Bridge of Birds

by Barry Hughart

  The legends are quite marvelous. Ginseng hunters refer to the plant as chang-diang shen, "the root of lightning," because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt. After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul. It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness.

  It is totally good, and will happily sacrifice itself to aid the pure in heart. In human form it can appear as a man or as a beautiful woman, but more often it takes the form of a child, plump and brown, with red cheeks and laughing eyes. Long ago, evil men discovered that a ginseng child can be captured by tying it with a red ribbon, and that is why the plant is now so hard to find, the hunters say. It has been forced to run away from evil men, and it is for that reason that ginseng hunting has become one of the most hazardous occupations upon the face of the earth.

  The ginseng hunter must display the purity of his intentions right from the start, so he carries no weapons. He wears a conical hat made from birch bark, and shoes of tarred pigskin, and an oiled apron to protect him from dew, and a badger skin attached to his belt, on which he sits when the ground is wet. He carries small spades made from bone and two small pliable knives that are quite useless for defense. Along with a little food and wine, that is all he has, and his quest takes him into the wildest mountains where no men have dared to pass before. Tigers and bears are his companions, and the hunter fears strange creatures that are even more dangerous than tigers — such as the tiny owls that will call him by name and lead him into the Forest of Oblivion from which no man returns, and the bandits that are more brutal than savage bears and who crouch beside the few paths in order to murder an unarmed hunter and steal his roots.

  Ginseng hunters, when they have thoroughly searched an area and found nothing, will mark the barks of trees with kao chu kua, which are tiny secret signs that tell other hunters not to waste their time there. Hunters would not dream of deceiving each other, because they are not competitors but fellow worshippers. Where a find has been made a shrine is raised, and other hunters who pass will leave offerings of stones, or scraps of cloth. If a hunter finds a plant that is not mature enough he will put stakes around it with his mark on them. If other hunters find the place they will pray and offer gifts, but they would rather cut their throats than take the plant for themselves. The behavior of a man who makes a find is very strange.

  A weatherworn, clawed, half-starved ginseng hunter will occasionally have the good fortune to make his way through dense underbrush and come upon a small plant with four branches that have violet flowers and a fifth branch in the center that rises higher than the others and is crowned with red berries. The stalk is deep red, and the leaves are deep green on the outside and pale green on the inside, He will drop to his knees, his eyes streaming with tears, and spread his arms wide to show that he is unarmed. Then he will kowtow and bang his head three times upon the ground, and he will pray,

  "O Great Spirit, do not leave me! I have come with a pure heart and soul, after freeing myself from sins and evil thoughts. Do not leave me."

  Then the hunter covers his eyes and lies still for many minutes. If the ginseng plant does not trust him, and wishes to change into a beautiful woman or a plump brown child and run away, the hunter does not want to see where it has gone. At length he opens his eyes, and if the plant is still there his joy is not so much from the fact that he has found a valuable root as it is from the fact that he has been judged and found to be pure in heart.

  He takes the seeds and carefully replants them so that the ginseng can grow again. The leaves and flowers are stripped and ceremoniously burned, with many prayers. The hunter's bone spades are used to dig up the root, which is forked and has something of a human shape — skeptics point to the shape as the basis of an ignorant folk religion — and the small pliable knives are used to clean the tiny tendrils called beards, which are supposed to be crucial to the curative powers. The root is wrapped in birch bark and sprinkled with pepper to keep insects away, and the happy hunter begins the long, dangerous trek back toward the safety of civilization.

  "Where his throat will probably be slit by somebody like Ma the Grub," the abbot said sourly. "Who will be swindled by somebody like Pawnbroker Fang, who will sell the root to somebody like the Ancestress, who will squat like a huge venomous toad upon a folk deity whose sole purpose in life is to aid the pure in heart."

  "Reverend Sir, I have never heard of the Ancestress," I said shyly.

  The abbot leaned back and rubbed his weary eyes.

  "What a woman," he said with grudging admiration. "Ox, she began her career as an eleven-year-old imperial concubine, and by the time she was sixteen she had Emperor Wen wrapped around her fingers to the point where he took her as his number three wife. The Ancestress promptly poisoned the emperor, strangled his other wives, decapitated all but the youngest of his sons, elevated that weakling to the throne — Emperor Yang — and settled down behind the scenes as the real ruler of China."

  "Reverend Sir, I have heard all my life that Emperor Yang was a depraved and vicious ruler who nearly destroyed the empire," I exclaimed.

  "That's the official version, with parricide tossed in," the abbot said drily. "Actually he was a timid little fellow, and quite likable. The real ruler was the Ancestress, which is a title that she awarded herself and which carries a certain Confucian finality. Her reign was brief, but gorgeous. She set about bankrupting the empire by decreeing that every leaf that fell in her imperial pleasure garden must be replaced by an artificial leaf fashioned from the costliest silk. Her imperial pleasure barge was 270 feet long, four decks high, and boasted a three-story throne room and 120 cabins decorated in gold and jade. The problem was finding a pond big enough for the thing, so she conscripted 3,600,000 peasants and forced them to link the Yellow and Yangtze rivers by digging a ditch 40 feet deep, 50 yards wide, and 1,000 miles long. The Grand Canal has been invaluable for commerce, but the important thing for the Ancestress was that three million men died during the construction, and a figure like that confirmed her godlike grandeur.

  "When the canal was finished," the abbot said, "the Ancestress invited a few friends to accompany her on an important mission of state to Yang-chou. The fleet of pleasure barges stretched sixty miles from stem to stern, was manned by 9,000 boatmen, and was towed by 80,000 peasants, some of whom survived. The important mission of state was to watch the moon-flowers bloom, but Emperor Yang did not watch the moon-flowers. The excesses of the Ancestress were being performed in his name, so he spent the entire trip staring into a mirror. 'What an excellent head!' he kept whimpering. 'I wonder who will cut it off?' The chopping was performed by some friends of the great soldier Li Shih-min, who eventually took the imperial name T'ang T'ai-tsung and who sits upon the throne today. T'ang shows every sign of becoming the greatest emperor in history, but I will humbly submit that he made a bad mistake when he assumed that little Yang was responsible for the crimes of the Sui Dynasty and allowed the Ancestress to retire in luxury."

  I suppose that I was pale as a ghost. The abbot reached out and patted one of my knees.

  "Ox, you will be traveling with a man who has been walking into dangerous situations for at least ninety years, assuming that he began at your age, and he is still alive to tell about it. Besides, Master Li knows far more about the Ancestress than I do, and he is sure to exploit her weaknesses."

  The abbot paused to consider his words. Bees droned and flies buzzed, and I wondered if the knocking of my knees was audible. A few minutes ago I had been ready to dash out like a racehorse, and now I would prefer to dart down a hole like a rabbit.

  "You are a good boy, and I would not like to meet the man who can surpass you in physical strength, but you know very little about this wicked world," the abbot said slowly. "To tell the truth, I am not so worried about the damage to your body as I am about the damage to you
r soul. You see, you know nothing whatsoever about men like Master Li, and he said that he would stop in Peking to acquire some money, and I rather suspect..."

  His voice trailed off, and he groped for the proper words. Then he decided that it would take several years to prepare me properly.

  "Number Ten Ox, our only hope is Master Li," he said somberly. "You must do as he commands, and I shall be praying for your immortal soul."

  With that rather alarming blessing he left me to return to the children, and I went out to say farewell to my family and friends. Later I was able to catch some sleep. In my dreams I was surrounded by plump brown children as I attempted to tie a red ribbon around a root of lightning in a garden where three million fake silk leaves rustled in a breeze that stank of three million real rotting bodies.

  5. Of Goats, Gold, and Miser Shen

  "A spring wind is like wine," wrote Chang Chou, "a summer wind is like tea, an autumn wind is like smoke, and a winter wind is like ginger or mustard." The breeze that blew through Peking was tea touched with smoke, and spiced with the fragrance of plum, poppy, peony, plane trees, lotus, narcissus, orchid, wild rose, and the sweet-smelling leaves of banana and bamboo. The breeze was also pungent with pork fat, perspiration, sour wine, and the bewildering odors of more people than I had dreamed there were in the whole world.

  The first time I was there I had been too intent upon reaching the Street of Eyes to pay much attention to the Moon Festival, but now I gaped at the jugglers and acrobats who were filling the air with clubs and bodies, and at girls who were as tiny and delicate as porcelain dolls, and who danced on the tips of their toes upon enormous artificial lotus blossoms. The palanquins and carriages of the nobility moved grandly through the streets, and men and women laughed and wept in open-air theatres, and gamblers screamed and swore around dice games and cricket fights. I envied the elegance and assurance of the gentlemen who basked in the practiced admiration of singsong girls — or tiptoed into the Alley of Four Hundred Forbidden Delights if they wanted more action. The most beautiful young women that I had ever seen were pounding drums in brightly painted tents as they sang and chanted the Flower Drum Songs. On almost every corner I saw old ladies with twinkling eyes who sold soft drinks and candied fruits while they cried, "Aiieeee! Aiieeee! Come closer, my children! Spread ears like elephants, and I shall tell you the tale of the great Ehr-lang, and of the time when he was devoured by the hideous Transcendent Pig!"

  Master Li had sharp elbows. He moved easily through the throngs, followed by yelps of pain, and he pointed out the landmarks and explained that the strange sounds of the city were as comprehensible to urban ears as barnyard sounds were to mine. The twanging of long tuning forks, for example, meant that barbers had set up shop, and porcelain spoons rapping against bowls advertised tiny dumplings in hot syrup, and clanging copper saucers meant that soft drinks made from wild plums and sweet and sour crab apples were for sale.

  As he moved toward his destination, I assumed in my innocence that he was intending to acquire some money by visiting a wealthy friend, or a moneylender who owed him a favor. I blush to admit that not once did I pause to consider the state of the bamboo shack in which I had found him or the nature of friends that he was likely to have. I was quite surprised when he turned abruptly from the main street and trotted down an alley that reeked of refuse. Rats glared at us with fierce glittering eyes, and fermenting garbage bubbled and stank, and I stepped nervously over a corpse — or so I thought until I smelled the fellow's breath. He was not dead but dead-drunk, and at the end of the alley, the blue flag of a wine seller hung above a sagging wooden shack.

  I later learned that the wineshop of One-Eyed Wong was the most notorious in all China, but at the time I merely noticed that the low dark room was swarming with vermin and flies, and that a thug with a jade earring that dangled from one chewed earlobe did not approve of the product.

  "You Peking weaklings call this watery piss wine?" he roared. "Back in Soochow we make wine so strong that it knocks you out for a month if you smell it on somebody's breath!"

  One-Eyed Wong turned to his wife, who was blending the stuff behind the counter.

  "We must add more cayenne, my turtledove."

  "Two hundred and twenty-two transcendent miseries!" wailed Fat Fu. "We have run out of cayenne!"

  "In that case, O light of my existence, we shall substitute the stomach acid of diseased sheep," One-Eyed Wong said calmly.

  The thug with the earring whipped out a dagger and lurched around the room, savagely slashing the air.

  "You Peking weaklings call these things flies?" he yelled. "Back in Soochow we have flies so big that we clip their wings, hitch them to plows, and use them for oxen!"

  "Perhaps a few flattened flies might add bouquet," One-Eyed Wong said thoughtfully.

  "Yours is genius of the highest order, O noble stallion of the bedchamber, but flies are too risky," said Fat Fu. "They might overpower our famous flavor of crushed cockroaches."

  The thug did not approve of Master Li. "You Peking weaklings call these midgets men?" he howled. "Back in Soochow we grow men so big that their heads brush the clouds while their feet are planted upon the ground!"

  "Indeed? In my humble village," Master Li said sweetly, "we grow men so big that their upper lips lick the stars, while their lower lips nuzzle the earth."

  The thug thought about it.

  "And where are their bodies?"

  "They are like you," said Master Li. "All mouth."

  His hand shot out, a blade glinted, blood spurted, and he calmly dropped the thug's earring into his pocket, along with the ear that was attached to it. "My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character," he said with a polite bow. "This is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox, who is about to strike you over the head with a blunt object."

  I wasn't quite sure what a blunt object was, but I was spared the embarrassment of asking when the thug sat down at a table and began to cry. Li Kao exchanged a bawdy joke with One-Eyed Wong, pinched Fat Fu's vast behind, and beckoned for me to join them at a table with a jar of wine that was not of their own manufacture.

  "Ox, it occurs to me that your education may be deficient in certain basic aspects of human intercourse, and I suggest that you pay close attention," he said. He placed the thug's jade earring, which was quite beautiful, upon the table. "A lovely thing," he said.

  "Trash," sneered One-Eyed Wong.

  "Cheap imitation jade," sneered Fat Fu.

  "Carved by a blind man," sneered One-Eyed Wong.

  "Worst earring I ever saw," sneered Fat Fu.

  "How much?" asked One-Eyed Wong.

  "It is yours for a song," said Master Li. "In this case a song means a large purse of fake gold coins, two elegant suits of clothes, the temporary use of a palatial palanquin and suitably attired bearers, a cart of garbage, and a goat."

  One-Eyed Wong did some mental addition.

  "No goat."

  "But I must have a goat."

  "It isn't that good an earring."

  "It doesn't have to be that good a goat."

  "No goat."

  "But you not only get the earring, you also get the ear that is attached to it," said Master Li.

  The proprietors bent over the table and examined the bloody thing with interest.

  "This is not a very good ear," sneered One-Eyed Wong.

  "It is a terrible ear," sneered Fat Fu.

  "Revolting," sneered One-Eyed Wong.

  "Worst ear I ever saw," sneered Fat Fu.

  "Besides, what good is it?" asked One-Eyed Wong.

  "Look at the vile creature it came from, and imagine the filth that has been hissed into it." Master Li bent over the table and whispered, "Let us assume that you have an enemy."

  "Enemy," said One-Eyed Wong.

  "He is a wealthy man with a country estate."

  "Estate," said Fat Fu.

  "A stream flows through the estate."

  "Stream," sa
id One-Eyed Wong.

  "It is midnight. You climb the fence and cleverly elude the dogs. Silent as a shadow you slip to the top of the stream and peer around slyly. Then you take this revolting ear from your pocket and dip it into the water, and words of such vileness flow out that the fish are poisoned for miles, and your enemy's cattle drink from the stream and drop dead on the spot, and his lush irrigated fields wither into bleak desolation, and his children splash in their bathing pool and acquire leprosy, and all for the price of a goat."

  Fat Fu buried her face in her hands.

  "Ten thousand blessings upon the mother who brought Li Kao into the world," she sobbed, while One-Eyed Wong dabbed at his eyes with a filthy handkerchief and sniffled, "Sold."

  In the country my life had been attuned to the rhythm of the seasons, and things happened gradually. Now I had entered the whirlwind world of Li Kao, and I believe that I was in a state of shock. At any rate, the next thing that I remember was riding through the streets with Li Kao and Fat Fu in a palatial palanquin, while One-Eyed Wong marched ahead of us and bashed the lower classes out of the way with a gold-tipped staff. One-Eyed Wong was dressed as the majordomo of a great house, and Fat Fu was attired as a noble nurse, and Master Li and I dazzled the eyes in tunics of sea-green silk that were secured by silver girdles with borders of jade. The jeweled pendants that dangled from our fine tasseled hats tinkled in the breeze, and we languidly waved gold-splattered Szech'uen fans.