In Jungian psychology, as in Taoist philosophy and the I Ching, the feminine principle lies within each of us, but perhaps in some more than others. Lu Ping, Taiwan's unofficial cultural ambassador to Hong Kong, so clearly embodies the multifaceted, nurturing yin side of yang that she could take out a patent on the rights to it. In the relatively short time since she arrived in Hong Kong in January last year, after an 11-month wait for a visa, the 50-year-old novelist and journalist has transformed her role from public relations agent of the government in Taiwan to a change agent in her own right.
Where the male principle would call for hard-edged marketing, Ms Lu goes in for networking. Geeky performance measures such as cultural indices, market focus groups, and other techniques for gauging how many times people turn on their television sets or go to a specific internet site are hallmarks of the male psyche. Ms Lu's penchant is for creating free-floating environments where spontaneity is a given.
At one recent performance at the Kwang Hwa Information and Cultural Centre, the Hong Kong branch of Taiwan's government information office, Ms Lu observes silently while guests listen to Zen practitioner and 'arts person' Lin Ku-fang explain the Chinese art of tea, with his troupe of musicians playing classical Chinese instruments. The performance involves two types of tea, pao chung and tie guan yin, or 'iron goddess of mercy', and their correspondences - or 'cross-references' in Ms Lu's terms - with the mainland's geography, styles of music and the classics of Tang poetry. At tables across the room, participants play a 21st-century version of a practice associated with thousands of years of Chinese literary gatherings, writing couplets on slips of paper to commemorate the mood and the occasion.
The old poets, sitting by the side of a stream, would have floated their tea or wine cups down it, along with their memories. Ms Lu does have a political point to make, which is that such graceful habits of mind have been able to persist in Taiwan because it avoided the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution. 'Taiwan has had the luxury of time to enjoy this aspect of life, to be unconventional,' she says. 'Everyone should have choice in life. Rather than everyone being a square, some can be circles. You can be a junzi, or scholar, or you can be a businessman.'
If this is propaganda, it is also generous and open-minded. The impulse behind it looks not to the survival of specific strands of Chinese culture in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland, but to creative continuities where each melts into the other; Hong Kong's commercial expertise blending with the mainland's raw energy and Taiwan's classicism.
Fusion has been occurring for at least 20 years in Chinese popular culture, buoyed by the mainland's economic reforms. The market for Chinese-language music, film, television and print media has rocketed, and Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland trade cultural icons seamlessly. Translating the possibilities into literature, art and poetry, however, has remained elusive.
