Iron and Silk

by Mark Salzman

  “Yes,” he said, “but these goals can be achieved so easily! All you have to do is be kind and work hard. But to eat and sleep well, that is a difficult wish, because you cannot control these things yourself.”

  In one of my classes I read aloud “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a short story about a small town that holds an annual lottery. Participation is compulsory for residents of the town, and the “winner” is stoned to death. No one knows why the lottery is held or how the tradition began, but no one questions it. Even the victim, when her number is finally called, seems blind to the madness of it all: as the crowd falls upon her, she cries that the choice was not fair, she should have had another chance. When I finished reading the story, a particularly opinionated student raised her hand.

  “Teacher Mark,” she asked, with a mixture of confusion and disgust in her voice, “why did people in America do that?”

  I explained, perhaps too quickly, that this was a fictional story, but she did not seem convinced.

  “It must be based on some kind of experience, or else how could she think of it?” she asked, giving me a knowing look. I said that the story gave us an exaggerated and therefore dramatic example of a kind of behavior that occurs all over the world, not just in America, where individuals do terrible things, things they would ordinarily never do, when they are part of a crowd.

  “But who,” she replied, “would be so foolish, to have a lottery and kill someone? No one in China can believe such a story! You Americans have big imaginations!”

  And you Chinese have short memories, I was thinking, when a man sitting behind her proved me wrong.

  “I have seen something like this,” he said. “During the Cultural Revolution. Everyone wanted to show love for Chairman Mao—everyone had to—so we went to the river. Chairman Mao swam across the Yangtse River, did you know that? So we all thought we should swim across the Xiang River. Many people jumped in—thousands of people—but a terrible, terrible thing happened. Too many people jumped in at once, they pushed to get in the water, so there was not enough room to swim. You could not move your arms! The river looked like soup, and all the peoples’ heads looked like dumplings going up and down. Because they could not move their arms, many people sank to the bottom and died. Really—they looked like dumplings.”

  The woman frowned. “That is not the same at all! That was an accident. Those people did not intend to hurt each other when they jumped in! In this story, the village people know they are killing the woman. They are throwing stones at her!”

  An awkward silence followed her comment. She fidgeted in her seat, then at last sighed with exasperation.

  “Anyway, we have all seen terrible things,” she said. “Why must we read about them? Can’t you give us stories that have happy endings?”

  “There is a lab technician in our college,” Hai Bin said one afternoon, “who wants to meet you. He practices wushu and says that his teacher is interested in you. If you like, his teacher will give you lessons to supplement Master Pan’s instruction.” Hai Bin told me I could meet the technician, Little Guo, in his lab that evening. “I will tell you something, though,” Hai Bin said. “Little Guo is a nice man, but he is sometimes clumsy—he often breaks things by accident. Perhaps he cannot control his strength. So if you practice with him, be careful he does not hurt you by mistake.”

  That night I made my way up to the second floor of the research building, stumbling over a spittoon placed in the dark stairway. When I knocked on the door, a voice said, “Just a minute—” then a young man who stood a full head taller than me, with huge shoulders and long arms that seemed to reach to his knees, opened the door. “I’m Little Guo,” he said, shaking my teeth loose with a handshake that engaged his entire upper body. He invited me into his lab, which was crowded with thirty or more low stools. As I walked in, I sensed movement all around me, but it took a few seconds for me to sort out what I was seeing. On each stool crouched three mice, nervously sniffing at the edges of the stools, occasionally peering over as if getting ready to jump.

  “Mice!” Little Guo said, slapping me hard on the shoulder and beaming. He explained that his current experiment involved tagging and weighing a large number of mice in groups of three to test their resistance to a certain disease. “But won’t they jump off?” I asked him. “No—they are afraid of heights! I’ve tried it before.”

  As he weighed the mice, he told me that his teacher, Zheng, was an expert nei-gong boxer. Nei-gong, literally meaning “internal skill,” refers to the schools of martial arts such as Taijiquan that emphasize the cultivation of qi, “intrinsic energy,” or “internal force,” rather than physical strength. I had by that time seen countless demonstrations of qi, none of which impressed me as being anything more than demonstrations of sleight of hand, confidence, or good balance, so I told Little Guo that I was skeptical. “Oh, but it is real!” he said, “You will see it yourself! Let me take you to Master Zheng’s house, and he will show you.” We set a date for the next week, and were just agreeing on a place to meet, when suddenly it happened. One of the mice had overcome its fear of heights and jumped to the floor, where it ran about at full speed, squeaking with abandon. The other mice immediately became excited, leaning farther out over the edges of the stools than before and following the movements of the free mouse with their eyes and ears.

  “Aiya!” Little Guo cried, charging at the mouse but missing it. The mouse darted and skidded under the stools as Little Guo followed it, finally stopping in a corner of the room under a lab table. Little Guo crept slowly toward it, his giant, rough hands cupped to grab the mouse. I didn’t want to look, for I had a feeling that Little Guo would land on the mouse and crush it, but before he sprang, the mouse shot out to the left and escaped. Little Guo spun around to follow it and hit one of the stools with his forearm, propelling three more mice into freedom. The mice still on the stools became frenzied, and one by one began jumping to the floor.

  …

  One week later Little Guo took me to Master Zheng’s house. Zheng lived in a factory unit that had its own electrical generator, so although most of the city was blacked out that night, his unit had electricity. Zheng, his wife, his three-year-old daughter and three of his senior students were finishing dinner when I arrived. At first Zheng was very stiff. Perhaps he was anxious not to lose the respect of his students by appearing too excited over a visit from a foreigner. After we drank a few glasses of a precious medicinal wine, though, he became not only friendly but very entertaining. He had a remarkable talent for mimicry, which he attributed to his many years of training with the Changsha “Flower Drum Opera” company. Flower Drum Opera, peculiar to Hunan, is sung in Hunan dialect and uses costumes and themes quite different from the more well-known Peking Opera. Both his parents had been Flower Drum singers, as had his wife, and all of his brothers and sisters were still performing. I never learned why Zheng himself had left the opera, getting a job in a factory and concentrating on martial arts in his spare time.

  Unlike many of my acquaintances at the medical college, Zheng and his students were all natives of Changsha and wanted to know what I thought of Changsha habits, food and language. I was accustomed to hearing, from people born in other parts of China, that in Changsha “there is nothing to do, nothing to buy, the people have no manners, the food is terrible and their dialect sounds awful.” Zheng, however, insisted that although Changsha was a poor city, its natives were the most polite, its food the most peppery and its dialect the most lively in all of China, so I should feel lucky indeed to have been sent there. We drank to that, and then it was time for martial arts.

  We went up to the roof of the building, which had a breathtaking view of the river and the main part of the city to the south. The blackout made the city look deserted except for small bonfires and candles flickering in the streets, where families played mahjong and poker. Zheng asked me to show him and his students the routines that Pan had taught me. I went through three of them and was rewarded wi
th applause and shouts of “Manhaodilei!” the Changshahua phrase meaning “very good.” Zheng said that my Shaolin boxing looked very strong, and no wonder, he said, with a teacher like Pan Qingfu.

  “But have you ever studied Wudang boxing?” he asked.

  “Wudang boxing?”

  “Shaolin boxing belongs to what we call the hard schools, or external schools. They are fast and strong. Wudang boxing belongs to what we call the soft schools, or nei-gong. Wudang Mountain is the site of a famous Taoist temple, where Taijiquan, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan, the three internal schools, are practiced. Have you ever studied them?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, you should. Watch!”

  He went through a routine of Chen style Taijiquan, writhing and twisting over the roof in slow motion, occasionally lashing out with a punch or kick that shook his entire body. The motion of his hips and abdomen looked fluid and dance-like. I had never seen anything like it. Then he challenged me to try to hold on to him. I reached out and grabbed his arms, but with a twist of his hips and shoulders he was free. Again and again I tried to hold him still, but no matter how much strength I used he managed to wriggle free without much difficulty. He challenged me to hit him in the chest, so I lunged forward with a straight right and his chest seemed to collapse, disappearing just as I thought I would hit him in the ribs. He stood with his back to a wall and told me to hold him against the wall, which I did, but with a shake and a twist he escaped. After a few more of these demonstrations we went back downstairs to rest and have some more food and wine. When we had settled down to eat and drink, he asked me why I thought he could do all those things.

  “You are very skilled,” I answered, but he did not appear flattered.

  “It’s not skill! It is qi,” he said, giving me a mysterious look.

  I asked him if he could explain qi for me, as I had heard about it for many years but had never had a clear idea of what it was.

  “Qi is a kind of force that resides in the lower abdomen and circulates through the body. A soft-boxing master can direct it to any part of his body, or even out of his body to another person’s body. That is why you could not hold me. In the old days, masters were so good they could hurt or heal you without even touching you. Do you believe this?”

  I told him that although I certainly believed that I could not hold onto him, I had to admit that I did not believe that a mysterious force circulates through the body.

  “Oh, no?” he said, his eyes widening with excitement. “Then explain this!”

  Sitting on a low ceramic stool he picked up a small wooden chair and held it above his head. His wife started to say something, but Zheng hushed her and, looking straight at me, brought the chair down with all his might onto his head. The chair broke.

  He held the smashed chair out for me to examine, then asked me to explain it. “Whatever it is, Master Zheng, it is certainly impressive.”

  “I should have married a carpenter,” his wife grumbled.

  Zheng said that I was perfectly right to be skeptical about qi—that way I would not easily be fooled by charlatans. The only way to experience qi, he said, was to cultivate it yourself, so he kindly offered to teach me on the condition that I try to be open-minded and to obey his instructions to the word. Starting that night, and three nights a week thereafter, Zheng taught me the rudiments of nei-gong.

  My lessons with Zheng differed in many ways from my lessons with Pan. The moment I entered Pan’s training hall I could feel his eyes telling me, “There is so little time—don’t waste an instant!” He paced around me as I warmed up, and as soon as I said “Ready,” he locked his eyes on mine and said, “Begin!” He believed that effort, concentration, stamina and desire were the ingredients of a proper training. When I asked him the difference between a great fighter and a mediocre one, he said, “Mediocre fighters are lazy and try to cover up for it with superstition. Masters eat bitter every day of their lives, and that’s that.” In all of our lessons he mentioned qi only once, and even then he used it in its original meaning, breath: “Don’t hold your breath when you practice,” he said, “or you’ll get tired.” Pan had great respect for the internal styles of wushu—he taught and practiced them all—but he respected them for their technical and theoretical sophistication, saying that no martial art could give one supernatural powers. “If the masters in the old days could really jump thirty feet high,” he snarled, “then why the hell did they build staircases in their houses?”

  Zheng had a different approach. Lessons began with a glass of herbal wine and conversation; he had a warm, fatherly relationship with his students, and one could see that they were all very fond of him. If it was not raining or too misty out, we went up to the roof to practice. Zheng said that rain and mist seeped in through the pores of the skin and damaged one’s qi, so it was best not to practice on days like that. On the roof, training was very casual. Each student worked on his own while Zheng walked back and forth among them, every once in a while calling everyone together to watch a certain technique. His students practiced in short bursts, taking frequent rests to avoid breaking a sweat. All of them, including Zheng, thought I was self-destructive, drilling to the point of exhaustion every night, and said that I would learn in the long run that the Taoist attitude of moderation was the most effective. In addition to forms, breathing exercises and sparring, Zheng’s training included a method of conditioning the hands. From a wooden frame on the roof he hung three coarse burlap bags filled with sand, each weighing at least a hundred pounds, and had us punch them for twenty minutes or so every day. This method differed from Pan’s iron fist training in several ways: Zheng’s method rubbed the knuckles raw, developing thick callous tissue over them in only six to eight months. The callus made Zheng’s hands look swollen, so one could barely distinguish one knuckle from the other. Pan’s method of hitting the iron plate had to be done more carefully, as the danger to the hand was greater, and the results appeared much more slowly. It took several years to develop the proper calluses, which looked as if they had been riveted onto the knuckles. Hoping to please both teachers I practiced both methods, giving me scabs on the surface of my hands from the sandbags and blood clots under the skin from hitting the iron.

  After a few months had passed, Zheng invited me to join him on a day trip to a small city south of Changsha. He had a good friend there, he said, whom he wanted me to meet.

  “My friend is a sculptor, an artist. In his spare time he makes swords. He is my best friend, and as he is feeling lonely these days, he wants me to visit. I think if you come, it will cheer him up. If he likes you, he might even make a sword for you.” That Sunday Zheng, three of his students and I got on a crowded bus that followed a dusty road through the countryside for three hours, stopping finally in a city that looked even more depressing than Changsha. On our way to catch a local bus, Zheng stopped at a peddlar’s cart and bought something wrapped in pieces of newspaper. He unfolded the newspapers and distributed some dark, shiny objects that looked like walnut shells among his students, then offered me one.

  “Binglang,” he said, popping one into his mouth. “It’s a local specialty.”

  Not wanting to be rude I put the binglang into my mouth. It seemed to be a kind of nutshell steeped in a strong cinnamon extract that slowly became pliable and fibrous as I chewed. I like cinnamon very much, so I chewed the object until it had no more flavor, then swallowed it with difficulty.

  “Do you want another one?” Zheng asked.

  “Yes, thank you It is very good.”

  Zheng and the other students looked pleased that I enjoyed this little treat, so at the next binglang cart they argued over who would have the honor of treating me to more of them. Altogether I ate seven or eight of them, thinking this might be our only lunch. On the bus, Zheng asked me if I wanted any more binglang, and I answered that I was full enough for the time being. His eyes opened wide and he asked me if I had swallowed them.

  “Yes—wasn’t I sup
posed to?”

  “Aiya …” he gasped, then told the others what I had done. They all looked at me in amazement and I suddenly became very nervous. My heart started beating wildly, and I asked if I had eaten something poisonous. They all laughed at this; Zheng said that the binglang was not poisonous, but was meant to be chewed, not swallowed. “Binglang is like wine,” he said, “it makes you feel a little drunk. We thought you were used to it, and that was why you chewed so many. Just one or two of them makes us feel dizzy!” The jolt of adrenaline I had just experienced must have quickened the effect of the drug, which is known as betel nut in the West, for my legs began to feel long and rubbery, a buzzing filled my ears, and the bus ride, which lasted only fifteen minutes or so, seemed to go on for over an hour

  We got off in the middle of a community of cement apartment buildings laid out in rows that went on in all directions as far as the eye could see. We walked north for eight or nine blocks and at last approached one of the dark entryways. Zheng called out a name, someone shouted back in response, and a minute later a short man with a bouncing, agitated gait ran out to meet us. After shaking hands and exchanging loud, emotional greetings with Zheng, Lin stood in front of me and looked me over. “So you are the man my friend has told me about—welcome to my home!” He shook my hand vigorously, almost violently, taking my arm into his other hand and grasping it tightly, winking at me as if something of great significance were taking place that need not be put into words; he seemed to be on the verge of tears. I was still disoriented from the betel nut and was unable to tell if the man’s behavior was really strange or if I was imagining things. This filled me with confusion, and once again my heart raced and adrenaline rushed through me. I felt slightly nauseous and asked to sit down, afraid that I might pass out or throw up at any moment. Once we got inside the apartment, Zheng and his friend disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Zheng’s three students and me in the dining room to relax and have tea. I asked them if Lin seemed a little excited to them. They smiled and assured me that he was always “a little crazy,” but that I should not worry—he had a good heart, and a more loyal friend could not be found. This came as a great relief to me, and almost immediately I felt my head beginning to clear.