The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (9 page)

LIAO:
Back in the old days, a headman was quite powerful, like a little emperor who could get away with anything. Legend has it that the local headman had seventy-two tombs built all over the region with the same designs. He had those fake tombs constructed to confuse grave robbers. After he died, his descendants were instructed to murder or bury alive every single person at his funeral, including the coffin bearers. As a result, his tomb still remains a mystery and nobody knows which one of the seventy-two tombs is the authentic site. Countless numbers of grave diggers have combed through the area to locate the headman's body and the treasures buried with him. So, based on your calculations, it's fairly likely that the real tomb could be right here, under our feet.

HUANG:
I don't think that headman's final resting place is somewhere around this prime spot. Otherwise, his descendants would have made it big. Well, on the other hand, he might have picked a good feng shui spot, but the natural and physical environment has changed. The good feng shui might have evaporated.

LIAO:
Now that you mention it, I have noticed that the feng shui around here is really good. Look at the setting sun, resting glowingly between the two penholders. There is a nice heavenly breeze now. I can even smell a subtle fragrance.

HUANG:
The scents actually come from the herbs that I have planted. The soil is so fertile. I planted over twenty different kinds of herbs in the springtime, and by summer leaves are sprouting all over the place. These herbs are more filling than crops. When I'm hungry, I simply harvest some herbs and chew them. The feeling of hunger will be gone right away. If you get some of these herbs, you can mash them into a thick paste and smear them around your mouth, your ears, under your armpits, and around your asshole. It will help prevent illness and drive away all sorts of bugs and evil spirits. Nowadays, I go days without eating. I simply sleep inside my tomb. My tomb is very dark inside. If a bug gets into my mouth, I can catch it with my teeth. Those earthworms taste pretty good. Snakes or scorpions are all scared of me.

LIAO:
Those snakes and scorpions are dangerous.

HUANG:
Nowadays, people are more poisonous than snakes or scorpions. In the sixties and seventies, people hurt one another as a result of Mao's political campaigns. In the nineties, people hurt one another in order to make more money. People are so degraded and selfish. Confucius used to call China a nation of formalities and kindness.

LIAO:
Sounds like you are still smarting from the experience with the township chief. Can I go take a look at your tomb?

HUANG:
That's top secret and I wouldn't allow anyone to see where my tomb is. I have spent years building it. For an old guy like me, it's no easy job. Since you are so persistent, let me give you a rough idea where it is. Look at that huge rock near the cliff. Half of it sticks out in midair. The base of that rock is surrounded by many smaller ones. All the rocks are connected seamlessly, as if they are bonded together with cement. Nobody knows that there is actually a secret tunnel under the rocks that can reach my tomb. It used to be a tiger's den. In 1961, a male tiger roamed around on this mountain. One day, the tiger became desperately hungry because most of the trees had been cut down and all the small animals killed. So the tiger went down to the villages for human prey. All the villagers came out with torches, beat their gongs, and chased the tiger all the way up to the mountain. They cornered the tiger near that rock. With no way to escape, he climbed up on top of the rock, jumped into the ravine, and killed himself. The villagers retrieved the tiger's body, skinned him, and barbecued the meat. Over a hundred people showed up and each one got a small piece to munch on. Later on, I heard that was the last tiger in the border region between Sichuan and Guizhou. After the tiger was killed, I went back to the rock and discovered his den, which was about twenty meters deep. So I dug a tunnel under it and converted the den into my tomb. Since then, I go stay there for a couple of days every month. I enjoy staying there because Ruan Hongyu is lying somewhere nearby. With her company, my nostalgia for this world is being diminished day by day.

LIAO:
Ruan Hongyu?

HUANG:
Do you remember the courtyard house by the side of this road? That was Ruan's house.

LIAO:
Of course. She was a famous blind singer and had a great voice. I visited her once. She was in her eighties and her singing was as vibrant as that of an eighteen-year-old. I used to put a tape recorder in front of her and tape her singing folk songs. She would sing one song after another for hours.

HUANG:
Yes, that was her. She has been dead for six years.

LIAO:
What happened to her house?

HUANG:
The courtyard has long been demolished. Ruan was a tough woman and she has become pretty dominant in the world of the dead. When a dead person is too strong, she affects the energy flow. The living will suffer. Her descendants had to move to find a new place so they could breathe.

LIAO:
Was there anything going on between you two?

HUANG:
I pursued her when we were both young. I'm three years her junior. We used to sing love songs to each other from across the mountain peaks. She was a pretty mountain flower and had many suitors. When it came to singing folk songs, nobody was her match. Singing folk songs from mountain peaks is a traditional courting ritual in the region. A boy and a girl sing to each other from separate mountain peaks all night long. It is like a contest. If the boy can defeat the girl, she will be his. I only competed with Ruan for half of the night and then acknowledged defeat. She lost both of her eyes during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards beat her up for singing decadent love songs. She was very stubborn and competitive all her life, but never made it big outside the area. So, after she passed away, I picked a nice resting place for her. The spot is close by and is very auspicious, better than the plot where her husband is buried.

LIAO:
She was married to someone else?

HUANG:
I think she married the wrong person. I wanted to borrow the feng shui from the world of the dead to correct her mistakes.

LIAO:
She is dead. How can you correct her mistakes?

HUANG:
I wanted us to be husband and wife in the other world.

LIAO:
You are like the legendary Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, who didn't get to live in the same house when they were alive, but ended up buried inside the same grave.

HUANG:
You can think whatever you want. I will join Ruan Hongyu in her grave. After we reunite in our afterlife, our family fortune will definitely take a turn for the better. As the saying goes, “When the floating dragon falls between the penholder, it heralds the thunderous rising of three generations.” Within three generations, the Huang family should be able to produce a regional lord, with thousands of acres of land bestowed on him by the government.

LIAO:
Okay. But, Master, how could you share such good feng shui with an outsider like Ruan Hongyu? Aren't you married yourself ?

HUANG:
I was. My wife died in the 1960 famine. Millions of people died from starvation that year. There was no way for me to afford a tomb with good feng shui. I just randomly found a spot, dug a shallow hole in the ground, and buried her. As you can tell, she was born poor and died poor. With her bad karma, she could spoil the good feng shui for my descendants if I'm buried with her after I die. However, if I'm buried alone, the yin and yang won't be in harmony. For this reason, I have to join Ruan Hongyu after death.

LIAO:
I'm so confused by your idea of using Ruan Hongyu to benefit your descendants.

HUANG:
Lao Tse, the founder of Taoism, once said: If you can explain what the way is, it is no longer the good way. Therefore, I cannot fully explain the mysterious karma that was bestowed on me and Ruan Hongyu.

LIAO:
Have you shared your afterlife marriage plan with your family? As you probably know, you have no control once you die. Also, I don't think Ruan's family will allow you two to be buried together.

HUANG:
This matter concerns the well-being of many generations to come. I will certainly tell the children of both families. I think they will understand. Actually, I have long prepared for our afterlife together. I'm going to let Ruan occupy this spot first. In this way, if our children do not respect my will after I die . . . I would move in myself when I'm still alive.

LIAO:
I think they will freak out if they know about your plan.

HUANG:
I have done enough for my children and it's time they understood me. My children have moved to the township. They are now living crammed inside the tall buildings with their kids on a noisy street. I like peace and quiet and refused to go with them. I'm an old man and I don't want to be a burden to them. Also, once Ruan Hongyu was gone, my only reason to live in this world was also gone. Even though I still helped people with their feng shui designs, my soul had already left. At the moment, my life is coming to an end, reaching zero. Zero is nature. The mountain is my home.

LIAO:
Master Huang, it's not like we still live in ancient China, where you can find a remote place to live like a hermit. The mountain here, the river there, none of the pristine scenery will last. Soon, a developer will come and convert the area into a tourist site. If tourism business is good, I bet they will build a big entrance at the foot of the mountain, and market it as a newly discovered forest park. People would come from all corners of China on boats or by air. It's hard to believe that your tomb can remain hidden and the good feng shui can remain intact for twenty years after that.

HUANG:
Your mind is filled with many inauspicious thoughts. You'd better go visit your friend in the village. It's getting late.

THE ABBOT

In the spring of 2003, while climbing Fengqi Mountain, about sixty kilometers west of Chengdu, my friends and I stumbled upon an ancient Buddhist temple hidden in a thicket of trees. Guangyan Temple, also known as the Gu Temple, harkens back to the Sui dynasty (581–618
AD
). Built on the slopes of a mountain, the temple is divided into two parts: an upper and a lower section. In the upper section, I encountered a scene of neglect: overgrown plots of grass, and crumbling pagodas, which housed the bones of deceased Buddhists. Two halls of worship were in ruins. In contrast, the lower section was abuzz with the noise of activity generated by a long stream of worshippers and tourists. The chanting and the strong smell of incense wafting from the newly renovated halls reminded me of its recent prosperity.

The then 103-year-old Master Deng Kuan was the abbot in the Gu Temple. He lived in a spartan room at the back of the lower courtyard. Unlike those abbots in the movies, Master Deng Kuan didn't look distinguished at all: he was short, with small eyes, and always wore a yellowish woolen hat. He had to sit by an electric heater all the time because he was extremely sensitive to cold. The master was a heavy smoker and puffed on his tobacco pipe every few minutes. At the urging of his nephew, he also took a couple of sips of milk through a straw. He was extremely hard of hearing. Each time I asked a question, I had to shout in his ear. Eventually, after much shouting, coupled with occasional interpretations by his nephew, I managed to piece together this interview.

In September of 2005, one year after this interview was completed, I read in a local newspaper that Master Deng Kuan had passed away.

LIAO YIWU:
Master, you look really good, very healthy.

MASTER DENG KUAN (DK):
I was just hospitalized for two months in Chengdu. I'm falling apart. My body is stiff. Amitabha, Merciful Buddha. Now that I can't move around that much, I have a lot of time for meditating and thinking. I've been thinking a lot about the things that have happened to me in this life. Unfortunately, I'm only lucid half of the time. Some days, I'm so out of it that I have no idea where I am, what day it is, and who is standing beside me.

Have you read anything about our temple? In the Ming dynasty [1368–1644], Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang gifted this temple with an official name, “Guangyan Buddhist Temple.” Later on, Master Wu Kong, Emperor Zhu's uncle, became enlightened at this temple. If we count him as our first abbot, I'm now the eighth abbot in the past six hundred years.

I was born in 1900 when China was still under the Qing emperor Guangxu. My secular name was Chen Jingrong. Since my family was poor, my parents sent me to this temple at the age of seven so I could get fed. So that was how I started out as a monk. My teacher, Master Zu Run, was an eminent monk in the region. He was well-known for his knowledge and his righteousness. Apart from teaching me the Buddhist scriptures, he also invited scholars to the temple to teach all the young novices how to read and write. Thanks to him, I grasped the basic literacy skills in a few years.

In 1928, I walked over ninety kilometers to Chengdu to get ordained in a big temple there. Following my ordination, I was enrolled at a Buddhist school run by Master Chan An. After I graduated in 1930, I studied at two more temples, and continued to receive guidance from various eminent monks. In 1944, after a decade and a half of traveling and studying, I returned to the Gu Temple. Initially, I worked as an official greeter, coordinating daily worshipping activities. In 1947, I was promoted to be the abbot. I stayed in that position until the Communist takeover in 1949.

LIAO:
Your life has spanned the entire twentieth century. If we use 1949 as a dividing line, your life is pretty much divided into two equal phases. But you seem to play down the first half of your life with only a couple of sentences.

DK:
When you turn one hundred, and look back on the early part of your life, a couple of sentences are sufficient. Otherwise, I can go on for three days and three nights. I have personally benefited from the teachings of over thirty grand masters of Buddhism. You could write a whole book about every single one of them.

LIAO:
Sorry for the interruption. Please go on with your story.

DK:
This temple was first built during the Sui dynasty. Since then, over thirty convents and temples have been built along the Qingcheng mountain range, with Gu Temple as the main center of worship. At one time, this temple housed over a thousand monks. Over the centuries, as old dynasties collapsed and new ones came into being, the temple remained relatively intact. This is because changes of dynasty or government were considered secular affairs. Monks like me didn't get involved. But the Communist revolution in 1949 was a turning point for me and the temple.

After 1949, the new government launched the Land Reform movement. Many former landowners in the region were targeted. Several were executed, their property seized and redistributed. One day, a government work team raided the temple. The team consisted of government officials and peasant activists. They set up a tribunal inside the temple to dispense justice. They called me a “rich temple owner” and declared that I was under arrest. My captors dragged me onto the stage, stripped me of my
kasaya,
and forced me to stand in front of a large crowd of villagers, with my arms pulled up behind my back in the jet-plane position. One by one, peasant activists stood up to share with the crowd about my “crimes.” I was accused of accumulating wealth without engaging in physical labor, and spreading feudalistic and religious ideas that poisoned people's minds. Some even suggested investigating my past activities under the Nationalist government because I was collaborating with the rich to exploit the poor. At the end of each speech, the head of the work team would stand up and shout slogans like “Down with the evil landlord!” and “Religion is spiritual opium!” Then the whole crowd followed his lead with slogan shouting. Emotion soon ran very high: people spat at me, punched and shoved me. About thirty to forty monks were hunched over side by side with me on the stage. They were categorized as “bald lackeys of the rich landowner.” The landowner was, of course, me.

LIAO:
This is the first time I heard about the term “rich monk.”

DK:
It came as a shock to me as well and it was hard to cope with those unfair charges. All monks abide by the vow of poverty. In the pre-Communist days, many of us came from very poor families. Once we accepted the teachings of Buddha, we vowed to stay away from all human desires. In this vast province of Sichuan, there were over a hundred temples. No matter which temple you go to, you will find the same rule: monks pass on the Buddhist treasures from one generation to the next. Since ancient times, no abbot, monk, or nun has ever claimed the properties of the temple as his or her own. Who would have thought that overnight all of us would be classified as rich landowners! None of us had ever lived the life of a rich landowner, but we certainly suffered the retribution accorded one.

LIAO:
What happened after those “struggle sessions”?

DK:
Soon the struggle sessions turned into public beatings. Getting spat on, slapped in the face, and kicked in the back were common occurrences. Many times the local militia would show up at the temple at random and drag me to a room for interrogation. During one interrogation in the wintertime, a village militia chief and his men stripped me of my shirts and pants, and then hung me from the ceiling. It was so painful that I passed out in about ten minutes or so. They poured cold water onto my body. When I came to, my right arm was dislocated. Even today I still experience excruciating pain when I try to raise this arm. Sometimes I was beaten up for some ridiculous reasons. One time, an official called me to his office and ordered me to turn in one hundred golden bowls that I had allegedly hidden inside the temple. The official said a junior monk had revealed the secret to the work team. I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't even own a regular porcelain bowl, not to mention a bowl made of gold. When I told them that I didn't know, they accused me of lying and hung me from a tree. Then, several villagers went to search the monks' living quarters. Believe it or not, they did find one hundred bowls in the corner of the kitchen. To their disappointment, however, they were bowls made of pottery, not gold. Finally, I understood what the whole fuss was about. Since each bowl could hold only one
jin
[500 grams] of rice, we called it the “
jin
bowl”—which sounds the same as “gold bowls” in Chinese. The situation was truly hopeless.

By the way, during the Land Reform movement, the local government seized all the Buddhist treasures and confiscated hundreds of hectares of pristine forest and farmland from the temple. We were not alone. Temples around the whole country suffered a similar fate.

LIAO:
I have checked some historical records and found that many prominent monks suffered persecution during that time. For example, Master Kuan Lin from Chengdu's Wenshu Temple was brutally tortured by local peasants. They broke his legs and arms, and pulled his teeth out. He collapsed and passed out on the floor. His torturers thought they had killed him. Out of fear, they sent him to the hospital, and luckily the doctors were able to save his life. Master Qing Ding at Zhaojue Temple was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in 1955. That was because he had been a cadet in the Huangpu Military Academy under the Nationalist government before he became a monk. He ended up spending twenty years behind bars. Master Wei Xian, the former abbot at the Ciyun Temple near Chongqing, was arrested in 1954 for his efforts to establish a Buddhist school. He was jailed for twenty-seven years. The list goes on.

DK:
The Land Reform movement was just the beginning of a series of disasters that befell the temple. In 1958, Chairman Mao launched the Great Leap Forward campaign, calling people in China to find ways to mass-produce iron and steel so China could catch up with industrialized nations like the U.S. It was also the beginning of the collectivization campaign. No household was allowed to keep any private property or to cook at home. People were ordered to eat at communal kitchens and dining halls.

I put myself at the mercy of heaven and decided to go with the flow. I registered with the local village leader, who gave me permission to lead ten monks to look for iron-containing rocks in the mountain, and to participate in the production of steel. Peasants built a makeshift furnace inside the temple. We were a bunch of laymen and had no idea what an iron-containing ore looked like or how to produce steel from those rocks. The government sent a young scientist, who gave us a quick thirty-minute crash course. Then, confident in their newly acquired knowledge, people rolled up their sleeves and worked in groups to scout the mountain for iron-containing rocks. Many villagers ended up by gathering lots of dark-colored rocks and stones, and dumped them into the furnace.

Meanwhile, the local government also called on people to donate every piece of metal they had in their homes: farm tools, cooking utensils, basins, locks, metal hoops, even women's hair clips, and to melt them down to produce steel and iron. There was a popular slogan: To turn in one piece of metal is to wipe out a foreign imperialist. We monks didn't even have a home, but we didn't want to lag behind the others. We sniffed around the temple like dogs. We found incense holders, metal collection boxes, bells, and locks. We pried and hammered off the metal edges of the wooden incense tables, and even smashed and knocked down the small bronze statues on the four corners of the temple roof.

Near the entrance of the temple, there used to be a pair of royal cast-iron cauldrons given by Emperor Yongle in the Ming dynasty. None of it survived the Great Leap Forward. Since the royal cauldrons were huge, made with thick cast iron, it took over twenty strong and tough men to smash them with large sledgehammers. The loud echoes of the hammering sound could be heard miles away. Besides, melting those thick, ancient cast-iron pots was no easy job. People chopped down hundreds of big trees to fuel the furnace.

It wasn't long before the mountain was stripped bare. When I first entered the monastery here, there were hundreds of hectares of trees, many of which were rare species, such as ginkgo, nanmu, and ancient cypress. But during those crazy years, they were all cut down. Have you seen that big thousand-year-old tree outside the temple? The tree was left untouched because it grew on a cliff and people couldn't reach it. Nowadays, visitors have been telling me how precious and beautiful that tree is. Little do they know that there used to be seven big trees around here, each was thick enough for three people to circle around. That one left was the ugliest and quite useless. The other six were cut to feed the furnace.

It's really hard to imagine what happened then. People were exhilarated by Chairman Mao's lofty vision of building a strong socialist country. I was assigned the task of working the bellows to keep the fire in the furnace going. I used to practice kung fu at the crack of dawn every day to stay fit and healthy. That rigorous training helped build up my stamina. While most people were on the verge of exhaustion and some had even collapsed, I was still full of energy, working the bellows nonstop for hours in a half-squatting position beside the furnace.