Serenity: The Lives my Mother and Grandmother Lived Part II

By You-Sheng Li
(From the book: The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary societies: Taoist Philosophy for the 21st Century http://taoism21cen.com/eng2.html)

(3) Afterword: Traditional vs. Modern Lifestyle

Western culture had assimilated numerous traditional cultures before it assumed the dominant position in the world. When Western influence penetrated into China, it affected the cities first and affected the men first. Western culture entered into my family by transforming my grandfather from an ordinary young peasant into a city employee, and then a business man who lived entirely in a highly commercialized large port city, Tianjin. He returned home only after the Japanese invaded China as he thought it was safer to live in the countryside. My father moved into the city as a child to have his Western education. I consider the 1950s as the transition period when Chinese rural areas said goodbye to the traditional way of life that Chinese peasants had lived for thousands of years. Under communist rule, the education my generation had in the 1950s and 1960s was essentially Western except for the communist ideology which was only an hour or so per week. In conclusion, my mother and grandmother remained as the last two people in my family who lived their lives in the traditional way. My mother and grandmother were in their forties and seventies respectively when Chinese peasants started to live the modern life. They had no need to adapt to the new life, since my family

buffered a safe haven for them. My mother and grandmother lived in a typical Chinese traditional lifestyle almost entirely in the primary society setting of family and relatives, and were seldom in contact with friends from outside the family circle. Modern life is almost entirely based in the secondary society, and family life exists as part of the panorama of social life on a vast horizon.

In comparing their lives to ours, we wonder which is better, and which is more worth living? I would say modern life is more attractive to young people who are about to start their own life. For those who have lived the major part of their lives, the Chinese traditional life is more rewarding.

As to ones life achievement, both my mother and grandmother brought up several children, and supported their husbands and children as they moved smoothly into the new lifestyle. If we see this transition as the rocket that sent the first man to the moon, my mother and grandmother were the ground workers who made it possible. Historians like to talk about historical marks. If a Roman emperor expanded the empires territory by invading its neighbours, historians would say this emperor left a historical mark. If a Roman emperor did nothing particular except for the routines, the emperor was said to have left no marks. With such criteria, both my mother and grandmother left historical marks. They contributed to some extraordinary historical marks as one of the millions of people who made those marks possible. Their names would not be mentioned in Chinese history or world history, but their contribution was a major part of our family history. To a historian, there is only one super tree exists in an entire mountain, and that is the one on the top even though thousands of trees cover the mountain

forming the dense vegetation. In such a view, my mothers and grandmothers achievements are only meaningful to their family.

The dimensions of life experience may be quite different for those who live in primary society and those who live in secondary society. My mother and grandmother, who lived in the primary society, regarded the world outside the family circle as foreign lands to them. If anything happened in those foreign lands that affected them, they simply adapted to those changes the same way as they adapted to climate changes. They never bothered to fully understand what happened to China during their lifetime. My grandmother had an artistic mind, and she saw the musing and aesthetic side of her life experience. During the Boxer rebellion in 1900, my grandfather bought a sifter for half price when the possessions of the local Catholic churches were put on sale. My grandfather had to pay a small fine soon after when foreign troops invaded Beijing to protect their interests in China. My grandmother always chuckled a little when she told the story to me, as she sensed a musing quality of those dramatic events, but she knew nothing about the Boxer rebellion and foreign invasion. Those Boxers showed altered states of mind, trance. My grandmother told me several times about those Boxers in trance. It was apparently peculiar to her. To my observation, both my mothers and grandmothers spiritual pursuit remained in the realm of serenity, and they never relied on mysticism or the experience of an altered state of mind. I think they lived their lives almost entirely in serenity, and they did not have much experience of uncertainty. The mystic pursuit or even altered state of mind is, in my opinion, related somewhat to life experience of uncertainty.

When my grandfather was dying, my mother and grandmother knelt down in front of the kitchen god, begging Heaven to allow them to donate some of their destined life years to my grandfather in order to help him to heal. Whether my grandfather would die or not was an uncertainty to them, but they called upon the emotional and psychological social bond with my grandfather itself to deal with this experience of uncertainty. When people stick together emotionally and psychologically, nothing including uncertainty will matter much to them. Considering the time they lived was one of the most tumultuous and uncertain periods in Chinese history with one war after another and one revolution after another, it was nothing short of a miracle that they lived their lives so serenely and so productively in their own world. With the knowledge and mind we have been brought up, we would have certainly fallen into deep depression or even committed suicide if we had been in their position. We live a life of our own choice while they lived the life they were born into. They made much fewer choices than we do today.

As to one's spiritual experience, they lived no doubt a much happier life than our modern men on average, though they might have laughed less and experienced fewer emotional ups and downs. My grandmother showed remarkable artistic talents that allowed her to spend some of her spare time more aesthetically. Although my grandmother often painted flowers and birds from life, she never painted anything to reflect her life, specifically like we would do if we were in her position. Both my mother and grandmother enjoyed watching Chinese traditional opera. Those operas, as were once criticized by the Communist government as being all about emperors, ministers, scholars, and ladies, did not relate to their life specifically. Chinese women often sat together and chatted for hours while each was doing her needlework to make clothes or shoes. As a child, I listened to their chat a lot. Their chat was always about family life in their

neighbourhood, and they laughed a lot but much less than we do in similar situations. To be precise, they only smiled and chuckled. They never talked nonsense or said anything obviously untrue or against the moral standards. Again, their chat was like the opera they watched and the paintings my grandmother created. They were related to their life only in a highly spiritual and abstract way. In other words, they were parts of their serenity. If they had talked nonsense or anything to denounce the moral requirement put on them as a woman by the Chinese patriarchal society, we think it would have served them as a much desired spiritual experience of liberty. But they never did, and it was beyond any doubt that they did not have such a spiritual need in their serene minds.

In the book, A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy, I divide our life experience, physical and spiritual, into six levels, namely the biological, social, cultural, intellectual, spiritual, and cosmic levels. We are almost identical at the biological and cosmic levels whether we live in a primary or a secondary society. The remaining four levels harbour the difference, and the middle two levels, the cultural and intellectual levels, the most. I guess my mother and grandmother lived their lives physically close to the biological level and spiritually close to the cosmic level. They were born that way, and only with great efforts, we may be able to achieve their serenity today.

To look back at my life, I moved away from serenity to a business mind. When I was a child, we had only occasionally a dim lamp light for the whole family in the long winter evening when I just started to work as a physician in the 1970s. I used to sit along with other roommates on the balcony for hours in the early summer evening. We talked very little on those occasions. But

today, I have to listen to radio or watch TV to go to sleep. It is no easy job to go back to serenity. Apparently, we have lost the ability to stay quietly within ourselves by doing and thinking nothing.