Every day—every single day—nothing particularly notable happened in class. And yet, there was always something … and on this day, Yahui had to go to the hospital to visit Jueyu shifu.
Originally, Yahui had planned to go the previous day, but instead she had spent the entire day with Imam Tian preparing for an exam on the relationship between Chinese religion and Chinese society, and she didn’t finish the examination essays until evening. Yahui had been attending classes at the center on Jueyu shifu’s behalf while her shifu was in the hospital, and although it was an open-book exam, Yahui still wanted to do as well as possible, so that she could present her scores to her shifu as a gift. In return for Imam Tian’s help, she bought him some of the university store’s most expensive chocolates. In exchange, Tian Dongqing not only explained to her the principle that, throughout history, Chinese religion has always been in the service of society, he also explained the reason—which was not appropriate for writing in her examination booklet—why Chinese religion cannot supersede governmental authority or political power. When it came to this exam topic, Tian Dongqing’s knowledge was as vast as the sky, and even if you merely considered the reference books piled on his desk—which included works like Marxism’s Perspective on Religion, The History of Humanity and of Religion, The History of China and of Religion, and Chinese Religion’s Spirituality and Secularity—any of these texts could be used to complete three or five examination booklets, thereby allowing a student to become a master-level disciple in a single stroke. Yahui had previously thought that if it weren’t for the fact that Tian Dongqing was more than twenty years older than she—and that his wife, Ruan Zhisu, had come with him to the center and was living with Yahui on the seventh floor—she would surely have preferred to spend all her free time with him rather than with Mingzheng.
But now that they were together, Imam Tian merely smiled and said, “For those who have come to study at the center, it’s sufficient that they simply pass their exams.”
“But I must do right by my shifu,” Yahui replied. “While she is in the hospital, all the scores I receive will be listed under her name.”
Imam Tian explained how the examination booklet should be filled out, and he even wrote the important parts on a sheet of paper and asked her to copy them into her exam booklet. She handed in her booklet in the evening, and the next morning she listened as Nameless, his chest covered in medals, lectured on the topic “Where Was New China Born?” That afternoon, Yahui learned that she had received a score of ninety-eight on the exam, placing first in her class. Meanwhile, Tian Dongqing himself just barely passed with a score of sixty.
Yahui took her first-place score and went to see her shifu, and as she was emerging from the religion building, she noticed that the sky was as blue as a three-year-old child’s painting. Yahui stood in the courtyard, stared up at the sky, and noticed that the clouds resembled a herd of horses and a lotus pool, then she watched as they drifted away. When she reached the school entrance, she ran into Gu Mingzheng, who was descending from the skywalk. They both stood under the skywalk, and Yahui noticed that Mingzheng’s face was flushed and, like a fool, he was wearing a coin-sized Mao badge pinned to his chest. The badge had a bright red base, out of which the golden Mao portrait shone like a picture of the Buddha. Yahui stared in astonishment at Mingzheng and his commemorative badge. Her eyes began to burn and she clasped her hands in front of her chest. After chanting Amitābha, she stared at him and asked, “Heavens … where have you been the past couple of days?”
Mingzheng patted his badge and replied, “You didn’t go out? I went to see the Great Wall and the Palace Museum, and also visited Babaoshan and Tiananmen Square!”
Yahui continued staring at him. She seemed to want to say something, but no words came out. Instead, her lips trembled as she headed to the side of the road.
At this point, Gu Mingzheng turned and positioned himself in front of her, then removed his Mao badge and offered it to her. “Do you want this? They sell for one yuan each in Tiananmen Square.”
Yahui continued staring at him without saying a word, then silently lifted her hand to hail a taxi.
“Here, take it …” Still smiling, Mingzheng handed her the badge. “Perhaps you might find it useful someday.”
Yahui turned away and spat at the ground. She replied coldly, “Gu Mingzheng, the deities up in heaven are watching. Aren’t you afraid they might punish you?” As she asked this, a taxi stopped in front of her. She opened the door, got in, and left Mingzheng standing in the school entranceway, like a wad of writing paper tossed out of the school window. Mingzheng gazed scornfully at her taxi, which was the color of a yellow Buddhist robe.
Half an hour after Yahui left Mingzheng, she arrived at Yonghe Temple. She got out of the taxi and stood for a moment in the entranceway, gazing at the palace. She thought how nice it would be if Jueyu shifu were the director of Yonghe Temple, because then she could spend her entire life in Beijing’s oldest and most vibrant temple, right outside of which there were subways, stores, pedestrians, and the Second Ring Road. Moreover, just as incense smoke can reach the mountains and seas, the temple could collect several hundred, several thousand, or even several tens of thousands of yuan in the merit box every day. Yahui entertained these odd thoughts for a while, and then, as a wave of sadness welled up in her chest, she followed the temple’s red wall toward Yonghe Hospital.
There was a small park in the entranceway to the hospital. Occupying a square plot that was over a mu in size, the grove contained poplars, elms, cypresses, and pine trees. A brick path wound through the trees like a wet ribbon, and as Yahui quickly walked along this path, she once again saw a miraculous sight, as though she had glimpsed the shadow of a bodhisattva in the sky. Astonished, she stared with her mouth open, and for the longest time she didn’t say a word.
She saw her shifu, who had not gotten out of bed for more than a month, sitting on one of the garden’s stone benches, and next to her there was a wheelchair, a water glass, a sutra, and a cloth for her to wipe her brow. The sun was shining down through a gap between two trees, landing on her face and shoulders, giving her thin and sallow face a red glow. Her shifu used one hand to massage the knuckles of the other, then used the other hand to massage the knuckles of the first. “Shifu!” Yahui came to a stop and, after staring for a moment, headed over. As she approached, she again stopped and quickly performed a Buddhist ritual and chanted a sutra. Then she knelt down in front of her shifu, grasped her hands, and gazed up at her.
“How did you manage to come outside?!”
Upon seeing her shifu’s recovery, the annoyance and resentment Yahui had felt toward Gu Mingzheng immediately faded. Up ahead there was another patient and a volunteer nurse, who were laughing and looking in the direction of Yahui and her shifu. Jueyu shifu turned to Yahui and exclaimed, “Ya-ya, ah-ah,” as tears streamed down her cheeks. At this point, Volunteer Nurse Wang—a layperson who had not yet joined the Buddhist order—walked over to Yahui. She warmly remarked that she didn’t know what Yahui had told shifu the last time she came to visit, but perhaps Yahui had brought a spirit with her, because from that point on it appeared as though some force were protecting Jueyu shifu. Shortly after Yahui’s previous visit, Jueyu shifu had been able to sit up in bed, and the next day she was able to sit up, hold her bowl, and grasp her sutra. By the third day, she was able to hold her own chopsticks and rice bowl and could even take a few steps while leaning against the wall. Now not only could she support herself by leaning against a wall, she could even stand and walk on her own—as though the spirit were supporting her.
As the nurse said this, she pulled Yahui over, and once they were several steps from Jueyu shifu, she asked Yahui earnestly, “So, what did you tell your shifu the last time you came?”
“I told her that the school would no longer hold tug-of-war competitions. I don’t think I said anything else.”
“Then you should continue speaking to her in the same vein today—because if you don’t, all of the progress she has made may be in vain.”
With this, the fifty-year-old volunteer nurse headed back to her patient. That patient was a Protestant and had crosses hanging from his neck and his IV bottle. His bottle needed to be changed, so Nurse Wang quickly pushed him back to the sickroom. As she was leaving, Nurse Wang nodded to Yahui, encouraging her to do as she had instructed.
Yahui returned to Jueyu shifu’s side, then pushed her and the wheelchair back into the shade. After pouring her shifu a glass of water, she suddenly thought of something, then half knelt in front of her, grasped her hand, and giggled like a child. “He-he-he … Amitābha … Such an important matter, and I forgot all about it! Director Gong asked me to send his regards. Last week, he not only discontinued the religious training center’s tug-of-war competitions, he also arranged for all students to sing a religious song in their rhetoric class. He said that in this week’s class, everyone will sing the Protestant ‘Jesus’s Hymns,’ next week they will sing the Catholic ‘Ode to the Virgin Mary,’ the following week they will sing the Islamic ‘In Heaven There Is Only You,’ and the week after that they will sing either ‘The Daoist Universe’ or our own Sanskrit ‘Great Compassion Mantra’!”
Yahui appeared girlish as she said this, as though she were Jueyu shifu’s daughter. Yahui repeatedly tapped her shifu’s legs with her hands, adding, “Director Gong also told me to ask you—when it comes time for the other disciples to sing our Brahma song, should they first sing the cheerful ‘I Am a Lotus Next to the Bodhisattva or the sorrowful ‘Great Compassion Mantra’?” Yahui stared at her shifu’s face and noticed that it was not only flushed but also slightly plump, and her eyes, which had previously been cloudy, had already started to clear up. In the corner of her eye a tear slowly swelled until it rolled down her cheek.
“I feel it would be best to first have them sing ‘I Am a Lotus Next to the Bodhisattva.’” Wiping away her shifu’s tear, Yahui added in a childlike tone, “Once they observe the Bodhisattva’s compassion and dignity and sing the sorrowful ‘Great Compassion Mantra,’ they will be able to appreciate the Bodhisattva’s goodness, broad-mindedness, and compassion for the world.”
Yahui asked, “Shifu, do you agree?”
She added, “Even if the world were larger than it is, it would still be no match for the Bodhisattva’s compassion, and even if the universe were vaster than it is, it would still be no match for the Bodhisattva’s broad-mindedness. We must help disciples from other religions understand the Bodhisattva’s capaciousness and essence.”
Then she asked, “Isn’t that right, Shifu? Wouldn’t you agree that this is in fact the Way of the Buddhist canon? If so, I’ll go tell Director Gong. I’ll tell him you recommended that the disciples first sing ‘I Am a Lotus Next to the Bodhisattva.’”
Jueyu shifu wept, her tears falling like raindrops onto Yahui’s head and face. She removed her hand from Yahui’s grasp, then hugged her tightly. As if noticing for the first time that Yahui had grown up, Jueyu shifu suddenly realized the spirit of the Buddha. As for Yahui herself, she was increasingly clear about what she should say and what she should do—so she obediently continued saying good things about the relations between the different religions represented in the center. By the time she had almost finished with these happy reports, the sun had again moved toward the west and its heat had begun to fade, as a chill descended on all areas of the hospital’s clinic and sickrooms. A breeze blew through the trees in the courtyard, and the sunlight shifted from one side of Jueyu shifu’s body to the other, as patches of sunlight moved away from her body and shoulders and instead began to fall like sacred rays on her head—making her face, which had come to resemble a withered date, return to the appearance it had had back in July and August. Her face regained a jujube-colored glow and the corners of her mouth contained the hint of a smile. It looked as though she were about to say something, though no words escaped her lips. Instead there were just a few drops of spittle around her mouth. Yahui wiped her shifu’s mouth and smoothed back her hair. At this point, the hospital’s holy bell tolled, and the sound melodiously drifted out and back again—as though a river were flowing through the sky next to the Second Ring Road. Yahui gazed up at the celestial river and said, “Shifu, you will recover soon, and if you were to remain in Yonghe Temple as a host, I would be able to stay in Beijing for the rest of my life.” Jueyu shifu looked up, listened to the tolling of the bell, then turned in that direction. She uttered a string of ah-ahs and ya-yas, as her gaze fell on a small bag hanging from the right side of her wheelchair.
Yahui removed a pen and notebook from the bag and handed them to her shifu, who placed the notebook on her knee and proceeded to write a string of crooked characters—including some that were larger than a fingernail and others that were smaller than a bean. When she finished, Jueyu shifu handed the page to Yahui, who immediately turned pale.
“Really? Are you sure you want to do this?”
Yahui stared at her shifu for a moment and repeated the question a couple more times. Only after her shifu nodded emphatically did Yahui accept the fact that she had in fact made up her mind—like the Buddha deciding to give his sacred lotus pad to a member of another religion who had previously harmed him.