The Remote Country of Women

by Hua Bai

  caught in a net. Yet he neither told stories nor spoke to her.

  He drank and drank and then sucked on his water pipe. The bubbling sound from the pipe seemed endless. How stifling. Sunamei leaned against her bed, bored. All they did was drink and smoke, smoke and drink.

  Sunamei recalled that, when Asi was strong enough to stroll along the lake, she had often taken her along. Asi had said, “For every person on earth, there is a star in the sky.”

  She asked Asi, “Which star is mine?” Asi said, “Since you haven’t put on a skirt, how can you have a star?” Now I have put on a skirt. Asi, tell me, which star is mine? Sunamei looked into the night sky. She found it. Her star was sending a message with its twinkling. It was a bright green star.

  Its light shone straight into her heart. She wanted to catch it and hold it with both hands above her head. Oh, she

  understood at last: It’s you I’m waiting for. Rising up onto her tiptoes, she found herself extremely light. The lightness amazed and pleased her. She felt like she was floating, flying toward the green star on the peak of a mountain, and the star was speeding toward her. But the moment she stepped on the mountain peak, her star stopped. There was still a great distance between them. She started flying again, and her star sped toward her again. She was flying among rivers of stars, like countless snowflakes. She could not tell which star was hers any longer. Every star looked half like hers and half not. Worried, she started to fall. Perhaps when she landed on the ground she would be able to tell which was hers. But, being too light, she had lost the power to fall.

  Her body floated like a sheet of paper. Finally, she forced her body downward. Placing her two feet together, she landed on a plain. Then she saw the green star that belonged to her again, still so far away. Suddenly she heard a strange noise, a 6 3

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  noise she had never heard before, which deprived her of the power of seeing. In fact, the noise simply woke her from her fantasy of flying in the starry sky. She listened again

  intensely and found the noise coming from Amiji Zhima’s

  huagu. It was Zhima’s voice. It wasn’t like crying or weeping or groaning or sighing. Sunamei had never heard such a

  noise from Zhima before. She seemed to see Zhima being

  borne up toward the starry sky. But Zhima was not chasing after the star that belonged to her, for she herself was a big, bright star. Zhima ended with a long, contented sigh,

  which dispersed suddenly like morning mist. Then the man breathed heavily several times. Finally, their rhythmical breathing faded away. Supporting herself with one hand

  against her head, she heard all this. She was shocked, as though it had thundered near her; although the flash of

  lightning had disappeared, her heart was still beating

  fiercely.

  Taking off her new top, new skirt, and heavy headdress,

  she burrowed naked under her blanket. Cili’s snores made the partition between their two huagu hum like an airplane.

  Lying on her back, she touched her thin, small body. Looking up at the beam in the roof, she seemed to know that she was waiting for a male, for a man who would be the first to offer his love as her axiao. The embers in the fireplace were covered by ashes. Only the big white cat’s green eyes still shone. What was she waiting for?

  Now she was thirteen. Oh, beautiful Sunamei! The husks were falling off the spring sprout and the green bamboo was emerging.

  What year was it when Sunamei reached thirteen and

  became a Mosuo woman in a long, pleated skirt? She did

  not know, and there was no need for her to know. Antiquity, long forgotten by many nationalities, is still the present reality of the Mosuo people. Sunamei is only thirteen years old, but her people are more ancient than the legendary Yao 6 4

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  and Shun. During the time of Yao and Shun women had

  already become dependent on men. E Huang and Nü Ying

  wailed for their lost husband: Oh, my heaven! Their sky had fallen. Today the teardrops on bamboo in southern China

  remain the best evidence of their obedience.

  While Sunamei was entering the age of thirteen in this

  primitive manner, the modern world was entering the year 1976.

  She was already thirteen. Oh, beautiful Sunamei! An obscure little flower with pouting lips was about to reveal a smile. Popping above the grass, it shone like a red star against the blue night.

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  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.

  Jane’s death caused me to abandon my

  long-planned strategy for attacking the stronghold of the clinic. During the night, Gui Renzhong often shone his

  flashlight on Jane’s portrait on the cover of the box containing her ashes and stroked it affectionately. Jane’s beauty was, indeed, beyond description. It reminded me of the full-blooming golden chrysanthemum in tropical sunlight, par-

  ticularly when her face beamed with happy smiles. As Gui Renzhong kept Jane’s ash box beside his pillow, I was lucky enough to share his happiness. Each time after admiring

  Jane’s beauty, I could not fall asleep for a long, long time. In turns the fierce, insane Jane in rags and the pure winged angel on the palm of God appeared before my eyes until I was utterly exhausted.

  As the saying goes: a leaky house confronts one rainy day after another; a disabled ship is struck head-on by a storm.

  Poor old Gui had suffered another misfortune!

  The PLA rep was extremely conscientious, never relaxing

  his vigilance over us odd-job workers who did not participate in collective labor. He hammered over and over again:

  “Never leave any dead corners.”

  The cowherds, duck tenders, fishpond watchers, and

  6 6

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  cooks were regarded by the PLA rep as ideologically loose men, and he believed our minds would grow sprouts with

  the slightest relaxation in political study. Therefore, he never gave us a moment of peace, saying, “Even those from a working-class background will turn revisionists if they make themselves comfortable – let alone these stinking

  number 9’s, who were reluctant to reform themselves.”

  Every night, after feeding the cows and water buffaloes, all the odd-job workers had to get together for political study – a fixed system that could not be changed even by a thunderbolt. No absences were allowed. And everyone had

  to give speeches. Actually, this type of study was not so hard to cope with. The moment the leader finished reciting a

  supreme command, you took the floor. First you wished

  Chairman Mao a long life three times. After Lin Biao’s

  death, you no longer needed to wish for “Great Assistant Helmsman Lin’s good health,” of course. But you could not forget to chant, “Learn from Comrade Jiang Qing.” You

  could perform this stereotyped ceremony in slow motion,

  stringing it out for at least three minutes. Then you recited at least three supreme commands between murmurs of

  admiration and tears of excitement. Of course, you might pause from one emotion to another. Pauses meant you were thinking, and no one dared to hurry you up or cut in during your slow buildup of genuine proletarian feelings. After all this, you spoke about the results of your study, such as how you felt the greatness and foresight of the supreme commands in influencing Chinese and world revolution, blazing our path, and inspiring all genuine Marxists and Leninists to fight bravely for the realization of their ultimate goal of communism. To give your speech some depth, you might

  first denounce Soviet revisionism and U.S. imperialism and then engage in some self-crit
icism. If you were afraid of saying something wrong, you could cite Chairman Mao’s quo-

  tations from the beginning to the end of your speech. In so doing, not only would you avoid possible mistakes, but all 6 7

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  your listeners would have to regard you with love and awe because “One of Chairman Mao’s words has the force of ten thousand.” Quite a number of people could easily compose songs of quotations or string quotations into essays or plays.

  In those days everyone, no matter how stupid, acquired this particular knack. The old scholar Gui Renzhong remained

  an exception. He read Chairman Mao’s works with honesty

  and effort and after each reading contemplated what he had read. If there had been a library nearby, he would have

  checked out a thousand books in order to test the truth of Mao’s latest supreme command. Studying, meditating, and

  researching silently by himself, he would have been all

  right. But he was far too inquisitive. Each time he asked a question, my palms turned sweaty. Who could make him

  understand that to ask questions was just asking for trouble? One could safely say, “I have no questions,” for it had been officially announced that we must carry out Chairman Mao’s instructions whether we understood them or not. Not only did your inability to understand them simply betray your inferior ideological level: no one even dared to doubt their truth. But Gui Renzhong was different. He asked

  questions with such straightforwardness that I wanted to warn him late at night. However, I dared not. If I warned him, he would surely report my words honestly at the meeting. I could not afford to take the risk.

  It was by asking such a question that Gui suffered his

  greatest misfortune. That day we were discussing a supreme command:

  Except for the desert, wherever there is a crowd of peo-

  ple, they can be divided into the left, the middle, and the right. And it will remain so for ten thousand years.

  Every one of us put on a show of excitement, gratitude,

  praise, and self-criticism. When the PLA rep asked, “Any questions?” we chorused, “No, Chairman Mao’s instruction 6 8

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  is a universal truth that can be applied to the four seas. It is easy to understand but infinitely profound. It requires more than a lifetime to grasp the whole truth of it.”

  But Gui Renzhong refused to follow the flock. He raised

  his hand.

  “Report!”

  My heart jumped into my throat and I held my breath.

  What sort of question would he raise? Although a Ph.D. in chemistry, he was no wiser than a four-year-old in politics.

  “Our great leader Chairman Mao teaches us, ‘Honesty is a scientific attitude; self-deception and ignorant arrogance cannot solve problems.’” Pretty normal. I relaxed a little. “I want to ask a question.”

  “Please! All questions are welcome in our discussion.”

  The PLA rep crossed his legs. I grew nervous again.

  “Chairman Mao says, ‘Except for the desert, wherever

  there is a crowd of people, they can be divided into the left, the middle, and the right. And it will remain so for ten thousand years.’ Marx, Lenin, and our great Chairman Mao Zedong, these three, coming together, can be considered a crowd. In this crowd, who is the left, who is the middle, and who is the right?”

  No one present at the meeting, including the PLA rep,

  had expected such a question. It was as if old Gui had

  thrown a bomb into our midst. For a while we were so flabbergasted that no one knew what to do. But Dr. Gui Ren-

  zhong was examining each of us with his sober, naive eyes, believing his question was really a hard nut that even the PLA rep would not be able to crack. He rubbed his hands

  together. Even the PLA rep failed to give an answer. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he pounded the table, rose to his feet, and left.

  A quarter of an hour later, the loudspeaker came on. Several of Mao’s quotations regarding severe punishment of

  counterrevolutionaries were followed by a call for an emer-6 9

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  gency assembly. The recording of a bugle call spread omi-nously in the air above the farm.

  Undoubtedly, the question raised by Gui Renzhong was

  the most vicious crime of sacrilege. Workers of the entire farm stood indignantly in the canteen, a straw-thatched

  shed, waiting for the PLA rep to denounce Gui Renzhong’s crime. The denunciation was kindled by a sudden roar:

  “Drag the counterrevolutionary Gui Renzhong to the

  stage!”

  This unprecedentedly large criticism meeting lasted

  more than three hours. Everyone knew old Gui’s suffering, but none dared to show him a shred of sympathy. Group

  after group pledged their loyalty to Chairman Mao before the square table where old Gui was bowing low as a dwarf.

  In order to demonstrate their revolutionary action in front of the PLA rep, they put on all sorts of masks. A poet,

  famous at home and abroad, denounced Gui Renzhong

  between short sobs and long wails, as if he were at a funeral.

  A well-known playwright simply charged headlong toward

  Gui like a goat. Fortunately he was unable to climb the

  table. Nevertheless, he had fully demonstrated his hatred for the criminal who dared to attack the great leader. A few howling females jumped on the table to pull old Gui’s hair and pinch him. An old spinster, taking advantage of the

  chaos, sprang up on the table and pulled the old man’s private parts fiercely, parts that should not be touched by females other than his own mother or wife. The searing pain made the old man scream for help. A historical opportunist, who had pretended to be a Communist when the Communists won the upper hand and had yielded to the Kuom-

  intang when the Kuomintang gained power, dashed forward

  and pushed down the bench on which Gui Renzhong was

  standing. As Gui fell, the mob jumped onto him with

  strange shrieks, and everyone tried to stomp on him.

  Finally, I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Chairman Mao 7 0

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  teaches us, ‘We must fight with words, not with physical force.’”

  This shout stopped the feet that were determined to

  trample Gui’s body into marmalade. The mob could not

  make out whose voice it was but believed it must be the

  PLA rep’s. Who else but the rep would dare to shout such a quotation at such a moment?

  Old Gui’s head was bleeding. His right leg, limp as a

  noodle, could no longer support his weight. Obviously, it was broken. The PLA rep could only adjourn the meeting

  and order Gui Renzhong to write a self-criticism. Later, Doctor Yu Shouchen asked the PLA rep what was to be done with the broken leg of Gui Renzhong, that dirty dog? The PLA rep issued three directives: one, his leg should be

  treated in accordance with the principle of revolutionary humanism; two, the cows herded by Gui Renzhong should

  be assigned to someone else; and three, Gui’s written self-criticism must be completed and handed to the PLA rep’s

  office as soon as possible.

  Using traditional Chinese medical arts, Doctor Yu set

  Gui’s broken bone and splinted his leg with boards. Instead of feeling bad, old Gui relished the little happiness brought by this misfortune. Now he needn’t go out to work anymore. Every day he could stay in the empty, spacious dorm with his Jane. Squatting on his quilt and facing the wall, he wrote his self-criticism on a washboard placed on his knees.

  He always took a serious attitude toward self-criticism.

  Each time he would go through his four volu
mes of Mao

  Zedong’s works. When he wrote something satisfactory, he would pause and read it emotionally, nodding and swaying, as if he were not writing a self-condemnation but a beautiful prose poem like the “Ode to Yueyang Palace” by Fan

  Zhongyan.

  One night, when Gui Renzhong lay his tired body down

  on the bed and stretched out his broken leg with excruciat-7 1

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  ing pain, he asked me in a tiny voice, “Do you remember

  whether the one who wailed like a funeral guest was a man or a woman?”

  I knew he meant that great poet. Out of his extreme love for the great leader, the poet had so distorted his pitch and tone that it was hard to tell his gender. But I could not tell him the truth. I only said, “Sorry, I didn’t notice.”

  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.

  With a broken leg, it was unlikely that Gui Renzhong

  would make any big trouble. So it was up to me to scheme at night how to conduct my campaign against the clinic.

  Gui screamed again in his nightmare. It was already one

  o’clock in the morning. Someone yanked open our dorm

  door. A chilly wind filled the room quickly, as though a swarm of practical jokers had dashed in and pulled away all of our quilts. Most of us were jarred awake, slinging a flood of curses.

  “It must be Piglet!” They thought the man who had

  opened the door was Zhu Zaizhi, a college student majoring in world geography.

  “Damn it! How many times does he have to pee in one

  night?”

  “We should tie his bladder with a string.”

  “Let’s write a petition to the PLA rep and ask him to

  transfer Zhu to another dorm.”

  I knew Zhu, a weak body plus a pair of thick glasses for myopia on his nose, a little guy who drank a lot of water.

  Then I heard someone speaking the words in my mind.

  “How can we blame him? He has a kidney problem and

  the food here is so bad. Can anyone really tie his bladder up?

  Why don’t you try it on yourselves first.…”

  We laughed. A few sound sleepers were awakened by the