by Yunte Huang
I don’t want to comfort you
the trembling maple leaf
is scrawled with spring lies
the sunbird from the tropics
hasn’t perched on our trees
and the forest fire behind
is only sunset in a cloud of dust
If the earth is sealed in ice
let us face the warm current
and head for the sea
if the reef is our future image
let us face the sea
and head for the setting sun
no, longing for a conflagration
is longing to turn into ash
but we seek only a calm voyage
you with your long floating hair
I with my arms raised high
(Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall)
City Gate Open Up (excerpt)
Light and Shadow
1
I returned to the city of my birth at the end of 2001, after a long, unforeseen parting of thirteen years. As the plane descended, the myriad lights of the houses and buildings rushed into the portholes, whirling and spinning. I suffered a momentary shock: Beijing looked like a huge, glittering soccer stadium. It was a cold midwinter night. After I went through customs, three strangers with a raised sign that read “Mr. Zhao” were waiting for me. Though of different height and size, they weirdly resembled one another against the glow of the arc lights, as if shadows from some other world. The welcoming ceremony was brief and silent; not until we were all seated in a sleek black sedan did they begin to speak, though it was difficult to distinguish between courtesies or threats, the lights outside like the tide keeping me distracted.
When I was a child, nights in Beijing were dark, pitch-dark, a darkness a hundredfold darker than today. So, for instance, Zheng Fanglong lived next door to my family in a two-room residence with only three fluorescent lights: eight watts in the sitting room, three watts in the bedroom, and a shared three-watt bulb that hung from a small porthole between the kitchen and bathroom. In other words, whenever the whole family celebrated New Year’s or decided to live large on any ordinary day, they never used more than fourteen watts—those brilliant, bulb-lined full-length mirrors weren’t fashionable yet.
Perhaps this is an extreme example for Sanbulao (Three Never Old) Hutong No. 1, but for the rest of Beijing I fear the situation was even worse. My classmates often lived with their family in one room with one light, and were commonly forced to observe “blackouts”—but once the light-string was pulled . . . What about homework? . . . Quit your lip-flapping, there’s always tomorrow.
The lightbulbs were ordinarily bare, shadeless, a dim yellow softness—a shade only made a mysterious halo and washed out the numerous subtleties of darkness, projecting a single spotlight upward. Back then girls didn’t wear makeup, or even dress up, though they were strikingly beautiful, which certainly had something to do with the quality of the light. The spread of fluorescent lights was a disaster, painfully dazzling the eyes, blotting out the sky as it enveloped the earth without impediment or pause. As the nighttime illumination on a chicken farm pushes hens to lay more eggs, fluorescent lights create the illusion of daylight, except humans cannot lay eggs and so they become more agitated, heart vexed thoughts confused. What’s unfortunate is that kind of feminine beauty can’t exist anymore—to apply makeup on those ashen, worn-out faces is useless. And yet the ones who suffer the most under fluorescent lights are children. With nowhere to hide in that space erased of imagination, they prematurely step into the savageness of a public square.
Our physics teacher once said that when one enters the dark, visual acuity expands twenty-thousand-fold for a brief moment. So in this way the darkness allows one to see things as clear as a flame. Light originally signified humankind’s first evolutionary milestone, but surpassing this milestone only produced an open-eyed blindness. To think that the male beast once possessed the keen vision of a wolf, swiftly adapting focus: woosh . . . see the flame . . . woosh . . . see the flock of sheep . . . woosh . . . see the matchless beauty of the she-wolf.
In those days there were plenty of “four eyes”*—besides lighting conditions, this must have had something to do with study habits. Students would argue vigorously over why, in the unlit darkness of the countryside, were there so few “four eyes.” Although the school provided night-study rooms (i.e., space with sufficient lighting), it couldn’t prevent the all-hour overachievers and hardcore intellectuals, like my good friend Cao Yifan, from some light reading—nestling into his quilt with Dream of the Red Mansion and flashlight in hand, he long ago joined the ranks of “four eyes.”
Back then streetlamps in Beijing were scarce; many hutong alleys and lanes didn’t have a single one, and even if there were some lamps each one was separated by thirty to fifty meters of darkness and only illuminated the small area immediately below it. Adults often exploited the story of the forehead-tapping beggar to frighten us. The forehead-tapping beggar used a certain enchanting drug to abduct children. The tale itself became an enchanting drug, bewildering countless children, the teller always conveying the fuzziest of details, and so, for one, what exactly did the head-tapping trick entail to instantly stupefy a child into mechanically following the villain away? Didn’t Taiwan unleash this kind of advanced weaponry a long time ago? While we couldn’t be sure if such a crime actually occurred, oil and vinegar spiced up the oral legend which stretched through hutong history into my childhood.
For the night traveler, streetlamps are more for steeling nerves than for illumination. The night traveler rides her bike, whistles a faint melody, ding-ding rings her bell. If every streetlamp is out, or some kid has shattered them with a slingshot, she panics, cursing eight generations of ancestors.
As streetlamps were scarce, one needed to provide another light source to bike at night. Toward the end of the fifties there were still bicyclists who used paper lanterns, as depicted in Hou Baolin’s masterful piece of comic xiangsheng cross-talk “Night Traveler.” Most used a kind of square flashlight that was strapped onto the handlebars. The next grade up was a dynamo-powered light that generated electricity at the spinning hub. If the bicycle’s speed was uneven, the light flickered on and off, a visible part of Beijing’s nightscape.
At the end of the 1950s, modern streetlights were installed along Chang’an Avenue, the thoroughfare of “eternal peace.” Walking along the long avenue as dusk settled and the lights flickered on filled oneself with pride, mind clear eyes ablaze, as if devouring communism with a glance. In stark contrast, the lights in hutong neighborhoods were extremely dim. Once you strayed from the broad open road, you’d be lost again in Beijing’s endless hutong maze.
When I was a child I’d play the shadows game with my little brother and sister—intercepting the light with hands overlapped and fingers intertwined to cast animals of all kinds onto the walls, weak or ferocious, from the chase to the fight. No one chose to be a rabbit, the weak meat for the strong, behind the succession of shadows lurked a will to power, the shadowteers believing they were masters of the ten thousand manifestations.
For children, darkness is for hide-and-seek. Retreat from the realm of light into countless hiding places, deep into the nooks and corners. When we moved into Three Never Old Hutong Alley No. 1, there was still a rock garden in the courtyard—strange, otherworldly forms of Taihu stone terrified people at night; whatever shapes one said they appeared as, they thus appeared. The courtyard was the perfect place to play hide-and-seek. Both sides trembled with fear—who could be sure one wouldn’t encounter the ghost of the famous former resident, the voyager Zheng He, or one of his handmaidens? Hearing the high-pitched, trilling calls pierced our quivering hearts: “Saw you a long time ago, yalayala! Don’t play dumb, come out come out—” And then a shrill scream right behind our backs, bodies tingling with goose bumps.
Darkness was also for telling stories, particularly ghost stories. Adults told them to children, children retold them to each other. In a country tha
t doesn’t believe in God, to use ghosts to frighten children and to frighten oneself truly reinforces Confucian orthodoxy. Chairman Mao made appeals for don’t-be-afraid-of-ghosts stories to be told in school, at once confounding the people. First off, the bold are few in this world; furthermore, to not be afraid of ghosts requires a troubling explanation: one must first prove the existence of ghosts to prove one shouldn’t be afraid of them.
During the “Revolution” we’d make revolution by day and tell ghost stories by night, as if ghosts and revolution didn’t contradict one other at all. In my first year of high school at Beijing No. 4, I lived in the dormitory. Often, once the lights were switched off for the night, one student would inevitably start to vocalize some spooky music. At the decisive moment, another would smoothly push over a bed rail or toss a metal washbasin to the ground. After this special effects assault, the self-professed bold ones could never withstand any test of fear.
As fluorescent lights became common after 1970, Beijing suddenly turned bright and ghosts no longer manifested themselves. Fortunately, the power consistently went out. Once it did, houses here and there would glow with candles, as if remembering and mourning a lost childhood.
2
Waking up, ceiling bright with the reflected light of a heavy snowfall. Warm air from the heater stirs the curtains as the window frame blurs with the light pouring in, making it seem as if a train is slowly, ever so gently, moving forward, taking me to a faraway place. I linger in bed until my parents rush me out.
A heavy snow turns the city into a mirage, as if one stares into a mirror of self-reflection. Soon the mirror will smash and shatter, in a flash, mud splashes everywhere. On the road to school wrapped in a padded cotton coat, I grab a handful of wet snow, roll it into a ball, and throw it at the old locust tree by the hutong gate. Alas, it misses its target. I burst into the classroom as the school bell rings. Once again, it is as if the windows of the room were those of a train leaving the platform, gradually accelerating. In the gloominess, the teacher’s silhouette turns, chalk dust flies up, the numerals on the blackboard seem to fade. The teacher raises her pointer at me and shouts, “Hai! Yes, YOU, are you deaf?”
As soon as the end-of-school bell rang, spring arrived. The eaves once white with snow were soaked black with water, the sky curved down, endless branch-tips were tinted green, bees buzzed in the sunlight, a steady hum, the shadows of girls dashed around like kites whose strings no one could catch, fluff from willow trees fluttered down, irritating people. I started to write, first plagiarizing Liu Baiyu’s Red Agate Essays, then Wei Wei’s Who Are the Most Beloved People? Liu Baiyu wrote of watching the sunrise from a plane above Moscow. This passage I evidently couldn’t plagiarize. I was puzzled: Why Moscow? I strolled to Houhai Lake to watch the sunset. What precisely is this red agate over there? The setting sun looked like a two-fen piece of fruit candy. Swallows flew back and forth across the lake; the Western Hills folded up and down in layers. Upon the glittering waves a foul stench rose up from the foam.
On a windless day, a cloud paused, motionless, casting its shadow upon a playground. Some muscular upperclassmen swung themselves mechanically on some parallel bars, their shadows like a metronome. Beneath a horizontal bar, I positioned my feet, took a breath, and prepared to stretch upward. Grip fixed, the plan was to do six consecutive reps to pass. After two, my spirit and strength were already depleted, legs kicked out, forehead just reaching the iron bar. It seemed as if I was exhausting all my energy to climb into the sky and peek at the freely drifting clouds.
The summer sun cut the streets into two halves. In the shade it was as cool as water as I passed like a fish through the crowd. I abruptly changed tactics and walked to the side of scorching sun, alone but proud, stepping on my own shadow, face dripping with sweat, my whole body soon drenched. When I reached my destination, I treated myself to a popsicle.
I like wandering the streets aimlessly, without a thought or care. At the heart of the grown-up world, there is a kind of subconscious sense of security. Just don’t look up, and everything one sees is below chest-level—no need to suffer if you’re ugly, no need to be distracted by the pleasures angers sorrows joys of the world. When enveloped by a thronging crowd, sky a dark screen, tightly squeezed without a trace of wind, one must struggle and strive to break free from the siege. One benefit of being young is having a unique point of view: a deformed face reflected in a nickel-plated doorknob, the stream of human figures mirrored in glass display windows, countless feet trample cigarette butts, a candy wrapper rises and falls along a sidewalk curb, sunlight on the spokes of bicycle wheels, the taillights of a bus blinking on and off. . . .
I like rainy days, the way the boundary between light and shadow fades, a harmony of milk and water, like the color palette of a dilettante painter. Birds and clouds descend to lightning-rod heights, empty crows’ nests in the branches of tall trees, bright-colored umbrellas meet by chance like drifting duckweed, raindrops make tracks on glass, handwriting on bulletin boards smudges their judgments, the reflected light in puddles scatters beneath my feet.
Yifan and I would often walk over to Dongan Market. In the 1960s, Dongan Market was renovated into a shopping mall, its name changed from “East Peace” to Dongfeng “East Wind” Market, its former ambience wholly destroyed. Before, all the small vendors displayed their wares in charming disorder, and anything you wanted you could find. In my memory, that place is a maze of lights: a cross-luster of electric lamps, gas lamps, kerosene lamps, and candles all melding into a bewitching haze. Beneath such illumination, the faces of the shop vendors and customers appeared utterly mysterious. If one could but fix that moment onto a scroll it could represent the perfect scene of daily life at the time. Once in a while, a thread of sunlight leaked inside, barely shifting—that most ancient hour hand.
3
Every child naturally harbors many illusions. The play of light and shadow, the space of imagination, even the body’s biology all shape these illusions. As children grow up, most of them are forgotten—time society customs systems of knowledge together forge this forgetting as one enters adulthood.
The three years between the ages of ten to thirteen were difficult for me—that breaking point of the advancing body and mind when puberty begins. Deprivation was daily existence. In a photograph from that time I look like a starving African boy with eyes glazed in a fixed stare, the trace of a sly, strange smile at the corners of my mouth.
I must have been in the throes of a consummate illusion. Before my eyes I saw grotesquely shaped trees, brilliant flowers about to drop petals, smoke suspended midair, water flow backward, crooked houses, stairs roll out, clouds turn into monsters, inscrutable shadows, stars so big and bright. . . . When I finally saw Van Gogh’s starry sky I felt no surprise. For me, such visions are the normal result of a deprived existence.
I’d walk the streets with dazed eyes glazed, talking to myself, straight ahead no turns. In class, especially, as I could barely hear a word of what the teacher was saying, I’d immerse myself in my illusionary world. The teacher would ask a question, my reply would be nonsense. During parent-teacher conference, the teacher transferred all her worries to my mother and father. As my mother was a doctor, she didn’t make a to-do over nothing. But I was put under close surveillance.
Waking up in the middle of the night, I see my shoes shuffling along, making a circle before returning to their original place. An enormous ship suddenly rushes in through the window, a stranger’s face appears in the glass, a forest lit from behind erupts in flames. . . .
One evening I returned home alone and found a white cloud motionless above the gate of Three Never Old Hutong No. 1. Not huge, a bit curved in the canopy-shape of a large umbrella, the cloud was incredibly low, even a little lower than our four-story home. Some years later I learned about UFOs and was instantly enlightened. Beneath that cloud it was as if I was put under an enchanting spell—mind a confusion of tangled threads, body completely rigid. Time seemed
to have stopped. I finally took a step forward, and quick as a wing-flap ran into the house.
(Translated by Jeffrey Yang)
* A Chinese nickname for those who wear glasses.
GU CHENG
(1956–1993)
The son of a noted writer and party member, Gu Cheng began writing poetry in his teens. Often associated with Bei Dao and other Misty Poets, Gu was known for his work’s radiant innocence with a touch of melancholia. He was always seen wearing a stovepipe hat, cut from a leg of blue jeans, supposedly an amulet to dispel evil spirits and safeguard the dreams in his head. He searched for a simple, utopian life in poetry and reality, until his tragic death, some say a murder-suicide, on a small island in New Zealand in 1993. His two-line poem, “A Generation,” with its imagistic brevity and ironic twist, defines the dreams and disillusionment of more than one generation in post-Mao China, and has become a rallying cry of rebellion against ideological orthodoxy and political repression.
A Generation
the black night gave me black eyes
still I use them to seek the light
—April 1979
Nameless Flowers
On the way back from mowing, in drizzling rain, I saw wet little flowers.
Wildflowers,
stellar spots,
like lost buttons
litter the roadside.
They lack the chrysanthemum’s
golden locks,
don’t have the peony’s
tender looks;
they have only small flowers,
and frail leaves,
wafting faint fragrance
into the gorgeous spring.
My poems,
like nameless flowers,
follow the seasons’ winds and rains,
quietly opening