American Shaolin

by Matthew Polly

The referee explained the rules. The Champ and I bowed to each other and hugged. This time I kept my back straight.

  When the bell rang, I could no longer hear the crowd.

  We stood deathly still in the middle of the ring, neither one of us wanting to bounce or show any signs of anxiety. The pressure built. I felt compelled to move. I hopped forward and back, feinting to see if he would react. He didn’t. I feinted again and then took a bigger step forward with my left to close within kicking range, and launched a right roundhouse.

  This is what the Champ was waiting for. He had correctly anticipated a kick. Without any wasted motion or doubt, he trapped my leg, ducking his head down, so I couldn’t punch him in the face. And with a speed I’d never experienced before, the Champ dropped his left leg back and lowered his body, which pressed my leg away and downward. Before I knew it I was flat on my back with him standing over me.

  2-0.

  The catch and throw was so perfectly executed it intimidated me. I decided to switch from an offensive to defensive strategy and try to catch one of his kicks.

  He shuffle-stepped forward and launched a left side kick aimed at my chest, which was about the level of his neck. I saw the kick coming, but it was too fast for me to trap it. I felt the impact before my mind was able to register the kick had landed.

  4-0.

  I was rocked back a step. No one, not even Baotong, had ever kicked me that hard. I remember thinking with astonishment, That really hurt, as I watched him repeat the attack. I tried to trap his foot again, and again I was too late. My breath blew out of my mouth as the force of his side kick pounded my sternum.

  6-0.

  We were in the dance now, and I was on the losing end of it. I knew I had to attack. I tried a side kick, but he blocked it downward with his right forearm, sending a jolt of pain up my leg as he stepped back and out of the kicking range.

  Combinations!

  I immediately followed the failed side kick with a right roundhouse. He hooked it to the side of his body, allowing the kick to connect with his left arm. My body tensed, preparing to be thrown to the ground. We were standing face-to-face. He placed his right hand on my chest, and then he started running forward. With only one leg to stand on, I was forced to hop backward to keep my balance. He was running me, like a wheelbarrow, off the platform.

  As I reached the edge of the leitai, he let go of my leg and pushed with his hand against my chest. Flying through the air, the thought that flickered through my mind was: That’s not fair. To prevent a wrestling match, the referee is supposed to stop any throw that takes longer than two seconds to execute. That took longer than two seconds, hometown ref!

  The air left my body as I landed on the foam padding below. I was staring up at the hundred-foot-high rafters. It felt like it took forever to stand up.

  10-0.

  I knew with a sagging dread that this round was over. The psychological impact on the judges of throwing your opponent off the platform was worth much more than the official four points. Unless I was able to knock him off the leitai in the next minute and a half, I’d have to win the next two rounds.

  As I stepped onto the platform, the realization that he’d dropped me to the canvas, kicked me twice, and tossed me off the leitai in less than thirty seconds settled over me like a heavy weight. With absolute certainty I knew he was too good for me. There was no way I was going to win. As we faced each other again, I could hear these words bouncing around inside my skull: Pride. Too good. Face. Coach Cheng. Pride. Deqing. He’s too good. Pride. You’re fighting for pride now.

  So I started to dance. I shuffled. I backpedaled. I circled around the ring using my longer arms and legs to keep him out of range. It wasn’t Ali, but I was dancing. Shuffle. Punch. Backpedal. Shuffle. Kick. I had generalship of the ring, if only for a brief moment. In my head I was moving faster than in fact I was, but still I held the Champ off for the rest of the round. I’d closed the scoring gap but not enough: 20–10 was my best guess.

  The five referees lifted their cards. They were all black for my opponent.

  I’d lost the round but salvaged my pride.

  But I wasn’t thinking about that when I returned to my metal chair where Coach Cheng and Deqing were waiting for me between rounds. As I sat down, I didn’t believe I would ever be able to stand up again.

  Coach Cheng had my legs up on his knees, rubbing them. Deqing was pouring water into my mouth.

  “Keep moving, you must keep moving,” Coach Cheng shouted at me.

  I could barely hear him over the screaming crowd and buzzing in my ears.

  “My legs,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “My legs. They feel like cement.”

  “Mei shi. Keep moving. Punch, kick, move.”

  “I can’t. My legs, they are so heavy.”

  “Mei shi,” Coach Cheng kept saying. “No problem.”

  It angered me. I wanted him to say it was okay. I’d done enough. I could quit now.

  “I am so tired,” I said. “I have never been this tired.”

  Deqing grabbed my face. “Remember what I told you before, ‘It takes real courage to fight when all hope is gone.’”

  I nodded. But I didn’t believe him.

  It took both Deqing and Coach Cheng to pull me off the chair. I hated them for doing it. Couldn’t they see how tired I was?

  The walk to the leitai was the longest of my life. It felt like I was underwater. I slunk the ten feet to the platform with my head down. I had to brace my leg to step onto the platform.

  I wasn’t going to dance anymore. I didn’t have the strength. And where’s the pride in running? When the referee blew his whistle I charged. My side kick landed. I followed with a right haymaker. The Champ ducked it. We rammed each other in the center of the platform. He had his hands around my waist. I grabbed him around his head. He lifted. I focused my qi toward the ground, imagining my feet rooted to the center of the earth, as Coach Cheng had taught us. I couldn’t let him break my contact with the leitai. He heaved. I held firm. The referee blew his whistle and separated us.

  I attacked immediately. I felt wild, the last thrashings of a wounded beast. Left roundhouse to his leg. Right roundhouse aimed at his head. I needed to end this now.

  He caught my right leg above his shoulder. My foot had connected with his face—two points—but it was trapped. He was carrying my leg like a log over his shoulder. He placed his right fist in my chest and started running forward. The endless, repetitive loop of a nightmare. I hopped backward until he launched me into the air.

  That was longer than two seconds!

  I was furious. I wasn’t angry that the fight was for all practical purposes now over. I was in a rage that he had embarrassed me. Wounded my pride. All I could see was red. I was going to knock him off the damn leitai if that was the last thing I did.

  At the first opportunity, I ducked my head and charged him like a linebacker, tackling him around the waist and driving forward with my legs.

  He reached down and grabbed me around the waist as I drove him backward. It was the classic defense. You score four points if you throw your opponent off the platform while remaining on it, but if both fighters go over together, no points are awarded, no matter who hits the ground first. I knew he was going to pull me off the leitai with him. I didn’t care. He was going off and I was going to land on top of him.

  I drove to the edge with a shout. He went backward dragging me with him. In vain, I tried to remain on the platform. As I tipped over I decided to jump, so when he hit the foam, I could ram into him with as much force as possible. I even tucked my right shoulder so I’d strike with a sharper point.

  I didn’t see any visible signs of pain on his face. He was as placid as ever. The referee blew his whistle. No points. But the Champ was on his back, off the platform, and I was on top of him. That was victory enough for me.

  For the last thirty seconds of the round, we danced around each other. He scored a few more blows
than I did, but it was a formality. The fight was already over on the judges’ card and in my mind.

  The front cover photo of the special Wushu Festival edition of the Zheng Zhou newspaper showed me shaking hands and grinning with delight at the Champ from the silver-medal position on the top of the platform. The clear subtext was: “Look at how happy the laowai is to have had the chance to be defeated by a Chinese champion.”

  In fact, at that moment, the list had popped up in my head.

  THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH MATT

  Cowardly

  Boy/Not a Man

  Getting back up on that platform and fighting a hopeless round was the bravest thing I’d ever done. I’d won by losing and in so doing accomplished the goal I’d set out to achieve at Shaolin. I was grinning at the Champ, because I’d finally found my courage.

  4

  NO PROBLEMS

  After the tournament, John Lee followed my bad example and dropped out of college for a year. His cover story for his father was that he wanted to improve his Mandarin Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a reasonable enough excuse for a Taiwanese manufacturing family. His cover story for me was that he wanted to start a new business and make millions. China was the Wild West for entrepreneurs, he repeatedly told me. This was our moment to strike while the iron was hot. The real reason was that Yeli, the Zheng Zhou dancer, had lassoed his heart, tied it up into a little bow, and attached it to her ring finger.

  With the summer over, John had moved to Tsinghua for the fall semester of classes. I had stayed in Shaolin to continue with my training. I wanted to learn how to do backflips.

  Early one Sunday morning, Comrade Fish woke me up from a deep sleep to tell me I had a phone call. It was my first phone call in over a year. The village’s only international phone worked so infrequently I hadn’t given anyone I knew the number, but for a moment I thought I was back in Kansas. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why a Chinese man with brown stained teeth was in my bedroom. Comrade Fish repeated himself several times before I remembered where I was and felt the irritation of having had my personal space violated again.

  “What are you doing opening my door?”

  “Very sorry, you have a phone call.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “John.”

  He pronounced it Jah Ni. John had a Chinese name, but the locals never used it, preferring to use his English name because, I think, it was a way to separate him from them. Mainland Chinese had mixed feelings about huaqiao (overseas Chinese).

  Comrade Fish didn’t know what John wanted at that hour, only that there was a problem and it was important that he talk to me. It had been over a month since he’d left for Beijing.

  “John, what’s up?”

  “Matt,” he whispered. “Is that you?”

  “John, I can barely hear you.”

  “Matt, I’m in trouble, bro,” he continued to whisper.

  “What is it, bro?”

  “Yeli is staying with me.”

  “With you? I didn’t know that.” I said. Yeli and I were not on speaking terms, because being young and stupid I had felt it was my duty to tell John that she wasn’t right for him (I believe the adjective I used was “gold digger”), and John being young, stupid, and in love felt duty-bound to tell Yeli what I had said.

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “So what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Her ex-boyfriend.”

  “She has an ex-boyfriend?” I asked.

  Yeli was eighteen, about the age good Chinese girls started dating. I had assumed John was her first boyfriend.

  “John, I told you not to date a dancer.”

  “Matt, listen to me. Her ex-boyfriend is here.”

  “He’s a Beijinger?”

  “No, he’s from Zheng Zhou. When he heard Yeli had moved in with me he came with his crew to bring her back.”

  “His crew?”

  “Matt, you gotta listen to me. Her ex is hei shehui,” he said. “Black society.”

  It was slang for “Chinese mafia” or “Triads.”

  “Mafia? John, this isn’t Hong Kong. This is northern China. The rackets are run by army officers. It’s the beauty of living in a police state.”

  “I don’t know. Yeli said he had relationships with hei shehui. He called the room three days ago. He was outside the building on a cell phone. He told Yeli she had to return with him to Zheng Zhou. When she said no he called her a whore. Said she was only with me for my money.”

  I came very close to saying, Well, he was her boyfriend. Maybe he knows something you don’t. But I refrained myself.

  “I lost my cool, you know?” John continued.

  “Yeah, John, I know.”

  “I went outside to hit this fucker, but out of nowhere there were like ten of his guys all around me. What was I supposed to do? I barely got away from them and back inside. They’ve got the building surrounded and keep calling.”

  “Why don’t the officials who run the foreign students’ dorm call the cops?”

  “They don’t want to get involved. Matt, I’m scared.”

  He said it again in a whisper. I imagined him hunkered beneath the window with the curtain closed and the lights off.

  “Don’t worry, John. I’ll be there,” I said without any hesitation or any thought otherwise.

  “Thanks, Matt.”

  “I’ll take the overnight train from Zheng Zhou tomorrow. Can you hold out that long?”

  “Yeah, I’ve made friends with some of the African students here. They are keeping us well supplied.”

  “Good, I’ll see you in about twenty-four hours.”

  Later that morning I went to Deqing and Cheng Hao’s room for advice. What did I know about dealing with Chinese mafia members who are insane with jealousy? The sum total of my knowledge about the Triads came from Hong Kong movies starring Chow Yun-Fat. Based on those, I’d need two handguns that I’d have to fire simultaneously while diving horizontally in slow motion through dozens of white doves.

  When I finished recounting the situation, Deqing and Cheng Hao looked at each other.

  “Guai guai,” Cheng Hao said. “Very strange.”

  He ground out his cigarette and lit another as he contemplated the situation in his cool, silent way.

  Deqing turned to me, “Lao Bao, China has a saying, ‘Reduce big problems into small ones, small problems into no problems.’”

  “Okay.”

  “But I have a saying,” he continued, “‘If no problems become small ones, and small problems become big problems, then sword, staff, spear.’”

  Deqing jumped off his bed and dug beneath it. He pulled out one of the samurai swords they sell to tourists on the street: The blade was dull but heavy. He told Cheng Hao to get a nine-section whip. Cheng Hao grabbed a heavy version and handed to me. I folded it up and put it in my pocket. Deqing gave me a dagger with a sharp blade.

  “You can tuck this into the back of your pants,” he said.

  The weapons and words of wisdom were nice, but I actually had come to their room looking for a posse. I sat in their room for another hour discussing the problem, waiting for them to volunteer. If I asked for help, they’d be duty-bound to do so, but I couldn’t bring myself to put them in a potentially face-losing situation. So I waited until it was obvious to me they weren’t going to offer. I’d seen them in too many potential fight situations to think it was fear that held them back. They must have felt I was able to handle this situation on my own. It was a compliment I’d rather not have received at that particular moment.

  I spent the next four hours in a cab from Shaolin to Zheng Zhou, the following six inside the Zheng Zhou train station, ten more sleepless hours on the overnight from Zheng Zhou to Beijing in the hard-seat section (the only tickets available) and two more after that stuck in Beijing traffic working myself into a frothing rage about Yeli. It was much, much easier to blame her. This trampy gold digger trades in her psycho Triad boyfriend for a flush Taiwanese
-American, and now I have to confront the psycho and his crew armed only with a sword, dagger, and nine-section whip. I told John she was no good. I told him not to fall in love with a dancer. And now this.

  So it didn’t help when I finally arrived at John’s room and Yeli didn’t turn around to look at me. It also didn’t help that she refused to say anything or in any way acknowledge my presence. It was incredibly rude by any standard. For a Chinese person, it was like spitting in my face.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I said to John in English.

  John shrugged and tried to appease me. “She’s upset.”

  “She’s upset? John, I spent the last twenty-two hours traveling to deal with her fucking Triad ex-boyfriend, and she can’t say ‘hello’?”

  “Matt, I’m sorry. She’s upset. I’m sorry. Thanks for coming, bro. It’s good to see you.”

  “You too. So where are they? I didn’t see anyone outside.”

  “They left last night. He called and said he’d be waiting for her at the Sunshine Hotel.”

  “Did he leave a room number?”

  “813.”

  “Does this goombah have a name?”

  “Li Hetai.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking around the room at the green carpets and unmade mattresses on the floor. I focused on the closet doors. John had already marked his territory. There were several fist-size holes in the plywood. “John…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You could always send her to him. End this right now before someone gets hurt.”

  John’s gaze dropped. In my anger, I’d put him into an impossible bind: the love of his girl or the safety of his boy. Without being able to look at me, he finally said, “I can’t do that, Matt.” His voice cracked. “I love her.”

  That decided it. Love is love, even when it’s for the wrong woman. I remembered what that helpless grip felt like.

  “Okay then, we’ll just have to handle it,” I said, standing up. “Better get this over with.”

  “Yeah,” John said, looking down again, letting me know he didn’t intend to join me. I knew it was a bad idea for him to come along. Putting John with his uncontrollable temper in the same room with his girl’s jealous mafia ex-boyfriend would have been a disaster. But still I wanted him to offer to help. I was starting to feel like Gary Cooper in High Noon.