"Every human endeavour is intended to a greater or lesser degree, to exploit man. Only story-telling is devoted to entertaining him, a function which is so often equivalent to consoling him." (letter dated Paris, 8th of February, 1895 included in Eça de Queirós: Correspondência, Oporto, 1928)
When we speak of literature, we often tend to forget about so-called marginal literature, one of the expressions of which is the oral tradition. This is popular literature which is not written down. In China, it reached its peak with the creative genius of the story-tellers.
I once listened to an old Chinese story-teller in Macau, sitting on the reclaimed land at Praia Grande Bay.
Many residents used to walk along the Praia Grande on sultry summer evenings, their paths lit by kerosene lamps or flickering red lights. They sought out the fresh breeze coming off the river, sometimes with a warm edge to it just like the air spun by those old-fashioned ceiling fans used in stuffy houses. Street vendors selling snacks, noodles, fruit, iced teas, and a thousand and one trinkets, parked their stalls there, but all the same, the story-teller was the main attraction for the crowds. The man, created from shadow and light sat on a straw mat, a large black fan with butterflies fluttering over peonies in his hand. He was old, his beard white and grizzled, his hands knotted and skinny, his cheeks rutted with wrinkles drawn over time and adversity. He had come, in distant times, from China.
As he spoke, the story-teller moved his hands, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, now embracing, now rejecting. The hands of an opera actor, the hands of a poet or scholar, the hands of an ascetic.
And there we sat, crouched down on our heels, listening to him recount his legends from ancient China, stories from the history of the great Middle Kingdom, tales of ghosts, each one holding us in its grip. Then there were the stories about people who may or may not have been pure figments of his imagination.
Nowadays in Macau, there is no longer anyone who knows how to tell stories, anyone who knows how to slip into a fantasy world, an unreality which only comes alive through the process of telling. Where have Macau's story-tellers gone?
Story-telling is perhaps the oldest tradition known to mankind. In China, the story-teller provided, from time immemorial, stimulation for humble villagers. He was an essential element in homes during the "dead" season. (1)
While failed scholars occasionally turned to telling stories, it was often a simple man endowed with a creative spirit and a fertile imagination who would tread the roads of China selling fantasies, the harmless pastime of telling stories just as the medieval jesters did in Portugal. Frequently, they did not even sell their stories, but preferred to offer their art as entertainment in the Chinese spirit which does not put a price on creation. (2)
The following story is intended to give an idea of what kinds of stories a story-teller told. It is called "Magistrate Lei's Cat". This story is probably an adaptation of a classical Chinese narrative dating from the Ming Dynasty. (3) I have selected it because I heard it being told by a story-teller in Macau in the form in which it had reached the people over many years. It is also typical of the cyclical nature of Chinese thought, which makes Chinese philosophy so different from the linear nature of Greek thought on which classical western thought is based. Nothing happens in this story. Nevertheless, the mental process on which it rests is profound.
A high-ranking Chinese official, a famed scholar, bought a wonderful cat for an exorbitant amount of money. His eyes were opal-green and his fur a luxuriant gold, his ears pinned back, with sturdy legs and a neat tail. The markings on his back were like two great butterfly wings traced in a darker shade. The cat was truly a beautiful example of the domestic feline.
As he was so proud of having such a gorgeous cat, his owner called him Tiger and invited some of his scholar friends to come and compose poetry, play chess and admire the newly-acquired bibelot.
The scholars, dressed in their long heavy silk tunics, sought the shade of a thicket of bamboo at the far end of the garden and then sat down at a large stone table with a chess board carved into the surface. There they conversed in the manner of scholarly men of good taste.
The host pointed to the cat who was stretched out on an old bench fast asleep, in the heat of the sun:
"Look how beautiful my cat is!", he said. "Don't you agree that Tiger is just the right name for him?"
One of the other scholars replied:
"It is true that the tiger is a beautiful and powerful animal but the dragon is more powerful. Why did you not call him Dragon?"
Another friend interrupted:
"No doubt the dragon is stronger than the tiger, but is it not equally true that when the dragon rises up to Heaven he is covered in clouds? Why don't you call your cat Cloud? Gilded Cloud would be such a pretty name!"
A third scholar took the floor to make his contribution:
"Consider it carefully - although clouds can cover all of Heaven, they are not so strong as the wind which can blow them away. As far as I can see, the best name for your cat is Wind."
"Wind?" asked another member of the party. "What force does the wind have against a strong fence fashioned from bamboo. Bamboo is the best name. Only Bamboo."
The fifth scholar, who had kept quiet until then, turned to look at the cat and said:
"Although the bamboo fence can stop the wind, mice can nibble at it until they can creep through. Why not call your pretty cat Mouse?"
An old peasant had been listening carefully to the six scholar's erudite conversation from the beginning. When they stopped talking, he asked them in a humble voice:
"Venerable Masters, please pause for thought. Who is stronger because he can kill mice? Is it not the cat?"
The cyclical nature of this parable shows how fragile and relative are any notions of power.
As well as tales such as this one, the Macau story-teller told epic tales in the Chinese style, going on for hours and hours at a time. And after the stories there were anecdotes and riddles, all of them contributing to a world of the imagination and memories.
An old Chinese saying goes: "My books speak to my spirit, my friends to my heart and Heaven to my soul. Everything else is for my ears".
I think it would be more accurate to say the Chinese story-teller in Macau spoke to my spirit, my heart and my soul through my ears!
This is a summary of a speech given in the first session of "Chinese Culture Fortnight" held in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon on the 7th of March, 1989.
Translated by Marie Imelda MacLeod
NOTE
(1) Marcel Granet - La Civilization Chinoise, "L'Évolution de I'Humanité" Collection, Albin Michel, Paris, 1968.
(2) We know from the terracotta sculptures which have been excavated recently in China that there have been story-tellers since the Han Dynasty. They are represented with a small tambourine which they used to accompany their tales as could be seen in Macau in the first decades of this century.
(3) "The Name of the Cat" is a similar story to this one, attributed to Yuan King, a Chinese writer of the Ming Dynasty.
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