In Time, Out of Place

by You Jin

  I suddenly thought of walking into the painting for a little rest. I asked the carrier who was waiting on one side if there was an inn operated by the Zhuang tribe in the mountain area. When he heard that, his eyes flashed excitedly, “I operate an inn. When we get down the mountain. I’ll take you there for a look. If you like it, you can stay. If not, I’ll help you find another. How about it?”

  I nodded, thinking, He probably rents out rooms in his own house to earn a little extra money! But frankly, at this point, my only concern is hygiene.

  He bounced his way down the mountain. I held on for dear life to the hand rail, crying out, “Hey! Slow down! Don’t throw me down the mountain.”

  He didn’t bother letting up the pace. As he practically flew down the slope, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ve never had an accident yet.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. But when we were halfway down, he set the sedan chair down and said, “Come with me.”

  I never expected the inn he spoke of to be an eye-catching bungalow. It was built with sturdy fir wood in very grand style, with three storeys and about ten rooms. I asked, “You work here?”

  He smiled and said, “It’s mine.”

  I thought something was wrong with my ears, but seeing his expression, it did not seem he was joking, so I asked, “If you have such a big inn, why do you still carry a sedan chair?”

  He said bluntly, “I borrowed a hundred thousand yuan from the government to build this, and I have ten years to repay the loan. In the off-peak season, there is no one to stay in the inn. My children are studying and school fees are not cheap. Carrying the chair ensures that I have an income of several hundred yuan a month.”

  The sedan carrier’s wife came in, carrying a bamboo basket of green vegetables. She had obviously just come from working in the fields. Her shy face looked dark and taut. She asked me, “How many nights will you stay?”

  I said, “Is there a washroom?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Even a toilet with running water.”

  It was early winter, with very few tourists, and the eight rooms in the inn were empty. As soon as we saw the corner room on the third floor, I gasped. It was really beautiful! There was a large window overlooking the terraced field. Though it was early winter, it was still verdant. The sunlight fell gently on the greenery, the whole land, in the vast quietness, pulsated with a boundless life force.

  The room cost twenty yuan a night—about four Singapore dollars. We decided to stay two nights.

  The sedan carrier / landlord, Liao Yuanping, told me Ping’an village, with its seven hundred residents, had an interesting phenomenon. All the villagers shared the surname Liao, and all were of the Zhuang minority group. Before the tourism industry flourished, the villagers had made their living by farming, everyone given half a mu of land (equivalent to three-hundredths of a hectare), raising one crop of rice per year. It was a hard life.

  Liao Yuanping wrinkled his brow and recalled, “The rice was like gold and we ate it sparingly. On days when there was no rice to eat, we ate sweet potatoes and yams. We were limited by the natural mountainous environment. The acreage of the terraced fields was limited. Even if we were willing to work, there wasn’t any work.”

  But it was also this unique mountainous environment which gave their life the desired turning point. In 1999, the authorities built a road leading to the foot of the mountain, putting in a lot of effort to boost the tourism industry. Their lives would undergo a huge change, allowing them to walk out from the darkness of poverty.

  The first development following the change in their fortunes was sedans. The bamboo sedans cost about two hundred and fifty yuan each, so it would only take two sedan trips to pay for the price of the chair. The hard part was getting the capital to buy one. Carrying a sedan looked like hard work, but to the villagers who had grown up in the mountains, walking the steep mountainous paths was as easy as walking on flat ground. One sedan carrier told me that in the past, before the road was completed, he carried hats made of rice stalks to Guilin to sell, and he had to make a very tough two-day journey through the mountains. He said, “Back then, there were no lights on the road, and the path was muddy and slippery, and I still prevailed. Today, carrying a sedan like that, that’s not hard at all. Only in the winter when it snows and gets slippery is it a little difficult.”

  Each sedan requires two carriers, and they must match their speed and steps perfectly. So the “philosophy of business” they employ must also match. Liao Yuanping said that many guests aren’t willing to sit in a sedan when they are at the foot of the mountain, but after walking a bit, they change their minds. And sometimes, a guest might be fine ascending, but she needs help with the descent. So, they have to patiently, quietly follow the guests, and sooner or later, they will get their opportunity. But sometimes though one of the duo wants to follow, his partner is impatient and does not want to go along, so they forego the chance to earn some money.

  Generally speaking, European tourists do not like to sit in sedans, but those from Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong love to. As for domestic travellers, those from Beijing and Shanghai are the most extravagant, not even bargaining over the price.

  Taking the sedan chair up to a height of five hundred metres, halfway up the mountain, costs one hundred and twenty yuan for a return trip. Ascent to the peak, at eight hundred metres, costs one hundred and sixty yuan.

  Liao Yuanping was very frustrated when he talked about the attitudes of some tourists. “It takes strength and stamina to carry a sedan chair. We don’t cheat, lie, steal or beg, but people still look down on us. Once, a tourist even said rudely, ‘Five yuan. I’ll give you five yuan. How about it?’ How heartless is that?”

  At present, Ping’an village had eighty sedan chairs, but during the spring festival, Labour Day and National Day, when the tourist season picked up, travellers would pour in nonstop, and of course the carriers would earn plenty then. In the off-season, business was poor, so the villagers working in town, in the spirit of watching one another’s backs, when they returned from work would give the sedan carriers thirty or forty yuan to transport them back to their home.

  But to the residents of Ping’an village, having a sedan is a minor dream. Their golden dream is to own a guesthouse. The government will offer them loans, so the braver and hardworking ones will grit their teeth and take out a loan and build. It was hard to believe, but this small village already had fifty inns, all owned by the local Zhuang people. During the peak tourist season, they could host up to three thousand guests!

  Of course, no one eats for free, and after becoming an innkeeper, the burden of debt is heavy. Liao Yuanping’s face showed determination as he told me, “If I can earn a bit more, I’m willing to do any sort of work.”

  He carried the sedan, moved bricks, lugged cement, and grew crops. His wife was also employed in many ways, such as washing, cleaning, growing vegetables, and rearing livestock, keeping her busy from morning till night. She seemed to have endless strength, even carrying our luggage from the bottom of the mountain in a bamboo basket, practically flying up the slope with her burden. To tell the truth, I couldn’t have walked an inch with such a heavy load.

  This woman was also an excellent cook. That night, she cooked a delicious meal for us, with smoked meat, bamboo rice, wild mushrooms, boiled chicken, and even a home-brewed rice wine. The smoked meat was the Zhuangs’ unique method of preserving meat, because they did not have refrigerators. Seasoning the pork with salt and pepper, they put it in a sausage casing and hung it in a dark, cool place to smoke it. It could last for a very long time without spoiling. The bamboo rice was made by boiling rinsed glutinous rice with sausage, mushrooms, fungus and peanuts, all packed inside bamboo, then roasting it over a fire for fifteen minutes. It was very flavourful. The really special dish was the wild mushrooms, which had grown beside the pine trees on the mountain, nourished by the nutrients in the roots of the pine; they could enhance blood circulation. Mrs Liao liked to say, “
The Longji Mountain is a real treasure. There are about ten types of wild mushrooms grown in different seasons, all free to be picked. Each type has its own flavour, good for frying or for soup. They can even preserve beauty and strengthen the body.”

  The native chicken was reared by the family. Its meat was extremely tender.

  After we ate, we drank some home-grown Longji tea. It was very fragrant, and had a lingering taste. Liao Yuanping explained brightly, “We have a saying here: the height of the mountain determines the height of the water, and we never lack water. Moreover, the mountain water is fresh and untainted, its taste sweet and pure, and drinking it will result in longevity.”

  The next morning, we went for a walk, and saw many workers building a new guesthouse of pine wood. Ah, yet another person living the golden dream!

  Ping’an village, this remote little town, was full of life like the sunlight. The villagers had a dream, but this dream was not unattainable, nor was it illusory. It was right before them, ready to be grasped. Having something to hope for, the people in the village lived with enthusiasm and zest.

  I remembered when I first came and saw Liao Yuanping’s sturdy cat walking around. I said, “Oh, you keep a pet.”

  He immediately replied, “It’s not a pet. It’s a rat trap. In our village, no one eats for free. Of course we don’t raise anything that would not earn its keep.”

  As I looked out the window, the terraced fields stood stacked proudly, a symbol of the villagers’ iron will. This will is their magic formula that will allow them to make great things even from meagre resources.

  A Departed Glory

  A Temple with Many Faces

  IT WAS FIVE in the morning. The whole land was dark and quiet. I sat high on the stone steps at Thatbyunnyu Temple, resting my chin in my hand. As if waiting for a pot of tea to brew, the land slowly began to wake in a leisurely manner. The first sounds of life stirring were the chirping of birds, then the barking of dogs, then the sound of horse hoofs, and finally the rooster’s crow. Eventually there were other sounds: bits of women’s chatter, the clear shouts of children, the phlegmy coughs of the elderly, one sound after another, from indistinct to vivid.

  At six o’clock, a bell tolled clearly. The charming dawn light oozed from the horizon, little by little, until the profile of the land slowly revealed itself. Soon, the sun appeared as a blazing torch, raging, burning hotter and hotter, heartlessly devouring big chunks of the heavy, dark night. The vast expanse of sky turned blue, white and bright. The dense outlines of the trees were like green clouds hanging in soft clusters in mid-air. Beneath and beside the trees were many ancient ruins marked by the vicissitudes of life, fearless of wind and rain, proudly standing on the criss-crossing roads. Both sides of the street were lined with the houses of ordinary people. In this way, ancient and modern, the dead and newborn very mysteriously and harmoniously intermingled in the thousand-year-old ancient city of Pagan.

  Pagan is situated in central Myanmar along the Irrawaddy River. According to the data, it used to have more than four thousand historical relics. However, amongst them, many had been destroyed by cruel wars and terrible earthquakes. Today there are 2,200 relics remaining, and seventeen historical sites in Pagan that are maintained in good condition, many of which are Buddhist pagodas and temples. One of them, standing sixty-one metres in height (the highest temple in Pagan) is the Thatbyinnyu Temple.

  Now, sitting on the highest stone step of the temple, I could see Buddhist pagodas of various designs. There were round roofs, three-cornered roofs, small domes, and spirals, and they were made of bricks, stone or even gold-plating. The variety was gorgeous.

  I watched dreamily, unwilling to leave. After a whilst, Risheng nudged my arm and said, “Let’s go. We still want to get to Theigni’s village.

  Aspiring to be a Doctor

  I had unexpectedly met Theigni the previous day at the famous Manuha Temple in Pagan. This temple had four Buddhas, three sitting and one reclining. The four Buddhas, each in their own halls, were surprisingly large. The halls themselves were not that big, so it gave the feeling that the tall Buddhas were trapped inside. What was even stranger was that the Buddhas did not wear the usual calm, peaceful countenance. Rather, their eyebrows were furrowed, as if they were full of worry.

  Whilst I was looking up at the huge image of the Buddha, a young man explained to me in fluent English: “The Manuha Temple was built in 1059. At the time, the emperor of southern Myanmar lost the war and was captured and confined in Pagan. Later, he requested to build a temple here. When he was granted permission to do so, he sold all his jewels and built this temple. Through the architecture of the temple and the way the Buddhas were housed, he strongly expressed the stifling pain his body and spirit went through after being captured.”

  Then, he volunteered to lead me up a narrow staircase to the upper level. Once we reached it, he pointed through a tiny window, and said, “Look.”

  I looked, and was speechless.

  Through the tiny window, I had a clear view of all four Buddhas. A moment earlier, I had stood below looking up, and I thought the Buddhas looked worried, but now, standing level with them, I could see that their brows were actually stretched out calmly.

  “This demonstrates the superb skill of Myanmar’s sculptors,” this young fellow, Theigni, proudly explained to me.

  The weather was fine that day, and the sky was crystal clear. White clouds were scattered sparsely, plainly and thinly across the sky. They looked like they would fall down if a wind came.

  I sat on the temple terrace, chatting with Theigni, who was a volunteer guide. He was very thin, his chin so sharp it looked like an awl, which did not quite seem to match the shape of his face. His big round pupils, set into such a small face, and their constant darting movement brought to mind a clever dog. He was just nineteen.

  As we talked about Pagan’s history, it was like he was counting his family’s treasure. He was still in secondary school, and was making use of his holidays to work as a guide, saving up his earnings to help pay for his school fees at university the following year. When I asked what he planned to study, he answered without hesitation: “Medicine.”

  Laughing, I asked, “In Myanmar, are doctors well-paid?”

  He answered seriously, “The village I live in is very poor. One villager became a doctor, and he opened a clinic there. Everyone admired him. But before long, he moved out of the village. The villagers brought their old and young to see him for medical help. He still charged them fees which were sky high. After that, nobody dared to see him when they were sick. If a doctor lacks a paternal spirit, it’s useless even if he has miraculous healing skills.”

  “That’s true,” I said, nodding. “When you become a doctor, you should serve the people well. You should treat everyone fairly, without discriminating.”

  “No!” he objected quickly. “I won’t treat everyone without discriminating. I plan to rob the rich to give to the poor!”

  We both laughed.

  He offered to take us to his village to have a look. We agreed to meet the next day.

  Milky Yellow Sap, Feminine Gift

  This morning after watching the deeply moving sunrise at the Thatbyunnyu Temple, Risheng and I took a trishaw to where Theigni lived, Myin Ka Par Village.

  The houses in Myin Ka Par were like those elsewhere in Myanmar, grass-roofed huts with bamboo beams and pillars; very simple, windy and cool.

  Theigni was squatting outside the doorway holding what looked like a withered tree branch about six inches in length, very attentively grinding it on a flat, round millstone. He seemed to be enjoying it very much.

  “Theigni!”

  He raised his head and saw us, his big eyes lighting up with pleasure. “Welcome!”

  I squatted beside him and looked at what he had in hand, and the milky yellow fluid on the millstone. I asked curiously, “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing much. Just grinding cosmetics for my mother and sisters.” He l
aughed.

  “Oh!” I was surprised. I pointed at the thing in his hand and asked excitedly, “Is that a branch from the tanaka tree?” (Tanaka is translated according to the sound of the Burmese word.)

  “Yes.”

  He handed me the small piece of branch and I received it like a treasure, turning it over and inspecting it carefully. The bark was rough, of a bland brown colour. When turned over, it was like a larger version of the angelica, a herb commonly used in Chinese medicine. It didn’t have any smell when I placed it close to my nose.

  “You have to grind it with water to bring the fragrance out,” Theigni said. He dipped a hand into the milky yellow fluid and smeared it across the back of my own hand. I sniffed it and, sure enough, a fresh fragrance gently exuded forth, and an extremely cool feeling rapidly spread across the back of my hand.

  Since we had arrived in Myanmar I had noticed something interesting. The women there, whether old or young, pretty or ugly, married or single, all applied the milky yellow liquid powder on their face. Those who were not particular spread this paint-like liquid powder all over their face, here a patch, there a patch, in random fashion. Those who were particular used this liquid powder to draw exquisite patterns on their cheeks. Some drew a pair of leaves, clearly showing the veins. Some drew two tiny butterflies fluttering, and so on.

  For many years, Myanmar had been closed off to other countries. On top of that, its economic development was slow, and feminine cosmetics became an “insulated product”. Women helped themselves within their own means. That was why the tanaka tree had become a saving grace for women in Myanmar. Every family used it, but they all used the product right after grinding it. Every morning when they got up, they would spend about ten minutes grinding the bark of the tanaka tree with water, then they would apply the ground product to the face as a sort of sunblock. At night before going to bed, they would grind some more and apply it to help moisturise the skin. The people of Myanmar believed that the tanaka tree sap protects the skin from pimples and black heads, and keeps it smooth and soft.