The Trail to Buddha's Mirror

by Don Winslow

  “Eighteenth-century English literature.”

  “Qing Dynasty.”

  “If you say so.” “I have read some Shakespeare.”

  “Oh, yeah? Which?”

  “Julius Caesar. It concerns the oppression of the masses by first a militarist dictator and then a capitalist oligarchy.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “Do you believe all that?”

  “Of course.”

  “So what is Huckleberry Finn about?”

  “Slavery and the rejection of bourgeois values. What do you think it is about?”

  “A boy on a river.”

  “Whose thinking is correct?”

  “You have your interpretation and I have mine. One isn’t any better or worse than the other. We’re both right.”

  Wu chuckled and shook his head. “What you say is impossible. Thought is either correct or incorrect. Two different interpretations cannot be right. One must be right and the other wrong.”

  “They’d love you at Columbia.”

  “Yes?”

  “Fuck yes.”

  Wu laughed but then looked serious and said, “You are joking with me, but I think this is the difference between our two cultures. I believe that wrong thought leads to wrong action. Therefore, it is very important that people be taught correct thought. Otherwise, how will they know how to act correctly? I think in your society, you believe that it is bad to insist on correct thought, but then, because your people do not have correct thoughts, they perform bad actions. This is why you have so much crime and we do not.”

  Neal almost answered that it is also why China could have a Cultural Revolution and the States couldn’t, but he stopped. He didn’t want to hurt Wu’s feelings.

  “We just don’t believe that there is only one way to think.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I have a correct thought,” Neal said.

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s go out for dinner tonight. Can you arrange it?”

  “I do not have money,” Wu said unabashedly.

  “I do,” Neal said. Mr. Frazier had come to China loaded.

  “I think that your thought is a correct one, then,” Wu answered. “Would you like to eat at the Hibiscus?”

  “Wherever you say.”

  “It is the best.”

  “The Hibiscus it is.”

  But before the Hibiscus, there was more touring. They hit the Cultural Palace, the People’s Market, and the River View Pavilion, where an enormous terrace overlooked the Min River. It seemed to Neal that they were covering the entire city, putting shoe leather to every public place; the whole scene reminded him of a fisherman who casts his lure all over the pond, hoping for the big fish to strike.

  But that’s okay, he thought, because I’m going to be the first bait in history that catches both the fish and the fisherman.

  “Chengdu is the best place to eat in China,” Wu said. He had tossed back more than one maotai. “And the Hibiscus is the best place to eat in Chengdu.”

  Neal wouldn’t argue with that. The decor wasn’t much; in fact, it looked like any Chinese restaurant you might wander into in Providence, Rhode Island, if you were more interested in getting laid than in getting moo goo gai pan. You walked in a narrow doorway off the street into a minuscule lobby. A door to the right led to a large dining room packed with round tables with plastic covers. Neal started through that door, but Wu explained that the room was only for Chinese citizens; foreign guests ate in private dining rooms upstairs.

  “What’s the difference?” Neal asked.

  “Privacy.”

  Yeah, right. Privacy and the prices. Not that he really cared, the Chinese having given him the money to be Mr. Frazier in the first place.

  So they climbed the stairs to a room about the size of a large den. There were three tables, but only one of them had been set. A white linen tablecloth set off the black dishes, and black enameled chopsticks with blue and gold cloisonne were set on the plates. Linen napkins were rolled in black rings, and small black china cups completed the setting. The walls had been whitewashed recently, and several charcoal sketches of bamboo leaves and hibiscus blossoms on framed rice paper had been hung. The plank floor had been painted in black enamel, and someone had gone to some trouble to carry out a “theme” with limited means. Neal didn’t think the rat that scurried across the shiny floor was part of the theme, but he pretended not to notice it and took his seat in the black wooden chair offered by the waiter. Anyway, he thought, nobody from New York had any right to be picky about rats in restaurants.

  And rats always seem to know the best places, because the food was fantastic. The banquet started with a single cup of a tea that Neal had never tasted before, followed by a shot of maotai. Neal could see that Wu wasn’t much a drinker, because his face turned scarlet and he had to work hard to suppress a coughing fit. Neal hadn’t had a taste of booze in four months, and it felt good—like getting a letter from an old friend.

  The drinks preceded a parade of hors d’oeuvres: pickled vegetables, small mantou with meat centers, dumplings filled with pork, and several other items that Neal didn’t recognize and was afraid to ask about. Wu exercised the proper protocol by selecting the best tidbits and putting them on Neal’s plate, a task that became more complicated as the shots of maotai went south. The last appetizers were the little pastries of red bean paste that Neal remembered from Li Lan’s dinner.

  Then came the main courses: sliced duck, chunks of twice-cooked pork, a whole fish in brown sauce, steamed vegetables, a bowl of cold noodles in sesame sauce … the courses interspersed with small bowls of thin broth that cooled the mouth and cleared the palate. Somewhere in there, two or three more maotais sacrificed their lives for the greater good, and then the waiter brought out a dish of chicken with red peppers and peanuts—another one of Li Lan’s greatest hits. Neal was beginning to pray that the Hibiscus didn’t have a hot tub when the waiters brought out a tureen of hot and sour soup and then a big bowl of rice.

  Neal watched Wu scoop up globs of the sticky rice and rub them in the sauces of the previous dishes. He did the same and found it was a delightful recap of the whole meal, a gustatory album of a recent memory. Wu looked as happy as a politician with a blank check.

  Wu polished off his rice, leaned across the table, and said, “I have a secret to tell you.”

  “You’re really a woman?”

  Wu giggled. He wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t sober either. “That is the best meal I have ever eaten in my whole life.”

  “I won’t tell your mother.”

  “That is not the secret.”

  “Oh.”

  “The secret is—I have never eaten here before.”

  “That’s okay. Neither have I.”

  Wu broke up on that one, but when he stopped laughing he turned terribly earnest. “Why must a foreign guest come before a Chinese can eat like this?”

  “I don’t know, Xiao Wu.”

  “It is an important question.”

  “You could eat downstairs, right? Same food.”

  Wu shook his head angrily, then looked around to see if anyone was listening. “I cannot afford it. Only party cadres can afford it.”

  “Home cooking is better anyway, right?”

  “Do you think we can afford to eat like this at home?” Wu asked indignantly. “We have no money for pork, for duck. Even good rice is very expensive. This food is for festivals only, sometimes for a birthday….”

  He trailed off into silence.

  “Let’s go get blasted, Xiao Wu.”

  Wu was still smoldering in resentment. “Blasted?”

  “Blasted. Hammered. Spiflicated. Shit-faced.”

  “Shit-faced?!”

  Wu was fighting a grin and losing.

  “Shit-faced. Bombed. Intoxicated.”

  “Shit-faced?!”

  He was off and giggling.

  “Drunk.”

  “
It is frowned upon.”

  “Who cares?”

  “Responsible persons.”

  “No. Cocksuckers and motherfuckers.”

  That did it. Wu was doubled over in his chair, gasping for air and mumbling, “Shit-faced.”

  “Where can we go?” Neal asked.

  Wu suddenly got serious. “We have to go back to the hotel.”

  “Is there a bar there?”

  “On the roof. There is a noodle bar.”

  “I don’t want any more noodles, I want us to get shit—”

  “They serve beer.”

  Neal signaled the waiter. “Check, please!”

  Dinner should be surprises, Neal recalled as he and Wu finished off the last cup of tea at the Hibiscus Restaurant.

  The meal wasn’t surprising. Li Lan had made several of the same dishes in the Kendalls’ kitchen in Mill Valley, although not as well.

  “Were all these dishes Sichuan specialties?” Neal asked Wu.

  “Oh, yes. Very distinctive. In fact, Chengdu is the only place in the entire world where you can eat some of these dishes.”

  Not exactly, Wu, Neal thought. You can suck down this home cooking in Kendall’s dining room in Mill Valley, provided your chef is Li Lan.

  They walked the two blocks back to the hotel. A cop stopped them at the entrance. More accurately, he stopped Wu, and spoke to him brusquely.

  “What’s up?” Neal asked.

  “He wants to see my papers.”

  “What for? I’m the foreigner.”

  “Exactly. It is natural you would be in the hotel. Not natural for Chinese.”

  The cop was starting to look impatient, annoyed. It was the same imperious look that Neal recognized from small-minded cops everywhere.

  Neal asked, “But you’ve been here all week, right?”

  “Through the back door.”

  Neal saw the look of painful embarrassment on Wu’s face. He was being humiliated, and he knew it. He fumbled in his wallet for his identification card.

  “He’s my guest,” Neal said to the cop.

  The cop ignored him.

  Neal got right in his face. “He’s my guest.”

  “Please do not cause trouble,” Wu said flatly as he handed the cop his card. The cop took his sweet time looking it over.

  “It’s no trouble,” Neal said.

  “It is for me.”

  Right, Neal thought. I’m going home. Maybe.

  “You mean to tell me you can’t walk into a hotel in your own country?”

  “Please be quiet.”

  “Does he understand English?”

  “Do you?”

  The cop shoved the card at Wu and nodded him in. No apology, no smile of recognition, just a curt nod of the imperial head. Wu’s own head was down as he walked through the lobby. Neal knew that he had just seen his friend lose face, and it made him furious and sad.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Neal said as they got into the elevator.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does! It matters a—”

  “Let’s just get shit-faced.”

  The noodle bar surprised Neal. It had an almost Western feel of the dreaded decadence. The lights were low, the small tables had red paper covers and lanterns, and the entire south wall was composed of windows and sliding glass doors to give a spectacular view of the Nan River and the city beyond. A wide-open terrace had tables and scattered lounge chairs, and you could lean over the balcony railing to see the street fourteen floors below. The bar itself ran at least half the length of the large room, and it looked like a real bar. Glasses hung upside down from ceiling racks, bottles of beer cooled in tanks of ice, liquor bottles glistened on the back wall, and wooden stools provided plenty of spots to belly up. Off to the side, a cook fried noodles on a small grill, but the whole noodle bit was clearly just a gimmick to get past the bureaucracy. The operative word in “noodle bar” was Bar.

  There weren’t many customers. A few cadre types were smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and having a quiet conversation at one table, while a few Japanese businessmen sat silently at the bar. The tone was subdued but not sullen. It had the feel of any late weeknight in any bar in any city in the world, and Neal had to remind himself that it was only ten o’clock. The place closed at ten-thirty.

  Neal dragged Wu to the bar, lifted a finger to the bartender, and said, “Two cold ones.”

  The bartender looked to Wu.

  “Ar pijiu.”

  The bartender popped open two bottles and set them on the bar. Neal tossed some Chinese bills down. Wu retrieved a couple and handed them back to Neal.

  “Plenty,” he said.

  “Let’s go out on the terrace.”

  “Okay.”

  They stood against the balcony wall and looked out at Chengdu. Lack of electric power made the city lights relatively dim, but their low glow made the night soft and somehow poignant. A few old-style lanterns shone in the windows of the stucco houses of the old neighborhood, while behind them the low electric lights in the new prosaic high-rise apartments made geometric patterns in the night sky. Just across Hongxing Road the Nan River made a lazy S-curve, and the lamps of a few houseboats reflected in the water.

  The soft night took the edge off Neal, and the urge to get drunk left him as suddenly as it had come. He felt a little ashamed, too, about leading Wu into trouble. Better just to have a couple of beers, talk a little Mark Twain, and leave it at that.

  Anyway, he thought, the kid isn’t used to alcohol, and you’re not in drinking shape anyway. Maybe they’ll let you take a scotch back to your room.

  He knocked back a long slug of the domestic Chinese beer and found that it wasn’t bad. Wu didn’t seem to mind it, either, sipping at it steadily as he drank in the view.

  “Can we see your house from here?” Neal asked him.

  “Other direction.” He was still smarting from the scene at the door, nursing a grudge along with the beer.

  Maybe that isn’t all that bad, Neal thought. If I were him, I’d have a hell of a grudge, too, and it might be better to nurse it than to forget it. Come to think of it, I do have a hell of a grudge, and I’m not going to forget it either.

  “Beautiful city,” Neal said.

  “Fuck yes.”

  “You want another beer?”

  “I’m not finished this one yet.”

  “You will be by the time I get back.”

  Neal held up his empty bottle in one hand and two fingers in the other. The bartender responded with the requisite two brews and even made change for Neal. The cadres at the one table stopped their conversation to stare at Neal as he walked past.

  “Hi, guys,” he said.

  They didn’t answer.

  Neal handed Wu his fresh bottle. “Here’s to Mark Twain.”

  “Mark Twain.”

  “And Du Fu.”

  “Du Fu.”

  “And here’s to Mr. Peng, who’s coming through the door.”

  Peng nodded a hello to the boys at the table and came out on the terrace. He looked pissed off, and the sight of Wu with a beer bottle in his hand didn’t do anything to improve his mood. He spoke rapidly to Wu and then stood looking at Neal.

  “He is happy you are enjoying your evening.”

  Meaning exactly the opposite, Neal thought.

  “If he’s happy, I’m thrilled,” Neal answered.

  “He says to pack your bags tonight.”

  Neal felt his heart racing. Maybe they were going to put him on a plane.

  “You will be gone for three days,” Wu continued.

  “Where?”

  “Dwaizhou Production Brigade.”

  “What’s that? A factory?”

  “No. It is in the countryside, perhaps one hundred miles south of Chengdu. You would call it a commune.”

  “A collectivized farm.”

  “As you say.”

  “It’s a tourist thing?”

  Peng spoke quickly.

&nb
sp; “Foreign guests love to see production brigades,” Wu translated. “This is one of Sichuan’s best. Highly productive.”

  Swell. They’re finished displaying me in the city, so we’re taking a weekend in the country. What for? More Mr. Frazier bullshit?

  “How are you going to keep me down on the farm, after I’ve seen Chengdu?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Do me a favor, Xiao Wu? Last call is coming. Go to the bar and get us three beers?”

  “I don’t think—”

  Peng told him to go. He and Neal stood staring at each other for a few seconds.

  “Let’s cut the translation crap, okay?” Neal said.

  Peng smiled narrowly. “As you wish.”

  “What’s the game here?”

  “I have gone to great lengths to explain that.”

  “You have gone to great lengths to avoid explaining that.”

  “Things are not always what they appear.”

  “Grasshopper.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Nothing. Come on, Peng, what’s the deal? Why are we going to the country?”

  “You do not wish to go?”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “Your returning home. The sooner you go on this trip, the sooner you can go home. Of course, if you wish to delay …”

  “I’ll be packed and ready.”

  Wu returned with the beers and stood on the edge of their conversation. He edged forward when he saw that they had stopped speaking, and offered the beers.

  “I do not drink beer,” Peng said. It wasn’t a comment, it was an order.

  “Yes,” said Wu, setting the beers on a table, “it is late and we must start early in the morning.”

  Neal scooped up the beers. “I’ll just take them to my room, then.”

  “That is against the law,” said Peng.

  “Arrest me,” answered Neal. He popped Wu on the shoulder and walked out the bar. He could feel Peng’s glare on his back, and it felt great.

  Peng was furious. Until his conversation with the arrogant, rude young American, his evening had been going quite well. Persuading Comrade Secretary Xao to send Carey into the countryside had been ludicrously easy.

  “I think we had better bring him closer to the asset,” he’d told the secretary.

  “Yes? Why? It seems he has attracted no attention at all.”

  Peng had furrowed his brow and stared at the floor.