Soul Mountain

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Erected during the Great Song Dynasty in the first month of spring in the tenth year of the Shaoxing reign period and repaired during the Great Qing Dynasty on the twenty-ninth day of the third month of the nineteenth year of the Qianlong reign period.

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I set out from the hostel of the nature reserve and go back to the house of the Qiang retired village head. A big padlock is hanging on his door. This is the third time I’ve been back but again he’s not there. It seems that this door which can lead me into that mystical world has closed for me.

I wander on in fine drizzling rain. It’s been a long time since I have wandered about in this sort of misty rain. I pass by the Sleeping Dragon Village Hospital, it looks deserted. The forest is quiet but there is always a stream somewhere not too far away, for I can hear the sound of trickling water. It’s been ages since I have had such freedom, I don’t have to think about anything and I let my thoughts ramble. There’s no-one on the highway, and no vehicles are in sight. As far as the eye can see it is a luxuriant green. It is the middle of spring.

The big deserted compound on the side of the road is probably the headquarters of the bandit chief Song Guotai mentioned by the reserve warden last night. Forty years ago, a single mountain road for horse caravans was the only access to this place. To the north it crossed the 5000-metre-high Balang Mountains into the Qinghai-Tibetan highlands and to the south it went through the Min River valley into the Sichuan basin. The opium smugglers from the South and the salt smugglers from the North all obediently put down money here to buy passage through. This was called showing proper respect. If there was a fuss and proper respect wasn’t shown, it would be a case of arriving and not returning. They would all be sent to meet the King of Hell.

It is an old timber compound. The two big heavy wooden gates are wide open and inside, surrounded on three sides by two-storey buildings, is an overgrown courtyard big enough for a caravan of thirty or forty horses. Probably in those days, as soon as the gates were closed, the eaved balconies with their wooden railings would be thick with armed bandits so that caravans thinking of stopping the night would be trapped like turtles in a jar. Even if a shoot-out took place there wouldn’t have been anywhere in the courtyard to escape the bullets.

There are two sets of stairs in the courtyard. I go up. The floorboards creak noisily and I deliberately tread heavily to show my presence. However the upstairs is deserted. One after another I push open the doors to empty rooms smelling of dust and mildew. Only a dirty grey towel hanging on a wire and an old worn shoe show that the place has been lived in, but probably some years ago. When the reserve was established the supply and marketing cooperative, local produce purchasing depot, grain and oil depot, veterinary clinic as well as the village administrative office and the personnel were all relocated in the narrow hundred metres of street built by the reserve administration where there is not a trace of Song Guotai’s hundred or so men and their hundred or so rifles once housed in this compound. In those times they would lie on rush mats smoking opium and fondling their women. These women, who had been abducted, had to cook for them in the daytime and sleep in turn with them at night. At times, either because the loot wasn’t shared equally or because of a woman, fights would break out and wild rioting probably took place on the floors of this very building.

“Only the bandit chief Song Guotai could keep them under control. This fellow was ruthless and cruel, and renowned for his cunning.” The warden of the reserve does political work and he is eloquent and convincing. He says his lectures to university students here for practical work range from protection of the giant panda to patriotism and that his lectures can reduce the women students to tears.

He says that amongst the women the bandits abducted there was even a soldier of the Red Army. In 1936, during the Long March, when a regiment of the Red Army was passing through the Mao’ergai grasslands, one of the battalions was attacked by bandits. The ten or so girls of the laundry detachment were abducted and raped. The youngest was seventeen or eighteen and was the only one to survive. She was passed around several of the bandits and eventually an old Qiang man purchased her to be his wife. She lives in a nearby mountain land and can still recite the name of her battalion, regiment and company, as well as the name of her commanding officer who is now an important official. He’s quite excited and says of course he can’t talk about all these things to the students, then goes back to talking about the bandit chief Song Guotai.

This Song Guotai started out as a junior assistant, he says, for an opium merchant. When the merchant was killed by Big Brother Chen, the bandit chief who had taken over the district, he threw in his lot with the new boss. By wheeling and dealing he soon became Big Brother’s confidante and had access to the small courtyard where Big Brother lived at the back of the compound. The small courtyard was later blown up by the Liberation Army in a mortar attack and is now a mass of trees and shrubs. But in those years it was really a Little Chongqing, a replica of the wartime capital, where Big Brother Chen and his harem debauched themselves on sex and liquor. The only man allowed to wait on him was Song Guotai. A caravan arrived from Ma’erkang full of bandits who had been eying this strip of territory where all you had to do was to sit there waiting for the loot to come to you. A fierce battle raged for two days with deaths and injuries to both sides, but before any clear victory or defeat, they held peace negotiations and sealed an agreement in blood. The gates were opened and the other party invited inside. Upstairs and downstairs two lots of bandits joined in finger-guessing games and drinking liquor. Actually it was Big Brother’s plan to get the other side drunk so that he could deal with them swiftly. He got his mistresses to flit about from table to table with their breasts exposed. It wasn’t just the other bandits, who of either side could resist? Everyone was rotten drunk. Only the two bandit chiefs were still sitting upright at the table. As pre-arranged, Big Brother snapped his fingers loudly and Song Guotai came to pour more liquor. In one swift action, faster than it takes to tell this, he snatched the rival bandit chief’s machine gun from the table and one bullet each sent the pair sprawling, Big Brother included. Then he asked: Anyone who doesn’t want to surrender? The bandits looked at one another, not one dared to utter so much as half a murmur of dissent. Song Guotai thereupon moved into Big Brother’s little courtyard and all the mistresses came into his possession.

He tells all this with great drama, he isn’t boasting when he says he has the women students in tears. He goes on to say that in 1950 they came into the mountains to exterminate the bandits. The little courtyard was surrounded by two companies of soldiers. At daybreak they shouted to the bandits to put down their weapons, change their wicked ways and reform, and warned that there was a blockade of several machine guns at the main gate so no-one should try to escape. It’s as if he’d taken part in the battle himself.

“What happened then?” I ask.

“At first they stubbornly resisted so the little courtyard was bombarded with mortar. The surviving bandits threw down their guns and came out to surrender. Song Guotai was not amongst them. When a search was made of the little courtyard they only found a few weeping women huddled together. Everyone said the house had a secret tunnel which went up into the mountain but it was never found, and he has never shown up anywhere. It’s over forty years now, some say he’s still alive and others say he’s dead but there’s no real evidence, only theories.” He sits back into the round cane chair and tapping his fingers on the edge where his hands are resting, he begins to analyse these theories.

“There are three theories about what happened to him. One is that after escaping he fled to another area, changed his name, and settled somewhere to work in the fields as a peasant. The second is that he could have been killed in the gun fight but the bandits wouldn’t admit to it. Bandits have their own set of rules — they may be embroiled in a terrible fight amongst themselves but they won’t divulge anything to an outsider. They have their own ethics, a code of bandit chivalry if you like, and yet on the other hand they are cruel and wicked. Bandits have two sides to them. The women had all been abducted but once they came into his lair, they became a part of the gang. They were abused by him and yet kept secrets for him.” He is shaking his head not because he finds it incomprehensible but because he is moved by the complexity of the human world, it seems.

“Of course one can’t dismiss the third possibility that he fled onto the mountain, couldn’t get out, and starved to death.”

“Do people get lost on the mountain and die there?” I ask.

“Of course, and not just the peasants from elsewhere who come to dig for medicinal herbs. There are even local hunters who have died on this mountain.”

“Oh?” This is even more intriguing.

“Just last year a hunter went up the mountain and didn’t come back for ten or so days. It was only then that his relatives sought out the village authorities, and we were notified. We contacted the forestry police and had them send us tracker dogs. We got them to sniff his clothes and carried out the search by following them. Afterwards we found him caught in a crack in the rocks. He had died there.”

“How did he come to be stuck in the crack in the rocks?”

“Could’ve been anything, he probably panicked. He was hunting and hunting’s prohibited in the reserve. There’s also the case of a man killing his younger brother.”

“How did this happen?”

“He mistook his brother for a bear. The brothers had gone into the mountain to lay traps. There’s good money in musk. Laying traps has been modernized — a trap can be made with a small piece of wire pulled out of a steel construction cable and a person can lay several hundred in a day on the mountain. It’s impossible for us to supervise an area of this size. They’re all so greedy, it’s hopeless. The brothers went into the mountain to lay traps and in the process were separated. It would be superstitious to believe what the mountain folk say: according to them the brothers fell foul of blackmagic. The two of them bumped into each other after going in a circle around the top of the mountain. There was a heavy mist. The elder brother saw his younger brother, mistook him for a bear, and shot him with his rifle. The elder brother had killed the younger brother. He went home during the night and lay his and his brother’s rifles alongside one another by the bamboo gate of the pig pen so that his mother would see them when she got up to feed the pigs first thing in the morning. He didn’t go inside the house but went back up the mountain to where his brother lay dead and slit his own throat.”

I leave the empty upstairs and stand for a while in the courtyard big enough for a whole caravan of horses, then head back to the highway. There still is no sign of people or vehicles. I look at the dark green mountain enveloped in a haze of rain and mist on the opposite side. A steep greyish-white logging chute is over there and the vegetation has been totally ravaged. Earlier on, before the highway was put through, both sides of the mountain would have been covered in thickly-wooded forest. I am becoming obsessed with getting to the primeval forest at the back of the mountain and find myself drawn to it by some inexplicable force.

The light drizzle gets heavier and turns into a thin film which completely enshrouds the ridge, obscuring the mountain and gully even more. There is the rumble of thunder behind the mountain, muffled and indistinct. Suddenly, I realize that the noise of the river below the highway is much louder, there is a perpetual roar as it charges endlessly at great speed from the snowclad mountains to pour into the Min River. It possesses an intimidating and violent energy not found in rivers flowing over flat country.

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It is by the pavilion that you encounter her. It is an undefinable longing, a vague hope, it is a chance meeting, a wonderful meeting. You come again at dusk to the riverside, the pounding of clothes being washed reverberates from the bottom of the pitted stone steps. She is standing near the pavilion and like you she is looking at the mountain on the other side. You can’t take your eyes off her. She stands out in this small mountain village. Her figure, poise and enigmatic expression can’t be found among the local people. You walk away but she lingers in your mind and when you return to the pavilion she is no longer there. It is already dark and in the pavilion a couple of cigarettes glow from time to time as they are smoked, people are there quietly talking and laughing. You can’t see their faces, but from their voices you guess that there are probably two men and two women. They don’t seem to be locals, who always talk loudly whether they’re flirting or being aggressive. You go up and eavesdrop. It seems they are talking about what they have had to do to get away on this excursion: deceive their parents, he to the head of the work unit, and think up all sorts of stories. Talking about it is such fun they can’t stop cackling with laughter. You’ve already passed that age and don’t have to be supervised by anyone, still you aren’t having as much fun as they are. They probably arrived in the afternoon, but as you recall there’s only the one morning bus from the county town. Anyway they probably have their own ways and means. She doesn’t seem to be among them and didn’t seem to be as cheerful as this crowd. You leave the pavilion and walk straight down along the river-bank. You no longer need to think about finding your way. There are several dozen houses by the river but only the last one, which sells cigarettes, liquor and toilet paper, has the half door-flap of the shop open. The cobblestone road swerves back towards the town and then there’s a high wall. In the weak yellow streetlight on the right, through the dark doorway, is the village administrative office. The tall buildings and large courtyard with a watchtower must once have been the residence of a rich and powerful family at one time. Further on is a vegetable plot fenced off with broken bricks and opposite is a hospital. Two lanes up is a cinema, built just a few years back, and now showing a martial arts movie. You’ve been around this small town more than once so you don’t need to go to see what time the evening session starts. The lane at the side of the hospital cuts through to the main street and comes out right opposite the big department store. You know all this perfectly, as if you’re an old resident of the town. You could even act as a guide if anyone wanted one, and you desperately need to talk with someone.

You didn’t think that after dark there’d be so many people about on this small street. Only the department store has the iron door shut and the grill up and padlocked in front of the windows. Most of the shops are still open but the stalls that were out during the day have been put away and replaced by small tables and chairs or bamboo bed planks. People are out on the street eating and chatting, inside the shops watching television as they eat and chat, and silhouetted on the curtains of upstairs windows moving about. Someone is playing a flute and there are small children crying and yelling — every household is making its own nill-blast din. Songs popular a few years ago in the cities are playing on tape recorders — tenderness laced with petulant lyrics alongside the beat of heavy metal electronic music. People sit in their doorways chatting with people across the street and it is at this time that married women in singlet and shorts and plastic slippers take tubs of dirty bath water to pour into the street. Gangs of adolescent boys are everywhere, deliberately brushing against the young girls strolling hand in hand. Suddenly, you see her again, in front of a fruit stall. You walk more quickly, she’s buying pomelos, which are just coming into season. You push in front and ask how much they cost. She touches the round unripe pomelo and walks off. You say, that’s right, they’re not ripe. You catch up to her. Like to join me? You seem to hear her agree, she even gives a nod which makes her hair shake. You had been nervous, terrified of a rebuff, you hadn’t imagine she’d agree so spontaneously. You instantly relax and you keep pace with her.

Are you also here because of Lingshan? You should have been able to say something smarter than that. Her hair shakes again, then you begin to chat.

On your own?

She doesn’t answer. The front of the hairdresser’s shop is fitted with neon lights and you see her face. It’s youthful and that slight weariness is distinctly attractive. You look at the women with their heads under the dryers and getting their hair done and say that modernization has been most rapid in this. She looks away, laughs, and you laugh with her. Her hair covers her shoulders and is black and shiny. You want to say, you have lovely hair, but think it would be going a bit too far, so you don’t say it. You walk along with her, and don’t say anything else. It’s not that you don’t want to get on closer terms with her but that you can’t think of the right words to say. You can’t help feeling embarrassed and want to get out of this dilemma as quickly as possible.

May I walk with you? Again, this is really a stupid thing to say.

You’re really a funny person, you seem to hear her mumbling. She looks reproachful and yet approving. However you can tell she’s trying to look cheerful, you must keep up with her quick steps. She’s not a child and you’re no teenager, you try flirting with her.

I can be your guide, you say, this was built in the Ming Dynasty and goes back at least five hundred years, you’re talking about the heat-retaining wall behind the Chinese herbalist’s shop, one of the flying eaves of the gable curls upwards out of the darkness into the star-lit sky. There’s no moon tonight. In the Ming Dynasty, five hundred years ago, no, even just a few decades ago, to walk along this road at night you had to carry a lantern. If you don’t believe me you only have to go off this main street and you’ll be in pitch-black lanes. You don’t even have to go back a few decades, just take twenty or thirty paces and you’ll be back in those ancient times.

While chatting you come to the front of the First Class Fragrance Teahouse where there are adults and children standing along the wall. You stand on tiptoes to look inside and stay there as well. The narrow door leads into the long teahouse where all the square tables have been put away. On the rows of benches are the backs of craning heads and right in the middle is a square table draped with a yellow-bordered red cloth: a storyteller in a robe with wide sleeves is seated on a high stool behind it.

“The sun goes down, thick clouds hide the moon, and as usual the Snake Lord and his wife lead their pack of demons back to the Palace of Blue Vastness. On seeing the plump fair-skinned boys and girls and the lavish banquet of pork, beef and lamb, they are delighted. The Snake Lord says to his wife: This good fortune is due to you. Today’s birthday celebration is magnificent. One of the demons says: Today being her Ladyship’s birthday requires wind and string music and the Master of the Grotto has had to busy himself with these.” Bang! He slams his wooden clapper on the table, “Indeed, lofty aspirations produce ideas!”

He puts aside the clapper and taking the drum stick strikes a few dull beats on the slack drum skin. In his other hand he takes up a tambourine threaded with metal bits which he slowly shakes so that it tinkles. Then in his old rasping voice he begins to explain:

“The Snake Lord gives instructions and in all four quarters are activities which immediately transform the Palace of Blue Vastness with colourful decorations and a medley of wind and string instruments.” He suddenly raises his voice, “And, when the frog heard, it croaked loudly and the owl waved his conductor’s baton.” He deliberately imitates the recitation style used by TV performers and makes the audience roar with laughter.

You look at her and both of you laugh. This is the happy face you’ve been hoping for.

Shall we go in and sit down? You’ve found something to say. You lead her past wooden benches and peoples’ legs, find a bench which isn’t full and squeeze in. Just look at the storyteller trying to get the audience worked up. He’s standing up and banging his clapper again, very loudly.

“The birthday salutations now begin! All the lesser demons —” he gaily hums as he turns to the left performing the actions of bowing with hands cupped together in salutation, then turns to the right to wave his hands and sing in the voice of the old seductress, “Thank you, thank you.”

They’ve been telling this story for a thousand years, you say close to her ear.

And they’ll still go on telling it. She seems to be your echo.

Will they go on telling it for another thousand years? you ask.

Mmm, she replies, pursing her lips like a cheeky child. You feel very happy.

“Let’s go back to Chen Fatong. He makes it to the foot of Donggong Mountain in three days, a journey normally taking seven times seven equals forty-nine days, where he encounters the Daoist Wang. Fatong bows in salutation and says: I have a request of the Venerable Master. The Daoist Wang responds with a salutation and Fatong asks: May I ask where the Palace of Blue Vastness can be found? Why do you ask? The demons there are really fierce. Who would dare go there? My surname is Chen and my name, Fatong, means ‘comprehending Buddha’s laws’. I have come especially to capture the demons. The Daoist Master heaves a sigh and says, young boys and girls have just been sent there today, they may already be in the Snake Lord’s belly. On hearing this, Fatong exclaims, I must go quickly to their rescue!”

Bang! You see the storyteller raising his drum stick in his right hand and rattling the tambourine in his left hand. His eyes open wide until they show the whites and as he recites a chant his whole body begins to shake … You smell something, a subtle fragrance in the midst of the strong smell of tobacco and sweat, it’s coming from her hair and from her. There is the cracking of melon seeds as people eat the seeds with their eyes fixed on the storyteller, who has donned a monk’s robe. He is holding a magic sword in his right hand and a dragon’s horn in his left and talking faster and faster, as if he is spitting out a string of pearls.

“Laying down three times the magic tablet, one-two-three, three troop-summoning amulets instantly muster the divine troops and the generals of Lu Mountain, Mao Mountain and Longhu Mountain, o-ya-ya a-ha-ha da-gu-long-dong cang-ng-ya-ya-ya-wu-hu. Emperor of Heaven, Emperor of Earth, I am the younger brother sent by the True Lord Emperor to exterminate demons. Holding the precious magical sword and treading on the wheel of wind and fire I wheel to the right and wheel to the left —”

She turns and stands up, you follow after her, stepping over people’s legs. They all glare at you.

“Quick, quick, you’ve got your orders!”

A roar of laughter follows the two of you.

What’s the matter?

Nothing.

Why didn’t you want to stay?

I was feeling sick.

You’re sick?

No, I feel better now, it’s stuffy inside.

You walk outside and the people sitting on the street chatting look up at the two of you.

Should we look for somewhere quiet?

Yes.

You lead her around a corner into a small lane, the sound of people and the lights of the street fall behind you. There are no streetlights in the lane, just the weak glow coming from the windows of the houses. She slows down and you think back to what has just happened.

Don’t you think you and I are like the demons being pursued?

She chuckles.

Then you and she can’t stop laughing. She laughs so much that she doubles over. Her heels clatter noisily on the cobblestones. You emerge from the lane and before you are paddy fields bathed in faint glimmering light. In the hazy distance are a few buildings, you know it’s the one middle school in town. A little further off are sprawling hills beneath the grey star-lit night sky. A breeze starts up, bringing ripples of cool air which sink into the clean fragrance of the paddy rice. You draw close to her shoulder, and she doesn’t move away. Neither of you say anything but go wherever your feet take you along the greyish paths between the fields.

Enjoying yourself?

Yes.

Don’t you think it’s wonderful?

I don’t know, I can’t say, don’t ask me.

You lean against her arm and she leans towards you, you look down to her, you can’t see her features but you sense her small nose and you again smell that familiar warmth. Suddenly she comes to a halt.

Let’s go back, she mutters.

Back where?

I have to get some rest.

I’ll take you back.

I don’t want anyone with me.

She is quite adamant.

Do you have relatives or friends here? Or are you here on your own?

She doesn’t answer. You don’t know where she’s from nor where she’s going back to. Still, you escort her to the main street and she walks off on her own, vanishing at the end of the street, as if in a story, as if in a dream.