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In Yaoba Guzhen, an ancient town in southeastern Sichuan, I stepped into a tiny, abandoned courtyard. The sunlight was falling upon a rectangular basin made of gray stone, the bottom of the basin was damp with rain water, the sides were covered with bright green moss, and inside the basin stood two stone columns, resembling giant versions of the seals used by the Emperor to stamp official documents. On top of the pillars were two identical potted plants, each with long, relaxed leaves.
As I moved around the basin, looking at it through my camera, trying to just see the colors and shapes as if it were an abstract painting, I realized that half the basin was in light and half in dark, one of the pillars was lit up and the other nearly black. To me it resembled the Yin-Yang motif – the symbol of dualisms, and of the road that returns to its beginning.
A moment later a shaved-head boy quietly crept into the courtyard and stared at me. I took his picture and left, so that he could start his own journey, and so that I could finish mine.
Most of my students don’t know that a Chinese person has won the Nobel Prize, and when I tell them they deny it’s true. In fact the Chinese playwright/novelist Gao Xingjian, who now lives in France, won the Nobel Prize for literature in the year 2000. His book, Soul Mountain, is a part-novel, part-memoir about a 10-month trek through the mountains and ancient forests of southern China, following the Yangtze from Sichuan Province to the coast. It deals with life among Chinese minorities, with disappearing folk culture, and with Gao Xingjian’s efforts to understand himself and his soul.
I spent most of my trip visiting small towns and mountain villages in southeastern Sichuan, where the Yangtze River begins its long journey to the coast, and where Gao Xingjian started his journey. Every time I got on a bus and headed up into the mountains, I felt like I was escaping: from crowded, noisy cities – Beijing, Chengdu – to smaller cities and towns – Yibin, Luzhou, Ya’an, Gusong, – and finally to tiny, quiet mountain villages where time seems to have
stopped, and where mysteries – like coffins hanging on cliffs – can still be found.
In addition to feeling like I was escaping, I also felt like I was in search of something. What I was searching for I had only a vague idea: a special place, a quiet mountain village, where I could slow down, drink some tea and write in my journal, perhaps a place I could return to some day and stay for awhile, or even a place where I could retire and grow old.
On my first day in Chengdu, after checking into my hotel, I visited the Wuhou District, which includes the Wuhou Temple and Jinli Street. The temple complex includes a temple dedicated to Zhuge Liang, a great military strategist, statesman, scholar and inventor during the Three Kingdoms Period, a time of chaotic fighting following the collapse of the Han Dynasty. Appropriately, it was there that I witnessed an epic battle.
In a small garden within the temple complex a young woman spotted a rat. She, her boyfriend, and I watched with horror as the rat viciously attacked a large toad. The two combatants disappeared under some leafy groundcover, but we could tell the battle was still going on from the movement of the leaves. The young man picked up a small stone and tossed it. It worked: the rat took off running, and the big toad emerged from the greenery, bleeding from his head
wounds, but otherwise ok. We applauded his bravery.
I then strolled through colorful Jinli Street, which was one of the busiest commercial streets during the Shu Kingdom (221-263), and so is known as “First Street of the Shu Kingdom.” I had dinner at the Lotus Tea Garden, sitting in a small courtyard, protected from the rain by a large umbrella. On a stage under an umbrella a young woman played the guzheng, the Chinese zither. At the table next to mine sat an old man with long white hair and wispy beard, wearing a traditional white silk shirt, matching loose-fitting pants, (they looked like pajamas), and sandals. He sipped his tall glass of green tea, smoked a long bamboo pipe, and read a newspaper. I chatted with him for a bit, but he had a strong Sichuan accent, so it was hard for
me to understand him.
After spending a few days in Chengdu I took a 4-hour bus ride to Yibin, in southeastern Sichuan. Though it’s a small city, the streets of Yibin were busy and noisy. Chinese drivers love to honk their horns, and a lot of shop owners had turned huge speakers outward from their shops so they could “attract” customers by blasting loud music at them. An anthropologist from another planet might conclude that in Yibin they worship clothing and mobile phones, because one can walk for block after block without finding a place to eat, passing only clothing stores and mobile phone shops.
In Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian is in search of traditional cultural intangibles – mountain folk songs, farm-work songs, and forgotten (repressed) Taoist rituals. He’s especially interested in finding folk culture, not just of the minority peoples of China, but also of the Han nationality – “genuine folk culture that hasn’t been contaminated by Confucian ethical teachings.”
While in the Shennongjia, a Forestry District in Hubei Province, he meets a man who shows him a notebook of old folksongs. The man tells Gao Xingjian about an old master singer who had a complete set of folk songs known as the Record of Darkness, which had been targeted by the government in the search for reactionary and superstitious works. Eventually the old man was
reported and forced to hand over a brass chest full of song books to the public security officials. Soon after the old master singer died.
Gao Xingjian recounts his indignant, (and rice wine induced), reaction upon hearing about the loss of the song books:
“Where else can reverence of the soul be found? Where else can we find these songs which
one should listen to while seated in quiet reverence or even while prostrated? What should
be revered isn’t revered and instead only all sorts of things are worshipped! A race with
empty, desolate souls! A race of people who have lost their souls!”
one should listen to while seated in quiet reverence or even while prostrated? What should
be revered isn’t revered and instead only all sorts of things are worshipped! A race with
empty, desolate souls! A race of people who have lost their souls!”
In Yibin I watched an old women cross a busy street. She wasn’t at a crosswalk and there was a lot of traffic, but she was undaunted. Across her shoulder was a long bamboo pole, and suspended from each end of the pole were two huge baskets made from woven strips of bamboo, each basket full of some fruit or vegetable she was selling to make a meager living. The bamboo pole bent with the weight of the baskets. Cars and motorbikes honked and swerved around her, and she eventually reached the other side of the street.
Perhaps, for some people, Gao Xingjian’s judgment is too harsh. When life is nothing but a daily struggle, who has time for nurturing their souls?
Perhaps, for some people, Gao Xingjian’s judgment is too harsh. When life is nothing but a daily struggle, who has time for nurturing their souls?
Not far from Yibin is the town of Lizhuang, an ancient town on the Yangtze River. Though it
was a hot and humid day, I enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere of the quaint river town, with its narrow alleys and Qing Dynasty architecture.
The village is a labyrinth of narrow lanes. In one of them I sat and chatted with an 86-year old man who was in front of his house fanning himself. I then met his daughter, who was around my age, and her husband, and finally I met their granddaughter; her parents were at work. In other words, four generations lived in the small house.
They invited me to have lunch with them. As we ate a simple and delicious meal I asked them about the history of Lizhuang and their house, for which the woman kept apologizing, saying it was in need of repairs that they couldn’t afford. After the meal she broke open a thick, long leaf and applied the sticky juice to the skin infections on her granddaughter’s back, chest, arms and legs. One of the little girl’s knees was especially bad, all white and crusty. I asked them if Lizhuang had a hospital and they said it did, but that it was small. Despite her condition, the girl had a cheerful smile on her face the entire time I was there.
After I left the family I stopped to watch and take a picture of a group of men playing a card game using long, narrow cards that resembled dominos, with black and red dots on them.
I watched some shirtless, sweating men working in a kind of open warehouse, stirring huge vats in which a coarse, brown grain was being boiled. Another man was using a flat bamboo basket to make steaming piles of the stuff. Later, when I showed my photo to someone they told me the men were making grain alcohol, or baijiu (white liquor), a popular drink in China.
I chatted with a man eating his bowl of rice and meat, sitting in front of his house under a vine-covered trellis, from which were hanging small pumpkins and another vegetable that resembled a fat, yellowish cucumber. The man told me it was kugua, so that evening at a restaurant I ordered a plate of it for dinner as a side dish. I regretted it: the ku in kugua means “bitter” – it was so bitter I couldn’t eat it.
One morning I went to the Yibin bus station to buy a ticket to a place where I could see the cliff coffins. I was told that the only bus to that place left at 2:00 in the afternoon. So instead I joined a tour group headed for Shunan Zhuhai National Park – the Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea, where some scenes from the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” were filmed. It’s a 120 square kilometer park, so going with a tour group was a good idea. As the tour bus took us up into the mountains, the tour guide, a young woman, gave us an introduction to the place. She spoke fast and it was hard for me to understand her, so at times the little girl sitting in front of me peered over the back of her seat and repeated the key points in simpler, slower Mandarin.
The little girl was really cute, and in the Bamboo Forest she called me shushu, “uncle”, and took
my hand and led me on if she thought I was lagging behind, which I often did because I wasn’t used to the tour group pace. A few days later her mom sent me photos she’d taken, and told me that her daughter had said that when she grows up she was going to test into a Beijing university, come to Beijing and look me up. I wrote back that I predict her daughter will easily get accepted at Beijing University, and I invited them to contact me if they come up to Beijing.
I left Yibin and went to Gusong Town in Xingwen County. There aren’t many taxis in Gusong, so from the bus station I took a cycle rickshaw, or pedicab, to the Xingwen Grand Hotel. The place was not so grand: my toilet leaked water onto the floor, and in the middle of the night I heard a rustling noise. I got up, turned on the light, looked into the waste basket and saw a mouse, his head turned, looking up at me. I first opened the window – there was no screen – and I tossed out the intruder along with some trash. I felt bad about littering, and hoped the mouse survived the two-story free-fall.
From Gusong I made a daytrip to the Shihai Dongxiang – Stone Sea and Land of Caves – a very scenic place that resembles Kunming’s Stone Forest, but with more mountains and bamboo. It includes interesting rock formations, a place called the Big Funnel – a deep, circular pit that’s wide enough to fit an entire village in – and a huge cave that you must pass through partly on foot and partly by small boat. I was excited to arrive there because I was finally going to see the cliff coffins that I’d read about.
In the Shihai I enjoyed reading the names given to the rock formations and the locations along the steep trails. One rock formation was called “Pigsy Proposing to His Love.” Pigsy (猪八戒), is a character from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West (西游记). There was also Heart-Calming Valley, which was oddly right next to Death Valley, as well as Mind-Opening Terrace, Terrace of Various Beasts, (I didn’t see any), and my favorite: Valley of Drunk Hermit.
In the Shihai I finally got to see the famous xuanguan - hanging coffins, or cliff coffins. Most of the cliff coffins can be found in Gongxian (Gong County), but a cliff inside the Shihai is also one of several places in southern Sichuan where, over four centuries ago, the Bo people “buried” their dead. There are only six coffins still hanging on the cliff face, but the man I talked with said that 50 years ago there were 23 of them. In front of the cliff was a replica of a Bo village, with all the houses made of stone.
The Bo people dominated their area for four centuries, but were eliminated by a Ming Dynasty army in 1573. They were thought to be extinct, but in Xingwen County in 2005 some people were found who are thought to be Bo descendents, based on some unusual handwriting traits. The Bo people lived in stone houses which they built near mountains or cliffs.
To achieve their “hanging-coffin burial,” they first dug square holes into the cliff face, inserted two or three logs, placed a wooden board across the logs, and finally placed the coffin on top, at times stacking two or three coffins on top of each other, probably for a couple or a family. How the Bo people managed to hang the coffins 40 to 50 meters above the ground, and a few up to 130 meters, is still a mystery.
In his book, A Cultural Tour Across China, author Qiu Huanxing saw Bo hanging coffins in the Suma Gorge in Gongxian, not far from where I was. He writes that researchers have developed three different theories. The first one is that the ancient locals cut down trees and built scaffolding, which allowed them to mortise the holes then lift up the coffins. Another theory is
that stonemasons with ropes tied around their waists were lowered down from the cliff tops, and after they had prepared the holes and logs the coffins were also lowered down using ropes. A third theory is that earth ramps were built from the ground up. This theory is the least plausible due to the extent of the labor required.
Qiu Huanxing conjectures that this custom of the Bo people developed out of totem worship. “Since they looked upon eagles as their first ancestors, by burying their dead high on cliffs, they made it possible for them to return to their source.”
Another peculiar custom of the Bo people was the “knocking out teeth marriage.” Archeologists who opened and examined some of the hanging coffins discovered that all the adults showed
evidence of having their upper side teeth knocked out. “It is said that the Bo people knocked out the upper side teeth before marriage. Bridegrooms did so to show their bravery and heroism while brides did so to prevent bringing misfortune to their husbands.”
The teeth knocking custom seems to me a rough way to start a blissful marriage. I can picture the young couple on their wedding day with pained, gap-toothed smiles on their faces. But the cliff burial custom seems like a nice way to go, perched on a cliff like an eagle, and an apt symbol of human beings: suspended between heaven and earth.
My own theory about the cliff coffins? I don’t have one. I’ve decided I like it better if it’s left a mystery.
From Gusong I headed up to Luzhou, a small city on the Yangtze River, southeast of Chengdu. From my window at the Nanyuan Hotel I could watch the brown water of the Yangtze flow by. A sign on the wall in my bathroom won this trip’s prize for the best Chinglish: “Caution Wet Frool.” I don’t know why they didn’t just clean up the “wet frool” instead of putting up a sign. And what exactly is “wet frool,” anyway? Another mystery of southern Sichuan.
Since I’d arrived in Luzhou before noon, I went for a walk from my hotel to Zhongshan Park, where I saw a couple of kids ride by on a camel, where I heard frogs in a pond that sounded like dogs barking, and where I relaxed and drank some green tea in an outdoor tea garden, while chatting with the owner and her friend, two elderly women.
As I was walking to the park I was able to confirm something I’d heard about the slang meaning of the word xiaojie (小姐), which literally means “Miss.” In my Chinese textbook, published in 2002, one of the characters calls a waitress xiaojie. These days people in restaurants say fuwuyuan, “service person,” to avoid being impolite. In Sichuan I also heard people call the waitress “meinu,” which is a nice thing to say because it means “beautiful woman.”
I was on a street corner, studying my map of Luzhou, when a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties approached me, got unusually close to me, and said something that I didn’t understand at first. When she repeated, “Ni xiangyao yige xiaojie ma?” while remaining close to me and giving my arm a squeeze, I understood, smiled and said, “Bu yao, xiexie” – “No thank you” – and I walked on. Someone told me that in Guangdong you can still say xiaojie and not
mean “prostitute,” but I think if I go there I’ll play it safe and use fuwuyuan or meinu.
The next morning I took a bus from Luzhou to Yaoba Ancient Town. At one point Don Qixote of the East boarded the bus and sat across from me. What a wonderful face: gaunt, wrinkled brown skin, white patchy beard, topped by a wide-brim hat made of white, yellow, and blue
strips of bamboo. He let me take his picture and even managed a slight smile.
Yaoba Ancient Town, in the mountains southeast of Luzhou, near the border with Guizhou Province, was in ancient times an important crossroad between Guizhou, Sichuan, and Yunnan
Provinces, and a busy trading post. It contains plenty of ancient architecture, including the Qing Dynasty Dahong Rice Store and the Ming Dynasty Dongyue Temple.
In the small restaurant where I ate lunch I met three university students, two boys and a girl, from Hejiang, a town farther east down the Yangtze. They invited me to finish touring Yaoba with them, so we explored the ancient town together.
One of my favorite places in Yaoba was the Oil Paper Umbrella Store. These handmade, hand-painted umbrellas are a Luzhou/Yaoba specialty. I bought one of the smallest ones for 50 yuan.
It was already midafternoon when we finished touring Yaoba Ancient Town, so when the students invited me to go with them to their hometown, Hejiang, I hesitated. But I’m glad they talked me into it, because they took me to a very interesting museum: the Hejiang Han Dynasty
Coffin Museum.
The museum featured several huge, Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) stone coffins with various animals, historical figures, and daily life scenes carved on their sides. In the opposite wing of the museum Song Dynasty (960-1279) carved stone tablets were on display.
I also picked up a second souvenir at the museum – for free. The museum caretaker, a thin, middle-aged local man, drew our attention to some huge wood beams that were on one side of the museum’s central courtyard. He told us the beams were discovered lying under some of the stone coffins, but that experts had dated them as being from the preceding Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC). He then told us to help ourselves and tear off a few slivers of wood if we wanted to, so we all did.
For my third week in Sichuan I returned to Chengdu and lived with my friend Gao Qing and her mother. I was planning to spend two weeks doing volunteer work, teaching English at Gao Qing’s preschool – the ABC Happy Child English – that she runs out of an apartment in a fairly new apartment complex, located on the outskirts of Chengdu.
When Gao Qing and I discussed her plan via email I thought it sounded like an interesting idea: expose Chinese kids at a very early age to English, so that when they start kindergarten they will already have a foundation in English.
I ended up staying for only a week because it was not what I had expected. With Chinese kindergartners, who I’ve taught before, you can actually teach some rudimentary English – colors, shapes, names of fruits, etc. They mostly sit in their chairs, pay attention, and repeat – “Banana! Yellow!” – with wonderful enthusiasm.
I’ve never raised children, so I didn’t know that preschoolers, though they can talk, and even repeat English words, are primarily interested in playing, eating, fighting, crying, screaming, peeing, etc. It was an enlightening experience, as well as a traumatic experience for my ears. But I have to say, the kids were really cute – especially the twin boys who quickly learned that saying “I want peach,” earned them a snack.
During that week I worked in the preschool in the mornings, so I had the afternoons free to explore Chengdu. I really liked a place called Kuan Xiangzi – Kuan Alley. It’s actually three
parallel lanes: Kuan, Zhai, and Jing. The narrow, shaded alleys have a nice ambience, and include traditional courtyard houses, tea houses, galleries, handicraft vendors, restaurants, bars, local snack shops, places to see a performance of Chuanju (Sichuan Opera), and, of course, a Starbucks.
At the end of the week I apologized to Gao Qing for not wanting to do another week of babysitting, and she took a taxi with me to the city center and helped me find a hotel. I spent that afternoon at a very interesting place called Jinsha Yizhi. Jinsha means “Gold Sand,” and Yizhi means “Ruins” or “Site.”
Jinsha, which flourished around 1000 BC, is the remains of an ancient Shu Kingdom settlement. The Shu Kingdom existed on the Chengdu Plain from ca. 1046 BC, and was conquered by the Qin Dyansty in 316 BC. Today “Shu” is a traditional term for Sichuan. The Shunan Zhuhai, for example, means Southern (nan) Sichuan (Shu) Bamboo (zhuzi) Sea (hai). Because of the size of the Jinsha settlement it’s believed to have been the “capital” of the Shu Kingdom.
The site, discovered in 2001, located northwest of the city center, is an archeological site and a museum. Like Bingmayong, (the terra cotta army site in Xi’an), the Jinsha archeological dig is in a covered building, where excavation is still going on. At Jinsha you can descend into and walk through the site, past the pits where archeologists have dug up large quantities of ivory, jade artifacts, bronze objects, gold objects and carved stone objects. I was hoping to spot some little gold or jade artifact that the experts had missed, shove it in my pocket and make a quick exit, but no such luck.
But the real jewel of Jinsha Yizhi is the museum. Inside you can see the famous four-birds-circling-the-sun artifact, made of gold foil, as well as a gold mask, a boat coffin, (carved out of a single log), and the skeletons of Jinsha people. A few days later, while taking a taxi through Chengdu, as we crossed over a modern bridge, I noticed the sun-and-birds symbol at the top of the bridge towers.
The museum itself is an amazing work of modern architecture: the back side of the building is elevated to three stories, and the roof slants down to ground level at the front of the building. Because of the slant the roof is visible, and you can see how the skylights make a pattern of lines and squares – a pattern resembling an archeological dig. In the center of the roof is a huge round skylight, situated above an atrium within the building, in the shape of the four-birds-circling-the-sun motif.
The city of Ya’an, west of Chengdu, is worth a two or three day visit for two reasons: one, to see the pandas at Bifengxia, and two, to visit Shangli Ancient Town. The Yu Du Hotel is a nice place to stay in Ya’an, and it was there that I read this cryptic message on a bottle of body wash, (the spelling, punctuation, and spacing are exactly the way it was written):
“Washy Gene and Plant s’ bmissive.”
I assumed it was some sort of secret code, and I wondered if there was any connection with “Frool.” (Also, wasn’t “Washy Gene” the name of a Michael Jackson song?)
Websites and travel books that have not been updated still direct tourists to the Wolong National Nature Reserve. Wolong was badly damaged in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and most of the pandas were moved to Ya’an Bifengxia – Bigfeng Gorge, (雅安碧峰峡基地). You can also see pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, (成都大熊猫繁育研究基地 – local people refer to it as simply Xiongmao Jidi), which is close to Chengdu, but Bifengxia in Ya'an is larger and more scenic.
Adult giant pandas are cute, but young pandas are way cute. I and a group of tourists just happened to be at an outdoor play area when two young pandas were let out. It seemed they’d been cooped up for a while, because they had a lot of energy. They ran and romped, wrestled, climbed a little swing set, fell off it, and splashed in a small pool of water. At one point a caretaker came out and one of the little pandas ran after him and chomped down on the cuff of his pants, just like a puppy would.
Shangli Ancient Town is a short bus ride from Ya’an up into the mountains. It’s a very interesting and scenic ancient town that includes the Erxian Bridge, (a stone bridge built in 1776), an ancient stage where original forms of Sichuan Opera were performed, and many handicraft and food shops.
In Shangli Ancient Town, at a small restaurant situated on the corner of two narrow lanes, I enjoyed one of the best meals I had during my trip. It consisted of simple steamed dishes: steamed rice with peas, steamed dumplings, (not jiaozi but similar), and steamed pumpkin, all served in bamboo cups. Most food in China is drenched in cooking oil, so it was a refreshing change. A young woman ran the restaurant along with her husband. She sat at my table while I ate, and I helped her translate her small menu into English. When I’d finished she took me to their coffee shop across the street and gave me a free, fresh-brewed cup of coffee.
Back in Chengdu, I went one morning to Renmin Gongyuan – People’s Park – and in a shaded, outdoor tea garden I met my friend, Cao Jiyun, and her girlfriend. We drank jasmine tea, chatted, walked through the park, and enjoyed a delicious lunch of Chengdu special snacks that
my friends ordered. In the afternoon Jiyun and I went to Kuan Alley and strolled around until we got hungry again.
The next day Jiyun borrowed a car from a friend and she drove us out of Chengdu to Jiezi Ancient Town. At one point along the way, in the town of Dujiangyan, we pulled over to ask a boy for directions. He had to consult with an older boy standing nearby, but finally told us to go straight ahead. In mandarin Chinese that’s yi zhi zou, (pronounced ee jir zoe), but the boy’s strong local accent made it sound like “ye zhi zhou” (yeh jir joe). As we drove on we kept repeating the directions, “ye zhi zhou!”, in the boy’s dialect, laughing and feeling happy, despite the fact that it had started to rain.
It was pouring when we arrived at Jiezi Ancient Town, so we relaxed in a tea house until the rain stopped, then strolled around the town. Because of the weather there weren’t many tourists, and after the rain stopped it was pleasantly cool. I really liked this place; the buildings and bridges were fascinating, the wind was strong and fresh, the river water high and swift, and it was nice to enjoy it all with my friend.
At one point in Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian meets a Buddhist monk:
Afterwards, at the old stone pagoda on the island in the middle of the Ou River, I
encounter a monk with a shaven head wearing a crimson cassock…
“Venerable Master, can I invite you to drink tea with me? I would like to ask your advice
about some Buddhist teachings.”
He thinks about it, then agrees.
He has a gaunt face, is alert, and looks to be around fifty. His trouser legs are tied at the
calves and he walks briskly so that I have to half run to keep up.
“The Venerable Master seems to be leaving for a distant journey,” I say.
“I’m going to Jiangxi first to visit a few old monks, then I have to go to a number of
other places.”
“I too am a lone traveler. However, I am not like the Venerable Master who is steadfastly
sincere and has a sacred goal in his heart.” I have to find something to talk about.
“The true traveler is without goal, it is the absence of goals which creates the ultimate
traveler.”
“Venerable master, are you from this locality? Is this journey to farewell your native
village? Don’t you intend to come back?”
“For one who has renounced society all within the four seas is home, for him what is
called native village does not exist.”
Back “home” in Beijing I took a three-wheeled, open cab from the Longze subway station to my university, only to discover that the south gate was closed for repairs. The driver didn’t know where to go. Both of my two previous schools had done gate repairs, so I knew that there was probably a small, temporary gate opened up nearby, likely just ahead. When one gate closes, another one opens. So I told the driver, “Yi zhi zou, yi zhi zou!” and I laughed, but I’m sure he didn’t know why I was laughing.
Yi zhi zou!
Ye zhi zhou!
Go straight ahead!
That’s what I hope to keep doing, until I’m placed in my hanging coffin, my stone coffin, or my boat coffin – or until my journey comes round full circle and I return to the place where I started from.
~~~