Howard French has a piece on a new book, Wolf Totem, that has taken China by storm and will soon be in an English-print bookstore near you (and maybe even a movie theater).  I have not read the book and am going here just on French’s brief description, but he raises an issue that is certainly germane to The Useless Tree.

    The novel centers on the experience of a Han Chinese man’s life in Mongolia. It seems to celebrate the "wolf culture" (wolves have certain symbolic and totemic significance in Mongolian culture) of freedom and energy and daring of Mongolia.  The anonymous writer (a political scientist!! at Beijing University) spent time in Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution and came to respect the local society.  He is favorably comparing the dynamic nomadic culture of that grassland nation to the more staid and settled traditional Chinese practices.  The book, according to French, is:

…a stirring allegorical critique of Chinese civilization, which he [the author] calls soft and lacking in individuality and freedom.

    I can’t help wondering if some part of this comparison is shaped by the contemporary changes sweeping across China, where a certain dynamism is displacing more cautious traditions.  Perhaps the author is wondering why this could not have happened earlier, especially in China’s confrontation with Western imperialism.  Why couldn’t Chinese be more like Mongolians earlier? 

     That’s an interesting question.  But I want to pick up on the trope of Chinese culture as "soft."  While the author sees this as a deep historical weakness, there are ways that it can be understood as a strength.

     The first, and most obvious, point is to ask: what happened to the Mongolians?  At a certain time in history their energy and dynamism was an incredibly powerful force, carrying them far and wide across Eurasia.  But when they invaded China proper and took up rule there, what happened?  The "soft" and pliable Chinese culture absorbed them.  Or, to put it a bit more politically, the minority Mongols realized that in order to rule over so many Chinese they had to take on and reproduce Chinese cultural practices.  Same thing happened, roughly, to the Manchurians.  And, of course, if we fast forward into the 19th and 20th centuries, we notice that Mongolian cultural power and political influence had withered to a shadow of its former presence.  Indeed, "Outer Mongolia" used to be an American-English term for extreme cultural and political remoteness.

    Perhaps wolf freedom and energy burns out after a while.

    And this leads to a larger second point.  The Tao Te Ching tells us that, in general terms, soft and pliable will always beat out hard and rigid.  Now, maybe I being unfair in inferring that if the author is saying China is "soft" then Mongolia can be understood as "hard".  But that is the implicit dichotomy set up in French’s telling.  And, to the extent that that is accurate, then let’s remember this passage from the Tao Te Ching:

People are soft and weak in life,
hard and strong in death.
The ten thousand plants and trees are soft and frail in life,
withered and brittle in death.

Things hard and strong follow death’s ways
and things soft and weak follow life’s:

so it is that strong armies never overcome
and strong trees always suffer the axe.

Things great and strong dwell below.
Things soft and weak dwell above. (76)    

    I’ll take soft and weak every time…