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ONE

西

WEST

The Elderflowers

– What will you do with them?

– The elders? I will head them and boil them up.

I didn’t know your name when we first met. No one introduced us. The only thing I remember is that you were picking roadside elderflowers.

We were in a park, Clapton Pond in north-east London. Some friends had arranged a picnic to celebrate a warm spring. But on that day, it was neither sunny nor warm. The clouds above London were making fun of us, with their fluffy cotton faces. The daffodils had faded, but the bluebells had just begun to bloom. Their clustered buds were nodding in the wind. Everyone was talking. And I was watching. Words didn’t come so naturally to my mouth. The English manner was something I found difficult to follow then. You were the only man who was not involved in any of the conversations. You walked away from us, and disappeared behind some shrubs by the roadside. I could see you were plucking milky-coloured plants by the edge of the park. When you came back, I saw that you were carrying a bunch of elderflowers. You glanced at me, with a look I could not quite read. Your eyes were blue green, and they didn’t dart about but were steady. I was not used to seeing a man holding wild flowers on an occasion like this. I thought there was perhaps something socially peculiar about you, or at least a little eccentric. Still, you had an air of normality. I noticed your blue denim jacket, and your muddy boots.

‘What will you do with them?’ I asked, pointing at the flowers.

‘The elders?’ you answered. ‘I will head them and boil them up.’

You remained in my memory as the elderflower picker. Even though I later learned that men (especially European men) do pick wild flowers sometimes. But that day in the park was only a few months after I came to Britain, and I had never seen a man do that with such concentration in public.

You were the elderflower picker. And that is how I still picture you, after all these years.

Vote Leave

– It says Vote Leave, but leave what?

– Oh, leave the EU! You know, the European Union.

I came to Britain in December 2015, six months before the Referendum. I had no idea there would be a referendum. I vaguely knew this word in a Chinese context. But in China we never had such an experience. I had never voted, because we were never asked to vote. Besides, we were told only countries like Switzerland or Iceland might be able to conduct a national referendum because of their tiny populations. Leaving aside politics, I had too many unanswered questions for myself when I came to England. After my MA in sociology and film-making in Beijing, I didn’t want to work in an office, nor did I want to stick around in China. I read a biography of the American anthropologist Margaret Mead, and decided to study visual anthropology in the West. I wanted to be a woman in the world, or really, a woman of the world – I wanted to equip myself with an intellectual mind so that I could enter a foreign land and not be lost in it. I would have a stance or mission, a way of navigating as an outsider. So I applied for PhD scholarships, and finally King’s College London accepted me.

So here I was. I had arrived in the deep winter. It was cold, and mostly grey.

I had booked a small Airbnb in south London for the first few weeks, and thought I would be able to walk to King’s College since it was close to the South Bank. I laughed myself to tears when I found out the distance was so great. It was almost impossible to walk in this city. There were hardly any straight avenues or boulevards one could orient oneself with, and the pavements were an uncomfortable public space to walk on. Once I almost tripped over what I took to be a pile of laundry, before I saw it was an occupied sleeping bag, a homeless person. Making my way through the dense city was like walking a tightrope strung across a raging torrent of traffic. It was so overwhelming that I chose to use the bus instead and perch myself by the window to view the world.

Two and a half months had passed, and I moved to accommodation in east London. One morning, I was on a bus on my way to see my supervisor. I saw a poster with the word Brexit. I didn’t know what it meant. I hadn’t read any English newspapers since I arrived. I checked the word in my pocket Chinese–English dictionary. Oddly, it was not there. The traffic was bad. We were stuck in streets which were lined with other buses. Right beside us, a red bus stopped. There were no passengers on it. A slogan on the side read:

We send the EU £350 million a week

let’s fund our NHS instead

Vote Leave

I studied it for a while, and with my adopted anthropological spirit I wrote it down and photographed it. I pondered on the slogan. I had heard of the NHS – something to do with everyone getting free medical care in Britain.

While I was scratching my head, I heard someone behind me say:

‘Look, there’s one of those stupid Brexit Buses again!’

‘Oh no!’ his friend responded, turning to look. ‘Will anyone believe this bullshit?’

I thought this could be my opportunity to interview a few natives. So I stoked up my courage, and asked in my most polite way:

‘Excuse me, what is a Brexit Bus?’

‘Sorry?’

The native informant stared at me, blankly. His friend laughed. I tried to hide my embarrassment. Clearly my question was stupid in some way. Nevertheless, I kept trying.

‘Sorry, I just arrived recently. I’m new here.’

The native didn’t bother to answer. He just shrugged dismissively.

But I was calm and cool, and didn’t give up. ‘It says Vote Leave, but leave what?’

‘Oh, leave the EU! You know, the European Union,’ he finally answered.

Oh, the European Union. For us Chinese, the European Union seemed grand. And in fact, deep down, we always wanted to be part of something like that. But apparently, some people here didn’t want to be in it. Before I could continue my interview, we heard an announcement: ‘This bus is on diversion. The next stop will be London Wall.’

I thought, London Wall? I knew of the Berlin Wall, but I had never heard of a London Wall. Was it also a Communist wall but between East and West London? With some curiosity, I got off the bus, and stood in a place called London Wall, but only found myself under a bleak-looking bridge with traffic lights in all directions. The Brexit Bus by then was gone too. Now I had to walk, but in which way?

Family History

– What’s your family history?

– Why do you want to know?

In the beginning I was very lonely.

I thought it was obvious I would be lonely. I had just come to Europe. But I asked myself: had I always felt lonely even when I was in China? Even when my parents were around? Yes, I had. Maybe because I was an only child. Or maybe because the burden of study had killed any other kind of life. But here it was different. Here it was the feeling of desolation. Evenings were difficult to pass. English nights were long, and they didn’t belong to the non-pub-going people. Nor did they belong to foreigners, especially those friendless and familyless foreigners. What were we supposed to do at night in our rented rooms, if we didn’t drink or watch sports?

There was an area by the canal I often passed on foot. It was a little green patch next to De Beauvoir Town, by a lock-keeper’s cottage. I didn’t know how many lock-keepers’ cottages were in use by Regent’s Canal. And I never managed to walk all the way along the canal. I was afraid to walk through the grim part of it. I didn’t trust it. But around this cottage I had a certain feeling of homecoming. So I went back there one evening, with my bag full of library books and a packet of biscuits.

The cottage was minute, as if it were built for dwarfs. There was neither a lock-keeper nor anyone else living in it. It was always locked. There were some dead sunflowers by the wall. I sat on a tree stump next to a wild nasturtium bush, and my eyes fixed on the rusty water. It was not that I could see the nasturtiums but I could smell them. We used to eat their peppery leaves as well as their sour-tasting flowers in my home town. My mother would pick them. So with that peppery smell in the air I knew what plant I was sitting next to.

A small waterfall was rushing down from the upper level of the canal. The sound was loud, but peaceful. In the near distance, the lights were on in one of the boats. A warm glow in the grey green. It was a mournful place. I never thought it was beautiful. For me, the idea of a beautiful scene was associated with a typical Chinese landscape – bamboo and water lilies by a temple, or a wild mountain. Never this kind of industrial landscape. But this lock-keeper’s cottage and ­quietly flowing water soothed me somehow, made me feel less alien in this city.

As I was sitting there, staring at the water, my mind began to wonder. Should I just give up and fly back on the next plane? My parents were recently dead, so they could no longer say anything about it. Maybe my aunt would be surprised to see me return. But she had no say in my future life. You feeling lonely? It’s too hard? Too cold? Were these real problems? Everyone in China would ask. For them, these were perhaps happy problems, since everyone in China was either dying of cancer or suffering from some traumatic family history. And their children would bear the weight of that wherever they went, even abroad.

I thought of the week before when I had first met my GP. I registered myself at the clinic and the GP asked me:

‘What’s your family history?’

I didn’t understand why she had asked this. Because in China, the question of family history means whether you were born in a family whose status was either peasant or city dweller, and whether they were Communist Party members or not. These details were recorded officially throughout your life. And I didn’t expect I would have to carry all this old baggage to England.

‘Why do you want to know?’ I didn’t hide my irritation.

The GP was taken aback. She glared at me, then after a few awkward moments, she explained:

‘Your family history is about whether your mother or your father had cancer, heart disease or rheumatism, or . . .’

I then understood what she was asking. I just nodded my head.

But the doctor was confused. ‘So . . . what conditions, then?’

‘Everything.’ I nodded again. ‘Everything you just said.’

‘Everything?’ she asked back, like I was a person with a low IQ.

‘Yes, everything!’ I raised my voice: ‘Cancer, heart disease and rheumatism!’

A Desirable Immigrant

– You are now a desirable immigrant, as they say!

– Ha, a desirable immigrant! Since when did I become an immigrant?

The second time we met was a few days after that strange event – the Referendum. Clearly things were happening in this country, but I did not understand what they were. I remember walking around my neighbourhood the next day and seeing the looks on people’s faces. Some looked tired and despondent and others a bit wild. This all added to my feelings of disorientation and confusion.

One day, an Englishwoman who worked in the university library mentioned in passing that I could join her for a weekend gathering. The pub was near where I lived. I said I would definitely come.

‘What’s the exact address in Hackney Down?’ I asked her.

‘Hackney Downs,’ she corrected me.

At that time I didn’t know Downs was a proper word, a meaningful word.

‘It’s a pub called People’s Tavern – we’ll meet there at five.’

When I got there that day, I saw the sign Hackney Downs by the park. I wondered about that word. Downs, not Down. Plural. Then I found you in the pub. I was surprised. Your curly hair, straw-coloured, was a little shorter than the first time I met you. Your eyes, the same blue green I remembered.

You recognised me too. I thought you were directing a slight smile towards me, but I could have been imagining it.

It was a book-club meeting. They say book clubs are for lonely people, or middle-aged women. I was definitely lonely, but neither of us was middle-aged. You were the only man in the group. Most women there were new mothers of small children. I didn’t feel I could blend in. I didn’t like the idea of having children, or marriage.

One of them was very pregnant and stated: ‘I will probably never have time to read a book in the next few years.’ She hugged her swollen belly.

Everyone had a copy of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. But no one was eager to discuss it. Everyone was talking about Brexit. And I was beginning to understand what the word meant. Or at least some of the politics behind it. But the emotion remained alien to me.

A ginger-haired woman spoke: ‘My daughter will grow up in a Brexit world, a non-European world as a European child. Can you believe it?’ She looked distressed.

Another responded: ‘Well, you have an Italian passport and an apartment in Rome, and they won’t take these things away. You are now a desirable immigrant, as they say!’

‘Ha, a desirable immigrant! Since when did I become an immigrant?’

‘We are all foreigners here. No one is aboriginal!’ The pregnant woman made another statement.

A desirable immigrant. I repeated this to myself. If I stayed, would I be one of the desirable immigrants? I wondered.

You didn’t say much. The conversation was infused with a certain anger and intensity. It was interesting to watch, but difficult to follow. Then the group began to talk about housing and the property market. The Golden Notebook was left on the floor. Literature gave way to real estate. Everyone had so much to say about property, except for you and me. Were we connected by our mutual disconnection from these women?

Engländerin

– So where are you from? I can’t tell if you have an accent.

– I grew up in Australia. Aber meine Mutter ist eine Engländerin, originally.

Then I called you. Because you hadn’t called me. Not even once.

‘I’m away this weekend, in Hanover,’ you explained on the phone. ‘But we can meet next week.’

Hang Over? I was puzzled. Was it a place? A hotel, or a famous bar?

But I dared not expose my ignorance. Instead, I asked: ‘When are you coming back from Hang Over?’

‘Oh, look, I don’t drink that much. But I’ll be back on Tuesday.’

Although your voice had a laughing quality, it had a calm and sober centre. I imagined you speaking on the phone from somewhere else in the city. But I could not picture what that place might look like.

‘We can meet on Wednesday then. There is a Chinese restaurant in Old Street. How about we meet there for lunch?’

‘Wednesday is a bit tight for me. But I can try,’ you said. ‘Hope the food isn’t too spicy.’

I paused for a second, and thought you must be one of those hypersensitive northern Europeans who couldn’t eat anything hot. You might even be a vegan, who eats tasteless food. No salt in your meals either, because of high blood pressure. I would find out.

So we arranged a time to meet. You suggested a very particular time – 12.45 – and you had to leave at 13.50 or just before 14.00. This sounded awful to me. Too precise. It was like going to see a dentist. It is true that you Westerners are not able to be spontaneous in your day-to-day lives, and you are from a supposed free country.

Wednesday arrived. You came into the restaurant wearing a battered leather jacket. Obviously you had not shaved. When we sat down at the table, you didn’t appear to like what was on the menu: spicy cow’s stomach, pickled duck tongue, ants on noodle trees, and so on.

‘My grandmother used to make stews from pig guts and liver.’ You stared at a colourful picture of fried stomach, slightly amused. ‘I used to stuff myself with it when I was a kid. It was so chewy and tasty and I thought it was just meat. Then one day, when I was about nine or ten, I found out what those long tubes were. I never went near it again!’

‘I know. Westerners think Chinese are inhuman. We kill anything just for eating. And we stir-fry anything alive.’

You didn’t comment on this. Perhaps out of politeness?

‘So, are you a vegetarian?’

You nodded. ‘More or less.’

I began to worry. Perhaps there was nothing for you to eat in this restaurant. Plain rice with soy sauce? Were you also a gluten-free person?

A Chinese waitress stood by our table. She had the face of a terracotta soldier. Speaking Mandarin, I ordered some vegetables. She responded in Cantonese. You made a few interjections in English. When she left, I continued:

‘Are you English?’ For me, this fact needed to be confirmed, so I knew to whom I was talking.

‘No way – I’m no Pom.’ You laughed. ‘That’s what we used to say in Australia.’

I was puzzled. My monocultured Chinese education was manifesting itself again. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Look, basically I’m an Anglo-Saxon, a Wasp.’

‘Wasp?’ Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘A fly with yellow-and-black stripes, going around stinging people?’

‘I don’t sting people, but I do wear striped shirts.’ You choked a little on your hot green tea, then explained: ‘A Wasp is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You might have heard of it?’

‘Hmm, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.’ All these words sounded alien to me, apart from white. ‘You know, every day I hear some new English words. I hear them but I don’t register them. As if I was half deaf.’

You raised your eyebrows slightly. ‘I know what you mean. I’m not from Britain either.’

‘So where are you from? I can’t tell if you have an accent.’

‘I grew up in Australia, on the east coast. When I was eighteen, we moved to Germany. To cut a long story short, one morning my father woke up and announced that he wanted to go back to Germany.’ Then you put on a German accent: ‘I can do a German accent if I want to. Aber meine Mutter ist eine Engländerin, originally. That’s me summed up.’

Mutter. Mother, I guessed. The rest remained opaque. I could see that Australia, Germany and England all had something to do with what you were. There was something mysteriously attractive about it.

And then this strange place you visited called Hang Over. It wasn’t until a year later that I understood which city you meant. In China, we call it Hannuowei, a wealthy German city that produced the Scorpions, a band I had listened to when I was at university.

Morning Dew

– How swiftly it dries, the dew on the garlic-leaf.

The dew that dries so fast.

Tomorrow it will come again.

But he whom we carry to the grave will never return.

Near Haggerston station by the canal, there were two housing estates: De Beauvoir Town and Orwell Estate. They were massive, connected with long corridors and narrow green spaces, and shared the same architectural style. As I sat by the water, De Beauvoir Town was quiet right behind me. Even with multitudes of families living in these council homes, the estate felt strangely serene in the early morning. As did the canal before me. No wind. No human noise. Maybe because it was Sunday. It had rained yesterday. Today London was blue. Morning dew on the sunflowers by the lock-keeper’s cottage glistened. The canal water was yellow green, but clean and clear. I thought about being alone here in England. I thought of China, and my parents. I recalled a strange conversation I had with my mother. It was at my father’s graveyard. The thought of how he had lived during his last few weeks made my throat turn to stone.

It was not the Tomb Sweeping season, and we had had my father’s burial a few months before. But we were there because I had just received the scholarship to go to Britain, and I had some time to prepare for my departure. I was leaving for good, for a future in the West. There we were, in a large cemetery under a hill with a quarry, on the outskirts of my home town. It was a new cemetery, immense and already crowded. The iron gates were wide enough for four cars to drive through at the same time. We lived in a very populated town, more so than other parts of China. The local government had to cope with the large numbers of the living, but also large numbers of the deceased.

A few months before my father died, my mother had purchased a plot in the cemetery for him. It was only at the burial (not a real burial with a coffin, as the government had banned the practice years ago, but one with an urn) that I discovered that the tomb was so small. It was no more than one square metre. ‘It’s so expensive, I had to pay the deposit as early as I could.’ My mother had told me this in the hospital corridor, even before the doctor announced there was no cure for his cancer. My father didn’t know this, of course. None of us would tell him that there was an expensive burial pit waiting for him outside the town.

It was during this second visit to my father’s tomb with my mother that I discovered there was a new gravestone erected right next to my father’s. The two stones were side by side. The new one had the same style of engraving. My father’s headstone had his name and dates of birth and death. That was to be expected. But the writing on the new stone next to his was my mother’s name and her birthday. And then a blank space, waiting to be filled. I stood there, astonished, then turned to ask her:

‘Why is your gravestone here?’

‘Are you stupid?’ my mother answered dismissively. She was impatient, as always. She kicked away a little moss-covered rock under her feet, and said: ‘You don’t know how much they have raised the rent for grave plots, do you? For my spot, I had to pay double what your father’s cost! Not to mention the money for the mason! He charged five hundred yuan for that! What a robber! He knows it’s a one-off deal!’

She pointed to the space on her headstone, where the death date remained uncarved.

‘You will help to add that, won’t you?!’

She groaned and brought up a glob of mucus from her throat. She spat it out on the grass beside her shoes. With a clear voice, she added:

‘Don’t get those thieves to do the job! They don’t deserve a penny more.’

I was speechless. My mother had always been a blunt and coarse peasant woman, and I was used to her manners. But I had never imagined that I would have to add the date of her death to her gravestone, with my own hands. Was I meant to carve it with a chisel or screwdriver? It didn’t seem real.

Towards the end of this visit, there were almost no words left between us. My mother seemed to have closed herself off in her thoughts. Was she anticipating her own death? In those silent moments, I could not foresee or even have envisaged that my mother would die only a few months later. I knew she had a weak heart, but she was not old, and I didn’t expect anything would happen so soon. Out of the blue, she was taken to hospital, after being found unconscious on the ground in our local market. She died of heart failure before I got there. Suddenly, within months, I was an orphan, a grown-up orphan. And all this happened just before I left China. Were these events signs of my future, condemned to be alone, whether in my native country or abroad?

Before I flew to England, I visited the cemetery one more time. Now my aunt stood beside me, looking at the two gravestones. The date on my mother’s remained uncarved. New grass had grown beside my father’s. A few daisies. There was still dew on the leaves, shimmering with sunlight. Soon it would evaporate in the midday sun just as we sang that old burial song:

How swiftly it dries, the dew on the garlic-leaf.

The dew that dries so fast.

Tomorrow it will come again.

But he whom we carry to the grave will never return.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

– As Tears for Fears sang: ‘Everybody wants to rule the world.’

– Who are these tears?

Although I had been in Britain for a few months, I still could not say whether I liked or disliked English people. Somehow, I had not got to know them. I could not read their emotions. Some made me feel uneasy, like my professor Grant Stanley. I feared his cleverness would expose my hidden stupidity. Something about his way of speaking suggested to me that in his universe I was a secondary citizen. Maybe also because I felt that my Western life depended on him, at least my PhD project. Once I bought a large chocolate bar for him before our meeting, as I noticed there was always a piece of chocolate lying around his desk. But when I got to his office, the bar in my pocket was already melting. I didn’t offer it to him. In Chinese we say ‘pat the horse’s arse’ to mean that you always offer a little bribe in a relationship. And since the melted chocolate incident, our professional relationship had not been so good, as if he knew.

Grant had some doubts about my project. ‘Project’ was an English word I found impossible to grasp. A vague and abstract concept. Nevertheless, my project, according to the academic film anthropology style, was a documentary about a village and its inhabitants in southern China. I had been reading about the village – Jing Cun in Guangdong Province. There were two thousand uneducated workers and peasants living there. But somehow in the last few decades, just about every villager had transformed himself into a painting copyist. They could now reproduce Monet, Chagall and da Vinci at the drop of a hat. I know it’s a cliché that almost every Chinese person is a good copyist. But this was still fascinating to me. I could not even draw a proper arm or leg, or paint a tree. Let alone some Western religious figure.

In the corridor I saw my supervisor rushing in my direction. He greeted me and opened his office door, with a mocking exaggeration in his gesture.

‘The admin people want to eat me alive! They have left me no time to see my students!’ Grant pointed to a chair for me. ‘Did you read the news this morning about President Xi Jinping’s new reforms? He really is trying to be the new Mao!’

‘Well. Every leader is an emperor in China, for sure.’

‘Yes, as Tears for Fears sang: “Everybody wants to rule the world.”’

‘Who are these tears?’ I asked hesitantly. Once again I felt like a fish swimming in a new part of the ocean, unable to recognise the seaweed.

Grant started to hum in a tuneless way, but stopped abruptly. ‘Okay, let’s get going, no time to lose. Tell me where you are.’

‘I’ve been collecting materials, and made contact with the village. I think I should go there for the actual research and do some filming.’

‘That’s good to know. Fieldwork is the primary thing in our area.’ He then looked at me over his glasses, and added: ‘I need to discuss one thing with you before you go further.’

My heart tightened a bit.

‘As your supervisor I have an ethical and moral duty to monitor your film-making activities and to ensure that there are no legal complications arising from your filming. It’s part of being an anthropologist. So I have some forms for you to fill in. Your secondary supervisor has to sign as well as the head of department.’

He tapped his keyboard and began to print out something.

‘What kind of ethical and moral duty?’ I asked defensively. ‘I thought our purpose was to make a good film with narrative strength and research value.’ I remembered that this was the phrase he used the other day. ‘My film will be quite straightforward. It’s just about people in a small village making reproductions of Western art, which they then sell back to the West. What’s the issue?’

Grant looked at me with his knitted brow. His hair was a mess, his clothes dishevelled. I wondered if his wife had left him recently.

I stared back at Grant, and didn’t feel like talking any more. What did he know about China and Chinese manual workers? Ethical and moral duties? Did he mean that I should get consent forms? Even though Chinese villagers would not give a damn about this sort of formality?

Grant stood up and handed me a dozen printed pages.

‘Just fill this in later,’ he said, with a slightly impatient tone.

I was about to leave, when Grant suddenly thought of something. He raised his right hand, a Lenin-style gesture, directing me to sit down again.

Authorship

– But authorship is always an issue.

– Didn’t Roland Barthes announce the author is dead?

Grant settled back in his chair, and picked up one of the small figurines from his shelf. It was a dancing tribal woman and he twiddled her in his fingers. He appeared to be reflecting on something we had just discussed. He was breathing in and out heavily. This was usually a sign that he wanted to embark on a more theoretical course of conversation.

‘So, I’m curious, you say these workers are originally farmers without any artistic training. How did they learn to draw and to paint? I mean, what is their craftsmanship based on? If a worker makes a hand copy of a Leonardo da Vinci painting, he would need to understand perspective, anatomy, glazing, chiaroscuro and so on.’ Grant was on a roll. ‘So do they learn simply from copying? But how exactly? Do they learn the skills from their foreman?’

My professor liked to ask questions, but didn’t seem to need my answers. He went on:

‘You say they are self-taught. Do they have any idea that they have been forging classical artworks and making a profit out of it?’

‘No. It is not forging!’ I almost laughed. ‘These artisans never claim that they are selling the original paintings. They sell reproductions. There is a huge market in the world for them – in hotels, restaurants, people’s homes.’

I turned my head, looking around Grant’s office. There were no reproductions hanging on his walls here. But I spotted a small postcard of Hockney’s A Bigger Splash lying by his computer. I pointed to the postcard.

‘For example, that is a reproduction, not a forged copy.’

‘Yes, I understand. But authorship is always an issue,’ Grant claimed.

‘Didn’t Roland Barthes announce the author is dead? So what the Chinese artisans are enacting is a postmodern phenomenon. They interpret Western paintings with their own eyes and hands.’

‘Even if Barthes is right, that does not affect issues of intellectual property rights.’

‘Exactly, property rights! What a bourgeois concept!’ I found myself speaking like a little Red Guard from Mao’s time.

Grant stared at me, with a look of irritation, and said in a slightly clipped tone:

‘Okay, it looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree.’

I didn’t reply. Because I didn’t understand what he meant by we’ll have to agree to disagree.

A Landscape Architect

– But aren’t landscape and architecture opposite concepts?

– No. That’s like saying love and marriage are opposite concepts.

The hay fever season continued into the early summer. Everyone in England seemed to be red-eyed and sneezing. It was as if the whole nation was weeping out of some collective grief. The book club met again for the second and last time on a Saturday afternoon. No one wanted to talk about the book we were supposed to discuss this time either. Instead the topic of conversation was the new prime minister, who had come to power after the referendum. I listened with some interest but had nothing to contribute. And I noticed you holding the book but not engaging in the conversation. You were unshaven, but pleasing to the eye.

I turned to you. ‘I never asked what you do for your work.’

‘I’m a landscape architect.’

Oh. I thought for a moment. This was a new concept for me. I had not met a proper landscape architect before, but plenty of humble gardeners and builders in China. Then, uncertain, I said:

‘But aren’t landscape and architecture opposite concepts?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Architecture is invented by people who want to change the landscape. But landscape doesn’t need architects.’

‘No.’ Your blue-green eyes locked on to me. ‘That’s like saying love and marriage are opposite concepts.’

Ah. But aren’t love and marriage opposite concepts? I wondered. Only fools would get married. Maybe you were a fool, I would find out.

‘So tell me, what does a landscape architect do?’ I asked.

‘Like a gardener, we design outdoor spaces, like community gardens, public parks, children’s playgrounds, with details such as where the cars park and where to locate flower beds.’

The women from the reading group were leaving. We stood up, hugging them goodbye. Now only you and I were left on the sofa. You asked:

‘So what will you do after finishing your PhD?’

What a question. The British only granted me a three-year visa. And then what? Would I find a job here? Or could I go back to China, with my non-practical qualifications? Should I talk to you about this? I wondered. We didn’t know much about each other yet. And, perhaps, you might think I was just like all those Chinese who come here purely with practical aims. Few of them show any imaginative life during their time overseas. That’s how Chinese people appear to Western people – in America, in Britain, in Italy, in Spain. Everywhere in the world. Young Chinese students study hard, while old Chinese people work hard. Faceless and voiceless. Should I talk to you about this? Was this a pressing matter for me? The truth was, I had no one to talk to in this country. This was not my country. I knew very few people here.

In the pub, as I was about to reply, a football match started on a giant TV screen above us. Liverpool versus Arsenal? I had thought arsenal was a weapon factory, I didn’t know it was a football place too. The noise level became unbearable. I stared at the screen, and thought I could never become an English person. Let alone an English football fan.

爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū

– In Chinese we say, 爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū. Which means if you love your mansion you’ll love the magpie too.

– Why? What’s the connection between mansion and magpie?

– In Chinese ‘mansion’ and ‘magpie’ have the same ­pronounciation – wū.

A room with a view was not my first concern. But a warm bedroom upstairs (no matter how small) with a south-facing window was my basic need in England. After a desperate period of searching, I found a top-floor flat on Richmond Road with two bedrooms. One of the flatmates had decided to go back to Spain. Apparently he was not keen to live in Brexit Britain. The rent was reasonable. I decided I would take it. The other flatmate was a post-doc student, from Italy. She didn’t mind the situation in the UK. ‘Naples is worse, so I can’t complain!’ Besides, she was writing a thesis on Swinging Sixties. ‘Thank God I got myself out from Naples. I love London. A great city,’ she said, while cooking some ravioli in the kitchen.

There was only one bookshelf in the living room. Our books were mixed together. After a few nights, I discovered that she only took my books to read at bedtime, and I, too, took her books to read at night. We both discovered our perfect books to fall asleep with.

Since meeting you, I had bought two books about Germany. One was a history book about Berlin. Another one was The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. I was told at university that the magic mountain was a Swiss mountain and not a German one. But it would do for now. I placed the novel on my bedside table, not in the living room. I thought of buying an Australian novel too, perhaps Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. But maybe I should ask you first.

While I was on the sofa leafing through the Berlin book, my flatmate asked:

‘Are you going to Berlin soon?’

‘No. But I met a German, actually a half German,’ I explained. ‘That’s why.’

She giggled, and asked: ‘And the other half is?’

‘Australian,’ I answered. ‘I know. Opposing characters, like yin and yang.’

‘Ha, so you prefer reading books about Germany than Australia?’

Perhaps, I thought. But what do I know about either of these cultures?

‘In Chinese we say, 爱屋及乌 – ài wū jí wū. Which means if you love your mansion you’ll love the magpie too.’

‘Why? What’s the connection between mansion and magpie?’

‘In Chinese “mansion” and “magpie” have the same pronounciation – wū.’

She looked at me, as if I had grown three heads. Then she yawned and walked away, carrying her Swinging Sixties book.

On my bed later that evening, in my pyjamas, I looked at Internet images of those ice-age lakes in and around Berlin, and their strange German names: Schlachtensee, Wannsee, Müggelsee, Plötzensee. So they call their lake see (sea). And they call their sea meer. Curiously non-English, I thought. This was of course obvious. German is different from English. But still, I realised, I was encountering a third language. This was very different from learning English, because English was always in the atmosphere like pollen from the plants permeating the air, whereas German was like a specific mountain in the landscape which you had to have a particular ambition to climb.

Der Mond – Moon

– Why is moon masculine in German?

– There is nothing objective about how you feel about stars or planets. It’s all literature.

The next time I met you, I asked many questions about your German-ness. Or rather, I interrogated you and even accused you of being Germanic. I found German culture confusing.

‘So you are half German. Can I ask you a question? In every culture, moon is feminine. In Chinese too. Why is moon masculine in German? Do you really see the moon as a male character?’

We were in a Turkish cafe near Dalston. Everyone around us was eating brown mushy chickpeas. People in east London seemed to eat a lot of chickpeas.

‘Why is moon masculine in German?’ You repeated my question.

As if you sensed this was not a simple linguistic question. You thought about it for a few seconds. Then you answered:

‘Well, der Mond. In some old languages like Sanskrit, the moon is masculine and the sun feminine. I remember learning in school about some pre-Babylonian Sumerian languages, and the word for moon is explicitly masculine, as it is in Arabic, in which the word for sun is feminine.’

It was like you were giving me a lecture, presenting the findings of some research you had carried out on historical linguistic study.

‘I thought you were a landscape architect. But you sound like a linguist. You know a lot about language!’

‘A landscape architect knows everything.’ You smiled. ‘Well, to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this by a non-German speaker.’

‘So you think it’s just a different tradition that we see the moon as female?’

‘Yes, there is nothing objective about how you feel about stars or planets. It’s all literature. People put too much feeling and emotion into these things.’

I thought about what you said for a while. Perhaps I was just one of those romantic and cultural preservationists who view things according to convention? Or according to the ­clichés of literature, as you pointed out? But I continued:

‘So if der Stuhl – the chair – is masculine, then why is the table not feminine? I thought chair and table make a perfect match.’

‘There is no logical explanation. There is no why. You just can’t ask a question like that about a language.’ Your eyes were looking for something, then you pointed to my cutlery. ‘For example. You have die Gabel – the fork, der Löffel – the spoon and das Messer – the knife. A fork is feminine, a spoon masculine and a knife neutral. Why? No reason. Just convention. So, the only way to learn the genders of nouns is to treat their articles as a component of the word.’

‘That’s very unnatural for Chinese people. In our language we don’t have articles.’

‘You don’t have any articles?’

‘No. Why bother? We save time for something else.’

‘Something else like what?’

‘Like enjoying the taste of green tea, or staring into a pond, checking out frogs and lotus flowers.’

You raised your eyebrows, not commenting, but almost laughing. Now the waiter appeared. We began to study the menu, which was full of pictures of all sorts of cooked chickpeas.

‘German is a hard language, no?’

‘Not as hard as Chinese, probably.’ You chuckled. ‘I remember when I first came to Germany from Australia. I was in my late teens. One day I learned a word at school: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. I got back home and told my father proudly that I’d learned the longest word I’d ever heard. Then he told me that it was the most useless word to learn.’

‘Geschwindig . . .’ I tried to copy this weirdly long word. But I couldn’t. You wrote it down on a napkin:

Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung

‘You don’t need to remember it, if you don’t drive.’

‘Do you mind to tell me what it means?’

‘Speed limit.’

Ah. I instantly lost interest.

‘Do you want to share some chickpeas?’ you proposed.

I nodded, tossing the speed limit napkin away.