by Xu Xu
Throughout the narrative, there are several references to *Beiping, which was the official name of Beijing during the Republican period after Chiang Kai-shek had moved the capital to Nanjing in 1927. In defiance of Mao Zedong moving the capital back to Beijing in 1949, the name Beiping continued to be used in Taiwan until the 1980s. The story’s female protagonist also mentions that the bank for which she works had recently been transferred to Taiwan. Many important financial institutions were relocated to Taiwan as the Nationalists’ military defeat on the mainland became more likely.
*Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋志異, also cited in “Ghost Love,” is a well-known eighteenth-century collection of ghost stories. Toward the end of the story, the narrator makes a reference to Lin Daiyu 林黛玉, the tragic heroine of the famous eighteenth-century novel *Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 who died from a broken heart upon learning that her cousin Jia Baoyu 賈寶玉 would marry his other cousin Xue Baochai 薛寶釵 instead of her.
Mr. Wang was a conscientious man who did not lack a sense of humor. Besides, he was calm and composed in all his dealings with others. He had to go to *Chiayi to take care of some business related to his factory, and his son Dawen was going with him to visit the campus of a college at Taichung. Mr. Wang knew that I had often spoken of taking a trip to *Mount Ali, and, because Mount Ali is not far from Chiayi, he invited us to come along. We all knew that he had friends down south and that he knew his way around. Finding accommodation and organizing transportation would all be easy. Everyone was excited. There were going to be seven of us: Ms. Nie, Ms. Li, Xianmeng and his wife Cunmei, Mr. Wang and his son, and me. But then, shortly before the trip, Xianmeng announced that his cousin Xiancheng was able to come along as well, because the trip happened to fall on a bank holiday. And so we bought eight train tickets.
Everyone knew each other well, with the exception of Xianmeng’s cousin Xiancheng. Other than Xianmeng and his wife, only I was acquainted with her, having met her several times at Xianmeng’s house. She was a rather unusual girl. Her appearance was unusual, her manner was unusual, even her character was somewhat unusual. She was not tall, but she looked rather tall, because her body was well proportioned. Her facial features were not exactly beautiful. She had a low hairline. Her forehead protruded a little and her lower jaw was pointed, but luckily her cheekbones were not too high and her cheeks bore soft curves. Her chin was round and resembled a little fruit, and her nose was upright. She had big eyes whose corners were slightly curved upward. Her eyebrows were nicely shaped and well balanced. They were very delicate and very enticing. Yet she did not apply any makeup and dressed like a middle school student.
The first time I met her was shortly after the lunar New Year. Xianmeng was entertaining a lot of guests that day, and everyone was playing dominoes. Xiancheng at first joined in the fun and stood by the table to place some bets, but then, all of a sudden, without having either lost or won much money, she suddenly withdrew to a sofa in the corner of the room and began to knit. I wanted to go over and to talk to her but felt a little awkward because we were not properly acquainted. A few days later, I ran into Xianmeng’s wife Cunmei and I asked whether Xiancheng often came to their house.
“She’s a little odd,” Cunmei said. “Sometimes she does, but then we suddenly won’t see her for months. Sometimes when she is supposed to come for dinner, she won’t even show up.”
“Is she at school?” I asked.
“No, she works at a bank,” Cunmei said.
“Does she live in a company dorm?”
“No,” Cunmei answered. “Sometimes she lives with us, and then on a whim she suddenly moves in with Xianmeng’s elder brother. At first I thought it was me she had a problem with, but later I realized that’s just the way she is. When she feels like it, she’ll suddenly move in with us again. That’s why I don’t try to keep her when she leaves, and don’t turn her away when she comes back.”
“How odd,” I said.
“Yes, she’s a little odd. I don’t really understand her,” Cunmei replied. “You would think that a twenty-two- or twenty-three-year-old girl would enjoy dressing up, but she doesn’t like it at all. It’s not that her salary is too low, either. She doesn’t even have to pay for food or lodging. But still, she never has any clothes made for her.”
“But that day when I saw her, wasn’t she dressed really nicely?”
“Oh, that striped, woolen qipao? I gave that to her,” Cunmei said. “During the first month after the Lunar New Year, we always host a lot of guests. Xiancheng is Xianmei’s cousin, and now she lives with us. What do you think people would say if they saw her wear the same simple, blue-cotton dress every day? They would think that I …”
Cunmei was a clever and capable woman. Appearance mattered a great deal to her, and she was very ambitious. She expected her maids to be tidy and neatly dressed and naturally did not want her cousin to be careless about her outfit. But sure enough, the next few times I ran into Xiancheng, she was always dressed extremely plainly. But this did not diminish the natural charm of her youthful appearance. On the contrary, it only made me more aware of it. Her eyes always sparkled with a radiant intelligence. I enjoyed talking to her and she likewise seemed happy when I did. At first, she always seemed a little shy, yet her replies would be very sophisticated. But then, she would often suddenly excuse herself for no apparent reason and walk away from the conversation. After that, even though I was a frequent visitor to Xianmeng’s house, I no longer ran into her. I assumed that she must have moved in with Xianmeng’s brother and that she probably would not be back for a while. And so it was a bit of a surprise that she was going to travel to Mount Ali with us.
Mount Ali is covered in virgin forest. When Taiwan was a Japanese colony, a railway line had been built from Chiayi to the top of the mountain in order to facilitate the logging of timber. Setting out from Taipei, we naturally first had to take a train to Chiayi. Our tickets had all been arranged in advance, and Ms. Nie, Ms. Li, and I went to the station together. We were going to meet up with Mr. Wang and his son as well as Xianmeng, Cunmei, and Xiancheng on the train, and when we boarded, Xianmeng, Cunmei, and Xiancheng were already in their seats. I introduced Xiancheng to Ms. Nie and Ms. Li, and they liked each other right away. Shortly afterward, Mr. Wang and his son Dawen also got on board. Dawen was a sophomore at college, and he was thinking of transferring to a vocational industrial college in Taichung. He wanted to see if the school was a good fit and whether transferring there was an option. He was about twenty-four years old and was healthy looking and energetic. He knew how to drive and was a good swimmer. He could fix a radio and sing English songs, and he played tennis and bridge. Naturally, I also introduced them to Xiancheng. The six of us at first had been sitting together in two rows of seats facing each other. When Mr. Wang and his son came on board, Xiancheng and I got up while Dawen put his father’s luggage into the luggage rack. Then Mr. Wang and I went to sit in a pair of seats on the right of the aisle.
We all experience youth at some point, and there invariably is a time when our behavior somewhat resembles that of animals. A rooster likes to crow in front of a hen, a stag during mating season likes to grunt. Once Dawen had laid eyes on Xiancheng, he could not hold back. He would look at her again and again, suddenly start singing, get up and sit down again, stare out of the window, or take out a deck of cards and keep shuffling them. Xiancheng at first had been quite jovial and talkative, but then all of a sudden fell silent, swapped seats with Cunmei, and stared out the window.
The train had left the city behind and open fields were now sweeping past the window. As the train was picking up speed, everyone’s conversation slowed to a halt as if lacking the energy to speak. Even Dawen, who was humming an English pop song while still fiddling with his deck of cards, seemed a little lost for words. Eventually, Ms. Li suggested that we play a game of cards. No one objected, yet when she asked Xiancheng, Xiancheng said with a smile, “I don’t know how to play.”
Dawen happily rose to his feet, ready to swap seats with Xianmeng, but Xiancheng threw me a glance and calmly said, “Why don’t you let Mr. Xu play instead?”
She got up while she spoke and walked in my direction to swap seats with me. Of course I could not decline, and so I took her seat. She remained in that seat all the way to Chiayi.
Mr. Wang had called in advance and so we were met at the station by a friend of his. Chiayi is not a big city. There were only a handful of hotels, and our rooms were quite small. There were two of us to a room. I shared a room with Xianmeng, and Mr. Wang and his son occupied another. Ms. Nie and Ms. Li stayed together in one room and so did Cunmei and Xiancheng. Mr. Wang’s friend then treated us to a lavish dinner, and it was already quite late when we returned to the hotel. Since we were going up into the mountains early the next day, we all went to bed right away.
The next morning, we took a diesel-powered train into the mountains. Another friend of Mr. Wang’s from Chiayi, a certain Mr. Shi, came with us as well. The scenery along the way was lush. We traversed a tunnel and, shortly thereafter, another one. We climbed to a mountain pass, and once we passed it, we approached another one. It was spring, but after three or four hours, the scenery started to change as if there had been a change of season. The temperature also got colder; we were already inside the clouds. Everybody had been cheerful at first, but then the women among us all got a little tired. Even after they had put on their overcoats they complained that it was still chilly. When it then also started to rain, everyone’s laughter and chatter dwindled. Only Dawen was still humming along.
Xiancheng, who was sitting next to me at the time, suddenly leaned toward me and said, “I feel I have seen this landscape somewhere before.”
“Mountainscapes always resemble each other a little,” I said.
It seemed as if she had not taken note of what I had just said. She remained silent and gazed at the mountains, spellbound. I followed her line of vision to a steep cliff directly facing us. The bottom of the cliff was covered in undergrowth and was sloping toward the ravine. Hundreds of meters down below, one could see the violent currents of a mountain stream. On this side of the stream, the slope was covered by forest, which was crisscrossed by little paths. High above, one could see the meandering rails where our diesel engine was headed. At that time, the mountains were shrouded by a sea of clouds. The sky above was ash-gray. Below, mist was clinging to the slopes, forming thick clouds one moment and then dispersing the next. The whole mountain range looked as if covered by a layer of fine gauze.
“Strange. I am sure I have seen this place in my dreams,” Xiancheng suddenly said.
I did not reply but felt that this was a sensation many people experience. We come to a place for the first time, but feel we have seen it in our dreams before. There is a psychological explanation for this. We might have seen a painting of Mount Ali, and in our dreams it then becomes a real landscape. When we then see the actual mountainscape, we think that we have seen it in our dreams.
By the time we reached the mountaintop, it was already late morning. During the colonial period, vacation homes had been built here for wealthy Japanese. Later, those buildings had been turned into hotels, and that was where we had planned to put up for the night. Our hotel was an elegant Japanese-style building. On the second floor, it had a spacious balcony, the front of which was enclosed with large windows from where you could gaze at the mist-shrouded mountain ranges. Far in the distance, you could see the faint outlines of a few snow-covered peaks.
It was quite cold and the hotel staff had brought out a brazier for us. They had also prepared padded cotton kimonos and all of us put one on, but Ms. Nie and Ms. Li were so tired that they immediately lay down on their beds, covering themselves with thick padded blankets. Mr. Wang and his friend Mr. Shi asked the hotel to have our lunch prepared, and I went up to the balcony. Xiancheng was standing by one of the windows, gazing into the distance. The kimono she was wearing made her look even more charming. Suddenly, Dawen also appeared on the balcony, jovially singing a foreign song. He wanted to talk to Xiancheng, it seemed, and so I went to stand on the other side of the balcony, where I was joined by Xianmeng and Cunmei. Xiancheng only had eyes for what lay in front of the window and had not noticed any of us. Only when Dawen had come up close behind her did she raise her head. She saw the three of us on the other side and, as if to avoid Dawen, walked over to us.
Gazing into the distance from our vantage point, all we could see were mountain ridges amidst a sea of clouds, but closer by, we could see a valley and a number of ragged rocks protruding from high above. Xiancheng suddenly said, “Those rocks look as if they are about to tumble down.”
“But they are rooted deep in the ground,” Xianmeng said, “and even if a hundred people stood on top of them, they wouldn’t budge.”
“But those one hundred people might all fall down,” Cunmei said jokingly.
“Would you die if you jumped down from there?” Xiancheng asked.
“Even if you didn’t die you would still break every bone in your body,” I said with a chuckle.
It had been drizzling when we first got to the hotel, but now the drizzle had turned into sleet. By the time we were done with our lunch, it was snowing. Most of us agreed that we should wait for the weather to clear up and then explore the next day, and that today we would just stay at the hotel and play cards. We were all pretty tired and exhausted on account of the previous day’s train journey and the uncomfortable night in the small hotel in Chiayi. In the morning, we had gotten up early to catch the train for the journey up the mountain that had taken several hours. Once we had eaten our fill and had warmed up, everyone wanted to take an afternoon nap. I slept for about an hour and a half. When I woke up, I noticed that everyone else was still asleep. It was still snowing, and the hotel felt deserted. I put on the padded kimono and wore my raincoat over it and then went outside to take a walk. It was cold outside, but the snow had let up a little and the wind was not very strong. The sky was still overcast and the mountain ranges kept disappearing and reappearing amidst the clouds. It looked spectacular.
There was a fork in the road ahead of me. One road led up the mountain, the other down. I followed the road going up. I had only walked a few steps when I noticed a woman dressed in a kimono and holding a Japanese umbrella ahead of me. At first I thought it was another hotel guest, but then I recognized the leather shoes and the rim of the dress that showed from under the kimono, and I realized it was Xiancheng. I called out to her and she turned her head. I noticed that she was holding a branch covered in leaves.
“You didn’t go to sleep?” I asked.
“I slept a little, but when I got up and saw that you were all still fast asleep, I went out for a walk,” she replied.
“Where did you get that umbrella?” I asked, having now caught up with her. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“I borrowed it from the hotel.” Walking next to me now, she waved the tree branch she was holding and asked, “Do you know what kind of tree this is?”
“I think I have seen it in other places as well,” I said, “but I can’t think of the name.”
“We have them in my home province too,” she said. “In our local dialect they are called ‘all-souls trees.’ They are said to convey omens. They seem to be smaller here.”
“That’s probably because of the climate.” I said. “But can such a small all-souls tree also convey omens?”
She did not reply. We walked next to each other for a while until I could no longer bear the silence and said, “The others really are healthy sleepers. When I got up, they were all still sound asleep.”
We kept walking. Ahead of us, the road began to slope down. Below, there were several Japanese wooden houses. Cooking smoke was already rising from their chimneys. Xiancheng walked to the point where the road began to descend and stopped. Like in a trance she gazed at the mountain range to the left of us t
hat was protruding from a thick sea of clouds. I followed her gaze and marveled at the scene. After a while, the clouds began to stir and a gust of wind caught Xiancheng’s umbrella. I quickly helped her close it up and took it from her. The snow had almost stopped.
“Let’s go back,” I said. “Aren’t you cold?” She nodded and we walked back together. After a few dozen steps, we ran into Dawen who had a camera round his neck and came walking toward us, humming a tune. I called out to him.
“So you got up as well?”
“Everyone’s up and playing cards,” he said. “They asked me to get you.”
“We are heading back now,” Xiancheng said.
“Let me take a picture of the two of you,” Dawen said.
“Is there enough light?” I asked.
“I have a very good lens, f2 aperture,” he said, standing by the side of the road and opening the camera case.
“I’d rather not have my photo taken,” Xiancheng said with a smile and continued to walk down at an accelerated pace.
“Well, then I can take one of you alone,” Dawen said to her, thinking that she did not want her picture taken together with me.
“I’ve never liked having my picture taken,” Xiancheng said, still smiling.
“What’s wrong with having one’s photo taken?” Dawen asked jokingly. He seemed to think that Xiancheng was just being prudish.
Fearing that he would say something that might displease her, I quickly turned toward Xiancheng and said, “Maybe you can take a photo of me and Dawen?”
She nodded, and Dawen, after having adjusted the lens, passed the camera to Xiancheng and came over to stand next to me. Xiancheng did not have anywhere to put the branch of the all-souls tree she was still holding, and so she said to me, “This is for you.”
I quickly walked a few steps down to her and, taking the branch, asked, “Are you sure you want me to have it?”