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“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 in 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 blackmagic. 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.
3 (#ulink_cd7b072e-047f-5a0a-8228-3623e30ab426)
So you arrive in Wuyizhen, on a long and narrow street inlaid with black cobblestones, and walking along this cobblestone street with its deep single-wheel rut, you suddenly enter your childhood, you seem to have spent your childhood in an old mountain town like this. The one-wheel handcarts can no longer be seen and instead of the creak of jujube axles greased with bean oil, the streets are filled with the din of bicycle bells. Cyclists here need the skills of an acrobat. With heavy hessian bags slung across the saddle, they cause loud swearing as they weave through people with carrying poles or pulling wooden carts and the hawkers under the awnings. It is loud, colourful swearing which mingles with the general din of the hawkers’ calls, bargaining, joking and laughing. You breathe in the smell of soya sauce pickles, boiled pork, raw hide, pine wood, dried rice stalks and lime as your eyes busily take in the narrow shopfronts lining the street with products of the South. There are soya bean shops, oil shops, rice shops, Chinese and Western medicine shops, silk and cotton shops, shoe shops, tea shops, butcher stalls, tailor shops, and shops selling stoves, rope, pottery, incense, candles and paper money. The shops, squashed up one against the other, are virtually unchanged from Qing Dynasty times. The smashed signboard of the Ever Prosperous Restaurant has been repaired and one of the flat-bottomed pans used for frying its speciality guotie dumplings is beaten like a gong to announce it is back in business. The wine banner is again hanging from the upstairs window of the First Class Delicacies Restaurant. The most imposing structure is the state-run department store, a newly renovated three-storey concrete building. A single display window is the size of one of the old shops but the insides of the glass windows look as if they have never been cleaned. The photographer’s shop is eye-catching: photos of women in coquettish poses and wearing awful dresses are on display. They are all local beauties and not movie poster mm stars from some place at the other end of the earth. This place really produces good-looking women, every one of them is stunning. They have their beautiful cheeks cupped in their hands and their eyes have alluring looks. They’ve been carefully coached by the photographer but they are garishly dressed. Enlargements and colour prints are available and there’s a sign saying photos can be collected in twenty days, apparently they have to be developed in the city. Had fate not otherwise decreed, you could have been born in this town, grown up, and married here. You would have married a beautiful woman like one of these, who would long since have borne you sons and daughters. At this point, you smile and quickly move off in case people imagine you’ve taken a fancy to one of the women and start getting the wrong idea. And yet it is you who are carried away by your imagination. As you look up at the balconies above the shops with their curtained windows and pots of miniature trees and flowers, you can’t help wondering about the people who live here. There’s a big apartment with an iron padlock on the door — the pillars are now crooked but the carved eaves and railings which have fallen into disrepair indicate how imposing the place was at one time. The fates of its owners and their descendants fill you with curiosity. The shop at the side sells Hong Kong style dresses and jeans, and the stockings on show have a Western woman showing off her legs on the packaging. At the front door there’s a gold-plated sign, “Ever New Technical Development Company”, but it’s not clear what sort of technical development it is. Further on is a shop with heaps of unprocessed lime, and further on still is probably a miller’s and next to that a vacant allotment where rice noodles are drying on wires strung between posts. You turn back and go into a small lane next to the hot water urn of the tea stall, then turning a corner you are again lost in memories.
Within a half-closed door is a damp courtyard, overgrown with weeds, desolate and lonely, with piles of rubble in the corners. You recall the back courtyard with the crumbling wall of your childhood home. You were afraid but it had a fascination for you, for the fox fairies of story books came from there. After school, without fail, you would go off alone with some trepidation to have a look. You never saw a fox fairy but that feeling of mystery always lingered in your childhood memories. There is an old stone bench riddled with cracks and a well which is probably dry. The mid-autumn wind blows through the dry yellow weeds in the rubble and the sun is very bright. These homes with their courtyard doors shut tight all have their histories which are all like ancient stories. In winter, the north wind is howling through the lane, you are wearing new warm padded cloth shoes and are with other children stamping your feet by the wall. You can remember the words of the ditty:
In moonlight thick as soup
I ride out to burn incense
For Luo Dajie who burnt to death
For Dou Sanniang who died in a rage
Sanniang picked beans
But the pods were empty
She married Master Ji
But Master Ji was short
So she married a crab
The crab crossed a ditch
Trod on an eel
The eel complained
It complained to a monk
The monk said a prayer
A prayer to Guanyin
So Guanyin pissed
The piss hit my son
His belly hurt
So I got an exorcist to dance
The dance didn’t work
But still cost heaps of money
Pale withered weeds and lush green new sprouts in the roof-tiles quiver in the wind. How long is it since you’ve seen grass growing in roof-tiles? Your bare feet patter on the black cobblestone street with its deep single-wheel rut, you’ve run out of your childhood back into the present. The bare feet, the dirty black feet, patter right there in front of your eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never run barefoot, what is crucial is this image in your mind.
After a while you find your way out of the little lanes and make it back on the highway. This is where the bus from the county town turns around to go back. There’s a bus station by the road with a ticket window and some benches inside, this is where you got off the bus earlier on. Diagonally across the road is an inn — a row of single-storey rooms — and the whitewashed brick wall has a sign “Good Rooms Within”. It looks clean and you have to find somewhere to stay, so you go in. An old attendant is sweeping the corridor and you ask her if there’s a room. She says yes. You ask her how much further is it to Lingshan. She gives you a cold look, this is a state-run inn, she’s on a monthly state award wage and isn’t generous with words.
“Number two,” she says pointing with the broom handle to a room with the door open. You take your luggage in and notice there are two beds. On one there’s someone lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other, with a copy of Unofficial Record of the Flying Fox in his hands. The title is written on the brown paper cover of the book, apparently on loan from a bookstall. You greet him and he puts down the book to give a friendly nod.
“Hello.”
“Staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Have a cigarette.” He tosses you a cigarette.
“Thanks.” You sit on the empty bed opposite. It happens that he wants to chat. “How long have you been here?”
“Ten or so days.” He sits up and lights himself a cigarette.
“Here buying stock?” you ask, taking a guess.
“I’m here for timber.”
“Is it easy getting timber here?”
“Have you got a quota?” he asks instead, starting to become interested.
“What quota?”
“A state-plan quota, of course.”
“No.”
“Then it’s not easy to get.” He lies down again.
“Is there a timber shortage even in this forest region?”
“There’s timber around but prices are different.” He can’t be bothered, he can tell you’re not in the game.
“Are you waiting for cheaper prices?”
“Yes,” he responds indifferently, taking up his book again to read.
“You stock buyers really get to know about a lot of things.” You have to flatter him so that you can ask him some questions.
“Not really.” He becomes modest.
“The place Lingshan, do you know how to get there?”
He doesn’t reply so you can only say you’ve come to do some sightseeing and is there anywhere worth seeing.
“There’s a pavilion by the river. If you sit there you’ll get a good view of the other side of the river.”
“Enjoy your rest!” you say for want of something to say.
You leave your bags, find the attendant to register and set off*. The wharf is at the end of the highway. The steps, made of long slabs of rock, go down steeply for more than ten metres and moored there are several black canopy boats with their bamboo poles up. The river isn’t wide but the riverbed is, clearly it’s not the rainy season. There is a boat on the opposite bank and people are getting on and getting off. The people on the stone steps are all waiting for it to come across.
Up from the wharf, on the embankment, there is a pavilion with upturned eaves and curling corners. The outside is lined with empty baskets and resting inside are farmers from the other side who were here for the market and have sold all of their goods. They are talking loudly and it sounds like the language used in the short stories of the Song Dynasty. The pavilion has been painted recently and under the eaves the dragon and phoenix design has been repainted and the two principal columns at the front are inscribed with the couplet:
Sitting at rest know not to discuss the shortcomings of other people
Setting out on a journey fully appreciate the beauty of the dragon river
You go around to look at the two columns at the back. These words are written there:
On departing do not forget to heed the duckweed waters
Turn back to gaze in wonder at Lingshan amongst the phoenixes
You’re intrigued. The boat is probably about to arrive as the people resting and cooling off have got up and are rushing to shoulder their carrying poles. Only an old man is left sitting in the pavilion.
“Venerable elder, may I ask if these couplets …”
“Are you asking about the couplets on the principal columns?” the old man corrects me.
“Yes, venerable master, might I ask who wrote the couplets on the principal columns?” you say with added reverence.
“The scholar Mr Chen Xianning!” His mouth opens wide, revealing sparse black teeth, as he enunciates each of the words with great precision.
“I don’t know of him.” You’d best be frank about your ignorance. “At which university does this gentleman teach?”
“People like you wouldn’t know, of course. He lived more than a thousand years ago.” The old man is contemptuous.
“Please don’t make fun of me, venerable elder,” you say, trying to stop him ridiculing you.
“You don’t need glasses, can’t you see?” he says pointing up to the beam at the top of the columns.
You look up and see on the beam which hasn’t been repainted, these words written in vermilion:
