After making inquiries everywhere he could, Dahe first went to the county petition office.
The petition-office staff were fairly cordial when they saw how honest, humble, and harmless he looked. Several villagers from a neighboring settlement, who were unhappy about their compensation for demolition and relocation, were being received at the same time.
But the moment Dahe explained why he had come, the officials paused and their friendliness cooled.
“Probably a complete simpleton,” several villagers seated behind him whispered.
“Comrade, the matter you’ve raised isn’t within our jurisdiction. Go home and discuss it with your village leaders first,” an official said.
“The village leaders can’t handle it,” Dahe replied.
“You know the village leaders can’t handle it?” The official laughed. “Well, neither can we.”
“Can the provincial authorities handle it?” Dahe asked.
“No idea. You’ll have to ask the province about that.” The staffer waved him away. “Next! Next!”
When the neighboring villagers went home, they told everyone the story for a laugh. Rumors spread across the fields faster than mice could carry them. Before long, news of Dahe’s visit reached his own village Party secretary.
The secretary was already overwhelmed with the relocation arrangements. Nursing a headache, he led a group of people to Xiuxiu’s ancestral house, only to find the door locked. Dahe had packed his things during the night and boarded a bus for the provincial capital.
“Good grief, that boy!” The secretary stamped his foot. “He’s gone completely mad! He’s been a worry since he was little. What a wretched business!”
The terminus for the county-to-capital bus was the very place where the terrible accident years earlier had left more than twenty people dead or injured. Dahe’s legs nearly gave way as he stepped down from the bus.
He would never forget that place for as long as he lived. Aside from a new barrier erected after the accident, everything looked exactly as it had then. Agony was carved into his bones; every step felt as though he were walking on a knife’s edge.
Asking directions along the way, he found the provincial petition office. He presented his identification, passed through security, received a queue number, and waited in the reception hall. So far everything went smoothly.
Yet as the waiting dragged on, his throat grew parched. His shoulders felt heavier and heavier, as though his dead little daughter were sitting on his neck, as though the restless spirit of Xiuxiu, unable to close her eyes in death, were pressing down upon him. He looked anxiously at the traffic outside and could not stop remembering every moment of the past: his wife, his daughter, the unfinished little family that had given him such a meager measure of warmth.
He had already lost them.
And now there was something else he absolutely could not lose.
The clatter of footsteps startled him from his thoughts. Two pairs of black leather shoes stopped sharply before him.
“Chen Dahe?” a kindly smiling staffer with the bearing of a superior asked, accompanied by a security guard.
Without waiting for his queue number, they led him into a sparsely furnished office in the corner. The official knew all about the old accident; everyone involved had been put on a watch list years before. Closing the door, he came straight to the point. “Comrade, that was many years ago. You signed the compensation agreement and the confidentiality undertaking at the time. What is it you want now?”
Dahe shook his head and explained his request in simple, direct language. The official studied him with an odd expression. “You mean you want the mountain spared? Comrade, are you dissatisfied with your village’s relocation policy? Has someone seized your compensation money? Tell me and I’ll help communicate with the relevant people.”
Dahe shook his head. “I just don’t want the mountain flooded. Sir, that mountain cannot be flooded. There’s a god living there.”
The official concluded that grief over his family’s deaths had affected Dahe’s mind and relaxed. As long as he was not here to make trouble over the old accident, it would be easy enough to handle. Leaning back on the sofa, he slipped smoothly into official rhetoric. “Here’s what we’ll do, comrade. Go back and write a concise, to-the-point petition. Then take another number outside. We’ll arrange for someone to hear your suggestion. Provided the request is reasonable, naturally it will be addressed. Rest assured.”
His face remained just as kindly as before. Dahe, unfamiliar with official games, could not tell what he truly meant. But the official’s first manner had resembled the friendly construction contractor keeping a wary eye out for workers’ complaints; his present manner resembled the same smiling employer after withholding wages for months.
Then Dahe was politely shown out. According to procedure, he had to write a concise and to-the-point appeal. In his head the phrase came out as a string of wrong, similar-sounding characters. His schooldays were long behind him, and he could scarcely write anything except his own name and the mountain god’s. He looked up his younger brother, who now worked in the provincial capital, in the telephone directory.
Elio’s Notes The official asks Dahe for a statement that is yan jian yi gai, “concise and to the point.” Dahe hears it as a string of different, similarly pronounced Chinese characters. Even the bureaucratic instructions are baffling to him.
Dahe waited the whole day outside his younger brother’s rented flat. His brother finally appeared late at night, wearing a cheap suit and smelling of liquor. He complained about having to drink with clients. Fresh out of university, he had gone into insurance sales and was throwing himself enthusiastically into meeting sales targets and building a career.
But when Dahe explained his reason for coming, his brother kept shaking his head. “Brother, I hate to say it, but people will think you’re a fool if you go around like this! Whether they flood our home isn’t something you can decide. And you don’t even have a proper reason. All you say is there’s a god on the mountain! Who’d believe that? I don’t!”
“Help me write it,” Dahe repeated.
His brother still refused. “Even if I wrote it, it wouldn’t do any good! Brother, you’d be better off going home to ask about the relocation compensation. Who knows how much money Xiuxiu’s house is worth? And the village secretary called today, wanting to talk to you. Sleep here tonight and hurry home tomorrow.”
His brother absolutely would not help. Dahe made do with a bedroll on the floor of the tiny rented room, which was not even ten square meters. The next morning he packed his belongings and sought help from someone else.
Several years earlier, a talented man of letters had traveled a great distance into the mountains with a cameraman carrying an enormous lens. He had come to interview the Bamboo Grove Guy and see his mountain god’s shrine.
Dahe followed the address on the business card he had been given. Reporter Gao, whose talents had taken him far in just a few years, had risen to a middle-management position at the newspaper: one of its deputy editors-in-chief.
Deputy Editor Gao now wore a brand-new pair of gold-rimmed glasses but the same rumpled shirt. He received Dahe in an office filled with the smell of paper and ink, rummaged through stacks of yellowing folders, found the prints of several photographs taken years before, and handed them over.
“I’m terribly sorry. I meant to mail them to you back then, but the newspaper moved offices and one thing led to another until I completely forgot.” The newly promoted deputy editor was not yet entirely fluent in official airs. He waved toward the doorway. “Xiao Chen! Come in a moment.”
A young woman with large-framed glasses, fair skin, and a few cheerful pimples across her forehead hurried in carrying a stack of documents. “Yes, Editor Gao!”
“Xiao Chen, this is a man I interviewed several years ago. His surname is Chen too. He needs a little help with some writing. Nothing long. Just type what he dictates and print it out for him. Make Mr. Chen a cup of tea first.”
The young woman rubbed her hands, looking extremely serious and nervous, and led Dahe respectfully to her workstation. It was no more than a little corner of a cluttered desk with an old computer.
She hurried off to prepare tea, brought it back to Dahe, switched on the computer with painstaking formality, and asked, “Mr. Chen, what would you like to write?”
When she heard his story, she was surprised but quickly understood. Unlike the officials at the petition office, she did not give him a strange look. Instead, she earnestly explained that saying there was a god on the mountain would not count as a valid argument.
Then she thought it over for him, began typing rapidly, and drafted a petition in the form of a policy recommendation. The letter described Mount Dahan as a scenic area of remarkable natural beauty with rich plant and animal life and, on environmental grounds, requested a change in the project’s route to protect the mountain’s landscape.
To make the proposal more complete, she asked Dahe question after question. She became genuinely interested in the matter and even took the old photographs of the mountain shrine from Editor Gao to scan in color for possible later use. But that belonged to another part of the story.
Carrying a policy recommendation full of environmental principles, Dahe returned to the provincial petition office. Again he presented his identification, passed through security, took a number, and waited. After two days in the queue, he finally sat before another kindly official.
The official read the letter kindly, assured him with great kindness that all reasonable requests from the public would be considered, and told Dahe to go home and wait patiently. A written decision would be sent to his village.
Dahe returned full of hope and anxiety, only to be caught by the village secretary as soon as he arrived. He was given a long lecture. The secretary was already struggling to mediate bitter compensation disputes: brothers had fallen out, sisters fought, fathers and sons had become enemies. And here Dahe was causing more trouble, damaging the village’s model image of civilized relocation. The secretary had known the honest, hard-luck boy since childhood and had always looked out for him. Everyone knew how dangerous it could be to petition higher authorities. He did not want to see this simple, dark-skinned fellow stumble headfirst into something he could not escape.
Dahe listened without a word. After the secretary left, he boiled a pot of sweet potatoes, carried them up the mountain, and sat beside the altar, staring into space.
He might be foolish, but he understood some things. The mountain god had spoken plainly. Even if Dahe lay on the great rock, he would never see him again.
So he merely peeled the sweet potatoes one by one and sat keeping the shrine company.
When night fell and the cold dew made his leg ache, he limped down the mountain. Black Fur and its little companion came out and gnawed through the cold sweet potatoes, one after another. There was no one to stop them.
The spirit of the mountain sat wrapped in his robe upon the shrine roof, simply staring at the place where Dahe had sat.
Dahe waited two months. He traveled to the provincial capital countless times during that period to ask after the result. Every time the answer was the same: the matter was still being processed.
More than two months later, an official red-headed letter reached his home. It contained only a few sentences. Every word seemed intelligible, yet together they wound about in circles he could not follow. He telephoned the young woman Xiao Chen at the newspaper and read the notice aloud. She explained that the decision concerned central-government policy and lay outside provincial jurisdiction. There was nothing more to be done by asking the provincial office.
By then the relocation was sweeping through the region. Most households in the village were moving to other cities according to the government’s plan. Only those still disputing compensation remained, desperately struggling to negotiate. Tourists poured into the scenic area in ever greater numbers, carrying cameras with lenses like great guns deep into the mountain, day and night, hoping to preserve the final fading page of Mount Dahan’s beauty.
Amid the waves of departing villagers, Dahe gave the valuable furniture from Xiuxiu’s house to Third Uncle and his wife, who were moving to a neighboring county. Taking all his savings and leaving the empty, disordered ancestral house behind, he boarded a train for Beijing.
If it was beyond the province’s authority, surely someone in the capital could deal with it.
Two days and three nights on a hard train seat left him dusty and reeking of sweat. He forced his way out of the surging crowd at the station and, after many turns, finally found the petition bureau in Beijing.
The procedure was scarcely different: security screening, taking a number, presenting his complaint, and being told to wait for news. He anxiously asked how long he would have to wait. According to the village secretary, the floodwater would arrive in only three more months.
“Rest assured. Your complaint will be forwarded to the appropriate local authorities. Under the law they generally have sixty days to resolve it. If you’re dissatisfied with the result, you have another thirty days to lodge an appeal. Go home and wait for notification.” The staff member saw him off politely with a practiced smile.
The answer came not long afterward. Central policy would remain unchanged, and local governments were ordered to handle relocation in a harmonious manner. The county leadership, alarmed to hear of his petition, phoned the village secretary and demanded that Dahe be firmly disciplined.
Buried in the everyday work of moving a village, the secretary had no time for such discipline. He went to Dahe’s house in a rage, only to find the place empty again. Dahe had packed another bundle and gone back to Beijing.
His demands were branded unrealistic and contrary to government policy. In the space of one month he visited the Beijing petition bureau four times, refusing to give up. His persistence was deemed disruptive to normal operations, and he was quickly added to a list of “abnormal petitioners.” When he appeared again he was refused entry. The next time, the same.
One day Dahe emerged from the petition bureau exhausted and anxious, speaking by phone with the young reporter Xiao Chen, who wanted to know how his case was going. He had bought himself a cheap mobile phone specifically to contact the “relevant departments” and Xiao Chen. Suddenly, he heard the familiar accent of his home region.
“Hey! Isn’t that Dahe?” called a man whose skin was as dark as his own.
Dahe looked up and recognized an old workmate from the days when he drove in the county town. Beside him stood a middle-aged woman who spoke the same hometown dialect. They had scarcely exchanged greetings when a minivan drew up at the roadside. A man with an official’s bearing stepped out: the very same kindly official from the county petition bureau.
The official greeted them warmly. The workmate and his female companion appeared to know him too. After they spoke for a while, the official announced that he had come specifically to arrange their accommodation and invited everyone into the van.
Dahe had a cheap hotel where he usually stayed and at first did not want to go. But the official promised the lodging would be free and smiled more kindly than ever. Everyone agreed to get in.
The official got off halfway through the journey. The only people left with them were several bald, tattooed men. The minivan rattled on until it reached a secluded compound on the outskirts of Beijing.
At that moment the mountain god was reclining lazily on the shrine roof, playing with a few bamboo leaves. Several children visiting with their parents ran around the low shrine. One stooped to lift the red veil from the statue, saw its broad face and long ears, and cried with delight, “So ugly! That head’s so ugly!” before racing off.
The immortal paused, glanced lazily at the children, and smiled. He brushed his knuckles against the scarred, uneven half of his face. Ugly?
More than ten years earlier a foolish little boy had stood right there and told him, I think you’re beautiful.
The boy had grown into a man, left, then come home with wounds all over him. He had told another little child, If you believe in him, he’s there. He had told that child the mountain god was the most beautiful, the finest being he had ever seen.
The immortal’s fingertips trembled, and the tiny life in the bamboo leaves he was holding fell away and scattered on the wind. Uneasily, he raised his head toward the north. Across the boundless land lay countless joys and sorrows, meetings and partings. He could not see the one person he was thinking of and yearning for.
His chest suddenly tightened. Grief and dread surged through him.