Introduction

Sanmao (1943–1991)

Her birth name was Chen Maoping. Since she could not learn to write the character mao, she renamed herself Chen Ping.

At thirteen, she ran away to Xiaoliuqiu to have fun; in middle school, she skipped class to read miscellaneous books among the graves.

Travel and reading were the two brightest stars in her life, entwined with both her greatest happiness and her deepest pain.

She saw a photograph of the Sahara Desert and felt a homesickness from a previous life, so she decided to move there. José, who had long been in love with her, followed without a second thought.

I first encountered Sanmao while browsing a bookstore in high school. Among a stack of Keigo Higashino books, I found Meteor Shower. It was a paperback mixed into a pile of hardcovers, conspicuous in its own way, and I liked the cover and its colors.

After I bought it, I found that it recorded Sanmao’s speeches and interviews. The speeches made me think: this person is so strange—much stranger than I am—but also so interesting.

Sahara Stories was the second book. During that period, I read only Sanmao, and she later became the first author whose complete works I finished.

Sahara Stories is also the first book I often recommend to people who do not usually read physical books: my mother, my grandfather, and countless classmates. Very few of them finish it. I do not understand whether they simply do not get Sanmao’s particular kind of strangeness, or whether I am strange too. But through this book, I found a friend with whom I could communicate without words.

A Restaurant in the Desert

The first course was “vermicelli cooked in chicken soup.” José took a sip and asked, “Eh, what is this? Fine Chinese noodles?”

“Your mother-in-law sent you fine noodles all the way from China? No.”

“Then what is it? Give me some more—it is delicious.”

I lifted one strand with my chopsticks. “This is called rain.”

“Rain?” He froze.

“This is the first rain of spring. It falls on the high mountains and freezes strand by strand. Mountain people bundle it up, carry it down, and sell it for rice wine. It is not easy to get.”

After that, he often ate “spring rain,” and to this day he does not know what it is made from. Sometimes I think José was rather silly, and that makes me a little sad.

Sanmao was exceptionally good at Chinese and exceptionally bad at mathematics. Her skill with language was not ordinarily good, and neither was her weakness in math. She was the kind of writer whose essay could make a teacher cry; she wrote so well that I would not feel it excessive to copy out a whole piece.

A Record of Marriage

“Sorry to tell you at the last minute. We did not know in advance that we would be getting married tomorrow. Please forgive us—” José’s telegram was as long as a letter.

As for me, I used my father’s registered telegram account and wrote: “Sanmao marries tomorrow.” Only a few words.

It seems Chinese people always sent telegrams that briefly. I had seen notices of bereavement in old books and films too: “Father critically ill. Return at once,” and so on.

“I want to take you to a movie. Tomorrow, you will not be my girlfriend anymore.”

So we ran to the only fifth-rate desert cinema and watched the excellent Zorba the Greek, as a farewell to our single days.

I copied out an unusual amount today because I think these two pieces introduce Sanmao and José very well.

The last couple I found this interesting were Shen Fu and Chen Yun in Six Records of a Floating Life, but theirs was a separation by death.

Sanmao’s writing offers readers a pair of eyes. It seems to open another side of the world: full of life, vitality, and humor. Put another way, if I were in that setting, I would see inconvenience and hardship. But Sanmao could show readers the genuinely interesting parts through a magical yet natural style.

I should learn from her too, whether in style or in that way of observing.

The Child Bride

In a Sahrawi town around the 1970s or 1980s, only men could become doctors. Unmarried women with illnesses involving intimate parts of their bodies would rather die than let a male doctor examine them.

Many women were married at around ten years old; some even at eight.

When I reached this part, I suddenly felt something. The world is so large, and perhaps I will never live for a while in a town in the Sahara Desert. The differences between countries are so vast too; perhaps I cannot experience them one by one.

It is the same across time. I cannot imagine what the night markets of Chang’an in the Tang dynasty were like, or what it was like when a princess went on an outing.

There is so much I cannot reach: because of distance, because of time. Yet I cannot stop that small curiosity, that small longing.

And words have shown me so much: Kawabata’s Kyoto and snow country, Mishima’s Song Island, the Athens Haruki Murakami traveled through, Sanmao’s Sahara.

In animation, the capital of the State of Yuanwu in A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality fulfilled a little of my imagined Chang’an. In comics, Li Changge is my princess.

These are undoubtedly fictional, but the small fragments of truth I catch within fiction move me. I am grateful that novels exist in this world, and grateful for those animated works.