The Buddha has as much faith in fate as the Bodhisattva has in the power of her own finger.
Yahui, however, suspected that mortal affairs were not necessarily determined by fate. Take, for example, tug-of-war, where it is assumed that there will always be winners and losers, the same way that there will always be black and white. However, when two of China’s five major religions compete in a tug-of-war, they cannot simply be divided into winners and losers. In a competition between teams composed of Buddhists, Daoists, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims from China’s northwestern Ningxia and Gansu Provinces, the losers will always be the competitors, while the winners will always be those who organized the competition itself—the same way that there are casinos everywhere, where gamblers experience excitement and frustration around the clock, but at the end of the day all the money goes into the pockets of the casino owners.
One of these tug-of-war matches took place in late September. At the religious training center on the campus of Beijing’s National Politics University, everyone felt as though they were being boiled alive, with the campus, the streets, and the entire city stewing in the heat. Today’s match was between the Protestant and Catholic teams. The Protestants had selected five disciples for the competition, as had the Catholics. The contestants were all wearing undershirts, underwear, and sneakers with a good grip. The court had a red rubber surface, which resembled a Buddhist temple cook’s fat face and was set up in the school’s badminton court, with the Catholic team positioned on one side and the Protestant team on the other. To determine which team was winning, Director Gong, the competition’s organizer, had painted a white line on the ground, and it was across this line that the competition unfolded. The members of the Protestant team were not ordinary apprentices or missionaries but rather pastors, just as the members of the Catholic team were not ordinary monks and nuns but priests. Only high-ranking religious figures like pastors and priests were qualified to attend this advanced religious research program and participate in these tug-of-war competitions. The spectators sitting around the court included Daoist masters, Buddhist abbots, Protestant pastors, and Muslim imams—all either religious masters or master candidates.
This was a competition between master and master, deity and deity, human and human, and deity and human. It was part of one of the religious training center’s classes, and consequently all the disciples were required to attend. Even Yahui, who was at the center merely as an auditor, had no choice but to attend.
But today she was late.
She was late because she had spent too much time fashioning intricate papercut images in her dormitory room’s temple, after which she had spent some additional time admiring herself in the mirror. On her way to the competition, she looked at the school’s tallest building and thought how nice it would be if this were a Buddhist convent. She looked at the school’s new library and thought how stylish and powerful it would be if this were the convent’s sutra depository. As she was thinking this, she tripped over some pieces of sandstone in the middle of the road. She looked down and thought, Yesterday these stones tripped a small child, and today they’ve tripped me. What might they do tomorrow? She resolved to move two of the stones to the side of the road, but after several attempts she found she was unable to budge them. A young Daoist came over to lend a hand, and he easily picked up the stones and moved them out of the way—but because he was afraid of crushing the grass by the side of the road, he instead placed the stones in a dusty area where there was no vegetation. When the Daoist returned, Yahui thanked him by clasping her hands together and chanting Amitābha. The Daoist didn’t reciprocate with a heart palm salute, but rather, in a very secular fashion, he simply grinned and said, “Don’t mention it. My name is Gu Mingzheng.”
Then he walked away.
Yahui was surprised that a Daoist would respond to her in such a casual manner. She stood by the side of the road and watched him walk away as though looking at an unannotated page from a sutra. Meanwhile, at the tug-of-war court, they had already conducted the opening ceremony, and the Protestant and Catholic teams were already debating on which side of the white line the rope’s red tassel would ultimately land. They argued until the flesh had almost fallen from their faces—as though debating who was God’s most powerful presence on earth, Jesus or the Virgin Mary.
By that point, it was already three in the afternoon and the sun was burning brightly overhead, heating everything into a murky soup. Everyone felt like they were steadily boiling alive, and after they started the competition and began huffing and puffing, it sounded as if the earth were being rocked by thunder. Yahui finally entered through a small gate on the side of the court and stood quietly behind the Buddhist team. The first thing she saw were the bald heads of the senior monks, including one whose hair had already turned gray and whose close-cropped scalp resembled wheat stubble left in a farmer’s field. Then she turned and saw the young priests and pastors divided into two groups, who glared at each other resentfully, like sports fans divided into two irreconcilable camps. Meanwhile, the Daoist and Muslim fans were casually laughing and chatting. The air was filled with shouts of “Go, go!”, though it was difficult to tell which shouts were cheers directed toward the competitors, and which were simply spectators making a commotion.
As the temperature rose, the ground began to split open. Yahui watched for a while, until she began to feel similar cracks appearing in her own cheeks. Sweat poured out of these fissures, flowing like worms crawling down toward her chest. She was gazing up at the September sky when the shadow of a tree suddenly drifted overhead like in a myth. She turned and saw that the young Daoist master Gu Mingzheng had found a branch of an umbrella tree and was holding it over her head. With a smile, he said, “I’d like to treat you to an ice pop from that cold-drink shop.”