Taiwanese art historian: My Aquarian friend Hualing who embraced everyone [Part 2]

After I was invited to the Iowa International Writing Program in 1981, Hualing would often ask me over to her house. Whenever an interesting writer was coming, she would also let me know, “Wang Zengqi is coming this year, do come too…”

So in 1987 I went to Iowa again because of Wang. I moved into the Mayflower Apartments once more, and Hualing arranged for Wang to stay right opposite me.

I love Wang’s writing. It is as plain as water, yet clear and delicate. He knows exactly when to stop, leaving much unsaid, inviting the reader to linger and think for themselves.

He was a student of Chinese writer Shen Congwen at National Southwestern Associated University, inheriting much of Shen’s quiet, watchful way of seeing the world, sketching life with unadorned yet expressive strokes.

The core of a writer’s craft, technique and style must lie in their own attitude to life itself.

Shen hailed from Xiangxi, starting out as a low-ranking soldier from a remote town before becoming a writer. He said himself that all he relied on was a “dictionary” he carried with him. 

To write with nothing but a “dictionary” almost sounds like a myth. Yet a “dictionary” has no bias and no subjectivity. It just tells you where a word or phrase comes from. Perhaps this was how Shen mastered a writer’s most basic skill of “quiet observation”.

Quiet observation is a form of humility. Writers slip into arrogance far too easily. It is difficult for them to be humble.

In the 1930s, every writer had their own subjectivity and often wore that subjectivity as a stylistic badge. They easily became arrogant without even realising it.

And then came Shen, who was almost like a living “dictionary” — so humble, so still, simply telling the stories he saw along the way.

Stories from the years of revolution, of heads being chopped off. When local officials failed to catch bandits and were pressed by their superiors, they rounded up farmers to make up the numbers. The farmers were gathered in front of a temple, their fates decided by divination blocks. A yangjiao (阳筊) or a shunjiao (顺筊) meant life. But an yinjiao (阴筊) meant beheading. The farmers reckoned it was a two-in-three chance of surviving — a bargain, really. If the blocks fell yin, there was no bitterness. The man would merely tell his family to take good care of the breeding sow, and then he’d be dragged away to be beheaded.

These kinds of true stories were invisible to most of those subjective intellectuals.

The “revolution” in The Autobiography of Shen Congwen felt more truthful than anything you would find in volumes of modern history. There is no subjective praise or condemnation, and the sheer absurdity of “revolution” stares straight at you. Because of its humility, the “dictionary” carries the weight of a thousand pieces of gold when held in the hand.

Whenever I talked with Wang about Shen, he would always show utmost respect, referring to him as “Shen laoshi” (meaning Teacher Shen).

During the Cultural Revolution, Wang worked for Jiang Qing (a Chinese actress who married Mao Zedong), writing revolutionary operas. Whenever he recounted that period, he would first drink hard liquor. His face would become red, his speech slurred and tears would well up in his eyes. I remember him jokingly call himself a Zhongnanhai xingzou (行走, a Qing-dynasty term for someone temporarily assigned to a post without being granted a formal official rank), as if he held an “official title” that was neither here nor there.

During those years, Chinese writer Lao She took his own life; while Shen attempted to do the same, but failed. The latter went on to produce brilliant research on ancient Chinese costumes.

“What is literature?” There practically wasn’t a day or time when Wang wasn’t drunk. There was so much we could talk about. He loved to cook, and so did I. Our doors were never locked — once a dish was done, a plate was sent opposite.

He painted, and so did I. When we said goodbye, he gave me a small square painting: a daffodil and an ink-black butterfly, full of quiet charm. On it he’d written, “蒋勋方家” (meaning, For Chiang Hsun, a master of his craft). I laughed and said, “I don’t deserve that — when it comes to smoking and drinking, I’m nowhere near your level.”

I never had Wang’s appetite for cigarettes. He smoked so much he once set off the building’s fire alarm — the thing went screaming, and fire engines came howling down the street. He looked utterly wronged, “But I didn’t use any fire…” I blinked at him. The moment the firefighters left, we took the alarm down.

He was elated — from then on he puffed to his heart’s content, finally unrestrained.

When it came to drinking, I was nowhere near his level either. When I drank with friends in Taiwan, it was about brands, ambience and mood. But Wang drank for one reason only: to get himself drunk.

I couldn’t understand how much the two characters xingzou had hurt him — caught between Lao She and Shen Congwen, and between a suicide attempt that succeeded and one that failed. Wang’s pain was something I could hardly grasp. I grew up in comfort and ease; perhaps for him, getting drunk was a form of suicide.

The last time I saw Wang must have been after 1995, in Beijing. Wang brought over a bottle of old Moutai, and solemnly said, “Mr Shen gave this to me. It is 40 years old. I couldn’t bear to drink it. Today, I’ll drink it with you…”

Tears welled up in his eyes again and I could not reject him. But I knew that this was perhaps one of the last times he was drinking as a form of self-destruction. Wang passed away in 1997 — I poured a glass of alcohol for myself alone at home, paying respects to a writer I deeply respected.

We had such happy times in Iowa and I am truly grateful to Hualing for allowing writers from different parts of the world with different circumstances to see themselves — and to see others.

I met Wang Zengqi in 1987, and Ah Cheng in 1988 — they are the two Chinese writers I miss most: one showed you how to live in a drunken dream, while the other coolly watched all those drunken dreams, not saying one word.

In 1988, Hualing reached retirement age, and the writing programme was passed on to a new chair.

She invited me to Iowa again. “I’m retiring — of course you must come. Chen Yingzhen is coming too, so is Ah Cheng…”

She gave me many reasons I could not refuse.

Ah Cheng was someone I wanted to know. Reading his writing, I always sensed a cool detachment, a kind of seeing-through-the-world.

Ah Cheng is a man of few words, and he never gives perfunctory responses. At the bustle of gatherings at Hualing’s house, he always seemed to be in some corner no one else noticed — either reading, or quietly puffing away at his pipe. 

Hualing retired, the formal ceremony ended, and the baton was passed to her successor. In public, Hualing was poised and elegant, beautifully dressed, thanking one by one the colleagues she had worked with for so many years.

When the ceremony was over and we went home, Paul Engle was already drunk, and went straight to bed. A few Chinese writers stayed on, cooking noodles and singing songs. Hualing suddenly burst into tears, wailing so loudly it could shake mountains. That was the only time I heard Hualing cry — far more startling than her usual thunderous laughter.

That kind of crying needed no reason. It was as if a lifetime of worries and burdens, all the weight stored up over the years, had to be let out in one proper wail. The rest of us stood there, a bit stunned, not knowing how to react.

Ah Cheng emerged from the corner he’d been hiding, walked over to Hualing, pipe in hand, and said plainly, “Feeling that emotional, are you…”

Hualing blew her nose, wiped away her tears, and burst out in laughter again. Everyone else laughed too.

That moment with Ah Cheng reminded me of the ending of The Chess Master: an old man steps out; a wise man who has seen through the world. He knows everything, and so he says nothing. 

Ah Cheng is an Arian — within his cool detachment, a blazing fire lay frozen.

He was invited to Iowa in 1987 and ended up staying on, living in the US for several years. He lived in a trailer, ready to drive off anytime. Wherever he ended up at, he would hook up the gas, electricity and water, and that was home.

During the Cultural Revolution, he was a “sent-down youth”, exiled to the mountains of Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi — perhaps he had already been wandering since then, making a home wherever he could…

He told me many legendary stories, much like his novels. One was about a sent-down youth so hungry he was dizzy, roaming everywhere in search of food. From afar he saw a thin wisp of white smoke. “Where there’s smoke, there must be something to eat…,” he thought to himself.

So he ran towards it. The smoke was indeed rising from a big stove. A hunched old man, ghost-like, was guarding it. When he saw someone coming, he panicked, not knowing what to do. The starving youth could not wait — he shoved the old man aside, lifted the lid of the pot, and inside, in the boiling water, was a human hand.

I didn’t ask Ah Cheng whether the story was legend or truth. Neither did I ask him, “Was the starving youth, you?”

In Water Margin, people ate human flesh buns. We took them all as legends, but they were probably real enough. When true events are told plainly, they end up sounding like legends.

Later when I was in California, I visited Ah Cheng again. Most of the time we sat in his narrow, dim trailer. He rolled cigarettes while I sat quietly, waiting for him to tell another story.

Ah Cheng’s writing is utterly cold, yet your whole body burns once you’ve finished reading — as if scorched by ice, a pain sharper than fire.

He gave me several pieces of embroidery from ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Guizhou — keepsakes, perhaps, from his years of being sent down. They were exquisite, densely worked. “Such beautiful craftsmanship…” I exclaimed under the lamp. “The patterns on the sleeves are all words — the history of a people.”

That was all he said. I recalled the time I was studying history in university, while Ah Cheng was being sent down. I guess he came to know history by another path altogether.

History is about the survival of mankind. Or perhaps survival was incredibly difficult and impossible to put into words, so the stories are stitched into clothing instead, passed down from generation to generation.

I know that those pieces of embroidery are very special to Ah Cheng, so I’ve cherished them ever since, and am deeply grateful to him for them.

After Hualing retired in 1988, she asked me to go to China with her. She and Engle were responsible for introducing the new chair of the writing programme to the Chinese-speaking world. “Come with us…” she said. She knew I’d left the mainland at the age of three and had never been back. During the years of martial law, the mainland was labelled “bandit territory”; cognitive warfare made fear hard to shake off. Even now, years after martial law was lifted, when I occasionally see a ferocious-looking face, my first instinct is still to think of the words “Communist bandit”.

“I’ll feel more at ease with you around.” Hualing was very gentle and reassuring. She must have understood how difficult political fear is to overcome…

We flew together from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Writing associations often came to welcome us, but I avoided them all.

We stayed at Jinjiang Hotel for the night. The room was immense — the curtains were satin, patterned with bamboo leaves. It all felt terribly old, as if no one had lived there for years, and the air carried a musty smell. I pulled back the curtains and thought of Zhou Xuan singing “Shanghai by Night” (夜上海) — but it was pitch black outside the window.

I couldn’t judge an environment I didn’t know at all. It was a complicated feeling, and I was dazed. Hualing rang and asked me to come to her room for a drink. The Aquarian always knows how to soothe my unease at just the right moment. She poured me some wine. I asked, “Where’s Paul?” “Oh,” she sighed, “already drunk…”

They often argued about his drinking. When we travelled together, they quarrelled all the way from New York to Washington, and argued almost every night. Hualing worried about Paul’s health and always tried to stop him from drinking too much. But Paul became increasingly like a wilful child, sneaking drinks behind her back, time after time ending up completely drunk.

In the mornings he’d wake with a hangover and look at Hualing with the eyes of a child who’d done something wrong. She’d be angry, sulky, refusing to speak to him. Paul would lower himself, all penitence and remorse. But by evening, he’d lose control again, drunk as ever, barely able to stand.

Hualing’s Aquarian acceptance and magnanimity only became unusually strict when it came to looking after Paul.

She was much younger than Paul, perhaps subconsciously always afraid of something… Then in 1991, Paul suddenly collapsed from a heart attack at the airport. Hualing was devastated, yet it seemed she was also suddenly relieved. Mournful and emotional, she said to me, “From now on, it won’t get any better — and it won’t get any worse either.”

After saying that, she looked desolate, as if she herself wasn’t quite sure what the words meant either.

After Paul passed in 1991, Hualing often went to the cemetery alone. She would see Paul Engle’s name on the gravestone, and beside it, another grave left empty. More than 30 years later, she finally lay down in that waiting space, resting beside the man who had loved her tenderly all his life — the same man who had also brought her endless worry.

Hualing’s daughter, Lan-Lan, sent me photographs of the cemetery after Nieh Hualing’s funeral.

Whenever I was in North America, I would make a point of detouring to Iowa to see Hualing. After Paul Engle passed away, she was terribly lonely. There was once someone who loved and protected her so completely. There was once someone who, like a child, made mistakes; like a child, was scolded; and like a child, repented again and again — only to make the same mistakes once more.

That sudden sense of loss — was it that there was no one left to even scold?

The house in Iowa suddenly felt hollow. Hualing’s laughter was gone. Engle’s constant calls of “Hualing! Hualing!” were gone too. No one could comfort Hualing’s loneliness. Anyone who stayed by her side could only sense an emptied Aquarian — its water all poured out, a hollow vessel echoing its own emptiness.

She must have wished to wake in the middle of the night and see Paul drunk again — so she could rally herself and give that mischievous man another proper scolding…

Originally, the Iowa International Writing Program had no quota for Taiwanese writers. But with Hualing there, of course she made sure there was. With her wide network, raising funds to sustain one or two places was never too difficult.

Even after she retired, she made sure to keep those places for Taiwanese writers. From 1967 until 2024, through Hualing’s own care and commitment to Taiwan, she sustained the possibility for Chinese-language writing from Taiwan to remain in conversation with the world.

In May 2011, the Trend Education Foundation held a tribute to masters. Hualing returned to Taiwan and was also invited to the Presidential Office, where then president Ma Ying-jeou presented her with a medal.

Because of the “free China” incident, Hualing left Taiwan during the White Terror period of the Kuomintang regime’s martial law. The resentment never left her. She said to me privately, “When I go to the Presidential Office, I’ll call him ‘Mr Ma’. I don’t want to call him ‘President’.”

Her Aquarian innocence showed itself completely in that moment. Everyone has their own memories. She was nearly ninety by then — speaking so candidly was good too.

We accompanied her into the Presidential Office. When she saw the “President”, her face lit up, and she blurted out “Mr President” without a second thought.

During dinner, I teased, “I thought you were going to call him ‘Mr Ma’?”

She smiled shyly and said, “He’s so handsome…” and then burst out laughing.

That was one of the few times I witnessed Hualing laugh so heartily after Paul’s death.

Nearly 90, yet with the attractive charm of a young girl — able to find a man “so handsome”, to let herself soften and forget, just for a moment, so many old grievances and unhappiness. Was this perhaps an Aquarian instinct for self-healing?

The last time I visited her in Iowa was probably when she was around 95. Her health was still good but it was clear she seemed to have lost interest in life — she was listless and dull. Lin Hwai-min and I tried to cheer her up, but it didn’t really work. We took a photograph together and I showed it to her. She didn’t like it. She pointed at herself in the picture and said, “Such a look of death!”

If you had once lived so intensely and passionately, would you end up growing tired of yourself if the end feels like living on borrowed time, where you are unable to do anything and are just merely alive?

I looked at the photo of the cemetery Lan-Lan sent me. Nieh Hualing, 1925-2024. That small hill that will slowly fade from memory; the flowers spread around for the funeral must all have withered by now…

As snowflakes fall one by one, is Hualing’s laughter still as ringing and clear as it once was?

This article was first published in Chinese on United Daily News as “水瓶座，懷念華苓（下）”.

Related: Taiwan art historian: My Aquarian friend Hualing who embraced everyone [Part 1] | This ordinary, extraordinary life: A Taiwanese woman called Ching-ti [Part 2]