The Remote Country of Women

by Hua Bai

  leading now? Only cavemen living ten thousand years ago

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  had lives like yours, so chaotic that a child knows his

  mother but not his father. This is the residue of group marriage. You are party members. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? This is far from the morality of a party member. We cannot put up with this anymore. Comrade Jiang Qing has

  given special attention to our team. Listen to the instructions of Comrades Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan on

  how to accomplish your great historical mission. In the

  shortest possible time, by force or by persuasion, you must drag our Mosuo kinsmen out of the stone age and into modern life with the rest of us!”

  Bima, a twenty-year-old female party member, said in a

  thin voice, “During the year of the Great Leap For-

  ward...they said the same thing. But later – ”

  “What happened later?”

  “The women and men who married ended up separating

  and returning to their mothers.”

  “I can assure you that this year is not the same as ’58. If that year saw a storm, this time there will be a hurricane!

  We will not give up until we have carried the revolution through to the end!”

  “I can take the lead in all things except – ” Bima stam-

  mered, “except in this kind of thing. I...I...I can’t take lead.”

  “Then you’ll be expelled from the party!”

  “So be it.”

  “So be what? You will still have to get your marriage certificate, even after you lose your party membership.”

  “I...I...” Raising her head, Bima suddenly found cour-

  age. “I don’t see why the members of the central committee should give a damn about what’s inside a man’s pants or

  under a woman’s skirt! We have been leading a decent,

  peaceful life, not a speck of chaos in it. No Mosuo has ever committed a crime, and none of us ever goes to court or

  picks a fight with her neighbor. Why are you forcing us to accept marriage? Why are you trying to separate us from

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  our own kin and break up our matrilineal families? We are not accustomed to living in a family of strangers, separated from our own mothers and maternal uncles.”

  “Your head is on backward! Only monogamy fits current

  moral standards – can’t you get that through your head?”

  Nobody replied. Gu Shuxian roared out, “Understand?”

  The three party members shook their heads in unison.

  “Listen to me!” Gu Shuxian took off her sterile mask.

  Bits of white foam sprayed from the corners of her mouth as she screamed, “Without a marriage certificate, a man and a woman cannot become legal spouses. Men and women who

  ‘sleep together’ (what a vivid term) are committing a crime.

  When they are caught by the team, if they repent, they may get their food ration reduced; if they resist, they will be declared undesirables and sent to jail to reform themselves there! Now hear what I say: Everything I just said becomes effective immediately. Let’s hold a mass meeting.”

  On hearing this, the eavesdropping children crawled

  back to the village. Like an impatient bird with seven beaks and eight tongues, in broken phrases and fragmented concepts they all tried at the same time to tell the adults what they had heard at the meeting. In spite of the verbal confusion, the message was clear that no one was allowed to make axiao anymore unless they got marriage papers and entered into a one-husband, one-wife relationship. On hearing that the team was determined to break up their extended matrilineal family, quite a few men and women started to weep aloud. They had a hunch that this time would be even more disastrous than ’58.

  At the mass meeting, Gu Shuxian read out loud the arti-

  cle by Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, which was

  immeasurably tedious, like the endless rumbling of a water mill. No one understood a word of it. Even Suola couldn’t translate it. But no one was really sleepy. Thanks to the young eavesdroppers, the villagers already knew the gist of the article. Such a lengthy article was made simple and con-9

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  cise through the medium of children: a man and a woman

  cannot sleep together without official approval; also, when a man and a woman do not wish to sleep together anymore,

  they must go to the authorities to get a stamped, official paper. Otherwise, the officials will search your place and catch you.

  After she had finished reading the document, Gu Shu-

  xian asked the masses to discuss it. They sat through three candles, but no one said a word. Emphasizing each word,

  Gu repeated what she had said at the party meeting. Then she warned them, “Don’t try to test the law with your own body. Adultery deserves the most severe punishment. If you do not want marriage, just stay in your own home and don’t go out. Can you manage that?”

  No answer. Perhaps silence was the best answer.

  The older Mosuo rose first and exited the meeting place, followed by the women, the men, and the party members.

  The children brought up the rear. Gu Shuxian put on her

  sterile mask in a fit of anger and mumbled, “Let’s see who is tougher! Let’s see how long you can bear celibacy!”

  She was going on thirteen. Oh, beautiful Sunamei! A grain of corn was about to bloom.

  This occurred in the summer of 1975. A most peculiar,

  destructive revolution in China had already been dragging on for nine years, surpassing the length of the interminable anti-Japanese war of the thirties and the forties. If this could be called a flame, then the flame was dim but still smolder-ing. No one could really put it out. Moreover, these monsters who had illuminated themselves and burned others

  with this flame kept pouring oil onto the dying fire in desperation. So millions of Chinese were still being burned alive.

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  2

  I gaze at her window. In the past it was pasted

  over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.

  So here I am again, in this place so familiar

  and full of affection. Oh, I can’t help leaning against a plane tree on the sidewalk. I’m too weak to stand, and wounds

  cover my body like the scales on a fish. Torture, hunger, toil, lack of sleep, insomnia – all these have disappeared since yesterday. I can hardly believe the past is really gone; perhaps it has merely been suspended. During the past few

  years, I have adopted a sort of spiritual equilibrium that enables me to relegate any disaster – as soon as it has ended

  – to the status of nightmare. Reality only exists once I awaken from the nightmare. The din of the metropolis, the ceaseless flow of the crowds regardless of weather and time, the plane tree turning green, emitting its fragrance, the window on that third floor from which the light floods out

  – all this is real. Although reality is at hand, I can’t go over and rush upstairs right now because I have no energy left.

  That lovable shadow in that window is her. No one but me would be able to tell that she is listening to music as usual.

  How often she used to turn on the record player stealthily and put that warped copy of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony on the turntable. Every time it went around, the needle

  would move up and down once, distorting each quarter note by the interval of a sixth. She would turn the volume down 1 1

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  so low that no one could hear it from outside. At those

  moments, when tears glistened in her eyes and a glass of hot water warmed her hands, she looke
d most beautiful, as

  though transfigured into the world of pure music. In the middle of all this vandalism, it was a miracle she could have a Tchaikovsky album. It was indeed a miracle, and I had

  brought it about.

  The revolution of 1966, an entire nation gone insane,

  began with the savage destruction of cultural monuments.

  At that time I was an idealistic youth, a freshman at the College of Fine Arts, throwing myself into the revolutionary currents. Burn! We burned the Bamboo Slips of the early

  Qin; we burned the scriptures brought back by Buddhist

  Master Xuanzhuang from the Western Heaven (India); we

  burned the original works of Minangong, Tang Yin, Wen

  Zhengming, and Xu Wenchang. Needless to say, replicas of European Renaissance masters were all burned to ashes.

  Smash! We smashed the stone carvings and frescoes of the Sui and Tang; we smashed the fine porcelain art of the

  northern Song. Even human heads could hardly escape the

  fate of being smashed.

  That winter I had been extremely lucky. The headquar-

  ters of the Red Guards had made me leader of the group

  raiding the Music Reference Library. At that time, the

  power of a group leader was indeed great; after all, Jiang Qing was merely an assistant group leader. I commanded

  my group of young warriors to remove everything from

  stacks and drawers, heap all the musical scores, albums, and tapes in the courtyard, spray gasoline on the heap, and then light a match. Just one match started a blazing fire. Around the fire we young warriors, holding Little Red Books to our hearts, chanted Quotations of Chairman Mao. I sincerely felt that we were creating an epoch, a great revolution that

  would shake heaven and earth. In a flash, what had been created through years of labor by the masters of world music was burned to ashes. Yet I firmly believed that we were

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  merely eliminating the germs detrimental to humanity.

  From now on, the universe would be forever purged of such bourgeois music.

  As the person in charge of the destruction, I was the last to leave that “slaughterhouse.” Leaning against the wall in a dark corner, I watched with pride and satisfaction as the embers glowed – now bright, now dim – when a middle-aged woman wearing a worn-out padded hat and a faded,

  outmoded army overcoat, floated up from the basement.

  Unaware of me, she walked with dazed eyes to the embers, which were still emitting heat, and started poking around in them helplessly. I admired her boldness from the bottom of my heart, but at the same time I hated her for being so counterrevolutionary. How could I let her go on? I ran up to her, and she, like a chick in the shadow of a vulture, was immediately seized by sobs. Writhing on the ground, she

  turned a tear-streaked face toward me, stared at me, and sank into a state of abject terror. I acted the part of the victorious warrior pointing a bayoneted rifle at his captive.

  “Who are you?”

  “The library researcher.”

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I…am…cry…” Her quivering lips were unable to get

  the words out.

  “Why are you crying?” I took another step toward her.

  Fearfully and cautiously she turned her back to me. Her

  eyes, like those of a frightened doe, looked over her shoulder at me, accompanied by fits of shivering. I didn’t know why a sudden feeling of pity rose from my heart and my face

  became less stern. She whispered, “Have you ever listened to music?”

  “What do you mean?” My revolutionary vigilance imme-

  diately made every cell of my body taut.

  “If… you…” Her weak voice, like the chirping of a

  tiny bird, moved me to hear her out. “If you have a

  chance… listen to any of these albums in peace; you will 1 3

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  understand how great those masters are. If you had heard any of them before, you wouldn’t have treated them – ”

  “Ha – you have a lot of confidence in their bourgeois cultural superiority, don’t you?” I sneered.

  “Only if you listen to it will you understand. Please listen to it in peace – ”

  I kicked the heap of ashes, as if to tell her, “This heap of ashes will never make another sound.” She understood my

  meaning very well. After wiping her shivering, dirty hands on her overcoat, she took from her bosom a single album, with Tchaikovsky’s portrait on the cover.

  “Still one… left, the only one. Since I can’t protect it myself, you may take it and listen to it. Sooner or later

  …you will find a record player. You must find a quiet place, although it’s hard to find such a place now. You will find one, however; perhaps the upstairs room of a building whose capitalist owner has just been driven out.”

  I was quite at a loss as to what to do with this woman.

  Her audacity could only indicate either insanity or addiction to the drug of bourgeois culture; in either case, she was definitely beyond salvation, I thought. I grabbed the album from her and threw it to the concrete floor. The woman,

  who must have heard the sound of the album cracking,

  threw herself toward it and became hysterical. Holding the album in her arms, she roared in rage, “You, can’t you leave even this last one unbroken?”

  Out of curiosity, and with the generosity of a victor, I said with a smile, “Okay, give it to me. I’ll listen to it. But remember, I can never be corrupted by it.”

  Her eyes full of confidence, she offered me the album

  with such solemnity that I wanted to smash it. Fortunately, her eyes were soon shut. With both hands touching her

  heart, she froze as if in silent prayer.

  I wrapped the album in one of our revolutionary pos-

  ters, took it secretly to my dorm, and hid it in the bottom of my suitcase, hoping to find a chance to listen to it. But 1 4

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  then, fighting one battle after another, I completely forgot about it.

  I gaze at her window. In the past it was pasted over with black paper; now a cloth curtain with tiny blue flowers hangs there.

  Now she must be listening to that album. From her sil-

  houette I can tell that the second movement is already

  underway.

  It was she who made me take that forgotten album from

  the bottom of my suitcase. I should cross the street quickly, climb the stairs, knock at her door, fall straight into her arms, and lean against her shoulder, together at last, listening with her to that quivering of the human heart composed by Tchaikovsky. But I am too weak to move even a single

  step. A feeling of relaxation is incapacitating me, as if I were a swimmer approaching the shore. I want to call to her for help. Licking my parched lips, I find I have lost my voice. I don’t even know how to shout or cry. In the surging waves of the metropolitan din, my tongue is as insignificant as the quivering of a bamboo leaf in the thunderstorm.

  I began retracing my past. How did I get to know her?

  When did my love first begin? Three years ago? Yes, it was three years ago that I first saw this window. And before that? Where was I during the three years before those three years? Now I remember. That was 1969. That year we, the

  palace guards of Jiang Qing, were disbanded like captives who had surrendered their guns and, under the policy of so-called military training, were incorporated into the regular army, not as privates but as scapegoats, leading a half-imprisoned life on a farm. That bitch Jiang Qing finally abandoned us. Mixed feelings of anger, grief, insult, and a heavy sense of loss shattered all my beliefs. I was too tired to open my eyes and I hated to think about anything. I had no wish to repea
t others’ thoughts but had no thoughts of my own either. Thank heaven, my duty on the farm was looking 1 5

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  after water buffaloes, a duty that enabled me to escape the drills in the scorching sun and other military training such as crawling, rolling, and fighting on the muddy ground. I did not even need to cultivate the earth with a hoe. Luckier still, my herd was a low-maintenance one. Gui Renzhong, a Ph.D. in chemistry and a former professor, was looking after a herd of cows. Although my buffaloes looked dirtier and clumsier than his cows, they made my job much easier.

  Gradually, I became one of them. In summer I would wal-

  low in the muddy pond and then lie in the summer shade so that the mud on my body would dry and peel off by itself.

  In winter I would sleep on the sunny hillside, snoring to my heart’s content.

  Not long ago I had recited the Quotations of Chairman Mao and “The Three Old Articles” verbatim, but now every word of them sank into oblivion. What sort of things had I done during the Cultural Revolution? Had they been right?

  Which had been right and which wrong? Arguing, tearfully shouting revolutionary slogans, swearing to defend Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought to the death, fight-

  ing revisionism, breaking away from the Four Olds [old

  ideas, old culture, old customs, old traditions], wiping out all ox-demons and snake monsters, and smashing the heads of capitalist roaders. Furthermore, using one quotation to attack another, you seized my pigtails, and I spied on you.

  Then, like wolves who love to chase the scent of blood, we fell into wars with real bullets. We lived, ventured, thrilled for this sort of stuff. We even held Jiang Qing’s stinking feet and carried her all the way to Tiananmen Square so that she could declare in her quivering falsetto, with an accent somewhere between those of Shandong and Shanghai, “My dear

  comrades of the proletarian revolutionary factions! My dear comrades in arms! On behalf of our great leader, I…”

  Recalling her voice and its associations, I felt like vomit-ing. Ugh! What sort of creature was I? Where was I? What 1 6

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