Iron and Silk

by Mark Salzman

  First, one of the young men who had been fighting earlier with a long pole performed the “Drunken Sword.” In this style the fighter must stumble, weave, leap and bob as if drunk, at the same time whipping his sword around him at full speed, all the while maintaining perfect control. Then a woman with a single braid reaching to her waist performed the double sabre. The two blades flashed around her but never touched, and she finished by leaping into the air, crossing the sabres and landing in a full split. One after the other, the athletes performed routines with spears, halberds, hooks, knives and their bare hands. My stomach hurt by now just from the excitement of watching them; I’d never seen martial arts of this quality before, nor sat so close to such tremendous athletes as they worked. Just as the last man finished a routine with the nine-section steel whip, someone clapped once, and all the athletes rushed into a line and stood at perfect attention. I turned toward the wooden doors to see who had clapped and for the first time saw Pan.

  I recognized him immediately as one of the evil characters in Shaolin Temple, and I knew from magazine articles about the movie that he had choreographed and directed the martial arts scenes. This movie, shot partly on location at the real Shaolin temple where Chinese boxing has been practiced for more than fifteen hundred years, featured China’s most famous boxers and was produced and distributed by studios in Hong Kong It became an immediate success in East Asia when it was released in 1981, and remains China’s only blockbuster film to date. Not long after my arrival in Changsha, several people had mentioned to me that someone connected with this movie was in Hunan, but no one had actually seen him or could agree upon who he was. They did agree, however, that one would need a significant “back door” to gain an introduction, if he was really in Hunan at all. Pan had a massive reputation as a fighter from the days when scores were settled with blows rather than points. His nickname, “Iron Fist,” was said to describe both his personality and his right hand, which he had developed by punching a fifty-pound iron plate nailed to a concrete wall one thousand to ten thousand times a day.

  Pan walked over to where the athletes stood, looked them over, and told them to relax. They formed a half-circle around him; some leaned on one leg or crossed their arms, but most remained at stiff attention. He gave them his morning address in a voice too low for me to hear, but it was clear from the expressions on his face that he was exhorting them to push harder, always harder, otherwise where will you get?

  He stood about five foot eight, with a medium to slight build, a deep receding hairline, a broad, scarred nose and upper front teeth so badly arranged that it looked as if he had two rows of them, so that if he bit you and wrecked the first set, the second would grow in to replace them. Most noticeable, though, were his eyebrows. They swept up toward his temples making him look permanently angry, as if he were wearing some sort of Peking Opera mask. At one point he gestured to one of the athletes with his right hand, and I saw that it was strangely disfigured. Dr. Nie, who must have known what I was thinking, leaned over and said, “That is the iron fist.”

  Pan looked fearsome, but what most distinguished him was that, when he talked, his face moved and changed expression. I had been in China for eight months, but thought this was the first time I had seen a Chinese person whose face moved. Sometimes his eyes opened wide with surprise, then narrowed with anger, or his mouth trembled with fear and everyone laughed, then he ground his teeth and looked ready to avenge a murder. His eyebrows, especially, were so mobile that I wondered if they had been knocked loose in one of his brawls. He commanded such presence that, for the duration of his address, no one seemed to breathe.

  At last he finished. He clapped his hands once again and the athletes jumped back to their positions in the room, ready to continue their morning workout. He started to walk toward the far side of the room, where all the weapons lay on a wooden rack, then pretended to notice us for the first time. He looked surprised, spread his palms in a welcoming gesture, then said to Dr. Nie, “Why didn’t you tell me we had a guest?”

  Dr. Nie introduced me once again as Professor Mr. Sima Ming, this time adding that I was a wushu expert and had performed several times in China with great success. “The professor practiced Chinese martial arts for nine years before coming to China and has performed not only for our college, but for the governor of Hunan as well.” While this was true, it was not true that I was an expert, or that the success of my performances was due to the quality of my wushu. Anything a foreigner did in front of a Chinese audience received thunderous applause. “He is especially good at ‘Drunken Fist’.” In fact, I knew very little Drunken Fist, but since all my performances occurred after huge banquets, where drinking contests with baijiu were required, my thrashing about was usually identified as “Drunken Fist.” I would typically jump over a table, trip over a chair and throw it around, fall down a few times, punch an imaginary opponent and leave to be sick. Before I could explain all this, though, Dr. Nie turned to our host and said, “And this is Master Pan Qingfu. There is no need to introduce him further.”

  Pan extended his hand for me to shake. It was not deformed, but simply decorated with several large calluses on his knuckles and finger joints that had turned black as if scorched I put my hand in his, and to my great surprise and relief, he shook it gently. We sat down and he asked how it happened that I spoke Chinese and lived in China.

  As we spoke the troupe continued to practice, even more furiously than before, now that Pan had arrived. Every few minutes he pointed to his stopwatch, shook his head and asked some poor athlete if he was napping or practicing. He criticized one of the women so fiercely that it looked as if she were on the verge of tears. He made her repeat a move, a complicated leap ending in a crouched position, until she collapsed in a heap on the floor. “Who’s next?” he shouted, and another athlete came forward, taking care not to step on the woman as she dragged herself off to the side. None of the athletes even twitched an eyebrow when receiving instructions or criticism. He ordered, and instantly they obeyed, without so much as a sigh, and they obeyed in this fashion until they could no longer stand.

  After two hours or so morning practice came to an end. Pan reminded them to be on time for afternoon practice and seemed about to dismiss them when a smile came over his face. He pointed at me. “Please welcome our American friend.” The athletes burst into applause, smiling with what energy they had left. “He has practiced wushu for nine years—don’t you think he should do something for us?” The applause turned to cheers of delight. I felt all the blood drain from my face and thought I would faint if I stood up. As soon as I could speak I refused, but this only brought louder cheering. Dr. Nie, ever the friend in need, announced that I was just being modest, and that I was as strong as a lion and fast as a swooping pigeon, or something like that, and began to pull me from the bench. I looked at Pan; he was smiling at me the way a wolf might smile at a lame deer.

  Then the blood rushed back into my face, and I nearly saw double with anger. Humiliating unwitting foreigners is something of a popular sport in China, and it occurred to me that my little spectacle would soon be legendary. But he had me. If I accepted, I would go down in local history as the foreigner who made a fool of himself in front of Pan Qingfu and the Hunan Wushu Troupe; if I refused, I would be remembered as the foreigner who left the Hunan Sports Unit with his tail between his legs.

  I stood up, and the applause died down. Pan sat down, continuing to smile. I explained that my wushu couldn’t be compared to theirs and added, truthfully, that I had never imagined I would see such expertise as they possessed. I then said that for me to perform a Chinese routine would be a waste of time, since they did wushu so much better. I had come to learn. Better for me to do something they might not otherwise have a chance to see. I told them that in America, fighters have been exposed to a variety of Asian martial arts, Western boxing, and African dancing rhythms. Making it up as I went along, I explained that a distinctly American style has come out of all this, and is
called “On the Street Boxing.” I started clapping out a syncopated beat, began moving in a modified hustle, and let loose, trying to make up for what I lacked in gymnastic skill with unrestrained violence. At the time I was not in good condition, so after a few minutes, when I started to taste blood in my throat, I stopped. The athletes exploded into cheers, and Dr. Nie slapped Pan’s shoulders in excitement, but Pan sat dead still, with the same smile on his face. I started to see black around the edges of my field of vision and no longer heard all the noise, but only saw Pan at the end of a darkening tunnel. He stood up and walked toward me, stopping when his face was very near my own. His smile had disappeared. In a very low voice he said, “That’s not gong fu.” We stared at each other for a long time, then he raised one eyebrow. “I could fix it, if you wanted.” I must have nodded, because then he asked me if I could chi ku, eat bitter, the Chinese expression meaning to endure suffering. Lying, I said yes. Then he asked me if I was afraid of pain. Lying again, I said no. “You want?” he asked. “I want,” I said, and became his student.

  Early one morning a heavy fog fell over the city. Right away I thought of going down to the river to see what it looked like. I put a few pieces of steamed bread into a small covered pot, got on my bicycle and rode down to the end of Anti-Imperialism Road. I parked the bicycle against a tree, went down the stone steps of the flood wall to the riverbank and sat on a discarded tire.

  I hoped that I might see the fog rise, or at least have the sun burst through an opening and light it all up, but nothing like that happened. I ate my steamed bread and was getting ready to leave when something caught my eye. Out of the fog slipped a tiny boat with a fisherman standing in it, rowing slowly and singing to himself. Chinese rowboats, unchanged for many centuries, are shaped like cigars and have a curved roof of woven bamboo at one end. The oars are longer than Western oars, crossing in front of the oarsman to form an X. The oarsman stands at the rear of the boat, facing forward, with the oars in front of him. He pushes them through the water, pulling them for the return stroke. The fisherman stopped not far from me and took out his net, which was folded neatly into a ball and had several round metal weights dangling from it. He walked to the front of the boat, got his footing, wound up and threw the net. It spun in the air, and the weights went their separate directions, opening the round net like a flower before it hit the surface of the water and disappeared. After waiting a few minutes he pulled it in, taking a few wriggling fish out and dropping them into a bucket. He folded the net carefully and prepared to move on. Just as he took the oars in his hands, he saw me.

  I cannot imagine what goes through a Chinese fisherman’s or peasant’s mind when he sees a white man for the first time, but I can describe the physical reaction: paralysis, and the mouth drops open. This is what happened that morning, and only when the current started to spin his boat around did he come to and start rowing. He rowed slowly past me, his mouth still open, close enough that I could see that he was barefoot, in the winter, and that his hands were dark and swollen from all the time they spent in the cold water. I smiled at him and he beamed back, waving so vigorously he nearly fell out of the boat. I said hello and asked him if he wasn’t cold without shoes on, and he dropped both oars, clapping his hands with delight. It was obvious that he simply could not believe that I spoke Chinese. He picked up the oars, rowed frantically over to where I stood and stretched out his hand to help me into the boat. “Jump on!” he yelled, “I have to show you to my family!” At first I hesitated, but then I remembered that I was not in New Haven anymore and would probably not be mugged, so I took his hand and got on.

  We rowed downstream for about half an hour, talking the whole way, though he often had to say things a few times for me to understand him. He tried to speak Mandarin for my benefit, but his Changsha accent made it almost incomprehensible. He seemed most interested in hearing songs from my country. I sang a few lines of this and that as he rowed and asked him if he liked them. “They’re not bad, but not as good as Hunan folk songs!” “Would you sing one for me?” “Of course!” I leaned back in the boat and put my arms behind my head while he sang. His broken voice was the perfect instrument for the exquisitely frail melodies, and certainly I could not have heard them under better circumstances.

  He stopped singing to point something out to me. Near the river bank, not far ahead, a cluster of five or six boats like his floated together, connected by ropes. “My family!” he said, then urged me to crawl under the bamboo roof. “Don’t come out until I tell you!” He rowed up to the flotilla, tied his boat to one of the others and exchanged a few words with someone before winking at me and telling me to come out. I crawled out and stood up. Ten or eleven men and women, young and old, sat together around a portable charcoal stove eating a mid-morning snack. One by one they looked up, and I could see the paralysis hit like a wave until it reached the youngest child, not more than three years old, who burst into tears. My friend doubled over with laughter, and as soon as he could speak he blurted out, “There’s more—he talks!” This time I hit them with the smile and the speech all at once, and the effect was stupendous. Before I knew it, I had more food than I could eat in a week set in front of me, the men crowding around me shaking my hands and slapping my shoulders with joy, the women asking me questions all at the same time, and the children fighting to get in line to touch me.

  My friend, who called himself Old Ding, was the only one among them able to approximate the sounds of Mandarin, so I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying. I smiled a great deal, though, and that was enough. I became their new friend, and they indicated with sincerity that what was theirs was now also mine. That morning I learned to row their boats, cast a “flower net,” as they called it, and set up the larger nets that are pulled shut by two, three, or sometimes six boats.

  Around noon I reminded Old Ding that I had a two-thirty class, so I should be getting back. He, one of his brothers and I hopped into the smallest boat, and after I had said goodbye to the family and promised to return, we started upstream. The Xiang River runs fast, so even with the brothers taking turns rowing vigorously, it took us an hour and a half to get back to the city limits, where my bicycle was parked. The brother had a huge barrel chest, a scarred face and a moustache that made me think of Fu Manchu. He didn’t speak so much as growl, or so it seemed to me, and every once in a while he leaned forward to slap me on the shoulder, nearly propelling me out of the boat. He smiled at me, gnashed his teeth and growled. “What is he saying?” I asked Old Ding. “He says he likes you and wants to wrestle! My brother likes to wrestle!”

  Before letting me ashore, they insisted that we have one more adventure. A big river boat was anchored in the middle of the river, dredging up silt from the riverbed and dropping it onto flat tugboats that carried it to shore. Old Ding knew the crew and suggested that we stop by and say hello. We rowed alongside the boat and got on quietly. None of the crew saw us, for they were all in the cabin relaxing during xiuxi. The three of us walked into the cabin, me last of all. The captain was the first to look up. He opened his mouth but was unable to speak, and his cigarette fell from his lower lip into his bowl of rice, where it sizzled loudly. Once the initial shock and frenzy died down, the captain gave me a tour of his boat. He told me that he remembered the American soldiers from the Second World War very well. With great emotion in his voice, he repeated over and over how good it was of them to help China. At last, he managed to say “USA!” in English, and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  Eventually we left the river boat and the brothers took me to where I had first gotten on. Only after I agreed to accept the two biggest fish in the hold did they let me ashore. They stood in the boat waving for as long as I could see them, yelling after me that I should come back soon to play, that all I had to do was walk by the river and I would find them. To avoid arriving late for class, I rode directly to the classroom, where I had a difficult time explaining to my doctor students how I came to possess two giant fish that still
breathed when I set them on my desk. Every few minutes, just as the curious whispering had died down and we began to go over the lesson, one of the fish would leap into the air and land with a loud slap on the floor. On my way home, I gave the fish to Teacher Wei and told her of my day with the fisherman. She nodded slowly as I told it, and when I had finished, she smiled. “The fishing people are very honest, and very kind. You see how well they treat you? That is the Chinese way. They are common people, but they understand manners better than we intellectuals, who are now cautious and tired.”

  Two hours later she walked into my room with a covered pot and put it on my desk. It contained one of the fish, cooked to perfection in a spicy Hunan sauce. “Of course,” she said as she hurried out, “we intellectuals can still do a pretty good job.”

  It started with an argument about Nastassia Kinski’s lips. Tess of the D’Urbervilles was playing in Changsha, and I asked the small group of doctors and teachers from my class what they thought of it. We had just finished an outstanding meal cooked by two of the doctors, husband and wife, and were now relaxing in their small apartment, drinking tea and trying to digest seventeen dishes shared among eight people. The doctors beat around the bush for a while, calling the movie “interesting” and “full of characters,” but eventually confessed that they had not enjoyed it much. Among the disappointments of this movie, they said, was that Miss Kinski, the star, was not beautiful. “You can’t be serious,” I said, but they were, and their complaint was specific: her lips were too big. “They aren’t big,” I said, “they are full.” “Then they are too full,” they replied. According to Chinese taste, a woman’s lips should be small and delicate. I told them that Westerners consider full lips to be very good, and they asked, “Good for what?”