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Authors: Ryszard Kapuściński
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his farewells with great warmth, smiling and with wide open arms.
The entire visit was arranged and conducted in such a fashion as to accomplish nothing in its course—not one single concrete subject was touched upon, let alone discussed. They had asked me nothing and had given me no opportunity to inquire how my sojourn and my work were to be structured.
But, I reasoned, perhaps such are local customs. Perhaps it is considered impolite to get to the point quickly? I had certainly read, more than once, that in the East the rhythm of life is slower than what we westerners are used to, that there is a time for everything, that one must be calm and patient, one must learn to wait, grow internally calm and tranquil, that the Tao values not motion but stillness, not activity but idleness, and that all haste, passion, and frenzy arouse distaste here and are interpreted as symptoms of bad upbringing and a lack of refinement.
I was also well aware that I was but a mote of dust in the face of the vastness that is China and that I, as well as my work, meant nothing when compared to the great tasks facing everyone here, including the staff of
Chungkuo
, and that I simply had to wait until the time was right for arranging my affairs. Meantime, I had a hotel room, food, and Comrade Li, who did not leave me alone for even a moment; when I was in my room, he sat by the door of his, observing me all the while.
I sat and read the works of Mao Tse-tung. This effort coincided nicely with the decree of the moment: huge banners all over town proclaimed DILIGENTLY STUDY THE IMMORTAL THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN MAO! I was reading a lecture delivered by Mao in December of 1935, during a meeting of the Party’s hard core in Wayaopao, in which he discussed the effects of the Long March, “the first of its kind in the annals of history,” as he called it. “For twelve months we were under daily reconnaissance and bombing from the skies by scores of planes, while on land we were encircled and pursued, obstructed and intercepted by a huge force of several hundred thousand men, and we encountered untold difficulties and dangers on the way; yet by using our two legs we swept across a distance of more than twenty thousand
li
through the length and breadth of eleven provinces. Let us ask, has history ever known a long march to equal ours? No, never.” Thanks to this march, in which Mao’s army “cross[ed] perpetually snow-capped mountains and trackless grasslands,” it escaped the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and was later able to mount a counteroffensive.
Sometimes, tired of reading Mao, I would pick up Chuang Tzu’s book. Chuang Tzu, a fervent Taoist, scorned all worldliness and held up Hui Shi, a great Taoist sage, as an example. “When Jao, a legendary ruler of China, proposed that he should assume power, he washed his ears, which had been defiled by such a notion, andtook refuge on the desolate mountain of K’i-Shan.” For Chuang Tzu, as for the biblical Kohelet, the external world was nothing, mere vanity: “In conflict with things or in harmony with them, they pursue their course to the end, with the speed of a galloping horse which cannot be stopped;—is it not sad? To be constantly toiling all one’s lifetime, without seeing the fruit of one’s labor, and to be weary and worn out with his labor, without knowing where he is going to: is it not a deplorable case? Men may say, ‘But it is not death’; yet of what advantage is this? When the body is decomposed, the mind will be the same along with it: must not the case be pronounced very deplorable?”
Chuang Tzu is beset by doubts and uncertainties: “Speech is not only the exhaling of air. Speech is meant to convey something, but what that is has not been fully determined. Is there really something like speech, or is there nothing at all like it? Can one see it as distinct from the warbling of birds, or not?”
I wanted to ask Comrade Li how a Chinese would interpret these fragments,
The entire visit was arranged and conducted in such a fashion as to accomplish nothing in its course—not one single concrete subject was touched upon, let alone discussed. They had asked me nothing and had given me no opportunity to inquire how my sojourn and my work were to be structured.
But, I reasoned, perhaps such are local customs. Perhaps it is considered impolite to get to the point quickly? I had certainly read, more than once, that in the East the rhythm of life is slower than what we westerners are used to, that there is a time for everything, that one must be calm and patient, one must learn to wait, grow internally calm and tranquil, that the Tao values not motion but stillness, not activity but idleness, and that all haste, passion, and frenzy arouse distaste here and are interpreted as symptoms of bad upbringing and a lack of refinement.
I was also well aware that I was but a mote of dust in the face of the vastness that is China and that I, as well as my work, meant nothing when compared to the great tasks facing everyone here, including the staff of
Chungkuo
, and that I simply had to wait until the time was right for arranging my affairs. Meantime, I had a hotel room, food, and Comrade Li, who did not leave me alone for even a moment; when I was in my room, he sat by the door of his, observing me all the while.
I sat and read the works of Mao Tse-tung. This effort coincided nicely with the decree of the moment: huge banners all over town proclaimed DILIGENTLY STUDY THE IMMORTAL THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN MAO! I was reading a lecture delivered by Mao in December of 1935, during a meeting of the Party’s hard core in Wayaopao, in which he discussed the effects of the Long March, “the first of its kind in the annals of history,” as he called it. “For twelve months we were under daily reconnaissance and bombing from the skies by scores of planes, while on land we were encircled and pursued, obstructed and intercepted by a huge force of several hundred thousand men, and we encountered untold difficulties and dangers on the way; yet by using our two legs we swept across a distance of more than twenty thousand
li
through the length and breadth of eleven provinces. Let us ask, has history ever known a long march to equal ours? No, never.” Thanks to this march, in which Mao’s army “cross[ed] perpetually snow-capped mountains and trackless grasslands,” it escaped the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and was later able to mount a counteroffensive.
Sometimes, tired of reading Mao, I would pick up Chuang Tzu’s book. Chuang Tzu, a fervent Taoist, scorned all worldliness and held up Hui Shi, a great Taoist sage, as an example. “When Jao, a legendary ruler of China, proposed that he should assume power, he washed his ears, which had been defiled by such a notion, andtook refuge on the desolate mountain of K’i-Shan.” For Chuang Tzu, as for the biblical Kohelet, the external world was nothing, mere vanity: “In conflict with things or in harmony with them, they pursue their course to the end, with the speed of a galloping horse which cannot be stopped;—is it not sad? To be constantly toiling all one’s lifetime, without seeing the fruit of one’s labor, and to be weary and worn out with his labor, without knowing where he is going to: is it not a deplorable case? Men may say, ‘But it is not death’; yet of what advantage is this? When the body is decomposed, the mind will be the same along with it: must not the case be pronounced very deplorable?”
Chuang Tzu is beset by doubts and uncertainties: “Speech is not only the exhaling of air. Speech is meant to convey something, but what that is has not been fully determined. Is there really something like speech, or is there nothing at all like it? Can one see it as distinct from the warbling of birds, or not?”
I wanted to ask Comrade Li how a Chinese would interpret these fragments,
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