by Xiaolu Guo
As long as it is not too crowded. When I thought of what you said, an image of the Swiss landscape entered my mind. Or a postcard with Stockholm Palace above blue water. I didn’t think what you said was true, though. India and China are very crowded, and don’t these countries bring promise and happiness to their people?
Your aunt, who was your mother’s older sister, had retired from city life with her husband. She opened the house for us, a few old fat cats following behind. Your uncle had a loud and jolly voice. He was suntanned, wrinkly but healthy-looking. I imagined he didn’t have arthritis or rheumatism like us folk from wet lands.
Inside, the house had a stale and musty smell. The stink of cat urine. The carpets were as old as your uncle, with dark brown stains here and there. There were quite a few rooms in this house, but each was cramped with old books and damp boxes and cracked furniture. They showed us our room – another dark room with a very old sunken mattress. I thought the dark and staleness inside made up for what was outside – the sunny, dry wildness. God knew about irony. God might be from Australia too.
Nostalgic about England
– Are you nostalgic about England yet?
– Not yet. I am still looking for my Fernweh.
The rainstorm arrived in the afternoon, after a very hot noon. The raindrops formed a wet curtain, sweeping across the island. The old gum trees, the mangroves, the yachts by the beach, as well as everything else on the island, were under a sudden attack of green-blue torrential rain. From the house, we could see some children still swimming in the bay, with their colourful swimsuits. They were called back by their parents. Within minutes, the beach was empty.
The storm didn’t move away. It stayed for hours on end, wrapped around the island like a great amorphous animal, squatting over us. I was not unfamiliar with rainstorms. I had known such heavy rains from my childhood. But not at this time of year – in the middle of November! This was the southern hemisphere – we were upside down. In the night, raindrops leaked through the windows. They came down where our bed was. I sat up, waking you and switching on the light. I thought, no wonder the house smells so musty and damp. It leaks. And then I heard another strong blast of wind. Everything was rustling madly. The gum trees in front of the window swung back and forth and it looked like the trunk was going to snap. Your uncle got up. He switched on the light and went to the front door to check something.
In the midst of the wind and rain, we couldn’t hear the seagulls. There was no human voice on Coochiemudlo, not even a dog barking. Only the waves, the rain and the wind.
The next day, the wind had ceased and the sky was once more dry and blue. There they were, your uncle and aunt, moving their old skeletons in the house and outside in the garden. I watched you making a list of things you wanted to buy for them: batteries, fruit, vegetables and meat, toilet paper, and so on and so forth. To go shopping on the mainland, we had to wait for the ferry which came only once every two hours. I walked to the beach, and stared at the sea with some stale bread in my hand. Yes, the ocean out there is boundless, but humans don’t really belong to the ocean. Humans belong to the land. Land only.
‘Last night the storm caused a power cut, and destroyed the converter, so now we can’t use computers or any of the main lights,’ your uncle said. ‘I hope you’ll get used to the loud generator in the back, I have to switch it on now.’ His face broke into crackling laughter.
The generator was switched on. No more sounds of waves or wind. Only the drone of a whirring machine and the stink of oil.
‘We’ve been travelling for a while. Sydney and Melbourne were nice, but now we’re marooned on this island. Are you nostalgic about England yet?’ you asked.
‘Not yet. I am still looking for my Fernweh,’ I said.
‘In this case, I would say you’re looking for your Heimweh, your Sehnsucht,’ you corrected me. ‘Your longings, or your desire, if you like.’
Aussie Salute
– Have you heard of the great Aussie Salute?
– What is that?
– It’s this: you wave your hands to scare away the flies!
All the romantic stories are flawed. Or if there was ever a romantic one, it would come to an end. Since we arrived on this island a few days ago, you had told me some affectionate and beautiful stories about your aunt and your uncle, and how they had travelled the world on their sailing boat. Now, in this musty crumbling house, one of your cousins came to visit. Robert, but your uncle called him Robbo. ‘How you, mate?’ – that was Robbo’s greeting to me. I nodded, but didn’t feel I was his mate yet. Robbo liked barbies. He threw a chunk of frozen kangaroo meat on the fire, while you prepared some salad. Bottles of Victoria Bitter (a big local brand) were bought from the shop, and you even managed to repair the old dusty stereo to play an LP version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When the meat was cooked, a seemingly very local conversation began. ‘A cold one!’ ‘Deffo! I’m going for a ciggy!’ ‘It’s for your brekky tomorrow!’
I tried a piece of kangaroo meat. It tasted like the buffalo meat I ate back in China.
Then you asked me: ‘Have you heard of the great Aussie Salute?’
‘What is that?’
‘It’s this: you wave your hands to scare away the flies!’ You waved your hand, chasing away the cloud of flies over the meat.
I too did some Aussie saluting, and at the same time, heard more jolly good old Aussie slang. I thought, this is a light-hearted family, relaxed and easy-going. But in no time the family was arguing about money. The old couple said they had no money and Robbo was angry. The atmosphere grew heavy. You listened to their conversation patiently, without commenting. I stood up, throwing some meaty bones to the cats. I thought, luckily they are not your parents. And you are not the person asking for money. But perhaps this was just a rehearsal for me?
Leaving the fly-infested table, with kangaroo meat in my stomach, I climbed onto the slightly damp bed to read my book. Zorba the Greek. That was another sunny land I would like to be in. Maybe one should always dream of sunny lands but never be in them.
A Wide-screen TV
– The sea in front of them might as well be the sea on a wide-screen TV.
– Well, not quite. The beach is sacred for Australians. It is only a TV screen for you because you have little connection with this sea. But it’s different for them.
We were on a train, then on a bus, and then in a car, passing through Queensland and heading towards New South Wales. Vast land. Vast emptiness with bright sunshine on deep green trees. So strange, the name of every town here came from England, even the street names: Queen Street, Adelaide Street and Richmond Road. Colonial identity was fully present. Even though this identity was artificial – this sunny dry land had little to do with the rainy cold country called Great Britain. Did they not want to escape from the old Empire? Instead, they tried to bring it with them.
The Gold Coast is a newly developed tourist town, implanted in what was once a desert by the beach. Fast food, cheap-looking holiday apartments, endless freeways, amusement parks, even the ocean looked plastic here. A great celebration of banality. A complete exploitation of wild nature.
‘Don’t the developers consult landscape architects before they put up those tacky amusements parks right next to the sea?’ I asked, as if this awful industrialised seascape was your fault. ‘Is it not the job of a landscape architect?’
You shrugged and simply said:
‘The local government and the developers would always choose the cheapest and most profitable proposal amongst all.’
Standing by the ocean, I told myself to face the sea only, and never turn around to the sight of McDonald’s and the ugly motels. Perhaps people here were used to the surroundings. They were lying in the sand, bathing in bikinis, drinking from cans.
‘The sea in front of them might as well be the sea on a wide-screen TV.’
/> ‘Well, not quite,’ you disagreed. ‘The beach is sacred for Australians. It is only a TV screen for you because you have little connection with this sea. But it’s different for them.’ Then you added: ‘They do all sorts of things by the sea: camping, barbecues, swimming, surfing, making bonfires, singing.’
Singing? I looked at you. Were you being serious? You mean someone like Nick Cave? But didn’t he move to England a long time ago?
We left the Gold Coast with a hollow feeling in our hearts, and headed to the next destination: Tweed Heads, and then to Kingscliff, then Hastings Point and Suffolk Park. McDonald’s, KFC and petrol stations had taken over the horizon. Strange, where were my mango trees and giant bats? Where were the magic and the mysterious nights from years ago when I was travelling alone and looking for home?
The romantic island no longer exists.
I remember the feeling of looking at ancient Chinese ink paintings when I was still a schoolgirl, and how beautiful the landscape depicted in those images seemed to be. And how I would spend time looking for hills and rocks and bridges which resembled what I had seen in those paintings by the old masters. But the painted landscapes were never to be found, or never came alive in front of my eyes. Where were they? Either they had never existed and were just inventions in the minds of the artists, or they had been destroyed by those who came later, people who were in love with new technologies and man-made nature.
无我 – Wu-wo
– What do you mean by wu-wo?
– It’s like no self. No I. Non-existence. My body is here, but I don’t feel I am here, right now. I don’t feel my existence in this environment.
Through the foliage of the pine woods, we were looking towards Mount Wellington. A deep sense of wu-wo rose.
‘What do you mean by wu-wo?’ you asked.
‘It’s like no self. No I. Non-existence,’ I answered. ‘My body is here, but I don’t feel I am here, right now. I don’t feel my existence in this environment.’
How could I explain this feeling to you? I was not a subject in these surroundings, even though I was able to sense the feelings of no self. If you asked an old Chinese sage about wu-wo, he would probably say it’s the state of human and nature being at one. They have merged with each other. It means the positive disappearance of the individual self, the sage might have added. But here, facing the direction of the South Pole, I was not sure that this wu-wo was a positive feeling. I missed the human world and the warmth and chaos it had generated. If we died here, no one would ever notice our death.
But this feeling of non-existence was soon swept away by a nasty reality. We woke up one hot morning and discovered we had been attacked by bedbugs in the night. The bedbugs in the hostel had almost eaten me to a real wu-wo, a non-existence. My neck was red and swollen with small bubbles, my arms and legs too. I thought only old rotten cities like London or Paris or New York hosted these parasites, but here, under the purest sky and cleanest air, the army of bedbugs was the strongest and fiercest.
We drove away from the city, and came to the area where the South Pacific Ocean and untouched beach were the only visual elements. We rented a beach house. We made love. Food. We needed food. In a nearby town, we bought a giant calamari, almost half a metre long. We brought back the huge creature, and cooked it on a small stove with salt only. We chewed the half-roasted calamari. Both of us didn’t speak much. We seemed to have lost language in this place, or lost any desire to use it. Or perhaps in this place language had lost its meaning. And I was not sure if I liked or disliked this feeling.
In the evening, someone was playing a ukulele on the beach. The tune was slightly broken, but with a bit of the Japanese style. The sound dissolved in the ethereal air above the waves. The moon was full. The tide was rising, as if it were going to reach the silver sphere. Then the waves reached us, sweeping the mossy rocks under our wooden house. I thought of England, and then China. So far away.
‘Do you miss Europe now?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think so,’ you answered. ‘I miss the culture.’
I nodded in agreement.
It was time to leave. I missed the big grey dirty urban city with human interactions, and those dimly lit bars and cafes where I could eat through my money as well as chew on my occasionally heavy thoughts.
SIX
上
UP
Lifeless
– Why do you think home is lifeless?
– I don’t think home is lifeless. This boat’s our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional set-up is lifeless!
We finally landed. My body still held the heat from the southern hemisphere but English snow fell as soon as we stepped out of the plane. Yes, snow, come! I yelled in my heart, looking up at the sky and feeling energised by the cold. But the white flakes didn’t come down as much as I hoped. We had a lengthy wait at passport control, as the immigration officer asked endless questions about my UK visa and scrutinised each page of my passport. When we left the airport, the snow drifted away. There was only sad wet sludge on the ground.
Returning to England was a peculiar feeling. Sitting on the Heathrow Express and gazing out, the small squat Victorian houses behind winter hedges seemed to mirror my grey mood. I wondered how strongly an urban landscape could shape people’s spirit. Was this the land I had missed, and wanted to return to when I was in Australia? I thought about the criticisms I made when I was on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Maybe I was spoiled by the sun. Light is the primary thing in life, I now realised. And culture might be secondary.
The cross-continental travel was only a distraction from the everyday problems we had in London. The boating lifestyle made many simple things impossible. With your eco-friendly solar energy system, which I hated, I had to fight to get my camera charged along with my editing machines. There was not enough power. Then there were bigger issues. Would we live here forever? Would we raise children on this boat? How would we take them to school if we had to move our boat to get legal moorings every few weeks? How would we cope with drunken neighbours on the next boat and always having to pick up broken bottles the next morning?
We had discussed these problems. And I wanted to find a flat again.
‘Even swallows choose not to nest on the roof of a boat. You know that?’ I put two bowls of instant noodle soup on the table and sat down. ‘Yes, even birds prefer to make a home on stable structures. They make their homes in solid trees or under bridges. But never on a moving object! I am the same. I want to have a solid home in a solid place.’
You shrugged. You were not interested in the idea of abandoning boat life.
‘We will have the same problems with a flat. Bad neighbours, less outdoor life, and more bills to pay.’
‘But at least I wouldn’t need to worry about the battery all day long, or whether I can poo or not when there’s no water in the tank.’
You didn’t respond. But a bit later you remarked:
‘Living in a flat in this country makes me feel claustrophobic.’
‘Claustrophobic? I didn’t know you felt that bad!’
I pondered this word claustrophobic. I hadn’t heard this word before I left China. We didn’t have the same word or even concept. I didn’t know how to spell it. In my ears it sounded like closed-for-peek. But now if I checked the Chinese dictionary, the word would be listed there and translated into you bi zheng – ‘the disease of fearing enclosed spaces’.
‘But we can find a nice home with a balcony or a garden. Or at least a place with huge windows.’ I tried to persuade you.
‘You just want to have a comfortable domestic space.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Well, there’s no challenge in it! There’s no life in that kind of space!’
‘Why is there no life? Why do you think home is lifeless?’
‘I don’t think home is lif
eless. This boat’s our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional set-up is lifeless!’
I stopped and thought about what you said. Then I suggested:
‘But we need a stable address, don’t you think? This is not sustainable.’
‘This is very sustainable. It’s your mind that’s not sustainable.’ You went out onto the deck, leaving the door open and letting the cold wind into the boat.
The next few days we continued with the same arguments. I began staying away from the boat. I would stay in a breakfast cafe for hours just to avoid the dreary cooking on the boat with limited gas supplies. Or I stayed inside the British Library. I only came back in the evenings. I would arrive with some cheap takeaway, often soggy rice soaked in oily sauce. And you would just eat a plate of salad, barely washed, straight out of a Tesco shopping bag.
Monolingual
– I’m monolingual.
– You can’t say you’re monolingual.
– But I really feel I am. Whether I speak English or Chinese.
New Year’s Eve played out against a background of lilting music with some of your colleagues in their house all the way down in south London. I didn’t know them well, nor did I drink any alcohol. I felt desolate and just wanted to go home. With the distant sound of fireworks exploding under the English sky, 2018 arrived. ‘Happy New Year!’ Everyone hugged each other with zeal and conviction in their voice. I felt I was unable to participate in this ritual. Why Happy New Year? A new year was nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness. The time wheel turned forward persistently, without caring about us at all. I had only one more year left on my visa. And after the Dog Year of 2018, where would I go?
While I was waiting for you on a sofa in the corner, you were in your drinking and talking mood. You were deep in conversation with some German friends, moving quickly between English and German. I could not follow at all. I heard each word you spoke but I didn’t understand any of it.
