21st Century Chinese Poetry

Ordinarily it's the fortune tellers who are eager to engage.
One of them staked out the underpass to the train station.
He said, “oh, come, wait, look at your face, let me tell you about...”
Tell her about what? Fate? Money, love, luck, career, health?
Was the “telling” meant to map an escape route from misfortunes,
from one’s demons, the decisions made and not made?
That particular afternoon the fortune teller pointed out a few milestones,
fat years and lean years, some past, some still to come.
“Oh, but that was the year my daughter was born.”
“It had nothing to do with your daughter,” he replied.
They say fortune-tellers are masters of statistics,
using the same method as facial recognition, but leaning more on intuition.
That afternoon, when she sat before the monk, south of eastern Mongolia's grassland,
under the white and vermillion Tibetan-Buddhist monastery,
it felt less tentative than science.
Her travel companion was displeased, muttering
words such as scam, fools, weak-minded, and so on —
to the daughter of an impoverished postwar soldier,
every expense had to have a tangible purpose,
had to fit in with logic.
Towards the end of the day, they took the bus to return to the city
— so slow-moving was the bus that they wondered if the driver was paid by per passenger,
unwilling to miss the teenager dashing out from the alley
in a glorious retro-metrosexual outfit,
or the grannie with a grocery bag in her saggy arm,
or the foreign trio in black Gore-Tex, map in hand, trying to plot their next move.

Written and Translated by Meifu Wang

與算命先生相對而坐

王美富

通常算命先生都是主動熱心的。
有一個還常常在火車站的地下通道等著。
那天他說：“哦，等等，快點，看你的臉型，啊，聽我說……”
要告訴她什麼？不就是命運？不就是錢財、愛情、運氣、事業和健康？
說是算命，確實就是宣傳能幫你擺脫厄運？
或是擺脫內心的掙扎，來到岔路口不得不做的抉擇（有的人喜歡一拖再拖）？
那天下午，算命先生為她指出幾個生命的關卡，
豐年，荒年，過去與未來。
“哦，可是，那是我女兒出生那一年。”
“這和你女兒沒什麼關係，” 他回答。
人們說算命先生其實是統計學大師，
用的方法與人工智慧的臉部辨識相似，但靠直覺多一點。
那天下午，在蒙古草原的東南一角，在一座朱白相間的藏傳佛寺高牆下面，
她與算命的僧侶相對而坐，
僧侶雖然是帶她摸著石頭過河，感覺比科學家更有自信。
她的旅伴非常不高興，哼哼唧唧地嘀咕著，
說什麼沒有文化迷信騙局傻瓜等等。
身為戰後士兵的女兒，從她的角度看，每筆開銷必須有實際用途，必須符合邏輯。
時近傍晚，她們一起搭車返回城市，
公車慢吞吞的走，以至於她們開始猜測司機的工資也許是按人計酬的。
因此他不想錯過那個從巷底衝出來的少年，穿著幾年前時髦過的絲質男裝，
還有那個手臂鬆垮的擰著購物袋的老奶奶，
還有三個老外，一身新款防風防水黑外套、抓著地圖，議論著下一段旅程。

AN IMPERFECT HOUSE

by Meifu Wang

Not all houses are perfect,
some come with ad-hoc apparatus,
for example a log ladder in a two-story cob home;
some are improvised sanctums, like an igloo;
some are relics, valued only for sentiments.
Once I stayed in a house
that had rigged a wired net to act as a lift.
I was terrified after just one ride,
shaken like a bluefin tuna hoisted over open sea
or an acrobat in a glass cage at the carnival.
Not all houses are castles,
not all manors come with a chapel for prayers,
but oftentimes there are children and animals around
that more than make up for
the house's imperfection.

Written and Translated by Meifu Wang

不完美的房子

王美富

並非所有的房子都是完美的，
有的只有簡單拼湊出來的裝置，
比如二樓土坯房裡一根瘦長的獨木梯，
就是老松樹或老杉樹的樹幹鋸出來的;
有些房子就是緊急避難所，比如愛斯基摩人的冰屋;
還有些房子看起來很破舊，像古代遺址，卻充滿回憶。
我去過的一戶人家，
他們用鐵籠子搭建出一個臨時升降梯。
我僅僅乘坐一次，就給嚇得不可言喻，
經歷了鮪魚被撈出海面吊在半空中的心悸，
也像馬戲團的雜技演員被高懸在玻璃球裡。
並非所有的房子都是城堡，
並非所有的莊園都有清淨的小教堂，
即使如此，他們周圍常會有孩子和小動物追逐玩耍，
一定能彌補房子的缺陷，
而且足足有餘。

WATER

by Meifu Wang

Once upon a time I saw a salt merchant sitting by her donkey cart.
She and her donkey had travelled far and waited long to enter the monastery,
but the monks’ prayers went on even longer.
By mid-morning the little monks’ clogs began to clatter behind the temple walls,
and soon the great gates opened.
The donkey finally unlocked her knees and entered the holy ground,
carrying life-saving salt, harvested from an inland sea
a few hills away.
The monastery sat on scrubland, hemmed in by bald mountains
south of the windblown Silk Road. A sleek airport was just been built
to funnel in modern visitors, offering perks like thirty free minutes on the phone.
I used one minute to call you to say goodbye.
Earlier that day, we had walked up a concrete bridge over the churning Yellow River.
At the top of its curve, you spoke of your mom and dad,
picturing them at their front door, eyes lifted, waiting for rain.
Their sod house stood north of the great Yellow River,
though your ancestors had chosen the desert as home, to elude the warlords.
Settlers everywhere tell their own stories of love for water.
There's the Fountain of Youth, the Eternal Spring, the Whispering Well, amongst others,
but of all men's intimacies with water, none is sweeter
than an oasis in the desert.