ACOUSTIC METADATA

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• TIMESTAMP: Summer, 2022

• LOCATION: Yunnan Border / National Boundary Wire

• AUDIO DATA: Zi-la (Fabric tearing), Zi-liu (Body dragging), Hell-vibration hiss

• PHYSICAL STATUS: Thigh laceration, fine-worsted fabric breach

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly forty years later, the hairpin dropped at my feet by that Back Lakes crow has placed a definitive full stop at the end of Rowan’s dance.

 

I took refuge in a Yunnan border town. Under the cover of total darkness, a motorcycle carried me through checkpoints to the foot of a mountain that loomed like a wall of cold iron. I climbed a thousand meters, finally collapsing before the insurmountable barbed wire. I am no longer the boy who skipped along the mountain paths of western Beijing fifty years ago.

 

I sampled the whispers of the mountain guides grumbling about their meager cut. I reached into the dark and offered them my last 2,000 RMB. One guide couldn't suppress a dry heave—Kheh-kheh—a sound disturbingly similar to the old prostitute in Pocket Alley.

 

They hoisted me through a pre-cut hole in the wire. The steel barbs tore through my fine-worsted fabric and into the flesh of my thigh. Zi-la, zi-la. Thud. My shoulder was the first part of me to strike foreign soil.

 

"Move!" the villager hissed, his frequency vibrating from hell. They carried me like a log, dragging me down the mountain. Zi-liu, zi-liu. Several times we nearly slid into the silent abyss. My eardrums were saturated: the crawl of insects, the internal struggle of the guides' organs against their bones. There was no sound of "Great Power" controlling me, yet no sound of "freedom" either.