Katherine by Anchee Min Read Free Book Online Page A

instead of being used by it.”
    When Lion Head talked, it seemed he was talking more to himself than to his guest. He indulged himself and demonstrated his elaborate knowledge of history. He must have felt like Mao at those moments, I thought.
    Gently wiping the dust off the antiques, I told Lion Head that I liked to paint and asked him about the ancient way of making paints. He said that they would mix color with egg yolks. It was expensive but good, he said. He painted too, but he preferred photography. He handed me a new jar of paint as a gift and asked me what I liked to paint. I told him I mostly painted symbols, a white mask on a black background, for example, or a giant watch without numbers, a candle burning on both ends, a faceless face. He said that had always been his idea of a self-portrait—a faceless face. He had been trying to capture that image with his camera but hadn’t been successful. We sat quietly for a long time.
    I told Lion Head about Katherine’s efforts at understanding China. He asked if she had seen my paintings. Yes, I told him, I showed her some. He asked what her comments had been. “She said that she saw anger in the paintings,” I told him. Lion Head shook his head and laughed.
    We talked about Katherine’s expectations and whether they were realistic. I told him that Katherine now seemed to understand that she couldn’t swallow the Pacific Ocean in one gulp, but she was thinking about taking it one cup at a time, downing it bit by bit. I told him that she intended to capture her experience in the book in units simple enough for her readers to comprehend. Shebelieved she could break it down, like measuring curves by reducing them to a sequence of tiny straight lines.
    “That’s the thinking of a typical western mind,” Lion Head said. “You see, Chairman Mao ruled China by
not
ruling it. Mao swam in the Yangtze River in the summer, traveled around his kingdom in the autumn and spring, and wrote poems in the Forbidden City in the winter. The basic difference in our beliefs lay in our concept of the Great Void and the westerner’s idea of God. They think God exists in the world by
wei
—making—while we believe in the power of
wu-wei
—not-making—which is the
true
creative power.”
    While polishing and rearranging his antiques, Lion Head continued: “In order to comprehend China, or in fact anything, Katherine must understand that things are not made of separate parts put together, like machines. The Chinese mind doesn’t ask how things were made, which to Katherine must sound odd. If the universe were ‘made,’ there would be someone who knows
how
it is made—who could explain how it was put together as a technician can explain, one word at a time, how to assemble a machine. But the universe simply grows, and the shortcomings of language, for one thing, exclude the possibility of ever explaining how it grows. Katherine must understand that the universe does not operate according to a plan. Katherine is misguided by her western view. She should learn how to open herself to the unknown in order to gain knowledge.”
    Lion Head’s grandmother appeared like a ghost. She leaned on the doorframe. Lion Head introduced me. She smiled, showing the one tooth left in her mouth. She said, “Are you the girl who came last week?”
    Her question embarrassed Lion Head.
    “No girl came last week,” he interrupted her. “That was Jim.”
    “I am not that old,” said the old woman. “My sight is still good. She had long hair. Don’t you fool me.”
    “It’s he, not she,” Lion Head corrected her.
    “No, no, no, I am sure it’s she. No boy would wear his hair that long.”
    Lion Head wrapped up his pots and said to me, “Jim’s been influenced by the Beatles, the long-hair-men.”
    I laughed, thinking how people reacted with shock to Jim’s long hair. I thought of Katherine. The Beatles. “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Katherine, the foreigner, the magician.
    Lion Head and