Brave Dragons

by Jim Yardley

  The Pan Pan Dinosaurs and the Brave Dragons had developed something close to mutual hatred. The season opener had been a stunning upset. The Dinosaurs regarded themselves as an elite team and had never imagined losing to a team like Taiyuan, much less losing by more than 20 points. When the Dinosaurs came to Taiyuan for a rematch, the Brave Dragons had won again, and one of the Dinosaurs’ star guards, Yang Ming, had been carried off the court on a stretcher. Now the two teams were battling for a playoff spot.

  I returned to the same bleachers reserved for the press during the season opener. Now every spot was taken by a reporter, and nearly every reporter was a young, pretty girl, fresh out of college, working for a different website eager for updates on Bonzi. I squeezed myself into a spot beside a young, cheery woman who worked for a local newspaper. She introduced herself by her English name, Pooh. I noticed the screen saver on her laptop was a large photograph of Winnie the Pooh.

  Nearly all the female reporters knew Garrison, or wanted to know him, because he was considered the best path to Bonzi. Garrison had been complaining to Zhang Beihai that it made no sense for him to live with the Chinese players since his job was to translate for the foreigners. He was spending hours every day driving back and forth. Zhang Beihai had ignored him until Bonzi began complaining that without an on-site interpreter, he was a hostage in his apartment. The general manager had then relented and ordered Garrison to find a room somewhere downtown for $25 a month. No apartment or room was even remotely possible at that rate, so Bonzi agreed to let Garrison live in the spare bedroom of his apartment, under certain rules: No guests. Knock before entering.

  Garrison had celebrated by starting a blog, www.wohebangqiweiersi.com, which translated as www.MeandBonzi.com. He did not mention the blog to Bonzi or to the team’s management, but he had used his first entry a few days earlier to position himself as the best source of inside Bonzi news: “Garrison ‘charges’ into Wells’ camp,” read the headline.

  Starting today I want to record stories about Bonzi in China, stories about him and me, and the many interesting things that happened on the team. That’s the way I am. Salute to Chairman Mao, to pragmatism and realism!!

  I am going to move into Bonzi Wells’ camp. Many stories are still waiting for me to dig them up, who knows, you are never gonna know…

  Bonzi opened the game with an airball. The Liaoning crowd hooted but Bonzi soon took control, hitting a 3, making a steal for a dunk, and scoring 16 points in the opening quarter. But Yang Ming was having his revenge from the stretcher game and scored easily against the Brave Dragons’ guards. With every shot, Pooh jumped off her seat to cheer.

  “Jia you! Jia you!” she shouted, the Chinese cheer that translates literally as “Add oil! Add oil!” but that effectively means, “Go team!”

  The first half ended with the Brave Dragons leading 48–46. Kobe, who had started the game, had regressed; at one point he dribbled down the court for an apparent layup, only to reverse and dribble back out to the wing, where he made a crosscourt pass that landed in the seats. Weiss removed him a few minutes later, and Boss Wang pulled him down for a few words on the bench before letting him go. There were no punches.

  The second half started with more baskets by Yang Ming. Pooh clapped and screamed beside me. Then it happened: Kobe took the ball on the wing, slashed to the basket, and rose, twisting through the air for a reverse dunk over two defenders. It was stunning. Entire games pass without a Chinese player dunking, and Kobe had performed an NBA-quality jam in traffic. He seemed stunned and then exhilarated, pulling out his jersey in pride as he trotted down the court. The Shanxi bench had erupted, and Boss Wang punched the air. Bonzi stood on the court and conferred his ultimate gesture of respect: a look of surprise and genuine admiration.

  Pooh, on the other hand, was not happy.

  She was even more disappointed when the game ended, the Brave Dragons on top, 86–83. Boss Wang was beaming. Bonzi triumphantly tossed his headband into the crowd. The next day, the Chinese players would get their first break from basketball in eleven months. They would have four days off.

  Weiss and I walked to a local pool hall to celebrate. It was a dingy shop at the end of a row of dingy shops near the arena, and the owner sent out a runner to buy us beer. Garrison arrived with Bonzi and the two foreign players for the Dinosaurs, and soon a tournament was under way. The stakes were one pink Mao 100-yuan note per game. Each bill was stamped with the face of Mao.

  Pool is played most everywhere in China, usually outdoors. Tables are placed on sidewalks or in alleyways. It is not uncommon to see scores of tables outside beneath a makeshift tent or awning to protect against the midday sun. Like basketball, the rules are the same as in the United States, and so is the size of the table, but the differences lie in the subtleties.

  Weiss had already spent a few hours deciphering the table. He discovered the pool hall earlier in the day, during a walk around Bayuquan, and had played with some of the locals. No one could communicate, other than to point, but Weiss was tickled, playing pool in a shithole town in eastern China. His frustration with the dysfunction of the team was matched by how much he enjoyed China. In Taiyuan, he had a regular Ping-Pong circle, including a local television reporter, a young woman barely five feet tall, one of the best players he had ever faced. He loved it.

  Bonzi, on the other hand, had not yet played on a Chinese table. He drew me as an opponent. He began by running in several balls on short, direct shots. He hit them hard, crashing into the back of the pocket, and then taunted me with some trash talk. But then he began to falter. The balls bobbled off the sides of the pockets. He kept missing shots, and I slowly caught up. “That would go in in America,” he said after another shot tickled out of a pocket. He began to complain. The sticks were too short, too light. The tables weren’t right. The sides of the corner pockets were curved.

  I sank the eight ball to win the game and placed Bonzi’s pink money in my pocket.

  He increased the stakes to 200 yuan. I agreed and broke. He kept trying to hit the ball hard, growing more frustrated, and he kept missing. I won easily, and he crumpled up two 100-yuan notes and tossed them into my hand.

  Last game. Finally, Bonzi adjusted. He slowed down. He hit balls softly. He worked the corner pockets carefully, compensating for the curve. He was still talking trash. No force on the planet seemed capable of changing that. But now he was playing a different game. He won, and I returned his 200 yuan.

  In China, even if the table seems the same, you’ve got to learn to adjust.

  The Brave Dragons were as happy as I’d ever seen them. The team was 15 and 14, in a four-way tie for seventh place, and the bus was ripping down the highway toward the Dalian airport and four days of freedom. The landscape was still brown and lifeless, still months from springtime, and a dusting of snow swirled over the roadtop as we roared south. Two players were arranging tickets on their cell phones. Another sat toward the back, dead asleep, mouth agape. Up front, Weiss sat near Liu Tie and Wingtips. Last night, after the win, Wingtips had called Weiss and Garrison over to his table during the postgame meal.

  “Your burden will continue,” he had said in his graveled voice, smiling.

  We drove into Dalian, where the driver made a detour. The guard Duan Jiangpeng was hopping a train home. A few websites had begun listing Duan’s name as one of the young Chinese players who might one day be capable of playing in the NBA. It was the sort of speculation that periodically arose when a young player began showing promise, and Duan had improved more than anyone else on the team. The driver punched a button and the teenage star stepped onto the street with his duffel bag, searching for a taxi in the light snow to carry him to the train station.

  Together almost fifty weeks of the year, the rest of the team dispersed at the Dalian airport before Boss Wang could change his mind. Wingtips was flying to Shanghai. Big Sun was going to Shandong Province. Yu, Kobe, and Big Calves Tian were headed to Beijing before returning to Taiyuan. Wei was t
aking a train from Beijing to join his parents in Baoding. Everyone was going home to see family. Across China, one billion people were on the move: tens of millions of migrant workers who left the countryside for work in factories; tens of millions who left their families for work on construction sites; young girls, still teenagers, who left home to wait tables in restaurants or, failing to find anything better, took work in beauty salons that were actually brothels. Lunar New Year was when an ancient nation reverted to its original shape. Everyone went home.

  I flew to Beijing with the foreigners. In the Beijing airport, Weiss caught a flight back to Taiyuan. He and Tracy were joining the Nigerians for the beach trip to Sanya. Finally, there was Bonzi. At the luggage carousel in Beijing, he assumed his usual position, sitting alone, staring into his iPhone. Garrison went to collect Bonzi’s baggage but would not be escorting him any farther; he needed to catch a flight to Taiyuan and then pack for Sanya. So I assumed the role of Bonzi’s body man. We were talking at the luggage carousel, waiting for Garrison to return with the luggage, when a chubby man in a suit and tie approached us. He wore the red sash of an airport employee. He stood about two feet from Bonzi, staring and smiling—no, beaming.

  “Bangqi Weiersi,” he said.

  I nodded. Yes, it was the great Bonzi Wells.

  Bonzi was annoyed, if trying not to be. The man kept grinning and staring. I mentioned to Bonzi that personal space was defined differently in China. He seemed to have realized that and the chubby man finally walked away. “When I first got here, I had no idea what was going on,” he said. “People were crowding me and grabbing at me and pushing.” He motioned with his forearm. “So I was pushing back.”

  A minute later, the chubby airline employee returned. He informed me that he spoke English. Then we spoke in Chinese. He pointed his mobile phone at Bonzi from a distance of about four feet and began snapping photos, one after another.

  “Doesn’t he know that is rude?” Bonzi asked, increasingly annoyed.

  I mentioned in Chinese to our friend that in the United States it was considered impolite to stand directly in front of someone snapping scores of photographs without his or her permission. He nodded and kept snapping. I pointed to his sash and asked what service he provided for the airport. “Luggage collection,” he said. “Luggage collection.”

  We escaped by pushing Bonzi’s luggage cart outside the security perimeter. My job as body man was to escort Bonzi to the international concourse, Terminal 3. We searched for a shuttle to take us there, but an agent from Starz Sports was unexpectedly waiting for Bonzi, a man who introduced himself in English as Michael. He was joined by Coco, the Sports Illustrated reporter who had profiled Bonzi. Bonzi was startled that they were here, and I imagined a vast unseen machine of sports agentry trying to anticipate the needs of a volcanic basketball star.

  On the shuttle, Bonzi and I took seats on the back row. Coco had brought some posters of Sports Illustrated, which was hitting the stands later that week. Bonzi was the cover boy, and Coco made a point of saying she had personally arranged to make the posters and bring them to Bonzi as a gift before he returned to Muncie. Bonzi didn’t grasp what she said, and Coco seemed hurt, so I translated from English to English and he got the message: She had done him a favor. Bonzi smiled and sprinkled Coco with some charm as the shuttle rumbled toward Terminal 3.

  Terminal 3 was a showpiece built for the Olympics, the largest, most architecturally stunning airport terminal in the world. Now it was mostly empty. Bonzi was flying to Chicago, and we approached the United counter, where the most famous basketball player in China presented his passport. United had no ticket under his name. The Brave Dragons front office was supposed to make the arrangement, but the clerk said no ticket was registered under the name Wells. To his credit, Bonzi was calm. But his support team—us—swung into action. I called Garrison and told him that we needed to contact the team accountant, but Garrison was stepping onto his flight and could not make the call. That is when Michael of Starz Sports silently took over. If Mark Zhang was friendly and talkative, Michael was a silent hit man. He had already gotten the team on the phone and was haggling with the counter clerk. Bonzi liked him.

  As we waited, Bonzi sat on the luggage scales. He hadn’t yet seen Coco’s article, but she offered her thesis: He was misunderstood, and his angry expressions and animated gestures toward officials and coaches were just his emotions boiling over. Coco interpreted these outbursts as a cultural difference; Americans were more direct, while Chinese were less confrontational and more acculturated to smile and never be so direct. Yet then her English brought a bluntness she probably did not intend.

  “Everyone says you are a monster,” she said. “But I do not think so.”

  “Monster,” said Bonzi. He repeated it softly, shaking his head.

  The moment dissolved. Bonzi’s ticket was still unaccounted for. He said he would have to buy his own ticket and that now he was not coming back to China. He was joking. “There’s my story,” Coco said, smiling. “Bonzi Wells says he is not coming back.” Then I wondered if hers was merely a courtesy call to deliver the posters. Why are you taking such a large bag? Coco asked Bonzi. She was suspicious. Bonzi said he left three more back in Taiyuan. He had brought a lot of suits and ties because he usually dressed up in the NBA but now he realized that players wore nothing but sweats in China. So he was taking things back.

  Finally, Michael cleared the ticket. The team had misspelled Bonzi’s last name using “i” instead of “l.” Bonzi Weiis. My job was done. Bonzi gave me a shoulder bump. He said he would see me when he got back. This time he would be bringing a camera because he wanted to get pictures of all the crazy shit he’d been seeing in China.

  The great Bonzi Wells walked toward security, having checked his very large bag. Coco left with Michael, and I walked out of Terminal 3. I also had plans for Lunar New Year. I was spending it in Taiyuan with Ren Hongbing, the team deejay, and his family. I wondered if we’d be celebrating with the Wave.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RED SOLDIER

  This must have been what war sounded like. Taiyuan was vibrating. It did not seem unreasonable to wonder if each of the city’s three million residents had been issued a drum and ordered to stand outside and beat it. What had actually happened was that many of those people were lighting firecrackers or bottle rockets or cherry bombs or whatever else. Dull booms punctuated the steady percussion of the fireworks. Then, an instant after each boom, a splash of color crackled in the sky. Sidewalk vendors stood hidden behind gaudy towers of boxed fireworks. Grown men were lighting roll after roll of firecrackers, never mind that the launch sites were downtown streets, or that they were grown men. The acrid smell of gunpowder hung over the city. A giddy anarchy had taken hold. The Year of the Rat was ending. The Year of the Ox was soon to begin.

  This was my sixth year in China. I’d lived here long enough to know there was only so much I would ever know. Most foreigners who chose to live in China succumbed to an obsession about the place. China appealed to the maven, the polymath, the autodidact because of how insistently it withheld itself, charging outsiders a price of admission for every step deeper inside, forcing them to prove their worthiness through mastery of successively more complicated levels of language, custom, and culture. Mastery was so hard earned that those who managed to bore deeper inside the hard stone of the culture often became gatekeepers, too. Any dinner party of seasoned expatriates in Beijing was sprinkled with little demonstrations of expertise, of Chinese phrases carefully dropped into conversation, of knowing discussions of this political figure or that, of chuckling recitations of this adventure or that one in distant places whose names elicited knowing nods. China hands cannot resist keeping score. But the obsession was genuine because answering one question inevitably led to another and another, which inevitably boiled down to the most essential ones: How were we similar? How were we not?

  I’d always wondered about the moments in Chinese life where Chinese
take joy in being Chinese. Society was bound by love of family and food, but China was consumed by a churning relentlessness, a pressure cooker wrought by the national mandate of restoring Chinese greatness. Ask an Indian intellectual in New Delhi why the capital’s libraries are mediocre or their infrastructure was poorly built and he might shrug and say, “We Indians are not especially good at that.” The Chinese, or at least their leaders, could not accept such a lack of ambition or national will; for China to reclaim its place in the world, China must be great at every endeavor. Yet the price was that daily life was a grinding stone. Everyone worked hard, often separated from family, as rebuilding and rebranding Chinese greatness was a round-the-clock enterprise. Drive past a construction site at 3 a.m. Men were working. Drive past a textile factory at 4 a.m. Women were working. Work, work, work, work. When was the payoff?

  I came to believe Chinese New Year was the best representation of that single moment when people could exhale, the purest representation of the Chinese soul. Migrant workers put down their hammers or walked away from their sewing machines and went back to the countryside, like some of the Brave Dragons players. Gifts were bought. Houses were cleaned to sweep away bad luck. Firecrackers were lit as symbolic reminders of the mythical beast called Nian, who centuries ago had feasted on livestock and crops until farmers realized he was frightened by the color red and the cracking noise of fireworks. Those running the race to the future paused to remember the past. I once spent the eve of Chinese New Year at a farmhouse in a mountain village a few hours outside Beijing. My family rented rooms from a local farmer as a getaway from the city. It was not a typical second-home arrangement; we paid $40 a month for four unheated rooms lacking a bathroom. My landlord grew corn and held a second job as a carpenter making coffins. When you shook his hand, you noticed he was missing parts of a few fingers. On the big night, he and I drank many celebratory shots of baijiu, so many that I was happily asleep when my wife, Theo, began shaking me at midnight. Get up! You are missing it! she said. I staggered out to see our tiny village in rare ecstasy. Fireworks exploded out of the drab dirt courtyards of every farmhouse. Snowflakes of color burst over the silent mountains, and I could hear laughing and shouting echoing through our narrow valley. This was happening in every village in China. This was the moment.