In Conversation with Medieval Chinese Literature Scholar Baoli Yang: Borders, China, and Cultural Exchange

As part of my investigation while making a limited edition fragrance Chéngmén, I was fortunate to have a conversation with PhD candidate Baoli Yang of Brown University who is completing her work there in Comparative Literature with a focus on Medieval Chinese Literature. Baoli holds a B.A. from Beijing Normal University, an M.A. from Dartmouth College and has lectured at M.I.T. Her perspectives on cultural exchange between China and the US provided some fascinating insights into our perceptions of each other at a time when the world can seem extremely small, yet there are still gaps in our mutual understanding. Here is the conversation between Baoli and I - I hope that you find it as interesting as it was for me to speak with her. 

Baoli Yang (top) John Biebel (lower) in conversation

John Biebel: Hello Baoli, can you tell me about your area of study?

Baoli Yang: My PhD will be in Comparative Literature with a focus on Medieval Chinese Literature.

JB: When you mention Medieval Chinese literature - my idea of Medieval is usually the idea of European Medieval, and is that roughly the same period in China as well? Does it reflect the same dates in China as well?

BY: Uhm, I don’t think so because China has a longer regional history, so we date that back to about 3,000 years ago. So we define Medieval Chinese Literature as the texts written between 200 BC to 1,000 AD. So it’s about 1,200 years old.

JB: That’s a very long time, and that’s a very different period of time [than European Medieval]. What drew you to that period of writing?

BY: I was born in a small town in northwestern China, and the town was famous for its cultural heritage. The town was not the most famous place in China, but when I was younger, I often thought about going out, because going out meant embracing something more modern, to understand the world in a new way. I wanted to go to places like Beijing, Shanghai, New York, L.A., and when I actually went there, I really got a cultural shock, like in Beijing, I understood how power works, in the capital of China. And after several years when I got to the US, I realized “Oh, this is the center of capitalism, and this sets the trend of the world that I’m in now…” and I felt alienated from this capitalist, modern, commercialized culture. 

For a long while I didn’t know what I should study. Then I thought about my background, and I wanted to know what my cultural root meant to me. So that’s why I want to understand why the province of my city has such an important role in Medieval Chinese culture rather than in modern culture or world culture. That’s why I am interested in working on past historical periods.

JB: Interesting, and I completely understand. In a way, you could almost say that by searching things out, other things, it sort of made you reflect back on where you came from originally.

BY: Yes! Currently I feel this, and I thought that you making films and perfume, painting make you realize who you are. Just as I work on Medieval Chinese Literature makes me realize who I am. 

JB: That’s so fascinating. Something I’m curious about: I have a friend, he makes fragrances, and he was, you may know this, it’s a fairly famous Chinese poem about a scholar who is having a conversation with the moon - Li Bai? 

BY: Drinking Alone Under the Moon 

JB: Yes, “Drinking Alone Under the Moon” - right. And he told me about this poem and how he wanted to make a perfume about this state of mind, about this man sitting alone, but he’s sort of talking to the moon, and thinking about his friends and all of that. And what I found so interesting when I read the poem (and of course I have to read it in translation, and it’s hard to translate some of it) the sentiment of it was very modern - a very modern, sophisticated kind of thinking…

BY: Oh really? Because I was trained to read it in a classical way, but I never thought how a modernist would find it interesting.

JB: Yes, it struck me as very modern. The idea of drinking by yourself is, you know, there’s something sad about it because you’d rather be with other people. But then sometimes that’s all you have, so there’s something - how can I say it? There’s something not idyllic about it, but rather very realistic about it. There’s something very modern about it. It also reflects the idea of getting older, and how your friends are not always there any more. I was thinking of certain friends of mine - I saw certain friends of mine in that poem. It really struck me as very interesting. It’s a very old poem, isn’t it?

BY: Yes, Li Bai is a very old guy!

JB: Yeah! I thought about that when I was reading about your background and what you study. I was very curious, are there any particular themes in Medieval Chinese Literature that really strike you that are very interesting? Is it just a reflection of life like modern literature, or are there specific things that really interest you a lot?

BY: Currently my research is about the conceptualization of borders or frontiers within Medieval Chinese literature, so when they tell you about how we do boundary making or border crossing, so we learn about how to understand ourselves or others. This is the current focus of my research.

JB: And in your research within this area of borders and boundaries, I’d love to hear more about that. What are you finding? That’s such an interesting topic, because in some ways, they’re very rigid, but they’re completely artificial, very man made constructions, but then sometimes the landscape can dictate a boundary. Anything particularly notable that you’ve found that you can tell me about?

BY: I’ve found that in American culture right now, the world considers the US the best of the capitalist models; I saw a lot of American shops and restaurants and brands in China, so the boundary between American culture and Chinese culture somehow is blurred there. In Medieval Chinese culture, I found a similar case. At that time, it wasn’t the US, but Tang China (Tang is a dynasty in Chinese dynastic history.) Tang China exported a lot of cultural elements to Japan, Korea and Vietnam at that time, so Tang China has a lot of imposing cultural elements in those states, also other states too. In many ways, Tang China was an empire. So I want to understand how this kind of cultural imposition took place and how the recipient states established their sense of self and others when they received foreign cultures like the Tang.

JB: That’s so interesting. That whole question you bring up, for many of us in the US, (and I can’t speak for everyone in the US, but) we learn about certain parts of China and of Asia and certain periods, but for instance, the phenomenon you talked about of the Tang exporting cultural elements, we get some information about how some parts of Asia had cultural dominance over others, but it’s not always for us to understand how that happened, or how it expressed itself, or what pressures pushed that, or how it affected language or culture, you know? I’m sure some of these things took place over hundreds of years. I know that linguistically the Chinese had a big impact on many other languages, right?

BY: Especially in East Asia. That’s why we consider East Asia as a cultural entity - because it has a holistic Confuscian ideology based on Chinese thinking, some people call it the chopstick-sphere, because everybody’s influenced by how Chinese eat. So for example you’ll only find chopsticks in East Asian restaurants in the US, this is a relic of that influence.

JB: One thing I’ve heard, and I’ve read a lot about this very strong focus on academics in Beijing, and how there was this very strong bureaucratic system for a long time, and how very few people could ever break into it. Was that also true in the larger empire that China had its hands on? Was it true where everyone from far and wide had to go to Beijing and only a few people could be a part of that experience?

BY: Yes. In modern times, the situation has improved because we have the college entrance examination like the SAT; it improves one's chances of entering good schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford in the US. Nowadays, smart kids can do that in China as well, they can enter good schools like Peking University, Shanghai University, Fudan University. However, the aristocrats always had the highest position and they will try to make the empire as meritocratic as possible by using the Imperial Service Examination System (it’s very similar to the SAT) but only the rich kids can afford tutors, and they have information about what’s going on with the examinations. It’s very rare for really, really poor students at that time to get at the top of the power hierarchy. So the situation improved after 1911 but now it’s getting worse because we have very stiff stratification of the social levels right now.

JB: So that part is interesting. From my perspective from what I know from the revolution in the 40s, 50s, that seemed at the time was an attempt to stratify and create a level playing field in society, but it seems like it sort of returned to more of an economic hierarchy - is that true?

BY: During the Cultural Revolution, we tried to make everybody equal, but after ten years we realized it’s not possible, and then we went back to the market economy and tried to use the college entrance examination exams again. It’s not easy, especially for poor kids.

JB: I’m really curious about your coming to the United States to study. I’m very much in awe of people who work and study in one native language, and then they work and study in a completely different language - it’s very hard to do and has so many challenges, but also gives you such an interesting perspective. For a while I was teaching ESL when I was living in London and I was so interested to hear these stories from people who left one life where it was and picked up another life to work and live in a completely different context. Can you tell me some of your perceptions of that process of coming to another place, speaking a different language, learning new things, but also studying something from your home country but in a new language context?

BY: It was not easy. Even though it sounds very exciting, you’re accepting a new environment and you’re exposed to all kinds of new stuff, however, it’s not easy especially if I’m trying to work with English. In terms of Chinese language, I have no difficulty, but when I first studied in an American class, I couldn’t understand any words. And it was not a normal university, I came here as a visiting fellow at Harvard University, so I really, really didn’t understand what the professor was talking about. It was a Gilgamesh class. I stayed in Harvard’s library all night, looking up all the words in the Gilgamesh text, I looked up every word and still don’t understand what it’s about [laughter]. 

So, it was definitely a struggle. I jumped from a non-English environment to a sophisticated English environment. I felt so desperate. But I was fortunate enough because my husband suddenly appeared. At that time, he was just a boyfriend, but he became my husband, and he’s a native speaker. He tried to help a little bit but it took me a long, long time to get used to academic writing and sophisticated English. Even though I still have an accent, I’m still trying to get used to the academic environment. I feel a strong rupture of my life, my personal life and my professional life by moving from China to the US.

JB: Well, I’m not an academic, I’m primarily a creative type - 

BY: Lucky you!

[laughter]

JB: But academic English is very difficult! It tends to be very “coded” - it has its own code within it. It’s hard - even for native English speakers it’s hard!

BY: Wow - sweet words!

JB: So give yourself credit for understanding academic English. So something I’m particularly interested in, culturally in this day and age, our world is getting a lot smaller…

BY: I agree

JB: I think that can be very wonderful but it also has some problems, where we almost can feel as if we can just take a jump and suddenly we’re in a different culture and then jump out again, and I don’t know if it’s that easy. You know the way you’ll see people on Instagram who will suddenly take a plane and go somewhere and say “Oh I’m in this culture and I love it!” but they don’t get to understand something deeply. But at the same time, we do have access to people and places like we never had before. What do you feel about the general idea of cultural exchange between two different entities? How do we best engage each other from different parts of the world in a way that’s helpful, formative, positive? I also see cases where some cultures run into walls where they don’t really understand each other very well. I’m curious if you have some thoughts about that because You’ve lived a good portion of your life in two very different cultures.

BY: I think perhaps we should first accept and respect differences, and try to learn from each other’s differences. And then I think we can’t really ignore the power hierarchy. If you consider the economic power in the US and economic power in China, we may understand why sometimes people consider Americans are rich and Chinese are poor; and Chinese have less say in terms of international affairs. So when we consider international relationships or cultural exchange, this cultural hierarchy is always an undercurrent and a force. I think the more cultural exchange, the better. Then we understand each other and try to incorporate differences toward cultural enrichment. Nowadays, the Chinese government has banned so many global websites and their usage in China, it just makes Chinese people dumber, it won’t help. 

JB: Right - I’ve often thought on the topic of something like free speech, this has come up in a couple of different contexts now; free speech can be difficult because we hear things that are hard to hear but I don’t think we should punish negative things with more rules against free speech. In other words we should try to open it up as much as we can. Of course that means it’s going to let in difficult things, but - I’m more worried about limiting speech than having to occasionally listen to things that I don’t like.

BY: I’m so happy that a lot of Americans are open minded, they really don’t believe the media propaganda. I find that American media is so, so confusing! Sometimes, for example, about a week ago, the Harvard, MIT and UPenn presidents went to the hearing in DC and they said some things that might be appropriate for legal terms but not appropriate for that occasion, and it was such a big mess I was so surprised. I really hope the media can get more detail about a situation rather than say “Oh, she didn’t say no to speech about genocide, then she must resign,” I feel it was a little simplistic, isn’t it? I’m just an outsider, I don’t know a lot about American culture, it’s just my opinion.

JB: I agree; I’ve spoken to a lot of friends and colleagues who agree that sometimes the media (and social media is part of it too) has trouble with subtle or nuanced thoughts; they have a very hard time reporting things like this. Whereas it just takes a couple of paragraphs or a longer quote or more context to give the full explanation of something in order for us to get the full story. It’s interesting because I wonder if some of our cultural differences (looking back to the US and China) often has to do with us not having a deeper understanding of that longer conversation between the two? 

There was something you said to me that I wanted to ask you about - so, you mentioned the importance of more conversations and cultural exchanges. There’s something that’s of interest to me… I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had certain perceptions of what life in China is like, what Chinese culture is like based a lot on what I would read and see and from the people I would meet. I’ve been very fortunate to have some Chinese friends, some roommates from China, from different parts of China, different ages, and I’ve noticed I’ve gotten very different perspectives from them, particularly based on their age. I’ve often found that some of my ideas from when I’m much younger have to be revised a lot because they’re very filtered or American-filtered ideas that are probably fifty years out of date. But it did make me think about how the US has so many immigrant populations here and we tend to have a cultural memory that’s a little bit old, right? Because it’s based on a few decades before when someone might have immigrated. What do you think people in the US don’t really understand about modern China?

BY: Perhaps they haven’t really taken any courses about modern China because I have my knowledge, because I got systematic training in modern Chinese literature, modern history, but a lot of people, they don’t feel the necessity for this, and you don’t take such courses. It’s totally fine and acceptable, but in terms of understanding a culture, perhaps we shouldn’t only be a tourist, to just go there to have a few good times and then come back and feel “I fully understand American culture, I fully understand Canadian culture” - I think that’s a need. So, if we really hope to appreciate another culture we need to invest our time and energy into it.

JB: Yes, definitely. So we really should commit to learning more about another culture. Along with that thinking, I would love to hear more about some of the themes that you encounter in your studies. I have so many questions - do you find that the people you come across in Medieval Chinese literature are mirrors to ourselves today, are they vastly different? What really strikes you from what you’ve read along the way?

BY: One theme that really interests me is this notion of young men wanting to leave their studies and join the Emperor on the frontier. It’s funny because in these cases, these men probably never left their classroom and were only dreaming about such things. But this was very adventurous, this idea of a frontier. Do you know of something similar, John? There doesn’t seem to be something like that now…

JB: Mmm, about fifty years ago or more, there was a lot of this theme in one of my favorite cultural areas, which is radio. There were tons of radio programs about westward expansion, the border at Mexico, “the old west”, etc. You will still see some remnants of these themes today, but it has generally moved further north, and tends to be more about people against the wilderness, the elements. Men and women in northern Canada, Alaska. But it sounds as if this theme really is still alive and well, from Medieval China to now.

As you know, I’ve been working on perfume as one of my areas of creative expression, and so I’m very interested in the world of smell, and what thoughts and memories are evoked by it. Have you come across any notable mentions of smell-related content in your work?

BY: Yes, there are a few. There is a passage in the literature that describes the smells of flowers as they are found in nature. Another one that I recall is a passage where foul smells are associated with corruption.

JB: Oh really?

BY: Yes, it’s a description of a group of corrupt men, and they are linked with the smell of alcohol, women; many other smells of decay. They are “bad” men and they are portrayed with foul smells.

JB: What are some smell memories that you have yourself, something perhaps from your childhood?

BY: I remember the smell of medicinal alcohol. I grew up very close to a hospital, so this smell was around a lot. My mother used to clean with alcohol; I remember her cleaning the bathroom mirror with alcohol. To me, this smell is the smell of cleanliness. As for smells such as perfume, we didn’t have such things around because it was too expensive.

JB: Ah, this is interesting, that smell of alcohol. I’m also interested in what you said about the smell of cleanliness. In the US, many cleaning products here, particularly those used for cleaning public bathrooms, use ingredients that aren’t very expensive, and the smell of orange blossom is fairly inexpensive to make. It’s probably random, but that became our default “clean” smell here. In Europe, it’s (mostly) lemon. But that’s often why you don’t smell a lot of orange blossom perfumes in the US.

BY: This is so interesting! What sort of smell associations do you have like this?

JB: I was just thinking the other day about the smell of toothpaste, and how, for most of my years growing up, you were only able to buy toothpaste that was flavored with mint (or something like mint). So I’ve always associated mint with teeth and brushing. It’s different now, there are many new scents and flavors available, but I still think that they don’t quite feel as “clean” if it’s not minty.

[Laughter]

BY: Yes, I can see how cultures have smells that are associated with them. For me, for example, I always associate Japan with the smell of peach. There are so many drinks in Japan that are flavored with peach, and that smell is linked to me visiting there. I suppose many people make the association of smell with China and tea…

JB: Yes, tea and also certain flowers; osmanthus, and maybe perhaps peony as well?

[we have some translation of flower names]

BY: Ah yes, this is true for both of these flowers. With tea, does this smell become too bitter for something like perfume?

JB: It’s a great question, because I do think that tea can be too bitter of a smell if it were used too strongly. Using natural oils from tea leaves is also very expensive, you need a lot of leaves to get a small amount of oil. There are a number available; jasmine tea, pu erh, white tea, each with a slightly different profile. But it’s becoming a much more popular note in fragrances. Speaking of that, I’d like to return to China for a minute. You might have read on my site that I have been reading some of the work by Wenfu Lu.

BY: Yes, this is a very good place to enter into Chinese writing. He wrote a lot about food, about cuisine - so he writes from a very happy place, a beneficial place. He wrote a lot about the feelings that people have that come from their memories of food. I feel like he would be a great person to sit down to have a conversation with.

JB: I agree! I also really liked his story about returning to his hometown in Suzhou, and how it seemed different from when he was there as a very young man. On that note, looking back, I’d like to close with some thoughts you might have about how your study and your work impacts your thinking today - what do you bring with you from your studies?

BY: Borders and boundaries are important because they help us have a sense of ourselves. But these boundaries need to be porous and flexible. They can’t be walls. They need to move and change along with culture so that they are still helpful in some way. 

JB: And how does this relate to cultural exchange?

BY: This is a global world now, I say the more sharing and greater exchange, the better.