Yi ballads can be boisterous and jubilant, or serene, or reminiscent of lone traveling spirits, full of sadness and melancholy. My first encounter with the Yi ballad was in a bar in 2007 when I was traveling in Dali. I met a French musician who had just returned from a trip to several Yi villages in the Daliangshan area. With his expensive recording equipment, he had collected several dozen ancient ballads and burned them onto three CDs. We drank together as he played me a selection.
Those songs entered my dream one night. A simple repetitive melody echoed inside the dark, bare mountains, every note dripping tears, as slithery as earthworms. When I woke up, my feet were ice cold, which I like to attribute to my subconscious interpretation of the Yi culture—a people coming from the dark, damp mountains, their beings a combination of gods, ghosts, and humans.
In early August 2006 I was invited by Reverend Zhang Mao-en to attend a service held not in a church but in the yard of a parishioner’s house. As he led me along a narrow, muddy path that wound through the village, giving way to strolling cattle adorned with bells and clip-clopping horses with rounded bellies, I trod carefully, avoiding deep hoofprints filled with steaming dung. Zhang seemed oblivious to the petty disruptions of rural life.
The sight and smell of so much manure reminded me of an allegorical article I was made to read in high school during the Cultural Revolution. A group of urban youths sent down to the rural areas to receive “reeducation” stumble upon a pile of fresh cow dung on a similar muddy path. As they search for a shovel to scoop it up, a peasant girl appears, cups the dung in both hands, and carries it to the communal manure pond. The young peasant girl sets a powerful example for the young city people who are unable to see past their petty bourgeois habits. Our teacher left us with a series of questions: Which was worse—the horse dung or petty bourgeois thinking? Who had the purer mind—the peasant girl or the urban youths? Some forty years later, school teachers no longer imbue cow shit with Communist ideology. Chinese people know shit stinks and that anyone in his right mind would use a shovel to collect it, whether proletariat or bourgeoisie.
What should have been a five-minute walk took half an hour, and by the time we arrived, my pants and shoes were a muddy mess. I stomped my feet on dry ground, trying to shake myself clean, when the driver touched me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t waste your energy. The mud will dry in no time and come off easily.” As we approached the parishioner’s courtyard home, I could hear hymns blasting from two Mao-era loudspeakers, very like those used by Party cadres during denunciation meetings, mixing in a painful static that drilled at my eardrums and cast me back for a moment to darker times.
The sun was well up now, and the air was humid and full of cicada song. I licked my parched lips, looked around to get my bearings, and realized it was here, the night before, that I had met Zhang. The house and the yard looked very different in daylight, the surreal and magical rendered shabby and crude, the crowd indistinguishable from any other gathering of ordinary, simple peasants, except that they were all smiling with what I can only ascribe to faith-induced happiness.
Zhang’s head of silver-gray hair disappeared fast inside the house. He was the only ordained minister in the Sayingpan region, so this was his show. I watched his parishioners, and what at first glance appeared to be chaos resolved itself into order as greeters arranged seats and passed around tea and candies while the cooks chopped and clattered in the kitchen.
Christians in China’s major cities are greatly divided over the government-sanctioned churches, but villagers here are not so political. They attend Sunday service at government-sponsored churches run by Zhang but also participate in services held by family pastors.
Around me in the courtyard, the talking stopped and ears strained to hear Zhang’s voice as it rose and fell on the warm morning air. I listened but couldn’t understand a word. He was speaking Yi. It was like listening to a tape of poet T. S. Eliot reading his poems when I was young. I could only decode the meaning from the tones and rhythms and with my eyes, my nose, and my mind. I let my imagination fill in the blanks and felt I could see the blood of Jesus, smell the fetid air before his death, and share the exultation of others around me of his resurrection. It was not a long service, and soon the crowd uttered “Amen” and life snapped back to its noisy secular state.
Language made it impossible for me to interview participants. Since many had seen me arrive with Zhang, I could move freely with my camera, trying to capture interesting faces and unusual scenes. Mounds of garbage and dirt piled up along the walls near the yard entrance. In another corner, a pigsty and a chicken coop. Animals and humans lived side by side, forming a harmonious picture. Four old ladies sat side by side on the bottom stairs of the house, facing the scorching sun. One stood up, slowly wobbling forward. I focused on her weathered face, the deeply creased forehead.
It was approaching noontime and the flies were out and about. When the villagers around me made a gesture or laughed or shook hands in greeting, flies would rise and swirl around them. When they stopped, the flies would drop back on their heads, shoulders, arms, and legs. Little clouds of flies hovered over the more animated of conversations.
Zhang beckoned to me, and I went inside the house, where it was cooler and there were fewer flies. He introduced me to several pastors from other villages, but our conversations in Mandarin were of the simple kind and limited to common phrases. They all looked tanned, crimson like the red soil of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, their faces exuding kindness and nobility. When we ran out of words, we sipped our tea and smiled at one another.
Outside, four tables were being set up for food. Growing up in the rural areas of Sichuan province, I had attended all sorts of banquets—weddings, funerals, birthday celebrations—but none quite like this one. People in Yunnan were accustomed to low benches and short tables, whereas folks in Sichuan preferred higher benches and long tables. But the banquet customs were the same. From ancient to modern times, people in every province have maintained celebratory traditions—slaughtering pigs and goats and filling big plates and bowls with meticulously prepared meat and vegetable dishes.
The cooks rushed in and out of the kitchen. The hostess invited Zhang and the other pastors and preachers to step out to the yard. Everyone got up and bowed to one another. “Please, you go first, I can wait.” Nobody moved. A few minutes later, the hostess appeared again, urging Zhang outside. “Please, you go first, I can wait.” After a third such exchange, Zhang grabbed my wrist and said to everyone, “Let’s all go outside and start.” Zhang led the other church leaders down the steps, waving to the crowd, exchanging a few words here and there as he headed for the tables. Each was occupied by eight to ten villagers; more lingered outside the courtyard waiting to join the second sitting.
Pork, lamb, chicken, duck, tofu, peanuts, and vegetables, stir-fried, steamed, stewed, and raw—most of the dishes looked and smelled as if they were heavily spiced with hot chili peppers. Within minutes, the table was covered by a dozen or so dishes. The sun was now overhead. I was very hungry. The flies seemed more like ravens, trying to snatch up the food. At other banquets, people would clink their glasses and toast each other with loud yelling. On this day, the courtyard was silent, save for the buzzing of flies. The mountain loomed large in the distance, glorious in the sunlight.
Zhang stood, gazed into the distance, and lowered his head to lead a prayer. He towered above us on the low benches. Every Yi word he uttered sounded melodic and beautiful.
Zhang was praying.
I felt overcome by an entirely different set of emotions. The damp solitary darkness in my dream evaporated around me. His voice, deep and thick, and the melodic words made me think of the beautiful uplifting gospel music of the American blacks or the soul-grabbing chanting of the ancient African tribes.
Zhang was praying.
As his “Amen” was chorused by everyone present, my ears returned to the normal sounds and activities of life as chopsticks began clicking through the food. More dishes were served. Zhang engaged in some lively conversations with his neighbors around the table. They laughed, openly and freely and with happiness.
At that moment, I remembered a passage from the Bible, which I had read before the trip. “On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines” (Isa. 25:7). It was truly a memorable feast and a celebration of life.
• • •
The feast was over by one o’clock. After I made my farewell to Reverend Zhang, my driver recommended that I visit the site of the former Southwestern Theology Seminary in Salaowu.
The car glided on a newly paved concrete road; small tractors spewed plumes of black smoke, tainting the pristine air. When the driver stopped on the edge of a cornfield, I could see the outline of the seminary, standing like a lone island among a green sea of cornstalks. I began feeling unusually animated and eager. I leapt across ditches and walked briskly. I thought of Dr. Sun who had regaled me with stories about the seminary and its founder, an Australian missionary named Zhang Erchang. In the early twentieth century, the seminary became an incubator for Christian leadership in the region. When Zhang Erchang and his wife died, they were buried nearby. Nearly all the Christian leaders I had interviewed in the region mentioned this seminary and remarked on its tremendous influence over the local Christian community. My expectations ran high as I dashed across the cornfield, with the driver calling me from behind, panting and shouting, asking me to slow down.
Two or three small drab buildings with gray roof tiles made up the whole campus. If one didn’t know about its history, one would assume it was a small collection of farmhouses. There were no Western-style buildings, no stained-glass windows or biblical frescoes.
A villager directed us to the chapel, with its yellow crescent sun logo painted on a second-floor window. We followed several villagers through a small entrance. The inside was spacious, with exposed wooden beams. Paint was peeling off the ceiling. The afternoon lights filtered in through large windows. There was a dais and a blackboard on the front wall, with a red cross hanging above. Rows of long green benches could accommodate more than a hundred people.
Half a dozen villagers sat quietly inside the empty room, like diligent students who came ahead of their class to prepare for their lessons. My eyes darted around, trying to find traces of its former glory. I wandered out of the chapel, around the yard, and even climbed up a hill at the back, hoping to locate Zhang Erchang’s grave or tombstone. There was nothing.
I peeked in every room in the adjacent buildings. All I could see were dust, spiders, flies, and animal droppings. A fierce-looking dog leashed with a heavy cast-iron collar lay asleep inside a dilapidated room. In another building, I ran up to the second level; the wooden floors looked moldy and rotten. I took a couple of steps forward and heard a loud crash. A big hole appeared. A small crowd gathered down on the lower level and looked up, trying to figure out what was happening.
We came down. The driver followed me closely, worrying that I would get myself into some more embarrassing troubles.
I sat despondently on a flight of stone stairs in front of the chapel. A group of people walked past me to attend an afternoon service. I stopped one pious-looking woman and asked slowly in Mandarin: “Did you know a missionary named Zhang Erchang? Do you know anything about the Southwestern Theology Seminary?”
She looked befuddled and shook her head. She had no ideas what I was mumbling.