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As we remember literary legend Yang Jiang, we should not forget her devotion to family
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THE literary world received some sad news last week, when author and translator Yang Jiang passed away at the age of 105.
Yang was known for her translation of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” as well as her novels and short stories centering on the lives of intellectuals. She was also wife of Qian Zhongshu, one of the most learned figures in modern China.
By the time of her death on May 25, she had outlived her husband by 18 years and her only daughter by 19 years.
News of her death revived interest in Yang and her husband, with many attempting over recent days to make sense of their legacy.
I first discovered Qian and Yang’s works by accident in the 1980s. At that time, their names were little known and their works were available at bookstores at discounted price.
After Qian became a literary phenomenon, his novel “Fortress Besieged” (1947) was rediscovered, translated into many languages, and made into a popular TV series in the early 1990s.
The title of the novel was inspired on the French proverb that “Marriage is like a fortress besieged; those who are on the outside wish to get in; and those who are on the inside wish to get out.”
In this novel, Qian lampoons the hypocrisy of the effete pseudo-intellectuals he encountered in academia.
The story unfolds through the eyes of the character Fang Hongjian who, having been disappointed in his romantic pursuits, finds himself in a marriage of convenience. He gradually resigns himself to all the mundane and unpleasant facts of married life.
I was at first fascinated by the humor and subtleties of the work.
Many years later I learned from some critiques that the dialogue is clunky and sometimes cliched, as the text is sprinkled with learned allusions, many of Western origin.
As this was his only novel, Qian’s chief interest was annotating Chinese poems and classics from a cross-cultural perspective.
A cursory look at the copious verbatim citations of so many European-language works in his hefty tomes cannot but make one marvel at the scope of his knowledge.
But I think it unfair to accuse Qian of being an escapist, who took refuge in antiquated tomes rather than played a greater role in society, particularly in those turbulent times of political extremism. Yes, Qian did not suffer as much as many others, probably due in part to his role as an anointed translator of Chairman Mao’s works (his friend Fu Lei and his wife hanged themselves in 1966, soon after the start of the “cultural revolution”).
But it’s a tall order to any intellectual to make greater sacrifice given the instinct for self-preservation.
This mindset is partly echoed in a few lines of verse by Walter Savage Landor that Yang liked to quote in her later years:
“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to nature, art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”
In a sense, Qian did live by the principle preached by Mencius: “A scholar, though poor, does not let go of his righteousness; though prosperous, he does not leave his own path.”
Love for the family
As people continue to argue over whether Qian still has a compelling message for society at large, I reserve my highest esteem for Yang, in her devotion to her family.
Her husband was hospitalized in 1994, and soon their only daughter was also stricken by cancer. In her 80s, Yang had to travel long distance between the two to take care of them.
“At the time of Zhongshu’s illness, I just wanted to survive him by one year, for in taking care of others, man cannot compare with woman. I tried to take good care of myself, so that I could survive him, for otherwise there would be a mess,” she once said.
It is probably in these manifestations of tender love Yang — rather than Qian’s cynic observations of intellectuals in his “Fortress Besieged” — that we learn better how to live a worthy and charitable life. In this sense, the couple do have a message for us today.
We still have outstanding figures before us. In November 1918, Liang Ji, a scholar of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), drowned himself in a lake in Beijing, in his determination to wake up his compatriots to the importance of nationhood.
Before he took the plunge, he asked his son, philosopher Liang Shuming, a question: “Will this world get any better?”
We need to be inspired by such examples of personal courage, though instances of integrity are equally valuable, even among so-called intellectuals.
Against the virtues of integrity and honesty, the scholarly merits so estimated and extolled among intellectuals — innovative spirit, depth of inquiry — pale into insignificance.
A recent example will suffice.
On May 23, an explosion at a chemical plant in Qingpu, Shanghai, killed three people.
One of those who died was Li Peng, a graduate student from East China University of Science and Technology.
At the time of the disaster Li was doing an experiment at a factory owned by his supervisor, Zhang Jianyu.
Zhang also has stakes in other plants in Shanghai and Zhejiang Province, despite explicit school rules against this practice.
Zhang had previously arranged for his students to pursue the commercial application of their research in his factories, or made them work as interns at these factories.
Zhang may not be lacking in innovative spirit, though he seems to be more like a businessman than scholar, reckless in his pursuit of profit.
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