by Yunte Huang
in the lonely world of men.
—June 1971
Farewell, Cemetery
In Chongqing’s Shapingba Park, facing distant Geleshan Martyrs Cemetery, among weeds and scattered trees, is a Red Guard cemetery. Following no footprints, my poem and I happened upon it. What more can we say. . . .
1 A Faded Path Has Brought Me Among You
a faded path
has brought me
among you
like a stray ray of sunlight
standing with the tall grass
and short trees
I don’t speak for history
or that voice from on high
I come
only because of my age
staggered you
sank into the earth
crying tears of joy
clutching imaginary guns
in clean fingers
that had known only textbooks
and heroes’ stories
maybe out of some
common custom
on the last page of each book
you drew yourselves
no longer depicted
in the pages of my heart
it has turned against the tide
now wet with leaf-tip blue dew
when I open it
I can’t use a pen
can’t use a brush
I can only use my life’s
softest breaths
to paint some
image worthy of conjecture
2 Geleshan’s Clouds Are Cold
Geleshan’s clouds
are cold
as bloodless hands
reaching for the cemetery
amid fire and molten lead
silent parents
with the same hands
caress their dear children
the slogans they left you
never forgot
maybe they were just what
called death down upon you
you poured a shared belief
into your final breaths
you are not far apart
on one side are fresh flowers
lively Sundays
Young Pioneers
on the other side, beggar-ticks
ants and lizards
you were so young
your hair was jet-black
death’s night
has eternalized your purity
I wish
I were a Young Pioneer
a fresh hanging fruit
and I wish I were you
a newlywed photo
forever frozen
in a happy moment
but I go on living
in gravity-bound thought
like a rowboat
slowly approaching
the dusk riverbank
3 I Have No Brother, But I Believe . . .
I have no brother
but I believe you were
my brother
in the whirs of cicadas
on top of a sandpile
you gave me
a clay tank
a paper airplane
you taught me
to join words in clever ways
you were a giant
though just in sixth grade
I have a sister
but I believe you were
my sister
in the pale green morning
you’d slightly turn
then jump so high
those rubber band chains
that shot you toward the sky
were stretched too tight
I had shortened them some
to bind up my socks
and he?
who was he
who tore off the reed sparrow’s
gold-button wings
sprinkling the ground with blood
who wrapped the antennae of the long-horned beetle
in gauze and flame
made it unsteadily
climb onto the sill
for its pulp-gulping crime
who was he?
I don’t know
4 You Lived Among Tall Mountains
you lived among tall mountains
lived among walls
every day walking the requisite path
never having seen the ocean
not knowing love
knowing no other land
knowing only that somewhere
in some mute fog
an “evil” floated
thus, down the center of every desk
a battle line was drawn in chalk
you were leaving
laughing
to hide strange flashing feelings
as if to hide the glow of the moon
behind silhouettes of trees
in the statutes you found
only callousness and hatred
as spectacular as fireworks
so, one morning
you polished up your belt buckles
with rough leaves
and left
everyone knows
it was the sun
that led you off
riding on marching songs
to look for paradise
until, halfway along
you got tired
tripped into a bed whose headboard
was studded with bullet holes and stars
you seemed to have played in a game
that could start all over
5 Don’t Question the Sun
don’t question the sun
it can’t be responsible for yesterday
yesterday belonged to
another star
that has burnt away
in terrible yearning
these days in the temples
there are only potted plants
and airs of silence
as solemn
as white icebergs
sailing warm currents
when did the bazaar
and the rebuilt merry-go-round
start to turn again
carrying the dancing and
silent youths
toothless children
the elderly
maybe there must always be
lives doomed to be
shed by the world
like the feathers dropped daily
in the camps of white-breasted geese
tangerine, pale green
sweet and bitter
lights come on
in the humid twilight
time has a new lease on life
I’m going home
to rewrite my life
and I haven’t forgotten
to carefully circle the tombs
the empty eggshell moon
will wait here
for the fledglings to return
6 Yes, I Too Am Going
yes, I too am going
to another world
stepping over your hands
despite the fallen leaves
and a thin film of snow
I keep on walking
huge rocks beside me, dark woods
and an exquisite
gingerbread town
I go to love
to seek out kindred spirits
because of my age
I believe
you are lucky
that the earth doesn’t flow
those proud smiles
cannot float up through the red
clay and disperse
November’s drizzle
as it seeps down to you
will filter out
life’s doubts
eternal dreams
are purer than life
I have left the cemetery
leaving only the night and
the blind canes still groping
your headstone inscriptions
groping
your entire lives
farther, and farther, cemetery
may you rest in
peace
may that faded path
by some pale green spring
be quietly erased
—January 1980
I’m a Willful Child
—I want to draw windows all over the land, let eyes used to darkness get used to the light.
maybe
I’m a child who’s been spoiled by his mother
I am willful
I wish
every moment
were colorful as crayons
I wish
I could draw on dear paper
awkward freedom
draw an eye
that would never cry
a sky
feathers and leaves that belong to the sky
pale green evening and apples
I want to draw morning
draw dew
all the smiles in sight
I want to draw all the youngest
unsuffering loves
draw my imaginary
lover
she has never seen storm clouds
her eyes are the color of the clear sky
she’s always watching me
always, watching
will never turn away
I want to draw distant landscapes
draw a clear horizon and waves
draw scores of happy streams
draw hills
sprouting pale down
I’ll bunch them together
let them love each other
let them acquiesce
let every subtle tremor of spring
be the birth of a tiny flower
and I want to draw the future
I’ve never seen her, and cannot
but know she is beautiful
I’ll draw her fall windbreaker
draw flaming candles and maple leaves
draw the many hearts snuffed out
for love of her
draw marriage
draw one after another early-rising holidays—
stick candy wrappers at the top
and pictures from storybooks
I’m a willful child
I want to erase all unhappiness
I want to draw windows
all over the land
let eyes used to darkness
get used to the light
I want to draw the wind
draw mountain ranges each higher than the last
draw the Eastern peoples’ yearning
draw the ocean—
an endlessly happy sound
finally, in the paper’s corner
I want to draw myself
draw a koala
deep in a Victoria forest
sitting on a calm branch
slow
with no home
no faraway heart
just so many
berrylike dreams
and great big eyes
I am wishing
wanting
but don’t know why
I have no crayons
haven’t had one colorful moment
I have only I
my fingers and the pain of creating
just these tattered sheets
of dear paper
let them go look for butterflies
let them from this day on
be gone
I am a child
spoiled by an imaginary mother
I am willful
—March 1981
(Translated by Aaron Crippen)
MO YAN
(1955– )
Born Guan Moye in rural Shandong, Mo Yan worked in the wheat and sorghum fields for ten years after primary school, an experience upon which the future Nobel laureate in literature would continuously draw for inspiration in writing. Like the fertile soil of Oxford, Mississippi, for William Faulkner, the pristine land of Gaomi County would provide a backdrop, a Chinese Yoknapatawpha, for Mo Yan’s stories, in which hardscrabble peasants and other lowly characters, while barely making a living, battle against enemies and with each other in the brutal game of life and death. After years of farming, Mo Yan joined the army in 1976 and attended the Military Art Academy in 1984. His debut story “A Crystal Carrot” (1985) brought him national attention, followed by Red Sorghum (1986), a novel about three generations of love and horror, a hallucinatory, myth-laden tale told through a discrete series of flashbacks. While his pen name “Mo Yan” literally means “don’t speak” in Chinese, Mo has been a prolific writer firing verbal cannons at sordid Chinese reality, rendered in a Rabelaisian carnivalesque language. In 2012 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Red Sorghum (excerpts)
On her sixteenth birthday, my grandma was betrothed by her father to Shan Bianlang, the son of Shan Tingxiu, one of Northeast Gaomi Township’s richest men. As distillery owners, the Shans used cheap sorghum to produce a strong, high-quality white wine that was famous throughout the area. Northeast Gaomi Township is largely swampy land that is flooded by autumn rains; but since the tall sorghum stalks resist waterlogging, it was planted everywhere and invariably produced a bumper crop. By using cheap grain to make wine, the Shan family made a very good living, and marrying my grandma off to them was a real feather in Great-Granddad’s cap. Many local families had dreamed of marrying into the Shan family, despite rumors that Shan Bianlang had leprosy. His father was a wizened little man who sported a scrawny queue on the back of his head, and even though his cupboards overflowed with gold and silver, he wore tattered, dirty clothes, often using a length of rope as a belt.
Grandma’s marriage into the Shan family was the will of heaven, implemented on a day when she and some of her playmates, with their tiny bound feet and long pigtails, were playing beside a set of swings. It was Qingming, the day set aside to attend ancestral graves; peach trees were in full red bloom, willows were green, a fine rain was falling, and the girls’ faces looked like peach blossoms. It was a day of freedom for them. That year Grandma was five feet four inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds. She was wearing a cotton print jacket over green satin trousers, with scarlet bands of silk tied around her ankles. Since it was drizzling, she had put on a pair of embroidered slippers soaked a dozen times in tong oil, which made a squishing sound when she walked. Her long shiny braids shone, and a heavy silver necklace hung around her neck—Great-Granddad was a silversmith. Great-Grandma, the daughter of a landlord who had fallen on hard times, knew the importance of bound feet to a girl, and had begun binding her daughter’s feet when she was six years old, tightening the bindings every day.
A yard in length, the cloth bindings were wound around all but the big toes until the bones cracked and the toes turned under. The pain was excruciating. My mother also had bound feet, and just seeing them saddened me so much that I felt compelled to shout: “Down with feudalism! Long live liberated feet!” The results of Grandma’s suffering were two three-inch golden lotuses, and by the age of sixteen she had grown into a well-developed beauty. When she walked, swinging her arms freely, her body swayed like a willow in the wind.
Shan Tingxiu, the groom’s father, was walking around Great-Granddad’s village, dung basket in hand, when he spotted Grandma among the other local flowers. Three months later, a bridal sedan chair would come to carry her away. After Shan Tingxiu had spotted Grandma, a stream of people came to congratulate Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma. Grandma pondered what it would be like to mount to the jingle of gold and dismount to the tinkle of silver, but what she truly longed for was a good husband, handsome and well educated, a man who would treat her gently. As a young maiden, she had embroidered a wedding trousseau and several exquisite pictures for the man who would someday become my granddad. Eager to marry, she heard innuendos from her girlfriends that the Shan boy was afflicted with leprosy, and her dreams began to evaporate. Yet, when she shared her anxieties with her parents, Great-Granddad hemmed and hawed, while Great-Grandma scolded the girlfriends, accusing them of sour grapes.
Later on, Great-
Granddad told her that the well-educated Shan boy had the fair complexion of a young scholar from staying home all the time. Grandma was confused, not knowing if this was true or not. After all, she thought, her own parents wouldn’t lie to her. Maybe her girlfriends had made it all up. Once again she looked forward to her wedding day.
Grandma longed to lose her anxieties and loneliness in the arms of a strong and noble young man. Finally, to her relief, her wedding day arrived, and as she was placed inside the sedan chair, carried by four bearers, the horns and woodwinds fore and aft struck up a melancholy tune that brought tears to her eyes. Off they went, floating along as though riding the clouds or sailing through a mist.
Grandma was light-headed and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red curtain that gave off a pungent mildewy odor. She reached out to lift it a crack—Great-Granddad had told her not to remove her red veil. A heavy bracelet of twisted silver slid down to her wrist, and as she looked at the coiled-snake design her thoughts grew chaotic and disoriented. A warm wind rustled the emerald-green stalks of sorghum lining the narrow dirt path. Doves cooed in the fields. The delicate powder of petals floated above silvery new ears of waving sorghum. The curtain, embroidered on the inside with a dragon and a phoenix, had faded after years of use, and there was a large stain in the middle.
Summer was giving way to autumn, and the sunlight outside the sedan chair was brilliant. The bouncing movements of the bearers rocked the chair slowly from side to side; the leather lining of their poles groaned and creaked, the curtain fluttered gently, letting in an occasional ray of sunlight and, from time to time, a whisper of cool air. Grandma was sweating profusely and her heart was racing as she listened to the rhythmic footsteps and heavy breathing of the bearers. The inside of her skull felt cold one minute, as though filled with shiny pebbles, and hot the next, as though filled with coarse peppers.
Shortly after leaving the village, the lazy musicians stopped playing, while the bearers quickened their pace. The aroma of sorghum burrowed into her heart. Full-voiced strange and rare birds sang to her from the fields. A picture of what she imagined to be the bridegroom slowly took shape from the threads of sunlight filtering into the darkness of the sedan chair. Painful needle pricks jabbed her heart.
“Old Man in heaven, protect me!’’ Her silent prayer made her delicate lips tremble. A light down adorned her upper lip, and her fair skin was damp. Every soft word she uttered was swallowed up by the rough walls of the carriage and the heavy curtain before her. She ripped the tart-smelling veil away from her face and laid it on her knees. She was following local wedding customs, which dictated that a bride wear three layers of new clothes, top and bottom, no matter how hot the day. The inside of the sedan chair was badly worn and terribly dirty; like a coffin, it had already embraced countless other brides, now long dead. The walls were festooned with yellow silk so filthy it oozed grease, and of the five flies caught inside, three buzzed above her head while the other two rested on the curtain before her, rubbing their bright eyes with black sticklike legs. Succumbing to the oppressiveness in the carriage, Grandma eased one of her bamboo-shoot toes under the curtain and lifted it a crack to sneak a look outside.
