Iwa ni Hana

The Chinese language has a rich vocabulary for sadness. Consider the Chinese characters that all have the meaning of “sadness” -

憂 愁 悲 哀 惆 悽 悕 悴 悵 惙 惻 愴 慘 慽

Now if you consider combined words that all have the meaning of “sadness,” the list could go on and on – from commonly used words like xin suan [心酸] to very rare words like liu li [懰慄]. In addition, if you also add to your list four-word Chinese words like qi chu bei qie [悽楚悲切], duan chang cun duan [斷腸寸斷] and so forth, you will probably add up with a dictionary of several hundred pages of Chinese words describing “sadness” alone.

Personally, I think the proliferation of words for “sadness” in Chinese is not confusing at all but adds precision as to the the exact shade of sadness one is describing. Among these many shades of sadness, there is one area that the Chinese language is particularly good at describing. I refer to dan dan de ai chou [淡淡的哀愁] – the kind of sadness that is light in touch on the surface. This kind of sadness is never so violent as drive you to put a gun to your head or jump off a bridge. In fact, this kind of sadness is usually not apparent on the surface, and no one knows how deep it cuts within. Within this category of sadness, there is one particular word I wish to highlight, and it is wu nai [無奈].

The meaning of wu nai

Wu nai [無奈] is short for wu ke nai he [無可奈何]. It is hard to translate into English but you may think of it as:

Something sad that cannot be helped due to lack of means or solution, typically brought about by forces that are out of human control, such as the passage of time and vicissitudes of the world.

Let me give a more concrete example -

Suppose when you were a teenager you used to have to an older friend who opened your eyes to a new world of ideas and art. You read the same books, listened to the same music, admired the same artists and watched the same films. You lived in the same intellectual universe with him and spoke in the wavelength. There were scarcely any topic you do not like debating with him on, and for once in your life you felt you had met your equal. And because he was a few years older and had more experience of life than you, you looked up to him.

And then (as is typical of the young and headstrong), the two of you had a quarrel that was really quite trivial in retrospect but instead of making up at that time, you parted ways, burned all bridges and never spoke again. Ten years passed. One day, news of that older friend trickled through to you. From what you gathered he had not really kept up with all the books, music and art. He embraced a lot of things that he once thought was low and vulgar, and associated with people he used to consider silly and ridiculous. It was like he had given up all the pride and sophistication you used to see in him.

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Recently I was asked by a Japanese acquaintance (who happened to be learning Chinese) as to how Chinese people distinguish levels of intimacity and politeness in oral speech. As you may know, in Japanese, you i) conjugate verbs and ii) use a different set of honorific nouns to show respect to your listener or reader (see this Wikipedia entry for details). But Chinese does not really conjugate verbs, and although a different set of honorific nouns can be used to show politeness, such nouns tend to be appear only in written form and almost never in oral speech. So how does the Chinese, with cultural concepts of insider group and outsider group similar to the Japanese, distinguish between formal speech and informal speech from a linguistic perspective? While I am far from having the complete answer to this, I believe the partial answer may be in the use of nicknames.

You just know that A is speaking to B in Chinese in familiar terms if a number of nouns of people, things, corporate entities and places are substituted with:

i) nicknames that only the speakers or their immediate circle knows

ii) nicknames made up on an impromptu basis

On the other hand, you just know that A and B are speaking formally if they use proper nouns that can be found in a dictionary.

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Advertisement of "Hodohodo no Ie" from the March 2009 issue of Serai, a magazine which deals with topics such as the Noh, classical Japanese literature and the traditional fine arts. "Hodohodo no Ie" means a "so-so house". The large white caption on the upper right-hand corner says (perhaps paradoxically), "the luxury that is living with fire". I am a loyal reader of this excellent magazine and buy it every month.

When I first came across the Japanese advertisement posted on the right, the following three points were my knee-jerk reactions:

- “This looks rather like the house that the professor of German in the Kurosawa Akira’s film Madadayo (1993) lived in.”

- “Perhaps it is a modern reincarnation of Kamo no Choumei‘s ten-foot square hut?”

- “Well, what would the developers of Beijing’s Palais de Fortune say to that?”

Palais de Fortune (财富公馆), for your information, is a recently-built gated community of 172 chateaus inspired by 18th-century French architecture in general and by the palace of Versailles in particular. You may Google around for more information and have a look at this video on their official website. Many things have been said about this residential project and I have nothing to add to those – instead I would like to concentrate on the Chinese aesthetic concept of wei mei [唯美] and the Chinese conceptualization of time in artistic styles.

Being beautiful is a prerequisite to being considered wei mei, but wei mei refers to a very specific kind of beauty. It is not easy to explain in a straight forward way what it is because it has no English equivalent, though a good starting point would be to decide what it is not. “Hodohodo no Ie” for instance, would probably not be considered wei mei. Houses like that are like zen gardens in that the beauty lies in the austerity and restraint, which takes time to sink in and to reflect on. The beauty of zen gardens leaves wriggling room for argument if you just don’t “get” the austerity and restraint. Wei mei has no room for differing opinion – it s always obviously beautiful.

Features of Palais de Fortune include catering at the clubhouse, butler and maid service, enhanced security and various amenities.

Wei mei tolerates no defect, but it is far from having the same meaning as the English word “beautified” – the proper Chinese word for that would be mei hua [美化]. I think a fair distinction is that the emphasis on “beautified” is in on hiding ugliness away, whereas the emphasis on wei mei is about having everything that meets the eye look aesthetically pleasing. The two words are like the faces of Janus, bound together like Siamese twins but each looking the other way. Wei mei is complimentary and does not have the same negative connotation as “beautified” in English seem to have. 唯美圖 [wei mei tu] means an “absolutely beautiful picture”. 唯美風 [wei mei feng] means an “absolutely beautiful style”. 唯美風景 [wei mei feng jing] means “absolutely beautiful landscape”. Wei mei is absolute.

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A few months ago, I was scouted by a talent agency. It was during lunchtime in the office district. I went out to buy lunch and put on my MP3 player to listen to some language learning podcast as usual. Suddenly a man who looked as though he had already followed me for some distance touched me in the shoulder (because I did not hear not him) and introduced himself as a talent manager. After apologizing profusely, he gave me his business card and asked for my number. At first I thought this might be some sort of scam but he seemed to say nothing too exceedingly flattering about me (as I would expect from a scam). I gave him my business card.

He called several times afterwards to persuade me to take comp photos and sign up for a contract with his agency. After thinking about the consequences this may bring, I turned it down – mainly because of all the conflicts I can foresee with my existing career, but more importantly I think I have never been blessed with what the Chinese call tao hua yun [桃花運] to be successful in the entertainment industry.

Tao hua means “peach blossom” and yun means “luck”. On a mild scale, people with tao hua yun are well-liked wherever they go, especially by the opposite sex. This is quite irrespective of how good or bad they are or how they treat others. On the extreme end, people with tao hua yun are like sex magnets. A man who is well-endowed tao hua yun would inspire women to want to have his babies or something from the first moment they see him. Chinese astrologers traditionally see tao hua yun as a negative quality because of all the irrational impulses it might bring to disturb society’s order, but in modern times they seem to have come to regard this as a positive quality for popstars, musicians and the like to have, because tao hua yun may be a contributing factor to gaining adoring fans. On a tangential note, tao hua jie [桃花劫] describes the sort of love that leaves you ruined, typically in being fleeced of your life’s savings or being left with a mountain of debts. I believe the English word “lovefraud” which I saw coined here would be a close equivalent.

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You just know that the Chinese civilization has not been around for five thousand years for nothing by looking at all the words they have for describing different nuances of beauty – of beauty in the abstract, in nature, in men and women. Whatever you can think of, the Chinese is likely to have coined a word for it already. If you were ever to compile all those words together, you may actually end up with a nice dictionary of several hundred pages. What I have time to write about on this blog is only a tip of the iceberg.

There are two words in Chinese that describe the beauty of decay. They are easily confused with each other but I think several fine points of distinction would be as follows (feel free to disagree with me though):

墮落美 [duo luo mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is alluring in a sinister way, but is at the same time evocative of pain and longing in being a reminder of what it once was and what it no longer is – namely, the pristine state of innocence and purity it can no longer return to. In some (but not all) cases, the evil originates from a pure, noble and innocent motivation that turned bad in its means and execution for lack of choice, and from its existing state of badness it can only go from bad to worse and beyond salvation. The emphasis of this word is on the state where you have fallen from. Duo luo mei says to the viewer: ‘There was a time when I used to be not like this.’ It evokes pain and regret in the viewer, in that beneath those layers of decay, there may perhaps be a shred of that past innocence left.

頹廢美 [tui fei mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is strangely attractive in its defiance and self-abandonment. It is frequently associated with moral decay but instead of angsting over its downfall, it rejoices in its fallen state. The emphasis of this word is the state of ruin as it is. The vision is focused on the end which is near – of impending doom, destruction, disease or death. It says  to the viewer: ‘This is just the way I am now and I have no regret about it. I long for the final release and I shall put on my best dress to greet that final release.’ It is brazen and is indifferent to what the viewer feels. Tui fei mei springs from the conviction that there is no tomorrow and tends to expresses itself in a rebellious attitude, by going out of the way to do something to excite jaded senses, to be lost in worldly pleasures and self-gratifications, and the pursuit of all that is unwholesome by society’s standards. Often, it is about slipping one notch lower, then another notch lower, then another notch lower, but keeping up pretenses of greatness with extravagant and sumptuous external appearances which are calculated to hide the interior emptiness. Tui fei mei is often found in artistic works towards the end of each dynastic cycle in Chinese history; an example of this would be the poetry of the late Tang.

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Japanese sensibility perceives beauty in falling cherry petals, whereas Chinese sensibility perceives beauty in fallen flower petals.* To put it another way, the Japanese mind seems inclined to find beauty in the active act of destruction, whereas the Chinese mind seems inclined to find beauty in the passive act of coming upon what is already or partially destroyed. The words to describe these perceptions of beauty are known as 破壊の美 [hakai no bi] in Japanese and 滄桑美 [cang sang mei] in Chinese.

Hakai no Bi

There are many manifestations of hakai no bi. Hakai means ‘destruction’; bi means ‘beauty’. ‘Destruction’ in this sense not only includes active acts of violence but is also inclusive of a life force burning furiously towards its exhaustion. The fall of cherry petals, kamikaze deaths and anything to do with the writer Mishima Yukio (三島由紀夫) and his works are typical examples of hakai no bi.

One such manifestation of hakai no bi which I think is central to Japanese aesthetics is the concept of 潔い [isagiyoi]. Isagiyoi is a powerful concept in Japanese culture and though a typical dictionary would give its meaning in English as ‘graceful’, ‘manly’, ‘sportsmanlike’, ‘noble’, ‘courageous’, ‘readily’, ‘with good grace’ etc , none of these is correct – or at least not quite. There is a peculiar meaning to this word which I would personally define as:

A ready resolution to relinquish or end the existence of something/oneself at an immaculate, pure or perfect condition, either before the onset of impurity or imperfection (when or should they set in), or at the first sign of such impurity or imperfection. It is a kind of self-determination to let go of or withdraw something/oneself in a dignified manner , without fear or hesitation, before the downhill, decay or dishonour sets in. At the extreme end, this resolution may border on madness and is prone to manifest itself in death or destruction.

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