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[Home]
[Hangman's Point] [In
Search Of Seri Court] [Kingdom] [Memoirs]
[Hangman's Point] [Beijing
Journey] [Beijing Part 2]
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Here are some other links to
some of Dean's works (right-click to
open in new window):
http://www.angelfire.com/de/YumCha/KingdomChapter.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/YumCha/Noy.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/YumCha/Adams.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/YumCha/Ballads.html
http://www.angelfire.com/de/YumCha/MemoirsChapter.html
A
BEIJING JOURNEY -- Part 2
-by-
Dean
Barrett
"Here begins our tale - The empire being divided must unite; being united, must divide.
It has always been thus."
Romance
of the Three Kingdoms
Back in Beijing, the girl playing the ancient "xun" instrument inside
the main hall of the Confucius temple is playing "Old Lang
Syne" to attract buyers. Outside the hall are long rows of stone steles
with the names of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasty scholars.
These men spent much of their lives preparing for and taking a series of
incredibly difficult examinations to become chinshih,
the highest award granted. (Their diligent study of ethics and philosophy would
ill-prepare them for the encroachments of
Western military might.) Chinese characters in one of the stones reads:
"The Emperor Ch'ien Lung began to have the following
155
names carved in this stone during the 45th year of his reign, 5th month, 10th
day (1781)"
I lean closer to read the names.
"Li Kwang Shih, from the county of Chi Ning in Shantung province
Wang Lin, from Liu Ho prefecture south of the Yangtze"
But the stones appear abandoned, some are in disrepair and almost all have small
bugs irreverently crawling over the names. I
think of the pride of these men, of their families and of their villages. The
jubilation, the triumph, the rejoicing. Part of a way of
life and of a dynastic cycle which has passed forever. As I pass between the
long rows of carved, silent stones, I can just make
out the faint sounds of "Old Lang Syne."
There is also a clinic inside this temple and I happily chat with a middle-aged
doctor who explains that there are 27 kinds of
pulse, each indicating what is right and wrong with the body. She shows me a
kind of twig that resembles a plant in winter and
an insect in summer. A perfect symbol, I think, of how the West has viewed the
ever-changing mosaic of China over the
centuries.
At this temple are also rows of beautifully formed Chinese calligraphy and I
remember the dynastic story of the two Chinese
generals and their armies facing one another. One of the generals wrote a note
to the other suggesting that to avoid bloodshed
between men of honor, he surrender to him. It is said that when the general read
the note, he could discern from the strength
and beauty of the characters that his opponent had far greater character than he
and he surrendered his army on the spot. As for
thousands of years, Chinese have practiced their characters to improve their
character, the story rings true. I try to think of
Ulysses S. Grant surrendering his army to General Lee because of Lee's
penmanship. Or Westmoreland. Or Powell. No. Some
things work only in China.
My favorite temples, though, are the Taoist. Thoroughly disliked by everyone
from the Tang Dynasty's Confucian Judge Dee to
Mao Tse-tung, I enjoy their laid-back, irreverent and even sensual atmosphere.
Thick streams of incense curl up beside colorful
drawings of very lifelike gods and goddesses and victims undergoing imaginative tortures.
A man in a painting has a wooden
square around his neck known as a "cangue." It is so wide that it prevents him
from reaching his mouth with his hands and he
must rely on others for food. Along with defeated politicians and bankers
convicted of embezzlement, he will soon find out who
his real friends are.
************************************************
Eureka! A discovery! The McDonalds's south of South Gate has a squat toilet in
the men's room. I don't know exactly why that
makes me happy, but it does. Where warlord armies once assembled and where Red
Guard factions once fought there now
exists Minder's Cafe, Flower City Music Cafe, Car Wash Cafe and Cafe Cafe, but
still, the McDonald's south of South Gate
has a squat toilet in the men's room. Some piece of tradition to hang on to.
This particular outlet also sells beautiful blue-and-gold T-shirts with the
McDonald arch and the Forbidden City and five
Chinese characters which mean "Beijing McDonald's." Wait!
I'm not
really going to demean myself by buying a McDonald's
Beijing T-shirt, am I? I buy two. After all, I figure it is only a matter of
time before the rapidly growing McDonalds's chain in
China will join the Great Wall as the only man-made structure on earth
supposedly visible from Outer Space. And when I
return to Hong Kong, I will swap one of the T-shirts for a Time magazine T-shirt
with Chairman Mao on it. Yes, Time has
come a long way also.
************************************************
"He who has not climbed the Great Wall cannot be counted as a real man.
And
he who has not viewed true Peking opera at
Zheng Yi Ci may live to regret it." This, along with a painting of a
character from Chinese opera, is painted on the wall of a small
lane near the beautifully renovated late- Ming Dynasty temple now serving as a
Chinese opera theater. Whether the painted
words are meant as a threat or as a statement of fact, I'm not sure, but the performances here are among China's best.
During
intermission, I spot a cryptic notice that among the service items available is
"the karaoke of Beijing opera." Some things are
best left to the imagination.
But then I notice a photograph of four men on the wall which captures my
attention so completely I am almost late for the
second half of the show. It is a 1960 picture of Chairman Mao shaking hands with
the great opera female impersonator Mei Lan-fang, the talented playwright, T'ien Han, and the famous writer, Lao She.
All are smiling broadly as Chairman Mao shakes
Lao She's hand. The caption does not speak of their fates. It does not mention
how during the "Great Cultural Revolution" of
1966-76, the "ten years of turmoil" in which China devoured itself,
T'ien Han was tortured and died in prison; Lao She, no
longer able to stand the fury of the Red Guards, drowned himself in a lake.
Only
Mei Lan-fang escaped such a fate by dying in
1961, before the worst of the madness began. But something about the fate of
those men made me decide that during my last
full day in China I would visit lesser- known attractions now serving as small
museums: the homes of Mei Lan-fang, Lu Hsun and
Soong Ching-ling.
Lu Hsun, who died in 1936, was China's greatest modern writer, and the few rooms
open to public scrutiny reveal how simply
he lived. His pictures clearly portray one of those sensitive faces that
immediately reveals his artistic soul. What impresses me
most about Mei Lan-fang's house is the inscription on the fan presented to him
by Rabindranath Tagore in 1924:
"You are veiled, my beloved, in a language I do not know
As a hill that appears like a cloud behind its mist."
For me, however, it is Soong Ching-ling who holds the most interest. The widow
of Sun Yat-sen, the "Father of Modern
China," and the only one of the three famous Soong sisters who stayed on
under Communist rule. I walk through the rooms
scanning her pictures as she evolves from the delicate, croquet-playing bride of
Dr. Sun into the portly, sharp-eyed,
representative of China's rubber stamp parliament. Again, the captions reveal
little. There is nothing about her inner turmoil, her
arguments with Mao Tse-tung, her passionate love for her male secretary and the
danger she faced from the Red Guards which
forced Chou En-lai himself to intervene to protect her.
I spot a photograph of Dr. Sun and his young wife surrounded by loyal Chinese
soldiers on board a steamer commemorating
their escape from one of China's many warlords. But every historical Chinese
photograph has at least one untold story and in
this one I spot the head of none other than the flamboyant Two-Gun Cohen, the
British/Canadian/Jewish bodyguard of Sun Yat-sen. A man who once saved Sun Yat-sen's life and the life of Chiang
Kai-shek. A man whose actions may have changed
Chinese and, hence, world history. A man who, not unlike so many others in
China's long historical tapestry, has himself faded
into history.
************************************************
A potpourri of facts gleaned from Beijing papers during my stay: The city has 11
million people; most adults are smokers
despite the new ban on smoking in public places and the 85,000 people mobilized
to enforce the "Kick Butts Campaign;" a
small number of sea burials have begun as a means of combating the soaring
prices for burial ground in the city; Chinese
authorities have banned articles discussing the 30th anniversary of the Cultural
Revolution as conclusions might hurt the Party's
image; China is still the largest bicycle producer in the world with 470 million
bicycles in the country; Beijing's famous shopping
street, Wangfujing, now has new pay-to-use, automatic, odor- free, non-flush
toilets; because of construction of hotels and
plazas and destruction of courtyards and "hutongs" (narrow lanes), Beijingers
don't find their way around town as easily as
before; the Liberation Daily is complaining about "advertisements featuring
blonde-haired, blue-eyed people . . . as if a product
that has been accepted by foreigners must be good;" foreign agents of the
music, film and software industries who lead Chinese
authorities to illegal shipments of pirated goods are in danger of being prosecuted for "illegal surveillance."
And, in the
provinces, thunder editorials indignantly, a huge amount of garbage from the
United States has been uncovered. As a new
Yorker, I am well aware of New York's history of sending its unmanageable,
overflowing garbage outside the state by barge,
train, truck, whatever, and, during my last few days in the country, I decide to
keep a low profile. After all, those no-fat, low
sodium pretzel bags and back issues of Village Voice might be traced directly to
me.
Well, then, Beijing -- sprawling, dusty, fascinating without being in any way
charming, too hot in the summer, too cold in the
winter -- what and whither? I would not be so foolish as to predict anything
beyond the most mundane observations. Beijing,
like so much of Asia, has transformed from a romantic adventure for foreign
travelers into an engine of a powerhouse economy. There will be fewer budget travelers and more luxury hotels, more plazas, more
discos. More bicycle and automobile traffic will
continue to ignore more crosswalks. More joint ventures. More threats of
tariffs. More cultural misunderstandings. Fewer
heated discussions of ideology and more heated towel rails. More prickly
relations with the West in which a little sediment of
pulp is to be expected.
But as the experts on China say: there are no experts on China, only varying
degrees of ignorance. So perhaps it is best to close
by quoting the wise preface to the great fourteenth-century Chinese novel,
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of Chairman
Mao's favorite books: "Here begins our tale -- The empire being divided must
unite; being united, must divide. It has always
been thus."
The End
Copyright Dean Barrett 1998
A Beijing Journey first appeared, in shorter form, in THAI Airways' international
magazine, Sawasdee, in 1997.
For a trip up the Pearl River from Hong Kong to Canton, click below:
A CANTON JOURNEY
Dean Barrett lived in Asia for 20 years as a writer, editor and publisher. He
wrote the novel, MEMOIRS OF A BANGKOK
WARRIOR and his novel set in China, HANGMAN'S POINT, was published by
Village East Books in September 1998. His screenplay, DRAGON SLAYER has been optioned for film and his musical,
"FRAGRANT HARBOUR," was selected by
the National Alliance of Musical Theatres to be staged on 42nd Street, NYC.
Contact Dean Barrett at deanbarrett@mindspring.com
Read
a thriller/mystery set in 1857 Hong Kong:
HANGMAN'S POINT - A NOVEL OF HONG KONG: A Sample Chapter
Read a sexy ghost story about a Bangkok bargirl: Noy of the Horny Toad
Hangman's Point -- A
Novel of Hong Kong
by
Dean Barrett
ISBN:
0-9661899-1-4
Published
by Village East Books
US$24.95
Available
on all web booksites at a discount
For
signed first editions call: 1-800-431-1579
Read a synopsis of HANGMAN'S
POINT
REVIEWS OF HANGMAN'S POINT
Read Uncle Yum Cha's CHINESE WISDOM
Read a sample chapter of a new novel set in Thailand, Kingdom of Make-Believe: A
Novel of Thailand
Contact the Publisher: Village-East@mindspring.com
Dean Barrett lived in Asia for 20 years, 17 of those years based in Hong
Kong. His novels on Asia are: Hangman's Point,
Kingdom of Make-Believe, and
Memoirs of a Bangkok Warrior.
Copyright
2001 Dean Barrett
No part of this article may be performed or published without written permission
from the playwright.
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