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Opinion Forum
Culture as Encounter: A Polemic against the Trend of
Ideological Thinking in the Field of Chinese Studies

Wolfgang KUBIN*

I. Introduction
In recent years I have repeatedly tried to draw the attention of mycolleagues to the fact that in comparison with other fields such as philosophy,
history, or English literature, the subject area of Sinology (traditional China)
or Chinese studies (modern China) seem to be behind the times by at least
fifty years. But probably I have issued my warning in vain. We still fightbattles of the past that take us nowhere. In the following I shall try to showthat the idea of an autochthonous culture is no longer up-to-date and that it
leads us in the wrong direction.
For my difficult undertaking I prefer the form of the essay, as it enables
me to speak out and to go without footnotes. I am afraid footnotes might
offend some readers as names and titles would have to be dropped, or might
disturb them as almost all books that would be quoted are in German.
The crisis in our field deepened when the Chinese side at the end of the
1990s announced the politics of zouchuqu (走出去), the politics of “goingabroad,” or that of translating and introducing Chinese culture for the “West”
on its own. China would no further rely upon any scholars from foreigncountries, who in its eyes misunderstand Chinese masterpieces, and distort the“sound” image of China according to their own biases. In the process, China
has turned itself into a victim of the “West.”
We meet here with a kind of hostile hermeneutics, a claim to truth and aview of the Chinese people as the best messengers of China past and present.
It is easy to understand that any nation would feel entitled to such an attitude
towards the outside world, including the Japanese as well as the Americans—only Japanese understand Japan, only Americans understand America the rightway. But there is no true image of China, Japan, or the United States. Therecan be only different views that different people nurture and change all the* Wolfgang Kubin (顾彬/九敏) , Beijing Foreign Studies University / Bonn University

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time. This is even the case when someone talks about his own country. I also
have never maintained a static picture of Germany. I see my motherland andmyself as always changing.
To believe in a certain understanding of China as fixed forever andobligatory for everyone is not so much an expression of chauvinism or
resentment, but the result of a lack of knowledge of the character of civilization. Our opinions offer only possible perspectives that we need to discuss,nothing more. They do not amount to historical “truth.” All they need to be is
logical, new, and of interest, not a boring copy of prejudices always repeatedin the same way.
Nowadays, in very advanced translation theory, the obviously strange
phrase “translated modernity” is quite common. It means that no society
attains its modern existence from itself, but that its modernity is derived fromsomething else, from something outside. The simplest example in our case is
the work of Karl Marx (1818 1883) in Chinese. It is no exaggeration to saythat if Marx’s theory had not been translated, there would be no “New
China.” Something similar can be found in the role loanwords play in East
Asian languages. Through the impact of translation or of phonetic assimilation, “classical” Chinese changes to modern Chinese, etc. The German idea of“Fortschritt” (progress), for instance, probably becomes in Japanese (進步shimpō), and in Chinese, jinbu (进步). The English word for “cake” turns into
the Japanese word, “kēki,” etc. Many words we use today only seem on thesurface to be true words of our mother tongue. In fact, many Chinese or
Japanese binomials have a foreign origin, but by bringing loan words homethey soon lose their original flavor in our mother tongue.
It is not only in China that purists demand a return to their own traditions.
In contemporary France, for instance, the government decided many years
ago to protect the French language by law; otherwise, it was expected toquickly become a victim of American English. The French now speak andwrite poor English. This is quite different from Germany after the Second
World War. Being liberated by American and English forces we learnt thelanguage of our former “enemies” quite well.
All those who now advocate for a kind of guocui (国粹), a national essence
to ward off foreign infiltration (Überfremdung), do not take into account thatvery often even in traditional societies culture or civilization were only
possible through encounter with others. China before the arrival of Buddhism(65 A.D.) was quite different from China after its arrival. No one would denythat the Buddhist Chinese Middle Ages (220 907) opened a splendid chapterof great civilization in China. Similarly, the Renaissance (15th and 16th
centuries) came into being in certain parts of Europe when ancient Greek and
old Roman civilizations, both heathen, were finally rediscovered by ChristianCulture as Encounter

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thinkers. In the end Germany is today more Greek, Roman, French, andEnglish, perhaps even more American, than German. Only the rightists in ourcountry ask us Germans for more blue eyes and blond hair.
Unfortunately, we can still hear elsewhere voices that call for a pure cultureof their own. The movement for guocui, for Chineseness through the help of
guoxue (国学; national studies), in modern and contemporary China is but one
example among many. In its darkest times, Germany strove for “Deutschtum”(Germaneness). The result was a total disaster. No need to repeat what
everyone knows. The case of the still eminent German philosopher Martin
Heidegger (1889 1976) is awful and shameful enough. But until now no one
has obviously paid any attention to the following fact: When China under the
influence of the Occident produced the best of modern world literature
between 1912 and 1949, about nine fascist countries in Europe had nomodern literature to offer the public at all. In 1930 German writers without
outside pressure were already demanding to avoid modernity just as Chinese
writers did before and after 1942. Modernity means internationalism.
Internationalism prohibits “Germaneness” or “Chineseness.” Between 1933
and 1945 Berlin prohibited the translation of all modern literary works fromabroad. Even in the 1950s, German-speaking countries had not yet recoveredfrom the loss of understanding of the essence of literature in modern times
and had therefore to (re)learn through the help of foreign authors what thewriting of the day should be, eventually including even Chinese writers suchas Lu Xun (1881 1936).
The same is true for China during the Cultural Revolution (1966 1976).
What was demanded was zili gengsheng (自力更生; do it yourself): Do notlearn from foreigners, only face yourself; do not translate anything fromabroad, only translate yourself into the language of the Party. The result iswell known. Morally, Germany became the most backward country in theworld in those years, while China became the most backward economically.
Now both countries are back in the international community. Why? They
are open—open to foreign views and they are translating nearly everything.
This leads us to a serious question. If one is open and absorbs the “Other,” isone still oneself? The Self and the Other now play an important role in thediscussion of postcolonial theory. The problem is that eager representatives ofpost-colonialism in the field of Chinese studies do not seem to understandsufficiently the complexity of history and philosophy; they are not even yet
willing to comprehend it because any kind of deeper knowledge would makethe learning of many old and new languages necessary. Neither Chinesespeaking nor English-speaking scholars are prepared to do so. They often
regard anything they read or write in Chinese or English as true, as the only
truth. Thus they do harm to the research of China. Chinese history is bigger

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than the current issues of the so-called clash of friend and enemy, self andother, man and woman, local and foreigner. Besides, philosophy is now much
more complex than to be inclined to answer the question of any identity in a
simple manner.

II. Encounters and Identity
When we talk about encounters, what are we talking about? Are encounters possible? And if so, can we, must we save our “self ” during an
encounter with the Other and not become part of the Other just as the Other
also becomes part of our Self? Has any scholar in our field clarified what
“encounter” means? Any kind of encounter means change; if not, it is not an
encounter. It is small talk or even worse, it is only a means to reassure
oneself. To come to terms with this issue, allow me first to be a little bit
vulgar. So often when confronted with our food in Germany Chinese tourists
run into so-called Chinese restaurants between Cologne and Berlin just to eat
so-called Chinese food and nod to one another to indicate that Chinese foodis the best in the world. But at the same time, they expect us Germans whenin Guangdong Province to cherish chicken feet and the ears of pigs. On thestreets of Bonn, where every day hundreds of Chinese visit the home of
Beethoven, we sometimes can hear Chinese voices saying, “Our old Chinese
culture.” But Bonn is much older than Beijing!
When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 1832) went into the deepest
crisis of his life during the liberation wars in Europe (1813 1815) he turned
to China. He wrote a famous poem about a tree that went from the Middle
Kingdom during the Song Dynasty (960 1279) to Japan and from Japanaround 1735 to the Netherlands, and finally to the Weimar Republic around
1800, where our poet lived. The tree I talk of is the gingko (Japn. ginkyō;Chin. yinxing 银杏), which is now quite common as a word and as a tree in
the German language and in German parks.
To clarify the problem of identity, let me first ask some silly questions.
Has any gingko tree in the Botanical garden of Bonn University lost its “self”
and does it really want to go back through a Japanese port to Chinese soil?
Or is it possible that this magnificent tree is able to strengthen itself even ina country not its own? Goethe answers this question indirectly by reflecting
upon the character of the gingko. He asks if its essence (Wesen) is made ofone or more potential. We all know that this Chinese tree is very special, as
it is both male and female. It is one tree with two genders. Thus, Goethe,when reflecting upon a gingko that he probably saw in Heidelberg in 1815,
finished his poem by asking, “do my songs not give the feeling / that I am
one and two?”
How to understand here “one and two”? Does it mean that man and woman

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are one? That China/Japan and Germany/Europe are one? Or do we have to
see the two lines in the sense of modernity? Modern man is divided into two
persons? Tradition asked for one personality, the personality of obedience.
Everyone had a certain place in society; (wo)man had never to move and had
to follow the rules of the church or aristocracy. But bourgeois modernity
created the individual who no longer allowed any priest or duke to decide hisfate; this individual tried to find a new position in or outside society. Afterthat he was split into two personalities: into the person he was and into theperson he wanted to be. G.W.F. Hegel (1770 1831) called this “the unfortunate consciousness.”
Since then the quest for identity has become an important issue. Marxand his followers tried to solve it through revolution. Did they succeed? Theirideals ended up misapplied in the Soviet Union and as despotism in North
Korea. Meanwhile, all societies have so many identity problems that suicide
is a common cause of death for people under 35.
Goethe speaks of a double identity: his own identity and an identity
probably made up of Chinese and German elements. But he stands at the
beginning of modernity, not at the end, as we might stand. After him people
thought in the 19th century just as now in China that nationalism, the nation
state, etc. would lead to personal identity. Nowadays, where all nationalism
more or less has failed in Europe, one might think of soccer, which seems to
be a uniting force for people in Great Britain and on the European continent.
But all of this nourishes only illusions about the possibility of finding or
creating identity in the 21st century. Contemporary German philosophy has
long declared we are not one person, we are many persons. Forerunners of
this philosophy can be seen in the Chinese Middle Ages when the literati
were Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian at the same time. This is partly eventrue for the Song dynasty.
Multiple identities were perhaps the rule even before modernity; single
identity is an illusion after modernity. But scholars in Chinese studies still
demand or dream of an autochthonous China. A so-called pure China,
however, has not existed since the Later Han dynasty (25 220 A.D.), if at all.
Even worse, its remnants were destroyed before and after the May 4th (1919)
Movement and in the years after 1949 by the Chinese themselves. The revolutionaries permanently destroyed what their ancestors had built up over three
thousand years, and they did this nearly completely, all in the name of revolution or reform after 1911.
Despite this fact, American and Chinese scholars in Chinese studies now
ask “us Europeans” to respect “Chineseness,”or anything in China with socalled Chinese characteristics—in short, Chinese identity. But there is none.
Marx is a foreigner on the mainland and the idolized W.I. Lenin (1870

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1924), is, too. On Taiwan, in Hong Kong, and in Macau, America is themodel. And if there has been any identity in the Chinese-speaking world
during the last one-hundred years, it is the identity of the destructive urge anda feeling of inferiority. Both phenomena are of course problematic.
Besides, more important is the fact that postmodernity does not allow one
or two identities anymore as was traditionally possible or as Goethe made anappeal for. I repeat: Everybody has many identities now, unfortunately, even
including comic figures (manga). So why in Chinese studies are academics
still talking about the “Self” and the “Other”? “You and me” are not different
entities anymore. We are the same under the rubric of “lost identity.” This istrue for any culture. Goethe at the end of his life was as “Chinese” as he was“German.”Even if there is still the phenomenon of “self and other,” no one asks
where the “self” comes from and what the “other” really is or means. When
we are born are we self or other? Some stupid German literati like to declarein public that they were never asked if they wanted to be born or not. Thus,
they differentiate themselves before and after birth, or between their “self”
and their “other.” I asked many German philosophers where our “self” (Ich)stems from, and they had no answer. It seems that only Chinese andAmerican scholars have a reply. Their problem is that they do not read muchin the original language except in Chinese or English. Rather, they readtranslations, i.e. they read interpretations, and they read them in theirlanguages and in their frame of understanding. Thus, bias comes in. Bias asreflected by contemporary German philosophy is actually a good thing solong as it allows us to ponder upon the possibility of our understanding. Biasthen might turn from prejudice (Vorurteil) to “judgement” (Urteil). This iscalled the hermeneutic circle. Its precondition is the knowledge of history andof languages.
Let me ask again: Do we really belong to “us” and not at the same timeto the “other”? When we believe in God we are his, not us, as we are often
told by certain hymns in church or by poets before modernity. When we fallin love we often say, “I am yours.” We give up ourselves and become
another person.
Most problematic in humanities is the demand of Chinese, be they
politicians, scholars, or writers, for a national literature even today. Since
Goethe in 1827 spoke of world literature, he pronounced the end of any
national literature. Not only was Mao Zedong (1893 1976) totally behind thetimes when he asked for a return of modern Chinese literature, which wasthen of international character, to autochthonous forms in 1942, even contemporary poets of Chinese origin now living abroad, like Yang Lian (b.1955),
oppose Chinese literature as international literature in the first place. All areCulture as Encounter129of the same opinion: Literary works in the Chinese language have to be
Chinese before anything else. Why are they so backward and lacking
Goethe’s deep insight into the essence of writing in modern times? No needto answer this question because any sincere answer would hardly be acceptedby American or Chinese scholars, who often lack a thorough understandingof the complexity of European history. Prejudice in the bad sense andideology in its worst are sometimes too much their business. When talking
about Goethe and the term “world literature,” not a few of them still try outof context to show that behind this giant of German literature and his ingenious idea of a modern literature for the world lurk some kind of nationalism
and Eurocentrism. Nationalism in today’s sense, however, is a late notion andphenomenon. The same is true for Eurocentrism. Goethe and his times wereopen to cultures from outside of Europe. This is little known because of thelanguage barrier.
Besides, Germany was quite a different country after 1949 as opposed to1989. What do I mean by this? These days [May 2015] we commemorate theend of World War II. Not only does our German chancellor Angela Merkel (b.
1954) go to Dachau, the German concentration camp for German Jews, but
Simon Rattle (b.1955), the British conductor of the Berlin Symphony, asks his
violinists to play the best German music by using violins rescued fromconcentration camps and restored by Jewish friends. Would something likethat be possible in Japan for Chinese victims of World War II, or in China for
the Chinese victims of the Cultural Revolution? I am afraid probably not. Not
to mention other occurrences in recent Chinese history we are silenced fromtalking about.

III. Problems in American and Chinese Scholarship
Again, prejudice from the prospective of contemporary German philosophy actually should not be a great problem. So long as one knows that one
has to go on from one’s prejudice to another step of recognition that might beless prejudiced, such a circle would be of no harm for creation of a lessbiased view. But since the victory of the theory of post-colonialism, Chinesestudies are less a matter of scholarship than a tendency towards ideology.
Whatever we Europeans, male and white, did when researching and translating China, according to the American intellectual Edward W. Said (19352003) and his followers in Chinese studies, is regarded as a crime. From ourEuropean standpoint our critics are of course wrong because they do notunderstand our language, our history, our viewpoint. And most important,they are quite reluctant to understand!
The history of understanding itself is so complicated that it needs theknowledge of many languages and of many historical facts. But the theory of130

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post-colonialism is not really open to unbiased thinking. This is the reason
why it is so successful. American and Chinese scholarship is textbook
scholarship. American and Chinese scholars more or less can only readtranslations of European thinkers and thus imagine they understand what theywould hardly understand in the original works.
Just to give a simple example: The German Jew Walter Benjamin (18921940) is always quoted by English- and Chinese-speaking scholars in
Chinese studies, but rarely by German colleagues. The reason is that only
American and Chinese academics seem to understand him because they readhim in translation, but we Germans do not really understand his difficult
German in the original, so we barely quote him. Besides, without deep
knowledge of his Judaism one gets only a small glimpse of his ideas.
American textbook scholarship is so-called scholarship, a scholarshipwithout sufficient knowledge of Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, or French.
What do scholars on the basis of one language (Chinese) or of two languages(English and Chinese) create? First of all they formulate misconceptions
because they cannot check the originals. And most problematic is that they do
not seem to be eager to comprehend any important work in the original
language other than in Chinese and/or English. But they are always quoting
the most difficult French contemporary philosophers whom only specialists inGerman-speaking countries are able to follow.
Why do I stress the ideological factor in American scholarship so much?
Many books or articles in the United States tell two different stories. The firststory might be a story about China, for instance. The second story, however,is the fight against Europe, against Old Europe that many of their ancestors
escaped from for religious, political, or economic reasons. Now one can readin English-language writings any kind of nonsense. To give you only one
example: American scholars recently invented the term, “European imperialism.” But there was never a European imperialism; there was, for instance,
only Turkish, British, Russian or French imperialism. Iceland or Switzerland
or Finland or Slovakia never conquered China. It is also not true that the“West” invaded the Middle Kingdom. It was the British, then the French, thenthe Americans, and finally the Russians and the Japanese. There was no
Finland, no Slovenia, as these countries that are considered the “West” did
not exist then.
American scholarship is collective scholarship. Everyone quotes the samebooks, the same authors, the same ideas. The prayer wheel calls for thesimilarity of thinking: You think what I think, I think what you think. Just as
in China, scholars only reflect what others repeat. In Beijing it is the Party
that stipulates the rules; at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton it is the institution ofrefereed journals and the reader who works for these journals who helps

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131publishing houses to do the editing. Both decide in Chinese studies what canbe produced and what cannot. New or radical thought has not much chance.
Figures such as Karl Marx or Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 1900), if they werestill among us, would never be allowed to get published in English-language
refereed journals or in an English-language university press by readers
nowadays. They are politically incorrect. Their English would not be up to
American standards, and most of all, they might be critical of the UnitedStates. For Europeans it is a strange phenomenon that scholars in the UnitedStates barely endure any criticism of their country or they almost prefer toavoid being critical of their motherland.

IV. The “Other” and the “Self”
The “other” is not an enemy of the “self;” it is rather, a friend. It helps
one to overcome weaknesses and to find one’s way. The most familiar
examples are Ezra Pound (1885 1972) and Bertholt Brecht (1898 1956). As
both have already many times been introduced to a greater readership,including by myself, I do not want to go too much into detail here. It will be
sufficient to remind you of the fact that the American poet in 1914 successfully started to rejuvenate literature in English-speaking countries through
Chinese Classical aesthetics and poetry, whereas the German found (1920) his
language, his style, and his world views through the reading of Laozi’s Daode
Jing in German. The most influential translation (1911) was done by Richard
Wilhelm (1873 1930), who, as a pastor, preferred the language of the New
Testament for his rendering. Choosing the way of Taoist philosophy did notmean getting lost in the “other” for Brecht, just the opposite. Not only he, butmany other German writers and artists in his time and long after him grew anawareness of how to create great art.
On the Chinese side we discover something similar. Feng Zhi (19051993), for instance, wrote his 27 great sonnets (1942) under the influence of
Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926), and the German philosopher Karl
Jaspers (1883 1969). The same is true for Lu Xun, who, under the impact ofEuropean intellectual history, invented the modern Chinese short story or the
Chinese prose-poem.
In both cases, be it Germany or China, it is the “other” that is expanding
someone’s “self.” One might of course ask, if the process of translation if
acquisition and the treating of the “other” does not lose its uniqueness. Yes,
perhaps so, but this is not something that only happens when one culture
encounters another. This also happens in one and the same culture. The
philosophers of the Song and Ming (1368 1644) dynasties saw The Four
Books (Sishu) of Confucianism in a totally different light than the way they
were outlined in antiquity, namely as four single scriptures by Confucius (551132

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016479) and others. The concept of the junzi (君子) changed from monarch togentleman, thus totally distorting the historical aspect.
In this respect, it is unfair to accuse such translators as the German
missionary Richard Wilhelm of simply reading Christian elements into theChinese classics when rendering them into highly readable German. Even the
Chinese do not have an understanding of their heritage that is bound to one
direction of interpretation for all. A good text is always open; it allows any
reader to follow his predilections, so long as one is able to give good reasonsfor one’s choice of words. There is not something like absolute loyalty to apiece of paper as is often blindly demanded for in Sinology or in Chinesestudies. We do not translate the meaning of something written because we cannever know what the author really had in mind. What we translate is ourunderstanding of a given text. Here we have the choice to be true to ourpoint of view and to our faculty of language, or true to the author, who mighttell us about his former writing ambitions but can err, or not remember
everything and sometimes also betray us by keeping silent or not telling thereal story. Finally, we can be true to the work itself, which when finished, has
not much to do with the author anymore. The work becomes independent and
all we do is follow certain traits that are of great importance for us.
If we want to judge the possibility or the possible depth of an encounter
between Europe and China, we sometimes have to go deep into history.
Brecht was an atheist; he was a member of the Communist Party. But his
favorite book was the Bible. That is the reason why he was so excited whenreading Wilhelm’s Daode Jing. He found there Martin Luther’s German.
Martin Luther (1483 1546), through translation of the Bible, created ourmother tongue (German). One has to know that the most common languagesof scholars before Goethe and sometimes even after him were Latin andFrench in Germanic “countries.” What we today call German used to be thelanguage of the street that literati tried to avoid. Luther nevertheless was notafraid of forming it into powerful speech. He did this five-hundred years ago.
And we still read his version of the Bible, which of course, was revised
several times. We are often told by publishers and by demanding readers thatany translation becomes antiquated after thirty years. Nevertheless, besides
the Luther Bible there are other translation works done in the 18th century thathave not yet lost their German appeal after more than two-hundred years.
Finally, Richard Wilhelm’s renderings of ancient Chinese philosophy are often
reprinted, sold, and read even after one-hundred years. Why? The German ofRichard Wilhelm was not only influenced by Luther, but by Goethe andImmanuel Kant (1724 1804) as well. It is very beautiful German, full ofrhythm and witty expressions. When Brecht in 1938 wrote his famous poem
about Laozi he also made use of Biblical language as he found it inCulture as Encounter

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Wilhelm’s Daode Jing.
It sounds like a contradiction that an atheist should become fascinated byreligiously-tinged language. But many announcements of Communist parties,
including the Communist Party of China, have roots in the Christian way of
speaking. Thus it does not make much sense to go on treating Christianity as
the total “other” in regards to socialism. Both understand themselves as
having a “holy mission.” This fact allows us also to reproach Richard
Wilhelm less for his Christianization of certain aspects of Chinese thought.
He found there something sacred, something holy that demands us to facehistory in a stricter manner.
All early translations of the Daode Jing done in the 19th century were by
theologians. Actually, early Sinology was a kind of theology. Sometimes even
now it seems as if Sinology and theology are inseparable. Lauren Pfister (b.
1956) of Baptist University (Hong Kong), one of the most important scholarsof Confucian studies in the world, is a pastor. I myself turned once fromtheology to Sinology, but have been teaching religion on the mainland when
asked to. What do I mean? Lauren Pfister and I do not see our daily encounters with China in the framework of the self and other. I am Chinese enoughnot to look at my Chinese friends as “the other” and they are open enough todefine themselves from a European context. This has nothing to do with“foreign infiltration” (Überfremdung) or with self-colonization, as we aresometimes told by American or Chinese colleagues. Giving room to the“other” is only a question of developing into a complete person who needs
more than just the elements of his own culture.
The idea of zouchuqu, of being one’s own interpreter for the “West,” isalways accompanied by the complaint of Chinese that the “West” does not
sufficiently understand or it misunderstands China, does not translate enoughor introduce the country’s culture to others. But whenever, for instance, theChina Daily mentions the “West,” all its news is only about America or
England or the English-speaking world. The rest of Europe, the rest of the“Western” world, is not mentioned at all, just as if we were part of North
America and shared the same characteristics. Whatever we Europeans do for
China goes more or less unnoticed overseas; it is not much taken into
consideration by American or Chinese scholars. This is not only because ourmother languages are German or French, but because we think in a different
way. In this respect we share the fate of our German colleagues in the field ofEnglish literature, for instance. They publish in English, too, but they tell methey are not read by scholars between New York and San Francisco either.

V. Conclusion
As the encounter between Europe and China has been taking place for134

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five-hundred years already in a very fruitful way, European Sinology andChinese studies should not be viewed in China via America. Their scholars
make all kinds of groundless imputations about Europe. Thus, China must
learn more of our languages and more of our history, especially scholars in
Sinology and Chinese studies. They would recognize that we are not only
unique in our way of doing research, but also for the quantity and quality ofour translations of Chinese literature, philosophy, and history. One language,
one prejudice, one direction: It is time that this kind of international Sinology
and Chinese studies comes to an end. Otherwise, it does not make muchsense to discuss encounters between Beijing, Paris, and Berlin anymore.

Author’s note: The word “man” in this essay reflects the inclusive German
meaning of man, woman, and child.