China Journal 1

View from our balcony at Yangshuo Mountain Retreat

The River Yulong right by the retreat

21 October

5pm, the first day in Yangshuo and the sun is out. Rivers, rivulets, ponds, rapids down which bamboo boats carrying tourists, dip and right themselves. A large carp in a tiny pond. A big black butterfly the size of a small bird, flittering round near the hibiscus. Above us those extraordinary limestone outcrops, karst, clothed in trees but revealing sheer rock faces, scarred and holed. It's about 25C. We are all getting acclimatised. I wrote for an hour or so this morning then lay down and fell asleep. Then we had a short walk in the heat.

Tonight the formal welcome dinner, outdoors on the terrace.

Travel Notes

Air-conditioning.

Outside, the mountains blunted

by the soft darkness.

*

We are all alone

in the spaces between words,

in breaths, in commas.

*

Before early dawn.

The vast terrain of China

as dark as the sea.

*

One bad sentence ruins

the book, he says, our young aesthete,

breathing the night air.

*

Everything passes,

says the clock but nothing does,

nothing quite passes.

22 October

Last night a walk round the city, Yangshuo County. Buzzing and crammed, the main shopping drag packed solid with shops and stalls, blaring music, often live, with some demonstrations of crafts, a VR lounge, bars, the music mostly westernised as are the clothes, a mixture of China and America (call it Chimerica) but with an air of Kuala Lumpur meeting Grafton Street. We sit in a bar and drink a beer, are photographed as amiable curiosities. Boy sings Chinese pop-ballads feelingly to a guitar.

Have sketched two poems, written a journal and added to the book about my mother. Clarissa painting.

HOMAGE TO SVETLANA BOYM*

‘The Future of Nostalgia’

The future of nostalgia was resolved.

We’d had enough of it. No more dreaming

of grandad’s underpants or mother’s bra.

It was the end, there was nothing worth redeeming.

This was Chimerica where everything was trade 

and free as air, the air of yesterday.

Nostalgia was the present remembering itself.

The present was past and wouldn’t go away.

Lord, let us live in a shower of cheap light.

Let’s trade our bodies as once we traded fur.

Let us be lost in streets without a map.

Let’s be ourselves by being who they were.

22 October

Off air much of yesterday. Took an after breakfast walk while it is relatively cool down the cycle path. Tremendous variety of butterflies from the bat-sized blacks, to smaller by still large blacks with brilliant blue flashes and still others blacks with white fine brocade edging. Also copper coloured ones with delicate patterns, some some yellow ones like Brimstones, and a few tiny whites.

Black Butterflies in Yangshuo

1

shreds of burning cloth,

smuts, flakes of soot, a black flap

studded with medals

2

if you are the ghosts

of the river, the river

must be in mourning

3

sinister as bats

in a movie, you reveal

nothing, hide nothing

4

the jewels you wear

on your black wings shimmer

before you settle

5

troubadors of night

where are your instruments. your

inaudible songs?

6

see the hibiscus

thick with black hordes. is it death

that you are bringing?

7

such variations

on one simple theme of black,

spots and striations

8

could you be the soul

torn loose of flesh, set to dance

to no clear purpose?

9

wholly enviable

condition to be alight

without pain or grief

10

a grand finale

of black butterflies, the rain

jewelled, falling.

The bamboo boats come in flotillas, essentially punts propelled by pole. They descend the miniature rapids and right themselves. Small zebra-striped fish dart and hide in the clear shallow water of the river. People pass on electric mopeds.

Work for the rest of the day with a break for lunch at the nearest restaurant, down the path, just a couple of minutes away. Interesting to hear the female writers speak in defence of boys and men. That would be counter-revolutionary talk in the U.K. But they have sons and worry about them.

More work, then dinner at the second restaurant along where they speak some English. It isn't a group arrangement but we are all there so it feels a little more formal but the conversation is very relaxed.

We walk back in the dark. Little or no reception. Maybe it's better in the morning.