China in English: perception is an act of translation. We also use what we cannot understand.

In spring of the third year of the Hu Jintao reign, a young man from Hong Kong visited the city of Shenzhen for the weekend.  Late in the evening, after having enjoyed a pleasant dinner and water massage, he was wandering in search of a bar when he spied a young woman crying quietly by the side of the street.  Instantly smitten by her obvious charms, he asked her what was the matter.  "Why are you talking to me?" she retorted tearfully.  "It isn't polite to address strange women in the street."  He apologized and replied he was merely worried about her.  "The truth, sir, is that I have nowhere to go," cried the girl.  "I have no family in this city and no money to go home.  Even if I were to return, my father would simply beat me.  Now I have lost my job because I refused the advances of my former employer.  Because I lived at the company, I have lost my housing as well."  She then broke down in sobs.  After further conversation, the man convinced her to come with him.  She spent the night with him at his hotel, but refused to be intimate with him.  "You seem like a nice man," she told him.  "I am sure you can treat me with respect."  The next day he took her shopping and bought her an apartment.  She beamed, splendid in her new dress, and bashfully told him she did not know how to express her gratitude.  He assured her that even the apartment was a gift, but that he wished to visit her.  When he said this, she lowered her eyes quietly, and it was all he could do just to keep his hands off her.  When he left, they parted wordlessly, but the look she gave him lighted a fire in his chest.

After that, they began to sleep together.  At first, he would visit her every weekend.  Later he made excuses to leave work early so he could cross the border to be with her.  Some months later, his friends began to comment on how sickly he seemed.  He had lost weight, and when he moved he seemed to jerk nervously.  His hands trembled and his hairline seemed to be receding.  When one of his best friends asked what he had been doing, he finally confided he had been keeping a young mainland girl in Shenzhen.  He showed a photo.  "This girl is too beautiful," his friend said.  "Look at her eyes.  If she is Chinese, why does she have folded eyelids like a foreigner?  You had better be careful.  Are you sure she is safe?"  The man confessed to having had himself tested, and that he had learned just yesterday he was STD free.  "In that case," said his friend, "you may need one of these.  I brought it along just for you."  From his bag, he produced a small round mirror made of a cheap aluminium alloy, with the eight trigrams printed around its periphery.  "Hang this over your door and you will know soon enough what kind of woman she is," his friend recommended.  The man accepted the gift so as not to offend his friend, though it did not seem something to be treated seriously.  That evening, he crossed the border again.

He had not seen her for three weeks due to his hectic schedule.  When they met at a restaurant, the graceful way she ate again set him on fire.  He was fully indulging in the pleasure of her company when he observed that her hair was now a slightly reddish color.  Looking closely at her face, he noticed that the small mole which had always been below her nose near the middle of her lip was missing.  He leaned in as if to whisper to her, to see if a larger mark on her neck, behind her right ear, was still there.  It was also gone.  When he sat back, she seemed alert to his concern.  "Did you bring me anything from Hong Kong?" she asked sweetly, with a slightly tense edge.  He told her he had.  "I'll show you when we get home," he said.

In the hallway before the apartment door, the man asked her to wait for a moment, so he could show what he had brought for her.  As she nodded, he felt he detected a hint of anxiety in her wide eyes.  He extracted the mirror from his backpack and held it before her.  "What is that horrible thing?" she wailed, holding up her hands and the designer bag he had bought her as though to defend herself as she staggered back.  He held it closer to her and she recoiled, sliding down the wall to the floor, pulling her knees up to her forehead.  He could see her ears sticking out of what was now her very red hair.  For a moment, her body seemed to be getting smaller, but when he looked again, it had remained the same.  For a long time, he stood there looking at her, but she refused to move, so he turned and fixed the little mirror to the apartment door with a piece of poster tape, above the peephole.  When he looked into it, behind him on the floor he saw the body of a fox.  He quickly let himself into the apartment and closed the door, then stood there motionless, not knowing what to do.

Minutes later, a scratching sound began, followed by a slight whine.  He heard her voice.  "It's so cruel of you to lock me out of the apartment like that," she cried.  "Please don't be angry at me.  If you let me in, I will explain everything."  He could hear himself breathing, and felt cold all over.  "You have a key, don't you?" he managed to ask.  "Yes," came the response, "but I can't pass through this door after what you have done.  I'm sorry I never told you I was a fox.  It's not that I wanted to hurt you.  Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"  Her crying seemed so genuine that he found himself moved.  His feelings for her returned and he opened the door.  There she stood in the hall, her radiant face bathed in tears.  "I am sorry," she said.  "I really do care about you.  I never wanted to take your life away.  I only want what's good for you."  He opened the door wider.  "Won't you come in?" he asked.  She shook her head no.  "I don't deserve to," she said.  He peeled the mirror off the door and repeated his offer.  She still stood there.  He stepped out in the hall and took her hand, pulling her gently.  "I will come in only if you promise to trust me," she said softly.  He stood there looking into her big western eyes.  Silently, he brought her into the apartment.

Once she was inside, she seemed to feel better.  She told him that although she was a fox, she was not the reason for his sickness.  She had once been a normal girl from a small town, but in the city there was an evil priest who had used his powers to change her and numberless other girls.  The man wondered why someone would want to do that.  She told him the priest was trying to find a means for his own immortality.  "He is the one depriving you of your life," she told him.  "It is he who was my former employer.  He sends us out to steal the lives from young men.  At first I did this to a number of others, and I am very sorry for that.  However, you were so good to me that when it came to you, I refused.  You must have been the victim of one of his other employees.  Have you been seeing any other girls?"  The young man bashfully admitted he had, though only when he went to get a massage.  There was one pretty girl who occasionally gave him extra attention.  "Like me, she must have given herself to him in the pursuit of beauty," observed the fox.  "Collecting the lives of men is how we pay our debt for his assistance.  Now that I am no longer working for him, it is only a matter of time before he comes for me.  I told you the truth when I said I had nowhere to go."  The man asked her what could be done.  "If you can stop him from operating on the spirits of young girls, you are sure to get your life back," she said.  "And if you are willing to risk it, you can free me as well."  The man insisted he was more than willing, and asked her what he must do.  "You must come with me in your dreams," said the fox.  "We will go together to his temple.  Once we are there, you must ask if you can photograph what he does.  Leave the rest up to me."  The man agreed to do this, and they went to bed together.  The fox spent a long time looking at him before she finally closed her eyes.  The man found that knowing she was a fox, holding her had only increased its sweetness.  He realized he was only now really beginning to care about her.

When he slept, he saw her face, her dark eyes the unfathomable black of an animal, her sweet features the long whiskered visage of a fox.  Then he saw all of her, teeth bared, tail outstretched, running silently through open snow.  "You're dreaming now," she told him.  "Are you ready to come with me to the temple?"  He said he was.  They changed direction and entered the city, the nighttime lights casting strange shadows as they passed.  He realized traveling with her in this manner was not uncomfortable, which increased his affection for her.  She directed his attention to a single white building with what looked like a garden with a small pond in front, and large office complex in back.  They alighted beside the pond, before the temple doors.  He heard a delicate splashing sound, and noticed the pond was full of fish.  "Nice to see you again, Angel!" called one of them.  "I told you, you would be back!  Who's your boyfriend?"  The fox seemed slightly embarrassed and grinned at the fish with obvious affection.  She squeezed the man's hand.  "They're friends of mine," she said.  Together, they turned to look at the temple.  "You have to go in alone," she told him.

He ascended the steps under the upturned eaves, and noticed the temple had sliding glass doors that opened automatically upon his arrival.  Everything inside was white, suffused in a soft light for which he could not locate a source.  Two acolytes seated behind a desk greeted him upon his entry.  "Welcome," they said in unison.  "What may we do for you this evening?"  He told them he wanted to know what procedures were available at their temple.  "Please follow me," one of them said.  "I'll give you a tour."  They walked down a long hall, past rooms in which people intermixed with different kinds of animals sat reading magazines, drinking tea and chatting.  The attendant explained, "We use only the most current procedures.  We can offer you great strength, wonderful luck, indefatigable sexual prowess, all for a modest donation to the temple, of course."  "Actually," the man answered, "I'm most interested in eternal life."  The acolyte looked at him.  "Oh!  A real VIP.  You'll want to talk to Doctor Longevity, then.  Please come this way."  They turned down another long hall and ascended a wide staircase flanked by a pair of large marble drums that rang like mobile phones as they passed.  On the walls, a series of ink paintings offered washes and daubs of color in which the man thought he could discern birds flitting quickly among flowers.  Each time he looked, the birds were in a different position, and the associated poems seemed to have rewritten themselves.  As he looked more closely, all he could see were layers of stains made by an unknown brush.  "Up the stairs please.  We're almost there," the acolyte called to him.

At the top of the stairs, they turned and entered a large room filled with hundreds of young women clothed in simple, loose-fitting blue gowns with zippers in the middle.  They were attended by a collection of acolytes attired in white, wearing surgical masks that oddly offset their bald heads.  At the end of the room stood a man in long flowing robes and the black hat of a Taoist priest.  He had bushy eyebrows and a thin beard that extended down to his ample belly.  As the man watched, the priest unrolled a scroll and removed a hypodermic needle from the middle.  He then used the needle to inject a thick liquid into the forehead of a young woman who lay on an offering table before a towering statue of the lord of the dead, and then swept his flywhisk five times over her face.  She got up, bowed to the statue, and then to the priest, who handed her the scroll he had unrolled, saying, "This is your prescription.  Please keep it."  The woman took it with both hands, bowed again and stepped to the side.  Another young woman then climbed onto the table, assisted by a pair of acolytes.  A third acolyte stood by the priest holding a gleaming steel tray containing an inkbrush, inkwell, the same syringe and a large plastic bottle filled with the same thick liquid.  The priest then lifted the brush, dipped it in the inkwell, and leaned over the woman on the table as the first two acolytes opened her clothes.  First he wrote the word 'beauty' in the middle of her chest.  Then he drew a series of dark marks around both of her breasts and injected the liquid into each one, refilling the syringe a number of times from the large bottle held by the third acolyte.  When this was done, the first two acolytes closed her clothes and the priest waved his flywhisk five times over her torso.  She got up, bowed to the statue, and bowed to the priest, who handed her a scroll just as before.  "What liquid is he using?" the man asked the acolyte standing beside him.  "That's the water of immortality.  Doctor Longevity collects it from those unfortunates who are unable to dream as powerfully as yourself.  Unlike them, you knew just where to find it," came the reply.

Among the young women who had been waiting, the man noticed one coming up to him.  It was his dear fox.  She smiled and handed him a camera.  "You're almost free," she whispered sweetly.  With a newfound sense of conviction, the man walked up to where the priest was operating on another customer and announced loudly, "I'm here to see the water of immortality.  Do you mind if I take a picture?"  Everyone stopped.  The priest turned to look at him.  "Pictures for the waking world?" he questioned incredulously.  "What, did you come here just to put us out of business?"  "Yes," the man answered.  There was a small sound as someone shifted position.  "Get him!" shrieked the priest to his acolytes.  Raising the camera, the man pointed it at the table and pressed the button as the acolytes ran at him.  There was a blinding flash.  He could hear screaming.  He could see the priest and his acolytes with their hands over their eyes.  The priest had dropped his inkbrush, which was writing by itself all over the floor, the table and the priest's and his acolytes' clothing.  The screaming was coming from the women standing after their operations.  The thick liquid was moving inside the first woman's face.  The other woman pressed both hands against her chest as though it were about to explode.  He could see the pain and terror in their expressions.  The statue began to move.

The man felt a tug on his hand.  It was the fox.  "Come quickly!" she said.  They ran for the door as the acolytes fell to the floor, prostrating themselves before the statue as it slowly strode forward, the long strings of beads dangling from its hat swaying with each heavy step.  "Judgement is coming," quipped the fox as they slipped down the hall.  Some of the young women followed them.  The man could hear shouting.  "Defend the temple!  Save the patients!  No photos!  No photos!"  The fox stopped.  Between them and the exit, a brawl had started.  At the door, an assortment of reporters had gathered with raised cameras, asking what was the matter, what all the noise was for.  A mass of acolytes blocked their passage.  Some had begun pushing and striking the visitors.  Others brandished large metal bars.  "This is what friends are for," commented the fox, pulling the man back the way they came.  Turning down another hallway, they stopped next to a large cloisonne pot emblazoned with fish swimming amid water lillies.  The fox whispered something to one of them, which began to move and open its mouth.  Where before the man had seen a pot, all he saw was water.  "Come closer!" the fox insisted, pulling him in.  The fish lifted its mouth up from the surface to swallow them.

When it spat them out, they were beside the pond, the temple entrance next to them.  The reporters were going, threatening the acolytes with what would happen after their reports had been read in heaven.  The fox smiled.  "The life that was stolen from you is yours again," she said.  "But there is one more thing I would ask of you.  You said you were willing to take a risk.  Are you still willing?"  The man nodded yes.  "Then you must go on without me.  If you stay, you will give away the life you have just regained.  I will never forget you."  She looked at him with Chinese eyes, the small mole under her nose as before.  He wanted to tell her he didn't care, that he would happily lose his life for her, that she meant everything to him, that she was truly beautiful, that he would live with her as a fox if she wanted, but before he spoke, she had already hopped in the water with the fish, which then swallowed her and dove to the darkness below.  Tears came to his eyes.  As he stood looking, the water froze over.  Snow began to fall.  His tears were hot, but everything else was cold, so cold.  The surface of the pond was gone.  He looked around.  He could not see where to go.  He began to shiver.  A terrible pain seized his limbs.  He wanted to call out to his beloved fox, but could not find his voice.  Then he fell over.  He realized he could no longer feel his body.  Only his eyes told him he was alive.  He was alone in an ocean of falling snow.  His eyes closed.

When he awoke, his pillow was wet.  He felt better.  The mirror his friend had given him lay next to his head.   On its surface was a thin layer of snow.  He sat in bed and held it as it melted.  Then he got up and returned to work.  Everyone felt that something in him had changed, but they could not quite say what it was.  Once, when his friends were discussing what they wanted a chance to do in their lives before they died, he said something none of them could understand.  He said dying was the best thing he had ever done, and that he was grateful he would be able to do it again.  His friends looked at one another.  The conversation moved on to another subject.