Gerhard Borner (Germany)
1.Huangshan
“I will travel with you." He said, looking slightly worried. His friendly brown eyes searched my face, and he could see that I was a bit concerned too. Li Qibin had been in a group of Chinese astronomers, who had worked with me through the exciting new field of X-ray astronomy and the physics of neutron stars for about six weeks. I came to China in 1979 as one of the first visitors to stay for a long period of time .Six weeks of lectures in Beijing meant one lecture every second day with a discussion session the next day after each lecture. Thus my audience and I had become acquainted quite well. Now, at the end of the hard work, there was the reward by the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Another six weeks to travel in China interrupted by only a few lectures here and there. Six weeks of traveling for LiQibin and me—no wonder that we both were a bit concerned. How would it work out? Li surely was thinking of his responsibility to guarantee my health and safety, to keep me out of trouble, and I was concerned, because he would have to leave his family for a long time. But it turned out wonderfully. We shared so many interests in science, in art, in nature, and in general human conditions. When we arrived in Shanghai at the end of our journey, we had become good friends.
Our travels took us from Beijing by train in 32 hours to Guilin, from there by plane to Hangzhou, and again by train to Hefei, Nanjing, and Shanghai.
The appropriate opening for the tale of our adventures would be ‘Once upon a time…', appropriate in view of the rapid development of China which makes these times appear far away indeed. Let me tell in some detail of our hike in the Huangshan, the Yellow Mountains. Li Qibin and I came to Hefei in late November to visit the University of Science and Technology. Hefei was then a city of 1.5million inhabitants. The hotel we stayed in was the “Dao Xiang Lou", in a beautiful landscape with hills and s mall lakes, and with a sleepy army of slow-moving waiters, a situation that inspired Li to the poem "Fengjing hen hao, fuwu hen zao.”
We composed many poems like this one during our travels, maybe not of top quality, but fitting nevertheless. Li Qibin was treasuring classic Chinese poetry, he knew two thousand poems by heart, and whenever a stone inscription caught our attention, he would translate it for me, and tell a story connected to it. Emperor Qian Long of the Qing dynasty seemed to have left inscriptions at all the places we visited. Li had to employ all his diplomatic skill to persuade the officials of USTC to let us go to Huangshan. Snow had already fallen in the mountains, and it seemed too dangerous to go, especially for a foreigner. He spent several hours every day, talking to the administrators, and pointing out that our travel plan had been decided and approved in Beijing. Finally they broke down, and agreed to let us go.
After a long trip of 11 hours on the country roads of Anhui crossing the Yangtze river on a ferry boat, we arrived at the small village of Wenquan at the foot of the mountain. In those days there were no roads in the mountain area, no cable cars lifted the weary traveler up to the top. You had to walk on your own feet. So did we; many, many steps on the gigantic staircase that goes across the top ridges to the Beihai Binguan. Here we stayed a few days, hiking to the different sightseeing spots. All the higher elevations were covered by snow, and our small party of four —a graduate student, Hua Xinmin from USTC, our guide, Li and myself —put the first tracks into the fresh snow fields.
Li was full of vigour, and daring to climb up to the highest peaks. The trail up to the Lianhua Feng (the highest peak) was totally covered by snow, and our guide warned us to climb up "Too dangerous! Xiao Xin! Xiao Xin!". But Li shouted “Danger and beauty sometimes are inseparable!”, and both of us climbed the highest peak, and stood there in the bright sunlight. A magnificent feeling!
The hotel Beihai Binguan was not heated, the temperature in the rooms was below zero. Thus we got together in the evenings around a small basin with glimmering charcoal, dried our wet socks, and chatted about the stars, the Huangshan mountains, and about China. Li was confident that his country would experience a big improvement of the present situation. We agreed that the strict regulation of all aspects of life was a great obstacle to progress. Li also told about his vision of creating the conditions for an active and efficient science. One step towards this goal seemed to be a reduction of the size of the extremely big research institutes, of introducing methods of modern management in the administration. Years later, meanwhile in the position of director of Beijing observatory, he could realize some of his visions.
One example of how fervently the bureaucrats at that time installed regulations we could experience during our journey: To minimize contacts we ought to have our meals in separate rooms. This led to the funny situation that in the cold dining room in the mountain hotel, we had to sit at a big common table, because it was the only one, but our chairs were arranged diagonally across the table, that is, as far away as possible from each other. That we could talk freely with each other during the whole long day obviously was not important. An equally strange experience we had during our visit to Hangzhou. In early November there were very few visitors, some days the two of us were the only guests in the guest house of the Academy. But the meals were eaten separately, each of us alone in a huge dining hall served by half a dozen waiters. The food was identical, as we soon found out.
We spent a few days in the mountains surrounding the Beihai Binguan, then began our descent down the many steps through the pretty valley, where now a cable car carries huge numbers of tourists upwards. The station of the cable car at the foot of the mountain is now connected by a road to the village of Wenquan. The building of this road was just going on, when we passed by. Hundreds of workers were moving huge rocks, digging a path along the steep mountainside with sheer muscle power. We threaded our way carefully through this hustle and bustle, and reached finally after a long hike the hotspring settlement Wenquan, where our carwas waiting.
During this first long journey together I got to know Li Qibin better and better. His knowledge of and respect for the Chinese poetry and art, especially painting were as deep a trait of his personality, as was his love of science. He was always full of plans, friendly, good-natured, and full of humor, a very attractive set of character properties.
2. Here, There, and in-between
After my first long stay in China, Li came to Germany for one year on a Humboldt scholarship, and we continued our scientific work, and also developed plans for an extended exchange program between China and Germany. We also began a series of bilateral workshops between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max-Planck-Society.
Some years later Li became the director of Beijing observatory (now National Observatories), but when I congratulated him, he told me that being a director in China is not like being a director in Germany or in other western countries. He said: “In China as a director you have to take care of everything, and very often you have to deal with non-scientific issues.” So, when a wife and her husband had a quarrel. they came after midnight, and knocked at his apartment door to ask him for help. It was a lot of stress. Mainly, however, he wanted to change the administration of the Beijing astronomical observatory to forms of modern management. He had the vision of an efficiently working observatory, dedicated to science, in contrast to the reality of it being a haven for quarrelsome owners of “iron rice-bowls”. Thus he began to reduce the number of non-scientific staff, like drivers and cooks, encouraging them to form independent smaller units associated with the observatory, but not part of it.
A great economic success was the construction of a TV satellite antenna with an exceptionally good feedback system designed by the radio astronomers and manufactured in a bicycle factory near the observatory. It sold well all over the world from Singapore to Germany. A new building for the observatory could be financed from the antenna sales, as well as salary rises for staff members. Li wanted to promote and give higher salaries to staff members, who did exceptional good work, an invention or a scientific achievement. He also tried to establish international connections and collaborations. In all these activities he met the resistance of people not willing to change their habits and policy. But Li found a clever way around that. As more delegations from the observatory went abroad, he always invited his opponents to join these travels. They liked that, and while they were away reforms could be carried out. Li Qibin was full of ideas, but unfortunately he could only realize a part of his plans until the end of his life.
Our scientific activities went on smoothly at the same time. One amusing example is our collaboration on the identification of ancient Chinese observations of supernovae with X-ray sources discovered by the ROSAT satellite. Old documents containing lists of observations of a bright star suddenly appearing in the sky had been edited and translated into English by Li. Some of the occurrences may have been connected to supernova explosions, when a whole star blows up, and shines many orders of magnitude brighter. Li found that such records existed from very early times, scratched on bones or tortoise shells. The remnants of these supernovae are observed by X-ray satellites, especially by the satellite ROSAT which did an all-sky survey. We found a few cases, where the observations of the ancient Chinese astronomers matched the data of the modern X-ray satellite. Li was quite pleased by this interesting connection of old Chinese and modern western astronomy.
3. West of the Yang Pass
Let me end this short essay of my memories of Li Qibin with a story of another long trip we made together. In 1999 after a workshop in Urumqi we travelled to Dunhuang at the edge of the Gobi desert. We stood on top of the great sand dune and overlooked a sea of rolling sand mountains. On this western border of the ancient Chinese empire we saw the caves of Mogaoku and their impressive Buddhist paintings, and their equally impressive crowd of tourists.
But a less crowded site of Buddhist sculptures and frescoes in caves nearby gave us a great spiritual uplifting. Li apparently was deeply moved by these ancient relics of culture and religious belief. Sometimes I could see tears in his eyes. But he also keenly observed all the details, and often drew a quick sketch in his paper notebook. Driving out into the sand and stone desert to see the remains of Han dynasty towers and walls, hidden by a hazy swirling and sand-laden wind, impressed us very much. We could understand the feelings of the Chinese traveling to the west, when they passed the Yang Guan:
“Let me persuade you, friend, to drink another glass of wine, west of the Yang pass none of the old friends are there." (Quan jun geng jin yi bei jiu, xi chu yang guan wu gu ren)
Li and I read the poems on the stone tablets standing on a hilly slope at the starting point of the silk road. Four years later he passed away, just 67 years old, a great loss to his family, to Chinese astronomy and to all his friends. For me coming to Beijing had been so inextricably connected with meeting Li that for many years it seemed completely unreal that he would no longer be there, greeting me with his charming smile. In some sense he has passed to the west through the eternal Yang pass, but nobody knows, whether this is simply an end, or a beginning. Maybe the poem does not tell the complete truth, that beyond that final pass of our life on earth we still find old friends, and maybe Li Qibin just has gone a short while before to meet us there.
