Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

Dark grey clouds speed overhead but the night sky is bright. The high glow of sunset and the low dark clouds are richly coloured. Round mountains rise from the plains directly ahead. The tops of the mountains on this high plateau are like voluptuous breasts, but close up, they are huge and somewhat oppressive. I don’t know whether it’s because of the clouds speeding overhead but I have the sensation that the ground slopes and I have one long leg and one short leg… and I haven’t even been drinking! This night in Anshun gives me this odd sort of feeling.

I find a small inn opposite the railway station and in the semi-darkness I can’t make out how the building is constructed but the room is like a pigeon cage and my head seems to be touching the ceiling. It’s a room fit only for lying down.

I go out onto the street which is lined with places to eat with tables on the pavement. There is a blaze of electric lights but strangely there are no customers about. It’s a crazy night and suddenly I am uneasy about eating here. However, at a square table some twenty or thirty metres away there are two customers, so I sit down at the table opposite and order a bowl of rice noodles with beef and chillies.

The two men are both rather gaunt. One is guarding a pewter wine jar and the other has one foot on the bench. Each has a small patterned wine bowl in his hand but they don’t seem to have ordered any food. The ends of the single chopstick each holds touch and, in the same instant, one says “Dried prawns!” and the other says “Carrying pole!”. Neither wins and the chopsticks separate. They are playing “Execute Drinking Orders”. When both have psyched themselves up, the ends of the chopsticks meet again. One says “Carrying pole!” the other says “Dog!”. The pole hits the dog so the one who said dog loses. The winner takes the stopper off the wine jar and pours a little liquor into the small patterned wine bowl in the hand of his opponent. The loser drinks it in one gulp and the ends of the chopsticks touch again. Their slow and meticulous movements make me wonder if they aren’t immortals. However, looking carefully, I see that they are very ordinary people. Anyway, I expect immortals probably play “Execute Drinking Orders” just like this.

I finish eating the rice noodles and beef, get up and leave. I can still hear them playing and on this deserted street they sound very loud.

I come to an old street. The old houses on both sides are about to collapse and the eaves come right out over the road. The further I go the narrower the road becomes and the eaves of the houses on both sides virtually join. There are clear signs of imminent collapse. At every doorway is a stall with some things to sell, a few bottles of liquor, a few pomelos and small amounts of dried fruit, or some items of clothing which hang there, swaying like hanged corpses. The street is endlessly long, as if it goes through to the other end of the world. My deceased maternal grandmother seems to have brought me here, I recall that she took me out to buy a spinning top. The big boy next door had a top which filled me with envy but normally this particular toy was only on sale around the Spring Festival and even toy counters in the big shops didn’t have them. My maternal grandmother had to take me to the Temple of the City God in the south of the city but there they only had performing monkeys and people practising martial arts. It was only in places where they sold dogskin medicinal plasters that tops might be found. I recall that when I went to the Temple of the City God to buy a top that I had gone along this kind of street. It’s been a long time since I’ve played with this humble toy: the more you hit it the faster it spins. But none of the people on this street sell tops, the merchandise on show is all much the same and the more you look the more uninteresting it all is. Who actually comes to buy at all these shops? Do they really do business or is it all for show? Do they have proper jobs as well? Or does every household open up a shop, like some years ago every household used to paste up Old Mao’s sayings to make their doorways look more impressive?

Later on, I somehow make a turn and come onto another big street. Here they are all regular government shops but they are already closed for the night — when they can do good business, they’re not open. Nevertheless the street is thronging with people. The young women are particularly eye-catching. They are all wearing lipstick, walking noisily in high heels, and wearing sleeveless, body-hugging, low-cut, gaudy Hong Kong dresses which either have been smuggled in or else bought after being resold profitably many times over. They are not on their way to a nightclub but they look as if they have dates.

Coming to a crossroads, it is even more crowded and it seems that all the inhabitants of the city have come out and are all casually walking in the middle of the road. No cars are in sight and it’s as if this wide road has been built for pedestrians and not vehicles. Judging by the size of this crossroads and the style of the houses on the street, I gather that I must be at the Big Ten of the city. The cities of this high plateau usually refer to the city centre as the Big Ten but it is dark here compared with the bright lights of the shops in the small winding lane. Maybe there’s a shortage of electricity or maybe the shift workers forgot to put on the street lights, who knows? I make use of the light shining from a window and go right up to look at the road sign. It in fact reads “Big Ten” and it is quite certain this is the square in the centre of the city, the place where ceremonies and parades are held.

I hear the sound of chuckling coming from the darkness on the pavement. Puzzled, I go up to look and discover that people are sitting, one next to the other, all along the wall. I stoop to get a better look and see that they are all old people, several hundred of them, and they look to be neither meditating nor demonstrating. They are chatting, laughing and singing. There is the squeaking of strings from an untuned huqin resting on someone’s knees: the cloth on his knees makes this huqin master look more like a cobbler mending shoes. The person next to him is leaning against the wall and singing the tune, “At the Drumbeat of the Five Watches” which counts each of the five watches from night to dawn and tells about a besotted girl waiting for her lover. The old people all around listen entranced. The intriguing thing is that they are not all men, there are also old women, all with huddled shoulders and bent backs, like so many shadows. However, their coughing is very loud, but the coughing seems to be coming from people made of paper. Someone is quietly talking, as if talking in sleep, or one could say talking just for oneself. However, there is the sound of laughter in reply. On eavesdropping, it turns out to be an old man earnestly flirting with an old woman. What sort of wood did elder brother fetch from the mountains? What sort of shoes did younger sister embroider with her hands? One asks and the other replies as in the singing of mountain love songs. Perhaps they are using the darkness of the night to transform the Big Ten into a singing stadium of their youth, or perhaps this was the very place where they flirted and talked of love in their youth. There is more than one old couple singing love songs, and there are even more earnestly chatting and laughing. I can’t understand what they are saying or why they are having so much fun, only they can understand the hissing which comes through their sparse teeth. I wonder if I am dreaming and look carefully to see if these are real people. I pinch my thigh through my trousers and it does hurt, so I’m not mistaken. After coming to this high plateau I have been travelling from north to south, tomorrow I will catch the early long distance bus and go further south to Huangguoshu. In the waterfall there I will wash away these strange images and will have no doubts about the reality of my surroundings and myself.