Sandalwood Death: A Novel (Chinese Literature Today Book Series)

another followed on its heels. The Russians told them that the train’s boiler had been forged from a gigantic gold ingot. Otherwise, how could it withstand the buildup of heat year in and year out? They believed every word the Russians said, because of the adage “Real gold is fireproof.” In an attempt to make up for the wasted straw and beans, they removed a section of track, causing a train to flip over. But when they converged upon the locomotive with their tools, there was not an ounce of gold to be found.
    Even though my small village was no more than twenty li from the Jiao-Ji line, the first time I actually stood near the tracks and witnessed one of those impressive monsters scream past was one night when I was sixteen, out with some friends. I will never forget the striking image of that scary single light in front and the awesome roar of its engine. Now, although I later rode trains regularly, none, it seemed to me, was anything like the one I saw as a youngster back in Northeast Gaomi Township, nor like any of the trains I heard about back then. Those were living creatures, while the trains I rode in later were inanimate machines.
    The second sound is the opera popular all over Gaomi—Maoqiang. Its songs are sad and dreary, especially those sung by the dan, or female characters, which, simply stated, are tearful accountings of the oppression of women. Everyone in Northeast Gaomi Township, both adults and children, can sing snatches of Maoqiang opera. This talent—natural, it seems, and not taught—has long been a fact of life among Northeast Gaomi Township residents, passed down from one generation to the next. Legend has it that when an old woman who had followed her son north beyond the Great Wall was dying, a visiting relative handed the son an audio tape he had brought from home, and when the unique strains of Maoqiang arias emerged, the old woman, whose life was ebbing away, suddenly sat up, her face imbued with a healthy glow, her eyes bright and clear, and when the tape ended, she lay back and died.
    As a boy, I often tagged along behind bigger kids from the village chasing will-o’-the-wisps on their way to neighboring villages to watch opera performances. Fireflies danced in the air, adding their light to the glow of the earthbound will-o’-the-wisps. In the distance, foxes barked and train whistles blew. From time to time we spotted beautiful women in red or in white sitting by the roadside crying, their sobs and wails sounding very much like Maoqiang arias. We figured they were fox fairies and gave them a wide berth, taking pains not to provoke them. I had seen so many operas, I had committed many of the arias to memory, filling in the blanks by making up my own lyrics; and when I was a bit older, I took bit parts in village stagings, playing villains. At the time, only revolutionary operas were performed, so I was either a spy or a bandit. Things loosened up a bit in the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, when folk operas were added to the revolutionary corpus. The Maoqiang opera Sandalwood Death was born. As a matter of fact, the story of Sun Bing’s resistance against the Germans had already been performed on the operatic stage by Maoqiang actors in the last years of the Qing, and some local elders could still sing some of those arias. Using my childhood talent for writing jingles to start rumors and spread gossip, I teamed up with an illiterate old villager who played the erhu, sang opera, and was a master storyteller to write a nine-act opera we called Tanxiang xing . An elementary-school teacher who had been labeled a rightist, and who loved literature, gave us a lot of help. The reason I had gone with the other kids to see the train that first time was to get some real-life experience in order to enhance the opera.
    Eventually I left my hometown to take a job elsewhere, and my interest in Maoqiang decreased, owing to the pressures of work and the trials of everyday life. A dramatic form that had once stirred the hearts of Northeast Gaomi Township residents went into decline, and even though one professional drama troupe remained, they performed infrequently, and that caused the younger generation to lose interest in Maoqiang.
    I went home for a visit over New Year’s in 1986, and the moment I emerged from the train station, my ears picked up the sadly moving strains of a Maoqiang aria coming from a diner on the edge of the station plaza. The sun had just burned its way