Ma Jian - Red Dust

. . Last night I visited the folk singer’s hut. He was out, but his son sang for me instead. Two of the songs were about lovers who yearn for the day they will meet again at the Nine Crossroads.

Our driver has been away for an hour. He has obviously had a drink with a friend. He clambers back on to the bus and flings a bag of live chickens under his seat, takes a quick swig of tea, mumbles ‘What a life!’ and switches on the ignition. As the engine heats up, the chickens kick frantically inside the darkness of the cloth bag.

I remember seeing the little girl called Meina crouched in a doorway of that Jinuo village. She had stepped on a rusty nail the week before and her foot was swollen with pus and blood. She could hardly walk. I washed the wound, smeared it with antiseptic cream and covered it with a clean bandage, and she didn’t flinch once. When I finished, she hobbled inside and fetched me a banana. Her mother was sitting by a loom, ears pricked. An older woman was smoking in the dark corner behind. All I could see were her silver earrings. That evening, Secretary Li told the children to take me into the hills to see Shabalu, the old shaman who had spent eighteen years in prison for cursing an innocent man. In the 1950s, he was the richest man in the village and owned more rice than he could eat.

Shabalu wore an old army cap that night. When he looked up there was sadness in his bloodshot eyes.

‘I am a journalist, but a Buddhist too,’ I said, ‘so you can speak freely.’

‘Mmm, is that so? Some government officers visited me last month. Asked me lots of questions for a religious survey. I let them record my answers.’

‘I am writing a story about the Jinuo and would like to know more about your religious customs. Can you tell me about the sacrifices? How often do you perform them?’

‘We hold sacrifices all year round. Before we sow the seeds, cut the corn, hunt, build a house.’ He bowed his head when he spoke.

‘And funerals?’

‘When someone dies we kill a pig and hang the head and trotters on a tree above the grave.’

‘I saw a grave hut on the fields today. There were bones inside. I suppose the dogs must have dug them up.’

‘No, it wasn’t the dogs. Most families can only afford one grave so they must dig up the old bones before they can bury the new.’

‘What if two people die in the same week?’

‘Mmm, that hasn’t happened yet. A year after the funeral, families stop putting food in the grave hut and perform a ceremony to send off the soul. After that they can remove the bones.’

‘What do you chant in that ceremony?’ The oil lamp was too dark for me to see my notebook, so I switched on my torch.

‘Mmm, I have forgotten most of it.’ He began to chant in Jinuo, translating some words for me as he went along. ‘Valley path. . twin boulders. . Hill of the Parting Stream. . horsegrass, brushwood. . White Ghosts’ Lair. . Cave of the Spirit Lovers. . It describes the route the soul must take on its journey home. At the end of the ceremony I say: "Go! It is time for you to leave and return to the land of our ancestors. We have killed a chicken to see you off. Go! You will not miss us." Then I repeat the details of the route.’

The glass shade above the oil lamp was encrusted with burnt mosquitoes. We sipped the rice wine I had bought in the village store, and chewed on some raw spring onions. Shabalu looked down and stroked his enamel cup. His tall shadow on the grass wall behind made him look very small.

‘The villagers say they come here when they are sick and you drive the demons from their bodies.’

‘Most illnesses can be cured by eating some food from one’s uncle’s mouth. If the sickness is serious, relatives bring me rice, salt, eggs and ginger, and I recite from the scriptures. For very severe cases I kill a pig, but I need some help with that.’

While taking photographs that morning, I had seen two small boats made of plantain leaves set on a mountain path. The Jinuo believe these ‘spirit boats’ carry diseases away from their villages. There were spells written along the sides and incense sticks burning on the prows.

‘Sometimes it is necessary to take medicine though,’ I said. ‘Little Meina’s foot is gangrenous. She will lose it if it isn’t treated. Whatever her family smeared on the wound didn’t seem to be working. I hope it wasn’t food from her uncle’s mouth.’

‘Mmm, surely not. No one comes to me for cuts and bruises. I too believe in pills and injections.’ He glanced up nervously.

‘I’ve heard you can speak to the spirits. What do they look like? What do they say to you?’

‘I never went to school. My father taught me everything. He could see the ghosts, I think. The teachings have been passed through my family for generations. I don’t really understand them. I’ve forgotten a lot.’

Finally I asked him why he placed a curse on the village teacher. Apparently, when Shabalu drew lots and announced the teacher was possessed by demons, the villagers beat the poor man to death and chased his wife into the jungle. She was found a few months later hanging from a tree.

‘Mmm, I still don’t know why I said that. I have done my time in prison for it though. I won’t make that mistake again.’

He was released from prison a while ago, but the trauma of his years behind bars was still etched on his face. He missed the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the hordes of city youths who flooded the village to eradicate feudalism and superstition. By the time he got out, the village had four Party members, nine league members and the head of the Jinuo Autonomous Region was a graduate from Beijing Nationalities Institute.

The white enamel cup and grey mosquito net were the only bright objects in the hut. Everything else was buried in darkness.

When the unexpected happens, people seek answers in rocks, trees and stars. The fear of things we can see diverts us from the fear of things we cannot. When I was lost in the mountains at night and a bright light appeared before me, my first thought was that my grandfather had come to rescue me.

All afternoon the long-distance bus trundles into the mountains up a narrow, twisting road. I am lucky to have a seat. Although the plastic seat-cover sticks to my sweaty thighs and my headrest is torn and filthy, at least I am not squashed among the passengers in the aisle. I close my eyes and remember how green the air was during my trek through the jungle to Bulangshan. When I entered the rainforest at Menglong, the air smelt of green sap, and huge pineapple trees towered above me. I crawled like a mouse between fallen trunks and through chinks in the walls of leaves. My feet seldom touched the ground. The long, musty lianas hanging from the canopy made the jungle look like a deserted cathedral. Insects stuck to my hands and face and bit ferociously.

That area of primeval forest is still inhabited by the Bulang, Lahu and Ake tribes. An hour into my trek the path petered out. I pushed through the leaves and found a track of broken branches and followed it for three hours until I came to a clearing on a mountain top. Someone had died in Menglong, and their family had come here to fell a mahogany tree for the coffin. The track I had just followed was the path the trunk had made. The cut branches lying on the ground were over ten metres long and the tree stump was big enough to sleep on. Sunlight poured through the hole in the canopy. A circle of mushrooms rotted among the leaves on the ground. Looking through the trees I could see more mountains in the distance and a river in the east.

I climbed down and discovered the river emptied into a huge swamp, enclosed on three sides by tall mountains. Branches and weeds floated on the surface and a buffalo carcass protruded from the reeds. I had no choice but to retrace my steps and loop round through the jungle. The forest was dark now. Thorns and brambles ripped my clothes and dug into my skin. I thought of Zhao Lan who spent five years in these forests during the Cultural Revolution. Her watercolours are always huge and green.