For Gentlemen of Purpose

Written by Vanessa Cheung from Hong Kong, China

190 BCE 

Luyue, the Dew Month - Tenth Month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar 

“Have you heard about that poor, poor darling?” 

“Oh yes. Her father– that horribly zealous man, Chunyu Yi, the doctor who aspired all the way to devastation.” “His failure to save the life of a noblewoman led to his incarceration.

What shall it be? Mutilation? Execution?” 

“I wouldn’t linger on that. His daughter, though, the darling– Tinying. She makes the excruciating journey to the capital to appeal to the Emperor himself as we speak.” 

“May the Torch Dragon light the way to her destination and back.” 

—––––

Dawn spills millet gold over the horizon. Qin Shufen hauls cattle-feed to his ox, a beautiful beast he reared from a calf: Zhinu, whose presence at his side never falters. 

He brings an absentminded hand over her snout. Shufen’s body is crouched wary on the dew-dried pasture, but it is controlled by a mind inside a memory months long dead. 

Chunyu Tinying’s smile, golden sunlight invaluable as jade. “Shufen, you look tired today. Is your mother well?” Shufen swallowed regret and answered, in a nature convincing as any,

“She’s getting better. Don’t worry about her.” “I’m worrying about you,” Tinying pressed.

“My father will be more than happy to watch over you for a day.” 

Shufen swallowed something again, a notion rather akin to blossoming wildflowers and a quickening heartbeat. “I’m perfectly functionable; you and your father don’t need unnecessary trouble.” 

“Alright.” Tinying cast him one final, wary look. “Take care of yourself. Please.” 

In the present once more, in the humidity of almost-winter, Shufen lifts his palm from where it rests on Zhinu. 

“Goodbye, my dear companion. I’ll be back in the afternoon,” he whispers. He stands and turns, beginning the trek home. 

How would Tinying fare on the voyage to the capital? She’d slunk away in the dead of night. Surely she knew that had she requested Shufen’s help, he would have accompanied her in an instant. No, she had known. Precisely the reason. Despondency is a sinking weight and Shufen is pulled under. 

—––––

He returns to the sun-dried hut and its singular room and finds disaster. Ceramic bowls are scattered in shards on the floor. Amongst the sepia pieces are large strips of torn paper– precious material. 

“Māmā.” 

The shadowed silhouette perched on a chair and wrapped in rags, rouses. “Son,” his mother murmurs, “go.” 

Shufen eyes the strips, the familiar handwriting of his father painted precariously atop. “You shouldn’t do such a thing.” 

“Go!” 

He retreats outside the hut, onto the worn, sanded path. His limbs ache. The heat chokes. He walks through the village, silent and unthinking, past falling houses and falling people. Neighbours call to him, but he ignores them. 

Shufen’s gaze catches on a lone house on the outskirts now devoid of two of its inhabitants. He thinks of the glorious girl that once lived in it. 

His headache worsens. Tinying’s voice could soothe it. When they were younger she nicknamed him Yuanyang– the name of the ducks that floated along the fresh rivers adorned with joyful plumages, who according to old tales meant: devotion. And she was right - there weren’t many things he wouldn’t give for Tinying’s safety. 

The walk takes him opposite the terraced tilling fields and into a mountainous area. A wide gape in one of the mountain’s edges attracts Shufen’s attention. He quickens his step and soon finds that it’s a cave, a small one, with light brightening its bottommost corners. Inscriptions are carved into the stony floor. Curious, he bends down, brushing away dust and sand. 

Shufen gasps. 

Incised in the ground is a carving of a majestic creature. Its long, feathered tail stretches beyond its torso, which is thin and rigid, held up by four limbs and a spine coated with a veneer of fur. A capability to hurt. And yet. It is no bigger than he is. He takes a rock and scrapes it into the floor, disrupting a thin layer of soil. 

—–––– 

Night falls with a whisper and Shufen is intoxicated with discovery. Who could have left that drawing there, coaxed so deeply into stone? 

His mother, worn from despair, is asleep on the other side of the hut. The little moonlight trickling in from the window is enough for Shufen to reach for a small chest tucked beneath his bed and crack it open, bright enough for him to pull out a thin pamphlet and read. Here is the only gift he had ever received from his father. 

A segment of Shanhaijing. The Classic of Mountains and Seas. A historical relic, his father’s letter said. Cherish it. Shufen had weaned himself on the pamphlet, taught himself written language and the fantastical beasts that resided within. 

He traces its words. ‘The deity of the mountain is named Torch Dragon. When this deity's eyes look out, there is daylight, and when he shuts his eyes, there is night…

He is a god with a snake's tail, protected with a pelt. He has vertical eyes in a straight seam. What land does the sun not shine on and how does the Torch Dragon light it? He will come when one calls at dayspring.’ 

A deity with a snake’s tail and a fur pelt. Bringing the sun. Shufen’s imagination dances. It almost offsets the bruises that line his ribs, which only throb when he drifts to sleep. 

–––– 

The door is pushed open. Māmā rises swiftly, hair falling away from her face, mouth parting in surprise. She is rendered speechless as Shufen’s father stands before the threshold, his features in a genuine grin. 

“Am I welcome on my son’s birthday?” 

“Yes, Bābā,” Shufen gasps, finding his voice. 

Bābā steps inside the house. He’s dressed in civilian clothing, distinct from his military armour, carrying a small red pouch. 

“How are you, boy?” 

“Happy,” Shufen croaks. The last time his father had visited his family had been two years prior, when the king’s guards had called upon him to fight. “Harvest season is arriving.” 

Beside them, Māmā awakens from her stupor, rushing forward to envelope Bābā in an embrace. She giggles when he turns and lifts her in his arms, twirling her, a scene written straight from a halcyon romance. 

That night, Shufen sleeps contentedly. 

The fourth day of Bābā’s visit brings an unwelcome change. Bābā wakes with a wraith in his expression, gaze decrepit and glazed. It is the habit of war disquieting his every action. On the final day he breaks furniture and brings down the door, ruining Māmā’s joy in the fashion characteristic of a soldier. 

When Māmā tries to stop him from smashing the porcelain set gifted on the eve of their marriage, he raises his fist. Shufen leaps to defend his mother. The fist collides with his chest– he inhales dust and hazily feels the impact. Māmā screams. 

His father stumbles backward, startled, suf ocated with shock. Māmā lunges, grabbing him by his shoulders and pushing him forcefully from the house. 

“Leave,” his mother hisses vehemently, “and only come back when you’re unwilling to hit your son.” 

Bābā, hemp coat doused with the slow pour of midsummer rain, remains frozen in the entranceway. His wife slams the door in his face, drops to the ground, and trembles. “Oh, Heavens,” she shudders.

Later, after Māmā retires to bed, Shufen opens the pouch his father had left. Within it is a slim stack of bamboo paper, presented with a folded letter. He unfolds it, noticing the simple characters, vaguely recalling Bābā spelling them out one summer a myriad of harvests past. 

“This is the Classic of Mountains and Seas,” Shufen reads. “Cherish it.” 

A few moons later a military squadron passes through the district. One solemn soldier knocks, delivering news of the haunting cloak of death. 

When Shufen and his mother hug in the aftermath, she sobs sorrow into his shoulder. 

–––– 

And so begins Shufen’s new routine. Rising to dim sunshine, tending to Zhinu, then hiking to the cavern embedded with the carving. No matter how far he excavates, however, the carving remains out of reach, improbably deep in the ground. 

Shufen’s anxiety grows. Three weeks go by and he finds himself beginning his mornings easing a difficulty to breathe. It shouldn’t take so long to reach the capital and back, especially if one has money. Even if one is the youngest daughter in a family of seven. An extraordinarily intelligent, resourceful and determined daughter. 

Shufen wants to tear his hair from his scalp. 

His mother ceases work entirely, electing to remain in the hut. Voice forgotten in a weathered teapot, the lone survivor in a porcelain set. 

One flowering afternoon spectacled with scarlet roses precedes calamity. Shufen returns home, restless with his anxiety for Tinying’s life and the purpose of the grandiose carving, and pushes open the front door. 

The house has been devastatingly upended, splintered wood and brick pieces, bludgeoned chairs and strips of hemp cloth. Shufen gasps when he sees his treasured chest cracked open. 

“Māmā?” Shufen croaks. 

“No,” his mother whispers, feverish. “I’m sorry. It was I who killed you, husband. If I had not forced you out, would you be here, breathing and unburied?” 

Shufen walks carefully toward her, a shepherd approaching a trembling lamb. “Māmā, you saved me. Bābā could have broken my ribs if you didn’t.” 

“Love, I have red on my hands,” Māmā rasps. She lifts the Classic of Mountain and Seas and tears a straight line down the middle. 

Shufen’s breath catches. “No. No. Please.” 

She attacks it– rips it apart. “Why have you left us, your wife and your child? We’re dirt poor and hungry and dying– we’ll be buried because of you!”

Shufen moves, attempting to save the last of the pamphlet. His mother lifts her head at the motion and, in her manic rage, aims shards of a ceramic cup and throws. 

He dodges before they take out his eyes. He doesn’t register the fresh cuts dripping blood down his cheeks, only Māmā’s shriek– terror and frenzy and burning lament– and staggers out of the house. 

–––– 

Shufen kneels before the stone creature. The Torch Dragon. He will come when one calls at dayspring. He professes a prayer, casts it in the name of Tinying’s safety. 

A desire to see Zhinu overcomes him, so he begins embarking towards the terraced fields. 

Rusting orange is bloodlet from the heavens, and birds skim across rivers in intimate flocks. Halfway into the walk, Shufen stops and sits on the edge of the path, legs dangling above the short hillside. Close beneath is a lake. He stares down into the surface, observes himself, the scarlet seeping from the slashes on his face. 

One month since Tinying’s disappearance. 

Before Shufen collapses headfirst into the water, he whispers an apology to Zhinu. His eyes shut to a world of silence. 

–––– 

Shufen wakes. He stands shakily, wincing at the feel of his drenched clothing. The air is thick and very hot. He’s in a wide clearing surrounded by lush, verdant foliage and light grass. The sun bears down, drying his hair. He nearly falls backward into the shallow pond he’d been inexplicably lying in when he sees a shadow soar above, blocking sunlight with flaps of its large wings. 

“Oh, that’s a pterosaur.” 

Shufen glances down, notices a peculiar, miniature figure the size of his leg looking up at him, and almost yelps. 

“Yes, I can speak,” the figure tells him. When Shufen peers closer, he notices the lengthy tail, the thin fur– it’s the carving of the Torch Dragon. “I’m a sinosauropteryx, by the way.” 

“What is that?” Shufen asks. “What are you?” 

It scoffs. “Insolent. I’m a dinosaur, according to classification by future generations of your species.” “You’re so little.” 

It levels him with an indecipherable look. “Follow me.” The creature moves at an unfathomable pace into the thick greenage. Shufen jogs behind, eyes darting around, swallowing his surroundings. 

He nearly runs into a tree trunk before he realises it’s not actually a tree at all, but the limb of a gargantuan being towering over the forest. Its neck stretches wider than Shufen is tall, bends down and rips leaves from the canopy.

“Does it know I’m here?” he asks. 

“That titanosaur doesn’t,” the creature says. “Nothing here does. Not even the plants, nor the wind.” 

It burrows on, taking Shufen through acres of jungle. The discomfort in his lungs fades and the perpetual ache that trails him dims, overshadowed by curiosity. 

The creature speaks the truth– not one entity is aware of Shufen’s existence. Insects are unbothered by his proximity to their hives, polychromatic storms dipping past trees in frenzied unison– he breathes sharply when one brushes his arm, at its vibrancy, the flush of vibrating wings and foreign noises. 

“Here.” The creature gestures to a branch, weighed down by brambles of spotted, shallow-pink fruit. “But only eat the nut that’s inside the colourful outer shell. Believe me when I say the odor of that outer shell, when crushed, is abhorrently pungent.” 

Shufen plucks one from the branch, does away with the shell and places the rest in his mouth. He can’t comprehend it, this prismatic alien expanse. 

The creature leads him longer, farther, encircling ferocious, robust beasts, razor-toothed and wide-skulled– the tyrannosaurus– and describing to him the anatomy of the pterosaurs. 

And then the odyssey halts at a cliff, jagged, rock splinters tipping into the depths. 

The heavens are a sweeping blue and the waters a mirror of reverence. “Where am I? Where is this place?” Shufen’s gaze flickers askance at the creature. “The Ten Courts of Yanluo that punish sinners?” 

If the creature could grin, it would’ve. “So you’ve finally recovered from your post-mortem shock.” “I died… I succeeded?” 

“Almost. You hang to life by a fraction of a finger. You’re one hundred and twenty million years in the past.” It shuffles closer to the edge. “Isn’t it beautiful?” 

This sun is gloriously brilliant, but its warmth is a painful sear on Shufen’s skin. He wishes for home. “Yes, it is. Why did you bring me here?” 

“Did you know I once saw a sinosauropteryx hatchling be rejected from its herd. I returned decades later to find it nursing a pack of its own. Beautiful, no?” 

Shufen frowns. “Your analogy is almost too obvious.” 

The creature sighs and flicks its tail. A glinting bracelet appears on Shufen’s wrist, crafted from golden jade. “Close your eyes.” 

He does, finally opening them only when the creature has given permission. The scorching air and land of lizards vanish. He’s floating, discarnate– faced with a calamity of a structure, built from seemingly indestructible material, with windows a hollow blue covering its sides.

“The Geological Museum of China,” the creature introduces. It’s hovering beside him in this incorporeal plane. “A grand concrete building, housing numerous national treasures.” 

“China,” Shufen repeats. He tastes the word, finds it reminiscent of Māmā’s cooking. Then he blinks, and he’s inside the structure. Fluorescent light kisses his neck and before him is a glass case. 

Inside the case is his carving. The Torch Dragon. The creature’s bones– a sinosauropteryx. 

“You’re not supposed to dig me up just yet,” says the creature. “You’ll have to wait for– oh– what is it, two more millenia? Another farmer will come along. Don’t you worry.” 

Shufen twists the jade bracelet on his wrist and asks, “Are you the Torch Dragon?” 

The bracelet flashes gold in tandem with the creature’s scrutiny. 

“What an interesting idea.” 

Shufen isn’t given time to respond. Wind sucks away his shout as he’s flung backwards, in free-fall, horizontal and spectral, in a tunnel that is not supposed to exist. 

–––– 

He inhales a lungful of air. 

Solid ground is beneath his hands. A shadow leans over him. 

“I almost had a heart attack,” a voice heaves. An excruciatingly familiar voice. 

A hand is stretched out to meet Shufen’s. He takes it, half-appreciative and half-disbelieving. 

Tinying’s staring at him, and there’s sunlight angling off the lake he nearly drowned in, so he catches his own reflection in the expanse of her irises. 

“I thought you were dead,” Shufen says. 

She frowns. “There were accidents. Difficulties. But you had to believe I would survive them.” 

Shufen surges forward in anguished relief, wrapping his arms around her— she stumbles, nearly falling over, and hugs him back. 

“But what of your father?” 

“The appeal worked,” Tinying mutters weakly. 

Shufen shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re something impossible.” 

His friend huffs. “Nothing is.”

A large silhouette moves toward them– Tinying breaks away to rush to its side. “Zhinu led me to you, to the lakeshore,” she explains, caressing the bovine’s snout. 

A wave of gratitude crashes over Shufen’s heart, and he feels he has to build a dam in order to stop the rainstorm of remorse. To his animal companion. To Tinying. He embraces Zhinu, channeling his sorrow into the movement. 

Tinying sighs, tension falling from her shoulders. “Shufen. I can’t believe I did all that and returned to find you half-dead. You’re a fool, Yuanyang.” 

“Thank you,” Shufen says, and he can’t express his gratitude enough. “It means devotion, doesn’t it?” 

“Yes, but that’s not all,” Tinying laughs, then grins, unperturbed, priceless radiance, a healing balm to headaches and waterlogged lungs. “That breed of ducks is a symbol of love.” 

Reverent, Shufen keeps pace with her as she starts taking off for dry land, Zhinu leading their entourage. Almost unconsciously, his fingers twist against a bracelet softly aglow against his wrist. 

He stifles a gasp.