Advertisement Hundreds of temples were destroyed. other countries in East Asia. Genera tieing Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement.) LETTEI\ FI\OM BEIJING By the nineteen-eighties, Confucianism tions of Chinese thinkers had dreamed was so maligned that the historian Yu of finding the optimal recipe for "na The Confucian revival has been es ON THE TOWN Ying-shih called it a "wandering soul." tional studies"-the mixture of philoso pecially visible in the city of Qyfu, the BE THE. FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT EVENTS, In September, 2010, nine months phy and history that might insulate sage's home town, in present-day Shan CONFUCIUS COMES HOME China from the pressures of Western dong Province. In 2007, the city's Inter PROMOTIONS, AND SPECIAL OFFERS after I moved in, I was at my desk one FROM OUR ADVERTISERS ization. Mter the democracy demon national Confucius Festival was co Move over, Mao. morning when I heard a loudspeaker crackle to life inside the temple. A strations at Tiananmen Square in 1989 sponsored by the Confucius Wine ended in a violent crackdown, leaders Company. Thousands of people filled a BY EVAN 05N05 booming voice was followed by the sound of a heavy bell, then drums and a needed an indigenous ideology that local stadium, giant balloons bearing the flute, and the recitation of passages from might restore the Party's moral credibil names of ancient scholars bobbed over writings by Confucius and other ancient ity. Top Communists gave speeches at head, and a Korean pop star performed · masters. The performance lasted twenty meetings devoted to Confucianism, and in an abbreviated outfit. Near the cave minutes.·An hour later, it was repeated, state television launched a series about where Confucius was said to have been and an hour after that, and again the traditional culture intended, it said, "to born, a five-hundred-million-dollar next day. boost the people's self-confidence, self museum-and-park complex is under The wandering soul, in one form or respect, and patriotic thought." In 2002, construction; it includes a statue of another, has been stirring. As China the Party officially stopped calling itself Confucius that is nearly as tall as the undergoes an economic transformation a "revolutionary party'' and adopted the Statue of Liberty. In its marketing, ten times the speed of the first industrial · term "Party in Power." The Prime Min Qyfu has adopted comparisons to Je revolution, people are turning to ancient ister, Wen Jiabao, declared, ''Unity and rusalem and Mecca and calls itself ideas for a connection to the past. The stability are really more important than "The Holy City of the Orient." List Enjoy a season's worth of anything else." In February, 2005, the year, it received 4.4 million visitors, sur classics have become such reliable best great theatre when you sellers that, in 2009, the company be Party chief, Hu Jintao, quoted Confu passing the number of people who vis hind National Studies Web, a site that cius' observation that "harmony is some ited Israel. join Roundabout! Choose thing to be cherished." No one has harnessed the interest in sells digitized Confucian texts, went from "Cabaret," "Dinner public on the Shenzhen stock exchange. Soon, "harmony'' was on billboards Confucius more successfully than Yu To appeal to entrepreneurs, Peking and in television commercials and in Dan, a professor of media studies at with Friends,': "Violet," toned by apparatchiks. In 2006, a teain Beijing Normal University. She pre University .and other respected schools "The Real Thing," and created mid-career courses that prom of government-backed historians sented a popular series of lectures on ised to reveal "commercial wisdom" in marked Confucius' 2,557th birthday by state television and wrote a book, "Con more. From the best prices unveiling what they called a "standard fucius from the Heart" (2006), that is the classics. to V.I.P. access, Roundabout Confucianism has no priesthood or ized" portrait: a kindly old figure with a said to have sold ten million copies. rites of conversion, and is not generally luxuriant beard, his hands crossed at his Today, she occupies a position in Chi has a package for you. considered a religion, but new members chest. The Chinese Association for the nese pop culture somewhere between of China's middle class regard an inter Study of Confucius, supported by the Bernard-Henri Levy and Dr. Phil. S}fe roondabouttheatre.org/packages est in philosophy and history as a mark Ministry of Civil Affairs, introduced plays down themes that irritate modern of cultivation and cultural nationalism. traditions that had never existed before. readers-such as Confucius' observa Parents have enrolled their children at It arranged for couples to renew their tion that "women and small people are private Confucian academies; I visited a wedding vows in front of a statue of hard to deal with"-and writes, reassur the sage. ingly, "The truths that Confucius gives n my fifth year in Beijing, I moved in the sixth century B.C., traditionally weekend school where children aged As a gentler alternative to Mao, Con us are always the easiest of truths." into a one-story brick house beside had a stature in China akin to that of three to thirteen were learning the clas I fucius has been enlisted as an avatar on Scholars mock her work-one critic at the Confucius Temple, a seven-hun Socrates in the West. He stressed com sics by rote, reciting each passage six the world stage. The opening ceremony tended book signings in a T -shirt that dred-year-old shrine to China's most passion, ritual, and duty. "There is gov hundred times. Around the country, of the 2008 Olympics made no mention read "Confucius is deeply worried" important philosopher. The temple, ernment when the prince is prince, and Chinese tourists flocked to the surviving of the Chairman but featured recurring but within a year Yu became the sec which shared a wall with my kitchen, the minister is minister; when the father Confucius Temples, where they filled references to harmony and to the classic ond-highest-paid author in China, after was silent. It had gnarled cypress trees is father, and the son is son," Confucius out prayer cards. "The overwhelming texts. In the past decade, China has Guo Jingming, a writer of young-adult and a wooden pavilion that lOomed said. Chairman Mao believed in "per number are about exams," Anna Sun, a opened more than four hundred Con fiction who travelled with guards to above my roof like a conscience. In manent revolution," and when the Cul sociologist at Kenyon College, who fucius Institutes around the world to hold back the crowds. · the mornings, I took a cup of coffee tural Revolution began, in 1966, he ex studied the cards, told me. "They are teach language, culture, and history. At Yu Dan's headquarters in Beijing, outside and listened to the wakeup horted young Red Guards to "Smash primarily wishes for the college entrance ROUNDABOUT Many universities have welcomed them; a suite of offices on a high floor at the ) sounds next door: the brush of a the Four Olds": old customs, old cul exam, but also the TOEFL, the G.R.E., .. THEATRE the program provides teaching materi edge of the campus, her assistant ushered broom across the flagstones, the ture, old habits, and old ideas. Zealots law school." ..,.COMPANY als and cash. (Some scholars have com me into a modern conference room. Yu squeak of a faucet, the hectoring of the denounced Confucius fo~ fostering It would have been anathema to plained that the institutes seek to limit Dan arrived, smiling broadly, and asked magpies overhead. "bad elements, rightists, monsters, and Chairman Mao, but his heirs have expression. In July, McMaster Uni the assistant to prepare tea. Yu Dan, who It was a small miracle that the shrine freaks," and one of Mao's lieutenants changed their view on revolution. In the eighties, when China set itself in pursuit versity, in Canada, closed its Confucius is in her late forties, has high cheek newyorkeronthetown.com had survived. Confucius, who was born gave the approval to dig up his grave. ------of prosperity, the Party studied how Institute after a teacher complained bones and a short, severe haircut. I Follow us on Twitter: @NewYorkerPromo that she had been prevented from prac- The Communist Party has decided to embrace classical ideas ifauthority. Confucian values had helped to stabilize asked what prompted her to embrace the
ILLUSTRATION BY VICTO NGAI THE NEW YORKER., JANUARY 13, 2014 31 30 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 13, 2014 classics. She said that, like others her was an era of war and corruption, and companied by its proper sauce, he would pher. But I was curious about the show age, she had grown up denouncing the Confucius argued that rituals could not eat." But in times of war or instabil in scholars' robes; each song-and-dance had happened. Some of those edits were and arranged to visit the head of the ancient scriptures. 'When I began writ teach people to reconcile their desires to ity his dictates on how to dress, how to routine was named for a line frorri the ordained from above: for years the peo temple, a man named Wu Zhiyou. Wu ing 'Confucius from the Heart,' a lot the needs offamily and community. He govern, and how to live held out the tan classics-the Analects, the Book of ple were barred from discussing the looked less like a theologian than like an of people asked me, Why are you writ was an optimist. A virtuous ruler, he talizing promise of order. A prime min Songs, the Book of Rites, and others crackdown at Tiananmen Square or actor who'd play the kindly father in a ing this?' And I said, 'I am atoning for ~aid, is like the wind: "The moral char ister later remarked, 'With just half the and had an upbeat interpretation: "Hap the famine of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese soap opera: in his mid-fifties, the crimes of my generation, because acter of those beneath him is ·the grass. Analects, I can govern the empire." piness" was based on the line "Good which took between thirty million and he had a large, handsome face, a perfect we were young and we criticized him When the wind blows, the grass bends." In the centuries that followed, Con fortune lies within bad; bad fortune lies forty-five million lives, because the pair of dimples in his cheeks, and a res mercilessly.' " He finally earned a government post, fucianism was manipulated and.buffeted within good." (The stage version omit Party liad never repudiated or accepted onant voice that sounded somehow fa She paused, and turned her atten but his reforms threatened other offi by politics. In 213 B.C., the first em ted the ominous second clause.) The responsibility for those events. Ordinary miliar. Before being posted to run the tion to the assistant, a graduate student. cials, and, as legend has it, they con- peror of China sought to put knowledge finale, "Harmony," linked Confucius Chinese had few choices: some accepted temple, he had spent most of his career "Child, how could you be so stupid!" . cocted a plan to drive him out: They under government control and ordered and the Communist Party. A pamphlet the forgetting, because they were poor in the research office of the city's Propa Yu said. "This tea has been steeping for sent his superior eighty beautiful girls, the burning ofbooks, including Confu explained that it conveyed the "harmo and determined to get on with their ganda Department, and he had a mind too long!" She looked at me, and the who succeeded in occupying the boss so cian texts. People who invoked them nious ideology and harmonious society lives; some raged against it, but lacked for marketing. Of the performance, he smile returned. "Children today do not thoroughly (he disappeared for three were executed or sentenced to labor in of the ancient people, which will have a the political means to resist. said, "This show has attracted people know how to host people," she said. days) that the righteous Confucius had exile. Confucianism was revived in the positive influence on the construction of There were other books about the from all levels of society-Chinese and Mter Yu became popular, the Party in to leave. Humiliated, Confucius began subsequent dynasty, the Han, and was modern harmonious society." Confucius Temple, and these filled in foreigners, men and women, well edu vited her to conferences, and she began travelling about the country, pointing China's state ideology for much of the the blanks-especially about the' night cated and less educated, experts and or presenting her readings of the classics out abuses. He met a woman whose next two millennia. The temple next to read the book that Wu gave me, and ofAugust 23, 1966, during the opening dinary people.'' in a political context. "Unlimited possi husband and son had been eaten by ti my house in Beijing was built in 1306, I the depth of detail about ancient weeks of the Cultural Revolution. The I asked if he was involved in the pro bility leads to chaos, because you don't gers, and he told his disciples, "An op near the Imperial Academy, a training events was impressive: it recorded who order to "Smash the Four Olds" had de duction. "I'm the chief designer!" he know where to go or what to do," she pressive government is more terrible ground for officials, which remained planted which trees on the temple volved into a chaotic assault on author said, eyes shining. "I oversaw every de told me, adding, 'We must rely on a than tigers." Confucius was so radical China's highest seat oflearning until the grounds seven hundred years ago. But it ity of all kinds. That afternoon, a group tail. Even the narrator's voice is mine." strict system to resolve problems. As that a fellow-sage, Laozi (said to be the fall of the emperor, in 1911. 1 was conspicuously silent on other mat of Red Guards summoned one of Chi The show had been con~eived under citizens, our duty is not necessarily to be founder ofTaoism), warned him against ters, including the years between 1905 na's most famous writers, Lao She, to demanding circumstances. Wu had perfect moral persons. Our duty is to be "ill this huffing and puffing, as though few days after I heard the loud and 1981. In the official history of the the temple's front gate. been given only a month's notice before law-abiding citizens.'' you were carrying a big drum and speaker next door, a large banner Confucius Temple, most of the twenti Lao She was sixty-seven and one of A the birthday celebration. He hired a searching for a lost child." To Confu went up in our neighborhood, identifY eth century was blank China's best hopes for the Nobel Prize composer, recruited dancers from a local onfucius-or Kongzi, which cius, harmony was consensus, not con ing the temple as "The Holy Land of During tny time in China, I had in Literature. He had grown up not far art school, and selected lines from the means Master Kong-was not formity. It required loyal opposition. A National Studies." For the first time learned to expect that renderings of his from the temple, in poverty, the son of C classics that could lend the performance born to power, but his idiosyncrasies country is at risk, he said, when a prince since the Communist Party came to tory came with holes, like the dropouts an imperial guard who died in battle a narrative shape. "You need ups and and ideas made him the Zelig of the believes that "the only joy in being a power, in 1949, the temple was putting in an audio recording when the music against foreign armies. In 1924, he went downs and a climax, just like a movie or Chinese classics. His story runs through prince is that no one opposes what one on a celebration of Confucius' birthday. goes silent and resumes as if nothing to London and stayed for five years, a play," he said. "If it's too bland, it will the ancient books-the Analects, Zuo says." Warlords ignored him or tried to The occasion featured speeches by gov never work" zhuan, Mengzi, the Records of the kill him. ernment officials and professors and a Wu had succeeded in making the Grand Historian-with details that Confucius never imagined that he recitation by children. I figured that the Confucius Temple into his own com range from historical to mythical. His would become an icon. "He liked con event would probably signal the end of munity theatre, and he was savoring his father, Shuliang He, was an aging war versations. They helped him think, but the daily musical shows, but in the role. "In junior middle school, I was al rior-physically enormous arid fa he never expected anyone to write them weeks that followed they continued, and ways the student leader of the propa mously ugly-who was desperate for a down," the historian Annping Chin ob-. followed a regular schedule: every hour, ganda section of the student council," he healthy son. When he was in his seven served, in "The Authentic Confucius: A ten to six, seven days a week, rain or said. "I love reading aloud, and music ties, he found a teen-age concubine, Life ofThought and Politics" (2007). shine. The sound echoed off the walls of and art." In his spare time, he still did and they had a son, in 551 B.C. The "Confucius did not wish to have his the houses beside the temple, and what cross-talk comedy routines, the Chinese baby, like his father, was unsighdy, with words end up as rules," she wrote, be had begun as a novelty gradually wore version ofstandup. He had plans for the a crooked nose and a bulbous fore cause "he loved the idea ofbeing human. grooves into the minds of my neighbors. temple's future. 'We're building a new head so peculiar that he was given the He loved the entirely private journey of Huang Wenyi, an employee at a recy set that will have ceramic statues of the name Qiu, meaning "mound.'' (Admir finding what was right and feasible cling yard, who lived next door, told me, seventy-two disciples. And we need ers insisted that his head resembled a among life's many variables." "I hear it in my head at night. It's like more lighting. Then, maybe, I can say it crown.) After thirteen years of wandering, I've been on a boat all day and I can still is complete." When Confucius was three, his fa Confucius returned home to his books, feel the rocking." Wu checked his watch. He wanted ther died, and his mother set off with and he died, in his seventies, convinced His face brightened with an idea. me to catch the three-o'clock show. He her toddler to find a livelihood. As a that he was a failure. Of his three thou "You should go tell them to turn down gave me a book on the history of the boy, he worked and lost himself in po sand students, only seventy-two were the volume~" temple and said, "Mter you read this etry and imagination. He married at t~e disciples, said to have mastered his 'Why me?" book, your questions will no longer be eighteen or nineteen, but was bored and teachings, which they compiled in the "Because you're a foreigner. They'll questions." frustrated, because he lacked the con Analects. His rules made him exhausting pay attention to you." The stage, in front of a pavilion on nections to realize his ambition of be to be around. 'When the meat was not I wasn't sure I wanted the kind of the north side of the compound, had coming a bureaucrat. Instead, he offered cut squarely, he would not eat," his disci attention that comes from complaining been fitted with lights. The cast con to teach students of every social class. It ples wrote. 'When a thing was not ac- about China's most famous philoso- sisted of sixteen young men and women "Usually I'd be nervous, but the rest ofhis apartment is so nice." 32 THE NEW YOI\KEI\, JANUAI\Y 13, 2014 a soft breeze blew in the window from a ended his life, it would be difficult; the spect this sacred land of Chinese culture, The longer I lived beside the Confu nearby canal. I asked if he had ever Lake of Great Peace was filled in de and stop the building of the Christian cius Temple the more I sensed the gap learned more about his father's suicide. cades ago, during an extension of the church at once," they wrote. The govern between what people asked of it and "It's hard to know exactly, but I think -subway system. I have often marvelled ment tried to argue that there was a prec what it provided. The Chinese came to his death was his final act of st:f)lggle," at how much people in China have edent for having a church in town, but the temple, to the Holy Land of Na Shu Yi said. "Many years later, I came managed to put behind them: revolu the protest attracted the support ofgrass tional Studies, on a quest for some kind upon an article called 'Poets,' which he tion, war, poverty, and the upheavals of roots Confucian associations and Web of moral continuity. But it rarely gave had written in 1941"-a quarter century the present. My neighbor Huang lived sites, and construction was postponed. them what they wanted. The Party, to before he died. "He wrote, 'Poets are a with his mother, who was eighty-eight. In China, the official embrace ofCon maintain its hold over history, offered a strange crowd. When everyone else is When I once asked her if she had pho fucius has come to be seen by some as caricature of Confucius. Generations of happy, the poets can say things that are tos of her family, she said, "They were suffocating. When, in the name of pro Chinese had grown up condemning discouraging. When everyone else is burned during the Cultural Revolu tecting political stability, censors remove China's ethical and philosophical tradi sorrowful, the poets can laugh and tion." And then she laughed-the par critical comments from the Chinese Web, tions, only to find that the Party was dance. But when the nation is in danger ticular hollow laugh that the Chinese savvy users say that their words have been now abruptly resurrecting them, with they must drown themselves and let reserve for awful things. "harmonized." The Party's conception of out granting permission to discuss what their deaths be a warning in the name Confucian harmony leaves little room for had happened in the interim. Hu Shuli, of truth.'" he Cultural Revolution dismantled the politics of negotiation, for an honest a progressive editor, described a "collec This sacrifice was a tradition in T China's ancient belief systems, and clash of ideas. After the pop scholar Yu tive amnesia'' surrounding the Cultural China, dating to the third century B.C., the economic revolution that followed Dan became a sensation, Li Ling, a Pe Revolution. "Files on that episode in when the poet C2ll Yuan drowned him could not rebuild them. Prosperity had king University professor, published our history remain 'secret,'" she wrote. "Can you give me some sort ofmetaphor for how you're feeling?" selfin protest against corruption. Shu Yi yet to define the ultimate purpose of the "Stray Dog: My Reading ofthe Analects," "Older generations do not dare look told me, "By doing so, they are fighting nation and the individual. There was a in which he criticized the "manufactured back, while our younger generations hole in Chinese life that people called the Confucius." He wrote, "The real Confu don't have the remotest inkling of the • • back, telling others what the truth really is." His father, he said, "would rather jingshen kongxu-"the spiritual void." cius, the one who actually livt::d, was nei Cultural Revolution." break than bend." Every day, I noticed groups of civil ther a sage nor a king . .. . . He had no There were signs that liberal intellec servants from the hinterlands and stu power or status-----i>nly morality and learn tuals were not the only ones losing pa living near Bloomsbury and reading scious. Three hours later, he was taken After I talked to Shu Yi, I went back dents from around th~ city visiting the ing-and dared to criticize the power elite tience with the official rendering of Conrad and Joyce. He wore khakis be to a police station, where his wife re to see Wu Zhiyou, the head of the tem Confucius Temple. One young guide of his day. He travelled around lobbying Confucius. In November, 2012, Yu cause he couldn't afford tweeds. In trieved him. ple, and asked him about the story of with a ponytail spoke to a group of mid for his policies, racking his brains to help Dan appeared before an audience at Pe 1936, he wrote "Rickshaw Boy," about The next morning, Lao She rose Lao She's final night. He gave a short dle-aged Chinese women. She held her the rulers ofhis day with their problems, king University after a performance of a young rickshaw puller whose encoun early and walked northwest from his sigh and said, "It's true. During the Cul tural Revolution, there were struggle hands out before her. ''This is the gesture always trying to convince them to give up Chinese opera, and the students booed ters with injustice turn him into a "de home to a pond called the Lake of Great L for paying respects to Confucius," she evil ways and be more righteous . . . . He her. They shouted that she didn't de generate, selfish, hapless product of Peace. He read poetry and wrote until sessions here. Afterward, Lao She went said. Her visitors did their best to copy was tormented, obsessed, and driven to serve to be onstage with serious schol a sick society." Lao She also lived in the sun set. Then he took off his shirt home and threw himself in the lake. her. For many people in China, I real roam, pleading for his ideas, more like a ars. "Get out of here!" someone yelled, America, for more than three years--on and draped it over a tree branch, loaded This can be described as a historical ized, the gaps in history had made Con stray dog than a sage." and Yu made a hasty exit. The previ Manhattan's Upper West Side-but he his pockets with stones, and walked into fact." fucius a stranger. It was difficult to know When Li's book came out, in May, ous winter, a large statue of Confucius eventually returned to China and be the lake. Why had the temple's written history where his life ended and the mythology 2007, he was denounced by other classi- appeared beside Tiananmen Square, came to Beijing what Victor Hugo was When the body was discovered the made no mention of it? and the politics began. Annping Chin the first new addition to such a sensi to Paris: the city's quintessential writer. next day, his son, Shu Yi, was sum Wu s_truggled to find an answer, and wrote, 'We give him credit for all that tive spot since Mao's mausoleum was The Party named him a "People's Art moned to collect it. The police had 1 braced myself for a dose of propa has gone right and wrong in China be erected, a generation ago. Philosophers ist." He resented being asked to produce found his father's clothes, his cane, his ganda. But then he said, "It's too sad. It cause we do not really know him." and political scientists wondered if propaganda, but, like many, he was a glasses, and his pen, as well as a sheaf of makes people too sad. I think it's best In that vacuum, some in China have it signalled an official change to the loyal servant who poured criticism on papers that he had left behind. The not to include this in books. It's factual, been eager to put the philosopher to Party platform. But then, four months his fellow-writers when they fell out official ruling on his death declared that it's history, but it was not because of the more useful political purposes. In Octo after it arrived, the statue disappeared. It with the Party. Lao She had "isolated himself from the temple. It was because of the time. It ber, 2010, the dissident writer Liu was moved, in the middle of the night, Now he was the target. A group people." He was a "counter-revolution doesn't belong in the records of the Xiaobo, who is serving an eleven-year to a much less prominent site, in the of Red Guards-mostly schoolgirls ary'' and was barred from receiving a Confucius Temple." sentence for subversion, was awarded the courtyard of a museum. The reason for of fifteen and sixteen-pushed him proper burial. The body was cremated I understood his point, but the expla Nobel Peace Prize. That enraged the cal scholars, such as Jiang Qlng, a prom the move remained a mystery, because through the gates of the temple and without ceremony. His widow and chil nation felt incomplete. Lao She was Chinese government. In response, a inent Confucian political thinker, who the Central Propaganda Department forced him to kneel on the flagstones dren put his. spectacles and his pen into beaten in the temple because it was a group of nationalists organized what they called the author "a cynical doomsday barred Chinese journalists from writing beside a bonfire, among other writers a casket and buried it. place oflearning, ofideas, ofhistory, the called the "Confucius Peace Prize," and prophet who deserves no response." One about it. People were left to joke that and artists. His accusers denounced him I wondered about the son, Shu Yi. permission to attack one of China's awarded it, the next year, to Vladimir ofLi's defenders was Liu Xiaobo. Before Confucius, the itinerant teacher from for his ties to America and for amassing H~ would be in his seventies now, older most famous novelists was, like so much Putin, for bringing "safety and stability to Liu went to prison, he warned of a mood Shandong Province, had been caught dollars, a common accusation at the than his father was when he died. I of the Cultural Revolution, the permis Russia." At times, the embrace of Con in which "Confucianism was venerated trying to live in Beijing without the time. asked around and discovered that he sion to attack what it meant to be Chi fucius has turned hostile. In December, and all other schools of thought were proper permit. + They shouted "Down with the anti lived only a few minutes' walk from my nese, and in the decades since then the 2010, a group of ten well-known classi banned." Instead ofinvoking Corili.Icius, Party elements!" and used leather belts house. He invited me over. Shu Yi had Party and the people had never recon cal scholars denounced a plan to build a Liu wrote, intellectuals should be vener with heavy brass buckles to whip the old white hair and a heavy, kind face, and ciled all that they lost in those moments. large Christian church in Qufu, Confu ating "independence of thought and au NEW YORK ER.COM / GO/ OUTLOUD men and women. Lao She was bleeding his apartment was cluttered with books Even if someone wanted to mark the cius' home town. 'We beseech you tore- tonomy of person." A conversation with Evan Osnos. frqm the head, but he remained con- and scrolls and paintings. As we talked, site where Beijing's greatest chronicler
34 THE NEW YOI\KEI\., JANUAI\Y 13, 2014