by Gao Xingjian
“You can’t say for sure, you just followed him, passed along a big street, went into a lane and came out at the other end, came back to a big street, went into another lane and emerged from it again,”
“And returned to the street you started off from!”
“Dawn is about to break,”
“Come do it again, once more . . .”
I have long tired of the struggles of the human world. In all the fine-sounding discussions, controversies and debates, I have invariably been made the topic, subjected to criticism, made to listen to instructions, made to wait for a verdict, and then waited in vain for some kindly divinity to intervene, to turn Heaven and Earth and get me out of my predicament. This divinity eventually emerged but wasn’t sympathetic and just looked somewhere else.
Everyone wants to be my teacher, my leader, my judge, my good doctor, my adviser, my referee, my elder, my minister, my critic, my guide, my acknowledged leader. Whether I need it or not, people want to be my saviour, my hit man (that is to say my hit-my-hand man), my reborn parents (even though both my parents are dead), or else grandly represent my country for me when I myself don’t know what is country or whether or not I have a country. Others invariably represent me. And my friends, those who argue for me, that is to say are willing to argue in my defence, have all been reduced to circumstances similar to my own. Such is my fate.
I can’t play the tragic role of the defeated hero who fights against fate but I greatly revere those dauntless heroes who charge into danger and when badly injured will still fight on. I can only silently extend my respect and grief to them.
It is also impossible for me to be a recluse. For some reason, I hastily depart from the Palace of Supreme Purity. Is it because I can’t endure the purity of non-being? Is it because I lost patience with reading the several thousand extant volumes of the Ming Dynasty edition of Daoist Scriptures which escaped being burned through the pleading of some old Daoists and are stored in the Daoist Scripture Pavilion? Or is it because I can’t be bothered with hearing any more of the sufferings of the lives of the old Daoists? And that I am also afraid of prying into the secrets locked in the heart of the young Daoist nun? Or is it because I don’t want to destroy my own heart? It seems, in the end, I am just a connoisseur of beauty.
In Haiba, more than 4,000 metres into Tibet, I am warming myself by the fire in a road worker’s stone hut blackened from smoke. Up ahead are huge ice-clad snowy mountains. A bus appears on the highway and a crowd of excited people get off, some have backpacks and some have little iron hammers, some also have specimen folders on their backs. They look like university students here to do practical work and, after poking their heads into the smoke-blackened hut with the windows shut tight, they go off. Only a girl with a red cotton umbrella comes in. Light snow is falling outside.
She thinks I’m a local roadworker and asks for a drink of water as soon as she enters. I use the iron ladle to scoop some from the sooty black pot sitting on the stone slabs around the fire and hand it to her. She takes it, starts drinking, and gives a yell. She’s scalded herself. I can do nothing but apologize. She comes up to the light of the fire, looks at me, and says, “You’re not a local, are you?” Her face, wrapped in a woollen scarf, is red with cold. Since coming onto this mountain I haven’t seen a girl with such beautiful skin and I want to tease her.
“Don’t you think mountain people know how to apologize?”
Her face goes a brighter red.
“Are you doing practical work here too?” she asks.
I can’t say that I could even be her teacher, so I say, “I’m here taking photos.”
“Are you a photographer?”
“I suppose so.”
“We’re here collecting specimens. The scenery is superb!” she exclaims.
“Yes, beyond words.”
It does seem that I am just a connoisseur of beauty. On seeing such a pretty girl I can’t help being affected and suggest, “May I take your photo?”
“Can I put up my umbrella?” she asks, twirling her red umbrella.
“This is black and white film.” I don’t tell her the film I’m using was cut and put together from a whole lot of reject movie stock I’d bought.
“It doesn’t matter, artistic photographers all use black and white film.” She seems to know a bit about it. She follows me outside. A large part of the sky is filled with fine swirling snow and she puts up her bright red umbrella to fend off the wind.
Although it is May and already spring, the snow on the mountain still hasn’t completely thawed and in between the patches of white, little purple fritillary flowers are growing everywhere and occasionally there are squat bushes of dark red stonecrop. Beneath the bare cliff, a green velvety artemesia stretches out a furry stalk with a big yellow flower.
“How about here?” I say. The big snow-covered mountain in the background was clearly visible early in the morning but right now the fine snow has turned it into a faint grey shadow.
“Does this look all right?” She poses and tilts her head but the mountain wind is quite strong and she can’t hold the umbrella steady.
She looks even better struggling to hold up the umbrella against the wind.
Further ahead is a trickling creek with a thin crust of ice flanked by big yellow alpine buttercups.
“Go over there!” I yell, pointing to the creek.
She struggles with her umbrella in the wind as she runs and I zoom in with my lens. She is panting, the fine snow has turned to misty rain and her scarf and hair sparkle with drops of water. I signal to her.
“Have you finished?” she calls out against the wind. Drops of water sparkle on her eyelashes and she looks even better. Unfortunately, I’ve already come to the end of my film.
“Can you send me the photo?” she asks hopefully.
“If you leave me an address.”
As my bus is about to leave, she runs up and hands me through the window a page torn out of her notebook with her name and a number of some street in Chengdu written on it. She says I am welcome to come, and waves goodbye.
Later, when I return to Chengdu, I pass by this old street. I remember the number of her house and go past the front of it but don’t go in. I don’t send her the photo afterwards either. After developing my big pile of film, apart from the few I really need, I don’t print most of it. I don’t know whether or not one day I’ll have all this film made into prints, nor do I know whether she will look as stunningly beautiful in the photo.
On Huanggang Mountain, which is the main mountain of the Wuyi Range, I manage to photograph a splendid deciduous pine growing in the belt of conifers in the lower section of the sub-alpine grassy marshland adjoining the peak. Halfway up the trunk it suddenly divides into two almost horizontal branches. It is like a giant falcon flapping its wings ready to take off and the part right between the two wings is exactly like the head and beak looking down.
Nature creates, in this mystical way, not only powerful vitality such as this but also exquisite, ever-changing feminine beauty. It also creates evil. It is also in the Wuyi Mountains, on the south side of the mountain reserve, that I see a huge decaying torreya. The core of the tree is hollow and could be a nest for a python, but on the sparse branches growing out at an angle from the iron-like black bark, small dark green leaves tremble. At sunset, the valley is plunged into shadows and above a sea of fine gentle bamboos burnished green and orange by the setting sun, this ancient tree suddenly looms up, its decaying black branches wilfully outstretched like a malevolent demon. This photo I do develop and print and whenever I look at it, it chills my heart and I can’t look at it for long. I realize that it brings to the surface the dark aspect in the depths of my soul, which terrifies even me. I can only recoil when confronted by beauty or evil.
It is on Wudang Mountain that I see possibly the last Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect. He is the embodiment of this sort of evil. I heard about him on the way up the mountain at a place I made my camp site. An old
Daoist nun has made her home in a ramshackle hut outside the wall of the Courtyard of Steles of the sacked Ming Imperial Palace. I ask her about this famous Daoist mountain in those better times of long ago and she starts to talk about the main school of Daoism. She says there is only one old Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect alive. He is over eighty and has never come down the mountain, preferring to stay all year round keeping guard at the Gold Top. No-one dares to provoke him.
I rush to catch the first bus early in the morning to South Cliff, then make my way on foot up the mountain track to the Gold Top. Already past noon, it is overcast and bleak on the mountain and there are no tourists about. I go right around the cold winding corridors and find that the doors are either bolted from the inside or have iron padlocks hanging on the outside. Only one thick and heavy door fitted with iron bars is slightly ajar. I push hard and finally get it open. An old man with dishevelled hair and bristling whiskers in a long gown, turns and stands up at the side of the brazier. He is large and tall and his dark ruddy face shows a violent streak. He barks ferociously, “What are you up to?”
“May I ask if you are the custodian of the Gold Top?” The tone of my voice is very polite.
“There is no custodian here!”
“I know the Daoist temple here hasn’t yet resumed activities, but would you be the former head Daoist?”
“There is no head Daoist here!”
“Then may I ask if you, venerable elder, are a Daoist?”
“What if I am a Daoist?” His black eyebrows which have a sprinkling of white hairs also bristle.
“May I ask if you are a member of the Pure Unity Sect? I heard that it is only at the Gold Top that there is still–”
“I don’t belong to any sect!”
Without letting me finish he opens the door and chases me out.
“I’m a journalist,” I hasten to say. “The government is now implementing religious policies, I can help you get a report through.”
“I don’t know what a journalist is!” And with that slams the door shut.
At the time, I saw an old woman and a young woman sitting by the brazier, they were probably his family. I know that the Pure Unity Sect can marry and have children and even join with all sorts of men and women to practise sexual techniques. I can’t help imagining the most wicked things about him. His eyes shone like bronze bells under his bushy eyebrows and his voice was gruff and booming. His whole presence was menacing and he was clearly an exponent of the martial arts: it is little wonder that for years no-one has dared to provoke him. Even if I knocked on the door again the outcome would not necessarily be any better, so following the narrow path with the iron hand rail I make my way up to the golden temple cast in yellow bronze.
The mountain wind impregnated with fine rain is howling. I come to the front of the temple where I encounter a middle-aged woman with big hands and feet. She has her hands clasped in prayer before the bronze temple. She is dressed like a peasant but her threatening stance is that of a drifter who has travelled around. I amble away and holding onto the iron railing threaded through stone posts pretend to be looking at the scenery. The wind howls and the dwarf pines growing from crevices in the cliff shake violently. Gusts of clouds and mist brush over the mountain path below, from time to time revealing the sea of dark forest there.
I look around. She is right behind me in the martial arts iron post stance, her eyes narrowed to slits and devoid of expression. They have their own closed world which I will never be able to enter. They have their own methods of survival and self-protection and roam beyond the fringes of what is known as society. However, I can only return to pass my existence in what people are accustomed to calling a normal life, there is no alternative for me, and probably this is my tragedy.
I make my way down the mountain path. A restaurant on a level part of the slope is still open but there are no tourists inside, just a few waiters in white jackets eating dinner around a table. I don’t go in.
On the slope, a big iron bell taller than a person is lying in the dirt. I hit it with my hand but it is solidly stuck and doesn’t ring. There must have been a temple here once but now as far as the eye can see there are only weeds trembling in the wind. I follow the slope down and before me is a steep rock path.
I can’t stop myself and go faster and faster and within ten minutes I am in the secluded valley. On both sides of the rock steps the forest blocks out the sky, the sound of the wind is muffled and I can no longer feel the drizzling rain. Probably the rain is only in the clouds and mist on the mountain top. The forest becomes darker and darker, I don’t know if I am in the dark forest I saw looking down through the mist and rain from the Gold Top, nor can I remember if I came along a path like this on my way up. I look back at the many steep rock steps I have come down: to climb back up to look for the way I came would be just too exhausting, so I keep going down.
Here the rock steps have deteriorated, unlike the path up which has had some repairs. I realize I have reached the dark side of the mountain and just let my legs carry me down: when people are about to die their souls probably rush unstoppably to Hell like this.
At first I hesitate and from time to time look back, but afterwards, beguiled by the sight of Hell, I no longer bother. The round tops of the stone posts along the gloomy mountain path look more and more like bald heads. Further down in the valley it is damper and the stone posts are all askew. They are badly eroded and look more like two rows of skulls on top of the posts. I fear that my impure thoughts about the old Daoist have incurred his curses and that he is using his magic on me to make me lose my way. Terror suddenly rises from the depths of my heart and I become confused.
Swirling mists and vapours spread around me. The forest becomes even darker and the damp stone slabs lying askew and the lurid grey-white stone posts are like skeletons. I make my way through the white bones, my feet disregarding my commands. Unable to stop myself I plunge headlong into the abyss of death, sweat oozing from my spine.
I must stop my feet and quickly get off this mountain path. Ignoring the brambles at a bend, I charge into the forest and by embracing the trunk of a tree, I finally come to a stop. My face and arms sting and hurt and probably it is blood that is running down my face. I look up and see a cow’s eye on the trunk observing me. I look around. All around, far and near, the trunks of the trees all have huge eyes and all of them are looking at me, coldly.
I must calm down – this is just a forest of lacquer trees. It is only after the mountain folk tap them for raw lacquer and abandon them that they develop this nether world appearance. I could also say that this is simply hallucination induced by my inner fears, my soul in the darkness is spying on me, this multitude of eyes is simply me scrutinizing myself. I always have the feeling of being spied upon which makes me feel uneasy all over, in fact this is only my fear of myself.
When I return to the mountain path, fine rain is falling. The stone slabs are all wet, I no longer look and just blindly charge down.
The initial reactions of panic, terror, struggling and wild thrashing pass, then there is confusion. You are lost in an eerie, primeval forest, standing bewildered under a leafless tree which is dead, withered and waiting to topple. For a long time you loiter about this strange fish skeleton pointing at an angle into the grey misty sky, reluctant to leave the only signpost you recognize, even if it’s just something in your hazy memory.
You refuse to be skewered to death on a fishbone like a fish out of water. Instead of wasting energy scouring your memories, why not discard this last thread to the familiar human world? Of course you will be more lost but you do still clearly have in your embrace a thread of life.
You find you are at the edge of the forest and the valley, and confronting you is yet another choice. Should you return to the endless forest or go to the bottom of the valley? On the cold dark mountain is a stretch of alpine grassland with the grey shapes of a few trees here and there, the black towering places would be bare cliffs. Somehow the ch
urning foam of the river in the valley attracts you and without further thought, you stride towards it and run straight down to it.
You realize you will never return to the human world with its anxieties and warmth. Those distant memories are tiresome. You cannot stop yourself from giving a loud shout and charging towards this dark River of Forgetting. Running and yelling, roars of joy emerge from deep in your lungs and bowels like a wild animal. To start with you came fearlessly shouting and yelling into the world, then you were stifled by all sorts of customs, instructions, rituals and teachings. Now finally you have regained the joy of shouting with total freedom. Strangely, however, you can’t hear your own voice. You are running with arms outstretched, shouting, panting, shouting again, running again, but still there is no sound.
You see the line of churning white foam but cannot distinguish the upper or lower part of the river which flickers then vanishes in the mist. You are weightless, relaxed, and experience a never before experienced freedom. You feel a slight trepidation but you don’t know why you are afraid.