Over the Great Wall
鈥淢ay you live in interesting times鈥� goes the well-known Chinese blessing or, depending on your outlook, curse. For Robin Yates, the mid-sixties could scarcely have been boring as he embarked on a BA at Oxford in Chinese archaeology. 鈥淣o one studies China,鈥� his high school teachers had chided him, attempting to steer him back toward the Latin and Greek they knew. But 鈥渢he more they told me I shouldn鈥檛 study it, the more I wanted to!鈥� recalls Yates with his characteristic easy laugh.
Only once he arrived at Oxford did he learn that over in China, the word 鈥渋nteresting鈥� was being redefined. In addition to the social and political upheavals that marked Mao Zedong鈥檚 Cultural Revolution (1966-76), all archaeological work had been abandoned and artifacts from the longest continuous civilization the planet has seen were being destroyed. Two weeks after beginning his studies, Yates switched to Chinese poetry.