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Highbrows, lowbrows and no-brows

I was once asked by a young friend to translate for him the Chinese idiom "qu gao he gua" （曲高和寡）into English.

"Too highbrow to have many company", or "too highbrow to be popular" were answers I came up with.

"What's highbrow?" he inquired.

That was when the conversation began to turn more interesting, for attempting to put Chinese expressions into English is often a thankless exercise."Highbrow is something you and I are seldom associated with," I quipped. "For instance, qin, qi, shu, hua (琴棋書畫，the Chinese fine arts of guqin (or zither), go chess (or weiqi), calligraphy, and traditional brush painting, pastimes that have come to symbolize intellectual culture and good taste.)"

"Meaning old and stale stuff that young people are not bothered with?" said he. Young people are quick to reach conclusions.

"It might be interpreted that way," said I. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's all relative. To my way of thinking, however, highbrow works involve years of training and cultivation, such as it is with Peking Opera, martial arts, western classical music, again, using a few age-old examples."

"Any up-to-date examples?" he asked.

"When it comes to highbrow works, ancient arts seem naturally becoming. Our contemporaries are more about show business than long-term dedication, which is essential to any highbrow pursuit.

"Even in the show business, tastes differ. The Three Tenors of Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo are highbrows. They sang in the Forbidden City in 2001 and that was a highbrow event."

"Gotcha," he said, adding "the whole thing was considered highbrow. The Opera itself is highbrow, the venue is highbrow, the ticket price is highbrow, fetching 1,000 yuan apiece."

"And even people in the audience were 'highbrow', quote unquote," added I.

"Did you go?" he queried.

"I didn't," I said. "I have the tenors on CD. Besides, I don't think I'd mix with those "highbrow" people in a show like that. Did you go?"

"No," he replied. "I don't like Opera. But I went to watch Man United play when they were in town."

Man United is short for Manchester United, one of the biggest soccer clubs in England and the world over. They toured Beijing last summer.

"But that was not a highbrow event," I said. "There's nothing highbrow about soccer to people outside soccer circles. Adults mucking in on an open field scrambling to kick a ball, that's rather lowbrow to people with any taste for cerebral sophistication, which is an essential quality of being highbrow."

"Cerebral sophistication, and lowbrow?" he asked.

"Opposite the highbrow is the lowbrow. The expressions derive from, again, ancient superstitious notions that a person of superior intellect has a high forehead whereas an illiterate person has a low one. Lowbrow, hence, refers to people wanting in education, taste and culture."

"That's interesting," he said.

"The expressions of highbrow and lowbrow in the English language are said to have been invented by Americans," I continued without further invitation. "I read from somewhere that Americans, without the noble classes of the old Europe, were more inclined to use education and intellectual sophistication to differentiate themselves.

"Much ado, if you ask those Europeans with a prejudice that cultural American is lowbrow as a whole. If you ask Americans, on the other hand, some of them think everything American is better.

"In America, for example, John Updike (who wrote Rabbit, Run) is considered a highbrow writer.

"The New Yorker magazine is regarded as highbrow. The Playboy magazine is lowbrow. Woody Allen is a highbrow for a comedian. Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger is a highbrow for a former bodybuilder. And judged by Bush-speak, the man in the White House at present is a lowbrow even for a president."

"Ha," my colleague laughed, before pleading for "Chinese examples."

"Judging from their put-all-to-sleep speeches, Chinese politicians, to be fair, are middlebrow even by our own low standards. They are otherwise excused from further discussion here for their collective lack of humor.

"As for others, Chinese artists in general, and writers in particular, are lowbrows."

"Without exception?" my friend asked, sounding incredulous.

"There is always an exception to the rule. Flesh Literature with Muzi Mei as an example is an exception. (The Flesh Literature or Youth Literature represents works written by young women who describe in their writing their personal experiences, sexual rather than intellectual).

"Mei would not have appeared in this conversation had the subject of lowbrows not been broached. She's not even lowbrow. She's all-flesh and no-brow."

"But she's popular," my friend countered, laughing. "There are reports that her articles on the web draw tens of thousands of hits a day."

"Yes, she is popular, and that's her problem.

"She's too popular to be a highbrow."

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for future use in this column.