From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan

Translator’s note: As with the other selections in the present volume, this translation of “My ‘Out-Law’ and the Hill Songs” is primarily based on the version of the story printed in New Complete Works (1:157–172), which in turn is based on the later of the two extant manuscripts. However, in this translation I have included all the hill songs that appear in the earlier manuscript, on which the Complete Works II version was based (3:69–82). The second manuscript cut the total number of lines of hill song from twenty to nine. The reinclusion here of the original songs in toto—while otherwise following the revisions to the first manuscript—gives the reader of this volume a fuller showcase for folk song, which plays an important part in Zhong Lihe’s oeuvre.

The whole morning I sat alone on the veranda, gazing ahead into the distance and listening to the hill songs from across the river. Down on the plain the people, the fields and villages, mist and haze, bamboos and trees, and hills and rivers presented themselves in their ancient, amiable guise; at this distance, the landscape seemed unchanged. In the past I myself had sung its hill songs, shared its heartbeat, and felt its feelings. But now I knew how impossible it would be to try to rediscover the emotions of yesteryear among these people and things. Everything had changed so much; it was all a long way from what I had known so intimately.

Overhead, from deep within the blanket of gray, misty clouds, the sun set the land alight with its pitiless fire. The roasted crops were shriveled and haggard. The soil looked like new-fired lime: gray, desiccated, thirsty, crumbly. One gust of wind and the earth flew up; the acrid smell of the scorched soil irritated the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Ahead of me, at the foot of the low hills, the village stretched itself out lazily, apparently lifeless. Its betel-nut trees and the fortress formed by its encirclement of bamboo were more gray than green, terribly pale and wan. They swayed feebly, as if they no longer possessed the strength or the will to carry on.

And yet, behind this scene, human life was seething, churning, swarming, and buzzing like the beehive my son poked with a stick. The clouds, steaming hot and shining with dazzling white light, draped over the land like ash covering an iron in the forge. Underneath, the people were frantically writhing around—on edge, restless.

Kicking at the sun-bleached soil in their fields, these good and honest folk mournfully knitted their brows. Often they complained to me that their beans weren’t podding, the sweet potatoes were no bigger than hen’s eggs, and the sesame stood gaping in the field, waiting for rain to drink. It was not the first time their fields had teetered on the brink of reversion to wilderness. In fearful tones, each tiller cursed the cruelty of Heaven; in more strident tones he cursed the hard times, or the human race, or his sallow-faced, slatternly wife and her brood of insatiable little monkeys.

“Ai! Ai!” one farmer neighbor had sighed as he spoke to me. “A bad year—even Heaven’s gone all contrary.”

I remembered his eyes, darting fearfully in all directions as he spoke; in them one could plainly see the uneasiness of a soul stripped of all confidence.

Somehow I felt the people had changed beyond all comprehension; they hadn’t been at all like this in the past.

And so, gazing into the distance, I felt depressed.

—Perhaps he’s right!—Afterward I had attempted to construct an explanation, to seek some sort of logical thread: perhaps there’s nothing else they can do!

In the past, their lives were their own; they embraced this existence and devoted themselves to it, as naturally as a bird sleeping in its own nest. Everything appeared harmonious and smooth. But now it was different. Above all, they no longer understood their lives. Like a vicious, treacherous hooligan, Life had far eluded their grasp and was swaggering alone across the expanses of this world, wherever it liked. The people had lost all sense of connection with it. Life was changing from minute to minute, changing most strangely, weaving absurd stories otherwise seen only in a magic lantern show. But the stories somehow always turned out to be closely related to their lives.

—Perhaps he’s right! For thousands of years the land had provided their every need; it matched their portion of toil, blood, and sweat with the corresponding rewards, and never disappointed them. But if this land were suddenly to stop giving … then what?

Now, they were betrayed by everything around them!

—Perhaps he’s right!

But then, what was it all about?—Naturally I began to think of the things I’d seen and heard in the last few days: A-Tian’s troubles, Uncle Dechang’s sadness, Bingwen’s deception, my mother-in-law’s grumbling, the arsonists’ folly, my brother’s curses, A-Huang’s decline….¹

Perhaps it was all a mistake, an utterly random mistake. When the time came, everything would be put aright again and life would reassume its splendor, harmony, and reason—just as when we wake from a nightmare: opening our eyes, we see that the world is still as beautiful as ever!

Let us hope it is so!

Another hill song reached my ears—

The singing was sinuous, mellow, and delightful; the lingering melody was achingly sad, but the song retained the simplicity and unaffectedness of the pastoral. This was an extremely moving example of a hill song. In the past, whenever I heard a good hill song the most wonderful feelings would arise in me. Now I listened in silence, allowing myself to melt into those feelings once again.

“Listen, someone’s singing!” My wife, who was tidying up a neglected plot beside the house, looked up with a smile. Pingmei had never been much of a singer herself but had always loved to listen. “I haven’t heard a good hill song for years. How lovely!”

I looked east, where the teak trees grew lush and green on the steep hillside. I saw human figures dressed in blue flitting in and out of sight among the trees. Female figures. Blue headscarves were tied round their bamboo hats, the corners trailing behind and flapping in the breeze like tails.

That’s where the hill songs were coming from.

The notes of the song quivered in the atmosphere, dissipating in every direction. Off in another direction, the crisp pure sound of tree felling seemed to chime in with its rhythm: ding, ding, ding, ding …

It was very strange: the calm, warmth, and longing in the tone of the hill song, and the vacillation, unease, and coldness of its real-life surroundings were so out of balance. Through the profound emotions of romantic love the song expressed an insistent love for life. You could imagine those young, tender lives being nurtured and maturing in the bright sun. Amid all the change and upheaval, perhaps this was the only unchanging thing I could find. Back then the girls worked just like this, and sang; the hill was the same, the tails, the blue headscarves. And from then till now the same stories of youth continued to be sung and celebrated over and over again.

That’s right! When the time came, the decrepit, the ugly, and the sick would fall, so that the young, the strong, the healthy, and the well-formed could grow: like saplings under a rotten, fallen tree, they would supplant what had gone before.

These thoughts heartened me somewhat.

My sister-in-law came in. Taking off her bamboo hat and rearranging her messed-up hair with her fingers, she cheerfully reported: “Your ‘out-law’ will be here in a minute!”

“My out-law? Oh, you mean Yuxiang? Where is he?”

I quickly realized who she meant.

“Just over there; he’s with his son—they’re doing a job moving timber.”

“What? Has he got a son big enough to help him to move timber?”

“It’s not his own son!”

So my sister-in-law told me my “out-law”’s ordinary and yet extraordinary story.

—Tu Yuxiang was one of the ablest workers on my father’s farm, and a good friend of mine, just a couple of years older than me. For two or three years he and I worked together almost every day: planting coffee and bamboo, harvesting silk-cotton, breaking new ground. He was a superb singer; perhaps his teeth were too big for him to be an attractive man, but he had a fine, deep, and mellow voice; he knew how to modulate his singing to make the phrases just perfect. Moreover, he had somehow learned many strange and wonderful songs that nobody else knew. All the workers loved to hear him sing, especially the girls.

He’d throw his arms around a silk-cotton tree and climb up, spry as a monkey, to the very top, stand and survey the surrounding hills beneath him, and then crane his neck to sing out loud and clear, yet tenderly.

His singing would resound among the clustered peaks and valleys. He struck a handsome, stirring pose, and there was something mysterious about it, suggesting the image of a mountain sprite.

Such were the circumstances in which one day he and I, out of the harmless banter of innocent youth, began to address one another as “in-laws,” even though not only was neither of us father to a child old enough to marry, but we were both still unmarried ourselves. Hearing us address one another so intimately, one of the older women teased us:

“Unmarried in-laws? More like out-laws, I’d say!”

A few years after I went to the Mainland, Yuxiang had an affair with a widow who already had a child. Then he was conscripted into the Japanese army as a porter and sent to Southeast Asia. Two years later, when he was demobilized and repatriated, the widow came to see him. In her arms was a child that had just passed its first birthday.

“Your child!” she said simply. While Yuxiang was in the army she had been cast out of her late husband’s house and forced to go out to work to support herself and the two children.

Looking at the woman and her two children, Yuxiang had been stumped for quite a while. But just as rice that’s already been boiled can’t be put back in the jar, he had to accept the fait accompli, and so he left home and went away with the woman and her children to make a new life together.

“It wasn’t such a bad thing,” said my sister-in-law in conclusion. “He got himself a well-grown son into the bargain, a handy help in all kinds of work, heavy or light. Father and son, they drive their cart, moving whatever people need moved; they’ve got work every day of the year, they’re never idle—they work even harder than the ox itself!”

No sooner had my sister-in-law finished speaking and left than my “out-law” and his “into the bargain” son arrived. The boy was about fourteen; his face was anemic, but his dark shining eyes suggested a keen intelligence. He was leading the two water buffalo. Yuxiang and he looked more like brothers than father and son.

“Drive them over there, into the orchard …” My “out-law” pointed as he instructed his son. “—Just watch them while they graze.”

I left the veranda and went to meet him. “Brother Yuxiang!”

“Brother A-He!” he replied, then turned to Pingmei in the kitchen doorway, and, after a slight hesitation, called to her: “Sister-in-law!”

His tone sounded unnatural. In the old days he had always called her “Sister Pingmei.”

“I thought you were supposed to be in-laws!” She reminded us with a laugh. Back then, the three of us had all worked together.

Yuxiang scratched the back of his head, a bashful smile spreading from the corners of his mouth.

“Moving timber, eh?” I said.

“That’s right. For the brick kilns …”

We sat down on the veranda. Pingmei busied herself getting tea.

“You’ve hardly changed at all,” said Yuxiang, accepting a cup of tea from Pingmei. “Except Sister-in-law’s a bit thinner!”

“Not thinner, just older!” she corrected him.

“But you’ve had a dozen or more years of eating since we last met!”

We looked at one another with knowing smiles.

Yuxiang was no longer the youth of a dozen years ago, still wet behind the ears and not knowing the meaning of the word “worry,” but a strapping man, thoroughly mature in both mind and body. Long years of life’s tribulations seemed only to have tempered the vitality that lay beneath his dark-brown skin, and made it firmer and more resilient. Perhaps this was the kind of man who could weather any storm, withstand any frost, rain, or snow.

Through the window on my right I could see his son in the orchard and the two oxen moving in and out of sight among the trees. The boy was sitting in the shade with his back to us, invisible from the shoulders down.

Turning my gaze away from the orchard, I asked, “How many kids?”

“Four! The oldest helps me out a bit, but the others are either too sickly or too small to be much use.”

As he spoke Yuxiang was looking at our eldest son, nestling at Pingmei’s knees.

“So this is your …?”

“Our first-born!” said Pingmei, caressing Tie’er’s head. “He’s five.”

“How time flies. It’s only been a dozen or so years, and here we all are with whole broods of children!”

As he spoke Yuxiang took matches from his pocket, together with a “Bowelove” Bowel Salts tin. He opened the tin, which contained tobacco and a sheaf of snow-white cigarette papers. Taking a paper, he pinched up some tobacco and spread it evenly, then began rolling with skilled, experienced fingers. Once it was rolled tight, he brought the cigarette up to his mouth and gave it a lick, and there was his hand-rolled smoke at the ready.

I thought this was great fun; people never used to roll their own.

“You probably both remember Rongmei …”

He inspected his cigarette with some satisfaction, stuck it between his lips and lit a match.

“… You might say Fate has been pretty kind to her; she has five kids now. A few days ago I bumped into her on the road and she had one on her back, one by the hand, and what looked like another in her belly. Her hair was like a bird’s nest and she looked ugly and old. You’ll both remember how fastidious she used to be about her appearance. There was that time I accidentally got some mud on her headscarf … she was angry with me the whole day, her face almost purple with rage. Unbelievable!”

He spoke pensively. His Japanese was much more fluent than before, to judge from what he mixed in with our native Hakka. Apparently his two years of military service had allowed him to reach a level of Japanese hardly imaginable for someone who hadn’t got any further than primary school.

“What about the other girls?” Pingmei piped up. “Lanying got married before we left; and what about …?”

“How could any of them be any different? In a nutshell: they got married, had children, and one by one fell on hard times, as simple as that. But the amazing thing is how fertile they all are, each of them has a great litter of kids, and because they have so many, they all end up looking like fat sows straight from the sty. But if you go back a decade or more, all of them were good-looking, neatly turned out lassies. It sure beats me!”

“Is Lianmei married too?” persisted Pingmei. “She had an older sister whose husband wasn’t poor, right enough, but he turned out to have a violent temper and would give her terrible beatings twice a week or more. One time he busted her forehead open and she ran straight home to her family the same night and didn’t go back for ages. That was the sister who tried to make a match for Lianmei. She said to her, ‘Haven’t you taken enough beatings yourself? Do you need me to make up the numbers?’ She was determined not to get married; she often said that when a woman married, if she didn’t get beaten up she’d be reduced to poverty; if she wasn’t reduced to poverty she’d get beaten up—either way it was a sorry state to be in.”

As Pingmei spoke she bowed her head and stared at the floor, sunk in her memories.

“I’d like to see them,” she said after a while, looking up. “Could I?”

“That’s difficult! Apart from you, it’s not easy to see any of the girls from our old crew!”

So saying, Yuxiang nipped out the ember of his cigarette with his fingers, and then flung the butt forcefully to the ground.

“And then there’s Xiudi: after her husband died she started living with a man …”

“Oh!” Pingmei sighed. “And now?”

“What do you think? She was disowned by her family …”

At this point Yuxiang suddenly pricked up his ears and said enigmatically, “Listen, a hill song!”

“That’s really good hill-singing!” Yuxiang was well satisfied. “A beautiful voice!”

“They still can’t get away from the ‘laddies’ and ‘lassies,’ can they?” I said, then smiled and added: “Do you still sing? You used to sing really a lot, and really well!”

“Me? Oh, I’m no use anymore! The mood doesn’t take me, and my voice just isn’t what it was. When I was young I didn’t know a damn thing, but I was really happy when I sang; once you know a thing or two, it’s not so easy to sing. Only the youngsters—especially the girls—and the hill songs never change; the singing goes on forever, no matter how good life is, or how hard!”

He set about rolling a second cigarette and lit it. White smoke climbed out from his mouth, curled into his nostrils, up the bridge of his nose, and over his forehead. It rose up very slowly, like a little caterpillar. He watched it dissipate in the air as he switched to a cooler tone of voice: “And times really are hard, you know. All the folk just shake their heads; it’s the same wherever you go. I just can’t figure it out.”

Yuxiang’s gaze was fixed on the farmland down on the flat, as if that’s where the hard times lay for anyone to see. The sunlight glared and shimmered there, where a gray human figure could be seen on one of the ridges between the fields. The figure looked small, insignificant, antlike.

“The sun has just burned everybody crazy,” Yuxiang went on. “But it’s so strange; it’s as if people are fated from birth to suffer like this, and it’s the same all over. Once, when my unit was scattered by an American attack in the Philippines, everyone was fleeing for his life, and four or five of us found ourselves in the middle of a mountainous jungle. We climbed mountain after mountain for a full day and night without a bite to eat. Then we came to a valley, where we found a house. We were overjoyed and walked toward it, only to find not even the shadow of a ghost—the local people were so scared of the Japs. We searched the whole house but could find nothing better to eat than sweet potatoes; and there was not so much as a single pig or chicken. Think about it—this was a farmer’s home!

“One of my friends shook his head and said: ‘It beats me why the Japanese want to fight a war like this!’

“‘Why?’ I asked him.

“‘It’s just the same here … poor!’ he said.

“He sure wasn’t wrong: the people there were really poor. It just didn’t make any sense.”

“I’d better be going.” Yuxiang flung down his cigarette end and stretched lazily.

“I sure am bushed! I haven’t had a day off in over a month. A-Hui! Where are the oxen? Let’s go!” He yelled in the direction of the orchard.

Then he picked up where he had left off speaking: “In the past our bellies were full, so we sang hill songs of lads and lasses and never bothered about where our next meal was coming from. But now, we’ve all become parents of children, haven’t we?”

The boy drove the oxen out from the orchard. Yuxiang got up and said warmly, “I’ll drop by again another day. I often pass this way!”

Outside he stopped again and turned back to us.

“Listen,” he smiled. “She’s singing again; she’s good, really good! See you again!”

1. The names are all of characters from the first three parts of Homeland. The collective time span of these four linked stories is nebulous, but clearly extends over more than just a “few days.” The action began, at the start of part I (“Zugteuzong’), “one day in April 1946,” but in this story Yuxiang tells A-He he has four children, two of whom must have been born no earlier than 1946, given that Yuxiang could not likely have been repatriated much before the end of 1945.