I Am China (43 page)

Iona Kirkpatrick

9B Chapel Market

London N1

Dear Iona
,

This is Deng Mu, a Chinese poet. We have never met. But I think you know my story
.

I’m writing to you as I found out that you are translating the writings between Jian and me for future publication. I hope you are managing well with them
.

Jian posted me his diary and letters, just before I left China for the UK. And only very recently I heard he is “dead” from a newspaper. It said he drowned himself on a Greek island. But so far there is barely a proof my eyes can see and believe. From what I knew about Jian, he was a very vigorous person, and I would never imagine he would choose to die in such a way. In my memory he doesn’t believe in killing oneself. I really find it hard to believe what I’ve heard is true
.

Before he posted me his writings, the last letter I received from Jian was about a year and a few months ago, he wrote to me when he was in France. He said he didn’t like the Western life, he dreaded the solitude, or rather being totally cut off from his past. He missed China badly, it haunted him. He said he was taking the train down to Marseilles, where he would work on a ship with someone he knew there. And I’ve heard nothing since. He’s never had a stable address, especially after he left the asylum centre. On my side, I’ve moved around a lot, too. I left China to go to America, then ended up here in the UK. It seems that my life and his life are destined to drift apart
.

But recently, about two weeks ago, I saw a man who really looked like Jian in east London. I was at Old Street station and I was going down to the Tube on the escalator, and I saw a Chinese man coming up on the other side of the escalator. He was wearing this old black leather jacket like Jian used to wear in Beijing, his startling black hair was long and covered his shoulders but it was very much Jian’s hair. He was small-framed like Jian was. The only feature I couldn’t catch were his eyes, and that trademark scar under his left eye which he had when he was a child. Before I reached the bottom and could run back up he had already disappeared from the top of the escalator and off into the night. I’ve been back a few times at the same hour but I haven’t had any luck. I have been thinking of this for days now, and I still think it might have been him
.

One more thing—as you know, Jian and I always argued about politics and how it fits into life. Jian’s answer was to write; he was constantly writing a new manifesto. In the end, he was forced out of China thanks to the manifesto he distributed at his last concert. This one was not like the ones before
.

Jian was obsessed with trying to understand power, and the power of men. He grew up with very little love but plenty of rigid ideology around him. He was too caught up in that sphere of ideas and ideologies. Men often lose themselves in these things. I know we come from different backgrounds, but you might have discovered this too. If we always have to engage in ideological struggle like Jian, to try to gain political power, where is the place for life? And in the end it kills us. Over all these years I have come to believe the opposite of Jian. We die, governments change, ideologies evolve, borders disappear, rivers merge, islands sink, trees rot, bones dissolve, even nature expires one day. But the universe exists, with stars or without stars, with air or without air, infinitely and unimaginably beyond man. I know that the infinite world is there beyond trivial ideologies or politics. And we only have one life to live. I know this is a long discussion, and maybe it will even sound silly to some people, but it was a never-ending discussion between me and Jian. Anyway, I leave these pages of the manifesto to you. As always, his handwriting is messy, like the drawings of a drunk calligrapher, but I’ll let you judge the discussion for yourself
.

Finally, one last thought: I was wondering if you might be able to attend my first poetry performance in this country. It will be held next Friday, at Foyles on Charing Cross Road. The reading will start at 7:30 p.m., please say you are on the guest list of Deng Mu. I sincerely hope you can make it—it would mean a lot to me
.

Your new friend
,

Mu

TRANSLATION OF THE MANIFESTO

DREAM:

I had a dream. I dreamed I was a great nation. I was a state. My power stretched over the land and its peoples. I felt power running through my veins, and felt it strong in my heart. I was China
.

Then I woke up. I wondered: was I a man waking from a dream of being China, or was China dreaming of being a man?

If I am a man dreaming I am China, I want to rule the world. To be a great state, with power over the people like small animals beneath me
.

If China dreams of being a man, then I am just that man living out the myth of a great state. My thoughts and desires are not my own, but are taken from the state. China rules my heart
.

POWER AND MYTH:

The state needs myth: it creates a mythical vision for the people to live by and live for. This is China. China is the great mythmaker
.

GUNS AND POWER:

Why does China need myth? Is it not enough that a state has guns? If there are guns, can’t the guns be used to control the people? Mao said: Power flows out of the barrel of a gun. Gun is power. But the rule of the gun is not the greatest power. There are only so many bullets, and people will always resist. If the state kills its people, it will have no one to grow rice, build cars and create luxury
.

The state needs to control its soldiers and its people. Myth is necessary to control the soldiers who fire the bullets. With a great myth the people control themselves. China’s myth used to be that of Tian Zi—the emperors. Now it is the myth of the great democratic middle-class society who consume this and consume that with commercial freedom
.

INVISIBLE:

I am a drop in the ocean, in an ocean I cannot see
.

I am a brick in a wall I cannot feel
.

I am a citizen of a state, but of a state that is everywhere
.

I am a citizen of China, but China is everywhere
.

Our leaders hid themselves after the revolution, and became secret manipulators. They held up images of past great leaders. They forced themselves into our dreams
.

The real state hides itself, to hide how it works. When the citizen dreams, they know nothing of who makes their dreams
.

COCK / GUITAR / ARTIST:

Who really has the power in this invisible state? The artist looks down at his cock, and his cock looks at his guitar. Then his guitar looks at him. They all look at each other. Who is playing whom? Each said: “I am!”

ART AND THE ART OF POLITICS:

Now the artist must deal with politics. That’s why art is always a political thing. What is a political thing? The political is power exercising itself at the moment of revolution. It is when we create the impossible. That is art
.

Art is the politics of perpetual revolution. Art is the purest revolution, and so the purest political form there is
.

A great artist is a revolutionary
.

Revolution = art, and art = perfect freedom. Right now, we have no revolution, no real art and no freedom
.

INCONCEIVABLE REVOLUTION:

Revolution happens when we strip off the invisibility cloak and show the emperor
.

Revolution happens when the water in which the citizens swim is frozen. The ice breaks and shatters and the fish are cast out onto the dry land, gasping for air
.

REVOLUTION:

Revolution is impossible. This is the first fact about revolution. Revolution is when politics happens. The only real political act is revolutionary. Otherwise, it’s just the day-to-day grind of the state, the day-to-day buying and selling. In a democracy the people think there is politics. But it is just theatre
.

Revolution is impossible because the people live in prison by choice. They consume the state’s myth as their daily comfort
.

REVOLUTION IN CHINA:

In China the impossible happened more than once. The youth of Tiananmen Square realised the impossible for hundreds of years
.

But it did not last. The impossible vision faded into concrete reality and China became a state again
.

PERPETUAL REVOLUTION:

The perpetual revolution is the revolution that even revolutionises itself. Perpetual revolution is complete freedom. Art is complete freedom. And love is complete freedom
.

A DEBATE: THE REALIST VS. THE REVOLUTIONARY:

You, my realist, say this: “What you say is unrealistic. It is of no interest since it is unreal and unrealisable. I can only feel and respond to what is around me. And love, which must be there in the end, lives in a reality separate from revolution.”

The revolutionary answers: “My friend, you accept this world of everyday imperfection and appearance, of compromises and small steps. And you talk of ‘love.’ You speak as if there is no love in me. But that is not true. Our love has been dragged onto a political battlefield. And often it just doesn’t look like love, it looks like a battle.”

The realist responds: “But love only lives in the work of imperfection.”

“Love should live in the perfect revolution,” says the revolutionary. “It’s a process. It’s not something we arrive at, but an imperative. It is an arrow. It always moves beyond itself.”

BREAK THE SPELL:

I am China. We are China. The people. Not the state
.

3
LONDON, DECEMBER 2013

Iona raises her head from the Chinese files. The translation is finished. Somehow she never imagined she would arrive at this point. It feels like the first time in her life that she has managed to finish something significant, totally and completely. It’s the end of something, and the beginning of something else.

In the street below the winter light illuminates London in a hazy half-glow. She sees people rushing along the pavement, sellers packing up, buyers leaving. She hears the sound of trucks driving away for the day with their unsold goods; the Turkish shop downstairs turning on the TV, and the evening-ready clack of high heels on the street below. Life is roaring with full force, even though the evening swallows the city whole. But perhaps all this is not natural, inevitable. One cannot take it for granted. Perhaps it is not determined by any law of human life. It is a matter of history and luck. Iona finds herself murmuring: “
I am China. We are China …
” She repeats, in a hypnotic mood. “
The people. Not the state
.”

The number 38 bus on this Friday evening is crowded with people jostling each other in the sardine-can interior, fiddling with their iPhones and iPods, or just staring blankly ahead. Outside, the sky is pierced by a rosta of burning red clouds. Against the horizon are dark trees and curious towers, whose shapes are reflected in the windows of the bus. They zigzag through London’s narrow streets. As the light gets darker and glows redder, everyone on the bus becomes restless. Spanish-speaking, Swahili-speaking, French, German, Swedish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, the voices flood into Iona’s ears, like a dark but mysteriously busy underworld she can’t understand.
Right now she is eager to hear only one voice, the voice she has imagined for so long, the voice from so many letters and diaries.

The bus halts abruptly. It’s already a quarter to eight. She hurries up Charing Cross Road, wishes she could have left her flat an hour earlier, as her ears ring with a Chinese-sounding voice:
“The reading will start at 7.30 p.m., please say you are on the guest list of Deng Mu. I sincerely hope you can make it—it would mean a lot to me.”