Soul Mountain

By Gao Xingjian

Translated by Mabel Lee

(1990, translated 2000)

Harper Perennial

(Novel)

Gao Xingjian, the author of the short story collection, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1983 and given months to live. He made the rounds of relatives and friends, saying his goodbyes to returning to his doctor, the same fellow who diagnosed his late brother several years before. A set of x-rays revealed something remarkable: the dark mass in his lungs had disappeared. Gao had merely been suffering from pneumonia. Following his “rebirth,” Gao began a quixotic quest to travel throughout China in pursuit of Liang Shan, “Soul Mountain.” The mountain is a Mcguffin, though the landscape Gao traverses is real: he walks all over the Sichuan region of southwestern China and even into Tibet. The book he composes during this period of wandering contains reflections on his youth, hometown, and various lovers; a travelogue of remote places, hostels, and temples; musings on language and dialect; philosophical ruminations on “I,” “You,” and “They;” ecological and archaeological arguments against the Three Gorges Dam project; retellings of folk tales from various regions, as well as retellings of dreams and tales he may or may not have made up on the spot to entertain or distract a listener. The entire adventure is an investigation into storytelling, the audience, and the ego. Gao features any number of discussions between new, old, and imaginary lovers. His women often speak freely of their desires, dissatisfaction with marriage, sexual violence, and spousal abuse, as well as the joys of being a woman. The male speaker at times seems to understand his female fellow travelers, and at other times comes off as a self-loving bore. At over five hundred pages, this book is best approached by readers who are likewise at home wandering and who have the time to pursue the many unpredictable but rewarding digressions Gao presents. 

“You pass close by them. They have been holding hands all this time, both have red coarse hands and strong fingers. Both are probably recent brides back seeing relatives and friends, or visiting parents. Here, the word xifu means one’s own daughter-in-law and using it like rustic Northerners to refer to any young married woman will immediately incur angry abuse. On the other hand, a married woman calls her own husband laogong, yet your laogong and my laogong are both used. People here speak with a unique intonation even though they are descendants of the same legendary emperor and are of the same culture and race.”