‘I couldn’t make it yesterday,’ he continues. ‘Too many villages to visit. There are three hundred Christians in the area now.’ He is the priest of the local Christian society which has recently been restored after two decades of religious persecution. I ask him if I can borrow his bible, but he tells me it is on loan from the library, and is the only copy in the county.
I reach Jiaxian the next day and go straight to Baiyunguan, a large Daoist temple on the banks of the Yellow River. The muddy beach below is strewn with black boulders and blocks of ice. I seek out the sage Yao Lu told me Chairman Mao used to consult, but am told he has travelled to Xian for a meeting with the religious affairs committee. So I shake the divination box myself and pull out a stick.
When roaming the land keep your face hidden. Conceal yourself in the cities; Nurture your spirit in the wilds.
I register the advice, drop a coin into the collection box and step outside. A song celebrating the ninety-first anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth blares through the village speakers. ‘The Red Army climbs a thousand mountains and crosses ten thousand rivers, yearning for a moment of rest. .’
In the hostel courtyard a troupe of peasants practises their red drums for the New Year parade. The noise is deafening.
The next morning, I continue down the main road south. As the cold wind blasts the sweat from my face an old folk song comes to my mind: ‘I live on the Yellow Plateau, where the wind scrapes down from the hills. Whether it blows from the north-east or blows from the north-west, the wind is always my song.’ A bundle of straw sits on the roadside, waiting to be squashed by a passing truck.
I hear a sudden burst of firecrackers and notice two cars parked outside a house. I poke my head over the gate. It’s a wedding. Before I know it, a middle-aged man in a Mao suit drags me into the courtyard. The villagers sitting down eating sunflower seeds clear a path for us. Every door and window is pasted with the words DOUBLE HAPPINESS cut in red paper. The bedroom is crammed with silk quilts and metal thermos flasks — gifts which the family will later wrap up again and pass on to the next couple in the village to get married. I am introduced to the bride and groom and given a seat and a pair of chopsticks. I wolf down some fried cakes and drain a bowl of soup. When I lean over the table to take some fish I discover it is rock hard. The person next to me explains that it is made of wood. I am reminded of how my mother used to boil stones in a pan of water so the neighbours would think we had food in the house. When my stomach is full I take a group photograph as thanks for their hospitality, and instantly my pockets are filled with sweets and sunflower seeds.
In the next valley I see a school in the caves on the opposite bank. Classes have finished for the day and children are sweeping yellow dust from one side of the yard to the other. I am curious to know what these children want to do when they grow up. I decide to cross the river and pay them a visit.
A dirt track leads me down to a village of mud huts but there is no sign of a bridge. Four or five women are leaning against a wall, soaking up the winter rays. I ask them the way to the school. They laugh. I assume they find my accent difficult so I repeat the question slowly.
A women in a green scarf says, ‘It’s a long walk.’
‘But I saw it just now from the path.’
‘If it’s across the river it’s a long way. The nearest bridge is seven kilometres down that track.’
Patches of snow lie on the mud fields next to heaps of dry manure. There probably is a bridge down there but I suspect it is further than she says. When you ask peasants for directions, the distances are never reliable. You can walk for hours and still be told your destination is seven kilometres away.
I watch a woman feed her baby with a piece of bread from her mouth, and ask her how many children she has.
‘None,’ she says, looking at the track behind me.
‘Isn’t that yours then?’ I say, pointing to the baby in her arms.
‘Doesn’t count, it’s a girl.’ The baby’s mouth is smeared with wet dough.
‘Women are equal to men now, haven’t you heard?’ I say. I watch an insect land on the baby’s chapped cheek then fly away again. The mother tuts and rolls her eyes to the sky. I ask if there is a hostel in the village. They tell me the nearest one is in Mizhi, fourteen kilometres away.
I ask them if the Mizhi women are as beautiful as people say and they collapse into giggles. One woman pulls off her white scarf and walks away. I give the baby a sweet from my pocket and walk back up the way I came. From my map I see that Mizhi is twenty kilometres away. With no stops I should be there in three hours.
As I walk into Mizhi, I remember Fan Cheng saying he wished he could marry a northern woman. He said southern girls are weak and flighty, but northern girls are strong and chaste. That comment has always stuck in my mind.
It is market day. The path is muddy from melted snow. Pigs, sheep, dogs and bicycles jostle for space. The man selling rat poison shows a pile of dead rodents to prove the efficacy of his potion. The tooth puller displays a heap of teeth to prove his skills in dentistry. His gaze is unnerving. I suspect there are dog teeth and pig teeth mixed in his pile. A girl walks by with a steaming roll. I am too embarrassed to ask where she bought it so I walk behind her, breathing the sweet smell.
When the crowd becomes overbearing, I sit down at a food stall, order a bowl of noodles and watch the villagers walk by. There are men in blue overalls and young girls with red scarves tied at their necks and big rosy cheeks. On my left, a freckle-faced women sells plaster casts of the goddess Venus and slices of yellow cake. The fruit stall on the right must have caught fire earlier. Its burnt frame lies toppled on the ground. Charred apples and oranges steam in a puddle of water. An old woman in an army coat swears at a child. Six beautiful pheasants hang limply from the side of a bicycle rack.
I mop up the remains of my soup with a piece of dry bread from my pocket, then go to look for a place to sleep.
In the morning I search the streets for beautiful women, but see none, so I wander into a video room and watch a Hong Kong action film instead. Halfway through I realise it is Beyond Forbearance, the film I saw in Golmud. The worse something is, the easier it is to forget. Suddenly I hear the thud of drums. I step outside to see what is going on.
A crowd has lined the street. Through a cloud of dust, a yellow dragon advances, swaying above the heads of ten burly men. Behind it march peasants in yellow tunics beating the red drums fixed to their waists. Next come acrobats hobbling on high stilts dressed as Guanyin, Black Face, White Beard, and Pigsy and Monkey from Journey to the West; then singers with rouged cheeks and red cummerbunds and dancers with babies in their arms. I remember being paraded like that in the National Day processions. My headdress was so heavy it nearly broke my neck. The huts along the street are old and ramshackle, but the red flags and exploding firecrackers liven them up. The po-faced crowds, however, look completely out of place. They are still clutching live chickens and bags of flour, and their battered shoes are covered with dust.
For me, New Year’s Day is no different from any other. The fleas that plague my body will not leave me for the holiday. I walk back to the hostel, slip a towel into my bag and take to the road.
Beyond Mizhi the bare terraced hills follow in endless succession. No grass, no trees, no rocks. When the wind blows the air turns yellow and I cannot see a thing. But I will walk the road however hard it is, because only on the road can you see that yesterday lies behind you and tomorrow waits on the path ahead. The road measures life in distance. The further you travel the longer you live.