The fact that Yahui, an eighteen-year-old “jade nun,” would soon become the object of the Daoist Mingzheng’s love was something neither the school’s religious masters nor the deities themselves possibly could have anticipated. Yet Yahui didn’t even feel this was love. Instead, she simply regarded it as the kind of secular attachment her religious mentor, or shifu, had once mentioned—like the mud that sticks to your shoes on a rainy day. Once, as Yahui was going down the hall to dump her scraps from making papercuts, she happened to see Mingzheng at the bottom of the stairwell waving at her—like a boy wanting to give something he had just stolen to a girl. At the entrance to the building’s seventh floor, there was a wooden placard that read: “Male disciples must stop here!”
He came to a stop.
The placard’s interdiction stopped Mingzheng in his tracks. The female disciples were all housed on the seventh floor, the same way that all the female students at this university were assigned to the seventh floors of their respective dormitories—to prevent male students from visiting freely, and to block their amorous and lascivious impulses. In the religious training center, however, commandments were even more powerful than rules, and disciples crave commandments the way a starving person craves three meals a day.
The religion building’s first floor contained the religious training center’s administrative offices, as well as the offices of its faculty and instructors. The second floor was the Buddhist dormitory, the third was the Daoist dormitory, the fourth, fifth, and sixth were the Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic dormitories, respectively, and the seventh was reserved for the school’s female disciples. Each floor had a study room with newspapers and journals, but none had a chapel or a Mass room.
Every religious master and disciple who came here for training attended under the arrangement of the nation’s School of Spirituality and Faith. This wasn’t a foreign religious academy, nor was it a church or mosque, or a Buddhist or Daoist temple. Instead, it was an advanced religious research program that had been established with government support at Beijing’s most prestigious university. A short-term appointment was for three months, a medium-term appointment was for six months, and a long-term appointment was for a full year.
The religious training center consisted of a single building, which the school called the religious belief building, or the religion building. The building’s exterior was just like that of the school’s other buildings, but inside everything was completely different. Not only were male and female disciples forbidden from mingling with one another, but even disciples of the same sex and belonging to the same religion rarely walked together or spoke to one another. Each disciple’s religious practices—such as worshipping, attending Mass, burning incense, and chanting sutras—were conducted in the privacy of their own rooms. Every student had a room, every room had a temple, and every disciple had a church—though the Buddhist temples were rather small, as were the Daoist temples and the Islamic mosques. The young Daoist Mingzheng, meanwhile, yearned to see the Buddhist nun Yahui in person—the same way he might be able to recite the Daodejing by heart yet still yearn to see the real Laozi, or the way Yahui might burn incense and chant sutras every day yet still yearn to see the real Buddha.
Deities and humans must always maintain their distance from one another, because it is only with distance that there can be deities in the first place.
However, although most foreign deities reside in the distant heavens, many of China’s deities are located closer to humans, down on earth. Foreign deities mostly attend to people’s spirit and soul, while China’s deities attend not only to their spirit and soul, but also to more mundane matters such as food and clothing, life and death, jealousy and hatred, money and wealth, aristocracy and bureaucracy, marriage and reproduction. Often, when people are walking along, they may suddenly look up and see a deity.
Now this young Daoist was at the center searching for deities. After repeatedly failing to speak to Yahui at the entrance to the seventh floor, Mingzheng figured he would probably run into her at the entrance to the building at mealtime. He decided he would join her when she emerged to take a stroll around campus, so he waited for her both on the path leading to the canteen and at the entrance to the campus store.
One day, Yahui had her period and went to the campus store to buy sanitary pads, which even nuns need to use. She bought the Comfort and Treasure brand, which had a blue sky, white clouds, and a female model smiling and dancing on the box, and on her way back to her room, she was as happy as a drifting cloud. With a relaxed heart and light steps, she strolled through the campus garden and began to wonder, Does the Bodhisattva also have periods? And if she does, what kind of pad does she use? At this thought, Yahui immediately stopped and silently chanted Amitābha. Then she smiled and saw a pair of feet with pointed-toe shoes and gray socks to protect the ankles. The stitching along the bottom of the robe resembled withered grass, but it was also as neat as cracks in a wall. This was a Daoist robe, and like a Buddhist robe it was wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. A row of cloth buttons extended diagonally across the left side of the robe, like a river flowing through it.
“I just knew you were going to pass by here,” Mingzheng said.
Yahui stopped in surprise and reflexively hugged her sanitary pads to her chest.
“Tomorrow, there will be another tug-of-war competition. However, if your shifu is opposed to these inter-sect athletic competitions, I can ask for the center to stop including them in its athletics classes!”
Yahui stared at the young Daoist in disbelief.
“Ours is a program for religious masters, and it is as selective as the Summer Palace’s Communist Party School. If you aren’t a Buddhist abbot or Daoist master, or a priest, pastor, or imam, then you are not qualified to enroll. I know you have come to look after your shifu and audit some classes on her behalf, but do you know why I, a twentysomething-year-old Daoist, was able to enroll?”
Lips pursed, Yahui continued staring at him.
Without answering his own question, the young Daoist approached her and took her hand. “Let’s go over there!” As though giving her an order, he led her toward the garden on the west side of the campus. The perimeter of the garden was lined with willows, while the interior was filled with dead cypresses. Students looking for a secluded site to either study or chat flirtatiously usually didn’t go there. This, however, was precisely where Mingzheng was leading her. Yahui wasn’t sure why she was following him, but when they arrived, he said solemnly, “I know that the reason you weren’t ordained when you turned eighteen is because your shifu wanted you to return to secular life.”
“…”
“But who could maintain their faith while enjoying a secular life? I also want to return to secular life, so why don’t we take the opportunity provided by this training program, return to secular life, and get married?”
Yahui stepped back in shock. With her gaze fixed on his face and her hands clasped in front of her chest, she repeatedly chanted Amitābha, then turned and walked away. The young Daoist stepped forward and grabbed her, blocking her way like a wall.
“I really can arrange for the center to stop the tug-of-war competitions. Do you know about my family’s relationship to the center’s Director Gong?”
As Yahui listened, she took a step back, and then another. The entire time, her hands remained clasped in front of her chest as an interminable thread of sutra chants emerged from her mouth. After Yahui had taken several steps back, she turned and rushed out of the garden. As she ran off, she heard him calling after her, “I’m telling you that tomorrow, on behalf of your shifu, I’ll ask the center to remove tug-of-war competitions from its athletics courses!” She turned to him in surprise, then hurried away even more quickly than before. When she reached her room, she dealt with her period. She didn’t know why she kept feeling a surge of delight and wondered why Laozi and Guanyin hadn’t ever fallen in love. She reflected that if Laozi and Guanyin had in fact fallen in love and gotten married, it would have been a beautiful, divine marriage!