But my Ama scoffed: “Namu is not going to trade anybody’s mushrooms. You silly girls! She’s not going to the market! She’s going to win a singing contest!”
I gazed at my mother, and I thought, yes, I am going to win a contest and bring fame to my family and to my village, and everyone will be proud of me!
When we set off the next morning, all our neighbors had assembled to accompany us to the edge of the village and wish us good luck. We were like the caravans of old — ten horses and nine people, for Yisso had decided he would need two helpers to take care of the horses when we arrived at the cement factory, the first stage on the famed oil road, where the cars were to pick us up.
Now, according to Moso custom, we must never ride horses within the boundaries of the village in case we should meet an older person, as it is considered a great insult for a young person to stand above an older one. But we had barely passed the last house when my mother told me to get on my horse, and while I stood above her on my little pony, she took the reins and led me forward to show how proud she was of me. After a few steps, she stopped and handed me the reins and walked back to where the other villagers were standing, waving us off. Several times I turned to see her standing on the road, following me with her eyes and warming my heart with her pride, until the trail curved and I lost her.
THE TREK TO THE CEMENT FACTORY took five days, during which we spent as much time walking alongside the horses as riding on their backs. We passed through Moso villages, and then through Pumi and Yi villages, where Mr. Li impressed us with his ability to speak the local language. Wherever we knew people, we took advantage of local hospitality to eat and sleep indoors — but on the third night, we made a fire outside and piled up pine needles for mattresses and slept under the stars in the mountain. Generally speaking, Moso women do not like to travel very far from their villages because of the wild animals, and also because in the old days, before the Communist liberation, the mountains were filled with dangerous people and bandits. That night, when we slept outside, Latsoma and Zhatsonamu grumbled that it was too cold and they missed their beds. But young Zhu said, “Hey! What are you complaining about? This is the best there is! Look at the sky . . . this is an all-star hotel!” And I thought, I am going to see what a hotel looks like.
Next day, in the early afternoon, the path turned, revealing on the opposite hillside the colored strips of cultivated fields and a typical Yi village with a half dozen houses built far apart from one another, with yellow earthen walls and roofs made of long planks held down by big boulders arranged in neat rows, and each house enclosed by a tallish fence made of interwoven wooden sticks. Yisso announced that he had an old friend in this village and that we could stay the night. “That way, you’ll get a good rest.”
“That won’t be too soon!” Latsoma griped, as she wiped the sweat from her face.
From where we were standing, the village looked very close and we could even smell the smoke from the wood fires, but we knew we should not rejoice too soon. In high mountains, the peaks are so tall and the valleys so deep, it takes a long time for the road to wind down from one hillside across to the next. As an old Moso proverb tells, “A man and a woman may sing to each other from the peaks of two mountains, but they will need to carry food for three days if they want to meet halfway.”
Thankfully it took a few hours rather than three days for us to reach the stick fences, where, as usually happens in mountain villages, we were greeted by savage-looking dogs barking at us furiously. As no one came to our rescue, we bent down to pick up some stones, and the dogs, snarling and growling and with their hackles up, retreated to a safer distance. After the dogs the children came out, barefoot and curious, and before long we found ourselves in the house of Yisso’s friend — a tall man with a face black from soot and years of accumulated dirt, and small glowing eyes. His name was Jibu.
Jibu invited us to sit at the place of honor, between the sooty back wall of the house and the fireplace, which consisted of a circular pit in the earth floor and which produced what struck us as a great deal of smoke. There he left us in the company of his wife, who offered us roasted potatoes and then gathered her long skirt underneath her to take her place, as mistress of the house, on the left-hand side of the hearth, while her daughter poured us rice wine and hot tea. Like my Yi sister, Añumo, Jibu’s daughter had a beautiful smile and beautiful white teeth.
Mr. Li was raising a toast when Jibu came back in, leading on a short rope a sheep that stared at us through the thick smoke and bleated in discomfort. I thought the poor animal probably needed salt, but before I had time to say anything, Jibu had smashed a heavy stick over its head and was hauling it out of the house, stunned or dead, across his shoulder. Within minutes he had come back, holding the sheep’s liver in his bloodied hands.
Zhatsonamu raised her hand to her mouth as though she were about to gag. Latsoma and I stared at the man’s hands and then looked at each other. We had never seen anyone kill an animal in such cruel and cold-blooded fashion.
Jibu then prepared to roast the liver over the fireplace, and Yisso explained that this was the local custom, that in Jibu’s village the proper way to treat respected guests was to show them the animal they were about to eat and then kill it and give them the liver. Furthermore, to truly show respect, the animal had to be four legged — it couldn’t be a chicken or a duck. Not wishing to offend anyone, I asked no more questions, and when Jibu handed me a piece of the liver, I took it and thanked him, but I swallowed it whole without chewing.
While Jibu respectfully went about handing us pieces of freshly killed liver, his wife and daughter dragged a large iron pot over the hearth and filled it with water, and when the liver was finally disposed of, Jibu went out again, to hack the sheep into several large pieces, which he then threw into the pot. And at the sight of these pieces of meat and bones dropping into the water, the three Cultural Bureau officials turned a little green.
The aroma of mutton stew soon pervaded the room, seemingly attracting Jibu’s relatives, who began streaming in, bearing wine and the local brew of beer. The house took on a festive atmosphere, with much drinking and singing, dancing and laughing, and by the end of the evening, there was nothing left of the sheep but the bones the dogs were fighting over. And that, Yisso explained, was also the custom of the Yi people, who, whenever they killed an animal, ate the whole thing in one sitting.
It was very late into the night when the last of the guests tottered back to their houses and our hosts to their beds. We spread our cotton quilts straight onto the earth floor next to the fire, and I fell asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. We woke very early next morning, feeling stiff and scratching wildly at our legs, and Latsoma, who could barely open her eyes, complained that she would have preferred the all-star hotel. “Well, maybe the fleas don’t like mutton stew,” Yisso said, laughing. We went out and relieved ourselves in the fields and then washed our faces in the courtyard while Mr. Li and Zhang and Zhu were foaming at the mouth, diligently working their toothbrushes, and the village children, who for their part had not washed since New Year, looked on, puzzled and wordless.
The morning ablutions over, we were again seated around the fire, the daughter of the house serving us tea, still smiling with her beautiful smile, while her mother sat herself at a low table to prepare corn and buckwheat cakes for our breakfast. “You girls are so fortunate to go to the city!” Mrs. Jibu repeated over and over as she kneaded her dough and occasionally blew her nose into her fingers. But we all agreed, even Mr. Li agreed, that her corn cakes were the best we had ever eaten. Mr. Li said that several times as we waved good-bye to Jibu and his family.
One more hillside to descend and we finally reached the cement factory, a huge brick building with a tin roof. It stood in a great dusty quarry that had been carved out of the forest. Workers in blue overalls and dusty caps milled about. It was a strange and ugly sight — and a marvelous sight as well. Ah! And here were the trucks I had so wanted to see! Nois
y and spewing bad odors but nevertheless rolling up and down on the road under their own steam. And there also was the oil road.
We had heard so much about this oil road from the horse-men, but now that we were standing on it, we were so surprised. It was hard and black and dull — where had all the oil gone?
On seeing the three of us touching and smelling the road, Yisso stared as though he were seeing us for the first time in his life. “What are you talking about? What are you doing?” He burst out laughing. “This is not the same oil as we cook with!”
Crestfallen, we moved off to the side of the road and squatted on our heels to wait for Mr. Li, who was arranging our transport to Yanyuan. Then we heard a loud engine noise as a Jeep came toward us, hopping and bumping on the uneven road and across the potholes like a monstrous green rabbit. It stopped right in front of us.
We looked at it and then at each other. There were seven of us. “This thing must have a huge belly!” Latsoma said.
“This is a car. It doesn’t have a belly, it has seats,” Yisso replied. “But we’re not all going to get into it. Mr. Li and the others are waiting for another car.”
The driver got out and opened the back of the car for us to stash our bundles. We obeyed him dutifully and then climbed in, leaving Yisso to close the doors behind us and get into the front seat. We touched the canvas seats and the glass windows and wound the windows up and down and tapped our feet on the floor. We changed seats, several times, to try out which suited us best. Naturally, we all wanted a window, but someone had to sit in the middle and we quickly agreed we would take turns. Latsoma then volunteered to sit between us. When we were finally settled, the driver turned the key in the ignition and we took off with a jerk, hitting our heads together and laughing wildly, and as the car built up speed, we hung out the windows and held our faces to the wind, staring at the trees and the precipice whizzing below us, and we screeched in delighted terror. To this day I can recall the exhilaration, the sheer thrill of the ride — until we had gone a few kilometers on the mountain road, falling over each other to the left and then to the right, and then to the right and left, and again, and I suddenly stopped laughing and said: “I want to throw up.”
We all threw up.
Yisso told the driver to stop.
While the driver mopped up the floor of the car with an old rag, we did our best to clean ourselves, but we could not get rid of the smell on our clothes. “Oh, this is disgusting,” Latsoma cried. “Now the smell is enough to make me sick again!” And Yisso, who had apparently thought of everything, took some fresh ginger out of his bag and broke off a piece for each of us to chew on. “That will stop you from feeling sick,” he said. But it didn’t. We threw up until all we could do was dry retch and our heads felt like they would explode, and at last we could no longer open our eyes — until about five hours later when we arrived in Yanyuan and the car finally stopped.
“That’s it,” Yisso said. “It’s all over now!”
I opened my eyes and looked at the city.
The City
Ishould have found it ugly. The guest house was a squat gray concrete building three stories high, with large glass windows in metal frames, and underneath, white and blue shirts and dark trousers and flesh-colored underwear hung on square metal racks, billowing in the breeze like prayer flags gone awry. The yard was an uneven patch of dirty broken concrete surrounded by buildings and a brick wall with tall iron gates. A gray, dusty haze covered everything, including a half dozen geraniums growing in pots and a poor excuse of a shrub meant to decorate the entrance. Latsoma and Zhatsonamu found it ugly. But I did not.
The tall rectangular building took my breath away. I thought of all the glass Dr. Rock had brought from America and imagined that this must have been how the little glass palace on our island had looked. I tapped my feet on the dirty hard ground and touched it. Curiously, no dirt rubbed off, and I thought, if we had this sort of floor in our courtyard, it would not get muddy and would be a lot easier to sweep. The worn-out local buses parked alongside our Jeep, the people going about their business, milling back and forth between the buildings, the loud unfamiliar noises, and perhaps also the fact that my ears were still ringing with the vibrations of the car engine and my head and stomach had not yet settled from the motion sickness — all of it transported me into a strange and wonderful space, marvelously unreal, as the world beyond our mountains ought to be. And that world, to me, was immediately beautiful.
Latsoma climbed out of the car holding her stomach. “If I had known it was going to be this horrible, I would never have come! When we go home, I am not riding in this car! I’d rather walk all the way!”
“Me, too,” Zhatsonamu joined in. “I’ll never ride in a car again!”
They looked at the surroundings. They said nothing, but the expression of disappointment and shock on their faces spoke plenty.
Latsoma tried shaking the dust from her soiled clothes and she leaned back against the car with a dejected expression on her face. “We look horrible. . . .”
We did. We looked terrible. We were so dirty, covered in red dust, and our clothes reeked of vomit. And we had left our mothers’ houses so beautiful. . . .
“Come, you’ll feel better soon,” Yisso bravely cheered us on, as he pointed toward a building at the end of the yard. “Let’s go to the canteen and get you some sour cabbage. That will settle your stomachs.”
By now we had our doubts about Yisso’s remedies, but the sour cabbage worked better than the ginger. When we felt a little better, Yisso led us to a sink with water faucets. He poured water into an enamel pan and we washed our faces and hands and slowly woke up to the world, but then we could not stop ourselves from turning the water on and off.
When he’d had enough of us playing with the water, Yisso told us to pick up our bundles and follow him inside the guest house. It was only then that we noticed Mr. Li and Zhang and Zhu had not arrived.
“Hey! Where are the other three?” Latsoma asked. “They went home. We’ll see them at dinner.”
I looked above the brick wall at the protruding concrete buildings beyond — so people had homes here in the city. And I wondered what Mr. Li’s house looked like.
The foyer of the guest house was a square room, large enough for people to stand about chatting and laughing, almost as large as the main room of our house. There were a lot of people in this hotel, most of them dressed in minority costumes — Yi, Tibetans, Miao, Lisu — all of them strangers, people who did not speak our language and whom we had never seen before, people who were neither relatives nor friends of relatives and who had come to participate in the singing contest. To the left was the reception booth, with a boxed window beyond which the service woman was taking a nap, her head resting on her arms folded on the service desk. Leaning all the way into the window, Yisso woke her by tapping gently on her shoulder.
She lifted her head and snapped rudely, “What? What do you want?”
And we could not believe our own eyes or ears, for no one in Moso country would ever dream of barking at a guest. But Yisso looked unfazed, and whatever passed between him and the service woman, she eventually came around the corner, holding a set of keys, her spirits up somewhat, because she was smiling — the sort of kindly smile that, I would discover later, is often displayed by city people in their dealings with country folk.
She was wearing a white blouse and black pants, and her hair was pinned back into a bun. There was no cap or shawl on her head, and her lips were painted bright red. Her feet click-clacked on the smooth concrete floor as she stepped ahead of us in her high-heel shoes.
“Hey, Yisso!” Zhatsonamu whispered. “How can she walk on these little sticks?”
“All the city girls can do that,” Yisso answered. “They think those shoes are pretty.”
“Well, I think they look strange and ugly,” Latsoma said. I didn’t say anything but I liked the woman’s shoes. I also liked the way the woman walked in them, with her hips sway
ing prettily from side to side. Most of all, I liked her painted lips. Her mouth looked like a red azalea flower.
She took us upstairs to the second floor, where she unlocked a door to a square room with a smooth cement floor. The walls were painted green halfway up, and the rest was all white. There were four beds, arranged neatly at each corner, covered by a pink cotton spread with a flower motif. Each bed had two pillows, also pink, bordered by frilly trims. At one end of the room was a small wooden table and a chair, and on the table, four bright red enamel thermos flasks with white flowers and a blue enamel basin with pink flowers that looked just like the enamel basin we had at home. On the floor beside the table was a green plastic wastebasket. Sunlight poured in through the large metal window and the effect was perfect. I had never seen anything so beautiful, so colorful, or as bright and cool as this room. We stepped in, carrying our bundles in our arms, and then stopped in our tracks, overwhelmed by so much luxury, so much cleanliness, not daring to tread on the floor or to put our things down.
The service woman pushed past, budging me out of her way with her hip. She slapped the beds and lifted the thermos flasks and pointed to the wastebasket, all the while shouting in Chinese, evidently in the belief that if she yelled loudly enough, we would overcome all language barriers. When she was satisfied that we knew where everything was, she told Yisso where we would find the showers and warned that we needed to call her whenever we wished to get into our rooms and that she did not want to be bothered after eleven o’clock at night. Then she left us and Yisso followed her into the corridor.
Well, no Moso woman would ever shout like this and slap furniture! But then again, we were not in Moso country anymore, we were in the city. We tried the beds, sitting on them and bouncing a little, and then lying down, and then we discovered the white sheets inside. We had never seen sheets before, but we had a good idea that we needed a wash before we dared sleep between them.
Leaving Mother Lake Page 14