After the Dragons

by Cynthia Zhang

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About Stelliform Press

  Publication Information

  For family, by blood and by choice. For anyone who survived when the world told them they shouldn’t.

  Cynthia Zhang

  Stelliform Press

  Hamilton, Ontario

  1

  These days, when he is not painting or working, Kai walks and searches for dragons.

  They are not hard to find. Not in Beijing, with the water prices still rising and forcing even the rich to curb their luxuries. There have always been strays in Beijing, lurking in the gutters and drifting through crumbling hutong neighborhoods. Now, they also fill the modern quarters of the city: tiny, glittering shapes squirming among lotus-scented suds and tall, wilted calla lilies.

  Gingerly, Kai kneels to peer at the jade-green helong flattening itself beneath the dumpster. A thousand or even a hundred years ago, it would have been sacrilege to let a dragon live like this. In the villages near his town, Kai knows that there are many who still worship the dragons, who will row out into the deepest part of the river and drop the first of every harvest into the waters — for the Great Ones, if they should return.

  But Beijing is a modern city. There is no time for superstition here, for old gods or sick dragons or hopeless causes. There is only Kai, and he does what he can.

  Kai breaks off a piece of sausage, the cheap stuff they sell to kids in little red tubes, then takes a step back. The helong is cautious at first, but hunger soon wins out, and the little dragon is letting him pet it as it licks the grease from the plastic casing. Though the whisker-like tendrils spouting from its muzzle are not quite adult length, the elaborate neck ruff and long horns mark the helong as decidedly male — young and a little skinny, but with a temperament that speaks to an obvious familiarity with humans. He’d be easy to re-home, once Kai got him to the shop.

  Looping thin leather jesses around the dragon’s back legs, Kai lets the helong settle on one gloved hand and begins the walk home.

  On good nights, when the sickness recedes to a perpetual dry throat and the reminder of feverish heat, he thinks, perhaps, that it will be all right. That he can do it, and that this will pass — that it would only be a little while, and he will find himself in Beishida again, the new chalkboards bright and the water clear and no taste of blood when he swallows. That it will be over soon, this bad dream of not enough water and skin that is always too warm, always too dry to touch.

  Bad nights —

  On bad nights, he knows that there are other ways to do this. That there are alleyways and lean, dark-eyed men; that, poverty grimy and fever-hot as he is, there are still some who would take him — who would take him for it, even. To some, the disease is almost romantic, heroin chic without the track marks, and the thrill of bug chasing without the risk of infection attracts a certain clientele — greasy businessmen with gold buttons and foreigners in expensive suits, come for business and a taste of the local customs. When all else fails, there are tall buildings and reckless drivers, a city of highways and noise and so many ways to disappear.

  With the drought, the water prices have risen, and there are days when his illness presses on him. When he longs for before, the luxury of dorm-subsidized water and one-jiao drinks at the water fountain. Water that came cool, prepackaged, showers longer than the five minutes he allows himself each week. And beyond that, buried in a place he does not let himself access, the impossible longing for his childhood bedroom, muffled K-pop filtering from his sister’s room and the crackle of frying scallion pancakes from the kitchen —

  But there are the dragons, and they must come first.

  Mei chirps when he opens the door, flitting over and sinking on his shoulder with sharp claws. She’s light, built for speed like all tianlong. But with her long grey wings extended and her neck stretched to rub her face against Kai’s, she looms over the helong he’s brought home. Understandably startled, the little dragon dives off his fist to scramble under the bed. Kai lets him go; he’ll adjust soon enough, and if not, Mei has a talent for bullying friendship out of other dragons. Right now, though, his recalcitrant dragon ignores the newcomer in favor of chattering at him, clicks high and scolding.

  “I know, I know,” Kai murmurs, one hand reaching to scratch her shoulder blades as he shrugs his backpack off. “I’ll feed you soon, all right?”

  Now, however, there are other things to do. Tanks to scrub and check, pork bones to clean and make into meal — a thousand small tasks to complete, and always a thousand waiting after those.

  The thing they do not tell you about Beijing, Eli realizes three days into his internship with Peking University, is the way people stare.

  The other shocks — the toilets, the dryness, the smog — those he had expected, had been prepared for. Had been warned about a dozen times before in brochures and on blogs, by professors and by his mother — careful about the food, she had whispered as she hugged him at the terminal, their porter standing awkwardly aside with the luggage, don’t eat anything too greasy or fried. Never drink anything on an empty stomach. Always boil your water first. Try the Peking duck — it is your only chance to have it. Properly, at least. Wear a mask when you’re on the train and if you stay out long. When he had opened his suitcase that first evening in the dorms, he had found a notebook in the top compartment, filled with neat rows of relatives’ numbers and cultural landmarks to see.

  But what his mother had not mentioned, had forgotten to mention in all her lists and last-minute lectures, had been the stares.

  “Wu kuai wu,” the woman at the stall says, holding out a cup of soymilk and a length of fragrant, golden dough. Weeks of routine have made theirs a practiced transaction, and now the vendor doesn’t even ask for his order when she sees him approaching. Eli hands her a five yuan note and five small coins, nods his thanks, and nibbles at the youtiao as he continues down the street, a dozen pairs of eyes burning on his back.

  It isn’t their fault, of course. In many ways, China is better than America in this; in China, they see the color of his skin — too dark to be Han Chinese, but light enough to be mistaken for anything from Desi to Middle-Eastern to Latinx — and think novelty instead of threat, curiosity instead of criminal. American means bleach-blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes, and while Eli has the clothes and height associated with his nationality, he also has dark skin and curly hair and relative Mandarin fluency. To Beijing residents used to seeing Americans as visiting businessmen and language instructors, these features make Eli even more foreign than his white co-workers, an intellectual puzzle of but where are you from? Logically, Eli knows it is an improvement, freakshow instead of horrorshow. And yet there are times, late night walking back from the lab or early mornings on the trains, too little sleep and too much caffeine ringing in his head — there are times, when the pressure of those stares overwhelm him. Hot days and long nights and experiments that never seem to work, his grandmother’s ghost on every corner and his mother’s questions ringing his ears, what are you thinking are you crazy what do you think you’re doing —

  He thought he’d known once, the answers easy and at the tip of his tongue. It would help his med school application; it would be a chance to conduct cutting-edge research with experts in the field, to connect more fully with a culture he’d known primarily through family vacations and potluck dinners. That was what he had told his mother, the explanations he offered until he wore her res
istance down — not completely, of course, because his mother took a lawyer’s attitude toward arguments, but enough for her to relent, frowning even as she watched him board the plane.

  Eli closes his eyes, the dough suddenly heavy and tasteless in his mouth.

  When he opens them, his grandmother is gone, and the city stretches out before him: a palimpsest of old imperial architecture and tall new buildings, narrow streets and wide boulevards and traffic-choked highways that wind together into the shape of Beijing. An abstract expressionist painting of a city, expansive and exasperating by turns, yet somehow familiar despite the disorientation. Somehow right, in a way Eli cannot quite articulate but which he feels in his bones.

  As it should be. This is his city, after all, his country even if he does not look the part — his because it had been his mother’s city, and before her, his grandmother’s city, hers by birth and blood. The city she had been born in, the city she had loved in, the city that — in the end, lungs ashen and hands shaking with fever — she had chosen to die in. Laojia. Home.

  In the end, over the doctors and clean air, over the grandson who had just started college, the daughter who had begged her to stay — over all that, his grandmother had chosen to come home.

  What are you thinking? Why are you here? What are you doing?

  Kai goes to the shop early on Mondays. He does not have to — technically, it is his day off, and as Mr. Lin constantly reminds him, he isn’t being paid for it. But he goes anyway, arrives at the steps each morning and sits, waiting, with a sketchbook on his knees. And while Mr. Lin may grumble when he arrives, he always lets Kai in, pulls Kai a seat in the corner as he yells at the new hires.

  “No, you moron, we need four crates, not two, do you even notice much Tsingtao we sell —”

  “Idiot, how long have you been here, can you even remember anything —”

  It’s a familiar routine. Kai sits there, half-sketching, half-watching as Mr. Lin ignores him and terrorizes the employees. There aren’t that many customers in the morning, and with no one watching, Mr. Lin is free to relax all pretense of customer service. The kids cower and stumble at his abuse; their clumsiness only aggravates him more, and before it is noon, Mr. Lin is shoving a rag and a bucket of water at Kai as he glares contemptuously at the newest employee.

  Kai does the job quickly and without comment, and when he finishes, Mr. Lin nods and hands him a beer.

  They sit for a while, the whir-whir-whir of the fan fluttering the edges of the stacked newspapers in the air. In one of the tanks, a small hailong cautiously pads over to his green tank mate who flares his ruff, hissing when the smaller dragon tries to reach the food bowl.

  “Juveniles,” Mr. Lin says, nodding. “Got them over the weekend, wouldn’t shut up all fucking night — you think this is bad, should have seen them this weekend. Thought they’d kill each other by now.”

  Sipping his beer, Kai watches them. Haunches raised and ruffs fluffed as they circle each other, they look like something out of a classic painting, brought to life in jewel-bright colors.

  “They’re for the matches?”

  “Yeah. Wangzi and Yuqi got sold. Had a void. Had to fill it — so, these fuckers. Hopefully the fighting will wear them out, but who knows. Teenagers, my god. You’ll be there?”

  “Yes.” The question is more of a formality than anything at this point. Other than that first shaky weekend, when he had just moved into his new apartment and deactivated his old phone, Kai has not missed the dragon fights.

  Mr. Lin nods, short and brisk, then turns back to the store.

  “Old man in heaven,” he bellows, voice loud enough to make the boy jump and stumble into a nearby post, “what do you think you’re doing? Did I say you could sit there and stare outside? No?”

  “You know,” Kai says, reaching for a pencil, “maybe if you didn’t yell at them so much, they wouldn’t make so many mistakes?”

  “You don’t run this shop, kid.”

  “Just a suggestion,” Kai says, shrugging as he finishes his beer. It’s gone flat and, sun-warmed, tastes faintly of paper and dust.

  Eli’s at the end of his shift, entering data from the week’s tests into a spreadsheet when someone knocks on the door. He looks up, expecting to see one of the other interns, Evangeline or Tycho or Jiling, but instead it’s his PI standing in the doorway, hands in her pockets as she glances curiously around the lab.

  “Dr. Wang,” he says, posture automatically straightening as he turns to face her. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Talk about?” Dr. Wang is in her mid-fifties at least but she has a round, open face, the kind more suited to a guileless tourist than one of the world’s leading experts on immune-based therapies for chronic conditions. “Oh no, none of that — I’m not here to talk about work, Eli! I was about to leave, but since you’re still here, I wanted to ask if you would join me for post-work drinks. My treat, obviously. My friend Lin, he organizes a weekly dragon fight circle, and well, it’s a Friday evening, you’re here working late — why not take a break and join me?”

  For all Dr. Wang’s reputation for eccentricity, there’s still something strange to Eli about the idea of going out for drinks with his professor. In college, some of his friends had done it, departmental house parties and celebratory post-thesis drinks, but Eli had never had that kind of closeness with any of his teachers.

  “Thank you for the offer,” he says, “but I shouldn’t. I have some work to finish.”

  “Work? Eli, you’re here every morning when I get here, you leave after all the other interns, and when they go out for lunch or drinks, you never go with them. I head this project, so I can justify working late, but you’re young and bright and in a new city — you should be exploring and having fun, not spending your nights in the lab. You work too hard.”

  Eli frowns, caught off guard. “Aren’t you supposed to be glad about that?”

  “Perhaps,” Dr. Wang says, leaning back against the doorframe. “You’re my employee, yes, but you’re also a future colleague — can’t fault me for trying to build connections while I have the chance, can you? I don’t know how it is in America, but knowing people is important here, guanxi and all that. Personally, I’m waiting for the day one of my former students cures cancer so I can point at them and say ah-ha, you see? I wrote their recommendation letter to grad school, back when they were still worried if they were smart enough for a PhD program. If you want, you can count it as research. Lin does have some utterly beautiful specimens.”

  “Don’t we already have a lab working with dragons?” Eli remembers hearing something about it during the official program orientation, where Dr. Wang had been determined to introduce all her colleagues in the Department of Immunology.

  “Dr. Yun’s lab has some interesting dragons,” Dr. Wang acknowledges, “but it’s nowhere near the breed variety Lin works with, and you know how important a diverse gene pool is for proper species-wide research. And the crowd — dragon fighting’s a popular sport, so it draws all sorts. Not always the most respectable company, so I hope you won’t mention this in front of the administration, but some of them, the things they know! Back when the Europeans came to convert people, they saw our traditional cures, the ginseng and qi charts, and they couldn’t understand it, thought it was just superstition and old wives’ tales — and yes, a lot of it was that, but look at them now! Studying the antioxidant properties of cinnamon and putting goji berries in every other thing they eat. Which is all to say, Eli,” Dr. Wang says, placing a hand on his shoulder, “that curiosity can lead in fascinating directions, and it is occasionally useful to walk off the path of standard procedure.”

  Eli considers this, Dr. Wang’s hand a warm, grounding weight.

  “Do I get a choice in this?”

  “Not really,” Dr. Wang says cheerfully. “It’s all right, though. I’ll pay.”

  2

  The venue, when they reach it, is a small, faded storefront on a na
rrow side street: old houses surrounding either side, roofs colorful collections of mismatched shingles — not quite hutong architecture, but still far from the glittering glass and skyscrapers of downtown. Newspapers and crumpled advertisements litter the ground, faded words winking up at them as they pass.

  There’s an old man in a rickety chair by the front, a beer in one hand and a smartphone in the other. He glances up as they approach, a single, sharp appraisal.

  “Wang Jiachun,” the man says, standing up.

  “Tong,” Dr. Wang says, smiling as she steps forward. She holds out one hand, and they shake. “It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve been here — work’s been ridiculous lately, a million experiments and PhD candidates all needing committee members, I’ve hardly been able to breathe. It’s been a good busy, though. Eli,” she says, turning to him, “this is Mr. Lin. He sells dragons and dragon supplies for almost twenty years now, and he’s been helping referee the dragon fights. Tong, this is Eli, one of the researchers over for the summer program — straight from America. Good kid, but works too hard. So I said Eli, hey, come on over, have a drink with us, why don’t you? Almost would have said no, too, but I managed to talk him into it, telling him he could think of it as research. Too serious, this one,” she says, shaking her head. “I thought it was just our students who were like this, but things are tough in America too, huh?”

  “Hi,” Eli says, ignoring his PI’s words as he extends a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” Mr. Lin’s hands are warm and calloused when he shakes, and his grip is strong, the strength of a man distinctly unimpressed by you and unafraid to let you know it.

  Dr. Wang’s smile practically splits her face as she watches them. Eli is reminded of the house parties his mother would bring him to as a child, and her look of approval whenever he interacted with the other children instead of reading in a corner.