The mountains beyond the village are green, but there are no more oil palms or coconut trees. I walk downhill through bamboo groves and double-spring trees in full blossom, and spend the night with a Li family in their roadside hut.
The next morning, I crest a hill and see a large forest fire. The area is cultivated by slash and burn, but this fire is out of control. There is no one about. If the wind changes, the flames will swallow the bamboo hut nearby. I run over and bash through the door. Inside, there are rugs, clothes, pots and pans. I toss everything into the stream outside and weigh them down with stones. The last time I enter, waves of heat roll towards me. I try pulling the jar of rice wine across the room but the bamboo ladder is in the way, so I dip my hands inside and scoop some wine into my mouth. As I stagger out of the door, ribbons of smoke curl up the ladder.
Two days later I stop at Tongzha, then continue my journey south. I skirt the foot of a cool mountain, descend to fields of sugarcane and spend the night with some labourers from Guangdong. They have contracted to farm a mu of land for fifteen yuan a year, and will share the profits between them. They puff at long water pipes. Their hair has turned dry and yellow in the sun.
The road scorches during the day, but at least the passing trucks leave a pleasant breeze. The people who live by its sides wander up and down all day then retire to their homes at dusk. At night the boys come out and flash their torches into the dark. I rarely use my torch for fear of attracting mosquitoes. Two weeks later I arrive at Sanya, the most southern tip of China.
The sea washes straight into the streets. The small wooden boats moored at the shore smell as sour as my damp plimsolls.
I have come to the end. Ahead of me lies the blue-black sea. My footprints stop where the sea begins. I can go no further. I long to, though. The oceans haunt my dreams. But I belong to the earth and can only walk across land.
Two women clutching handfuls of sunglasses run up and ask if I want a digital watch. I walk to a seaside restaurant and buy a packet of biscuits. The boss puts a new tape in the cassette player: ‘Fate has sent me far and wide to wander the distant wastes. .’ It is the theme song of an Indian film I saw as a child. With my canvas bag and walking stick I look just like the wanderer in the film — only I am wearing sunglasses.
A child gives me a prickly pear then steps back to stare at me. A girl on a bicycle stops to wave. As I get to my feet, the boss wipes the sweat from his face and says, ‘Why not have something to eat before you turn back.’ He too knows this is the end of the world.
7. The Abandoned Valleys
The Silent Beat of the Drum
Dear Wang Ping. I wish I could lie in your arms for hours on end, but my mind is too restless. Sometimes I sense I am walking to a final destination, but I don’t know where it is yet. In fact I am just drifting in circles, swirling like a loose leaf on a stream.
Today is Saturday, 10 October. I have just arrived in Gunbei, a remote village in the mountains of north Guangxi. Tomorrow I will cross the Motianling range and proceed into Guizhou.
I spent most of the last month in Longzhou village near the Vietnamese border. Limestone pinnacles rose from wide paddy fields, and the sun moved through the sky, illuminating the landscape like a huge stage light. The scenery was beautiful, but the local Zhuang nationality live in dark dank hovels. The peasant I stayed with lent me a musty blanket he brought back from the Korean war. Thirty years of body odours clung to me like a wet skin, it was impossible to sleep. I thought of the students in the neighbouring village who butchered their teacher in the Cultural Revolution. To prove their devotion to the Party, they cooked his chopped corpse in a washbowl and ate him for dinner. They developed a lust for fresh offal, so before they killed their next victim, they cut a hole in his chest, kicked him in the back and the live liver flopped into their hands. Local villages were able to consume an average of three hundred class enemies during those years. The Zhuang wore long black tunics and sipped beer from each other’s spoons.
I walked to the border near Pingxiang, and was arrested on suspicion of espionage. Fortunately, I had a letter of introduction from the Guangxi writers’ association. The police phoned them the next morning, then let me go.
I visited the provincial museum in Nanning and saw an exhibition on the natural history of sex. It was very interesting. It made me realise how much our lives are governed by ovaries and semen. In the next room I saw huge bronze drums that were excavated in fields nearby. Some were over two thousand years old. The sides were carved with images of rain clouds and shamans in feathered headdresses dancing themselves into a trance to the beat of ritual drums. They could not hear the noise of the modern world. I could not hear it either. . I have drawn a map for you of my journey down the coast. I will write to you again from Guizhou.
There is no postbox in Gunbei, so I put the letter back into my bag, and go to a shop to buy firecrackers for this afternoon’s party. The village head has told everyone to take the day off and prepare a dance for Comrade Ma who is here to write an article on minority culture.
Gunbei is enclosed by mountains, only one or two trucks pass each day. The villagers belong to the Miao tribe. They live in round wooden huts with roofs made of bark. The girls usually dress in clothes from the local town’s discount stores, but for the dance today they are wearing traditional costume: hand-dyed purple tunics, embroidered cummerbunds and intricate silver crowns. They step into a gentle dance as the bamboo pipes begin to play. The instruments range from small flutes to pipes five metres long. The girls hold their backs straight, sway their hips and stamp the rhythm with their feet. There is a controlled restlessness to their movements. The whole village gathers round and children join in the dance. At dusk the firecrackers are let off. Everyone laughs and cheers, the pipes play new tune, and for a moment I almost forget I am a stranger.
Later the village head invites us home for a bowl of butter tea. His wife is a school teacher. She has removed her traditional costume but her neck is still purple from the dye. She serves us sticky rice and pickled fish. I ask the white-bearded man next to me where the fish was caught.
‘They grow in the paddy fields,’ he says. ‘When the rice is cut, we drain the water from the fields and grab the fish with our hands. We rub them with salt, chilli powder and herbs then keep them in a earthenware jar for two years. It is our custom to give the head to the guest.’
I scoop a handful of sticky rice, squeeze it into a ball and bite. ‘That is a fine beard you have, grandfather,’ I say.
‘I have to let it grow. If I cut it I fall ill!’ Everyone laughs politely. A bowl of wine is passed around the table.