Rock Paper Tiger

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

IT’S A FIFTEEN-HOUR train ride overnight from Xi’an to Chengdu. I end up on a hard sleeper, in the middle, which is the best berth, because if you’re on the bottom everybody sits on your bunk, and if you’re on the top your nose is practically touching the ceiling and it’s usually stuffy and also a long way down if you miss a step trying to get to the toilet in the dark.

I don’t make conversation. I climb up on my bunk with a big bottle of Xian’s finest lager and my last Percocet, and between those and the fact that I’m so exhausted that I can barely haul my gimpy leg and tired ass up there, I fall asleep about five minutes after I finish the bottle, pulling the quilt over my head like a shield.

When I wake up, I’m in a different country.

Everything’s green here, unlike the dry, yellow north. There’s soft mist poured over the fields and hills and stands of trees and bamboo.

It’s raining when the train pulls into Chengdu.

The Sichuan earthquake in 2008 killed tens of thousands of people; no one knows how many. They don’t want anyone to know how many children died up in the mountains in collapsing schoolhouses that weren’t built right, constructed out of tofu, people say. But I can’t see any signs of quake damage here. Maybe it’s been covered up, plastered over, like so many inconvenient wounds.

There’s a hotel I’ve heard of in Chengdu, a cheap backpackers’ hangout, and I figure I pretty much look like a cheap backpacker, considering that all I’m carrying is an overstuffed day pack and a plastic shopping bag from the Number 2 Pingyao Department Store. I catch a cab outside the train station, take note of the giant statue of Mao with his arm outstretched like he’s directing traffic-or maybe he’s just trying to greet the patrons of the shopping mall and the Starbucks down the street.

I get to the backpackers’ joint, wedged between a hotpot restaurant and a camping-supply store on a narrow lane.

“No baggage?” asks the… clerk? Manager? You can’t call somebody a “concierge” when he’s sitting behind a scarred desk in a beige room containing a bulletin board leprous with notices about treks to Tibet and Jiuzhaigou and dubious job offers to teach English, a pressboard bookcase overflowing with paperbacks, and a pile of backpacks heaped in one corner.

“My bag got stolen,” I explain. “In Xi’an.”

The hotel guy, a compact man of indeterminate age wearing a Madras shirt and khaki shorts, makes a sympathetic noise. “Lots of thieves in Xi’an,” he says. “I show you your room.”

Another cheap hotel room, beds with pressboard mattresses, pebbled brown vinyl on the walls. Backpackers wander the halls. My age, most of them. All of them fit, tanned, and relaxed. Laughing. “Yangshuo was awesome!” “Have you checked out Hei He?” Couples holding hands.

Shiny, happy people. Isn’t that the name of some old song?

But where there are backpackers, there must be Internet connections.

Sure enough, out in the courtyard, beneath a gray-tiled roof that I’m told dates from the Ming Dynasty, is a teahouse. In the back of the teahouse, a row of computers.

I order a pot of Dragon Well and retreat to the darkest corner. Plug in Chuckie’s little anonymizer and log on to the Game.

And here’s Little Mountain Tiger, sitting on a rock in front of the big red doors of the Yellow Mountain Monastery. Sulking, if I can attribute a mood to an avatar.

“Hail the Great Community,” I type. “Yo, Little Mountain Tiger here. I’m in Chengdu.”

After a minute, a text box pops up, framed in gold, containing the Chinese characters for “Da Tong” and, in English, “Message From the Great Community.”

The characters are a live link. I click on it.

“Changqing Shan. The Taoist Scholar Cave. Tomorrow. 3 P.M.”