Wu Qi: The idea of the gentry is perhaps one concept that threads our conversation together, which may also be one of your particularities, so let’s talk about it a little bit more. Today’s social structure is no longer like the rural society of the past, and indeed there have been profound changes. Are local gentry still possible?

Xiang Biao: As an attitude, the gentry can exist. The local gentry never really fit in with the larger system, and there was always a certain distance. Their foothold was in their small universe, but they could communicate with and outflank the system, or make use of the system. They had their own understanding of the system. From this perspective, it is entirely possible for the gentry to exist today, but anyone who wants to be a member of the gentry must first understand their own little world and have a firm grasp on the system as well. The difference is that in the past, the gentry lived and acted in the world of the rural villages, and was very clear on their material origins, while this question of material origins is quite different now, and we need to understand it in a new way. Today’s small worlds are not self-sufficient, but instead are constructed, and have no material boundaries. Precisely because they are constructed, the principles behind the construction are a crucial matter, and when you construct your own little world, you have to define it, and decide what you will do in it, what the principles are, what ends you are serving.

Wu Qi: In modern society, people are divided among all sorts of specialized institutions, such as companies, schools, bookstores, shops, etc., and most of these organizations have leaders. Can we understand these leaders as latent gentry?

Xiang Biao: The key point may be how much those leaders are hoping to be promoted to higher levels, and how much being an official is important to them. The gentry have to be a part of their world, their people, and to represent these people. They don’t look for promotions. The gentry has to fully understand the demands and interests of these people and has to express these demands in a language that the official system can understand, that will have an impact on the system, and to which the system will have to react. In this sense, the gentry of the artistic world and the gentry from villages would have no trouble sitting down for a chat, because they share many strategies. The next question is whether the gentry are the same as civil society, NGOs, and activists. My feeling is that they are not too alike. The gentry don’t have a priori, preset goals, and their goal is not to engage in social movements. The important thing is that they represent a group of people, and what they do is continually convey their situation, so the gentry are a kind of representative, whose role is to analyze, understand, and represent; they are shapers of discourse, and also makers of local rules.

Wu Qi: It sounds like representatives to the People’s Congresses in our political system.

Xiang Biao: This was the original idea, to replace the gentry with the representatives of the People’s Congresses, but the issue is complicated. Many people argue that the modern state-building project at the beginning of the twentieth century led local bullies who served state interests to replace community-oriented gentry, or resource-grabbing, selfish gentry to replace what was originally a more cultured gentry. The people’s representatives are meant to be the local representatives of the grassroots populations, and if we can make the system of popular assemblies work properly, then we will have modernized the gentry. The people’s representatives should discuss policy from the perspective of the small worlds of which they are a part. But contemporary representatives are divided by profession and redistributed to fill quotas, and they wind up being quite distant from those they are meant to represent, so the organic quality of representation is lost.

Wu Qi: What’s the difference between the gentry and public intellectuals as presented in popular discourse in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century?

Xiang Biao: I think the difference is pretty big. In my view, one important thing about establishment intellectuals is that they want to articulate universal principles and see themselves as critics. The gentry are moderate and are not concerned with criticism based on universal principles. Their point of view is rooted in the local world, and they have no sense of moral superiority over the system. An important part of the gentry’s job is protecting the well water or responding when someone’s chickens are stolen. Relying solely on principles won’t do—you have to figure out what it means that someone stole someone else’s chickens right before Spring Festival. This is different from today’s public intellectuals.

In continental Europe, especially France, there are what they call public intellectuals. Their thinking can be idealistic, sometimes radical, and revolutionary. It is quite different from Britain. Britain does not have this kind of prescribed role for intellectuals, although of course there are countless commentators in newspapers, and thus a lot of organic voices, but no opinion leader emerges to shock people with his ideas. Instead, it is rather conservative, so when Fei Xiaotong came to Britain he felt right at home, with his Yangzi Valley gentry temperament, which was quite similar to that of his British counterparts.

Wu Qi: Since the gentry temperament is itself moderate, is it more likely to produce social reform rather than radical social movements?

Xiang Biao: Probably. But the idea that because gentry are conservative, we don’t need revolutions, or revolutions are always bad, is wrong-headed. We have a lot of people who talk about revolution today, but they cannot explain why revolution is not happening even when the system is illegitimate. The gentry would be better at explaining things like what the people are thinking, what their relationship with the system is, and how they are getting by. So if we had a few more gentry-style intellectuals, this would not slow the progress of society. They cannot hold society back and would have a more comprehensive, accurate grasp on things. In non-revolutionary times, they are good at pushing changes forward, but when revolution becomes necessary, this means that there has been a rupture between the gentry and the system. So we can’t take the gentry as a specific social group, but rather as representing a research perspective, or a method.

Wu Qi: Can you explain a bit more what “taking the gentry as method” might mean?

Xiang Biao: First, I am not talking here about the gentry as an existing group that we find in the population, but rather as individual temperament, or a way of thinking. Is your first reaction to get angry or to be curious? Do you make an effort to describe things clearly in a moderate, or even humorous, way, or do you rush to judgment? It is in this sense that I like how the gentry comport themselves, by observing life from the inside out. For example, having received a Western education, I know that peasants are wrong to prefer sons to daughters, but you can’t simply dismiss their feelings, and instead have to understand how their lives are set up, knowing what you can change, and what you allow to evolve on its own.

Second, whether we could really recreate the gentry as an actual social group or a social force, strikes me as quite doubtful. Of course, it is not completely impossible, and “local” doesn’t have to refer only to villages; any place has people who like to observe and who have good memories in ways that recall the gentry. But in theory, we still have to slowly move toward a system of political parties, organizing social life through professional groups, rather than relying on the moral order and imperial order maintained by the gentry.