Ran Chen - A Private Life

Many years after my infatuation with Nixon, when as a mature young woman I attended an art symposium, a Chinese artist struck a similar emotional chord in me. Because he was actually physically present, his impact on me was much stronger. Once, during a banquet, the gods finally arranged that I sit beside him, but because of my innate reserve and my social awkwardness, I managed nothing in the way of real conversation. It wasn't so much that I didn't like to "converse," it was just that I didn't have much faith in "conversation." Conversation was fruitless. All I managed was the usual kind of toast to express my esteem. I was already quite aware that an easygoing, unaffected attitude was the best approach to life, a stance of indifference, but this could only be achieved through the exercise of extreme self-restraint.

On another occasion I saw him in a hotel lobby, holding a fluent conversation in English with a foreigner cinematographer. As he turned around, he caught sight of me and waved me over with a smile. I was amazed that someone of his age and prominence was able to converse so well in English. I stood beside him wanting very much to take his calm, confident hand, to bask in the security and comfort that his age made me feel. But my mind seemed to have stopped working and I had lost all ability to respond. I was slipping slowly into a state of bliss where I seemed to float unanchored in the sumptuous lobby, now steeped in sentimental tints of rose. When we said good-bye, as timid as an inexperienced little girl, I stuffed a letter that I had previously written into his hand. All my intelligence seemed to have drained from my head, leaving it an empty hole, and any remnants of my sensibility had retreated into my ice-cold fingertips. After I had given him the letter, I fled.

Regrettably, rather than being a letter expressing my affection for him, it was a request for his support in overcoming some difficulty, because he was the only person whose help I would accept. But as soon as I had left the hotel, I regretted what I had done. I was terribly afraid that he would see me as someone seeking his friendship because of his name. In fact, with my coolness and stubbornness bordering on arrogance, it would be rather difficult for me to show respect for someone just because of their fame.

Later on, he phoned me, and when I heard his voice, I felt as if I were talking to God.

I know myself. I wanted a man who was like a father to pour my love upon, a man whose views on humanity accorded with my own, of whom I would be a female extension, my thinking taking up where his male thinking stopped. I don't know if this qualifies as a question for the ethics of human relationships.

Actually, if you want to be modern, then all questions are both real and empty. One of the significant things about civilization, without doubt, is that it has given classifying names to the fantastic variety of human and natural phenomena. But this is simply one possible system of names.

At lunchtime that day, I sat beside Yin Nan.

Here was a person of a type totally different from the father figure that always won my affection. We struck up a casual, relaxed conversation. After we exchanged a few questions and answers, such as which department and grade we were in, he started talking about the poetry society.

I noted that he spoke very softly, with the easy grace that comes with a good education. When he talked about the name for the club being twice rejected, his brow furrowed slightly and he became very serious, not at all like those young men who are full of promises but empty on results. All you have to do is get them later on the telephone and you'll discover their insincerity.

I fixed my eyes on him, drinking in his brilliance.

Of everything about Yin Nan, it was his eyebrows that first moved me.

When I think about it, this was very strange, because the first things that I usually took note of in a person were the cheeks, the eyes, the lips, the body, and so forth – the big or conspicuous things. But now the things my attention gravitates to are the little or easily overlooked things such as the eyebrows, the nose, the teeth, or the hands or feet.

Yin Nan 's eyebrows glistened like flowing strokes of black lacquer below his cleanly chiseled forehead. His slightly furrowed brow made me think of the phrase "worry lines." I have a rather special feeling about people's hair. With women, if they do their hair in a fuzzy bouffant style, I assume that their minds are equally fuzzy. Only after that do I consider the woman herself behind the hairdo. But with men, the first thing that captures my attention is their eyebrows. Only after I've checked their eyebrows do I consider their hair, beard, and the various areas of body hair that signal their level of physical maturity. I carry this so far as to judge their life and their spirit through their hair.

Yin Nan 's eyebrows were long and very beautiful, severe yet soft, pliant yet unyielding. On that day his eyebrows gave him away in an instant, revealing his physical nature and his mentality.

Looking at his slightly furrowed, handsome brow, without giving it any further thought, I said, "Why don't you call your poetry club 'Frowners'? It's close in meaning to your original name, but it softens the violent tone. Really, they both convey the idea of negation, but mine does it in much more subtle way."

Yin Nan thought about it for a moment, the long, slim fingers of his scrawny right hand gripping his spoon; then he waved it excitedly as he exclaimed, "Perfect! That's perfect!"

Beginning to see me in quite a different light, Yin Nan very solemnly shook my hand.

His hands were the second thing about him that attracted me.

It was as if his hand emitted a current of air that penetrated the palm of my own, or a unique sound, perhaps the secret sound of the blood hidden in his fingertips, flowing in smooth yet distinct pulsations. It was the kind of hand that the moment you touched it, made you think of phrases that reflect the special ways we use our hands, such as "breathing through one's fingers" or "tears following one's palm lines to slowly fall," to try to mask or hide whatever it is we are feeling; that made you think of the smoothness and weight of skin touching skin. It was impossible to treat it as just a hand. It was a mouth sucking the heat from your skin. It was an eager, attentive ear pressed to the walls of your veins to pick up the pulsations of your blood. It was a hungry nose fiercely seeking the unlimited hard or soft secrets it could gain from the hand it was touching. It was a kind of light, a voice, a rumination…

It seemed as if I had known that hand long ago, before I had ever seen Yin Nan. Long before his face ever entered my field of vision, I knew that hand.

His hand revealed him.

It was at that point that he earnestly invited me to join the poetry society.

I said, "I've never had any interest in joining any kind of group. I'm an 'individualist.' Right from when I was small, no matter what kind of group I became part of, I always numbered among the outside minority, because whenever the majority chorused 'Yes,' I couldn't help but counter with a tactless 'No.' I think that boldly standing up and saying no to the world is a powerful expression of personal responsibility."

Yin Nan said, "Our poetry society makes a point of saying no."

I said, "The unfortunate thing is when you give a chorus of no's, I'm afraid that I'll be inclined to say yes."

"Why? Just for the sake of being different? Not running with the crowd?" he asked.

"Of course not," I answered.

That same year I had begun reading Kierkegaard, so I trotted out his discussion of majority and minority groups. I said, "Members of a minority, or individuals, sometimes have more power than people in the majority, because the views embraced by members of minorities, or individuals, are genuinely their own, while the power of people in the majority is often spurious, because the group is made up of people of diverse views. When a minority or an individual produces a compelling point of view, then members of the majority take it as their own, but the diversity of their readings of the view reduces it to a confused welter of opinions, and the minority group or individual who first supported the view subsequently abandons it."