Without speaking or even moving, Yahui remained in her room from afternoon until after dinner. Finally, when she began to feel truly lonely, she got up to polish the porcelain Bodhisattva statue on the table, and when she felt even lonelier, she lit an incense stick in front of the statue. Eventually she lay down and went to sleep. When she woke up, she became curious what crime Wang Changping had committed, so she went downstairs to ask Director Gong. It was only after she reached the first floor that she noticed it was already dark outside, though the lights in the lobby were so bright that it seemed like midday. The door to Director Gong’s office was so tightly locked that not even air could pass through. Classmates and disciples had all gone to the canteen to eat, leaving the religion building empty like an old temple without any humans or deities. Yahui stood for a while in the lobby, then went back upstairs to her dormitory. She prepared a packet of instant noodles, and just as she was about to eat, Tian Dongqing arrived.
He stood silently in the doorway for a while, holding a thick wad of bills wrapped in a newspaper. He placed the bills on her bed, then looked at her and said, “This is the prize money the center issued for the competitions this afternoon. There was ninety-eight thousand yuan in all, and I added another two thousand to make it an even hundred thousand. You can use this to repay Director Gong. We disciples can owe each other money, and we can owe the deities money, but we definitely mustn’t owe money to the organization.”
Holding her bowl of noodles, Yahui stood frozen next to the bed. The red-pepper soup appeared yellow in the lamplight. Yahui gazed at Tian Dongqing’s face as though trying to solve a riddle. However, his face didn’t contain a riddle, nor the solution to a riddle—it just had a normal expression. She wanted to ask him, “Did you know that Pastor Wang was taken away?” However, when she remembered what Director Gong had told her, she offered Tian Dongqing her bowl of noodles instead.
“It’s clean. I haven’t touched it.”
Tian Dongqing shook his head, and said, “Do you know why Wang Changping was taken away?”
Yahui’s eyes widened with surprise as she shook her head.
“Didn’t Director Gong tell you?”
Yahui again shook her head.
“Do you know who ratted on him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t!”
After standing there quietly for a moment, Tian Dongqing eventually said, “Eat your food,” and walked out, leaving her alone in her solitude. She ate her noodles, then sat down and tried to make some papercuts. But every cut was in the wrong place, and eventually she threw the scissors onto her bed in frustration, while also balling up several sheets of paper and tossing them onto the desk next to the sutras and textbooks. Then she got up and went to walk around the building. She saw that the disciples who should be praying were praying in the hallway and in their rooms, while those who should be drinking tea and playing chess were drinking tea and playing chess in an empty area near the entrance to the stairwell. An imam was in his room playing the qin and erhu and singing Qin opera lyrics, his tone as sorrowful as sand blowing in the wind:
I let out a mighty cry—here I stand outside!
Brave warriors all about cheer in great delight
I, Shan, alone astride my horse, trampling the Tang camps in a single stride
Wreaking death and destruction until grown men cry
Wreaking death and destruction until rivers of blood flow to the sea and nigh
Wreaking death and destruction until mountains of corpses pile high
Those piddling Tang troops, cowering in terror from my might
My horses have trampled and conquered all five battalions—who still dares to challenge my might?
When Jingde captured me, that was as fate would have it
But I do resent that the hearts of all the braves were his to buy
Thinking back to how we sealed our brotherhood with blood, and all bonded as one,
Yet now, one after another we bend to the Tang—should that be right?
…
Yahui didn’t know which northwestern Muslim was singing this rendition of The Decapitation of General Shan. It almost seemed as though the tune was playing itself. At the end of the song there was also a dance performance, followed by the sound of disciples clapping their hands and stamping their feet. The imam’s room became filled with people, to the point that they couldn’t fit anymore, whereupon they poured out of the room and into the hallway.
Yahui listened in the hallway for a while, then proceeded down the stairs of the religion building and through the campus. As she walked along, she thought about many things, but it also felt as though she wasn’t thinking of anything at all. Even if she wasn’t thinking anything, however, her brain was still so full of thoughts that there wasn’t any empty space left. At ten o’clock that night, the moon appeared in the sky, and by eleven o’clock the entire campus was bathed in light. She walked and sat in this light, and eventually returned to her dormitory and went to bed.
Yahui was depressed and anxious from exhaustion, and quickly fell asleep. She slept until almost eight the next morning. It was a Saturday, and it occurred to her that Director Gong would come to campus, because recently he had been coming every Saturday and Sunday to polish his monograph. After he paid his fee, the press accepted the manuscript, and merely requested that he increase all the scores mentioned in the study, and also increase the number of anecdotes. This way, after the book was published, he could submit it for a National Humanities and Social Sciences Research Award and would surely win the nation’s top prize.
Therefore, Yahui got up and washed her face, then from behind the Bodhisattva portrait she removed the hundred thousand yuan that Tian Dongqing had given her, and after placing the money in a blue cloth bag, she headed out. She intended to return the hundred thousand yuan to Director Gong and the organization as Wang Changping and Tian Dongqing had recommended. However, as soon as she left her room, she stopped in front of the stairwell. She saw that in an empty area in the entranceway someone had painted a new white line, lying across which there was a tug-of-war rope—as though Jesus’s cross had fallen to earth.
Tian Dongqing’s wife Ruan Zhisu and two other female imams were standing at the other end of this cross, waiting for Yahui to get out of bed as though waiting for a thief that they could catch. The women stood there with an odd smile and a hard expression, looking like they were hatching a plan. Ruan Zhisu, her arms crossed and leaning to the side, said, “Have you gotten up yet, Yahui? We saw Director Gong go to work and knew that you needed to return his money, so we came here to wait for you.” As she said this, she stared at the cloth bag Yahui was holding. The smile in the corner of her lips mirrored the hard words that were emerging from her mouth.
“That ninety-eight thousand yuan is everyone’s prize money—so wouldn’t you feel ashamed if you took it? Is it because your Buddhism is really a religion of money? Is it true that you aren’t interested in anything other than money?”
Yahui was stunned and for a moment didn’t know how to respond. The seventh floor was as still as an abandoned ruin, without even a trace of movement. The light at the entrance to the stairway was gray, as though it were overcast outside and there were fog inside the fog and clouds above the clouds. There was a smell of moisture in the air, and through this moisture Yahui stared at the light and air in the entranceway. While gazing at Ruan Zhisu, she instinctively held out the bag she was holding. She said, “Sister Zhisu, it was your husband, Imam Tian, who told me to borrow everyone’s money. If you don’t want to lend me any, however, I can return you the money.” Then Yahui took two steps forward and handed Ruan Zhisu the bag. Seeing that Ruan Zhisu made no move to accept it, Yahui placed the bag next to Ruan Zhisu’s feet, then headed back to her room. However, after she had taken only two steps, Ruan Zhisu called out to her. Ruan Zhisu opened the bag and looked inside, then came over and placed the bag back at Yahui’s feet. With a faint smile that was quickly replaced with a hard expression, she solemnly declared, “Allah has never used His strength to bully anyone. Allah’s soul is absolutely fair. I, Ruan Zhisu, did not want you to give me back the money, but rather I want to win it back.”
Yahui stopped, attempting to read Ruan Zhisu’s face as though it were a sutra.
“You want to use this money to buy an apartment in Beijing, while I want to use it to repair a mosque back home.” Ruan Zhisu resembled the text of a scripture. In a measured tone, she continued, “This is money our classmates won in competition, and if you want to use it, you’ll need to win it.” She looked down at the tug-of-war rope, then looked up again and added, “I know that you can’t do anything other than burn incense and make papercuts. Some even say you are merely a papercut artist. However, there is no disciple who can’t compete in a tug-of-war. Come, let’s have one match for ten thousand yuan. There’s nothing fairer than this.”
At this point, the other two female imams—one of whom was somewhat older than Ruan Zhisu, while the other was a few years younger—picked up the rope and handed one end to Ruan Zhisu and the other end to Yahui.
Yahui didn’t take the rope. Instead, she picked up the wad of bills and once again placed it at Ruan Zhisu’s feet. “I don’t do tug-of-war, and neither do I need this money.”
Yahui turned to leave, but found her way blocked by the older of the two imams.
“In acting this way, you are disrespecting Islam.”
Yahui came to a halt.
The younger of the two imams came over and once again placed the rope in Yahui’s hand, and then the two of them stood still, as though frozen in the middle of the hallway in the dead of winter. Time became like a drop of water suspended from the eaves. There was the sound of footsteps downstairs heading toward a lower floor. It was already after eight, and the female disciples should have already gotten up, washed their faces, and begun to get on with their day, but there still wasn’t any hint of movement. Yahui held one end of the tug-of-war rope, like someone holding a hoe when they had never farmed before. She didn’t know whether she should pull or not, and instead she merely stared at Ruan Zhisu, who was significantly thinner than she. Yahui resembled someone who had been pushed to the edge of a cliff and had no choice but to jump.
“Let’s begin.”
Yahui repeated, “Do we have to do this? I really don’t want the money.”
“Does Buddhism kneel down to accept favors from other religions?” Ruan Zhisu once again produced an odd laugh. “Allah would not let us accept favors from the government or money from other religions.”
So they had no alternative but to proceed.
Yahui hesitated for a moment, squeezing the finger-thick rope and trying to find the best place to grip. Here, there wasn’t the soft rubber ground they had out in the athletic field, nor was the area as spacious and bright as the main lobby. However, the hallway was just long enough for a competition. Similarly, the entrance to the stairs was bright and open enough for the other two imams serving as referee and scorekeeper to stand and observe the match. Yahui was on the west side of the hallway, while Ruan Zhisu was on the east. There was no referee’s whistle or hand signals, and instead, as soon as Yahui grabbed the rope, Ruan Zhisu said, “If you are not pure of heart, then Allah will spit in your face.” Yahui turned pale and, biting her lip, she gripped the rope, as Ruan Zhisu pulled even more vigorously.
The rope was pulled taut and the tassel swung back and forth several times before finally stabilizing over the center line—like a deity appearing before an imam has even had a chance to kneel. Seeing the rope pulled taut, the older imam ran to the other side of the center line. In this way, four individuals—including the two imams—quietly began the competition. In more than a hundred tug-of-war competitions spanning more than a semester, the center had never had one between two female disciples, yet here were two women from different religions awkwardly competing with one another. When Yahui leaned over, she felt a hot pain shoot from her hand to her wrist, arm, and body. Yet just as she was starting to worry about the pain that was surging through her body, she saw that the pair of legs across from her were not angled backward, but rather were standing straight, which reassured her that the other woman didn’t have any more tug-of-war experience than she did. Even though Ruan Zhisu was more than a decade older than Yahui and was very thin, neither competitor appeared to have any tug-of-war experience, and therefore Yahui would be hard-pressed to come up with an excuse not to compete. Accordingly, she decided to let the outcome be determined by the deities and by the contestants’ respective strength, and viewing things this way, she found herself at ease, with more strength in her hands and arms as she looked over at Ruan Zhisu. Yahui didn’t know what kind of expression she herself had, but she saw that the face across from her, which was not particularly attractive to begin with, had turned red and purple as the blood beneath the skin welled up to the surface.
Meanwhile, the two female imams on either side of the rope had originally been standing straight as rods, but they seemed to have received instructions from the deities and were now putting their entire bodies into observing the competition, bending at the waist and staring intently at the tassel as it swung back and forth. When they saw the tassel swing over to their side of the center line, they made fists and cheered Ruan Zhisu on, shouting, “Allah! Allah! Allah!” On the other hand, when they saw the tassel being pulled back toward the center line, they bit their lips and shook their fists at the rope—as though they weren’t acting on behalf of Allah or Ruan Zhisu, but rather were threatening the rope and tassel themselves. Meanwhile, Yahui didn’t have any nuns cheering her on, nor did she have anyone shouting “Buddha! Buddha!” or “Go! Go!” on her behalf. Nevertheless, Yahui hoped that she would win this match, because that way she would win ten thousand yuan, and even if she wasn’t doing it for the money, she should at least do it for the sake of this competition between Buddhism and Islam, between Shakyamuni and Muhammad. Yahui would have preferred that the two imams stationed on either side of the rope stand farther away, not sway back and forth directly in her line of sight. However, she was afraid that if she said anything it might break her concentration and the tassel might drift to the other side of the line.
Sweat poured down her forehead and into her eyes, and as a result the scene in front of her became enveloped in white fog. She very much wanted to check on Ruan Zhisu’s posture and expression, but all she could make out was a shadowy figure. Behind her, she seemed to hear footsteps in some room, followed by a toilet flushing and then silence. The tassel was pulled back and forth. Whenever it came to her side, at most it only crossed the center line by a few inches or perhaps a foot, but just as she was about to reposition her feet, it would slip back to the other side. It was cold that morning and the robe she was wearing kept blocking her knees, as though there were a rope underfoot that kept tripping her up. She regretted that she hadn’t thought to take off the robe and wished she had worn a shirt, pants, and flexible sneakers like her opponent. It occurred to her that she should have worn that red athletic suit that she had recently bought. It occurred to her that it would have been better if, instead of her pointed-toe cloth shoes, she had instead worn the kind of flexible athletic sneakers where you can tie the shoelaces across the instep. She wondered, How many times has the tassel crossed the center line? And how long has this competition been going on? For five minutes? Eight minutes? Maybe ten minutes? Sister Zhisu, are you not in pain? After having experienced almost unendurable agony giving birth to three children, how is that you can now hold out for so long? How is it that every time the tassel comes over to my side, you can immediately pull it back?
Yahui’s legs became sore and her ears began to pound as though she had tinnitus. Time passed as slowly as an interminable sutra, with every second stretched out like a sentence uttered without pausing for breath. However, no matter what, she had to focus in order to endure the progression from one second to the next. There was a sparrow perched outside the window, and although Yahui couldn’t hear the bird clearly, she could see its mouth opening and closing. Then, another sparrow flew over and similarly began opening and closing its mouth. Each time the birds opened their mouths, Yahui could hear the female imams’ shouts of “Allah! Allah!” exploding in the entranceway and in her ears. She pulled with her knees, hands, and arms, until she felt the rope slowly inching toward her side. She finally managed to shift her left leg, which had been bent in front of her, back a step, and to place her right leg in front. At this point, she saw Ruan Zhisu’s rear leg inexorably move forward, as her flushed face became even more red than before. Yahui took advantage of the opportunity and shifted her front leg back and leaned backward at an even sharper angle. She glanced down and saw the tassel swaying back and forth on her side of the center line, as though it were about to fall off. She knew that if she was going to win this match, she needed to exert herself just a bit more. If she could hold out for just a few more seconds, she would be able to claim victory. After winning the first match, she’d also be able to win the second and third. After she won the entire competition, this ninety-eight-thousand-yuan pot—really, a full hundred thousand yuan—would be rightfully hers, and she wouldn’t need to borrow from her classmates via Tian Dongqing. The two female imams kept shouting “Allah! Allah!” and it was as though the chirping of the sparrows in the window had suddenly become the cawing of a crow. Becoming increasingly annoyed by the imams’ cawing, Yahui glared at them and saw that their faces were covered in sweat, like stones scattered in the sands of the Gobi Desert, while the stairwell railing and the white wall behind them resembled cliffs and ravines. Yahui thought how nice it would be if one of them were to fall into a ravine and the other were to hit her head on the cliff wall.
The shouts of “Caw! Caw!” and “Allah! Allah!” made Yahui feel as though her head were about to explode. She needed to make the imams close their mouths, but the only way she could do so would be to win this match as quickly as possible by pulling the rope toward her side like water in a sluice. She seized on this thought, and it was as though the Bodhisattva were hovering in front of her—as though the white walls were lotus clouds, and the Bodhisattva were sitting on a lotus cloud gazing down at her. The Buddha also arrived and stood behind the Bodhisattva, enveloped in a golden glow. His steady gaze was fixed on Yahui, which granted her considerable hope and perseverance. Yahui no longer felt the pain in her hands nor the fatigue in her legs, and she no longer felt as though her arms were about to be ripped out of their sockets. Instead, she felt as though the shouts of “Allah! Allah!” were urging her on, as were the imams’ sighs of hopelessness after their calls to heaven fell on deaf ears.
One of Ruan Zhisu’s feet was already at the center line, and Yahui just needed to pull her a little more so that more than half of Ruan Zhisu’s foot was over the line. By this point, the two imams were panicked, and their hoarse shouts resembled the squawking of chickens and ducks facing certain death under the eye of an eagle.
As far as the eye could see, there was prayed-for hope and Buddha light.
As far as the eye could see, there were the joyful smiles of the Buddha, the Bodhisattva, and their disciples. Now Yahui could clearly see Ruan Zhisu’s face, which was as wrinkled as a wet shirt that someone from Xining is wringing out after having just forded a river. Ruan Zhisu’s complexion had shifted from blood red to yellowish white, and her face was as sweaty as Jueyu shifu’s had been when she first managed to get up from her sickbed. If Yahui could pull just a little harder, adding an increment of force equivalent to a bean or a grain of sand, she would be able to pull Ruan Zhisu over to her side of the line. Yahui had already received this additional strength from the deity, and simply needed to transfer it to her legs and to her big toe that was pressing through the sole of her shoe and into the concrete floor. But suddenly Yahui’s shoes seemed to become one or two sizes smaller and no longer fit her size thirty-six feet. It was as though her feet had become so swollen that her shoes would burst open. It was as though this were no longer a battle between Yahui and Ruan Zhisu, but rather between Yahui’s shoes and her own feet. Because of the force she was exerting, her feet became swollen as though they were full of blood and were determined to burst out of their shoes. In particular, her right foot, which was in front of her, became as swollen as a water bag, but the shoe dammed up the water and prevented it from flowing out.
Yahui could feel her right shoelace pressing against the top of her foot, like a rope tied tightly around a water bag filled with blood. She prayed the shoelace would bind her foot and prevent the bag from rupturing and letting the blood flow out. She prayed that the Bodhisattva and the Buddha would protect her shoelace. She made a wish that she would win the match and the money, so that after buying a house she could immediately place the Bodhisattva and the Buddha over the head of the bed, thereby transforming her entire apartment into a Buddhist temple and giving the Buddha and the Bodhisattva another home in Beijing. Maybe if she hadn’t gotten distracted thinking about her shoe and her shoelaces, she could have won the match. But she did think about them, and remembered how, when she had been washing her shoes a week earlier, she had noticed that the thread connecting the laces to the top of the shoe was a bit loose. At the time, she had wanted to sit down and resew the thread, but because she was in the process of making a papercut image of Guanyin and Laozi talking and drinking tea, she didn’t have a chance to fix it.
Now, however, the situation had come to a head, like an entire dam collapsing because of a tiny ant hole. As soon as she remembered the loose thread at the base of the shoelace, the thread did in fact snap at that very location. There was a loud explosion, as though a stone had fallen from the top of a tall building. Yahui felt the ground trembling beneath her feet, and before she knew what was happening, she felt her right foot weakening, as her toes, which had been digging into the ground, started to slide forward. At this point, Ruan Zhisu quickly took several steps back, as though her entire body were being pulled backward by Allah, and Yahui’s feet were dragged over the center line.
The hallway immediately fell silent. The sound of wind blowing suddenly congealed, pressing down onto their heads and their chests. Unable to believe what had happened, Ruan Zhisu stood in the entranceway to the stairwell, appearing not particularly happy and excited, but rather staring, with a taut expression, at Yahui’s shoelace, which had fallen to the ground. After a while, she said, “It was God who didn’t want you to win, and who broke your shoelace. Now I’ve won ten thousand yuan.” Her gaze shifted to the wad of bills, as though she wanted to immediately take back the money. However, she appeared to remember something, and said, “Just put it anywhere. Allah has already decided that I’ve won this money.”
Yahui didn’t say a word. Instead, she merely stared at that dark-blue shoelace and that fat wad of bills.
“Allah gave me strength, while neither the Bodhisattva nor the Buddha offered you any assistance.” As Ruan Zhisu said this, she looked around, then suddenly bent down and removed her own shoes. She also took off her socks, stuffed them into her shoes, and placed the shoes against a wall. Then she returned and said to Yahui, “Of all the gods, Allah is the fairest. Given that your shoelace broke, we will therefore both go barefoot.”
Yahui looked at that pair of black, ugly, duck-like feet that appeared as though they hadn’t been washed in several days. She could see mud between the toes and smell the stench of the feet. Yahui stared for a moment, then looked away. She slowly removed her own shoes and put them aside. At this point, several female disciples opened their doors and emerged, including the Protestant disciple Lin Xiaojing and the Catholic disciple Sister Daxue. Missing, however, were the Buddhist nun Bikhuni and the Daoist nun Zai. Everyone was staring at the scene in the hallway, including the two pairs of feet. Initially no one said a word, but then they started shouting, “What is missing from Director Gong’s book is an account of this sort of tug-of-war competition! But wouldn’t that be like putting lipstick on a pig, or a deity’s face on a human’s butt?” Upon seeing that Ruan Zhisu, Yahui, and the two female imams were not responding, the other women laughed and simply stepped aside to serve as spectators. The women watching stopped urging them not to participate in the competition so as not to promote conflict and resentment between different religions. Instead, they came to have a glow of excitement, as though they were being illuminated by the miraculous scene in front of them.
Ruan Zhisu once again placed the rope in Yahui’s hands.
Upon accepting the rope, Yahui glanced down at her feet. She noticed that next to Ruan Zhisu’s, her own feet resembled a pair of white doves next to a pair of black crows. The concrete floor was freezing cold, making Yahui feel as though there were a painful thorn in her foot. In response to the pain and the hardness of this concrete floor, Yahui arched her toes, and only then did she look over at the end of the rope.
Her opponent had already bent down and grabbed the rope, her feet resembling a pair of eagles with their wings spread. The second match began and Yahui bent over, pulled hard, and struggled to hold on. With the ground cutting into her bare feet like a knife, Yahui lost the second match in less than three minutes.
For the third match, Yahui put her socks back on, but as she and her opponent pulled each other back and forth, the sandstone floor rubbed holes in the bottoms of her socks and she felt an excruciating pain in the soles of her feet. As Yahui was attempting to endure this agony, she felt pieces of gravel being drilled into her feet, and eventually she gave up again.
For the fourth match, Yahui picked up the rope after removing two pieces of gravel embedded in the sole of her right foot. She had rubbed a hole in her right sock, and her big toe was poking out. At this point, Ruan Zhisu also stared at her snowy-white toe, then smiled and said, “The Bodhisattva’s feet were cultivated in the clouds, and your nun’s feet were cultivated in a mountain spring. As for us imams, our feet developed in yellow earth, desert, and rocky ground. In our tug-of-war competition today, the winner will be not the strongest, but rather the one who is most able to endure hardship.”
After saying this, she looked at the female disciples who had gathered around. They had all finally emerged from their dormitories after sleeping in, and were in the hallway watching the match. There were several Buddhist nuns in the group, and they were chatting with each other, remarking that “Gu Mingzheng’s heart is true, while Yahui’s has strayed.” After saying this, the nuns dried their recently washed faces and applied some skin cream. Yahui looked at the group and saw that there were also several male disciples who had come upstairs and were standing on the outside of the cluster, craning their necks as though watching a comedy. Laughing uproariously, the disciples pointed at Yahui and Ruan Zhisu, but Yahui couldn’t make out what they were saying. She once again looked down at her right foot and saw that she now had three toes sticking out of her sock. She then saw that her left sock also had a hole, from which a toe with an overgrown nail was sticking out. Yahui hesitated a moment, as though she would have to admit defeat, then she did in fact go over to Ruan Zhisu and said quietly, “Sister Zhisu, I concede. You can keep the money.”
Ruan Zhisu reflected for a moment, and replied, “Allah doesn’t permit us to accept money from people belonging to other faiths. For each match I win, I can only take the ten thousand yuan that corresponds to me.”
“What if it’s not me who is giving you the money, but rather the Buddha?”
“I can’t take the Buddha’s money either. Other than Allah, we don’t recognize any other deities, including the Buddha, the Bodhisattva, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary. If I were to accept the Buddha’s money, I would effectively be acknowledging that other deities exist.” Ruan Zhisu glared at Yahui and continued, “Let’s begin. Other than the Buddha and the Bodhisattva, everyone must bow down before Allah.”
Yahui stood there as Ruan Zhisu picked up one end of the rope and took two steps back. At that moment, Shuiyue shifu suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She was holding a pair of new white athletic shoes, and after making her way through the crowd, she placed the shoes in front of Yahui and whispered, “One can lose to a person, but one cannot lose to the Buddha!” Immediately afterward, several more Buddhist and Daoist nuns jostled in, and they all started shouting, “Yahui, can’t you defeat her? You’re not even twenty years old, while she has already had children of her own.” Afterward, they laughed while chanting Amitābha, and said, “Don’t be an embarrassment for us Buddhists! Don’t let them speak ill of our Bodhisattva!” Then they were pushed back by other classmates who had just arrived, and their voices were drowned out by other people’s laughter.
The entire hallway became filled with people.
The entrances to the stairwell and the elevator became filled with male disciples from different religions, and even an eighty-two-year-old priest was in the crowd, supported by other disciples so that he could watch the excitement. Through the window they could see that the blue sky was perfectly still, except for a few clouds drifting by. The sky was cheerful, but some of the clouds were still sorrowful. An imam brought Ruan Zhisu her own shoes and placed them in front of her, indicating for her to put them on before continuing. However, Ruan Zhisu glanced at the shoes and kicked them aside, then looked contemptuously at Yahui, who was putting on the new pair of shoes, and at Shuiyue shifu, who was helping her tie them. Yahui saw Ruan Zhisu kick away her shoes and, after a brief hesitation, removed hers again and stuffed them into Shuiyue shifu’s hands. Then she stood up, took off her socks, and tossed them aside as well.
The fifth tug-of-war match began, and what followed was a repetition of what had come before. Yahui dug her toes into the ground and felt that this time the strength in her feet and body would surely be enough for her to win. Ruan Zhisu was in fact pulled part of the way over, but then she regained her balance and planted her feet. Ruan Zhisu had figured out the secret to winning: she bent her knees, angled her back, lowered her head, and stared straight ahead while biting her lower lip, holding her breath, and exerting all her strength. She would then manage to find a foothold as her toes dug into the ground, and Yahui’s own feet and legs would seem to rise up from the ground.
The raucous crowd briefly fell silent, then again started shouting, “Go! Go!” The Buddhist and Daoist disciples stood on Yahui’s side, while the Muslim disciples stood on Ruan Zhisu’s side. Meanwhile, some of the Catholic and Protestant disciples cheered for Yahui, others cheered for Ruan Zhisu, and others simply cheered for whichever side appeared to be losing, as God was always on the side of the weak. Shouts flooded the hallway as the tassel clearly edged over to Yahui’s side of the center line, although in the end it always ended up on Ruan Zhisu’s side. The results of the fifth and sixth matches were the same as the preceding ones. Finally, Yahui couldn’t stand it anymore. Her face drenched in sweat, she stood in the spacious entrance to the stairwell, and after a brief hesitation she went to pick up the bag at the base of the wall and handed it to Ruan Zhisu. With trembling lips, she said, “Sister Zhisu, it is not I who am giving your Islam money, nor is it the Buddha. Instead, it is Allah who has directed that I give it to you, so that you can then return and renovate that mosque.”
Everyone’s shouts of encouragement immediately subsided. Their gazes became as still as moonlight, neither bright nor pitch black, such that everything appeared murky but could still be seen. Apart from the sound of the disciples holding their breath, there was also the whirring of the elevator. At this point, Ruan Zhisu stood still. She knew she had won this competition, but from the look in everyone’s eyes, she seemed to recognize that the Buddha was the real winner and Allah was the loser. Therefore, Ruan Zhisu didn’t take the money, nor did she say another word, and instead she simply pushed away the bag Yahui was handing her.
“Allah doesn’t let me accept this!”
After a brief hesitation, Yahui took another step forward and suddenly reached out to Ruan Zhisu. At this point, all the disciples saw that Yahui’s palm was covered in blisters, one of which had burst open and covered her palm in blood. No one said a word. The deities also stopped walking through the crowd and down the hallway. Everyone stared at Ruan Zhisu, as though she were a sinner or a criminal.
However, Ruan Zhisu appeared perfectly calm, and as she looked at Yahui she simultaneously scanned the crowd of disciples and calmly asked, “Are you able to declare, in front of these disciples, that Buddha lost to Allah?”
Yahui shook her head. “No, I cannot!”
“Then can you declare that Buddhism is really not as powerful as Islam?”
Yahui replied, “It was not Buddha who lost to you, but rather it was I, Yahui—who does not even deserve to be called a Buddhist.”
Ruan Zhisu picked up the bloody rope and handed it to Yahui, saying, “Take this.”
As she said this, she turned to the female imam who was serving as scorekeeper, and said, “Take out your knife; I said that Allah is the fairest of all deities.” Seeing that the imam wasn’t responding, Ruan Zhisu shouted to her, “Take it out, and don’t forget that we are all the daughters of Allah!” The imam finally picked up the small bag next to her and removed a copy of the Quran. From beneath the Quran, she took the stationery box she used for class, and from the box she selected a small pocketknife and calmly handed it to Ruan Zhisu. She said quietly, “Sister Zhisu.”
Ruan Zhisu did not respond. Instead, she took the knife and opened it. With one hand she passed the knife with the inch-long blade to Yahui, while simultaneously holding out her other hand.
“Are you going to do it, or should I? You tell me how deep to slice, and how many cuts to make.”
Yahui turned pale.
Shuiyue shifu and the other monks and nuns watched in alarm. The male disciples standing behind the female disciples all turned pale and didn’t dare speak or even breathe loudly. The entire floor once again became as still as an abandoned tomb. It was as though before any of the disciples had seen God, the Buddha, the Bodhisattva, or Laozi in the flesh, Ruan Zhisu had brought forth Allah’s real body and real voice, positioning this sacred Allah in front of these disciples from other religions. All the disciples’ palms were bathed in sweat, and everyone’s eyes appeared ice cold. Yahui stood in the middle of the crowd, her body like an old tree that Ruan Zhisu had dug up. She felt so light that it seemed as though she were about to float away at any moment. She stared at the knife and at Ruan Zhisu’s hands in front of her, and saw that those hands’ calluses resembled rocks protruding from the northeastern soil. Yahui finally understood that the reason she had been unable to defeat her opponent was because she had been raised by the Buddha, while Ruan Zhisu had not only raised herself but furthermore was a true disciple of hardship and of Muhammad. Yahui didn’t know what she should do or what she should say. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. It seemed that she had not perspired very much while competing, but now, upon seeing that knife, her entire back became completely soaked. A chill ran up her spine.
At this point, there was a loud commotion. Everyone turned toward the elevator, where someone emerged through a gap in the crowd.
It was Gu Mingzheng!
Like the other disciples, Mingzheng had slept late this weekend, and upon hearing that some female disciples on the seventh floor were having a tug-of-war competition, he returned to his room, poured himself half a glass of water, took several sips, and then sat for a while. In the end, however, he couldn’t resist taking the elevator up to the seventh floor. He suspected Yahui might be competing against someone, and immediately realized what was happening as he watched from the edge of the crowd. In this pivotal moment, he appeared before them, almost as if he had done so without even thinking. It was almost as though the reason he had had so few interactions with Yahui this semester was precisely because he had been waiting for this very moment to approach her. Neither fast nor slow, neither rushed nor panicked, he removed his gray robe as he walked forward, revealing a white shirt tied at the waist. Then he tossed his robe into the crowd, pulled his shirt out of his pants, tightened his belt, and rubbed his hands. After passing in front of everyone, Mingzheng went up to Yahui like Jesus walking up to a prostitute who was about to be stoned to death. He pushed her aside, then stood in her place, picked up the bloodstained rope, and examined it. Holding the rope, he said gently to Ruan Zhisu, “Buddhism and Daoism have always been part of the same family. I’ll compete against you.”
Ruan Zhisu scornfully asked him, “Are you a woman?”
“Yes!” Mingzheng said. “Would you like to see?”
Mingzheng turned and surveyed all of the disciples and classmates who were assembled around him and then, standing face-to-face with Ruan Zhisu, placed both hands on his waist and said, in a voice so loud it sounded as though he had a microphone in front of him, “I’m a female disciple. I’ve already been operated on! If any of you won’t take my word for it, I’d be happy to remove my pants in front of everyone and show you.” With this, he again looked around and saw that everyone was mesmerized by what he had said—as though a rumor had suddenly become reality.
It was Ruan Zhisu’s turn to turn pale. It appeared as though a layer of frost had appeared on her wrinkled yellow face. She didn’t know whether she should let Mingzheng remove his pants to prove that he was in fact a female disciple. Ruan Zhisu glanced at the female disciples behind her, and saw their look of confusion as they sank back into the crowd. In the end, she said rather comedically, “Priest Gu, go right ahead—if you dare to show your ugly regions in public, I’ll be happy to compete with you.”
Even more surprising was that Mingzheng did, in fact, remove his pants. With his hands on his waist, he hesitated a few seconds, then began unfastening his belt. This was the same shiny black Lacoste plastic belt that he had previously used to poke himself, and the stainless-steel square buckle was still just as dazzling. The belt prong that previously penetrated his shoulder blade was still in the middle of the buckle. He unfastened the belt, and the entire floor seemed to be filled with the buckle’s clatter. As he pulled his pants down, the hallway became as quiet as a mountain about to suffer a landslide. Then, when his red underwear was revealed, the sound of the landslide drowned out all other sounds. He wasn’t wearing the sort of homespun underwear that other Daoist monks usually wear, but rather the dark-red briefs that people wear each anniversary of their zodiac birth year—and that resemble the swimsuits that people in movies wear at the beach.
It was already after nine in the morning, and from somewhere on campus there was the sound of a bell summoning students to their weekend classes, like the sound of cicadas outside the religion building in summer. Although the rest of the world was the same as before, Mingzheng was no longer the same Mingzheng. He was no longer the same shallow and impetuous Daoist disciple as before. Instead, he appeared to have achieved enlightenment. He seemed to have matured into a Daoist master, and had a steady, introspective demeanor. He inserted both hands into his pants and pulled down his underwear, and when his white skin appeared in the opening between his shirt and his underwear, it was as though the sun were rising in the middle of the night. Some of the Daoist nuns, Buddhist nuns, and female imams closest to him muttered as they pushed their way to the back of the crowd, others screamed as they covered their faces with their hands, and others simply stood there waiting to see what horror might unfold next.
However, the next step would not come from Mingzheng, but rather from Tian Dongqing and Director Gong. No one saw them arrive, and it was unclear whether they had come up the stairs or taken the elevator, but as Tian Dongqing swept through like a tornado, he glimpsed his wife through the opening in the crowd, and also saw Mingzheng, who by this point had already pulled down his underwear. Tian Dongqing rushed forward and gave Mingzheng a slap that was neither particularly strong nor particularly light. Mingzheng stopped pulling down his underwear and instead used his hands to cover his crotch.
Tian Dongqing roared, “Are you even human? I’m ashamed and humiliated on behalf of all you Daoists!”
Without waiting for the other disciples to come to their senses, or for Mingzheng to respond, Tian Dongqing spun around and slapped his wife with all his strength. The slap was more than twice as loud as when he had slapped Gu Mingzheng. As Ruan Zhisu held her cheek and was about to cry out, he roared again, “This isn’t Allah striking you, it’s your husband!”
Ruan Zhisu stared at Tian Dongqing, and then glanced at Yahui and Mingzheng. Then, through her clenched teeth, she asked Tian Dongqing, “Whose husband are you?”
Tian Dongqing replied, “I’m your husband!”
Ruan Zhisu was silent for a moment, then said, “Do you dare publicly declare, in front of these disciples, that you will remain my husband for as long as you live?”
“I’ll be your husband for two lifetimes!”
“Will you swear to this in front of these disciples and in front of Allah?”
Tian Dongqing turned halfway and looked at the students and disciples gathered around him, then he looked up at the white ceiling overhead. Finally, in a loud, solemn voice, he announced, “To Allah up above and to the disciples assembled before us, I swear that, for this life and the next, I will remain Ruan Zhisu’s husband, and will also remain Allah’s son, grandson, and great-grandson!”
In this way, the situation rushed to a conclusion, like a strong wind blowing a tree’s yellow leaves to the ground. Upon hearing Tian Dongqing’s oath, Ruan Zhisu didn’t look at her husband, nor did she say anything to the crowd. Instead, she picked up the bag in which Yahui had put the money, then reached past Gu Mingzheng and handed it to Yahui, who was still standing there motionless. Ruan Zhisu shouted brightly, “Go buy your apartment—Allah has agreed to give you the money.” Then she turned and, upon seeing Director Gong through an opening in the crowd, said, “Now your monograph will have an example of every form of competition. It is sure to be a great work!”
As everyone watched her leave, Yahui proceeded toward her dormitory at the other end of the hall. Then the crowd dispersed, whereupon Yahui took the hundred thousand yuan that Ruan Zhisu had given her and handed it to Director Gong. In this way, this incident involving humans, deities, and money reached its conclusion.