Looking back over my growing-up years, one can sketch out a “clear line,” roughly including abacus, olympiad math, Schrödinger’s cat, the philosophical grand unification, ecological philosophy, Kant, and so on. Each of these events marks some obvious turning point or development. But perhaps the more important events are not those whose influence was immediately visible, but those experiences that, though they seemed to have little effect at the time, nevertheless seemed to have imprinted themselves on my heart and have continued to exert certain secret influences on me ever since. The experience of the starry sky in the observatory at Shanghai Gezhi High School is of course one example, and perhaps also the only example of an important “revelatory” experience—that is, one that happened almost instantaneously.
Aside from that, most of the secret experiences worth mentioning took place over a fairly long period; in other words, they were not “mystical experiences” but ordinary “life experiences.” Yet sometimes they too possessed a mystical, or at least unfathomable, force. More recent examples include romance and anime, and so on; these will gradually shift from dark to light and will be expressed directly in my philosophical writing. What I want to write about today are those most distant memories; of late, those scenes have often surfaced in my mind, still feeling so vivid and real that I cannot resist pulling them out and talking about them.
When I wrote the first post of “A Casual Recollection of My Growing-Up Years,” I also mentioned that childhood was too remote, and recalling it felt like describing someone else’s affairs. But there were precisely “three scenes” that left a deeper impression: “First, riding on Grandpa’s head around the City God Temple… second, seeing that cat at the stairwell… third, watching rainwater strike the eaves across the street from the attic.” In the later “Digression, on My Hometown,” I also added some details about the first two items.
Let me start with that cat. If the simulated starry-sky experience was the most fleeting of secret experiences, then the impression of the cat was probably the longest-lasting one. In the “clear line,” I did olympiad math for eleven years, which by comparison is only about the same. My experience of living with cats lasted at least thirteen or fourteen years.
As it happened, when I was just born, my grandmother quit her job at a sewing machine factory so she could stay home to look after me, and at the same time she adopted two kittens. In other words, they were the same age as I was; we watched one another grow up.
Of course, cats mature too quickly. By the time I remember things, they had already grown into adult forms, and for more than ten years afterward they seemed to stay exactly the same, so that in my mind their appearance became completely fixed. Even now I can still clearly and vividly recall the way one of them leaped and stood among the stair railings, its emerald-green eyes, the feel of its striped tail, and its terrifying sharp claws.
Those two cats were originally called “Da Mimi” and “Xiao Mimi”—the plump one was Da Mimi, the lean tiger-striped one Xiao Mimi. Later, after Da Mimi disappeared (I no longer remember what happened), we dropped the “Xiao” and simply called it “Mimi.”
I often wondered what kind of relationship Mimi and I actually had. It certainly was not a pet-and-owner relationship, because the one who kept the cats was my grandmother. I sometimes said it was like a sibling relationship (only after Da Mimi disappeared did I realize that Xiao Mimi was also female), but that still was not quite right. My cousin and I really did have a relationship like biological brothers, but Mimi, though we grew up together, from the very beginning seemed like an eternally unchanging figure. Yes, perhaps “childhood idol” would be a more apt description. Though it was always by my side, it also always gave me the impression of being above me, to the point that one could speak of admiration and longing. I once wrote about my so-called “cat style,” and perhaps I learned it from Mimi.
People sometimes divide themselves into “cat people” and “dog people,” and the debate is often about which is cuter or smarter and the like. But I wonder how many people know that there is a most fundamental difference between these two animals, and that from the very beginning the two were never comparable on an important level.
Apart from dogs, most of the domesticated livestock human beings have tamed—horses, pigs, cattle, sheep, camels, and so on—share a common trait: they were originally herd animals! In fact, when judging whether a wild mammal might be domesticated by humans, apart from a gentle temperament, whether it is gregarious is also a decisive factor. Why? Because gregarious animals generally have some form of hierarchy—that is, among a pack of beasts there is the strongest one as leader, and the rest, when they see the leader, must behave obediently and comply, “watching which way the horse’s head points.” In other words, their nature already contains a gene of “obedience,” so humans as domesticators actually step in to serve as a higher-level leader. When an animal acknowledges the master’s status, submission and loyalty naturally become matters of instinct.
And to tame animals that are by nature solitary would surely be much more difficult. Although circus trainers can, through long training, make even the fiercest beast bow its head, to make a solitary beast submit to human beings generation after generation is, unless one rewrites its nature at the root through genetic engineering, truly hard to imagine.
Among animals domesticated by humans, rabbits are a kind that somewhat prefers solitude, but they are such frail herbivores, and in fact they are not very domesticated to begin with. Laboratory mice, for example, are even less worth mentioning in this regard. But the most wondrous domestication of all is unquestionably that of the cat. Together with tigers, leopards, and the rest of the feline family, cats belong to the fiercest class of carnivores, and they are also typical solitary animals, not to mention nocturnal creatures that come and go like ghosts. How could such a most free and unruly beast become human beings’ most docile pet?
Dogs and horses, because of their obedience, can be domesticated by humans; rabbits and mice, because of their weakness, can be raised in captivity. But only cats draw near to humans because of their freedom. And so I can use cats to interpret “freedom.”
Cats are not loyal like dogs, which once they have recognized a master will never betray him. The relationship between cats and humans is closer to that of true friends, or even, one might say, lovers. If you treat her well, she will be more docile and loyal than anyone else; if you treat her badly, or do not treat her with equality and respect, she can also leave with a fierce scratch across your face and depart in grand style. I know this from deep experience. Among Mimi’s offspring there was once a particularly adorable little kitten, all white from head to toe, so my cousin and I decided not to give it away to the neighbors in the alley as we had done with the other kittens; instead, we wanted to keep it ourselves and raise it for fun. Yet perhaps because all we thought about then was teasing it to play with us (in fact, it was letting it tease us), and never, like my grandmother, truly caring for it with real effort. So when it grew a little older, it used its sharp claws to teach me this bloody lesson: do not treat cats as playthings…
No matter how well you raise a cat, you can never restrain its unruly nature. Lao She wrote in “Cat” that they sometimes wander off on their own and do not return all day; to my mind, that was simply commonplace. If Mimi was not curled up at home sleeping during the day, it was often nowhere to be seen all day long, only returning at mealtime to show its face. Now and then it would run away from home; at least three or five days, and at most perhaps a month and a half, during which no one knew where it had gone off to fool around. Grandmother was never in a hurry anyway; after all, cats know the way home. In the end, when it returned home, dusty and windblown, it was often time for it to have a litter of kittens.
A cat like Mimi, when walking down the street, could not be distinguished as a house cat or a stray. Perhaps one could say that from beginning to end it was a stray cat, only frequently appearing at our house and having become rather familiar with us. In the house, we were like two overlords who respected one another: under the bed was its territory, while the bed and the attic were my domain. In my memory, Mimi would leap about the house, sometimes climbing onto the tall chest of drawers, sometimes appearing and disappearing in the balcony or stairwell like a ghost. But it almost never played on the big bed, and rarely entered the attic, perhaps because it knew that this was my territory.
Although Mimi was on the livelier side, after all “laziness” is still part of a cat’s nature, especially in the daytime. Its usual state was to curl up into a ball and sleep soundly, eat when food was put before it, and then sleep some more. Of course, cats also like to play; often a ball of yarn would be enough to keep them delighted for ages. Yet on the other hand, when it came to catching mice, it was so focused and serious, often able to crouch motionless for an hour or more—although it probably neither needed to eat mice nor liked to eat them. I think that for it, the activity of catching mice was more interesting than eating mice. It enjoyed taking pleasure in what was offered to it, but never allowed itself to become bound by it; at any moment it could say goodbye and leave, without the slightest dragging of feet. That is the cat’s character: respectful yet not obedient, attached yet not infatuated, lazy yet capable of concentration, playful yet capable of stillness, independent yet able to enjoy… Is this not the perfect expression of the free spirit I have in mind?
By the time I reached middle school, my parents and I had moved to our new home in Pudong. I do not know what finally became of Mimi; it seems that after its last runaway episode it never came back? At the time, I did not feel much attachment. Only in recent years, as I have been re-examining freedom and bondage through philosophy, and as I have been advocating a philosophical spirit of “laziness,” have those eyes glittering with emerald light reappeared in my mind… Those must be the eyes of a philosopher, no?
Next, let me talk about the “rain” scene. I place “starry sky—rainwater” side by side, and made “The Rainwater Complex” the second post in the whole Suixuan series, immediately after “Starry-Sky Philosophy”; that alone shows how important it is (the order of the posts published on the day the blog was first created was arranged with some care, though apart from the first two, which still have some readability, the rest are mostly of memorial value only).
I have already written enough in earlier posts about rain scenes and the associations they evoke, so I do not want to go on developing some so-called philosophy of rainwater here. I will only add two symbolic meanings that I did not make sufficiently clear before. First, a rain scene is also a kind of “silent wonder”; it makes the whole world become quiet, while the world in the rain seems newly transformed, showing a face different from the usual one, both familiar and strange. Rain awakens a kind of excitement that is not exhilaration. Second, there is that “falling” and “flowing”: a static image in motion. The image of “degeneration” just happens to echo the symbol of the “demon king” that I recently crowned myself with; while the image of “flow” echoes my newest “philosophy of communication” (so I will leave that for later and say more about it then). Add to this the silent wonder, the inclusive clarity, the resilience of following the current, and so on, and one can say that through the little window in the attic of my hometown, many mysterious elements of my character are already visible. Of course, all this belongs to the art of interpretation: since my philosophy can make my originally utterly ordinary experiences richer in meaning, why not?
Finally, there is the scene of “riding on Grandpa’s head around the City God Temple.” This scene is rather subtle; unlike the rain scene, which is just that one picture, the image of the cat staring at me at the stairwell is also very distinct. But this scene of strolling around the City God Temple does not yield any fixed image, and even now I find it hard to recall clearly what Fuyou Road looked like back then. Yet this impression of going around town can still unquestionably stand alongside the cat and the rain.
By “strolling around the City God Temple,” I of course mean strolling along Fuyou Road, the small-goods street beside the “City God Temple.” I seem never to have entered the actual City God Temple itself, including the famous Yuyuan Garden; from the time I can remember, I never went in there either. It is said that when I was very small, my mother often took me to parks, and we had almost visited all the major parks in Shanghai, but unfortunately I have retained no impression of any of them. As for my earliest childhood memories, apart from staying at home, there was the City God Temple—Fuyou Road.
When you came out of my old alley, directly across the street was Fuyou Road. From about the age of four or five, perhaps after Grandpa retired, I would have him take me to stroll around Fuyou Road every few days, often together with my cousin of the same age. Especially in the two years before I started primary school, it would not be an exaggeration to say we went there every day (I certainly do not remember the exact frequency). Of course, when I was even smaller I also went there often; I just have no memory of it.
What was there at the City God Temple—Fuyou Road? The City God Temple then was completely different from what it is now. Today the City God Temple has mainly become a place to slaughter out-of-town and foreign tourists, and all along the road one department store after another has sprung up. Back then, however, the City God Temple was not yet so prosperous; the shops and stalls of all sizes were mainly concentrated on both sides of Fuyou Road. Compared with now, there seemed to be more toy vendors then, though it is also possible that this was simply because, in my childhood eyes, there were mainly only toys.
In short, the City God Temple was a place where all kinds of people and all kinds of things could be found. From priceless gold and silver jewelry—still “small” goods in terms of size—to bamboo skewers and pins costing a few cents or a few mao, down to the tiniest things. In any case, almost any “small good” one could imagine could be found there.
As for me, of course, I mainly went for the toys. Although at the time, as the little emperor of the household, I basically had whatever I wanted, I probably did not buy many toys; most of the going-out-to-stroll activities must have involved not buying anything, otherwise the toys at my old home should long ago have piled up like mountains. (In fact, the things that piled up like mountains at my old home were books… In a broad sense, the childhood habit of going to bookstores also counts as part of going to the City God Temple, although the bookstores selling manga were not on Fuyou Road, they were still on the way to the City God Temple.) So the joy of strolling around town lay in the strolling itself; just being led by Grandpa, or riding on his head and looking at the dazzling array of novel things by the roadside, was enough to make one happy. As for the Lantern Festival, going to the lantern fair by pulling a rabbit lantern oneself was even more exciting. (By the way, that huge rabbit lantern was actually another object that left a deep impression on me, but like the row of unforgettable trash bins in the alley, it does not seem to have much to say, so I will not list it separately.)
Besides the City God Temple, the alley where my family lived itself connected to a little lane called “Jiucang Street,” and whether it was because of the name or not, this little lane was at that time a periodic street of antiques. Every weekend the whole street would be packed with countless street stalls, which displayed mostly so-called antiques, calligraphy, and paintings, and other old things. The level of noise was no less than that of Fuyou Road.
This impression of “strolling around town” is worth mentioning because I realized that it points to an important tension in my character. Compare it with the “rainwater” scene: on one side, the sheer, quiet solitude, as though the whole world were empty and even I myself were melting into the rain curtain—that natural sense of the unity of Heaven and humanity; on the other side, the incomparably mixed-and-mingled urban marketplace, as though the people of the whole world had all gathered together, with colorful goods and bustling crowds… Can one both love tranquility and love liveliness? Can one both long for simplicity and pursue richness? Of course one can. This tension is not expressed only in my ecological philosophy.
It must be mentioned that throughout my childhood, Grandpa had an enormous influence on me. Of course, most of that influence worked subtly and imperceptibly, and I lived with Grandpa until university, so it is not easy to distinguish scenes that left particularly strong impressions. But there is still one rather vivid “scene” worth mentioning besides the strolling-around-town scene. This scene became more and more distinct only after Grandpa passed away, which is why I did not mention it when I wrote my “memories” back then.
In my memory, Grandpa almost never deliberately taught me any principles for conducting myself in the world. The principle he spoke to me about most often was the principle that “one must reason things out.” Grandpa was the kind of person who could still speak calmly even when angry; in any case, I cannot imagine what he looked like when quarreling. —When conflicts arise, do not act on impulse; everyone should sit down, calm down, and reason things out. —That is what Grandpa wanted to convey to me. In my sealed-away childhood memories, there is such a scene: he spread out his palm, the five fingers slightly curled upward, as if holding up a jewel, and said to me, “Our family… bright pearl….” This shows how weak my understanding was at the time, and how nonstandard my grandpa’s Mandarin was (at first, the family created a Mandarin-speaking environment for me, and only after I started school did we gradually switch to Shanghainese). At the time I naturally heard it all in a daze, and it was only much later that I suddenly realized that what Grandpa had said then was not “bright pearl” but “democracy,” and that the five raised fingers were not holding a pearl but symbolized a family of five, different yet equal. As for the “do not act on impulse” that Grandpa often said, when I was little I also always wavered among interpretations such as “acting out of anger,” “acting out of loyalty,” and “acting through qi” (because when Grandpa said this, the scenes were often rather serious, I never dared ask follow-up questions) … Yet “reason” is not transmitted merely through words. Although as a child I seriously misunderstood the “terms” Grandpa used, I am certain that Grandpa’s spirit was indeed transmitted to me. Not through the word “bright pearl,” but through the daily influence of his words and deeds.
Thinking of Grandpa, going out of the house meant taking me to stroll around the City God Temple, while the activity at home was playing chess. When I was five or six, I specifically took classes to learn chess; even earlier, of course, I had played Gomoku, but neither of these games developed further because there was no suitable opponent. Chinese chess, however, became one of the most important interactive games of my childhood because of Grandpa and my maternal grandfather.
Even until recently, whenever my cousin met me, he would often pull out a chessboard and we would play three games as a way of catching up. This habit began forming from the time I can remember. Apart from playing with my cousin and Grandpa, I was practically a chess tyrant when I was young: every time I visited my maternal grandfather, I went there for the chess, and other elders who knew how to play chess—such as my uncle, my great-uncle on my mother’s side, and so on—would, whenever they came to my house, inevitably be dragged by me into several games. A so-called great-uncle on my mother’s side is a relative one generation above Grandpa. Thinking about it now, when some old senior made the long trip to visit, only to be grabbed by some little kid like me and forced to play chess, that does seem a bit absurd and funny. But how could I have understood those formalities back then? Anyway, in my eyes at the time, all elderly male relatives were chess opponents.
As for the relationship between chess and philosophy, there is really no need for me to dwell on it too much, because chess, as a case or metaphor, has long been interpreted by many philosophers. And the “Game,” “game,” and so on that I often speak of—saying that games are the source of various virtues, and the like—can for the most part also take chess as the most vivid example, though if I were to further elaborate a philosophy of games, card games and computer games, and so forth, might perhaps be more fitting examples.
Apart from using Chinese chess as one example among games to elaborate philosophy, the more important influence chess has had on me is undoubtedly the cultivation of this most basic scholarly attitude: namely, taking the most calm, most serious, most tense, and most exacting attitude toward the enjoyment of a leisurely pastime. Some people are good at putting themselves into a grave and stern state in order to work, yet find it hard to derive ease and pleasure from it; others are good at relaxing and enjoying themselves, yet find it hard to throw themselves into such a tense environment. The experience of chess is an excellent fusion of this tension and relaxation, this seriousness and play. I believe that anyone who has personally tasted the joy of chess can easily understand the following: at certain moments, making oneself serious and stern is precisely in order to enjoy the pleasure of the game; and to go all out, pressing step by step and forcing one’s opponent into a tight spot, is the highest form of respect for the other party… Apart from experiencing such an attitude through chess, I really cannot think of any shortcut to it through anything else. Other similar games, such as playing cards, are far less serious than chess. “Watch the game in silence; once a piece is placed, there is no taking it back.”
Besides the “principle” that “once a piece is placed, there is no taking it back,” which I have firmly carried through within philosophy as well—what is written must never be retracted—there are certainly many other things I have learned from chess. For instance, a second principle, not coercive but strategic in nature, is a saying my grandfather often used: “A move must have roots.” One could give too many interpretations of this line; I do not remember my grandfather’s exact wording. In any case, my own understanding is this: every move must correspond to the dispositions before and after it; every piece is never isolated or merely local; no move should be allowed to act on its own, detached from one’s grasp of the situation as a whole; the understanding of any specific move must be based on an understanding of the overall state of affairs. Thus what is carried through in my philosophy is this: “Every sentence must have roots.” Every sentence corresponds to the contexts above and below it; every judgment is never isolated or merely local; no viewpoint should be allowed to talk to itself once severed from my grasp of the whole world… That is how I read philosophy and write philosophy. Just as a player who insists that “a move must have roots” can still play in a way that seems utterly free and unconstrained, my philosophy may well appear loose and unstructured, but I have always held fast to this habit of thought: “Once the pen is put down, there is no regret; once the pen is put down, it must have roots.”
Please forgive the prolixity and verbosity of this article; perhaps the approach of Qingming especially makes one sentimental about the past?
I began writing this article when I had just started to catch a cold. Over these two weeks, as the illness kept recurring, I have written it on and off until today, when it is finally finished; may the cold depart along with it!
March 30, 2009
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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