Wreckage

Yu The Great: A Legend -- A Burial -- Closing A Breach -- A Change -- A Weapon -- A Temple -- A Drought -- A Human Scarecrow -- Seized -- Fate -- A Diviner's Confession -- In Confucius's Class -- The Script -- An Exile's Song -- Burying Them -- Words By A Castrated Writer -- Between A Lamb And A Dog -- A Court Proposal -- The First Brush -- Reproach -- A Lost Scholar -- The Worthy Ruler's Way -- Human Pig -- A Sewing Song -- Lament -- A Return -- The Expatriates -- Betrayal -- Surrender -- On The Great Wall -- A Sculpture Of Lovers (circa 200 A.d.) -- To Her Sister -- Afterward I Became A Model Wife -- A Childless Merchant -- Cleansing The Body -- A Young Girl's Lament -- To Survive -- A Contract -- On Issuing A Residential Certificate -- A Sedan Chair -- Ode On The Cangue -- Questions -- A Query -- Reward And Punishment -- Equality -- Salvation -- A Dragon Lover -- A Sorcerer -- The Returned Crane -- A Gentleman's Dream -- A Mission -- Expedition -- The First European -- Etiquette -- Trade -- An Opium Smoker -- An Edict From The Empress Dowager -- Breach -- The Rebel Leaders -- Starting Off -- Help -- An Execution -- The Victory -- A Ghost's Argument -- Departure. Ha Jin. Poems. Includes Bibliographical References (page 111). WreckageBy Ha JinHanging Loose PressCopyright © 2001 Ha Jin. All rights reserved.ISBN: 1-882413-98-9Chapter One Yu the Great: a Legend Soon the angry gods turned the Yellow Valley into a swamp, where water and reeds swelled toward the fumy sky, serpents and crocodiles devouring people. Yu's father stole some Divine Loam. With it he stemmed the flood, but the Fire God wrapped him in flames— the water broke loose again. Yu had to continue the struggle. Hundreds of miles up, in the grasslands, the river flowed clear and peaceful. But entering the ocherous plain it roared and rolled, poured silt into the valley, and drowned our crops and homes year after year. Yu set out to survey the river. He took a sled on mud, a boat on water, a wagon on land, and trudged up mountains with a spiked cane. He divided the land into nine states, linked them with solid roads, dug waterways along the valley, dammed the marshes that had overflowed. Still the river could not be tamed. It pranced around, shattering dikes. For eight years Yu lived among the laborers and never returned home although three times he passed his hovel and heard his children cry. He realized the river was a divine animal that would run tempestuous if bridled, so he opened three mountains for a new channel and widened waterways to guide the water toward the ocean. The river was calmed. We had land to sow and populate— villages emerged, then towns, then cities, then a country. Yu's deeds made him our king. Thus began our first dynasty. A Burial We were pulling a bundle packed with green branches and earth, twenty feet across and a hundred feet long. We were to lodge it in place to plug the holes burrowed by foxes and badgers. Singing in one voice, we sank the bundle along the dike. Immediately two boats loaded with rocks were scuttled against the bundle. As the second boat was going down it dragged Ah Shan into the water, his legs caught by the gunnel. He yelled, "Oh Mama, help! Get me out, brothers!" We tried but couldn't pull him out. Not daring to give the river time, seven hundred men rushed over to drop sacks of earth and rocks. So—we buried him alive. For days his voice squeaked under our soles. The dike was saved. Now miles of stones cloak its surface, but every April Ah Shan's mother throws dumplings into the river and begs the fish not to eat her son. Closing a Breach Each spring our Emperor sent troops to repair the breach at Gourd Bend. Eight provinces had no harvest for years, famine and plague thinning our land, flooded or cracked by droughts. Wolves fattened on corpses in the plain. Again he arrived in October to offer a sacrifice on the bank. He ordered all the Royal Guards, even the generals, to join the work—to carry wood, straw, earth and rocks. We all took part, sweating as though soaked in rain. Still the water went on surging, no way for us to close the gap. Our Emperor was about to drop into the river bleating lambs, a jade camel, two plump girls, a bushel of gold coins, a pair of bronze quadripots— so heartbroken he broke into song: "Heavens, how can we piece together the smashed Gourd? So many provinces becoming ocean. This water is drowning my people. How can we drain it? We have removed several hills, where can we get more earth? We have cut all the nearby woods, how can we find more timber? Winter's coming, everywhere fish are swimming with ease, but we men have to toil like beasts of burden, without hope. Mother River, have pity on us, please return to your old course. Now enjoy these small gifts. We shall give you more." Our tears falling into the torrents, we too chanted the song. The river seemed to relent remaining calm for a month. That was how we relocked the dam and topped it with the Pity Pagoda. A Change The river gives no warning. We were flailing sorghum that afternoon when a man shouted from the road, "The river's coming. Run for your lives!" We scrambled up the hill while the head of the water thundered past tossing tables, bridges, roofs, carriages, bodies, livestock. A buffalo was mooing in the flood, stuck to an elm with a plow, then the animal disappeared in the waves which were spinning pots, wheels, pitchers, cauldrons, barrels, bins. Around us people were howling, their children had drowned and their parents vanished. Some prayed to heaven that the river would spare their ancestors' graves; some sat on the grass trembling, assuring one another they were lucky to be alive. We thought the water would withdraw soon. Week after week we waited and paddled around to look for food. Yesterday word came that the river had shifted its course and would keep our fields for good. A Weapon Under this lake (so sandy that fish jump out to breathe) once a town was thriving, inhabited by several peoples- Huns, Jurchens, Tobas, Hans, Mongols. They basked in the frontier's freedom and ignored the new dynasty. The governor ordered its citizens to surrender, but they refused. They strangled the envoy, roasted oxen and sheep, drained wineskins, and poisoned scimitars, arrows, spears. One night the dam that stood above the town was opened. Torrents swept their homes down the lowland. Within half an hour the town disappeared. A few men clung to treetops calling to the army boats for rescue— One by one we put them to the ax. A Temple In the morning sun, the bell lingers, incense smoke surrounding the statues and the bronze tablets that record royal visits. Monks are reciting sutras beyond the mossy wall. How many temples once stood here before this one? All were built for the same purpose— to appease the river and lock in the head of floods. Through two thousand years hundreds of herds of goats walked down that coiled path, each carrying a pair of glazed tiles for the temples' roofs, golden or green, all kept under the sandy soil now. The goats were sacrificed to the gods, then eaten by stonecutters, carpenters, masons, sculptors. When a temple was raised the Emperor would come to inscribe its name, plant an evergreen tree, promote thousands of officials. So the construction continues. We are told the river can be sated even though every few decades here it swallows a temple. A Drought What has become of the river so determined to be our woe? Last fall it flooded like an ocean and took away our harvest, but now in midsummer it yields no water. For a whole month its stream has been gone; carts can cross the main channel, in which sand has buried fish, turtles, broken buckets. Our fields are baked, barren and gray. Water, water, where can we get water for people, animals, seeds? We're all starving, but have no place to beg for food. Our land is dying of thirst: elms and willows stripped of bark, grass gone, clouds dry like rock, even mountains seem withered. Some parents have eaten their children; fresh graves are opened for the flesh on the bones; a dipper of cash cannot even buy a dipper of grain; peasants are rising up everywhere— still the river withholds its water. Oh if only a July flood would come! although most sheepskin boats have become food. Poetry. Asian American Studies. New poems by the author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award. Ha Jin's writing has been called luminous and eloquent by The New York Times Book Review, extraordinary by the Chicago Sun-Times and achingly beautiful by the Los Angeles Times. Asianweek calls him a master of lyric. New poems by the author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award. Ha Jin's writing has been called luminous and eloquent by The New York Times Book Review, extraordinary by the Chicago Sun-Times and achingly beautiful by the Los Angeles Times. Asianweek calls him a master of lyric. -- Amazon.com