Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of A Young Poet

At night I lay on the tatami mats under a mosquito net, listening to the tumult of the waves as they swept faintly yet fiercely over my chest. Ever so gently, with a perpetual force, the waves whooshed, never able to cease for a moment. I listened to the waves as they rolled ashore one after another and receded, a large concentric circle. Lying with my head against the pillow, I became the center of that incalculable circle. My spirit fled outward, surging into boundless space, extending outwardly up to a world of utterly inconceivable abstraction, rocking, almost intangibly, and then in a twinkling, I sank off to sleep amid the gentleness of the ocean.

The ocean. On the ocean, bloody fighting was, in fact, already taking place. In the summer of 1944, three and a half years after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the American army had advanced steadily across the South Pacific, until they finally took Saipan in the middle of June. Starting from there, the American forces, in coordination with the New Guinea offensive, set their sights on the Philippines. By the end of the year, Saipan was the base of operations for the B-29 raids on Japan itself. At the beginning of 1945, MacArthur returned to Manila, which was immediately followed by the taking of Iwo Jima.

I slept amid the warm melody of the ocean, so peaceful, as if no worries existed. Actually, at that time, many Japanese living in Taiwan were roused to join the “sacred war” and left the community they had ruled, amid the stirring yet sentimental Japanese military songs, never to return. Prior to and following the battle of Luzon, many Taiwanese were conscripted and sent to the South Pacific as military laborers. These Taiwanese really didn’t understand why they were forced into this brutal and shameful war, only to perish absurdly overseas in the tropics. Without a credible call to heroism or a serious or coveted goal, they died on the beaches, in the jungles, and on burning, exploding, and sinking warships. Their demise did not glorify the great Japanese spirit of martyrdom as the Japanese officers claimed in their loud exhortations; nor did it glorify the great Chinese spirit of martyrdom as recorded in the books of their ancestors: how, by bravely sacrificing themselves in time of war, they’d be gods in death, and the soul, from beginning to end, would be a hero in the realm of ghosts. No, this had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Taiwanese military laborers who fell in the battleground of the South Pacific. Their deaths only served to continue a kind of forced humiliation without ever holding forth the slightest possible joy of rebirth. Many were they who were lost overseas. I slept amid the warm melody of the ocean, unaware that all of this was violently transpiring beyond the mist-covered water, and advancing insanely. Immaturely I went on weaving my own dreams, lacking the wisdom to worry about anything. Of equal beauty were the world of my dreams and the waking world. I could spread my arms and fly, fly across the paddy fields and over the mountains.

Daytime bore the fragrance of time. The mountains were unchanging and, save for the density of the mist, their appearance never changed. Looking down at me, steep and lofty, they stretched north and south firmly of their own accord. I could hear the mountains speak; far away and high above, they narrated myths from time immemorial to me and told me secrets that no one else knew about. I seriously stored those secrets in my heart. But one day at the mouth of the alley, a throng of children suddenly appeared, jostling as they squeezed into a circle. I rushed over and saw two big men displaying a river deer. Most likely they were amateur hunters. Having killed the deer deep in the mountains, they had carried it down from high above. All traces of blood had been washed away, and it stared wide-eyed as it lay on the ground. The setting sun shot over the roof, shining on its body. There were specks at the corners of its mouth, which was tightly shut in a beautiful curve, making it look as if it were smiling. An adult neighbor stroked its back, and in amazement exclaimed, “It’s still warm!” I looked up at the mountain, so tall and yet so near, just there above the rooftops and the treetops, as if you could reach out and touch the belt at its waist. I was somewhat at a loss, for we shared many secrets; I heard the mountain speak, but it hadn’t told me that on this day at sunset someone would carry a dead deer down and even display it on the ground at the mouth of the alley with such shocking cruelty. Later, when I was finally a bit more knowledgeable, the mountains were high, but in the mist and the bright and sunny forest, I imagined waterfalls everywhere falling into the valleys below; at the water’s edge wild deer and rabbits; overhead a canopy of ancient trees in which groups of monkeys played, chattering and wrangling, as they vied in picking juicy fruit; a large bear ambling along below the trees and hunkering down to watch as a pangolin silently made its way through the underbrush; occasionally a beautiful and slender bluish-green snake slithering through the leaves, vanishing into the dense forest. Off in the distance was a group of wild pigs, bravely thrusting with their tusks; they were the most fearless large animals in the forest, at times attacking hunters and their braying dogs. I heard many stories about wild pigs. Sitting and relaxing in the cool covered walkways on warm summer nights, I’d listen as the adults recounted their strange encounters, how they used their weapons to aid the hunting dogs in bagging a wild pig, and how the wild pigs would resist, even fighting until they died of exhaustion, falling blood-spattered in the broken vegetation and roiled soil. For me, the wild pig was the largest and most fearless beast, the true hero that most beguiled and won my sympathy in hunting stories.

It was probably about the time the B-29s started flying over Japan and bombing the homeland of the proud Japanese soldiers, as summer turned to autumn in 1944, that American planes also appeared over Taiwan in frightening air raids. But the bombings and strafings occurred only occasionally, and mostly on the larger towns and cities of the north and west, and perhaps never occurred in Hualien. The waves continued to lap at the small city overlooked by mountain peaks; forever forming white ribbons under the beautiful sun and in the rain and wind, they rolled ashore, rising and falling. Not long after that, we finally heard news of an American plane skimming over Hualien, dropping a few bombs near the harbor and strafing the few factories in the area with machine-gun fire. The air raids had finally arrived. The flames of war finally licked this small, unknown city.

Probably in the winter, as the American forces inched their way closer to the Philippines, the air raids on Hualien grew more frequent. By the time MacArthur kicked the Japanese out of Luzon, the American military had already decided to bypass Taiwan and the Pescadores, heading directly onto Iwo Jima, while undertaking concentrated air raids against our homeland. We heard that a harbor and two small airstrips in the north and south were bombed frequently, but most residences were not seriously damaged. Only pedestrians who didn’t get out of the way or hide quickly enough were strafed on the streets. Everyone began thinking that it was necessary to evacuate and tried to come up with ways to flee to the mountains, but most people put off doing anything and took a wait-and-see attitude. Each day, when the air raid sirens sounded, everyone would hide in air raid shelters until the all-clear siren sounded; then they stood around on the streets talking, where, heavy of heart, they would exchange experiences. The B-29s attacked several of the more important cities in Japan and Taiwan, but I don’t think they ever flew over Hualien, despite the fact that some people, after climbing out of the air raid shelters, would tell how they had seen the huge bomber, and then say without much certainty: That must have been a B-29. At that time, some of the more sagacious people began to feel ill at ease, for if the bombers attacked the railroad south of the city, the evacuation route to the mountains would be cut off, making it very difficult to flee. Most people felt that it was best to evacuate toward the south, because north of Hualien it was extremely mountainous, and no one could imagine entering the indigenous villages there, despite the fact that it was also mountainous to the south. But after all, the villages along the rail line were all Han Chinese, some predominately Hakka and some predominately Hokklo. The farther one strayed from the railroad toward the mountains, the more prevalent the indigenous villages naturally became. If one considered evacuating, it had to be done while the railway was still passable.

Shortly after a train departed Hualien heading south, in just a matter of minutes, it would enter a longitudinal valley. Far off on the left was the Coastal Range of mountains; off to the right was the great Central Mountain Range. I had no impression of the Coastal Range other than that it was far away and totally unfamiliar, unlike the large mountains to the right, winding and continuous, which seemed to belong to me. Riding the train, our attention was focused on the massive mountains to the right, at the foot of which we advanced in a twisting, circuitous route. As I imagined it, the first row of peaks to the west after leaving Hualien and heading south were Papaya Mountain, Mount Lintian, and Mount Yuli, all of which were over 2,000 meters in height, at least twice as high as any peak in the Coastal Range. The second row of peaks included Mount Wuling, Mount Dakuai, and Mount Erzi, all approximately 3,000 meters in elevation. The third row of massive peaks around Hualien, which along with our Mount Qilai—our great guardian deity at 3,605 meters in height—also included Mount Nenggao, Mount Baishi, Mount Andongjun, Mount Danda, Mount Mabolasi, Mount Dashuiku, Mount Sancha, and Mount Xiuguluan, the highest peak of all at 3,833 meters above sea level. It stood shoulder to shoulder in height with Jade Mountain and looked northward to Mount Qilai, all pillars in Taiwan to support heaven.

Mount Xiuguluan was originally known as Mount Mahuolasi. At its eastern foot flowed the Mahuolasi River and the Miyasang River, which came together in the mysterious mountain forest. Flowing southeast, they joined the Majiacichun River and the Taluomu River. As the river broadened, it was referred to as the Lele River. It then flowed east until it was obstructed by the Coastal Range, in a place approximately twelve kilometers from the sea, where it flowed over twenty kilometers to the north, by which point it was known as the Xiuguluan River. From there it turned east and cut through the volcanic stone of the Coastal Range, surging with lightning speed through precipitous stone walls under the watchful gaze of the ancient forest into the sea. The Xiuguluan River is the only river with its source in the Central Range that cuts through the Coastal Range and flows into the Pacific Ocean. As it bends east just before flowing through the Coastal Range, there is a train stop called Ruisui, once called Shuiwei, which is about fifty kilometers from Hualien. Somewhat earlier, just before the train enters the longitudinal valley heading north, is a station called Yuli, which is seventy kilometers from Hualien. Ruisui and Yuli are major stops on the eastern railway and have large concentrations of Han Chinese.

When the number of American air raids on Hualien was on the increase, my parents decided to band together with other relatives and evacuate to the mountainous areas around Ruisui or Yuli.

As the train left Hualien and entered the longitudinal valley, the paddy fields were replaced by dry fields. All the small villages along the railway looked very much the same, with countless betel palms surrounding the small farmhouses and green bamboo and breadfruit trees interspersed irregularly between. The farmhouses were roofed in simple metal sheeting or straw thatch. Next to the houses were outbuildings such as cowsheds, pigpens, and chicken coops. Pumps could be seen outside some of the houses, while others had covered wells in their courtyards. Vegetable patches lay beyond the betel palms, and still farther off were the rice fields. In spring the farmers and their plow oxen could be seen working between the footpaths while the children played on the field embankments or on the banks of the streams. Dragonflies flew in the air; reeds and white ginger flowers lined the banks of the streams and ponds. Seldom did planes fly over the fields, disrupting the order of farm life in the valley. Everything was peaceful and calm. The train proceeded slowly, belching thick smoke. This rail line was one of the narrowest in Taiwan. It couldn’t compare with the Western Longitudinal Railway in width or speed, chugging, winding slowly along especially as it ascended the slopes, chugging along slower than a pedestrian. Each time the train approached the mouth of a river—those streams that originated in the huge mountains and joined the Xiuguluan River—it appeared to speed up, and inevitably accompanied by the tooting of its steam whistle, it would fly across the steel-truss bridge. From the train window I looked upstream to the mist-shrouded reaches at the foot of the mountain; the riverbed was quite wide and filled with large and small stones, but the water flowed in a narrow trickle under a woven bamboo footbridge. That’s the way the rivers usually were. But when a typhoon struck, water would rush down from the high mountains in a raging torrent, immediately filling the rocky riverbed with muddy water. Uprooted trees floated on the surface, along with dead timber, weeds, drowned animals, and other indistinguishable things from deep in the mountains. Naturally at such times, the bamboo bridges we originally had seen would have been swept downstream to the Xiuguluan River and out into the sea. Sometimes the steel railroad bridges were knocked askew or even washed downstream to a sandbar. As the typhoon passed, the floodwaters abated and people began setting the bridges upright or erecting bamboo bridges over the narrow trickle of water flowing among the rocks, allowing cautious pedestrians carrying loads and people on bicycles to cross once again.

Whistling, the train crossed a bridge and began a difficult ascent, chugging slowly ahead. The paddy fields became scarcer; the flat fields in the area were planted with sugarcane and cassava, as well as crops I’d never known. Bamboo grew thick on the mountain slopes, from the railroad tracks rising all the way up to the indistinct peaks. Occasionally, a tree would be seen trembling in the cool mountain air.

I seem to recall that the fifty-kilometer trip took a whole day. But it didn’t really feel like we were evacuating, more like a happy spring trip instead, mainly because we didn’t once hear the sound of air raid sirens. Each time the train arrived at a small station, we’d have a long wait or would be coupled to another train, or we waited for a northbound train from Taidong to switch or pass before continuing on. This stretch of track was very quiet. From the train I looked at the farmhouses and fields, the rivers and the forests, watched the receding telephone poles, without the slightest fear one experiences in wartime. But after we had settled in the mountains, I one day heard the adults saying that one train that had departed from Hualien after ours had been attacked by an American plane near the Papaya River. At first, when the plane suddenly appeared, the train’s engineer didn’t know what to do, so he stopped in a wide open space. The plane began to strafe the train from a low altitude. Shortly thereafter, when some passengers saw the plane turn and head off in a different direction, they braved it by leaping out of the cars and running for cover, crawling amid the rocks and reeds. Unexpectedly, the plane quickly turned and headed back, firing on those seeking cover, killing many, before sweeping through the sky above the Papaya River and flying out over the ocean. A number of years later, when I was in middle school, one boy told me that he and his mother had been on that unfortunate train. He had luckily survived, but his mother had been killed in the bloody strafing. He was my good friend, and I recall that his father never remarried.

At around four in the afternoon we arrived at the last small station before Ruisui. The train came to an abrupt halt. The passengers jumped off the train with all kinds of luggage, including clothing, bedding, and cooking utensils tied on the ends of a pole. The small station was like any other on the eastern rail line—suffused in gray, silent and desolate, but imbued with a rural atmosphere. Outside the station, under the betel palms, we boarded an oxcart, took the road across the railroad tracks, and, rocking and swaying, headed toward the mountains. I probably fell asleep on this hot and humid mountain road. After what seemed like quite a while, and after being unbearably jostled around, we finally arrived at a small open area on the mountain ridge; though night was approaching, we could see three or four small thatched huts. Someone came out and greeted us and gave us dinner under a coal-oil lamp. The adults all spoke in whispers; I was exhausted before I finished eating. The insects cried all around, but in the deep darkness the din was penetrated by a vast silence. The coal-oil lamp flickered strangely, but without being scary. Then I went to sleep.

I woke before it was entirely light. Lying in bed, I thought about the events of the previous day. I knew I had been on the train all day, and later took an oxcart to arrive at a distant place I had never visited before. I think I woke once during the night and saw the low flame in the lamp, which was insufficient to light the small room. Before I could notice anything else, I fell soundly asleep again. But now, just as dawn was about to break, I suddenly remembered everything: the train, the steel-truss bridge, the mountains and rivers, the bamboo forest, the sight and smell of the little station.

I got out of bed and walked over to the window to have a look outside. Branches and dry leaves were scattered over the newly cleared land, and the wood from the felled timber probably had already been handed over to the government. Looking out the window, I could see the bamboo and bushes on the rise nearby. I opened the door and stepped out for another look. The rising ground was part of the mountain slope. The small houses faced the forest with the mountain for a backdrop. A small, rough road wound around to a clearing where there were paddy fields. Off in the distance were some farmhouses tucked behind some betel palms. Someone was already working in the fields; the ox stood in a grassy area, chewing and lithely flicking its tail to shoo away the mosquitoes and gnats that always followed it.

Seeing the paddy fields in the ridge gap, we figured that most of the locals were probably Han Chinese and not Ami. Given the distance from the rail line, one would expect it to be an aboriginal village. The Ami didn’t plant much rice, preferring instead dry-farmed millet. Spring plowing had just commenced when we arrived on the mountain ridge, and the fields were busy. The sun had already risen from beyond the sea and shone over the countryside, and the cool spring air was gradually disappearing. I saw the plow oxen chewing grass and flicking their tails, I saw egrets skimming over the pools crisscrossed with paths. I was bound and determined to remember the pure and simple colors and charm. Standing on this side of the paddy fields and looking across, I felt it was a luxuriant universe. The group of small mountains, rising and falling, beyond the bamboo groves, betel palms, and farmhouses, seemed to embrace this little plain. It was a group of small, verdant mountains, behind which towered much larger mountains, their peaks shrouded in clouds. Distant and indistinct, they appeared the same as I had seen them on the way south from Hualien. They had a primitive grayish-green hue as we gazed fixedly at each other through the morning cloud-mist. The mountain ridge was awash with the sun’s rays. I turned to look at our little shelter through the forest, incredulous that anyone was living there. The small mountains beyond were a deep greenish blue. I was pleased and excited by this new place.

Several days later, I was thoroughly familiar with the mountain gap and its surroundings. Many species of birds flocked in the forest before the hut, and the noises they made often drew me into the forest in search of them. I once discovered a bird’s nest in a small tree, in which were some recently hatched fledglings, completely bare and squeezed together, mouths open. As I leaned against the tree trunk observing them, a large yellow bird swooped down at me, and raucously it fiercely beat its heavy wings, forcing me down out of the tree. It was the mother of the chicks. One day on the backside of the mountain I saw a high framework of woven bamboo on which was stretched a very fine line in which hung a bird upside down, trembling on the verge of death. The sunlight shone on its beautiful plumage, tossed by the breeze. Right when I was wondering how to get the bird down, a small, dark-skinned man stepped from the forest, and without uttering a word, drew down the fine line, untied the bird, and then tied it by its feet with another string at his waist. Then, looking at me, he cleverly reset the fine line on the framework and left without as much as a by-your-leave. I noticed he already had quite a string of dead birds at his waist, silently bumping against his blade in its scabbard.

Later, after the paddy fields were filled with water and the farmers were getting ready to plant the rice sprouts, an urgent whistling, something like a train whistle, was heard from the other side of the mountains. We soon realized it was an air raid siren. No one ever thought planes would appear here, so everyone fled to the backside of the mountains, but the siren soon ceased. Over the next few days we frequently heard it. The farmers would put aside the buckets that held the rice sprouts and run to take temporary shelter in the ditches. We also became accustomed to running quickly more than halfway up the mountain to a low-lying earthen pit and sitting there, but we never once saw an airplane, or even so much as heard one. We guessed that a plane must have followed the railroad tracks south from Hualien, dropping several bombs along the way and strafing people on foot, then banked left at the wide mouth of a river and headed back out to sea. Under these circumstances, the farmers planted the rice sprouts, and the plow oxen, flicking their tails, grazed more leisurely than ever by the water. The egrets stood in the paddy fields or elegantly flapped their wings. I frequently went to where the water buffalo stood grazing on grass to pick white ginger flowers or play with the kids looking after the water buffalo. When it was hot, I would strip off my clothes and swim in the river. Once, as I climbed out of the water, one of the kids let me ride the water buffalo he was looking after, but before counting to twenty, I had to get off. I had climbed on its back with some difficulty and was naturally very excited; however, since I wasn’t wearing any trousers, the hair on the water buffalo’s back tickled me and made me laugh. Suddenly, I felt the heat from the water buffalo’s body, so I climbed off. After that experience, I thought I knew why the water buffalos like bathing so much, and why, when they were not working, they spent all their time in the river, with only their heads and two horns sticking out of the water, looking ever so foolish. Why, you might ask. I believed it was because their body temperature was too high.

The rice plants grew ever thicker; no one was very earnest about taking shelter when the air raid siren sounded. One day, after the all clear siren sounded, I decided to walk up the mountain through the forest. Soon I turned and came into a bright clearing, where I saw three men and a water buffalo. Speaking Taiwanese, the men obviously were not Ami, but when they saw me emerge from the forest, they waved their hands among themselves and said nothing. With an utterly dejected look, the water buffalo stood to one side, tied firmly to a large tree. Filled with curiosity, I looked at the three men and then at the water buffalo, and discovered that it was crying. “Look! Your water buffalo is crying!” I said. The three men glanced at one another and suddenly looked as dejected as the water buffalo. With a wave of his hand, one of the men angrily told me to get lost. I didn’t sleep well that night because of a recurring dream about that crying water buffalo. The following morning, I took the same route to that clearing in the meadow, where I discovered that the ground beneath the tree was covered with blood and a pile of manure, circled by hordes of gnats and flies. Although I was somewhat stupid and immature, I knew that those three men had slaughtered that crying water buffalo the previous afternoon.

The slaughter came as a great shock to me. Although I had not seen the assault of those three men or the death of the water buffalo with my own eyes, I could imagine everything: how the three of them knocked it senseless with a heavy object, how they dismembered it with a sharp knife, leaving the scene covered with blood. And how the water buffalo, silently, after a hard life of plowing and pulling a cart, realized how really cruel and heartless were the people whom it had served. Perhaps those three men were the farmers it had always known, and that was why it cried so sadly for itself and for the heartless cruelty of men. When my indignation and fear were at their peak, I had to keep telling myself that those three men were cattle thieves, and certainly not the owners. Even so, that was the first time I knew the fear of death, despite the fact that it was just a water buffalo. I detected the scent of human brutality, which had spread to mix with the superficial purity of the village. This gap in the mountains was nowhere near as peaceful and easy as I had imagined, nor nearly as pure as I imagined it. Despondency and doubt were fostered and grew in my callow and immature mind amid the senseless air raid sirens. At the beginning of summer, the ears of rice swayed in the wind, the dragonflies increased in numbers, and during the day the air raid sirens never ceased. Suddenly my mother and father said we were going to leave and move to the mountain to the west of Mount Yuli, where the Xiuguluan River entered the longitudinal valley and made a sharp turn to the north. Thinking about the slaughter, I was only too willing to leave that place which had brought such disappointment. With several neighbors, we formed a procession of oxcarts along the left bank of the Xiuguluan River heading south. To guard against surprise attacks from the air, we made our way at night and rested during the day. In this way, after crossing a number of mountaintops and tributaries of the Xiuguluan River, we finally reached an aboriginal village twenty kilometers away.

Now I realize that we left that mountain gap where the ears of rice were ripening and hurriedly relocated in this mountain village on account of the significant increase in air raids as the war in the Pacific entered its final days. At the beginning of April, 1945, the American forces launched a full-scale offensive against Okinawa, which lasted almost three months. The Japanese government, seeing that the enemy was at the door, mobilized young people to sacrifice themselves in the fighting, organized the kamikaze corps, and within those three burning months, engaged in a mad suicidal military strategy. In order to prevent the Japanese soldiers on Taiwan from participating, the American forces, most likely on account of having received intelligence that the Japanese were building a southern airfield along the coast near Hualien for suicide planes, had dramatically increased the number of air raids on eastern Taiwan. Oftentimes the trains were not running because the bridges were destroyed as soon as they were repaired. Even when the trains were running, most people didn’t dare ride them, afraid lest they be attacked from the air. On that twenty-kilometer trip we made, we saw a lot of destruction and many intact houses that had been deserted when people fled to the mountains for safety. Most of the tributaries of the Xiuguluan River were actually quite small despite large stone-filled riverbeds. On one occasion, however, we encountered a tributary with a huge flow of water. After dark, we were led across by the Ami. I sat perched on a high oxcart with the chickens and ducks—the chicken cages had been placed on top of the duck cages because the chickens, it was said, were afraid of drowning and the ducks weren’t.

The village had another smell about it, and for a while I didn’t know how I could stand it. Later, every time I entered an Ami village, I encountered the same smell. At first I didn’t much care for it, but later I became accustomed to it, so much so that I eventually found it agreeable. There were no rice paddies. By the end of the war, rice was becoming scarcer, and my mother began adding potatoes to the rice when she cooked it. As time went on, the proportion of potato increased. Sometimes an Ami would come selling millet from a bag on his back, but he preferred to barter. My mom later made the millet into millet porridge as our principal food. Once again I began making my way through the new atmosphere of the mountain forest, watching the Ami hunters going in and out of the valleys and ravines or moving quickly between the banana orchards and the bamboo groves. I hadn’t forgotten that crying water buffalo. Before the summer was out, air raid sirens were heard here as well, wailing, increasing with each passing day. But this time we didn’t have to run a long way to the mountain forest to hide, because there were air raid shelters all over the village. I never could forget that crying water buffalo at another mountain gap, where, after the all clear siren sounded, it had been killed by three men. I wonder if my childhood didn’t end with the slaughter of that water buffalo.