1
One year, during the New Year, my family and I went to Puzhao Temple to burn incense. In the courtyard before the Guanyin Hall, around the great incense burner, the crowd pressed thick, blue smoke curling upward. I stood under the eaves behind the mountain gate, in the shade. Just inside the door to my right stood the guardian Weituo, one hand resting on his sword, eyes wide open.
All at once, I saw a woman with her face hidden beneath a bamboo hat. She was tall, her back straight, her steps poised and slender. She moved from south to north, passing through the crowd. She simply walked on, as though no one were there—as if the worshippers in the courtyard were without substance, like air, like emptiness itself.
When I looked again, the hat was gone. She, too, had vanished.
I raised my head. It was the twelfth month in Kunyang. The sky was a deep blue, the sunlight brilliant. The glazed tiles on the roof of the Guanyin Hall shimmered in the light.
I asked myself: was I dreaming?
2
Many years later, at university, during the student demonstrations, after sitting in silence at the train station for an entire afternoon, we formed lines and began to walk back. A fine rain had started to fall. We were hungry, our clothes soaked through, but the singing did not stop.
Two rows ahead of me was a girl. I could not see her face—only the French braid at the back of her head. A simple, graceful braid, rising and falling with her steps. A few loose strands of hair held tiny drops of rain, glinting in the light like morning dew on grass. She was tall, her back straight, her steps slender and full of youth. That braid at the back of her head—I can still see it, even now, whenever I close my eyes.
I raised my head. The rain fell in fine threads, drifting down from the vast northern sky.
3
I was in the language office at a middle school, grading papers, when I heard, from the first-grade music class next door, the voice of a new teacher singing:
Rain is falling,
rain is falling,
falling, falling,
down beside me.
Clothes are soaked,
no umbrella,
bareheaded,
how pitiful!
Then came the voices of her students, rising and falling, uneven, out of sync—like currents moving this way and that, like bells and drums sounding together.
I did not know what the new teacher looked like. Short hair, or long braids? A short blouse, or a long dress? Head slightly lifted, eyes wide, looking straight at you?
I forgot about the papers in front of me. I only thought: if she keeps singing like this, I might have to go in and join them.
4
The Lotus Sutra, “The Universal Gate of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva”
If there be countless hundreds of thousands of myriads of beings,
who suffer all manner of afflictions—
if they hear of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva,
and with single-minded devotion call upon her name,
then Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva will at once perceive their voices,
and they shall all be delivered.
Yego’s Chronicles 