Watching Over Kuzhu Village
Watching Over Kuzhu Village By Li Wenfeng Whenever my heart has nowhere to rest, I want to go to a mountain village where white clouds and emerald waters grow. That village is Kuzhu Village, the dream destination of men and women beyond the mountains. —from Literary Notes Kuzhu Village, the best-preserved ancient town in northwestern Hunan, was already a famous Lishui river wharf in the Yuan Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing dynasties it belonged to the territory of the Sangzhi Tusi and was a commercial distribution center on the upper reaches of the Lishui River, as well as an important town on the southern border of the Sangzhi Tusi. In the late Qing Dynasty it gradually declined. Yet the ancient stone...
Keeping Watch Over Kuzhu Village
Li Wenfeng
Whenever my heart has nowhere to rest, I want to go to a mountain village where white clouds and green waters grow. That village is Kuzhu Village, the one that city folk, men and women alike, long for in their dreams.
—— from Literary Notes
Kuzhu Village, the best-preserved ancient town in northwestern Xiangxi, was already a famous river port on the Lishui River in the Yuan Dynasty. Under the Ming and Qing it belonged to the territory of the Sangzhi Tusi, serving as a trading hub on the upper reaches of the Lishui and a key town on the southern frontier of the Sangzhi domain. It gradually declined toward the end of the Qing. Yet its old flagstone street, time-honored shops, fire-blocking walls, and simple rustic customs still shine like a thread-bound history of Tusi culture.
—— from A Zhangjiajie, China Travel Souvenir Album
Where the waters flow most tenderly, there must surely rise a wild host of green mountains. In the setting where mountain meets mountain, who is the master painter? He has dotted out a wash of ink so plain and elegant. Deep in the crescent moon, fading out in the white mist. The moss-covered fire-blocking walls, steeped in ancient charm, are shaped as dragons and phoenixes bringing auspiciousness, rhythmically interspersed with gray-black boat-shaped stilt houses, while on the inverted V-shaped tiled roofs flourish and wither the years of fragrant grass. A long flagstone street echoes with the clatter of footsteps, the clip-clop of horse caravans, the swish of long sleeves, the roar of drunken laughter, the crying of children, the cursing of shrews, the calls of old shops, and the oh, oh, oh moans from behind the white curtains of the west wing of the stilt houses. There are the drum-and-suona sounds of weddings and funerals, the sounds of wooden leaves, bamboo flutes, and huqin in the slack farming season, and the earth-shaking roar of firelocks…… In the fish-scale-like shallow hollows of the flagstones, after rain, countless tiny moons collect, like the blinking eyes of village girls. The flagstone street stretches along the riverbank, stubbornly following the terrain, now pulling the mottled wooden stilt houses into a sudden left bend, now a right turn. At each bend, a sliver of sky is squeezed out for the convenience of people and livestock. Where the sky comes to rest, narrow, cramped flagstone alleys are formed. At every corner and turn, stone-built mountain gates are set in. From between these gates, if you cast your gaze deep into the stilt houses, you can tell the good and bad fortunes of the Qin, Huang, and Shi sisters and their families.
The stilt houses that form the main body of the village are built along the riverbank and against the mountain slopes. Their feet extend into the river; up close they look like the bare feet of villagers soaked in the water all year round, and from afar they resemble the long legs of red-crowned cranes standing still in a lake. The stilt houses are beautiful, with carved beams and painted rafters, upturned eaves and flying corners. A long winding corridor over the water draws many chatting, laughing villagers. Some sing; when one side sings, the other side answers from the stilt houses, voices rising and falling. Those matching flowers match until fragrance stains their collars; those matching water match until ten thousand springs cascade; those matching love match until they find the one in their hearts. An old granny spins thread, spinning out long
long flowing water, spinning out the long, calm years of the village. Now the old granny's spinning wheel and the stilt houses have both entered the footnotes of history. A group of children, naked through all four seasons, slide down from the stilt houses into the river, diving into the water like carp, then suddenly bursting back to the surface, splashing everywhere, and in no time a water fight begins. The winners laugh heartily; the losers wail loudly. Hearing the crying, someone shouts from the stilt house, "Which brat is showing off? If you can't take it, don't start bawling!" Hearing the shout from above, the commotion below stops, and laughter and tears suddenly give way again to the sound of flowing water. Watching the small river rise from the stilt house, a look of vague loss creeps over the faces of the whole family; the long flowing water gives one the feeling of life slipping away. In the past, driven by hardship, when the river rose, villagers would use a long wooden hook to fish out timber washed down from upstream. Nowadays this is rarely done. When the small river floods, it is the happiest and most wonderful time for the villagers in the stilt houses: playing cards, playing the datong, playing mahjong, playing chess, humming Yang opera, secretly writing letters to the world beyond the mountains—altogether a new way of life.
For those used to living in the city, just come to the village and study the stilt houses for a while, and your feelings will rise. On the arched corridor eaves hang plows and harrows; on the board walls beside the windows hang palm-bark rain capes and bamboo hats. At the Beginning of Spring the farm tools come down from the stilt houses, accompanying the mountain folk as they turn the fields and plow the soil, sowing spring. Autumn walks very lightly into the stilt houses; strings of fiery red chilies are like strings of fiery red pastoral poetry. Potatoes have long lain on the floorboards, and sweet potatoes crowd into a corner for the fun of it. When the season for cutting ripe corn arrives, it comes to the windows and doors, upstairs and downstairs, inside and outside the stilt houses. With such food for life, the stilt houses are utterly secure, and the hearts of the farmers are utterly secure. Let the years drift on and the sun and moon turn; the stilt houses always give off a kind of luster.
The deft and clever sisters embroider flowered handkerchiefs in the stilt houses, embroider sock soles and shoe uppers, embroider the years of youth, embroider splendid love. When the Qin sisters embroider to the point of feeling, an alluring ballad follows the wind and moonlight through the half-open west window, circling low and flying around the stilt house:
In the first watch, oh, I wait for my love to come, embroidering a sachet in the stilt house. The sachet is embroidered with my heart, hung at my love's waist and held in his breast.
In the second watch, oh, my love does not come, embroidering a sachet in the stilt house. The sachet is embroidered with my longing, to accompany him south and north.
When the time for crying marriage arrives, the stilt houses again drift with the lingering songs of bridal lament, and though the crying shakes the stilt houses, it is sorrowful without being tragic, painful without resentment. Children often climb onto the crossbeams to poke out swallow nests; when adults see it, they give chase and beat them. Adults protecting swallows are really protecting blessings; children playing with birds are really playing with innocence. For generation after generation, the stilt houses have become a kind of history, a dwelling custom of an ethnic people. The leisureliness of life has poured calm feeling into the stilt houses. Under the stilt houses are piled firewood and grass for daily needs, and livestock are shut in. The tinkling of cowbells, the bleating of sheep, mixed with the colorful crowing of roosters, play a symphony of the mountain village stilt houses morning and night, plain yet containing brilliance, complex yet breeding simplicity—truly beauty in its highest degree returning to plainness.
At the center of the village, a cluster of stilt houses surrounds an old and vast building: the Guandi Temple, which the mountain folk visit morning and evening. Though the temple is now dilapidated, from its antique lingering charm I can still feel the prosperity of its former incense offerings. The wooden fish goes tang, tang; the sighs of vows, the kneeling and bowing seem right before my eyes, clinging to the villagers' entrustment and hopes. Beyond the temple's incense burner stands a theater-watching tower. Opera troupes from beyond the mountains often come to the village to perform grand operas. For weddings and funerals, festivals and New Year, they sing for seven days and seven nights; if a rich patron hires them, they must sing for three months or half a year. When the gongs and drums strike up, onto the theater tower come the laughingstocks of history, the torches of Yuanmou Man, the moon of Tang and the wind of Song, the figures of ethnic migration, and the drunken dances after harvest. It is precisely at such heart-stirring moments that the mountain folk enter a mysterious impulse of life. In each villager's heart, the village performs an ancient song, desolate yet vivid, every note surging with the tide of life. Qin music. Legends. Bonfires. Suffering. Beautiful birth. Tragic death. Time is polished into dream on the theater tower. The Guandi Temple has now fallen silent as a window on history, and through this window one can see the shifting storms of history and the changes in the village's survival.
Water sleeves sweep away the village's loneliness; long arias drag in the villagers' excitement. But outside troupes must always leave, and once they go, the village returns to loneliness and cold quiet. So the villagers trained their own troupe, and when the outside troupe leaves they perform Nuo altar opera, dance lion lanterns, perform flower lanterns, and hum Yang opera. The troupe sings every night with flavor and color, utterly enchanting. Just from this theater tower you can imagine the pomp of the former dignitaries, the refined pleasures of the boudoir, the comfortable days of common folk waving palm-leaf fans, and the broad mingling of all walks of life.
I break free from the temple's alluring rope and stop again at the village's weather-beaten river port. Will the feelings I laid down before come surging back? I caress with my gaze every drop of water and stone, every grain of sand and blade of grass at this port. The stone steps of the river port run in a single line into the village. The stone steps are the village's feet: when the water rises, the feet stretch up; when the water falls, the feet drop down. In this way the laughter and curses at the port have followed the stretching and shrinking of the village's feet for hundreds and thousands of years. For a thousand years, three old white-barked maple trees have stood facing the wind at the village mouth's port. The old maples guard the mountain gate; their cloud-piercing crowns pile up countless forked branches, seeing off the sun and welcoming the moon, cutting the white clouds of the sky to pieces. On the forked branch of the tallest tree grows an eagle's nest like a beauty mark. Mischievous village children climb up, take out eagle eggs, and squint as they hold them up to the sun. Two spotted dogs are making love on the flagstone street; the child tosses down the eagle egg, the two dogs fight over it, heads bumping together, rumps joined so tightly that even a stick cannot separate them. A widow secretly watches from a stilt house, her eyes darting this way and that, not knowing where to rest. Flustered, she opens her blouse and stuffs a lively nipple into her little one's mouth. If it were night, just then from below the stilt house would surely come the long and short bang-bang, bang-bang sound. The widow's ears are sharp; she hears it clearly, hears it to the heart, and her heart is like a mountain bird that flutters away. But this bird has nowhere ever to nest, just as the waters of the Kuzhu River, though free-flowing all their life, will in the end have no final resting place.
The Kuzhu River guards Kuzhu Village and nurtures Kuzhu Village. The Kuzhu River does not seek speed; it uses its whole body of water to polish its own quality morning and night. A red dragonfly flies romantically over the Kuzhu River; each rise and dip to touch the water stirs out an extremely glittering rhythm. A plain little village girl beckons the silver-winged fish, chrysanthemum shrimp, and tiny crabs in the water to come near her, and with childlike delight raises a lotus-leaf umbrella, quietly lurking at the water's edge; she lures the red dragonfly to come. This river has become poetry.
Time is always too short for me in the village. I casually seize the village's hazy dusk, and night arrives. Through the osmanthus that lingers by the village riverbank, I look up and see a very small waning crescent moon, so small it can just light the small village. Sighs. Longing. Quiet. Bustle. The autumn wind combs the thin village. The loose boat-shaped stilt houses cluster around the flowers of the soul. I gaze at the melody and theme of this ancient image, always lingering between intention and unintention along the thread of logic. The osmanthus on that bank and in that village is rice-yellow as a dream, white as snow. Speaking of snow, indeed the sky fills with flocks of dancing snowflakes. In this season, the village uses black shining lines to conquer the almost level snowfield of the village.
On a pure white night, the human soul is quiet. The village is beautiful; birds gently close the door for the mountain folk. The heavy snow buries everything, leaving only a tranquility that defeats restlessness. The village sleeps in the bosom of the great mountains, quiet as a lightly sleeping white swan. The snowy street refracts a bright white light. Bamboo fences press close together for warmth; woodpiles stand guard under white snow; the chickens, ducks, and singing insects, the little stone alleys and osmanthus have hidden somewhere unknown. A thread of blue flowing on the river, a wisp of green drifting from the chimney, a stretch of white winding along the flagstone street, and the ice flowers born far from clamor—their tones are so soft, unified, and harmonious. Snow is truly a makeup artist for this village. But in fact, what embarrasses me is that I cannot cross this auspicious snow. I can only use experience to stir imagination, and imagination to bind the journey. All this, of course, I care about very much. And yet this is precisely the most absolutely beautiful firmness in my life's journey.
When the snow passes through the village, a very hard wind sweeps across the village's southern slope. In the early spring dusk, when river ducks feel warmth and comfort, from the osmanthus riverbank that raises countless palms comes the faint chirping of mountain birds. Can this small, clear sound pierce the bonds of the biting cold wind? Can it fluently call the great mountains back to life? Facing these questions, the mountain birds continue their chirping. Though vague, broken and continuous, they cast a line of bright, vital sound into the vast sky. Mountain birds have none of man's sorrow and doubt; though what they chirp is only faint, blind, fragmentary life, it is still so abundant and beautiful. One day, when the sun is as big as a washbasin, the mountain folk watch winter's weary and broken ranks retreat before their eyes. From their hearts they release song.
The mountain folk could not hold back spring.
The village cheers the arrival of spring.
The mountain folk survey the village, open the mountain gate, lower the drawbridge, and a broad road stubbornly stretches out beyond the mountains. I seize the opportunity, specially invite the spring still lingering beyond the village, joyfully take spring's clever hand, and together plunge into the Kuzhu Village I have long kept watch over.