Daomu Biji: Wu Xie’s Private Notes

I‘m now on the train to Erdao Baihe. The sorghum fields outside are passing by in a flash and the people in the same carriage as me have already fallen asleep. I tried, but I just can't sleep.

I had been to Changbai Mountain once before. It was a few years ago when I was a little boy. At that time, I never imagined that I would be going there again in this way. I never thought that one day, I’d have to write something before going to bed to calm down.

Seeing that the sorghum has been harvested and the snow hasn’t melted completely, I can't help but think of my last trip to Changbai Mountain.

Now that I think about it, something was strange about that trip. I vaguely remember that there seemed to be some turmoil in the house at that time, and my father and grandpa had a big fight.

My father was a gentleman, or someone who had a lot of patience. He had never fought with Grandpa before, so this quarrel made me feel very strange. But I was too young at the time, so I didn’t really know what they were arguing about.

After that, my father suddenly decided to travel to Changbai Mountain. That year, I saw the snow-capped mountains. The white snow and endless valleys were exactly the same as those in the movies.

Now that I think about it, I feel a little surprised. Why did I have such a deep impression of the snowy scene at that time? And I can still associate it with movies at a glance? My memory of the journey that year is blurred now, and only a rough idea remains, but why can I only remember that snowy mountain?

Maybe it’s because the mountain has a special symbolic meaning in the local area? Or maybe it’s because of something else?

I really can't remember, and don't want to think about it.

Earlier in the morning, I chatted with Fatty about some topics other than women and grave goods.

I keep thinking that Fatty is someone who has a lot of hidden depths, and it turns out that my judgement was right. When I talk about various topics with him, I find that it’s not that he doesn’t understand, it’s just that he thinks more directly.

I have known all kinds of people in all kinds of professions. I know that there are certain people who live in the simplest and most practical way, and Fatty is undoubtedly one of them.

If you intend to challenge him, he can directly say something that you can’t refute. Of course, I don’t know whether it’s due to his wisdom or mere instinct. In other words, the principles of saints and fools are originally the same. The difference is that saints use this principle to benefit others, while fools benefit themselves.

The topic I discussed with him was mainly about the protection of cultural relics. I used to wonder why archaeological teams kept chasing after grave robbers.

Most of the tombs were found because of rescue excavations, not because of grave robbers. Farmers and construction workers were the first group of people to discover these ancient tombs, since they often accidentally discovered them while carrying out their projects.

Archaeological teams chasing after grave robbers was a bit mysterious, and it seemed that grave robbers had some skills that archaeological teams didn’t.

There was no fixed answer to this question. Pan Zi said that some of the most basic skills couldn’t be learned in university, and it was unlikely that a group of grave robbers would be invited to become professors at the university. As a result, students could only learn some skills about standard excavation.

As for the skills on how to smell the soil and locate the tomb, those things required practicing on the spot. How could there be that many ancient tombs to act as teaching aids?

Fatty shook his head and sighed, saying that that wasn’t the reason at all.

The current situation of archaeological teams chasing after grave robbers was normal and couldn’t be changed. In the archaeology industry, a sense of mystery had to be maintained. Otherwise, if all the skills of smelling the soil and searching for dragon veins to find the right entrance to the mausoleum were written straightforwardly in the textbooks, then these skills would be equivalent to a public announcement to the world. Within two years, there wouldn’t be any tombs left to dig up in China.

There are many things that actually don’t have a threshold. What threshold is needed for tomb robbing, you ask? You could be someone from the underworld and become a grave robber. You could do it as long as you were fierce and courageous enough.

It was like those people who studied medicine and knew how to perform surgeries. They could put a knife that was used to kill pigs in the fire to disinfect it, and then suture the wounds with normal sewing thread to complete the surgery.

The threshold was set by people who consciously decided how much they should teach you. You could learn mathematics and physics at will, but would someone teach you how to rebel and start a riot?

I thought what Fatty was saying may not be totally right, but it did make sense.

Humans are two-sided creatures. Under the current social pressure, there are a number of accidents that can give people millions of windfalls at a time, which means you can buy a house and a car. So, if you can achieve all that at the risk of being bitten by mosquitoes and having your morals judged, it’s unknown how many people would be able to resist the temptation.

This is why people often hate hearing about the loss of national treasures, but they’re angry because they weren’t the ones to sell the national treasures with their own hands.

Fatty always believed that a long cultural history was often a manifestation of a nation’s self-comfort. The imperial palace, which was full of priceless treasures, wasn’t able to block foreign aggression.

You needed to create an image. If you could use ten pieces of blue and white porcelain depicting “Guiguzi going down the mountain” (1) to exchange for the knowledge of how to build an American aircraft carrier, should people make the exchange or not?

A century ago, when Aurel Stein (2) came to Dunhuang, Taoist Wang (3) was using white paste to paint over the priceless “Flying Apsaras” murals. Those magnificent art treasures were destroyed by lime in a few seconds. The reason was simply that he wanted a white wall.

As a result, even if Aurel Stein didn’t cheat Taoist Wang out of those ancient scrolls and blood scriptures, Taoist Wang might have burned them as firewood. Even if people hadn’t torn the mural down in order to preserve it, it’s unlikely it would have escaped the fate of being covered in white paint.

In those days, the mistakes we made were far from the problem of letting Aurel Stein take away the cultural relics. Our problem lies at the roots. How could we expect Taoist Wang to understand the value of those cultural relics, and at the same time have the character to not be tempted by money (4). How could we ask a fake Taoist who had fled and was starving to do so many things for us?

Even if our words could travel through time and space and reach his ears, how could we be sure that he would agree with us? Are our words worth a few dollars?

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TN Notes:

(1) In 2005, a piece of blue and white porcelain from the Yuan Dynasty that painted the story of “Guiguzi going down the mountain” was sold for US $27.7 million in London, setting a world auction record for an Asian artifact. Guiguzi was a well-known philosopher, politician, and educator in the Warring States Period.

(2) Aurel Stein was an archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. Wiki link

(3) Wang Yuanlu was a Taoist priest of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang during the early 20th century. He is credited with the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts. He first spoke of the manuscripts to the local officials, in an attempt to gain funding for their conservation, but he was ignored. He later sold numerous manuscripts to Aurel Stein. Taoist Wang was both “revered and reviled”. Wiki link

(4) After being ignored by the officials, Taoist Wang first sold scriptures to the residents around Dunhuang, claiming those scriptures could treat illness, which attracted interests from archaeologists from the West. At that time, he was trying to restore and rebuild the cave and was short on money, so he sold more than tens of thousands of scriptures to Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, who was a French orientalist. He sold those scriptures for a fraction of their value (£220 in 1907). (This is something that the Wikipedia page in English didn’t mention, but the Chinese page did.)