SU FENGLEI

FOUR POEMS

translated by Tiantian Yuan and Simon Shieh

A Day in the Life of J

J told me about an unhappy day of his.
This recurring draining day started at 8am;
at 9 he rushed to work, started the 9-to-5 routine.
His morning started late, and
as you can imagine, the hour between 8 and 9
was all a mindless blur.
He reported the results of yesterday afternoon’s experiment to his higher-ups
in line with his instructions and professional standards.
But that’s it. What do these results have to do
with my captive, shriveled heart?
After a fleeting half-hour lunch and nap, the afternoon began early
as it did yesterday afternoon, so much so that he
finished reporting on it this morning.
These kinds of days fly by into the dark recesses of time,
and I can’t even leave my seat, hop off and gather
that dwindling happiness I left behind god-knows-where.
He left work at 5, got back to his place at 6,
and it was like he’d reached a long-familiar wilderness
devoid of even a single green tree to shelter him with its shadow
so he simply lay down, resting on an inclined
headboard, and watched the last few episodes
of a TV series. In this hazy spell
the show’s irresistible storyline hooked him like a drug.
Finally it’s almost over, however absurd the ending,
and it was always going to end, but then what?
They keep playing the next TV show’s trailer
and, if nothing comes up, I guess I’ll watch all of it…
The droning procession of days made him anxious,
even panicked. He was reading A Financial History of the United States,
a book that compares the world after 2008
to the West after 1929. He was terrified
the world would come to the edge of a cliff and, like a pig, jump off
without having lived joyfully, without having
relished the taste of happiness. He felt he had been
too cautious, that he’d failed to be courageous in the face of life,
and that he’d been even more helpless when faced with girls he’d fallen for. In love,
I often throw in the towel in the first round. When they say, I already have
a boyfriend, I don’t know if they’re lying
or why they’re even saying that.
Prolonged suffering made his eyes
swarm with melancholy, loss, and fear…
Tomorrow the sun will rise as usual, the eighth hour’s arrival
unrelenting, but how will my life change?
Where do I look for the meaning of life?
This question has weighed on him,
a Master’s of Science and Engineering graduate of five years.

Early Spring· Ominous

The entire world is in a gloom. Dust, another kind of rebel, invades everything. Everything here. Even the sky is sealed off. The sky, far beyond us, like the blue dome of another world.

The city is trapped in layers of mist, its face veiled in gloom. Is it a demon gently wrapping the city tight with its magic—a demon seizing new territory? Is it the invisible painter who, with intricate craftsmanship, smeared the tainted milk of a mad cow all over our planet? Loud, blundering roars pass over our heads, but there is no steel bird in sight. Your vision, blocked. Everyone’s expression, frozen.

You descend the sloping river onto a lower level of the bank. It feels scarier, more frigid than walking. On the shore, willows like lushly bearded ancients guard the canal. Their branches—a profusion of browns, motionless—soak in the water’s desolate pallor. And the shore, running along the river in the form of an ellipsis, is endless. Fix your gaze and you can make out a huge, pale-white snake, its mouth gaping as it devours a nearby willow, then the river, then another willow. A young mother leads her daughter helplessly along the gentle cascade of feminine willow trees.

Black water flows—cloudy, like the Styx. Silent black cloth ripples and whorls soundlessly, lying low at the foot of the bank, flowing thin and broad. On the road opposite, a rush of eerie white car headlights. It’s 4:30 p.m. Terrifying. Pedestrians flutter, shuttle quietly between grey tree trunks, keeping their voices low, never above a whisper. Evil finds every way in. It seeps into our hearts. Blue lovers mired in distress take walks along the riverside. A sad whisper is a torn net. Murmuring, a private resistance, like building dams in flood-ravaged lowlands. Near the beloved old humpback bridge, the water becomes shallow. A few wild ducks, black on the black water, paddle slowly, leisurely. Though seemingly trapped, they are clever souls—their corner of the river still the best. And they just go on living. The creatures of this land are so alike.

A fool is laughing—the kind of laugh that bares the teeth. He is laughing skyward with red lips curled back, revealing his gums. A young girl in a white down jacket leaps through the woods like a deer. The city’s sewer reveals its cancerous throat, even as it plays its self-righteous music. On the bridge, an unkempt middle-aged man guards several scarlet pyramids of strawberries-and-cream. You hurry past these little darlings. Back.

Shan Village

I.

It’s all but erased, save for some corner remnants. Plant evergreen pine seedlings and they’ll grow malnourished. Plant sophora seedlings and they’ll be weak and pale come March. As if Spring cannot wake them, as if they’re half-dead. I walk down old streets, watching trees grow on the foundations of the past. It is still too early and Spring still comes too late to conceal. Yes, Spring can only conceal. Its deepest core still waits for the corkscrew, potent scent of wine never disappearing.

The people were driven away, so they planted trees. A small grove growing slow and thin. Each tree stands for one family, and even more tenants. Look how valuable these trees could be! But it’s as if they’re ashamed, reluctant to grow overly lush and win admiration for their beauty. Trees are innocent; they know the pang of guilt better than some people do. Trees are innocent; they had the bad fortune to be planted in a place they should not have been, on a bed of gravel and cement, deprived of sleep and nutrition. It could be that these people never meant for the trees to live very long at all.

II.

A silken Spring breeze jogs through the light of a setting sun, leaving behind traces of chill—the delicate grove barely surviving on pale, yellow soil. On the grass roots cut last year and the busy roads of days past, dust resembles the desert’s skin, only more suffocating. Fragments of the houses that once sheltered our modest lives are like unmarked graves. Fragments of a past life. Those people were not wiped out by force but driven away with whips, like livestock, and herded into dense crowds of people—from one life into another.

The place where they had once earned a living, they turned into a home, but home is like a strange rabbit: as soon as you capture it, its tail slips out of your hand. An impossible dream. So it becomes a memory buried deep in the hearts of millions, turning into scars, lesions, staying with them until they die, taking each of their pained faces and wrapping it around their children’s souls. Perhaps their children are witnesses, just like them. It’s as if an eagle has descended on their young souls—shadows of anguish circling endlessly above.

III.

Among the remnants, several families are lucky enough to enjoy cheap housing, almost as if they were taking advantage of their country. But their memories are like fresh wounds. There was a time when the village was entangled in a spiderweb of red banners; their threats and promises, like those on the big-character posters of the Cultural Revolution, baring their fangs and brandishing their claws everywhere. At the village entrance, there were often armed police or security guards holding batons. They were either showing off their strength at the mouth of the village or marching single-file down the main road, like the cruel slash of a plow. The Mandarin spoken in the broadcasts, as well as the demolition notices blaring from the car loudspeaker, tore up the entire village. Eventually the whole village was surrounded and besieged. Even the old trees wanted to move their lives elsewhere. But despite everything, the families stayed. Their hearts, aren't they just like ours? Covered with fissures like ancient porcelain. Or perhaps, like decrepit porcelain, they have already shattered. With the passage of time, their hearts gradually recover—jumping again like a normal, healthy person. Heartache, however, always comes out of nowhere, as if memory were fierce prey—uncontainable.

IV.

A grandmother and her granddaughter are passing through the grove, but don’t know where they’re going. They’re playing some kind of word game—holding hands then interlocking their fingers…their joy untainted.

The high-speed rail slices through the sky's waist. Its cry lifts their ears.

Reservation

I.

I walk on its dusty road, my steps heavy, eyes blurred, nose blocked. A thousand types of plastic, hard on nature's stomach, surf the wind, rustling and reveling in themselves. Its ground, its roads, rich in color and never lonely, are sandwiched between apartment buildings that shift and undulate like a Rubik's Cube. Here, a madman plays incessantly with grey toy blocks, and a magician in beggar's rags empties colorful trash from his hat…

Thursday. Noon. The village is still too loud. Ant-like crowds stay their course. I get off at the Tiantongyuan North subway station and slot myself into this village populated by the flesh and humble souls of the poor. I am like a sperm cell, not very lively but still able to squeeze into an egg. I’m trying to express something but do not know where to start. My eyes are like tiny cameras, taking in bit after bit after bit of poverty, pallor, chaos, color, clamor—all different, yet all similar. There's no angle and no point at which I can lift this village. It is raucous, full of life, but it is just a tiny corner, like wounded tissue in which bacteria work feverishly but in utter silence. (Looking to curb my excessive rationality, I walk into a diner and order a drink for lunch, allowing the alcohol to wear something down in me—maybe my desperate need for purpose. But what I really need is a gentle boost or a deft catch to capture it in the cage of my language. To do this, I create the right conditions; but to do that, I must cast my doctor's advice to the wind. Poetry or language is my sole responsibility. I have come to realize that I must speak up in a way that is trustworthy. I want to get rid of the pressure, to alleviate the anxiety of not knowing where to start, and then, calmly, to dive in.)

II.

I’ve named it Pedestrian Street, though it isn’t, and much less Nanluoguxiang. Its clothes aren’t that flashy. No makeup, no lipstick, no French perfume; it doesn't float on the honeyed glaze of lust. If Nanluoguxiang is a beautiful phoenix, then this place is an ugly loach. Though equally lively and full of the same energy, different people belong to different streets, or different streets belong to different people.

Thursday. This crowded alley—straight, surging in dusty chaos—is like a river with lung disease. The traditional red banners with white text, the electronic black ones with red text…they’ve adorned the street with commercial glitz. This is a low-end, everyday version of Wangfujing Street. It has its own frenetic energy, dust and plastic bags leaping, whirling, scurrying like otherworldly children indulging in their games. Northern and southern dialects mingle like twittering birds of different species in the most popular forest. But those faces forged by life are even more eye-catching—behind each of them lies an epic tale, a window waiting to be opened.

III.

Under a patch of sky, the village is growing painfully like a mongrel puppy. Never maturing, forever stunted, or cute, and therefore never intimidating, never to overstep its earthly bounds into that patch of sky.

But I am seeing the contemporary Chinese version of “Liberty Leading the People.” A Chinese woman, or to be more precise, a housewife from Dongsanqi—Beijing’s Three Eastern Garrisons (now a pocket of thriving real estate)—is standing in her blue-and-white checkered apron on a platform. Cheeks full of blood, she seizes the moment—encouraging her fellow soldiers, commanding them, and marching forward. Let’s move, let’s move. She wraps her body in the flag and says in a silent language (the actual utterances only audible to the comrades by her side): Onward! Onward! A gold mine is approaching! It will invite her inside! She doesn't even have to say: open sesame. Words are unnecessary. Once she builds her houses, many will flock to her bearing silver and gold, chanting “open sesame.” And she will be, then, unquestionably more like a rich lady, or a noblewoman, no longer an ordinary Dongsanqi housewife.

The entire village is growing wildly. But, as it turns out, this madness is not a shameless business. The village is lying down, a bit different each day.

IV.

In an alley, on a windy day, if you face the current head-on, you must know how to avoid its unreasonably ill temper, its dusty assaults—so as not to be swept away by its tyranny. Best to wear a mask, stand against a wall, or duck into another alley or a doorway. Let it pass. This potbellied figure, its family’s stewards in tow, shoves pedestrians out of its way. Oh, you don't know where it lives? Maybe everything here is its home, or maybe its home is everything here. No one knows if it plans to make here its home for life, or if here will always accept it. Maybe... Maybe...

V.

Although its face looks like a gaggle of beggars, it is still growing, maturing, slowly changing, and I’m willing to bet that it will develop into a beautiful town. Back into its tattered cloth walk the impoverished children, like a group of ants returning to their nest. These poor children are surviving in their shoddy village; they can still smile and even laugh in the arms of their men or women. Their birth has by no means deprived them of their right to laugh and love.

The city sinks here, as other places grow too tall, too steep, too raucous. Its poker-faced people climb through the dizzyingly high mouth of a monstrous beast, crawling through its intestines into its "cavities" or "chambers". And occasionally, they will turn their pockets skyward, giving thanks to this or that god.