strong beautiful haunted
strong beautiful haunted
I don’t know what to make of Chinese literature.
I read the word ‘death’ and cry for no reason, and I read the word ‘mother’ and cry, and the reason becomes clearer.
Then I read the words ‘tears’ and ‘graves’ and ‘love’, and then I know the reason so well it keeps me up till the dawn turns yellow. My nose is red and my head is filled with things that threaten to tear it apart. I think, reading past these pages that seem to hide secrets I can’t begin to understand, all Chinese can’t be this haunted, can they? with these stories of neglect, sadness, things so bottomless and deep, worse than taboo. More terrible than our petty Western problems of greed and politics, what to eat for dinner, how to waste our time improving our minds while our parents cheer for us from home and applaud our indecision.
These are obedient, tormented daughters chased by the ghosts of their mothers and the hidden expectations of their people; they are born without metal, yin, hard and controlling – or without wooden spines, yang, strong and flexible, and always with the ghosts, the ever-present ghosts of women who shamed their ancestors, hanging over their heads waiting to snatch them from their sleep. They live their lives by something unseeable. They have old souls. The words they use remind me of myths and fables, told in the short – staccato – broken English of those who understand the world in a different way, and I think of the moon festival; I think of the dragons and paper lions, the grandfathers and ancestors and their stories, the things they gave up, the things they died to protect and the despair and the pride that make them so mysterious, the things that are ugly about them, the things that make them noble and clear to their descendants but blurred like murky water to me.
They are in me but foreign – In me but unknown – part of me yet I know them like strange old faces with lines and golden clothing. I want to see, for once, the things other people see, and believe the things that make them lihai – so strong, so beautiful, so haunted.