This world is not deserted. Wan Chen points out several monasteries in the distance, far out on the plateau, home to thousands of monks, sometimes pouring into the prayer halls, then returning to the cells around them, reciting hymns for days on end, doing ritual exercises, in their ceaseless efforts to keep the demons at bay, apparently leading idle lives, but in fact never flagging for a second in the defence of their country.

  Then he brings me to the small cloister high in the mountains, where ten or twelve hermits live together, fearless, invulnerable, devoting all their time to higher meditations and nothing else, providing the instant telegraph service of mind-transference. They do not clothe themselves, staying warm not through exercise but through the friction of thoughts. Their prayers are as short and thin and clear as the sound of bells over mountain streams, as orders passed on from nearby gods.

  Higher still are the tents of the ascetics, who live naked in the snow, the cells of those who have retreated into the enveloping darkness once and for all, saying farewell to light and open air to live in the company of their own thoughts.

  I see the demons advancing over the desolate fields of snow, now and then seizing some unwitting creature, a stray shepherd or a monk less diligent in prayer. And in this seemingly desolate country, fit only for natural disasters, the most fierce and grievous of battles is being waged without truce. Time and again, the demons strike, and time and again, the spiritual armies drive them back.

  ***

  Nowhere else on earth are the demon armies so powerful and well commanded; nowhere else do the people have so much power to resist and courage to fight, so much that it makes them inhuman in appearance and almost their opponents’ equals. You have to have lived here a long time to tell friend from enemy, fellow human from attacker. Without experience, you might try to defend yourself from both and soon fall exhausted to the barren ground.

  I understood that without Wan Chen as my escort, I would fall prey to the demons as soon as I entered the country, torn to shreds in an instant. I turned to him and told him I was ready to enter with him and remain there.

  But Wan Chen said to me, ‘The only reason I’m showing you this is so that, when you long for it later, you won’t think it was kept from you. You can see you aren’t strong enough to make your way there alone, and I can’t look after you the whole time. You couldn’t even stand up to one of the foot soldiers in the spirit army. It takes years of prayer and practice.

  ‘You will often wish you could be in one of the fortresses in the Land of Snows, under permanent siege, where the kanglings77 sound in the furious winter’s rages and the prayers are maintained like rapid fire. Nowhere on earth is such an astonishing battle waged and the emptiness of existence forgotten so deeply, or populated so densely.

  ‘But it is too late for you to adopt this life. You have dissipated your powers. Just after the fall of Chungking, I thought for a moment that it might work, but no sooner did I loosen my grip on you for a moment than you fell into the western paradise between here and there. Go on with your life now in the Middle Kingdom. The multitudes of people there, always struggling with each other and with natural disasters, are your surest distraction and strongest protection against the emptiness and the demons.

  ‘There is no better place on earth to live for a man tormented by his fate and threatened by those demons, like you. Try never to stay in one place; move from city to city, resting your weary body in the inns and your weary soul in the monasteries. Wherever you go, you will be recognised as my kin and given shelter.’

  ***

  And I returned to the kingdom where I would go on wandering without ever stopping, until the end, avoiding Europeans, no longer hoping for closer contact with the Chinese, until I found myself somewhere between the two of them, spending a while in the steppes, then a while in the cities, sometimes travelling with a caravan, sometimes sailing the rivers on a broad junk.

  And I took no further part in life on earth. For those who do, it can have only one meaning: conceiving or bringing forth other lives, as many as possible, or exterminating other lives by the throng, yet merely making way for new arrivals. The people of the Middle Kingdom have learned and remembered this lesson: they bring forth and exterminate; they watch dispassionately as children are born and landscapes devastated, as armies obliterate each other and blood relatives die, and they celebrate at funerals and weddings.

  I had fulfilled life’s meaning, largely in spite of myself, through the twists and turns of my fate, liberating myself from the conspiracy of lineage and menacing spirits, and conceiving the narrow remainder of my days. I would not have to destroy myself before my time.

  A long, low mountain ridge led back to the Land of Snows. At the end was the curve of the mountain at which I’d gazed up, with the sun beside it. It was not great and overwhelming, any more than a long-stemmed pipe or the lamp that glows beside it. And the clouds drifted above like the fumes inhaled by fortunate smokers.

  Even that no longer tempted me.

  I would sometimes yearn to be back with Wan Chen, sunk in year-long meditations or combating the spirit army. Once my years of wandering the kingdom were done, wouldn’t he be waiting for me somewhere? No, there would be no point. Against the creatures he battled, I was powerless. Still, I longed to see him again, my final companion.

  But maybe the kingdom is haunted by many phantoms like me, and we will greet each other like humans, sit together in smoky inns drinking bad but warm wine, sharing our thoughts and reading the inscriptions scratched in the walls there by earlier passers-by, which can never be erased by time nor marred by the living. Then I won’t be so lonely anymore, and I’ll eventually forget not only Taihai and Chungking but also the western paradise, not even regretting that I found no meaning but myself for my life on earth.

  I only hope that when I cross over, I will not be sitting in some great hall or on the edge of a ravine, squinting at some distant mountaintop under motionless clouds like the spineless sages, but on my way, marching through the mountains or floating down a river. Maybe then, after all, the current will carry me to Wan Chen’s country to continue the battle of a man who can neither die nor share in the careless, formless life of the true immortals.

  Notes

  by Kate Macdonald

  1 junk: traditional Chinese sailing vessel.

  2 Amoy: a city in south-eastern China, now called Xiamen.

  3 Malacca: now a state in Malaysia.

  4 Dutch East Indies: now called Indonesia.

  5 Middle Kingdom: Zhongguo, the Chinese name for their country, among other elements of the Chinese nation, was translated into Western languages from the sixteenth century as ‘Middle Kingdom’.

  6 quicklime: calcium oxide, a common chemical compound used to preserve bodies before burial, by taking advantage of its rapid dessicating action.

  7 Gulangyu Island: a small island off Amoy (Xiamen), the site of an international settlement in the period of the novel.

  8 the great famine: China has experienced many famines; the famine referred to here would be the 1920–21 famine in North China, which killed half a million people.

  9 Natuna: a group of islands between south-east China and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).

  10 sampan: a low-lying shore-going boat capable of holding only a few people, also used for floating market stalls.

  11 Taihai: Slauerhoff’s invented name for Shanghai, one of the five international treaty ports in China and a haven for millions of Russian refugees in the 1920s. When Slauerhoff was writing the novel Shanghai was the fifth-largest city in the world.

  12 Hankow: Hankou, now part of Wuhan city at the confluence of the Han and Yangtze rivers, north-west of Amoy (Xiamen) and due west from ‘Taihai’ (Shanghai).

  13 Ichang: another large trading city and port, due west of Hankow (now Wuhan city).

  14 coal trimmer: the crewman responsible for handling the coal in a coal-fuelled ship, from loading and storage to shovelling into the furnace.

  15 the Canton–Hong Kong boycott: a strike by Chinese workers protesting at the killing of nine Chinese demonstrators by British imperial police on 30 May 1925 in Shanghai. It lasted from June 1925 to October 1926, and gives a precise date for the novel , if the reader accepts it as a strictly factual account.

  16 Ningpo: Ningbo, large trading city south of Shanghai.

  17 Mecca, Memphis and Atlantis: Mecca is forbidden to non-Muslims, Memphis is a lost city of the ancient Egyptian civilisations, and Atlantis is a fabled city lost under the sea.

  18 the inescapable misery of the old days: a reference to Cameron’s struggles in Slauerhoff’s earlier novel, The Forbidden Kingdom.

  19 black-toothed grin: painting the teeth of older women black to prevent tooth decay was practised in some parts of China, though was disappearing due to Western influences in the modern era.

  20 rictus: the stiffening of the body after death.

  21 Woosung forts: these fortifications guarded entry along the Yangtze River to Shanghai, formerly a tidal port.

  22 green isle of Erin: this novel was written not long after the romanticisation of Ireland by the artists and authors of the Celtic Twilight.

  23 the Bund: a central Shanghai waterfront area, formerly the heart of international trading and relaxation.

  24 flagrant juvenility: the girls are children, well below the accepted age of marriage or concubinage in Chinese culture.

  25 camphor: bark product used to ward off textile-eating moth larvae.

  26 the ruler of Mongolia, the living Buddha: the Bogd Khan (1862–1924), born as Agvaanl Uvsanchoijinyam Danzan Vanchüg, was the ruler of Outer Mongolia and the third most important figure of spiritual authority for Tibetan Buddhists. His reputation for loose living has been attributed to early twentieth century Chinese propaganda. After his death Outer Mongolia was contested by both Soviet and Chinese Communist forces.

  27 the Whangpoo: the Huangpu River flows through Shanghai.

  28 the long pipe: opium is traditionally smoked using a long-stemmed pipe.

  29 Tonkinese opium: from a region in Vietnam.

  30 the Shantung variety: from a region in north-east coastal China.

  31 the Wing On department store: this was one of the four largest department stores in Shanghai and opened in 1918.

  32 a Sikh constable: many British police officers in the international concessions came from the British colonial forces.

  33 fan-tan: a traditional Chinese gambling game, similar to roulette.

  34 the victorious armies in the south: (note by David McKay) Until 1927, Shanghai was ruled by a local warlord in cooperation with the international powers. In early 1927, the southern nationalist armies captured the city, and there was a brief interim period in which revolutionaries (mostly communist) within Shanghai controlled the city. In April 1927, the nationalists carried out a violent purge of communists in Shanghai but Slauerhoff doesn’t seem to refer to that, and it seems reasonable to assume that Cameron is unaware of the full political backdrop to the chaos around him.

  It’s likely that the Japanese felt threatened by both the northern and the southern armies. Elements of the southern forces, especially the communists, were more hostile to foreign settlements than the warlords, but the nationalists were more open to alliances with the foreign powers and capitalists in China. At the same time, Japanese expansionism and occupation of parts of Shandong created friction with almost all other parties.

  As soon as the northern armies arrive there are skirmishes, probably with local revolutionary (nationalist and communist) forces from Shanghai and perhaps also with foreign troops defending the concessions. A band of local revolutionaries attacks the Japanese concession. It’s also possible that the band attacking the Japanese settlement is made up of soldiers from the fleeing northern armies or other refugees, because of rivalries between warlords, or the ‘race hatred’ that Cameron describes, or the desire to loot, or because they had defected to the south. The Japanese residents of the outlying streets of the concession are massacred, but many others remain alive.

  Not long after that, Cameron sees Japanese soldiers inside their country’s concession (and inside the barbed wire fence), defending it from within. Cameron is outside the city gates and the barbed wire fences, in his undefended outlying district, looking in at the foreign soldiers, revolutionaries, and militiamen defending the city and the concessions. The idea of city gates and a city wall is obviously important to Slauerhoff, but may here be a fictional conceit.

  35 Lilliput and Brobdingnag: references to Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift. Lilliputians are tiny, and Brobdingnagians are giants.

  36 Nanking, the old capital: Nanjing, the former capital city of several Ming dynasty emperors, was selected by Sun Yat-Sen as the new capital for the Republic of China in 1912, though it did not function as such until Chiang Kai-Shek’s leadership, from 1927.

  37 Hupeh, Szechwan: Hubei and Sichuan provinces, west of Shanghai.

  38 carry that disease in your blood: Hsiu is joking that Europeans are inveterate roamers.

  39 Lao Tzu: also known as Laosi and Lao-Tze, a Chinese philosopher thought to have lived between the fourth and sixth centuries BCE.

  40 Chusan archipelago: islands south of Shanghai.

  41 the Thames and the Elbe: the two large rivers in north-western Europe with which presumably Cameron was most familiar.

  42 Minyang: Mianyang, large city in Sichuan, in the centre of China.

  43 laudanum: a sedative and opiate made from opium.

  44 Lake Baikal: the largest freshwater lake in the world, and the deepest, in southern Siberia.

  45 Hunan and Shantung: Hunan is an inland province in south-east China, Shandong is a coastal province on the north-east coast.

  46 a poem: to appreciate and compose poetry was a mark of civilised values in Chinese culture.

  47 Lanchow: Lanzhou is in Gansu in north-central China, a very large city on the Yellow River.

  48 cogon grass: a grass, growing to three metres high, used widely across south-east Asia for thatching and soil stabilisation.

  49 the lowest rank of scholar-officials: until 1912 the Emperor appointed scholar-officials or ‘literati’ to run the government and attend to all aspects of civil and political life in China. They were examined on the basis of their knowledge of the Confucian classics and other philosophical texts.

  50 nankeen: a pale yellow cotton cloth, originally made in Nanjing, and eventually exported worldwide as a basic fabric for clothes, particularly trousers.

  51 before the Han Dynasty: that is, before 206 BCE.

  52 Celestial Empire: a literary translation of Tianchao, an old name for China.

  53 Yellow River: the second longest river in China and the sixth-longest river system in the world.

  54 Ch’in Shih Huang: the first Emperor of a unified China, which he achieved in 221 BCE.

  55 li: the Chinese unit of measurement of distance, and of weight. As a distance it is now standardised at about 500m, or a third of a Western mile.

  56 Cimmeria: the reach of the Cimmerian peoples was widespread and scattered across Central and Eastern Asia, and they settled in the area occupied by modern Anatolia.

  57 the cities of Kublai Khan and the Manchus: Kublai Khan ruled in the thirteenth century CE, and the Manchu Qing dynasty ruled China from the seventeenth century to 1912.

  58 the Forbidden City: the royal palace complex in Peking (Beijing).

  59 one of the foreigners: this refers to events in Slauerhoff’s earlier novel, The Forbidden Kingdom.

  60 Canton: Guangzhou, capital city of Guandong, in southern China.

  61 Velho: the descendant of a character in The Forbidden Kingdom.

  62 glazed tiles in soft colours: these suggest the Portuguese tastes of Velho’s ancestor, the original settler in Chungking.

  63 Emperor Yung Cheng: Yinzhen, the Yongzheng Emperor, who ruled China in the eighteenth century.

  64 the Tuchun: the warlord ruler of Chungking.

  65 Phodang Monastery: a Buddhist monastery in Sikkim, northern India.

  66 Amdo: the northernmost of the three regions of Tibet, bordering China.

  67 Siemens-Schuckert: German electrical engineering company, known for their military aeroplane engines in the First World War.

  68 a member of the Forest of Brushes: the Hanlin Academy, the Oxbridge of pre-revolutionary China.

  69 yamen: the office and sometimes also the residence of a Chinese imperial official. Here it refers to the city’s bureaucracy.

 

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