Home Hunting
From a tourist guidebook, we learned quite a lot about Tenglong [meaning “soaring dragon” in Chinese] Cave. Two hundred meters tall and almost 60 kilometers long, it was actually the largest monomer karst cave system in the world, which could hold as many as ten million people. With a complex underground network of streams or riverlets, the cave was the very origin of the beautiful Qingjiang River, which ran about 17 km inside the cave. Having more than a dozen tributaries, the river flowed as far as 430 kilometers through one of the most scenic areas in the heartland of the whole country. Like the Han River, the second longest river in Hubei, it eventually joined the Yangtze River, the mother river of southern China.
However, when we arrived in a taxi at the geopark, we realized, to our great disappointment, that as a tourist attraction, it was not fully developed yet. Though we could walk freely in front of the cave, we were not allowed to go inside because the entrance was under construction. In fact, as Ah-Jing had mentioned earlier, there were a lot of safety and entertainment projects going on inside the cave as well.
“It’s a shame we cannot enter the cave,” Hua said.
“But I can tell you a cave story,” I replied. “You know something about Tao Yuanming?’”
“Not really, except that he’s a great ancient poet.”
“He wrote ‘Peach Blossom Spring’ in 421 CE, the first fable about a utopia in Chinese history. It’s influential even today, especially to those loving nature or gravitating towards an idyllic life.”
“Tell me the story then.”
As I could recite the entire essay, which was actually very short in classic Chinese, I paraphrased every sentence in contemporary vernacular Chinese for Hua:
It was during the Taiyuan era of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. There lived a man from Wuling who made his livelihood by fishing. One day, as he rowed his boat along a winding stream, he lost track of distance and time. Suddenly, he came upon a grove of peach trees in full bloom. For several hundred paces along both banks, not a single other tree stood among them. The blossoms, delicate and fragrant, filled the air with their gentle fragrance, while countless petals lay scattered upon the ground. Struck by the enchanting sight, the fisherman pressed forward, eager to discover the extent of this wondrous grove.
At last, where the stream had its source, the peach trees came to an end. There, at the foot of a mountain, he beheld a small cave from which a faint light seemed to flicker. Overcome with curiosity, he abandoned his boat and stepped ashore. The cave’s entrance was narrow, permitting passage for but a single person at a time. Yet after venturing several dozen paces within, the passage suddenly widened, revealing a vast and open land. Before him lay a tranquil realm of level fields and orderly dwellings. The soil was rich, the ponds clear, and groves of mulberry and bamboo flourished. Crisscrossing paths wove through the village, and from one hamlet to another, the calls of chickens and dogs could be heard. The villagers, clad in garments no different from those of the outside world, went about their labors in quiet contentment—men and women, young and old, all exuding an air of simple joy.
Seeing the fisherman, the villagers were astonished, inquiring eagerly whence he had come. He answered their questions in great detail, and, moved by curiosity and hospitality alike, they welcomed him into their homes. Wine was poured, chickens slaughtered, and a hearty feast laid before him. Word of his arrival quickly spread, and more villagers gathered to hear his tale. They recounted their own history in turn: their ancestors had fled the chaos of the Qin dynasty’s wars, bringing their families and kin to this secluded haven. Since then, they had never ventured beyond its bounds, nor had they any knowledge of the world outside. When they asked the fisherman of the present day, they were shocked to learn that dynasties had risen and fallen—that the Han had long passed, and even the Wei and Jin were but memories to the outside world. Listening to his account, they sighed with wonder and sorrow alike.
As the days passed, the fisherman was invited to many homes, each host eager to offer him food and drink. At length, he got ready to depart. The villagers bade him farewell, but with one earnest request: “Do not speak of this place to the outside world.”
Emerging from the cave, he found his boat where he had left it, and began his journey homeward. Along the way, he carefully marked his path so that he might return. Upon reaching Wuling, he went directly to the governor and recounted all that he had seen. The governor, marveling at his tale, dispatched men to accompany him in search of the hidden village. Yet though they followed the fisherman’s markers, the path seemed to have vanished, and they searched in vain—never again did they find the way to the Peach Blossom Spring.
In the years that followed, a man of Nanyang, Liu Ziji, a scholar of lofty virtue, heard of the tale and was seized by an irresistible yearning to find the fabled land. But before he could set out, illness overtook him, and he passed away. Thereafter, none sought the path again, and the tale of the Peach Blossom Spring remained but a legend.
“How do you like the story?” I asked Hua while we were waiting for a tourist omnibus heading to Moudao Town. “It supposedly took place in another Hubei county, not very far from here.”
“Are you sure it’s really a fable about an ideal human society?” Hua asked. “To me, it sounded more like a horror story.”
“How come?”
To Hua’s way of thinking, it was impossible for the fisherman to have lost his sense of time and distance, unless he was in a dream or coma for an unknown reason to begin with. More unthinkable was the physical setting which made her feel as if it were a graveyard of some kind rather than a living village, since the villagers acted more like ghosts than living people. Considering how westerners would habitually present flowers during their visits to graveyards while we Chinese would bring wine and meat in a similar situation, I realized that her interpretation of Tao’s fable was not completely groundless. To support her understanding of Tao’s story, I told her further that in Daoism, peach wood was a traditional symbol of the yang force or energy, as is illustrated by the way most Daoists would use a peach rather than a metal sword to perform a magic ritual. The fact that Tao’s village was situated where the peach grove ended was a strong indication that it was a yin place or, rather, the underground world. While neither of us was sure about why the ideal and the horrible were intertwined in Tao’s essay, I thought that ghosts, or anyone living in the yin world, might prove to be kinder, friendlier and more peaceful than those living in the yang world.
Arriving in Moutao, we found a local guide and hired her to take us as soon as possible to Metasequoia Queen, one of the best-known trees in the world.
“What’s so special about this tree?” Hua asked.
As a plant species, the guide told us, metasequoia glyptostroboides, shortened as shuisha in Chinese and known as dawn redwood in English, was believed to have already extinguished since the beginning of the Quaternary Period dating about 2.6 million years back. But in 1941 a Chinese botanist first discovered it; seven years later Profs. Hu and Cheng published a joint study and confirmed the discovery. From then on, the species began to re-develop rapidly as a living plant fossil throughout the world. Like an ambassador of friendship, it had been planted in more than eighty countries as a gift tree from China.
“That’s really an amazing tree story,” Hua said.
“It’s like you I’ve re-discovered, like my love for you that’s gained a new life of its own, like life itself that’s outlived all hardships and setbacks,” I said. In my book, any form of life that defies or defeats its harsh environment and manages to survive and succeed deserves high esteem. I recalled that when I first read about shuisha nearly a decade before, I published a poem about the tree. Earlier than that, I had written and published another ode to huyang, in which I celebrated the desert tree as a representative of all life forms that were hardy, tenacious or resilient. Its defiance against the tyrannical forces of nature made it a rebellious or romantic hero like Milton’s Satan, or Wu Chengen’s Sun Wukong, who was my most favorite protagonist in classic Chinese literature. Standing straight in the Gobi desert in Xinjiang, huyang kept challenging death for a thousand years. After death, it remained upright for another thousand years, and even after its eventual fall, it refused to decay for a third thousand years.
When we came to the site, we had to worship the tree at least five meters away, as it was surrounded or protected by a solid parapet. Aged more than 600, Metasquoia Queen was 35 meters tall, with a DBH at 2.5 and crown width of 22. Apparently, it was not as old and tall as the famous General Sherman in California, but it definitely had a much higher emotional and intellectual value for me and Hua alike, because it had a story with a typical Chinese plotline and a location geographically much closer to our native county. Hua wished to do a live sketch, but without enough time, I suggested her taking some pictures and remembering as many sensory details as possible to paint the tree at a later time.
“If only we could build a tree house and live up there!” I said.
“But aren’t we too old to do the climbing like monkeys?” Hua asked.
“Just want to become part of the tree, so we can remain resilient and live long.”
“Unfortunately, we can only live like, not as, a tree.”
At this, I recalled a contemporary Japanese novelist who referred to all men as animals, and all women as plants. By so doing, the author was able to make a striking contrast between mem and women in a romantic relationship. While every man was active like a wild animal, constantly trying to make a move forward into a woman’s body, all women remained passive like trees, waiting all the time to be touched by the right men at the right moments.
But to Hua, my idiosyncratic comparison of a man to a bird, and of a woman to a nest, was more captivating as a romantic metaphor, since it had both a physical and spiritual/emotional significance. Indeed, just as Hua’s heart was the haven for my soul, her vagina was the home to my dick.
The problem was, where could we find our true home? All our lives, we had stayed in too many hotels and hostels; even our residences in Vancouver and Melbourne were respectively hotels in a sense. For us, the true home should be the right place for the right people or, more specifically, a stable setting where two soulmates could live together free of any social, physical or psychological concerns.
Back in our hotel, we had a serious discussion and decided to spend the rest of the day looking for a permanent home for us in a most scenic spot near Lichuan. There were several important considerations. First of all, rich in selenium and free of pollutants, the local produce was the best and healthiest food we could have. Second, the climate was perfect: it was relatively cool in summer but not really cold in winter. Moreover, the city had many picturesque but unpopulated rural areas with a good and “clean” ecosystem. Close to Chongqing, Yichang and the Yangtze River, the city offered fast and convenient transportations to anywhere anytime.
After an early lunch, we found and hired an auto-rickshaw near the train station and set off in search of our own private Peach Blossom Garden. To improve our chances, we asked the driver, a middle-aged woman who was both friendly and knowledgeable, to go along the most beautiful tributary of the Qingjiang River to a remote mountainous area far from any human settlement. At first, the driver felt perplexed because we had no specific destination, but hearing us speak the Hubei dialect and assuming us to be local people “trying to find an ideal picnic site,” she said, “I’ve never seen an old couple looking so alive. You’re so romantic and adventurous!”
When the driver stopped finally at the end of the road, we asked her to wait there for us for exactly two hours. In the meantime, we climbed up the mountain and did a lot of zigzagging until we discovered a fantabulous natural cave, which had a perfect size, shape and structure for the two of us. Not completely rocky inside, it would help to keep cool in summer and warm in winter. Offering a heavenly view of the landscape, its physical location had the best fengshui I could hope to find in the wilderness, with endless hills rolling closely behind and two streams joining together down in the far front. Facing towards the south, the cave sat high at a vantage point.
“So, you’re a true fengshui master!” Hua said joyfully. “But how can you tell this is our fengshui oasis?”
I told her that there were a lot of superstitious elements in fengshui, but it did contain many valid scientific ideas and principals. In fact, after much learning and thinking, I had recognized it as a legitimate human science based on micro geo-environmental and macro spiritual-cultural studies. Given its geological locality at the meeting point of yin and yang, the cave was the very place for us to live in perfect harmony with nature.
When we returned to our hotel by the same rickshaw, we both felt spent, but we were highly delighted to have reached two important decisions: the short-term one was to drop by Yichang for a farewell gathering with my first date Yiming on our way back to Jingzhou the following day; the long-term one was to return at the first opportunity to the cave as our ultimate hermitage, which we had finally discovered to our mutual satisfaction.
“Now we got our Gaxyden,” I said, as we began to chat after lovemaking. “What shall we call the mountain?”
“How about Minghua?” Hua replied.
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. “And wherever our Eden or Peach Blossom Garden is, we will just call it Mabakoola.”
“Now, tell me why you insist on seeing Yiming with me?” Hua asked. “Isn’t it because you still feel attached to her?”
“Nah. Every Chinese man may ‘long to see their first love after becoming somebody” as the saying goes, but I want to see mine only to get square with her emotionally, though I am nobody.”
“How?”
“By showing you as my true first love.”
“Now you’re talking,” Hua said in relief. “You’ve mentioned ‘emotional justice’ several times. I wonder who else, beside Yiming, has hurt you most severely in your life.”
“My wife, needless to say.”
“You did mention your wife’s ‘spiritual derailment,’ but you’ve never told me the whole story!”
“You’re sure you want to hear it?”
“Fill me in!”
Well, it took place in the mid-summer of 1993, I recalled, shortly after I moved from Saskatoon to Vancouver. While busy with my graduate studies at UBC, I worked part time as an ESL instructor in Stanford College, a language school founded in North Van by a Dr. Chen, a middle-aged businessman who owned a highly profitable private clinic in Taiwan. After an in-depth conversation, I and Chen both “regretted not having met earlier.” Knowing that I had had much teaching and managing experience before leaving China, Chen promised to hire me officially as the dean of his college once I received my doctorate. Before that, he would like me to help “supervise” the current dean, a senior English gentleman who used to be the principal of a local public high school before retirement.
Several months later, when Chen returned from Taipei, I invited him for a homemade dinner. As a friendly gesture, Chen said he would like to offer my wife a part time job as a dorm supervisor after firing the present one.
“We’re really fortunate to have met Chen!” Helen said as soon as our guest left.
So we two really were. Since that meeting, everything went well for both of us. Except for a couple of night classes to teach every week, I didn’t have to do anything else for Chen’s school, so I focused on my dissertation, hoping to get my degree and take the job in due course.
But on a moony and quite hot night, Helen didn’t return home around ten as I had expected. Assuming she must have missed the last seabus to cross Burrard Inlet, I became worried about her safety. Without a cellphone, which was still very rare back then, I could do nothing but wait passively and anxiously until midnight.
“How come you’re so late this time? How did you get home after the seabus stopped for the night?” I asked her.
“Dr. Chen gave me a ride,” she answered, with a note of uneasiness in her voice.
“But how come you got home nearly two hours late? I’ve been worrying about you!” I asked her again, more curious than suspicious, as it should have been just a half hour’s drive at night.
“We had a talk,” she replied impatiently.
“About what? For so long? Where were you two talking?” I had never meant to interrogate her, but for the first time since our marriage I felt something off. On the one hand, I just couldn’t imagine what they two could possibly have been talking about, since she had begun to work for the school only several evenings before, and should have little to say to him or anybody else about running a language school in Canada. She had neither the knowledge nor the experience nor even any interest in this respect. On the other, it was as much contradictory to her character as extraordinary for any prudent Chinese wife like her to stay alone with a male boss so late at night. Most alarming was a strong suggestion in the dark atmosphere of our small rented suite about her desperate effort to hide something from me.
“About the students, in his car,” she responded briefly as she habitually did, but in an unusually reluctant way.
“You’re saying you two had been staying in his BMW talking about the students for nearly two hours at midnight?” I asked her again to make sure of the situation.
Probably because her explanation didn’t sound plausible even to herself, she softened her tone into a murmur, adding, “He invited me to have a night snack at an Earl’s.”
“Did he try to … harass, or flirt with you?”
“Oh, no, no!”
“Then, why didn’t you tell me this the moment you returned home? If I hadn’t kept asking you, you’d never have told me the truth, wouldn’t you?”
“.…”
“The cat got your tongue?”
“.…”
If she had explained that she said nothing in the first place because she didn’t want me to turn jealous or suspicious, I would have had every reason to shrug off the matter. But the more hesitancy she showed in addressing my concern, the more I felt resentful and even hurt. Apparently, she had at least hoped to develop a relationship with Dr. Chen, even though he might not necessarily have had such a romantic agenda hidden in his heart. Put differently, she was prepared for or, rather, actually beginning the process of, a spiritual derailment, unilaterally if not in accomplice with him. Though at our home party, Chen had praised her as “an ideal wife whose cooking skills are as good as her looks,” I knew that he was just trying to be polite when he quoted the popular Chinese saying; furthermore, I didn’t think Chen was really her cup of tea, nor was she a loose or frivolous woman by character. As a quite traditionally minded woman, she was in every sense the opposite of Daisy in Great Gatsby.
But why was she anticipating a relationship with Chen? I kept asking myself in agony. Perhaps she believed that I could no longer give her a safe and decent life here in a new country. At the depth of her mind, I had depreciated into a doomed pauper who had no future, not to mention a rosy one! This realization was particularly painful.
The idea that Chen might have been coming on to my wife made me furious. So, early the next morning, I went to the school to settle the score with him. Unable to locate him anywhere, I left a written message and quit my job. By the end of the month, I had sent my wife and son back to China for the summer vocation.
“Sensitive as you are,” Hua said, “you must’ve overreacted to the situation.”
“Maybe or maybe not,” I said. “But I felt so hurt then I began to think of you constantly.”
“What’s that to do with me?”
“Because with our common zhiqingexperience, you would never even think of leaving me when things look gloomy ahead of us. I mean, you would definitely share weal and woe with me.”
“Goes without saying! I’ll always be there for the laughs and tears,” Hua confirmed in a resolute voice. “Now I see why you’re not so morally troubled by our affair as me.”
“Why?”
“Because emotionally she betrayed you first.”
“You said it! One way or another, I’d try to do myself some justice, especially in such emotional matters, just like those who’d do the same when law failed them.”
[Author’s Note: This piece of writing is inspired by Helena Qi Hong ((祁红).)
bio ::
Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and 2159 other publications across 52 countries. A poetry juror for Canada’s 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began to write prose in 2022, his hybrid novel DETACHING, ‘silver romance’ THE TUNER and short story collection FLASHBACKS available at Amazon.
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