Cultural Intermediary and Friend of China: An Interview with Dutch Sinologist Wilt Idema

In fact, Professor Wilt L. Idema has reason enough to be proud if he wanted to.

He was appointed a full professor of Chinese literature at age 31. Two years later he was named head of the Chinese department at Leiden University's Institute of Sinology, one of the strongholds of China studies in Europe. Since then he has become the dean of the university's School of Humanities and director of its Center for Non-Western Studies. He has been extremely active academically, having written more than fifty translations and original works, not including numerous publications in academic journals.

Among Western sinologists of his generation, 45-year-old Professor Idema is considered one of the most outstanding.

His schooling was smooth sailing all the way. He was born in 1944 in Dalen in eastern Holland. As a high school student he loved music, poetry, and literature, and he devoured the Chinese detective novels written by the noted Dutch diplomat and sinologist R. H. van Gulik. On entering Leiden University, one of Europe's oldest institutions of learning, he chose to major in what he considered the university's "most challenging" department, Chinese.

When he graduated, mainland China was being wracked by the Cultural Revolution, and scholarships were not yet available to foreign students on Taiwan. Relations between the Netherlands and Japan were extremely close, however, and hefty government scholarships were up for grabs, so with only a handful of Japanese majors in all Holland, the budding sinologist earned the chance to study in Japan on a government scholarship.

Idema studied in the sociology department at Hokudai University in 1968. The next year he transferred to the graduate school at Kyoto University, where he studied ancient Chinese literature with Tanaka Kenji. After returning home in 1970, he taught in the Chinese department at his alma mater and wrote his doctoral dissertation. He received his doctorate in 1974 and was appointed a full professor two years later.

His two years in Japan made a deep impression on him and have had a lasting influence on his academic career.

"I'm still in the habit of using the Morohashi dictionary as a reference tool," he says, adding that the number of China scholars in Japan, their diligence, and the abundance of library holdings there are remarkably high when compared with the West's.

Professor Tanaka is an expert in the vernacular literature of traditional China, especially in the drama of the Yuan dynasty, and although Idema's interest and research in Chinese vernacular literature cannot be said to have originated with his tutelage, they benefited immensely.

"The fate of sinological studies in the West has been an odd one," Professor Idema reflects. Noted French scholars such as S. Julien and A. P. L. Bazin began studying Yuan drama and the fiction of the Ming and Ching back in the nineteenth century. "They couldn't very well go to China at the time," he explains, "so they had no other way to study contemporary Chinese speech than vernacular fiction and literature."

Building on their foundation, the next generation of sinologists chiefly studied ancient philosophy and history. It was not until the 1950s that vernacular literature began to receive the attention of Western sinologists again. Gustav Prucaek of Czechoslovakia, Cyril Birch of Great Britain, and Patrick Hanan of the United States pioneered the modern study of vernacular fiction, so that by the 1960s, when Idema was a student, vernacular literature had once again become a lively field in Chinese studies.

Most Chinese people think that vernacular literature is something that "Chinese people only began to care about after foreigners started paying attention to it," but Professor Idema believes just the opposite. The renewed interest in vernacular literature in the West during the 1950s should be credited to the energetic promotion of popular literature by Hu Shih, Lu Hsun, and other Chinese scholars since the May Fourth movement, he feels.

"There's a problem in studying vernacular literature, I feel, whether it's hua-pen stories or chang-hui novels," Professor Idema continues. "Many people say that traditional Chinese fiction is no good and has no plot to speak of. They're wrong, because their standpoint is based on the standards of nineteenth century European fiction." Not only foreigners hold those standards, he points out, but many Chinese scholars also make the same mistake. To look at it the other way round, when Western novels were first translated into Chinese, many Chinese people felt they weren't fiction either: Why did they have so few characters? And why were the stories so simple?

Furthermore, although some people maintain the theory that "traditional Chinese fiction is not truly realistic," Professor Idema believes that is like comparing shao-hsing wine to champagne. "When Chinese authors wrote a story, they didn't worry about Western literary theory," he says, "They didn't know about it and they didn't care. It had nothing to do with them. They wanted to write a story that they liked and their readers would like too!" Chinese fiction has its own kind of plots, and within Chinese fiction itself those of Dream of the Red Chamber and Chin P'ing Mei are quite different from each other.

As a result, the stories preferred by the readers and writers in different eras each have their own structures, and those structures can of course be quite different from Europe's. So scholars and critics must respect the uniqueness of Chinese fiction as a prerequisite to further discussion.

Learning to respect the peculiarities of another culture seems a simple principle, but to fully achieve it, whether for East or West, is clearly no easy matter. So Professor Idema believes that Western sinologists bear at least two responsibilities: "One is to do your own research and provide the international sinological community with the results, and the other is to help ordinary citizens understand and appreciate Chinese culture."

His long list of published works falls clearly into two categories, accordingly. The books and articles written in English are specialist academic studies. Those written in Dutch are translations for a more popular audience.

Fluent in standard Chinese and steeped in the fiction and drama of the T'ang, Sung, Yuan, and Ming, Professor Idema has the bearing and character of the traditional gentleman and scholar. And having devoted decades of energy to studying another cul ture, how does he maintain a balance between that one and his own?

"The English used to call the Dutch the Chinese of Europe," he says with a smile. The implication, not entirely friendly, was that the Dutch, like the Chinese of southeast Asia, are "little merchants."

In fact, of course, China and the Nether-lands are completely different countries with completely different cultures. Holland, with its early development of industry and commerce, its early relations with the outside world, and its location at the mouth of the Rhine, could better be likened to Europe's Shanghai: highly international in outlook and comparatively free and open in thinking.

Professor Idema's gratitude and devotion to his native culture are reflected in his determination to translate Chinese literary works into Dutch and introduce them to his fellow citizens. "Naturally I hope that what I provide in this way can have some small effect on Dutch culture," he says earnestly. "As for serving as an intermediary between Chinese and Western culture, I'm afraid I don't know enough about Chinese culture to have the qualifications for that."

Is Professor Idema "stuck up"? Perhaps "diffident and retiring" would better characterize this knowledgeable friend of the Chinese people.

[Picture Caption]

Immersed all day in the world of traditional Chinese drama and fiction, Professor Idema also has a model of an anclent Chinese stage in his office.

Fluent in Chinese as well as modest and unassuming in nature, Professor Idema has the bearing and character of a Chinese person.

Riding a bike and whistling, now he looks like a typical Leiden native.

In order to get hold of this busy man on the move, students in the Chine se department often catch him in the hallway to resolve their problems.

Professor Idema pays back his homeland by translating works of traditional Chinese literature into Dutch.