Beautiful Country (18 page)

After dinner, Dwyane invited me to go downstairs to play basketball. Across the street from the apartment complex was a community sports center. There was an outdoor volleyball court, an area for tai chi, and a concrete basketball court. When we got
there, we each had to pay a 2-RMB entrance fee. It was the U.S. equivalent of a quarter. There were two four-on-four half-court games going on. Another twenty guys watched from the sidelines, waiting for their chance to play. I sensed that most were regulars. Dwayne went about recruiting a team and putting us down for a game.

The rules were simple: first to seven points, winning team stayed on to face the next challenger. Our team consisted of Dwyane, myself, and two other guys that Dwyane had recruited. The first was tall but overweight and was wearing a counterfeit L.A. Lakers jersey. Whoever had manufactured his jersey had taken a fair amount of creative license with it, not only changing the spelling of “Lakers” to “LeKars,” but also determining that “MIKEJORDAN” (all one word) was a player on the L.A. Lakers. The second of Dwyane's two recruits was a thin, wiry man who was no more than five foot six. In the five minutes that we had been teammates I had seen them each finish two cigarettes. Needless to say, this wasn't exactly the Dream Team.

After we lost, we walked off the side of the court. Dwyane pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered everyone a smoke. We debated waiting for another game, but more players had shown up, and Dwyane said that it could be forty minutes until we played again. Our two teammates both decided that they had had enough basketball for one day. After finishing his second cigarette, Dwyane said that we should leave, too.

As we walked back to the apartments, I got a text message from Random that the Beijing team had won its first two matches and just beaten the Nanjing team easily in the semifinals. They would be playing the Tianjin team in the finals of the tournament tomorrow afternoon.

I told Victoria the good news. She said she would give me a quick tour of the city tomorrow morning, and then we could head over to the sports complex after lunch. I remembered Bowen telling me that there was a very good traditional Chinese medicine clinic near his home. I doubted that Madame Jiang would have allowed Bowen to visit the clinic, but I figured that we could go pick something up for him. I was a bit skeptical about traditional Chinese medicine, but both Bowen and Victoria seemed to put a lot of faith in it. I asked Victoria if she knew of a good traditional Chinese medicine shop. She said the best one in Tianjin was in the old part of the city. “Famous all over China,” she said. “Owned by the same family for over three hundred years.” We agreed we would go the next morning.

The medicine shop was located just past the outskirts of the French Concession. We passed through what I sensed were the slums of the city—run-down buildings overrun with families, laundry hanging everywhere like flags of surrender, birds' nests of illegal electrical wires.

“This used to be an okay area to live,” Victoria said. “But now everyone wants to live in the new part. So this is where a lot of the peasants who come in from the country or the laborers live. The shop is just around the corner.”

The shop was a traditional stucco one-story building that had managed to stay intact amid the squalor that surrounded it. No one was inside. The shop was small and dark and quiet. The walls were lined with wooden drawers, all about the size of a book. They reached almost five feet high. Victoria pointed to the drawers.

“Count how many there are,” she said. “And then count everything else. There is a special number.”

I counted the drawers. There were seven of them. I looked around the shop for other objects. On top of the drawers sat two more shelves holding identical ginger jars on top, three on the
top shelf, four on the bottom, seven in total. There was a counter that ran the length of the wall and in the middle of the counter was a small table with a stack of what appeared to be mixing bowls. I counted the bowls. Again there were seven.

“Seven,” I said. “What is it about seven?”

“Seven is considered spiritual or ghostly. The seventh month of the Chinese calendar is also called the ‘Ghost Month,' when the gates of hell are said to be open. Seven is often linked with fate or destiny.”

“What is the luckiest number?” I asked her.

“Eight, of course. And the word for eight?” Victoria asked, reversing the questioning.

“Bā,” I said.

“And the word for prosperous?”

“Fā?”

She nodded. “See, very close in sound.” She pulled out a pen and a piece of paper from her satchel. “There is also a resemblance between the two digits ‘88,' and the
shuang xi
(double happiness) and,” she said, “to show you how truly superstitious the Chinese are, the Olympics in 2008 are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m.” Victoria leaned over the counter and looked down a passageway.

“I don't think there is anyone here,” I said.

“Don't worry, Doctor Song will be out soon.”

I asked Victoria what was in all the jars.

“Different ingredients for medicine.”

“What kind of ingredients?”

“There are many ingredients. In China we believe that everything is medicine. Tea, parts of animals, herbs, all can be medicine.”

“But what's an example of those ingredients?”

“Maybe the roots from trees,” she said. “Here, look.” She moved behind the counter and pointed to jars arranged neatly on the shelves below it. “Things taken from animals. Sometimes they use parts of turtles, snakes, lizards, sharks, even bats.” She pointed to a jar that had a complete iguana and some sorts of plants submerged in a liquid. “Sometimes the doctor makes a mixture and lets it . . . how do you say, become like wine?”

“Ferment.”

“Maybe, yes. Ferment.”

We heard a door shut and the shuffling sound of someone walking slowly in slippers on a stone floor. When Doctor Song, an elderly man with a heavy brow that almost closed his eyes, appeared, Victoria began speaking with animation. She tapped her shoulder and mimicked a service motion. She asked him for something for a bad shoulder. Doctor Song must have asked her who it was for. Victoria said it was for a friend who could not come. Doctor Song shook his head several times and said something I could not understand. Victoria tried again. “Okay, can you help him with his elbow?” she said, referring to me. She swung her arm out as if hitting a tennis ball.

“I don't want anything,” I whispered to her in English. Victoria held her hand up as if to signal me to stop.

Doctor Song shuffled around the counter and put his hand on my elbow and then on the top of my head.

“He is feeling for the temperature to see if he needs to deal with cold or heat,” Victoria explained. I looked at her impatiently. She nodded her head and raised her index finger and whispered, “After.” Doctor Song nodded and grunted and then shuffled back around the counter. He turned around and took a few jars off the
shelves and placed them on the center table. He then bent down and pulled out several more jars from the drawers behind the counter. He shook them and placed them on the table next to the other ones. Then he shuffled down the long row of drawers and opened three other drawers and took out three glass vials containing crushed-up powder. He tapped pinches of each into the bowl and then added ingredients from the jars on the table. We watched silently as he finished mixing the ingredients. He took out a heavy stone pestle and ground up all the ingredients until the bowl was filled with a fine yellow powder and then reached under the table and took out a glass jar. He funneled the yellow powder into the jar and screwed the top on tight and handed it to Victoria. I asked her what it was, and she said it would help my elbow.

“Can you ask him again to make something for Bowen's shoulder?”

“I'll try, but he has already said no.” Victoria turned to the doctor and spoke to him. Doctor Song answered in a low mumble I could not understand. Again she mimicked a tennis serve with her right arm. He seemed to repeat what he had just said. “He says he cannot make something for someone without seeing them. He says Bowen will have to come.”

“Can't I just show him where it hurts on me?”

“I tried to show him on me, but he says he has to feel for heat and cold on Bowen.”

I paid for the medicine the doctor had mixed for me but I knew I would never open it. Victoria and I had incorrectly assumed that if I bought something for myself, Doctor Song might be more willing to mix up something for Bowen.

“Sorry,” said Victoria. “Maybe Bowen can come here. It's only fifteen minutes from the tennis center.” I nodded but said nothing. I could tell by the way she said it that Victoria didn't really believe Madame Jiang would let Bowen do that. At least he had the Advil I had given him. I hoped that would help.

We arrived at the Tianjin Tennis Center just as the boys were starting the finals. Madame Jiang was standing with her back to us. She was speaking with the Tianjin coach. Victoria and I took a seat in the bleachers behind them. They were watching Bowen play on the first court. The acoustics in the building were such that we could overhear most of their conversation. The Tianjin coach asked, “Is he injured? He looks injured.”

“No, there is nothing wrong,” she said. “He does this to be difficult.”

She continued, saying that Bowen was trouble. “No discipline,” she said, “he causes so many problems for the team.” She stabbed the cold air with her words. She added that Bowen lied and that she often caught him disobeying her. The Tianjin coach said that Bowen should win this match easily. Madame Jiang agreed. “He is losing to try and make me look bad,” she said. The Tianjin coach watched Bowen double-fault and agreed that Bowen wasn't trying.

Had Bowen not told me that his shoulder hurt so much that he could hardly hit the ball, I would have assumed that his behavior was just another case of his making the game more evenly
matched or perhaps toying with his opponent. But now I understood his situation differently so I found myself watching another kind of high-wire act in which Bowen never left a margin of error—not because he was playing with people's expectations but because it was all he could do. I had been looking at one thing and thinking about it in a certain way, and now I was looking at the same thing and understanding it completely differently. China itself was a lot like that, I had learned. You could never assume you understood something unless you knew it inside and out and even then you still couldn't be certain.

Bowen's match against the number one player from Tianjin seesawed back and forth. With his injured shoulder, Bowen could not serve as hard as he usually did and had to rely on his wits and clever play to win points. He had to use surprise to throw his opponent off balance. By the time the other boys had finished, Bowen had just won a hard-fought first set in a tiebreaker. Hope and Dali had won their matches, Random and Little Mao had lost. Bowen's match was crucial. They all came to watch Bowen. I could tell that they thought he was consciously making the match close in order to torture Madame Jiang or to seek revenge for the way she had treated him. Little Mao turned to Random and said something about “Bowen showing off again.” He resented what he thought Bowen had put them through. Random told him to shut up.

“Look at the way he's hitting forehand,” Random said. “There is something wrong with his shoulder.”

I watched the next few forehands that Bowen hit and saw that he wasn't extending his arm on the backswing and his motion was stiff and truncated. The second set was not going well for Bowen. With his opponent up 3-2, Bowen played a terrible ser
vice game, double-faulting three times. I could tell that he was in agonizing pain every time he hit a serve. He lost his serve at love. I looked around at the people watching the match to see if there was anyone who might be Bowen's parents. Most all the spectators were players and coaches. In the next game Bowen began running around his forehand to hit backhands on the forehand side of the court. In the men's game, players often run around their backhand to hit forehands as the forehand is almost always the stronger and more offensive shot. But it is almost unheard of for a player to run around his forehand to play his weaker backhand. It was obvious to me that Bowen would only be doing this if he was in too much pain to hit his forehand properly. But Madame Jiang had a different reaction. She turned to the Tianjin coach and said, “See how he clowns around? He insults your player and your team by not taking the match seriously.” A few minutes later Bowen lost the second set 6-3.

Bowen walked to his chair with his head down and his left arm limp by his side. He held his racket loosely in his right hand. Madame Jiang stormed over and gave him a furious dressing down in front of everyone. I felt sick. I didn't think he was going to be able to finish another set, let alone win one. But when the break between the sets was over, Bowen walked to the baseline, his head held high, and I hoped he had a new plan. With the exception of Random, the other boys on the team thought Bowen would make certain he would win the third set. The National Championships for them felt secure, but Random and I knew otherwise.

In the opening games of the third set, Bowen raised his game and unleashed his full talent. He pulled off impossible angles, inch-perfect drop shots, slice serves that dragged his opponent
onto the next court, and topspin lobs that traced a precise trajectory just over the top of his opponent's racket and landed within half a foot of the baseline. Bowen must have realized that he couldn't win the match by beating his opponent with power, so he exhausted every single ounce of his talent to find victory through finesse.

Despite some of the miraculous shots that Bowen was pulling off, his opponent had managed to edge a slight lead through stubborn grinding. He stood on the baseline and ran down every shot Bowen hit and just put the ball back in play, knowing that eventually Bowen's shoulder was likely to fail him. The player's two styles could not have been more different. After forty-five captivating minutes of play, Bowen's opponent led him by five games to four. Luckily, it was Bowen's turn to serve, in theory giving him the upper hand in the game.

Bowen started the game strong and went up 30-love. But his opponent retaliated with two immense return winners to level the score. At 30-30, Bowen hit a slice serve that curved into his opponent's body, jamming him and causing his opponent to send a wild return long past the baseline. At 40-30 Bowen took a gamble and went for a huge first serve out wide. The gamble almost paid off. His serve cracked through the air at upward of 115 mph and skidded off the slick court and flew past his opponent, thumping into the curtain behind. About half of the spectators assumed Bowen had aced his opponent and started cheering. But Bowen's opponent held up his racket and indicated that the serve had landed just out, and the umpire agreed. The supporters that Bowen had won over to his side cried out, appealing the decision, but Bowen waved them down because he knew that the decision had been correct and he had missed the serve.

When the commotion died down, Bowen returned to the baseline and bounced the ball seven times. His face looked calm. He tossed the ball and as he went up for his second serve, he winced and exhaled in pain. He must have damaged his shoulder further with that big first serve. The second serve limped through the air and meekly landed at the bottom of the net. The score was now deuce and his opponent was only two points from victory. I will never forget what happened next.

The atmosphere in the indoor arena was tense as Bowen prepared to serve the deuce point. He bounced the ball seven times and then tossed the ball up like he was going to serve normally. The toss was wild and too far to the left. Bowen acted as if he was going to let the ball drop and catch it so he could re-toss. He put his right hand out to catch the ball, but at the last second, just before the ball fell into his hand, Bowen flicked his racket out and hit an underhand slice serve. It was a trick shot that I had seen him hit in practice. The ball curved through the air and landed just on the other side of the net, before the tremendous backspin that Bowen put on the ball caused the ball to bounce backward toward his side of the court. His opponent stood frozen to the spot and watched with confused horror as the trick shot spun backward over the net and landed back on the same side that Bowen had served it from. It was Bowen's point. His opponent hadn't touched the ball, and the serve counted as an ace.

There was silence in the indoor arena as the spectators tried to comprehend what had just happened. The ball bounced twice, rolled past the service line, and stopped near the baseline. Bowen wordlessly walked to the ball and picked it up and prepared to serve the next point. Still nobody clapped. Random, who was sit
ting next to me, whispered, “Wow.” I looked around at the other spectators and everywhere I looked I saw stunned faces.

Madame Jiang shattered the silence.

“Hey! Come here!” she screamed at him. She had stormed onto the court from her position beside the umpire chair and was walking toward Bowen at the baseline. She looked angrier than I had ever seen her before. “You think this is a joke? This is not a joke! Treat your opponent with respect! Serve properly! Replay the point!”

I couldn't believe it. Bowen had just hit one of the more incredible shots I had ever seen, at a crucial time in the match that would decide the final, and Madame Jiang wanted him to replay the point? I would have been livid if I were in Bowen's shoes, but he just stood there and looked back at her with clear, glassy eyes and showed no reaction. He nodded. “Okay,” he said quietly. I turned to Random and gave him a look of incredulity. He just shrugged. Bowen was back at the baseline and readied himself to serve again. “Forty-forty,” he called the score loud, as if to ensure that everyone in the arena understood that Madame Jiang had ordered him to replay the point. He bent his knees and raised his right arm, tossing the ball high into the air. His body was coiled, but still loose, like a whip before it strikes. The ball toss reached its apex and the ball hung in the air and Bowen released his service motion. His racket whipped through the air and connected with the ball, sending it rocketing toward the other side of the court. The serve was wild and off target. The ball screamed through the air and smacked against the tall umpire chair, ricocheting back off the hard wood at a slight angle and hitting Madame Jiang square in the side of the face.

Bowen rushed over and made a show of being extremely concerned for Madame Jiang's well-being. She didn't acknowledge him. Even when the ball had struck her she had hardly moved. She just stared straight ahead with hate all over her face. The umpire determined that Madame Jiang was fine and waved Bowen on to continue playing. People in the crowd were split on whether it had been an accident or an act of retribution and a few low hisses rang out as Bowen walked back to the baseline.

Bowen was finished. He looked as though he could barely hold the racket. He served his second serve underhand and watched powerlessly as his opponent rocked a forehand return into the corner for a winner. On match point, Bowen managed to get an overhand serve in, and a long, grinding baseline rally ensued. Bowen was too hurt to do anything more than to loop the ball high over the net, and as Bowen's opponent was unwilling or too nervous to go for a big shot, the rally seemed to last for an eternity. Unable to continue the rally any longer, Bowen took a gamble and went for a slice drop shot, hoping to catch the other boy out of position. It was a hopeless shot. His aim was off and the shot landed too short, dancing off the net cord up into the air where it hung for a second before falling back down onto Bowen's side of the court. It was the kind of shot that he had been pulling off all match. But he finally reached the point where either his talent or his luck ran out.

His opponent sank to his knees and raised his arms. The other Tianjin players cheered and stormed the court, enveloping their victorious teammate and lifting him on their shoulders. I looked to Random and my other teammates. They were already packing up their things silently with heads bowed. Madame Jiang left the courts without a word.

Bowen sat on the court behind the baseline with his knees bent and his back against the wall. He rested his forehead on his crossed arms. I went over to him. He lifted his head and saw me approaching and got to his feet before I could offer him a hand. Where he had been sitting was now a dark patch of sweat. He had truly left everything on the court. I went to say something to him but he waved me off. I understood though. Sometimes it's better to be alone.