Soul Mountain

by Gao Xingjian

  I can’t stay long in this small town and flee.

  Kuaiji Mountain beyond the city is the tomb of Yu the Great, historically, the first dynastic emperor with a documented genealogy. About the twenty-first century BC he unified the empire and at an assembly of all the commanders proclaimed their meritorious achievements and rewarded them.

  I pass the stone bridge at Ruoye Stream, below pine-forest-covered hills. Paddy rice is drying on the square in front of the site of Yu the Great’s tomb, the late crop has already been harvested. It is still quite warm in the mid-autumn sun and I feel comfortably drowsy.

  Within the gates is an enormous deserted courtyard. I can only try to imagine how it was that right here the Miao descendants of the Hemudu people who seven thousand years ago grew paddy rice, raised pigs, fired clay figures with human heads and faces, together with the descendants of the Liangzhu people who five thousand years ago inscribed geometric designs and circular symbols, and the ancestors of the Baiyue who had birds as totems, shaved their heads and tattooed their bodies, had all submitted to a review of the troops by Yu the Great. At the ceremony it happened that the hapless giant Fang Feng came late, wearing a hemp coat with a leather cord around his waist and looking generally slovenly. Yu the Great ordered his retainers to decapitate him.

  Two thousand years ago, Sima Qian came here to carry out investigations and wrote that great work the Historical Records. He offended the emperor and, although he managed to keep his head, he was castrated.

  On the roof of the main hall, between two dark green dragons, is a round mirror reflecting the dazzling sunlight. The new statue of Yu the Great inside the gloomy main hall has a kindly, almost commonplace look. However, the nine battle axes behind the statue, symbolizing his curbing of the floods in the nine kingdoms, succeed in indicating something closer to the truth.

  According to the account in the “Records of the State of Shu”, Yu was born in Shiniu and was a native of Guangrou County in Wenshan. I have just come down from that area which is the present Qiang nationality district of Wenchuan as well as the home of the giant panda. Yu was born from the womb of a bear and this can be substantiated in an earlier work, the Classic of the Mountains and Seas.

  His achievement of curbing the floods is generally thought to have been through his dredging of the Yellow River but I have reservations about that. My theory is that he set out from the upper reaches of the Min River (the main source of the Yangtze in ancient times was the Min River and references can be found in the Classic of the Mountains and Seas), followed the course of the Yangtze and passed through the Three Gorges. In the north he fought in the mountains of the Jishan people, in the south against the kingdom of Gonggong, and in the east in the mountains of the Yunyu people. He waged war all the way to the shores of the East China Sea. In the kingdom of Qingqiu which at the time produced the nine-tail fox symbolizing good fortune in the verdant place of Tushan, later renamed Kuaiji, he encountered the seductive beauty Yaorao. When on their wedding day he revealed his original bear appearance, the young virgin was panic-stricken. The divine Yu the Great, wild with lust, chased after her and shouted: “Open up!” Hence the first prince was born into the world to inherit the position of emperor. For his wife Yu was a bear, amongst the ordinary folk he was a god, for the historian he was an emperor, for those who write fiction he can be described as the first person to kill another in order to realize his ambitions. As for the legend about the flood, it is possible to search for elements of prenatal memory in the amniotic fluids of the womb. In overseas countries there are people carrying out this type of research.

  In Yu’s tomb there are now artefacts for reference but the experts still cannot decipher the tadpole-like script on the stone epitaph opposite the main hall. I look at it from various angles, ruminate for a long time, and suddenly it occurs to me that it can be read in this way: history is a riddle,

  it can also be read as: history is lies

  and it can also be read as: history is nonsense

  and yet it can be read as: history is prediction

  and then it can be read as: history is sour fruit

  yet still it can be read as: history clangs like iron

  and it can be read as: history is balls of wheat-flour dumplings

  or it can be read as: history is shrouds for wrapping corpses

  or taking it further it can be read as: history is a drug to induce sweating

  or taking it further it can also be read as: history is ghosts banging on walls

  and in the same way it can be read as: history is antiques

  and even: history is rational thinking

  or even: history is experience

  and even: history is proof

  and even: history is a dish of scattered pearls

  and even: history is a sequence of cause and effect

  or else: history is analogy

  or: history is a state of mind

  and furthermore: history is history

  and: history is absolutely nothing

  even: history is sad sighs

  Oh history oh history oh history oh history

  Actually history can be read any way and this is a major discovery!

  “This isn’t a novel!”

  “Then what is it?” he asks.

  “A novel must have a complete story.”

  He says he has told many stories, some with endings and others without.

  “They’re all fragments without any sequence, the author doesn’t know how to organize connected episodes.”

  “Then may I ask how a novel is supposed to be organized?”

  “You must first foreshadow, build to a climax, then have a conclusion. That’s basic common knowledge for writing fiction.”

  He asks if fiction can be written without conforming to the method which is common knowledge. It would just be like a story, with parts told from beginning to end and parts from end to beginning, parts with a beginning and no ending and others which are only conclusions or fragments which aren’t followed up, parts which are developed but aren’t completed or which can’t be completed or which can be left out or which don’t need to be told any further or about which there’s nothing more to say. And all of these would also be considered stories.

  “No matter how you tell a story, there must be a protagonist. In a long work of fiction there must be several important characters, but this work of yours . . . ?”

  “But surely the I, you, she and he in the book are characters?” he asks.

  “These are just different pronouns to change the point of view of the narrative. This can’t replace the portrayal of characters. These pronouns of yours, even if they are characters, don’t have clear images they’re hardly described at all.”

  He says he isn’t painting portraits.

  “Right, fiction isn’t painting, it is art in language. Do you really think the petulant exchanges between these pronouns can replace the creation of the personalities of the characters?”

  He says he doesn’t want to create the personalities of the characters, and what’s more he doesn’t know if he himself has a personality.

  “Why are you writing fiction if you don’t even understand what fiction is?”

  He then asks politely for a definition of fiction.

  The critic is cowed and snarls, “This is modernist, it’s imitating the West but falling short.”

  He says then it’s Eastern.

  “Yours is much worse than Eastern! You’ve slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend-like nonsense of your own invention, and are calling it fiction!”

  He says the gazetteers of the Warring States period, the records of humans and strange events of the Former and Later Han, the Wei and Jin, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the chuanqi romances of the Tang Dynasty, the prompt books of the Song Dynasty, the episodic novels and belles-lettres of the Ming and
Qing Dynasties, as well as the writings through the ages on geography and the natural sciences, street talk, morality tales, and miscellaneous records of strange events, are all acknowledged as fiction. But none of these have ever had any fixed models.

  “Are you from the searching-for-roots school?”

  He hastens to say you sir have stuck such labels on him. However, the fiction he writes is simply because he can’t bear the loneliness, he writes to amuse himself. He didn’t expect to fall into the quagmire of the literary world and at present he is trying to pull himself out. He didn’t write these books in order to eat, fiction for him is a luxury beyond earning money and making a livelihood.

  “You’re a nihilist!”

  He says he actually has no ideology but does have a small amount of nihilism in him, however nihilism isn’t the equivalent of absolute nothingness. It’s just like in the book where you is the reflection of I and he is the back of you, the shadow of a shadow. Although there’s no face it still counts as a pronoun.

  The critic shrugs his shoulders and departs.

  He feels confused and uncertain about what it is that is critical in fiction. Is it the narrative? Or is it the mode of narration? Or is it not the mode of narration but the attitude of the narration? Or is it not the attitude but the affirmation of an attitude? Or is it not the affirmation of an attitude but the affirmation of the starting point of an attitude? Or is it not the starting point but the self which is the starting point? Or is it not the self but perception and awareness of the self? Or is it not the perception and awareness of the self but the process of that perception and awareness? Or is it not the process but the action itself? Or is it not the action itself but the possibility of the action? Or is it not the possibility but the choice of action? Or is it not whether there is a choice but whether there is the necessity of a choice? Or is it not in the necessity but in the language? Or is it not in the language but whether the language is interesting? Nevertheless he is intrigued with using language to talk about women about men about love about sex about life about death about the ecstasy and agony of the soul and flesh about people’s solicitousness for people and politics about people evading politics about the inability to evade reality about unreal imagination about what is more real about the denial of utilitarian goals is not the same as an affirmation of it about the illogicality of logic about rational reflection greatly surpassing science in the dispute between content and form about meaningful images and meaningless content about the definition of meaning about everyone wanting to be God about the worship of idols by atheists about self worship being dubbed philosophy about self love about indifference to sex transforming into megalomania about schizophrenia about sitting in Chan contemplation about sitting not in Chan contemplation about meditation about the Way of nurturing the body is not the Way about effability or ineffability but the absolute necessity for the effability of the Way about fashion about revolt against vulgarity is a mighty smash with a racquet about a fatal blow with a club and Buddhist enlightenment about children must not be taught about those who teach first being taught about drinking a bellyful of ink about going black from being close to ink about what is bad about being black about good people about bad people about bad people are not people about humans by nature are more ferocious than wolves about the most wicked are other people and Hell in fact is in one’s own mind about bringing anxieties upon oneself about Nirvana about completion about completion is nothing completed about what is right about what is wrong about the creation of grammatical structures about not yet saying something is not the same as not saying anything about talk is useless in functional discourse about no-one is the winner in battles between men and women about moving pieces backwards and forwards in a game of chess curbs the emotions which are the basis of human nature about human beings need to eat about starving to death is a trifling affair whereas loss of integrity is a major event but that it is impossible to arbitrate this as truth about the fallibility of experience which is only a crutch about falling if one has to fall about revolutionary fiction which smashes superstitious belief in literature about a revolution in fiction about revolutionizing fiction.

  Reading this chapter is optional but as you’ve read it you’ve read it.

  When I arrive in this small city on the coast of the East China Sea a middle-aged single woman insists that I go to her home for dinner. She comes to my lodgings to invite me and says that before going to work she had gone out and bought all sorts of seafood for me – crab, razor clams and even wonderful fat saltwater eel.

  “You’ve come from far away to this port and must sample some seafood. It’s not just difficult to find inland, but you can’t always get it in the big coastal cities.” She is very earnest.

  It is difficult to refuse so I say to the owner of the house, “How about coming with me?”

  He knows her well and says, “This is a special invitation for you. She gets bored living on her own and she’s got something to discuss with you.”

  They have evidently worked it out between them so I have no choice but to follow her out the door. She wheels her bicycle over and says, “It’s some distance and will take a bit of time to get there, get on and I’ll double you.”

  People are coming and going in the lane, and I am not a cripple.

  “What if I double you and you tell me the way?” I say.

  She gets on the back seat. We attract a great deal of attention as we weave through the crowds the handlebars swaying and me ringing the bell continuously.

  It is great getting an invitation to dinner from a woman but she is past the best years of her life. She has a pale sallow complexion and prominent cheekbones, and the way she talks and how she wheels out the bicycle and gets on is devoid of feminine grace. I glumly pedal away and try to find something to talk about.

  She says she is an accountant in a factory. No wonder. She’s a woman in charge of money, I’ve had dealings with such women. You could say that every one of them is bright but they never pay a cent more than they have to for anything. Of course, this is a habit resulting from that line of work, it isn’t a basic trait of women.

  Her apartment is one of several around an old courtyard and she parks the old bicycle which will barely stand upright under her window. A huge padlock hangs on the door which opens into a small room with a big wooden bed occupying half of the room. At one side is a square table laid out with liquor and food. Two big wooden chests are stacked one on the top of the other onto bricks on the floor and there are some cosmetics on a slab of glass on top of the chests. There is a pile of old magazines at the bed head.

  She notices me looking around and hastily says, “I’m so sorry, it’s all a terrible mess.”

  “Life is like that.”

  “I just muddle through life, I’m not very fussy about anything.” She puts on a light and gets me to sit at the table, goes to the stove by the door to put on the pot of soup then pours me a drink and sits down opposite. Propping her elbows on the table, she says, “I don’t like men.”

  I nod.

  “I don’t mean you,” she explains. “I’m talking about men in general. You’re a writer.”

  I don’t know whether to nod or not.

  “I got divorced long ago and live on my own.”

  “It’s not easy.” I am referring to life being hard and that it is like that for everyone.

  “I had a girlfriend, we were very good friends from primary school days.”

  It occurs to me that she is probably a lesbian.

  “She’s dead now.”

  I make no response.

  “I invited you here to tell you her story. She was very beautiful. If you saw her photo you’d like her, everyone who saw her fell in love with her. She wasn’t beautiful in a normal sense, she was extraordinarily beautiful – a melon-seed shaped face, a small cherry mouth, willow frond eyebrows, big crystal-clear almond eyes. Her figure, needless to say, was like that of classical beauties described in the fiction of the past. Wh
y am I telling you all this? Because, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep a single photo of her. At the time I wasn’t prepared, when she died her mother came and took away everything. Drink up.”

  She has a drink as well and I can immediately tell by the way she drinks that she is experienced. There are no photos or paintings on the walls and certainly none of the flowers and little animals women usually like. She is punishing herself and probably most of her money is converted into something which goes from a cup into her stomach.