arrive at the Li Family Ancestral Temple in the village. An ancient stone tablet carved with cranes, deer, pines and plum blossoms is set into the newly built buttress above the front doors. You push open the unlatched doors and immediately hear an elderly voice ask what you are doing. You say you’ve come to look around. A short, well-fed old man emerges from a room in the corridor. It would seem being the caretaker of the ancestral temple is quite a good job.
The old man says the place isn’t open to outsiders and with these words starts pushing you out. You say your surname is Li and you’re a member of the clan. You’ve been abroad and are now back visiting your native village. He wrinkles his bushy white eyebrows and looks you over from head to toe. You ask if he knows that earlier on there was a grave robber in the village. The lines on his face deepen and you wince at his expression, most memories can’t help being painful. You can’t tell if he’s sifting through memories or trying to recognize you. In any case, it’s awkward looking at his contorted old face. He mumbles to himself for some time, not daring to rashly believe this clan member wearing sports shoes instead of hemp shoes. After a while he blurts: Isn’t he dead? It’s not clear who is dead but he probably means the father, not the sons and grandsons.
You tell him the descendants of the Li family abroad are all rich through a stroke of good luck. He gapes at this, moves aside, bows, and reverently leads you into the hall of the ancestral temple. He seems to be an old servant of the family. He used to wear black oil-cloth shoes and was keeper of the keys, he is referring to the time before the temple was converted into a primary school. It has now been restored to the family and the primary school has been shifted elsewhere.
He points at the horizontal tablet. It looks like an archaeological relic and the lacquer is peeling off, nevertheless the full implication of the calligraphy in regular script is quite clear: “Illustrious Ancestors of the Glorious Clan.” The iron hook under the tablet is for hanging the clan genealogy but that’s kept by the father of the village head and normally it isn’t brought out.
You say it’s mounted on yellow silk and looks like the central scroll for a main hall. He says, quite right, quite right. In the land reform period when it was burnt, a new one was secretly made and hidden upstairs. Later on when people’s things were confiscated, the floorboards were ripped up and it was found and burnt again. The present one was made by the father of the primary schoolteacher Mao Wa’er, according to what the three Li brothers managed to piece together. Mao Wa’er already has an eight-year-old daughter and she wants to have another child. Don’t people now have to carry out family planning? If there’s a second child it means not just a penalty but also that an identity card won’t be issued! You say, is that so? You also say you’d like to have a look at the family genealogy. He says it’s sure to have you there, it’s sure to have you there, everyone in the village with the surname Li has been put in. He adds that there are only three families with other surnames in the village. These are families where there have been marriages with women of the Li family, otherwise they wouldn’t want to stay on in the village. But people with other surnames remain people with other surnames, also women are not entered in the genealogy.
You say you know all this. The founder of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shirnin, had the surname Li before he became emperor. While the Li clan of the village doesn’t claim to be related to the imperial family, our ancestors do include generals and ministers of war and not just grave robbers.
Leaving the temple you find yourself surrounded by a group of children who have sprung out of nowhere. They trail along after you and when you say they’re like a pack of arse worms, they break out into stupid cackling. You hold up your camera and they scurry off. The leader of the pack holds his ground and says you don’t have film in the camera and you can check by opening it up. The child is quite bright, he has a slight build and is like a pike in water leading this pack of small fry.
“Hey, what’s worth seeing around here?” you ask.
“The opera stage,” he answers.
“What opera stage?”
They run into a small lane. You follow them. A foundation stone on the corner house of the lane bears a carved inscription: “Be as bold as the rocks of Mount Tai.” You’ve never been able to work out the precise meaning of these words and even now perhaps no-one can say for sure what they mean. In any case there are associations with memories of your childhood. In this empty narrow lane, wide enough only for a person carrying a pole with a single bucket, you again hear the loud patter of bare feet on wet cobblestones.
As you emerge at the end of the lane suddenly before you is a drying lot spread with rice stalks which fill the air with the clean sweet smell of freshly cut rice. On the far side of the drying lot there really is an old opera stage. The framework consists of full-length logs and the actual stage platform, which is half the height of a person, is stacked with bundles of rice stalks. This pack of little monkeys is climbing up the posts, jumping down to the drying lot, and tumbling about in the piles of rice stalks.
The four posts of this open air stage hold up a large roof with upturned eaves and protruding corners. The crossbeams must once have been used to hang flags, lanterns, and the ropes used by the performers. The posts and crossbeams were once lacquered but have already peeled.
Here, operas have been performed, heads have been cut off, meetings and celebrations have been held; people have also knelt and kowtowed here. At harvest time it is filled with piles of rice straw and children are always climbing up and down on it. The children who used to climb up and down here are now old or have died. It’s not clear who of those who have died have got into the genealogy. Is the genealogy put together from memory like the original one? Whether or not the genealogy exists finally makes little difference, if one doesn’t travel afar one will still have to work in the fields in order to eat. What remain are only children and rice stalks.
There is a temple opposite the opera stage. Newly rebuilt on the rubble of the demolished old site, it is once again colourful and imposing. Two door gods, one green and one red, are painted on the vermilion main doors, and each holds a sword and an axe and has eyes like bronze bells. There is writing in black ink on the whitewashed wall: Huaguang Temple has been rebuilt with contributions from the people listed below. So-and-so one hundred yuan, so-and-so one hundred and twenty yuan, so-and-so fifty yuan, so-and-so sixty yuan, so-and-so two hundred yuan … The last item is: Announced by representatives of the old, middle-aged and young of Lingyan.
You walk in. At the feet of Emperor Huaguang is a row of old women, some standing and some kneeling, all dressed in black tops and black trousers, and all toothless. As the ones kneeling stand up the ones standing kneel down, they are all scrambling to burn incense and pray. Emperor Huaguang has a smooth wide face with a square chin, a lucky face, and in the curling smoke of the incense looks even more benevolent. The brush, ink and inkstone in front of him on the long table make him look like a civil official carrying out public business. Above the offering table with its candle holders and incense burners hangs a red cloth with the words “Protect the Nation and Succour the People” embroidered with brightly-coloured silk threads. The black tablet above the curtains and canopy is inscribed with the words: “Communion with Heaven Makes Wishes Come True.” Alongside these words, but much smaller, are the words: “Presented by the People of Lingyan.” But you can’t make out the date of this antique.
Still, you’ve confirmed that there is a place called Lingyan and you think this wonderful place must really exist, proving that you haven’t made a mistake by charging off to find Lingshan.
You ask these old women. Their sunken mouths make hissing sounds but none of them can say clearly how to get to Lingyan.
“Is it next to this village?”
“Shishisisi …”
“Not far from this village?”
“Sisixixi…”
“Go around a bend?”
“Xixiqiqi …”
“Go another two It?”
“Qiqixixi …”
“Five