Reading Yang Jiang (IV):Yang Jiang's a Patriot

Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang: Romantic Nationalists?

Spring, 1973
Hunan, China.
The "May 7th" Cadre School in Minggang village.

Yang Jiang:

My mind wandered back to the days just before Liberation when so many people were fleeing overseas. Why hadn't we taken one of the many offers and left as well?

Though the couple was famous worldwide, and though they were sought after as lecturers in America and Europe, still, Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang in 1978 remembered agreeing not leave China in 1949. They loved being at home, together. Just as together, they can be patriots. How patriotic was Yang Jiang, really? And Qian Zhongshu -- did he really quote that rather sappy and romantic Liu Yong line?

My belt may grow looser all of my days; for her, I will wither away
衣帶漸寬終不悔，為伊消得人憔悴

I believe that the logic of Yang Jiang's reading is as follows: She wishes to tell us why and how she and Qian Zhongshu chose not to leave China in 1949. Or, to be more precise and accurate, she wishes to tell us what Qian Zhongshu thought of when she asked him why they hadn't left China in 1949. Apparently he would quote a rather trite line from a distinctly second-rate love poem, which seems uncharacteristic of the grandmaster, unless he be making some kind of joke at the poem's expense. Was it possible or even common for Qian Zhongshu to quote poems against themselves, to use a line of poorly set praise to effect a criticism? Perhaps I'm over reading here. Even if we settle whether Qian Zhongshu is up to some sort of game here, we also must ask ourselves whether Yang Jiang is up to one. If Qian Zhongshu means for the 'her,' of the poem to mean China, then it's quite natural to see the thinning, withering man as both Qian Zhongshu and the Chinese people. The generally romantic notion that national identity is like true love, and would not see reason, would not respect a sense of self-preservation may be a darkly witty comparison meant to criticize. Or it might be quite genuine. Other studies have linked nationalism, both generally and Chinese in particular, as related in the world of words to the terms of love, truth and eternity. Qian Zhongshu might be a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, as Stephen Owen has strongly implied in a series of objections to Qian's reading of the Rhapsody on Literature (Readings in Chinese Literary Thought).

The Romantic Patriot

Whether Qian Zhongshu's romanticism is genuine or not, in this passage, Yang Jiang's romantic notion of nation certainly is.

The simple fact was that we couldn't abandon our homeland, discard 'her' -- the only place in the world we could ever be part of that 'us'. Even though there are hundreds of millions of Chinese, members of the 'us' who we don't know, we are all still part of one entity. We feel as one, breathe as one, all undeniable, inseparable parts of China. I felt ashamed that I had believed the rumors and had hoped that Mocun would be going back to Peking to live with Ah Yuan in safety. It was selfish of me to think only of my own family without any regard for others. In the end, that's what it all had come to: despite the endless campaigns and injunctions to reform my thinking, I was worse than I had been before.

"The simple fact," "the only" -- Yang Jiang imagines in very concrete terms here the bond between the couple's identity and their identity as Chinese. With what is really, on close inspection, breathtaking directness (we "breathe as one"), Yang Jiang imagines China. The issue here is suddenly not that Yang Jiang is patriotic; it is that she writes a definition for patriotic, a beautiful and romantic way to imagine China as a life love, a destiny -- one's lungs. [To be...uhm? re-read?]