Chapter 44 Traveling Notes

This name really surprised me. I knew that there were many local gods in the South China Sea, with about one temple in almost every village. And after we passed through Wenchang, many of the gods in the local temples couldn’t even be found on the list of deities, nor could we figure out what their origins were. Some were ancestral gods while others were really only local and unique.

I couldn’t find this name anywhere either. I asked the Zhang woman why this might be the case, but she couldn’t tell me. I couldn’t help but sigh with emotion—it seemed that the Zhang family could live like ordinary people if they could callously sever their memories.

When Fatty asked her if she felt like she was really strong or in particularly good health, she appeared confused and said that nothing stuck out other than being really good at the high jump when she was a child.

Compared to the Mutou god, she had a much deeper understanding of the other gods in the temple, and introduced them to us one by one. These various gods all had some kind of relationship with each other. It seemed that over the long, lonely years, the temple caretaker connected the folk tales one by one, weaving a complete legendary life for the Mutou god.

She also told us that as a temple caretaker, it was the biggest highlight of her life whenever someone passed by the temple and had a few cups of tea she prepared. But our late-night visit made the whole temple seem livelier, which made her think that we must be more than just simple strangers. I didn’t know why, but she kept thanking us for coming today.

After arriving here, it seemed as if everything took on a different meaning, whether it was our leisurely walk or her choice to seclude herself from the world, but I couldn’t tell what meaning our visit gave to this ancient temple.

As we drank a lot of tea that night, I couldn’t help but think that this woman wouldn’t change in any way. After we left, she would probably still sleep peacefully. It was enviably quiet here, so the quality of sleep must be very good.

When we left, she walked us all the way to the street lamp by the entrance and stood there smiling as we walked away. I thought she would watch until we reached the end of the road, but we only took two or three steps before she turned and headed back, leaving only an empty space under the street lamp.

The tea made me feel hot and dry all over. When passing by the nearby village, we saw some kids playing ball so Fatty and I went to join them for a while. Poker-Face didn’t participate and just leaned against a nearby wall and watched us. A slogan from the local government was printed on the wall: Burn the fields in the morning, get detained in the afternoon.⁽¹⁾

After playing ball, the kids invited us to go fishing in the sea together.

This was something new for us, so we followed them to the part of the beach where the reefs were. But when we got there, I found that this was different from the kind of sea fishing I had seen on the internet. The beach was very barren, and there wasn’t much in the reefs. The kids swam into the sea and pulled up a rope that was connected to a fishing net. The net must have been tossed in a very deep place because it took us three hours to pull it out of the water.

But when we finally pulled it out, we found that a lot of fish had been caught in it, especially hairtail and silvery pomfret.⁽²⁾ Everyone divided the haul up, but since we only helped a bit, each of us got three hairtails. After wrapping them in some grass, we carried them all the way back to the village.

The hairtails looked like unblemished silver satin when they were first caught, but then their color gradually changed to what we usually saw at the vegetable market. As we walked back to the village, we were followed by at least twenty wild cats of various colors.

They made all kinds of flattering noises—maybe people often fed them on that road—but Fatty cruelly refused them and even beat back several orange cats who rushed up and tried to steal the fish from us.

Back at Fatty’s friend’s place, we killed the fish first and then took showers. The sun was starting to rise by that time, but I didn’t feel tired at all. I went out onto the balcony to watch the sunrise and slowly fell asleep. With the sound of the waves filling my ears, even falling asleep was a very casual affair.

I could fall asleep at will without having to think about tomorrow or trying to foresee the future. When compared to the sweet sleep I usually got in Rain Village, sleeping here was a rare freedom.

I only slept for about six hours before I woke up, feeling wide awake, but I felt as if I had slept for twenty hours. At noon, I had a very simple meal of hairtail steamed in broth and deep-fried hairtail. Then we got in the truck again and, guided by Fatty’s friend, went to find the authentic Fei Kun Temple, which was the southernmost Fei Kun Temple in China. Instead of a wooden statue, it was supposed to have a real Fei Kun statue.

My plan was very simple: Along the way, we would pass a particularly good beach, so we were going to swim there. I heard that we could swim from there to a big reef that was further off shore.

The best time to swim was at dusk, so we decided to go to the temple first. As it turned out, this temple was actually quite famous. If there were too many people there, then the lines would move slow, so we needed to get there early and queue up.

I glanced at Poker-Face and asked him, “Can’t you get us an in or something?”

Poker-Face looked at me but didn’t respond.

The temple was located in an area where a small number of ethnic groups were gathered. There was also a unique rule where you had to change into local clothes when you traveled through the area. We rented a few sets, and then entered a village filled with betel nut trees. As we approached, I suddenly heard the sound of something falling on the truck’s roof.

I thought the truck had finally been hit by a coconut, but then a hairy paw suddenly came in through the window and scratched my face. Although it didn’t break the skin, it left three red marks that were extremely painful.

It turned out to be a big monkey.

Fatty immediately stopped the truck and we all got out. The big monkey jumped into the back of the truck and started rummaging around. We had our beach stuff and snacks back there, so Fatty immediately rushed forward to drive it away. The big monkey had a very surprised expression on its face, as if to say, “What? You dare to resist?” Then it jumped on Fatty and tried to bite him.

The monkey’s canine teeth were very sharp so the attack was very strong, but what kind of person was Fatty? Without even stopping to think about whether the opponent was a protected animal or not, he picked up one of the lounge chairs we were planning to use at the beach and slapped the big monkey on the head with it.

The big monkey then grabbed the chair, resulting in a mini tug-of-war between the two sides. I took the opportunity to lift the food out of the truck bed and throw it to Poker-Face. When the monkey saw this, it released its hold on the chair and rushed right towards him. Not only did Poker-Face easily dodge, but he also flicked the monkey’s head while he was in mid-air.

It must have been very painful, because the monkey suddenly fell to the ground and took a long time to get up before it ran crookedly into the betel nut forest.

Fatty’s friend’s complexion wasn’t good as he walked up to us and said, “We’re screwed. The monkeys here have very bad tempers. This one will definitely come back for revenge.”

<Chapter 43><Table of Contents><Chapter 45>

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TN Notes:

(1) As I understand it, it’s a slogan meant to dissuade burning wheat because it causes smog. So if someone gets caught, they’ll get arrested.  

(2) Hairtail on the left, silvery pomfret on the right:

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Pic added 2/15/2023 (fan translation courtesy of me)