Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  It occurs to me that I can bring them in for a closer look through the zoom lens of my camera so I go back to my room for it. It is in fact the person in the red singlet who is singing in a voice that sounds like a woman’s high-pitched wailing as he swings a big sledge hammer and keeps time to the sound of a rock drill. The bare-chested man wielding the rock drill seems to be harmonizing with him.

  Suddenly the singing stops, they must have seen the sun glinting off my camera. They stop work and look in my direction. There is an absence of any sound and the silence is searing, but I am pleased that I don’t have some psychological disorder and that my hearing is normal.

  I return to my room and want to write something, but what can I write about? What about something on the singing of the quarry workers? When I pick up my pen I can’t write a thing.

  I think, I’ll try and get them to come for a drink and a chat in the evening – it’d be a way of passing time. I put down my pen and head for the small town.

  When I emerge from a little shop with a bottle of brown rice wine and a bag of peanuts, I bump into the friend who lent me the stencilled material. He tells me he has also collected many hand-written copies of mountain folk songs. This is just what I want so I ask him to come for a chat. He’s busy at the moment but promises to come after dinner.

  I wait for him until ten o’clock. I am the only guest in the hostel and it is frustratingly quiet. I start regretting not having asked the quarry workers when I suddenly hear knocking on the window. It is my friend. He says he couldn’t get anyone to open the main door, the girls in charge must have locked up and gone to sleep. I take the torch and a paper parcel from him and he climbs in. Nervous with excitement I immediately open the rice wine right away and pour out half a teacup each.

  I can’t recall his face but I recall that he was thin and not too tall, that he looked timid but once he started talking there was an enthusiasm which hadn’t been crushed by life. His looks are irrelevant, what delights me is this treasure of his which he opens before me. He unwraps the newspaper parcel. Apart from a few notebooks, these are all badly tattered hand-written texts which used to be circulated among the people. I read through them one by one and when he sees my utter delight, he says magnanimously, “Go ahead and copy any that you like. There used to be lots of folk songs in these mountains. If you found an old master singer, he wouldn’t be able to get through them all if he sang for several days and several nights.”

  At this I start asking him about the songs of the quarry workers on the mountain.

  “Oh, they’re falsetto singers from Badong,” he says. “The forests on the mountains there have been stripped bare so they’ve had to leave to work in the quarries.”

  “Are there also different sets of music and words?”

  “There are some books of music but the words are largely improvised, they just sing whatever comes to mind, much of it is quite crude.”

  “With lots of coarse swear words?”

  “These quarry workers are away all year round and don’t have any women, they take out their frustration on the rocks,” he says with a smile.

  “Why is the music so haunting and sad?”

  “It’s that sort of music. If you don’t listen to the words it’s like resentful wailing and sounds great, but the words aren’t particularly interesting. Take a look at this.” He takes a notebook from the paper parcel, leafs through to a particular page and hands it to me. Under the heading Record of Darkness is written:

  On a good day at a good hour, Heaven and Earth open.

  The filial family has asked us, a drummer and a singer,

  To lead the singing at the song square.

  One two three four five, metal wood water fire earth.

  It is not easy to lead the singing,

  And we sweat even before we start.

  Deep at night when all is quiet a bright moon and stars,

  And we get ready to start the singing.

  It is late at night to start a long one,

  If we start a short one it won’t last till dawn,

  We must start one not too long and not too short,

  So you the assembled singers will not waste time.

  One calling heaven, earth and waters

  Two calling the sun, moon and the stars,

  Three calling the five directions and the land,

  Four calling the goddess of lightning,

  Five calling Pan Gu who separated Heaven and Earth,

  Six calling the Three Emperors and Five Kings, and all the kings of past ages,

  Seven calling the Black Lion and the White Elephant, the Yellow Dragon and the Phoenix,

  Eight calling the fierce dogs guarding the gates,

  Nine calling sprites of marshes and mountains,

  Ten calling tigers, leopards, jackals and wolves,

  We ask all of you to stand aside, to give passage,

  To the singers entering the song square!

  “This is wonderful!” I gasp in praise. “How did you get hold of it?”

  “I got this a couple of years ago when I was a primary school teacher in the mountains. I asked an old master singer to sing it while I wrote it down.”

  “The language is really beautiful and flows straight from the heart, it isn’t at all constrained by the five-word and seven-word prosody of the so-called folk song genre.”

  “Quite right. This is a genuine folk song.” As he drinks, his façade of timidity totally vanishes.

  “This is a folk song which hasn’t been vandalized by the literati! It is song gushing straight out of the soul! Do you realize this? You’ve saved a culture! It’s not unique to the smaller nationalities, the Han nationality also has a genuine folk culture which hasn’t been contaminated by Confucian ethical teachings!” I can’t contain my excitement.

  “You’re right again, but take it easy and read on!”

  He is beaming and that superficial modesty put on by grass-root cadres disappears. He takes the notebook from me and, imitating the singing pose of a master singer, chants in a high-pitch voice:

  I clasp my hands high in greeting,

  Whence do you come singer? Whence do you come?

  What province what prefecture? What brings you here?

  We respond to your greeting:

  I am a drum singer from Yangzhou,

  And I a singer from Liuzhou,

  We travel to song squares and call on friends,

  Here in your honourable territory,

  We beg hospitality.

  What do you carry on your shoulder pole?

  What do you carry in the basket you hold?

  The weight bends your back and shoulders,

  Yet you seek the advice of the master singer.

  My pole carries song books,

  My hand carries a rare book,

  We do not know if the master singer has seen these?

  But we have come to your home for instruction.

  I can see the people, hear their voices, the sound of a gong and the beat of a drum. However outside the window is only the sound of the mountain wind and the lapping of water.

  There are three hundred and sixty pole loads of songs,

  Which load do you carry on your pole?

  There are thirty-six thousand books of songs,

  Which book do you carry in your hand?

  Address me as master singer for I know,

  The first book is the book born within us,

  The first book is the script born within us.

  I understand when I hear,

  The master singer is an expert.

  To know the things born within us,

  Is to know the principles of Earth and Heaven.

  I venture to ask him,

  In which month of which year was song born?

  On which day of which month was song born?

  A tragic ancient sound in the darkness accompanies the sound of the wind and the beat of the drum and I seem to hear it all.

  Fuxi made t
he strings of the qin,

  Nüwa made the pipes of the sheng,

  With Yin there is language,

  With Yang there is sound.

  With the matching of Yin and Yang there is man,

  With man there is sound,

  With sound there is song,

  The songs grew many, and song books came into being.

  These books were rejected by Confucius,

  And dumped in the wilderness.

  One was blown up into the sky,

  So there came to be the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid.

  Another was blown into the sea,

  Fishermen picked it up and sing for wronged ghosts.

  A third was blown into a temple,

  So Buddhist monks and Daoist priests sing their scriptures

  A fourth landed in a village lane,

  So girls sing of their longings.

  A fifth landed in a paddy field

  So farmers sing them as mountain songs

  The sixth book is the Record of Darkness

  When the master singer holds it, he loses his soul in song.

  “But this is just the prelude. What about the Record of Darkness?” I have been pacing about the room but I stop to ask him this.

  He says this is the filial song they used to sing in early times at mountain funerals before the interment of the coffin. It was sung on the song ground in front of the spirit hall for up to three days and three nights, however it can’t be sung frivolously and when it is sung all other songs must be suppressed. He had only taken down a small part when the master singer suddenly fell ill and died.

  “Why didn’t you write it down at the time?” I say looking at him.

  “At the time the old man was ill and sat with his bedding wrapped around him in a small wooden chair,” he explains. It is as if he is to blame and he resumes his timid appearance.

  “Isn’t there anyone else in the mountains who knows how to sing it?”

  “Some can sing the prelude but no-one can sing all of it.”

  He says that he knew an old master singer who had a brass chest full of song books, amongst which was a complete set of the Record of Darkness. At the time they were confiscating old books and the Record of Darkness had been targeted in the search for reactionary and superstitious works. The old man buried the brass chest. A few months later he dug out the chest and found the books had gone mouldy so he spread them out in the courtyard to dry. He was seen and reported. The head of the forest district had the public security officials come and the old man was forced to hand over the whole set. It wasn’t long afterwards that he died.

  “Where else can reverence of the soul be found? Where else can we find these songs which one should listen to while seated in quiet reverence or even while prostrated be found? What should be revered isn’t revered and instead only all sorts of things are worshipped! A race with empty, desolate souls! A race of people who have lost their souls!” I angrily declare.

  He watches me with a worried look without saying so much as a word. I realize that I must have drunk the rice wine too quickly and that I am consumed by my rage.

  In the morning a jeep stops in front of the building and someone comes to tell me that several of the leaders and cadres of the forest reserve have called a special meeting on my behalf and have invited me to hear a report on their work. This makes me feel ashamed. I think it must be because I had been bragging and boasting while addle-brained during that drinking orgy in the county town. As a result they think I’ve come from Beijing to make an investigation and they want me to let their superiors know about the situation here. The car is waiting at the main door and it is impossible for me to make up an excuse.

  The cadres are already seated with their cups of tea in front of them in the conference room of the administrative office and as soon as I take my place, a cup of tea is brought out for me. It is just like the “experience-life” group visits organized by the Writers’ Association to factories, military units, farms, mines, folk craft research centres and revolutionary memorial halls. In those times, the leaders of the writers would speak at the main table, but minor writers like me who were there to make up numbers were free to find some inconspicuous corner in which to drink tea and be silent. However, as they have convened this meeting especially for me I have to think about some things to talk about.

  A cadre in charge first presents a review of the history and construction work of the reserve. In 1907 an Englishman called Wilson came here and collected specimens. At the time it was inaccessible, so he could only get to the fringe areas, indeed before 1960 you still couldn’t see the sun and could only hear the sound of the water, it was still a vast expanse of virgin forest. During the 1930s the Guomindang Government made plans for logging the trees but there were no roads and they couldn’t get in.

  “In 1960 the Forestry Ministry made aerial maps. There was a total area of 3,250 square kilometres of mountain forest. Development started in 1962, proceeding from both the northern and southern extremities at the same time. In 1966 the road was put through. In 1970 an administrative district was formed, containing 50,000 peasants and about 10,000 cadres, forestry workers and their families. At present 900,000 cubic metres of timber is supplied to the state.

  “In 1976 scientists petitioned for the protection of Shennongjia.

  “In 1980 a proposal was made for a reserve.

  “In 1982 the provincial government approved the setting aside of 80,040 hectares for the reserve.

  “In 1983 the reserve was established and the timber industry units within the protected area were withdrawn, four sign-posted gates were erected and a surveillance unit was established. It was possible to stop vehicles but not people. Last year, in one month, three to four hundred people came in for traditional medicines. They dug up the rhizomes of goldthread and stripped off the bark of winter jasmine and eucommia. People also come in to illegally cut trees and to hunt. There are also those who come to look for the Wild Man.

  “As for scientific research, a research unit has artificially cultivated seven hectares of dove trees, and spice bush has also been successfully propagated by cloning. Wild medicinal herbs have also been cultivated – pearl on top, a bowl of water at the river-bank, one of King Wen’s writing brushes, seven leaves to one flower, and the dying and returning to life plant (none of which seem to have scientific names).

  “There is also a wildlife unit which carries out investigations into the Wild Man, the golden monkey, the leopard, the white bear, the civet, the muntjac, the masked civet, the serow, the golden pheasant, the giant salamander, as well as yet unnamed animals such as the pig-bear, and the donkey-headed wolf which peasants have reported to be eating their piglets.

  “After 1980, animals started returning, and last year a fight between a grey wolf and a golden monkey was discovered. The screams of a golden monkey were heard and a king golden monkey was seen blocking the path of a grey wolf . . . in March they caught a small golden monkey but it refused food and died. The sunbird, which eats the honey of azaleas and has a red body, an orchid tail and a small pointed beak, has also been sighted.