A LEAF FROM A BROKEN DIARY

[mahuairong]

(Continued) By Mahuairong
It made me imagine how the world was small.
How the two nations shook hands!
I bicycled for a few minutes to the airport,
where my brother once harvested weeds.
I gazed into the sky to watch the soldiers,
Who heroically came down by parachute.

My aunt was a truck driver in a state-owned farm.
On her way to work she gave me a lift
and dropped me at TianAn-men Square.
My first experience of standing and walking
on the square was really an adventure
I must say in that period few young men should
have had the opportunity to set his or her foot
on that royal ground, breathing the air of
the Forbidden City centuries ago.

I still remember there I had a picture taken.
I was standing in front of the Square
with the ancient buildings as background.
I also visited the Palace’s Museum and so on.
Above all, I was fortunate to pay my homage
to MaoTse-tung, our great leader and father
forever sleeping in the Memorial Hall.

Many years later even to this day,
when I recall this scene,
it occurred to me that it was from that summer vacation
that I began to get the capacity to view a familiar object
from an objective standing point.

I also toiled in the fields.
What caused most of my concerns
were not the crops or the peasants
who were weeding in the corn fields,
but the Fate of the elder villagers.
I asked my father whoever of the natives
had passed away within those six months.
At first, my father remained silent.
At last he got so annoyed with my continual harassment
that he lost his temper and began to curse.

I doubt whether I by birth possess
a natural proclivity towards other peoples’ taboos.
Or it is my interest to make myself a bother.
It is a rule that people go to tomb from very cradle.
China is an uncommon country.
The Chinese are a different people.
Its history is long enough to change everything valuable
to swallow without mercy like black hole.

Its culture is mysterious enough to make a
Man from stupid to wise
And still further from wise to stupid.
An honest scholar devoted his whole life studying
and eventually he got muddled-head
or even he himself can not recognize
whether it was male or female.

It is not easy for a Chinese to be.
It is not easy for a foreigner to know.
To know China without personal experiences is not possible.
To know China one needs big wisdom.
To know China one needs great courage.

To know China, modern western logics and dialectics
prove to be not enough except Marxism,
the theoretical basis guiding the communist thought.
Pure economic theories universally correct
would find themselves poor and powerless
put in China under some special circumstances,
very soon they became powerless,
helpless and incapable of action.

For instance, the leaders of the C.P.C
in its early stage were all famous professors.
None of them are capable of leading
the revolutionary cause to march forward.
That was just where MseTse-tung succeeded

Why so?
He had proven himself to be exceptionally capable
and perceptive in his revolutionary career
that he had reached a high level of knowing
the weakness of his people.
In years of successive political campaigns
he had got a thorough understanding of the bad habits
and psychic diseases of his countrymen.
He always looked far and aimed high
as if he had a telescope and a microscope
at hand in observing the Chinese people.

In the Book of Songs Odes Cart shaft Keys,
there exists a phrase:
You are like mountain high;
like the broad road you go alone.
Here mountain high and broad roads are used figuratively
to mean the nobility of character and moral integrity respectively.
And MaoTse-tung was worthy of this praise and exaltation.

Also, a people can be known by its way of dwelling.
Once I told my father that there was still a panorama
remained in my memory of the old architecture of my village.
I tried to illustrate and consulted him
Whether or not it was the same picture years ago of his time
He nodded and said yes.
At the reply I got overjoyed that I had seen Old China.

At that time people handed down from the same ancestors
inhabited in a certain region or in a compact community.
Rich families linked their buildings together and form a manor.
When came around the Spring Festival
celebrations and congratulations went
first to the elder and the senior.
Ties of blood was the leading force
at the core of family groups.
Family groups formed villages.
Villages formed the country.
And the emperor hatched emperors.

In each tribe and under each roof
there was also a little emperor.
Here I shall touch the question of “Chinese way”
or the so-called “Chinese Wisdom”.
It is the most over-developed wisdom in the world
and has been skillfully applied
by emperors and officials of all dynasties.
As to my favor, Chinese books I can read
but Chinese films I can not
except for those early works
by ChenKai-ge and ZhangYi-mou.
I hate the masked faces, both in and out of the play.
They represent nothing of the TRUE
let alone the GOOD and the BEAUTIFUL.

I am especially tired of the TV plays
with the imperial life as background,
especially those made up from the stories of the Qing Dynasty.
In order to get and seize the political power,
Fathers and sons, brothers and brothers
Plotted and intrigued to squeeze each other out.
Women became the victims of the political strife.
History itself may be so or may not be so.
The point is that the audiences, old and young, enjoy seeing
They must have thought they had learned something.
In fact, they are misled and their minds paralyzed. (to be continued.)
_________________
You see me, you lose me