The following is translated by Abby Yin for she loves Sanmao and her stories. But the translation might lose the original charm to some extent, as Abby doesn’t have much time for professional translation. (づ╥﹏╥)づ But, please just bear with me and all I ask for is a little patience to read and enjoy the story.
About the author
Sanmao (三毛, meaning three hairs)’s original name was Chen Maoping (陈懋平）. Because she couldn’t write the character “懋(mao)”, she changed her name into Chen Ping (陈平）.
At the age of thirteen, she run away from home to visit the Little Ryukyu Island. During the junior middle school period, she often went to graveyard to read her books.
Travelling and reading were the two first-rate stars of her life, with the greatest happiness and sorrows closely intertwined.
She didn’t have a sense of number and refused to work for money. The original purpose for writing was to make her parents happy.
She saw a picture of Sahara Desert and immediately felt a strange nostalgia of previous life. She then decided to move to Sahara Desert and Hexi who loved her so much went with her without hesitation.
She then got married to Hexi in the desert and wrote many prose and novels ever since which became popular among countless readers. In her writing, she depicted the wildness and tenderness of the desert and her energetic married life so vividly that soon there was a Sanmao Craze which swept across the literature world of Taiwan and Hongkong all the way to that of mainland China and her writing style of “Romantic Vagrancy” became a literature phenomenon.
Later, the peaceful settlement faced a precipitous decline. Her love Hexi’s death devastated her and almost made her give up her own life too. Only after travelling in Central and South America did she start writing again. She tried writing plays, lyrics, which could all strike a chord with the audience.
In the end, just like when she was little, she escaped the world in her non-conformist way to somewhere no one knows, so she could wonder around uninhibitedly (she killed herself).
However, she still remains to be the most romantic, courageous, unconventional and undisguised soul to us. She is--
Forever Sanmao
A boy’s love story
Today I will tell you a love story, a story about a boy who passed away at the age of thirty, a story about this boy’s thirteen years’ love. That boy was my husband. His Spanish name was Jose. I gave him a Chinese name --“荷西(Hexi)” . I gave him this name simply because it’s easy to write. Had you known him, you would agree that he should have been renamed as “和曦(Hexi)”, “和(He)” as in “和祥(Hexiang, meaning temperate ), “曦(Xi)” as in “晨曦(chen xi, meaning the morning sun), for that’s who he was. As he told me that the “曦(xi)” character was too difficult for him to write, I taught him to write “荷西(Hexi)” instead --which came unintended to my mind.
Such a handsome boy!
When I met Hexi, he didn’t even reach eighteen. It was a Christmas night and I was at my friend’s house. Hexi happened to be there too, wishing my Chinese friends a merry Christmas. According to Spain’s tradition, one should visit his neighbors and wish them well, which kind of resembles our Chinese tradition of paying New Year’s call. Hexi was just running downstairs when I first saw him. I felt like having an electric shock, wondering how could there be such a handsome boy in the world and that if I could become his wife someday, it would at least satisfy my vanity. That was my first impression of him. Later on, I often hung out at this friend’s house. As Hexi lived nearby, we often went to the big yard behind my friend’s house, playing baseball or snowball fight when there was snow. We also went shopping at the flea market. Even without much money, we would often simply stay there from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon and sometimes we only ended up buying a bird feather. At that time, Hexi was in the third year at high school and I was in my third year at college.
Your cousin is here!
One day, I was reading in my convent dorm when one of my Spanish friends rushed in, " Echo, your cousin from downstairs is here looking for you." The Spanish word for "cousin" has a mocking sense and my Spanish friends all shouted in a banteringly fashion, "Cousin is here! Cousin is here!" I was baffled, as I had no cousins here in Spain. So I run to the balcony and there he was, with several books held close to his chest and the French cap clenched in his other hand, very tightly as if water was about to ooze because of all the squeezing.
Being young and shy with strangers, Hexi feared coming inside the living room and therefore waited outside under the big tree. Seeing him, I rushed downstairs towards him and pushed him a little, asking with a little temper, "Why are you here?" He didn't say a word. I continued with my interrogation, "Your classes aren't over, are they?" He replied, "I don't want to take the last two sessions." "Why are you here?" I asked. I guess because I was much older than him, I lectured him a lot like an old sister. He took out from his pocket fourteen Spanish pesetas (equivalent to seven Taiwan dollars), "I have fourteen pesetas, just enough to buy two movie tickets. Let's go to the movies together, shall we? Though we need to walk there, for I don't have extra money." I looked at this young boy, my sensitive heart telling me that something was on his mind, but I accepted his invitation anyway and suggested going to the nearest movie theatre so we could go by foot. The next day, he skipped his classes again. So he did for the following several days. Soon, the young boy who always stood under the three clenching a French cap instead of wearing it became a laughingstock in my dorm. They always shouted, “Cousin is here again!” I run downstairs to him with a shove or a punch, warning him, “Don’t come here again. Skipping your classes like this isn’t a smart thing to do.” As he still wouldn’t attend the last two class sessions, he continued coming here and hanging out with me. Both of us having no money, we would usually just take a walk on the street and sometimes wonder into the Palace, feeling amazed after searching all the crap in the garbage, “Look, what a beautiful iron nail! Oh, look at that...”. Soon, I realized that we shouldn’t go on like this anymore, because the boy started being serious and I couldn’t do anything about it as he didn’t even finish college, though I did like him a lot, to be honest.
Wait for me for six years!
It was a cold day. We didn’t have any place to go, so we just moved the bench on the street near the air outlet of the underground garage and used it as our heating to get the warm blast of hot air when cars passed by. Still, we were freezing on the bench like two beggars. I said to Hexi, “ From now on, don’t come looking for me again.” Why had I said that to him? It was because moments ago, he said to me in a very serious manner, “Wait for me for six years, four years for college and two years for military service. Six years later, we can get married. My lifelong dream is to have a small apartment with a wife like you and I will make money to feed you. It is the happiest dream of my life,” He then added, “I can’t get the warmth of family love at my own home.” Upon hearing his dream, I felt the urge to cry. Nevertheless and yet I told him, “Hexi, you are only eighteen and I am much older than you. I hope you could stop such an idea and don’t come see me from now on. Even if you wait under that tree again, I won’t come out anymore. Six years is too long a time and I don’t know where I would be and I can’t wait for you for six years. So listen to me, don’t come looking for me anymore, otherwise you will only scare me.” He froze for a moment, and then asked, “Did I do something wrong these days?” “No, you didn’t. I am telling you this only because you are such a good boy. But still I can’t go out with you anymore.” Then, I stood up and he followed too. We walked to a park in the Madrid Palace and stopped at a slope. I said, “I will be here watching you go and for the last time. Don’t ever come back.” He said, “No, let me be here watching you go.” “No! No! No! I will be here watching you go. You must remember my words and never ever come back.” Back then, I was afraid that he would still come looking for me, so I said, “Also, don’t latch on me. I will go out with other boys at class from now on, so I can’t go out with you anymore.” I felt uneasy after saying all that, worrying that I might have hurt a young man who was in love for the first time, for first-timers could easily get emotional. He then said, “Okay, I won’t see you anymore. And you shouldn’t see me as a kid too. For all these weeks when we were going out, you always treated me as a kid. You ask me not to latch on you and I thought about that, unless you want me to, I will never seek after you from now on.”
Goodbye, Echo!
It was already late that day after our conversation. He started running, while turning his head from time to time and with a smile, crying out, “Goodbye, Echo! Goodbye, Echo!” I stood there watching him. In Madrid, it rarely snows and yet it started to snow that night. Hexi kept running further away on the grass slope, waving his French cap, constantly looking back until he gradually vanished into the darkness of the night and the whiteness of the snowflakes. “Hexi, come back!” I almost let it out but I forced back the strong urge. Later on, whenever I read the part in The Dream of the Red Mansions where Baoyu became a monk, I would think of Hexi of eighteen running on that empty snow fields shouting my name, “Goodbye, Echo! Goodbye Echo!”
After that time, he didn’t seek after me or latch on me. When out with my classmates, I often run into him. He would hold my hands, kiss my cheek and say “Hello!”, just like how other Spanish people greet others. I would also introduce him to my boyfriend, “Hi, Hexi. This is my boyfriend...” Then he would give a handshake.
He has grown beard! Like a grown-up!
Six years had passed after we said goodbye to each other. I went back to Taiwan after my education in Spain. One day, I had a Spanish friend visiting. He asked me, “Do you still remember Jose?” I answered, “Yes!” He then said, “Oh, he is different now. He has grown beard and turns more mature.” “Really?” “I have his letter with a photo inside. Do you want to read it?” “Yes!” I answered, still surprised and wondering how he had been doing. That friend then said, “He said that if you have forgotten him, then don’t read it.” I replied, “God knows that I never forgot him. I just thought that as he is younger than me, I shouldn’t hurt him when he became serious.” I took the letter from him and a photo slipped out. It was a young man with beard in swimming trunks catching fish in the sea. “It is the Sea God in the Greek myth!” I shouted immediately. I then opened the letter and started reading, “After so many years, you might have already forgotten Spanish. However, I want to tell you a secret. Do you know after you told me that you didn’t want to see me anymore on that snowy night, that eighteen-year-old boy cried all night and even wanted to die? After all these years, do you still remember me? The appointed time I set is six years.” That’s all about the letter. I didn’t reply and instead just put it aside, and then said to my Spanish friend, “Just tell him I have received the letter and that I said thanks.” Half a year later, I was emotionally frustrated, and again I left Taiwan for Spain.
Hexi, I am back!
It was the last month for Hexi to complete his military service. Hexi’s sister insisted on my writing back to Hexi but I felt awkward, “I have already forgotten my Spanish; how could I write him?” She wrote the envelope for me and forced me to write the letter inside. So I wrote it in English instead and sent it to Hexi’s military camp. The letter read “Hexi, I am back to Spain. This is Echo and I am at**.” However, no one in the camp understood the letter as they didn’t speak English. Hexi was so anxious that he wrote back that he didn’t know how to reply that letter because he didn’t understand the content. With the letter came many comic clippings of divers and he pointed one out as himself. As I didn’t reply to that, Hexi made a long distance call from the South telling me, “I will be back to Madrid on 23rd; you must wait for me!” I totally forgot about it on 23rd, and instead visited a small town with one of my classmates. Even when I came back home and my roommate told me that a boy called dozens of time looking for me, I still couldn’t think of anyone. Then I got another call from my other female friend who had got married, urging me to take a cab to her home as she had something important to discuss with me. I rushed to her home by taxi and she welcomed me to her living room and then asked me to close my eyes. I didn’t know what was with her, but I clenched my fists tightly behind my back, afraid that she was going to put some little animal in my hands to scare me. As I closed my eyes, I heard the sound of footstep coming closer and then my friend saying she was going out but asking me to keep my eyes closed. All of a sudden, a pair of open arms scooped me over, and I was startled with a shiver. Then I saw Hexi as I opened my eyes. I squealed with excitement. That day I wore a long skirt and he wore a claret pullover. He lifted me swirling around in circles with my skirt flying and me squealing and smiting him, meanwhile I couldn’t help holding his face and kissing him at the same time. People standing outside the living room were laughing as they knew Hexi and I were on really good terms even though we were not in a relationship.
In the sixth year after I said goodbye to Hexi, fate seemed to bring me back to him.
Do you still want to marry me?
One afternoon in Madrid, Hexi invited me to his house. It was dusk when I reached. He led me into his room and pointed to the wall, “Look!” I looked up and saw the amplified black-and-white photographs of me with yellowish tinge all over that wall and the sun stripes slipping through the window blinds cast on me with short hair in the pictures. Looking at those pictures, I was silent for quite some time. Then I asked Hexi, “I have never sent you pictures before, so where are those from?” He replied, “From Uncle Xu’s house. You used to send pictures to them and after sharing with everyone in the family, they would put the pictures in a paper box. So when I visit them, I would steal their pictures, have them amplified in the studio, and then secretly put the original ones back.” I asked, “What did your family say about this when they come into your room?” “They said I was crazy and that the girl had already gone, but I couldn’t stop being entranced even by her picture.” I continued with my questions, “How come these pictures have a yellowish tinge?” “Of course they do. The sun comes in every day and I couldn’t do anything about it. Even though I put down the blinds, they still couldn’t be protected from the sun as the sun can always slip in through.” He answered with a sense of guiltiness. I randomly took one and it left a white stain on the wall. I turned to Hexi, “Do you still want to marry me?” It was his turn to be dumbfounded as if I became a ghost. He looked at me, for a long time. I said, “Didn’t you say six years? I am here in front of you now.” Then I couldn’t help but start to cry, “No, don’t. Just forget it.” He asked promptly, “Why? Why not?” With all my old and recent sentiment and sorrows welling up inside of me, I said, “Why did you give up on me back then? Had you insisted, I would still be a complete soul. Now I am back with a broken heart.” He said, “A broken heart could be glued together.” “But still it would have cracks.” He then pulled my hands towards his chest, “There is one complete heart here. It’s made of gold. Exchange yours with me.”
Seven months later, we got married.
I feel somehow a cosmic plan was set for us. Thank god for the six years of happily married life. I once wrote in my book, “I didn’t fall madly in love before getting married but I had so much confidence in him that I gave him my hand in marriage. Later, I found I had made the right decision.” If he continued living till today, still I wouldn’t feel regretful for marrying him. I don’t think one’s age, financial status, nationality and even scholarly attainment should be preconditions for choosing their other half. Certain these are important considerations for common people, but still, the most important things to me are one’s character and soul, and it is those factors rather than anything else that should be considered for a so-called marriage of “marrying into a proper family”.
Don’t you die! Don’t you die!
Hexi died at the age of thirty. I used to ask him, “How would you like to die?” He used to ask me the same. I always said, “I am not going to die.”
One day, the Book Enthusiast magazine requested from me an article on “suppose you only had three months to live, what would you do?” I shared the request letter with Hexi and said, “God knows what would we do when we’re about to die?”
He replied, “How weird this topic is,”
I went on to knead dough,
“will you write it? What would you do three months before you die? How would you write it?” Hexi continued.
I carried on with my kneading and replied, “First let me finish kneading.”
“Will you write it or not?” He insisted.
I turned to him, looking at him and caressing his hair with my hand plastered with flour, “Silly! I won’t write it, because I need to make dumplings for you.”
Then I turned back to continue with my kneading. Suddenly, Hexi enfolded me tightly from my back with his arms around my waist, and simply wouldn’t let go.
“What? You crazy,” I needed to find the glass to roll out the dough as we didn’t have the rolling pin at that time, but I couldn’t move with his tight hugging. “come on,” I tried to break loose, but failed as he refused to release his arms. “you are becoming so annoying...” I didn’t finish my sentence and was struck dumb as I turned only to see his eyes filled with tears.
He cried, “Don’t you die! Don’t you die! Don’t you die...”
“Let’s ignore this Book Enthusiast magazine because both of us won’t die.” He then added,
“Then how shall we die?” I asked.
“When we grow old together, and both of us couldn’t walk and hold each other, we will wear neat clothes and lie on the bed together, saying to each other, ‘okay, now ready to go.’”
That’s why I didn’t write that article for the Book Enthusiast magazine. Recently the Magazine asked me why I hadn’t written that article, I told them that it was because I had a husband and I needed to make dumplings for him.
You should call him baba(meaning dad)
Before my parents came to Canary Island, they first visited Spain. Hexi asked me what should he call my father and whether he should call him Mr. Chen.
I said, “If you call him Mr. Chen, he will immediately take the same plane back to Taipei once he gets off the plane. Didn’t I call your father dad?”
He said, “But we all think you are being a little too affectionate!”
So I learned that Spanish people call their own parents-in-law Mr.** and Mrs.** instead of mom and dad. Being Chinese, I refused to call them Mr. and Mrs, instead, I call my mother-in-law Maria Mother Marria and father-in-law Father Cissa.
Hexi said, “I will just call your father Mr.Chen!”
I disagreed, “You can’t call him Mr. Chen. You should call him baba.”
I kept company with my parents for sixteen days in Spain and then came back to Canary Island. Hexi was waiting for us at the airport.
I said to him beforehand, “There are three persons in my life. One is my dad, anther is my mom and then there is you. I am the last in my list. If we had a baby, the list could be a little longer. My deepest wish of my parents and you staying together seems to come true. I know you have a great heart but your tone and temper might be not in the right place sometimes, so please don’t lose any temper when my parents come. Parents can really chatter sometimes.”
“Lose temper? No way! I am more than happy to meet them!” He protested.
In preparation for meeting my parents, he studied English for many hours a day. His English was learned three years ago in Nigeria. When he saw us coming out of the airport, he went to hold my mother in one arm and my father in the other. He soon noticed that he didn’t have an extra arm to hold me, so he said to me, “Come here!” So there we are, all holding together. He hadn’t seen me for sixteen days. He released his arms and first gave my mother a hug, then my father, then me. When he first saw my father, he appeared to be so nervous and all of a sudden, he started calling him “baba!”, then calling my mother “mama!” Then he didn’t know what to say next, so he lowered his head to help with the luggage and load them on to the car. As the car started, I said to Hexi, “Come on, talk with them. Your English is okay now. Don’t worry.” He said to me in Spanish, “I am really nervous and I didn’t sleep for several nights and I am so afraid.” Only then did I realize that it was only so normal for a Chinese to call their parents-in-law mom and dad, yet it was almost impossible for a foreigner to call their parents-in-law mom and dad at the first meeting unless he had deep feelings for his wife. After reaching home, we gave our room to my parents and Hexi and I stayed in the small guest room. One day at the dinner table, my parents and I were having a joyful conversation when suddenly Hexi said to me that it was his turn to speak, so he said in broken English, “Diedie, could you please ask Echo to buy me a motorbike?” Hexi had wanted to buy one long time ago, but needed my permission. Hearing that, I stood up and went to the bathroom and there I stayed for a while, covering my eyes with the towel. I believed that from the moment Hexi said “diedie” (Sanmao’s way of calling her dad), the relationship between Hexi and my parents had reached another level.
My parents had expected to travel to Europe, but then my father got rid of all businesses after countless calls and telegraphs just to see his son-in-law and stayed with us for a whole month.
I once made a pact with Hexi that as long as we were together, we shall not have any baby, for if it’s a girl, I would beat her to death due to jealous of Hexi’s love for her and if a boy, Hexi would hang him on the veranda because my love for our son would be too much for him to bear. Afterwards, I was also shocked by these childish and selfish words coming out of a couple like us. But when my parents came, Hexi suddenly asked, “Don’t you think we should have our own child?” I said, “Yes, I do.” He then continued, “Since mom and dad come, the house is filled with more family atmosphere. I have never felt this atmosphere in my family before.”
Forever Goodbye
When I decided to accompany my parents to London and other European cities for traveling, Hexi came to the airport to see us off. He hugged my mom, “Mama, I don’t like to see you cry. In January next year, you will be picking me up at Taipei Airport. Don’t be sad. Echo will keep you company.” The plane we were taking was a very small propeller-driven aircraft as the island we were living couldn’t be reached by jet planes. Before boarding, I stood in front of the plane “belly” in order to see more of Hexi and I found Hexi was jumping across shrubs of flowers hoping to see us more. I waved to him after boarding on the plane and he waved back until the stewardess signed me to sit down. When I settled on my seat, the woman sitting next to me asked, “Is that your husband?” I said, “Yes.” She then asked me what Hexi was doing here. I told her about how my parents were travelling to Europe and Hexi came to see us off. She then told me, “I came to see my son.” Meanwhile she handed over a card. There is a tradition in Spain that if you are a widow, you need to add to your name “**’s relict”. I felt uncomfortable with those words and didn’t know what to say to her except a “thanks”. I never thought that two days after receiving that card, I also became a relict...
(Sanmaoo’s voice was choking with emotions. She stood on the stage for quite a long time and couldn’t speak another word. The speech was discontinued...)
