Round and Square: Longevity Mountain (2)

[a] Shaoshan RL

During the last two weeks of July and into early August I will be posting segments from my project dealing with five Chinese mountains that are often referred to as "the sacred mountains of China." They represent each of the "five directions" found in early Chinese thought (think of the ones you know and then add the middle as the fifth); they have figured prominently in Chinese political culture, travel, and religion for 3,000 years. I have spent almost 400 days on the mountains, and am working on a series of books that detail the mountains and their "home" areas. Mountains were said to connect earth (thought to be "square") with heaven (thought to be "round"). The entire project is called—this may or may not surprise you—Round and Square.

One volume is planned for each mountain, beginning with the southern peak, Mt. Heng, in Hunan province. The reasoning behind this choice of a starting place took me months to develop, but suffice it to say that these books will take the reader up and down each of the five sacred (sometimes called "Daoist") mountains and around the lunar calendar in an exploration of Chinese life and culture. As an introduction to the series, I have included an introduction that is based on a recent book proposal and a full "sample" table of contents. These are followed by nine "scenes" from Longevity Mountain that are meant to give readers a sense of the project as a whole. Photographs used in this series were taken during my travels, unless otherwise indicated. My photos are marked "RL."

Scene Two
Mao and Then

The bus pulls into Shaoshan, a modest little city that reminds me of the sacred mountain towns where I have been living. I am on a tour today, and I have always vowed to accept the consequences—when in Shaoshan do as the Shaoshanians do. I have always taken pride—a dangerous thing, as any number of thinkers have warned—in my ability to react to a social situation and remain in tune with it. Indeed, I sometimes fear that “grandma’s lessons” have been too well taught, and that I am too quick to calm the waters and seek social harmony for its own sake. Students have occasionally noted that I snuff out discord in class sooner than might be warranted for a full display of views. I tend to err on the side of calm ripples on the communal waters, and this is a theme that I suspect will occupy my Chinese travels.

[b] Loyalty and filial piety

I am ready. I can handle megaphones and tour group flags. I will even consider wearing a tour group cap, if they require them (they don’t). I booked a seat on a tour; I will be a tourist. This isn’t the Wisconsin Dells, after all. I am on board.

Or so I thought. Into a little gift shop we go—eighty legs moving in queue, eighty arms positioned to point toward bargains, eighty eyes checking prices and objects. Forty heads face a large portrait of Mao Zedong. Thirty-nine heads bow low…and stay low for what seems like minutes. There is a sound of sobbing in one corner, and physical displays of devotion in another. No one sees me; everyone looks at the portrait.

I can’t do it. I just can’t.

I go through a perfunctory “I don’t want to stand out as a jerk” nod, but I feel a wave of revulsion. It is not Mao. Really. I teach history for a living. I have spent enough of my life studying imperfect human beings who held great power to be particularly bothered by that. There is nothing political about this, hard though that might be to believe in a politicized world. It is all on me, and I don’t really understand what is going on, or why I feel the way I do. I remember being told, long ago in Taiwan, that I would have to make at least a partial bow toward the corpse of Chiang Kai-shek in his temporary resting place in Cihu. It was twenty-five years ago, but I negotiated it with aplomb. It is not—certainly not—a feeling of affection for the one figure or hostility toward the other. Brother Chiang had enormous talent, yet it was squandered in the petty politics that plagued China since the Opium Wars. I had a load of contempt for him back in 1985, too. But I bowed. I just can’t understand it, even to this day. Mao had his flaws—big ones. I am capable of nodding, anyway.

No, the only way I can explain it is to cite age, impatience, and Alexis de Tocqueville. I am both more and less culturally tolerant than I was a quarter century ago, and I feel the right at least to an opinion when I hear throat-clearing spit in an upscale coffee shop in Changsha or people staring at foreigners and talking about them as though they were in a zoo. That has been, and likely will be, a theme of my mountain year—a combination of cultural admiration and aging exasperation. No, the revulsion I feel was noted by Alexis de Tocqueville even before the first Opium War. There is nothing simple about this passage, and it works both ways—upon the devoted bowers, as it were, and the intransigent American who really does not know why he is disgusted. In both cases, Tocqueville is pointing out a kind of reaction few of us understand, no matter what part of the room we occupy. It “explains” both of us—the bowing Chinese tourist and the flabbergasted foreigner.

There exists a patriotism which springs mainly from that instinctive, disinterested, and indefinable feeling which binds a man’s heart to his birthplace. This unreflecting love blends with the liking for ancient customs, respect for ancestors, and the memories of the past. Those who experience it cherish their homeland as they love their father’s house. They love the peace they find there; they are attached to the quiet habits they have formed there; they are tied to the memories it recalls, even feel a tenderness in their life of obedience. Often this patriotism is also intensified by religious fervor which then works wonders. It is itself a sort of religion; it does not reason, it believes, feels, and acts. Some nations have in a sense personified their country and have seen this personification in the prince himself. They have thus transferred to him some of the feelings which compose patriotism; they feel pride in his triumphs and have boasted of his power. Time was under the old monarchy, when the French experienced a kind of joy in surrendering themselves irrevocably to the arbitrary will of the monarch and were wont to say proudly: “We live under the most powerful king in the world.”[1]

Tocqueville’s passage actually passes through my mind, but I am too far gone by this point. I know that I shouldn’t do it, but I walk up to the tour leader and tell her that I am leaving. I finish by saying that I will meet the bus before it is scheduled to leave Shaoshan at 4:00. She is startled, and tells me:

—You can’t do it.

I reply that I am going to do it, and that she is free of any responsibility for me, including waiting with the bus if I am late. If I am not there, just leave. I honestly don’t want to do so, but I am making a scene. Her megaphone drops to her side, and a flash of anger appears in her eyes.

—Wait here.

She gets pen and paper and writes out a contract, of sorts, explaining that I am renouncing any pre-paid meals, any admission to exhibit halls, any paraphernalia. I read it quickly and sign. I can’t wait to get away, and I find myself almost running away from the group.

And then I stop, not quite fifty steps from the scene I have caused. Seventy-eight eyes follow me.

[c] Leaving Shaoshan RL

I realize immediately that I am out of line—that a tour group remains a group, loose though it may be, and that I have severed the bonds of sociality. In addition, I have embarrassed the tour leader in front of her followers. I turn, and walk back a few steps, explaining that my foreign habits are different, and I am afraid that I will intrude. I am very sorry; it is entirely my fault, and I hope that she and my tour companions do not take offense. I do not want to spoil a joyful day for my friends. I am from a different country, and I do not understand some of your ways. I am deeply sorry for any misunderstanding I have caused.

It is a halfhearted effort, and the result is predictable. She gives a halfhearted nod of understanding, and I have taken a small amount of the burden I have dumped upon her back onto myself. As my seatmate told me on the return trip to Changsha, “You really shouldn’t have done that.” He explained that he has always thought of doing something similar—just fleeing, to be on his own—but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it, so fearful was he of the words of others.

[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 686.

Bibliography

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America [Translated by Gerald Bevan]. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003).

Longevity Mountain 1      Longevity Mountain 2        Longevity Mountain 3    Longevity Mountain 4
Longevity Mountain 5          Longevity Mountain 6          Longevity Mountain 7          Longevity Mountain 8
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NEXT

The Road to South Peak

The ride to the little village at the foot of the mountain is bumpy, but it is a window onto southern China and a changing world.

Round and Square

From Round to Square (and back)

Monday, July 25, 2011

Longevity Mountain (2)—Mao and Then

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