I wrestled more with Spence’s God’s Chinese Son than Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China. Spence’s story of the Taiping Rebellion reads as an incredibly prosaic history book to me. Winchester is a breezy and quick-witted writer while Spence feels more deliberate and metered. Winchester could be seen as rather circumlocutious to Needham’s already heavily ornamented existence. Eventually both of their writing styles become auctioned to the activity of their subjects.
However, I loved Spence’s appreciation of the historicity of the poetic moment that Hong battles Confucian scholars in verse. The elder scholars say of Hong:
We unskillful old folk hoped for help from the young,
Little imagining you would have nothing to do with us.
You are crammed with learning, and could have used it–
But convinced by slanderous words, you cling just to them.
(Spence 69)
They recognize the scholarly ability of Hong, but they ridicule the direction. They recognize the lack of foundation in the tradition and ritual of Confucian society his intellect is taking.
This is a direct threat towards their cultural hegemony, and in the West this type of argument is cited the logical fallacy argumentum ad antiquitatem. Or more plainly, “But it has always been done like this.”
His answer to the preceding had me captivated, especially the last line, “How can we the muddled-heads traverse this earthly life?” (Spence 69) Here is the dichotomy of good and evil clashing with the singular entity of many masks that is the Confucian concept of ren. Here the two perceptions are already at war fronting their violence with poetry. This tendency of Hong’s to carry the voice of his message in verse and music pop up again with Thistle Mountain jingles promising repudiations to the wealthy and yet to the poor, “Heaven will keep you well.”(Spence 161)
I did learn a great Latin idiom in the seminar class; “de jure” as opposed to the “de facto”. I was aware of “de facto” from some ninth grade history class discussing de facto segregation in contemporary demography, but de jure I had heard yet had no real understanding of what it meant. It means “By law”, simply enough. I love these anachronistic expressions in an unsophisticated sense of intellectual sentimentality and nostalgia. The thought of a verbal zeitgeist so swimmingly powerful that its true meaning was best contained in the waters of its own genesis; this concept of cultural conservatism is so elegant to me. So when Winchester expresses this with his drop of “sine qua non” (p 133) and its insertion into the stiff up lip of our dear Needham during his expeditious tribulations, I forgive him.
I believe these small intellectual treats are to be savored with those who know them, and desired by those unfamiliar with their meaning. It leavens speech with special moments of challenging context that has high expectations of the listener. The situation does not suppose that you know what it means, but rather you express interest either way.
Both books speak to the courage of belief and the frenzy of faith. The Hong from the subtitle of God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan is a peculiar character, more peculiar than Needham and his “private nudism” (Winchester 39). Hong had felt the word of God, the Father of Jesus, and began to understand his place as the elder Chinese son of God. That is a story in itself.
Now enjoin this with the ultimate path of this cultural mezcla convert/creator of a new heterodoxy. His first path was as a student of the Imperial exams. His intellectual endeavors were intersected by his apostolic kinship to Christ. As his first path to proselytize among his people, he chose the same route he had taken while he was a student heading for Canton. The vestments had changed, but his route was the same. His orbit was not yet affecting his faith’s direction. But it does so by the end. That this story had remained unrecognized to my education prior to my reading this book is unbelievable.
Winchester’s Needham had a strength of character that appears quiet and confident. Only the most dire of circumstances could dent Needham buoyancy. Well, except for how he took his toast. (Winchester 244) I also love the moment the author reconstructs what Joseph was doing by reconstituting his custom hand-written English to Chinese dictionary. I knew that with the addition of Lu Gwei-Djen to the story that ”apologize” or “sorry” would make the first draft. (Winchester 68)
I find it interesting that to get to China ideologically our class is using these two largely Western ideologues, one from each side of the cultural fence. Our studying them is a fulcrum for entering into a greater connection. Both Needham and Hong transformed and extricated China from the Chinese. To get to an understanding of Chinese life, history and culture we have these two books whose important facets have been about Westernizing China or changing China, indeed. It is as if to study China means we must cut it into small recognizable bits. Then digest it and spit it out the other side … like some sort of McChow mien.
Sources:
Spence, Jonathan D.. God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996, 1996.
Winchester, Simon. The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. New York: Harper, 2008.
“sine qua non – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.” Dictionary and Thesaurus – Merriam-Webster Online. 14 Jan. 2009