Xu Xiaobin - Dunhuang Dream

When she was twelve, at one time her father went to the Yulin Caves to teach yoga. Yu’er wanted to go and cried and made a scene until her father relented and took her, but not without setting many rules.

Yu’er could never forget how, burning with curiosity, as dusk settled, she quietly followed her father to a Buddhist temple deep in the Yulin Caves. It was dark by then and at the back of the temple there was a lustrous black curtain. A well-dressed young man knelt in front of the curtain, his eyes closed and his face glowing with piety. It was then that she suddenly heard voices from behind the curtain.

She quietly stepped from the Guanyin of a Thousand Hands and a Thousand Eyes behind the curtain. It was stifled with panting and moaning. She saw a naked man and a naked woman intertwined. The woman was so white she looked like a ray of light in the dark of night; the man looked like a dark cloud that was extinguishing the light.

She was transfixed. At that moment, the man looked around — it was her daddy! Her father pointed with one finger and as if under a spell, she retreated without a fuss. She sat down beside a red column with gold filigree and cried.

Later, her father found her and comforted her with tender words. He told her it was a superior form of yoga, the highest form transmitted from Tibet. That day, her father told her many things, about the vajra, the lotus, enlightenment, meditation, and the male and female bodhi minds, and other things. She didn’t understand a word; the only thing that made an impression on her was the last thing he told her, which was about the consecration ceremony. “In Lhasa, I served as a Vajra master.” Her father’s face was bathed in a yellow light. There wasn’t a wrinkle on his face; he was extremely youthful. “This place is nothing. In those days I taught the Five-part Great Vajra Dharma in which the consecration ceremony was held before a mandala. One had to bathe and be very clean. I held a bottle of sacred water and I would sprinkle water on the head of the one who was to be consecrated. Then he would drink highland barley wine from a duobala , or a bowl made from a human cranium. He would have to drain it at one go. Then I would lead him to choose a specific Buddha. After this he could begin cultivation. This is the initial consecration ceremony, which was very colorful and filled with burning incense. It was extremely solemn.”

“Daddy, I want to be consecrated too and practice tantric yoga!” Yu’er said sweetly.

“Nonsense! Children are not consecrated. You are intelligent. Later I will teach you general yoga, which is good for the health. Under no circumstances are you to study Five-part Vajra Dharma, even if someone approaches you, no way!”

Thinking even now about her father’s expression as he spoke left her soul stirred.

Later, the young acolyte — the one who had been kneeling in front of the curtain — came out from behind the columns, approached and bowed many times, and respectfully said, “Master, your student has practiced the secret method.”

She looked back and chanced to meet his eyes. He was fair-skinned and handsome with a pair of lively, bright eyes. Later she learned that he sold yellow noodles in Dunhuang. Sometime later they began to practice unsurpassed tantric yoga. Starting then, Yu’er became a “female yoga adept.”

Eventually her father found out about it. He beat the noodle seller and almost killed him. Yu’er never had any idea of what sort of crime he had committed. As a result, all her later tantric practice was conducted in absolute secrecy so that her father wouldn’t find out.

Shortly thereafter, her father did in fact shave his head and go off to Sanwei Mountain to be a monk. The night before he left, he kneeled in front of a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha and wept, confessing his various sins and that he was willing to practice even in the next life. It was the first time she had seen her father cry. But her mother stood there watching scornfully without saying a word.

10

Many things are determined in a brief moment.

Perhaps there was something about Xiao Xingxing in those days that touched people, or perhaps Zhang Shu had some sudden inexplicable urge to express himself, or perhaps it was something else altogether. In any event, Zhang Shu took the painting out of some secret place — that painting he had sworn not to show another living soul.

However, later when Zhang Shu recalled this, he told me that he had shown the painting to Xiao Xingxing in order to alter her mood and cheer her up. After Wuye disappeared, she had been rushing with great purpose here and there and had lost a lot of weight. Zhang Shu was afraid she’d have a breakdown.

Zhang Shu’s fingers trembled as if he had encountered something extremely fragile that would break at the merest contact. When the painting was entirely unrolled under the lamp, he used four shiny stones he had obtained at the antique stalls as paperweights to hold the painting in place so that Xingxing could savor it.

Lakshmi was as beautiful as ever. Yiseng had certainly captured the fearful and tragic look in his cousin Guonu’s eyes. Her leaving her cousin must have been a heart-wrenching scene. The fear such a beautiful woman must have felt about the road ahead must have been deeply moving. Too bad one of the eyes was missing. Why had the living Guonu also lost an eye? Could there be some mysterious connection linked with something that had occurred over a thousand years before?

He saw a perfunctory smile appear on Xingxing’s lips.

“It’s a lovely painting — too bad it’s a fake,” said Xingxing as she lifted her head after examining the painting for a while.

Zhang Shu looked at her anxiously.

“That’s impossible.”

“Well, then, just forget it,” smiled Xingxing. “You can take it and ask an expert.”

“How do you know. .?”

“Of course, I know. Before entering the Art Academy, I spent two years working at the Forbidden City copying classical paintings. To tell you the truth, I could do a better job. They haven’t got the ancient style right.”

He was silent. He knew she wasn’t joking.

Then who was having a joke on him?

“Where did you get the painting?”

He shook his head to indicate that he was not at liberty to say. He tried to stay aloof, but he was beginning to feel angry.

“How’s Wuye, do you have any news?” he replied in a whisper after a while.

She shook her head, “I have a bad feeling about this. Do you remember what Dayejisi said?” She looked up and her eyes were filled with sadness. “What he said about the one in the past was right, but he was off by only a year. By his reckoning, twelve years after the fact at twenty-nine would make it this year. No wonder Wuye. .”

Zhang Shu stared at her. She suddenly fell silent because she realized she had made an indiscreet remark, but he understood everything from her words. He no longer had to doubt anything. Previously, the motherly tone she adopted whenever she mentioned Wuye was just a form of self-deception.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he said, as he poured a glass of juice for her. “That friend of yours, the one in the past, how did he die?”

She stared blankly and sighed. “That was more than ten years ago. There’s nothing to say, really. You wouldn’t understand anyway. People in those days were too idealistic and set too much store in ‘isms.’ During the Cultural Revolution his parents were killed. He had no brothers or sisters. In the midst of such cruelty one was supposed to keep their mind on participating in the world revolution. Isn’t that a joke?”

“No, I was the same way at the time.”

“In the early ’70s, he and some friends decided to cross the Honghe River to Vietnam to resist America and support Vietnam. Only one out of seven succeeded in crossing the river.” She bit her lip and tears welled up in her eyes. “I just pity his genius and his zeal to sacrifice himself. This all belongs to the last generation. It doesn’t exist any longer. .”