Promises and ‘Talking Love’
My Inspirations for This Book
Early one morning in February 2012, my husband Toby Eady and I went out for a stroll around Kensington Gardens. The gentle breeze hinted at the approach of spring. The first rays of morning sun danced in the trees, bathing buds still in hibernation. A patch of green on the ground failed to hide its growing presence. The parakeets larked around, greeting their neighbours the crows and the visiting seagulls. The whole scene gave off a most palpable sense of being alive. Toby and I walked in silence, hand in hand, along the narrow path, unable to speak for fear of interrupting the birds’ peace.
I’ve always liked birds. As a child, I would wonder wide-eyed at the various types that visited the fruit trees in the courtyard of my grandmother’s house. Some even made their nests up on the high branches. But then the birds disappeared, perhaps because they couldn’t bear the human chaos playing out below. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when I was working as a journalist in the countryside, that birds once again caught my attention. However, this time they were in peasants’ cooking pots. (‘There aren’t enough food rations. We can only survive by eating whatever we can catch,’ I was told.)
It is true. You could only find birds in China in cooking ingredients, fairy tales, and those beautiful old paintings.
There is a pond directly in front of Kensington Palace which I like to think of as my own ‘Swan Lake’. There, the swans have mingled with the grandsons and -daughters of Queen Victoria for generations, carrying on their respective lines. At night, the royal household holds candlelight feasts for honoured guests from across the world; at dawn, the lake ripples as it welcomes back the swans and other migratory birds. The Chinese say that a person’s character is inextricably linked to their local environment. Well, I say a bird’s is too.
I am ashamed to say that I recognise very few types of birds. Except for swans, mandarin ducks and seagulls, I only know pigeons – those birds who seem to be ever-present, and ever looking for love.
That day, we walked along the side of the pond watching the birds stop by for breakfast and a morning shower. Three pigeons caught my attention. One ‘young lady’ was foraging for food on the bank, followed by two restless ‘young men’. She didn’t have a moment’s peace.
‘They’re not like us, are they? With pigeons, it always seems to be the men who are nagging,’ I said to Toby.
‘They’re talking about love,’ said Toby, kissing me on the forehead.
‘“Talking love”? You have this saying in English?’
‘In English, we say “dating” or “making love”, not “talking love”. But there are no laws to language – only what we express and what we understand. What’s so special about “talking love” in Chinese?’
That last sentence really struck me; I was lost for words.
The past century has seen more upheaval than any other time in the 5,000-year-old history of Chinese civilisation. The ways in which people show love for each other have also changed in the face of war and cultural development. Toby didn’t mind my stalling at his first question; he simply moved on to another. We had known each other for more than twenty years, and in that time not only had his questions driven me into the boundless sea of questions on China, but also forced me into the furthest corners of my own knowledge.
At home that evening, I started to look into the Chinese term ‘talking love’, and how its meaning has changed over time.
In a culture that traditionally forbade physical contact between men and women, ‘talking love’ is a modern term, defined in the Chinese dictionary as follows:
‘Talking love’ is a type of social activity. It is the process of cultivating love or interacting on the basis of love. It is mainly an exchange between two parties. Generally, if the exchange is successful, you will marry, live together and raise the next generation. The moral requirements for ‘talking love’ are as follows: First, respect human equality; second, consciously assume responsibility for it; third, love each other with humility.1
This impersonal Chinese definition left me with a cold, empty feeling. The foundation of ‘talking love’ is romance and the feelings it generates are invigorating, so how could this official annotation reduce it to something so completely void of emotion? I had a daydream in front of the computer: like a magic wand, the term ‘talking love’ opened a mysterious cave in my mind. The cave was clouded by history, full of its silent cries and the tragedy of countless weeping spirits – four generations of Chinese over the past century, their love and affection cut off, passed by, forgotten, gathering dust.
Over the next few days, while out walking in the park, Toby and I discussed at length the love affairs of our own ancestors. Toby is very familiar with his family history, whereas my understanding of my parents and grandparents is almost a blank page. Toby’s mother, the author Mary Wesley, wrote about her family for all to see, sharing her upper-class bohemian romance with honesty and courage, leaving behind the evidence for later generations. I, on the other hand, am completely ignorant as to how my grandparents got married, how my parents met, and so many other things. The few details I do have are taken from my political file – something every Chinese must keep. The only personal stories I have belong to other people, because in more than thirty years of interviews and research into Chinese women I have accumulated a lot of ‘unique’ Chinese materials. Many of these stories I still find hard to believe, even after my own investigations have confirmed them to be true.
Toby seemed to have read my mind: ‘My mother’s books taught me a lot about my own family history, but they also showed me that many people shared and sympathised with the loneliness and family silence they found in her books. You should help bring these stories of Chinese love and emotion out from under the dust of obscurity, and shine a lamp on history. Only then will young people in China and the world see this unexpected and beautiful side of humanity.’ As always, Toby spurred me on: ‘The world needs to know the emotional side of China, not just the rise of its economy or the hard facts of its politics. You should do your best to record these stories before your mother’s generation disappears.’
After I finished writing Buy Me the Sky in 2012, I could hardly wait to get started. Little did I know then that the process of writing this book would not only take me deep into that mysterious cave, but also reveal to me something of the life my mother lived without ever telling me or my brother. Whenever I called my mother, in near-shock, to confirm the latest story I came across in my interviews, she would reply flatly:
Yes, it’s true. That was our youth.
It’s nothing to get worked up about. If needed, we could give up everything for the greater good of our ideals: family, lovers, children, even our own lives.
Just because you didn’t know, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. In our day, many people got married not for love or affection, but for their revolutionary compatibility.
Our understanding of sex, emotions and love is very different from yours, and from young people now. Many couples only talked about love; they never had experienced it or did anything about it.
My mother’s words make me speechless once again.
I had published seven books based on interviews with more than 300 Chinese women, but I had never before realised just how much Chinese women have changed in their understanding of the difference between sex, emotions and love. Could it be that in the space of only two generations, a collective cultural understanding had completely turned on its head? China may have experienced war and political turmoil throughout the past century, but we still share the same culture, roots and ancestors. So how could the times we live in have reconstructed an entire cultural awareness of sex, emotions and love in such a short period?
In 2013, I brought my doubts, curiosity and deep concern with me to Beijing and started writing this book. After four years of hard work, I finally walked away with a story of four generations of one Chinese family. When I finally put down my pen, I also felt that this book had brought me much closer to my mother. I may still be on the other side of the riverbank, but I can see, more clearly than ever before, the silhouette of her life. She had been led astray by the promise of her political beliefs, and she had never known true love.
And let me tell you, since that trip to China, I have seen more and more young birds hopping about among the shoots budding by the path we still walk along.
Xinran, May 2018, London
