“We failed,” Zhang Li said, as they tucked themselves into side-by-side Lhasa twin beds for the last time.
Lulu, eyelids heavy, reached out for the bedside lamp. “Yes, but we had a good time.”
After breakfast, after one last cup of yak butter tea, they checked out of the hotel, settled into the Land Rover, cruised through the city one last time. On a narrow street, out the windshield, a flash. Lulu slammed on the brakes. A girl, her gaze cast downward, had walked out in front of them. Tires squealing. Red hair. Slow motion. Jerking to a stop. Just in time. Red hair, red hair, red hair. The girl looked up, startled. She smiled. She waved. She held up a phone. She turned around in the street, shouted something indiscernible to someone behind her.
Zhang Li reached for Lulu’s hand.
A parade of people emerged from a narrow alleyway between two blocky buildings, following the red-haired girl. Girls in false eyelashes and high heels; girls with shaggy haircuts and Converse sneakers; boys in dingy T-shirts; boys with perfectly coiffed pop-star hair. A broad-shouldered, handsome man with long hair. A smaller, younger, serious-faced man. Horns blaring. A line of cars behind Lulu’s Land Rover. Someone attempting to maneuver around her. Someone rolling down a window and crying a curse: “Stupid bitch! Your husband put you in that tank because he knows you can’t drive?! Go already!” A curse directed at her. But she wasn’t the one causing this delay; couldn’t the drivers behind her see these people pouring into the street? Honking. Lulu glanced into the rearview mirror, frowned. Only a second had passed, but when she looked out the windshield again, the partygoers were gone, the street before her empty.
Lulu blinked. “Wait, did I… just… ? Did you… see… ?”
Zhang Li, wide-eyed, only nodded. They’d been set free.
And for seven days, they drove in silence, driving the very same road they’d driven before, just in a different direction. In her head, in that silence, in reverie, Lulu repeated, Sometimes it’s as easy as believing; sometimes it’s as easy as going where you’re called, into the emptiness, into the form, into the everything; sometimes it’s as easy as…
IN THE NEWS
RIOTS ROCK TIBET
LHASA, CHINA —…The Party urges both Han and Tibetan citizens, who are all citizens of the People’s Republic, to end this senseless violence. The Party also wishes to remind citizens of the evilness of the Dalai Lama, a Satan on this earth, and to speak his name as one might speak Lord Voldemort’s name, which is to say never…
KELLY HUI: HAVANA’S NEWEST SOCIALITE?
NANJING, CHINA — On Saturday, renowned gossip columnist Ma Guowei reported on his microblog that Ms. Hui may have been sighted at a nightclub in Havana, Cuba. Although this sighting remains unconfirmed, Mr. Ma notes that Ms. Hui’s late father was indeed a frequent visitor to the island nation…
YUAN STEPS DOWN AS BASHFUL GOOSE CEO
BEIJING, CHINA — Yuan Wang Ping, CEO of Bashful Goose Snack Company, announced today his resignation. He steps down following controversy over tainted products and alleged food safety cover-ups. Activists purport that Mr. Yuan paid off regulatory and media entities to “make this damn mess go away…”
Mr. Yuan, who came into power after Mr. Yang’s resignation earlier this year, is rumored to be succeeded by a Mr. Jiang.
“Jiang has a tough road ahead of him,” said a middle-aged, balding professor of finance at Qinghua University who hails from Papa Hui’s Wuxi and who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity. “Bashful Goose sales figures have plummeted. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. Frankly, people are terrified to eat the snacks they once held dear…”
MILLIONAIRES ACADEMY GROOMS NATION’S FUTURE TYCOONS
SHENZHEN, CHINA —…Gone are the days of Papa Hui’s awe-inspiring leadership, and with the city’s millionaires disappearing at alarming rates, our tycoons-to-be lack strong, wealthy role models. Spotting this gaping hole in the marketplace, Ms. Huang founded the Future Millionaires Academy. The academy, located on Dongmen Street, caters to students ages 6 to 16 and offers intensive courses such as Mind Your Manners, To Bribe or Not to Bribe?, Business English, Navigating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and French Wines for Beginners…
While none of the all-star faculty members is currently a millionaire, most hope soon to be. Classes are filling up quickly, Ms. Huang tells us, and space is limited…
NATIONAL SPIRIT STAGNANT, REPORTS INDICATE
BEIJING, CHINA —…Mr. Deng, our nation’s leading happiness expert, declined to comment, as he couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and answer his phone…
THE EX-MILLIONAIRES’ CLUB
In the unlikely event of my death, the goose shall inherit the throne. In the even more unlikely event of the goose’s death chaos shall reign!
—THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TIMID DUCK (A MAINLAND-BANNED FEATURE FILM DRAMATIZATION)
1.
THE WOODS, THE SETTLEMENT, THE COMMITTEE
Let us form a committee, a committee to solve this mystery.
An elusive city.
But it’s not really a city, is it?
Whatever it is, it is here before us. We can see its buildings, we can see its streets, and yet…
We are the finest minds in this country.
Are we?
But the city is here, here it is, what is so elusive about something that can so clearly be seen?
Well, where shall we begin?
LULU GAVE UP HER MONEY, HER LAND ROVER, HER APARTMENT, HER unreachable dreams, her vanity, her shopping sprees, her Coke Zero. She gave it all up until there was nothing left to hide behind, nothing left from which to run.
And now she was here, at night, in a forest thick with trees, in this overgrown forest, still running, running away from that nothing.
She sucked in her stomach and squeezed herself between two trunks, stepped over their gnarled roots, squinted to make out the path ahead. She pictured herself clambering all the way up this mountain, through its ecological labyrinth, and down its other side, dashing through orchards and fields and back, eventually, to civilization.
That would be one way to do it. But then what?
The quarter moon hung low in the sky, tilted ever so slightly—a crooked smile, offering its blessing. She peered up at it through the skeletal branches.
Snapping. Crunching. Footsteps. She gasped, pressed her back against the trunk, camouflage. Her heart pounded.
These woods were safe. These woods were hers.
Another broken branch, another step, another skipped heartbeat.
She stifled a scream, her tongue bloated in her mouth.
Two red eyes floated in the near distance, staring right through her. They glowed in the dark: sharp crimson light, two evenly spaced laser pointers. No form, no else; just eyes.
Don’t scream, she willed herself, don’t.
But the eyes had a voice. The voice spoke her name. Lulu.
Set to sound, a whiteness emanated from them, cloaked her rag-dressed body with warmth. All at once, she knew, sensed deep down to her core, that this being wasn’t here to hurt her, it was here to help.
She peeled her back from the tree trunk and leaned forward. She stared back into those eyes. Her limbs tingled, pins and needles. She yearned to speak, to shout, “Please tell me what to do.” Her tongue wiggled, a serpent seeking escape. She clamped her mouth shut. She breathed. She listened.
What do you want? the voice asked her.
She did not allow her teeth, her lips to part. She needn’t speak her reply aloud. The eye-being knew her soul. The eye-being reached inside her and pulled its answer out.
Dear Officials,
We thank you for your patronage of the social sciences and for your generous financial donations to support the continuation of such pursuits. Thank you also to Happy Mart Inc., whose own tax-exempt contribution served to make this study ever the more possible. We are pleased then to offer you the findings of our research regarding [This Settlement]:
H
istory books tell us that [This Settlement] was once, for three weeks, the home of Confucius, who had fallen ill from food poisoning and who declared the area’s tranquil mountains and streams “ideal spots for secret relief.” Lao-tzu, who also passed through, declared the famous local delicacy, fish-head soup, “damn delicious.”
Until recent years, however, [This Settlement] enjoyed no further fame, no nods from heads of greatness. In fact, when Wang Xilai and Stefan Ping arrived, it must have stood all but abandoned, a few country houses in an empty valley, its native inhabitants long gone off to cities to seek their fortunes.
Our research confirms that, earlier this year, inspired by Mr. Wang’s and Mr. Ping’s renunciation of wealth and embrace of simplicity, millionaires across the nation abandoned their homes, dispersed and dissolved their assets, and uprooted their lives to [This Settlement]. A number of notable CEOs, businessmen, film directors, actors, singers, and other public figures…
Months before that encounter in the forest, Lulu—weary from hazy days of trains, minibuses, cars, and hiking—had arrived at the Settlement. She stood at the base of a mountain looking out across the valley, at the village nestled within: clusters of buildings, a grid of dirt roads, plots of farmland. This, this was it. A meaty lump lodged in her throat. She was torn between laughing and crying.
She did neither. She took a deep breath.
She situated herself on the earth, dropped her bag beside her, planted her palms on her hip bones. This was the place, the place she’d overheard a woman in an overpriced coffee shop extolling, the place an oil industry acquaintance fell into drunken raptures over at a wedding reception, the place founded by her old friends Stefan and Hair Inc. CEO Wang, the place that everyone who was anyone was elevating to myth. This was Mecca, Bodh Gaya, Paradise. This was home.
Energy, electric, coursed through her veins, and she swore she heard the wind whistle welcome.
Or maybe it wasn’t the wind.
“Ay!” a voice called. “Hey, over here!”
Lulu spun on her heel. Two ball-like blurs. Then clarity: two old ladies, raggedy clothes flapping on them like flags in the wind, each clutching a bag to her abdomen, tumbled down the mountain like roly-polies.
That lump in her throat dissolved. A smile crept across her face. Judging by their somersaults, these ladies must’ve been retired acrobats, ready to move out from the spotlight completely. What stories must be housed in each muscle, each ligament, each joint.
The lady-balls slowed to a stop, uncurled, reassumed biped status, dusted off, and limped toward Lulu.
One of the women extended her hand and sunk into a curtsy. “Hello, my name is Witch One, and this is my sister, Witch Two.”
“Oh,” said Lulu, taking the woman’s hand. Odd names. Stage names, perhaps. “I’m Lulu.”
“Well,” Witch Two said, “shall we then?”
Lulu nodded, her head on an independent streak—she wasn’t sure, with that nod, to what exactly she was agreeing. But this was a new life, a new start. She didn’t need to know everything. She needed to trust.
She grabbed her bag by its handles. The women linked on to either of her arms. The three of them tromped toward a structure on the western edge of the mountain’s base.
“We knew,” Witch One said. She tsked. Her eyelids drooped to half-mast. “Oh, yes, we knew.”
“Indeed,” Witch Two took over, “we knew that when we arrived here, our new sister would reveal herself.”
Lulu fixed her eyes on the mystery structure, the goal without purpose, or at least a purpose made clear to her, and on the vast golden sky behind and above and all around it. Her brain produced thoughts in slow motion. They’re not acrobats. They’re witches. They rolled down the hill not for the sake of athletics or aesthetics, but because it’s easier to roll down a hill than to walk. And because they could. Because they’re witches. And they seemed to think she was a witch too.
Witch Two continued: “Our sisterhood is once again complete. Funny, our last sister died only a few months ago, but you must already know that—”
Witch One interrupted. “Ay, she was just minding her own business when she was bitten by a wolf.”
Lulu’s eyes, still moored to the horizon, widened.
Witch Two cleared her phlegmy throat. “Yes, that’s right. A wolf. She’d traveled to Inner Mongolia to collect a very special kind of herb that we needed for a potion—”
“And she made it almost all the way, but then a wolf grabbed hold of her leg. She managed to fight him off and escape before he gobbled her up completely, and she staggered into a nearby village, if you could even call it that—”
“They live in tents there, you know.”
“Of course she knows. Everyone knows that.”
“Yes, those horsemen. Nomads. They pack up their tents and move on and—”
“So anyway, when she staggered in, her mouth looked like a bubble bath in one of those French films.”
“Foaming at the mouth! Rabies! Ah, cruel fate!”
“Ay, yes! Who knows how long it’d been since that wolf had sunk its teeth into her tender leg meat. Days, maybe. Staggering around like a right lunatic—”
“People meat is a delicacy for wolves, you know. It’s like puffer fish is for the Japanese or—”
“But anyhow, how impressive that she hadn’t just given up.”
“She spent heaven knows how long dragging her ailing, poisoned body to civilization—”
“When she could’ve just given up the struggle altogether, laid down and died—”
“Ay, yes, it’d have been much easier. But she didn’t. She continued on for us. She gave the nomads our information. She wanted us to know what had happened to her. To not waste time wondering, searching—”
“So the nomads sent us news that she’d fallen ill and died—”
“And we sent a ganshiren, a corpse walker, to bring her body back to us—”
“Most people would be afraid to keep a rabid body around, but—”
“The nomads whose tent she crashed put her outside, away from anything that could be infected, kept a distant guard on her body day and night until the ganshiren arrived.”
“But those ganshiren, they’re trained for that kind of thing. They sleep with dead bodies in their rooms. They aren’t afraid of rabies! So he lifted her body under the armpits and then he did his rhythmic call—ho, ho, ho, ho! And he took away his arms and she stayed upright on her own and her dead feet began to move to the beat. Step, step, step, step.”
“Suddenly, Ms. Two Left Feet can dance, imagine that! And like that, she followed him across the plains of Inner Mongolia and back down to where we were living in Shaanxi, and we gave her a proper burial.”
“We thought we’d done everything right, but—”
“But then her ghost turned up.”
“In broad daylight.”
“We were cooking porridge in the morning and there she was, clear as bone broth, and she spoke in her living voice, a terribly shrill voice she always had, mind you, and told us—”
“Told us to head south, to Yunnan.”
“And she said once we arrived in Yunnan, everything would become clear.”
“Then she just disappeared! How were we supposed to enjoy our breakfast after that?”
“So we packed everything up and took a train to Kunming, and outside the station, we camped out, waiting for her ghost to send us a sign. We sat there, nothing to do, for days. Bor-ing.”
“Embarrassing is more like it. Some passersby mistook us for bums and left coins in our teacups!”
“Ay, hardly embarrassing. I told you, it was a compliment. It speaks to our fashion sense. I’ve seen magazines. Nowadays it’s hard to tell who’s homeless and who’s filthy rich.”
They both cackled.
Witch Two waved her hand, continued. “But we’re just joking. We know we’re not fashionable. And anyway, sitting outside that train station like common vagabonds, we began to worry tha
t maybe we’d made a mistake.”
“Or that Witch Three was just playing a trick on us.”
“Ay, she always was a trickster. Maybe she’d sent us to Yunnan for no good reason, just for laughs.”
“That was the kind of thing she would do. Once, at a wedding, she slipped an herbal oil into the philandering groom’s wine so he wouldn’t be able to perform in the bridal chamber. Flaccid as an earthworm. His bride divorced him within the year, and his mistress left him too!”
“Actually, when we first caught wind of her death, we thought it was a joke—talk about the witch who cried wolf!”
They cackled again.
“And she was always slipping dead mice into our shoes and—”
“Don’t give this new one any ideas.”
“Ay, right. So, surrendering to a joke well played, we tossed back our heads and laughed and laughed outside the train station, and we shouted to the heavens, ‘Good one, Witch Three!’ and we gathered our things and decided to head out, to find some sort of a tour group to join, figuring we may as well enjoy the sights—we’re not getting any younger—when a young man talking on his cell phone stopped directly in front of us, paced the same couple of steps, back and forth, back and forth, rattling on.”
“At first we were annoyed. Young people on those damn contraptions, shouting, not paying any mind to their surroundings or to the affairs of others. But when the words of his conversation began to take form—”
“He was talking about a village he’d heard of, some new sort of commune where its citizens rejected modern ways.”
“Imagine that, a young man in a business suit, a very fancy-looking man, mind you, speaking and philosophizing in awe about a place where people rejected everything he was, everything he stood for!”
“And crazier yet, he was saying he was thinking about going, about joining them!”
“He ended his conversation abruptly—the person on the other end of the line must’ve had something to do—and then he faded into the throngs. My sister and I just looked at each other—”
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