Amy Tan - Saving Fish From Drowning

Thus saddened by this tour of Buffalo Torture, the travelers continued their bus journey to the grottoes. As the road climbed into the mountains, Marlena and Harry were interested in taking note of the scenery. It was an excuse to lean their faces together and make small talk. “Those are poplars, I believe.…” “Look, eucalyptus.” “What are those?”

Moff, who was sitting behind them, answered in a bored voice: “Willows.”

“Are you sure?” Harry said. “They don’t look it.”

“Not all willows are the grand weeping variety.”

He was right. These willows were a scrubby, fast-growing kind that can be cut back often for kindling. Higher up, the willows gave way to long-needled pines, and trudging along the road was a phalanx of Naxi women collecting the fallen needles.

“What do they use those for?” Marlena called out to Miss Rong.

Miss Rong struggled to say it was for the animals. Everyone assumed she meant that the animals ate the needles, which is not so. In the winter, the animals nest in the needles to stay warm, and in the spring, the Naxi women use the manure-soiled needles as fertilizer when they plant the new crops. With a limited diversity of life, there is greater diversity of purpose.

“Where are the men?” Wendy demanded to know. “Why aren’t they out there breaking their backs?”

“Yes, very lazy,” Miss Rong joked. Then she added, “They play outside, do poetry.” She was partly right. The rest she knew but didn’t know how to verbalize clearly, so I will translate: In China, there is a saying made popular after the revolution: Women hold up half the sky. In the Naxi Autonomous Region, women have always held up the whole sky. It is a matriarchal society, where the females do the work, handle the money, own the houses, and raise the children. The men, meanwhile, ride on the backs of shooting stars, so to speak. They are bachelors, boyfriends, and uncles, roaming from bed to bed at night, not knowing which children they have fathered. They take the animals out to graze early in the morning, they bring them back at dusk. In the mountain pastures, they roll their cigarettes and smoke, and when they call the animals, they lure them with love songs. They sing at the top of their lungs, which extract oxygen much more efficiently than those of most Americans. So Miss Rong was correct in what little she said. The men do poetry. To hear a song sung in the mountains is always poetry.

At the entrance to the temple park, the bus stopped and my friends jumped out for camcorder documentation of their arrival. They gathered behind a sign, “Sincerely Welcoming you to Famous Grottoe of Female Genitalia.” Harry had his arm around Marlena’s waist. The others arranged themselves in various positions according to height. Roxanne held the camcorder. Meanwhile, Miss Rong had gone to pay the park entry fee. She stepped up to an old man sitting in a tollbooth the size of an upright coffin. He spoke to Miss Rong in the Bai dialect that was common in that region, telling her, “Hey, be careful today. We may get a thundershower any minute, so stay off the high ridge. Oh, and one other important matter—please note, the foreigners should avoid going to the main grottoes between the hours of two-thirty and three-thirty, because a television crew from CCTV will be filming a documentary there. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Miss Rong, who was ashamed to let both the man and her charges know she did not understand Bai, nodded briskly in return. She believed he was just reminding her that as an official tour guide she was required to take her tourists to the state-approved souvenir store. Each time she had been asked to be a substitute tour guide, the main office had reminded her of this as her foremost duty.

Before embarking on the trail, several of our group made a visit to the restrooms, two gender-assigned concrete pavilions with an open trough through which a paltry stream of water constantly ran, failing, however, to wash away the deposits. Heidi donned a face mask before entering, turned on her air purifier, and retrieved from her pack various germ-fighting supplies. The other women crouched and buried their faces in their sleeves, trying not to retch. In the men’s latrine, Moff let out a gusher strong enough to jet-spray gum off a sidewalk, while Harry, standing at the other end of the trough, focused his mind and squeezed his muscles—lats, abs, quads, and glutes—and out came a meager trickle. Though he had not attained relief, he zipped up quickly, not wanting to prolong his humiliation.

Let me add here that I am most emphatically not in the habit of watching or talking about people’s private business. I also abhor scatological humor and salacious gossip. But these are things I knew with these Buddha-like talents I now possessed, the Celestial Eye, the Celestial Ear, the Mind of Others. Furthermore, I report these intimate details that are salient only so that you might better judge later what occurred and why. Just remember: Throughout history, many a world leader was injudiciously influenced by his malfunctioning bladder, bowels, and other private parts. Didn’t Napoleon lose at Waterloo because he couldn’t sit in a saddle, on account of hemorrhoids?

At one o’clock, the eager travelers began their downward trek into the canyon that was the heart of Stone Bell Mountain. They were slightly disoriented from jet lag, the bouncy bus ride, and retreating motion sickness. Miss Rong’s version of English did not help matters. She was trying to recall which English words meant “east,” “west,” “north,” and “south,” and eventually she translated her directions thus: “Descend shady side, see temple grotto, ascend sunny side up, return the bus.” Of course, such terms are relative to the time of day. In fact, they rely entirely on the assumption that sunny and shady remain constant even after the sun has been completely obliterated by storm clouds as black as the tumbling seas.

To those who might visit the Lijiang region one day, let me assure you that winter is an excellent time for travel. It is the dry season. Even in late December, the days are usually warm and pleasant, while the nights are brisk but easily managed with a sweater or light pullover, unless, of course, you are someone like Heidi, who prefers layers—a down vest with Gore-Tex waterproofing, microfleece leggings, a 30 SPF shirt pretreated with mosquito repellent, a heat-retaining cap with visor, and a two-ounce Space blanket—in other words, a compact arsenal of techno-wear to enable her to handle every impossibility. I am not poking fun at Heidi, for as it turned out, she was the only one who was suitably prepared for mosquitoes with voracious appetites for Americans, and for skies that demonstrated with dramatic effect what might occur during a surprise flash flood.

When the rain first began to fall, soft as tears, our travelers had long since dispersed themselves like sheep on a sparse range. Each had gone off to stake his or her own unique experience. Roxanne had led the way uphill for Dwight and Heidi. Wyatt and Wendy sprinted down the shadier paths for a bit of smooching and pawing. Marlena and Esmé accepted Harry’s invitation to search for wildlife and the fabled pine with limbs as gnarled as an old man’s arthritic joints. Bennie and Vera wandered downward, taking the path of least resistance gravity-wise as they passionately discussed the building of the new Asian Art Museum and the various ways to blend innovation with tradition. Moff and Rupert jogged away, the younger lad soon being two turns ahead of his father, at which point he was seized with a desire to hoist his limber self up a steep face of rock, at the top of which was a grotto surrounded by a stone relief. He scrambled across scree, stepped over a low roped fence, and began to climb. At the bottom was a sign in Chinese that read: “Forbidden to Enter! Danger!”