( from a letter, written in Summer 1999, in Beijing)

Here,life goes on its own sleepy space. Beijing also has been under a heat wave, and looking at old chinese people sitting under the shade fanning themselves made me feel very like I was back in Port Louis. But here it is different, in the sense that I feel a liking for the people, whereas back in Port Louis, I would walk in Chinatown, see the sights, smell its strange smells, a mixture of dust and eucalyptus oil, and taste the food, but it remained a bit alien. Diaspora Chinese are rather distant people. In Mauritius, I’ve had long, close friendships with Creoles and Muslims, I’ve been to their places, gone to church and mosque with them, and generally spent so much time in their company that I can safely say that a little bit of me is Creole and Muslim. But the Chinese kept to themselves. The other day, I was speaking to a sino-mauritian, like we call them, who lives here. I said: "So, you’re from Port Louis. Maybe you know my father’s family, they were from Madame Street, near the pagoda.." She said: "We were very Chinese, in my family…", meaning by that, that they knew only Chinese people.
But here, like I was saying before, it is impossible not to like them after some time. They are a warm, welcoming people, although it takes some time to get used to their crude manners. Most of them look like they are fresh from the villages. Also, the Red Guards crushed the old middle class during the Cultural Revolution, and condemned all forms of bourgeois behaviour. So, the working class lost that elite whose manners they could have taken on. And as for the nouveaux riches who have appeared since the early 80’s, they imitate American manners, which only makes things worse.
Despite the Chinese in mauritius generally being an aloof bunch, still, China was part of that kaleidoscope of cultures I grew in, but as a distant star. My neighbourhood friend was a Muslim, and I remember eating beef once at his place when I was small, which is forbidden for us. The house behind mine was that of a mulatto, who spoke english to her dogs for one week everytime she came back from visiting her son in Australia. China only came to the fore whenever we went to visit my mother’s family in Port Louis.
Port Louis, boiling in its hyper humid bay surrounded by hills was a rather strange, fascinating place for me. I have ever since been using images from my childhood visits there in my writing. But if I could paint, I would have liked to paint a huge, crowded, picture in the naïve style, like the folk painters in Haiti, showing the people of Port Louis, in the 70’s.
In that picture, somwhere near the centre you would have the pot holed streets in the northern part of Port Louis, with afro-hair style creoles hanging around near little tin-and-wood shops. In the 70’s when I was a kid, afro hairdos were in fashion. I was frightened of ,yet fascinated by the creoles in Port Louis loitering near my grandmother’s place, with their huge James Brown heads, open shirts, big gold-plated chains, platform shoes. They radiated sexuality and danger. Their women had short skirts and a defiant come-get-me-if-you-can look. The men flicked a knife at you, gangster-style, if you looked for trouble with them. Then somewhere a bit to the south of the creoles, in the picture, you would see a hindu temple, with a pink dome half hidden by trees. The street where my grandmother lived was almost an indian village, and the temple near her house was a quiet place with a big banyan tree whose trunk was surrounded by the threads tied by people who had made vows ("promesses"), and the priest was an old brahmin who could interprete dreams and cast horoscopes.
My grand mother’s place was also a quiet little house made of iron leaves and wood. Near one of the doorstep, one could see a bit of a old newspaper which had been pasted on a wooden rafter to protect it from rotting. It started with: "The Allied met yesterday in Tehran…" but I don’t remember the rest. My grand parents were pious people, and you could see old hindi books on the shelves and a painting of Krishna bought from the bazaar on the walls, but one room had a different atmosphere. That was S..’s room. He was my mother’s little brother, a bachelor, with bad habits.
That room had pin ups on its walls, beer bottles, an ashtray, and there were always some comic books on the bed, some for children, some for adults. Looking out by the window, I would see my uncle S... squatting by the roadside with the creoles, drinking beer with them. Many of the comic books were westerns. Westerns were in their last days of fashion – Clint Eastwood, especially. The young crowded in the hot moist cinemas in Port Louis to see them. Looking beyond my uncle having his beer, I would see a dry yellow hill – Port Louis is surrounded by a U-shaped chain of hills. That hill was always dry and dusty, and it looked like the canyons in the Westerns. Even now, when I see that hill, I think of cowboys and apaches. So, in my imaginary picture, I would have , to the left of the creoles near their shop, a yellow hill
with Geronimo at its top.
There was another hill, touching the dry one. That one was always very green. It was covered with a thick forest - it received the rains coming from the central plateau of the island. It was rather high, and the clouds often gathered around its summit, which was like a thumb – it is called Montagne Le Pouce. That one, I associated with the war in Vietnam, because in another of the comic books in S...’s room, I once saw american planes flying around jungle covered hills which looked strikingly like Le Pouce.
So, in my picture, you’d have, a bit above my grandmother’s house, a green thumb-like hill with jet planes flying around it, throwing bombs. And, running out of the house by one of its doors, there would be a naked girl hiding her limbs with a bedsheet.
That would be not an allusion to the famous war photo of the little vietnamese girl running naked from the american bombs, but to one visit my mother made to the house, after her parents’ death, where she fell upon a girl whom her brother had brought to his room. She chased her out of the place.
This is a long digression, but I am presenting first the other elements of the picture then I will last talk of China, which comes at the South East of the house.
Further South of the house, coming out of the Hindu temple, you would see a cavadee procession. The cavadee is a feast of penance and vow-taking made in honour of Muruga, the son of Shiva. On that day, the penitent, after having maintained abstinence and vegetarianism for eight days, pierce their chest and arms with little needles to form the pattern of a peacock fanning his tail, the peacock being dear to Muruga, and carry on their back a miniature Muruga temple with a wooden frame covered with flowers on a long procession. My uncle S..., for all his bad boy habits, often carried the cavadee. Let’s follow the penitents.
Coming out of the temple, they lounge the border of the muslim quarter of Port Louis. That is to the left of my grandmother’s house in the picture, and I paint it as a casbah of white little cubes crowding each other, a bit like the old towns in Algeria. Do you remember the story of Naushad and Ayesha I gave you? Ayesha was a surtee, one of the rich trading families from Surat, near Pakistan The surtees are a beautiful people, a handsome mixture of persian, indian and arabic, and if you are walking in the surtee section of the muslim quarter, through which the cavadee procession is presently passing, sometimes a breath-taking beauty from the Arabian nights may pass by you on the street. So, let’s have a languid eyed shaheen (queen) peeking at the procession from the balcony of her opulent house. And notice the little wizened figure with a skullcap observing the procession from the door of the mosque. That’s the mullah, who is carefully looking at the faces of the penitent, to check whether none of the Faithful is indulging in these abominable bhut-parast (idolaters) practices.
And now the procession enters Sun Yat Sen Street. The children of the Middle Kingdom are, appropriately enough, right in the middle of Port Louis, and they look with amusement at the strange procession. The Mauritian chinese are only faintly interested in the other cultures on the island, and that kind of flamboyant penitence – at that stage many in the procession have fallen into a trance and are dancing ecstatically – is not to their taste anyway.
The Chinese. Like I’ve been saying before, they have meant little to me. I have been madly in love with a muslim girl, whose father, incidentally, finances a good part of the running costs of the mosque in front of which the procession passed earlier on, and even if I was jilted, she unintentionally set into motion a chain of events in my life which is still unfolding. It was following the advice of another girl that I once became a journalist. But when it comes to the Chinese, I have only a few stray images.
I remember my mother telling me, one rainy day, in the streets of Port Louis: "Guette enn bonnefemme in mette kabai" ("Look at that old woman. She is wearing the kabai") –effectively, among the passer-bys, I saw a bent old little chinese woman wearing the kabai, the traditional blue shirt-and-trousers worn by chinese peasants. I don’t know if she was carrying the bamboo pole with two baskets hanging at each end, or if my imagination is adding things to my memory.
I also remember, in a very old Chinese shop, a dusty red framed picture of Sun Yat Sen. He was sitting with his back very straight, in an austere setting. It looked very ancient. It reminded of the pictures of Nehru and Gandhi, which you could still see in the waiting room of any old Indian lawyer or doctor in the 70’s in Mauritius.
The idea of dust often came to my mind when I thought of China. Chinese historical films were often filmed in the arid provinces of Shanxi and Kansu, near the desert, since the stories of "old" China often occured in these places. Looking at those places, one had the feeling that China was a drab, dusty land, a bit sad. I haven’t yet been far outside Beijing, so I can’t say if it’s true. The rare old buildings one may see in Beijing, apart from those in the Forbidden City are big grey stoned houses, with the typical horned roofs, military looking in aspect, which goes in well with the rather sad "siberian" looking vegetation in the region – there are lots of pines here, and other severe-looking trees whose name I don’t know , but which all make me think of Russia.
The problem is that, already, I am starting to pick up the regional stereotypes, and stereotypes are hard to get rid of. In this case, l’idée reçue is that North China, where I am, is the "old" China, especially Shanxi province, a bit to the east of Beijing. The North is where the imperial capitals have traditionally being located. It is said to be more intellectual and conservative. These grey buildings do have an austere aspect, with their crenellated walls. It seems like a land of soldiers. Northern India also has that imperial character: a vast plain dotted with forts, castles and ancient battlefields. The North is said to be a bit narcissic: the emblematic image here is that of a chinese soldier in armour standing sentry over the Great Wall.
South China, on the other hand, is a gay tropical country, of great natural beauty. Here in the market we get mangoes and litchis from the South, and they evoke images of sandy beaches, cyclones, tropical jungles, all of which ye may find downe there. The South, with its long tradition of commerce with the rest of the world, is said to be more open to change from outside. The fact that it is where the boom started in the 80’s reinforces the stereotype.

A lazy winding conversation in the beginning of the afternoon

The other day, on a hot sleepy beginning of the afternoon, I was talking with Miss G., our young, and quite pretty, typist cum translator. Beijing was nodding, reminding itself with difficulty that Deng Xiaoping had abolished the old chinese custom of the one o’clock siesta ( but when I phoned Wuhan University, in Hubei Province, to talk to a friend, the girl at the other end of the line said– "Everyone’s sleeping here! We open again at three!", a reminder that Beijing’s imperial edicts are often disregarded by the rest of the country. Just like in India, where a provincial administrator will often quip: "Dilli door hein"- Delhi is far away )
I am reproducing bits of our conversation.
She:- "So did you go to the Fragrant Hills in the weekend?"
Me: -Yes! It was nice!" (actually it was raining. But still it was good to be a little bit out of beijing).
-You took the cable car to the top?"
-No, I walked up. I met a French family on the way. They are in Beijing for a few days, then they are going to Mongolia to do horseriding" Those crazy french.
-Oh! Really!"
-Is it safe there in Mongolia?"
-Of course it is. They are very warm people. But very rough" (coming from a chinese, means they are really very warm and rough)
-Oh. I know little about Mongolia. Do they look like the chinese?"
-Yes, they do (after a bit of reflection) Their skin is less smooth"
-How so?
-It’s a very windy country.."
-When I think of the mongolians, I think of very strong warriors, on horseback.. with moustaches"
-But that was in ancient times. I had mongolian friends at the university. They were good people..and Mongolia was part of China before, during the Yuan and Qin dynasties" now the Yuan were a mongolian dynasty, so it was rather China which was part of Mongolia, but I did not want to offend her by making that correction. Chinese people are terribly sensitive about their country. Which is one more reason why it is extremely difficult to discuss politics with them. Not only would it be dangerous for them, but also they are often too proud to admit to a foreigner that they are unsatisfied with the state of things.
She continued: "So that before, with Mongolia, China was shaped like a cow" I tried to imagine an old Qin dinasty map of China but could only conjure up images of Tintin, of japanese soldiers and of the streets of Shanghai and Kunming as described in an old english travel book I had read in a house boat on the Dal lake in Kashmir, last year, none of which images correspond to the times of the Qin dinasty.
She added: "Now, China is shaped like a rooster" ( the head being Manchuria and the tail being Xinjiang province) and continued "So, people say, the cow is a peaceful animal, which is why China was…" she hesitated.
-Dominated by foreigners?"
-Yes. But the rooster is very.." she looked for the word
-Proud? Likes to fight?"
-Mmmm , yes"
The Chinese have that thing about the "power" of animals, and plants. It is not a coincidence that the chinese horoscope is made up of animals. What she said reminded me of two things. The first one was an article I had read about the golden dragon fish. The dragon fish ( I think that is its name) is a very old species of fish, with no dorsal fin. It has a smooth gliding way of moving in the water, which can be quite hypnotic. The chinese have great respect for it, and can pay millions to get the red or golden variety, which are very rare. The article was about a young man in Hong Kong who had spent a huge fortune to buy a golden dragon fish. It was not for speculation. He said: "I love it. To have it for me is a blessing. I can watch it for hours. I have no doubt that it is a very old and wise fish, and I can feel it giving me protection" The man was not a soulful old chinese, on the contrary he was one of those bland utterly hollow looking young executives .
And the second thing was a little bit of a book I had been leafing through some time last year in a bookshop. It told how one day a great chinese wushu fighting nun ( wushu being what is known in the west, mistakenly, as kung fu) in shaolin, saw a great white heron near her window. She teased it by touching it with the end of her fighting stick. The heron smoothly pushed away the stick with the tip of its wing. Puzzled, she touched it again. The heron broke the stick with its beak. Whereupon, said the book, the Wushu master immediately understood that this was the spirit of a great animal who had come to visit her. She fell down on her knees, and the spirit of the heron entered her body, whereupon she was infused with its power, and became the first master of the Fighting Heron wushu style.
There is a streak of animism, I think, which runs in the Chinese soul. Strange, for such an old civilisation. And yet one more common point they have with the Indians.
-But I thought China looks like a dragon" I said. We looked at a map of China. "Look" I said, pointing to Manchuria – that looks like its mouth, its crest.."
-Yes, a bit"
-You have dragons for the rivers, the mountains, the air ?
-According to legends, dragons are in the water, and in the air. They are especially in the rivers, and in the sea"
-Like in the Chanjiang river ( the YangTseKiang)? So, when there are floods, it would mean the dragon is angry?"
-Especially when there are droughts. People then say, the dragon is burning the earth"
-And Sun Wu Kong ( the Dear Monkey King, much beloved of the Chinese– you remember the story I told you in my previous letter, about Sukumong’s fight against Heaven ) stole the magic stick from the dragon, right?
-Yes ! And he hid it behind his ear"
-Then he and Xuan Zang went to the West (India)…"
-Yes, he and Xuan Zang they went to find books. And they became…Fu " she looked for the word in the dictionary "Buddhas" she finally said. Having acquired merit by finding the books, the Monkey King and Xuan Zang became buddhas.
-But they went through a lot of adventures.."
-Eighty one"
-Oh? Exactly?
-Yes. Because the Chinese say that nine is the greatest number. So when we say 81, that is 9 by 9, that means the maximum. Xuan Zang and Sun Wu Kong were already buddhas when they were coming back from India. They were flying through the clouds. But Xuan Zang said: We have undergone 80 adventures. We have to go through one more, then our merit is complete. So they fell down on the earth, and had one last adventure"
-Oh. Very resolute’
-And in the Forbidden City, there are 999 and a half rooms" meaning, I guess, absolute perfection.
Then the phone rang and it was time to work again.

Les Chinois sont des Français qui ne le savent pas, ou est-ce l’inverse?

As you must have noticed, I have a habit of comparing the Chinese and the Indians. It’s automatic for me, because I’ve always thought of the Chinese as "our neighbours". Despite my mixed feelings about the sino-mauritians, I’ve always had great admiration for the mainland Chinese. I consider them as a brave people, who have always kept their head high through innumerable tragedies. A good many of the things I read about them came to me through the French.
I suspect French intellectuals, especially the right-wing variety, of having a deep fascination for China. De Gaulle certainly had. Both countries have a lot in common. They have a history of high centralisation, heavy bureaucracy and both are now nominally republics, but headed by Presidents who enjoy near monarchical power and prestige. They have a ritual attitude of reverence towards their literature ( the French, when speaking of Chateaubriand or Voltaire, will sometimes make a little bow and say : "comme disent les classiques". Like old chinese quoting Li Bao or Du Fu) and a deep inner conviction in the age-worn superiority of their civilisations. Was it a coincidence that the French sometimes talk of their writers as "les mandarins de la littérature"? And of course, both are stiffly proud of their cuisine.
The other day I was talking to a young Chinese from the bureaucracy who had just returned from a course at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.
-Et avez vous été en stage en préfecture à la fin de votre cours, Mr H?
-Bien sur, bien sur, cher ami. J’ai travaillé durant deux mois comme adjoint au préfet du Pas de Calais. J’étais là-bas lorsqu’il y eut un accident dans l’euro- tunnel. Comme vous le savez sans doute, le service des pompes à incendie relève, en France, de la Préfecture. Je suis resté dans le tunnel, en compagnie de Monsieur le Préfet, pendant 36 heures, à diriger les opérations de secours. Ce fut fort intéressant".
Fort intéressant, indeed. Who else but the Chinese can instinctively grasp the complexities of French administration…
Both countries were the main land powers in their respective continents, and both are being outshone by countries over which they exercised cultural dominance in the past: Germany and Japan. And better have a good life insurance if you bluntly point that out to a Frenchman or a Chinese.
In this case, are the Japanese the Germans of Asia ? I rather tend to think of them as Asia’s british: stiff, formal, monarchical, looking down their nose at the yahoos on the Continent. But the Japanese have, like the Germans, a classless set of mind, a great tradition of consensus-seeking between syndicates, employers and government. I’m in two minds about their "European nationality" then.
India is the Asian Italy, I’m a bit more sure about that. Both are hot, corrupt, colourful and chaotic peninsulas. Theatrical, overemotional people. From India, buddhist monks spread the faith all over Asia, and from Rome , Christianity reached the farthest reaches of Europe.
About Spain, I would think of Indonesia, although Philippines has obvious credentials for that sobriquet. The Indonesians are a macho people, a bit death-seeking. The Koreans are the Dutch, a medium-sized, sea-faring nation. They have a family air with the Japanese, (like the Dutch with the Germans) but they don’t like to be told that, because they have suffered a lot from the Nippons.
Hong Kong is Monaco, a prosperous southern beauty spot living in symbiosis with a hulking China/France. Taiwan is Corsica, but a Corsica where the independentists have won. Rich, bland, boring Singapore is Luxembourg. Nepal is of course Switzerland.
But of course these comparisons have only limited value. The Chinese may have common points with the French, but there is one big difference between the two: the French, for all their hauteur, and streaks of xenophobia, are "condemned" to be a crossroads of cultures and of people, by reason of their prestige and location. In the last two centuries, they have received many migrants from Poland, Russia, Spain, Italy, North and West Africa. In the 30’s France was the second biggest immigrants destination in the world, after the United States. Culturally, Paris has always been a magnet for writers and artists. In the 30’s it was the American writers – Hemingway, Mc Fitzgerald. In the 50’s, the Africans – Césaire, Senghor. And, less well known, Paris has constantly been the home of many american jazzmen who later became famous in the States.
China, on the other hand, has not been blessed with that influx of foreign talent since many centuries, not since Chang’An ( now known as Xian) was the great metropolis of the Tang Dinasty, during China’s Golden Age.
Anyway, I’ve got to end the letter now. Cher ami, the letter you posted me this week should be at my doorstep some time next week, I guess. That will be a nice moment.

( Another letter from Beijing, also in 1999)

I'm listening again to a cd i had bought a few months ago. it's nice how when you listen to a tune you know, it brings back memories of the days when you had heard it for the first time. in the present case, the cd, despite its ghastly title of (i'm respecting the ortograph): "the moon reflected on the 2nd spring. it is the best of music television karaoke collections coppact disc" is actually a cd of classical tunes on the pipa ( a sort of luth). my favourite is "the autumn moon on the han palace", a lovely old melody full of nostalgia, which judging from its title, should be 'bout 1500 years old. it is a very popular tune, but it's not easy to play because, like debussy's "clair de lune", it requires heavy soaking by the performer in the highly romantic, very tender and delicate mood of the piece.another popular tune on that cd is "surrounded in ten directions", one of those melodies you'll hear everywhere in china if you spend a few days here, it's one of the staples of chinese classical music, like beethoven's 9th symphony in the West. It's about the death of a famous warrior at the end of the civil war period which preceded the founding of the han dynasty in the 3rd century bc. It's a tragic and powerful tune, a bit like the death of karna in the mahabharata would have sounded like if it had been put to music. interestingly, in that piece the pipa often sounds like the guitar background in sergio leone's westerns ( by the way, i loved that comment i read the other day about a japanese film where all the actors are intense, introverted types: "the dialogues are sparse words falling like rare dewdrops into a pool of silence, making slow and lengthy rings in it. it is like a Western where all the parts are played by clint eastwood").forget about the syrupy classical tunes they put as background music in chinese restaurants ( at least in mauritius): if that leads you to think that chinese classical music is the docile sort, you're dead wrong. the other day at the san wei bookstore ( a very studentish - chinese translations of derrida, sartre, joyce, proust and the rest on the ground floor - place, the first floor is a bit gauche with its puzzling sculptural hymns to maternity or whatever, but still a very nice hiding place on grey sunday afternoons) i too was tempted, after the first half of a cozy late night concert to conclude that the classical chinese musical heritage was a castrated repertoire of soporific tunes meant as background for the breast fondling afterdinner conversations of emperors with their concubines when suddenly, that evening's performer, a twenty year old guqin player, seemed to have an intuition of my thoughts and she suddenly embarked on the most amazingly brillant, tormented interpretation of a very strange piece, she tore at the strings, a lock of hair escaped from her hairpin and waved across her sweating brow, her eyes flashed wildly and the rather dumbfounded audience, to whom she had seemed up to then to be a slightly plump, not very bright looking, peach perfect product of some starchy conservatory, suddenly found themselves listening to what sounded like the musical rendition of a hurricane in the south china seas being played by a overpowering passionate woman of stunning beauty. i was chastened, even frightened.

--II--

( Part of an email sent to me by my friend Leonhard, during that same period – I’m sure he won’t mind):

Well then, let me give you Benjamin's code to begin with once I have the
book with me. It is really a beautiful insight into someone else's mind
to have their motives listed up so conveniently - inconveniently only for
Fouche's police, whom Constant in true French romantic cloak-and-dagger
style seems to have feared rather more dramatically than was perhaps necessary.
Nor was he in fact particularly good at tricking them, for while it may be a
clever idea to write your journal in cyphers, there is not much of a point
in doing so if then, for fear of forgetting the - fairly elaborate - code
yourself, you actually note it down on a page of the very diary. After
using this system for 3 years, in 1808 he must have got tired of it and
instead began to write the French text in greek characters, before finally
under the restauration he got so worried that he packed off the whole set
of diaries, gave them to a reliable swiss banker, immediately afterwards
forgot that man's name and never saw them again. Only when after his death
his heirs announced publication of his Oeuvres did the forgotten banker's
family remember the little treasure they held and sent it back to Paris -
to the benefit of, entr'autres, J. Christopher Herold from whose classic
life of Mme de Stael the following is taken. "The Code tells more of
Benjamin than anything else could in so little space:
1 Physical [i.e., sexual] pleasure.
2 Desire to break my eternal chain [with Mme de Stael].
3 Reconciliation with this bond, because of memories or a momentary charm.
4 Work.
5 Disputes with my father.
6 Tenderness for my father.
7 Travel projects.
8 Mariage projects.
9 Tired of Mrs Lindsay.
10 Sweet memories and revival of love for Mme Lindsay.
11 Irresolution in my projects with regard to Mme du Tertre.
12 Love for Mme du Tertre.
13 Indecision about everything.
14 Plan to settle at Dole [with his father] to break with Biondetta.
15 Plan to settle in Lausanne for the same purpose.
16 Projects for a voyage overseas [i.e., America] (1)
17 Desire to make up with certain enemies [i.e., Napoleon].
Numbers 9 and 10 gave Benjamin some slight trouble during his remaining
weeks in Paris. On July 3, after receiving a letter from Germaine which
prompted him to write fourteen 2's in a row, he left for Coppet."