Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 17

Featuring "Remembering Blackfish in Black Pool," a short story by Zhang Wei, translated by Chu Dongwei:

How much ink is needed to dye such a stretch of sand black! Decades have passed but its color is as before. People nowadays don't know why there is such a large stretch of black sand amid the dozens of square miles of brown soil and sand, but I clearly remember that here in this place there was originally a black pool and the day the pool was filled it dyed the mud and the sand black.

Over the years, the pool of dark clear water has often come into my dreams to flash in front of my eye. I still remember how I lingered all day around the pool watching black fish swimming to and fro, their bodies like charcoal and their eyes sparkling like crystals. Because the water was too clear, all the scales of a black fish were visible.

The pool was located below a sand ridge northwest of our little thatched cottage. When and how did it come into being? And why didn't the loose sandy soil drain it? Today it is all a mystery. In the boundless wilderness, similar mysteries abound that are simply not explored.

On the two sides of the pool grew some wild copal trees, and when autumn came, a big frost cast red the leaves and petioles, which gradually fell off, some into the pool, some onto the edge of the pool. We collected copal tree leaves, weaved them into hats, which we put on our heads, and mimicked various animal sounds....

Beside the pool were some eroded wood stakes, which often carried some mushrooms. When you picked the newly grown mushrooms, some new ones would quickly grow. It was an interesting place that held a mysterious appeal, quiet, deserted, unfrequented except for visits by one or two children. On the sandy ridge on the right of the pool there were two weed-covered mounds said to be two graves. What kind of people had come to this remote corner to build the graves? Everyone wondered.

Then I heard the legend of Black Pool...