Duli, being single, had become enamored of Emily during the early stages of our assignment. By this time he’d decided that the feeling was not reciprocated and so hung back with me cracking jokes as we walked slowly to the Shaolin Temple. A lot of our conversation had to do with the Wu Tang Clan and Chinese language. One of the earliest phrases I learned in China was “bu yao,” or roughly “I don’t want it,” and it was always satisfying to be able to yell “boo yah!” at people and get a point across. A lot of Chinese phrases sound straight out of a rap song, but with entirely different meanings. In addition to my Shijiazhuang donut business I may also be able to carve out an opportunity by creating a Chinese-Rap crossover double entendre genre. I’m really surprised this doesn’t exist already.
At long last we entered the Shaolin Temple. I stuck a coin in an old tree, Duli burned some incense, Carlos snapped photos of Emily posing in front of temples, and the entire thing went on towards infinity like everything else in China. It’s a nice temple in a beautiful setting, and Duli took some shaky videos on his iPhone.
“I have a friend who makes Kung Fu B movies.”
“Isn’t he about 35 years behind on that one?”
“Maybe he can use some of this footage.”
“Let’s get one of me leaping out from behind that wall, then.”
The monks in the temple were not doing any Kung Fu. Mostly they were talking on cell phones. We heard later that a lot of them are actually rent-a-monks put in place for aesthetic purposes. But we did come across some older ones who, while they looked like they hadn’t done any Kung Fu in a long time, did at least chant, wave some smoke around, bang on things, and ask you not to take pictures. That felt authentic.
He heard the call
Inside the Shaolin Temple grounds
We’d seen the temple and continued walking away from our driver and Shijiazhuang. Now a number of women began swarming us to sell us these incredibly annoying cats that make a high pitched noise, apparently meant to be a meow, when you run your fingers down the string to which the cat is attached. The women were insistent. One woman came up to me while torturing her cat toy and began punching me in the chest, ordering me to buy it for 2 yuan. I started yelling “Boo Yah!” and pointing at her face repeatedly, which made me feel good but didn’t stop her. As I wrestled my way from her I asked myself who the hell would buy anything when faced with these selling tactics.
I heard Duli’s laugh before I saw him walking up to me, and then I heard a weak but still annoying meow come from the item he was holding in his hands. “This thing is great,” he said as he kept laughing.
Reluctant movie stars and their cats
Kung Fu Chicken
Eventually we began our journey back to Shijiazhuang. Our bus deposited us at a noodles place in Zhengzhou, and after dinner we dodged hectic nighttime traffic while walking through what seemed to be a pretty nice city. We narrowly avoided being run over several times and Carlos just about lost an eye when clotheslined by a low hanging wire. “Why this wire hanging here?” But we found the station.
Unlike our outbound train, the return train was a slow one with sleeper cars. Our “hard sleeper” consisted of six beds crammed three high into a narrow box. Duli and I were convinced that we’d share a unit with one of the local men who showed off their shirtless and prodigious bellies in what seemed to be a Shijiazhuang summer style. As we settled in, we found a bottle of rice wine that smelled like nail polish remover and a tube of something that thankfully turned out to be toothpaste awaiting us on the filthy table between beds. The train pulled out of the station sometime after 10 pm and would not make it to Shijiazhuang until 3 am. Tired and weary after a long day, the four of us chatted for a bit before retiring to our bunk beds.
Hard sleeper
I looked down at my feet that hung well into the aisle and, having recently seen Misery in an oddly-chosen dinner accompaniment at a Shijiazhuang restaurant, was glad there was no food cart on this train. Soon the lights were turned out and the train filled with sounds of many snoring Chinese passengers, what Carlos called the “Lotus Symphony.” Tool’s cover of No Quarter drowned out the sound via my iPod. With no real idea where the train was, and hours from Shijiazhuang, I lay there in the dark on a small, hard bed looking up at the occasional lights of a very foreign land flashing by. The world was infinite again.
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