Beyond life and death, continue to search: the first anniversary of the death of Wanma Tseden

Interface News

2024-05-08 11:04Posted on the official account of Beijing Jiemian News

Interface News Reporter | Dong Ziqi

Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon

"Good news to the official, food for parents, truth for the master."

"A horse that has escaped the wild can be caught, but it cannot be taken back when it is spoken."

These proverbs are from the Ruyi Tales Anthology, a collection of Tibetan stories compiled by Wanma Tseden.

It has been a year since the death of director and writer Wanma Tsedan. When people talk about Vanma Tseden, one of the key words is "Tibet". Vanma Tseden has his own understanding of Tibet: Tibetans do not live in mythology as people think, they have always lived as realistically, but readers – especially those in the Chinese-speaking world – do not understand it.

With the recent publication of his posthumous work The Fragrance of Pine Wood and the compilation of Ruyi Stories, readers may be able to hear more about the Tibetan world through these two works.

"The Fragrance of Pine Wood" tells the story of a troublesome incident encountered by "me" who works in a government unit: a herdsman issues a death certificate for a fellow villager who died unexpectedly, but the deceased has no ID card or household registration book. After some questioning, "I" remembered that I had known the deceased. The body needs to be cremated immediately, and there are two options for how to cremate: six hundred dollars with diesel and one thousand dollars with pine wood. "I" chose pine cremation for the deceased. The administrator also agrees that the smell of diesel is too strong, and the smell of pine is better.

"I" put a pine wood under my nose and smelled the faint fragrance of pine wood that had not yet dried in the solidified, cold air. The fragrance of pine wood is the aroma of the wood used to burn the corpse. At this point, the story rises from the ordinary conflict between the cadres and the villagers to a more transcendent level. "I" and the villagers who reported scattered the ashes onto a hill full of garbage, and the ashes stuck to our hands, faces, and hair, and we couldn't stop coughing.

The Fragrance of Pine

Written by Wanma Tsedan, edited by Jiumi Chengli

Dafang CITIC Publishing 2024

"The Fragrance of Pine Wood" is a story of recognizing and collecting corpses, revealing the vagaries of life. Dorje (the deceased) had better grades than me, and now "I" has become a "state cadre", first a gangster and then a "nameless male corpse". The same theme of change is also present in Vanma Tseden's previous work, Hard Candy of Fruits. A mother who wanted her son to be with her, only to find that she had no control over their fate: the first son entered the city, and the second son was said to be the "reincarnation of a living Buddha". Watching them move away from her, she suddenly remembered that she had met a living Buddha when she was a teenager. The Living Buddha gave her a handful of fruit hard candy because she was different from other girls and had an important mission. At the end of her life, she still wanted to taste this hard candy, and when the children asked what it tasted like, she said, it was a faint sour and bitter at first, and slowly turned into a faint sweetness.

The theme of body change and transcendence of life and death is also reflected in another posthumous work of Wanma Tseden, "Ruyi Story Collection". The whole of "Ruyi Story Collection" is connected by the corpse bearer Desang Juebu carrying the Ruyi Bao corpse on the road. The corpse of the wishful treasure is in the tomb of the cold forest, full of treasures, which can eliminate sins in the world and bring gold and silver wealth. After the corpse bearer carries the wishful treasure corpse, the treasure corpse constantly tells the story to the corpse bearer, and once the story provokes the corpse bearer to praise it, the treasure corpse can escape back to the cold forest. The treasure corpse has told the story of the prince of the bird's clothes, the pig's head hexagram master, the soul migration spell, and the horse of the mulberry smoke. Among them, soul migration spells can exchange the souls of humans and animals, and the souls of people can be attached to dead animals and migrated to other creatures. "Mulberry Smoke Horse" comes from the Tibetan sacrificial ritual "Simmering Mulberry", which is to use cypress branches to light smoke, add mulberry materials such as tsamba, chant sutras, and pray for blessings. In the story, a painter tricked the king into saying that a mortal could ascend to heaven on a smoky horse, only to be burned to ashes in a raging fire. 

Wanma Tseden (Image source: Douban)

Whether it is the creation of Wanma Tseden or the translation of Tibetan legends, it is not difficult for the reader to perceive the intimate and ironic attitude towards mystical and ancient powers. Stories that have been passed down from generation to generation are nested in contemporary contexts, which explains why the people in the stories are always on the lookout, looking for legendary figures and identifying their own place.

This is the case with the novel "In Search of Zhimei Genden": "Zhimei Genden" is one of the eight major Tibetan operas, and Jigme Genden is a prince of ancient India. In the story, the group is looking for a suitable actor to play Jimi Genden, and they find villagers with children in their arms, young actors from the county theater troupe, karbet rockers in fancy costumes, and male students who have studied at a normal university.

"The Story Is Only Half Told" is also about searching and loss. "I" work in an official folk literature collation agency, responsible for rescuing, sorting out and publishing some folk literature works that are about to disappear. After completing the routine work, "I" finally had the opportunity to go to the village to collect stories, the old man was seriously ill, and the story was not finished. The old man's storytelling skill lies in selling guanzi, and when he tells it, he is very serious, like a divine artist who raps "The Legend of King Gesar", and enters a state of complete self-forgetfulness. Before the story of a strange farming story was told, the old man died suddenly, leaving an unfinished story in the world.

View original image 134K

• 

•