by Gao Xingjian
You move forward a step at a time, not daring to touch him in case he collapses, and reach out for the hunting rifle covered in grime and bear fat on the rock wall behind him. However, as soon as you grasp the barrel it crumbles as if it had been fried to a crisp. You immediately retreat, undecided as to whether you still want to go to see the place of the Queen Mother of the West.
Overhead there is an explosion of thunder, the Heavenly Court is angry! Heavenly soldiers and generals are pounding with the thigh bones of the Thunder Beast on huge drums made from the hides of walrus from the Eastern Ocean.
Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine white bats shriek and fly about the cliff cave. The mountain divinities have all awoken, huge boulders roll from the mountain top in an avalanche and the cliff completely collapses. It is as if a thousand mounted soldiers are galloping up from the earth and the whole mountain turns to smoke and dust.
Oh, oh, suddenly nine suns appear in the sky! The five rib-bones in men and the seventeen nerves in women are struck and pulled and no-one can help screaming and groaning . . .
Your soul flees through the orifices of your body and you see countless toads with their big mouths gaping at the sky. They are like a flock of headless tiny people with arms outstretched to the hoary sky, calling out in despair: Give my head back! Give my head back! Give my head back! Give back my head! Give back my head! Give back my head! My head give it back! My head give it back! My head give it back! Give me back my head! Give me back my head! My head give it back to me, my head give it back to me, give back my head to me, give back my head to me, to me give back my head, my head to me give back . . . give back to me my head, to me give back my head . . .
Startled from a dream by the sound of urgent bells and drums, for a moment I don’t know where I am. It is pitch-black and only gradually do I make out a square window which seems to have a grille on it, though I can’t be sure. I must find out if I am still dreaming and forcing my heavy eyelids to open, I manage to read the phosphorescent dial on my watch. It is exactly three o’clock in the morning. I realize morning prayers have started, then remember I am lodging in a temple. I quickly roll over and get out of bed.
I open the door and go into the courtyard. The drums have stopped and each peal of the bell is more distinct. The sky is grey against the shadows of the trees and the sound of the bell is coming from the direction of the Palace of Magnificent Treasures behind the high wall. I feel my way along the serpentine corridor to the door of the vegetarian hall but it is bolted on the other side. I turn and go back to the other end of the corridor, and groping about find there is a high brick wall all around and that I am locked like a prisoner in this courtyard. I shout a few times but no-one answers.
During the day I had begged to be allowed to stay in this Temple of National Purity. The monk who accepted my incense donation looked me over but was dubious about the sincerity of my devotion. But, I obstinately refused to leave and when the monastery gates were about to close, after seeking instructions from the old monk in charge, they installed me all on my own in this side room in the back section of the temple.
I refuse to be locked up and am intent on seeing if this big temple, whose incense burners have been burning for over a thousand years, still preserves the rituals and ceremonies of the Tiantai Sect. I do not believe I have transgressed the temple’s rules of purity and I go back to the courtyard. I discover in one corner a sliver of weak light coming through a crack. I touch it. It turns out to be a small door which immediately opens. This is after all a Buddhist temple so there are no prohibited areas.
I go around the screen behind the door and enter a medium-sized sutra hall with a few candles burning and incense smoke curling into the air. In front of the incense table hangs a piece of purplish-red brocade embroidered with the four characters “incense burners very hot” which makes my heart jump. It seems foreboding. In order to demonstrate the purity of my heart and that I haven’t come to spy on the secrets of the Buddhist world, I take a candle in a holder. There are ancient scrolls of calligraphy and painting on all the walls. I didn’t imagine there would be such an elegant and secluded inner room within the temple, probably it is a place reserved for the Buddhist masters. Having come in uninvited, I can’t help feeling a bit guilty and do not spend time seeing if they still have the works of the two eminent Tang monks collected by Han Shan. I return the candle and, following the sound of the bell for morning prayer, go out through the main door of the hall.
I enter another courtyard. The side rooms on all four sides are ablaze with candles and are probably the monks’ dormitories. A monk in a black cassock brushes past and overtakes me. I give a start then think he is probably leading the way, so I trail behind him and pass through several corridors one after the other. Then in an instant he vanishes. I am a little perplexed and can only look for somewhere with some candlelight. Just as I am about to cross a threshold, I look up and see a four- or five-metre high guardian of the Buddha wielding a demon-subduing cudgel. He is charging right at me, his fierce eyes glaring, and I am bathed in cold sweat from fright.
I flee along the dark corridor and see a dim light. Nearing it I see a round doorway, and going through I realize it is the large courtyard below the Palace of Magnificent Treasures. The palace roof has flying eaves and two green dragons, one on each side, guarding a bright mirror in the centre. The dark blue of the night sky before dawn, showing through the towering old cypresses, looks extraordinary.
Behind the huge incense burner at the top of the stairs the sound of the giant bell pours out of the hall lit with a blaze of candles. The monk in the black cassock is striking this enormous bell with a big wooden pole suspended from the ceiling. It does not so much as quiver but, as if in response, from the ground beneath, the sound of the bell slowly ascends to the rafters and fills the hall – booming reverberations gush through the doorway, engulfing my body and mind in its sound waves.
Some monks light the red candles in front of the eighteen arhats lining the two sides and plant whole bunches of burning incense sticks into each of the burners. The monks surge into the hall, all wearing the same dark grey cassocks, serene figures slowly moving to their positions in front of the individual rush cushions, each of which is embroidered with a different lotus design.
Two resounding booms of the drum follow with tones so deep and penetrating that it makes a person’s insides reverberate. The drum is located on the left of the hall and is mounted on a drum stand the height of a person. The round drum skin is a head higher than the monk standing on the platform of the ladder. The drummer, the only person not in a cassock, is wearing a short sleeveless jacket, trousers trussed at the calves and hemp shoes. His hands are raised high above his head.
Da-da
Boom! Boom! Another two times.
Da-da
As the lingering sounds of the bell vanish the drum takes over, shaking the ground underfoot. At first it is possible to make out the individual sounds as they reverberate from the heart of the drum but as the speed increases and the momentum builds up they become one continuous sound which makes the heart palpitate and the blood surge. The overpowering sound of the drum does not slacken, it is simply breathtaking. Then a slightly higher note with a slightly clearer beat drifts from the heart of the drum above the robust, long booming sound, creating interludes of even faster drum beats. Afterwards there emerge countless changing drum beats with high or low notes which mingle or harmonize with both the deafening booms and the faster interludes. All this is produced from the one drum!
The drummer is a thin, middle-aged monk without drum sticks. The back of his shiny head can be seen moving continuously between his bare arms as he slaps, punches, knocks, hits, jabs, pokes and kicks, making use of his palms, fingers, fists, elbows, wrists, knees and even toes. His body seems to be like a lizard sticking to the drum skin, and as if possessed he pounces and jumps at the drum, striking it everywhere from its centre to their sides encrusted with iron nails.
> In this unbroken intense booming symphony, suddenly there is the tinkling of a bell so faint that I almost think I am hearing things. It is like the trembling cry of a cicada on a late autumn night. It is so ephemeral, so delicate, so pitiful, yet it is so distinct and clear above the chaotic booming of the drum that it is unmistakable. This bell first activates six or seven big and small wooden fish with gloomy, lonely, melodious and resonant timbres and then a series of vigorous brass chimes all in harmony. These sounds intermingle and dissolve in the booming of the drum.
I search for the source of the bell and find it is an old senior monk wearing a billowing mended and re-mended cassock who is conducting the music. He is holding a small goblet-like bell in his left hand and a thin steel pin in his right hand. At the touch of the pin on the bell, a gossamer-like tinkling slowly drifts up with the smoke of the incense. It is like the threads of a fishing net dragging in a world of sounds so that people cannot stop themselves drowning in it. At this my initial surprise and excitement vanishes.
At the back and the front of the palace are two tablets, one inscribed with the words “Majestic Land” and the other with “Profit and Pleasure is the Existence of Emotion”, and from the ceiling hang layers of curtains in the midst of which sits Buddha, with such dignity as to immediately banish vanity and with such kindness as to induce indifference to the point of absence of emotions so that the cares of the world of dust are extinguished in an instant, and time in that instant becomes frozen.
The sound of the drum stops without my noticing. The senior monk with the bell is in front, and as his sunken mouth moves his sunken cheeks and his eyebrows also move. The motley group of monks slowly begins to chant sutras after the last note of the bell. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten . . . altogether ninety-nine monks follow in single file after him, circling around Buddha in the centre of the hall, walking as they chant. I too join in, and like them press the palms of my hands together and chant Namo Amitofu, but I clearly hear another sound. As each sentence of the sutra is about to end there is always a voice with a slightly higher pitch than the chanting. So there is therefore still the unextinguished passion of a soul still being tormented.
– Facing this snow scene scroll by Gong Xian what more can one say! There is such tranquillity one can almost hear the snow falling. It seems audible and yet is soundless.
– It is a dream scene.
– The wooden bridge on the river overlooks the clear stream and solitary hut. You can feel the signs of human existence but also the pure isolation and serenity.
– This is petrified dream, the intangible darkness at the edges of dream is faintly visible.
– It is all wet ink, his brush uses ink extravagantly but he attains such depths of artistic conception. His brush-work is meticulous and embodied in the charm of the brush-strokes is the clarity of his images. He is a genuine artist and not just a member of the literati who paints.
– The insipid elegance of literati painting often only has ideas but no art, I detest this affectation of pedantry.
– What you are referring to is that contrived lofty purity which manipulates the brush and ink but loses natural sensuousness. Interesting brush-strokes can be acquired but sensuousness comes into existence together with life and also exists with mountains, rivers, plants and trees. The wonder of Gong Xian’s landscapes lies in the brilliant flashes of sensuousness in his brush-work. To be boundless to the point of forgetting one’s existence cannot be acquired. Zheng Banqiao can be imitated but not Gong Xian.
– Ba Da also can’t be imitated. His monster bird with the fierce eyes can be copied but that infinite loneliness of his lotus flowers and ducks cannot.
– Ba Da’s best works are his landscapes, his works showing his contempt and rejection of the vulgar are his minor works.
– People think contempt for the vulgar is lofty purity. They don’t realize that this lofty purity inevitably sinks to vulgarity. Rather than pitting the vulgar against the vulgar, it is better just to be vulgar.
– Zheng Banqiao was destroyed by people like this. His lofty purity became the decorations of people who failed to achieve their ambitions, those few bits of bamboo of his have been painted to death and have become the most vulgar of painting transactions.
– The worst is his “It is difficult to be muddle-headed”. If he really wanted to be muddle-headed he should have just gone ahead with it, what was so difficult about it? He didn’t want to be muddle-headed but pretended to be muddle-headed while striving to appear clever.
– He was a cowardly genius and Ba Da was a lunatic.
– At first Ba Da pretended to be mad, then he really went mad. His artistic achievement lies in his real madness and not in his feigned madness.
– Or one could say he viewed the world with a strange pair of eyes and the sight of the world made him go mad.
– Or one could say the world cannot tolerate rationality and it is only with madness that the world becomes rational.
– Xu Wei in old age went mad like this and killed his wife.
– Maybe it would be better to say that his wife killed him.
– It seems cruel to say this but he couldn’t bear the world so he had no choice but to go mad.
– However Gong Xian didn’t go mad, he transcended the world. Because he did not want to fight against the world he was able to preserve his innate nature.
– He did not want to pit rationality against being muddle-headed, he withdrew far away to a remote corner and immersed himself in a realm of pure dream.
– This was just another form of self-defence when he came to the realization that it was impossible to fight the world which had gone mad.
– He did not fight, he did not rationalize, and hence preserved the totality of his being.
– He was not a recluse, nor did he turn to religion, he was neither Buddhist nor Daoist. He supported himself with a half mu vegetable plot and by teaching. He did not think of thrushes as vulgar nor did he despise the vulgar. His painting transcends language.
– His paintings were not for money, painting itself was an expression of feelings in his heart.
– Would you and I be capable of this?
– He achieved it, as in this snow-swept landscape.
– Can you verify that this painting is authentic?
– Surely that’s not important? If you think it is then it is.
– What if I think it isn’t?
– Then it isn’t.
– In other words, you and I think we have seen his work.
– Then it is his work.
Leaving Tiantai Mountain, I go on to Shaoxing where rice liquor is produced. This small city is not famous only for its rice liquor, it has also produced numerous famous personalities, including great politicians, writers, artists and heroic women whose old homes have now all been converted into museums. Even the local grain temple where Ah Q, the lowliest of the characters created by the pen of Lu Xun, sheltered from the storm one night, has been restored and painted in bright colours. There is a horizontal tablet with an inscription by a famous contemporary calligrapher. When Ah Q was beheaded as a local bandit he could not have imagined he would be so honoured after his death. I begin to reflect that it was difficult even for minor characters of this small town to escape being killed. So it goes without saying that the heroic revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin who believed it was her duty to save her race was doomed from the outset.
Her photo is hanging in her old residence. This talented daughter of a big family wrote beautiful poetry and prose and has elegant eyebrows, bright eyes and a gentle expression. She was just twenty when she was tied up, paraded through the streets to the market place and beheaded in broad daylight.
That literary giant of the age, Lu Xun, was a fugitive on the run all the time. Afterwards, he luckily moved into the foreign concession, otherwise he would have been killed long before he died of illness. It seems in this country nowhere was safe. There is a line in o
ne of Lu Xun’s poems, “I spill my blood for the Yellow Emperor”, which I used to recite as a student, but which now I can’t help having doubts about. The Yellow Emperor was, according to legend, the first emperor of this land and can also mean one’s homeland, the race, or one’s ancestors. But why is it necessary to use blood to promote the spirit of one’s ancestors? Can one achieve greatness by spilling one’s hot blood? One’s head is one’s own, why does it have to be chopped off for the Yellow Emperor?
Xu Wei’s couplet, “The world is a false illusion created by others, what is original and authentic is what I propose”, seems to be more penetrating. However, if it is a false illusion why is it created by others? And whether or not it is false is irrelevant, but is it necessary to allow others to create it? Also, as for what is original and authentic, at issue is not its authenticity but whether or not it can be proposed.
His Green Vine Studio is tucked away deep in a little lane and consists of a smallish courtyard with several old vines and a hall with large spotlessly clean windows, said to be the original structure. These peaceful surroundings nevertheless sent him mad. Maybe the human world is not meant for human habitation, yet human beings continue to survive. In seeking to survive and yet to retain the authenticity existing at parturition one will either be killed or go mad, if not one will constantly be on the run.
