“But that head’s the size of a small house!” I’d seen many pictures of the famous Buddha.
“No, not that, miss.” He chuckled. “It’s because each time they tried, something happened-a comrade fell off the mountain and got killed; another seized by a panic so that he had to be carried down the mountain; yet another one had a massive heart attack and died on the spot. Finally the vandals agreed that chopping was impractical. A new idea was born; they climbed up the statue and tied sticks of dynamite around the Buddha’s head-”
“Oh, no! Then what happened?”
Michael turned to me. “Please translate what he said!”
“Shhh! Let me hear the whole story first.”
I prodded the driver: “Then what happened?”
“Be patient, miss. That’s what I’m about to tell you.” He took time to wet his lips, swallow hard, and after that, plunged on. “Then, when they tried to detonate the dynamite, it thundered. It had been a fine day, but suddenly there was a bolt of lightning!” He struck the steering wheel sharply. “And-”
Michael jolted. “Meng Ning, what happened?”
“Quiet, please, Michael, would you please let him finish?”
“I want to know what he’s saying.”
I ignored Michael’s remark while searching the driver’s eyes in the mirror. “And what?”
“And it struck everybody dead. Dead!” He spat out the window, then he lifted his hands from the steering wheel and stretched them wide apart, his excited voice echoing in the small confines of the car. “Their corpses looked like huge, roasted sausages!”
“Oh, my God!”
Michael’s voice, now very upset, rose next to me. “Meng Ning, when you talk to him he takes his hands from the steering wheel-better stop asking him things. The road is still wet and slippery.”
Just when I was about to warn the driver, deafening honks exploded. To my horror, I saw a car speeding toward us from the opposite lane. Our taxi swerved sharply and we all skidded to the side of the road.
Our driver stuck his head out and hollered, “You son of a bitch! Couldn’t you wait to register with the King of Hell?!”
The other driver shot him a murderous look. “You dead man!”
He shot back, “Fuck your mother and stop driving like a lunatic!”
After that, he resumed driving, while casting a triumphant smile toward us in the rearview mirror.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Michael; then he patted hard on the driver’s shoulder. “Would you please concentrate on the road and drive more carefully?”
The driver turned to ask me, “What did your
Before I could answer, Michael was fuming again. “Meng Ning, won’t you tell him not to turn his head back, but instead look at the road ahead?!”
I told the driver and he said, “All right, all right. Miss, tell your laowai friend not to worry; I’m a very experienced driver.” He added with a casual air, “I talk to my passengers all the time and nothing’s ever happened.”
A brief silence followed. I took the opportunity to translate to Michael everything the driver had told me about the Buddha.
Michael listened intently, and then, to my surprise, dismissed it with a laugh. “It’s not at all Buddhist. Buddhas don’t kill people.”
Not wanting to incur Michael’s wrath by distracting the driver, I kept my mouth shut.
But not the driver; he spoke again. “Miss, you know that the Leshan Buddha always responds to people’s wishes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Many years ago before it was built, boats, when sailing past this mountain, had capsized. Then the villagers decided to carve a Buddha out of the whole mountain to subdue the devils. And after the statue was built, there have been no more accidents.”
I translated this to Michael. He said, “It’s nice that people believe that, but I think it’s just coincidence.”
“Michael, you’re too scientifically minded. I like the idea.”
“Actually, I sort of like it, too.” He smiled.
A long meditative silence followed. Then the driver spoke again, this time turning back to stare directly at me. “Miss, if you ever have a chance to look this Leshan Buddha straight in his eyes, you’ll find that they’ll follow you wherever you go. Besides, if you stare at him long enough, you can see that he smiles-”
“Meng Ning. Is there some way you can convince him to keep his eyes on the road?”
After I’d translated to the driver, he chuckled. “Miss,
“Why don’t you pay attention-then my friend will relax,” I said, then translated to Michael.
“Good,” he replied.
I started to translate our earlier conversation, but our driver turned back again, with a wide grin that showed a jumble of yellowed teeth. “Oh, miss, don’t you worry about me. I started to drive thirty years ago, probably before you were born-”
Suddenly Michael screamed, “Watch out!” and pulled me toward him.
I saw a tall truck, like a mountain wall, crashing toward our taxi at full speed. In a split second, I heard frenzied honks, squealing of tires…
I didn’t know how long I remained unconscious, but when I opened my eyes, the whole world seemed tilted. People-like phantoms-moved, talked, and hollered around our taxi in slow motion.
The driver, his glasses cracked and his forehead cut and bleeding, turned and muttered something comforting, but his words were lost in the buzzing and bustling of the people around us. My bones felt as if they were broken. Before I had a chance to gather up my thoughts, I saw rivulets of blood streaming from underneath me onto the floor.
I shrieked, “I’m bleeding!”
The driver spoke, his hand dabbing his forehead with a blood-stained handkerchief, “It’s not you, miss. I think it’s your friend.”
It was then that I realized the blood was not mine, but Michael’s. He sprawled next to me, unconscious.
I reached to touch him with my trembling hand. “Michael…”
But he didn’t answer me and his eyes remained closed. A nerdy-looking man, his body half inside and half outside the car, was trying to stop Michael’s bleeding with a filthy rag. Several others milled around giving useless suggestions.
“Oh, my God, Michael, Michael…” I touched him, but soon my mind was numbed by the quickly growing group of people now hovering around the car like vultures.
The driver got out of the car and moved toward me in the backseat. “Don’t worry, miss, I think your
“Shut up!” I yelled. “If you’d paid more attention-”
I lifted Michael’s head, laid it on my lap, and gently rocked.
“Don’t move him!” someone yelled as more people crowded around us to watch-as if we were animals on display.
Then I heard sirens wailing. Two policemen rolled up and got out of their car to look at us. Another police car arrived and more khaki-uniformed policemen jumped out and started to direct traffic. The crowd grew as thick and dark as the coagulating blood.
One fiftyish woman gestured wildly. “My heaven! Blood spilled out of the laowai like a slaughtered pig!”
A teenager slashed the air with a wide arc of his arm. “Wow! The truck driver flew up in the air just like a stuntman!”
I cried more.
Our taxi driver yelled to them, “Why don’t you both shut up!”
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. I kept holding Michael and involuntarily began to recite Guan Yin’s name.
Right then the ambulance’s piercing sirens overrode the crowd’s noise. Several uniformed men jumped down from the vehicle and got to work. They put Michael and the truck driver on stretchers, threw blankets over them, then carried them into the ambulance. After that, they helped the taxi driver and me in. Then the ambulance sped away and brought us to the hospital.
To my great relief, Michael finally woke up. But because of all the commotion, we couldn’t really hear each other talk. I felt a huge weight lifted from my chest when the doctor told me that his life was not in danger. He had a sprained ankle and a big cut on his scalp, which took twenty stitches to close, but fortunately, the X-rays showed no skull fracture. Because he had been unconscious, the ER doctor decided to keep him for observation.
I only had a few bruises and scrapes. After a wait of two hours, a young doctor in a stained, off-white coat quickly bandaged me and told me I could leave.
But I was not finished with the accident yet. Two policemen came and took me to the police station to give details of the accident and to verify both Michael’s and my identity and the purpose of our trip. After that, I went back to the hospital. Michael, though awake and lying in bed, looked very weak and ill at ease. He asked where I’d been, and when I told him, he looked both angry and touched. “Meng Ning”-he reached to grasp my hand-“I’m sorry you have to go through all this.”
A silence. Then when I was about to say something comforting, he’d already fallen back to sleep. While I stared at his bandaged head and his shrunken face, I kept telling myself that now I was no longer a young girl protected inside the Golden Lotus Temple. That I was a woman responsible for Michael’s recovery. That I had to be strong. Now, in China, where it was just him and me.
The hospital staff wouldn’t allow me to stay overnight to keep Michael company, so I left the hospital at ten. A young nurse was kind enough to help me call for a taxi back to the hotel.
I cried my heart out in the dimness of the car. The driver, a fierce-looking man, scrutinized me in the rearview mirror and spat out, “You all right?”
I shot back, “Just let me cry in peace, will you?”
To my surprise, he shut up.
35. The Hospital
First thing next morning, I took a taxi to see Michael in the hospital. The large establishment was shabby, crowded, and stank of medicine. Beds were everywhere, not only in the wards but even along the corridors. Careful not to step on an outstretched arm or leg, I walked to the nurse’s station and asked a skinny, bespectacled nurse the whereabouts of Michael.
“Bed number fifty-nine,” she said after flipping through a few pages of the thick registration book; then she scrutinized me for long moments. “You’re his girlfriend?”
I nodded.
“Then tell your boyfriend to be more cooperative with the doctors.”
“What did he do?”
