Lens vs. Mirror: Chinese Scientific Imagination in the 1900’s

下面这段研究文字，摘自我的一篇英文论文，里面说的“宝玉”是重新想起“补天”使命的贾宝玉，出现在1905年吴趼人《新石头记》里。他游历了上海十里洋场、义和团运动，和完美的乌托邦社会“文明境界”（Civilized Realm）。论文中谈及的另一个人物“老少年” （Old Youth）是类似《镜花缘》里多九公的博学长者，陪伴宝玉在未来中国——文明境界里考察。“老少年”也是吴趼人的笔名之一，不能说没有梁启超“少年中国”的影子。

论文中探讨的所谓“性质测验镜”（Human Nature Inspection Lens）， 是宝玉在“文明境界”里所见识的一种能透视被测人道德“性质”的先进技术。此“镜”被解说为来源于中国古代的灵感，并超越了西方技术的极限，还能以科学测验的方式证明中国人道德的优越。我觉得，在某种意义上，晚清的科幻小说做为一种历史特定的文学类型，就如同这样一面不可多得的“镜”，让我们借此来透视百年前的历史和意识形态。

Dun Wang（王敦）, “The Late Qing's Other Utopias: China's Science-Fictional Imagination, 1900-1910,” in Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies (Taipei, Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University) 34.2 Special Issue “Asia and the Other” (November 2008): 37-62.

…

Thus we have the “Human Nature Inspection Lens” as an example of the Civilized Realm’s “more advanced science.” This lens can detect a person’s “nature”—it can see whether he is “civilized” or “barbaric” by looking inside his body. Of course, the real scientific basis for this fantasy was Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen’s discovery and application of the X-ray in medical science in 1895,[1] but in Wu Jianren’s narrative the “lens” is a Chinese invention. The episode of the lens begins when Baoyu first enters the border area, where a “Human Nature Inspection Room”—annexed to the border hostel—is used by a doctor to “inspect” the visitor’s “nature.” While Baoyu and Old Youth are chatting in the hostel, the doctor finishes and reports that this new guest’s nature is “clear and bright” (晶瑩), which suggests that Baoyu is civilized enough to be admitted into the Civilized Realm.[2]

Baoyu then says, “I used to think that ‘human nature’ is an incorporeal thing. If you want to inspect ‘nature,’ it should be investigated through daily reflection. How can it be inspected by using a lens?” (Wu 168) Old Youth replies in a long scientific passage:

“After the inception of science, what thing can not be subject to experimental verification? Take air for example. If you inspect it carefully, you can find myriads of things contained in it. The half-barbaric and half-enlightened people usually call all these things by the appellation ‘air.’ How can this mindset be sufficient? If air is shapeless and cannot be experimentally verified, how come the European and American acousticians can identify sound waves? However, although the acousticians can detect sound waves, the sound wave diagrams they make are only illustrations. The science doctors in our land will let you see the things with your own eyes every time they inspect something. Take the inspection of human nature for instance. This is achieved through a lens which was made by a prestigious medical doctor. The chemically-made glass is processed through several treatments by special liquid compounds. When one inspects the human body through it, his vision will bypass the blood, the muscle, the bones, and the sinews. The inspector can only see the inspectee’s nature. If the inspectee’s nature is civilized, it looks clear and bright like ice and snow. If his nature is barbaric, it is as turbid as smoke. You can evaluate the degree of barbarity by examining the density of the smoke. If it is as pitch-black as ink, it will be impossible to improve that person’s nature.[3] (Wu 168)

This seemingly empirical, analytic science derives from the practice, in traditional Chinese fiction, of telling good persons from bad persons. Old Youth continues:

Most of the ancient novels are loaded with demons and spirits. When those books talk about good and evil, they say that there is a red aura several feet high on top of a good man’s head, and there is dark air surrounding a bad man’s head. It is also said that people have either an air of vigor or an air of decay, and these airs cannot be seen by ordinary eyes but only through supernatural means. But those authors of novels in the old days couldn’t become demons and spirits themselves, so how could they know? It was just their belief. But since there is a belief, it’s possible that it will be proven. As a result, that medical doctor in our country used all of his ability to invent this lens.[4] (Wu 169)

Old Youth’s reference to the apparently supernatural phenomena presented in traditional fiction in fact points to the ancient Confucian belief that people have a moral nature or quality that is spiritual, that is, beyond the reach of sense perception, and furthermore that this moral nature can somehow be seen or known by non-physical means. Therefore Confucius exclaimed: “Look to how it is. Observe from what it comes. Examine where it is that he feels at ease. How can he remain hidden? How can he remain hidden?”[5] This nature-inspection lens is an extension of the Confucian moral eye. The scientific discourse about its optical “mechanism” validates rather than dismisses “observation” of moral qualities that can be visualized as bright or turbid gases. The lens thus serves as the trope of a scientific investigation that transforms intuition into rational verification.

This “fathoming” power of this lens also has a variety of medical applications in the Civilized Realm’s hospitals, which themselves have many lens-equipped devices that look like cameras with tripods. The late Qing Chinese were familiar with photography in their cities, especially in the treaty port of Shanghai. Western photography had become a symbol of Western science since the 1840s through the activities of entrepreneurs, diplomats and missionaries. Following the lead of foreign photographic studios, Chinese photographic studios began to emerge.[6] The Chinese public’s interest in this novel science as well as art was reflected in various publications, for example the Shanghai Dianshizhai Pictorial (點石齋畫報).[7] Therefore, it was only natural that Wu Jianren would imagine the Civilized Realm’s Human Nature Inspection device as a kind of super-camera. It was for him also an imaginative extension of the newly-invented X-ray machine, which was after all an enhancement of the camera which let it see beneath the body’s surface and into the inner body. Of course, the actual (Western) X-ray could only see the physical (not the moral or spiritual) inner body, whereas Wu’s X-ray-like lens could see the inner essence. Indeed Wu’s Human Nature Inspection Lens was accompanied by a “Bone Inspection Lens” through which Baoyu could see the human body become a “snow-white skeleton,” and a “Marrow Inspection Lens” which could see through the bones themselves to the marrow inside, which is after all (figuratively or allegorically speaking) our true inner essence. Other lenses in the doctor’s Human Nature Inspection Room could detect blood circulation, tendons, and internal organs.

In his reading of Thomas Mann’s 1920’s novel Magic Mountain, Peter Brooks notes that “moment of great significance” (Brooks 263) when Hans Castorp visits the X-ray room for the first time. Castorp views Joachim’s body through a “lighted window” that displays the “empty skeleton,” and is amazed to see that Joachim’s “honor-loving heart” looks something like a “swimming jelly-fish.” Here Brooks wonders “if this is the first moment in literature that the heart is viewed in an X-ray” (Brooks 263). He aptly points out that at this point, Mann “uses the relatively new technology to rewrite an age-old trope of the heart as the seat of emotions and character” (Brooks 264). As the juxtaposition of “swimming jelly-fish” and “honor-loving” makes plain, this human heart is being viewed simultaneously as “a piece of anatomy” and “a moral concept.” Like Mann, Wu Jianren combines “physiology and poetry” to illuminate the unseen by analogically projecting from a pattern of symbols on the level of the visible. (Brooks, 264)In both cases the optics is also a poetics, one which is instrumental in allowing a particular culture to see what it intends to see.

In fact, optical objects have long been employed metaphorically in traditional Chinese fiction, and not only in the context of Confucianism. The most important figure is no doubt the mirror, which was associated with that self-reflective quality by which one might see the unseen truth, the truth that evades the naked eye. In the evolution of Neo-Confucianism, proper observation of one’s own moral nature as with a self-inspecting lens was fused with the Buddhist image of the ideal empty (void) mind that reflects the whole world like an empty mirror. In the Dream of the Red Chamber—the original Story of the Stone—there is a mysterious “Mirror for the Romantic” (風月寶鑒 Fengyue Baojian) with two sides in “the Hall of Emptiness in the Land of Illusion” (太虛幻境 Taixu Huanjing). Its front side or face makes clearly visible one’s erotic desires, while its back side or face presents a skull to serve (as in European Renaissance painting) as moral admonition.

In Chinese, the character “jing” (鏡) stands for both the mirror, an optical surface that reflects images into the human eye, and the lens, a transparent optical surface that mediates between the human eye and the object focused on by refracting the light reflected from the surface of the object. Since both things have the same name in Chinese, the more modern connotations of the lens—that scientific instrument and optical novelty newly-imported from the West—are still congruent with the classical symbolism of the mirror. Thus the conflated jing-trope unites these two senses of ancient Chinese mirror and modern Western lens; jing integrates China’s traditional past and (at the turn of the 20^th century starting-to-be-predicted) scientific future into a unified optical epistemology, applied by Old Youth to justify the traditional discourse, in Chinese fiction, of the “red aura” (紅光) or “dark air” (黑氣) on top of a good or bad man’s head.

That is, Old Youth’s pre-scientific (“supernatural”) imagining of the red aura and dark air which express a moral meaning can in a sense be validated by a creative scientific discourse; or, to take it the other way, the modern scientific discourse helps to validate a moral discourse that might otherwise seem purely metaphysical, supernatural or even magical. The utopian-philosophical, utopian-scientific and utopian-fantastic narrative gives a validity to the imaginative space of the ancient Chinese world, for it sees this world as being indispensable in and to the new (Western) scientific discourse. Conversely, the scientific discourse is assimilated as an organic component of the ancient ethical-metaphysical discourse about morality and human nature....

…

---

[1] In 1896, only one year after Röntgen’s discovery, Liang Qichao (梁啟超) had introduced the X-ray to the Chinese. In the same year Tan Sitong (譚嗣同) also described X-ray photos in his writing.

[2] Of course, one might see a danger in this sort of inner-self inspection by external “authorities,” a praxis which may seem an extension of the Foucauldian panopticon—and/or of the Althusserian “hailing” and “subjecting” ideological state apparatus—into the inner body or “inner subject.” Such a view would indeed reinforce a typically Western (to some degree distorted) perspective on Chinese society and culture. This view may be kept in mind throughout the following discussion, though the author’s point will be that a truly moral-spiritual view is also a true view on a level above that of merely scientific-material truth.

[3] “科學發明以來，何事何物不可測驗！即如空氣之中，細細測驗起來，中藏萬有。野蠻半開通之流，動輒以空氣二字，一總包括在內，如何使得？倘謂無形，不能測驗，何以歐美聲學家，尚能測出聲浪來？不過聲學雖然測出聲浪，但所繪聲浪圖，都是以意為之。敝境科學博士，每測驗一物，必設法使眼能看見。即以測驗性質而論， 系用一鏡經高等醫學博士，用化學制成玻璃，再用藥水幾番制煉，隔著此鏡窺測人身，則血肉筋骨一切不見，獨見其性質。性質是文明的，便晶瑩為冰雪；是野蠻的，便混濁如煙霧。視其煙霧之濃淡，以別其野蠻之深淺。其有濃黑如墨的，便是不能改良的了。” All the English translations of passages from this novel are my own.

[4] “古人小說多半是載神鬼之類，每每談及善惡，謂善人頂上有紅光數尺，惡人頂上有黑氣圍繞。又說人有旺氣，有衰氣，人不能見，惟鬼神可見。當日著書之人，又不曾親身做過鬼神，如何知道？不過是個理想而已。既有此理想，便能見諸實行。所以敝境醫學博士，瘁盡心力，製成此鏡。”

[5] Analects 2:10 (視其所以。觀其所由。察其所安。人焉廋哉。人焉廋哉。) My own translation. For the “Confucian moral eye,” also see note 18.

[6] See Hu and Ma.

[7] The Dianshizhai Pictorial depicted a scene of photo-taking in one of its pages in 1884. See Chen, The Pictorial Late Qing (圖像晚清).

A Tour of China in Late Qing/ 晚清的“支那旅行记”

本期《读书》杂志 （2007年7月）登出了我的这篇文章。全文如下，欢迎学者及同好指正。

晚清的“支那旅行记”

王敦

“支那旅行记”三千字左右，刊在1910年第3期《小说月报》上，文言自述体，不具作者姓名。主人公以“余”自称，说是英国人，学了十年中文，之后周游中国，故事因此得名。

“余”中学毕业，适逢英国创立“支那文学堂”。考取之后，跟随“支那北京通儒”从蒙学入手，循序渐进，经过十年苦读，已精通制帖试艺。故事开始的时候，“余”以“最优等”毕业。可是，毕业典礼上这一刻即标志着打击的开始：好不容易学来的中文，竟在应用中连连碰壁。

在毕业典礼上，“余”基本上听不懂支那钦使的话。与中国随员交谈，也是“茫然不辩为何语” 。比如，武官是合肥人，一张嘴则“有声如鸮出自彼之舌底”。“余”记起孟子说的“引而置之庄岳之间”，觉得“欲学其语，固非躬致其地不可”，遂有东游“支那”之志。“余”先去香港，然后辗转至上海。一路之上，“余”益发领略了 “支那文”的复杂性。和形形色色的“支那人”交谈，皆互相不知所云。中国之博大，语言之复杂，可比孟子时代的一个“齐语”难懂多了。“余”听香港人说话，觉得“其声如击柝”。“余”说的“支那话”，却被讥为“外江话”。此处有一行小字批注：“粤中俗人不辨他省之名。称无论何省，均谓之外江”。上海话听起来像“山鸟之鉤輈”。湖南籍的官员说话“声如镗鞳，一字不可辨”。总之是“不通如故”，“不觉怅然。深悔前此之虚掷光阴矣”。辛辛苦苦积攒来的“支那”语资本不能带来收益。掌握“支那”语的那一天被推延，希望变成了沮丧。

方言和语音方面的障碍终究还是可以解决的。一日“余”经一个“文人”朋友点拨，方才醒悟自己有“操官音”和“掉文”的毛病，难怪所到之处没有人能听懂“余”说的话。听得懂官音的人，也未必能领会“余”的文言表达方式。彻悟之后，“余”可就有长进了。他混迹于上海的官场洋场，对中国的人情世故越来越熟。这才跨越了语音、语义层面的障碍，深入到了语用层面。他发现在实际应用中，文言与俗语远非壁垒分明的关系。具体的选用，都取决于场合、亲疏，和社会阶层。

“余”能够取得进步，第一要感谢“支那”的官员，第二要感谢官员身边的妓女。主人公在“支那文学院”里学来的，是文人士大夫经营“道德文章”所必备的“高等语言”。然而，他认识的士大夫却喜欢和“下流”的妓女说上海俗话，整天混在一起。官僚与妓女，两者的“社会用语”水乳交融，二者的社会存在也是相濡以沫。“余”就是从官员和妓女那里学舌开始来领会中文的妙处。只是他还说不太好，该“文”的时候不够文，该“俗”的时候又太文，闹出很多笑话。可能他还需要经历一个和“十年寒窗”同样漫长的“灯红酒绿”，才能掌握语言的得体和微妙。

在与“支那”官员的交往中，“余”每每惊诧于他们投来的“名刺”（旧时中国官场和商人使用的“名片”），“其色红，巨盈尺，字若鹅卵”，为“世界所仅见，亦余游支那之纪念品也” 。然而，中国官员之间并不交换这样的巨物。这种独特的名刺是中国“官府特制以投外国人者”。为什么会是这样？“余”百思不得其解。有一天赴约“燕于妓家”，客人没有全来齐的时候，“余”无意在妓女的妆阁中“忽睹一巨大之名刺”，好象是中国官员之“投我者”。问之，得知“上海妓者，所用名刺皆似此，所以投狎客者”。官员给洋人准备的名片，竟然与妓女为狎客准备的一模一样！“余”不禁莞尔，“盖支那官之待吾辈如妓女之待狎客。即谓吾辈为支那官之狎客可也”。一语道出半殖民地中国的官儿与洋人的本质关系。名片做得大些，鲜亮些，是为了给“恩公”难忘的印象，长相思，莫相忘。

作为旅行在中国语言文化里的外国人，难免会有不习惯的时候。遗憾的是，小说的主人公因为想不通一件事，就再也不学中文了。事情的起因甚微。“余”看到一个妓女“面目尚娟好而施脂甚红”，不由得想恭维之。然而，因为没有掌握好措辞的褒贬，“余”把妓女的粉面描述为“猢狲屁股”。妓女骂“余”：“你格杀千刀断命外国人”。第二天“余”斥责一个中国侍者时，回想起了这句骂人话，便也借用来骂道：“你格杀千刀断命外国人”。侍者不惧反笑。“余”不解。文人朋友又解释给“余”说，“子自外国人，而称彼为外国人，彼乌得不笑”。

没想到，俩人对“外国人”这个词的理解，也就是说到底谁应该被“杀千刀”，产生了严重的歧义。对于“余”来说，“所谓外国者，我国之外之国也”。所以，“余英国人，称彼支那人，宁不可谓外国人耶”。中士朋友万万不同意，说道“吾等自是中国人。支那者，汝外国人之强以称我者耳”。他们反复论辩，互不相让。对中士来说：“自古皆分中外。不闻有指中国为外国者也”。——这是在中国土地上固有的规矩。不管“你”来自何方，但凡在我这儿说我的话，就必须遵守我这儿的规矩。来自英国的“余”甚为不悦，坚持认为既然对“余”来说所有中国人都算是外国人，“余”自然可以在中国的土地上用中文骂中国人是“杀千刀断命外国人”。就因为这场争执，“余”对学习“支那文”彻底失望了：“嗟夫。支那人之语言，如是其难解也。余从此更不欲学之矣”。学语言正是这个地方最难学，语音、语意都还尚可，唯独他人语言里给自己预留好的“他者”位置，让“余”不甘心接受，让“余”放弃。

妓女泼辣直率，一针见血地骂洋人“杀千刀断命”，比官员刚性得多；因为妓女需要取媚的是官员，却不用顾忌洋人的脸色。而恰恰这一句激愤之语，显示语言的暴力所在，正是民族、文化冲突的前沿。这篇小说题为〈支那旅行记〉，笔者觉得应该叫做〈“支那语”旅行记〉似更贴切。“余”在中国斑驳的语言领地里穿行。行程的记录，就是想象中那一连串的语言误用与冲突。

小说结尾，不知是出于编者还是拟想的译者之手，又加了个评语，从文化相对论的角度来“解构”中外之别，说那就如同是“若合世界之大。仅得中国外国两地也”。评者认为，如此的狭隘眼光，与粤人称别省为“外江”，不啻“五十步笑百步耳”。其实，同样的揶揄，也可以转送给那位努力学习汉语的“外国”人。从粤人到英国的“余”再到“余”的中国朋友，谁也无法超越自己的局限。由此也联想到一百年来，中国人在西方话语里的处境。面对早已为自己预留好的的“他者”位置，那份不平与无奈，与小说里来自英国的“余”的感受，该差不多吧？

草成此文不久，看到吴趼人主编的《月月小说》第四号（光緒三十二年十二月），才知道对“支那”官场和欢场的名片，在“余”之先，早有“非支那人”发表观感。观感见于“俏皮话”栏目，是一位无名的“支那人”转述其“西友”的话：

大字名片

外国人之名片。大仅一二寸许。中国人之名片。大至五六寸。而官场中与外国人交涉往来之名片。则又加大。且字大如拳。不知是何命意。上海各歌妓之名片。亦崇尚大字。几满纸柬。有西友至某妓处小坐。谈笑之顷。观见其名片。不禁诧曰。汝等之名片。何以亦是大字。妓曰。此备以请客人之用者。西友叹曰。原来汝等待客人。就如同官场待我辈一般。

© Copyright by Dun Wang (王敦). All rights reserved. 著作权拥有者：Dun Wang (王敦)。