Much agreement, and more slurping of tea and rattling of cups on saucers. Then more silence.
D: This tea is very good. What kind of tea is it, anyway?
F: Chinese.
See? Embarrassing. Disquieting, even before this chance to review the tape. Back at the hotel that very evening the Big-time Writer couldn't get the humiliating encounter off his mind. Unable to sleep, he dug the borrowed book from the bottom of his luggage. He opened it beneath a bed lamp and found himself immediately captured by the clarity of the prose; it had been swept as clean as that bald yard…
Two hours later, the Big-time Writer lays the book down and bows his head, finally beginning to get some inkling of the stature of the mind he had found in this far-off keep.
He discerned that Philosopher Fung had arbitrarily fashioned four views of man, as a means of observing the gradations of evolving ethical human awareness. These four views, or "realms" as Fung calls them, are (1) The unself-conscious or "natural" realm, (2) The self-conscious or "utilitarian" realm, (3) The other-conscious or "moral" realm, and (4) The all-conscious or "universal" realm.
The first two realms, according to Dr. Fung's canon, are "gifts of nature," while the second two are realized only as "creations of the spirit." That these two conditions must sometimes necessarily be in conflict was taken for granted by the old Doctor; that either side should ever completely triumph over the other was considered the most dangerous of folly.
The writer looked up from the closed book, recalling the walk through blighted Berkeley and the question to the minister concerning the old man's pertinence. Here was how he pertained, this teak-jawed Chinaman, to the Telegraph of today as well as to last season's idealism. Wasn't he trying to light up the very dilemma the sixties had stumbled over? the problem of how to go with the holy flow and at the same time take care of basic biz? Sure, you can to thine own cells be true and liberate parking lots from the pigs, but how do you keep them free of future swine without turning into something of a cop yourself? There was the block that had stumbled a mighty movement, and Fung Yu-lan pertained because he had tried to light it with his intellect, without bias, from all sides. And is still trying, bright as ever. How does he manage it, in this dim comer? How does he keep the faith and keep ahead of the ax at the same time? And for so many years?
The Sharp Old Fox would have had answers to such pertinent questions, had the subjects ever been touched on, but all our Big-time Writer could think to ask were things like "What kind of tea?" Embarrassing…
It is only at the end of the tape, after the visitors have slurped their way to the meeting's end and are once again outside in the shifting Chinese twilight, that he asked a question that was remotely close:
D: One more thing, Doctor. There are some pretty grisly – I mean we've heard a lot of accounts, stories, about how quite a lot of teachers and intellectuals were… I mean how did you get through that dreadful time of turmoil?
F (shrugging): I have been a student of Chinese philosophy for more than three quarters of a century. Thus – (he shrugs again, flashing such a jaunty, devil-may-care grin that one might almost expect him to say, It was a piece of cake. Except for a sharpness that one senses beneath that jaunty flash, a carnivorous quality that suggests the toothy old smiler is not only capable of biting off and swallowing any time of turmoil -- any period of upheaval or downfall brought about by any single dictator or by any Gang of Force with their rinky-dink revolution whether cultural or dreadful -- but that he can thrive on it! As though the turmoil had not only been a piece of cake, easily downed and digested, it had been savored as well) -- I have become very broadminded.
RUN INTO GREAT WALL
Verses appearing here are from the Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu. An older contemporary of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), Lao-tzu was the Chinese historian in charge of archives at the royal court of the Chou dynasty. He wrote nothing of his own but taught by example and parable. When the famous sage was at last departing his homeland for the mountains of his end, the keeper of the mountain pass detained him.
"Master, my duties as sentry of this remote outpost have made it impossible for me to visit your teachings. As you are about to leave the world behind, could you not also leave behind a few words for my sake?"
Whereupon Lao-tzu sat down and filled two small books with 81 short verses, less than some 5,000 characters, and then departed. No one ever heard where he went.
The dark was already pressing down out of the eastern sky when Yang at last swung off the main road from the village and opened up for his finishing sprint down the canal path. A hundred and thirty meters away, at the end of the row of mud-and-brick houses crouching along both sides of the dirt lane, his uncle's dwelling was tucked back beneath two huge acacias. A large estate compared to the other 10-by-10 yard-with-huts, the building housed his uncle's dentist shop and cycle-repair service, as well as his uncle's wife and their four children, his uncle's ancient father, who was Yang's grandfather and an inveterate pipe-smoker, wind-breaker, and giggler… also Yang's mother and her bird and Yang's three sisters, and usually a client or two staying over on one of the thin woven mats to await the repair of their transportation or recuperate from the repair of their molars.
Yang could not see the house as he ran toward the looming acacias, but he could easily picture the scene within. The light would already have been moved from above the evening meal to the dishwashing, and the family would be moving to the television in the shop room, trying to find places among the packing crates of dental molds. The only light there would be the flutter of the tiny screen beating at the dark like the wings of a black-and-white moth.
Yang knew just how they would look. His uncle would be cranked back in the dentist chair, a cigarette cupped in his stubby hand, his shirt open. His wife would be perched beside him on her nurse's stool. On the floor, in half lotus, Grandfather would be leaned forward, giggling, his long pipe only inches from the screen. Farther back his four cousins and his two youngest sisters would be positioned among the paraphernalia on the floor, trying to appear interested in the reports of how the flood along the Yangtze might affect rice quotas. Along the rear wall his oldest sister would be preparing the infants for the night, wrapping their bottoms and sliding them, one after the other, onto the pad beneath the raised cot. The bird would be hung near the door, covered against evening drafts.
In the other room his mother would be cleaning the dishes as quietly as possible.
His uncle would be angry that Yang was late again, but nothing would be said. A quick scowl turned from the television. No questions. They all knew where he had been. The only dalliance he could afford was the public library. For one-half fen a reader could rent two hours on a wooden bench and enjoy the kind of privacy a library creates, even when the benches were packed, reader to reader.