Chapter 1 Traveling Notes (Trail Reading)

Should we go out?

Fatty had been asking this question since the Chinese New Year, but it wasn’t until several months later that I started to think about it seriously.

The painting that had been sent here from Motuo was leaning against a wall in the annex.⁽¹⁾ It was a little out of place because of its size, but I hung it up anyway. The painting actually kept making me wonder if I should go back and travel around.

Had I ever looked back? Not really. The world was so big and I had been chasing Poker-face for most of my life. Plus, it was difficult for me to reminisce about what had happened in those places.

Many people I knew kept lots of photos that they treasured more than anything, but I never seemed to have this kind of habit ever since I was a child. I did have a few photos, but they didn’t turn out too good. Xilaimian’s customers, however, took a lot of photos of us and would sometimes develop the pictures and send them back to us. I pinned them all up in the annex’s living room. Without them, I wouldn’t have had so many group photos of the three of us.

The customers must have felt that there was something mysterious about us since they sneakily took pictures of us. I knew what they meant by this—the three of us were indeed different from ordinary people. We had been through so much that it almost seemed like we were haunted by countless ghosts and gods even if we were only sitting next to each other.

As a result, those photos were exceptionally good. In Fatty’s words, they were like the humanist photographs Europeans and Americans took of African tribes in the past.⁽²⁾

But these photos were all in Xilaimian so it was like I was able to forget the many painful memories of the past and let my own memory start from here.

Of course, there were some photos of Motuo because I had taken a camera with me as I was gathering information at that time.

When Fatty mentioned going out, it was obvious that he was talking about going to Motuo.

In fact, Motuo was a place to cleanse your soul, but it wasn’t a good place to take a vacation. If you didn’t have a particularly strong physique, your body may experience many adverse reactions while trying to cleanse your soul and relax your body and mind there.

Fatty didn’t mean for us to go back for a vacation but to go back and travel around. After all, we had never tried going back there. In fact, there were some places that we had been to once but could never revisit, including Xisha and Changbai Mountain’s three snow-capped mountains. But out of all those places, it was much easier to go to Motuo.

When Fatty broached the subject, I was already tempted to go.

But there was a lot going on and we had been busy preparing receptions that the villagers had requested. For some reason, we had been particularly busy this year so Fatty ended up dropping the subject.

When I saw the oil painting again, I remembered that Fatty had wanted to go traveling so I brought the subject up with him again.

Fatty sighed, “You finally remembered. My original plan was to go during the Chinese New Year since our restaurant was closed anyway, but now the tourist season is coming. We’ll have to close the restaurant if we go there.”

I hesitated again but soon made up my mind.

I was the kind of person who was hesitant at first but was able to keep pushing forward eventually.

“We leave in two days.”

“Are we going back to inherit Little Brother’s business there? Then we don’t have to run a restaurant anymore. When we come back to the village, we can level our place to the ground and build a temple on top of it. We’ll make a Zhang Qiling Bodhimaṇḍa.”⁽³⁾

“We’re going back to look at the snowy mountains. We aren’t doing anything else.”

Just go back and look around.

“Then we can travel around and have fun,” I said. I had never traveled with my friends without any specific purpose before.

“So no equipment?”

“Definitely no.”

“Don’t regret this.”

“Never.”

“How do we get there?”

“We drive.”

“Wow, you’re so decisive, Mr. Naïve. Did you drink some tonic to become this confident?”

Although it was a little far from here, it wouldn’t be difficult for us to travel. We could definitely make it there in a week. And now that the roads were all built, traveling around Motuo wasn’t as arduous as before.

“Maybe we should ask Little Brother if he wants to go?” Fatty asked.

I thought about it and agreed with him. Poker-face had gone to explore the mountains again but should be back tomorrow based on his usual pattern. We really did need to ask him if he wanted to go because traveling was only meaningful to mortals. For him, this kind of life was called wandering so I wasn’t sure if he was interested.

“If we start traveling, I’d like to go back to Banai,” Fatty suddenly said.

“Ok. We’ll go there after Motuo,” I replied. The image of snowy mountains appeared in my mind like a picture scroll unfurling, the dry and icy air rising up from the depths of my memory.

I didn’t know why, but there was a sense of excitement in my heart. That same indescribable feeling washed over me just like it did the last time I went there.

That was the place where I started walking into the darkest period of my life.

You can look back now, Wu Xie.⁽⁴⁾

<Notes in Rain Village Part 2 Chapter 29><Table of Contents><Chapter 2> 

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TN Notes:

(1) FYI, this is the house they built.

(2) Humanist photography is a French movement which appeared at the end of World War II. It focuses on photographing everyday human experiences by capturing personal anecdotes and spontaneous moments of daily life. You can think of it as “street photography” or “candid photography”. Info here and Wiki here.

(3) Bodhimaṇḍa, a term used in Buddhism meaning the “position of awakening”. Wiki Link.

(4) Because I want you to cry with me, I’d like to remind you that Pan Zi told Wu Xie to go forward boldly and not look back as he sacrificed himself to save Wu Xie in Banai (Vol 8, Chapter 62). Now Wu Xie is able to look back.

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Translated by: Tiffany X
Edited by: merebear226

Pic added 8/26/2023 (fan translation courtesy of me and Tiffany).