A Millennial Tale of Souls Living, Deceased, and Eternal

Reviewed by Cynthia Ning, associate director emerita, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Xue Mo. Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia. Translated by Fan Pen Li Chen, State University of New York Press, 2023. 687 pp.

Original work: 雪漠，《西夏咒》。Encyclopedia of China Publishing House/Xuemo Library Research Center, 2017. 560 pp.

Xue Mo is the pen-name of the acclaimed novelist and spiritual leader CHEN Kaihong, a native of Liangzhou City, Gansu Province, in Northwestern China. The translated version under review here is by Prof. Fan Pen Li Chen of the University of Albany, State University of New York. It is a monumental rendering of a "complex novel (that) embraces history, literature, religion (Tantric Buddhist lore, local customs and beliefs), and is infused with local colloquial expressions and (descriptions of) religious practices..." (from the Translator's Introduction, p. ix)

Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia(hereafter Curses), at 560 pages in the original Chinese and almost 700 pages in translation, is a sprawling novel propelled by dense, evocative, descriptive prose, featuring a panoply of characters whose stories are interwoven into a fantastical, non-linear plot with a timeline spanning over 1,000 years. The work is a deep historical, imagined, mythological and spiritual exploration of a delimited space around Liangzhou (current day Wuwei) in the Hexi Corridor, squeezed between the Tibetan and Mongolian Plateaus. In this region the lost Kingdom of Xixia arose in the early 11th century and crumbled in 1227 during the Mongol invasion of China. The Xixia population, mostly Tangut in origin, was absorbed into the Mongol and Chinese empires that followed. In Curses, the narrative about the fates of the denizens of the region is tragedy recounted with a comic, irreverent spirit. The resulting effect is reminiscent of a classical Chinese multi-scenic handscroll painting unfurling at great length, revealing incrementally the drama of events and tableaux that combine to form a multifaceted whole, with commentary that derives from an understanding of China's past and recent history, and of world events.

Again, from the Translator's Introduction (p. x): "Curses...uses the discovery of "lost" manuscripts as a framing technique for presenting historical events and tales of the avatars of a local Tantric Buddhist goddess (Diamond Maiden Dakini; Vajrayogini; Snow Feather), a tutelary deity (Ajia), and a monk (Jasper), as well as people related to them, through different time(s) and realms."

The opening chapter sets the stage: Leave Chang'an, the capital city of China's ancient dynasties including the Han and Tang, continue westward along the Silk Road and you will find the city of Liangzhou in the Qilian Mountain Range. Just outside the city is a mountain resembling a Sleeping Buddha, and within this mountain is the Diamond Maiden Cave, a grotto dedicated to the leader of the "millions and millions of Dakini goddesses" of Tantric Buddhism, deities who are able to travel freely through the air (空行母) (p. 2-3). Through many historic periods, ritual offerings were habitually made in this cave. So much is real—the book offers photographs of Liangzhou (Wuwei) and the entrance to the Diamond Maiden Cave, taken by the author.

As the narrative begins, the fictional narrator, who, like the author, is a published scholar of Tantric Buddhism and a native of Liangzhou, comes to the cave to make an offering.  In the aftermath of a rockfall, he discovers a cache of eight manuscripts crudely bound together, collectively titled Curses of Xixia西夏咒. The texts are written on sheepskin parchment, largely in Chinese with a smattering of Xixia terms, and labeled Annotated Collection of Nightmares, Crazy Ramblings of Ajia, Tale of the Goddess, Family Instructions of Diamond Clan, True Records of the Curses, Historical Mirror of Forgotten Events, and Affairs of the Black Tatars. The narrator elucidates: "(They) recorded events in a village named Diamond Clan, with emphasis on the spiritual journeys of a monk, or madman, named Jasper and a woman named Snow Feather...I spent several years interpreting, clarifying, researching and footnoting the seemingly confusing and antiquated language in order to present them to my readers in a style akin to a vernacular novel" (p. 5).

This Diamond Clan is enigmatic; it could have already existed in Liangzhou during the Xixia period or could have originated much later, maybe even during the Republican Period post-1911. Since the provenance of the manuscripts cannot be ascertained, the narrator points out that "(such) ambiguity enables this book to represent massive chaos." (p. 8)

From the chaos, chunks of narrative coalesce (like scenes in long handscroll). The author helpfully provides labels for successive segments, which are further grouped into a total of 39 chapters and a postface.

Some striking stories include the following.

Ajia is a guardian deity of Liangzhou, born perhaps during the time of the Xixia. He may have been a Buddhist monk who broke his vows, but eventually cultivated spiritual techniques well enough to ascend to the ranks of tutelary deity. Many characters named Ajia appear in the manuscripts and seem to derive from disparate time periods. Eventually someone named Ajia comes to the narrator and becomes his primary teller of tales (p. 22).

The times were hideous. Under the Xixia, heavily armored cavalry called "Iron Hawks" by the local population slaughtered so many people with swords and arrows that the "city moat overflowed with blood" (p. 25). Following the Iron Hawks came the marauding troops of the Mongols (1279–1368), with the bloodletting eventually blending into the horrors of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). War and strife are the "eternal curse of mankind" (p. 25) with concomitant times of famine. "Hunger was one of the nightmares of history" (p. 35).

Two key characters in the story are Jasper, a monk of Liangzhou who was able to communicate with spirits, and Snow Feather, also called the Diamond Maiden. Their stories are told in parallel throughout the first portion of the novel and intersect and intertwine in the middle.

The Tale of the Goddess focuses on Snow Feather, an incarnation of the Wisdom Dakini Goddess Niguma of India. The elders of Liangzhou tell many legends about her. She was beautiful and had breathtaking martial arts skills. With these she was able to steal provisions for her family in times of famine and gained the reputation of a "flying thief"—one who could perform incredible feats of thievery, darting between rooftops as lightly as a feather, and get away without being caught. 

As for Jasper, as he returns to Liangzhou from a journey of self-discovery, he "walked toward Diamond Maiden Cave. His path was strewn with corpses—mostly with thin legs, bulging bellies and covered with green-headed flies the size of jujubes. The flies hummed and buzzed, like the German planes when they would later bomb London. They clamored frantically, licking the fluids of the corpses with outstretched tongues and sowing their seeds into the flowing, sticky juices. The sun also became crazed, pouring its flames onto the corpses with abandon. Now and then, the bellow of one of the corpses exploded with an earth-shaking loud bang. The sky was strewn with hungry ghosts. Those who died such untimely deaths wailed throughout the nights" (pp. 36-37).

As he enters Diamond Clan, Jasper encounters Barbarian Hag, a nightmarish old woman who hangs about the entrance, longing for the return of her only son, who had left decades earlier with a camel caravan. The village is imbued with the stench of death, and Barbarian Hag lures Jasper into a cellar with the promise of a drink of water. There she knocks him out with a blow to the head. When he comes to, he sees Barbarian Hag advancing unsteadily toward him with a knife. "Jasper grabbed her wrist, and Barbarian Hag let out an eerie screech. A rotten stench emanated from her mouth. Her toothless gums bulged from swelling. Jasper found out later that she must have accumulated too much heat from eating too much human flesh" (p. 40).

Jasper escapes, and Barbarian Hag eventually faces a horrific karma for how she has chosen to survive.

As for Snow Feather, she completes Buddhist practices and evolves from a flying thief to a Dakini goddess. But the times are as harsh for her as for all around her. "The incredible tribulations she endured, comparable to the ordeals endured by Christ, later endowed her with an aura of holiness" (p. 48). She works feverishly to protect her aging mother, but both are eventually caught, beaten, and tortured. Snow Feather attempts to escape into the mountains with her mother on her back. They survive for a period, but eventually her mother is captured, and endures torture in one of the most sadistic segments of the novel.

The villagers of Diamond Clan punish women by having them "ride the wooden donkey." "The wooden donkey was, in fact, a single-wheeled cart. Instead of a seat, there's a round trunk resembling the back of a donkey. Upon the back of the "donkey" was affixed an upright wooden rod about five centimeters long that resembled a phallus. Whenever a lascivious or adulterous woman was discovered in the village, she would be stripped naked, trussed up tightly, and placed on the back of the "donkey" with the rod in her vagina. Someone would be ordered to push the cart and have it toss about on a particularly bumpy road" (p. 410). [Here the translator errs in rendering 五寸(five Chinese inches) as "five centimeters"—a Chinese inch is slightly longer than a U.S. customary inch, so the length of the phallus is approximately 6.5 inches.] Subsequent scenes of suffering include descriptions of the blood that covered the sides of the "donkey", but the author's satirical irreverence is demonstrated in the following: The craftsman who crafted the upright rods "collected wood from fruit trees and fashioned many strangely shaped rods, which he polished with leather-working implements. He then doused them with oil and buffed them with soft sheepskin until they were glossy black...He thought surely this would lessen the suffering of the women...He was castigated by (the people) instead. They said, "What were you trying to do? Do you call what you made punishment? You made them so well that all the women would want to use them!"... Many years later, (the craftsman) fashioned many lifelike dildos of different shapes and polished them until they were a hundred times smoother than the real thing, using his skills as an expert leather craftsman. His products were so popular that they were exported to Europe, America, and Southeast Asia, and created many millionaires" (p. 415).

Back to mimesis: the description of Snow Feather's old mother placed on the back of the wooden donkey is one of the most stomach-churning of the novel.

A subsequent description of the process of making ritual implements out of human skin, skull and leg bones, and the victims from whom these items are obtained named collectively as "leather", is equally challenging.

The narrative moves between despair and resignation to human depravity and suffering, and veneration for religious faith and striving, in particular through the character and purity of Snow Feather and Jasper. Perhaps the "curses" in the title of the novel might also rendered "ritual incantations." The narrative makes frequent mention of various spells, incantations and ritual offerings the main characters discover, memorize and make use of to try to overcome obstacles in their chaotic environment.

Eventually they escape together into the mountains and finally into the Diamond Maiden Cave. Their passage reflects the quest for the Buddhist paradise of the soul—for non-attachment and permanence through enlightenment. They are aided by bears and a python and a bull, among others. The natural world around them is alive and anthropomorphic: Grandpa Sun rises and sets, and two mountains outside the village "were a husband and wife couple, and used to be of the same height. But the wife mountain had an affair with a person later, and had her legs broken by her husband; so she ended up shorter" (p. 453).

Throughout the story, the narrator seems to be expressing deep sympathy for the wronged souls of history, those who starved or were tortured, eaten, or killed, or even those driven to eating others through hunger, who appear and disappear through thousands of years. "You saw many men slicing your flesh. In fact, there was very little meat. You felt sorry that you had so little meat that they couldn't eat their fill...You heard the sound of smacking. You wished you could have video-recorded the scene for future readers lest they accuse Xue Mo of concocting a cock-and-bull tale" (p. 479). Evidently, comedic remove helps to alleviate the grimness of the narrative.

The author Xue Mo expresses sympathy for his readers—those whopersevere in slogging through his fantastical, monumental story. He calls them "readers with karmic affinity (for the subject)" (p. 598). In return, they will likely find him a lively, thoughtful, creative, shocking and profoundly moving conversationalist.

Xue Mo "spent ten years "shut-in" ([undergoing] voluntary confinement with a rigorous regime of meditation), (as a result of which) the spiritual enlightenment he...attained purportedly enabled him to enter and engage with different realms of reality. Indeed, both (the) fantastic and mimetic realms (of the novel) are depicted with such graphic minutiae that it is as if he actually visited these places" (translator's introduction; pp. ix-x).

As for the translator Prof. Fan Pen Li Chen, she traveled first to Dongguan, Guangdong, to meet with Xue Mo at his then residence to discuss her understanding of Curses with him in person, and then to Liangzhou (present-day Wuwei) in Gansu, where Xue Mo's son and spiritual followers showed her some of the sites mentioned in the novel.

The resultant work is inspirational for those "with karmic affinity."

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