Soul Mountain. Mabel Lee

The smashed signboard of the Ever Prosperous Restaurant has been repaired and one of the flat-bottomed pans used for frying its speciality guotie dumplings is beaten like a gong to announce it is back in business. The wine banner is again hanging from the upstairs window of the First Class Delicacies Restaurant. The most imposing structure is the state-run department store, a newly renovated three-storey concrete building. A single display window is the size of one of the old shops but the insides of the glass windows look as if they have never been cleaned. The photographer’s shop is eye-catching: photos of women in coquettish poses and wearing awful dresses are on display. They are all local beauties and not movie poster mm stars from some place at the other end of the earth. This place really produces good-looking women, every one of them is stunning. They have their beautiful cheeks cupped in their hands and their eyes have alluring looks. They’ve been carefully coached by the photographer but they are garishly dressed. Enlargements and colour prints are available and there’s a sign saying photos can be collected in twenty days, apparently they have to be developed in the city. Had fate not otherwise decreed, you could have been born in this town, grown up, and married here. You would have married a beautiful woman like one of these, who would long since have borne you sons and daughters. At this point, you smile and quickly move off in case people imagine you’ve taken a fancy to one of the women and start getting the wrong idea. And yet it is you who are carried away by your imagination. As you look up at the balconies above the shops with their curtained windows and pots of miniature trees and flowers, you can’t help wondering about the people who live here. There’s a big apartment with an iron padlock on the door — the pillars are now crooked but the carved eaves and railings which have fallen into disrepair indicate how imposing the place was at one time. The fates of its owners and their descendants fill you with curiosity. The shop at the side sells Hong Kong style dresses and jeans, and the stockings on show have a Western woman showing off her legs on the packaging. At the front door there’s a gold-plated sign, “Ever New Technical Development Company”, but it’s not clear what sort of technical development it is. Further on is a shop with heaps of unprocessed lime, and further on still is probably a miller’s and next to that a vacant allotment where rice noodles are drying on wires strung between posts. You turn back and go into a small lane next to the hot water urn of the tea stall, then turning a corner you are again lost in memories.

      Within a half-closed door is a damp courtyard, overgrown with weeds, desolate and lonely, with piles of rubble in the corners. You recall the back courtyard with the crumbling wall of your childhood home. You were afraid but it had a fascination for you, for the fox fairies of story books came from there. After school, without fail, you would go off alone with some trepidation to have a look. You never saw a fox fairy but that feeling of mystery always lingered in your childhood memories. There is an old stone bench riddled with cracks and a well which is probably dry. The mid-autumn wind blows through the dry yellow weeds in the rubble and the sun is very bright. These homes with their courtyard doors shut tight all have their histories which are all like ancient stories. In winter, the north wind is howling through the lane, you are wearing new warm padded cloth shoes and are with other children stamping your feet by the wall. You can remember the words of the ditty:

      In moonlight thick as soup

      I ride out to burn incense

      For Luo Dajie who burnt to death

      For Dou Sanniang who died in a rage

      Sanniang picked beans

      But the pods were empty

      She married Master Ji

      But Master Ji was short

      So she married a crab

      The crab crossed a ditch

      Trod on an eel

      The eel complained

      It complained to a monk

      The monk said a prayer

      A prayer to Guanyin

      So Guanyin pissed

      The piss hit my son

      His belly hurt

      So I got an exorcist to dance

      The dance didn’t work

      But still cost heaps of money

      Pale withered weeds and lush green new sprouts in the roof-tiles quiver in the wind. How long is it since you’ve seen grass growing in roof-tiles? Your bare feet patter on the black cobblestone street with its deep single-wheel rut, you’ve run out of your childhood back into the present. The bare feet, the dirty black feet, patter right there in front of your eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never run barefoot, what is crucial is this image in your mind.

      After a while you find your way out of the little lanes and make it back on the highway. This is where the bus from the county town turns around to go back. There’s a bus station by the road with a ticket window and some benches inside, this is where you got off the bus earlier on. Diagonally across the road is an inn — a row of single-storey rooms — and the whitewashed brick wall has a sign “Good Rooms Within”. It looks clean and you have to find somewhere to stay, so you go in. An old attendant is sweeping the corridor and you ask her if there’s a room. She says yes. You ask her how much further is it to Lingshan. She gives you a cold look, this is a state-run inn, she’s on a monthly state award wage and isn’t generous with words.

      “Number two,” she says pointing with the broom handle to a room with the door open. You take your luggage in and notice there are two beds. On one there’s someone lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other, with a copy of Unofficial Record of the Flying Fox in his hands. The title is written on the brown paper cover of the book, apparently on loan from a bookstall. You greet him and he puts down the book to give a friendly nod.

      “Hello.”

      “Staying here?”

      “Yes.”

      “Have a cigarette.” He tosses you a cigarette.

      “Thanks.” You sit on the empty bed opposite. It happens that he wants to chat. “How long have you been here?”

      “Ten or so days.” He sits up and lights himself a cigarette.

      “Here buying stock?” you ask, taking a guess.

      “I’m here for timber.”

      “Is it easy getting timber here?”

      “Have you got a quota?” he asks instead, starting to become interested.

      “What quota?”

      “A state-plan quota, of course.”

      “No.”

      “Then it’s not easy to get.” He lies down again.

      “Is there a timber shortage even in this forest region?”

      “There’s timber around but prices are different.” He can’t be bothered, he can tell you’re not in the game.

      “Are you waiting for cheaper prices?”

      “Yes,” he responds indifferently, taking up his book again to read.

      “You stock buyers really get to know about a lot of things.” You have to flatter him so that you can ask him some questions.

      “Not really.” He becomes modest.

      “The place Lingshan, do you know how to get there?”

      He doesn’t reply so you can only say you’ve come to do some sightseeing and is there anywhere worth seeing.

      “There’s a pavilion by the river. If you sit there you’ll get a good view of the other side of the river.”

      “Enjoy your rest!” you say for want of something to say.

      You leave your bags, find the attendant to register and set off*. The wharf is at the end of the highway. The steps, made of long slabs of rock, go down steeply for more than ten metres and moored there are several black canopy boats with their bamboo poles up. The river isn’t wide but