Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of A Young Poet

I tried searching for them. At times it was like gazing absent-mindedly at the glow of the setting sun at the end of winter, with the clouds floating together then apart, gazing at them for ages until finally mind and reason were lost and nowhere in particular to be found. What my eyes observed was no longer real, just illusions in some corner of the cosmos, floating and wavering. I recalled and soon forgot the shapes of the clouds, until the light had nearly faded and the darkness took hold upon my vision and my imagination. I quickly came back to myself and sought the forms and colors I had just seen, but they were already gone. So I quickly pressed myself to capture all that I had seen moments before, but to no avail; it was too late, it all had dimmed and melted away. I heard only the wind whistling in the telephone wires like some small, solitary animal crying, lonely and far away. No longer could I grasp their forms; they had slipped from my embrace and vanished from my inspired vision. Did that mean they really no longer existed? But they still existed, obscure and dull. At times it seemed that I alone was awake, restless in the chill of daybreak, glimpsing the first hint of light behind the curtains, perhaps already bringing the impatient wild cherries into bloom. Light and shadow covered the mountain slopes, swayed in patterns on the stone walls, pierced the dewdrops on the spiderwebs, and fell on the thick carpet of pine needles—yes, after a long, long dark night, the sky grew light, and I had just awakened from a chaotic dream, having passed through the dense forest of time and space, luckily returning to myself, feeling the familiar pillow under my cheek, the blanket tight around me, safe, though a little bored, to toss and turn in the world of reality. What was to be done about it? What was significant? Safe, I monopolized my thought and imagination, my waking senses, aching, itching, not tired or sleepy, all self-controlled, without fear, but why so distracting? Something was missing. But what? Fear and danger were missing. I turned over, thinking about the long, long dark night I had just passed. I had soared on an imaginary line where longitude and latitude met. Bizarre hues mixed automatically, overlapping, and divided up, amid which I shone forth, shuttling through a tale of adventure in which a special plot was unfolding, without limitations, and I was the center of it all. The plot developed in the direction of all times and spaces, with me as the center. All the effects of joy, anger, sadness, and happiness came back to me with the speed of electric waves, shifting to my character, forming the structure of my spirit and feelings, the system of my knowledge, my loves, my evils, prejudices, and indifference. I vigorously tried to recall the intricacies of my dream, some sweetness, some danger, and everything I had experienced, treasuring the incidents that lashed my character. Ah, that flawless plot I had experienced in my dream. Then, at that moment, resting against my pillow, I searched for traces, but possessed not a snippet of memory; perhaps there were some, but only fragments, more broken pieces than fragments. As I approached, they vanished one after another, melting into emptiness. At times, with luck, I’d go back to the very start, making my way against the current at normal speed; at times, I’d hastily know all of the details, flashing back with greater speed, tapping my way back to that initial time and space, disk-shaped time and space, with the sound of the winter wind, cold, gloomy, transparent.

At first, Teacher Feng was nearly impossible to understand on account of his heavy accent. He came from a large and famous literati family, which, beginning in the mid-Qing dynasty, determined literary taste and excellence (his own words). His ancestors, along with other literati from their county, who appreciated one another, formed a group or school in the nineteenth century that stressed a “Way of Righteousness,” and put it to use in public affairs to govern the world. It is said that they won respect and a widespread following. When I was assigned to Teacher Feng’s class, he had probably just arrived in Taiwan and come to Hualien that summer. He led a group of us boys to the playing field, vigorously instructing us to run quickly to the left and then sharply to the right, but we had no idea what he wanted us to do and just swarmed behind him, zigzagging left and right. Vigorous Teacher Feng worked up quite a sweat, and constantly pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his recently barbered head of hair, as he motioned hopelessly. We finally understood what he wanted: he wanted us to line up single file according to height in order for him to more easily arrange our seating order, with the short in the front and the tall in the back. After we all stood in a row, he walked in front of us, panting and wiping his sweat away, scrutinizing us very carefully. At times, he quickly would have two boys standing side by side change places; other times, he had more trouble deciding and would have the two boys stand back to back, after which he would take a couple of steps back to seriously size them up, following which he’d say a few words in his sharp voice, the meaning of which was unclear, but probably something like, “You stand here and you stand there, that’ll do.” He was hard to understand and always seemed anxious and, although he never smiled, his white complexion touched with red was that of someone from a scholarly family, and for that reason, I never held the slightest ill feeling toward him. Several rows of boys formed on the playing field to decide on the seating order. They glanced about with curiosity, their closely cropped heads shining under the sun. I could hear the sound of the sea nearby; a train slowly made its way down the tracks on the mountainside, almost silent and invisible save for a few puffs of white smoke, the rings dispersing in the blue sky above the sea.

All of it seemed to be between existence and emptiness, on the misty shore opposite and at the edge of time. I occupied spot number twelve and sat in a seat by the window in the second row; directly behind me was a student who had flunked a grade and who always smiled awkwardly at me. He was a member of the Bunun tribe and lived in Xiuli Village. He told me he got up every morning before daybreak and, by running and walking, would make his way to school, which took about two hours, one way. If he was lucky, he would run into someone he knew and get a ride on the back of a bicycle part of the way, taking him to a crossroads and leaving him with a few words of encouragement. He was probably the only Bunun boy in the school. His name was Wu Maoxiu. I can’t imagine why the officials in charge of household registration in those days were so mischievous in that they not only forced them to give up their Bunun names, but also forced them to take Han names and to use the character wu for “shaman.” There was really nothing wrong with having Wu as a surname, but because he was a Bunun, he became the butt of jokes, not only by his classmates but sometimes also by the teacher when calling roll. In such situations, when all the students and the teacher laughed at him together, I’d turn around and look at Wu Maoxiu and see him sitting there with his lips firmly shut, his cheeks red, his bright, flashing eyes fixed on the teacher, who never stopped shaking with laughter. I don’t know why his eyes shone so brightly, perhaps on account of the tears filling them, but perhaps not. Wu Maoxiu was just furious. His eyes were always deeper and more profound than anyone else’s, the shrewd eyes of a hunting family living deep in the mountains. He sat behind me, bolt upright, waiting for the laughter to recede. I know that several hundred years of humiliation were focused in those seconds, and Wu Maoxiu withstood it with the fortitude of his people. Half of our class of sixty had been held back; the other half consisted of those of us who were on a waiting list to enter regular classes, unsure of when we would advance in school. During the hottest time of the summer, someone came to pay us a visit, but my father wasn’t home; the person stood in the doorway, speaking with my mother for a long time. I eavesdropped while hiding on the other side of the shoji. The person indicated that the head of the family with a child on the waiting list had better go to a certain director and give a gift, as the total had reached a certain number. The child on the waiting list could be entered in the first year of junior high. I guessed most of families had done so, and that was why the students on the waiting list were mixed with the ones who failed to advance. Teacher Feng had been designated as the teacher of this composite class. It was certainly a setback for him and not something to be desired. One time, in a fit of anger be blurted out, “The students in the other classes all have delicate features. What’s wrong with you guys?” I soon had no other choice but to become accustomed to his accent. Teacher Feng liked the students who had delicate features, and he really appreciated the few passable specimens in our class. On New Year’s Day or other festivals, they would be allowed to go to his house, where they would draw pictures and cut and paste up the wall newspaper for the school. It was then that I discovered what a young wife he had, not much older than we, who wore her hair short. She also had white skin touched with a light red. She wore a thin, sleeveless top and slacks that were neither long nor short. She was clean and tidy, her lovely frame visible beneath the print fabric of her clothing.

The last typhoon of the year came and went after the Mid-Autumn Festival; the sun shone on the sea, but it was still incredibly hot after the noon hour had passed. We took advantage of the bright light to remove the glass windows, wash and dry them, and put them back one by one. Some went to the flowerbed to pull weeds and play. There was seemingly an endless supply of time to squander. We piled the weeds and dead flower stalks while singing, “Oar girl, you are so beautiful,/Oh, there is no other to be found in Chatong.” A high school Chinese teacher walked over and stood with his hands behind his back for a long time under the portico, listening to our song with a blank expression. We stopped, not daring to sing anymore. Standing under the sun-filled portico, he nodded and said, “You’re doing the flowerbed? You’ve got to get the roots when you pull the weeds.” He sauntered off toward the sea below, hands behind his back. The cicadas chirred sporadically as white clouds drifted across the sky. Lying on my belly beneath the trellis, I watched the ants busily coming and going. Another boy came over to look: “What’s so great about ants?” He stood up and ran over to the classroom. Not long after, I heard heavy footsteps approach where I was lying on my belly. I heard someone throw a bucket of water—huala—on the ants. Struck by the water, some of the ants were swept into the ditch beside the wall while others clung to the side of the ditch and then ran soaked in all directions. The cicadas had stopped chirring completely, while the sparrows bickered noisily on the gray-tiled roof.

After the arrival of winter, the sea at the end of the long covered walkway was no longer blue. Sometimes I could sit for a whole afternoon watching the fiercely surging waves. Wind from the northwest blew madly then; the sea surged rapidly toward the coast, but was blocked by the breakwater stretching north and south. The water slammed against the breakwater, sending huge columns of water shooting into the sky; sometimes it shot up in a high, massive curtain, where it was blown in all directions by the wind, only to fall and disappear in a matter of moments. The waves followed swiftly one upon another, breaking and receding without letting up. Awe-inspiring, the white lighthouse stood alone amid the raging wind and waves without flinching. On a winter afternoon, we walked out of the classroom to find the third-year high school students walking silently with their book bags on their backs. Their blue-gray uniforms appeared inflated, too big for them, with lots of pockets above and baggy trousers. They wore what appeared to be military caps, but the color was wrong, as was the shape. It was said that the hats were worn in place of their old high school caps, in complete rejection of the poison of the Japanese occupation. Although the corners of the caps were different, they still tended pretty much to a deep, cold color. They looked somewhat like officer’s caps, but lacked the stiff, sharp edges, making them quite malleable. Those senior schoolmates of ours, with at least six years of Japanese elementary school and three years of junior high school, who soon would be wearing high school hats, found them replaced by those soft, flat caps overnight. The school badge on the edge of the old, lackluster military-style ones were suddenly changed into white-on-blue insignias of the Nationalist Party. Each and every one of the students were quite disappointed. One of them tried pinching the hat into shape—one corner, two corners; while eight was out of the question, several crooked corners was doable, and with two drooping sides, the cap looked like the one worn by General MacArthur. In those days, all the high school students wore those strange caps, albeit apparently unwillingly, as they’d take them off and carry them the first chance they got. They looked very serious, even more serious than the young teachers from mainland China, whom they rarely greeted. They were extremely polite to the local teachers, because all of the local teachers had graduated from Hualien High School. After finishing college in Taipei, they’d return to teach for a while. They were upperclassmen who had worn real high school caps.

The high school students I encountered in the long, covered walkway would sooner or later make a sound, their words of mutual greeting. I was never able to understand what they said. They would meet and pass with a string of words, unlike us boys, who always had our arms around each other’s shoulders. When they met a graduate who was now teaching, they’d not only make those sounds but also stop in their tracks and bow. The graduate would hurry over and they’d exchange a similar sound. Those same students would brush past the teachers from other provinces without the least expression or sound. They’d both walk to their end of the long covered walkway, sunk in a tense silence, perceptible even to us junior high school boys. Sometimes, one of the high school boys would throw us a warm, amiable look, but with no desire to speak with us and in a parsimonious way. Many of us had brothers in high school, but that didn’t make any difference when you met in the long, covered walkway, because he’d just give you the eye and certainly not speak to you.

I’ve had difficulty in attempting to recall all of this, more difficulty than I expected, though it was not impossible. Later, I recall Teacher Feng saying that that string of sounds used as a greeting was Japanese, but modified by the high school students, perhaps shortened or simplified, but the source was Japanese. Mentioning this, Teacher Feng was quite angry. In his refined face and bitter voice, I could detect a kind of great sadness, a sense of confusion: “Why do they use Japanese when they greet one another?” His insistent questioning of us young fellows, despite the fact that we didn’t greet one another in Japanese when it was our older brothers who did, seemed to us that he was asking himself: “Why?” In Teacher Feng’s sad looks, furrowed brow, and curled lip, I saw the hopelessness and thoughts of a scholar who had crossed the sea to come to this small city at the end of the earth. He pondered this strange question and because he received no answer, he couldn’t help but suffer dramatically and exaggeratedly throw up his delicate white hands to us innocent boys. Actually, I knew he understood why. He had an answer; it was just that he didn’t like it. Disliking the answer, he refused awareness of it, masking himself in a perplexed expression, emphasizing his tragic consciousness, suffering, estrangement, and loneliness. He’d arrived in Taiwan from so far away, and had chosen to teach in a small and remote seaside city. It wasn’t any wonder that he felt down and out. Suddenly he had discovered this startling place, unlike anyplace he had experienced on the Chinese mainland. It was simply like a foreign country. The houses and streets were different, the interior decor was even more different, but these could be arranged to suit him. The residential area where Teacher Feng and his family and the other teachers lived was characterized by lanes lined with high walls where the doors and gates had all been painted red. Although the tile-roofed Japanese houses still stood behind the walls and gates, they were isolated in courtyards that had lost all their Japanese flair. The tatami mats remained in Teacher Feng’s house, but I noticed how they had placed rattan chairs on them. This was strange enough, but one day, as his wife slid open the shoji to another room, I espied, much to my astonishment, a bed on top of the tatami mats on the other side of the door. That was the first time I ever saw a bed on top of tatami mats; later I saw many more, as all the teachers had placed their beds on top of the tatami mats. A hammock was tied to two pillars in the room, a precious little baby sleeping within. A cute little life grew in a remote seaside city to the continuous sound of waves, cicadas, crickets, the shouts of people buying wine bottles and waste paper, and the clatter of wooden clogs going down a long lane. Teacher Feng and his family accepted all of this, tempering themselves for the long haul. Only when they heard high school students greeting one another in Japanese did they feel cut off from their surroundings, having lost the support of human warmth.

By the time the principal announced that students were forbidden to speak Japanese, our older brothers, who were accustomed to greeting one another with that string of sounds, had already graduated. The incoming high school students had already abandoned that sentiment and what with the start of military training, even their uniforms were changed to khakis, hat included, only the style remained the same, a KMT insignia was still on the front. Judging from the circumstances, it was unlikely that the school emblem would ever return. The high school students remained the same; they removed their hats at every opportunity, kneading them till flattened and soiled. The school emblem was a special characteristic of junior high school, but unfortunately that was in an age when the authorities did everything they could to eliminate any special characteristic, in hopes of extinguishing any form of individuality. All schools in Taiwan established before the war had to take Retrocession Day as their founding anniversary, with all pre-Retrocession history being wiped clean as if it never existed. At that time there was also a universal motto for all schools consisting of the word “camaraderie,” which made no sense hanging over all school gates, for who knows what reason. Each time our music teacher saw the word, he’d shake his head. At that time, speaking Japanese was prohibited at school, but there was actually no need for such a measure, because by then few students could even utter a sentence in the language. They could only use a simple vocabulary and short phrases for the thing they wanted to express, such as tiannishi for tennis, luolaiba for screwdriver, and bidabin for vitamin, all of which were foreign loan words in Japanese. Normally when the students got together they spoke Taiwanese; sometimes Hakka was heard; and outside of class the teachers, both Taiwanese and mainlander, spoke the “National Language,” and we also replied to them in the National Language. Our learning of Mandarin was very difficult, and when the Taiwanese teachers used it, they always looked exhausted; many of the teachers from the mainland never bothered to learn it and simply spoke their home dialect. Dialects from all over China were spoken in the classrooms where we grew up, confusing and unintelligible. There was no point in the principal forbidding us from speaking Japanese. Later, this must have become evident, because he ceased raising the issue. One morning, after the flag was raised, he got up and announced that we would no longer be allowed to speak Taiwanese.

I remember when a tremor rippled through the ranks of high school boys. A new drill instructor in a military uniform walked slowly up to the ranks of assembled boys, tilting his head on which he wore a military cap, eyeing everyone, but without the tremor entirely dying away. The principal continued expounding the beauties of Mandarin as opposed to base and vulgar Taiwanese. I saw all those who had graduated from high school in Hualien and had returned from Taipei to teach—those graduates whom we all admired as teachers—exchange angry glances. Several of them shifted their feet, indicating their impatience. The music teacher stepped out of the ranks of the high school students, strode in front of the drill instructor, and walked toward the twenty-four steps. The principal, who was both surprised and embarrassed, never having been aware of the man’s courage, could only watch as he climbed the steps in silence and, upon reaching the high place, pause momentarily before turning down the walkway beyond the flowers and shrubs. The music teacher had graduated from this high school before the war and had returned to teach during the Pacific War for many years. He was one of the few teachers who made the transition between two eras. In class, he made a great effort to use Mandarin to teach us the principles of music, musical notation, and singing; after class, whenever he ran into his colleagues or the school handyman, he usually conversed with them in Japanese; and when he ran into us, he’d speak more Taiwanese. His silhouette, which disappeared at the high place, once looked incredibly large; to my young, impressionistic mind, it once glowed on a spring morning, imprinting itself indelibly on my heart. The sea breeze softly stirred the trees, flowers, and grass up there, and the old banyan tree stood quietly without expression. A group of sago palms nearby stood even more obstinately, almost angrily, leading the protest. The old houses fell away in neat order, haughtily but warmly in the morning light. Farther off stood the range of green mountains beyond which stood, with a hint of sternness, the eternal peaks of Mount Sangbalakan, Mount Botuolu, Mount Liwuzhu, Great Tailuge Mountain, Mount Dumou, Mount Nenggao, and Mount Qilai. The major northern peak of Mount Qilai stood 3,650 meters high, to the north of which stood Mount Dabajian, and was matched in the south by Mount Xiuguluan and Jade Mountain. From far away it looked down on our square, where a person with a foreign accent humiliated our mother tongue. His voice was piercing, his spit flew, and he had two pens thrust in his garment with many pockets. His head, rocking back and forth, was nearly bald. I stared at him and beyond him saw the national flag that had just been raised in all its bright purity, yet possessed of a sense of disaster.

I suddenly seemed to understand. I understood why Teacher Feng was so sad and pained. I too felt sad and pained.

The national flag, that bright and pure flag, fluttered in the beautiful morning light, unfurling in the sea-scented breeze. Mount Qilai, Mount Dabajian, and Mount Xiuguluan all turned their eyes on us, glancing at our bodies and me with strength and affection. The sadness and suffering would then finally begin, never to find solace.

Several days later on a drizzly afternoon, four of us students on duty swept the classroom and shut the door and windows, after which we passed a basketball back and forth in the covered walkway, slapping it, and frequently stopping to shoot it through the high gap under the roof. Above the gap, the two sides were sloped and open, and the rain dripped following the downward slope of the roof. The horizontal beams, supported on each end by a column, were laid out in an orderly fashion, seven paces apart, meandering eastward, downhill from the teachers’ offices. The ocean could be clearly seen, framed at the end. The four of us passed the ball back and forth as we walked downhill, stopping every seven paces to take a turn shooting the ball high into the gap. The gap was divided into three parts by two small uprights; the slightly larger middle space was big enough for the basketball to pass through, while the two side spaces formed two scalene triangles, the narrowest angles of which would not permit a ball to pass, but the wide side would, so you had to aim very carefully for the widest part of the triangle. First we shot through the center space and, swoosh, it would go through; then we’d shoot at the right triangle and, if it went through, we’d shoot at the left triangle. But it was rare to make all three shots. The rain fell outside the walkway, the falling drops like silk thread suspended on two flanks. The four of us bounced the ball and noisily shot high up at the empty spaces. Sometimes the ball would bounce outside the walkway and roll into the ditch. We’d retrieve it, wash it off, and bounce it energetically several times to knock off the water, and then start all over. The school was silent, as if the four of us making a racket bouncing the ball were the only ones left on campus. The flowerbeds appeared shrouded in gauze by the rain, drifting in the breeze from the sea. I looked at the sea at the end of the walkway, an ill-defined hazy gray. There were two high school students standing under the eaves at that time, khaki caps in their hands and book bags slung over their shoulders. They were talking softly. When we approached, they waved good-bye to each other. The tall one opened an black umbrella and strode out into the rain; the other one, who was wearing glasses, turned to leave, but suddenly thinking of something, raised his voice and shouted to the other, “Make it 7:30, not 8:00.” The one carrying the umbrella turned and simply said, “Okay.” All of a sudden, a skinny, dark man came running out of one of the classrooms and shouted in all seriousness at the student with the umbrella, “Come back, you!” We were all taken aback. The four of us, along with the high school student wearing glasses, peered into the rain. We saw the high school student with the umbrella stop in his tracks, turn, and notice that the person shouting at him was the guy surnamed Sun, the civics teacher from last year or the year before last. At present, he was still some honcho in the dean’s office. The student walked back through the rain to the covered walkway. He closed his umbrella and, leaning with one hand against the floor, used his hat to wipe off his wet book bag. He stood there, taller than the civics teacher. The teacher stepped forward and barked at him, “Stand up straight!” Before the student could adjust himself, the teacher violently raised his right hand and struck him across the face while angrily cursing, “Shameless slave!” Made dizzy by the blow, the high school student stepped back suddenly, realizing he had been struck. He took a step forward, and his hand, in which he held his umbrella, trembled as if he were going to strike back. Sun repeated once again, “Stand up straight!” Only after he came to his senses did the student calmly stand up straight, his face twisted with pain and anger, while glaring at that thin, dark face. That dark face was also twisted, both sides wrenched, as if he himself had just been struck.

“Why …,” the high school student paused a moment before continuing. “Why did you hit me?”

“I just hit a conquered slave without a country”.

“Don’t you think I heard you speaking Japanese? You shameless slave!” He continued, “I ought to hit you again.” He raised his right hand as if to strike him again.

Afraid lest that upperclassman be struck again, and filled with courage from who knows where, I stepped forward and said to the man with the dark face:

“He didn’t speak Japanese!”

“He didn’t speak Japanese?” He turned to look at me, his hand paused in midair. “I heard him with my own ears. Don’t think I don’t understand. I understand all your tricks. I’ve seen plenty of Japanese devils and have heard them speak. You conquered slave without a country!” Once again he turned to scold the high school student.

“But he didn’t speak Japanese,” I replied. “What he spoke was Taiwanese; it wasn’t Japanese.”

The man with the dark face lowered his hand and continued, “Don’t think I don’t understand. I’ve seen more Japanese devils than you. I’ve seen plenty of good-for-nothing Japanese devils. I heard him speak Japanese, that much I know.” He looked at the four of us, then at the upperclassman wearing glasses, and then at the student he had struck. The uppserclassman who had been struck finally understood that Sun had misheard him: when he said “okay” in Taiwanese, he thought he had used that string of sounds that formed a greeting. It was so absurd. Who would utter Japanese when taking leave? At first, humiliation had filled his red, swollen face, which gave way to a look of scorn as he stared angrily at the guy with the dark face.

“What he spoke was Taiwanese,” interjected the upperclassman wearing glasses.

“Don’t think I don’t understand. I’ve heard the Japanese devils speak plenty.” The civics teacher had softened the tone of his voice and even seemed a bit embarrassed. “I’ve seen more Japs than you, you slave.” The civics teacher was from Manchuria and was filled with a passionate hatred for the Japanese.

“How can he be a conquered slave without a country when he’s speaking Taiwanese?” I interjected.

Sun tilted his head again. Flushed, he glanced at me and replied angrily, “Taiwanese, Japanese, it’s all the same. You’re all a bunch of conquered slaves without a country.” He shifted on his short legs, turned, and walked back into the classroom out of which he had just come, leaving the six of us in the covered walkway. It was still drizzling.

The tall upperclassman looked at his friend and then he looked at the four of us; he tapped his umbrella a couple of times against the ground and looked toward the classroom, knowing everything was pointless. He slowly turned until he faced the rain beyond the covered walkway and stood there silently, gazing at the rain swept by the wind across the campus. His friend walked over and looked at him and, after saying a few words, turned and stood side by side with him, with one hand in his pocket. They stood there in silence without uttering a word, looking at the neatly pruned banyan trees, sago palms, the low, shiny fence, and the vague flower beds beyond in the rain. In silence, I could faintly make out the moist cockscomb flowers and gently trembling canna lilies. On the other side, near the steps up to the indoor basketball court, facing the rear window of the school clinic, stood a trellis of fine wisteria flowers, a blended patch of pink and green, dim in the rain. Usually in the morning light, that wisteria trellis was beautiful and dazzling to the eye. Every day, we saw the nurse, who liked to dress up, watering it, plucking the dead leaves, and arranging its long, twining stems. I liked to watch, but the high school boys liked to watch even more. The teachers too liked to watch, and sometimes go over and chat with her. Now the breeze blew through the trellis and cool water accumulated in depressions in the ground. Through the empty spaces amid the trees, the large playing field, I imagined, was empty. I couldn’t say what the two of them were looking at while they stood there in silence. Apprehensively, the four of us youngsters stood behind them, disconcertedly looking here and there: one moment looking at their backs, another moment casting a glance at the silent classroom, or occasionally looking at one another, discovering that it was slowly growing dark. The one who was surnamed Shi plucked up his courage and cautiously walked over to stand beside them. He looked back at us before he looked up and asked, “Does it still hurt?” The tall guy looked down and replied in Taiwanese, “It’s okay.” He then reached out and patted him on the head and said in Japanese, “I’m okay” and then added, again in Japanese, “even the monkey falls from the tree.”

It was growing increasingly dark.

It seemed, ah, that the great spirit of the vast blue sea, the spirit of the distant, imposing mountains, and the power of art did not come solely from the beauty of Nature, nor solely from the collision of time and space in alternation. In my groping hands, in my exploring eyes, in the querying beat of my heart, in all actions and continuing behavior, time and space shook me to pieces; the weight of heaven and earth struck me deeply in body and soul, inspiring me, making me determined, curious, forsaking the vulgar while pursuing the unlimited secrets of myself. But all of this did not necessarily constitute the full power of art. Many other factors in my life clamored around me, stimulating me and intervening to speed up my growth, making me grow strong and sturdy, making me suddenly halt. There were so many other indefinable and indescribable factors in my limbs and heart striving and dominating me. Ah, the great spirit of the vast blue sea, the great spirit of the high mountains, in the end, I finally came to understand, to fully comprehend the enlightenment you gave to me. Only your vastness is impossible to measure, your distant heights are impossible to thoroughly measure; I longed to climb them with my surveyor’s pole. Profound mystery is not everything in life and, although it helped to consolidate my early worship of the beauty of nature and erected the palace I single-mindedly sought, yet the power of art actually derived from the understanding of real things that could be touched, rejected, scorned, and struck, unreasonable things and conflicts.

He opened his black umbrella, turned, and spoke a few words to the guy wearing glasses, then once more stepped out into the rain, strode off in the direction of the steps, and disappeared in the mist over the playing field. The guy with the glasses looked us over before stepping out of the covered walkway, walking quickly and with determination. The rain continued to fall unchanged; all I saw was the raindrops falling all around, very cold and lonely. These things were submerged in a silent corner of memory, the spirit of the vast blue sea, ah, the spirit of the distant and imposing high mountains.

Thus I see myself hesitating, alone in the rain—an imagined image in a youthful, obscure illusion—painstakingly capturing those sentiments. At any moment, that which has passed away, which doesn’t seem real, at most a few empty sentiments, far off and indistinct, that can be forced to stay, vacillating, taking shape in a tender and youthful heart. Later, I learned to coldly observe, not just gaze far away at the mountains and the sea, the moon and the constellations, but to open my eyes and pay attention to the relationships among people. I realized that prior to that age, my observations of people had all been careless, met or bumped into by chance. Although some had long been driven straight into my spiritual world and feelings, and had even left deep traces that could not be expunged, still, they had appeared to me suddenly and intermittently as I grew up. But the fear I had was, from beginning to end, a kind of passive attitude, even though I didn’t see it as passivity; but I had never once been active. When I bid farewell to childhood, I actively bid farewell to a period of time, its joy and sadness indistinguishable, and consciously delivered myself to a new and different time—at best, what I can say is that I had not taken the initiative to observe the human relations around me. Only after this incident occurred was I forced to become more sensitive and detached in observing people.

As winter deepened, a desolate moisture and a fragrance that emanated from the roots of plants floated in the air of the upland. I stood at the end of the covered walkway closest to the sea, gazing afar, sometimes leaning against the wooden columns, bored stiff, with the sunlight hidden in the cold at the end of the year. The waves on the sea surged enormously, swirled exaggeratedly, before they receded in a big way while rolling continuously to the right and left, like a long, pitiful song that led to an end that was slow in appearing, foretelling since time immemorial some onrushing truth and messages of destruction, devouring, liberating, and comforting. With my soul, in a hurry to grow up, I learned and imagined, and arranged page after page of interwoven and revealing pictures; I looked at the sea with my eyes, but what I thought about in my mind was no longer the sea but abstract ideas, one by one shaped between pictures. I was powerless to bear so many ideas. I was tired, feeling weak and worn out. In earnest, I fixed my eyes on the sea. At the farthest point, where the black clouds were layered with light, I suddenly saw a dark shadow. It was minute but moving—perhaps it was the sea that was moving—in the cold wind, as if it were being led by the variegated light and clouds, like some secondary character on a puppet stage, a black imagined image moving with difficulty. After I blinked my eyes and refocused my sight, I finally confirmed that it was a fishing boat, a mid-sized fishing boat, sticking up high at one end. I determined that it was a fishing boat making its way amid the troubling wind and waves of winter, heading laboriously for port. I imagined that it had been making its way for some time when the fishermen on the vast ocean heard a warning over the radio, a special report about a violent wind from the northeast that was hurtling in a southeasterly direction over the sea southeast of Hualien. It was like a horse that, put out to graze on the vast plains, vaguely senses some imminent disaster from far away, looks up at the sky, immediately turns about, and hurries back. I could clearly make it out: the ship continued to increase in size, its outline growing clearer, sticking up high at one end, several nautical miles to the southeast, beyond the white lighthouse, but within the gaze of my naked eyes. I discovered that at the moment it became clearly discernible, another dark shape appeared on the horizon; it was moving fast and in the same place as the previous ship. It too was a fishing boat, identical in every way, like a horse grazing on the plains that hurries back after sensing the approach of a disaster from the northeast. I stood watching under the covered walkway for a long time. The cold air and cool mist filled the campus of the middle school. Soon I saw a dozen or so fishing boats appear among the ferocious waves in the same position following a set course, rising and falling, rapidly toward the shining white lighthouse, struggling toward the calm embrace of the port. Sometimes a fishing boat would be raised high on a wave, tottering as if it were about to plunge, but within a matter of moments I saw it leisurely slide down, propelled forward by the wave, only to meet another huge wave. Each time the boat disappeared in the trough between waves, I assumed it had sunk, never to rise again, but in a matter of moments, it would float elegantly like a white bird playing on the waters outside of town to the top of a wave, slide down, bobbing, rapidly making its way toward the white lighthouse and the harbor.

“Hurry home,” came a deep and pleasant voice from behind. I knew it was Teacher Guo. Indeed, it was him. He was standing beside a column behind me and dressed in a navy blue quilted coat, his hands thrust in his pockets. Teacher Guo taught us physics and chemistry, and was a very patient teacher who never lost his temper. He had divided our class into four groups, each of which he led into the chemistry classroom, where he seated us in a circle while he busied himself preparing the convex and concave lenses in front of him and then lit a medium-size white candle. Then, in a happy tone of voice, he said, “Turn off the lights!” After the lights went out, he said in a slow, unhurried fashion, “Can you see it? The candle flame has tipped over. Do you see it? Now look at this side, the candle flame is upright.” We answered that we could all see it as we jostled one another. Then Teacher Guo said, “Turn on the lights. You go outside and tell the next group to come in.” Teacher Guo walked to the window and lit a cigarette, looking extremely relaxed. His fluffy hair looked very shiny in the light coming through the row of west-facing frosted glass windows in the classroom. He said, “There’s a high wind on the sea, and the fishing boats are all heading back fast. Look at all the fishing boats!” I counted them one by one. Some had already arrived back at the harbor. The mid-sized red and green fishing boats were tinged golden as they came through the breakwaters, sailing smoothly through that narrow opening, slowing once they passed the white lighthouse. You could almost hear the chugging motors in the distance. I counted them one by one off toward the farthest point, but before I finished counting, another black dot had appeared on the horizon, surging continuously toward us. “Can’t get a clear count because they are heading home quickly,” said Teacher Guo, facing the sea, “can’t get a clear count.” Teacher Guo was from Jiangxi and lived in the long lane of dormitories on the mountainside. He and his wife had a baby, but they had not been given a place of their own. They lived with two other teachers and their families in a Japanese-style house with tatami mats and a large courtyard. In the courtyard grew longan, guavas, bananas, papayas, custard apples, pomegranates, grapefruits, and a host of other plants of various sizes. The wives of the three teachers were all very amiable and were always smiling, each one carrying her baby. The sun shone in their courtyard and I could see the wives of the three teachers, very relaxed, sitting in rattan chairs and talking. Teacher Guo was in the kitchen preparing dumpling skins, as another was chopping green onions and cutting meat, while the third teacher was still over at the school on duty for the day and wouldn’t be back until dinnertime. Each of the wives had a different accent, but they were not hard to understand. They talked, laughed, and dandled their children on the ground—could life really be so simple and cozy? Perhaps this was just what I so eagerly sought as I grew with vigor. Thus, one sunny Sunday, I saw that simple, cozy level of life, intimate, friendly, serene, and hopeful in that dormitory courtyard filled with that confused mixture of flowers and fruit trees. Suddenly one of the babies on the ground—I don’t know whose—began to cry, and cry very loudly. In the middle of speaking, the tallest of the three noticed and, smiling, quickly picked up her baby and pressed it to her face: “Darling, don’t cry.” But he kept on crying. She held him tightly in her chair said, “Hungry? We’re hungry, aren’t we?” The baby continued crying, so she began to unbutton her blouse, while saying, “We’re hungry.” Mrs. Guo whispered to her, “Qin Defen,” as she looked in my direction, her lips moving. The sunlight played at my feet, and I heard the shrill cries of the cicadas resounding in and around the long lane. The baby continued to bawl. The woman slowly rose to her feet, redid one of the buttons of her blouse, and said, “Okay, okay, we’re hungry.” She turned to leave and looked back at Mrs. Guo with a smile, and with one hand pulled open the screen door and stepped inside. The screen door banged shut without disturbing the chirring cicadas, which kept up their shrill cries. I smelled the scent of sweet osmanthus blossoms wafting from a tree. Looking up at the tree, I noticed a wax apple tree, whose lush, deep green leaves I had not previously noticed in the courtyard. At that moment, Teacher Guo pushed open the screen door and came out and said happily, “Everything’s ready.” The screen door banged shut again: “Everything’s ready. We’ll be done eating by the time Xu Hao gets back. What’s taking him so long?”

After nightfall, the sound of insects in the lane to the teachers’ dormitories only grew louder. Long distances separated each burning light. In the rings around the few scattered lights in that distant age, moths flew and circled. Perhaps the light of day lingered too long, for the breadfruit tree with its huge leaves was still visible at the end of the lane, bestowing an unusually tropical atmosphere on the scene. A bicycle with a light on went by, its bell clear and sharp. It was the husband of our history teacher. He taught biology, but we hadn’t had his class yet. He always wore a Sun Yatsen jacket, buttoned up and impeccable. I bowed silently to him; he nodded and asked with solicitude, “You’re still here and not at home at this hour?” His bicycle disappeared into the darkness. The outlines of the trees in the courtyards had grown obscure and, after the bicycle with its light had passed, I lost my night vision and the sky had grown entirely black. At that moment a woman passed right in front of me, holding a very small boy by the hand. She was just a few steps away before I became aware of her. It was our algebra teacher, who, though small in stature, was always graceful, and who, though pretty, was prone to scolding. She was about the same age as the wives of the other teachers, but because she taught at school, she was always more properly dressed. Short and verging on plump, she always wore eye-catching clothes. Her features and skin were very pretty. She wrote on the blackboard with her left hand, her back turned toward us. At the beginning of summer she wore a sleeveless qipao that was slit to three inches above her knees. From the twelfth seat in the rear on the left, I could see the hair of her armpit flash under her white arm, a hint of perspiration to her shapely back, and the rounded curves below her waist and how her tight-fitting qipao descended in a perfectly indescribable line, to the slits from where her full legs, which were also snow white, gracefully peeped. With the onset of autumn, her qipao had sleeves and were plainer in color, over which she wore a heavy coat. I’m not sure what made her unhappy, but she slammed the chalk down in the blackboard trough, turned, and, seeing me as I sat in my seat by the window staring at her, she told me to stand up, and asked me to recite the formula (A + B) × (A − B). I stood there at a loss, totally confused, and for the life of me was unable to think of how A and B ought to be combined in the formula. In addition to the shame I felt, I was angrier still, saddened that she had betrayed me in front of the entire class. I never expected that she wouldn’t treasure the secret and tender feelings I had for her, but that she would shame me in front of everyone. How could such heartlessness not break one’s heart? Seeing that I couldn’t recite the formula, she roundly scolded me using a pithy saying, but her voice sounded coquettish to my ears, even sweet. Her heavy southern accent was as crisp and clear as a short song in the Wu dialect, thinly veiled, amorous, like raindrops beating on lotus leaves, on the canopy over a drifting boat inside which a naïve youth dozed over a translated novel. At the whim of wind and wave, the boat drifted through the deep shade of the willows, under a winding bridge, through the reflection of a pagoda, and the sound of a bell was heard as partridges flew over the water and an oriole flew up and down in the high grass. By that time, my algebra teacher had walked to the left in front of me, where there was a street light that clearly illuminated both of us. I never thought of her as having a child. Somewhat recalcitrant, I bowed respectfully. When she saw it was me, she smiled like a flower and said, “You’re not home at this hour?” I quickly replied, “I went to Teacher Guo’s house for dumplings. There were five of us.” She smiled, said that was nice and then good-bye, continued on her way, and disappeared among the dark shapes of the trees.

That night after lowering the mosquito net and going to bed, my mind seemed filled with glowing spheres of light, like stars shining in the sky, filling the vast emptiness, revolving, floating, colliding, and shattering to produce even more and finer stars. In a flash they would expand and, with differing volumes, unfold as a unit, revolving, floating, colliding, giving rise to a loud sound in my mind. At first it was a thundering that could be heard all around, rising and falling, which later the universe spontaneously organized out of chaos, bestowing order, producing something akin to regularity, a systematic harmony, like the rising of the music of heaven coming from beyond the wilderness, to which the mountains and rivers replied, in a symphony of trees, small and large, piping to each other with their openings. My being seemed to become a great empty hall, and my young body was instantly filled with that sound, subject to the passion of the sound and light, no longer myself. I took out my only fountain pen and wrote, replicating incomplete and imperfect thoughts on the horizontal-lined paper, taking shape like music, but also seemingly as if it would never take shape. Leaping images: clouds, fountain, reeds; unallied metaphors: window, boat reflection, threshold, small building, corridor; “Oh, so profound and abstruse, like a purple whisper vanishing.” I explored the darkest, most foreign world, arrived at a strange world—strange, but at the same time entirely real and familiar. Good-bye, good-bye, I said to myself, watching the suspended mosquito net slanting left and right in the lamplight. I would enter, searching for dreams and illusions. I was unwilling. I sat at my desk writing forcefully, allowing the infinite spheres of light to dance in my mind, in an unrestrained fashion exhibiting all sorts of shameful, frightening, and regrettable images, hair and skin, delicate fingers, sparse and elegant eyebrows beneath which were one, two, three pairs of bewitching eyes, black as well as gray, and light blue eyes, pure, intricate, and colorful, clear as the morning light, soft as rings of moonlight. I tried—as I am trying now—to find the right words to describe a face like a flower, to describe that true and perfect body, but the sound and light were too strong for my weak mind, the protracted up and down, right and left made it impossible for me to grasp hold of what I wanted. The fleeting words remained elusive despite the sad appeals of emotion. A fluttering moth flapped against the short hair on my sweaty head; outside my window, the swaying royal palm whispered; and as usual, the stars were farther off. I seemed to hear the sea.

I heard the sound of the ocean at the tip of my pen. Sometimes it was a huge wave that confused my absorbed and infatuated perceptions; my senses were assailed and grappled with that endless din, becoming increasingly sensitive the moment it began to hurt. At other times, it was calm and quiet, faintly bearing some tidings, like a pulsing glance, transmitting the tidings of nature, the pulse of the universe, quietly beating. I could hear it in that deeply troubled and difficult age; late on a lonely night, by lamplight, I wrote something illegible; strange and trembling illusions compelled me to explore the unknown, capturing that ache in words, vigorously transmitting tidings to the self—I knew that those tidings came from a dark and mysterious place in my soul. In the process of transmission, it was disrupted by an external force, rustling, and misled, forced off in the opposite direction. So I struggled in pursuit, right on its tail in a blank world devoid of sound or light; by myself, alone and lonely I searched, searched for what in all certainty would be mine, what was destined to be mine, and what should be mine. I was conscious of the process being creation. Prior to that I had already observed creation from beginning to end, and thought I had actually experienced it. But I hadn’t. Although I had observed it, and even experienced it, it had been false and superficial. Today I threw myself into it, working with all my strength and spirit, by turns strongly and weakly. I was aware that that process was the process of creation. The insects cried outside—I heard them when I stopped writing, a few scattered cries; sometimes their cries filled the courtyard. It was darkness upon darkness, so deep with no end, but then when I began once more to write, my entire being melted into that actuality, no longer able to hear the insects, vanished. At that moment, only creative power pushed on. I heard the sound of the ocean in that process—I saw mountain forests and clouds, shining in the mirror of the sea, great yet modest. I continued to dash ahead, vigorously forcing some images, vague, when suddenly a huge black net spread before my eyes, swaying in the cold air, blocking my way. I saw the complex warp and woof of the weave, hanging there densely, blocking my advance on this side, with no way to break through. My head dropped in exhaustion. I closed my eyes and carefully thought about what I had encountered in those days, gradually becoming aware that my pulse was quickening. On that night, the blood flowed from my forehead quickly down my spine, slowly overflowing my belly, filling my four limbs. The blood vessels throughout my body were throbbing. I concentrated all my mental effort in a strange and magical place, where it rose up and shot forth. In a flash the black net was broken, torn to shreds, spilled into the universe, and flowed away. I watched as a galaxy composed of constellations rose up to take its place, arranged in an organic order in the territory in front of me, bright and continuous, showing me all manner of color and sound. When I had nearly sped through it, that boundless galaxy multiplied in a geometric progression, expanded, increased in size, one after another falling into a fixed position. At that moment, I once again heard those tidings emanating from that dark place in my soul, saying that that which never moves is love, sympathy, beauty, rebellion, and poetry.