The scent of rice cooking. Zhao touches his hand to mouth, the taste of food so tantalising. Soft rain soaking into wool. Zhao lowers his hand back to the sword at his side. His poetry will not be of much use to him now.
The black hill broods over the village, the dark heather and grasses the same colour as the soil, growing from the neat mounds of graves a thousand years old. The keening wind cuts into damp clothes. He shivers, pulls the padded jackets tighter with a tug on the rope belt and continues the climb, following the faint etching of the path.
Looking back the mist has grown. He can still make out the houses, the smoke from the fires, the courtyards and farm houses but they fade in and out of his vision. He unslings a small gourd and takes a sip of sweetened tea.
Walking on he hears a chanting. He is frightened at first but remembers the words of the town mayor. The Daoist priest may be able to help him. Or he may be the cause. Either way Zhao is committed.
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Nanowrimo 1
It's Nanowrimo time, so rather than write something new I'm going to pick something from the novel I am writing and upload it. Unfortunately, with only two days done, there's not so much to choose from yet, but it proves I'm doing something.
His life recently has been an increasing spiral of change that has wound him tighter and tighter until he thought there was nothing more that he could see, or feel; the shifts from joy to sorrow have been so rapid, as in the blink of an eye, that he no longer feels certain as to who he is anymore. Since the death of his father nothing has been certain; he knows this from when he has caught his mother crying to herself, when she thinks he has not been nearby, or overheard conversations she has had with his uncles and aunts that are now long behind him in Guangzhou. He has even lost those few friends he thought he had to come to this cold, dark town.
His mother comes forward and pats him on the shoulder as the gate is opened to the outside and his uncle gestures to him to follow. Outside a breeze catches down the street, cutting through his clothing even deeper than before. The road is edged with snow that is stamped into the blackened and muddy road.
“Keep wrapped up warm.” His mother calls to him from inside the doorway. He turns back with what he hopes is a smile of confidence. He sees the lacquered scripts fastened on the wall on either side of the door: Long life, happiness, prosperity. Those all feel a long way from him.
In front of the steps are four men dressed in greasy padded jackets, straw hats tied on firmly against the wind, blowing through clasped hands to try and loosen them and keep them warm before the journey begins. There are two palanquins waiting for them. Master Li gestures for Wei and young Li to get into the one while he pulls open the door for the other, pausing only to ensure that they are safely aboard.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Archery Contest
I am Clan Ion Monkey. My name is Dao Zhou Tong.
The clansmen behind me are silent but I can feel their focus. Their energy is urging and protecting me as I face the straw target ahead. The air in the courtyard is still, untouched by gentle curls of currents stirring over the ruined brick edges of the walls that enclose us. The bow in my hands is taut, the arrow fixed against my thumb. The lacquered wood, curved reflexively in a pattern recalling compound bows reaching back three thousand years, creaks slightly under the pressure. I draw my focus to the target, although it is not so important as the lasers that mark the width of range with a ghost trail of reddened dust at regular intervals.
The sun is weak overhead. A pale touch through thin wisps of cloud. Overhead I hear the gods as them squabble, jostling for the best position to watch my dare to them. When I am ready I draw them bow back just an extra few milimetres and flick my fingers forwards to release the string with an outrush of breath mixed with prayer.
"Ho!" The judge shouts. The speed comes back almost immediately and I know I am the first to see it appear on the board. Everyone else keeps their eyes upwards a little longer, scared of the reaction, but the speed is the only thing of interest to me. "198.5" The judge announces. My clan shouts with joy. I can feel the smile across my face. So close to the limit. So close to meeting the gods' wrath. And yet I escaped. I turn, raising my arms, holding the bow aloft. I sneer at my opponent, at his choice. He had come in at only 175 before. A coward's speed. His clan is silent. We have won. I have won.
An arrow can fly from the bow in excess of 200 kilometres per hour. To do so is to bring the attention of the gods alive in the clouds that extend beyond the edge of the atmosphere and to bring death. That is the challenge. To remain in their eye, to bask in their attention, but to remain alive.
My clan shout and jeer at our silent opponents. They have been shamed. A scuffle breaks out at the corner of my vision but it soon dissipates. Everyone knows the rules. I walk towards the target to pull out the arrow that is firmly embedded through the flag of their clan, Polar Waste. I tuck the arrow away and tear the flag from the pins that held it on to tie it around my head.
"Wait." My opponent has gotten up and walked to the edge of the range, his bow in his hand and an arrow ready. I can see him shaking from where I am. I can only will him not to be so stupid as to try to beat my speed. Not today.
He raises the bow, pointing it towards me. The crowd of clansmen on both sides is silent, whispers of discontent but also appreciation of a show. I cannot show fear but I do not trust myself to speak. I just know that when I meet this guy in hell I am going to give him a bloody good kicking for killing me like this.
He strains at the bow. The point shifts with his fear and anger. I suddenly doubt he would even hit me. I don't see it launch. My eyes are closed. There is a flash of light, a crack of thunder more powerful than any I've heard from nature. I feel myself thrown back against the dummy and we both tumble to the floor. The gods are angry. I roll and try to piece together any evidence of injury. None. I look back through blackening smoke and ugly smells. It is rare for a contest to end in a death.
Then a shadow falls. The flicker of a kite overhead. The fear leaps through all of us and everyone leaps up to run, to flee before the police, or worse, get here to punish us. I laugh. I run too.
As soon as I can I get under cover. I crash through the cracked wooden boards protecting the entrance of an abandoned office. Inside is littered with debris of broken desks and faded pipe. Wong has tracked me, loyal and accurate, amongst the crowd while carrying the case for the bow and its arrows. No matter how fast we are there is no way we can go unnoticed while carrying the bow. He is shorter than I am, and fatter, a perfect guard with the bright badge of our monkey spinning around its atomic system emblazoned on his chest and the short, broad dagger tucked with a sly glint of ready action in his belt. My laughter has cut to a smile which I see reflected in his face.
"We showed them, eh?" He says.
I nod. He continues.
"198.5. That's incredible."
"I cannot believe that Polar Waste idiot decided to try it."
Wong shrugs. Despite his slightly piggish looks I have learnt that Wong is incredibly intelligent. That's why I trust him. You don't want somebody stupid looking after you. I wonder, sometimes, why someone as intelligent as him would choose to run with us. I guess he does it for the same reasons: What else is there except that moment of random choice every moment of our lives. We both know that yesterday 198.5 could have killed us, that the god flying over on his cloud at that time might have had a different margin of error, or a different expectation of what makes a threat.
The clansmen behind me are silent but I can feel their focus. Their energy is urging and protecting me as I face the straw target ahead. The air in the courtyard is still, untouched by gentle curls of currents stirring over the ruined brick edges of the walls that enclose us. The bow in my hands is taut, the arrow fixed against my thumb. The lacquered wood, curved reflexively in a pattern recalling compound bows reaching back three thousand years, creaks slightly under the pressure. I draw my focus to the target, although it is not so important as the lasers that mark the width of range with a ghost trail of reddened dust at regular intervals.
The sun is weak overhead. A pale touch through thin wisps of cloud. Overhead I hear the gods as them squabble, jostling for the best position to watch my dare to them. When I am ready I draw them bow back just an extra few milimetres and flick my fingers forwards to release the string with an outrush of breath mixed with prayer.
"Ho!" The judge shouts. The speed comes back almost immediately and I know I am the first to see it appear on the board. Everyone else keeps their eyes upwards a little longer, scared of the reaction, but the speed is the only thing of interest to me. "198.5" The judge announces. My clan shouts with joy. I can feel the smile across my face. So close to the limit. So close to meeting the gods' wrath. And yet I escaped. I turn, raising my arms, holding the bow aloft. I sneer at my opponent, at his choice. He had come in at only 175 before. A coward's speed. His clan is silent. We have won. I have won.
An arrow can fly from the bow in excess of 200 kilometres per hour. To do so is to bring the attention of the gods alive in the clouds that extend beyond the edge of the atmosphere and to bring death. That is the challenge. To remain in their eye, to bask in their attention, but to remain alive.
My clan shout and jeer at our silent opponents. They have been shamed. A scuffle breaks out at the corner of my vision but it soon dissipates. Everyone knows the rules. I walk towards the target to pull out the arrow that is firmly embedded through the flag of their clan, Polar Waste. I tuck the arrow away and tear the flag from the pins that held it on to tie it around my head.
"Wait." My opponent has gotten up and walked to the edge of the range, his bow in his hand and an arrow ready. I can see him shaking from where I am. I can only will him not to be so stupid as to try to beat my speed. Not today.
He raises the bow, pointing it towards me. The crowd of clansmen on both sides is silent, whispers of discontent but also appreciation of a show. I cannot show fear but I do not trust myself to speak. I just know that when I meet this guy in hell I am going to give him a bloody good kicking for killing me like this.
He strains at the bow. The point shifts with his fear and anger. I suddenly doubt he would even hit me. I don't see it launch. My eyes are closed. There is a flash of light, a crack of thunder more powerful than any I've heard from nature. I feel myself thrown back against the dummy and we both tumble to the floor. The gods are angry. I roll and try to piece together any evidence of injury. None. I look back through blackening smoke and ugly smells. It is rare for a contest to end in a death.
Then a shadow falls. The flicker of a kite overhead. The fear leaps through all of us and everyone leaps up to run, to flee before the police, or worse, get here to punish us. I laugh. I run too.
As soon as I can I get under cover. I crash through the cracked wooden boards protecting the entrance of an abandoned office. Inside is littered with debris of broken desks and faded pipe. Wong has tracked me, loyal and accurate, amongst the crowd while carrying the case for the bow and its arrows. No matter how fast we are there is no way we can go unnoticed while carrying the bow. He is shorter than I am, and fatter, a perfect guard with the bright badge of our monkey spinning around its atomic system emblazoned on his chest and the short, broad dagger tucked with a sly glint of ready action in his belt. My laughter has cut to a smile which I see reflected in his face.
"We showed them, eh?" He says.
I nod. He continues.
"198.5. That's incredible."
"I cannot believe that Polar Waste idiot decided to try it."
Wong shrugs. Despite his slightly piggish looks I have learnt that Wong is incredibly intelligent. That's why I trust him. You don't want somebody stupid looking after you. I wonder, sometimes, why someone as intelligent as him would choose to run with us. I guess he does it for the same reasons: What else is there except that moment of random choice every moment of our lives. We both know that yesterday 198.5 could have killed us, that the god flying over on his cloud at that time might have had a different margin of error, or a different expectation of what makes a threat.
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Joy of water
The peacock jumps on to the bench beside me.
"Dong wo ma?" It says. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes." I reply in English. "I understand you." I pull out a small block of the treats I had purchased at the park entrance and hold it out to the bird. Its body does not seem so large when seen so close up but there is something terrifying in the way it looks at me with its black eyes, the multi-coloured skirt of its feathers cascading down over the edge of the bench. It takes the food from my hand with a carefully vicious stab and swallows it whole. As the chemicals and amino acids in the pellet quickly absorb into its bloodstream it receives both a pleasing kick of a positive behavioural feedback loop and the bootstrapping the next part of its program. It begins babbling about the history of these gardens, its expression of ancient arts and the mores of the scholarly class of old Beijing. The studious official, the good scholar. The bureaucrat as archetype.
The bird starts translating an old poem by Du Fu, fifteen hundred years old and still studied with a reverence that makes my own country's affair with Shakespeare positively healthy in comparison. An old woman walks up to me. A beggar, I realise, her face scarred and her hands broken and bent with arthritis or work. Even though China is undergoing its brightest blooming since the Tang and the age of Du Fu, there is still monstrous poverty. Too much even for the large scale bio-alchemical wizardry of the Chinese science gurus. The old woman holds out her hand and looks at me before realising with disgust that I am white, a scruffy foreigner, and unlikely to be able to offer her much at all. She curses and moves on, aiming for a young, professional-looking Chinese couple, hoping that the man will want to impress the young woman with his generosity.
There is a dampness to the air here that my skin is soaking up with a happiness after absence. Although the air in Beijing is normally as desiccating as the deserts around it the park clearly has mechanisms to raise the humidity to help the plants. After a month in the north I am grateful. Even in my home country, where it still rains regularly, there is a caution to wantonness with water since the droughts began. Memories of them pepper my childhood, the frustrations of the adults and the sense of a danger never quite understood or explained. So here is a good place to sit and wait for my friends, watching pretty girls walking past, listening to the drone of the guide-bird while I feel the joy of water in the air.
"Dong wo ma?" It says. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes." I reply in English. "I understand you." I pull out a small block of the treats I had purchased at the park entrance and hold it out to the bird. Its body does not seem so large when seen so close up but there is something terrifying in the way it looks at me with its black eyes, the multi-coloured skirt of its feathers cascading down over the edge of the bench. It takes the food from my hand with a carefully vicious stab and swallows it whole. As the chemicals and amino acids in the pellet quickly absorb into its bloodstream it receives both a pleasing kick of a positive behavioural feedback loop and the bootstrapping the next part of its program. It begins babbling about the history of these gardens, its expression of ancient arts and the mores of the scholarly class of old Beijing. The studious official, the good scholar. The bureaucrat as archetype.
The bird starts translating an old poem by Du Fu, fifteen hundred years old and still studied with a reverence that makes my own country's affair with Shakespeare positively healthy in comparison. An old woman walks up to me. A beggar, I realise, her face scarred and her hands broken and bent with arthritis or work. Even though China is undergoing its brightest blooming since the Tang and the age of Du Fu, there is still monstrous poverty. Too much even for the large scale bio-alchemical wizardry of the Chinese science gurus. The old woman holds out her hand and looks at me before realising with disgust that I am white, a scruffy foreigner, and unlikely to be able to offer her much at all. She curses and moves on, aiming for a young, professional-looking Chinese couple, hoping that the man will want to impress the young woman with his generosity.
There is a dampness to the air here that my skin is soaking up with a happiness after absence. Although the air in Beijing is normally as desiccating as the deserts around it the park clearly has mechanisms to raise the humidity to help the plants. After a month in the north I am grateful. Even in my home country, where it still rains regularly, there is a caution to wantonness with water since the droughts began. Memories of them pepper my childhood, the frustrations of the adults and the sense of a danger never quite understood or explained. So here is a good place to sit and wait for my friends, watching pretty girls walking past, listening to the drone of the guide-bird while I feel the joy of water in the air.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
China Taxi
Taxi rides always fill him with a mixture of awe and fear. They seem to sum up everything that is different about China from home. Over the quiet hum of of a million electric motors is a cacophony of downloaded kareoke horns; videos flickering along the side of taxis flashing advertising; teenagers scooters decorated in strange holos of their favourite pop sites, images of divas from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan smearing in the air around them competing with rappers and rock bands depending on dress and inclination. Sam is only 24 but the Chinese youth make him feel old and slow with their devotion to fashion, colours and gadgets.
The taxi ascends on to the freeway and the computers take over from the driver with a short warning beep and a scripted message in Chinese, Hindi and English informing them of the additional insurance charge and their rights in the case of an accident. The messages are barely audible under the thud of the driver's Taoist Tech beats. The driver still has a limited say in the direction of the vehicle but primary control now rests with the computers of the central traffic control. The movement on the freeway, though, is not the steady calm grace of motorways back home, but an acceleration into speeds nearing 150 kph amid a chaos of shifting lanes and variable speeds. Lines marking the road's natural channels become mere indicators as 5 lanes of traffic shift in the space seemingly made for only four. The traffic constantly weaves in and out amongst each other with only inches to spare, determined by complex flocking algorithms that European and American governments would never have the courage to trust.
After a short ride they spiral back down to street level again, the adrenaline of the trip metallic in Sam's mouth, and the driver dumps him with a disinterested grunt of thanks onto the edge of the pedestrianised shopping area.
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