Her parents’ bed is pressed against the opposite wall, next to a sofa and two red thermos flasks. Her stilettos and gumboots peep from under a tall wardrobe. At the end of her bed are a pair of soft pink slippers that bear the dark imprints of her feet. I decide I have to see her.
So I stay another night in the hostel and move in with Ai Xin’s parents the next day. I take a sampan up a tributary river through a smaller version of the Three Gorges. Steep flights of stone steps rise from the banks to villages high above. I close my eyes and think of the smell of her hair on the pillows, and imagine holding her in my arms.
Two days later her father says she will arrive by boat tomorrow. He pours me some beer and talks about his daughter. He says he doesn’t want her to spend the rest of her life trapped in the Wu Gorge.
I wait for her at the wharf at the top of the stone stairway. A steamer comes into dock, all the passengers get off, but she is not among them. I sit down again and open my book. Two hours later another boat arrives. A woman emerges from the crowd and moves along the rickety wooden plank like a lotus rising from the mud. I stand up and feel myself getting smaller and smaller. She climbs the steps and peers up at me. In this sea of peasants heaving wicker baskets and cardboard boxes we are the only ones with empty hands. I call out her name. She smiles and asks who sent me.
‘I’ve waited for you for five days,’ I say pathetically.
‘What on earth for?’ she asks, as if she didn’t know.
We stick to each other’s side all day. When one of us goes to the toilet, the other stands outside and we continue our discussion about life and poetry. We go for a meal and talk about love and sacrifice. I tell her about the ocean and my childhood by the sea. We go shopping and she buys me food for my journey. In the evening we go to her office and sit together in the dark. She speaks of the men who are in love with her and the studies she longs to pursue in Beijing.
And she keeps asking me again and again, ‘What is it you are looking for?’
And I say, ‘I want to see my country, every river, every mountain. I want to see different people, different lives.’
‘Why are you travelling?’
‘China is a black hole, I want to dive into it. I don’t know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead. I want to think on my feet, live on the run. Never again can I endure to spend my life in one room.’
‘Do you want to change this country?’
‘I just want to know it, see it with my own eyes.’
‘Do you hate this world?’
‘Love and hate can drive you on, but hate can drive you further.’
‘Do you believe in love?’
‘No. But love plasters the wounds, it makes you feel better.’
She cries out and slumps back into her seat as if struck by a fatal bullet. ‘You men are all the same!’ she says. ‘You need women but you don’t need love.’ I say nothing. All I can think about is the print of her feet in the soft pink slippers.
She switches the light on and makes a camp bed up beside her desk. ‘Let’s go to sleep, it’s nearly morning. You can lie by my side if you promise not to touch.’
‘Promise.’ I try to repair the damage. ‘When I say I don’t believe in love it’s because I can’t trust myself. It doesn’t mean I don’t need love. Everything one says is a product of one’s past experiences, it is not a true reflection of one’s inner. .’
‘Shut up, will you.’ She touches my hand. We hug each other and kiss. It is not until I suck her breast that I discover her heart is silent.
I step onto the boat and look at her standing at the top of the stone steps, exactly where I stood yesterday. Her long neck is still as lovely. I drift downstream over muddy, turbulent water. That night I dream my head is plunged into the river and I cannot breathe. I wake up screaming. My bag is still here, but the sleeping mat I hired for two and a half yuan has been nicked from right under me.
5. The Wind-Blown Soil
City of Tombs
I leave the Yangzi at Yichang, then walk north through Hubei Province from the Shennongjia mountains to the Wudang range. After a five-day rest in Shiyan town I press on into Shaanxi Province. It is only seventeen days since I left Sichuan but my money is almost gone.
In the evening of 23 October I arrive in Xian, exhausted and penniless.
24 October. Clear sky. Came straight to Shaanxi Press last night to find Yao Lu. Haven’t seen him since he visited Beijing for the 1979 Democracy Wall Movement. He is editor of Yellow River magazine now, but looks as dishevelled as ever. He sleeps in his office during the week, and said I could stay with him. This morning he even found me some work. His leaders have contracted me to draw the illustrations for this month’s magazine. They’ll pay me 20 yuan a picture, so I should make 400 yuan all being well.
26 October. Fierce winds. Three of Yao Lu’s friends came round last night, and we drank and talked for hours. One was a set designer at Xian Film Studio. He said there is nothing left in Xian but ancient buildings, if you want to see the real Shaanxi you must travel north. Another, Yang Qing, writes poetry. His favourite poet is Tagore. By day, he works at the Public Security Bureau as censor of post. He said all the city’s mail passes through his hands before it reaches the post office. Yao Lu said Yang Qing’s wife is the belle of the local song and dance troupe. She comes from Mizhi, a town in the north where the women are famed for their beauty.
I told Yang Qing about how the Qinghai police accused me of selling drugs, and when they found none on me, accused me of wanting to buy drugs instead. ‘It’s not funny,’ he said. ‘Drugs are rife in Qinghai. Some come from Xinjiang to be processed, some are grown locally. Many villages have been taken over by the army. When people start to make money, they experiment with drugs. It is considered one of the pleasures of modern life. One man I arrested said a puff of opium costs more than a policeman’s wage. Our detoxification centre is filled to capacity.’ We discussed the sensations that drugs induce, even though none of us had ever taken any, or seen any for that matter. I asked Yang Qing if I could visit the centre. He said he would take me next week on condition that I wash and shave and try to behave like a normal person.
The other visitor was Sun Xi, Yellow River’s literary editor. He said, ‘I know every writer in Shaanxi. Just mention my name, and you will enjoy free meals and accommodation throughout the province.’ He drank far too much, and is snoring on my bed as I write.
On the 28th I take Sun Xi’s letter of recommendation to the Forest of Steles Museum and get in free of charge. The seven grey exhibition halls house 2,300 stone tablets inscribed with classical texts of Chinese history and philosophy. A total of 600,252 characters carved in stone. The earliest inscriptions are over a thousand years old. I wander breathlessly through the stone library, exhilarated and absorbed. Each tablet is a living testament to the past, each one deserves an exhibition room to itself.