The I Ching is not taught at school today and many Chinese have never heard of it. After that Sunday morning in Edinburgh, I myself never used it again, but doing research for this chapter brought back many memories. Did it help me? Definitely. Do I believe that my grandfather came back from the grave to guide me that day? No. However, going through the process of dividing the sticks and searching for the hexagram did make me examine truths I had not wished to acknowledge and provided me with a course of action I needed to follow.
After I graduated from the London Hospital Medical School, I was fortunate enough to be chosen by the renowned neurologist Sir Russell Brain as his house-physician. One of the fringe benefits of working under Sir Russell was that it gave me the opportunity to treat his roster of famous private patients, many of whom suffered from unusual diseases that were difficult to diagnose. Among them was the great English poet Philip Larkin.
He was then close to forty, a balding man who worried about everything, with anxious intelligent eyes behind thick glasses. He had a private room and many vague symptoms: insomnia, deafness, lack of concentration, fainting spells. I was ordered to perform a plethora of painful diagnostic procedures on him which he endured without complaint. After each ordeal he would quiz me about the significance and rationale of the tests. On many occasions he would order the nurse in charge to page me ‘immediately’. When I rushed back in response to his summons, I would find him listening to the radio or reading in bed, having forgotten he had sent for me.
We did, however, have some wonderful conversations: about literature, philosophy, poetry and the art of writing. I was in awe of his talent and flattered that he should want to chat with someone like me, a lowly intern with literary aspirations assigned to look after his health. Once he complained of boredom and asked whether I would consider having dinner with him outside the hospital on my day off. I declined and told him it was against hospital rules for house-physicians to socialise with their patients. ‘The real reason is that there is someone special in your life, isn’t there?’ he asked. But I found his question difficult and left without answering.
We discussed music and I told him that my favourite composer was J. S. Bach. He mentioned a Dutch artist named Escher, whose drawings consisted of recurrent cyclical themes that reminded him of Bach’s fugues and preludes. Then he asked me, ‘What’s the best book you’ve ever read?’
‘Shakespeare’s King Lear,’ I answered without hesitation. ‘What’s yours?’
He started to laugh. ‘It’s almost too ironical. Here you are – a Chinese girl saying that the best book in the world, ever, is Shakespeare’s King Lear. And here I am, an Englishman, telling you that it’s the Tao Te Ching* by Lao Zi
Philip Larkin was discharged from hospital without a definite diagnosis. We said goodbye, and he gave me a copy of his poems, The Less Deceived, inscribing it to ‘Dr Yen’ and signing it ‘With kindest regards from Philip Larkin’. A few months later, having completed my term as house-doctor, I moved to Edinburgh (as mentioned earlier) and went to work there. I took the book with me when I moved into the attic of Dennis and Helen Katz, colleagues and close friends of Karl’s. However, Karl continued to write and his sporadic visits were deeply disturbing. At times, I thought I, too, would go mad. At the end of two years I finally made a clean break from Karl and went ‘home’ to my family in Hong Kong, leaving Larkin’s book with the Katzes. On the publication of Falling Leaves three decades later I was doing a reading at the Edinburgh Festival when Dennis and Helen entered. In their hands they held a gift. They were returning Larkin’s book.
I like to work in public libraries. While writing this chapter, I happened to be in the library on Brompton Road in London’s Earls Court. Looking up from my manuscript one morning while searching for a word, I saw Anthony Thwaite’s Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 standing on a shelf immediately above my desk. On a whim, I took the volume down and flipped through its pages, wondering if my former patient had described any of his experiences at the London Hospital. To my amazement and delight, I found my name mentioned in two of his letters to Maeve Brennan.
April 10, 1961 … Everyone is very nice (my doctor, or rather, the house-doctor, is Chinese, a Miss Yen) …
Well, now it is 9.45 and almost time for me to settle down for the night. Miss Yen came in and said the ear report was negative, so there’s no cause to worry about that. Still, there are plenty of other things, aren’t there. Miss Yen intimated that she couldn’t hear what Sir Russell said either!* She keeps asking how one writes poetry, how one manages the beats and rhymes. I say that is the easiest part. The hardest part is having something to write about that succeeds in drawing words from your inner mind – that is very important, as one can always think of subjects, but they have to matter in that peculiar way that produces words and some kind of development of thought or theme, or else there’s no poem either in thought or words.
Philip Larkin died in 1985 at the age of sixty-three. Ours was a brief encounter and, after his discharge from hospital, I never saw him again. Looking back, his belief that the Tao Te Ching was the greatest book ever written must have influenced me subliminally over the years. It suggested the possibility that Chinese thought, if properly translated, can be of interest to other western minds besides that of one brilliant, gifted British poet. It may even have inspired me to base Watching the Tree on this very theme.
Of all the ancient Chinese classics, the one which has been most frequently translated into foreign languages is a slim volume written 2500 years ago: the Tao Te Ching (Classic of the Tao and Its Virtue). More than forty different translations in English alone are in print. According to many sources, the author was someone named Lao Zi
Lao Zi, the founder of Taoism, was born in Ku Xian, Henan province (400 miles south of Beijing) in 571 BC His real name was Li Er. He came from a distinguished and cultured family and was employed as a curator of the imperial archives and historical documents at the royal court in the capital city of Loyang during the Chou dynasty. Confucius admired him and was said to have sought his advice around 517 BC.
Lao Zi was married and had a son who later became a general in the state of Wei. According to legend, Lao Zi left his post in his old age and travelled west to India, leaving his writing in the hands of a frontier warden guarding the Hankukuan Pass.
His book, the Tao Te Ching, is very short. It