by Yunte Huang
TextingQQand a hieroglyphic alphabet:
Born in the ’50s
We too must learnthe language flying in the air
All those lost words
Only lived at certain times
Like grapes, goji berries, and dates
Fallen on our bed, when we draw the curtains
As I murmurword by word
My boyfriend understandsthey
Turn blood-red
(Translated by Yunte Huang)
HAI ZI
(1964–1989)
Born as Zha Haisheng to a peasant family in rural Anhui, Hai Zi is one of the most mythologized Chinese poets today. He attended Peking University from 1979 to 1983, and then taught at China University of Political Science and Law. Committing himself totally to poetry, he composed over 250 short poems and a number of long poems within the brief span of seven years. On March 26, 1989, two days after his twenty-fifth birthday, Hai Zi threw himself in front of a train in Shanhaiguan, the eastern end of the Great Wall. Although his suicide, caused probably by schizophrenia, bore no direct relation to the tragic event on Tiananmen Square two months later, the younger generation regards it as a symbol of self-sacrifice in the pursuit of spiritual salvation. A copy of Thoreau’s Walden and a Bible were found in the sachet Hai Zi had carried on the day of his death.
Your Hands
the North
pulls at your hands
hands
pluck off gloves
they are two small lamps
my shoulders
are two old houses
that hold so much
they’ve even held the night
your hands
on top of them
illuminate them
because of this in the morning after our parting
in the light of dawn
I carry a bowl of porridge with both hands
thinking of the North
separated from me by mountains and rivers
two lamps
that I can only distantly stroke
—February 1985
Facing the Ocean, Spring Warms Flowers Open
starting from tomorrow, become a content person
feed the horses, split wood, roam the world
starting from tomorrow, I’ll concern myself with grains and vegetables
I have a home, facing the ocean, spring warms flowers open
starting from tomorrow, I’ll write letters to all the relatives
to tell them of my contentedness
what that content lightning flash told me
I will tell everyone
give a warm name to every river and every mountain
strangers, I send you my blessings
I hope for you a splendid future
I hope that you lovers become family
I hope that in this dusty world you become content
I only hope to face the ocean, as spring warms and flowers open
—January 13, 1989
Spring, Ten Hai Zis
spring, ten Hai Zis fully revive
on the brilliant landscape
mocking this savage and sorrowful Hai Zi
why your long, deep sleep?
spring, ten Hai Zis release their throaty roars
encircling you and me, dancing and singing
pulling at your black hair, riding you rushing wildly away, dust swirling
your pain at the cleaving spreads over the earth
in spring, only this savage and sorrowful Hai Zi
remains, the last one
child of the dark night, steeped in winter, losing his heart to death
unable to extract himself, in deep love with an empty, frigid village
where the grain is piled high, blocking the window
the six family members use half of it: mouths, eating, stomachs
half is for planting and reproduction
great winds blow from the east to the west, from north to south, with
no thought for the dark night or the dawn
in the end what will your daybreak mean?
—before dawn 3–4 o’clock, March 4, 1989
(Translated by Dan Murphy)
MA YUAN
(1953– )
Hailed as the first Chinese postmodernist, Ma Yuan was born in Liaoning. A peasant and factory worker during the Cultural Revolution, he attended Liaoning University from 1978 to 1982. After graduation he was assigned to work for a radio station in Tibet, where he lived for eight years, an experience he often draws upon for his writing, as he does in “Thirteen Ways to Fold a Paper Hawk.” A hardcore avant-gardist known for his use of circular narrative and embedded storytelling, Ma once declared that “the novel is dead.” After a hiatus of twenty years, he resumed fiction writing in 2012 and now lives in self-imposed isolation in the tropical rain forest and monsoon jungle of Sipsongpanna, the southernmost region in Yunnan.
Thirteen Ways to Fold a Paper Hawk
1
March 3 was the Tibetan New Year. My coworkers came over in the morning to wish me Happy New Year, and got me drunk on Tibetan barley wine until I didn’t know up from down, went to bed at noon, and didn’t wake up until dark. When I got out of bed and splashed cold water on my face, I found a little boil on the right corner of my mouth. Just something tiny, I thought.
Half a week later this boil had swollen up incredibly, and started oozing out sickening pus mixed with blood. A scab the size of a walnut formed at the corner of my mouth, my cheek had swollen, and my face was one big mess. Traditional medicine calls the corner of your mouth “the danger triangle.” From there, they say, the pus can run right through your veins straight into your brain. I had no idea if that was true. You can laugh if you like, but I cried from the pain, and not just once either. Now this wasn’t just something tiny anymore.
I started going to the hospital.
In Lhasa, Tibetan New Year is a big holiday. My friends were out celebrating and here I was alone in my work unit’s dormitory, where I’d crawled into bed to read a novel. It’s tough for a man all alone. What could I do to while away the time, doomed as I was to a life of perpetual loneliness? But I wasn’t content with being lonely. I have ways of coping with it. Reading novels is one. Or, for example . . .
At sundown I sometimes walk out onto the street and look at the shattered clay pots and bowls people leave lying all over the street. I watch the long-haired dogs chase each other playing. Sometimes I go to a sweet tea shop, sit for an hour and drink up the last fifty cents in my pocket. Or I take a walk to the south side of Medicine King Mountain to see what Buddhist worshippers have left behind. Little clay Buddhas? Prayer flags with a picture of Sakyamuni?* Stone tablets engraved with lines of scripture?
Or I could draw the curtain (my only spare bedsheet, white with blue checks—you know that pattern), shut the door, turn on the lamp on my little three-drawer desk, and spin you a story.
(Of course it’s a good story . . . at least I hope so.)
It’s times like this my imagination is especially active. I can call to mind things that happened and things that haven’t happened. Before I write a story I always rack my brain—“What should I write? How should I put it?”—the same old problems. If my Tibetan pal Little Kelsang hadn’t come by and told me what his criminal investigation squad was up to, who knows where my imagination might have galloped to?
Little Kelsang asked me if I remembered the turquoise peddler. Sure I did. Little Kelsang had just joined the police department last year—a true raw recruit. This case had him worked up. I told him to unbutton that stiff collar on his uniform, take off that visored policeman’s hat, and relax a little, while I poured him a cup of tea.
Let’s talk a little about the Barkhor. The Barkhor runs in a circle around the famous Jokhang Temple, with streets and alleyways crisscrossing all over the place. You can see people here from almost every country on earth. Somebody reckoned more than thirty thousand people come here every day to do
business and to worship Buddha, and it must be at least double that on Sunday. The Barkhor is one big marketplace. The array of goods on sale here puts to shame anything you could imagine. This is China’s greatest antique and jewelry market. Millions change hands here every day. A rare peddler of indecipherable nationality surreptitiously slips a jewel from his sleeve to show a foreign tourist. With a smile neither cringing nor haughty, he holds up his fingers in token of offer or counteroffer.†
It was here that I came across the world-famous alexandrite cat’s-eye gem. From a peddler’s rug on the street’s second corner I bought an emerald-green turquoise, about as big as a couple of peanuts in their shells. It weighed fifty-two grams. Well, actually, I don’t know anything about the quality of precious stones. I just liked its shape and color, so decided to have it. At first he wanted sixty. I offered him thirty. He laid out his rug at this same spot every day of the year. You couldn’t reckon his age. Seventy was as good a guess as thirty-five. I’d been dropping over to the Barkhor for quite a while, so by now we knew each other on sight. From his face I decided he must be from South Asia. Nepal maybe. Or else India or Pakistan. He spoke Chinese clearly enough. We struck a deal at thirty-eight. That was last year, August 12—my desk calendar confirms the date.
2
You remember that little street that runs off the Barkhor’s southwest corner, right?
(In fact I didn’t. Once I’m on the Barkhor I can’t tell north from south.)
You remember how muddy it used to get there in the summer? They’ve been repaving it with concrete paving stones.
(I nodded. This didn’t mean I remembered what it was like. It meant I was listening.)
The street has been repaired.
(I still couldn’t work out what Little Kelsang was driving at.)
They widened it too, so they had to cut into the courtyards on both sides. The City Works Commission tore down the walls of the courtyard houses and then rebuilt them. In one courtyard, where nobody lived but an old lady, they dug up a man’s body, not decomposed yet. Right, it was the turquoise peddler. You’ve noticed there’s a different peddler on that street corner now, a Khampa woman selling sheepskins.
(I didn’t want to tell you I’d really noticed. . . . I didn’t want to interrupt your story.)
The old woman had caved-in cheeks, not a tooth in her head. She said she had no idea what had happened and didn’t know the dead man. She had no children, no regular occupation, but kept body and soul together by selling used clothing on the street. She used snuff, no other unusual habits. The neighborhood committee told us that she’d moved to the Barkhor after the 1957 Lhasa uprising, a little over twenty years ago. They had no precise information about what she did before that. On the Barkhor people are always moving in and out. It is all so confusing that even old neighbors know little about each other. When we started to question her, she just stuck to her story. After we threatened her, she spilled everything.
3
The story of this old lady reminded me of another old lady who lived all by herself near the Barkhor. A guy I work with is one of her customers. She runs an unlicensed wine shop. Her barley wine doesn’t have that sour taste—if you know what I mean. So her business is good. Now, I can’t drink Tibetan barley wine. They brew it with unboiled water and it gives me diarrhea. When I drop in at my friend Big Kelsang’s house he always wants me to follow the Tibetan custom and drink off three cups of the stuff, so the last time I went over there I got out a copy of the doctor’s diagnosis, and told Big Kelsang that I had inflammation of the stomach lining, but he swore the barley wine he bought was made with boiled water, and I wouldn’t get diarrhea from it. So I couldn’t refuse. That was how I learned about this old lady.
When Big Kelsang went out to her shop again to buy wine, I went along. I wanted to find out how she made her wine. I was curious to know why she brewed her wine with boiled water when everybody else used unboiled water.
She was plump, with thick, fleshy hands—a gentle, agreeable person. In my mind’s eye I’d pictured this unlicensed wine shop owner as a shriveled old woman, cautious and reserved, with a thousand secrets lurking in the wrinkles of her face. But she wasn’t like that. She was nothing like any character in my stories. At the time, I was a little disappointed. But anyway let’s go back to Little Kelsang’s story.
4
She said the dead man was her lover. He’d left her all his things to look after. She’d sold them all. She said he had a nine-eyed alexandrite cat’s-eye. (A top-quality gem with just five eyes will bring in better than a thousand yuan.) He kept it on a cord around his neck, never took it off. She’d asked for it more than once, she said, but he always refused. All he’d given her was a few ordinary turquoises. So she got him drunk on liquor, and with the help of two itinerant Khampa peddlers, she strangled him with a cord, buried him, and then, after all, she said, she didn’t get the jewel. The two guys grabbed it and took off. How could she stop them? Cheating an old woman! Her father was Muslim, she said. She’d been a jewel-trader herself.
Three times we asked for a description of the two Khampa men. Each time she gave a different description. We asked her their names and where they came from. She said people in business don’t ask people questions like that. You don’t ask where goods come from, or where they’re going. But she said by the sound of their accents they were from the Tibetan district of Sichuan Province. Well, whether you believe her is up to you. She’d been here in Lhasa twenty years, and nobody knew anything about her. There she sat, not a tooth in her head, her mouth all puckered—her face the portrait of a lifetime of hardship. Not a word of truth in all she said, I reckon.
(And then?)
We went over her statement. We figured she might have made up the two Khampa accomplices to throw us off the trail. Think about it—thousands of Khampa traders up and down the Barkhor, how could we track them down with no description? And on top of that, she said they’d left the Barkhor, left Lhasa! Still, we’re going to dispatch a couple of men to search in the Tibetan district of Sichuan.
5
Little Kelsang was one of the two men they dispatched. He said he was setting off in three or four days. I asked him to let me know what happened when he got back. He laughed, and asked if I wanted to turn it into yet another story. I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no. The material was pretty flimsy, but who knows how the case might develop? I’m waiting for the outcome.
Suddenly I thought of something else. I asked Little Kelsang if the old lady believed in Buddha. He said there were some copper Buddha statues in her house, even some ceremonial items, but who could tell if they were for prayer or for sale.
That’s about all Little Kelsang’s story.
I’m sure you’d forgive me for not finishing this story. I’m all worn out. I fold my quilt into a pillow, lean back, light a cigarette, and close my eyes. I’m wondering why all old women involved in secrets and intrigues are thin and shriveled, and why, when I heard about the murder, the old lady selling barley wine came into my mind. What’s even more interesting is that my image of the old lady who sells illegal wine should fit in so perfectly with the murderous old woman.
6
A knock on the door.
“Ma Yuan! Ma Yuan!”
It was Xinjian.
“Sitting at home all alone? God, what’s the matter with you?”
“A boil. Must be a punishment for something I did.”
“Dead-on. Have you eaten?”
“There’s hardtack, and some cans.”
“Listen, come on over and stay at my place a few days.”
Xinjian’s a painter. He’s designing the interior of the new museum, and arranging the art exhibition there too. So I moved into his apartment with him, right there in the museum.
His place is roomy enough. As I walked in, my eyes lit on some paper hawks on his design desk. He came to Lhasa the year before last, the same as me. He studied fine art, and he brought along photos of all his murals, h
is sculpture, his canvases. I’ve seen them.
A couple of bachelors get together, things go better. His place is cleaner than mine, and the reason is a girl who comes over every once in a while, a beautiful girl with a laugh to show flashing white teeth. Her name’s Nima. She’s nineteen. She likes to do her laundry in the Lhasa River.
Xinjian likes to go over to the river too. He paints from life, and he’s always looking for scenes to inspire his art. The Lhasa River in summer is just so enticing, at last he couldn’t resist. He leaped in, and cut his foot on a piece of broken glass. The wound was deep. He grabbed his foot, howling like a devil, and Nima came running from the bank where she was washing clothes.
You can imagine what happened next. She got a bicycle and took him to the hospital, then came to the hospital to visit him, then came again, then . . .
She discovered he was a painter, and that after he shaved his beard he wasn’t so old. (In fact he’s only twenty-nine.) She found out the work studio where he lived was in the worst mess you could imagine. She became his student. She’s been interested in art ever since she was a child. Now they talk about art together for hours on end. He’s sculpted a bust for her too, abstract style. Anyone can see that they have too many romantic illusions about the future. I’m more practical, even if I’m boarding here with Xinjian for the time being. As soon as she came in, I went out. I might as well take a little break, go stroll around the Barkhor.
The Buddha may well be an idol for all eternity, I thought to myself, as I hung around outside the front gate of the Jokhang Temple. I just couldn’t understand all these people prostrating themselves before the Buddha, but somehow I felt a deep respect for them. What I could see as I stood there watching them was their passion and concentration. In the dark expanse of the central hall I ran into her unexpectedly. In profile she still looked plump and kindly. She wouldn’t remember me, but I watched her as she intently stuck four ten-yuan bills onto a Buddha shrine made of yak butter: I recalled that after I drank her wine at Big Kelsang’s house, I didn’t get diarrhea.