I tried to console myself with bitter thoughts. No wonder Chinese-Americans’ average SAT scores are higher than white Americans. They left their stupid cousins behind.
This didn’t help. Soon I felt resentful and guilty.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I shooed them away. “What are you looking at? Go on, get out of here! Go on, look at someone else!”
They were like the oxen they used to work the land: They blinked at me several times as if they couldn’t understand what I was saying, or why I was waving my hand at them. For a moment, I thought I’d have to slap them on the hindquarters to get them to leave us alone. Finally, they turned and left. I grabbed a manager and held on to his arm with a tight grip until the luggage purchase was complete.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked.
“I’d like to look around.”
She led me over to the section where they sold the foreign purses: Gucci, Prada, etc. She examined several of them.
“What do you think?” she asked me.
Their prices ranged between $500 and $1,000.
“I think they’re awfully expensive.”
As she stared at them, I kept wondering how she had come up with the equivalent of a Chinese farmer’s annual salary to spend on a purse. It did not occur to me—during the thirty minutes she spent staring longingly at those purses; nor when she reluctantly left the counter; nor when I asked her if she wanted to go to a hotel and she turned me down, saying that she needed to return home; nor during the three-hour bus ride to Deng Feng when she did not speak a word to me; nor when she did not respond to my request that she have dinner with me next weekend; nor during the next three weeks when I didn’t hear from her; nor when she did finally find me on the street one afternoon and wanted to see me for lunch the next day and I suggested dinner instead but she insisted on lunch; nor when she sat down to lunch and I asked her what she wanted to eat and she told me that she needed to borrow 100RMB ($12); nor when I asked, moron that I am, if this was a loan or a gift—no, it did not occur to me until she put the money in her handmade cloth purse, stood up, and walked out the door of the restaurant that she had expected me to buy her one of those damn luxury purses. And because insights tend to arrive in bunches, this first revelation was quickly followed by the certainty that having proven myself so inadequate in the realm of mistress-management, I would never see her again.
I didn’t.
Yunfei came to my room on a Sunday to ask if I wanted to visit Little Mei, the young woman he was courting at the moment.
“Isn’t she training with her master up in the mountains?” I asked.
“It’s not a very long walk.”
“How long?”
“Couple hours.”
“Yunfei, it’s only a couple of weeks until the Zheng Zhou tournament, and you know Sunday is my only day to rest.”
“I want to show you her master’s style of kungfu. It is a fascinating mix of tai chi and Shaolin style.”
“You want me to come along so your real reason for going is not as obvious.”
Yunfei smiled. “You won’t help out a friend? Friendship is very important. China has a proverb, ‘One chopstick is easily broken, but a dozen can hardly be bent.’”
“The only thing you are going to break is that poor girl’s heart.”
“Lao Bao, how can you say that? I like this one.”
“You like them all at first.”
“Have you ever been up in the mountains?”
“No.”
“Then you should come. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re not going to leave me alone until I come with you, are you?”
“Probably not.”
We walked west past the Shaolin Temple, past the Pagoda Forest. When we ran out of road, we turned onto a dirt path that led us up into the mountains. After a thousand-foot climb, the trail wound around the tops of the various peaks.
We had walked for about an hour when we turned a corner and ran smack dab into a mini-village. A dozen old women sat on stumps around an iron kettle over an open fire. Scattered around the women were twenty or so earthen huts with thatched roofs. A donkey was tied to a tree. The place took my breath away. It could have been a millennium ago. There wasn’t a single sign of the twentieth century anywhere in the village. This was what rural China must have looked like to Marco Polo.
But the most amazing thing was that not one of the women turned to look at me. I had gotten pretty good at measuring how far into the boondocks I’d traveled by gauging the size of response I caused. The farther out I went the more people pointed and stared. But here I had finally found a place so isolated that the Chinese were either incapable or too frightened to acknowledge my existence. Yunfei and I walked along the path barely twenty feet from them, and I might as well have been a yang guizi (Western ghost).
When we were past the village, I said to Yunfei, “That was weird. They didn’t even look at me.”
“It was strange,” he agreed. “They didn’t look at me, either.”
“You’re not their type.”
“I’m every woman’s type.”
“At first.”
Little Mei tried hard not to show how pleased she was to see Yunfei. She was a delight—beautiful, sweet, and smart. Yunfei had impeccable taste in women. She was one of the sisters whose father had sent her to Shaolin after she had finished high school to train. Initially, she had been at one of the schools in the village, but her father had heard about this old master in the mountain and sent her here. She clearly was lonely in the mountains.
Yunfei hailed her coach, “Master Tung, I brought a laowai who wants to examine your style of kungfu.”
Master Tung, a rugged man with the physical vitality and size of a Midwestern farmer, came out of his brick-and-tile house. It was much larger than a typical one, and he looked prosperous. He must have done something else for money besides farming, because there wasn’t much arable land in the mountains. He invited us inside.
After an unappetizing lunch of cooked Chinese Spam, Master Tung had Little Mei give a demonstration of his style.
“I have developed a variation on Shaolin,” he explained. “It relies more on generating internal power than external strength, making it useful for women.”
Little Mei got into a horse stance, which made her look like she was sitting on an invisible chair, and started punching. But the punches were slow and not straight. She twisted her arms around in a corkscrew motion. I tried to look interested, but I felt sorry for her. Internal styles work, but they take years and years before they are effective. I couldn’t imagine her lasting that long.
Sensing I wasn’t impressed, Master Tung asked, “Would you like me to demonstrate?”
“Oh no, master, please,” I said. “That’s not necessary. I can see the power in Little Mei’s punches.”
“Her technique is no good. You study kickboxing, right? Let me show you the power of the punch.”
“Oh, no, no, please. It’s okay,” I said as I backpedaled across the yard.
It was a sufficient display of humility.
“Okay,” he said. “But I do want to show you how I practice.”
“All right.”
He went to his shed and pulled out a hoe. We walked over to a garden about the size of a backyard swimming pool.
“I’ve planted sweet potatoes,” he said.
He walked into the middle of the field and brought down his hoe three times. With the first he uncovered a potato. With the second he cut the root. With the third he pulled the potato out of the ground and flipped it to me.
Holding out his hoe, he said, “Here, you try.”
I grabbed the hoe with confidence. How hard could this be? It took me five strokes to uncover a potato. I missed the root three times, slicing open the potato instead. It took three more strikes to sever the root and I had to bend over and pull the potato out of the ground with my hands, because my attempts to remove it with the hoe had further mashed it.
By the time I’d finished, Master Tung and Yunfei were rolling with laughter.
“I just need practice,” I said.
I was in the best shape of my life. I had trained seven hours a day for a year. I lasted five whole minutes before I was bent over panting for breath, the muscles in my back spasming.
“It’s harder than it looks,” Master Tung said, taking back the hoe and ending my lesson.
“You should pick a master and become a Shaolin disciple,” Yunfei told me one day.
“Coach Cheng is my master,” I replied.
“He’s your coach. But he’s not a monk anymore. You should pick a monk out of the temple and bai tade weishi,” he said. “Become his disciple.”
“How do I do that?”
“There is a formal ceremony.”
“Who should I pick?”
“My master is Senior Monk Yongxin.”
I hesitated. Monk Yongxin was the richest, most powerful, and best-connected monk at the temple, but he was therefore the most controversial. He had his own Mercedes-Benz with his own driver, a gift from a Beijing politician. He spent months at a time away from the temple cultivating his relationships inside the national army and the Beijing government. Whenever Beijing VIPs came to the temple, they were escorted by Yongxin. He was eventually made a deputy in the National People’s Congress. He’d also set up a separate group of martial monks to compete with the Wushu Center’s foreign-tour business.
“But I’ve never met him,” I said. “He has never taught me any kungfu.”
“He didn’t teach me either. That’s not the point,” Yunfei said. “Picking a master is a political decision. Yongxin will be the next abbot. His guanxi with the Beijing generals is deep. I tell you, when Yongxin becomes abbot, he will use his guanxi to wrestle control of Shaolin from the provincial government.”
That was interesting. It was well known and resented that the Henan tourism agency took all the revenue from ticket sales and then doled back only a small percentage to the temple. It was the main reason that life inside the temple was so moribund.
“Can you arrange it?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I couldn’t.”
On the agreed-upon day, Yunfei and I made our way to the temple. The policeman at the gate stopped us.
“Where are your tickets?”
“I’m a disciple of Yongxin,” Yunfei said.
The guard waved us through.
Yongxin’s quarters were in the back of the temple. Several younger disciples loitered around the entrance.
“Martial arts little brother,” Yunfei said to the Tall One, the only monk in Shaolin taller than six feet. “Tell Master Yongxin his American disciple is here.”
The Tall One knocked, opened the door, and ducked inside. After a moment, he waved us in.
Yongxin’s residence had two rooms: an audience room to greet guests and, behind a curtain, his bedroom. We sat down in two chairs in the main room. There was a Buddhist shrine on a table against the far wall with a cushioned kneeling stool in front for prayer. In short order, Yongxin made his way into the room.
I had seen him at a distance, escorting PLA generals on tours of the temple and into Wushu Center performances. But this was as close as I’d ever been to him. He was plump with a well-padded, porcine face and an advanced Buddha belly.
I stood, pressed my hands together, and bowed.
“Amituofo.”
He urged me to sit. As Yunfei had instructed, I presented him with a hongbao (red envelope—a monetary gift is placed inside). In prepping me for the day, Yunfei had explained that new disciples give their new master a hongbao. The sum was somewhat optional, but given Chinese obsessions with numerology certain amounts were considered auspicious, particularly 888 and 1,111. He left dollars or RMB up to me. I was feeling pretty poor by this point, and I’d also lived in China long enough that I’d stopped dividing RMB by eight to get the dollar amount—1 RMB equaled $1 as far as I was concerned. I went with 1,111RMB ($140).
Yongxin took the hongbao but tossed it onto the table as if it were an unnecessary, unpleasant matter to be concluded as quickly as possible. Given how wealthy he was rumored to be, he’d discover how trivial it was when he opened the envelope.
As the fixer, Yunfei poured tea for all of us.
“I am honored you would agree to meet me,” I said. “I am unworthy to be your disciple.”
Yongxin spoke to me, but his regional accent was so thick I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I turned to Yunfei.
Yunfei translated, “Master Yongxin says that he has heard many good things about you and that you are an interesting laowai.”
“Where? Where? Where?” I said. “No need to be kind.”
Yongxin spoke and again Yunfei translated: “And you are humble, too. That is very good. I hear you are a writer.”
The monks had seen me typing into my laptop and word had gotten around that I was an aspiring writer.
“I’m not a writer. I’d like to be one. Hopefully with enough hard work and practice I might become one.”
“I hear you are working on a movie script.”
“I’ve just started on one,” I said. “It is my first. It is very poorly written.”
“Perhaps you can write a movie about Shaolin for Hollywood. Tell what you have seen. What life is like here in modern times. It would help spread the fame of Shaolin to America. You come from a great country. I enjoyed my visit. The Americans were very kind to us.”
“Master, I want to ask you a question. Have you heard about the fate of two monks who remained in America after Shaolin’s first tour?” I said, referring to Yanming and Guolin, the two monks who had defected.
“It is still not easy for them. But their lives are improving.”
“But was it not embarrassing to have them leave in the way they did?” I asked.
He smiled at the delicacy with which I’d phrased the question. One of the defecting monks, Guolin, had been his disciple.
“For some. For me, I think of it as planting Shaolin flowers around the world. A seed drops in this country. A seed drops in that country. Soon Shaolin is everywhere.”
“I see.”
“Shall we begin the ceremony?”
Yongxin instructed me to kneel before the altar. He opened an ancient text and placed it onto a bookstand. He lit incense candles. He picked up a tiny bell with his right hand.
Yongxin read for about fifteen minutes, interspersing the chanting with rings of the bell. I could pick out only a few words. The text was in classical Chinese, which is to modern Chinese what Latin is to Italian. Most of the words were Chinese transliterations of Sanskrit Buddhist terms. And then there was his impenetrable accent.
What I heard was: “Buddha [something, something, something] Buddhist monks [something, something] Buddha [something] Buddhism [something, something, something] Buddha…”
Toward the end, it became clearer.
“Do you vow to devote yourself to the Buddha?” he asked.
“I vow,” I said.
And then I kowtowed. Yunfei had taught me the proper way. First you place your right hand down on the floor, then your left, then your right again, then you turn your left palm up, then your right, then you close both into a fist, then you touch your head to the floor.
Yongxin rang the bell.
“Do you vow to devote yourself to the Shaolin Temple?”
“I vow,” I said, kowtowing again.
Yongxin rang the bell.
“Do you vow to devote yourself to your new master?”
“I vow,” I said, kowtowing a final time.
Yongxing went on, “[Something, something, something] Buddha [something, something] Buddhism.”
Yongxin rang the bell three times, and the ceremony was over.
I stood up, “Amituofo, master.”
“Amituofo,” he said.
And with that I was a disciple of the Shaolin Temple, the first laowai ever, as far as anyone t
here knew.
3
TOURNAMENT
We filled a minivan for the trip to the Zhengzhou tournament. There was Deqing, Coach Cheng, Cheng Hao, my teammate and sparring partner Baotong, Monk Xingming, and Little Tiger, along with various hangers-on. All we needed were some cheerleaders and it would have been like a high school football game.
With their spirit of hospitality and sense that I was the frailest member of the troop, everyone tried to cheer me up with their advice on how to beat Wuhan Sports University’s champion, the best 70 kg. sanda fighter in China.
“You want to charge while punching to his head,” Baotong said. “And as he defends, duck low, pick him up by the waist and throw him.”
“Make sure you turn your hips into each kick,” Coach Cheng offered. “Given how fast he is, you won’t get many chances, and you want to make each one count.”
Cheng Hao, having heard the story of the crazy Finn Mikael, smiled and said, “Step on his lead foot and jab. It’s Bruce Lee’s technique and it’s impossible to stop.”
“You could try begging for mercy,” Deqing suggested. “‘Please, stop hitting me. I can’t take it anymore.’”
I turned to Monk Xingming. “What would the Buddha suggest?”
“He taught us the principle of universal love,” Monk Xingming replied. “You could try loving him. But the Buddha had lousy kungfu.”
At this point, our driver narrowly avoided a multiple car pileup, giving me something more urgent to fear than the Champ. The suggestions continued for the rest of the journey, but I had too firm a grip on the luggage rack above me to really hear them.
After a restless night in the Zheng Zhou International Hotel, we joined the parade that kicked off the Zheng Zhou International Wushu Festival. Teams of martial artists from twenty-six countries walked the main avenues of Henan’s capital between floats filled with young women waving at the crowds lining the sides of the streets and kungfu stylists in feudal Chinese garb pretending to fight each other. While it had all the earmarks of a homecoming parade, there was something forced about it, like a Soviet May Day ceremony with MIGs and ICBMs. It was as if Henan Province were saying: “Look at our kungfu power.”
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