The City of Old Hundred Names

I'm not (I promise) behind on my China reading yet, although I certainly am in nearly everything else, and blogging is always near the bottom of the list.


A couple of weeks ago, I finished Peter Hessler's 'River Town', definitely my favorite among the three I've read, and I'd like to share some highlights, as well as things I learned.


First, I loved his discussion of literature and politics:


"There was an intenseness and freshness to their readings that I'd never seen before from any other students of literature, and partly it was a matter of studying foreign material. We were exchanging clichés without knowing it: I had no idea that Chinese poetry routinely makes scallions of women's fingers, and they had no idea that Sonnet Eighteen's poetic immortality had been reviewed so many times that it nearly died, a poem with a number tagged to its toe. Our exchange suddenly made everything new: there were no dull poems, no overworked plays, no characters who had already been discussed to the point of cynicism. Nobody groaned when I assigned Beowulf - as far as they were concerned, it was just a good monster story.


This was the core of what we studied in that cramped classroom, and on the good days we never left. But there was always a great deal that surrounded us: the campus and its rules, the country and its politics. These forces were always present, hovering somewhere outside the classroom, and it reached the point where I could almost feel the moments when they pressed against us, when some trigger was touched, and suddenly the Party interfered. Occasionally students wrote about how Shakespeare represented the Proletariat as he criticized English Capitalism (because of this theory, many Chinese are familiar with The Merchant of Venice), and several pointed out that Hamlet is a great character because he cares deeply about the peasants. Other students told me that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are the most powerful figures in the play, because all power comes from the Proletariat, which is how Revolution starts.


I had mixed reactions to such comments. It was good to see my students interacting with the text, but I was less enthusiastic about Shakespeare being recruited for Communist Party propaganda. I found myself resisting these interpretations, albeit carefully- in light of my students' backgrounds, I couldn't bluntly say that the peasants in A Midsummer Night's Dream are powerless buffoons who provide comic relief. But one way or another I always tried to answer the readings that I felt were misguided. I argued that Hamlet is a great character not because he cares deeply about the peasantry, but rather because he cares deeply and eloquently about himself; and I pointed out that Shakespeare was a Petty Bourgeois Capitalist who made his fortune by acquiring stock in a theater company.


For the first time, I came to understand why literature so often slides away toward politics. I had struggled with this before; at Princeton I had majored in English, and after graduation I had spent two years studying English language and literature at Oxford. My original plan had been to become a professor of literature, but over time I became less enamored of what I saw in English departments, especially in America. Part of it was simply aesthetics- I found that I couldn't read literary criticism because its academic stiffness was so far removed from the grace of good writing. And I could make very little sense of most criticism, which seemed a hopeless mess of awkward words: Deconstructionism, Post-Modernism, New Historicism. None of it could be explained simply and clearly- just as my Fuling students stumbled when asked to define Historical Materialism or Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.


But mostly I was disturbed by the politicization of literature in the West: the way that literature was read as social commentary rather than art, and the way that books were forced to serve political theories of one stripe or another. Very rarely did a critic seem to react to a text: rather the text was twisted so that it reacted neatly to whatever ideas the critic held sacred. There were Marxist critics, Feminist critics, and Post-Colonial critics; and almost invariably they wielded their theories like molds, forcing books inside and squeezing out a neatly shaped product. Marxists turned out Marxism; Feminists turned out Feminism; Post-Colonialists turned out Post-Colonialism. It was like reading the same senseless book over and over again.


And I resented the way that English departments constantly tinkered with the canon, hoping to create a book list as multicultural as the fake photographs they put on the covers of their undergraduate brochures. It had always seemed to me that with regard to literature there was some value in establishing and respecting a cultural foundation, and now in China I saw what happened when these roots were completely ripped up. For years the Chinese had mined literature for its social value, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when all operas were banned except for a handful of political works like The Red Detachment of Women. Even today there was much that had been lost. All of my students knew Marx; none of them knew Confucius.


But at the same time I came to see the reason for such politicization in a more human light...It's natural to want Shakespeare on your side- and if he doesn't fit perfectly, you can twist his words to serve your purpose. Or, if he absolutely refuses to come to heel, you can expel him from the canon." (Hessler, 44-45)


Hessler says more, and I want to type it all, because as a literature lover, and, once-upon-a-time English major, something in me was standing up on my chair to cheer as I read this. It cemented for me yet again some of my reasons for fleeing the English department in favor of foreign language study, a choice which many people I know still question and criticize. It also gave me a new burst of excitement for ESL and teaching overseas. I can't wait to be a student of my students, learning from their assumptions, stories, and fresh perspectives, encountering a China I have only caught glimpses of so far in a few of the best books.





'Old Hundred Names':


Hessler makes repeated reference to this group, essentially the peasantry or common people, in his book.


"A woman... told me that she didn't understand the issue, because she was simply Old Hundred Names. That was the best part of being Old Hundred Names- they were never responsible for anything. It was the same way in any country where the citizens spoke of themselves as the 'common people,' but in China there was a much higher percentage of Old Hundred Names than in most places. Virtually everybody you met described himself as such, and none of them claimed to have anything to do with the way things worked." (Hessler, 207)





"The differences between these countries [America and China] interested him. 'All Chinese like Americans,' he said, a while later. 'But many Americans think there are problems with human rights here. In fact, Old Hundred Names doesn't care about that. Old Hundred Names worries about eating, about having enough clothes. Look out there.' He pointed out the window- a dusty village, garbage beside the tracks, a skinny donkey followed by a peasant in blue. Old Hundred Names. 'Do you think people like that worry about democracy?' he said, 'They need to improve their living standard and then they can start thinking about other things. That's the problem with America and China- you can't compare them in the same breath.'"





This last quote brings up another idea referred to throughout River Town, and which I am still mulling over. That is the idea that much idealism and reform are essentially luxuries- that people who are deprived of basic needs and comforts are hardly likely to waste time worrying over lofty definitions of human rights, or the various environmental, artistic, and moral issues of the hour. Discussing the damming of the Yangtze river, which would change its historical course and destroy countless ancient, marvelous monuments and landmarks, Hessler admits that, in the winter when he periodically lost electricity, he also lost interest in the dam's logistics or the need for historical preservation. He simply wanted warmth and light. Hessler writes, "Cold was like hunger; it had a way of simplifying everything." (115)


Can life really be simplified so quickly? From a purely human standpoint, it seems obvious to me that men under duress would feel so. It must take some force beyond the human will, superimposed upon the human nature, to produce courage and sacrifice which disregard hunger, shame, and exposure to the elements. My reckless generalizations about politics and China seem hopelessly naiive and two dimensional in the face of this reality. So, I conclude that I have a great deal more to learn, and, for now, nothing more to write.