social activity, and I think you should keep it up. I do like dancing – we have weekend dances here too, and I sometimes go and dance – but I watch more television. When people get older, quick dance steps are just too hard, and I prefer slow dancing so that I can enjoy the music and chat at the same time. That's what I enjoy most.

  I've thought and written a lot to this point, and maybe I haven't expressed myself clearly, but I really don't care, just so long as our hearts have communicated. I know you will understand, and will forgive the deficiencies in my letter.

  With best wishes,

  Phoebe

  31.

  30 May 1992

  Dear Phoebe [in English],

  I hope you are well. Your letter from Shanghai arrived in due course and I have read it. You have sent me another deeply loving and wonderfully philosophical love letter.