On the Chinese screen

Author: (English) Somerset Maugham
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Long before I met him, I had heard of his legendary story, so I expected him to look extraordinary. In my eyes, it seemed that those who had extraordinary experiences also had distinctive appearances, but the man I saw was ordinary in appearance, with no special features. He was shorter than average, somewhat frail, with very dark skin and brown eyes. His hair had turned gray before he reached thirty. He looked like an ordinary person, perhaps you would have to see him five or six times to remember who he was. If you happened to see him behind a counter in a shop or on a stool in an agency, you would think he belonged there, but just as you wouldn’t pay attention to the counter or the stool, you wouldn’t leave much of an impression of him either. Yet, it was precisely his ordinary appearance that eventually piqued my curiosity: his unremarkable face reminded me of an empty palace wall in the Forbidden City of Manchuria. Perhaps one side was a dirty street, but you knew the other side was adorned with dragon-carved walls and the exquisite, complex life of the imperial court, known to few ordinary people. His entire life was like a legend. He was the son of a veterinarian, and early in his career, he worked as a clerk at the London Metropolitan Police. Later, he served as a steward on a merchant ship bound for Buenos Aires. After the ship arrived at its destination, he sneaked off and traveled alone through South America in various ways. In a Chilean port, he managed to get a ride to the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, where he lived among the hospitable indigenous people for six months. He then joined a sailing ship to Tahiti and became the second mate of a ship transporting Chinese laborers to the Society Islands, eventually ending up in Xiamen. That was nine years ago, when I first met him, and after that, he has lived in China ever since. At first, he found a job with the, but a few years later, he found the work too monotonous and, having learned some Chinese, he took a job as a traveling salesman for patent medicines across the country. In three years, he sold pills province by province and finally saved eight hundred yuan, resuming his life of wandering. He embarked on the most thrilling adventures. Starting from Beijing, he traveled across all of China, dressing as a poor Chinese peasant, carrying a sleeping roll, a water pipe, and a toothbrush. He stayed in small Chinese inns, sleeping on large communal beds with other travelers and eating Chinese food. It was quite remarkable. He rarely traveled by train; most of the way, he either walked, hitchhiked, or took a boat. He crossed Shanxi and Shaanxi, journeyed across the Gobi Desert under howling winds, and risked danger exploring the wilds of Central Asia. He lived with nomadic tribes in the desert for several months and followed a tea caravan through the desolate Gobi. Four years later, he finally spent his last yuan and returned to Beijing. He wanted to find a job, and writing seemed to be the easiest way to earn money. An editor of an English newspaper in China asked him to write a series of travel articles. I imagine his only challenge was choosing from such a rich experience. There were so many things that perhaps only he, as an Englishman, knew: strange, fascinating, terrifying, amusing, and unexpected. What hadn’t he seen? He wrote a total of twenty-four articles, and I wouldn’t say they were heart-wrenching, because they reflected the author’s meticulous and emotionally rich observations. However, in his view, things were chaotic, and in reality, they were merely raw materials for art. They were like an inventory from a military or naval supply depot—treasure for an imaginative person, but more like the foundation of literary creation than the work itself. He was like a field scientist, patiently collecting endless facts but lacking any ability to generalize, leaving it to those with more complex minds to refine them. What he collected was not animals or plants, but all kinds of people; his collection was unparalleled, but his understanding of them was superficial. When I met him, I tried to discern how his rich experiences had shaped him as a person. Unfortunately, though he was a cheerful, friendly man with a wealth of anecdotes and eager to share his observations, I couldn’t find a single adventure that had deeply moved him. The impulse behind his eccentric actions stemmed from his innate eccentricity. He was tired of the civilized world and had a passion for breaking free from conventions. Strange things in life attracted him, and he had an insatiable curiosity. But I felt his experiences were merely physical, never reaching the level of the soul. Perhaps that’s why you might find him an ordinary person. His plain appearance was the true reflection of his plain soul, and behind that empty palace wall, it remained empty. That’s why he had so much material but wrote articles that were dull and lifeless, because in writing, what matters more is not the richness of material but the richness of personality.