Xu Xiaobin - Dunhuang Dream

As a result, Xingxing completed four paintings.

In the first painting, two white clouds on which stood Vaisravana and Biancaitian, 1floated against a backdrop of blue sky. Vaisravana’s eyes were fixed on a naked young woman bathing in a lotus pool. Biancaitian was arrayed in the robes of a bodhisattva, her face filled with anger, and ready to go off in a huff. The water in the lotus pool was crystal clear, and several pink lotuses were in full bloom. The naked young woman smiled flirtatiously as she plucked a lotus blossom. Naturally, this was Lakshmi.

In the second painting, Lakshmi, who was dressed for her wedding and looking supremely satisfied, sat with Vaisravana, who looked somewhat repentant. Far off in the distance, Biancaitian stood upon a cloud staring at Vaisravana. The gandharvas, 2the wind gods, and the asuras 3made merry with song and dance. The sky was filled with flying flowers and striking colors. Aupapdaka, or transformation, children gamboled in the lotus pool.

In the third painting Lakshmi had become a wife. She sat in dignified silence. In her left hand she held a fly whisk, in her right she held her son. With a flick of her fly whisk, she scattered gold and silver. Below was the mundane world, where countless people kneel to receive the gold and silver. Vaisravana sits to one side, looking regretful. It looks as if Lakshmi, quickly after marrying, controlled the wealth. She had also ascended to become Gongdetian, one of the Buddhist protective deities.

Later, Xingxing decided to add a picture of Lakshmi’s childhood in which the asuras who are stirring up the Sea of Milk stare blankly as Lakshmi slowly ascends. Behind her the Buddha light shoots in all directions.

When Xingxing did these paintings, she felt admiration for Lakshmi, because she would never be so resourceful. As such, when people appraised her, they all said her talent far outstripped her fame.

3

Xingxing often thought she was a bit of an oddball.

For her, sex and love were two separate things. From an early age she began to take an interest in the opposite sex. But it wasn’t until the age of twenty-five that she understood what sexual love was.

This was probably due to an inherent deficiency of her generation.

When Xingxing was very young, the male idol she worshiped was the actor in the Polish movie Mermaid of Warsaw . She was only five years old at the time, but she wept copious tears when the actor was injured. Later she liked a number of male roles in movies and plays and often wept over their misfortunes. She had a special liking for misfortunate males. At the age of nine, she surreptitiously “read” Dream of the Red Chamber at night as her grandmother slept. She wept for Daiyu’s plight and death and eventually suffered from weak nerves. The lack of sleep and extreme introversion led her to the brink of death, but it was there that hallucination and intelligence were born. These two qualities nourished her throughout her life and transformed her into a painter who towered above others.

Girls develop much earlier than boys. In light of this, every girl is a little woman. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, all elementary schools closed to pursue “revolution.” Chairman Mao buttons had just appeared, and obtaining a good one was as good as and as pleasing as a holiday. One day, an older neighbor boy came over and gave Xingxing a glow-in-the-dark button and pinned it on her chest himself. Jubilant, Xingxing suddenly felt the boy’s hand flit like a dragonfly over her breast. The shock nearly knocked her off her feet. That night she dreamed and slept uneasily. From then on, she experienced a vicious cycle and ended up in a shambles over dreams about sex. During the day, she felt disgust for herself and her developing body.

One psychology book on the subject of sex said a small minority of women worldwide experience spontaneous sexual desire. They were intelligent, healthy, and full of energy. Unfortunately, Xingxing belonged to this category; even more unfortunately, she viewed her desires as evil.

As a result, she spent most of her time from morning till night under a cloud of evil. She was ashamed of her thoughts, which were impossible to talk about. Looking at her sister and her thin and elegant body and docile nature, she felt even more inadequate. She liked her sister’s flat chest and slim figure. Hiding from her mother and sister, she sewed a tight vest for herself, which was so tight she could hardly breathe, and was soon suffering from prickly heat. Her breasts continued to swell at an alarming rate.

To rid herself of her dreams, she read from morning to night. Half the books she had read in her life she read during that part of her life. In books, she found men different from those she had admired as a child — most of them, though, were stamped from the same mold: Voynych’s Gadfly, Chernyshevsky’s Rakhmetov, and Turgenev’s Insarov. Not only did she weep for the misfortunes of the male characters as she did when she was young, she also imagined herself in the roles of the main female characters. Perhaps she fell in love with Xiaojun at first sight because he was like Rakhmetov, a Chinese equivalent to a member of the December Revolution. At the time he was engaged in the fight against the “Central Cultural Revolution” (later “the Gang of Four” 4).

In the years after she encountered and lost Xiaojun, she ignored the pangs of sexual awareness and fantasized about a pure and undying love. However, at the age of twenty-five, after fully understanding the nature of sexual love, she felt totally disillusioned. It was then that she started thinking about getting married.

4

Xiaojun didn’t smoke, but could drink. Parties in those days weren’t really extravagant, and the liquor was usually nondescript. He did like to drink out of a big jar as if there were no other way to demonstrate his masculinity. But in her eyes he was a real man with light golden eyes.

At times he seemed pretty wise. During the awful years of the Gang of Four, many young people couldn’t find anything to do and were depressed and dispirited. Others proposed starting a new people’s revolution to overthrow the Gang of Four (of course they weren’t known as the Gang of Four then). But Xiaojun said, “When a house is filled with moths that eat clothes, you have to slowly clean them out; you can’t burn the house down to get rid of them! Revolution is absolutely not the way.”

At other times he was really like a child. The first time he went to Xingxing’s house, her parents asked him his name. He flushed red and then recited what sounded like his CV: “My name is Yan Xiaojun. I live at Zhongzhi Xiyuan Office where my parents work. I attend the middle school attached to Qinghua University. I’m seventeen. .” Xingxing bit her lip and laughed to herself. Later, her mother commented, “He’s a good boy.”

5

Wuye accompanied Xingxing around Dunhuang collecting rubbings.

Some exquisite rubbings sold for as much as 450 yuan. If Xingxing liked a piece, Wuye had his ways of buying it at a substantially lower price by cutting out the middleman.

One rubbing was actually listed as Lakshmi Bathing , but it was done in a vulgar fashion to attract a prurient interest — Lakshmi’s breasts spilled over her arms in a disgustingly exaggerated way. But Xingxing didn’t bat an eye.

“I’d like a whole bunch of these. Can I talk with your boss?”

The clerk hesitated a moment before taking them to a large room in the back of the shop. The room was gorgeously decorated, a feast for the eyes. An unusual fragrance hung in the air, like some burning aromatic wood. Several animal skins hung on the wall side by side making the room look even more sumptuous. Xingxing was startled by the sight of two women sitting on a sofa in the corner. One of them was that old woman she and Zhang Shu had run into at the door to Cave 73. Shuffling along by herself at the time, she looked like a doddering old woman, but now she appeared to be around fifty. She wore a long red silk gown and a blue and white embroidered vest. Her gray scarf had been replaced with a trumpet-shaped red hat. Her wrinkled visage resembled a chrysanthemum blossom, but her eyes were expressionless. The young woman sitting next to her, though, was as dazzling as a ray of bright light. With the eyes of a professional painter, Xingxing scrutinized every inch of her. She found her, though, to be flawless. It was the first time she had seen such a beautiful young woman. Her first thought at the time was to try to convince her to model for her; of course, the best would be to take her to the art academy so as to do her colleagues a huge favor. The young woman was splendidly attired and wore a round, flat red hat from the top of which hung a large red jade and from inside hung a ring of pearls. Her braided hair was ornamented with colored pearls, pieces of silver, agates, and shells. Two bright eyes like stars glowed amid the precious raiment along with her smooth ochre-colored skin.