动物化与自然回归 ——对《百种神秘感觉》的生态解读 Animalization and Return to Nature An Ecological Reading of The Hundred Secret Senses

By QIN Yuanyuan

A Thesis Submitted to the School of English and International Studies
Beijing Foreign Studies University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Chinese American Literature Course

Supervised by
Professor Pan Zhiming

June 2014

Animalization and Return to Nature A Ecological Reading of The Hundred Secret Senses
I Introduction Amy Tan, born in 1952, is acclaimed for her lyrically written tales of sensibility and conflicts in Chinese-American mother-daughter relationship, in which generational and cultural divergence is highlighted. Themes of loss and reconciliation, hope and failure, friendship and familial conflict, added with mystic oriental flavor and healing power, have made Tan’s writing emblematic and well-received. Following the publication of The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), Amy Tan’s third novel The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) again enjoys a high popularity and evokes strong responses from both readers and critics. Despite the fact that The Hundred Secret Senses still exhibits Tan’s trademarks of “a strong sense of place, a many-layered narrative, family secrets, generational conflict, Chinese lore and history”, unlike the previous two that are generally praised, this novel gets mixed opinions. Most reviewers receive the characterization of Kwan as “the most original and best one” among Tan’s works (Huntley 113). Some other critics, Michiko Katukani et al, criticize Kwan’s over-imaginary, sensational and superstitious beliefs in ghosts, reincarnation and fantasies (qtd. in Chen 120). Frank Chin asserts that Tan has made both Kwan and Changmian appear inferior for the purpose of "perpetuating and advancing the stereotype of a Chinese culture so foul... (and) perverse..." (11). Sheng-Mei Ma quotes Marianna Torgovnick’s Gone, Primitive: Savage Intellects to shed light on Amy Tan that “Reified and atomized in economics of advanced technology, the ‘Western’ self feels drained, in need of recharging or healing in a spiritual sense, for which purpose the ‘primitive’ third world cultures are deployed. Simultaneously marked by its bestial savagery ans spiritual transcendence, the primitive other is made to coalesce the physical with the metaphysical” (29). She claims that The Hundred Secret Senses adopts an archetype of ‘primitivism’ catering to the Western ‘self’ which “views the rationality as an obstacle to the union of the body and the mind” (30) and “celebrates the exotic Chinese other in the image of animals with supernatural instincts” (34). Generally speaking, the disagreement arises over whether the character Kwan makes contribution to the depth of the novel by promoting “universal love” or lessens its profundity by yielding to “the White gaze”. In this paper, I will employ eco-criticism as my theoretical tool and attempt to prove that instead of an “exotic” Chinese other, Kwan is an animalized, transpersonal character who possesses revelatory significance across time and space. Besides, themes of “returning to nature” and “environmental conservation” would also be touched upon in the essay. Owing to limited sources, research papers available at hand suggest that up till now, few foreign critics have taken an ecological perspective to examine The Hundred Secret Senses. Nevertheless, there are a few Chinese scholars who have made study of “green thoughts” revealed in the novel. Huang Hui, in her “Conflicts and Reconciliation”, pays close attention to conflicts between two sisters and their return to Changmian. She stresses that it is the Chinese ecological ethics clashing with Western mechanical rationalism that results in conflicts between sisters. Their return to Changmian, so to speak, brings them to “original purity” and reconciles their eco-ethics. From an angle of social-natural ecology, Huang holds that the novel conveys Tan’s meditation on the interrelationships among man, nature and society (59-65). Hu Xiaoli, in addition, expounds her viewpoint of spiritual ecology in analysis of spiritual emptiness and existential alienation embodied by Olivia. “The pure, long-lasting love given by Kwan,....the close contact with nature”, Hu confirms, “are the remedies for Olivia’s broken character and her alienated state.” More importantly, she raises up a concept of “inner ecological balance” and its unseparable relation with “love”, which is quite provoking (147). Furthermore, Nie Xinlin introduces eco-feminism into the reading of this novel, arguing that females could only gain vitality, love, hope when they integrate with nature and Kwan and Olivia are two typical cases. She views that compared to males, females were born to be more close to nature since they all breed and support lives. (143-44) Shi Pingping reports that Chinese scholars, more often than not, lay stress on how Chinese Americans as ethic minorities in American society construct their identity and explore issues of ethnic politics or social justice (101). The near absence of eco-criticism in Chinese American literature, therefore, calls for more critics to dig out the hidden ecological messages in Chinese American literary texts and help enrich the current ecological wisdom (102). In answer to this call, this essay would like to find common ground for the novel and the contemporary ecological thinkings by text analysis, and complement the previous studies if possible. Before I start my argument, I will briefly list several key terms of eco-criticism in order to better illustrate my points.

II Ecocriticism Concepts i Biophilia Hypothesis The Biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems.The term biophilia was firstly raised by Erich Frommin in 1973, meaning “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.” Then in 1984, Edward O. Wilson popularized the hypothesis in his book Biophilia, elaborated on its connotation,"Biophilia is the urge to affiliate with other forms of life”, which proposes humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms that have, in part, a genetic basis with humans. (qtd. in Britannica) ii Anthropocentrism and Ecological Self Deriving ideas from the ecological holism in “land ethics”, Arne Naess comes up with the concept of “Ecological Self” within his deep ecology framework. The idea that an human individual possesses an independent and separate essence, Næss argues, cuts off the human self from the surrounding world, leads to selfishness and induces the pitfalls of anthropocentrism.“Self-realization”, then, is the initiative reconnection and enlargement of the shriveled human individual with wider natural environment. To respect and care for an extended ecological Self is to respect the natural environment—which is actually part of Self and with which Self should identify. (Naess 25)

III Animalization vs. Rationalism By portraying a psychic animalized character Kwan and a series of perverse events, Amy Tan displays a mysterious existential form in which love, hope, loyalty and true senses deconstruct the calculation and rationalism in the modern reality. Though Sheng-Mei Ma criticizes the animalization of Kwan and the revealable conception of “Chinese and dog”, the vivid descriptions of Kwan’s resemblance to animals, as a matter of fact, pointed to Kwan’s intimacy to nature and her internalization of natural characteristics. The other narrative, Olivia, as a modernized urban figure, misread Kwan’s presentation and twisted her truthfulness and sincerity. “Dog-like’was one typical feature Olivia labeled to Kwan. “Still hooting and laughing, she jumped and squealed the way our new dog did whenever we let him out the garage” (10). At the first sight of Kwan, Olivia regarded Kwan’s kind and friendly manner as abnormal, which uncovered Olivia’s incapability of receiving real sentiments. Stories goes on, Olivia repeatedly characterized Kwan to be dog-like, unconsciously revealing Kwan’s natural instincts. When Kwan claimed that she overlooked doctors and nurses in her psychiatric ward by “treating them as American ghosts”, Olivia thought she looked “as immovable as a stone palace dog” (15). The underlying message was that Kwan appeared to be extremely determined and loyal. It was then proved that even suffering from physical affliction and mental torment could not sway her loyalty to ghosts or confidence to Olivia. After the electroshock treatment, Kwan mourned for her gone hair but asserted her “staying strong”, which was then witnessed by Olivia, “[Kwan’s] her hair grew back, it was bristly, wiry as a terrier’s” (17). The continuing vitality of Kwan was assimilated to “a terrier’s”. Though not appreciated by Olivia, it had its own existential significance in terms of life succession. Kwan’s other characteristics were illustrated elsewhere in the novel, for instance, when Olivia was annoyed at Kwan’s playing games with Captain, her rhetorical question of “how any dumb thing could make her and the dog instantly happy” delineated the undisturbed optimism held by Kwan. On other occasions, Kwan appeared to be like a duck, a donkey, a cat, an ox, a fly, etc. Despite that Olivia colored her description of Kwan with prejudices, Kwan’s welcoming instincts were not blemished but set off by Olivia’s prejudiced remarks. Kwan, on her part, was not against being animalized, for she was the practitioner of “biophilia hypothesis”. In her earthly life, she kept proximity with all species of animals, and animalizing herself was one access to achieve the state of symbiosis. “I could no longer stay silent as a fish. I became a country duck, crying gwa-gwa-gwa!” When Kwan detailed her suffering during the electroshock treatment, she herself adopted an analogy to fish and duck (17). Throughout the book, the secret senses best exemplified that Kwan’s animalization was an affiliation to the surrounding environment and a mean to experience the authenticity of life. Some kind of sense like ant feet, elephant trunk, dog nose, cat whisker, whale ear, bat wing, clam shell, snake tough, little hair on flower. Many things, but mix up together...Memory, seeing, hearing, feeling, all come together and you know something true in your heart (102). To Kwan, to sense true feelings deep down in one’s heart was closely related to all life-forms in virtue of the inseparable “genetic basis”. She apperceived “the instinctive bond” with natural lives and intuitionally believed that “secret senses are not really secret. We just call secrets because everyone has, only forgotten” (102). Dating back to 1980s, before the book was published, New Age Movement peaked and a focus on “spirituality” was accented. In the novel, Amy Tan quested: what accounted for the missing of secret senses and subtle spirits? She managed to picture how the highly valued “rationalism” took place of “senses” and by what ways it constrained “love” and “hope” through telling Olivia’s conflict with Kwan and Simon, which two were “the source of [Olivia’s] my greatest headaches and fears” (167). As regard to Kwan, Olivia clearly knew that Kwan persistently poured the maternal love to her whereas her natural mother offered her with “the meager souvenirs of love”(8): When my teacher call Mom to say I was running a fever, it was Kwan who showed up at the nurse’s office to take me home. When I fell while roller-skating Kwan bandaged my elbows.... She soothed me when I lost a tooth. She ran the washcloth over my neck while I took my bath (11). However, in face with Kwan’s rich emotions and love devotions, Olivia acknowledged that “I never go out of my way to do anything for her unless it’s motivated by emotional coercion on her part and guilt on mine” (154). The failure of Kwan’s winning Olivia’s gratitude can be attributed to two major reasons. In the first place, it was due to Olivia’s early experience of lacking the care and love from parents. As a little child, she had reinforced an indifferent, pessimistic and uncertain attitude by choosing“to make things not matter” “to put a seal on hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach” and “to avoid being wounded by disappointment” (8). Moreover, Olivia retained her modernized identity and conformed to the dominance of “rationalism”. When she applied the “rational” criteria to judge Kwan, she found Kwan to be “wacky and irrational” with yin eyes, ghost stories and unconceivable fondness for life. Unlike Kwan who extended her love to man, ghosts, animals and the living environment, Olivia was inwardly absorbed in the calculation of gain and loss. Kevin, Olivia’s mother once commented that “Olivia analyzed every single detail to death....has her father’s accountant mentality” (20). It hinted Olivia’s relationship with Simon, in which Olivia was entangled with the idea that “I loved him—too much. And he loved me, only not enough.” (25) Since Olivia was alienated from her true self which was emotional and hopeful, in heart she became estranged with people around. “As to our hopes, our dreams, our secret desires, .... they stayed inside us, growing like a cancer, a body eating away at itself” (111), though she was deeply in loved with Simon, she concealed her sentiments owing to an unbalanced calculation of love. Simply put, Olivia retarded her embrace of “love” and “hope” out of distrust and fear, and was bound by“rational” ideology. According to Ken Wilber, human developmental psychology moves from the pre-personal, through the personal, then to the transpersonal (spiritually advanced or enlightened) level (211). Olivia, in contrast, stayed at the stage of “being personal”, biased and limited; Kwan, however, represented a transpersonal figure: both secular and mysterious, both humane and animalized, both exceptional and universal. Her “hundred secret senses”, in accordance with Jung’s archetypal criticism, could be construed as the collective unconsciousness of “biophilia”, once existed in every individual but were then inhibited by “rationalism” or “logic”. When Olivia finally learned the truth that “the world is not a place but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitedness, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true” (358), she was de facto being aware of “biophilia” and with the help of it she reconnected with herself, with Simon, with Kwan, and with the world.

IV Return to Nature Kwan, appearing as a transpersonal character, was of significance in revelation of truths. She was designated by Amy Tan to diagnose modern ailments of “being too personal”, or a step further, of “being too anthropocentric”. At the beginning of The Hundred Secret Senses, Olivia described Kwan’s wired ability of diagnosing ailments, which was: When she puts her hands on the place where you hurt, you feel a tingling sensation, a thousand fairies dancing up and down, and then it’s like warm water rolling through your veins. You are not cured, but you feel released from worry, becalmed, floating to a tranquil sea. (18) In stead of supernatural power, what actually endowed Kwan with such magic was Nature, and Olivia’s rediscovery of herself and reconnection with Simon were attached to their return back to Nature. It was also with Nature that Kwan fulfilled her Ecological Self. Before their trip to Changmian, China, Amy Tan had foreshadowed the theme of “returning to nature”. Despite Olivia’s incompetence of love and hope, when she has her first kiss with Simon, they were in woods of oak and encountered twinkling fireflies. Olivia recorded this sweet memory, “Two flickering bugs were zigzagging their way toward each other, their attraction looking haphazard yet predestined....our mouth, like those fireflies, bobbed and weaved toward each other” (85-6). Then when they camped at Rancheria Falls, Olivia observed that “Above us was a magnificent canopy of stars. It was so vast, so vivid, and my hope was the same..I felt myself becoming smaller yet denser, about to be crushed by the weight of my own heart..I stared once again at those sharp little stars, twinkling like fireflies...the night heaven was tilting and whirling, too immense to hold itself up any longer” (94-5). In these two scenes, Olivia unconsciously integrated herself with the surrounding environment— minute as fireflies, vast as starry sky—and sparked her inner love and hope that were crushed out by the lethargic “rationalism”. It was also noticeable that Nanunu, Kwan’s prelife, taught Miss Banner who possessed Olivia’s prelife, how to sensitively experience the matter of existence in natural environment and taste life itself: I taught her to point to and call out the five elements that make up the physical world: mental, wood, water, fire, earth. I taught her what makes the world a living place: sunrise and sunset, heat and cold, dust and heat, dust and wind, dust and rain. I taught her what is worth listening to in this world: wind, thunder, horses galloping in the dust, pebbles falling in water. ... I taught her the five tastes that gives us the memories of life: sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty (48). Kwan, Olivia and Simon’s return to Changmian, Kwan’s birthplace, was then symbolic, for it was “a village miraculously avoided the detritus of modernization” that could evoked their missing secret senses (204), as well as bringing them into their shared reincarnation. “What I see instead is a small, flat valley, a rain-soaked pasture on the side, a sectioned field on the other, with the pathway we are on continuing straight down the middle like a flat brown ribben....It would be the perfect setting for a pastoral romance” (290). In face with a stretch of splendid scenery, Simon applauded, “Isn’t it amazing, more like the fields of an English county manor, a scene out of Howards End”(290). Olivia, as well, got the same idea in a flash, which incarnated their consonant response to nature. Here Tan tended to erase the place setting and projected a symbolic environment of pastoral sceneries, where human life was in harmony with “first nature’, namely, wildness. Howard End, literally speaking, manifested the theme of “returning to nature”. There, the landscape reclamation was not devastating and anthropocentric: it preserved “the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” (Leopold 212). Though Changmian was a Chinese village covered by supernatural mystiques, haunted with fabled ghosts, it was in essence a microcosm of what Heidegger pictured, that was, “poetically man dwells”. The poetical village life and unsophisticated interpersonal relationship unleashed Olivia’s fear, guilt and inner struggle and shattered her rational way of understanding the world. Deducing from Heidegger’s “poetically man dwells”, Bill Devall expressed that “it is not only about dwelling, but about caring, let things be” (qtd. in Wang 147) and it was an eccentric belief held by Kwan, who welcomed her Ecological Self. For one thing, she recognized all beings’ inborn values (regardless of species or races) and treasured them; for the other, she submitted to “the beautiful but cruel rule of ecosphere community” which maintains the operation of ecosystem mechanism. Out of her respect to life, she freed the captive owl and let go of her entanglement with the dead Big Ma who “horribly abused her, left her with crescent-shaped scars” (229); with her hope in death, she moaned over the loss of Big Ma but also embraced the death. “Ending? You die, that’s not end story. That only mean story not finish...”( 338) in the ending part, when Kwan spoke of death, she was rather easy. Her attitude towards life and death could be deciphered as an acknowledgment of supernatural beings, or be looked upon as an compliance with natural laws. In the physical ecosphere, there existed a “circle of being” and an interchange of energy. Death ended one form of life and started another in a different form: human, animal, plants, soil. The loss of life was a perquisite for the regain of life, and human life, as organic brings, was of no exception. By this notion, Kwan’s seemingly superstitious conception of reincarnation, stories of Yi Ban, Miss Banner, Nanunu, Zeng, etc., even her missing in the cave have their ecological ground: to maintain the natural cycle and be a part of it. Beyond the return to nature and soul, Tan uttered her worry of environmental degradation, for it was also caused by modern ailments of “being too anthropocentric”. In Olivia’s flashback, she narrated that “Kwan repeatedly mentions how she must go back to China before everything changes and it is too late. Too late for what? She doesn’t know” (23). In a narrow sense, it might be too late for preserving the marriage of Olivia and Simon; in a broader sense, it might be too late for conserving the natural environment. Both of then were suffering from alienation. During the trip, Olivia and Simon had witnessed how other villages were transformed to follow up modernization, “tin roofs...electrical power lines...the outlying lands become dumping grounds for garbage, the alleys are lined with crumpled cigarette packs or pink plastic bags....fast-food markets, junkyard...” (204-5). That was the stumbling reality. To make things worse, medias started to report crime waves stemmed from “Western pollution and degenerative thinking” (291). The statement could be regarded as an accusation of “intrusive modernization”; or rather, it pointed to the fact that universally men was prone to objectify himself, to take himself as an utilized end and drive himself into the state of alienation. With The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan incisively delivered a forward-looking message: to uphold the fragile human-nature harmony, and to slow or reverse the alienation of modernization shall be highly valued. Though the novel was published two decades ago, it came straight to the point of ecological wisdoms and environmental warnings.

Conclusion The Hundred Secret Senses implies abundant ecological wisdoms rather than cater to “White gaze” of “Oriental primitivism”. The animalization of Kwan is in contrast to rationalism, laying the foundation for her embodiment of “biophilia” and realization of “Ecological Self”. Matter of anthropocentrism and modern ailments are touched upon to call for the return to nature and the preservation of human-nature harmony. On the whole, the novel delivers a significant message: for the sake of reviving love and hope, we shall diagnose the alienation in modernization and find solutions to heal it.

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