The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature

by Yunte Huang

  YOU COME TO her door and beg her to open it. She says stop making a fuss, leave things as they are, she feels good now. She needs peace, to be free of desire, she needs time, she needs to forget, she needs understanding not love, she needs to find someone she can pour out her heart to. She hopes you won’t ruin this good relationship, she’s just starting to trust you, she says she wants to keep traveling with you, to go right to Lingshan. There’s plenty of time for getting together but definitely not right now. She asks you to forgive her, she doesn’t want to, and she can’t.

  You say it’s something else. You’ve found a faint light coming through a crack in the wall. Someone else is upstairs apart from the two of you. You ask her to come and have a look.

  She says no! Stop trying to trick her, stop frightening her like this.

  You say there’s a light flickering in a crack in the wall. You’re quite sure there’s another room behind the wall. You come out of your room and stumble through the straw on the floorboards. You can touch the tiles of the sloping roof when you put up an arm, and farther on you have to bend down.

  “There’s a small door,” you say, feeling your way in the dark.

  “What do you see?” She stays in her room.

  “Nothing, it’s solid timber, without any joins, oh, and there’s a lock.”

  “It’s really scary,” you hear her say from the other side of the door.

  You go back to your room and find that by putting a big bamboo tub upside down onto a pile of straw you can stand on it and climb onto a rafter.

  “Quick, what can you see?” she asks anxiously.

  “An oil lamp burning in a small altar,” you say. “The altar is fixed to the gable and there’s a memorial tablet inside. The woman of the house must be a shaman and this is where she summons back the spirits of the dead. The spirits of living persons are possessed and they go into a trance, then the ghosts of the dead attach themselves to these persons and speak through their lips.”

  “Stop it!” she pleads. You hear her sliding against the wall onto the floor.

  You say the woman wasn’t always a shaman, when she was young she was the same as everyone else, just like any other women of her age. But when she was about twenty, when she needed to be passionately loved by a man, her husband was crushed to death.

  “How did he die?” she asks quietly.

  You say he went off at night with a cousin to illegally cut camphor in the forest of a neighboring village. The tree was about to fall when he somehow tripped on a root and lost his bearings. The tree was creaking loudly and he should have run away from it but instead ran toward it, right where it fell. He was pulverized before he could yell out.

  “Are you listening?” you ask.

  “Yes,” she says.

  You say the husband’s cousin was frightened out of his wits and absconded, not daring to report the accident. The woman saw the hessian shoes hanging on the carrying pole of a man bringing charcoal down from the mountain, he was calling as he went for someone to identify a corpse. How could she not recognize the red string woven into the soles and heels of the hessian shoes she had made with her own hands? She collapsed and kept banging her head on the ground. She was frothing at the mouth as she rolled around, shouting: Let all the ghosts of the dead and the wronged all come back, let them all come back!

  “I also want to shout,” she says.

  “Then shout.”

  “I can’t.”

  Her voice is pitifully muffled. You earnestly call out to her but she keeps saying no from the other side of the wall. Still, she wants you to go on talking.

  “What about?”

  “Her, the madwoman.”

  You say the women of the village couldn’t subdue her. It took several men sitting on her and twisting her arms before they managed to tie her up. From then on she became crazy and always predicted the calamities which would befall the village. She predicted that Ximao’s mother would become a widow and it really happened.

  “I want revenge too.”

  “On whom? That boyfriend of yours? Or on the woman who’s having an affair with him? Do you want him to discard her after he’s had his fun with her? Like he treated you?”

  “He said he loved me, that he was only having a fling with her.”

  “Is she younger? Is she prettier than you?”

  “She’s got a face full of freckles and a big mouth!”

  “Is she more sexy than you?”

  “He said she was uninhibited, that she’d do anything, he wanted me to be like her!”

  “How?”

  “Don’t be inquisitive!”

  “Then you know about all that went on between the two of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then did she know all that went on between the two of you?”

  “Oh, stop talking about that.”

  “Then what shall I talk about? Shall I talk about the shaman?”

  “I really want revenge!”

  “Just like the shaman?”

  “How did she get revenge?”

  “All the women were frightened of her curses but all the men liked chatting with her. She seduced them and then discarded them. Later on she powdered her face, installed an altar, and openly invoked ghosts and spirits. Everyone was terrified of her.”

  “Why did she do this?”

  “You have to know that at the age of six she was betrothed to an unborn child in the womb—her husband in the belly of her mother-in-law. At twelve she entered her husband’s home as a bride, when her husband was still a snotty-nosed boy. Once, right on these floorboards upstairs, she was raped in the straw by her father-in-law. At the time she was just fourteen. Thereafter, she was terrified whenever there was no one else in the house but the father-in-law and her. Later on, she tried cuddling her young husband but the boy only bit her nipples. It was hard waiting years until her husband could shoulder a carrying pole, chop wood, use the plow, and eventually reach manhood and know that he loved her. Then he was crushed to death. The parents-in-law were old and were totally dependent upon her to manage the fields and the household, and they didn’t dare to exercise any restraints on her as long as she didn’t remarry. Both parents-in-law are now dead and the woman really believes she can communicate with the spirits. Her blessings can bring good fortune and her curses can bring disaster, so it’s reasonable for her to charge people incense money. What is most amazing is that she got a ten-year-old girl to go into a trance, then got the girl’s long-dead grandmother, whom the girl had never seen, to speak through the child’s mouth. The people who saw this were petrified. . . .”

  “Come over, I’m frightened,” she pleads.

  47

  Walking along a road on the shady side of a mountain, no one ahead or behind me, I get caught in a downpour. At first it’s light rain and feels good falling on my face, then it gets heavier and heavier and I have to run. My hair and clothes are drenched, and seeing a cave on the slope, I hurry to it. Just inside is a big pile of chopped firewood. The ceiling is quite high and one corner of the cave goes farther inside. Light is coming from over there. A stove built of rocks with an iron pot on it stands at the top of a few roughly hewn steps and light is streaming in through a crack in the rock running at an angle above the stove.

  I turn around. Behind me is a roughly-nailed-together wooden bed with the bedding rolled up. A Taoist priest is sitting there reading a book. I get a surprise but don’t dare disturb him and just look at the gray-white line of rain shivering in the crack. It is raining so heavily that I don’t want to venture back out.

  “It’s all right, you can stay awhile.” It is he who speaks first as he puts down his book.

  He has shoulder-length hair and is wearing a loose gray top and gray trousers. He looks to be around thirty.

  “Are you one of the Taoists of this mountain?” I ask.

  “Not yet. I chop firewood for the Taoist temple,” he replies. On his bed, cover up, is a copy of Fiction Monthly.

 
; “Are you also interested in this?” I ask.

  “I read it to pass time,” he says frankly. “You’re all wet, dry yourself first.” Saying this, he brings a basin of hot water from the pot on the stove and gives me a towel.

  I thank him, then, stripping to the waist, have a wash and instantly feel much better.

  “This is really a good place to shelter!” I say as I sit down on a block of wood opposite. “Do you live in this cave?”

  He says he is from the village at the foot of the mountain but that he hates the whole lot of them, his older brother and his wife, the neighbors, and the village cadres.

  “They all put money first and only think about profit,” he says. “I no longer have anything to do with them.”

  “So you chop firewood for a living?”

  “I renounced society almost a year ago but they haven’t formally accepted me yet.”

  “Why?”

  “The old head Taoist wants to see whether I am sincere, whether my heart is constant.”

  “Will he accept you then?”

  “Yes.”

  This shows he firmly believes he is sincere of heart.

  “Don’t you feel bored living in this cave on your own all the time?” I go on to ask, casting a glance at the magazine.

  “It’s more peaceful and relaxed than in the village,” he calmly replies, unaware that I’m trying to provoke him. “I also study every day,” he adds.

  “May I ask what you are studying?”

  He pulls out a stone-block-print copy of Daily Lessons for Taoists from under his bedding.

  “I was reading some fiction because on rainy days like this I can’t work,” he explains when he sees me looking at the magazine on his bed.

  “Do these stories affect your study?” I am curious to find out.

  “Ha, they’re all about common occurrences between men and women,” he replies with a dismissive laugh. He says he went to senior high school and studied some literature and when there’s nothing to do he reads a bit. “In fact human life just amounts to this.”

  I can’t go on to ask him whether he ever had a wife and I can’t question him about the private concerns of one who has renounced the world. The pelting rain is monotonous but soothing.

  I shouldn’t disturb him any further. I sit with him for a long time in meditation, sitting in forgetfulness in the sound of the rain.

  I don’t notice the rain has stopped. But when I do, I get up, thank him, and bid him farewell.

  He says, “No need to thank me, it is fate.”

  This is on Qingcheng Mountain.

  AFTERWARD, AT THE old stone pagoda on the island in the middle of the Ou River, I encounter a monk with a shaven head wearing a crimson cassock. He presses his palms together then kneels and prostrates himself in front of the pagoda. Sightseers crowd around to watch. He unhurriedly completes his worship, removes his cassock, puts it into a black artificial leather case, picks up his umbrella, which has a curved handle and doubles as a walking stick, then turns and leaves. I follow him, then, some distance from the crowd of sightseers who were watching him pray, I go up and ask, “Venerable Master, can I invite you to drink tea with me? I would like to ask your advice about some Buddhist teachings.”

  He thinks about it, then agrees.

  He has a gaunt face, is alert, and looks to be around fifty. His trouser legs are tied at the calves and he walks briskly so that I have to half run to keep up.

  “The Venerable Master seems to be leaving for a distant journey,” I say.

  “I’m going to Jiangxi first to visit a few old monks, then I have to go to a number of other places.”

  “I too am a lone traveler. However, I am not like the Venerable Master, who is steadfastly sincere and has a sacred goal in his heart.” I have to find something to talk about.

  “The true traveler is without goal, it is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate traveler.”

  “Venerable Master, are you from this locality? Is this journey to bid farewell to your native village? Don’t you intend coming back?”

  “For one who has renounced society all within the four seas is home, for him what is called native village does not exist.”

  This leaves me speechless. I invite him into a tea stall in the park and choose a quiet corner to sit down. I ask his Buddhist name, tell him my name, and then hesitate.

  It is he who speaks first. “Just ask what you wish to know, there is nothing one who has renounced society cannot talk about.”

  I then blurt out, “If you don’t mind, I wish to ask, Venerable Master, why you renounced society.”

  He smiles, blows at the tea leaves floating in his cup, and takes a sip. Then, looking at me, he says, “It seems that you are not on an ordinary trip, are you on a special mission?”

  “I’m not carrying out any sort of investigation but when I saw the Venerable Master’s serene person, I was filled with admiration. I don’t have a specific goal but I still can’t abandon it.”

  “Abandon what?” A smile lingers on his face.

  “Abandon the human world.” After I say this, he and I both laugh.

  “The human world can be abandoned just by saying it.” His response is straightforward.

  “That’s indeed so,” I say nodding, “but I would like to know how the Venerable Master was able to abandon it.”

  Without holding anything back, he then tells me about his experience.

  He says that when he was sixteen, and still at junior high school, he ran away from home to join the revolution and fought for a year as a guerrilla in the mountains. At seventeen he went with the army into the city and was put in charge of a bank. He could have become a party leader but he had his mind set on studying medicine. After graduating he was allocated work as a cadre in the city health bureau although he really wanted to continue to work as a doctor. One day he offended the branch party secretary of the hospital and was expelled from the party, branded a rightist element and sent to work in the fields in the country. It was only when the village built a commune hospital that he got to work as a doctor for several years. During this time he married a village girl and three children in succession were born. However for some reason he wanted to convert to Catholicism and when he heard that a Vatican cardinal had arrived in Guangzhou, he traveled there to ask the cardinal about the faith. He ended up not seeing the cardinal and instead came under suspicion for illicit dealings with foreigners. For this crime he was expelled from the commune hospital and he had no option but to spend his time studying traditional medicine on his own and mixing with vagrants in order to eat. One day he came to a sudden realization—the Pope was far away in the West and inaccessible, so he might as well rely on Buddha. From that time he renounced society and became a monk. When he finishes telling this he gives a loud laugh.

  “Do you still think of your family?” I ask.

  “They can all feed themselves.”

  “Don’t you have some lingering fondness for them?”

  “Those who have renounced society have neither fondness nor hatred.”

  “Then do they hate you?”

  He says he never felt inclined to ask about them, but some years after he entered the monastery, his eldest son came to tell him he had been exonerated from the charge of being a rightist element and having illicit dealings with foreigners. If he returned he would be treated as a senior cadre and veteran revolutionary, reinstated in his former position, and also receive a large sum of unpaid salary due to him. He said he didn’t want any of the money and they could divide it up. The fact that his wife and children had not been unjustly treated could be considered recompense for his devotion to the Buddhist faith and thereafter they should not come again. After that he started wandering and they had no means of knowing his whereabouts.

  “Do you now seek alms along the way to support yourself?”

  He says people are mean-spirited nowadays. Seeking alms is worse than begging, if you seek alms you don’t get anything.
He mainly supports himself by practicing as an itinerant doctor. When practicing he wears ordinary clothes, he doesn’t want to damage the image of the Buddhist order.

  “Does Buddhism allow this flexibility?” I ask.

  “Buddha is in your heart.” His face is serene and I believe he has achieved liberation from the worries of the inner heart. He is setting out on a distant journey and he is very happy.

  I ask him how he finds lodgings on the way. He says wherever there are temples and monasteries he only needs to show his monk’s certificate to be accorded hospitality. However, the situation at present is bad everywhere. There are not many monks and all of them have to work in order to feed and clothe themselves: generally long stays aren’t possible because no one is providing support. Only the big temples and monasteries get any government subsidies but these are only minuscule amounts and, naturally, he doesn’t want to add to people’s burdens. He says he’s a traveler and has already been to many famous mountains. He thinks he is in good health and that he can still walk a ten-­thousand-li journey.