The
Great Wall of China was finished at its northernmost
location.
The construction work moved up from the south-east and south-west and
joined at this point. The system of building in sections was also
followed on a small scale within the two great armies of workers, the
eastern and western. It was carried out in the following manner: groups
of about twenty workers were formed, each of which had to take on a
section of the wall, about five hundred metres. A neighbouring group
then built a wall of similar length to meet it. But afterwards, when
the sections were fully joined, construction was not continued on any
further at the end of this thousand-metre section. Instead the groups
of workers were shipped off again to build the wall in completely
different regions. Naturally, with this method many large gaps arose,
which were filled in only gradually and slowly, many of them not until
after it had already been reported that the building of the wall was
complete. In fact, there are said to be gaps which have never been
built in at all, although that's merely an assertion which
probably belongs among the many legends which have arisen about the
structure and which, for individual people at least, are impossible to
prove with their own eyes and according to their own standards, because
the structure is so immense.
Now, at first one might think it would have been more advantageous in
every way to build in continuous sections or at least continuously
within two main sections. For the wall was conceived as a protection
against the people of the north, as was commonly announced and
universally known. But how can protection be provided by a wall which
is not built continuously? In fact, not only can such a wall not
protect, but the structure itself is in constant danger. Those parts of
the wall left standing abandoned in particular regions could easily be
destroyed again and again by the nomads, especially by those back then
who, worried about the building of the wall, changed their place of
residence with incredible speed, like grasshoppers, and thus perhaps
had an even better overall view of how the construction was proceeding
than we did, the people who built it.
However, there was no other way to carry out the construction except
the way it happened. In order to understand this, one must consider the
following: the wall was to be a protection for centuries; thus, the
essential prerequisites for the work were the most careful
construction, the use of the architectural wisdom of all known ages and
peoples, and an enduring sense of personal responsibility in the
builders. Of course, for the more humble tasks one could use ignorant
day labourers from the people - the men, women, and children who
offered their services for good money. But the supervision of even four
day labourers required a knowledgeable man, an educated expert in
construction, someone who was capable of feeling sympathy deep in his
heart for what was at stake here. And the higher the challenge, the
greater the demands. And such men were in fact available - if not
the crowds of them which this construction could have used, at least in
great numbers.
They did not set about this task recklessly. Fifty years before the
start of construction it was announced throughout the whole region of
China which was to be enclosed within the wall that architecture and
especially masonry were the most important areas of knowledge, and
everything else was recognized only to the extent that it had some
relationship to those. I still remember very well how as small children
who could hardly walk we stood in our teacher's little garden
and had to construct a sort of wall out of pebbles, and how the teacher
gathered up his coat and ran against the wall, naturally making
everything collapse, and then scolded us so much for the weakness of
our construction that we ran off in all directions howling to our
parents. A tiny incident, but an indication of the spirit of the times.
I was lucky that at twenty years of age, when I passed the final
examination of the lowest school, the construction of the wall was just
starting. I say lucky because many who earlier had attained the highest
limit of education available to them for years had no idea what to do
with their knowledge and wandered around uselessly, with the most
splendid architectural plans in their heads, and a great many of them
just went downhill from there. But the ones who finally got to work as
supervisors on the construction, even if they had the lowest rank, were
really worthy of their position. They were masons who had given much
thought to the construction and never stopped thinking about it, men
who, right from the first stone which they sunk into the ground, had a
sense of themselves as part of the wall. Such masons, of course, were
driven not only by the desire to carry out the work as thoroughly as
possible but also by impatience to see the structure standing there in
its complete final perfection. Day labourers do not experience this
impatience. They are driven only by their pay. The higher supervisors
and, indeed, even the middle supervisors, see enough from their various
perspectives on the growth of the wall to keep their spirits energized.
But the subordinate supervisors, men who were mentally far above their
small, more trivial tasks, had to be catered to in other ways. One
could not, for example, let them lay one building block on top of
another in an uninhabited region of the mountains, hundreds of miles
from their homes, for months or even years at a time. The hopelessness
of such a hard task, which could not be completed even in a long human
lifetime, would have caused them distress and, more than anything else,
made them worthless for work. For that reason they chose the system of
building in sections. Five hundred metres could be completed in
something like five years, by which time naturally the supervisors were
as a rule too exhausted and had lost all faith in themselves, in the
building, and in the world.
Thus, while they were still experiencing the elation of the
celebrations for the joining up of a thousand metres of the wall, they
were shipped far, far away. On their journey they saw here and there
finished sections of the wall rising up; they passed through the
quarters of the higher administrators, who gave them gifts as badges of
honour, and they heard the rejoicing of new armies of workers streaming
past them out of the depths of the land, saw forests being laid low,
wood designated as scaffolding for the wall, witnessed mountains being
broken up into rocks for the wall, and heard in the holy places the
hymns of the pious praying for the construction to be finished. All
this calmed their impatience. The quiet life of home, where they spent
some time, reinvigorated them. The high regard which all those doing
the building enjoyed, the devout humility with which people listened to
their reports, the trust that simple quiet citizens had that the wall
would be completed someday - all this tuned the strings of their
souls. Then, like eternally hopeful children, they took leave of their
home. The enthusiasm for labouring once again at the people's
work became irresistible. They set out from their houses earlier than
necessary, and half the village accompanied them for a long way. On all
the roads there were groups of people, pennants, banners - they
had never seen how great and rich and beautiful and endearing their
country was. Every countryman was a brother for whom they were building
a protective wall and who would thank him with everything he had and
was for all his life. Unity! Unity! Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated
movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the limited
circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning
through the infinite extent of China.
In view of all this, the system of piecemeal building becomes
understandable. But there were still other reasons, too. And there is
nothing strange in the fact that I have held off on this point for so
long. It is the central issue in the whole construction of the wall, no
matter how unimportant it appears at first. If I want to convey the
ideas and experiences of that time and make them intelligible, I cannot
probe deeply enough into this particular question.
First, one must realize that at that time certain achievements were
brought to fruition which rank only slightly behind the Tower of Babel,
although in the pleasure they gave to God, at least by human reckoning,
they made an impression exactly the opposite of that structure. I
mention this because at the time construction was beginning a scholar
wrote a book in which he drew this comparison very precisely. In it he
tried to show that the Tower of Babel had failed to attain its goal not
for the reasons commonly asserted, or at least that the most important
cause was not among these well-known ones. He not only based his proofs
on texts and reports, but also claimed to have carried out personal
inspections of the location and thus to have found that the structure
collapsed and had to collapse because of the weakness of its
foundation. And it is true that in this respect our age was far
superior to that one long ago. Almost every educated person in our age
was a mason by profession and infallible when it came to the business
of laying foundations.
But it was not at all the scholar's aim to prove this. He
claimed that the great wall alone would for the first time in the age
of human beings create a secure foundation for a new Tower of Babel. So
first the wall and then the tower. In those days the book was in
everyone's hands, but I confess that even today I do not
understand exactly how he imagined this tower. How could the wall,
which never once took the form of a circle but only a sort of quarter
or half circle, provide the foundation for a tower? But it could be
meant only in a spiritual sense. But then why the wall, which was still
something real, a product of the efforts and lives of hundreds of
thousands of people? And why were there plans in the
book - admittedly hazy plans - sketching the tower, as well
as detailed proposals about how the energies of the people could be
channelled into powerfully new work.
There was a great deal of mental confusion at the time - his book
is only one example - perhaps simply because so many people were
trying as hard as they could to join together for a single purpose.
Human nature, which is fundamentally careless and by nature like the
whirling dust, endures no restraint. If it restricts itself, it will
soon begin to shake the restraints madly and tear up walls, chains, and
even itself all over the place.
It is possible that even these considerations, which argued against
building the wall in the first place, were not ignored by the
leadership when they decided on piecemeal construction. We - and
here I'm really speaking on behalf of many - actually
first found out about it by spelling out the orders from the highest
levels of management and learned for ourselves that without the
leadership neither our school learning nor our human understanding
would have been adequate for the small position we had within the
enormous totality.
In the office of the leadership - where it was and who sat there
no one I asked knows or knew - in this office I imagine that all
human thoughts and wishes revolve in a circle, and all human aims and
fulfilments in a circle going in the opposite direction. And through
the window the reflection of the divine worlds fell onto the hands of
the leadership as they drew up the plans. And for this reason the
incorruptible observer will reject the notion that if the leadership
had seriously wanted a continuous construction of the wall, they would
not have been able to overcome the difficulties standing in the way. So
the only conclusion left is that the leadership deliberately chose
piecemeal construction. But building in sections was something merely
makeshift and impractical. So the conclusion remains that the
leadership wanted something impractical. An odd conclusion! True
enough, and yet from another perspective it had some inherent
justification.
Nowadays one can perhaps speak about it without danger. At that time
for many people, even the best, there was a secret principle: Try with
all your powers to understand the orders of the leadership, but only up
to a certain limit - then stop thinking about them. A very
reasonable principle, which incidentally found an even wider
interpretation in a later often repeated comparison: Stop further
thinking about it, not because it could harm you - it is not at
all certain that it will harm you. In this matter one cannot speak in
general about harming or not harming. What will happen to you is like a
river in spring. It rises, grows stronger, eats away powerfully at the
land along its shores, and still maintains its own course down into the
sea and is more welcome as a fitter partner for the sea. Reflect upon
the orders of the leadership as far as that. But then the river
overflows its banks, loses its form and shape, slows down its forward
movement, tries, contrary to its destiny, to form small seas inland,
damages the fields, and yet cannot maintain its expansion long, but
runs back within its banks, in fact, even dries up miserably in the hot
time of year which follows. Do not reflect on the orders of the
leadership to that extent.
Now, this comparison may perhaps have been extraordinarily apt during
the construction of the wall, but it has at most only a limited
relevance to my present report. For my investigation is only
historical. There is no lightning strike flashing any more from storm
clouds which have long since vanished, and thus I may seek an
explanation for the piecemeal construction which goes further than the
one people were satisfied with back then. The limits which my ability
to think sets for me are certainly narrow enough, but the region one
would have to pass through here is endless.
Against whom was the great wall to provide protection? Against the
people of the north. I come from south-east China. No northern people
can threaten us there. We read about them in the books of the ancients.
The atrocities which their nature prompts them to commit make us heave
a sigh on our peaceful porches. In the faithfully accurate pictures of
artists we see the faces of this damnation, with their mouths flung
open, the sharp pointed teeth stuck in their jaws, their straining
eyes, which seem to be squinting for someone to seize, whom their jaws
will crush and rip to pieces. When children are naughty, we hold up
these pictures in front of them, and they immediately burst into tears
and run into our arms. But we know nothing else about these northern
lands. We have never seen them, and if we remain in our village, we
never will see them, even if they charge straight at us and hunt us on
their wild horses. The land is so huge, it would not permit them to
reach us, and they would lose themselves in empty air.
So if things are like this, why do we leave our homes, the river and
bridges, our mothers and fathers, our crying wives, our children in
need of education, and go to school in the distant city, with our
thoughts on the wall to the north, even further away? Why? Ask the
leadership. They know us. As they mull over their immense concerns,
they know about us, understand our small worries, see us all sitting
together in our humble huts, and approve or disapprove of the prayer
which the father of the house says in the evening surrounded by his
family. And if I may be permitted such ideas about the leadership, then
I must say that in my view the leadership existed even earlier. It did
not come together like some high mandarins hastily summoned to a
meeting by a beautiful dream of the future, something hastily
concluded, a meeting which saw to it that the general population was
driven from their beds by a knocking on the door so that they could
carry out the decision, even if it was only to set up an lantern in
honour of a god who had shown favour to the masters the day before, so
that he could thrash them in some dark corner the next day, when the
lantern had only just died out. On the contrary, I imagine the
leadership has always existed, along with the decision to construct the
wall as well. Innocent northern people believed they were the cause;
the admirable innocent emperor believed he had given orders for it. We
who were builders of the wall know otherwise and are silent.
Even during the construction of the wall and afterwards, right up to
the present day, I have devoted myself almost exclusively to the
histories of different people. There are certain questions for which
one can, to some extent, get to the heart of the matter only in this
way. Using this method I have found that we Chinese possess certain
popular and state institutions which are uniquely clear and, then
again, others which are uniquely obscure. Tracking down the reasons for
these, especially for the latter phenomena, always appealed to me, and
still does, and the construction of the wall is fundamentally concerned
with these issues.
Now, among our most obscure institutions one can certainly include the
empire itself. Of course, in Peking, right in the court, there is some
clarity about it, although even this is more apparent than real. And
the teachers of constitutional law and history in the schools of higher
learning give out that they are precisely informed about these things
and that they are able to pass this knowledge on to their students. The
deeper one descends into the lower schools, understandably the more the
doubts about the students' own knowledge disappear, and a
superficial education surges up as high as a mountain around a few
precepts drilled into them for centuries, sayings which, in fact, have
lost nothing of their eternal truth, but which remain also eternally
unrecognised in the mist and fog.
But, in my view, it's precisely the empire we should be asking
the people about, because in them the empire has its final support.
It's true that in this matter I can speak once again only about
my own homeland. Other than the agricultural deities and the service to
them, which so beautifully and variously fills up the entire year, our
thinking concerns itself only with the emperor. But not with the
present emperor. We'd rather think about the present one if we
knew who he was or anything definite about him. We were naturally
always trying - and it's the single curiosity which
satisfies us - to find out something or other about him, but, no
matter how strange this sounds, it was hardly possible to learn
anything, either from pilgrims, even though they wandered through much
of our land, or from the close or remote villages, or from boatmen,
although they have travelled not merely on our little waterways but
also on the sacred rivers. True, we heard a great deal, but could
gather nothing from the many details.
Our land is so huge, that no fairy tale can adequately deal with its
size. Heaven hardly covers it all. And Peking is only a point, the
imperial palace only a tiny dot. It's true that, by contrast,
throughout all the different levels of the world the emperor, as
emperor, is great. But the living emperor, a man like us, lies on a
peaceful bed, just as we do. It is, no doubt, of ample proportions, but
it could be merely narrow and short. Like us, he sometime stretches out
his limbs and, if he is very tired, yawns with his delicately
delineated mouth. But how are we to know about that thousands of miles
to the south, where we almost border on the Tibetan highlands? Besides,
any report which came, even if it reached us, would get there much too
late and would be long out of date. Around the emperor the glittering
and yet mysterious court throngs - malice and enmity clothed as
servants and friends, the counterbalance to the imperial power, with
their poisoned arrows always trying to shoot the emperor down from his
side of the balance scales. The empire is immortal, but the individual
emperor falls and collapses. Even entire dynasties finally sink down
and breathe their one last death rattle. The people will never know
anything about these struggles and sufferings. Like those who have come
too late, like strangers to the city, they stand at the end of the
thickly populated side alleyways, quietly living off the provisions
they have brought with them, while far off in the market place right in
the middle foreground the execution of their master is taking place.
There is a legend which expresses this relationship well. The
Emperor - so they say - has sent a message, directly from
his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which
has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He
ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the
message into his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the
herald repeat it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal
message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those
who've come to witness his death - all the obstructing
walls have been broken down and all the great ones of his empire are
standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of
stairs - in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The
messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one
arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he
runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of
the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd
is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open
field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvelous
pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are
all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms
of the innermost palace. He will never he win his way through. And if
he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to
fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing
would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the
courtyards, and after the courtyards the second palace encircling the
first, and, then again, stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a
palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally did burst
through the outermost door - but that can never, never
happen - the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is
still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one
pushes his way through here, certainly not with a message from a dead
man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening
comes.
That's exactly how our people look at the emperor, hopelessly
and full of hope. They don't know which emperor is on the
throne, and there are even doubts about the name of the dynasty. In the
schools they learn a great deal about things like the succession, but
the common uncertainty in this respect is so great that even the best
pupils are drawn into it. In our villages emperors long since dead are
set on the throne, and one of them who still lives on only in songs had
one of his announcements issued a little while ago, which the priest
read out from the altar. Battles from our most ancient history are now
fought for the first time, and with a glowing face your neighbour
charges into your house with the report. The imperial wives, over
indulged on silk cushions, alienated from noble customs by shrewd
courtiers, swollen with thirst for power, driven by greed, excessive in
their lust, are always committing their evil acts over again. The
further back they are in time, the more terrible all their colours
glow, and with a loud cry of grief our village eventually gets to learn
how an empress thousands of years ago drank her husband's blood
in lengthy gulps.
That, then, is how the people deal with the rulers from the past, but
they mix up the present rulers with the dead ones. If once, once in a
person's lifetime an imperial official travelling around the
province comes into our village, sets out some demands or other in the
name of the rulers, checks the tax lists, attends a school class,
interrogates the priest about our comings and goings, and then, before
climbing into his sedan chair, summarizes everything in a long sermon
to the assembled local population, at that point a smile crosses every
face, one man looks furtively at another and bends over his children,
so as not to let the official see him. How, people think, can he speak
of a dead man as if he were alive. This emperor already died a long
time ago, the dynasty has been extinguished, the official is having fun
with us. But we'll act as if we didn't notice, so that
we don't hurt his feelings. However, in all seriousness
we'll obey only our present ruler, for anything else would be a
sin. And behind the official's sedan chair as it hurries away
there arises from the already decomposed urn someone or other
arbitrarily endorsed as ruler of the village.
Similarly, with us people are, as a rule, little affected by political
revolutions and contemporary wars. Here I recall an incident from my
youth. In a neighbouring but still very far distant province a
rebellion broke out. I cannot remember the causes any more. Besides,
they are not important here. In that province reasons for rebellion
arise every new day - they are an excitable people. Well, on one
occasion a rebel pamphlet was brought to my father's house by a
beggar who had travelled through that province. It happened to be a
holiday. Our living room was full of guests. The priest sat in their
midst and studied the pamphlet. Suddenly everyone started laughing, the
sheet was torn to pieces in the general confusion, and the beggar was
chased out of the room with blows, although he had already been richly
rewarded. Everyone scattered and ran out into the beautiful day. Why?
The dialect of the neighbouring province is essentially different from
ours, and these differences manifest themselves also in certain forms
of the written language, which for us have an antiquated character.
Well, the priest had scarcely read two pages like that, and people had
already decided. Old matters heard long ago, and long since got over.
And although - as I recall from my memory - a horrifying
way of life seemed to speak irrefutably through the beggar, people
laughed and shook their head and were unwilling to hear any more.
That's how ready people are among us to obliterate the present.
If one wanted to conclude from such phenomena that we basically have no
emperor at all, one would not be far from the truth. I need to say it
again and again: There is perhaps no people more faithful to the
emperor than we are in the south, but the emperor derives no benefits
from our loyalty. It's true that on the way out of our village
there stands on a little pillar the sacred dragon, which, for as long
as men can remember, has paid tribute by blowing its fiery breath
straight in the direction of Peking. But for the people in the village
Peking itself is much stranger than living in the next world. Could
there really be a village where houses stand right beside each other
covering the fields and reaching further than the view from our hills,
with men standing shoulder to shoulder between these houses day and
night? Rather than imagining such a city, it's easier for us to
believe that Peking and its emperor are one, something like a cloud,
peacefully moving along under the sun as the ages pass.
Now, the consequence of such opinions is a life which is to some extent
free and uncontrolled. Not in any way immoral - purity of morals
like those in my homeland I have hardly ever come across in my travels.
But nonetheless a life that stands under no present laws and only pays
attention to the wisdom and advice which reach across to us from
ancient times.
I guard again generalizations and do not claim that things like this go
on in all ten thousand villages of our province or, indeed, in all five
hundred provinces of China. But on the basis of the many writings which
I have read concerning this subject, as well as on the basis of my many
observations, especially since the construction of the wall with its
human material provided an opportunity for a man of feeling to travel
through the souls of almost all the provinces - on the basis of
all this perhaps I may truly state that with respect to the emperor the
prevailing idea again and again reveals a certain universal essential
feature common to the conception in my homeland. Now, I have no desire
at all to let this conception stand as a virtue - quite the
contrary. It's true that in the main things the blame rests
with the government, which in the oldest empire on earth right up to
the present day has not been able or has, among other things, neglected
to cultivate the institution of empire sufficiently clearly so that it
is immediately and ceaselessly effective right up to the most remote
frontiers of the empire. On the other hand, however, there is in this
also a weakness in the people's power of imagining or
believing, which has not succeeded in pulling the empire out of its
deep contemplative state in Peking and making it something fully vital
and present in the hearts of subjects, who nonetheless want nothing
better than to feel its touch once and then die from the experience.
So this conception is really not a virtue. It's all the more
striking that this very weakness appears to be one of the most
important ways of unifying our people. Indeed, if one may go so far as
to use the expression, it is the very ground itself on which we live.
To provide a detailed account of why we have a flaw here would amount
not just to rattling our consciences but, what is much more serious, to
making our feet tremble. And therefore I do not wish to go any further
in the investigation of these questions at the present time.
