My Asian Dragon

“Well, that settles it,” he said, climbing back in the van and shutting it off. “Looks like we’re camping here tonight. Most temples let people stay on their grounds for free, and I did pack food.”

“Oh, what do you have?” Tang Wen asked from the back.

“You’re not going to enjoy it, but I brought two cases of American MRE’s. They’re easy to eat, easy to heat, and one of them is enough to fuel us for almost an entire day if we need.”

Tang Wen made a face, but nodded. “Fine. I am hungry. Let’s eat.”

*****

The next morning, Joy started her investigation. Waking up a little past dawn, she gobbled her breakfast before the group started out on trying to find people to talk to. “Might as well start right here,” Joy said, walking up to the now open gates of the temple. Tang Wen and Uncle followed, while Billy said he was going to find a better place to park the van.

Joy’s frustration with the investigation grew as the day wore on. Most of the villagers seemed very shy, or even fearful of outsiders. She had thought perhaps it was due to her brown skin, but even when Billy had gone out with Uncle and Tang Wen they had little success. By evening, Joy was almost ready to give up.

The biggest challenge was language. Almost nobody in the village spoke any English at all, apart from a few children who could spout a few phrases, only to go off giggling and running up the road. The adults of the village were hardly any better, speaking a broken, heavily accented form of Chinese that sounded like total gibberish to Joy. Even Billy couldn’t understand, and Uncle could only translate phrases to Tang Wen. All of them were the same, too. “No, nothing strange,” “What is a Triad?” “We have lucky protector,” and the ever present unintelligible yammering.

What made it worse for Joy was the particular tone of the village’s dialect. She had gotten used to the higher pitches and seemingly excitable talking of Chinese, which to American ears sounded a lot like shouting and screeching, but this village’s tone was on a whole new level. Even when the villagers repeated themselves to Uncle, it sounded almost painful to her ears.

On the positive side for Joy however, the village was remarkably clean and peaceful. She had gotten used to the Chinese culture that had grown under the Communist regime of people often being very rude to those they didn’t know. She had seen drunks kicked in the streets, children shoved out of the way of shoppers, and many other varieties of petty unkindness.

But in Long Xue Yu, everything seemed the opposite. People were kind to each other. She had seen a young child, maybe no older than three or four, stop to help pick up the things dropped by an old grandmother who was struggling with her load. Better yet, with nothing but a kind word the child volunteered to carry the woman’s things the rest of the way to her destination. In the fields surrounding the village, Joy watched farmers work in harmony with their animals and with each other, exchanging hearty calls and greetings across rice paddies. While the village was obviously very poor, in many other aspects it was almost a Utopian setting.

As the sun set, the foursome collected themselves back at the van, which Billy had ended up leaving next to the temple. “So, what’s your opinion, Joy? This is your story, after all.”

Joy shook her head. “I don’t know, Billy. To be honest, I’d love to stay and just observe for a while, but I don’t think there’s a real story here. Maybe a human interest piece, but anything on Triads? No.”

“So what’s your plan?”

Joy sighed, and stirred her ration packet, dipping her plastic spoon into a foil envelope to scoop out what was supposedly beef stew. “I think I’m going to stay a while, but you should probably head back. Maybe if it was just me, and I went organic and just low key, I might be able to see something that will give me a clue.”

“You sure? You get in trouble out here, there’s not exactly a lot of help available.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. How about you head back to Hefei, or take Uncle back to his home, and if I need help I’ll try and call.”

“Cell phones don’t work well out here, Joy. The only spot I got a signal was two kilometers north of here, on the main road.”

“I know. Billy, relax. I’m a big girl, and was raised in some of the worst neighborhoods of Washington. I can take care of myself.”

*****

After Billy left, Joy’s confidence started to fade. Night was coming on, and while the full moon overhead seemed to cast the village in a soft white light, she realized for the first time how much light she had come to expect from things like streetlamps, building signs, and other artificial means. Other than the moon, the night was black. Joy looked back at the sight of her small one person tent, a parting gift from Billy, along with the rest of the military rations and an extra battery pack for her phone. It felt weird, knowing the thin nylon shelter was all she had, but she felt like she could deal with it.

Deciding to take a walk, Joy made her way along the outside of the temple. The monks who had talked to her that morning had seemed distant but polite, although she felt like they had wanted her to leave quickly. She decided to see just how big the temple grounds were, having only seen the main atrium building that morning.

As she made her way towards the west side of the temple walls, a hint of motion got her attention. Off in the distance, perhaps a few hundred meters away, she could see two figures making their way through the edge of the forest surrounding the village. Joy crept along, curious.

When Joy got within a hundred meters, her eyes opened wide, and her chin dropped into her chest. In front was a man, walking like any normal person would in the moonlit darkness, arms behind his back, glancing up at the sky. What caused her reaction however was the creature behind him. Maybe twenty feet long, with a snake like body but a face that looked something like a short snouted dog, the creature looked to Joy just like the drawings of a Chinese dragon she had seen in books. The dragon was obviously stalking the strolling man, and was maybe ten feet behind him. When the dragon reared up, Joy knew she had to do something. “No! Behind you!” she shouted.

Both the dragon and the walking man’s heads whipped towards hers. The fiery gaze of the dragon scared the hell out of her, and she took off running, scampering as best she could through the trees and grass that surrounded the temple. As she ran, she kept looking back, afraid the dragon would be on her heels at any second. Unfortunately for her, her lack of attention to where she was going caused her to miss a low hanging tree branch, which caught her in the forehead, right above her hairline, sending her crashing to the ground, stunned.

Joy lay there for a moment, until the fear of the dragon cleared her fogged mind, and she tried scrambling up. As soon as she did, she saw the dragon, less than twenty feet away, its small front legs in the air as the creature reared up on its belly and rear legs. It didn’t roar, but instead hissed, a snakelike sound that turned her knees to jelly and caused her bladder to release. She was too afraid to feel shame about peeing her pants through, as she fell back down, covering her head with her arms, only praying that the dragon would leave her alone.

After a few moments, when she hadn’t been eaten or torn apart, Joy dared to look out from behind the shield of her arms. The dragon was gone, in its place one of the monks from the temple she had seen that morning. “You should not be here,” the monk said, before turning and walking away. Before disappearing into the night, Joy could hear the monk’s voice again. “Go back to your tent, and go back to your life in the city. You cannot understand what you saw tonight.”

The surreal situation finally overtook Joy, and she fainted, her last thought was thankfulness that she was at least already lying down.