I was woken by buzzing mosquitoes. It was past midnight. I could hear snoring next door. I shook my bed a little, the snores didn’t stop, so I carefully crept to the open window and eased myself down. I left the village and climbed the hill, not daring to turn my torch on. Soon I could hear the river again. When my hand touched a concrete bridge I switched on my torch and ran.
Half an hour later the batteries ran out and I was plunged into darkness again. Cold shivers ran down my spine. I was on a narrow path on a high mountain ridge. One false step and I would roll to my death. I could hear the wind rustle through treetops in the valley far below. I wished I had the eyes of a mouse and could see in the dark. I crouched down and began to crawl like a pig. If my hands touched mud I shuffled forwards, if they touched grass I shifted to the left. I groped like this for hours until I could go no further. At last I collapsed and sank my face into the ground. Even if the militiamen had run at me with their guns, I would still not have had the energy to move. I was no longer a traveller, I was a fugitive on the run.
At that very moment a light appeared in the darkness. It was neither a torch nor a candle, nor a glow-worm shaking in the breeze. It seemed to come from another realm. It rose from a stream and floated through the trees then stopped by some branches ten metres away and slowly dropped to my eye level. I shut my eyes and tried to compose myself. Suddenly I remembered a story my father told me as a child. One night, when my grandfather had lost his way in a field of sorghum, a ball of fire appeared before him and guided him back home.
I opened my eyes and stood up. He is here. My grandfather who died in a communist jail before I was born has come to my rescue. I walked forward and the ball of fire followed me through the branches, guiding my way for twenty kilometres until the sky turned white.
Selling Chiffon Scarves in a Traffic Jam
The driver grumbles, ‘Looks like we’re stuck here for the night,’ then swings his legs onto the dashboard and falls into a doze. We should have reached Dali two hours ago. The passengers start fighting for sleeping space. I cannot sleep while it is still light, so I wander outside and count the stationary vehicles. Seventy trucks, three tractors. If that boulder isn’t moved, there will be even more tomorrow. Thank goodness I have a seat. I climb back onto the bus, sit down, tug the raincoat from my bag and drape it over my head.
I am woken in the morning by rowdy peasants banging on the bus trying to sell us their boiled eggs. At noon they are joined by people selling home-made ice lollies, biscuits and sugared prunes. One man turns up with a wok and starts selling pancakes and fried rice. The road inspector arrives in the afternoon. He has a gammy leg. He clambers onto our bus and says, ‘I’ll call the roadworkers out, but it’ll take them a day to get here,’ then he takes a cigarette from the driver and hobbles away again. Suddenly it occurs to me that even if the boulder were shifted no one would be able to move because the trucks are double-parked. I feel tempted to take my bag and walk, but decide it would be a waste of a four-yuan ticket. So I stroll outside instead, buy a bag of boiled eggs and sit under a tree with my notebook.
Last week, when I arrived in Baoshan after my narrow escape from the police, I sought refuge with Li Chengyuan, the editor of Peacock magazine. I was afraid to venture outside in case the local police had been notified about me. So I stayed indoors most of the time, writing letters. I sent Wang Ping a poem and a large butterfly. I wanted to ask her to write back to me, but was still not sure where I would be next month. I sent Lingling my notes on the Wa tribe, and an embroidered bag I bought last month in Xuelin market.
Xuelin was a small Wa village in the Awa mountains, close to the Burmese border. On market day, Wa peasants came down from the mountains to sell their meagre wares. Their skin was dark and coarse, and brought to mind their mythical ancestors — the mud creatures. According to legend, two sexless creatures walked through a garden and heard a snake tell them to pick fruit from a tree. The first creature ate two and the fruit became breasts, the second ate one and the fruit became an Adam’s apple.
Although the Wa women had torn clothes and callused hands they found ways to express their femininity. Some had woven black skirts and embroidered the hems with yellow and red flowers. One old woman wore a bicycle chain as a necklace. Girls who could not afford bracelets wore rubber bands instead, and rouged their cheeks with spit and a rub of cheap red paper. Women who owned no scarves wrapped shirts around their heads and decorated them with sprigs of wild flowers. Traditionally, Wa women spent their time making life beautiful while the men were busy severing heads. A nearby village once stole a bull from Xuelin, and in the fight that ensued four hundred people were decapitated.
An old woman selling a garlic bulb bought a bunch of herbs and stuffed it through the large hole in her earlobe. A little girl sat on the pavement trying to sell a scrawny hen. I gave her five mao, told her to feed it up and sell it when it was bigger. Naked children scoured the streets like hungry chickens, searching for grains of rice. Occasionally a Wa trader from Burma strode through the dirty crowds in clean clothes and shiny shoes.
I will never forget the Xuelin villagers who lived in those conical straw huts. They each carried a bamboo pipe that was specific to their gender and age. Boys played loud courtship tunes on four-holed dangli, girls blew love songs on small, flute-like lixi, and old women whistled simple melodies on their two-holed enqiu. After a day on the fields, they would return to their huts, pour themselves a bowl of home-made rice wine and listen to an old man play love songs on a one-stringed lute. In the morning they would run to fetch mountain water from the village pipe, tie their babies to their backs and set off for the fields. I stayed with the village head. On my last night, his wife cooked a chicken stew. After dinner we huddled around the pot of simmering pig slops, and I asked them what they wanted most, because I could not believe that life could be so simple. Almost everything they wanted I could buy in a flash, but I still did not know what I wanted. My notebook says:
Bilisong, village head, 47: I want a brick house that keeps the rain out, like the ones in the county town.
Kanggeng, Bilisong’s wife, 43: I want a gold tooth. (She smiles. Her teeth are perfect and white.)
Sangamu, Bilisong’s daughter, 25: A watch, and an alarm clock.
Abengyi, Sangamu’s husband, 30: When I’m rich, I will buy a bicycle.
Junmei, Sangamu’s daughter, 5: I want an ice lolly.
Biniou, Sangamu’s son, 10: A dog like the frontier police have. One will do.
Eiwo, Bilisong’s daughter, 18: I don’t want anything.
Eiwo is weaving cloth for a skirt. She always curls her toes when she speaks. I gave her a chiffon scarf the other day and she has worn it ever since. She always sits furthest from the fire. The pigs in the sty below stick their tongues through the floorboards by her feet, licking around for scraps. I’ve lost two pencils to them already. Eiwo’s lips are so thick they stick out beyond her nose. When she sings her nostrils tremble. Last night she sang a Wa folk song called ‘Let Me Run Away With You’. The translation goes: ‘Let me come with you. If our water runs out, we can drink our saliva. If our saliva dries up, we can learn from the wind-monkeys and drink the wind.’
The Wa believe a new hut has no soul until the house spirit has been summoned. They entice the spirit into the hut with chants and a potion made from wine, oxtail and dried rat. Whenever an object is bought, money-ghost ceremonies are performed to ensure the ghost does not stay with its past owner. If a stranger approaches the hut during the ceremony, they rush out to shake his hand, as they believe he carries the money ghost.