Los Mares de Wang

LOS MARES DE WANG, visto por Andrés Barba
Para escribir un libro como Los mares de Wang hace falta una buena dosis de honestidad, inteligencia, valor y talento. Después de cerrar la última página de este voluminosa obra cabe decir sin reparos que Gabi Martínez (Barcelona, 1971) está más que bien servido de esas cuatro virtudes. Si ya de forma aislada son difíciles de encontrar en el panorama de nuestra narrativa, encontrarlas de forma conjunta es un raro placer que no se debería pasar por alto.

El libro se plantea como un largo viaje a lo largo de la costa china, desde Dandong hasta Dongxing, al sur de Macao, en forma de dietario de acontecimientos y ensayo acerca de la política, la economía y la filosofía china. Su primer acierto, cabría decir, es estilístico. Como todo buen libro de viajes se lee como una auténtica novela, se sufre las peripecias de su protagonista y se alegra uno de sus hallazgos como si fueran propios. Desde el principio queda marcada la que será una constante de todo el viaje; la incomprensión, la incomunicación, la imposibilidad de comprender, unida al serio deseo de hacerlo.

Gabi Martínez no sólo representa la aproximación del buen occidental a Oriente (culto, abierto, y peculiarmente bien preparado para su viaje) porque encarne el entusiasmo propio del acercamiento, sino también porque lo hace del desencanto de una incomprensión que no para de repetirse desde que aterriza, y que no es precisamente lingüística. El viajero que es Gabi Martínez cuando aterriza en Pekín va quedando moldeado ante nuestros ojos a medida que viaja no porque los acontecimientos que se ve obligado a vivir demientan o ratifiquen sus opiniones previas, sino porque las enmarcan en la mucho menos fácil de tratar –por ambigua– sustancia de la vida, porque le empujan a integrar lo que ya sabe con lo que cree descubrir.

En este libro –o al menos en su primera parte, hasta que llegan a la ciudad de Quingdao–, esa sustancia de la vida queda concretada básicamente en la figura de Wang, estudiante y traductor de español, con el que el autor se ve obligado a viajar para poder comunicarse. El aparentemente tímido y virginal muchacho, con el que se establece una relación cordial al principio, va desvelando uno a uno, en las diferentes situaciones en las que el occidental le pone en compromiso, todos los terrenos en los que la compresión y el diálogo entre oriente y occidente es poco menos que milagrosa. La forma en la que Wang protege sus sentimientos y su historia privada con un hermetismo sin fisuras va haciendo que, a ojos del occidental, sus cualidades humanas vayan haciéndose cada vez más remotas y su compañía cada vez más difícilmente tolerable. Por otro lado la "desfachatez irrespetuosa" del occidental, su individualismo, sus ganas de saber, su insistencia en vivir, no son menos agresivas e intolerables para el buen Wang. "El conflicto racial emergía en la cama de al lado disparando una serie de estímulos inéditos, sensaciones que jamás me había planteado, porque pese a las noticias terribles que a diario nos golpean, pese a los relatos asombrosos de conflictos entre razas, religiones, etnias, pese a haber sido testigo del odio de unos hombres contra otros, hasta entonces había creído que la única fuerza capaz de provocarme una convulsión tan perturbadora era el amor doméstico. Porque no había sentido ese odio hacia nadie, ni sobre mí. Porque no había accedido esencialmente a las tinieblas del peligro".

La relación con Wang –verdadero tema y corazón de este libro, por mucho que su presencia no abarque todas sus páginas– es el verdadero conflicto, y la única verdadera conexión entre el autor y su viaje. Un viaje tan lleno de desencantos como de sorpresas por la belleza de algunas situaciones (y las hay ciertamente conmovedoras, como el descubrimiento del autor de que ya no será joven nunca más, de que ha cruzado su particular “línea de sombra”), pero transido de la primera página a la última del valor de los auténticos viajeros, que desean conocer aquello en lo que se sumergen, como Conrad en el mar, tal vez sólo porque lo aman sin saberlo y quieren dar cuenta de su amor.

Zhang's views on Chinese Culture

Zhang's ideas about classical education were revolutionary. He believed that Chinese culture had to be abandoned altogether, for even though it was immensely rich, it had an equal number of liabilities. Like the Yangtze river, which flowed faster than one might think, Chinese culture was indeed great in the present as well as in the past but did not consider human intervention and was impossible to purify. The result was that the culture could be appreciated only by aristocrats. Adapted to the few, it was undemocratic.

The main problem was that the difficult writing required at least ten years to learn and thus effectively precluded the dissemination of culture. The masses had to make a living, which, of course, was not easy, and they didn't have time to master a complicated language. As long as characters were used, the masses would be illiterate. An ideographic language was protection for any autocratic polity and ensured an uneducated population. China could no compete with more civilized nations as long as it took half a lifetime to learn how to read. With such a handicap, how could a nation absorb the science and culture of other nations? The only solution was to adopt a phonetic writing system. Although the transition would be invonvenient for their own generation, for the sake of future ones, it had to be begun, now. Inconvenience for Zhang and Taiming meant convenience for their descendants. [...]

In this way, the literati had ruled China for many centuries. The common people could not even correspond with one another.

(Wu Zhuoliu, Orphan of Asia, pp 133-134. Zhang's views on Chinese culture and the Chinese language).

Taiming and Reality

Over the years the Hu clan had scattered, with some members going to the southern and eastern parts of the island and resettling there. [...]
"Ah-San's and Ah-Si's world is disappearing," Taiming mused, captivated by the objective vision he suddenly had of the lives around him. Licentiate Peng was trying to escape reality , whereas Grandfather was trying to transcend reality. Wu Wenqing was overwhelmed by wrestling with reality. And Taiming -he was tired of chasing reality. What spurred him on was youthful ambition, hopes and dreams, but come to think of it, didn't it sometimes seem meaningless? He almost envied his grandfather's detachment.

(Wu Zhuoliu, Orphan of Asia, p. 36. On returning to Taiwan after his stay in Japan)

"Orphan of Asia" -by Wu Zhuoliu

Wu Zhouliu (1900-1976), one of the most renowned Taiwanese writer was born of Hakka parents, worked as a journalist and started his literary career writing in Japanese. He is the author of short stories and novels, among them The Fig and Formosan Weeping Forsythia.

He wrote his autobiographical novel Orphan of Asia in secret between 1943 and 1945. It was first published in Tokyo in 1946. It was then translated into Chinese in 1962 and into English in 2005.

The story recounts the conflicting emotions of its hero, Hu Tai-ming, as he travels between Taiwan, Japan and China.

Born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, raised in the scholarly traditions of ancient China by his grandfather but forced into the Japanese educational system, Hu Taiming ultimately finds himself estranged from all three cultures.

Japanese rule in Taiwan had made him look to Japan as the center of modernity and progress, but when he arrives there he is all too conscious of not being a "real" Japanese. Indeed, a fellow Taiwanese recommends that he pretends to come from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, rather than admit to being from Taiwan.

In China, he has to lie about his origin as well, and is later arrested on suspicion of being a Japanese spy. At any event, he is not a "pure" Chinese either, so he is kept in prison. And, in a novel replete with irony, he then escapes on a boat to Shanghai only after asserting that he is in reality a Japanese national.

It is hardly surprising that this book was banned in Taiwan by KMT. For them, Taipei was the interim capital of the whole of China. Manifestations of a specifically Taiwanese identity were prohibited, and only mainstream Chinese literature could be disseminated. Small wonder, then, that a book that presented an archetypal Taiwanese as so confused that he didn't know who on earth he really was found itself banned as well.

The truth, of course, was that overnight the inhabitants of Taiwan had been asked to change from being model, though never fully equal, citizens of the Japanese empire to being unquestioning citizens of a greater China.

Orphan of Asia is obsessively concerned with geographical movement, and as a result with feelings of displacement, dislocation, alienation and, finally, despair. China and Japan, he points out, were both real and imagined places, and the book's protagonist finds it impossible to locate himself in either of them.

(partly from Taipei Times)