Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud Read online

  When I told my mother about my plan, she exploded. Why was I going alone to those God-forsaken places in search of a man who died more than a thousand years ago? I must be out of my mind. Was I unhappy living in England? What was it for anyway? But she knew she could not stop me. I told her I would not be away for eighteen years. Many of the places Xuanzang visited no longer exist, or at least no one knows where they are; some, like Afghanistan, I could not visit. I would go only to the key places that mattered to him personally, and were important for the history of Buddhism. I would be travelling for no more than a year.

  My little nephew Si Cong was also concerned. He had been completely gripped by yet another cartoon series of The Monkey King on television. It looked magnificent with the latest computer graphics and special effects. It was on every day at five o’clock when children came back from school. Would I have someone like the monkey to protect me? he asked me, while his eyes were fixed on the television. I said no. He quickly turned around. ‘What happens if you run into demons? They’re everywhere. Even the monkey can’t always beat them. You’ll be in big trouble.’ I told him the demons would not eat me because my flesh was not as tasty as the monk’s and it would not guarantee their longevity. He seemed relieved and went back to the magical world of The Monkey King.

  It set me thinking, watching with him and looking at the steep mountains clad with snow, the deep turbulent rivers, the sandstorms that swept away everything in their path. Soon I would have to encounter them myself, not in fiction but in real life. I would pass through dangerous and strife-torn places; I might be robbed, or put in situations beyond my control. Whatever might happen, I would try to face it. Xuanzang would be my model and my guide.

  TWO

  Three Monks at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

  IN AUGUST 1999 I took a late-afternoon train from Handan, my home town, to Xian, the capital of the early emperors for much of the first millennium. It was where Xuanzang began and ended his travels. I was conscious that I was starting the most important journey of my life. But for the other people in my hard-sleeper compartment, the first order of business was food. As soon as the train started moving, the man opposite me produced a big plastic bag and unwrapped the contents. An amazing banquet slowly appeared: roast chicken, sausages, pot noodles, pickled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and dried melon seeds, apples, pears, bananas and six cans of beer. The Chinese have suffered so much from starvation and famine that eating is rarely far from their minds. Everyone followed suit. Before long, they were sharing food, finding out each other’s names, where they were going, and why.

  Privacy is not a concept we understand in China. We have lived far too long on top of each other, as in this six-bunk compartment, off a narrow corridor without doors. Conversation reduces the tension and makes life tolerable, but it is not small talk; more like an interrogation. After ten years in England where you can choose to live and die without knowing your neighbours, I was uncomfortable with the intrusion. I took out a book about Xuanzang and tried to read, but that was no protection. A single woman travelling on her own makes her fellow-passengers curious. Whether for business or pleasure, the Chinese like to do it in groups. Xuanzang tried very hard to find companions, but in vain, owing to the emperor’s prohibition against travelling abroad. I had also asked several monks myself. They were over the moon; pilgrimage to the land of the Buddha was the dream of every Buddhist – they would even gain merit from it should they need it for their rebirth in the Western Paradise. And to follow in the footsteps of Master Xuanzang! He was a model for them. His indomitability was an inspiration for them in their struggle for enlightenment. Many of the sutras they read every day, their spiritual sustenance, were his translations. His selflessness in giving his life to spreading Buddhism, not seeking his own salvation, was the ideal of the Bodhisattva, and of all Chinese monks. And for me, to see their reactions, to hear their thoughts, to ponder their reflections and to ask them questions – I would have learned so much more and understood Xuanzang better. I was not so fortunate, oddly enough for the same reason as Xuanzang: Chinese monks were not allowed to go abroad, unless they were on an official mission.

  The men and women in my compartment quickly determined they were all going to Xian for business: the men were in engineering and the women in quality control. Then they turned to quizzing me, firing rapid questions like well-trained detectives. Who are you? Where are you going? Why? I told them I was following Xuanzang. They fell silent for a moment, then erupted into questions.

  ‘You mean you are really following that monk in The Monkey King, the one who went to India? Are you really going all that way?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why? Are you a Buddhist?’

  I had hardly finished answering him when the man sitting next to me put his hand on my forehead. I stiffened. ‘I want to see if you are running a fever,’ he said. His colleagues laughed and I relaxed.

  ‘If you really want to travel, why don’t you go to Europe, or America or Australia? I wouldn’t go to India if you paid me! It is so dirty, so poor, worse than China.’

  ‘If you want to write about Xuanzang, why don’t you talk to some academics in Xian and make it up? Do you really think all the scholars do such hard work? You must be joking.’

  They went on for some time, trying to dissuade me. After the lights were switched off the woman above me knocked on the edge of my bunk. ‘You really shouldn’t make this trip,’ she said. ‘It’s too dangerous. Why don’t you join our group and have a good time in Xian?’

  We arrived in Xian early next morning, by which point my companions seemed to have become used to the idea that I really was going on my journey. Perhaps they thought I was a bit crazy. The men all helped me with my luggage. I told them I could manage on my own. ‘Save your energy. You have a long way to go. You don’t have the Monkey King to help you. You must take care of yourself,’ they said, smiling and waving from the platform.

  Just outside the railway station stands the old city wall. I asked the taxi-driver to take me first alongside the wall to the main North Gate. I sat in the front seat, keen to see everything. The wall is weighty and ancient, towering high above the car, and made me feel that once inside it, I would be safe, but also in a place of mystery, full of the secrets of the past. Most of the wall is seven hundred years old, part of it even older, going back another six hundred years to Xuanzang’s time. No other large Chinese city has anything comparable. Beijing’s, for example, was completely destroyed on Mao’s orders, to make way for a new ring-road.

  The North Gate is vast, surmounted by a three-eaved tower. It was dark going through it; because of its dense traffic it took some minutes to emerge into the light, into the modern city. A wide boulevard leads to the Bell Tower at its centre. Every old Chinese city has one, or used to have one. From it the ancient city received its wake-up call at sunrise. It is an imposing sight, over a hundred feet high with its three flying rooftops and an arch at its base. But it was not what Xuanzang would have seen. Then, the imperial city stood within these walls, and extended well to the north, with all the palaces and buildings of government. He would have come here to ask for travel passes for his journey to India, but his monastery was beyond the southern wall, where the rest of the city lay.

  Even the commoners’ city was spacious and grand in those days. Wide avenues ran north to south, crossed by boulevards east and west, dividing the capital into geometrical wards, which bore propitious names: Lustrous Virtue, Tranquil Way, Eternal Peace. Xian, or Chang’an as it was called back then, was neither tranquil nor peaceful when the young Xuanzang arrived here in 625 AD. The new dynasty, the Tang, was founded at a great cost. Over twenty million people, two-thirds of the population, perished in the uprisings, famines and epidemics that followed. Xuanzang was deeply affected. He remembered how his old monastery had been razed to the ground, and when he was fleeing from it, skeletons were everywhere on the roads and deserted villages and devastated fields stretched for hundred
s of miles. Old people told him that no turmoil and destruction like it had happened since the First Emperor eight hundred years before. In Chang’an, people came to his monastery – each ward would have one – fervently praying for certainty, for the calamities to go away, and for the return to a peaceful life. Buddhism was supposed to save people from all this suffering. Why was it so rampant? Was there something wrong with the doctrines the Chinese believed? Were they the true teachings of the Buddha? As he said, he ‘desired to investigate thoroughly the meaning of the teachings of the holy ones, and to restore the lost doctrines and give people back the real faith’.

  Very little remains of the old Chang’an beyond the South Gate. The imposing avenues have shrunk, through the centuries, to narrow streets lined with restaurants, shops and government offices. One of them brought me to the Monastery of Great Benevolence, where the Big Wild Goose Pagoda stands. This is Xuanzang’s monastery, where he spent many years of his life. This was where I wanted to be in Xian, to learn as much as possible about him.

  It was much smaller than I expected, containing little more than the pagoda, a single shrine hall, and the monks’ quarters, surrounded by village houses and fields. Clouds of smoke wafted up from the altar in front of the main temple. Long queues of people were waiting to light candles and burn incense. The hypnotic sound of monks chanting sutras reached me from the loudspeakers in the temple shop. Busloads of tourists, foreign and Chinese, poured through the gate and rushed to get their pictures taken: this is Xian’s second most popular tourist attraction, after the famous Terracotta Army. The pagoda is what they come to see, and there is a good view of the city from the top. Xuanzang designed it himself in a graceful and slightly austere style, reminiscent of India.

  Sixty-four metres up, from the topmost of its imposing seven storeys, I could see the whole of Xian – low houses lining the street leading to the pagoda, streams of people and cars moving at a snail’s pace, high-rise buildings dwarfing the magnificent city wall, and vast stretches of fertile land to the south that have nourished the city for more than two thousand years. No wonder that after the pagoda was built in the seventh century, young men used to climb up here to celebrate when they had passed the imperial exam and joined the ruling class. They must have felt the world was at their feet and their ambition could soar into the sky. Even today, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is one of the tallest structures in Xian, dominating the scene – in fact it is the city’s symbol.

  I used to go to monasteries as a tourist myself, enjoying the quietness, the chanting and the old trees in the courtyards. I would look around, take a picture or two, and then go away, vaguely comforted. Now, having learned something of Grandmother’s faith and Xuanzang’s, I began to understand what it was to feel reverence for this place. There are three treasures of Buddhism: the Buddha; the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings; and the Sangha, the community of monks who make up the monastery. The monastery is the outward symbol of Buddhism. It tells the world a different way of life does exist – we crave love, fortune and fame; the monks and nuns live happily without them. As Grandmother used to say, it was the centre of our life. I had to try and find out what that means.

  From a row of traditional courtyards on the left, one or two monks appeared now and then and disappeared quickly back inside. That was where they ate, slept, prayed and meditated, and where they could not be disturbed. I decided to be bold, and the next time I saw one, I went up to him and greeted him. I asked him where the abbot’s office was. He pointed to one of the courtyards on the left. But the abbot was away, he told me and he asked if he could help me. I told him I wanted to find out more about the monastery and Xuanzang. ‘You definitely should go and talk to an old man in the village outside. His name is Mr Duan,’ he said. How would I find him? ‘No problem, if you ask for the ex-monk.’

  It was indeed very easy to find Duan’s house, barely a hundred yards from the monastery, down a small lane. Casual workers were squatting on the ground. They had just finished their lunch and were washing out their bowls in a bucket of grey water and emptying the bowls on to the hard-baked road. Dogs and chickens came up looking interested. Mothers were screaming at their children and shouting threats of punishment. It was just the kind of hectic scene which Duan must have become a monk to get away from. I asked an old lady who was busy chatting with her neighbour and she said Mr Duan was meditating. She was his wife. Did I mind waiting? Or could I come back in an hour?

  I asked her if she knew the monastery well. ‘My family has been living here for almost a hundred years,’ she said, ‘and I am married to one of its monks.’ We went off and sat on a bench. She pointed to the dusty square in front of the monastery and the fields in the distance. ‘All this area used to be the monastery’s land. We leased it from them and gave them grain as rent after the harvest. The monks were really kind – they let us use their mills for free and take water from their well. There weren’t many of them, only six or seven.’

  The land became the villagers’ in the Land Reform of 1950. Monasteries used to be among the biggest landowners in China and so were the first targets. Monks were told to give up their ‘parasitic’ life and work just like everyone else, growing what they ate and weaving what they wore. Mrs Duan found the turn of events puzzling. ‘Their job was to pray, meditate and perform ceremonies for the dead and the living. How could they know about growing soya beans?’ She shook her head. ‘We wanted to help them, but the village Party Secretary told us we were masters of the new China and shouldn’t allow ourselves to be exploited by them any more.’

  I asked Mrs Duan what happened to the monks. She said that her husband would know more about it. He should have finished his midday meditation. ‘Eight hours a day he does it. Three in the morning, two around now and three in the evening. He might just as well be in another world. But it’s what keeps him going,’ she sighed.

  Just then I saw a man walking slowly towards us from across the street. I told Mrs Duan her husband was coming. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Yes, that’s my old man.’ She turned back to me. ‘How did you know it was him? Have you seen him before or seen his picture?’ I didn’t know what to say, but I just knew it was him. He was thin, even stick-like. Behind a pair of dirty glasses were sunken eyes in a wizened face, and his straggling hair came down to his neck. He had on a threadbare blue Mao suit, faded from what must have been hundreds of washings, and an ancient pair of soldier’s shoes, which he wore without socks. He looked as if he were sleepwalking – perhaps he was still meditating. ‘Come on, hurry up!’ his wife shouted. ‘This lady wants to talk to you about Xuanzang and the monastery.’

  He ambled up to us murmuring, ‘I am a sinner. I am a sinner. What is there to talk about?’ As we walked back to their house, I asked him if he would tell me about his meditation.

  ‘He’s been doing it for thirty years,’ Mrs Duan said petulantly, pulling at Duan’s sleeve until he sat down next to her. ‘Nothing distracts him. Even if a bolt of lightning dropped on his head he still wouldn’t move.’

  ‘She’s exaggerating,’ Mr Duan said, looking at his wife fondly. ‘I am just a worldly man distracted by mundane thoughts. So you want to know about Xuanzang?’ He paused, then continued, his voice becoming more animated at the sound of the monk’s name. ‘Now there was a great man. He was above it all. When I worked in the monastery I used to walk around the pagoda whenever I had problems. But really, they were so trivial. Master Xuanzang was very brave to go on that journey, risking his life. He never gave up, he came back with the sutras. All I have to do is to sit and meditate in a comfortable room – I don’t call that difficult.’

  I told him I was surprised that he loved the monastery so much, yet he had given it up and returned to secular life.

  ‘It is a long story. You are too young to understand,’ Duan said, his voice suddenly sombre.

  After the Land Reform in 1950, the monasteries were left with very little land, barely enough for the monks to live on. Donations and fees for re
ligious rituals – a considerable proportion of the monastic income in the old days – were drying up. Monks were warned against ‘making a business out of superstition’. In a monastery in northeastern China they were forced to put up this poster:

  Do not think that through the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas you can obtain good fortune, cure disease or avoid disaster. No matter how big a donation you make, they cannot grant you such requests. Keep your good money for buying patriotic bonds and you can create infinite happiness for society.

  Hunger made many monks return to secular life. By 1958, nine years after the revolution, ninety per cent of Chinese monks and nuns had left their monasteries for the world outside, or had died of starvation. The abbot of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda was forced to leave the monastery and had to make a living selling coal from a handcart. Duan was an orphan and had nowhere to go, so he stayed on where he was, barely surviving on cornflour porridge and vegetable leaves.

  His old monastery was shut down in the 1960s and the government Religious Bureau assigned him to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. There were three other monks and also four cadres from the Xian Municipal Cultural Bureau, ostensibly to protect the pagoda but also to keep an eye on the monks. They forbade them to shave their heads, wear their robes, make offerings to the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or conduct the morning and evening services in the shrine hall. In fact the shrine hall could be used only for political study sessions or struggle meetings. They did allow the monks to say prayers in their own rooms, but not too loudly – that would disturb other people working in the monastery.

  Normal religious life was resumed, however, when there were foreign Buddhist delegations. Buddhism helped China to develop friendly foreign relations, especially with Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. The monks’ presence would show that the Communist Party, though not religious itself, respected religious freedom for its people. When there was an important visit, the cadres would collect monks from all over Xian to simulate the appearance of a functioning monastery. The monks were carefully rehearsed in the questions that might be asked.