by Hua Bai
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After a long trip along the serpentine path, we reached a mountain called Abulingu. On its northeast slope was a
rectangular cavern, about fifteen meters in length and seven meters in width. Water on its western side had formed a
pool, and a platform in the center was covered with burning incense. A stalagmite rising from the western side was
shaped like a mountain peak. Daba told us the peak was the goddess Jizhema. Where was Jiumulu then? Awu Luruo
pointed to the column-shaped stalagmite on the platform: This is Jiumulu. I immediately grasped their imagery – a gigantic phallus, protruding upward to a height of two feet seven inches. A dent on its tip, receiving the drippings from a stalactite hanging from the roof, was constantly filled with clear water. While I was carefully observing this stalagmite made sacred by the human imagination, Daba lit the
cypress twigs as incense. Following Daba’s instructions, Awu Luruo asked us to face east and kowtow to Jiumulu
again and again in front of the burning incense. The solemn looks of Sunamei, Daba, and Awu Luruo soon infected me,
washing away my hidden laughter.
Daba was chanting all the time. Later Sunamei told me
what he chanted: “May Heaven let you bear children. May
earth let you bear children. May river let you bear children.
May mountain let you bear children. May the wind, the sun, the moon, and the star all let you bear children. May your neighbors let you bear children. May the Mosuo people let you bear children. May the Tibetans and the Li let you bear children. May goddess let you bear children. She will bless you with a firm belly that will bear you many, many daughters and sons.”
We knelt until Daba finished his prayer. My knees ached
from the rocky ground, but Sunamei looked self-possessed and beamed with happiness. Next, Daba and I squatted by a fire. He continued praying and asked me to add cypress
twigs to the fire while Sunamei, following Daba’s instruction, stripped naked and walked into the pool, where she 3 5 3
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bathed herself from head to toe before getting dressed again.
Then Daba gave her a reed tube and asked to close her eyes and touch Jiumulu gently with her hand while sucking
water three times through the reed tube from the dent on its tip. I shuddered at this moment, my body turning cold.
When Daba took back the reed tube, the ceremony was
over. We made a bonfire outside the cavern, boiled water, and had a picnic. Before eating, Daba said solemnly to Sunamei and me, “Tonight you two must sleep together, holding each other tightly and chanting the name of Jizhema for a long, long time. You must give yourself to her and she to you – then you will have a child.” It seemed that even Daba did not believe that the strength of the goddess and sacred water alone could make a woman pregnant.
Sunamei answered Daba solemnly, “Yes, I will obey you.”
In order to get back while it was still light, we started home immediately after the picnic. On the way, I asked
Sunamei, “Do you believe all that stuff?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because this is what we Mosuo people have believed for
thousands of years.”
Should one believe anything simply because it has been
believed for thousands of years? “I don’t believe it.”
Sunamei, on horseback, kicked me nervously. “Do not say
things like that. How terrible it would be if Ami heard you.
Awu Luruo, you understand some Mandarin, but please do
not tell Ami. Okay?”
Awu Luruo laughed. “I do not understand Mandarin.”
“My good Awu.”
It was dusk when we reached the river outside the vil-
lage. The shadows of the western mountains appeared blue, and their peaks thrust right into the river. A flood of light red sunshine remained on the eastern bank of the river. Suddenly, as if in a dreamland, I saw two men in ancient armor by the riverside, each wearing a helmet, a leather coat of 3 5 4
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mail, with a sword on his back. One was pouring water with a wooden bowl into the pail on the back of the other. Seeing my amazement, Sunamei said to me, “These two men
are fetching water to wash the dead body in the Agupozhe family.”
We made way for the two young men, who passed
silently with sorrowful strides toward the Agupozhes. One of them paused a moment at Sunamei’s horse, raising his
eyes to Sunamei, while Sunamei shut hers.
An aged woman, coming out from the Agupozhe home,
stopped Daba and begged until he bid good-bye to Awu
Luruo and followed her into the mourning yard, which was crowded with mourners from the same siri, all of them holding flags of red, blue, and white. Did they know these are the three primary colors of the universe, or did they have some other significance? When we got home, I asked Awu
Luruo why Daba had to attend the funeral. He who did not speak Mandarin said, “Oh, he is very important. His most important function is to guide the dead person’s soul away.
Although a person’s body is dead, his soul still exists. Invisible to our naked eyes, the soul will never die.” (The Mosuo believe in the immortality of the soul.) “Daba will guide the dead person’s soul back to the homes of our ancestors, quite far away. Daba’ s Bible of the Road has recorded several hundred such places. Every Mosuo er has a line stretching from the ancient time up to now. It is like a long string, and each place the ancestors lived becomes a knot on the string. The route of our er is tortuous, having a lot of circles, going back and forth from the golden Sand River several times. We
came from north of Muli and Sichuan to the foot of Kala
Kunlun Mountains.” (They are a nomadic race, moving
from north to south.) “Our ancestor was the master of the the Kala Kunlun Mountains. She raised ten thousand white horses, ten thousand white cows, and ten thousand white
sheep.” (He believed his ancestor was rich.) “Later, owing to the growing population, the oversized family was divided 3 5 5
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into six er – Xi er, Hu er, Ya er, E er, Bu er, and Guo er. The six er were subdivided into numerous siri, and we are no longer rich.”
I asked Awu Luruo how Daba guided the soul onto the
route. He told me, “Daba calls out the dead person’s name and says, ‘Care no longer, do not care about the things of the living. Because you cannot run their affairs, do not care about them anymore.’” (Obviously they fear that the ghosts of the dead make trouble for them.) “‘Can’t you hear with your ears? Now I come to open the path for you. Because we have given you every share you deserve and you have
enjoyed your happy life, please go away with a relieved heart. Stepping out of the gate is the first step. Right, go out of the village, following the route of our ancestors.
Don’t complain that the route is long and tortuous. Don’t try to take a shortcut, because our ancestors, no matter what hardships they confronted, blazed their own path and paved their own way. Their path was new; yet the path you are
returning on is already old, marked with black stones at each turn. The places you should pass are – ’ Daba intoned more than a hundred place-names. ‘Now you have arrived at the place your ancestors are living. The room upstairs is a shrine. The dirty one downstairs is for the cattle. Don’t go in that one. Here in the middle live your ami and amu.
Please go in and stay there. Never come back. Do not worry about the younger generations; they are leading a happy life.
Do not worry about the cattle. We have someone to look
after them, feed them, and take them
out for exercise. Please do not try to take them away. When you are settled there comfortably, during the wheat harvest in summer and the
time of making rice cakes or the festival of butchering pigs, we will call you back and let you sit with us in a circle for a feast. Until then you should sit properly, stand properly, and live peacefully with our ancestors. Never come back unless we call you. Never, ever.’” People are afraid of the dead.
Even the return of dead relatives is a fearful event.
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I was carried away by Awu Luruo’s words. The elders and
children in the yimei were snoring heartily, and Awu Luruo had added firewood several times. He suggested: “If you’re so interested in stuff like this, why don’t you go to the Agupozhes and watch how they wash the dead body and
how Daba washes the horse? It’s very interesting.”
“I don’t think I can, because I am a stranger.”
“Oh, that’s true. You are an outsider from a faraway place.
Your visit may scare the dead person’s soul, as they believe.”
Ami Cai’er, lying by the fireplace, sat up with Zhima’s
baby in her arms and grunted a signal at Awu Luruo, who
immediately whispered to me, “Liang, please hurry back to Sunamei’s huagu. Watch out for other axiao. ”
I knew he was joking, and Ami Cai’er scolded him for his rudeness. Still I had some qualms. After running to the
stairs leading to Sunamei’s huagu, I slowed down and tiptoed, trying to hear whether there was a man in her room.
Absolutely still, not a sound. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and saw that Sunamei was in bed and the lamp already blown out. She turned to face me. I scolded her, “Why don’t you bolt the door?”
“What for?”
“If a man came in – ”
“Do not think our Mosuo men behave like you Han men
who risk jail to break into a woman’s room. We are a different people. If a Mosuo woman says, ‘Out,’ a Mosuo man
goes out submissively. I was about to ask whether you went to the wrong huagu. ”
“I was chatting with Awu Luruo, listening to him talk
about Daba.”
“I know. I got up three times to look for you at the yimei entrance.”
“Then, why didn’t you call me?”
“Where have you heard that a Mosuo woman goes out to
call a man?”
“So that’s it?”
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“Do you think I would lower myself as a Han woman
does? If her husband does not come back at night, she
searches high and low; if the man does not want her any
more, she cries as if the sky is falling. Once in town I met such a Han woman wailing. I asked her, ‘Sister, why are you crying?’ She screamed, ‘That man of mine, who deserves to be butchered, has abandoned me! That heartless beast!’ It sounded more like singing than cursing. I said to her, ‘Sister, if he has abandoned you, why don’t you abandon him?’
She was horrified by my words. Blinking her eyes for a
moment, she wailed even louder: ‘Oh, my heaven! My earth!
My life!’”
Sunamei had teased a laugh out of me. Sitting by the fireplace, I poked the fire to boil a kettle of tea. Sunamei said aloud, “Have you forgotten that?”
“What?”
“What Daba has bidden you?”
“Daba?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had
forgotten completely.
“Think hard.”
“Sorry, I can’t recall. Tell me.”
“Daba says, tonight – now do you remember?”
I remembered but pretended I didn’t. “No.”
“Daba says, tonight you and I must sleep together.”
“And what else?”
“Hold each other tight.”
“What else?”
“For a long, long time.”
“What else?” I laughed.
Now Sunamei realized that I was teasing her. Jumping
out of bed, she picked up the earthen kettle and tossed it out the window. When I hugged her in the darkness, kissing her face, I tasted her tears.
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When I opened my eyes in the morning, I
saw that Sunamei was already awake; she seemed to have
something on her mind. She turned to me and said, “I saw Yingzhi.”
“Yingzhi?” Of course I knew who she was talking about.
“Where? Did he come?”
“You saw him, too.”
“Me? No.”
“Yesterday, on our way back from worshiping Jiumulu,
we saw two men carrying water for the funeral, didn’t we?”
“Do you mean the two wearing leather helmets and
armor?”
“Yes. The one carrying a pail on his back was Yingzhi.”
“Why didn’t you greet each other?”
“Anyone carrying water for washing the dead is not
allowed to speak.”
“Oh – I didn’t notice him.”
“Ah.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
She said no more, so I didn’t give our exchange much
thought.
After getting up, we fitted out two horses for sightseeing along Lake Xienami. Declining any guide or company,
Sunamei and I went alone. It was the happiest day of my
stay there. We rode toward Xienami at a leisurely pace at the foot of lofty Mount Lion. As Lake Xienami seemed to
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open itself wider and wider in the mountain valley, a vision suddenly came to me. In a remote time, perhaps the
Neolithic Age, ancestors of the Mosuo people crossed a long distance from the north to the south, as I had done only recently, and discovered Mount Lion, whose peak resembles a lion and is even more majestic than a real one, thrusting its head into the vast blue as if ready to leap. Farther south, a huge lake gradually came into view. It was so blue they had trouble believing it was water. Those ancestors cheered with excitement and sat by the wooded lakeside. Several
clan chieftains met together, recalling the difficult mountains they had passed. All agreed that this was the most beautiful and richly endowed of all the places on which generations and generations of Mosuo had set their feet, and they decided to settle here. They burned their tents, built wooden houses, and hollowed out tree trunks for canoes.
They grew grain, fished, and hunted. They named the lake Xienami (mother sea). Yes, mother sea – the sea of our
mother. What do the Mosuo people respect more than the
mother? So they gave this most respectable name to this
matchless, pure blue lake.
At the lakeside we borrowed a canoe from the fishermen.
Paddling out to the center of the lake, we saw small fish glistening like silver on the surface. A snow-white bird dived right in front of us to catch fish. Lying on her back in the canoe, Sunamei looked at the sky and said emotionally:
“Liang Rui, I am a Mosuo girl after all.”
“Of course. That goes without saying.”
She dipped her hands into the water, splashing playfully.
“I don’t know why I ever moved to town!”
“I understand your feelings. If I were Mosuo, I would not want to leave here, either.”
“You.” She eyed me sadly. “But you are not Mosuo.”
“Now the greater part of me has already turned Mosuo.”
“The greater part? Far from it. Even your smallest part
hasn’t turned Mosuo yet.”
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“Not even the smallest part of me? How much I love
your home village now, Sunamei! When I first arrived I was not accustomed to its way of life, but now I never want to leave.”
“What do you love about my home village?”
“Everything. The mountains, the waters, the forests,
Mount Lion, and the people, your kinsmen Ami Cai’er, Awu Luruo, and you, my dear Sunamei. Even Longbu, he’s a
pretty decent fellow when I think about him calmly.”
“Do you like Longbu?”
“Sort of, but not completely…”
Sunamei giggled heartily. We canoed in a large semicircle back to shore. Then we went over to the fishermen’s bonfire for some tea. An old fisherman roasted some small fish on bamboo sticks over the flames. When the fish were sizzling and dripping grease, he sprinkled some salt on them. They are delicious when eaten hot. Sunamei and I each ate a
dozen. After paying and saying good-bye to the fishermen, we were ready to get back on our horses.
Suddenly, the old man stopped Sunamei and asked her,
“Is this Han your – ?”
Sunamei had no term for husband. So she replied, “He
and I have a marriage certificate.”
Narrowing his eyes into a smile, he said “Ah, he is truly ga! ” Because I could not understand the Mosuo word ga, I asked Sunamei for help. She told me, “He said how brave
you are!”
“Of course I am!” With great pride I jumped into the
saddle.
Sunamei was silent on our way back to the village; I
talked endlessly. With my mind purified by nature, I
became intoxicated, talking about my visions of the history and future of their nation and about my impressions of their matrilineal, extended-family customs. I talked on and on as if delivering a lecture. I wanted to pour out all my feelings.
My conclusion was mainly encomium: “Here I witness a
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matrilineal society that should have existed only in antiquity. Yet it exists today. No outside pressure has the power to change it. The Mosuo people live and love solemnly according to their own primitive way of existence. Although modern men cannot appreciate their sexual permissiveness, nobody can deny the fact that among them there is no murder for love, no jealousy and hatred between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law or between aunts and sisters, nor even any family quarrels. In their extended family there is no power struggle over inheritances and no selling of the body for money or position. Mosuo women are their own masters on earth. Only they have the right to love or not to love, to want or not to want, to accept or to refuse. They are independent of men. In their world, there are no spouses in