Longing for the River
Longing for the River by Zhong Tiefu I grew up in a small mountain town by the Li River. In my faint memories, the county town was extremely small, with just one flagstone street, where pigs, cows, dogs, and horses could be seen wandering everywhere, now and then leaving a pile of dung or urine. Occasionally a bridal sedan chair would pass through the narrow street, and the piping and drumming tunes would draw the feet of the whole town, old and young alike. The only mark of modern civilization was a small thermal power plant in the town. The thermal generator burned charcoal and was especially loud. At night…
Longing for the River
Zhong Tiefu
I grew up in a small mountain town by the Lishui River. In my vague memories, the county town was tiny, with just one flagstone street, where pigs, cows, dogs, and horses could be seen wandering everywhere, now and then dropping a pile of dung or urine. Occasionally a bridal sedan chair would pass through the narrow street, and the tunes played by the musicians would stir the feet of the whole town, old and young alike. The only sign of modern civilization was a small thermal power plant in the town. It burned charcoal and was terribly loud. At nightfall, the town would tremble in the rumbling as it welcomed light. After ten o'clock, the rumbling stopped, and civilization departed along with it. In the middle of the night, wild animals often slipped into houses to steal chickens, and the sudden burst of screeches only added to the emptiness and silence of the night.
The place was remote and isolated, yet full of magical color. The mountains that seemed to hide and yet reveal themselves, the clear, green streams and river branches, and the city god temples and ancient pagodas were filled with an atmosphere of enchantment, inviting speculation and stirring the soul. Since the landscape was like this, it was only fitting that it should give birth to rich and colorful folk literature and art. An old camphor tree, a cave, a pair of straw sandals, a flowered kerchief—each contained a moving legend. In the first and twelfth lunar months, farmers from the surrounding villages would pour into the small town with their whole families, playing with lanterns and watching lanterns, singing antiphonal mountain songs all night long, and they would not stop until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. At such times, I would join the neighborhood children, each carrying a little paper lantern, and squeeze into the crowd to look at the powdered faces of the flower-lantern girls, the clam spirit spitting fire, the qigong master lying on a rack of blades, and the young men beating the three-stick drum and tossing knives. If my grandmother had not grabbed me and shouted through the streets, I would never have remembered to go home and sleep.
My grandmother was an opera fan and also a storytelling fan. Whenever the county's Yang opera troupe staged a new play, she would always take me along, and if it was a tragedy like The Tablet of Life and Death, I would have to accompany her through a few handfuls of old tears. On summer nights, my grandmother would play host, sweeping the yard behind our house, preparing tea, and inviting the storyteller over. My duty was to fan people and pour tea. The storyteller was a blind old man surnamed Dai who lived by the river. He was decrepit, but his voice was extremely loud, and when he reached an impassioned passage, he would often bang the gavel heavily on the tea table. His prodigious memory and his vivid, emotionally rich narration remain unforgettable to this day.
The local people mostly believed in ghosts and foxes, and everyone had a few stories at their fingertips; when they got together, they would talk of ghosts. On such and such a day, whose youngest daughter was bewitched by a spirit and hid in her room all day giggling foolishly. Someone else saw a hanged ghost collecting debts, a ghost of difficult childbirth combing her hair…… I was afraid of ghosts, yet I loved to listen, and no beating could drive me away. At night when I slept, my head was full of green-faced, fanged monsters. There was a woman surnamed Song in the neighborhood who often had epileptic fits, and everyone said she was a Wuchang, a ghost that specialized in taking lives. She herself did not deny it, and even openly said that she would soon take her uncle's life. Because of this incredible ability, I held her in considerable awe.
Whether this can be called the special culture of a region, and what seeds it sowed in my stubborn soul, I do not know.
What I remember most deeply is the river called the Lishui. The river was not particularly remarkable, but it was very clean, hugging the south side of the town as it flowed past. On clear days, the riverbank was crowded with women washing clothes, squatting on the bluestones like birds, while the sound of wooden beaters echoed over the riverbed like raindrops. Many black-canopied boats, oiled to a shine, were moored by the bank, and their bows and sterns became the domain of men bathing. Stark naked, they either jumped into the river to frolic or stood on the boat bows scrubbing their backs, feeling not the least bit embarrassed. The boat trackers were even more uninhibited, walking past the wooden beaters in naked files, their white buttocks and dark upper bodies strikingly conspicuous in the sun. The washing women were used to it and thought nothing of it; only when the men deliberately splashed water their way would they raise their willow-leaf eyebrows and scold, “You beheadable wretch!”
Many years later, when I began writing fiction, I drew much inspiration and insight from this river. It unabashedly displayed nature's charm and ruggedness, and displayed people and human nature. Precisely because of this, the river had living life and color.
I was not born worshiping rivers. My grandmother had once consulted a blind fortune-teller, who said that I was “doomed at the three watery passes.” The gist was that I would drown, and could only escape the calamity at twelve. I was not a docile child, and watching other children leap into the river like dumplings while I squatted on the bank guarding clothes—what agony that was. I sneaked into the water, and indeed nearly drowned several times, but in the critical moments I was always pulled out. I did not submit to fate, and in this struggle between life and death, I finally learned the dog paddle, diving, and splashing with shining claws, and could even float my little belly to the surface without moving my hands and feet.
The river was the children's Garden of Eden. We went upstream to Wulong Shoal to catch fish, spearing them with homemade fish forks and smashing them with stones; we went downstream to Guanyin Bridge, where the current was swiftest, to ride the waves, letting out a series of proud cheers amid the terrifying swells. When tired, we lay on the sandbar and took turns telling stories (mostly heard from adults or made up on the spot), and we also made up children's songs and sang them. We sang of stars and moon, flowers and birds, insects and fish, sang of how to go up the mountain to cut firewood and down to the river to fetch water, full of childish fantasy and natural melody.
We loved the river, because the river taught us to love, taught us the grandeur of nature and the meaning of life.