Ma Jian - Red Dust

And I say, ‘I want to see my country, every river, every mountain. I want to see different people, different lives.’

‘Why are you travelling?’

‘China is a black hole, I want to dive into it. I don’t know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead. I want to think on my feet, live on the run. Never again can I endure to spend my life in one room.’

‘Do you want to change this country?’

‘I just want to know it, see it with my own eyes.’

‘Do you hate this world?’

‘Love and hate can drive you on, but hate can drive you further.’

‘Do you believe in love?’

‘No. But love plasters the wounds, it makes you feel better.’

She cries out and slumps back into her seat as if struck by a fatal bullet. ‘You men are all the same!’ she says. ‘You need women but you don’t need love.’ I say nothing. All I can think about is the print of her feet in the soft pink slippers.

She switches the light on and makes a camp bed up beside her desk. ‘Let’s go to sleep, it’s nearly morning. You can lie by my side if you promise not to touch.’

‘Promise.’ I try to repair the damage. ‘When I say I don’t believe in love it’s because I can’t trust myself. It doesn’t mean I don’t need love. Everything one says is a product of one’s past experiences, it is not a true reflection of one’s inner. .’

‘Shut up, will you.’ She touches my hand. We hug each other and kiss. It is not until I suck her breast that I discover her heart is silent.

I step onto the boat and look at her standing at the top of the stone steps, exactly where I stood yesterday. Her long neck is still as lovely. I drift downstream over muddy, turbulent water. That night I dream my head is plunged into the river and I cannot breathe. I wake up screaming. My bag is still here, but the sleeping mat I hired for two and a half yuan has been nicked from right under me.

I leave the Yangzi at Yichang, then walk north through Hubei Province from the Shennongjia mountains to the Wudang range. After a five-day rest in Shiyan town I press on into Shaanxi Province. It is only seventeen days since I left Sichuan but my money is almost gone.

In the evening of 23 October I arrive in Xian, exhausted and penniless.

24 October. Clear sky. Came straight to Shaanxi Press last night to find Yao Lu. Haven’t seen him since he visited Beijing for the 1979 Democracy Wall Movement. He is editor of Yellow River magazine now, but looks as dishevelled as ever. He sleeps in his office during the week, and said I could stay with him. This morning he even found me some work. His leaders have contracted me to draw the illustrations for this month’s magazine. They’ll pay me 20 yuan a picture, so I should make 400 yuan all being well.

26 October. Fierce winds. Three of Yao Lu’s friends came round last night, and we drank and talked for hours. One was a set designer at Xian Film Studio. He said there is nothing left in Xian but ancient buildings, if you want to see the real Shaanxi you must travel north. Another, Yang Qing, writes poetry. His favourite poet is Tagore. By day, he works at the Public Security Bureau as censor of post. He said all the city’s mail passes through his hands before it reaches the post office. Yao Lu said Yang Qing’s wife is the belle of the local song and dance troupe. She comes from Mizhi, a town in the north where the women are famed for their beauty.

I told Yang Qing about how the Qinghai police accused me of selling drugs, and when they found none on me, accused me of wanting to buy drugs instead. ‘It’s not funny,’ he said. ‘Drugs are rife in Qinghai. Some come from Xinjiang to be processed, some are grown locally. Many villages have been taken over by the army. When people start to make money, they experiment with drugs. It is considered one of the pleasures of modern life. One man I arrested said a puff of opium costs more than a policeman’s wage. Our detoxification centre is filled to capacity.’ We discussed the sensations that drugs induce, even though none of us had ever taken any, or seen any for that matter. I asked Yang Qing if I could visit the centre. He said he would take me next week on condition that I wash and shave and try to behave like a normal person.

The other visitor was Sun Xi, Yellow River’s literary editor. He said, ‘I know every writer in Shaanxi. Just mention my name, and you will enjoy free meals and accommodation throughout the province.’ He drank far too much, and is snoring on my bed as I write.

On the 28th I take Sun Xi’s letter of recommendation to the Forest of Steles Museum and get in free of charge. The seven grey exhibition halls house 2,300 stone tablets inscribed with classical texts of Chinese history and philosophy. A total of 600,252 characters carved in stone. The earliest inscriptions are over a thousand years old. I wander breathlessly through the stone library, exhilarated and absorbed. Each tablet is a living testament to the past, each one deserves an exhibition room to itself.

On Saturday, Yao Lu takes me back to his home in Lintong. On the way he talks to me about a book he is reading on Daoist philosophy. I meet his wife who is six months pregnant. She and Yao Lu have just completed a translation of Ginsberg’s poetry. They have not found a publisher yet, so I am their first reader. They live in the compound of the town revolution committee and must register with a soldier each time they enter the main gate. Their small room holds a pail of water, a bucket of coal, a shovel and a poker. A traditional Shaanxi embroidered waistcoat hangs from a nail on the wall. In the evening, the wife leaves to spend the night with her mother. She tells us to clean our feet in the red plastic washbowl under the bed. Yao Lu and I take turns to wash, then sit on the bed and talk.

He tells me his wife has a violent temper, and that she attacked him once with a fire poker and knocked his teeth out. We discuss the Xian literary scene, then I pick up the Ginsberg and read through it again.

‘Listen to this,’ I say. ‘They "sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of/ the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-/ saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,/ danced on broken wineglasses barefoot. ." It reminds me of a night in Beijing when our group of poets and painters took some empty beer bottles outside and smashed them into a metal rubbish bin. We hurled with all our strength. It was the loudest noise I had ever made. But Ginsberg can sing out of his window in despair, he can cry all over the street. That sounds like heaven to me. He implies his country is not fit for humans to live in. Well, he should live in China for a month, then see what he thinks. Everyone here dreams of the day we can sing out of our windows in despair.’

‘No society is perfect. Freedom is only possible when the heart is in line with the Way. If the heart is tempered and the mind is clear then you will see there is no right or wrong.’

‘I am more concerned with the outside world. I want to live in a country where people can cry all over the street.’ I pause then say, ‘Xian feels as though it is being crushed under the weight of tombstones. The air is as heavy as death.’

‘The Chinese alive today are reincarnations of torturers. The wronged souls of the past will haunt us for ever. We must pay for the sins of our ancestors. Daoist scriptures say if you dig more than a metre into the ground you pierce the heart of Mother Earth. But beneath the foundations of Xian, the earth is riddled with cavernous tombs.’