Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

Won’t you just have to find yourself an old man? another woman says caustically.

Why do I have to find an old man? the woman with the plump hand retorts.

When the old man dies won’t all the money belong to you? Then you can go and find the young man you love. The woman is pretty harsh.

What if he doesn’t die? Won’t that be tragic? Don’t be so mean! the woman with the plump hands retaliates.

This voluptuous, plump hand is very sexy, you say.

Everyone claps, whistles and shouts.

Read my palm! she commands, nobody interrupt!

When you say this hand is sexy, you are serious. This means that this hand brings many suitors so it’s hard to choose and hard to know what to do.

There are plenty of people who love me and this is fine, but what about money? she mumbles.

At this everyone laughs.

People who don’t seek money but seek love don’t have love and people who pursue money don’t have money but have many who love them. That’s fate, you sternly declare.

This fate is pretty good! one woman calls out.

The woman with the plump hand turns up her nose, if I don’t have money how will I be able to dress up? As long as I can dress up and make myself pretty I won’t need to worry about nobody wanting me, will I?

Well spoken! the women all chime in.

And you, you just want women milling around you, you’re really greedy! a woman behind you says, will you be able to love them all?

But you’ve yearned for such a happy night and you say you love every hand and you want every hand.

No, no, you only love yourself! Each hand is shaking, protesting, shouting.

I enter Shennongjia through Fangxian in the north. Even now rumours are rife that there are Wild Men around these parts. It is recorded in the late Qing Dynasty work Annals of Yunyangfu that in this forest running 800 li from north to south, “all day long is the roaring of tigers and the screeching of apes”. I am not here to carry out an investigation into Wild Men, but have come to see if this primitive forest still exists. I am not mercilessly driven by some burning missionary zeal, it is simply because I have come down all the way from the high plateau and the huge mountains of the upper reaches of the Yangtze and it would be a pity to miss out seeing this mountain region of the middle reaches. So not having a goal is a goal, the act of searching itself turns into a sort of goal, and the object of the search is irrelevant. Moreover, life itself is without goals, and is simply travelling along like this.

The rain falls heavily during the night and although by morning it has lessened somewhat, it is still fine and continuous. There is nothing resembling forest along the two sides of the highway and the mountains are covered only with creepers and actinidia vines. The rivers and creeks are all brown and muddy. I arrive in the county town at eleven in the morning and go to the forestry bureau hostel hoping to get a ride into the forest proper. I run into a meeting of three grades of cadres, and although I can’t work out which three grades, it seems the meeting is about timber.

At noon the cadres assemble for lunch and it becomes known that I am a writer from Beijing. The section chief in charge gets me to join them and arranges for a driver who is setting out in the afternoon to sit next to me while urging me to drink up.

“All writers are good drinkers!” he says. The section chief has a solid build and is very direct.

Big bowls of hot rice wine go down easily and faces are flushed bright red with alcohol. I can’t disappoint them and quaff down the wine. After the food and drink, I have a fuzzy head and the driver isn’t in any condition to drive.

The meeting reconvenes in the afternoon but the driver takes me to one of the guest rooms where we find beds and sleep right into the night.

At dinner there is leftover food and drink so all of us get drunk all over again. The only thing I can do is to stay the night at the hostel. The driver comes and tells me the mountain waters have washed away some of the road and it is hard to say whether or not it will be possible to set out the next day. It is a chance for a good rest and he is quite pleased.

At night the section chief comes to chat and wants to find out what they eat at banquets in the capital. What dishes are served first? What dishes are served last? He says people who have visited the Imperial Palace in Beijing tell him that when a meal was prepared for the Empress Dowager a hundred ducks had to be killed, is this really true? Is the residence of Chairman Mao in Zhongnanhai still open for public inspection? Have I seen the Chairman’s old patched pyjamas they show on TV? I take the opportunity to ask what stories he can tell me about the place.

He says that before Liberation there were only a few inhabitants in the area, a family in Nanhe and another at Douhe; they cut the timber and set the logs in the river before strapping them. The annual timber export was less than 150 cubic metres. From here all the way to Shennongjia there were only three households. Right up to 1960 the forest hadn’t been damaged but after that the highway went through and everything changed — today every year 50,000 cubic metres of timber have to be delivered. As production developed the population increased. In earlier times, every year at the first clap of spring thunder the fish would emerge from the mountain caverns and if we blocked the mouths of the caves with large bamboo trays we would haul in a basketful. Nowadays we can’t eat fish.

I also ask about the history of the county town. He takes off his shoes, sits cross-legged on the bed, and says, “It’s very old. In mountain caves not too far from here, archaeologists have found the teeth of the Ancient Ape Man!”

He sees that I am not very interested in the Ancient Ape Man and starts talking about the Wild Man instead.

“If you run into one of these creatures, he will grab you by the shoulders and shake you until your head starts spinning, roar with laughter, then turn and run off.”

I get the impression this is what he’s read in some old books.

“Have you ever seen a Wild Man?” I ask.

“It’s better not to see one. This creature is bigger than humans, generally it’s more than two metres in height. The body is covered with red fur and it has long hair. It’s fine talking about it like this but to really see one is quite frightening. However, it doesn’t set out to hurt people, as long as people don’t hurt it. It goes yiyiyaya trying to speak, and when it sees a woman it smiles.”

He’s heard all this and probably it’s been going around for several thousand years. There’s nothing new in what he’s saying so it’s best that I interrupt him.

“Have any of your staff seen it? Not the peasants or villagers but cadres and workers of the reserve, have any of them seen it?”

“Sure. The head of the revolutionary committee of Songbaizhen was with several others travelling in a small jeep along the highway when they were stopped by a Wild Man. They were all terrified and just watched it amble off. These are all cadres on our reserve, we all know them and we get along well with them.”

“That incident with the revolutionary committee happened some years ago, has anyone seen it recently?”

“Lots of people come to carry out investigations on the Wild Man, several hundred every year. They come from all over the country, the Central Academy of Social Sciences, university teachers from Shanghai, and even someone from the political committee of the armed forces. Last year a pair came from Hong Kong, a merchant and a fire fighter, but we didn’t let them go in.”

“Did any of these people see the Wild Man?”