The Curio Market Peddler Asks a High Price
WE've RETURNED to where we started, talking about the history of these letters' origin.
Toward the end of the year in 2004, I returned to Taiyuan in Shanxi, where I shut myself up in residence at the Provincial Writers' Association, and concentrated on writing about the fierce struggles of the "Great Cultural Revolution" in the southeast part of the province. I had spent the whole of my childhood in the hinterland of the Taihang Mountains. In 2005 and 2006, in two years I wrote the non-fiction work Sacrifice, the text of which was 80,000 words. As previously described, I'd write until I was tired and impatient, before taking a casual stroll in the curio market, treating it as a kind of break.
Taiyuan is not large, but it has many antique markets, and they can be counted as the foremost antique centers of the prefecture level cities, even on a par with Beijing. From the South, heading North, it has Dayingpan Market, the Nangong Building, weekend street markets, Cotton Lane antiques village, Wenyuan Lane old wares store, the first and second floor of the prefectural China Federation of Literary and Art Circles building, Dazhongshi Market District, seven or eight places such as those at the start of Liberation Road, and the Confucian temple market also remains. Business is very slow. That day, which was probably while I was just about completing the finishing touches to Sacrifice in 2006, for no reason at all I went to the Confucian temple. That kind of shop is few and far between, there're only about seven or eight remaining. Treasure seekers from other prefectures either don't know about this shop or don't take it seriously, and they take their money elsewhere.
Zhao Congping was a curio market peddler, aged past sixty and bald-pated, and of a crabby disposition. He ran a small roadside shop, which faced north. Inside the shop, a cabinet was used as a partition, the larger front part of which could be used for doing business, and the smaller back part of which could be used for sleeping. The shop was called "Li Xuan Studio" , and the shop sign stated "Confucian temple, No.22" . With the door to the room half-closed, I leaned out into the interior, where, at a glance, I noticed goods on the shelves and an out of commission chessboard lying on the ground.
Zhao called out in a loud voice, "Hey, writer! Come finish a game!"
I didn't know Zhao that well. In previous days we'd had several games, of which he'd also had a loss. Today while talking casually, Zhao suddenly thought of something, asking me to teach him something about Ba Jin, and to tell him whether something of his that had been written by Ba Jin was valuable. My heart started to beat faster, but I feigned dismissiveness: Ba Jin? Yes, the Southerner. In this neck of the woods, we're more familiar with Zhao Shuli. Zhao the peddler expressed that he had some old things of Ba Jin's—given that I was a writer, I should be interested.
I concealed my immense curiosity, and continued understatedly as before: well, we'll have to see what type of thing relating to Ba Jin it is.
Zhao's reply surprised me greatly: old letters written by Ba Jin to a lover!
I poked some fun at him, and said that he was just making things up. Zhao immediately became irritated.
The two of us, shop-owner and customer, discussed the matter further, and Zhao finally emerged from the back room with a tattered old magazine to show me. Ba Jin's letters, which had been described previously, were loosely inserted inside the magazine.
Taking a closer look at the letters, I was greatly surprised:the language was very uninspiring, and this was just an ordinary reply from an author to a reader. Authors send many such letters, and I was afraid it wouldn't fetch a high price.
Zhao was greatly disappointed, following which he said something which made me even more astounded: this is just one letter, there are seven letters in total! Then, from behind his glasses, he gave me a sly wink.
There's an expression in the antiques trade, "Someone who looks for faults is a serious customer." If you're not going to buy, there's no point in criticising an item.
Zhao was a laid off worker from a munitions factory in Taiyuan, he'd been in the antiques trade for about twenty years; I met him early in his career at the Fuxi Street shop. Today, he'd guessed my intentions! Therefore he only showed me this one letter, hoping to test my interest. As long as I showed an interest in the remaining six letters, my desire to buy would become apparent. From there, he would relentlessly entice and tempt you.
Therefore, I was determined to remain calm, feigning a disinterested expression, with my hands behind my back, not following my desire; stopping myself as if I were about to take my leave, each word like the movement of a chess piece. To facilitate tracking the matter in the future and as a way of making a deposit, I bought a large late Qing Dynasty vermillion standing wooden mirror which was missing its stand, so that he would have no means of matching the stand and the mirror, in order to keep in contact with him. At the point of departure, I seemed to have another idea, and blurted out, "I have a friend in Beijing, I think he researches Ba Jin; if you carefully sort out the letters, I'll give them to this friend, so that they can be useful to him." The meaning beneath his words was as follows: I personally have no interest in having these in my shop, you can take them or leave them, but if the price is low I may as well send them to a friend.
The ways of Shanxi's antiques traders are deep and thick, and idiots don't survive in this industry. Zhao also took a nonchalant attitude, and replied, "Say that one more time."
I left the Confucian temple, and returned to my house where I loafed around, feeling apprehensive. To be honest, I didn't have much money, and I was afraid that the antique peddler would ask a high price.
From there, I jumped between Beijing and Taiyuan, maintaining on and off communication with Zhao Congping. With regard to Ba Jin's letters, I'd read about five or six of them in total from beginning to end, and I had no real reason to buy this kind of thing. Like the late Qing daffodil vases of which I originally had a pair, this time I bought them, but treated it only as something to keep for a gift for someone. Between us two Zhaos, a Cold War had started; inside, we knew each other's purpose, but we wouldn't reveal them aloud. Twice, I would purposely visit him late, so as that it would be convenient to ask him if he wanted to share a drink. After he'd drunk a lot, he remarked, "Zhao, old mate, let's be clear about this, next time, just wait until I nimbly reveal the seventh letter and I'll give you the whole lot!" In all honesty, I was disoriented and my head was spinning, and I repeatedly praised his generosity. We warmly called each other "Old Zhao" , and finally the day to set the price arrived.
That day, Zhao set an infuriating price.
He said, "Originally, the letters were to be priced at 10,000 yuan each, making 70,000 yuan total; but, seeming as you're an old customer, I'll give them to you for 50,000."
I calmed my nerves and said, "Good lord, you're dreaming!"
So the Cold War between us continued. Of course I didn't want to give up: I was simply afraid that they might fall into someone else's hands and that I'd never see them again. And my book, Sacrifice, which had been written in seclusion, had taken two years, plus an additional year of recovery and interviews. In three years, I hadn't had a cent of income, but my expenses were large, there was no way I was going to be able to find 50,000 yuan. In my head I calculated, if I threw 30,000 yuan at him, he'd be sure to sell. I was rightly indignant at the time, just like a young person, and I didn't want to deal any further with him.
Objectively speaking, if the young Ba Jin had written seven letters, which were miraculously intact, to ask 50,000 yuan was not excessive. In the words of a popular expression, in terms of the need to preserve intangible culture, these were fine objects. To my way of thinking, in the history of the 20th century Chinese new culture movement, Ba Jin had a special richness of spirit, his works influencing many generations, especially Family. His transformation from radical anarchist revolutionary to literary life spanned a major historical period. Finally, he wrote the non-fiction work a Record of Random Thoughts, which stands as a complete museum of the of the deep and widespread ideological changes of the Cultural Revolution, expressing the rich period of China's earlier generation of intellectuals. Around 1946, Ba Jin and Mao Zedong met in Chongqing, Mao Zedong said, "It's strange, I'd been told that you were an anarchist!" , to which Ba Jin replied, "That's correct, and I hear that the same was true of you previously."
Nobody isn't by nature a Marxist.
Before the revolution and the beginning of the system of public ownership, Chinese young people lived in a system where family was everything, and there was no means to overstep the prescribed limits. Ba Jin's novel Family and this early series shook the families of a million young people, deeply influencing the whole of this traditional society. Because of this, Ba Jin was able to write letters to countless people such as Daili. Today, the serious research of Ba Jin has a richness and importance no less than research of authors such as Lu Xun, Guo, Mao, Xia, and Lao, Cao. Research methods must urgently be revised and improved. Therefore, there are many authentic letters written by Ba Jin in the 1930s that have never been published, so these letters are extremely valuable from my point of view. As the saying of antique dealers goes, price is simply a reference point. Zhao Congping had already said to me, "You can just look on the internet, to see that Ba Jin's death shook the world, the vice-president of the CPPCC[5] is the leader of both the party and the country! Indeed, he was the director of that conference for some decades." I corrected him— "Chairman" . Zhao said, "Whatever, he was the greatest cadre among you."
I said with a painful smile, "It's true."
Zhao slapped his thighs, "It's true, really! Ba Jin was your greatest official!"
Luckily, he didn't know, that in space there is an asteroid named after Ba Jin, otherwise he'd really have something to say!
If he didn't want to give the letters away cheaply, I had almost no way of acquiring them and it would be pointless.
Moreover, we need to appreciate what was written on Ba Jin's second letter. On the letter was written Journal of Literature in Translation and so forth. The paper was fragile and damaged. It can't be known why Ba Jin didn't address it to anyone in the opening. The entire letter was written in vertical on two pages:
The night of May 25.
I received your letter quickly. As a person, I am full of contra-dictions, as are my essays. In my life, I seek light, love and the happiness of humanity—this is also what I seek in my essays. But often my actions aren't always a mirror of my ideology, I am like this because of the negative influence of society, so I'm not a sound individual, nor am I a happy man.
If you want to research literature, and if it's the case that this suits your temperament, of course that's ok, your letters truly … and Ican tell you some books which you should read … I have many friends who have never read old books.
I think you should pursue further education—I said the same thing in a letter to another eighteen-year-old child. Society is too dark and people's emotions are too complicated. You're a bird whose feathers aren't yet fully grown, you can't yet fly freely in the sky, because there are many eagles there waiting to eat you. A person must go out into society, but the best thing is to acquire skills and knowledge. If at this age, you give up opportunities to cultivate your skills … you may never find them, so you should listen to my advice, wait for the future. You can't always be thinking of sacrifice, you also have to have some enjoyment. A seventeen-year-old woman should also be able to spend some days enjoying herself.
Why did you send money? This is actually quite embarrassing for me. Whatever books you need, I'll find them for you and send them. Now that I haven't written back, I'm afraid you'll be unhappy. I arranged a new copy of Literature Monthly for you … to help you pass your examination. I … but for that damn essay—friends are always pressing me to write essays. You see, I'm also writing Spring … so it's hard for me to find time to write letters. I can't find the free time to send even a single letter! Until next time,
All the best,
Jin
There was a month's gap between this letter and the previous letter.The statement in the letter, "I am again writing Spring" , probably refers to the new publication of Spring as a serial in Literature Monthly, but this is not to say that he had already finished Spring. The completion of Spring must have taken place in February 1938, and the next month the editing was completed by Kaiming bookstore, and with Jin Yi, Ba Jin left Shanghai to visit Guangzhou.
From the words, "I have arranged a new copy of Literature Monthly for you" we can guess, this letter could only have been written in 1936. The historical records inform us that Ba Jin and Jin Yiput out the first edition of Literature Monthly in July 1936. Early in the next year, when Literature Monthly issued its seventh edition, it was prohibited by the government. In future letters, Ba Jin would make reference to this fact. Literature Monthly only existed for half a year, but quite remarkably, its first edition published the first ten parts of Ba Jin's Spring, as well as Cao Yu's play Sunrise and Lu Xun's long novel, Wildfire. As soon as Sunrise was published, it soon attracted fierce debate in newspapers such as Ta Kung Pao and the media. Before long, the seventh edition would contain numerous famous authors such as Shen Congwen, Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong, Xiao Qian, Lu Fen, Luo Shu, Zhang Tianyi, Ling Shuhua, Liu Xiwei (also known as Li Jianwu), Jiang Muliang, He Qifang, Bian Zhilin, Li Guangtian, Jian Xian'ai, Li Ni and Lu Li.
Literature Monthly and also The Journal of Literature in Trans-lation, as well as Author, together published The Chinese Literature and Art Workers' Manifesto, which became a major work of contemporary Chinese literature. Ba Jin participated in the drafting of this manifesto, which was edited by Lu Xun, whose signature appeared first, to put out a call-to-arms to the anti-Japanese resistance movement in Shanghai to save the country. From a different angle, this manifesto also gave rise to a split in Shanghai's two great revolutionary artistic camps …
While living in Taiyuan, Ba Jin had sent Literature Monthly, to help those like Daili, living on the elevated yellow soil of the far away interior provinces, become the first readers of famous work of famous authors.
This letter was written using Literature in Translation company paper, which also stated the source. Literature in Translation was from Introducing Foreign Literature and Art Monthly, which was directed by Huang Yuan. More than twenty days before Ba Jin sent Daili this letter, on May 3, Huang Yuan was in Shanghai hosting a gathering for the republication of Literature in Translation. Lu Xun wrote in his diary for that day, "The Literature in Translation Company invited around thirty guests to eat dinner at Dongxing House." Ba Jin also participated in this event. At that time, Ba Jin and Huang Yuan of Literature in Translation were very close, and they often published translated works. That he used Literature in Translation stationery is not at all surprising.
However the envelope accompanying this letter was still that of the Culture Life Publishing Company. It brought me joy to see that there were still two complete Nationalist era stamps remaining on the back of the envelope, bearing Sun Yat-Sen's portrait, and a face value of five cents. On the remaining six envelopes, there were also stamps, with three stamps remaining: two two-cent stamps also bearing Sun Yat-Sen's portrait, and a one cent stamp bearing a half-length portrait of Chiang Kai-Shek in military attire. In total there were five Nationalist era stamps that were in perfect condition with no damage.
Beginning from this letter, Ba Jin would inscribe his letters with a single character— "Jin" .
In this letter, there were two points that left a deep impression on me. The first is the hint of a sigh in Ba Jin's deions of his activities: "Often my actions aren't always a mirror of my ideology, I am like this because of the negative influence of society" . It can be seen that where differences exist between the beliefs of the author and his negative social environment, it creates some suffering, which is a constant source of heaviness. The first point is talking about himself, but the second is compassionate: Ba Jin was afraid that a young woman "whose feathers aren't yet fully grown" might seek out society too early, writing, "you can't yet fly freely in the sky, because there are many eagles there waiting to eat you" ! Society is too dark and people's emotions are too complicated …
Will Daili heed Ba Jin's advice?
