Leaving Mother Lake

by Yang Erche Namu

  The showers were in an outhouse across the street — another brick building, dank and black, with slimy walls glumly lit by a single electric bulb hanging from the low ceiling. On the wall nearest the entrance were a series of hooks with clothes and towels hanging, and only a few feet from those, women were standing on slippery wooden slats, scrubbing themselves under some metal pipes that spouted a jet of hot water when you aligned a little handle in the direction of the tubing. Ah! Turning that little handle was the most beautiful experience! At home, we were at least two days’ walk away from the hot springs in Yongning, so we washed ourselves out of the enamel basin, or else we bathed in the cold water of the lake. And now we had not washed for days. The water ran deliciously hot and black off our bodies and our hair. We stayed in the shower room, soaping ourselves over and over under the steaming warm water, for such a long time that when we came out, squeaky clean, having forgotten all about the car ride and looking magnificent in our Moso costumes, the sun was beginning to set.

  Yisso was waiting for us in the yard, sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette. “Did you enjoy yourselves in there?” he asked, laughing.

  “Yes, we did! We really enjoyed ourselves!” we answered in one voice, laughing back.

  “Do you want to go for a stroll in the streets before dinner?”

  “Yes! Yes! We do!”

  And on Yisso’s instructions, we ran to the guest house to give our dirty clothes to the service woman and ran straight out again, laughing with joy and entirely amazed at the fact that someone we didn’t even know was going to wash our clothes.

  Everything to us was so new, wonderful, astonishing — from the electrical switch that lit the neon tube in the middle of the ceiling in our bedroom, which we turned on and off over and over, to the soft wheezing of the bicycles, the din of the trucks and tractors on the street, and the people bullying each other. It was not as though we were entirely ignorant of the world, but what we knew, we had pictured in imagination, we had learned by hearsay, through others’ stories — some of them tall stories, as we had found out when we had touched the “oil road.” And now that we were touching and smelling and hearing and seeing for ourselves, we were not only setting things right in our own minds but discovering other things we knew nothing about, like bedsheets and hot showers and, almost as soon as we had stepped outside for our first stroll in the city, toilets. In Zuosuo we didn’t have toilets. But here, in the city, there were no fields to go to and no dogs or pigs to clean up after you. Instead there were concrete blocks where you had to squat hurriedly over a narrow slit in the floor between two low walls, closing your nose to the stench and your eyes to the pit below, and then you rushed outside, back into the strangely acrid city air, and then the wonderful streets and the shops, lit magically by naked electric bulbs, where you could buy everything you’d ever dreamed of owning and at least as many things none of us could even identify — shops not built of rough planking with a countertop for you to lean on but brick buildings with concrete floors, with wide-open entrances where you could walk all the way in. And there were so many people, and all of them strangers. Nationality people in colorful dress, and Han people; Han women who did not wear turbans or caps on their heads or braided hair but wore their hair cut short, just below their ears. “Are you sure they’re women?” “Yes, look, they’re wearing those little stick shoes!”

  “And what about them?”

  Outside a shop, there were two young Han women whose curly hair made me think of the sheep the Yi herded in the high mountains. They were sucking on pink sticks.

  “It’s ice cream,” one said in Chinese.

  Icecreem, we repeated. Icecreem. What’s icecreem? She tried to explain but there was no point. So she walked into the shop and returned with three sticks.

  I loved the ice cream so much I did not bother licking but chewed on it instead and ate the whole thing in no time. Then I chewed on the wooden stick while I watched my girlfriends lick theirs, and then lick the sweet melted goo off their fingers, and I thought of how my little brothers and Jiama would love this ice cream.

  When we got back to the guest house, the dining room had been set up with twenty or so big round tables and was brightly lit by fake brass chandeliers. It was filled with people all dressed in colorful ethnic costumes. Latsoma, who prided herself on her knowledge of ethnic dress, identified the Tibetans, Naxi, Yi, Pumi, Miao, and Lisu, and Yisso pointed out the Bai, Dai, Zhuang, and Hani. All these people had come to Yanyuan to take part in the singing contest. Some were already seated, and others were moving between the tables looking for their friends. I spotted a few faces we had passed in the corridor, and also Mr. Li and his colleagues, who were looking very clean and were waiting for us at our designated table.

  “So, you’re feeling better? I heard you got very carsick,” Mr. Li said as he took out a little brown bottle from his pocket and emptied a few pills into his hands to hand over to us. It was traditional Chinese medicine, he explained. “Something to clear your throat and energize your qi.”

  We swallowed the pills and then drank some tea that tasted like hot water to us. But if we could not help wishing for our butter tea, the food was splendid. We had never seen such a variety of dishes. The rice especially was so white and fluffy.

  Mr. Li explained that Chinese rice was steamed, not boiled like our rice, and that was why it was so sweet. “Good food?” he asked, turning to me directly, perhaps impressed by my gluttony.

  “Yes, very good food,” I answered him in Chinese. And I dished myself a fourth helping of rice.

  “Very good,” Mr. Li continued. “You need to eat well and get a good rest so you can be strong and practice tomorrow.”

  “Practice, what for?” Zhatsonamu asked. “All we have to do is sing!”

  Yisso translated and Mr. Li laughed out loud. “Well, at least you can make the most of a good night’s sleep, don’t you think?” He paused for a while, still smiling, and again addressing me directly, he said, “Do you like your room, Namu?”

  “Yes, the bed is very comfortable, thank you,” I answered him, once more using Chinese and feeling very proud of myself for doing so.

  “Good, good,” Mr. Li said, and he picked up a little piece of meat with his chopsticks.

  Zhatsonamu turned to Yisso. “Can you ask him why the bedrooms have no fireplaces?”

  “Oh, yes, ask him! Ask him how people light their fires at night!” Latsoma giggled.

  Of course, Yisso knew what they meant — that it was hard to imagine yourself whispering to your lover under the bleary light of the neon tubing. He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not asking him that.”

  “Come on, Yisso, ask him!” Latsoma put on her prettiest smile.

  So Yisso asked Mr. Li, who answered matter-of-factly: “It’s difficult to get wood in the city.” And when we burst out laughing, he continued in earnest, “Besides, if you were to light a fire in these rooms, everything would turn black and you’d suffocate.”

  Even without a fire, my girlfriends slept very well that night. It was so good not to sleep on the floor and not to be bothered by fleas. The beds were so comfortable, and the sheets and the covers smelled like the soap we had used in the shower.

  THE NIGHT OF THE SINGING CONTEST , Mr. Li said, “Don’t be nervous. Everything will be fine. There’s no need to be afraid.” We laughed, of course. We were not afraid, we were going to sing! What was there to be nervous about? But Mr. Li looked nervous. He wiped his face with his handkerchief, and he told us over and over as he led us through the big function room to the backstage area that when the hostess called our names, all we needed to do was walk to the middle of the stage.

  We were the first to be called. And when I stepped onto the stage, I understood what Mr. Li was worried about. It was easy enough to answer to my name, but I took only a few steps before I was blinded by the stage lights and all I could do was stop and wait for the hostess to take me by the hand and lead me to where my girlfriends were stand
ing, their eyes blinking and their faces glowing in unearthly fashion. Gradually I began to make out the faces in the darkened audience before us, and my heart missed a beat. It was the first time in my life that I was going to sing in front of people I did not know, and there were so many of them. And I was afraid.

  When the clapping had quieted, the hostess introduced us as “three Moso girls from the Country of Daughters,” and we sang and the audience clapped again. And we could tell by the clapping that the people had loved our song. I turned around and looked for Mr. Li, who was standing behind the curtain, a big smile on his face. He nodded for us to sing again, and we sang another song, and again the audience loved it. We were about to begin a third song, but the hostess walked up to us and congratulated us and ushered us out. For the rest of the evening, we sat in the wings listening to the other nationality people, some of them performing with a full orchestra, their songs as varied and colorful as their costumes. I was entranced. I had never imagined that the world was filled with so many songs.

  The hostess broke the spell, thanking the performers and telling the audience that the music was over — it was time to announce the prizes. Mr. Li then walked up on the stage and said something, and before we had time to ask Yisso to translate, we had been called and pushed up on the stage toward him, and we were shaking hands and smiling back. The hostess, also smiling, handed each of us a red diploma and a red envelope. Meanwhile, the audience had stood up, applauding us. My girlfriends waved and bowed and made toward the back of the stage, and the hostess gently pushed me in their direction. I didn’t want to leave just yet. These strangers could not get enough of me.

  Next day, when we walked in the streets, people we did not know called out to us and smiled at us. Zhatsonamu and Latsoma hardly seemed to notice. When we had opened our red envelopes, we had discovered that they each contained fifty yuan. We had never seen so much money, and my girlfriends were so excited they could not wait to spend it on gifts for their mothers and their boyfriends. In those days you could buy a lot of things with fifty yuan. For my part, although I was very happy with the money, I especially loved being famous, and I could think of only one thing: I want to see more of the world.

  My wish was granted that same afternoon when Mr. Li and Yisso came into our room to announce that we were not going back to Zuosuo as planned. Mr. Li had enrolled us in another contest in Xichang — eight hours away by car, and we had to leave early the next morning. My girlfriends sat back on their beds, almost in tears. I was overjoyed.

  Xichang is a much bigger city than Yanyuan. The tallest building in Yanyuan had four stories, the tallest building in Xichang had twelve. The hotel in Xichang also had a red carpet and toilets on the floors that flushed most of the time. The morning after we arrived, Mr. Li took us on a tour of the city and said, “Now I’m going to show you the railway station and a train.” And gazing at the giant centipede, it occurred to me that the farther away from Zuosuo we traveled, the more marvelous the cities became. . . . I would love to ride in this train.

  Back at the hotel, the TV people were waiting for us. They were carrying a thing on a stick and what we assumed was a big tape recorder. “It’s a video camera,” the cameraman said. “And that’s a microphone,” he added, pointing at the thing on the stick. Then he pointed at the glass box in our bedroom. “And that’s the TV” — and that annoyed us a bit because we had already worked it out for ourselves and learned to switch it on and off.

  When the TV people were done with making us sing and dance and laugh in front of the video camera, the cameraman hooked his machine into the back of the television and turned on the screen. There was a little explosion, and our faces suddenly lit up on the screen. Awestruck, we watched ourselves laughing and singing and smiling on the television. We looked at ourselves inside the TV and then we looked at each other inside the room, and then again we looked at ourselves in the TV. I thought we were so pretty. But on seeing how the TV had captured her face and her songs and her laughter, Latsoma said: “Can this thing steal our souls?”

  At the Center of the World

  In Xichang we won first prize again. But this time we did not get any money, although Xichang was a much bigger city than Yanyuan, so big we were sure we would earn at least a hundred yuan each. But all we got was a red diploma — and we had our photo taken.

  The day after the contest, we were driven to the local airport and a journalist took a photo of us standing in front of a plane. That was the first photo ever taken of us, and it was also the first plane we had ever seen. After the photo session, we watched the planes take off and land. How could a thing like this, made of metal, fly like a bird? And what was it like inside a plane? Was it like riding in a car? Did it make you throw up? No, the journalist said. It didn’t. You could eat in an airplane and walk around. I had always wanted to fly beyond our mountains, like the birds that came and went with the seasons. And now that I was seeing with my own eyes that not only birds but people could fly, I wanted to fly and see the world. Zhatsonamu and Latsoma only wanted to fly home.

  In the evening there was a lot of talk between Mr. Li and the Xichang organizers, and it was about us. I could not understand any of it, but I stayed with them, hanging on their every gesture, every now and then pestering Yisso for some information. When at last they were done with talking, Yisso said that fifteen people had been chosen to represent Sichuan province in a national competition in Beijing and that I was one of them. When I went up to our room and told Zhatsonamu and Latsoma that I was going to Beijing, the place where the Panchen Lama lived and Mao Zedong slept, and they were going home, they jumped for joy. They could not wait to go home to their mothers and their boyfriends.

  Yisso was also going home, and so was Mr. Li. From tomorrow, Mr. Luo of the Xichang Cultural Bureau would be the leader. Yisso would inform my mother, and since I knew enough Yi to get by and I was already making some progress in Chinese, neither Yisso nor Mr. Li could foresee any problems.

  “NAMU,SINGING IN BEIJING is not going to be as easy as singing in Xichang,” Mr. Luo warned me. For a start, I was to perform with the famous Tibetan opera singer Nankadroma — one Moso song and a Tibetan and a Yi song, and with a full-size traditional Chinese orchestra. Now, for Nankadroma and the others, who were all professional singers, learning new songs and singing with an orchestra were routine work, but not so for me. As Mr. Luo saw it, I sang as one walked or danced, I had only ever sung to the accompaniment of the bamboo flute and I knew only a few tunes. For Moso songs, like almost all the music of the ethnic people of western China and unlike Chinese or Western music, consisted of improvised poetry sung to a few set and standard tunes. And how many tunes did Moso people have? Mr. Luo asked. Six or seven? Ten? One tune to sing of our love for our mothers, another to farewell the horsemen leaving with the caravan, another for funerals, another to sing for our lovers, and finally, the working songs, whose simple rhythms express the movements of people laboring in the fields.

  From Xichang we went to Chengdu, where we stayed at the guest house of the Provincial Cultural Bureau and began daily rehearsals the following morning, and Mr. Luo’s assessment of my musical capacities proved correct. I found it very difficult to learn new melodies and almost impossible to sing with the orchestra. No matter how much I tried, I could not count beats. I just could not come in on time — until the erhu player suggested tapping his foot when it was my turn to come in. To everyone’s relief, it worked. But then, as though the orchestra were not enough, Mr. Luo had also arranged for a professional voice teacher to coach us. I did my best not to appear reticent, but I just could not bring myself to contort my face as I needed to in order to make my voice come out louder and clearer. Moso women sing very high and very loudly and because they sing in falsetto, they can always sing and smile at the same time. To pull an ugly face in order to sing better seemed to defeat the purpose. But perhaps more frustrating than anything, especially for those around me, was that although I learned quickly, by imitatio
n, I forgot everything almost as fast — most likely because I had never learned anything in any formal setting. Nevertheless, after two weeks the rehearsals were over, and the next day we were on the train to Beijing, traveling in second-class sleepers.

  For three days and two nights, the giant centipede chugged through the mountains and alongside great rivers, crossing through small villages and big cities, stopping at the railway stations filled with noisy people and noisier vendors. Some of the singers complained that the journey was too long but I kept my face glued to the window, and for three days I watched China go by. When I grew tired of looking outside, I practiced speaking Chinese. At night we slept on the narrow sleeper bunks and I dreamed of stage lights and pink ice cream. I dreamed with my eyes closed but I was not sleeping.

  Beijing is a very big city, much bigger than Chengdu, perhaps even bigger than all of Moso country. From the moment the train drew into the station, I felt its sheer size. And as we stepped off the train onto the platform, I felt terrified. I reached for Mr. Luo’s hand. “You don’t need to grab me so hard!” he said, pulling away. “Look at what you’ve done!” And I looked at the scratches I had left on his hand.

  Nankadroma took my arm and we made our way through the surge and swell of a human sea to the gigantic hallway, where a woman’s voice boomed melodiously over the general uproar, “This is Beijing railway station, Beijing is our great capital city, Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic of China.” Although I could not make out the words, it sounded like a soft song to me. I found it calming and I began to sing in imitation of the woman, a soft singsong in gibberish that made everybody laugh.

  In the hall we were met by the organizers, who led us outside to the minibuses waiting to take us to our hotel. The hotel in Beijing was bigger than the hotel in Xichang. It not only had a red carpet but there were bedrooms with attached bathrooms with tiled walls and bathtubs and toilets that flushed every time you pushed on the handle. I shared such a bedroom with the famous Tibetan opera singer Nankadroma.