Wu wei

“ He’d punish—strike to the quick, flay to the raw nerve—but not wrangle with his condemned. “The sound of that gong will ring in your ears as long as you live. Go where you will, you will hear it. Go where you will, you will see, waking and sleeping, a pagoda by a lotus lake, while you live; and when you die, you will feel the vengeance of a Wu. Never again will you look upon your mother’s face without seeing too the dead face of Wu Nang Ping—and mine.” ”

“ Among the most important of these is the negative excellence of an 83absence of the bustling ostentation of goodness. Not to be fussy or showy, but to do one’s proper work and lead a quiet life without meddling in the concerns of others, are virtues which to Lao-tzŭ seemed of transcendent importance, the expression which I interpreted as meaning absence of ostentation or bustle is wu-wei (無爲) .15 Many Chinese commentators seem to regard this as equivalent to nothingness, non-existence, or absolute inaction ”

“ We can only suppose that it is mysteriously One, without beginning and without end.'↑ The Book of the Yellow Emperor is no longer extant, but the above passage is now incorporated in the Tao Tê Ching, and attributed to Lao Tzŭ.↑ 'They were engendered out of nothing, and came into existence of themselves.'↑ 'After the separation of the Yin and the Yang, when classes of objects assume their forms.'↑ Wu Wei, Inaction, here stands for the inert, unchanging Tao.↑ Such is Tao.↑ 'If we regard ourselves as passing along the road of evolution, then I am alive and he is dead. ”

“ Tu Mu’s conjecture seems to be based on a passage in the 漢官解詁 “Wei Wu Ti strung together Sun Wu’s Art of War,” [40] which in turn may have resulted from a misunderstanding of the final words of Ts‘ao Kung’s preface: 故撰爲略解焉. ”

“ The older mandarin had graciously appointed them attendants upon his granddaughter and to stay with her in Pekin. But the bear and the juggler were traveling with the home-returning Wus; and when the inevitable chess-board and its jeweled chessmen and the flagons of hot spiced wine were laid between Muir and the mandarin, Bruin—Kung Fo Lo was his name—danced and pranced in the firelight for the boy, who clapped his hands and shook with laughter; the heart of a man-child cannot be for ever sad for a baby-girl, known but two months and not able to crawl yet. But Wu Li Chang did not forget Wu Lu. ”

“ Ah Sing slid a little nearer him. The two guarding moved on his either side a little closer. But neither on their faces nor on Ah Sing’s was there the slightest expression or any sign of interest.
“Why?” Wu laughed as he spoke. “Other countries, other ways! In China a daughter often sacrifices herself for a father, a son for his mother—to the utmost. ”

“ Wu watched his hostess with lynx eyes, and the more he watched the more be respected and admired. Late at night, in the hour he invariably spent alone, and had done so from his first coming to England—the hour in which he read and wrote and spoke and thought in Chinese, when in spirit, and bodily too, he made obeisance to his ancestors’ tablets across the world—he wrote down carefully much that she had said and that he had learned from her. Among his many sons the gods might send a daughter, and if they did she too should learn of Ellen Muir. ”

“ In our moments of greatest personal dilemma and peril we seek the strangest confidants: sometimes in half-crazed desperation, sometimes in shame and fear of our nearer and dearer, sometimes instinctively, and then oddly often it proves well done. But whatever the most general explanation, most of us are prone at such tremulous times to lean upon some one not of our constant or closest entourage.
Basil Gregory had little estimate of Wu’s position and power, and none at all of Chinese character. ”

“ He had known such slight men by the dozens and twenties at Oxford, scant-minded, uncultured, clad like popinjays; and for this—this English nothing, this manling thing too slight for Wu Li Chang’s hate, almost unworth his crushing—she had made the father that had adored and cherished her grandsire to a mongrel of shame. The pain at Wu Li Chang’s heart was greater and gnawed sharper than that at Basil Gregory’s. The Chinese was the bigger man, and paid the bigger penalty. ”

“ Rest, Wu Li Chang! Be satisfied! The Englishman is punished. He has broken his mother’s heart. Your curse is fulfilled. Basil Gregory heard your gong cry out a soul’s damnation to-day above his wife’s “I will.” So long as he lives he will hear it, a bitter, relentless knell. When ginger is hottest in his mouth, when wine bubbles reddest in his cup, when the English girl he loves lifts with tired, triumphant hands their firstborn toward his arms, through the young mother’s misty314 smile he will see Nang’s face, above the baby’s first cry he will hear the throbbing note of a Chinese gong. ”

“ Wu quizzed good-naturedly.
Really, she must do better than this. She would not give offense. “Not only civilized,” she said, contriving a slight laugh—it was an awkward one—“but refined to the last degree.”
There was very fine sarcasm and some contempt in the little bow he gave her—not a Chinese bow—but his voice was sincere and almost pleading. “My dear Mrs. Gregory,” he began, “there is not so very much difference between the East and West, after all. Perhaps we in the East have a finer sense of art; certainly we care more for nature. ”

“ Should any one ask me whether men can be made to move like these snakes, I say, yes. The men of Wu and Yueh hate each other; yet, if they cross a river in the same boat and a storm overtake them, they help each other like the two hands. ”

“ He had no more time for thought, nor need. His thinking was done. His years of selfishness were past. He no longer saw or felt “a divided duty.” He was China’s now—Wu the mandarin. Each hour should be full. He would serve assiduously and relentlessly, not with brooding thought, but with action piled on action.
139 At dusk he smote upon the gong hanging in the smaller audience hall, an apartment half of state and half of intimacy.
Nang Ping heard the deep notes reverberate through the house—she had been listening for the sound all day—and rose to her feet before they died away. ”

“ Nang Ping rejoined. “The Japanese go more to Cambridge.”
“Yes—and yet,” Mrs. Gregory said musingly, but more interested in watching the servants than she was in her talk with this rather wooden and very painted-faced child of the East, “your name—‘Wu,’ I mean—has seemed familiar to me from the first, and now I seem to remember that the man I knew at Oxford had a surname rather like that—or even that. How odd!”
“There are many Wus in China,” the girl said. “It is a most large clan. All our clans are very large. We are, you know, so old.” ”

“ The mandarin pointed to where it hung.
Mrs. Gregory half smothered a moan.
260 “The sword with rather a gruesome history——”
“Oh! don’t, please, Mr. Wu,” she broke in, “please—I—I couldn’t bear it now.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Gregory,” he persisted blandly, “good news will keep. Time is not pressing. Besides, tea has not yet been brought in.”
“Tea!” she panted distractedly; “oh! Mr. Wu, you must please excuse me.”
“I beg you to excuse me,” the Chinese corrected, a little arrogantly. “For countless generations my ancestors have drunk tea at this hour, and our tradition must be kept up. ”

“ O curse of Europe! That such men as you pour into Asia and do this damnable thing! You’ll boil in oil for this. You insufferable ass! Don’t you realize in the least who and what her father is? You might better have affronted Tze-Shi herself. Boil in oil, I tell you, and, by God, so you ought! If it were not for your mother, I’d help Wu to heat it. How would you like some Chinese man to do to your sister what you have done to this girl? ”

“ The fan shut with an ominous click—a rattle of ivory, a hiss and a rustle of silk. “It lies by that door”—he pointed it with his fan—“which leads to my own inner chamber.”
The woman smothered a scream, but she could not smother a groan.
Wu laughed. He took a step towards her. “Have you no desire to hear my news of your son?” he asked softly. “Good news? I promised that you should—I am here to keep my promise.” The terrible significance of his words could not have been clearer, but he emphasized it hideously by gliding still a little nearer to the stricken, appalled woman. ”

“ Compare what is said of king Wan in the third stanza of the sixth ode of the first decade. King Wan and duke Wû were both influenced by the consideration that their inmost thoughts, even when 'unseen by men,' were open to the inspection of spiritual beings.]
O prince, let your practice of virtue Be entirely good and admirable. Watch well over your behaviour, And allow nothing wrong in your demeanour. Committing no excess, doing nothing injurious, There are few who will not in such a case take you for their pattern. When one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum [1] . ”

“ Wu the grandfather was never long or far from the side of Wu the grandson. James Muir had taught one Wu almost as much (though not as systematically) as he had taught the other. And they had taught him more than he had taught them: the child unconsciously, the mandarin with conscious glee. All three had been eager to learn, the men more eager than the boy; and the teacher who is at home always has a wide and deep advantage over the teacher who is abroad. ”

“ I, too, had a daughter——”
“Had!” the woman’s lips just breathed it.
“And family history has repeated itself—so far.”
For some moments there was silence in the room—a silence far more poignant than any words—a silence chill and kindless as the voicelessness of death. Then Florence Gregory started up at the sounds of bolts withdrawn and of panels sliding in their grooves.
Wu rose too, carried the sword, and put it beside the gong. “It is growing dark,” he said. ”

“ Until the door opened and Wu came in, she sat cowering, her eyes riveted on her cup, her fingers knotting and unknotting in her lap, and under the lace of her sleeve the costly jewel she had worn to pay honor to Sing Kung Yah winked and danced.
She did not look up at the mandarin’s step, and for a space he stood and studied her, hatred and contempt for Basil Gregory’s mother ugly on his face, pity for his vicarious victim—and she a woman—in his Chinese eyes. And in his heart there was self-pity too: his sacrificial office was in no way to the liking of Wu Li Chang. ”

“ Wu sat down again, and the slow, cold voice went on263 evenly. “My ancestor had only one child, a very beautiful daughter. He worshiped her with more devotion than is common in China—for you know we do not often (unless of pure Manchu blood) esteem daughters so highly as sons. ”

“ Bradley threw down the hat he had taken up and sat down again. “You are wrong there,” he said. “For I too believe that Basil Gregory will not be found. But I did go to try to interest Wu Li Chang in what is very urgent to me—for—for several reasons—because I know him to be, humanly speaking, almost omnipotent, and because I trust and like him.”
“Trust and like Wu Li Chang!”
“Emphatically,” was the quiet answer. “I’ve seen153 a great deal of Mandarin Wu since I first came out. He’s a gentleman, and every inch a man. ”

“ I am all for wealth. As to which pursuit is not in accordance with principle nor in harmony with right, let us refer to the arbitration of Wu Yoh."
"The mean man," said Wu Yoh, "devotes himself to wealth. The superior man devotes himself to reputation. ”

“ Wu will never forgive you or the poor child; though it’s he himself he ought not to forgive for having let a Chinese girl out and unwatched so with us English about. He’ll punish you both, and what Wu does he does well. There’ll be no escaping him. No boat will take you beyond his reach, no spot on earth hide you. You can’t stay in China with her. Her position would be too intolerable,85 even for one of us to inflict on a woman. ”

“ But Ah Sing—still with an expressionless face—leaned across the table, leaned between the blow and Wu Li Chang.
And almost as Gregory sprang the other servants seized and held him—they, too, with indifferent, blank faces. They would have shown far more interest sweeping wistaria leaves from the graveled paths, far, far more watching a quail fight.
“An eye for an eye!” the mandarin cried fiercely. “A tooth for a tooth. That is what you teach us, you Christian gentlemen! And,” he hissed, from enfoamed, protruding lips, “Woman for woman! We’ll teach you that!” ”

“ Even so, the effect of the article would not have been possible had it not been for one little weakness of the people of Wu. In most ways, they are not a credulous folk; indeed, one may show them a plain fact ninety-nine ways without convincing them ”

“ She read it all—his soul, and hers—and suffered as she had not suffered in the K’o-tang of Wu Li Chang. And her soul quailed and grew very sick before the vengeance of Wu, a greater vengeance and a more terrible even than he had planned.
We need never snatch at vengeance with our poor, feeble, fumbling hands. God always repays. And sometimes it seems as if He, like the Chinese, enforces vicarious atonement—daughters scourged for fathers, mothers for sons, and even friend for friend. But sooner or later the great ax of retribution always falls. ”

“ One day the Master was walking before the cave in the company of his disciples. He called Sun Wu Kung up to him and asked: “What progress have you made with your art? Can you fly already?”
“Yes, indeed,” said the ape. ”