Li Wai-yee and the Confucius Chronicles

In this podcast, I got the chance to do a face-to-face interview with Professor Li Wai-yee, a Harvard scholar who is one of the most prolific scholars of Chinese literature. During our interview, we discussed her new book, The Confucius Chronicles, just released by Columbia University Press, along with the massive role that Confucius has played in Chinese history. 

Interested in purchasing the book? Check it out on Columbia University Press’ site here.

AI Generated Transcript:

Chinese Literature Podcast – Professor Li Wai-yee and the Confuicus Chronicles

Speaker: [00:00:00] My name is Lee Moore and this is the Chinese Literature Podcast. Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, but before we get to her, just, I just wanna plug my book again. China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read. It’s about the four China history related topics popping up in the newsfeed of most folks in the West, Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese Economy in Hong Kong.

Check it out. You can find it on Unsung Voices Books, my publisher. And you can also find it on the website of a little known bookstore based in Seattle, Amazon.com. Okay, now on today’s show. A few weeks ago, I actually got to sit down and interview Lewae. Professor Lee is the 1879 professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University.

She is an expert on pretty much everything in Chinese literature. It’s really phenomenal how much she knows. Uh, she’s an expert on Mingen Qing literature, that is the literature from the period from [00:01:00] 1368 to 1912, 1911, depending on where you wanna draw that line. Uh, but she’s also an expert on really, really old Chinese stuff.

She, along with friend of the podcast, Steve Durant and David Shawberg translated the or the tradition. Um, that’s the oldest narrative history in Chinese that we have. Uh, it goes way, way back. Uh, it’s more than 2000 years old. So she’s an expert on really old stuff, but also early modern stuff. She actually came on a visit to Eugene, so we got to talk face-to-face.

One of the things that most impressed me is we were just sitting there and she was able to recall all these obscure passages of Chinese from, from memory. Any quote that y’all hear her making in Chinese, that’s her just pulling that out of her head. She didn’t have notes when we talked. She wasn’t sitting there looking at a computer.

This is just her pulling that out of her head. She’s such an impressive figure in the study of Chinese literature. Uh, really great to have her on [00:02:00] the podcast. Okay. I think that’s enough of an intro. Let’s get on to the interview. Professor Liwai, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

Speaker: You have a new book out from Columbia University Press. It’s called The Confucian Chronicles. Before we dive into the book, could you tell us a little bit about Confucius himself? Who is Confucius and why is he so important to understanding China?

Speaker 2: That I think is the most challenging question of honest.

Because I, I feel that I’m particularly weak in, in, in doing such things. I, because I often have to do it in classrooms and then I would trot out the usual things once says, so then I sit back and ask myself, but it’s, it’s that all there is too. Because what one usually says in the classroom, for example, is how there was this figure who lived about the fifth century BCE and who belonged to, in terms of world history, the so- called axial age and, uh, love great thinkers and so on, and [00:03:00] who lived in a period when China was in a multi-state system with aristocracy, uh, aristocratic lineages in decline already.

And he himself might have come from a distinguished lineage, although it was also by his time, reduced to humble circumstances. And he showed a great interest in, in the, in earlier traditions and was especially invested in a vision of social, cultural, political order that could be dated back to the founding of the Joe Dynasty about 500 years before the time he lived.

And in trying to revive those, the, revive that order associated with those institutions, he, he came to articulate really important ideas about how we should live our life, what is richly, the richly proper way to live our lives. And he also speaks a [00:04:00] lot about some of the key virtues in what does it mean to lead a good life.

And the word that pr- posterity considered very important, for example, is the word Jen, which is very hard to translate, which Arthur Wally just translated as the good, which is actually not a bad translation because, and I, I myself actually reverts to it in some cases. I, I call it the highest good because in the analytics, which is a collection of sayings attributed to him and his disciples, when he’s asked to define what is learned, he very often comes up with different definitions.

Uh, so the, the, the other common translations of kindness or, or the nevolance or humanity, even, even humanity or humaneness is also kind of a cop out because it, it just means that everything that is most perfect, it, what is humanly possible, the highest humanly possible [00:05:00] perfection, which is also again, trying to encompass as much as possible.

Anyway, so when we talk about Confucianism, as in a class situation, we would talk about his idea of different types of virtue, what is this virtual system? What does it mean for the family order, for the social order? What does it mean to function like that in that political system and so on and so forth?

And these ideas are very influential. It’s developed a couple of centuries after the death of Confucius by thinkers such as months and sins. And then we see is various applications in later periods as well. Eventually, dynastic rulers, most of them adopt disguise of, disguise as a proponent of the Confucian order.

And so Confucianism is, in that sense, tied up with the functioning of imperial wu. But of course, everybody who wants to articulate opposition to imperial also draws on Confucianism. So [00:06:00] it’s, it’s like a font of ideas for defining what is the moral life within the Chinese tradition and important for that reason down to today.

Speaker: Could you tell us a little bit more about the book you just published, The Confucius Chronicles?

Speaker 2: So what it is, it’s a compilation of stories about Confucius. So when we talk about basic Confucian texts, especially in the context of curriculum, university curriculum or class, we often, for example, teach the analytics and some of the other canonical Confucian classics.

But what I find in teaching is that it actually helps to be able to tell the stories and to help students understand that ideas become meaningful in the context of life stories or in the context of how stories are told about Confucius. And not only that, it’s in telling those stories that we can understand not how Confucius [00:07:00] was understood, but also how different thinkers drawing on Confucius thought and trying to promulgate different ideas often use Confucius sometimes as a punching bag, sometimes as a kind of venue through which they articulate their own ideas.

So you can then, through the stories of Confucius, understand the intellectual history and cultural history of China. I thought of this primarily as, as a text for teaching, whether students can actually use them and learn from them will see, because it’s, the, the test is really in the classroom. My whole experience is that I already have to make some concessions because for general education class, a lot of my translators notes may, may be a bit too much, so I tell them to read only selections of translators notes, but at least go through the account of Confucius Life by Samartian.

So half of the book is actually a, an [00:08:00] annotated translation of that chapter on Confucius in historical records, which is a historical work compiled by Smartsheet around 1st Century BC. But that’s chapter 47 in that book, which consists of 130 chapters. And what it was, was the first kind of biography of Confucius.

And of course, between the time of Smartsheet and the time of Confucius, we’re talking about four and a half centuries. So where does Smarten gets his stories? He, he is getting them from all these earlier thinkers or early accounts of Confucius, which had their own agenda very often in telling this or that anecdote about Confucius.

And Smartsin is aware of that, but he, so he brings them together. And that’s why I, in, in translating that account, I, I felt it was necessary to introduce my own voice or rather myself as a mediator in telling what other stories Smartsheet may be drawn [00:09:00] from and what reverberations each antidote may have for later periods.

How can we look at each segment of this life story comparatively and think about each segment of a life story as both itself, the product of all kinds of arguments and itself generates all kinds of arguments.

Speaker 3: How, you mentioned the forces, the question of sources with Samad Chen and his narrative of Confucius.

How reliable do we think that is or do we even have any ability to judge how reliable Sumatienas is as a narrator of, of Confucius’ life?

Speaker 2: So I think he tries his best to, to, to convey the stories he thinks are believable. I must say that there have been many attempts to try to tell the authentic story of Confucius.

This started over the centuries. I mean, you can say that in many ways earlier, scholars were trying to do that. For centuries, they were trying to do that. [00:10:00] And in the 18th century, there’s, there was a famous scholar called Tre Shu Tredongbi, who was a little bit skeptical about some of the entries in Smartian, as well as some of the entries in the analytics and really tried to authenticate that story by looking at what he believes are the most canonical classics and so on.

So there, there was him and more … So Temu, another very well-known 20th century intellectual historian also tried to do that. And sources in English also try to, try to kind of create what is the authentic Confucius. So I don’t see my, myself as joining that project because it’s just not possible to verify a lot of these stories.

And I think Smartsheet, when he tells his story … Okay, so he sifts what he be- thinks are more believable, but perhaps in his mind, he’s also already thinking about what are the stories that are most important when we think about the life of Confucius. [00:11:00] And his sort … When, when we’re talking about his sources, it, it could months, it could be the analytic.

It’s, it’s a whole range of sources that he’s drawing from.

Speaker 3: So when you say it could be, we don’t really know what his sources … We have the texts that say stuff about Confucius, like the Djwangza and the Manza, but we don’t know about other sources that could be floating around there that are lost, right?

Speaker 2: There, there are some of those too. So for example, some of the excavated texts-

Speaker 3: Okay. …

Speaker 2: more recently have been used by scholars to, to establish what, what might have lied outside extent sources, but in fact, there, there, there’s not that much either. I still think that maybe what is most important is, about a story is not whether it actually historically happened, but what, what are the implications of telling that story?

Speaker 3: So you mentioned the analytics. I was reading Michael Nylund’s, one of her books on Confucius, and I didn’t realize that until fairly late when I was first taught the [00:12:00] analytics in undergrad, it was taught, like, this is kind of like the similar to, to the New Testament, but in Chinese tradition. So per Christianity, you have, like, this, the, the things that Jesus said, that’s really important.

In Confucianism, you have the things that Confucius said in the analytics, but I didn’t realize this, but the analytics wasn’t that important until much later period. It, it became a classical, a classic Confucian text, but originally it was less important. Is that right?

Speaker 2: So in, in the Han Dynasty, when they talk about the canonical classics, at first it was more the earliest classics, like the canon of poetry or the classical forgery, the Xi Zing or the, or the documents and so on.

So it’s true that the, in, let’s say in, in early 10 is the Confuci- uh, the analytics was, was not, had, did not have this preeminent position. And as to when it was compiled, there, there’s also a lot of controversy surrounding it. There’s some scholars who [00:13:00] believe that it’s really not put together until maybe two or three centuries after the death of Confucius, and there were scholars who argued that, no, it had an earlier providence, and the scholars who argue that it’s a period of a Christian, there were some who even want to say that it’s maybe closer to, to, to an early hand text and so on and so forth.

And I also don’t want to enter into that debate because I, I, I don’t think it’s answerable one way or another. And at least for myself, just speaking selfishly, I, I don’t find that to be the most interesting question about the analyst when I read it. I just wanna read it and think about what it has to say to me.

Speaker 3: True.

Speaker 2: So it’s not a very scholarly attitude in that sense that I’m not obsessed with dating, but, but a lot of scholars are and they, they, they have good reasons to be because when to date it also, of course, determine how you interpret these ideas as well. But eventually, it, it did have, it, it, it, it did gain a [00:14:00] preeminent position.

So eventually there, there, we have the so- called four books, but that, that was really not until the self and song, not, not until the 12th century-

Speaker 3: Jushi, right?

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When the, the Confucius and the X and, and mentions and two other chapters from the, from the record of rituals, the so- called great learning and the mean then they, they become the four books.

And once the four books became the basic text for, for the examination, it means that everybody memorized them as the, as the first primer, as, as the first step in the education. Not only memorize them, but also choose these commentaries on them. So, and then that lasted for quite a few centuries, right?

From the second, third century onwards until the 19th century, the whole, there’s such a vast body of commentarial literature. Yeah. The, the, the kind of [00:15:00] comments that are collected in the basic annotated editions of the analytics runs to … I, I, I can’t, off the top of my head, tell you how many pages the, the edition I have at home, Josuta, issue is about, I would say, maybe 2,000 pages.

And when you consider how short the analytics actually is, the, and the amount of commentaries they generated is, it’s just amazing because of course, of course, it’s not, it’s not surprising in the sense that the, the history of Chinese thoughts really works by commentaries, right, of people commenting on text.

And even that standard annotated edition represents only a fraction of what’s out there because everybody would comment on this text at some point and how do you even collect what they’re saying and-

Speaker 3: And so on. So

Speaker 2: just a vast sea out there. So that is another reason why I thought it may be fun to use the [00:16:00] smart sense text as a way to think about the analytics as well, because he uses it quite strategically.

He, he puts a, a bunch of the quotes together at the very end of his chapter, but throughout, he would narrate an incident in the life of Confucius and connected to a saying from the end like, “What Smartsheet does is to tell stories and put the s- saying in the context of a certain event and then invites you to imagine how the two speak to each other, the story and the saying.”

Speaker 3: One of the, the things that I thought was most interesting about some of the earlier, earlier texts that you translate is these stories, these rumors of Confucius’ illegitimus.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: Can you tell me about that? Like w- how … I guess we’ve gotten beyond the question of, like, whether or not this is historical, because I think you, you said it’s not.

It’s, it’s hard to figure out and, and it’s not really important. But [00:17:00] what does that say about the, the, uh, because those are early Han texts or are they like pre, pre Han preaching, prehan texts that are talking about Confucius as possibly having this … Is it fair to say it’s mythological, this mythological illegitimacy?

Speaker 2: So this, this particular phrase in the, in the historical records has generated a, a lot of arguments also because it says that his father and this lady from the Yen family, Yeha, that they, they had the Union in the Wilds and then Confucius was born. So what exactly was this-

Speaker: In the wild.

Speaker 2: Union in the wild.

So what we c- what comes to our mind, of course, in our modern imagination is that they had some, they have some sort of devout in the woods or something away from the city. Yeah. And that might have been a case, but yeah, and for, for a lot of commentators that, that just seem so disrespectful, they give all kinds of ingenious [00:18:00] explanations as to what this may mean.

And so one of them comes up with this idea that, no, it just means some sort of ritual infraction. And in this particular case, it refers to the age difference between his father and his mother. And that is why it’s referred to as. You can say that that’s the apologist doing their work, but if you look at it from another perspective, then it’s, it’s actually entirely predictable why all these stories about Confucius strange birth is told in this way.

B- to tell a story of extraordinary destiny, you almost have to go outside regular genealogy and paternity, right? In one sense, you need some sort of supernatural agent as the, as the force that brings you into being. So this idea that they go outside ritual bonds and then they pray at a certain place and then she becomes pregnant with Confucius and so on is entirely in line with all kinds of stories about the, the miraculous impregnation of women who, who give birth to dynastic founders that-

Speaker 3: Marchin’s [00:19:00] story of Lobam is similar, right?

Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes. So Lil Bon, for example, is, uh, uh, is, well, there is some story about how her, his mother dreams of some dragon hovering over him, over her and then, and then she becomes pregnant with him. In later dynastic histories, this kind of im- impregnating dragons appears a lot, but not only Luban, right?

So like the, the founder of the Joe Dynasty, the, the ancestors of the Joe Dynasty is supposed to have stepped on a top print and then becomes pregnant. This is as told in a poem in Shezin called or, uh, giving birth to her people. So she steps on the top print, she becomes pregnant, she gives birth to this boy and then she has to abandon him.

It doesn’t exactly say why, but presumably because of this problematic paternity and then the animals take care of him and the births take care of him.

Speaker 3: Sounds almost like a Disney [00:20:00] film.

Speaker 2: Yeah, right. And then, and then he grows up, be- becomes Lord milit and this kind of agricultural God that is also the ancestor of the, of the Joe Dynasty.

It goes on and on like the, the ancestors of the Shang dynasty is supposed to have swallows some verd eight and then becomes pregnant. So, so unusual birth as a trope is very, very common. So later on in the High Dynasty, when all these supernatural stories become even more common, then there’s, there’s some story about Confucius being connected to, to, to a God called the Black God, uh, or something like that.

It’s how his mother becomes pregnant through the manifestation of the supernatural power of this black God. But that’s a little bit later, maybe as late as well, I can’t say for sure, maybe first century or so, maybe even after Smartian. But when Smartzin was writing, he had access to all these ideas about miraculous birth.

And, and this particular approach actually offends some [00:21:00] commentators who one of them said that, “Well, he tries to make Confucius appear miraculous, but this ends up almost this, this age and so on and so forth.” So there’s some who were offended with him.

Speaker 3: I had heard some suggestion that Confucius might be not, and this is completely anachronistic, but not Han Chinese.

And is there any suggestion that that term in the wild suggests that he’s some sort of, he’s somehow conceit outside of the, uh, I’m getting into a minefield here, the civilizational bounds of, of pre of, of Joe dynasty, like mainstream and, and somehow connected with the ethnic mi- w- w- ethnic minorities is, again, an anachronistic term, but that he’s somehow like non Han Chinese or non

Speaker 2: So there’s nothing that indicates that. I, I, you’re right about the word there as indicating something beyond the boundaries of [00:22:00] civilization because in, in this conception of cultural order, social political order, you operate in concentric circles of square. So first there’s the royal capital and then there’s the region outside where, or you have all these feudal lords.

And later on, there’s a ritual text that there, there’s a chapter in, in the documents that talk about this kind of rings of order and so on. And, and yeah, is actually connected to what is called which is the, indeed what is beyond the boundaries. So, so what is Confucius attitude about boundaries and what are the boundaries of culture?

Because he himself said that, “I, I want to go on, go into the seas and float away on a raft and so on, that I want to go to the so- called, the, the nine arien, alien tribes or the, the [00:23:00] barbarians or something because he, he, he said that, well, so long as the, the nobleman is there, how-

Speaker 3: He’ll transparent.

Speaker 2: Yeah, to transform them and then

So, so there, there are various things in the analytics that could be mined to infer a certain attitude about what does it mean to have the boundaries of culture and what does it mean to go beyond it. Eventually, after Confucius, uh, in the high dynasty, we have this saying that that when you, when you lose ritual propriety at the center, it is by going to the margins that you can recover it.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: And so, and that is associated with the idea that civilization can become overripe and decadent, and in order to recover what is that original impetus, what is that positive energy you may have to go beyond the boundaries. So that, that idea is quite old as well, and, and it [00:24:00] generates all kinds of stories about wise barbarians who, who come back to instruct the quote unquote Chinese and so on and so forth.

The analytes itself has a lot of … Has quite a few things about that, but Smartsan actually doesn’t quote them. One, one of the things is you can translate that as saying for this END barbarians to have rulers, they, they may have rulers, but they do not compare to those rulers in the central states even when they don’t have rulers.

But there’s an alternative translation entirely acceptable based on the syntax, which can be rendered as the END barbarians. They do have rulers, unlike those central states, which no longer have rulers. So they really are the better in, in that, in that case, not as bad, but, uh, as a central states have gone to the dogs.

So those, those two readings are both [00:25:00] synthetically acceptable. And in fact, if you look at history of interpretation of those lines, it really depends a lot what was the historical situation of the interpreter was at that moment, for example, whether he was in a conquest dynasty where another people was ruling China.

Speaker 3: So like the Yan dynasty who was

Speaker 2: ruling- Oh, yeah. Or, I mean, seeing or whether you sought to justify Indian rule or not, and so on and so forth. But that thing, for some reason, that, that is not in, in, in similar sense account of Confucius. That, that idea is not taken up smart. And it does take up the idea of cultural boundaries, of course, with a lot of energy in other chapters.

Speaker 3: ‘Cause his chapter on the Xiongnu is one of the most interesting discussions in early, in early China that, that discusses this kind of question of us versus them.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it, it, it is really interesting. As you recall, in the middle, you have this guy, [00:26:00] Jung Hanger, who was a unique, sent to the Sonu in order to negotiate some marriage diplomacy, and he told the Han quarter, “Don’t send me, because if you send me, I’m gonna make trouble for you and they stupidly sent him anyway.”

And so he went over to the Sono, he became a turn coat. And then when the next Hanvoy came to the Sono, he basically defended Sono customs to the Han Envoy. So in such a passage, for example, you ask yourself, “I know why Xiohanji is saying that because he had to, he has to justify why he be- has become a turncoat, but why is Martin writing that?

So is he using that to criticize the wars that the emperor, the Han Empres waging against the Sono? Is it his particular argument about historical perspectives that in order to truly understand the center, you have to go to the periphery that you … In other words, that you do rely on these perspectives from the outside in order to truly [00:27:00] understand what’s going on inside.

That’s not the only story. Mm-hmm. He has several other chapters devoted to border peoples and all very interesting in terms of understanding what exactly are the boundaries of China. Even in the Prihan chapters, there are also interesting accounts of who, who exactly are the barbarians and so on.

Speaker 3: We’ve talked a lot about the earlier parts of the, the Confucian chronic, Confucius Chronicles.

You translate these texts of, of how Confucius was received later on. Mm-hmm. So I had no idea about the Typing Tiangua, like, translation of, of this discussion with Confucius. Can you-

Speaker 2: Yeah, so that’s a very interesting episode. I, of course, am no 19th century historian, but the, in very rough outline, the so- called typing wars referred to a, a group of rebels from the South Ho- Honsul Chen is the leader.

He was the leader and he believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He eventually became the center of, of [00:28:00] a movement that tried to over- overturn Xinhu. Basically, the mid 19th century saw a really devastating civil war in China. The scale of destruction was immense.

Speaker 3: It’s the most deadly civil war in history, I think.

Speaker 2: To propagate his ideas, Xin compiled something called a typing chronicle, his classics by heart, like, like everybody else, and he described a kind of, a dream vision in which Confucius was summoned to heaven and basically was flogged for misleading the Chinese people with his writings and, and he tried to escape from this punishment, but then God and Jesus Christ then dragged him by the scruff of the neck and brought him back and basically said that “You have to stay here.

You’re not to go to human world to confront more people. ” So it’s a very paradoxical thing because on, on the one hand, it shows this ab- abjectness and utter humiliation of Confucius and is a bonafide anti-Confucian [00:29:00] text in that sense, but, and, but also it, it allowed Confucius to stay in heaven. It, it doesn’t say that you have to go to hell or anything of the sort.

So it’s not, it’s not Dante where if, even if you’re Plato, you have to go to the limbo. Here you, you still stay, stay in heaven. Of course, knowing Wholesale Chan’s background, one cannot help but speculate as to what kind of anger would, would produce this portrait. He must have been very angry that he failed the examination, right?

Maybe the punishment of Confucius is some sort of psychological compensation, we can’t say, but yeah. But so there’s that kind of text, and also there’s also a 10th, a Texas probably 10th, 9th century, we can’t know for sure that’s found in the caves of, about how Confucius is confronted by a child who is smarter than he is, and he gets so mad with this child that he actually becomes homicidal, he kills his [00:30:00] child Yeah.

I, that text I also find absolutely fascinating. Yeah.

Speaker 3: These are the kind of cool texts that I think you, that the book brings to the fore that even someone like me hadn’t, had never encountered. And that, I think that’s one of the, the really strong points of, of this book that you produce. Can I ask, so we talked a little bit about the Typing Chronicles and the reaction to Confucius.

It kind of presages what’s gonna happen in the late 19th, early 20th century and how Confucius is gonna be rethought. He goes from being this most important of Chinese sages to being the reason that, that China is backwards or something thinkers talk about him. What does Lucian think of Confucius? How do

Lucian is this most important figure, or one of the most important writers in the 20th century in China. How does he deal with Confucius? What does he think?

Speaker 2: [00:31:00] So Lucin, actually there’s an article in the New York Times just yesterday.

Speaker 3: I was gonna ask.

Speaker 2: Yeah, about how he becomes this figure in the theme park, which is all very ironic because he’s such an acerbic character.

And had he lived to the, to people to … I mean, had he lived past the founding of the People’s Republic that, that there’s no doubt in my mind that he would get into trouble with authority. But as it were, he died already in the 1930s and, and therefore was Lionized and, and appropriated by the Chinese Communist Party.

So you’re right that there, there’s criticism of Confucius, there’s skepticism about what he’s, what he stood for and so on and so forth. But there was also all kinds of ways to resacrilize him since the late 19th century. So it’s by no means just a simple picture of how he’s taken down from the throne, as it were.

It is pretty complex. All the cross currents in Chinese politics and Chinese intellectual history in the 20th century, the, the, the, [00:32:00] the ways of elevating him or putting him down and so on and so forth. And I do … I thought of about titling that chapter and eventually I, I decide to code settling scores with Confucius.

The reason why I call it that is because, as I said, it’s not simply how you evaluate Confucius. It’s about whether we should blame him or not. And I also want to blame him would, would say that China’s problematic transition to modernity, whatever, whatever issues we have with that has to do with how Confucius teachings have been usified and then, and therefore have been misused to or manipulated to, to limit China’s development.

So in the particular case, and so there, there, there, there’s kind of ways, case that I mentioned earlier in reinvented Confucius as a reformer and so on and so forth. So Xin is, is a very interesting case. I, I, I once asked my students, and those who come from the mainland told me that this [00:33:00] story that he wrote Coconinzi is still very much a staple in the curriculum.

So this is a story about a pathetic scholar, Kokunisi, who is wearing this long gun is a kind of Confucius uniform, a confu- uh, the, the uniform of a Confucius scholars, although he is in, in very desperate circumstances, is very poor and has no proper employment and living really at the margins of society.

And the story is told as a child’s narrative’s encounter with this figure. And this child narrative describes how he goes from being marginal in their society to utter, utter degradation and disappearance and resorting to theft and, and, and- Stealing. Stealing and then being rejected by society. So this con-.

So what is the name Koizi? So when I was little, when you learn calligraphy in your first grade, when you’re six or seven, [00:34:00] you trace characters on absorbent, what we call absorbent paper that is printed with this character called Koniz the, the supremely great man Kongizi. So Kunisi is also a way to refer to Confucius, but the precise understanding of the syntax has never been established because i- i- i- i, the second character means second.

So because Confucius is the second son that sort of makes sense, but what is doesn’t, what is? It doesn’t totally make sense, but what that name evokes is the rudiment of a Confucian education. So the reason why Kuhisi is called Kunisi because nobody knows how to make sense of him. So they give him that, that name because everybody knows it from, from their primer and so on and so forth.

So, so there’s that depiction of Kunisi. And in the 1930s, Confu- Lucian [00:35:00] also wrote another essay called, which I also translated in the book, Confucius in Modern China, where it’s not so much about making fun of Confucius or dismissing him, but really about how Confucius has been appropriated by whoever has power.

And in Lucian’s time in the 1920s and 1930s, it meant war laws or whatever government that is in power, they would try to bring up Confucius as this beacon of traditional wisdom that we should all pay our respects to, and to be more, to put the context in, in a slightly more concrete way, what happened was that after the sing dynasty fell in 1911, there was a warlord, uh, commander of the army called Yeshikai, who briefly tried to, to declare himself, who, who was president and even tried to make himself king emperor again and so on.

So Yeshikai, for example, reinstituted the whole [00:36:00] worship of Confucius. And after the death of Yenshikai from about 1917 to 1927, China was torn by various war lots claiming bits and p- pieces of territories. And several of these warros also claimed to elevate Confucius. Changkaishak eventually in the 1930s in his new life movement also tried to bring up Confucius as a way to restore social order and to elevate tradition and so on and so forth.

So when Lucin expressed, expresses his distaste with this particular use of Confucius is less about what Confucius really meant, but more about how he has been misused by those impositions of power. I think that in, uh, one follower suggested that because if, for a brief time, ConLucian himself worked in the Ministry of Education.

And at that time, if you worked in the Ministry of Education, you participated in the, in the sacrifice of [00:37:00] Confucius. So he might have also done that himself. Doesn’t mean that you could not be so skeptical and enraged. In fact, the two might have been intertwined, that he knew the classics very well was very steep in traditional learning.

It’s sometimes even nostalgic about, I think, is, is obvious this despite his also very sharp criticism and so on.

Speaker 3: You talk about how with Confucius, one of the things that he seems to prescribe with, if there’s disturbances in politics is that he seems to prescribe education as one of the solutions. And I, I feel like that echoes in today’s China.

Like the, one of the responses, I feel like to the chaos of the, the first 30 years of the PRC was afterwards to, to sort of bury … A lot of folks buried themselves in, in education. But do you see anything from, from all of the attempts that helps us better understand [00:38:00] contemporary China today?

Speaker 2: I think one of the issues is how Confucius is deployed as a kind of cultural nationalism and how in some ways he is also co-opted by the government and with Xi Zinping visiting the shrines and, and paying his respects like previous emperors and like Yeshkin, like Chengkai Shank, and what does it mean for those in power to have to, again, elevate Confucius?

And on one level, of course, it’s great, right? Because it means that people are reading the classics again and then it matters. But when those in power embrace Confucian texts, what, what, what is the vision they’re trying to propagate? Uh, is it a particular respectful authority or harmony in society or is it a vision of independent thinking that is also in Confucius, or at least in interpretations of Confucius?

I would say that [00:39:00] the, the complexity continues. As I said, there are people, enough people interpret Confucius in, even in oppositional terms, right, in terms of … Even I think Smartsheet in his account from 2,000 years ago implies that bec- because when he says that Confucius is Brio is that, meaning he is not employed, he’s not appreciated, he’s not used by people who could use his talents, that kind of disjunction doesn’t, that kind of disjunction is not complimentary about the power structure that exists because it’s about someone who, who, who, who cannot find a place in, in that system, but who has to craft his own sense of values and to have to teach other people what truly matters in, in existence, right?

So it, to, to that extent, so then of course, Smartsin then probably invents the story of Confucius transmitting the classics [00:40:00] because some of those stories did not exist before Smartsan, like how Confucius cuts down 3,000 poems in the classic portray to 300 and then so and so but he was a, he’s the first one who tell those stories.

So in other words, if we look at that story today, are you looking at Confucius as a big supporter of the powers that be, and is he, is, is he teaching a certain vision of orderly conduct and respect to authority or is he, is he teaching independent thinking or, or being able to think deeply about what is truly meaningful and then to adhere to it?

Because that is also, in some ways, the lesson of Martin’s account, right? This is someone who, despite not finding a place in society, manages to teach people what truly matters and, and then these moral teachings survive the vicissitudes of history and people find meaning in it.

Speaker: I think that is a good place to end this conversation, discussing [00:41:00] questions of authority and independent thinking in the Confucian tradition.

The new book, The Confucius Chronicles, is out now from Columbia University Press. Professor Liwai, thank you so much for coming on the Chinese Literature Podcast.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much.