The Pidgin Warrior Page 8

  “Like blade-spitting, like the Passing Through the Five Elements?”

  For a disciple with native ability it is easy to learn those. The Supreme Ultimate Master was calculating a date.

  “Um, they could be learned in a week or two.”

  “Not even a fortnight,” Shi Zhaochang said, sounding it out. He looked at Elder Brother and Elder Brother Disciple. “After a fortnight, I…I…I could, for example, I could manage those…those…”

  “Sure, a fortnight,” The Supreme Ultimate Master lifts his teacup, but then remembered the taste of the tea and quickly put it back down.

  Shi Zhaochang nearly fainted. It was shocking; he was so happy.

  “A fortnight… a fortnight… Dammit, ah! So simple!”

  Not only that, but Elder Brother Disciple was inviting everyone to where he was living.

  “Come to my place…It’s not so far: not more than six blocks. Come to my place and we’ll eat. Whoever wants to treat us to dinner can do it at my place.” He looked with a little fear at Hu Genbao at that. “Well, my place is actually pretty far away: I’m not even sure how far away it is… Who’s treating?”

  “I’ll treat,” Shi Zhaochang patted his belly. He needed to be a generous as possible now.

  Elder Brother Hu Genbao left abruptly, making a gesture for them to wait.

  “We’ll all help you,” Elder Brother Disciple Half Mote put his right hand on Shi Zhaochang’s shoulder. “Master told us to help you with your veats of fertue You’ll treat today, but Master is a living immortal, so he doesn’t eat. He’s…”

  “I can eat a little,” The living immortal interrupted. His reasoning was this: He had never met a disciple with such a background as Shi Zhaochang had. Looking at his face, he would make a bit of a sacrifice. But—“But, I’ve never done this before. Next time—This shall not be a precedent.”

  Shi Zhaochang saluted him with his two trembling clasped hands.

  The three stood and waited for Hu Genbao to return.

  Half Mote grumbled, “What the… Old Hu still ain’t back. How long’s it take to call a cab?”

  Shi Zhaochang was arguing with one of the servers: He was paying the check but the server said one of his coins was lead, and asked him to replace it.

  “What? Your old man is cheating you with a lead coin? Your old man is benevolent with largesse! Why would I begrudge you two mao? Replacing it is nothing to me, but you can’t say that I, Mr. Shi, am a cheat. Humph. Take it!”

  He looked at everyone, and with a red face walked to the window, forcing himself to look out at the street as if nothing had happened. A XX woman walked past the entrance to the Isis Theatre.

  “Don’t let it get to you. In a fortnight… Hmph. Just you wait! And that server is a bastard!”

  After half a minute, Hu Genbao called for them to come downstairs and get in the cab he had called. But The Supreme Ultimate Master wouldn’t budge. He had something to take care of and would go to Half Mote’s place in in a while.

  The driver got the three of them settled in the car and then looked back at them and couldn’t stifle a chuckle: “These three stiffs—going for a tour in this cold, they’ll catch their death!”

  With that he started off southward on North Sichuan Road.

  Not very far, right?” Shi Zhaochang asked.

  “Oh it’s far!”

  It was truly far. Shi Zhaochang felt that the car must be going very fast, but it was a very long ride. He looked out the window: the streets flew by. The car turned east at the post office, then the road twisted to the south and over a large steel bridge. Steamboat piers. And he also saw a copper bodhisattva. Then they turned west: This road he recognized.

  “Isn’t this Avenue Edward VII?”

  They kept going west. Damnit this road was long. Eventually they turned north. And then after a while, they turned east.

  “Here’s the horse track,” Elder Brother Disciple pointed out on the right.

  Then they made another turn at the New World Mall: to the north again. Always to the north. Then back to the east. Then back north. Over another steel bridge. Ahead—the road ended, so they had to turn east. Shi Zhaochang saw what he recognized must be a railway station. Then they turned north to Baoshan Road. After a while, they turned east, and Shi Zhaochang caught sight of a sign: “Jukung Road”

  “We’re nearly there, surely?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The roads weren’t that smooth and the car’s rumbling was enough to turn legs numb. The car went east, block after block.

  Suddenly Elder Brother Hu Genbao called out: “We’re here, we’re here!”

  Shi Zhaochang blew out a breath. “It really was quite far. It must be sixty or seventy li from the Sunya.”

  “Yeah,” Elder Brother Disciple said as he led Shi Zhaochang upstairs. “And the car was fast. It was only an hour or so… If we had walked… Eh, even if we’d taken a rickshaw it would have been three hours… Old Hu is downstairs paying the cab. He’ll be right up.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Yeah, upstairs. Step carefully here: pitch dark. This is my place.”

  Elder Brother Disciple Half Mote took out a key to open the door.

  Shi Zhaochang was the first through the door. As soon as he looked in the room he was stunned. What? How!

  There was a person sitting in the room chuckling at him.

  Who was this person? Take a guess, dear readers.

  Ah! The Supreme Ultimate Master! Absolutely, The Supreme Ultimate Master.

  It was so far, they were speeding in a car for so long, but The Supreme Ultimate Master arrived first.

  Then, as if it were entirely instinctual, his knees bent and he knelt: He kowtowed twenty-four times to The Supreme Ultimate Master. Right then he had seen the power of The Supreme Ultimate Master with his own eyes. But The Supreme Ultimate Master said this kind of power was only the most pedestrian. And using that as a topic to begin with, he wipes his eyes with his sleeve.

  “There is a global civilization now, Passing Through the Five Elements isn’t enough anymore: For example, I just came from Sunya to here using a different type of Passing Skill. Passing through Asphalt. Do you see? You can use it to pass through asphalt. It is… do you see? It is…”

  Half Mote busied himself going downstairs to order food. Hu Genbao poured tea. The Supreme Ultimate Master went on talking nonstop. By the time the food was served, he had come back around to the plan for building a platform for refining immortality pills on Mount Kulun, and he asked Shi Zhaochang to contribute some funds.

  “It is all fated, a little more, a little less, that doesn’t matter. Your Elder Brother Old Hu donated two thousand dollars. Your Elder Disciple Brother—that third-wheel—uh, Half Mote… half Mote donated three thousand… These dishes are wonderful. If it weren’t for the sake of Disciple Shi here I wouldn’t eat, otherwise…”

  The Supreme Ultimate Master has a great capacity for food and drink, and he ate fast. With one look you could tell he hadn’t partaken of anything from the smoke and fire of the worldly realm in three or four hundred years. While he ate, he praised the Cantonese cuisine. Half Mote had ordered the dishes to go from Sunya.

  Perhaps because the room was so small, Shi Zhaochang wasn’t breathing smoothly. He felt like he was floating in midair, like his belly was full of light air. After a fortnight… but he wouldn’t continue thinking along those lines. To think about things too happy would lead to difficulties: he had had that experience before.

  He needed to think about unfortunate things.

  Ah, contributing to building a platform for refining immortality pills on Mount Kulun! That thought was like a medicinal plaster applied to his mind that he couldn’t take off.

  He took a look at Elder Brother and Elder Disciple Brother: they had contributed two and three thousand. And he would nee
d to give money for the Master to take him as disciple too.

  “Need to do better than some two thousand dollars.”

  But perhaps The Supreme Ultimate Master would mimic the policies of companies: a winter cut in prices.

  “Damnit, what’s the good of trying to be clever about money. A hero cares not for lucre.”

  Spending money has its own methods, to spend, one must do the accounting: That day when he bought the Woman Warrior of National Salvation’s tickets, when he gave two mao to Little Wang, this was all spent with reason. If The Supreme Ultimate Master truly has incredible swordsmanship, it would be nothing to dump out his entire wallet: In a fortnight he could make back his capital, and on top of that…

  The Supreme Ultimate Master’s skills were truly extraordinary: That day after eating, he used his Art of Withdrawal to allow Hu Genbao to take Shi Zhaochang back. When they exited the door to Half Mote’s place and walked east not more than ten steps, at the intersection, suddenly there appeared the Sunya.

  “That’s Master’s Art of Withdrawal,” Elder Brother shook his pointy face. “Second Brother, look: The Sunya, the Isis Theatre. With one Withdrawal, we went back this far. The Art of Withdrawal is an old skill of the Chinese people. Lots of people can do it. It’s nothing special.”

  Elder Brother also wanted to tell Shi Zhaochang: the withdrawal at the front line in XX Province was the same Art, but they just don’t say it publicly. It’s just that…

  “Let me flag you down a rickshaw, Second Brother… Rickshaw!”

  Shi Zhaochang felt that he had been a little disrespectful to The Supreme Ultimate Master: What was he doing before by trying to be so clever about money? Spending like this, he couldn’t avoid being thought to have more money than sense. He felt himself floating again. He blamed it on the rickshaw driver not running fast enough.

  “Hey! Faster!”

  He put his hands in his sleeves. But his hands were burning hot, so he pulled them out and put them on his thighs. His mouth was tightly closed. The corners of his mouth curved down as he looked at a banner pasted over the entrance of a XX Shop:

  “Congratulations to our Troops in X Province”

  Who cares if you take another ten X Provinces: You’ll see. After a fortnight there won’t be anything for you to be happy about. By then…

  Should he first take back X, or fight through to XX ? By the time Shi Zhaochang stepped into his house, he still hadn’t decided.

  “I should just ask Master to make that decision.” He lowered his head as he walked through the hall.

  There seemed to be a lot of people in the guest room. His mother-in-law was declaiming her education strategy for Shi Zhaowu in her shrill voice. Shi Zhaochang heard one sentence: “Next year he will go abroad…”

  “Heh,” Shi Zhaochang laughed coldly as he turned back to the guest room: He wanted to hear their discussion.

  7

  A Shortcut to National Salvation

  In the guest room, everyone was familiar. The only unknown person was the young guy in a jade-green necktie. According to the introduction he was Mr. Liu Liu’s eldest son Liu Zhao.

  “Is this brother Zhaochang?” Liu Zhao rubbed his hands together. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Mistress Shi puffed out a breath in her dissatisfaction at being interrupted. Touching the hair at her temples to see if it was covering that purple scar, she gently invited everyone to enjoy the melon seeds.

  “Please eat the seeds. These are authentic Suzhou rose-roasted pumpkin seeds. Master Liu has been to Suzhou, haven’t you? People from Suzhou say eating seeds is very good for you. They take food very seriously in Suzhou: their make wonderful dim sum. Back in Beijing, I had a cook from Suzhou. He was really a wonder. He could even wiggle his ears—what fun! The children would laugh themselves to death. The children all loved him, and demand that he tell them stories. Children always love to hear stories. Their teacher would tell them stories. Before, at school, there just wasn’t anyone to tell them stories. They would, ah, they were just overwhelmed with homework. It was very hard, they hardly had time to eat. You must have some of these seeds, they’re Suzhou seeds, Mr. Liu, have some. Mrs. Liu, ah, don’t be so polite. Don’t be so polite, well, our teachers weren’t polite at all, so very strict with the homework—it was so difficult back when we were students. Now those people who become teachers, ai, it’s infuriating, what’s it matter?… it’s like…”

  Others had begun talking about the art of eating melon seeds. Mr Liu Liu brushed the shells off his clothes while describing a man from Suzhou who could eat fifty seeds in one second.

  “And the meat of the seed was still whole!”

  “Shi Boxiang nodded: “Suzhou’ers can really eat seeds. It’s an odd thing, no one from outside Suzhou can out-eat them.”

  Liu Zhao was waiting for an opportunity to speak, standing there rubbing his hands like he was planning to perform. But he only spoke one sentence: “That’s the Ethnic Essence of Suzhou people.”

  “What?” Said Shi Zhaochang.

  “Ethnic Essence, it’s the same as a National Essence, or just Essence for short.” The reply was clear, and he looked around at everyone. “Like, eating hot peppers, that’s the Ethnic Essence of northerners. The ethnic essence of northerners is eating steamed bread.”

  He licked his lips and continued. “Every ethnic group has its Essence. The Ethnic Essence is defined as that inborn thing that people of the area have in common. The XX people’s Ethnic Essence is the worst, the cruelest. That’s why they’ve invaded us. Our Chinese Ethnic Essence is to love peace…”

  Shi Zhaochang didn’t quite agree with this, and vigorously gestured with his right hand. “This is at odds with the Path of Good and Path of Evil.”

  “Not necessarily,” Liu Zhao said loudly, but his face showed a courteous smile. “This is the Ethnic Essence. Although our Ethnic Essence is to love peace, at the point of no other recourse, we will resist. Isn’t everyone resisting the XX for national salvation?”

  “Yes!” Mr. Liu Liu chimed in with his son. “And there are those on hunger strike for national salvation, even the elite families are in for national salvation. And they’re even preparing to campaign against the barbarian. They’ve already set to raising funds.”

  But it was as if the son hadn’t heard. With the next breath he went on with his speech. He told everyone that in the past the Chinese people had been on top of the world, too.

  “The Yuan Dynasty, for example,” he gestured with his right hand. “During the Yuan, they fought all the way to Europe! This is our… That’s our—Ethnic Essence. The Xinhai Revolution to tear down the Manchu Qing Dynasty: Ethnic Essence. The Chinese Essence is truly great… It would be best if we could have it like in the Yuan Dynasty: Conquer every nation! First we must campaign against the barbarians!”

  The speechmaker raised his fist, with glaring eyes staring at everyone’s expressions.

  Shi Zhaochang couldn’t help but speak up: “We only have to wait a fortnight and then there’ll be a way.”

  Everyone was startled: What? Only wait a fortnight?

  Mistress Shi felt that a fortnight wasn’t enough time. They would have to wait for next year.

  “Next year Zhaowu will be sixteen,” She stretched out her neck. “If only Zhaowu does not lose his drive it will all go well. That child, I understand him. Those teachers don’t understand him at all. Like that Teacher Zhang back in Beijing. Hmph, can you imagine what he said? He said Zhaowu would need to be held back a year, said Zhaowu had no prospects. I honestly have no idea what he was on about. Right, Young Master Liu? Eh, Mrs. Liu, isn’t that so? Can you tell me how Teacher Zhang got so muddled?”

  “Where was he from?” Asked Young Master Liu quickly.

  “Teacher Zhang?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shandong, I think.”

  “Then
that’s the Ethnic Essence of people from Shandong.”

  “Ah, that’s right, he was from Sichuan.”

  “Well, that’s the Ethnic Essence of people from Sichuan.”

  Mrs. Liu was nimbly cracking into the seeds with her teeth. She looked over at Mr. Liu Liu and smiled knowingly, then she examined everyone’s faces to see if they were admiring their Young Master Liu.

  A coal brick went into the stove and crackled with a Pop! Pop! to rival the sound of cracking seeds. Shi Zhaochang took out his handkerchief to wipe away his sweat. He wanted to sit in the seat by the window, farther away from the stove, but there was so much he had to say to Liu Zhao. He stared at that jade-green tie across from him, waiting for someone else to question him. Everyone else forgot all about it. So he had to take it upon himself and ask:

  “After a fortnight, there will be something new in play in China. You’d better believe it!”

  “Based on what?”

  Mr. Liu Liu explained for Shi Zhaochang with an odd confidence:

  “That’s to say that the “Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund” has been very successful, and after a fortnight, they can go on campaign, isn’t that so?”

  But Shi Zhaochang didn’t know anything about any “Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund.” It was just another kind of national salvation scheme. Even though he had heard Mr. Liu Liu explain it, his mouth stuttered out: It’s useless!

  Mr. Liu Liu paid no attention whatsoever to what anyone else thought, he just snatched out a sheaf of documents and started spraying spittle:

  “To campaign against the barbarians, there is of course the need for funding, and to have that funding relies on everyone’s contributing. This Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund Committee of ours is especially formed to take care of that; this is a patriotic organization! It hasn’t been long since we formed now, but we’ve already collected nearly ten thousand in contributions. The overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia can contribute some five or six hundred thousand, and overseas Chinese from elsewhere all together can contribute one or two million. Truly in only a fortnight, my son, one fortnight would be very impressive… The comrades of the Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund Committee are each and every one a patriot, and I am one of the committee members. The Hunger Strike for National Salvation is passive, but the Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund is active. We should come at this from both angles: passive and active. The XX must be obliterated… Like our Mr. Ren here.” At this he pointed at an elderly man. “He is a secretary, Secretary Ren, but he was willing to resign his post and come to our committee and serve as a seventh-grade worker. Now that kind of patriotism is… it’s so… So the Campaign against the Barbarian movement is so very important. My son is a member of the Campaign Against the Barbarians Fund Committee too: He is a third-grade clerk in the Communications Branch of the Office of General Services.”