Remembering Jim

REMEMBERING JIM Cyril Birch (University of California, Berkeley) The “set books” for traditional fiction and drama for the University of London Bachelor of Arts degree were Honglou meng (first five chapters) and Xixiang ji (first four acts). Katherine Whittaker (Lai Po-kam) had helped Walter Simon select these works, and it was a revelation to read Xixiang ji with her—one had, of course, to know any set text forwards, backwards, and sideways for the final examination. Afterwards I lost sight of classical drama for a decade, until Jim Crump. The first time I met him he gave me an offprint of his seminal “Elements of Yuan Opera.” I had called on him in Ann Arbor basically to thank him for his generous review of my translations of Ming huaben stories. I remembered his comment on coming across the word “smallholding” in one of them. It is a word not so commonly used in America and it was new to him; he found it a perfect fit in its context and was delighted to add it to his own vocabulary. It was obvious as soon as we began to talk that we shared a love of the richness of the English language as well as a joy in the vernacular literature of Yuan and Ming times. The fact that Jim reached that pre-modern era from his grounding in early legends and the history of the Warring States, whereas I progressed backwards into it from my studies of twentieth-century literature, only added spice to our discussions. I still have that offprint of 1958, creased and well-thumbed, and coffee-stained from the Ann Arbor Student Union table at which we began a friendship that lasted close on fifty years. The next time we were together was some five years later at the Bermuda symposium that produced the volume Studies in Chinese Literary Genres. Jim presented a survey of chenzi, the characteristic “padding phrases” of his beloved zaju; I was beginning to explore late-Ming chuanqi plays. Between them our fellow conferees covered the major genres of Chinese literature from the earliest times to the end of the Empire. The hope underlying the entire enterprise was to be taking a useful step towards a future history of Chinese literature, which would be the joint work of several hands, be more comprehensive and more authoritative than any single individual could achieve. After a few days of intense cerebration we were all granted a very welcome afternoon off. So what was to be done in the bright Bermuda sunshine but—go fishing. In later years Jim and I used to sign letters to each other A.A., for Ancient Angler, and W.W., for Weird Woodsman—the latter being myself, happily playing at amateur forester in my retreat in the Sierra foothills. Evidently the two of us saw ourselves as “fisherman and woodcutter, chatting of the past” in the concluding lines of Taohua shan. That afternoon in Bermuda, I was delighted to be taking a lesson in angling, a closed book to me, from a dedicated master of the art. We stood knee deep in the surf and cast rented lines into the Atlantic. To no avail—how was it possible there could be fish so close to shore? “Bound to be,” says Jim, and lo, I feel a tug, reel in, and catch the first and last fish of my life. CHINOPERL Papers No. 26 (2005-2006)©2006 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. CHINOPERL Papers No. 26 It was probably the smallest flounder (or whatever—I'm not sure it was of identifiable species) ever to come out of those gentle sunlit waves. It was flat, bored-looking, about the size of my hand and probably inedible. But it was mine, and when we had spent another fruitless hour I insisted that we take my catch back to the hotel in triumph. With great good humor Jim assented, though his angler's pride must have taken a terrible beating from the miserable size of our joint harvest. Back we went to the rather palatial hotel whose name I have forgotten, but which was perfectly worthy of...