Dead Languages. Intangible stories and ways of thinking, lost in the past. Listening to one is 
just about the closest I’ll ever come to traveling back in time without the use of a time machine. Latin. Ancient Greek. Coptic. Sanskrit. Some people have never even heard of these languages, much less imagined that they were once widely spoken. People used them for commerce, to govern, to flirt with, to issue edicts. Someone long ago, before being executed, spoke his last words in Latin. Now where are these languages? Gone. Blown aside by history’s dust, and the high rises of today. They have either merged with new languages, or else they have been completely destroyed, rolled over by the modern world’s inertia and way of thought. Dead Languages. Toilets flush over the railway tracks and the train moves on.
Laying it out
Opening my map of LiaoningW, I try to plan my week-long itinerary. I brought the large prefectural map along with me just for this moment on the train. I can explore names of places that mean nothing to me while the motion of the train rocks me back and forth. This moment is one of my favorites about any trip…the beginning…diving off into the unknown, into the abyss. I feel I can go anywhere. I’m pretty certain I will go to Dandong, on the border with North Korea. It’s the destination of this train, so there’s no way around that, unless I decide to get off early in the middle of the night during the 21 hour train ride. The other two places that I have on my flexible itinerary are Dalian and Shenyang. Dalian is supposed to be a large tourist destination near the seaside, while Shenyang is a place of historical interest with a forbidden city all of its own. If I stay 2 nights in each place, that gives me a little more time to go somewhere else…somewhere that’s not on the usual tourist route. I want to choose somewhere ordinary. In my travel experiences, the ordinary is usually the most extraordinary.
I look on the map and my fingers run over the words that signify a “Manchu autonomous region,” which denotes that the area’s population primarily consists of the Manchu ethnic minority. The Manchu. This is where the word “Mandarin” comes from in “Mandarin Chinese.” The Manchu are an ethnic group that ruled China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644 until roughly 1904). At that time, the Han Chinese outnumbered the Manchu at a proportion of 315: 1. This number astounds me and makes me curious as to the Manchu’s success of ruling the nation for a period of time longer than the US’ own independence. The Manchu, too have their own dead language, Manchurian. Hmmmm….
The Classics
The cranium of the young man in the bunk next to mine on the train swells with knowledge. I think of Brainy smurf, except in a good way. Brainy was kind of a know-it-all who spoke more out of his rear than his mouth. Wang Wei keeps to himself, and he picks his words as delicately as a flamingo stands on one leg in a marsh. He and his wife, Liu Bo, are returning to their hometowns for a visit. Wang Wei is from the town of BenxiW, and Liu Bo is from TielingW. Both are in Liaoning Province. I learn that Wang Wei is 28 years old. He and Liu Bo have been married for 2 years.
“We originally met through a friend through the internet. After communicating online for some time, we met in person,” Wang Wei tells me with a semi-refined English accent.
I ask Liu Bo if she was nervous the first time that they met in person.
“Not really. I felt we knew each other before that time anyway,” she says with a smile. Liu Bo is sweet, and I can easily imagine myself standing in their future home while she pours me a cup of tea in her nightgown. Her smile is like cream.
“So, what about that first meeting? Can you remember it? Did you giver her flowers or anything?” I ask.
“Not flowers. I brought alone two books in English to give to her: Little Women and Sense and Sensibility. She knew that I was a reader, and I wanted to give these two books to her because I knew that when she read them, she would really be reading me.”
This statement turns over in my mind, a pancake simmering. I know of no other man who would voluntarily tell someone the first time he met his wife in person he gave her these two books.
“So,” I start again, “tell me…if you could describe your wife using only 3 adjectives, what are they?” I’m eager to hear what Wang Wei says. He has a quirky way with language, as his brain is full of it. His major in university is Hermeneutics, focusing on the study of interpretive language. I didn’t even know what this word meant and had to look it up after he told me. He speaks and studies both Ancient Greek and Latin. One of the first questions he asked me was if I enjoyed reading “the classics.” I thought he meant books like “Huckleberry Finn.” I was wrong. He listed off such philosophers as Voltaire, Russel, Euclide. Dickens was another favorite of his. I was surprised to hear that he had also read de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” a book that I read in Mrs. Hays’ high school AP government course. He suggested that I start off my journey of “the classics” with Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” I thought it was an appropriate suggestion for a guy living in China.
Wang Wei thinks about my question for a moment and then looks at me with steady eyes.
“First, she is womanly (period, pause). Second, she is wifely (period, pause). Third, she is motherly (period, pause).” Direct from the philosopher’s mouth.
“Ok, what about you?” I turn to his wife.
“Let me guess,” Wang Wei breaks in, as his wife that here he goes again smile. “She will most likely say first, manly….second, husbandly…..third, fatherly.” This man is one in a million! How did she ever land him?
“No…what were you thinking, ” I ask Liu Bo again.
“Hmmmm….let me think….” her English isn’t as good as Wang Wei’s but it’s still pretty good. Wang Wei wants to go to study at Yale for post graduate studies after the two of them finish studying at Peking University. Liu Bo asked me about any other small universities near Yale that accept foreign students but weren’t as competitive to enter. They plan to stay in the US for 2 years.
“I’d say…kind, would be the first one. Then, responsible….after that, probably reliable.”
We talk for a while more as the sky grows dark. Wang Wei’s mind is a fascination to me. How did he become so interested in philosophy and Western thought?
“I’d say it’s because of my father. He didn’t have a high education, but he is in an avid reader. Our house was always full of books. You know, I haven’t had the chance to travel abroad yet, so the best opportunity I have to explore Western thought is by studying these books and these languages.”
Later on we discuss the topic of the “harmonious society” that is the latest and most fashionable of all the propaganda slogans that run through the Chinese world that the media and the big wigs are always pushing. To build a harmonious society. What does that mean?
“We like to say, if someone loses his or her own way of thinking, then they have been successfully ‘harmonized.’” Wang Wei smiles with a kind of wink in his eye. He and Liu Bo aren’t dummies. They know the score. They know the joke.
We talk until the lights on the train go out, the lack of light successfully harmonizing our own conversation. I walk to the sink at the end of the car so that I can brush my teeth, thinking about the conversation tonight, about the great mind that I brushed against in the bunk next to mine. As I brush my teeth, the neurons in his central cortex still swirl around. How long will it take for the electricity and heat of his synapses to cool off? His mind is a vat of Chinese, English, and dead languages. I don’t know them, these languages, but I want to encounter one, up close and personal. It’s the new mission of my trip. I will find a dead language of my own in Liaoning. The Manchus wait.
