Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet 9780231538527

Citation preview

M E M O R I E S O F M O U N T Q I LA I

Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan

M O D E R N C H I N E S E L I T E R AT U R E F RO M TA I W A N Editorial Board Pang-yuan Chi Göran Malmqvist David Der-wei Wang, Coordinator Wang Chen-ho, Rose, Rose, I Love You Cheng Ch’ing-wen, Three-Legged Horse Chu T’ien-wen, Notes of a Desolate Man Hsiao Li-hung, A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers Chang Ta-chun, Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up Michelle Yeh and N. G. D. Malmqvist, editors, Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry Li Qiao, Wintry Night Huang Chun-ming, The Taste of Apples Chang Hsi-kuo, The City Trilogy: Five Jade Disks, Defenders of the Dragon City, Tale of a Feather Li Yung-p’ing, Retribution: The Jiling Chronicles Shih Shu-ching, City of the Queen: A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong Wu Zhuoliu, Orphan of Asia Ping Lu, Love and Revolution: A Novel About Song Qingling and Sun Yat-sen Zhang Guixing, My South Seas Sleeping Beauty: A Tale of Memory and Longing Chu T’ien-hsin, The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei Guo Songfen, Running Mother and Other Stories Huang Fan, Zero and Other Fictions Zhong Lihe, From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches from Taiwan

Memories of Mount Qilai T H E E D U C AT I O N O F A YO U N G P O E T

Yang Mu Translated by John Balcom and Yingtsih Balcom

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and Council for Cultural Affairs in the preparation of the translation and in the publication of this series. Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by Mr. Tzu-hsien Tung, Chairman of the Pegatron Corporation, in the publication of this book. Columbia University Press Publishers Since  New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright ©  John Balcom and Yingtsih Balcom All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yang, Mu, [Qilai qian shu. English] Memories of Mount Qilai : the education of a young poet / Yang Mu ; translated by John Balcom and Yingtsih Balcom. pages cm. — (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) ISBN ---- (cloth : acid-free paper) — ISBN ---- (electronic) . Yang, Mu, —Childhood and youth. . Poets, Chinese—Taiwan—th century— Biography. I. Balcom, John, translator. II. Balcom, Yingtsih, translator. III. Title. PL.SQ  .'—dc [B] 

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c           cover photo: matthew liang © getty images cover design: milenda nan ok lee References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CONTENTS

translator’s preface vii acknowledgments xvii

Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain  Return to Degree Zero  Long Ago, When We Started 

T R A N S LATO R ’ S P R E F A C E

Yang Mu was born Wang Ching-hsien in Hualien, Taiwan, on May , . A poet, essayist, scholar, and translator, he has published over sixty volumes of poetry and prose. Considered by many to be the greatest living Chinese poet, he is also one of the most distinguished Chinese prose stylists and essayists. The Former Book of Mount Qilai, Yang Mu’s collection of autobiographical essays—translated here as Memories of Mount Qilai—appeared originally as three volumes, published over a ten-year period: Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain (), Return to Degree Zero (), Long Ago, When We Started (). They were published as a single volume in  and form an integral whole. The book is one of the most significant autobiographical works, in terms of style and content, to appear in Taiwan in recent decades. The collection was supplemented in  with a sequel entitled The Latter Book of Mount Qilai, which focuses more on the author’s pursuit of his literary studies and his interactions with others, such as the translator Lin Yiliang and Ya Xian, a well-known poet. Strictly speaking, the book is a partial autobiography of the poet, because it covers only the formative years—the first twenty-some years of his inner and outer life—recalled and recorded decades later. He was born during the Japanese occupation and grew up in the Republic of China (ROC) under the authoritarian Nationalist government. This is not a mere chronological account of the author’s life, but something far more impressionistic. Yang Mu’s description of events is largely anecdotal and sometimes humorous. The depiction of the historical milieu in which he grew up is subtle and indirect, and never judgmental. It is, of course, written from the perspective of a young Taiwanese observing the changes going on around him. He yokes together inner abstractions and detailed descriptions of the outer

viii Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

world to create a dense and expressive prose style complete with classical allusions. A work of art like Goethe’s Dichtung und Warheit, Memories of Mount Qilai offers the reader insights into the genesis of an artist. Covering the author’s childhood and youth to young adulthood, the book traces his personal and artistic development, shaped by his contact with Taiwan’s natural environment and the rather complicated history of the island. The chronological trajectory of the text starts with the author as a young child taking in the details of the small world immediately around him in his house and back yard. This occurs during the final years of the Japanese occupation. The text moves from this small world outward in a broadening sweep, in an ever-deepening engagement with society.

The Natural Environment It is obligatory to begin any discussion of Taiwan by referring to its historical appellation of Formosa, from the Portuguese Ilha Formosa, meaning Beautiful Island. The geography and landscape are formative and sustaining influences on the poet—from start to finish, the mountains and ocean are abiding presences in the book, stirring both his soul and his imagination. Taiwan lies  miles off the coast of southern mainland China astride the Tropic of Cancer, which gives it a humid, subtropical climate. It covers about , square miles and is slightly larger than Belgium. Geologically, Taiwan was formed at the boundary where the Eurasian tectonic plate is subducted under the Philippine plate. The fault runs the length of the island, and the upthrust block has given Taiwan its largely mountainous terrain—five mountain ranges run parallel to the east coast. The boundary is still active, producing a great number of earthquakes, and the mountains continue to rise. Most of the island’s population resides on the narrow and fertile western plains. Hualien, the author’s hometown, is located on an alluvial plain on the northeastern coast, facing the Pacific Ocean. Taiwan sits on the Northwest Pacific cyclone basin and is struck by typhoons an average of four times a year, from July to October. The typhoons and earthquakes made deep and early impressions on the author.

ix Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

Hualien City Hualien, the city where Yang Mu was born and grew up, is on the east coast of Taiwan and is the capital of Hualien County. It sits on an alluvial fan, with the Pacific Ocean to the east and high mountains to the west. It is one of the bigger cities on the sparsely populated east coast. The Spaniards arrived where the city is now located in the seventeenth century. Permanent settlement by the Han Chinese began on a larger scale in the nineteenth century. The city remained a collection of villages until the Japanese occupation, at which time the authorities changed the name from Qilai to the present name, Hualien. The city was expanded under the Japanese starting in the early twentieth century, with infrastructure projects, including the expansion and addition of rail and port facilities. The Nationalists retained the name Hualien after Taiwan was ceded back to China. Today it has a population of over one hundred thousand.

History Imperial China The historical connections between Taiwan and China go back to the Three Kingdoms period (a.d. –). But significant settlement by the Chinese did not begin until about the fourteenth century. Most of the early settlers came from nearby Fujian province. In those days the island also provided port for fishermen and pirates. The first Westerners—the Portuguese—arrived in . The Dutch actually took Taiwan in , with little opposition from the inhabitants, most of whom were Chinese farmers or indigenous people living on the coastal plains. The Dutch established an outpost in Anping, on the coast west of Tainan. The chaos on the mainland with the collapse of the Ming dynasty in  sent many to Taiwan to seek a new life. Zheng Chenggong (also known as Koxinga), a Ming loyalist, landed in Taiwan in , expelled the Dutch, and set up a government and ruled for a couple of decades until the island was taken by the Qing in . In , Taiwan was made a county of

x Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

Fujian province; it remained so until , when it was made a province in its own right. In the period after Taiwan fell to the Qing, the government imposed a partial quarantine on the island, prohibiting immigration by the Han Chinese, mostly to prevent dissident elements from gaining a foothold. However, illegal immigration continued. Eventually, recognizing the de facto situation, the government allowed families to immigrate in , at which time the population was less than half a million. The period from  to  is generally considered one of pioneering, frontier society. By the early nineteenth century, the population had grown to two million. In , Taiwan’s ports were opened to foreign trade. In , after Taiwan was made a province, the first governor, Liu Mingchuan, arrived. Liu embarked upon a series of ambitious infrastructure projects, including railway and telegraph systems. Under Liu, Taiwan went from an imperial backwater to the most technologically advanced province in China. Liu left Taiwan in  and was replaced by Shao Yulian, who departed after Taiwan was ceded to Japan in .

The Japanese Occupation The first chapter opens with the author’s early childhood in the last years of the Japanese occupation. China went to war with Japan in  over Korea. The war ended the following year with China’s defeat. The Chinese government signed the treaty of Shimonoseki on April , , ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan. Within a year after the Japanese stepped ashore, sixteen thousand Japanese civilians had come to manage the island. The Japanese sought to make Taiwan an agricultural appendage of Japan. Over the years, they made extensive improvements to the infrastructure of the island, laying the foundation for economic development and modernization and improving public health and sanitation. From  onward, the need for cultural assimilation was emphasized. Education became a focus: the Japanese language and Japanese textbooks were used in schools. Political autonomy also increased with the implementation of local councils. In , just before the outbreak of hostilities with China, industrialization and assimilation policies were strengthened. Japanese was made the official

xi Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

language for media use. By the end of the war, about half the population was literate in Japanese. Yang Mu’s depiction of the period is not documentary—he does not cite facts and figures. Instead we learn that the use of the Japanese language was becoming quite pervasive, as were Japanese customs. Yet, many of the Japanese lived in their own areas, and their contact with the locals was limited to the police and perhaps teachers. Many of his early impressions of the environment of Taiwan are bound up with this period. Toward the end of the war, the United States began bombing Taiwan, forcing many to flee to the countryside. Yang Mu’s family fled to the mountains, where his contact with nature became more immediate. It also brought his first encounters with Taiwan’s indigenous peoples.

Retrocession With the arrival of the Chinese after Taiwan was ceded back to China in , changes began to take place, but the process was not always smooth. As the Japanese left and the Chinese took control, there was a good deal of hope and expectation among the Taiwanese, which gradually turned to perplexity and consternation, and finally to bitterness and rancor. Troops and government officials arrived to take control, while teachers and civil servants took up the positions left vacant by the departing Japanese. Initially, curiosity was the byword—the new arrivals spoke differently, ate differently, even had different cultural and social beliefs and practices. Political power was vested in the hands of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), which was run by waishengren, people from other provinces, as they were called by the Taiwanese. Many of the arriving Chinese distrusted the Taiwanese, often viewing them as traitors due to their colonial affi liation with Japan or suspecting them of being Communist sympathizers. Dissatisfaction came to a head on February , , in what later became known as the  Incident, perhaps the defining moment in postwar politics. An old woman was caught selling black-market cigarettes in Taipei and beaten, which led to spontaneous uprisings in protest against government corruption. The rebellion spread southward and was brutally suppressed by the government. Eventually martial law was declared and all

xii Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

personal freedoms guaranteed by the Republic of China’s constitution were suspended. Politically disenfranchised, many Taiwanese looked upon the KMT and waishengren as just another colonial power. In , the Nationalists lost the civil war, and approximately . million people fled to Taiwan. For their part, the ruling KMT saw the future of Taiwan as uncertain. Hainan Island fell to the Communist forces in , and it appeared to be only a matter of time before Taiwan would follow. The Korean War began in June , and the U.S. government suddenly decided Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait had strategic importance worth protecting. The U.S. Seventh fleet was dispatched to the Taiwan Strait to protect the island. The KMT took advantage of this situation to launch a political stabilization campaign aimed at eliminating Communists, dissidents, and liberal thinkers. Over the following years, a period known as the White Terror, the government rounded up thousands of people, imprisoning and executing an unknown number. A mutual defense pact was signed with the United States in . On January , , after two days of fighting, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) took the Yijiangshan Islands, leading to the fi rst Taiwan Strait Crisis. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) then set its sights on the Dachen Islands. The U.S. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, which led to a U.S. evacuation of the islands. Close to thirty thousand people, both soldiers and civilians, were evacuated to Taiwan along with forty thousand tons of supplies. Three days later the islands were taken by the PLA. Most of the civilians were resettled in Yilan, Taiwan. The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, a continuation of the first, occurred on August , , with the  Bombardment of Quemoy (Jinmen) Island. The U.S. Seventh Fleet was reinforced to keep the strait open, and the United States supplied the ROC with artillery to return fire on the PRC. The United States also equipped the  ROC F-s with Sidewinder Missiles— the first time they were deployed in air-to-air combat—giving the ROC air superiority over the  Chinese MIGs. The crisis ended on September , , when the PRC forces ran out of shells and Russia warned Beijing not to pursue the confrontation with the United States. In the end, , ROC soldiers were killed, while the PRC lost  soldiers. After the crisis, the two sides continued to shell each other with shells containing propaganda leaflets.

xiii Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

Yang Mu’s account of the changeover and life under the KMT is again anecdotal, running the gamut from humor and curiosity to disappointment and disgust. Several examples will suffice—ghosts, teachers, slogans, propaganda efforts. The author’s first encounters with people from other provinces were with soldiers and teachers. The differences between the locals and the émigrés are humorously highlighted in various ways. Lifestyle differences such as food and household arrangements are points of reference. The Nationalist soldiers appear in the neighborhood and plant different kinds of vegetables, and in one shocking instance, the author discovers that they eat dog. Many Taiwanese live in Japanese-style homes on tatami mats. When he visits his teachers, who now reside in Japanese housing, the author finds to his consternation that they place Western-style furniture on top of the mats. One of the most telling differences involves belief in ghosts. Yang Mu devotes a good deal of time to the widespread belief in ghosts in Taiwan. In one instance, a local developer constructs a number of brick residences. The Taiwanese who move in quickly depart because they claim they are haunted. The houses remain empty because no one dares move in—that is, until the arrival of the Nationalist troops. They soon take over, and Yang Mu remarks with surprise that they are not afraid of ghosts and that after they move in, the ghosts actually disappear. Not all examples of the interaction between the two groups are humorous. In school at one point, conflict erupts between an instructor from mainland China and a student. The instructor thinks that the student has been speaking Japanese, which has been banned on campus, and not only insults the student but also strikes him. The author observes the situation and intervenes to explain that the student was speaking Taiwanese, the local dialect, and not Japanese. Things are eventually smoothed over, but not without bad feelings all around. The author’s depiction of the incident tends to remain impartial and without blame.

Indigenous Peoples At present there are  recognized indigenous tribes in Taiwan, and they account for about  percent of the population. The Ami are the largest in-

xiv Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

digenous group, inhabiting a large swath of territory in eastern Taiwan, including the coastal plains, with many residing near Hualien. Yang Mu was intrigued by them from an early age, especially encountering them in the mountains after he and his family evacuated during the American bombing raids on Hualien. Yet there were barriers, linguistic and cultural, to entering into their world.

Literature Yang Mu’s autobiographical account also details his burgeoning interest in poetry and his early attempts at writing and editing. After Retrocession, Japanese was replaced by Chinese as the national language and the language of instruction. Writing in Japanese was stifled, effectively silencing an entire generation of writers. Taiwanese was also banned in schools and in the media. Yang Mu was among the fi rst postwar generation to receive a Chinese education. In the late forties and early fifties, anti-Communist literature predominated and was supported by the government. In the fifties, many writers who had come from mainland China began to push their artistic agendas. Poets who had been engaged in the Modernist movement in China in the thirties renewed their artistic ambitions in Taiwan. Ji Xian, who had been a part of Dai Wangshu’s Modernist circle in Shanghai, for example, established Xiandai shi (Modern poetry, –). Some eighty poets joined to form the Modern Poetry Society in . Modern poetry prospered and other societies and journals were founded, the most important of which were the Blue Star and Epoch poetry societies. The Epoch Society was particularly active in the translation and introduction of the various schools of Western modernism. This had a profound influence on poetry in Taiwan. Taiwan’s poets assimilated the best from the West and from Chinese tradition. Ironically, what was missing was much of the modern vernacular tradition when the government proscribed the work of any author who was perceived as left-leaning. In Yang Mu’s account, he focuses on Shen Congwen, generally considered to be one of the greatest writers of fiction in twentieth-century China.

xv Tra n sl a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

Starting in high school, Yang Mu actively contributed to the journals of all the major poetry societies on the island. In the essay titled “Cheng Jianxiong and Poetry and Me,” he details his early attempts at poetry writing and his penchant for creating striking images. At this time he coedited “Seagull,” the weekend poetry supplement for the East Taiwan Daily News, as well as a couple of literary supplements for other newspapers. It was a vibrant period in the development of the island’s literature. Yang Mu has gone on to become one of Taiwan’s most important poets and, in the opinion of some, one of the greatest living Chinese poets. Developments in his poetry often turned into larger trends. His early romantic verse gave way to a more hermetic style, and his later work provides a deepening response to Chinese tradition as well as Western poetry. As a translator, he has translated poetry from English, his finest achievement perhaps being his translations of Yeats. As a scholar, his research on classical poetry is of particular note. As an essayist, his work can be characterized as neoclassical in its stylistic command of the language and broad allusiveness to classical works of Chinese literature and Western literature. His autobiographical essays also move toward the construction of a Taiwanese identity and, like Goethe’s Ductung und Warheit, provide insights into the genesis of an important artist. JB Monterey

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Translating Memories Mount Qilai, one of our favorite works of contemporary Taiwan literature, has been a richly rewarding experience. It has also been extremely challenging. We would like to thank Mr. Tung Hsien-tzu for supporting the translation, and Goeran Malmqvist and Chen Wenfen for commissioning it. We would also like to express our gratitude to Yang Mu and Wang Ying-ying for their generosity of spirit and kind words for this translation. Thanks are due to Jennifer Crewe of Columbia University Press for her continuing support in bringing translations of works of Taiwan literature into print. Leslie Kriesel, our editor, also deserves mention for another fine job. Last but not least, we would like to dedicate this translation to our beloved Taiwan.

M O U N TA I N W I N D A N D O C E A N R A I N

T H E F LA M E S O F W A R B U R N I N T H E D I S TA N T S K Y

1 In the beginning the sun shone brightly, illuminating the clean and shiny kitchen. I sat on the bench by the window. As I recall, that bench was wider than the others, and the red paint on its surface had been stripped away by my mother’s frequent vigorous scrubbing. My mother never liked painted furniture. She used ashes from the stove to remove the paint from any article made of wood to restore its natural appearance, after which she would place it in the sun to dry, and then carefully move it back indoors. A light fragrance from the scrubbed bench floated, drifting in the morning sunlight. I sat there observing my surroundings. The shadows flickered on the checkerboard pattern of the floor. The sun must just have risen from the sea a short time ago, and at that moment was climbing over the east side of the small city; the surface of the sea must have shimmered with a thousand kinds of light. I remember that shimmering water, which at the same time seemed so distant. Often I heard the low, continuous surge of the water in the night and asked what it was. “That is the ocean, the Pacific Ocean,” my mother replied. The ocean was close by, of course. When the sun rose from the sea, shining through the windowpanes onto the clean floor, the room was fi lled with a fresh and delicate fragrance. I slid off the bench, slipped on my wooden clogs, and walked out the small kitchen door. A pump, which was taller than I, stood in the courtyard. Its wooden handle was scrubbed clean and its iron body gave off a damp smell and was very cold to the touch. The cold came from the water as it rose through the iron from underground. Farther on, there stood a huge broad-leafed tree—its name was unknown to me then—which covered half of the courtyard and stood right above a small shed for firewood.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

The leaves of the tree were greenish gray, larger than my palm, and hairy. The falling leaves were always dry and produced a sound like snapping fingers. Decades later during my school days, whenever I read a description of the clear, loud sound made by falling wutong leaves, I would immediately recall that tree. In summer, it circumscribed a small, cool world for us, and as autumn gained, its broad leaves would fall one by one and pile up in the courtyard. Wearing wooden clogs, I kicked the fallen leaves. I liked hearing the rasping sound and the mood it created, as if a cello embellished a tune in a lonely courtyard in the afternoon, expressing a mood I didn’t understand then, but do now. Standing in the courtyard, I observed the huge tree in summer, and up through layers of green leaves I sought the bright sunlight in the swaying treetop and the broken blue sky beyond. I’d close my eyes and perceive a tiny dot of red light in the darkness that gradually faded away, and then I’d open my eyes and look for it again. On one branch there was a chrysalis, and when a breeze suddenly stirred I saw a tumblebug descending obliquely on its wings to the ground, where it struggled to right itself only to speed off again up into the broad, overlapping leaves. All of this occurred in the early days of the Pacific War. The flames of war burned in the distant sky, but hadn’t reached my ocean, my small city, and my courtyard, which was covered by a dense canopy of leaves. Almost every day the sunlight played on the bamboo fence, at the foot of which had sprouted several papaya trees. Each day, I squatted to see how much one of them had grown. The earthworms turned the soil, and the cannas blossomed. In the neighboring courtyard a rooster patrolled proudly as a mother hen led her chicks beneath the daylilies where they vied, pecking for seeds, while heavy snorts rhythmically rose from the pigpen nearby. A bit farther on was another bamboo fence of the neighbors’, beyond which the bell of a bike could be heard ringing all the way to the end of the alley and then turning left, where there was a row of houses that faced a porch where a blind grandma with bound feet always sat. Turning to the right led downhill to where vegetable gardens were planted among the random trees. I’m not quite sure what was beyond that. The flames of war had not yet reached Hualien. It was a small, quiet city beyond the notice and concern of most people. At that time, almost no news was produced in that small, remote city, which slept below the layered high green mountains and nestled on the

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

whitest and cleanest beach on the Pacific Ocean. At the far end of the streets running west to east you could see the deep blue sea, which was smooth and gentle like a silk curtain hanging below a sky of the same deep blue color. At the opposite end of the streets was the highest mountain range, rising abruptly several thousand meters, from Mount Sanbalakan in the north winding south to Mount Qijiaochuan, beyond which, and even higher, stood Mount Botuolu, Mount Liwuzhu, and Great Tailuge Mountain. At the far periphery, and in your imagination, you could clearly see Mount Dumou, Mount Wuling, Mount Nenggao, and Mount Qilai. From the northern peak of Mount Qilai at , meters, you could see Mount Dabajian to the north, rival of Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain to the south, which looked down on Hualien, that small, sleepy city without news. A train slowly puffed smoke as it climbed the longitudinal valley; the narrow highway cut though cliffs, in the open spaces of which you could intermittently see a convoy of trucks cautiously wheeling from tunnel to tunnel. Yes, Hualien slept at the intersection of the railroad and the highway on an alluvial fan of a beautiful river. It was pillowed on the lullaby of the Pacific Ocean, as the waves surged up and down on the beach, repeating a melody of tens of millions of years, regardless of whether anyone was listening or not. Hualien is located on a small plain where the high mountains meet the great sea. The squat houses were hidden beneath betel palms, flame trees, old banyan trees, and breadfruit trees, and under the unknown broadleafed tree where the chrysalis and the tumblebug rested. On the shores of the river and lake grew reeds and white ginger flowers. My world was very small. Most of the time I was in the courtyard in the shade of the tree, watching the flickering shadows, the wet spot that had dried beneath the pump, or the strange and changing mirages shining on the bamboo fence. Sometimes I sat on the tatami mats, leaning on the small, low table by the window, looking through my mother’s photo albums, turning the pages of pictures of people dressed in Chinese clothes, or Westernstyle clothes, or Japanese kimonos. In the background of most of the photos was a corner of a steamer, the hawser and ship’s wheel, or a life ring fastened to the side of the ship, under which a potted orchid was placed. The fresh and delicate fragrance of straw from the tatami mats floated in the sunlight. Outside was a small courtyard, on the other side of which lived a couple who spoke almost exclusively Japanese. At first I thought they were

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Japanese, but later my mother told me they were Taiwanese like us; I didn’t understand why they spoke only Japanese. I knew some Japanese, not just enough to understand it but also to speak it; however, we did our best to use it as little as possible, save when we played and sang children’s songs. One time, I was under the banyan tree by the door feeding a dragonfly to the ants when the man next door came out and scolded me, calling me dirty. With a long string of Japanese words, I replied with as good as I got. As I recall, Japanese has many expressions for scolding and swearing at people, making it much easier to use than Taiwanese. At that moment, a Japanese policeman in uniform happened to walk by, and when he heard my Japanese, he said in all seriousness, “This kodomo (kid) can really talk.” He couldn’t help laughing as he spoke. At dusk, the light of the setting summer sun shone obliquely into the alley.

2 I don’t know why the Japanese police were always called “detectives.” Perhaps it was because civil disputes in Taiwan were handled by minor officials, while the criminal cases were handled by the Japanese police in their neat and clean uniforms. Perhaps it was not so, but their uniforms were very convincing to my young and impressionable mind. When I happened to run into those uniformed men, fear and admiration inevitably arose. I think that what I feared and admired was their authority, and it was on the basis of this not yet mature judgment that I understood them to be different from us, that they were foreign rulers. Their facial expressions were unique, not to say their tone of voice, which few Taiwanese were able to learn well. Why did so many Taiwanese make such a great effort to learn Japanese facial expressions and tone of voice? The era of the Pacific War was upon us; the Japanese had ruled Taiwan for nearly fifty years; the Komika, or assimilation movement had been going on for some time; and many a Tom, Dick, and Harry had changed his name to Watanabe or Tanaka. The big, strong men liked to wear a white T-shaped mawashi, or sumo belt, and relax under the covered walkways along the streets during the summer and greet each other in their broken Japanese. Thinking of all this now, it ought

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

to be clear. Taiwan had been under Japanese rule for almost fi fty years, and through an exhausted consciousness the people seemed to have come to some sort of realization. The flames of war were burning in the distant sky and one day would perhaps affect our small world, perhaps redefine right and wrong, honor and shame, and alter the image of man and human values here. Perhaps, but nothing was certain. The flames of war burned overseas, and some were waiting for them to quickly spread here. But the insane flames only ever burned across the sea. From then until the U.S. army started bombing Hualien, and even to the end of the war when the Japanese were forced to withdraw, I don’t recall seeing many Japanese, except for the policemen who handled the criminal cases. But one morning, perhaps in winter, I saw a soldier with a sword striding silently down the street. His face was almost expressionless, but the little moustache on his lip evinced a lonely haughtiness. In those days when the emperor’s army had suffered successive defeats, he strode silently, one hand resting on his sword. He strode in that small and remote city as the cold winter air fi lled the Pacific coast, as the towering mountains stood steadily looking down, as snow covered the summits of Mount Sanbalakan, Mount Liwu, and Mount Qilai, which silently kept watch, yet could not avoid quietly telling me something, though they were more silent than the defeated rulers and the uneasy Taiwanese. I could hear the mountains speaking. Not far south of Hualien by foot was a village called Yoshino, where it was said the Japanese lived. From the quaint Japanese name, one knew that it was a special place. Moreover, Yoshino was located at the foot of a high mountain, but unlike Hualien, it did not face the ocean, because directly to the east rose the Coastal Mountain Range, which runs south in the mist all the way to the mouth of the Beinan River, where it ends. Yoshino stood facing the far-off starting point of the Coastal Mountain Range, and so was tucked away at the head of the Taidong Longitudinal Valley. South from there, the train ran all the way between two parallel mountain ranges. The Japanese chose this place to live and gave the village its classical name. It was said that they were seriously experimenting with a new variety of Penglai rice with a limited harvest to present to their emperor, eating it themselves only if there was some surplus, and thereby demonstrating its excellence.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

I visited Yoshino more than once. There was a young girl, somewhat older than I, who lived in my neighborhood and often took me out to play. For some reason, one day she said we were going to Yoshino. She helped me up on the back of her bike, and then we rode out of town. That was probably the first time I left my small world of the chrysalis and the tumblebug and ventured to a faraway place. The mountains never altered shape, maintaining the same appearance, looking down upon me in that familiar way. Sitting on the back of her bike, I looked at the paddy fields and betel palms, and heard the wind whisper in my ears as countless dragonflies circled in the air. We entered the vestibule of a Japanese home; the smells of miso soup and salted daikon radish quietly filled the air, giving it a strange and foreign savor. We were invited into a modest room of tatami mats and sat at a small, low table, waiting for the hostess to show up. There was a large scroll on which I think was written one big character. At the time I couldn’t read the character, but thinking about it now, it was probably the character ᖡ (endurance), written very large and in a cursive form. Suddenly I heard someone enter the room with short, quick steps. It was a woman holding up the hem of her thin kimono, the sash of which was not fastened tightly, leaving her breasts visible. She sat down and in a crisp and hurried voice talked to my older companion. I don’t know what she said; I just sat there, looking around, peeking with curiosity at her exposed breasts, feeling embarrassed. The Japanese woman was friendly and smiled quite naturally at me, but when her eyes met mine, I couldn’t help lowering my head. As the final phase of the Pacific War approached, the rulers mobilized the Taiwanese to build a new airstrip near Yoshino to serve as a staging base from which the kamikaze pilots would set off to attack the U.S. warships at sea. But before it was finished, their emperor announced Japan’s surrender in a radio broadcast. Thinking about it now, it was lucky that they surrendered early; otherwise, regardless of how many suicide aircraft went down the smokestacks of American warships as a show of their endless bushido spirit or how many Japanese youths continued to sacrifice their lives in the “sacred war,” Hualien would have suffered more bombings by American military planes, which would have destroyed not only Yoshino of the Japanese but also our small city that slept year in and year out on that alluvial fan. Amid a total absence of emotion on my part, the Japa-

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

nese withdrew. The betel nut palms were still there, as were the flame trees, old banyan trees, breadfruit trees, and that unknown broad-leafed tree that I was most familiar with, which belonged to the insects. The reeds and white ginger flowers on the shores of the river and lake were still there, and the dragonflies still danced above the footpaths that crisscrossed the fields. The Japanese man of my memory was dressed in an arrogant uniform and carried a sword; the Japanese woman of memory wore a loose-fitting robe with her breasts embarrassingly exposed. She sat on the tatami mats and talked with smile in a voice that was crisp and hurried, but what she talked about, I can’t say.

3 In those years of immaturity and curiosity, vastness and loftiness were about the only things bestowed upon me by my space. The mountains were staunch guardians and the sea was the starting point of imagination, arising as it did from the continuous rolling of the waves and foam. I could imagine the existence, not too distant, of a deep and surging place with a reef, seaweed, and fish swimming in the cold darkness below. But beyond that the powers of my imagination failed, though there was probably also a reef, seaweed, and fish, only bigger and much fiercer. Sometimes I knew by instinct that deep in the open sea off the coast of Hualien there must lie sunken ships that had come to rest there on account of pirate attacks or storms. Sunken in the icy depths was a rusty and rotten warship, its crooked masts and iron chains fused by the seawater, the treasure chests, broken swords, and dull knives scattered under branching coral. Nearby, in twos and threes, were the skeletons of long-dead sailors. Colorful fish swam around, blowing bubbles; and the crabs and starfi sh squirmed and scuttled along, providing a patina of horrifying color to the silent underwater world. However, all of this swayed only in my imagination; I was convinced that it must be so, though it never entered my mind to dive as other boys did to probe that dim world. The thought simply never crossed my mind. Occasionally I indulged in sketching those underwater landscapes, but I was far more enthusiastic about creating a world above the sea for myself, beyond

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

the ken of our eyes, beyond the horizon. Then for some reason the air suddenly stirred, dashing and vibrating to produce one of those storms that no one had the power to oppose or resist. A typhoon was coming. The typhoons came from far away across the sea and always chose to make land at Hualien. In the succession of the long, hot days of summer, we sometimes sensed that there was something unusual at work between the heavens and the earth: the sun turned somber and the wind blew steadily. That’s how it always began. It wasn’t the cool sea breeze whispering on the beach, but rather a sultry, even hot, wind without the slightest hint of moisture. The tree leaves flapped, beating against one another, and the ants quickened their pace at the foot of the wall. In the neighboring courtyard the rooster huddled strangely with the hen and chicks under the eaves, peering about uneasily. The sparrows disappeared from the telephone poles. When you looked up at the mountains behind, they appeared clearer and lighter than usual, the trees so distinct you could count them, and the deep green looked plated with silver light. According to the regulations, the shops in this small city closed early; the pickle vendor, the tinker, the umbrella and shoe repairman, the barber who shouldered the tools of his trade with which to shave people’s heads on the street, the castrator of pigs, and the pedestrians on the streets and alleys all went home one by one. Following tradition, they firmly nailed the planks, which had been used in previous years and stored in sheds, across the doors and windows. So, from the chair where I sat in the kitchen, I could hear the neighbors on all sides hammering, stirring the hot wind. My mother busied herself with taking down the bamboo poles on which clothes were hung out to dry and fi xing them to the floor of the porch, moving the firewood and coal inside along with the earthen jars of pickled cucumbers and dried turnips; nor could the thick, fermented spicy broad-bean sauce and the nearly cured fermented bean curd that had been drying half the summer be forgotten and left outside. She carefully moved all of it into the kitchen, which suddenly seemed to come alive. I sat on the chair watching or slipped down to walk around and touch everything, feeling the warmth of home. The typhoon really was something, I thought, hearing the neighbors nailing their doors and windows shut. The typhoon was very interesting, I thought,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

as I wiped the light perspiration from my neck. The typhoon was coming, hu—hu, the typhoon was coming. At first the strong wind brought rain showers to attack the sheet-metal roofs and board walls. Sitting on the tatami mats, I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard the wind blow stronger and stronger and the rain fall heavier and heavier. I could picture its arrival, a mass of black air rolling toward Hualien from far over the sea. Steadily it loomed, carrying tens of thousands of square meters of rain. Tearing the vast canopy of the sky, it rolled our way, the clouds and moisture churning like boiling water, separating and reuniting in the cosmos. The seawater turned and tossed and swayed, hurling itself furiously at the land. At first we could still hear the female radio announcer talking, and even the impractical music between the news and government orders trying to block out the noise of wind and rain outside. Several candles and a box of matches were kept by the radio. I sat under the lamp and concentrated on listening to the violent beating, shaking, and howling of the typhoon. I listened attentively again and could sense the drum and bugle of the furious waves that besieged the coastal breakwater ever more vehemently. And so the sky darkened. Yes, from the sea rushed the typhoon toward the small city crouched at the foot of the mountain. People were accustomed to its powerful force, as in the past and as they would be in the future; they even felt that the summer cleansing it brought was necessary, to perhaps drive away the insect pests and stagnant air. Perhaps that was not the case, though, after the typhoon warning balloons were raised and amid the exhortations of the radio announcer. After feeling the abnormally hot wind and witnessing the extreme transparency of the air on the mountain, we knew that the wind would bring a huge quantity of rain as it ran madly through the sky over the small city; it would uproot big trees, knock down fences, down electrical wires, even blow the roofs off some houses, sweep away bridges and trains, and send a torrent of mud and rock down onto the highway, cutting off traffic. The typhoon made the night violent and strange to my young soul. The lights went out, and the candle that burned on the small table flickered in the raging darkness and sometimes burst into bloom. Although my eyes were tired, I stared at the candle flame, and listened to the wind and rain howl without letting up. When I woke up, I was safe inside the mosquito

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

net, the wind and rain had stopped, and the bright rays of sunlight shone through the crack in the window onto my face. It was quiet, and the only sound in the cool morning air was the usual drone of a mosquito buzzing outside the net. The typhoon had passed. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window for a look. The planks nailed to the windows the day before had been taken down while I was asleep. Wow! Everything was real! Several banyan trees in the alley had been blown over, and most of the telephone poles were leaning precariously by the roadside. The workers made rush repairs in the mud; broken branches and fallen leaves lay strewn over the roads and wet covered walkways. The adults talked as they pulled down the planks covering the doors, occasionally yelling at kids who were sneaking out to get back inside. An oxcart pulled slowly into the alley. It was loaded with logs of varying lengths and sizes, which had been picked up on the beach early in the morning. I stood and gazed out the window, imaging the typhoon passing over our small city and scurrying to the mountains and there ruthlessly beating the high peaks and old forests. Pouring from deep in the mountains, the rainwater dashed down precipitous streams, roaring down in several rivers, sweeping countless trees and drowned animals along in its flow, all the way down to the Pacific Ocean. But almost immediately, they were washed back to land by the violent waves. Swept back and forth and up and down several times, the trees were stripped of branches and leaves. People risked their lives to retrieve the logs from the crests of the waves, accepting these gifts sent circuitously from the mountains. So, I thought, the typhoon was now still blowing and beating the great forest, and might then be approaching Mount Qilai, where it would uproot more trees, sending them quickly down to the Pacific Ocean. Many risk takers stood by the sea, and under the strong sunlight stared at the drifting logs of various sizes—but were they a gift from the mountains or from the sea? The typhoon must have crossed over Mount Qilai. Once the typhoon crossed Mount Qilai, it had left the boundaries of Hualien. The northern summit of the main peak of Mount Qilai is , meters in height, placing it in the subtropics. Mount Dabajian, to its north, is a rival to Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain to its south, both of which looked down upon distant Hualien, then awake. The people labored in filthy mud and broken tiles, fallen trees, collapsed fences, putting sheet metal back onto the roofs, opening windows and front and back doors to

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

allow the sun to shine in through the clean air. I sat once more on the bench in the kitchen and smelled a fresh and delicate fragrance wafting in from the courtyard and floating slowly out again. Back and forth, it spread, floating in the lively morning light. The wind and rain proved to be just an ordinary summer interlude that never produced any stirring news. The wind and rain passed as quickly as they had come, leaving the small, sleeping city awake. After the habitual busyness and chaos passed, the city went peacefully back to sleep, caressed by the lullaby of the Pacific Ocean and watched over by layer upon layer of big mountains. The typhoon seemed unreal, and though it occurred every year, we easily forgot about it. But it was also what we remembered, it and the dazzling sunlight that shone on the most beautiful alluvial fan in the world.

C LO S E TO X I U G U L U A N

1 At night I lay on the tatami mats under a mosquito net, listening to the tumult of the waves as they swept faintly yet fiercely over my chest. Ever so gently, with a perpetual force, the waves whooshed, never able to cease for a moment. I listened to the waves as they rolled ashore one after another and receded, a large concentric circle. Lying with my head against the pillow, I became the center of that incalculable circle. My spirit fled outward, surging into boundless space, extending outwardly up to a world of utterly inconceivable abstraction, rocking, almost intangibly, and then in a twinkling, I sank off to sleep amid the gentleness of the ocean. The ocean. On the ocean, bloody fighting was, in fact, already taking place. In the summer of , three and a half years after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the American army had advanced steadily across the South Pacific, until they finally took Saipan in the middle of June. Starting from there, the American forces, in coordination with the New Guinea offensive, set their sights on the Philippines. By the end of the year, Saipan was the base of operations for the B- raids on Japan itself. At the beginning of , MacArthur returned to Manila, which was immediately followed by the taking of Iwo Jima. I slept amid the warm melody of the ocean, so peaceful, as if no worries existed. Actually, at that time, many Japanese living in Taiwan were roused to join the “sacred war” and left the community they had ruled, amid the stirring yet sentimental Japanese military songs, never to return. Prior to and following the battle of Luzon, many Taiwanese were conscripted and sent to the South Pacific as military laborers. These Taiwanese really didn’t understand why they were forced into this brutal and shameful war, only to

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

perish absurdly overseas in the tropics. Without a credible call to heroism or a serious or coveted goal, they died on the beaches, in the jungles, and on burning, exploding, and sinking warships. Their demise did not glorify the great Japanese spirit of martyrdom as the Japanese officers claimed in their loud exhortations; nor did it glorify the great Chinese spirit of martyrdom as recorded in the books of their ancestors: how, by bravely sacrificing themselves in time of war, they’d be gods in death, and the soul, from beginning to end, would be a hero in the realm of ghosts. No, this had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Taiwanese military laborers who fell in the battleground of the South Pacific. Their deaths only served to continue a kind of forced humiliation without ever holding forth the slightest possible joy of rebirth. Many were they who were lost overseas. I slept amid the warm melody of the ocean, unaware that all of this was violently transpiring beyond the mist-covered water, and advancing insanely. Immaturely I went on weaving my own dreams, lacking the wisdom to worry about anything. Of equal beauty were the world of my dreams and the waking world. I could spread my arms and fly, fly across the paddy fields and over the mountains. Daytime bore the fragrance of time. The mountains were unchanging and, save for the density of the mist, their appearance never changed. Looking down at me, steep and lofty, they stretched north and south firmly of their own accord. I could hear the mountains speak; far away and high above, they narrated myths from time immemorial to me and told me secrets that no one else knew about. I seriously stored those secrets in my heart. But one day at the mouth of the alley, a throng of children suddenly appeared, jostling as they squeezed into a circle. I rushed over and saw two big men displaying a river deer. Most likely they were amateur hunters. Having killed the deer deep in the mountains, they had carried it down from high above. All traces of blood had been washed away, and it stared wide-eyed as it lay on the ground. The setting sun shot over the roof, shining on its body. There were specks at the corners of its mouth, which was tightly shut in a beautiful curve, making it look as if it were smiling. An adult neighbor stroked its back, and in amazement exclaimed, “It’s still warm!” I looked up at the mountain, so tall and yet so near, just there above the rooftops and the treetops, as if you could reach out and touch the belt at its waist. I was somewhat at a loss, for we shared many secrets; I heard the

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

mountain speak, but it hadn’t told me that on this day at sunset someone would carry a dead deer down and even display it on the ground at the mouth of the alley with such shocking cruelty. Later, when I was finally a bit more knowledgeable, the mountains were high, but in the mist and the bright and sunny forest, I imagined waterfalls everywhere falling into the valleys below; at the water’s edge wild deer and rabbits; overhead a canopy of ancient trees in which groups of monkeys played, chattering and wrangling, as they vied in picking juicy fruit; a large bear ambling along below the trees and hunkering down to watch as a pangolin silently made its way through the underbrush; occasionally a beautiful and slender bluish-green snake slithering through the leaves, vanishing into the dense forest. Off in the distance was a group of wild pigs, bravely thrusting with their tusks; they were the most fearless large animals in the forest, at times attacking hunters and their braying dogs. I heard many stories about wild pigs. Sitting and relaxing in the cool covered walkways on warm summer nights, I’d listen as the adults recounted their strange encounters, how they used their weapons to aid the hunting dogs in bagging a wild pig, and how the wild pigs would resist, even fighting until they died of exhaustion, falling blood-spattered in the broken vegetation and roiled soil. For me, the wild pig was the largest and most fearless beast, the true hero that most beguiled and won my sympathy in hunting stories. It was probably about the time the B-s started flying over Japan and bombing the homeland of the proud Japanese soldiers, as summer turned to autumn in , that American planes also appeared over Taiwan in frightening air raids. But the bombings and strafings occurred only occasionally, and mostly on the larger towns and cities of the north and west, and perhaps never occurred in Hualien. The waves continued to lap at the small city overlooked by mountain peaks; forever forming white ribbons under the beautiful sun and in the rain and wind, they rolled ashore, rising and falling. Not long after that, we finally heard news of an American plane skimming over Hualien, dropping a few bombs near the harbor and strafing the few factories in the area with machine-gun fire. The air raids had finally arrived. The flames of war finally licked this small, unknown city. Probably in the winter, as the American forces inched their way closer to the Philippines, the air raids on Hualien grew more frequent. By the time MacArthur kicked the Japanese out of Luzon, the American military had

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

already decided to bypass Taiwan and the Pescadores, heading directly onto Iwo Jima, while undertaking concentrated air raids against our homeland. We heard that a harbor and two small airstrips in the north and south were bombed frequently, but most residences were not seriously damaged. Only pedestrians who didn’t get out of the way or hide quickly enough were strafed on the streets. Everyone began thinking that it was necessary to evacuate and tried to come up with ways to flee to the mountains, but most people put off doing anything and took a wait-and-see attitude. Each day, when the air raid sirens sounded, everyone would hide in air raid shelters until the all-clear siren sounded; then they stood around on the streets talking, where, heavy of heart, they would exchange experiences. The B-s attacked several of the more important cities in Japan and Taiwan, but I don’t think they ever flew over Hualien, despite the fact that some people, after climbing out of the air raid shelters, would tell how they had seen the huge bomber, and then say without much certainty: That must have been a B-. At that time, some of the more sagacious people began to feel ill at ease, for if the bombers attacked the railroad south of the city, the evacuation route to the mountains would be cut off, making it very difficult to flee. Most people felt that it was best to evacuate toward the south, because north of Hualien it was extremely mountainous, and no one could imagine entering the indigenous villages there, despite the fact that it was also mountainous to the south. But after all, the villages along the rail line were all Han Chinese, some predominately Hakka and some predominately Hokklo. The farther one strayed from the railroad toward the mountains, the more prevalent the indigenous villages naturally became. If one considered evacuating, it had to be done while the railway was still passable.

2 Shortly after a train departed Hualien heading south, in just a matter of minutes, it would enter a longitudinal valley. Far off on the left was the Coastal Range of mountains; off to the right was the great Central Mountain Range. I had no impression of the Coastal Range other than that it was far away and totally unfamiliar, unlike the large mountains to the right, winding and continuous, which seemed to belong to me. Riding the train,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

our attention was focused on the massive mountains to the right, at the foot of which we advanced in a twisting, circuitous route. As I imagined it, the first row of peaks to the west after leaving Hualien and heading south were Papaya Mountain, Mount Lintian, and Mount Yuli, all of which were over , meters in height, at least twice as high as any peak in the Coastal Range. The second row of peaks included Mount Wuling, Mount Dakuai, and Mount Erzi, all approximately , meters in elevation. The third row of massive peaks around Hualien, which along with our Mount Qilai—our great guardian deity at , meters in height—also included Mount Nenggao, Mount Baishi, Mount Andongjun, Mount Danda, Mount Mabolasi, Mount Dashuiku, Mount Sancha, and Mount Xiuguluan, the highest peak of all at , meters above sea level. It stood shoulder to shoulder in height with Jade Mountain and looked northward to Mount Qilai, all pillars in Taiwan to support heaven. Mount Xiuguluan was originally known as Mount Mahuolasi. At its eastern foot flowed the Mahuolasi River and the Miyasang River, which came together in the mysterious mountain forest. Flowing southeast, they joined the Majiacichun River and the Taluomu River. As the river broadened, it was referred to as the Lele River. It then flowed east until it was obstructed by the Coastal Range, in a place approximately twelve kilometers from the sea, where it flowed over twenty kilometers to the north, by which point it was known as the Xiuguluan River. From there it turned east and cut through the volcanic stone of the Coastal Range, surging with lightning speed through precipitous stone walls under the watchful gaze of the ancient forest into the sea. The Xiuguluan River is the only river with its source in the Central Range that cuts through the Coastal Range and flows into the Pacific Ocean. As it bends east just before flowing through the Coastal Range, there is a train stop called Ruisui, once called Shuiwei, which is about fifty kilometers from Hualien. Somewhat earlier, just before the train enters the longitudinal valley heading north, is a station called Yuli, which is seventy kilometers from Hualien. Ruisui and Yuli are major stops on the eastern railway and have large concentrations of Han Chinese. When the number of American air raids on Hualien was on the increase, my parents decided to band together with other relatives and evacuate to the mountainous areas around Ruisui or Yuli.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

As the train left Hualien and entered the longitudinal valley, the paddy fields were replaced by dry fields. All the small villages along the railway looked very much the same, with countless betel palms surrounding the small farmhouses and green bamboo and breadfruit trees interspersed irregularly between. The farmhouses were roofed in simple metal sheeting or straw thatch. Next to the houses were outbuildings such as cowsheds, pigpens, and chicken coops. Pumps could be seen outside some of the houses, while others had covered wells in their courtyards. Vegetable patches lay beyond the betel palms, and still farther off were the rice fields. In spring the farmers and their plow oxen could be seen working between the footpaths while the children played on the field embankments or on the banks of the streams. Dragonflies flew in the air; reeds and white ginger flowers lined the banks of the streams and ponds. Seldom did planes fly over the fields, disrupting the order of farm life in the valley. Everything was peaceful and calm. The train proceeded slowly, belching thick smoke. This rail line was one of the narrowest in Taiwan. It couldn’t compare with the Western Longitudinal Railway in width or speed, chugging, winding slowly along especially as it ascended the slopes, chugging along slower than a pedestrian. Each time the train approached the mouth of a river—those streams that originated in the huge mountains and joined the Xiuguluan River—it appeared to speed up, and inevitably accompanied by the tooting of its steam whistle, it would fly across the steel-truss bridge. From the train window I looked upstream to the mist-shrouded reaches at the foot of the mountain; the riverbed was quite wide and filled with large and small stones, but the water flowed in a narrow trickle under a woven bamboo footbridge. That’s the way the rivers usually were. But when a typhoon struck, water would rush down from the high mountains in a raging torrent, immediately filling the rocky riverbed with muddy water. Uprooted trees floated on the surface, along with dead timber, weeds, drowned animals, and other indistinguishable things from deep in the mountains. Naturally at such times, the bamboo bridges we originally had seen would have been swept downstream to the Xiuguluan River and out into the sea. Sometimes the steel railroad bridges were knocked askew or even washed downstream to a sandbar. As the typhoon passed, the floodwaters abated and people began setting the bridges upright or erecting bamboo bridges over the narrow

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

trickle of water flowing among the rocks, allowing cautious pedestrians carrying loads and people on bicycles to cross once again. Whistling, the train crossed a bridge and began a difficult ascent, chugging slowly ahead. The paddy fields became scarcer; the flat fields in the area were planted with sugarcane and cassava, as well as crops I’d never known. Bamboo grew thick on the mountain slopes, from the railroad tracks rising all the way up to the indistinct peaks. Occasionally, a tree would be seen trembling in the cool mountain air. I seem to recall that the fifty-kilometer trip took a whole day. But it didn’t really feel like we were evacuating, more like a happy spring trip instead, mainly because we didn’t once hear the sound of air raid sirens. Each time the train arrived at a small station, we’d have a long wait or would be coupled to another train, or we waited for a northbound train from Taidong to switch or pass before continuing on. This stretch of track was very quiet. From the train I looked at the farmhouses and fields, the rivers and the forests, watched the receding telephone poles, without the slightest fear one experiences in wartime. But after we had settled in the mountains, I one day heard the adults saying that one train that had departed from Hualien after ours had been attacked by an American plane near the Papaya River. At first, when the plane suddenly appeared, the train’s engineer didn’t know what to do, so he stopped in a wide open space. The plane began to strafe the train from a low altitude. Shortly thereafter, when some passengers saw the plane turn and head off in a different direction, they braved it by leaping out of the cars and running for cover, crawling amid the rocks and reeds. Unexpectedly, the plane quickly turned and headed back, firing on those seeking cover, killing many, before sweeping through the sky above the Papaya River and flying out over the ocean. A number of years later, when I was in middle school, one boy told me that he and his mother had been on that unfortunate train. He had luckily survived, but his mother had been killed in the bloody strafing. He was my good friend, and I recall that his father never remarried. At around four in the afternoon we arrived at the last small station before Ruisui. The train came to an abrupt halt. The passengers jumped off the train with all kinds of luggage, including clothing, bedding, and cooking utensils tied on the ends of a pole. The small station was like any other on the eastern rail line—suff used in gray, silent and desolate, but imbued

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

with a rural atmosphere. Outside the station, under the betel palms, we boarded an oxcart, took the road across the railroad tracks, and, rocking and swaying, headed toward the mountains. I probably fell asleep on this hot and humid mountain road. After what seemed like quite a while, and after being unbearably jostled around, we finally arrived at a small open area on the mountain ridge; though night was approaching, we could see three or four small thatched huts. Someone came out and greeted us and gave us dinner under a coal-oil lamp. The adults all spoke in whispers; I was exhausted before I finished eating. The insects cried all around, but in the deep darkness the din was penetrated by a vast silence. The coal-oil lamp flickered strangely, but without being scary. Then I went to sleep.

3 I woke before it was entirely light. Lying in bed, I thought about the events of the previous day. I knew I had been on the train all day, and later took an oxcart to arrive at a distant place I had never visited before. I think I woke once during the night and saw the low flame in the lamp, which was insufficient to light the small room. Before I could notice anything else, I fell soundly asleep again. But now, just as dawn was about to break, I suddenly remembered everything: the train, the steel-truss bridge, the mountains and rivers, the bamboo forest, the sight and smell of the little station. I got out of bed and walked over to the window to have a look outside. Branches and dry leaves were scattered over the newly cleared land, and the wood from the felled timber probably had already been handed over to the government. Looking out the window, I could see the bamboo and bushes on the rise nearby. I opened the door and stepped out for another look. The rising ground was part of the mountain slope. The small houses faced the forest with the mountain for a backdrop. A small, rough road wound around to a clearing where there were paddy fields. Off in the distance were some farmhouses tucked behind some betel palms. Someone was already working in the fields; the ox stood in a grassy area, chewing and lithely flicking its tail to shoo away the mosquitoes and gnats that always followed it. Seeing the paddy fields in the ridge gap, we figured that most of the locals were probably Han Chinese and not Ami. Given the distance from

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

the rail line, one would expect it to be an aboriginal village. The Ami didn’t plant much rice, preferring instead dry-farmed millet. Spring plowing had just commenced when we arrived on the mountain ridge, and the fields were busy. The sun had already risen from beyond the sea and shone over the countryside, and the cool spring air was gradually disappearing. I saw the plow oxen chewing grass and flicking their tails, I saw egrets skimming over the pools crisscrossed with paths. I was bound and determined to remember the pure and simple colors and charm. Standing on this side of the paddy fields and looking across, I felt it was a luxuriant universe. The group of small mountains, rising and falling, beyond the bamboo groves, betel palms, and farmhouses, seemed to embrace this little plain. It was a group of small, verdant mountains, behind which towered much larger mountains, their peaks shrouded in clouds. Distant and indistinct, they appeared the same as I had seen them on the way south from Hualien. They had a primitive grayish-green hue as we gazed fi xedly at each other through the morning cloud-mist. The mountain ridge was awash with the sun’s rays. I  turned to look at our little shelter through the forest, incredulous that anyone was living there. The small mountains beyond were a deep greenish blue. I was pleased and excited by this new place. Several days later, I was thoroughly familiar with the mountain gap and its surroundings. Many species of birds flocked in the forest before the hut, and the noises they made often drew me into the forest in search of them. I once discovered a bird’s nest in a small tree, in which were some recently hatched fledglings, completely bare and squeezed together, mouths open. As I leaned against the tree trunk observing them, a large yellow bird swooped down at me, and raucously it fiercely beat its heavy wings, forcing me down out of the tree. It was the mother of the chicks. One day on the backside of the mountain I saw a high framework of woven bamboo on which was stretched a very fine line in which hung a bird upside down, trembling on the verge of death. The sunlight shone on its beautiful plumage, tossed by the breeze. Right when I was wondering how to get the bird down, a small, dark-skinned man stepped from the forest, and without uttering a word, drew down the fine line, untied the bird, and then tied it by its feet with another string at his waist. Then, looking at me, he cleverly reset the fine line on the framework and left without as much as a by-your-

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

leave. I noticed he already had quite a string of dead birds at his waist, silently bumping against his blade in its scabbard. Later, after the paddy fields were filled with water and the farmers were getting ready to plant the rice sprouts, an urgent whistling, something like a train whistle, was heard from the other side of the mountains. We soon realized it was an air raid siren. No one ever thought planes would appear here, so everyone fled to the backside of the mountains, but the siren soon ceased. Over the next few days we frequently heard it. The farmers would put aside the buckets that held the rice sprouts and run to take temporary shelter in the ditches. We also became accustomed to running quickly more than halfway up the mountain to a low-lying earthen pit and sitting there, but we never once saw an airplane, or even so much as heard one. We guessed that a plane must have followed the railroad tracks south from Hualien, dropping several bombs along the way and strafing people on foot, then banked left at the wide mouth of a river and headed back out to sea. Under these circumstances, the farmers planted the rice sprouts, and the plow oxen, flicking their tails, grazed more leisurely than ever by the water. The egrets stood in the paddy fields or elegantly flapped their wings. I frequently went to where the water buffalo stood grazing on grass to pick white ginger flowers or play with the kids looking after the water buffalo. When it was hot, I would strip off my clothes and swim in the river. Once, as I climbed out of the water, one of the kids let me ride the water buffalo he was looking after, but before counting to twenty, I had to get off. I had climbed on its back with some difficulty and was naturally very excited; however, since I wasn’t wearing any trousers, the hair on the water buffalo’s back tickled me and made me laugh. Suddenly, I felt the heat from the water buffalo’s body, so I climbed off. After that experience, I thought I knew why the water buffalos like bathing so much, and why, when they were not working, they spent all their time in the river, with only their heads and two horns sticking out of the water, looking ever so foolish. Why, you might ask. I believed it was because their body temperature was too high. The rice plants grew ever thicker; no one was very earnest about taking shelter when the air raid siren sounded. One day, after the all clear siren sounded, I decided to walk up the mountain through the forest. Soon I turned and came into a bright clearing, where I saw three men and a water

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

buffalo. Speaking Taiwanese, the men obviously were not Ami, but when they saw me emerge from the forest, they waved their hands among themselves and said nothing. With an utterly dejected look, the water buffalo stood to one side, tied firmly to a large tree. Filled with curiosity, I looked at the three men and then at the water buffalo, and discovered that it was crying. “Look! Your water buffalo is crying!” I said. The three men glanced at one another and suddenly looked as dejected as the water buffalo. With a wave of his hand, one of the men angrily told me to get lost. I didn’t sleep well that night because of a recurring dream about that crying water buffalo. The following morning, I took the same route to that clearing in the meadow, where I discovered that the ground beneath the tree was covered with blood and a pile of manure, circled by hordes of gnats and flies. Although I was somewhat stupid and immature, I knew that those three men had slaughtered that crying water buffalo the previous afternoon. The slaughter came as a great shock to me. Although I had not seen the assault of those three men or the death of the water buffalo with my own eyes, I could imagine everything: how the three of them knocked it senseless with a heavy object, how they dismembered it with a sharp knife, leaving the scene covered with blood. And how the water buffalo, silently, after a hard life of plowing and pulling a cart, realized how really cruel and heartless were the people whom it had served. Perhaps those three men were the farmers it had always known, and that was why it cried so sadly for itself and for the heartless cruelty of men. When my indignation and fear were at their peak, I had to keep telling myself that those three men were cattle thieves, and certainly not the owners. Even so, that was the first time I knew the fear of death, despite the fact that it was just a water buff alo. I detected the scent of human brutality, which had spread to mix with the superficial purity of the village. Th is gap in the mountains was nowhere near as peaceful and easy as I had imagined, nor nearly as pure as I imagined it. Despondency and doubt were fostered and grew in my callow and immature mind amid the senseless air raid sirens. At the beginning of summer, the ears of rice swayed in the wind, the dragonflies increased in numbers, and during the day the air raid sirens never ceased. Suddenly my mother and father said we were going to leave and move to the mountain to the west of Mount Yuli, where the Xiuguluan River entered the longitudinal valley and made a sharp turn to the north. Thinking about the slaugh-

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

ter, I was only too willing to leave that place which had brought such disappointment. With several neighbors, we formed a procession of oxcarts along the left bank of the Xiuguluan River heading south. To guard against surprise attacks from the air, we made our way at night and rested during the day. In this way, after crossing a number of mountaintops and tributaries of the Xiuguluan River, we finally reached an aboriginal village twenty kilometers away. Now I realize that we left that mountain gap where the ears of rice were ripening and hurriedly relocated in this mountain village on account of the significant increase in air raids as the war in the Pacific entered its final days. At the beginning of April, , the American forces launched a fullscale offensive against Okinawa, which lasted almost three months. The Japanese government, seeing that the enemy was at the door, mobilized young people to sacrifice themselves in the fighting, organized the kamikaze corps, and within those three burning months, engaged in a mad suicidal military strategy. In order to prevent the Japanese soldiers on Taiwan from participating, the American forces, most likely on account of having received intelligence that the Japanese were building a southern airfield along the coast near Hualien for suicide planes, had dramatically increased the number of air raids on eastern Taiwan. Oftentimes the trains were not running because the bridges were destroyed as soon as they were repaired. Even when the trains were running, most people didn’t dare ride them, afraid lest they be attacked from the air. On that twenty-kilometer trip we made, we saw a lot of destruction and many intact houses that had been deserted when people fled to the mountains for safety. Most of the tributaries of the Xiuguluan River were actually quite small despite large stonefilled riverbeds. On one occasion, however, we encountered a tributary with a huge flow of water. After dark, we were led across by the Ami. I sat perched on a high oxcart with the chickens and ducks—the chicken cages had been placed on top of the duck cages because the chickens, it was said, were afraid of drowning and the ducks weren’t. The village had another smell about it, and for a while I didn’t know how I could stand it. Later, every time I entered an Ami village, I encountered the same smell. At first I didn’t much care for it, but later I became accustomed to it, so much so that I eventually found it agreeable. There were no rice paddies. By the end of the war, rice was becoming scarcer, and my

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

mother began adding potatoes to the rice when she cooked it. As time went on, the proportion of potato increased. Sometimes an Ami would come selling millet from a bag on his back, but he preferred to barter. My mom later made the millet into millet porridge as our principal food. Once again I began making my way through the new atmosphere of the mountain forest, watching the Ami hunters going in and out of the valleys and ravines or moving quickly between the banana orchards and the bamboo groves. I hadn’t forgotten that crying water buffalo. Before the summer was out, air raid sirens were heard here as well, wailing, increasing with each passing day. But this time we didn’t have to run a long way to the mountain forest to hide, because there were air raid shelters all over the village. I never could forget that crying water buffalo at another mountain gap, where, after the all clear siren sounded, it had been killed by three men. I wonder if my childhood didn’t end with the slaughter of that water buffalo.

4 At the height of summer that year, I became more familiar with the village smell. I was quite sensitive that it was trying to tell me something, trying to inspire new knowledge and feelings in me. That was the special aura of the Ami. I knew them as rough, brave, pure, and happy-go-lucky. They grew up in the green mountain wilds but seemed possessed of the shortcoming of fatalism. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I decided to search. An outsider came running into the village, panting and shouting: “It’s peace, peace!” People came out of the houses and out of the forest to the clearing and welcomed him with suspicion. “Peace!” he shouted. “Peace!” In mid-August , Japan announced its unconditional surrender. So the war ended, but my search had not yet begun.

THEIR WORLD

1 Their world was definitely permeated with a unique smell. The first time I noticed the smell was as we approached a mountain village deep in a wooded area on Mount Xiuguluan. It was precisely where the Central Mountain Range gradually starts its descent toward the seacoast, but for various geological factors, never quite makes it into the salt sea, gently rising and falling several times before ending its eastward descent with grace and maturity. A stream ran through the village, flowing far away and emptying into a wider stream before flowing indolently to join the Xiuguluan River on ordinary days, or rushing down in a frenzied rage when a torrent occurred in the mountains. When the mountain torrent flew down through the primeval forest to . . . When the mountain torrent came flying down through the primeval forest, a loud noise indicated its direction, much like a bugle call before a cavalry charge, but much deeper and louder, like thunder, though longer and more sustained than thunder, perhaps like peals of thunder, continuously linked, without the warning flash of lightning but bringing heavy rain falling unrestrained, pelting the little village on a remote mountain gap. We stayed indoors out of the rain, which really wasn’t scary. Pressed against the window, I stood on tiptoes looking at the water roaring down the mountain slope, surging off into the misty and rainy wilds. The erstwhile stream had now become a long river. I closed the wet window and, reconsidering, opened it again just a crack, and suddenly I had the feeling that I had witnessed the scene before, when the typhoon passed over Hualien. But I didn’t really see it. It was an illusion, but one that approximated reality. The shapes of trees and animals floated in the huge rapids, bobbing, spinning,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

staggering, and fleeting. It was dark inside. Owing to my willful absorption of the marvels of heaven and earth, at an age of fervent childish curiosity, to see and savor those shapes and the speed, and also hear, remember the sounds and colors, as well as hoard them in my mind and thoughts, formed one side of my wild nature, and by never forgetting any of it, my wild side would never be extinguished. After the mountain torrent had passed, the bright sunlight fully illumined every corner. The course of that stream was several times larger, but the amount of water remained the same as before, flowing just as shallowly and as slowly, trickling. The reeds and Chinese silver grass quickly grew again on both banks and in the dried riverbed. Sometimes I walked upstream, and at a bend deeper in the forest I ran into a patch of lilies, snow white with a clean fragrance. I climbed up and picked a lily, just one, and then continued slowly amid the forest, open spaces, and spring water. I carried the flower and remembered the location of that patch of lilies and could return the next day. The sun shone on the village on the other side of the water, and the bamboo partridges and quail clucked in the low brush. Separated by the dense forest, I often heard cries, sometimes stopping only to be followed by quick footsteps and people talking. Their speech was clear, crisp, and sonorous, but I didn’t understand it—it was the Ami people conversing and passing messages as they hunted. Occasionally I’d catch sight of them, and one time I actually came face to face with a hunter. We stood there in silence scrutinizing each other. He must have decided there was nothing of interest, because he turned and walked away. I only saw him once in the short summer after the mountain torrent. He represented the entire tribe. Even when he (maybe it wasn’t him, but someone else from the tribe) carried millet for trade, I couldn’t help but be afraid at first, and even lacked the courage to take a good look at him. Behind every tree in the forest, I frequently heard him talking with his people and their passing on messages, right behind the forest, like a bird crying, the wind blowing, or raindrops falling, stirring behind every tree and flower, from a direction I couldn’t pinpoint, outside my common knowledge, though there was no end to my curiosity or the courage with which I conducted my search. Their speech, as real as the mountain forest, was something I was anxious to know. The banana orchards, papaya trees, creeping wood sorrel,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

guava, betel palms, sweet orange, and pomelo, as well as reed flowers, angelica, spider brake, mulberry, lilies, morning glories, and canna lilies, all vied to show off in the summer like a vast symphony. The horsetail tree, Formosan acacia, poplar, flame tree, Chinese banyan, giant bamboo, coir palm, dwarf elephant’s ear, as well as the stately China fir, black pine, and Formosan cypress either grew nearby or took shape at the limits of vision. They beckoned, waved, and even shouted to me, wanting me to approach them, embrace them, and enter among them. I remember those plant names, though some of them I chose. Although that human speech shone behind the forest, I couldn’t comprehend its meaning and just had to let it float on by, leaving confusion on my side, and as always, me standing securely in my boundless curiosity. One morning, as I was wandering through a gigantic banana orchard and the sun was shining on the slope, I suddenly heard a single cicada call. Almost immediately the entire mountainside exploded in a response of similar cries. I continued walking surrounded by the cicada calls while starting up a small rise I had not previously climbed. I was soaked in perspiration, and a cool summer breeze blew over me. From the top of the rise, I could see our small house in the distance with its thatched roof, which was covered with tree leaves and branches in order to keep the heat out as well as for camouflage from air raids. Actually, in those days, even though the air raid sirens sounded continuously, the American bombers never deviated from the rail line, never once entered the mountainous country. Looking in the other direction, I saw several very small houses squatting deep in a valley. Tiny and pale yellow, they squatted silently amid the rows of green and golden peaks. I descended in a run in that direction, wind whistling in my ears, mustard seeds covering my clothes and pants. It was a new world, I thought. Panting heavily, I ran smack into a woman in black. Under the scorching sun, she was adorned in elaborate clothing, jewelry, and headdress, and carried a large woven bamboo basket. Between her lips was a large cheroot. Although I had never directly encountered such a strange woman, I knew that she must be a mountain aboriginal. There was no mistake: an Ami, the kind of person I had hoped to meet, but unexpectedly it was a woman. The woman opened her mouth and began to gabble; she pointed at me, at the mountain, and at herself, then she put down her basket, took out a

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

banana, and placed it in my hand. She tossed the cheroot into her basket, squatted, and looked me over thoroughly, her eyes filled with kindness and curiosity. I’m sure she was no less curious than I was. Then, taking my hand, she stood up, skillfully shouldered her basket, and set off with me. Soon we were followed by a group of Ami boys, who chattered excitedly. The woman and I entered the village of grass houses, where, almost at once, I was assailed by that powerful smell, strange but fascinating. At first I thought it was tree leaves or wild grass, or some sort of flower or grass I had never before encountered, or even the traces left by a bird that had flown over or the dust raised by a rabbit hopping through the grass. I wondered what the smell was. Maybe it was the happiness at the betel palm growing tall, the night dew suspended at the end of a banana leaf, the difficulty a new bamboo shoot had in breaking through the soil, or perhaps the lowing of a calf for its mother. It was a happy-go-lucky, a brave and uncalculating smell, one that was so sincere, honest, simple, and open, one of spontaneous laughter or tears. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a shyness, fear, tiredness, and indolence would seep through the ordinary atmosphere. It was a fruitless search for a dull light in the empty darkness. It was a reliance on the teachings of legend and totems and worries about difficultto-mention taboos. That smell was imbued with faith immemorial, absolute courage, nearly insane anger, endless tenderness, love, and sympathy, and colored with fatalism. It was also like music, like a newborn baby’s cry, a prodigal’s song, an epithalamium, the groans of a dying warrior. That smell was fatalistic, desolate, determined, with no leeway to look back. Floating in the village air, it immediately stuck to my clothing, my body, and my spirit, and, as I grew up with the passage of time, it stayed with me even to this day. Returning from the village, I was excited, for it was as if in the process of my bold explorations I had been predestined to discover, and had in fact discovered, a new world, their world. That world was both dull and flourishing, the reality of which was tinged with fleeting mystery. Not long after the end of the war, we again rented an oxcart and took that small road to the village nearby to catch the train back to Hualien. That was the end of summer, in the early morning when the mountains were still green. The birds called peacefully in the forest; the ground was covered with a layer of dew; and farther off there was smoke and mist. Sud-

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

denly the cicadas cried once more. I looked back at the small mountain behind the house and bid a bewildered farewell. I was reluctant to leave, but not that reluctant—on the other side of that small mountain was a new world, their world. I was quite confused, but I was resolutely making plans, as if real, to return. After I grew up, I would return. I hoped I could grow up quickly so that I could come back soon, and grow up big and strong like those hunters, so that I could run through the forest with them, and maybe I could even use their language to communicate and pass messages with them. I hoped I would grow up quickly. The oxcart left the foot of the mountain. I know the tears welled up in my eyes and the little mountain and the forest became a blurry illusion. My tears welled up, but I was determined not to let them fall; they melted away, leaving my eyelashes a bit moist.

2 In those years, Taiwan’s aborigines were already divided into two groups: the plains dwellers and the mountain dwellers. I say two groups, but this division was the result of the categorical analysis by a stronger foreign culture of what was in actuality a single ancient people, who, after a process of moving and spreading over many generations, produced some secondary cultural characteristics. The so-called plains dwellers originally lived on the fertile plains of the west coast and very early on practiced rudimentary agriculture in addition to hunting and fishing. In the forty years the Dutch occupied Taiwan, they actively taught them how to raise water buffalo and cultivate rice. Later, after the Ming dynasty rule of Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) and Qing dynasty rule, as well as deliberate planning by the Japanese colonial authorities, they gradually spread to all parts of the island, even crossing the mountains, stopping at the Pacific Ocean on the east coast at the farthest. In general, the mountain dwellers developed later and lived in groups in the region of the Central Mountain Range, especially in the limited gaps and plateaus among the peaks, areas that the Han Chinese only entered later, if at all. Owing to different ways of life and locale, they have been divided into ten tribes: Saisiyat, Atayal, Tsou, Thao, Bunun, Rukai, Paiwan, Puyuma, the Yami of Orichid Island, and the Ami, the tribe I’d had contact with since childhood.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

The Ami is the largest of the ten tribes in terms of population. The tribe is spread out over eastern Taiwan, in the mountains and along the coast, in a long, narrow swath of land extending from the mouth of Liwu Stream to the mouth of the Beinan River. The most southerly branch resides on the Pingdong peninsula, living alone among the Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, and Puyuma peoples. This group is the so-called Hengchun Ami, while the branch that resides north of the Beinan River is referred to as the Beinan Ami. The two branches are collectively referred to as the Southern Ami by some people. Farther north along the Pacific coast, east of the Coastal Mountain Range, live the Coastal Ami. Another branch, the Xiuguluan Ami, lives in the Xiuguluan River Basin, west of the Coastal Mountain Range and near the foot of the Central Mountains. Their neighbors are the Bunun people, who live deep in the mountains and have contact with a small number of Atayal people who passed south. These two branches are referred to together as the Central Ami. The northernmost branch is called the Nanshi Ami, and they live in the Hualien area. Their neighbors include the Atayal and the Bunun, and they have dealings with the Yilan Gemalan plains dwellers, who are known as the Galewan in Hualien. They were forced into this area in the mid-nineteenth century when the Han Chinese began to open up the Lanyang plains. The Nanshi Ami is the sole branch of the Northern Ami. Ami society is matriarchal, different from other Taiwan aborigines. The most significant thing, though, is that although the Ami have always been considered mountain dwellers, they typically reside in the better plains at the foot of mountains. Moreover, in addition to fishing and hunting, they were proficient farmers. Although they didn’t necessarily engage in wet rice cultivation, they did have fields of their own. Thinking back on my childhood years now, the first time I entered an aboriginal village in which floated that difficult-to-describe smell, I had, without being aware of it, already had contact with an indigenous village, ignorantly barging into their world. When I left, I couldn’t explain my excitement, but the experience remained with me as a sediment in my spirit until many years later, when, for some inexplicable reason, it all reappeared, clear as a bell. It must have been a Xiuguluan Ami village. Prior to that experience, I had occasionally seen Ami hunters running quickly through the mountain forest as well as those talking and passing messages. They must have been men from that branch, though later I did hear that the Bunun

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

hunting territory was quite large, and they had long since invaded Ami territory. This was more than likely on account of the Ami not being particularly passionate about hunting, with some even expressing a total lack of interest in fishing. When it came to work, they preferred farming, puttering in their gardens. But my intuition tells me that the mountain aborigines I met were all Xiuguluan Ami. According to Ami legend, their ancestors always moved south to north. However, since the creation myths of the various branches are not identical, one can only speculate about the northern and southern limits. I think it must have been a narrow and small universe out of which metamorphosed a huge cosmos. The Xiuguluan Ami believe that the universe was opened by a single great deity. He handed the sun, moon, and stars over to his siblings to run, and their descendants became the gods and spirits of the real world, in charge of activities such as sacrifices, planting, fishing, hunting, war, and giving birth. After a dozen generations, floodwaters covered the earth. Only a brother and sister survived and later married, and from them all others are descended. The story of the flood is also found among the Nanshi Ami, as well as in many other places throughout the world. It is one of the most common legends of human genesis known. Why this is so, is a complete mystery. In addition to myths and legends, there is one real story that is very amazing. For generations, the Ami to the south of Hualien had planted dry crops until about fifty years before I was born, at which time they suddenly discovered that the Han Chinese and the Galewan engaged in irrigation and transplanted rice sprouts, which came as a surprise. At that time, they also tried their hand at growing rice, but they found dry agriculture truly to their liking. Their principal crops include millet and glutinous rice. They also grow quinoa, sweet potatoes, pigeon peas, sugarcane, sesame, peanuts, and cassava. Quinoa is used exclusively in the brewing of liquor. They also grow tobacco, betel nut, bananas, papayas, chili pepper, ginger, and taro as well as other types of melons and vegetables. However, they do not like to grow pineapple, because they believe it will lead to illness through bewitching, in which case one has to consult a shaman to dispel the evil. The shaman will take a branch or piece of bamboo into the field, light one end of it, and then strike a newly planted pineapple and say: Please don’t harm that sick person, please let him recover.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

When I bid farewell to the Xiuguluan Ami village, I didn’t realize they had so many taboos. As I grew up, I gradually learned that they conduct many rituals during each season of the year. The sacrificial rites were rituals of taboos. They have special rituals for sowing, praying for rain, praying for sunny days, for repelling insects, harvesting, storing crops, and a bountiful year. Moreover, it is stipulated that vegetables, fish, and shrimp cannot be consumed prior to or after a ritual. There are even more taboos surrounding hunting. Hunting is a male occupation, and women are not allowed to participate and not even allowed to touch hunting implements and weapons. They are good at hunting or trapping any kind of bird or animal, and especially like deer, wild pig, wild goat, and pheasant, and also enjoyed taking muntjac, rabbit, monkey, squirrel, partridge, and even weasel, swallows, and sparrows, and so on. However, they will do their best to avoid bear, because if a killed bear falls with its head to the south, east, or southeast, it is a sign of bad luck for the hunter’s wife, children, or even the hunter himself. It is a good omen only if the bear falls to the west or north, but the probability is pretty slim. If a hunter dreams of a fish on the eve of a hunt, it is a bad omen, and the departure date must be changed; dreaming of himself facing north to take off his clothes is a good sign, while dreaming of himself in a red shirt is a symbol of injury and loss of blood. Moreover, weaving cloth or sewing clothing is not done in the home within five days of a hunt; otherwise the hunter will trip. Also, for some unknown reason, bathing is not permitted within five days of a hunt. There are far fewer taboos for fishing. However, fishing is not permitted when millet or glutinous rice is being harvested, and on the first day of the ritual for a bountiful year, fish cannot be eaten. A married man cannot go fishing when his wife is pregnant or during her menstrual period. At those times, even if he works very hard in the river, his labors will come to naught because his wife is pregnant or having her period. I bid farewell to that mysterious mountain village with its strange floating smell and its endless listlessness and many illusions. Later, as I grew up, although I never had a chance to return to that village and even slowly forgot where it was located, I frequently recalled it with longing, the singing birds, the deafening cries of the cicadas, and the cool breeze blowing on the shining leaf tips of the trees. Or when the quiet contained my curious spirit, sitting on a huge root as the green shade never stopped vibrating with the

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

cadence of a hymn. The fallen leaves covering the ground were imbued with a timeless fragrance, both a little familiar and a little strange. I had found my own universe, one concealed just for me, where I could let my fancy play. I so treasured that universe where my fancy played that I had no wish to reveal it to another living soul. I didn’t know what to make of this growing up, but I do know that there was an abiding and progressive determination to understand, like, and love that world between the ideal and the real. Even if one day in the future it meant I couldn’t like it because I understood it, because I had lost the power of imagination by knowing too much, I knew I would maintain this passionate love, not an inborn love, but a pure love that I had mysteriously sought and pursued. Love for that world between the real and the false, a cherished world. Their world.

3 Their world was my world. Or I should say, their world was once my world. When I returned to Hualien from the mountain village, nothing seemed to have happened. It was very tranquil. War had once spread to this little city, but I hadn’t the ability to distinguish the difference, before and after. Besides, when the train pulled into Hualien station, darkness had already fallen and I couldn’t see a thing. But, curled up in the rickshaw, between sleeping and waking, I could make out some lights that were exceptionally bright, something that never occurred in the mountains. The lights were close to the ground, leaping and swaying, while in midair, one’s eyes met with an impenetrable darkness, and looking higher, one saw the star-filled sky. I knew that where the lights flickered were people’s houses, the darkness in the middle was the mountains, and the brilliant heights were the early autumn sky that peacefully covered the little city heavy with sleep. I heard the sound of the sea; the familiar sweetness of the sea had returned. As I lay down beneath the mosquito net listening to the whoosh of the sea rising and falling, I couldn’t bear to fall asleep. From that year until I left Hualien to attend university, what most struck my fancy, in addition to the sea and mountains, were the Ami villages. At first perhaps fancy is all it was, but it gradually became an urgent desire to understand. Originally, the Ami in the area of Hualien were divided into

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

seven tribal villages, but by the time I reached the age of understanding, only three remained due to movement and separation. The three tribal villages were Doulan, Bobo, and Lilou. Their myths and legends were pretty much the same as those of the Central and Southern Ami, including a flood story that confirmed the movement from south to north. Every tribal village possessed a tightly knit structure, each village area was surrounded by a wooden stockade, and news was transmitted via wooden drums. The Ami here also had various rituals, ceremonies, and subsidiary taboos; however, as my age increased, the rituals and taboos lost some of their mystery. Moreover, in those ten-odd years, rapid changes took place among the Ami in the Hualien area. Following the departure of the Japanese, a new rural system was replacing the system established during the colonial period. The Chinese lifestyle had already wrought great changes, and many of the old customs and habits of the tribes were unavoidably being lost as the pace of change increased in the new era. The names of most of the villages in the Hualien area were changed. Not only were the Japanese-sounding names eliminated, many that were phonetic approximations of aboriginal names were also replaced. Therefore, from south to north village names with a didactic function appeared, such as Da Yu, Sanmin, Guangfu, Datong, Zhixue, Yichang, Chongde, and Heping; otherwise, there were the poetic ones, Wuhe, Hongye, Fengming, Yuemei, Daoxiang, and Jiahe. I disliked both types. And Yoshino Village near the mountains was changed to Ji’an. The changes came very quickly. When I was growing up and on occasion heard names such as Doulan, Jiye, or Galewan, I felt as if I were thrown back to some ancient world. Although I was not necessarily able to grasp the emotions of being joyful, angry, sad, and happy, I did experience a nostalgic mood. When the Ami came into Hualien, they came in groups. The men were dressed quite ordinarily, much like Han Chinese men, so I really didn’t notice them. However, when I saw Ami women, I was always very excited, and so approached with the desire of speaking with them. I could greet them with a few simple words in their language, some of which were certainly friendly words, others of which I’m afraid were some dirty words taught to me by the bad kids. As a result of our conversation they often looked flustered, leaving me crestfallen or even afraid. They were usually richly attired when they came to town, and sometimes even wore their headdresses.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Their clothes were immaculate and primarily red and black, each layer fastened together. In those days I thought their adornments were the most beautiful. Descending fi ne black and red cloth, the most symmetric and harmonious piece hung as a short skirt, and their legs were covered in a cloth of a different design but also primarily in red and black, intricately embroidered with rows of tassels all the way to the ankle. However, the most beautiful of all was that under all this, they almost all went barefoot. They walked barefoot on Hualien’s cobblestone streets and alleys, asphalt roads scorched by the sun, and the ground made muddy by the rain. The bronze bells on their clothes tinkled with a gentle rhythm as they walked with woven bamboo baskets on their backs or carried sacks of grain on their heads; their regular silhouettes grew stable as they walked quickly without much expression. They were very quiet and really did not much like talking. It was my feeling that the Ami did not like to talk, but perhaps that was the wrong impression. There cannot be a silent people in the world. They have their world, unrestrained and passionate, filled with joyful happiness, fi lled with imagination; chanting, howling, and singing to their heart’s content and dancing, encouraging and egging on one another, comforting and praising one another. They had a world I never knew how to enter. Sometimes the Ami would mobilize the entire tribal village, male and female, young and old, to go fishing. It was also a rite of religious significance, matching other seasonal rituals. I once saw the entire village go to Meilun River at sunrise, pitch a simple tent, and laughing, carry out their ritual under the sun. The men entered the water to catch fi sh while the women and children remained on the riverbank, where they played, ran, jumped, sewed, nursed, built fi res, and bathed. Although I could not entirely grasp the significance of all this, I could appreciate it. As the catch gradually increased by the afternoon, they would return to their oxcarts before sunset and head southwest to their village. But returning home from Meilun River, their procession of oxcarts would have to pass down one of the main streets of Hualien. One could see the long file of oxcarts slowly making its way, wheels turning on the asphalt road at dusk, moving quietly, stopping frequently on the roadside to exchange fish for rice wine before proceeding, people drinking in their carts until they were all a little bit tipsy. Some of the more sanguine of them began to sing, singing all the way

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

back to their village into the summer’s night. I heard that most of their catch, if not all of it, was exchanged for rice wine on the long, happy trip, and all the wine was consumed before they reached home. In this way, they completed one day’s collective activity and a part of their traditional ritual. One time, I stood leaning on the big bridge over the Meilun River, seriously watching them catch fish and run in the green water under blue mountains. Fishing was a ritual and running was the favorite sport of the Ami, if not a ritual as well. By that point, the Meilun River was nearing the Pacific Ocean, flowing leisurely in a large arc. From high above on the bridge, I looked down for a long time at the river, which with all its blue waves received a village’s religious practice. Above and off in the distance were the trimmed hedges and small gates behind which, in twos and threes, were the tiled roofs of Japanese-style houses. Higher up on the mountain ridge was the dark green forest of black pine, and several jutting radio relay poles that towered into the clouds. Hualien might not have changed much, at least superficially; the wide blue-green sea spread toward an unknown world. The waves lapped calmly on the beach, an affectionate gesture, forever soothing. By that time I was a middle school student with my own bicycle, basketball, and diary, as well as one who possessed a great faith in nature and who dreamed endlessly of poetry. There was a fairly long period of time when every Sunday I’d ride my bike to the rural countryside on the mountain, to be close to the crops in the fields, the ducks and fishing nets in the river, and the beasts on the mountain. I frequently turned off to a village to visit one of my Ami classmates and to smell that smell that had remained in my soul since childhood. The villages ringed with betel palms, the roads lined with uneven stone posts and short fences—even in those years, they were all tinged with a Japanese flavor. The Ami in the area had already entered an age of paddy rice cultivation and wore bamboo hats as they worked in their fields crisscrossed with footpaths. The flat and neat paddy fields were like an East Asian scene, unchanged since ancient times, and it all seemed to come into life with them and with no need for any other appearance of spirit. The brimming ditches flowing quickly with the order of life, an already perfect style of life. In the mountain villages there frequently would be a towering Catholic church. When I went to the rural mountain areas on Sundays, I

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

often saw the Ami lined up to enter. Neatly dressed, they solemnly and silent greeted and shook hands with the foreign priest as they entered the church, where hymns were being sung. I never saw an Ami dressed in traditional costume at church, nor did I ever hear ancient and rhyming Ami hymns coming from a church. Watching from a distance while listening to the singing sometimes produced a feeling of spatial displacement. The cross above the steeple, the stained-glass windows, the concrete walls, and the symmetrical trees in the courtyard; the Mediterranean-sounding organ on which were played a thousand identical-sounding pieces of music; the nice, respectful believers making their way to an excessively ceremonious Mass. Only the ramrod-straight betel palms and the bamboo forest behind the church reminded me that this was the village of Doulan, Bobo, or Lilou, serving to prove that the mountain, thousands of meters in height, was part of our Qijiaochuan Mountain Range, rising and falling, as it stretched on amid the green passion, and not in cool and restrained Eastern Europe. The Ami did not necessarily forsake their beliefs on account of Catholic baptism. On traditional holidays and festivals, they wore their old-style clothes and beautiful headdresses as before. They dressed in full regalia woven in red and black with layered necklaces and tassels. Bare feet on the ground, they conducted their rituals, worshipping their omnipresent gods and spirits. In groups they sang, praising nature, emitting a series of highpitched shouts, surging with the rhythm of a lightning storm or sinking to engage in that tranquil and serene melody—a good breeze blowing over the rice sprouts and the ponds, over the sweet potato leaves, over the gourd trellises, banana trees, tobacco fields, passing over the thatched roofs and the sheet-metal roofs, to curry favor from their gods. When the moon rose, we heard the flute and drumbeats as the dancers stepped barefooted on the solid ground. In the clear moonlight, they danced in a circle, then two circles, then three circles, and then spread like a whirlpool and splashed, glittering spray shooting in all directions. The vehement spirit filled the flickering layered forest, startling the birds to wing, the bugs to silence, the water buffalo to rise to its feet then sit down again, flicking its tail as it closed its eyes and slowly went off to sleep again. The fireflies, like sparks, glowed over the riverbank. The fireflies, like sparks, glowed over the riverbank.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Summer, that summer seemed to last forever. When the golden sunlight had climbed into the transparent space to the very end, shining over the ocean and over the abundant sandy beaches, condensing the cicada cries in that first layer of mountains into nutrition to hasten parturition, watching the Xiuguluan River rush down through the cliffs, the sugarcane was making its honeyed sweetness, and the pigeon peas were swelling with starch. In that narrow longitudinal valley, in all of the arable fields, the rice, millet, and vegetables were growing. The golden sunlight shone on the hanging bird traps, the uneven fish traps in the river, the bows and arrows, the bamboo fish traps, on the blossoming creeping wood sorrel over which the oxcart had rolled, the sun shone on those shallow impressions, warming all the streams and ponds, drying the newly flayed deerskin, tree fiber, and bunches of feathers. The golden sunlight had climbed into transparent space to the very end, slowly making its way to its high mountain home, red-faced like a drunken warrior, softly intoning a poem, awkwardly throwing himself into the forest’s embrace. It gave the world, gave their world over to night, to flute and drumbeat, to singing and dancing. As the moon rose from behind the betel palms, witnessing the ancient festivities and the people worshipping their omnipresent gods and spirits, the fireflies, like sparks, glowed over the riverbank. Autumn, winter, spring. Summer, that summer seemed to last forever. Autumn, autumn also was forever, as were winter and spring in their world, a world I must admit I’ll never know how to enter.

W AT E R S T R I D E R

1 The color of the mountains and the sound of the sea—I imagine these were at the center of my mind. Actually it was a matter of looking and listening carefully, as if to grasp some deeper clues from phenomenal reality—those factors that sank deep within my spirit suddenly surged at the moment of realization and produced a limitless splendor. At fi rst there was a riotous profusion of color and a rising and falling cadence, followed by the presence of a rainbow, and a structure like a perfect musical movement. Leaving from the back door, I wound my way through the tranquil world of plants. Bushes and grass grew wild by the roadside. Narrow-leafed Formosan ficus trees, broad-leafed mulberry trees, prickly screw pines, and dwarf elephant ears the size of basins, all grew thickly at a corner where the road turned. One day I heard that screw pines were inauspicious. After sunset, female ghosts would appear under them, crying and singing a ditty. Although I found it perplexing that there were so many female ghosts to stand under each and every screw pine after sunset, crying and singing, I was still somewhat frightened. I didn’t think there were so many female ghosts, but rather that one could change and fly from place to place without our noticing, because she was a ghost. From then on, even in the light of day, whenever I passed a screw pine, I’d quicken my pace or even run. However, there was one stretch of the path over a rugged slope on both sides of which grew a couple rows of prickly screw pines. Regardless of how fast I walked, it always took a good deal of time to get through. I quickly walked on with a fear that was both true and false. Sometimes I’d close my eyes, the sun shining on my face, a dazzling red light seeping through my halfshut eyelids. I opened my eyes to look quickly to see if I was through. Later

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

I could close my eyes and bolt right across that rugged slope of screw pines. I never once heard a female ghost crying or singing. I sat under a flame tree thinking: Why does the female ghost cry? And sing as well? Before me lay potato patches; high-tension wires hung in the air, buzzing fiercely like bees circling around the ears. She died, I thought, but she died wrongly, so after she became a ghost, she continued to complain and to cry. But sing? Most likely, she sang about her indignation, expressing herself through rhythm and rhyme. One summer, many years later, I returned to Hualien during a university break. One hot afternoon, I climbed alone the many stone steps up to an abandoned Japanese Shinto shrine. I saw a middle-aged woman sitting behind the shrine, crying and lamenting loudly. She was telling a story, but not very clearly, apparently about a conflict at home, something complicated. After listening for a short while, I felt sad and uneasy and decided to walk over and try to comfort her. As soon as she saw me, she stopped crying and, twitching stubbornly, sobbed, entirely spurning my concern. I could tell she wasn’t the least bit interested in speaking with me, so I could do nothing but leave in a huff. As soon as I rounded the left side of the shrine, she once again began to cry loudly, recounting her woes. Towering pine trees grew all around the shrine, dark and gloomy. I stood there for a long time, not knowing exactly what to do. I just heard the sound of a sad woman crying amid the deafening chirr of the cicadas. She spoke, slowly and hoarsely, oh, what I thought was a tragic song to make a person tremble. The following day, I carelessly opened the local paper and learned that the woman had hanged herself from one of the ancient pine trees behind the shrine. My whole body shook, trembled for ages. I felt an icy chill in the middle of scorching summer. It came as a horrible realization that she had cried and then killed herself. Perhaps I might have been able to comfort her and save her life, but I had failed to entirely grasp the hatred and anger in her song, and had allowed her to end it all so abruptly, perishing amid the violent sound of the cicadas. Beyond the potato fields and halfway around some old rusty barbed wire lay a green river embankment. It was a fairly good-sized river, at least in my mind as a child, and it was always full and swift-moving. From amid the green grass and wildflowers on the embankment I watched the shimmering water strike the stones in the middle of the river, and dragonflies skim the river’s surface and with a sudden flick be on the opposite shore, darting

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

in and out among the reeds. There was also an embankment on the opposite shore, beyond which lay a few scattered farmhouses half concealed among betel palms and wax apple trees. Beyond that, as always, the eternal mountains rose up. I sat on the ground. I simply lay on my side and rolled down the steep slope of the embankment; the blue sky and white clouds alternately whirled before my eyes, and the breeze picked up, and the flowers and grass brushed my face and neck. I came to a halt on a flat grassy area beside the water. As I lay there, the sound of the water suddenly became louder, faster, and more powerful, even somewhat exaggerated, in a torrent downstream. It was like a timeless sound pledging that it all belonged to me, forever; regardless of how the world might change, none of this would be lost. Often in this fashion I could consume a lot of time with boundless energy. Narrowing my eyes, I would watch the clouds floating in the pure blue sky as they rolled back and forth, instantly forming different patterns. Or when I was not paying attention, rolling over to examine a blade of grass or an illusory white flower, I’d casually look up at the sky only to fi nd that all the clouds had vanished into nowhere. There was only an endless distance stretching out inconceivably in front of me. The distance seemed unreal, as if I could touch its position with the palm of my hand, allowing me to observe it with all my attention. It was the sky, the boundless sky that belonged to me, belonged entirely to me. A small white butterfly fluttered nearby, pausing on a white ginger blossom on the riverbank. It dissolved amid the stamens and pistil of the flower, vanishing. Suddenly it took flight, flying directly overhead, through my line of sight, off to who knows where. Still there was the vast blue sky, in which floated clouds shaped like sheep. I rolled over and pressed my face to the ground, listening to the water rush by, apparently without ever ending. I looked at the layered grass before my eyes, light and dark, leaping and swaying. I closed one eye and looked again, and all that remained was a single blade of grass, a transparent green, faintly fuzzy, filled with the life of watery light. It was alive at the tip of my nose, from where it comically rocked back and forth in my breath, suddenly near at hand, suddenly far away. The sun shone on my back. I felt perspiration forming behind my ears, slowly rolling to my cheeks or collecting on my forehead to roll down to the end of my nose where it would drip with a plop onto the grass. A strange

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

track opened up in the ground. I reached out to grab it between my fi ngers and saw the tail end of an earthworm as it struggle to burrow into the earth. The river continued to flow elatedly beside me, extolling without purpose or goal, even without direction, as far as I was concerned. Perhaps there was only one definitive direction, which was the sea, the vast and boundless sea, the final place for all the ripples and whirlpools, all the splashing foam, all the fullness, speed, cold and crystal clarity, and warmth. I knew the sea; it occupied my consciousness day and night; it belonged to me, forever; regardless of how the world might change, none of this would be lost. Suddenly I heard an uproar of gongs, drums, pipes, and strings swelling in the distance, piercing the torpid heat, drowning out the sound of the river, profoundly shaking my consciousness. I looked up out of the grass to the bend in the river downstream, where a colorful procession was crossing the stone bridge to the accompaniment of loud suona and cymbals. I knew it was a funeral procession. Another person had died, and the funeral procession was crossing the bridge, heading downhill to the cemetery.

2 I stood up and headed upstream on a deserted path along the riverbank. The riverbed sometimes widened and sometimes narrowed, but the depth of the water never went above my shoulders, I believed. Some places were covered with stones the size of gourds through which the water ran trilling. I trod the sparse stones, jumping from one to the next to the middle of the river, where I squatted to watch the swimming fish. What I saw were mostly walking catfish no bigger than my thumb and gray in color, scurrying with fear among the stones. One would dart from one cool corner to another a foot or so away, stirring the fine silt of the riverbed, clouding the water momentarily before it settled immediately and the river regained its normal clarity. It was easy to imagine the panic of the little fish that dared not move under my gaze. When I reached into the water with my hand, it would madly shift its position, but no more than a foot away. Sometimes it would halt on the sand, exposed to the sun and sky, its belly on the riverbed. The color of its back was identical to the silt. That poor little walking catfish already had no alternative but to develop that protective coloring.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

I never believed that fish were happy. Occasionally several water striders flew slowly over the surface of the water. I never believed that fish were happy. Now I wonder what the arguments and quandaries of the philosopher amount to. Now I wonder if all those repeated discussions with all the varying degrees of ridicule and derision are real. Philosophers lack an external world and its phenomena; all they have is the mind, the complicated and complex mind, which, because it is inflated with too much thought, resembles an overripe tomato in summer. The poor little walking catfish: “Although you hide in the ebb and flow of the pale tide.” Later, reading Yeats, I arrived at a greater understanding that the concerns of philosophy are very different from those of poetry. I also knew what was reliable and what was not. The water strider is an exceedingly fragile organism that could die at any time, blown away by the wind, drowned by the water, or swallowed by birds or even a leaping fish. But when it flies close to the surface of the water, it is graceful and touching, not unlike a wild crane. It was so quiet and still, even in scorching-hot summer when a hot wind blew over my river, sending the sweat running down my back, inevitably making my young heart restless. The water strider danced on the water’s surface and my mind sank into stillness as if I had returned to a world of silence where I pulsated, thought, searched, and sought. Now I understand that when the mind enters a still and silent world like Caesar in his camp tent, like Helen crossing a destroyed avenue, like Michelangelo in the vaulted dome of the chapel, the heart still beats actively, like a water strider flying above rapids. Going upstream under the scorching sunlight, the big mountain was very close and the patches of forest floated, stuck to the higher elevations. So close, the tree trunks resembled red incense sticks in an incense burner. An empty space sometimes appeared amid the immense green forest—a precipice from which fell a waterfall. The waterfall formed the river on the right, the river bottom visible through the limpid water. A steel-truss bridge stood upriver. It had been built during the Japanese occupation period by the sugar factory especially for the narrow-gauge train used to transport sugarcane. Just beyond the bridge there was a big bend in the river, which was considerably wider due to the mountain torrents, but it was mostly gravel and sand, over which the shallow water ran

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

quickly through a patch of low-growing reeds. Someone had built a small shed on the riverbank and had encircled a stretch of the river with a bamboo fence and stocked it with a thousand ducks. Once across the bridge, I heard the ducks quacking, one minute to the left, one minute to the right. I could see them floating in the river, feeding, waddling around en masse at water’s edge, or making clumsy attempts to fly and falling to the ground after a couple of steps. The ducks were of different colors: some were white, some black and white, some were brown and called domestic ducks, and there was even a red-headed variety, which was called a Muscovy duck. No doubt the duck farmer raised any sort of duck that was available. He’d gather and sell the eggs of those that laid eggs; those that didn’t lay eggs, he’d have no trouble selling for slaughter on the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month, for the Ghost Festival. It was already the first part of Ghost month, and we thought about lingering near the water after we began to feel the heat, just like the ducks. And the ducks were already fattened and waiting to be offered up as sacrifices to the spirits. And the kids were playing in the water, and the water ghosts were waiting for a victim. I approached the shed, frightening a bunch of resting domestic ducks, which started quacking and thronging toward the water’s edge, forcing the white ducks, which had been by the waterside, into the water. An incredible movement was produced immediately as the entire area penned in by the bamboo fence erupted in chaos. The duck farmer rushed out of the shed, no doubt his noon nap having been interrupted. He grabbed a bamboo pole and ran to the center in an attempt to quell the disturbance that reached to heaven. However, his efforts proved to no avail—the ducks swarmed this way and that. Some hurled themselves into the water, while others clambered out of the water with difficulty onto the bank. But if they weren’t careful, they’d fall back into the water and float along with the current, spinning around and splashing with their loud quacking fi lling the countryside in summer, breaking the hot, torpid air, forcing me to laugh. The duck farmer heard my laughter, looked around, and discovered that I was the culprit. He straightened his small frame, held up that exceptionally long bamboo pole, and rebuked me. Hearing him shout, the ducks became more vociferous in their quacking, as if to echo his scolding or to accuse: It’s all that boy’s fault, he startled us and made us cause this ruckus, quack, quack, quack, scold him, scold him. To me they all looked very angry; I

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

knew I was in trouble, so I turned and ran back across the steel-truss bridge, taking cover down the slope, panting. Under the bridge was a deep pool. Perhaps after that shallow bend in the river, it suddenly straightened and the flow grew more powerful and it had created the pool. I never thought that this was where the duck feathers and excrement from upstream accumulated, swirled around, before being swept downstream. There were several boys swimming there completely naked. After half the summer in the sun, their skin was dark and shiny in the shadow of the steel-truss bridge. They floated, laughed, and frequently splashed each other in the face. Standing on the riverbank, I could see the stone bridge downstream, the one that had just been crossed by the noisy funeral procession, which I had nearly forgotten. At any rate, such processions were a daily occurrence, walking across the stone bridge even in the rain toward that low-lying place in the mountains. The duck farmer no longer pursued me, and his ducks still had not entirely recovered their calm. I discovered that I knew two of the four boys in the water; they lived behind our lane—I recognized them even though they were stark naked. The biggest of them was surnamed Cai, and we often fought, but he actually was a friend of mine. I called him Ah Cai. I didn’t know the name of the little one—we all called him by a Japanese name, Tetsu. They and the two other boys were taking turns diving underwater, competing to see who could stay under the longest. They all counted in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, nana, hachi, kyu, jyu  . . . then a head would emerge from the water with the boy pinching his nose. Then another boy would pinch his nose and sink under the water, while the others shouted, ichi, ni, san, shi. . . . They had so much fun playing the same game without stopping! I couldn’t resist, so I stripped off my clothes and jumped in the water to join the competition. The water was delightfully cool, you could even say cold, especially in the shadow of the bridge above our heads. We floated and shouted in the water in which floated duck feathers and other things, and were no longer able to hear the quacking ducks. Ah Cai was at least two years older than I. His chin jutted out and looked something like a bailing bucket. Whenever we fought, I’d laugh at his chin and he would charge me with no thought of life and death and press me to the ground, where we’d roll back and forth, fighting until we were so exhausted we could fight no more and would lie panting on the ground. But

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

he was actually really smart and knew where all the fruit trees in the area were located, and when we were having a good time, he’d take me to pick fruit. He knew where there was a gap in a fence that would allow us to crawl into someone’s yard. What’s more, he could pet any dog in the yard and make it stand there obediently without barking and watch us as we climbed up in those trees to pick guavas, star fruit, pomelos, wax apples, custard apples, peaches, and mangoes. I don’t think we ever picked a ripe fruit—if they weren’t bitter, they were sour, but they were still good. One time I got up on his shoulders to pick a stalk of half-ripe bananas. Suddenly a very fierce Muscovy duck approached us from behind. Ah Cai dumped me on the ground and took to his heels. When the Muscovy duck flapped its wings and bit me, he ran back and kicked it and pulled me through the hole in the fence. Ah Cai was a very enthusiastic friend. Whenever Ah Cai went to the river, I think he went straight to the steel-truss bridge to go swimming. He and I were different. I liked to spend half the morning by myself downstream near the stone bridge, watching the fish dart over the silt riverbed; he liked to take risks and display his courage in front of other boys. Ah Cai possessed the bearing of a leader! One time when we were diving under the steel-truss bridge, Ah Cai decided to open up a new realm. There was a wide stretch of deeper water to the right, in the steel-truss bridge’s shadow. However, over the surface of the water was laid a tangle of barbed wire that looked very dangerous. Ah Cai decided he would go first and try it out. If it was okay, he’d shout for us to come over. From a distance I watched as he swam in the deep water while singing a Japanese navy song and commenting, “Not bad, not bad.” Suddenly he screamed and stopped. We ran over to discover him crouched over on the riverbank, both hands covering the lower part of his body. Crying and screaming, he bent over, writhing in pain, as blood ran between his fingers. I took off toward the village at a run to inform his mother. I ran a little way before I realized I was stark naked, so I went back, put on my pants, and flew, shouting to some adults. It was said that Ah Cai’s scrotum had been lacerated by the barbed wire. Many years later, my mother asked me if I still remembered Ah Cai. I replied that of course I did and that he had been injured while swimming when we were kids. But I didn’t know what he was doing. “He married quite some time ago,” said my mother, “and has four kids.”

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

The mountains were green as before; the forests were so clear that they seemed to be right in front of me. The waterfall cascaded down, forming a pure, crystal-clear river at the end of the path, the farthest place I ventured alone. The river passed under the steel-truss bridge and ran straight beneath the stone bridge downstream, disappearing behind some hills farther on. Only later did I learn that after the river flowed under the stone bridge, it braced itself before rushing into the sea a few minutes later.

3 Perhaps the steel-truss bridge over the river had been long abandoned; perhaps it was still used, though I never saw a train cross it. At the end of summer, when the ripe peaches and pears had all been picked, no more wax apples were seen, and the star fruit and mangoes had all disappeared from the yards, the pomelos continued to slowly swell and the longan hung in clusters high up, and were all harbingers of good typhoons this year. I continued walking that winding little path through the screw pines and brush, passing under the high-tension wires, climbing the embankment and rolling down to the water’s edge, getting up and loitering around upstream. The dragonflies were fewer and the water was rising, swallowing the stones that had appeared during Ghost month. I reached out and felt the river water. It felt much colder, and the water buffalo remained on the riverbank grazing, no longer spending most of their time soaking in the river. I walked to the steel-truss bridge and looked at the bend in the river where the pen for the hundreds and hundreds of ducks had been. It was totally quiet, and there were no longer any ducks to raise a hubbub. I think they must have all been given as offerings to the spirits who had family or did not on the Ghost Festival. Not far from the left side of the steel-truss bridge, the railroad tracks split into three branches. On the two outside branches sat a number of sheet-metal cars fi lled with white sugarcane. Approaching the cars, you could smell the heavy, sweet odor, a nostalgic aroma that filled the air at the end of summer, like those years of ignorant freedom so long ago; but at the same time it was so close, like Mother’s admonishments and that older sister’s smile, something familiar you knew you could count on, that you worried might vanish. That powerful, sweet

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

odor made you halt with envy and approach with a presumptuous desire. This was especially so after a storm, when, following the railroad tracks, you’d concentrate on making your steps conform to the irregularly spaced railroad ties. Sometimes you’d walk with short, hurried steps; other times you’d have to jump to reach a slippery tie while keeping your eyes on the wet gravel and the rusty tracks. The sky was filled with black clouds, thick or thin, through which the sun would suddenly appear and disappear or amid which a pale orange patch would hang. At the end of the tracks receding into the distance, the two rails would merge into a single blind spot. Looking up again, you’d see the colors had changed, and rosy clouds now filled the sky. There were always one or two guards near the sugarcane train. If there were two of them, they’d squat and play cards. If we got too close to the train, one of the guards would stand up and shout at us to move away. The sugarcane belonged to the sugar factory. The sheet-metal cars would stop there, waiting to be filled by the sugarcane farmers. When they were filled, the engine would come chugging along, blowing smoke as it traveled south to north, slowly joining one car to the next, dragging them to the Tiepu Station, where they’d be coupled to a larger engine that would then head south to the sugar factory. We knew that any sugarcane not in the cars could be picked up—that belonged to us boys. But one day there were no stalks lying outside the cars, so we had to leave empty-handed. All we could do was to stand there watching and waiting for a stalk to fall from the tightly packed pile, but it never fell. The air was fi lled with the heavy, sweet odor, a fragrance that held you there. The clouds at the edge of the sky changed. We stood there staring at the sugarcane, or we’d sit down. Sometimes we really couldn’t wait any longer. Some of us would walk on tiptoes around to the other side of the car and tug at the bundles of sugarcane. By the time the guards looked up from their cards, we had already fled. Sometimes the guards would see how distressed we looked, waiting there. They wouldn’t shoo us away but rather count to see how many of us there were, and then walk over and pull out a number of stalks and throw them on the ground, pretending they’d fallen from the car, and then have each one of us take one before we left. We walked to a spot nearby and gnawed on the sugarcane—but that white sugarcane wasn’t very good—after which we’d

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

return to standing by the sheet-metal cars, staring at the tightly piled stalks of sugarcane, waiting for one to fall. Rosy clouds filled the sky. That was the end of summer, or perhaps it had already passed, and autumn had arrived in this fashion. The reed flowers blossomed white beyond the railroad tracks. The sweet air had cooled a little. Sometimes the white smoke emitted by the chugging engine would hang for a while in the air without dispersing. The sheet-metal cars fi lled with sugarcane were much fewer by then. In the afternoon when I’d walk to the duck farmer’s shed, I’d see only one car, sad and frustrated, parked there, half filled with sugarcane. The guards no longer bothered to come. I climbed into the car and rolled around in it, smelling the sweet odor of the white sugarcane, but it was no match for the thick, glossy red sugarcane in our garden. I loved it, but I thoroughly experienced that curiosity and was no longer greedy for it, although I still madly pined for that sweet smell. I once lay on top of a sugarcane car, frequently lifting my head to look around. Over my toes I saw the rosy clouds fi lling the sky and the blind point where the two rails hurriedly converged in a sharp point, remote and beautiful. Though far away, I had been, in my broadening universe, to the end of the tracks. A beautiful “little sister” lived there. My grandmother had taken me from home and walked down a big road to this side of the steel-truss bridge. First she had me sit down and adjusted my Warrior-brand shoes, which I hardly ever wore—the left shoelace was always loose, and the cloth tongue always shifted to the side. She sat on the tracks and softly struck her legs and massaged her tightly bound little feet. We walked along the tracks, always around mid-autumn when the air was cool and a thin mist hung over the countryside in the morning. Grandma could only walk the little path below the ties with her strong little legs, rocking as she walked. I busied myself walking on the ties, varying my steps, sometimes short, sometimes long, and counting from  to  and  and then starting over again. Sometimes I walked on the gravel, kicking and jumping; sometimes I’d walk on my tiptoes on one of the rails, both arms thrust wide for balance, while loudly singing out the numbers. “One, two, three,” a little slowly, and by the time I reached “five” I was about to fall, so I’d pick up the pace and run, counting “six, seven, eight, nine, ten” in Japanese, in a single breath.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

As the narrow-gauge railroad of the sugar factory neared the Eastern Rail Line, it crossed a large gray road. We walked a stretch of the road, turned, and entered a harvested field, crossed by a small stream over which was a wooden bridge. Beyond the bridge towered betel palms and a closeplanted ring of fruit trees. We passed under the fruit trees and pushed open a wooden gate, which made the dogs, chickens, and ducks raise a ruckus. Out of the house came a girl with short hair dressed in a pure-white blouse and a blue skirt. Running over, she took my hand. She was the granddaughter of the people who lived there. Later I learned she was eleven, five years older than me, and in another year, she’d enter junior high school, while I was still waiting to be informed about entering primary school. Her short hair was very fine and very black and neatly combed. Her white face glowed with health. Her fingers were cool, tiny, and soft, but when she reached out to take my hand, she exuded boundless warmth. Every time I saw her, I became somewhat uneasy. I’m not sure if it was due to shyness or excitement, but the whole time I was with her, when our two grandmothers were busy talking and she took me in and out of the house, I always felt happy and secure. I’m sure I was terribly fond of her. I don’t know why, but I didn’t try to conceal the fact that I had a completely favorable impression of her. Their yard was surrounded by a bamboo fence, on the outside of which grew lush fruit trees. By then there were only longan and large pomelos, clustered and hanging heavy, high up in the trees. We left by a small gate and lingered under the peaking trees. Beyond were the autumn fields; shocks of rice stood in the harvested fields. Blue smoke drifted on the breeze as someone burned weeds; several water buffalo half reclined, chewing their rich feed, or stood up and sauntered away, birds on their backs. The war had just recently ended, but I had entirely forgotten it, as if it had never happened or was a few fragments of dreams, broken and vague, shifting between existence and nonexistence. There were no traces of the war; all was quiet and serene, the fields were suff used with harvest gold, and even farther off, as always, rose the big mountains, green even in autumn, unchanging. Forgotten. Actually, I had forgotten nothing, or it had just settled. First I put everything else aside to pursue the new. To capture, grasp, collect, one has to be completely receptive and hoard. Otherwise, there will come a day when all will be forgotten, and once that happens, then what?

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

We sat under the eaves, the chickens and ducks walked around the yard, and that black dog kept wagging its tail at me. I grew a little concerned that if it kept on that way, it might wag its tail off—the black dogs I had seen always appeared to be missing a part of their tails. It jumped up and licked my hand, which I also found annoying. That little sister was peeling a pomelo while gently pushing the dog away. Oh, her smile was absolutely beautiful. In this way autumn seemed to spread its strong fragrance—I don’t know if it was the pomelo or her smile or both that fi lled that corner of the countryside. I sat there carefully lest I leave her with a bad impression, going so far as to be extraordinarily tolerant of that troublesome black dog, even while hoping it would step away and sit nicely. Under the eaves where the fragrance concentrated, it was the pomelo and the little sister’s smile. I wondered, what if she didn’t like me? If she didn’t like me, what should I do? I didn’t dare look at her, though I liked to—I was happy in my heart. I looked at the ripe longan in the tree. There would be some good typhoons this year. Before the end of autumn, I entered the first year of primary school. They waited until the last minute to admit me, because I was too young. I didn’t like school at all. The following year when I saw the little sister in her junior high uniform—white blouse and black skirt with a blue flower on her breast, with an even larger one on her book bag—I was green with envy. After that day I never saw her again for some reason. Time went by, and the seasons flew and changed. Perhaps quite suddenly I felt embarrassed about walking with my grandmother and her clumsy walk, and felt that going out rocking and swaying like that was a loss of face. Perhaps I harbored so many feelings for that beautiful little sister, in the fluctuation of time past, like a branch soon weighted down by its fruit, hanging heavily in the garden of dream, which made me feel as though I couldn’t bear it and fear lest a storm come and with all severity knock off those young feelings of mine and cast them in the mud. Perhaps that was not the case at all. I just felt that I had to be afraid, and that this evasion was a choice of sorts that would help me preserve these rich memories for a long time, to keep my memory forever young, for if it never aged, I reasoned, tears filling my eyes, it would never grow weak, and I would never be hurt. I stood at one end of the railroad tracks thinking these thoughts, listening to the quacking of the ducks as innumerable dragonflies danced in the air. Or after the sugarcane cars had left and I stood amid the reeds and blue smoke, that lonely corner,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

the barren, rusty rails stretched out before me, extending straight into the distance, until the parallel tracks converged in an illusory blind point. The river water flowed swiftly away behind me, purposely exaggerating its inspiring impetus, turning, spraying, and rushing through memory and forgetfulness, some joys, some fears, and some fantasies and disappointments. But at that far distant point, at the limits of the universe before me, lived an absolutely perfect girl, where the fruit trees joined in a ring in the paddy fields. That was my first love. Yes, it was there, but it also seemed otherwise. So I thought perhaps it was not, it was only my universe, and that was all. Perhaps she was dead, dead in the embrace of time. I turned back toward the river’s surface, which added a feeling of drifting aimlessly, flying slowly, like a quiet water strider in that eternal summer.

STUPID WINTER

1 The weather in October generally saw an end to the typhoons. The handle of the water pump felt cold in the morning. On rainy days I’d walk along the muddy street wearing my synthetic rubber raincoat. The water would run down the back of my neck and then down my arms. The raincoat stuck to my skin. At fi rst it was cold, making me feel restrained all over, even creepy. After walking a ways, I started to sweat and began to feel agitated, because the rainwater had begun to feel half warm. The water mixed with my sweat, and my raincoat stuck to me, making me feel as if I were encased in stuff y air. But I wasn’t wearing anything on my feet. In those years, we almost always attended school barefoot. The street was quite narrow, and up ahead was a large truck repair garage. When a truck came, it emitted a deafening roar, and I’d hurriedly step to one side and watch it go by. Sometimes the truck would hit a puddle and cover me with water, but that was actually very exciting and lots of fun. In those days no other vehicles were seen in Hualien except for freight transport trucks. Some years later, large military trucks and two kinds of jeeps finally appeared. I struggled up the slope and crossed the bridge. Ahead lay the barren fields, with an occasional paddy field among them. The rice had all been harvested by then, and everything was hazy in the rain. The road became narrower and smaller. My school was at the end of the road, in a place that could not be seen. I know I hated going to school, hated that long walk, and hated carrying that old Japanese book bag on my back. It sat high on my back, over which I wore my raincoat. When I looked in the mirror, I discovered I looked small and helpless, like a camel.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

In those first few days, the autumn rain seemed never to stop. One minute the rain was warm and one minute cold. I walked barefooted in the mud and gravel, knowing I was doing something I’d rather not do; I was scared and had absolutely no desire to talk to the other kids. The school consisted of a row of entirely new wooden buildings. Outside, there was an athletic field and in one corner a flagpole. School was off to a rainy beginning. Entering by the main gate, I found the athletic field a quagmire and the flagpole bare; water dripped from the rope. Even in the drizzly weather, I could still see the mountains behind the classroom and the clouds flying and changing, floating in front of the forest. I didn’t know any of the kids in the class. They were from the school district across the bridge; they appeared to be playmates who had grown up together. Only I seemed to stand aloof from that illustrious circle. As they chattered noisily, they pointed at me with seeming ill intent, making me feel uneasy. The air was fi lled with a stuff y odor from the newly nailed wooden walls and the windows and doors, as well as from the simple and crude desks and chairs. There was also the smell of a roomful of children. I was afraid they would give me trouble, so I hoped the teacher would arrive soon. But when the teacher was present in the classroom, no one was allowed to move, and that odor soon fi lled the room, making me feel so nauseated that I hoped class would be over soon. When the bell rang indicating the end of class and the teacher left, I stood feeling very lonely in the dripping hallway, breathing deeply, facing the muddy athletic field, watching the water run down the flagpole. I was so lonely. Besides, I always nervously suspected that the other kids were pointing at me with ill intent and talking about me, which made me feel even more uneasy. That was the first time I detected that humanity stank. And that humanity was also frightening. Helplessly I sat at my desk, listening to the teacher’s loud voice, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what he wanted us to do. On the blackboard he had written “b, p, m, f” and wanted us to practice them repeatedly, but I had already learned them. Previously, on a summer night full of mosquitoes, I had listened to them being recited loudly as I bathed. It was an educational program on the radio. I sat in the small tub pouring water over myself as I listened to the female broadcaster enthusiastically pronounce each syllable with prolonged emphasis: “b—” followed by a pause, then fol-

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

lowed by “p—,” followed by another pause. By the time the bathwater started feeling cold, she was still vigorously enunciating “b—” followed by a pause, “p—.” Occasionally a mosquito would drone overhead, and when I reached out to slap it, I heard the woman holding her breath in a prolonged nasal “m—.” The pale yellow light shone in the kitchen; the table and chairs stood quietly, and there was some firewood and coal. Outside, the summer insects were calling loudly. The adults and children had probably already gathered in the lane. My bath water was getting colder and colder, and the woman on the radio continued, “b—, p—, mf,” making a person feel fed up. The adults were sitting outside on the porch gossiping, and the kids were crazily kicking an empty can or hiding in the dark looking at the stars. But that voice—at once enthusiastic, fierce, and stupid—continued to drift from the house, “b, p, m, f.” I sat there, and beside me was a skinny little girl who stared at the teacher listlessly. After glancing at her, I decided not to look at her again and also decided not to speak to her. I stealthily turned my head to look at each one of my classmates. With their utterly disinterested eyes, noses, and mouths, they dully chanted “b, p, m, f,” along with the teacher, hardly willing to open their mouths. They were probably startled that going to school was such a boring thing to do. A rather depressed young man stood in front of the brand new blackboard, desperately and in low spirits trying to explain something. That was our teacher. His explanations were exaggerated: this way, he didn’t know where to place his tongue, but bared his top row of teeth, which he pressed over his lower lip: “fu.” It was hilarious. We repeated after him, “hu,” without paying the least attention to the relationship between teeth and lips. “Hu . . .” The air was foul, and you felt like you were suffocating. I looked up at the ceiling. The rain had seeped in and stained the wall, freshly painted white, and still trickled down. I imagined there must have been a small hole in the roof. Maybe it was a large hole and the water had dripped through the crude, simple roof and run down the wall. Several flies buzzed around the classroom, producing a stupefying noise. Outside, the rain had already stopped, and wispy clouds flew across the sky; the mountains shifted between a deep green and grayish blue, just like that repeated dream of returning under the mosquito net in the morning.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

2 On a day that was clear and cloudy by turns, I was transferred for no reason to another school. The night before I switched schools, I sat in a rattan chair, turning over that old, hard leather book bag and thinking about the large dragonfly I had captured beside a pond in someone’s vegetable garden. A rotten tune was playing on the radio; the distorted singing voice suddenly rose and suddenly fell, making a person impatient; sometimes it would suddenly shift to a strange sort of folksong, of the hai-yo, hai-yo type I’d never heard before. That strange folksong emanated from some unknown place in the past. It was a little rough and somewhat tenderly passionate. The singer was sitting in a mule cart facing a withered, yellow plain, vast and lonely. The song was ancient but vulgar, not entirely intolerable, but I couldn’t say I liked it. It was like a back itch that I subconsciously reached to scratch, for it was both pleasant and irritating. I didn’t know if it was me or not. Just before dark, I had tied a thread to one leg of that big dragonfly and had hidden it in a hibiscus, tightly tying the other end of the thread to a twig. I wasn’t allowed to bring something like that home, but I didn’t really want to set it free either. But I knew that my method of trying to keep a dragonfly overnight had never been successful. Early the next morning, I ran to the hibiscus to look. The dragonfly was gone. I don’t know where it went; only that thread remained among the hibiscus leaves. All around were large red flowers covered with dew, smiling happily at me. I wondered how it would be this time. It was already late autumn. I felt I began to understand what memory was and to indulge in probing it, thinking I would become a person with a good memory. I’d remember smells, sounds, colors, light and shadow, cold and heat from the end of summer that had just passed. Like parting layers of reeds at the end of summer the air ˉlled with the faint scent of wood ˉre from the chimney wafted on the breeze, creeping toward my low-lying land, a call agilely unfolding while seeming inside and outside my eyelids, was the crowded duckweed as a fragment of color cherished in memory swelled on the pond, swaying

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

as a single dragonˊy ˊew, ˊew directly ahead, hesitant and trembling, circling above the ripples replete with dusk’s rosy clouds, and tried to halt brieˊy atop a spike of silver grass jutting from the water. Breaking the powdery stamens, sending the colors of dusk back to that moment of sudden change, I parted the layers of reeds as I parted those reeds at the end of that distant summer. I saw, like the last dying ember in an incense burner before the darkened shrine insisted on silence, scream, struggling to rise that moment to the level of eternal memory in my slight unease like a moth beating its transparent wings, like dry broad leaves blowing outside the window, like the heart turning in the wind and then falling imperceptibly into an empty courtyard, shady and cool I saw the light of the end of summer linger on the frightened pond idly, intoning a long, ancient song in a whisper, intentionally making chance out of the necessary, when the croaking frogs, one after another, became lonely, when the crickets fully occupied the desolate outskirts of childhood, asbIbparted the reeds ahead and discovered time slowly transcending the end of summer then

Thinking in this fashion is like taking the short steps before jumping over a ditch. It was a strange new world beneath your feet, but one not worth fearing. Looking back at the place where I had just stood, so familiar, and slowly stepping back before making the return leap, I hesitated, hoping, looking forward to an unknown world, my thoughts speeding back and forth, swaying in the cool breeze, flying with a huge dragonfly, flying ever higher. I lost my way at the scorching height of noon, roaming among the scattered wood houses. The canna lilies flourishing next to the pigpen were blooming, basil embellished the dry paths, and the chilly wind played in the bamboo grove. I wandered in the shabby back village where the air changed, fi lled with the smell of ducks and pigs, and the resting water buffaloes,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

flicking their tails. I heard people talking, strange voices wafting from the houses with sheet metal for siding. It was the voice of a blind fortune-teller. I remember his sharp, high-pitched voice, usually when he sat under someone’s eaves solemnly revealing Heaven’s design, his two darkly clouded eyes under thin eyelashes, a wispy beard, and mournful wrinkles covering his pockmarked face made him look like an overly ripe, almost rotten custard apple. I pressed close to the window, looking in; several rays of bright sunlight streamed ramrod-straight into the room, lighting the space. The blind man, his pockmarked face twisted into a forced smile, was facing me and scared me. Then he said, “What’s that noise outside?” It was the sound of my foot kicking an empty can. “What noise?” came the faint voice of a woman. “I didn’t hear anything.” “It sounded like someone walking by, En?” His cavernous eye sockets faced me, distant and empty. I confirmed he was blind. “There’s no one.” The woman’s voice sounded depressing. Only then did I realize that the blind man was sitting on top of a woman, her two arms shining in the sunlight. All I could see was her disheveled hair. “There’s nothing.” “Nothing.” The blind man sighed. “Maybe it was the rooster.” “Perhaps it was a hen,” said the woman, laughing, “bringing her chicks to eat bugs.” “Maybe it was the criminal police.” “Don’t get carried away thinking nonsense.” His cavernous eye sockets revealed his anxieties as his face clouded. Drops of sweat rolled down his cheeks, like a cracked and leaking wall. Again the woman spoke: “There’s nothing . . .” “It’s the spirit of a dead person!” He lowered his head and smiled tenderly at the woman. “It’s the spirit of a dead person come for you . . .” “Ah—” My hair stood on end and I quickly dropped to a squat, and sat panting at the corner of the house. The chilly breeze rustled in the bamboo grove in front, to the left the pigs could be heard grunting, and the sun shone on the parched ground. I stood up and braved entering the bamboo grove, and felt a liberating, seeping coolness. The sunlight changed as thousands of elusive colors danced before my eyes. My heart beat violently and sounded like a little drum; even as I ran I could hear it, dong-dong, dong-dong,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

thumping with that riot of color. I ran under the high-tension wires, collapsing, covered with sweat, in the shade of a chinaberry tree. Dong-dong, dong-dong, the sound of my pounding heart merged with the hum of the high-tension wires.

3 My teacher at the new school was a very pretty woman. Her black hair had just a tint of brown and was cut very short and fastened with a hairpin on one side. From a distance her hair seemed to shine. She led us in loudly reciting: “qu, qu, qu, qu youxi” [go, go, go, go play]. Four sounds in a row made by pursing the lips. I stared at the beautiful corners of her mouth and was soon enchanted. She couldn’t speak Taiwanese and she always wore a qipao that fell below her knees. It was a pale blue after so many washings, something not seen every day. I repeated after her, “qu,” doing my best to purse my lips like hers, determined to be a good child. When she was pleased, she’d smile, lift her face, and brush back the hair on her forehead. Her chin was rounded, soft, and pretty. I really liked it when she stepped down off the lecture platform and the way she stood and talked right in front of me. She smelled like sandalwood and was strangely cordial, which was surprising. Normally she spoke slowly, probably afraid lest we not understand, but when she spoke to the other teachers out in the hall, her words flowed more quickly. The Japanese had left that year. They said they were leaving and that was it; they were all but gone. However, the schoolteachers were all accustomed to speaking Japanese, interspersed with Taiwanese, with a few words of Mandarin sprinkled in. Even when they laughed it sounded Japanese in tone; only she was completely different. The weather grew increasingly cold. At first she just put on a sweater, and later this was replaced by a short, lined Chinese-style jacket, which made her look swelled up, but in no way displeasing to me. Walking to school in the morning, my feet began to feel frosty. One day not long after she started wearing that lined jacket, an old male teacher showed up in the classroom and had us repeat “b, p, m, f” in a slipshod manner for a whole morning. She never reappeared. A younger male teacher replaced her. Every day I

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

expected her to show up, until the winter and until the distant mountain peaks were embellished with a layer of white clouds and mist, but she never came back. In the beginning, I waited anxiously and even dreamed about her standing in front of the blackboard, lifting her face, and brushing back her plain, short hair, as well as her round chin, gentle and beautiful. Later I began to feel somewhat angry, as if I had been cheated. Why wasn’t she coming? Why had she not said anything to me and just suddenly disappeared? Th inking about her, I’d be angry at her, and I lay with my head against my pillow before drifting off to sleep, a tear would roll down my face. I don’t know where she went. The sun on winter days was very short. I’d sit on the tatami mats, looking out at the puddles in the small courtyard where the rainwater had accumulated and a few dead leaves stuck in the mud. Looking up again through the bare tree branches, I could see the high, dark mountains, on which there were patches of white. It was said to be snow on the peaks of the Central Mountain Range. In that distant age, the temperature always seemed a bit lower. In the quiet of the afternoon, I heard the sound of a flute wafting over, becoming a long string of laments, passing through the cold wind, resonant with sorrow. At some point a squad of soldiers had moved into an abandoned warehouse behind the lane.

4 Winter passed very slowly, and a damp and gloomy cold filled the streets and lanes. Turning a corner, one was sometimes assailed by the aroma of roasting sweet potatoes. Otherwise, the only thing I saw was the leaves on the banyan tree, leaves made shiny by the cold rain, and its air roots swaying in the air. I liked to go to a bamboo hatmaker’s place to see the kid there and play with their yellow dog. The women of the house sat under a shrine, talking, busily weaving bamboo hats. His grandmother sat cross-legged on the bench, holding a bamboo basket heater to stay warm. Suddenly she’d place the bamboo basket heater inside her loose-fitting coat, making her belly protrude like an ox that had drunk its fi ll of water. The oldest son of the bamboo hatmakers worked for the power company. In the winter, he’d hook up an electric heater and submerge it in a water vat and the water

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

would soon be hot. That’s how they heated their bath water all winter long, and sometimes in the summer. One time, the boy my age stuck his hand in the vat and was knocked unconscious by an electric shock. He stayed home from school for a week, and when he returned, he was changed and seemed very stupid. We really liked to play in their kitchen because they had a huge wood-burning stove where we could raise flames by blowing through a bamboo tube. We took turns blowing and watching the small flames grow, feeling quite pleased during the long winter. However, I didn’t much like coming in contact with his saliva, so whenever he handed me the tube, I’d wipe it vigorously on my pant leg; he didn’t seem to have the same aversion to mine. One day, he stood up and uncovered a pan that appeared to be filled with something like hot chicken. He ate a piece and urged me to eat a piece. It tasted pretty good, but a bit unusual. Then he flatly asked me, “So, how do you like rat meat?” That night, lying in bed, I heard the rats running above the ceiling and broke into a cold sweat. On sunny days, I’d take the long way and roam around after class, usually going to a residential area I normally didn’t pass through. A lot of government employees lived there, a lot of people from other provinces. They nailed green screen over the windows of the Japanese-style houses and painted their doors bright red and always kept them tightly shut. In most cases they had dug out the low holly hedges and replaced them with high concrete walls, with broken glass placed on top of some of them. I roamed with my book bag on my back, hoping that I might unexpectedly run into her. I figured she must live in this area and thought she might remember me, and that she might smile at me. And I might once again smell that sandalwood fragrance. Our textbook said, “When it snows, the dog runs across the wooden bridge, leaving plum blossoms imprinted on the bridge; the rooster runs across the wooden bridge, leaving bamboo leaves imprinted on the bridge.” There was snow high on the mountains and more distant than a dream. But what were plum blossoms? I had never seen them. Bamboo leaves I was familiar with, but in what way did rooster tracks resemble bamboo leaves? Our bamboo leaves were all larger than our teacher’s hand. All of this I knew. Maybe the textbook had been printed with errors. I was prepared in the event that one day I should unexpectedly run into her. I  wanted to ask her about these things, while pretending I wasn’t angry, forgiving her for leaving without saying good-bye.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

I wandered around in this fashion, but never found her. Later on, over many melancholy days, I’d make an effort to recall what she looked like, fearful lest one day I would forget. But slowly I did forget. Her eyebrows were the first thing I forgot, then her nose, then her eyes, one by one receding into the world of the past, much the way a black-and-white photo fades. In the end, the only thing that remained was her plain, short hair with a hairpin fastened on one side, and the way she raised her face and brushed her hair back, as well as her smile and her round chin. But all of this had been soaked by the rain, making it fragmentary and fragile, if not illusory. Slowly, I came to no longer dream of her. Only occasionally, when I was tired of school, I’d think, If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t necessarily be the way I am. After the weather warmed, I’d take my book bag and sneak out of class, jumping over the wall and following the river to the fields planted with rice sprouts and crisscrossed with footpaths. I would loiter around the fields with no goal in mind, attracting the attention of the farmers. Later I’d just cut through the bamboo grove and turn off into the back village, which I hadn’t visited in some time. Keeping my distance, I’d circle past the blind man’s house with metal siding, fearful lest he recognize my footsteps. I heard the sound of a flute nearby and found myself standing in front of that abandoned warehouse. The sound of the flute suddenly broke off. A soldier sitting in the portico waved at me and spoke; I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he had that same hai-yo, hai-yo tone. But I didn’t understand a word of what he said. I timidly approached him, my eyes fi xed on the flute in his hands. He suddenly smiled and pointed to the ancient well beside the warehouse. Two other soldiers were squatting there, busily skinning a gutted animal. Several other soldiers stood nearby, noisily laughing and carrying on. I rubbed my eyes and took a closer look. I saw that it was a dog, and was no doubt the dog that belonged to the bamboo hat makers. I turned around and ran. The melodious sound of the flute recommenced, lithely turning behind me, rising and falling without restraint, right on my tail without catching me, and then suddenly seeming to leap in front of me to block my road of escape.

S O M E R E A L A N D S O M E F A L S E TA B O O S

1 Ahead of me, under our golden sun of late spring, there were countless utterly exhausted people, strangers. Their clothes were in tatters, their panic evident in their breathing, as if they had a million and one frightening stories—reeking of blood, gloom, obscurity—to tell. All of this was apparent to my sensitive soul—it was mockingly obvious that those dirty, sloppy clothes were uniforms, and that, despite having absolutely no military bearing or discipline whatsoever, those men were soldiers. I was already aware that in life there are conditions; in that age, existence depended on a few difficult-to-understand taboos. In that oppressive age of turmoil, I cautiously protected my feelings, lest I suffer harm. Wherever you went, it seemed that you encountered severe restrictions, especially with regard to behavior—for example, your pace or posture. Someone was keeping an eye on you at all times and always took great pains to correct you, loudly scolding you and even at times raising their hand to beat you with a pointer or call you up to the rostrum, where you’d receive a knuckle rap on your childish forehead or be struck in the chest by a flying projectile of a piece of chalk hurled from the blackboard. Whenever something like that happened, silence would reign in the classroom and, although you couldn’t see the faces of your classmates, you could be certain they were very cowardly and even base, putting on innocent, respectful, and submissive expressions, as if echoing the tyranny and cruelty of the punisher, reprimanding you unanimously. At that age, they were as hypocritical as reed flowers in the autumn wind. They lacked character because they were afraid, and because, like me, they already were aware that in life there are conditions and taboos.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Time passed very slowly. We too were slow in growing up. We studied how to roll our tongues and how in conjunction with our teeth to produce sounds, reciting ridiculous nursery rhymes such as “Pop, Pop, Goes the Threshing Barley.” What was barley? It wasn’t rice, it wasn’t corn, it wasn’t taro, it wasn’t potatoes; it was something else that you might never once see in your entire life. It was said that war had broken out again in the distant barley fields. We studied addition and subtraction, and started reciting multiplication tables. One morning after the flag-raising ceremony, one of the male teachers got up on stage to speak. With a heavy accent, he spoke with emotion. The playground was silent, and the janitor who rang the bell stood under the eaves listening intently. A flock of swallows flew over the school roof. It was the spring planting season and they were busy looking for food. The swallows disappeared behind the tree-fi lled garden. I heard the teacher intermittently say “communists.” The swallows regrouped and headed off in the direction of the river. There was a large smokestack outside the school. At that moment the direction of the wind changed, a gentle breeze from the sea, and soon the thick black smoke enveloped the playground, floating above us. Once again the teacher mentioned the “communists,” and bits of coal began to fall. I don’t know where the swallows went. My eyes wandered, searching for them, figuring that when the wind changed—actually the black smoke had begun to retreat from the playground—the swallows would turn out of a corner of the tree-filled garden. It was spring planting season and the wind came from the sea, blowing toward the mountain peaks. The rice sprouts fi lled the warm new fields. White clouds drifted slowly in the sky, and the brimming paddy fields reflected a myriad colors. An egret leisurely spread its wings, flying smoothly over the fields crisscrossed with paths, heading over the top of the bamboo. By that time, the swallows had probably gone elsewhere, but I didn’t know where. War? I thought we had gone through war several years ago. When I was fully composed and without any real fear, war had broken out overseas and in the mountains. It wasn’t fear that the war instilled in me, but rather a sense of excitement. I was like a participant in a simplistic adventure story, one that wasn’t very real, because the plot lacked focus. Perhaps under my own volition I had sought a metaphysical mystery amid the changing symbols of Nature. Grasping that mysterious fear frightened me, a romantic fantasy.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

I heard that war had started in some other inconceivable place. People were not really willing to discuss it in clear terms. My intuition told me that many irresolvable factors were involved, creating a number of problems. People spoke evasively, trying to avoid the heart of the matter. Naturally I couldn’t understand any of this. The teaching materials for music class were the first to change. The gentle tone of the Japanese songs suddenly vanished. We opened our mouths wide to loudly sing songs of a different tone. Every one of those Chinese songs opened on a slow, soft note. With so many difficult and hard-to-pronounce words and phrases, and though hard to understand, they were so lyrical and sad. Suddenly the tempo would increase and the notes rise, sonorous and forceful, grating, slightly imprecatory in significance, making it impossible for the organ to harmonize. Soon, the prosody would revert to its original lyricism and sadness before coming to an abrupt end. I never understood the lyrics, but I imagined that they were nostalgic, sad, accusative, declaratory, as well as possessing a kind of poetic solace. Sometimes there were not enough Chinese songs, so they would take some Japanese martial songs out of the files and we’d sing those. However, although the tunes were Japanese, the words had been changed. We sat in the shade of the banyan tree, singing the Japanese martial songs with new lyrics. It felt as if we were a bunch of Japanese kids showing off our imperial strength and power in song to criticize another war of smoke and gunpowder in the new China: raping, burning, killing, famine, and hatred. All sorts of strange words were printed under the Arabic numerals, leaving us guessing as we sang together. In the shade of the banyan tree, countless brilliant golden flecks of light flickered over the students, momentarily illuminating the girls’ short hair, momentarily reddening the boys’ cheeks. In the sequence of time, it was already late spring and we wore only a single layer of clothes outside for music class, occasionally feeling drowsy. One day in late spring, we got out of class early, the moment the sun was at its hottest, and I decided to take the long way home to kill the extra time. We walked along the riverbank, laughing and shouting. We took off at a run, turned left only to be confronted with a startling scene—both sides of the long, straight street were fi lled with uniformed soldiers. Suddenly I was curious; not exactly frightened, though maybe just a little. I’d never seen so many soldiers in one place. Intuitively I knew they were soldiers, strangers,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

tired and sentimental. My intuition told me they were feeling sentimental. They were resting here and there along the street, leaving the middle of the narrow street open. As far as I could see, the middle of the street was empty, but at regular intervals a soldier walked nervously, blowing an ear-piercing whistle intermittently. I hesitated a moment, but without really thinking, I had already stepped onto the long street. My curiosity overcame any fears I might have had. Originally that long street had been lined with holly and mulberry hedges and two rows of banyans. Both sides of the street were crowded with soldiers. They sat under the banyan trees, some lying by the hedges. Their uniforms and hats were a soft color and disorderly. At that time they were resting and had removed their hats and unbuttoned their uniforms and, though they still wore leg wrappings, most of them had removed their cloth shoes, letting the cool breeze in the scorching tropics caress the aching soles of their feet. Their weapons and cooking utensils lay by the roadside, some stacked neatly, others piled randomly along with baskets fi lled with pieces of coal, pans, scoops, and other things. I advanced step by step, frequently looking to both sides. Some of the soldiers noticed my footsteps and spoke to me, but I didn’t listen; some pretending to be asleep opened their eyes to look at me, then closed them again, looking exhausted. Most of them just looked at me indifferently, without expression or interest. Their faces were dark or yellowish and were all skinny and unshaved. My intuition told me they were sentimental. Filtered through the banyan trees, the sunlight shone on their faces and their bodies, shining brightly. A strange smell floated faintly in the dead stillness on both sides of the straight street late in spring. I don’t know what the smell was, but it floated on the breeze, neither entirely unpleasant nor entirely pleasant. I continued forward, passing the fatigue, alarm, low spirits, the unfathomable curiosity, some disintegrating dreams, dissolving fancies, uniforms, steamer baskets, rifles, pans and scoops, bayonets, and devilish whistles.

2 I frequently passed through a bamboo grove, which was said to be haunted by ghosts. One believer in Jesus who was not afraid of ghosts gathered some

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

money, cut down much of the bamboo grove, and built a row of red brick houses to sell. The first family that moved in fled in a matter of days, saying that ghosts could be heard moaning in the bamboo grove, complaining of hunger, and even went so far as to drift into their new house. After that, even the landlord who believed in Jesus became wary; no one wanted to buy those houses and his enthusiasm waned. Eventually he abandoned that row of secluded and quiet brick houses in the bamboo grove, and nothing more was said about it. Knowing that that area was haunted, I didn’t have the courage to go deeper into the grove to verify matters. During the day I walked at a quick pace; at dusk I was afraid of the wind rustling in the bamboo leaves and the faint apparition of those red walls. One day, a group of soldiers in leg wrappings shambled over to the bamboo grove, halted, formed ranks, right faced, and without the slightest hesitation started for that row of brick houses. They formed a number of small groups; some carried guns, some carried pots and pans, and they all moved into those haunted houses. The farmers and the villagers stood watching from a distance with their mouths hanging open, unable to believe their own eyes. The water buffaloes, dogs, chickens, and ducks didn’t dare take a step forward. The landlord who believed in Jesus hurried over on his bicycle, barged right in, and was inside for quite some time before he came out. When he came out of the first house, he was blue in the face and wiping his sweating face with a handkerchief. He bowed at the waist to an army officer and looked like a man out of his mind. He climbed on his bike, pedaled a few feet, stopped, and fell off. Someone ran over to help him up and found he was uninjured. He apologized and politely offered his thanks. As he departed, pushing his bicycle, smoke was already rising from the chimney of the first house. The cook was already preparing food; the soldiers had garrisoned the area. After that, the bamboo grove was never haunted again. I continued to frequently pass through the bamboo grove and slowly realized that the bamboo was decreasing. The soldiers probably had cut it to clear more ground. Initially I imagined that they would drill on the empty ground, but after quite some time, no one had ever used it for that purpose. Occasionally two or three of them would appear holding guns with bayonets affi xed, but most of them sat in a corner of the square, laughing and

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

washing for what seemed like ages. Dogs squatted here and there or indolently paced around. I don’t know what the soldiers busied themselves with most of the time. They made a large pigpen with the bamboo they cut, and I think they were raising some piglets. And now the square was filled with ducks and chickens and even some geese, as well as a foul-looking turkey. I couldn’t believe that they raised all these beasts. Actually, I never gave the soldiers much thought except about how they had no fear of ghosts and had an awful lot of free time to raise chickens, ducks, and pigs, and even to grow vegetables. Sure enough, they managed to get their hands on some farm tools and started digging in the earth and planting vegetables. Their gardens looked different from ours, a bit narrower, and unlike us, they liked to grow tomatoes and bell peppers. I saw them busy all day long with these tasks, and I couldn’t believe that that was all there was to being a soldier. If they hadn’t been armed and lived in groups, you would have simply assumed that they were refugee farmers. This group was different from that earlier group that lived in the back village behind our lane. Those soldiers lived in a big dark building and didn’t raise animals or grow vegetables, and were somewhat mysterious. I once saw them butchering a dog beside the well, and heard that spellbinding flute. . . .

3 That was at the end of the s. We studied Mendel’s laws of genetics, story problems, and issues of forestation. This was probably the first time in my life that I developed an interest in knowledge. The first time I discovered that the real world was just a small part of human life, and that in addition to what we perceive with our senses, people could also pursue the abstract. While the abstract was not fi xed, it never disappeared, and was its existence any less real than that of the mountains and the sea? It made no difference whether it was the deeds of heroes, the description of unchanging geography, a concept, article of faith, principle, or reason. But our textbooks repeatedly expounded the same teachings and admonishments. From my perspective at least, they never once offered a rational definition of love, freedom, or equality—such

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

concepts existed outside our textbooks. At times, I couldn’t help but ask in amazement if these too were taboo? A mind for pursuing knowledge in those weak and immature years meant absolute loneliness. I never wanted to express my desire. In the long, peaceful afternoons I sat in a corner of the room, guessing as I flipped through a work of fiction randomly chosen from the shelf, skipping over the words I didn’t know, trying to grasp the plot of the story. The plots of the books were always fragmented and beyond me. All I could really make out were a bunch of rich and beautiful words, words filling the pages, densely packed, interlocked, one upon another, then spread apart, keeping watch, just like a column of soldiers, arranged with one person at the head. The bewitching power of words was already well established in my mind in those half-baked years. I liked to quickly go beyond the shapes of the words and sentences to imagine that I had already grasped their meaning, putting them aside to vigorously search for the most obscure passages, staring at those difficult words, in order to understand them with my rational mind and thereby feel happy. Actually, I didn’t exercise my faculty of knowledge, but rather a perception that had matured early, or perhaps even a physical indulgence, using that strangely stimulated faculty to approach all those enchanting words. It would be better to say that the happiness I obtained from them was an erotic consolation rather than the satisfaction of knowledge. I submerged myself in words. Reading on the tatami mats or in the shade of a tree, I had no idea what other meaning a book might possess. I was partial to plump characters, like the round cheeks or plump wrists of a girl; otherwise I liked slack characters, those that evinced sadness from a delicate and pretty thinness. To me those characters and words were incapable of expressing the true meaning they ought to have expressed; in fact, in my imagination, they changed organically into a kind of object in which to place emotion. I knew this was difficult to explain, so kept it to myself, keeping it a secret, much like the love and sadness that occasionally sprouted in my young breast, distant fantasies, delicately stirred feelings, astonishment, and fear. Love and sadness and feelings, even fantasies and such, never seemed that complicated. It was all part of a bad dream that tormented my defenseless body and mind. Written language was really a temptation. Sometimes I felt self-satisfied, feeling that I was different from ordinary people. I had

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

so many secrets. But this feeling didn’t necessarily create a sense of happiness; in fact, it ate away at me in the dark, because there was no one with whom to share the frustration. I tossed aside my book and tiptoed deep into the lane. That was muggy late summer, in which large drops of warm rain fell. Turning at the end of the lane was an airy passageway where two other kids and I played cards. At that moment, someone slowly appeared at the steps with the sunlight behind, a vague silhouette. I looked up. It was a girl carrying a baby. She approached us and stood by my shoulder and watched, swaying gently at the waist, patting the child as she uttered a few mesmerizing sounds, ever so gentle and moving. I recognized her. She was a young daughter-in-law who had just wedded and moved into the alley before the New Year. I still remembered how she had walked, head down, in her wedding dress. The child, of course, was not hers, but rather her motherin-law’s newborn. She squatted. The child slept, leaning against her shoulder. As she continuously patted the child with her left hand, she concentrated on watching us play, gesturing with her empty right hand. Later she asked to be dealt a hand, and in that way joined us in our afternoon game. The large drops of warm rain dripped, tick-tock, onto the muddy ground outside the passageway; her fragrance wafted in the air; perhaps it was a fragrance—I don’t know what it was, but it was something very special mixed in the muggy air. The child slept against her shoulder without moving. She held him in the crook of her left arm, patting him occasionally. She had stopped making that mesmerizing sound. She just extended that clean bright arm, flashing back and forth, as she snatched the cards from the ground, laughing as she held them close to her face to look at them. Then she sat down and leaned against the wall, her right leg folded under her, her left leg raised. Looking down her wide pant leg, I could see a patch of shining, fine black hair against her snow-white leg. My heart pounded, throbbing against my young chest, like a mad water buffalo charging down the riverbed. I had soon lost nearly all of my cards. Heart pounding and blushing, I imagined the inconceivable, mature beauty harbored in that mysterious world. Perhaps it wasn’t beauty, but a kind of frightening strange phenomenon, like a bolt of lightning splitting black clouds, exploding into panic-stricken flight, and strange images. Frightening, hallucinatory, seductive, uplifting and sinking, suddenly falling into a

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

deep abyss, straightening out a moment later to soar above the clouds. That surge of pure sensibility left me at a loss. What was I to do? In the short time of a matter of months, I was taken by surprise as the universe revealed its significance, its ultimate meaning, to me in a number of different ways, unfolding before my eyes the details of life and death that I had never before dreamed of, transcending the inspiration of mountain forests and the sea. Oh, mountain forests and the sea are eternal. What was I to do? Was knowledge true or false? And written language was nothing more than misleading knowledge. Where did that smell come from under the rainy passageway? Where did that color come from? A flower in the snow? Why did the heart beat for that unknown, embarrassing world? There was only the heartbeat, no longing or love, and no tears. That afternoon, I held a tattered novel in my hands, desiring to read and understand it. However, aside from mulling over a few words of which I had a shaky grasp, I couldn’t make complete sense of it. Perhaps it wasn’t a novel; what it was, I don’t know. I felt both excited and worried. At that moment, a young man came walking down the road, holding a leafy bamboo stem. He stood next to me, smiling. “Do you understand that?” he asked. I knew him. He was a neighbor with a nervous problem. Every spring, he would go nuts and wander around the neighborhood, talking to himself. It was said that his illness acted up when the peach trees blossomed, and after the flowers fell, he would be okay. Having lost in love was said to be the reason. He was reputed to have been talented, able to pen a fine essay or poem. Later he fell for a young woman, but the other party did not reciprocate his feelings, so he went crazy. In spring, he would walk back and forth along the streets and lanes or stand on the riverbank, conversing with the clouds. But with the arrival of summer, he would be fine. Every year prior to New Year, he would set up a table in a bustling part of town and write couplets for people. Spring had not yet passed, and he stood muddle-headed in front of me. I didn’t want to pay attention to him. “Do you understand that?” he asked once more. I just shook my head. He reached out, indicating he wanted to see my book. I hesitated before handing it to him. He stood there hurriedly flipping through several pages. His eyes drifted, gazing off into the distance, before he suddenly turned to me, recovering

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

himself, and spoke to me in a friendly manner. “There’s nothing good about this book. You’re too young, you shouldn’t read this kind of book.” “What’s it about?” “What’s it about?” He then replied, “It’s about . . . love.” “What’s love?” He didn’t answer, and once again seemed lost in thought. He handed the book back to me. “How many characters do you know?” “Lots,” I said. He laughed. “Okay, I’ll quiz you.” He randomly opened the book to a page, stripped a leaf from the bamboo stem, and used it to point out a character on the page while asking me, “What character is this?” ∾ wang. “What does it mean?” A lot of water. “Good. And this one?” ⪄ huan. “What does it mean?” Ring. “Not bad. And this one?” I don’t know. “Guess,” he said, encouraging me. Well, inside is the character (䲅) yin, and the outside probably means sick. “Right. That’s ⱂ. He said, “What does it mean?” With his bamboo stem, he wrote a big and beautiful character ⱂ on the ground. I said, it’s probably some kind of hidden illness that can’t be treated and that others can’t be told about. “Wrong. Wrong, you only got a third of it. It’s probably an illness, difficult to treat, but not something that has to be hidden from others!” Delighted, he laughed, showing his white teeth. I suddenly admired him. In his slightly curled hair, I saw a few white strands. His face was thin, but his eyes were full of feeling. If I could know as many characters as him, I wouldn’t mind going crazy once a year. After he left, I lay down under the tree and continued thinking: What is love? Love means to lose. Right, he had lost his mind on account of love. But if a person was so well educated, and he had such beautiful calligraphy, how could love harm him? I decided to think of something else. Impossible. So love wasn’t something to be feared, and going nuts was normal and not an illness. I heard he was better the next day and had left for the countryside at once. Usually he wouldn’t be back until after the New Year. As for his love story, I heard it later. It was said that the young woman didn’t necessarily let him down. She was forced to do so when he went to Taipei to study. At that time, not long after the first group of scattered troops had arrived in the small city, the original sentiment of society started changing quickly, and a young soldier fell madly in love with her.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

The young soldier’s passion clouded his mind, and one day he pulled a knife and coerced her, doing a foolish thing by staining a once pure love with ugly colors. When she woke, she took that knife and stabbed herself. The young soldier slipped back to the barracks, where he shot himself in the heart, dying covered in blood. By the time he returned from Taipei, the girl had been buried. That spring, when returning from her grave, he walked over all the field paths and the small paths on the mountain slopes, mumbling to himself. He lost his mind until the beginning of summer, when the fruit had set on the peach trees; then he suddenly got better. But the following year, when the peach trees began to blossom, he got sick again. Year after year this way, a tragic tale was pitifully resurrected in the memory of home. I don’t know if it was about love or something else.

4 Indecisive and confused, I slowly passed the second part of my childhood amid so many inconceivable taboos. It was a near certainty that many gloomy ideas actually existed in the environment around us, a number of topics we were not permitted to ask about. Sometimes I was not careful and overheard people talking in a whisper, passing along an unhappy tale about knives and guns and imprisonment, about blood, disappearances, and death. I didn’t understand everything, but I could detect the nervous tone. One day several people came to our house to ask if we had a Japanese sword in our closet. We handed over the sword the Japanese had given to us just before they left. Several days later we received notice that we should go and pick it up. I saw that the long sword had been cut in half, the pointed half confiscated; the half that remained was returned to us. My mother used that broken blade for years to cut firewood. That broken sword was the distinctive image of the second half of my childhood. I can’t really say what that image meant, except that it occasionally recurred in my dreams. A shining sword would suddenly appear, only to be broken and fall into the dust. Gradually it disappeared, never to return in my dreams, replaced by some other image, I’m afraid. That year I was transferred to an advanced class where I had an indifferent female teacher; I spent two miserable years until I was rescued from the nightmare

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

by junior high school. Yes, when the image of the sword disappeared from my subconscious, I would wake up startled at night, always because of that female teacher’s cold, stern face. That face descended from on high, covering my weak body with bloodthirsty cruelty, treacherously wreaking havoc on my body and mind. Finding myself lost in a black valley, I’d struggle to open my eyes, only to awaken under the dizzying mosquito net. The memory of the sword had dulled. The memory of the sword had dulled. Everything had dulled. A gnawing pain reappeared day and night. As I sat in a corner of the classroom, stealthily reading a novel and intentionally ignoring the teacher’s instructions, savoring the solemn and sad beauty produced by my resistance, I was frequently punished by her and would imagine the look in the eyes around me, a mixture of scorn, sympathy, and admiration, or perhaps nothing at all. In that age of being swayed by considerations of gain and loss, when we had just bid farewell to childhood, we were very selfish and consciously sought a brilliant meeting of the minds, single-mindedly hoping to win praise and commendation; we had just lost the innocence of childhood, utilizing unfamiliar tricks, struggling without knowing why, while lacking the hypocrisy and scheming required for that sort of struggle. We were like apes that had not fully evolved trying to demonstrate their intelligence, ability, and courage in a flurry at the iron bars. I had seen through everything, or so it seemed, but that wasn’t really the case. I vigorously cultivated my own feelings, carefully guarding them. I think I was already tired of the symbols of sword, gun, and soldier. I was situated in an absolutist position without fantasies or heroes to worship. Yes, the long sword was broken. The rifle lay together with the pot and scoop. And the soldier? I had no idea what the soldiers were doing, other than watering and fertilizing their hot peppers and tomato plants. I didn’t know because so many things occurred and were analyzed and eliminated in the dark. I thought I understood most everything, but I’m afraid I didn’t. In addition to the necessity of spiritual resistance, and enjoying that sad and solemn beauty, my body was indulging in suffering the pressure from that nightmare. On the one hand, I wanted to exorcise the fear, but on the other hand, I was loath to forsake that gnawing pain.

A N I N K L I N G O F P O E T RY

1 What follows is poetry, an inkling of poetry. I determined for a fact that Heaven and Earth possess a spirit, and dusky Mother Nature could respond sympathetically to me. This occurred around the time of a large earthquake. How did that earthquake begin? Thinking about it now, I can hardly believe it, so many years later with so much mist and water in between. Everything in the room began to shake—books, writing implements, teapot and cups—everything began shaking as if in a dream. But it was palpable. Th rough time and space, a drastic wavelike motion is stirred in my heart, dizzying and dim. Even at this very moment, as memory returns, I slowly lift my eyes and see the large trees and the buildings below the mountain shaking. A breeze, white clouds, sunlight, everything within my ken staggers like a drunk. Perhaps this is not observed with the eyes, but rather it all presses upon the soul. So quietly and so leisurely, the earth shakes, dizzying, shakes me back through ten million changes in the sea to a small point with the same sun, clouds, and slightly cool breeze. Ah, spring. . . . We worked in the classroom with all the windows wide open, the bright morning air flowing through. The girls were embroidering flowers. They each held a piece of pretty fabric in their left hand; in the middle of the fabric was a double bamboo ring that held the fabric taut. Various designs— peonies, butterflies, and goldfish—were drawn on the fabric. Each plied a needle with her right hand, stitching various colors of thread within the ring, each so intent and beautiful. The boys were making small desktop bookshelves. They were arranged in small groups, some of which sawed the

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

wood, while others hammered nails. The whole classroom was fi lled with sawdust. I disliked the dirt and disorder, and was totally disinterested in such work. I looked up frequently at the girls embroidering by the windows, with their short, shiny black hair, white necks, and delicate fingers holding their needles, quietly embroidering. I thought it was so beautiful. Behind them, the green banyan trees and flame trees shone. It was so very beautiful. At that moment, from what seemed like an unimaginably distant place, a faint sound between have and have-not was heard approaching, mysteriously; from out of nowhere, a frightful sound arrived before we were completely aware of it. At the very same time, the whole world began to shake. Earthquake! The whole world swayed left and right. Instinctively, we wanted to run out of the classroom. “Don’t run,” sternly shouted the female teacher, “take shelter under your desks!” We each crawled under our little desk, but the ground continued shaking, increasing in intensity. When it swung northwest, our desks and chairs were thrown together in the northwest corner; when it swung back to the southeast, we rolled back, crowded under our desks along with the embroidery rings and needlework, the pieces of wood and the nails. The tools followed us as we rolled back and forth. A muted cry continued to fall from the sky. Helplessly we shouted. It was like a nightmare from which we could not wake. Afraid and anxious, we finally abandoned our efforts. The earthquake stopped. We climbed out from under our desks, some crying. Many people were standing outside, shouting to us. During the earthquake, everyone else at school had run outside and gathered in the middle of the playground. Only our class stayed put to be tossed around. The row of classrooms beyond us had collapsed, and only ours was intact. If it had collapsed, we in all likelihood would have been crushed to death. In a matter of a few minutes, half the houses in Hualien had crumbled, the railroad tracks had been twisted, cracks had opened in the streets, and wells had gone dry. Countless stories and gossip followed with the aftershocks that occurred one after another. The reaction to the aftershocks was like negotiating with a celestial being, allowing you to really discover the existence of a (or many) transcendental spirit(s) beyond outer space, vast and unknown. Although the earthquake had stopped, the small city perched on the ocean continued to tremble and shake for the next two weeks. Sometimes it would shake softly, making a person look back with helpless apprehension, not knowing what to do. The

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

most vexing thing was that each time there was an earthquake, regardless of how slight, the clock on the wall would stop. Surprisingly, being shaken several times, it would stop ticking. In those instances, we’d straighten it, reset the time, and set the pendulum swinging before it would begin ticking again. But after a while another large tremor would hit and everyone would rush outside. Upon returning, we’d look up and the clock would be crooked and stopped, and we’d have to start all over. Gazing at the clock, I found it to be the most pitiful machine around. After I looked at it for a while, it ceased to be a machine—the hour and minute hands looked like eyes and the pendulum looked like a tongue. It ticked on, but some distant spirit disliked that way of proceeding, so with its hand started an earthquake that stopped it. I wondered if time was not the same. As time continues ahead, we cannot grasp it; suddenly that spirit took a dislike to the way it advanced, and with its left hand set the earth to quaking, stopping time in its tracks. Sometimes the aftershocks were violent, and you could feel them coming. At that time, our new house had a lotus pool in the backyard, the source of water for which had been cut off after the violent shake. All that remained were some broken leaves on top of the mud, and all the carp of South Asia were caught and cooked in soup. We dared not live in the house, because Japanese houses in those days were roofed with tiles. If we ran outside when a strong quake hit, there was a chance that one of the gray roof tiles would fall off and hit us on the head—that was the frightening reason I heard—so at night we slept in a tent pitched in an open space beyond the lotus pond. At first I thought it was interesting to sleep in a tent, but I was often awakened in the night by a tremor, which finally led to fear. The most frightening of all was while dreaming, I seemed to hear a dark howl come from the other side of the sky and like a demon approach my drowsy soul, half awake or half asleep, listening to it rapidly press closer, closer, closer, then finally the earth shook violently. I awoke, clutching my blanket, fearing lest the tent collapse. When I determined that the tent wouldn’t collapse, I then thought of how only a tightly stretched mat separated my body from the ground. What would happen if the earth split open? If a crack opened, I’d lightly fall in; then it would close again and no one would be able to find me. That pursuing howl set a person to trembling, proving that there was a metaphysical majesty between heaven and earth. Recalling how I surmised

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

this at the end of childhood and thinking of the subtle and hidden meaning today, I cannot help but feel that that realization is the maturation of the classical source of myth. That majesty was awe-inspiring like the thunderbolt of Zeus, bursting forth in a flash, cutting through the dark sky, descending on the world of men with a deafening roar, leaving us terrified and panic-stricken. This is a myth that was produced before Plato, in an extraordinary corner of the northern Mediterranean, where as the people evolved, they relied on their imaginations to create the myth—perhaps it’s better to say that they relied on experience, on the collective unconscious of the community, to determine the image of the thunderbolt of Zeus. Fear, a human fear of metaphysical majesty, produced the power to create myth. I was conscious of how my insignificant life had entered a new unconscious stage, amid the howling and shaking, gestating the structure of myth. That is to say that the origination of that myth was much earlier than the earthquake that spring, perhaps in the storms and torrents in the mountainous wilds, in the bloody light and the tears. It happened long before, in my uneasy tracks—if this was the case, then the howling pursuit and the dizzying shaking of that spring served to bring my portion of the structure of myth to maturity. Ah, spring, black spring. Assuming that this must be the case, then what that black spring bestowed upon me was an inkling of poetry. Assuming there was poetry in any of this, that poetry was produced in the process of the maturation of myth. It was impossible to keep this inkling secret. “And you actually believe that war occurred among the gods, and there were dreadful hatreds, battles, and all sorts of fearful things like that? Such things as the poets tell of, and good artists represent in sacred places; yes, and at the great Panathenaic festival, and the robe that is carried up to the Acropolis is all interwoven with such embellishments?” Poetry is the explanation of myth.

2 When the earth shook, it woke a miraculous beast hibernating inside me. In that tumultuous time, like a soldier crouched behind a boulder on open ground to take cover from an enemy grenade, my heart beat quickly as I

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

watched the room swaying left and right, like pomegranate blossoms wavering in the breeze. The wooden door creaked like it was about to split, as if it would topple at any moment. Sensitive, I prayed to God, making various promises as I stole glances at the high clouds, as if there really were an absolute power between heaven and earth with which I could share a certain kind of secret. In that brief second, I felt that I was different from other people, like a high priest given the idea by the gods. I possessed a special supernatural power that allowed me to speak with them directly. I was the first to do their will and who prompted the ordinary people to express their desires and concerns so they could judge pitifully, and I could do my best to interpret their orders. Sometimes my prayers were not answered. I assumed it was due to conflicting opinions among the gods. Thus, in my imagination, I constructed all sorts of confl icts, the debates among the gods, their struggles, their fights, and all out wars. Until one day I grew tired of so many disappointing fantasies and decided to banish the gods from my imagination, leaving a single abstract concept that I could wholeheartedly kneel to and worship, and it could forever play the role of my guardian, omnipresent, omnipotent. It was the universe, vast and eternal; it was the mountains, the dust, happiness, sadness; it was everything. It guided me like the calm northern star, it inspired me and tempered me, molded a tireless soul for me to explore and pursue, forever and ever. From an immature pantheism, I moved to a cheerless monotheism—cheerless because that god was my creation, not my creator. After many years, when I was no longer able to bear that mutually reliant faith alone, I returned to the world of many gods, happy with their indifference to me. This repeated asking and praying was actually religious in nature; however, I have never been clear about the real nature of religion. All I know is that people practice their own faiths, respectfully, devoutly, carefully, fearfully, you can usually tell from the expression on their faces. The one thing I have never been able to understand is why the forms of worship practiced by people always transcend natural beauty. That earthquake destroyed many houses, but I never heard of a temple or church being destroyed. There must be a reason, sacred mysteries perhaps. How could anyone have his own explanation? After the earthquake, the largest city god temple to the smallest earth god shrine on a country

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

road, as well as the scattered churches, all stood erect with no damage. Even though I couldn’t penetrate the sacred mysteries, I secretly developed a curiosity about all of it. I have all along treated the god images in temples with respect and fear, and have never dared look at them directly. This has always been a strange and contradictory matter for me, revealing a conflict between the real and the unreal, even after so many years, the gap between essence and phenomenon, internal and external, past and present. In short, it was always an illusory experience, latent within the process of growing up, that left me in an unsteady trance, but in fact closer to the world of poetry and art. Shortly after moving into our new house, I noticed that near the lotus pond there was a pomelo tree, under which grew a lot of cockscomb flowers. Beyond that was a row of banana trees, and a bit farther on was a hibiscus hedge. I saw an opening in the hedge and squeezed through. Outside was a clean courtyard and to the right was a small shrine to a deity with which I was unfamiliar. Incense smoke rose around it. Outside the shrine sat a pale, heavyset, middle-aged man, who was busily carving something while speaking off and on with a skinny old man. The old man was the keeper of the shrine. I approached them while intently watching the pale, heavyset man. In his left hand he wielded a chisel; in his right hand, a wooden mallet. He was carving an unblemished piece of wood with beautifully skilled gestures, hard and soft and up and down strokes. The wood chips fell like flower petals in front of him. He never stopped chatting with the old man, talking and laughing. I sat down, my eyes fi xed on that piece of wood. The pale, heavyset man smiled at me, but didn’t pay any special attention to me. He kept tapping the chisel against the wood as he chatted and laughed. The warm sun shone all around, while a heady scent continued to waft from the incense burner, making a person dizzy. A number of turkeys strutted around the courtyard; in the randomly strewn shadows of the trees it was quiet and peaceful. I was pretty sure in my mind that he was carving the statue of a deity. I was so certain of this that I didn’t ask. A form emerged very quickly from the piece of wood: a head, body, and four limbs. A blanket of fine wood chips covered the ground as the sky grew dark. When I returned the following day, the man had just awakened from his noon nap, and, after a flurry of activity, sat down and set about carving again. His tools were much finer this day; he gently scraped the wood with a small fine

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

chisel and sanded it and smoothed it with his fingers, then brought it close to his lips to blow away the dust. He smiled as he lifted the unfi nished image for me to look at its nearly complete likeness—helmet, face, and armor. I sang its praises: “That’s really great!” He was very happy. On the third day, he spent more time to smooth the image with sandpaper, till his hands and face were covered with dust. Even I was dusty. On the fourth day, he painted the image with beautiful colors, but had not applied any paint to the goodlooking face. On the fi fth day, I arrived later than usual, and he said, “I didn’t think you were coming today.” I asked why. He said, “I’m going to draw the deity’s face today.” He took up a fine brush, drawing the outline of his two lips and the ridge of his nose in crimson red. Then he delineated the hair on his temples, and eyebrows in black ink, and finally added the eyes before stepping back to examine his handiwork for a while. “Look good?” he asked. I promptly said yes, then asked “What deity is it?” “Guan Ping,” came his reply. Is this really how gods are created? No, no. Over a five-day period spent with the woodcarver, I watched as a piece of wood was transformed into Guan Ping, who, along with Zhou Cang, would serve Guan Gong in a new temple. It was not a deity before me but rather a beautiful work of art, prompting joy and warmth. Later, it was more than just Guan Ping, more than just Guan Gong, Zhou Cang, and Guan Ping; that pale, heavyset man produced countless deity statues. Some were handsome like Guan Ping; others had black faces and long hair like Zhou Cang; others had green faces and fangs like demons. Large and small, they all took shape under his mallet and chisel and paints. Sitting in that quiet courtyard, smelling the dizzying incense, I had no fear of those deity statues. I liked them immensely, because they were beautiful works of art. They were not deities, nor were they ghosts. Why was it then that every time I entered a temple, I never dared look directly at a deity statue? I feared their green faces and fangs, the black face of Mazu and the red face of Guan Gong, the solemn face of Guoxing Ye, and even Guan Ping. Deities are the products of our minds, as are ghosts. The carving in the courtyard that afternoon was a delightful work of art. Housed and worshipped in a temple, and steeped in incense smoke, and owing to our sincere desires, it would become a god that would prompt in us stirrings transcending the mundane. For me, it would always be frightening,

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

robbing me of the courage to look at it. A contradiction existed that was difficult to explain, if not ridiculous, while also being very real. These issues repeatedly arose in my young mind, troubling me; analysis was impossible, and I was left helpless as they rampaged through my young heart.

3 Again, I considered how intriguing the carving process was. That man focused his spirit on creating a work of art, and others were determined to become involved, making the artwork a symbol of a deity, adding to that kneeling and worshipping and the fostering of fear and respect in the individual. What was behind all of this, propping it up? If I chose to be an artist, I wondered what I would do. For example, I too could learn to carve and paint, making lifelike images, to please, to make people bow, to teach and admonish people. I could exercise my mind and my imagination, employ my tools, vigorously pursue and explore in order to realize my art. The process of realizing a work of art would also be the process of my real work. The tapping, the wood shavings and dust, and the smell of paint and ink would all vanish when the work was realized. What people—myself included, sometimes—saw was that art expressed the inner spirit, which would possibly become eternal, but which was no longer just the original materials. That is creation. Creation was so intriguing. I hated making a desktop bookshelf, but I was enthralled with imagining myself carving a statue to prove my creativity. I was not a craftsman, but an artist. I would pour all of my passion into a work of art; I would focus my spirit on the object of creation. Day and night I would trace and search, reverently and earnestly facing my materials, I’d attain, like a high priest, prophetic insight into the secrets of the universe, observing an order and categories never seen by common mortals, fully expressing it all, first moving myself and then others. For myself and for others, I would reproduce that sacred splendor, capturing that fleeting beauty, fi xing all that is good, so that we could always be close, recognizing human attributes while being concerned about them and loving them. Suddenly it was as if I had encountered a huge

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

challenge, a tempering of life, and a secret I could not tell anyone about grew inside me. Only I could feebly bear the burden. In that distant age, I knew I was reluctantly bidding farewell to my childhood. Frequent aftershocks continued after the big earthquake, propelling me with all vigilance into the dark world of the imagination. I knew that bodily trembling and pain were real and that the trembling and pain of the spirit were equally as real. When I was enjoyably fantasizing alone, my spirit would stir me ever so lightly, like the whirr of cicada wings, each time more quickly, finally becoming a speedy stimulant, hastening through the world of my imagination, as if there were a goal, struggling forward, oscillating, leaping in that moment unknown to others. In the days of the aftershocks, rumor had it that a tsunami was coming and the land would sink. The sea was the same sea. I sat on a high spot of the beach and watched the sea. That deep blue rarely changed. On sunny days, all the more since it was spring, the warm southeast stirred vastly as far as the eye could see, all the way to the horizon. What was a tsunami? Sinking of the land? A number of fishing boats could be seen plying the waves. Even in those days of a potential surprise disaster, a number of fishing boats set out to sea and returned to port. I suddenly thought of Mazu’s black face, auspicious and kind, though frightening. Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory, Pray for all of those who are in ships, those Whose business has to do with ˉsh, and Those concerned with every lawful trafˉc And those who conduct them. Repeat a prayer also on behalf of Women who have seen their sons or husbands Setting forth, and not returning: Figlia del tuo ˉglio, Queen of Heaven. Also pray for those who were in ships, and Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Or in the dark throat which will not reject them Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s Perpetual angelus. ( T.bS . E L I O T )

It is said that when a tsunami occurs, heaven and earth roar, howl, and wail. The sound comes over the surface of the ocean, sweeping across the endless deep blue. At that moment, billions of tons of water would rise up, rolling, sweeping toward Hualien. At that moment the color of the sky would be beyond my imagination. Would it perhaps be all purplish red, or white like the face of a dead person? The seawater would easily break the dike at the coast at Nanbin, immediately swallowing the houses on the eastern side, and from Milun Stream in the north to the mouth of the Hualien River in the south. Then the water would surge ahead, rolling toward the foot of the mountains, passing over Gongxia and Fengchuan, spreading south along Xiulin County, inundating all of Hualien then breaking the embankment at Qijiaochuan and rolling on to hills in Ji’an County. The sea would repeatedly surge for several days, singing boisterously as if the world were ending, like a lament from hell. That’s why it’s called a tsunami. As it rolled through old Hualien, it would tear up the ancient alluvial fan, ultimately washing away the city’s foundation, washing away the land, with the entire delta flowing like mud to the bottom of the sea. The houses, railroad tracks, bridges, factories, farmland, and all the trees and flowers would all flow into the Pacific, floating and drifting on the waves, and finally vanishing without a trace. That is what is meant by the sinking of the land. It is said that at that time, another round, funnel-shaped bay appeared to the north of Mount Milun, from Mount Qijiaozhou in the west to the dense forest slowly rising on Mount Liyu in the southwest. The sea would gradually spread into the longitudinal valley all the way to the Papaya River, halting at Mount Yuemei in the east. I sat on a high point on the beach, looking into the distance. The thin white clouds floated over the surface of the sea like a school of slow-swimming fish. The sky and the ocean were the same color and appeared permeated with a dense mist. A spring breeze blew through the trees on the shore, tapping lightly in response to the waves caressing the fine sand. Occasionally an errant wave would strike the reef, sending up spray that disappeared

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

just as quickly. The spring breeze carried a heartbreaking fragrance—the smell of salt mixed with fish scales and seaweed as well as dreams and fantasies, foolishness and curiosity, fear and reverence, boundless longing under the bright sun. Oh, a fragrance that instilled worry in you that all of this was soon going to disappear; a fragrance incomparable and irreplaceable, on the solid and complete coast of Hualien. I sat there and felt a gnawing pain; my spirit trembled, my body gradually grew numb, the internal and the external interacted, conflicting and tormenting. Ahead and to the right was the beginning of the Taidong Coastal Mountain Range. I took a quick look back and Hualien had not sunk to the bottom of the sea. The lofty mountains towered as if nothing had happened. In a moment I felt another tremor. The earthquakes had not entirely ceased, as if a deity had caused an earthquake with a special gesture, instructing me that wallowing in an excess of sentiment, these sharp pangs of love, was inseparable from the motion of the universe and all things in it, that everything had to conform to certain rules: age would come, followed by weakening, decay, and death, all without exception. The moment I abandoned myself to these thoughts and feelings, when I heard the breathlike sweep of the waves, saw the reflected sunlight, dazzling as the smile on a face, I felt the desire-fi lled breeze toying with me, with a feminine concern. In that direct and powerful metaphor I seemed to discover a secret that made me feel secure. I lay down. The earth shook again, or perhaps it didn’t, and though it may have been just a hallucination, I thought I had discovered the eternal clue. But I finally understood that many things were right then rapidly disappearing, those years where green, brown, and blue crisscrossed, days of long cicada cries, reed flowers, water dripping from the eaves, and dragonflies following one another were all disappearing, because there was a greater universe and that universe had rules of motion that would naturally send me on my way to another place. It was hard to say if it would be a strange and distant place, to explore, search, and create, with no regrets. When I grew up or grew old, and white hair covered my weary temples, and my eyes had probably grown dim, I would, by then, have grasped these eternal worries and longings with no regrets, but with a few sentimental feelings: At this moment the sun is setting in the west beyond the cypress trees in front of me. The tide

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

this shore. But I know that every wave starts at Hualien—there was a time I asked the distance in astonishment if there was a shore there. Today, that shore is this shore, there is just fading and falling starlight. Today, just a patch of starlight shines on my weary sentiments inquiring of the surging waves if they miss the sandy beach of Hualien. I don’t know if the wave roaring toward the beach at Hualien—after ˊowing back will only return in ten summers. I suppose it is the moment of determination the moment it turns and takes shape, suddenly the same sort of wave arrives silently ˊowing toward the deserted beach. If I sit and quietly listen to the tide observing the shape of each wave and for my future sketch from life like the small one on the left, isn’t it perhaps an ephemeral hatchling? Like that one in a suitable pose probably seaweed, like that one far away that large one, perhaps it’s a ˊying ˉsh ˉre rushing through a summer’s night. I don’t know if the waves are surging toward this deserted shore, at the moment What would be the best thing to do? Perhaps be a wave Suddenly turning over, ˊowing back, momentarily Joining the peaceful sea Brimming over the beach At Hualien.

 Mountain Wind and Ocean Rain

Then, as I step into the sea my insigniˉcant mass is unconsumed, the water rises, the beach is moistened higher up. As I continue in, even ˊoods the deserted beach seven meters west. I wonder if in Hualien in June, ah Hualien will there be rumors of a tsunami?

I have no regrets. More than thirty years later, at the end of summer in Westport, I remember the past. In the end I have no regrets, but where do these sentiments come from? Looking back suddenly, I seem to see myself lying on a high point of the beach as the earth shakes again, as the spring breeze blows, and as the tsunami amounts to no more than a rumor. I turn over, raise my head, and look toward the distance. Hualien is still there; it has not sunk to the bottom of the sea.

R E T U R N TO D E G R E E Z E RO

WILD CHINESE OLIVE TREES

It must have been precisely when the scorching heat of summer was diminishing, but before it had dissipated entirely, that a faint, undying light was lit between my consciousness and perceptions. An endless season smoldered, an oppressive season, with heat rising from the mountains, from the streams, the paddy fields awaiting harvest, the beach where the nets were drying, slowly dispersing in every corner, both near and far, lifted, swaying upon the breeze, as if forced up, suddenly brought into the emptiness between heaven and earth, as if preparing to vanish by seeping away into the clouds. But it couldn’t just disappear into the formless like that; instead it solidified, turned back, and struck my body. Sitting, I changed my position, leaning my back against an olive tree, my spine pressed right against a knob in the bark of the trunk, and the numbing sensation it produced made me feel drowsy. My eyes were barely open; beads of perspiration dripped from the ends of my hair, at first hanging on my brows, while some finally fell, rolling around my eyebrows and onto my eyelids, blurring my sight. The southern edge of the playing field rose at a fifteen-degree slope, with the green grass up to my ankles. The top of the slope leveled off where three olive trees grew randomly, and at the farthest corner stood a lone pine. I’m afraid that due to the typhoons over the years, all of the trees were old with a few short, thick, disorderly limbs on their trunks, giving the impression of extreme panic. The olive trees were all bent and deformed, but the pine, seen from afar, looked limp and lifeless. I sat on the grass, leaning against the easternmost olive tree, squinting as I counted the leaves on its four thick limbs, one, two, three, four, a breeze stirred, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, only forty-three leaves. Suddenly the breeze quickened, and two leaves the size of my palm

 Return to Degree Zero

detached from the tree and silently floated down to the slope. Forty-three minus two meant that only forty-one leaves remained. How was it possible that there was such a tree? How could it be so old that I, a twelve-year-old boy, could lean back against it, numbing my back by rubbing against it, and still have only forty-one leaves? I imagined that every time a typhoon struck, this tree was the first to bear the brunt, the first tree to be fiercely struck, violently shaken, and knocked down, while the people, animals, and trees of other places were breathing in the first inklings of, and preparing for, the coming typhoon. Typhoons came from the sea and made land at Hualien. My Chinese olive tree stood beside the playing field on the slope, just fifty meters from the coast. Fate had determined that it would meet the first blast of mad, warm wind and the downpour of cold rain. I imagine that one or two of its few limbs would be snapped off and nearly stripped of leaves; and after the wind and rain had passed, it would try to right itself, trembling, its solitary form leaning even more to the northwest, and what few leaves remained would shine strangely in the light of day. Thus it managed to breathe in the warm, ever humid air; the strong sunlight from the sky and the sea’s surface shone together on it. Life leaped inside it, its sap circulating quickly; new shoots burgeoned from the sundered limbs, and new leaves sprouted from the branches. In a matter of days, the new branches had grown to the thickness of a young person’s arm and the leaves had grown larger than the palm of a  hand. Although it slanted to the northwest, solitary and despondent, its  renewed branches and leaves were abundant and elegant, beautiful and flourishing. The tree proudly stood on a high position with the vast and boundless sea before it and the precipitous peaks behind, until the arrival of the next typhoon. I leaned against the tree, facing south. Not far away, the land fell away precipitously, where only the surging sea was seen, a rich blue with a steady stream of rolling swells. I could hear the surf, but couldn’t see the striking waves because fi fty meters away the land ended at a steep cliff. The deep water fi lled a small inlet, striking and falling, perpetually crashing and striking. Sitting at the top of the slope, all I could hear was its echo. An unbroken stretch of potato leaves covered the cliff and on a not too distant rise stood a blockhouse, a fortification recently occupied by the coastal defense forces. Roundly did the immense sea move, rocking and swaying gen-

 Return to Degree Zero

tly in the dazzling sunlight. I wiped the sweat from my eyelashes and, looking as far as I could see, with adoration and all of my will, I gazed at a mountain rising from boundless mist-covered waves far to the south. The mountain sat gracefully beneath the clear sky and white clouds, as if expecting me, looking at me affectionately with heart and will. The mountain was the starting point of a long chain. I consciously grasped love and beauty and roughly sensed the mysterious symbols, the expression in the eyes of heaven and earth, everything approaching the idea of poetry. At the time, I thought I already had a firm grasp of the idea, consequently giving full rein to my naïveté, submerging myself in a bottomless, black world, probing myself and suffering. I frequently crossed the wide and long grassy area, climbing the high slope alone to sit, leaning against the slanted tree, looking for a long time at the starting point of the coastal mountain chain. Amid the sound of waves, I seemed to have known that mountain, bemusing as an ancient dream, for ages, secretly agreed upon in a past life, a thousand years ago, possessed of a tragic sense. However, it came first, sitting in a distant corner of the earth for so many ages or kalpas, bitterly waiting for me, sadly but firmly. Then it spent even more ages waiting for me, certain that one day I would arrive. As the wind blew and the clouds parted and the tide roared, I finally was on the point of arriving. It waited again for ages and I fi nally arrived, a twelveyear-old boy, one who thought he was able to grasp love and beauty, mysterious symbols, the expression in the eyes of heaven and earth, close to poetry but lukewarm, a boy who was quiet and odd. I saw the mountain rise from the ocean, appearing bluish gray in the distance, blending green and many other colors I was unable to name. It sat firmly, shoulders hanging down, as if one hand sought support on the ground and the other was placed on its bent back ankle. The sea breeze blew softly over the water; the waves swayed, stirring the sea’s voluminous robes. I could almost make out the mountain’s face amid the brightness and beauty, an awkward, flirtatious expression. Occasionally a thin cloud would drift over, concealing it behind nothingness. There were no large ships on the open sea, vast and forgotten. Where the bay formed at the foot of the mountains, the color of the water changed with that of the sky, and once in a while a fishing boat would row across. Previously I had sat on the beach trying to imagine an

 Return to Degree Zero

earthquake and a tsunami, bewildered and surprised, the water rising and falling till I could no longer see the edge of the sea, a fishing boat, or that beautiful crouching posture of the whole mountain. Now from my high vantage point, I could see the fishing boats plying back and forth. Hualien stood at a triangular depression on the east side of the bay. I could take in the entire area at a glance, the gentle rising and falling, and how the houses and the trees were woven together to form the fabric of a peaceful human community. Occasionally there was a hole marking the location of someone’s especially large garden, or a playing field, or an afternoon market in front of a temple. Here and there one could also see upright structures, a chimney, a radio antenna, a transmission tower, the observation tower of the weather station, or a Buddhist stupa. The movement of water to my left was immense, extending far into the distance, over which hung the clouds, like flowers on a meadow. There was a long breakwater extending from north to south, cutting the sea in two— outside, the water was rough and choppy, inside, nearly smooth and placid. At the end of the breakwater was a white lighthouse, not far from which another breakwater jutted out from the land from west to east, ending about four hundred meters to the west of the lighthouse, calming the water from the other direction. The hundred-meter opening between the two breakwaters was the gateway to Hualien Harbor, and the lighthouse marked the defensive stronghold on the right-hand side, towering and graceful, revealing an ancient nautical grace and martial bearing, combining all the love and hate shared by both sexes, and all the longing and waiting, joining together that eternal romance. The harbor was man-made, and the locals referred to it as the “constructed harbor.” It was a huge engineering project dating from the time when the Japanese ruled Taiwan. When the rulers first decided to build the harbor on the alluvial deposit of the river, perhaps they saw it had a limitless prospect facing the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean. They chose this terrain and first had to construct two large breakwaters of huge quantities of earth and stone along the coast, one from north to south, at the end of which they also built a lighthouse. And the other advancing from west to east, tightly close to the lighthouse, until they met and no opening was left. Once it was completed, they had to begin dredging the earth below, expending a great deal of time to excavate a deep, rectangular pit, separated

 Return to Degree Zero

from the sea by the two arms of the dike. The other two sides followed the topography of the land inland, ending as the land rose in a hill. When all of this was complete, they chose an auspicious day, much like a religious procession in gratitude to the gods, and they mobilized all the men and women, young and old, of Hualien to observe the ritual by the coast. On that day, amid the sound of drums and gongs, firecrackers, people, dogs, and the roar of the surf, with heavy equipment, they opened the spot where the two breakwaters had been joined, allowing the sea to surge like a thunderous torrent into the deep pit. The water surged in at great speed, raising a heavy white foam, boiling up from the bottom of the pit and striking the four thick walls of black earth, producing a fishy smell. Amid the loud torrent, fish, big and small, could be seen being swept up in the whirling water, dizzily passing by, floating white bellies up and sinking, in a flash pushed in another corner. The seawater surged in with a deafening roar, leaving the people of Hualien, who every year experienced several typhoons, stunned. It was noisier than a mountain torrent and swifter that the surf on Nanbin Beach. Suddenly, to everyone’s dismay, the noise and the speed diminished, and the water in the pit rose to a point on the breakwaters equal to the level of the sea. On the other side, the water pressed the hilly coast, gradually calming, murmuring as it snuggled close gently as a cat, swaying, splashing up and down, like all surf, going on with its perpetual rise and fall, leisurely swelling, rising, whooshing, pleasantly and gently sliding across the new ground, leaving a trace of moisture as it retreated, then coming again in the same leisurely fashion. The two sides became the breakwaters of the man-made harbor, one on the east and one on the south, and after the hole through which the seawater poured had been shored up it became the harbor entrance, with the white lighthouse standing at the end of the eastern breakwater. The first time I entered the “constructed harbor” was probably when I was twelve years old. By then water had been in the pit for some time, so when I arrived at the west-east breakwater, the coast looked pretty old, and it was impossible to imagine the place of rising and falling surf had been an inland meadow a few years before. The waves came and went continuously, and the sand on the beach was fine and the shells exquisite, while slightly higher up was beach grass and reeds. The breakwater was stronger and wider than I’d imagined. When I stood on the breakwater, whenever the

 Return to Degree Zero

ocean spray would fly, my clothes were sure to be soaked. I could walk directly out toward the sea with waves rolling on both sides, giving me the illusion of being on a rocking boat. When I reached the end, the exit of the constructed harbor, which wasn’t very wide, separated me from the towering white lighthouse, which looked more impressive and vivid than from a distance. That was the fi rst time I had ever been close to Hualien Harbor, and standing there in the middle of the water, I looked back at the green mountain slopes and the neat-looking tile roof of my new school behind the trees. The year after the great earthquake, I entered middle school. Thinking about it now, it was a time that was moving from disturbance to calm— well, perhaps not calm, but an age that was a mixture of anger and fear, and severity and sternness, which, to a certain degree, changed into a fairly hollow age of silence. It wasn’t appropriate to express the anger and fear, and I was conscious that most people had little faith, if any at all, in the new order. It was odd, but not really. In the year or two preceding the earthquake, a number of locally famous individuals became entangled in politics. We heard about many cases of people being shot or disappeared, and the number of people jailed was unusual—this was the difference between the old system and the new. Some hid out in the banana groves, aboriginal villages, and mountainous ravines, and their relatives paid bribes to have them declared dead. When they reappeared, they were silent, empty, and depressed, but frequently they were doctors, teachers, musical conductors, and the intelligentsia of the small community. Depressed, they continued seeing patients, lecturing in class, and leading the choirs in singing the praise of God. As I recall, all the adults were unhappy, always on their guard, unwilling to get involved in even the most mundane matters, for fear of being interrogated. Although this was the case, still people would be startled awake in the middle of the night by the neighborhood committee, accompanied by the military and police, to check a household register. In the dull, yellowish lamplight, they looked disgraceful and disgusting in their uniforms. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, listening to the confusion of footsteps, the harsh voices breaking the quiet of the night in which the insects chirruped. At once, the light of a flashlight would slice through the mosquito net, shining right on my face. My eyelids twitched, but I contin-

 Return to Degree Zero

ued to pretend to be asleep. I think I was less afraid of them than I was of showing my disdain for them. It was also an age of written and shouted slogans. Any empty wall, inside Hualien or outside, regardless of how large, was always covered with slogans. Whenever you walked down an old street overarched by broad-leaved tropical trees in the summer heat of August with the deafening noise of the cicadas, you’d suddenly see amid the beautiful flickering tree shadows characters the size of tires telling you to obey, support, and implement, reminding you of hunger and killing and other abstractions, and even false concepts—a few disgraceful lies. In some cases the painted slogans were continued onto the walls of residences, blotting out the wisteria blossoms that had been blooming under the windows. Other times, they painted the slogans on chimneys, in a long vertical string of characters, amid which there were a couple of commas, and at the bottom of which was a tilted, absurd exclamation point. That string of characters in the slogan soon peeled off, perhaps because the chimney was too hot. The churches were especially on their guard at this time, for each church had at least one long wall, so they preemptively wrote in red characters things such as “God loves man,” and “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. . . . Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” went on the next wall, allowing the cockscombs and canna lilies to grow up and cover the remaining words. For many years I passed the church on my bicycle and would dwell on the words, “that whosoever believeth in me,” wondering what they meant. I would linger over those words the entire way. Only later did I learn that those who “believeth” have “everlasting life.” Every day after the flag-raising ceremony, we had to shout slogans. A man in a military uniform led us in shouting “Obey . . . Practice” and even “Rescue” and “Complete,” a slogan consisting of six words. He raised his right fist, looking extremely determined. When he didn’t show up, a teacher came to lead us, but because of the difference in sound and form, it was comical. One time, for some reason, a rather shy and refined chemistry teacher had to take the stand and lead us. He raised his hand and shouted “Obey” and “Practice,” but he totally forgot what came next. He stood there nervously, his face flushed. The school principal walked over and stood below

 Return to Degree Zero

the platform and reminded him of each word, and only after the “Long Lives” did he step down. Such a funny and embarrassing ceremony made me feel strange and wonder about its popularity during my youth and why no one put a stop to it, and eventually, like a plague, it penetrated to the remotest areas. Slogans even floated down out of the sky. It was around the time of national day when some office got the bright idea to print up thousands of fliers and put them on a propeller-driven aircraft, which circled Hualien, dropping them inside and outside the city. The fliers floated down out of the heavens like flocks of white pigeons, fluttering and shining for miles in the clear sky, making you think it was an absurd dream. Falling, falling, they fell over the roofs of houses, small yards, courtyards, temple squares, riverbanks, bamboo groves, cowsheds, markets, and railroad tracks. Ridiculous with a vulgar beauty, like countless unrecognizable spirits floating down from the clouds, they landed in the ditches, garbage dumps, and the manure pits in the open country. But the news was the same—those same stiff, horizontal or vertical slogans you saw scrawled over the walls or shouted until hoarse, the same six-word slogan: “Obey,” “Practice,” and “Long Lives,” with their tilted exclamation points. Someone said the noisy prop plane was a Japanese trainer from the war stationed up at Beipu Airport. It carried the number twelve, and after the war it had been abandoned by the Japanese along with another one numbered eleven. The Chinese Air Force, the recipient of the plane, had repaired Number Twelve and decided that it could be flown for distributing fliers. The rising sun had been rubbed out and the white sun on a blue sky had been painted in its place. But no matter what they did, they couldn’t get Number Eleven working and just let it rust in a corner of the airport. Every year on national day, we would see noisy Number Twelve circling in the sky, distributing large quantities of fliers, like white pigeons swaying in the air. The airplane’s wings would tip exaggeratedly from right to left quite joyfully. Sometimes I feared that it might fall out of the sky. In that strange age, I grew up faulty with dread, with abounding perplexity, and an inexplicably scornful frame of mind. That’s how I grew into a middle-school student. I was even more withdrawn than before, seeking every chance to be alone; even at that childish age, such opportunities were not difficult to

 Return to Degree Zero

find. Two years before I finished primary school, our class was broken up: one third failed to pass, and the other two thirds were distributed among the other six classes. In a matter of one night, I was hurled into a world in which I was nearly a total stranger; only one other of my classmates was assigned to the same class. It was very lonely. I thought that the way they interacted was different, the language they used was different, even the way they dressed was different. To me the teacher was a heartless woman, her face always powdered a vapid white, and she probably never sweated. She never looked at me directly, but strangely she was kind and genial to the students originally in her class, and always smiling. She conversed with them using their pet names and sometimes went further, addressing them using their Japanese names and even calling each one of them by their first name only, no surname when taking roll, creating an atmosphere of closeness. But at roll call, she always frostily called my name and surname. I think she must have been the first person in my life to dishearten me, a most intolerable woman. But I never felt afraid of her in the least, just felt loathing for her. Her not too long hair was a smoky black color, with no radiance; her features were like those of the denizens of hell in a temple painting; even when she smiled at someone else, behind the sweetness was a sense of derision and ridicule. Her white blouse and long navy blue skirt was an image for which I had a tender regard in my childhood; that yearning was suddenly shattered, and that old feeling, tinged with sadness, turned to flight and disillusionment. She was from Hualien. Entering middle school at least allowed me to escape from under that shadow and should have been cause for rejoicing. But the feeling of solitude to which I had become accustomed wasn’t to be shaken off. With complicated feelings, I gazed about my new surroundings and felt happy for the most part, despite feelings of loss and gain. Directly in front of the school and to the right were two large walls, but quite beautiful for not having been defaced with slogans. Behind the school were trees, flowers, and a wooden fence that faced the Pacific Ocean. To the left, across that surprisingly large playing field, was that slope at a fifteen-degree gradient that suddenly dropped precipitously at its highest point. Eight meters from the ground, a coarse wall constructed of round stone and cement stood steadfastly and proudly, looking out upon the distant streets of Hualien, and even

 Return to Degree Zero

farther were layer upon layer of vague, precipitous mountains. It was here that first year that I discovered that mysterious world, where a lone pine stood and three Chinese olive trees grew randomly. I sat leaning against the one nearest the sea, the one that had just forty-one leaves, with the sweat of late summer running down my face, gazing at a green mountain rising to the south.

L O V E , B E A U T Y, A N D R E B E L L I O N

1 I tried searching for them. At times it was like gazing absent-mindedly at the glow of the setting sun at the end of winter, with the clouds floating together then apart, gazing at them for ages until finally mind and reason were lost and nowhere in particular to be found. What my eyes observed was no longer real, just illusions in some corner of the cosmos, floating and wavering. I recalled and soon forgot the shapes of the clouds, until the light had nearly faded and the darkness took hold upon my vision and my imagination. I quickly came back to myself and sought the forms and colors I had just seen, but they were already gone. So I quickly pressed myself to capture all that I had seen moments before, but to no avail; it was too late, it all had dimmed and melted away. I heard only the wind whistling in the telephone wires like some small, solitary animal crying, lonely and far away. No longer could I grasp their forms; they had slipped from my embrace and vanished from my inspired vision. Did that mean they really no longer existed? But they still existed, obscure and dull. At times it seemed that I alone was awake, restless in the chill of daybreak, glimpsing the first hint of light behind the curtains, perhaps already bringing the impatient wild cherries into bloom. Light and shadow covered the mountain slopes, swayed in patterns on the stone walls, pierced the dewdrops on the spiderwebs, and fell on the thick carpet of pine needles—yes, after a long, long dark night, the sky grew light, and I had just awakened from a chaotic dream, having passed through the dense forest of time and space, luckily returning to myself, feeling the familiar pillow under my cheek, the blanket tight around me, safe, though a little bored, to toss and turn in the world of reality. What was to be done about it? What was significant? Safe, I monopolized my

 Return to Degree Zero

thought and imagination, my waking senses, aching, itching, not tired or sleepy, all self-controlled, without fear, but why so distracting? Something was missing. But what? Fear and danger were missing. I turned over, thinking about the long, long dark night I had just passed. I had soared on an imaginary line where longitude and latitude met. Bizarre hues mixed automatically, overlapping, and divided up, amid which I shone forth, shuttling through a tale of adventure in which a special plot was unfolding, without limitations, and I was the center of it all. The plot developed in the direction of all times and spaces, with me as the center. All the effects of joy, anger, sadness, and happiness came back to me with the speed of electric waves, shifting to my character, forming the structure of my spirit and feelings, the system of my knowledge, my loves, my evils, prejudices, and indifference. I vigorously tried to recall the intricacies of my dream, some sweetness, some danger, and everything I had experienced, treasuring the incidents that lashed my character. Ah, that flawless plot I had experienced in my dream. Then, at that moment, resting against my pillow, I searched for traces, but possessed not a snippet of memory; perhaps there were some, but only fragments, more broken pieces than fragments. As I approached, they vanished one after another, melting into emptiness. At times, with luck, I’d go back to the very start, making my way against the current at normal speed; at times, I’d hastily know all of the details, flashing back with greater speed, tapping my way back to that initial time and space, disk-shaped time and space, with the sound of the winter wind, cold, gloomy, transparent. At first, Teacher Feng was nearly impossible to understand on account of his heavy accent. He came from a large and famous literati family, which, beginning in the mid-Qing dynasty, determined literary taste and excellence (his own words). His ancestors, along with other literati from their county, who appreciated one another, formed a group or school in the nineteenth century that stressed a “Way of Righteousness,” and put it to use in public affairs to govern the world. It is said that they won respect and a widespread following. When I was assigned to Teacher Feng’s class, he had probably just arrived in Taiwan and come to Hualien that summer. He led a group of us boys to the playing field, vigorously instructing us to run quickly to the left and then sharply to the right, but we had no idea what he wanted us to do and just swarmed behind him, zigzagging left and right.

 Return to Degree Zero

Vigorous Teacher Feng worked up quite a sweat, and constantly pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his recently barbered head of hair, as he motioned hopelessly. We finally understood what he wanted: he wanted us to line up single fi le according to height in order for him to more easily arrange our seating order, with the short in the front and the tall in the back. After we all stood in a row, he walked in front of us, panting and wiping his sweat away, scrutinizing us very carefully. At times, he quickly would have two boys standing side by side change places; other times, he had more trouble deciding and would have the two boys stand back to back, after which he would take a couple of steps back to seriously size them up, following which he’d say a few words in his sharp voice, the meaning of which was unclear, but probably something like, “You stand here and you stand there, that’ll do.” He was hard to understand and always seemed anxious and, although he never smiled, his white complexion touched with red was that of someone from a scholarly family, and for that reason, I never held the slightest ill feeling toward him. Several rows of boys formed on the playing field to decide on the seating order. They glanced about with curiosity, their closely cropped heads shining under the sun. I could hear the sound of the sea nearby; a train slowly made its way down the tracks on the mountainside, almost silent and invisible save for a few puffs of white smoke, the rings dispersing in the blue sky above the sea. All of it seemed to be between existence and emptiness, on the misty shore opposite and at the edge of time. I occupied spot number twelve and sat in a seat by the window in the second row; directly behind me was a student who had flunked a grade and who always smiled awkwardly at me. He was a member of the Bunun tribe and lived in Xiuli Village. He told me he got up every morning before daybreak and, by running and walking, would make his way to school, which took about two hours, one way. If he was lucky, he would run into someone he knew and get a ride on the back of a bicycle part of the way, taking him to a crossroads and leaving him with a few words of encouragement. He was probably the only Bunun boy in the school. His name was Wu Maoxiu. I can’t imagine why the officials in charge of household registration in those days were so mischievous in that they not only forced them to give up their Bunun names, but also forced them to take Han names and to use the character wu for “shaman.” There was really nothing wrong with having Wu as a surname, but because he

 Return to Degree Zero

was a Bunun, he became the butt of jokes, not only by his classmates but sometimes also by the teacher when calling roll. In such situations, when all the students and the teacher laughed at him together, I’d turn around and look at Wu Maoxiu and see him sitting there with his lips firmly shut, his cheeks red, his bright, flashing eyes fi xed on the teacher, who never stopped shaking with laughter. I don’t know why his eyes shone so brightly, perhaps on account of the tears filling them, but perhaps not. Wu Maoxiu was just furious. His eyes were always deeper and more profound than anyone else’s, the shrewd eyes of a hunting family living deep in the mountains. He sat behind me, bolt upright, waiting for the laughter to recede. I know that several hundred years of humiliation were focused in those seconds, and Wu Maoxiu withstood it with the fortitude of his people. Half of our class of sixty had been held back; the other half consisted of those of us who were on a waiting list to enter regular classes, unsure of when we would advance in school. During the hottest time of the summer, someone came to pay us a visit, but my father wasn’t home; the person stood in the doorway, speaking with my mother for a long time. I eavesdropped while hiding on the other side of the shoji. The person indicated that the head of the family with a child on the waiting list had better go to a certain director and give a gift, as the total had reached a certain number. The child on the waiting list could be entered in the first year of junior high. I guessed most of families had done so, and that was why the students on the waiting list were mixed with the ones who failed to advance. Teacher Feng had been designated as the teacher of this composite class. It was certainly a setback for him and not something to be desired. One time, in a fit of anger be blurted out, “The students in the other classes all have delicate features. What’s wrong with you guys?” I soon had no other choice but to become accustomed to his accent. Teacher Feng liked the students who had delicate features, and he really appreciated the few passable specimens in our class. On New Year’s Day or other festivals, they would be allowed to go to his house, where they would draw pictures and cut and paste up the wall newspaper for the school. It was then that I discovered what a young wife he had, not much older than we, who wore her hair short. She also had white skin touched with a light red. She wore a thin, sleeveless top and slacks that were neither long nor short. She was clean and tidy, her lovely frame visible beneath the print fabric of her clothing.

 Return to Degree Zero

The last typhoon of the year came and went after the Mid-Autumn Festival; the sun shone on the sea, but it was still incredibly hot after the noon hour had passed. We took advantage of the bright light to remove the glass windows, wash and dry them, and put them back one by one. Some went to the flowerbed to pull weeds and play. There was seemingly an endless supply of time to squander. We piled the weeds and dead flower stalks while singing, “Oar girl, you are so beautiful,/Oh, there is no other to be found in Chatong.” A high school Chinese teacher walked over and stood with his hands behind his back for a long time under the portico, listening to our song with a blank expression. We stopped, not daring to sing anymore. Standing under the sun-fi lled portico, he nodded and said, “You’re doing the flowerbed? You’ve got to get the roots when you pull the weeds.” He sauntered off toward the sea below, hands behind his back. The cicadas chirred sporadically as white clouds drifted across the sky. Lying on my belly beneath the trellis, I watched the ants busily coming and going. Another boy came over to look: “What’s so great about ants?” He stood up and ran over to the classroom. Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps approach where I was lying on my belly. I heard someone throw a bucket of water— huala—on the ants. Struck by the water, some of the ants were swept into the ditch beside the wall while others clung to the side of the ditch and then ran soaked in all directions. The cicadas had stopped chirring completely, while the sparrows bickered noisily on the gray-tiled roof.

2 After the arrival of winter, the sea at the end of the long covered walkway was no longer blue. Sometimes I could sit for a whole afternoon watching the fiercely surging waves. Wind from the northwest blew madly then; the sea surged rapidly toward the coast, but was blocked by the breakwater stretching north and south. The water slammed against the breakwater, sending huge columns of water shooting into the sky; sometimes it shot up in a high, massive curtain, where it was blown in all directions by the wind, only to fall and disappear in a matter of moments. The waves followed swiftly one upon another, breaking and receding without letting up. Aweinspiring, the white lighthouse stood alone amid the raging wind and waves

 Return to Degree Zero

without flinching. On a winter afternoon, we walked out of the classroom to find the third-year high school students walking silently with their book bags on their backs. Their blue-gray uniforms appeared inflated, too big for them, with lots of pockets above and baggy trousers. They wore what appeared to be military caps, but the color was wrong, as was the shape. It was said that the hats were worn in place of their old high school caps, in complete rejection of the poison of the Japanese occupation. Although the corners of the caps were different, they still tended pretty much to a deep, cold color. They looked somewhat like officer’s caps, but lacked the stiff, sharp edges, making them quite malleable. Those senior schoolmates of ours, with at least six years of Japanese elementary school and three years of junior high school, who soon would be wearing high school hats, found them replaced by those soft, flat caps overnight. The school badge on the edge of the old, lackluster military-style ones were suddenly changed into white-on-blue insignias of the Nationalist Party. Each and every one of the students were quite disappointed. One of them tried pinching the hat into shape—one corner, two corners; while eight was out of the question, several crooked corners was doable, and with two drooping sides, the cap looked like the one worn by General MacArthur. In those days, all the high school students wore those strange caps, albeit apparently unwillingly, as they’d take them off and carry them the first chance they got. They looked very serious, even more serious than the young teachers from mainland China, whom they rarely greeted. They were extremely polite to the local teachers, because all of the local teachers had graduated from Hualien High School. After finishing college in Taipei, they’d return to teach for a while. They were upperclassmen who had worn real high school caps. The high school students I encountered in the long, covered walkway would sooner or later make a sound, their words of mutual greeting. I was never able to understand what they said. They would meet and pass with a string of words, unlike us boys, who always had our arms around each other’s shoulders. When they met a graduate who was now teaching, they’d not only make those sounds but also stop in their tracks and bow. The graduate would hurry over and they’d exchange a similar sound. Those same students would brush past the teachers from other provinces without the least expression or sound. They’d both walk to their end of the long covered walkway, sunk in a tense silence, perceptible even to us junior high school

 Return to Degree Zero

boys. Sometimes, one of the high school boys would throw us a warm, amiable look, but with no desire to speak with us and in a parsimonious way. Many of us had brothers in high school, but that didn’t make any difference when you met in the long, covered walkway, because he’d just give you the eye and certainly not speak to you. I’ve had difficulty in attempting to recall all of this, more difficulty than I expected, though it was not impossible. Later, I recall Teacher Feng saying that that string of sounds used as a greeting was Japanese, but modified by the high school students, perhaps shortened or simplified, but the source was Japanese. Mentioning this, Teacher Feng was quite angry. In his refined face and bitter voice, I could detect a kind of great sadness, a sense of confusion: “Why do they use Japanese when they greet one another?” His insistent questioning of us young fellows, despite the fact that we didn’t greet one another in Japanese when it was our older brothers who did, seemed to us that he was asking himself: “Why?” In Teacher Feng’s sad looks, furrowed brow, and curled lip, I saw the hopelessness and thoughts of a scholar who had crossed the sea to come to this small city at the end of the earth. He pondered this strange question and because he received no answer, he couldn’t help but suffer dramatically and exaggeratedly throw up his delicate white hands to us innocent boys. Actually, I knew he understood why. He had an answer; it was just that he didn’t like it. Disliking the answer, he refused awareness of it, masking himself in a perplexed expression, emphasizing his tragic consciousness, suffering, estrangement, and loneliness. He’d arrived in Taiwan from so far away, and had chosen to teach in a small and remote seaside city. It wasn’t any wonder that he felt down and out. Suddenly he had discovered this startling place, unlike anyplace he had experienced on the Chinese mainland. It was simply like a foreign country. The houses and streets were different, the interior decor was even more different, but these could be arranged to suit him. The residential area where Teacher Feng and his family and the other teachers lived was characterized by lanes lined with high walls where the doors and gates had all been painted red. Although the tile-roofed Japanese houses still stood behind the walls and gates, they were isolated in courtyards that had lost all their Japanese flair. The tatami mats remained in Teacher Feng’s house, but I noticed how they had placed rattan chairs on them. This was strange enough, but one day, as his wife slid open the shoji to another room,

 Return to Degree Zero

I espied, much to my astonishment, a bed on top of the tatami mats on the other side of the door. That was the first time I ever saw a bed on top of tatami mats; later I saw many more, as all the teachers had placed their beds on top of the tatami mats. A hammock was tied to two pillars in the room, a precious little baby sleeping within. A cute little life grew in a remote seaside city to the continuous sound of waves, cicadas, crickets, the shouts of people buying wine bottles and waste paper, and the clatter of wooden clogs going down a long lane. Teacher Feng and his family accepted all of this, tempering themselves for the long haul. Only when they heard high school students greeting one another in Japanese did they feel cut off from their surroundings, having lost the support of human warmth. By the time the principal announced that students were forbidden to speak Japanese, our older brothers, who were accustomed to greeting one another with that string of sounds, had already graduated. The incoming high school students had already abandoned that sentiment and what with the start of military training, even their uniforms were changed to khakis, hat included, only the style remained the same, a KMT insignia was still on the front. Judging from the circumstances, it was unlikely that the school emblem would ever return. The high school students remained the same; they removed their hats at every opportunity, kneading them till flattened and soiled. The school emblem was a special characteristic of junior high school, but unfortunately that was in an age when the authorities did everything they could to eliminate any special characteristic, in hopes of extinguishing any form of individuality. All schools in Taiwan established before the war had to take Retrocession Day as their founding anniversary, with all pre-Retrocession history being wiped clean as if it never existed. At that time there was also a universal motto for all schools consisting of the word “camaraderie,” which made no sense hanging over all school gates, for who knows what reason. Each time our music teacher saw the word, he’d shake his head. At that time, speaking Japanese was prohibited at school, but there was actually no need for such a measure, because by then few students could even utter a sentence in the language. They could only use a simple vocabulary and short phrases for the thing they wanted to express, such as tiannishi for tennis, luolaiba for screwdriver, and bidabin for vitamin, all of which were foreign loan words in Japanese. Normally when the students got together they spoke Taiwanese; sometimes Hakka was heard;

 Return to Degree Zero

and outside of class the teachers, both Taiwanese and mainlander, spoke the “National Language,” and we also replied to them in the National Language. Our learning of Mandarin was very difficult, and when the Taiwanese teachers used it, they always looked exhausted; many of the teachers from the mainland never bothered to learn it and simply spoke their home dialect. Dialects from all over China were spoken in the classrooms where we grew up, confusing and unintelligible. There was no point in the principal forbidding us from speaking Japanese. Later, this must have become evident, because he ceased raising the issue. One morning, after the flag was raised, he got up and announced that we would no longer be allowed to speak Taiwanese. I remember when a tremor rippled through the ranks of high school boys. A new drill instructor in a military uniform walked slowly up to the ranks of assembled boys, tilting his head on which he wore a military cap, eyeing everyone, but without the tremor entirely dying away. The principal continued expounding the beauties of Mandarin as opposed to base and vulgar Taiwanese. I saw all those who had graduated from high school in Hualien and had returned from Taipei to teach—those graduates whom we all admired as teachers—exchange angry glances. Several of them shifted their feet, indicating their impatience. The music teacher stepped out of the ranks of the high school students, strode in front of the drill instructor, and walked toward the twenty-four steps. The principal, who was both surprised and embarrassed, never having been aware of the man’s courage, could only watch as he climbed the steps in silence and, upon reaching the high place, pause momentarily before turning down the walkway beyond the flowers and shrubs. The music teacher had graduated from this high school before the war and had returned to teach during the Pacific War for many years. He was one of the few teachers who made the transition between two eras. In class, he made a great effort to use Mandarin to teach us the principles of music, musical notation, and singing; after class, whenever he ran into his colleagues or the school handyman, he usually conversed with them in Japanese; and when he ran into us, he’d speak more Taiwanese. His silhouette, which disappeared at the high place, once looked incredibly large; to my young, impressionistic mind, it once glowed on a spring morning, imprinting itself indelibly on my heart. The sea breeze softly stirred the trees, flowers, and grass up there, and the old banyan tree stood

 Return to Degree Zero

quietly without expression. A group of sago palms nearby stood even more obstinately, almost angrily, leading the protest. The old houses fell away in neat order, haughtily but warmly in the morning light. Farther off stood the range of green mountains beyond which stood, with a hint of sternness, the eternal peaks of Mount Sangbalakan, Mount Botuolu, Mount Liwuzhu, Great Tailuge Mountain, Mount Dumou, Mount Nenggao, and Mount Qilai. The major northern peak of Mount Qilai stood , meters high, to the north of which stood Mount Dabajian, and was matched in the south by Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain. From far away it looked down on our square, where a person with a foreign accent humiliated our mother tongue. His voice was piercing, his spit flew, and he had two pens thrust in his garment with many pockets. His head, rocking back and forth, was nearly bald. I stared at him and beyond him saw the national flag that had just been raised in all its bright purity, yet possessed of a sense of disaster. I suddenly seemed to understand. I understood why Teacher Feng was so sad and pained. I too felt sad and pained. The national flag, that bright and pure flag, fluttered in the beautiful morning light, unfurling in the sea-scented breeze. Mount Qilai, Mount Dabajian, and Mount Xiuguluan all turned their eyes on us, glancing at our bodies and me with strength and affection. The sadness and suffering would then finally begin, never to find solace. Several days later on a drizzly afternoon, four of us students on duty swept the classroom and shut the door and windows, after which we passed a basketball back and forth in the covered walkway, slapping it, and frequently stopping to shoot it through the high gap under the roof. Above the gap, the two sides were sloped and open, and the rain dripped following the downward slope of the roof. The horizontal beams, supported on each end by a column, were laid out in an orderly fashion, seven paces apart, meandering eastward, downhill from the teachers’ offices. The ocean could be clearly seen, framed at the end. The four of us passed the ball back and forth as we walked downhill, stopping every seven paces to take a turn shooting the ball high into the gap. The gap was divided into three parts by two small uprights; the slightly larger middle space was big enough for the basketball to pass through, while the two side spaces formed two scalene triangles, the narrowest angles of which would not permit a ball to pass, but the wide side would, so you had to aim very carefully for the widest part

 Return to Degree Zero

of the triangle. First we shot through the center space and, swoosh, it would go through; then we’d shoot at the right triangle and, if it went through, we’d shoot at the left triangle. But it was rare to make all three shots. The rain fell outside the walkway, the falling drops like silk thread suspended on two flanks. The four of us bounced the ball and noisily shot high up at the empty spaces. Sometimes the ball would bounce outside the walkway and roll into the ditch. We’d retrieve it, wash it off, and bounce it energetically several times to knock off the water, and then start all over. The school was silent, as if the four of us making a racket bouncing the ball were the only ones left on campus. The flowerbeds appeared shrouded in gauze by the rain, drifting in the breeze from the sea. I looked at the sea at the end of the walkway, an ill-defined hazy gray. There were two high school students standing under the eaves at that time, khaki caps in their hands and book bags slung over their shoulders. They were talking softly. When we approached, they waved good-bye to each other. The tall one opened an black umbrella and strode out into the rain; the other one, who was wearing glasses, turned to leave, but suddenly thinking of something, raised his voice and shouted to the other, “Make it :, not :.” The one carrying the umbrella turned and simply said, “Okay.” All of a sudden, a skinny, dark man came running out of one of the classrooms and shouted in all seriousness at the student with the umbrella, “Come back, you!” We were all taken aback. The four of us, along with the high school student wearing glasses, peered into the rain. We saw the high school student with the umbrella stop in his tracks, turn, and notice that the person shouting at him was the guy surnamed Sun, the civics teacher from last year or the year before last. At present, he was still some honcho in the dean’s office. The student walked back through the rain to the covered walkway. He closed his umbrella and, leaning with one hand against the floor, used his hat to wipe off his wet book bag. He stood there, taller than the civics teacher. The teacher stepped forward and barked at him, “Stand up straight!” Before the student could adjust himself, the teacher violently raised his right hand and struck him across the face while angrily cursing, “Shameless slave!” Made dizzy by the blow, the high school student stepped back suddenly, realizing he had been struck. He took a step forward, and his hand, in which he held his umbrella, trembled as if he were going to strike back. Sun repeated once again, “Stand up straight!” Only after he came to his senses did the student

 Return to Degree Zero

calmly stand up straight, his face twisted with pain and anger, while glaring at that thin, dark face. That dark face was also twisted, both sides wrenched, as if he himself had just been struck. “Why . . . ,” the high school student paused a moment before continuing. “Why did you hit me?” “I just hit a conquered slave without a country.” “Why?” “Don’t you think I heard you speaking Japanese? You shameless slave!” He continued, “I ought to hit you again.” He raised his right hand as if to strike him again. Afraid lest that upperclassman be struck again, and fi lled with courage from who knows where, I stepped forward and said to the man with the dark face: “He didn’t speak Japanese!” “He didn’t speak Japanese?” He turned to look at me, his hand paused in midair. “I heard him with my own ears. Don’t think I don’t understand. I understand all your tricks. I’ve seen plenty of Japanese devils and have heard them speak. You conquered slave without a country!” Once again he turned to scold the high school student. “But he didn’t speak Japanese,” I replied. “What he spoke was Taiwanese; it wasn’t Japanese.” The man with the dark face lowered his hand and continued, “Don’t think I don’t understand. I’ve seen more Japanese devils than you. I’ve seen plenty of good-for-nothing Japanese devils. I heard him speak Japanese, that much I know.” He looked at the four of us, then at the upperclassman wearing glasses, and then at the student he had struck. The uppserclassman who had been struck finally understood that Sun had misheard him: when he said “okay” in Taiwanese, he thought he had used that string of sounds that formed a greeting. It was so absurd. Who would utter Japanese when taking leave? At first, humiliation had filled his red, swollen face, which gave way to a look of scorn as he stared angrily at the guy with the dark face. “What he spoke was Taiwanese,” interjected the upperclassman wearing glasses. “Don’t think I don’t understand. I’ve heard the Japanese devils speak plenty.” The civics teacher had softened the tone of his voice and even seemed a bit embarrassed. “I’ve seen more Japs than you, you slave.” The civ-

 Return to Degree Zero

ics teacher was from Manchuria and was fi lled with a passionate hatred for the Japanese. “How can he be a conquered slave without a country when he’s speaking Taiwanese?” I interjected. Sun tilted his head again. Flushed, he glanced at me and replied angrily, “Taiwanese, Japanese, it’s all the same. You’re all a bunch of conquered slaves without a country.” He shifted on his short legs, turned, and walked back into the classroom out of which he had just come, leaving the six of us in the covered walkway. It was still drizzling. The tall upperclassman looked at his friend and then he looked at the four of us; he tapped his umbrella a couple of times against the ground and looked toward the classroom, knowing everything was pointless. He slowly turned until he faced the rain beyond the covered walkway and stood there silently, gazing at the rain swept by the wind across the campus. His friend walked over and looked at him and, after saying a few words, turned and stood side by side with him, with one hand in his pocket. They stood there in silence without uttering a word, looking at the neatly pruned banyan trees, sago palms, the low, shiny fence, and the vague flower beds beyond in the rain. In silence, I could faintly make out the moist cockscomb flowers and gently trembling canna lilies. On the other side, near the steps up to the indoor basketball court, facing the rear window of the school clinic, stood a trellis of fine wisteria flowers, a blended patch of pink and green, dim in the rain. Usually in the morning light, that wisteria trellis was beautiful and dazzling to the eye. Every day, we saw the nurse, who liked to dress up, watering it, plucking the dead leaves, and arranging its long, twining stems. I liked to watch, but the high school boys liked to watch even more. The teachers too liked to watch, and sometimes go over and chat with her. Now the breeze blew through the trellis and cool water accumulated in depressions in the ground. Through the empty spaces amid the trees, the large playing field, I imagined, was empty. I couldn’t say what the two of them were looking at while they stood there in silence. Apprehensively, the four of us youngsters stood behind them, disconcertedly looking here and there: one moment looking at their backs, another moment casting a glance at the silent classroom, or occasionally looking at one another, discovering that it was slowly growing dark. The one who was surnamed Shi plucked up his courage and cautiously walked over to stand beside them.

 Return to Degree Zero

He looked back at us before he looked up and asked, “Does it still hurt?” The tall guy looked down and replied in Taiwanese, “It’s okay.” He then reached out and patted him on the head and said in Japanese, “I’m okay” and then added, again in Japanese, “even the monkey falls from the tree.” It was growing increasingly dark. It seemed, ah, that the great spirit of the vast blue sea, the spirit of the distant, imposing mountains, and the power of art did not come solely from the beauty of Nature, nor solely from the collision of time and space in alternation. In my groping hands, in my exploring eyes, in the querying beat of my heart, in all actions and continuing behavior, time and space shook me to pieces; the weight of heaven and earth struck me deeply in body and soul, inspiring me, making me determined, curious, forsaking the vulgar while pursuing the unlimited secrets of myself. But all of this did not necessarily constitute the full power of art. Many other factors in my life clamored around me, stimulating me and intervening to speed up my growth, making me grow strong and sturdy, making me suddenly halt. There were so many other indefinable and indescribable factors in my limbs and heart striving and dominating me. Ah, the great spirit of the vast blue sea, the great spirit of the high mountains, in the end, I finally came to understand, to fully comprehend the enlightenment you gave to me. Only your vastness is impossible to measure, your distant heights are impossible to thoroughly measure; I longed to climb them with my surveyor’s pole. Profound mystery is not everything in life and, although it helped to consolidate my early worship of the beauty of nature and erected the palace I single-mindedly sought, yet the power of art actually derived from the understanding of real things that could be touched, rejected, scorned, and struck, unreasonable things and conflicts. He opened his black umbrella, turned, and spoke a few words to the guy wearing glasses, then once more stepped out into the rain, strode off in the direction of the steps, and disappeared in the mist over the playing field. The guy with the glasses looked us over before stepping out of the covered walkway, walking quickly and with determination. The rain continued to fall unchanged; all I saw was the raindrops falling all around, very cold and lonely. These things were submerged in a silent corner of memory, the spirit of the vast blue sea, ah, the spirit of the distant and imposing high mountains.

 Return to Degree Zero

Thus I see myself hesitating, alone in the rain—an imagined image in a youthful, obscure illusion—painstakingly capturing those sentiments. At any moment, that which has passed away, which doesn’t seem real, at most a few empty sentiments, far off and indistinct, that can be forced to stay, vacillating, taking shape in a tender and youthful heart. Later, I learned to coldly observe, not just gaze far away at the mountains and the sea, the moon and the constellations, but to open my eyes and pay attention to the relationships among people. I realized that prior to that age, my observations of people had all been careless, met or bumped into by chance. Although some had long been driven straight into my spiritual world and feelings, and had even left deep traces that could not be expunged, still, they had appeared to me suddenly and intermittently as I grew up. But the fear I had was, from beginning to end, a kind of passive attitude, even though I didn’t see it as passivity; but I had never once been active. When I bid farewell to childhood, I actively bid farewell to a period of time, its joy and sadness indistinguishable, and consciously delivered myself to a new and different time—at best, what I can say is that I had not taken the initiative to observe the human relations around me. Only after this incident occurred was I forced to become more sensitive and detached in observing people.

3 As winter deepened, a desolate moisture and a fragrance that emanated from the roots of plants floated in the air of the upland. I stood at the end of the covered walkway closest to the sea, gazing afar, sometimes leaning against the wooden columns, bored stiff, with the sunlight hidden in the cold at the end of the year. The waves on the sea surged enormously, swirled exaggeratedly, before they receded in a big way while rolling continuously to the right and left, like a long, pitiful song that led to an end that was slow in appearing, foretelling since time immemorial some onrushing truth and messages of destruction, devouring, liberating, and comforting. With my soul, in a hurry to grow up, I learned and imagined, and arranged page after page of interwoven and revealing pictures; I looked at the sea with my eyes,

 Return to Degree Zero

but what I thought about in my mind was no longer the sea but abstract ideas, one by one shaped between pictures. I was powerless to bear so many ideas. I was tired, feeling weak and worn out. In earnest, I fixed my eyes on the sea. At the farthest point, where the black clouds were layered with light, I suddenly saw a dark shadow. It was minute but moving—perhaps it was the sea that was moving—in the cold wind, as if it were being led by the variegated light and clouds, like some secondary character on a puppet stage, a black imagined image moving with difficulty. After I blinked my eyes and refocused my sight, I finally confi rmed that it was a fishing boat, a mid-sized fishing boat, sticking up high at one end. I determined that it was a fishing boat making its way amid the troubling wind and waves of winter, heading laboriously for port. I imagined that it had been making its way for some time when the fishermen on the vast ocean heard a warning over the radio, a special report about a violent wind from the northeast that was hurtling in a southeasterly direction over the sea southeast of Hualien. It was like a horse that, put out to graze on the vast plains, vaguely senses some imminent disaster from far away, looks up at the sky, immediately turns about, and hurries back. I could clearly make it out: the ship continued to increase in size, its outline growing clearer, sticking up high at one end, several nautical miles to the southeast, beyond the white lighthouse, but within the gaze of my naked eyes. I discovered that at the moment it became clearly discernible, another dark shape appeared on the horizon; it was moving fast and in the same place as the previous ship. It too was a fishing boat, identical in every way, like a horse grazing on the plains that hurries back after sensing the approach of a disaster from the northeast. I stood watching under the covered walkway for a long time. The cold air and cool mist filled the campus of the middle school. Soon I saw a dozen or so fishing boats appear among the ferocious waves in the same position following a set course, rising and falling, rapidly toward the shining white lighthouse, struggling toward the calm embrace of the port. Sometimes a fishing boat would be raised high on a wave, tottering as if it were about to plunge, but within a matter of moments I saw it leisurely slide down, propelled forward by the wave, only to meet another huge wave. Each time the boat disappeared in the trough between waves, I assumed it had sunk, never to rise again, but in a matter of moments, it would float elegantly like a white bird playing on the waters outside of town to the top of

 Return to Degree Zero

a wave, slide down, bobbing, rapidly making its way toward the white lighthouse and the harbor. “Hurry home,” came a deep and pleasant voice from behind. I knew it was Teacher Guo. Indeed, it was him. He was standing beside a column behind me and dressed in a navy blue quilted coat, his hands thrust in his pockets. Teacher Guo taught us physics and chemistry, and was a very patient teacher who never lost his temper. He had divided our class into four groups, each of which he led into the chemistry classroom, where he seated us in a circle while he busied himself preparing the convex and concave lenses in front of him and then lit a medium-size white candle. Then, in a happy tone of voice, he said, “Turn off the lights!” After the lights went out, he said in a slow, unhurried fashion, “Can you see it? The candle flame has tipped over. Do you see it? Now look at this side, the candle flame is upright.” We answered that we could all see it as we jostled one another. Then Teacher Guo said, “Turn on the lights. You go outside and tell the next group to come in.” Teacher Guo walked to the window and lit a cigarette, looking extremely relaxed. His fluff y hair looked very shiny in the light coming through the row of west-facing frosted glass windows in the classroom. He said, “There’s a high wind on the sea, and the fishing boats are all heading back fast. Look at all the fishing boats!” I counted them one by one. Some had already arrived back at the harbor. The mid-sized red and green fishing boats were tinged golden as they came through the breakwaters, sailing smoothly through that narrow opening, slowing once they passed the white lighthouse. You could almost hear the chugging motors in the distance. I counted them one by one off toward the farthest point, but before I finished counting, another black dot had appeared on the horizon, surging continuously toward us. “Can’t get a clear count because they are heading home quickly,” said Teacher Guo, facing the sea, “can’t get a clear count.” Teacher Guo was from Jiangxi and lived in the long lane of dormitories on the mountainside. He and his wife had a baby, but they had not been given a place of their own. They lived with two other teachers and their families in a Japanese-style house with tatami mats and a large courtyard. In the courtyard grew longan, guavas, bananas, papayas, custard apples, pomegranates, grapefruits, and a host of other plants of various sizes. The wives of the three teachers were all very amiable and were always smiling, each one carrying her baby. The sun shone in their courtyard and I could

 Return to Degree Zero

see the wives of the three teachers, very relaxed, sitting in rattan chairs and talking. Teacher Guo was in the kitchen preparing dumpling skins, as another was chopping green onions and cutting meat, while the third teacher was still over at the school on duty for the day and wouldn’t be back until dinnertime. Each of the wives had a different accent, but they were not hard to understand. They talked, laughed, and dandled their children on the ground—could life really be so simple and cozy? Perhaps this was just what I so eagerly sought as I grew with vigor. Thus, one sunny Sunday, I saw that simple, cozy level of life, intimate, friendly, serene, and hopeful in that dormitory courtyard fi lled with that confused mixture of flowers and fruit trees. Suddenly one of the babies on the ground—I don’t know whose—began to cry, and cry very loudly. In the middle of speaking, the tallest of the three noticed and, smiling, quickly picked up her baby and pressed it to her face: “Darling, don’t cry.” But he kept on crying. She held him tightly in her chair said, “Hungry? We’re hungry, aren’t we?” The baby continued crying, so she began to unbutton her blouse, while saying, “We’re hungry.” Mrs. Guo whispered to her, “Qin Defen,” as she looked in my direction, her lips moving. The sunlight played at my feet, and I heard the shrill cries of the cicadas resounding in and around the long lane. The baby continued to bawl. The woman slowly rose to her feet, redid one of the buttons of her blouse, and said, “Okay, okay, we’re hungry.” She turned to leave and looked back at Mrs. Guo with a smile, and with one hand pulled open the screen door and stepped inside. The screen door banged shut without disturbing the chirring cicadas, which kept up their shrill cries. I smelled the scent of sweet osmanthus blossoms wafting from a tree. Looking up at the tree, I noticed a wax apple tree, whose lush, deep green leaves I had not previously noticed in the courtyard. At that moment, Teacher Guo pushed open the screen door and came out and said happily, “Everything’s ready.” The screen door banged shut again: “Everything’s ready. We’ll be done eating by the time Xu Hao gets back. What’s taking him so long?” After nightfall, the sound of insects in the lane to the teachers’ dormitories only grew louder. Long distances separated each burning light. In the rings around the few scattered lights in that distant age, moths flew and circled. Perhaps the light of day lingered too long, for the breadfruit tree with its huge leaves was still visible at the end of the lane, bestowing an unusually tropical atmosphere on the scene. A bicycle with a light on went

 Return to Degree Zero

by, its bell clear and sharp. It was the husband of our history teacher. He taught biology, but we hadn’t had his class yet. He always wore a Sun Yatsen jacket, buttoned up and impeccable. I bowed silently to him; he nodded and asked with solicitude, “You’re still here and not at home at this hour?” His bicycle disappeared into the darkness. The outlines of the trees in the courtyards had grown obscure and, after the bicycle with its light had passed, I lost my night vision and the sky had grown entirely black. At that moment a woman passed right in front of me, holding a very small boy by the hand. She was just a few steps away before I became aware of her. It was our algebra teacher, who, though small in stature, was always graceful, and who, though pretty, was prone to scolding. She was about the same age as the wives of the other teachers, but because she taught at school, she was always more properly dressed. Short and verging on plump, she always wore eye-catching clothes. Her features and skin were very pretty. She wrote on the blackboard with her left hand, her back turned toward us. At the beginning of summer she wore a sleeveless qipao that was slit to three inches above her knees. From the twelfth seat in the rear on the left, I could see the hair of her armpit flash under her white arm, a hint of perspiration to her shapely back, and the rounded curves below her waist and how her tightfitting qipao descended in a perfectly indescribable line, to the slits from where her full legs, which were also snow white, gracefully peeped. With the onset of autumn, her qipao had sleeves and were plainer in color, over which she wore a heavy coat. I’m not sure what made her unhappy, but she slammed the chalk down in the blackboard trough, turned, and, seeing me as I sat in my seat by the window staring at her, she told me to stand up, and asked me to recite the formula (A + B) × (A − B). I stood there at a loss, totally confused, and for the life of me was unable to think of how A and B ought to be combined in the formula. In addition to the shame I felt, I was angrier still, saddened that she had betrayed me in front of the entire class. I never expected that she wouldn’t treasure the secret and tender feelings I had for her, but that she would shame me in front of everyone. How could such heartlessness not break one’s heart? Seeing that I couldn’t recite the formula, she roundly scolded me using a pithy saying, but her voice sounded coquettish to my ears, even sweet. Her heavy southern accent was as crisp and clear as a short song in the Wu dialect, thinly veiled, amorous, like raindrops beating on lotus leaves, on the canopy over a drifting boat inside

 Return to Degree Zero

which a naïve youth dozed over a translated novel. At the whim of wind and wave, the boat drifted through the deep shade of the willows, under a winding bridge, through the reflection of a pagoda, and the sound of a bell was heard as partridges flew over the water and an oriole flew up and down in the high grass. By that time, my algebra teacher had walked to the left in front of me, where there was a street light that clearly illuminated both of us. I never thought of her as having a child. Somewhat recalcitrant, I bowed respectfully. When she saw it was me, she smiled like a flower and said, “You’re not home at this hour?” I quickly replied, “I went to Teacher Guo’s house for dumplings. There were five of us.” She smiled, said that was nice and then good-bye, continued on her way, and disappeared among the dark shapes of the trees. That night after lowering the mosquito net and going to bed, my mind seemed filled with glowing spheres of light, like stars shining in the sky, filling the vast emptiness, revolving, floating, colliding, and shattering to produce even more and finer stars. In a flash they would expand and, with differing volumes, unfold as a unit, revolving, floating, colliding, giving rise to a loud sound in my mind. At first it was a thundering that could be heard all around, rising and falling, which later the universe spontaneously organized out of chaos, bestowing order, producing something akin to regularity, a systematic harmony, like the rising of the music of heaven coming from beyond the wilderness, to which the mountains and rivers replied, in a symphony of trees, small and large, piping to each other with their openings. My being seemed to become a great empty hall, and my young body was instantly filled with that sound, subject to the passion of the sound and light, no longer myself. I took out my only fountain pen and wrote, replicating incomplete and imperfect thoughts on the horizontal-lined paper, taking shape like music, but also seemingly as if it would never take shape. Leaping images: clouds, fountain, reeds; unallied metaphors: window, boat reflection, threshold, small building, corridor; “Oh, so profound and abstruse, like a purple whisper vanishing.” I explored the darkest, most foreign world, arrived at a strange world—strange, but at the same time entirely real and familiar. Good-bye, good-bye, I said to myself, watching the suspended mosquito net slanting left and right in the lamplight. I would enter, searching for dreams and illusions. I was unwilling. I sat at my desk writing forcefully, allowing the infinite spheres of light to dance in my mind, in an unrestrained

 Return to Degree Zero

fashion exhibiting all sorts of shameful, frightening, and regrettable images, hair and skin, delicate fingers, sparse and elegant eyebrows beneath which were one, two, three pairs of bewitching eyes, black as well as gray, and light blue eyes, pure, intricate, and colorful, clear as the morning light, soft as rings of moonlight. I tried—as I am trying now—to fi nd the right words to describe a face like a flower, to describe that true and perfect body, but the sound and light were too strong for my weak mind, the protracted up and down, right and left made it impossible for me to grasp hold of what I wanted. The fleeting words remained elusive despite the sad appeals of emotion. A fluttering moth flapped against the short hair on my sweaty head; outside my window, the swaying royal palm whispered; and as usual, the stars were farther off. I seemed to hear the sea.

4 I seemed to hear the sea. I heard the sound of the ocean at the tip of my pen. Sometimes it was a huge wave that confused my absorbed and infatuated perceptions; my senses were assailed and grappled with that endless din, becoming increasingly sensitive the moment it began to hurt. At other times, it was calm and quiet, faintly bearing some tidings, like a pulsing glance, transmitting the tidings of nature, the pulse of the universe, quietly beating. I could hear it in that deeply troubled and difficult age; late on a lonely night, by lamplight, I wrote something illegible; strange and trembling illusions compelled me to explore the unknown, capturing that ache in words, vigorously transmitting tidings to the self—I knew that those tidings came from a dark and mysterious place in my soul. In the process of transmission, it was disrupted by an external force, rustling, and misled, forced off in the opposite direction. So I struggled in pursuit, right on its tail in a blank world devoid of sound or light; by myself, alone and lonely I searched, searched for what in all certainty would be mine, what was destined to be mine, and what should be mine. I was conscious of the process being creation. Prior to that I had already observed creation from beginning to end, and thought I had actually experienced it. But I hadn’t. Although I had observed it, and even experienced it, it had been false and superficial. Today I threw myself into it, working

 Return to Degree Zero

with all my strength and spirit, by turns strongly and weakly. I was aware that that process was the process of creation. The insects cried outside—I heard them when I stopped writing, a few scattered cries; sometimes their cries filled the courtyard. It was darkness upon darkness, so deep with no end, but then when I began once more to write, my entire being melted into that actuality, no longer able to hear the insects, vanished. At that moment, only creative power pushed on. I heard the sound of the ocean in that process—I saw mountain forests and clouds, shining in the mirror of the sea, great yet modest. I continued to dash ahead, vigorously forcing some images, vague, when suddenly a huge black net spread before my eyes, swaying in the cold air, blocking my way. I saw the complex warp and woof of the weave, hanging there densely, blocking my advance on this side, with no way to break through. My head dropped in exhaustion. I closed my eyes and carefully thought about what I had encountered in those days, gradually becoming aware that my pulse was quickening. On that night, the blood flowed from my forehead quickly down my spine, slowly overflowing my belly, filling my four limbs. The blood vessels throughout my body were throbbing. I concentrated all my mental effort in a strange and magical place, where it rose up and shot forth. In a flash the black net was broken, torn to shreds, spilled into the universe, and flowed away. I watched as a galaxy composed of constellations rose up to take its place, arranged in an organic order in the territory in front of me, bright and continuous, showing me all manner of color and sound. When I had nearly sped through it, that boundless galaxy multiplied in a geometric progression, expanded, increased in size, one after another falling into a fi xed position. At that moment, I once again heard those tidings emanating from that dark place in my soul, saying that that which never moves is love, sympathy, beauty, rebellion, and poetry.

R E S O LV E D O N D O U B T

I never asked why. Why did I write such things? Staring at the scattered lines and words, images, topics, the obvious and the obscure on the paper in front of me, I’ve never had any doubts. Sometimes I really did intuitively perceive the difficulties posed by form and meaning, but this was never really disturbing for a young and tender soul, though perhaps it was momentarily frustrating. Searching and groping on a morning warmed by the newly risen sun, on a quiet night of solitude after the light was extinguished, trying to situate my ideas that had fled, using a great number of metaphors, coloring with the shades of words, making it shine, and out of a richness of sound, scoring a success with a musical rhythm, as if several caged thrushes called to one another from every corner of the white paper, chirping endlessly. I allowed the sound and color to drift, spreading far and wide, while out of curiosity I followed in pursuit, as if none of it had anything to do with me and all of what I had written with my own hand surged before my staring eyes, sometimes submerging me. It was an age of leaps and bounds, fast, without the slightest hesitation, sometimes even seeming careless, spurting in leaps and bounds. I looked out through the four upper panes of my window at the royal palm that drooped and danced, its fronds deep green, its trunk rising in segments, golden in color, but it was still a young royal palm, planted at the end of spring just two years ago. The tree’s speed, the speed with which it grew was startling. At first I couldn’t see it from my room, because the lower two sections of the window were of frosted glass. Later, it grew taller and appeared through the transparent glass above, finally rising above the whole window, rising vigorously day by day. Soon I had to look up to see the new pairs of opposite leaves and hear the crisp, clear sound amid the flurry of rain. But that was an age of startling speed, and I grew, competing with

 Return to Degree Zero

everything around me. At first I thought it was just my body and four limbs that were changing, but finally, one day, I discovered that it was not just my body that was truly growing and producing changes, but also my mind. A few ideas, ways of thinking, the scope of my thought, a few objects of pursuit, seemingly both simple and complicated, floated and sank deep in my mind. I perceived the speed of the change, like the light and shadow I  greedily tried to apprehend in the external world, interlocked through form—I was summing up, arranging, and transcending light, shadow, and form with a speed surpassing speed. I felt I already possessed a system, a perfect one, of which I was the master. Thus a betel palm, by changing a few words, became a royal palm or yellow palm; the ditch outside the house became a limpid, purling stream; the concrete bridge over it became the little wooden bridge of folksong, the bells in all the churches rang on time, and all the nuns were melancholy. Out of the progression of objective interplay, words came together, forming a whole, which also possessed rhythm and meter, to produce a work that tried to say what exactly? I often felt frustrated, because something real was missing behind the words; there was nothing philosophically engaging, sad, suffering, or even fervent. Was that poetry? Although many unusual things were happening, and I was not totally without feeling, I was never able to arrive at any conclusion about the course of those feelings—I couldn’t analyze, I couldn’t elaborate, I couldn’t make it concentrated. All I had at my disposal were words, and an array of metaphors, symbols, and allegories. No passion and no sadness. I sat down and wrote earnestly. Sitting under the lamp, I should have been the indefatigable writer that I imagined; I was reprising all the joys and sorrows of life, crafting lovely lines, word by word. In this way, I imagined persisting in my efforts—in my young illusions—one day I would finally capture the most mysterious light of art. At the moment it flashed across the edge of the sky, with tenderness and sincerity and leaping with superhuman courage, I’d clasp it to my breast, my heart wild with joy, aching and aflame. I alone would experience its infinite power, weighty and real. I would embrace it always and never relax my grip, protecting it and worshipping it, so miraculous and mysterious. Sometimes, in my youthful illusions, I had already apprehended it. Sitting under the lamp, my chin in hand, in the quiet of night, I’d grow tired and sleepy, and fall asleep with

 Return to Degree Zero

my head on my desk, my papers wrinkled in a pile, my pen fallen to the tatami mats. Then in my dreams I’d continue my pursuit of poetry. The willow branches hang over the water. Deep in the garden, some bananas are already ripe. At night I bravely walk alone down a dark lane. By myself I take a train to Taidong to wander around. The grass in the stream is stretched by the current. The French padre wears a little round hat in autumn. The sky is ˉlled with ˉsh-scale clouds.

All of this is poetry. In a jumble it appeared to my eyes and took possession of my mind, oppressing me. Poetry is a kind of oppression, if it is poetry. Absorbed in my thoughts, I wasn’t clear as to why it had to be thus. Of what use was poetry, really? We studied plane geometry, and when I  couldn’t think anymore, I’d draw an additional line, making this angle equal to another. We studied physics and chemistry: the acceleration of gravity. I tried hard to memorize the formulas and the periodic table, but didn’t have much success, which is what I regretted most in my youth, and one of the things I most feared. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and sodium, all represented by their symbols in English letters, were pasted up on the wall; at the foot of each was a number, making things really complicated. That’s what we studied. We studied migratory water birds, migratory birds, cellular plants, lymphatic glands, and ruminants; Lithuania, Gibraltar, the Inland Sea, and that the Amazon has the greatest volume of any river in the world and that the longest river in the world is the Mississippi. The one hundred pests of the Yellow River (which has only one favorable bend); Yunnan possesses the largest tin reserves in the world; the Jiangyin fortification controls the strategic passage of the Yangtze River, the Tropic of Cancer passes through Jiayi (the teacher added that it also passes through the Ruisui hot springs); the five barbarian tribes included the Xiongnu, Di, Qiang, Jie, and Xianbei; among the Sixteen States were five states of Liang, the former, the later, the southern, northern, and western; Wang Anshi handled state affairs and instituted bureaucratic reforms; Bi Sheng invented movable type; Hong Chengchou was governor-general of Zhili and Liaodong, who surrendered to the Qing when his troops were defeated; Li

 Return to Degree Zero

Zicheng sacked Beijing (“in mourning weeds wept all the six armies, Wu Sangui opened Shanhaiguan when extremely angry over a beauty”) and welcomed the Qing soldiers in to rule China. These lamentable but interesting things were the stuff of poetry, as were all the charming formulas and the periodic table that I was shamefully unable to memorize. When drowsy and on the verge of sleep, shuttling about among my words and lines, I metamorphosed into birds and beasts and unusual plants and flowers. We spent a lot of time studying English. We knew nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and articles, and memorized the changes in the various parts of speech. Everyone had a notebook of new words but couldn’t pronounce most of them. Phonetic spelling included æ, which I marveled at for ages. Whenever I saw it, I fancied that I was looking at some strange animal, some huge mythological beast, which somehow had been tamed and shrunk, fi xed in typographical form, and used as a phonetic symbol. To me this was an inconceivable tragedy, but my English teacher was incapable of appreciating a beauty concealed in the distant mists of time. Big and brilliant, before you knew it, it was toppled and I was swallowed in the dictionary’s vast sea. Oh, and then there was the passive voice, subjunctive mood, past perfect tense, future perfect tense—how were the mysterious past perfect and future perfect to be distinguished? On the points and line, and face of abstract time and space, something was perfected or has been perfected, which, this being the case, meant that the verb changed form, and with so many verbs in the world, how was I to remember which verbs were regular and which irregular? It was certainly well nigh impossible. Impossible, unreasonable, inconceivable. But everything I studied, even if I really didn’t understand it, was usually vivid and lively, and stimulating to the powers of my imagination, and I was never slack and lazy, not even a little. That was an age that emphasized standard answers to a unified textbook, in which all textbooks had their fi xed and unmovable purpose. We were just a group waiting to be taught, and in the process of being taught we were not permitted to ask the whys and wherefores; in all subjects we were expected to accept things as they were set forth; otherwise during the interminable exams, you would certainly encounter difficulties and defeat, and fi nd yourself fallen and unable to get up. I appreciated the many materials, the variety of vocabulary, sayings, theorems, and stories—not that I could fully understand everything, but all those materials were being

 Return to Degree Zero

moved in preparation for action, like some colorful serpent in a cage, contending when I went to catch it, subdue it, and use it. I was opposed to the standard answers of the unified textbooks, and disregarding the purpose, I thrust my hand into that mass of serpents and groped around without the least fear. It was probably only when I was fifteen that I heard about the death of a cousin who had committed suicide three years before. No wonder I hadn’t seen her in ages or heard anyone mention her. My cousin, who was four years older than I, or perhaps three, lived in Taipei. I remember when I was quite young she helped me put on my hat, adjusting it left and right until it was just perfect. Her hair was cut very short with straight bangs on her forehead. The rest of her features are just vague impressions—I can’t even remember her face. But I can still almost hear her voice today. She spoke with a genuine and elegant Taipei accent, and her speech was interspersed with Japanese words and her sentences frequently ended with an admiring or inquiring final note, but most of the time she was very quiet, especially when adults were conversing. She sat off to one side, occasionally looking in my direction, a smile appearing at the corners of her mouth, such an endearing smile. I remember that the family lived upstairs on a large street—Auntie, four female cousins, and one male cousin lived in the bright, spacious upstairs house. In one corner were lots of hardbound Japanese books; most of them were about irrigation works and belonged to Uncle. Uncle worked in Yilan and occasionally returned to Taipei; that’s what I heard, at any rate. Auntie and all my cousins were very good looking. As I recall, they were better looking than the people on the bustling streets. Uncle was also handsome. There was a photo of the two of them that stood on a small table in the living room. I clearly remember that Uncle was dressed in a military uniform, but I only later learned that the photo was taken in mainland China, in Changsha, I think. Uncle returned to China and joined the army, but the details became clear only later. I looked out of the upstairs window and saw the rickshaws and the people coming and going—that was back in the days when Taiwan was still ruled by Japan. I heard the train whistle from the rear and to the right, followed by the sound of bells at the crossing as the train clattered, circling north. I stuck my head out the window and saw puffs of white smoke rising above the roofs of the houses before vanishing. One time we came down out of the arcade and

 Return to Degree Zero

were going to cross the railroad when the bells rang and the crossing bar came down; the whistling train from faraway arrived with a clatter. My cousin grabbed my hand and we stood behind the crossing bar, watching calmly. The train was there before we knew it, passed before our eyes, countless windows flashing by, the large wheels, the steam, heading from the south to the north through Shuanglian, Yuanshan, Shilin, Beitou, Guandu, Zhuwei, to the sea coast at Danshui. It was only much later that I learned the sequence of places. I don’t know the original name of that big busy street, but one day the name was changed to Chang’an West Road; by that time, my cousins had already moved to one of nine long lanes not too far away. They hadn’t lived there for more than a few years when my cousin died. She died just after graduating from junior high school, during summer vacation. I never asked why my cousin committed suicide, because by the time I heard about it, three years had already elapsed, at least three years, and the adults didn’t want to bring it up again and I didn’t have the courage to ask. Moreover, it had been a while since I had seen her, and, although I did have my suspicions, I really don’t know why I didn’t ask my other cousins, male or female, about her. It was very strange. But perhaps I had asked and had foolishly been distracted when the subject was changed. That was quite possible. It was a fast age, actually a flurried age. I grew up observing on the one hand and daydreaming on the other, and rarely did I stop to ponder really serious questions. And for some reason during that age I developed an empty, uneasy state of mind in which if I were not on my own, I preferred not to investigate matters and normally just let things slide, being unwilling to interact and discuss things with others. In such a flurried age, I only had courage to delve within myself while letting so much in reality happen as it might. I think in all that time, in three long years, seeing that my cousin was never at home and that her book bag and clothes were nowhere to be seen, how could I have kept silent and not asked? I suspect that I did ask, but the adults, being sad and clever, must have managed to change the topic and make me lose interest and let me imagine where she was. Maybe she was living at school; that was certainly possible for my cousin, who was in high school. Or maybe she had gone to Japan or married (that wasn’t possible) or she had left home and become a nun (that wasn’t possible either). In those three years, I honed my imagination on my cousin’s abrupt disappearance, making it, on occasion, something oversensitive and absurd.

 Return to Degree Zero

When I did hear that she was dead, my heart froze in an instant. It was just like the shrimp and fish, melon and fruit on a big block of ice on the offering table of the Saving All Beings Festival. Everything looked very much alive, but couldn’t move. I never asked the cause of her death, perhaps because I was too afraid or too grief-stricken, or because I felt it was too beautiful. It had happed three years earlier. In those three years, had I often thought about her? Perhaps in those three years I hadn’t really thought much about her or been concerned about her. I just honed my imaginative faculty and hadn’t thought about her. My cousin disappeared from the real world and I didn’t once inquire about her or seek her, but rather let her slowly fade from my loving heart; not once did I have the courage to get to the bottom of things. It was very selfi sh! I can’t say for sure if I wasn’t made secretly happy by some other strange and regrettable matter that I possessed on account of those suspicious circumstances, and because I hadn’t seen her for such a long time, and that allowed me to willfully exaggerate my sentiments, bitter and sad, and feel smug and complacent. It seemed that life had decided that I should have such an opportunity, the perfect opportunity to catalyze my poetic inspiration, to expand, mature, and make it of use. It was so selfish! So the three years I spent not very seriously seeking to know what had become of her were all for this, and when I did hear that my cousin had committed suicide, I never thought of trying to find out the real cause. Wasn’t that for the same reason? The only thing I was concerned about as I grew up was to increase the powers of my imagination. Although I maintained the appropriate amount of curiosity about the world around me, what I really paid close attention to was only my own inner world, and that’s why I found her death frightening, sad, and extremely beautiful. Yes. A long, sagging wisteria trellis. Red ˊowers and green leaves covered a red lacquer door. I can’t really recall her bangs. Three rickshaws stopped in a lane one hot day, one for several separate houses. The train from Shuanglian was approaching. They never again mentioned my cousin’s name.

 Return to Degree Zero

I found myself submerged between a mysterious sadness and joy when I looked at myself, sitting at my desk, starring fi xedly at the stack of papers in front of me, the tip of my pen sliding across, soon leaving behind so many true and illusory traces. I felt I was on the verge of tears, and yet also happy, swaying between a slight sense of guilt and contentment. In this way I wrote quickly, until one day I discovered that I really was with full composure writing each character clearly, without a single mark straying beyond the boxes on the writing paper. I actually was already capable of being leisurely and unhurried. Where does poetry come from? It comes from a passion. You press a surging passion deep down in the soul, where it fuses with melancholy, stirring deep in your soul; fear it, test it, sometimes make it change color. A passion of a different color shifts position deep in your soul; sometimes it leaps up, falls, crawls, and never comes back, and sometimes it rushes in on all sides, fast as lightning. It has no fi xed form or character. I had realized that it was the motive force of art, it was the truth. But where does poetry come from? Does it come from utmost sadness? Grief? But that is entirely foreign to a fifteen-year-old boy. What is sadness? You try to catch it, fathom it, put it together, and affirm that it is grief or not, and then ask, why did it strike my weak young heart? It was sadness because it arose out of remorse, as if from some dark end of the central nervous system, originally of utter insignificance, but once you fi xed on it, then you bravely fostered it, catalyzing it, producing an ever greater sense of remorse. One day amid a light breeze, while I was walking alone along a new wall where a river ran to the right far down to the sea, someone opened a door and pushed out a bicycle, hesitated for a moment, and then rode off in the opposite direction. The streets were quiet and not a person was seen. Suddenly, as if pursuing a memory, my heart throbbed and ached as I thought about some distant matters, which I had forgotten but which had not completely vanished, things that had happened a long time ago. The train approached, traveling slowly, station to station, from Taidong. I recalled the train at the crossing, amid all the clanging, rounding on its way toward Shuanglian, Shilin, Guandu, and Danshui. I resolved on doubt and asked, “Why?”

C H E N G J I A N X I O N G A N D P O E T RY A N D M E

1 The cut-down oleander burgeoned once again, and was soon crowding against, overlapping with, and shooting up over the hibiscus; it even put forth a few pink flowers. I snapped the branches, bumped against and broke off bunches of flowers. The sap that oozed plentifully from the crisp and brittle tissue stuck to my ten fingers and felt disgusting. It smelled bad, and when tasted it was actually bitter. Shortly after the family moved in across from us, they fenced in their front yard with a tight bamboo fence. It looked new, and when the sun appeared after the rain, a pleasant aroma wafted from the freshly cut bamboo. When the sun shone at its strongest on the bamboo fence, vapor rose from between the canes and drifted over our front yard, which faced west. Just outside the yard stood a tall mango tree, gloomy and gray. Among the spaces in the indistinguishable layers of large leaves hung small unripe green mangoes, which slowly turned yellow with the passing days. The stout and knotty mango tree was the easiest and the oldest tree to climb in the summer, but beginning in the spring of that year, the bees had made a hive in a low-lying fork halfway up the trunk of the tree. Before summer vacation began, the bees could be seen constantly entering and leaving the leafy shade. The dark brown hive resembled the fruit of a pomelo in our backyard, growing ever larger with the lengthening days until it finally became an important topic of conversation among the adults and children of the area, a frightening signal. “Whoever isn’t afraid of big bees can climb the tree and pick the mangoes,” I said. I squeezed between the oleander and hibiscus in our garden until the rain shower passed. The raindrops moistened my head and face, my body and limbs, but I was dry in no time. Lian was the name of the family with the new bamboo fence. I

 Return to Degree Zero

wasn’t really clear about the members of their family; all I knew was that there was a boy my age—fifteen years old—and his younger brother, who was the same age as my sister, and another younger brother, who was probably the same age as our youngest sister, who had died young. However, since our little sister was no longer with us, we suddenly dispensed with our parallel and symmetrical relationship. Occasionally I thought about these things, but would soon forget them. Actually, the most important thing is that the three brothers had an older sister, a very pretty one, who was already a high-school sophomore when they moved in. As we chattered noisily up in a tree, I’d look over the bamboo fence and see her standing at her window. She’d throw us a casual glance and disappear into her room. Sometimes we’d stand at a distance in the middle of the road, eyeing the beehive in the tree. One said, “Whoever isn’t afraid of big bees can climb the tree and pick the mangoes—he can have them all, and if he eats them and dies, it wouldn’t matter to me.” Another said, “I’m scared. I’d rather go without mangoes.” At that very moment, she returned and, glancing at us, pushed open the gate and went inside. I stared breathlessly at her face and neck as she clapped the gate shut. Someone shouted, “Who’s afraid of big bees?” The Lians’ bamboo fence was infectious. The second and third houses to their left soon hired someone to erect identical fences, but displaying a different taste in gates—single gates, one of which pulled open to the left and one to the right, which were slightly different from the Lians’ double gates, which pushed open to the right and left. The third house sat on the edge of a stream, and there was no other house for some distance across the stream and a small path. Given the state of affairs, I assumed the house on the Lians’ immediate right would soon put up a bamboo fence, but that was not the case; they never acted, despite how simple it would have been because both sides of the front yard already had fences in place. All they had to do was put up a bamboo fence by adding horizontals on one side, set back just a little from the road, and add a single or double gate. Why not do it? But they didn’t. As a result, there was a hole there, but fortunately the original trellis, which was covered with luxuriant growth and blooms, was still there next to the mango tree. I thought that even if they did put up a bamboo fence, I’d still be able to see the trellis by climbing a little higher to look over the tight fence. But the neighbor to the Lians’ immediate right never stirred. Their front yard was planted with many different kinds of trees and

 Return to Degree Zero

appeared sufficiently secluded not to need a bamboo fence. From the house with lots of trees, past the Lians’, who had just moved in, all the way to the stream, there were a total of five houses with gates that opened toward our house and our row of hibiscus. The row in front was as long as those on the other three sides. They were meant to form a wall, but with so many gaps, it was more symbolic than actual. I would frequently leave or enter through one of the many gaps, so they never managed to fill in. It is surprising that I now remember that they were named Lian and that I clearly remember a few of their faces, especially that haughty, pure white one. I have forgotten most of the others. But I do remember that mango tree, that gloomy and gray tree, and the swarms of bees flying in and out with a dreamy buzz, the red trellis, and the aroma produced by the bamboo fence under the scorching sun after a downpour. Oleander sap was bitter; the hibiscus bloomed in the morning and closed by dusk. If you pulled open the petals when the flowers were in full bloom, placed one in your mouth, and sucked, the flavor was sweet. You could go along and sample each flower, hearing people coming and going, gates being pushed opened and gates closing, the sound of parking bicycles, gates pulled open and then closed. A large hen led a dozen or so fledglings, scratching for food along the roadside, clucking and chirping. A yellow dog came out of the bottom lane next to the stream, sniffed, and stood humbly, tail drooping, behind the pickle seller, looking at him as he sold pickles from his car fi lled with bottles and cans of pickled vegetables. He’d use chopsticks one time and a spoon another to put the pickles into the fan-shaped paper bags folded out of the pages of old exercise books. Wrong answers and correct answers were in red. It was already afternoon, a long and slow afternoon. I’ve forgotten most things and retain but a few unimportant things, a few shapes, sounds, colors, smells, a few bemused feelings, if you can call them feelings, an unidentifiable melancholy, not really melancholy, an enmity, an enmity against oneself? I sat at my desk, writing without stopping on a large sheet of paper. It was a long, slow afternoon, and outside I heard a sound, gululu: Gululu, beside a garden full of guava trees I know not what is calling, gululu? Gululu? In a dark corner under the banana tree behind the woodshed, beyond the lotus pond

 Return to Degree Zero

in a distant place, far away across the stream, in the ˉeld at the end of the lane even farther away, at the bend in the railroad tracks easily punted across, a swift-ˊowing river deep in a bamboo grove, gululu, gululu, it’s a quail, I spotted one by chance a long time ago, gub.b.b.

I had heard it a long time ago, but at that moment as my pen was flying, it seemed real, as if I could still hear that crisp call, just as at the moment I was writing, the setting sun turned the clouds in half the sky red as they gradually dispersed, moving to the four corners, and in a flash the sky was filled with the rays of the setting sun. Sitting at my desk, I described my confusion, my lost heart, a soft and sentimental heart incapable of asserting itself. I described it, explained it, seized it, and then the more determined I was to press close to it, the farther it fled, leaving me far behind, in a small boat without a paddle, the water by turns hot and cold, with whirlpools, dangerous shoals, and rapids everywhere. I wandered destitute in an unknown direction, sometimes shouting, sometimes pleading, as I searched for my companions. At times it was as if I heard a moaning, sometimes a gentle weeping. In order to give rise to sadness, I moaned and wept like that, then wondered if it was necessary. What I heard was the quail I had heard in days gone by, deep in a distant bamboo grove, gululu, not here and now. Gululu, gululu, gu. . . .

2 Hualien in those days, that small city of yore, was cut by a number of pure, parallel-running rivers, swift-flowing rivers. I knew that all the rivers originated someplace high in the western mountains, at first as far-off waterfalls, speeding hither, coming together, following the topography, snaking this way and that until they found their way, flowing to the east, flowing through small towns and ultimately into the sea. Before entering urban areas, the water naturally was sparkling clear and irrigated many fields, filling them with water that reflected the distant and lofty mountains that looked down. Then, even though the rivers passed through an urban area,

 Return to Degree Zero

and even as they neared their final destination, in those days they were still clear, preserving their original appearance from the mountain valleys, joyfully flowing into the sea. A small stream ran below the hibiscus on our right side, if it could even be considered a stream. It ran for a short distance before it was diverted by an embankment constructed by a farm family to an area of paddy fields. I have no idea where it ended—all I remember is that there was an endless series of straight ditches and small curved pools. The shallow pools and calm and deep lakes were filled with tadpoles at the beginning of spring. At first, the tadpoles swam by beating their tails; in a matter of days, they sprouted tiny legs, but because they still had their tails, their movements were awkward and inconvenient. The ducks quickly showed up to fight over them and eat them. One day, the tails on the tadpoles disappeared, their four limbs had sprouted and grown, and they had become frogs, capable of jumping over the heads of the ducks. By that time, the rice sprouts had already been planted, and it was a solid patch of green as far as the eye could see, accompanied by an indescribable fragrance from the clear water and mud, and from the tender burgeoning leaves. On the left was another row of hibiscus, beyond which stood the neighbors’ vegetable garden, close to their remodeled Japanese-style house with a large tile roof. The neighbors were surnamed Huang and were Hakka. They opened up a long stretch of their tiled house to serve as a general store. Licenses to sell tobacco, wine, and salt were hung in the arcade. The owner worked unceasingly in the store moving things, without a word or smile. His wife occasionally appeared in the store, but was more often found in the rooms behind the store or out in the garden watering the vegetables, patiently looking after a great variety of leafy greens, beans, and squash. I looked through the branches of the hibiscus and saw her attending with silent confidence to her plots of beautiful plump leaves and yellow flowers. Her expression of composure and diligence was something with which she had been born. The Huangs had added a long tin-roofed room onto the other side of their house, along the wall of which grew jasmine with small white flowers. Farther on was a river that originated far off in the mountains and rushed down to the sea. I slowly rode my bike, heading east along the river. Farther down, the roads widened, the houses were more scattered, and the sea was just ahead. I turned left into a narrow lane and headed north and soon arrived at the

 Return to Degree Zero

gate to the City God Temple; then I crossed the square, continuing straight ahead until I hit a wider street by a river, beyond which was another street. The river was a little bigger and deeper than the others, and the roads on either side were lined with weeping willows. The houses all looked out onto the river through two rows of willows. The ends of the long lanes rose to a wooden bridge with sparse railings that crossed the river, tying two parallel streets together. I turned and stopped under a huge willow on the other side and watched the water. It was so quiet all around; not a sound was heard. The sun made its way around the smokestack of the liquor factory intending to hide behind the mountains. Yes, it was a quiet afternoon, and the only thing I felt was the power of the murmuring river as it rushed along, as if responding to a call. Long aquatic grass grew in the river, swaying in the sunlight, adopting an endless number of poses, which changed every second. The riverbed was covered with gravel, plentiful and rounded, which never ceased rolling, but that was just my mistaken impression. The afternoon sun shone on the river’s surface, shimmering bright and clear, and dragonflies flew through the scorching sunlight, black dots drifting this way and that, dazzling, trembling. I heard the faint thumping of the tires of a bicycle crossing the wooden bridge, slowing to a stop at the head of the bridge, the rider’s foot against the railing as he leaned over to look at the water. It was Cheng Jianxiong, a sophomore and the best known poet at school. Of course, anyone whose poems appeared regularly in the local paper and even in the Taipei poetry magazines had to be a poet. Every time I saw him from a distance, I seemed to blush uncomfortably and have a strong desire to hide, but he was a sophomore and naturally would never notice the expression of a junior high student such as myself. Besides, he didn’t even know me. With one foot stepping on the railing at the end of the wooden bridge, he leaned forward and remained that way for a long time. Sure enough, a few days later his new poem appeared. I sat on my bike and leaned against the newspaper display board until I had finished reading and my arms couldn’t ache much more. It was a long poem, neat and pleasing to the eyes, the lines of which were approximately all the same length, with refined punctuation separating the images, the most fascinating images, metaphors and similes that did not clash, synonyms of sound and color, exclamations, surprise, grief, and silence. I saw emotional eyes fi xed for ages on the shimmering surface of the water, dragonflies flying

 Return to Degree Zero

through the dazzling light, circling between the two banks of the river. The long aquatic grass was stretched out, on and on, like a folksong, murmuring, rippling, swaying with rhythm and rhyme, flowing ever onward. His eyes flew to the bridge farther away, and I saw that not a soul was moving there. Suddenly a flock of sparrows flew past, fleetingly, then two women emerged from an arcade on the other side of the river, each carrying a basin for washing clothes, talking as they carefully picked their way down to the river, but the sound never made it to me on this side, fading over the river so that I couldn’t hear a complete sentence; or perhaps it was because I wasn’t listening carefully and heard only fragments. Then they squatted on the greenish stones by the river, their voices even fainter, only to be carried off by the water, which actually increased the tranquility in the vicinity. He turned his eyes then to the willows on the opposite bank and observed how low the already deep green willow branches hung, “like childhood memories dimpling the water’s surface,” eternally flowing toward the sea. Not a breeze was stirring, the smoke rose straight up from two or three chimneys, and the clothes drying on the bamboo poles hung from the tops of the walls were warm and fragrant. Distracted, I looked at the two women below washing clothes, their mouths opening and closing continuously, but I couldn’t hear a thing they said, their voices extinguished. Only when they kept vigorously swishing the clothes in the flowing water and the water now regained its natural rippling pattern, the spray splashing, producing some different patterns, only then did the aquatic grass sway, conforming to the other movements, and the shimmering light dim a bit, moving downstream to shine all the brighter, leaping violently and irregularly. That area was always tranquil, and in the yellowing light it was imbued with an atmosphere of sadness. Reading his poetry, I realized it possessed a certain sadness, a premature grief and distress, where a certain melancholy played behind the words, though it was hard to pin down and explain. Thus, that pose looking downward that I saw from afar on the riverbank that day as the sun wended on its downward course, inclining toward the rushing water and the weeping willows, so that it and the world were understood together, forming a vision that was organically poetic. I plumbed that mood and found that it was probably filled with extruded fancy, a nostalgic breeze blowing his way. To me, that was melancholy, the melancholy that repeatedly appeared in his words and lines, but why would a high school

 Return to Degree Zero

sophomore be possessed of so much melancholy? I couldn’t understand. Or perhaps it was something like the haughtiness of the Lian girl. At a certain age, they all acquired a certain bearing and disposition, even though they were equally incomprehensible to me. So as he leaned over the bridge alone and gazed silently, deep in thought, he was at that moment giving shape to, composing, and organizing poetry. And what I had surmised and fathomed with my own eyes was correct—the air aroused unhappiness, a gloomy mood, and the melancholy that a person like him apprehended with his emotional eyes. Several more sparrows flew past, but this time I could hear their crisp chirping, and though they were gone in a flash, their calls lingered between the two banks and suddenly fell to the water’s surface, where they raised a splash. The splash seemed both real and unreal. I could scarcely make out the trailing aquatic grass, and there appeared to be mosquitoes and gnats circling near the water on the opposite bank, in the last rays of the sun. I heard a creak from the wooden bridge as he kicked away from the railing and rolled on, bike bell ringing, to disappear in the lane ahead. Vaguely at a loss, I sank into a strange frame of mind. So that was it— poetry was absolutely subjective. The arm with which I held the newspaper display board ached and my eyes were blurry, but it wasn’t tears, although there was a slight moistness. I thought back to when I’d stood under the willow trees the week before, holding my bicycle with both hands, observing closely with curiosity. Unexpectedly, I took in everything, although at the time I wasn’t aware of how long I had been observing; that was actually the process of how raw material was transformed into words, which was entirely a process of how the mundane was elevated to poetry. Reading those words, that poem, now as I leaned on the newspaper display board, I suddenly realized that that was roughly the way it was, so subjective, absolutely subjective, that something came out of nothing, absolutely. River, bridge, two rows of willows, smoke rising straight above the houses, sparrows, dragonflies, flashing light, each of which had blended into his words, where they agitated, elevated, and interpreted one another and became poetry of substance. This was not difficult; it simply required that you seek, choose, and remember from all around you with your eyes wide open. This was not difficult; it simply meant that you had to oppose everything external, accepting and rejecting with your emotional eye and vibrant heart. I lowered my head and recalled, yes, he had not once recounted those two

 Return to Degree Zero

women whose mouths opened and shut continuously without being audible as they washed clothes—the part that was relatively more unrefined, overstated, and comic—amid the tranquility of the fading evening clouds, in that equally quiet and moving scene. That had been the moment I felt most acutely to be the main reason for the sadness, but he had intentionally omitted it. I recalled that when he was on the bridge, there was not necessarily a lack of sadness, of grief and melancholy. Now I realize that his sadness and emotions had a different source and had nothing to do with the silent scene on which I had expended so much thought in trying to experience. Poetry was just that subjective—you could accept or reject whatever you wanted. That we both explored the sincerity of the mysterious essence was probably the same, but he was molded by so many different factors, making him quite different from me. The factors of that time and later were the power that had an impact on the ways we greeted or rejected the ordinary affairs of the world, which were undeniably at variance. Those factors for him as well as for me all came from the animal spirit, temperament, feelings, experience, and could not be imposed or evaded. Sadness existed to the point of prominence, but what I believed was the reason for that prominence was different from what he believed. This indicates a probable misunderstanding: the comprehension and interpretation of poetry can sometimes not be otherwise. You might be misled by your own surmises, but you insist upon sticking to that hard-won thread, following a trail with preconceived ideas, already mistakenly believing that you have fully comprehended it, while in fact you’ve got it all wrong, you have entirely misunderstood the poem. What his poem faintly suggested was not the way I imagined it that day. He passed the river and stopped his bicycle at the head of the bridge for a long time, because located among the tranquil houses behind the willows was the house he had lived in as a child.

3 After that, I stopped at the newspaper display board every day. In addition to the familiar names that appeared in the literary supplement, there was mine, coming a bit awkwardly behind the others, but there it was nonetheless. My

 Return to Degree Zero

mood was always affected by seeing it there or not, right or wrong. It had a huge impact on me that continued for the whole day until it was time to sleep. I was aware that mine was a narrow path unknown to others, a territory where others had no footing; that I possessed an uncommon ability to express myself and was able to converse with the mysterious and transcendental world. I set my own titles, honed my senses, adopted a style, normally ordering my words between vertigo and lightness, seemingly half baked but still self-confident, as everything was controlled by me. I was accustomed to using words to prompt thought. Usually only after I began to write would I discover what my mind was driving at, and I couldn’t help but be momentarily surprised, while feeling smug and complacent and unwilling to share it with others. Within a short time, I became conceited and unsociably eccentric. When I read someone else’s poems, sometimes I’d reject them as sloppy and slapdash; sometimes I’d reject them as affected and contrived, using too many pretty words; sometimes I’d be disgusted by the layout, the irregularity in line length. At that time, my pen would fly, unrestrained. It was a period of high self-awareness, when I felt I found what I really needed and wanted, a recognizable form of expression all my own, unshared with anyone else, because when I became aware of my conceit, my unsociable eccentricity asserted itself. My form of expression is my own, I would think. This is the best. No one else has come up with it before; it belongs entirely to me, appropriate, exact, and effective. Small world, large world, a world rich in self-satisfaction. Character strokes, lines, punctuation, color, sound—some of everything, unending abundance. Other things occurred outside that belonged to the “important news and current events” in the weekly notebook; they came and went like drifting gunpowder and smoke, not seeming real at all. One day the principal mounted the stage to report in an emotional tone, “The warship Peace was sunk in a surprise attack by the Communist bandits. . . .” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, unable to continue. A number of teachers also wiped away their tears. The principal continued, “The Peace Island sank, not Peace Island, the warship Peace.” I looked all around me and discovered that most of my fellow students seemed perplexed and didn’t really grasp why the principal and all the teachers were crying. It turned out that the warship had been attacked and sunk! In war there is

 Return to Degree Zero

always victory and loss—were tears necessary at the sinking of a warship? It was funny. Thinking of this, I couldn’t help but smile, especially seeing them all busily wiping their eyes and noses. Smiling was the only response. The Japanese battleship Yamato was rocked by explosions all around; thick smoke swirled upward into the fire-reddened sky as the sailors scurried around the deck, and some were thrown into the churning sea, covered with oil and flames. The scene in the movie shifted to an officer standing rigidly erect on the bridge. He wore glasses and had a small moustache. He blinked several times, his lips pressed tightly together, the very image of an evil Japanese officer. The raging flames and thick smoke closed in from all sides, and only he remained standing on the bridge; his left hand rested on his sword as he held the iron railing with his right. The camera zoomed in on him, his eyes fi xed on the distance, blinking occasionally as if his eyes were tearing up, out of shame and self-reproach or despair and fear of death, or had smoke got in them? Finally two tears rolled from his eyes just as the bridge tilted and suddenly fell. The officers attending him and the soldiers screamed as they fell into the water. Shaking, his right hand let go of the iron railing and as he tumbled backward, his left hand left his sword. Shouting “Banzai,” he fell through a parting in the thick smoke into the sea. It was the end of the Yamato. The movie emphasized the heroic deaths, presaging the fall of the empire: the flag of the rising sun and the naval flag caught fire and fell into the sea. I thought of the splash made by the admiral in the glasses and the small moustache as he fell headlong into the water, and I couldn’t help smile because he resembled “a frog with four legs leaping into the water with a splash”? No. Didn’t he resemble “a frog leaping with a splash into the cold pond at an ancient temple”? No. No, it was the end of the Yamato. The background music grew louder. The scene shifted to an arcade in Tokyo, where a crowd of the aged, the young, and the women were listening to a broadcast, tears streaming down their faces. Were tears necessary for the sinking of a ship? The background music stopped. How did the warship Peace sink? No one spoke about the details, but some said that a Communist bandit torpedo boat had taken it by surprise and with a single bang sealed its fate, sinking it. It wasn’t sufficiently just or honorable. For several days, the school was wrapped in a fog of depression, especially the high school with its heroic atmosphere—the principal and others were encouraging the students to join the military and by going to

 Return to Degree Zero

the military academy and entering the service, to get revenge for the warship Peace. Then one day during the weekly meeting, a red banner, on which the words “Joyfully Seeing Off Patriotic Students as They Enter the Service” were stitched in black, was unfurled in front of the stage. Below the banner were seated several high school students, no more than ten, each of whose chests carried a red ribbon on which appeared their name and the military school they were entering. In addition to the Naval Officers Training School and the Noncommissioned Officers Training School, there were some others. I saw Cheng Jianxiong among them. He was destined for the Naval School for Noncommissioned Officers. Despite the heat of the day, I shuddered. That’s all there was to it—he was just going off to join the navy? It was beyond logic and reason. How to handle the melancholy recently produced by the river, weeping willows, wooden bridge, and smoke from kitchen chimneys? How to handle it in poetry? Could you take all this along to the navy? Did you really want to get revenge for the warship Peace? Bang! Bang! Raging flames, thick smoke, the hull of the ship sinking in a whirlpool, an oil slick on the water, seagulls screeching, circling overhead—perhaps one day it would be your turn, then what of your immature melancholy, your poetry? Did you think what you were doing was romantic? Maybe you thought the navy was romantic. However, I couldn’t accept it—not only was it not romantic, it was unbearably vulgar. Listening to the principal and teachers get up on stage and speak, listening to the student representatives bidding a fond farewell, and listening to the students who were joining the service take leave—it was all the same clichés and platitudes. Sitting there, didn’t you feel disgusted? That all those expressions were empty and common? Where would your poetry go? Your regular lines and stanzas, exquisitely punctuated to bring out the dexterous and fine images, like a song of lamentation, so gentle, so beautiful, from concrete to abstract, from reality to the world of the unknown. How would you protect this small world, this big world? Later, we discovered that Cheng Jianxiong didn’t really join the service. I heard that he originally had no thoughts of joining, but had been pressured by the principal and teachers and finally gave his muddle-headed consent. The principal and teachers chose him because he was good at everything, and moreover, he had lost his father two years before and was easy to con-

 Return to Degree Zero

vince since he lived with his mother and younger sister. But at the key juncture, his mother came to her senses and would not allow her only son, who was just seventeen, to quit school and join the navy, and how could the principal and the others, who still had a conscience, seeing that he was an only son with no father, let him leave his widowed mother and little sister in Hualien to go and seek revenge for the warship Peace, which had nothing whatsoever to do with him? Their innate sense of pity gradually awakened; they kept him there so that he could continue with his studies. Thus the others really did go, but Cheng Jianxiong remained behind, as if nothing had happened, and every week his latest work appeared in the local newspaper, and frequently appeared in the Taipei poetry magazines. His large vocabulary, regular lines and stanzas, and vapid melancholy were the marks of an extraordinary young poet. I admired the way he could imbue those poems of his with vapid melancholy, just the right amount to make them moving, which was no doubt a technique. Even so, I was secretly opposed to his vocabulary and stanzas. I demanded greater simplicity, a less rigid appearance; nor did I like his overly poetic language, especially the appropriately planned line length of which I had already had my fi ll, those orderly lines and perfunctory stanzas. I began to feel that his style lacked an air of authenticity, a style that was born from traditional poetry and lyric, but that was just my impression, for which I had no analytical proof. It wasn’t a matter of certitude, just dislike, just feelings, if not prejudice. I think usually at moments when I was wracking my brains or fed up with the books, I myself was not necessarily free from dependence on a style determined by traditional poetry and lyric. In that period of exploration, despite a strong disposition, I didn’t know where I was at, but still used my boundless energy to hurl myself into that desolate small-large world, absurd and distant, that occasionally manifested itself, to record my surprise, joy, disappointment, dislikes, and frustrations. Every morning I rode my bike to that evergreen flame tree where I leaned for a moment, reading the new poetry in the literary supplement of the newspaper. In that short time, I accumulated a lot, and thinking about it now, it seems as if they were just a few fragments, a few fragments of my fifteen years that I had just parted from. Pitiful silence and death and the storm lantern under the eaves. Brief musical notes—probably low ones—fl ickered

 Return to Degree Zero

over dark images. The chief engineer’s pipe wrote poetry in curls of smoke, soaked with salt. Noon nap on the embankment, sighing like the wind, a lake in the distance, deep and blue: it’s dusk and the setting sun is traced in the heart of the lake. The rain draws arcs at your feet and lights countless splashes in the water. There, there is the brooding forest; the crows at dusk carry the setting sun on their backs, flying low; the evening bell pecks, lighting the stars. “The crows at dusk carry the setting sun on their backs . . . flying low, that’s good.” He said, “How does the evening bell peck, lighting the stars?” “If the bell doesn’t ring, you won’t lift your head and you won’t feel surprised because the stars are already alight.” Or this: A blood-red dragonˊy riding the gentleness of willow catkins secretly kissed my crazy thoughts I catch it, slowly dismember it, and it dies. Then I sing loudly to it, singing: “I pick chrysanthemums at the foot of the eastern fenceb.b.b.”

One nation’s territory fell to the enemy. The newspaper said that the defending troops held the position for several days; the ammunition ran out and there were no reinforcements in sight, and many died heroically. The commanding officer was named Wang, and his wife and children lived in a military housing complex at the foot of Mount Meilun. She spoke to reporters as she burned spirit money. It was said that the island was only the size of our playing field and that the Communists had stormed ashore, taking the beach, and both sides had fought fiercely for days. Who knew what it was about? One day at dusk in June I continued writing, the sea was orange-yellow and the route was circuitous due to the many hidden reefs—don’t think it strange, but when I looked up, the sea was fi lled with the masts of rocking ships. Or “Flower,” which was written even earlier: A long-necked bottle also had its shadow, as night approached and the ˊower’s shadow long was lost in a place ˉlled with the buzzing of bees.

 Return to Degree Zero

“Or I will make a silent prayer for the dead goldfish—what does that mean?” he asked. I answered evasively. That year I was fifteen. Then I said good-bye to fifteen. Harvest season! You said the sugarcane blossoms were white. I took my poetry notebook and a red leaf to visit you. Shrubs, persimmons, the salt in the soil, a spotted dog, millet, books, my letters. You said you can’t buy a jin of wine in the village and I’m drunk. One autumn, the Big Dipper fell in the mountains and crushed a poor beetle. Spirits and ghosts are on the road; an argument takes place on the stone bridge and even in the apple orchard regarding the disappearance of the stars; she clearly grasped the corner of her grandma’s clothes. If the stars lost their footing, then no one knows where they fell. At that time we put out a notice for “a star search” in the black sky. After several days of fierce fighting, one nation’s territory fell to the enemy. Cheng Jianxiong decided to start a poetry publication, and asked me to be his assistant. The publication took up one page in the local paper every Monday, in place of the literary supplement. My job consisted of helping him to calculate the number of lines in manuscript every Sunday afternoon and, after he decided on the order and the layout and rolled it up and put a rubber band around it, to get on my bike and deliver it to the newspaper office. Sometimes we found that we didn’t have enough poetry for the page, so we each had to put our heads down and write hurriedly in the classroom by the sea, listening to the waves coming and going, the rustling of the leaves, and the occasional chirping of the birds. Following the play of your imagination, flying, writing “Fishing and Hunting Season”: Open the mountain forest once again! Open the sea! When someone can read the birds and beasts one by one! And writing comments at the top of the page, and in embarrassment write reˊections on what you read. And no one can mediate that quarrel: Characters 17 to 19 in line 3 clearly mean a ˊounder, you insist until red in the face that it’s a plum blossom deer. Even though they are blurred by the blowing snow, the argument between the Black Peach King and Queen goes on.

Writing “An Arab Squats by the Stove”:

 Return to Degree Zero

And drooping eyelids, so exhausted drinking sheep’s milk. An Arab squats by the stove Gauging tomorrow’s sandstorm, water, and women on the road, sighing frequently, drooping eyelids looking at his own black beard.

This grew out of an illustration to a story, a Chinese translation of a story by Camus printed in a Taipei newspaper that was delivered here. The illustration showed an Arab exhausted and squatting by a stove, drinking sheep’s milk. But did he gauge the sandstorm coming tomorrow, the water, and the women on the road or not? Did he sigh or not? Was he looking at his own black beard? That’s how I imagined it. Most of these poems were too distant and could not be pinned down and only took a few minutes to complete. My other job was to pass by the newspaper office early Monday morning and get a bundle of the morning paper from Old Cui, the retired soldier who was in charge of the mailroom, and then take them to school and give them to Cheng Jianxiong. After picking up the papers and before getting back to my bike, I’d have to undo the bundle and closely examine the poetry page. The strong smell of the fresh ink rose from among the words and lines, the scent filling the morning hallway with the same vitality as the poetry itself and possessing a bewildering beauty and a fatal charm that wafted through the quiet streets, where faint footsteps could be heard coming and going, or where the sunlight was just starting to shine through the tree leaves onto the asphalt road, or more often the slanting rain blew some simple fliers, or in the plaza at the railway station, the fountain sounded quieter than usual in the hot wind from the east. In the pool was a large carp sculpted out of concrete, rising out of the water’s surface, supported by its thick tail and spitting beads of water into the air, which fell along with the raindrops onto the cool, dark lotus leaves. We once went to the newspaper office in the evening, the time when everyone was busiest. The printing plant was in the warehouse downstairs. The bright fluorescent lights shone on the workers in their sweaty shirts as

 Return to Degree Zero

they ran looking for characters and setting type. Everywhere the clickityclack of the lead type hitting the metal plates was heard, and in one corner was the sound of paper being cut; the sound of wooden clogs and rubber boots came and went; the workers sang ditties and Taiwan songs, Japanese songs, and songs from Hong Kong movies. They joked and fooled around, said things that could embarrass the female worker who boiled water, but she just turned a deaf ear to them, while the two of us high school students really were embarrassed. At that time, the printing presses were not running and sitting silently along the wall. The fan hummed overhead and the strong smell of oil and betel-nut juice, along with some other unidentifiable smells, floated in the air. Upstairs was the editorial office with the same bright fluorescent lights. In addition to two telephones, there were piles of paper, scissors, glue, red ink, fans, ashtrays, and exceptionally large glasses for tea. The newspaper that we read every day was written in this room, but I don’t know if they had any other implements in addition to the paper, glue, red ink, and the like. They must have. I heard the radio broadcasting patriotic songs, the same as anyone else’s radio, from behind the farthest door. We casually greeted the people in the room; the chief editor was sitting behind his large desk, fanning himself as he read manuscripts. In addition to two telephones in front of him, there were also, as usual, piles of paper, scissors, glue, red ink, an ashtray, a fan, and an exceptionally large glass for tea. The chief editor was named Zeng and was from Fujian province. He probably wasn’t yet forty and had a head of deep black hair and his face was a little pale, and he was always very agreeable to us. He was just about to say something to us when the phone suddenly rang. He picked up the receiver and said “Hello,” then leaned back in his chair to relax. He was absorbed in his conversation and talked for about ten minutes. He chain-smoked and the thick cloud billowed out of the open window behind him, flowing out into the dark street. This is a distant picture, but still very clear and lifelike and will never fade. He was a little pale, if not jaundiced looking, and his thin face was wrinkled, covering his intellectual refinement—probably due to late nights at his desk, cigarettes, tea, and even the failure to achieve some ambition, the inability to face the reality of the times, locked away in a small room, writing news that he himself didn’t believe, adding a few topics that were nonessential, or that people could never take up as topics, for Taiwan’s most depressed cultural community. He hung up and offered us a smoke. Cheng

 Return to Degree Zero

Jianxiong said he couldn’t smoke; I took a chance and lit one, feeling grownup and somewhat bohemian, and the thought that I could one day be like him flashed across my mind: hunched over his desk writing so many pieces, smoking like a chimney, black tea, frustrated, in an unpredictable age, a distant foreign place. This was no doubt very romantic. One time the chief editor asked us, “Why do you have to write new poetry?” “What?” replied Cheng Jianxiong, startled. “I was asking, why is it new poetry that you have to write? You two write pretty well; sometimes,” he lowered his voice and pointed outside at the editorial office, “you write better than they do. But why do you have to write new poetry?” “New poetry is the inevitable trend,” Cheng Jianxiong calmly and unhurriedly replied, looking at me. “Isn’t that so?” “Yes,” I echoed. “That’s what Teacher Hu says.” The chief editor smiled and waved his fan. “Hu is an idealist. There’s no future in writing new poetry—no one reads it and no one buys it!” He continued, “But you know that I have nothing against new poetry; otherwise, why would I give you a page in the newspaper for poetry? Right?” We glanced at each other, nodding our heads. “New poetry, I believe poetry is the best for expressing what I’m really feeling,” said Cheng Jianxiong earnestly to the chief editor. “I mean new poetry.” “But it’s totally useless,” said the chief editor. “It is useful, it is,” I interjected. “How is it useful?” he asked with curiosity. “Well,” I said, “even if it weren’t, what difference does it make? The way I see it, most of the things in the textbooks are useless, algebra and geometry are useless, every day a page and a half of the paper is useless. It’s all lies. But at least what we write is what we really feel.” “Well put,” said the chief editor, evidently moved, “well said. Actually, a little idealism isn’t all that bad, right?”

4 How could he say that new poetry was useless and that there was no future in it? After the Yijiangshan islands were lost and the army withdrew from

 Return to Degree Zero

the Tachen islands, Hualien became home to many fishing families, all of whom lived at Meilun, where they continued their lives fishing. Cheng Jianxiong’s family also lived in Meilun, in a small, sparsely populated community, not far from the man-made harbor. Actually, we hardly ever went to the place, only passing through it on our way to the harbor. At a large bend there, the road began to go downhill—and our bikes to pick up speed— ultimately ending at the wharf in the harbor. The first time Cheng Jianxiong took me to his home was on a Sunday. As we hit the bend, I thought: Great, we’ ll go downhill, the wind blowing around us. Cheng Jianxiong suddenly stopped on the gravel beside the road and jumped off his bike. I followed suit, the sound of the rushing air suddenly stopping. We’re here, he said. I  never expected to stop at the very moment we would start to plunge downhill. His house was a small one, set in the middle of a few low houses by the roadside. By the narrow entrance stood a cigarette stand, a chair, and nothing else. The houses were all alike in their simplicity, all having doors of rough boards overlapping horizontally and vertically, and not a single tree growing beneath the eaves. Right at his front door was the road where large military trucks would roar by at any moment. As the trucks first entered the bend, the drivers would ease off on the throttle right in front of his door and the trucks would head down the slope, raising dirt and dust that would drift into the house. If the trucks came up from the wharf, you could hear them grinding up the slope until they reached his door and then the drivers would hit the accelerator, roaring and curving left as they passed, raising dust and dirt that would drift into the house. As we stepped into the house, I realized that it was almost entirely dark inside, because being a long, narrow house squeezed between others, it had no windows on either side. My eyes were jolted, and I couldn’t see anything and felt blind. An aching redness penetrated the darkness, but that was probably just the blood vessels behind my eyelids and not the light. I had never stepped out of the light of day into a pitch-black room that was so disorienting, where there was no sense of direction. I walked with him to a small room in the very back, because at least there seemed to be a ray of light. Finally, after walking right on his heels, I saw the light grow brighter. He led me over a low threshold, and turning, I saw a row of half-open wooden windows, from where the light was entering, light from the wasteland of wind and sand beyond the house. My eyes were suddenly freed from

 Return to Degree Zero

the imprisoning blackness. Blinking forcefully, I saw that one side of that light space was the kitchen and the other side, behind a half-open door, was his room. Cheng Jianxiong unhurriedly entered his room and came out carrying something, his latest poem, which he had mentioned to me at noon and of which he already had a fair copy. He was planning on including it in tomorrow’s poetry page. Probably because I was accustomed to the light, I discovered that after we left the kitchen we went past two small rooms on one side of the hall, probably his parents’ and his little sister’s room. The room had no windows and was dark and silent; an atmosphere of misery fi lled the hallway, leaving me fearful. He called out “Mom,” but received no reply; the brief sound melted quickly into the dark room but also seemed to linger, the power of its warmth seeming to dissipate some of the misery in the hallway. As we approached the cigarette stand at the very front, someone suddenly blocked the light. He once again called out “Mom” and when the light was once again revealed, a frail woman appeared before us. It was his mother. She was so frail and obscure that all sadness and suffering, real and imaginary, seemed to rest on her face, body, spirit, character, and mood. She smiled at me, examining me with greater than usual respect, looking at me with curiosity and a sudden sadness, her brow furrowing momentarily before smoothing out once again, her long eyes shining with a watery look before receding again. She was silent and didn’t ask me a thing; she just said something to her son before stepping into the darkness. I leaned against the wooden door, reading his latest poem in his fine, neat hand. Dusk, tranquil, murmur, standing silently, confi ned, thin breeze, swaying sound, sympathy, and reluctant departure. So many lovely words occupied your eyes and soon led you off to another world, a strange world away from the blowing sand and dust, the dark hallway and rooms, the empty reality, the roar of the trucks, and the frightening silence. The regular structure, gentle tone, and color of his poetry seemed to lie between joy and shyness. Thoughtless as I might have been, I could still feel that his mother’s sadness and suffering had permeated his imagination and could not be brushed aside. Perhaps he continued to struggle vigorously in hopes of leaping free of the melancholy, but it far exceeded his ability. Therein was inexhaustible warmheartedness and love for supporting each other. Perhaps he didn’t know it, but I did. After we finished discussing the poem and

 Return to Degree Zero

I was about to leave, his mother walked slowly toward us from the rear. They spoke. I noticed she had let her hair down; it was long and hung down her back, black, shiny, and beautiful. I rode my bike slowly past New Tachen Village, which from a distance looked desolate and lifeless. I guessed that they were still trying to adapt to the new environment and that it must have been a strange world, with ironwood and acacia trees and poinsettias that had yet to blossom. I had once gone to a strange world and was a little curious, but mostly frightened. A  military truck passed occasionally, making a disturbing racket, raising sand and dust. At quiet moments, you looked to the left and all intersecting roads ended in sea blue permeated with the rosy glow of a vast expanse of evening clouds, revealing a kind of primeval dusk without any human touch. I realized that I had already been infected with the sharp and powerful melancholy of that strange world. Perhaps it wasn’t melancholy—that was too difficult to understand; perhaps it was sadness and suffering. Large dark clouds had enwrapped me and just as swiftly departed, but every part of my body and mind had been infected. Heavy and saddened, I slowly pedaled my bike forward, and tired, I said to myself: I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired, but I’m still young! I had no idea how to relieve myself of that pain. When I was in that dark hallway, my eyes vigorously tolerated that deathly feeling because I knew that it was still light outside and that the sun had just fallen to a forty-five degree angle behind the mountains and the remaining light shone east over the boundless horizon. That was usually the most carefree and pleasant time, the clearest and most delightful hour on the remote coast of Hualien. Darkness, blushes, pains, melancholy, sadness, suffering, and poetry. I went down the small road on the slope, turned at the intersection shaded by flame trees, and delivered the poetry to the newspaper office. The newspaper office was still and quiet—no one in the printing plant or editorial office had arrived for work yet. There were just a man and a woman at the front desk accepting ads for the newspaper. I made my way over to the riverbank that Cheng Jianxiong had written a poem about and took a closer look at the wooden bridge, flowing water, weeping willows, and residences. My mind was placid like the smoke above the roofs where the wind wasn’t blowing, rising straight up from the chimneys, reaching to another boundary. I understood that it was a matter of the relationship between here and

 Return to Degree Zero

there, the comparison of here and there, the conflicts and harmonies, that produced poetry. Therein was profound mystery, but by the same token, this did not likely prohibit understanding, explanation, or analysis. Right? I really wasn’t bothered. I thought. My style and grammar were my own: I already stood alone and had found what I was looking for. Does vexation fall from the treetops? It floats on the ocean, the night sky is water. The hurried traveler consults his map by the faint light of the meteorite. The truth cannot be hidden. The breeze skimmed over. The love and pallor of snakes, the calls of the wisteria, and the dream of the beach. So I went. It was a mistake. A large needle-leafed forest! You said: Why not take Park Street? Why not silently bid farewell? Memory is a stone tablet, erected in silence; the wandering clouds stay for a long time, stay for a long time, as if they were grieving. You said I was rash, so I stuck your faults in a glass bottle. I am in the deepest shadow and I have slept soundly for far too long, footsteps like sighs as they tap going back and forth. A small gathering seemingly for a temporary separation. Shadows stretched within shadows—sighs set toward dusk, set toward whose threshold? Compare the sound of four afternoons of water to four afternoons of footsteps. If they are the unending quarrels of impetuous young girls—then, no one can come. I just want a noon nap! No one can come! A midnight locked in a feeble smile, smiling amid wisps of clouds—that today have been conjectured, something locked . . . a small boat slipped by, slipped between your fi ngers, a few familiar and strange moods, stirred into words, my poetry. A lot still could not be grasped, could not be tasted, flying before my eyes, skimming over my mind, without leaving a trace on paper. Those channels and ponds were fi lled with water in spring, but never ended up in my poetry, I don’t know why; drifting, sinking, and finally disappearing, only to float up again with difficulty much, much later, having become a network of life’s weakest memories; every time that image floated to the surface, I was conscious of my mind retrenching, violently sweet and distressed. Perhaps other people, like me, have all had this experience of encountering things that leave indelible memories and other things that can’t quite be grasped. Can poetry help free you from the bondage of sadness? Make you remove that cold dark coat and welcome gentleness and beauty? Poetry to you was simply a huge metaphor. You used it to ward off sadness, to experience pity, imagine unformed joy, and pursue happiness. Poetry makes the adversity of

 Return to Degree Zero

your reality fade, makes misgivings subside, and makes a river flow clear, as if it never met a single obstacle. Poetry uplifts your life. There were no mangoes on the tree late in the summer. At this time last year, a couple of workers came to the Lians’ house to fi x the chimney. When they took a break, one of them put up a ladder and the other climbed up in the tree and brought down the beehive. They broke it open and with chopsticks removed the larvae one by one and plopped them in their mouths. The two of them ate every single one of them. The larvae were small and white, nearly transparent. Plucked out of the hive, they still wriggled, and the workers kept saying, “How sweet!” They beat the broken hive and peeked inside to see if there were any left. The children bravely clambered up the tree to snatch the ripe mangoes while I watched from our side, having no wish to join them, because I feared that haughty look. By the time it was dark, the mangoes had nearly all been picked. This year there was no beehive. When the green mangoes had just begun to turn yellow, they were picked or knocked down with bamboo poles by everyone before they were even ripe, but I never ever joined in.

S H E S A I D W H AT I S O U G H T W A S SOME KIND OF ESCAPE

1 Once again I found myself groping my way down long streets and short lanes on a drizzly night. Night, yes, a dark night in which the floating lights were not enough to illuminate the darkness, but rather served to make the surrounding blackness all the more profound and lost in loneliness. Sometimes the street was long and narrow, stretching from east to west. An immense shadow was all that met the eye in the distance, an ever swelling shadow. Did I see anything? I saw the darkness. At the farthest point to the west were the immense mountains, rising abruptly with their matchless threat to intimidate me. I didn’t see anything, but I had already seen everything; I saw myself at a different time when I once gazed far away, my eyes fi xed on the big mountain I knew. The forest was clearly distinguishable, the gorges were solemn; they rose and fell innumerable like ocean swells, up and down. Forty-five degrees higher up and to the right was a seam in which the gray was flecked with pale green; this I was aware of, and had long imagined and finally decided had to be a huge rock formation. The forest stopped there abruptly but gently surrounded it, by day reflecting its green and by night joining it in darkness. This I was aware of, having long kept it in my memory and thoughts; even as I groped through the drizzling darkness, I could not forget it. I opened my eyes wide and searched the west, but saw only the darkness, the wet darkness; but in my mind’s eye I could see the soaring forest, the gorges, and the huge rock, all of which were watching me through the warm rain. They watched and saw me turn my head to the east, under the protection of the streetlights on both sides of the long street that grew dimmer with distance, as I groped toward a faraway place over the boundless sea.

 Return to Degree Zero

My eyes registered skepticism and concern, but for what reason I sometimes couldn’t say, while at other times I was so certain, with no doubts in my mind. I knew that looking here and there I was seeking, seeking an image, one that was calmer, more turbulent, larger, and more minute than the sea, so far away that it could not be touched, so close at hand that it snuggled against my bosom, an undying image.

2 “Do you think you can reach there?” “I once made progress by twists and turns.” “Do you think you know where you want to go?” “Once, I walked on a path along which the betel palms bloomed.” “Do you think,” she asked, “that you will be able to converse with her?” “I can whisper.” “I know you can. But can you converse with her?” “On the path where the betel palms bloom,” I said, “no. At a place where the moon rises above the silver grass, in autumn.” “I don’t believe you.” “In a courtyard where the banana magnolia is in full bloom.” “I don’t believe you,” she said. I sat on the tatami looking at her expression across a large square tea table. Her hair appeared cool under the lamplight, but I have no idea from where that coolness came. Her eyes were long and narrow. She blinked slowly with a kind of indolence. “You ought to face reality,” she said, a smile flickering at the corners of her mouth before expanding into a real smile, her eyes narrowing to slits, for an excessive length of time. “Not a courtyard where a banana magnolia is in full bloom,” I continued, correcting myself, “it’s a Buddha’s hand. Have you seen a Buddha’s hand? Big leaves and big fruit that hang plentifully in the summertime, their fragrance fi lling the slopes in the scorching heat. I walked over and saw someone approaching on a bicycle. I saw her come closer and closer and I stopped at the side of the road, opened my eyes wide, and looked at her. She whooshed by on her bicycle, the road filled with the fragrance of Buddha’s hand.” “I don’t believe you.”

 Return to Degree Zero

Their quarters were cool and quiet with very little furniture; everything was arranged neatly, without anything superfluous, but apparently lacking nothing. Although they appeared old, the tatami mats were very clean. Despite being somewhat discolored, the shoji between rooms were in perfect condition, without a single hole. The right two panels were tightly shut, while the left two were half open and partly overlapping, creating a traditional, conservative atmosphere, not at all carelessly, but rather ceremonial in appearance. She sat in front of the partly opened shoji, as if on a stage, and filled with wisdom, able to see you clearly and understand you, like a witch able to foresee your future. The props were strictly symbolic, and her dramatic tone of voice provoked my troubled mind. “Do you think you can bear the weight of love?” I trembled uncontrollably, and my hands and feet felt cold. The wall clock suddenly tolled, dong, dong, dong, several times, carrying me off to a faraway place, drifting and flying away to a distant place. The clock chimes stopped and I returned to the tatami on the other side of the low tea table, entirely forgetting the question she had just put to me. I replied: “I’m groping through the darkness of a drizzly night.” “I don’t understand.” Of course she understood. Two olive trees grew in front of her house, shading the window, which I discovered when I entered before dark. Now I could only sense it. Again she said, “I don’t understand.” “I mean seeking,” I said. “What are you seeking?” “It’s just my fancy,” I said, “just thinking whatever. Sometimes I imagine myself returning after wandering, disappointed, haggard, riding the cheapest local train that stops at every station, approaching the home where I was born. As we pull up to the station and stop, I see her hurriedly looking in every window, looking for me. She runs through the thick smoke from the train, anxious, beautiful. I recognize her, it is her, as I expected. I push open the window, stick my head out, and shout her name. By then the smoke from the train has thinned. The station clock high up points to :, a few passengers come and go, as a few stars blink at the edge of the sky.” “Stars blink?” When she laughs, her eyes narrow to slits and her eyebrows curve downward. “I fancy she hears my voice, sees me, and enters my carriage. The train clangs, shudders, and gets under way. I walk anxiously toward the carriage

 Return to Degree Zero

door and see her quickly approaching me. The train starts to leave the little station, picking up speed. The telephone poles recede behind the train, the signs with the station name on the railings also recede, faster and faster, until soon the railing disappears from sight. As the train goes over the crossing, we come close together, the bells ringing, and several lights seem to be visible over the uncultivated land, flickering in and out over the uncultivated land.”

3 The rain drifted against my face, my body, running together with my sweat. I stepped slowly, but with the sweltering night and my heavy and gloomy heart, I couldn’t help feeling anxious, worried. I carried a little notebook in my pocket, crammed with densely written characters. I tramped along the long street, not knowing where I would end up if I continued in this way. In the notebook, I had copied out poems from the ’s: Carrying an oil paper umbrella alone, I make my way down a long, long and lonely lane in the rain, pacing back and forth, hoping to encounter a young woman knotted with sadness and hate like a bud of lilac

What was the meaning of a young woman knotted with sadness and hate like a bud of lilac? I didn’t have the slightest idea. Walking back and forth, my sweat mixed with the rain, looking around, giving play to my fancy—what I saw was nothing more than myself. I had it memorized, encountering a sad girl like a bud of lilac. What I saw was myself. On that lonely night without direction, I split myself in two. I split myself in two. One of me was on the ground, walking down a distant, awkward, and old street, looking here and there, fantasizing, as if really seeking something (it simply seemed unreal), just like strolling from here to there. When my shadow grew shorter, I neared a power pole; when it lengthened, I slowly moved away from a power pole, thus my shadow

 Return to Degree Zero

went back and forth this way, long and short, and sometimes even was completely absorbed in the shade of a big tree and its broken light. One of me was on the ground, wandering with a tragic color, wondering what he thought he was seeking, while the other was on high looking down, moved. I was conscious of this split, fully conscious. I wasn’t quite sure which one I liked to play more. The one in the heavens? The one on the ground? I was my own actor and my own audience, fond, absorbed, and moved beyond compare. Thus I wandered around, observing. When my mind perceived a resonance, there was immediate exchange, stirring my soul. Kept going, kept going, walking slowly from the stone bridge, I would always meet her unexpectedly, surprised and shy. Or, even though I kept walking, kept walking, past people’s walls, vegetable gardens, shop fronts, spinning, lost in the dramatic changes in the rings of light and dark mist, in the end, I’d never run into her; it was as if it would never ever happen, not once, and not meeting her on the street corner, there was no encounter, no surprised happiness, and no shyness. None of the imagined scenes was there for my other self to discover. Nothing whatsoever occurred. I wasn’t necessarily able to let my transcendent spirit, that spirit that hibernated deep within my heart, like Dante’s, in a violent shudder, feel my body weaken and my pulse assailed. I was waiting for my spirit to tremble in that way, my instincts startled, naturally acknowledging that they would forever be disturbed. But then it was too late for anything to happen. I was already enlightened; “it is perhaps too trifling to indulge overmuch in my youthful passion and behavior,” as Dante puts it in his rueful words. “I should stop and avoid transcribing the book of memory of these kinds of passions and behavior. Instead, I should turn toward those words written in my soul, turn toward a weightier subject.”

4 “Words written in your soul?” “Secret symbols such as cannot be made public; they await annotation.” “Can they be understood? Grasped? Made clear?” “I can’t say for sure.” “Is there value in this?”

 Return to Degree Zero

“Yes.” “How do you know there is value?” “Because it is entirely my own, truly, purely, immovable, just like my spirit, character, temperament, voice, and appearance that formed a moment ago—and even though young, tender, and simple, it is not lacking nature; that’s why I say truly, purely, and immovable, it is entirely my own.” “Of course, it’s entirely your own.” “Even to the level that it exists solely for me to be aware of and recognize, because it truly does not change, and thus principally it solemnly moves me.” “Moves you?” “Moves me at the moment of seeking. From point A, I hasten to point B, seeking a single image. I stumble, I fall and injure myself, I get up, lean against a huge tree to rest and think, vow to the stars, great and small, while at the same time conceiving of a complete piece of writing, the words in my soul. Thus, my words come from the setbacks to the spirit and injuries to the body.” “Maybe when all is said and done you just like talking about the subject of love. Right?” “Love?” “Isn’t love your weightier subject?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t know?” “I can’t determine whether the words are more important, or love.” “Love, of course, is more important.” “Not necessarily.” “Of course love is more important than the words.” “Not necessarily.” “One day you will be completely enlightened.” “We’ll see when that day comes.” “Love is the motive force behind everything, greater than the universe, time, and space; smaller than blood, sweat, and tears, smiles and sighs. It all manifests itself and disappears because of love. You yourself understand this. Why not admit it?” “I have my suspicions, sometimes . . .” “Suspicions?”

 Return to Degree Zero

“I suspect that love is the means and words are the real end.” “That’s terrible, terrible.” “. . .” “That’s terrible. Your view is terrible.” “I’m speaking the truth. Besides, I said sometimes, not all the time.” “The more you try to explain, the worse you make it. It’s terrible, terrible. So there is someone who would go so far as to say that love is the means and words the end.” “Don’t exaggerate. When you make me mad, I can also say that hate is a means and words the end.” “Hate is not my thing, whatever you say.” “I don’t feel like saying.” “In any event, I’m not interested in hate. Whatever you say is fine, means or ends, it has nothing to do with me.” “I’m sorry. I’m not interested in hate, either.” “Just as I guessed.” “You ought to be able to guess.” “Until you really made me mad, just a little.” “I’m sorry, but this is for the sake of argument, not the truth.” “You’re really starting to make me mad, more than just a little.” “Why?” “What do you mean for the sake of argument, not the truth?” “You take it too seriously. How can you have a conversation when you take things so seriously?” “For a start, you can’t be harsh and unreasonable and come and talk to me with an attitude of for the sake of argument, not the truth.” “But I like talking with you, even arguing with you. But I never expected this exchange to really be a pursuit of the truth.” “Well, you really are something.” “I’m honest, am I not?” “You could say that. I just hope I can believe you. First, I want to believe what you say. You say you are not interested in hate, that hate has nothing to do with you.” “Hate has nothing to do with me, but love has.” “Then you think that hate and love are the same, both a means to the end, to words.”

 Return to Degree Zero

“I take back half. I think that love is sometimes a means and words the end.” “So we’re back to that terrible subject.” “. . .” “Is that what you mean by more important subject?” “Forget it! We haven’t found what I would call an important topic.” “You can’t seem to take responsibility,” she said. “You think you are seeking when in fact you are running away.” “No,” I replied, “let me read you a passage.” I took out an old book: I say that when Beatrice appeared from any direction, by the hope of her wondrous salutation no enemy was left to me, but rather a ˊ ame of charity possessed me which made me pardon whomsoever had offended me; and to him who had then asked of me concerning any matter, my answer would have been simply: Love! with a countenance clothed in humility.

“It’s the same old thing,” she replied, her expression turning to scorn. “Is it love or words?”

5 I was certain I would never encounter her. I ran around, sometimes on spring nights. I heard the sound of the flowing water in the stream and was occasionally struck by the continuous clamor of the sea, but these were usually quiet. I guessed that no sound outside had ever entered me. The stars shone radiantly, extending north to south, and some even touching the mountain peaks in the west with two or three way up, illuminating the highest points; some hung over the ocean to the east, dipping playfully over the vastness, testing the warmth of the water with light and shadow. From the perspective of my magically transformative mind, the prolonged shining light and shadow also looked like feet that suddenly appeared and disappeared. The waves rose and fell, dropped back, swallowed up, and vanished. At last I fi nally discovered that in actuality I had not seen a thing, no starlight, no mountains, no sea, and

 Return to Degree Zero

no feet playing in the water. I guessed that no colors outside had ever entered me. In silence I read, “A young woman knotted with sadness and hate like a bud of lilac,” without entirely understanding it. What was lilac? I had only encountered it in poetry, in the modern poems I had copied out and in poetry from the Five Dynasties: who is responsible for the flowers falling in the wind? Pensive, the bluebird does not deliver news from beyond the clouds, and the lilac causes melancholy in vain. That must be it. It is associated with longing for someone, and expectation, and most certainly with rain and melancholy. But then, what was melancholy and what was sadness? I didn’t get it entirely. Perhaps this seeking really was a form of escape. Perhaps I was intentionally following the wrong route whenever my state of mind became agitated; perhaps, perhaps I’d suddenly stand up at my desk, setting aside character and character and character taking shape on my desk, in an attempt to probe and get close to what people were accustomed to exaggerating—mysterious “love.” At that time, my vocabulary and clarity of thought abdicated, leaving me in the dark, unable to explain, abandoned to one side. I stood up, pushed open the window, and looked outside. What was falling was the night, which was simultaneously tender and cold, dry and moist—as if the performance had just started in the theater or had just ended. Solitary, I overcame levels of hollow structure, seeking to orient my character. Once again, I wanted to set off, and along the way I would look for her; like a lost wind, following the wrong road, I’d look for her. It was possible. Perhaps I was intentionally following the wrong route so that I would repeatedly be unable to find her, disappointed, despondent, deeply moved, so that when the other me looked down from above, I would be deeply, deeply moved. “I hope,” he recited softly, “I hope I can meet a young woman knotted with sadness and hatred like a bud of lilac.” It was impossible to go on this way. So finally, one day, when I chose the wrong road to take, I actually ran into her at an intersection. There was a bridge on one side of the place, where people peacefully came and went, some on foot, some slowly on bicycle. When I discovered her, she was stepping out of the shade of a tree, the mottled light covering her, like a farm before a summer’s night had fully fallen, wrapped in a glowing haze, exud-

 Return to Degree Zero

ing ease, comfort, and abundance. The orchard was fi lled with fruit, racing to ripen in expectation of the harvest season to come. Waiting, listening to the song of the bees coming and going, as the gnats circled in cover and the snails in threes or fours began to move, patrolling the fertile garden in their meandering way, past the chrysanthemum, spinach, tomatoes, taro leaves, parsley, amaranth, soybeans, carrots, garlic chives, asparagus, potato leaves, lovage, Dutch peas, gourds, sponge gourds, cucumbers; past onions, ginger, garlic, hot pepper, the dew forming on the bottle gourd trellis, heavily weighing down the large green leaves, maintaining balance between the close-knit stems, swaying under the moonlight as if to fall, and finally, because stirred for no reason by a breath of wind, the turned soil, loose and soft, emitted a faint sound, which in turn wakened a caterpillar, which lifted its head and looked right and left before hurriedly inching ahead, disappearing into the dry fragrance of the eggplant blossoms. On the other side of the stream was the sweet sugarcane field. At that moment, the stream was clear and shallow, shot through with a cold and clear joy that continuously provoked an ever headier aroma of sweetness from that patch of sugarcane, which was dizzying and intoxicating. The farm before a summer’s night had fully fallen shone under a star chart that lost its position. What was bursting out all around was life’s tidings, responding to the brilliant operations of the sky, like a call, an outcry, a kind of desire to free myself, which illuminated my fearful mind; with her surpassing penetration, questioned my fearful mind; and with her completely warm and gentle curiosity and irrepressible smile soothed my fearful mind, allowing me to abandon the idea of flight that I had always had, so that I could pause under a large streetlight and without the slightest reservation display my fright, joy, shyness, and a look of seeking something uncertain. At that moment she paused beneath the streetlight, her white neck visible below her short hair, her eyes, brows, and cheeks as bright and pure as a jasmine blossom. She was not sad, just quiet, her lips tightly shut. She stopped and stared at me and then, without uttering a sound, continued walking, past me, on her way. That moment seemed to last an eternity, time stretching out unbroken, long enough for me to continue, in an unspecified time and place, to leisurely construct a beautiful temple to glorify and praise the deity in Heaven, to glorify and praise the deity in my heart. Twelve cones soared up into the

 Return to Degree Zero

clouds, decorated with gold, symbolizing the virtues of the twelve months in a year, broadcasting the tidings into the distance while absorbing the miscellaneous tidings from the universe. The rounded tops of the temple cones were made of amber, glaze, and jade, setting each other off, radiating flame that reached everywhere. And the flying eaves preserved a rhythm that tempered the brightness of the firelight. It was so staid and sedate that it was like the imperturbable and sublime mind of the phoenix in restful meditation. Twenty-four marble columns stood solemnly, adorned with intricate carvings. All around the  degrees of each column were displayed  groups of complete mythological tales, and with the greatest dramatic tension they expressed aesthetic joy and moral teachings. Arranged neatly and orderly around the  degrees of each column, they seemed to come to life, and the  groups of complete mythological tales commented on one another, combining to form a vast system of belief, and through the , groups aesthetic joy and moral teachings to the nth power upheld the vastness of the temple. Love was its foundation, tightly fi xed to the earth, extending into its dark recesses. I now think this all actually should have happened. It did occur, no doubt about it—it was not just some figment of my imagination. I groped my way along through the drizzly darkness, down long streets and short lanes, wet and disappointed. One day I chose the wrong road, on which I had a premonition that something was about to happen, concrete, abstract, forcing me to stand fearfully and numbly among others on this earth, but also forcing another me to look down from the heavens above, deeply moved. In the shade of trees, the mottled light shone on a farm of ease, comfort, and abundance. A lovely temple sat beneath the streetlight. When those plants, insects, minerals, and profundity disappeared, when they vanished before my eyes, I felt as though I were drenched, suddenly hot then cold, but my spirit was alone and awake, circumspectly and proudly controlling my will, preventing it from following the mixed feelings of joy and sadness and that body which seemed on the point of disintegrating, and preventing it from disappearing together with the senses. Within moments, I was aware that a fierce confl ict was raging in my life, proud and indomitable, high-spirited, and ruthless. Thereupon another I

 Return to Degree Zero

looked down, and the more it looked down the closer it came. Paying close attention like that and the pity it brought overcame the power of resistance of the I standing firmly on the earth. I got closer and closer until I discovered that because I seemed on the verge of wild joy and great grief, with which I trembled, the two Is dashed forward where they merged, returning to a single body.

A G R E AT F I C T I T I O U S A G E

A great fictitious age. People repeatedly said that it was a great age. A great age? A fictitious great age. A great fictitious age. I saw the sea always surging, wave after wave, an interlinked network of waves, coalescing, inseparable, close yet bashful, spreading far and wide. The boundless water was constantly in motion, and I knew it could never die. It was the pulse of the planet, the energy of the universe. Shape-shifting clouds filled the sky, sometimes breaking apart and drifting away, where suddenly from east and west, they finally went their own vague direction and, at some unknown point, alone, they would disperse, merging into the emptiness; sometimes they would stretch and converge, joining together before my very eyes, unwilling to stop; channel together, fly away, fused, born anew, and thus slowly move, shaking off the mood that had been with them while floating, complete in their forms, ascending high above, changing their appearance and carriage at will. Only the tender feeling of concern for the sea never changed. A large shadow spread on the water’s surface, deep blue applied to the imposing dark green. Someone said loudly, “This is the kind of great age that comes along once in a thousand years.” I rolled my eyes and looked at the sea and the clouds. I continued watching the sea and the clouds. I would seek, apprehend, and lock onto a cloud above the sea, the one cloud that favorably impressed me. It would hesitate a moment before encountering others of its kind, motioning, calling, approaching, embracing, interpenetrating, taking on an entirely new form, an entirely new value; then it would continue on its way, exploring. Only the tender feeling of concern for the sea and me never changed, and, reflected in my dry eyes, fi lled

 Return to Degree Zero

me with favorable rain collected from far, astounding me, making me accustomed to amazement. This was the one cloud that favorably impressed me. Who could say why, sometimes? Taking advantage of my distraction, it would break apart in an uninhibited fashion and disperse. My eyes grew lonely and dissolved into nothingness with it. Strangers were making sounds in their throats and sinuses. Two fi sts striking produced a heavy, muffled sound, which suddenly turned to clapping, lasting for a long time. Coming to an end, it was followed by a nod of the head with the mouth tightly closed in a sincere expression, after which it was agreed that nothing more would be said. His voice abruptly stopped, unsure of what was to follow. I looked at the cloud. It was moving farther and farther away, and I feared that I would not be able to follow it. It lingered deep and far off in the blue sky; I’d never make it, I’d never make it. The person appeared frozen, his mouth shut, his cheeks twitching, not knowing what would be said next, the same as when a phonograph needle gets to the end of a song and the lyrics come to an end, the tune fading away as the needle slides into an empty groove, spinning, around and around. You thought it would jump to the next track, where a new song would commence, carrying you off to a great, proud, and indomitable world again. But that was not the case, the needle turned in an empty groove, issuing an embarrassing sound of falling and striking, somewhere between plastic and metal, the moment deathly silence produces confusion. A brief moment, a great age, a fictitious great age, a great fictitious age. It was my own choice. I decided to become a seaman on an oceangoing voyage. The fog gradually engulfed the dark port. It was already after midnight, an uncertain but most romantic hour, so sentimental after midnight in such a foggy port. I looked through a dark, steamed-up window but couldn’t make out this unknown place at this unknown hour. I tried to push open the window a crack. From that confusing position, I only had a sketchy impression of what was outside in the night fog. The points of light were the streetlights that led to the wharf. All I could see was the cold fog rapidly accumulating where a solitary streetlight at the intersection illuminated the departure. Although the wind was blowing off the sea, the drifting fog floated, pressed

 Return to Degree Zero

in, and sometimes seemed to move, overflowing beyond the light, only to be fanned back, twisting in the opposite direction, sinking. Autumn deepened. Dark nights of fog, cold fog. I was about to leave, to say good-bye to that romantic port—I wasn’t sure when. The exact hour was unknown. I turned away from the window, and the fog playing in the light remained in my mind; I’m not sure if it was with an air of mockery or uninhibited coquetry, which made me feel a very tender regard. There were several hanging lamps in the room, which made it feel warm. The steam once again covered the crack in the window and it was totally dark outside. I seemed to hear the wind. I lit a cigarette. Standing up, I picked up a simple travel bag, carefully replaced the chair (I was always proper and well behaved), and walked to the door, where I put down my bag and, with a cigarette in the corner of my mouth, proceeded to button the large round buttons of my coat. I stepped out into the fog and hurried on my way. How real was the autumn cold! It caressed my cheeks and my right hand, in which I carried the travel bag. At that moment, the bell of the port authority building tolled, dong, dong—it was two o’clock in the morning. The muffled sound of the tolling bell was prolonged in the fog and completely lacked the clarity and sharpness of the tolling on a clear summer’s day. When the beautiful steamer arrived from far away, its small flags flapped in the hot wind; when the wharf was bustling with women and children hurrying to meet the ship, all eyes were fi xed on the steamer in the port. At that time, a few sparse, pale white clouds drifted in the clear sky, so pale that they would melt away at any moment. At that time, a train left the station, sounding its whistle as it slowly made its way toward the back of the mountain—one small toot was followed by a louder one, the sound rising and breaking through the oppressive atmosphere, lingering for a long time before fading away. The sound had come from the steamer, skimming over the water in the harbor, totally unabashed. The small flags flapped vigorously, the large one less so, though still sporadically swaying with the gusts of wind, one gust following upon the next. Oh, wasn’t that the most enchanting moment in the port during the day? Life was squandered, squan-

 Return to Degree Zero

dered vigorously in the air filled with joy and even excitement, as if it would never end, as if it would never know the meaning of solitude or loneliness, as if it would never understand parting and longing, as if it were always bearing, never dying. Dong! It was two-thirty in the morning, a sudden reminder struck through the cold fog, penetrating the confusing darkness to the sea nearby. I heard the seagulls call raucously several times before ceasing, to the right ahead of the wharf, like the hot and seething call of a cat on a spring night. I was going to sea, letting the ship take me to a faraway place. It was such an emotional experience. And I still wasn’t even sure in which direction our ship was sailing. Walking alone, I smelled the wonderful scent of the sea; my mind was occupied with favorite unfinished thoughts, a disagreeable parting, a suspended soliloquy, a seemingly sad face beneath the dim light, startled eyes welling with tears. I walked alone toward the wharf. Yes, in that direction, because I had a general idea which way to go, but didn’t know which port, which port on which coast. I really didn’t know. But I knew I was headed in the right direction, toward the sea. I was going to sea. Don’t be sad on my account. I was going to sea now, now. By all means, don’t cry for me. Just keep looking surprised, it looks so becoming. Let the tears well up in your eyes; keep it that way, the tension constant, but do not, please, by all means do not shed a tear. I must recall your face, which looked sad, under the dim light. I must, I must recall what was so suddenly broken off, the fragments of that soliloquy. It appeared intentional, intentionally broken off, fragmented, that we might both bear a grudge deep in our hearts, so that when we recalled our parting later, that grudge might then softly and secretly rise to become inexplicable hatred. Ah, hatred, we thought that love must contain some hate. But in fact, we understood nothing and spent a good deal of time trying, then defining, before arriving at the truth. Of course you agreed that some hate was bound up in what we didn’t entirely dare to face. We believed it was real love but didn’t dare to look at it squarely. Perhaps it was the most beautiful, but we were unable to explain or analyze it. I was going to sea. Don’t be sad on my account.

 Return to Degree Zero

I had a picture of you from last year in my diary. I treasured it all. On that page there were two pressed jasmine flowers, yellowed but still somewhat fragrant. I was going to sea. . . . Don’t be sad on my account. Or perhaps I should be a forest lookout. I could live alone in a small hut someplace in the great mountains, where the vast virgin forest meets a newly planted forest. I was a forest lookout. I had a special background, what I had gone through known only by a few people, my sad story that circulated in that village at the foot of the mountains. “Don’t know where he went?” People would discuss it in this fashion: “We miss him, he was lovable and also hateful. . . .” My little hut was situated in a secluded place on a jutting cliff. The topography jutted outward, with huge rocks on three sides and only a ravine opening to the west, descending downward for a long way, as if it extended all the way to the end of the earth. The topography rose and fell and wound around. Under my feet, I could see a sea of conifers surging, embellished with a few white clouds like those in my memory from another age, that hoarse and strange age, that great fictitious age. I tracked and followed the clouds, floating and drifting. Sometimes this scene made me reluctant to go, reflecting long on the lost feelings of youth, profoundly striking. Thus I was momentarily caught unprepared, and suddenly my will, feelings, and spirit were shaken like never before. I seemed on the verge of a breakdown, submissive and exhausted. Only after a protracted period of lying low could I begin to struggle to stand up again. Thus I abandoned everything, choosing to cut myself off from the world, choosing to exile myself. Behind my hut was a long series of wooden steps tight against the rock, by which I climbed up to the small lookout tower above. From there the green conifers stretched off endlessly in all directions. The dense forest appeared to surge from all directions like a vast sea, save that it was silent. During the bright daylight hours, as I stood in the lookout watching silently, the trees were also especially silent, opposing my staunch expression with utmost patience. It was so tranquil in the vast forested region that it seemed deathly still, silent. Sometimes the trees would clamor as if they occasionally wanted to sob. Conversely, a breath flowed through the needles, shaking them, sweeping in the direction of the slope, a breeze stirring

 Return to Degree Zero

gently. When the wind rose, on any morning or at noon during any season, it would stir a young and tender branch with its shy strength, gradually growing stronger. As the wind picked up speed, blowing through the conifer forest, I could see the vast green forest surge more rapidly, one wave following close upon another, spreading in every direction. Standing then in the watchtower, I heard the familiar and beautifully moving crash; suddenly it was the waves of my lost youth. I lived alone in a high mountain hut, and there was also a watchtower. My exact position was unclear, but it was at some very obscure point on the globe, difficult to make out. The peaks were ranged endlessly in a way you couldn’t imagine. The forest there resembled the sea, sometimes absolutely silent, other times quite turbulent. I had already been there for some time, but wasn’t exactly certain how long; for some time. The road leading down the mountain was at that end. If I left when the sun rose and descended, circling left around the rock, slipping down Lily Cliff—the lilies were in full bloom there when I arrived, that’s why I referred to it as Lily Cliff in my diary—into the dense forest, I came out and crossed a large grassy meadow in the center of which were two lakes, so clear I could see the bottom, and went back again into the forest, where I followed an old path knee-deep in weeds, thinking about the lakes so like her eyes, deeper into the fi ltered sunlight, light and shadow shifting. Before the sun set behind the mountains, I’d reach another wooden hut and watchtower, where another lookout lived, my nearest neighbor. I made this trip at least once a month—down the cliff, into the forest, out of the forest, across the meadow, into the forest, out of the forest, to his wooden hut. The lookout who lived there was considerably older than me and wasn’t much of a conversationalist. I sat down in a corner of his hut and he gave me food and drink. Soon night fell, so he lit the lantern. He sat and stared absentmindedly. Only then did I realize his hut was more spacious than mine. His shadow wavered in the lamplight; occasionally he’d tell me about the past, bits and pieces of the past, the story of a hunter. The night was very quiet. A breeze blew through the quiet but never ceased. “The sound of the waterfall,” he said. The next day before noon, someone arrived from the lowlands bringing rice, canned goods, salt, and other daily necessities, as well as some cigarettes and wine. The man was small and dark and carried a curved knife at his

 Return to Degree Zero

waist and a quiver of arrows and his bow on his back. He carried all those things on his back, but still he walked as if on wings, walking three days and three nights from the lowlands, and when he was tired, he’d hang his hammock and hang the things from a high branch. He left one third of the things with the old hunter and gave him a letter. He’d eat, drink, and rest a spell before departing with me. From among the things in his load, I removed a little pouch of books; I knew there were some letters pressed inside the books. I shouldered the pouch and, walking single file under the blazing sun, we entered the dense forest. An expert sent to southern Africa for a long period of time by a mining company. I (likewise) kept to myself and wasn’t very sociable, but because I was an expert on mining and geology, most people put up with me. I was sent to southern Africa, at first on a short-term, rotational job, but soon thereafter at my own request, the company was happy to enlist my help, allowing me to stay there for the long term. My work was quite simple. I participated in the inspection of the mining reserves of a number of small southern African countries, especially in the South African Union, closely following advances in politics, commerce, and long-term foreign investment in mining and cabling information on the current situation to the relevant departments of the company. My cables usually included details about quality assessments and market analysis (the important markets being those of the United States and Europe), as well as proposals for our course of action and suggestions for steps to take, and definite opinions on buying or waiting to see. Southern Africa, as everyone knows, is rich in mineral resources. My interest, no, my mission focused on tungsten, manganese, iron ore, coal, platinum, chromium, antimony, tin, vanadium, asbestos, zinc, copper, lead, and naturally with particular attention to the amazing gold, silver, and diamond mining as well as uranium. I chose to live in Cape Town because of its proximity to the sea, but my job required me to make frequent trips to Port Elizabeth, Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Kimberley, with trips sometimes to Lorenço Marques, the capital of Mozambique. However, I rarely went to any northern towns. The company had another expert who lived in Casablanca, Morocco, whose duties were about the same as mine, but in northern Africa.

 Return to Degree Zero

The only difference in our jobs was that in addition, he had to keep an eye on the oil markets in Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. At first, when the company supervisor came to Africa, I often had to go north and meet with them in Casablanca. Later, I made excuses about travel fatigue and suggested they come to Cape Town. Thus we decided to hold our meetings in Casablanca and Cape Town in alternate years. Several years later, the company’s new supervisor suggested that all future meetings could simply be held in Paris. “You can take a vacation while you’re at it,” he said, “that way you can avoid living a life of seclusion on the Dark Continent. The company will cover all your expenses.” I was not in the least bit interested in Paris, but it was hard to disagree with his good intentions, so I said I’d give it a try. But after two years of giving it a try, I felt it was too much trouble, so I suggested we resume our meetings in Africa, (ideally in Cape Town). Everyone knew what I was like and made allowances. After that we met every year in Cape Town, and I scarcely went anyplace other than South Africa and Mozambique. Other than my contacts at work, I had no friends to speak of. If I had to name a friend, then it would probably be that old minister. The old minister claimed to be of Dutch descent, which I didn’t think quite possible, he being more likely of German descent, because the Dutch all belonged to the Catholic Church, while the old minister and his generation were all Calvinists. Perhaps because the Nazis turned Europe upside down, some Germans were actually ashamed to admit it, so to simplify matters, they called themselves Dutch. Another possibility was that the old minister was perhaps of Swiss-German descent and had ties to the Calvinists, and so when they arrived in South Africa to do missionary work, their tenets and rituals were the same as those of the Calvinist Reform. As to why he would not admit to being of German or Swiss-German descent, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, maybe it was also a matter of convenience, making it a bit easier to stand with the majority of locals and draw upon the political and economic superiority of those of Dutch descent. Of course, this was all supposition on my part, simply guessing. Perhaps it was all unclear to the old minister, or he had never paid attention to such issues. You could say that the old minister was my only friend, but he didn’t reside in Cape Town, he lived in Kimberley. There was no changing the situation, and I accepted the state of affairs without complaint. He and his wife

 Return to Degree Zero

both liked a life of peace and quiet and didn’t like being disturbed, traits that became more pronounced with age. It had been ages since they had traveled anywhere. Their one daughter moved to Johannesburg after marrying and would drive to Kimberley for holidays or vacations, so that the old people could be with their two grandchildren for a few days. When the vacation ended, back they would go to Johannesburg. This life might seem a little lonely, but fortunately the couple knew lots of people in the parish and could look after each other. Life was all right, I imagine. Each year I made a number of trips to Kimberley, as few as two or three or as many as five or six, all on company business. Normally, I’d catch the : a.m. train out of Cape Town and arrive there at dusk, around  p.m. It was a trip of about six hundred miles, but a somewhat enjoyable one. The train started from a good vantage point and slowly headed northeast, crossing mountains, rivers, and bridges. There was an abundance of vegetation and small villages were scattered around, creating scenes that had not changed since time immemorial. I knew that although the land appeared changeless, there had, in fact, been changes. While riding the train, in addition to looking at the scenery, I would shut my eyes and rest. It had been ages since I’d read a book and I never picked up a magazine, except for a professional mining journal or to read the economic news, which I had to keep up with. I flipped through a couple of pages in the newspaper every day and skimmed the rest of it. Sometimes I would recall how when I was young I always had a book in hand and had decided to devote myself to a life in literature, and now I never looked at books. I couldn’t help but blush with shame and feel vaguely troubled. It was usually nearly dark when the train arrived at the Kimberley station, but in the winter the days were long and it was still bright. I recall a few lines I wrote when young: b.b.b. And eating the fruit given to me by the old minister. In winter, I’d write letters to China in the east.b.b.b.

All of this seemed to come true. But that wasn’t necessarily so, I thought. Everything seemed to have come true, except that I never took up a pen to write a letter, much less mailed one to China. A fragment of a few lines:

 Return to Degree Zero

At that time, the rock broke and fell, the lakes and marshes dried up. I liked nothing more than to walk the broad streets of Kimberley late at night I set my watch to the clock tower and stand for a short time on the bridge, thinking when I was seventeen, I.b.b.b.

I cannot remember the rest. I don’t know the reason for the images of the rock and lakes, nor do I know what sort of contrast I was trying to provide with the broad streets late at night. No doubt I wanted an “I” to face the clock, cross the bridge, and look back on the past. But this was entirely impossible, because I would never understand how to look back on the past with longing. I wasn’t the type to ever nostalgically recall the age of seventeen with its dreams and ideals. I would never understand how to look back on the past with longing. On the train back, I’d sit, thoroughly bored looking at the familiar scenery, and then close my eyes to rest. It was the right direction—traveling slowly from northeast to southwest, in this far-flung corner of the world. The train passed through villages in the midst of change. The blacks were farming, herding, bathing, playing, or standing close to the tracks waving at me, speeding past. It was the right direction, toward the sea, toward the vast expanse of ocean in the southern hemisphere. It was all familiar to me, living alone in my apartment by the sea, getting used to this full feeling of “possessing.” I saw the sun rise in the Indian Ocean and watched it set in the South Atlantic Ocean. I was unsociable, and proud; I never felt lonely or depressed. Or maybe I’d be a lighthouse keeper. I imagined the life of a lighthouse keeper would be about the same as that of a forest lookout, as would the emotional burden. Both were bound to have gone through some life-shaking experience that left a permanent scar after endless blood, tears, and anger. I came from a different county, possessing a different accent in which the second, third, and fourth of the seven tones were indistinguishable, and where I came from, we pronounced our vowels a little differently than the locals, so I stood out among the villagers. After learning of my presence, they were naturally curious, especially the younger generation of men and women (the young women noticeably more so than the young men);

 Return to Degree Zero

however, on account of the older generation’s admonishments, they evinced no outward expression, despite their curiosity. They made a concerted effort to act as if nothing were different to save me from feeling awkward. I examined them carefully, no less so than they did me, I’m afraid. I noticed that when the young women opened their mouths to speak, they spoke, sounded quite sweet, and I was at once entranced by the rhythm of their speech and the unusual changes in the way they pronounced their vowels. I spent a good part of the winter that year sitting inside the lighthouse contemplating the accent of the young women, attempting to analyze its distinctive characteristics and classify them. A war correspondent. Given my idealism and love of risk, I chose to go to the combat zone. My colleagues couldn’t believe it when I first applied to go to the combat zone, because normally I never showed my feelings, was rather quiet and ordinary, and gave no indication of being the sort of person to shine through being willing to take risks and endure hardship. And because I never harangued, no one guessed that I was in fact an idealist. I knew I thoroughly confused them, so after I received my orders and had downed a few glasses of rice wine, I told my colleagues, “What does this have to do with idealism? Being a war correspondent means appeasing the military, how can that be the way of an idealist? As for risk, I don’t see that the front lines are any more dangerous than being in the rear.” They were all deeply touched. I was sent to an extremely hostile war zone. When I arrived there, a number of important battles had already been fought. Both sides were exhausted, and each had a number of bases for strategic confrontation. Occasionally skirmishes would occur, generally the result of patrols unexpectedly encountering each other and randomly firing off a couple of shots. This happened several times a day and both sides suffered casualties, but generally they were very light. My arrival at the combat zone coincided with the start of the rainy season; there was mud everywhere, and it was perpetually wet around the barracks. The things I brought with me were placed on a rack and never dried. Notebook, paper, and the English-Chinese dictionary I had carried with me for years was all soft and swollen by the dampness, and all the pages stuck together so that I couldn’t open them. But I was even more worried

 Return to Degree Zero

about the new camera I had just purchased, fearful that it might become moldy and dysfunctional. I tested it, moving all its parts and it seemed okay, but I soon began to worry that the rolls of film might be moldy, even though the camera was not. I never really expected I’d become such a worrywart after arriving in the combat zone that autumn. Likewise, other than the unexpected encounters, strictly speaking there was little fighting at the front line. Autumn found both sides worn out, trying to recoup while avoiding direct, large-scale conflict, also hoping to reduce the number of chance encounters. Thus there was a tacit understanding that not only would they detour on purpose to avoid encountering the opposite side while on defensive patrol, but they would also reduce the number of patrols. Sometimes, when HQ asked, the commander would have to fabricate reasons for stalling. And the rain kept on falling, forming puddles in the mud; the rain struck the dirty water, struck our tents, struck the general confusion, struck the vehicles of all sizes, and struck the marching noncommissioned officer who was on duty for the week as well as the fully armed dispatch. I hunkered down in the damp, in a small moldy space, uncertain as to what sort of news I could report. Sometimes I’d sit, wracking my brain, unable to come up with a topic, before I’d start daydreaming. I couldn’t always write about the rain; I couldn’t always write about how both sides were doing their utmost to avoid military engagement. Soldiers must do battle in a war zone. Any changes and trends in the current overall situation were related and had large and far-reaching impact. I couldn’t write that the soldiers were avoiding battle where they must fight, that they were all resting. None of this had anything to do with idealism or risk taking. All was quiet on the western front; all was quiet on the eastern front; all was quiet on the southern and northern fronts. Broad was the world and gloomy; only the raindrops, large and small, were seen falling. Occasionally a gunshot was heard, but even then without rousing any interest in me. Perhaps something important had happened. Had some of the soldiers argued and shot and killed someone? Or had a soldier been cleaning his weapon when it discharged? Had someone gone crazy and shot himself? Had the commander executed a deserter? I should have been curious about that shot in that depressing, vexing, and lifeless combat zone. I sat there and went back to daydreaming, not even interested in glancing outside the tent.

 Return to Degree Zero

On a rare day the rain stopped and the sun actually showed its face in the blue sky, playing hide and seek with us behind the white clouds. Those who had taken cover in their tents or underground shelters now calmly walked abroad or sat and scratched themselves on damp piles of things. I hung my camera around my neck and for the first time felt a little relaxed, and actually began to take a little interest in what I was doing. My complex mood was a little romantic, idealistic, adventuresome, satisfied, and self-pitying. The sun shone on the vehicles, weapons, military supplies, tents, and garbage. A vapor began to rise, giving off a moldy odor, drifting mixed with the mud all around, but it was still clear, and despite the moldy odor, it was quiet all around, the sound of falling rain having ceased. Nor was there a gun to be heard. It really was one of those rare and pleasant days with no military front line. I raised my camera and snapped two photos of soldiers lolling around. Up ahead and to the right, a bunch of people were trying to push a three-quarter-ton truck out of the mud. Again I raised my camera, framed the shot, and was about to snap the shutter when I suddenly heard an explosion. I was hurled back, spun around, and fell face down in the mud. I was cold and seemed to smell blood and gunpowder; I couldn’t keep my eyes open and everything grew dark, after which I remember nothing. Basically someone opposed to government, an anarchist. “From a very young age, I liked to fantasize. My wildest imaginings were connected to this. It was a vision I created when I was around twenty,” I replied. Right now I’m doing my best to remember, but I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong. I wasn’t around twenty when I created it, but around seventeen. When people repeatedly express themselves about their great age, a great age that comes along once every thousand years, and high ambitions come into play, when they repeatedly talk nonsense about when the clouds chased and played over the sea, strolled and lingered, it was at such a time that I had this thought: “Determined, I stubbornly reside alone in the Black Forest in Germany near the Austrian border, where I am engaged in academic research, humanistic creation, and bravely criticizing the government from a position of conscience firmly from the opposition, having become famous for not compromising with officialdom.”

 Return to Degree Zero

Anarchists, of course, are made and not born. Put simply: no one in the world considers himself an anarchist from an early age. The development, growth, and formation of an anarchist are dependent upon a host of real political factors and cultural and noncultural inspiration. He must experience a number of powerful shocks, spiritual and emotional shocks, such as witnessing one or more governments become dictatorships with disregard for all authority, the corruption of justice, the greed of legislators; he must witness a system without truth or justice in which those with the special powers of a small clique can help themselves to public resources and wealth by trickery, while the vast majority of people outside that clique are then forced to break the law out of desperation, and respond by resorting to force. Among these people there is no loyalty or camaraderie; instead, they know only the seeking of personal advantage, struggle, and interest only in material gain, to the extent that education and reason are directed at satisfying personal desire, patiently teaching and admonishing students until they possess inflated egos to compensate for their shortcomings. Thus students have no respect for knowledge and are totally unconcerned about others or even Nature. The anarchist must have bitterly experienced these realities, joined the opposition, and suddenly withdrawn before he could become a true, complete, and good anarchist, a person against government. I think I had experienced all of this, so I was true, complete, and good. I taught in a European language, lecturing on the social history of the Middle Ages in an old and conservative institution. The course encompassed religion, politics, economics, literature, art, and the new knowledge that was gradually leading to the Renaissance, all of which were within the scope of my research. At times I even sought out research materials from music and medicine as the basis for setting forth my views. As far as I was concerned, teaching was not really that complicated, because under the tutelage system, human wisdom and knowledge were fully and effectively stirred up so that interest was aroused and something new was learned by looking at the old. It was always in our afternoon discussions in the study that a farsighted perspective naturally took shape and seemed like the basis for academic discovery. My time at the institute was divided between two places, the library and the study room; otherwise I was on the shady path between the two, taking the brick walkway to the bus, or spending a little time eating and drinking tea or in a club drinking. Strictly speaking,

 Return to Degree Zero

teaching was not my most important occupation. The institute expected me to do research and write academic papers, go through old books, analyze research materials, criticize past scholarship, and offer new ideas. It was in this old and conservative environment that I, a foreigner, worked, buried in the obscure, difficult, and incomparably important academic investigation of traditional European culture. The principal language of my research was German, but I often had to use French and English when attending conferences, and in my work I often had to read old and new books in five or six other languages, and only Chinese was not among them. One time at an annual academic conference, a young scholar from the University of Edinburgh asked me, “Why did you choose medieval social history?” I hesitated, reluctant to respond. She changed the topic and asked heavy of heart, “Why did you choose this institute for academic research? I mean, it’s so far from your home.” “I’m an anarchist, I’m against government,” I calmly replied. Her eyes widened and her red lips fell open as she looked at me as if I were something strange, no, as if she had seen a ghost manifesting through the smoke of time, standing right before her. I knew she also engaged in some facet of social history, but she specialized in the shifts in theory from the period of the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of the Second World War, different from me. Even so, our disciplines were similar, as were our methodologies and languages. Later, she wrote up our brief exchange and published it as an appendix to our academic journal, in which she vigorously attempted to explain the meaning of the word anarchist (which it turned out was one of the foci of her research, so she wrote a brilliant piece), and surmised that my perfunctory words betrayed a scholarly dignity, integrity, and (she added with emphasis) having some sorrowful thoughts of my home country. Having so-called sorrowful thoughts of my home country, I confess, was sometimes difficult to deny. I sat in a wooden rocking chair by the window at dusk, smoking my pipe. Why couldn’t I face it? With my pipe in my hand, I looked out the window at the freshly fallen snow and four old, leafless maple trees; the upright branches were quiet as before and partly covered with snow. The sun had vanished, but night had not yet fallen over this peaceful valley. A kind of clear, cold light shone on the yard and the sidewalk farther off. But wasn’t that just the color of the snow? The pipe had

 Return to Degree Zero

grown cold in my hand, but my vest was warm and the fire still burned in the fireplace, popping occasionally before returning to serene tranquility. Oh, it was such a burden. The light shone off the fresh snow at dusk in a peaceful valley in the Black Forest in a far-off county. I stood up and went to my desk, picked up a manuscript, walked back to the rocking chair, turned on the floor lamp, and by the gentle light of the snow, fireplace, and lamp, read the manuscript. The manuscript was in Chinese, a manuscript written character by character by hand in blue ink, taking shape with each stroke of my Montblanc, as always. I used a word processor to type my academic work; I used a pen with blue ink to write analysis and criticism of current opinion and, with even more assurance, the steady accretion, day after day, of lyric and narrative poetry, fables, letters, as well as my stylistically unique confessions, all of which constituted a pursuit of form, with the spectrum and tone color for rhetorical grace in order to propel a particular topic, a leisurely piece of writing with order, outward show and inner thought on an outstanding topic. Night gradually descended on the peaceful valley. The light from the snow had not entirely vanished. Sitting in my rocking chair, my vest warm, I felt indolent and on the point of dozing off, but I fought the urge to sleep. I have always been a person of determination. The fire popped and was quiet again. I dozed off, finally, and seemed to dream about my faraway home in the past with the mountains looking down and the sea there always surging, wave after wave, rising and falling, spreading. Shape-shifting clouds filled the sky, sometimes breaking apart and drifting away, where suddenly from east and west, they finally went their own vague directions and, at some unknown point, alone, they would disperse, merging into the emptiness.

LO N G A G O, W H E N W E S TA RT E D

T H AT A G E

1 I don’t know what day it was in that age. Morning. A strong wind blew in off the sea. I wondered what news such a strong wind, such a fierce wind blowing straight at me, would deliver. By that time, I was accustomed to using my imagination for evoking faraway places, ancient times, the distant and the unfathomable. Or perhaps there was someone like me, as passionate about the unknown, who explored with as much urgency as I did, who worked as hard at it as I did, and thus, we were sure to meet by chance at a certain time and place. I had thrown myself in, fleeing, acting as if nothing mattered. Already I had thrown myself in, and with great curiosity, which aroused a will verging on the solemn and stirring. I threw myself into love and beauty, experimenting with the cold clarity and torturing heat of poetry, glimpsing the sacred and the possible as eternal light; with that will as vanguard and as rearguard, with the stamina of youth, in a dreamlike search filled with wonder and risk, approaching it all, I threw myself in. It felt like a piercing cold followed by a searing flame. It felt like a process of solidification, incomparably quiet, but also like a process of carbonization, emitting minute but explicit bursts. Then automatically I fled, running from between the cold and the heat. I needed complete emptiness to possess as my own so that I could think and weigh, so that I could return to that original point, to that self without a will, and without even passion or curiosity. Willingly would I return to that great emptiness. That strong wind blew against me in the morning on the road along the coast. I stood on my tiptoes, gazing into the distance, seemingly able yet unable to see myself in the wind. That was a suffocating age of dejection. So

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

it can be perceived today in hindsight, even though at the time I never thought of it that way. Oppressive and distant, faded black and yellowing white. It was a huge sheet of white paper that had grayed and then yellowed, while the densely packed characters had faded to such an extent that they were nearly invisible. I could only speculate by relying on my memory, and then speculate with little or no interest. I thought I had grasped the traces of spiritual transcendence, mastered the diff useness of art and its power to rise above, as well as the form and content of poetry, along with happiness, sadness, and a mood that may have been joy elevated to tragedy. A lamp shone at the window; below the lamp was a branch of jasmine, amid the fragrance of which someone secretly worried about me. Every time I think about that oppressive age, I seem to gaze back in this fashion. On the coastal road, I rode my bike, struggling against the wind from the sea, my heart pounding, not knowing what it was all about. Love? Doubt? Disgust? Hatred? Could it not possibly have been hate and disgust? Was it doubt? But my scornful mind, ready for action, tended toward suppression. Perhaps I really was trying to run away. Then was it love? Then perhaps it was entirely for love. No one understood these things. I continued into the wind and looked up at the sky: I was a secretive person with no one to share my secrets because I didn’t analyze myself, unless you allowed me to use the form of poetry— then you could notice me, interpret me, like and love me through the form of poetry.

2 It was such a severe and destructive age. That was at the end of the fifties. I knew everything I was supposed to know, though not entirely by choice; but I did make an effort to keep everything in mind. Some things were inappropriate for us to talk about in public; some things couldn’t be passed on by a whisper in the ear. If you heard anything that had the slightest harmful intent, you had to be careful and not remember it, or best of all, forget you’d heard it, and that was what was meant by a sound young person. The weekly journal had one section titled

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

“Free Expression” to provide you with the opportunity to express yourself. Once a week you could practice expressing yourself, practice limiting yourself to expressing what could be expressed and omitting what could not be expressed, even if you knew more about it from experience or were more interested in it. Limiting oneself. A sound young person had to know when to limit the way he expressed himself, and had to be able to limit what he said in writing, regardless of whether it was going to be printed or not. You had to control your own mind and never allow it to run wild, just as you had to control your soul and never allow it to roam at will. Long-term practice not only taught you caution when you wrote but also made you write in a more accessible and colloquial style, sometimes high-spirited, sometimes faltering. All this effort was expended so as not to stumble into a trap, to stand up against all the fear and stern looks with confused and broken grammar saying, pathetically, who knows what? “Otherwise,” all long, complex sentences had to be embellished with that one word: “otherwise, otherwise, otherwise.” Otherwise what? Otherwise, who knew what would happen? At the end of the fifties. Those known to have died were already dead; those who had disappeared had already been gone for many years. Although he had disappeared, people still remembered him, but didn’t much talk about him or even mention him. Some of them were, beyond doubt, in prison, though it was not beyond doubt that they had perhaps been executed long before. One summer, we traveled from the countryside to Taipei. The organization hosting us had arranged for us to visit a military academy, which was a medical school. I assume it was to seize an opportunity to encourage us to take the entrance exam for the military academy after we fi nished high school. We walked in single fi le through the dorm, across the playing field, through the church, looking at everything. Suddenly a door opened in front of us and out wafted a strong medicinal odor. We didn’t have time to ask and filed in one after another, holding our mouths and noses, looking at a vat to the left. The people in front of me ran to the open door to get out. Only after I walked closer did I see a naked man in the vat, soaking in a chemical bath, with two or three holes in his chest.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

3 I knew most of what I wanted to know. Shallow and superficial. I heard that war was raging in most parts of the world, and they emphasized that it was an age of war and hunger, which might have been less than accurate, even false. I saw the pictures of the cease-fire and negotiations in Panmunjom on the photo page of the newspaper, after which, every once in a while, a picture of an American military sentry would be printed, cruel and merciless, all traces of romanticism or heroism having long since vanished. Soviet tanks patrolled the streets of Budapest, advancing among the ancient houses filled with a religious atmosphere. The pigeons flew to the left and right of the gun barrels; the soldiers poked their heads out to breathe the fresh air of a conquered country; stunned and expressionless, the Hungarians stood motionless, watching the tanks. Some of those who stood up to oppose the government had died, following the loud rumble of the foreign tanks first entering the city and the destruction, the smell of gunpowder, the shouts, and wails of grief; others had fled to the border, scattering to all corners of the globe. I mulled over the news, an incessant nightmare, my mind confused and chaotic, almost able to foresee—it was foresight—amid the increasingly intense thrumming of strings at the same pitch, melody, color, and identical flavor. It rose, and was joined a moment later by the beating of a single drum, cutting impetuously through time and space, gradually covering the strings that had maintained their ascent. Then an ensemble of two- and four-stringed instruments, reed pipes, and bamboo flutes rose to take their place. Gongs, drums, and cymbals beat rhythmically. Then the entire story, along with the plot, the emotions, and the sighs, were all alike—foreshadowing the reenactment of the same thing thirty years later: some had already died following the tanks of their own country, intimidated by the overpowering violence under a scorching sun, the implacable advance across a square, picking up speed, charging, firing, strafing, amid the same destruction, smell of gunpowder, and cries; they died amid the wailing; others fled to the border, scattering to all corners of the globe. Then these broken fragments piled up, one scene overlapping another, distorting the picture; the focus was lost. Although the music seemed to provide the timpani to connect them into a solid framework, it fi nally faltered and began to display intermittent faults, as if it were incapable of

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

bearing that fear and grief, as if it were seeking more evidence for the overlapping and piling up of tracks and guns, and for the gleeful killing. The nightmares. Time advanced and time retreated, until it locked on one point, becoming motionless in another space. From all directions, the Vietnamese communist forces drove the captured American tanks along the roads, the sky fi lled with wind-blown sand and dust, bombs exploded, machine guns strafed, the crowds assembled and scattered again, scattered and reassembled again. The tanks entered the city of Saigon and passed down busy streets, the lush tropical trees swaying in the breeze. Perhaps that’s not accurate. Killing was occurring in all parts of the world. The attacking tanks paraded down the city’s brick streets that were laid six hundred years ago, past the Bishopric, City Hall, Official Meeting Hall, the morning market, the Memorial to the People’s Heroes, the theater, the Independence Monument, the Children’s Hospital, the Arts and Crafts University, and the Foreign Business Club. In Hungary and in Vietnam and in China. But what was real took place in another summer. An idea occurred for the countless pieces of artillery on the coast opposite Quemoy—to concentrate a bombardment on the numerous bases and installations on the island. The first round rained down for several minutes, killing many officers and soldiers who were unable to take cover, including several generals. Afterward, the soldiers on Quemoy returned fire, and thus the war of artillery continued, and it was unsure who would win and who would lose. In short, it went on for ages before it stopped.

4 I was very particular about poetic expression, and very self-confident about it. Strangely, however, I didn’t feel that I had mastered the right way. Usually I was able to spontaneously latch on to an image or imagistic language, expand upon it, embellish it, and quickly decide upon a form, all to my happiness. Thus I sought an external framework for it, limiting its parameters to a specific theme, after which I set about methodically realizing that framework, making sure that the overall meaning worked in concert with the music and color, that everything worked in harmony and nothing was

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

out of place or conflicting. Poetry was the means of the interflow of information between the external world and myself, the best way, and the way I communicated with myself, the best and most effective way. On account of this, a feeling of incomparable self-satisfaction and pride awakened in me. But at that time, strictly speaking, I tried to keep this feeling secret. I was afraid meddlesome people would bruit it about and put me in a position of being taken by surprise and unable to explain things. Perhaps I was still just too weak. So I can’t really claim self-confidence, even though I was very particular about poetic expression and stuck to it.

5 The wind stopped in the afternoon. I went downhill on my bike. Looking down, I hurtled nearer at a high speed while looking down at the sleepy little city, which up to that time had been the sole city in my life. How could it be otherwise? Though it was winter, a vast stretch of green trees grew densely between the sparse and scattered houses. How could it be otherwise? The evening clouds stretched straight from north to south, changing instantaneously, dimming, growing dark, and vanishing before I could contemplate them. In addition to beauty, I could also look squarely at the ugly. Such was progress. I knew that lies, deceit, and betrayal were human. Although I got wind of some of it and guessed some of it, due to the fact that the ugly was within the scope of my understanding, I felt, sadly and with what might be described as self-pity, that I was already mature. I firmly believed that it was generally so, but unfortunately, I couldn’t proclaim it aloud; I had to keep it secret until the day I was fully prepared, and then I would let everyone know, awakening them suddenly. There was no hurry, I told myself. At the same time, I selected several irrelevant and secondary problems and, pretending to be entirely absorbed, misled other people, just as Dante did in Florence when he found himself entirely smitten by Beatrice, his mind entirely subservient to her, yet was unwilling to reveal this and pretended to be in love with another, even to the point of penning and dedicating rhymes to another, thereby concealing the passion buried deep in his heart. Like Dante in Florence, I spent a lot of time in the class-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

room doing sketches of plaster figures, my eyes fi xed on the images from Greek myth and on replica busts of philosophers, silently sketching with charcoal on white paper, sketching in the fading light of the setting sun as darkness fell. . . . Thereby concealing the passion buried deep in my heart.

TO H I D E

My bike glides along a long wall down a lane. Allow me, beginning at this very moment, to search for a river in a backward glance through memory. My tired eyes shut, allowing the morning sun to play over my mildly dizzy head and in my messy hair, tinged with excitement, having experienced wind and rain, snow and frost. My line of vision stopped short, a red cloud and darkness intertwined around my eyes, round stars rolled, exploded, splitting into even more stars. Countless atoms expanded and contracted, melded together and split apart: an independent and solitary universe. It was a small, independent, and solitary universe after I pondered it but before my imagination came into play. The sun bashfully shone on me, the red clouds expanded while their density increased, soon taking complete possession of my fl ighty nerves, capturing them one by one, swallowing them, dissolving them into formlessness. All that my vision contacted was rolling atoms, denser and more concentrated, maintaining a structure, my independent and solitary universe, eternal now and transient nevermore. Let me glide, parallel to the coast, and then turn down a long lane, where I ride with a high wall to my left. A weak and beautiful song seems to accompany me from a distance through the layered leaves, affectionately. Oh, Spirit of Time, please regard and look upon me, support me in my time of worry, when I am thwarted and wanting, the moment I lose faith; please look down upon me and give strength to my memory and the will to inquire, imagine, verify, analyze, and compose. Oh, Spirit of Time, provide me with near perfect wisdom to open that old secret master plan, then with single-minded sincerity and resolution to compose along that more than complex main thread, weaving each long line carefully, compiling and organizing and ordering them, so the plain raw lines might interlock and be

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

managed well, freely winding and threading together. Please bestow composition upon me. Oh, Spirit of Time, do not forsake me, do not lightly abandon me to bitterly and sadly pace the shore of hunger, the thirsty wasteland, the clamoring streets, and crowded nightmares. Please give me boundless courage to resolutely plumb that hard, solid, and foolish crystal ball, to patrol in that unfamiliar area, shuttling between the cold light and the accumulated shadows. Oh, space, ever-changing space that defies intent watching, God, please guide me, do not let me fall too deep into melancholy for taking risks in passionately pursuing the unknown, for willingly coming and going from life and death and discovering the eternal vastness of your realm. Do not let me fall into melancholy on account of love. The melancholy seemed transient, quietly departed. My bike glided down the silent long lane; then I circumscribed a half circle and turned down a small path to the right, shaking violently on the uneven stone surface, the shade of the trees concealing an unnamable joy. The slow speed and the intense shaking were numbing, but pleasantly so from head to toe. Maybe it wasn’t entirely on account of the uneven stone surface and the dense shade, and not even because the tires were overinflated; rather it was due to a certain offense, resistance, or betrayal of self-consciousness that made a person want to indulge, feel satisfied or a little worried. The road narrowed ahead and was pitted with a series of large potholes. I leaped off my bike and pushed it forward slowly. The hedge to the left was the same height as I and composed of hibiscus, short ruscus bamboo, and weak silver grass. It swayed in the late spring air. Behind the hedge were several vegetable plots, but the gardener was nowhere to be seen. Plump lettuce, chives, and garlic, along with bottle gourd and pea vines that seemed never to stop growing, were planted. In one corner a mother hen and her chicks pecked for food. Nearby stood a tall persimmon tree, which I recognized from the unripe fruit hanging among the green leaves. I stopped and stood in the middle of the trail. To my left were camphor trees covered with new palegreen leaves. A delicate fragrance could be faintly detected wafting from the fiber—could it not have been that awe-inspiring, dreamlike fragrance from childhood, like laughter and tears from the older broken leaves of midsummer from a long, long time ago?—wafting mercilessly, assaulting me through a barbed-wire fence. A two-story wooden building with a gray

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

tile roof sat off in the distance behind the fence. Its clapboard siding had been covered with a thin coat of anthracene oil, but the windowsills and frames had been painted white. From a distance it bore a slight resemblance to a country mansion, but I knew for a fact that it was the county administrative office for the Papaya Mountain Forest. There were no large trees around the building; a few crude and simple bonsai, no doubt camellias or sago palms and such, were placed on one side of the large open area leading to several newly planted yellow coconut palms and a row of azaleas farther off. It looked like the living quarters for the administrative staff, which at that moment was somber and silent. Amid the slumberous fragrance of the camphor trees, I saw that the large open space next to the barbed-wire fence had been covered with concrete, although it was full of cracks out of which grew weeds of various heights. There were a few faded remnants of squares and lines painted on the concrete, giving it a very run-down look. Examining it more closely, I realized it was an abandoned tennis court, which must have dated back many, many years to the time of the Japanese administration. Even after being exposed to so much scorching sun, so many storms, and so many shoes, the lines were still faintly visible. A single flagpole, short and fi lled with ennui, stood at the center line of the court nearest the lane. A banner flapped, blown gently by the breeze, as if it were afraid of drawing attention to itself. I continued down between two rows of flame trees, the river directly ahead. The weak sunlight shone on the water’s surface, flickering and swaying as if it were flowing, while at the same time seeming to stand entirely still. Looking across the river, I shouted to a tall skinny man in the hut opposite: “If I want to rent a boat for an hour, what’ll I do with my bike?” He stared blankly at me as if he couldn’t understand me. “I also have a book bag,” I added. On this side there was a tilted piece of ground where the reeds didn’t grow and the randomly piled stones that served as steps didn’t look all that stable. I couldn’t be certain, but there was probably not much danger of falling in the water. Where the steps ended, several large bamboo poles were placed upright, parallel to the riverbank; to them bamboo was lashed to form a temporary pier, to which were tied a dozen or so boats, scarcely moving on the nearly still water. I noticed that all of the boats were clean and dry, with no trace of dampness; likewise the stone steps, making them look fake and more like stage props. “That’s because no one is rowing

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

the boats,” I said to myself. “Of course not, everyone is in school.” I turned back and saw the tall thin man rubbing his eyes in confusion, looking in surprise at my book bag. At that moment I felt a strange sense of excitement on account of offense, resistance, betrayal, but I also was a little apprehensive. I heard that familiar music drifting from off in the distance. At first it seemed like it was coming from deep in a green valley, the deepest place of cloud mist, springs, moss, and wisteria that imagination could reach. I didn’t know its exact position, at what longitude and latitude. The music rose from some sinkhole that suddenly appeared in the earth. It rose like smoke, sometimes thinly, sometimes thickly, floating like a water snake on water. A skillfully sung song told of a primordial mystery, a legend made up especially for me. But I couldn’t fully understand it. The music suddenly drew nearer with infinite adoration and tenderness. Perplexed, I lifted my head to look at the clear sky, and for a moment was unable to determine the actual situation and thought that the song was rising inside me in reverent praise of the unknown. Soon thereafter, I imagined that the music stopped on the steep slope of the mountain, behind the shadows of the dense virgin forest as the sun was inclining to the west. The numerous outthrust branch tips of the trees cast their shapes on the perilous mountaintop. I sat alone on a high spot, my arms around my knees, thinking over some strange matters, such as the slow telling of the strings—the shadows of the trees were slowly moving, and time was with uncommon patience trying to enlighten me, but I was too obtuse to understand. Or perhaps I thought that the moment had not yet arrived or might never come, so why waste my energy trying to predict when it would come? But the song was constantly imbued with sweet sentiment, like angels with the rustling beat of their wings drawing near to me; yes, like angels, the faces of angels bearing a hundred kinds of blessings, and the moment you watched them intently and recognized them, it all became vague and confused, abstract, without character. The afternoon wind blew in off the ocean over the river and set the vegetation swaying as if hinting something to me—never slowing, the song was at times near and at times far, at times loud and at times faint. I looked down in search of it, thrust my hands into the water, feeling that it might be there. I wanted to find a place where I could hide, a place they couldn’t dream of in which to hide myself.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

The small boat rocked fiercely to the right and left without stopping, raising ripples that spread outward. I sat down and watched as the whole row of small boats rocked back and forth on account of me, bumping together hollowly, mixed with the surging sound of small waves, some of which rolled and struck against the rocky bank while some rolled out to midstream where they tossed about and were swept back, rising and falling. I clutched my book bag and threw it on the dry seat at the front of the boat, following which I arranged my seat and sat down, and then the boat finally stopped rocking. Standing on the stone steps, the guy handed me an oar, which I set in the right oarlock; then he handed me the other oar, which I set in the left oarlock. He said, “Okay.” I made no reply and had no wish to even look at him. He stooped behind me and untied the rope that moored the boat to the bamboo pole. He held it up, indicating that I should take it. I tossed it to my feet in front of me, then grasped the oars. He said, “Okay.” He then bent down behind me again, and I wondered what he was up to. The moment I turned to look behind me, I felt the boat move forward and saw him pushing forcefully with his right hand and, pleased, he shouted happily, “So long. . . .” The small boat left the dock at the stone steps and smoothly and calmly shot toward the heart of the river. I competently worked the oars and slowed the boat, but was already several meters from the bank and approaching midstream. The river flowed down from the western majestic heights and boundless green mountains, but not necessarily from the depths of the mountain chain. I once followed it upstream back to its source; later, one hot summer morning I rode my bike along its banks and reached the source before noon. What amazed me the most at the time was how the source could be so narrow but the shallow flowing water so clear. Rocks, small and large, were scattered all about. It was as if the spirits of the mountain and the ghosts of the river, along with the mischievous tree and flower spirits, had contended to arrange them in a dreamlike display. On both sides of the small, narrow trickle, shrubs and vines grew thickly, with bright clusters of white flowers—the name of which I never determined—blossoming amid the dense leaves. The riverbed resembled a dish of pearls inserted between two banks of jade. The spring water descended, flowing clear and shallow as usual, but the riverbed suddenly widened, inundated only by the torrents caused by the typhoons. Usually it flowed at a trickle in a calm and tranquil

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

fashion without attracting attention. The flow of water increased as the river neared Mount Milun, flowing clear and deep around its small southern foot, ever so quietly, bathing the unbroken reeds, wild celery, violets, and ginger. Huge flame trees on the bank cast reflections of their leaves and flowers on the surface of the water, sometimes even dropping leaves and flowers to gently float on the leisurely rising and falling waves, bobbing slowly away. The slope of the bank behind the trees was covered with wildflowers. Beyond the bank was an old residential street of Hualien. I never believed that that clear, shallow, dreamlike display that originated in a dish of pearls and flowed between two banks of jade could really instill fear with the sound of flowing water from behind a long bank built behind the flame trees. I could hear that unbroken song drifting toward me. Was it the music of the river? Or was it the creation stirred deep within my heart, surging and swelling, gentle and gloomy, omnipresent? It also sounded like an echo fading off into nothingness. Now it turned north forty-five degrees, as usual following the topography of the small mountain, curving and pausing in a semicircle, secluded and circuitous, the song rising and continuing east, intoned ever so gently and sweetly to me of all reflected thought and mood, all precipitated will and raison d’ être, and all yearning and depression. My little boat hesitated for a moment, unsure of which direction to proceed. Downstream, the river became extraordinarily wide and the opposite bank rose abruptly like a cliff and, for a distance of several hundred meters from east to west, the flowing water unexpectedly paused in an ancient, thickly forested lake, placid and quiet, surreptitiously whispering that repeated and familiar tune. In the old days, this stretch of the river was called Army Bay. I was now under a bright and clear sky, the sun beginning to incline to the west. It was typical of the sun as spring gave way to summer, so ordinary, vigorously with the remaining heat of afternoon to warm our ample, brimming river. A little farther downstream, two massive bridge piers rose from the river to support a large concrete bridge ten meters above the water’s surface. Two more bridge piers, buried deeply in the ground, rose from a depression in the bank, while the north end of the large bridge was supported by a clifflike bank. The people and vehicles traveling from north to south slowed on the slope approaching Army Bay and crossed the bridge with the sea on the left and the mountains to the right; its shape was very

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

distinctive, with the water always flowing full under the bridge. I had just come by that road on my bike and descended the slope, crossed the bridge, and continued ahead for another thirty meters before turning right down a lane, gliding along a long wall on my left. Not far from the large concrete bridge in the direction of the sea was a steel railway bridge. Both bridges were about the same length and stood equally high above the water, but the steel-truss bridge was much narrower. People always crossed using the large bridge and, looking toward the sea, saw the steel-truss bridge standing firm and high, much like a scene in a postcard. The rippling water formed rings around the bridge piers, so empty you could take in everything at a glance, but could not touch it. I rowed with both oars, heading downstream. I knew the ocean was not too far away and was a little scared, though perhaps even happier still. “What if, what if a mountain torrent suddenly came crashing down?” “A mass of water swept out of the high mountains with incredible speed, surging toward my little boat. Even if it didn’t knock me into the water, it was strong enough to sweep me to the mouth of the river, rising and sinking, all the way to the salty seawater, where, as the first burst of the torrent collided with the ocean waves, I would lose consciousness. I’d be like a piece of water grass torn from its roots, drifting in the Pacific Ocean near shore among shimmering schools of colorful fish, swaying amid the coral reef, where finally and slowly, like water grass licked ardently and irresistibly by the sea, I would be cleansed, leaving a transparent spirit and weightless soul.” “You’d be dead long before.” “The first time doesn’t count.” I continued, “I was embraced by the cold, quickly flowing spring water. Everything happened so quickly I was taken by surprise, right? Frightening or sweet, I couldn’t say. Happy or sad, I couldn’t say. It’s hard to say if it wouldn’t be a comfortable, relaxed way to die in the tender, fresh water like clouds, spring grass, velvet, a song that never stops rising, an offering, becoming religious. Then let it come. Let the torrent come quickly, taking me by surprise, carrying me away, while I still possess true and far-fetched love. I am so pure and untainted. If I can die with such purity, amid the blessed sounds of fowl, animals, and insects, comforted by aquatic creatures, attended by plants, then let me die, die unconscious, or maybe it couldn’t be called death.”

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

“What kind of death counts as a real death?” “What kind of death counts . . .” At that moment, my small boat had passed the watercourse under the large bridge between the two bridge piers and, like a water strider unconsciously pausing in the swiftly moving current, was lifted and sent on by the water, as if accompanied by song, soft as an angel’s exhortation, utterly calm; the wake blossomed like a bouquet of spring flowers, withering at once, drifting away, but then never slacking or dispersing. “What counts as real?” But the sound I heard, beyond being entangled in my own questioning, was the sound of bicycles braking high on the slope above the north end of the bridge, the sound of bicycle chains. I knew it was the sound of school being let out. They must have lowered the flag, listened to the speech of exhortation, dispersed, and set off for home. Nine hundred male students were surging out, swinging identical book bags in the same color and with the same weight, their hats on their heads, in their hands or, like mine, thrust into their book bags. I didn’t attend the flag-lowering ceremony today. Starting around noon, I couldn’t sit still as a strange, unformed melody floated through my mind, as if from the other side of a high, dark ancient wall someone abandoned themselves to chanting for me a fragmented but still special and recognizable song of prudence, pronouncing words that were difficult to understand but occasionally stressing a certain expression, seemingly also what I frequently heard between sleep and wakefulness. I looked around me: the distant sky, sea, prostrate mountains, the aged banyan tree, hibiscus, canna lilies, and the beehive under the eaves, steadily growing larger by the day. “How am I to let go, be free, release myself, and be different from others?” I repeatedly asked myself such silly questions and then when totally exhausted, “How can I prove that I am different from others?” The blackboard was covered with proper nouns: “Age of Enlightenment,” “feudal lord,” “serf,” “guild,” “Galileo,” “isolationism,” and “indulgence.” I descended the steps of the path by the swimming pool and walked along the stone wall beside the playing field, my book bag slung over my left shoulder, my hat in my book bag, careful not to stumble in the ditch, past the flagpole, walking lightly across the slope newly planted with flame trees to the bicycle shed, quietly unlocking my bike and pushing it out, holding it with both hands through the small

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

gate and, by the time I was noticed by Old Jin, who was patching a tire, I had rode off swiftly and was gone. Spring was almost over, but summer hadn’t yet arrived. What sort of time was that? How was I different from others? Was being risk taking, rebellious, and a loner enough? With the left oar fi xed in place, I stroked the right oar hard and in succession, turning the boat  degrees so that it floated facing upstream. As I applied myself left and right, the boat began to advance a little in quiet, quickly gliding beneath the large bridge, close to the bridge pier nearest the cliff. On the bridge pier not too high above the water was a projecting ring of toothlike overlapping stones, which I quickly grabbed to hold the boat in place. But I soon discovered that this was too tiring. And although the river flowed to the depths downstream like an ancient lake, where it grew sluggish and languid, my small boat forced to stop between the two bridge piers, was, in the end, still pressed by the current and tossed about, and imperceptibly it might find itself gliding downstream at any moment. I heard the sounds of bicycle chains, bells, metal, voices, and the wind and knew that the first wave of the fastest cyclists had already reached the bridge and would soon come upon the people and vehicles. I pulled in the right oar and rested it onboard, and the boat swung tightly against the bridge pier. I stretched my hand, relying on the ring of overlapping stones to exert my strength, and swung the boat from the watercourse facing ahead, so that the boat stopped right at the huge foot of the bridge pier. I listened as the swirling water struck and caressed the boat, stably sheltered there, rocking gently, emitting a slyly joyful splashing sound. At the time, the noisy and confused sound of people and vehicles surged continuously from the direction of the school. I sat at the stern of the boat, facing the cliff to the north, which was covered with vegetation, and looked at its precipitous slope. The sun had inclined farther to the west and had nearly reached the highest peaks of our mountain range. Upstream, the brimming water shimmered so brightly I could scarcely keep my eyes open. I turned to look at the sea behind me. No problem, the sea was still back there, vast and welling, as if it were surging higher than the land. The sun setting in the west cast the shadow of the bridge downstream, rippling nearly to the steel-truss bridge. I saw shadows of people on their bikes zoom across and vanish, while an occasional pedestrian would pause and lean on the railing of the bridge, gazing off into the distance. I sat in the boat hold-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

ing my breath, not daring to make a sound. The heat from the sun was lessening, and a chill began to rise from the water’s surface. Turning back to look at the sun, I began to worry. Suddenly, I felt strange, that feeling of surprise and uneasiness that one feels when one’s hiding place is discovered. Only after I lowered my eyes somewhat did I notice that skinny guy with the boats waving vigorously and shouting at me from the stone steps, though I couldn’t say when he had started. He might have been trying to signal something to me, but from a distance he looked more like a dutiful scarecrow. Embarrassed, I couldn’t make out a word he was saying because his words were blown by the wind and extinguished amid the gentle sound of the sea. What made me more nervous was that although I couldn’t make out what he was shouting, someone on the bridge noticed him, and it was hard to say if he could hear what the guy was trying to say to me. On the gradually darkening surface of the water, everything that ought to have been said to me was shattered by the wind and was cut off, deep in the sound of the vast sea. I could see from the remaining shadow of the bridge that someone was peering in the direction of my hiding place. Understanding, he stood firmly and waved at the skinny guy, a little disdainfully or mockingly, no doubt blaming him for disturbing the sunset scene, and then walked away. When I looked back in the direction of the stone steps, the skinny guy was nowhere to be seen. The bridge was quiet. A flock of sparrows swooped down from high on the north side and skimmed over the water and flew away to the south. Just then I looked up and saw the sun hide among the high mountain peaks that always waited to accept it. “I should get going,” I said to myself, “it’s dark.” Thus I took the right oar from the oarlock and shoved off from the bridge pier. “I should be going.” The small boat shuddered as it entered the flowing water, but was soon reconciled and in harmony. I figured anyone looking from the bridge wouldn’t be able to make out who I was. I said I could leave, so I could. I rowed, entirely alone, but my heart was not lonely, occupied as I was with asking questions. “What if the mountain torrent came rushing down right now?” “It would take ages for the water to reach here.” “What if, just supposing what if, the torrent had already started rushing down and was just about to reach here, surging toward you, right this minute as you are rowing back. . . .”

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

The torrent was about to cover me, turn over my pitiful little boat and me with a gigantic and vigorous force, sinking us. No one would know I had been submerged in this way and died. The skinny guy would certainly not open his mouth about renting me the boat. Someone showed up during school hours with a book bag to row a boat, perturbed in appearance, abiding without moving by the bridge pier after the sun had disappeared behind the mountains. He knew better than to mention it. Ask Old Jin? Old Jin would say that he might have heard a student at the bicycle shed before flag lowering, really he might have, but he was patching Teacher Xu’s tire and cleaning his bike, and didn’t have a chance to see who it was. But then again, perhaps no one would even think of asking Old Jin. I sank and rolled along the bottom and was swept down the river to the sea. The small boat ran aground on the beach, upside down. Perhaps that was a very good ending. Perhaps ending is not the right word—perhaps it was a beginning. I was carried far away by the flood into the indefinite distance, the cool dark vastness. That boundless mystery and surging space, so lush and vast, all belonged to me alone. Thus, like me, it continuously sought the hopeful, that solitary little universe, because it was undisturbed and deeply treasured. Oh, please don’t disturb me, don’t say anything to me, don’t smile or frown; don’t praise my writing or offer opposing ideas. Please step back and don’t disrupt my arrangements and my situation with your inquiries. I don’t need it. Don’t impart to me cosmological change; don’t dream I’ll die for you by memorizing the eighty-nine chemical elements. Please let me rest, give me solitude, give me time with myself. I once did this, but you didn’t believe me. I insisted that’s the way I was; you were too slow to catch up with my rapid thoughts and unable to appreciate them but, on the contrary, said it was impossible. You see, I was prepared, the fullness of my mind was like a burning hot brazier, so that whatever I saw, heard, or smelled, and even what I imagined and could or could not touch, was all submitted to its intense heat and repeatedly beaten on the anvil until it took on the shape I chose to give it, with that shape setting the limits to its individual connotation. I consented to steal it for its eternal, extensive, and transcendent potentiality. Everything tempered by my mind was so. It was great. Rowing with both oars, I advanced. A cloud of little mosquitoes circled above the water, which, with inflexible will and courage, I

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

was determined to face and not avoid. As I passed through the middle of them, the itching made me hesitate a moment, but I immediately regained my resolve. I was highly self-conscious of all this, fully aware. The place where I hid was secluded and secure; no one saw me or was able to see me at any time. Not even when the declining old red-faced sun gazed west at the peaks and hobbled off to rest, not even when it gazed longingly back at the sea. That rapidly weakening light was indeed like the palm of a hand placed on my feverish patient’s forehead, but even in the end you couldn’t say for certain if it had seen me. Perhaps only it could really see me. Perhaps. At that time in the afternoon, the last train had departed from the artificial harbor, arriving empty at the foot of the slope below the middle school where the steam whistle blew for a long time, startling the pigs in the back courtyards of several homes, where they grunted from nose and throat, imitating, and protesting. The students scrambled to board the train and in a matter of moments all the seats in the five carriages were full. Some still preferred to stand outside, holding the iron railing of the carriage, their book bags slung over their shoulders. Once more the train’s steam whistle emitted a long, piercing scream, once again spooking the pigs that had just quieted down into grunting amid the puffing of the steam engine. The little train set off along the coast, passing every minute through a small station without stopping. Another long blast from the steam whistle sounded as the train approached Army Bay. I heard it all from my seat in the small boat by the bridge pier and stooped to see the train speed across the steeltruss bridge. Many students, inside the carriage and outside, looked in my direction, throwing casual glances only. As the evening clouds filled the sky, most of the lovely color was painted near and far in the sky over the sea, but the river water had flowed from afar to this bend, so deep and calm, a little melancholy, so beautiful that it made the male students just out of school want to indulge their mood and, narrowing their eyes, they looked upon it with the first recognizable stirrings of sentimentality and admiration. As the male students looked at the river and the distant lofty mountains illumined by the setting sun—eternally familiar, yet eternally strange and eternally beautiful—the train sped over the bridge, chugging along. No one saw me. The mountain torrent was about to explode. The mountain torrent had already exploded. I didn’t know exactly at what moment, unprepared at that unimaginably critical juncture, at that moment, I solemnly bid them

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

farewell. They were especially moved by the evening clouds fi lling the sky at sunset and by the shimmering river water changing every second. Vexation was occasionally encountered in youth. The train chugged over the bridge—I saw and heard it clearly. I too had to be on my way, rowing wearily at that still and quiet bend. Those feelings, bursting from I knew not where, fostered in me a stockpile of intentions that I harbored for a long time, affirming the feelings that would operate throughout my entire life, in my yearnings and my aspirations. My oars plied the water, striking softly, rising and falling in a quick rhythm, pulling rapidly in short strokes with the strength of my shoulders and arms—one stroke before I could take a breath, but I grew confused, allowing the rhythm to stretch longer and longer, as if it would go on forever. No one knew about my state of mind. So strong and so weak, to such an extent unfathomable that even I didn’t dare estimate its movement. Now, as I lightly plied the oars, rising and falling with a happy spirit, my heart leaped, like a fighter’s fist divulging its superfluous energy. But every time I leaned forward and then sat up, pulling toward me, my extroverted mind grew shy, as if an infinite tenderness colored my worries, though a bit precociously. My mind was uneasy, changeable, awakening my attention all the time. The boat glided toward the stone steps, in fact I was just a few oar strokes away, but the distance seemed to lengthen and after some time I looked back to where time slowed down. Behind me I heard the rise and fall of the waves, now absolutely real and precise, with the sound of the evening tide upon the beach to remind me, to pledge to me: to try to ascertain, to find out, to pursue with confidence. Who would dare conclude that you and I, as we separately traverse a good part of this dreamlike life, aren’t predestined to meet again in the same place? That place, dim and faint, would allow us humbly to hide ourselves, an end and a beginning.

T R I P A RO U N D T H E I S LA N D

We gradually quieted down after the train crossed the big Beinan River Bridge. Someone wanted to keep talking and did so off and on, but didn’t meet with any real enthusiastic response. The voice grew fainter, quieter, and the time between sentences grew longer; everyone was tired, too tired. Ninetyplus male students and the accompanying teachers occupied two train carriages. No one had yet realized how hard the seats were against the spine, though . . . thighs stuck to the shiny, polished wooden seats, which swayed with the motion of the train, ever so gently, especially now, after the train had crossed the big bridge, everything seemed to have settled down, able to rest amid the faint swaying. The first sensation was of the moistness of the skin against the wood, which turned to sweat, making the already polished, shiny wooden seats and the thighs that had been scrubbed and exposed to the sun for over a week warm one another, smoothing and providing a pleasant ache without preserving that uncomfortable feeling, allowing one to feel tired, finally tired. The train finished crossing the big bridge. We finally quieted down after the train crossed the Beinan River Bridge. We were on the way home, on the last leg of our journey. Heading north, the train moved at a leaden pace or even more ponderously, straining to turn its giant, lumbering wheels, running slowly down scattered streets, hesitant, uncertain, even as if it bore a complaint that was difficult to utter. Amid our boisterous excitement as we greeted one another and took our seats arranging our new rucksacks, opening a canteen for a drink, and standing up to pass out snacks (or even cigarettes), the whistle suddenly blew an extended toot. The sound penetrated the heavy and gloomy dry fields between three and five in the afternoon and, with a certain decisiveness, came to an abrupt end; without waiting for an echo from the nearby

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

hills, the train quickened, its clattering mixed with news like a far-off thunderclap, and sped along. I knew it was going all out now. The moment I turned to look out the window, the railings of the steel-truss bridge flew past, the irregular structure of vertical columns and horizontal bars painted a bluish gray flashed by in sections accompanied by the rhythm of the wind, the wheels against the tracks, and other sudden sounds. I saw the south bank of the Beinan River sloping back, embellished with layered green trees, wildflowers, and silver grass. The uncultivated bed of the Beinan River spread before my eager eyes. As the sloping bank spun out of direct view, shining white stones flashed by, winking secretly to me before dulling. Thus, before my eager eyes the riverbank spread bit by bit. At the window to my left the wind increased, blowing through the short hair on the back of my head and over my temples and cheeks. The southern bank of the river began to rise abruptly in a determined line toward the high mountains, following the horizontal line below at a fi fteen-degree angle directly to the foot of the mountain. At that moment another line sprang immediately into view, dark like an ink brushstroke, forcefully demarcating the line between the blue-green mountain and the riverbed. That speeding line was the north bank of the river. I could practically hear the sonorous flow of the Beinan River as it ran from the foot of the mountain toward the bridge amid the sound of the train and my hot breaths. Nearing Taidong, it grew quiet, silently and affectionately entering the sea. I didn’t observe all of this, but what I didn’t see was strangely more real than what was before my eyes. The water of the river ultimately was, with the propitious indication from the greater flow of time, predestined to meet the sea, where they would shine brightly and clearly at each other on the surface of the water, in the air, and in the heart, shining with poetry, which was also predestined. The vast smoky bed of the Beinan River opened willfully in a sharp triangular composition. Originally, time intentionally had raised its axe with unlimited authority and struck heavily at the foot of the mountains; its vast traces were still discernible. The gravel piled up and down throughout the riverbed was interspersed with wildflowers and weeds that had chanced to grow. Through the gravel interspersed with flowers and grass there flowed a clear, silent trickle that carried a fine silt. Around dusk, the occasional reflection of a small pheasant could be seen in the blushing flow.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

Eastern Taiwan, facing the Pacific Ocean, calmly waited at the end of July for the sudden appearance of tropical storms raised by the low atmospheric pressure around the equator—our inevitable and all too familiar typhoons. During that season, the Beinan alluvial fan, which was without obstacle, waited in all sincerity for the succession of typhoons to take shape far away and, in order to keep a certain appointment with destiny, the flatland at the break in the mountain range sloped off to the south as if to facilitate a typhoon strike; it had chosen an appropriate position to wait. The gravel, washed down from far away, piled up in the broad riverbed. Only at that time, under the promised attack from tropical low pressure, did it finally yield to the converged streams and tributaries from the mountains and sink in the flood. And swept up in that flow, rolling and striking, it passed the bridge and its stone piers, pressed the grayish-yellow raised banks, and at least once, in that forgotten summer of childhood—forgotten by others— the torrent knocked down the big bridge on a night recovered by memory; it collapsed, the steel and wooden frame screeching, broken to pieces in the torrent and swept out to sea in an instant. The train sped over the bridge. I looked far up the gorge, where I could see grayish-white smoke or perhaps clouds and mist. There was not a sound to be heard. Perhaps it wasn’t clouds and mist, because it was the middle of summer. It was smoke, smoke from the steam engine blown back to the carriages, slanting inland, where it was dissipated by the breeze. At first it lingered and then it began to vanish before the eyes. Like a boy’s childhood, filled with bravery or not, that no longer existed but could be remembered on a summer’s eve; like a girl at seventeen, overwhelmed with feeling, ever so faint. The train whistle gave another long toot and, before the sound could reach the riverbed, the train had already crossed the iron bridge. The Taidong Longitudinal Valley started here. Mount Luming rose to Mount Guandongsong, which rose to Mount Wuwunuliu; higher up in Hualien was Mount Wule, winding and extending far, far away to the north. I sat on the left-hand side in a seat next to the window, facing the rear of the train, the telephone poles along the tracks flying past, beyond which were fields that pressed against the foot of the mountains about as far off as you could see. Trees appeared and disappeared in the windows on the other side of the carriage; sometimes, due to a prolonged gap in between, when the

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

sound of the wheels grew louder or both sides spread without obstacle, I could see an uninterrupted series of green hills and mountains rising and falling outside the window—Mount Dulan, Mount Xialaobawan, and Mount Jiazhilai. Upon entering the longitudinal valley, the train appeared to slow, but perhaps that was a misperception. My head rested next to the rattling open window and was numbed by the jerking and shaking, and even a bit dizzy. I squinted, scanning near and far, without actually finding a place on which to fi x mind and spirit. We were on the way home and, having already entered the longitudinal valley, were heading north and at that dizzying, illusory moment, the train finally slowed, which for ages, since childhood, we had always known, heard, and experienced, that the slowest train on earth was heading slowly from south to north over the narrow tracks with so many twists and turns (I poked my head out the window to look at the world’s narrowest tracks and saw the faraway end of the train take a big curve in an exaggerated fashion). The train had proceeded unhurried since entering the dark and mysterious longitudinal valley, since entering the most active mountain-building and gradually shrinking piece of the earth’s crust, which saw Mount Dulan, Mount Zhiluo, Mount Jialulan, Mount Yuemei, and other coastal mountains rise yearly by two centimeters, and grow closer to mountains of the Central Range such as Mount Luming, Mount Dijia, Mount Pinglin, and Papaya Mountain by an average of . centimeters a year. I closed my eyes (knowing the way home) and remembered that last stretch of rugged road, rising and falling. We started off the day before yesterday, two days before or three days before yesterday, I couldn’t remember anymore, from Fangliao, where the palm trees, in the gradually more brilliant morning light, welcomed the southwest wind from the Taiwan Strait to the south—which softly stirred their large leaves, shimmering and imprinted on a backdrop of the deep blue sea, and thrown into relief amid the chaos of light on the horizon and the water’s surface. The large feathery compound leaves, watered by wind and rain, swayed in the breeze; their shadows fell over the rock road; our tires bouncing over the road, gliding by even though the morning light was hot, shining on our faces, making us perspire, moistening the straps that held our straw hats in place. Passing between the rows of palms to the right and left of us, light and dark rapidly alternating, our slightly sweaty faces suddenly burned, then just as sud-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

denly felt briefly cooled by the shade of the palms. Through our eyelashes shielding our eyes, light and shadow alternated endlessly, and our wheels never stopped rolling onward, like the song and rhymes of youth leisurely flowing from a bamboo flute, passing rapidly through the seven evenly spaced holes, bright and dark, bright and dark. The shadows of the palms grew shorter, sometimes scanty and sometimes dense in the middle of the road. The bright light on the sea’s surface grew fainter, finally becoming a vast expanse of light on the copious water, pretending to linger, desiring only to summon up the true colors of the deep sea. To the left were the lowland fields, where occasionally a person was espied, but they didn’t seem to be working the land. July in southern Taiwan and the stalks of rice hung heavy with grain, and people in twos and threes stood at random on the raised footpaths crisscrossing the fields, their clothes flapping noisily in the breeze. Oh, straw scarecrows. The scarecrows here were more complicated than the ones in our fields on the back side of the mountains, and more lifelike. The scarecrows here actually wore straw hats and coir rain capes, with long poles in hand standing between the fields of ripe grain; the strips of cloth on their poles seemingly never stopped beating in the wind to scare off the sparrows. So diligent in doing their duty, waiting for the hands to gather and harvest everything before the onset of the typhoons, after which they would fall over. Oh, scarecrows, still wearing straw hats, coir rain capes, but the poles in your hands have since disappeared. Sometimes a real person was seen walking amid the vast fields of golden grain. I watched him from a distance on my moving bike, his torso visible above the crops, appearing to swim against the current as serenely as a duck in water. I couldn’t see the movement of his feet, just how he appeared to drift and float. I pedaled hard, my hands gripping the handlebars, following a host of bicycle tracks ahead. The sweat finally ran down into my eyes, to the tip of my nose, and down my neck. The sun rose higher. I rode into the wind, and it whooshed noisily under my bamboo hat. The shining rice stalks, laden with grain, were to me more than usually fragrant as they spread, extending eastward as far as the eye could see, until cut off by abruptly rising precipitous ground, protruding like a fault line

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

at the end of the field. The dense forest was shrouded in a hot vapor, and it was as if I could still hear the cicada crying, thundering in the world of legend in my unconscious, prognosticating a great primordial age for me, roused deep in the high and distant Dawu Range, provoking and pressing. But I was so calm with the wind blowing by my ears. I was convinced of the existence of that primordial age in some entirely unknown forest, but I was afraid of not having enough time to ponder it. Th inking, I would lift my head and gaze at the sea to my right and breathe with my mouth wide open. I felt I could sing to that gentle sea beyond the long, long beach. It was so clean and exquisite behind the windbreaks of trees, neither high nor low, row after row of horsetail trees, not far from the palm trees to the right. The strange seacoast seemed to call to the drowsy waves. At Fenggang, we turned east and could no longer see the ocean. The highway meandered into the mountains, into Taidong County, following the bends along the gorge, the cicadas thundering in the ears, concealing the sound of the rushing water. The group stretched longer and longer. Then, at dusk one day, we sailed downhill on the highway, where the long departed sea reappeared under the reflected light of the evening clouds. Then a thousand golden arrows of light seemed to freeze in a frame I was familiar with, pausing in a flash. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The Pacific Ocean, golden arrowheads shone, vibrated, and suddenly went flying toward the vast, unimpeded distance, picked up speed and flew higher under the direction of my controlling, affectionate eyes. Ah, the Pacific Ocean. It was as if I could hear an immense symphony on the stage that I had once specially arranged. At the time, a new musical movement was commencing, with all the musical instruments joining in, enthusiasm soaring, transcending all, the winds and brass rising, unwilling any longer to be alone, with the power of the contact point and a thunderclap, embracing that voice and appearance, vibrating and intelligent, at the farthest point where sky and sea met to direct and supervise the ceremony of it all in the elation of gliding downhill loudly unveiled; I was so humbled and grateful, even though for ages and ages I had been so amid all this stern guidance and loving affection. I was humbled and grateful, even regretful. Then I heard the real wind whooshing by my ears, exhorting me. I was so sensitive, secure, and happy.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

On the second day, we set off from Daren, heading north, the Pacific Ocean to our right. From high up, I felt that the fresh and clean morning light had dimmed and was gradually becoming turbid. We proceeded in single file along the left side of the highway, next to the rocks and springs of the mountain, because we told ourselves by experience that with the steep drop on the right, one false move could send you down the mountain or into the sea. There was a layer of dark gray rain clouds in the sky, through which occasionally the sun would peek; the Pacific Ocean was silent and dejected, without a single boat. After Dawu, the seacoast was deserted, and not even a fisherman was seen. Occasionally we would pass a solitary pillbox and, behind various forms of camouflage, a small barracks, on the whitewashed walls of which could sometimes be partly seen the words of a slogan through the covering foliage, and sometimes a limp, lusterless flag hung from a flagpole. Gravel shoals appeared where the rushing mountain streams approached the coast, the water slowing and turning before entering the sea. In the open countryside near the Dawu River, the black clouds spread densely and the air grew oppressive and humid. At that point, our group encountered a massive swarm of millions of dragonflies. Passing through that horde of dragonflies, we followed the highway up to a cliff, where a downpour from the sea fell in large drops. I looked up, convinced that the downpour was falling from the low clouds rolling in from the upper right-hand side of the sea. Like water from a burst water pipe, the rain streamed down, blown by the wind, striking the slightly less than one hundred of us who were totally unprepared and furiously pedaling uphill. It was upon us too quickly, and every drop was huge, soaking us to the bone instantaneously. I jumped off my bicycle, pressing myself to the rocky mountainside to avoid it, but I was already soaked through, so there was no point. Panting, I faced the mountain slope, leaving my back exposed to the striking rain. To my right and left I heard the trickling mountain springs growing louder and stronger. The water dashed against the vines, silver grass, wild cane, and date palms, splashed against the broad-leafed branches hanging down the precipice, running across the highway, rushing down the slope so quickly that no mud was stirred up, to fall and disappear down the path to where we started. I looked back at the great change apparently taking place between sea and sky; the surging vapor flew with a life of its own, soaring in the misty sky, joining and separating. Illusory though it

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

appeared, it seemed more illusory, more real, more astonishing, and more delightful than that impeding swarm of dragonflies. Yes, after the downpour, between the sky and the sea, it seemed that some indescribable life form was undergoing immense changes, looking for a counterpart, like the dragonflies in their mad flight, anxiously pairing, like those just encountered or in the wild countryside far in distant childhood, as I loudly sang the songs committed to memory, constantly repeating those things that I had long wanted to sing, in the voice of a Japanese child: tombo no megare wa /mizu iro megare (the dragonfly’s glasses are/light blue glasses). Then I saw the vapor slowly dissipate. All that remained to see were sky and ocean now grown empty and clear. No clouds, just sunlight penetrating everywhere. The purest blue extended into the unknown distance, perfunctorily spreading before my eyes, like an oracle. Grasping my handlebars, I gazed east for a long time. Indeed, perhaps my eyes were good, but I also seemed to hear something—once again I was struck by the music of the universe coming from nowhere, as if beginning from my long departed childhood I already possessed it day and night, in strange gorges and the familiar footpaths crisscrossing the paddy fields—looking from here, I could hear that sound, the heavenly music of the universe. It seemed that there would certainly be more encounters, individual moments, moments rapt in loneliness, in which to hear it many more times. That loud and repeated sound, frightening and gentle, that baptized the crown of my head with an absolute and irresistible magic, and said: Pursue. Create. The long whistle of the train—

Nobody except me noticed how vehemently the train blew its whistle in the dark mountain wilderness. My eyelids and the back of my neck twitched when the train broke the inertia of silence with its steam whistle, engine, and steel wheels rolling on the rails, and the wind rattled the windows, all kinds of dull and repeated noises, which soon no one noticed but me. I knew it was merely a semblance of silence. I heard the train and its long, zestful whistle, the lingering sound of which was dragged out far into the

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

mountains, where it dissipated deep amid the silver grass, the bamboo forest, and the bushes, following which the train picked up speed and we crossed another steel-truss bridge. We arrived in Taidong around dusk, and consigned our bikes to a night train to ship them to Hualien. The South-Link Highway stretches  kilometers from Fangliao to Taidong. Now, on the way home, everyone was drowsy. I too ought to have wanted to sleep, but forced myself to bear the fatigue and feelings of emptiness. Amid the noise of the moving train, I kept thinking, forcing myself to stay alert, and thus inevitably being different from the others as we were coming to the end of our journey. I wanted to stay awake and keep my mind clear, even though my eyelids were already drooping, closing with exhaustion. The train whistle blew again. I awoke and found that I had indeed dozed off. The steam whistle continued for a while and was cast into the gravel riverbed in the gorge. This time I could imagine that it should be like this, the sound of the whistle cast into the gorge. Last week, or not just last week (I’m calculating), I had shipped my bike by train. That was to the Taipei Main Station. I calculate, recalling that long, long train trip, starting out from Taipei and traveling all the way to Kaohsiung, to Pingtung, and to Fangliao. Looking at the map, one sees that Fangliao is the final stop. What was strange was that once the idea of final stop, a bizarre image that only ever appeared in adventure stories, was present in my busy mind, my racing heart became uneasy. Confronted, then, with this idea, I never rested day or night in my investigations, wondering how I would perceive it at the end of the trip. How should I prepare to be able to start in the appropriate way (like the protagonist in an adventure story), heroically (with the proper degree of sadness and grief in the back of one’s mind like the Western European navigators of old), to venture to a station never visited before or, after a long voyage, to fi nally sail into port as if it had been decreed by fate? I measured the distance on the map. The long trip would end at the small, southernmost station called Fangliao, which was situated on the cliffs above the Taiwan Strait. The name wasn’t very romantic (if it had been a little farther south, at Fenggang—Maple Bay—that would have been better, but unfortunately the train didn’t go there), but that didn’t really matter. My incomplete and flimsy experience

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

and my limited reading didn’t allow me to understand what was appropriate for an adventuresome seafaring hero, and that a day would come when after suppressing his feelings, he’d arrive at that final port, the goal of a certain stage. I thought, knit together, and searched in different directions, planning an entirely different symbolic system. If I said (for example) that I was a palm tree on the seashore at Fangliao and not a seaman of old who had traveled the seven seas, was that okay? Arriving that night in Fangliao, we slowly took down each bicycle from the iron boxcar, lined up single file, and rode to a public elementary school by the ocean. We spent that night in the classrooms. The following morning was spent preparing and in free time. I walked through the hallways, looking here and there. It was summer vacation, so the school was empty with not a single soul around, save a few little kids playing on the playground. I descended the steps and onto the short, yellowed grass of the playground, the sea a short distance in front of me. I saw a row of palm trees, shimmering under the scorching sunlight of a July morning, welcoming the breeze blowing in off the strait, their large feathery leaves swaying. They stretched toward me from behind the dune on my left and proceeded in a neat and orderly fashion off to my right into the distance, out of sight. Stretching away rashly, a little clamorously, it appeared, stirring to their heart’s content. What about the night before? What were the palm trees like the previous night? What was the palm tree at the end of that entire row along the seashore like? Was it all alone? Even if I couldn’t imagine what Magellan was like, I could imagine how alone a palm tree was at night on the seashore at Fangliao. I sat down and wrote about the night, vapid night: A star trembles at the far end of the tracks A shooting star was never seen to draw by. This is the ˉnal stop

“Dreamed Always by Magellan.” Only a person at sea was capable of dreaming about their final stop in this way, despite never really having made the return voyage. Even though the dream was repeated, and it was like a promise, the promise of a return, it made me (a single palm tree standing by the seashore at Fangliao) pause with hope:

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

.b.b.b.b.b.b.b.b. Though only the tide strikes with intermittent falsehood the rain’s footsteps leap from a reef in the Strait. Lonely, Ib.b.b.

The sunlight fi ltered down through the leaves to shine on me as I sat writing quickly under a palm tree, not far from the sea and close to the railroad tracks. I (sitting beneath a tall palm tree) imagined myself as a palm, and facing a far-off star the night before, I should have felt lonely, as not even one extra shooting star fell in my direction. Before noon, I had transcribed the poem into a date-red hardcover notebook. It was my diary. Yes, in that unsteady, illusory age, the concerns of youth were so real and appealing, though weak and empty; but now on a quiet autumn afternoon just as the northern sun lingers and gently warms the withered rosebushes with its remaining light, shines on my tired eyes through the dual focal point of my eyeglass lenses, I silently flip through that old date-red notebook, trying to explain some hopeless entries, reconstructing time and place—it seems that everything I possess now is an illusion, and everything that vanished long ago is real. And remembering the trip home on a small train through the Taidong Longitudinal Valley, sitting next to the window, exhausted, facing the south from which we were departing, on the dark way home through the layered hills and mountains, the broad river valleys, the betel palms, bananas, and breadfruit trees, the narrow, curved paddy fields repeated at short intervals, separate from the mountain villages. I recall that fast southbound train that set off from Taipei Main Station, its loud metallic clamor as it proudly and in an exaggerated fashion passed over many streets and through many towns and villages, clinging to its large-gauge tracks across the western lowlands, toward Kao-hsiung, Pingtung, hurtling along at what seemed to be lightning speed. I thought I had never ridden such a fast train. When not among tightly packed tile-roofed houses, he sped along—he being the train—passed through the tunnels, flew across long metal bridges, taking in the boundless fields. I walked to the platform between cars to feel that proud and hyperbolic metallic clamor. What did or could that heavy and awe-inspiring sound, more frightening than I had imagined, of steam engine against metal, combined with the mad rush of the wind, coming

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

apart, proclaim to me? How could it be possible? I thought that a train ought to be gentle, quiet, and amicable, like the familiar one from Hualien to the man-made harbor, with the shiny black steam engine that pulled the long yellow carriages innocently without concern, or like the one that traveled back from Ruisui to Hualien and had been altered by the addition of two extra carriages, but with the same innocent railway engine. It was perfectly suited for a spring outing, slowly twisting and turning through the mountains and valleys and the betel nut farms as you ate a boxed lunch while sitting on the wooden seat. I guessed now that the train had just passed through Ruisui. Although I was tired, like everyone else in the carriages, sinking into that steady rhythm, whether he turned left or right, everyone was so relaxed that we simply swayed left or right. I thought that that small lighted station where we had briefly stopped and just departed, the corridors and the yellow light in the stationmaster’s room and the four lights above the platform, was probably Ruisui. I sat in a seat to the west, eyes wide open, looking at those lights through the narrow carriages over our heads, swaying back and forth. I didn’t have enough time to see the first station sign before we set off again at an unusually fast clip. The second sign flew past in the dim light, vanishing before I could see a thing. But I thought that surely it was Ruisui. There were some latticed windows, lampshades, and the shapes of trees, bonsai, as well as railings that I couldn’t recall were too high or too low, standing on either side of the station house through the intermittent years, through storms, wars, partings, in front of our own apprehensive eyes. As the train reduced speed entering the station and picked up speed leaving, the railings appeared to leap, flashing, flashing, slowing until everything came to a complete halt, followed by an increase in speed, finally being hurled behind you. Intuitively, these things all seemed familiar to me, not just once, twice, thrice, or even more times, as I grew up, in days of overcoming stupidity and ignorance but finally and unavoidably always seeming to indulge in stupidity and ignorance, I had been at this station and left repeatedly, before which the Xiuguluan River turned east, swelled, and flowed into the sea. Like everyone else in the carriage, I responded to that regular rhythm, aware of that soothing and blessed and protected rhythm of the road home, and thus we consigned our exhausted limbs to it, crossing Fuyuan and

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

Wanli Bridge. However, I knew my mind was still pretty alert, even though entranced by that hypnotic sound, like the enchanting fragrance of fascinating incense, as usual stubbornly resisting, unwilling to let go, totally uptight, following indicators, passing Ruisui, Fuyuan, and Wanli Bridge. I  let my mind go, racing, so lively in exploring all around, pursuing, and thinking. That was the rhythm of the road home. It had to be broken and not sunk into, never surrendering or unexpectedly yielding to its monotony, tedium, or comfort. The train came out of the winding mountains, at which time it sped off toward Wanli Bridge. It was fifty kilometers from Wanli Bridge to Hualien. It was pitch black on either side of Wanli Bridge with no lights to be seen, nor the stars. I could see only my own reflection in the window, skinny, solid, with my close-cropped hair starting to grow longer, my skin as dark as that of my good Ami friend sitting next to me, and shiny. “You’re too pale,” he often said. “It’s unhealthy—you should get a little sun.” I was generally darker than most people, but lighter than he. I had been in the sun all the way for ten days and gotten darker and darker, then was drenched in the rain and then in the sun once more—now I was as dark and shiny as he. Everyone looked the same, and should all have been satisfied. My good Ami friend should have remembered the first time we had scouting class in junior high school. The teacher wore a round hat that was tied under his chin and ordered all of us boys to stand at attention. Out of the sixty of us, he wanted to select six who would become real boy scouts. He examined each of us carefully, looking me directly in the eye with his wide eyes, making me feel awkward in the extreme; I only wished I could close my eyes to avoid seeing him. Neither of us was selected. Before leaving, the teacher said that to be a boy scout, one had to be healthy, be a good student, and have skin that wasn’t too dark. We laughed about that for years, from junior high to high school, skin too dark, ha-ha-ha. Now it was even darker, ha-haha. I looked at myself in the window and still recognized my silhouette, and my complexion. I was overjoyed from the bottom of my heart. That sort of joy was of an entirely self-conscious sort, perhaps close to a hidden sense of pride, a kind of happiness arising purely from self-approval, which rarely occurred in those unripe years. Now, this strand of clear satisfaction, harmony, and movement fi lled my breast like music, or it had knocked, knocked ever so gently and entered the realm of my spirit. I thought

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

that was happiness, like a single line of inquiry in music, repeatedly measuring, then rising with surpassing harmony, skimming over your body, your heart breaking for it, your spirit unsettled for that nameless feeling that came from nowhere, but was so firm that it seemed completely attainable, a kind of firmness that seemingly could be fully attained, that kind of feeling, happiness for that kind of great feeling. You might have experienced that sort of happiness before. That rare feeling that wells up out of bodily fatigue or pain, a failure of nerves, forcefully stabilized, and finally, in a calm state of mind, you feel your spiritual solemnity and dignity still intact and realize that you possess more natural endowments than you ever thought. That night, shortly after setting out, I realized that on one night among the first few days in a small village in the north of Hualien County, as I lay down on a bed made of desks in an elementary school classroom, that uncontrollable, upwelling feeling was just that sort. It’s just that at the time, I didn’t realize what it was, or that it was even real. I lay down, closed my eyes, and thought, Eyes, poor eyes, don’t close, open and take a look, think of where you are. The classroom was pitch black. I listened to the sound of waves rising and falling continuously. I said to my ears, E ars, poor ears, listen, listen carefully to the surging sea, rising and falling continuously. That day we had traversed the Qingshui Cliff Highway and arrived at the village at dusk and, taking advantage of the light of the setting sun lingering over the sea, we first went to a mountain stream (near the border of Hualien and Yilan) to bathe before returning to the elementary school to eat dinner. Night had fallen, and the group leader that day urged us to make an early night of it and go to bed. Someone said they wanted to celebrate the completion of that difficult stretch of the Qingshui Cliff Highway. The leader said that the stretch the following day was even more difficult and repeatedly urged us to go hit the sack. I heard the loud rise and fall of the sea, the call of the Pacific on a summer’s night. Why was it so exaggerated, deliberate, and obvious just as I lay down that night in a village I had never visited before? The village was at the southern edge of the alluvial fan of a mountain stream close to the sea, the other end of which lay snuggled close to the abrupt rise of a high mountain. With the mountain on three sides, the alluvial plain formed a small delta. That’s the way it was, shaped like a funnel. That night just happened to wrap me in layers of high-quality sound effects and tuck me away in a comfortable,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

hidden corner of the delta where the sound of the surging sea poured into that funnel, which the three sides of the mountain isolated and cut off, bouncing right and left on that strange dark night. I lay on my back, thinking, Strange night, curious night, sweet night, how can I be certain that this is my choice, arriving through my own volition on this strange, curious, and sweet night? I blinked my eyes as if in pain, not being sure if it was fatigue, though I fell asleep unwillingly. My ears heard all the more clearly through the pitch-black distance of the night as the Pacific Ocean continued its probing, probing my sensitive mood, my concerns and longings; it was exploring the depth of my memories, near or distant, reality or fantasy. Of course I knew how to distinguish them, listening to the sound of the waves surge and recede, depth and shallowness, near or distant, reality or fantasy, a large fish pursuing a small one through myriads of algae; just at that moment, it felt as if I were submerged in endless depths of sapphire water, through the algae and coral, following the waves, large and small, as they rose and fell toward the waiting shore, soaking the sea lettuce, laver, shells, barnacles, brittle stars, sea urchins, and hydrozoas. Perhaps the moon now hung over the Pacific Ocean, shining on these little lives, illuminating them clearly, showing them to be busy feeding, digesting, and growing. Or perhaps it was a pitch-black moonless night with the countless stars spread over the universe, giving us on the delta at the mouth of the mountain stream a little bit of beautiful brilliance visible to the naked eye high above; however, the insignificant lives ate, digested, grew, and died as usual. I stretched my arms and legs, rolled over, and went to sleep, one ear pressed to the army blanket, making the sea sound softer, but it continued to surge, surging against our coast, soaking the sea lettuce, laver, and the rest. When the sun rose the following day, uh, no, just before the sun rose, when it was watching and waiting below the horizon line at the farthest edge of the Pacific Ocean, its faint light grew stronger, ray after ray of light shining on the sea lettuce, laver, barnacles, sea urchins, and the rest; shining on the relatively drier but dew-moistened beach and the stone reef higher up; shining on the Hottentot fig, sweet ears, and the lilies swaying in the sea breeze; shining on us on the uphill road when we crossed to the east side of Mount Zhuoshui, which faced the sea, and down into Yilan. My eyes, my poor eyes closed; my mind was still filled with that surging feeling felt for the first time (ears listening eagerly). Like the sea pressing the sky to dawn, setting

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

off, and achieving. Now that is happiness, a grand feeling. So it must be. Even while I slept soundly with one ear pressed to my blanket, the night was melting, slowly, tenderly, that strange, curious, and sweet night. Or the night was gradually deepening on our way home. The train never appeared to speed up but had already passed many sleeping fields, scattered lights, and silence. I closed my eyes and repaired and knit together the station signs one by one, feeling that my limbs ached not at all and even feeling no fatigue. There was only a leaping, rising force that accompanied my restless spirit, attempting to seek out some sort of formula or method to imitate fully and completely, for a long time, never slacking, to mold a concrete form for that abstract and grand feeling, happiness.

TEACHER HU

Teacher Hu was playing chess with his wife. Playing chess with his wife, Teacher Hu was all smiles. His wife also looked happy, just a bit more reserved. Early in the spring, in March, the morning light pierced through the ocean coolness, shining on the winter dampness; a layer of fragrance gently drifted as the earth awakened with the burgeoning of roots and tender shoots. There was an old wooden building at the northeast corner of the playing field, a single classroom not far from that large banyan tree. I assumed that on a quiet Sunday, no one would be there, but through the window I saw Teacher Hu and his wife playing chess. I quickly walked away, afraid lest I interrupt their game. I walked down the covered walkway. The grass was still wet. The large banyan tree stood on huge, firm and winding roots that were clean, smooth, and shining. I sat down facing the sea, arms around my knees, looking out over the endless Pacific Ocean. So clear and certain, I felt it was good to be able to waste a little time with nothing in particular to do. The cool sea breeze blew through my short hair, and the sun, which still hung low in the sky, seemed to shine in my eyes on purpose. At that moment, I experienced a sense of regret for having turned in my exam too early. But at the time I felt that I couldn’t possibly sit any longer, since I didn’t know how to do the problems, and decided that I might as well go outside and see if there was anything else I could do. My mathematics teacher glanced at me and said with pity, Won’t you try again and see? I had paper and pencil in my pocket, and if I could be completely alone and not have this unreal feeling of failure, that feeling of being at a complete loss facing the test questions, my spirit would then protect me and I would not end by giving up; it would lead me in overcoming this dark mood and provide me with, at the very least, prophetic words, appropriate rhymes, and

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

the right rhythm to unfold the most bizarre images so as to foreground my boundless feelings and thought, real or illusory. Sitting with my arms around my knees and looking at the sea, I did indeed feel a little lonely, and began to have feelings of regret. The campus was deserted on Sundays, but who was to say that in the classrooms higher up there weren’t classes being made up? Or perhaps not. At the far end of the playing field there were a number of exceptionally quiet junior high students kicking goals. Other people had things to do on Sunday, but I just sat there, chewing over my own self-imposed solitude, for whatever reason. Why not think a little more and try to solve those problems? Why not play soccer? Why not play chess? I knew that Teacher Hu rarely smiled. In class, he normally stood at the podium in all seriousness, sometimes with a pallor to his face, apparently on account of nerves. Was it not stage fright? I thought about it and figured that wasn’t the case. Why should he be nervous or have stage fright in front of a group of inattentive high school students like us? Especially since he had already been teaching for nearly a decade when he was assigned to our second-year high school Chinese class; especially since he had already taught at the girl’s high school by the river at the foot of the hill. Why would he be afraid of the boy students if he wasn’t afraid of the girls? But I thought nerves didn’t necessarily mean fear. His stage fright perhaps wasn’t on account of those sixty pairs of eyes, most of which were muddleheaded, looking up at him. Was it on account of the importance of the topic he had to teach? The first time Teacher Hu came to class, I was probably the only one who knew who he was. He didn’t take roll. Standing at the podium, he glanced around casually and saw me, paused for a moment, and then without expression glanced at the other students. He seemed a little cold, if not scornful. Thinking back on it now, he was probably expressionless as he flipped through the new textbook and tossed it on his desk and began to lecture. The first sentence was dragged out, with one word that made his strange face appear livid: “Con . . . fu . . . cius.” Thinking about it now, I have absolutely no memory of what Teacher Hu said during that first class. But I can still clearly hear his complicated and resounding Hunan Mandarin. Slicing, intercepting, pulling back, circling, like a captain deploying his troops, at times modest, at times recalcitrant, the changes unfathomable, depriving the enemy (the students in our class) of their will to fight, power-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

less to anticipate his tactics. Ordering or ambushing, all we knew was that the volume of his voice rose and fell, the tone lengthened or shortened, but his complicated and resounding quality was all the same. Another thing that the students noticed—I wasn’t the only one who noticed it: in any of Teacher Hu’s classes, he’d mention “Con . . . fu . . . cius” (Kongzi) at least twenty times, the name being pronounced with a clear and affectionate falling fourth tone instead of a standard third tone, which was very touching. Outside of class, his nickname became “Con . . . troll . . . ler” (kongzi]), pronounced with the same falling fourth tone. After that, Teacher Hu forced himself to select some lessons to lecture on—forced himself is how he revealed it to me, because there was no other way. He said, “I’m at my wit’s end.” He taught only classical Chinese, and when he began to lecture, he was always quite enthusiastic, which made it hard to believe that he was forcing himself. He skimmed over what little vernacular writing there was in the textbook. “Want to read the vernacular, then reading what I have written is enough,” he said to me and not the whole class. Alert, I never repeated what he had said. For my age at the time, I was pretty sensitive and considered things too much. I always sought out places of solitude where I could be by myself, where if I wasn’t pointlessly managing abstractions under the influence of my mood, then it was fictions, the disparate plot elements of which I linked with my imagination, filling in the blanks, preparing a seat for myself in advance. Some of this was fleeting and free and never brought fully to completion, like a wind drifting away and disappearing, like a youthful indiscretion or enervated state of mind. Another part actually ended up neatly arranged on my paper, word after word squeezed tightly together, working in concert, mutually explanatory and informing, producing all sorts of contrastive implications. I had just begun to discover the incomparable power and way of this kind of work, and its accompanying joys and sadness. So, I assumed that Teacher Hu was as diligent in what he was engaged in as I was, or perhaps many times more diligent—his poetry and fiction, and other works that seemed to fall in between or transcend the two, were all written in the vernacular. Even so, in class he taught classical Chinese. Thus, throwing himself into it, there were no digressions, and he always took aim at the words and expressions, scrutinizing and examining them. Sometimes he’d look at the ceiling, muttering to himself, as if he had forgotten our existence. He was, of course, very

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

diligent with regard to all of this, I thought. He was also very diligent when it came to writing books in the vernacular. But he would rather it be a secret when he spoke to me about his vernacular writing. He chose to share with me a sort of solitary pride, a slight sense of disappointment, beautiful, haunting, and persistent. I had to be alert. I had to be alert. Words can only express a part of what we feel and think, and there are many subjects that cannot be captured in words. Thus, every person who has spent a long time deeply engaged in fighting and doing battle with words has his own deep sadness and unbridled joy. Such moments are not something he can express by how he chooses or employs words that he ordinarily would reject, because he may not want to express himself, knowing well as he does the universe and the unknown between life and death. Indeed, there are some things that cannot be expressed, need not be expressed, or at the very least need not be completely expressed, concealed in the dark recesses of an individual’s poetry. That too is a sublime mystery. Usually he was the serious type and maybe a bit nervous, so he was always reserved before a crowd. Teacher Hu never told jokes in class, and was even incapable of the incidental anecdote like other teachers told. At that time, Teacher Chen, our civics teacher, read us The Biography of Patriotic Yue Fei in great detail, day by day, until the whole book was finished. He mangled Yue Fei and Niu Gao with his thick and nasal Cantonese accent. Everyone had to concentrate on listening carefully to him and, in the course of one year, rain or shine, he really did read the whole thing. Teacher Hu was different. Not only could he not tell a joke or a story, he never even mentioned his own writing or the names of any other contemporary authors or poets. That was the situation in class; in private, things were a little different. Sometimes when he saw a new short poem of mine, he’d smile broadly, with a happier than happy expression. He was more likely to crack jokes or tell stories with the few students who went to his home without an invitation. But he really was the nervous type. He’d also criticize his own work and, in a sarcastic, mocking tone, he’d lay into several contemporary writers. In his own home, he had an opinion about everything. Sometimes we’d be completely flabbergasted, but it was nothing more than a speculative semantic exercise, with nothing taboo for me, which in fact I found

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

enjoyable in the extreme. But his wife wasn’t very pleased with some of the more vehement talk. Frequently I saw his wife looked displeased. Teacher Hu’s wife was quite young. She was carrying around a baby girl who was just learning to walk. She always rocked the baby in her arms as she listened with us while Teacher Hu talked about this and that, and offered her opinions. Sometimes she would laugh loudly with everyone else, her mouth open as she laughed childishly, and the girl in her arms also laughed. The sun shone through the green window screen into the little living room of wicker chairs, wooden stools, glasses, thermos, and the scattered pages of the newspaper. A very warm atmosphere pervaded the dormitory near the Pacific Ocean where the sound of waves was constantly present. But I always felt that most of the time his wife was not very happy, as if they had just argued or had not finished when I entered and had no wish to continue in front of me. Anyway, it was like a forced silence. The little girl was sleeping at one end of the tatami mats while his wife sat in a wicker chair by the window, staring blankly. Hearing my voice, Teacher Hu came slowly out of the kitchen, motioning for me to have a seat wherever I liked. I greeted his wife; she blinked her sad eyes and asked me to have a seat too, but without any other expression. Then after some time had passed, Teacher Hu once again emerged from the kitchen and sat down in a chair some distance away. I stood up and took another seat closer to where he was sitting. The warm sunlight on the newly painted walls was not all that bright and shone weakly on Teacher Hu’s head of youthful messy hair and his wife’s knitted brows, her usual boisterous laugher having vanished. The topic of conversation I had prepared was a story of hers about binoculars, which guaranteed Teacher Hu’s interest, but in the cold atmosphere I found it impossible to be so liberal with my words. I just felt sad, very sad—laughing to our heart’s content had been for appearances, whereas sadness was life’s constant companion, and eminently real. Proof of this was seen in Teacher Hu and his wife and in their hearts. Even though they were in love and both embraced literature, had such a pretty little girl who had just started to learn to walk, and were away from war and famine, at least temporarily beyond the fires of war and the dark shadows of hunger and banishment, sadness still lingered. Messy hair and frowns—no wonder there was pallor, no wonder there was no laughter. Life was full of hardship and helplessness, even if you loved and shared.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

2 Life was so incredibly full of hardship that all I could do was shake my head. Head shaking. A desolate and helpless gesture—I don’t know where and when I learned it. I shook my head only once, once to the left and once to the right that day when I left Teacher Hu’s place. But I don’t think I learned it there. Teacher Hu and his wife persisted, with neither one of them willing to compromise for a thaw. The only expressions were cold and unhappy. Then the precious little baby woke and his wife got up and crossed the tatami mats to pick her up. Teacher Hu remained expressionless, and unlimited sadness hovered about his head of messy hair. Unable to do a thing, I thought it was best just to leave. Coming out the gate, I could see the deep blue of the ocean—the omnipresent sea smiling broadly at me under the clear sky—beyond the basketball court and the barbed-wire fence covered with morning glories. At that moment, I felt twice as sad just from gazing at the distance and, at a loss, shook my head. I felt I had never before experienced that desolation and helplessness—it was the first time in my “whole life.” Who knows if it was the first time, but I am certain that after that, I knew how to shake my head. After a long period of suffering and pent-up feelings, when I suddenly seemed to see the light of day, I shook my head, not only with desolation and helplessness but also to express a kind of maturity and resoluteness toward myself and seemingly say: Don’t forget, but you must transcend it all. I walked over to the barbed-wire fence and could see on the sea’s surface several fishing boats slowly making their way. It was just a normal day. Looking back, I could see the new tiled roofs of the teachers’ dorms shining neatly in a row. I silently counted the doors behind the bamboo fence. There were a total of six, all closed, unassuming and amiable. A row of six houses, one against the next, backs to the mountain and facing the sea, for the teachers’ quarters. There were no large trees around because they had just recently been built. The few upthrust green leaves of two or three papayas had just recently emerged above the bamboo fence, competing silently in shooting upward. The slope rose gradually beyond the roofs. No other houses were seen, just a stretch of green, rising tender and attractive like shoulders

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

sloping in a relaxed fashion, indolently placing two arms lightly there—that was my very smallest, very mildest Mount Milun. What age was I when, standing there, I unexpectedly got to the point of having not the least shame in describing, explaining, and idolizing Mount Milun as a woman? That was perhaps the first time in my life, though it can’t be confirmed. What’s wrong with the first time? Before that, I’d lift my head and see the wide-eyed mountains standing west of the town, rising high into the clouds. I had always seen them as male deities: Mount Sangbalakan, Mount Qijiaochuan, Mount Baituolu, Mount Liwuzhu, and Great Tailuge Mountain. Even higher and more distant were the ones that could not be made out with the naked eye but were the constant protectors of my soul, day and night: Mount Dumou, Mount Wuling, Mount Nenggao, and Mount Qilai. Looking away from the mountains, I found a large hole by the barbed wire, stooped down, and passed through it, knocking off a morning glory blossom with my sleeve. Then I jumped down and sat with my back against the stone wall and, although I was sitting, I could still see the sea calmly stretched out without a sound, silver-gray mixed with deep blue, or perhaps the direct rays of the noon sun created this special effect. Fortunately it was nearly noon. If a morning glory was encountered in the morning, it mustn’t be picked, otherwise a clear sky would change and rain would fall. I sat there thinking, or it must rain. Dark and cloudy, damp, and cold like the tears of sadness. The row of teachers’ houses below Mount Milun looked so peaceful and serene—absolutely peaceful and serene—six young teachers and their families, who had crossed the sea fleeing war, lived there, intellectuals who had chosen remote Hualien. Perhaps it was only Teacher Hu and his wife who occasionally quarreled about something behind their beautiful purple door and bamboo fence. There was an unhappy family this morning, a small family belonging to the intellectual class. But unhappy about what? I couldn’t imagine; all I could do was shake my head. Perhaps the other teachers and their wives were a bit happier. Hopefully. Th inking about it, I couldn’t say for sure, not knowing the others who lived there very well. From a distance everything looked calm and peaceful, but conflict could arise over some trivial matter, the same as between Teacher Hu and his wife. Actually Teacher Hu’s neighbor to the right, Teacher Lin, who

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

taught Chinese in junior high, and his wife also perhaps quarreled. Through the wall, I once heard Teacher Lin roar; apparently aggrieved, he exploded, followed by the sound of his wife crying, also sad and aggrieved. Teacher Hu and his wife threw a meaningful glance at each other and pretended not to hear a thing, sitting affectionately close together, the baby girl cooing and climbing on her mother. I too pretended not to hear a thing or even notice their meaningful glance or how they pressed closer to busy themselves with the little girl in a happy manner. That’s probably the way of love: sadness and feeling wronged were possible at any time and in any place. I thought of Teacher Lin and his wife and how when they were walking together, they seemed to be the couple most in love. Of course being newly married had something to do with that impression. Mrs. Lin had been a nurse in the clinic and loved to dress up and when she wasn’t working, she loved to take care of the wisteria outside her window. Naturally, standing there she attracted a great deal of attention. Later, in short, she married Teacher Lin. I was not clear about all of the details. The one thing I did know was that her family lived in Hualien and she was accustomed to riding her bicycle in the morning, down the streets and lanes, across the bridge, uphill to the school, where she would park her bike in the shed and then cross the cobblestone road and go down the steps to the clinic, where she would open the door and shut it behind her. That’s it. I also heard that her parents were opposed to her marrying Teacher Lin because he was a waishengren, a person from a different province. Why they later consented I didn’t know, perhaps because Teacher Lin was from Fujian province and wasn’t much of an outsider—at least they spoke the same language. Anyway, the details aren’t really important. They simply got married, they fell in love and got married, after various trials they happily became man and wife. But in spite of this, the sharp shouting and tears, suppressed feelings, being aggrieved seemed to come out of nowhere to buffet my young romantic heart. So a normally loving newly married couple, pure and proper, also quarreled. There wasn’t much use in thinking any more about it, I said to myself, because I’d never be able to understand it. Everyone said that husbands from other provinces were much more considerate of their wives. At least when you had an aunty or older sister marry someone from a different province—after surmounting various

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

difficulties—you’d hear your family, relatives, and even your neighbors never tire of the topic, repeatedly offering comfort. But even if you didn’t have an aunty or older sister who married someone from another province, you could see for yourself that when a husband from another province walked with his wife along the river at dusk, they very naturally held hands or even locked arms while looking up at the chattering sparrows flying back and forth in the light of the setting sun, so intimate for all to see. Sunday mornings they would go together to the market to buy groceries and on the way back, the husband would lug the groceries, switching them from hand to hand, his brow covered in sweat, while his wife carried nothing. They appeared harmonious and happy, without a complaint in the world. Or, when they’d take the baby for a walk under the old-style arcades, the husband would hold the squirming infant and watch as his wife paused to make a purchase. This too was very heartwarming. Teacher Lin and his wife were just such a husband and wife at whom everyone would marvel; even if they did quarrel from time to time, it would never affect the loving atmosphere of their home, I thought. Even if a thin wall separated you from your neighbor, you wouldn’t pay too much attention to such small, insignificant matters. In the same way, how could Teacher Hu and his wife entirely avoid having those positive confl icts? I continued thinking. They were young and wise intellectuals, and diligent. At the same time, they were also so untrammeled; having both decided upon a career in literature at the end of the earth in a corner of the sea, they spared no effort in writing their own work, passed it back and forth, discussed, revised, joining their youthful minds and energy in this unusual artistic pursuit, as the focal point of their work and goals. So I figured that even if at times they were displeased with each other, it didn’t matter much. That was just the way of love: no one could avoid it, but some were better at concealing it than others. Or to avoid conflict, the woman would not insist on being right, maintaining an indifferent air day and night. At least it was quiet, that’s the way we Taiwanese were; otherwise people would laugh. As for accompanying the wife to the market or carrying the baby while shopping, among Taiwanese husbands, such ideas never occurred. The day I saw Teacher Hu and his wife in the classroom playing chess, all smiles, especially Mrs. Hu’s lovely dimples, radiant with unlimited

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

happiness amid the cool Sunday morning air, I too began to feel happy on their account. I wished them long or eternal happiness. But in an instant I awoke and wondered if eternal, that is to say “long” happiness, was simply impossible. The shadows of the trees had grown shorter as the sun rose higher. Math class was probably over. As I returned to class, I ran into the teacher. He earnestly looked at me and in an amiable fashion asked, “Are you sure you can’t do it?” but the tone of his voice maintained his customary seriousness, meaning “Did you even try?” He was concerned about my math, but I just stood there absent-minded. “You ought to give yourself a chance and try,” he added. He didn’t seem very encouraging, actually more admonishing. I nodded and said okay; he nodded slightly, but his nodding turned to shaking almost at once. The teacher’s younger brother was in our class, and for that reason the teacher might have looked upon all of us as younger brothers. After all, he himself had studied at our school for six years, from the Japanese period to the age of Chen Yi and the  Incident. After graduating, he attended university in Taipei, did his compulsory military service, and took advantage of the time after he came home to prepare to go abroad and study, to teach our class math. I knew he was without a doubt very concerned about us and even possessed a brotherly affection for us. Unfortunately, that brotherly affection, when not entirely guarded, came across more as impatience. All of our local teachers were that way, with no exceptions—they would return to their alma mater for a brief period after graduating from college in Taipei to teach math and physics and chemistry and biology before going abroad to study. Nearly every one of them had a younger brother in high school, or one in high school and another in junior high school. He was concerned and paid attention, afraid lest we not advance, but lacked the ability and technique to guide. He took our mistakes to heart, but if you repeated them, he’d soon forsake you. You could see that he put his effort into a few students he could tolerate. That is to say that he clearly appeared brotherly, but was not really brotherly. Thus he regarded us with a special sense of hope; his estimatation would go up and down, and sometimes he didn’t seem to care at all. We had two kinds of teachers. One was the serious, brotherly type like our Taiwanese teachers. The other type was more relaxed and sometimes

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

had a painfully lonely look, like our teachers from other provinces who had crossed the sea—Teacher Hu, for example.

3 I asked, “Teacher, where are you from?” He replied, “Hunan.” “Hunan?” “I was born on the shores of Dongting Lake. Do you know Dongting Lake? I grew up in Xiangxi.” “Xiangxi?” “Xiangxi corpse herding, have you heard of it?” “I’ve heard of it, but that’s impossible.” “No one believes it, but it’s true, but no one from outside believes it.” Among the teachers from other provinces, Teacher Hu was the most nervous and could not ever be considered relaxed. In general I liked them, I liked their temperament, their not being stern and their striking degree of friendliness and the warm desire to help others. But because Teacher Hu was a little more the sensitive type, those qualities were often concealed. But it never really mattered all that much to me, and even his heavy accent struck one as a necessity. “Of course I don’t believe it.” “Listen, and I’ll tell you about it. When a person dies, he wants to be buried in the place he called home. The bird flies home; the fox dies with its head pointing toward home. Okay, so when people where I come from leave to work and they die away from home, they must, according to custom, be returned home and buried. The only thing different is the special way in which they are brought home. We don’t carry them home in a coffin, because it would be tiring to carry them all that way, far across mountains and rivers; cremation and carrying the bones and ashes home is not popular either. Our way is to hire someone to herd the corpses home, like a cowboy in the American West herding cattle, of course not that many, but always in a group or herd. Believe me or not, it’s up to you. How can the dead walk? That depends on the technique, the magic. Experts in that line of

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

work cast a spell on the dead, who then arise. The corpse herder taps them with a bamboo stick, and they advance by hopping. That’s what I’ve heard, though I’ve never personally seen it done. What? Like a farmer herding ducks? That’s hardly a comparison! Okay, so usually the corpse herder herds them all the way like that. Some arrive early, some later, and it’s arranged for others to join along the way. It’s pretty tough enduring hardships outdoors. At night when it’s time to rest, the corpses lie down in a row. The following day, they are tapped with the bamboo stick and they get up and set off again. If they encounter an inn along the way, the corpse herder will go inside to sleep, but the corpses can’t enter, so they are lined up and leaned against the inn wall until it grows light outside, at which time they are tapped again with the bamboo stick and set off in a column, all the way to where ‘the fox dies with its head pointing toward home.’ ” After listening to this, I was at loss for words. At first his wife smiled; then she grew afraid and told me not to listen. “Don’t listen to Teacher’s nonsense, don’t believe a word he says.” Then, switching to her Sichuan dialect, she said to Teacher Hu, “Don’t frighten people, and don’t deceive others with your wild talk.” Then she would switch back to Mandarin and say to me, “I don’t believe it.” “I don’t believe it, either,” I said. Teacher Hu was all smiles and almost chuckled—he was incapable of laughing loudly. I knew his wife didn’t like the topic of conversation, so I asked: “There is a famous writer from Xiangxi, isn’t there?” “How did you know that?” he asked in reply, looking surprised. “I read his fiction.” “Is that possible?” It was his turn to be incredulous. “Banned books?” “They are in the library, locked inside a cabinet with opaque glass, not like the other cabinets. I am on really good terms with the teacher who is in charge of them, and once she asked me, ‘Have you ever read Shen Congwen?’ I said I hadn’t, and she pushed her glasses up on her nose and said to me, ‘What a pity not to have read Shen Congwen.’ And then added, ‘I see you borrowing translated fiction every day, and know you have never had the chance to read Chinese fiction. . . .’ I said it couldn’t be helped since Shen Congwen’s books were banned, it couldn’t be helped. She sighed. A few days later, as usual, I stood at the counter with my library card to borrow a book.”

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

“What did you want to borrow?” Teacher Hu asked me. “Something like Pierre Loti’s An Iceland Fisherman and Jules Verne’s Dick Sand, Captain at Fifteen.” “You can only borrow one book at a time, right?” “Yes, just one book at a time.” “And then what happened?” “She took a thin, worn volume out of her drawer, handed it to me, and said, ‘Shen Congwen. After you’ve read it, bring it straight back to me, no need to check it out.’ Then she instructed me, ‘You are not to loan it to anyone else.’ ” “Which book was it?” Teacher Hu asked. “Eight Steeds.” “That’s great,” said Teacher Hu. “The next day I carried Eight Steeds back and returned it to her. Actually, I had read it all the way through during our extracurricular activities period before the flag was lowered, while sitting behind the auditorium. That night at home I read it once more. She took it, stood up, walked around her desk, went over to the cabinet with the opaque glass, opened it, and returned Eight Steeds to its place, took out another book, and when no one was looking, handed it to me, and waved me away. . . .” “Which book was it?” “The Border Town.” “That’s great, that’s great!” Teacher Hu was very excited. “No wonder you knew about Xiangxi when I mentioned it. Why should Shen Congwen be banned? Those people are just bored with nothing else better to do.” After that, Teacher Hu decided that, much as if he had discovered a treasure cave, he wanted to open that cabinet of proscribed books. Then he successively lent me Dragon Ball, Young Tiger, and Random Sketches on a Trip to Hunan, all of which that nearsighted teacher in charge had loaned him and he in turn loaned to me. I had actually forgotten that she had told me not to tell anyone else, but she never took me to task. Later it all stopped. But I had read Shen Congwen, which was impossible, but there should have been even more. I once asked Teacher Hu if there were many more titles and he replied, “Lots.” I was extremely curious about that cabinet—looking at it sitting in the corner with nothing out of the ordinary about it, save perhaps that it was coated more delicately with a slightly

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

better-quality lacquer and was more intact than all the other glass cabinets. There were two small locks, top and bottom, that shone dimly by the light of the lamp. I asked, “What’s Xiangxi like?” “Steep mountains and dense forest,” replied Teacher Hu, “vast and rugged.” One time he was suddenly struck by a wild idea, saying that his home was “the same as Hualien,” with steep mountains and dense forest. The only regrettable difference was that his home lacked the ocean. “But you have Dongting Lake, the biggest lake in China.” “Thank you, thank you. We have a long river with remote sources.” “I read Shen Congwen’s ‘A Night at Mallard-Nest Village.’ ” “That’s on the Yuan River.” “Just before dusk the snow started to fall and we soon stopped. In the severe cold, everything seemed frozen, even the air felt like it was going to freeze. By the time the snow was falling heavily, the small boat I had hired was moored along the shore. It was the ˉfth night out, proceeding upstream from Taoyuan. A blizzard seemed in the ofˉng that night, so upon arrival we looked for a good place to moor along the banks. Apart from a beach that was suitable, the other places were all of black boulders the size of houses. And as the boulders were so big and the boat so small, we all hoped to ˉnd a place to shelter the boat from the snowstorm as well as provide a convenient place for going ashore. But the ˉshing boats had long since taken the best spots. The boatmen of our small boat broke out the steel-tipped poles from the boat and punting, struck the bank with an agreeable sound, but like so many other boats, large and small, we had no choice but to moor with the others by casting the stone anchor up on the sand, leaving our small boat exposed to the approaching snowstorm.”

Teacher Hu leaned back in the wicker chair as if he were asleep, having abandoned himself to a fit of debilitating homesickness. “Continue reading, one more paragraph.” “It was at a long bend in the lake with steep cliffs on both sides, on top of which grew small bamboo, which was oppressively green all year round. The ˊ anking mountains stood in a stark silhouette of solid black against the faint light of the

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

sky. But at dusk what we could see looked amazing—a number of stilted houses stood about ten meters above the water. “The dark night took possession of the river, and the ˉres could still be seen on the wooden rafts and lights from the windows of the stilted houses, and even the reddish torchlights of the people disembarking and moving among the boulders. People were heard talking on shore and on the boats; in one of the stilted houses, a woman was singing by the dim lamplight, and whenever her song came to an end, it was greeted with the sound of laughter. Under one stilted house stood a lamb bleating constantly, an insistent yet gentle sound that saddened those who heard it.”

“There’s more. There’s this passage: “But there was no dispelling the long night, and my imagination set off in pursuit, following that woman’s clear, deep voice to a place beside her. I seemed to see a bed on a straw mat on which was spread an old quilt made of canvas, hard and dirty, on top of which was placed a wooden tray containing a small teapot, an opium box, a ˊint, and a lamp. A man was lying next to the tray. The singer, her hands in her sleeves, was kneading her upper arms or standing close to the head of the bed, lighting opium for the manb.b.b.”

“Baizi!” said Teacher Hu, cutting me off. “We’re not there, yet. Let me see. “Perhaps they were dead, drowned or shot, perhaps poisoned with arsenic by a concubine, but then.b.b.b. Such ideas were disturbing. I went to the prow and looked off into the distance. The water was calm; the ˉres on the wooden rafts were much diminished; there were a few lights still lit on the boats; the big picture of everything near and far was only discernible by the faint light on the water’s surface. In another stilted house another woman was singing, and the light ˊickered.b.b.b.”

“Baizi—” “The sheep persisted in bleating. From off in the distance somewhere came the sounds of drum and gong, the drumming and gonging of the shaman as

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

offerings were made to thank the spirits. No doubt there were torches and candles shining brightly there, by the bright light of which an old shaman, head bound in red cloth, whirled alone in a dance. Gold coins had been placed on the lintel, and a large measure of grain stood on the ground. Freshly slaughtered pigs and sheep were laid out on wooden racks, little paper ˊ ags stuck in their heads. A living rooster, its legs and wings bound, lay helplessly on the earthen altar, waiting to have its head bitten off by the shaman. The hot pigs’-blood porridge cooked in a pot and the ˉre blazed in the stove. .b.b.”

“Bai . . . zi—” “I remember Baizi. Although we were all traveling by boat, one happily went ashore, while one lonely fellow followed later by himself, and upon arriving could not expect the same treatment as Baizi, that was for sure.”

Teacher Hu might have been asleep. Or, sitting there with his eyes closed, he might have been immersed in the long river of a certain kind in his heart. The long river of his heart, both near at hand and far away. I continued reading, silently to myself: It was probably around midnight when a different sound arose over the water’s surface. It sounded like the beat of a drum or the motor of a steamship that was slowly approaching, but just as slowly receding. It was a magical song, so simple and pure that it deˉed description and, repeated monotonously, made anyone who heard it or anyone at the long bend in the lake under its spell want to capture that sound in words, but his efforts would be futile.b.b.b.

4 Teacher Hu did in fact write a novel, which was titled The Long River. Formed of several thick sheaves of paper stapled together, it was perhaps his only novel, and was about Xiangxi. He let me look at those thick stapled sheaves, but never allowed me to read them. I figured it must have been because the ink was still wet, then dry, then wet, with one page stacked on top of another, thousands upon thousands of ink-damp pages had accumu-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

lated, until a fine pattern of wrinkles was squeezed outward from the center, following the moisture invisibly downward, the white margins on the left and right of the sheets curled to meet and appeared stuck together, making the piled sheaves of manuscript look like tubes. I wasn’t anxious to read them, because he did not like to let people—save his wife—read his repeatedly revised manuscripts. I could wait until the book was published and then read it carefully word by word. We frequently mentioned the book: Teacher Hu had a high opinion of himself, but I felt that his endless revisions of the work bordered on the pious application of a monk to his daily chores. In that way time passed, flowing slowly by, with him mentioning the book ever less frequently, and I seemed not to notice it or gradually came to forget its existence, the existence of that wrinkled and curled manuscript, sheaf upon sheaf, its existence in the innumerable strokes of the written characters. I imagined it must possess a vast narrative structure, a moving plot, and poetic language, but later there came a day when we no longer mentioned it at all. That is vaguely what may have happened before I was eighteen. I imagined that there was a long novel, which was also called The Long River, and so on and so forth, until later it was lost. I might have read it in my dreams, reading it word by word: the rivers and mountains of Xiangxi, boatmen, songstresses, solitary soldier, commander, robbers, bandits, rent collectors, peddlers on rafts, and the occasional unusual appearance of an intellectual who had thrown off the likeness of small soldier, an intellectual who busily observed, thought, and recollected, one who was contemplative but not afraid to talk and laugh with strangers, from Changde to Tafu and Fenghuang. To me, it seemed to be a way of overcoming homesickness or of weaving it together. But it was a novel that never existed and had never eliminated or woven anything together. Perhaps even the manuscript itself, stapled in sheaf upon sheaf, never existed, but was just something I imagined. Had the plot and characters also only been figments of my imagination? On the weaving of homesickness and unraveling it, about Hunan: A drizzle-like weaving, I weave my long and deep thoughts into the falling rain. The banyan tree outside the window raises a white ˊ ag

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

that is not the gentle willows or hazy smoke of my old home but rather the wavering of smoke and the longing for the willows. Thus I discover that my loneliness rises not from a void nor the vault of heaven, the sea’s vastness, nor from the mountainous landscape in the rainy season but .b.b. but from the grass growing thickly at the foot of the wall and the early appearance of one or two ˉreˊies.

I saw all of this with my own eyes, as well as a lot of other poems, short stories, even dramas, and translations. And I clearly liked the contrast between the banyan tree and the willows and smoke, the thought projecting from Hualien to Dongting Lake, clear and leisurely. I sighed, affected by the expansion, deepening, and heightening of that banyan tree so as to concurrently have the effect of willows and smoke. Thus the mountains, the sea, and the boundless time and space of nature of Hualien, so different from the scenery and life sentiment at home, were not the reason for my loneliness. The sensitivity of being alone and quietly observing a firefly or two at the foot of a wall was the reason I suddenly felt lonely. If this was not so, how could I not be contented among the mountains, sea, and sky of Hualien, living in a corner among the human feelings a thousand li away from my old home? Everything arose from the mind, weaving, unraveling, weaving, about the shores of Dongting Lake, about the port just a little way down along the most precipitous shoreline in the Pacific, sticking to them both alike with feeling—all of this was of the mind. Wasn’t the cultivation of homesickness and the constant cleansing of my sensitive thoughts necessary and natural? Were not such exquisite and broad thoughts always successful? So why not turn them to grander and more heroic pursuits, such as poetry, art, science, and democracy? Such poetry actually exists. But the text of my dreams? Thick and heavy, complicated, a huge book too beautiful to absorb, compelling me to read it sleeplessly, sometimes holding my breath and sometimes hearing myself talk in my sleep. Perhaps I had already discovered the way to create. One day I awoke to the pure light of the sun and thought that I ought to stop being concerned about that text that perhaps had never existed, and that I had to make an effort to understand how it might lead to lines of poetry with multiple levels through the simple observation of reality. Actually, this

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

occurred before I was eighteen years old and had already written many poems, upward of two hundred between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, almost all of which appeared in print in Modern Poetry, Wild Wind, Blue Stars Poetry Magazine, New Poetry Today, Sea Gull Poetry Magazine, New New Literature, Epoch Poetry Quarterly, Ocean Poetry Magazine, Literary Stars Magazine, Literature Magazine, and Convergence of the Pen. Frequently I admonished myself that I ought to eliminate the overly forced use of language, but how? At fi fteen I wrote “Days of Living in the Mountains”: I held a bamboo pole of twelve nodes, a hat full of the wind on my head, onbthe lake, on the lake, breathing in the peach red of the setting sun and the clarity ofbthe undulating lake. A wish for a thatched cottage ˉlled with starlight, squatting on the shore ofbthe lake, the mountain slopeb.b.b. the mountain rain accompanies the broken rhythm of the raft.

Two years later, I seemed to stumble upon a simple secret. It was simple because I seemed to have encountered an entirely new law of beauty. One afternoon while sitting in the corner of the classroom, after having examined a zincograph illustration in the newspaper for a long time, I took up pen and paper and wrote a poem titled, “An Arab Squats Beside the Stove.” I said that I had already found the language I wanted. Teacher Hu told me to try again. I said that a poem like “Days of Living in the Mountains” about this and that on the lake was all imaginary, as was the poem about the Arab trying to gauge the wind the following day. Never once had I written about something I had experienced, though it surely must have happened. He said imagination was very good. I asked, “Is imagination really good?” He answered, “Imagination is really good.” I asked, “Is simple language better than forced language?” He replied, “Not necessarily. Try again.” I said I wasn’t sure if the forced use of language was bad, much less the same forced use of simple language. But I understood that imagination was good. I said, You have Xiangxi, I don’t, but that isn’t important, because I can listen to you describing it in detail. “Even so,” I said, “Teacher

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

likes Hualien, right?” Teacher Hu sat distracted for a while, a silent smile spread on his face that remained for some time. So I added, “I’m very happy that Teacher came to Hualien.” The ancient. The foreign. I exchanged these for his wind-blown sand and beacon fires, his sense of loneliness and the experience of being away from home, coming to us in this small city, recently recovered from war. I could only put myself in his place and in the place of the other “refugees” or “nonconformists” like him, in the minds of teachers who were so far from home, for whom I felt an unspeakable sadness and pity. Living in the mountains in ancient times was nothing more than a copied style of painting, like imitating an empty pavilion in an ink painting by Ni Zan. An Arab’s journey was something unspeakably fantastic from out of the Thousand and One Nights, about shadows cast over the vast desert, mysterious religious rites. Then, sitting silently, someday in the future, as to that person who was you, who could be certain that fate did not blow you to that dismal and violent place, utterly exhausted, squatting by the stove, at the ends of the earth? It was entirely possible, according to my imagination, and I thoroughly believed that imagination was good. One day, I too would experience it all, just like the guy who had exchanged his military uniform for a scholar’s, and with the same unlimited sensitivity journey back to the steep mountains and dense forests of Xiangxi, watch, listen, smell, and touch the story’s plot, unbroken to its climax, the reality of the real world. Even though it didn’t correspond to the real world that I touched and even though it remained hollow to me, I believed that I too would have the same matchless courage to advocate and bear witness for you, that still it was the authentic reality of the real world. I bore witness for you with my imagination. So again, I recalled that sound on the water’s surface: “It was a magical song, so simple and pure that it defied description and, repeated monotonously, made anyone who heard it or anyone at the long bend in the lake under its spell want to capture that sound in words, but his efforts would be futile. . . .”

F RO M T W I N C R E E K S

1 Yan died many years ago, but I still think of him often, seemingly ever more frequently—always without premeditation, because some exquisite or profound alertness on my part unexpectedly stirs the nerve of memory, as if I were able to hear that broken-off song automatically recommence, the voice shaky, feigning to take advantage of a moment of weakness on my part, to submerge me with one fell swoop in the upper reaches of memory. And time after time I have resisted, perhaps because I disliked the fact of the matter and was unwilling to admit that he was dead, and had been dead for many years. What I mean is that if I had a choice, I wish I could choose to say that he was alive; perhaps if I had a choice, I’d at least hope to slightly postpone this mournful longing, to willfully face it later, when I am older— for with age comes more time without today’s busyness—diligently to remember, amid a vast and unfurling dusk, splendid and hushed. Even so, denying his death sometimes seemed to work in an utterly subjective way, which, after all, certainly runs counter to the truth, and couldn’t be helped due to my willful blindness. Sometimes I’d exhort myself not to think so much about it because it was the way of the world for friends to be more frequently apart than together. Yan was okay; it’s just that we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, but upon returning to Hualien and meeting once again, things would be as ever. But this sort of willful blindness couldn’t be maintained forever or employed indefinitely. Initially, perhaps, it was occasionally effective. When I thought of him, I would immediately employ this method to block the rising fear that occupied all my thoughts, the feeling of sudden loss, through my powers of keeping things separated, channeled, expelled to the extent that I believed Yan was okay, and nothing was

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

wrong. I don’t know why it later became ineffective; actually, when I felt it wasn’t working, it was already too late and there was no remedy. Dead. Yan was dead. No matter how I might try to deny it and in the silence of my heart continue cheating myself, it was a failure; after a while, there would be a reversal in my consciousness of the actual state of affairs. What are the deer doing in the courtyard?/Or the water dragons outside the water? Was I confused, and had I distorted the limited truth that I had borne in mind and pursued and guarded for half of my life? Reflecting on the past this way during moments of ease, I decided that even if I didn’t like the truth, still the truth of the matter was that Yan was dead, and had been dead for many years. Why not face this and my obligatory denial? I didn’t have to wait till I was advanced in years before having sufficient time to do so. I sat in my chair, watching the maple leaves fall, one by one, into the fishpond, on the leaning grass all around, and onto the trembling surface of the water. I thought that otherwise it would be difficult to bear the continuous doubt, thinking that he was well and living in Hualien. But a moment of lucidity was enough to prove it was an illusion, all nonsense. I had to face the truth now in order to transform those sad and mournful thoughts into something fair and reasonable. Moreover, if I had the courage to look at it with the appropriate attitude, then there was no reason not to feel sincerely cleansed and serene, and I might even forget the separation of life and death, and the way people come into this world and leave it.

2 Adopting such an attitude was the right thing to do, and was precisely what I termed conforming to the ordinary course of events. But perhaps I would be able to forget. I’m not saying banish his face and voice from my thoughts, or our friendship and other things, no, of course not; what I am saying is that perhaps I could avoid the terrible recognition that parting from life is such a sad thing, and succeed in forgetting. That being said, I did after all want to remember him, remember our friendship, and so on and so forth.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

This way of thinking was significant: by adopting a positive and suitably natural attitude, I might be able to discover something, even comfort, peace, and wisdom. Yan once said to me, We should all try to die before you; then he turned to the other friends at the table and said, We should die first, right? Everyone was startled and had no idea why they should. I knew. That morning the paper had carried an article I had written in memory of an old acquaintance who suddenly had died. In fact, everyone knew that I seldom had associated with him in the last few years, especially in the time right before the tragedy, and had actually been subject to his severe criticism, you could even say reviled, on account of my poetry. As a result, I consciously avoided him, figuring it was better not to see him, and so a distance grew between us. Although I had known him well for quite some time, there was a long period in which he could be considered a friend with similar professional ambitions. Strangely, most of the trips to Taipei were rainy—why did only new friends come and not the old friend? Far more than didn’t come? Yan spoke of dying first and dying later, but he didn’t know the unapparent details. More importantly, Yan said on the phone that morning that although my article had been short, it allowed the reader to get a clear picture of the person’s moral character and style in various aspects, though obviously there were many unpleasant things about him I avoided and did not mention. With enthusiasm and energy, Yan said, If I die, I hope that you write such a powerful piece for me about the past, as he took a drink. Everyone at the table laughed and quickly lifted their glasses. It would be worth dying first for such a piece of writing, right? Everyone laughed. However, after such a long time, after he has been dead these many years, I am apprehensive and hesitate with regard to my doubts and certainties after so long, and I finally remember what he said at that time, jesting over wine, tea, and melon seeds, seemingly unintentionally, but still dimly possessing a prophetic warning. Of course, I could be thinking about it too much. But why should I not have taken it to heart? Over the years, my thoughts have turned ever more frequently to Yan and, although he occupies my mind much each time, still, I could affirm that my image of him was as clear and unchanged as ever, including his face and voice, temperament, and bearing at various stages of his life. We’d suddenly meet but not feel the need to converse, and in an instant, that image would grow dim and

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

vanish with an awkward expression each time. But I really had difficulty imaging if it was plausible that each time, he was so straightforward and obsequious. When he was alive, Yan occasionally would suddenly look awkward in some public situations. For example, when a military instructor praised him in front of other students or when he caught a ball but mistakenly passed it to the other team, or when the chain fell off his bike and he tried unsuccessfully to put it back in place by the roadside, his hands covered with grease. But these incidents couldn’t be called awkward. At first I was somewhat confused; later, I thought that maybe he was unwilling for his image after death to linger too long among our troubled souls. Perhaps he knew and was afraid we had reached an age when a chance meeting might be harmful. Perhaps. Thus, for a long time it was that way. Suddenly I’d remember something about him; then just as quickly, I’d be distracted and think no more about it. If my explanation is even slightly plausible, as I described it previously, then that awkwardness came only after Yan’s death, many, many years later, when I was able to develop one side of his character, being unwilling to look squarely at the reality of the distance between us. And this unthinkable expression of his, and allowing it to vanish, all arose from his concern for us, fearful lest we be unable to bear so much panic, apprehensiveness, and fear. My explanation was pretty sound: the parting from life is such a sad thing.

3 In this way it seems that only when I took the initiative to think, recalling all those images accumulated in the past and the interplay of those images in the creation of a life’s story, by cherishing and pursuing those memories, that I might begin to come to grips with those thoughts or fragments of thought that were momentarily controlled by the departed. I had to take the initiative and forge ahead, enter into, linger until it was all exhausted in the domain of my will, for me to decide upon and dispose of, to think about, call up those images and stories, to pursue those memories woven out of the remote past and those feelings for people and events not easily dismissed, shrouded under another huge curtain in the calm and tranquil present.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

“First, you have to work hard at handling words.” “I know,” Yan said. “Take your time, you still have plenty of time.” “Still have time? It’s already late, I’m nearly sixteen.” And so we discussed literary aspirations and ambitions. But pausing to consider, Yan probably said that this kind of topic was not literary, and that we delved even more deeply into writing, weighing words, as well as revising, realistically facing the written manuscript, thinking that our conversation revolved around literature. To this day, when I concentrate on recalling and considering that time, I see we were probing the hot and cold of life with the determination of youth. “I’m over seventeen.” Thus we repeatedly probed the realities and unrealities of life. Even when it was my turn to pause and think, I’m afraid I’d still say that literature is part of life and he, I’m afraid, would agree, then I’d seize the opportunity and state: literature is life. Then, in the matter of an instant, I’d feel that time and space would be repositioned for us, and all around it would grow still and quiet, without a sound to be heard; the insects became silent and the spurting fountain seemed to stand still and pause. Yan nodded and shook his head. Then the insects resumed and the fountain shot up again with beads of water in the shimmering pool. “It’s not that serious, is it?” He wanted to laugh, but when he saw my serious expression bordering on sad, he restrained himself from laughing aloud and simply nodded and then shook his head. If Yan had laughed, I’m afraid I would have ended up following suit. A frog in the pool croaked a couple of times; I leaned forward to listen and, after a long while, it croaked again. We sat on the edge, waiting for a long, long time, but it never made another sound. I guessed because I had uttered such weighty words, there was little desire to go on, and decided to change topics: “With goldfish in the pond, there shouldn’t be any frogs.” Yan didn’t want to change the topic. “I also like to write, but I don’t have your persistence.” He asked, “Is it necessary?” “One must be especially persistent.” “The ways of expressing thought and emotion are many.”

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

That’s really how it was. Perhaps because I only knew one of so many ways, my art was still unskilled in my youth. Individual words combine to form a work, but I didn’t know if thought should beget literary expression or literary expression should engender thought; anything was possible, I thought. Assuming it was all possible, mastering and developing literary expression became much easier, easier to color; even so, thought was always very simple. “I couldn’t say I have any thought.” Clearly I was thinking of a way to escape, unwilling to face the challenge; clearly I lacked the courage to admit to so many possibilities of expression. I persisted in my singular way of expressing myself with words, which happened to be a method of the highest order. Moreover, I would clearly and regrettably admit defeat on the side of thought, while at the same time heightening my satisfaction and spirit in the personal style of writing, though Yan said that it was thought and feeling.

4 Yan’s house was near mine: turn left outside the gate and walk a hundred steps, over a wooden plank bridge, take another left, and you were there. Their house was also Japanese style, with front and rear courtyards. In the beginning, it had been a long time since anyone had lived in it, but I do remember that the wall was very solid, not the usual short bamboo fence with flowers and shrubs, but constructed out of bricks and mortar, making it quite unusual; additionally, outside the wall was planted a row of six or seven banyan trees that almost entirely concealed the tile roof. During my junior high school years, when I walked under that row of trees in the evening and always felt uneasy, I would sing loudly to myself or imagine some heroic situations with that loud building sound heard several times a day as the radio station call sign (later I learned it was the William Tell Overture) as I quickened my steps. Th is went on for a while, and I remember it as a fairly frightening and unhappy experience from my junior high school days. It was pretty lousy, but who could foresee that it would get even worse? It was probably just before I graduated from junior high. One morning on the way to school, as I was crossing the wooden plank bridge, I saw several people gathered outside the house, pointing at one of the banyan trees in the row. I pushed my bike into the crowd, looked up, and was shocked to

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

see a person hanging there amid the leaves. After that, for a time I refused to walk there and made a detour around. If for some reason I had to walk by those trees, I would loudly hum the William Tell Overture to myself as I flew by on my bike. And so another year passed and then during summer vacation, a large group of workmen showed up and bustled around the empty house for several days doing something; what was obvious was that those dense banyan trees concealing the roof were cut down, not one was left standing, even the roots were dug out. It also appeared that a new front gate was being constructed, and it was only then that I saw how well the flowers and bushes grew inside the walls, including a pomegranate tree and a star fruit tree that was leaning over the wall. I recognized the pomegranate and star fruit trees because they also grew in our courtyard. The changes made me feel very satisfied and happy. After the elimination of that tree in which the man had hanged himself, my young heart beat more quickly, and I soon forgot the fear of what I had seen that morning as well as the William Tell Overture, which helped me get over the shock, and never did I feel bad about the destruction of those innocent trees, even if only the one in which the man hanged himself was guilty. It was around that time that our wood-plank bridge was rebuilt; not only did it have buttresses at each end, it also had been widened and railings added to allow people to rest and enjoy the cool air. In those days, the stream ran clear, lively, and joyfully. I stood on the bridge, looking toward the mountains from where the river flowed with river grass and the fresh, clean moss, speeding under the bridge, flowing downstream and into the Pacific Ocean. These things all satisfied me and made me happy. But that was not all. One day I discovered that living in that house with the pomegranate and star fruit trees was that boy with the crooked head who had just transferred to my school. That was Yan. Although Yan’s family was small, it was in no way simple. It took me quite a while to figure things out. His father’s second wife (she should have been his mother, but he never addressed her as such) arrived; she brought with her a daughter, a little younger than us, who should have been his little sister, though he never referred to her as such. Where was Yan’s biological mother? We never asked, but the impression was that she had passed away in another county. It was only much later that I discovered that Yan usually lived by himself in that renovated and refurbished Japanese-style house,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

while his father lived with his stepmother and her daughter in another house. I can’t be certain if that’s the way things really were, but regardless, I remember that I rarely ever greeted his stepmother and her daughter there. I do seem to have the impression that they were in the house, but in a different room. Occasionally I did meet his father there and would customarily greet him as “Orisan.” Yan never mentioned his stepmother and her daughter and never talked about his father or his biological mother. He was seemingly possessed of a precocious sadness and even a faint melancholy that he kept to himself. He never mentioned any of this, but was always curious about my affairs. About what in particular? About my girlfriend. About writing to her and waiting for her letters; about writing poems for myself in an exquisite notebook, which were also sent to Taipei for publication; about strolling with her along the beach or among the paddy fields. Yan patiently listened to me pour out my heart, but always as I changed topics and spoke about writing poetry, he would insist upon jumping in. I thought he was more interested in this topic, and I was always more than happy to oblige and talk with him, because without a doubt I was interested in poetry more than anything else in the world. I’m afraid that such a wonderful topic far outweighed that of girlfriends in importance.

5 The time Yan mentioned that they were from Twin Creeks (Shuangxi) was the first time I had ever heard of the place. “Except ‘I only fear at Twin Creeks my small boat,’ ” I recall saying. He said, “Isn’t it a beautiful name?” I asked, “Why beautiful?” He said, “You don’t think ‘I only fear at Twin Creeks my small boat won’t be able to bear the grief’ is beautiful?” I said, “Why is it beautiful?” Then he repeated, “ ‘I only fear at Twin Creeks my small boat won’t be able to bear the grief.’ Isn’t it beautiful?” I replied, “Twin Creeks is a pretty name, and you don’t need the ‘small boat’ to make it so, nor do you need the ‘won’t be able to bear the grief.’ That’s the crux of the matter.”

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

At that time we frequently discussed the beauties of expression, ideas, and such in the old poetry and song lyrics. We seemed unable to break away from those bonds, whether there was a desire to do so, as in my case, or no desire, as in his case. Perhaps he was never conscious of the problem, while I, on the contrary, not only cared but perhaps in my weak thoughts and nerves also was overly worried about it. Putting it aside temporarily, I thought: It is true that some of it has to do with time. Just take your time. Twin Creeks (Sungai)? Where is that? Yan replied, “In Yilan.” So that was the case. It was on account of his Yilan accent. When he said suan (sour), he pronounced it nsueng; and guang (light) he pronounced nkueng. For the time being I didn’t think any more about it. In fact, starting then, I thought Twin Creeks (Shuangxi) was in Yilan and never had any doubts. Many years later, on my many train trips to Taipei, I’d sit by the window after we passed Toucheng and focus on looking at the sea, at Turtle Island, which appeared to float just off shore. Every time the train emerged from a tunnel, higher above the wave-splashed rocks, flying along, I’d think: It’ d be better if Turtle Island were just a little bigger, like the island of Taiwan, but might as well maintain the present distance, already being so close—an island twice as large to lead a Pacific nation of hundreds of small islands and islets. The mysterious and indistinct Turtle Island was, after all, Turtle Island; but that was sufficient, so I changed my mind. Then the train slowed, winding through the mountain ravines, following the rushing river. I knew that we would soon be at Twin Creeks. Yan’s old home was deep among those layered mountains. It was a place of dense forest, narrow paddy fields and gardens, and houses, factories, and barracks built following the mountainous topography. Wild silver grass grew along the steep banks of the river, bowing and swaying silently in the wind, or in another season, dripping and bending under the weight of autumn rain or bathed in sunlight, shining, dazzlingly bright, smiling at us. The train passed Twin Creeks, Noble Cave (Houdong), Ruifang, Four-Footed Pavilion, Nuannuan, Eight Walls, and would soon arrive in Taipei. Twin Creeks was such a small station that the train never stopped there. It would slow a little or maintain its original speed and pass the empty platform. My impression was the same in later days: after seeing Turtle Island, with darkness and light alternating, we’d go through tunnels and

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

along the river to Twin Creeks, Yan’s old home. I always thought Twin Creeks was in Yilan. “Well, what about Monkey Cave (Houdong)?” Many years later, for some reason the “small boat at Twin Creeks” was again mentioned, and still we were uncompromising. Then he asked me: “Isn’t Noble Cave (Houdong) beautiful?” I earnestly replied, “Yes, it’s okay.” What I meant was that it was in no way inferior to Twin Creeks, despite the fact that it was not mentioned in poetry. Of course it’s not, he said. “What about Monkey Cave (Houdong)?” I didn’t smile and stopped in my tracks and earnestly replied, “Monkey Cave perhaps is better than Noble Cave, it is more beautiful.” He smiled and asked, “Why?” I replied, “Because there is meaning to Monkey Cave. The minute you hear it you know; I don’t know what Noble Cave is—it’s meaningless.” We stood by the roadside, gesticulating as we debated. First you have to define it, defining the relationship between the words; that is, do two words, when placed side by side, produce meaning? That’s the first level, the most essential quality; the rest is just icing. Is it more elegant to use the word “noble” (hou) as a place name than the word “monkey” (hou)? Yan asked, “For example, nobleman?” I replied, “Words are words, it’s not a matter of elegance, much less of sacrificing meaning for elegance. I am in no way prejudiced against the word ‘noble’ (hou), but I am opposed to adding the word ‘cave’ after it, because I don’t know what it means—combined they mean nothing and separately they mean nothing. The meaning of the words Monkey Cave is clear and very good; clarity is better than elegance; in fact, only what is clear can be elegant and beautiful.” “So  .  .  .” that slightly awkward expression appeared on Yan’s face and then, still challenging me, he said, “What about Ruifang, Four-Footed Pavilion, Nuannuan, and Eight Walls?” “Beautiful. And there is a Seven Walls, Six Walls, Five Walls. . . .”

6 Time was a confusion; so was space. Thinking about it from the beginning when I was alone, I realized that there was no lack of confusion: I was extremely inattentive—perhaps pur-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

posely so—to the order of time and space, standards, and ethical principles, and so everything was wrong and confused, weakening the definition between them, departing from the reality of the senses, and because of the interaction of cause and effect they became less distinguishable with age. But today I am certain about some things. Twin Creeks is not in Yilan. Perhaps I only decided recently that it was time to stop the endless procrastination and concentrate on recalling Yan and my youthful friendship. For that reason, I sat down by the window and fell deep into thought, then stood up and, pacing, went over and took a Taiwan atlas from the bookshelf. I searched for Twin Creeks, which Yan had so often mentioned, before realizing that it was actually located in Taipei County and not Yilan. So I thought in particular about his Yilan accent, which perhaps was absurd. So, even though Turtle Island was right there at the curve when the train came out of the tunnel, dimly seeming to float on the sea’s surface, it was all unrelated. I guess that I was once quite comfortable in that unclear area between true and false, and knew for a fact that the place was wrong and never sincerely wanted to correct it. With this thought, I had to wonder if the feelings that had brewed in my heart over the course of time were reliable, if the memories on which they were based were also wrong and confused. Oh, time is kind; time is cruel. Even if I felt and knew I must, still I lacked the courage to oppose you directly, and also lacked the courage to question what you permitted or granted to me. This abundant and beautiful time, whether it was confounded intentionally or not, undermined me day by day, distancing me from reality until I was left indifferent and memory was lost. I knew that under your immense shadow I was nothing; I submissively felt your unlimited kindness, which allowed me to rise up with force when I was utterly exhausted, to labor to repay you and glorify you, but I was so humble, so insignificant. Ah, time is kind, time is cruel. Even if I feel and know that I must still I lack the courage to oppose directly, I also lack the courage to question what you permit or grant me, this abundant and beautiful time, whether it was intends to confound or not undermining me day by day, distancing me from reality

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

until I’m left indifferent, memory lost. I know under your immense shadow, I am nothing; submissively I feel your unlimited kindness, which allows me rising up with force when utterly exhausted to labor to repay you and glorify you But I am so humble, so insigniˉcant

I labored continuously, seeking authentic fragments from the past, because I dared not entertain any hope of obtaining the whole story; fragments were enough as long as the cobwebs and dust were removed and their original condition was manifest to me. Even if I couldn’t recall their original condition, I could still obtain some peace of mind from their vague likeness, and moreover without complaint accept them, labor to remember, and, finally, happily recapture those fragments. We had to pray, supplicate, and give thanks. If I could make a few departed voices, faces, and movements reappear without being false or pretended, though small and scattered, I would be happy. After going through such a great effort to mold myself and laboring continuously to finally manifest the past in a work of words, I feared, deeply feared, that it was still not believable, save only for me at this end of time. Now, as I imagined certain things, I asked, why not keep them like this and like that, for at the other far end of the time were those permanently vanished voices, faces, and movements of the past that seemed true; I could only tremble, fearing lest they all be illusory. The train never once stopped at the small station, Yan’s old home.

7 The train always swayed slightly to the right and left, following the gushing river, leaving the sea ever farther behind and entering the mountains. Then the train passed the deserted platform, without the slightest reluctance to leave, a few tiled roofs, railings, and walls shining with an unimportant light, before disappearing. The train approached Twin Creeks.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

The train passed through an unfamiliar little station. The train left Twin Creeks far behind. I never got off the train in that little station, although I did have the impression of doing so. Sometimes I would imagine what such a village isolated in a mountainous region should be like, like this and that to fi nally make it conform to nature. Especially in the years since Yan died, I have discovered that we the living survived by luck, thinking, and taking a waitand-see attitude, and were bound to understand how forty years had disappeared so quickly, especially the time of youth, those early times without a trace that disappeared the earliest and the fastest, with about the only things left behind being cold and repulsive politics and the dregs of industry and commerce, things such as plastic bags and thermoses, and the lies of election season. In any given year, from beginning to end, there was never any lack of fumes, noise, and batteries, tires, oil cans, rusted and corroded cars accumulated by the roadside. All of us saw it, even in the remotest and most out-of-the-way villages. I think what I am trying to say is that this all ran contrary to nature. I wish I could go on smoothly to expose the details and attack, but, but then I suddenly realized that I had already once adopted and used that attitude and method, but couldn’t recall if they were effective or not. Perhaps nothing had happened, or perhaps nothing had happened on account of my activity. The sun rose and set and the rain fell on the foul-smelling and poisonous industrial goods and the political lies, without, as usual, anything changing for the better, though I had tried. No. We were bound to realize that our worries stemmed from our survival by luck. It was a bad feeling, living without exercising the responsibility of living life to the fullest. By dying, one need not be troubled by such worries, I sometimes couldn’t help thinking. But this is certainly because what the good friend of my youth confirmed was death. He, along with us, went through a bright, clean time, but before he saw for himself his old home and village polluted with those things, he withdrew at that sad and critical moment and departed. Without a doubt, with this bad feeling, which was because he had departed and wasn’t with us, we shouldn’t, on moral grounds, have let his old home become that way. Then I thought it over again and again. Perhaps his old home had not become that way, much less this one little station through which the train sped, of all the places in Taiwan called Twin Creeks. Maybe Yan

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

came from another place called Twin Creeks, which was his old home. Just thinking of how he could actually mix Taipei and Yilan, anything was possible. I think. As usual, the train passed through one tunnel after another, passing through that mountainous region. Never once did I take the slow train and get off at the little station of Yan’s old home to look around, though I often thought about it. Perhaps I was afraid that even that remote village, well off the beaten path, would confirm to my own eyes that it had long before been plundered and polluted by politics and industry.

8 I deduced that Yan’s father brought his only son to Hualien in the latter part of the mid-s, where he was enrolled late in high school, so I can’t say that his Yilan accent was really all that special. Thought of in this way, his family background was a little different from ours, his high school classmates. If the two sections of our high school class were combined, there were probably a little more than one hundred students, with little change from admission to graduation. Half the students were from Hualien; the other half, in addition to being those kids who spoke Hakka and Taiwanese from all the little towns and villages along the rail line through the Taidong Longitudinal Valley, also included one Ami student and fi fteen children of civil servants from other provinces. Occasionally, one who didn’t fit this fi xed pattern entered partway through and aroused a good deal of curiosity and, when they were found not to be odd, were quickly forgotten and became part of us with their different accents. From Twin Creeks, Yan was of this type. In addition to Yan, there were other students who transferred in, but they never managed to become kids from the backside of the mountains and always retained a solitary and aloof dignity and reserve. One student surnamed Huang came from the Yancheng district of Kaohsiung and resembled Koji Tsuruta, but with a darker complexion. At first he kept his distance from everyone else and appeared extremely preoccupied. Later he was often in the company of Yan, talking nonstop, and finally he infected Yan with that early maturity and countless worries; they began to speak in whispers, seemingly on guard against those around them, as if what they

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

talked about was of utmost secrecy. One day, Yan said to me that he needed my help and asked if that was okay. I said of course. Why not? What kind of help did he need? He took a rectangular box about a foot in length, tightly wrapped in Japanese printed cotton, from his book bag, and said, “Can I leave this with you for a while?” I was very surprised, but even more curious. I had no idea what sort of precious object he wanted me to look after. “What is it?” Yan grew silent and then in all seriousness said, “Okay, it’s only right that you should see it.” He undid the cloth outside, and inside was a colorful and exquisite lacquer box. My eyes grew wide and my heart thumped. Using both hands, he undid the clasps and the box sprang open. Surprisingly, inside, resting on a thick bed of velvet, was a shining knife. Before I could carefully examine it, Yan slammed the box shut, quickly refastened both ends, and wrapped it up again in the cloth. “Hide it anywhere for me under the tatami mats by lifting the wooden boards.” He said, “I’ll get it back from you in a week.” I did as he said and lifted two wooden boards under the tatami mats. I placed the incomparably sharp knife in its box and wrapped in the colorful cloth at a forty-five-degree angle inside an American gas mask bag that I used as a book bag and slowly lowered it into the ground and let go of it. I replaced the floorboards and laid out the tatami mats. Everything looked the same as before. That night, in my room, as I was thinking and writing, sending all sorts of words in pursuit, writing from my imagination, I extended the day with pen and ink. My happiness transcended everything, and I completely forgot about the knife. But that night, on the verge of sleep lying on the tatami mats, I sometimes thought of it, that knife bright and sharp beyond compare. Thinking of the knife that was wrongly sunk in that dark hole, I felt sorry and should have been worried and grieved for it, as well as a bit excited and nervous. Later the excitement passed; the light of the moon shone through the leaves of the royal palm into my room, and through the mosquito net above me; before I could think of anything else, I fell asleep. Several weeks later, Yan helped raise the tatami and the floorboards and I retrieved the book bag from the ground and returned it to him. Yan said the knife belonged to Huang from the Yancheng district. We put the boards back and the tatami mats back in place. Yan said that Huang also liked poetry and liked to write, and so on and so forth. Recently he had felt depressed and uneasy because someone had shadowed him to find this knife,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

which forced him to look for a place no one would notice it and hide it away, and so on and so forth.

9 Yan and I shared the pride and aloofness of poetry, of this there is no doubt, even though he himself never took up pen to write. I realized he must have another side or even role to play, which I knew nothing about and about which I had no wish to inquire. If we were able to have a common understanding of the traces of our groping through life during the bitter time of youth, then it must be counted a gain. I too thought had another world of my own, one even more alone and cold, a small world no one else could observe. As always, we had plenty of things to talk about. Often we would lower our voices, discussing things that were taboo or things we were forbidden to discuss. Photographs of several journalists killed at Liao-lo Wan during the August  bombardment of Quemoy appeared in the newspapers, and we wondered about the young soldiers doing their compulsory military service. Hu Shi’s photo appeared on the cover of the first issue of Wenxing magazine, and it was said that a number of teachers were quite indignant in class, but we thought it was a good photo. A man by the name of Liu Ziran was shot by a noncommissioned officer in the American military advisors’ compound on Yangmingshan, and the American military court had ruled he was innocent of any crime, following which he boarded a plane and returned to the United States. In Taipei, groups of angry people attacked the U.S. embassy, consulate, and U.S. Information Service. The American military had behaved with total disregard for the law, but the principal told us not to get involved in matters of no concern to us. Matters of no concern to us? How could this be considered a matter of no concern to us? And just before graduation, as spring led into summer, we began to hear a new term: garrison command. It was extremely threatening, and we were not to casually discuss it, even though we all knew it existed. We did talk about it, and it symbolized autocratic terrorism. One time the principal lost his temper and in a stern voice said to our section: Let’s see how you look after you are reported to the garrison command! That scared us, but also made me angry, and made me want to laugh. What kind of world was this?

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

But the sound of the cicadas increased with the gradual onset of summer’s scorching heat. I suddenly had a strange thought of becoming an artist, so I spent a good deal of time in the art classroom, doing paintings of the  plaster casts one by one, and when I finished I started all over again until I knew what Venus’s hair and Socrates’s whiskers looked like with my eyes closed. Here a line and there a line, I knew their eyebrows, eyes, noses, lips, necks, and shoulders, all of which were distinct. In a lonely, isolated corner, the sun shone through the half-closed curtains of the south-facing window and onto the black charcoal drawing on white paper; I shrank back, copied, erased and changed, and discarded. In that lonely, isolated corner, I planted an idea about which I could tell no one in my realm of fertile thought and feeling, the area of which increased by the day, growing more steadfast and deeper. They were perhaps doing extra work on math or English, but they also were thinking about games such as kickball and bullfighting. Yan, like the others, was busily preparing for the college entrance exams. The sound of the cicadas increased, chirring in the shade of the trees, thick and sincere and heavy. A flaming yellow accumulated on the surface of the deep blue sea. The wind scarcely blew through the covered walkways between the classrooms and descending toward the sea; it blew down from a high mountain peak. Or maybe it would change direction and feel a little cool, blowing in off the sea, blowing down the walkways toward someplace deep in the forest, repeatedly stirring things up on our campus facing the waves of the Pacific Ocean, the campus to which we would soon be saying good-bye. Yan might have been preparing for the college entrance exams like everyone else, but as the time approached, he suddenly changed his mind, leaving us totally confused. In short, just before the exam, he said he was going to leave, “to go back to Twin Creeks.” We arranged that upon leaving Twin Creeks, he would first return to Hualien, and then we would go together in a group to Taidong for the exam. Someone was responsible for picking up his Examination Permitted Card and mailing it to him at Twin Creeks, but unexpectedly he returned it a few days later. As the exam date neared, we waited for him to return to Hualien and join our group to go to Taidong. Even on the morning when the train, whistle blowing, left Hualien Station and headed south, there was no trace of him. Despondently, I had to admit that Yan had given up the idea of taking the college entrance exam. Maybe he had other plans, I thought.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

10 For many years I did deny the facts and stupidly refused to accept that Yan had died, and had been dead for a long time. I really did think of him often, two or three times a year, or maybe more, feeling there was a person missing, but every time I thought of him it was for a brief moment—feeling his absence, recalling him suddenly and just as quickly letting the memory slip away—never for very long, but I did grapple with the point until I couldn’t go on anymore, the same as I normally did with a couple of other old troubling and painful matters, sometimes even losing sleep over them, anxious and apprehensive, as if in a desperate situation. That brief moment of sudden recollection and just as quickly letting the memory slip away made me, on occasion, doubt the veracity of my missing him. That’s right, I was admonishing myself that while feeling one person was missing from the world, I suddenly would sense from a distance in time and space that more often than not, there weren’t necessarily any tearful, sad feelings for the departed. Therefore, I had doubts and was scared that the blows of life and death in the long passage of time were insufficient to affirm these emotions and knowledge, or that philosophical weight could evoke true revelation, which left me depressed and uneasy. Perhaps I once expected that such a grave matter of life and death would make us engage in thought close to the religious, but obviously it didn’t happen. Perhaps I even considered that if such a matter was unable to spur us to engage in pan-religious thinking, at least it would make us take it more seriously and focus more on worldly thought, making an effort to recall and pursue memories as a way to bid farewell and forget. Maybe that’s what I am doing right now. How can I deny that I am not doing this with all of my mind? In a more worldly manner of speaking, how can it be denied that writing this is a way to seize the events of the past, put them into words so as to say good-bye to them and forget them, as well as hopefully through such efforts to start again and have a breakthrough desire and stronghold? But maybe I didn’t do it well enough; oh, the kindness of time, the cruelty of time. I really had hoped to begin early and not procrastinate until now. I guess that even though I had thought about my departed young friend with all my mind and strength, missing him over and over again, floating amid the endless images and layers of sounds and ex-

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

pression, still, in addition to trying not to get lost in mourning and to stay clear-headed, and even adding my own explanation, I was never able to completely explain my spiritual burden of seemingly never having effectively said good-bye or forgotten; instead I found myself in a dilemma for some reason. I think the reason is perhaps that I hesitated too long, from when I first heard the news of his death until today, in a sad and worrisome middle age, which went seemingly so fast I am afraid it’s not merely ten years—that is the reason. Ten long years—how could they pass so quickly? Ten strange and bad years, just a glimmering, momentary absent-mindedness on our part, in a flash receding and vanishing like a bolt of lightning, brief and without a trace. This conflict between the illusory and the real led to everything being lost in regular fashion and nothing to rely on, thus shattering time. Simply because I often thought of Yan and, alert that so many years had accumulated since he died, at the time I decided to write a piece like this to memorialize him, because what he had demanded of me surpassed all this and was held in suspense until now, and as a result, beguiled us into middle age. Every time I thought of the past, I couldn’t bear it for very long, with little interest and enthusiasm. Thus it should come as no surprise that in my original plan I thought I could take the past and sequester it in the niche of memory and not think about it again, but in fact it seems I was unable to do so. The last time I saw Yan he was in jail. I was teaching in Taipei that year and heard that he had violated some of the laws concerning negotiable financial instruments when his business failed, and had been imprisoned. Returning home, my wife and I took the opportunity to pay him a visit. It was a delightful spring morning. In the countryside around Ji’an Township life burgeoned in an atmosphere of tranquility and peace; the vegetation was green, the rivers ran clear, the rice sprouts grew in the shimmering paddy fields between the field ridges and paths, egrets stood on the backs of water buffaloes or soared, while the clean wind, as transparent as in childhood, blew to us from that deep blue sky. I could almost hear the roar of the sea, tending north from the direction of the mouth of the Hualien River and crossing the Crescent Moon Hill, which just rose in height, hesitatingly sent this way. As I looked up in the other direction, Mount Ciyun, Mount Baiye, and Mount Tongmen ran from north to south, vast and majestic, high and friendly, all according with my cherished memories, eternal and

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

unchanging, the precious work of nature. Yan was surprised to see us and perhaps felt a little awkward, for he had that same awkward expression as before; but all in all he seemed very happy to see us. I spoke to him through a pane of glass, and he appeared to grow calmer and through the receiver his voice gradually began to sound as if it wasn’t coming from behind bars. I asked him how old his son was and where he was attending school. He replied that he was in his second year in the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University. The he asked, “And what about yours?” I said, “He’s at NTU as well.” He nodded. I then added, pointing to my young son next to me, “He’s at the kindergarten attached to NTU.” Yan laughed loudly, the same as the way he laughed back when we were all drinking, or perhaps not as long and a little lonely. I can’t be certain. After saying good-bye and leaving and while standing in the parking lot, I kept smelling the fragrance of flowers and grass everywhere and the sea waves, all gently arousing in us recognition and concern. Up to the west, the aweinspiring sight of the rugged, layered mountains and the dense forests stretched off in all directions with their endless force and embellished the lofty and precipitous rocks. Amid the crags, waterfalls could vaguely be seen, suddenly stopping in the rocky and tortuous mountain corners. Wings flapping, a bird arrived from the direction of the sea and flew over our heads toward the mountains, where the mist was densest. I figured it had chosen a place near the Papaya Creek basin, and was flying along the flickering green mossy river valley toward the place where the clouds rose thicker and higher. I stood holding my son’s hand, facing the extreme vastness of the mountains, and thought of how that bird, which had flown from the sea, was now passing over the southern foot of Mount Baiye, and if it had the stamina to continue, it would soon pass through the morning light cascading over the crags of Mount Tianchang and Mount Tuzhou and even through the glow of the setting sun over and the contrasting light and shadow on Great Tailuge Mountain, and the brilliant layers of lofty rocky mountain peaks, arriving at Mount Qilai, where the banners of the sun, moon, and stars are so resplendent.

JUVENILIA

The Wind Goes Back A sad whistling, unnatural in the extreme made by the leaves, and the lamplight trembles anemically. The wind seriously considers going back The evening slowly fades. The morning light smiles and raises the gauze skirt of the earth. The wind thinks hard about going back The ˉreˊy’s glow in the corner is stealthily lit. The wind thinks hard about going back ( 1956 )

8:13 p.m. A blind man waits for me at the wharf; the stars are getting depressed at the bottom of the sea. At this moment the streets don’t face the tolling bell—the man who tolls the bell ages Ah, lilies, someone waves Looming, who casts a shadow in my heart?

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

Someone sits under the persimmon tree for ages What is she thinking? Getting depressed. At this moment, you wave too The stars are at the bottom of the sea The stars grow thin ( M AY 1956 )

When July Came When July came, I thought thought July would rush into my arms while embracing a song. Or I would mold a shape for a smile (forever and ever), Or I would pray in silence for a dead goldˉsh. When July came, I thought, thought of my swaying as I neared a cliff, thought of the bird cooing as you walked on the bridge, thought of the beautiful ˊowing water as you leaned on the rail. ( J U N E 1956 )

Starry Night Outside the bamboo fence, we talked of seasonal rain, deep shade under the trees. Ah, see the stars assembled in the west! Then we picked up so many crowded promises and so much laughing talk .b.b. Leaning in the door, I guessed. Gently opened was a pack of fallen stars. —Orion furiously raised a dagger, having lost his bow, the stone steps of the observatory were covered with remnants of moss, itbwas cold

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

Throwing black coats over our shoulders, we followed the ˉreˊy’s road The hunter hurriedly crossed the southern mountains, leaving fox fur all over the ground. How incredible! I saw the Big Bear’s nose and Leo’s tail fall down, not only that, I wrapped them up, stepped over the railing— stepped over the railing, seizing night’s halo, paced leisurely. Look far into the distance— The distance! The wind ceased! Pale yellow Cassiopeia in the vastness Ah, we couldn’t ˉgure out how much rain fell as September gave way to October, but, ah, we saw the stars assembled in the west. ( N O V E M B E R 1957 )

The Vermilion Bird 1 Facing south at night, parting the willow branches on the banks of the Milky Way, I pointed to her, shining with a dim color. The ˊowers were ˉnished blooming, the leaves withered, that day the willow ˊoss drifted like rain .b.b. Although the birds were roosting and the ghosts and goblins perching, I parted the willow branches on the banks of Milky Way, facing south, looking for the Vermilion Bird in the sky. Was the scarlet bird dead? The sweet peas cared only for weeping, shedding their tears in my poetry. Was the Vermilion Bird dead? Tonight, the south is lonely. 2 I wandered to the north, in the ice,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

tears took shape. Ah, a star, that was the Vermilion Bird. The Vermilion Bird was dead— the Vermilion Bird died, and carried away the mystery of night. I parted the willow branches on the banks of Milky Way, facing south looking for Vermilion Bird in the sky. ( N O V E M B E R 1957 )

Sugarcane Flowers It’s harvest season! You said the sugarcane ˊowers had turned white. I took my book of poetry and a twig of red leaves to visit you. I knew the sugarcane ˊowers had turned white, the hedge yellow, and the persimmons overripe. Standing under the eaves, we argued about the salt content of the soil. You said your spotted dog had died, died in the sugarcane ˉeld, you scattered sugarcane ˊowers and erected a small cross for him. Therefore, the memory went far, like the setting moon, like frost ˉlling the sky. The sun was still warm this month, grain, books, and my letters all dried in the square, a blossoming cactus sat on the windowsill. You said there was nary a jin of wine to buy in the village; I was already drunk. Late one night, you suffered from insomnia, because you pulled open the curtains and saw sugarcane ˊowers white in the moonlight. ( D E C E M B E R 1957 )

Evening Tide Shut the wind, the stars, and the sound of waves outside the window, then, open old, old Luke

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

read of Christ, read of an exhausted donkey, read of columns and moss .b.b. Tonight is the time of the traveler’s return: See the anxious musical instrument salesman on the road and his sad and beautiful beard; see a Spring Festival couplet hung at the door of the inn and shop assistants repairing the stable; see the workers drive wooden stakes laughing occasionally and bantering, as they exchange stupid things like monkey ˉsts. ( F E B R U A R Y 1958 )

Concluding Remarks A small room, a cat Often a cold wind blows and a cold rain falls outside A wisp of black cloud on the wall, it’s the cat who consumes my coffee She too has aged, often thinking of the copper bell of her youth ( J U LY 1958 )

Downstairs I press the confused theory of Dalton close to my chest —happy Dalton I press the remaining formulas, quadratic trinomial factorization, close to my chest The distance— with each level, life descends lower and lower stooping to look down, how deep the valley! Watch, the luxuriant grass growing over the plain assails my eyes: a mole Alas, I send a message by word of mouth to you beyond the Great Wall.

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

Loneliness belongs to you ( O C T O B E R 1958 )

Your Face Once the strange shadow was discarded And lingered for a long, long time. On the ˉrst day of the next lunar month, who will drink with me? A siskin ˊew to the west, the wind pressed the small building I listened to the fading footsteps several times Ah, Julie In the pupils of a sleepwalking woman in the frills of her purple robe in the light of seven short candles I know, walking to the right, seventy meters ahead Ah, Julie ( J A N U A R Y 1959 )

SECRET

At the time I was preparing to leave, leave this series of lofty peaks reflected in the deep waters of the vast blue sea, the whole supporting an inexhaustible and complicated fairyland, in which fairies could be seen crossing paths as they flew through the pristine air day and night, each one dragging around his or her brief worries, passing through high above with the pure light of the stars as background, glimmering as if there were something they were entrusted with, some sparkle or movement that they didn’t have enough time to express. There were moments I lost sight of them as they flew, but at least I could hear their voices coming from many quarters, subtle and containing the flowery fragrance of banana magnolia, perhaps from the throats of the lingering fairies (I mean to say they were singing to each other) or from the eyes of the stars that never stop blinking. This indicates that it was summer when I was preparing to leave. The blue mountains were an abundant manifestation of life, many-layered by nature, stretching in an unbroken chain north and south. Actually, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about leaving; instead, the moment the fi rst light of morning fell across the awakening peaks, I leaned out my window to look, shouting with joy within. They looked down, their foreheads covered with dew, gently touching my shy, young, and tender brow, nose, and chin. At that instant I fear I felt the transparent morning light penetrate the silent streets and lanes, forcing open the buds of the cockscomb flowers early and sending a surge through the huge dark-green leaves of the breadfruit trees, streaming into the rear courtyard of every home, shining on the slightly sweating pumps and cisterns. I heard the peaceful sound of the sea beyond the scattered houses a short distance away, and beyond the grass still farther away and even farther beyond the desolate sand and gravel, as she extended her loving and exploring arms and with her snow-white fingers

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

patiently caressed this shining land of ours while pouring out her heart without complaint. Even if I didn’t hear her most of the time, her abandoned but purposeful voice reminding me to think of her, persistently in her single-minded voice, which I sometimes mistook as weak and felt a little guilty about. The volume of her voice changed with the time and tide, which corresponded to the width and brightness of the halo of the moon, determined by the rule of the cycle of life and death in this inexhaustible and complicated fairyland. However, because I was preparing to leave, I’m afraid my senses were ten times more sensitive than normal, and my senses of sight and hearing were extremely acute. Not only could I see and hear the particles and sounds floating in the air that were beyond the ken of most people, I was also constantly aware of the common and extraordinary things from the past long overlooked by others. With all the energy my mind could muster, I willfully sought some perhaps forgotten images and tidings of reality by exerting my memory at any given moment. And the reason, the clearest reason, was that I knew that if I chose the end of summer to leave, I could still return home after one autumn and part of the winter, but who could be certain? I had a premonition that my not being able to bear leaving would be the clue to the countless and repeated partings in my life, something that would never cease and always possess the same sadness—at first, this time for example, the sadness resembled a clear tear, squeezed out—but I did not know whether the sadness was true or false. Later it became more real, until one day I discovered it transcended the real, having instead become mundane and vaguely nonexistent so many years after it first occurred. However, I wanted to clearly recall all of it to remind myself that when the scorching sun was making its prescribed journey over the vast ocean—how it shone on that limitless sapphire blue, and the denizens of the deep and the tirelessly singing corals—and the rising land and mountain ranges, surfing ahead, at all times driving wandering spirits, leaping in the tumultuous air, riding on blinding and deafening beams of golden light, like a fairy child riding a dolphin in the stories and pictures of myth, sculpture and carving, and music and dance. It was that summer that I indulged my antennae without holding back. My perceptions were more acute than those of anyone else my age, that ability to constantly explore with zest set my famished soul off in pursuit, overcoming any obstacle to enter into, collect,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

and classify. I deeply feared that one day I might forget the memories I’d started to accumulate from the cradle, because I decided I needed them if I hoped to think, imagine, and behave differently from other people in the unforeseeable future. Good-bye, I said, facing the sea. I felt the breeze penetrate the scorching air and caress the sleeping town, and how it licked my sweaty forehead. Good-bye, I said, facing the solid, unbroken chain of mountain peaks, the silent recipients of my affection, and the transparent forests surging high up. On those scorching days with the humidity approaching zero, perhaps the days of high summer were already past and the sun showed fatigue, a fire-red round eye attempting to shine toward a slight bluish-gray patch amid the four quadrants of the universe. Good-bye, I said, looking up at the clear and countable trees, crags, waterfalls in the transparent air. And they seemed to say ever so faintly to me: Good-bye, you are our secret. Then I chose a path along the river into the countryside with few farmhouses, to the foot of an unfamiliar mountain, the source of two rivers. The path ended and I pushed my bike down the riverbank, walking slowly in the shallow water, the rubber tires sliding over the flat white riverbank, leaving two fine and beautiful tracks that suddenly came together and parted, the fine grains of sand sticking to them washed clean in the river water. The outstretched limbs of a heavy, drooping tree made a canopy over the riverbed, the remaining light shone on the burgeoning silver grass up ahead. I laid my bike on a pile of round stones in the shade of the tree and sat alone with my shoed feet in the water, and sensed a leaping stimulation, uncertain if it was from the speed of the flowing water or the broken sunlight. I lay down, the back of my head and my spine against the round stones piled in disorder, my feet still in the water and the sweat nearly dried from my face and neck; my calves near the finer stones near the water’s edge could feel their coolness. I closed my eyes, my eyes were unable to fight the dark glimmer that lingered in my vision. I knew the sun was moving and the afternoon breeze blew, moving the green tree leaves fi ltering down countless golden dots of light to scatter across my face. It was the sunlight, not the water, another kind of leaping stimulation, though I smelled a faint fragrance wafting and floating across the surface of the water—it was ginger. Or perhaps changing direction, where the stream sped downhill and at the spot where the riverbed widened, right where it left the mountain,

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

I turned left and headed south, my bike flying down the blue-green mountain; I could hear the wind rushing at me and its breath, as if it wished to speak to me. I rode past one village after another, the familiar atmosphere I had known since childhood and preserved deep in the memory of the senses, even though at the time I didn’t know how to concretely describe it, but I could distinguish and recognize it, regardless of when it appeared, day or night or amid excitement or fatigue. But I finally found a way to capture and describe it after another thirty years through the use of metaphor and symbol. It might be a leaf, blade of grass, unknown flower, or the trace left by a bird flying through the air or the dust raised by a jumping rabbit. Wasn’t it the joy of the betel palm growing tall, of the dew accumulated overnight on the tips of banana leaves, of the hardship of the bamboo shoots moving to break through the earth, and of the voice of a young water buffalo calf calling to its mother? It was optimistic and had a bold savor, free from planning and considering. I decided it was so pure, upright, simple, open, crying or laughing madly to its heart’s content. Sometimes, for some unknown reason, as in an ordinary atmosphere, shame, fear, fatigue, and laziness appeared, that sort of helpless search for a dim light in the empty darkness, that usual reliance on the teachings of legend and totems, unspeakable taboos and worries. That smell possessed an ancient faith and absolute courage, anger close to violence, unlimited tenderness, love, and sympathy; it possessed a predestined color and was like music, a baby’s fi rst cry, the song of a loafer, a poem in praise of a new bride, or the moan of a dying warrior. In this way, I once bid farewell to Mount Xiuguluan, keeping it firmly in mind, but now it is time for me to say good-bye to you. So I passed through a stretch of wasteland of small withered trees and shrubs and reed stalks, the sediment and gravel slowly cut by the river, the muddy, moss-covered boulders scorched by the fiery sun. It was here, as expected, where, after passing a dozen town streets, the river was exhausted and spiritless, and submerged into the barren sand and gravel after being alienated by the ocean breeze and salt water, trying hard to keep flowing, and finally, in some other likeness, entered the sea, unrecognizable. I wound around a wooden raft cloaked in a ragged, tattered sail and some abandoned fishing nets. Looking up, I saw the vast blue sea ahead. At that time, the sun had just started its westward descent toward the mountains behind me, and just begun its regular seasonal trek as summer turned to

 L o n g Ag o , W h e n We S t ar t e d

autumn. My shadow fell at my toes, short and thin. The sea was a mixture of blue and green, close to the color of hard jadeite, but as I fi xed my eyes on her rolling motion I found it gently hypnotic, like layers of feathers or a thick pile of wool that made a person feel like sleeping. Oh, sea, my eternal dream, every inch reflected the illusions that have steadily increased since my childhood, tossing, floating, and sinking, pure fabrication dissolving in the abundant and enduring mass. The undoubted reality drew me and prompted me, regardless of how I was forced by inner and outer compulsion to search for the light and the heat, my thoughts and imagination, truth and beauty, as well as for love and affirmation; in the end, she would be the final development of my life’s work. In her vastness and depths that cannot be broken down, under her secret examination, my rights and wrongs would become absolutely transparent, and perhaps I would attain some modicum of wisdom, lashed by the overbearing world of man, and thereby experience great happiness as I grew older. Perhaps I would discover that I owned nothing in the world. Good-bye, I said, you are my secret.