Stein now asks about his personal life. Mr Lai is silent for a long time; he turns his cigarette around in his hand.
lai. I originally did not study to be a kunqu actor. Before 1979, I was a part of the Zhejiang Song and Dance Ensemble. I wanted to be a dancer. I studied dance, and my wife studied kunqu at the provincial art college. And in Zhejiang I was very lucky — at that time, they taught dance according to the traditions of the Russian ballet school. They also placed great emphasis on a complex training, so I had to learn kunqu too. So I learnt traditional singing, traditional music, even anatomy. My wife and I had the same master. How did this work? A person had to observe the master, observe the pieces, then imitate the master until, without any instruction, in the recognition of his own personality and among the givens of his own cultivation, he could somehow, step by step, understand the figure that had to be created. This is the decisive thing — the comprehension of the figure to be portrayed; the rest is theatrical performance and so on. It helps only partially. What that figure — which a person will create across an entire life — will be like depends on many things. First, it depends on his age, his talent, his education, his sensitivity and other accidental factors. And an actor, in kunqu, does not simply play a man. As you perhaps know from jingju, from the Peking Opera, there are differing male roles. For us as well there is the xiaosheng, the young man; there is the laosheng, the old man; there is the man with a painted face, the da hualian; the clown, the xiaochou; as well as the wusheng, the warrior. During basic training it doesn’t matter what kind of role you are playing or will play, you must learn the most important theatrical abilities. You must learn the theatrical steps, the practice of the ‘bent shoulder’, the lowering of the long silk sleeve, the basic modes of singing. Everyone learns these. Then if, let us say, you will be a wusheng, from that point on you will complete the training necessary for that set of roles, or if you will be a xiaosheng, you train for that. So we say that the wusheng follows the wusheng master, and the xiaosheng follows the xiaosheng master. And it is always the given master who decides if you are suitable for this group of roles. He picks out his students.
Should it really be imagined as such, that there is really nothing: Neither book, no description, nor secret handbook, nothing at all, just the master?
lai. The student learns from the master. Naturally, certain pieces have to have their own texts. There are role books as well. And each kunqu drama text contains, of course, dramatic instructions. It looks something like the texts for the noh pieces in Japan. Where, for example, a single book contains the score and the text. In the old days, this was known as the gongchi[96] score.
They have been sitting for more than two hours in this shabby office, listening to this bitter, cheerful person. They make their excuses and, slowly, their farewells, but as Lai leads them out of the office he offers to show them the theatre. He has two rooms at his disposal, which in Europe would serve as a rehearsal room for a studio theatre: at the front is a stage of a few square metres, a spectators’ area also of a few square metres by the entrance, for five rows of chairs, and in between certain empty places, the function of which is unclear. Lai jokingly shows them everything they have, it is not too much, he says, still, there’s plenty of room for the public, he winks at his visitors with his own bitter serenity, then stops before the pictures on the wall in the miserable, half-lit, chilly corridor, points at them and recites the names of each famous kunqu actor, and finally accompanies them to the front door. They do not leave immediately because they would like to know something.
Mr Lai — Stein leans in close to him — would you permit a confidential question? So much has been said about kunqu, but what does kunqu mean to you, personally? He has been truly moved, Stein says, by what he has heard and what he has seen of the theatre but he has also grown rather sad. Mr Lai — Stein gestures, to the outside. There are so many rich people in the city. . You could do so many things to make a lot of money. . You sit here in this office, you take care of the affairs of this poor kunqu theatre, and in the evenings, if there is a performance, you do the lighting. Tell me, why?
lai. I am a kunqu actor. And I am not completely alone. That is, I speak in the name of those with whom I can say that this is the Kunqu Company of Zhejiang Province. Of course there aren’t too many of us, but all of us work for kunqu. And if I say that I am proud of our culture, proud of classical literature, music, painting and of course theatre, then that is true as well. But I believe there is something else. I love kunqu. I love classical culture. And I love China. So what does it matter if I am poor, that I will never have even a penny to my name?
He shakes the hands of his visitors, closes the door after them, turns around and disappears from sight.
The next day they leave Hangzhou.
5. If Forgotten, It Will Be Saved
In their hands is a slip of paper from their friend Tang Xiaodu, and on it is written the eight things they must see if they are really serious, and so they go there; then there is the page in the unbelievably crappy Lonely Planet guide to China from which nothing at all can be discerned about the place they are preparing to visit; nor have they been able to obtain any serious information, from Yang Lian or from Tang Xiaodu or from anyone else, as if all their distant and less distant advisers implicitly wished to talk them out of this destination, so that when they sift through and examine the scanty materials at their disposal on the highway leading to Shaoxing, they take it for granted that Shaoxing will be exactly like Yangzhou, or exactly like Nanjing or Zhenjiang, because why would it be any different, there will be a few monuments in this or that specific stage of restoration, there will be a few dreadful hotels according to this or that woefully starred standard, there will be 10,000 tourists, and everywhere there will be high entrance fees and cheap junk and the swarming masses of vendors, unavoidable and unbearable, in a word, there will be everything; and so their friends try to persuade them that to come here, to Shaoxing, really isn’t worth it, they should forget it and go somewhere else, anywhere else, just not here, because not only is there nothing here, there never has been anything interesting here — they, however, go there, Shaoxing is nonetheless the subsequent goal of their trip, Stein has absolutely no idea as to why he is insisting on this so much, why he isn’t changing his mind at the last moment, when he could have, in the eastern bus station of Hangzhou, maybe because the sun began to shine? — he really does not know; in any case, there they were in the bus station, standing in line in front of the ticket counter; suddenly the skies, which had been overcast for weeks, cleared up, and the sun came out so quickly it was as if it had been switched on, it began to shine outside, and inside as well, they noticed it while standing in line, because the rays of the sun suddenly burst in, falling obliquely across the glass windows of the bus station, Stein pointed it out to his companion: it was like a bundle of kindling, like a fine, lukewarm rug that spread out before their feet for a couple of minutes, then it withdrew and faded away into the grimy flagstones — in a word, nothing, but nothing else came up which could have influenced his decision, only this sudden sunlight in front of the ticket counter; so he got the ticket on the basis of a feeling, two for Shaoxing, he said, gesticulating, just one way, the interpreter explained from behind him, smiling apologetically when the women at the ticket counter really didn’t want to understand why the European with the big nose who knew how to ask for a ticket refused to answer the question: just one way, or round-trip; yes, just one way, one way, he kept repeating when he understood the question; then they got onto the bus, and set off from the single slum in Hangzhou in a southerly direction, and the route was to Shaoxing, the one-time Shanyin, the definitive name of which was settled upon by Emperor Gaozong[97] — in his happiness, as is rumoured, at the victory he had reaped over the Jurchens: Let the name of this place be Shaoxing, he proclaimed, and the imperial clerks were writing it down with their wondrous brushes onto the wondrous imperial documents, let its name be ‘Resurgent Prosperity’, dictated Gaozong in 1230 ce, and so it became, from then on, the name of the city, to which — for reasons unknown, in the characteristic good cheer of aimless, careless, thoughtless decisions — he became so attached, suddenly, just like the sunshine, explained Stein, but, well — the interpreter asked — What do you want so much in Shaoxing? and Stein just pointed outside, through the bus window, at the sun that was shining, and spoke not a single word, like someone who knew something; he did not, however, know anything, he just kept smiling, and enjoying the warm sunshine after the torturous weeks of cold and dark, enjoying the fact that the sun was shining at all, and warming him up, as he said happily when they arrived and asked enthusiastically, Can you feel it? he asked his companion who also was growing ever-more cheerful, can you feel the warmth? — and, really, it has grown warm, so that when, having picked out a hotel and settled down, they quickly start off towards the city, to Jiefang Bei Lu, they slowly begin to take off the outer items of clothing, at first the raincoats which no longer make any sense, for the pure sky was shining above, then the sneakers, intended for mountain climbing and against the cold, which they have been wearing for the past few weeks, since their arrival in Nanjing and the exasperating experience of the unusual May conditions, so that when they reach the first significant structure near the city centre, both are wearing T-shirts, and to their greatest surprise, as far as the residents of Shaoxing go, all of them are dressed just as lightly, as if it were May; they look around happily, as if it were really finally May here, to the south, quite a distance below the Yangtze. That certain first significant structure is hardly 200 or 300 metres from that point where they had just turned out onto the main street, having left their fairly shabby hotel, and it is not merely significant, but they are at a loss for words, they are struck down, as they find the Dashan pagoda[98] — for this is what they see — in a state of perfection, the seven graceful storeys built from brick still standing, have been standing since 1004 ce; they gape at the walls, originally painted white but, of course, due to the city buses continually passing its perimeter — ornamented at a later date — now nearly completely blackened: it stands, they stretch their necks upward, it stands, in the most beneficial neglect, which means that the Dashan is quite simply a part of life here; this will be immediately clear to them: it is not partitioned off, it is not promulgated, it is not cordoned off, there is no ticket booth out in front, and this is betrayed by the fact that, in addition to the bus routes passing right by, the local youth — possibly coming here from the outskirts of the city — have scribbled all over the inner walls, and that these youths, judging by this, possibly spend their evenings here as well, perhaps stroll around here on those evenings or those days, because there is no fence nor is there a doorway on the ground floor, only four openings in the octagonal ground plan where the entrances would be, so one can go in and out freely, everyone, including the local youths from the outskirts of the city, who, without the slightest idea of what they are doing, have scribbled all over the walls — until someone will dare to say out loud, beneath these dense scrawls, what has been carved into the plaster: namely, that the Dashan pagoda has remained a part of everyday life, and, looking at the walls, that this everyday life is full of all kinds of dangers, it has remained a part of this life, they determine, and it withstands those words on its walls just as it withstands the grime of the filthy exhaust fumes from the immediate area, it withstands the fact that anyone can go inside and anyone can roar past at full speed, just as it has withstood, for the past thousand years, how the outer precincts — with its crude emissaries and its grimy and stinking buses — have permeated within and rumbled alongside it, for a thousand years. They go on, and over the next few days they visit everything listed on the piece of paper pressed into their hands at the eastern bus station of Hangzhou when they said goodbye to the friend of Tang Xiaodu: they go to the house where Lu Xun, the great reformer, was born, then to where Lu Xun later lived, and finally to the private school where Lu Xun finished his grade school studies at the end of the Imperial era; they visit the atelier of Xu Wei,[99] the Ming-era painter, they take the No. 3 bus to the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi,[100] they look at the imperial tomb of the Yue Kingdom,[101] recently excavated and to this day the only proof of its existence, then they take the No. 2 bus and look at the presumed burial place of King Yu,[102] the legendary water conservationist, they go up to the roof of the Song-era Yingtian pagoda[103] in the city centre, they stroll through the living alleyways of the city densely interwoven with canals, they examine everything, they look at everything, they go to all the places on the list, and then they lie down in their beds in the hotel at the end of one day or another because, although they are dead tired, they cannot sleep, for they simply cannot believe on the first, on the second or on the following days — although, it is obvious from the very first instant — that Shaoxing has been forgotten, that Shaoxing has been left out of the Great Modern Revival, it has been decided that Shaoxing is not needed — that Shaoxing is intact, that Shaoxing has remained: a very poor, an enchanting, a left-behind, peaceful and modest stratum from the past, sunken into quiet provinciality, Shaoxing has remained, even if it is difficult to determine — as they try every evening in the hotel room — exactly which stratum of the past it is; because when they were outside by Chi Brook, in the valley of Kuaiji Mountain,[104] south-west of the city, where they spent a half day in the shrubbery garden of the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi, the greatest calligrapher of all times, giving themselves over to the nearly natural tranquillity of the unforgettable beauty preserved on the steles commemorating the mountain, the brook and a former poetry competition of world renown,[105] they felt that Shaoxing irrevocably belonged to the fourth century. But on the following day, when they again visited the buildings associated with Lu Xun, and were enchanted by that noble simplicity of Chinese tradition created by the internal order — maintained until the great downfall — of the noble houses in the provincial small towns south of the Yangtze, then they said, no, Shaoxing was the seat of China before its downfall. And it was like that afterward too — if they were in the tiny studio of Xu Wei, with its delightful garden, then they felt that everything had come to a standstill in the Ming dynasty; if every afternoon, as it fade