Ah Q's spirit of self-deception is a reflection of traditional Chinese literati.

Li Yousheng

Plato’s Republic is divided into three classes: philosopher-king, soldiers, and commoners, representing the psychological levels of rational thought, heroic emotions, and material desires, respectively. In Chinese history, since the Song Dynasty, there have been three classes: the imperial court, bureaucratic scholars, and the peasant masses. My research over many years has shown that before the 1950s, rural China was still a natural society, a primitive society encoded in its genetic makeup (see author’s website: http://taoism21cen.com). The bureaucratic scholar class in the middle was completely immersed in the moral teachings of Confucian classics and the Four Books. After the Song Dynasty, the maturation of the imperial examination system allowed commoners to enter the bureaucratic class through study and examinations, hence the saying, “In the morning, the farmer hoes the field; in the afternoon, he goes to court.”

In the preface to *Call to Arms*, Lu Xun wrote: “A nation that is ignorant and weak, no matter how healthy or robust its people may be, can only serve as meaningless exhibits and spectators; it is not a misfortune for them to die of illness. Therefore, our first priority is to change their spirit.” Ah Q represents the common people of China, and also the peasantry who constitute the majority of the Chinese population. Lu Xun used the character of Ah Q to depict the suffering, misery, and ignorance of the vast working class who were exploited and oppressed, hoping to awaken the slumbering masses.

However, when discussing the origins of “The True Story of Ah Q,” Lu Xun stated that he wanted to “write about the soul of a modern Chinese person.” In a modern, artificially constructed society, there needs to be a leader representing the direction of social progress—the soul of society. In Chinese history, this soul was composed of the middle-class bureaucrats and literati. Ah Q’s spirit of self-deception is a reflection of traditional Chinese literati, characterized by self-preservation, avoiding trouble, retreating to the mountains and lakes, and finding joy in simple pleasures. During my youth, I lived in rural China for many years, and the farmers showed no trace of Ah Q’s spirit, because it was unnecessary in a close-knit community. However, traces of Ah Q’s spirit can be seen in urban society.

According to statistics compiled by Zhang Hongjie, a Chinese scholar, emperors were the most unfortunate people. Of the 209 emperors throughout Chinese history whose exact birth and death dates are known, their average lifespan was only 39.2 years, nearly 18 years shorter than that of ordinary people. In total, Chinese dynasties, including large unified dynasties and smaller ones, had 611 emperors, of whom 272 died unnatural deaths, a mortality rate of 44%, far higher than other social groups. This harsh social environment demonstrates that the highest levels of society were far removed from the Confucian ideal of a sage-king.

Emperor Wu of Han reigned for over fifty years, employing thirteen prime ministers, six of whom died unnatural deaths: three were executed, and three committed suicide after being questioned. The unnatural death rate of Emperor Wu’s prime ministers was similar to that of emperors throughout history. In contrast, all four of Zhu Yuanzhang’s prime ministers were executed. Thus, it seems that officials caught between the imperial court and the peasantry leading a simple life also faced the threat of being killed; it’s not an exaggeration to say that their lives were filled with the constant fear of being beheaded by the emperor.

*Dream of the Red Chamber* portrays Jia Zheng and Jia Yucun as distinct bureaucratic figures: Jia Zheng is only interested in empty talk and ignorant of worldly affairs; Jia Yucun specializes in flattery and political maneuvering. In real life, Jia Zheng and Jia Yucun are two faces of the same person within the bureaucratic literati class. They are instilled with Confucian morality and righteousness, but are forced to flatter and fawn, thus causing them spiritual trauma. Traditional Chinese literati used poetry, calligraphy, music, and painting to replace the opium-like effects of Western religion.

I once used the frequency of the word “I” in poetry to represent the degree of subjective expression, and found that the historical trends in the East and West are opposite: Western history shows an increase in the degree of subjective expression, while the degree and persistence of the decline in subjective expression in China over three thousand years is striking. Western research has found that poets who committed suicide used the subjective “I” more often than the objective “I,” a phenomenon also seen in the suicidal poet Qu Yuan. In Qu Yuan’s imaginary journeys through the heavens, he was alone, and thus rarely used the objective “I.” Surprisingly, the ratio of subjective to objective “I” in Chinese poetry after the Tang Dynasty is similar to that of the suicidal poet Qu Yuan, prompting speculation about the heart-wrenching pain of the ancients.

This shift in the expressive power of poetry in Chinese history is directly related to the political introversion that followed the Southern Song Dynasty. We can also see a similar change in Lu Xun’s *The True Story of Ah Q*: Lu Xun begins by writing about Ah Q’s self-deception, then his interactions with the villagers, and finally his unjust arrest, trial, and execution. Readers can imagine that Ah Q, initially using only the subjective “I” in his self-deception, speaks in the form of “I do this and that,” while during his trial, he uses the objective “I” most frequently. This reflects a lack of a secondary social hierarchy in Chinese history, hindering the development of personal space and the corresponding social rules. Reading the story of Dou Ying, the first prime minister of Emperor Wu of Han, I felt that in the face of the domineering Empress Dowager Dou and Emperor Wu, he had little personal agency, scheming and maneuvering to be subservient to others. Ultimately, he was implicated by someone’s indiscretion at a banquet, and despite producing the late emperor’s edict allowing him to “seek an audience with the emperor if things become inconvenient,” he was executed. This oppressive secondary social environment forced writers, like Ah Q, to seek solace in their inner world—a kind of spiritual victory. This led to a significant increase in the proportion of subjective/objective self-expression in Chinese poetry after the Tang Dynasty, approaching the level of suicidal poets. This is a direct result of the lack of personal space for activity in secondary social spheres throughout Chinese history.

Historically, Chinese literati adhered to Confucianism in officialdom but embraced Taoism at home. I examined Taoist poetry and found a more pronounced decrease in subjective expression and the reduction of the use of the word “I” as an objective self. I also sampled biblical poetry and found no such phenomenon; in fact, the frequency of the word “I” as a subjective self was higher in Taoist poetry than in the ancient Chinese Book of Songs. Western poetry tells stories and creates scenes, while Chinese literati poetry is like whispered conversations with kindred spirits, a self-absorbed, Ah Q-like musing. (By Li Yousheng, author’s website: http://taoism21cen.com) (Published in: Community Newspaper, Issue 37, May 2016)