Mirrors and Wheels - Part 1

Based on a true story

By Weiyang Gao

Chapter One : First Glimpse into the Abyss

Once there was a boy named Gantin – just a teenager in China, who despised the grading system of his middle school. Once ranked ninth among his classmates, he had fallen to twenty-fifth after a single exam. The drop brought more than disappointment. It brought his mother’s wrath. Slaps to the face, pinches to the thighs, beatings with long sticks — these were the greetings that would await him at home. Gantin understood, in his own way, that this violence must have been his mother’s version of love. But that didn’t help much.

 At thirteen, Gantin learned that his mother had never wanted children. She had been obliged by his father’s family — have a child, or face divorce and shame. She chose to save face. His father, too, had no real choice about it. According to traditional Confucian values, not having children — especially not having a son — was the ultimate shame, a betrayal of filial duty. From that moment on, Gantin began to regard Confucianism as the hateful abuse of individuality, sacrificed upon the altar of ancestral duty. More than just societal convention, Confucianism was metaphysical fatalism, assigning a purpose to one’s existence even before birth, and scripting a life through the tentacles of obligation rather than through one’s own free choice. If not for that system, perhaps his mother could have enjoyed her own self-fulfillment as an artist, rather than having sacrificed her dreams for a child she never wanted.

All this had a long and sorry backstory. Between 618 and 755 AD, during the early-to-middle period of the Tang Dynasty, China experienced its golden age. Those days, Confucianism was one of many traditions — Buddhism and Taoism were equally influential. It was an era marked by economic prosperity and even by inclusiveness. In Chang’an, the capital city of the Empire, one could easily encounter people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds – Arabs, Christians, Manichaeans, Zoroastrians. For the first time in Chinese history, the nation became a rather harmonious multiethnic society.

 From 713 to 741 AD, during the Kaiyuan era, the Tang Dynasty reached its peak in political stability, economic strength, and cultural achievement. Chinese women for the first time enjoyed high social standing. They were visible and active. They could even ride horses! They could dissolve their own marriages, and participate in politics. Looking back to that golden age, it’s hard not to imagine men and women, Chinese and non-Chinese alike, living together in harmony and joy. At least that’s the story later writers tell: that back in the day, the people of the Tang were solidly optimistic about the nation’s future. Perhaps much of this acient tale may have even been true. In any case, it is deeply part of the nostalgia of later generations.

 But then came the year 755 AD. Just fourteen years after the Kaiyuan era the An Lushan Rebellion erupted. Over the next eight years, somewhere between thirteen to thirty million people perished in the ensuing chaos. The golden Chinese sun slipped behind a shadow, and China has never been the same.

 Confucian scholars of the time blamed the rebellion on the moral decline of Chinese society. It had become too open and inclusive. In the aftermath Confucianism came to dominate an increasingly  patriarchal culture, as the emperor’s power grew ever more centralized and social structures grew ever more rigid. The status of Chinese women of course declined dramatically. And although society became more male-centered, the responsibility became more burdensome to men in general. This is why, years later, when Gantin moved to America and heard his American friends criticize Chinese politics, he didn’t blame everything on the Communist Party. In his mind, the root of China’s problems stretched back to that rebellion — a catastrophe that had dragged the Chinese people from heaven to hell, and mocked their dreams of a great future.

 Like many teenagers of his time, Gantin was rebellious — but unlike most of his peers, he loved to read about all these things. To tell the truth, he was overweight and unattractive. And he was clumsy at sports. Apart from reading books, there weren’t many options left for him. However, one new option did come to him through his piano teacher, after whom Gantin began to read the Bible and soon embraced faith with all the enthusiasm of rebellious youth. Thus Gantin became the only student in his grade who believed in Jesus, and this made him proudly unique. During those years, many Chinese still idolized Western culture, and so following a Western God felt like being a very wise man, following his own “star in the east.” 

By 2011, he had been a Christian for almost two years. Each time he went to church, he prayed harder and harder, confessed more and more, and sang hymns more and more passionately. How was it then that he was getting fatter and fatter, uglier and uglier, and worst of all, he was no longer the top student he used to be? Jesus Christ hadn’t saved him from being a loser in life after all. And so the subliminal whispering began to intrude on him: “Jesus loves me, but this I know: he’s useless.” So yes, Gantin began to waver. The more church ceremonies he joined, the more the rituals began to grate on him. Was all this chanting and bowing really the essence of Christianity? The people spoke the words of God, perhaps, but they still bled the blood of Confucianism. After two years of this, Gantin could no longer even distinguish Christianity from Confucianism. Neither gave him any relief.

 Around this time Gantin began to feel a strange sympathy for Cain, and for Abraham’s Isaac. He even felt for the fig tree Jesus had cursed. He vividly imagined the fear of God, as when the disobedient Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:16-17)– Gantin called it the Tree of Truth – and later when God caused human language to become babel and the peoples of the earth to be scattered. 

 But even so, on December 24, 2011, in Beijing, Gantin went in to the Church of the Saviour to attend the Vigil Mass. He stood there, staring at Jesus at the center of the sanctuary. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people around him, and Gantin surveyed them wonderingly. Had any of them ever questioned Jesus “divinity”? Had any sensed fear during God’s imagined presence? Did any of them even know the Old and New Testaments were written in different languages? His heart screamed “Truth,” but his mind couldn’t find peace. Again Gantin was the outsider. An invisible curtain had dropped, cutting him off from both Jesus and the faithful crowd, as he felt himself descend into a lonely hell carved out of the harsh truths life had revealed to him.

 But then, with the dawn of the year 2012, after reaffirming his renunciation of the very faith that was supposed to restore him, Gantin became fiercely motivated. Over the whole year, he improved in school and studied English tirelessly, day and night. He began reading Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy (English version!) and found new companions — Plato, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche. Especially Nietzsche. Gantin learned that the young Nietzsche, like the young Gantin, had grown up in a traditional religious family but had renounced his faith in Christianity. The young Friedrich would soon be using reason to deconstruct religious dogma, and even morality itself! Gantin just knew had felt he had found his new guiding star — his new soulmate..

 Around 2013, Gantin began reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and behold! Thus spoke Boston University: Gantin received his letter of acceptance. And so it was that Gantin started his first year in college, and Obama began his second term in office. China’s economy was still booming, Xi Jinping was about to begin a new era, and Pope Francis would soon be the new pope.  Most countries were definitely recovering from the Great Recession, and nations seemed ready to cooperate in the face of climate change. The world felt largely peaceful.  And Gantin? He was excited, and ready for his new journey. Perhaps now, after suffering two scalding betrayals – by his country’s ancient hopes (now dashed) and by own his chosen faith (now abandoned) – he could begin to see his own dreams now being fulfilled.

 Yes, the year 2013 was an optimistic year. No one seemed to feel the ominous currents beneath the calm surface.

 (To Be Continued)

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Weiyang Gao is a Chinese artist and writer who currently works in New York City. He received his BFA from Boston University (2018) and his MFA in painting and drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago (2021). His philosophical interests center on the many ways people have used and abused culture and history to create barriers and divisions within the broader spectrum of humanity.