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International business people mostly
come to China for profits, opportunities

and an exotic experience.

But one of them wanted to discover more.
A British investor, he has not only

learned the Chinese language well, but
grasped the skill to translate ancient

Chinese poems into English.

What's his story and what can he share
with us after publishing three books on

China? Welcome to The Point with me, Liu
Xin, coming to you from Beijing.

Let's meet Tim Klitzel, who is author of
three books about China already, two of

them being Mr.

China and the other Cloud Chamber.

He's also director of two investment
trusts that are listed on the London...

Stock Exchange.

And there's more. If you read his
biography, he studied physics and

theoretical physics at Cambridge
University.

So, Tim, welcome to The Point. It's
great to have you finally.

And I have your book here. I have your
book, Cloud Chamber.

And the title itself is fascinating
already because it's so poetic, right?

Literally means...

Cloud chamber, yunshi.

But I understand it's also a physical
term. Tell us about it.

Okay, so a cloud chamber is actually a
relatively simple apparatus that was

invented in the late 1800s, in fact.

But then much later on, it was actually
used to study elementary particles that

stream in from outside the solar system
and come through into the atmosphere in

the Earth.

Studying of the tracks in the cloud
chambers gave Western scientists a new

of looking at the fundamental structure
of matter.

So I was quite intrigued by that because
I think there are certain parallels

between the Chinese language and ancient
poetry and the most modern science of

Western... Because the Chinese language
to a foreigner,

particularly in poetic form... um of you
know in the medieval times appears to

us to be very very uncertain and vague
and and western science has always been

struggling to find a kind of perfect
explanation for everything yeah but it

seems like they're like the opposite
exactly so it seems like they're the

opposite but the most modern theories of
western science are all about

uncertainty so the foundation the
founding principle of quantum physics is

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

So in the end, we both actually come
back to the same idea that you can't

express things in a very, very certain
way.

And that just intrigued me, the two
things that came together.

And I've tried to draw those together
because when it comes to human emotions,

which the...

ancient poets are expressing. I think we
can all accept that those can never be

expressed with complete precision.

So it's quite a surprise that in the
end, in the end, Western science that

200 years trying to get great precision
actually can't get great precision in

the end either.

That's just... That's just like... I'm
sure it

sounds like... So what I'm really trying
to do with this book,

It's to illustrate that actually there
are some really basic things about

wherever they live in different
civilizations that are the same.

So the emotions that are expressed in
some of the poems, the ones that I've

chosen, are instantly recognizable to a
foreigner.

And that was actually the criterion.

All right. You know, this is so
fascinating, and I'm really treasuring

because I'm doing exactly...

I think I'm doing exactly what you're
trying to do is to help people in other

culture understand Chinese culture.

And I find it very difficult because
sometimes it's just

intranslatable, if you know what I mean.
You can translate

the word literally, but you can't
translate the picture, the imagination,

scenario, the feelings. And there is
just so much of it, right?

So what my personal experience, I lived
in China for more than 20 years.

And when I came back to the UK, my
children could not continue their

about China in the education system in
the UK.

And that, for me, seems like a really
serious problem because the world is

through incredible changes, where
there's a huge shift, an inevitable

wealth and power and confidence from...

the West and the East, and we have to
learn how to live together. So I felt

there was a tremendous lack of
understanding about China, particularly

UK, and that worried me, because there
are two things about that.

So in a nutshell, I think that,
especially the leadership, Chinese

understand more about us than we
understand about the Chinese, right? So

the foreigner's perspective... That's a
problem because it gives Chinese the

competitive advantage in this process.

It's actually a problem for the Chinese
people as well because if foreigners

don't understand the real intention and
motivations of Chinese people, that's a

danger. Because they can misjudge an
intention.

Absolutely.

That's why I'm so passionate about it.
On both sides, we have a very, very

urgent and pressing need to understand
China. As you know, in the West, there

are hawks and there are doves.

So there are some people who think that
China is like a terrible threat to us.

So in Western society, there's only one
thing that unites both the doves and the

hawks about China, and that is we need
to understand it better.

Oh, that's good to know.

Yes,

that's very good to know. So what I was
trying to do was to find poems that

express things that are easy for
foreigners to understand.

So the first thing is that they're so
ancient.

The foreigner generally will say, you
know, I had no idea that these poems

written 1 ,300 years ago.

But aren't you worried that...

It's useless to study something that's 1
,300 years old.

So that is the exact opposite.

That was the thing that I found amazing.

Because all the poems are about current
problems, right? So Liu Zongyuan wrote a

poem about the problems of excess
logging on the environment, cutting down

many trees.

Totally current problems.

Dufu is a refugee.

Yeah, Bai Juyi wrote about tax evasion.
Internally displaced, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah,
sure, sure.

But it's still, you know, a massive
problem for Europe is the refugee

True. And Bai Juyi, sorry, and Lu Hu
spent most of his life displaced.

It's a bit like the more it changes, the
more it doesn't change, right? It's

all... What people say, under the sun
there is nothing new, especially when

have a 5 ,000... For European culture as
well, you have extremely millennia

-long civilization, so you have
experienced all of these, and it's

to revisit, yes.

So I think there's a difference, and the
difference is in the language, and

that's something I find so intriguing
about... Chinese, because it's a

-based language, obviously, rather than
a phonetic.

So if you take... The house that I live
in is about 850 years old.

So there's a document written about this
area called the Doomsday Book, which is

written in about 1080 or something.

And if I look at that document, I can't
understand a word of it. It's totally

different because the phonetic and the
sound changes.

But if you look at a piece of
calligraphy, like there's a piece by

Tingjian, which is exactly the same age.
And it just starts, I can

see the waters of the Yellow River. So
you immediately understand something

that's written a thousand years ago.
It's continuous.

In other words, you can reach back and
feel the thoughts of those people living

a thousand years ago in a way that you
can't do that with a phonetic language.

I think that's very powerful.

You know, it's very interesting that you
mention this because even for many

Chinese, it gets lost from time to time.

For instance, we forget that our
language sometimes pictures themselves.

When people say, you know, oh, the
Chinese is so difficult to learn, I say,

two -year -old can learn it, you can
learn it too.

You just have to learn it in the right
way. But anyway, we've been talking

about, you know, these ideas, and I have
this book.

We want to show people with examples
because otherwise they don't know what

we're talking about. So yeah, so this
one We have decided that we will try to

illustrate what we talk about and it's
called Mai Tan Weng, the old man who

sells charcoal and this is this is a
good test of whether what you say just

is true because you say these ancient
wisdom can stand the test of time

Let's try that in just a moment, but
let's let's first try to read this read

few lines of read maybe one stanza of
this of this poem It was written by Bai

Juyi from the Tang Dynasty.

He lived from 772 CE to 846

CE so that's one thousand three hundred
something like that, years ago.

And it's about an old man who sells
charcoal.

Do you want to do the Chinese or the
English half?

Maybe you should do the Chinese. I think
your Chinese is somewhat better than

mine.

Let's try.

I mean, you translated this. Your
Chinese must be good enough to go

lines. How about that?

Okay.

The old man who sells charcoal.

Cuts firewood, burns it up on Southern
Hill.

Grimmed with ash, face dripped with
smoke from the fire, his gray hair

each finger, inking black.

What living can he make from this
miserable seal?

The clothes on his back, the food in his
mouth, so wretched, his coat

so thin, yet anxious his seal might lose
value, he longs for

icy weather.

How was it? It was okay?

Excellent. Thank you. Yours too. Thank
you.

you manage to translate these four lines
into these simple languages,

but you explained almost to the point as
precisely as

possible, if I put it correctly.

So for me, this poem, and the rest of it
too,

conjures up an image.

very strong visual image of a very poor
man. So there's a lot of colour in him,

all of it black, because the charcoal's
the important thing.

And this man's terribly poor.

Yet, even though he's poor and he's
freezing cold, and later on he sits

down in some slush by the southern gate,
melted snow, because he's so exhausted,

even though he's in this pitiful state,
he still wants the weather to be colder.

because that means the price of his fuel
will go up. So he's so desperate that

he'll bear the pain of the ice.

And that, to me, is not only very
visual, but it's also something that

that Bai Juyi understood the
relationship between supply, demand and

Centuries before it was articulated in
the West.

And I think that that's quite
interesting as well.

And the harshness, and to me what it
strikes me is the emotional part, being

woman, probably.

The difference between a physicist and
an investor.

And me as a woman and a mother. I just
feel the emotions, the empathy he shares

as a poet.

He must not live a very bad life if he's
able to observe people and write poems,

but yet what he's trying to describe is
the life of this old man who is really

shivering, but still wishing for even
icier weather.

The thing that I particularly like about
Bai Juyi is his simplicity of writing,

but the fact that he came from a fairly
poor family.

So he will have known hardship. His
father died when he was quite young. He

have known hardship.

And then he became very successful and
he was a Jinja at the exams and a fairly

high level official and so on. But he
never forgot the condition of the

people. And that to me is tremendously
important.

I mean, I think that's the charm of...

many of these poems, many of these poets
that they're not just writing about

beautiful scenery, about life being
good, about you know spring, they're

about the grassroots, ordinary people's
lives, but one thing that

strikes me here is also

because in poems you have certain rules,
for instance, you have to rhyme

or you have to alliterate, right?

In English poems, for instance, you have
alliteration if I remember correctly,

but here, how do you reconcile the
content and the style between

the Chinese poems and the English poems?

It's very problematic because the
Chinese language is much more

dense.

Okay, so for example, just one example
is 苏舍得舍.

If you translate that into English, it's
to stand on a chariot.

It's to stand on a chariot and salute.

But you can't write stand on a chariot
and salute in one line. You can't get

information into one line. So you have
to cut some information.

So that involves decisions about cutting
information but keeping the main

feelings. But I think one of the things
that's most important about this

particular genre of Chinese poetry is
the rhythm.

It's a very, very fixed rhythm. So
you've got this wild imprecision.

of the real meaning, but it's captured
within quite a rigid structure.

Extremely rigid.

Yeah. So, you know, if you have a five,
you know, five characters, you know,

it's one, two, one, two, three.

So very, very rigid rhythm.

Yeah. So I tried to convey the rhythm.

And then if you can get it to rhyme as
well, obviously that's fantastic.

So out of the 70 poems I translated, I
only got one to have the rhythm and the

rhyme. It's very, very difficult.

Oh my, oh my.

So basically what I put, first of all is
the emotional connection, and then the

rhythm, and then if you can get some of
the rhyme as well, that's a big bonus,

but it's very, very difficult.

It's extremely difficult. But, you know,
again, someone who...

to take up this endeavor and manages,
because it's

difficult to learn Chinese. Let me tell
you this. I was reading a survey about

what African people view as their
preferred language to learn as a second

language, especially for young people.

You know, how many percent prefer
Chinese?

Just take a wild guess.

Right, so I would say quite a lot. In
comparison to English, what would you

I went to Egypt recently, and all the
young hustlers, all the people

outside the temples wanting to sell
things, they all speak Chinese.

Yeah, but they're the ones who want to
occur to the Chinese tourists.

Of course, of course.

But the point is, such an interesting
change, because I went to Egypt 20 years

ago, and everybody spoke English there.

Now they speak Chinese.

That's a very important signal about the
way the world is thinking.

Well, if that is progress, I tell you,
we have a very long way to go, because

the statistics that I got was 3%.
Really? Yeah.

3 % surveyed across 34 African
countries. And I wonder, you know, I

Tim, can you share with them...

some tips as to where to start, how to
start, because you started in your adult

life, I'm sure, and you managed.

Yes, I did.

Wow. So, right, I firmly believe, and I
hope I've done this with my own

children, that you can only be good at
something if you really love it.

Yes. You force yourself to do something
like study, I don't know, accountancy or

something, because you'll get a better
career later on. But if you don't love

it, you're never going to be very good
at it.

Absolutely. So for me, personally,

my interest was the characters.

So every time I saw a character, I
wanted to know what it meant.

So I think you have to put the...

Language into the context so I mean
Chinese history is should be very very

interesting to a foreigner because it's
so wild It's so incredible ups and downs

and struggles The word while we used it
to describe

Chinese history, okay, I like that
Tremendous tremendous battles and

going on, you know going Over millennia.
And the rise and fall of dynasties, but

the same core still surviving.

Totally different from our civilization.

Our history is one civilization rising
and then being replaced with another

So China's is rising and falling, being
replaced by the same civilization.

By itself.

By itself, yeah. And I think that the
thread that runs through it is the

language, because the characters don't
change, whereas our language in

writing... changes. So, you know, if you
have another civilization comes along,

then everything that was written by the
civilization is finished.

So what is the key to entering this
world of the Chinese characters?

How did you start?

Right. Well, it was a complete accident
for me, because I went to Hong Kong in

1987.

And, you know, I had absolutely no idea
about anything to do with China at all.

Absolutely no idea.

And I suddenly saw these characters.

you know this like this completely
different way of thinking everything's

totally different and then i started
reading so so you know if you read um

know history about um you know about
what happened to china in the 1800s for

example it's really important for
foreigners to understand that because

can't understand china's current
situation unless you know it's recent

you know so i found that so i found like
peeling off the onion skins in my own

language, trying to understand why China
was like it is, that, to me,

led me to the language. Because I
thought, right, I want to know about

place and its history and its people.

And the only way I'm going to be able to
do that is if I can try and prise open

the language.

And there are some things, remember,
that are very easy about Chinese

For instance? There are no tenses.

There are no...

There's no genders. There's no definite
article or indefinite article.

Actually, it's just like this big string
of beautiful pictures.

So the things that are difficult are the
tones.

There's so many homophones. So the tones
and learning the characters. But one

thing that I think really makes it
easier is if you go into the

countryside...

Yeah, and you just... And you put your
hand... Yeah, no, no, but if you just

the simplest thing like, yeah, nǐ hǎo,
then people will say, wǒ hǎo, nǐ de

wǒ nè me hǎo hǎo. Yeah, so you get this
positive feedback because it's quite,

you know, whereas I think if... A
Chinese comes to the UK and speaks quite

English. They'll never get this positive
emotional feedback.

So that's also quite rewarding.

Tim, you know, I say to people, China is
how you treat it.

China is how you treat it. But I do want
to ask you, you study so many Chinese

culture poems.

Is there anything that you think is not
so good?

that needs to evolve with the time, with
the Chinese culture, because, you know,

thousands of years, okay, very rich,
very long, but things change after all.

Have you ever thought about, is there
anything about this Chinese culture that

maybe needs to change or modernize a
little bit so that we can catch up?

You know, if I don't ask for this
outfit, I don't have it. Not many people

wearing it these days.

So when I first went to China in the
1980s, I sometimes thought that China

wasn't completely open to new ideas.

And that, for any civilization, is kind
of the end of a cycle. That's partly the

reason why I'm so worried about some of
the Western thinking.

There's kind of a certainty in the West
that our system is just the best there

is and there's nothing that we can
learn, which is clearly not the case. So

think earlier on, but not now, because
the core of the Chinese

reform process is actually taking ideas
from other places and then seeing if

they work in a Chinese context and
experimenting.

And if it doesn't work, you quietly...

stop doing it without any particular
announcement.

If it does work, you carry on and you
explore it. So to me, there isn't

that stands out because I think

what we have to do is try to form some
sort of model where you

think more globally about the problems
that we face as a species.

without abandoning our differences, but
being more open -minded to learn

differences between each other.

So there honestly isn't anything that
instantly springs to mind. Look, there

all sorts of differences, right? We can
argue about all sorts of difficult

political topics.

But I think that the core difference is
I think Chinese is very practical.

Foreigners are more principle -driven,
and it's quite difficult to negotiate

with someone if they're sticking to a
set of principles.

And I actually think that comes right
back to the very beginning.

So if you think of the core text of
China and the core text of the West, you

could argue what it would be, but you
can say the core text in China is Lun

the Analects of Confucius. The Analects,
yes. The first line is like, you

know...

So what a pleasure it is to have friends
from afar, right? It's something that

every human being can understand.

Whereas, you know, if you take the
Western text, probably the Bible, yeah,

know, you can argue about what it would
be. But that immediately starts with,

you know, God creating the world and
creating light, you know, bang, and

everything's created.

So it sets up a relationship between
people and a deity.

In a different way. In a different way,
yeah.

The Chinese philosophy and the Western
philosophy definitely are different, but

I think we definitely can both learn
from each other and get better at the

time. And I think that's the richness of
it, isn't it?

Yeah, I fully agree.

I fully agree.

So it's really great what you're doing
and I hope you will carry on doing that.

My last question may be,

If I want to ask you to choose one
favorite line of poetry from your book,

would it be, besides the Bai Juyi poem,
or one that is the most challenging, the

one that you like the most?

Right, okay,

so that's a very difficult question, but
there's one line that I deliberately

mistranslated, actually. Really?

Why? Yeah.

Right, so because I wanted to get the...
The Real Feeling.

The Real Feeling, rather than words.
Okay, so it's in Lu Ye Shu Huai.

Which one? Which page?

So it's 305.

Okay, so it finishes, Ming Qi Wen Zhang
Zhu Guang

Ying Lao Bing Xiu Piao Piao He Suo Si
Tian Di Yi Sha Ou

And so the last line, tian di yi shao,
which literally means I'm just like a

single gull between heaven and earth. So
it's Dufu, possibly the greatest poet

who ever lived.

Of course.

Worrying about whether he's had anything
that is left after he dies.

Yeah? So he's got this image of a small
bird.

Between the sky and the earth. But I
translated it slightly different, which

my whole life just bird tracks on sand.

And I did that because sand is an image
for Westerners about the

passing of time and nothing being left.

So there's a very famous poem called
Ozymandias, which uses the image of a

desert to just say that, yeah, the
tininess of an individual life is one

of sand.

A huge desert.

So that's why I... But the idea of Dufu,
this incredible genius, thinking

about after he retired, and then, you
know, what am I? I'm just floating

I'm nothing.

Wow. Have my poems not given me a name
in this world?

Though I retire as I should, now I'm
old, floating, floating, like what?

I don't know. My whole life... Just bird
tracks on sand.

Yeah, that is pretty powerful stuff.

Yes, very powerful.

From 8th century.

8th century.

Thank you so much, Tim. Tim Clissold,
author of Mr. China, Cloud Chamber, and

one other book about China, who is also
director of the two investment trusts

that are listed in the London Stock
Exchange.

It's a great pleasure to have you on our
show. Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we come to the end of
this special edition of The Point with

Li Xin.

As always, you can follow me on Facebook
and Twitter using the handle Li Xin in

Beijing. On behalf of the whole team,
thanks for watching and you've got the

point.