Students, as they began to write on the writings of others, were not to say anything that was not derived from the text they were considering. They were not to make any statements that they could not support by a specific use of language that actually occurred in the text. They were asked, in other words, to begin by reading texts closely as texts and not to move into the general context of human experience or history. Mere reading, it turns out, prior to any theory, is able to transform critical discourse in a manner that would appear deeply subversive to those who think of the studying of literature should really be studying of a combination of ethics, sociology, psychology and intellectual history.

        There are, after all, more important things than mere reading--there is life, for instance. Only specialists could have built their distinctive professional virtue— textual impeccability—into a theory of interpretation. And the current practice of close reading has lasted, not because it is commonsensical, but because specialists have appointed themselves the policemen of their own field. In an age of specialization, the specialist usually frightens off the amateurs. But this triumph of professionalism is not necessarily a triumph of intelligence or truth.

        What is at stake, then, is clearly the nature of reading; the question is not whether to be or not to be close but how to read in such a way as to break through preconceived notions of meaning in order to encounter unexpected otherness— in order to encounter objective truths through grounding in language and immersion in the literature, history, and culture of a society. For it is the question of the nature of the act of reading that can either illuminate or repress.

02 The Socialist

Wuhan at the end of the twentieth century was a bustling chaos of movement and energy, poverty and hope, due to Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms sweeping over the country. Enjoying the confluence of the Yangtze and Han River, the city is the most populous metropolitan in central China, first settled more than 3,000 years ago. A renowned center for the arts (especially poetry) and intellectual studies, it is also internationally famous for the Wuchang Uprising in 1911 which triggered the collapse of Qing Dynasty and establishment of the first republic in East Asia.  

My family was living in the nearby area of Wuhan University when I was five years old to record the first continuous memory of my life in the year of 1989, a year of events led by students, intellectuals and labor activists who developed over the course of their demonstration from protests against corruption into demands for freedom of the press and an end to, or the reform of, the rule of the Communist Party and Deng Xiaoping.

I was too young to appreciate that energizing myth, though. Nevertheless, I can still visualize the sunny day when everywhere well-wishers come out of their homes, offices and shops to wave and show support. My mother carries me to join the students. By the time we reach JiedaoKou, the numbers are swelling beyond count. Police blockades at critical junctions are relaxed as the good-natured vanguard of students wearing sun-visors, carrying the sweaters and jackets no longer needed in the midday sun, cheerfully beg cooperation.  A jolt of energy surges through the rapidly moving procession, numbering ten thousand or more as we reach DaDongmen. The students around me are sweaty and sunburned, some losing their voices, others already limping from the long march. My mother purchased several boxes of soda-water and arranged me to uncap all the bottles and distribute to the students. My father, having organized a group of peasant construction workers equipped with huge slogans (wrote by father on my mother’s wedding sheet) marching to the magnificent palace of provincial government, settled me in the front of his bike and followed behind in a safe distance. He was shrewd enough to ensure that our personal safety would remain intact during later possible arrests and bloody purges - which occurred indeed, yet we remained safe.

Father was then a factory worker who received his education by reading consciously during the dark days of the Cultural Revolution; he loved Chinese literature and law. Being a son of an “extreme-rightist” and grandson of Chief Justice Cheng (r. 1953-67) in the adversarial state of Taiwan, the “bad elements” in his political background ruled out his eligibility of getting a lawyer’s license, but he almost developed an expertise on classical Chinese. When I was born, he betrayed the patriarchal tradition in China, showing no objection to name me after mother, who shares the 77^th lineage of Confucius or Kong-Fu-zi with the last name Kong. And as literary as he was, he took lingxi from a poem of Li Shangyin - the best and most loved poet of the late Tang period whose works are sensuous, dense and allusive. ling means spirit or inspirited and xi or lingxi refers to a special rhinoceros horn; legend has it that under the burning light of lingxi, human can ultimately see through nature and recognize monsters and deities.

He proved to be a gentle and kind companion, never authoritative and always tolerant of my solipsistic peculiarities. I (if my memory does not deceive me) received few bombardments of moral exhortations from him, but encouragements to debate and discuss ideas, to challenge and persist, to attack and defend by reason. Consequently, I was always seen as the most troublesome student in school, in part because the behavior did not match the academic records - who would love to have a top student challenging his authority, thus behaviorally corrupting the rest? It became more so in middle school when I shamelessly attempted to employ classical Chinese rhetoric to challenge the school’s unpopular policies; terrible relationship with the teachers readily led to my voluntary exile from the classroom into three-month home-education, during which I experienced, with pain and ecstasy, the pregnancy and birth of my first invention.

My father ran a construction and decoration company since I was ten, but the company suffered an economic crisis resulted from the uninspired manager betting on an uninspired project, which finally led to its collapse when I was in middle school. Our family moved many times to avoid the terrifying creditors, and the ungratefulness of our debtors could hardly lighten our estimation of men. Father demonstrated his skills as a talented lawyer and brought me as his assistant to all levels of courts to sue the debtors, but it was a time when gold-clad hands could easily buy off laws and justice. Frequented the courts, it was the first time I came into contact with the hapless side of contemporary life. The ragged dress and frightened faces of men, women and children who covered the ground outside every court, having suffered from all sorts of injustice and official wrong-doings, received no legal assistance and some of them had to sleep outside the courts in the open air; they were waiting - some had waited for months to get a chance meeting the director during the monthly office hours, during which he, by a kaleidoscope of excuses, rarely showed up. My father tried his best to advice them on procedural laws, on the way to collect and present what sort of evidence, the tactics of dealing with bureaucracy, the basics of legal reasoning, etc. As his assistant, I was gradually able to process some uncomplicated cases under his supervision and even once disguised as a lawyer to represent an old, ragged, impoverished lady hoodwinked by a charlatan. She with her trembling hands offered 20 yuan for my successful effort and crowned me Living Lei Feng, a soldier hailed by the propaganda as the best moral exemplar of young people. I returned the money and gently removed the wreath from my unwilling head with a confused modesty. Her innocent son was executed without trial in 1983 during the yan’da or harsher punishment period; no positive outcome had been reached thus far despite her seventeen years of undiscourageable petitioning. But when I learned from her melancholy voice that she herself was sent to lao’jiao or labor education three times during these years, because each time the local government deemed her peaceful petition in Beijing had “disturbed social harmony”, my imagination was chilled.

The relative economic liberalism of Jiang Zemin’s administration let me, aged 16, to hope that the proximate aims of socialism might be realized sooner, and with less turmoil, if more and more socialists should carry on their faith and work for the welfare of the society. Consequently and naturally, it was my belief that there would be the presence of a leader of genius ability and exceptional integrity who could effectively control corruption and gradually launch political reforms benefiting future generations.  My parents unfortunately being shuang’xia’gang or simultaneously laid-off were victims of these economic reforms; yet my childhood was not embittered. Like every baby produced under the One-Child Policy, I had no siblings and was protected well. I joined almost every student of my generation to become a member of The Communist Youth League in middle school and promised to write Ideological Reports regularly. The promise was kept, but my doubts grew.

With that touching, sentimental, idealizing blend of hope, confusion and socialism that dominated my spiritual chemistry, I became a high school student in Wuchang Experimental School in 1999, where I strived to compete with my ambitious peers in the effort to bear off a prestige award in the Olympic competition of science - math, chemistry, physics or biology. Biology particularly fascinated me; I studied diligently the subject and made a hectic start: At the end of my second year high school, I had gained a substantial knowledge in the main fields of biology, being somewhat mediocre in physiology and microbiology, yet proudly excellent in taxonomy.

I think it was my studies of biology did most to sober me and further diluted these blind hopes for a warless socialist regime or for a Chinese Gorbachev: it forced me, aged 17, to recognize the social and political implication of the inescapable, omnipresent struggle for existence; now I saw that struggle not merely in plants and animals, but as well in the competition of man against man, of woman against woman, of state against state, of idea against idea - competition is the law of life. In this view the socialist call for a warless and classless society seemed doomed by the processes of nature and the resultant nature of man. It became clear to my budding brain that the communist ideal of equal reward and a classless society was biologically impossible.

01 The Anarchist

What the Mirror Said

Listen, oh woman

you are a speaker

greater than Homer

because someone can

catch the nerd's lines in ancient Greek

but not your words in a patient week!

Listen, oh woman

you are a runner

faster than Hector

for he is the man

who passed away in Book Twenty-two

but someone's heart you just lived into!

Listen, oh woman

you are a city

with puzzling geography

but be plain as you can

for someone needs your map to learn you

and directions to move around you.

June 29, 2006

           We

Real cool. We

Peel fool. We

Sing sin. We

Fling kin. We

Rape date. We

Tape mate. We

Hive wrong. We

Live long.

The Goblet of Relief

  "Nunc est bibendum!" *

Filled is the goblet to its brim;

Quickly the sparkling bubbles swim.

  Filled are my eyes with silent tears

  Slowly telling the sorrows of years

I unfold the thoughts like a pilgrim.

No rosy flowers, no meadows green,

Embrace the goblet’s shade or sheen.

  The bubbles, like phantoms, grow and

  Rise in the air; yet cannot withstand

The gleams of shine, and vanish unseen.

This goblet, plain, lucid and chaste,

Is filled with wine (your favored taste);

  As the deep fountains of my heart

  By strong spasms shattered apart,

The wine is all running to waste.

O, I pledge in this cup of grief

Brewed by Time, the deceiving thief:

  For maddening quaffs of dewy wine

  From the holy streams of Hippocrene,

In half-waking dreams I find relief!

* Nunc est bibendum (Latin): “Cheers!”; literarily means “Now it’s time to drink”.

June 11, 2006

Lingxi Kong

Salutamus Viventem

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. - Hannibal

That was three thousand years ago,

  A man, watching wistfully into the sky

Where gulls hovering in the rainbow,

  Thought, that man can both run and fly.

So he built himself two wings. And

  Trusting them and trying to glide,

Icarus his son, wielding each hand,

  Fell into the sea and rested inside.

Undaunted, life carries on the dream…

  Thirty generations passed. Leonardo,

Spirit made flesh, inspired to stream

  Across his drawings a machine; below,

A phrase left in the notes that rings

  Like a bell stamped in the deepest

Memory: “There shall be wings!”

  Leonardo failed and died, blessed.

But this dream, life still carries on.

  Generations failed and passed, men

Said: “Stop, for God frowns upon

  All these doomed attempts.” And then

Men flew! Life is that which can

  Hold a purpose for three thousand

Years and never yield. And through an

  Ancient voice, death will understand:

The individual fails but life succeeds,

  The individual dies but life, wondering,

Trying, tirelessly and undauntedly proceeds,

  Planning, mounting, attaining, longing…

Lingxi Kong

April 18, 2006

On the Journey

- To a brave friend

Does the muddy road stretch all the way?

  Yes, beyond the horizon.

Will today’s adventure take the whole long day?

  From dawn to eve, my son.

Shall we meet other travelers in this journey?

  Yes, some ahead of us.

Can I talk, or ask them what else did they see?

  They’d be happy to discuss.

But is there a resting place for the night?

  The sky itself is a dark tent.

O, it must be cold, tough and dreary, right?

  That’s what strength meant.

Umm, how can I seek comfort, hope and energy?

  Learn to labor, and to pray.

But in the night have you ever felt sad or lonely?

  The Polestar is invisible by day.

March 25

New York

Composed in the mid-night, after waking up from a dream, with Saint-Saens's Swan gently flowing in the air.

To Thee, Nymph of Thy Dreamland

I come ashore in a dream to thy dreamland

  A gentle breeze ruffles my white tee-shirt

As the waves flow smoothly, onto the sand

  Where gulls hovering happily as in concert

But above all these fascinating things

I see thee, dear friend, fairy, faraway, sings

  Softly thy own beautiful melody

  Oblivious to my presence and ecstasy

At first, because of the sea I can not hear

  But slowly and gently the world goes silent

And the sound of thy spirit becomes clear

  And captivates me, O, so divine and elegant

Then the world begins to fade away, without trace

Nothing exists in me, but thy voice and thy grace

March 20

New York

This is the only monologue in my tragic drama-- The Silent Mountain, cultivating the single-act play to its climax.  I succeeded to develop a network of conflicts that reinforce each other, but I took a great risk to write a monologue revealing the inner conflicts of both the hero and the heroin. Because when monologues are used in realistic drama today, they’re usually brief, and an effective way to reveal inner conflict is to provide the protagonist with a confidant, a personal friend or a mirror character who serves primarily to set off a primary character by contrast. However, this technique is not practical here in this single-act play. Since I am good at writing classical poetry, I just audaciously tried a very classical way -- a Shakespearean monologue poeticized. Yet its success, I trust, largely depends on the performer’s capacity.

DISABLED MAN: (wounded, very painful, utterly helpless, bleeding on the head; monologue)

O immortal Gods, why should I suffer the hate

And poisonous arrows of this outrageous fate?

Why should I plunge myself in a sea of painfulness

And take arms against the desert of helplessness?

My heart aches and a thousand pains shock

My body. Be numb, to sleep, besides this rock.

For in a sleep of conscience whatever dreams may visit,

Must give me a pause, to stop at the calamity’s limit.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The pangs of despised love, the ongoing crime,

The gangsters’ cruel fists, the ungrateful girl’s insolence,

The oppressor's turpitude, the policemen’s arrogance,

The government’s denial to my eighteenth petition

For my father executed in the Cultural Revolution,

And the idleness of the spineless spectators who withdraw

And conspire the grayness of the so-called rule of law!

O, in the dirty flows of this corrupted world,

By offenders’ gold-clad hands, justice is hurled,

And wicked booty itself will buy out the rules

And twist the truths to make a trap for fools!

What then? What rests? What memory would recall

The conscience, but what then makes cowards of them all?

Try what forgiveness can. Yet what forgiveness is meant

And what can it worth when they will never repent?

O wretched society! O conscience black as death!

O lamed soul, that, struggling to freely breathe,

But more engaged! Help, angels! Make a way!

With thy bless the dirty currents will turn away!

O Heaven! Stamp justice in each Caliban’s brain

And on foreheads wearing forever the curse of Cain!

The Withering Age of Innocence

I

Newland’s courage proved only this

That he chose to leave the lonely Paris

He trailed through the onshore wind

Like a wounded bird fallen behind

Standing besides the ever ice-sea

Where he lost the pearl of memory

Where he bore in heart a hidden tempest

Watching gulls o’er tides hovering gayest

Where he dwelt at the soul’s expense

Longing for a break of the sea’s silence

II

When sitting alone in the Central Park

He thought till the day went dark

Finding memory is a deceiving murder

The fountain of pains, tears and terror

Knowing that he had first to forgive

The past to seek the mastery to live

An’ took the world not for a better place

But for the oblivion of Ellen’s grace

Yet no one could ever tell or know

How much the balcony slaved his soul

New York

Feb. 2006

William White, when importuned by

A young Chinese boy to deny

He is just an American lib,

Looks contempt as—this is a fib

(A whopper; really)—Will shows

He’s one of the American intellectuals

Who see the world through history

Without bias and partisan sensitivity.

While, hitting keys with two fingers

Like playing wizardry, Will triggers

Rhetorically his indifference to victory

And aversion to the ‘worst’ presidency.