ACOUSTIC METADATA

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• TIMESTAMP: Winter, 1970

• LOCATION: Village near Tanzhe Temple, Beijing Mountains

• ACOUSTIC PROFILE: Pa-chi (Hoe impact), Rust-flavored vibrations

• KINSHIP: Diptera (Flies), Cypress woody scent

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That viscous voice drifted over—perfectly timed as my father was being hauled away by soldiers, “Come here, boy. Let Grandma scratch your back.”

 

Those pale, aged hands fumbled with her cloth buttons, emitting a frequency mixed with vanishing cream and a stale, bodily odor. Between her neatly combed hair, I saw hairpins just like the one I would find decades later.

 

I let her unnaturally slick fingers slide down my neck. The sound was lighter than an insect crawling over a leaf. A guttural purr followed—a female primal hunger. “The Chief’s seed... it really is different.” She exhaled puffs of heat laced with a rotting sweetness. Just as I felt ready to explode, she would abruptly shift her weight to embroider, time congealing under her spectacles.

 

My father never came home. I was shoved into a drafty Jeep and driven to a village near Tanzhe Temple. I was handed over to men undergoing "re-education." With my sunken eyes and snow-white curls, I was a doll in a world of stone—a target for malice.

 

Twelve of us shared a single earthen bed (Kang). I stayed in the corner, ears covered, but I was an obstacle at mealtimes. I was beaten. Once, while raiding a swallow’s nest, a local swung a hoe at me. Pa-chi. I’ve forgotten the pain, but never that sound: the wet impact of steel against flesh.

 

I never cried. I hated humans. I fled to the ravines to talk to insects and squirrels. The cypresses kept me company, their cold, pungent woody scent becoming my own. In the village, I preferred to sleep in the pigsty. I let a small fly land on my face, feeling a stinking sense of kinship.

 

When the winter winds howled, my ears would itch. I would press my head against the frozen earth, letting the viscous, rust-flavored vibrations from deep underground fill my ear canals. In the sky, a red star pulsed. I wanted to fly toward it.