Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties

Chapter 4. A Good Place Need Not Be a Nowhere: The Garden and Utopian Thought in the Six Dynasties

Chapter 4 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• A Good Place Need Not Be a Nowhere The Garden and Utopian Thought in the Six Dynasties Shuen-fu Lin The following quotation, which may at first appear totally irrelevant to the topic of this essay, is from the early Daoist text Zhuang Zi . Huizi said to Zhuang Zi, “I have a big tree people call ailanthus. Its trunk is too gnarled and knotted to measure with the inked line. Its branches are too curly and twisted to fit a compass or an L-square. It stands in the road but no carpenter would even look at it. Now your talk, too, is big and useless—it will be dismissed by everyone alike!” Zhuang Zi said, “Have you never seen a wildcat or a weasel? It crouches down in wait for stray prey. It leaps and pounces east and west, not avoiding high or low, until it falls into the snare and dies in the net. Then there’s the yak, big as a cloud hanging from the sky. It’s certainly big, but it can’t catch mice. Now you have this big tree and you’re bothered by its being useless. Why don’t you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village, in the broad and open wilds, where you can while the time away and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy slumber under 123 it? No ax will ever cut its life short, nor will anything else ever harm it. If it’s totally useless, how can it come to grief?1 The above is the second of two parables that conclude the “Xiaoyaoyou ” (Free and Easy Wandering) chapter in this great text of Daoist philosophy and literature. The title “Free and Easy Wandering” metaphorically expresses the idea of spiritual freedom, which is not only the central theme of the chapter, but also a major theme in the entire Zhuang Zi. In each of the two closing parables, Zhuang Zi (ca. 369–286 B.C.E.) engages his friend, the logician Hui Shi (ca. 380–305 B.C.E.), in a lively debate on the subthemes of usefulness and uselessness. Hui Shi is here depicted as someone who has not attained spiritual freedom and is unable to roam above the artificial distinctions between usefulness and uselessness and recognize the uses of something that is “big” and “useless.” In Zhuang Zi’s eyes, he is far from being the ideal person—that is, an ultimate person (zhiren ), a daimonic person (shenren ), or a sage (shengren )—mentioned in the chapter.2 Zhuang Zi’s remarks quoted above constitute one example of the Daoist thinker’s persistent attempts to deconstruct such opposing concepts , distinctions, and values as large and small, long and short, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong, useful and useless, success and failure, dream and wakefulness, and life and death, which have structured our culture. In his response to Hui Shi’s criticism, Zhuang Zi is careful not to allow his own argument to fall into any rigidly constructed category. He resorts to using “outlandish opinions, expansive discourses, and borderless words,” to borrow a phrase from the “Tianxia” (All under Heaven) chapter of the Zhuang Zi,3 and he creates a fantasy world named “Wuheyou zhi xiang” , which literally means “a village where there is nothing whatever.”4 This Not-Even-Anything Village is a perfect world in which one can do free and unrestricted (xiaoyao ) roaming or simply do nothing (wuwei ) and rest at will, free from all harm and care. It is not so much a world of literal nothingness as one that transcends all human classifications, distinctions , purposes, and values. The concept of “wuwei,” which is commonly found in both the Daodejing and the Zhuang Zi, does not mean “doing nothing” literally but “the absence of purposive activity.”5 According to the Daoists, a person is to emulate Dao in his conduct so that he can act in a manner that is natural, spontaneous, and free 124 SHUEN-FU LIN from human interests, judgments, and goals. The late modern intellectual historian Xu Fuguan interprets the kind of life in NotEven -Anything Village Zhuang Zi advocates in “Free and Easy Wandering ” as a mode of life that embodies Dao or an artistic mode of life that is free from any utilitarian concern or practical purpose.6 Following Xu Fuguan’s interpretation, we can...