Seeing the World, Seeing Ourselves

阅读中文版 →English

During the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty, eight courtesans celebrated for their artistic talents along Nanjing’s Qinhuai River came to be known as the Eight Beauties of Qinhuai. Liu Rushi is often regarded as foremost among them. Later accounts frequently turn to her circumstances, marriage, or moral courage. What particularly draws me is the origin of her name. “Rushi” comes from two lines by Xin Qiji:

I find the green mountains so lovely; I imagine they would see me in the same way.

Reflecting on age and the dwindling company of old friends, Xin Qiji turns to the mountains for companionship. They say nothing, yet he imagines that they look back and understand him.

I also wonder what happens in the simple act of looking at a mountain.

The mountain is there. It has its own contours, rocks, and vegetation. My mood does not alter its shape. Yet the mountain I see may not always be the same. One person finds it lovely; another finds it imposing. Even the same person may see something different on returning years later.

Calling the mountain lovely already brings my own sensibility into the encounter. What kind of gentleness moves me? What lines can I recognize as beautiful? Calling it imposing reveals something else: my sense of strength, my capacity for awe. The mountain brings these responses into view. Through it, I discover that I have this side of myself too.

This gives me another way to understand the Chinese expression jian shìmiàn: to see more of the world, to become acquainted with life beyond what one already knows.

We often use it to describe someone who has traveled widely or experienced much. Those experiences matter. Unfamiliar surroundings interrupt our habits and introduce people and situations we might otherwise never encounter. But if distance traveled were our only measure, when would we have seen enough? Any person’s itinerary covers only a small fraction of the world.

Online, I also encounter attempts to divide “seeing the world” into its production and consumption sides: seeing how things are made, or experiencing how they are consumed. Certain places or levels of access seem to become prerequisites for having truly seen anything. Learning about these things can certainly broaden our understanding. But using them to prescribe what counts feels too rigid to me. If those experiences reveal a previously unfamiliar part of myself, they count. If something else does, it counts too. Meeting a new part of myself is already a way of seeing more of the world.

Imagine two people visiting the same place and looking at the same landscape. One finds it beautiful, perhaps takes a photograph, and moves on. The other discovers, in that moment, that something they had never cared about can move them deeply. They have traveled the same distance on a map. What the encounter leaves within them may be quite different.

It is this second dimension that interests me. An encounter with the world changes what I know about myself. The seemingly settled idea of “who I am” acquires an unfamiliar possibility. I can feel this way too. I can care about this. Perhaps I could live differently. Wherever such a discovery happens, I am willing to call it seeing more of the world.

Understood this way, the encounter need not depend on that particular mountain. A film, a conversation, or a song may also let me meet myself.

I might be lying on the sofa watching television when I suddenly understand a character I once found unreasonable, and recognize a similar hesitation in myself. I might be cooking while someone on the radio describes their life, and realize how casually I had judged a situation I barely understood. Even humming in the shower, I might hear an emotion in my voice that I had never noticed. My body has traveled little. My understanding has reached somewhere new.

Of course, staying home does not automatically bring discovery. Neither does going far away. What matters to me is whether the encounter reveals something, whether it makes me willing to reconsider a judgment or revise my understanding of myself. Meeting another part of myself can mean recognizing my narrowness or admitting that I was wrong. Such discoveries are not always pleasant. They still enlarge my world.

The world can surprise me. Because it does not entirely conform to my imagination, an encounter can reveal the limits of what I already understand and offer something beyond them. Seeing myself includes being corrected by another person and being changed by an unfamiliar experience.

None of this requires an audience. I do not need to turn every moment into a vlog or explain on social media where I have been and what I have learned. Some changes are small and difficult to articulate. They may simply make the next song I hear, the next person I meet, or the next quiet moment with myself feel slightly different.