The Art of War (42 page)

Authors: David Wingrove

BOOK: The Art of War

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wuwei	Nonaction, an old Taoist concept. It means keeping harmony with the flow of things – doing nothing to break the flow.
ya	Homosexual. Sometimes the term ‘a yellow eel’ is used.
yamen	the official building in a Chinese community
yang	The ‘male principle’ of Chinese cosmology, which, with its complementary opposite, the female yin , forms the t’ai ch’i , derived from the Primeval One. From the union of yin and yang arise the ‘five elements’ (water, fire, earth, metal, wood) from which the ‘ten thousand things’ (the wan wu ) are generated. Yang signifies Heaven and the South, the Sun and Warmth, Light, Vigor, Maleness, Penetration, odd numbers and the Dragon. Mountains are yang .
yang kuei tzu	Chinese name for foreigners, ‘Ocean Devils’. It is also synonymous with ‘Barbarians’.
yang mei ping	‘willow plum sickness’, the Chinese term for syphilis, provides an apt description of the male sexual organ in the extreme of this sickness
yi	the number one
yin	The ‘female principle’ of Chinese cosmology (see yang ). Yin signifies Earth and the North, the Moon and Cold, Darkness, Quiescence, Femaleness, Absorption, even numbers and the Tiger. The yin lies in the shadow of the mountain.
yin mao	pubic hair
Ying kuo	English, the language
ying tao	‘baby peach’, a term of endearment here
ying tzu	‘shadows’ – trained specialists of various kinds, contracted out to gangland bosses
yu	Literally ‘fish’, but, because of its phonetic equivalence to the word for ‘abundance’, the fish symbolizes wealth. Yet there is also a saying that when the fish swim upriver it is a portent of social unrest and rebellion.
yu ko	a ‘Jade Barge’, here a type of luxury sedan
Yu Kung	‘Foolish Old Man!’
yu ya	deep elegance
yuan	The basic currency of Chung Kuo (and modern-day China). Colloquially (though not here) it can also be termed kuai – ‘piece’ or ‘lump’. Ten mao (or, formally, jiao ) make up one yuan , while 100 fen (or ‘cents’) comprise one yuan .
yueh ch’in	a Chinese dulcimer, one of the principal instruments of the Chinese orchestra
Ywe Lung	Literally ‘The Moon Dragon’, the wheel of seven dragons that is the symbol of the ruling Seven throughout Chung Kuo: ‘At its centre the snouts of the regal beasts met, forming a rose-like hub, huge rubies burning fiercely in each eye. Their lithe, powerful bodies curved outward like the spokes of a giant wheel while at the edge their tails were intertwined to form the rim.’ (Chapter Four of The Middle Kingdom ).

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
he transcription of standard Mandarin into a European alphabetical form was first achieved in the seventeenth century by the Italian Matteo Ricci, who founded and ran the first Jesuit Mission in China from 1583 until his death in 1610. Since then several dozen attempts have been made to reduce the original Chinese sounds, represented by some tens of thousands of separate pictograms, into readily understandable phonetics for Western use. For a long time, however, three systems dominated – those used by the three major Western powers vying for influence in the corrupt and crumbling Chinese empire of the nineteenth century: Great Britain; France; and Germany. These systems were the Wade-Giles (Great Britain and America – sometimes known as the Wade System), the
École Française de L’Extrême Orient
(France) and the Lessing (Germany). Since 1958, however, the Chinese themselves have sought to create one single phonetic form, based on the German system, which they termed the
hanyu pinyin fang’an
(Scheme for a Chinese Phonetic Alphabet), known more commonly as
pinyin
, and in all foreign language books published in China since 1 January 1979
pinyin
has been used, as well as being taught now in schools alongside the standard Chinese characters. For this work, however, I have chosen to use the older, and, to my mind, far more elegant transcription system, the Wade-Giles (in modified form). For those now used to the harder forms of
pinyin
the following may serve as a basic conversion guide, the Wade-Giles first, the
pinyin
after.

p for b	ch’ for q
ts’ for c	j for r
ch’ for ch	t’ for t
t for d	hs for x
k for g	ts for z
ch for j	ch for zh

The effect is, I hope, to render the softer, more poetic side of the original Mandarin, ill served, I feel, by modern
pinyin
.

The translation of Meng Chiao’s, ‘Impromptu’, is by A. C. Graham from his excellent
Poems of the Late T’ang
, published by Penguin Books, London, 1965. The translation of Po Chu-I’s ‘To Li Chien’ is by Arthur Waley, from
Chinese Poems
, published by George Allen and Unwin, London, 1946.

The quotation from Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
is from the Samuel B. Griffith translation, published by the Oxford University Press in 1963. The quotation from Arthur Koestler’s
The Act of Creation
is from the Hutchinson & Co. Edition, published in London, 1969, reprinted with their kind permission.

The translation from Nietzsche is by R. J. Hollingdale and is taken from
Beyond Good and Evil
(Prelude To A Philosophy Of The Future), published by Penguin Books, London, 1973.

A marvelous recipe for Yang Sen’s ‘Spring Wine’ – mentioned in the opening to this volume – can be found on page 163 of
Chinese Herbal Medicine
by Daniel P. Reid, published by Thorsons, London in 1987.

Finally the game of
wei chi
mentioned throughout this volume is more commonly known by its Japanese name of
Go
, and is not merely the world’s oldest game but its most elegant.

David Wingrove

April 1990/July 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T
hanks must go, once again, to all those who have read and criticized parts of Chung Kuo during its long gestation. To my editors – Nick Sayers, Brian DeFiore, John Pearce, Alyssa Diamond – for their patience as well as their enthusiasm; to my Writers Bloc companions Chris Evans, David Garnett, Rob Holdstock, Garry Kilworth, Geoff Ryman, Simon Ings, Bobbie Lamming and Lisa Tuttle; to Andy Sawyer for an outsider’s view when it was needed; and, as ever, to my stalwart helper and first-line critic, Brian Griffin, for keeping me on the rails.

Thanks are also due to Rob Carter, Ritchie Smith, Paul Bougie, Mike Cobley, Linda Shaughnessy, Susan and the girls (Jessica, Amy and baby Georgia) and Is and the Lunatics (at Canterbury) for keeping my spirits up during the long, lonely business of writing this. And to ‘Nan and Grandad’ – Daisy and Percy Oudot – for helping out when things were tight... and for making the tea!

Finally, thanks to Magma, IQ and the Cardiacs for providing the soundtrack.

Table of Contents

Author biography

Title page

Contents