Will Osborn Translation
Mingliang’s Distress
By Liang Hong, translated by Will Osborn
At 3 in the morning Haihong received a message from Mingliang:
T: I’m not in a good way. Something’s wrong with my mind. For nearly a month now, I haven’t been able to close my eyes. I don’t want to go on living. You don’t need to feel sad for me; I have no feelings. I don’t want you to worry about me at all. T, Goodbye. Mingliang.
Haihong switched off the phone. She told herself: It’s the middle of the night. I didn’t see that. She turned over in bed, and fell back to sleep.
Haihong had a dream. It was as if she was going to a certain school to teach, but for what reason? She really wasn’t sure, only knowing that the school was where she had to go. She was running on an old highway, blown to a crystal-white clearness by the autumn winds. On either side of the road grew rows of perfectly straight, tall white poplars, just like the roadside trees of her home town when she was young. It gave her a very familiar feeling.
She continued running forwards, but however hard she looked, she couldn’t find her way to the school. She got hungry, and was also desperate to go to the toilet. Suddenly, she found herself on the outskirts of a small village. There was a man on guard there, looking at her with a smile, as if already knowing in that moment where she wanted to go. He pointed towards a towering courtyard wall and roadside toilet, and said that that was his home. By doing this, it was like he was calmly and mysteriously telling her: everything he had was everything she had. This is where she can stop running.
Looking over the white poplars, clear whiteness and the undulating road into the distant horizon, Haihong understood she had forever been cut off from reality.
In the dream, Haihong could see the 18-year old version of herself, staggering around, as she was thrown into the middle of the big, wide world.
T: I have already registered at White Poplar Hills Middle School. It’s a ghostly place, suspended all alone on a big slope. It’s known as White Poplar Hills, but actually, there’s not a single white poplar around. There are only a few locust trees – old and ugly, bent and twisted. Where I live is just below the biggest of these trees. If you come, find that tree and you will find me. Apparently, the students here aren’t that interested in learning, spending the whole day wandering the campus. Some of them are older than me, some taller. They’re not even the tiniest bit afraid of me. But I’m not at all scared of them either. If anyone disrespects me, I’d punch them. There’d be hell to pay if they show off in front of me, hell to pay if they take anything from me.
A large wind gathers – oh – clouds rise up...
Mingliang
Haihong – at 18 years old – crumpled up the letter in her hands and raised her head to the mottled, wooden window. Directly opposite stood several white poplars. She could see only their thick, round trunks, and yellowy-brown dust rising in the playground. A few hens were in the corner of the playground, pecking amidst the dust. Suddenly they separated – as if they had received a warning – flapping away and leaving a covering of feathers on the floor. The small school was surrounded by tall, dense white poplars, unruly and overgrowing wild grasses and wild trees. Outside the playground and the walls, nothing could be seen but endless fields of crops – with the nearest village about one li away from here. The maize plants in the fields were taller than people, crowded and chaotic, all dark, gloomy green. In the evening, they whispered surreptitiously outside the window of her dormitory – just like ghosts emerging out of the Earth’s surface, stalking their prey.
She didn’t know where White Poplar Hills was. Rang County Normal School taught trainee teachers from several local counties. Usually, after graduating, based on the rule of each going back to their own county, everyone went back to teach where they were from. But in this county, which town and which village to teach in wasn’t up to the individual. Haihong was sent off to teach in a village primary school 40km away from Wu town. But Mingliang, whose family lived in another part of the county, was sent to White Poplar Hills Middle School in Wu town. There were still other classmates, except for the small number who remained in Rang county town, who had been sent out to the ghostly White Poplar Hills, wherever that was.
Haihong was in the middle of the wilderness, isolated on the outside of life. But in general, Haihong didn’t really feel like she suffered that much, as she didn’t know any other way to live and she didn’t have any concrete hopes and dreams.
On the contrary, there were a few things she liked about the open country here – a place that was good for deep thinking. After the autumn rain stopped falling, standing barefooted on the wild land, with a strong wind blowing across her shirt and hair, looking far away at the flaming, greyish blue clouds running across the western sky, seeing the sky emerge from behind the dark clouds with a ray of golden light – it was as if she was suspended in the midst of all time.
She wondered where Mingliang’s such strong feelings of indignation and elation were coming from. He was using “White Poplar Hills Middle School” as his field of battle. She could imagine a scene: he takes out ‘Classical Chinese’ (his nemesis – after over two years of continuously trying to pass his self-study professional training exam, he still hadn’t passed) conscientiously studying in the dormitory doorway. That silhouette, resolute and solitary, carrying a burst of indignant determination, seemingly telling everyone: Whatever the hell you do, whoever the hell you are, you can’t disturb my studying...
From the beginning to the end, Haihong had a feeling that Mingliang liked her. When he saw her, his eyes were so deep, his face so serious, his look so distressed – he couldn’t cover that up. But, she also knew during his three years of teacher training, he was always quietly chasing a classmate from his home town. He poured out his heart to that girl, but only got an evasive, non-committal response. He returned to Haihong, lay on the nearby table, heart-brokenly looking at her with an expression full of deep meaning.
Afterwards, Mingliang and the classmate next to Haihong swapped seats, and Mingliang now sat right next to Haihong. On the floor either side of the desk he placed a teapot; they were like two stupid and stocky guardians, under orders to stay by Mingliang’s side. On the table, he placed a large, plastic, dark-brown coloured cup. Inside, he poured – to the brim – many types of herbal medicine. He hugged the cup and loudly drank it down, his Adam’s Apple sliding firmly up and down as he swallowed the medicine. After this, he would pour some boiling water in, bubbling away. In one day, he drank four pots in that way. Mingliang said he was ill, though what kind of illness was never clear, and he never said.
“You have to look after yourself. You can’t just let others say what they want about you and just believe you are that way. If you do that, you’re being bullied. If you’re thinking why is he saying ‘you’ in this way, you need to think clearly. You can then avoid falling into his trap, and won’t just go along with what he wants.”
Mingliang slammed his hands down, turned to Haihong and started a speech, in a low but grave voice. He gave Haihong his analysis of every person in the class, his analysis of the class leader and their rivalries, secret plans and the traps they had set.
Haihong was now fully immersed in the middle of emotion and sorrow. It was as if she was suddenly taken into a new world, and understood the complexities of this world: the doubts and suspicions between people, the backstabbing, the taking advantage of others. Years later at the moment when Haihong first came across the saying ‘Hell is other people’, the form of Mingliang appeared in front of her eyes.