June 21, 2012
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Portuguese translation

On Walking

Yi-Fu Tuan

[Dr. Tuan is no longer writing regular Dear Colleague letters. This is a special essay written for his readers.]

Walking, so far as I am aware, is not highly valued in Chinese culture. It was and is seen as a means of getting from A to B. In the old days, officials were carried in sedan chairs, or they rode horses if they were of a military bent. My father was chief of protocol at the Chinese foreign ministry in the late 1930s. His job was to escort the newly appointed foreign ambassador to the residence of the Chinese president where the ambassador presented his credentials and members of his staff. The Chinese president, Lin Seng, lived on a mountain, the only access to his residence being a narrow, winding path. Father arranged for coolies and sedan chairs to carry the dignitaries up the mountain. Alas, the Soviet ambassador refused to ride on the shoulders of human beings. He insisted on walking, so father and other Chinese officials also had to walk. I can imagine them sweating and swearing under their breath at the uncouthness of the barbarians.

The Soviet ambassador might have thought that he owed his desire to walk to Marxist ideology. Actually, it went deeper than that. Walking is deeply embedded in Western civilization, going back all the way to the Romans. (See Timothy M. O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture, 2011). To the ancient Romans, walking–how one walked–was a mark of one’s personality and social status. Slaves walked quickly; in fact, they more or less ran. Men of stature aspired to a stately pace. It would not do to be too slow, for slowness marked one as a woman or effeminate. Fair enough as etiquette, but barbarians–Spaniards, in particular–wondered, what was walking for? Why did Roman generals pace about in the battlefield? Answer: to appear high-minded and to engage in serious conversation, a habit they acquired as civilians. Porticoes were an intrinsic part of Roman domestic architecture, its purpose being to provide shade for walking.

Before the Romans, Athenians also valued walking–but only insofar as it promoted thinking. A whole school of thought, Aristotle’s “Peripatetic” school, is named after walking (peripatein–“walking around.”) Characteristically, the Greek sage, Thales, while wandering about lost in his own thoughts, fell into a well. To the Greeks, thinking effectively was more important than walking as such, the latter being merely the means, the former the end. To the Romans, walking had value in itself. The elites of modern Europe are more Roman than Greek. I am struck by how they love to walk. Perhaps I should limit my observation to just members of the English governing class who cover 10 to 20 miles of country road every day as a matter of course. For what purpose? They would have found the question impertinent, though, if pressed, they might say that it is a mark of character and builds character. And if pressed further, they might say that the British empire was as much won on the well-trodden English country roads as on the playing fields of Eton.

To the true devotee, walking not only unclogs thought, it also unclogs body fluids and so promotes physical well-being. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard certainly thought so. In a letter to a friend, dated 1847, he wrote: “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. On the other hand, the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps walking, everything will be all right.”

All meditative practices recommend, however, the opposite. The guru sits cross-legged, perfectly still. Buddha is invariably portrayed as seated, eyes closed, immobile. And yet his last words to his disciples were “Walk on!”     

Yi-Fu Tuan