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Authors: Ryszard Kapuściński
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but I was afraid that they might sound too provocative in the face of the ongoing campaign to study the sayings of Mao. So I picked something innocent, about a butterfly: “Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and flittering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu. Between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly there must be
some
distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.”
I asked Comrade Li to explain the meaning of this story to me. He listened, smiled, and carefully noted it down. He said he would have to consult someone and then would give me the answer.
He never did.
• • •
I finished volume one of Mao Tse-tung and started on volume two. It is the end of the 1930s, the Japanese army already occupies a large portion of China and is advancing further into the interior. The two adversaries, Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek, enter into a tactical alliance in order to make a stand against the Japanese invader. The war drags on, the occupier is savage, and the country devastated. In Mao’s opinion, the best tactic in the struggle against a prevailing enemy is an adroit elasticity and ceaseless tormenting of the opponent. He speaks and writes about this constantly.
I was reading a lecture about the lengthy war with Japan which Mao delivered in the spring of 1938 in Yunnan when Comrade Li, having finished a telephone conversation in his room, put down the receiver and came in to announce that tomorrow we would be going to the Great Wall. The Great Wall! People come from the ends of the earth to see it. It is one of the wonders of the world, a unique, almost mythical, and in some sense unfathomable creation. The Chinese constructed it, with interruptions, over the course of two thousand years. They commenced when the Buddha and Herodotus were alive and were still building it when Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Johann Sebastian Bach were at their labors in Europe.
The wall is variously estimated as being from three to ten thousand kilometers long. Variously, because there is no single Great Wall—there are several of them. And they were built at different times, in different places, and from different materials. They had one thing in common, however: the originating impulse. As soon as one dynasty came to power, it immediately set about erecting the Great Wall. The idea of a wall possessed China’s rulers. If they ceased construction for a while, it was only because of a lack of means—they were right back at it the instant their finances improved.
The Chinese built the Great Wall to defend against invasions by the restless and expansionist nomadic tribes of Mongolia. These tribes, in great armies, hordes, legions, emerged from the Mongolian steppes, from the Altai mountains and the Gobi desert, and attacked the Chinese, constantly menacing their nation, sowing terror with the threat of slaughter and enslavement.
But the Great Wall was only a metaphor—a symbol and a sign, the coat of arms and the escutcheon of what had been a nation of walls for millennia. The Great Wall demarcated the empire’s northern borders; but walls were also erected between warring principalities, between regions and even neighborhoods. The structures defended cities and villages, passes and bridges. They guarded palaces, government buildings, temples, and markets. Barracks, police stations, and prisons. Walls encircled private homes, separated neighbor from neighbor, family from family. If one assumes that the Chinese built walls uninterruptedly for hundreds, even thousands of years, and if one factors in the population—enormous throughout the national history—their dedication and devotion, their exemplary discipline and antlike purposefulness, then one
some
distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.”
I asked Comrade Li to explain the meaning of this story to me. He listened, smiled, and carefully noted it down. He said he would have to consult someone and then would give me the answer.
He never did.
• • •
I finished volume one of Mao Tse-tung and started on volume two. It is the end of the 1930s, the Japanese army already occupies a large portion of China and is advancing further into the interior. The two adversaries, Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek, enter into a tactical alliance in order to make a stand against the Japanese invader. The war drags on, the occupier is savage, and the country devastated. In Mao’s opinion, the best tactic in the struggle against a prevailing enemy is an adroit elasticity and ceaseless tormenting of the opponent. He speaks and writes about this constantly.
I was reading a lecture about the lengthy war with Japan which Mao delivered in the spring of 1938 in Yunnan when Comrade Li, having finished a telephone conversation in his room, put down the receiver and came in to announce that tomorrow we would be going to the Great Wall. The Great Wall! People come from the ends of the earth to see it. It is one of the wonders of the world, a unique, almost mythical, and in some sense unfathomable creation. The Chinese constructed it, with interruptions, over the course of two thousand years. They commenced when the Buddha and Herodotus were alive and were still building it when Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Johann Sebastian Bach were at their labors in Europe.
The wall is variously estimated as being from three to ten thousand kilometers long. Variously, because there is no single Great Wall—there are several of them. And they were built at different times, in different places, and from different materials. They had one thing in common, however: the originating impulse. As soon as one dynasty came to power, it immediately set about erecting the Great Wall. The idea of a wall possessed China’s rulers. If they ceased construction for a while, it was only because of a lack of means—they were right back at it the instant their finances improved.
The Chinese built the Great Wall to defend against invasions by the restless and expansionist nomadic tribes of Mongolia. These tribes, in great armies, hordes, legions, emerged from the Mongolian steppes, from the Altai mountains and the Gobi desert, and attacked the Chinese, constantly menacing their nation, sowing terror with the threat of slaughter and enslavement.
But the Great Wall was only a metaphor—a symbol and a sign, the coat of arms and the escutcheon of what had been a nation of walls for millennia. The Great Wall demarcated the empire’s northern borders; but walls were also erected between warring principalities, between regions and even neighborhoods. The structures defended cities and villages, passes and bridges. They guarded palaces, government buildings, temples, and markets. Barracks, police stations, and prisons. Walls encircled private homes, separated neighbor from neighbor, family from family. If one assumes that the Chinese built walls uninterruptedly for hundreds, even thousands of years, and if one factors in the population—enormous throughout the national history—their dedication and devotion, their exemplary discipline and antlike purposefulness, then one
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