A taste of Confucius

Six thousand impossible things before breakfast

2. A taste of Confucius

or
Young Zhang grapples with the concept of Western womanhood

Shanhaikuan is full of bustling scenes of socialist construction. This Eighth Route armyman was wounded fighting to liberate the people, so we must certainly save him. Every revolutionary knows that if you write with milk nothing can be seen on the paper, but if it is toasted the words can be seen.

This ought to ring a bell with anyone who has come across the delightfully upbeat, if one-track minded language reserved for foreign language textbooks -- in places where authors tend to be chosen for their party membership rather than linguistic soundness. In the workers' paradise, a sentence is never just a sentence. It's a political message designed to propel the reader firmly down the socialist road, in defiance of all real-life obstacles.

Yes, you've guessed it: in preparation for the Great Unknown I had begun to take language classes (using a politically correct manual from the 1960s). During a previous experience involving Russia I had failed to take this precaution. For at least the first six months in the country I found myself reduced to the state of a deaf-mute - until that magical moment when the veil lifted and I realised I could actually tell the end of one word from the beginning of another. The meaningless sequence of gargling and hissing noises started shaping into words and sentences, some of which I could even understand and, later still, respond to.

With Chinese, I decided to give myself a headstart.

My teacher's name was Zhang Qi Feng. Qi Feng to his parents, Xiao Zhang to everyone else, until middle age or having children of his own would turn him into Lao Zhang (xiao 小 and lao 老 meaning 'young' and 'old'). He was a grant student from the prestigious Beijing University (Beijing Daxue), selected for export as one of the ten best students in his year. He told me without the slightest change of expression on his perfectly serious face: "Auparavant je consacre mes jours à l'étude de l'histoire et de la littérature françaises. Maintenant, je me passionne pour le droit international fiscal". Enraptured by international fiscal law. It sounded like something straight out of Confucius. But even if you didn't share his awesome passion for tax legislation, Zhang was so cultured, erudite, polite, reserved, hardworking and serious that it would have been difficult not to be impressed by him. If he was in any way shocked by our strange ways he managed to conceal the fact (most of the time). He lived in a students' residence hall, sharing a shoebox-sized room with his bicycle, a huge potful of boiled white rice (which, supplemented with boiled vegetables, would last him a whole week), and stacks and stacks of French and Chinese newspapers.

Only one thing seemed to occasion him acute discomfort. And that was the overwhelming presence of Western womanhood. It was probably only on account of sheer personal bravery and a tight budget that he agreed to give me private classes at my place. The first few times he made sure he sat near the door, probably in case I attempted to rape him. Was this part of some collective rape trauma, featuring outsized, large-footed, chain-smoking creatures the colour of pigskin, with coal scuttles for hands? These things existed, I knew: the mere mention of the word Russian could still induce nightmare visions of Red Army rape in German women who had experienced the end of World War II (although it rarely seemed to make them wonder what had brought those unfriendly men to their doorstep in the first place). Luckily, after a few rape-free sessions Zhang started to relax somewhat and even accepted tea made from a bag. Whatever his misgivings about the potentially violent nature of Western WoMan, he certainly didn't let them interfere with his teaching mission. Zhang was a strict disciplinarian if ever I saw one. Despairing of my clumsily scribbled characters, I said : 'I bet this looks like the handwriting of a seven-year old.' After a brief critical study, he replied without the slightest hint of irony: 'No, actually more like that of a five-year old.'

Leaving aside my notoriously poor handwriting, Zhang professed to be impressed with my progress. This, by the way, was no flattery. What was it Doctor Johnson said about women who write and dogs that can walk on their hind legs .... of course they can't be expected to do it well. The amazing thing is that they should attempt to do it at all.

Zhang's further story: a cautionary tale illustrating Confucian values, featuring calligraphy and filial duty in large doses.Shortly after I left for Shanghai Zhang got married - to a bright and bouncy girl from Beijing, a model student in her own right. They had met during their final school year. He was far too busy concentrating on his French to take much notice of the other sex, even if they did get top grades, but he said yes when she asked if she could write to him during his time abroad in Geneva. Starting out as pen pals, they wrote their way into each other's hearts. No-one pointed out to them that calligraphy, though traditionally a highly valued skill, is hardly an adequate basis for lifelong matrimonial bliss. When Zhang returned to Beijing on home leave after two years, marriage seemed the logical conclusion.

In China most of life's major business - like getting married, organizing revolutions, running the country, or a steamed dumpling stall - seems to involve, apart from the usual relatives, between one and any number of classmates. People with whom one has guanxi关系- connections.

Guanxi, a traditional feature of Chinese society, are maintained throughout life by means of a complex tacit accounting system recording favours and indebtedness. This can be carried to extremes. So-and-so lent you his chopsticks during the Long March, so taking into account inflation you owe his grandson something in the order of a ministerial post. Or as a proverb suggests, your best bet is to throw overboard the man who just saved you from drowning as you'll never be able to repay the debt .... It's a bit like the English old boy network (except that that's class-based and - is it really gentlemanlike to call in a debt ?); the צָבָא (army) in Israel; the extended family network including strings of cousins and battalions of in-laws in many other countries. It just surprised me to find that bond operative among people who happened to have been in the same class, when I myself had long lost touch with anyone I used to crib from or trade sandwiches with during my school years.

After centuries of a ferociously hierarchical society based on ancestor worship, filial duty and an inexhaustible supply of offspring, the classmate must have seemed a more user-friendly concept in modern-day China. At least in urban areas, given shrinking family sizes and broader access to schools. It probably also served the purpose of putting the entire country in revolutionary mode: break the links that chain you to the past, bond with your contemporaries. Classmates of all year groups, unite!

Poor Zhang was to become a victim of precisely these conflicting loyalties. His chosen classmate, Xiangyang, did not meet with his father's approval. The main reason, I think, was that the father had high hopes for him and expected him to do better. Zhang's bride was the daughter of a divorcee, in those days still a very precarious, not to say disgraceful position for a woman. It meant that Zhang could not hope to draw on her connections to further his interests in life. Also, Xiangyang may have been rather too unconventional and enterprising and not nearly submissive enough for the old man's liking. So he kept nagging away at his son, gradually undermining Zhang's loyalty towards his young wife. In best literary tradition, he was able to do so from a great distance and mostly by letter.

Xiangyang could feel her husband drawing away from her, burying himself in tax legislation, and sensed that something was wrong. One day she came across a letter written to Zhang by his father about her - I gather less than complimentary. She confronted him with the letter and asked him to choose between classmate and ancestor worship, so to speak. He opted for the ancestor and divorced the wife. All their friends were shocked to hear it. They had seemed such a good team - each so clever in his/her own way, he more introverted, she the outgoing one.

I have to confess that I felt a pang of guilt. When Zhang wrote to tell me about his marriage I bought a beautiful pair of white babies' silk pyjamas in the Shanghai Friendship Store (a department store where you could buy export-grade Chinese and foreign goods with hard currency, like the Beryozka stores in Russia). I sent it to Geneva as a wedding present. Later I learned that giving or receiving a present for an unborn child is believed to bring bad luck - and not just in Chinese culture. Also, in addition to purity, white is associated with death and mourning, and the colour worn at funerals. I can only hope that those pyjamas did not precipitate the failure of Zhang's marriage ...

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