Step Fifteen

The word "cosmopolitan" gets used as an adjective, but if we look to the original Greek, it's actually a combination of "cosmos" and "politas" - "citizen of the world". It's been appropriated as an adjective, like in reference to a city, where it can mean "Having the characteristics which arise from, or are suited to, a range over many different countries; free from national limitations or attachments." or "Composed of people from many different countries." (both OED Online)

Regardless of nitpicky details about parts of speech, I figure, when we're talking about cities anywhere along the Silk Road(s), and especially ones near the ends, we're talking about the latter definition. So when we're talking about Xi'an (Chang'an, on some maps), we're talking about a city that is ridiculously ethnically/culturally/linguistically/religiously/etc  diverse.

This was my thought process (with some help from the internet - I don't carry the Oxford English Dictionary around in my head, unfortunately) when I dug out my course outline in my attempt to write something that actually fit with the week's theme instead of just branching randomly and haphazardly from the readings.

And then I read some articles. Two really stuck out at me: Bundy's essay "Missiological Reflections on Nestorian Christianity during the Tang Dynasty" and the first chapter of a book by Edward Schafer - romantically entitled Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics. I'm going to go with a tri-layered argument refinement process here, to boil down a concrete strategy for how to deal on the Silk Road once you reach your destination.

I would like to sum up Section One, before I begin it, with the phrase: "like the new Star Trek movie!" Bundy's focus on the Nestorians' awesome survival method reminded me so much of that movie, in an abstract sense, it was ridiculous. Basically, if you haven't seen it, J. J. Abrams, bless his heart, managed to craft this movie that satisfied both the hardcore Trek nerds (tribble in Scotty's office was such a nice touch) and made a whole new fanbase of people who found it a genuinely good movie without needing to know any Trek lore at all. How does this relate to the Nestorians? They were, essentially, J. J. Abrams. They kept, as far as I can tell from Bundy's article, the basics of their religion so that the original adherents stayed cool with it, while changing and revitalizing things to appeal to the whole new fanbase that they found in China.

So, really, the Nestorians and good ol' J.J. make the point that one should adapt to the times/places in which one finds oneself - to make whatever it is that one is both something that one can fully own, and something that can be equally owned by the other people of the time/place.

In the margins of the article, next to "Step 15: IT'S JUST LIKE STAR TREK!" is the scribble "although it kinda failed the Nestorians but wtvs." And I was pretty worried - was the one awesome argument that I'd found in Bundy's article totally called into question by the fact that the Nestorians were kind of subsumed into broader Chinese culture so that we have very little information about them at all - Bundy makes it seem as though he presents the bulk of the extant material in all of 11 pages - and so that they essentially disappeared as a cultural subset?

It turns out that Schafer is very helpful in answering that question with a resounding "No!" Schafer details an elegant, slightly disorganized (so much getting lost. So many delicious little tangents.) history of Tang China with reference to commerce and luxury items and traders and stuff. It's all really wonderful and opulent and happy and "oh, so traders liked to live here..." until he starts getting into expulsion edicts and the idea of making monastics of all religions disrobe and join secular society for tax purposes and then the revolts and killing of foreign traders and it all gets pretty terrifying.

The basic idea of Schafer's chapter, in connection with my lacklustre conclusion from Bundy, is that, in Tang China, particularly during the end of the dynasty, it was less about cultural survival and more about survival. Period. The Nestorians, then, did it right - they adapted as much as they needed to in order to survive, and if that meant not being foreign, and if that meant getting rid of monastics (which Bundy maintains were the backbone of the religion), and if that meant protecting your family from overzealous revolutionaries however you could, then you did it. I think, too often, in academia we forget about the nitty-gritty, the everyday life aspect of things, and we say "Gee, the Nestorians didn't do themselves any favours!" but what we really mean is "Gee, the Nestorians didn't do us any favours!" and we don't see that, on an individual level, they survived. Dying for your faith is all well and good, but if you can preserve your religion in quiet while preserving your life as well, then, you know, I'd vote for that.

Additionally, as the latter part of the Schafer's chapter makes very clear, whatever your culture was pre-Tang-blowup doesn't matter. Even if you had a strong, non-adaptive presence, after you're gone, they'll find their imaginations are more exciting than you ever were.

It's a sobering thought, that, even if you were really radical and strong and didn't adapt at all, you might not make a mark. And I think it makes the middle point a lot more important, because if even your culture won't survive, you might as well start to think about yourself as an individual/member of a family and get on weathering the storm.

Troubling lessons of the Silk Road(s) boiled down into Step Fifteen: Adapt, and you have a chance of survival. Because even cosmopolitan cities can decide that the world is just too big to include inside their walls, and the weeds that stick up beyond the grass are the ones that get pulled out.