Ma Jian - Red Dust

‘Do you think dogs can predict earthquakes? Have you ever seen a ghost?’ Before my talk, this man told me he was a professor of biology at Guizhou University. Either his hair is very greasy or he was caught in a shower on the way here.

‘As man’s brain has evolved he has lost some of the subtler sensitivities. Animals are more attuned to nature. The dogs in the street outside know we are sitting in this classroom, but we have no idea where they are. Sometimes when I practise qigong I feel my soul leave my body. I have never seen a ghost, but I hope the Buddha will appear to me one day.’

‘What is your opinion of Bao Yu’s love for Lin Daiyu in A Dream of Red Mansions?’ This woman is sitting right in front of me. She has a small mouth and thick white glasses.

‘I read the book when I was sixteen. It’s a wonderful novel. We all want to live a dream life in a beautiful secret garden. But when the dream shatters, we wake up and see through the red dust of illusion. I too write about love and death, or, to be precise, about how love can only exist in death, because only death is eternal. What? No, I have not seen through the red dust yet.’

The questions come to an end. During the applause Zheng Guang presents me with a brand new nylon shirt, and everyone begs me to show them some qigong.

A few days later, Tian Bing and I go to Zheng Guang’s home for a drink. He and his wife are divorced but they still share their one room. His wife is a Beijing Opera singer and gave me twenty yuan for my copy of Van Gogh’s cornfields. Tonight she has fried some wild onions and spicy fish. Everyone from the book club is here. They say they paid me too little for the lecture and slip a hundred-yuan note into my pocket. I sit on the floor and give them another qigong demonstration. Everyone gasps as my palms turn red and the sweat pours from my head. When I open my eyes I see Tian Bing weeping on Old Xu’s shoulder. As I open another beer, she walks over and slaps me hard on the face.

I decide to take a trip into the countryside. Yang Ming is due to arrive soon, but I cannot bear to stay in this city any longer. The next day, I walk to the train station and buy a ticket for Zhangjiajie Nature Reserve in northern Hunan Province.

I wake in the morning to a white universe. It snowed last night. The toilet hut looks like a fairy-tale cabin. I walk past it and crunch through the snow to the edge of the ‘One Step Crevasse’ I jumped across yesterday. The snow has narrowed the gap, but the drop is still as deep. The opposite side is slightly lower, so the leap across is easy, but the return jump is perilous. Last summer a Beijing tourist jumped back with so much force he ricocheted off the wall and fell into the abyss. I remember the fear that seized me yesterday, a sudden clenching between my thighs. They should build a footbridge across the damn thing and put an end to it.

I walk back to the timber frame of the condemned house that stands at the foot of Mount Tianzi. When this spot was turned into a tourist site, the village committee decided the house spoiled the scenery and ordered it to be knocked down. I stayed with the owner’s uncle last night in his warm and comfortable flat. He showed no concern for the fate of his nephew’s family when the snow started to fall. ‘Let them freeze to death!’ he said. ‘Serves them right for not listening to the village head.’

I see smoke rising through the roofless frame. Since there is no door, I walk straight in. The wife is feeding logs into the stove, and the five-year-old daughter is clutching a hand warmer. I touch it. It is stone-cold. Her frozen fingers look like little red carrots. She says her daddy has gone to the village. Hanging from the central beam is a mirror, a string of chillies and a calendar torn to today’s date: 1 January 1986. ‘Snow on the first day of the year. That must be a good omen.’ I try to give them some words of comfort, then take my leave and set off for Zhangjiajie town.

In the white mists of Tianzi I felt cut off from the world, but Zhangjiajie pulls me back to earth. Tourists fill the streets and restaurants. Late at night, the police break into my hostel and drag a naked couple into the corridor, threatening to inform their work unit unless they pay a three-hundred-yuan fine. The man’s feet turn white and the woman’s thighs tremble with cold. They fetch 170 yuan and say it is all they have. The police grab the money and let them go.

Back in the dormitory, everyone lights a cigarette and discusses the naked woman.

‘So that’s what women look like with no clothes on.’

‘Such shiny skin, lovely white bottom.’

‘Serves them right, sleeping around like foreigners.’

‘They were up to no good. He looked old enough to be her father.’

Director Liu of Shaoyang Food Supplies describes how counter-revolutionaries were dealt with during the Cultural Revolution. ‘They were shot, then stripped naked and tossed into the river so everyone downstream would know. Once I saw a whole family floating by, threaded together with a piece of wire.’

‘What about the women?’ asks the man who had never seen a naked woman before tonight.

‘No chance of a cheap thrill, my friend. They hacked the tits off before they threw the women in.’

I read the hotel regulations pinned to the wall. The last one says: ‘Men and women can only share a room if their age gaps exceed seventy years.’ I guess that rules out grandmothers sharing a room with their grandsons. I crawl into bed, but cannot sleep. The room is still murmuring with gossip.

I hate people gloating over the misery of others. When the police drive criminals to the execution ground, the streets fill with gawping crowds. Women are always treated the worst. In a Beijing suburb I saw a woman being dragged through the streets by a wire hooked between her vagina and anus, while the male prisoners were just hooked at the shoulder blades. When a woman steps before the firing squad, people point and whisper, ‘Look, it’s a woman.’

In the 1940s Chinese men could take fourteen wives, but a decade later they had to limit themselves to one. But the thwarted desires for domination and voyeurism still seethe inside men’s hearts and explode at every opportunity. On an execution notice today, I read of a Sichuan man who, having raped a young girl, stretched his hand up her vagina and ripped out her womb. When a country is ruled by a band of thugs, men behave like savages. Another naked couple stand shivering on the street outside. The police must have found some more victims. Inside our room, six stinking mouths chew over the details of the scene. Before day breaks I pack my bag and leave.

I return to Guizhou Province the next day and climb the sacred Mount Fanjing. There are stone steps all the way up. When the black rain clouds lift, the mountain is bathed in light. The Buddhist temple at the top is under restoration, the shrine is empty. I stand and watch the clouds race through the sky below. There is no one in sight. It feels good to be away from the crowds and breathe the clean mountain air.

Two days later I descend the mountain and trek to Shiqian village to bathe in the Ming Dynasty spa.

When the Shiqian Library manager reads my letter from Guizhou Press he smiles and hands me the keys to the building. There are four thousand dusty books to browse at will. I decide to stay a few days.

The next morning I buy a ticket for the hot springs. There are three connected pools: officials’ at the top, men’s in the middle, and women’s at the bottom. The middle room is thick with steam. About ten men are wallowing in the bubbling water. They mop their faces with flannels then use washing powder to scrub their dirty clothes, plimsolls, slippers and sheets. The water is filthy, but at least the heat soothes my chapped skin. The stream that arrives from the officials’ pool is far from clean, I imagine it is black by the time it leaves the women’s pool.