Translator’s Note
The following extracts are selected from Before the Snowmelt (我所告訴你關於那座山的一切, lit. “Everything I’ve Told You about That Mountain”), the only published book by the late Taiwanese transgender writer Liu Chen-Chun. In 2017, during a hiking trip in Nepal, Liu and his partner Liang Sheng-Yueh (known as “Yueh” in Liu’s writing) were trapped in a mountain cave by a snowstorm. Forty-seven days later, the rescue team finally arrived and discovered that only Liang had survived.
After returning to Taiwan, Liang, along with Liu’s friend and independent filmmaker Lo Yi-Shan, submitted manuscripts of Liu’s writing—from his notebooks during the Nepal trip to letters and poems in his computer—to editors for consideration, in an effort to commemorate their dearest friend whose life had been cut short at just nineteen years old. Before the Snowmelt features Liu’s travelogue, poetry, letters, and personal essays. In 2020, the book was awarded Taiwan’s Golden Book Award.
In September 2024, Lo released her debut film After the Snowmelt (雪水消融的季節), a 110-minute coming-of-age documentary that retraces Liu’s life journey from Taiwan to Nepal. Given the name of Lo’s film, it might be fitting that Liu’s anthology is titled Before the Snowmelt in English.
Before the Snowmelt is an encapsulation of a young life cut short. With his charged, idiosyncratic, and precocious voice, Liu painstakingly explores the themes of belonging, the human body, the meaning of life, and much more. The fact that this book is the totality of Liu’s oeuvre makes a powerful statement—readers can only imagine how stunning Liu’s formal literary debut in his twenties could have been had his life not been claimed by the mountain in Nepal.
FROM PART 1: ON THE ROAD 在路上
Arriving in Kathmandu 抵達加德滿都
February 18, 2017
Kathmandu
To be honest, I don’t really want to know how I got here. Now that I think about it, there’ve been many times when I had absolutely no idea how I’d ended up where I was. But it’s good that I’m not thinking too hard about it—or else, my travel would become meaningless.
Let me give you a quick recount of our movement from Guwahati to Kathmandu: at 6.30pm on Thursday, at Kamakhya Junction Station, we got on the Muzaffarpur-bound long-distance train, squeezed into the accessible car, and climbed on our upper bunks; thanks to many delays along the way, we didn’t arrive in Muzaffarpur until around four the next afternoon; the transfer was too short for us to visit the city, and so we stayed in the station until we boarded the 6.45pm bus to the border town of Raxaul—we were trapped in our seats by another long delay, and the bus waited in the station for four hours without moving an inch; it took us until two in the morning to finally reach the border.
When you wake up on your upper bunk in the morning, you immediately find yourself caught up in the swaying of the train. You think you might be familiar with your current state of being, like those around you who’ve brought their entire lives with them on the train. Your world remains swaying, in a drowsy rhythm, through the heavy-eyed landscape. Everything above the horizon is enveloped under the clouds, but the horizon extends so far into the distance, which makes everyone living by the railroad think they must’ve left something behind: the kids playing by the fields see your train and immediately let go of whatever is in their hands, whether a bamboo stalk or a piece of mud. But you might also spot a boy whose hands are empty, and your train is slow enough for him to pull out an invisible gun. He points his fingers at you—but before you’re struck by the invisible bullet, he has already laid down his arm and surrendered.
Of course, there are moments when you ask yourself what’s brought you to where you are. Why should I keep going? You feel ridiculous, like an imposter, and nothing can convince you otherwise. At the same time, you notice that Yueh has yet to move his eyes away from the window. What is he looking at? What could he be looking at? Well, I don’t think he’s focused on one specific thing—I’d describe his current state of being as all other people’s passage of time lies outside the boundary of his world. I wonder whether he’s capable of acting this way because he cares little about others. But there’re many things I don’t know the reasons for—sometimes, even love can be hard to articulate. Speaking of reasons, let me point out something else that you’ll only experience when you travel: reasons are often found at indefinite and unexpected places and moments. When a gentle wind blows across your skin, or when you run into an old granny carrying a basket of sand, you immediately feel something different. You can’t say you’ve “discovered” your reasons, but you know you’ve gotten somewhere. You know exactly where you are.
I woke up as the bus approached Raxaul, my neck and shoulders sore as I leaned against my hiking backpack. The dark night was lit, which made the sky look purple. I asked Yueh how come it was so bright. He pointed toward the windows across the aisle—outside the train, the gigantic factory was radiating an uncontrolled amount of light. The mist sank like excessive sleep, though I knew that the light emitted from it was not real.
– A Kathmandu shoe repairer with (somewhat) long hair. His look when he was repairing shoes The Magician on the Skywalk.
– The old granny carried her basket of sand on her back.
FROM PART 2: A TRAVELER’S DEATH 旅人之死
a downgaze from the horizon 來自地平線的俯視
a downgaze from the horizon
instructs us to build a city
within a clear, plump droplet of water
quietly embedded in the wall, as though
there would never be another
fallen or lofty civilization
houses huddle, their crevices entwine
as though a profound malady is exhumed
someone is handcrafting a wooden flute
peaceful and serene like wind
the city has become heartless, and yet blood
still tattooed in its flesh
the streets are organized by color like balloons
above which, just a stretch of the boundless blue sky—
transient moments, evaporated like mist, are preserved
like gliding hawks
gazing down at balconies, skylines, and temple courtyards
in the same manner as the horizon
you ask me why
desolate terrains are always rugged—
after all, time never subsides
or becomes hollow
at last,
the droplet of water becomes a grain of dust absorbed into the wall
crushing the city like bones
where window frames heap atop window frames
and iron roofs turn into narrow strips
together, you and they have fallen asleep
and you mutter, within entwined embraces
let’s go back, shall we?
as sunshine, fluid and dazzling
eclipses my rambling answer
FROM PART 3: EPISTLES 致信
Debris and Treasures 廢墟與寶藏
KUBLAI: Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they sift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them.
POLO: Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan’s palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside.
—Excerpt from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, tr. William Weaver
Their bodies intertwined, their movement somewhat too stiff and intense, and also clumsy, as though they must make love in the same awkward and unskilled manner as the first time they made love, when they innocently explored their bodies, embracing and stroking each other on the wrong spots, wasting their energy at all the wrong moments. For them, sex has never been driven by irresistible passion; rather, it’s been motivated by an instinct of “I need you” and a habit of entering deep inside each other, like two cubs searching for their den where they can find the warmth that puts them to sleep, or two fish about to be thrown out of water frantically beating the torrent with their tails, leaving behind a trail of bubbles as they dive back into the dark trench.
You could say that this is their way of getting to understand each other. They plunge into water and leap out simultaneously, remaining in a dissociative state of being half-afloat and half-sunken, as though they’ll soon part but haven’t—this state of in-betweenness is often injected with a tinge of something frigid, which makes them inch yet further toward despair.
But the undeniable thing is, they’re exerting so much effort. They aren’t sure whether their passion has been transferred into each other’s body, and so they must rely on the pulsating of their muscles and the jerking of their joints to understand each other and let themselves be understood. Perhaps their embraces are selfish, with an inborn sorrow. Even so, they feel an irreplaceable warmth when their bellies are pressed tightly, as though they’re sinking into a soft lake. This feeling grows from the inch of their skin that touches and travels through their blood and nerves—an unshakeable force that they only experience when they reach the climax of sorrow.
◆
Is the act of traveling related to sorrow? I’m not sure, but I know your answer is absolutely no. After all, sorrow is needed in order to drive anything shackled by sorrow far away.
At times, I find myself unable to gaze at you—is it because sorrow is simply not an idiosyncrasy of yours, and yet I continue to gaze at you with my sorrowful eyes?
Perhaps, a macroscale image of the world would look like the shattered cliffs we saw at Mei-Yuen-Chu-Tsun walkway—a pile of debris thoroughly soaked in sorrow, a collection of sharp, bulging, and dazzling objects barely glued together by something that cannot be seen. And so, the act of writing halts; between a wasteland and a garden, eyelids likely become transparent; what is not precious enough to be called precious are treasures of the East, emerging abundantly like a wildfire.
FROM PART 4: THE YOUTH OF SUMMER 夏天的少年
Going on a Mountain Walk, Becoming the Mountain 走山路，成為山
Yueh wasn’t with me, but I still went on a hike in the mountains, and I decided I’d go on three hikes this month. Sometimes, I like to tell people I’m “going on three walks.”
For me, legitimate “walks” can only be taken in the mountains. I’ve been feeling restless recently, even though I know it’s important to always stay composed, observe what happens around me, and try to accumulate more experience. My body regularly reminds me that I need to go somewhere at certain times, which is one of the few things in my life that reminds me I’m not completely useless. After our bodies enter a specific developmental stage, it becomes hard for us to eradicate some fundamental yearnings, like hunger and agitation. And if we do successfully eradicate them, then it must be because we’ve managed to convince or force ourselves to get over them, like how Dahu makes himself forget his feelings for the mountains in The Man with the Compound Eyes. Still, we’ll eventually become used to forcing ourselves into this type of eradication. (Which is why we need to push ourselves all the time)
“Taking a walk” doesn’t simply mean going from one place to another—sometimes, it’s more important to know what you’re walking into. Most places in the mountains have always been under the sun and will never be able to hide from the sun. When you hike along a ridgeline like walking a tightrope suspended high in the air, or when you roam on the grassland on a saddle, or even when you reach the site of a landslide in the valley, you’d never think that you’re “hiding yourself” somewhere in the mountain. You might need to stay focused because of the dangers in your surroundings, but the hike will always help you feel something open up in your heart.
And if you’ve taken enough walks in the mountain and had your heart thoroughly opened up, you’ll notice that many things have moved into and started living in your heart. And if you get lost and walk into your heart yourself, then it’ll be your turn to become a mountain.
