From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan

Most people would agree that just as a general has his headquarters, an engineer his design room, and a carpenter his workshop, so should a man of letters have his study. The interior arrangement and décor will be adjusted to the man’s individuality, taste, and aesthetic feeling. Everything will be harmoniously disposed to perfection, so that whether he is working, resting, or just sitting deep in thought, he will always feel free, at ease, and serene. A scholar without a study is like a lady without her boudoir—even in everyday situations he will constantly feel awkward, and the tranquility he seeks will elude him.

My present residence was originally a banana-curing shed. It is not small in area, but apart from two spaces in the middle that could just about qualify as rooms the rest is just a single encircling veranda under the eaves. Even our kitchen had to be built by enclosing a section of the veranda, so there was no question of a separate study for me. As for building an extension, decades of adverse circumstances had already forced my extended family to economize in many ways, so where would I have been able to find the resources?

What’s worse, it pains me to admit that I didn’t even have a desk. The only tables we had were a small coffee table and a solitary dining table—the latter having been a loyal servant to four generations of my family. There were two holes in the surface, each almost big enough for a bowl to fall through, and two of the legs were so rotten that sticks had had to be strapped to them. This table was where I did my writing when we first moved here. Among all its various inconveniences I need only mention the way it swayed and shook like a rickety cradle. It was quite heartbreaking. I had to take care at all times, or the slightest wrong move, such as putting down my pen a little too forcefully, would cause the table to pitch and creak in a most alarming fashion. Sometimes this would cause my inspiration to take flight altogether. Nothing could be more dreadful.

I once made a vow that I simply must get a little money to buy a new table. “Heaven fails not the adamant heart”: eventually my prayers were answered, and at last I could write without constant fear of lurches and wobbles. But it was not a new dining table that I got, but a study of my own!

My study! Oh, nothing could beat it! I believe no one ever had a better, more agreeable study than mine.

But please don’t imagine that I had struck gold and become a great tycoon with the means to build a fine, stylish study. No! I was still just as infuriatingly poor as ever. But finally I did have my own study. This study was not built, nor could it be made with money: I had discovered it.

My study was the earth and the sky that we inhabit!

My house has a big, wide concrete front yard originally designed for laying out bananas during the curing and drying process. Several years ago I had planted some Mexican papayas along the edge of the yard where the concrete dropped off to the soil. After two or three years the papayas were over ten feet tall and stretched out lush clusters of hand-shaped leaves. On sunny days a patch of cool shade appeared under each of the trees, and every year, in the six months from the autumn solstice to the spring solstice, the shade lay right across the yard.

One winter’s day, when the long shadows of the papaya trees were falling across the yard, those cool, dark patches gave me an idea. I brought a rattan chair outside, plus a small round stool on which to place paper, ink, and so on. And so I began to write. My writing desk was a wooden board less than a foot long and about seven inches wide. I would support one end with my hand and rest the other end on the arm of the chair. Because the shade from the papayas was constantly shifting I had to keep moving to stay in shade. This would happen about once every half-hour.

I was enormously pleased with my discovery. It was just so beautiful. Doing my writing there, I could be both comfortable and content. That dingy house and its rotten, wobbly table couldn’t begin to compare with this. Why, even the most exquisite architectural gem of a study was no whit better than this!

Perhaps you have a pristine, well-lit study, ornately furnished, maybe a bonsai plum tree on the desk and pictures and calligraphy by famous artists on the walls…. But compared with the grandeur of the landscape before my eyes—the profound blue of the broad sky and the great patchwork expanse of farmland—your study seems paltry and shabby, unspeakably vulgar….

Your study may be opulent, whereas mine is plain and rustic. But I don’t love your opulence—I love my simple rusticity. Because my study is open to the sky it has abundant light; because it is on the hillside it has a commanding view of the hills, the streams, the fields, the villages, clouds and mists, bamboos and trees, and the people…. This whole vista lies before me, leading my eye to distant prospects.

Your study confines you within a limited space and cuts you off from the outside world; but since my study has neither roof nor walls and is situated amid the great vastness of sky and earth, it is free to breathe the spirits and humors of the universe and to be at one with Nature itself.

Sometimes when I grow tired from writing I put aside my pen and paper and look up. White clouds are slowly spreading and changing shape in the sky. They silently move en masse toward the northwest, their shadows racing and chasing each other across the hills and fields below, so that light and shade go dancing across the land. The weather brings infinite variety to my view.

The land is like a green ocean. If it happens to be a busy time on the farms it is dotted all over with busily wriggling figures. They are digging away at the land in search of human sustenance. It is a scene of tense activity, but a peaceful one; a scene of industry but also of joy.

And then, behind the gradually dispersing smoke rising from kitchen chimneys, the distant hills are as black as mascara.

Mother Nature has framed for me a grand, immense picture that could never find room on the wall of a manmade study. It is a poem of the universe!

From lichun¹ the shadows gradually retreat, and then after the spring solstice they shrink until they are too small to shade me. But the idea I first got from the papaya shade now takes me to the shade of other trees. Luckily there is no shortage of shade trees in my surroundings: on the hillside, in the orchard, or halfway up the hill at the back of our house—they are everywhere.

Wherever there is a patch of shade, plus a rattan chair and a wooden board, there I’ll have my study, where I can sit down and write with no need to fret about any dingy room or wobbly table.

During last year’s typhoons all my papaya trees were either toppled or damaged. Not one was unscathed. However, I immediately replanted a few saplings. This time I planted them nearer to the edge of the yard, and now they are already over three feet tall. Perhaps soon after lidong they will be able to give me a few patches of deep, cool shade. Then I will once again be in possession of my incomparable study!

1. Lichun: the “Beginning of Spring,” according to the Chinese solar calendar, falls on the third, fourth, or fifth of February each year. Below, lidong is the “Beginning of Winter,” falling in the first week of November.