Bridge Builders:
Frances Wood

First time in China

With such love for the Chinese language, it's little wonder Wood wanted to see the country itself. That wasn't easy back in the 1970s, but after graduating from Cambridge University she used an inheritance – and the help of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU: see this Bridge Builder) – to take an opportunity. 

"My grandmother died and left me a little bit of money, I think 250 pounds or something like that" – perhaps equivalent to $4,000 today. "And I was able to spend it on going to China with the first British youth delegation since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1971."

As you might expect, it was an experience Wood was determined to drink in – and learn from. She recalls "Going out into the street and being followed by a great crowd of peasants who'd not seen foreigners, and they asked me if I'd eaten." Culturally, this was a phatic greeting – a question not really meant to answered, like "How do you do?" in English or "Ça va?" in French.

"But not knowing this, I launched into a great long list of what I'd eaten at dinner – chicken, this, that and the other – and everyone looked at me in a rather kind of dumbfounded way…"

Despite such difficulties, Wood fell in love with China. "It was incredible fun, finding that I could speak to people and that they were friendly and funny and amused by me –  it was an absolute revelation. I loved it."

This was a very different China to today. "In the early 1970s, China was still an incredibly poor country," she says. "Beijing was more like a village – you could wake up in the middle of the night in the Beijing Hotel, look out of the window and see flocks of sheep being driven along Chang'anjie. You could see camels pulling loads in the outskirts of Beijing. It was a very different place. 

"The greatest change has been the extraordinary development of China. People now have comfortable houses, they have hot water, they have running water, they don't share kitchens. The amazing rise in living standards of most Chinese people – that's fantastic."

There is also a difference closer to home for Wood, compared to her first visit 50 years ago. "It's nice that people aren't quite so surprised at seeing foreigners on the street. In the early 1970s, people would sort of lurch backwards when they saw a foreigner – old ladies would clutch the trees at the sight of a foreigner, children would run away shrieking.

"Now, people are just completely used to foreigners. It's nice that one can be a bit more anonymous in China than in the old days when one was almost a traveling circus."

Chinese as a career

On arriving home from China, Wood "was quite lucky" to get a job in the British Museum Library, soon to split from the Museum and become the British Library. Her specialist Chinese knowledge granted her a move to the School of Oriental and African Studies, meeting all manner of Sinocentric academics. 

In 1975, she took advantage of a British Council scholarship to return to China for a whole year – "I thought I had to go to China for a longer period of time to improve my spoken Chinese" – and upon her return moved into the job that would change her life.   

"After a year spent in China improving my language, I got the opportunity to work in the British Library – to handle the nation's most important Chinese collections," she says. "Above all, there was the great mass of material that had been brought back by Aurel Stein from Dunhuang."

Aurel Stein was not a man tied to one place. Although a naturalized Brit, he was born in Budapest and died 80 years later in Kabul, having spent much of the interim decades expeditioning around central Asia. He lost several toes to frostbite, but he also acquired several priceless artifacts which were sent back to London.

Chief among these was the Dunhuang haul. From the Mogao Caves, on the Silk Road, Stein took thousands and thousands of scrolls, including the Diamond Sutra – the world's oldest printed text, dating to AD 868. The plunder gained him a knighthood.

While in the West, Stein may be considered an explorer, an archeologist or even a polymath, in China he is viewed in a very different light. Many denounced the way he acquired the trove of treasures from Dunhuang, seeing him as the utmost cultural thief. Stein purchased the treasures at an incredibly low price from the caves' guardian monk Wang Yuanlu, who needed to repair the caves but was struggling to get enough funding from the Qing government, which by then was in its dying days.

By his own account, Stein couldn't quite believe his luck at the cave's rich content. 

"Heaped up in layers, but without any order, there appeared in the dim light of the priest's little lamp a solid mass of manuscript bundles rising to a height of nearly 10 feet," Stein wrote in his 1912 book Ruins of Desert Cathay. "Not in the driest soil could relics of a ruined site have so completely escaped injury as they had here in a carefully selected rock chamber, where, hidden behind a brick wall... these masses of manuscripts had lain undisturbed for centuries."

The monk eventually sold Stein 7,000 complete manuscripts and 6,000 fragments, as well as several cases loaded with paintings, embroideries and other artifacts. 

Stein was the first to take the manuscripts from Dunhuang, but he far from the last: others soon followed in his footsteps. It's estimated nearly two thirds of the original collections in the cave are currently held in museums across the world. To this day, the loss of the Dunhuang treasures is  considered a national tragedy in China. 

In the years since Stein sent his booty back to London, British experts had made haphazard attempts to restore the scrolls, but Wood was appalled by what she saw: "People didn't understand Chinese scrolls. They didn't understand Chinese paper." 

She took particular interest in the fragments, then called the 'Stein debris' – "boxes full of crumpled pieces of paper which hadn't been touched since Stein brought them back." Wanting to catalog these almost forgotten fragments, Wood "led the charge" in finding money – and finding help.

"We were able to invite Chinese conservators to come over for quite lengthy periods of time, for a year or so, to work on the pieces. Our English conservators were brilliant, but they didn't get anything from opening up a Tang Dynasty piece of paper – they didn't even know which way up it went. 

"Whereas for a Chinese conservator to open something up and say, 'Goodness, this is even pre-Tang, this is possibly Sui. Look at the way the characters were written' or 'This is an imperial ordnance,' 'this is a piece of a census' – for them, it was much more interesting."

For the next couple of decades, Wood looked after "not just the Dunhuang fragments, but also the conservators and scholars who came to look after them." Part of this was making library tools accessible, but extended to finding accommodation – self-catering, so they didn't have to rely on "horrible British food".

The hard work paid off. "We ended up with an extra 14,000 items added to the collection, all of which can now be seen by visitors," she beams. "The whole project of bringing Chinese conservators over, that's the thing I'm most proud of in the library."

Gateway to the past

Besides the cross-cultural teamwork involved, Wood also feels privileged to have worked with such an important historical artifact as the Dunhuang collection.

"I think it's very difficult for people to understand how amazing Dunhuang is. In this tiny cave, you have the world's earliest paper archive," says Wood. "I mean, these are papers that were made maybe 500 or 600 years before Europe had even sniffed paper, hadn't even heard of paper. 

"It's a massive archive. It's not just Chinese either – it includes materials in all the possible languages and scripts of the Central Asian area. It reveals such a lot about the whole history of human contact.

"Things made their way eventually to Europe from China via the Silk Road, and Dunhuang is this pivotal storehouse which tells us so much about trade networks and thoughts, ideas and languages and peoples crossing along the Silk Road. It's a massively important part of world history."

Among this treasure trove of priceless information, though, one thing stands out above all for Wood. "I think the Diamond Sutra is the most important book in the entire world, or the most important printed object in the entire world. If you think of what people say about the importance of printing, what printers meant to us, the Diamond Sutra marks step one on that road. 

"I mean, it was printed in 868 AD, which is 500 years before Gutenberg printed on paper. Paper was invented in China in the early Han dynasty. Both of those aspects, paper and printing, are Chinese firsts and deserve to be celebrated." 

The fact that the Diamond Sutra was dated was a testimony to the fact that China was first in both aspects: printing and paper-making. 

"And it is a very beautiful item as well. If you look at the characters, we are very used to Song Dynasty-style characters in printing which are very narrow, sort of tall and thin.

"The characters in the Diamond Sutra are wonderful, square, very strong. They're absolutely beautiful. I think we should all emulate that style, Tang Dynasty style of printing."

It was a challenging task to restore the Diamond Sutra from misguided earlier restoration attempts, when a backing was glued to the script to keep it together. To restore it, the backing had to be carefully scrapped before new protection could be applied. It's a procedure requiring patience, time and care, and one that fell upon the shoulders of Wood's then colleague Mark Barnard, who spent years diligently but completely removing the backing. Barnard and Wood later co-authored a book, The Diamond Sutra: The Story of the World's Earliest Dated Printed Book.

The repatriation question

But is the Diamond Sutra in the right place? The discussion around repatriation of cultural relics is controversial, long-lasting and ever-developing. In June, British Museum chairman George Osborne said there is a "deal to be done" over the potential repatriation of the so-called Elgin Marbles, original pieces of the Parthenon, to Athens. 

To a greater or lesser extent, institutions set up as cultural caretakers are frequently loath to give up their collections. Having retired from working at the British Library, Wood says she can more easily express her opinions – but even now, she admits to mixed feelings. 

"The Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest-dated printed book – that is a world first, a most significant item, and I would be in favor of that going back to China," she says. "China invented paper, invented printing, and here is this wonderful example."

However, Wood isn't suggesting parceling everything up and posting it back to China. 

"I think we can single out the most significant items – if something is of true significance, if it's an absolutely pioneering piece that is associated with certain countries, I think there are good reasons to return."

However, for others, Wood suggests a burgeoning use of technology. "But I think for many other things, I would be very much in favor of the use of digital representation. Digitization and representation preserves the original from too many hands touching it, but at the same time they can be seen by scholars in all parts of the world."

It's a solution "which we did pioneer," says Wood, "but is now happening with the National Library collection, the French collection and so on. Scholars can now, on their computer screen, see the Dunhuang corpus. They don't even need to travel as far as their own universities. 

"That's a way of conserving originals and making the content available to far-flung scholars very easily. With repatriation of cultural treasures, one has to look at the value of individual pieces plus the youthfulness of the mass. And I'm in favor of digitization, digital scholarship for the mass, and then singling out the special pieces like the Diamond Sutra."

If the Diamond Sutra were to leave London, Wood could be forgiven a tinge of personal sadness. But the idea conjures a different emotion within her. 

"I've had the privilege of being close to it for 30 years, and I've watched its restoration by our conservators, and I think we can feel a pride that it's been beautifully treated in the UK," she says. "We could be quite proud in handing it back to China and saying 'Look, this we have looked after very well.'"

Narrowing the gap

Wood is less proud of her country's relatively narrow, notably Anglocentric reading habits. "I feel rather ashamed of the UK in terms of world literature – we're famous for not reading much translated literature," she says. 

"I remember being in a taxi in Shanghai and the driver had a very well-thumbed copy of Sherlock Holmes in Chinese by his seat. People in China are also familiar with Dickens and Jules Verne. There's a wide variety of material being translated into Chinese, but you can't say the same about English, unfortunately."

This situation is improving – Nielsen research suggests that the number of translated books in Britain rose by 96 percent between 2001 and 2015 – but from a low base. Even after that rise only 1.5 percent of books published in the UK were translations, compared to 12.3 percent in Germany, 15.9 percent in France and 19.7 percent in Italy, according to a 2015 study by Literature Across Frontiers.

"I think we can only close the gap by more translation," says Wood. "I think people will like it. We must make it easier for British and European readers to read Chinese works. A lot more contemporary Chinese fiction is translated in France, so I quite often read it in French."

As a polyglot, Wood has long recognized that learning a language can help unlock the culture. "Learning Chinese does help enormously in understanding Chinese culture and history, and Chinese history is fantastically important in understanding about China."

Wood offers encouragement to Europeans who might fear the difficulties of learning Chinese. "The language itself is just a very interesting language. I think people are unnecessarily afraid of it. I think more European people should take up Chinese. It's not actually that difficult, it's just different."

While not every European will endeavor to learn Chinese, Wood has nevertheless seen the gap narrowing between the cultures. "Prejudice and stereotyping are things that people gradually lose," she says, but globalism is also bringing people closer. 

"In the 1970s, people from China looked different – they wore the Mao suits, they dressed in a very different way. Now, if you just were to take people's clothing, people in China dress in exactly the same way as we do. So certain stereotypes are beginning to be broken down just by young people's taste."

Spot the difference 

Wood insists there isn't that much of a cultural gap to bridge. "The differences between Chinese people and British people are frightfully small. Both are keen on food – and prefer their own food."

Sometimes, even the commonalities between cultures can separate them. Take tea.

"British people drink tea like mad, but it's very different tea from Chinese tea," smiles Wood – and the British preference for milk in tea is also a difference: "As far as the British are concerned, Chinese tea isn't really tea at all, it's just water."

But after half a century, Wood has come to recognize such differences as culturally crucial. "Understanding and empathy are absolutely essential to the human experience," she says. "We're all human, we're all exactly the same when it comes to utterly basic feelings. And what we have that is different is cultural. 

"Understanding culture means that we understand the subtle differences between us –  and understand that they are subtle differences, that they're not crucial differences. The crucial thing is that we are human.

"Just to see the difference that culture makes is absolutely fascinating. I love the way that Chinese people treat older people in a different way, with far greater respect than we do. And yet sometimes as an older person, it can be a bit oppressive. When I'm in China, if there's one single step, I get helped up it. And I think 'I can manage.' 

"So Chinese people need to understand that British old people like a certain amount of independence. And we have to understand that Chinese old people like to be supported. Those are very subtle differences."

Wood believes that teamwork toward a shared intention is often the best way to bring people together – as she discovered with the Dunhuang fragments.

"You're concentrating on something which is of world significance, and each person brings their own special talent or expertise to it," she says. "Projects that bring people together are absolutely ideal when you've got a common goal."

Such projects will throw up cultural confusion – "There are difficulties sometimes in understanding where cultural matters come up against cultural matters" – but these can be overcome. 

"Just point out how easy it is to get across this point: understand this, pay attention to that, and you're fine. Explaining the customs that sometimes interfere with free communication, and then build a bridge across and help people to see that there's nothing to be afraid of.

"Any bridge-builder is welcome, from either side. Anything that improves communication between our two cultures makes it easier, makes it happier. That's always a good thing."