Xinran on Understanding China

Tell me about your first book, Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin.

This book is believed by many to be the greatest Chinese novel ever written. For me it is like a bible for everything to do with Chinese culture. Cao belonged to the Han Chinese clan and the book is a huge family novel written in the 18th century. The family’s fortunes were tied up with the Kangxi dynasty and the book is all about the relationship between the family members and all the different classes.

It really is a wonderful book which has been translated by Penguin since 1970 and reprinted again and again. But many Westerners don’t know about this book, which is a shame because it is such a powerful book which I really love.

Why is it so important to you?

Well, it is such a good guide to our culture. In the book more than 100 people, buildings, poems, paintings and dreams are described in great detail. So you really find out the lifestyles of the people living there. I have read this book again and again ever since my childhood.

For example, there is a part which sums up how important food is in Chinese society. Xueqin writes about an aubergine recipe, which is a famous dish in the book, where the mother describes to her daughter and grandchildren how you need to wash the aubergines in snow, soak them with spring dew, pickle them with flowers from summer to season them and the thorns from autumn. And these are known as four-season aubergines. That is so beautiful. And why I think this book is so important is because it has helped Chinese culture to survive despite all the political upheavals and civil wars which have taken place since it was written.

Books like this remind Chinese people what the true Chinese culture is all about and how to preserve it, which is why I call it the ‘Bible of Chinese Culture’. Actually, many people try to copy this way of life even now.

Your second book is The Spirit of the Chinese People by Hung-ming Ku.

Yes. He was the first professor to teach foreigners in English so he wrote this book to give his students a better understanding of what the Chinese people are like. It was published in 1915 and it talks about the soul of Chinese culture. He explains why Chinese people respect old people and food. So, for example, for Chinese people part of the social order is that you never challenge your elders. This book is all about the roots of today’s culture. He wants Westerners to understand why we are so different from them. A large part of that is because we are brought up by the seasons and nature. We don’t have such strong religious roots. We adopted Buddhism as our Chinese philosophy relatively late on into our culture.

In this tiny book Hung-ming Ku wants people to understand that we are much more rooted in the power of nature like stone, plants, water, fire and gold. If you look at all the old Chinese paintings they are not about heaven and royalty like many of those in the West. We are much more focused on nature, the seasons, animals, birds and water. You will see those things in many of the ink and silk old paintings. I must have given 50 or 60 copies of this book away to all my Western friends who want to understand more about Chinese people. I explain to them that understanding the Chinese is just like how you would try to understand a tree. It is not just the leaves and the branches – you have to understand the roots as well. We are like plants: you need to understand our environment to understand our culture.

How does Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People continue your theme of better understanding China’s culture?

He wrote it during the 1930s, although he is looking at what happened in China after the Opium Wars of the 19th century. A lot of people were trying to understand what was going on in China so Yutang wrote the book to explain. For many people it became the standard text to read on the subject if you wanted to understand the key characteristics of Chinese people and China’s history. He wanted to explain why Chinese people are lost without the Imperial Emperor who is like our god. He suggested that without a god we had nothing to fight for except a new god; that is why when the last Emperor fell in the early 20th century there was such turmoil as Chinese people fought to find the new Emperor or god.

This was something I read in the 1980s at university and I was very surprised to see this portrayal of Chinese people to the Western world, because Yutang wrote it in English for foreigners. You have to understand that China has a long history without religion and even though Western people might say they are not religious your country is so deeply embedded in religious history it permeates your culture and your way of life. You have Christmas and Easter, you can walk down a street in London and see St Paul’s Cathedral and hear church bells. When you pray for something it is to do with the afterlife and your spiritual wellbeing.