On the Verge of Disappearance (End of the Chinese Letters)

By Ying Chen (page 2 of 4)

Many Westerners would agree with you: a "westernized" Oriental won't have the same charm or has no value. The West, just like the Orient, can at most tolerate the Other, but has no use for the transformed. These last are horrors of globalization. The subject is very hot right now, as though globalization were an event, as though it hasn't been, since the dawn of time, a natural law, an inevitable process in the world's evolution. The linguistically transformed are sometimes the exception in a given political context. The "politically correct" is only "politically necessary". This creates discontent without changing the reality of things. This certainly doesn't improve the fate of those in my condition. The sparks and flames, that in the end the "politically incorrect" can't put out, will be finished off by the "politically correct", by making them banal and ridiculous.

You see, without crossing the boundaries, without knowing the languages of the "others", your thinking agrees strangely with those of the "strangers". Thought is strangely uniform, even spatial distance can't sever it. The human species likes difference. Today we hear, in absolutely every corner of the Earth, this same speech: "We're different, our language is particularly beautiful, our culture is particularly rich or distinguished, our nation is perpetually menaced with disappearance…" And "let's live together with our differences?" This means living in our own corner, staying in our culture of origin, protecting our spiritual, if not geographic, territory, contenting ourselves with appreciating each other from a distance. This love of difference is not only in style everywhere, but it's becoming a real world tradition. We tried in vain to divide the world into two, or many, camps. The planet's map is different depending on the angle from which it's seen. But the planet stays the way it is. The world is globalized anyway.

What hit me the hardest in your letter, what provoked a buzzing in my ears, is an allusion that you make to territory. You have qualified me as a "Ji Ju Zhe" in the country where I am. This Chinese expression is an excellent example that shows the disarming efficiency of my mother tongue. And it stuns, with sobriety, like a blow from a hammer. My understanding of Chinese is still good enough for me to suffer fully. A "Ji Ju Zhe" is someone who lives shamefully, pitifully, in a way that's always temporary, under the roofs of others, sheltered from the lights, to share the leftovers from meals, without so much as contributing anything, like rodents. A certain Frenchman named LePen will adore this expression. And he's not the only one. Your letter makes me react because it touches a part of reality.

When the plane was taking off from the Shanghai airport, 12 years ago already, I said to myself: I am as dead, I will start everything again elsewhere. I didn't have any intention or need to navigate. I was simply looking for a haven. No battlefield, no ancient ruins, no site in construction. But a garden. Where I was born and I grew up, reigns a mixture of ancient and modern dust that disconcerts me and suffocates me sometimes. So I left. To clean out my lungs.

Even if I haven't experienced, at any moment in my life, the need to pace up and down (Kong-Zi taught me despite myself to scorn that, measurements and calculations being, according to him, activities that restrict the spirit), I don't like departures and trips. I always wanted a haven, a routine. All that is familiar to me touches me, holds me. Nobody today believes in my profoundly sedentary temperament. I'm always expressing my repugnance toward roots at the same time as my admiration for birds that seem to be free. I praise the birds, their quality that I don't possess. I no longer have wings, after having lived so long among the ruins. I was no longer a young shoot that could transplant itself easily. I no longer have the courage or the force of real nomads. If I went through another transplant or replanting, I think I would die.

So I don't content myself with a voyage. I aspire to a real destiny: a destiny with roots. I like North America. I say it without blushing. I like this Nordic continent (my body doesn't tolerate extreme heat), for absolutely childish and capricious reasons that hardly justify the gesture of uprooting myself. Here, at least, the land is still green and the sky is blue. Do your children know this, the blue sky? And the moon is disproportionately large, the way it's seen in drawings. The sidewalks are very clean. Nowhere else have I seen so many smiling faces. Here, we rarely have to line up. And we don't fly into a rage for nothing. It's important. We're calm when others are calm. One must at least maintain the appearance of calmness; a little politeness is needed, some distance, in order to share the planet without colliding with each other. This appears to be very Confucianist, very "politically correct". Kong-Zi's ambition was to correct our nature, to suppress our instincts. It's what makes him detestable, and also eternal, for our nature doesn't change. Here live a so-called uprooted people. They no longer recognize it, having quickly fenced in their land, but the others know it. The others, from older continents, don't forget the question of age. When the future is uncertain, the past serves as a map. I'm glad to find myself among those who can't look back, who are thrown into the elusive present. Are you even able to tell who are the real natives? In the beginning there was desert. Like Shanghai one hundred years ago. And the archaeologists tell us that two thousand years is but the blink of an eye. Two thousand years of civilization, a shooting star. And how long will I remain on this earth? Why would I give myself so many worries, ask myself which land belongs to whom? The children. My little ones keep me from sleeping serenely. They carry my genes, they're visible. They'll be asked the question: But where do you come from? I already see a shadow suddenly covering their young faces; I already sense their disarray. And I feel responsible.