Renditions
No. 23 (Spring 1985)
By Bo Yang
Translated by Don J. Cohn
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Chinese People are the Same Everywhere
I have spent the last thirty years in Taiwan, the first ten writing fiction, the second ten writing essays and the last ten in jail; quite a nice balance, I would say. Why do I no longer write fiction? Because with fiction you can only approach problems indirectly, through the medium of form and characters, while the essay is like a dagger which can penetrate directly into the hearts of scoundrels and villains. Writing essays is similar to sitting in a car next to the driver, advising him when he's made a wrong turn, telling him to turn right or left, to stay in the side lane, not to pass when there's a double yellow line, to watch out for the bridge ahead, to reduce his speed, to watch for the intersection coming up, to heed the red light. After many years of exhorting this driver of mine repeatedly and telling him how to drive, someone must have decided that I'd overdone it because I ended up in jail. Those in power believe that if no one is there to point out a driver's mistakes, he simply won't make any.
During my incarceration I spent a lot of time contemplating my fate. What crimes had I committed? What laws had I broken? I continued pondering these questions after I was released and began to wonder whether mine was an abnormal or special case. On this trip to Iowa, where I have been able to meet writers from the Chinese mainland in a formal setting, I have discovered that God has predestined people like me to go to jail, whether the jail be in Taiwan or on the Chinese mainland. These mainland writers told me: "Someone like you would never have made it as far as the Red Guards or the Cultural Revolution. In fact, you'd have been lucky to survive the Anti-Rightist Movement." Why must a Chinese person with the courage to speak even the thinnest slice of truth suffer this sort of fate? I've asked a number of people from the mainland why they ended up in prison. Their answer was, "I made a few true statements." And that's the way it is. But why does speaking the truth lead to such unfortunate consequences? My answer is that this is not a problem of any particular individual but rather of Chinese culture as a whole. A few days ago I had a discussion with the party secretary of the " All-China Writers' Association". He made me so angry that I literally became speechless. I used to think I could hold my own in an argument; but this guy did a damn good job of knocking every bit of wind out of my sails. I don't blame him though, the same way I don't blame the agents who handled my case in Taibei. If you were in that environment and conversant with its ways and means, you would very likely act the same way, since you would believe that what you were doing was right. I would do the same thing, believing that my actions were correct, though I'd probably be even more ob- noxious than that party secretary. I often hear people say, "Your future is in your own hands." Having lived the better part of my life, I don't believe that any more. Actually, only about one half is in your hands, while the other half rests in the hands of others.
Living in this world is similar to the fate of a stone in a cement mixer; after being tossed around with the other ingredients, it loses all control of its own existence. I could cite examples of this ad infinitum, but the conclusion we are led to is that our problems are not so much individual as social and cultural. Before he died, Jesus said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." When I first heard this statement as a child, I thought it rather bland and frivolous, and even as I grew older, I continued to feel that it lacked substance. Only now do I appreciate its profundity, as well as its bitterness. It reminds me that the Chinese people's present state of ugliness is due to our own ignorance of the fact that we are ugly.
Because Taiwan and the United States have broken off diplomatic relations, the expenses for my trip to the University of Iowa had to be borne by Iowa University and private sources. The latter came in the form of a gift from the owner of the Yanjing Restaurant in Iowa City, Pei Zhuzhang, a man who had never met me before. His generosity moved me deeply. Pei told me, "Before reading your books I felt that the Chinese people were the most extraordinary people in the world, but after I read them my thinking changed. Your books inspired me and made me want to meet you in person." I joined the Kuomintang when I was 18 years old and wasn't expelled from the party until 1968. Thus most of my friends have been members of the KMT, while my non-party friends were a bunch of worthless bores who tried to start an argument every time they opened their mouths. These people, like Pei before he had read my books, remained stuck in their youth, the most fashionable and progressive period in their lives, and had ceased to mature any further.
When Pei Zhuzhang became aware of the problems which exist within Chinese culture, he wondered whether there might be some basic defect in the moral fibre of the Chinese people. Before I made my first trip abroad, Sun Guanhan said to me, "When you come back, there's one thing I absolutely forbid you to say: 'Chinese people are the same everywhere!' " I readily gave him my promise. But when I returned and he asked me about my trip, I said, "You told me not to say it, but. …Chinese people are the same everywhere!" He hoped that Chinese people would be able to change and grow over the course of time and couldn't imagine this not happening. Are there intrinsic flaws in the basic nature of the Chinese people? When God created us, did he actually intend to make us so ugly? My answer is that the question is not one of moral fibre. This is not meant as self-consolation; the Chinese are indeed one of the most intelligent nationalities in the world. In American universities, Chinese students always rank in the top of their classes, and we have produced many noted scientists as well: Sun Guanhan, one of the fathers of nuclear physics, as well as Nobel Prize winners Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao. There are no intrinsic flaws in the moral fibre of the Chinese people, and there is no doubt in my mind that we are capable of making China a healthy and happy place to live in. I also have good reason to believe that China will someday become a great country . But we mustn't spend all of our time and effort making China a major military power. What is more important is to bring happiness into the people's lives. Only after this is achieved can power be sought. I believe that the Chinese people possess noble qualities. But why is it that during the last several centuries, we have so rarely succeeded in freeing ourselves from suffering?
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Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.