Then he turns and stares at me, and says, ‘You won’t make it there today.’
I slide in beside him, pull my legs up and gaze at the sunlight beating on the dry riverbed. I wonder when a river last ran through it. The stony channel cuts through the desert like an open wound.
I offer him a drink from my water bottle to repay him for his hospitality.
My temperature falls. I swallow the steam in my mouth, then — Peng! The bicycle tyres explode.
‘It was stupid of me to leave it in the sun,’ I say, and imagine my body exploding with the bike, my innards splayed over the hot sand.
‘So you are walking to the Gorge on your own, then?’ he says.
‘Yes, just want to see what it’s like. Where are you heading?’
‘There’s nothing but ruins there now. All the valuables have been pillaged.’ The old man twists a piece of wire around his hand.
‘I heard that when the Gorge temples were abandoned five centuries ago, a sage went to meditate in a cave and died in the lotus position.’ I picture the sage’s spirit floating through the cool breeze of Nirvana. The stony desert is a dazzling white now, waves of heat tremble in the sun. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dried to a bone.’
‘You should cross the desert in the morning or evening, and sleep in the middle of the day. If you were to ride a horse through the desert now, its hooves would burn to a cinder. You are not from these parts, it seems.’
‘I come from Beijing. This is my first time in the desert. Were you born in Gansu?’ I run my fingers through the burning gravel.
‘I’ll be going back in a few days.’
‘Where to?’ The question sounds impertinent, so I add, ‘It must be hard living here.’
‘Are you a piss-drinker or a shit-eater?’ he asks, eyeing me sternly.
‘I have never drunk piss myself, or. .’
He taps my leg with the twisted wire. ‘So you’re not one of us, it seems.’ I stare at the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, trying to guess his meaning.
‘You don’t seem like a gold-digger. You have no tools.’
‘So you’re a gold-digger?’
‘Yes, I thought you were too at the beginning. There are many robbers wandering these parts, asking questions, trying to discover who has struck gold.’
‘Don’t worry, old man, I’m not interested in your gold.’
‘Sometimes I meet other diggers. They stop and chat for a while, and if they think I have gold they stand perfectly still, waiting for me to turn round so they can shoot me in the back.’
‘Did you suspect me just now, then?’
‘You can’t trust anybody here. When you have seen gold you will understand.’ The old man turns his face away and looks into the distance. ‘I’ve hit on some gold, but there is not enough water. I will wait for the winter snows and come back with my son.’
‘So there really is gold here?’
‘Don’t ask, young man. The less you know the better. You should go now. Head east and spend the night in Qiaozi. You can continue your journey tomorrow.’
I realise I will not make it to the Gorge tonight, so I follow his advice and walk east. As the sun sinks to the west, the air cools and gusts of cold wind blow sand into my face. I reach the village before dark.
Stuck in Suoyang
Qiaozi consists of mud-brick houses surrounded by green vegetable fields. As I approach I hear a propaganda song blasting from the village speaker. ‘Every village, every hamlet, beat your drums and strike your gongs! Chairman Mao’s splendour shines throughout the land. Mountains smile, rivers smile, everyone smiles: Socialism is Good. .’ Old Mao has been dead for eight years now and they’re still bloody smiling! I mutter as I follow the loudspeaker’s cable back to a small adobe house.
I knock on the door, but no one answers. A crowd of children gathers behind me. When I look round they all run away, except for the smallest boy who falls over and starts to cry. Before I have time to pick him up, a woman appears at the front door. From her neat black hair I can tell she is a cadre.
‘Are you the village announcer?’ I ask. She says yes, so I pull out Zhang Shengli’s introduction letter.
‘Beijing journalist. . reporting on the cultural sites of Gansu. . The village head would have looked after you, Comrade Ma, but I am afraid he is not here today.’ The hands that fold the letter smell of soap, she must have just washed them.
‘We both work in propaganda. I am sure the authorities would be happy for you to organise my stay in the village instead. I would like to wash my face. Do you have water in your room?’ I picture a washstand behind her door, and a thermos of hot water on the ground.
She opens the door for me, turns on the light and shouts to the children, ‘Go home now, it’s supper time!’
I tell her I am travelling to the Gorge of Ten Thousand Buddhas and would like a bed for the night.
‘There’s no hostel in the village. The militia headquarters have some spare beds though. I will have a word with their leader.’ She fills the basin with hot water, hands me a flannel, then goes to pour me a cup of tea. The wall is hung with a framed certificate that reads ‘Annual Prize for Advanced Workers, Awarded to Comrade Li Anmei, public announcer of Qiaozi village.’
A few minutes later, her husband, Tang Weiguo, returns from the fields. When he hears I am a Beijing journalist, he shakes my hand and invites me to stay for dinner. Li Anmei serves us bowls of noodle soup sprinkled with chopped spring onions, and sets the table with a plate of fried peanuts and a saucer of garlic cloves.
Tang Weiguo graduated three years ago from Anxi high school. Li Anmei was his classmate. Her family live in a small hamlet two hundred kilometres away. She moved here with Tang Weiguo when they married last year.
Their home is simply furnished. The adobe walls are freshly whitewashed, you can still smell the powder. The ceiling is neatly pasted with sheets of newspaper. A small pink curtain hangs over the one window. A brightly polished bicycle stands propped up against the door. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling is slightly brighter than the candle on the desk. Stacked on the bedside table are twelve volumes of A Hundred Thousand Whys and Wherefores, a new edition of Deng Xiaoping’s Collected Works, and some old military magazines. The plastic flowers in the red vase are not too dusty.
After supper a girl called Mili walks in and sits next to Tang Weiguo. She lives next door with her uncle, and visits every night, apparently. Her mother is Kazak, her father Han Chinese. They live a hundred kilometres away in the Kazak Autonomous Prefecture.
Mili pours herself a cup of tea, then pulls out a bag of pumpkin seeds and proceeds to stuff them, one by one, into her mouth.
The scene takes me back to my childhood in Qingdao, when our neighbour Aunty Liu would come round every night, plonk herself onto my parents’ bed and gossip for hours. Her husband was a cook on the trains. He travelled all over the country and saw many strange things. My parents were always eager for his news. Sometimes Aunty Liu brought a cup of tea or a newspaper, sometimes she delved into her pocket and pulled out exotic sweets for my sister and me. Those wrappers emblazoned with the names Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, or Dalian Sweet Factory were my most valuable possessions. I cannot remember what the grown-ups talked about exactly, but most of my knowledge about the world was picked up from fragments of their conversations. For example: