by Xiaolu Guo
‘What about Mother? Isn’t she angry with you for writing to her?’ I whispered, trying not to let my mother hear us from the next room.
‘Your mother knows the whole story. We never keep secrets, there’s no such thing in marriage. I always read my letters to your mother before posting them, and she gives me comments. It’s always been this way.’
No secrets in marriage. Indeed, my mother didn’t show any bitterness towards this other woman; if anything, I could detect a twinge of envy over her American life. Although I’m sure my parents were as clueless about America as me. But the photos were amazing enough. I remember once she sent one of her local supermarket, somewhere in the suburbs of Philadelphia. ‘Look, Xiaolu,’ my father said, ‘this is a Western supermarket!’ I stared at the glossy photo; what I saw was a large modern building with a row of shiny cars parked outside. Displays of black-coloured cakes were visible through the windows (I didn’t know what chocolate was then), as well as shelves of cute, blonde-haired dolls. I was absolutely blown away. A supermarket! It was so beautiful to the eyes of a small-town Chinese child. America must be on one of the Nine Continents the Taoist monk had talked about. I swore I would go there one day.
Misty Poetry with Optimism
As if the American Chinese woman had cast a spell on me, my head started to fill with thoughts about poetry and love. She was a poet, and so had my father been before becoming a painter. And they had loved each other. Did they love each other because they were poets? Is that what poets did? Did they still love each other, or had those feelings been killed off during the years of separation when my father was in a labour camp? I was used to reciting Tang Dynasty poems at school, but I had never really paid attention until then. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and what this thing ‘poetry’ really was. At some point I started to read all the poetry I could find to try and uncover these supposed magical powers. But perhaps it was because she was in America? American poets? I should read them first. So I went to the biggest bookshop in Wenling looking for American poetry books. Previously banned during the Cultural Revolution, collections like Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and Ezra Pound’s Cantos were suddenly available. I was drawn to these texts, but I was still too young to really understand them. Then I tried to write some poems myself. I was more inclined to write using image and metaphor than narrative. The style I sought to emulate had been given the most dreamy, fantastical name in Chinese: Misty Poetry. It had emerged after the Cultural Revolution and became very popular among the young intellectuals of the 1980s in China. Young writers no longer wanted to be told to write about politics or the Communist Party. They wanted to make the land, the cloud-covered mountains, the foggy sea, ethereal love, the subjects of their writing. And contrary to the strict formal requirements of classical poetry, it did away with rhyme schemes and tonal patterns. It was, in the words of the time, historically free.
I wrote my first Misty Poem at the age of thirteen. It was called ‘Autumn’, and the first stanza went like this:
I walked into the autumn forest
Feeling the touch of a leaf
falling behind my head
I turned around, and
Only found my melancholy
My father read those first lines and they satisfied him, but he wasn’t as convinced by the mournful tone as each stanza developed. The last lines went:
I gazed at the dried souls around my feet
And wondered about the difference
Between
the death of a leaf, and
the death of a human
After reading the whole poem, my father turned to me with a deep frown scored across his forehead. ‘What do you know about death? You’re only thirteen!’
I had witnessed my grandfather’s suicide and more recently the death of my grandmother. They had raised me for the first seven years of my life, and now they were no longer here. Why couldn’t I write about death? But I was too afraid to answer back.
‘It’s a very negative perspective on life, even for a poem. You should always look at the positive,’ my father announced in a slightly disapproving tone. ‘You should always try to give a positive ending, even in a Misty Poem.’
A positive ending. Was that why he never visited us in that dim, depressing house in Shitang? Is that why he ran away from his father’s way of life, because it wasn’t positive enough? I wondered.
I continued writing poetry and started expanding into the short essay form. I continued using the death metaphors, and sometimes even tackled the subject head on, despite my father’s disapproval. With the letters from America and my new passion for writing poetry, my father believed I might become an accomplished poet when I grew up. It even inspired him to take up writing again, and he would show me his lines. His preferred imagery was always linked to the sea, the moon, the mountains, as well as everyday fishermen and villagers. He didn’t like the classical style of rigid rules or rhymes either. He was, after all, a modernist. He was a good influence on me, because he encouraged me to do away with restrictions of form and tradition. Since Misty Poetry was very much influenced by Western modernism, my father introduced me to Walt Whitman. He read these lines to me from a translation of Leaves of Grass:
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.
I repeated in my mind the words, ‘You must travel it by yourself’. It sparked a kind of excitement in me, and soon became my mantra. Yes, I will travel the road by myself. I will. The road is everywhere, on water and on land. I will travel it by myself.
Because of Leaves of Grass, I began to collect strange-shaped leaves from the almond tree, the Japanese maple, the crying plant, wisteria. I dried each carefully selected leaf and flattened them in between the pages of my diary. Soon my collection had grown so huge that I had to relocate them into the pages of A Study of the Thoughts of Marx and Lenin, which I had found on my father’s shelf. I relabelled the book with my own title World Leaf Collection. It was not much of a ‘world’ collection. The dried specimens were just fallen autumn leaves picked up from the street corners of Wenling.
I started reading Whitman. I connected more and more with his lyrical style, and with his descriptions of vibrant trees, grasses, mountains and seas. I would learn verses of his poems and recite them to myself as I wandered on the bamboo hills behind our house, searching for my perfect leaves and moulding my heart into Whitman’s words. I started to write every day, to do more than just imitate him. And then I started to send the results of my labours to literary magazines. At first I got no response. But one day, my first letter of acceptance arrived. By the age of fourteen, I had published my first poem and received my first hui kuan by post (the official payment cheque sent from publisher to author). Over the next year, I managed to publish a few more and even won first prize at the National Young People’s Poetry Competition. I was on the road to becoming a poet.
Five Thousand Miles of Coastline Expedition
Just as I spent my days at school, my father spent his days in his studio, painting. But I could see he wasn’t happy being a state painter. Once home, he chain-smoked by the kitchen window, frowning and not talking to my mother. The moon above the bamboo hills was often very bright and he used to stare at it intensely, as if meditating on its luminosity.
One day, as we were finishing our evening meal, my father placed his chopsticks on his bowl, and then, after sitting in silence for a few brief moments, turned to my mother.
‘Xiaomei, I have to leave.’
My mother looked down at her rice and didn’t respond. I could hear her breath deepening. My brother took his chance, and reached for the rest of the dumplings on the serving plate. My father continued in a clear and steady voice. He seemed to have prepared his words, which he reproduced
with a certain gravity.
‘China has a great coastline, with thousands of bays and beaches. I am a painter of the sea, but I know only this small corner of the world. To continue to develop, I must walk this coastline, to know and feel it deeply and remake myself as an artist. I will make a thousand sketches, in watercolour, ink and pencil, and this will be the new foundation for my work. I have decided the time has come for me to do this. I have to leave home and begin my journey.’
‘How long will it take?’ my mother said with sadness but evident resignation.
‘It won’t be a short trip.’ Then my father tried to make light of it. ‘Ideally, I will go on foot without taking buses or trains. I imagine it will be at least six months …’ My father’s voice was gentle but firm.
‘Six months!’ my mother exclaimed. ‘You’re not coming back home for six months?’
We had all stopped eating and were staring at him. Even my brother was visibly concerned about this news. He was already taking lessons in painting and calligraphy from our father, and he was progressing well. He didn’t want our father to go away now.
‘I have already sent the request to my superior at the Provincial Culture Bureau, asking for their assistance. And they said they would stamp my work unit reference letter. I feel very encouraged,’ my father finished.
At that time there were only two types of citizens in China: government officials and the rest of us. An artist needed an official introduction letter from an upper-level governmental department in order to receive assistance when travelling around the country. Without that letter, my father wouldn’t have been allowed to stay at hotels in other provinces.
My mother was silent, like a small stone statue, her emotions knotted inside her. We could all feel her growing anger towards my father, but she seemed to be swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth. She was, after all, a woman born in 1940s China. She didn’t have her own goals in life, and often felt abandoned by my father. Yet at the same time, she felt it was her obligation to support his work.
So that was it. My father had made up his mind. He wanted to hitchhike along the Chinese coastline to develop his art. And he gave the project the grandest of names: ‘Five Thousand Miles of Coastline Sketching Expedition’. He even knew how he was going to present his final report for his superiors – he would put on an exhibition of all his sea-life sketches once he had returned home.
The task my father had set himself was immense. The Chinese coastline is vast, stretching from the North China Sea next to the Bay of Korea and the Sea of Japan, then all the way down to the Yellow Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, the Qiongzhou Strait and finally the South China Sea. It is also dotted with innumerable islands both closer and farther from the mainland. The northern part of the Chinese coastline was going to be the more straightforward part of the trip, he told me. It was mostly blocked by marine bases that he wouldn’t be able to enter. But the southern part was more irregular and the landscape here interested him more. Much of the Zhejiang and Fujian coastline, for example, was rocky and steep. People had lived along its edge for thousands of years. Farther south the coast became less rugged: low mountains and hills reached towards the sea gradually, with river deltas and fertile fields meeting the ocean. As my father pointed his finger on the map, my eyes lit up like two lamps. I wished I could go with him. But I couldn’t. I had to go to school. I had to wait, until one day when I was an adult and could decide to leave myself.
The morning before my father’s departure, large bags blocked the doorway. He was taking one large bag which contained two cameras and many rolls of film, wrapped up in his sweater. Another was filled with his painting materials and sketchbooks. His ambition was clear. Before he left, some government officials came to say goodbye to him. A group of television journalists were going to film his leaving. Somehow his project had become famous in the province. He told my mother that he would write letters to us. And just like that, he went, leaving my mother and us on the roadside. He simply walked off, along the dusty road, lorries and buses bustling past him, battering him with gusts of an indifferent wind. As he disappeared into the haze, a small figure laden with the weight of his painting materials, I felt a tightening in my throat and a moistening of my eyes. I missed him already. I wanted to run after him, to join him on his great quest, and get away from this stale small-town life.
My father had left me something before his departure, however, as if he knew that I would need something to sustain me in his absence. He had left two books on my bed, with a brief note that said: ‘I loved these books. Reading them will help you understand why I had to leave. One day you will do the same yourself.’
One of the books was a biographical novel about Van Gogh, Lust for Life, and the other was Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. By the early 1980s, restrictions on Western literature had been loosened and almost everything was available to Chinese readers. That night after my father’s departure, I started reading The Old Man and the Sea. I was almost fourteen. I had never heard of Hemingway. I had read Western poetry and been dazzled by its directness. But Western narrative fiction was a new thing for me. The story didn’t draw me in instantly, although I saw in the image of the old fisherman my grandfather, who had spent most of his life in the same way as the old man in the novel. Both used the most basic kinds of fishing tools. Both murmured to themselves and felt the bitterness of their poverty. I could understand why my father had been drawn to this book.
Some lines did leave a deep impression on me, such as ‘Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.’ These words seemed to touch something within me, though I didn’t know quite what it was. Naturally, reading them took me back to Shitang, where I had known the sea and its creatures. The fishermen of my childhood had worshipped turtles. Our steamed rice cakes were always stamped with their image, especially during the festival season. My grandmother had a bench carved in the shape of a turtle, and that was one of the most valuable objects in the house. We knew that the good old sea turtle could live up to 150 years, and a fisherman paid his respects when they caught one by mistake by either letting it go or keeping it as a pet in their house. But Hemingway’s old man identified with the turtle and its plight in a way that was new to me. I finished reading the novel within days, but I didn’t feel that I had totally understood the book. The Van Gogh one I saved for later.
While Father was Away
During those six months of my father’s absence, each one of us left behind faced some sort of a crisis. First, my mother had a serious fall down the stairs, breaking one of her arms and injuring her back. She was hospitalised for weeks. She asked me to write a letter for her to the address on the back of my father’s last letter, but got no response. No one really knew where he was, and we only received more details when his next letter arrived.
‘I have just arrived at Qinghuang Island, where the Great Wall plunges into the sea. It’s blue and windy here and you cannot help but admire how the army in ancient times managed to build this part of the Great Wall …’ More romantic rambling followed in the next paragraph. ‘There is a temple dedicated to the Lady of Mengjiang which I visited today. This Lady of Mengjiang, whose husband was sent to build the Great Wall of China, missed her husband so profoundly that her tears flooded the Wall. An impressive story, but even more impressive scenery here!’
He wrote this to my mother entirely without irony. It could only be a one-way correspondence. We received another letter in which my father had sent a beautifully shaped golden almond leaf for me.
‘This leaf is for Xiaolu’s World Leaf Collection – it fell on my shoulders while I was walking through the forest in Hainan Island, at our country’s southernmost tip.’
I had barely any specimens from outside our province in my World Leaf Collection. As I placed it among the others, I imagined a tropical forest in the middle of the South Ch
ina Sea full of golden leaves. How much I wished I was with him! The letters just made my mother unhappy. Once she was out of hospital, my brother and I had to look after her and cook every day. Sometimes I had to ask for leave from school. I remember seeing her weeping on the bed when I brought in a bowl of noodle soup. But even then, we weren’t brought closer together as mother and daughter. It was a burden to look after her and do the household chores. In my heart, I was coming to know what it was like to be a trapped housewife, just like my grandmother. A house made a woman busy with meaningless things. And now it seemed that I too had been swallowed by such a fate, while my father wandered freely.
Then my brother got bored being stuck in the house without much to do. He started associating with some wild teenagers who smoked and engaged in gang fights. He was only sixteen, but he no longer came back home until the early hours of the morning. He was often drunk and stank of cigarette smoke. He started missing class. But since my mother loved him, she felt powerless to change his bad behaviour.
Those six months felt very long and lonely to me. For some reason, though, it was during that time that Hu Wenren stopped following me through the mazes of Wenling’s streets, and so for now the sexual abuse ended. But I didn’t feel any sense of relief. Instead, I felt unpredictable danger lurking at every corner like a miasma. I had one or two female friends from my class, but I had never mentioned my plight to them, nor anyone else. I couldn’t stand living with my mother and brother without my father to temper their behaviour. I didn’t feel emotionally attached to them. I was intimidated and frightened by both of them most of the time. My father had been my only protection. One lonely night, two months after my father had left, I remembered the other book he had left me: Lust for Life. With an image of my father sitting by some rocky bay, sketching boats and waves, I picked it up and started reading.