I hung up the phone and let out a sigh of relief.
My friend Marco wasn’t home, so I left a message with his father. At least I’d managed to reach him. Whether we would actually meet was something to worry about later.
Day by day, the fatigue from the journey wore me down. I hadn’t done any hard labor, but the endless hours of walking were taking their toll. My feet were always covered in blisters.
The instant I saw a bed and my head touched the pillow, sleep would claim me without mercy. But whenever I woke, guilt would creep in, chiding me for being lazy: If I had the time, why wasn’t I out on the streets instead?
It was a scorching afternoon when I finished the call. In a haze, I closed my eyes for a moment. Someone from the reception desk came up to tell me a guest was waiting downstairs.
I hurried down and saw Marco standing in the lobby.
Having not seen each other for many years, we hesitated for a moment before throwing our arms around each other.
“Marco, I’m back!” I blurted out.
“Back? When were you ever here in Ecuador?” He drew me close and kissed my cheek.
“You’ve forgotten the story I always told you?”
“Still clinging to that story? That you were an Indigenous woman in another life?” He laughed, pulling me into his arms.
“And not from the Peruvian side, but from your country. Don’t I look the part?” I grinned back at him.
Marco had his hands buried in his pockets. He held my gaze for a few quiet seconds, then pulled me over to sit on the sofa.
“How have you been?” He patted my cheek gently, a helpless look in his eyes.
“Alive,” I sighed, turning my face away so I wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Marco had been a friend for many years. He sent me a card when I got married and a long letter after my husband’s passing. We lost touch when Marco moved from France to Lebanon and then back to Ecuador.
For a while, we sat without a word.
“So,” Marco said at last, “what’s your plan in Ecuador?”
“I’m heading up into the Andean highlands to stay with Indigenous communities for two or three weeks. I’ll stop in six towns along the way, then take a bus from Quito down into the lowlands, passing through two more towns. In the end, I’ll circle back here to catch a flight to Peru—over a thousand miles in just under a month!”
At that time, I was staying at an inn in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest port city.
“Come to our place and celebrate the holidays first! It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.”
“What do the holidays mean to someone like me? Thanks—I appreciate it, but I’ll pass.”
“When are you heading to the highlands?”
“On the 25th. The first leg is a seven-hour ride.”
“To where?”
“Riobamba!” I said, listing a few small villages nearby.
“Your geography is better than mine; you really must’ve been here in a past life!” Marco chuckled.
“I’m going to find a lake—” I said.
“The lake should be near Otavalo . . . You didn’t mix it up, did you?”
I knew I wasn’t wrong. That lake couldn’t be found without a detailed map, but I was certain it existed.
“Echo, can you wait until the 27th? I’ll be driving back to Quito for work. You and your colleague can ride with me. It’ll save you a long bus ride!”
What unsettled me most was the kindness of friends too generous to refuse. Accepting such hospitality weighed heavily on my heart. With my anxious temperament, I always felt far more at ease traveling alone.
I stood firm in refusing Marco’s invitation. Nothing he said could change my mind. We agreed to meet again in Quito in twenty days, then parted ways.
*
Misha seemed even more curious about Marco than I was, though the two had never met. After all, Marco was a sociologist, and a conversation with him promised more than a little insight.
When he learned there was a ride, Misha was eager to join. However, the two didn’t share a common language. Playing interpreter for the entire ride would only make the trip harder for me. Moreover, the Indigenous villages I wanted to visit were still deeply secluded. If the three of us showed up with cameras like tourists, the effect would likely be the very opposite of what we intended.
*
Ecuador’s 280,000 square kilometres of land are commonly divided into three regions.
To the east, the Amazon jungle remains wild and nearly untouched. Legend has it that a forest tribe known as the Jivaro still hunts with blowguns and practices the ancient art of head-shrinking. They keep to the depths of the jungle, and few outsiders dare to venture in. The Ecuadorian government has never managed to bring the jungle tribes under control, so the two sides keep their distance.
Central Ecuador stretches into the highlands carved by the Andes. Two mountain chains run side by side, extending all the way to Colombia. Between them lies a broad plain, about sixty-five kilometres across, dotted with countless Indigenous villages where their lineage remains intact. Forty percent of Ecuador’s six million people make their home here.
Aside from a few small towns, the capital, Quito, is cradled in the northern mountains and has a population of over six hundred thousand. At an altitude of 2,850 meters, it is the second-highest capital city in the world.
The southern coast, often called the lowlands in books, stays hot year-round and brims with resources. In a medium-sized city named Quevedo—better known by its other name, “Chinatown”—many Cantonese immigrants have settled for three generations. Its famed “Banana King” is an elderly Chinese gentleman.
Ecuador also has a handful of small islands known as the Galápagos, floating far out in the Pacific Ocean.
Of course, the place I longed for most was the Andes.
The highland people speak their own languages and maintain distinct ethnic identities. But when Columbus, in search of China, landed in Cuba instead, he mistakenly believed that he had arrived in India. As a result, he referred to the Indigenous inhabitants as “Indians,” a name that has clung to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas ever since.
*
The bus pulled out of the sweltering station at noon. As we entered the mountains, the weather shifted without warning. Sheets of rain came down, and the air inside the bus grew heavy and stale. I drifted into sleep against the window.
A biting breeze startled me awake. The endless green expanse of the Andes stretched before me, bathed in the rain-washed clarity of dusk, wrapping me in its quiet embrace. Unfolding before my eyes was a landscape that felt like somewhere I had wandered through in dreams a thousand times—so familiar it seized me with the strange ache of coming home. How could this be?
The bus rounded a bend, and suddenly, the snowcapped peak of Chimborazo loomed before us like a colossal beast. Caught off guard by the mountain’s sudden rise from the highlands, I leaned back in shock.
The sight of that imposing peak lifted my soul skyward. I felt as though I were gliding over eucalyptus trees, sweeping across fields and grasslands, circling the icy summit with no way back. For a moment, I thought I must have died in a car accident and my soul had slipped free. Yet all around me, the other passengers sat in quiet composure.
Ay—home at last! The thought breathed through me like a whisper of wind. There was no one I could tell about this haunting sense of déjà vu; the highlands of Ecuador felt uncannily familiar to me.
“A-Ping! A-Ping!” Misha kept calling for me, but I couldn’t answer. My eyes were fixed on the snowcapped giant, over six thousand meters high, looming like a weight upon my chest. Its coldness and familiarity seeped into me. I felt utterly weightless, as if I might drift away once more.
In that instant, the whole weight of my life flashed past like a film—the years of grief and joy, the faces of family, living and departed—and I felt nothing at all, as though I were watching someone else’s story.
Perhaps this is what death feels like: lucid, indifferent, as clean and chill as snow!
“Oh no! Your nails and lips are turning purple!” Misha exclaimed.
I asked slowly, “What’s the altitude?”
“The book says it’s over 3,200 meters here. Riobamba is about 2,650 meters.”
Only then did I notice how heavy and swollen my hands felt, and how hard it was to breathe. So my out-of-body experience had been nothing more than the trick of thin air and fatigue.
The bus stopped at a small station, and the driver announced: “Ten-minute break!” I found it impossible to get off; the altitude made every movement an effort.
Under the dim light of a streetlamp by the station, I noticed an elderly Indigenous couple squatting by the roadside. The woman, her hair in thick braids, wore a dark long skirt and was wrapped in several layers of colorful woven shawls, with a well-worn wool hat perched on her head. The two were intently tearing a piece of bread to share. I gazed at these people of Indigenous descent, and a wave of ecstatic recognition surged within me—how strikingly beautiful they were!
Old mama, I’ve wandered and come back again, yet you’re still sitting here . . . I whispered in my heart to the woman by the bus. Once again, the thought that I might have been an Indigenous soul in a past life surged back like a rising tide.
The few streets of this small town were filled with Indigenous individuals; I could hardly spot anyone from the lowlands.
Nightfall thickened. Silhouettes wavered along the street, everything blurred like a dream—where was I? I truly couldn’t tell.
*
Just after getting off the bus in Riobamba, a European-looking couple approached us as if they had been sent to meet us.
My heart was already unsettled, so I gave them a faint smile and wanted to slip past without a word.
They stopped me, explaining that they were staying at a hostel and had been asked to find their own roommates. There were five beds in the room, they said, and a few were still empty.
With so many passengers spilling out of the station, I almost felt flattered to be chosen.
The hostel offered dormitory-style rooms—spacious, clean, and quiet. The couple was from Switzerland. They had traveled by bus from Quito to this small town to see the Indigenous market the following Saturday. They seemed trustworthy, so I accepted their offer.
Inside the dorm, I picked a bed by the window, dropped my small bag on it, and went to brush my teeth in the communal bathroom. As I moved from one country to the next, my luggage kept growing. But I always stored the bulkier things at the first hostel I stayed in, carrying only a small bag to move within the rest of the country.
When I opened the toothpaste, it burst out in a sudden white spiral as a result of the high-altitude pressure. This was a rather novel and amusing experience.
Now, at nearly three thousand meters, my body began to falter: a wave of weakness, no appetite for dinner, a sharp throb in my chest like a needle, whereas everyone else seemed perfectly fine. I didn’t dare roam the streets that evening. I lay down early.
Since it was a dormitory, I didn’t dare turn over, afraid of waking the others. I lay sleepless until after four in the morning. Outside the window, the streets were already alive with the clamor of Indigenous people streaming in from all directions for the market.
*
Riobamba’s Saturday open-air market felt like one of the last true wonders of the world.
Most travelers to Ecuador flocked north to the famous market in Otavalo, where Indigenous vendors catered almost exclusively to white visitors, selling goods tailored to tourist tastes. Everyday staples, however, were nowhere to be found there.
Here in Riobamba, nearly ten thousand highland people came together. They sold not just handicrafts, but also vegetables, wool, livestock, fabrics, food, clothing, seeds, and herbs . . . The once-quiet town burst into life, awash in color and sound as the vibrant crowd filled the streets. The Indigenous vendors and customers traded among themselves, with a liveliness and energy that outshone any tourist bustle.
In nine separate open squares, goods of every kind were piled high and neatly arranged by category. Sewing machines clattered in the open air, stitching clothes on the spot. A woman who had just sold a sheep rushed over for a piece of fabric to be sewn into a long skirt she would wear home.
Little food stalls lined the streets. Roasted guinea pigs, lined up in rows, had become an essential touch of color at Indigenous festivals. The vendors tore the meat by hand, and the buyers would grab a handful of white rice and squat by the roadside to eat right there.
I wished this market could remain hidden in its quiet corner of the world, living its own life, never touched by tourists.
*
The clothing and adornments of the Indigenous people had evolved into a distinct style after three or four centuries of Spanish rule. The men in the market moved with calm gentleness, their eyes shy. The women dressed like the earliest women in the world. They adored beads and bursts of color. Loud with laughter yet deft at trade, they welcomed customers with warmth and a disarming charm. Long skirts, shawls, and belts, along with earrings once reserved for priests and nobles during the Inca era, had become part of every woman’s attire. The European-style tweed hats, once worn by Spaniards when they landed, now crowned every head and were seldom removed.
In Otavalo, by contrast, the women wore headscarves instead of hats and dressed in wide, lacy white blouses. Although they were all called Indigenous, their clothing—and even the width of their hats—varied from tribe to tribe. A keen eye could tell the difference at a glance.
To me, the Indigenous people were the most beautiful in the world. Their adornments, born of no deliberate design, had grown into a style all their own. Their faces, reminiscent of the Mongolian peoples of Asia, held me utterly spellbound.
Most highland people were shorter, influenced by nature itself. Their physique, it was said, made breathing easier at these heights.
I bought little after a whole day at the market; the real beauty was not in what I could carry away, but in the spell of its atmosphere. The local sellers were the most captivating part of it all.
Sitting on the ground, roasted guinea pig in hand, I secretly listened to them speaking Kichwa. When it was time to pay, I copied their syllabus to ask the price, which made the plump woman burst into laughter. Because I was eager to learn their language, the woman selling the guinea pigs began repeating phrases aloud, teaching me as she tended her food. She seemed to take a real liking to me.
After picking up a dozen phrases, I ran to another stall to test them out, and to my surprise, they actually understood me. They kept laughing, their eyes stealing friendly glances at me.
As dusk approached, the crowd in the town gradually thinned, leaving the once-bustling market to sink into a strange hush. I climbed to a park on a low hill outside town, watching the pale red clouds bleed into dove-grey over the plains and distant mountains.
Breathing in the thin, minty air, I let my thoughts drift back to the day’s market and its people. A quiet calm, the kind that settles after a day of vivid life, filled my chest. Nothing in the world gave me greater joy than sitting there, watching the twilight fade.
*
The next morning, with a thick coat in my arms and my toothbrush in hand, I stepped out of the hostel to find a camper van waiting outside. Its owner, Washington, stood by the door with his wife and two children.
We had arranged for the van the night before, after a chat with the owner of a small restaurant. Washington wouldn’t simply rent out the van but insisted on driving us himself.
Washington was a bulldozer mechanic who rented out his van only on Sundays. His name sounded strikingly British here.
The Indigenous villages I wanted to see were hours away, hidden deep in the mountains along muddy roads. Washington said his family had never been out there and asked to come along. I agreed without hesitation. Only Misha knew that if I found the lake I felt sure existed, I would stay there for a few days and find a way back later.
Throughout the journey, Misha was captivated by the grand colonial architecture, the churches, the countless museums—sights that left him in awe. Coming from a country with a younger cultural history, he had seen little of this before.
As for me, I had grown weary of churches and museums. Having studied architectural history in the past, I still carried some regrets from old exams and had no desire to revisit that path.
What I longed for was to spend time with the Indigenous communities in this land still untouched by tourists. To live as they did for a few days would be enough for me.
So we agreed to split up: Misha would visit the grand cathedral, while I went into the highlands. He would ride out with me and return later with the Washingtons.
As we drove into the mountainous area, Washington diligently searched for villages for us to visit. However, the Indigenous people scattered as soon as they saw outsiders. The inability to get close to them left me frustrated and disheartened.
By the time we were about to head back, I still hadn’t seen much. Then, when a dirt road we hadn’t taken before came into view, I felt a sudden pull to have Washington drive down it.
“I haven’t been here,” he said, “but they say there’s a plain in the valley—and a lake.”
Hearing the word “lake,” I fell silent, stunned.
We drove for another forty minutes along the mountain road.
Under the clear blue sky, the grassland and the lake unfolded like a secret world within the world. Why did it feel so much like coming home?
“Enough, Misha, no more photos!” I called as I jumped out of the van. There was no road beyond the lake.
In the distance, thin smoke curled above tranquil, scattered homes, oblivious of the strangers’ arrival.
Only then did Mrs. Washington realize I meant to stay there. She objected immediately.
“I’ll go into the village and find a place to stay. If I do, I’ll come and tell you—don’t worry!” I called, then dashed across the grassland.
In under forty minutes, I came running back, snatched up my coat, toothbrush, and a box of tissues, and urged them to go.
Misha looked panicked. Clinging to the door, he said softly, “I’ll come back for you in a few days.” He didn’t dare argue with me; he knew this was a fight he couldn’t win, though worry clouded his face.
When the car pulled away, only my small figure remained on the vast grassland, standing silent beneath the twilight sky.
Back in Taiwan, I had wept in secret from exhaustion and emptiness after seminars. Yet here, alone in the open wild, I felt none of that deep loneliness.
I walked slowly toward the village, turning back now and then to gaze at the vast lake—a dream I had stumbled into, and it had come true.
Sometimes, my own premonitions leave me bewildered and frightened.
*
Her name was Jièr, as pronounced in the Indigenous Kichwa tongue.
I first noticed the animals in her field: a bull, a milk cow, a donkey, and a flock of sheep. The moment I stepped closer, the cows lowed and the sheep bleated.
Jièr came out to see what was happening. Her eyes skipped my face and fixed on the silver pendant at my neck—a tiny plaque etched with an Indigenous figure and a llama, bought from an antique store.
She did not ask where I was from. She simply stepped closer and said, “What will you trade for your pendant? I want that.”
Her Spanish was fragmented, woven through with the cadence of her native tongue.
I proposed to stay for a few days and help with all the chores. In return, I would give her the pendant plus a thousand sucres, the currency of Ecuador. She agreed at once. So I stayed—so simple, so natural.
Jièr had a husband and a son. Their two brick rooms had no windows, only doors. That first night, she gave me a mat over a pile of dried corn leaves, and a bowl of rice cooked with oil. After a ladle of water, I fell asleep. On the other side of the low wooden wall, a skinny brown pig slept perfectly still. The three family members slept in the other room. They didn’t ask me a single question, which struck me as odd.
This family was genuinely kind, offering me everything they could. Among them, I felt no fear—only simplicity and safety. The next morning, I woke to Jièr’s voice as she called out to the livestock.
I went with her toward the lake. It was a long, weary trek. The lakeside was muddy. Jièr went barefoot, while I wrapped my shoes in plastic bags I had tucked inside my coat. I followed her to fetch water.
Although this was a village, the houses lay scattered and sparse because everyone had their own fields. These lands, inhabited by Indigenous peoples for generations, finally belonged to them when the local government called for land reform in 1973. No longer were they bound to work as laborers for large farms.
During my days in the village, I helped with chores as much as I could: herding cattle and sheep by the lake, mending threads while her son spun yarn, gathering firewood, and stringing beads in the afternoon sun.
Jièr had a large sack of oats, which she cooked with milk into a thin soup. She also made corn cakes on a flat pan.
We ate one meal a day, but Jièr left the broth simmering in the pot until the fire died. Whenever hunger came, we drank from the pot with an aluminium cup that Jièr kept.
I also wandered into other homes. No one avoided me, neither did they pay me special attention. Strangely, some even asked me which tribe I belonged to, even though I was clearly wearing the jeans of the lowlands people.
At dusk, the men returned from the fields. Everyone sat together at the doorway, gazing at the lake and the snow-capped mountains. They rarely spoke to one another, and never once did I hear them sing.
The lake was called Yahuarcocha, which means “Heart Lake.”
The corn harvest was over, and the gathered crops lay piled in a corner of my room. Among them was a kind of black corn, as curious to me as the coffee-colored pig. It wasn’t ground into flour; instead, Jièr simmered it into a dark purple soup that tasted wonderful with a sprinkle of sugar.
The fields here grew onions, potatoes, and tender corn sprouts. No one fished in the lake. When I asked why, Jièr couldn’t explain. She simply said they never had.
The lake stirred a deep homesickness in me. Under the moonlight, its still waters gleamed like silver, so in my heart, I named it Silver Lake.
The villagers went to bed early, and I often walked around the lake before returning to my room. The highland nights were bitterly cold; but here, my thoughts stripped down to nothing.
I wished never to return to the world; let my journey end by the shore of Silver Lake, and let the person called Sanmao disappear forever!
When others asked my name, I said my name was “Yahuar.”
*
The old women in the village, too, had a fondness for beads. When I visited their homes, they would take out their one treasured possession, placing it in my hands for me to marvel at to my heart’s content. Words were scarce between us.
Years might pass in such quiet simplicity, while the sun rose all the same.
In the village, I came upon a kind of flowery stone, once worn by the nomadic women of Asia Minor, an ancient compound whose origins remain a mystery. It is hard to fathom how these stones found their way into the hands of South America’s Indigenous peoples. This kind of stone had long been rare and costly in North African bazaars. The women had no notion of the value these stones held. They kept trying to trade them for the silver pendant I had promised Jièr, or else for my thick coat.
I could not bring myself to cheat these good people. I accepted none of their stones. Instead, I told them with all seriousness that these flower-stones were priceless; should the gringos ever come, they must ask no less than four hundred thousand sucres, or else four hundred sheep.
“Gringo”—that was what we called the white folk.
Most of the villagers were poor and untutored; the tales of the Inca Empire reached them only to be met with blank faces and quiet indifference.
They took me for an Inca.
Our talk scarcely ventured as far as Salasaca, three hundred miles away. I told them that the men and women of Salasaca wore nothing but black, in perpetual mourning for a war four centuries past. They laughed and would not believe me.
Jièr always fed the pigs on potatoes, which seemed a pity to me. Once, I made a Spanish omelette for the whole family. Jièr said it was delicious, but far too troublesome to make herself.
The days by Silver Lake lengthened without end, as though I had lived here since the hour of my birth. Let all memories scatter with the wind.
Gazing at the cattle and sheep that grazed the plains beneath the towering sky, I often felt I must have died and drifted into this place beyond the real world.
*
“Undo your braid, and I’ll braid it up again for you.”
In the village, a man from the household with a large mirror was combing my hair. He wrapped long red strips around the braid, making it trail behind me like a donkey’s tail. I loosened my hair and bowed my head, letting this quiet, gentle friend style me. By then, I had been in this village for seven days.
The room was very still. At that moment, I heard a faint click and quickly lifted my head.
Misha struck in, calling out in English, “Wow! An Indian man is doing your hair—”
He raised his camera, ready to take a picture without asking. My friend stood frozen, looking uneasy.
“How rude! Did you even ask if you could come in?” I shouted.
“¡Lo siento!” I turned to the man and apologized in Spanish. Misha didn’t leave. He wandered about the room, looking everywhere, even reaching out to touch the loom.
“Let’s go!” I gave him a push.
I ran through the village to say goodbye to everyone. They were stunned that I was leaving so suddenly. I hurried to find Jièr. She stood by the house with her arms full of firewood.
“¡Toma la placa, y también este dinero!” I reached behind my neck to unfasten the chain.
“¡No, Yahuar, no, por favor!” Jièr pushed me back desperately.
She dropped the firewood and ran into the house, returning with a cup of milk-and-oat soup, insisting that I drink it.
“¿Te vas con el gringo?” She pointed at Misha.
Misha asked for a photo of me with Jièr. She obeyed me and sat down, not shying away from the camera.
News traveled fast. Jièr’s husband and son came running from the fields. I picked up my coat and glanced back at them. Jièr firmly refused the silver plaque. She ran off without a word.
I forced a few large bills into the husband’s hands and ran toward the tourist van at the far end of the lake. My beloved people and Silver Lake—the paradise where the green grass met the sky—I could only enter here once in a lifetime, then wait forever for the next. In this life, I shall never return.
This was Ecuador, two stories written at the start of 1982.
