Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of A Young Poet

In the beginning the sun shone brightly, illuminating the clean and shiny kitchen. I sat on the bench by the window. As I recall, that bench was wider than the others, and the red paint on its surface had been stripped away by my mother’s frequent vigorous scrubbing. My mother never liked painted furniture. She used ashes from the stove to remove the paint from any article made of wood to restore its natural appearance, after which she would place it in the sun to dry, and then carefully move it back indoors. A light fragrance from the scrubbed bench floated, drifting in the morning sunlight. I sat there observing my surroundings. The shadows flickered on the checkerboard pattern of the floor. The sun must just have risen from the sea a short time ago, and at that moment was climbing over the east side of the small city; the surface of the sea must have shimmered with a thousand kinds of light. I remember that shimmering water, which at the same time seemed so distant. Often I heard the low, continuous surge of the water in the night and asked what it was. “That is the ocean, the Pacific Ocean,” my mother replied. The ocean was close by, of course. When the sun rose from the sea, shining through the windowpanes onto the clean floor, the room was filled with a fresh and delicate fragrance.

I slid off the bench, slipped on my wooden clogs, and walked out the small kitchen door. A pump, which was taller than I, stood in the courtyard. Its wooden handle was scrubbed clean and its iron body gave off a damp smell and was very cold to the touch. The cold came from the water as it rose through the iron from underground. Farther on, there stood a huge broad-leafed tree—its name was unknown to me then—which covered half of the courtyard and stood right above a small shed for firewood. The leaves of the tree were greenish gray, larger than my palm, and hairy. The falling leaves were always dry and produced a sound like snapping fingers. Decades later during my school days, whenever I read a description of the clear, loud sound made by falling wutong leaves, I would immediately recall that tree. In summer, it circumscribed a small, cool world for us, and as autumn gained, its broad leaves would fall one by one and pile up in the courtyard. Wearing wooden clogs, I kicked the fallen leaves. I liked hearing the rasping sound and the mood it created, as if a cello embellished a tune in a lonely courtyard in the afternoon, expressing a mood I didn’t understand then, but do now. Standing in the courtyard, I observed the huge tree in summer, and up through layers of green leaves I sought the bright sunlight in the swaying treetop and the broken blue sky beyond. I’d close my eyes and perceive a tiny dot of red light in the darkness that gradually faded away, and then I’d open my eyes and look for it again. On one branch there was a chrysalis, and when a breeze suddenly stirred I saw a tumblebug descending obliquely on its wings to the ground, where it struggled to right itself only to speed off again up into the broad, overlapping leaves.

All of this occurred in the early days of the Pacific War. The flames of war burned in the distant sky, but hadn’t reached my ocean, my small city, and my courtyard, which was covered by a dense canopy of leaves. Almost every day the sunlight played on the bamboo fence, at the foot of which had sprouted several papaya trees. Each day, I squatted to see how much one of them had grown. The earthworms turned the soil, and the cannas blossomed. In the neighboring courtyard a rooster patrolled proudly as a mother hen led her chicks beneath the daylilies where they vied, pecking for seeds, while heavy snorts rhythmically rose from the pigpen nearby. A bit farther on was another bamboo fence of the neighbors’, beyond which the bell of a bike could be heard ringing all the way to the end of the alley and then turning left, where there was a row of houses that faced a porch where a blind grandma with bound feet always sat. Turning to the right led downhill to where vegetable gardens were planted among the random trees. I’m not quite sure what was beyond that.

The flames of war had not yet reached Hualien.

It was a small, quiet city beyond the notice and concern of most people. At that time, almost no news was produced in that small, remote city, which slept below the layered high green mountains and nestled on the whitest and cleanest beach on the Pacific Ocean. At the far end of the streets running west to east you could see the deep blue sea, which was smooth and gentle like a silk curtain hanging below a sky of the same deep blue color. At the opposite end of the streets was the highest mountain range, rising abruptly several thousand meters, from Mount Sanbalakan in the north winding south to Mount Qijiaochuan, beyond which, and even higher, stood Mount Botuolu, Mount Liwuzhu, and Great Tailuge Mountain. At the far periphery, and in your imagination, you could clearly see Mount Dumou, Mount Wuling, Mount Nenggao, and Mount Qilai. From the northern peak of Mount Qilai at 3,605 meters, you could see Mount Dabajian to the north, rival of Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain to the south, which looked down on Hualien, that small, sleepy city without news. A train slowly puffed smoke as it climbed the longitudinal valley; the narrow highway cut though cliffs, in the open spaces of which you could intermittently see a convoy of trucks cautiously wheeling from tunnel to tunnel. Yes, Hualien slept at the intersection of the railroad and the highway on an alluvial fan of a beautiful river. It was pillowed on the lullaby of the Pacific Ocean, as the waves surged up and down on the beach, repeating a melody of tens of millions of years, regardless of whether anyone was listening or not. Hualien is located on a small plain where the high mountains meet the great sea. The squat houses were hidden beneath betel palms, flame trees, old banyan trees, and breadfruit trees, and under the unknown broad-leafed tree where the chrysalis and the tumblebug rested. On the shores of the river and lake grew reeds and white ginger flowers.

My world was very small. Most of the time I was in the courtyard in the shade of the tree, watching the flickering shadows, the wet spot that had dried beneath the pump, or the strange and changing mirages shining on the bamboo fence. Sometimes I sat on the tatami mats, leaning on the small, low table by the window, looking through my mother’s photo albums, turning the pages of pictures of people dressed in Chinese clothes, or Western-style clothes, or Japanese kimonos. In the background of most of the photos was a corner of a steamer, the hawser and ship’s wheel, or a life ring fastened to the side of the ship, under which a potted orchid was placed. The fresh and delicate fragrance of straw from the tatami mats floated in the sunlight. Outside was a small courtyard, on the other side of which lived a couple who spoke almost exclusively Japanese. At first I thought they were Japanese, but later my mother told me they were Taiwanese like us; I didn’t understand why they spoke only Japanese. I knew some Japanese, not just enough to understand it but also to speak it; however, we did our best to use it as little as possible, save when we played and sang children’s songs. One time, I was under the banyan tree by the door feeding a dragonfly to the ants when the man next door came out and scolded me, calling me dirty. With a long string of Japanese words, I replied with as good as I got. As I recall, Japanese has many expressions for scolding and swearing at people, making it much easier to use than Taiwanese. At that moment, a Japanese policeman in uniform happened to walk by, and when he heard my Japanese, he said in all seriousness, “This kodomo (kid) can really talk.” He couldn’t help laughing as he spoke.

At dusk, the light of the setting summer sun shone obliquely into the alley.

I don’t know why the Japanese police were always called “detectives.” Perhaps it was because civil disputes in Taiwan were handled by minor officials, while the criminal cases were handled by the Japanese police in their neat and clean uniforms. Perhaps it was not so, but their uniforms were very convincing to my young and impressionable mind. When I happened to run into those uniformed men, fear and admiration inevitably arose. I think that what I feared and admired was their authority, and it was on the basis of this not yet mature judgment that I understood them to be different from us, that they were foreign rulers. Their facial expressions were unique, not to say their tone of voice, which few Taiwanese were able to learn well. Why did so many Taiwanese make such a great effort to learn Japanese facial expressions and tone of voice? The era of the Pacific War was upon us; the Japanese had ruled Taiwan for nearly fifty years; the Komika, or assimilation movement had been going on for some time; and many a Tom, Dick, and Harry had changed his name to Watanabe or Tanaka. The big, strong men liked to wear a white T-shaped mawashi, or sumo belt, and relax under the covered walkways along the streets during the summer and greet each other in their broken Japanese. Thinking of all this now, it ought to be clear. Taiwan had been under Japanese rule for almost fifty years, and through an exhausted consciousness the people seemed to have come to some sort of realization. The flames of war were burning in the distant sky and one day would perhaps affect our small world, perhaps redefine right and wrong, honor and shame, and alter the image of man and human values here. Perhaps, but nothing was certain. The flames of war burned overseas, and some were waiting for them to quickly spread here. But the insane flames only ever burned across the sea.

From then until the U.S. army started bombing Hualien, and even to the end of the war when the Japanese were forced to withdraw, I don’t recall seeing many Japanese, except for the policemen who handled the criminal cases. But one morning, perhaps in winter, I saw a soldier with a sword striding silently down the street. His face was almost expressionless, but the little moustache on his lip evinced a lonely haughtiness. In those days when the emperor’s army had suffered successive defeats, he strode silently, one hand resting on his sword. He strode in that small and remote city as the cold winter air filled the Pacific coast, as the towering mountains stood steadily looking down, as snow covered the summits of Mount Sanbalakan, Mount Liwu, and Mount Qilai, which silently kept watch, yet could not avoid quietly telling me something, though they were more silent than the defeated rulers and the uneasy Taiwanese. I could hear the mountains speaking.

Not far south of Hualien by foot was a village called Yoshino, where it was said the Japanese lived. From the quaint Japanese name, one knew that it was a special place. Moreover, Yoshino was located at the foot of a high mountain, but unlike Hualien, it did not face the ocean, because directly to the east rose the Coastal Mountain Range, which runs south in the mist all the way to the mouth of the Beinan River, where it ends. Yoshino stood facing the far-off starting point of the Coastal Mountain Range, and so was tucked away at the head of the Taidong Longitudinal Valley. South from there, the train ran all the way between two parallel mountain ranges. The Japanese chose this place to live and gave the village its classical name. It was said that they were seriously experimenting with a new variety of Penglai rice with a limited harvest to present to their emperor, eating it themselves only if there was some surplus, and thereby demonstrating its excellence.

I visited Yoshino more than once. There was a young girl, somewhat older than I, who lived in my neighborhood and often took me out to play. For some reason, one day she said we were going to Yoshino. She helped me up on the back of her bike, and then we rode out of town. That was probably the first time I left my small world of the chrysalis and the tumblebug and ventured to a faraway place. The mountains never altered shape, maintaining the same appearance, looking down upon me in that familiar way. Sitting on the back of her bike, I looked at the paddy fields and betel palms, and heard the wind whisper in my ears as countless dragonflies circled in the air. We entered the vestibule of a Japanese home; the smells of miso soup and salted daikon radish quietly filled the air, giving it a strange and foreign savor. We were invited into a modest room of tatami mats and sat at a small, low table, waiting for the hostess to show up. There was a large scroll on which I think was written one big character. At the time I couldn’t read the character, but thinking about it now, it was probably the character

(endurance), written very large and in a cursive form. Suddenly I heard someone enter the room with short, quick steps. It was a woman holding up the hem of her thin kimono, the sash of which was not fastened tightly, leaving her breasts visible. She sat down and in a crisp and hurried voice talked to my older companion. I don’t know what she said; I just sat there, looking around, peeking with curiosity at her exposed breasts, feeling embarrassed. The Japanese woman was friendly and smiled quite naturally at me, but when her eyes met mine, I couldn’t help lowering my head.

As the final phase of the Pacific War approached, the rulers mobilized the Taiwanese to build a new airstrip near Yoshino to serve as a staging base from which the kamikaze pilots would set off to attack the U.S. warships at sea. But before it was finished, their emperor announced Japan’s surrender in a radio broadcast. Thinking about it now, it was lucky that they surrendered early; otherwise, regardless of how many suicide aircraft went down the smokestacks of American warships as a show of their endless bushido spirit or how many Japanese youths continued to sacrifice their lives in the “sacred war,” Hualien would have suffered more bombings by American military planes, which would have destroyed not only Yoshino of the Japanese but also our small city that slept year in and year out on that alluvial fan. Amid a total absence of emotion on my part, the Japanese withdrew. The betel nut palms were still there, as were the flame trees, old banyan trees, breadfruit trees, and that unknown broad-leafed tree that I was most familiar with, which belonged to the insects. The reeds and white ginger flowers on the shores of the river and lake were still there, and the dragonflies still danced above the footpaths that crisscrossed the fields. The Japanese man of my memory was dressed in an arrogant uniform and carried a sword; the Japanese woman of memory wore a loose-fitting robe with her breasts embarrassingly exposed. She sat on the tatami mats and talked with smile in a voice that was crisp and hurried, but what she talked about, I can’t say.

In those years of immaturity and curiosity, vastness and loftiness were about the only things bestowed upon me by my space. The mountains were staunch guardians and the sea was the starting point of imagination, arising as it did from the continuous rolling of the waves and foam. I could imagine the existence, not too distant, of a deep and surging place with a reef, seaweed, and fish swimming in the cold darkness below. But beyond that the powers of my imagination failed, though there was probably also a reef, seaweed, and fish, only bigger and much fiercer. Sometimes I knew by instinct that deep in the open sea off the coast of Hualien there must lie sunken ships that had come to rest there on account of pirate attacks or storms. Sunken in the icy depths was a rusty and rotten warship, its crooked masts and iron chains fused by the seawater, the treasure chests, broken swords, and dull knives scattered under branching coral. Nearby, in twos and threes, were the skeletons of long-dead sailors. Colorful fish swam around, blowing bubbles; and the crabs and starfish squirmed and scuttled along, providing a patina of horrifying color to the silent underwater world. However, all of this swayed only in my imagination; I was convinced that it must be so, though it never entered my mind to dive as other boys did to probe that dim world. The thought simply never crossed my mind. Occasionally I indulged in sketching those underwater landscapes, but I was far more enthusiastic about creating a world above the sea for myself, beyond the ken of our eyes, beyond the horizon. Then for some reason the air suddenly stirred, dashing and vibrating to produce one of those storms that no one had the power to oppose or resist.

A typhoon was coming.

The typhoons came from far away across the sea and always chose to make land at Hualien. In the succession of the long, hot days of summer, we sometimes sensed that there was something unusual at work between the heavens and the earth: the sun turned somber and the wind blew steadily. That’s how it always began. It wasn’t the cool sea breeze whispering on the beach, but rather a sultry, even hot, wind without the slightest hint of moisture. The tree leaves flapped, beating against one another, and the ants quickened their pace at the foot of the wall. In the neighboring courtyard the rooster huddled strangely with the hen and chicks under the eaves, peering about uneasily. The sparrows disappeared from the telephone poles. When you looked up at the mountains behind, they appeared clearer and lighter than usual, the trees so distinct you could count them, and the deep green looked plated with silver light.

According to the regulations, the shops in this small city closed early; the pickle vendor, the tinker, the umbrella and shoe repairman, the barber who shouldered the tools of his trade with which to shave people’s heads on the street, the castrator of pigs, and the pedestrians on the streets and alleys all went home one by one. Following tradition, they firmly nailed the planks, which had been used in previous years and stored in sheds, across the doors and windows. So, from the chair where I sat in the kitchen, I could hear the neighbors on all sides hammering, stirring the hot wind. My mother busied herself with taking down the bamboo poles on which clothes were hung out to dry and fixing them to the floor of the porch, moving the firewood and coal inside along with the earthen jars of pickled cucumbers and dried turnips; nor could the thick, fermented spicy broad-bean sauce and the nearly cured fermented bean curd that had been drying half the summer be forgotten and left outside. She carefully moved all of it into the kitchen, which suddenly seemed to come alive. I sat on the chair watching or slipped down to walk around and touch everything, feeling the warmth of home. The typhoon really was something, I thought, hearing the neighbors nailing their doors and windows shut. The typhoon was very interesting, I thought, as I wiped the light perspiration from my neck. The typhoon was coming, hu—hu, the typhoon was coming.

At first the strong wind brought rain showers to attack the sheet-metal roofs and board walls. Sitting on the tatami mats, I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard the wind blow stronger and stronger and the rain fall heavier and heavier. I could picture its arrival, a mass of black air rolling toward Hualien from far over the sea. Steadily it loomed, carrying tens of thousands of square meters of rain. Tearing the vast canopy of the sky, it rolled our way, the clouds and moisture churning like boiling water, separating and reuniting in the cosmos. The seawater turned and tossed and swayed, hurling itself furiously at the land. At first we could still hear the female radio announcer talking, and even the impractical music between the news and government orders trying to block out the noise of wind and rain outside. Several candles and a box of matches were kept by the radio. I sat under the lamp and concentrated on listening to the violent beating, shaking, and howling of the typhoon. I listened attentively again and could sense the drum and bugle of the furious waves that besieged the coastal breakwater ever more vehemently. And so the sky darkened.

Yes, from the sea rushed the typhoon toward the small city crouched at the foot of the mountain. People were accustomed to its powerful force, as in the past and as they would be in the future; they even felt that the summer cleansing it brought was necessary, to perhaps drive away the insect pests and stagnant air. Perhaps that was not the case, though, after the typhoon warning balloons were raised and amid the exhortations of the radio announcer. After feeling the abnormally hot wind and witnessing the extreme transparency of the air on the mountain, we knew that the wind would bring a huge quantity of rain as it ran madly through the sky over the small city; it would uproot big trees, knock down fences, down electrical wires, even blow the roofs off some houses, sweep away bridges and trains, and send a torrent of mud and rock down onto the highway, cutting off traffic. The typhoon made the night violent and strange to my young soul. The lights went out, and the candle that burned on the small table flickered in the raging darkness and sometimes burst into bloom. Although my eyes were tired, I stared at the candle flame, and listened to the wind and rain howl without letting up. When I woke up, I was safe inside the mosquito net, the wind and rain had stopped, and the bright rays of sunlight shone through the crack in the window onto my face. It was quiet, and the only sound in the cool morning air was the usual drone of a mosquito buzzing outside the net. The typhoon had passed.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the window for a look. The planks nailed to the windows the day before had been taken down while I was asleep. Wow! Everything was real! Several banyan trees in the alley had been blown over, and most of the telephone poles were leaning precariously by the roadside. The workers made rush repairs in the mud; broken branches and fallen leaves lay strewn over the roads and wet covered walkways. The adults talked as they pulled down the planks covering the doors, occasionally yelling at kids who were sneaking out to get back inside. An oxcart pulled slowly into the alley. It was loaded with logs of varying lengths and sizes, which had been picked up on the beach early in the morning. I stood and gazed out the window, imaging the typhoon passing over our small city and scurrying to the mountains and there ruthlessly beating the high peaks and old forests. Pouring from deep in the mountains, the rainwater dashed down precipitous streams, roaring down in several rivers, sweeping countless trees and drowned animals along in its flow, all the way down to the Pacific Ocean. But almost immediately, they were washed back to land by the violent waves. Swept back and forth and up and down several times, the trees were stripped of branches and leaves. People risked their lives to retrieve the logs from the crests of the waves, accepting these gifts sent circuitously from the mountains. So, I thought, the typhoon was now still blowing and beating the great forest, and might then be approaching Mount Qilai, where it would uproot more trees, sending them quickly down to the Pacific Ocean. Many risk takers stood by the sea, and under the strong sunlight stared at the drifting logs of various sizes—but were they a gift from the mountains or from the sea? The typhoon must have crossed over Mount Qilai. Once the typhoon crossed Mount Qilai, it had left the boundaries of Hualien. The northern summit of the main peak of Mount Qilai is 3,605 meters in height, placing it in the subtropics. Mount Dabajian, to its north, is a rival to Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain to its south, both of which looked down upon distant Hualien, then awake. The people labored in filthy mud and broken tiles, fallen trees, collapsed fences, putting sheet metal back onto the roofs, opening windows and front and back doors to allow the sun to shine in through the clean air. I sat once more on the bench in the kitchen and smelled a fresh and delicate fragrance wafting in from the courtyard and floating slowly out again. Back and forth, it spread, floating in the lively morning light.

The wind and rain proved to be just an ordinary summer interlude that never produced any stirring news. The wind and rain passed as quickly as they had come, leaving the small, sleeping city awake. After the habitual busyness and chaos passed, the city went peacefully back to sleep, caressed by the lullaby of the Pacific Ocean and watched over by layer upon layer of big mountains. The typhoon seemed unreal, and though it occurred every year, we easily forgot about it. But it was also what we remembered, it and the dazzling sunlight that shone on the most beautiful alluvial fan in the world.