Frontier. Can Xue

a Uighur dance, but a dance he had invented. Sometimes others called him Grandpa. Discontentedly, he thought to himself, Am I old? No, no way! My life has just begun! Is it fair for a person to be called Grandpa just because he’s unskilled? He felt more energetic than ever before. Ha, it was time for him to take a wind bath again. He filled a basin with water and, facing the wind blowing over from the mountain, he wiped his face. Then he scrubbed his torso. The guesthouse was great. No one in this quiet place fussed about his activity. While the breeze dried him off, Qiming returned to the time of his youth. His family was a large one; he had eight siblings. They lived at the seaside in the south and made their living as fishermen. He was only thirteen then, but he had gone out on the ocean many times with his father. He loved his life of freedom. He didn’t know why his father had to send him away. He remembered that day: a man who looked like a cadre came to their poor dwelling and took a seat. His father said this person was Qiming’s “lucky star,” and then made Qiming go with him. His brothers and sisters saw him off with envious glances. And so he traveled with that person to this small town in the north—all because he couldn’t disobey his father. Back then, this place was truly desolate. The so-called town was no more than some simple buildings scattered around the wasteland. There were no roads or public facilities. Though there was a little electricity, power outages were frequent. You had to light kerosene lamps. However, as Qiming saw it, this wasn’t a problem because he was used to an even poorer life at home. At first, he did heavy labor. When the officials asked him what he was good at, he said he had only been a fisherman. But this place had no fisheries, and so he worked on constructing buildings, repairing roads, reclaiming land from the river, transporting coal, manning the furnace, and so forth. One day, the Design Institute director noticed him and asked him to work as the guesthouse janitor. That’s when he settled down. He was twenty-two then, and he had no idea why the institute director had chosen him. He thought this sharp-eyed woman was imposing. Finally, after becoming the janitor in this quiet place, he slowly came to understand Pebble Town—and why his father had sent him far away.

      One time when outsiders came to visit the Design Institute, Qiming saw the Uighur beauty who would change his life. She wasn’t wearing her minority dress; for some reason, she was wearing a drab grayish outfit. But her plain clothing couldn’t cloud her stunning beauty. Qiming couldn’t stop staring and tagged along behind her. This playful girl actually broke away from her group and led him to hide behind the rockery. They sat on a cobblestone, watching little birds hopping here and there, and watching the poplars dance in the sunlight. It was so beautiful—like a fairyland. But this stunning beauty couldn’t speak his language, so he could only ogle her and caress her elegant hands over and over. Finally, the tour group had to go back. Their bus stopped outside the gate. When the people passed the rockery, the girl jumped out like a fawn and rejoined the group. This, then, was Qiming’s fleeting encounter, and this encounter had shaped his life. Later, he saw her once more in the market: she was with her father. She seemed to have forgotten him. He followed her all the way to her faraway home—at the big mountain over there. He didn’t dare go in because several large dogs guarded the entrance. The next time they met each other, she was already a married woman. Later, he saw her several more times, almost always with her family. He rarely saw her alone. But Qiming wouldn’t give up: this woman could set his heart afire. What more could he possibly want? He couldn’t sleep at night in the narrow bed in his humble home: he spent a lot of time meditating. He liked this feeling: it made him feel special—a man destined to pass his lifetime in solitary meditation. His father had been farsighted!

      When Qiming bathed in the wind and thought of his family, he didn’t feel sentimental. In his memory, his poor home became sweet. He recalled how sad his three sisters were when he left. They had tears in their eyes—Father had warned them not to cry. Their rough hands had reddened from the freezing cold water. Their noses—congenitally flat—made them look rustic. Qiming had turned around at once, because he felt like crying, too. Then he said farewell to his mother’s grave: he placed his young face on that stone marker—and all at once he felt his mother’s warmth. There had been much human warmth in Fish Village and in that ugly three-room adobe house. He could see seagulls from the entrance to his home. Whenever he saw them, the idea of leaving home for distant places rose vaguely in his mind. How had Father known this? Although he longed for his faraway hometown, he didn’t plan to go back for a visit. Partly because he reveled in this aesthetic faraway feeling, he was afraid that any bold action would destroy his spiritual pleasure. Another secret reason was that he had obeyed his father’s will in leaving home in the first place; it wasn’t his own choice. On the way, indignant and grief-stricken, he vowed over and over to never go back. Now, more than twenty years had passed, and as Qiming reflected on this matter, he started to question his views. Was it all about Father’s will? Now, he liked everything here so much, and he was self-sufficient and content with his life. It was that one migration that had brought him everything! Just think, if his father hadn’t been so astute and hadn’t entrusted him to that cadre (this was of course his father’s long-range plan), what would his life be like now?

      The newly-arrived young couple were completely bewildered, especially the man. Qiming could see this, because he used to feel the same. Who wouldn’t be puzzled by Pebble Town’s strange ways? Back then, besides feeling gratified, he was also puzzled and uncomfortable—until the incident that changed him. Qiming’s “incident” was, of course, the appearance of the Uighur beauty. Before that, when he was working in construction, he frequently felt so confused that he didn’t want to go to work. He would sit at the riverside for several hours looking at the tamarisk trees. The foreman was a folksy middle-aged man. He squatted down, clapped Qiming on the shoulder, and said, “You can’t go back, son.” He told Qiming to look up at the sky. Qiming did—and saw only a goshawk. The sky was so high, and its color held no gentleness: it was completely unlike the sky at the seaside. The foreman told him to take another look, to look more carefully. So he looked up again—and suddenly realized what had puzzled him. He stood and quietly followed the foreman back to the work site. It was such a wondrous feeling: the foreman was terrific. Before this, he had paid no attention to this old man, though he had seen his family. His three children wore ragged clothes, but the children’s eyes were composed and bright. Like him, they worked in construction. They weren’t the least bit bewildered, probably because they were locals. Having had all these experiences, when Qiming saw José and his wife abandoned by the crazy guy on the hill, he understood completely why they felt rattled. After a few days, he sensed that Nancy was somewhat like the locals. He sensed, too, that José was stepping into his role, even though he didn’t understand the role. José was a little impatient. So what? The tranquil frontier would help calm this young man. The reason Qiming took note of this couple was that they reminded him of himself when he had just arrived on the frontier.

      After he finished work that day, he rested on the rockery cobblestones. In the haze, he sensed a sheep approaching him, a red cloth tied around its neck. It was a domesticated sheep. After smelling his hand, it knelt down beside him. Qiming was fighting in his dream with a kid with whom he often played back then in Fish Village. This kid threw him to the ground, stepped on his chest, and looked down at him. But as soon as the sheep knelt beside him, the kid above him disappeared. He struggled to open his eyes and saw Nancy sitting next to him. He blushed and stood up in embarrassment. He said, “Hey, I was dozing.” Nancy looked bewildered, and—as though discussing a problem with an invisible person—said, “Hunh. I’m puzzled by lots of things here; they’re mixed together. Still, this place is magnetic. Look at that eagle, flying and stopping . . . Everything’s unresolved.” Qiming thought to himself, This young woman who has just arrived has already become a Pebble Town local. The transformations in the world were so rapid. He heard they were from Smoke City. What was a smoke-swathed city like? Nancy was still sitting on the rock. The wind blowing here had reddened her pale, delicate face. She looked at him, and yet she didn’t seem to actually see him. So Qiming couldn’t decide whether to talk with her or not. Except for his goddess, he hadn’t been this close to a woman for years. He was a little nervous. Nancy quietly pulled some weeds and deftly plaited them into a chain to wear on her head. Qiming’s heart throbbed, and nostalgia rose in him, but he couldn’t remember the scene across from him. So he did his utmost to imagine the scenery in Smoke City. Was it similar to the misty mornings in Fish Village? People often bumped into each other at such times.