In the summer of 2019, Wang Di attended a lecture at the Luhu Xunlu Library in Chengdu, Sichuan. Photo/ Xunlu Library
Wang Di: I express historical thinking between the lines
Reporter/Xu Pengyuan
"Whether it's the tea guest who left the tea house last night, or the baby of the century who fell to the ground in the early hours of the first day of this century, or the cousin who is dreaming, they will not know that after more than fifty years, a historian born and raised in Chengdu but living in a foreign country will write history for them. They would not have imagined that in the eyes of this little fellow countryman, they were the protagonists on the stage of history. ”
It may be hard to imagine that such an affectionate passage comes from a serious academic work. But as long as you know its author Wang Di a little, you will no longer seem surprised. Although he has been away from his hometown for thirty years since he went abroad in 1991 to study, he has never cut off his connection with Chengdu. He studied street culture, the fireworks in the teahouse, the secret society of the brothers, and the academic perspective was always aimed at his hometown. He once compared himself to a Sichuan cricket in a poem by Liushahe, singing songs in the hearts of nostalgic people for nearly 30 years. He always has a thermos cup in his bag, brewing Chengdu's favorite hot tea; his Mandarin still has a strong "pepper and salt flavor" — a recent guest on a podcast, and the audience left a message saying that this is a really qualified ring of the main urban indigenous people.
He loves Chengdu, and he loves Chengdu and all the ordinary people in the world. Except for the early book "Stepping Out of the Closed World", Wang Di's research no longer relies on charts and data, nor does it have a macroscopic overlook, but constantly condenses the horizon of exploration, telling the historical detritus of flesh and blood in a narrative tone. This is related to his early experience: before he was admitted to Sichuan University in 1978, he went to the countryside to work as a farmer, a worker in a kiln, and an officer, not only tasting his own humble fate, but also witnessing the suffering and tenacity of all sentient beings. In the face of China News Weekly, he said that he was a moderate person, especially when facing people, and the only sharp thing was to always be critical of power.
He has a Ph.D. in history from Hopkins University in the United States, a professor in the History Department of the University of Macau, and a professor at many universities in the mainland, but he has no Facebook, no Twitter, no Weibo, and no circle of friends, so even if he has won the Best Book Award of the American Society for urban history research twice and has important influence in both Western and domestic academic circles, he is still not a well-known star scholar. However, with the rise of micro history and new cultural history in China, Wang Di's name began to become familiar, especially based on his popular writing in the past two years, and his historical thinking is glowing with more intimate value.
The teahouses in Chengdu have not decayed,
But fate cannot be predicted
China News Weekly: You published the book "The Tea Shop on that Street Corner" in 2021, and you are still writing about the teahouse. It seems that you are writing your own existing research somewhat repetitively?
Wang Di: I have been studying the teahouse for twenty or thirty years, on the one hand, this book is due to the promotion of the editor Li Lei, on the other hand, I think it is also to make my academic research popular, I am trying to write history can not be literary - in the past, when we wrote history, we paid more attention to views, arguments or quotations of historical materials, and paid little attention to its literary nature.
This attempt made a lot of sense for me, and it was worth it. When doing academic research, I generally put myself in a detached position, not allowing myself to enter the middle of the writing object, not to do my own expression, but to calm academic analysis. In "The Tea Shop on The Corner", I was very relaxed to enter the city, including childhood memories and my own feelings.
China News Weekly: Several of your books in the past two years, from "The Vanishing Ancient City" to "Chengdu Under the Microscope" to this year's one, seem to be particularly concerned about popularization. Why is there such a clear and strong shift?
Wang Di: I am walking two roads at the same time. In fact, I don't want to become a popular writer, but I am willing to popularize my writing so that readers who have not read "Street Culture" and "Tea House: Public Life and The Microcosm of Chengdu (1900-1950)" (hereinafter referred to as "Tea House") can see my research. At the same time, in this process, my main energy is not on this matter, the last five years I spent the most effort is "The United States and China in the May Fourth New Cultural Era", which is completely beyond my past academic attention, I think its significance is that Sino-US relations have come to a very critical moment, each of us should understand how Sino-US relations have developed to today, and the May Fourth period is actually a very important node.
In addition, I am working on a three-volume version of Brother Robe. This is probably the most important achievement in my later stages, and I have nothing to worry about if I can get this done.
China News Weekly: You have completed the second part of "Tea House", "Tea House: The Decline and Revival of Chengdu's Public Life (1950-2000)", please tell us how the tea house in the second part has changed compared with the first part? Especially after the reform and opening up, the tea house has been revived from the almost disappearing situation of the planned economy era, and has there been some changes in essence in a new market environment and consumption era?
Wang Di: Chinese is expected to come out in June next year, and the editor of hong Kong Chinese University Press has already sent me the editorial manuscript, and I haven't had time to read it yet, I would like to Chinese instinct to meet the reader earlier.
The second volume took a long time, not to mention collecting information, from the official writing in 2006 to the English edition of Cornell University Press in 2018, a total of 12 years. If you compare the teahouses described in the two books, the changes are certainly very obvious.
In the first 50 years and the last 50 years of the 20th century, the political and economic environment changed, but some basic things still existed, not to say that they were completely gone. The shadow of the old-style teahouse can still be seen in the current teahouse, especially some old-fashioned teahouses, but as a public space, the corner tea shops in the past have gradually been replaced by some more modern tea houses, and the street corner tea shops can basically be said to have disappeared. And in the past, teahouses had no privacy, and this lack of privacy was the most attractive place for teahouses. In the past, people went to teahouses for social interaction, and now they go to teahouses not for social interaction, but to rest, to talk about things, or to meet between acquaintances. The function is also single, I wrote in the first book of "Tea House" that it can provide space for all kinds of people to earn a living, and although some tea houses still have ears, shoe shines, fortune telling, and singing, it is not the same as in the past, and it is not as heavy as in the past.
So what the fate of the teahouse is, only time can answer. For now, at least, Chengdu's teahouses have not decayed, and in terms of numbers, they have far exceeded the past – the Chengdu municipal government has a data that before the epidemic, there were probably nearly 10,000 teahouses. In the process of survival and development, it is definitely adapting to people's needs, and in a few decades it may have a new form, and we cannot predict it.
China News Weekly: If the tea house is a way of life and public space formed by relying on the beverage of tea, the milk tea culture born among young people is also a way of life, which also undertakes some social functions, but more of a presentation is an individual state and a home state. Does this mean that, in a way, public space will gradually tend to disintegrate in our time and in the future?
Wang Di: Actually, I also like to drink milk tea. Milk tea is not the same as tea, its mobility is relatively large, drinking tea to sit in the tea house, milk tea is rarely sitting there to drink, are playing the bag while walking to drink or sent to the office. But the impact of this drink on public life is not the most critical, and it is not that young people do not go to the tea house, when I go to the Heming Tea House, many middle school students do activities there.
The most critical thing is the Internet. In the past, we interacted through face-to-face, then by phone. Today's Internet, not limited by space, is not limited by class, and everyone can have a dialogue. You can never see him, but you can have a very deep exchange with him. Nor does public speech need to be expressed in a public place. This kind of space is a completely new concept of space, and the challenge to public space is the greatest.
In June 2021, Wang Di recorded a tea house scene during an inspection tour of the Chen Jin Tea House in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Photography / Wang Di
China's public domain,
It is actually a kind of social space
China News Weekly: Do we still need traditional realistic public spaces?
Wang Di: Definitely needed. I have always believed that changes in lifestyle are slow, and that man is an emotional animal, and that direct interaction between people is absolutely needed. So why when the epidemic relaxes a little, everyone has to come out and meet.
China News Weekly: When it comes to public space, many people think of Habermas. He argues that early capitalism in the West developed from the bourgeois public sphere, including cafes, churches, and other spaces. But a public space like a teahouse, more often just a place of civic culture, does not seem to have such a strong effect on politics or history, and even it is far away, just like Lao She's teahouse wall is written on the wall of the teahouse " Do not talk about state affairs." What is the reason for this?
Wang Di: Although as a kind of public domain, people also discuss politics in teahouses, chinese teahouses really don't have what Habermas said. There are two very important public domains in Europe, namely churches and print publishing. The Church in China never developed, and it is difficult to say that the temple is completely independent of the state, so it has not formed a force like the Western church. This is why, when discussing the public domain, a considerable number of scholars in the West do not think that there is a public domain in China.
But scholar Shi Qiande's Rickshaw Beijing, which recently published a Chinese translation of "The Rickshaw Puller in Beijing," addresses China's public domain. He and my mentor William Luo were among the first scholars to discuss china's public domain. Although it is different from habermas's public domain, China has its own public domain, which cannot be denied. What is the public domain? It's actually a kind of social space. In the second volume of The Teahouse, I devote considerable space to such an issue in the concluding section, and the English version has also won the American Society for Urban History (UHA) Best Book Award, which means that my discussion has been mainstreamly recognized.
China News Weekly: If we continue to start from the Western definition of the public sphere, does it mean that China's mass culture itself may lack publicity?
Wang Di: Temple fairs and so on during the imperial period are considered to be a kind of publicity, and this publicity has a very important characteristic, it has little to do with politics, but it is just a popular religious belief. In general, popular religion and local authority are more of a combination, and confrontation is only a minority.
By the 20th century, things were different. After the Xinhai Revolution, the activities of the Chamber of Commerce and the Peasants' Association were all public, and even armed; from May Fourth, students entered the political arena, and public speeches, theater performances in teahouses or streets were very popular. Luo William's study of Hankou, Ran Meishuo's study of Zhejiang before and after the Xinhai Revolution, and Shi Qiande's "Rickshaw Pullers in Beijing" all prove this. The teahouses in Chengdu eventually evolved into teahouse politicians, and during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, they became a space for propaganda of the War of Resistance, and the early brothers in the pao were active in the teahouses, and the Communist Party also used the teahouses for political contacts. We can find many examples of how public space is used as a political activity, not as some Western scholars believe that this field does not exist in China.
Young people may not be as online
Behave as it is
China News Weekly: One of the key concepts in your research is mass culture and elite culture. For example, through "The Tea House", we can see that modern China is actually a process of continuous struggle and competition between these two cultures for dominance. Although mass culture will revolt, in general, elite culture dominates, constantly absorbing and transforming mass culture. With the advent and rise of the Internet, mass culture seems to be exploding with its power like never before in this day and age. Do you think this role has reached a moment of interchange?
Wang Di: I think to a certain extent, this situation can be seen. However, we must also see that due to the overall improvement of the cultural level, the masses and the elite are now very blurred, especially the younger generation, and the masses we are talking about are sometimes even part of the elite.
I think the difference between authority and the masses is obvious. We can see that the rhetoric on the Internet is not simply the relationship between the elite and the masses, but more diversified and more complex, and sometimes the elite and the masses may stand together. Of course, authority controls all kinds of public opinion, and we can see that many people also stand on the side of authoritative discourse. Günzberg said in Cheese and Maggots that perhaps the sounds we hear are sifted through.
China News Weekly: But in this more complex situation, the younger generation seems to be showing some homogeneity with authoritative discourse.
Wang Di: Unlike our generation, the younger generation has gone through some pain and is very vigilant about authority. Their identification with authority does not arise with complete freedom to receive information, so they naturally accept it.
In a positive sense, they are able to look at the present and the future with optimism. Of course, I just pointed out that many opinions may not be seen by us, and it may be that young people are not as they appear on the Internet.
China News Weekly: Local culture and national culture are another important concept in your research. In today's globalized and networked world, it is possible that a world culture has been added to the national culture. Under such circumstances and trends, will local culture still have space and meaning?
Wang Di: The era we are facing now has actually begun in the 20th century. For example, the establishment of the municipal government was actually common in the 1920s, in the past, there was no concept of a city in China, the city was managed by various counties, and the concept of municipality came from the West. Therefore, the influence of global culture is inevitable, especially after the reform and opening up, China's market has opened to the West, and the entry of the world economy has actually changed our way of life and changed our culture. Of the intersection of local culture, national culture and world culture or commercial culture, local culture is the weakest.
Local culture is left behind by our ancestors, and its value lies in the fact that it is a part of Chinese culture, and any disappearance is the result of the loss of our culture. What form it will be retained is something that we should seriously think about now and that we must act on. Letting it fend for itself is definitely something to regret, and don't go to that step and regret everything.
The postmodern nature of Chengdu culture
China News Weekly: For a long time, Chengdu left the impression of a particularly laid-back place. It is also because of this impression that Chengdu has become an Internet celebrity city in today's cyberspace, especially in such an era of inner volume, it seems to have become a reverse existence. As a Chengduian and a scholar who studies Chengdu, do you think this perception of Chengdu is a stereotype? And what do you think of Chengdu's Internet celebrity?
Wang Di: The slow pace in Chengdu is real, and it has always been so. In the 1920s, the educator Shu Xincheng wrote "Shu You Xin Ying" in the hope of "enjoying the life of this peasant country"; when I went to the countryside in Meishan, farmers told me that they had only worked for half a year in the past, and there was nothing to do in the fields in the summer and winter, and there was a lot of free time to rush to the scene.
In the past, this was indeed a negative impression, the so-called "basin consciousness", self-satisfaction, not thinking of progress, and small wealth is peace. But now, we rarely hear such criticism, and this transformation is of course related to the widespread involution of China, but it also expresses social progress.
In fact, Chengdu people have not laid flat, and many people have a very hard and nervous life, but compared with the pace of life in these cities in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, the pace of life is slower, and the spirit is not so tense.
China News Weekly: So can Chengdu be used as a reference? Or is it just a distant yearning? Are there any other possibilities for us to escape the inner volume?
Wang Di: This is actually a personal choice. Many people can travel to Chengdu, but if he really wants to live in Chengdu, he may not be able to fully agree. But I always believe that if China's economy continues to develop without major problems, Chengdu's model will be accepted by more people. Because the culture of Chengdu actually has a postmodern nature, postmodern is that after the material living standards have developed to a certain extent, people begin to look back and find those things that should not be abandoned in the traditional way of life.
China News Weekly: In the past two years, there has been a wave of publishing in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science and other disciplines in China, and some young people have also shown a state of enthusiasm for social science. You said in a previous interview that you are influenced by American academia and attach great importance to whether academic research can have a dialogue with the big issues that everyone cares about. But as a historian, how do you talk to the big questions that are in focus at the moment?
Wang Di: It's a good phenomenon that the younger generation likes the social sciences, at least they are thinking, they want to absorb more things. Sociology is the closest thing to our social reality, and I also really appreciate sociological surveys like Sanhe Youth and Scavengers, but sociological research I think has a big problem, it is more at the social level, and rarely studies state power. In fact, this is the strength of our historical research.
I wrote several articles this year, talking about history and actually answering real-world questions. For example, I wrote a book review of Cheese and Maggots, with a subtitle in the middle titled "Reacquainting the Middle Ages." In the past we talked about the Middle Ages, we used to say dark Middle Ages, but if you look closely at the trial of the small miller in Cheese and Maggots, the crime is absurd, and the trial is serious. And in the 20th century, many people were executed without any trial or even explicit charges, but only the whims or personal ambitions of the great men who dominated their destiny, and the so-called civilized society was not as good as the dark Middle Ages.
In addition, CITIC Publishing House has just published "The History of Human Evolution", and I also put forward a very important point in the preface I wrote for it, that is, the development of human beings to this day is not mainly due to competition, but cooperation, which is a revision of Darwinism.
I express my historical thinking between the lines, and as to how many people can notice it, it is beyond my ability, and historians can only do this step.