The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature

by Yunte Huang

  “Oh, you’re playing cards,” you say, putting on an apologetic look.

  They go on playing. The long paper cards have red and black markings like mah-jongg and there’s a Gate of Heaven and a Prison of Hell. The winner penalizes the loser by tearing off a strip of newspaper and sticking it on a designated spot. Whether this is a prank, a way of ­letting off steam, or a tally, is something agreed upon by the gamblers and there is no way for outsiders to know what it’s all about.

  You beat a retreat, go back to your room, lie down again, and see a thick mass of black specks around the light globe. Millions of mos­quitoes are waiting for the light to go out so that they can come down and feast on your blood. You quickly let down the net and are enclosed in a narrow conical space, at the top of which is a bamboo hoop. It’s been a long time since you’ve slept under a hoop like this, and you’ve long since passed the age of being able to stare at the hoop to lose yourself in reverie. Today, you can’t know what traumas tomorrow will bring. You’ve learned through experience everything you need to know. What else are you looking for? When a man gets to middle age, shouldn’t he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank, and add to it every month so there’ll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation?

  2

  It is in the Qiang region halfway up Qionglai Mountain, in the border areas of the Qinghai-Tibetan highlands and the Sichuan Basin, that I witness a vestige of early human civilization—the worship of fire. Fire, the bringer of civilization, has been worshipped by the early ancestors of human beings everywhere. It is sacred. The old man is sitting in front of the fire drinking liquor from a bowl. Before each sip he puts a finger into it and flicks some on the charcoals, which splutter noisily and send out blue sparks. It is only then that I perceive that I too am real.

  “That’s for the God of the Cooking Stove, it’s thanks to him that we can eat and drink,” he says.

  The dancing light of the fire shines on his thin cheeks, the high bridge of his nose, and his cheekbones. He tells me he is of the Qiang nationality and that he’s from Gengda Village down the mountain. I can’t ask straight out about demons and spirits, so I tell him I’m here to do some research on the folk songs of the mountain. Do traditional song masters and dancers still exist here? He says he’s one of them. The men and women all used to form a circle around the fire and dance right through to daybreak, but later on it was banned.

  “Why?” I know quite well but I ask. I’m being dishonest again.

  “It was the Cultural Revolution. They said the songs were dirty, so we turned to singing Sayings of Mao Zedong songs instead.”

  “And what about after that?” I persist in asking. This is becoming a habit.

  “No one sings those anymore. People are doing the dances again but not many of the young people can do them, I’m teaching the dances to some of them.”

  I ask him for a demonstration. Without any hesitation, he instantly gets to his feet and proceeds to dance and sing. His voice is low and rich, he’s got a good voice. I’m sure he’s Qiang even if the police in charge of the population register insist that he isn’t. They think anyone claiming to be Tibetan or Qiang is trying to evade birth restrictions so they can have more children.

  He sings song after song. He says he’s a fun-loving person, and I believe him. When he finished up as village head, he went back to being one of the mountain people, an old mountain man who likes good fun, though unfortunately he is past the age for romance.

  He also knows incantations, the kind hunters employ when they go into the mountains. They are called mountain black magic or hexes and he has no qualms about using them. He really believes they can drive wild animals into pits or get them to step into snares. They aren’t used only on animals, they’re also used against other human beings for revenge. A victim of mountain black magic won’t be able to find his way out of the mountains. They are like the “demon walls” I heard about as a child: when a person has been traveling for some time at night in the mountains, a wall, a cliff, or a deep river appears right in front of him, so that he can’t go any farther. If the spell isn’t broken the person’s feet don’t move forward, and even if he keeps walking, he stays exactly where he started off. Only at daybreak does he discover that he has been going around in circles. That’s not so bad, the worst is when a person is led into a blind alley—that means death.

  He intones strings of incantations. It’s not slow and relaxed like when he is singing, but just nan-nan-na-na to a quick beat. I can’t understand it at all but I can feel the mystical pull of the words and a demonic, powerful atmosphere instantly permeates the room, the inside of which is black from smoke. The glow of the flames licking the iron pot of mutton stew makes his eyes glint. This is all starkly real.

  While you search for the route to Lingshan, I wander along the Yangtze River looking for this sort of reality. I had just gone through a crisis and then, on top of that, a doctor wrongly diagnosed me with lung cancer. Death was playing a joke on me, but now that I’ve escaped the demon wall, I am secretly rejoicing. Life for me once again has a wonderful freshness. I should have left those contaminated surroundings long ago and returned to nature to look for this authentic life.

  In those contaminated surroundings I was taught that life was the source of literature, that literature had to be faithful to life, faithful to real life. My mistake was that I had alienated myself from life and ended up turning my back on real life. Life is not the same as manifestations of life. Real life, or in other words the basic substance of life, should be the former and not the latter. I had gone against real life because I was simply stringing together life’s manifestations, so of course I wasn’t able to accurately portray life and in the end only succeeded in distorting reality.

  I don’t know whether I’m now on the right track, but in any case I’ve extricated myself from the bustling literary world and have also escaped from my smoke-filled room. The books piled everywhere in that room were oppressive and stifling. They expounded all sorts of truths, from historical truths to truths on how to be human. I couldn’t see the point of so many truths but still got enmeshed in the net of those truths and was struggling hopelessly, like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Fortunately, the doctor who gave the wrong diagnosis saved my life. He was quite frank and got me to compare the two chest X-rays taken on two separate occasions—a blurry shadow on the left lobe of the lung had spread along the second rib to the wall of the windpipe. It wouldn’t help even to have the whole of the left lobe removed. The outcome was obvious. My father had died of lung cancer. He died within three months of it being discovered and it was this doctor who had correctly diagnosed it. I had faith in his medical expertise and he had faith in science. The chest X-rays taken at two different hospitals were identical, there was no possibility of a technical mistake. He also wrote an authorization for a sectional X-ray, the appointment was in two weeks’ time. This was nothing to get worried about, it was just to determine the extent of the tumor. My father had this done before he died. The outcome would be the same whether or not I had the X-ray, it was nothing special. That I in fact would slip through the fingers of Death can only be put down to good luck. I believe in science but I also believe in fate.

  I ONCE SAW a four-inch length of wood which had been collected in the Qiang region by an anthropologist during the 1930s. It was a carved statue of a person doing a handstand. The head had ink markings for the eyes, nose, and mouth, and the word “longevity” had been written on the body. It was called “Wuchang Upside Down” and there was something oddly mischievous about it. I ask the Qiang retired village head whether such talismans are still around. He tells me these are called “old root.” This wooden idol has to accompany the newborn from birth to death. At death it accompanies the corpse from the house and after the burial it is placed in the wildernes
s to allow the spirit to return to nature. I ask him if he can get me one so that I can carry it on me. He laughs and says these are what hunters tuck into their shirts to ward off evil spirits, they wouldn’t be of any use to someone like me.

  “Is there an old hunter who knows about this sort of magic and can take me hunting with him?” I ask.

  “Grandpa Stone would be the best,” he says after thinking about it.

  “How can I find him?” I ask right away.

  “He’s in Grandpa Stone’s Hut.”

  “Where’s this Grandpa Stone’s Hut?”

  “Go another twenty li on to Silver Mine Gully, then follow the creek right up to the end. There you’ll find a stone hut.”

  “Is that the name of the place or do you mean the hut of Grandpa Stone?”

  He says it’s the name of the place, that there’s in fact a stone hut, and that Grandpa Stone lives there.

  “Can you take me to him?” I ask.

  “He’s dead. He lay down on his bed and died in his sleep. He was too old, he lived to well over ninety, some even say well over a hundred. In any case, nobody’s sure about his age.”

  “Are any of his descendants still alive?”

  “In my grandfather’s generation and for as long as I can remember, he was always on his own.”

  “Without a wife?”

  “He lived on his own in Silver Mine Gully. He lived high up the gully, in the solitary hut, alone. Oh, and that rifle of his is still hanging on the wall of the hut.”

  I ask him what he’s trying to tell me.

  He says Grandpa Stone was a great hunter, a hunter who was an expert in the magical arts. There are no hunters like that these days. Everyone knows that his rifle is hanging in the hut, that it never misses its target, but nobody dares to go and take it.

  “Why?” I’m even more puzzled.

  “The route into Silver Mine Gully is cut.”

  “There’s no way through?”

  “Not anymore. Earlier on people used to mine silver there, a firm from Chengdu hired a team of workers and they began mining. Later on, after the mine was looted, everyone just left, and the plank roads they had laid either broke up or rotted.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “When my grandfather was still alive, more than fifty years ago.”

  That would be about right, after all he’s already retired and has become history, real history.

  “So since then nobody’s ever gone there?” I become even more intrigued.

  “Hard to say, anyway it’s hard to get there.”

  “And the hut has rotted?”

  “Stone collapses, how can it rot?”

  “I was talking about the ridgepole.”

  “Oh, quite right.”

  He doesn’t want to take me there, nor does he want to find a hunter for me, so that’s why he’s leading me on like this, I think.

  “Then how do you know the rifle’s still hanging on the wall?” I ask, regardless.

  “That’s what everyone says, someone must’ve seen it. They all say that Grandpa Stone is incredible, his corpse hasn’t rotted and wild animals don’t dare to go near. He just lies there all stiff and emaciated, and his rifle is hanging there on the wall.”

  “Impossible,” I declare. “With the high humidity up here on the mountain, the corpse would have rotted and the rifle would have turned into a pile of rust.”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, people have been saying this for years.” He refuses to give in and sticks to his story. The light of the fire dances in his eyes and I seem to detect a cunning streak in them.

  “And you’ve never seen him?” I won’t let him off.

  “People who have seen him say that he seems to be asleep, that he’s emaciated, and that the rifle is hanging there on the wall above his head,” he says, unruffled. “He knew black magic. It’s not just that people don’t dare go there to steal his rifle, even animals don’t dare to go near.”

  The hunter is already myth. To talk about a mixture of history and legend is how folk stories are born. Reality exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience. However, once related, even personal experience becomes a narrative. Reality can’t be verified and doesn’t need to be, that can be left for the “reality-of-life” experts to debate. What is important is life. Reality is simply that I am sitting by the fire in this room which is black with grime and smoke and that I see the light of the fire dancing in his eyes. Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant, and it can’t be related to another person. All that needs to be said is that outside, a mist is enclosing the green-blue mountain in a haze and your heart is reverberating with the rushing water of a swift-flowing stream.

  17

  You come to the end of the village. A middle-aged woman with an apron tied over her long gown squats by the creek in front of her door, gutting fish no bigger than a finger. The blade of her knife flashes in the glow of a pine torch burning by the creek. Farther on are darkening mountain shadows and only the peak shows some slight traces of the setting sun. There are no more houses in sight. You turn back, perhaps it is the pine torch which draws you there. You go up and ask if you can stay the night.

  “People often stop here for the night.” The woman understands what you want, glances at your companion, but doesn’t ask any questions. She puts down the knife, wipes her hands on her apron, and goes into the house. She lights the oil lamp in the hall and brings it along. You follow behind, the floorboards creaking beneath your feet. Upstairs is the clean smell of paddy straw, freshly harvested.

  “It’s empty up here, I’ll fetch some bedding. It gets cold in the mountains at night.” The woman puts the lamp on the windowsill and goes downstairs.

  She says she won’t stay downstairs, she says she’s afraid. And she won’t stay in the same room as you, she says she’s afraid of that too. So you leave the lamp for her, kick the paddy straw piled on the floor, and go to the adjoining room. You say you don’t like sleeping on plank beds but like rolling about in straw. She says she will sleep with her head next to yours so you will be able to talk through the wall. The wooden partition doesn’t go right to the ceiling and you can see the circle of light projected onto the rafters in her room.

  “This is unique,” you say.

  She asks for some hot water when the woman of the house returns with the bedding.

  The woman brings her a small wooden pail of hot water. Afterward you hear her latching the door.

  You strip to the waist, throw a small towel over your shoulder, and go downstairs. There is no light, probably the only kerosene lamp in the house is upstairs in her room. In the kitchen, you see the woman of the house by the stove. Her expressionless face, lit by the light of the open stove, is gentler. The burning straw crackles and you can smell the aroma of cooking rice.

  You take a bucket and go down to the creek. The last remnants of sunset on the mountain vanish and the haziness of dusk descends. There are spots of light in the clear rippling water—the stars are out. A few frogs are croaking.

  Opposite, deep in the mountain shadows, you hear children laughing on the other side of the creek. Paddy fields are over there. You seem to see a threshing lot in the mountain shadows, and the children are probably playing hide-and-seek. In the thick dark mountain shadows, separated by paddy fields, a big girl is laughing on the threshing lot. It’s her, she’s in the darkness opposite: a forgotten past is relived as one of that crowd of children one day recalls his childhood. One day the squeaky voice of the boy screaming cheeky nonsense thickened, became throaty and deep, and his bare feet pattering on the stones of the threshing lot left wet footprints as he departed from childhood to enter the big wide world. You hear the patter of bare feet on black cobblestones. A child by a pond is using his grandmother’s embroidery frame for a tugboat. At a shout from his grandmother he turns and runs off, the patter of his bare feet resounding on the cobblestones. Once again you see the back of her, her single lo
ng black plait, in a small lane. In the wet lanes of Wuyizhen the winter wind is icy. She has a bucket of water on a carrying pole and is walking with quick short steps on the cobblestones as the bucket presses on her young frail shoulder, straining her body down to the waist. The water in the bucket wobbles and splashes the black cobblestones as she comes to a halt when you call out to her. She turns to smile at you, then goes on walking with more quick short steps. She is wearing purplish red cloth shoes. In the darkness children are ­laughing and shouting. Their voices are loud, even if you can’t make out what it is they are shouting, and there seem to be layers of echoes. It is in this instant that everything comes back to life, Yaya. . . .

  In an instant your childhood memories become stark and vivid. The roar of dive-bombing planes, then black wings suddenly swoop up and fly into the distance. You are huddled in your mother’s arms under a small sour date tree and the thorns on the branches have torn her cotton jacket, showing her plump arms. Then it’s your wet nurse. She’s carrying you. You like her cuddling you, she’s got big floppy breasts. She sprinkles salt on rice guoba toasted a delicious crunchy golden brown for you. You love spending time in her kitchen. The bright red eyes in the dark belong to the pair of white rabbits you kept. One of them was mauled in the cage by a weasel and the other one disappeared. You later found it floating in the urine pot in the lavatory in the back courtyard, its fur all dirty. In the back courtyard there was a tree growing in a heap of broken tiles and bricks, the tiles had moss growing on them. You could only see as high up as the branch which came to the top of the wall, so you didn’t know what it looked like after it grew over the wall. You only knew if you stood on your toes you could reach a hole in the trunk, and you used to throw stones into it. People said trees have feelings and tree demons are sensitive just like people and don’t like being tickled. If you poked something into the hole of the trunk, the tree would shake all over laughing, just like when you tickled her under the arms and she immediately pulled away and laughed until she was out of breath. You can always remember the time she lost a tooth: “Toothless, toothless, her name is Yaya!” She was furious with you for calling her toothless and went off in a huff. Dirt spews up like a pall of black smoke and rains down on everyone’s head, your mother scrambles to her feet, feels you, you’re all right. But then you hear a long shrill wail, it’s another woman: it doesn’t sound human. Next you are being shaken about on endless mountain roads in a tarpaulin-covered truck, squashed between the grown-ups’ legs and the luggage, rain is dripping off the end of your nose. Mother’s cunt, everyone down to push the truck. The wheels are spinning in the mud, splashing everyone in the face. Mother’s cunt, you say, imitating the driver, this is the first bit of swearing you’ve picked up, you’re swearing because the mud has pulled off your shoe. Yaya . . . The shouting of the children is still coming from the threshing lot, they are laughing and yelling as they chase one another about. But your childhood no longer exists, and all that confront you are the dark shadows of the mountain. . . .