Gems of Chinese Literature/Su Tung-P‘o-Inaccuracy

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Gems of Chinese Literature (1922)
translated by Herbert Allen Giles

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SU TUNG-P‘O.

a.d. 1036-1101

[An almost universal genius, like Ou-yang Hsiu, this writer is even a greater favourite with the Chinese literary public. Under his hands, the language of which China is so proud may be said to have reached perfection of finish, of art concealed. In subtlety of reasoning, in the lucid expression of abstractions, such as in English too often elude the faculty of the tongue, Su Tung-P‘o is an unrivalled master. On behalf of his honoured manes I desire to note my protest against the words of Mr. Baber, recently spoken at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, and stating that “the Chinese language is incompetent to express the subtleties of theological reasoning, just as it is inadequate to represent the nomenclature of European science.” I am not aware that the nomenclature of European science can be adequately represented even in the English language; at any rate, there can be no comparison between the expression of terms and of ideas, and I take it the doctrine of the Trinity itself is not more difficult of comprehension than the theory of “self abstraction beyond the limits of an external world,” so closely reasoned out by Chuang Tzŭ. If Mr. Baber merely means that the gentlemen entrusted with the task have proved themselves so far quite incompetent to express in Chinese the subtleties of theological reasoning, then I am with him to the death.

There is one more point in regard to which I should be glad to cleanse the stuffed bosoms of some from a certain perilous stuff―the belief that Chinese sentences are frequently open to two and even more interpretations. No theory could well be more mischievous than this. It tends to make a student readily satisfied with anything he can get out of an obscure paragraph rather than push on laboriously through the dark passages of thought until the real sense begins to glimmer ahead, and finally to shine brightly upon him. I wish to place it on record, as my opinion, after the arduous task of translation now lying completed before me, that the written language of China is hardly more ambiguous than English; and that an ordinary Chinese sentence, written without malice aforethought, can have but one meaning, though it may often appear at the first blush to have several. There are exceptions, of course; but the rule remains unchanged. I have frequently been trapped myself, and may be again; trapped into satisfaction with a given rendering which I subsequently discovered to be wrong, and which I could then feel to be grammatically wrong though I had previously accepted it as right. The fault in such cases, I venture to suggest, should be sought for outside the text. (I leave this to stand as it stood in 1884, merely suggesting that it is the extreme difficulty of the book-language which is mistaken for ambiguity.)

To revert to the subject of this note, Su Tung-P‘o shared the fate of most Chinese statesmen of the T'ang and Sung dynasties. He was banished to a distant post. In 1235 he was honoured with a niche in the Confucian temple, but his tablet was removed in 1845. After six hundred years he might well have been left there in peace.]

Su Tung-P‘o1524145Gems of Chinese Literature — Inaccuracy1922Herbert Allen Giles

It is stated in the ancient work on Water-courses that at a certain place there was a “stone-bell hill.” The commentator, Li Yüan, considers the name to have arisen from the fact that the foot of the hill is washed by a deep pool, and that on the slightest agitation of its surface by the wind, waves would splash against the rock and produce a sound like that of a great bell.

This explanation, long regarded with suspicion, was at length exploded by a real bell being placed in the pool, which, no matter how violent the waves, never gave forth a sound. How much less then, it was argued, would stone.

By-and-by, an official, named Li Pŏ, set to work to investigate, and discovered at the pool two stones which when struck emitted ringing sounds of different pitches, the vibration continuing some time after the stroke, and at length dying gradually away. Thus be believed that he had finally settled the point.

Of this settlement, however, I always entertained grave doubts. For many stones will yield a ringing sound when struck; why then should these be more particularly bell stones than any others?

Subsequently, I had an opportunity of seeing for myself these so-called stone bells, when accompanying my eldest son on the way to his post as magistrate. The priests of a neighbouring temple bade one of their novices carry an adze, and with this he chipped off several pieces and showed me how they rang when struck. I smiled, but was not convinced; and that same night, the moon shining brightly, I stepped into a boat with my son and we proceeded to the base of the hill where the rock rose almost sheer to a height of near a thousand feet, looking like a fierce beast or huge hobgoblin about to spring upon us. Flocks of birds, startled at our approach, flew out and whirled away into the sky. There were also sounds as of old men coughing and laughing within a chasm of the rock, which one would have said was the noise of herons or cranes.

Much affected by the scene, I was about to leave, when suddenly over the face of the water came clanging and rolling sounds, like the notes of bells and drums. The boatman was horribly alarmed; but on examination we found that the base of the rock was pitted all over with holes, of I know not what depth, and that the sounds were due to the water which had been forced up them rushing noisily out as each wave retired. And steering our boat into a chasm between two rocks, we there found a large boulder of a size to seat a hundred persons, right in mid-channel. This too was full of holes, and when these had been filled with water driven in by the wind, the water would flow out with a noise similar to that we had just heard.

Laughing, I turned to my son and said, “Don’t you see? These sounds are identical in timbre with the notes of the two famous bells of old. Ah! the ancients deceive us not. But how should people undertake to decide about what they have neither seen with their eyes nor heard with their ears? Li Yüan was a man of experience equal to my own. Yet his explanation was inaccurate. He doubtless would not be bothered to get into a boat and anchor here at night beneath the cliff. Therefore he could not ascertain the real cause of the phenomenon, while the boatmen and others, who may have known, had no means of publishing the truth. Li Pŏ put his trust in an adze, and thought he had solved the problem thereby.”

I accordingly made a note of this adventure, with a sigh for the remissness of Li Yüan, and a smile at the credulity of Li Pŏ.

Gems of Chinese Literature/Su Tung-P‘o-Inaccuracy

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