Boda Chen, the First and Last Dracologist

Yuhang Zhang’s piece, Boda Chen, the First and Last Dracologist, slyly subverts Liu’s obsession with pattern and purity, through the mouthpiece of the mysterious — fictitious? real? both? neither? — Qing dynasty scholar, Boda Chen.

It is a reading of Liu’s text that takes us from Tesco’s to rat-borne plagues, and from the Boxer Rebellion to the library of Howqua, the Hong Kong merchant who was once the richest man on earth.

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Boda Chen, the First and Last Dracologist

Yuhang Zhang

I vaped too much today. I felt the blob harden in my lungs, pressing down to my upper belly. I tried some hot water to ease the pressure, but it made no difference, left the blob untouched.

The blob only appears when I am in London — here where something reverberates cancerously through the fetid air. I read that line in Negarestani, as I sat flipping through PDFs at fucking 1.47am. The blob was everything. The trees, the pavement, the unsolicited nude on the phone screen. And in five fucking hours time, the dim sunlight would start to reflect off the double-glazed windows on the building opposite, and I would have to get up early to rush through the excerpts to send to the publisher.

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Born in 1875, there is little record of Boda Chen’s early life. His father was said to be a cousin of Wu Chongyao, the fifth son of Wu Bingjian, also known as Howqua, the Hong merchant and the richest man on earth. This may be why Boda had access to Yuet Nga Tong (粤雅堂), Howqua’s library in 1347 volumes. It was there Boda read The Carving of Dragons, in multiple versions. It is impossible to trace which versions he read because in the only study he wrote, ‘Diagramming The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons’, Boda refers to all the works using pseudonyms or non-existent titles. At the time Boda’s state of mind was questionable too: while writing, he was ingesting heavy doses of opium.

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Boda traces The Carving of Dragons to a time before Liu Xie’s days at Dinglin Temple, and to China’s long history of live burials — something that related to Boda’s own obsession with accounts of the live burials of Christians and European missionaries during the Boxer Rebellion.

He sits in the garden, the rank air fumigated by wreaths of opium, thinking about the buried soldiers from the state of Zhao. Their last breaths, their sweat in the exhumed dirt, mingling with the air we breathe. Their blood and bone sinking to the subterranean rivers from which we draw well-water.

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Nevertheless, it would be unfair to put Boda’s Diagramming down only to his opium-smoking in the garden. What he offers the reader is something substantial. Liu Xie writes:

Why do we say this? Because all colour-patterns are mixed of black and yellow, and all shape-patterns are differentiated by round and square. The sun and moon, like two pieces of jade, manifest the pattern of heaven; mountains and rivers in their beauty display the pattern of earth (夫玄黃色雜， 方圓體分，日月疊璧，以垂麗天之象;山川煥綺，以 鋪理地之形).

Boda’s comments on Liu’s passage read as follows:

But when the Battle of Changping ended with the live burial of the Zhao army, the air became rancid and misty. The water turned purple, the earth rotten with human tissue. This was all in keeping with pattern. Liu writes that patterns are manifested in the ooze and the differentiation of heaven and earth. This differentiation gives rise to multiple others, exterior to the pattern. These multiple others go on in turn to give birth to still more others.

What are human beings? Are they ‘the refined essence of the five elements’ (為五行之秀，實天地之心)? Or are they a pot of innumerable others, multiplying at the back of the kitchen, a slop bucket? For if integrity is what pattern is willing to be, why does it differentiate at all? And if pattern is a kind of integrity, why does it need to be anything at all?

Therefore, Liu writes: ‘When we extend our observations, we find that all things, both animals and plants, have patterns of their own’ (傍及萬品，動植皆文).

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Reading this, I no longer felt the blob in my lungs. Or to be more precise, I couldn’t feel my lungs at all. There was nothing to feel in the middle of my torso. But it was not a void. It was neutral. The air pumped in and out, but nothing was consumed or produced.

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Chen continues:

Given that patterns generate their own exteriority, what is the pattern of human being? Surely, it is the live burial.

Liu tells us: ‘Words with pattern indeed express the mind of the universe!'( 言之文也，天地之心哉!).’ But what mind belongs to the worms that hatch from the bodies of the Zhao soldiers buried in the earth? The worms know nothing about the course behind things. There is no such course. The worms, purposeless, find a way through. They do not look ahead, or back to what came before. They could grow even in a vacuum. The worms express what it is to be. Existence is nothing other than the worms' expression.

And so, the Zhao soldiers, blindfolded, stepped into their own tombs. This was their own expression, their pattern. Arrows thrust into intestines, hearts ripped open to welcome the limestone. The expression of this pattern began once the worms started to bore through numerous orifices, in and out. Multiple others, exterior to the soldiers' bodies. And the soldiers, sealed under the displaced dirt — gnawing teeth, compacted hair — their shivering bones were their literature.

Therefore, Liu writes, ‘by the time of the Shang and the Zhou [dynasties], literary form surpassed its substance.’ (逮及商周，文勝其質，《雅》、《頌》所被，英華曰 新),

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On YouTube, a fat, wrinkled chef from Beijing is boiling up white pork intestines as he instructs his assistant.

‘Did you put baking powder in it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then turn on the tap.’

‘See? Here comes the foam. The transparent mucus you couldn’t see can now be washed away. Give it a good shower! The taste of intestinal air is not pleasant.’

‘Fucking Westerners have no idea about food hygiene,’ I think.

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Needless to say, the Chinese know the secrets of both mucus and literature. Mucus is drowsily rancid, translucent, mildly sinister. It shapes our brains, causes them to ooze other compounds. This is the source of so-called literature.

Dealing with mucus is by no means straightforward. It demands meticulous hygiene. But — this is the secret knowledge, a conspiracy of the Chinese people — to pursue hygiene is to collude with the filth you seek to exclude. When you wash away the mucus, you find it seeps back into your body. The mucus floods back, up from sinkhole, into the abdomen, through the joints of the body, and then out of the mouth, the nostrils and the butthole. It clings to the edges of your slippers in your dining room, it spreads in a grubby path to Tesco, where it climbs up onto the meat counter.

This is the real pattern of literature. It takes shape with every turn it takes down the road, every hole it pours through.

Literature is never ours.

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Surely, Liu Xie knew this well. His own era was not so far removed from the time of strict food hygiene of the Zhou dynasty. Writing The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, he knew the extent of his own collusion. Liu’s book is a séance of white magic. His obsession with impurity in the cosmic patterns of literature, like food hygiene, is destined to betray itself.

The Zhao soldiers, buried deep, a much older conspiracy, find their way back through Boda.

And the plot is completed.

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Timeline of Boda Chen:

December 1900: Boda finishes Diagramming the Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. Before he completes a draft for publication, he succumbs to a hernia.

September 1901: Recovers from hernia. Parts with Wu family and leaves Yuet Nga Tong for unknown reasons.

Spring 1902 – Summer 1905: Purchases land on Cheung Chau Island, using money defrauded from a British merchant. Plants ephedra which he exports to a laboratory at Tokyo Imperial University.

Autumn 1905: Bankruptcy. Allegedly receives a contract from the newly established Guangzhou Water Supply Co., for whom he oversees the construction of the Xicun Water Plant.

Summer 1912: Arrested in Hong Kong for importing rats from Canton. Bailed out by the Canton warlord, Jiongming Chen.

Spring 1916: moves to Wong Chuk Hang Kau Wai Village. Starts writing The History of Rat-Borne Plagues in Hong Kong

1918: Spotted in Leung Shuen Wan Chau, after which, all records cease.

Boda Chen, 最初和最后的龙学家

译者：张煜航

今天我电子烟又抽多了，抽的肺里的‘那玩意儿’好像结块儿了一样，往肚子上压。我喝了些热水，但没什么用。肺里的东西依旧在那儿。

‘那玩意儿’只有我在伦敦的时候才会找上我—— ‘‘在腥臭的空气中，癌变般回响着的…’’，凌晨1点47分，我来回翻看几个PDF文档，瞟见Negarestani的《Cyclonopedia》里写有这么一句。‘那玩意儿’是一切。是树，是人行道，是手机屏幕里不请自来的裸体。还有他妈五个小时，阳光就会从对面的双层玻璃上射到我的眼睛里。我得抓紧过一遍这些节选，然后发给出版社。

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Boda Chen生于1875年，早年经历已无从考证。据传，他的父亲是时任怡和行行主伍崇曜的表亲。而伍崇曜即红顶商人 ‘浩官’ 伍秉鉴的第五子，在其父去世后接手洋行。推测正是因为这层关系，Boda才有机会进入伍家的藏书楼粤雅堂。也正是在那里，他接触到了不同刊本的《文心雕龙》。Boda到底接触过哪些本子，现已无法考证，而至于其唯一的著作 《图解文心雕龙》中所提及的文献，大多都不可考，或是纯属捏造。而同样存疑的是Boda在撰写本书时，吸食大量鸦片影响下精神状态…

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本书将《文心雕龙》的考据推到了刘勰入定林寺前的上千年，既从商代到战国时期的活埋史——Boda对于活埋有着异乎寻常的兴趣，这或许与当时多起义和团活埋欧洲传教士的事件有关…

密实的鸦片烟环升腾——他坐在花园里，思索着被埋在地下的赵国士兵——蒸发的汗水，混着他们最后的吐息，升腾成我们呼吸着的空气。他们的血液和骨骼则渗入地下河，而我们则在其上打井饮水。

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将《图解》中的内容完全归咎于粤雅堂的鸦片，显然有失偏颇。其实正相反，Boda的书写大都清晰而详实。

《文心雕龙》言：

夫玄黃色雜， 方圓體分，日月疊璧，以垂麗天之象;山川煥綺，以 鋪理地之形

Boda则评论道:

…长平之战以坑二十万众，气散而臭；水涌紫流，犹土筋骨齐朽也。此所谓天之象，地之形也。勰所谓‘象’者，天地之朽，脓也。腐以生外於象者之无数‘他氏’，继宰庖益‘他氏’。

人之乎？‘五行之秀，实天地之心’，何谓也？或于人者但‘他氏’之篇谋——于后厨者倾夺匕炙，泔浆者？若‘象’者，一性之总摄，其太初之时，奈何存而布之？故勰曰：傍及万品，动植皆文。

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读至此处，我不再感觉到肺里的‘那玩意’了。或者，更准确的说，我甚至在呼吸的时候感觉不到肺了。胸腔里空空如也，但好像又不完全是一个‘空洞’。那是某种很中立，惰性的东西。空气压进去，又被挤出来。但并没有消耗，或是产生…

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Boda继续写道：

既已知夫象物者，人之象何也？无疑者，坑之也。 勰谓曰：言之文也，天地之心哉！身在土之赵尸，虫出于户，心奈何？虫不藏于身后道。道盖不存。虫为之不辍身行向，然后破肉出。不前见，亦不回。又有能中虚而出；虫‘文’即身也。身在身为虫文。

赵卒，蒙眼而蹈其穴。象之分别也。镞刺肠，心开以迎灰岩。虫入口始出，其出孔者无算。他氏，外化军士尸。泥沙俱下，裂齿发结，——以悸骨为其文。勰乃曰：‘逮及商周，文胜其质，《雅》、《颂》所见，英华曰新’，由是也。

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视频中，一个肥头大耳，满脸褶子的北京厨子正在教如何给猪肠子焯水。

‘你放小苏打了么？‘
’放了，师傅‘
’把水龙头打开‘
’你看，这沫子就都出来了。这些都是肠子里的粘液，透明的，你眼睛看不到，就得这么着才能洗掉。好好洗洗！要不会有脏器味儿。‘

’傻逼洋人根本不懂食物清洁‘，我想到。

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不用说，中国人懂得粘液和文学的秘密。粘液有着一种催眠般的恶心，半透明，惰性邪恶。它塑造了我们的大脑，使其分泌更多其他的粘液。粘液是文学的起源。

与粘液打交道意味着迂回。这意味着严格的食物卫生。但是——卫生实则是一种秘密的知识，是只有中国人才掌握的阴谋。遵守这种卫生是同你想要清除的肮脏的共谋。当你把肥肠里的粘液都清洗出去，你就会发现，粘液总会从别处潜回你的身体——从水槽的下水，到你的下水，经过你所有的关节，再流到你嘴里，鼻子里，肛门里。粘液会附着在你穿进餐厅的拖鞋的边缘，沿着前往Tesco的臭水沟，爬到生鲜货架上。

粘液是’文‘的’象‘。它会在每条路的拐角中生成，钻出孔洞。

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当然，刘勰对此了如指掌。他所生活的时代，比我们现在更加接近遵循严格饮食卫生的周代。他也加入了同样的阴谋，所以才写了《文心雕龙》这场降灵会，只不过白魔法的降灵会。刘勰对道与文中的污秽的痴迷，就像饮食卫生一样，终究会将自己暴露出来。

而被坑杀的二十万赵军，被埋葬在一个更深，更古老的阴谋中，并在千年之后找上了Boda。而这个阴谋也在此刻完成。

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Boda Chen 生平年表

1990年 10月：Boda完成《图解文心雕龙》初稿，在付印前患疝气。

1901年9月：康复。离开粤雅堂并与伍家停止交往，原因不明。

1902年春—1905年夏：从某英国商人处诈取钱财，并于长洲岛购置土地。种植麻黄，售于东京帝国大学某实验室。

1905年秋： 破产。据称受雇于时年新组建的广州自来水公司，负责监督西村水厂的建设工程。

1912年夏：因从广州偷运老鼠至香港而被香港警方逮捕。之后被时任广东都督的陈炯明赴港保释。

1916年春：搬至黄竹坑旧围居住，并开始写作《香港鼠疫史》

1918年：被目击到出现在西贡粮船湾。其余不详。