陋室

Twenty-sixth of June, 2038, a Saturday, eight in the morning, Chengdu. West of the city, a 1990s block of six floors and no lift; sound-activated lights on the stairs, one stamp per landing. Fifth floor, left: on the door a faded fortune character I stuck up my first New Year and never took down, the red sun-bleached to pink. Twelve square metres: a single bed, a desk, a chair, a shelf, a wardrobe; a north window onto the wall of the next block and its dripping air-conditioners; a damp stain in one corner painted over twice in ten years and back each time. On top of the shelf the little bamboo basket, dusty, holding a fountain pen, pencils, a red pen. Its base woven with the flower on my uncle's box. Autumn 2028, a stall in Jinli, thirty-five yuan: "Qingshen weaving, the most famous in China." I thought: thirty-five yuan, just right for pens. The lower half of the wardrobe held no clothes but notebooks laid flat, nearly a foot high: the first few hardback, dark green, the twenty-dollar kind from New York; then five-yuan exercise books, blue, yellow, one held together with tape. Twenty-seven. Ten years. I came, I'd said, to see the city. What I saw was drying houses in Turpan, cells in Kuqa, a scale platform in Aksu, a drying room in Shanshan, a tasting room in Shanghai, wooden trays in Fresno, a kitchen table in New Jersey. This room was only where I brought them back and wrote them down.

Near noon a cough at the open door: a thin man of sixty with high cheekbones in an old blue gown, hands behind his back, looking round. "Smaller than mine." Liu Yuxi; twenty-odd years in minor posts far from the capital. In one place the locals, disliking him, gave him smaller lodgings each time: three rooms, one and a half, then one, "a bed and a table and hardly room to turn," and there he wrote eighty-odd characters for the wall. A mountain need not be high. "A small room doesn't matter; if the one inside is worth something, the room isn't humble." Then: those who talk here are great scholars; none who come and go are common men. "Who came to this room in ten years?" A printer delivering proofs, couriers, a plumber, the lad from the copy shop. Not one of the people in those notebooks ever set foot here: hangers, raisin-pinchers, a driver, buyers, sorters, an inspector, a seamstress. "Sir, everyone who came and went through this room was a common man." He stared, then laughed till he coughed and wiped his eyes. "I wrote that line badly."

In the copy shop downstairs I sat beside the lad page by page, sorting by place: Turpan, Kuqa, Turpan, Aksu, Shanshan, Shanghai, Hami, Fresno, New Jersey. In the 2029 book, dark green, my first Turpan page: "Abdurehman, hanging, flings each string onto its nail; not one falls. Won't speak; when I ask how, he waves: watch." And beneath, my own neat pen of the time: "Tacit knowledge. Cannot be verbalised. Need a quantifiable proxy." Then I thought what I couldn't understand needed a number to stand in for it. Ten years on, I know it needs someone to stand beside it and watch. I had that page copied too, the English line included: Alim should see how the man of ten years ago looked at his father. Eleven envelopes by nine at night, one per place, each with the same handwritten note: "This is what I recorded of you these years. Where I got it wrong, correct it, and write who corrected it. The originals are at my mother's and won't be lost." — M.

Memo to file. Chengdu, 26–27 June 2038. Closing the room.

1. The room. Twelve square metres, fifth floor, no lift; a north window, a damp corner, a fortune character on the door for ten years, bleached pink. The Qingshen basket on the shelf, bought for thirty-five yuan in 2028 "because it was just right for pens."

2. The notebooks. Twenty-seven, nearly a foot: the first green hardbacks from New York, then five-yuan exercise books, one taped together. What I came to see wasn't the city; this room is only where I wrote down everywhere else.

3. The precedent. Liu Yuxi, twenty-odd years in minor provincial posts, moved by unfriendly locals from three rooms to one and a half to one, wrote eighty-odd characters for the wall: a mountain need not be high; with an immortal on it, it's famous; a humble room, fragrant only by the virtue within. "Those who talk here are great scholars; none who come and go are common men."

4. My visitors. A printer, couriers, a plumber, the copy-shop lad. Not one of the people in my notebooks ever came here; every one of them a "common man." Liu laughed till he coughed: "I wrote that line badly."

5. Copying by place. Page by page at the copy shop: Turpan, Kuqa, Aksu, Shanshan, Dunhuang, Hami, Shanghai, Chengdu, Fresno, New Jersey, Qingshen. Eleven envelopes; Qingshen's holds two pages, written last month at my uncle's.

6. The 2029 page. "Abdurehman flings each string onto its nail, not one falls; won't speak; waves: watch." Below, in my neat pen: "Tacit knowledge. Cannot be verbalised. Need a quantifiable proxy." I had it copied, the English line too: Alim should see how the man of ten years ago looked at his father.

7. The note in every envelope. "This is what I recorded of you these years. Where I got it wrong, correct it, and write who corrected it. The originals are at my mother's and won't be lost." The twenty-seven originals go to New Jersey, to the basement, beside her thirteen piecework books, the sewing machine and the blue tin.

8. The Bamboo Branch songs. Liu, on the copy-shop step: his longest posting was a small river town in the Ba hills, not far from here. At New Year the young people played flutes and drums and sang their mountain songs; "I couldn't understand; I thought it noise. After a month I understood." He hummed: willows green, the river level; I hear you singing on the river; sun in the east, rain in the west; you'd say no sun, yet there is sun. "Written to their tunes, and those are the poems people read most, not the humble room. Not one of my teachers could read."

9. The landlady. Mrs Qian, seventies, from the block opposite: "I'm on the fifth floor across, facing your window. Ten years your light was on till midnight, sometimes one or two. When you were away for months it was dark. I'd get up at night and look across out of habit. Dark: you'd gone again. Lit: you were back." I had someone here too, watching my window, and for ten years I never knew.

10. Two homes. Where now? Both ends: a family in Xinjiang keeps a room for me; in America, my mother's house, my childhood room. "Good. A light at both ends." Taking the key: "Leave the fortune character. I'll keep it for the next tenant."

11. The Wall Street version. An office thirty-odd floors up, half of Central Park in the window; I took it as proof of what I was worth. Resigning, I packed it into one box; next day another name on the door. Passing the building later, I couldn't tell which window. That room kept nothing of me. This one kept a pale square on the wall, twenty-seven notebooks, and someone across the street who watched it for ten years. Liu Yuxi: "Whether a room is humble isn't its size but who has come through its door. No one came through yours, and yet for ten years those people were on your desk every day. I had the line backwards: when all who come and go are common people, then it isn't humble."

12. Next. Notebook twenty-eight, page one: Chengdu, moving out. Post office: "Twenty-seven notebooks, heavy." Ten years. A night on the floor upstairs at Zhong's print works. Near midnight, Lu Xiao from Shanshan: "Master Chang is in hospital in Dunhuang; he fell coming down a rack, femoral neck, a joint replacement. He says he knows what's in your envelope before it arrives: you'll have made him too good. The times he got it wrong, you didn't write down once."

"A mountain need not be high; with an immortal on it, it is famous. This is a humble room; only my virtue gives it fragrance."
Liu Yuxi, the Tang poet who spent more than twenty years in provincial postings, is remembered in every Chinese classroom for an eighty-one-character inscription on a humble room: a small room is not humble if the person in it is worthy, and the proof is that "those who talk here are great scholars; none who come and go are common men." He is equally remembered for poems he learned from the opposite direction, setting his verse to the folk songs he heard village youths sing along the Yangtze.
The two works pull against each other, and the second corrects the first. The value of a room, an office or an address lies in who passes through it, and the most instructive visitors are often the ones with no titles at all.
Records made in such a room belong, in a real sense, to the people they record. Sending each person a copy of what was written about them, with an invitation to correct it, turns a private archive into a shared one, and it is the honest way to close an account that ran for ten years.
"When all who come and go are common people, then the room isn't humble."