Year of the Tiger (30 page)

‘Right,’ I type. ‘So you guys have me running around wasting my time because you can’t agree on the rules. Thanks.’

‘It’s not just the four of us you meet in our Guild. We have to be careful. We have to make sure we can trust you.’

‘Fine.’ I fall back in my chair, take a couple slugs of my beer. I’m so pissed off, and I’m so tired.

‘Just tell me what to do,’ I finally say.

‘Can you go to Chengdu?’ Water Horse asks.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, practically in the furthest southwest corner of China.

‘Why?’

Water Horse just stands there.

‘Why Chengdu?’

‘To help Upright Boar.’

‘How does me going to Chengdu help him?’ I type furiously. ‘What do you want me to do?’

A pause.

‘Maybe Chengdu too far for you.’

I think about this. I drink some more beer. ‘Maybe you’d like it if I give up.’

‘No,’ Water Horse protests. ‘I think you are Upright Boar friend and you want to help him.’

‘Okay,’ I type. But how do I know what’s true? Water Horse, Golden Snake, Cinderfox, the Monk – they could all be the same person, or they could be lying about what they want and whether they’re on my side or not.

Maybe Water Horse is some fat dude sitting in a comic-book store in Cleveland.

‘I’ll go to Chengdu,’ I finally say.

I’ve already gone this far, haven’t I?

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

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

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

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

It’s raining when the train pulls into Chengdu.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Changqing Shan. The Taoist Scholar Cave. Tomorrow. 3
P.M.
’

Changqing Shan, ‘Evergreen Mountain,’ is a Taoist sacred site, a mountain honeycombed with temples, sixty or seventy of them, connected by steep stone paths that wind over and around the peaks. The entrance to the mountain is the front gate and galleries of a temple – carved peaked roofs rising to points, painted dragons perching on the roof tiles, surrounded by a riot of ginkgos and palms and plum trees. Behind it, the low mountain rises, swaddled in green and mist.

I get there early, catching a ride from the hostel’s mini-bus.

I pay my entrance fee and go inside.

Walking through the first temple, I think: that Chinese guy kneeling in front of the Guanyin altar with his incense sticks – he could be part of the Game. Or that European woman in cargo shorts and a camera vest taking photos of an ornate bronze caldron. The worker sweeping the temple courtyard.

Any of them. None of them.

I walk up a slate path that is slick from the drizzle, my sneakers squeaking as I step. Changqing Shan isn’t as crowded as a lot of Chinese tourist traps. I don’t know if it’s because of the weather, or if the complex is so big, with so many temples and galleries, that it somehow absorbs the visitors, renders them nearly invisible, like they’re a part of the landscape.

Maybe it’s the mist. I feel like I’m walking through a cloud. I turn my head and see a little shrine tucked into the rocks. In another direction, a pavilion, with two women and two men dressed in traditional costumes – musicians with stringed instruments and hand drums. Poised as if they’re about to start singing, but they don’t: they just stand there like a freeze-frame in some movie.

Above them, nestled in the rafters of the pavilion, is a surveillance camera.

I keep walking. Behind me, I hear the echo of strings and the quaver of a woman’s voice.

I have over two hours before I’m supposed to go to the Taoist Scholar’s Cave. I have to do something, so I keep moving. I take the chairlift, just a raw wood-and-iron bench painted a thick, peeling green, to the top of the mountain. My feet seem to skim the tops of the trees. This little chant goes through my head, something I learned in a Chinese class: ‘
Ren fa di, di fa tian, tian fa dao, dao fa ziran
.’

Man follows Earth, Earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows the Way, the Way follows Nature.

I’m not really clear on what that means, because, as it was explained to me, all things arise from the Tao, from the Way, the union of opposites, and that would have to include nature, wouldn’t it? So maybe it’s all one big circle. Big wheel keeps on turning, right? The Tao keeps rolling along.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. Who cares about all the rest of it, all the details? I listen to the silence, the occasional creak of the iron cable that hauls me up the mountain, the crows that ruffle the treetops.

At the summit is a teahouse. I sit by the window, near a family playing cards and a young couple holding hands across the table, and have a pot of tea and a bowl of spiced melon seeds. I look out the window, staring down at the clouds.

Finally, I go looking for the Cave of the Taoist Scholar.

I pick my way down the slippery path, following the carved wooden signboards. There’s a Temple of Utmost Purity, a Palace of the Creation of Good Fortune.

And here’s the Cave of the Taoist Scholar.

I walk inside. It’s simple, with unfinished earthen walls that recede into darkness. A young woman and her five-year-old daughter hang out behind a low wooden counter at the entrance. A snack bar in the sacred site. There’s a little TV at the end of the bar, playing cartoons at low volume, and they’re half-watching it as mom braids her daughter’s hair.

I go further into the cave. The walls narrow, then widen into a small chamber. I see what looks like an altar, with this twisted brass candle-holder with many branches, like a bare tree, surrounded by red strips of paper with black writing on them fluttering in the dim candlelight.

There’s a plain wood table in front of it. On that is a carved wooden cylinder, with the patina of age. It’s filled with flat bamboo sticks, tipped in red.

I’ve seen this before. It’s for fortune-telling, I think. They have it in front of temples sometimes.

‘Do you want to try?’

Standing there is a monk. He’s wearing plain blue robes and a round hat that has a red knob on top, like some kind of spiritual bellhop. He’s middle-aged, the lines of his face softened by the candlelight.

I shrug. ‘Sure.’

He picks up the canister and hands it to me. ‘You just shake,’ he says in English. ‘Like playing dice.’

I’ve never played dice. ‘Right.’

I shake the canister, thinking things like: this sounds like bones rattling around, but that’s stupid, because I don’t know what rattling bones would actually sound like; it’s just the kind of thing that you’re supposed to think of when you’re doing some creepy Chinese fortune ritual.

A bunch of the sticks starts to slide out. Slowly. I keep shaking. A couple teeter on the brink. Then, finally, one falls.

The monk picks up the stick. ‘Number forty-eight.’ He smiles a little.

‘So, what does that mean?’

‘Every number has fortune to go with it.’ He lightly touches my forearm. ‘Come, and I get you Taoist fortune.’

I hesitate. The monk smiles at me.

‘Come, Little Tiger. I get you your fortune.’

I follow him.

He leads me through a wooden doorway, into a little room off to one side. One wall is the side of the cave. The others are wooden screens, heavy, blackened cabinets, and bookcases filled with scrolls, books, and stacks of paper. There’s a small traditional scholar’s desk, with ink-stone and calligraphy brushes.

And a computer.

‘Are you Monk of the Jade Forest?’ I ask.

‘No. Just a monk.’

‘Where’s Upright Boar?’

‘Upright Boar could not come. He would like to. But is not safe for him.’

‘What about Cinderfox? Or Water Horse?’

The monk shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry. I do not know them.’

‘Golden Snake?’

‘Sorry,’ he says again. ‘I don’t know.’

So much for my Tao mellow. ‘What
do
you know, then?’

The monk nods and reaches into the drawer of his scholar’s desk.

‘For you.’

He extracts a rice-paper envelope, so thin that I can see the folded sheet inside.

‘This is from Upright Boar. Instruction to manage his art. He names you to be manager. It says you get money for doing this.’ The monk grins, showing crooked, tea-stained teeth. ‘A percentage.’

I just stand there. ‘I don’t understand,’ I finally say.

I guess I was hoping for something bigger. Like, if the Game is this great conspiracy, shouldn’t we be overthrowing a government or something?

‘He request someone to help him in this way. You take care of his art. You put money aside for him. He put his chop on this paper. So it is legal document.’

‘Why me?’

‘He trusts you. And you are foreigner. So you are protected, a little, from Chinese government.’