Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain

She thinks I’m a local roadworker and asks for a drink of water as soon as she enters. I use the iron ladle to scoop some from the sooty black pot sitting on the stone slabs around the fire and hand it to her. She takes it, starts drinking, and gives a yell. She’s scalded herself. I can do nothing but apologize. She comes up to the light of the fire, looks at me, and says, “You’re not a local, are you?” Her face, wrapped in a woollen scarf, is red with cold. Since coming onto this mountain I haven’t seen a girl with such beautiful skin and I want to tease her.

“Don’t you think mountain people know how to apologize?”

Her face goes a brighter red.

“Are you doing practical work here too?” she asks.

I can’t say that I could even be her teacher, so I say, “I’m here taking photos.”

“Are you a photographer?”

“I suppose so.”

“We’re here collecting specimens. The scenery is superb!” she exclaims.

“Yes, beyond words.”

It does seem that I am just a connoisseur of beauty. On seeing such a pretty girl I can’t help being affected and suggest, “May I take your photo?”

“Can I put up my umbrella?” she asks, twirling her red umbrella.

“This is black and white film.” I don’t tell her the film I’m using was cut and put together from a whole lot of reject movie stock I’d bought.

“It doesn’t matter, artistic photographers all use black and white film.” She seems to know a bit about it. She follows me outside. A large part of the sky is filled with fine swirling snow and she puts up her bright red umbrella to fend off the wind.

Although it is May and already spring, the snow on the mountain still hasn’t completely thawed and in between the patches of white, little purple fritillary flowers are growing everywhere and occasionally there are squat bushes of dark red stonecrop. Beneath the bare cliff, a green velvety artemesia stretches out a furry stalk with a big yellow flower.

“How about here?” I say. The big snow-covered mountain in the background was clearly visible early in the morning but right now the fine snow has turned it into a faint grey shadow.

“Does this look all right?” She poses and tilts her head but the mountain wind is quite strong and she can’t hold the umbrella steady.

She looks even better struggling to hold up the umbrella against the wind.

Further ahead is a trickling creek with a thin crust of ice flanked by big yellow alpine buttercups.

“Go over there!” I yell, pointing to the creek.

She struggles with her umbrella in the wind as she runs and I zoom in with my lens. She is panting, the fine snow has turned to misty rain and her scarf and hair sparkle with drops of water. I signal to her.

“Have you finished?” she calls out against the wind. Drops of water sparkle on her eyelashes and she looks even better. Unfortunately, I’ve already come to the end of my film.

“Can you send me the photo?” she asks hopefully.

“If you leave me an address.”

As my bus is about to leave, she runs up and hands me through the window a page torn out of her notebook with her name and a number of some street in Chengdu written on it. She says I am welcome to come, and waves goodbye.

Later, when I return to Chengdu, I pass by this old street. I remember the number of her house and go past the front of it but don’t go in. I don’t send her the photo afterwards either. After developing my big pile of film, apart from the few I really need, I don’t print most of it. I don’t know whether or not one day I’ll have all this film made into prints, nor do I know whether she will look as stunningly beautiful in the photo.

On Huanggang Mountain, which is the main mountain of the Wuyi Range, I manage to photograph a splendid deciduous pine growing in the belt of conifers in the lower section of the sub-alpine grassy marshland adjoining the peak. Halfway up the trunk it suddenly divides into two almost horizontal branches. It is like a giant falcon flapping its wings ready to take off and the part right between the two wings is exactly like the head and beak looking down.

Nature creates, in this mystical way, not only powerful vitality such as this but also exquisite, ever-changing feminine beauty. It also creates evil. It is also in the Wuyi Mountains, on the south side of the mountain reserve, that I see a huge decaying torreya. The core of the tree is hollow and could be a nest for a python, but on the sparse branches growing out at an angle from the iron-like black bark, small dark green leaves tremble. At sunset, the valley is plunged into shadows and above a sea of fine gentle bamboos burnished green and orange by the setting sun, this ancient tree suddenly looms up, its decaying black branches wilfully outstretched like a malevolent demon. This photo I do develop and print and whenever I look at it, it chills my heart and I can’t look at it for long. I realize that it brings to the surface the dark aspect in the depths of my soul, which terrifies even me. I can only recoil when confronted by beauty or evil.

It is on Wudang Mountain that I see possibly the last Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect. He is the embodiment of this sort of evil. I heard about him on the way up the mountain at a place I made my camp site. An old Daoist nun has made her home in a ramshackle hut outside the wall of the Courtyard of Steles of the sacked Ming Imperial Palace. I ask her about this famous Daoist mountain in those better times of long ago and she starts to talk about the main school of Daoism. She says there is only one old Daoist of the Pure Unity Sect alive. He is over eighty and has never come down the mountain, preferring to stay all year round keeping guard at the Gold Top. No-one dares to provoke him.

I rush to catch the first bus early in the morning to South Cliff, then make my way on foot up the mountain track to the Gold Top. Already past noon, it is overcast and bleak on the mountain and there are no tourists about. I go right around the cold winding corridors and find that the doors are either bolted from the inside or have iron padlocks hanging on the outside. Only one thick and heavy door fitted with iron bars is slightly ajar. I push hard and finally get it open. An old man with dishevelled hair and bristling whiskers in a long gown, turns and stands up at the side of the brazier. He is large and tall and his dark ruddy face shows a violent streak. He barks ferociously, “What are you up to?”

“May I ask if you are the custodian of the Gold Top?” The tone of my voice is very polite.

“There is no custodian here!”

“I know the Daoist temple here hasn’t yet resumed activities, but would you be the former head Daoist?”

“There is no head Daoist here!”

“Then may I ask if you, venerable elder, are a Daoist?”

“What if I am a Daoist?” His black eyebrows which have a sprinkling of white hairs also bristle.

“May I ask if you are a member of the Pure Unity Sect? I heard that it is only at the Gold Top that there is still—”

“I don’t belong to any sect!”

Without letting me finish he opens the door and chases me out.

“I’m a journalist,” I hasten to say. “The government is now implementing religious policies, I can help you get a report through.”

“I don’t know what a journalist is!” And with that slams the door shut.

At the time, I saw an old woman and a young woman sitting by the brazier, they were probably his family. I know that the Pure Unity Sect can marry and have children and even join with all sorts of men and women to practise sexual techniques. I can’t help imagining the most wicked things about him. His eyes shone like bronze bells under his bushy eyebrows and his voice was gruff and booming. His whole presence was menacing and he was clearly an exponent of the martial arts: it is little wonder that for years no-one has dared to provoke him. Even if I knocked on the door again the outcome would not necessarily be any better, so following the narrow path with the iron hand rail I make my way up to the golden temple cast in yellow bronze.