In “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”, it is the hunger for the banned foreign book titles in the 70’s China that drives the plot forward.  Similarly, in “Once on a Moonless Night”, it is the hunger for the ‘mutilated relic’ – a missing Buddhist sutra – that sets the story on fire.  In fact, the fire is so great that it breathes life to factual and fictitious characters, civilizations, and traditions; from ancient China to modern Beijing, from France to Africa and Southeast Asia.  So much details and emotions are poured into the historical figures and places, as well as traditional workmanships and crafting techniques, one has to marvel at the depth of research the author has performed.  Unlike “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”, this book requires patience to read.  The construct of the sentences appears to be more complex (unsure if it is because of the different translators involved).  The history behind the story is vast.  Although I am from a Chinese background and that most of the translated terms, history, and tradition I am familiar with, there are still lots of details I am not . Fortunately, most of the so-called diversions from the main plot are relevant to how the story develops.  That kept me engaged even some of the materials require a higher amount of concentration to grind through.

The story begins with a piece of silk scroll Puyi has torn into pieces by his teeth – hence the ‘mutilated relic’ – and threw out of a Japanese warplane during his final days as the Last Emperor.  That silk scroll turns out to contain a Buddhist sutra written in a dead ancient language that Emperor Huizong from the Song dynasty tried to decipher and could not, that Puyi tried to decipher and could not.  The tale then spins all the way to a vanished civilization called Tumchooq (it is also a language Buddha preached in, the name of one of the main characters, and more), through the Forbidden City, the Manchuria race, different languages and geographic locations, narrated by multiple characters.  It is remarkable to see how the sutra travels through time and space, linking historical and fictitious characters, vanished and present time civilizations as the search continues for the missing sutra.  And when the final piece of puzzle is solved, after numerous twists in plot (too many to mention), the answer seems so humorously simple.  Yet thinking of all the effort and sacrifice people made in order to find the truth, it is mind blowing.

It is quite impossible to quote a particular paragraph to illustrate Dai Sijie’s writing style, because the entire book is treated with the same poetic touch.  If I may, the following excerpt touches my heart the most.  The narrator, a French girl who studied in China, is in search of her lover – a half French half Chinese – who is in turn searching for the missing sutra.  It is this sense of melancholy that touches my heart.

The sun was only just up, the meticulously swept path with not a single fallen leaf on it glittered beneath my bare feet, and each of my footsteps, I was aware, was an act of meditation.  With its sand and its occasional stones positioned here and there, as if among the extinguished, collected, cooled ashes of our passions, without the least spark of an ember to reignite them, that little path was like the life of whoever walked along it.  Perhaps its maker wanted it to remind us that our footprints, like the happy days of our lives, disappear with the first gust of wind, without leaving any trace at all.

It comes with a pleasant surprise that one of the characters in this book – Ma – is indeed the narrator of “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”.  And Ma plays an important – albeit minor – role in this book.  I suspect that a Buddhist may get more from this book than I do.  But I am happy that my horizon has been expanded and am certainly looking forward to read his second book if I manage to get hold of it in our library.