Diary of a Naked Official (18 page)

The story goes something like this. The man is a playboy who has inherited a large sum of money from his dead parents which could have lasted him years if he had not squandered it on beautiful women, good food, gambling and all sorts of expensive things like horses and carriages, until he became penniless. He goes around seeking help from his relatives but no one cares to give him a hand with his bad reputation behind his back. Just as he sits on a street corner going hungry with no prospect of a meal anytime soon, an old man appears and asks what is going on. He tells the old man his story. The old man says: How much do you need? He says: 100 bucks. The old man challenges him by saying: How much more? He says, emboldened by the
question: Maybe 1000. The old man says: How much more? He increases it to 10,000 but the old man keeps challenging him until he ups the ante by raising it to one million while promising he will never squander it again.

As soon as he allays his hunger and has a good night's sleep, the man forgets his misery. With the newly acquired fortune, he retraces his steps to the old track again, this time even more extravagantly by keeping a house of 20-odd concubines and having a large team of servants at his service until, in about two years, he comes to the end of the road with nothing in his pockets. The old man reappears and keeps challenging him until he walks off with two million dollars.

Again, this amount of money is soon gone. When they – the old man and the squanderer – meet for a third time, the squanderer is so ashamed that he refuses to look the old man in the eye. In the end, he takes a larger amount and goes away, never wasting his money again. Instead, he devotes himself to charity by helping the poor and the needy. Before he leaves, the old man asks him to visit him in the mountains one day.

So he does, visiting the old man in a temple where the old man turns out to be a monk, sitting at the altar, surrounded by nine fairies. To become a deity, the monk advises, he should keep silent, never uttering a single
sound under any circumstances. As soon as he finishes speaking, the monk disappears. In his place is a huge vat filled with water.

Soon after, a group of soldiers turns up, led by a general who demands to know his name but he refuses to utter a word. Angered beyond his endurance, the general leaves with his soldiers. Next comes a swarm of snakes, tigers, poisonous dragons and lions that attack the man but he remains unafraid, not saying a word. Before long these also quit the scene.

A storm comes shortly after with such power and passion that it feels as if the mountain housing the temple is going to be split in half but the man remains absolutely unperturbed, without uttering a sound. When the storm dies down, the general reappears with his army and demands again to know the man's name. Seeing that nothing could move the man to words, the general decides to torture the man's wife by having her hauled to inches within the man's reach and beaten up, but the man says not a word, not even when the general orders that they cut off her flesh piece by piece and not even when his wife entreats him to save her by saying something. Eventually, the general gives up and orders that the man be knifed to death.

After Du, the man's name, goes to hell, he remains silent, to the great chagrin of the demons who turn him
into a woman and send her back to the earth. Even as a woman, Du says nothing and so is called a mute. She grows up to be a great muted beauty, with whom many fall in love but one scholar has the fortune of taking her as his wife, excusing himself by saying that he prefers to have a good woman who says nothing over a long-tongued woman who scolds.

Not long after, they have a baby boy, intelligent beyond belief. The scholar shows Du their baby and tries many ways to get her to say something but she remains quiet until one day when, his patience worn threadbare, the scholar gets so enraged that he holds the baby upside down by grabbing hold of his feet and dashes his head against a rock. On impact, instantly, the baby's head is smashed into pieces and the blood is spilled many feet far. It is not until then that Du, whose heart is filled with love, utters a sound of ‘yee', opens her eyes and finds himself back in the temple, with the old man/monk by his side. It's now near dawn.

The monk tells him that he has ultimately failed in his attempt to become a deity because he has not kept his promise not to utter a sound. Even though he has beaten all his other sentiments, such as fear, fury and disgust, he has not been able to overcome his love. He is thus sent back to the ugly, worldly and dusty human world, never to rise above it again.

I was devastated to hear this story on a street corner this morning, told by a blind street storyteller. When I asked if he could give me a date he said: Oh, this happened a long time ago, probably more than 1000 years ago.

11/9

Nothing more to say except that I have burnt all the photographs, deleted more from my computer and trashed the lot in the bin. If they dig the ashes they won't recognize anything. It's my 9.11, for sure, but if they turn up as they say they will, in the
shuanggui
notice they have issued me, telling me to pack up and go to live in a special place to wait for ‘further notice', I shall be prepared, as naked as ever, my bank accounts remaining zero and all the flesh ever associated with me gone, including the text messages in my mobile phone. Hang on. I must also delete all the phone numbers, including my wife's in Australia. When they ask, I shall have a naked memory as well, in which nothing is retained, as naked as 9.11.

Although I have returned all the submissions, of poetry, self-aggrandisements clothed as autobiographies
and academic books, I retain one manuscript, or, to be more exact, one part of it, for my own entertainment. This comes from someone who claims to be remotely related to Confucius, by the name of Kong Kongwu. He is so unhappy about Lin Yutang's rendering in English of
zhongyong
, commonly known in the West as
The Doctrine of the Mean
or
The Golden Mean
, that he renders everything afresh. I have compared his translation with that of Lin's and find that his is more concise and succinct. For my own record I include Lin's, italicized, below, followed by Kong's, in three paragraphs:

‘The moral law is a law from whose operation we cannot for one instant in our existence escape. A law from which we may escape is not the moral law. Wherefore it is that the moral man (or the superior man) watches diligently over what his eyes cannot see and is in fear and awe of what his ears cannot hear.'

Kong's rendering,

‘Dao, the way, is not something one can depart from for a moment. If it is something that one can depart from, it is not the Dao. For this reason, Junzi, a gentleman, ought to be careful of what is not visible to him and live in fear of what he cannot hear.'

‘There is nothing more evident than that which cannot be seen by the eyes and nothing more palpable than that which cannot be perceived by senses. Wherefore the moral man watches diligently over his secret thoughts.'

Kong's rendering,

‘Nothing is more visible than the invisible the same way nothing is more significant than the insignificant. For this reason, Junzi needs to be wary of himself even in solitude.'

‘When the passions, such as joy, anger, grief and pleasure, have not awakened, that is our central self, or moral being (chung). When these passions awaken and each and all attain due measure and degree, that is harmony, or the moral order (ho). Our central self or moral being is the great basis of existence, and harmony or moral order is the universal law in the world.'

Kong's rendering,

‘If passions like joy, anger, sadness and pleasure are well under control, it is called Zhong, or neutrality. If they have an outburst but are well adjusted, it is called He, or harmony. Neutrality is the great basis of the under-heaven just as harmony is the through Dao under heaven, too.'

That's right, I thought to myself.
is the Dao, the way, consisting of a head
in the act of walking
. As for my own Dao, I am not sure where it is going to lead. Perhaps I really should have come to this earlier as I would have become wary of whatever I do, even in my solitude.

[The diary abruptly ends here - editor's note.]

1
Qtd in Gilles Neret,
Erotica Universalis
. Taschen, 1994, p. 639.

2
See ‘Mu Cao's Diary', in Chinese, at:
http://www.douban.com/note/136462582/

3
Anon, from Feng Menglong,
gua zhi'er
(Hanging Branches), vol., 10, at:
http://www.my285.com/gdwx/gdsc/gze/010.htm

4
Samuel Beckett,
The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
, eds. By Sean Lawlor and John Pilling. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2012 [1930], p. 126.

5
Samuel Beckett,
The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
, eds. By Sean Lawlor and John Pilling. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2012 [1930], p. 130.

6
Samuel Beckett,
The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
, eds. By Sean Lawlor and John Pilling. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2012 [1930], p. 127.

7
See Yu Jie, ‘wenben hujiao: bei zhijie de xilali huiyilu' (Texts compared: the mangled Hillary Biography), at:
http://blog.boxun.com/hero/yujie/109_1.shtml

8
Xu Xiangchou, quoted in Zhang Jiayan,
zhongguo di shige
(Low Poetry in China). People's Daily Press, 2008, p. 92.

9
For more info on this category, see
http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/business/163/eligibility-business-owner.htm

10
Samuel Beckett,
The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
, eds. By Sean Lawlor and John Pilling. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2012 [1930], p. 129.

11
Xiao Zhao, ‘wo zuibeizi zuida de mengxiang jiushi cao wo de qin meimei'. See his Chinese poems at:
http://geibook.com/simple/?t4698.html

12
The legal age of consent for sexual activity in China is 14. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Asia#China.2C_People.27s_Republic_of

Postscript