I'm away deep in the woods, blissfully unaware of whatever trouble is happening. But here's the next installment of our epic nonviolent yarn.
If you want to catch up on chapters 1-65 of The Other Cheek, the archive is here.
For the moment, Wei was by herself in the Christmas wares section of the International Trade Center—alone except for Momo who sat on the carpet by her feet. It was unusual to be by herself these days—usually there was someone showing up who wanted to take a selfie with her, or at least as often with the dog. Some of her visitors were traveling around China collecting pictures of all seven members of the royal court—they reported that the girl from the rabbit farm had branched out into gerbils and hamsters, and that the carpenter from Beijing continued to like beer. Indeed he had purchased his favorite bar, and now sat on a stool at one end, greeting friends, of whom apparently there were a lot. They showed her pictures, and he looked very happy, or at least drunk.
Wei had not changed her life nearly that much—for a week or so she’d stayed home, until the photographers out in the street left. Her boss had been much nicer about letting her miss work once it was clear she was among the richest people in China—he was surprised she still wanted to work, but he knew it would bring more customers. She’d heard from the lawyer that Bao Jun had sent: her money was scattered in safe places around the world, and he’d given her an email to contact him if she needed it. Which seemed unlikely, since she had a million yuan on deposit in the bank in Yiwu, and a million yuan was roughly all the money she could begin to imagine. She had brought herself a pink scooter to take to work (when she went to the dealer he recognized her, and tried to give it to her for free, but she pointed out this made no sense) and she had trained Momo to sit on the handlebars, wearing a little helmet she’d constructed from a “whiffle ball” she’d seen in the sporting goods section. She’d sent money to the shower curtain factory—a fund so that newly arriving girls could have stuffed animals right away—and her parents were building a two-story villa in their hamlet, and her brother was at technical school, so that was that. She’d been asked to go on tv several times—one man who had come to see her at her work had said she was the audience favorite of all the courtiers. But when she meditated, it seemed to her going back on tv was unnecessary and maybe even a bad idea—she wasn’t Jay Chou, she had no real talent beyond being rich, so what would she say? Mostly she felt the same as she had before.
As she was reflecting on that, however, a small man with a wispy gray beard appeared quite suddenly next to her counter.
“Hello,” said Wei. “Would you like to see the new Santa ornaments?”
“I would,” he said politely, “but I fear we have no time. In just a few minutes men will be here to arrest you, and I am here to get you safely away.”
“Arrest me?” said Wei. “But I haven’t done anything.”
“That is not such a good defense in China, or most other places really,” he said. “Anyway, you have done something without knowing it. Not a bad thing—a useful thing. You let people know about the DL.”
“The cartoon on my phone?” she said.
“Yes and no,” the man said. He pulled out his phone—an iPhone, Wei noted. She’d thought about buying one, but actually her Mothra phone worked just fine. He hit a button, and then handed it to her. A video was playing on the screen, of a smiling older man in a red robe who looked surprisingly like the figure on her meditation video. “Wei, I fear that I have gotten you in some trouble,” the man said, in a scratchy voice, as if he wasn’t used to talking. “I would like to try and get you out. Perhaps you could go with my friend Tashi. I fear it will not be an easy journey, but I think it would be for the best. And I would like very much if you could bring Momo, in hopes we could meet someday. And please—as you travel, continue your meditation. It will help, I think.”
“DL is a real person?” Wei asked.
“He is,” said Tashi, “and I fear we have very little time if we are to leave.” Wei hesitated, but she thought that the man in the video seemed very calm, and then she thought that if she went to jail Momo was not likely to go with her, and then before she knew it she was walking quickly with the man out of her world. They left Santa ornaments, walked through a glade of Black Madonnas destined for Polish gift shops, and were making their way through a forest of elephant-headed Ganeshes when Tashi calmly but quickly took Wei’s arm and steered her behind a large statue. He’d just tucked her behind it when two men in suits, one with a gun in his hand, ran past in the direction of Christmas. “Looks like we left just in time,” he said, as he and Wei walked quickly past a display of monkey-faced Hanumans and toward the stairs.
As they hurried through the stairwell, Tashi took from his pocket what looked to Wei like clear plastic dentures—Bao Jun had had dentures, and always warned the young people at the shower curtain factory to brush their teeth. He told her to put it in her mouth, but when she tried it didn’t seem to fit correctly.
“It’s not really supposed to fit,” he said. “It’s supposed to realign your jaw a little—I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s important. Please put on this baseball cap too. There are cameras throughout the city—throughout the country—that can recognize a person’s face. They’re not perfect—they were mostly set up to recognize Uighur Muslins—and if we shift your jawline some and hide your eyes a little we’ll probably be okay.”
Wei had no real idea what Tashi was talking about, but he was kind and calm, even as they rushed through the corridors of the giant building. As they stepped out of the air conditioning and into the muggy heat of the parking lot, a green minivan pulled up to the curb—a Wuling Hongguang, which Wei knew was the most common car in the country because she’d just bought one for her parents. The side door opened, and Tashi swung Wei and Momo in to the back, following them even as the vehicle began to roll. A woman was driving, and another—young, her hair dyed blonde—turned in the passenger seat to greet them. “Is that Momo? I very much wanted to meet her,” she said, stretching back to pet the dog. “And you too, of course.
The driver kept the minivan right at the speed limit, and Tashi talked as she navigated the roads back towards the center of the city. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said to Wei. “We didn’t get the warning that you were in danger until the very last minute. We need to get you out of China,” he said.
“Out of China?” said Wei
“Yes—you are not safe here. Parts of the government are upset that you showed the phone with DL on the tv. They want to—well, they want to put you in jail at the least,” he said. “But do not worry. It is not easy to leave China without the government knowing, but it’s not impossible either. The DL did, after all.”
“He did? The man in the video you showed me?” said Wei.
“Yes, and he was just about your age—24. He had to hike through the mountains for weeks, but we have an easier way, we hope,” said Tashi. “Still, it involves heading for the mountains first. We need to put you on the train to Tibet.”
“By myself?” said Wei. “But won’t they see me?”
“Not by yourself,” said Tashi. “Rinchen here will come with you,” he said, gesturing to the blond girl who smiled and waved. “And they won’t see you because—because you’re going in a box.”
The van pulled quickly up to a loading dock at a warehouse, next to a white panel truck. Tashi boosted the two girls and the dog into the back of the truck, joining them there, and as soon as the door was rolled down the truck began to bounce along the street. Most of the back of the truck was taken up with a wooden crate. It looked like an ordinary crate resting on a wooden palette, like the ones that would wait on the loading dock of the shower curtain factory for the daily pickup. But Tashi led them to the back of the box, and showed them that its frame swung open on hidden hinges. Inside was a small compartment, perhaps a third of the crate, just large enough for a couple of chairs, a bucket, and a box of food. “This box is going in the cargo area of the train to Lhasa,” said Tashi. “It’s a 47-hour journey, and you will be safe—you’ll be loaded against a wall, and even if someone thought to look in the crate they’d find the main compartment stuffed with meditation cushions for a monastery gift shop in Tibet. So, you’ll be safe—but uncomfortable. The bucket is your bathroom, I fear, and that bag is your food. I’m going to have to take the batteries out of your phone so they can’t track you,” he said, quickly unscrewing the back of the Mothra.
“Is there food for Momo?” Wei asked.
“Of course,” said Rinchen. “The same puppy chow you’ve been feeding him.”
“That’s good,” said Wei, wondering how they knew. “Because he gets sick if he eats different food.”
The truck ground to a halt. “Into the box, girls,” said Tashi. “I hope I meet you again, Wei—it has been a great honor,” he said, with a slight bow. And with that they settled into the chairs, the frame swung closed, and they could hear Tashi nailing it shut.
“Half an hour ago you were at work, and now you are shut in a box with a stranger,” said Rinchen. “I think I would be very scared.”
“I don’t think I’ve had time to be scared, but I am confused,” said Wei. “I’m not at all sure what’s going on.”
“Do you know about Lhasa?” Rinchen asked.
“I think I’ve . . . heard of it?” said Wei.
“It’s the capital of Tibet—it’s where the DL grew up,” said Rinchen. “Who is DL?” said Wei. “I only thought he was a cartoon on my phone.” “Actually, we call him the DL. Or usually His Holiness, HH for short,” said Rinchen—who stopped suddenly because the crate suddenly lifted a foot or so in the air and began to move. She looked a little panicked, and they each grabbed for the side of the crate to steady themselves.
“I think it’s a forklift truck,” said Wei in a low voice. “They had them at the factory where I used to work. They can lift very big boxes.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” whispered Rinchen. “They must be loading us on to the train. There must be men around, so we should be quiet. Momo won’t bark, will he?”
“No,” said Wei. “He knows to be quiet. Dogs aren’t really allowed in my apartment house, though now they don’t seem to mind because they think Momo’s good luck. Because of the lottery.” Their crate was shoved against the wall, and for the next few minutes they could hear other cargo being stowed around them—once their crate was bumped hard enough that Wei nearly fell from her chair. But soon the noise died, and a few minutes later they could feel that they were in motion, slowly at first and then picking up rhythmic speed.
“Okay,” said Rinchen. “No one can hear us now. The train is going. So, I’m sorry we have to pee in a bucket.”
“It’s okay,” said Wei. “I grew up peeing in a bucket. And it’s got a lid, so that’s good. Can you tell me about DL now. About the DL?”
“DL stands for Dalai Lama,” said Rinchen. “Do you know about Buddhism?”
“I know it’s a . . . religion, yes?” said Wei.
“Yes,” said Rinchen. “It’s in many places, but one of its centers is Tibet. And the Dalai Lama is the leader of Buddhism in Tibet. You know about Tibet?”
“Yes,” said Wei. “We studied it in school. I know about the mountains. And I know that China liberated it from feudal landlords.”
“Well,” said Rinchen. “That’s actually partly true. When China came to Tibet in the 1950s, many people were happy to see . . . modernization. Tibet had been run by Buddhist monks and by powerful families, and people had to give up their crops, like serfs. It was unfair and it was hard. But, it soon became clear that the Chinese government wanted to take over Tibet, and that they wanted to stamp out our way of life, which wasn’t perfect but was very old. And very deep. They were getting ready to arrest the Dalai Lama, and so in 1959 he fled across the mountains to India, where he has lived ever since.”
“And what happened in Tibet when he was gone?” said Wei.
“It’s been very hard,” said Rinchen. “People were put in prison if they even had a picture of the Dalai Lama—that’s why the government was so startled when you showed the cartoon of him on television. Many monasteries have been destroyed. And the government has moved in millions of Chinese, so that Tibetans will be a minority in Tibet. This train is a part of it.”
“The train?” asked Wei.
“It used to be very hard to even get to Tibet,” said Rinchen. “But in 2006 they built these train tracks. It was very hard to build—it goes over Tanggula Pass, higher than any train in the world. There are 675 bridges. Half the tracks is built on permafrost, so you have to dig very deep. It’s an engineering achievement—I think China must have the best engineers in the world. But every day it brings thousands of new people flooding into Tibet, overwhelming the people who have always lived there. Many are tourists, but many stay too. It’s still not easy, because it’s so high—on the train they have special oxygen masks for passengers if they start to feel faint. But we are not exactly passengers.”
“No,” said Wei. “Not exactly. Do you know what will happen to us when we get to Tibet?”
“Not exactly,” said Rinchen. “Just that people will figure out how to get you out, maybe to India.”
“But why am I important?” said Wei. “I’m just a shopgirl, even if now I have money.”
“A lot of money!” said Rinchen. “But that’s not why. First, we can’t let you go to jail because you helped the DL. That wouldn’t be right. And second, HH sent a message that we were to try and help you—he saw you on tv and he thinks you’re important. So, almost any Tibetan, if they knew that, would help you. And third, you named your dog Momo.”
“Why does that matter?” asked Wei.
“Because Momo is the name of our favorite food,” said Rinchen. ‘”Like dumplings, except much better. In fact”—she rummaged around in the food bag next to the chairs—“here are two. They’re cold, so they won’t be very good. But maybe we can toast our voyage with them. And some cold tea. I don’t think you’ll like our yak butter tea very much, so we have normal.”
For two days the train juddered and hummed across China—Rinchen, who’d ridden it before, knew the timetable well enough to narrate some of the journey. “We’re in Xi’an now,” she said. “Terra cotta warriors, but also biangbiang noodles.” Many hours later: “This should be Xining. We’re still in Qinghai, but at least on the Tibetan Plateau.” Mostly they just chatted, and napped, and passed Momo (who quickly learned what the bucket was for) back and forth. Rinchen had gone to college, and she’d almost gotten married once but then decided not to because her fiancé drank a great deal of something called chaang, all of which interested Wei a good deal. She felt like she was making a friend, and that seemed to make up for the cramps that came with sitting for two days, and the headache that they decided might be high altitude at work. She told Rinchen about her parents, and about her brother, and about the trip to Beijing and the dress and the makeup. She tried to meditate too, though at first she was self-conscious about doing it right next to someone else.
“I’m not a very good meditator,” she told Rinchen. “I start thinking about things.”
“I think you have to be old to be really good at it,” Rinchen said. “By then you don’t have anything interesting to think about, so it’s probably easier.”
I like this young lady Wei and her little dog Momo. And how she is learning to meditate. I like to read the parts about her. Not a selfish bone in her body.
Huh, ‘blissfully unaware’. You wish.