by Cole Reid
“Remember what I told you? Remember?” said Deni. Xiaoyu’s breaths were heavy.
“Wha?” said Xiaoyu.
“Remember what I said I want from you?” said Deni, “Loyalty.” Deni looked Xiaoyu up and down.
“You’re no good to us if you don’t follow orders, yeah,” said Deni, “A Jade Soldier. OK, but what good is a soldier that doesn’t follow orders? That’s like a dead soldier, a useless one. If you don’t do as you’re told you’re useless. Do you understand?” Xiaoyu nodded his head still in Deni’s hand. Deni released his grip on Xiaoyu’s face and took one step back. Xiaoyu rolled his head sideways to look at Deni and the two men standing behind him. As his eyes focused, Xiaoyu could see they were carrying metallic stun batons. The batons were used to give him the separate pulses.
“You’re not too young to know the price of disloyalty in our organization,” said Deni. Deni reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a thin stack of paper cards. He threw the paper cards down on the wet tile floor. Slightly submerged the cards began to float away from Xiaoyu. Xiaoyu dragged his body over the slippery tiles to catch the cards in his right hand. Pulling the cards to eye level, he saw that they weren’t cards. They were photographs. The photographs showed a naked body in a bathtub. The body was unique because the pieces had been taken apart and put back together. There was severe discoloration of the skin near the seams where the limbs had been amputated, giving the impression the man was alive while his body was taken apart. The body was lifelessly reassembled and rested peacefully in a bathtub stained as a grave. Xiaoyu understood the body had been put back together for the sake of recognition. Xiaoyu did recognize the body; it belonged to his uncle, Li Xing.
• • •
Xiaoyu sat on his bed in the hotel. The ride back had been long and silent. Deni looked back at Xiaoyu with the same burning coal look. He suggested that Xiaoyu keep the photographs to help him remember their conversation. Xiaoyu half agreed with Deni. He would keep the photographs, but his reason was different. He put the photographs under his bed so that only he knew they were there; how he wanted it. He would approach his next fight differently. He had no choice. It was nearly five months later. His opponent was from the Mainland. Before his conversation with Deni, he would have wondered what brought another Mainland boy into a violent life in Hong Kong. He would have felt a natural kinship with the other boy, another victim of circumstance. That was before. Now, he let no emotions leave his body so he would feel no remorse. He managed time by managing his own energy level. Every kick was well placed and every punch hit its target. He was faster than the other boy which gave him an advantage energy-wise. In a particular display of skill, Xiaoyu peppered the other boy with a series of punches to his face and rib cage before retreating and catching a cross to the face for his efforts. The combination cost Xiaoyu more energy than he wanted but the effect was necessary to weaken the boy’s breathing ability and anger him. The angered boy began to swing and kick wildly burning through energy while his damaged body couldn’t support enough airflow to keep his blood oxygenated. The result was blurred and starred vision, along with shortness of breath. This affected the boy’s mobility and allowed Xiaoyu to get behind him flooring him with a hard kick to the back of his right thigh. The boy fell to his knees first then to his hands. Xiaoyu turned and looked at the audience without much to see. The light remained over the cage not the crowd. He spent enough time in darkness to be able to read it. Although he couldn’t see their faces he could read them. Xiaoyu spun around and kicked the kneeling boy in the back of the neck. The kick was the hardest he had dealt. The boy’s head hit the floor with a thud, as his body collapsed over itself. The boy was dead. There was no cheering, only rhythmic applause from the audience. He could hear mostly high-pitched noises sounding like satisfactions. It was clear to him most people had bet on him. He didn’t think about the boy he had killed. If the boy was like Xiaoyu, he wouldn’t have anyone waiting for him to come home. Xiaoyu calculated the odds in his head and the odds were he had done the boy a favor. He tried to keep his mind on the fact that he didn’t disappoint. The idea was supported by the Emporium employee who came to the cage door and unlocked it on the side where Xiaoyu entered. He exited passed a clapping Deni Tam and a group of Moons he didn’t recognize. He went straight to the white-tiled room and took a shower with his back to the wall and his eyes facing the entrance.
Xiaoyu’s days and nights were spent at the Emporium. He trained in the storage space below while business went as usual above. He trained himself without equipment. He might have been given training equipment if he wanted but he never asked. He went through the rigors that Master Song had taught him and tried to remember his advice. But the Jade Soldier was supposed to be a weapon in and of himself, needing no tool, advice or instruction to do damage. So Xiaoyu was put in charge of his own training and conditioning. With his life at stake, he punished himself more severely than any instructor, using bare concrete pillars as a target for his wrapped fist and bare feet. To accelerate his transformation into the Jade Soldier, Deni tried to make his matches more frequent. Eventually he did so by placing a gag order on Xiaoyu’s matches. No one in the Moon Dragons was allowed to speak of the fights and the results would be known only to those in attendance. The reputation of the Heigui would hinder his ability to get matches. Few would want to train a fighter before sending him to what was beginning to be seen as certain death. Xiaoyu’s matches began to end more quickly on average. Rarely did he use the strategy of letting his opponent use up their energy. He was more of a predator, not looking for a fight but having it end quickly. By his sixteenth birthday he was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of eleven other boys. He was given a sixteenth birthday present befitting a Jade Soldier. Deni had the hotel room next to Xiaoyu’s emptied out and a wood dummy placed in the empty room. Xiaoyu was given the only key to the new room so he could go and practice whenever he wanted. The room with the dummy became his sanctuary. He wasn’t allowed visitors so he made the dummy his other. If Xiaoyu was aggravated, the dummy would know about it. The dummy was the perfect tag-along, easy to manipulate. It could be Deni, it could be an opponent, past or present. It was his sister more often than not. Xiaoyu’s favorite match up was against his sister and they played the Blame Game.
Genesis was the designated fight on Monday night, June 30, 1997, almost four months after Xiaoyu’s sixteenth birthday. The audience was full. While there were many celebrations around Hong Kong, Genesis was the most exclusive. At midnight, Hong Kong would lose its status as a British Colony and return to The People’s Republic of China as a special administrative region. An effort was made to toast Hong Kong’s colonial past. The Moons found an eighteen year-old fighter from Belize to match up against Xiaoyu. The Moons thought Belize was an appropriate country because at midnight Hong Kong would join Belize as a former British Colony. The shared colonial lineage made for a fight with mixed emotions. It was easy for a Hong Konger to sympathize with a boy from a tiny place like Belize. Like Belize, Hong Kong itself had its share of foreign friends who overstayed their welcome. The night was meant to be a celebration, a celebration without bloodletting, at least not enough to be permanent. But the fight would be full-contact. The audience was full of members from multiple branches of the Triad family and their guests, as well as first time invitees. One of those invitees was an American businessman who had given the Triads a way around customs procedures in Hawaii and Los Angeles. This allowed the Triads to start expanding their operations to the American West Coast. He sat in a back row on the west side of the cage. He was appropriately dressed to the point of over-meticulousness. He wore a custom multi-fiber suit in a sky-colored gray. His light yellow shirt was accented by a yellow pocket square. He wore no tie but he had earlier in the day. His hair was brown. With gel, it looked black. His hair was neatly combed, parted on the right side. He was clean shaven, as always, with fierce blue eyes noticeable even in the dim light of the back row. The yellow shirt a
nd pocket square contrasted the man’s blue eyes making them more blue and more fierce. He sat on the end to keep a good eye on the cage. He sat alone with no one to talk to and no desire for conversation. The only tools he brought with him were his blue eyes and an open mind.
Xiaoyu’s opponent was Belizean Kriol from Punta Gorda, Toledo District in southern Belize. Axino Watson was an inch taller than Xiaoyu and had the same muscular build. He resembled Xiaoyu more than any of the other opponents. The two could have passed for brothers. To contrast Xiaoyu’s reddish-brown skin, Axino had light brown skin heading in an orange direction. His hair was long and wavy, like Xiaoyu’s if grown out. Their similar appearance wasn’t lost on the crowd or each other but Xiaoyu had a trained response for dealing with his opponents and he made no exception for a doppelganger. When the horn sounded, Xiaoyu took a ready stance reminiscent of the various Tai Chi stances passed on to him by Master Song. The stance was designed to give him equal footing moving forward or back. He was undecided how he would approach this fight; he wanted to keep his options open. When the bell rang, he found himself launching the first attack. He faked with his left foot tried a quick jab with his right which was blocked. He dropped his weight at his hips and landed a rib shot with his weaker left. The skilled combination put his opponent on guard. Then Xiaoyu held back. Axino came back with a violent assault of kicks designed to exploit his powerful right leg. He faked with his right combining a spinning jump kick with the same leg. Xiaoyu had seen a similar combination before but he couldn’t remember where. He realized that he could beat Axino not with energy exertion but with motion confusion. Axino showed an early reluctance to use the weaker side of his body. Xiaoyu guessed that his left kicks and punches were severely atrophied from under use. Axino was able to rise to the level of stardom in a tiny place like Punta Gorda relying only on his right-side power. The Tank was not Punta Gorda. The Tank was home to a different species, one not found in Belize. The species had evolved in the cage, highly adaptable. Xiaoyu moved to Axino’s right keeping him pivoting on his left leg. Xiaoyu’s assault was meant for Axino’s right leg. As Axino rotated to match Xiaoyu, he was surprised by quick hard kicks to his right calf and hamstring. When Axino came in on Xiaoyu, he was punished. Xiaoyu landed a left hook against Axino’s chin as Axino encroached. He was able to get a grip on Xiaoyu’s torso and pinned him against the cage wall. Xiaoyu wrapped his arms around Axino’s bent torso laying his head comfortably on Axino’s back. Xiaoyu dropped all his weight onto Axino’s back pulling his entire body to the right, taking both fighters to the cage floor. As the fighters scraped the floor, the man with blue eyes recorded everything on his blue-eyed camera. He processed every movement of every muscle in every minute of their caged world. He mentally recorded Xiaoyu’s reaction times and the success of his counterstrikes. He saw how Xiaoyu decided to take the fight to ground level and thought it was an extra-wise move for anyone in the same position, especially a sixteen year-old. When Xiaoyu rose to his feet less than a minute after dropping Axino to the ground, the blue-eyed man’s lips squeezed to the right, angling upward. It was the first sign of emotion on a superior poker face. Xiaoyu went to the opposite side of the cage and banged on the door. A black-tied employee of the Emporium unlocked the cage door and let him out. The blue-eyed man waited. The Emporium employee stepped into the cage and went to the fighter lying on the ground and tapped him with a foot. Axino coughed as he felt the foot on his ribs; he rolled on his side to make coughing easier. After two tries, he was on his feet. Two minutes later he was walking with the cage wall as a crutch. The blue-eyed man wasn’t disappointed. Xiaoyu had followed orders. He had choked Axino unconscious while the two were on the floor, but he didn’t kill his opponent because he was ordered not to. The blue-eyed man saw Xiaoyu’s martial discipline. He could have killed Axino, but that wasn’t his requirement. The blue-eyed man was told Xiaoyu had killed other fighters on more than a few occasions. He was also told the boy was smart. The blue-eyed man hadn’t made a decision but he was interested. He was among the first to leave after the fight was over. But unlike other patrons who would return home and forget the match in time, the blue-eyed man left with an undying ember in his head. It would burn him until he found out all he could about the fighter, Heigui.
• • •
Xiaoyu had no matches the months following Genesis. The Triads were under a massive reorganization. The return of Hong Kong to Chinese control had deep repercussions for the city, its inhabitants and its organizations—especially its extra-legal organizations. Property prices in Hong Kong dropped nearly fifty percent. The hotel business was tied directly to the property market because both were affected by the sentiment of Hong Kong city soil. The idea that Beijing would tighten the strings on the city and dampen its market economy was a normal one. This idea kept many investors and tourists away. The deal-flow dried up in Hong Kong transactions above and below. The Triads’ business was deeply affected by the handover. Drug rings with ties to the Hong Kong Triads started to look to partner else where out of fear of supply disruptions. The South Asian drug trade was like any other business, marketability was tantamount to survival. After Hong Kong was ceded back to China, its marketability as a hub diminished for the time being. The Triads started to move. The Moons especially were spurred to action because Uncle Woo wanted to capitalize on the fire sale. As property prices fell, so did the resolve of Hong Kong property owners to keep their title. Businesses and individuals wanted to shed their exposure to falling prices, Uncle Woo and other Dragon Heads aligned their collective efforts to buy up as much of Hong Kong as they could. Hotels went first. The Triads had to set up various dummy corporations in order to divide any attention. The dummy corporations organized in neighboring Macau were remarkably successful. While the Moons were distracted with running their newly established dummy corporations, Xiaoyu was abandoned to be with his dummy—the wooden one. He spent many of his days in the adjoining room practicing with the wood dummy. Losing a step was the predominant concern. It had been sixteen months since his last fight, with nothing calendered. By the most accurate count, Xiaoyu’s eight years of fighting to earn his life as a Jade Soldier were over. Xiaoyu himself knew the eight years had run because the most accurate count was his own—eight years since he first fought tattooed. Deni Tam knew it had been too long since he made money off of Xiaoyu, but Mr. Cheung was the first to realize the boy was tenured—already a Jade Solider according to the old rules. Mr. Cheung argued Xiaoyu couldn’t be blamed because the Moons had given him no fights. Deni said the boy should be required to fight one more time on behalf of his candidacy. Turning the cage into a gate, Deni wanted one more fight to allow Xiaoyu’s passage from candidate to Soldier. Uncle Woo—a true traditionalist—thought letting the boy take advantage of the uniqueness of Hong Kong’s political transition was an undeserving way to become a Jade Soldier. Mr. Cheung pointed out that the boy was undefeated. Uncle Woo didn’t care. The decision was made that Xiaoyu would have one more fight. The design was to have a rock that Xiaoyu would have to break, then he would be as hard as jade. Uncle Woo made the suggestion himself.
The fight was held on January 12, 1999, the Heigui returned to Hong Kong the same time as the optimism. The cage was left entirely the same except for a painted white rising sun on a black flag hung over it. The rising sun was to represent the new Hong Kong—an optimistic future after a bittersweet colonial past.
He was Brazilian and swam upstream much of his life. The stream had been bigger than the Amazon. Brothers and cousins loss to streets, ambushed by disease, buttered by abuse and served with violence. He had learned Capoeira and Brazilian jujitsu as a base and built upon it clashing with other youths. Like Xiaoyu, being alive spoke highly of his decision-making, only more so. He was twenty-one years-old and 172cm of lean mass, Frankensteined by the favelas. He might have been taller and thinner, but early years of malnutrition prevented him from growing so far up. He ate better the more he corrupted and packed on pounds of
lean muscle from his violent days on. At seventeen, Xiaoyu stood 8cm taller than his opponent, with as much muscle but less concentrated. Xiaoyu’s arms and legs were longer than his opponent, but he remembered it didn’t matter. He had killed opponents with the same advantages over him. Both fighters had ink. Xiaoyu’s Mark was more intricate and secular. His opponent had praying hands on his left chest, a bust of the Virgin Mary on his ribs and the words Anjo Da Morte—in script—down his left arm. Xiaoyu wasn’t religious and he didn’t read Portuguese. As far as he was concerned, this was one last life to take. There was nothing for him beyond a mutual understanding. If he wasn’t killed he would be the one to kill—not metaphysical—simple. Xiaoyu did something he had never done before. He stood in the back and heard the name Heigui. He took his cue and proceeded toward the open cage door which was locked immediately behind him. While he waited for his opponent to enter the cage, he listened for his opponent’s name for the first time, Francisco Parra. Francisco entered the cage like business as usual—show up, hit, get hit, then put the other man down for good. He looked directly at Xiaoyu with a look Xiaoyu hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t the same I’m-here-to-hurt-you look that he had seen in the eyes of so many others, the competitive attitude. This look was different, coming from a very different place. It said I will never be hurt by anyone again, including you. Xiaoyu realized he had no experience with such a man but knew he needed it to be an effective Jade Soldier. Despite more than a year without an opponent made of anything but wood, he felt more ready for a fight than he ever had. Knowing the fight would be the hardest, he wanted it that way. Xiaoyu stared back at his opponent before the horn. The crowd was more than four-hundred people and chaotic, filling the storage area as wide as chaos. So much anticipation about the return of the Tank could not be quieted, but it was quiet in the Tank. Xiaoyu and Francisco heard no voices and saw only the glare in each others eyes. Horn. Bell. Both fighters closed the distance between in a fraction of measurable time. Xiaoyu being the taller went high. Francisco went low. Xiaoyu swiped at Francisco’s head with jabs and crosses, while Francisco laid waste to Xiaoyu’s legs with powerful kicks. Xiaoyu retreated backward with Francisco advancing, spinning backward he caught Francisco in the side of the jaw with a hammer fist. The fist sent Francisco sideways but he recovered his footing with a practical ginga. Xiaoyu circled to his left while Francisco began a side-to-side approach as if he were dribbling a soccer ball. The movement was enough to confuse Xiaoyu long enough for Francisco to land a fast and well-placed kick in Xiaoyu’s ribs. The pain from the kick was instant and lasting. Xiaoyu could feel his ribs weren’t holding their usual distance from his insides. With each exhale, he could feel his ribs poking against him inside. Xiaoyu now had two enemies in the cage, Francisco and his own ribs. He made the conscious decision to keep his elbows down to protect his ribs from further damage. While thinking, he lost track of Francisco who hit Xiaoyu in the left cheek with a jab that Xiaoyu could barely block. The force from the jab sent Xiaoyu back, twisting his body in an awkward direction. Xiaoyu shifted his weight to his back leg to absorb the direction of the punch while dropping his left shoulder to center himself. Xiaoyu brought his weight forward and kept his stance low countering with a low jab to Francisco’s ribs. Nothing broken, Francisco quickly spun out of Xiaoyu’s advance and tried to intimidate him with a fast kick that would have hit Xiaoyu in the head but for blocking with the meat of his left forearm. Francisco countered with a front snap kick that Xiaoyu should have blocked. The kick hit Xiaoyu in the stomach massaging his broken rib. The pain was minimal but enough to remind him of the damage already done. Xiaoyu used a desperate kick at Francisco’s left leg to keep his opponent back. Xiaoyu switched directions and circled right. Francisco quickly adjusted by switching forward legs. Xiaoyu took a lowered stance moving sideways with a horse’s motion. His shoulder began to twitch noticeable from the front row of the audience. He eased forward toward Francisco as he circled to his right. He threw his right leg out and twitched his shoulder before spinning and sending Francisco into the cage wall with a sidekick from his left foot. Experienced, Francisco knew to get away from the wall quickly. He did a ginga to the right but escaped left. Francisco backed toward the center of the cage, with Xiaoyu approaching. The pair locked eyes center cage. Like two dogs interpreting the other’s stare as a challenge, they attacked each other in an immediate dogfight. They exchanged blow after blow in the center of the cage bringing the noise level to a roar and the audience to its feet. Xiaoyu kneeled down and hit Francisco center rib cage with a swinging elbow. The blow caused Francisco to quickly change his rhythm and throw his weight onto his left hand and scissor kicked Xiaoyu in his broken ribs. The crowd applauded as Xiaoyu retreated covering his ribs. To ease the pain caused by his broken ribs Xiaoyu began breathing slower. Slower breaths meant slower oxygenation, which kept him fatigued and sluggish. Riding on the crowd’s energy wave, Francisco advanced on the noticeably weakened Xiaoyu. Xiaoyu stood up straight to take his opponent head on and threw a fast but fatigued punch which Francisco was willing to absorb because it allowed him to move in, hitting Xiaoyu with a one-two punch combo that left Xiaoyu dazed. So dazed, he didn’t see the hard right kick coming for his left leg. Francisco got a two for one. The kick collapsed Xiaoyu’s left leg and the surprise gave him no time to shift weight to his right leg. Both legs gave and Xiaoyu went down. Xiaoyu fell to his knees feeling the hard floor through his knees. His ribs hurt more from the force of the fall, he felt like he was breathing around a stone in his stomach. His body wanted to collapse to the ground, but he knew better. He chambered his arms tight around his head and braced for impact. The impact was Francisco’s feet repeatedly kicking Xiaoyu’s head. Xiaoyu bounced his body up and down. Up to block kicks, down to protect his ribs. Xiaoyu thought of one thing, block and breath. Xiaoyu held against the assault to try to get more air through his lungs to his blood. He was counting on one thing, Francisco would get tired. He focused his mind on that one thought, even as Francisco threw a hook around Xiaoyu’s arm guard and rammed Xiaoyu’s jawbone, dislocating it.