Status Updates From The Crippled Tree

‘How often have our hopes in such-and-such a man been set to nothing? There are all kinds of people in the South, both good and bad—but I don’t know—money corrupts even the best people.’ (He) planted several lilacs—acacia trees for shade, and there were forsythia—dahlias, and chrysanthemums in clusters—that year of 1927 many other things happened—But tomorrow might forget them. ‘Tomorrow would come the sea—’’

‘Strange are the ways of history, where no single thing abides, but all things flow into each other, fragment to fragment clinging—growing new—wholeness. To understand any event, in any country, one must go back three generations. A century ago sprouted the seed—root of today’s tree—whose branches cast their spreading shade over our heads—whose leaves may fall in a storm only to be replaced by a myriad other leaves.’

‘‘It was seventy-two days—many people do not believe me, but anyone who has done the trip in a small boat will know I am right. And there were troubles. North fighting South—nothing has changed—except the names—The boatmen sang—All along they never did me harm—But in the hovel was the most beautiful girl I had seen—I will never forget her face—her name : Flower on a Heap of Dung—no one knew what would happen to her.’

‘Shanghai people—not used to the hard life & the rigorous morality of the people—Li : the failure of—1911 made certain that the 1949 one would grow—in a forest an old tree impedes the vigour of a young one—& the two streams—those who went abroad—& those who stayed—were to meet—to complete the one—started by Sun. Looking back—with hindsight—I can understand it—much better. But understanding is also—effacement—grief—’

‘—people make their own history, but the circumstances under which they make it are not chosen by themselves, but given—transmitted by the past—Everyone is conditioned by experience—For the sake of unity, Sun offered to resign—Sun had little notion of the actual basis of power—& he—did not understand economics, nor the role of finance in politics. He was—at his cost—once more—a runaway outlaw—Present & past meet—’

‘—the best artists came from Canton—Hakkas, who travel back & forth as merchants—brought pictures sketched in Chengdu to—artists in Canton—painting on porcelain. By 1902—photographic shop had opened—elders said that the soul of man was absorbed by the machine—I had been collecting memoirs—In Hunan, Hubei—Guangdong—Everyone was afraid of the Cantonese—fiery, rebellious—had Overseas connections—strongly supported Sun—’

‘—read the first Chinese translation of (Aldous) Huxley’s—done, 1896—brought by a Hakka merchant from Canton. After reading—could not sleep—overwhelmed. They had friends—relatives of the ‘bamboo-shoot’ variety—by adoption & affection—Hakkas in whatever part of the world—To the Overseas—Sun is here, Sun is there, Sun was everywhere at once—But Sun—though controversial—changed all our lives—But this was mere prologue—’

‘—privileged—returned—from abroad—England, on a—scholarship—But this has not influenced me in the end. For truth is truth, & cannot be bought at any price. Shanghai—the greatest concentration of wealth & misery—Every foreigner that came to China mistook Shanghai for China: Shanghai was China to him. The recruiters of cheap labour for—South Seas—found this place a good hunting ground—so—the term “shanghaied” (OED)—’

‘Railway—not only a matter of means of communication, it was above all a strategic & political issue of enormous importance. For exploitation & oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage—I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any—nation, in the same state of dominance—with the same system of colonial profit-amassing—plunder, would—behaved otherwise.’

‘Easier to blame the visible foreigner. The Manchus were clever: they turned the ire of the uninstructed against the foreigner, using their own subjects, whom they feared, to kill foreigners, whom they hated—The heat was going—The moon, preparing its zenith—cicadas, ended their summer shrieking—The future enters, transforms itself in us, is shaped & shapes us—As I said, “Have you burnt your books? ” he began to sob—’

‘—scholars/merchants—smuggled books—whispered the name, Sun Yatsen—who had a price on his head—wanted to abolish the dynasty. ‘Not all our art & poetry will save us. We must learn—But we cannot learn unless we first become ourselves again—concepts vary according to the machinery which gives it concrete existence.’ When some railed against Christian missionaries, he'd differ. ‘They are—instruments, not prime movers.’’

‘‘—Chengdu smothered in flowers—burst pink—translucent bell flower—white narcissus—Buddhist shrines—never wasted anything—tenacious passion for—soil—things that grow in this earth.’ I read his—calligraphy—as if I were looking at the landscape painted by a Taoist artist—In time and in space, all that we are belongs to everyone else—The time is 1940—heat, relentless—you get to the point where you have nothing to lose—’

‘Their love songs date back to the Han dynasty—& when they move—they carry—ancestors’ bones with them—Hakkas were driven south—Fujian, Guangdong—Sichuan—Circumstances—defined their characters—thrifty, loyal to each other, bad neighbours—ready fighters—the name—stuck to them & they became proud of it. The last migration of Hakkas occurred at the end of the Taiping rising—which have characterised the history of China—’

‘As impossible as it was for Proust—to cut himself—his characters from the period in which they lived—events to which they reacted. We are all products of our time—vulnerable to history. I was born because—Boxer Rebellion (as Europeans called it), 1900—I had to go back, to the roots—I would not be a crippled tree—marring the landscape w/ its own malady—I would greet tomorrow—even if it killed me. For—Hakkas—Sichuan—’

Found this book on my father’s shelves along with other books ravaged by termites. This one - although lacking its back cover and a few pages tawards the end - was still readable. A shame to let a good book go to waist.