The interpreter is clearly in anguish, but he translates accurately. Yao hears him out, but he can hardly wait to speak.
yao. You make no difference between the culture of the educated classes and that of the wide stratum of the population. And you have not taken into consideration that there were always mutual influences and connections between the two layers of classical culture. I’ll give you an example. It is not just the intelligentsia who are fond of the kunqu theatre — the population at large also really enjoys it. And you can see not only older people in the audience but young people too. There is a Kunqu Research Society which was founded after the Cultural Revolution.[65] This is just one example. Classical Chinese culture can be researched from very many angles.
Stein is thinking that if he continues to refrain from polite circumlocutions, eventually Yao will be forced to open up. And so, after apologizing again, he continues by saying that Yao has not answered his question. Otherwise as well, he adds, living and researching a culture are two very different things. In China, just a few decades ago, it was fantastic, even formidable, how a person could feel that classical Chinese culture was truly a daily reality, because in its depths it was indestructible. And he, Stein, started off in this secret hope — because, he says, one always starts off with some secret hope in this country — but, well, these few weeks since he has been here have made it thoroughly impossible for him to nurture this hope within himself any more, because to state today about this society — that it would have any sort of connection at all to its own traditions, that this would be its daily reality in the depths — is simply absurd. The unbelievable hunger for the creation of a market economy in recent years, the hunger for the acquisition of money and possessions renders such statements ridiculous, even retroactively. And as far as Yao’s example goes — Stein looks at him more decisively — surely he does not wish to prove, by citing the founding of the kunqu societies, that the kunqu theatre is alive and flourishing? The kunqu societies are dying out because neither the intelligentsia nor the ‘wide stratum of the population’ is sitting there in the audience. No kind of wide stratum of anything sits there at all. It’s a miracle if there are even a few spectators. If there is even a performance being held somewhere.
yao. Classical Chinese culture lives on in the depths. On the surface it may seem that while the construction of an industrial society is in progress, classical culture has been pushed into the background, but if this indeed has occurred, then once again classical values will regain their significance — these will be the values to which people reach back, because they will have need of them, we will have need of our own culture, the essence of which cannot be anything but classical culture. This cannot change.
Stein asks Yao what he actually means by the term ‘Chinese classical culture.’
yao. For me it signifies a belief. Others think that it is the practice of life according to the highest principles. You cannot understand this, but that’s how it is, and the young people of today endeavour to not just live an everyday life.
Why couldn’t I understand, Stein spreads his hands apart. He would like nothing better, he says, than to encounter some facts which would allow him to think the same thing. But he doesn’t find any such facts, he lowers his hands. The young people of today? — He echoes the expression. For surely Yao himself is one of these youths, and he knows very well how young Chinese people spend their time in the cities. So why is he saying something different? They are endlessly dangling at the teats of the computer or the television, in the much better cases in the bookshops and libraries, trying to become acquainted with Western mass culture, amusing themselves with that, or, in the very loftiest of instances, trying to become acquainted with the more valuable accomplishment of Western culture and adapting it to the apparatus of their own intellectual lives.
Stein looks at Yao who, he senses, is eyeing his arguments with an ever-chillier glance. As a matter fact, here is where he should stop, but he doesn’t give up, trying to retreat a little, seeking some principle, some point in common, and he begins to interrogate Yao: What does he see in general as being the essence of culture?
yao. Culture is that strength which helps one discover the essence of life. It is enchantment. Chinese culture was always a continuum, it never became Westernized. Nor will it now. Because tradition is stronger than you realize.
Stein feels that their conversation is a kind of free fall where, however, he is the only one who is falling. He begins to lose his patience; he begins to forget that this is exactly what he should not do — if he wants to make himself understood — so that, well, he confides to Yao that he would be ecstatic if he could sense the strength of this tradition. It’s just that, he answers woefully, he only experiences the opposite. Everywhere. It is so obvious here in the big cities that there is no point in even trying to demonstrate it. And in the villages, well, what else do people want, especially the young people — and again he looks at him with that sincere gaze — what else do they want than to be big-city dwellers in this modern mass culture, because that’s what we’re talking about here — or in the case of the intelligentsia, to form connections, amid the advantages of the big city, with the elite culture of the West and to assimilate that culture fully? And, moreover, as quickly as possible and in ever-greater numbers. . In every city, with every acquaintance, every friend, in every conversation, Stein raises his voice, this is his experience. And as Yao knows, he adds, the goal of his journey is not to find out if the Chinese intelligentsia respect their tradition with their words but to see if they live it. It goes without saying that they respect it. But do they live it? Or if this is no longer possible, what would you do, practically speaking? Do you stand — Stein flings out the question in bitterness — in front of the temples when these know-nothing ‘preservationists’ show up to protect the treasures with your own bodies? Do you safeguard artistic objects all over China? Take them into the museums so that they can find refuge? And then go with children into these museums to look at them? No, he shakes his head, Stein doesn’t think Yao does this. These original artistic creations were destroyed by the civil war, or the Maoist era, or the tourist gangsterism of today, or by time itself or, worse, they have been counterfeited and sold as if they were real. What he has seen, Stein points to himself, for the most part during the past 10 years, as he has travelled through the provinces of China and viewed temples and monuments, is nothing other than the destruction of these exquisite objects in the hands of those who are not worthy. Wherever he has gone, he has met with forgeries and fraud. Because, he continues bitterly, temples are counterfeited in the name of reconstruction. Ancient monuments are ‘saved’ but they are not — these monuments are needed, so instead they are destroyed on the basis of purely material considerations stemming from a cheap dilettantish approach. And so he perceives — he slows down, because he can sense that he’s speaking too quickly for the interpreter — that the only goal is to sell something that used to be an authentic temple, an authentic sacred place, an authentic statue of the Buddha; to sell it as a counterfeit, whether made new ‘like magic’ or daubed up again — and, sadly, even to unsuspecting Chinese tourists. This is what’s happening, this is his experience — and Stein now feels he has been able to regain a calmer tone. And so, he explains, trying to persuade Yao of his good intentions through his glance, what the Chinese are annihilating is their very own culture which they could, in fact, be living. But you don’t want to live this tradition, you and your compatriots, says Stein, and he gestures, pointing to the clamorous room, you and your compatriots live the second-rate mass culture that goes with the so-called modern market economy as well as so-called elite culture, dredged up from the squalid vortex of the market; and you do so of your own free will — just like us, by the way, in Europe. And he asks the interpreter to once again, and continuously now, add an apology. And the interpreter says that he’s been doing so constantly. Practically after every sentence. But he signals to Stein that there is no way now to get the conversation onto a more friendly level. And he is right. Yao’s face is rigid, his voice descends from ever-greater heights. It is clear by now that he hardly has any statements to make that this European would be worthy of hearing.