The legacy of China’s last pilgrim

My article on Hu Hsu, the Chinese 'pilgrim' appeared in The New Indian Express this morning. His 101st birth anniversary is celebrated today. He was a great human being and a yogi, not running for publicity and recognition. Click here to read.

The Last Chinese Pilgrim

Have you heard of Xu Fancheng? Never heard of him? You are not the only one.
Those who visited the Pavilion of Puducherry at the World Exhibition in Shanghai may have come across a panel depicting Xu Fancheng’s amazing odyssey in India: ‘The key man in cultural exchanges between India and China’ as one panel depicts him.
This assertion might be true, but strangely enough, he is unknown in India; even the South Block Mandarins, always quick to find living symbols of the Chini-Hindi brotherhood, are unaware of him.
Ironically, it is a Communist publication, The China Daily (the largest English-language newspaper in the mainland) which first paid homage to the great scholar, artist and spiritual seeker.
In December 2009, The China Daily published a surprising article explaining the special place of Xu for the Chinese people who “cannot imagine that a scholar …could find [in India] a place to immerse himself in his quest for spirituality.” It noted that: “it is exactly what Xu Fancheng (1909-2000), a leading researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences did in India.”
It is worth quoting a few more lines from the Chinese newspaper: “In ancient times, Chinese scholars used to travel to India to study Buddhism and to bring back Buddhist scriptures, some of which have been well documented in history. But Xu spent a much longer time there than any of them, although he did not have to walk or ride horses and camels across deserts and snow-capped mountains to reach his dreamland”.
The Communist paper continued: “For 33 quiet and, for most part, penniless years, Xu worked as hard as the ancient pilgrims, studying and translating India's classical and modern writings. He was unaffected even by the loss of family members and the change of the national government back home. He spent most of those years in Sri Aurobindo Ashram.”
But who was really Xu Fancheng or Hu Hsu as he is still remembered in Puducherry?
Hu Hsu was born in Changsha, in the southern province of Hunan on October 26, 1909 into a well-off family. At that time, even though his family was involved in business, it was the normal practice for boys to get a classical education in literature and arts.
The discreet Xu once told one of his friends in the Ashram that Mao Zedong had been his history teacher in primary school. It is a fact that in 1917, the future Great Helmsman founded a night school in Hunan. Later Mao was later appointed assistant librarian at the University of Beijing. It is probably around that time that Xu met him this ‘very good teacher’.
Unfortunately for China, Mao’s destiny was not to remain a ‘good’ teacher.
A few years later, the young Xu came into contact with Lu Xun, one of the most prominent Chinese writers in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Lu had a large following among young intellectuals and is still considered today as the founder of modern Chinese literature. The two became friends.
Hu Hsu continued his studies at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong. Interestingly the university’s motto was: "Study extensively; enquire accurately; reflect carefully; discriminate clearly; practice earnestly". During his entire life, Xu Fancheng faithfully followed this path.
He later moved to the Fudan University to study Western Literature. In 1929 with Lu Xun’s support, he obtained a scholarship to study Fine Art and Philosophy in Heidelberg, Germany where he stayed 3 years.
He came back to China in 1932 where he started to translate the works of Nietzsche into Chinese; soon becoming a Nietzsche expert.
In 1945, at the end of the WWII he decided to come to India. Flying from Kunming to Calcutta was an adventure in itself (during the war, 594 aircraft were lost, missing, or written off and 1,659 personnel killed or missing). But this was nothing for the young spiritual aspirant.

For several years, he lived in Visva-bharati in Santiniketan studying Sanskrit while teaching the History of Chinese Buddhism at Cheena Bhavana, the centre co-founded by Rabindranath Tagore and Tan Yun-shan in 1937.
It is at Tan’s initiative, let us not forget, that Jawaharlal Nehru visited China in 1939. A close friendship and mutual respect is said to have been forged between the two thereafter.
It is probably Tan who spoke about Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram to Xu Fancheng. In 1939, after having visited the Ashram and meeting the Mother, Tan had Sri Aurobindo’s darshan. He later wrote: "...As in the past China was spiritually conquered by a great Indian, so in the future too she would be conquered by another great Indian, Sri Aurobindo, the Mahayogi who, is the bringer of that light which will chase away the darkness that envelops the world today."
In 1951, Xu landed in Pondicherry. He remained there for 27 years, deeply immersed into studying, painting, teaching, translating, writing or simply being an ‘integral yogi’.
He translated into Chinese several Indian classics such as the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishands, but also the major works of Sri Aurobindo, particularly The Life Divine. It is Xu who organized the first Chinese printing press in Pondicherry with the Mother’s support.
On October 30, 1962 (the Chinese had invaded India 10 days earlier), the Mother told one of her disciples: “I suddenly realized that the Chinese can't translate the way we do! In Chinese, each character represents an idea rather than a separate word; the basis is ideas, not words and their meanings, so translation must be a completely different kind of work for them. …But how interesting it must be [for Xu] to work with new ideas that way! The man is a genius!”
The death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 heralded a new era for China and the world. Those who had suffered the brutal repression of Mao’s policies began dreaming of a brighter and more peaceful future.
On December 18, 1978, hardly two years after the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a small man (in size) climbed the rostrum for the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Deng Xiaoping was to change the face of China.

The same year, Xu decided to return to China and worked as a researcher in the Department of Religion in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He continued to work quietly until he passed away on March 6, 2000.
Can you believe that it is The China Daily which asked: “Why are an old, lonely scholar born a century ago and the stuff that used to be called ‘Oriental mysticism’ and spirituality, drawing people's attention today when most students in China and India are being taught Western rationalism?” and then adding: “When Xu was pursuing his vocation single-mindedly, Chinese youths were flocking to Western countries' embassies or consul offices to apply for student visas”.
Yang Xusheng, a professor of Sinology in the Renmin University admits: “We have come to realize that seeing some of us become morally and spiritually hollow is as much painful an experience as seeing other people inadequately nourished and sheltered. Xu's research is unique for it reminds people that in order to seek a balanced life and economy, we have to go back to the questions raised by the first thinkers of our civilizations.”
Thirty years ago, though Deng Xiaoping announced that ‘to be rich is glorious’, the masses’ lives still remain hollow; it is perhaps time for China to meditate on the life and contribution of the last Chinese pilgrim. Hu Fancheng has definitively a message to teach to China's youth.

The link between India and China

The death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 heralded a new era for China and the world. Those who had suffered the brutal repression of Mao’s policies began dreaming of a brighter and more peaceful future.
Soon after Jiang Qing, the disgruntled Chairman’s widow and her colleagues of the Gang of Four were removed from the scene, one of the leaders who had several times been ‘purged’ and in disgrace for several years, was back in the center of the political stage, Deng Xiaoping.
On December 18, 1978, hardly two years after the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the small man (in size) climbed the rostrum for the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Deng was to change the face of China.
The new strong man of the Middle Kingdom proposed to the Central Committee an ‘open door’ policy as well as drastic economic reforms.
Thirty years later, China celebrated what Xinhua terms the “decision to open up the once-secluded country and reform its moribund economy”.
On the occasion, President Hu Jintao told an audience of more than 6,000 assembled in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing “Standing still and regressing will lead only to a dead end". He added that “China must continue the reform and opening-up drive, which in the past 30 years turned the once poverty-stricken country into one of the world's largest economies.”
The new path chosen by Deng would later be known as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Since then China has maintained an average annual growth rate of 9-10 % and this over the past three decades, making the developed world dream of a miracle à la Chinese for their own economies.
The years which followed Deng’s return were years of hope for the people of China who had greatly suffered during the different campaigns of Mao. One of the examples of the new wind blowing over China was the Beijing Spring in 1979 and the freedom slogans written by Wei Jingsheng and his colleagues on the Wall of Democracy in Beijing. 
For the so-called ‘nationalities’ and particularly the Tibetans, the last two years of the 1970’s also became an era of relative freedom. One soon started seeing the first signs of detente in China as well as in Tibet. For many, the arrival of the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping in power could only augur positive changes.
He had written a 24-Character’s advice “Keep cool-headed to observe, be composed to make reactions, stand firmly, hide our capabilities and bide our time, never try to take the lead, and be able to accomplish something.”
The Panchen Lama, the second most important Tibetan religious figure after the Dalai Lama and Bapa Phuntso Wangyal, the ‘first Tibetan Communist’ who led the Chinese troops into the Tibetan capital in September 1951 had been released after more than 15 years in Chinese jails. They had managed to survive in the most inhuman conditions.
Wangyal still remembers the return of Deng Xiaoping: “He changed the course of Chinese history, ushering in a new era in politics, society, and the economy. The kind of ultra-leftist thinking that had produced the anti-rightist campaign and the disastrous Cultural Revolution was now suppressed, and those who had previously been imprisoned were being released — if, like me, they were still alive. One dimension of Deng’s new policy was the attempt to resolve outstanding international issues, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetans.”
The return of Deng had other consequences, many Chinese who lived abroad returned to China. One of them was Hu Hsu, also known as Xu Fancheng (1903-2000).
I am posting here a remarkable article published by The China Daily in December 2009. The author points out: “In ancient times, Chinese scholars used to travel to India to study Buddhism and to bring back Buddhist scriptures, some of which have been well documented in history. But Xu spent a much longer time there than any of them, although he did not have to walk or ride horses and camels across deserts and snow-capped mountains to reach his "dreamland". 
The article goes into the extraordinary journey of Hu Hsu. This year, we are celebrating  Hu’s centenary.Though he was a great master of classical Chinese poetry, calligraphy, sculpture, and painting; though he knew eight ancient and modern languages; though he translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the major works of Sri Aurobindo into Chinese, how many know of him in India today.
Read The China Daily article.

In an unending search for spirituality
China Daily
You Nuo
2009-12-17
Wars, famine, state failure, revolutions, reform, economic boom. Most people in the world cannot think of much else when it comes to 20th-century China. To be honest, even most Chinese cannot think beyond them. They cannot imagine that a scholar from a society of constant upheavals could find a place to immerse himself in his quest for spirituality and life's meaning. But that is exactly what Xu Fancheng (1903-2000), a leading researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), did in India.
In ancient times, Chinese scholars used to travel to India to study Buddhism and to bring back Buddhist scriptures, some of which have been well documented in history. But Xu spent a much longer time there than any of them, although he did not have to walk or ride horses and camels across deserts and snow-capped mountains to reach his "dreamland".
For 33 quiet and, for most part, penniless years, Xu worked as hard as the ancient pilgrims, studying and translating India's classical and modern writings. He was unaffected even by the loss of family members and the change of the national government back home. He spent most of those years in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, an education center founded by Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) and led by Mirra Alfassa (known as the Mother, 1878-1973), in Pondicherry, southern India, where he started translating some of Ghose's key philosophical works.
It was not until 1978, when a friend from Hong Kong convinced him that China was beginning to reform and open up and might make room for his intellectual quest, did he think of returning home.
When he arrived in Beijing, as his former CASS assistant Sun Bo recalls while talking to China Daily, "the old scholar had nothing except a little money from his Hong Kong friend no company and no personal belongings other than his manuscripts". Nor was there a homecoming ceremony, like the one presided over by the emperor when the famous Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang (602-664) returned from his 17-year study tour to India.
After the long absence, the motherland seemed a strange place to Xu in many ways. Very few people could remember who he was unless they went through the Chinese editions of Nietzsche, some of which Xu had translated while studying in Germany in the 1930s. Or, they could find his name in the research on Lu Xun (1881-1936). Lu Xun had a large following among young intellectuals who, angry at the state of the country, went to him for inspiration and to get their articles published in his magazine. Xu was one of them.
But like Sri Aurobindo, his Indian inspiration, Xu turned from being a radical young intellectual into a thinker, making Eastern philosophy his source of spirituality, something China shared with India in ancient times and could still be valuable for modern man's existence. And it will be more than being valuable, as we can know from Xu's writings and, more importantly, derive from his entire body of research. He re-emphasizes that man's inevitable journey from the industrial and bureaucratic systems of the modern times will be toward moral independence and spiritual well-being.
As Xu has said: "In a way, the destiny of mankind has been determined by the philosophies of ancient Greece, India and China, each with its genuine and independent roots. Without those, neither the Eastern civilizations nor that of the West can be thinkable If there is any meaning of academic research, and if it is to provide any useful service to mankind, then it must be to prepare for the coming of a great future - by revisiting the profound lessons of the past."
Xu was one of the scholars who, after being educated in the Chinese and Greek classics at home, had the luxury of spending a long time to focus on Indian philosophy and teachings. He had the longevity, too, which allowed him another 20-odd years to write about his experiences and thoughts without much interference. As his former CASS colleagues recall, Xu was exempted by leaders in his research institute from attending most of the staff meetings.
Among the huge number of Xu's translations in Chinese are the Bhagavadgita, 50 of the Upanishads, and the major works of Sri Aurobindo (such as The Life Devine and Essays on the Gita) and the Mother, who incidentally was also his close friend. Xu lived alone in an apartment in a six-story building without an elevator in eastern Beijing till his death in 2000.
Xu Fancheng's collected works, published in 16 volumes by the Shanghai Joint Publishing Company in 2006, show that he was not only a translator of Indian philosophical works. He was also an original writer, and even though most of his own creations are relatively short, they cover an extensive range, reflecting deeply on Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, as well as classical Grecian philosophy.
But Sun Bo, Xu's assistant in his later years, says the collected volumes do not contain all of his works. Some manuscripts, particularly the last book he was writing on Buddhism, went missing after his death.
Xu's death, incidentally, was a non-event like his return from India. But now, almost a decade later, his standing as a scholar of very high repute has grown across the country. His translation of the Upanishads has been reprinted twice, according to its editor Huang Yansheng, of the Chinese Social Sciences Publishing. The Upanishads primarily discuss philosophy, meditation and the nature of God, and form the core spiritual thought of and mystic contemplations of the four Vedas. In Indian philosophy terms, they are known as Vedanta(or the culmination of the Vedas).
"We have orders not just from universities and libraries," Huang says. "There have been individuals, too, from various backgrounds (who have ordered Xu's translations). They call us either to ask where they can buy it, or to request us to buy a copy for them."

Thanks primarily to Xu's efforts some Chinese universities have started teaching Sri Aurobindo's works, Sun Bo says. Indeed, on popular Chinese online search site Baidu.com (on the web as well as the news search) Xu Fancheng is no longer an obscure name. At least two biographies of Xu have been published as his life story and his translations of Indian classical text attract widespread intellectual attention.
But why? Why are an old, lonely scholar born a century ago and the stuff that used to be called "Oriental mysticism" and spirituality drawing people's attention today when most students in China and India, as well the entire developing world, are being taught Western rationalism?
When Xu was pursuing his vocation single-mindedly, Chinese youths were flocking to Western countries' embassies or consul offices to apply for student visas. It was a time when science and technology were considered the best formula to change China. Who would think of going to India to study philosophy in a dead language called Sanskrit when GDP is considered the best measurement of progress? says Yang Xusheng, a philosopher and professor of Sinology in the Renmin University of China.
"As it has turned out, it is not a road (the GDP road) on which you can travel very far," Yang says. "It is also getting very crowded, especially because Chinese and Indians have started joining in. So we have a crisis.
We have come to realize that seeing some of us become morally and spiritually hollow is as much painful an experience as seeing other people inadequately nourished and sheltered."
Xu's research is unique, Yang says, for it reminds people that in order to seek a balanced life and economy, we have to go back to the questions raised by the first thinkers of our civilizations - the Chinese, Indian, and Greek - and to integrate all their inspirations.
"Haven't you heard what Xu said he wanted to do but could not find the time for?" Yang says. "He had plans to translate the Bible and the Koran again to give Chinese readers a better translation of the holy books. And do you know why he wanted to do that?"
(China Daily 12/17/2009 page9)
(Photos Courtesy Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)