The Silent Traveller in London

Chiang Yee (Signal Books reprint, 2001)

This endlessly beguiling travelogue by Chiang Yee, from Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province in China, was published in 1938, after the author had already been in England for five years and had written The Chinese Eye (1935), The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland (1937), and Chinese Calligraphy (1938).  It is partly a love letter to London, and partly an attempt to explain Chinese culture to the English and thereby subtly correct stereotypes.  Illustrated throughout with the author's own artworks (which he often exhibited at various London galleries), such as delicate studies of the geese in Kew Gardens and the deer in Richmond Park, Chiang Yee brings Confucianist philosophy and Chinese literature to bear on his surroundings, and the results are never less than illuminating.

Chiang Yee's voice is unique: poetic, limpid, humorous, and above all wistful.  In his description of searching for spring on Hampstead Heath, Chinese and English nature writing traditions intertwine imperceptibly and inseparably, to produce a sort of urban eclogue. He rhapsodises over bluebells and displays an affinity with birds of all sorts, marvelling at the close familial relationships of the ducks in St. James's Park, and even engages with pigeons, which will "take a rest on your head if you do not object."  The weather is, unsurprisingly, a major preoccupation, and he writes evocatively about London wind, rain, fog and snow, quoting Robert Bridges' famous poem on the latter.

The author is particularly prone to amusing or touching glimpses of other lives on the Underground, such as the appreciative audience reaction to a tipsy and uproariously merry lady, the conversation of some precociously contemplative public schoolboys, and the prestidigitations of those who own more than one pair of spectacles.  Indeed, eyewear is a source of considerable interest, especially monocles and pince-nez: "I cannot help looking with fascination at people who just put them on and off with a mere twitch of the nose!"  His humour is delightfully gnomic and mild -one chapter is given over to a linguistic analysis of English surnames (such as Whatmore) to demonstrate their nonsensicality.  He has a keen ear for accents and dialects, finding Cockney musical and less monotonous than what we now call RP.

On occasion his social observations verge on the mordant.  He notes that the same twenty or so sentences, repeated in different combinations and to different people, form the entire discussion at English tea-parties, so that a foreigner could spend years attending them without ever learning much English.  Far ahead of his times (and possibly ours) on the subject of women's rights, he attacks the obsession with slimness that leads to fatal eating disorders, and blames it on male objectification of women in art and literature.  He also deplores the pay gap, which prevents women from leading fulfilled independent lives, the cultural obsession with beauty that drains women's energies and ambitions, and the imperative to marriage and dismissive attitude towards spinsters which he views as contributory to Englishwomen's unhappiness, for which, he believes, English society has little compassion.  These original observations are all the more striking given that he had already criticised what he viewed as the oppressive cult of female beauty in a Chinese article before moving to England.

While alert to differences of culture and philosophy, Chiang Yee is always ready to seize on commonalities.  His comparison of tea-time customs in China and England is fascinating, quoting a Chinese scholar who believed that the English character could be explained by the national beverage, which is "a cup that cheers but does not inebriate," making "the Englishman serious….and almost ascetic." There is an extremely witty passage on the logistical struggles of English tea-parties: "after some experience I began to wish I could be a good deal fatter in order to have a wide lap to hold things safely."  He comes out strongly in defence of English cooking ("it is mild and clear"), cherishing the memory of an encounter with Cumberland ham, but is repelled by the smell of cheese and celery.

The book is generally sunny in tone, but there is an abrupt shift when he describes the existential anguish of choice displayed by rich Londoners: he does not believe that the Chinese will ever have the chance to suffer from what he terms "the worry of happiness."  In a rare revelation of his inner anxieties, he comments that "During these past two years, my worries have grown, and besides my personal failures I have to worry about the ruthless war which is being waged on our land and people, the death of my brother, the moving about and the scattering of the members of our big family, the damage done to our properties, the flood in my native city, and so on." His exile means that he is unable to visit his ancestors' tombs every year, as is the duty of a good son.

Although admittedly a bedside book, The Silent Traveller sometimes wanders a little too much, which can strain the reader's patience. However, it is charming and moving in equal measure, and is not to be dismissed as a curio.  On the contrary, it should be cherished for its pioneering attempts at cultural comparison, its glimpses of a bygone London, and above all for the author himself, a warm-hearted, curious, sociable and modest man who managed, despite private pain, to find considerable happiness in the small things that make up the warp and weft of life in a foreign city.—Isabel Taylor

Copyright © Isabel Taylor 2011.