Graduation Trip — Pathlight Magazine

To Longtang with a Bamboo Sword

By Lin Sen, translated by Jim Weldon
From the "Sense of Place" issue of Pathlight

Clang, bang, snickety-snack... every street resounded to the hack and slash of swordplay; every street was a vast outlaw underworld. It was an underworld contained inside television sets. When the mosquitoes came out, ready to launch their assault on the small town, it was also the time when tables would be set out in front of the teahouses in every street, the proprietors getting ready for the evening trade. Television sets were carried to doorways and set to playing videos. Martial arts flicks brought in from Hong Kong were the most popular. There was competition among the teahouse owners: if you were playing the latest serial it meant your shop would have that many more customers – and if you wanted to be the one to grab the latest tape from the rental store you’d have to throw a couple of quality cigarettes the way of that self- important storekeeper. The walls of his video rental store were piled high with tapes, boxes of every shade and hue all the way up to the ceiling. Only the storekeeper knew what corner a particular tape was tucked away in; only he knew what other world was hidden away in what tape box.

I was well in with the storekeeper. That had started back when my Dad was still in town. Dad had brought home a video recorder that we set up upstairs at home and I’d regularly be sent off to see the storekeeper and pick up a tape. Dad would hang around the house watching videos and he didn’t try to stop us kids watching too. I got to see all sorts of films, popular and obscure, the envy of all the other neighborhood kids. None of their families had a video recorder, so they had to suck up to me so I would bring them round ours and let them watch a tape or two. For a while there I thought my sense of superiority would last forever, but then a day came when Dad went off and never came back. Mum and Gran wept fit to burst for a while then after that we never turned the video recorder on again. I wasn’t going to tell the video storekeeper that we had three of his tapes at our house. Before he’d left, Dad had told me to take them back but I never did. I thought so long as I hadn’t returned the tapes I could put them in the machine and when the picture came up it would let me go back to the days when Dad and me used to watch together. If I returned the tapes, that other world would disappear. With Dad not being there, there was no opportunity for me to take out any new tapes, you see. Whenever you rented a tape, the storekeeper had a notebook in which he would write: so-and-so, such-and-such a date, such-and- such a movie (or such-and-such an episode), at such-and- such a price. When you returned the tape, he would score a line through that record. The storekeeper never got on to me about returning those three tapes; maybe he’d forgot. Maybe, in his notebook, there were lines that needed crossing through but he hadn’t noticed? A line of writing in a notebook on a lonely wait for the stroke of a pen nib that never ever came.

Not only did he not get after me about returning the tapes, one time the video storekeeper spotted me walking past and called me over, “Come here, you; fancy a zongzi?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. He picked up a video tape box, rapped it on the counter and shouted, “Young Ma, get down here; hey, Young Ma! Get down here.” His son Young Ma came clambering down from the attic, shaking dust and cobwebs out of his hair, “You what?” The storekeeper tossed him a couple of dollars. “Take your little mate here for a zongzi, if there’s any change you can keep it.” Young Ma reached over, took a hold of me and led me away. Young Ma was four or five years older than me, a third-year at the middle school in town. He took me over by the power line pole to buy zongzi. The stallholder peeled the leaves off, wrapped the zongzi in a bag and stuck it in my hand. Young Ma slapped me hard on the shoulder. “Ah-Long, you want to be like me, don’t stick around this town. Bugger all hope of ever coming to anything round here.” I bit a mouthful of the zongzi even though it was still piping hot, and answered him through greasy lips, “But you’re still right here in town!”

Young Ma said, “Are you thick or what? I’m in the last year of middle school, be taking entrance exams soon. If I get into a senior high somewhere else think I’ll be sticking around here? It’s just a matter of time, get it? Just a matter of time!” I counted it off on my fingers, “But it’s still years before I can get away, I’m only a fifth grader.” Young Ma said, “I’m telling you, you want to be like me, get it? Don’t be like them other kids, they’ll come to nothing. We want to get out there and see the world. Do you know what I was looking at it the attic just now? I wasn’t watching a video, I was studying a map. I want to go to Hong Kong. Get it? Hong Kong. Think about all them Hong Kong movies, they’re all so... eh-aye, if I don’t get to Hong Kong at least the once I’ll never rest easy. I’ve been studying that map, it’s not so far from us here in Hainan, just that stretch of sea between us. Could swim it, it’s not so far.” I said, “Now you’re bullshitting, could you really swim across the sea?” Young Ma laughed. “You’ve seen the Nandu River that runs through town, think how broad that gets when the floods come. I can swim across and back five times. Five times, get it? I reckon, if I train a bit more, might be across the sea but I can still swim it.” I swallowed the last of the zongzi and started to lick the grease off my fingers. Young Ma asked, “What about you? If you could get away from here, where would you want to go?” I pulled my finger out my mouth. It felt cool all covered in spit. “Nowhere I want to go.” Young Ma let out a long sigh; he was surely thinking I would come to nothing.

Actually, there was somewhere I wanted to go, I just hadn’t told him.

The kids from the neighborhood would regularly arrange to meet up by the wooden bridge on the edge of town to test out our martial arts skills. Each kid would learn a martial arts technique off a video, then having trained it for a bit would set a meet at the end of the bridge to test it out against the others. I wasn’t that into punching and kicking skills and I didn’t much go for the internal arts either. What I liked was archery. Back when Dad was still around I watched that series The Holy Dragon Saga. I liked the style of the main character Qiao San, the way he drew his bow and shot off an arrow, cool as you like. Dad’s mind seemed to be elsewhere while we were watching that series – his mind always seemed to be elsewhere – and he worked on his drawings. Dad drew a lot of pictures. There was a partitioned-off bit upstairs that was Dad’s little private space. I wasn’t allowed in without his permission. Dad drew me a picture of Qiao San the archer, I forget where I’ve put it. Still, you couldn’t use archery when you were comparing skills with the other kids. If you shot an arrow and it hit someone they’d be dead. I was always coming off second best in contests of unarmed martial arts skills. The other kids laughed at me for being so far off their level. They said if I went out into the underworld with them, I’d only be a deadweight holding them back.

Someone threw a punch and said it was Shaolin style. Someone else blocked them and used the momentum to turn the punch aside, shouting out, “Spy the dragon in the fields!” They were pretending to use the ‘eighteen dragon-subduing palms’ martial arts style from the Jin Yong stories. Two of the boys stood facing each other palms pressed together in a test of internal powers. One of them had the other leaning far forwards trying to resist until at last he got pushed over. The boy still standing puffed out a long sigh of relief. “Good job I ate fried rice noodles yesterday, added thirty years’ worth of kungfu power.” These sort of contests were of course supposed to be friendly but often ended up as real, and sometimes there were even black eyes and bloody noses. Of course, if that happened you didn’t go home and tell. Since we were trying our skills out on one another we reckoned ourselves to belong to the same martial arts brotherhood. Any conflicts should be handled internally and we had to save our energy to present a united front to outside enemies. Since most of the time I was just standing around, the other kids were pretty reluctant to let me be part of their sect and there was never a clear ruling saying I was. Of course I wasn’t so much interested in the punching and kicking as enjoying watching them mucking about as it stopped me feeling lonely. I’d watch the rumpus for a while then want a bit of peace and quiet, so I’d wander up onto the bridge and watch the river racing away downstream.

One time Dad took me across that bridge on our way to a wedding feast. He stopped the bike on the bridge and asked me, “Do you know where this river goes?” I didn’t. He told me the river flowed into the sea and he also told me that a long, long way downstream there was a place called “Longtang”, which was an iron-working town. All the people there worked iron and every day, amid much clattering and banging, a lot of blades got made. Dad also said that they only made kitchen knives, billhooks and machetes there now; only blades for cooking or farm work or maybe chopping wood. I never said to Dad, but I really wanted to go to Longtang and find a master blacksmith who could make me a sword. I very much liked the bow but then I thought about being out in the underworld armed only with a bow. You’d have used up all your arrows in no time so you were probably better off carrying a sword you could always rely on.

Dad left more than a year ago, and he never came back. Before that, Dad would sometimes go away for the best part of a month then come back bringing stuff you couldn’t get in our little town. One time he came back with a load of woolen overcoats, men’s and women’s styles. A whole bunch of people came crowding round ours; they’d quietly ask about the price and quietly buy them. It hadn’t even got cold yet then but a lot of them couldn’t wait and went out and about wearing the coats anyway, which had them sweating buckets. Everyone was pretty happy though and they praised the coats Dad had brought back as much better quality than anything you might buy in the stores in town. Dad even brought back a bunch of pagers one time and a crowd of young people came round the house. They looked them over and really liked them, but no- one took one off him in the end as they were so pricey and no-one was sure how to pay the service fees. Dad ended up having to get rid of them in the county town. Dad was always coming back with stuff that was new to us. We were used to him disappearing off and would look forward to his return. Once he’d turned the stuff he brought back into ready cash, he’d give a bit to Mum and Gran so even though he didn’t have a proper job like other people there wasn’t much Mum and Gran could say about it.

While he was at home, if Dad wasn’t watching martial arts flicks he’d be holed up in that little room of his busy with his own stuff. I crept in there one time and went through the stack of drawings he kept in a drawer. They were all pictures of people. There was one exception though. I was surprised to find a sheet of white paper on which he’d drawn a picture of a pistol, but a very strange picture. He hadn’t drawn how a pistol looks from the outside, he’d drawn all the various internal parts very carefully and accurately; it looked like it had been printed. It was only years later I realized it was most likely a sectional diagram. I quietly put everything back where it had come from to make it look like I’d never been there. Afterwards Dad got into a big row with Mum, him saying she’d messed up his room. They only stopped fighting when she was on the point of chucking a bowl of boiling water over him.

Mum and Gran studiously avoided any mention of Dad disappearing, the subject was a landmine buried in our house that you did your best not to step on. If ever it did come up they’d talk all round it without really saying anything. There were times when it couldn’t be avoided and that set the two women off at each other in a way that was drawn-out and pretty tedious. Gran blamed Mum for not keeping house properly and letting something like this happen to her son. Mum would mock Gran for the way she’d raised Dad and say she’d been conned into marriage with the sort of man who had left it to her to keep the family together. This kind of war had no winner and sometimes I felt its effects too, getting beatings off Mum that had me howling. That didn’t make me hate Mum, it wouldn’t have been good for her if she’d just kept it all in, she needed somewhere to vent too. She wasn’t that old but she had plenty of grey hairs already. More often though, Mum and Gran worked together; after all, they had a family to raise. Dad had set up on his own in a separate household to his brothers years back and Gran had moved in with him. Now Dad wasn’t coming back, it was down to Mum and Gran to bring up me and my little sister, and of course Mum and Gran had to eat as well. Mum got up early every morning and ground the rice she’d soaked overnight into a pulp, then she’d steam that on a round aluminum dish to make sheets of translucent rice noodles which she’d pile up together. Then she’d chop up big heads of garlic and fry them in sesame oil until they browned. When everything was ready, Gran would wheel it all off on a tricycle to sell in town. She’d sprinkle some of the browned garlic on the rice noodle sheet along with some sesame seeds and shredded coconut, then smear on a bit of soy sauce and roll it into a wrap. Tasty enough to make you swallow your tongue down along with it. We ate them all the time but still couldn’t get enough, especially the fried garlic bits which were a little bit bitter but amazingly tasty. When you bit into one, it would make your scalp tingle.

Gran and Mum never said but I heard it on the quiet off the neighbors that Dad had done a bad thing while he was away and had been arrested and was going to be in prison for nine or ten years. They even suggested proof for this story, like that stuff Dad used to bring back with him, all hard-to-get things. Where had it come from? Had he really got it on buying trips? No chance, it was all stuff him and his gang had stolen. Some of the other kids would laugh at me and say my Dad was a thief. I wasn’t bothered and steered clear of them, deciding the best policy was to pay them no mind. There was one time I lost it though. A bunch of sixth graders had surrounded my six-year-old little sister and were taking turns to mock my Dad. She was crying that much her face was awash with tears. I’d just got out of school. I grabbed a half-brick off the ground, steamed straight in and smashed it down on one of their heads. They scattered in a panic. That evening the parents of the kid whose head I’d smashed were outside our house cursing the odds, and of course Mum and Gran weren’t going to back down and were denying everything for all they were worth. I went storming out and practically spat at them, “That’s right, it was me who whacked him. What of it?” The kid’s parents, who’d just been shouting, “Don’t say it wasn’t your kid that brained him” were a bit stunned by this. It was a long time before they finally managed to splutter out, “We’ll report you down the police station.” I wasn’t going to come off second best. I shouted, “Tell that son of yours every time I see him from now on he’ll be getting a smack.” Gran and Mum saw this as the opportunity to get in some choice cursing of their own as well, and that was finally enough to drive off the enemy. Afterwards Gran told me not to put myself about too much around the town but Mum didn’t say anything; she knew I’d been looking out for my little sister. The sound of my mother’s crying that night, which her covers couldn’t muffle, did give me pause. It turned out that one swing of a brick was enough though. That bastard I hit was older than me, but he would give me the swerve whenever he caught sight of me after that. If I made like I was going to chase after him he’d run for it in tears.

Since we weren’t using our video recorder anymore, Mum packed it into a cardboard box and stuck it in that little room of Dad’s, then she locked the door with a big old padlock. I was still regularly watching all sorts of videos, not just martial arts movies, all sorts of crime thrillers too, big sprays of machinegun fire, ack ack ack, muzzle flash all over the shop, absolutely loved it. This wasn’t in the teashops in town, I watched them at the video store Young Ma’s family ran. There were only a few families in town that had video players and even if you counted the teashops too it still wasn’t many, so when a new movie came in it wasn’t long before everyone had seen it and they had to go up to the big town and fetch more. When the storekeeper went off on these trips he’d sometimes leave Young Ma in charge, so I’d hang around the store with him and we could watch whatever we wanted. The video machine they had in the store for people to try out tapes on practically caught fire we watched that many. When he was sure no one was going to come to the store, Young Ma would fetch out some of the “special” tapes they had hidden away in some dark corner, with a big show of how mysterious it all was. In a low voice he said, “These are the best, cost a fortune to rent, today you’re really going to see something.” The secretive way he was behaving made me incredibly curious. Then the TV started showing scenes of men and women stark naked wrestling about. I hardly dared watch and kept turning away. Young Ma was gulping and his forehead was bathed in sweat. The images made you want to get away but also drew your eyes in; I even seemed to be blinking much slower. I got a lump in my throat and I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable “down below”.

This video tape had some kind of strange magic power, it was no wonder Young Ma said it cost so much to rent. Picking a moment when I’d forgot to blink, Young Ma reached out and grabbed me down there. He laughed, “You little beggar, you’ve got hard as well.” It was only then I realized why I felt so funny down there, the crotch of my trousers was bulging right out. My face was probably hotter than the video machine, but Young Ma wasn’t laughing at me now. He said, “I’m hard too, get it? We’re normal people; all normal people will get hard, it’s if you don’t get hard you’re in real trouble.” I only half understood what he was saying. Young Ma went on, “I’ll tell you something now, because you’re young and you don’t get it. There’s two things in this world that people get so into they can’t get out from. One’s white powder and the other’s this. Get it? Now, white powder, never touch the stuff; anyone goes near it ends up dead. You have to do like I do, you know that, right? Don’t smoke, you mustn’t even smoke cigarettes. Do you know there’s some bastards in this town who sprinkle a bit of white powder in a cigarette then give it you. Smoke one and you’re done for. You get addicted and the only way you get out of that is dying.” I knew about white powder, these last few years a fair few people round town had turned druggy, wrecking their families and not stopping unless they killed themselves. Gran and Mum had their hands full making a living for the family so they didn’t really ask much from me but they did have one iron rule and that was to keep well away from all those drug users. Following Young Ma’s take on it, you had to stay right away from white powder, which just left one thing you could lose yourself in, which was going at it like the naked men and women in the video.

Most of the time it was just me watching the videos; Young Ma knew them too well and had pretty much seen them all. He spent more time buried in the martial arts novel he’d have at hand. He rented them from the bookshop in town. He loved reading all sorts of martial arts novels; if he could get his hands on one, he’d read it. What he hated most of all was when he’d be reading and reading then find somewhere in the middle someone had ripped out the best bits. He’d be so furious he’d smack his hand down on the table. I would read the martial arts stories he rented sometimes too; some I could understand and some I couldn’t. A few of the novels had been turned into movies. It was odd watching them at the same time as reading the book – that was a whole different world and in my head I could be one of the characters in the books. One time, Young Ma brought out a notebook, almost surreptitiously, which he handed to me saying it was a martial arts novel he’d written himself. He said it was brilliant and that no-one had read it yet but he would let me have a look. I took the book from him but before I had time to open it he changed his mind and snatched it back. I never got to read his story. What Young Ma talked about most was his sworn intent to leave our little town. He said once he’d got himself set up in the boom and bustle of Hong Kong, I could go over too and he would take me in. In Young Ma’s eyes, Hong Kong was the center of the world. He also said he wanted to check out how those martial arts movies got made, how they managed the light-body kungfu and the flying.

He didn’t want to let me read the novel he’d written but he couldn’t stop himself telling me bits of the plot. He said there was a woman who lived in a deserted lane who was waiting for someone. One day, she heard footsteps in the lane. Someone had come but it wasn’t the person she was waiting for. The visitor was bringing the news that the man she was waiting for was dead. This visitor was a man of course, and following on from his arrival lots of figures from the various schools and factions of the martial arts underworld began to gather in that little border town. They had all come there for the same reason and at any moment a bitter conflict was going to explode... Young Ma was so excited telling the story his lips flecked with spittle. I asked, “So what had they all gone there for?” Young Ma said, “I don’t know, I’ve not decided that yet.” I thought his story was rubbish. He said, “The story is about people who are despairing. Despair, do you get it? It’s a very high-level thing, do you get it?” I said, “I don’t get it.” Young Ma tried to explain, “Of course you don’t get it. I’ll give you an example then you’ll get it. You’re always waiting for your Dad to come home, and when he doesn’t come home aren’t you very disappointed?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s about right, your Dad is only temporarily not coming home but with this woman it’s different, she’s been waiting and waiting and what comes? News that her man is dead. You tell me, would she be disappointed?” I said, “She’d be very disappointed.” He said, “When you’re as disappointed as it’s possible to be that’s despair, get it now?” I said, “I get it.”

“Getting it” turned out not to be a good thing. Now I got it, I found myself wondering if Dad would ever come home and when that would be. I often used to think about Dad before, but not so frequently as after I “got it”. Young Ma used to practice sketching. He said he wanted to get into senior high then after that go to university, but his Dad didn’t want him to go to senior high. His Dad used to say training or technical college would do fine and he ought to finish school as soon as possible and get on with earning a living. What was the point of learning all that other stuff? And was it easy to pass the entrance exams for university? So Young Ma had started learning how to sketch, dashing off lines in big bold strokes. He said training college would do, so long as he got away he could reconsider after, what he couldn’t do was stick around our town. The world was changing so fast, if you didn’t get out there you’d be too late. Get out there first, then think about it, didn’t matter how. Young Ma also said, “Your Dad’s drawing was amazing.” I said, “You knew about that too?” He said, “I spent a couple of days learning off him. Your Dad had a sort of raw talent, he never had any proper training but he was brilliant at drawing. I’m studying drawing with the art teacher from the middle school in town now and he says if your Dad had applied himself seriously he’d be a better artist than him. It’s a shame about your Dad.” This fired up Young Ma’s propensity for spinning tales. He said if things had been different, if my Dad had been in the province capital or some other even bigger city, somewhere like Beijing or Shanghai, then most likely he’d have become a famous artist ages ago. We could have sold one of his paintings and the whole family could have lived off the money for three years. I laughed and said they’re not idiots in the big city, why would they go and spend all that money on a painting?” Young Ma patted me on the head, “You’re the idiot; you don’t get it.”

He was always telling me I didn’t get something or other, then he’d come up with a way of making me understand. Though it never made me any happier once I did get it. Sometimes I’d hang around at Young Ma’s store until it started getting dark. As the lights started coming on I’d make my way out of the dusty little shop and through the winding alleyways of the town until I arrived back in our street. Gran and Mum didn’t care, it would only be my little sister who noticed I’d come home, she’d always be the first to call out, “Bruv’s come back!” Gran and Mum would ignore her. My little sister turned into my tail; wherever I went she’d come following on behind. If I stayed in, she’d stay at home too. She was just like my own tail.

Young Ma told me about a plan he had. He was fixing to destroy the Dragon-Tiger Gang, who were the meanest lot in town. This Dragon-Tiger Gang was made up of about a dozen kids from the middle school and they lorded it over the town in the worst possible way, always extorting money and other stuff out of the younger children. They’d never tried to get any money out of me, though, maybe they were a bit scared to because of that time I brained the kid with a half- brick? Though a more likely reason was they just thought I was beneath them. My Dad wasn’t around, I was a kid with no Dad, so it went without saying I wouldn’t have a penny on me. Why bother trying to extort what wasn’t there? There was all sorts of little gangs at the middle school and junior school in town, but the Dragon-Tiger Gang was the biggest noise. When I say they were the biggest noise, I don’t mean they were the most vicious, it was because their leader was a second-year high school girl, which was unique out of all the gangs. This gang leader was very pretty but no way did she look like someone who could handle themselves in a fight, so how she got that bunch of hulking big kids under her banner was a mystery to me. Young Ma said, “They’re too full of themselves and they’ve been bullying loads of kids recently so I have to sort it out. Otherwise, after I go off to college they’ll be an even bigger scourge. I can’t not get myself involved.”

I said, “How are you planning to do it?”

Young Ma pondered for quite some time. “I have a plan but I can’t tell you, in case any word of it leaks out. It’s a complicated old business this, but you’ll know what’s gone on when I put an end to this Dragon-Tiger Gang.” Young Ma appeared supremely confident about it all. He also told me not to come and see him for a few days, as he had to get the things he needed for his scheme ready. He had a bag that he used specially for holding the “weapons” that were going to help him bring an end to the Dragon-Tiger Gang. I was a bit concerned for him, scared that he was just one boy, and not strong enough, and that he was going to get wrecked by members of the gang. Young Ma thought he had covered all eventualities and seemed to assume everything was going to turn out just the way he’d planned it. All possible futures were nice and bright. During that time Young Ma seemed like one of the warrior heroes in a martial arts novel, ready at last to draw his sword; a cold flash of steel and the Dragon-Tiger Gang would scatter in terror – he had decided he was going to be our town’s first ever knight-errant. We’d seen plenty of warrior heroes on TV but here was the first one we’d seen in real life. Young Ma treated the whole thing with supreme diffidence, like it would require only the slightest effort on his part. I felt he ought to be giving it a bit of the mournful hero on the eve of battle, say a lot of stuff that would stir my blood, stuff that would enhance his image. Young Ma said none of those things though, he made it seem more like he had got a bit tired of drawing so he was going to take down this gang, almost in passing, by way of taking a bit of a break.

I couldn’t wait for everything that was about to happen.

I had asked Mum about the business with Dad, but only the once. After that one time, I never asked again. I said, “Mum, what did Dad do?” Mum said, “What you want to ask that for?” I said, “I want to know!” Mum said, “He did it all.” He “did it all”? “Doing it all” meant doing what, exactly? I said, “When will Dad be coming home?” Mum didn’t say anything. I asked again, “When will Dad be coming home?” Mum’s eyes turned red and she started to sob. This shocked me a bit, so when Mum turned away to wipe her tears I took my chance and made a run for it. I never asked her about it again but my little sister asked lots of times. Mum could only smile at her and ruffle her wavy hair. I laid it down to my sister: “Don’t go asking Mum that again.” She said, “Why not?” I said, “If you ask her again, I won’t take you out to play with me.” She said, “No way, bruv; you have to take me too.” I said, “So long as you don’t ask Mum about it, I’ll carve you a sword. Don’t you want to have a sword? I’ll make one for you.” My little sister was delighted. “I won’t ask any more.” That’s what she said, but it wasn’t long before that slipped her mind and she kept on asking Mum and Mum kept on just smiling and mussing her wavy hair.

When Dad was home, he was always taking us out, my little sister on his shoulder and me running along in front. He liked to take us up along the bank of the river to the north of town. The riverbank was a broad stretch of sand. A sort of grass with very shallow roots grew all over it and Dad would dig about looking for lizards for us. There were people in town who’d buy lizards off you but Dad never sold them, he gave them to us to play with. My sister was scared to touch them ut I took a long thin red thread and tied it to the left back leg of the fiercest one then let it go. It would run off until the thread pulled taut, then I’d pull the thread in and I’d have the lizard back in my palm. Then I’d let it go and pull it back, again and again. When I’d finally had enough Dad would drop the lizard into a glass mason jar we had at home. The jar was full of rice wine. The lizards would steep in the wine until it changed from its original milky white to a deep brown. Dad said, “This is the good stuff. When you grow up, you and your Dad will have a couple together, but you’re still too young for it now.” Though actually, when Dad cracked the jar he let me try some. I was in two minds and quite hesitant, I did my best to fight the appeal of the heady scent of the wine and only stuck my tongue out to taste a couple of drops. The hot acrid taste made me howl out loud and I swore at Dad for tricking me. Gran heard the commotion and she laid into Dad for letting a kid drink spirits. Dad just laughed. Whenever we came back from a trip to the riverbank with Dad, that night I kept dreaming about a lizard crawling over my stomach. He’d still have that red thread tied to his back leg. The touch of the lizard’s claws made my stomach itch and I would want to reach out and grab it but I wouldn’t be able to move at all. The lizard would open its jaws and I would think it was going to bite me and want to shake myself even more but I still wouldn’t be able to move. The lizard wouldn’t make to bite me though, instead it would clamp its jaws on the red thread I’d tied on its back leg. The thread would break and in a flash the lizard would be gone. Although Dad had already put the lizard in the wine jar to soak, in my dream it always got away.

It never crossed my mind that Young Ma’s method for the so-called crushing of the Dragon-Tiger Gang would be to make the gang leader his girlfriend. I saw the two of them loads of times walking hand in hand down by the river; it was well strange. They weren’t overly bold about it, they never dared strut about the streets where there were lots of watching eyes, so they’d go down by the river or onto the wooden bridge where there weren’t so many people. It’s odd really, lovers always like to sneak off to where there’s fewer people. To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure if I should despise Young Ma or admire him. Had his noble ideal of destroying the Dragon-Tiger Gang been for real or just an excuse for chasing the girl who ran the gang? Now Young Ma was busy courting the gang girl, he had no time to let me come round the store to watch videos and even less interest in explaining any of it to me. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t be the only one who thought it was all a bit strange, the gang leaders’ old crew probably found it even weirder than I did. Plus how were they supposed to treat Young Ma who was so lovey-dovey with their boss-girl? Mind, it couldn’t be denied that after Young Ma started courting their gang leader, the Dragon-Tiger Gang stopped lording it over the town. Now they’d lost their core they turned into the proverbial tray of loose sand.

The situation soon changed though. A week or so later, there was an altercation and Young Ma was set upon by several members of the Dragon-Tiger Gang. They broke his right arm. The gang leader shouted until she was near hoarse but her followers didn’t listen. Young Ma ended up with his arm all bandaged up in a sling across his chest. When I went by the store to visit, his Dad said, “Ah-Long, don’t you turn out like him, your mate Young Ma is dumb as a rock. Thinks he’s so clever but look, he’s paid for it with an arm.” Young Ma shouted out, “Dad, are you still laughing at me?” His Dad said, “You made your bed so you have to lie in it.” Young Ma’s Dad was pretty laid back, treating such a serious thing so lightly, not like other parents who’d have been screaming blue murder.

Young Ma looked morose. We stuck comedies on the TV but they couldn’t raise even the ghost of a smile from the boy. I started, “You...” Young Ma said, “I’m done for.” I said, “Done for how?” Young Ma said, “She’s left me... and look at my arm, f it doesn’t heal right, how am I going to take the senior high entrance exams? I’m screwed; I’ll just rot away stuck here.” I said, “So how come you...” Young Ma said, “You want to ask me how come I went after her? I was always going to go after her; I didn’t care about the gang, I just wanted to go after her. You tell me, Ah-Long, was she pretty or what?” I said, “Very pretty.” Young Ma said, “If you think she was pretty too then it was worth it. I didn’t chase her all for nothing.” I said, “So how did you get her?” Young Ma said, “You’re a bit young to be wanting to learn about that aren’t you?” I said, “It’s not that, I was just wondering how you managed to get someone who set her sights so high like her? You’re no slouch!” Young Ma said, “Simplest thing in the world! I’m learning to draw, remember, so I did her a drawing and gave it to her, then after that I made a date for late eats. Then after that I said our store had a lot of video tapes other places didn’t – the ones other places don’t have, the one you saw, yep, the one where they weren’t wearing any clothes. I brought her round to watch those twice then she started coming to see me off her own bat. She was far more curious about it than even I was, so we gave it a try.” I said, “Gave it a try? Gave what a try?” Young Ma said, “Eh, you wouldn’t understand. Her old gang saw I’d picked up their leader and she was ignoring them completely and it made them mad, they told her they were done with her and gave me a beating right in front of her. They made a point of going for my right arm too, said didn’t I like to draw, then they’d break the arm I used to draw with and see if I could still draw then.”

Young Ma’s arm got broke but he really had destroyed the Dragon-Tiger Gang. After that crowd of them beat up Young Ma, the leader lost all authority and in no time the Dragon- Tiger Gang fell apart. Mind, now that the crew were short their old leader, they picked a new one and started a different gang that they called the Mystic Dragon Sect. They got the name out of some martial arts novel. What I didn’t get was since the old leader had cut all ties with her old followers, why she still insisted on splitting up with Young Ma. Even now they’d broken up there was no chance of her going back to being gang leader. Young Ma said he didn’t get it either, but he also said that was only to be expected, what went on between men and women was the hardest thing to get your head round. Of course, Young Ma was very down about the gang leader dumping him, but what worried him most was the fear his arm wouldn’t heal right. There was still just over a month before the senior high entrance exam. If his arm didn’t get better, or if it did get better but the long layoff had caused him to lose the ability to draw, then he had no chance of passing the entrance exam for fine arts senior high. He wanted to get away from town as soon as possible, the sooner the better. If this meant he was kept back and wasted a whole year it would be absolute torture for him. Seemed to me he was regretting what he’d done, ruining all his plans because of chasing after that girl; would he end up losing more than he’d gained? I asked him, “Do you regret it?” Young Ma shook his head, “What’s to regret? I’ve given it a try, get it? There’s some things you need to give a few tries. You could really get addicted to that, let me tell you.”

I went and cut a short length of bamboo from the clump by the wooden bridge. I used our kitchen chopper to split off a long sliver. I’d finally started work on making the bamboo sword but I’d got cuts on two of my fingers in the process so I had to call a temporary halt. After a few days when my fingers had pretty much healed up I set back to work on the sword. Splitting off a long strip of bamboo was easy enough; carving the node into a sword hilt wasn’t so straightforward. I wanted to make the hilt a bit prettier, I was thinking to carve patterns on it but I knew I wouldn’t be up to making it look that good. I thought, if Dad was about, given his skills, he’d definitely do a fine job of making a bamboo sword. Of course, if Dad was at home, sis wouldn’t be pestering Mum with questions, so I wouldn’t have promised to make her a sword. Same as saying, if Dad was here, we wouldn’t need a sword. Young Ma was another one who’d definitely be able to make a great sword, he’d seen plenty in martial arts flicks and knew all about all those swords in his martial arts novels and he could draw like Dad, so he was bound to make a good one. I thought about getting him to make one, but then hadn’t someone gone and bust his arm and it was still in a sling, how was he going to help make a sword?

I found some strips of old cloth and wrapped them round where the hilt was going to be and it sat very easy in the hand, nice and soft, but it didn’t look so good. Still, it was the first time I’d made a sword so what I’d managed wasn’t bad all things considered, though I’d be embarrassed to give it to my sister in its current state. Fortunately my sister wasn’t bothered, she never asked me about her sword. Maybe she didn’t even like swords and when I’d promised her I’d make her one she’d heard what I said but not really paid it any mind. After school I’d fetch the sword and head off to the end of the lane or down by the river to practise a sword form. The sword form was something I’d copied out of various martial arts movies. I thought I’d made a pretty decent fist of my training but unfortunately I knew nothing about the internal arts so my sword form lacked that bit of oomph. There was no one in the martial arts movies who showed you how to train the internal arts. You would sometimes hear them chant a few internal arts mantras but you could never understand a word of it. If I knew the internal arts maybe I could spear a fish out of the river with my sword. I asked Young Ma, “Is there really such a thing as the internal arts?” He looked at me sidelong. “It’s all a con; don’t believe a word of it.” I didn’t much take Young Ma’s word on it; he’d never trained the internal arts so how could he say it was all a con?

I might not have grasped the internal arts but I did soon put my sword form to actual use.

When I heard the story about how that bunch who used to be the Dragon-Tiger and now were the Mystic Dragon Sect had asked for three rice noodle rolls off Gran’s tricycle but never paid and just ran off, I had set my mind on unsheathing my sword. I’d not seen them take the three rice noodle rolls with my own eyes, Gran told us about it after she got home. Tired after a long day, back home now Gran had sighed and told me not to turn out bad like that crew of dead-end little rotters; didn’t even stop at stealing. I said nothing, I just kept the whole affair in my mind. I’d learned from martial arts novels and off Young Ma that your real men, your real masters, are men of few words. Young Ma hadn’t even got going and there he was bragging to me about destroying the Dragon- Tiger Gang, and he’d ended up paying with a broken arm. I had to go about it quietly. I made subtle enquiries about what had gone on that day. Actually, I didn’t need to inquire, soon as they saw me coming the grown-ups who’d witnessed what happened would beckon me over and give me a colourful account. Like for example: it was just two of them that day wanted rice noodle rolls but they’d asked for three; or like how they’d even got my Gran to put a bit of extra sesame on; or like how they’d given each other a look then run off in different directions so my Gran couldn’t keep an eye on both of them; like how after they’d legged it they even stopped and pulled faces at my Gran, laughing at her because she couldn’t catch them; like how they’d shouted out, “Next time, next time we come, we’ll ask for four!” I heard all this but I said nothing. The grown-ups would pat me on the head and sigh, then say, “If only your Dad was around” or the like. One even bought a dumpling from a teashop and pressed it into my hand.

I kept on working my sword. I hadn’t given the bamboo sword an edge to begin with; I was worried that if it was too sharp I might cut my hand. I hadn’t sharpened the point either, that was rounded off. Not any more. I’d used our kitchen chopper to shave away at the blade and give it an edge and even though it was only bamboo it seemed to gleam with the sheen of fine steel. I’d sharpened the point of the sword until it was unstoppable. Stab out with that and you could stick it right through a wooden board if it wasn’t too thick. All my meticulous working and grinding kept making the sword shorter until I could even hide it in my school satchel. When my sword was tucked into my satchel, I often used to reach in and hold it. I was patience personified, in no hurry whatsoever to strike. I still kept up regular visits to Young Ma to listen to him talk about his dreams. His arm was healing quickly and it looked like he wouldn’t have much trouble taking the senior high entrance exams. He assumed he was the best and that all he needed to do was show up for the exam and he’d solve any tricky questions right off no problem. He was definitely going to be the man who stuck to his plan and got out of town and went off to see Hong Kong and the world.

My sword saw action out front of the video game arcade. When we got out of school that afternoon, I caught sight of Gran’s tricycle down by the crossroads. There was a crowd gathered round her buying rice noodle rolls. I was going to say hi, but seeing as there were so many people and Gran was too busy, I just kept on going. Not far from where Gran had set up stall was the video game arcade. It had a heavy red curtain over the door and there was a bunch of teens hanging around in little groups just outside. That was when I spotted that one from the Mystic Dragon Sect. He was one of the pair who’d stolen the rice noodle rolls off my Gran. He was looking upwards and waving his arms about saying something or other. He’d barely finished talking when he stuck his head through the thick red curtain leaving just the lower half of his body outside. It was a fleeting opportunity, but the moment I’d waited for so long had arrived. I stuck my hand into my satchel. The cloth-wrapped sword hilt sat beautifully in my hand. There could be no hesitation. I dashed forward bodily, head lowered, viciously stabbing the bamboo sword in my hand into the arse left hanging outside the curtain. There was a scream. I wasn’t sure how deep the blade had gone, I just felt his body give an almighty shake then I was down by the foot of the wall. The bamboo sword had broken off in my hand and I was left holding just the hilt. Once the screaming started, it didn’t stop. People crowded round to see what was going on. The bugger I’d stabbed was rolling about under the curtain. Someone ran over and aimed a kick at me. I had no time to wonder if it was one of the Mystic Dragon lot, I just stuck out my left arm to block him.

I felt a rush of extreme pain and heard a cracking sound. Was my arm broken? Was I going to end up like Young Ma? I didn’t know and I hadn’t the time to wonder. I took advantage of the chaos to roll away. I rolled a few more times then scrambled to my feet and ran off northwards as fast as I could. I left the screaming far behind, and left my Gran’s shrill cries far behind as well. That’s right, I’d heard my Gran shrieking too. The spot I chose to use my sword was close by where she had her trike stall, she was bound to have seen my act of vengeance, it was right in front of her. Gran’s cries also sounded like she was sobbing but I couldn’t think about that, I could only go like the wind, just keep running, running away north, running down to the river. Right then I felt like I knew light-body kungfu and that if I wanted, I could have leapt into the air and flown. I ran faster than anyone has ever run. All the people and all the houses of the town blurred together as a hazy wall before my eyes, and the wind roared past my ears.

I hid in the bamboo grove where I’d cut the sword. I tried moving my left arm that I’d used to block the kick and although there was another rush of pain, I could still move it so it wasn’t broken. It wasn’t broken; it hurt like hell and was starting to swell up but it wasn’t broken. I leant back against the bamboo. I felt full up inside, it was the moment of purest happiness I’d experienced since Dad disappeared. A wind blew off the river and shook the bamboo and it was like a kind of music. I’d struggle to describe the tune but it moved me like nothing else. I laid down on my back and let out a long breath. I stayed lying there as it slowly grew dark. It took a very long time for darkness to fall. I watched the river water forever changing form and colour. I never imagined the river could have so many shapes and hues. Now and then I would hear the voices of people looking for me; Gran’s voice, Mum’s, sis’s, our neighbours’, an uncle who didn’t really get on with Dad’s and lots of voices I didn’t even recognise.

All looking for me.

“Where are you, Ah-Long?”

“Ah-Long...”

...

Born in 1982, Lin Sen ( 林森 ) now lives in Haikou. His works have featured in several annual best-of anthologies and publications such as People’s Literature, Writer and Poetry Periodical. His books include the short story collections Small Town, A Long Summer Spent Holding a Cool Coconut, and The Chill of the Ocean Wind; the novels Guan-Guan Go the Ospreys and Warm Like the Spring Breeze; and the poetry collections Island Melancholy and Moon Sets, Stars Return.

Jim Weldon is from the north of England. After leaving secondary education, he worked for a decade in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. He then went to SOAS, under the University of London, to study Chinese. Upon graduation, he volunteered at a rural development agency implementing projects in southwestern Sichuan. He then worked for an independent social development research journal in Beijing. Jim also undertook various translation projects, and when his post at the journal came to an end, this became his full-time occupation. He has translated literature, social science papers and monographs, journalism and art criticism.