by Sean Wallace
If you asked me, I couldn’t have told you what it was that I felt, or when was the exact moment that I felt it. All I can say for certain is that when I spoke to Xiaoyan, I felt connected to her somehow, in a way that was deeper than all the relationships I have had before. I suppose you could call it Yuanfen: a binding force between people that transcends conventional knowledge and lifetimes.
When I first met her, we were on a march through the northern villages. A show more than anything else, to inspire confidence in the people that we were there to protect them.
We had marched up the narrow roads through Yinchuan and out the other end, where we made camp. Usually, no one paid attention to us foot soldiers. The six Terracotta Warriors, arranged in two lines of three out in front, just behind the banner, took up most of their attention. It was better that way – no one to distract us from our duties. It also made a good show of China’s might.
The Terracotta Warriors were, strangely, not made of terracotta. It was an artifact name, revived by the Emperor with reference to the army Qin Shi Huang took with him to storm the afterlife. The records told us that no less than eight thousand men and one thousand horses were buried alive, so that they may continue to serve the First Emperor, even in death.
The modern Terracotta Warriors were different in two key ways: firstly, they were made of iron and stood about nine feet tall, towering above the common man. Secondly, the men encased inside were alive. They were more useful that way. The Warriors were also beastly heavy things, quaking the ground as they walked. One simple swing of its arm, I suspected, would have been enough to take a man’s head off his shoulders. Only veterans were allowed to pilot the Terracotta Warriors. The rest of us had to earn our stripes, prove our loyalty and wait for the death of a veteran so the spot would be free for us to fill.
In the middle of Yinchuan, as we did at every town, we halted as Commander Long saluted and gave the word of the Emperor to the elder of the village. We were disciplined to keep our eyes dead ahead, our backs straight, and our chins up as long as we were marching; but from the corner of my eye, I could see her there.
Xiaoyan carried herself with a certain elegance that was captivating. I remember, even studying her in the blurry edges of my vision, she stood with grace and dignity. I felt her smile upon me. And then, without a word, she took a delicate step forward and tucked a single flower into my belt.
Later, when we made camp and I loosened my belt, I looked and saw that it was an orchid, glowing white and purple in the bloom of the evening sun. I crushed it between the pages of my journal so I would smell it whenever I opened the book.
The second time I saw her, I did not recognize her. It was a midsummer’s day, and our section of the Great Wall was pleasantly shaded in the shadow of a passing cloud. She came in a six-wheel transport that came rolling in, stepping out behind nine boys who, awed by our show in their village, wanted to put their lives behind them and join the Lüyingbing.
It was a Saturday. I was near the gates having a cigarette with Hou. Greeting guests were none of our business – we were soldiers, nothing more, nothing less. But then she saw me, smiled and came walking toward me.
“Hey, Mako, you never told me you had a girlfriend,” Hou jested.
I ignored him. “My lady,” I said, standing up. “What brings you here?”
“I’m just here to see the wall,” she said. “Hong, our driver, will be taking a little while. I thought that it was a good opportunity to come and see the Great Wall with my own eyes.”
I was going to tell her that she may look around, but not wander up onto the wall itself, as that was against regulations. Then Hou appeared from behind and wrapped an elbow around my neck. “Our boy Mako will be glad to show you around!” he said. “Would you like to climb up and see what lies beyond the border? Or take a ride in one of the watchstations? Mako will be glad to do it for you!”
“Hey,” I said, “If you’re so eager to show her around, you should do it yourself.”
“But alas!” Hou let go of me. “I cannot claim the privilege, because I suddenly remember that I am on kitchen duty today.”
“You’re not,” I snapped. “Even if you were, kitchen duty doesn’t start until five o’clock.”
“See you!” Hou yelled over my words, taking off toward the barracks, which was nowhere near the kitchen. I was left alone with this strange woman whom I had only just met.
“Your name is Mako?” she said. “That’s a nice name. Very masculine.”
“I apologize on behalf of my friend,” I said. “His mouth is faster than his thoughts. What is your name?”
“Xiaoyan,” she said, and that was how we met.
Despite Hou’s promises, I could not take her up the wall. The stairs leading up were all guarded so that only those on patrol may pass. Xiaoyan told me that she didn’t mind, so I showed her what I was permitted to.
I showed her the eating hall, where we were fed some variety of gruel for every meal. It tasted like mud, but it was easy to make in large volumes, and it seldom caused episodes of stomach upset, due to how easily digestible it was. I took her as near as I could to the training grounds, where we had marching drills every weekday morning and physical training every weekday evening. Since it was a Saturday, a group of about twenty men were using the space to play ball. Then between the barracks and the motor pool, I decided to show her the latter. I couldn’t imagine there was anything of interest for a lady to find in the men’s barracks. The same cannot be said the other way around.
Usually, we rode the four-wheeled buggies in groups of eight from the training grounds to the motor pools. But since there was only two of us, we walked instead.
I told Xiaoyan a great deal about how we lived and how, in my three years with the Lüyingbing, the most intense conflict I had ever found myself in was when a group of wild boars attacked us in the middle of training. No one came out of it seriously injured, but there was a great deal of commotion, ending only when a couple of quick-thinking fellows took their training sticks and subdued the beasts. Zhihe, for one, received a nasty gash on his left leg; but on the bright side, there was pork enough for everyone during dinner that night.
She laughed loudly at every turn of this story. When I asked her questions about her life, however, she evaded the topic and asked me another question instead.
The motor pool was being cleaned that day, and all the vehicles were on their monthly maintenance runs, so Xiaoyan was one of the lucky few members of the public to see them in action. The maintenance crew also seemed to be in a more jovial mood than usual, laughing as they pushed the limits of the vehicles’ engines, speeding up and down the tarmac and leaving thick black smoke in their wake. They started with the lighter, more agile vehicles first: the standard personnel carrier and the light gunner; and then progressively they tested the heavier vehicles: the armored trucks and then the battle tanks.
At the end of it, like the climax of an opera, came the Terracotta Warriors, taking lumbering steps out of the garage. In reality, they walked faster than the average man; but due to their size, their large steps appeared slow and clumsy. I recognized Commander Long’s weathered face in one of the cockpits.
There came a revving sound from Commander Zhou’s Terracotta Warrior. To my surprise, the Warrior leaned forward and eased into a full throttle down the tarmac, going as fast as a twelve-wheel truck. At the end of the tarmac, it slowed, and within three steps it came to a standstill. Black smoke spilled out the exhaust hatch behind the Warrior’s shoulders.
Xiaoyan clapped her hands at the display. “Spectacular!” she said.
The trouble with mechas, I told Xiaoyan as I led her back, was that like humans, they were easy to trip. All it would take to incapacitate a Warrior was a high-tension cable wrapped around its ankles. Stuck in the mud, all that’s left is for an enemy battle tank to roll right over it.
“Unless it learns to fly,” she said.
When we got back, we found, to Xiaoyan’s
distress, that Hong had driven back with the transport, leaving her stranded. I found Captain Lee and told him about Xiaoyan’s situation. Captain Lee brought it up to Lieutenant Wong, and then Lieutenant Wong relayed the words to Commander Long. Finally, the word came back down to me through Captain Lee. He tossed me a set of keys.
“You know how to drive a light transport, right?” he asked. I told him I did, and he nodded. “Make sure that truck comes back in one piece,” he growled. “If the diesel is low, have the tank filled somewhere. There’s money in the dashboard. Be back before the gates close.”
Xiaoyan and I talked and laughed some more on the one-hour drive back to Yinchuan. She had me stop in the middle of town, halfway down a nondescript row of shops.
“Tell me, Mako, before I leave,” she said. “Did you keep the flower I gave you?”
The memory then swam back to me. “Yes, I did,” I said. “I keep it in my journal.”
“That’s good,” she smiled. “It needed a new home.”
I looked outside the window. These shops had living quarters on the second floor. “Do you live here?” I asked.
Instead of answering my question, she asked me, “If you could leave your past behind and go wherever you wanted to, where would you go?”
The question caught me by surprise. “If I could leave the past behind?” I repeated. “But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Your past follows you everywhere you go.”
“But let’s say that you can,” she said with a serious look. “You can go anywhere you want and start a new life. Where would you go? What would you do?”
I took long seconds to think the question over. Finally, I said, “I would be a wanderer, without any place to call home. I would go from town to town, city to city, country to country, until my life is over. And then I would do the same in the next life.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone has a past they are running from,” I said. “And if you don’t continue moving, the past will eventually catch up with you.”
There was a beat in which Xiaoyan just looked at me. And then, without any warning or buildup, she held my face and pressed her lips against mine. It was a quick, sweet kiss; and before I even knew it was happening, it was already over.
“Don’t ever change,” she said. Then she got off the transport and disappeared into the night.
How can one resist change? Change is all there is in the world. The second hand on the clock ticks by whether one likes it or not. People grow old and weary against their wishes. With enough time, even mountains erode and seas dry up.
Between the second and third time I saw Xiaoyan, summer changed into fall.
Political tensions were brewing all around the world outside China’s borders. There were rumors that Mongolian forces were gathering in the south, amassing their strength. At the same time, there were talks of a revolt about to erupt in the central provinces.
With Hou’s transistor radio, we could occasionally get snippets of the international news broadcast. A very important man in Austria had been killed at the end of June, and the whole Western world was thrown into crisis. A war was inevitable, the announcer said.
“But never fear,” Hou leapt up and proclaimed, “If the war comes to us, we shall welcome it gladly! When the white men come to the wall, we will show them the might of China and smite them all!”
Someone told him to shut up and sit down. I think it was Zhihe.
One evening at the end of July, as we were having dinner, there came an urgent call to gather outside. We dropped our spoons and left our food on the table. Within the minute, all two thousand of us were gathered in the training area. Commander Long made the announcement with a hailer.
The extremist political group Kuomintang has sparked an insurgency in the central and southern regions of China, headed by the traitor Sun Yat-sen. Various divisions of the Lüyingbing was being called back to aid in the quelling of the insurgency. Our division wasn’t one of the ones required to go, but we were to be on standby, ready to leave in a moment’s notice.
I stole a glance at Hou. For all his talk about fighting the white men, I think the last thing he anticipated was for the conflict to start from our own people.
“It’s hopeless,” Zhihe declared that night in our dormitory. “The Emperor is waging a pointless conflict. Before a battle is won, it is first won in the mind,” he tapped a finger against his temple for emphasis, “and if you follow the news, you will see that the Kuomintang has already won over the people’s minds.”
“Ridiculous!” Hou replied. “Without the Emperor – may He live ten thousand years – we will be just like these Western nations, always squabbling and killing each other over some small thing! How can a nation stay together under a ruler without the Mandate of Heaven?”
I was paying them no mind as I scribbled into my journal, at the same time taking in the fragrance of the crushed orchid. It was growing fainter with each passing day.
“Hey, Mako, what do you think?” Hou suddenly asked. I slapped my journal shut.
“Sorry?”
“What are you doing there, anyway?” Hou said, peering at me suspiciously. “For the past few weeks, you’ve been doing nothing but scribbling into that notebook of yours. Are you writing an opera?”
I laughed sheepishly. “An opera?” I said. “Of course not! Why would you think that?”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing,” I said quickly, but perhaps a little bit too quickly. I saw the suspicion grow in Hou’s eyes, and the mischievous grin that came creeping across his face. I tried to put my journal away as nonchalantly as possible, but it was already too late.
“Hey, Zhihe,” Hou said, getting up to his feet. “I’ll hold him down; you get that journal and see what he’s been writing.”
Heart palpitating, I glance at Zhihe. Even the ever-serious guy had a little twinkle in his eye as he said, “Let’s do it.”
I put up a mighty struggle. I punched, kicked, grappled, and flailed, offending the other fellows in the dormitory as I tried to keep Hou and Zhihe away from the journal; but in the end, to paraphrase the idiom, even two idiots can outsmart a genius. Before long, I was pinned to the hard floor as Zhihe flipped through the pages.
“Teeth, like stars twinkling in the night!” Zhihe began reading out loud. I begged him to stop, but he kept going. “Lips, like a rose blooming in the spring!”
He managed to get a couple more lines out before I viciously smacked Hou in the face with my elbow and pried the journal from his hands. By that time, I was already blushing all the way to my ears. All around, I could hear the other guys laughing.
“Poetry?” Hou laughed. “You’re writing poetry, Mako?”
“What is it to you?”
“It’s that girl, isn’t it? That one that you had to drive back?” he asked. Then noting my expression, he began hopping up and down. “Mako’s in love! Everybody, the day has come at last! Mako’s in love with a girl!”
“Shut up,” I said weakly. Even Zhihe was grinning amid the commotion.
“Honestly, I had my doubts about you, Mako,” he said. “For a while, I thought you were queer.”
“You’re such a romantic guy, Mako!” Hou said. “If I were a girl, I would fall in love with you straight away! Oh, hold me, Mako! Hold me in your big, strong arms!”
Hou puckered his lips and came toward me with his arms spread wide for an embrace. I drew my fist, ready to punch him. Then the door burst open and Captain Lee stepped in.
“What’s all this noise about?” he barked.
The dormitory became very silent. Then someone from the other end shouted that Hou, Zhihe, and I were the cause of it all. The three of us then spent the night holding water-filled buckets outside the dormitory instead of sleeping.
“Thanks for nothing, you two,” I muttered as my arms shook from the exertion.
“Teeth, like stars twinkling in the night,” Zhihe recited, and then the two of them started snorting wit
h laughter all over again while I blushed furiously.
When Xiaoyan came to camp one Saturday in the middle of August, there was silence wherever we went, though I could feel eyes on us everywhere. Occasionally, there came a snort or a giggle.
“What’s going on?” Xiaoyan asked me.
“Ignore them,” I said. “They’re just being stupid.”
Thankfully, none of them decided to do an impromptu performance of my butchered words they identified as poetry. This time, there weren’t many places for me to show her; but we were happy to just walk around and talk about everything under the sun. She expressed genuine concern about the rising conflicts in the Western world as well as the insurgency spreading like fire in the heart of China.
“But what will happen if we don’t have an Emperor?” she asked.
“Then we will live under the rule of men,” I said. “Subjected to the laws and whims of men who would crown themselves above us.”
She flashed a smile at this. “You know,” she said, “You really have a way with words.”
“Do I?”
She made no reply and skipped ahead.
Later, as we sat outside the motor pool beneath a yellowing sky, she suddenly said, “Time goes in a circle.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. She smiled mysteriously.
“We have been here before,” she said. “I have been at the front gates of this camp before, and you talked to me. Then you took me here, to this very same place. Even though things and other events have filled the time in between, we still find ourselves in the same place, just like spring again at the end of winter.”
“But this time it’s different,” I said. “I know you now, and you know me. Before this, we were strangers.”
“Just like how two summers are never alike,” she said, “And how two lifetimes are never the same. They are different, and sometimes one is better than the other.” She wrapped her arm around mine. “I think I like this one better,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder.
Just then, there came a crash from within the garage. We both leapt up and raced inside to find one of the Terracotta Warriors bent and broken on the concrete floor. There was a cloud of smoke, like a disappearing specter, in the air. A technician I did not recognize crawled out from the broken cockpit of the Warrior. Other technicians and engineers rushed to his aid, but he appeared to be unharmed.