Ma Jian - Red Dust

When the Haikou writers’ association see my introduction letter from Guangzhou Press they give me a free room in their guesthouse and pass my story to Horizon magazine. Three days later I follow a line of coconut trees to Wenchang town. Lingling’s cousin Chen Xiong runs a photographer’s studio here. His front window displays a huge photograph of two palm trees bending towards the sea. He tells me he took the picture in Dongjiao, a village twenty kilometres away. It is a photograph that hangs in almost every restaurant in the country. I stay for three days helping him paint a mural of Beijing’s Beihai Park for a portrait background, then take to the road again.

The next day I reach the coconut plantations of Dongjiao. The blue sea and green palms are as close as two lips, separated by a long white beach. Time settles like the flat sand. I sit beneath a tree, inhale the sea breeze and try to let my thoughts grow as large as the ocean. . The letter I received from Ai Xin in Wushan was just seven characters long: ‘I am off to see the ocean.’ I wish that smiling girl was sitting beside me now. Wang Ping said I was rigid and judgemental, and difficult to be with. What is it that draws me to her? On my last night in Shenzhen, Li Tao asked me why I always fall for women called Ping. It is strange. Guoping, Xi Ping, Lu Ping, Wang Ping. . ‘Ping’ means small green leaf that grows on still water, and the women I love are true to their name. They drift through my life like rootless weeds floating across the surface of a pond. Xi Ping taught me never to trust a woman again. Lu Ping’s pirouettes have long since faded from my mind. . Women are like the sea though, they are not just there to be looked at. I throw off my shorts and plunge into the water.

In the evening I come to a village lit by lamps that burn on coconut oil. The fragrant huts stand under dense palm trees. The only break in the canopy is the hole above the village well. A hunched old woman walks home barefoot, beating her way through the leaves. I knock on a door and ask if I can share a bed for the night.

A week later I stop below Five Finger Mountain at a village inhabited by the indigenous Li tribe. Director Huang of the hygiene office puts me up in his house. He advises me not to climb the mountain. ‘There are poachers’ traps everywhere. If you tread on one you will either fall into a ditch or be catapulted into the air. They only check the traps once a week, by which time you will be drinking tea with the immortals.’ I tell him that sounds fine to me.

I set off at dawn and reach the top at noon. A few dead pines rise from the two-thousand-metre summit. The limestone crags have blackened in the wind. My feet start to squelch inside my shoes, and I find it difficult to walk. I sit down, remove my socks and discover about thirty fat leeches stuck to my toes. I beat them with the soles of my shoes then rip them off one by one.

I follow a river to the Li village of Shuiman. There is a folk song that goes ‘Shuiman girls, Shuiman tea. .’ I take out my camera hoping a pretty girl might pass, but it frightens the children so much they run away in tears. Some of the grass huts have side sheds for grown-up daughters. Girls who do not become pregnant bring shame to their families. No Li woman can marry unless she has a bulging stomach. I go to a hut with a smoking chimney and ask for a bowl of tea. The old woman pulls a branch of tea leaves from a cloth bag and drops it into a pan of water. When it comes to the boil she empties the brew into a bowl. The taste is slightly bitter. She says she is seventy years old, and her grandsons are all married. I tell her I organised an exhibition on minority nationalities in Guangzhou, and have come here to photograph the Li. She eyes me coldly. ‘The Han came here when I was a girl and took twenty-four of us to Guangzhou. We were exhibited in iron cages in Yanghan Park for three whole months. They told the visitors the Li are born from monkeys and raised by snakes.’ Her lips quiver with anger. I let the matter drop. Despite our noble motives, the exhibition was a failure, a fantasy within a tropical garden. The old woman’s face is covered with tattoos. I ask to take her photograph but she still doubts my credentials so I show her the red stamp on my introduction letter. The sad lines inked onto her face as a girl have faded over the years. I promise to send her the photograph. She tells me Li girls tattooed their faces to repel the Han invaders.

The mountains beyond the village are green, but there are no more oil palms or coconut trees. I walk downhill through bamboo groves and double-spring trees in full blossom, and spend the night with a Li family in their roadside hut.

The next morning, I crest a hill and see a large forest fire. The area is cultivated by slash and burn, but this fire is out of control. There is no one about. If the wind changes, the flames will swallow the bamboo hut nearby. I run over and bash through the door. Inside, there are rugs, clothes, pots and pans. I toss everything into the stream outside and weigh them down with stones. The last time I enter, waves of heat roll towards me. I try pulling the jar of rice wine across the room but the bamboo ladder is in the way, so I dip my hands inside and scoop some wine into my mouth. As I stagger out of the door, ribbons of smoke curl up the ladder.

Two days later I stop at Tongzha, then continue my journey south. I skirt the foot of a cool mountain, descend to fields of sugarcane and spend the night with some labourers from Guangdong. They have contracted to farm a mu of land for fifteen yuan a year, and will share the profits between them. They puff at long water pipes. Their hair has turned dry and yellow in the sun.

The road scorches during the day, but at least the passing trucks leave a pleasant breeze. The people who live by its sides wander up and down all day then retire to their homes at dusk. At night the boys come out and flash their torches into the dark. I rarely use my torch for fear of attracting mosquitoes. Two weeks later I arrive at Sanya, the most southern tip of China.

The sea washes straight into the streets. The small wooden boats moored at the shore smell as sour as my damp plimsolls.

I have come to the end. Ahead of me lies the blue-black sea. My footprints stop where the sea begins. I can go no further. I long to, though. The oceans haunt my dreams. But I belong to the earth and can only walk across land.

Two women clutching handfuls of sunglasses run up and ask if I want a digital watch. I walk to a seaside restaurant and buy a packet of biscuits. The boss puts a new tape in the cassette player: ‘Fate has sent me far and wide to wander the distant wastes. .’ It is the theme song of an Indian film I saw as a child. With my canvas bag and walking stick I look just like the wanderer in the film — only I am wearing sunglasses.

A child gives me a prickly pear then steps back to stare at me. A girl on a bicycle stops to wave. As I get to my feet, the boss wipes the sweat from his face and says, ‘Why not have something to eat before you turn back.’ He too knows this is the end of the world.

Dear Wang Ping. I wish I could lie in your arms for hours on end, but my mind is too restless. Sometimes I sense I am walking to a final destination, but I don’t know where it is yet. In fact I am just drifting in circles, swirling like a loose leaf on a stream.

Today is Saturday, 10 October. I have just arrived in Gunbei, a remote village in the mountains of north Guangxi. Tomorrow I will cross the Motianling range and proceed into Guizhou.