Ma Jian - Red Dust

For the first two days the road follows an icy stream down a steep mountain valley. Occasionally I pass a flock of sheep grazing on a mound beside a tumbled shack.

On the third day I reach Luqu, a small village consisting of a few mud houses scattered along a straight stretch of road. There are trucks parked on the verge and horses tied to posts. I step into the village shop, buy a fizzy orange and sit drinking it on a large sack of flour by the doorway. Tibetan herders stream in to buy chillies, tea, oil, cigarettes. When it comes to settling the bill they empty their money onto the counter, let the shopkeeper take what he needs, then stuff the remainder into their pockets.

‘Mind he doesn’t cheat you,’ I say to the young Tibetan buying three bottles of rice wine. He doesn’t understand but smiles anyway.

‘I never take more than I should,’ the shopkeeper says.

‘Where do they get all that money from?’ I ask.

‘Wool. It fetches a good price in the market. They just need to shear fifty sheep and they can make five hundred yuan in a day.’

I stock up on pineapple sherbet, malt biscuits, shoelaces and boiled sweets, then leave the village and continue south.

The weather is clear and the road is good. Sometimes it twists through mountain valleys, sometimes it climbs over green hills. I walk fifty kilometres a day. Late in the afternoon on the fourth day, I arrive at Maqu. The villagers are mostly Tibetan, there is hardly a Han in sight. I dump my bag in the committee guesthouse and go outside to take photographs.

Tibetan men in army caps haul a felled tree from the back of a truck.

A woman waiting for a lift sweeps back her finely plaited hair and smiles into my lens.

A girl in a sheepskin wrap crouched in a corner biting her nails watches a man haggle over a leg of beef.

Two monks in red robes sit on the pavement talking. They raise their arms in the air then cover their eyes and laugh.

The mud houses and cement path turn gold in the late sun. I come to the narrow door of a small shop and see a girl inside with a long silver headdress. She is wearing a red blouse under a heavy sheepskin coat that is swung over the left shoulder and tied at the waist with long leopard-trimmed sleeves. Her cheeks are flushed with meadow light. As she turns to leave, she catches sight of me and stares straight into my eyes. She studies my hair, mouth, clothes, shoes, then strides past me, unties her horse from the post outside and jumps into the saddle. My heart thumps as wildly as the horse’s frantic hooves. She grabs her reins, turns to glance back at me, then gallops into the evening sun. Yearnings buried deep inside me surge to the surface. I want to chase after her, I want to see her again.

And I didn’t even have time to take her photograph.

Next morning I wake with the dawn. The streets are empty. A little puppy sits shivering where yesterday the girl tethered her horse. It looks no more than two days old. I pick it up and brush the straw from its back. Then I walk west out of the village and head into the wide grasslands.

At noon the sun grows warmer. I am walking through endless pasture, the scent of grass seeps into my skin. A few hours later the Yellow River appears again, lying flat on the grass ahead. It is as clear as before, but wider now, and almost motionless.

I follow its banks and soon I see a white tent in the distance and a woman outside, stripped to the waist rounding up a herd of sheep. She moves slowly, hips thrust forward, the folds of her sheepskin robe bulging over her rear. A dog barks at me. This is how I dreamed the grasslands would be. The puppy in my arms is trembling too.

Further along, a naked child canters past, clinging to his black steed like a little monkey.

At the crest of a hill I sit down to rest. There are sheep on the opposite bank, and behind them another white tent. Perhaps that is where the girl in the red blouse lives. I think of her breasts hidden under the sheepskin cloak, and imagine staring into her eyes as I touch her, just as she stared into mine. The words of a folk song play through my mind: ‘Far away there’s a shepherd girl with a face like the morning sun. I wish I were her little lamb, we would have such fun. She could beat me with her leather whip until the day was done. .’ North and south, white clouds pour from the seam where green hills touch the sky. A flock of white sheep spills over a distant hill and scatters like mist.

I put the puppy down, lie on my back, pull my jeans off and soak up the sun. I rub my stomach and tremble until the sky darts through the clouds. The puppy licks my thighs. I would like to curl up and sleep but I am too weak to move.

As the evening sun pulls the white clouds in and stains them a deep red, I come to a tent with a smoking chimney. It looks like a good place to spend the night. Before I know it two sheepdogs leap out and bite into my flesh. I howl and kick. By the time the owner looks out, my clothes are ripped and my arms are dripping in blood. I curse him and he curses back in Tibetan. My puppy sneaks under the sheepdogs’ legs and snarls at me.

I turn round, flick the midges from my face, and decide to walk back to the main road as fast as I can.

As twilight falls I hear someone riding towards me, humming a tune. A young man on a horse stops by my side and waves his felt hat. ‘Get on,’ he shouts. So I hoist myself up and wrap my arms around him.

The wind brushes past my ears as we gallop away, but I can still hear him humming his tune. I bounce up and down as the horse plunges into a river and charges up a grass bank. The young man nearly slips off the neck, but manages to right himself just in time. At last we reach a dirt track and pass three houses with lighted windows. The horse stops. I lose my balance and topple to the ground. The young man dismounts and walks into a courtyard, motioning me to join him for a drink.

I slowly rise to my feet. My thighs feel raw and the dog bites are starting to hurt. I shuffle into the yard and find a sheep market inside. A Han in blue overalls is seated by the scales. He is here to buy sheep for the Gansu food authority. I ask how much he pays for the animals. He says, two yuan a jin, minimum weight twenty-five. When the sheep are placed on the scales, they stick out their chins and kick their bound legs in the air.

‘What brings you to these parts?’ he asks, eyeing me curiously.

‘I went to the grasslands to interview some herders for a newspaper article, but I got lost on the way back. That young man who walked in just now brought me here on his horse.’

‘You mean Gyaltso. It’s Tibetan custom that if a herder sees someone on the grasslands after dark he is obliged to ride them to safety. There are wolves out at there at night, you know.’

I ask him how far it is back to Maqu by road, and he says ten or twenty kilometres. I think for a while and say, ‘Where are you sleeping tonight? I’ll squeeze in with you if that’s all right.’

‘Fine, I’m staying in the room upstairs. Go and lie down now if you like. Gyaltso’s up there playing cards,’ he says, breaking off to speak to the herders in Tibetan.

I stay and chat for a while then climb up to bed.

Loud bleating wakes me at dawn. The army coat I have slept under reeks of mutton. I step through the dung in the courtyard and urinate against the wall. Half my body aches, the other half itches, my mind and legs are numb. I kick a few sheep out of the way and, feeling slightly better, walk out of the yard.

The houses in the village are small and squat, allowing clear views of the hills beyond. I make for the highest hill. There are prayer flags at the top, a temple too. An old woman spins a prayer wheel as she circles its white walls. I step into the temple courtyard. It is empty apart from a flagpole that carries one’s gaze to the sky. I enter the prayer hall and see a gold buddha sitting on the altar above a sea of flickering butter lamps. The heat warms my face.