Days gone by no longer seem real. But they linger in a smile, a cup of wine, the smell of grass, raindrops on window panes, a scar, a melody... the memories are almost tangible, they make life real and meaningful.

This is how Li Jingze felt as he read Civilization and Capitalism 15-18 Centuries by Fernand Braudel (1902-85).

Li, 37, a prose writer and literary critic, was convinced by what he was reading that historical figures and incidents in the limelight were not as important as the masses of everyday people, whose ordinary lives, beliefs, wisdom, courage and inspiration - and greed and foolishness - was what really made up history.

He made up his mind to search into the very corners of history for traces of these people's lives - and the results of his search have been revealed in his book Mutual Glances, Secret Liaisons.

The book contains a dozen stories, which reveal the different views Chinese people and their foreign counterparts have about the same issues, or how Chinese people viewed foreign things and from what points of view foreign people looked at what they saw in China.

The first is called "Pillow-Book, Poor Persian and Pearl," immediately making readers wonder what the relationship is between the three factors and why the writer puts them together.

"Pillow-Book" was a book written by Japanese woman writer Sei Shonagon (966/967-1013), who wrote about things at odds with each other: People with poor-quality hair worn in white silk; curled hair adorned with flowers; bad handwriting on red paper; white snowfall or moonlight lighting up the courtyards of poor people's homes, in striking contrast to the atmosphere inside the walls.

Pillow-Book describes things that make people nostalgic. "Dead flower leaves; old containers which pay tribute to the dead; a fragment of a silk handkerchief tucked in a book; reading letters from old-timers on rainy days..."

Li Jingze compares what the Japanese woman poet wrote with what Chinese poet Li Shangyin put down in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

Li also talked about people who did not match their personas: a poor Persian; an unhealthy doctor; a thin sumo wrestler and a very fat bride.

A doctor should be healthy, a sumo wrestler fat and a bride slim and young - but why should a Persian be rich?

This was related to Chinese people's general view of foreigners at the time. The ancient silk road served as a business route between China and Persia. As a result, a lot of Persians came to China to do business.

Ancient legends say Persians who looked poor had pearls hidden somewhere on themselves.

Pearls were considered to be extremely precious by people in the Tang Dynasty, and Persia was where most foreign business people came from at the time, giving Persians a reputation for never being poor.

In this tale, Li Jingze tells his readers that Sei Shonagon had learned a great deal from the literature of the Tang Dynasty, while Chinese people at the time knew very little about the rest of the world. They took it for granted that people from the West must be very rich, as many people still do today.

One of the stories is about the alarm clocks Italian missionary Ricci Matteo (1552-1610) presented to Chinese Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

A clock is a symbol of time that used to be measured by the moving shadow caused by the sun, dripping water or trickling sand. When the first alarm clock was invented, people could hear time as well as see it.

On January 25, 1601, Ricci presented two alarm clocks to Chinese Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty.

"Time could be seen and heard simultaneously, time was no longer shadows, water drops or sand. It was the first time man could see time," Li Jingze wrote.

Ironically, Emperor Wanli, a Chinese emperor with the authority and power to become the first to "catch time," did not care about time at all.

He led the life of a hermit instead of an emperor.

"He ruled his empire without meeting his court officials for years. His court officials, who knew that their emperor was there, almost forgot what he looked like," the story says.

Matteo was lucky to have only waited just over five months before he was called to Beijing from Tianjin, where he was waiting. It was said that a Turk, who came from the Arabian peninsular to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor, had waited 40 years for an answer from the imperial court to allow him to return.

It was the two alarm clocks that brought Matteo his good luck. The hermit-like emperor suddenly one day said to his eunuchs that he was told some foreigners had brought him two clocks that could give out sound automatically, and he wanted to know where they were. He sent for them.

The Italian missionary never met the Chinese emperor and died in Beijing in 1610. The emperor did send his court painter to paint pictures of Matteo and his partner because he was curious about what they looked like, but no one could understand why the emperor did not meet the two foreigners himself.

As a missionary, Matteo's mission was to bring Christianity to this eastern empire, and he had hoped to convert the Chinese emperor, which would then turn the whole country into a Christian nation.

As Li Jingze wrote: "He was like a man who brings a bottle of water on a long journey full of difficulties to arrive at his destination only to pour the water on a vast stretch of desert or ocean." He brought the eastern emperor nothing but two alarm clocks.

The new device to measure time failed to bring any new concept of the world to this ancient empire, which continued to run on its own track in the several centuries that followed.

In one of his stories, Li Jingze talks about Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, 79, whose novel Memorial Do Convento was first published in Chinese in 1996. The fact that the books were mostly stockpiled until Saramago became a Nobel Prize winner in 1998 propels Li Jingze to ask why the writer was unheard of until he was given the Nobel Prize.

The answer is simple, he thinks. He is Portuguese. Li said the story "who's who of literary figures" was mainly made up of names from the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany and France.

The fact is that we prefer to remember the names of literary figures from the countries which plunged China into its abyss of agony in modern history.

"I read about Saramago simply because he was a Nobel Prize winner, but I can't be sure that he will remain in the 'who's who' of my memory," Li wrote.

Literature cannot be exempt from the influence of politics. Li, from this particular perspective of literature, uncovers a particular relationship between China and the rest of the world.

In the novel Memorial Do Convento, set in the early 18th century, Saramago tells the story of three ordinary people and their ordinary lives. Li holds that it is these ordinary people who make a difference in history, but whose names are never recorded.

"Foreign merchants brought maize and potatoes into China, and peasants have planted these crops from generation to generation. The development of agriculture based on imported crops is the foundation of social progress in China. But who knows the names of the merchants?" Li wrote in his story.

As a literature critic, Li believes a novel is the only form that keeps records of the voices and traces of ordinary people in history.

A paradox, then, that any account of history can only be done by associating everything with prominent figures such as kings, emperors, well-known generals and important officials.

Names like French politician and writer Malraux Andre (1901-76), Italian missionary Ricci Matteo (1552-1610), Japanese writer Sei Shonagon (966/967-1013), French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-85) and British diplomat George Macartney (1737-1860), under Li's pen, can hardly be called ordinary people.

Nevertheless, Li tries to sort out the insignificant anecdotes these people were involved in to shed light on the impact of minor events on history.

"In this era of so-called globalization, and amid the prayers for the new millennium, I strongly feel there is no fundamental change in the situation of human beings. The vigilance and imagination we demonstrate in meeting strangers and alien things still makes up what our lives are," Li said.

Reading this book could engender the same feeling, or encourage us to calm down to reflect on our human history from a different angle.

(China Daily 07/05/2001)