August 1, 2005

Dear Colleague,

         A couple of years ago, a student I got to know on State Street went to Rome to study Latin with John Paul ll's Latin secretary. I paid his airfare. He is now on his way to New York to study acupuncture. The world is still full of possibilities for a young American. Wonderful, isn't it?

         In any case, we had lunch at the Sunroom Cafe. It was our goodbye lunch, for he told me that it was unlikely he would ever want to return to provincial Madison. Now, to proceed with my story, you will need to know something about the Sunroom Cafe. To get to it, you have to climb a steep flight of steps. Also you order food at the counter. When your name is called, you go to the counter to pick it up. Student and I sat down to lunch. He wanted to know about my trip to China and what were some of the surprises I encountered there. I said that the surprises were not those of geography--I already knew what the Great Wall looked like and I had expected to see a forest of new skyscrapers. No, my biggest surprise was human and cultural. The trip forces me to revise my view of culture. I now see it as deeply inscribed in the psychology of a people. Outwardly they may change in everything from how they dress, what they eat, to the kinds of music they like and the political ideology they favor. Inwardly, however, they remain tradition-bound. And this is true even with young people. One tradition the Chinese have retained, despite the Cultural Revolution and rampant Capitalism, is respect for the old.

         "Now," I said to the student. "Let me give you a concrete example. When our food was ready at the counter and my name was called, I went over to get it and carry it to our table. You just sat there. In China, this could not have happened. Also, when we climbed that steep flight of steps to the Cafe, I would almost certainly have been helped by someone, if not you, then a stranger. In America, what you did--or rather, what you didn't do--was the right thing, the courteous thing. You would have insulted me if you had risen to carry the food, or put a hand to my elbow as I struggled up the steps, for you would have shown condescension and hinted at my oncoming decrepitude and dependency, things Americans dread."

         Where do I stand in these two opposing value systems--American and Chinese? I value my independence, I fight against "the dying of the light" and urge myself not to "go gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas). But I am old and tired. I want at times to be treated as someone who is in his second childhood, someone who cannot be held fully responsible. In China, I luxuriated in irresponsibility. Back in Madison, I find that I have to pick up the burdens of adulthood again.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu