BOOK TWO Belly of the Pig

CHAPTER FIVE Battle of the Beards

———— 1 ————

Qian Ding, newly appointed Magistrate of Gaomi County, had a spectacular beard that cascaded from his chin down across his chest. At his first official audience, this beard served to warn the wily clerks in the six boards and three ranks of devilishly crafty yayi against insubordination. His predecessor, a man with protruding lips and the chin of an ape, from which had sprouted a few dozen ratty whiskers, had bought his position. The man had been ignorant and incompetent, his only skill the accumulation of riches. He’d sat in the audience hall pulling his ears and scratching his cheeks like a macaque monkey. His wretched appearance and shameless immorality had created a psychological benchmark for his successor, Qian Ding. The gathered petty officials witnessed something fresh and appealing in the dignified demeanor of the new County Magistrate, and Qian Ding was struck by the light of amicability in the eyes of the men arrayed in front of him.

Qian had passed the Imperial Examination with distinction, achieving one of the highest rankings, in 1883, the eighth year of the Qing Guangxu Emperor’s reign, sharing honors with Liu Guangdi, one of the renowned Six Gentlemen of the Wuxu Reform Movement. Liu was the thirty-seventh successful candidate of the Second Rank, Qian the thirty-eighth. After passing the examination, he spent two years in the capital in a minor government office, then bribed his way into a provincial assignment. He had served as Magistrate before, first in Guangdong’s Dianbai County, and then in Sichuan’s Fushun County, the latter being the birthplace of Liu Guangdi. Both Dianbai and Fushun were remote, inaccessible locales with barren mountains and untamed rivers; the people led such impoverished, wretched lives that even had he aspired to be a corrupt official, there was no grease to skim. And so, for his third posting, he came to Gaomi, where access was convenient and riches abounded. While it was a lateral appointment, in his eyes it was a promotion. A man of spirited aspirations and robust vitality, he had a radiantly ruddy face, eyebrows like sleeping silkworms, and a gaze that had the quality of lacquer; every strand in his beard was as thick as horsehair and long enough to touch the desktop behind which he sat. An impressive beard represented half of what it took to gain credibility among the governed. His colleagues were fond of teasing him: “Elder Brother Qian,” they would say, “if the Old Buddha Herself were to lay eyes on you, at the very least you would be posted as a Circuit Magistrate.” Unfortunately, there had been no opportunity to display his dignified demeanor in the Imperial presence, and as he sat at his mirror combing out his beard, he could only sigh and lament, “What a shame that this face, with its dignified appearance, and this fine, ethereal beard are ill regarded at Court!”

On the long journey from Sichuan to take up his new post in Shandong, he had stopped at a small temple on the Yellow River in Shaanxi to draw a divination lot, and was rewarded with great good tidings. The inscribed poem read: “Should the bream reach the western Yangtze, thunder will rend the sky.” This tally swept away the deep-seated depression that had accompanied his career failures, and instilled in him confidence and high hopes. Upon his arrival in the county, despite being fatigued and covered with dust after a long journey, not to mention suffering from symptoms of a minor cold, he set right to work. After receiving the symbols of office from his predecessor, he summoned his subordinates to the audience hall, where he spoke to them for the first time. Splendid words flowing from a cheerful frame of mind gushed from his mouth. His predecessor had been a simple-minded dolt who could not string three simple sentences together. He, on the other hand, had a full-throated, richly seductive voice that at this moment was enhanced by a slightly nasal tone caused by the cold. The looks in the eyes of the listeners arrayed below him signaled success. When his speech was finished, he stroked his impressive beard with his thumb and forefinger and announced an end to the formal audience. His gaze then swept across the faces of the gathered functionaries, each of whom felt that the honorable Magistrate was looking only at him. The enigmatic look in those eyes seemed to include equal parts warning and encouragement. He then stood, turned, and walked out of the hall, a neat, orderly departure, like a breath of fresh air.

Soon afterward, at a banquet for local worthies, his handsome demeanor and impressive beard were once again the focus of attention for all who were present. The nasal obstruction had cleared up, and Gaomi County’s local specialty, aged millet spirits, and fatty dog meat—the spirits relaxed his muscles and joints and enhanced the flow of blood, while the fatty dog meat improved his looks—made his face glow with conspicuous health and lent increased elegance to his beard. He offered a toast in a cadenced voice, announcing to his elite guests that he was determined to use his office to enrich the lives of the local population. His speech was interrupted frequently by thunderous applause and shouts of approval, and when he had finished, the ovation lasted until the incense sticks had burned halfway down. He then raised his glass to all the skullcaps and goatees at the table. The men’s legs trembled when they stood; their hands shook and their lips quaked as they emptied their glasses. The Magistrate then called their attention to one of the dishes—a head of cabbage a vivid emerald green that gave no sign of being cooked. None of the guests dared touch the spectacular dish with his chopsticks for fear of making a fool of himself. “Worthy gentlemen,” the Magistrate said, “not only is this cabbage fully cooked, it has been stuffed with more than a dozen rare delicacies.” He touched the seemingly unblemished head gently with his chopsticks, and it opened like a flower bud, to reveal a rich, pulpy interior and fill the room with an aroma of great refinement. Most of the honored guests—unsophisticated locals and voracious meat and fish eaters—were ignorant of the more poetic forms of cuisine. But urged on by their illustrious host, they reached out, snagged cabbage leaves with their chopsticks, and put them into their mouths. Approving headshakes and words of praise followed. Elder Xiong, Magistrate Qian’s revenue clerk, who had joined him at the table, wasted no time in introducing the Magistrate’s wife, Gaomi County’s First Lady, to the honored guests: she was the maternal granddaughter of Zeng Guofan—given the posthumous title and name of Lord Wenzheng. She had personally prepared the dish, Emerald Cabbage, the recipe having been passed down by her grandfather, who had created it with his master chef when he served in the capital as Vice President of the Board of Rites. Together they had tried several variants before reaching the perfection they were enjoying today. It embodied the wisdom of a generation of renowned officials. The revered Lord Wenzheng, who had mastered both the pen and the sword, had also been a chef par excellence, second to none. Xiong’s introduction was greeted with even greater applause; tears spilling from the eyes of aging worthies sluiced down through the wrinkles in their cheeks. Snivel hung from the strands of their feeble goatees.

After all around the table had emptied three glasses, the local worthies approached the Magistrate, one at a time, to toast his arrival and sing his praises, each in his own way. And while their comments differed in style if not in elegance, the one constant was a mention of the revered one’s beard. One intoned, “Our esteemed Magistrate is a reincarnation of Guan Yu, a rebirth of Wu Zixu.” Another pronounced that Zhuge Liang had returned in the person of the esteemed Magistrate; the Deva King had descended from heaven. Now, while Qian Ding could tolerate a great deal, this group of toadies was more than he could endure. He could not, of course, refuse to be toasted and was obliged to empty his glass each time, and the more he drank, the further he moved away from his official airs. He chatted energetically, he talked and laughed merrily, he shuffled and gestured, his head was turned by the effusive praise, and he began to display his unrestrained nature as he moved steadily closer to the people.

That day he drank himself into a stupor; his worthy guests, too, lay passed out around the table. It was a banquet that rocked Gaomi County to its core and became a popular topic of conversation far and wide. The Emerald Cabbage gained almost mythical qualities on the people’s tongues. People said that it was a mysterious viand that could not be separated until Magistrate Qian touched it with his chopsticks, at which time it opened like a white lily, with dozens of petals, each tipped with a glistening pearl.

Word quickly spread that the new Magistrate was the grandson-in-law of Lord Wenzheng. Endowed with an imposing presence, he sported a beard worthy of Guan Yu himself. Not only was the Magistrate the epitome of dignity, but his name had appeared high on the list of successful candidates at the Imperial Examination, and he thus joined the circle of Imperial attendants. Brimming with talent, he was a master of eloquence. With an unmatched capacity for spirits, even drunk he retained his poise, like a jade tree standing tall before a wind or a mountain withstanding a spring deluge. Then there was the Magistrate’s wife, descendant of an illustrious family, a woman of matchless beauty and incomparable virtue. Their arrival in Gaomi County promised immense blessings for the people.

———— 2 ————

Northeast Gaomi Township was home to the leader of the local Maoqiang troupe, Sun Bing, a man who was also endowed with a splendid beard. Maoqiang, otherwise known as Cat Opera, is an operatic genre created and developed in Northeast Gaomi Township. The arias are exquisite, the staging unique, the ambience magical; in short, it is the ideal portrayal of life in the township. Sun Bing was both a reformer and an inheritor of the Maoqiang tradition, a man who enjoyed high prestige among his peers. As a performer of the old-man role, playing respected old men, he was never in need of a stage beard, since none could match the natural appeal of his own. As luck would have it, upon the birth of his grandson, the township’s richest man, Master Liu, hosted a celebration banquet, to which Sun Bing was invited. Also in attendance was a yamen clerk by the name of Li Wu, who sat at the head of a table in a pompous demonstration of his stature, and proceeded to sing the praises of the County Magistrate, from his eloquence to his every action, from his interests to his favorite activities. But the climactic note was sounded in his tribute to the Magistrate’s impressive beard.

Now, even though Li Wu was on leave from his post, on this occasion he was dressed in full formal attire, minus only his baton of authority. Gesticulating dramatically and blustering nonstop, he so intimidated the other guests, all decent, simple men, that they could only gape in stupefaction, the meal in front of them forgotten. With ears pricked, they listened wide-eyed to the man’s voluble outbursts as he slung slobber into the air. Sun Bing, a man of the world, had been to many places and seen many things, and had Li Wu not been present, Sun would have been the center of attention. But Li was present, and since everyone knew that he was in attendance to the County Magistrate, Sun was ignored. He could only drink alone to drown his melancholy, casting disdainful looks and snorts of derision in the direction of the despicable lackey. No one noticed, and in the eyes of Li Wu, Sun might as well not have been at the table at all, so intent was he on elaborately extolling the virtues of the Magistrate’s beard.

“Among ordinary mortals, no more than a thousand strands make up the finest beard. But can you guess how many strands His Eminence’s superb specimen contains? Ha ha, I see you are stumped. I am not surprised. Last month I accompanied His Eminence on a tour to observe the people’s mood, and engaged him in a conversation. ‘Young Li,’ he said to me, ‘how many strands do you think are in this official’s beard?’ ‘I dare not presume to guess, Your Eminence,’ I replied. ‘I am not surprised,’ he remarked. ‘Well, I shall tell you. This official’s beard is comprised of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine strands! One short of ten thousand! The First Lady performed the calculation.’ How, I asked, was the calculation of such a beard accomplished? ‘The First Lady is as finely meticulous as a human hair and endowed with surpassing intelligence. By counting one hundred strands at a time and tying them off with a silk thread, she accomplished the feat. She could not possibly be wrong.’ ‘Your Eminence,’ I said, ‘if you grew but one more strand, you would have the ultimate round number.’ To which he replied, ‘That, young Li, shows your lack of understanding. In the affairs of the world, perfection is a taboo. Take the moon, for instance. Once it is a perfect circle, the erosion begins. Or fruit on a tree. The moment it is perfectly ripe, it falls to the ground. A degree of deficiency is vital for all things if they are to last. There is no more auspicious number than nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Ten thousand is detrimental for the people and for those who govern them. This, my young Li, is a paradox you must work hard to grasp.’ That comment by His Eminence is an arcane truth of boundless import, yet one that I have yet to unlock. He then said to me, ‘Young Li, the number of strands in this official’s beard is known to only three people alive. One is you, I am another, and the third is my wife. You must not breathe a word of it to anyone, for if it were to be revealed, it not only would be a harbinger of bad tidings, but might well spawn a great calamity.’”

Li Wu picked up his glass, drank from it, and then picked at dishes with his chopsticks, clicking his tongue in a display of criticism over the crude array of food. Finally he picked up a bean sprout, which he chewed noisily with his front teeth, like a mouse that lazily grinds its teeth after eating its fill. Master Liu’s son, the father of the new grandson, rushed up with a plate of steaming pig’s-head meat and placed it in front of Li Wu before wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his greasy hand. “We have treated you shamelessly, Uncle Li,” he said. “We are peasants, untrained in the preparation of fine cuisine. Won’t you do us the honor of sampling this?”

Li Wu spat out the bean sprout, which had been stuck between his front teeth, and banged his chopsticks down on the table. Clearly unhappy, he forced himself to speak with laudable forbearance: “Elder nephew Liu,” he said, “your concern is misplaced. Do you really think I am here because of the food? If it were a meal I desired, I could visit any establishment in town and, without a word, be served fine sea cucumbers and abalone, camel’s hoof and bear’s paw, monkey brains and bird’s nest soup, one dish after another. Eating one while sampling another with an eye to the third, that, my boy, is a banquet worthy of the name. And what has your family provided? Some half-cooked bean sprouts, a plate of rotting, pestilential pig’s head, and a decanter of sour millet spirits neither hot nor cold enough. Is this what you call a celebration banquet? It is more like a meal to get rid of stinking actors. No, I have deigned to attend for two reasons: first as a favor to your father, to prop up your family, and second to mix with the local gentry. I am kept so busy that flames shoot out of my ass, and finding this little bit of time has not been easy.”

The elder son of the Liu family could only nod and bow in response to Li Wu’s rebuke, and make a quick, desperate exit when Li paused to cough.

“Master Liu, you are a learned, cultivated man,” Li Wu said. “How could you have raised such an empty-headed turtle?”

None of the embarrassed guests dared make a sound. But Sun Bing, infuriated by what he had witnessed, pulled the plate of pig’s head over in front of him. “Since the eminent Li Wu is used to eating delicacies from land and sea, placing this pig’s head in front of him is clearly meant to sicken him. For those of us who survive on a diet of chaff and coarse greens, this nicely greases our innards and helps us shit!”

That said, without so much as a glance around the table, he began stuffing greasy, dripping chunks of meat into his mouth, one after the other. “Um, good,” he mumbled, “really good, fucking delicious!”

Li Wu glowered at Sun Bing, who did not so much as look up. Gaining no satisfaction from his angry glare, Li blinked and turned his gaze on the others around the table. With a curl of his lip, he shook his head in the sort of contempt typical of those in high position, the common display of a gentleman in the presence of petty men. The guests, fearful of causing trouble, held out their glasses in a show of respect for Li, who, like a man who dismounts from his mule on a downward slope, emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and, picking up the thread of conversation lost in the remonstrance of the elder Liu son, said:

“Worthy gentlemen, I revealed the secret of the Lord Magistrate’s beard to you only because we are all friends. As the adage goes, ‘While we are not related, we come from the same place.’ Now that you have been let in on the secret, you must keep it inside and let it rot there. Under no circumstances is what I said to leave this room, for if it were to find its way to the ear of His Eminence, my rice bowl would be unalterably smashed. These are things known only to the Magistrate, to the First Lady, and to me. Kindly take heed!”

Clasping his fists together at his chest, Li Wu bowed to each of the guests in turn; they returned the gesture. “You needn’t worry. It is a rare honor for a place like ours to have in its midst a superior man like Elder Li Wu! Our residents, one and all, wait with bated breath to benefit from their association with you. With that in mind, by speaking out of turn, we would be doing injury to ourselves.”

“It is precisely because we are one big family that I am willing to speak my mind.” Li Wu took another drink and then lowered his voice to speak conspiratorially: “His Eminence frequently summons me to his official document room as a conversation partner. We sit across from one another, like brothers, drinking millet spirits, eating dog meat, and chatting about everything under the sun, past and present. Our Magistrate is a man of erudition, familiar with the affairs of the world, and never happier than when he is engaged in such conversations, with a supply of meat and spirits at hand. These talks frequently continue late into the night, so unnerving the Magistrate’s wife that she sends a maidservant to rap on the window and call out, ‘Master, the Mistress says it is getting late; time to take your rest.’ He invariably replies, ‘Meixiang, go back and tell the Mistress not to wait up for me, that our young Li and I have yet to finish our chat.’ I am not in favor with the Mistress, and that is the cause. A few days ago, on my way to the rear hall on an assignment, I met up with her, and as she blocked my way, she said, ‘Aren’t you something, Little Li, keeping the Magistrate up half the night talking about who knows what, to the point that he has even begun to neglect me. You little wretch, do you or do you not deserve a beating?’ Shaken to the core, I stammered, ‘I do, I do!’”

“Elder Brother Li,” Collegian Ma Da interrupted, “none of us here has ever laid eyes on the First Lady, though there is talk that her face is cratered with pockmarks…”

“Rubbish! Utter nonsense. Anyone who says that deserves to wind up in the layer of Hell for wayward tongues!” Li Wu was red in the face from anger. “I ask you, Collegian Ma Da, what is that head of yours filled with, soy milk or rice congee? You have been taught in the ‘Zhao Qian Sun Li Zhou Wu Zheng Wang’ of the Hundred Family Surnames and ‘Heaven is black and Earth is yellow, the universe is in chaos,’ from the Book of Changes, so why do you not use your head and consider the august lady’s lineage! Born into a great family, she was a pearl in the hand of a doting father, raised by a nanny and waited on by a household of maidservants. Her quarters are kept in such immaculate condition that a slice of sticky-rice cake dropped to the floor can be retrieved without a speck of dust. How, I ask you, could anyone emerge from such an environment scarred by the unspeakable affliction of smallpox? The only way she would have marks on her face is if you, Collegian Ma, were to scratch it with your fingernails!”

No amount of discipline could have kept the gathered elites from bursting into sidesplitting laughter, and no amount of self-control could have kept Collegian Ma’s face from turning bright red. “Yes, of course,” he said, both to defend and to mock himself. “How could a fairy among mortals possibly have pockmarks? What an ugly, hateful rumor that is!”

Li Wu cast a sideways glance at the nearly empty plate of meat in front of Sun Bing and swallowed a mouthful of saliva. “That His Eminence Qian and I, his subordinate, have a close and cordial relationship goes without saying. He once said to me, ‘Little Li, there is a natural affinity between us. I cannot tell you why, but it seems to me that you and I are of one heart and mind, adjacent lungs, entwined intestines, and overlapping stomachs.”

Sun Bing nearly spat out the food in his mouth along with his derisive snort, and only by stretching out his neck was he able to swallow it down. “What that means to me,” he said, “is that when Magistrate Qian has eaten his fill, you are no longer hungry.”

“Sun Bing!” Li Wu bellowed. “What is that supposed to mean? Aren’t you an actor who plays emperors and kings, ministers and princes, scholars and beauties, praising the virtues of loyalty, piety, benevolence, and righteousness resounding across the heavens, day in and day out? Then how can you be ignorant of what it means to live in civilized society? You have taken for your sole enjoyment the only meat dish on the table, to which the grease on your lips bears testimony. And yet you have the audacity to slander others, you filthy maggot!”

“Now that you have grown tired of your sea cucumber, bird’s nest, camel’s hoof, and bear’s paw,” Sun Bing said with a laugh, “how can you drool over a plate of pork?”

“You are trying to measure the stature of a great man with the yardstick of a petty one! I object not for myself, but for my fellow guests.”

Again Sun Bing laughed. “They have filled their bellies by licking your hot ass, so what need do they have for meat?”

Stung by Sun’s comment, the guests cursed him all at the same time. Unaffected by their anger, he finished what was left of the meat on the plate, then picked up a steamed bun and used it to sop up the gravy. That done, he belched, lit his pipe, and enjoyed a relaxing smoke.

Li Wu shook his head and sighed. “Born of parents, but raised without them, you should be sent into the city by Magistrate Qian to be given fifty lashes!”

“I say we let it go, brother Li Wu,” Collegian Ma Da chimed in. “The ancients have taught us that idle talk is our drink and free chats our meat. Tell us more about Magistrate Qian and the goings-on in the yamen. That will be a sumptuous feast.”

“I’ve lost interest,” Li Wu replied. “What I can say is, the people of Gaomi County are blessed to have Eminence Qian as their wise and caring Magistrate. Given the depth of his talents, how can we residents of such a trifling little county expect to keep him with us? The day will come when our illustrious official will move up and away from us, if for no other reason than the supernatural beard that adorns his chin. He will attain no less an appointment than Provincial Governor, and when the opportunity presents itself, he, like his esteemed father-in-law, Lord Wenzheng, will become a renowned official for whom the sky is the limit, a pillar of the nation a real possibility.”

“When Eminence Qian rises to fame, Li Wu will move up along with him,” Collegian Ma remarked. “That is what is meant by ‘When the moon is bright, a bald man shines, and when the water rises, the ferryboat floats highest.’ Brother Li Wu, a toast from your humble servant. What worries me is that once your career is in ascent, I can imagine how difficult it will be to see you!”

After draining his glass, Li Wu said, “Truth is, for a subordinate, all the fine language in the world can be refined down to a single word: loyalty. If your superior smiles your way, that is no reason to turn up your nose at others, and if he gives you a swift kick, there is no need to bemoan your fate. That does not hold true, however, for men like Magistrate Qian and Lord Wenzheng, who are either heavenly constellations come down to earth or mighty dragons who have returned to the land of mortals, and live in a different universe than us common folk. What, I ask, is Lord Wenzheng? He is a giant python come back to be among us. People have said that he suffered from ringworm, and that when he climbed out of bed each morning, his servants could fill a ladle with the flakes of pale skin on the sheet. But Magistrate Qian took me aside and told me that what they found was snake molt. And what, I ask you, is Magistrate Qian? I’ll tell you, but you must keep it to yourselves. Once, after he and I had talked late into the night, we were so tired we climbed onto the kang in the Western Parlor, curled up, and went to sleep. All of a sudden, I felt something heavy on top of me—I was dreaming that a tiger had its claws in me. I awoke with a fright, and guess what I saw: one of the Magistrate’s legs was draped across my body…”

The men around the table held their breath as their faces paled; their eyes were glued to Li Wu’s mouth, into which he emptied yet another glass. “That is when I grasped the truth that the Magistrate’s beard is so lush that, in reality, it is the beard of a tiger.”

Sun Bing knocked the ashes from his pipe on a table leg, then puffed up his cheeks and blew the tar out of the stem. After tucking his pipe away, he grasped his beard with both hands and, with an exaggerated and strikingly artistic stage gesture, flung it to one side. Assuming the articulated cadence of an operatic old man, he intoned:

“Little Li Wu, go back and tell your master for me that the beard on his chin cannot compare with the hair around my prick!”

———— 3 ————

Bright and early the next morning, before all the fatty pork he’d eaten had moved beyond his stomach, Sun Bing was yanked out of bed by four yamen bailiffs and thrown naked to the floor. His bed partner, Little Peach, an actress who took leading lady dan roles, curled up in a corner, wearing only a red belly warmer, and shuddered from fear. In the chaos that followed, the attackers smashed a chamber pot with a misplaced kick, filling the air with the pungent smell of urine and raising welts all over Sun’s body.

“Worthy brothers,” he shouted, “let’s talk this out, what do you say?”

Two of the men picked him up off the floor, twisting his arms behind him, while a third lit a lamp in a wall recess. Sun Bing saw Li Wu’s smirking face in the golden light.

“Li Wu,” he said, “there is no bad blood between us, never has been, so why are you doing this to me?”

Li Wu stepped up, slapped Sun, and then spat in his face.

“You stinking actor,” he said contemptuously, “you’re right, there is no bad blood between you and me. But there is great enmity between you and Magistrate Qian. As his subordinate, I have no choice but to take you into custody, for which I ask your forbearance.”

“What enmity is there between Magistrate Qian and me?”

Li Wu smirked. “Dear brother, you really do have a short memory. Last night you said that the beard on his chin cannot compare with the hair around your prick, if I’m not mistaken.”

Sun Bing rolled his eyes. “That is malicious slander, Li Wu. When did I say something like that? I’d have to be crazy or stupid to utter something as idiotic as that, and I am neither.”

“You may not be crazy or stupid, but greasy pork muddled your mind.”

“Dry shit does not stick to one’s body!”

“Any man worthy of the name stands behind his words and deeds!” Li Wu insisted. “Now, do you want to get dressed, or shall we take you along naked? If you dress, make it snappy. We don’t have time to argue with a stinking actor, for Magistrate Qian is waiting at the yamen to get a look at the hair around your prick!”

———— 4 ————

The bailiffs dragged and pushed Sun Bing into a hall in the county yamen. He was in a bit of a daze, and his body ached and burned from the beatings he’d suffered over the last three days in a jail cell, where he had played host to legions of bedbugs and fleas. During those three days, he had been taken out of his cell and blindfolded six times by guards, who proceeded to beat him with leather whips and clubs until he was banging into walls like a blind donkey. During those three days, he was given one cup of foul water and a single bowl of spoiled rice. Now, at the end of those three days, he was famished and parched, he ached all over, and most of his blood had been sucked dry by the fleas and bedbugs, whose bodies glistened on the walls like buckwheat soaked in oil. He felt that he was on his last legs, that he would not be able to survive three more days. He regretted his impetuous comment, no matter how pleased he’d been with it at the time. He also wished he hadn’t taken the plate of pork all for himself. Now would be a good time to reach up and punish his trouble-making mouth with several vicious slaps. But no sooner had he raised his arm than he saw stars. Sore and stiff, that arm felt like a piece of cold steel. It fell back to his side, a heavy weight, and hung from his shoulder like a yoke.

On that overcast day, the yamen hall was illuminated by a dozen or more thick candles made of mutton tallow, the odor spreading through the hall from the flickering flames. It was a rancid smell that fogged his mind and made him nauseous; something hard seemed to bounce off the walls of his stomach and churn up a vile liquid that rose into his throat and spewed onto the floor. More than ashamed, he experienced remorse. After wiping the muck from his lips and beard, he was about to apologize for vomiting when, suddenly, a resonant, even, practiced “WOO—WAY” emerged from the dark recesses on both sides of the hall, a scary sound that made him jump. What was he supposed to do now? The answer to that question came in the form of bailiffs’ feet buried in the backs of his knees that forced him to kneel on the hard, unforgiving floor as the official made his way into the hall.

Kneeling was actually more comfortable than standing, and the expulsion of the foul contents of his stomach had cleared his mind. Now, he realized, was not the time to whine or display any weakness: any man worthy of the name accepts the consequences of his actions. Even a beheading leaves only a bowl-sized scar. Under the circumstances, the Magistrate would not be in the mood for leniency, so it would do no good to pretend otherwise. He knew he was going to die, so he might as well go out in style; in another twenty years or so, that could find its way into a libretto and keep his good name alive for generations to come. This thought set the blood racing through his veins and his temples throbbing. His dry, thirsty mouth, his empty, hungry stomach, and his bruised, aching body all seemed to bother him less. His eyes watered, bringing the eyeballs to life. His mind was back in working order, as reminders of all the solemn roles he had played and the fervent arias he had sung surged into his head: I clench my teeth and bear up under abuse, for this cursed official I have no use. Inspired by these heroic sentiments, he threw out his chest and raised his head in the mysterious, forbidding surroundings, as the yayi, secure in the power of the office, kept up the din of “WOO—WAY.”

What was the first thing he saw after raising his head off his chest? There, seated stiffly beneath a board inscribed with the words “justice” and “honor,” seated properly amid the aura of brilliant candlelight, seated correctly behind a heavy carved blood-red table, impressive with a ruddy face and long beard, sober and dignified as an idol, was the County Magistrate himself. One look told Sun Bing that he was under the powerful official’s watchful eye, and he had to admit, however grudgingly, that the man had a formidable presence. Li Wu had not painted a false portrait. Most impressive was the beard that tapered down across the man’s chest, each strand as fine as the silken thread of a horse’s tail. Struck by a sense of shame and inferiority, he experienced a spontaneous affinity for the Magistrate, akin to being reunited with a long-lost brother. Brothers come together in a Magistrate’s hall, a scene of nostalgia brings tears to all.

The Magistrate pounded his gavel, the crisp sound reverberating through the hall. Sun Bing tensed, caught unprepared by the sound, and as he looked into the stately visage of the Magistrate, he awoke, as from a dream, to the reality that this was not a staged performance, that the Magistrate was not an old-man actor, and that at this moment, he was not playing a stage role.

“You there, on your knees, tell us your name!”

“Your humble servant is Sun Bing.”

“Home of record?”

“Northeast Township.”

“Age?”

“Forty-five.”

“Occupation?”

“Opera troupe leader.”

“Do you know why you have been brought here?”

“I had too much to drink and was betrayed by my tongue, casting aspersions on His Eminence.”

“Just what were those aspersions?”

“I dare not repeat them.”

“No harm will come to you for repeating them now.”

“I dare not.”

“I order you to do so.”

“I said that the beard on the County Magistrate’s chin cannot compare with the hair around my prick.”

The comment was met with giggles all around. Sun Bing glanced at the Magistrate, who appeared to have found the comment humorous, but only for a moment, as a stern look replaced the evanescent smile.

“Reckless Sun Bing!” His Eminence thundered, pounding his gavel a second time. “What prompted you to subject this official to humiliation?”

“I deserve death… I had heard that the Magistrate had grown a fine beard, news that I did not want to hear, so I said something foolish.”

“Is it your desire to compare beards?”

“Your servant is unskilled and lacks talent. But I have always thought that my beard is second to none. When I perform the role of Guan Gong in The Single Sword Meeting, I do not need to wear a false beard.”

The Great River flows east, wave upon wave, from the west floats a little boat, oh so brave. After leaving nine-tiered Dragon Phoenix Tower, we explore the depths of Dragon Lake and Tiger Cave.

“Stand up. Let me see your beard.”

Sun Bing stood up and rocked from side to side, as if riding waves on a sampan.

Pendants and banners flutter looking east to Wu, a tiger loose in a flock of sheep, a fear of Cao not true…

“That is indeed a fine beard, but not necessarily finer than mine.”

“Your servant does not yield.”

“How do you propose to compare beards?”

“Water would be my choice.”

“Go on.”

“Your servant’s beard does not float when placed in water, but goes straight to the bottom.”

“Can that be?” The Magistrate stroked his beard and paused for a moment. “What do you propose should you lose?”

“If your servant loses, then his beard will be the hair around the Magistrate’s prick.”

This time the yayi exploded in laughter. The Magistrate slammed his gavel on the table. “Reckless Sun Bing!” he bellowed, “how dare you say such things here!”

“I deserve death.”

“Sun Bing, directing vile epithets toward an official in his hall deserves severe punishment, but in light of your penchant for straight talk and a willingness to accept the consequences of your speech, I shall show mercy and approve the competition. If you win, all your crimes will be expunged. But if you lose, I shall order you to personally pull out every strand of your beard and never grow another. Do you agree?”

“Your servant agrees.”

“The audience is concluded!” The Magistrate stood up and, like a bright, airy breeze, disappeared behind the screen.

———— 5 ————

The battle of the beards was to take place in the spacious courtyard between the yamen’s main and secondary gates. Wanting not to make it too grand an affair, Magistrate Qian invited fewer than twenty of the county’s most renowned members of the local gentry as spectators and witnesses. But word of the battle between His Eminence and Sun Bing spread like wildfire, and by that morning, crowds of commoners had already gathered at the yamen gate, eager to get in on the fun. The earliest arrivals, always awestruck by the power and prestige of the yamen, kept their distance from the site, but as more and more people came, pushes and shoves moved the crowd closer to the gate. Crowds sometimes fall beyond the law. Commoners, who on most days would not dare even to look up as they passed by the yamen gate, now elbowed the gate guards out of the way and spilled into the yard as if a dam had burst. A mass of humanity quickly filled the spacious yard, while even more people arrived to take their place beyond the gate. Adventurous and unruly youngsters went so far as to climb trees and sit on the perimeter wall.

Invited members of the local gentry were seated on catalpa wood benches arranged in a polygonal circle, looking as if they were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They were joined by the Judicial Secretary, the Revenue Clerk, and scribes from the Six Boards. Arrayed in a circle behind them were yayi whose job it was to keep the gawkers from surging forward. Smack in the middle of the circle stood two large tubs of clear water. The principals had not yet arrived. Sweaty, oily faces gave evidence of growing anxiety. Young children, like slippery loaches, were wreaking havoc in the crowd with their erratic movements, pressing against the phalanx of yayi and throwing them off balance, like cornstalks bent before a raging flood. Most of the time these men were a ferocious, threatening lot, but on this day they seemed well disposed to the local residents. This strange and unique contest would actually create an unprecedented cordial relationship between the people and those who governed them. Then one of the benches was overturned by the crush of people, sending its occupant, a tall member of the gentry, jumping to safety. He stood there, water pipe in hand, staring cross-eyed at the crowd, his head cocked to the side like a puzzled rooster. Then a fat man with a long white beard fell to the ground, where he began crawling like a rooting pig, managing to get back on his feet only with considerable effort. As he brushed mud off of his silk gown, he filled the air with hoarse curses until his face puffed up like a red mass of dough right out of the oven. One of the yayi was shoved down onto a bench so hard that he injured his ribcage. He screamed like a stuck pig until his fellow yayi rescued him from his misery. The individual in charge of the yayi, Liu Pu, a young man with a gaunt face and dark skin, stood on one of the benches and, in a lilting Sichuan accent, made a friendly announcement:

“Please don’t push and shove, fellow townsmen. Lives are at stake.”

Midway through the morning, the stars of the show made their entrance. Magistrate Qian strode grandly down the steps of the Great Hall and entered the yard through the secondary gate. Bright sunlight lit up his face as he greeted the spectators with a wave of his hand. Smiling broadly, he displayed a mouth full of spotless white teeth. The crowd was moved, but not so that anyone would notice. They did not jump for joy, they did not they shed a tear, and they did not cheer. They were simply overwhelmed by the Magistrate’s presence. They had, of course, heard that he was a handsome man, but few of them had actually laid eyes on him. On this day he was dressed casually, not in his official robes. Since he was hatless, his broad forehead was freshly shaved, the shiny green of a crab shell; his scalp was slicked down with oil, leading to a long, thick braid that fell down the rise in his buttocks and was secured at the end by a jade ornament from which hung a tiny silver bell that tinkled crisply with each move. The venerable official wore a loose white silk robe and thick-soled green cloth shoes with ribs down the middle; his ankles were tied off with silk garters. The trousers under his robe were so baggy that his midsection looked like a giant floating jellyfish. The highlight of his appearance, of course, was the beard that fell from his chin. Ah, but that was no ordinary beard; it was, rather, a strip of black satin lying atop the man’s chest. So bright it was, so shiny, so glossy, and so sleek. The bright shiny glossy sleek beard hanging in front of the Magistrate’s snow-white chest had a comforting, cheery effect on all who saw it. A woman in the crowd was so taken by the sight of the venerable Magistrate, elegant and graceful, like a jade tree standing before a breeze, that her heart melted, as she seemed to float above the ground, her eyes filling with tears. On a drizzly night only months before, she had been captivated by the easy manner of Magistrate Qian, but on that occasion he had been dressed in his official attire and was properly stern, altogether different from the casual look he affected now. If one were to say that the Magistrate existed on an unattainable plane in his official robes, then one must admit that in everyday attire, he was quite approachable. The young woman was none other than Sun Meiniang.

Meiniang threaded her way forward, her unblinking eyes glued to His Eminence, whose every gesture and every look intoxicated her heart and possessed her soul. She cared not if she stepped on someone’s foot, was not bothered if she bumped into people’s shoulders; the angry shouts that followed her fell on deaf ears. Some in the crowd recognized her as the daughter of one of the principals in today’s battle of the beards, the actor Sun Bing, and immediately assumed that she had come to fret over her father’s fate. They generously made space for her to squeeze her way up to the front row behind the ringed field of combat. At last her knee bumped into a hard wooden bench, and she peered between the heads of some yayi. Her heart had already taken flight and landed on His Eminence’s breast, like a pet bird, there to make its nest and raise its young in bone-penetrating warmth.

The radiant sunlight filled the Magistrate’s eyes with incandescent passion. With hands clasped in front of his chest, he bowed to the assembled members of the local gentry, then turned and did the same to the ordinary residents. Saying not a word, he caressed the crowd with a bewitching smile. Sun Meiniang sensed his gaze brushing her face and stopped for a moment—she felt numb all over. All the fluids in her body—tears, mucus, sweat, blood, marrow—flowed out like quicksilver. She now felt as weightless as a spotless white feather, floating in the air, like a dream, like a breeze.

At that moment, two yayi emerged from the fearful lockup east of the yard, leading the way for the tall, once-robust Sun Bing, looking stern and resolute. His face seemed puffier than usual, and there were purple bruises on his neck. But none of that detracted from his spirited demeanor, however forced it might have been. Sun immediately earned the crowd’s respect when he walked up and stood shoulder to shoulder with the County Magistrate. In neither his attire nor the apparent state of his health could he hold a candle to the venerable Magistrate, but his beard was in a class by itself. It looked to be fuller than his opponent’s, but somewhat disheveled and not as glossy. That aside, it was a remarkable specimen of facial hair.

“That is a dignified appearance,” a thin member of the local gentry said confidentially to his fat companion. “He looks exultant. There is nothing ordinary about the man.”

“Not so fast,” the fat man said scornfully. “What is he but a Maoqiang actor!”

The Judicial Secretary, who was to preside over the competition, rose from the bench on which he was sitting, cleared his opium-scarred throat, and announced:

“Honored gentry, county elders, today’s competition is being held in response to a defamatory comment uttered by the unruly citizen Sun Bing against the venerable County Magistrate. For his felonious transgression, Sun Bing deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, but since this constitutes his first offense, the Magistrate has chosen to dispose of the case with compassion. In order to disprove once and for all his defamatory comment, the Magistrate has accepted the miscreant’s challenge to hold a battle of the beards. If Sun emerges the victor, the Magistrate agrees to drop all charges. But if the Magistrate wins the competition, Sun Bing must personally pull out every strand of his beard and never grow another. Is this your understanding, Sun Bing?”

“It is,” Sun Bing said, his head held high. “I am grateful for the Magistrate’s magnanimity!”

The Judicial Secretary then turned to the Magistrate for confirmation, which came in the form of a barely noticeable nod.

“Let the competition begin!” the Secretary announced grandly.

Without further ado, Sun Bing tore off his shirt to reveal lash marks across his shoulders. After curling his queue on top of his head, he tightened his trouser sash, struck a martial pose—legs apart, arms spread—took a deep breath, and concentrated all his strength in his chin. Like magic, his beard began to vibrate, just long enough for each strand to stretch out as straight and rigid as wire. Then, finally, he lifted his chin, keeping his back straight, as he lowered his body and slowly began to immerse his beard in the water.

This elicited no discernible reaction from Magistrate Qian, who stood off to the side with a smile and gently waved the paper fan in his hand as he watched Sun Bing concentrate his strength in his beard. The onlookers, won over by the Magistrate’s graceful bearing, viewed Sun Bing’s performance as artificial and repulsive, on a par with the common scoundrels who spin spears and twirl clubs to draw attention to the fake nostrums they sell. As soon as Sun began immersing his beard in the vat of water, Magistrate Qian snapped his fan shut and tucked it into his wide sleeve. Then, with a slight shift of his body, he took his beard in both hands, moved it away from his chest, and shook it, displaying boundless elegance and grace, and nearly inducing a mortal swoon in Sun Meiniang in the process. He lifted his chin, keeping his back straight, as he lowered his body and slowly began to immerse his beard in the water.

People stood on tiptoe and craned their necks to see how the beards were faring in the water. But no matter how widely they opened their eyes, most were able to see only the Magistrate’s composed, smiling countenance and Sun Bing’s taut, purple face. Not even those a bit closer to the action had a view of how the beards were faring in the water. The sun was too bright, the brown wooden vats too dark.

The Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan, who were to judge the contest, walked back and forth between the two vats, comparing and contrasting, their faces brimming with delight. As a gesture to convince the crowd and forestall any objection, the Secretary called out:

“Those of you who want to see for yourself, come closer!”

Sun Meiniang all but leaped over the benches and strode purposefully up to the Magistrate, lowering her head to the level of the tip of his thick queue, where the inward curve of his spine and the fair lobes of his ear were displayed before her eyes. Her lips burned; a greedy desire gnawed at her heart like a little insect. She yearned to bend down and cover the Magistrate’s body with kisses from her pliant lips, but she lacked the courage. A sensation more profound than pain rose up in her heart and sent a scant few teardrops onto the Magistrate’s potent, handsome, well-proportioned neck. She detected a subtle fragrance emanating from the vat, in which she saw every strand of the Magistrate’s beard perfectly vertical in the water, like the root system of a well-tended plant. She hated the idea of leaving the spot beside his vat, but the Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan nudged her over to Sun Bing’s vat. There she saw that her father’s beard had also gone straight to the bottom, also like a plant’s root system. But the Secretary pointed to the few white whiskers floating on the surface.

“Do you see what I see, madam?” he said. “Tell everyone exactly what you see. What we say does not count, but what you say does. Go ahead, tell them who has won and who has lost.”

Sun Meiniang faltered. She looked into her dieh’s red face and bloodshot eyes, and in them she saw the ardent hope he placed in her. But then she turned and saw the expressive eyes of the Magistrate, and she felt as if her mouth were sealed by a sticky substance. In the end, thanks to the prodding of the Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan, she broke down and sobbed:

“His Eminence has won and my dieh has lost…”

Two heads shot up from their respective vats, bringing with them beards dripping with water. They shook them, sending drops spraying in all directions. Their eyes met. Sun Bing, breathing hard, was dumbfounded; His Eminence was smiling, calm and composed.

“Is there anything else you care to say, Sun Bing?” the Magistrate asked with a smile.

Sun’s lips were twitching. He said nothing.

“In accordance with our agreement, Sun Bing, you are obligated to pluck out your beard!

Sun Bing, I say, Sun Bing, you haven’t forgotten, have you? Does your word mean nothing?”

Sun grabbed his beard with both hands, looked up at the sky, and sighed. “All right, I shall pluck out these annoying threads!” With a violent tug, he jerked out a skein of whiskers and flung them to the ground; drops of blood fell from his chin. He grabbed another skein and was about to pull them out as well, when Sun Meiniang fell to her knees before the Magistrate. Her face, lovely as a peach blossom, could soften any heart. With tears in her eyes, she looked up and pleaded in a delicate voice:

“Your Eminence, I beg you to pardon my dieh.”

The Magistrate squinted, a look of amazement on his face, tinged with gladness and, even more obviously, emotion. His lips fluttered. It hardly seemed as if he spoke at all:

“It’s you…”

“Stand up, daughter.” Tears spurted from Sun Bing’s eyes. “I do not want you begging from anyone,” he said softly.

Magistrate Qian, momentarily taken aback by this exchange, burst out laughing, and when he had finished, he said:

“Do you think I really wanted Sun Bing to pluck out that beard of his? Even though he came in second best in today’s competition, a beard like his is rarely seen anywhere in the world. I would feel a sense of loss if he were to pluck it out. The goal of this competition was, first, to stamp out his arrogance, and, second, to supply this august assemblage with a bit of entertainment. Sun Bing, I forgive you your transgressions and spare you your beard. Now, go home and sing your operas!”

Sun Bing fell to his knees and kowtowed.

The commoners in attendance sighed with deep emotion.

The local gentry drenched the Magistrate in flattering words.

Sun Meiniang remained kneeling, looking into the face of the venerable Magistrate Qian with rapt concentration.

“Daughter of the Sun family, you have proven your impartiality, and though you are a woman, you have the pluck of a man, a rarity in this world.” Magistrate Qian turned to his revenue clerk and said, “Reward her with an ounce of silver!”

CHAPTER SIX Competing Feet

———— 1 ————

A clear and very bright moon hung high in the sky, looking like a naked beauty. The third-watch gong had just sounded, and the county town lay in stillness. Smells of nature—plants and trees and insects and fish—were carried on the summer-night breeze to cover heaven and earth like fine gauze decorated with pearl ornaments. The naked moon shone down on Sun Meiniang as she strolled alone in her courtyard. She too was naked; she and the moon enhanced each other’s beauty. Moonbeams flowed like water in which she swam like a large silvery fish. This was a fully bloomed flower, a piece of ripe fruit, a youthful, vigorous, and graceful body. From head to toe, with the exception of her feet—which were large and unbound—she was flawless. Her skin was glossy, the only blemish a scar on her head that was hidden by her lush hair.

That scar was the result of a bite from a donkey before she had taken her first step as an infant. Unaware that her mother lay dead on the kang from swallowing opium, she had crawled up on her mother’s neatly dressed body, like climbing a resplendent mountain range. She was hungry, searching for the nipple, but in vain. She cried, and in the process she fell to the floor, where she cried even louder. No one came. So she crawled out the door, attracted by the smell of milk. No sooner had she reached the yard than she saw a young donkey drinking its mother’s milk. The ill-tempered adult had been tied to a tree by her owner, and when the little girl crawled up to feed alongside, or in place of, her baby, the donkey bit down on the girl’s head, gave her a shake, and flung her away, where she was immediately stained by her own blood. This time her terrified wails reached a neighbor woman, who picked her up and covered the wound with powdered lime to stop the bleeding. The injury was so severe that most people believed she would not survive. Even her normally buoyant father was sure she would die, but she hung on tenaciously. For the first fourteen years of her life, she was a scrawny, frail girl with a conspicuous scar on the back of her skull. She tagged along behind her dieh as he made the opera circuit, taking the stage in a variety of parts: little girls, little demons, even kittens. But in her fifteenth year, like a desiccated wheat sprout nourished by a spring rain, she grew like a weed, and at the age of sixteen, her hair grew lush and black, the way dense new shoots burst forth from a willow tree whose canopy has been lopped off. The scar disappeared beneath all that hair. At seventeen, she fleshed out, and people discovered that she was a girl. Prior to this, because of her unbound feet and sparse hair, most of the performers in the troupe had assumed that she was a nearly bald little boy. At eighteen, she had become the prettiest maiden in Northeast Gaomi Township.

“If not for her big feet,” people lamented, “the girl could become the Imperial Consort!”

It was this damning flaw—big, unbound feet—that caused her to be considered unmarriageable at the age of twenty, and was why, with no other prospects, Sun Meiniang, still lovely as a flower, was forced by harsh circumstances to marry Zhao Xiaojia, a butcher who lived and worked on the east side of town. When Meiniang moved in, Xiaojia’s bound-footed mother was still alive. She hated the sight of her daughter-in-law’s big feet, and tried to get her son to trim them down to size with his boning knife. When he refused, she decided to do it herself. Having lived up till then among a performing troupe, Meiniang knew all the acrobatic moves for the opera stage, and she had never been schooled in the traditional feminine imperatives of “three obediences”—first to father, then to husband, and finally to son—and the “four virtues” of fidelity, physical charm, propriety, and fine needlework. She was, not surprisingly, an untamed young woman who, now that she was married, found it suffocating to keep her temper in check and hold back her sobs. So when her mother-in-law came at her on her tiny feet, knife in hand, Meiniang’s pent-up anger burst to the surface. She leaped up and let loose a flying kick, a perfect demonstration of the “virtues” of unbound feet and testimony to her training and hard work in the troupe. Not particularly steady to begin with, her bound-footed mother-in-law was knocked to the floor. Meiniang rushed up, straddled her like Wu Song on the back of a tiger, and beat her with her fists until the poor woman could only scream piteously and soil herself, front and back. In the wake of this beating, the distraught old woman’s abdomen became dangerously distended, which soon led to her death. It was, for Sun Meiniang, a liberation, for she stepped up as head of the household. She converted a room with a southern exposure, facing the street, into a little public house that featured warm millet spirits and stewed dog meat for the general public. Burdened with a dullard of a husband, she relied upon her beauty to ensure a thriving business. All the local dandies entertained thoughts of finding their way into her favor, but none succeeded. Sun Meiniang was known by three nicknames: Big-Footed Fairy, Half-Way Beauty, and Dog-Meat Xishi, a play on the name of a legendary beauty.

———— 2 ————

Even ten days after the battle of the beards, the people’s excitement over Magistrate Qian’s striking appearance and broad-minded approach to governing had not abated, and they now looked forward with eager anticipation to the festive day on which they would meet his wife. Custom dictated that on the eighteenth day of the fourth month, the doors of the three halls, access to which was severely restricted, even to leading yamen officials, the rest of the year, were thrown open for women and children for the day. The wife of the County Magistrate would rise early in the morning and, in her finest attire, sit beneath the eaves of the Third Hall in the company of her husband, smiling broadly as she received members of the local populace. A gesture of goodwill toward the people, it also served as a grand display of the adage “A revered husband deserves an honored wife.”

Many of the county’s ordinary residents had been witness to His Eminence’s elegant bearing, and details of his wife’s background and education had early on filled local women’s ears. Anticipation leading to this special day had reached a fever pitch. What they yearned to know was, what sort of woman was a worthy spouse to a virtually celestial County Magistrate? Comments and opinions swirled above streets and byways like willow catkins: some said that the Magistrate’s wife was a woman of unrivaled beauty, capable of toppling a city with a smile; others said that the face of the Magistrate’s wife was scarred by pockmarks, that she was a demon in disguise. These two diametrically opposed views ignited avid curiosity among local women. Younger women were natural proponents of the view that the County Magistrate’s wife must be favored with the beauty of fresh flowers and fine jade. Slightly older, more experienced women doubted that this romantic view was sustainable in the world in which they lived, and were more inclined to accept the folk adage that says “A desirable man is burdened with an undesirable wife, while an ugly man marries a lovely maiden.” They cited as proof of this view the so-called “flower and moon” beauty of the former Magistrate’s wife, he of the wretched features. But younger women, especially the unmarried maidens, were firm in their desire to believe that the wife of the new Magistrate must be the sort of beauty who had fallen to earth from heaven.

Sun Meiniang looked forward to this day more fervently than any other woman in the county. She had already seen the County Magistrate on two occasions, the first on a drizzly night in early spring. While she was trying to hit a cat that had run off with a fish, the missile struck the Magistrate’s palanquin by mistake. Inviting him into her establishment, she noted his elegant appearance and demeanor in the candlelight, and was taken by his poise and easy manner, almost as if he had stepped out of a New Year’s painting. His conversational skills were extraordinary, his attitude one of pure affability, and even when he discussed serious matters, a unique sense of intimacy and gentility was ever-present. Any comparison of that man with her hog-butchering husband… well, there was no comparison. If truth be known, at that moment there was no room anywhere in her heart or mind to accommodate the image of Xiaojia. She walked as if floating on air, her heart raced, and her cheeks burned. She masked her confusion with excessively polite conversation and frenetic industry in order to keep busy, but in the process she knocked over a wineglass with her sleeve and overturned a bench with her knee. All that time, with everyone’s eyes on him, the Magistrate maintained the airs of his office, but she could tell, either from his coughs, which did not seem natural, or from the limpid expression in his eyes, that tender feelings lay beneath His Eminence’s tough exterior. The second time she saw him was at the battle of the beards. On that occasion, as the person chosen to validate the outcome, she was close enough not only to drink in His Eminence’s features with her eyes, but to smell the exquisite fragrance emanating from his body. Her lips were so close to his thick, glossy queue and his powerful neck, so very close… she seemed to recall that her tears fell on his neck: Ah, Your Eminence, how I hope that my tears really did fall on your neck… To acknowledge her impartiality, His Eminence rewarded her with an ounce of silver. But when she went to claim her reward, the goateed revenue clerk looked at her askance, with a strange gleam in his eye, resting on her feet for a very long time, which abruptly brought her back to earth. She guessed, from the look in his eyes, what he was about to say, and her heart cried out in silent agony: Oh, heaven, oh, earth, oh, Dieh, oh, Niang, my feet have spelled my doom! If only I had let my mother-in-law pare my feet with that boning knife when I had the chance, no matter how great the pain. If having small feet cost ten years of my life for each, I would gladly die twenty years before my time. Those thoughts produced a loathing for her dieh. Dieh, you not only caused the death of my niang, but might as well have caused mine as well; you cared only for your own romantic escapades and had no thoughts for your daughter; you raised your daughter like a son and refused to bind her feet… even if your beard had been superior to that of His Eminence, I would still have declared him the winner. Though, in fact, yours is inferior to his.

Sun Meiniang returned home with the County Magistrate’s gift of silver, her passion rising whenever she recalled the look of tenderness in his eyes; but icicles formed on her heart when she conjured up the censorious look in the eyes of the revenue clerk. As the day to see the Magistrate’s wife drew near, women flocked to the shops to buy cosmetics and fussed over new clothes, like maidens preparing for their wedding. But Sun Meiniang still had not made up her mind to go. Although she had seen His Eminence on but two occasions, at which he had not bestowed upon her any sweet words or honeyed phrases, she stubbornly clung to the belief that they had feelings for one another and that one day they would be together like a pair of mandarin ducks with their necks entwined. When women on the street engaged in debate over what the Magistrate’s wife, whom they would soon see in person, looked like, her cheeks burned as if they were talking about a member of her family. Truth be told, she could not say whether she wished His Eminence’s wife to be angelically lovely or demonically hideous. If she had the face of an angel, would that not be the end of her dream? But if she had the features of a demon, would His Eminence not be an object of pity? So she looked forward to the arrival of the special day, yet was simultaneously apprehensive of it. The day would surely come anyway, however, whether its inevitability filled her with hope or with apprehension.

She awoke amid a chorus of cockcrows. Somehow she had survived till dawn. Having no interest in making breakfast, she was even less inclined to dress up. Time and again she went outside, only to walk right back into the house, catching the eye even of Xiaojia, her gnarled log of a hog-butcher husband.

“What’s wrong with you, wife,” he asked, “the way you’re going in and out of the house? Do you have itchy soles? I can scratch them for you with a chunk of bottle gourd.”

Itchy soles? I’ve got a bloated belly, and I have to walk to keep from going crazy! That is what she thought of her husband’s good intentions. A pomegranate tree beside the well was so red with flowers that it seemed to be on fire; she plucked one of the flowers and said a silent prayer: If the petals come out even, I’ll go to the yamen to see the First Lady, but if they come out odd, I won’t go, and I’ll give up my dream of ever being with him.

And so she began: one petal, two petals, three… nineteen. An odd number. A chill settled over her heart; her mood plummeted to the depths. No, that didn’t count. My prayer lacked devotion, so it doesn’t count. She plucked another flower from the tree, bigger and fuller than the first one. This time she held it in both hands, closed her eyes, and mouthed a new prayer: Gods in the heavens, Immortals on earth, give me a sign… She began with the petals in a mood of extreme solemnity: one petal, two petals, three… twenty-seven. Again, an odd number. She tore up what was left of the flower and flung it to the ground. Her head hung disconsolately on her chest. Xiaojia walked up.

“Do you want to wear a flower, my wife?” he asked in a cautious, fawning tone. “Here, let me pick one for you.”

“Get away from me!” she thundered before spinning around and storming into the house, where she lay down on the kang, covered her face with the comforter, and sobbed.

Crying helped a little. She got up, washed her face, and combed her hair. Then she took a pair of half-sewn shoe soles out of her dresser, sat cross-legged on the kang, and began to sew to keep her restlessness under control and avoid having to listen to the animated chatter of the women out on the street. Her husband, foolish as ever, followed her into the house.

“They’re all going to see the Magistrate’s wife. Aren’t you going?”

That threw her back into a state of turmoil.

“People say they’re going to pass out sweets. Take me along so I can grab some.”

With an exasperated sigh, she said to him, as if speaking to a child, “Are you still a little boy, Xiaojia? This is an event for women only. Why in the world would you want to go, a hulking man like you? Aren’t you afraid the yayi would drive you off with their clubs?”

“But I want to grab some sweets.”

“Go out and buy some if you want them so badly.”

“They don’t taste as good as the ones you grab.”

The lively chatter of the women on the street rolled into the house like a fireball and singed her painfully. She jabbed her awl into the shoe sole; it snapped in two. She threw the sole, with the embedded awl, down onto the kang, and threw herself down on it right after. Upset and confused, she pounded the bed mat with her fists.

“Is your belly bloated again?” Xiaojia asked timidly.

Grinding her teeth, she shouted:

“I’ll go! I’ll go see what that dignified wife of his is like!”

She jumped down off the kang and drove all thoughts of the recent flower petal fiasco out of her mind, acting as if there had never been any hesitation where the matter of meeting the Magistrate’s wife at the yamen was concerned. Once again she filled the basin and washed her face, then sat down at her mirror to put on makeup. The face looking back at her, powdered and rouged, had slightly puffy eyes, but remained as lovely as ever. Reaching into her wardrobe, she took out the new clothes she had hung in preparation for the visit, and dressed in front of her husband, who was aroused at the sight of her naked breasts. “Be a good boy, Xiaojia,” she said, as if he were a child, “and wait for me at home. I’ll grab some sweets for you.”

Dressed in a red jacket atop green trousers beneath a floor-length green skirt, Meiniang looked like a cockscomb flower transplanted onto the street. Warm southern breezes carried the fresh fragrance of ripe yellow wheat on that resplendent sunlit day. It was the season for women in love, teased by those warm spring breezes. Burning with impatience, Meiniang wished that she could transport herself to the yamen in a single step, but the full-length skirt kept her from walking briskly. A restive heart agonized over the slow pace and was tormented by the distance that lay before her. So she scooped up the train of her skirt, lengthened her stride, and quickly overtook all the bound-footed women, who proceeded in mincing steps, hips undulating from side to side.

“What’s the hurry, Mistress Zhao?”

“Where’s the fire, Mistress Zhao?”

She ignored the women’s queries, intent on making a beeline from Dai Family Lane all the way to the yamen’s secondary gate. Half of the flower-laden branches of a pear tree at the home of Dai Banqing spread over the wall above the street. A subtle sweet aroma, the buzzing of bees, the twittering of swallows. She reached up and plucked one of the flowers and tucked it behind her ear, the barely perceptible noise drawing a string of barks from the always alert Dai family dog. With one final brush of nonexistent dust from her clothing, she let the hem of her skirt drop to the ground and entered the compound. The gate guard nodded, she responded with a smile, and before she knew it, she found herself in front of the entrance to the Third Hall courtyard, her body moistened by a thin coat of perspiration. Attending the gate was a young, fierce-looking yayi whose accent marked him as an out-of-towner, the one she’d seen at the battle of the beards. She knew that he was one of the Magistrate’s trusted aides. He nodded, and once again she responded with a smile. The courtyard was filled with women, children running freely in their midst. Meiniang pushed her way into the crowd, slipping sideways up to the front, where she had an unobstructed view of a long table in the passageway beneath the Third Hall eaves. Two chairs behind the table were occupied—the one on the left by Eminence Qian, the one on the right by his wife. In her phoenix coronet and ceremonial dress, she sat with her back perfectly straight. Her red dress shone like a rosy cloud under the sun’s bright rays, while her face was covered by a gauzy pink veil, which allowed for a blurred view of the shape, but none of the features. The sight had an immediate calming effect on Meiniang, for now she knew that what she had feared more than anything else was that the Magistrate’s wife had a face like moonbeams and flowers. Her unwillingness to show her face in public must mean that she was, in fact, unattractive. Instinctively, Meiniang threw out her chest, as hope was rekindled in her heart, just as she detected the heavy aroma of lilacs. She looked around and spotted a pair of mature lilac trees, one on each side of the courtyard, in full bloom. She also spotted a row of swallow nests beneath the Third Hall eaves, busily attended by adult birds flying in and out, accompanied by the chirps of fledglings inside. Legend had it that swallows never built their nests in government yamens, choosing instead the homes of good and decent farmers. But there they were, flocks of them, all tending their nests, which could only be a wonderful omen, good fortune brought to them by His Eminence, with his immense talent and strong moral character, but, needless to say, not by his veiled wife. Meiniang’s gaze drifted over from her face to his, and their eyes met. To her it felt as if his eyes held the promise of adoration, and tender feelings welled up in her heart. Your Eminence, oh, Your Eminence, how could someone who is nearly an immortal take as his wife a woman who must cover her face so as not to be seen? Do pockmarks scar her face? Does she have scabby eyelids, a flat nose, a mouth full of blackened teeth? I grieve for you, Your Eminence… Meiniang’s thoughts were a wild jumble, but then she heard a tiny cough, and that sound from his wife dispelled the intensity in the Magistrate’s eyes. He turned and had a whispered conversation with her. A maidservant, her hair combed into tufts above her ears, walked up with a basket filled with dates and peanuts, which she tossed to the crowd by the fistful. Chaos erupted as the children fought over the scattered delicacies. Meiniang watched as the First Lady casually adjusted her skirts, revealing a pair of tiny, pointed golden lotuses. A gasp of admiration rose from the crowd behind her. The woman had exquisite feet, and Meiniang felt ashamed to show her face. Granted, Meiniang’s skirt covered her feet, but she could not help feeling that the woman knew that her feet were big and ugly. And there was more—she knew about Meiniang’s infatuation with her husband. Revealing her golden lotuses had been a conscious act, intended to humiliate her, to go on the offensive. Meiniang did not want to look, was unwilling to look at the woman’s bound feet, but she could not help herself. They had pointed, slightly upturned tips like water chestnuts. And what beautiful little shoes, green satin embroidered with red flowers. The First Lady’s feet were magical weapons that subdued Meiniang, the girl from the Sun family, as she felt a pair of mocking rays pass through the pink gauze and land unerringly on her face. No, not her face—they passed through the veil and her skirt to land on her big feet. Meiniang was sure she saw a haughty smile on the lips of the Magistrate’s wife, and she knew she had been beaten, roundly defeated. She had the face of a goddess, but the feet of a serving girl. Her thoughts in total disarray, she began backing up. Was that mocking laughter behind her? And then it dawned on her that she had set herself apart from the others, putting on a performance in front of the Magistrate and the First Lady. Her humiliation now complete, she backed up in earnest, feet moving all over the place, ultimately stepping on the hem of her skirt and ripping it just before she fell backward in the dirt.

In the days to come, she recalled that when she fell to the ground, the Magistrate jumped to his feet on the other side of the table, with what she confidently believed was affection and concern in his eyes, the sort of look one expects only from someone near and dear. She also knew with the same degree of confidence that she saw the Magistrate’s wife angrily kick him in the calf with one of her tiny feet just as he was about to leap over the table and come to her aid. Momentarily dazed, the Magistrate slowly settled back down in his seat. Interestingly, despite his wife’s movements under the table, she remained poised and proper, as if nothing were amiss.

Meiniang picked herself up off the ground, her sorry plight accentuated by the humiliating laughter behind her. She scooped up her skirt and, without pausing to hide the big feet that had been shamefully exposed to the Magistrate and his wife when she fell backward, pushed her way back into the crowd. She kept herself from crying only by biting down on her lip, although tears had begun spilling from her eyes. Finally, she was as far away from the front as she could get, only to hear giggles and praise for the wife’s tiny feet from the women she had just left behind. She knew instinctively that the woman was showing off those bound feet without giving the impression of doing so. How true the adage that “One beauty mark can negate a hundred moles”! Her perfectly bound feet more than compensated for a face that needed to be veiled. As she was leaving the site, Meiniang turned for one last look at His Eminence, and once more there was a bit of magic when their eyes met. His, it seemed, was a mournful look, as if to console or perhaps show his sympathy. With a sweep of the arm to cover her face with her sleeve, she ran out through the Third Hall gate into Dai Family Lane and wailed at the top of her lungs.

Meiniang returned home utterly distraught, only to have Xiaojia cling to her in search of the sweets. She shoved him away and went into the house, where she flung herself down on the kang and wept piteously. Xiaojia, who had followed her inside, stood beside the kang and cried along with her. She rolled over, sat up, grabbed the whiskbroom, and began lashing her feet. Frightened out of his wits, he stayed her hand. Then, looking up into his ugly, stupid face, she said, “Xiaojia, get a knife and cut my feet down to size.”

———— 3 ————

The First Lady’s tiny feet were like a bucket of ice water that cleared Meiniang’s head, for a few days at least. But after encountering the Magistrate three times, especially that one time when he had looked at her with infinite concern and emotion, the scenes of their encounters waged a staunch resistance against those tiny feet. In the end, their image grew increasingly murky, while the look of tenderness in the Magistrate’s eyes and his elegant features gained increasing clarity. Magistrate Qian filled the void in her mind. If she stared at a tree, it flickered and swayed until it was transformed into Magistrate Qian. If she spotted a dog’s tail, it shook and wagged until it was turned into Magistrate Qian’s thick queue. If she was stoking a fire in the stove, the flames danced and cavorted until Magistrate Qian’s smiling face appeared before her. She bumped into walls when she was out walking. She cut her fingers when she was chopping meat and felt no pain. She burned a whole pot of dog meat without noticing the smell. Whatever she laid eyes on became Magistrate Qian or some part of him. When she closed her eyes, she felt Magistrate Qian come and lie down beside her. She could feel his rough beard prickle her soft, dainty skin. She dreamed of Magistrate Qian touching that skin every night, and her nocturnal screams frequently sent her husband rolling off the bed. She developed a sickly pallor and lost weight at a perilous rate; but her eyes shone and were continuously moist. For some strange reason, she suffered from hoarseness, releasing the sort of guttural, husky laughter that is unique to women in whom passion burns hot. She knew she had a severe case of lovesickness, and was aware of how frightful an affliction it could be. The only way a lovesick woman can survive is to share a bed with the man over whom she obsesses. Absent that, her veins will dry up, she will be consumptive, and once she begins spitting up blood, she will wither away and die. Meiniang had reached the point where home could no longer contain her. Things that had once interested or pleased her, like earning money or admiring a flower garden, now seemed insipid and meaningless. Fine spirits lay flavorless on her tongue; lovely flowers turned ghostly white in her eyes. Carrying a bamboo basket that held a dog’s leg, she passed in front of the county yamen three times a day, hoping for an accidental meeting with the Magistrate, and if that was not to be, she would be content to spot the green woolen curtain of his palanquin. But Magistrate Qian was like a giant turtle hiding in deep water, leaving no trace of his existence. Her hoarse, wanton laughter as she passed by the yamen gate so enticed the gate guards that they rubbed their ears and scratched their cheeks in anxious delight. Oh, how she would have liked to shout deep into the compound, purging her heart of pent-up lustful thoughts, loud enough for Magistrate Qian to hear. But she could only mutter under her breath:

“My dear… my darling… thoughts of you are killing me… be merciful… take pity on me… The County Magistrate is an immortal peach, the embodiment of manly might! I fall in love with an image that after three lifetimes still burns bright. I long to make it mine, but the best fruit is at an unreachable height, behind a leaf and out of sight. Your willing slave looks up to see your face, she thinks of you day and night. But her love you do not requite. I salivate hungrily as I shake the tree with all my might, and if the peach will not fall, the tree…”

In her heart, that monologue, sizzling with passion, quickly evolved into a Maoqiang aria of infatuation, which, as she intoned it over and over, brought a glow to her face and a salacious twinkle to her eyes, leaving the impression of a moth performing a fervent dance around a flame. Her actions threw a grievous fright into the gate guards and yayi, through whose minds raced fantasies of ravishing the woman, although thoughts of the trouble that would bring down on them brought their lust under control. Flames of desire engulfed her; an ocean of passion threatened to submerge her. But that all ended when she spat up blood.

The act of spitting up blood opened a seam in the confusion that gripped her mind. He is a dignified County Magistrate, a representative of the Royal Court. What are you? The daughter of an actor, the wife of a butcher, a woman with big feet. He lives on high, you exist in the dirt; he is a unicorn, you are a feral dog. This one-sided burning lovesickness is doomed to lead nowhere. You could exhaust yourself mind and body over him, and he would not so much as notice. But if somehow he did, he would react with a disdainful smirk, one devoid of feeling for you. You can torment yourself until there is no more breath in your body, and people will conclude that you got exactly what you deserved—no sympathy, and certainly no understanding. People will not merely laugh at you, they will hurl insults. They will mock you for thinking too highly of yourself and for your inability to think straight. They will fling abuse at you for your fanciful thoughts, for acting like a monkey trying to scoop the moon out of the lake, for drawing water with a bamboo basket, for being the warty toad that wants to feast on a swan. Wake up, Sun Meiniang, and know your place in the scheme of things. Put Magistrate Qian out of your mind. For all its beauty, you cannot take the moon to bed with you. For all his wondrous ways, he belongs to heaven. Forcing herself to purge all thoughts of Magistrate Qian, over whom she had now spat up blood, she dug her fingernails into her thighs, pricked her fingers with a needle, and thumped her head with her fists, but his spirit clung to her. It followed her like a shadow, unshakable by either wind or rain, impervious to knives and flames. Holding her head in her hands, she wept out of despair.

“Defiler of my heart,” she cursed softly, “set me free… I beg you to let me go, for I have changed and will bother you no more. Is it your wish to see me dead?”

In order to forget Magistrate Qian, she led her doltish husband to the marital bed. But Xiaojia was no Magistrate Qian, as ginseng is not Chinese rhubarb. He was not a cure for what ailed Meiniang. Sex with her husband only increased the urgency of her longing for Magistrate Qian; it was like spraying oil on a raging fire. When she went to the well, the skeletal reflection in the water nearly made her pass out; something brackish and saccharine sweet stopped up her throat. Heaven help me, is this how it ends? Is this how death will claim me, my quest unresolved? No, I mustn’t die; I need to keep going.

In an attempt to revitalize herself, she took her basket, in which she had placed a dog’s leg and two strings of cash, through the town’s winding streets and alleys to Celestial Lane in the Nanguan District, where she banged on the door of Aunty Lü, the local sorceress. She placed the fragrant dog’s leg and greasy strings of cash on the altar to the Celestial Fox—Aunty Lü’s nostrils twitched at the smell of the meat; her dull eyes lit up at the sight of the money. She stilled her labored breathing by lighting a stemmed datura flower and greedily sucking in its smoke.

“Good Sister,” she said at last, “you are terribly ill.”

Sun Meiniang fell to her knees and sobbed.

“Please, Aunty, save me…”

“Tell me about it, my child.” As she breathed in more of the datura smoke, she took a long look at Sun Meiniang and pronounced, “You can fool your parents, but not your healer. Tell me about it.”

“I cannot, it is too hard…”

“You can fool the healer, but not the spirits…”

“I have fallen in love with someone, Aunty… and that love is destroying me.”

With a crafty laugh, Aunty Lü asked:

“With a face like yours, Good Sister, can you not have anyone you desire?”

“You do not know who he is, Aunty.”

“Who could he be? The Spirit Master of the Nine Caves? Or perhaps the Arhat of the West.”

“No, Aunty, he is neither of those. It is County Magistrate Qian.”

Radiant light shot from Aunty Lü’s eyes. As she held her curiosity and deep interest in check, she asked Meiniang:

“What is it you wish to do, Good Sister? Are you hoping that I will work some magic to help you achieve your aim?”

“No, no…” Tears spilled from her eyes as she struggled to say: “Heaven and earth are separate realms, so that is not possible…”

“Good Sister, you are a novice in the affairs of men and women. If you are willing to pay your respects to the Celestial Fox, the man will take the bait even if he has a heart of stone.”

“Aunty…” Meiniang buried her face in her hands; hot tears oozed from between her fingers. “Work your magic,” she sobbed, “to help me forget him…”

“Why do you want to do that, Good Sister? Since he is the one you desire, why don’t we make something good happen? Can there be anything in the world more perfect than the love between a man and a woman? Clear your mind of those foolish thoughts, Good Sister!”

“Could something good really… happen?”

“If you are sincere.”

“I am!”

“Kneel.”

———— 4 ————

Following Aunty Lü’s instructions, Meiniang ran into a field carrying a spotless white silk scarf. After a lifetime of an unreasonable fear of snakes, on this day snakes were precisely what she was looking for. Aunty Lü had told her to kneel before an altar, close her eyes, and offer up a prayer to the Fox Spirit. Aunty Lü then intoned a chant that quickly brought the Fox Spirit into her body. At that moment, her voice turned shrill and tinny, like that of a little girl. The Fox Spirit commanded Meiniang to go into the field, where she was to find a pair of mating snakes and tie them together with the silk scarf. Once the coupling was over, the snakes would separate, leaving a spot of blood on the white silk. “Take this silk scarf,” the Fox Spirit said, “to the one you love and wave it in front of him. He will then be yours, since his soul will forever after reside in you. The only way to then keep him from wanting you is to kill him with a knife.”

So Meiniang, bamboo staff in hand, went to a weedy area far from the county town; there she chose a marshy spot where water plants grew in profusion. Curious birds noisily circled the sky overhead. Butterflies kept a respectable distance from her as they flitted to and fro. With her heart mimicking the dance of those butterflies, her feet sank into the spongy ground, nearly making her fall as she beat the bushes with her staff, scaring hordes of grasshoppers, katydids, hedgehogs, and jackrabbits… but no snakes. Snakes—what she sought and what she feared. Harboring those contradictory feelings, she continued pounding the bushes. Suddenly there was a raspy hiss, and a big brown snake wriggled out from the bushes to confront her with a hideous look, its forked tongue flicking in and out. Its eyes were hooded and gloomy, but there was a grin on its triangular face. An explosion went off in Meiniang’s head, and everything went black. For a brief moment she was blinded, but she heard a meandering scream tear from her mouth just before she sat down hard on the grassy ground. By the time she had come to, the snake was long gone. Her sweat-soaked shirt felt clammy; her heart was pounding wildly, as if someone were hurling rocks inside her chest. Her lips parted, and she spat out a mouthful of blood.

What a fool I was, she chided herself, to put any faith in the sorceress’s false words. And why do I keep thinking of Qian Ding? He is, after all, only a man, someone who eats and drinks and then eliminates it all, just like everyone else. Even if he climbed onto my body and squirmed in and out, it would be a sexual encounter and nothing more. What distinguishes him from Xiaojia, anyway? Get a grip on yourself, Meiniang! The rebuke, in a somber voice, seemed to come from high above, so she looked up into the clear blue and cloudless sky, where passing birds were calling out happily. Her mood was a mirror of the blue sky—clear and bright. She sighed, as if waking from a bad dream, then stood up, brushed off some blades of grass that had stuck to her dress, straightened her hair, and started walking home.

But as she passed the marshy spot, her gay mood underwent a change, for she spotted a pair of white egrets standing in the shallow water of a tiny pool whose surface shone like a mirror. Neither of them moved, as if they had been standing in the same spot for a millennium. The female was resting her head on the back of the male, whose head was turned so he could look into her eyes. They were lovers for whom no speech was needed to draw full enjoyment from mutual intimacy. Suddenly, all that changed, owing perhaps to Meiniang’s unexpected arrival on the scene, or maybe they had been waiting for her to show up, and it was now time to put on a special show. They thrust out their long necks, spread their wings to reveal black feathers hidden beneath the white, and in loud voices, as if shedding their hearts’ blood, welcomed her into their midst. The passionate greeting completed, they entwined their long, snake-like necks. She could hardly believe that any neck could be that soft and supple, with his and hers forming a long braid of deep emotion. Over and over they coiled and uncoiled, a seemingly endless process, one that could have gone on forever, never to end. But then they separated and began to preen one another’s feathers, tenderly yet with amazing speed. Their affection was manifest in the caresses, one feather at a time, and each feather from head to tail. The display of love between the two birds moved Meiniang to tears. Prostrating herself on the damp ground, she let her hot tears merge with the grass as her heart beat a rhythm on the muddy earth. With emotions flooding her soul, she muttered:

“Heavenly beings, transform me into an egret, then do the same with Master Qian… with humans there are high and low, noble and base. But all birds are equal. I beg you, heavenly beings, let my neck entwine with his until we form a red rope. Let me cover his body with kisses, every inch and every pore. What I long for is his kisses covering my body. Oh, that I could swallow him whole, and be swallowed whole by him. Heavenly beings, let our necks entwine for all time, let us fan our feathers like a peacock’s tail… I can imagine no greater pleasure, nor any more profound gift…”

Her feverish face wilted the grass beneath it; her fingers dug so deeply into the mud that she was pulling up roots.

Then she stood up and walked toward the birds as if in a stupor, a radiant smile creasing her mud-and-grass-covered face. She held out her white silk scarf, which billowed slightly in a breeze. Her thoughts took flight.

“Birds,” she murmured, “birds, give me a drop of your blood. One drop, no more, and make my dream come true. I am you, birds, and you are him. Letting him know what is in my heart is knowing what is in your hearts, so let our hearts beat as one. All I ask, birds, is some of your happiness, just a little. I am not greedy; a tiny bit will do. Won’t you take pity on me, birds, a woman whose heart has been seared by love?”

The egrets abruptly spread their wings and took off together, four strange, rail-thin legs breaking the mirrored surface of the pond in what some might have seen as awkward and others as nimble steps that left tiny ripples in their wake. Faster and faster they ran, their strength increasing, each step producing a sound like crackling glaze and sending modest sprays of water into the air. Once their legs were as straight as they would ever be, they fanned out their feathered wings, lifted their tails, and were airborne. Flying. At first they skimmed the surface, and then began to settle, reaching a spot opposite the pond, where now they were nothing but white blurs… Her legs had sunk into the loose mud, as if she had been standing there for a millennium… deeper and deeper, until the mud was up to her thighs and she felt her heated buttocks sitting on the cool mud…

Xiaojia rushed up and pulled her out of the mud.

For a very long time Meiniang was deathly ill, but even after the sickness passed, her longing for Magistrate Qian hung on. Aunty Lü slipped her a packet of yellow powder and said sympathetically:

“Child, having taken pity on you, the Fox Fairy has asked me to give you this love-lost powder. Take it.”

With her eyes fixed on the powder, she asked:

“Aunty Lü, what is it?”

“I’ll tell you after you take it. That is the only way it will be effective.”

So she dumped the powder into a bowl, added water and stirred it, and then, holding her nose, swallowed the foul-smelling stuff.

“Tell me, child,” Aunty Lü said, “do you really want to know what it is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll tell you, then,” she said. “Your aunty is too soft-hearted to see a vivacious young beauty like you come to grief, so I have conjured up my ultimate power. The Fox Spirit disapproves of my decision, but you are too far gone for it to save you. What I have come up with is a secret passed down from my ancestors, one that can be applied only to daughters-in-law, never to daughters. I will hold nothing back from you. What you just drank was distilled from the feces of your beloved. It was absolutely genuine, and very costly, not a cheap imitation. It was not easy to get my hands on it, I can assure you. I paid Magistrate Qian’s chef, Hu Si, three strings of cash to fetch it from the master’s privy. After baking it on a clay tile, I ground it into powder, then added croton seed and Chinese rhubarb to create a powerful medicine that can relieve internal heat. Believe me, I did not prepare this lightly. You see, the Fox Spirit told me that this method can shorten the practitioner’s life. But I felt so sorry for you that I was willing to give up a couple of years of my life. Child, there is one lesson you must take from ingesting this nostrum, and that is that the excretions from even a great man like Magistrate Qian are foul and smelly…”

Before Aunty Lü had finished her monologue, Sun Meiniang bent over and vomited, and kept vomiting till all that came up was green bile.

With this difficult episode behind her, clarity slowly returned to Meiniang’s mind, which had been mired in lard. While her longing for Magistrate Qian lingered on, it was no longer an obsession. The wounds to her heart were still painful, but scabs had formed. Her appetite returned: salt now tasted like salt, and sugar was sweet again. And her body was on the mend. This baptism of love, which had rocked her to her soul, had taken a toll on her seductiveness and replaced it with innocence and purity. But sleep remained evasive, especially on moonlit nights.

———— 5 ————

The moonbeams were like sands of gold and silvery powder. Xiaojia was sprawled on the kang, fast asleep and filling the room with thunderous snores. She walked into the yard, where moonbeams washed over her naked body. Lingering feelings of dejection diminished the sensation, as the source of her illness lost no time in producing fresh new sprouts. Qian Ding, ah, Qian Ding! Magistrate Qian, my star-crossed lover, when will you realize that somewhere there is a woman who cannot sleep because of you? When will it dawn on you that there exists a body as ripe as a juicy peach just waiting for you to enjoy it? Bright moon, you are a woman’s divinity, her best friend. The heavenly matchmaker of legend, is that not you? If it is, then what is keeping you from delivering a message for me? If it is not, then which constellation is in charge of love between a man and a woman? Or which earthbound deity? Just then a white night bird flew out from the moon and perched on a parasol tree in a corner of the yard. Her heart began to race. Oh, moon, you are, after all, the heavenly matchmaker. Though you have no eyes, there is nothing on earth that escapes your vision. Though you have no ears, you can hear whispers in the darkest rooms. You have sent down this feathered messenger after hearing my prayer. What kind is it, this great bird? Its pristine white feathers sparkle in your moonbeams; its eyes are like gold, white inlaid with yellow. It has perched on the highest and finest branch of the tree and is gazing down at me with the loveliest, most intimate look in its eyes. Bird, oh, bird, magical bird, you with a beak carved from white jade, use it to deliver my yearnings—hotter than a raging fire, more persistent than autumn rain, and more thriving than wild grass—to the man I love. If only he knew what was in my heart, I would willingly climb a mountain of knives or leap into a sea of fire. Tell him I would be happy to be a door threshold on which to scrape his feet, and that I would be content to be the horse on which he rode, whipping it to make it run fast. Tell him I have eaten his feces… Eminence, dear Eminence, my brother my heart my life… Bird, oh, bird, don’t waste another second, fly away, for I am afraid my yearnings and feelings may be too much for you to carry. They are like the flowers on that tree, soaked with my blood and my tears to give off my fragrance. Each flower represents one of my intimate utterances, and there are thousands of those on that one tree. My darling… Sun Meiniang, her face awash in tears, fell to her knees beneath the parasol tree and gazed at the bird perched at the top. Her lips trembled as a jumble of indecipherable words poured from between those red lips and the white teeth behind them. Her sincerity was so moving that the bird cried out as it spread its wings and disappeared without a trace in the moonlight, like ice melting in water or rays of light overwhelmed by bright flames.

A pounding at the gate startled her out of her crippling infatuation. She ran back into the house and dressed quickly, then, with no shoes on her big feet, ran across the muddy ground to the gate, where, with her hand held over her pounding heart, she asked in a shaky voice:

“Who is it?”

She hoped, nearly prayed, for a miracle, that the person on the other side of the gate was the beneficiary of her impassioned sincerity, the one the gods had linked to her by a red thread. He had come to her in the moonlight. It was all she could do to keep from falling to her knees and praying for her dream to come true. But the person outside the gate called her name softly:

“Meiniang, open the gate.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s your dieh.”

“Dieh? What are you doing here at this late hour?”

“Don’t ask, daughter, your dieh is in trouble. Open the gate!”

After hurriedly sliding back the bolt, she opened the squeaky gate for Northeast Gaomi Township’s famous actor, Sun Bing—who fell heavily to the ground.

Moonlight revealed patches of blood on her dieh’s face. His beard, which had been the loser in a contest not long before, but had not been torn out completely, was now reduced to a few scraggly strands curled up on his bloody chin.

“What happened?” she asked in alarm.

She ran inside and woke up Xiaojia to help her dieh over to the kang, where she pried open his mouth with a chopstick and poured in half a bowlful of water. He came to, and the first thing he did was reach up to feel his chin. He burst into tears, like a little boy who has been bullied. Blood continued to ooze from his injured chin, staining the few remaining hairs, which she removed with a pair of scissors before daubing on a handful of white flour. His face had undergone a transformation; he now resembled a very strange creature.

“Who did this to you?” Meiniang demanded.

Green sparks seemed to shoot out of his tear-filled eyes. His cheek muscles tensed; his teeth ground against each other.

“It was him, it had to be him. He was the one who pulled out my beard. He won the contest, why couldn’t he let it go at that? He pardoned me in front of everyone, said I didn’t have to do it, but then he carried out his revenge in secret. Why? He’s more vicious than a viper, a marauding blight on humanity!”

At that moment, her lovesickness was suddenly cured, and as she pondered her dazed and confused thoughts over the past several months, she felt both shame and remorse. It was almost as if she had conspired with Qian Ding to rip out her own father’s beard. Magistrate Qian, she said to herself, you are a mean and sinister man, someone to whom justice means nothing. What made me think that you were a tolerant, loving people’s Magistrate, instead of a cruel and ruthless thug? So what if I hovered between human and ghost because of you? That was my fault for demeaning myself. But what gave you the right to treat my father with such cruelty after he publicly acknowledged his defeat? When you pardoned him in front of everyone, I was so moved that I got down on my knees and let you tear my heart to shreds. That gesture earned for you a reputation of magnanimity, while all the time you planned to seek revenge in secret. How could I have let myself become besotted by a beast in human form, a true scoundrel? Do you have any idea what sort of life I have lived over the past few months? It was a simple question that produced both sadness and anger in her. Qian Ding, I will one day erase your dog life for tearing out my father’s beard.

———— 6 ————

After picking out two nice fatty dog’s legs, she cleaned and tossed them into a pot of soup stock, where they boiled noisily. She added spices to enhance the flavor of the meat, and tended to the fire herself, making it as strong as possible at first and then letting the meat stew over a low flame. People out on the street could smell it cooking, and big-eared Lü Seven, a regular customer, banged on the door when the aroma drifted his way. “Hey, Big-Footed Fairy,” he shouted, “what wind cleared the air this time? You’re cooking dog’s legs again, so put me down for one.”

“I’ll put you down for one of your damned mother’s legs!” she cursed loudly and banged the side of the pot with a spoon. In the space of a single night, she had recaptured Dog-Meat Xishi’s nature—easy to laugh and quick to curse—and had regained her looks. Where the enchanting gentility that had characterized the days of all encompassing yearning for Qian Ding had gone, no one knew, but it was gone. After polishing off a bowl of pig’s-blood gruel and a plate of chopped-up dog entrails, she brushed her teeth with salt, rinsed her mouth, combed her hair, and washed her face, then applied powder and dabbed on some rouge before changing out of her old clothes and taking a good look at herself in the mirror. She touched up her hair with wet fingers and placed a red velvet flower over one ear. Her eyes were moist and bright, her appearance one of grace and elegance. Even she was so taken by her own beauty that tender feelings made a reappearance. An assassin in the making? Hardly. More like a sexual provocateur. She nearly crumbled under the weight of her tender feelings, and hastily turned the mirror around so she could grind her teeth and let the hatred reignite inside her. In order to reinforce her confidence and keep her will from dissolving, she went inside to take another look at her father’s chin. The flour she’d spread on it had formed clumps and was giving off a sour, unpleasant odor that had drawn flies to it. Presenting an appearance that both nauseated and pained her, he awoke with a shout when she lightly poked his chin with a piece of kindling; obviously in pain, he gazed at her with a vacant look in his puffy eyes.

“I want to ask you, Dieh,” she said coldly. “What were you doing in town at that hour?”

“I went to a whorehouse,” he admitted frankly.

“Pfft!” she uttered in a mocking tone. “Maybe some whore picked your beard clean to make herself a flyswatter.”

“No, we’re all on good terms. They would never do that to me,” he insisted. “When I came out of the whorehouse, I was walking down the lane behind the county yamen when a masked man jumped out of the darkness, knocked me to the ground, and yanked out my beard, hair by hair!”

“One man could do all that?”

“He knew his martial arts. Besides, I was pretty drunk.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“He had a black bag hanging from his chin,” he said confidently. “Nobody but a man with a fine beard would take such care of it.”

“All right, then, I’ll avenge you,” she said. “You may be a scoundrel, but you are my dieh!”

“How do you plan to avenge me?”

“I’ll kill him!”

“No, you can’t do that. That is beyond your ability. If you can yank out a handful of his beard, that will be vengeance enough for me.”

“All right, that’s what I’ll do.”

“But that is impossible too,” he said, shaking his head. “With his powerful legs, he can jump three feet in the air, which is how I know he is a practiced fighter.”

“Don’t you know the adage ‘When virtue rises one foot, vice rises ten’?”

“I’ll wait here for good news,” he said sarcastically. “Except there is another adage that bothers me, and that is ‘Throw a meaty bun at a dog and it’ll never come back.’”

“You just wait.”

“Your dieh may be good for little, but I am still your dieh, and I’d rather you didn’t go. I’ve had a good long sleep, and that’s given me a chance to think some things through. Losing my beard like that is fit punishment for my misdeeds, and I cannot hold anyone else to blame. I’m going to head back, but no more singing opera for me. I’ve spent my whole life doing that, and it has turned me into an undesirable character. There is a line in opera that goes, ‘Cast off your old self and be a new man.’ Well, in my case let’s change it to ‘Lose your beard and be a new man.’”

“I’m not doing this for you alone.”

She went into the kitchen and scooped the cooked dog’s legs out of the pot with tongs, drained the liquid, and covered them with a layer of fragrant pepper salt. Then she wrapped them in dry lotus leaves and put them in her basket. From Xiaojia’s tool kit she removed a paring knife and tested the point on her fingernail. Satisfied that it was sharp enough, she slipped it into the bottom of her basket.

“What do you need a knife for?” her puzzled husband asked her.

“To kill someone!”

“Who?”

“You!”

He rubbed his neck and snickered.

———— 7 ————

At the entrance to the county yamen, Sun Meiniang gave one of her silver bracelets to Xiaotun, who was standing guard at the gate with his fowling piece, and pinched him playfully on the thigh.

“My good brother,” she said softly, “won’t you let me in?”

“Let you in to do what?” Xiaotun was so pleased by the attention that his eyes had narrowed to slits. With his chin he motioned to the big drum that stood to the side of the gate. “You’re supposed to beat that drum if you want to lodge a complaint.”

“What sort of complaint could someone like me have that was serious enough to beat that drum?” Her sweet-smelling cheek nearly touched Xiaotun’s ear. “Your Magistrate sent a message that he wanted me to bring him some dog meat.”

With a series of exaggerated sniffs, Xiaotun said:

“That does smell good, really good! Who’d have imagined that Magistrate Qian liked this stuff?”

“I’ve never known one of you vulgar males who didn’t like this stuff.”

“Good sister, after you’ve seen to it that the Magistrate has eaten his fill, you can bring me the bones to gnaw on…”

She pretended to spit in his face.

“You naughty boy, do you really think I’d forget you? So tell me, where will I find the Magistrate at this hour?”

“At this hour…” Xiaotun looked up to see where the sun was in the sky. “I expect he’ll be in the document room attending to business. Over there.”

After being let in, she followed the path that took her through the garden where the beard competition had been held, past the secondary gate, and into the official compound, with its six offices; she walked down the eastern passageway, skirting the main building, where he held court, drawing curious looks from everyone she met and responding with a sweet smile that let their imaginations run wild and set their souls on fire. Yayi drooling at the sight of her swaying hips exchanged hungry looks and knowing nods of the head. Dog meat, that’s right, taking him some dog meat, turns out it’s the Magistrate’s favorite. She is quite the sleek, plump bitch… pleased with themselves, the yayi smiled lasciviously.

Her heart began to race, her mouth was dry, and her knees went weak when she stepped into the Second Hall compound. The young clerk leading the way stopped and pointed with his pursed lips to the document room. She turned to thank him, but he had already left her side and returned to his courtyard. As she stood in front of the high carved and latticed door, she took a deep breath to settle the turmoil in her heart. Blasts of the heavy fragrance of lilac emerging from the Budgetary Office area behind the Second Hall made her restless. She touched up the curls at her ears, straightened the red velvet flower tucked behind one of them, then ran her hand down over her jacket, from the slanted collar to the hem. When she gently opened the door, a green curtain embroidered with two silver egrets blocked her way, and in that instant the blood seemed to race uncontrollably through her body, as the image of the intimate pair of white egrets she’d seen kissing on the pond leaped into her head. She had to bite her lip to keep from crying out, and was mystified by her inability to tell whether the turmoil she was experiencing was caused by love or by hate, by resentment or by injustice. What she did know was that her chest felt as if it might explode. With difficulty, she took several steps backward and rested her head against the coolness of the wall.

By clenching her teeth, in time she was able to calm the rough seas inside. She returned to the door, where she heard the faint rustle of pages in a book being turned and the clink of a lid as it was placed on a teacup. When that was followed by a light cough, her throat clamped shut and she could hardly breathe. It was his cough, a cough by the man of her dreams, but also the cough of a bitter enemy, the man who had yanked out every hair of her father’s beard, a man with a benevolent exterior but a cruel nature. She was reminded of the humiliation stemming from her unrequited love and of Aunty Lü’s advice, plus the filthy remedy she had consumed. You thug, now I know why I have come. I fooled myself into believing that I wanted to avenge my father, but in fact, the sickness is in my bones and cannot be cured, not in this life. I have come for release, though I know he could never give a passing glance to the big-footed wife of a butcher. If I throw myself at him, he will only push me away. For me there is no hope and no salvation, so I will let you watch me die, or maybe I will watch you die and then follow you by my own hand.

In order to find the courage to break through the curtain before her, she had to intensify her hatred. But that sense was like nothing so much as willow catkins lifted into the air by a spring breeze—rootless and insubstantial, powerless to keep from being blown out of existence by even the slightest breath of air. The bouquet of lilac dulled her mind and unsettled her heart, just as a faint whistle rose from the other side of the curtain, like the melodious twitter of a bird. The idea that an eminent personage such as the County Magistrate was capable of whistling like a frivolous young man caught her by surprise. A cool breezed seemed to caress her, raising gooseflesh and opening a seam in her mind. Heavenly Laoye, if I don’t do something fast, my courage will desert me altogether. She needed an immediate change of plans. Reaching into her basket, she took out the knife, intending to rush into the room and stab him in the heart before turning the knife on herself. Their blood would flow together. Steeling herself, she tore open the curtain, took one step, and was in the document room; the egrets on the embroidered curtain fell back into place to cut the two of them off from the outside world.

The document room’s broad writing desk, the writing implements atop it, the scrolls of calligraphy hanging on the walls, a flower rack in the corner, the flower pots on it, and the flowers and plants in them were illuminated by sunlight streaming in through the latticed window; it all slowly entered her consciousness once the intense emotions had peaked and were beginning to retreat. When she’d first parted the curtain, the only thing that had entered the curtain of her vision was the Magistrate. Casually dressed in a baggy robe, he was leaning back in an armchair with his white-stockinged feet on the table. Startled by her entrance, he took his feet down, a look of astonishment frozen on his face. He sat up, laid down the book he was reading, and stared at her.

“You…”

Then two pairs of eyes were riveted to each other, as if linked by red threads that quickly became entangled. An invisible rope seemed to bind her tightly, and she hadn’t an ounce of strength to struggle against it. The basket over her arm and the knife in her hand clattered to the brick floor. Light glinted off the knife. She did not see it; neither did he. The cooked dog’s legs gave off a mouth-watering aroma. She did not smell it; neither did he. Hot tears gurgled from her eyes and wetted her face as well as the front of her jacket. She’d put on a lotus-colored satin top whose sleeves, collar, and hem were all embroidered with pea-green floral piping. The high collar enhanced her long, delicate, fair neck. Her haughty breasts cried out from under her jacket, and her slightly reddened face looked like a dew-covered pink lotus—fragile, tender, timid, abashed. Magistrate Qian was profoundly moved. This beautiful woman, who seemed to have fallen out of the sky, was like a lover who had returned after a long absence.

He stood up and walked around the table, oblivious to the bruising bump on his leg when he skirted the corner of the desk. He could not take his eyes off hers. She filled his heart, leaving room for nothing else, like a butterfly-to-be imprisoned by the thin skin of its cocoon. His eyes were moist, his breathing labored. He stretched out his arms, opening up to her, stopping just before they met. Their eyes never wavered, despite the tears filling them. Their strength was gathering, the heat was rising, until finally they were in each other’s arms, though who had made the first move would always remain a mystery. They were quickly entwined, like a pair of snakes, investing all their strength in the embrace. They stopped breathing at the same moment; their joints cracked noisily. Lips drew closer and were frozen together. Their eyes closed in the midst of a frenzy of activity by hot lips and searching tongues. Rivers roiled, seas churned; you swallow me, I devour you, lips began to melt from the heat… afterward, flowing water formed a channel, ripe melons fell from the vine, and no power on earth could stand in their way. There in broad daylight, amid the solemnity of a document room, absent an ivory bed and a conjugal quilt, he and she shed their cocoons and emerged with natural beauty as they achieved immortality.

CHAPTER SEVEN Elegy

———— 1 ————

On the Chinese lunar calendar, March 2, 1900, was the second day of the second month in the twenty-sixth year of the Great Qing Guangxu Emperor. According to legend, that date is when the hibernating dragon lifts its head. After that day, spring sunlight begins to raise the temperature on the ground, and it is nearly time to take the oxen out into the fields to begin the plowing. For the citizens of Northeast Gaomi Township’s Masang Town, who themselves had emerged from a sort of winter hibernation, it was time to crowd into the marketplace, whether or not they had business there. Those with no money to spend strolled around the area taking in the sights and watching a bit of street opera; those lucky enough to have money enjoyed buns fresh from the oven, passed the time in teashops, or enjoyed glasses of sorghum spirits. It was a bright, sunny day that year, with a slight breeze from the north, a typical early spring day when the chill of winter gives way to the warmth of spring. Fashion-conscious young women changed out of their bulky winter clothes into unlined jackets that showed off their curves.

Early in the morning, the proprietor of the Sun Family Teashop, Sun Bing, climbed up one side of the steep riverbank with his carrying pole and down the other to the Masang River, where he stepped onto the wooden pier to fill his buckets with fresh, clean water for the day’s business. He saw that the last of the river ice had melted overnight, replaced by ripples on the surface of the blue-green water, from which a chilled vapor rose into the air.

The year before had seen its problems—an arid spring and a soggy autumn—but since the area had been spared hailstorms and locusts, it could not be considered an especially bad year. As evidence of his solicitude for the people’s well being, Magistrate Qian had reported a flood to his superiors, which had led to a fifty percent reduction in taxes for all of Northeast Gaomi Township—making their lives even better than in years with good harvests. To show their gratitude, the residents contributed to the purchase of a people’s umbrella and chose Sun Bing to present this token of respect to the Magistrate. He did everything possible to decline the request, so the people simply dumped the umbrella in his teashop.

Left with no choice, Sun Bing carried the people’s umbrella to the county yamen to present it to the Magistrate. It would be his first time back since losing his beard, and as he walked down the street, though he was not sure if what he felt was shame or anger or sadness, a painful chin, hot ears, and sweaty palms were proof of something. When he met people he knew, his cheeks reddened before a word of greeting was exchanged, for no matter what they said, he detected a mocking tone and a note of derision. Worst of all, he could find no valid excuse to react with anger.

After entering the yamen compound, he was led by a yayi to the official reception hall, where he deposited the umbrella and turned to leave, just as the sound of Magistrate Qian’s booming laughter was carried in on the air. Qian walked in wearing a short jacket over his long gown, a red tasseled cap on his head and a white fan in his hand. He looked and acted every bit the part of an impressive County Magistrate. He strode forward, hand outstretched, and said cordially:

“Ah, Sun Bing, a competition has formed a true bond between us.”

The gamut of emotions—sweet, sour, bitter, hot, and salty—crowded Sun Bing’s feelings as he gazed at the beautiful beard adorning Qian Ding’s chin and thought back to the beard he had once sported, only to be replaced by an ugly, mangy-looking pitted chin. He had prepared a biting comment, but was able only to sputter, “Your humble servant has been deputized by the people of Northeast Township to present Your Eminence with this umbrella…” He opened the red umbrella to display the signatures of the official’s subjects and held it up for him to see.

“My, my,” Qian Ding uttered, clearly touched by the gesture. “How can I, a man with few talents and no virtue, accept such a grand honor? I am unworthy, truly unworthy…”

Qian Ding’s expression of humility had a relaxing effect on Sun Bing, who straightened up and said, “If Your Honor has no further instructions, your humble servant will take his leave.”

“As a representative of the good people who have honored me with this umbrella, you cannot simply leave. Chunsheng!” he shouted.

Chunsheng rushed in and bowed. “What can I do for Your Eminence?”

“Have the kitchen prepare a grand banquet,” Qian Ding commanded, “and while you’re at it, have my correspondence secretary deliver invitations to the banquet to senior members of the local gentry.”

It was indeed a grand banquet, at which the Magistrate personally poured spirits for his guests, who took turns proposing toasts and, in the process, getting Sun Bing roaring drunk, too drunk to stand. The grudge he had carried in his heart and an indescribable sense of awkwardness vanished without a trace. So when he was lugged outside, he burst into song, a line from a Maoqiang opera:

In Peach Blossom Palace a king alone is hidden, as thoughts of the fair maiden Zhao come to him unbidden…

Over the year just passed, residents of Northeast Gaomi Township had felt good about things in general; but it had not been a year without troubling concerns, and foremost among them was that teams of German civil engineers had begun laying track for a rail line from Qingdao to Jinan, which would run through Gaomi Township. News of the impending construction had been in the wind for years, but had not been taken seriously. Not, that is, until the year before, when the rail bed had reached their borders. This, they all felt, was serious. All one had to do was stand on the Masang River levee to see that the rail bed had already come out of the southeast and lay across the flat open country like a turf dragon. The Germans had erected a construction shed and material storehouse to the rear of Masang Town, in the vicinity of the new rail bed, which looked from a distance like a pair of enormous ships.

After returning with his buckets of water, Sun Bing put down his carrying pole and told his newly hired helper, a youngster called Stone, to boil the water while he went out front to clean off the tables, chairs, and benches, wash the teapots and cups, and open the door to the street. That done, he sat behind the counter and enjoyed a smoke as he waited for customers.

———— 2 ————

The forcible loss of Sun Bing’s beard had introduced profound changes in his life.

He lay in bed that morning staring up at the rope hanging from the rafters, waiting to hear whether or not his daughter had been successful in her intended assassination. He was ready at a moment’s notice to take his own life, for he knew that however the attempt turned out, he was not likely to avoid implication, which would mean imprisonment—again. He knew the horrors of the county lockup from his earlier experience, and would kill himself before going back there.

He stayed in bed the whole day, awake most of the time and sleeping the rest, or lying somewhere between the two, and at those times the image of that thug seemed to fall out of the moonlit sky straight into his head. Big and tall, he had powerful legs and moved like a black cat, quick and nimble. Sun Bing had been walking down the narrow cobblestone lane that ran from Ten Fragrances Tower to the Cao Family Inn; the stones beneath his feet turned a watery bright in the moonlight, as he dragged a long shadow behind him. His legs were rubbery, his head foggy, thanks to his drinking and whoring at Ten Fragrances Tower, so when the man in black suddenly appeared in front of him, he thought he was seeing things. But the man’s chilling laughter quickly cleared his head. He instinctively dug out the few coins he had in his pocket and tossed them to the ground in front of him. As the coins clinked on the stone-paved road, he slurred the words “Friend, my name is Sun Bing; I’m a poor Maoqiang actor from Northeast Gaomi Township. I just spent all my money on a bit of debauchery, but come see me where I live someday, and I’ll sing a whole play for you.” The man in black did not even look at the coins on the ground. Instead, he pressed closer and closer, so close that Sun Bing felt a chill emanating from the man’s body. He was clear-headed enough to realize that he was face to face, not with a run-of-the-mill mugger who wanted money, but with someone intent on harming him. His mind spun like a carousel as he scrolled through his potential enemies and backed up slowly, all the way to a corner formed by a pair of walls, out of the moonlight. The man in black, however, remained in the light, silvery rays reflecting off his body. Though his face was masked, the outlines of his face were discernible, and the loose black sack that hung from his chin down past his chest flashed into Sun Bing’s field of vision, a sight that opened up a crack in his mind to let in the light of understanding; the image of the County Magistrate seemed to emerge from the cocoon of black clothing. A sense of terror was abruptly replaced by loathing and contempt. “So, it’s His Eminence,” he said disdainfully. More chilling laughter was the response of the man in black as he took hold of the loose sack and shook it, as if to confirm the accuracy of Sun Bing’s conjecture. “So tell me, Your Eminence,” Sun Bing said, “what do you want from me?” He clenched his fists in readiness to engage the County Magistrate, who was disguised as a man of the night. But before a punch was thrown, his chin felt as if the skin had been ripped off, and he saw that the man was holding a handful of his beard. With a screech, Sun Bing rushed at his attacker. Half a lifetime of singing opera had taught him how to execute a somersault and perform tumbling acts, and although these were only play-acting martial moves, in a fight with a scholar they were more than adequate. Sun Bing’s anger stoked his fighting spirit as he moved into the moonlight to accost the man in black. But before his first punch landed, Sun Bing was lying flat on his back, his head reverberating from thudding against the stones in the lane; he lost consciousness from the excruciating pain, and when he came to, the man in black was standing over him, his foot planted on Sun Bing’s chest. He had trouble breathing. “Your Eminence,” he said with difficulty, “didn’t you already pardon me? Then why…” More chilling laughter, but not a word in response. He reached down and grabbed Sun’s beard, yanked hard, and pulled most of it out of his chin. Sun Bing screamed in agony. The man in black tossed the beard away, picked up a stone, and stuffed it into Sun’s mouth. Then, with amazing skill and strength, he jerked out the remaining whiskers. By the time Sun Bing struggled to his feet, the man in black was gone, and if not for the searing pain in his chin and the back of his head, he’d have thought it had all been a dream. But there was also the stone that filled his mouth, which he removed with his fingers and immediately burst into tears. He looked down on the ground, and there, in the moonlight, he saw the remnants of his beard on the cobblestones, like clumps of water grass, still twitching sadly.

Just before nightfall, his son-in-law walked in buoyantly, tossed him a chunk of flatbread, and walked out, still buoyant. His daughter did not return until it was time to light the lamps. In the glow of red candlelight, she appeared to be wild with joy, not at all like a woman who had just killed someone, not even like a woman who had tried but failed to kill someone. She was acting like a woman who had just returned from a wedding banquet. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, she said sternly:

“Dieh, you could not have been more wrong if you had tried. Magistrate Qian is a scholar whose hands are as soft as cotton batting. How could someone like that be a masked thug? If you ask me, you let those whores of yours pour horse piss down your throat, and you went half blind and half mad. I can’t think of any other reason why you would say something so crazy. Think about it: if His Eminence wanted your beard removed, do you really think that he, a high official, would do it himself? Besides, if he wanted your beard gone, he could have made you do it yourself after the contest, couldn’t he? Why go to the trouble of pardoning you? Not only that, but with what you said about him, he could have had you killed on the spot or put you in the local lockup and left you there to die, like so many before you. But instead he challenged you to a contest. Dieh, you have already left your forties and entered your fifties, so you ought to act your age instead of whoring around and womanizing. The way I see it, the old man in the sky sent someone down to remove that beard of yours as a warning, and if you don’t wise up, the next time it will be your head.”

His daughter’s rapid-fire rebuke made Sun Bing break out in a sweat, and he gazed at her, feeling that something was amiss, however serious she might look. The absurdity of it all had him thinking that most of what she’d said sounded nothing like his daughter. She’d become a different person in the space of a single day.

“Meiniang,” he said with a sneer, “what magic has that Qian fellow performed on you?”

“Is that the sort of thing a father says to his daughter?” she replied angrily. “Magistrate Qian is an upright gentleman who would not look cross-eyed at me.” She took a silver ingot out of her pocket and tossed it onto the bed. “He said about you, ‘He’s a damned actor acting like a turtle awaiting an Imperial Edict.’ No proper man acts like that. He is giving you fifty taels of silver to disband the opera troupe and go into business for yourself.”

Burning with indignation, Sun Bing was tempted to throw the silver back to show what a Northeast Gaomi Township man was made of. Instead, once he picked up the ingot, its cold heft made it impossible to let go.

“Daughter,” he said, “this ingot isn’t lead wrapped in tinfoil, is it?”

“What are you talking about, Dieh?” Meiniang’s anger was palpable. “Don’t think I don’t know how you treated Niang. The way you cheated, it’s no wonder she died an angry woman. Then you let our black donkey nearly bite me to death! For that alone I’ll hate you for the rest of my life. But I’m stuck with you. No matter how much I resent you, you’re still my dieh. If there’s only one person in the world who wishes you well, that person will be me. Please, Dieh, take Magistrate Qian’s advice and do what’s right. If you can find the right woman, marry her and live a peaceful life for as long as you have.” And so Sun Bing returned to Northeast Gaomi Township with the silver ingot, a trip characterized by nearly uncontrollable rage one minute and unbearable shame the next. When he met people on the road, he covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep them from seeing his blood-streaked chin. Not long before he arrived home, he stopped alongside the Masang River to take a look at his reflection; looking back at him was a truly ugly face, striped with wrinkles, frosty gray temples, all in all the face of a doddering old man. With a sigh, he scooped up some water to wash his face, no matter how much it hurt, before heading home.

Sun Bing disbanded the opera troupe. Since he’d already had an intimate relationship with Little Peach, an orphan who sang the female leads, he went ahead and married her. They seemed well suited to one another, despite the substantial difference in age. With the silver given by Magistrate Qian, they bought a compound that faced the street, made some modifications, and opened the Sun Family Teashop. In the spring, Little Peach delivered twins, a boy and a girl, which made him deliriously happy. Magistrate Qian sent a congratulatory gift, a pair of silver necklaces, each weighing an ounce. The news spread like a thunderclap through Northeast Gaomi Township. Congratulations arrived from so many township residents that a banquet consisting of forty tables was necessary as an expression of appreciation. In their private conversations, people began referring to Magistrate Qian as Sun Bing’s semi-son-in-law and to Sun Meiniang as a semi-Magistrate. When this talk reached Sun Bing’s ears, he was, of course, mortified, but as time passed, apathy set in. Now that he had a smooth chin, like a wild horse shorn of its mane and tail, he had lost the air of intimidation and was no longer so easy to anger. A nearly permanent scowl was replaced by a gentle, mellow look. Life was good for the new Sun Bing. His face had regained its color, he was at peace with the world, and he had become a country squire.

———— 3 ————

At mid-morning, customers filled the teashop. Sun Bing, who was wearing only a thin jacket with a towel draped over his shoulder, was sweating as he went from table to table with a long-nosed brass teapot to fill people’s glasses. As a one-time singer of old men’s roles in opera, he had a sonorous voice with a tragic air, a talent he put to use in his business, shouting out orders as he worked, rhythmical and cadenced. He moved quickly and poured with great accuracy, his hands and feet in perfect harmony with a distinct tempo. His ears seemed always to echo with the enchanting sounds of Maoqiang drumbeats, the strumming of a Maoqiang zither, a lute, and flutes: Lin Chong Flees at Night. Xu Ce Runs to the City Wall. Three Kingdoms Operas: The Wind and Wave Pavilion, Wang Han Borrows Money at Year’s End, Chang Mao Cries over His Cat… As he made his rounds with the teapot, those operas drove out thoughts of his past and concerns for the future, keeping him focused on the joy that his work brought him. A kettle whistled in the yard out back. He ran out to replenish his teapot with boiling water. There his helper, Stone, stood by the fire, ashes in his hair and soot on his face, which made his teeth look snowy white. He reacted to the appearance of the shopkeeper by redoubling his efforts with the bellows beneath a four-burner stove on top of which sat four brass teapots. The fire blazed and crackled as drops of boiling water splashed onto the flames and turned to white, fragrant steam. Little Peach was holding a toddler in each arm, on her way to the Masang Market to take in the sights. The children’s laughing faces were like bright, shiny flowers.

“Bao’er, Yun’er, say hello to Dieh-dieh,” she said to them.

Together they slurred a greeting. Sun Bing set down his teapot, wiped his hands on his sleeves, and picked them up, one in each arm; and as he affectionately touched their tender little faces with his scarred chin, he breathed in their delightful milk smell. They giggled from the tickly feeling, which all but melted his heart, like soft candy, the sweetness reaching a peak before turning slightly sour. Now he moved more quickly and nimbly in the shop; his voice had more of a ring than ever as he responded to his customers. He was all smiles, and even the dullest among them could tell that he was a happy man.

Managing to steal a minute out of the busy morning, he leaned against the counter, lit his pipe, and breathed in deeply. Looking out through the double door, he watched his wife and children mingle with the crowd as they headed to the market.

A rich man with big ears was sitting at the window table. His family name was Zhang, and while he had both a formal name—Haogu—and a style name—Nianzu—everyone called him Second Master. For a man in his early fifties, he had a healthy, ruddy complexion. Perched atop his rounded head was a black satin skullcap into which a rectangular piece of green jade had been sewn. Second Master was Northeast Gaomi Township’s preeminent scholar, a man who had purchased an appointment to the Imperial College. Having traveled south to the Yangtze Valley and north beyond the Great Wall, he told of spending a night with Sai Jinhua, the notorious courtesan of Peking. No one who started a conversation with him ever found him unworthy of bringing it to an end. A regular at the Sun Family Teashop, he monopolized every conversation for as long as he sat there. Picking up his glazed porcelain teacup, he removed the lid with three fingers and made the leaves on top swirl a bit before blowing on the surface and taking a sip.

“Proprietor,” he called out after smacking his lips, “why is this tea so bland? It has hardly any taste.”

After hurriedly knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Sun Bing trotted over and, with a bit of bowing and scraping, said:

“Second Master, it’s the same tea you always drink—the best Dragon Well.”

Second Master took a second sip.

“No, it still lacks taste.”

“Why don’t I make some in a gourd?” Sun Bing said, anxious to please.

“Scorch it ever so slightly.”

Sun ran back behind the counter, where he stuck a silver needle into an opium pill and held it over a bean-oil lantern that burned all day long, turning it round and round. A peculiar odor spread throughout the shop.

After drinking half a cup of the strong, opium-infused tea, Second Master was clearly invigorated. His gaze swept the faces of the other customers like a pair of lively fish, and Sun Bing knew that he was about to launch into one of his voluble monologues. Gaunt, sallow-faced Young Master Wu Da opened his mouth to reveal teeth stained black by tea and tobacco.

“Second Master,” he said, “any news of the railway?”

Second Master put down his teacup, puckered his upper lip, emitted an audible snort, and, having formed a response, declaimed:

“Of course there is. I have told you people about our family friend Jiang Runhua of the Wandong District, the lead editorial writer for the Globe, who has installed two teletypes to receive the latest news from Japan and the West. Well, yesterday he received an urgent message that the Old Buddha Cixi received Kaiser Wilhelm’s special envoy in the Longevity Hall of the Summer Palace to discuss the construction of the rail line between Qingdao and Jinan.”

Young Master Wu clapped his hands.

“Second Master,” he said, “don’t tell me, let me guess.”

“Go ahead, guess,” Second Master said. “If you’re right, yours truly will pay for everyone’s tea.”

“Second Master is a forthright man who is unafraid to show his emotions,” Young Master Wu said. “No wonder the people all love him. Here is my guess: Our mass petition worked. They are going to alter the planned route.”

“Glory be! Great news!” muttered an old man with a white beard. “The Old Buddha is wise, truly wise.”

But Second Master shook his head and said with a sigh:

“Sorry, gentlemen, but today you will have to pay for your own tea.”

“They’re not going to change it?” Young Master Wu said, his hackles rising. “Our mass petition was a waste of time, is that it?”

“Your mass petition was probably used by some official as toilet paper,” Second Master said resentfully. “Just who do you think you are? The Old Buddha said, ‘We can alter the course of the Yellow River, but not the course of the Jiaozhou-Jinan rail line.’ ”

Dejection settled over the room, punctuated by long sighs. County Scholar Qu, he with the facial blemish, said:

“Well, then, did the German Kaiser send his envoy to pay restitution for the destruction of our burial grounds?”

“Scholar Qu has finally touched upon something,” Second Master said animatedly. “When the special envoy was led into the Old Buddha’s presence, he prostrated himself three times and kowtowed nine before handing up an account book printed on vellum that could last millennia. ‘The Great Kaiser,’ the envoy said, ‘will under no circumstances do anything to bring harm to the people of Northeast Gaomi Township. We will pay a hundred ounces of silver for every acre of land utilized and two hundred for every gravesite disturbed. A steamship with a load of silver ingots has already been dispatched.’”

The news was met with a moment of stunned silence, then greeted with an uproar.

“Damned liar! They took an acre and a quarter of my land, and gave me eight ounces.”

“They destroyed two of my ancestors’ gravesites, and gave me twelve.”

“Silver? Where is it? I don’t see any silver.”

“What are you all bawling about?” Second Master demanded unhappily as he banged his fist on the table. “All your complaints don’t make a damned bit of difference! Silver? I’ll tell you where it went. It was skimmed away by those crooked interpreters, traitors, and compradors, that’s where!”

“He’s right,” Young Master Wu agreed. “You all know Xiaoqiu, who sells oil fritters in Front Village, don’t you? Well, he worked as an attendant for a man who interpreted for a German engineer for three months, and wound up with half a sack of silver dollars that he picked up off the floor during their nightly card games. As long as you’re involved with the railroad—you can be a bloody tortoise or a bastard turtle—you’ll strike it rich. Let me put it differently: ‘When the train whistle blows, gold in thousands flows.’ ”

“Second Master,” Scholar Qu said tentatively, “does the Old Buddha know any of this?”

“Why ask me?” He wore a scowl. “I’ll just have to go ask someone else.”

His comment was met with forced smiles all around, before the men returned to their tea, slurping loudly.

An awkward silence settled over the room. Second Master cast a furtive look out the door to make sure that no one was outside listening.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” he said softly. “Interested in hearing more?”

Every eye turned to Second Master’s mouth, waiting expectantly.

After looking around the room, he said with a sense of heightened mystery:

“A good friend of the family, Wang Peiran, works as an assistant to one of the Jiaozhou yamen officials. He tells me that many strange incidents have occurred over the past few days, including men who have woken up in the morning to find that their queues have been cut off!”

Looks of incomprehension decorated all the faces around him. No one dared utter a word. Ears pricked, they waited for him to continue.

“The immediate effect has been light-headedness and a general weakness that spreads to their limbs. They then fall into a trance that nearly destroys their ability to speak. They have become blithering idiots, impervious to medical intervention, because they do not suffer from a physical malady.”

“I hope this won’t usher in a second Taiping Rebellion,” Young Master Wu said. “I’ve heard old people recall the time in the Xianfeng reign when the Taipings came north, how they first cut off queues, and then heads.”

“No, nothing like that,” Second Master said. “This time it’s German missionaries casting their secret spells, or so I heard.”

Scholar Qu had his doubts.

“What could they expect to accomplish by cutting off queues?” he asked.

“Don’t be such a naïve pedant,” Second Master replied, clearly annoyed. “Do you really think that’s what they are after, a bunch of queues? What they want is our souls! Why else would those particular symptoms appear in men who lost their queues? It’s a clear sign of losing their souls.”

“I still don’t quite understand, Second Master,” Scholar Qu said. “What good can it do the Germans to take all those souls?”

Second Master smirked in response.

“I think I know the answer,” Young Master Wu said. “It’s tied to the construction of the railway, isn’t it?”

“Our young Wu is nobody’s fool,” Second Master said. Then he lowered his voice and added in a mysterious tone, “What I am going to tell you now must remain here with us. The Germans bury men’s queues beneath the railroad tracks, one for each railroad tie. Every one of those queues represents a soul, and each soul represents a hale and hearty man. Here is something to think about: The trains are manufactured out of pig iron and weigh a ton. They neither drink nor eat, so how can they move across the land? And not just move, but move at an unthinkably high speed. What powers them? Think that over.”

The mind-numbing thought produced an eerie silence. The whistle of a teakettle out back pierced the men’s eardrums. Disaster loomed; they all felt it. Chills ran down their necks, touched, it seemed, by an invisible pair of scissors.

As anxiety over the safety of their queues gripped the men, the young clerk from the town dispensary, Qiusheng, scurried into the teashop as if flames were nipping at his heels.

“Proprietor Sun,” he said breathlessly, “bad news… my shopkeeper sent me to tell you… German engineers… making improper advances to your wife… shopkeeper says you have to hurry or something terrible could happen…”

The news stunned Sun Bing, who dropped the teakettle in his hand and sprayed hot water and steam all around him. But shock quickly turned to anger and a pulsing of hot blood through his veins. The patrons looked on as his scarred chin began to twitch and the peaceful, benign look on his face took wing and flew away, supplanted by a fiendish grimace. Using his right hand for leverage, he leaped over the counter and grabbed the date-wood club resting against the door before running out into the street.

The excited teashop customers were all abuzz; still reeling from the frightful news about pigtails, they had now been given a second dose of bad news, with Germans taking advantage of a Chinese woman, effectively transforming terror into anger. A storehouse of resentment had been building among local residents ever since the Germans had begun construction of the Jiaozhou-Jinan line, resentment that had spilled over into loathing. Courage that had long been hidden within the residents of Northeast Gaomi Township burst to the surface, and a sense of righteous indignation took hold in people’s hearts, erasing all concerns over their own physical safety. Sun Bing’s patrons fell in behind him, shouting loudly on the road to the marketplace.

———— 4 ————

The wind whistled past Sun Bing’s ears as he ran down the narrow street, the blood in his veins surging to his head, causing his eardrums to throb and hum and his eyes to glaze over. People along the way might as well have been made of paper the way they rocked back and forth as bursts of air emanating from his frantic passage hit them in waves. Distorted faces brushed past his shoulders. He saw a tight circle of people in the square in front of the Jishengtang Pharmacy and the Li Jin General Store. He could not see what they were looking at, but he heard his wife’s screams and curses and the bawling of his twins, Bao’er and Yun’er, coming from inside the circle. He roared like a lion, raised his club over his head, and leaped into the fray, the crowd parting to make room. What he saw was a pair of long-legged German engineers, their heads looking like wooden clappers, one in front and one in back, with their hands all over his wife. She was fighting off their grasp, but could not keep their hands away from top and bottom at the same time. The Germans’ soft pink hands, covered with fine hair, were all over her, like octopus tentacles; their green eyes seemed lit up with will-o’-the-wisps. Several Chinese lackeys stood off to the side clapping and shouting encouragement. Sun’s twins were rolling and crawling on the ground and sending up a heart-rending howl. Roaring like a wounded animal, Sun charged the man who was bent over fondling his wife’s crotch with both hands, his back to Sun, and brought the club—so heavy it felt like iron or steel—down on the back of his head, as if carried by a dark red burst of wind. A sickening crunch announced the meeting of the silver-gray, glossy, elongated head and the date-wood club, which vibrated in his hands. The German’s body jerked upward in a strange arc before going limp; his hands were still inside Little Peach’s pants as he fell over, taking her with him, and pinning her to the ground. Sun Bing saw a rivulet of blood flowing from the engineer’s head a brief moment before he smelled it. The next thing he saw was the almost demonic look on the face of the other German, who had been fondling his wife’s breasts, no longer the silly grin that had borne witness to the fun he was having. Sun tried to raise his club a second time to repeat the scene on the foreign devil who was fondling his wife, but his arms suddenly seemed paralyzed, and the club fell harmlessly to the ground. The fatal blow had used up all his strength. Yet out of the corner of his eye, he saw aligned behind him a small forest of raised weapons: carrying poles, hoes, shovels, brooms, but mainly fists. A deafening battle cry pounded his eardrums. Railway workers and the Chinese lackeys who had been looking on grabbed hold of the terrified engineer and carried him out of the way, stumbling past the angry mob and leaving the clubbed German at the mercy of the crowd.

After standing there nearly dumbstruck for a few moments, Sun Bing bent down and, with what little strength he could muster, pulled the still-twitching German engineer off of his wife. The man’s hands seemed to have taken root in her pants; his blood was smeared all over her back. Sun Bing was sickened and felt like throwing up. The urge to vomit was stronger even than the desire to help his wife up off the ground. She managed to get to her feet on her own. Her hair was a mass of tangles, her gaunt face disfigured with smears of mud, tears, and blood. She looked ugly and scary. With a burst of sobs, she threw herself into his arms. And all he wanted to do was vomit. He was too weak to even hold her. Abruptly, she broke free and rushed to her children, who were still on the ground, still bawling. He stood there staring down at the German engineer, whose body was still wracked by spasms.

———— 5 ————

Faced with the German’s corpse, which lay coiled like a dead snake, Sun Bing vaguely sensed that something terrible lay in his immediate future. And yet a voice inside rose to his defense, presenting him with the rationale for his action: Those men were molesting my wife, this one with his hands inside her pants. And look what they did to my children. I hit him; what else was I to do? Would you stand by and watch while somebody did that to your wife? And I never meant to kill him. Who knew he’d have such a soft skull? Imbued with a sense of righteous behavior, he claimed a just and reasonable defense. My fellow villagers saw it all; they are my witnesses. So are the railroad workers. You can even ask the other German engineer, who will back me up if he has a conscience. It was their fault for molesting my wife and abusing my children. I reacted instinctively with understandable anger. I wouldn’t have hit him otherwise. And yet Sun Bing’s sense of reason and justice did nothing to make his legs less rubbery or his mouth less dry or foul tasting. Foreboding filled his mind and would not go away, no matter how hard he tried; it incapacitated his ability to entertain complex thoughts. Large numbers of the spectators were slipping quietly away; roadside peddlers scampered to pack up and leave: the risks of hanging around even a minute longer were too great. Shops on both sides of the broad avenue shut their doors—for inventory, the signs said—in the middle of the day. The gray avenue was suddenly broader and emptier than it had been, clearing the way for a strong wind to send dead leaves and scraps of paper tumbling and swirling in from the north. A small pack of dirty mutts that had taken refuge in one of the lanes set up a chorus of barks.

A blurry image of his family performing a drama at center stage in front of a large audience took shape in his head. Probing rays beheld them from cracks in shop doors, from neighborhood windows, and from many dark, gloomy places. His wife stood there shivering in the cold wind, holding both children in her arms and looking pitifully up at her husband, silently pleading for his forgiveness and understanding. Both children buried their faces in the folds of her jacket, like terror-stricken fledglings so worried about their heads that they left their backsides exposed. He felt as if his heart had been gouged out of his body. His suffering was immeasurable. His eyes burned, his nose ached, and a sense of impending tragedy was born. He kicked the twitching German’s foot. “You can goddamn stop playing dead!” he cursed and then looked up at the converging gazes and said loudly, “You all saw what happened here today. If the authorities come to investigate, please, whoever you are, tell them what you saw; do that for me, please.” With his hands clasped in front, he made a turn around the square. “I am the one who killed him,” he said. “I will take full responsibility and not implicate any of you, I promise you that!”

As he swept his children up in his arms, he told his wife to hold on to his jacket for the slow walk home. A blast of cold air sent chills up his spine; his sweat-soaked shirt scraped against his skin like armor.

———— 6 ————

Bright and early the next morning, he opened the shop and began the day as always by wiping down the tables and chairs. His helper, Stone, was out back pumping the bellows with all his might to keep the water boiling. Four brass teapots steam-whistled on the stove. But even after the sun came up over the eastern horizon, not a single customer had stepped inside. The street in front was cold, cheerless, and deserted. Gusts of chilled wind blew leaves past his door. His wife held tight to the twins’ hands and stuck to him wherever he went, flashes of sheer terror emanating from her eyes. He patted each of the children on the head and said with a light-hearted laugh:

“Go back inside, there’s nothing to be afraid of. It was all their doing, taking advantage of a good and decent woman. They’re the ones who deserve to lose their heads.”

He knew he was saying that to calm himself as well, since the hand holding the cleaning rag was shaking. Eventually, he managed to get his wife to go out back, so he could sit alone in the shop, tap a beat on a table, and sing a Maoqiang aria:

She is home and far away, who will watch over her, I cannot say. What will happen to me, good or ill, and will she survive to live another day? Ha! Fear squeezes sweat from my feverish body, let this all end well, I pray…

The song ended, the dam burst, and a lifetime of opera tunes poured out of him. The more he sang, the sadder he became, and the more despondent. Two lines of tears snaked down his cheeks and onto his naked chin.

The residents of Masang Township all quietly listened to Sun Bing’s songs that day.

And so he sang, all that day, till sunset, when the blood-red rays of a dying sun shone down on the willow trees lining the river, where flocks of sparrows perched in the airy canopy of the highest tree to announce the day’s end, as if sending him a sign. He closed up the shop and sat at the window, club in hand, after ripping off the paper covering so he could see everything that was happening outside. Stone brought him a bowl of cooked dry millet. The first bite stuck in his throat, and he erupted in a series of hacking coughs that sent kernels of millet shooting out of his nose like buckshot.

“Youngster,” he said to Stone, “I am in big trouble. Sooner or later the Germans will be here to exact revenge, so get out of here while you can.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Shifu,” Stone said as he brought a slingshot out from under his shirt. “I won’t let you fight them alone. I’m a crack shot with one of these.”

He let the boy have his way, in part because he was so hoarse he could barely talk. The pain in his chest was nearly unbearable, the same sensation he experienced when his voice cracked as he was training to sing opera. And still, though his hands trembled, now joined by his feet, he hummed arias to himself.

The clack of hooves on the cobblestone street sounded to the west soon after a crescent moon had ascended into the sky. He jumped to his feet, gripped the club tightly in his feverish hand, and readied himself for a fight. In the weak starlight, he saw the outline of a big, black mule running his way with an awkward gait. The rider, all in black, wore a mask.

The rider slid neatly off the mule in front of the teashop and knocked at the door.

Gripping his club even tighter, he held his breath and hid behind the door.

The pounding was not loud, but it was persistent.

“Who is it?” he asked hoarsely.

“It’s me!”

He recognized his daughter’s voice immediately. The door opened, and in rushed Meiniang, all in black.

“Don’t say a word, Dieh,” she said. “You have to get out of here.”

“Why?” For some reason, this made him angry. “They’re the ones who took liberties with a good and decent woman—”

She cut him off.

“It doesn’t get any worse than this, Dieh. The Germans have already sent a telegram to Peking and Jinan. Yuan Shikai has ordered Magistrate Qian to arrest you. The constables are on their way, and will be here soon.”

“Is there no justice, no fairness anywhere—”

She was in no mood to let him defend his actions.

“How can you jabber about things like that when the flames are singeing your eyebrows? If you want to get out of this alive, you must go into hiding. If not, then wait here, for they won’t be long.”

“What happens to my family if I run away?”

“They’re almost here,” she said, cocking her ear. The sound of horses was faint for the moment, but getting louder. “Are you leaving or are you staying? It’s up to you.” She turned and ran out the door, but immediately stuck her head back in and said, “If you go, tell Little Peach to fake madness.”

He watched as his daughter nimbly jumped into the saddle and leaned forward until she looked like she was part of the mule she was riding. With a snort, the animal took off running, its flanks flashing for a moment before it disappeared in the surrounding darkness. The sound of its hooves sped east.

He shut the door, turned, and saw Little Peach standing in the room, her hair already down around her shoulders, soot smeared over her face. A torn blouse revealed her fair bosom. She came up to him and, in a voice that brooked no nonsense, said:

“Do as Meiniang said: leave, and leave now!”

An agonizing emotion welled up inside him as he looked into his wife’s eyes, which flashed in the dark room, and in the midst of that seminal moment, he realized that this woman, so gentle and fragile in appearance, was blessed with great courage and a quick mind. He wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed him away.

“There’s no time; you must go. Don’t worry about us.”

So he ran out of the shop and headed down the street he knew so well from fetching water, then ran up the Masang River bank and hid behind a large willow tree, where he could look down at the peaceful village below, the gray street, and his house. He could hear Bao’er and Yun’er—they were crying—and that nearly broke his heart. The new moon, hanging low in the western sky, was especially beautiful; the vast canopy of sky was dotted with stars that twinkled like diamonds. Every house in town was dark, and yet he knew that the occupants were not asleep, but were silently and expectantly listening for any activity outside, almost as if darkness was their best protection against bad tidings. The clack of horse hooves neared; dogs began to bark. A dark, tight formation of horses approached—how many it was impossible to say—and reddish sparks flew as the staccato beat of horseshoes on cobblestones announced their arrival.

The posse rode up and, after some confused jockeying, stopped in front of the shop. He witnessed the blurred silhouette of constables appearing to dismount from the blurred outlines of their horses, a spurt of boisterous wrangling seemingly intended to alert people to their purpose in coming. That accomplished, they lit torches they’d brought with them. The burst of light illuminated the street and nearby houses, as well as the willows on the riverbank, where he cowered behind the tree, from whose branches a flock of startled birds flew off. With a backward glance at the river behind him, he readied himself to jump in to save his skin, if necessary. But the constables took no note of the sudden bird migration, and gave no thought to searching the riverbank.

Now he could see clearly enough to count the horses—altogether nine piebald animals, a few black and white, some of the others red and brown, and all local horses: unattractive, neither plump nor robust-looking, with ragged manes and well-used saddles and fittings. Two did not even have saddles, their riders forced to make do with gunnysacks thrown over their backs. In the flickering light of the torches, the horses’ heads looked big and clumsy, but their eyes were bright and clear. After shining the light of their torches on the signboard over the door, the constables calmly knocked at the door.

No response from inside.

They attacked the door.

From his vantage point, he had a vague suspicion that the constables had no intention of arresting him. They would not have dawdled like that if they had, and they would have knocked more aggressively. No, they would have scaled the wall to get inside if they’d had to, something many of them were good at. Agreeable feelings toward the constables washed over him. He did not have to be told that Magistrate Qian was in the background, and behind him, his own daughter, Meiniang.

The door eventually gave way to the assault on it, and the torch-bearing constables swaggered into the shop. Almost immediately, he heard his wife’s feigned wails of insanity and crazed laughter, accompanied by the bawling of his terrified children.

The constables put up with the racket as long as they could before reemerging with their torches, some jabbering something he couldn’t hear, others yawning. After a brief discussion in front of the shop and some shouted commands, they mounted up and rode off. As soon as the hoofbeats and torchlight disappeared, peace and quiet returned to the town. He was about to come out of hiding when lights flared up in town, all at once, as if on command. Everything stopped for a moment, and then dozens of lanterns appeared on the street, forming a luminous, fast-moving line that snaked its way toward him. Hot tears slipped out of his eyes.

———— 7 ————

Relying on the guidance of an experienced old man, he hid during the daylight hours over the days that followed and slipped back into town at night, when the streets were quiet and deserted. He spent his days in the woods on the opposite bank of the Masang River, where there were a dozen or so cottages the villagers used to cure tobacco. That was where he slept during the days, crossing the river to return home late at night. He headed back to his cottages first thing the next morning with a bundle of flatbreads and a gourd filled with water.

Many of the willow trees near the cottages were home to nesting magpies. He would lie on the kang, eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating. At first he could not screw up the courage to step outside, but gradually he grew less guarded and slipped out to look up at the squawking magpies in their nests. He and a tall, well-built young shepherd struck up a friendship. He shared his flat-breads with Mudu, the simple, honest young man, and even told him who he was—Sun Bing, the man who had killed the railroad engineer.

On the seventh day of the second lunar month, five days after killing the German, he finished off several of the flatbreads and a bowlful of water in the afternoon and was lying on the kang listening to the magpies and to the tattoos of a woodpecker attacking a tree. As he slipped into that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, the sharp crack of gunfire snapped him out of his stupor. He had never before heard the sound of a breech-loading rifle, which was nothing like that of a local hunting rifle. He knew immediately that this was bad. Jumping off the kang and picking up his club, he flattened himself against the wall behind the door to await the arrival of his enemies. More gunfire. It came from the opposite bank. Unable to sit still in the cottage, he slipped out the door, bent at the waist, and scrambled over a series of crumbling walls to move in among the willow trees. A cacophony of shrill sounds erupted in town: his wife was crying, his children were bawling, horses whinnied, mules brayed, and dogs barked, all at the same time. But he could not see a thing. Then an idea struck him. Slipping his club into his belt, he began climbing the tallest tree he saw. When the magpies spotted the invader, they launched an attack, but he drove them off with his club, once, twice, over and over, until they retreated. He stood on a limb next to a large nest and, holding on to keep from falling, looked down at the far side of the river. Now he could see what was happening, all of it.

At least fifty foreign horses were arrayed in front of his teashop, all ridden by foreign soldiers in bright, fancy uniforms with round, feathered caps, and firing bayonet-fitted blue-steel automatic rifles at the shop door and windows. Puffs of white smoke, like daisy blossoms, floated out of the muzzles and hung in the air for a long moment. Sunlight danced off the brass buttons on the soldiers’ tunics and the bayonets attached to the barrels of their guns, blinding bright. A squad of Imperial troops wearing red-tasseled summer straw hats and tunics with white circles in the center, front and back, was arrayed behind them. Suddenly dazed, he dropped the club, which fell to the ground, banging into one limb after another on its way down. Lucky for him he was holding on to a branch, or he’d have followed the club down.

Panic took hold. He knew that this was the calamity he had dreaded. But he held on to a thread of hope that his wife’s acting skills, honed over the years, especially her convincing acts of madness, would work on the German soldiers the way they had on His Eminence Magistrate Qian’s constables, that they would make a fuss until they were sure he was not there and then leave. At that moment he promised himself that if they somehow escaped with their lives, he would pack up and move his family away, far away.

Nothing could have been worse than what happened next. He watched as two of the soldiers dragged his wife, kicking and screaming, down to the river, while a third soldier, bigger and taller than the others, followed with the children, dragging each of them by one leg, as if they were ducks or chickens, and deposited them on the riverbank. Stone broke free from the soldier who was restraining him by biting him on the arm. But then he saw Stone’s small, dark figure back down off the riverbank, down and down, until he bumped into the rifle of a soldier behind him. The glinting blade of the bayonet ran him through. It looked like he screamed, but there was no sound as he rolled like a little black ball down the bank. From his vantage point up in the tree, Sun Bing was blinded by the sight of all that blood.

The German soldiers backed up against the riverbank, where some of them got down on one knee and others remained standing as they aimed at the townspeople. Their aim was unerring—one victim fell for each shot fired. The street and yards were littered with corpses, either face down or on their backs. Then the Imperial troops ran over and put a torch to his shop. First came the black smoke, rising into the sky, followed by golden yellow flames that crackled like firecrackers. The wind rose up and blew the smoke and fire in all directions, even carrying thick, choking clouds of smoke and the smell of fire up to his hiding place.

Then came something even worse. He looked on as the German soldiers began shoving and pulling his wife back and forth, slowly ripping off her clothes as they did so, until she was stark naked. He bit down on the branch he was holding and hit it so hard with his head that it broke the skin. While his heart flew to the opposite bank like a fireball, his body remained bound to a tree; he couldn’t move. They lifted up his wife’s fair body, swung her back and forth, and then let go, her momentum carrying her into the Masang River like a big white fish. Sprays of white transparent water splashed into the air without a sound and fell silently back. Finally, the soldiers speared his children and flung them into the river, too. His eyes filled with blood, nightmarishly, and his heart was on fire, yet he was frozen in place. He struggled with all his might, but in the end he could only roar, freeing his body from its paralysis; bending forward, he managed to topple over, snapping several branches as he fell before landing on the spongy ground at the base of the willow tree.

CHAPTER EIGHT Divine Altar

———— 1 ————

He opened his eyes and was nearly blinded by sunlight streaming in through the branches of the willow trees. The horrific sight he’d witnessed from his perch flashed through his mind, and the constricting pain in his heart leveled him. At that moment the sound of drums pounded against his eardrums, like the drumbeats preceding the first act of a Maoqiang opera, followed by the doleful sounds of a suona, a horn, and then finally the circular, repetitive performance of a cat zither. These sounds, which had been a steady accompaniment for more than half of his lifetime, blunted the stabbing pain in his heart, like shearing off a mountain peak or filling in a ravine and turning it into a boundless plateau. The calls of magpies followed the rhythms of his heart as they flew in dramatic fashion, forming a blue cloud in the air above. A woodpecker attacked a tree—incessantly, tirelessly—echoing the urgent sounds around him. Willow catkins floating on breezy gusts of wind resembled the handsome beard he’d once worn. With a date-wood club in my, my, my hand and a glinting dagger tucked in my waistband~~I take a step and release a wail~~take two steps as anger blazes like a fire fanned~~I, I, I race down a meandering path, this journey too great a demand. A song of grief and indignation thundered inside him as he struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the tree trunk, his head wobbly, his feet stomping the ground. ——Bong bong bong bong bong bong——kebong kebong kebong——bong! Alas! I, Sun Bing, gaze northward to my home, where flames send black smoke into the air. My wife murdered, she, she, she is buried in the bellies of fish, and my children so fair~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel! A little boy and a little girl consigned to the Devil’s lair~~Those loathsome foreign devils with their green eyes and white hair, vipers’ hearts, bereft of conscience, slaughtered the innocent, destroyed my home, and killed my family, I am alone, I, I, I~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel!~~more than I can bear! He picked up the club that had brought such a calamity down on his head and staggered out of the woods. I, I, I am like a wild goose separated from its flock, like a tiger out in the open, a dragon caught in the shallows… He struck out with his club, pointing east and striking west, pointing south and hitting north, shattering bark. Willows wept. You German devils! You, you, you cruelly murdered my wife and butchered my children~~this is a blood debt that will be avenged——Bong bong bong bong bong—Clang cuh-lang clang Only revenge makes me a man. He staggered into the Masang River, swinging his club as he went, wading in till the water nearly reached his chest. The ice was breaking up, now that it was the second month, yet the water was still bone-chilling cold. But he was unmindful of the cold, as fires of vengeful loathing burned in his breast. Walking along the riverbed was difficult; the water hindered his progress like a line of foreign soldiers holding him back. He pressed forward, kept moving, striking the surface of the water with his club, pow pow pow pow pow pow! Splash, splash, water everywhere—like a tiger loose in a flock of sheep—water hit him in the face, a watery blur, a sheet of white, a sheet of blood-red. Charging into the dragon’s den, the tiger’s lair, looses a murderous river of blood, I, I, I am that judge from Hell, the messenger of death. He clawed and crawled his way up to the bank, where he fell to his knees and rubbed his hands across traces of blood that had yet to dry My beloved children, I see that you have been sent down to the Devil’s lair, and for my pain there is no gauge~~My head swims, my eyes glaze over, my world is spinning, my, my, my towering rage. His hands were stained with blood and mud. His house was still burning, releasing waves of heat and filling the sky with hot cinders. The cloyingly sweet taste of bile was caught in his throat. He leaned over and spat out a mouthful of blood.

The bloodbath had blotted out the lives of twenty-seven citizens of Masang Township. People carried their dead to the embankment, where they lined up to await the arrival of the County Magistrate. Under the direction of Second Master Zhang, young men went into the river to retrieve the bodies of Little Peach and her twin children, Bao’er and Yun’er, which the currents had taken five li downriver. They were laid out beside the other victims. Her upper body was covered by a tattered coat, leaving her horribly pale, stiff legs exposed. Sun Bing thought back to her opera roles as chaste women, in her pheasant hat, a sword at her hip, and embroidered shoes with red velvet flowers on the tips. She swirled and twirled her broad sleeves as she sang and danced, face like a peach and waist as thin as a willow branch. She sang like an oriole, exuding charm with her alluring looks. My wife, how do I accept that the blush of spring has been shattered by a hailstone chime, and worse, how do I endure the blade of wind and sword of rime, my, my, my tears of blood fall in a steady stream… I see the red moon sink in the west, where a silver crescent once hung high in the sky~~the shepherd’s sad song, an old crow sings in the nighttime~~bong bong goes the gong, the palanquin shafts tremble, here comes the Gaomi County Magistrate to the scene of the crime…

Sun Bing watched as Magistrate Qian stepped out of his palanquin, bent at the waist. His back, which had always been as stiff and straight as a board, was strangely hunched; his normally smiling face twitched horribly. The beard, once lush and full as a stallion’s tail, looked more like the scraggly appendage of a donkey. And his eyes, usually bright and keen, were now clouded and dull. His hands clenched into fists one minute and slapped his forehead the next. A squad of bodyguards, swords at the ready, followed cautiously. Whether they were protecting him or keeping watch on him was unclear. One by one, he examined the corpses laid out on the embankment under the quiet, watchful gaze of surviving family members. As his eyes swept the line of solemn villagers, crystalline beads of sweat soaked his hair. His agitated pacing ended. He wiped his perspiring face with his sleeve and said:

“Village elders and worthy citizens, you must exercise restraint…”

“Laoye, we want you to plead our case…” Wails of grief rose from the villagers, who knelt at his feet.

“Fellow villagers, please rise. This tragic incident has struck your bereaved official like a knife to the heart. But we cannot bring the dead back to life, so please prepare coffins for your loved ones. The quicker they are buried, the earlier they will find peace…”

“Are you telling us they died for nothing? Are you saying the foreign devils should be free to tyrannize us?”

“Fellow villagers, I share your sorrow,” said the tearful County Magistrate. “Your fathers and mothers are my parents, your sons and daughters my children. Now I must ask you, village elders and worthy citizens, to settle your mood and not take matters into your own hands. Tomorrow I will travel to the capital to seek an audience with His Excellency the Provincial Governor. I will see that you get the justice you deserve.”

“We are going to carry our dead into the provincial capital!”

“No, you cannot do that, you mustn’t!” It was a worrying possibility. “Please trust me to vigorously argue your case. I am prepared to sacrifice my feathered official’s cap for you.”

In the midst of bitter wailing on all sides, Sun Bing watched as Magistrate Qian walked up, awkwardly avoiding the villagers, and sputtered:

“Sun Bing, please come with me.”

The music swirling around inside Sun Bing suddenly reached a fever pitch, as if the earth were opening up and mountains crumbling, a frenzied soaring. His brows arched upward, his tiger-eyes rounded, as he raised his club. You sanctimonious dog of an official, shedding crocodile tears, empty promises to plead the villagers’ case, when all along your plan is to take credit for making an arrest in haste. You speak not for the people you serve, but are a willing conspirator with the murderers we faced. My, my, my wife and children are dead, my hopes all turned to ashes, for which my vengeance they will taste. That would not change even for His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, let alone a mere Magistrate. I, I, I rub my hands and clench my fists, eager to crush the head of an official by corruption debased. He aimed his club at Magistrate Qian’s head. I care, care, care not, for a lopped-off head means only a bowl-sized scar. You are an accomplice to the ferocious tiger who deserves only death. Magistrate Qian nimbly leaped out of the way, and Sun Bing’s club merely stirred up the air. The bodyguards, seeing the danger facing their Magistrate, drew their swords and rushed Sun Bing, but they were no match for a man unafraid of death; he rent the air with a shout and leaped up like a crazed beast, as fiery sparks flew from his eyes. A roar of intimidation rose from the crowd as they advanced in anger. Sun Bing swung his club, now his weapon, and connected with a fat yayi who could not get out of the way fast enough; he tumbled head over heels down the riverbank. Magistrate Qian looked into the sky and sighed.

“Hear me out,” he breathed, “I have given this much thought, as the Son of Heaven is my witness. Countrymen, this event is tied up with foreign affairs, and you must not act rashly. Sun Bing, I must let you go today, but mark my word, you may be able to make it past the first of the month, as they say, but you will not make it past the fifteenth. You are on your own, so take care.”

Under the protection of his yayi, Magistrate Qian slipped back into his palanquin, which was hoisted up by his bearers, who beat a hasty retreat and were swallowed up by the dark of night.

The residents of Masang Township passed a sleepless night, with the rising and falling of wails from women and the sounds of coffin-making continuing till daybreak.

As the day began, with neighbors helping out, the dead were placed into coffins, which were lined up on the ground and sealed with nails.

Then, after the dead were buried, the survivors, whose senses were dulled, as if they had awakened from a terrible nightmare, gathered at the levee and gazed out at the railroad shed erected in one of their fields. Tracks had already been laid up to Liuting, the easternmost village of Northeast Gaomi Township, no more than six li from Masang. Their ancestral graves would soon be overrun, their flood-relief channel filled in, and their thousand-year feng shui destroyed. Rumors flew that their souls would be taken by having their queues cut off and laid beneath railroad ties; everyone’s head was imperiled. The so-called mother and father officials were running dogs of the foreigners, and bitter times lay ahead for the people. Sun Bing’s hair turned white overnight; the few scraggly whiskers on his chin were like dead, brittle grass. He bounced around the village, dragging his club behind him, like a feverish old opera character. People felt sorry for him, assuming he was not in his right mind, so they were surprised to hear him speak with clarity and wisdom:

“Fellow villagers, I, Sun Bing, caused this devastation when I killed that German engineer, and you have suffered, for which I, I, I feel much anguish. I, I, I am terrified of what might happen. So tie me up and deliver me to Qian Ding and ask him to explain the situation to the Germans. He can tell them that if they alter the path of the railroad, Sun Bing will die with no regrets.”

The people lifted Sun Bing up and bombarded him with a chorus of voices:

Sun Bing, oh, Sun Bing, you are brave, upright, and bold, a man whom officials, foreign and local, must behold. Masang Township has suffered over what you did, but we knew that someday this story would be told. Better now than later, for once those foreign devils complete their railroad, all talk of peace will grow old. They say that when the fire-dragon passes, the ground trembles, and that will surely bring down our homes. We’ve heard that the Righteous Harmony Boxers have fought the foreign devils in Caozhou. So, Sun Bing, take what you need and flee for your life. Go to Caozhou and bring back those Boxers to eradicate the foreign devils, the common people’s lives to enfold.

They took up a collection for Sun Bing and sent him on his way that very night. With tears in his eyes, he chanted:

Fellow villagers, hometown water tastes fresher, hometown sentiments are more pure. I, Sun Bing, shall not forget your generosity, and will not return without the aid you seek, that is for sure.

The villagers chanted in return:

Your voyage will be long and arduous, so take great care. You must keep a clear head and be prepared for anything, foul or fair. We will await your return with great anticipation, for then the heavenly soldiers will our rescue declare.

———— 2 ————

One afternoon twenty days later, Sun Bing swaggered back into Masang Township in a full-length white robe under silver armor, six silver command flags sticking up over his back. His face, beneath a silver helmet with a fist-sized red tassel, was stained bright red, and his brows were drawn in the shape of an inverted spear; he wore boots with thick soles and carried his date-wood club. He was followed into town by a pair of fearsome generals—one walked with a quick, nimble step, wore a tiger-skin apron around his waist, and had a golden hoop around his head. He carried a magic cudgel and uttered shrill cries as he bounced and jumped down the street, all in all a fine replica of Sun Wukong, the magic monkey of legend. The second general, sporting a huge paunch, wore a loose monk’s robe and a square Buddhist hat. The manure rake he dragged behind him was a dead giveaway—he was Marshal Zhu Wuneng, or Zhu Bajie, the legendary Pigsy.

The threesome first appeared on the levee, sunlit apparitions breaking through a patch of dark clouds. With glistening armor, they presented a strange sight, three heavenly soldiers who had, it seemed, dropped out of the cloud-filled sky. The first person to see the figures, Young Master Wu, failed to recognize Sun Bing, so when Sun smiled at him, he did not know what to make of the man, and was terrified. He watched them enter the shop in the west where stuffed buns were made and sold; they did not reemerge.

As night fell, the villagers, as was their custom, took their coarse porcelain bowls out into the streets to eat their rice porridge. Young Master Wu ran from the east end of the village to the west, spreading the news that a trio of demonic figures had shown up. Most of the time, people discounted anything young Wu said, since his mind was more than a little muddled and he tended to spread wild stories. They were unsure whether they should believe him now, or treat it as a snack to go with their evening meal. But then, from the west end of the village, the clang of a gong rang out, and they saw the clerk Sixi emerge spiritedly from the shop wearing a black cat-skin cap, his face painted like a leopard cat, the tail of the cap swinging back and forth behind his neck. He sang out loudly as he banged his gong:

This Sun Bing, no ordinary man, in Caozhou learned from the Righteous Harmony band. He returned with two immortals, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, to uproot railroad tracks, kill the traitors, and drive out the foreign devils, till peace is at hand. Nights for Boxer training at the bridgehead, where old and young, men and women, come to watch and learn as best they can. When the magic is mastered, no bullet, no knife can harm them, it prolongs their lifespan. With the magic absorbed, all men are brothers, and all eat for free. With the magic absorbed, the Emperor grants amnesty to each and every clan. When that is done, men attain high rank, their wives and children honorary titles, and all receive food stores and land.

“Aha,” Young Master Wu exclaimed in happy astonishment, “so that was Sun Bing! No wonder he looked familiar, and no wonder he smiled at me.” After the evening meal, a bonfire was lit at the bridgehead to light up the night sky, attracting all able-bodied villagers, their excitement tempered by curiosity. They were there to see Sun Bing display his boxing skills.

A burner with three sticks of glowing incense had been placed between a pair of candlesticks on an octagonal table standing near the bonfire. Two thick red tallow candles flickered and burned brightly, producing a distinct air of mystery. The bonfire crackled and turned the river surface into a sheet of quicksilver. The shop door was shut tight. People were on edge.

“Sun Bing,” someone shouted, “you have been gone only a few short days. Do you think we do not know you? What good is served by acting so mysteriously? Come out and display your divine boxing skills for us.”

Sixi squeezed through the shop door and said softly:

“Not so loud. They are inside drinking the ashes of a magic charm.”

Then, with shocking abruptness, the door flew open, like the mouth of a rapacious beast. Silenced by the sight, the people waited wide-eyed for the appearance of Sun Bing and the two immortals he had brought back with him with the anticipation normally displayed for the arrival on the opera stage of a famous singer. But Sun Bing did not emerge. Silence, complete silence. Fast-flowing water crashed noisily into the bridge pilings; bonfire flames crackled like red silk snapping in the wind. The crowd was growing impatient when the silence was broken—no, shattered. The thundering, high-pitched voice of a Maoqiang old-man actor tore through the night air, a slight hoarseness enhancing its appeal:

I left my native place to avenge an evil deed. The individual words were as clipped as joints of green bamboo, climbing one by one into the clouds above, then settling slowly to earth, where they somersaulted back into the sky, higher than before, until they were out of sight. Sixi’s gong rang out wildly, abandoning all rhythm. Finally, Sun Bing emerged from the shop. He looked the same as when he’d first appeared in the village: white robe and silver helmet, painted face and extended eyebrows, thick-soled boots and a date-wood club. Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie followed close on his heels. Sun Bing took a turn around the bonfire, running so fast his feet seemed not to touch the ground, building upon the normal gait of the old-man role by adding the acrobatic moves of the sword-and-horse role, and highlighted by short, fast-moving steps that seemed as natural as drifting clouds and flowing water. He began to kick and twist, to tumble and turn somersaults, then ended his exhibition by striking a heroic pose and singing:

I acquired divine boxing skills in Caozhou, aided by immortals of every school, all to ensure that the foreign devils do not survive. Before I left, the Patriarch said to erect a divine altar in Gaomi after I arrive. Here I am to teach divine skills and demonstrate the martial arts, until the people have gained the will to move even Mt. Tai. Immortal brothers Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie have been sent down from the celestial kingdom, bequeathed by the Tao that remains alive.

By the time Sun Bing had finished his aria, the people’s faith in him had vanished. Divine boxing skills indeed! This was nothing more than his old stage show! With his hands cupped at his chest as a sign of respect, Sun Bing said:

“Fellow villagers, I traveled to Caozhou to study at the feet of the Patriarch of the Righteous Harmony Boxers. The revered elder had heard that the German devils who were laying track in Northeast Gaomi Township against the people’s wishes were on a murderous rampage, and the fires of loathing burned in his breast. At first the revered elder vowed to lead a divine army to crush the foreigners, but so many military affairs demanded his attention that he could not tear himself away. Instead he passed on to me his secrets of divine boxing and told me to return and erect a divine altar, then to teach divine boxing skills that would succeed in driving the foreign devils out of our land. My companions, Elder Brothers Wukong and Bajie, have been sent to aid me in my mission. Their bodies are impervious to all manner of weapons, a divine art that they will teach you. But first I will demonstrate the skills I have learned, in order, as the adage goes, to cast a brick to attract jade.”

Sun Bing laid down his club, took some sheets of yellow mounting paper from a bundle Sun Wukong was carrying, and lit them from a candle. The paper curled as it burned in his hand and rose into the air, where it merged with the swirling currents above the bonfire. When all the paper had been burned, he knelt in front of the incense stand and performed three solemn kowtows. Back on his feet, he reached into his own bundle and removed a tally, which he laid in a large black bowl and set on fire. Then he unhooked a gourd from his waistband and poured its watery contents into the black bowl, stirring the muddy ash with an unused red chopstick. After placing the bowl on the incense stand, he knelt a second time and performed three more kowtows. This time, however, he remained on his knees as he picked up the bowl with both hands and drank down the contents. Having drunk the tally, he kowtowed three more times before closing his eyes and beginning to chant. An occasional word seemed discernible in his incantation, but to the untrained ear it was speaking in tongues, ranging from high to low, the notes lingering in the air like unbroken threads in a piece of beautiful embroidery and affecting those who heard it like a soporific, replete with yawns and drooping eyes. That somnolent air was abruptly shattered by a piercing shout, as he began to foam at the mouth and his body was wracked by spastic jerks, just before he keeled over backward. The crowd reacted with fear and shock, but before they could rush to his aid, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie stopped them.

Slowly the crowd settled down and fixed their eyes on Sun Bing as he flopped up and down, like a fish on dry land, until his stalwart body began to levitate, light as a feather, attaining a height of three feet or more before settling firmly back to earth. Well acquainted with Sun Bing, the locals knew him as an outdoor opera actor, a man who was breathless after a couple of somersaults on stage. Seeing him perform so expertly now left them speechless and secretly amazed. In the blazing flames of the bonfire, they saw strange lights in Sun Bing’s eyes and a vivid expression sweep across his red face, one that struck everyone who saw it as intimate and unfamiliar at the same time. Normally they knew what to expect when he spoke, but this time they heard things they could not believe were coming from his mouth. An unfamiliar modulation rang with majestic power and proclaimed a noble, stern, indomitable spirit:

“I am the heroic general of the Great Song Dynasty, Yue Fei, known as Pengju, a resident of Tangyin in Henan Province.”

The people’s hearts seemed suddenly and precariously suspended, like red apples hanging heavily from supple branches, swaying in a breeze before snapping off and falling with a metallic thud to the ground.

“It’s the great General Yue!”

“It’s the spirit of the martyred Yue Fei!”

Someone in the crowd fell to his knees; others followed, until no one was left standing. Sun Bing, now the transformed spirit of General Yue Fei, circled the area with flying kicks, light and nimble on his feet, all with remarkable poise and skill. As his body rose and fell, the commanding flags behind his back fluttered in the wind. Waves of light glinted off the scales of his silver armor. At this moment, Sun Bing was no longer a man, he was a mythical dragon among men. After the dance, he clutched his date-wood club and whirled it like a silver spear, stabbing left and parrying right, thrusting upward, thwarting below, like a strange python, a coiled snake. The people were dazzled as they watched him—he had won their hearts. One by one, they fell to their knees and kowtowed. Now that his club display had ended, he raised his golden voice:

The hateful twelve edicts have doomed the nation, the three armies howl in protest, as waves on the Yellow River in rage implore. Alas, the aged suffer. Alas, the Imperial carriage does not return to the palace. When will dust from barbarian hordes be swept from the northern shore? My fury at treacherous court officials will not easily be appeased. To whom can I vent the grief and indignation in my heart? I look to heaven, sword in hand, and roar.

I am Yue Fei, Yue Pengju. I have descended onto the divine altar and taken possession of the body of Sun Bing by Imperial Demand. I shall transmit my martial skills to you who will engage the foreign devils in a life-or-death struggle. Wukong, heed my command.

The general who had taken on the appearance of Wukong took a step forward and knelt on one knee.

“Your servant is here!” he replied in a childish voice.

“I command you to demonstrate for this crowd the eighteen stages of cudgel fighting.”

“As you command!”

Sun Wukong adjusted the apron around his waist, raised one hand, and brushed it across his face. When the hand fell away, it was as if a mask had been put in place. It was now a lively, vigorous face, like that of a monkey—nose twitching, eyes winking. The crowd nearly laughed at this strange simian behavior, but dared not. After demonstrating the range of facial expressions, he uttered a peculiar cry, grabbed his cudgel with both hands, and executed a perfect somersault. The crowd roared its approval. He responded to the acclamation with a more impressively spirited performance: flinging his cudgel high into the air, he sprang up after it, made two complete flips, and landed solidly on his feet, where he steadily, silently, confidently reached up and caught the falling cudgel before it hit the ground. Every move, every maneuver, was accomplished with perfection, and the crowd reacted with frenzied applause; the Monkey King performed his cudgel artistry in the light of the bonfire: he became a coiled dragon, his cudgel a swimming dragon. Jab, strike, brush, sweep, pound, press, block, draw, mix, poke, every move done with precision, each maneuver a sight to behold. The cudgel whistled like the wind as it flew through the air. The demonstration came to an end when he flung it to the ground, where it stood on end like a stake. He leaped into the air, landed with one foot on the top of the cudgel, and assumed the golden rooster stance, shading his eyes with his hand, like a monkey gazing into the distance. The finale: a backward leap sent him back to the ground, where he landed solidly, brought his hands together in front of his chest, and bowed to his audience. Neither breathing hard nor sweating, he was perfectly poised, entirely natural, an extraordinary individual. The crowd applauded and shouted:

“Bravo!”

General Yue Fei issued a second command:

“Bajie, heed my command—”

The general who had taken on the appearance of Zhu Bajie waddled forward.

“Your servant is here!” he replied in a muffled voice.

“I order you to demonstrate for this crowd the eighteen models of manure rake skills.”

“As you command!”

Dragging his manure rake up in front of the crowd, Zhu Bajie greeted them with a foolish laugh—ke ke ke—the way a simple-minded farmer would approach a pile of manure to be raked. There was no mistaking his weapon: it was an ordinary manure rake, the sort that all families owned and all farmers knew how to use. Dragging it behind him, he circled the crowd with a silly grin, did it again, and then a third time. The crowd laughed, but they were getting annoyed, as they wondered whether walking around them with a silly grin was all this general was capable of doing. After the third revolution, he threw away his rake, got down on his hands and knees, and crawled on the ground, making pig noises—oink oink—like an old sow rooting for food. The crowd could hold back no longer. An explosion of laughter greeted this sight, but stopped abruptly when the people glanced at General Yue, who stood ramrod straight and immobile as a statue. Maybe, the people wondered, maybe this third general is leading up to some unique skills.

Sure enough, once he’d finished his rooting old sow act, his hands and feet began to speed up, until he was crawling along faster than any pig could possibly run, oinking the whole time. He crawled and he crawled, and then he rolled on the ground, rolled and rolled, quickly becoming a black whirlwind that spun him into a standing position. How, his puzzled audience wondered, had his manure rake wound up back in his hand? His movements seemed clumsy and awkward, but any expert could have told them that clumsy, awkward movements sometimes hide beauty in motion. Every move, every maneuver, was just as it should have been, and the crowd showed their appreciation with a generous round of applause.

General Yue said:

“Revered villagers, be heedful. The Jade Emperor has commanded me to take control of the divine altar in order to form and train a homeborn army to make war against the foreign devils. They are the reincarnation of Jin soldiers; you will be the disseminators of the way of Yue Fei. The foreign enemy is in possession of powerful rifles and cannons, and of sharp bayonets. How will you ward off their assaults unless you master the martial arts? The Heavenly Emperor has sent me to pass on the secrets of the divine fists, whose mastery will make you impervious to their knives and bullets, unaffected by water or fire, immune to death. Are you willing to do as your general asks?”

“We await your instructions, great general!” the crowd roared.

“Sun, Zhu, heed my command!” General Yue said.

“Your servant awaits his orders!” one said.

“Your servant awaits his orders!” the other said.

The General commanded:

“Demonstrate the Golden Bell Shield technique of divine boxing to the assembled crowd.”

“As commanded!” Sun and Zhu replied in unison.

General Yue Fei personally turned two paper tallies into ashes and told Wukong and Bajie to swallow the solution. Then he recited a secret incantation, this time clearly enunciating every word, as if wanting the crowd to commit it to memory:

“Golden Bell Shield, iron shirt, both parts of Righteous Harmony fist. Righteous Harmony fist holds up the sky, ingesting tallies as an iron immortal in the celestial mist. An iron immortal sits on an iron lotus terrace. Iron head, iron waist, iron stockade, all fortified against enemy weapons…”

The incantation ended, the General sprayed a mouthful of water over Wukong. Then he sprayed another mouthful over Bajie.

“It is done!” he said. “Now perform!”

Sun Wukong concentrated his strength and pointed to his head; Zhu Bajie twirled his manure rake, took aim at Sun Wukong’s head, and swung. Wukong straightened his neck—his head was unmarked.

Zhu Bajie concentrated his strength in his paunch. Sun Wukong twirled his cudgel over his head, took aim at Bajie’s paunch, and swung with such force that he recoiled backward when he hit his target. Bajie massaged his belly and laughed—ke ke ke.

General Yue said:

“If there are those among you who do not believe, come forward to see for yourselves.”

A young hothead by the name of Yu Jin, who had once felled an ox with a single punch, leaped into the ring, picked up a brick, and flung it at Wukong’s head. The brick disintegrated, but Wukong’s head suffered no injury. So then Yu Jin asked Sixi to fetch a cleaver from his shop.

“General,” he said, “may I?”

General Yue smiled but said nothing.

Zhu Bajie nodded his approval.

Yu Jin raised the cleaver and swung it with all his might at Bajie’s paunch. There was a loud clang, as if he’d struck iron. Bajie’s belly sported a new white mark; the blade of the cleaver was ruined.

There were no more disbelievers in that crowd, all of whom asked to be taught the magical boxing skills.

General Yue said:

“The most wonderful aspect of divine boxing is speed. You may lack the strength to tie up a chicken, but if you are pure of heart, the spirit will come. When you drink the ashes of an amulet, that spirit will attach itself to your body, and whichever divine host you desire will be yours. If you ask for Huang Tianba, Huang Tianba will be there; if it is Lü Dongbin you prefer, he will come. And when that divine host attaches himself to your body, you will be a master with unimaginable power. Drink down another tally, and you will have a body that can ward off all weapons and attacks, be impervious to water and fire. The virtues of Righteous Harmony fists are legion. In battle you crush the enemy, and off the battlefield it keeps you safe and healthy.”

“We accept General Yue as our leader!” the crowd erupted as one.

———— 3 ————

On a misty, drizzly morning ten days later—during the 1900 Qingming Festival—Sun Bing issued an order for the army whose training had just ended to launch an attack on the shed that served as the German engineers’ construction headquarters.

For ten uninterrupted days, day and night, before a divine altar erected at the bridgehead, he and his guardians, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, had spared no effort in drawing magic tallies and chanting incantations to propagate the physical art of warding off bayonets and bullets.

Every able-bodied young man in the township was a member of the divine army; they worshipped at the divine altar and practiced divine boxing skills. Even young men from surrounding villages came carrying their own provisions to join the army. The young shepherd from the south bank of the Masang River, Mudu, and the hothead Yu Jin became Sun Bing’s staunchest disciples. Mudu took the role of Zhang Bao, who preceded Yue Fei’s horse; Yu Jin took the role of Wang Heng, who followed it. During the training, each man chose the heroic figure, celestial or mundane, ancient or modern, whom he most revered as his possessing spirit. Yue Yun, Niu Gao, Yang Zaixing, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Huang Zhong, Li Kui, Wu Song, Lu Zhishen, Tuxing Sun, Lei Zhenzi, Jiang Taigong, Yang Jian, Cheng Yaojin, Qin Shubao, Yuchi Jingde, Yang Qilang, Huyan Qing, Meng Liang, Jiao Zan… in a word, characters from opera, heroes in books, and strange figures of legend emerged from their caves and came down from the mountains to attach themselves to the bodies of Masang Township men in order to display their magic powers. Sun Bing, the great loyalist general and leader of the resistance against Jin, Yue Fei, gathered all those heroes and paladins, the epitome of loyalty and righteousness, whose martial skills were second to none, and in the short span of ten days trained a cadre of indestructible warriors who hungered to fight the German devils to the death.

General Yue’s prestige was at its zenith—his every call drew a response from his followers in an army that numbered eight hundred. He recruited local women to dye red cloth for use in making turbans and sashes for the warriors under his command. He personally designed a fiery red battle flag embroidered with the seven stars of the Big Dipper. His eight hundred men were divided into eight contingents, each further divided into ten squads. Contingent commanders and squad leaders were appointed. Squad leaders reported to the contingent commanders, who took orders from the two guardians, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, who in turn obeyed the commands of Yue Fei.

As the sun rose on a hazy Qingming morning, General Yue and his two guardians set up an incense stand and planted the General’s flag at the bridgehead. Red turbans and sashes had been distributed the night before. When the cock crowed the third time, the order to muster at the bridgehead was given. Women in all the homes had risen before dawn to prepare food. What exactly? General Yue ordered: Today before the fight, warriors must eat their fill, white flour cakes and red preserved eggs will hunger pangs still. To improve the taste of the food, he told the women of each family to prepare yellow onions in broad-bean sauce. The women, who loved hearing General Yue speak, did as he asked. General Yue said that anyone who did not do as he was told was asking for trouble. What sort of trouble? On the battlefield, their amulets would lose their power, and a bullet does not have eyes. General Yue also told his warriors that they must abstain from relations with a woman that night so their bodies could ward off enemy bullets. Everyone took General Yue’s words to heart—their lives depended on it.

When the early birds had exhausted their songs, all the many heroic warriors, in twos and threes, mustered at the bridgehead, as if on their way to market. General Yue was disappointed in the sloppy way they answered the call, but upon further consideration, he decided not to punish them, as he might have done. Ten days earlier, after all, they had been farmers, used to being carefree and undisciplined, and joining him now, during a holiday season between crops, spoke well of them. In fact, some of the more committed individuals had actually shown up before him.

General Yue looked up into the misty sky. Though he could not see the sun, he figured it must be mid-morning. He had wanted to surprise the Germans in their beds, but it was too late for that. The plan to attack, however, would not be affected, given the difficulty in bringing together so many people at one time. The good news was that enthusiasm was running high. The men were talking and laughing, unlike the days soon after the massacre, when so many families had lost loved ones. After conferring with his two guardians, General Yue decided to start without delay by performing rites before the altar and the flags.

Sixi, the youngster in the cat-skin cap, who had been assigned to transmit General Yue’s orders, raised a ferocious beat on his gong to quiet the noisy gathering of warriors. The General jumped onto a bench and issued his orders:

“Find your contingents and squads, then line up to pay your respects at the divine altar.”

Following a brief commotion, they managed to fall in line, all sporting red turbans and red sashes. Some of them—descendants of men trained in martial arts, families in possession of weapons of war—carried spears; others held cleavers, and still others had shown up with tiger-tail whips. Far more men had arrived with ordinary tools: shovels, pitchforks, double-sided hooks, and manure rakes. But there is strength in numbers, and seven or eight hundred men made a force to be reckoned with. General Yue’s excitement was palpable, for he knew that only by being fired in a furnace does iron become steel, and only by the baptism of battle does a group of men become a fighting force. Transforming a bunch of farmers into the assemblage before him in a mere ten days was nothing short of miraculous. Having no experience in the business of organizing and deploying forces, he had relied on instructions passed quietly to him by Zhu Bajie, who had put in time as a soldier at a small military center in Tianjin, where he had received training in modern drilling, and had even had the privilege of seeing the famous Yuan Shikai, who was overseeing training at the center.

“Pay respects at the altar!” General Yue ordered. “And to the flags!”

The so-called divine altar was in reality an octagonal table with an incense burner. A pair of flags on fresh, unstripped willow branches had been planted in the ground behind the table, one white, the other red. The red flag was the altar banner, with the seven stars of the Big Dipper embroidered in white. The white flag was the commander’s banner, with a large “Yue” embroidered in red. The needlework was the contribution of two nimble-fingered unmarried daughters of tailor Du. Married women were not permitted to do this work, since the hands of married women are considered dirty and would break the spell.

A drizzle began to fall while they were paying their respects to the flags; there was no wind. Both flags hung limply. A flag that did not wave spoiled an otherwise perfect scene, but that could not be helped. On the other hand, the red turbans were resplendent against the overcast sky and in the light drizzle. The red wetness filled General Yue’s eyes and raised his excitement to a fever pitch.

In his role as the young hero Ai Hu in the novel The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, Sixi raised an ear-splitting din on his gong; he had been banging it so hard over a period of days that he had nearly destroyed the brass instrument and had broken the skin on the hand that was holding it, which was now wrapped in white cloth. The urgent beat of the gong focused the men’s minds and bodies on the task before them. A solemn, reverential mood settled heavily over the assemblage; a mystical aura grew in intensity. Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie lifted a lamb with its legs bound onto the octagonal table. The animal struggled, raising its head up off the table, and rolled its eyes as it pierced the air with a fearful bleat, a cry that wound its way around the men’s hearts and aroused sympathy for the animal. But sympathy was an emotion that had no place at that moment. War entails sacrifice. Before taking on the foreign devils, it was important to first sacrifice a lamb in anticipation of auspicious results. Sun Wukong pressed the lamb hard onto the table and stretched out its neck; Zhu Bajie picked up a hay-chopping knife and gripped the handle with both hands after spitting in them. He then took two steps backward, raised the knife over his head, and, with a shout, chopped the lamb’s head off. Sun Wukong held the severed head up to show everyone as a fountain of blood spewed from the animal’s truncated neck.

General Yue, a grave look frozen on his face, caught some of the blood in his hands and splashed it onto the limp flags, then got down on his knees and kowtowed. His men fell to their knees. After the General was back on his feet, he splashed the remaining blood over the heads of the people; there were far too many people and too little blood to reach more than a few of those nearest to him, who were thrilled to have been so honored. As he released the blood in his hands, the General chanted something, a request to all the spirits, since, as he had made clear to all, there would not be enough time to invite each and every spirit to attach itself to one of the men’s bodies. And so General Yue assumed the task of inviting all the spirits. “If you are pure of heart, the spirits will come,” he had said. Now he told them to call up their individual spirits in their minds and to enter a semi-hypnotic state. After the passage of some time, the General intoned loudly:

“Spirits of Heaven, spirits of the Earth, I respectfully invite you patriarchs to make your presence known. First, the Tang monk Tripitaka and Zhu Bajie; second, Sandy the Monk and Monkey Sun Wukong; third, Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang; fourth, Guan Gong and Zhao Zilong; fifth, Ji Dian, the Buddha; sixth, Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind; seventh, Shi Qian and Yang Xiangwu; eighth, Wu Song and Luo Cheng; ninth, Bianque, curer of maladies; and tenth, I invite the Heavenly King Natha and his three sons—Jinzha, Muzha, and Nazha—to lead a hundred thousand celestial soldiers down to earth to help exterminate the foreign army, for when that is done, the world will be at peace. I beseech the Jade Emperor to urgently give the command——”

The response was immediate, as a rush of extraordinary power infused the body of every man there; blood vessels dilated, energy levels rose, muscles grew taut—they were bursting with strength. A chorus of shouts rent the sky as they leaped and jumped, like big, predatory cats; they frothed at the mouth and glared in anger, flexing arms and kicking legs, every one of them assuming a superhuman pose.

General Yue issued his command:

“We march!”

The General, club in hand, set out on his horse. Sun Wukong, with the red altar flag, Zhu Bajie, with the white commander’s flag, and the little hero, Ai Hu, the gong beater, were hard on his heels. The spirited army marched behind them shouting out a cadence.

Masang Township had been built on the bank of the river; its southern boundary was the great Masang River levee, while a seemingly endless plain marked its northern end. A semicircular defensive wall, with a western, an eastern, and a northern gate, had been built to keep roving bandits at bay. The wall, as tall as an average man, was fronted by a moat with a drawbridge.

General Yue, at the head of his army, passed through the northern gate, followed by a contingent of thrill-seeking children. Armed with tree branches, dry sorghum stalks, and sunflower stems, they had painted their faces with ashes or red coloring. Taking their cue from the adults, they raised shouts in immature voices and swaggered in high spirits as they marched along. Old folks had taken positions on the wall to burn incense and pray for a battlefield victory.

General Yue picked up the pace when they reached the outskirts of town. Ai Hu’s urgent gong beats increased the speed of marching. The railroad shed was not far from town; in fact, it was visible as soon as the army passed through the gate. A light drizzle created patches of mist over the fields. Winter wheat had already turned green; the smell of mud was in the air. Flowers on the sowthistle facing the sun in ditches and furrows looked like specks of gold. Roadside wild apricots were in full bloom, turning the trees a snowy white. A pair of turtledoves, startled by the marching column, flew out of the underbrush; cuckoos made a racket in a distant grove.

The Qingdao-to-Gaomi portion of the Jiaozhou-Jinan line was basically completed; the tracks lay cold and detached in the open field, like a dragon whose head was visible but whose tail extended out of view. Men were already out working on the tracks, pounding spikes into the ground and creating a symphony of metallic rhythms. Milky white smoke streamed into the sky from the railroad shed, and even at that distance—several li—General Yue detected the aroma of meat cooking.

When he was about one li from the railroad shed, General Yue turned to look at his troops. A disciplined army when it set out from town had devolved into a ragtag assemblage of men with mud-caked shoes, stomping along like wayward bears. The General had Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie slow down and told Ai Hu to stop beating the gong. Once the main body of troops had caught up, he issued his orders:

“Clean the mud from your feet, my sons, and get ready to attack!”

They did as he commanded, but gobs of mud wound up in other men’s faces, which led to unpleasant grumblings. Some of the men shook their feet so hard that their shoes flew off with the mud. Seeing that the time was ripe, General Yue announced loudly:

“Iron head, iron waist, iron stockade, impervious to bullets. Valiant warriors, charge the enemy, tear up the tracks, kill the foreign soldiers, and bring peace for generations to come!”

After exhorting his troops, General Yue raised his club and, with a war whoop, bravely led the charge, with Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie right behind him, holding high the war flags. Ai Hu fell face first into the mud and lost his shoes to the gooey mess. But he scrambled to his feet and took off running barefoot. Shouts emerged from the throats of the rest of the army as they launched their attack on the railroad shed like a swarm of bees.

The men working on the tracks thought it was an opera troupe heading their way, not realizing that the masses were rebelling until the invaders were nearly upon them. They threw down their tools and fled for their lives.

Guarding the work under way was a squad of German marines, a mere dozen men. The earsplitting shouts interrupted their breakfast, and bad news greeted the squad leader when he stepped outside to see what was happening. He rushed back inside and ordered his men to grab their rifles. By the time General Yue and his men were ten or fifteen meters from the shed, the armed Germans were already outside with their rifles.

General Yue saw puffs of white smoke emerge from several of the German rifles and heard the crack of gunfire. Someone screamed behind him, but he had the time neither to turn back to look nor to think. He envisioned himself as a piece of driftwood propelled by surging waves as he virtually flew into the German devils’ shed, in the center of which stood a large table with a pot of stewed pork and some shiny silverware. The meaty smell filled his nostrils. The top half of a German marine had made it under the table; his long legs had not. Zhu Bajie’s rake quickly made its mark on the man’s legs, producing a long and loud shriek. The words sounded like gibberish, but the meaning was clear—he was crying out for his mother and father. General Yue ran out of the shed to lead the pursuit of the fleeing German marines. Most were headed for the sub-grade of the tracks, trying to escape the mob of shouting men behind them.

One of the marines was running in the opposite direction. General Yue and Ai Hu went after him. The man did not seem to be running all-out, and the distance between them shrank rapidly. General Yue watched in fascination as the man stumbled along stiff-legged, as if he had sticks for legs. It was almost comical. Then, without warning, the German dove into a ditch, out of which a puff of green smoke rose almost immediately. An instant later, Ai Hu, who was running ahead of the General, jerked upward before tumbling headlong to the ground. At first he thought the youngster had gotten his legs tangled up, but only until he saw fresh blood seeping from a hole in his forehead. Ai Hu, he knew for certain, had been hit by a bullet from the German’s gun, and he was grief-stricken. He charged the enemy marine, swinging his club over his head, and was nearly brought down by a bullet that whizzed past his ear. But in no time he was upon the German, who came out to meet him, a bayonet attached to his rifle. One swing of his club knocked the rifle out of the man’s hands; with a fearful shout, he turned and ran down the ditch, with General Yue hot on his heels. The German’s high-topped boots slurped in the mud with every step, as if he were dragging mud buckets behind him. General Yue swung his club again, this time connecting with the nape of the man’s neck. A strange bleat burst from the man’s lips, whose body released a muttony odor, and the General’s immediate thought was that the man’s mother might have been a ewe.

The German tripped and fell, burying his face in the mud, and he no sooner realized what had happened than General Yue’s club had flattened his tall helmet. The General was about to keep clubbing him when he saw that the man’s blue eyes were like those of the lamb they’d sacrificed earlier—sad eyes, blinking pitifully, and the General’s wrist failed him. This time the club hit the German marine not on the head but on the shoulder.

CHAPTER NINE Masterpiece

Razor-tipped knife in hand, Zhao Jia stood in the center of the parade ground, a bowlegged young apprentice at his side, facing a tall pine post to which the failed assassin of Yuan Shikai was bound, awaiting execution by the slicing death of five hundred cuts. Arrayed behind him were dozens of high-ranking officers of the New Army, seated on fine horses, while behind the execution post, five thousand foot soldiers stood in tight formation, looking from a distance like a forest, and up close like marionettes. Dry early winter winds swept powdery alkaline dirt into the soldiers’ faces. All those gazes made Zhao Jia, who had carried out hundreds of executions, slightly nervous, and somewhat self-conscious. By force of will he suppressed these feelings, which could only have a negative impact on his work, and focused on the condemned man before him, refusing to look at either the mounted officers or the formation of soldiers.

Something his shifu, Grandma Yu, had told him was on his mind: A model executioner does not see a living being as he prepares to carry out his task. Before him is nothing but strips of muscle and flesh, discrete internal organs, and a skeleton. After forty years in the trade, Zhao Jia had attained that degree of perfection. But for some reason, on this day he was on edge. After plying his trade for decades, during which he had ended the lives of nearly a thousand people, before him now was the finest specimen of the male body he had ever seen: a proud nose and capacious mouth, slanting eyebrows and starry eyes, his naked body a scene of perfection, with chiseled chest muscles and a flat, taut abdomen, all covered with glossy bronze skin. What truly caught his attention, however, was the ubiquitous taunting smile on the face of the young man, who was returning Zhao Jia’s scrutiny. A sense of shame engulfed Zhao in much the same way that a misbehaving child cannot bear to look his father in the eye.

Three steel cannons stood on the edge of the parade ground, busily attended by a squad of a dozen soldiers. Three rapid explosions startled Zhao Jia and made his ears ring. For a moment that was all he could hear. The acrid smell of gunpowder nearly choked him. The condemned man nodded in the direction of the cannons, as if in praise of the artillerymen’s skill. Zhao Jia, who was badly shaken, saw flames spew from the mouths of the cannons, followed immediately by another series of explosions. He watched as the bright, golden-hued shell casings flew behind the big guns, so hot they seared the patches of grass they landed on, marked by puffs of white smoke. Then three more explosions, after which the artillerymen stepped behind their guns and stood at attention, a sign that the fusillade was over, although the echoes hung in the air.

“Present—arms!” came a shouted command.

Five thousand soldiers raised Steyr rifles over their heads, forming a forest of long guns, a vast expanse of glossy blue steel to the rear of the execution post. Zhao Jia stared tongue-tied at this demonstration of military might. He had observed many martial drills by the Imperial Guard during his years in the capital, but nothing he had seen could compare with what he was witnessing today. The effect on him was apprehension and a powerful sense of unease. His self-confidence was shaken, his self-possessed demeanor, which had never wavered on the capital’s marketplace execution ground, now gone.

The foot soldiers and mounted officials remained at respectful attention for the arrival of their commander, which was heralded by the blare of trumpets and a clash of cymbals. A palanquin, covered in dark green wool and carried by eight bearers, emerged from a path through a grove of white poplars like a multi-decked ship riding the waves, crossed the parade ground, and settled gently earthward in front of the execution post. A young recruit ran up with a stepping stool, which he placed on the ground before reaching up to pull back the curtain. Out stepped a hulking figure, a red-capped official with big ears, a square face, and a prominent moustache. Zhao Jia recognized him immediately, an acquaintance from twenty-three years earlier, when he was still the young scion of an official family; now he was Commander of the New Army, His Excellency Yuan Shikai, who, in a break from the usual protocol, had summoned him from the capital to Tianjin to carry out the execution.

Dressed in full uniform under a fox fur cape, he cut an impressive figure. With a wave to the military complement assembled on the parade ground, he sat in a chair draped with a tiger skin. The commanding officer of the mounted troops shouted:

“Parade rest—!”

The soldiers shouldered their rifles on command, sending a deafening shock wave across the field. A young officer with a ruddy complexion and yellowed teeth, a sheet of paper in his hand, bent low to whisper something in Excellency Yuan’s ear. With a frown, Yuan turned his head away, as if to avoid the young officer’s bad breath. But “yellow teeth” would not let the distance between his mouth and Yuan’s ear increase. Zhao Jia could not have known, and never would learn, that the dark, gaunt young man with the yellow teeth would one day be known throughout the land as the Imperial Restorationist General Zhang Xun. Zhao Jia actually felt sorry for Yuan Shikai, being subjected to the stench from Zhang Xun’s mouth. Once Zhang had finished what he had to say, Yuan Shikai nodded and straightened up in his chair, while Zhang Xun stood on a bench and read what was on the paper in a voice loud enough for all to hear:

“The condemned, twenty-eight-year-old Qian Xiongfei, known also as Pengju, is from the city of Yiyang in Hunan Province. In the twenty-first year of the Guangxu reign, Qian took up studies at a military school in Japan, where he cut off his queue and joined an outlaw gang of conspirators. Upon his return to China, he joined forces with the Kang Youwei–Liang Qichao rebel clique. Under instructions from Kang and Liang, he assumed the role of a loyalist and infiltrated the Imperial Guard, where he operated as a planted agent for the rebels. When the Wuxu rebels were executed in the capital, like the fox that mourns the death of the hare, the frenzied Qian made an attempt on the life of our commander on the eleventh day of the tenth month. Heaven interceded to spare the life of Excellency Yuan. The criminal Qian was thwarted from carrying out this sinister and unpardonable act. In accordance with the laws of the Great Qing Empire, anyone found guilty of an assassination attempt on a representative of the Court is to suffer the slicing death of five hundred cuts. The sentence, approved by the Board of Punishments, will be carried out by an executioner brought from the capital to Tianjin…”

Zhao Jia felt the eyes of the assembled witnesses on him. Sending an executioner from the capital to the provinces was unprecedented, not just during the Qing Dynasty, but throughout the country’s history. The enormity of his responsibility put him in a state approaching alarm.

Now that the death warrant had been read, Yuan Shikai removed his fox fur cape and stood up, his eyes sweeping the formation of five thousand soldiers before he began to speak. Blessed with powerful lungs, he began, his words ringing out with great sonority:

“Men, I have been a military commander for many years and love my troops as if you were my own sons. If a mosquito bites you, my heart aches. This you already know. The idea that Qian Xiongfei, whom I had regarded with such favor, could one day turn his deadly rage on his own commander was alien to me. This act came as not only a horrible shock, but an even greater disappointment.”

“Men,” Qian Xiongfei shouted from the execution post to which he was bound, “the treacherous Yuan Shikai has betrayed friends and allies in order to seek Imperial favor, crimes for which death is too good for him. Do not be taken in by his fine-sounding words!”

Zhang Xun, who saw Yuan Shikai’s face redden, ran up to the execution post and punched Qian Xiongfei in the face.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut and die with a little class!”

Qian spat a mouthful of bloody saliva in Zhang Xun’s face.

With a wave of his hand, Yuan Shikai stopped Zhang Xun, who was about to hit Qian a second time.

“Qian Xiongfei, you were a wizard with a gun and smarter than most people. That was why I gave you a pair of gold-handled pistols and granted you special responsibilities as a trusted confidant. My benevolence not only went unappreciated, but actually led you to make an attempt on my life. If that can be tolerated, what then cannot? Even though I nearly died at your hands, I grieve over the loss of your talent and cannot bear the thought of your punishment. But the law can show no favoritism, and military law is unimpeachable. I am powerless to save you from it.”

“If you’re going to kill me, do it, but spare me the sermon!”

“Now that things have reached this point, I can only take a lesson from Marquis Zhuge Liang, who ‘wept as he beheaded Ma Su.’”

“Excellency Yuan, drop the act!”

Yuan Shikai shook his head and sighed.

“Since you insist on being stubborn and stupid, there is nothing I can do for you.”

“I am prepared to die, and have been for some time. Do what you must, Excellency Yuan!”

“For you I have done everything humanity and duty call for. Tell me of your last wishes, and I shall see that they are carried out.”

“Excellency Yuan, though Qian Ding, the Gaomi County Magistrate, is my brother, I disavowed our kinship long ago. I ask that he not be implicated in my activities.”

“You may rest easy on that score.”

“I thank Your Excellency for that,” Qian said, “but that you would send someone to remove the bullets from my guns to ensure my defeat when victory was within reach was unimaginable. Pity, what a pity!”

“No one removed your bullets,” Yuan said with a laugh. “It was heaven’s intervention.”

“If heaven decided to spare the life of Yuan Shikai,” he said with a sigh, “then you win, Excellency.”

Yuan Shikai cleared his throat and declared:

“Men, your commander’s heart is breaking over the need to subject Qian Xiongfei to the slicing death, for he was once an officer with a bright future. I had great expectations for him, but he cast his lot with those rebelling against the Throne and committed a heinous, unpardonable act. It is not I who am putting him to death, nor the Throne. No, this is an act of suicide. I would have been willing to grant him a simple execution, keeping his body intact, but the national penal code is involved, and I dare not bend the law for one of my own. In my desire to allow him a dignified death, I made a point of asking the Board of Punishments to send us its finest executioner. Qian Xiongfei, that is my final gift to you, and I hope you calmly accept your punishment as an example for the soldiers of our New Army. Listen to me, men. You have been brought here to witness this execution in order, as the adage goes, to scare the monkeys by killing the chicken. It is my hope that you will take away with you a lesson learned on the body of Qian Xiongfei, one of fealty and good faith, caution and prudence, fidelity to the Throne and obedience to your superiors. If you act in accordance with my guidance, I can guarantee you a bright future.”

Led by their commanding officers, the soldiers shouted in unison:

“Absolute fidelity to the Throne, devoted service to His Excellency!”

Yuan Shikai returned to his seat and nodded imperceptibly to his aide, Zhang Xun, who grasped his meaning at once.

“Let the execution begin!” he shouted.

Zhao Jia stepped up in front of Qian Xiongfei, where his apprentice handed him a knife of the highest quality, one made specifically for this purpose.

“My friend,” he said under his breath, “I ask your pardon.”

Despite his attempt to face death without flinching, Qian Xiongfei could not keep his pale lips from quivering, and his irrepressible terror was exactly what Zhao Jia needed to recoup his pride of profession. In that instant, his heart turned as hard as steel and he was as calm as still water. He no longer saw a living human being in front of him. Bound to the execution post was nothing more than blood, flesh, tendons, and bones, assembled in a pattern determined by heavenly forces. Without warning, he drove his fist into Qian Xiongfei’s chest directly above the heart. Qian’s eyes rolled up into his head, and before the effect of that blow had worn off, with a quick circular motion of the hand holding the knife, Zhao snipped a circle of flesh the size of a bronze coin off of the other side of Qian’s chest. He had neatly excised one of Qian’s nipples, leaving a wound that looked like a blind man’s eye.

In accordance with an unwritten practice of the profession, Zhao Jia held the nipple on the tip of his blade in full view of His Excellency Yuan and the officers behind him. Then he displayed the fleshy coin to the five thousand foot soldiers in front of him, as his apprentice announced:

“The first cut!”

The detached nipple seemed to him to jiggle. He heard the rapid, nervous breathing of the officers behind him and a forced little cough from Excellency Yuan. He did not have to look to picture the bloodless faces of the mounted officers. He knew also that their hearts, including Yuan Shikai’s, were pounding at that moment. And that thought instilled in him pleasant feelings of gratification. In recent years, many important men had fallen into the hands of Board of Punishments executioners, and he had grown used to seeing pitiful exhibitions on the execution ground by high-ranking officials who had swaggered through life when they were in power. Not one in a hundred was worthy of the manly Qian Xiongfei, who could suppress his feelings of terror while undergoing cruel torture to the point that they were virtually imperceptible. At that moment, at least, Zhao felt a sense of supremacy. I am not me; I am the agent of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, the embodiment of the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty!

Sunlight flashed on his blade as, with a flick of his wrist, the piece of human flesh flew from the tip of the knife high into the air, like a pellet, before settling heavily on the head of a swarthy soldier, like a glob of bird shit. The man screeched, as if a brick had landed on his head; he wobbled uncertainly.

Based on an age-old executioner’s custom, the first piece of the victim is a sacrifice to heaven.

Fresh blood oozed from the hole in Qian’s chest like a string of bright red pearls. Some dripped to the ground; some snaked down from the edges of the wound to stain his muscular chest.

The second cut, taken from the left side, was as deftly and neatly accomplished as the first. The remaining nipple was cut away. Qian’s chest was now decorated by matching holes the size of bronze coins. Less blood flowed this time. The blow to his chest had made his heart contract, and that had abated the flow of blood throughout his body, a technique that had evolved out of the experience of generations of executioners in the Bureau of Detentions, perfection based on trial and error.

Qian maintained the noble expression of fearlessness he had worn before the first cut, but a series of moans so soft that only Zhao Jia could hear them emerged, seemingly from his ears, not his mouth. Zhao forced himself to look away from Qian’s face. He was used to hearing wretched shrieks of pain from condemned prisoners as they were being sliced, howls that did nothing to disturb his unfaltering composure. But not hearing a sound from the valiant Qian Xiongfei, who clenched his teeth to keep from crying out, actually rattled him, as if something terrible were about to happen. Forcibly controlling his emotions, he raised the fleshy coin on the tip of his knife, as he knew he must do, displaying it first to His Excellency, then to the officers, and last to the ashen-faced soldiers, who stood before him like clay statues. His apprentice announced:

“The second cut!”

Zhao Jia had figured out that the legal and psychological foundation for the ritual of displaying fleshy parts sliced from the prisoner’s body to the officials in charge of the execution and to the observers was built on three principles: First, it was a display of the harsh rule of law and the unflinching dedication to it by the executioner. Second, it served to instill the fear of retribution in the minds of witnesses, who could be counted on to turn away from evil thoughts and criminal behavior. That was why the Imperial Court had staged public executions and encouraged attendance by the populace throughout the nation’s dynastic history. Third, it satisfied people’s bloodlust. The finest play ever staged cannot compete with the spectacle of a public slicing, and for this more than any other reason, executioners in the capital were contemptuous of actors, who were so highly favored in royal circles.

As he held up the second piece of Qian’s flesh for all to see, Zhao was reminded of scenes from his youth, when he was learning the trade from his shifu. In order to perfect the fine art of the slicing death, executioners for the Bureau of Detentions worked closely with a butcher shop just outside Chongwen Gate. During the off-season, the shifu took his students to the shop to practice their skills; there they helped turn the meat from countless pigs into filling for dumplings, and in the process developed a dexterity of hand and eye as accurate as a scale. If the call was for a pound of meat, a single cut would produce exactly sixteen ounces. When Grandma Yu was the keeper of the Bureau of Detentions official seal, the execution team opened a butcher shop on Walking Stick Lane in the Xisi, or West Fourth, District, where they slaughtered animals in back and sold the meat up front, enjoying a brisk business until one day someone revealed their identities. People not only stopped coming to buy their meat, they obsessively avoided the area, fearing they might be taken off the street and butchered.

He recalled that his shifu kept a secret book with brittle, yellowing pages and crude drawings, with coded writing. According to Grandma Yu, the book, Secrets of a Penal Office, had been passed down by a Ming Dynasty grandma; it comprised lists of punishments, their concrete applications, matters to take into consideration, and copious illustrations. In a word, it was a classic text for executioners. Shifu pointed out to him and his fellow apprentices an illustration and accompanying text that described in detail the particulars of the slicing death, of which there were three levels. The first level required 3,357 cuts. For the second level it was 2,896, and for the third, 1,585. Regardless of how many cuts there were to be, he recalled hearing Shifu say, the final cut was the one that ended the prisoner’s life. So when the cutting began, the spacing between cuts must be precisely designed to fit the sex and physique of the condemned individual. If the prisoner died before the required number of cuts had been reached or was still alive after, the executioner had not done his job well. His shifu said that the minimum standard for the slicing death was the proportional size of the flesh removed—when placed on a scale, there should be only minimal differences. To that end, during an execution, the man with the knife must have his emotions under complete control. His mind must be clear and focused, his hand ruthless and resolute; he must simultaneously be like a maiden practicing embroidery and a butcher slaughtering a mule. The slightest hesitancy or indecision, even a spur-of-the-moment thought, would affect the hand in unwanted ways. This, the pinnacle of achievement, was exceedingly difficult to attain. The musculature of a human being varies from spot to spot in density and coherence. Knowing where to insert the knife, and with how much pressure, requires a skill that, over time, had become second nature. Gifted executioners, such as Elder Gao Tao and Elder Zhang Tang, sliced not with a knife and not with their hands, but with their minds and their eyes. Among the thousands of slicing deaths carried out down through the ages, none, it seems, had achieved perfection and been worthy of the term “masterpiece.” In virtually every case, what was accomplished was merely the dissection of a living human being. That appeared to explain why fewer cuts were required for slicing deaths in recent years. In the current dynasty, five hundred was the apex. And yet, precious few executions lasted nearly that long. Board of Punishments executioners, in respectful devotion to the sacred nature of this ancient profession, performed their duties in accordance with established practices handed down over time. But at the provincial, prefectural, sub-prefectural, and county levels, dragons and fish were all jumbled together—the good mixed with the bad—and most practitioners were hacks and local riffraff who did shoddy work and exerted minimal effort. If on a prisoner sentenced to five hundred cuts they made it to two or three hundred, that was considered a success. Most of the time, they chopped the victim into several chunks and quickly put him out of his misery.

Zhao Jia flung the second piece of meat cut from Qian’s body to the ground. To an executioner, the second piece of the victim is a sacrifice to the earth.

When Zhao was displaying the piece of meat on the tip of his knife for all to see, he was, he felt, the central figure, while the tip of his knife and the flesh stuck on it were the center of that center. The eyes of everyone in attendance, from the supremely prideful Excellency Yuan down to the most junior soldier in the formation, followed the progress of his knife, or, more accurately, the progress of Qian’s flesh impaled on that knife. When Qian’s flesh flew into the air, the observers’ eyes followed its ascent; when Qian’s flesh was flung to the ground, the observers’ eyes followed its descent. According to his shifu, in slicing deaths of old, every piece of flesh cut from the victim was laid out on a specially prepared surface, so that when the execution was completed, the official observer, along with members of the victim’s family, could come forward to count. One piece too many or too few was a serious transgression. According to his master, one slapdash executioner of the Song Dynasty made one too many cuts, and the complaint by the victim’s family cost him his life. Public executioner has always been a precarious profession, since a poor performance can itself be a death sentence. Consider: you must remove pieces of roughly the same size, the last cut must be the fatal one, and you must keep track of every cut you make. Three thousand three hundred and fifty-seven cuts require a full day, and there were times, by order of the sentencing authority, when the process was stretched out to three or as many as five days, making the work that much harder. A staunchly dedicated executioner invariably collapsed from fatigue at the end of a slicing death. As time went on, executioners heeded the travails of their predecessors by flinging away the excised flesh rather than laying it out for others to count. Old execution grounds were known for the wild dogs, crows, and vultures that prowled the area; slicing deaths provided feast days for these visitors.

He dipped a clean chamois into a basin of salty water and wiped the blood from Qian’s chest. The knife holes now resembled the fresh scars of severed tree branches. Then he made his third cut on Qian’s chest. Also about the size of a bronze coin, it was made in the shape of a fish scale. This fresh wound abutted the edge of one of the earlier wounds but retained its distinct shape. His shifu had said that this had a name of its own—the fish-scale cut, for that is exactly what it resembled. The flesh exposed by the third cut was a ghostly white, from which only a few drops of blood poked out, the sign of a good beginning; that augured well for the entire process, to his immense satisfaction. Shifu had said that a successful slicing death was marked by a modest flow of blood. He had told him that the blow to the heart before the first cut constricted the victim’s major arteries. Most of the blood was then concentrated in his abdomen and calves. Only then can you make a series of cuts, like slicing a cucumber, without killing the victim. Absent this technique, blood will flow unchecked, creating a terrible stench and staining the body, which has a powerful effect on the observers and destroys the symmetry of the cuts—a real mess. To be sure, a lifetime of experience had equipped these men with a talent to deal with any unanticipated situation. They were not easily flustered or caught unprepared. For instance, if a heavy flow of blood made cutting difficult or impossible, the immediate recourse was to empty a bucket of cold water on the victim. The shock would constrict his arteries. If that did not work, a bucket of vinegar would. According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, vinegar is an astringent whose properties work to stanch the flow of blood. If that too failed, removing a piece of flesh from each calf served as a bloodletting. This last technique, however, normally led to an early death from a loss of blood. But Qian’s arteries appeared to be well constricted. Zhao Jia could relax, for indications were that today’s affair had a good chance of success, and the bucket of aged Shanxi vinegar on the ground near the post would not be needed. In the unwritten code of the profession, the shop that supplied a bucket of vinegar received no payment for it and was required to give the executioner a “vinegar reclaim fee” if it was not used. The vinegar had to be donated by the merchant, not sold, and a fee for its non-use was an extravagantly unreasonable demand. And yet the Qing Dynasty placed greater value on ancestral precedents than on the law. However outmoded or irrational a practice, so long as there was a historical precedent, it could not and must not be abandoned. To the contrary, it gained increased inviolability over time. In Qing tradition, a criminal who was about to be executed enjoyed the privilege of sampling food and drink at any establishment passed on his way to the execution ground, free of charge. And the executioner enjoyed the privilege of receiving a free bucket of vinegar as well as a fee for not using it. By rights, the vinegar should have been returned to the shop that supplied it, but it was sold to a pharmacy instead, for now that it had soaked up the blood airs of the executed criminal, it was no longer ordinary vinegar, but a cure-all for the sick and dying, and had acquired the name “blessed vinegar.” Naturally, the pharmacy paid for this bucket of “blessed vinegar,” and since executioners were given no fees for the tasks they performed, they were forced to rely upon such earnings to make a living. He flung the third piece of flesh into the air, a sacrifice to the ghosts and gods. His apprentice announced:

“The third cut!”

Having flung away the third piece, Zhao went immediately to the fourth cut. Qian’s flesh was crisp, easy to cut, a quality he found only in criminals who were in excellent physical shape. Slicing up a criminal as fat as a pig or as skinny as a monkey was exhausting work. But beyond exhaustion, a messy job was inevitable. An apt comparison would be a fine chef forced to work with substandard ingredients. Even the most skillful preparation cannot produce an outstanding banquet without the finest ingredients. Or for a carpenter who lacks the right material for his task, even uncanny workmanship is inadequate to produce high-grade furniture. Shifu told him that during the Daoguang reign he was assigned the task of dispatching a woman who had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. The woman was as blubbery as a sack of starchy noodles, so loose that her flesh quivered whenever the knife touched her. The stuff he cut off her body was like frothy snot, and not even the dogs would eat it. And she shrieked like a banshee, howling and wailing that so upset him, a work of art was out of the question. He said there had been good specimens of her sex, women whose skin and flesh had the texture of congealed fat that cut with ease and precision. It was like cutting through autumn water. The knife moved on its own, without the slightest deviation. He said he had dispatched just such an ideal woman during the Xianfeng reign. She had been condemned, it was said, as a prostitute who had murdered one of her clients for money. According to Shifu, she was a woman of surpassing beauty, the sort of gentle, demure woman who draws people to her at first sight. No one would have believed that she could actually commit murder. He said that the greatest degree of compassion an executioner can bestow upon his victim is to do his job well. If you respect or love her, then it is your duty to see that she becomes a model for execution. If you truly respect her, then you must fearlessly make her body the canvas on which you display the highest standards of your artistry. It is no different from a renowned actor performing onstage. Shifu said that so many Peking citizens thronged to watch the beautiful prostitute suffer the slicing death that more than twenty people were crushed or trampled to death on the marketplace execution ground. He said that in the presence of such a beautiful body, it would have been a sin, a crime, not to put all he had into the task before him, heart and soul. More to the point, if he had made a mess of things, an angry crowd might have torn him to pieces, for Peking crowds at executions were harder to please than any other. He did a fine job that day, with the cooperation of the woman herself. Seen from one angle, it was, from start to finish, a stage performance, acted out by the executioner and his victim. Such performances were spoiled if the criminal overdid the screaming part; but a total lack of sounds was just as bad. The ideal was just the right number of rhythmic wails, producing sham expressions of sympathy among the observers while satisfying their evil aestheticism. Shifu said that he had gained an insight into people only after thousands of individuals had died at his hands over a stretch of decades: All people, he said, are two-faced beasts. One of those faces displays the virtues of humanity, justice, and morality, representing the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues. The other is the face of bloodsucking thieves and whores. The appetite for evil is stimulated in anyone who willingly watches the spectacle of a beautiful woman being dismembered one cut at a time, whether that person be a man of honor, a virtuous wife, or a chaste maiden. Subjecting a beautiful woman to the slicing death is mankind’s most exquisitely cruel exhibition. The people who flock to such exhibitions, Shifu said, are far more malicious than those of us who wield the knife. He said he spent many sleepless nights reliving every detail of that day’s execution, like a chess master replaying each move in a brilliant match that has forged his reputation. That night he mentally dismembered her body, then pictured it all coming back together. Her tearful yet melodic moans and shrieks swirled around his ears from start to finish in an unbroken stream. And the captivating odor that emerged from her body as it was being ravaged by his knife filled his nostrils. An ill wind struck the nape of his neck, a swoosh created by the beating wings of impatient, rapacious birds of prey. His infatuated recollections paused briefly at that juncture, like a pose struck by an actor on the operatic stage. At this point, little skin or flesh remained on her body, but her face was unmarked, and it was time for the coup de grace. His heart lurched as he sliced off a piece of her heart. It was deep red, the color of a fresh date; he held it on the tip of his knife like a precious gem as he looked into her ashen oval face, moved by the sight. He heard a sigh emerge from somewhere deep down in her chest. Sparks—not many, just a few—seemed to glimmer in her eyes, from which two large teardrops slipped down her face. He saw her lips move with difficulty and heard her say, soft as a mosquito’s buzz: “not… guilty…” The light went out of her eyes; the flame of life was extinguished. Her head, which had rocked back and forth throughout the ordeal, slumped forward, covered by a curtain of hair so black it looked as if it had just been taken out of a dyeing vat.

Zhao Jia’s fiftieth cut completed the paring of Qian’s chest muscles. The first tenth of his work was now behind him. After his apprentice handed him a new knife, he took two deep breaths in order to normalize his breathing. Qian’s ribs were exposed, as he could see, connected by thin membranes. The man’s heart was pumping like a jackrabbit wrapped in gauze. He felt good about his progress so far. The flow of blood had been stanched, and the fiftieth cut had removed the chest muscles, just as he had planned. The sole blemish so far was that the valiant man bound to the post had not made a sound, had not yelled in pain. This flaw had turned what should have been a spirited drama into a mime performance that lacked appeal. In the eyes of these people, he was thinking, I am a butcher, a meat merchant. He deeply admired this Qian fellow, who, except for a few barely perceptible moans during the first two cuts, had not made a sound. He looked into the man’s face, and what he saw were: hair standing up straight, eyes wide and round, the dark pupils nearly blue, the whites now red, nostrils flaring, teeth grinding, and taut cheek muscles bulging like a pair of mice. The ferocity of that face secretly astounded him. Soreness crept into the hand holding the knife. If the victim was a man, tradition demanded that once the chest muscles had been pared away, next to be taken from the body were his genitals. For this, three cuts were permitted, and the size of the excised portions need not complement other portions. Decades of experience had shown his shifu that what male subjects feared most was not the loss of skin or tendons, but the treasured object between their legs. Not because it was especially painful—it wasn’t—but because it gave rise to a psychological dread and a sense of shame. Most men would choose to lose their head over losing their maleness. According to the shifu, once you have removed even the bravest man’s genitals, you have taken the fight out of him, the same effect as cutting the mane of a warhorse or the plume of a proud rooster. Zhao Jia turned away from the solemn and tragic face that was putting him on edge and sized up his flaccid organ. It was shriveled pathetically, like a silkworm tucked into its cocoon. I’m truly sorry, young friend, he muttered to himself as he picked it out of its nest with his left hand and, in one lightning-fast motion, sliced it off at its base. His apprentice announced:

“The fifty-first cut!”

He flung the once-treasured object away, and a skinny, mangy dog that had come out of nowhere snatched it up and darted in amid the military formation, where it began to yelp as soldiers kicked it. A forlorn howl of despair tore from the mouth of Qian, who until then had endured the torture by clenching his teeth. Zhao Jia had expected that, and yet it shocked him. He was not aware that he was blinking lightning-fast, but his hands were burning and swelling, as if red-hot needles were pricking his fingers. It was a discomfort he could not possibly describe. Qian’s howl—neither human nor beastly—had a horrifying quality that both unnerved and sent shivers through the ranks of the Right Militant Guard, who were witnessing the execution. Logic demanded that His Excellency ought to have been moved by the sound, but Zhao Jia had no time to turn back and scrutinize the reaction of Yuan and the high-ranking officials around him. He heard snorts of terror from the horses, which were loudly champing the bits in their mouths and agitating the bells hanging from their necks; he saw how the tight leggings arrayed behind the execution post seemed to be straining to break free. Qian’s body squirmed in concert with his repeated howls, while his heart, which could be seen behind exposed ribs, was thumping loudly enough to hear and so violently that Zhao Jia actually worried it might leap out of his chest. If that happened, the execution, a slicing death that had been days in the planning, would end in abject failure. Not only would it be a loss of face for the Board of Punishments, but it would make even His Excellency Yuan look bad. That was the last thing Zhao wanted, but it was made more possible by Qian’s head, which began to rock backward and forward and from side to side, producing loud thumps against the post. His eyes were blood-streaked, his features twisted beyond recognition, a look that would forever haunt the dreams of anyone seeing that face. Zhao Jia had never seen anything like it, nor, he knew, had his shifu. His hands were tingly and so uncomfortably swollen he could barely hold the knife. He glanced up at his apprentice, whose face was the color of clay and whose mouth hung wide open. For him to take over and finish the job was out of the question. So he forced himself to bend down and dig out one of Qian’s testicles, which had shrunk into his body. One swift cut detached it. The fifty-second cut, he coached his apprentice, who stood there transfixed until he was able to announce, barely able to keep from sobbing:

“The… fifty-second… cut…”

He tossed the sac to the ground, where it lay in the dirt looking hideous. For the first time in all his years in the profession, he experienced something unique, for him, at least: disgust.

“Fucking… bastard!” In an earthshaking display of loathing, Qian Xiongfei somehow found the strength to curse: “Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai, you turncoat, I may not be able to kill you in this life, but I will return as a ghost to take your life!”

Zhao Jia, afraid to turn his head, could only imagine the look on Excellency Yuan’s face at that moment. Desperate to finish the job, he bent down again, dug out the second testicle, and cut it off. But as he was straightening up, Qian Xiongfei leaned over and bit him on the head. Since he was wearing a cap, the bite did not inflict serious damage, but it did break the skin, even through the cloth cap. Well after the incident, Zhao shuddered when he considered the possibility that Qian could have bitten him on the neck and chewed his way into his throat; or if he had bitten him on the ear, he’d have lost that organ for sure. Experiencing a strange pain on his scalp, he jerked his head upward and connected with Qian’s chin. He heard the frightful crunch of Qian’s teeth as they bit through his tongue, which sent blood spurting from his mouth. But that did not keep him from hurling epithets, now less intelligible, though by no means incoherent, and still directed at Yuan Shikai. The fifty-third cut. As Zhao Jia threw down the thing in his hand, he saw flashes of light in front of his eyes, he felt light-headed, and his stomach lurched. He clenched his teeth to keep whatever it was down, telling himself that he mustn’t vomit, not now; for if he did, the power of intimidation enjoyed by Board of Punishments executioners would die in his hands.

“Cut out his tongue!”

Yuan Shikai’s voice thundered behind him in all its fury. Instinctively, he turned to look. Yuan’s face was livid as he smacked his knee with his fist and forcefully repeated his command:

“Cut out his tongue!”

Zhao Jia wanted to tell him that this was not the way of his ancestors, but the look of rage, born of mortification, on His Excellency’s face made him swallow his words. What good would it have done to say anything, when even the Empress Dowager respected almost anything that Excellency Yuan said? So he turned his attention to Qian’s tongue.

Qian’s damaged tongue had turned his face into too bloody a mess to make Zhao’s knife effective. Cutting out the tongue of a crazed condemned individual was a bit like trying to pull the teeth of a tiger. But Zhao was not foolhardy enough to ignore Yuan’s command. Without wasting time, he thought back to his shifu’s teachings and what experience he had gained from them, but nothing helpful came to mind. Qian was still shouting invectives. Excellency Yuan repeated his command yet again:

“I said, cut out his tongue!”

At that critical moment, the spirit of the profession’s founder saved the day with an inspiration. After placing the knife between his teeth, he picked a bucket of water up off the ground and emptied it into Qian’s face, bringing an immediate halt to his curses. Then he wrapped his hands around Qian’s throat and squeezed with all his might. Qian’s face turned the color of pig’s liver as his purple tongue emerged from between his teeth. Squeezing the man’s throat with one hand, Zhao reached up with the other, took the knife from between his teeth, and sliced off the tongue. This spur-of-the-moment change to the ritual brought a roar from the formation of soldiers, like a wave crashing over a sandbar.

Zhao displayed Qian’s defiant tongue in the palm of his hand, feeling it twitch like a dying frog. “The fifty-fourth cut,” he murmured weakly before throwing Qian’s tongue onto the ground in front of Excellency Yuan.

“The fifty… fourth cut…” his apprentice announced.

Qian Xiongfei’s face had turned the color of gold. Blood gurgled from his lips. A mixture of blood and water slid down his body. He was still cursing, even without a tongue. But now there was no way to tell what he was saying and whom he was cursing.

Zhao Jia’s hands were burning up and seemed in danger of being reduced to ashes. He was on the verge of collapse. Professional pride, however, kept him focused on the job at hand. Yuan’s disruptive order to cut out the man’s tongue had freed him to put his victim out of his misery without delay, but a sense of responsibility and personal ethics would not let him do that. As he saw it, not inflicting the requisite number of cuts was more than a blasphemy against the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty; it was an act of disrespect toward the good man tied to the post before him. Under no circumstances could he allow Qian to die before the five-hundredth cut. If he did, he would give credence to the view that Board of Punishments executioners were little more than common butchers.

Zhao Jia wiped the bloody water from Qian Xiongfei’s skin with a chamois dipped in saltwater; then, while rinsing it in a bucket of clean water, he cooled his overheated hands and dried them. Qian’s tongue-less mouth was still vigorously opening and closing, but the sounds coming out of it were growing weak. Zhao knew he needed to speed up the process, remove smaller pieces of flesh, and avoid spots with heavy concentrations of blood vessels. It had become necessary to make a practical adjustment in the cutting scheme he’d begun with. Rather than call into question the skills of a Board of Punishments executioner, this change was a direct result of Yuan’s disruptive command. In a move that went unnoticed by the witnesses, he jabbed the tip of his knife into his own thigh to produce a sharp pain that drove away his sluggishness and at the same time took his mind off his burning hands. With renewed energy, he stopped worrying about Yuan Shikai and the ranking officials behind him and gave no more thought to the five thousand soldiers arrayed in front. His knife began swirling like the wind, removing pieces of Qian’s flesh that rained down like hailstones or a swarm of beetles. The next two hundred cuts removed all the flesh and muscles from Qian’s thighs, followed by fifty cuts to do the same to his upper arms. Fifty cuts in the abdomen preceded seventy-five on each side of his buttocks. By that time, Qian’s life was hanging by a thread, though light still burned in his eyes. Bloody foam oozed from his mouth, while his viscera, now bereft of constraint by muscles and skin, strained to exit his body. That was particularly true of his intestines, which were writhing like a nest of vipers beneath a thin membrane cover. Zhao Jia straightened up and exhaled. He was sweating profusely; his crotch had gotten sticky, from either blood or sweat, it was hard to tell which. He was paying for his desire to honor the life of Qian Xiongfei and uphold the prestige of the Board of Punishments executioners with his own blood and sweat.

Six cuts remained. With the knowledge that success was within his grasp, Zhao Jia could bring an end to the performance at a more comfortable pace. With the four hundred ninety-fifth cut, he sliced off Qian’s left ear. It had felt like a chunk of ice in his hand. Then came the right ear, and when he threw it to the ground, the formerly emaciated dog whose full belly now scraped the ground ambled up to sniff the latest offering before turning and walking off in a show of contempt, leaving behind a foul-smelling discharge from beneath its tail. Qian’s ears lay untouched and unwanted in the dirt, like a matching pair of gray seashells. Zhao Jia was reminded of something his shifu had told him. When he was carrying out the slicing death on that exquisite prostitute on the marketplace execution ground, he had sliced off her delicate left ear, from which a pearl-studded gold earring dangled. The ear had held a powerful attraction for him; forbidden, however, from taking anything away from the execution ground, he had no choice but to reluctantly throw it to the ground. A mob of transfixed observers broke through the cordon of guards and swarmed to the spot like a tidal wave; their crazed, terrifying behavior drove away the birds of prey and wild animals prowling the execution site, all in pursuit of the detached ear. It may have been the gold earring they were after, but the shifu, knowing that this interruption could ruin everything, sprang into action by immediately slicing off the prostitute’s other ear and flinging it as far as he could. His quick action saved the day by diverting the onrushing crowd. His reputation as a man of superior intelligence was well earned.

Qian Xiongfei now presented a ghastly sight. Zhao readied himself for the four hundred ninety-seventh cut. By tradition, he had two options. He could cut out the condemned man’s eyes or cut off his lips. Since Qian’s lips were already such an awful mess, to do more seemed a shame, so he decided to cut out his eyes. Zhao knew that Qian was going to die with an unresolved grievance, but in the end, what did that matter? Young brother, he muttered to himself, you have no voice in this decision, but by removing your eyes, I will let you become a ghost that is content with its lot. The heart cannot grieve over what the eyes cannot see. This will cause you less suffering down in the bowels of Hell. No suffering in either this world or the next.

Qian closed his eyes just as Zhao held his knife up to them, catching him by surprise. This cooperation brought Zhao feelings of immense gratitude, since removing the organs of sight was an unpleasant task, even for someone who killed for a living. Taking advantage of the opportunity granted him, he inserted the tip of his knife into a socket and, with an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist, out popped a clearly defined eyeball. “The four hundred ninety-seventh cut,” he said weakly.

“The four hundred ninety-seventh cut…” His apprentice’s announcement was barely audible.

But when Zhao held his knife up to the right eye, it opened unexpectedly; at the same time, Qian released the last howl of his life. Even Zhao shuddered at the sound, and dozens of soldiers fell to the ground like bricks in a collapsing wall. Zhao had no choice but to apply his knife to Qian Xiongfei’s remaining eye, which was blazing. What emerged from that eye was not so much a ray of light as a red-hot gas. Zhao Jia’s hand was burning as he fought to hold on to the slippery handle. Young brother, he said prayerfully, close your eye. But this time Qian would not cooperate, and Zhao knew he mustn’t delay, not even for a moment. He forced himself to act, slipping the tip of his knife into the right eye, and as he circled the socket, he heard a barely audible hissing sound. Yuan Shikai could not hear it; the ranking officials standing in front of their horses, looks of utter terror on their faces, perhaps like foxes grieving over the death of the hare, could not hear it; and the five thousand soldiers who had been reduced to wooden statues with bowed heads could not hear it. What they all heard was the flaming, toxic howl that exploded out of the ruined mouth of Qian Xiongfei, a sound that had the power to drive an ordinary man insane. But it had no effect on Zhao Jia. What had affected him, nearly rocked him to his soul, was the hissing sound the tip of his knife made as it circled the eye socket. For a brief moment, he went blind and deaf as the hiss entered his body, encircled his viscera, and took root in the marrow of his bones. It would not leave easily, not then and not later. “The four hundred ninety-eighth cut,” he said.

His apprentice lay passed out in the dirt.

Dozens more soldiers fell headlong to the ground.

Qian’s eyes lay brightly on the ground, sending gloomy, deathly blue-white rays through the mud that all but covered them, as if staring at something. Zhao Jia knew exactly what they were staring at—it was Yuan Shikai—and the thought that crowded his mind was: would Yuan recall the gaze from those two eyes in his memories of that day?

Zhao Jia was beyond exhaustion. Not long before this, he had beheaded the Six Gentlemen of the failed Hundred Days Reform movement, an event that had caused a national, even an international, sensation. In appreciation of the great Liu Guangdi’s talents in front of his apprentices, he had sharpened the sword named “Generalissimo,” which had become rusty and saw-toothed, until it could cut a hair that fell on it in half. The other five gentlemen owed their swift, painless deaths to their association with Liu Guangdi. When he lopped off their heads with Generalissimo, it was lightning quick, and he was sure that all they felt when their heads were separated from their bodies was a momentary breath of cool air on their necks. Owing to the speed of decapitation, some of the headless bodies flopped forward, and others jerked upward. The faces all had the appearance of being alive, and he believed that long after the heads were rolling in the dirt, clear thoughts continued to swirl inside. After the Six Gentlemen had been dispatched, talk of miracles created by a Board of Punishments executioner swept through the capital. All sorts of fanciful tales relating to the six executions passed from mouth to ear. One story, for instance, related how the headless body of Tan Sitong, of Hunan’s Liuyang County, ran up to Excellency Gang Yi, the official in charge of the executions, and slapped him across the face. In another, as it rolled along the ground, the head of Liu Guangdi, known also as Liu Peicun, intoned a poem in such a loud voice that thousands of witnesses heard it. Even an event of this magnitude had failed to tire Grandma Zhao, and yet on this day, in the city of Tianjin, the responsibility of carrying out the slicing death on an insignificant captain of a mounted bodyguard unit had so enervated the preeminent executioner of the land that he could barely stand. Even stranger was the fact that he could not keep his hands from feeling as if they were burning up.

The nose fell at the four hundred ninety-ninth cut. By then, nothing emerged from Qian’s mouth but bloody froth—no more sounds. His head, once supported by a strong, rigid neck, now hung limply to his chest.

The final cut—the coup de grace—entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the color and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade. The strong smell of that blood once again made Zhao nauseous. He cut out a piece of the heart with the tip of his knife and, with his head slumped, announced to his feet:

“May it please Your Excellency, the five hundredth cut.”

CHAPTER TEN A Promise Kept

———— 1 ————

Peking experienced a heavy snowfall on the eighth night of the twelfth month in the twenty-second year of the Guangxu reign, 1896. Residents awoke early to a blanket of silvery white. As temple bells rang out across the city, the chief executioner assigned to the Board of Punishments Bureau of Detentions, Zhao Jia, got out of bed, dressed in casual clothes, and, after summoning his new apprentice, left for a temple to fill the bowl tucked under his arm with gruel. After leaving the chilled atmosphere of Board of Punishments Avenue, they met up with a fast-moving crowd of beggars and the city’s poor. It was a good day for beggars and the city’s poor, as attested by the joyful looks on faces turned a range of colors from the biting cold. Snow crunched beneath their feet. Limbs and branches on roadside scholar trees were a collage of silvery white and jade green, as if clusters of white flowers were abloom. The sun broke its way through a dense layer of gray clouds, creating a captivating contrast of white and red. The two men merged with a stream of humanity heading northwest along Xidan Boulevard, where most of Peking’s temples were located, and where great pots of charity gruel sent steam skyward from makeshift tents. As they neared the Xisi gateway, whose history was written in blood, flocks of crows and gray cranes were startled into flight out of the jumble of trees behind the Western Ten Storehouses.

He and his alert, quick-witted apprentice lined up at the Guangji Temple to receive their bowls of charity gruel from an enormous pot that had been set up in the temple yard. The blazing pine kindling under the pot dispersed heated air in all directions, which created a psychological dilemma for the beggars in their tattered clothes, who craved the tempting warmth but could not bring themselves to give up their precious spots in the food line. Heat waves formed a mist high above the steaming pot, creating an invisible shield like one of those legendary carriage canopies. A pair of disheveled, dirty-faced monks stood at the pot, bent at the waist, stirring the gruel with gigantic metal spades. The scraping sound of the spades on the bottom of the pot set his teeth on edge. People in line stomped their nearly frostbitten feet on the snowy ground, quickly turning it into a dirty, icy mess. At last the smell of cooked gruel began to spread. In the cold, clean air, the unimaginably rich aroma of food had a stimulating effect on men whose stomachs were rumbling. The light in the eyes of the derelicts was impossible to miss. Several little beggars, their heads tucked down into their shoulders, ran up front and stuck their heads over the edge of the bubbling pot, like little monkeys, to breathe in deeply before running back to their places in line. The foot stomping increased in frequency as the men’s bodies began to sway visibly.

Zhao Jia, who was wearing dog-skin socks under felt boots, did not feel the cold. He neither stomped his feet nor, of course, swayed from side to side. He had not gone without food; for him, lining up for charity gruel had nothing to do with hunger. It was a ritual passed down by earlier generations of executioners. According to the explanation given by his shifu, lining up for a bowl of charity gruel on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month gave executioners the opportunity to demonstrate to the Buddha that this profession merely provided a livelihood, like begging, and was not undertaken by men who were somehow born to kill other men. Lining up for charity gruel was an acknowledgment of their low standing in society. For executioners in the Bureau of Detentions, meat-stuffed buns were available every day, but this bowl of gruel was a once-a-year affair.

Zhao Jia considered himself to be the most dignified individual in the long line of men. But there, just beyond several beggars with their swaying heads and panting mouths ahead of him, was a man standing as tall and unmoving as Mt. Tai. He was wearing a black robe and a felt hat and carried a blue bundle under one arm. He had the typical look of a low- or mid-level official in what was known as a “plain water yamen,” one with limited funds and few opportunities to enrich oneself. He would change into his official attire, which was in the bundle under his arm, once he was inside the yamen. But no matter how hard up a Peking official might be, he could always get something from officials from the provinces on their annual treks to the capital on official business. At the very least, he was in line for “ice and coal fees.” But if he was so incorruptible that he refused even that sort of “iron rice bowl” subsistence, his government salary surely made a range of baked goods affordable, so there was no need to line up with beggars and the city poor for a handout of charity gruel at a local temple. He wondered what the man looked like, but was well aware that the capital attracted people of exceptional hidden abilities, that even the crudest inn could be home to a man of special talents, and that a customer at a won-ton stand could easily be a heroic figure. A true man does not reveal his identity; if he does, he’s not a true man. The Tongzhi Emperor, having tired of his imperial harem, ran off to Hanjiatan to cavort with prostitutes, and when he lost his taste for delicacies from the Imperial kitchen, he went to Tianqiao for bowls of soybean milk. How, then, could Zhao Jia be sure what lay behind the man’s purpose in lining up for charity gruel? He could not, so there was no need to go up to take a look. Instinctively the men in line edged forward as the aroma of gruel intensified, pressing the line tighter and tighter, which shortened the distance between Zhao Jia and the man up front. By leaning to the side, he had a view of his profile. But no more than that, since the man kept his eyes straight ahead. All Zhao could see was his somewhat unruly queue and a shirt collar made shiny by unwashed hair. Chilblains dotted the lobes and rims of his fleshy ears, some already oozing pus. Finally the anticipated moment arrived: it was time to hand out the gruel. Slowly the line began to move forward. Curtained carriages drawn by horses and mules and residents of the city with baskets to deliver gruel to friends and families made their way together to the oversized pot from both sides of the line. The alluring aroma grew stronger with each step closer to the pot, and Zhao Jia heard stomachs growling all around. Holding their bowls in hands that were black as coal, the men crouched down by the side of the road or stood against a wall to slurp the contents. The two monks were now leaning over the pot, dipping large, long-handled metal scoops into the gruel and impatiently pouring the contents into one bowl after another; inevitably some dripped to the ground from the scoop or the sides of the bowls, and was immediately lapped up by mangy dogs whose hunger was stronger than the pain from the kicks they received. Now it was the man up front’s turn. Zhao Jia watched as he took a small bowl from under his robe and held it out to the monks, who gave him a curious look. Each of the bowls held out by the others in line seemed larger than the one before, and some could rightly be called basins. He, on the other hand, could cover the lid of his porcelain bowl with one hand. The monks used extraordinary care when they poured gruel into his bowl, filling it to the brim almost as soon as they tipped the scoop, which held several times the amount of the bowl. With his bundle still tucked under his arm, the man gripped his bowl in both hands and politely bowed his thanks before walking, head down, to the side of the road, where he lifted the hem of his robe, sat down, and quietly began to eat. The moment he turned around, Zhao Jia spotted his high nose, large mouth, and sickly pallor, and he knew who the imposing man was—the director of one of the Board of Punishments’ many bureaus—though he did not know his name. He reacted by sighing inwardly at the man’s plight. To be the head of a Bureau in one of the Six Boards meant that he had passed the Imperial Civil Service Examination, yet here he was, so poor he had to beg a bowl of gruel in a charity tent. It was the height of absurdity. From decades of experience in official yamens, Zhao Jia was well acquainted with the means by which various officials fattened their purses and the vagaries of promotion. This fellow, who was crouching in the snow by the side of the road eating a bowl of charity gruel, was either hopelessly incompetent or a man of rare virtue.

After Zhao and his apprentice received their gruel, they too crouched by the side of the road, and as Zhao ate, his eyes remained on the man who had caught his attention. He was grasping his delicate ceramic bowl tightly in both hands, obviously for the warmth it afforded. The beggars and city poor all around raised a din as they slurped their gruel. He alone ate without making a sound, and when he was finished, he covered his bowl and his face with one of his wide sleeves. Zhao could not say for certain why he did that, but it was worth a guess. And he was right. When the man lowered his sleeve, Zhao could see that the little bowl had been licked clean. The man stood up, put the bowl back inside his robe, and headed southeast at a quick pace.

So Zhao Jia and his apprentice followed the man; that is to say, they too set out for the Board of Punishments. The man took long strides, his head tilting forward at each step, like a galloping horse, and Zhao and his apprentice had to trot just to keep up. Later, when he thought back to the occasion, he could not say what had motivated him to follow the man, who, as it turned out, slipped and fell as he was turning into a narrow lane near a hot-pot restaurant; his arms and legs were splayed on the ground, and his blue bundle went flying. Zhao’s initial reaction had been to rush over and help him up, but thoughts of the trouble that might cause held him back; so he stopped and watched to see what would happen. The man was having a hard time getting up, and once he was on his feet, he managed only a few steps before falling again, and this time Zhao could see that he was rather badly hurt. So, handing his bowl to his apprentice, he rushed over and helped the man, whose face was beaded with sweat, to his feet.

“Are you hurt, sir?” Zhao asked.

Without replying, the man took a few steps, supporting himself with his hand on Zhao Jia’s shoulder, his face twisted in pain.

“It looks to me, sir, that you are badly hurt.”

“Who are you?” the man asked with obvious suspicion.

“I work in the Board of Punishments, sir.”

“The Board of Punishments?” the man said. “If that’s true, how come I don’t know you?”

“You don’t know me, sir, but I know who you are,” Zhao said. “Tell me what you would like me to do.”

The man took a few more tentative steps, but his body gave out and he plopped down on the snowy ground. “My legs won’t carry me,” he said. “Find some transportation to take me home.”

———— 2 ————

Zhao Jia flagged down a donkey-drawn coal cart and accompanied the injured official to a broken-down little temple outside Xizhi Gate, where a tall, lanky young man was practicing kungfu in the yard. Despite the cold, he was wearing only a thin singlet; his pale face was beaded with sweat. As soon as Zhao Jia helped the official into the yard, the young man ran up. “Father,” he shouted, and burst into tears. Icy winds whistled through the flimsy paper covering the windows in the unheated temple, where cracks in the walls were stuffed with cotton wadding. A woman sitting on the chilled kang was shivering as she spooled thread. She looked like an old granny, with a sickly pallor and gray hair. Zhao Jia and the young man helped the official over to the kang, where, after a respectful bow, he turned to leave.

“My name is Liu Guangdi,” the man said. “I passed the Imperial Examination in 1883, the twenty-second year of the Guangxu reign, and have been the director of a Board of Punishments Bureau for several years,” the man said in a genial tone. “This is my wife, and he is my son. I must ask Grandma to excuse the humble place we call home.”

“You know who I am,” Zhao said, embarrassment showing on his face.

“Truth is,” Liu Guangdi said, “our jobs are essentially the same. We both work for the nation and serve the Emperor. But you are more important than I.” He sighed. “Dismissing several Bureau directors would have no effect on the Board of Punishments. But without Grandma Zhao, it would no longer be the Board of Punishments. Among all the thousands of national laws and statutes, none is more important than those upheld by your knife.”

Zhao fell to his knees and, with moist eyes, said:

“Excellency Liu, your words have moved me deeply. In the eyes of most observers, people in my line of work are lower than pigs, worse than dogs, while you, Excellency, esteem our work.”

“Get up, Old Zhao, please get up,” Liu said. “I won’t keep you any longer. One of these days we’ll sit down over something strong to drink.” He turned to his son, the gaunt young man. “Pu’er, see Grandma Zhao out.”

“I cannot let your honorable son…” Zhao was clearly flustered.

The young man smiled and made a polite gesture with his hands. Zhao Jia would not easily forget his fine manners and humility.

———— 3 ————

On the first day of the New Year, 1897, Liu Guangdi strode into the eastern side room of the executioners’ quarters, dressed in official attire and carrying an oilpaper bundle. The men were drinking and playing finger-guessing games to welcome in the New Year, and the sight of a senior official walking in unannounced threw them into a panic. Zhao Jia jumped down off the kang barefoot and knelt on the floor.

“Best wishes for the New Year, Excellency!”

The other executioners followed his lead:

“Best wishes for the New Year, Excellency!” they cried out from their knees.

“Get up,” Liu said, “all of you, get up. The floor is cold. Get back up on the kang.”

The men stood up but, hands at their sides, did not dare to move.

“I am on duty, so I figured I’d spend the day with you men.” He opened his bundle, which was filled with cured meat, then took out a bottle of spirits from under his robe. “My wife prepared this meat herself; the spirits were a gift from a friend. See what you think.”

“We would not dare to think of sharing a meal with Your Excellency,” Zhao said.

“It’s New Year’s, so we can dispense with the formalities,” Liu replied.

“We truly dare not,” Zhao insisted.

“What has gotten into you, Old Zhao?” Liu said as he took off his hat and official robe. “We all work in the same yamen, so let’s act like it.”

The other men looked at Zhao Jia.

“Since Your Excellency does us this honor, it is better to accept humbly than to courteously decline,” Zhao said. “After you, sir.”

Liu Guangdi removed his shoes and sat on the communal kang with his legs folded. “You’ve got this nice and hot,” he said.

The men received the compliment with a foolish grin. “You don’t expect me to lift each one of you up here, do you?” he said.

“Go on, get up,” Zhao said. “We mustn’t offend Excellency Liu.”

So the execution team climbed back onto the kang, where they made themselves as small as possible. Zhao Jia picked up a glass, filled it from the bottle, then knelt on the kang and held it out with both hands.

“On behalf of my fellows, Your Excellency, I wish you wealth and promotions.”

Liu Guangdi accepted the glass and drained it.

“Fine stuff,” he said as he licked his lips. “Now join me, all of you.”

Zhao Jia drank a glass and felt his heart bubble over with warmth.

Liu Guangdi raised his glass.

“Old Zhao,” he said, “I am in your debt for helping me get home that time. Come on, men, fill your glasses and accept my toast!”

They drained their glasses with great emotion. With tears in his eyes, Zhao Jia said:

“Excellency, not since Pangu split heaven and earth and the ancient emperors ruled the earth has a senior official actually joined a group of executioners to celebrate New Year’s with a bottle. Let us raise our glasses to His Excellency, everyone!”

The executioners knelt in place, raised their glasses, and toasted Liu, who clinked glasses with each of them and, as his eyes brightened, said:

“I can see that you are all men of indomitable spirit. It takes courage to engage in your profession. And nothing celebrates courage like fine spirits. So drink up!”

The men grew increasingly spirited as the level of the alcohol in the bottle dropped. No longer so tense or concerned about where they placed their arms and legs, they took turns toasting Liu, their constraints disappearing as fast as the spirits and the meat. Liu Guangdi, who had abandoned his official airs, picked up a pig’s foot and attacked it with such vigor that his cheeks shone from the grease.

By the time the meat and spirits were gone, they were all fairly drunk. Zhao Jia was beaming; Liu Guangdi had tears in his eyes. First Aunt was sputtering nonsense; Second Aunt was snoring with his eyes open. Third Aunt’s tongue was so thick that no one could understand a word he said.

Liu got down off the kang. “Wonderful,” he said, “this was just wonderful!”

Zhao helped Liu into his boots, and the young nephews helped him back into his official robe and hat. With the executioners in tow, Liu stumbled his way into the room where the tools of the trade were kept. His eyes fell on the sword whose handle proclaimed it “Generalissimo.”

“Grandma Zhao,” he blurted out, “how many red-capped heads has this sword separated from their bodies?”

“I never counted.”

Liu tested the rusty blade with his finger.

“It’s not very sharp,” he said.

“Nothing dulls a blade like human blood, Excellency. We have to hone it before we use it.”

With a laugh, Liu said:

“By now you and I are old friends, Grandma Zhao. If I fall into your hands one day, I hope this blade is at its sharpest.”

“Excellency…” It was an awkward moment. “You are an upright, incorruptible official, a noble man of great integrity…”

“An upright, incorruptible man deserves to die like anyone else. The slicing death repays nobility and integrity!” Liu sighed before going on. “Let’s say it’s a deal, Grandma Zhao.”

“Excellency…”

Liu Guangdi left the room weaving from side to side, watched by the executioners with tears in their eyes.

———— 4 ————

As a dozen horns blared their mournful music, the celebrated Six Gentlemen of the Wuxu Reform Movement were lifted down off a dilapidated prison van by a dozen uniformed guards and up onto the elevated execution platform, over which a thick red felt mat had been laid. A fresh layer of dirt had been spread on the ground around the platform. Zhao Jia, the principal “grandma” of the Board of Punishments, was somewhat comforted by the sight of these preparations. He and his apprentice followed the Six Gentlemen onto the platform. The mournful music was persistent and increasingly shrill. The musicians’ foreheads were sweaty; their cheeks had ballooned out. Zhao Jia took a good look at the six distinguished men lined up on the platform, and saw a range of expressions. Tan Sitong’s chin was raised as he looked skyward, a solemn, tragic look on his dark, gaunt face. The face of the young man, Lin Xu, who was next in line, was ghostly white; his thin, bloodless lips quivered. Heavy-set Yang Shenxiu had cocked his square head to one side; drool oozed from his twisted mouth. The delicate features of Kang Guangren were distorted by incessant twitches as he kept wiping tears and snot with his sleeve. Yang Rui, short in stature but full of energy, kept sweeping the area around the platform with his dark eyes, as if hoping to find an old friend amid the spectators. Liu Guangdi, the tallest among them, wore a solemn expression; eyes downcast, he was making a guttural sound.

It was approaching noon. The shadow cast by a fir pole behind the platform was slowly forming a straight line with the pole. It was a brilliant autumn day, with radiant sunshine and a deep blue sky. Sunlight reflecting off the platform mat, the red capes of the official witnesses, the red flags, banners, and umbrella canopies of the honor guard, the officials’ red caps, the red tassels on the soldiers’ helmets, and the red hilt of Generalissimo sent fiery rays of light in all directions. Flocks of doves flew in circles above the execution ground, round and round, filling the air with the whisper of flapping wings and their shrill cries. Throngs of spectators kept a hundred paces away by soldiers craned their necks and stared wide-eyed at the platform, waiting anxiously for the moment to arrive that would excite, sadden, or terrify them.

Zhao Jia was waiting too, waiting impatiently for the supervising official to give the order, so he could do his job and leave the premises. Facing the deeply affecting looks on the six men made him ill at ease. Even though he had smeared his face with chicken blood, which served as a mask of sorts, his nerves were still on edge, and he was actually somewhat self-conscious, as if standing in front of a gaping crowd without his pants. Never before in his long career had he been so unsettled or lost his sense of detachment. In the past, so long as he was wearing red and had chicken blood smeared on his face, his heart was as cold as a black stone at the bottom of a deep lake. He had the vague feeling that while he was putting someone to death, his soul was hibernating in the fissures of the coldest, deepest stone, and that a killing machine bereft of heat and emotion performed the deeds. And so, when the job was over, he could wash his hands and face and be free of any feeling that he had just killed someone. It was all a haze, a sort of half sleep. But on this day he felt as if the hardened mask of chicken blood had been peeled away, like the outer layer of a wall soaked by a rainsquall. His soul squirmed in the fissures of the stone, and a host of emotions—pity, terror, agitation, and more—seeped out like tiny rivulets. When an expert executioner stood on the platform to carry out his somber task, he was expected to show no emotion. If, however, indifference was considered an emotion of sorts, then it was the only one permitted; all others could serve only to ruin a reputation. He did not have the nerve to look at the Six Gentlemen, especially the one-time Board of Punishments Bureau director with whom he had established a unique and genuine friendship—Liu Guangdi. If he were to look into the man’s eyes, in which burned unalloyed rage, his palms would be wet with cold sweat for the first time ever. So he looked up at the doves circling above him. All those flapping wings made him dizzy. The chief official witness—Vice Minister of the Left, His Excellency Gang Yi—squinted up into the sky from his seat at the base of the platform before casting a sideways glance at the Six Gentlemen.

“It’s time,” he said in a shaky voice. “Criminals, on your knees to give thanks for the blessings of the Emperor.”

Like a man who had received absolution, Zhao Jia turned to his apprentice and took from him the unwieldy sword reserved for the decapitation of fourth-ranked officials and higher—Generalissimo. Out of respect for Excellency Liu, he had spent the whole night honing the blade to hair-splitting perfection. After drying his hands with his sleeves, he held his right arm across his chest so that the sword was pointing straight up.

Some of the Six Gentlemen wept; others sighed.

With appropriate decorum, Zhao Jia said:

“Please, gentlemen, take your places.”

Tan Sitong cried out:

“I have the intention to kill thieves, but lack the strength to change the course of events. It is a worthy death, and I have no regrets!”

His last words spoken, he had a coughing fit that turned his face the color of gold paper; his eyes were bloodshot. He then fell to his knees, placed his hands on the platform, and stretched out his neck. His loosened queue spilled across his neck down to the platform.

Lin, Yang, Yang, and Kang knelt beside Tan in utter dejection. Lin Xu sobbed like a mistreated little girl. Kang Guangren wailed loudly and smacked his palms on the platform. Yang Shenxiu also rested his hands on the platform, his eyes darting from one side to the other, but giving no hint as to what he was looking for. Liu Guangdi stood alone, his head held high, refusing to kneel. As he stared at Liu’s tattered boots, Zhao Jia said timidly:

“Your Excellency, please take your place.”

Glaring wide-eyed at the seated Gang Yi, Liu demanded hoarsely:

“Why are we being killed with no trial?”

Lacking the nerve to look at Liu, Gang Yi turned his fat, swarthy face to the side.

“Why are we being killed with no trial?” Liu Guangdi repeated. “Is this a nation bereft of laws?”

“My orders are to supervise the execution, that is all I know. I beg Peicun’s indulgence on this…” Gang Yi’s distress was palpable.

Yang Rui, who was kneeling alongside Liu Guangdi, tugged at his clothing.

“Peicun,” he said, “at this point, what is there to say? Kneel with us. It is what is expected.”

“Great Qing Dynasty!” Liu shouted, drawing the words out as he straightened his clothes, bent his knees, and knelt on the platform. A functionary standing behind the chief witness announced in a loud voice:

“Give thanks for the blessings of Her Royal Highness!”

Of the Six Gentlemen, only Lin, Yang, Yang, and Kang numbly performed the rite of kowtows to her. Tan Sitong and Liu Guangdi held their necks straight and refused to kowtow.

Then the functionary announced loudly:

“Criminals, give thanks for the blessings of His Imperial Majesty!”

After this announcement, all six men kowtowed. Tan Sitong banged his head on the platform as if he were crushing cloves of garlic, interspersed with shouts:

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty, I have failed you, Your Majesty!”

The thuds from Liu Guangdi’s kowtows were loud and insistent; tears lined both sides of his gaunt face.

In a voice that betrayed his discomfort, Gang Yi gave the command:

“Carry out the sentence!”

Zhao Jia bowed deeply to the Six Gentlemen.

“I will send Your Excellencies to your glory,” he said softly.

He braced himself to drive out all personal thoughts and concentrate his strength and spirit into the wrist of his right arm. In his mind, the execution sword and his body had already merged. He took one step forward, reached down with his left hand, and grabbed the tip of Liu Guangdi’s queue. With it he pulled Liu’s head toward him to expose the taut skin of his neck. Thanks to years of experience, he immediately spotted the precise spot where the sword would enter the neck. He lowered Liu’s head slightly as he turned to the right before he would swing back and bring down the sword in one motion, when a desperate howl emerged from the throng of spectators:

“Father—”

A tall, lanky, and badly disheveled young man stumbled forward at the very moment Zhao Jia was about to slice the sword through Liu’s neck. He aborted the move. His wrist felt the power of the bloodthirsty Generalissimo in that sudden stop. The young man staggering up to the platform was Liu Pu, Guangdi’s son, whom he had met that time in the little temple outside Xizhi Gate. A surge of compassion that had been suppressed for many years by weighty professional considerations flowed past his heart. Bewildered soldiers, armed with red-tasseled spears, recovered from their shock and rushed up in confusion. A badly shaken Gang Yi jumped to his feet and cried out shrilly, “Grab him.” Palace guards behind him drew their swords and converged on the young man, but before they could use their weapons, Liu Pu fell to his knees and was kowtowing to Gang Yi. That stopped the guards, who gaped vacantly at the handsome young man, whose ashen face was wet with tears and snot.

“Be merciful, Your Excellency,” he pleaded with Gang Yi. “Let me take my father’s place…”

Liu Guangdi looked up and, choked with sobs, managed to say:

“Pu, my son, don’t be foolish…”

Liu Pu crawled forward on his knees and gazed up at his father, his words muffled by sobs:

“Father, let me die in your place…”

“My dear son…” Liu Guangdi sighed. His face was haggard, his features twisted in his agony. “I want no extravagant funeral, and you are to take no bereavement gifts from anyone. Do not send my body back to my hometown, but bury it somewhere nearby. Once that is done, I want you and your mother to leave Peking and return to Sichuan. I want my descendants to receive an education, but I want no sons or grandsons to sit for an official examination. I entrust all this to you. Now, leave, and don’t make me waver in my resolve.” With that he closed his eyes, stretched out his neck, and said to Zhao Jia, “Old Zhao, do it now. For the sake of our friendship, make it a good job.”

Zhao’s eyes burned. He was nearly in tears.

“I promise, Your Excellency.”

Liu Pu howled from below the platform and crawled on his knees up to Gang Yi.

“Excellency… Excellency… let me take my father’s place…”

Gang Yi covered his face with his wide sleeve.

“Take him away!”

Soldiers rushed up and dragged the hysterical, sobbing Liu Pu away.

“Carry out the sentence!” Gang Yi commanded.

Zhao Jia grabbed Liu Guangdi’s queue for the second time. “An offense against Your Excellency,” he said softly as he made a rapid half circle, and Liu Guangdi’s detached head was in his hand. It felt extraordinarily heavy, the heaviest he’d ever held. Both hands—the one holding the sword and the one dangling Liu’s head—ached and felt swollen. Holding the head high over his own, he announced loudly to the Chief Witness:

“May it please Your Excellency, the sentence has been carried out!”

Gang Yi merely glanced at the platform before quickly averting his eyes.

Zhao Jiu followed custom by displaying the severed head to the observers. Some shouted their macabre appreciation; some wept openly. Liu Pu lay on the ground unconscious. Zhao Jia saw that the eyes in Liu’s head were open, the eyebrows raised. A grinding sound emerged from between chattering teeth; he was convinced that Liu’s brain was still functioning and that the eyes saw him. His left arm, in which he held the severed head, was getting sore and numb. Liu’s queue was like a slippery eel struggling to break free from the sweaty, blood-streaked hand holding it. There were tears in the great man’s eyes, which dimmed slowly, like cinders dying out from splashes of water. When Zhao Jia laid the head down, he noticed that it wore a peaceful look, and that made him feel better. “Excellency Liu,” he muttered under his breath, “as promised, I made a good job of it. You did not suffer, and I did no disservice to our friendship.” He now turned to the others and, with the help of his apprentice, dispatched Tan, Lin, Yang, Yang, and Kang with the same practiced skill. Thus, with consummate skill, he demonstrated his respect for the Six Gentlemen.

The capital was abuzz with talk of the spectacular execution, with most of the discussion centering on two aspects: one was the exceptional skill of the executioner, Zhao Jia; the other was the disparity in how the six men faced their deaths. People said that after Liu Guangdi’s head was severed, it wept copious tears and called out to the Emperor, and when Tan Sitong’s head left his neck, it proudly intoned a seven-syllable quatrain…

This new folklore, which contained particles of truth, burnished Zhao Jia’s reputation and elevated this ancient yet lowly profession far enough up the social ladder for people to take approving notice of it. It also insinuated its way into the Palace, like a gentle breeze, where it reached the ears of Cixi, the Empress Dowager. It would soon pave the way for great glory to find its way to Zhao Jia.

CHAPTER ELEVEN Golden Pistols

———— 1 ————

In the early morning hours, high-ranking officers from the Tianjin branch of the Right Imperial Guard led a delegation that included a military band and a cavalry unit to the little pier on the northern bank of the Hai River to welcome the return of the Vice Minister of War and Judicial Commissioner of Zhili, Yuan Shikai, from Peking, where he had presented longevity gifts to the Empress Dowager Cixi upon Her resumption of the Regency.

Among the members of the delegation were the Deputy Chief of the Military Affairs General Staff, Xu Shichang, who would later serve as President of the Republic of China; Deputy Adjutant of the Office of Military Affairs and future President of the Republic of China, Feng Guozhang; Zhang Xun, future Changjiang Patrolling Inspector and so-called “Pigtail General,” who would later attempt to restore the abdicated Emperor Pu Yi; Duan Zhigui, Commander of the Second Infantry Battalion and future Chief of the Republic of China General Staff; Commander of the Third Artillery Battalion and future Premier of the Republic of China, Duan Qirui; Xu Bangjie, Commander of the Third Infantry Battalion and future General Director of the Republic of China Presidential Palace; Deputy Commander of the Third Infantry Battalion and future Premier of the Republic of China, Wang Shizhen… all relatively young, enterprising military officers whose ambitions were not, at the time, excessive. None could possibly have imagined that within a matter of decades, the fate of China would rest in the hands of this cadre of men.

Also part of the delegation was the most promising member of the Right Imperial Guard in terms of moral character and knowledge, the captain of Yuan Shikai’s mounted guard, Qian Xiongfei. Qian was among the first delegation of students sent to study in Japan, where he graduated from a military academy. He was tall and trim and had bushy eyebrows, big eyes, and white, even teeth. A man of enviable self-discipline, he neither smoked nor drank nor gambled nor whored around. Always vigilant and a wizard with a gun, he was highly prized by Yuan Shikai himself. He rode up that day on a snow-white stallion, the creases in his uniform as sharp as knives, his riding boots shined to a high gloss, a pair of gold-handled pistols holstered on his leather belt. A contingent of sixty warhorses fanned out behind him like a swallowtail, with elite young military guards in the saddles, each armed with German thirteen-shot repeater rifles. Extremely fit, they kept their eyes focused straight ahead, and though there was a bit of a scripted look about the detachment, they managed to inspire awe in anyone who laid eyes on them.

It was nearly noon, and there was still no sight of the steamboat carrying Excellency Yuan. No fishing boats were visible anywhere on the Hai River, whose broad vista was broken only by flocks of seagulls that occasionally dipped down just above the waves. Since it was late autumn, the trees were bare, all but the oaks and maples, on which a smattering of vivid red or golden yellow leaves remained, bringing a bit of color to both banks of the river, a bright spot in an otherwise bleak panorama. Gloomy patches of cloud cover hung above the river, over which damp winds blew in from the northeast, carrying the rank, salty smell of the Bohai Sea. The horses were getting restless, swishing their tails, kicking out their rear hooves, and snorting. Qian Xiongfei’s mount kept turning its head back to nip at its rider’s knee. When Qian stole a look at the senior officers around him, he saw how their faces had darkened as the cold, damp late autumn winds bored through their uniforms and chilled them to the bone. Drops of snivel hung from the tip of Xu Shichang’s nose; Zhang Xun was yawning, which made his eyes water; and Duan Qirui was rocking back and forth in the saddle, looking perilously close to toppling off his horse. The term “sorry sight” perfectly described the delegation. Qian, who held his fellow officials in contempt, was ashamed to be counted among them. He was no less weary than they, but he, at least, valued his responsibility to maintain the proper military bearing. The best way to pass the time in the midst of the boredom of waiting was to let his thoughts roam wherever they desired. To the observer, his gaze was focused on the wide river before him, but what played out before his eyes were episodes from his past.

———— 2 ————

Little Xizi, Little Xizi! That sound, so touchingly intimate, buzzed in his ears, near one moment and far the next, like a game of hide-and-seek. Youthful visions of playing tag with his older brother danced in front of his eyes. As they chased one another through the fields of their village, the image of his brother slowly expanded, growing taller and wider, while he hopped and jumped, grabbing at the shiny queue flying just out of reach. Even when he touched it with his finger, it nimbly flicked away, like a black dragon’s tail. Anxious and frustrated, he stomped his foot and burst into tears; his brother stopped and spun around. And in that brief moment, a youngster without a single whisker on his chin was transformed into a court official with an impressive beard. The next recollection that crowded into his head was of the quarrel he’d had with his brother before leaving for Japan. His brother had been opposed to his abandoning his studies for the Imperial Civil Service Examination. He had responded by saying that the examination produced an army of walking corpses, so angering his brother that he pounded his fist on the table, spilling most of the tea in their cups. “How dare you be so arrogant!” scolded his brother, his impressive beard quivering as anger undermined his stately bearing. But only for a moment, as that wrath was replaced by a desolate sense of self-mockery. “If that is so,” his brother had said, “then generations of sages and heroes have been nothing but walking corpses. That includes Wen Tianxiang, whom you revere, and even the great Tang poet Lu You. Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong, officials in the present dynasty, are all walking corpses. Poor ignorant specimens like your brother are zombies that cannot even walk.” “That is not what I meant, Elder Brother.” “Then what did you mean?” “I meant that if China is going to move forward, the Imperial Civil Service Examination must be discarded and replaced by modern schools, and the ossified eight-part essay must give way to forms of scientific education. Fresh water must flow into this filthy, stagnant lake. China has to change, or she will surely perish. And the tactics required to effect the needed changes must be borrowed from the barbarians. I have made up my mind to go, so do not try to stop me, Elder Brother.” His brother could only sigh. “A man’s aspirations are unique to him, and no amount of coercion can change that. But I, your ignorant Elder Brother, believe that only by being tempered in the examination hall can one lay claim to dignity and prestige. All others are imposters who may achieve high office, but will never earn the respect of others.” “Brother,” he had replied, “troubled times demand a martial spirit—a civil ethos is reserved for days of peace and tranquility. Our family has had the good fortune of boasting one metropolitan scholar: you. We do not need more. So let me go take up studies in the martial realm.” His brother sighed again. “Metropolitan Scholar,” he said, “an empty label and nothing more. You carry a bundle of clothes to work in an unimportant yamen with little chance to benefit monetarily and are reduced to eating half a duck’s egg mixed into plain rice…” “If that is so, then why does my own brother want me to follow the same dead-end path?” With a dry laugh, his brother said, “The deep-rooted notion of a walking corpse…”

The winds were getting stronger; the river was beset by gray waves. He was reminded of his return trip on the Pusan Maru and thought back to Kang Youwei’s letter of introduction to gain him an audience with Yuan Shikai…

———— 3 ————

The town of Small Station in autumn; golden tassels on rice paddies as far as the eye could see gave off an intoxicating fragrance. Before his audience with Excellency Yuan in Shanxi, he had already quietly surveyed the area around Small Station for two days, secretly taking note of everything with the eye of a trained observer. He noted, for instance, that the soldiers of the New Army who took the parade ground every day carried themselves with military bearing, were armed with modern weapons, marched with precision, and made a fine impression, everything that the corrupt, inept old army was not. To know what a general is like, one need only look at his troops, and he held Excellency Yuan in the highest regard before he’d even met him.

Yuan’s official quarters, which were only a couple of arrow shots from camp, were protected by four swarthy guards the size of small pagodas who stood at the arched gateway. They wore leather boots, leggings, and leather cartridge belts, and carried German breech-loading rifles whose barrels were the blue color of swallows’ wings. He handed Kang Youwei’s introduction letter to the gatekeeper, who took it inside.

It was mealtime for Excellency Yuan, who was waited on by two beautiful attendants.

“I humbly offer my respects to Your Excellency!” He did not kneel and did not bow with his hands folded in front; instead, he stood straight and snapped off a Japanese-style salute.

He saw Yuan’s face undergo a subtle change, from a look of displeasure to a cold, sweeping examination with his eyes, and finally to an expression of admiration. With the briefest of nods, Excellency Yuan said, “A chair.”

He knew immediately that he had made a good first impression and that his plan had worked perfectly.

One of the attendants struggled to bring over a chair that was obviously too heavy for her. With the sound of her girlish panting in his ears and the smell of orchids emanating from her neck in his nostrils, he held his rigid stance and said, “I dare not sit in Your Excellency’s presence.”

“Stand, then,” Yuan said.

He studied His Excellency’s square face: big eyes, bushy eyebrows, wide mouth, and large ears, the very definition of eminence. Yuan, who had not shed the sounds of his rural home—thick and mellow, like aged spirits—went back to his meal, seemingly having forgotten his visitor, who stood there, rigid, unmoving as a poplar. His Excellency was in his nightgown and slippers; his queue hung loose. Breakfast that morning consisted of braised pig’s feet, a roast duck, a bowl of stewed lamb, a plate of braised mandarin fish, hardboiled eggs, and a basket of fluffy white steamed buns. Yuan enjoyed a healthy appetite and a love of food. He ate with rapt attention, as if he were alone. One of the attendants was responsible for peeling the eggs, the other for deboning the fish. He ate four eggs, gnawed on the feet of two pigs, finished off all the crispy skin of the duck, ate a dozen slices of lamb and half a fish, plus two steamed buns, washing it all down with three cups of wine. His meal finished, he rinsed his mouth with tea and wiped his hands on a napkin. Then he leaned back in his chair, belched, and shut his eyes while picking his teeth, as if he were alone in the room.

Knowing that all great men have their peculiarities, including the unique ways in which they observe and appraise talent, Qian Xiongfei assumed that the rude demonstration was how this one chose to evaluate his visitor. By then he had been standing at attention for more than an hour, but his legs remained steady, his eyes and ears clear and unaffected by the wait. By maintaining his military bearing, he had demonstrated that he was a model of military deportment and was exceptionally fit.

Excellency Yuan sat with his eyes closed, with one attractive attendant massaging his legs, the other rubbing his back. As loud snores rose from his throat, the attendants stole a glance at Qian Xiongfei and rewarded him with friendly smiles. Finally the snores stopped and His Excellency opened his eyes, fixing Qian with a penetrating stare that revealed no sign of having just awakened from a nap.

“Kang Youwei says you have acquired considerable learning and that your military skills are second to none,” he said abruptly. “Is that true?”

“Excellency Kang’s praise embarrasses and unnerves me.”

“I do not care if you have acquired real learning or worthless pedantry. I want to know what you studied in Japan.”

“The infantry drill manual, marksmanship, field logistics, tactics, armaments, fortifications, topography…”

“Can you shoot?” Yuan Shikai cut him off as he sat up in his chair.

“I am an expert in all infantry weapons, especially small arms, and with both hands. I may not be able to hit a tree at a hundred paces, but at fifty I never miss my target.”

“Anyone who boasts to me is in for a rude awakening,” Yuan Shikai said in a chilling voice. “I will not tolerate a man who overstates his abilities!”

“I will be happy to give Your Excellency a demonstration.”

“Excellent!” Yuan said with a hearty clap of his hands. “We have an adage in my hometown: ‘You can tell a mule from a horse by taking it out for a ride.’ Enter!” A young guard ran in to do Yuan’s bidding. “Prepare pistols, ammunition, and some targets.”

A rattan chair and a tea table were set up under a parasol on the firing range. Yuan removed a pair of pistols with gold-inlaid handles from an exquisite satin-covered box.

“These were given to me by a German friend,” Yuan said. “They have never been fired.”

“Please take the first shot, Your Excellency.”

The guard loaded his pistols and handed them to Yuan, who said with a smile:

“I’ve heard people say that for a true soldier, his weapon is his woman, and he will not permit another man to touch it. Do you believe that?”

“As Your Excellency says, many soldiers treat their weapons as if they were their women.” But then, with no apprehension, he added, “But I am of the opinion that anyone who treats his weapon as his woman scorns and considers his weapon to be a slave. I believe that a true soldier ought to treat his weapon as his mother.”

“Treating one’s weapon as his woman is absurd enough; treating it as one’s mother is preposterous,” Yuan said in a voice dripping with mockery. “You say that a soldier who treats his weapon as his woman scorns his weapon. Don’t you think that treating it as your mother is scornful of her? You can change weapons any time you want. How about your mother? A weapon is used to kill. How about your mother? Or better put, can your mother aid you in killing someone?” Under this withering interrogation, cracks formed in the foundation of his composure.

“Once you young officers receive a bit of Japanese or Western education, you develop an exaggerated sense of your abilities or worth, and when you open your mouths, all that comes out is wild talk and nonsense.” Yuan nonchalantly fired a round into the ground in front of them; the smell of gunpowder suffused the air around them. Then he raised the other pistol and fired into the air, sending a bullet whistling into the clouds. He lowered the gold-handled pistol and said, with a cold edge to his voice, “The truth is, a weapon is just a weapon. It is not one’s woman, and it is assuredly not one’s mother.”

He stood, head bowed, and responded, “I gratefully accept Your Excellency’s instruction and will alter my viewpoint. As you say, sir, a weapon is just a weapon. It is not one’s woman, and it is assuredly not one’s mother.”

“There is no need for you to climb high using my pole. While I do not agree with your comparison of a weapon to a mother, there is something to be said for comparing it to a woman. Here is a woman, a gift from me.” Yuan Shikai tossed him one of the pistols, which he grabbed as if catching a live parrot. Yuan Shikai tossed him the second pistol. “Another woman for you. That makes two sisters.” This one, too, he grabbed as if catching another parrot. And now, with the gold-handled pistols in his hands, it seemed as if all his veins and arteries had expanded. It had pained him to see Yuan Shikai fire those two shots so offhandedly; to him that was like schoolgirls being manhandled by a coarse, boorish man. But there was nothing he could do about that. He gripped the pistols, feeling them tremble in his hands and hearing them moan softly. Even stronger was the feeling that they had immediately given themselves to him. Deep down, he had already abandoned his shocking metaphor of a weapon as one’s mother, so why not treat them as beautiful women? The end result of the debate over weapon metaphors was a realization that Yuan Shikai was not only a military genius, but a man of considerable leaning.

“Show me what you can do,” Yuan Shikai said.

After blowing on the mouths of both barrels, he tested their heft for a few seconds. They sparkled in the sunlight, as fine a pair of pistols as he had ever seen. He took a couple of steps forward and, seemingly without taking careful aim, fired a total of six shots from the two weapons in less than thirty seconds. The guard ran up to the target and brought it back for Yuan’s inspection. Six bullets had hit the bull’s-eye in the shape of a peach blossom. Applause broke out from the men around Yuan Shikai.

“Nice shooting!” His Excellency said approvingly, a genuine smile on his face for the first time during the audience. “Now, what would you like?”

“I’d like to own these,” he replied unflinchingly.

Taken by surprise, Yuan Shikai stared at him for a long moment before bursting into laughter.

“Go ahead,” he said. “You can be their husband!”

———— 4 ————

As he recalled those moments, he reached down and stroked the handles of the two pistols on his belt. They had been chilled by gusts of cold wind. “Don’t be frightened, my friends,” he said encouragingly as he warmed them with his hand. Then he pleaded: “Help me, my friends. When I have done what I came to do, I will be shot dead, but the tale of the gold-handled pistols will live on for generations.” They were, he could feel, beginning to warm up. “Yes,” he said to his pistols, “we must be patient as we await the man’s return. A year from today will be the first anniversary.” The mounted contingent behind him was getting increasingly restless—they were freezing cold and hungry, horses and riders. With cool detachment, he surveyed the two ranks of senior officers. They presented an amazingly ugly sight, all seemingly on the verge of falling off their horses, which nervously nipped at one another. There was no calming the mounts behind him, with one agitated wave coming hard upon the other. Heaven is on my side, he was thinking. Weariness has claimed everyone here, dulling their senses. I could not ask for a better time to act.

At last he, and only he, heard the faint toot of a steamship upriver. Instinctively, as his nerves grew taut, he tightened his grip on the handles of his pistols, but only for a brief moment. “Excellency Yuan has returned!” he called out in feigned excitement to the troops behind him and the ranking officers lined up on either side. Bestirred by the shout, the officers blew their noses or dried their weepy eyes or cleared their throats, each man eager to greet Excellency Yuan in a manner befitting his station.

The undersized glossy black steamship appeared around the bend in the river, puffing black clouds from its smokestack, each accompanying breath louder than the one before, until they were thudding against people’s eardrums. The ship’s bow cleaved through the water, arcing whitecaps to each side, while a wake sent ripples from the stern all the way to the riverbank. “Mounted troops,” he commanded, “double file!” With trained precision, the soldiers spurred their mounts into two files, spaced at roughly ten paces, all facing the river. The soldiers sat perfectly straight in their saddles, rifles off their shoulders and held at present arms, muzzles pointing skyward.

The military band struck up a tune of welcome.

The ship slowed down and edged sideways up to the wharf.

With his hands on the grips, he felt the pistols quake, like trapped fledglings—no, like a pair of women. Don’t be afraid, my friends, you mustn’t be afraid.

When the ship nestled up to the pier, it released a long whistle as sailors at the bow and the stern tossed over mooring lines, which were secured to bollards. At that moment, the ship’s engine shut down, and a party of subordinates emerged from the cabin to form lines on both sides of the hatch, from which Excellency Yuan’s nicely rounded head peeked out.

Again the pistols began to quake in his hands.

———— 5 ————

A couple of weeks earlier, when news of the execution of the Six Gentlemen in Peking had reached the small camp, he was in his barracks room oiling the gold-handled pistols. His orderly rushed in and reported:

“Sir, Excellency Yuan is on his way to see you!”

He hastened to put his weapons away, but Yuan Shikai walked in before he could manage. He jumped to his feet, holding out his oily hands. His heart raced as he saw the four hulking guards walk in behind His Excellency, their hands resting on the grips of their side arms. The ferocious looks in their eyes were a sign that they would not hesitate to use them. Despite his status as Commander of the Mounted Guard Detachment, he had no authority over Yuan’s four personal bodyguards, who were all from the commander’s hometown. He snapped to attention.

“Your humble servant did not know Your Excellency was coming,” he reported. “I beg forgiveness for my unpardonable slight!”

Yuan Shikai glanced at the weapons parts scattered on the table and said in a jocular tone:

“What are you’re doing, Detachment Commander Qian?”

“Your humble servant is cleaning his weapons.”

“I think not,” Yuan Shikai said with a barely concealed snicker. “You should have said that you are bathing your women.”

Reminded of his comment regarding weapons and women, he smiled awkwardly.

“What can you tell me about your association with Tan Sitong?”

“Your humble servant met him once at Kang Youwei’s home.”

“Only once?”

“Your humble servant would not dare lie to Your Excellency.”

“What is your opinion of the man?”

“Your Excellency, your humble servant believes,” he said with conviction, “that Tan Sitong is a courageous and upright man. If he were your friend, he’d tell you when you were wrong, but he could also be your mortal enemy.”

“Just what does that mean?”

“Tan Sitong is a dragon among men. He would unhesitatingly die for a friend, and would not be a secret enemy. To kill him would ensure an envious reputation; to die at his hands would be a worthy death.”

“I appreciate your candor,” Yuan Shikai said with a sigh. “Too bad Tan Sitong was not someone I could use. Are you aware that he was beheaded in the capital’s marketplace?”

“Your humble servant knows that.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“It breaks my heart.”

“Bring them in.” With a wave of his hand, two of Yuan’s attendants carried in a large black lacquer food hamper with gold-inlaid borders. “I’ve had them prepare two separate meals for you,” Yuan said. “The choice is yours.”

The attendants opened the large hamper, in which were two smaller ones. They laid them out on the table.

“Go ahead,” Yuan said with a grin.

He opened the first box, which held a red floral porcelain bowl filled with six large braised meatballs.

He opened the second box, which held only a single bone with a tiny bit of meat.

He looked up at Yuan, who was smiling at him.

He looked down and thought for a moment before reaching in and picking up the bone.

Yuan Shikai nodded appreciatively as he walked up and patted him on the shoulder.

“Smart, very smart. The Empress Dowager Herself presented this bone to me. There is little meat left on it, but what there is has a wonderful flavor. Try it.”

———— 6 ————

With fires of rage blazing in his heart, he gripped the pistols with trembling hands and watched as Yuan Shikai negotiated the shaky gangplank with the help of his bodyguards. Strains of the welcome melody floated in the air as the senior officers fell to their knees to greet the great man. He, on the other hand, remained seated on his horse. Yuan Shikai acknowledged the greeting with a mere wave of his hand. An easy, magnanimous smile adorned his ample face as he swept the prostrated welcoming delegation with his eyes, resting in the end on the sole mounted figure. At that moment it was abundantly clear that Yuan Shikai knew, and that was part of his plan. He wanted Yuan Shikai to know who it was who killed him. He nudged his horse forward and drew one of his pistols; it took only a second for the horse’s muzzle to bump up against Yuan’s chest.

“Excellency Yuan,” he shouted, “this is to avenge the deaths of the Six Gentlemen!”

He took aim with his right hand and pulled the trigger, expecting to hear an explosion, smell gunpowder, and see the man’s head shatter, just as it had so many times in his mind’s eye. But not this time.

He drew the second pistol with his left hand, aimed, and pulled the trigger, once again expecting to hear an explosion, smell gunpowder, and see the man’s head shatter, just as it had so many times in his mind’s eye. But not this time, either.

Members of the official delegation looked on in amazement. If it had been any other than his gold-handled pistols, he would have had ample time to put bullets into every one of those future presidents and premiers, necessitating a complete rewriting of China’s recent history. But at that critical moment, his gold-handled pistols had betrayed him. Raising them to his eyes for a quick examination, he angrily flung them into the river.

“You whores!” he shouted.

Yuan Shikai’s bodyguards stormed up and dragged him down from his horse. The prostrated officers clambered to their feet, ran up, and began clawing and tearing at his body.

Yuan Shikai, unfazed, merely walked up, lightly kicked him in his face, which the guards had pressed down into the dirt, and said:

“What a shame, a true shame!”

“Excellency Yuan,” he said in an anguished voice, “you were right, a weapon is not one’s mother.”

With a smile, Yuan replied:

“Nor is it a woman.”

CHAPTER TWELVE Crevice

———— 1 ————

The day after the massacre in Masang Township, the County Magistrate sat in his document room composing a telegram to the Prefect of Laizhou, Cao Gui, the Circuit Attendant of Laiqing, Tan Rong, and the Governor of Shandong Province, Yuan Shikai, to report that the Germans had perpetrated grave crimes in Gaomi County. The tragic scene from the night before kept reappearing in front of his eyes; the wails and curses of the citizenry swirled endlessly in his ears. His brush moved across the paper like a whirlwind, as rage swelled unchecked in his breast, solemn umbrage guiding each passionate stroke. His aging legal secretary entered as if walking on eggshells and handed the Magistrate a newly received telegram. Sent by Governor Yuan Shikai to Laizhou Prefecture and forwarded to Gaomi County, it contained the Governor’s demand that the Magistrate take Sun Bing into custody and bring him to justice without delay. The Magistrate was also told to come up with five thousand taels of silver as restitution to the Germans for their losses. Finally, he was ordered to prepare compensation for the German engineer whose head had been injured in the incident, personally deliver it to the Qingdao church-run hospital, and ensure that no more such incidents arose.

The Magistrate jumped to his feet, pounded the table with his fist, and cursed, “The bastard!” Whether the curse was directed at Yuan Shikai or the German engineer was unclear, but he saw his assistant’s goatee quiver and noticed a phosphorescent glimmer in the man’s tiny eyes. He had never been fond of this secretary, but he relied heavily on him, for he was skilled at preparing indictments and appeals, was experienced and astute, knew all the ins and outs of official circles, and just happened to be the brother of the legal secretary at the Prefect’s yamen. If the County Magistrate wanted to ensure that the document he had written would not be sent back by the Prefect, the secretary was indispensable.

“Have them prepare my horse,” he said.

“May I ask where you are going?”

“To Laizhou Prefecture.”

“May I ask the purpose of the trip?”

“I want to see Excellency Cao and demand justice for the people of Gaomi County!”

With no attempt to maintain decorum, the secretary reached down, picked up the document, and scanned it quickly.

“Is this telegram intended for the eyes of Excellency Yuan?”

“Yes, and I’d like you to put a final touch to it.”

“Eminence, my eyesight and hearing are beginning to fail me. My mind is not as sharp as it once was, and at this rate I am afraid I will do you a disservice. I beg you to release me from my duties so I can return to my native home to live in retirement.” With an awkward little laugh, he reached into his sleeve and extracted a letter, which he laid on the table. “My letter of resignation.”

The Magistrate merely glanced at the letter and, with a sarcastic laugh, said:

“It seems the monkeys are abandoning the tree even before it falls.”

Rather than lose his temper, the secretary laughed politely.

“Tying two people together does not make them husband and wife,” the Magistrate said. “Since you desire to leave, trying to stop you would be meaningless. Do as you please.”

“I thank you for your generosity.”

“After I return from Laizhou, I shall see you off with a banquet.”

“I thank you for your kindness.”

“You may go,” the Magistrate said with a wave of his hand.

The secretary made it only to the door before turning to say:

“Eminence, I am only an advisor, but if you want my opinion, you must not go to Laizhou and you must not send this telegram.”

“And why is that?”

“I humbly submit, Your Eminence, that you are in the service of your superiors, not the people. A conscience has no place in the life of an official. You must choose one over the other.”

With a snide grin, the Magistrate replied:

“Well spoken and very incisive. If you have anything else to say, now is the time.”

“Arresting Sun Bing and quickly bringing him to justice is Your Eminence’s only path to survival.” The secretary’s eyes flashed as he went on, “But I know you cannot do it.”

“And so you are leaving,” the Magistrate said, “not to return home to live in retirement, but to steer clear of trouble.”

“Your Eminence is very perceptive,” the secretary remarked. “In truth, if you could abandon your personal feelings for Sun Bing’s daughter, capturing him would be as easy as turning over your hand. And if you did not want to do so yourself, I, your humble servant, would gladly render his services.”

“Do not trouble yourself!” the Magistrate said coldly. “You may leave.”

Grasping his hands in a salute, the secretary said:

“Very well, then, farewell, Your Eminence. I wish you well.”

“Take care of yourself, Yamen Secretary,” the Magistrate said before shouting out the door: “Chunsheng, ready my horse!”

———— 2 ————

At high noon the County Magistrate, in full official regalia, rode his young stallion out of town through the north gate, accompanied by his trusted personal attendant Chunsheng and his messenger, Liu Pu. Chunsheng, astride a powerful black mule, and Liu Pu, on his black mare, fell in close behind the County Magistrate’s white horse. After being stabled through a long winter, the animals were energized by the broad expanse of fields and the scent of spring in the air. They kicked their hind legs in frisky abandon and whinnied excitedly. Liu Pu’s mare nipped at the rump of the Magistrate’s horse, which bolted forward. The rough road surface had begun to thaw and was now coated with a layer of black, gummy mud that made for tough going. The Magistrate leaned forward in the saddle and held tightly to the horse’s untidy mane.

After heading northeast for an hour, they crossed the fast-flowing Masang River and entered the broad expanse of Northeast Township. Gentle golden early afternoon rays of sunlight fell on dry, withered grass and on the downy green sprouts just now breaking through the surface. Startled jackrabbits and foxes leaped and bounded out of the path of the horses’ hooves. As they rode along, the travelers could see the raised roadbed of the Jiaozhou-Jinan rail line and the railroad workers laying track. Steel rails snaking across the landscape, a sight that sullied the vista of open fields under a towering blue sky, destroyed the Magistrate’s cheerful mood. Disturbed by scenes from the recent bloody massacre at Masang Township that flashed through his mind, he was having trouble breathing, so he dug in the heels of his boots to speed up the pace. His horse reacted to the pain in its sides by breaking into a gallop, causing its rider to bounce around in the saddle, which seemed to lessen his melancholy.

The riders did not enter Pingdu County until the sun was low in the western sky. In a little village called Qianqiu, they stopped at the home of a wealthy family to feed the horses and rest up. Their host, a white-haired old county-level scholar, displayed his respect for his superior, the County Magistrate, by offering tobacco and tea and ordering a welcoming banquet that included braised wild rabbit and carrots, stewed cabbage with bean curd, and, from his own cask, rice wine. The old scholar’s obsequious and generous welcome restored the Magistrate’s sense of well being. A nobility of spirit swelled in his breast; his veins felt the rush of hot blood. The old scholar invited them to spend the night in his house, but the Magistrate was determined to get back on the road. With tears in his eyes, the old scholar took the Magistrate’s hand and said:

“Eminence Qian, an upright official who unstintingly pleads on behalf of his people is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. The residents of Gaomi County are truly blessed.”

“Elderly squire,” the County Magistrate replied emotionally, “as an official whose livelihood is in the hands of the Imperial Court, I am entrusted with service to the masses and am obliged to spare no effort in carrying out my duties.”

He mounted his horse as a blood-red sunset spread in the west. After bidding farewell to the elderly scholar, who saw him to the edge of the village, he whipped the flank of his white charger, which reared up, a mighty steed, and shot forward with a burst of power, like an arrow leaving the bow. Though the Magistrate did not turn to cast a backward glance, a host of phrases from classic poems of parting rose up in his mind: the setting sun, a dazzling sunset, wilderness, ancient roads, a withered tree, winter ravens… all encapsulating a sense of solemn tragedy, yet filling his heart with boldness.

As they left the village behind, they rode out onto a landscape that was bleaker and more extensive than anywhere in Northeast Gaomi Township, with few signs of humanity on the low-lying land. The animals raced proudly, heads high, on a gray serpentine path that was mostly hidden in dry waist-high grass that brushed noisily against the riders’ legs. As the evening deepened, a new moon sent its silvery beams through the purple canopy of a starry sky. The Magistrate looked heavenward, where he saw the outline of the Big Dipper, the glittering Milky Way, and a shooting star ripping open the darkening curtain. Damp, heavy air chilled the riders as the night wore on. The horses’ gait slackened, from a gallop to a canter, then to a trot, and finally to a lazy walk. When the Magistrate used his whip, the horse reared its head and ran a few yards before slowing again, weary and sluggish. The Magistrate’s agitation was waning; his feverish body was beginning to cool down. Moisture-laden air on that windless night attacked exposed skin like razor blades, so he hung his whip on the pommel, buried his hands in his wide sleeves, and draped the reins over his wrist before hunkering down and letting the horse go where it wanted. In the surrounding wilderness, the animals’ snorts and the sound of dry grass brushing against the men’s pants were almost deafening. The occasional muted bark of a dog in a distant village deepened the cryptic sense of mystery and struck the Magistrate’s nerves like pangs of sorrow. He had been in such a hurry to leave, he’d forgotten to put on the fox fur vest his father-in-law had given him. That had been one of the more solemn moments in his life, for the item, a relic by any standard, had been given to his father-in-law’s father-in-law, the great Zeng Guofan, by the Empress Dowager Herself. Although time, the elements, and insects had eaten away at the fur, wearing it imparted an indescribable sense of warmth. Thoughts of his missing fox fur vest took the Magistrate back in time, to recollections of the life he’d lived.

Recalling the poverty of his youth and the hardships of endless studies, he was reminded of the joys of passing the Imperial Civil Service Examination and the marriage alliance formed between him and Zeng Guofan’s maternal granddaughter, for which he received the good wishes of his fellow candidates, including those of his classmate Liu Guangdi, known then as Liu Peicun. Even at that age, Liu was a fine calligrapher, his writing as bold and sturdy as he himself. Having also mastered the art of poetry in its many forms, he inscribed a pair of scrolls for the wedding: “Strings of pearls, girdles of jade” on one, “Talented scholar and beautiful girl” on the other. At the time, a bright road of unlimited potential seemed to open up before him. But as they say, “Better a live rat than a dead prefect.” He spent six years in the Board of Public Works, mired in such debilitating poverty that he had no choice but to take advantage of his wife’s family connections to secure an assignment in the provinces, where he moved around for several years before landing on the relatively fertile ground of Gaomi County. Soon after his arrival, he vowed to put his talents in the service of notable achievements, which would ensure his slow climb up the official ladder. But he soon learned that Gaomi, a place coveted by foreigners, was a fancy title but a poor launching site for official promotion. Managing to survive in office until his term ended was the best he could hope for. Sigh! The last days of the Imperial House were approaching; the death knell for sage men had sounded; the earthly doings of base men resounded like thunder. He could only follow the currents and try to maintain his integrity…

The Magistrate was startled out of his reveries by a series of frantic equine snorts, and when he looked, he saw four emerald-green eyes glimmering in the bushes close ahead. “Wolves!” he shouted as he dug his stiff legs into the horse’s sides and pulled back on the reins. With a whinny that shattered the silence, the horse reared up and threw its rider out of the saddle.

It all happened so fast that Chunsheng and Liu Pu, who had been riding close behind the Magistrate, their teeth chattering from the freezing cold, were dumbstruck. They remained in a sort of daze until they saw two wolves moving to run down the Magistrate’s white stallion, and their dulled brains began to work again. Shouting to their horses, they drew their swords, awkwardly, and drove off the predators, sending them scurrying into the underbrush, where they vanished from view.

“Laoye!” both Chunsheng and Liu Pu shouted as they jumped off their horses and half ran, half stumbled over to the County Magistrate. “Laoye!”

The Magistrate was hanging upside down, his foot caught in the stirrup. Spooked by Chunsheng and Liu Pu’s shouts, the stallion bolted and began dragging the shrieking Magistrate after him; had it not been for the dry grass, the hard ground would have turned his head into a bloody gourd. The more experienced Liu Pu told Chunsheng to stop yelling and, like him, call out to the horse gently: “Good horse, be good, white horse, don’t be afraid…” Aided by the bright starlight, they cautiously approached the animal, and when he was near enough, Liu Pu rushed up and threw his arms around its neck. Chunsheng seemed to have fallen into a trance. “Idiot!” Liu Pu shouted, “get over here and free the Magistrate’s foot!”

Chunsheng tried, but made a mess of his rescue effort, causing the Magistrate even worse discomfort. “Can’t you do anything right?” Liu Pu complained. “Come up here and keep the horse from moving.”

Liu Pu managed to free the stiff leg from the stirrup and then wrapped his arms around the Magistrate’s waist to right him. His leg buckled the minute it touched the ground, wrenching a painful scream from him as he sat down hard on the ground.

Feeling numb all over, the Magistrate could not get his body to do his bidding. His head and foot throbbed unbearably; he was nearly bursting with indignation, but did not know how to vent it.

“Are you all right, Laoye?” Chunsheng and Liu Pu asked tentatively as they bent down close to him.

The men’s faces were blurred; the Magistrate could only sigh.

“It’s damned hard trying to be an upright official,” he said.

“Someone up there is always watching, Laoye,” Liu Pu said. “Your good deeds are not going unnoticed by the old man in the sky.”

“The old man in the sky will see to it that Laoye receives the promotions and riches he deserves,” Chunsheng added.

“Is there really an old man in the sky?” the Magistrate wondered aloud. “I guess the fact that my horse did not pull me to my death proves something. Don’t you agree? Now, take a look at my leg and see if it’s broken.”

Liu Pu untied the band around the Magistrate’s leg, reached up inside, and felt around.

“You can breathe easy, Laoye,” he said, “it’s not broken.”

“Are you sure?”

“My father taught me the basics of therapeutic massage and bone-setting when I was a boy.”

“Who’d have thought that Peicun could be a bone expert, too?” the Magistrate said with a sigh. “While we were riding a while ago, I was recalling the days when your father and I passed the examination. We were filled with such youthful energy and high spirits, eager to shoulder heavy responsibilities and help the country be strong and prosperous. But now…” Momentarily overcome with emotion, he said, “I guess there must be someone up there, since my leg is not broken. Help me to my feet, men.”

The two aides picked him up by his arms and supported him as he tried to walk. But his legs failed him—they had a mind of their own, or no mind at all—and produced stabbing pains that shot from the soles of his feet all the way up to the top of his head.

“Gather some dry grass, men, and light a fire to warm us. I can’t ride a horse like this.”

The Magistrate sat on the ground rubbing his hands and watching Chunsheng and Liu Pu gather grass by the side of the path. Up and down their bodies moved, a bit of a blur in the starlight, like large creatures building a nest on the ground. The sound of their labored breathing and the snapping of broken stalks of grass were heavy in the surrounding darkness; the Milky Way shimmered in a shower of shooting stars that lit up the faces—dark and purple from the cold—of his trusted aides and the overgrown gray wilderness behind them. Those faces gave him an indication of what he must look like: in the cold air, weariness had erased the self-assured looks they had started out with. He was suddenly reminded of his hat, the official symbol of his position and status.

“Chunsheng,” he called out anxiously, “forget that for now. I’ve lost my hat.”

“Wait till we get a fire going,” Chunsheng replied. “We’ll need the light to find it.”

With this simple statement, Chunsheng not only had disobeyed an order but, for the first time, had actually offered an opinion of his own, which the Magistrate found quite touching. On that dark night out in the wilds, all standards and norms were subject to modification.

They piled up layers of grass until they had a small stack. The Magistrate reached out to feel the grass, which was damp with dew.

“Chunsheng, did you bring something to start a fire?”

“Damn!” Chunsheng replied. “I forgot.”

“I have what we need in my pack,” Liu Pu volunteered.

The Magistrate breathed a sigh of relief.

“You think of everything, Liu Pu. Start a fire, I’m freezing.”

The young man took a steel, a flint, and a tinder from his backpack, crouched down beside the pile of grass, and began striking steel and flint together. Weak polygonal sparks flew from his hands onto the grass, making faint sizzles as they landed. He blew on the tinder with each spark, and as it slowly turned red, a tiny popping sound produced the first actual flames. The County Magistrate’s mood lightened considerably, the flames temporarily driving away the physical aches and pains and the mental anguish. Liu Pu touched the tinder to the grass, which reluctantly caught fire, the weak flames barely able to stay burning. So he picked up a handful of grass and twirled it in the air to make the fire burn stronger and brighter, until it was a blazing torch, which he then touched to the stack. White smoke began to rise skyward, filling the air with an acrid fragrance and the County Magistrate’s heart with emotion. The smoke was soon so thick that a man could almost reach out and grab a handful; and then, seemingly without warning, golden flames licked through the darkness with a roar. The smoke thinned out as dazzling bursts of light turned a swath of wilderness into daytime. The three animals snorted, swished their tails, and edged closer to the warmth of the fire. What looked like smiles adorned their long faces; their eyes shone like crystal, and their heads seemed unnaturally large. The County Magistrate spotted his hat nestling in the grass like a black hen hatching an egg. He had Chunsheng retrieve the hat, which was mud-spotted and grass-stained. The crystal ornament that represented his rank hung to one side, and one of the pheasant feathers, which had the same significance, had snapped in two. All inauspicious signs, he was thinking. But so what, damn it! How lucky would I have been if I’d been dragged to my death a moment ago? So he put on his hat, not to reclaim his dignity, but to help ward off the cold. The bonfire quickly heated up his chest, but his back felt like a slab of cold steel. As it warmed up, his nearly frozen skin turned prickly and painful. He scooted backward, and the heat moved with him, so he stood up and turned his back to the fire; but that no sooner warmed up than the front had cooled off. He turned back to face the fire. And so it went, front and back, over and over, until his body could once more move freely, although his leg still hurt. Knowing that he had not sustained a serious injury helped his mood, so he turned his attention to the three animals, which, as he saw by the light of the fire, were hungrily grazing, the bits in their mouths making crisp metallic sounds. The white horse’s tail seemed made of silvery threads as it swished back and forth. The flames got shorter as the crackle of dried grass being consumed was less frequent and not nearly as loud. The flames moved outward in all directions, much as water seeks lower ground, and spread with great speed. The wind began to pick up. Furry things were visible in the light from the fire, jumping and leaping—rabbits or foxes, probably. Birds flew into the dark sky with shrill cries, skylarks or turtledoves. The fire directly in front of the three men slowly died out, leaving only scattered red cinders. The wildfire, on the other hand, was rapidly gaining in intensity. The Magistrate, excited by the sight, his eyes lighting up, called out happily:

“This is something we might see once in a lifetime, if that! Chunsheng, Liu Pu, this alone was worth the trip.”

They climbed back on their horses and set out once more for Laizhou. By then the wildfire had spread far into the distance, like an illuminated riptide. The redolence of fire suffused the cold night air.

———— 3 ————

The County Magistrate and his traveling companions arrived at the Laizhou outskirts as dawn was breaking. The city gate was shut tight, the drawbridge was raised, and no gate guards were at their posts. The trees and groundcover were blanketed with frost as roosters crowed in a new day. Frost even decorated Chunsheng and Liu Pu’s eyebrows, in contrast to the soot that covered their faces. One glance made it clear to the Magistrate what his face must look like, and he hoped that look—frosty white beard and hair and a road-dusted face—would not disappear before he met the prefectural officials, for that would impress his superiors. In the past, he recalled, there had been a stone bridge leading to the city gate. But that had been replaced by a pine drawbridge, an emergency measure to defend against a surge in attacks across the city moat by Righteous Harmony Boxers. The Magistrate disagreed with the policy, refusing to believe that farmers would rise up in rebellion unless they were starving.

The city gate swung open as the sun rose red above the horizon, and the drawbridge made a creaky descent. After reporting their purpose in entering the city, they crossed the moat, the shod hooves of their mounts clattering on cobblestone streets that were deserted except for a few early-rising residents who were fetching water at a well, as mist rose off the frosted wooden frame. The red rays of the sun fell on the travelers’ skin, creating a painful itch, which was partially eased by the comforting sound of metal bucket handles scraping against the hooks of carrying poles. People shouldering those poles watched the passage of the visitors with surprise.

A cook pot had been set up outside a small diner specializing in tripe on a narrow street fronting the prefectural yamen. A fair-skinned woman was stirring something with a long-handled ladle. Steam rose from the boiling liquid, suffusing the air around it with the fragrance of viscera and coriander. When the three travelers dismounted, the Magistrate’s legs could barely support him; Chunsheng and Liu Pu also had trouble standing, although they managed to help the Magistrate over to a bench beside the pot. Unhappily, his broad backside was too much for the narrow seat, and he wound up on the ground, his arms and legs pointing skyward. His official hat, which seemed unwilling to stay put, rolled off into a muddy ditch. Chunsheng and Liu Pu rushed to his aid, looking sheepish over failing to properly attend to their superior, whose back and queue showed the effects of landing on dirty ground. Taking a fall early in the morning and losing his official hat in the process were bad omens. Frustrated and angry, he felt like lashing out at his attendants, but a glance at the downcast looks on their faces sent the words back down his throat.

Chunsheng and Liu helped the Magistrate up, steadying themselves on legs that were still bowed from the long ride. The woman hurriedly laid down her ladle and ran over to retrieve the Magistrate’s miserable-looking hat, cleaning it off as best she could with the lapel of her jacket before handing it to him.

“My apologies, Laoye,” she said as she handed over the hat.

She had a clear voice, filled with such fervor that the Magistrate felt warm all over. As he took the hat from her and put it on, he spotted a pea-sized mole at the corner of her mouth. Meanwhile, Liu Pu did his best to clean the Magistrate’s queue, which was as filthy as a cow’s excrement-coated tail, with the wrapping cloth from his bundle. With fire in his eyes, Chunsheng railed at the woman:

“Are you blind?” he said. You should have had a chair ready for Laoye as soon as you saw him ride up!”

The Magistrate immediately silenced his rude companion and instead thanked the woman, who blushed as she ran inside to fetch a greasy chair and set it down behind the Magistrate.

The minute he sat down, every muscle in his body ached, and the appendage suspended between his legs was as cold and hard as ice. The skin on his groin felt like it was on fire. But deep down, he was moved by his own selfless behavior of riding through the night, buffeted by the wind and dampened by frost, all in the name of justice for the common people. A nobility of purpose swept over him like the aroma of the tripe cooking in the pot and spread out on the early morning air. His body was like an enormous frozen turnip that is suddenly exposed to the warmth of the sun, and as the outer covering begins to thaw, it releases foul liquids from within. All in all, it was an agonizing yet at the same time joyous process. Viscous tears oozing from the corners of his eyes blurred his vision and created the illusion of vast numbers of Northeast Gaomi Township citizens kneeling in front of him, their upturned faces imbued with affecting expressions of gratitude. From their mouths emerged simple yet moving mutterings: Our great and upright Laoye… Our great and upright Laoye…

The woman placed three large black bowls in front of them, each with a black spoon. Then she dumped pieces of flatbread into each bowl, followed by shreds of coriander and some spiced salt. Her movements quick and deft, she did not bother to ask what they would like, as if they were regular customers and she knew exactly what they wanted. As he looked into her fair, round face, a reservoir of warm feelings opened up deep down inside the Magistrate, who was struck by what seemed like an intimate connection between this woman and the one who sold dog meat back in Gaomi County. Having finished with the preparations, she stuck her ladle into the pot and stirred the bovine hearts livers intestines stomachs lungs in the bubbling mixture, beguiling the Magistrate with the mouth-watering aroma. Then she fished out a ladleful of the stew, dumped it into the Magistrate’s bowl, and filled it up with soup, topping it off with half a spoonful of ground pepper. “The pepper takes the bite out of the cold,” she said softly. He nodded, touched by her concern, and stirred the contents of his bowl with the spoon. Then he bent over until his mouth nearly touched the rim of the bowl and, with a loud slurp, sucked in a mouthful. It was so hot, it felt as if a burning mouse had been let loose in his mouth; spitting it out would have been undignified, to say the least, and holding it in his mouth would likely burn his tongue, so he swallowed it whole, and as the mixture burned its way down, a welter of feelings rose up and drove the mucus from his nose and the tears from his eyes.

After several mouthfuls of bovine stew had found their way into the men’s stomachs, beads of sweat squeezed out through their pores like itchy little insects. The woman’s ladle never stopped its motion in the pot, except to add increasingly rich soup to their bowls, which remained full to the brim. When they sped up, so did she; when they slowed down, she followed. Eventually the Magistrate brought his hands together in front of his chest to thank her. “Enough,” he said. “You can stop now, madam.”

“I’m sure you can eat more than that, Laoye,” she said with a smile.

Although he was energized by the bovine stew he had just finished, the pain in his legs had not gone away; but at least he could stand unaided. He noticed a crowd of rubberneckers watching from the wall behind them. What he could not tell was whether they were just watching to see what would happen next or if they were potential customers who dared not come forward while the man in the official hat was on the scene. He told Chunsheng to pay for the meal, which the woman refused to accept. “It was a great honor to have Laoye partake of my simple fare, for which I could not possibly accept payment,” she said. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he reached down and removed a jade pendant from the pouch at his waist. “Madam,” he said, “I cannot adequately compensate you for your extravagant hospitality, so please take this trifle as a keepsake for your husband.” As her ears reddened from embarrassment, she made as if to refuse the gift, but the Magistrate had already handed it to Chunsheng, who stuffed it into her hand. “Our Laoye wants you to have this, and courtesy demands that you accept it,” he said. The woman stood there, pendant in her hand, speechless, as the Magistrate tidied up his appearance, turned, and headed off to the prefectural yamen, fully aware that many eyes observed his progress. He was aware, too, that in years to come, people might tell the story of the Gaomi County Magistrate who stopped here and had a meal of bovine stew at this outdoor stand, embellished with each telling, maybe even introduced into the repertoire of an opera, his adventure narrated in song by a Maoqiang actor for generations. If only he had paper and a brush, he mused, he would happily give a name to this little diner whose proprietor had treated him so warmly. Or he might write a poem in the finest calligraphic style to be displayed as an attraction for future customers. He raised his head and threw out his chest as he walked along the main prefectural street, exuding the prestige and dignity of an official representative of the Imperial Court. As he walked, he entertained visions of the lovely Sun Meiniang and of the fair-skinned, fine-figured woman who sold bovine stew; he did, of course, also think about his wife. Three women: one was ice, another was fire, and the third was a warm bed.

———— 4 ————

The County Magistrate was granted an immediate audience with the Prefect. It took place in the Prefect’s study, where a scroll written by the famous artist and one-time Magistrate of Wei County, Zheng Banqiao, hung on the wall. The Magistrate had the look of a tired man, with dark circles under his eyes and red lids; he yawned constantly as he reported in detail what had led to the incident in Northeast Gaomi Township and its consequences, focusing on the massacre perpetrated by the Germans. His personal loathing for the Germans and sympathies toward the township residents were patently obvious in his report. After quietly hearing him out, the first thing the Prefect said in response was, “Gaomi County Magistrate, is Sun Bing in custody?”

The County Magistrate sighed.

“Excellency,” he responded, “Sun Bing managed to escape and has not yet been brought to justice.”

The Prefect’s penetrating stare made the County Magistrate squirm. With a dry little laugh, he said softly:

“Elder Brother, word has it that you and Sun Bing’s daughter… ha ha, what does the woman have that you find so bewitching?” The Magistrate was tongue-tied, his back cold with sweat.

“I expect an answer!” the Prefect demanded, his demeanor suddenly harsh.

“Your humble servant, Excellency, has had no improper relations with Sun Bing’s daughter. I simply find her dog meat to my liking…”

“Elder Brother Qian,” the Prefect, having resumed a friendly demeanor, replied in the manner of a counselor, “our lives are devoted to serving the nation, and to that end we are the beneficiaries of the Empress Dowager and the Emperor’s favor. Our conscience compels us to carry out our duties to the best of our ability. If, however, we serve our own selfish interests or bend the law to help friends or relatives and are unfaithful to our calling, then that…”

“Your humble servant would never…”

“The death of a scant few stubborn and unruly subjects means nothing,” the Prefect said dispassionately, “and if that will mollify the Germans and end the provocations, well, that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”

“But twenty-seven lives were lost… the common folk deserve fair treatment.”

“Just how do you propose to manage that?” The Prefect punctuated his question by pounding on the table. “Don’t tell me you expect reparations from the Germans or expect them to pay with their lives.”

“But something must be done, in the name of justice,” the Magistrate complained, “or how do I face the citizens back home?”

With a chilling laugh, the Prefect said:

“I cannot give you the justice you seek. Nor, I’m afraid, will you find it from Circuit Attendant Tan or Governor Yuan, not even if you were to present yourself to the Emperor or the Empress Dowager.”

“We’re talking about twenty-seven lives, Excellency!”

“If you had carried out your duties and taken Sun Bing into custody immediately after the incident and turned him over to the Germans, they would not have sent in troops, and those twenty-seven individuals would be alive today!” The Prefect patted a pile of documents on his desk and, with another chilling laugh, said, “Elder Brother Qian, people are saying that you facilitated Sun Bing’s escape by warning him. The last thing you want is for that sort of talk to reach the ears of Excellency Yuan.”

By now the County Magistrate was sweating profusely.

“And so,” the Prefect continued, “the most urgent task before my Elder Brother is not to seek some sort of justice for the people back home, but to arrest Sun Bing as soon as humanly possible and bring him to justice. Taking Sun Bing into custody will be good for all concerned—high, low, those within and those without. No one benefits from failing to do so.”

“Your humble servant understands…”

“Elder Brother,” the Prefect said with a smile, “this Sun Meiniang must be a raving beauty to have planted the seeds of desire so deeply in you.” He added in a mocking tone, “She doesn’t have two pairs of breasts and two points of entry, does she?”

“Your Excellency is making fun of me…”

“I’m told that you fell in the street a while ago, and that you lost your hat in the process. Is that true?” he said with obvious portent as he glanced up at the County Magistrate’s hat. Before the Magistrate could answer, he held out his teacup and banged the lid against the lip. “Elder Brother,” he said as he got to his feet, “be careful, be very careful. Losing one’s hat means nothing, but losing one’s head…”


————

5

————

The Magistrate fell ill upon arriving home. At first his symptoms included headaches, dizziness, vomiting, and diarrhea; those in turn led to a persistent high fever and periods of delirium. The First Lady split her time between tending to her husband, including seeing that he received appropriate medications, and offering up nightly prayers at an outdoor incense altar. Whether it was the efficacy of his treatment or the intervention of the gods, no one knew, but half a bowlful of dark, rank blood abruptly spewed from the Magistrate’s nose, and almost immediately his fever broke and the diarrhea stopped. It was then the middle of the second month, a time when telegrams pressing for the arrest of Sun Bing were streaming in from provincial, circuit, and prefectural offices, sending the county government clerks into a frenzy of anxious activity. Yet all the while, the Magistrate lay in the space between wakefulness and sleep, neither eating nor drinking, let alone returning to his duties; there was even concern that he might never recover from what ailed him. The First Lady personally went into the kitchen to prepare the finest food of which she was capable, but all to no avail—the Magistrate’s appetite for food had vanished.

One afternoon a couple of weeks before Qingming, the First Lady summoned the Magistrate’s loyal follower Chunsheng to the Eastern Parlor.

Chunsheng entered the hall nervously and was met by the First Lady, who sat in a chair, her brow deeply furrowed, a somber cast to her face, all in all looking a bit like a temple idol. Chunsheng fell to his knees and said, “I have come in response to the First Lady’s summons. What is it you would have your humble servant do?”

“It’s all your fault!” she said icily.

“What did I do?”

“What is going on between Laoye and the woman Sun Meiniang?” she demanded to know. “I assume that you served as a go-between, you little bastard!”

“Madam, that is untrue. I have done nothing of the sort,” Chunsheng defended himself. “I am merely a loyal dog at Laoye’s side, prepared to attack wherever the Magistrate points me.”

“Don’t you dare quibble with me!” insisted the indignant First Lady. “You little bastards have led Laoye astray!”

“I have done nothing of the sort…”

“Chunsheng, you dog-headed wretch, as Laoye’s most trusted follower, instead of admonishing him to be pure of heart and wary of desires, as a good official must be, you have encouraged him to have illicit relations with a common woman, a loathsome deed, and one for which you deserve to have your dog legs broken. But I may be prepared to be forgiving, since you have served him diligently and well for several years, but only this one time. From today on, you are to report to me everything that involves His Eminence. If you do not, you will be punished for your crimes, old and new!”

Chunsheng nearly soiled himself as he banged his head on the floor. “I thank the First Lady for not having me beaten. You will have no further need to be upset with Chunsheng.”

“I want you to go to that shop that sells dog meat and inform Sun Meiniang that I wish to see her,” the First Lady said with seeming innocence. “I will have words with her.”

“Madam,” Chunsheng screwed up the courage to say, “Sun Meiniang is a good-natured woman…”

“Shut up!” The First Lady’s face darkened. “Laoye is not to know about this. If I find that you have had the audacity to breathe a word of this to him…”

“I would not dare…”

———— 6 ————

When news of the County Magistrate’s lingering illness reached Sun Meiniang, she was so upset that she could neither sleep nor eat; her distress eclipsed even that which she had suffered upon the tragic deaths of her stepmother and her siblings. She tried several times to deliver spirits and dog meat to the yamen and, she hoped, see the Magistrate, but she was stopped at the gate each time by guards with whom she had gotten friendly over time. Now they acted as if they didn’t know her, almost as if there had been a regime change within. An order specifically forbidding her to enter had been handed down.

Meiniang was a woman without a soul, distracted beyond the limits of endurance. Day in and day out, she roamed the streets aimlessly, carrying a basket of dog meat and followed everywhere by malicious chatter, as if she were some sort of monster. She visited every temple in town, large and small, where she offered up prayers for the health of the County Magistrate to a host of deities and divinities. She even lit joss sticks and kowtowed in the celebrated Bala Temple, which was devoted to issues and concerns other than sickness, and when she emerged, she was surrounded by a clutch of children who sang a song that had obviously been written by adults:

Gaomi’s Magistrate has the lovesick disease, food has lost its taste, sleep can no longer please.

He spits blood up top and passes filth down past his knees.

Gaomi’s Magistrate has a beard so long, day and night one thought only, of Sun Meiniang.

One man and one woman, Mandarin ducks made famous in song.

A pair of Mandarin ducks, yet unhappily apart, he thinks of death, she has a broken heart.

But dying and crying the First Lady will not let start.

On the children’s lips, this sounded like a message from the Magistrate, and it raised towering waves of passion in Sun Meiniang’s heart. Now that she had learned that his illness was more serious than she had feared, tears spurted from her eyes. Silently she repeated his name, over and over, and, relying upon her imagination, conjured up a vision of the damage the illness had done to his face. Dearest, she said to herself, you have fallen ill, all because of me, and if something should happen to you, I could not go on living! I am miserable, I must see you, no matter what. I need to enjoy one last decanter of spirits with you, share one last meal of dog meat. Though I know you do not belong to me, in my heart you are mine, for I have tied our fates together. I know, too, that you and I are different people, and that the things you and I think about are a million miles apart. I also know that what you feel for me is not true love, that I just happened to be there when you felt a powerful need for a woman. What you love about me is my body and my passion, and when the luster fades from my body, you will simply cast me aside. Something else I know is that you were the one who plucked my dieh’s beard clean, and that while you may steadfastly deny it, you ruined his life and brought about the destruction of Northeast Gaomi Township’s Maoqiang opera. I am aware that you vacillated about whether or not you should arrest my dieh, but that if Governor Yuan Shikai promised you a promotion and a fancy title for taking Sun Bing into custody, you would do it. If His Imperial Majesty the Emperor ordered you to kill me, you would take a knife to me without hesitation, even though it would sadden you to do so… I know all these things, I know everything, especially that my infatuation will end tragically, and yet that knowledge has no effect on my obsession. The truth is, you happened to be there when I felt a powerful need for a man. What I fell in love with was your appearance and your knowledge, not what was in your heart. I do not know what is in your heart, but why should I care about that? Enjoying a passionate relationship with a man like you is enough for an ordinary woman like me. Because of you, I have neither the time nor the heart to worry about my own dieh, who has suffered the grievous loss of his family. In my heart, in my flesh, in my bones there is only you. I freely admit that I am in the grip of a sickness, one that claimed me on the day I first saw you; it is a sickness every bit as serious as the one you are suffering now. You have said that I am the remedy that can cure you. Well, you are the opium that sustains me. If you die inside your yamen, I will die out here. There are many reasons why you are dying inside your yamen, and I am but one of them; but there is only one reason why I would die out here, and that is you. If I die and you do not, you will grieve over me for three days; if you die and I do not, I will grieve over you for the rest of my life. If you die, in truth my life will be over. It is an unequal transaction, in which I am a willing partner. I am your loyal dog; you need only whistle for me to come running, wagging my tail, rolling in the dirt, nipping at your heels, whatever you desire. I know that you love me the way a greedy cat loves a nice fat fish; I love you the way a bird loves a tree. My love for you knows no shame. Because of you, I have forsaken my honor, my will, and my future. I cannot control my legs, and have no control over my heart. Since I would climb a mountain of knives or dive into a sea of fire for you, malicious gossip means nothing to me. From the children’s song, I have learned that it is your wife who has made it impossible for me to enter the yamen and see you. I know that she comes from a respected family of high officials and that she is endowed with great learning and a talent for scheming; if she were a man, she would surely climb high in the official ranks. I readily admit that I, the daughter of an actor and wife of a butcher, cannot claim to be her peer, but I am the blind man at the door: if it is closed, I am rewarded with a bloody nose, but I gain entrance if luck is with me and it is open. I’ve lost all sense of the rules of decorum and taboos. If the main gate stands in my way, I will go around to the back; if the rear gate is closed, I will try a side door; and if that too does not admit entry, I will climb a tree and jump over the wall. So all the rest of that day I paced the area around the wall, trying to find a way into the yamen.

A half moon illuminated the rear wall and the flower garden behind it, where he and his wife strolled on most days. The limb of a tall elm tree reached out across the wall, its moonlit bark shining like dragon scales—a living, glittering creature. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the limb, which, cold to the touch, reminded her of snakes. Into her mind flashed the recollection of a time, several years before, when she had been in the field, obsessed by the desire to find a pair of snakes, and that thought produced feelings of desolation and humiliation.

Dearest Magistrate, my love for you is torture, agony you cannot possibly comprehend. And your wife, descendant of a famous official, member of an illustrious family, how can she understand what is in my heart? Madam, I have no desire to take your husband from you. In truth, I am but a sacrificial object willingly offered up for the pleasure of a temple god. Madam, can you possibly not have noticed how your husband has become a thirsty stalk of grain finally getting the spring rain it needs, all because of me? Madam, if you are the open-minded, charitable person you are reputed to be, then you must support my relationship with your husband. If you are a woman of reason and good sense, then you should not bar my entry into the yamen. Trying to keep me out, madam, will prove to be futile. You may be able to bar the way to Tripitaka, the monk who went to India to fetch scriptures, and to his disciples, the Celestial Horse and Sun Wukong, but you will fail to keep me, Meiniang, from being with Qian Ding. Qian Ding’s glory Qian Ding’s status and Qian Ding’s property all belong to you, but Qian Ding’s body Qian Ding’s smell and Qian Ding’s sweat are mine. Madam, I, Meiniang, followed my father onto the opera stage to sing and dance from an early age. My body may not be as weightless as a swallow, but I am light on my feet; I cannot fly onto eaves or walk on walls, but I know how to climb a tree. They say that when a dog is frightened it jumps over a wall, and when a cat is frightened it climbs a tree. Meiniang is neither a dog nor a cat, but I am going to climb a tree and jump over a wall. I am not afraid to demean myself, and I am perfectly capable of reversing the yin and the yang. You will not find me waiting for the moon in the Western Chamber, like Cui Yingying. No, I prefer to leap across the wall at night, like Zhang Junrui, who scaled a wall to be with Yingying; Meiniang will leap across the wall to be with her lover. Eight or ten years from now, someone may act out this Western Chamber drama in reverse.

She took two steps backward, cinched the sash around her waist, adjusted her clothes, limbered her joints, and then, after taking a deep breath, leaped into the air and grabbed hold of the limb with both hands. It bent from the weight, so frightening a perched owl that it shrieked, spread its wings, and glided silently into the yamen. Owls were among the Magistrate’s favorite birds. Ten or more of them often perched on a large scholar tree in the grain-storage compound, and he was given to referring to them as its guardian spirits, the bane of rodents. He would sometimes walk by, stroking his beard and intoning: “Rodents in the storehouse, big as a large jar; if someone comes in, they stay where they are…” Dearest Magistrate, you of great learning, filled with classical wisdom, my lover. She pulled herself up until she was sitting on the limb.

The third watch had just been sounded, the sole interruption of silence in the yamen. From her perch she saw the silvery glass ball atop the pavilion in the center of the flower garden and the shiny ripples on the little pond beside it. Patches of light emerged from the Western Parlor, apparently the Magistrate’s sickroom. My dear Magistrate, I know you are craning your neck, hoping to see me; your mind must be as unsettled as boiling water. Do not be worried, my dear, for your Meiniang, daughter of the Sun family, is about to leap over this wall. I am determined to see you, even if your wife is sitting at your side, like a lioness keeping watch over her kill, even if she lashes me across the back!

After edging her way along the limb, she jumped down onto the wall, but what happened next was something she would not forget as long as she lived. Her foot slipped when it landed on the wall, and she came crashing down on the other side, decapitating stalks of green bamboo, with the accompanying noise. Her backside ached, her arms suffered painful scrapes, and her insides were badly jumbled. With difficulty she managed to stand by holding on to a bamboo stalk, and, overcome by resentment over having to go through this to see him, she focused on the lamplight emerging from the Western Parlor. She reached down to rub her backside and felt something sticky. What is that? Her first thought was that she was bleeding from the fall, but when she brought her hand up to her nose, the foul-smelling, sticky dark substance could only be dog filth. My god, what black-hearted, unscrupulous wretch thought up this sinister plan to turn Sun Meiniang into such a sorry figure? Does this mean I am reduced to seeing Magistrate Qian with dog filth on my behind? Could I even want to see him after the way he has disgraced and humiliated me? Utterly dispirited, she felt rage build up inside her alongside feelings of low self-esteem. Go on, Qian Ding, be sick and die, and leave your respectable wife to her widowhood. If she chooses not to remain a widow, she can take poison or hang herself in defense of her wifely virtue and become a martyr; the citizens of Gaomi will then contribute to the purchase of a commemorative stone arch dedicated to her chastity.

She walked up to the elm tree, wrapped her arms around the trunk, and started to climb. Where the nimble, springy, squirrel-like energy of only a few moments before had gone, she could not explain, but she barely made it halfway up before she slid back down, once, twice, several times, until her arms and legs were coated with a dark, smelly substance—more dog filth, which had been smeared all over the tree trunk. Meiniang wiped her hands on the ground, tears of indignation slipping from her eyes, when she heard the sound of mocking laughter from behind the rockery. Then two black-clad, veiled figures emerged, preceded by a lantern that cast a muted red glow, reminiscent of the lantern the legendary Fox Fairy used to lead people to safety. The two figures, who could have been men and could have been women, gave no signs of their true appearance.

Terror-stricken, Sun Meiniang raised her hands to cover her face, but stopped when she recalled that they were smeared with dog droppings. So she lowered her head and instinctively shrank back all the way to the base of the wall. The taller of the two figures held the lantern up close to Meiniang’s face, as if to illuminate it for the benefit of the shorter person, who raised a thin stick used to frighten snakes hidden in the grass, stuck it under Meiniang’s chin, and lifted up her face. Utterly mortified and ashamed, she was powerless to resist. So she squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears run freely down her cheeks. She heard the person holding the stick heave a long sigh, and could tell that it was a woman’s voice. It was only a guess, but she assumed that it must be Magistrate Qian’s wife, and in that split second, the anguish she had felt turned to defiance; she was energized. Holding her head high, she smiled and searched for the words that would inflict the most pain on her foe. Her initial instinct was to ask the First Lady if she was covering her face with a black veil to hide her pockmarks. But before she could get the words out, the person stepped up, thrust her hand down inside Meiniang’s collar, and yanked away a bright, shiny object. It was the jade Buddha the Magistrate had given her in exchange for the jadeite thumb guard, not exactly a pledge of love, more a protective amulet. She sprang frantically forward to retrieve the object, but a kick behind her knee from the taller person sent her down on all fours. She saw the First Lady’s black veil flutter and her body shift slightly. It’s too late to worry about saving face, since I am already soiled by dog filth, she was thinking, so now I need to find the most hurtful words possible as payback for how she has violated me. “I know who you are,” she said, “and I know all about your pockmarks. The love of my life tells me you have a terrible body odor, that your mouth smells like maggots, and that he hasn’t slept with you for three years. If I were you, I’d hang myself out of humiliation. Any woman who outlives a man’s desire is no different than a coffin anyway.”

Meiniang’s gratifying outburst was interrupted by a stern retort from the short black-clad individual: “You little slut, how dare you come whoring around the yamen. Beat her, give her fifty lashes, then kick her out through the dog door!”

The taller person took a whip out from under his black clothes, kicked Meiniang to the ground, and, before she could utter another curse, laid the whip across her buttocks. She shrieked in pain just before the second lash connected with her buttocks; she looked up in time to see the other figure, the Magistrate’s stinking wife, turn and wobble off. The third lash landed as hard as the first two, but the next one did not hurt as much, and those that followed got lighter and lighter, until the person was hitting the wall, not her. Meiniang knew that her assailant was a decent person at heart, although her exaggerated screams continued for their dramatic effect, to their mutual benefit. When he was done, the man dragged her over to the side gate of the Western Parlor, opened it, and shoved her outside, where she lay in a heap on the cobblestone lane east of the yamen.

———— 7 ————

Sun Meiniang lay on the kang, gnashing her teeth one minute and heartbroken the next. She gnashed her teeth out of hatred toward that savage, cold-hearted woman, while she was heartbroken that the Magistrate was confined to a sickbed, and cursed herself for a lack of willpower; even when she bit her own arm till it bled, she could not drive the image of the wonderful Qian Ding out of her mind. Chunsheng came to see her when her torment had reached a fever pitch, just the familiar face she needed to see. She grabbed him by the arms and said tearfully:

“Chunsheng, dear Chunsheng, tell me, how is Laoye?”

Her anxiety moved him deeply. After glancing into the yard, where Xiaojia was skinning a dog, he said softly, “He’s improving physically, but mentally he is in bad shape; he gets agitated easily. He’s wasting away, and if he doesn’t start eating soon, I’m afraid he’ll starve to death.”

“My dear Magistrate!” Sun Meiniang cried out mournfully, accompanied by a cascade of tears.

“The First Lady has sent me to ask you to take some millet spirits and dog meat to the yamen, both to make Laoye feel better and,” he said with a little laugh, “to get his appetite back.”

“The First Lady? Don’t mention her to me,” she said with a gnashing of her teeth. “Your First Lady is worse than a sadistic scorpion spirit.”

“Mistress Sun, our First Lady is kind and honest, and always reasonable. How can you curse her like that?”

“What do you know?” Meiniang replied angrily. “Kind and honest, you say? Well, I say that her heart must have steeped in a vat of black dye for twenty years, and that one drop of her blood would be enough to kill a horse!”

“What did the First Lady ever do to you?” Chunsheng said with a little laugh. “This is like a mugger getting angry instead of his victim, or a lack of tears from a child that has lost its mother but wails from one whose mother is still alive.”

“Get out of my sight!” Meiniang demanded. “I’ll have nothing more to do with anyone in that yamen.”

“Mistress Sun, does this mean that your concern for Laoye no longer exists?” Chunsheng said with a supercilious grin. “If you no longer care about Laoye, does that mean you no longer care about his queue? And if you no longer care about his queue, does that mean you no longer care about his beard? And if you no longer care about his beard, does that really mean you no longer care about Laoye himself?”

“I said get out of my sight! Laoye, Shaoye, what difference does it make? What could his death possibly mean to a commoner?” Despite her tone of voice, tears continued to flow.

“Mistress Sun,” Chunsheng said, “you might fool others, but not me. You and the Magistrate are so close you might as well be one person. Break the bone, and there’s still meat attached; tug on the ear, and the cheek twitches. But enough of that. Don’t pull back on the reins now. Get ready and come with me.”

“I will not step foot in that place as long as your First Lady is there.”

“But, Mistress Sun, she has ordered me to come for you.”

“Chunsheng, don’t treat me like a circus monkey. How could I face someone who did what she did to me?”

“Apparently, Mistress Sun, someone has done something terrible.”

“Do you really not know, or are you just pretending?” Meiniang asked in anger. “They used a whip on me in that yamen of yours!”

“What are you saying, Mistress Sun?” Chunsheng was clearly shocked. “Who would dare use a whip on you in the yamen? We who work there see you as the Second Lady. We try our best to get on your good side. Who in his right mind would dare to even threaten you with a whip, let alone use it?”

“That First Lady of yours, that’s who. She had someone give me fifty lashes!”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for proof,” Chunsheng said as he moved to look under her clothes.

Sun Meiniang knocked his hand away. “Don’t get fresh with me,” she said. “Aren’t you worried the Magistrate would chop off your grubby paw?”

“You see what I mean, Mistress Sun, you do have feelings for him. All I did was stick out my hand, and you stopped me by bringing up his name. The truth is, the Magistrate is seriously ill this time, and the First Lady has no choice but to invite you, our Living Bodhisattva, to work your magic. Think for a minute—would she be doing this if there were any other path open to her? Even if she did order someone to use a whip on you, why is this so surprising? Sending me for you is an admission of defeat. This hill is the excuse you need to ride the donkey, so what are you waiting for? If your ministrations speed up the Magistrate’s recovery and set him on the road to health, even the First Lady will praise you for having performed a great service. What was once hidden will be out in the open; the private will be made public. That, Mistress Sun, will usher in good times for you. But it is your decision. Are you coming or aren’t you?”

———— 8 ————

Dog meat basket in hand, Sun Meiniang pushed open the door to the Western Parlor and spotted a slightly pock-scarred woman with dark skin and a downturned mouth seated in an armchair. Meiniang’s heated body abruptly turned icy cold, and the elation with which she had arrived was suddenly coated with frost. Dimly she sensed that she had fallen into another trap, one also engineered by the Magistrate’s wife. She was, however, the daughter of an actor, well acquainted with all sorts of poses; and she was, after all, the wife of a butcher, equally well acquainted with the glint of a knife and the sight of blood; and she was, in the end, the Magistrate’s lover, and thus familiar with the ways of officials. All that made it possible for her to bring her tangled emotions under control, brace herself, and match stratagems with the Magistrate’s wife. Two women, two pairs of eyes meeting, neither about to back down. As their gazes fought for supremacy, their hearts carried on a resounding dialogue.

Magistrate’s wife: Are you aware that I come from an old and distinguished family?

Sun Meiniang: It is clear to anyone with eyes that I am a great beauty.

Magistrate’s wife: I am his legal and formal wife.

Sun Meiniang: I am his most intimate soul mate.

Magistrate’s wife: You are nothing but a remedy for my sick husband, no different than a canine gallstone or bezoars of ox.

Sun Meiniang: You are, in fact, the Magistrate’s backroom ornament, a marionette, a clay sculpture.

Magistrate’s wife: All your bewitching talents and seductive airs can have little effect on my position here.

Sun Meiniang: What good is being the revered First Lady if you are denied the Magistrate’s love? He has told me that he fulfills his conjugal duties with you only once a month, but with me…

Thoughts of lovemaking with the Magistrate sent shivers through Meiniang’s heart, and as vivid scenes of romance flooded her mind, radiant lights, moist and bright, glowed in her eyes. The somber First Lady had become a blurred outline.

The Magistrate’s wife noticed that the face of the woman across from her, fresh and tender as a freshly picked honey peach, had flushed, that she was breathing fast, and that her eyes were suddenly unfocused, all signs that her emotions were heating up. She had, she felt, achieved a moral victory, and her face, taut and unyielding up till then, softened slowly as her ivory white teeth poked out between purplish-red lips. Tossing a jade bodhisattva on a red cord at Meiniang’s feet, she said arrogantly:

“I had worn that since childhood, until some dog stole it and covered it with ugly canine smells. Since dogs are butchered at your house every day, you should not find it objectionable. You may have it.”

Sun Meiniang blushed. The sight of the jade bodhisattva sent stabbing pains into her backside and brought back the memory of what had happened that night. Rage boiled inside her, and she’d have rushed up and scratched the woman’s pock-scarred face if her legs would have done her bidding. For the Magistrate, all for the Magistrate, you may have your little victory. She knew that more than just a piece of jewelry, the First Lady had tossed over her status, her position, her challenge, and her grievance. Meiniang wavered. Bending down to pick it up would feed the First Lady’s vanity; by refusing the offer, Meiniang could retain her dignity. Picking it up would satisfy the First Lady; not picking it up would outrage her. Satisfying the First Lady would establish a covenant for the love between Meiniang and the Magistrate; outraging the First Lady would erect a barrier between them. She had detected in the Magistrate’s comments about his old-fashioned wife that he revered her. Her illustrious family may well have been a factor in that. For despite its recent decline, the Zeng family retained some of its influence. If the Magistrate could kneel before his wife, why should simply bending over bother Meiniang? And so she bent down and picked up the jade bodhisattva, all for the love of Magistrate Qian. And she did not stop there. One does not build a wall without digging up mud, so it was time to let the curtain fall on this drama. She went down on one knee, as if to show her gratitude for an unexpected favor.

“This common woman thanks the First Lady for her grace.”

The First Lady exhaled loudly.

“Go,” she said. “The Magistrate is in the document room.”

Meiniang got to her feet, picked up the basket of dog meat and millet spirits she’d brought with her, and started to walk off. But the First Lady called her to a halt. With her dark eyes focused on the window, not on Meiniang, she said:

“He’s getting on in years, while you are young…”

The First Lady’s hint was not lost on Sun Meiniang. Her face was burning, and she did not know what to say to that. The First Lady walked out of the Western Parlor and headed to the rear of the compound. A welter of emotions fought for primacy in her mind—loathing, love, the pride of winning, and the humiliation of losing.

———— 9 ————

The Magistrate’s appetite gradually returned under Meiniang’s ministrations, and he grew stronger each day. Clouds of melancholy creased his brow as he read the documents that had piled up during his illness.

“Meiniang,” he said as he stroked her nicely rounded backside, “dear Meiniang, if I refuse to arrest your dieh, Excellency Yuan will arrest me.”

Meiniang rolled over and sat up.

“Magistrate, my dieh had good reason to attack the German. Yet they responded by killing my stepmother and siblings, and what’s more, they slaughtered twenty-four innocent civilians. Isn’t that enough? Why do they want my dieh arrested? Is this what people call justice?”

With a bitter smile, the Magistrate said:

“What does a woman know about such things?”

Meiniang grabbed his beard and said coquettishly:

“I may not know much about such things, but I know that my dieh is guilty of nothing.”

The Magistrate sighed.

“I never said he was. But I cannot disobey an order from my superior.”

“Be a good man and let him off the hook,” Meiniang said as she moved seductively on his lap. “Is a County Magistrate powerless to protect an innocent member of the community?”

“How can I make you understand, my precious?”

Meiniang wrapped her arms around his neck and began rubbing her silken body against him enticingly.

“Even by taking care of you the way I do, can I still not save my dieh?”

“Enough,” the Magistrate said, “that is enough. A carriage cannot reach the mountain without a road, but a boat can sail even against the wind. Qingming is nearly here, Meiniang, and, as in the past, I am going to have a set of swings put up in the parade ground for your enjoyment. I will also plant peach trees as a gift to the people. I am doing these things this year, Meiniang, because I cannot say where I will be next year.”

“By this time next year, you will have been promoted to Prefect, no, even higher!”

———— 10 ————

When he learned that Sun Bing had led an attack on the railroad shed on Qingming, the County Magistrate suffered a momentary lapse in his ability to function. He threw down the tool he was using to plant a peach tree and, without a word to anyone, crawled into his palanquin. He did not need to be told that his official career was about to end.

Back at the yamen, he summoned his clerks and secretaries.

“You must all know that today has signaled the end of this Magistrate’s official career,” he told them. “You are welcome to continue in your present positions and await the appointment of my replacement. If, however, you prefer to leave, I advise you to do so without delay.”

They exchanged looks, but said nothing.

With a bitter laugh, the Magistrate turned and went into his document room, slamming the door behind him.

The loud noise stunned them all. Deflated, they were at a loss for what to do. The revenue clerk went up to the window and said, “There is a popular adage, Laoye, that goes, ‘Confront soldiers with generals, and dam water with earth.’ What that means in essence is that heaven never seals off all the exits. We urge you to take a broad view.” His plea was met with silence from inside.

So he whispered to Chunsheng:

“Hurry out to the rear compound and tell the First Lady what has happened. Be quick, before something terrible happens.”

Meanwhile, the Magistrate had taken off his official garb and dropped it on the floor. Then he took off his hat and threw it into the corner.

“Happy is the man relieved of his duties,” he said to himself, “and lacking a head means no more worries. Your Imperial Majesty, Empress Dowager, I am unable to carry out my vow of fealty; Excellency Yuan, Excellency Fan, Excellency Cao, I am unable to complete the duties entrusted to me; dear wife, I am unable to fulfill my conjugal responsibilities; my dearest Meiniang, I am unable to stay with you. Sun Bing, you no-account son of a bitch, I have done well by you.”

The County Magistrate stood on a stool, untied the satin sash around his waist, and looped it over a crossbeam. Then he made a noose and inserted his head, carefully placing his beard outside the noose so that it fell neatly across his chest. He was able to see bits of the hazy sky and fine threads of rainwater through a hole poked in the paper covering of the latticed window, put there by a passing sparrow; he also saw his chief assistant, his clerks, his personal attendant, and his constables, all standing in the rain, as well as a pair of swallows that had made their nest under the eaves. Amid the hiss of falling rain and the twitter of swallows, the rich smell of life caressed his face. A light spring chill raised gooseflesh on his arms, in contrast to the sentimental longing for Sun Meiniang’s warm body that filled him up, body and soul. Every cell in his body thirsted for her. Woman, ah, woman, you are a miracle, a true wonder. I know that the destruction of my future occurred on your body, and yet I am still madly in love with you… The County Magistrate knew that if he let his thoughts go on like that, his courage to say good-bye to the world would slip away. So he clenched his teeth and kicked the stool out from under him. Vaguely he heard a scream, a woman’s voice. Was his wife coming to him? Or could it be Meiniang? Regret was already setting in, and he strained to reach up and free himself. But his arms were useless…

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A City Destroyed

———— 1 ————

The County Magistrate set out in his four-man palanquin for Masang Township. In order to project a commanding aura, he took twenty county troopers—ten archers and ten musketeers—along with him. Two hundred forty German soldiers were going through their paces when the procession passed the Tongde Academy parade ground. Outfitted in colorful military attire, the tall, muscular soldiers displayed an impressive battle formation, rocking the area with their cadenced shouts. The Magistrate was shocked by what he saw, but did not show it. More than the tight formation and the Mauser weapons the soldiers carried, what truly impressed him was the row of twelve Krupp cannons crouching on the edge of the parade ground. Looking like enormous tortoises with bright shells and short, thick necks raised skyward, they rested on iron wheels that sat heavily on the ground. When Yuan Shikai had assumed office as Governor of Shandong, the County Magistrate and dozens of other County Magistrates had traveled to Jinan to observe a new force of five thousand soldiers that Yuan had brought from Jinan; it was an eye-opening experience for men who believed that the country now had an army that could stand up to the Great Powers. But compared to the German troops on the parade ground, it was a second-rate military force, even after receiving German weapons and training by German officers, who would not likely put their most powerful weapons in the hands of people whose country they had invaded. Excellency Yuan, what a fool you are.

Truth is, Yuan was not the fool, the County Magistrate was. And that was because Yuan had no intention of confronting the Great Powers with his newly created force.

Back on the Jinan parade ground, Yuan had ordered his artillery unit to fire three volleys. The shells flew over a river and a mountain and landed on a gravelly sandbar. In the company of his fellow officials and led by the artillery unit commander, the County Magistrate had ridden to the spot where the shells had created deep triangular craters in the sandbar, shattering the stones and sending their sharp-edged shards flying in all directions. Several young trees in the nearby wooded area had been truncated, with beads of sap dotting the new stumps. All the County Magistrates had gasped in admiration. But the cannons fired that day might as well have been the sons of the twelve cannons crouching at the edge of the Tongde Academy parade ground. The County Magistrate now understood why Yuan always acquiesced to the Germans’ unreasonable demands, and why, in regard to the Sun Bing incident, he acted like a feckless father who slaps his own son in a cowardly display to ingratiate himself with a powerful man whose son has bullied his. No wonder he warned the people of Gaomi in his proclamation: “Let it be known that the German forces are invincible. Stir up more trouble, and you will come to even greater grief. Only a fool would ignore this advice. Have you not heard the adage ‘Obedience is the path to survival, stubbornness leads only to trouble’? I trust you will keep this wise adage in mind.”

The musketeers and archers under the Magistrate’s once-proud command were a pathetic contrast to the German troops. Qian could barely hold up his head in the face of such disparity. And his embarrassment was shared by the men, who felt like adulterers being paraded naked past the Academy grounds. The Magistrate, a representative of the mighty Imperial Court, had come to the negotiations with an armed escort as a show of strength for the Germans, but now realized that this was as foolish a gesture as facing a mirror with his eyes covered. No wonder his men grimaced when he ordered them to dress in full battle attire. They had seen the military hardware and the disciplined troops at the Tongde Academy back when he lay ill in the yamen. He recalled being informed by subordinates that German troops had entered the county’s capital without formal approval and had turned the Tongde Academy into a military camp, their excuse being that the Academy’s name—Tongde—could be interpreted as meaning “for De-guo, or Germany.” Having decided to end his life, he had turned a deaf ear to the shocking news. But once his death wish had passed, he realized that the Germans’ arrogant entry into town and forcible occupation of the Tongde Academy grounds was nothing less than a piratical act in defiance of the sanctity of Gaomi County as well as that of the Great Qing Empire. He wrote a stern diplomatic note to the German commander, von Ketteler, which was hand delivered by Chunsheng and Liu Pu, demanding an apology and an immediate return to the base site stipulated in the 1898 Sino-German Jiao-Ao Treaty. His messengers returned with von Ketteler’s response that Yuan Shikai and the Imperial Court in Peking had approved the establishment of a camp in Gaomi’s capital. As he contemplated the report—unsure whether or not he should believe it—a messenger from Laizhou arrived on horseback with a telegram from Excellency Yuan, sanctioned by Prefect Cao. Yuan had ordered the County Magistrate to extend every courtesy to the Germans as they established a camp in Gaomi and to gain the release of the German hostages taken by the criminal Sun Bing. Brooking no nonsense, Yuan wrote:

“In a recent incident involving foreign missionaries in Juye, Shandong Province suffered a significant loss of sovereignty, and if any of the captives are killed this time, it is hard to imagine what the cost to us will be. Not only will the nation be forced to cede precious land to the foreigners, but our lives will be in jeopardy. In difficult times such as we face today, you must think only of the national well being; you must work unstintingly, and you must successfully resolve issues. People who act out of personal considerations or pervert the law, and those who shirk their responsibilities and hamper the implementation of their duties will be severely punished. As soon as I have dealt with the Boxer rebels here in Northern Shandong, I will come to survey the situation in Gaomi County… in the wake of the February 2nd Incident, I sent a telegram ordering Magistrate Qian to arrest and imprison the rebel leader Sun Bing to ensure that no further incidents occurred, only to receive a return telegram asking that the rebel bandit be absolved of his crimes. I have rarely seen a more muddleheaded request. Such attempts at shifting responsibility and equivocation will inevitably lead to chaos and instability. For this dereliction of duty, Magistrate Qian, you deserve to be removed from office, but the nation is in need of competent officials, and you have ties to a former high official of the current dynasty, so I am prepared to show leniency. Now that you have committed a serious error, I expect you to redeem yourself with devoted service. Devise a plan, without delay, to free the hostages and appease the Germans…”

When he finished reading the telegram, he turned to his wife, who wore a clouded look, and heaved a long sigh.

“Dear wife,” he said, “why did you not let me die?”

“Do you honestly believe that what you are facing now is worse than what my grandfather faced after his defeat at the hands of the Taiping rebels at Jinggang?” The First Lady’s eyes blazed as she looked at her husband.

“But your grandfather jumped into a river to kill himself!”

“You’re right, he did,” she said. “But he was pulled from the river by subordinates, and drew a lesson from the experience. Spurred into rallying his forces, he staged a comeback, refusing to yield and enduring every imaginable hardship as he fought his way into Nanking, where he wiped out the Taiping ‘Long Hairs,’ an exploit that earned him a reputation as an official of great renown, a pillar of the state. His wife received honorary titles, and his children were given hereditary ranks along with considerable wealth. Memorial temples were erected in his honor so that his good name would live for all time. That is the essence of a man worthy of the name.”

“In the two centuries and more since the beginning of this dynasty, there has been only one Zeng Guofan.” The Magistrate looked up at the photograph of the posthumously named Lord Wenzheng hanging on the wall—even in his dotage he had lost none of his dignity. “I have little talent and insubstantial learning,” he said feebly, “and I am weak-willed. You saved my life, but not my reputation. How sad, dear wife, that you, the daughter of an illustrious family, should be married to someone who is little more than a walking corpse.”

“Why, my husband, must you belittle yourself?” she asked gravely. “You are possessed of great learning, are well versed in military strategy, enjoy good health, and have exceptional physical skills. You have had to submit to others not because you are inferior to them, but because your time had not yet come.”

“What about now?” he asked, the hint of a mocking smile on his lips. “Has my time finally come?”

“Of course it has,” the First Lady said. “The Boxers are inciting the masses to rebel, the Great Powers are like tigers eyeing their prey, and the Germans are enraged over Sun Bing’s rebellious actions. All this has put the nation in a precarious position. If you can develop a plan to rescue the hostages and take Sun Bing into custody at the same time, you will gain favor with Excellency Yuan. Not only will your punishment be expunged, but you will be rewarded with a high-level position. Can you deny that it is time for you to accomplish great things?”

“What you have just said has caused me to look at everything with new eyes,” the Magistrate said with a hint of sarcasm. “But the unpleasant Sun Bing business has its roots.”

“Yes, my husband. Sun Bing could be pardoned for avenging his wife’s humiliation by beating the German transgressor. But the Germans can also be pardoned for avenging their countryman. Following the incident, Sun Bing should have accepted his punishment instead of joining the outlawed Boxer movement and, after taking it upon himself to set up a sacred altar, leading an attack by his followers on the railway shed. Most inexcusable of all, he took hostages. If that is not a rebellious act, I do not know what is,” the First Lady said sternly. “Your livelihood is guaranteed by the Great Qing Court, and as its official representative, instead of single-mindedly coming to the defense of the nation in its hour of peril, you sought to absolve Sun Bing of his crimes. Your apparent sympathy was actually an act of harboring the guilty; what you considered benevolence was in truth collusion with the enemy. How could anyone as well read and sensible as you do something so foolish? And all because of a woman who peddles dog meat!”

The shamefaced Magistrate bowed his head under the penetrating gaze of his wife.

“I know that being barren is one of the seven causes for divorce, and I am grateful to you, my husband, for choosing not to abandon me,” she remarked delicately. “That is something I shall not forget… once things have settled down, I will find a woman of virtue for you, someone who will bear your offspring to carry on the Qian name. But if your infatuation with the Sun woman endures, we can arrange a divorce from her butcher husband so you can install her as your concubine. You have my word that I will treat her as family. But this cannot happen now. If you fail to free the foreign hostages and arrest Sun Bing, you and I are fated to come to a bad end, and you will be denied the pleasure of her charms.”

As sweat soaked the Magistrate’s back, he tried but failed to stammer a response.

———— 2 ————

As he sat in his palanquin, the Magistrate’s mood oscillated between righteous indignation and utter dejection. Rays of sunlight filtering in through gaps in the bamboo curtain landed first on his hands and then on his legs. He saw the sweat-soaked necks of the bearers up front through those same gaps. His body shifted with each rise and fall of the shafts, a reflection of his drifting thoughts. The dark, sedate face of the First Lady and the bewitchingly fair image of Meiniang entered his mind, one after the other. The First Lady represented reason, his official career, and the dignity that went with it. Meiniang was emotion, life, romance. He would not willingly give up either one, but if he had to choose, then… then… it would have to be his wife. The granddaughter of Lord Wenzheng was, without question, the proper choice. If he failed to rescue the hostages and take Sun Bing into custody, all would come to naught anyway. Meiniang, oh, Meiniang, your dieh may be your dieh, but you are you, and for you I must take him into custody. It is for you that I must arrest your dieh.

The palanquin crossed the Masang River stone bridge and headed toward Masang Township’s western gate along a badly pitted dirt road. It was the middle of the day, but the gate was tightly shut. Broken bricks and shards of roof tiles had been piled atop a rammed-earth wall, behind which men with knives and spears and clubs were on the move. Flapping high above the gateway was an apricot banner embroidered with the large single word YUE, representing the Song Dynasty hero Yue Fei. Young men in red kerchiefs and sashes, their faces smeared with a red substance, kept guard over the banner.

The Magistrate’s palanquin was lowered to the ground in front of the gate. He stepped out, bent slightly at the waist. A voice from high up on the gateway demanded:

“Who comes calling?”

“Magistrate Qian of Gaomi County.”

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“To see Sun Bing.”

“Our Supreme Commander is practicing martial skills and is unavailable.”

With a sardonic little laugh, the Magistrate said:

“Yu Xiaoqi, you can stop putting on airs for my benefit. When you held a gambling party last year, I spared you from the obligatory forty lashes for the sake of your seventy-year-old mother. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

With a smirk, Yu Xiaoqi replied:

“I have taken the place of the Song general Yang Zaixing.”

“I don’t care if you’ve taken the place of the Jade Emperor, you are still Yu Xiaoqi. Summon Sun Bing, and be quick about it. Otherwise, the next time I see you will be in the yamen when you are getting the lashes you deserve.”

“Wait here,” Yu Xiaoqi said. “I’ll take a message in for you.”

Wearing an inscrutable smile, the Magistrate glanced at his attendants. They are nothing but simple farm boys, he was thinking.

Sun Bing, wearing a long white gown and a silver helmet adorned with a pair of stage-prop plumes, appeared in the gateway. He was still carrying his date-wood club.

“Visitor at our city wall, state your name!”

“Sun Bing, oh, Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said sarcastically, “you still know how to put on a show.”

“The Supreme Commander does not converse with the unidentified. I repeat, state your name!”

“Sun Bing, you are truly lawless. Hear me out. I am a representative of the Great Qing Empire, Gaomi County Magistrate Qian Ding, with the style name Yuanjia.”

“So, it is the trifling Magistrate of Gaomi County,” Sun Bing remarked. “Why have you come here instead of functioning as a good official in your yamen?”

“Will you let me be a good official, Sun Bing?”

“As Supreme Commander, my only concern is to exterminate the foreigners. I have neither the time nor the interest to bother with an insignificant County Magistrate.”

“Exterminating the foreigners is what I have come to see you about. Open the gate and let me in. We will both be losers if their army decides to come.”

“Whatever you have to say, you can say it from out there. I can hear you.”

“What I have to say is extremely confidential. I must talk to you privately.”

After a thoughtful pause, Sun Bing said:

“All right, but just you.”

The Magistrate stepped back into his palanquin.

“Raise the chair!” he ordered.

“The chair stays outside!”

The Magistrate parted the curtain.

“As a representative of the Imperial Court,” he said, “I am expected to be carried in.”

“All right, but only the chair.”

The Magistrate turned to the head of his military escort. “Wait for me out here.”

“Excellency,” Chunsheng and Liu Pu said as they held on to the shafts, “you must not go in there alone.”

The Magistrate smiled.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “Supreme Commander Yue is a sensible man. He will not do injury to this official.”

With a series of loud creaks, the gate opened inward to permit the Magistrate’s palanquin to enter, swaying from side to side. The musketeers and archers of the escort attempted to storm their way in after him, only to be pelted by rubble raining down from atop the wall. When they took aim at their attackers, the Magistrate ordered them to lower their weapons.

The palanquin passed through the newly reinforced wooden gate and was quickly enveloped in the heavy fragrance of pine oil. Through gaps in the bamboo screen, he spotted half a dozen furnaces that had been set up on either side of the street, the fires kept red-hot by large bellows. Local blacksmiths were hard at work forging swords, their clanging hammers sending sparks flying. Women and children walked up and down the street with flatbreads and leeks stripped of their hard skins; lights flashed in the eyes of the glum-looking women. A little boy with tufted hair and an exposed belly who was carrying a steaming black clay pot cocked his head to gape at the Magistrate’s palanquin, then suddenly raised his juvenile voice in a rhythmic Maoqiang aria: “A cold, cold day and heavy snow~~northwest winds up my sleeves do blow~~” The boy’s high-pitched voice made the Magistrate laugh, but what came next was a dose of bone-chilling sorrow. Reminded of the German soldiers who drilled alongside cannons lined up on the Tongde Academy grounds, the Magistrate took a hard look at the ignorant Masang Township residents, who had been whipped into a state of fanaticism by the bewitching black arts of Sun Bing, and he was struck by feelings of obligation to rescue them from their plight. The sonorous inflections of a pledge rang out in his mind—what the First Lady had said made perfect sense: at this critical, perilous juncture, he must reject all thoughts of dying, whether in the name of the nation or of the people. To seek death at this moment would be shameful and cowardly. A world in turmoil gives rise to great men, and it is incumbent upon me to take a lesson from Lord Wenzheng, who defied difficulties and laughed at danger, who fought to save desperate situations and liberate the masses from peril. Sun Bing, you bastard, you have led thousands of Masang residents into the jaws of death, all to satisfy your thirst for personal vengeance, and I am morally and legally bound to see that you are punished.

Sun Bing rode ahead of the Magistrate’s palanquin on a dejected-looking chestnut horse. Its harness had rubbed the hair off the starving animal’s forelegs, exposing the green-tinted skin. Bits of watery excrement hung on the bony hindquarters of what the Magistrate easily identified as a plow horse, a pitiful animal taken from the fields to become Supreme Commander Yue’s personal mount. A young man with a red-painted face led the way, hopping and bouncing down the street with a shiny club that looked like a hoe handle, while a more somber young man, whose face was painted black, walked behind the horse carrying his own shiny club, also, apparently, a hoe handle. The Magistrate assumed that they had fashioned themselves after combatants in the novel The Story of Yue Fei, with Zhang Bao leading the way and Wang Heng bringing up the rear. Sun Bing sat tall in the saddle, reins in one hand and date-wood club in the other, his every stylized move and affected gesture the sort that a man might make astride a great galloping charger as he guarded a frontier pass under a chilly moon or while crossing vast open plains—What a shame, the Magistrate was thinking, that all the man had was an old nag with loose bowels, and that he was riding down a dusty, narrow street on which hens pecked at food and spindly dogs ran loose. The palanquin followed Sun Bing and his guards up to the bend in a dried-out river in the heart of the township, where the Magistrate was treated to the sight of hundreds of men in red kerchiefs and sashes sitting quietly on the dry riverbed, like an array of clay figurines. Other men in bright garb sat on a platform made of piled-up bricks in front of the seated men, intoning funereal strains of Maoqiang opera at the top of their lungs, the meaning virtually incomprehensible to the Magistrate, a celebrated graduate of the metropolitan examination: A black tornado blows in from the south~~a white cat spirit set free by Grand Commander Hong in camp~~white cat spirits, oh, white cat spirits~~white coats and red eyes~~intent on sucking our blood dry~~most exalted Laozi, appear in our midst~~train the magic fists as protectors of the Great Qing~~slaughter the white cat spirits~~skin them, gouge out their eyes, and light the heavenly lamp~~ Sun Bing dismounted in front of a makeshift mat shed. The horse shook its dirty, ratty mane and began to wheeze as it bent its hind legs and released a burst of watery excrement. Zhang Bao stepped back and tied the horse’s reins to a dried-up old willow tree; Wang Heng took the club from Sun Bing, who glanced back at the palanquin with an expression that seemed to the Magistrate to be a cross between arrogance and doltishness. The carriers laid down their shafts and pulled back the curtain for the Magistrate, who scooped up the hem of his official robe and stepped out. Head high and chest thrust out, Sun Bing entered the shed, followed by the Magistrate.

The tent was illuminated by a pair of candles, whose light fell on the image of an idol on one of the walls. Pheasant tail feathers rose above the head of the figure, which was clad in a ministerial python robe and sported a magnificent beard, looking a little like Sun Bing and a lot like the Magistrate. Thanks to his relationship with Sun Meiniang, the Magistrate knew quite a bit about the history of Maoqiang opera, and he immediately recognized the image as that of Chang Mao, the school’s founder, who had somehow been appropriated as the revered Taoist protector of Sun Bing’s Boxers of Righteous Harmony. Upon entering the tent, the Magistrate was greeted by intimidating sounds and the sight of eight wild-looking youths, four on each side of the image. Half had black faces, half had red; half were dressed in black, half in red. Their clothing rustled in the stirred-up air, as if made of paper, and when he took a closer look, he saw that that’s exactly what it was. Each was holding a club, the shiny surfaces indicative of hoe handles. They served to further diminish the Magistrate’s respect for Sun Bing. Can’t you manage something new, something fresh, Sun Bing? After all this time and energy, the best you can come up with is some tired old rural opera tricks. And yet he knew that the Germans did not share his disdain; nor did the Imperial Court or Excellency Yuan. Nor, for that matter, did the three thousand residents of Masang Township, the youthful attendants in the tent, or their leader, Sun Bing.

Following a ragged series of shouts announcing the discussion of military matters by Supreme Commander Yue, Sun Bing strutted over to a rosewood chair and swayed his way into it. With a dramatic flair, he intoned hoarsely:

“State your name, visitor!”

With a sarcastic laugh, the Magistrate said:

“Sun Bing, that’s enough of your insatiable play-acting. I have come neither to listen to you sing opera nor to share the stage with you. I have come to tell you that either the cinders are hot or the fire is.”

“Who do you think you are, speaking to the Supreme Commander like that?” Zhang Bao, the horse preceder, said, pointing his club at the Magistrate. “Our Supreme Commander leads an army of tens of thousands, men and horses, unimaginably greater than anything you can boast of!”

“I trust you haven’t forgotten, Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said as he stroked his beard and stared at Sun Bing’s scarred and scabby chin, “how you lost your beard.”

“I always knew that it was you, you double-dealer,” Sun Bing raged. “I also know that prior to our battle of the beards, you—crafty, petty tyrant that you are—treated your beard with a mixture of ashes and a glue-like substance, which is the only way you could have beaten me. Losing is one thing, but you had no right to pluck out my beard after pardoning me.”

“Would you like to know who really did it?” the Magistrate asked with a smile.

“It had to be you.”

“Right,” the Magistrate replied calmly. “Without doubt, you had the better beard, and if I hadn’t taken precautions, you would surely have won. I pardoned you to show the people that I am a generous, forgiving man. Then I covered my face that night and ripped the beard off your face in order to quell your arrogance and turn you into an obedient member of society.”

“You dog!” Sun Bing pounded his fist on the table and jumped to his feet enraged. “Grab this lousy dog of an official, men, and pluck out his beard! My chin has become barren thanks to you, and I am going to turn yours into the Gobi Desert!”

Zhang Bao and Wang Heng raised their clubs threateningly and bore down upon the Magistrate, aided by shouts from the wild youngsters.

“I am an official representative of the Imperial Court,” the Magistrate warned them, “dignified and properly assigned. Don’t you dare so much as touch a single hair on my body!”

“I curse the merciless, insignificant little Qian Ding~~In your role you are a moth that has flown into the fire, fallen into a trap, landed in my hand~~a blood debt will be paid on this day~~” With the Maoqiang aria on his lips, Sun Bing charged, raised his club high over his head, yelled “You rat… !” took aim at the Magistrate’s head, and swung mightily.

Calmly, the Magistrate moved backward, easily sidestepping the blow, and grabbed hold of the offending club, pushing it ahead of him and forcing Sun Bing down on all fours. Zhang Bao and Wang Heng raised their clubs and swung in the direction of the Magistrate’s head; he dodged their blows with a cat-like leap backward and then sprang forward like a leopard, causing the two heads to bang together with a loud thud. Somehow both of their clubs landed in his hands. With his left he hit Zhang Bao, and with his right Wang Heng. “You damned freaks,” he cursed, “get out of my sight!” The two men shrieked and scampered out of the shed, holding their heads in their hands. With them out of the way, the Magistrate tossed one of the clubs away, but held on to the other. “And you little freaks,” he cursed, “are you waiting for me to do the same to you, or will you clear out on your own?” Seeing how fast the tide had turned, the eight wild youngsters took the latter course, some throwing down their clubs, others dragging theirs out the door with them.

The Magistrate grabbed Sun Bing by the neck and lifted him off the ground.

“Sun Bing,” he said, “where are the three German hostages?”

“Qian,” Sun Bing said with a teeth-grinding snarl, “go ahead, kill me, if that’s what you want. Everyone else in my family is dead, so it makes no difference to me if I live or die.”

“Tell me where the Germans are.”

“Them?” With a sarcastic grin, he began to sing: “When you ask where all the German dogs are~~that makes this Supreme Commander’s spirits fly far~~they are sleeping in heaven~~they are hidden deep in the ground~~they exist in latrines~~they line the stomachs of dogs, that is where they are~~”

“Have you killed them?”

“They are alive and well, and it is up to you to go find them.”

“Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said as he let go of the neck and adopted a friendlier tone, “I have to tell you that Meiniang is now in the hands of the Germans, and if you do not release their people, they will hang her from the city gate.”

“That is up to them,” Sun Bing replied. “Marrying off a daughter is like spilling a pail of water. She is no longer my concern.”

“But she is your only daughter, and you owe her a lifetime of debts. If you refuse to free your German hostages, then I have no choice but to take you back with me today.” The Magistrate took Sun Bing by the arm and walked him out of the shed, where they were met by a burst of crowd noise. There on the dry riverbed, hundreds of men in their red kerchiefs, red sashes, and painted faces, under the leadership of several other men in stage costume, were heading their way, a bawling, raucous wave of black heads closing in and surrounding the Magistrate and Sun Bing before they could react. One of them, a general in a tiger-skin apron, his face painted like a monkey, leaped into the center, pointed his iron cudgel at the Magistrate’s head, and, affecting an accent from somewhere, said:

“Alien evildoer, how dare you cause our Supreme Commander to suffer such an outrage!”

“I, Gaomi County Magistrate, have come to negotiate the release of hostages and to take Sun Bing into custody!”

“County Magistrate, you shall do nothing of the sort! You are an evil spirit in human form. Destroy his evil powers, my children!”

Before he knew it, the people behind the Magistrate had dumped a pail of dog’s blood over his head, followed by a coating of manure. This was more filth than had ever degraded and soiled the fastidious Magistrate’s body. As his stomach lurched and nausea began to claim him, he bent over to vomit and, in the process, let go of Sun Bing’s arm.

“Sun Bing, bring the hostages to the north gate of the county seat tomorrow at noon, or your daughter will suffer grievously.” The Magistrate wiped his face with his hand, revealing a pair of eyes clouded with manure and blood; he presented a sad sight, and yet spoke with firm self-assurance: “Do not let what I say drift past your ears on the wind!”

“Kill him! Kill this dog-shit official!” many in the crowd shouted.

“I am doing this for your own good, fellow townsmen.” The Magistrate spoke from his heart. “After you deliver the hostages tomorrow, you may do whatever you please. Do not make the mistake of following Sun Bing.” He turned to the pair of Righteous Harmony Boxers and said in a mocking tone, “Then there’s you two. His Excellency Yuan, Governor of the Province, has sent an edict that Boxers are to be killed, down to the last man. None are to be spared. But since you have come from far away, that makes you guests of a sort, and I am willing to send you on your way in peace. Leave now, before provincial troops arrive, for by then it will be too late.”

His words had a stupefying effect on the men in the roles of Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, so he quickly took advantage of the changed mood. “Sun Bing,” he called out loudly, “your daughter’s life is at stake, and you must meet your responsibility. At noon tomorrow I will be waiting for you at the San Li River Bridge outside the north gate.” With that, he parted the crowd and strode purposefully down the street. His carriers rushed to pick up the palanquin and trot after him. He was also followed by the slightly off-tune strains of a Maoqiang opera, intoned by Sun Wukong:

“Righteous Harmony, we sacred Boxers~~slaughter the foreigners to preserve our land! Boxers of Righteous Harmony~~our power is great~~indestructible ~~together we band…”

Once he was on the outskirts of town, the Magistrate began to run, faster and faster, his carriers and attendants straining to keep up, like a flock of sheep. The stink of the man’s body easily reached them, and the sight he presented, a mixture of red and brown, so completely flummoxed them that they dared not laugh, they dared not cry, and they dared not ask what had happened; so they just kept running. When they reached the Masang River Bridge, the Magistrate jumped in, spraying water in all directions.

“Eminence!” Chunsheng and Liu Pu shouted together.

Suicide was what they were thinking. They ran down to the riverbank, prepared to jump in and save their Magistrate, until they saw his head break the surface. Though it was by then the fourth lunar month, a bit of wintry weather lingered on, and a chill rose from the clear blue water. Still in the middle of the river, the Magistrate shed his official clothing and rinsed it out in the river. He repeated the action, this time with his hat.

With his clothing now clean, he waded unsteadily up to the riverbank, aided by his attendants. He seemed shrunken, thanks to the cold water, and had trouble straightening up, but after draping Chunsheng’s jacket over his shoulders and stepping into Liu Pu’s pants, he crawled into his palanquin. Then, once Chunsheng spread his official garments over top of the palanquin and Liu Pu hung his hat from one of the shafts, the carriers picked up the chair and hurried home, followed by the Magistrate’s troops and attendants.

“Damn!” he was thinking as he was carried along, “I look like one of those opera-stage adulterers!”

———— 3 ————

The story that the Germans had taken Sun Meiniang hostage was a complete fabrication, either something the Magistrate had made up on the spot or what he had assumed the Germans would do if Sun Bing refused to repatriate their countrymen. Now he led his personal attendants to meet the German Plenipotentiary, von Ketteler, and his entourage at the prearranged site on the San Li River bridgehead near the city’s north gate, where they awaited the arrival of Sun Bing. The Magistrate had not mentioned a hostage swap to the German official, telling him only that a repentant Sun Bing had agreed to release the hostages. The Plenipotentiary, inordinately pleased by the news, told the Magistrate through his interpreter that if his countrymen were returned unharmed, he would praise the Magistrate’s efforts to Excellency Yuan himself. This did little to ease the Magistrate’s misgivings, and he responded with a bitter smile as he recalled the dreadful premonition that Sun Bing’s ambiguous comments had left him with the day before, a fear that the three German captives had already come to grief. He prepared for the meeting trusting to luck that all would end well, and with that in mind, he mentioned Sun Meiniang to no one, including Chunsheng and Liu Pu. He merely told them to ready a two-man palanquin, in which he had them place a large rock.

The Plenipotentiary, who was growing impatient as the sun rose high in the sky, kept looking at his pocket watch and telling his interpreter to ask whether Sun Bing was playing them for fools. The Magistrate equivocated as much as possible, avoiding a direct response to the man’s questions and his growing suspicions. Though he was churning with anxiety, he put on a brave, jovial face.

“Please ask the Plenipotentiary for me,” he said to the rat-faced interpreter, “why his eyes are blue.”

The befuddled interpreter could only sputter in response. The Magistrate had a big laugh over his little joke.

A pair of magpies were chattering loudly in a nearby willow tree, their black and white feathers making a lively show around branches that were just turning yellow. The scene was a work of art. Across the river, men with handcarts or carrying poles were making their way up the levee; before they reached the bridgehead, they spotted the foreign Plenipotentiary, who had remained in the saddle of his mighty steed, and the County Magistrate, who was standing in front of his palanquin; they turned tail and ran back down the levee.

When the sun was directly overhead, the sound of horns and drums signaled the arrival of a delegation from the north. The Plenipotentiary hastily lifted his field glasses to his eyes; the Magistrate shaded his eyes with his hand and strained to see who was coming, and heard the Plenipotentiary shout out to him:

“Qian, where are the hostages?”

The Magistrate took the field glasses the official held out to him. The still-distant contingent of men leaped into his line of vision. He saw that Sun Bing was still wearing his tattered stage costume, still holding his date-wood club, and still riding the same old nag. It was hard to tell whether the smile on his face was that of a dull-witted man or a crafty one. In front of his horse, as always, was Zhang Bao the monkey, while the silly-looking Wang Heng was walking behind him, followed by Sun Bing’s senior attendants, Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, who were both on horseback. They were followed by four musicians—two playing the suona and two on horns—who preceded a slow-moving mule-drawn wagon with wooden wheels on which a tent had been set up. Next in the procession were a dozen red-kerchiefed young men carrying swords and spears. Only the Germans were missing. The Magistrate’s heart turned to ice, and his vision blurred. Even though this was what he had anticipated, he held out a ray of hope that the three German captives were there in the tent on the slow-moving mule-drawn wagon. He handed the field glasses back to the foreigner and avoided the German’s anxious eyes. In his mind’s eye he gauged whether or not the tent could accommodate three good-sized Germans. Two scenarios played out in his head: One was that Sun Bing was according his German hostages the courtesy of riding to their salvation in a mule-drawn wagon. The other was that three bloody corpses were piled inside that tent. Neither superstitious nor much of a believer in ghosts and spirits, the Magistrate surprised even himself by offering up a silent prayer: All you spirits and demons in heaven and on earth, I beg you to let those three German soldiers step unharmed from that wagon. If they cannot walk, being carried off is acceptable. As long as there is still breath in their bodies, all is not lost. If three bloody corpses were carried out of the tent, the Magistrate could not bear to think of what that would lead to. A bloody, full-scale war was a distinct possibility, or a massacre. One thing was certain: his career would be over.

While thoughts thronged the Magistrate’s mind, Sun Bing’s procession approached the bridgehead, making field glasses unnecessary to see all the men, their animals, and the mysterious mule-drawn wagon; the Magistrate’s attention was focused on the wagon, which bounced and bumped its way along, appearing to have plenty of heft without being overly heavy. The iron-rimmed wooden wheels turned slowly, creaking noisily with each revolution. As soon as it reached the bridgehead, the procession halted, and the musicians put down their instruments. Sun Bing spurred his horse up the levee, and when he reached the top he shouted, “You are in the presence of the great Song general Yue Fei. I demand to know the name of the general I face!”

The Magistrate responded loudly:

“Sun Bing, release your captives at once!”

“First tell that dog beside you to let my daughter go!” Sun Bing replied.

“The truth is, Sun Bing, they never did take your daughter,” the Magistrate said as he pulled back the curtain of his palanquin.” There is nothing but a large rock in here.”

“I knew it was a lie,” Sun Bing said with a smile. “This Supreme Commander has eyes and ears everywhere in the city. You cannot make a move there without my learning of it.”

“If you do not free the hostages, I cannot guarantee Meiniang’s safety,” the Magistrate warned him.

“This commander’s emotional attachment to his daughter no longer exists. You decide whether she lives or dies,” Sun Bing replied. “But in the spirit of magnanimity, and despite the alien dog’s lack of humanity, this commander must retain his righteousness, and so I have brought the three alien dogs with me and herewith hand them over.”

With a casual wave, Sun Bing signaled the Boxer troops behind him to remove three burlap sacks from the mule-drawn wagon, which they dragged up to the bridgehead. The Magistrate saw signs of struggle inside the sacks and heard strange muffled sounds. The Boxers stood in the middle of the road waiting for Sun Bing’s command:

“Let them out!”

They opened the three bags, picked them up from the bottom, and dumped out the contents: a pair of pigs dressed in German uniforms and a white dog wearing a German soldier’s cap. With squeals and frantic barks, the animals scrambled across the ground, heading straight for the Plenipotentiary, like children rushing into the arms of family.

“They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!” Sun Bing announced earnestly.

His troops echoed his words:

“They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!”

Magistrate Qian did not know whether to laugh or cry at the scene playing out in front of him. The Plenipotentiary, on the other hand, drew his pistol and fired at Sun Bing, hitting the club in his hand and producing an unusual sound. But to look at Sun Bing, one would have thought that his club had hit the bullet rather than the other way around. At the very instant when the foreigner fired his pistol, one of the young musketeers behind Sun Bing took aim at the German and fired a spray of buckshot, some of which struck the man’s horse, which reared up in pain and threw its rider; his foot was caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged by the blinded animal toward the river. The Magistrate flew to the rescue, like a panther pouncing on its prey; he wrapped his arms around the horse’s neck and slowed it enough for the foreign attendants to rush up and free the Plenipotentiary, who had been hit in the ear by a buckshot pellet, from the stirrup. He reached up to feel his ear, and when he saw the blood on his hand, he screamed something unintelligible.

“What did His Excellency shout just now?” the Magistrate asked the interpreter.

“He sa… said he… he’s reporting you to Excellency Yuan!” the man stammered.

———— 4 ————

After marching all night from Jinan, German troops, in a joint operation with a battalion of Imperial Right Guardsmen, surrounded Masang Township and attacked, Chinese troops in front, Germans bringing up the rear. The County Magistrate and Infantry Regiment Commander Ma Longbiao stood on opposite sides of the Plenipotentiary, whose wounded ear was bandaged, as if they were his personal bodyguards. In the woods behind them, German cannons were in place and ready to commence firing, with four soldiers standing at attention behind each piece, like wooden posts. The Magistrate did not know whether von Ketteler had already telegraphed a complaint to Yuan Shikai, since Ma Longbiao and his infantry troops had arrived, travel-worn and weary, on the afternoon of the hostage-exchange farce.

After arranging board and lodging for the regiment, the Magistrate held a welcoming dinner for Commander Ma, a modest man who, throughout the meal, proclaimed his enormous respect for Lord Wenzheng and made a point of saying that he had long admired the Magistrate as a learned man. When the meal was nearly over, Ma whispered to him that Qian Xiongfei, who had suffered the slicing death in Tianjin, had been a close friend, a revelation that convinced Qian that he and his guest had a special relationship, as if they had been fast friends for years, someone from whom there were no secrets.

To help ensure Commander Ma’s success in his mission, Magistrate Qian lent him fifty of the county militiamen, who were assigned as scouts for the government troops and foreign soldiers, deploying them around the township in the darkness just before daybreak. The Magistrate himself made a personal appearance to help compensate for the ridiculous travesty the day before, when the anticipated hostage swap had blown up in his face. Sun Bing had made fools out of him and the German; his proclamation and the shouts of his followers rang in the County Magistrate’s ears: “They turned themselves into pigs and dogs! They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!” I should have known they would not let those three German soldiers live, he was thinking. As a matter of fact, he had heard that Sun Bing and his followers had tied the captives to trees and taken turns urinating in their faces. After that, he was sure, they would have offered the men’s hearts and livers in sacrifice to the souls of their twenty-seven dead. I should have followed my instincts instead of blithely believing that the German soldiers were still alive. Even more laughable was my thought that if I rescued the hostages, Excellency Yuan would take note of my achievement and view me with favor. My mistake was listening to my wife and letting what she said convince me to do something incredibly stupid. Von Ketteler’s luck was hardly better than mine. By taking a shot at Sun Bing, he had set in motion the creation of a legend that Sun’s martial skills were so advanced he could redirect bullets in midair, while his followers could fire a fowling piece without aiming and not only bring down a powerful horse but put a hole in its rider’s ear. The Magistrate assumed that von Ketteler had already sent his telegram, but even if he hadn’t, it was only a matter of time. For all he knew, Yuan had already left Jinan for Gaomi, and his only hope of keeping his head attached to his shoulders was to capture or kill Sun Bing before His Excellency arrived.

The County Magistrate watched as his militiamen, under the command of Liu Pu, approached the fortified town at a crouch from a position in front of the Imperial Right Guard troops, who treated ordinary citizens with the ferocity of wolves or tigers, but as soon as fighting broke out, they were as gutless as mice. They started out in a loose formation, but each step nearer to the fortified wall drew them closer together, like chickens huddling for warmth. Though he had no battle experience, the Magistrate had read everything Lord Wenzheng had written many times, and he knew that a tight formation was an invitation to be wiped out by fortress defenders. He wished he’d given them a bit of basic training before heading into battle, but it was too late now. They pressed forward, drawing closer and closer to the wall, which appeared unmanned; but he knew by the puffs of smoke rising every few yards above the wall and the smell of porridge cooking that there were people on the other side. He had learned from Lord Wenzheng’s military writings that defenders of walls did not prepare pots of boiling porridge to satisfy their appetite; the real purpose was something he knew only too well, yet tried not to think about. His militiamen stopped when they were but a few yards from the protective wall, and began the attack—musketeers shooting their fowling pieces, archers letting their arrows fly. The anemic sound of gunfire—some twenty or so shots altogether—was no demonstration of military might. Then the guns fell silent. Some of the archers’ arrows had sailed over the wall; others were lucky to have made it to the wall, a showing that failed to match even that of the musketeers. It was more like a children’s game than anything. After firing their fowling pieces, the men knelt in place and reached for the powder horns hanging from their belts. The horns were actually bottle gourds coated with tung oil, which made them glossy and strikingly attractive. In earlier days, when the Magistrate had led his musketeers out searching for bandits and highwaymen, those twenty gleaming powder horns had been a source of pride. Now, seen alongside the Imperial Right Guard and German battle formations, they looked like toys. The kneeling men finished loading their fowling pieces with powder, fired off a second scattered volley, and stormed the fortified wall, filling the air with battle cries. Last year’s straw on the ten-foot gently sloped wall quivered under the onslaught of running feet. Or was it the County Magistrate’s quivering heart? A pair of palanquin bearers ran up carrying a ladder. Years of carrying a palanquin had left them with a prancing gait that was in evidence even now; they no longer knew how to actually run. Despite the fact that this was an assault against an enemy fortification, they moved as if they were carrying the County Magistrate’s chair through the countryside. As soon as they reached the wall, they leaned the ladder up against it, and still there was no sign of defenders; the Magistrate was prepared to thank his lucky stars. Now that the ladder was ready, the bearers steadied it for their comrades, who began climbing with their fowling pieces and their bows and arrows. Three men were on the ladder, the first having just about reached the top of the wall, when the heads of Boxers in red kerchiefs appeared on the other side; they dumped full pots of steaming porridge onto the county militiamen. The screams were like stakes driven into the Magistrate’s heart. At any minute, he felt, the accumulated filth in his colon would empty into his trousers, and he had to bite down on his lower lip to hold it in. He watched as his men fell backward into their comrades, who had already begun beating a chaotic, panicky retreat to the raucous delight of the Boxers on the wall. But then a regimental bugler gave a signal to the better-trained Imperial Right Guards, who shouldered their rifles and opened fire on the fortified wall.

After watching the defenders repel the first assault on their fortification by the Imperial Right Guard with boiling water, hot porridge, homemade bombs, bricks, roof tiles, and rocks, even a couple of powerful and enormous local cannons, the Magistrate began to wonder if he had underestimated Sun Bing. Up till then, Sun had impressed him merely as a self-styled mystic; he had never entertained the thought that the man might actually be a military genius. Performing onstage had given him the same knowledge the Magistrate had acquired through extensive reading, and not just in military theories, but in practical applications that produced results. The Magistrate was comforted to see the mighty Imperial Right Guard suffer the same setback as his own ragtag militia; it was the sort of outcome he could almost revel in. As his anxieties vanished, they were replaced by resurgent courage and self-confidence. But now it was time for the Germans. He glanced at von Ketteler, who was training his field glasses on the fortified wall, blocking a view of his face, except for his cheeks, which were twitching. Not only had his soldiers, who had taken up positions behind the Imperial Right Guard, not mounted an assault, they had actually moved far back to the rear. Something was in the works. Von Ketteler lowered his field glasses and faced the scene with a smile of contempt before turning to his artillerymen and shouting a command. The stick figures leaped into action, and in a matter of seconds a dozen cannon shells screamed overhead on their way to the fortification, like a formation of crows, sending geysers of white smoke into the air on both sides of the wall, followed by deafening explosions. The Magistrate saw shells make direct hits on the wall itself, shattering bricks and tiles and flinging the shards high into the air, mixed here and there with human body parts. Another volley pounded eardrums, and this time many more body parts flew through the air. Howls of pain and anguish rose from behind the wall, whose pine gateway had been reduced to rubble. At this point, von Ketteler waved a red flag handed to him by his adjutant, a sign to his foot soldiers to begin the assault on the gateway’s yawning gap, rifles at the ready, battle cries on their lips, long legs striding forward. The Imperial Right Guard, having regrouped, launched their assault from a different direction, leaving behind the Magistrate’s wounded militiamen, who lay in a depression in the ground and wept piteously. The Magistrate’s mind was in a state of shock; this time, he knew, Masang Township was doomed, and a bloodbath awaited its thousands of residents. The most prosperous township in all of Gaomi County would simply cease to exist. In the face of German swagger, the Magistrate’s love for the common man was reborn, although he knew that the situation had deteriorated to the point where he was helpless to alter the outcome. Even if the Emperor himself made an appearance, He would be unable to halt the Germans, for whom total victory was assured. Symbolically, he now stood with the citizens behind the fortification, and he fervently hoped that they might escape with their lives, heading south before the enemy soldiers entered town. They would, of course, be forced to cross the Masang River, but villagers who live near water know how to swim. There was, he knew, a squad of Imperial Right Guardsmen lying in ambush on the southern bank of the river, but he was confident that many of the villagers would be taken to safety downriver. The Guardsmen would not fire on women and children as they crossed the river, he assumed; they were, after all, Chinese.

But events did not unfold as the Magistrate expected. The German soldiers disappeared from sight after passing through the gateway opening. A cloud of smoke and dust was followed by howls in German, and the Magistrate knew at once that the clever and resourceful Sun Bing had set a trap by digging a deep pit just inside the gate. The look on von Ketteler’s face said it all as he frantically waved his flag as a signal for his men to fall back. The German soldiers’ lives were what counted, and von Ketteler’s plan, which had called for victory without the loss of a single man, had failed. He was certain to order a second bombardment by his artillerymen, who had been given enough shells to turn the town into a wasteland. The Magistrate would be fooling himself if he believed that this battle would result in anything but a German victory. As expected, von Ketteler turned to the commander of his artillery unit and shouted a command, just as the outline of an idea in the Magistrate’s mind was suddenly transformed into a bold plan of action. He turned to von Ketteler’s interpreter.

“Ask von Ketteler to hold off. I have something important to say to him.”

The interpreter did as he was told, and von Ketteler honored the request. Suddenly two pairs of eyes were fixed on the County Magistrate: the Plenipotentiary’s deep green eyes and those of Ma Longbiao, whose expression was one of dejection.

“There is a popular adage, sir, that goes, ‘If you want to defeat an enemy, first go after his king.’ The commoners in town are under a spell woven by Sun Bing. That is the only thing that would have led them to do battle with your honorable soldiers. Sun Bing is the sole culprit in this episode. As long as we capture him and punish him severely—in effect, execute him as a warning to the masses—there will be no more vandalism against the railroad, and you will have carried out your assignment. It is my understanding that you have come to China in search of riches, not to subject the people of either nation to bloodshed. If what I say strikes you as reasonable, I offer my services to enter the town and convince Sun Bing to give himself up.”

“Are you sure you don’t plan to go in there for the purpose of cooking up a new strategy with Sun Bing?” The interpreter was kept busy interpreting for both men.

“I am an official representative of the Great Qing Court. My family is still in the county yamen,” the Magistrate replied. “The reason I am willing to put my life on the line is to spare your men from injury or worse. They have crossed a vast ocean to be here, and each of their lives is of great value. If large numbers of them were to be killed or wounded, the Kaiser would not reward you for a job well done, I believe.”

“I will agree if Ma Longbiao stays behind as your guarantor,” the interpreter said.

“Elder Brother Qian,” Ma said, his heavy-hearted tone unmistakable, “I know what you have in mind. But if unruly people inside…”

“Commander Ma,” the Magistrate said, “I am fifty percent sure of success. I cannot stand by and watch one of the county’s most flourishing towns be leveled by these foreigners and, even worse, see my people cut down for no good reason.”

“If you manage to enter town and convince Sun Bing to surrender,” Ma Longbiao said earnestly, “keeping our Imperial forces from harm while also protecting the lives of countless civilians, I will personally testify to your achievement to Excellency Yuan himself.”

“We have reached the point where I can lay no claim to any achievements,” the Magistrate replied. “I only hope that I do not make matters worse. Please get an assurance from von Ketteler that once I bring Sun Bing out, he will withdraw his forces.”

“You can trust me on that,” Ma Longbiao said as he took out a new pistol he was carrying and handed it to the Magistrate. “Elder Brother Qian,” he said, “keep this with you, just in case.”

The Magistrate waved the gesture off. “In the name of all the inhabitants of the town, I ask Elder Brother Ma to see that von Ketteler does not fire his cannons.” With that, he mounted his horse and headed for the open gateway.

“I am the Magistrate of Gaomi County,” he called out. “A friend of your commander. I need to speak with him. It is of the utmost importance!”

———— 5 ————

The Magistrate rode unimpeded into town, where he gave the trap a wide berth, but not before looking down into the pit, where a dozen or more German soldiers were struggling and screaming in pain. The floor of the pit, which was at least ten feet deep, was lined with pointed bamboo and metal spikes; some of the trapped Germans were already dead, while others had suffered grievous wounds and lay there like frogs on a spit. The stench rising out of the pit was proof that Sun Bing, not content merely to line the bottom of his trap with sharp objects, had dumped in a layer of excrement as well. That reminded the Magistrate of the time, decades earlier, when the foreigners had first come to China, and a certain frontier ambassador had petitioned the Emperor with a plan for dealing with them: the foreigners, he said, were obsessed with cleanliness and sanitation, and anything to do with bodily waste horrified them. So, he suggested, if each imperial soldier carried a bucket of shit into battle, all he had to do was spread his filth on the ground to send the enemy fleeing in disgust, holding their noses and maybe even vomiting until they died. The Xianfeng Emperor was said to have enthusiastically approved what He considered to be an especially creative suggestion, since it not only had the potential to vanquish this new enemy, but required a minimum of expense. The Magistrate’s wife had told him this, treating it as a joke, and he had had a good laugh over it. Never in his wildest imagination would he have thought that Sun Bing would employ that very method, with a bit of modification, a military tactic that had all the characteristics of a practical joke; he did not know whether to laugh or to cry. In point of fact, in the wake of the farcical hostage exchange of the previous day, the Magistrate had gained an understanding of Sun Bing’s approach to military tactics. Juvenile, to be sure, the stuff of children’s games, and yet, contrary to all expectations, they made people stop and think, as more often than not they proved effective. As he rode past the pit, the Magistrate also saw a good many dead and dying Boxers on both sides of the fortification, as well as smashed porridge pots whose steamy contents lay in pools of blood. The wounded were voicing their agony. Red-kerchiefed Boxers, as well as women and children, were running headlong up and down the street on which he had traveled not so long before. For all practical purposes, the town had been laid waste, the Magistrate concluded. The Germans could take it almost without a fight, and this realization underscored his sense of self-worth. By sacrificing Sun Bing, one man, he could save thousands. Sun Bing had to be delivered, at all costs. If persuasion failed, force would have to have to be employed. Even though he had refused Ma Longbiao’s offer of a pistol, the Magistrate was confident that Sun Bing was no match for him. He had such a deep sense of valor and solemnity that he could all but hear drums and horns heralding his arrival. Spurring his horse into a gallop, he flew down the street, heading straight for the mat shed that stood at the bend in the river, where he would find Sun Bing.

There he saw hundreds of Boxers down in the dry riverbed ingesting Taoist charms. Using both hands, each man held a bowl in which paper ashes were mixed with water. Sun Bing, the man he sought, stood atop a pile of bricks and filled the air with a loud incantation. His primary outside help, the Caozhou Righteous Harmony Boxer Sun Wukong, was nowhere to be seen; the second-in-command, Zhu Bajie, was demonstrating martial skills with his rake to lend an impressive air to Sun’s ritual. The Magistrate slid down off his horse and walked up to the brick pile, where he kicked over the incense altar in front of Sun Bing.

“Sun Bing,” he said loudly, “how can you continue to beguile and bewitch your followers when rivers of your men’s blood already flow across the fortification?”

When Sun Bing’s bodyguards rushed up from behind, the Magistrate quickly moved around Sun, took a glistening dagger from his sleeve, and placed the point in a spot directly behind Sun’s heart.

“Do not move!” he commanded.

“You dog of an official!” Sun Bing hissed. “Once again you have broken my boxing magic! I am iron head, iron waist, iron body, impervious to bullets, resistant to water and fire!”

“Fellow townsmen, go take a look at the fortification, then tell me if flesh and blood can stand up to cannon shells!” He chose this moment to make a bold assumption: “There you will even find the mangled body of your finest warrior, the mighty Sun Wukong!”

“You lie!” Sun Bing screamed.

“Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said callously, “have you really mastered the art of resisting knives and spears?”

“Nothing can penetrate my body, not even shells fired by those dog soldiers!”

The Magistrate bent down, picked up a brick, and struck it against Sun Bing’s forehead before he had time to react. Sun fell backward, but the Magistrate caught him by the collar and held him up.

“Now show these people your indestructible body!”

Dark blood snaked down from Sun Bing’s forehead, like worms squirming across his face. Zhu Bajie swung his rake at the Magistrate, who jumped out of the way and flung his dagger; it stuck in Zhu’s abdomen, sending him tumbling off the brick pile with agonizing screams.

“Have you seen enough, fellow townsmen? These are your altar master and one of his senior aides. If they have failed to withstand even the modest brick-and-dagger efforts of a local official, how are they going to repel enemy cannon fire?”

The adherents’ confidence was shaken, to which the buzzing below the platform bore irrefutable witness.

“Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said, “as a man of valor, you must not send these people to certain death just to satisfy a personal desire. I have secured a promise from the German Plenipotentiary that he will withdraw his troops if you surrender to him. You have already accomplished something so astonishing it has captured the attention of the whole world, and if you are willing to sacrifice yourself in order to keep your fellow townsmen from harm, your legacy will live forever!”

“Heaven’s will!” Sun Bing said with a sigh. “It is heaven’s will.” Then he began to sing: “Ceding territory and vanquished by the Jin~~I forsake the Central Plain and abandon the common people, a decade of exploits squandered in a single day~~Humiliated, we sue for peace, remorse follows an overturned nest~~I fear the whale will swallow our land away. Do not falsely consign me to confinement with no end, for when I am gone, the Yue army will stay~~ Fellow countrymen, disperse!”

The Magistrate led Sun Bing down from the brick pile, taking advantage of the chaos below to head to the township’s main gate. He forgot that he had come on horseback.

———— 6 ————

As he single-handedly brought Sun Bing out of Masang Township, the Magistrate was bursting with a sense of his own valor. What happened next dealt him a crippling blow, causing anguish over the knowledge that he had made yet another imbecilic mistake, this one far worse than the humiliating hostage exchange. Instead of withdrawing his troops, as he had promised, von Ketteler ordered the artillery commander to open fire the moment the Magistrate and Sun Bing were standing before him—with a roar, twelve cannons sent deadly shells flying past the defenses. Explosions erupted all over town, sending flames and smoke into the air. The screams of dying townspeople raised a terrible cacophony as an enraged Sun Bing spun around and began throttling the Magistrate, who put up no resistance, welcoming the death he felt he deserved. But Ma Longbiao signaled his guards to pull Sun Bing away and save his colleague’s life. County Magistrate Qian Ding closed his eyes as Sun Bing railed against him. Though he was lightheaded, he heard the clamor of the German attack, and he knew that Gaomi County’s most prosperous township had ceased to exist. Who had caused that to happen? Sun Bing, perhaps, or the Germans. Or maybe he himself.

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