I looked in the mirror to make certain the dagger hidden in the back of my pants couldn’t be seen while I was wearing a coat. I refolded the nine-section whip in my right pocket. I thought about taking the sword in my hiker’s backpack, but taking the backpack would seem suspicious and there was nowhere else to hide a three-foot samurai sword. Briefly I toyed with the idea of just carrying it, but that seemed an unlikely method to turn big problems into no problems. Still, it would be dramatic: a stunt from the Crazy Foreigner Kungfu School of International Diplomacy. In the end, I decided to leave it.
John and I hugged silently before I left. Yeli did not say good-bye.
I returned the courtesy.
The foreign students’ dorm at Tsinghua was a two-story building located on a sprawling campus. There was a cobblestone parking lot in front where cabs waited for foreigners in need of rides (Tsinghua was located on the outskirts of Beijing). I told my cabdriver to take me to the Sunshine Hotel.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“America.”
“America is a powerful nation, very rich.”
“How long until China catches up?”
“China is inadequate,” he said. “It’ll take at least fifty years.”
I smiled.
“Before we get there, please stop at a shop where I can buy cigarettes.”
I fired up a Marlboro as I stood outside the Sunshine Hotel, a rundown ten-story building in a decrepit area of Beijing. I didn’t want a cigarette, but to make my threat credible I needed to demonstrate I was a Zhongguo tong, China expert. Offering him a cigarette would establish my intention to negotiate a peaceful, face-saving solution, but I needed to make certain I could light one up without my hands shaking.
As I inhaled, my brain went to work trying to figure out how I had ended up at this moment. I had been interested in kungfu and Zen Buddhism. I had moved to Shaolin to study them both. I’d become friends with a Taiwanese-American. He fell in love with a local girl. She had a past. A led to B, B led to C, and so on until one afternoon I found myself in Beijing with a dagger tucked into the back of my pants about to confront an enraged Triad member who wanted his girlfriend back.
It took me a minute of smoking and deep breathing before I was able to reduce the tremors to the point where they were no longer visible. I put out the cigarette, squared my shoulders, tipped my chin up, focused my breathing into my stomach, waited for the fear to let go of my guts, and then walked into the hotel.
A young man in his early twenties wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses opened the door to 813 when I knocked.
“Is Mr. Li here?” I asked in as polite a tone of voice as I could manage.
Glasses was startled. It was not every day that a tall, skinny white boy knocked on his door.
“Who are you?” Glasses asked.
“So sorry to bother you, I have a matter to discuss with Mr. Li.”
“He’s not here.”
“When will he be back?”
“Please, come in. Maybe you can discuss the matter with me.”
“Oh, no, no, no, I don’t want to waste your time,” I said, as I let him pull me into the room by the arm, an insistent form of Chinese politeness.
Inside the drab hotel room with its two single beds were two desks with old IBM knockoff computers on them. Sitting at one of the desks was a twentyish young woman who was also wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses. Both the guy and the girl had smooth faces with a bit of baby fat. They looked completely harmless, nothing hard about them, like a pair of graduate students working on a special project. Office space was scarce in Beijing, and many hotel rooms were being rented out to tiny companies.
“You do business here?”
“Yes. Mr. Li is a business associate.”
I pulled out my Marlboros.
“Here, here, here, have a cigarette,” I said.
“No, no, no.”
“Please, please, please. They are good. They are American.”
Glasses took a cigarette. The young woman came over to pour us tea as we sat down.
“Where is Mr. Li?” I asked.
“He returned to Zheng Zhou this morning. What did you need to discuss with him?”
A side door connected to the next room. I wondered if the mafia crew was in there.
“It seems he has a problem with my friend, who is dating his old girlfriend.”
Glasses nodded. He knew what I was talking about.
“Her current boyfriend is my martial arts little brother,” I continued.
The young woman spoke up, “Your martial arts little brother?”
Glasses shot a glance at her to shut her up.
“Yes, I am a disciple of the Shaolin Temple. My martial arts little brother called me in Shaolin to tell me he had a problem in Beijing.”
“You came here all the way from Shaolin? Are you pian us?” the woman asked. “Tricking us?”
“Why would I want to pian you?” I snapped back.
Glassed stared hard at the woman until she dropped her gaze. Turning to me, he said, “I’m very sorry. Please continue.”
I tried my best to keep my voice soft and friendly. “Yes, I’ve just come from the Shaolin Temple where we are both disciples. He is my martial arts little brother. If Mr. Li has a problem with him, he has a problem with me. But my master has a saying, ‘Turn big problems into small problems. Turn small problems into no problems.’ I want you to tell Mr. Li to leave my martial arts little brother alone. If I have to come back to Beijing, I won’t come alone”—I hoped—“and then small problems will turn into big problems.”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice, “Do you understand my meaning?”
“I understand.”
I stubbed out my cigarette and as I looked at Glasses I suddenly had this vivid image of how I could kill him. With its thin layer of subcutaneous fat, his neck looked plump and weak. I could drive the dagger up underneath his chin into his brain. His female partner was sitting behind a couch. I’d have to leap the couch to grab her before she got to the door. Her neck looked fragile and easy to snap. The temperature of the room seemed to drop. Time slowed. I noticed for the first time the mole on the side of his nose.
“This situation is now part of the past,” I said. “There is no need to discuss it again.”
Glasses had started to shake. It took me a second to realize what had happened. He had seen the monster behind my eyes. In all the excitement, I had left the cage unguarded and it had wandered dangerously close to the surface. Now I was scared, too.
Trying to quietly backtrack my way out of this situation before the monster did something everyone in the room would regret (them more than me), I said, “You have been very polite. I am sorry I had to discuss this with you. Please let Mr. Li know I was here.”
I stood up.
“You don’t need to leave,” Glasses said out of reflex. There was no conviction in his voice.
“Thank you, but I should go.”
When I walked out of the Sunshine Hotel, I was a different man from the one who had walked in there. This time when I lit a cigarette I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking.
Mr. Li never bothered John again, but he did call Yeli to complain about her having sent a laowai after him. So he got the message.
5
THE WESTERN SPEAR
As thanks, John invited me to dinner at his favorite restaurant in Beijing: the Pauline Brewhouse in the German-backed Lufthansa shopping mall. (As an added bonus, Yeli refused to join us.) The food was fantastic—hot pretzels served with pâté and butter, fried pig’s leg with new potatoes—but I lost my heart to the stunning hostess, Wenqing.
I was gobsmacked the moment I saw her. The porcelain face, the wisp of a body, the jet black, straight hair down to the small of her back (oh, the small of her back!), the sly smile, the dancing eyes. I would do anything to have her: sell national secrets, lead the Mongol horde down from the northern steppes, sack Troy. The one thing I didn’t
seem to be able to do was speak to her. I just stuttered whenever I tried. John, feeling the helpful pity only a man securely in love can feel for his single buddy, decided he would hook us up. For five nights in a row, he insisted we go to dinner at the German restaurant. By the third night, Wenqing found this immensely funny, “You again?”
“We like the food,” John said.
She treated me the way beautiful women treat their more interesting suitors. She smiled while looking away, flipped her long hair, and pretended not to know what I was really there for.
The table conversation between John and me devolved into:
“Talk to her.”
“I can’t.”
“Show some guts.”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“She does.”
“Do you think so?”
“Ask her out.”
“I can’t.”
It is painful to realize that courage in the ring does not necessarily translate into courage in romance.
By the fifth night, I was getting desperate. Wenqing was losing interest. Shyness is cute for only so long before it becomes pathetic. John was losing faith. And even the fried pig’s legs were losing their luster. I had noticed one of her jobs when walking around the restaurant was to relight any candles that had gone out. So in desperation, I blew out the candle on our table. She lit it and walked away. I snuffed it out again. She was smiling on her next pass around the restaurant.
“What is wrong with your candle?” she asked.
“It seems to be broken, miss,” I said, finally finding my voice.
On the third pass, she was laughing, “You are a naughty boy.”
“It is not me. It is the candle. Is it German? Their workmanship is inferior.”
“No, it is superior.”
“For cars, maybe, but not candles.”
By the fourth pass, she was mock-angry. “I will not light it again, naughty boy.”
“Is it not your job?”
“You will just blow it out.”
“I will not.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, but only if you promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“To give me your telephone number.”
She tried to hide her smile by turning around. Through desperation and dumb luck, I had apparently hit on a strategy just dorky enough to seem charming.
She came back to our table with her number on a piece of paper. She held it above the candle and lowered it as if she intended to set it on fire. At the last moment, I blew out the candle.
“You lied to me. I will not give this to you, then,” she said and walked away.
But on her next pass she lit the candle and dropped her number on the table.
I called her the next day. After stumbling through some Chinese circumlocutions, she agreed to see me the next night.
The date went well. It was a wonder to actually be able to walk around with a Chinese woman in the open without drawing a crowd, only the occasional dirty look from young Chinese men.
Wenqing had worn her best dress and put on extra red lipstick. She gripped my arm the entire time and kept her face looking at mine, perhaps to avoid noticing the disapproving looks. Feeling confident, I invited her back to Tsinghua’s foreign-student dorm.
Tsinghua was fifty minutes by car from the center of town where we’d had dinner. Halfway through the drive she realized how late it was and how far away from her home I was taking her.
“You have to take me back,” she said.
“Why?”
“It is too far.”
“I had not thought of that.”
She laughed, “Naughty boy.”
Tsinghua’s foreign dorm had its own doorman, who served as a watchman to prevent just the sort of fraternization with the local population I had in mind. But he’d had the job long enough to know there was no way to stop it. Still, there were matters of face to consider, as there always were in China. I’d learned from talking to several members of Tsinghua’s large population of African graduate students—they faced far greater prejudice on the dating front than Western foreigners; race riots had broken out in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing in 1988 over the issue, which in a strange twist of fate became one of the undercurrents that led to the Tiananmen Square protests four months later—that the key was to send the girl in first and then follow her, so the doorman did not actually see the two of you entering at the same time. By Henan standards, this was almost libertine.
John had secured a dorm room for us. Wenqing and I sat on the edge of the bed. I offered her a glass of Johnnie Walker Red, which she sipped once before handing it back with a shake of her head.
“Too harsh,” she said.
I sat next to her. Her eyes darted around the room. I placed my hand on the small of her back. She pulled away like I’d burned her.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said, removing my hand.
She stood up suddenly, “I need to go home. Get me a taxi.”
I stood up. “Okay, okay, okay, I will.”
As I stepped closer to her, her knees buckled. She fell into my arms.
“Here, sit down for a second,” I said.
We didn’t get back up for a long, long time.
How long? I don’t trust myself to answer that honestly.
Sometime around brunch, when physical hunger replaced our seemingly insatiable sexual appetite, she stared at me intently as if trying to reassure herself that I was real and what had happened had actually happened. Finally she spoke.
“Do you know what the Chinese saying is for having sex with a laowai?”
“No, they didn’t teach us that in college.”
“Bei kai yang chiang,” Wenqing said. “To be opened by the Western spear.”
I looked down at her, her sweaty hair fanned across the pillow, her face the picture of conjugal bliss, her eyes awed, the most beautiful transformation in a woman’s set of expressions, the sunset of lust, and thought to myself that at that moment I had never loved anything more than I loved Chinese culture.
The Western spear! No wonder Marco Polo hadn’t wanted to leave.
6
ENDINGS
After the tournament, I spent less time training and more time meditating in the mountains. From the top of Song Mountain, the hectic pace and unsightly aspects of Shaolin village were diminished. From that height, I could see the plots of farmland dotting the valley. It was very contemplative, a great place for epiphanies.
One day I was looking inside myself and discovered that the revenge fantasies I’d been quietly nursing for years against my playground tormentors had magically disappeared. Once you know you can beat someone up, it takes most of the fun out of dreaming about it. Besides, I figured there should be a statute of limitations on childhood bullying. Still, it may be the first time in history that an Irish-Catholic ever voluntarily let go of a grudge.
As far as my kungfu training went, I realized I’d reached the point of diminishing returns. It is easy to be tougher than most, impossible to be tougher than all. And there were limited (legal) career options for that particular skill set. I wasn’t the baddest mofo on the planet, but I was bad enough. It was clear to me that I had accomplished almost all of what I’d come to Shaolin to achieve, except one.
THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH MATT
Cowardly
Spiritually confused
Unattractive to the opposite sex
Still a boy/not a man
One day, as I was working on my unified field theory of religion, I had an insight, which was all the stronger for its obviousness. All the religions disagreed about where the soul went after death. The Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believed that it went to another spiritual dimension permanently (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or Sheol). The Eastern religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) believed the soul was reincarnated in another physical body unless enlightenment had been achieved, in which case it was released from the cycle of bir
th and death. But the point they all agreed on was that we get only one chance with this soul and this body. Even in reincarnation, there is no memory of past lives (unless you’re Shirley MacLaine). So even if the soul survives, your current self does not. Life is a one-shot deal. It was like my head opened up and a light was shining down upon it. I would get to be Matt only once.
The next week, as I was meditating on the mountain, the list flashed in my head.
THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH MATT
Still a boy/not a man
No money/career
No wife/family
I laughed at myself. I finally realized that while I could eliminate items on the list, there’d always be more to replace them.
While I understood why men choose a religious life, I now knew I didn’t want to spend my life in a monastery. I was a bourgeois boy from a bourgeois society. I wanted a wife, children, and a place in society. If I knew at that time how hard it would be for me to accomplish these goals, I might have reconsidered.
With my to-do list’s new marching orders, I started to spend more time in Beijing. China’s capitalist fever had fully infected John. He was certain we could leverage our Shaolin guanxi into a successful business. After debating various schemes, we finally settled on the idea of a Shaolin Summer Camp. We would set up a travel company to bring American martial artists over to Shaolin to train.
Certainly Wenqing’s fiery presence in Beijing made a life of eating bitter in a remote mountain monastery with 10,000 Chinese boys less and less attractive as my time in China came to a close. But after the initial euphoria, it quickly turned into a tumultuous relationship with a lot of crying and a lot of making up. The basic problem was that she was convinced I would change my mind about not wanting to get married, while I was certain I wouldn’t. After about six months, when she finally accepted I wouldn’t, she left me for an Australian friend, or, as I thought of him, “The Backstabbing Spear from Down Under.”
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