Ma Jian - Red Dust

I spent most of the last month in Longzhou village near the Vietnamese border. Limestone pinnacles rose from wide paddy fields, and the sun moved through the sky, illuminating the landscape like a huge stage light. The scenery was beautiful, but the local Zhuang nationality live in dark dank hovels. The peasant I stayed with lent me a musty blanket he brought back from the Korean war. Thirty years of body odours clung to me like a wet skin, it was impossible to sleep. I thought of the students in the neighbouring village who butchered their teacher in the Cultural Revolution. To prove their devotion to the Party, they cooked his chopped corpse in a washbowl and ate him for dinner. They developed a lust for fresh offal, so before they killed their next victim, they cut a hole in his chest, kicked him in the back and the live liver flopped into their hands. Local villages were able to consume an average of three hundred class enemies during those years. The Zhuang wore long black tunics and sipped beer from each other’s spoons.

I walked to the border near Pingxiang, and was arrested on suspicion of espionage. Fortunately, I had a letter of introduction from the Guangxi writers’ association. The police phoned them the next morning, then let me go.

I visited the provincial museum in Nanning and saw an exhibition on the natural history of sex. It was very interesting. It made me realise how much our lives are governed by ovaries and semen. In the next room I saw huge bronze drums that were excavated in fields nearby. Some were over two thousand years old. The sides were carved with images of rain clouds and shamans in feathered headdresses dancing themselves into a trance to the beat of ritual drums. They could not hear the noise of the modern world. I could not hear it either. . I have drawn a map for you of my journey down the coast. I will write to you again from Guizhou.

There is no postbox in Gunbei, so I put the letter back into my bag, and go to a shop to buy firecrackers for this afternoon’s party. The village head has told everyone to take the day off and prepare a dance for Comrade Ma who is here to write an article on minority culture.

Gunbei is enclosed by mountains, only one or two trucks pass each day. The villagers belong to the Miao tribe. They live in round wooden huts with roofs made of bark. The girls usually dress in clothes from the local town’s discount stores, but for the dance today they are wearing traditional costume: hand-dyed purple tunics, embroidered cummerbunds and intricate silver crowns. They step into a gentle dance as the bamboo pipes begin to play. The instruments range from small flutes to pipes five metres long. The girls hold their backs straight, sway their hips and stamp the rhythm with their feet. There is a controlled restlessness to their movements. The whole village gathers round and children join in the dance. At dusk the firecrackers are let off. Everyone laughs and cheers, the pipes play new tune, and for a moment I almost forget I am a stranger.

Later the village head invites us home for a bowl of butter tea. His wife is a school teacher. She has removed her traditional costume but her neck is still purple from the dye. She serves us sticky rice and pickled fish. I ask the white-bearded man next to me where the fish was caught.

‘They grow in the paddy fields,’ he says. ‘When the rice is cut, we drain the water from the fields and grab the fish with our hands. We rub them with salt, chilli powder and herbs then keep them in a earthenware jar for two years. It is our custom to give the head to the guest.’

I scoop a handful of sticky rice, squeeze it into a ball and bite. ‘That is a fine beard you have, grandfather,’ I say.

‘I have to let it grow. If I cut it I fall ill!’ Everyone laughs politely. A bowl of wine is passed around the table.

After the meal, the young villagers take me to the house of an old widow who sings me some Miao love songs. I cannot understand the lyrics so I just look at the woman’s expressions. As the wine drifts to my head I fall into a doze and dream of my first love. She is standing on a Qingdao beach, wearing a long black skirt. The sea breeze streams through her hair. She says, ‘My parents don’t want me to see you any more. Go away now. Go!’

At Motianling Pass I light a cigarette, glance back at the path I have taken through Guangxi then at the wilderness of Guizhou that lies ahead. On the map this region is called the Land of Ninety Thousand Mountains. Only the wind can cross this sea of green heights, I will never make it. At first, the mountains seem to laugh at me. Then, as I climb one after another, I discover each one has an individual weight and form, each is as unique as a human face. The mountains I painted in Beijing were just lifeless protrusions of earth.

I take off my ‘journalist shoes’ and change into my plimsolls. The further I walk the less I know why. I have become a marching machine. As long as I have a bag on my back I will walk, until I drop. The path takes control, I follow it blindly. I have lost all sense of direction. Why did I choose to live this way? I am not a dog, after all.

The money I made in Guangzhou is almost spent. The capital of Guizhou is not far ahead now. Perhaps I can pick up some work there. I follow the wind north, and two weeks later tramp into the dirty streets of Guiyang, ‘City of Petty Tyrants’.

I find the house of the dissident poet Li Zhi at the end of a long narrow lane. There is a two-metre-high brick kiln outside his door. It looks as if he has made it himself. I hear rhythmless chords crash on a piano inside. It is the kind of piece parents force their children to play. When I step inside, Li Zhi clasps my hand. His wife goes to pour me some tea and his two little boys clamber up to the gallery and jump around like monkeys.

‘I got your letter last month, but I never thought you would make it! Sit down and I’ll show you my new work.’ He hands me two clay masks. The features are hideously deformed and painted in garish colours.

‘When masks are this ugly they’re not frightening any more,’ I half-joke and take a sip of tea. ‘What happened to you last year at Hu Sha’s house? I heard the police broke up your poetry reading.’

‘Yes. The cops arrested me and dragged me back here. Said I could never visit Beijing again. I haven’t written any poetry since then.’

I cut to the chase, and tell him my money is running out and I need to find some work.

‘Well, you have come to the right person. I know everyone in Guiyang! A friend of mine has just opened a sofa business. I’ll see if he needs any help.’ When I spoke with Li Zhi in Beijing he used standard Chinese, but now he has slipped back into Guizhou dialect. Fortunately it sounds similar to Sichuanese so I am able to get his drift.

His brick house is tiny. There is a double bed downstairs and a mattress in the gallery for the children. A piano and two lamps occupy the remaining space. A dim light bulb shines on the cucumber, exercise book and half-eaten meat pie on the piano lid. The meat pie looks delicious.

‘Is there anything you would like to see while you are here?’ Li Zhi waves his hands as he speaks. His fingernails are filled with clay. He looks as fragile as the broken pieces of terracotta I saw by the kiln outside.

‘Something different. I have become very interested in minority cultures since I worked on that exhibition in Guangzhou.’

His wife starts to wash the dishes. She has thick glasses and soft, pale skin. She looks like an accountant. One of the boys swings from the edge of the gallery, kicks into his mother, crashes onto the piano, screams, falls to the ground and scuttles under the stool.