Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

Oh! It’s rowdy as they quaff the liquor from the big bowl passed from hand to hand. They are sitting cross-legged opposite one another before woven bamboo mats laid with a long line of black pig’s blood, white bean curd, red chillies, tender green soya beans, soya sauce pig trotters, stewed pork ribs and broiled fatty pork. The stockade village is celebrating — nine pigs and three oxen have been slaughtered and ten big vats of aged liquor have been opened. Everybody’s face is flushed and shiny, noses drip with greasy sweat. The crippled chief stands up and starts to shout in his raspy drake’s voice. Hemp Flower Peak has been theirs for many generations, how can they let outsiders burn down the forests to plant corn? He has lost all his front teeth and splutters. Don’t get the idea that this decrepit old man who is like a piece of straw is all they have in head stockade, don’t get the idea that the head stockade can be easily duped. He can’t handle a spiked carrying pole or a blunderbuss anymore but the young men of the head stockade are no cowards! Mother of Big Treasure, you wouldn’t keep back your son, would you? The silver bangles on the woman fly up with her arms. Venerable old chief, don’t say that, the whole stockade has watched my son Big Treasure grow up, he is not respected by outsiders and he’s also the butt of the village. Don’t just pick on my Big Treasure. Mine isn’t the only family in the head stockade. Which of the families produce only daughters and no sons? Suddenly all the women sulk off. Mother of Big Treasure, why are you changing the subject? If the head stockade doesn’t stand up to the outsiders how can we not lose face? Flushed with alcohol, the young men open their jackets and beat their chests: Old chief, the blunderbusses we have aren’t vegetarian! Venerable elder, just give the order, but don’t listen to your daughters-in-law and keep your eldest son and second son locked up in the house, leaving us young people to fight in the vanguard. The daughters-in-law panic at hearing this, and retort: You spoke barbed words even before you started getting hair on your face, your parents don’t mind parting with you, so why should we? A young man suddenly stands up, his eyes bulging. Little Two, you’re being rash, it’s not your turn to interrupt in the head stockade! Are you still listening?

Keep talking, she says, she just wants to hear your voice.

So you muster the energy and go on. Everyone starts clamouring. With a toss of the head he braces himself into a straddle stance, seizes a rooster and snaps its neck, and with its wings still flapping, he sprinkles the hot blood into the bowl of liquor and shouts in a loud voice: Whoever doesn’t drink is a son of a bitch! Only a son of a bitch won’t drink this! The men roll up their sleeves, tread on the saliva they spit in the dirt, make oaths to Heaven and fiery-eyed turn to their weapons — knives are sharpened and firearms cleaned. The aged parents of each household light lanterns and go to the ancestral burial grounds to dig graves. The women stay at home and with the scissors they had used to cut their hair after marriage and to cut the umbilical cord when they gave birth, they cut streamers for the graves. At dawn when the morning mists are about to rise the chief limps out and pounds on the big drum. The women, wiping away tears, emerge from the houses to keep guard at the gates of the stockade and to watch their menfolk, armed with knives and blunderbusses and striking gongs and shouting, charge down the mountain. For their ancestors, the stockade, the earth, the forests, their sons and grandsons, they go into battle then silently return with the corpses. The women weep and wail to Heaven and Earth, then silence returns. Then there is ploughing, seeding, replanting, harvesting and threshing. Spring passes and autumn comes, then after many winters when the graves are covered in grass and the widows have stolen men and the orphans have grown up, the grief is forgotten and only the glory of the ancestors is remembered. Until one evening, before the annual feast and sacrifice to the ancestors, the old people start talking about the sworn enemies of many generations and the young people have been drinking, and hot blood again boils up…

All night the rain continues and you watch the flame shrink to the size of a bean flower. At the base of the bright bean flower is a blue-white shoot which expands as the bean flower contracts and deepens from light yellow to orange and suddenly starts jumping on the wick. The darkness thickens, solidifies like grease, and extinguishes the trembling pale light. You break away from the woman clinging tightly to you, she is bathed in hot sweat and is fast asleep. You listen to the rain beating noisily on the leaves of the trees and the mountain wind groaning in the valley from the tops of the fir forest. The thatched roof, from which the oil lamp is hanging, starts to leak and the water drips onto your face. Huddled in the mountain-viewing shack put together with some thatch, you smell rotting grass and at the same time something sweet and fragrant.

I must get out of this cave. The main peak of the Wuling Range, at the borders of the provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan, is 3200 metres above sea level. The annual rainfall is more than 3400 points and in one year there are barely one or two days of fine weather. When the wild winds start howling they often reach velocities of more than three hundred kilometres per hour. This is a cold, damp and evil place. I must return to the smoke and fire of the human world to search for sunlight, warmth, happiness, and to search for human society to rekindle the noisiness, even if anxiety is regenerated, for that is in fact life in the human world.

I pass through Tongren. On its congested ancient little streets with overhanging eaves reaching to the middle of the road pedestrians and people with baskets on carrying poles collide. I don’t stay long, get on a bus right away, and at dusk arrive at a stop called Yubing. A number of privately-operated inns have recently sprung up by the railway station so I take a room which is just big enough for a single bed. The mosquitos unrelentingly harass me but when I let down the mosquito net it is hot and stuffy. The noisy honking of trucks and cars outside the window accompanies the drone of a teary conversation which gives me goose bumps — it seems to be coming from a movie which is showing on the basketball court. It’s the same old story of melodramatic separation and reunion, only the time has changed.

At two o’clock in the morning I board the train for Kaili and after some hours reach the capital of the Miao Autonomous District.

I hear there is a dragon boat festival at the Shidong Miao stockade. This is confirmed by a cadre of the prefectural committee. He says it’s a big event which hasn’t been held for several decades and he estimates there will be a gathering of some ten thousand Miao from the stockades far and near, as well as senior provincial and autonomous district officials. I ask how I can get there and he says it is about two hundred kilometres away and I wouldn’t be able to get there in time without a car. I ask if I can go with them in a prefectural committee car. He winces, but after much pleading on my part, says to come at seven o’clock in the morning to see if there’s room.

In the morning I get to the committee office ten minutes early but there is no sign of the big cars which were in front of the building the day before. The only person I find on duty in the empty building says that the cars set out long ago. I realize I’ve been tricked. However, anxiety breeds genius. I take out my Writers’ Association card, which has never been of any use and has only given me trouble, and put on a bit of a bluff. I make a fuss about having come expressly from Beijing to write about this event and ask him to immediately contact the prefectural authorities. He knows nothing about me, makes a series of phone calls, and eventually finds out that the prefectural head’s car hasn’t left. I run all the way to his office and am in luck. The prefectural head had been informed and without asking questions allows me to squeeze into his small van.