The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature

by Yunte Huang

  The first truculent raindrops made the plants shudder. The rain beat a loud tattoo on the sedan chair and fell on Grandma’s embroidered slippers; it fell on Yu Zhan’ao’s head, then slanted in on Grandma’s face.

  The bearers ran like scared jackrabbits, but couldn’t escape the prenoon deluge. Sorghum crumpled under the wild rain. Toads took refuge under the stalks, their white pouches popping in and out noisily; foxes hid in their darkened dens to watch tiny drops of water splashing down from the sorghum plants. The rainwater washed Yu Zhan’ao’s head so clean and shiny it looked to Grandma like a new moon. Her clothes too were soaked. She could have covered herself with the curtain, but she didn’t; she didn’t want to, for the open front of the sedan chair afforded her a glimpse of the outside world in all its turbulence and beauty.

  IT WAS RAINING as she sat in the bridal sedan chair, like a boat on the ocean, and was carried into Shan Tingxiu’s compound. The street was flooded with water, peppered by a layer of sorghum seeds. At the front door she was met by a wizened old man with a tiny queue in the shape of a kidney bean. The rain had stopped, but an occasional drop splashed onto the watery ground. Although the musicians had announced her arrival with their instruments, no one had emerged to watch the show; Grandma knew that was a bad sign. Two men came out to help her perform her obeisances, one in his fifties, the other in his forties. The fifty-year-old was none other than Uncle Arhat Liu, the other was one of the distillery hands.

  The musicians and bearers stood in the puddles like drenched chickens, somberly watching the two dried-up men lead my soft-limbed, rosy-cheeked grandma into the dark wedding-chamber. The men exuded a pungent aroma of wine, as if they had been soaked in the vats.

  Grandma was taken up to a k’ang in the worship hall and told to sit on it. Since no one came up to remove her red veil, she took it off herself. A man with a facial tic sat curled up on a stool next to her. The bottom part of his flat, elongated face was red and festering. He stood up and stuck a clawlike hand out toward Grandma, who screamed in horror and reached into her bodice for the scissors; she glared intently at the man, who recoiled and curled up on the stool again. Grandma didn’t set down her scissors once that night, nor did the man climb down from his stool.

  Early the next morning, before the man woke up, Grandma slipped down off the k’ang, burst through the front door, and opened the gate; just as she was about to flee the premises, a hand reached out and grabbed her. The old man with the kidney-bean queue had her by the wrist and was looking at her with hate-filled eyes.

  Shan Tingxiu coughed dryly once or twice as his expression softened. “Child,” he said, “now that you’re married, you’re like my own daughter. Bianlang doesn’t have what everybody says. Don’t listen to their talk. We’ve got a good business, and Bianlang’s a good boy. Now that you’re here, the home is your responsibility.” Shan Tingxiu held out to her a ring of bronze keys, but she didn’t take them from him.

  Grandma sat up all the next night, scissors in hand.

  On the morning of the third day, my maternal great-granddad led a donkey up to the house to take Grandma home; it was a Northeast Gaomi Township custom for a bride to return to her parents’ home three days after her wedding. Great-Granddad spent the morning drinking with Shan Tingxiu, then set out for home shortly after noon.

  Grandma sat sidesaddle on the donkey, swaying from side to side as the animal left the village. Even though it hadn’t rained for three days, the road was still wet, and steam rose from the sorghum in the fields, the green stalks shrouded in swirling whiteness, as though in the presence of immortals. Great-Granddad’s silver coins clinked and jingled in the saddlebags. He was so drunk he could barely walk, and his eyes were glassy. The donkey proceeded slowly, its long neck bobbing up and down, its tiny hooves leaving muddy imprints. Grandma had only ridden a short distance when she began to get light-headed; her eyes were red and puffy, her hair mussed, and the sorghum in the fields, a full joint taller than it had been three days earlier, mocked her as she passed.

  “Dad,” Grandma called out, “I don’t want to go back there anymore. I’ll kill myself before I go back there again. . . .”

  “Daughter,” Great-Granddad replied, “you have no idea how lucky you are. Your father-in-law said he’s going to give me a big black mule. I’m going to sell this runty little thing. . . .”

  The donkey nibbled some mud-splattered grass that lined the road.

  “Dad,” Grandma sobbed, “he’s got leprosy. . . .”

  “Your father-in-law is going to give me a mule. . . .”

  Great-Granddad, drunk as a lord, kept vomiting into the weeds by the side of the road. The filth and bile set Grandma’s stomach churning, and she felt nothing but loathing for him.

  As the donkey walked into Toad Hollow, they were met by an overpowering stench that caused its ears to droop. Grandma spotted the highwayman’s bloated corpse, which was covered by a layer of ­emerald-colored flies. The donkey skirted the corpse, sending the flies swarming angrily into the air to form a green cloud. Great-Granddad followed the donkey, his body seemingly wider than the road itself: one moment he was stumbling into the sorghum to the left of the road, the next moment he was trampling on weeds to the right. And when he reached the corpse, he gasped, “Oh!” several times, and said through quaking lips, “Poor beggar . . . you poor beggar . . . you sleeping there? . . .” Grandma never forgot the highwayman’s pumpkin face. In that instant when the flies swarmed into the air she was struck by the remarkable contrast between the graceful elegance of his dead face and the mean, cowardly expression he’d worn in life.

  The distance between them lengthened, one li at a time, with the sun’s rays slanting down, the sky high and clear; the donkey quickly outpaced Great-Granddad. Since it knew the way home, it carried Grandma at a carefree saunter. Up ahead was a bend in the road, and as the donkey negotiated the turn, Grandma tipped backward, leaving the security of the animal’s back. A muscular arm swept her off and carried her into the sorghum field.

  Grandma fought halfheartedly. She really didn’t feel like struggling. The three days she had just gotten through were nightmarish. Certain individuals become great leaders in an instant; Grandma unlocked the mysteries of life in three days. She even wrapped her arms around his neck to make it easier for him to carry her. Sorghum leaves rustled. Great-Granddad’s hoarse voice drifted over on the wind: “Daughter, where the hell are you?”

  [. . .]

  THE MAN PLACED Grandma on the ground, where she lay as limp as a ribbon of dough, her eyes narrowed like those of a lamb. He ripped away the black mask, revealing his face to her. It’s him! A silent prayer to heaven. A powerful feeling of pure joy rocked her, filling her eyes with hot tears.

  Yu Zhan’ao removed his rain cape and tramped out a clearing in the sorghum, then spread his cape over the sorghum corpses. He lifted Grandma onto the cape. Her soul fluttered as she gazed at his bare torso. A light mist rose from the tips of the sorghum, and all around she could hear the sounds of growth. No wind, no waving motion, just the white-hot rays of moist sunlight crisscrossing through the open cracks between plants. The passion in Grandma’s heart, built up over sixteen years, suddenly erupted. She squirmed and twisted on the cape. Yu Zhan’ao, getting smaller and smaller, fell loudly to his knees at her side. She was trembling from head to toe; a redolent yellow ball of fire crackled and sizzled before her eyes. Yu Zhan’ao roughly tore open her jacket, exposing the small white mounds of chilled, tense flesh to the sunlight. Answering his force, she cried out in a muted, hoarse voice, “My God . . .” and swooned.

  Grandma and Granddad exchanged their love surrounded by the vitality of the sorghum field: two unbridled souls, refusing to knuckle under to worldly conventions, were fused together more closely than their ecstatic bodies. They plowed the clouds and scattered rain in the field, adding a patina of lustrous red to the rich and varied history of Northeast Gaomi Township. My father was conceived with the essence of heaven and earth
, the crystallization of suffering and wild joy.

  The braying donkey threaded its way into the sorghum field, and Grandma returned from the hazy kingdom of heaven to the cruel world of man. She sat up in a state of utter stupefaction, her face bathed in tears. “He really does have leprosy,” she said. As Granddad knelt down, a sword appeared in his hand, as if by magic. He slipped it out of its scabbard; the two-foot blade was curved, like a leaf of chive. With a single swish, it sliced through two stalks of sorghum, the top halves thudding to the ground, leaving bubbles of dark-green liquid on the neat, slanted wounds.

  “Come back in three days, no matter what!” Granddad said.

  Grandma looked at him uncomprehendingly. He dressed while she tidied herself up, then put his sword away—where, she didn’t know. Granddad took her back to the roadside and vanished.

  Three days later, the little donkey carried Grandma back, and when she entered the village she learned that the Shans, father and son, had been murdered and tossed into the inlet at the western edge of the village.

  (Translated by Howard Goldblatt)

  SHU TING

  (1952– )

  A Fujian native, Shu Ting, real name Gong Peiyu, was the leading woman poet in the 1980s. Like many of her generation during the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to the countryside to “receive reeducation by the peasants” in 1969, when she was still a high school student. In 1972, she returned to the city and worked at factories. The publication in 1979 of her poem “To an Oak,” which freely expresses romantic love, made her an instant celebrity in a nation still reeling from a decade-long cultural and spiritual devastation. Often associated with the Misty Poets, Shu Ting crafted a lyrical voice of a woman, weary of ideological weight and restraint, looking for beauty and truth in the apolitical and ordinary.

  To an Oak

  If I love you—

  I won’t be like the trumpet creeper

  Flaunting itself on your tall branches,

  If I love you—

  I won’t be like the lovesick bird,

  Repeating to the green shade its monotonous song;

  Nor like a brook,

  Bringing cool solace the year round;

  Nor like a perilous peak,

  Adding to your height, complementing your grandeur;

  Nor even sunlight,

  Nor even spring rain.

  No, these are not enough!

  I must be a kapok tree by your side;

  In the image of a tree standing by you,

  Our roots clasped underground,

  Our leaves touching in the clouds.

  With every breeze

  We salute each other,

  But no one

  Will understand our language.

  You have your trunk of steel and iron branches,

  Like knives, like swords,

  And like spears.

  I have my huge, red flowers,

  Like heavy sighs,

  And like valiant torches.

  We share the burdens of cold, storms, lightning;

  We share the joys of mists, vapors, rainbows.

  We may seem forever severed,

  But are lifelong companions.

  This is the greatest of love;

  This is constancy:

  Love—

  I love not just your robust form,

  I also love the ground you hold, the earth you stand on.

  —March 27, 1977

  A Roadside Encounter

  The phoenix tree suddenly tilts

  The bicycle bell’s ring hangs in air

  Earth swiftly reverses its rotation

  Back to that night ten years ago

  The phoenix tree gently sways again

  The ringing bell sprinkles floral fragrance

  along the trembling street

  Darkness gathers, then seeps away

  The dawning light of memory merges

  with the light in your eyes

  Maybe this didn’t happen

  Just an illusion spawned by a familiar road

  Even if this did happen

  I’m used to not shedding any tears.

  —March 1979

  Assembly Line

  On the assembly line of time

  Nights huddle together

  We come down from the factory assembly lines

  And join the assembly line going home

  Overhead

  An assembly line of stars trails across the sky

  By our side

  A young tree looks dazed on its assembly line

  The stars must be tired

  Thousands of years have passed

  Their journey never changes

  The young trees are ill

  Dust and monotony deprive them

  Of grain and color

  I can feel it all

  Because we beat to the same rhythm

  But strangely

  The only thing I do not feel

  Is my own existence

  As though the woods and stars

  Maybe out of habit

  Maybe out of sorrow

  No longer have the strength to care

  About a destiny they cannot alter

  —January–February 1980

  Where the Soul Dwells

  all roads lead to you

  none of them reach you

  your words are compiled into dictionaries

  those who keep copies of your silence

  have their own renditions in their hearts

  you locked the door

  then threw away the key

  you never walk down that street, yet each time

  you look up you see a window open

  catcalls and applause

  sedimentary rocks are soft

  before they turn into amber

  amid the lush foliage

  that cicada of yours

  shrills

  —1986

  (Translated by Eva Hung)

  LIU SUOLA

  (1955– )

  Born in Beijing to a family of high-ranking Communist cadres, Liu Suola, who also goes by Sola in English, tasted the bitterness and brutality of the Chinese revolution early in life when her parents were taken away in a political purge and exiled to a rural pig farm for twenty years. Music became her consolation, and Liu studied composition at the Central Conservatory of Music from 1977 to 1981. The publication in 1985 of her first novella, You Have No Choice, spiced with dark humor and Existentialist ennui, made her a pioneer of avant-garde Chinese fiction. She lived in England and the United States from 1988 to 2002, composing music, hopping blues clubs in Memphis, and jamming with jazz musicians in the Mississippi Delta. An internationally renowned vocalist, composer, and writer, Liu was cited by the New York Times for her ability to “wander from echoes of Chinese opera to simple folklike melodies.” The novella In Search of the King of Singers (1987), which follows, gives us a glimpse into that inspirational wandering.

  In Search of the King of Singers (excerpts)

  If anybody had wanted to find out where the two of us were on this earth then, they would have to use a magnifying glass to enlarge the map twenty times; still, they probably wouldn’t have been able to locate our whereabouts. It was a tiny little place, not far from the primeval forest, but it wasn’t shown on the map, though the primeval forest was. We circled around and around, and nearly walked our legs off. I grumbled and grumbled, but B just kept quiet. The skin on our noses had peeled off I don’t know how many times, but the King of Singers still eluded us. B, do you really have to see him, to plead with him? Why are you so sure he’s better than you are, in what way is he better? I’ve never come across a mountain as difficult to climb as this one—the soil slips and gives way for no reason. You walk and you walk, you only want to push on. A tree crashes to the ground. What a pain in the ass you are! The plants up in the mountain were so weird I dared not touch them. My shoelaces came undone as we walked, I stooped to tie them and found several leeches clinging to my shoes
. What a pain in the ass you are!

  B had his run of luck while he was still at the university. The scores he composed were published in magazines, as if they were recipes. Some called him avant-garde; he went mad when he heard this. I’d say he was a fool, just as he was a fool when he courted me. At the time, people said he was fooling around with me; when he got a bit of fame they said I was fooling around with him. If it were possible I’d quite like to go back to the past. The problem arose not because of that outdated label, “avant-garde,” it started with the quest for the King of Singers. He considered this more important than getting the Nobel Prize, though of course Nobel simply didn’t care a fig for composers. At first I thought it was good fun and went around with him for a bit; but, after a few months, I began to find the whole thing more and more absurd. They said the King of Singers was up in the north; we went to the coldest places—even our snot froze into icicles—only to learn that the King of Singers was in fact down in the south, in places where leeches thrive. We didn’t know where in this world leeches thrive. As we crossed the primeval forest, the leeches even bit B’s vital parts, but the King of Singers was still nowhere to be found. The strangest thing was the illiterate village people all said they’d seen him, and what they said sounded convincing: he was dressed in black and his head was shaven. You’d ask them where he was, they’d say he’d just left. So we trailed after him, like two lousy wriggling worms.