Pei Yan returned to the subway station with a beautiful square box in his hand, a paper cake box. Down to the platform, onto the train, up to another platform, and then up the stairs.
The station’s staircase was broad, but the evening rush-hour crowd surged through it in a dense crush.
Pei Yan wore a cap and kept his head lowered as the crowd swept him along. He stretched his long legs to find gaps and squeeze through, holding the cake box high overhead. He would only go to all this trouble to make Brother Xiao happy. For anyone else he couldn’t have been bothered. He was lazy by nature.
All around him was a dark sea of people staring down at their phones, shuffling up the stairs like zombies. Not one of them noticed the handsome young star riding the subway. There was no staged photo opportunity arranged by his agency, no advance tip-off to the paparazzi. Pei Yan complained inwardly that he couldn’t even get himself one genuine street photograph. How did other celebrities manage all those coincidental encounters and candid shots, then?
He was climbing too quickly, growing impatient. His body was still behind him while his long legs seemed determined to skip two steps ahead. With a little thump, his shoe caught something hard.
Crash!
Ugh!
Someone fell right in front of him. He knew he’d caused trouble. He had planted his foot with perfect accuracy on the cane of an old man, not the man himself. The cane tipped forward and sent its owner tumbling.
“Ahhh!”
A woman ahead screamed in fright. The old man had pitched forward and struck her backside with his head as she stood one step above him. It was a disastrous domino effect. He grabbed at her skirt as he fell again and landed sprawling on the ground. With a swish and a flash of exposed skin, it seemed he’d pulled the woman’s whole skirt down.
Pei Yan mentally slapped himself. That was completely unacceptable.
He bent down, quickly helped the old man up, set the cane upright again, and fled the scene of his crime.
At least the cake box hadn’t been crushed. Thank goodness.
He ran around a sharp bend, leaving complete chaos behind him. The two sides were yelling abuse at each other. The woman cried with humiliation, her male companion flew into a rage, and he slapped the old man across the head.
Crying, explanations, arguments, furious shouting.
“You shameless, disgusting old pervert! Why did you pull down her skirt?!”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Who pulled down her skirt? I didn’t even look at her!”
Pei Yan poked his head around the corner, speechless and guilty, and glanced around.
A young woman walked past, stared hard at him as though she’d recognized him, and was carried away by the crowd.
Then they really started fighting. Fists flew one way and a cane swung the other. Transit police rushed over, perhaps intending to arrest the old pervert.
Pei Yan felt remorseful and couldn’t quiet his conscience. Or maybe he was simply overflowing with a hero’s pride and couldn’t bear being the sort of man who ran away.
He lowered his gaze, kicked at the foot of the wall, turned back, and pushed through the crowd. “Stop! Don’t fight! I was the one who…”
He intercepted a heavy punch from the man and easily shoved him several meters away, then blocked the old man’s mountain-cleaving cane strike. The blow left his forearm tingling. This old man was still remarkably strong.
“I accidentally hit his cane just now and knocked him over. Then he fell into the lady in front… I’m sorry. I think this was all a misunderstanding.”
He explained what had happened.
“It was an accident. Come on, stop fighting!”
He stood between them trying to make peace and pointed at the man still itching to charge forward. Don’t come at me again. If you do, I’ll hit back.
One of the police officers, who had worked at the station for years, glanced at the old fellow. “Good grief, it’s you again? You’re here every few days. What kind of trouble have you stirred up this time?”
The old man kept repeating, “I didn’t do anything, didn’t start anything! I’m being wronged here! … Who the fuck touched her? Is she even worth touching?”
Then he pointed at Pei Yan. “This kid was pushing through the crowd. He hit me. He made me fall!”
His eyes were gray and cloudy, filmed over with a murky haze in deep sockets. Wrinkles crossed his face in chaotic lines. When their eyes met, Pei Yan paused. The old man seemed startled too. An empty liquor bottle fell out of his disordered clothes and hit the floor with a clatter.
The woman angrily demanded that the police take her complaint of sexual harassment. The officer tried to mediate, while the old man protested his innocence. Everyone argued in a hopeless tangle. Pei Yan could no longer decide whether he’d regret being so honest and staying, because people were beginning to recognize him.
A young man edged over and asked quietly, “Excuse me… aren’t you Pei Yan?”
Pei Yan gave a little snort. “Heh.”
The man held out a banknote and a pen. “Could you sign this? It’s for my girlfriend. She’s a huge fan.”
The woman who’d been crying and demanding to file a report wiped her tears. Her attention shifted entirely to Pei Yan. “Are you the Pei Yan from Su Qier? You’re not someone who’s had surgery to look like him? You’re really Pei Yan?!”
More and more onlookers raised their phones. Pei Yan knew that in their pictures he would look unbearably embarrassed. Even his carefully tailored suit couldn’t salvage his aloof, dangerous, impossibly cool superstar image. Forcing himself to maintain appearances, he pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m sorry. Could I give you an autograph? And could we call the whole thing an accident and leave it at that?”
There was a long pause.
One autograph wasn’t going to be the end of it. The zombie men and women suddenly came back to life, gathered around him, and held out notebooks for signatures.
The police officer exhaled in relief. The problem had been resolved without any effort. Both sides could be considered reconciled.
The man accompanying the woman was probably even more frustrated than Mr. Pei now, and the glare he gave him looked downright murderous. First his girlfriend had suffered what was described as sexual harassment when her skirt was accidentally yanked down, and then she’d encountered the male idol she adored. The supposed incident had been settled privately in exchange for a piece of paper with the idol’s autograph.
While nobody was paying attention, the old man silently turned and left the crowd.
He bent to retrieve his liquor bottle. It clattered again as his fingers trembled and he stumbled, swaying from side to side, still not sober.
He treasured the empty bottle enough to keep it, perhaps planning to sell it for money to buy more liquor. As he turned, his shoulders were plainly uneven, and one leg seemed longer than the other.
Was the old man lame? Disabled?
The limping old man gave Pei Yan a quick look, apparently with no desire to speak to him, and hurried up the stairs through the crowd.
Pei Yan hurriedly finished signing the notebook in front of him, fobbed off the remaining admirers, and strode after him up the stairs.
Once he finally broke free of the crowd, Pei Yan pulled his cap lower, stretched his legs, and set off in pursuit, keeping his eyes on the figure ahead.
The man in front was surprisingly nimble. He could limp at quite a pace, darting through the crowd and along the walls in steps that seemed to defy gravity. He was almost running over roofs and scaling walls. What an extraordinary fellow! He could have played Ghost Leg Seven in Once Upon a Time in China.
The subway station was dim and damp, with puddled wet stains along the walls in many places. Urine.
Street singers and masters of inventing sob stories to beg money had staked out opposite sides of the passage. Pei Yan strode down the middle. He normally drove everywhere and seldom walked through places like this. Unfamiliar with the route, he felt dazed.
Light flooded in at the end of the passage. Passengers naturally divided to either side of the stairs, which were separated down the center by an iron railing.
The limping old man grew irritated at being followed. He vaulted onto the iron railing and moved above the people climbing the stairs.
Pei Yan said nothing.
Holding the cake box in one hand, he strode forward, followed him onto the railing, and walked along it.
The two performed something like a circus act. In a sense they were well matched, both equally stubborn. Eventually they slipped into a dingy little alley in a nearby residential district.
“Sir, wait a minute! Stop running! I just want to ask you one question!” Pei Yan called.
“Why are you chasing me? Fuck off!” the old man shouted back. He was having a miserable day.
“Keep running! I’m young. I’m not tired. I can wait for you to get worn out!” Pei Yan retorted without a trace of courtesy.
“I know who you are… Stop following me!” the old man shouted over his shoulder.
“If you know who I am, why are you still running? Why not just stop?” Young Master Pei was used to being arrogant, and someone else with the same habit didn’t intimidate him.
A green flash came spinning toward his face: a liquor bottle flying straight at him. Pei Yan’s eyes and hands were quick enough to catch it.
Then a gust of force swept toward him. He instinctively raised the bottle as a shield, only for the old man to strip it from his grip in an instant. A pair of palms struck directly toward his temples. Pei Yan bent backward at the waist to dodge. Holy fucking hell!
Baguazhang.
Elio’s Notes: Baguazhang literally means “Eight Trigrams Palm.” This Chinese martial art emphasizes palm techniques and agile, circular footwork.
The slaps he’d taken from Zhuang Xiao before had all been restrained, playful blows.
These two palms swept past his forehead. Pei Yan was agile enough to retreat several steps without being struck.
The cake box had been knocked around so much that whatever was inside would still taste good but wouldn’t be much to look at. He chased the limping old man relentlessly through the narrow alley, pulling out his phone to call someone at the same time. “Hey, where are you?”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Driving. I’ll be there soon.”
“Almost there? Listen, I ran into someone on the way, an old man, and I think… have you seen your father since you returned to Beijing?”
Zhuang Xiao didn’t understand. “What?”
“I mean I ran into an old man at the subway station. I think he looks a lot like…”
“Which station?” Zhuang Xiao asked.
“The one near where we’re meeting.”
Zhuang Xiao’s voice was calm. “I understand. I’ll be there shortly… Leave that place. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“People have already surrounded me,” Pei Yan said.
“Leave, quickly. It doesn’t concern you. Stop getting involved in other people’s business.”
Pei Yan fell silent.
He knew now that his guess had been correct.
It was a face he recognized only by intuition. He’d watched some old movies from more than a decade before, kung-fu films of the eighties and nineties bearing the unmistakable stamp of their era. Nobody watched those pictures anymore.
The neighborhood was near Olympic Square and had become prosperous over the past decade or so, full of luxury apartment blocks, private clubs, and restaurants. But as new towers rose, the surrounding areas hadn’t been perfectly renewed. Old buildings remained in patched-together corners of the city, dark streets where all sorts of people mixed amid crumbling bricks and broken tiles.
That explained why his mother had bought a duplex apartment nearby in a newly developed, expensive gated community, while Pei Yan had unexpectedly encountered someone else in these surroundings.
A shabby gray apartment block stood there, its stairwell windows rusted and air-conditioning units dripping recklessly. Walls were crammed with telephone numbers advertising air-conditioner repairs and professional drain clearing. Pink and green garments hung from windows, piles of scrap crowded the corners and invaded public space, and puddles of wetness lay everywhere, much like inside the subway station.
It felt like stepping into another world, poor and squalid, with little regard for decent living, so unpleasant it made a person want to cover his nose.
By one apartment door stood rows upon rows of liquor bottles, arranged neatly according to their capacities and their various heights and girths. They resembled an army formation, the work of a genuine grandmaster among drunkards.
The limping old man quietly balanced a bottle on one hand, twirled it with his fingers, then tossed it upward to catch it upside down.
It was an easy trick, really. But his hand shook, and he missed it. With another piercing clatter the bottle hit the ground and rolled away.
“Hands shaking from too much drinking? You’re getting old. Don’t try to compete with youngsters like us anymore. You really shouldn’t drink so much…” Pei Yan strolled down the corridor and looked at the man sitting cross-legged by the wall, still as a bell.
“Mind your own business. Who the hell are you?” the old man muttered. He was exhausted from running and really couldn’t outrun a young man.
“Just thought I’d say something because I’m concerned. Nobody wants to see you ruin yourself,” Pei Yan replied.
“Heh. Ruined myself long ago. Nothing but a useless wreck… Now get lost, kid,” the old man rasped.
“I’m not leaving quite yet.” Pei Yan was never afraid of being cheeky. “I’ll stay here and watch you until your son comes, then I’ll go!”
“That little bastard isn’t coming… Ungrateful son of a bitch won’t bother with me…” the old man mumbled blankly.
Pei Yan stared at the visible deformity of the bones and the wasted muscles beneath his trousers and thought of Eriletu lying in his hospital bed. His heart was heavy. This man, too, had once been a great martial-arts hero who dominated the screen. And now look at him.
His stare was vacant, his mind confused, his clothes disheveled, and nothing he said followed any clear logic. He looked like a heap of old liquor dregs.
Seeing him was nothing like Pei Yan had imagined. Remembering the telephone conversation he’d overheard before, Pei Yan still felt angry enough to curse the man. But now, face to face, he also felt sorrow.
He looked down at the squashed cake box, crouched, and placed it in front of him. “Mr. Zhuang, maybe stop drinking. Your son’s so good, he never touches alcohol at all. Why not try something different? Have some cake?”
“…”
It seemed this was a day destined for trouble, and plenty of it. Before Pei Yan could wait for Zhuang Xiao, another group arrived.
Four or five men with ugly expressions came up, their shirts hanging open at the shoulders over black undershirts and tattoos. They pounded on the door with sticks and shouted at Old Mr. Zhuang. “Where’s the money? Pay up! You know how to hire prostitutes, but you don’t know how to pay? Old bastard, where’s our money?!”
“Weren’t you supposed to be famous once? A movie star, right? Don’t you know a deadbeat has to repay his debts?”
They smashed the array of bottles, scattering the whole formation. One of the collectors spotted Pei Yan. “You his son? No, you don’t look like his son. What are you to him?”
Pei Yan asked what the hell a pack of thugs like them wanted and what the old man owed them.
They yelled about unpaid drink bills and the girls’ fees for keeping him company. “You think you get all that for free? Have you no shame?”
Pei Yan was left speechless.
The stairwell descended into mayhem, sticks and bottles flying everywhere. Zhuang Xiao arrived around then. Pei Yan’s expression had stiffened. He had no experience handling a situation like this. He couldn’t even decide whom he was supposed to hit.
Zhuang Xiao did know how to handle it. He pushed Pei Yan behind him, reached into his pocket without expression, and pulled out a thick wad of large-denomination banknotes. “How much? Is this enough?”
The men stopped shouting when they saw the money. Both sides understood one another; they were old acquaintances. The collectors counted the notes. “Honestly, not enough. The old fellow has plenty of energy. Even had two girls at once. Knows how to enjoy himself.”
Pei Yan was silent.
The corridor was dim. Zhuang Xiao kept his face tense, his lips pressed thin. He checked his pocket again. No cash left. “I’ll go downstairs and withdraw some more.”
Pei Yan took out his phone and murmured behind him, “I can pay. An online transfer will do. Easier that way. How much is it?”
“No. I’ll go and get cash,” Zhuang Xiao said.
“Just send a digital red envelope or make a transfer. Maybe you haven’t got a Chinese payment account, but I have…”
“I don’t need your money.”
Pei Yan fell silent.
Once the men had received enough money, they hurried away under Zhuang Xiao’s ice-cold gaze. Money was all they’d come for, and they had no interest in prolonging the trouble.
Pei Yan marveled bitterly that old men certainly could surprise you. This pile of liquor dregs still knew his way around a woman’s bed and had energy to spare. Best of all, his son was left responsible for the bill afterward. What a convenient arrangement.
Inside, the apartment was filled with broken odds and ends, scrap, and liquor bottles. Supposedly this was called hoarding, a mental disorder in which people filled their space with objects to cover depression, brain damage, impaired thinking, or emptiness in their lives.
Pei Yan stood with his hands in his pockets among the heaps of junk, unable to find anywhere clean enough to sit. Nor could he bring himself to ask outright why Zhuang Xiao’s own father lived somewhere like this.
Zhuang Xiao leaned against the wall, unwilling to talk. His expression answered Pei Yan’s unspoken question. What had happened to the old man’s previous house? Who had that gone to? And the house before that? Where had it disappeared?
A bottomless pit. Anyone would be worn down in body and spirit, dragged down by it.
“You shouldn’t be making films for Jiahuang, you little bastard, you never listen… They’re bad people. They don’t make good films. They’re a pack of fucking scum… You bastard, working with Jiahuang…” Old Mr. Zhuang sat beside the table like a clay statue, breathing hard, his voice hoarse.
After a long stretch of muttering, Zhuang Xiao finally grew tired of listening and answered, “I have to earn money to keep the household going, to support you. What’s the difference who I make films with?”
“Support me, my ass… I’m like this already. I don’t need you supporting me. You wish I were dead. Fuck off,” the old man said.
“How much farther can I go? Can I really just abandon you?” Zhuang Xiao asked.
His voice was quiet and cold. They’d had this conversation too many times, repeating it like a recording until both were numb.
“You can film with anyone except them, except, except Jiahuang! Sell yourself to anyone, but not to Jiahuang! Earn money, my ass. They’ll get you killed…” Old Mr. Zhuang suddenly sank into some overwhelming feeling.
“My leg, how do you think it got crippled? It was those bastards. You want to follow the same road as me? Those people will kill you…” The old man shook from head to foot, his condition clearly worsening.
Pei Yan looked at Zhuang Xiao in surprise. Why would he say that?
Zhuang Xiao shook his head slightly, signaling with his eyes that Pei Yan shouldn’t pay any attention to the old man’s nonsense. Drink had destroyed his mind. He imagined people were plotting against him, that everyone wanted to hurt him.
This was a man who’d loved drinking since he was young, even though he couldn’t hold his liquor and turned vicious when drunk. He’d practice Drunken Fist while intoxicated and beat his wife and son.
He drove his wife away quite quickly. After several more years of beatings, he finally drove away his own son, who fled across the ocean and never wanted to return.
During a martial-arts shoot he’d suffered an accidental fall, been injured, and become disabled.
His disability and misfortune made him give up on himself. He abandoned restraint and sank into degradation. In old age he’d become a mad, incoherent drunk. To outsiders, he was worthless, utterly alone, sliding farther into an abyss and forever dragging his son down with him.
* * *
At that moment Uncle Johnny and Zhang Huan from Pei Yan’s team started calling. “Sweetheart, do you even realize you’re trending again? What were you doing riding the subway and getting into an argument with someone? Even the police got involved!”
“Lots of people took pictures of you at the station, apologizing to the police with your head lowered. Did you know that?”
Pei Yan said, “That’s right. I went down to the station to visit the police officers on duty, then handed out autographs to fans.”
Over the telephone, Zhang Huan spoke lightly. “Don’t worry, darling Yan. This kind of thing is easy. We’re steering the narrative toward ‘barefaced star seen keeping a low profile on subway; bumps into passenger by accident and sincerely apologizes; upright young man shows his genuine character without any airs.’ The key words are ‘no makeup,’ ‘upright,’ and ‘genuine’! We’ve got people among the big Weibo accounts and in your official fan forum who can help turn public opinion around. Tomorrow we’ll dig up that story about the celebrity from the rival camp who drove drunk last year, hit a road-maintenance worker, and fled the scene. We’ll blacken their name to divert attention… It’s no big deal. This is our job. We’re professionals at cleaning up messes for you.”
Pei Yan quietly thanked Zhang Huan for helping him.
He used to curse Zhang Huan’s publicity team all the time, dissatisfied with this and that, despising their supposedly low-class publicity tactics. But the most underhanded methods were often the most useful.
Then came the unavoidable call from his mother.
Pei Yan explained quietly, “Something came up unexpectedly. We’ll be there a bit later. Wait for us.”
“Oh, something happened?” Xu Qishang was understanding. “That’s fine. Your father and I are staying here tonight anyway. We don’t have to go anywhere. Just try to come to dinner, the two of you. We’ll wait…”
Zhuang Xiao heard her voice over the phone and signaled to Pei Yan with his eyes once more. Go on. Can you leave now?
Pei Yan caught his wrist and held tight, upset and miserable.
Zhuang Xiao pulled his hand free. “It doesn’t concern you. I don’t want to spoil your evening.”
Pei Yan whispered back, “Your problems are my problems. Where would I go? I’m staying with you.”
“What if paparazzi show up and trap you here? How will you explain it? Go, quickly.”
Old Mr. Zhuang raised his clouded eyes and tried to piece together the fragments of information in his muddled mind. “You’re… Pei, Pei what? One of Jiahuang’s people? You two were making Dragon Battles Heaven’s Pass? And… Drunken Fist?”
At that, Zhuang Xiao pushed Pei Yan again. Go on, you idiot.
“You think I can’t see it?” Old Mr. Zhuang stared straight at Zhuang Xiao, as though unable to believe or accept what he was seeing. “The internet’s full of it. You’re with him…”
“With who?!” Zhuang Xiao snapped back, suddenly raising his voice.
“Anyone but someone from Jiahuang! You cannot, cannot get mixed up with one of their people!” Zhuang Wenlong said. “How much did he pay you to do it?!”
Pei Yan frowned. He could barely restrain himself from sitting the old man down for a serious conversation.
Zhuang Xiao shot back, “He didn’t pay me anything. I’m with him because I want to be.”
Zhuang Xiao pushed Pei Yan toward the door and turned the handle. Old Pei, just leave.
A liquor bottle came hurtling toward them!
Zhuang Xiao didn’t even lift his hand to block. He merely tilted his head and let the bottle pass.
Pei Yan was shocked that Zhuang Xiao seemed to be standing there like a target, barely trying to avoid it. He hurriedly reached out to shield Zhuang Xiao’s face and pulled him a step to the side.
A sharp shattering sound exploded by their ears. Glass fragments flew from the wall and scattered across the floor like a shower of sparks. Some tiny green splinters struck Zhuang Xiao’s forehead.
Zhuang Xiao closed his eyes, then opened them again, letting his eyelids shield them from the fragments. He remained motionless against the wall, a human target with nothing to say. It wasn’t the first time someone had thrown a bottle at him. It probably wasn’t even the tenth or twentieth.
* * *