The interesting thing about Namu is that she bothered to come back to Lugu Lake at all. Though she calls herself, wryly, ‘a five-star gypsy’, the claustrophobic world that drove her away still seems to have a hold on her.
I put it to her that she’s still trying to win the approval of the mother who rejected her and she nods. But it hasn’t been easy for either of them. What Namu did, and how she did it, was in every way extraordinary, but it nearly severed her links with her mother for ever.
She also seems genuinely fond of her people, describing herself as a ‘Mosuo cultural ambassador’. This seems to excite her and she leaps up. There is something we must see.
We’re whisked away to a nearby promontory, rising a few hundred feet above the lake. Here, looking like a half-built million-aire’s home in California, is Namu’s latest contribution to the Lugu Lake property boom, her own half-built museum.
She talks vaguely in terms of some sort of Mosuo cultural centre, but as we step carefully over pipes and piles of dust and rubble I get the distinct impression that this is a museum of Namu.
She waves towards a substantial three-sided space.
‘I’m going to put the translations of all my books from all over the world here.’
‘That’s huge, Namu. That makes the British Library look like a newspaper shop.’
But she has already moved on.
‘And this is my kitchen.’
She enthuses about work spaces and artists in residence, and ‘rooms for my best friends’. On a terrace outside we look down on the concrete shell of a swimming pool.
‘That’s the most beautiful view on the lake,’ she says, and it certainly is a glorious position, out there with the mountains beyond and small, wooded islets rising out of shimmering, silver-blue waters.
There are problems, however. The architect backed out halfway through, she’s had to sack the last lot of builders and is down to her last 5000 yuan (about PS350).
She looks around at the mess, apparently unperturbed.
‘My mamma think I’m crazy.’
I walk down some steps to a long, curving room with floor-to-ceiling window spaces, and there is the woman who so affected her life. There is Mamma, almost silhouetted against the declining sun. She’s short and wiry, wears a Mao-style fur hat and is smoking a cigarette. A doughty little lady with shrewd, quick eyes. She sees me taking in the bare walls and empty sockets of the unfinished room and when I turn back to her I can see the ghost of a smile. A quiet smile of satisfaction. Or is it just the smile of experience, the smile of a mother who knows that she understands her daughter better than her daughter will ever understand herself.
On the way back to the hotel we pass by the local village, to which Namu donated a school for 60 children. We detour to look at it. It’s run down and neglected. We can’t get in but we circle it and try to peer inside. Namu mutters something. She looks puzzled and vaguely hurt by the state of it, but I have the feeling she’s not surprised.
A little deflated, we return to the road. Namu dives into a car and heads back. Needing a bit of a breather, I walk back beside the lake, which is peaceful and unspoilt here.
Day Eighty One : Lugu Lake
The fans have gone and we have the 37-room hotel to ourselves. Well, ourselves and Namu. Namu, a little force-field of her own, is the centre of attention even when she’s not around. She either retreats, with her mobile, to deal with her complicated international life, or sweeps out, usually in a different outfit, firing on all cylinders, organizing, cajoling and demanding.
Having talked about the importance of the Flower Chamber in her upbringing, she wants to recreate one for me. Orders are given and we all repair to the Karaoke room and watch pop videos until Namu, now in a long, black, satin dress with green silk lining, arrives, flicks off her mobile, then swings herself up on a raised platform before the fireplace and, with the relish of a natural actress, begins the half-interview, half-performance. I am expected to be both interviewer and supporting actor.
Though the Mosuo have this reputation for sexual generosity, the process she describes seems conventional enough. The first sign of attraction may well have taken place at one of the circle dances, a touch of pressure on the hand, a piece of skilful positioning. But the Mosuo girls are always in control, she says. Before anyone got as far as the Flower Chamber she would have been playing the field, asking one to prove his love by throwing a stone further than anyone else, or singing more sweetly, or riding a horse faster.
Once allowed in, the lucky man would be offered butter tea and little delicacies such as a potato, an orange or sunflower seeds. If things were going well, some wine might be offered as well.
‘All this at 13?’
Namu shakes her head. At 13 they don’t usually go with men, but they begin to learn about sex from cousins, sisters and in her case from her mother, who, she says, gave her advice on ‘how a woman should sit to show she had self-respect’, and at the same time, ‘how to walk to show herself off’.
Namu digs at the fire.
‘The Chinese very secret, we’re quite open about things,’ she says, sliding a potato towards me.
‘My mother told me sex is very good for the skin. You get good sex, you don’t get pimples.’
I’m trying to find a polite way of asking how many men she slept with in her Flower Chamber, but she answers for me.
‘In my Flower Room I was still virgin.’
I ask her if they used any form of birth control. She shakes her head. It’s rather the opposite.
‘Many Mosuo women want to get pregnant but can’t,’ she says. ‘So they go to the Penis Cave on Gemu Goddess Mountain.’
‘The Penis Cave?’
Namu’s almond eyes widen.
‘It’s unbelievable. All stones look like a penis. They all different sizes.’
‘Does it work?’
She nods.
‘They go there to pray and normally after that they get pregnant.’
As a result of being allowed to choose their male partners and to have as many as they want without stigma, the Mosuo are seen in some way as less than civilized, but Namu sees it as quite the opposite. Theirs is a society that has no place for sexual jealousy and all the judgemental possessiveness that goes with it.
She says that her people are very like the native Americans she met in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
‘I walk in there and feel that I’m like their sister.’
Tonight is our last night at Namu’s and she has ordered a lamb to be grilled on the spit. First of all, though, there’s entertainment around an open fire in the centre of the courtyard. Everyone’s expected to sing. The crew are terrified and have been practising ‘The Lumberjack Song’ for days. The Mosuo women sing powerfully - hard, back-of-the-throat sounds that are often harsh and strident to our ears - but their range and control as they fly up and down the keys can be thrilling.
Then, with the men dressed like cowboys, they go into what they call Mosuo disco. Music thumps out from loudspeakers, but the movements owe more to line dancing than John Travolta. Namu talks often of East meeting West and Mosuo disco does seem to have brought Yunnan and Idaho a lot closer together.
Finally, a few rounds of circle dancing. Namu pulls me up and seems unfazed by my inability to get the footwork up to Fred Astaire or even Fred Flintstone standard.
‘It’s good exercise,’ she says blithely, and suddenly I see the real Namu. She tries hard to be the vamp, but at heart she’s the gym mistress. Must tell Joshua.
The drink flows and Namu’s brother, who runs the hotel, is full of bonhomie. After bottles of Dynasty Red, gin and cognac have been passed round, he insists we have one last toast in the local corn wine.