Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

Next I opened the plastic bags, took out the different herbs, the notebook with recipes, and his diary. Together with the necklace, I aligned them in a circle to symbolize cyclic continuity, like the seasons, hoping that Lop Nor, though gone into another world, would somehow make his return. Each variety of herb was wrapped in a piece of rice paper, carefully labeled. These must be Lop Nor’s most precious items collected from secret locations on the Mountains of Heaven. Flipping through the notebook I saw that it contained complete descriptions: where he found the herbs, the best times of year to collect them, how to decoct them, even dangers to avoid.

I picked up one of the packages at random and opened it to find a bunch of dried yellowish-white flowers with pale green leaves. Didn’t look like much to me, but obviously had been precious to him.

Then I began to thumb through his notebook until I found what I was looking for:

Name: The Mountains of Heaven Snow Lotus

Nature: Gifts from heaven. When the Queen Mother of the West took her bath in the Heavenly Pond, the celestial maidens scattered snow lotuses onto the water.

Found: The Mountains of Heaven, northern and southern slopes, 4,000 meters above sea level. They grow in severely cold climate and thin air where no other plants can survive. Found on overhanging cliffs and precipices and also between cracks of rocks and ice.

Characteristics: Grows from seed to flowers in three to five years. Its root, stem, and leaves possess healing potency.

How to collect: Do not pull with force in one movement. This will damage its roots and the area it grows.

Function: Because of the plant’s ability to survive, it can cure many diseases: rheumatism, bronchitis, gastric ulcer, hemorrhoids, back pain, fever, chills, rare cancer. It facilitates blood circulation, dissipates humidity, regulates menstruation, inhibits discharge, stops semen leakage, restores potency, confers longevity.

Recipe:

For men: Soak one snow lotus in Ke wine for ten days. Drink one cup daily.

For women: Soak one snow lotus in Huang wine for ten days. Drink one cup daily.

Warning: Not for pregnant women.

I set down the notebook and sighed. The information was so detailed and precise. Then I also wondered, was there any herb for my brain? Was there an herb that would help me to get out of this ordeal in one piece? And maybe even help me finish writing my novel later?

I was soon tired of reading Lop Nor’s detailed descriptions of treatments for obscure conditions I’d never heard of. So I picked up his diary—I’d been dreading to look at it, lest more tragedy would reveal itself.

Heart beating, I flipped through the inch-thick book where every page was filled with my friend’s large, chaotic Chinese writing. Finally I stopped at one page where the penmanship seemed particularly disordered.

Life on my own is very lonely and painful. But I have to go on with healing so my family, especially my grandfather, did not die in vain. I still remember the happy days when he took me to collect herbs on the mountains. He used a magnifying glass to look at the leaves, tasted them with the tip of his tongue, then told me their names and characteristics.

Alas, my poor little boy will never carry on the family’s healing tradition. I don’t know what I did in my past life to deserve such severe punishment in this life. That’s why I believe I must work even harder to heal others in the hope that I can neutralize my bad karma.

I closed the journal and let tears roll down my cheeks. I felt as if I was peering into Lop Nor’s soul. He was the only man with whom I felt so intimate, yet who had never touched my hand or tasted my lips, who had not even seen my bare shoulders, let alone my naked body.

My hand continued to flip through the journal until I spotted my name and began to read:

Recently a young Chinese woman visited me for herbs. Our friendship grew. I even took her to the mountain, to my secret place, and helped her find the herbs she needed. This is the first time I brought another person with me up the mountain. So I must be out of my mind. To leak all these secrets of herbs to a stranger—a woman!

She is beautiful and lively and we talked long hours. I’ve never talked so much to anyone, certainly not a woman, besides my wife before she passed away….

I realized that he had written this when he still thought his wife was dead. I continued to read.

Every day I go to the door, hoping to see Lily. When I see it is a patient instead of her, my heart sinks. I must be really out of my mind that I’d rather see her than those who need my help. She comes often, so the villagers will gossip.

I can’t tell if she has any feelings for me. Her mind seems to be always occupied by something else. On the Mountains of Heaven, she overheard me singing “In the Distant Land” but showed no recognition of my feelings.

If I fall in love with another woman, am I betraying my dead wife? And what about my son, would he like this Chinese woman if he were still alive?

Alas! I know many herbs to cure heart disease, but not any to win a woman’s heart.

I closed the notebook and pressed it against my chest. An immense sadness rose inside me as I thought of Lop Nor’s difficult life, his wrinkled brown face and strong, rough hands. I regretted that I’d been so immersed in my thoughts of Alex that I had completely ignored his feelings for me. Yes, I liked him, too, very much, though not as much as I did Alex. How had I let my emotional life become so entangled? I’d never thought of making love to Lop Nor, but now this possibility was forever gone with the desert wind.

I picked up his necklace, kissed it, and put it around my neck.

“Lop Nor, I’ll always think of you,” I murmured to myself, to the pendant, and to my friend, wherever he was.

That night I had a dream. Lop Nor, his son, and I were a family. We lived near the cool Crescent Moon Lake and made our living by selling tourist souvenirs. One night when his son was asleep, we tiptoed outside our house and headed toward the shimmering lake, where we took off our clothes and plunged in. We frolicked, splashed water at each other, and laughed like children, then we made love. The moon and its silvery sprinkles were everywhere—the sky, the lake, our happy faces, our naked bodies.

When Lop Nor kissed me, he murmured, “My love, I’m kissing the moon.”

After passionate love, Lop Nor dived under the lake. I was waiting for him to call me to join him to make love again on the lake’s bottom. But alas, he never emerged. I screamed, but my voice was lost amidst the intense moonlight and the glittering stars….

I awakened to the sound of my own scream. For long moments, the burning images of the dream lingered before finally fading. I was both sad and happy that it was but a dream. Sad that the sex was only imaginary and Lop Nor was no longer in this life, but happy that Alex was. And sad that on his last day in Urumqi, Alex and I had quarreled and that he’d left angry and hurt. Would we cross paths again on this Ten Thousand Miles of Red Dust? As lovers, or just as friends?

I lifted Lop Nor’s pendant from my neck and pressed my burning lips to its cold surface. I realized that since I had no intention of being an herbalist, the best I could do with the precious herbs I’d been bequeathed was to pass them on to someone who could make use of them.

However, as much as I would never forget Lop Nor, I needed to move on with my own life. Thus decided, I felt a huge stone lifted from my chest.