Wild by Nature

Author:Sarah Marquis [Marquis, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250081995
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nina, wait until I catch you …

From the day I arrive in Nina, I’m confronted by aggressive Hans. They accost me and demand to know whether I use a condom! A woman who’s alone is considered to be a prostitute throughout the interior of China. The men with their crow-black, slick-backed hair look at me hard, then quietly turn away and observe me. I leave Nina after a good shower, sensing that I’m being observed. This feeling stays with me until the day I surprise a farmer working his field with a buffalo, who pulls out the very latest model digital camera to take a picture of me. Throughout my crossing of China, motorcyclists in black jackets come out of nowhere and take a photo of me with the same kind of camera. My days become psychologically trying. I hide, I sleep under bridges. Children throw stones at me each time I go through a village. It makes me sad, everything here is bereft of life energy. I discover cultures made in garbage, everything is polluted to the extreme. The earth is sucked dry, the water sources are open landfills. Chemical residues create a purplish-blue film on the water’s surface. Agricultural plantations of all kinds are accelerated with the aid of nighttime lighting, tricking the plant’s natural cycle so that it continues to grow at all hours. I’m in another world. Scenes from daily life break my heart. Animals are led alive to market for their meat. It’s common to see fat, black goats, still alive, folded in two on a motorcycle, on either side of the luggage rack, held in place with cords that cut into their flesh. Roosters are suspended head-down on top of bags in the back. And just beneath the luggage rack, in a bag of rice, a dog cries out each time the driver goes over a bump, squashing him between the wheel and the rack. The list of cruelty toward animals goes on and on. Their cries of agony and despair still haunt me.

It throws me into a state of shock each time one of these vehicles passes me. This China has branded me forever; it’s forced me to change my view of myself as a user of this planet. I’ll never be the same. I’ve seen with my eyes, I’ve felt, I’ve cried before this human and animal misery.

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