MANY CHINESE FAMILIES feel they have lost their way amid the country’s breakneck struggle to transform and modernise, and an increasing number are turning to miracle ‘cures’ from the West or returning to the teachings of their ancestors. In 2009 a big debate broke out over the Dizigui, one of the great Chinese educational classics. It represents thousands of years of civilisation, and has survived under the dust and rubble of a hundred years of chaos and war. If Confucius is the basis of Han Chinese culture, then the Dizigui is the ‘Ten Commandments’ of education.1 It was compiled from Confucius’s writings by Li Yuxiu in the reign of the Kangxi emperor towards the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and consists of a list of educational aphorisms. In prime place is filial piety towards parents and love of siblings, followed by self-control and keeping one’s word, then fairness, altruism, family unity and choosing virtuous friends. It emphasises studying the six traditional arts of ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, calligraphy and logic, and states that one can only be considered educated through an exhaustive study of the Chinese classics. The debate in society centred around the relevance of the traditional Dizigui in a modern globalised age. Can and should it be taught to children nowadays? Should it be preserved as part of the world’s cultural heritage?
Those in favour included Professor Qian Wenzhong of Shanghai’s Fudan University. He maintained that while many people nowadays consider it old-fashioned and harking back to feudal times, it is impossible to overestimate its real value. Although old, it deals with very current problems like happiness, children’s education and how to be a good citizen. It could again become the foundation stone for the nation and bring a civilising influence to family and society. We should treat traditional culture with the gratitude and respect it deserves, and make use of its teachings on filial piety and morality to create a happier society. This happiness should come from an acknowledgement of our current level of civilisation, and from giving our children a first-rate education.
Those opposed to the Dizigui maintained that traditional culture is secretive, morbid and dark, while modern culture is open, healthy and bright. Many Chinese people have been influenced by Western materialist ideas like ‘matter determines spirit’, ‘existence determines awareness’ and ‘economics are the foundations for growth’. They believe that happiness is solely linked to increasing GDP and material wealth.
I personally support those in favour of the Dizigui, because no matter what happens in the future or how our environment changes, if we continue to live in an age without virtue and a society that has forgotten its cultural roots, the people will lose their culture and regional diversity will disappear. They will become like flowers in a display, living a kind of cut-off life temporarily supported by nutrients, but unable to live long in their own soil.
But for those only children whose families believed in the Dizigui, has it acted as a charm to ward off evil? The experiences of Lily and her classmate may provide an answer.
My husband Toby, a literary agent, has spent many years exploring the translation and publication of books into different languages. His work has taken him to many non-English-speaking countries, and put him in touch with many authors and literature professors. Most years he attends two Chinese publishing events, the spring sowing and the autumn harvest, and over the years has acted as agent to many Chinese writers. One summer in the late 1990s he was invited to Shanghai, and while snatching a moment of peace in the newly built Shanghai Museum, asked one of the young staff where he could see traditional life and religion in Shanghai and Beijing. To his surprise, the young university student took the time to show him the city’s old courtyard houses still surviving down narrow alleys between skyscrapers. She also left him some information on religious sites in Beijing, including the Yonghegong Tibetan Buddhist temple, Shishahai Han Buddhist lake and the Eight Great Buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties.
When Toby told me about this young woman, I found it hard to believe that amid the craze for computer games (on-line gaming was yet to take off) and fast-food culture, which was spreading like wildfire through society, there was still a young person who cared about history and traditional culture. Especially as it was all being swept away in the enthusiasm for modernisation.
I wanted to meet this exceptional young woman, and very soon my wish was granted. Lily was an architecture student specialising in urban art at a university in Shanghai. She spent her holidays working as a part-time interpreter at the Shanghai Museum, which she had fallen in love with when she was a little girl. Because of our common interests, Lily and I soon became good friends. Later on we discovered a connection between our families, and restored a link that had been severed since the Cultural Revolution.
Lily was an unusual young woman, with a fine physique, an appreciation for art and an impressive educational background. However, she later told me that she only studied architecture because she was not accepted into the military. Lily seemed to regret this, as it was clear that she had modelled herself on the army for many years. She exhibited great self-control and was instinctively respectful of others. She dressed with military simplicity and elegance, and had very precise body language. She hardly ever made exaggerated gestures, even during extremes of emotion. I guessed that her general style came from her family, who were part of the military aristocracy, having held high military posts for several generations.
There is a particular class within Chinese society known as ‘inside the residential compound’. The residential compound is the army. Chinese military academies were the only places that maintained normal education and discipline during the Cultural Revolution. The military is one of the master controls of the nation, and to this day enjoys preferential treatment. Children growing up in those guarded compounds never lacked for food or clothing when times were hard. There were never any worries over choosing the right school. Housing, life, clothes, even festivals were all set out according to the military calendar. However, there was also little opportunity for individual expression. The vast majority of young people from these compounds received a first-rate education and were comparatively public-spirited. They tend to be very determined, not afraid of hardship and have a strong sense of responsibility, although the big residential compounds also produce their fair share of tearaways. At first, I thought that Lily’s innate self-control came from her ‘compound’ upbringing. However, as soon as I met her mother, I realised the true source of her strength.
Her mother told me, ‘My husband and I come from a long line of scholars. Although our families have been completely absorbed in military affairs and the construction of academies for the past two generations, our parents gave us a traditional education. Even during the height of the Cultural Revolution, my father would have me and my sisters recite the Three-Character Classic2 and the Dizigui. My father, who was a maths professor in a military academy, used to tell me that the three Chinese educational classics, the I Ching, the Three-Character Classic and the Dizigui, are China’s ‘maths, physics and chemistry’. Once you know them, you can face any situation in the world without fear. Soon after, we were sent down to a poverty-stricken mountainous area in Jiangxi province. Many similar families were sent there with us, and spent almost the whole ten years bemoaning their fate. But my parents made us memorise the classics and read books, hunt for different types of grass and insects, and pick wild vegetables. I don’t think I had one boring day in all those ten years!
‘Conditions improved after we moved back to the city and civilisation. We were paupers compared to other families, but we had the benefit of ancient philosophy. We never complained or got upset at “not having”. Later when I was looking for a husband, the clincher was whether he knew the Three-Character Classic and the Dizigui. It might sound strange now, but in 1980s China there were only two sorts of people: those chasing after political power and those chasing after money. When I said I wanted to marry a man who knew the classics, everyone thought there was something wrong with my head! Fortunately, my husband’s family were cultural diehards too, so we hit it off very quickly.
‘After our daughter was born we took turns to read her the Three-Character Classic and the Dizigui. My husband thought the I Ching was too difficult to read to her immediately, and something that should be learned slowly over a lifetime. When Lily was just three years old, she started memorising the Dizigui, one character at a time. I remember one day, not long after she started at primary school, she came home and said with a pout that none of her classmates had heard of the Dizigui, and her teacher had said it was old and of no use to anyone. She asked us why she had to memorise a text that nobody knew or cared about. I didn’t know how to answer her, but my husband quickly replied that the Dizigui is useful for getting into the best universities. Years later, Lily really did get into one of China’s top universities.’
When Lily’s mother told me this story, Lily was about to finish her course. Her mother and I came to an agreement that some time after her graduation Lily would live with us in London for two months. The aim was to broaden her horizons, give her a feel for European civilisation, and teach her about the world outside the Dizigui and China’s politicised classrooms.
Lily graduated from university in 2003, and soon found her Dizigui-centred academic life crashing headlong into the hustle and bustle of Chinese city life. But this meeting of worlds left her scarred and bruised. She could not understand it. China’s ever hungry capitalist beast was swallowing up the city’s traditional architecture totally unimpeded. Nobody was talking about it, development policy was in a shambles, and officials seemed locked in petty power struggles. Her family and university education had led her to believe that her knowledge would be respected and her ideas welcome, especially as the country went through major reforms. However, as soon as she started work she discovered the harsh reality. Either she could be a spare part in an outdated production line, where those who went with the flow flourished, while those who went against it floundered. Or she could be just one more obsolete tool in the barbarism of modernity, to whom no one would give a thought. Either way she would have to bide her time for an opportunity in a bloated hierarchical system where promotion was based on seniority. Three years passed, and the crisp blueprints that she clutched to her chest were slowly trampled under the feet of reality until faded and yellow.
In autumn 2006 Lily brought her injured heart to London. I took her to see many buildings, including the mix of modern and Gothic that jostled like neighbours along the banks of the Thames. Lily was beside herself with excitement at the Royal Albert Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the National Theatre and London Television Centre, at all those geometric lines and higgledy-piggledy rooflines. However, she was puzzled by groups of buildings that seemed neither fish nor fowl in terms of historical continuity. ‘How has nobody noticed that the design of this group damages the artistic landscape of accumulated centuries on both sides of the Thames?’ she would ask incredulously.
In the three months Lily spent exploring Britain and Europe, over half my time was spent listening to her rigidly held opinions. ‘Shining such a strong light on the exhibit will spoil people’s appreciation of it, and damage the precious artefact. It’s wrong. Why hasn’t anyone corrected it? That refit has damaged the original style of the building, why have so many generations overlooked this? Art is like the four seasons, with design elements as living things. Just like the tiger is found in Asia, or the lion in Africa, how can they just change things with no awareness of the environment? That’s not art, that’s messing around with technique!’ On and on she went . . .
Lily’s concept of good and bad was as rigid as reinforced concrete. Many people think this Chinese black and white mindset comes from the last one hundred years of turmoil. During those years, everything had to be either good or bad, black or white, with none of the shades of light and dark grey found in ancient Chinese paintings. But I think this is only part of the picture. It also has to do with how people perceive culture and civilisation, and how in modern society the boundary between these two words has become increasingly murky. In fact, culture is not the same as civilisation. Every clod of earth develops its own culture, but civilisation only arises when we have learned to understand, respect and make use of culture. However, in twenty-first-century China, destroying traditional civilisation through new educational models is a trend we have become accustomed to and no longer see as strange.
In order to test something I had heard in China, I invited Lily and two other Chinese students to afternoon tea. One was from Peking University and the other from Shanghai’s Fudan University. I told them about a Beijing Union University survey in 2002 that had greatly surprised me. A group of second-year female students had no idea from which part of the body babies were born. Some said they came out of the armpit, some from the belly button, there were even girls who said that babies were born out of the head! The students were asked where they got their ideas from. One said, ‘Well, don’t women who’ve just had children bind their heads up?’ True enough, I thought, country women do believe that they should wrap up warm and avoid wind and water after giving birth, so as to avoid arthritis and headaches in later life. A second said, ‘Haven’t you heard of the belly button? Children are born through the belly button, and then the umbilical cord is cut.’ Another said, ‘I’ve heard people say babies come from that place where women have hair, right?’
I asked the three girls in front of me whether they believed these findings.
The girl from Peking University replied, ‘What’s so unusual about that? When we were at university, we got everything we knew about sex from classmates from the countryside who in turn learned about it from watching farm animals! City families tended to be more prudish, and never discussed sex at home. Students from small towns pretended to understand but didn’t really. But they did have more freedom to talk about it, and had covered a bit more ground than us big-city girls. It was different in those days. Now you can watch it all secretly on the internet, but back then we had to wait till lights out to discuss men and women.’
The girl from Fudan University said, ‘We were all in the same boat. At home we had no sisters to “pass on the jewels of experience”. Away from home we were indoctrinated by other family members and teachers, ten of them to every one of us. Aside from homework, all we had was our daydreams and mad fancies at night. Still, I think that talking about these things is foolish. If you want to know about men and having babies you should go and experience it for yourself!’
‘Experience? Is it really the sort of thing you can experience?’ Lily asked, her eyes huge. ‘Xinran, have you experienced it? How do you go about it?’
‘Me? Oh, I used to be appallingly ignorant, I was a very late bloomer,’ I told them. ‘In my day, if you even discussed sex you’d end up in jail. I once read a book called Beacons on the Grassland, which contained a passage about love. “They sat shoulder-to-shoulder under the moonlight, holding hands . . . The following year they had a fat baby boy.” When I was twenty-two, our political instructor wanted to hold hands beside the campfire. I got very scared and angry, and turned him down outright. I thought he was sexually harassing me, wanting to get me pregnant out of wedlock! I’m part of the older generation, and still find it hard to accept your ideas of “experience”. Even after I was married, I still often did not know what to do. We all grew up in a sexual desert.’
The girl from Fudan University was from Shanghai, China’s most modern city, and it showed in her forthright attitude. ‘Experience is getting to know men, coming into contact with them. It’s nothing to worry about, you’re not going to get pregnant from touching and stroking.’
The Beijing student was equally as direct. ‘Modern families don’t necessarily need a man and a woman to have a child. All you need to do is find a good-looking guy, have a child and live by yourself. Isn’t that a better way of doing it?’
I suddenly noticed that Lily’s expression had changed. She was looking down and seemed unusually reserved. Her eyes were fixed on her two hands, which she was rubbing together nervously. I wanted to put it all in some kind of historical context she would understand, so I said, ‘When society was mainly agrarian, Chinese rules on sex were very cruel. From princesses and nobles to peasants, if a girl was touched by a man out of marriage it would signify the end of her life as she knew it, and she would be labelled “dirty goods”. The pleasures of sex were for men only. For the emperor, kings, generals and ministers. Many women never experienced a moment’s pleasure from sex in their whole lives, and regarded themselves as sacrificial cattle . . .’
All of a sudden, Lily surged to her feet and stormed into the bedroom, gasping with rage. The rest of us were stunned, not knowing what had just happened. We followed her to the bedroom only to find her in tears. When she saw me she said, face scarlet and streaming tears, ‘Xinran! It was only because my mother trusted you so much, and we thought you were a moral person, that I came to visit you in the UK in the first place. Now here you are talking to me about these filthy, horrid, indecent things!’
‘I . . .’ For a moment I could not find the words to reply to her indignation.
I had been away from China for almost ten years. Each time I returned during that period I would seek out the old familiar feelings of home in those utterly transformed streets and thronging crowds, but they always seemed to have been lost among the changes of Reform and Opening-up policies. Time and again I felt abandoned on a branch line of history by my madly sprinting motherland. But I never thought that I would have such a young fellow branch-line traveller. That at twenty-five Lily could still possess such childlike innocence!
Seeing my bewilderment, the girl from Beijing commented, ‘Students from China’s top universities are all this naïve, and that’s not to mention those from smaller universities.’
The girl from Shanghai said, ‘Xinran, the facts of the matter are right here in front of you. Is there anything else you’d like us to confirm?’
After seeing out the two girls, I asked Lily, ‘Have you really never had a boyfriend since leaving university?’
Lily was still angry. ‘I’m not the kind of person you think I am!’
‘What kind of person do you think I think you are?’ I genuinely did not understand.
‘I’ve never carried on with a man like that!’ Lily said in a definite tone.
‘Have you ever had any male friends before? Have you ever gone for meals or just chatted with them?’ As I asked this question, countless girls like Lily flashed before my eyes. Caught up in the conflict between Chinese traditions and Western openness, they defended their chastity and morals with a painful uncertainty.
‘No, I haven’t. In the day I go to work, and have an office to myself. When work finishes at six, I go back home to my mother, who has a meal waiting for me,’ Lily said blandly.
‘Are you still living with your parents?’
‘Of course, I’m not married yet. How could I live with anyone else?’
‘Nowadays lots of young people rent a flat with friends or colleagues. Why couldn’t you live with other people?’
‘If I did that then how would I be able to prove my purity?’
‘Why would you want to be able to prove your purity?’
‘If I can’t clearly prove my purity, won’t my parents lose face? Won’t I have gone to university for nothing? Xinran, I’m living my life according to the Dizigui!’
Listening to Lily’s traditional ideas on chastity made me realise how disconnected she was from modern China. I once again felt the strength of tradition and culture in the development of human civilisation. It was a force that not even Chinese politics or modernisation programmes could stand up to, let alone one-child families cherishing their little ‘one-and-onlies’. In this way the ancient Chinese were much like many other peoples. They believed that love and courtship were only a small part of reproduction, to be respected, but certainly not required. Giving in to human desires was a sin, and locking up young people’s sexuality a parent’s duty. However, does this rigid view of chastity and morality, pure as crystal though it is, lower people’s immunity to living in a diverse society? Does it in fact leave them unable to defend themselves? Chinese academics are very concerned about how these traditional ideas could damage or even split up families if, in the fast-changing modern world, young people reject these ideas, and their parents who taught them.
I told Lily my personal belief that a woman may have as many as three men over the course of her life. One is like a huge tree in which you can build a nest and raise children. One is like light itself, having little influence on your daily life, but appearing when you are in the depths of despair, moving mountains and crossing oceans for you. The third is a combination of the two. This is the man of your dreams. Perhaps you will never encounter him, but he plants in your life the hope for a good man and the things you want of him.
‘Lily, be brave for a moment and try to imagine the man of your dreams. Make a few male friends, you don’t have to have any physical contact that your family might worry about. Learn to experience the feeling of men and women being drawn to each other. There is nothing low about this kind of awareness, nor is it improper. It is the gift of culture and the delight of civilisation.’ With these words of encouragement I drove Lily to the airport for her return to China.
I caught up with Lily again on my next visit to China. ‘Xinran, I’ve been very brave, and not just in my thoughts, I’ve had some new experiences too!’ she blurted out as soon as we met. Her body language was as controlled as ever, but her eyes were brimming with excitement. She had softened her stark, military-style clothes with a brightly coloured silk scarf, displaying the style of a woman of the arts.
‘Brave? Why do you say brave, is there something dangerous about men?’ I asked, puzzled. I had forgotten about Lily’s distinctive way of talking.
‘Of course there is! Otherwise, why would so many people lay down their lives or break up their families for love? The art of human life is on another level of complexity altogether compared to city design. It’s just about the only art that people are powerless to alter. Don’t you think, Xinran?’ Lily looked at me, apparently surprised at my shallowness. Evidently new discoveries were coming thick and fast for her. ‘Do you know? In the past I never thought there could be such passion between men and women, aside from what you do to make babies. Somebody can be several metres away, but a single glance can whisk you off to a fantasy land that is totally out of your control, it can even send you out of your mind. It’s fascinating. If you’ve never experienced it you wouldn’t believe it possible, but once you do, boy, do you get a shock! Those traditional love stories really weren’t made up, they’re a record of actual love, to be passed down through the ages. Could my parents’ and grandparents’ generation really have condemned these powerful emotions as hooliganism? I know it happens, but I still don’t understand it. People know full well that disaster may be looming over them, but they still charge blindly into enemy lines. The power of love is irresistible. How can you say that’s not brave?’
I later discovered that Lily was not as brave in real life as she believed. In the subsequent two years I did not hear any news of her ‘material progress’. However, her clothes and make-up suggested a blossoming of her emotions. Her style was inching towards a feminine warmth, with colours changing daily to match her dress and accessories. Occasionally I would even see jewellery peeping shyly from her new hairdo. I would often tease her, ‘Next time you visit us, it’ll be as a couple.’ To which she would reply bashfully, ‘Before introducing any boyfriend to my family he’ll need to pass the test of time. I wouldn’t want him scaring them to death over something!’
Toby never really understood where she was coming from. ‘Men and women finding happiness together is their own business. Why does Lily care so much about what her family thinks?’
I tried to explain: ‘In traditional Chinese culture, filial piety comes first, then duty to the whole family, then children’s education. For a girl, there’s also the added duty of bearing a son. If you don’t give the family a son you’re spurned by society. You have to understand that Lily grew up with the Dizigui, the equivalent of Moses’ Ten Commandments for children. It’s very hard for these beliefs just to be washed away by new trends or politics. But Lily is also an exception, as hardly any families teach their children the Dizigui these days.’
However, despite Lily’s upbringing, at twenty-seven she was already past normal marrying age. Could she really stand by unaffected while her contemporaries were all roosting in their own little nests? What was it that made her so cautious? Why did she think romance was like skating on thin ice? Was it fear of her parents? Did she lack confidence? Or had she fallen in love with a man who did not belong to her? I had no way of answering her mother’s probing questions. Sometimes she even suspected us of colluding together to deceive her, of ‘crossing the sea under cover of darkness’.
Lily finally told me that Chinese people think men can do no wrong, that they cannot marry the wrong woman. She wanted to look around and play the field for a while, to test her own judgement of men through experience, and make sure she was prepared for marriage. She was wary of destroying her parents’ hopes and dreams for her in some moment of passion that she would later live to regret. She wanted to be certain that the man she chose would walk the road of life with her till the very end. She required more than promises, more than romance, she was seeking the wisdom to plan ahead for the rest of her life.
When I heard her words I could not suppress a deep sigh of emotion. In today’s China, where great and ancient things are collapsing and we are being whittled down to a fast-food society that only knows how to snatch and compete, who would have thought that a young woman like Lily could still exist. A young woman who, without fuss or hurry, looks around with a cool gaze. I wondered whether her logical and reasonable outlook was based on great wisdom or great fear? I often feel that higher education grants both of these things. The wisdom to be aware of risks that others are blind to, but also the fear that comes with awareness, and the opportunity for greater wisdom through facing this fear. I have seen this pattern played out many times over the years, particularly in only-child families, and particularly when Chinese and Western education systems are flung together without a thought.
Perhaps it was in order to explain the dangers of haste that Lily introduced me to Lotus, a friend of hers famous for her good looks at university. Lotus had a striking face and an elegant, refined manner. An artist through and through who, in Lily’s words, was ‘a public work of art’ wherever she went. She was a pedestal to which boys would gravitate to put themselves on display. They would flock around her, but almost none had the nerve to possess her. A single date with her was worth several weeks’ boasting. The other girls were jealous of the competition, and there was much gossip over which prince would have the good fortune to marry this paragon of beauty.
After graduating from university, Lotus met an art critic from Germany called Karl at an international art event. Karl had come to Beijing to research the roots of Chinese performance art. What intrigued Karl the most was how there could be so much transcendental awareness in Chinese art. The country had been cut off by war and chaos for almost a hundred years, but was still able to produce pieces that wowed the world, even against the backdrop of modern art so popular since the 1960s. Lotus was Karl’s assistant and translator in China, and their investigations led them to a very unusual artistic community.
The community was a research group on the ancient Chinese ‘Art of the Bedchamber’ (Fang zhong shu), an ancient text on Daoist sexual practices. Each group consisted of one male director-trainer and three women. They not only lived under the same roof, but would also sleep in the same antique four-poster bed. According to the ‘requirements of the research’, the three women had to come from different cultural and educational backgrounds, in order to obtain evidence of the relationship between sexual culture and background. The highest educated woman was granted the title of Elegant Lady of Talent. Her role was to make love in the ancient, warm and soft ways, and to explore Chinese sexual behaviour. The most beautiful or culturally unusual woman was called Beautiful Concubine or International Beautiful Concubine. Her role was to explore the senses in modern frenzied lovemaking. The third woman was the Uneducated Peasant, whose role was to allow the male artist full scope in sexual violence, based on the idea that men are superior to women.
As I got to know Lotus better, she introduced me to more of the research, in the hope that I would support their artistic freedom. She said that the government refused to accept that it was performance art, and that Chinese artists had no freedom of expression. Lotus told me that there was a fair amount of evidence to support her view, as over the last thousand years art had belonged to one of the ‘low nine groups’, and been banned for a long time. ‘But do you really think this is what the men in the group are researching? Or are they just . . .’ I asked Lotus, unconvinced.
‘Xinran, I know what you’re thinking. When Karl and I first heard about it we were left open-mouthed too. Several of the male sex director-trainers explained to us that they were “excavating and researching” China’s ancient arts of the bedchamber, which are at the heart of Chinese culture. They said that if it is to be understood and passed on people need to rush headlong into the experience. Ancient Chinese is being polluted by Western junk. It’s in danger of being supplanted by American fast-food culture. Any Chinese person who can should stand up and do something about it, and safeguard the continuation of a thousand years of civilisation. When I heard the passion in their voices, a feeling of great responsibility arose in my heart. I realised that I had a responsibility to help these artists perfect their knowledge of ancient culture, including the arts of the bedchamber.’
‘Then . . . you joined in?’ I asked Lotus. At that moment my body felt as if it had fallen into two different worlds, freezing and burning up all at once. Shameless? Degenerate? Ridiculous? Foolish? Hooligan? Out of all the 18,000 Chinese characters that have survived 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation, I could not find one word or phrase adequate to describe this kind of cultural confidence trick!
‘I haven’t signed a contract with them yet, as I have to help Karl finish his project. My first agreement was with him, so I can’t break that,’ she said.
What a responsible girl, I thought! All my instincts warned me that this was some kind of cultural trap. After the event, I did some research among China’s artistic elite and discovered that research into the ancient arts of the bedchamber really did exist. I had naïvely hoped that what Lotus had described was one of a kind. As it turned out, the facts were shocking. There is indeed a hidden movement in Chinese society, set up by male artists to pursue ‘the art of human nature’, ‘primitive cultural moulding’ and ‘art through international sexual blending’. These are essentially groups of conmen dressed up in the golden robes of artists, trampling traditional morals underfoot, and violating young girls’ yearnings for art and natural human feelings.
A female migrant worker who had been duped into taking part in this ‘sexual culture research’ told me: ‘A job centre official said there was a bloke who wanted a few of us to help him with some kind of cultural work. Those cultured city guys are strange though. They say and do things that country people wouldn’t even dare to think. I don’t understand how city women can live with them. If I hadn’t wanted to build up a nest egg, so I couldn’t be pushed around when married, I would never have kept my family in the dark and done this sort of “sexual education”, that’s for sure. If all city education is like this, I’d be better off going back to the countryside and marrying a totally uneducated man. At least then I’d be living a proper life.’
This was the last time I saw Lotus, but my brief contact with her left me with many unanswered questions. I wondered what became of her after that.
In spring 2009 Lily sent me two pieces of news, one happy, one tragic.
The happy news was a natural reflection of her increasing emotional maturity. The currents of common interest and personality had brought a man into her life. After flying together for a year and a half they had decided to build a nest and have a child. It was just as Lily’s mother said: ‘As a mother, I can finally see my life’s work completed. In a one-child family such as ours, this is such a one-off opportunity, such a one-off labour. I’ve waited nearly thirty years with my heart in my mouth!’
The tragic news was related to Lotus and her pursuit of the arts. Her involvement with the Art of the Bedchamber research group had left her physically and mentally scarred. The realities of sex research finally made her come to her senses and realise that she had become a sex slave. Her elegant and refined heart had been broken. After all the education she had received to the contrary, she was unable to face up to her own family and beliefs. But what made the memories of that time most unbearable was that her elderly father had to come and rescue his child, once his pride and joy. He faced down the artistic director who, realising that he was losing Lotus, had begun to behave appallingly towards her. However, after returning home, her father collapsed, never to rise again. Lotus remained at home thereafter, full of sadness, refusing to see anyone.
In summer 2010 I received an email from Germany with news about Lotus. She said that when Karl, who had always admired her from afar, heard she had given up the sexual culture research, he hurried back to China to ask her to marry him. He had enveloped her injured heart with all his love, and they had moved to Germany together. Apparently she felt that she suited German seriousness and their precise way of working, and that her Chinese art was going down well in northern Europe. However, from time to time her hidden pain and shame would still surface and overwhelm her.
Lotus asked me in the email: ‘Lily and I grew up together, but one of us is sipping sweet nectar in peaceful tranquillity, while the other is chewing on bitter memories. Why is this? Has all the beauty in my life been corrupted by the dirty mud and foul waters of my past?’
I replied: ‘Why don’t you do what Lily does, read ancient Chinese philosophy and that will help you attain peace. Remember that your name is Lotus, a flower that emerges from the mud with no stain on her!’
In 2012 Lily, now a mother, was still researching the urban art history she so loved. She had already started to read the Dizigui to her child, who was not even old enough to talk. She said to me, ‘In the past, the Dizigui only existed in black and white in an old book, but now it is guiding me towards happiness and ease in my daily life. After getting lost for a while when I was growing up, when I reread the Dizigui, it helps me re-evaluate life’s losses and gains. The journey through life is like driving a car or sailing a boat, many people lose their way through ignorance or curiosity. However, the subsequent panic and moaning causes so many people to give up before they’re halfway through, or even give up and live the rest of their lives in despair. To me, the Dizigui is the compass on my journey through life, or a set of rules for the art of living.’
Lily once asked me, ‘Why would something like this happen to Lotus? What has life revealed and taught to generations of people like her? Why do so many young people courageously sacrifice themselves to ignorance this way? To destroy their parents’ hearts and lives with this ignorance and fearlessness? Can they ever know peace again?’
I was unable to answer Lily’s questions. I do not know how many hothoused ‘emotional infants’ modern China has created, who go charging blindly into the tumultuous winds and rains of sexual relationships. Nobody has yet produced a practical and effective way of educating a society of only children, whether in China or abroad, in ancient times or today. China has still to develop a ‘social vaccine’ to solve the problems faced by this first generation of only children.
How do you view the Yao Jiaxin incident? Why is Chinese society debating him (a post-80s man) so fiercely?
I do not understand the whole story, but from Google searches after the event I came across a few things. From the first to second sentencing, there was a general dissatisfaction with the special rights enjoyed by second-generation nouveaux riches and officials. The focus of the incident has become whether or not everyone is truly equal in a society under the rule of law. I once asked a lawyer what he had learned from studying law. He said, smiling, that the first chapter of the first lesson in law school is that everybody is equal before the law. These words left a particularly deep impression on me. I personally believe that adults have to be responsible for their actions, without exception, even if they are ‘only children’.
1 See Appendix II: The Dizigui.
2 The Three-Character Classic, sanzijing 
, believed to have been written in the thirteenth century, is an educational primer to teach children the basics of Confucian thought.