4. Requiem in Hangzhou
In one of the world’s most beautiful cities, in the unparalleled administrative seat of the Southern Song dynasty,[69] from the first moment until the last, they never feel any sort of disappointment. Hangzhou does not lie. It can be seen that there was splendour and brilliance here, there was erudition and intellect, it can be seen that the current conspicuous and exceptional wealth of the city is not due simply to the new era of Deng and Deng’s followers but that it follows upon former wealth; Hangzhou, nonetheless, does not claim for itself, among all this new prosperity, any connection to the past which, of course, is indestructible in the same sense as the scene of a murder or an obstinate memory in the brain — no, Hangzhou announces, you won’t find that here, no point looking for anything — and the fact that people keep coming is due simply to the present of the past that was once here, but Hangzhou doesn’t say anything like that, it doesn’t deceive because it has no need of deception, it propagates its new name in place of the old, and it has the right to do so from pride, from self-esteem: here is the new, the wealthy Hangzhou, and it does not wish to display itself in any kind of role that would tie it to the old, it has accepted that the old is gone, and it is happy for whatever residue has remained, this is Hangzhou today and, thanks to this, they feel above reproach for the first time, that is, they would feel above reproach if the rain were not constantly pouring down, if it wasn’t cold, if the sky wasn’t eternally cloudy, meaning that the other side of the lake was never visible, not even for a single hour, but fine, in spite of all this everything is fine because they have no expectations, and they are not obligated to take anything to task here, because in the Hangzhou of today there isn’t anything to take to task, they enjoy the former splendour dimly glimmering here and there, they enjoy it, and they are satisfied with that much, and if in the meantime the thought arises in Stein: God Almighty, what astounding beauty there must have been once in this city, if after so much definitive destruction you can still sense something of it, like a draft of air where an amputated leg used to be. Because that’s what he feels, László Stein corrects the explanation of the interpreter who has got entangled in this, when after a few days he asks what the problem is: he finds it unusual that Stein is so silent — he tends to feel, Stein says, that it was beautiful, that it was so incredibly beautiful here, that China’s most eternally famous lake was beautiful, the Xihu[70] or West Lake, celebrated by the greatest poets more beautifully than anything else, that Gushan island (‘Orphan Mountain Island’)[71] was beautiful, and the two dams, Bai Juyi,[72] in the lake, that the Chan Buddhist[73] Jinci temple[74] was beautiful, that Feilai Feng (‘The Peak That Flew Hither’),[75] and Yuhuangshan (‘Jade Emperor Mountain),[76] and Leifeng Ta (‘Storm Peak Pagoda’),[77] and Yuquan (‘Jade Spring’),[78] and Hupaquan (‘Running Tiger Spring),[79] and the tea plantations of Longjing[80] were beautiful, indeed breathtaking, and that something has remained of everything here, like a kind of hint, is beautiful as well; in fact, they could even say that many things have remained and, with the help of a tour guide, contacted through Tang Xiaodu, they are seeking out these many things, although they don’t feel any amazement at all when their guide takes them first to his own secret lookout, in the freezing rain, to the slippery cliffs atop the mountain in Gushan, promising that from there, from above, from that height which he has loved greatly since his childhood, they will see all of Xihu and all of Hangzhou, and it never even occurs to them to ask him where these things are, because from up there nothing but nothing in the entire God-given world can be seen, the lake and the city are enveloped in thick fog while the sky is covered by heavy clouds; their newly found friend is sad, Stein, however, is not, because he is aware that to see Hangzhou would not be possible even in bright sunshine, but he does not try to explain what he is thinking, he just consoles his friend that even like this it is beautiful, and that he is being very kind and what they can see from of the lake is very pretty: the fog, and the clouds above Hangzhou, this is enough, enough just to be here, and to be able to see the former Longjing tea plantations and the little village where the tea planters lived and live even today, just as they realize with joy that they can see the city’s most famous temple or, rather, what has become today of Lingyin Si temple,[81] a soulless place of pilgrimage, victimized by its restoration, because that was the place where. . but chiefly what makes them happy is when their enthusiastic guide takes them to the magical Feilai Feng, the mountain known as the Peak That Flew Hither, he takes them into what is undoubtedly one of the most significant — and hardly known — works of Buddhist sculptural art in the world, and it has an enormous effect upon them, here and now, beneath the earth, standing face to face with them: no one was able to destroy these Buddhas and bodhisattvas and luohans and monks, carved, in their immortal beauty, into the walls of the interconnected watery caves, but — and this is the thing that is really breathtaking — no one was even able to disturb them, maybe these statues carved into the walls of appallingly hard rock could have only been detonated, but no one got around to it, and now it’s too late, now they are protected by the so-called dominant trend of the preservation of national culture as well as by the significant proceeds originating from the armies of tourists flooding this place, in short, here they are, perfect, undamaged, drenched in the water dripping from the ceilings of the caves, and nowhere else, not in any other temple cave, can such terrifying faces be seen, nowhere else can such uncanny suggestive gazes be seen, such an unearthly radiance from the eyes, not in Longmen,[82] not in Datong,[83] nowhere else, just here, beneath the earth, in the depths of the mountain, so that when at twilight their young guide takes them to Gushan to see a friend, Ge Youliang, who, as the owner of the renowned Louwailou pavilions,[84] opens up the magnificent lacquered doors, looking onto the lake, and in his teashop graciously invites them to sit down and offers them a cup of the very best Longjing tea, Stein’s happiness is genuine, because he wasn’t hoping for anything from old Hangzhou, and he didn’t get anything, it was good on that cliff peak, though, he reassures his companion later on, it was good in Longjing, it was good below Feilai Feng and it was good in the tea pavilion on Gushan, and Xihu, says Stein, was beautiful, as its motionless mirror-like surface, from the breath-like touch of the thousands and thousands of raindrops, glittered in the twilight thousands and thousands of times; so that everything is perfectly fine, he reassures the interpreter, and in a few days they set off to meet one of the most outstanding figures of artistic life in Hangzhou, the deputy director of the kunqu theatre, they set off in order to somehow entangle themselves back into reality, back into forfeitous reality, back to where they had been led by their own superfluous interest and their own faulty presumptions, back into disappointment, the disappointment that what they believed to exist, to be alive, is gone, is not alive, back to the feeling — in the embittered words born of human dignity and serenity — that for them here, in this China, with their own great love for the exquisite treasures of this culture, there is nothing, but nothing for them to look at any more.