Jingshi 17 July 2012

Citation: Jing Shi. Translated by Keith Dede and Susan Su. 2012. Ballad of The Huang River and Other Stories. Asian Highlands Perspectives. Volume 20. Front Cover: Huangyuan countryside and Sun Moon Mountains in Summer. June 2012. Photograph by Zhao Zimo. Back Cover: Left to right: Jing Shi, his grand-nephew, and younger brother, in Nalong Village, Huangyuan County. June 2011. Photograph by Keith Dede. e-mail: [email protected] hard copy: www.lulu.com/asianhp online: www.plateauculture.org/asian-highlands-perspectives ISSN (print): 1835-7741 ISSN (electronic): 1925-6329 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008944256 Call number: DS1. A4739 Subjects: Uplands-Asia-Periodicals Tibet, Plateau of-Periodicals © 2012 Keith Dede and Susan Su. This publication may not be reproduced, translated, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express prior written permission from the publisher, unless its source is duly noted and it is not for commercial purposes. Contact the email above with questions. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION <5> THE BALLAD OF THE HUANG RIVER <15> OLD MAN ZHANG PANS FOR GOLD <87> THE FANTASTIC TALE OF THE GOLDEN PHOENIX EGG <167> INTERVIEW <225> NON-ENGLISH TERMS <239> •3• •4• INTRODUCTION A round face, framed by longish, slightly unruly bangs and chubby cheeks, is pulled wide by a somewhat cock-eyed grin that forces into prominence a pair of protruding front teeth. His eyes are drawn into narrow slits from the strength of that smile. The roundness of his head and face extends to his chest and belly, which are covered in a brightly colored polo shirt that may hang a bit long, but fits tightly elsewhere. He is laughing, or singing, or relating an amusing anecdote. He flirts, pleads, plays for laughs, listens, corrects, explains, argues a bit, but mostly he is trying to entertain while also enlighten. Whether seeing him on a television broadcast or sitting across from him at a banquet table, this is most people's first impression of Jing Shi. He was born Sun Shengnian (his four-year- old granddaughter told me in June 2011 that when he is in front of the computer he is 'Jing Shi,' but otherwise he is 'Grandpa Sun') in September 1953, at his family's home in the village of Nalong, a few miles west of the county seat of Huangyuan County in northeastern Qinghai Province. Educated through primary school in the village, he left home to attend junior middle school in the county town. After middle school he enrolled in the Qinghai Academy of Public Health, from which he graduated in 1973. Because this period of early education was during the 'Maoist years', he admittedly didn't get much out of it. The way he puts it, the leaders had decided that the old textbooks were not sufficiently revolutionary, so they were discarded, but the leaders never bothered to find new materials, so there wasn't much to do in school. Instead, he enjoyed reading stories on his own time, mostly traditional Chinese stories, such as Journey to the West and Outlaws of the Marsh. He fondly recounts how as a child, before he could really read, his mother would have his older brother read aloud a chapter from one of those stories at night while she did her sewing. When his brother went away to school, she made Jing Shi •5• read the chapter aloud. Even though he couldn't read every word, he knew enough of the characters on the page for the story to make sense, and then he would make up the rest. While at the Qinghai Academy of Public Health, he was selected to join an elite group of students who were trained to detect radiation poisoning and, when he graduated, he was assigned to a work station in western Qinghai. His job was to test plants, soil, and livestock (mostly sheep) for traces of radioactive iodine after atmospheric nuclear tests were carried out in Xinjiang. As he relates it, China was poor back then, so there weren't tests very often, meaning he had a lot of free time to do whatever he wanted. Free time meant he had time to visit local herding families, chat, listen to stories, and drink. But mostly it was free time for reading. While still working as a nuclear fallout data-gatherer, he began editorial work for a local literary journal, Desert Tide (Han hai chao). The first issue in 1979 included his very first short story, 'The Unfinished Lab Report' (Meiyou xiewan de shiyanjilu). When China announced that it would end atmospheric nuclear testing in 1980, he basically lost his day job. Rather than follow the rest of his work unit into the job of testing radioactive levels among health workers (radiologists and such), he dropped his scientific career to pursue life as a writer. His editorial duties exposed him to a wider range of Chinese writers, and as China opened up to the outside world in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he began to read the works of foreign authors. And yet, as much as this broad taste in reading influenced his writing, it was always the stories he heard in his home village that inspired him. Though he left the village at a relatively young age, the village never left him, and its hold on his imagination was rejuvenated through frequent visits home to see his family, to visit relatives, and to listen to the stories of village elders. One story, about how folks from the village traveled to western Qinghai to dig for gold and discovered a piece of gold shaped like a bottle-gourd, forms the basis of the second novella in this collection, 'Old Man •6• Zhang Pans for Gold' (Zhang baye taojinji). Similarly, most of Jing Shi's fiction, from his early short stories to his last novel, The Gold Dream Disaster (Jin meng jie),1 involve the lives, loves, joys, and tragedies of the peasants that reside in rural Qinghai Province. The first story in this collection, 'The Ballad of the Huang River' (Huangshui yao), is also based on rural life, specifically that of a woman, widowed at a young age, struggling with the strictures of traditional beliefs and practices. Elements of the story's structure, however, were inspired by Mario Vargas Llosa's La Casa Verde (The Green House), 2 and it is by far the most experimental form Jing Shi has tried. It shifts frames and perspectives, narrating multiple events from different historical eras with few overt signals to mark the shifts. This structure radically challenges the reader to make sense of the entirety of the heroine's experience before the experience is fully related, while reinforcing the story's theme of the force of history and tradition in the present lives and consciousness of villagers. This experimental form only appears in this one story, however, because as Jing Shi said, "It's just too difficult," by which I think he meant it was difficult to write. His other stories, such as 'Old Man Zhang', included here, are relatively straightforward narratives. The popularity of his work is explained in part by the fact that most of his fiction doesn't require the reader to do mental gymnastics. He is a practiced, professional storyteller, formally giving the readers more or less what they expect. The real appeal of his stories, at least for readers familiar with the stories' settings, lies in his characterization and language. Jing Shi's characters are well-wrought, three-dimensional portraits of rural people his readers can identify with. Whether it's that uncle from the village behind the mountain, or the busybody who lives around the corner, his readers identify with them 1 2001. Xining: Qinghai renmin chubanshe [Qinghai People's Press]. 2 1966. Barcelona: Seix Barral. •7• because they resemble people his readers know. The image of Old Man Zhang, wearing a tall, round hat with ear-flaps, a man who explodes in curses when he is angry, is based on Jing Shi's recollections of his own father, who was known around the village as Old Man Sun. The portrayal of Old Man Zhang's wife, Old Lady Zhang, is based on one of Jing Shi's neighbors who wore an old yellow headscarf whenever she came outside the house. These details of portraiture, derived from intimate familiarity with the people of rural Qinghai, enhance the realism of Jing Shi's narratives and his readers' identification with them. The language Jing Shi's characters speak, the Chinese dialect of northeast Qinghai Province, is the most immediately recognizable detail identifying them as rural Qinghai folk. Jing Shi's manipulation of this language within his stories has evolved over time. In his earlier stories, such as 'The Ballad of the Huang River', it is mostly used in dialogue, while the narration is primarily in Standard Chinese. In 'Old Man Zhang', Qinghai dialect infiltrates the narrator's voice in a limited way. In such later stories as 'The Fantastic Tale of the Golden Phoenix Egg' (Jinfengdan chuanqi), included here, the infiltration has proceeded to the point where it dominates the narrative. While use of dialect for dialogue adds to the descriptive fullness of a character's portraiture, its use in the narrator's voice allows the writer to signal when the narrator is slipping into the perspective of the character, a technique commonly referred to as free indirect discourse. The narrator's ability to shift from an omniscient, outside perspective to an interior, biased one draws the reader more intimately into the story and into the emotional state of the main characters.

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