The Black Tulip Collection - By Juan José Vidal Wood by VLP_Agency

La colección de los tulipanes negros

Primera edición: 2018

ISBN: 9788417321109

ISBN eBook: 9788417483555

Impreso en España – Printed in Spain

Quedan prohibidos, dentro de los límites establecidos en la ley y bajo los apercibimientos legalmente previstos, la reproducción total o parcial de esta obra por cualquier medio o procedimiento, ya sea electrónico o mecánico, el tratamiento informático, el alquiler o cualquier otra forma de cesión de la obra sin la autorización previa y por escrito de los titulares del copyright. Diríjase a info@caligramaeditorial.com si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algún fragmento de esta obra.

When the widow of my old martial arts master asked me to write his biography, my nervous tic immediately went into action: my mouth went open and closed, open and closed. She asked me very directly, no small talk, as soon as I walked into her house in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. She caught me by surprise, and not thinking it through I just said yes right away. But if I had known the kind of trouble it would bring me, I would have very politely declined the invitation.

The old woman gave me some boxes, papers, and books, filled with material she thought might help inspire me to start writing. She was hoping for something that would stand the test of time, inspire new generations of martial artists. Somewhere deep down inside I knew I wasn’t the man for the job; it had been ten years since I had last seen Master Alfred Tang, but his widow just kept insisting that she trusted me. She asked me to come up with a draft in twelve months.

They found the body of Master Alfred Tang that was his English name: his Chinese name was Tang De on a hill where he often went walking. He appeared to have collapsed from a heart attack, but there was one thing about his death that seemed a bit odd: when they found him, he was clutching a black tulip in his right hand. Black tulips are not commonly found in Yunnan province.

In all the years I’ve lived in Asia, his was the only funeral I ever attended. I had to ask several people what was the right clothing for a funeral. In Chile, where I am from, if you use a black or navy suit, white shirt and dark tie you can be more or less sure of being acceptably dressed. So I consulted with several of my coworkers at my office in Shanghai, all of them Chinese, as well as with some of my more trusted clients. What, I asked, does one wear to a funeral in China?

The question took many of them aback, because death is not something people here like talking about. They have a kind of superstition about it; they believe that thinking about death could cause something bad to happen to you or someone in your family. But each person I asked dutifully gave me wardrobe advice. The options, as they laid them out, were as follows: (a) everyday clothing; (b) shorts and short-sleeve shirt (because it’s very hot in southern China); (c) traditional white silk suit with gold buttons; or (d) designer jeans, sneakers and polo shirt.

Actually, Master Tang would have probably loved it if we had all come to his funeral dressed in our martial arts uniforms That’s what we used to do whenever my training pals and I would go out to a restaurant with him. No matter what our level, we would always wear our belts. Finally I settled on a black suit, black shoes and white shirt.

The funeral was held at his house, which sat high up on a hill, surrounded by trees. Being July it was quite hot, over 34 degrees Celsius. I was the only foreigner, or rather the only westerner, present. Among the crowd I spotted a few other former students, from his schools in Malaysia and Thailand, familiar faces from my days training with him. A couple of men stood around smoking a very strong-smelling tobacco, and one of them offered me a cigarette, but I declined in Mandarin, explaining that I did a lot of sports. He looked at me for a moment, bewildered, probably thinking about how odd foreigners are, because in

CHINA

situations like this one, smoking was perfectly normal and acceptable, according to the unspoken rules of socializing in China.

Mrs. Tang passed me a few sticks of incense. Master Tang’s body had been laid out in a dark coffin, some three meters away from where we were standing. Two cushions had been placed on the ground for people to kneel on. Someone lit the incense in my hand, I knelt and began to bow my head in a gesture of respect. My two hands held tight to the incense sticks, which I raised up to my forehead. I tried to hold my breath, but suddenly, from somewhere deep inside my throat, the violent sound of a hiccup escaped my mouth. Again I tried not to breathe, and tried counting up to 15, but it was useless: by the time I hit 10, another hiccup disrupted my counting. In spite of this I tried to maintain a dignified stance, leaning forward three times as I had been told was part of this traditional ritual. Close to the coffin I placed the still-burning incense sticks in a large iron incense burner with sand at the bottom, so that they might continue smoldering. They joined hundreds of other, already burnt-out incense sticks. A pungent smell hung in the air.

I got up, and as I walked back over to the coffin, I let out another hiccup, this time silently, and I saw my master’s face. I had never told him why I had decided to give up traditional Tai chi chuan and Kung fu. One day I simply stopped calling him, stopped going around to his house. I knew he had asked some of the other students about what had happened to me, but the truth is I just never worked up the nerve to tell him that I no longer believed in what he was teaching me. The practice of traditional martial arts had served people well for many centuries, but with the twenty-first century well underway, it was time for change. There were so many techniques that were obsolete, pointless. For years I trained every day, practicing the different moves and positions that Master Tang taught us, but when I asked him if I would actually be able to defend myself in a real-life situation, he got angry at me. He told me I should trust, not ask so many questions, but accept.

“Everything will come to you,” he said, “when you face your enemy.”

In those days I was living in Chongqing, studying Mandarin at one of the universities in town. One night, my friends and I were out at a bar, having a farewell party for our friend Claudio, a Catholic seminarian from Colombia. Officially he was in China as a soccer coach, and he worked at a local high school, but he was about to leave for the United States to be ordained as a priest.

At the bar, my friends and I were enjoying ourselves, toasting to our future priest. For this purpose, several bottles of rum sat on the table, because rum was Claudio’s drink. As he himself often said, the Bible reads a whole lot better when accompanied by a dram of pure rum. Lots of friends and acquaintances turned up for the celebration, which went on until late into the night, and we all drank our fair share of the bottles that piled on the table. At some point, a man sitting at the table alongside ours, very clearly drunk, stood up and came over to us, and asked us what country we were from. I don’t know why, but each of us told him a different country than the one we were really from. I think I said Mexico, I don’t remember very well – we meant it all as a game, we were laughing, celebrating. The drunk man definitely didn’t catch on to the game and kept on asking us, one by one, where we were from until finally, Giovanna, a woman from Northern Italy with brown hair and very green eyes, said she was Japanese. Suddenly, the man’s face changed and he

began berating her, insulting her. It was hard to understand what he was saying, but I remember hearing him say something about the Nanjing Massacre and the Japanese invasion of China. Then, from one moment to the next, he turned on her and tried to strike her with his bare hand. I was sitting next to her, so I blocked his arm and in the process gave him a hard shove. Then, without missing a beat, the people at his table all stood up and began throwing glasses and bottles at us. All of this happened incredibly fast. We gathered our things and hurried out of the bar, but a man from the drunk guy’s table intercepted me, and tried to punch me. After a night of drinking, his movements were slow, and in that split-second I waited for that magic energy that was supposedly going to materialize from somewhere, the energy that would help to protect me. Nothing. The universe also did nothing to aid my situation. And so I resorted to something I had learned at the age of 16, in my first karate classes. Round kick, two hard jabs with the fist, front kick and two more jabs with the fist. That gave me and my Colombian friend enough time to get out of the bar, run like hell outside and jump into the first taxi we found. The rest of the group had already gotten themselves into taxis.

A few days later, back in the safety of the university campus, Giovanna’s boyfriend, a strapping Swedish guy, confronted me: “You Latin Americans are so violent. In Sweden we have always have trouble with the political asylees. A lot of the Chileans there are pickpockets, and they’re always with the very worst crowds.”

“But what did you want? For those guys to hit your girlfriend?”

“I didn’t see anybody try to hit her. That was your interpretation, I think you wanted to fight, and show off in front of her.”

My German friend, who had been listening to all this, couldn’t think of anything better to do than grab me by the elbow and tell me that violence doesn’t get you anywhere, that we could have fixed the situation by talking it over.

“But they were throwing bottles and glasses at us. All I was trying to do was defend Giovanna – and myself, for that matter. Between their muscles and those bottles they could have smashed us to pieces. We could be having this conversation in a hospital, with a bunch of broken teeth between us. But you know what? Váyanse a la mierda, both of you.” I couldn’t help saying that last bit in Spanish, I’ve always found that those kinds of things come out best in your own language, more powerful, more cutting.

I saw Giovanna’s Swedish boyfriend a couple more times, but from a distance. We didn’t even bother to wave.

After that incident, I went to see Master Tang one last time. I told him what had happened to me, and he just looked at me, surprised because I hadn’t used energetic defense, chi, or another of the age-old techniques that he had taught me. That was when it hit me, like the proverbial bucket of cold water that made me finally wake up. I looked around me, at all the other instructors and students, and I realized that their belts had never really been put to the test. We existed in a totally theoretical practice—there was no real combat, no real opponent to confront and contend with.

It took me a while to reach the conclusion that my “master” was a man just like any other. For years I had idolized him, placed him on a pedestal. But I came to see that his ego had been his real enemy, because it kept him from making any changes to his teaching that might have been worthwhile. He had schools in many different countries, his business was booming, the students were paying, he was famous so why change anything?

His body was covered in a large swath of white silk. The skin on his face was incredibly white from the makeup that had been applied, and his lips had been painted a pale shade of pink. His eyelashes had been retouched, as well, and his hair was perfectly combed. Then, as another hiccup interrupted my train of thought, I suddenly remembered my grandmother’s home remedy for getting rid of them: a glass of freshly-squeezed lemon juice with honey. I walked over to Master Tang’s widow and, in a very solemn, respectful tone of voice, I asked her for a glass of lemon juice.

I stayed over at the Tangs’ home that night. The cremation ceremony was set to take place early the next day, and Mrs. Tang’s daughter told me that a Buddhist monk had just arrived at the house; he would be guiding the cremation process. Technically speaking, the Confucian religion prohibits cremation, but with the arrival of Communismin 1949 it became more common in China largely because of public health issues.

The monk and two assistants assembled a funeral pyre with a stack of neatly-cut firewood, all the logs exactly the same length and width. The men laid them out to form the structure into which we would deposit Master Tang’s body. Mrs. Tang had dressed her husband in his finest martial arts uniform: white jacket and pants, accented at the waist by a gold belt with ten lines, which meant that he was a tenth dan, the very highest rank awarded in the traditional Chinese martial arts. After 9am, more people began to arrive his most devoted students, local authorities, and an assortment of other people. Gathered around the coffin were Peter, his one son; Master Tang’s nephew, known by everyone as “Soldier;” and some of his closest friends. Together, they lifted the coffin and deposited it on the wooden pyre. Everyone present gathered around, and the monk began chanting a mantra in a deep, low voice, repeating an incantation over and over again. He took a blanket with gold embroidery and covered Master Tang’s body with it. Then he set the wood on fire. As we all watched the flames flicker and grow, I thought back to the moments I had shared with him in the early days, when I first started coming around to his house. I still remembered the awe I felt for him; all I wanted was to train with him, to be accepted as his student. On those visits we would take his dogs on long walks through the woods, and he would give me advice, usually practical sometimes almost too practical, about making a living, earning money, that kind of thing. The flames on the pyre grew wilder and smoke began billowing out. And despite the fact that it had been several years since I had stopped calling him, stopped training with him, I felt a pang of grief, probably because I hadn’t said goodbye to him. I hadn’t been able to tell him how grateful

I was to have known him, because he had helped me to fulfill my dream of practicing martial arts in China. I had left my country and my family behind on account of that dream which, over the course of time, changed and transformed into new dreams and experiences: I met my wife, we had children. Over fifteen years ago in the Santiago airport, if you had told me how radically the course of my life would change, I never would have believed it.

“Thank you, Master. For everything,” I whispered, as the flames crackled in the wind.

3. That night Mrs. Tang invited a small group of us to dinner at her home. The round dining table was made of wood, with a large, rotating glass plate in the middle that you could spin to get the dishes you wanted. We were fifteen, and before sitting us down, Mrs. Tang introduced me around. Everyone except for me was Asian, and I recognized almost everyone there, because we had all trained together with Master Tang. The only two people I didn’t know came over to me and gave their calling cards, cradling them in two hands, as a sign of respect. I took out my own card and did the same, as is the custom in China.

“You work for a piano manufacturer?” asked one of the men. Large curls of black permed hair fell onto his forehead, giving him the air of a second-rate movie star from the 1980s.

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s a relatively new brand on the market. We’ve got two plants, one in Europe and another one here in China.”

“And how are sales?” he asked.

“In general quite good. We’ve gotten a lot of demand from middle class Chinese families that want their children to master an instrument. Some of these parents will pay whatever it takes to give them instruments and classes; they really want their kids to learn.”

“But Mrs. Tang told me that you’re a lawyer, isn’t that right?” asked the other man who had also approached me. He was short, and the buttons on his suit looked ready to pop at any moment from the pressure of his huge belly.

“Yes, well, my professional degree is in law, but I don’t work as a lawyer. I reinvented myself in China,” I explained, with a smile.

“As a tax lawyer you could have made plenty of money, certainly there’s more security in that,” the curly-haired man said.

I was about to respond, but the man with the big belly started talking before I could speak up.

“Every Sunday I take my granddaughter to her violin lessons, but of course I don’t know if she’ll ever earn a living at it. It’s a difficult life, the competition is fierce, but I just tell her to keep at it, there’s nothing like playing an instrument. But Lucas, don’t worry, don’t pay attention to what this man says. He’s got the sensitivity of a rock. The only time I’ve ever seen him get emotional is when the stocks go up and down on the Hong Kong market.”

“Excuse me!” exclaimed the curly-haired man. “I happen to be a very sensitive person. Yes, the stock market excites me but so do other things - like touching the leather upholstery of a Ferrari…” As he trailed off he let out a little cackle.

“You are incorrigible, my friend. One day you must come with me to the opera.”

“The best music I know of is the hum of a motor car or motorcycle, whichever you choose.”

“Well, no matter. In any case, at the end of the year, do expect an invitation from me to my granddaughter’s recital. She plays in a quartet. I think they’re preparing something by Schubert. And I won’t accept no for an answer it’s my granddaughter we’re talking about.”

“All right, all right, all right,” the man with the curls said. “I’ll just drink enough coffee to keep from falling asleep and snoring.”

“If you snore, my friend, I will put a hot spice directly in your open mouth.”

The two men laughed. Clearly, they had been friends for a very long time; they had that kind of complicity. In my head I had a series of clichés about music and art all ready to go, as I always did whenever I was facing a particularly difficult sale. You know, things like “music is good for the soul,” “where would humankind be without beauty?”, things like that. I knew they were just clichés like those throwaway phrases you hear in between songs on the radio, chirped by the radio announcer on shift, so banal yet repeated so often that they just become part of the fabric of everyday life. I didn’t know what else to say; as the years have gone by I’ve come to realize that I am not particularly clever. I should have responded with a little bit of humor, or maybe a poem by Nicanor Parra, or Ernesto Cardenal. But I couldn’t remember a single one. After a long, uncomfortable silence I mumbled something about houses without books and music are houses without life.

Curlyhead looked over at Big Belly. Then they both turned to look at me, and in unison started to laugh.

“We’ve got a real Confucius on our hands here,” the guy with curly hair said, giving me a hug. “Enough with the theories,” he said. “Let’s sit down and get something to eat.”

The food began to arrive at the table. According to custom, there must always be more dishes than guests at a table. Mrs. Tang told us that on this night she would only serve local dishes, with the exception of Hong shao rou, a soft underbelly of pork with a layer of fat on top, sliced in rectangular pieces and topped with a thick sweet sauce. Any cardiologist would advise against this dish on principle alone. But I adore it, and so did Mao Zedong, in fact. My neighbor scooped out a huge spoonful of rice from inside a pineapple, along with almonds, walnuts and vegetables. There was a whole fish cooked with mushrooms, and bottles Baijiu, a slightly sweet traditional Chinese liquor, normally over 500 proof, were on the table.

The parade of dishes continued: long strips of steamed bamboo, fried lettuce with ginger and tea, potato purée with red pepper and onions, little rice cakes. In a loud voice Mrs. Tang announced one of the house specialties, known as “noodles crossing the bridge,” which consisted of noodles cooked in chicken broth with pork, vegetables and mixed spices, and there were two tofu dishes with two different sauces, and something that struck me as totally out of place: goat cheese. I asked Mrs. Tang about it and she said that it was actually very typical in Yunnan province. Each place setting had a little teacup with Pu-erh tea, a very pungent, dark tea, also native to Yunnan. They say it helps purify the organism.

At some point beer was also brought out; I didn’t recognize the brand and assumed it was local. One of the guests, a man with a large head and military-style cut, the head of Master Tang’s martial arts academy in Malaysia, took out two more bottles of Baijiu.

“I raise this drink in honor of our great master Alfred Tang,” he proclaimed. I was suddenly reminded of the many drunken nights I’d lived through on account of Baijiu. It burns as it slides down your throat. Even just a small shot is enough to give you a punch in the stomach, and the hangover is deadly. At the table, the effect of the flowing alcohol combined with the many simultaneous conversations going on raised the noise level considerably.

“To our master!” everyone shouted. “Ganbei!” (“bottoms up”).

Conversations went on: some people talked about the dismal state of the Chinese national football league and its football teams in general, others gossiped about the sex life of a famous ping-pong player who was less than 1,7 meters tall, and his two-meter tall girlfriend, who played for the Chinese national volleyball team. Can you imagine what those two are like in bed?, one of my companions asked me, laughing. The girlfriend in question was an athletic woman with huge, thick thighs too much woman for me, said someone at the table, and everyone laughed. It’s funny, the atmosphere wasn’t melancholy at all. The opposite, I’d say: it was a meal that could have been taking place with anyone, anywhere, in any city, where people gather to eat, talk, and drink. We were of course still in pain over our loss, but there was a kind of joy at the table, too. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the fact that almost everyone had known each other for years; it felt like a real family.

Nonetheless, my mind kept wandering back to the same question: why clutching a black tulip when they found him? I knew he liked walking in the hills, gazing at the trees and the foliage. But clutching that flower seemed kind of odd; he wasn’t particularly interested in flowers. Maybe it was a poetic act, but I had known him as a practical man, he wasn’t a literary kind of person.

Mrs. Tang got up, her face red from the alcohol she had been drinking. This always happens to Chinese people, and Asians in general, when they drink: they get red. It’s said to be a reaction in their pigmentation. I always forget to ask if that’s really true.

“I would like to dedicate two Ganbei,” she announced. “Firstly to my husband, who devoted his life to the traditional Chinese martial arts, and through them cultivated the use of energy and developed methods of healing. Next month, a medical journal in Singapore will be coming out with an article about how to cure depression by practicing Tai chi chuan. Ganbei!” she cried.

Everyone downed their glasses of Baijiu.

“The second Ganbei is to tell you all that I have decided to move to the United States, to live with my sister in New York. Mr. Zhang, who is here with us tonight, has made me a very good offer to buy this house, and for that I am grateful, Mr. Zhang. It goes without saying that I will be delighted to receive you all in the United States, so ... Ganbei!” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

I looked around me, trying to gauge the others’ reactions to this news; I was somewhat startled that she had made such a fast decision to sell everything and go to the US. Her husband had been dead for just three days.

Master Tang’s daughter, Elizabeth, was also at the table. She had been living for some time in England, and worked at an architecture firm. Her clothes were exceedingly modern, and she had short black hair and alabaster skin. She was very attractive. At her side was her brother Peter, a computer programmer who lived in Singapore. Peter looked and dressed more like an academic researcher; he was the farthest thing imaginable from an athlete. Master Tang had only had two children, although people said that he had another child from an affair in Hong Kong many years earlier, but they were only rumors. Was I to include that sort of information in the biography? That kind of rumor? It would be incredible if I could track down his lover. His illegitimate son might be entitled to some portion of the inheritance particularly the Tang International School of Traditional Martial Arts, which had locations in several countries in Asia, Europe, South America and the US. Someone at the table mentioned that, all told, the school had over 20,000 students. For this reason, I think, one of the questions that nobody dared ask was who was going to become the new leader of all these schools. From the outside, at least, it looked like an extremely prosperous business. His daughter Elizabeth was clearly uninterested, and his son Peter had not made a name for himself in the world of martial arts.

After the toasts ended we all rose from the table and walked outside, to an ample lawn with carefully-tended flowers. You could hear the crickets chirping. The Tang home was in the outskirts of the city of Kunming, on a hill surrounded by eucalyptus trees. Mrs. Tang walked over to me and asked me if I wanted to take any of the books in her husband’s library.

“Take what you want, Lucas,” she said. “I’m going to try to sell those books, and whatever I don’t sell I’ll just burn.”

“But Mrs. Tang! What do you mean, burn them? I’m sorry but those are valuable books.”

“Sentimental value, Lucas. But I can’t take them with me. Maybe you can get some money for them. That’s why I’m telling you – take what you want, I know how much you like to read.”

“Well, all right. I’ll go over to the library right now,” I said.

The image of a great bonfire of books was like a slap in the face, and it suddenly woke me up from my alcohol-induced haze. Unless it was absolutely necessary for survival, and a bonfire was the only way to keep from freezing to death, burning books felt like a terribly violent thing to do, for it meant burning knowledge, history, lives. Dictatorships burn books. I wondered what would my father have said; my father, who had cared for his books by making little plastic jackets for them, to protect them, so they would last longer. For him even jotting down notes in books was an unspeakable crime.

It was a beautiful midsummer night. Some of the other guests lingered on, smoking, while others brought out more bottles of Baijiu, and continued drinking under the stars. We were all milling about outside, when at some point Mr. Tang’s nephew Chris, the one they called the Soldier, came over to where I was. He had been in the army for several years, and you

could tell; if I had to pick an animal to represent Chris it would definitely be the tiger. He was tall, with an athletic build and was well trained in Sanda, a martial discipline that combines punches and kicks as well as takedown techniques. Chris had been a Chinese national champion in Sanda, and had won a number of competitions in Asia. He also had experience in traditional Chinese martial arts, which Mr. Tang had started teaching him when he was a child.

“I heard that our master was teaching you Tuishou,” the Soldier said in a low voice to Peter, Mr. Tang’s son. “Alcohol makes you more relaxed, that’s good for Tuishou. Why don’t you show us some of those techniques you learned? Let’s have a little contest, just between us cousins,” the Soldier proposed, with a serious look in his eyes.

Tuishou is a traditional form of combat in which two opponents make contact through their arms or hands. One of the main objectives is to defeat your opponent by creating an advantage with your own position and destabilizing that of your opponent. Some people say that the purest form of Tuishou is when you flow with the energy of your opponent, and for this your body, arms, and legs must be relaxed.

Peter placed his right leg forward, poised for combat. The Soldier took a small step forward and stretched his arms. For a few silent moments, the two men looked into each other’s eyes. Everyone was silent. Without another word, the two men’s arms made contact. In slow-motion they began moving in circles, without force or violence of any kind. Their hands and arms seemed like one, united, as if everything was totally coordinated.

“Not bad, cousin, pretty good technique,” the Soldier said, with a smirk. Then, all of a sudden, he advanced with his right leg, landing his knee squarely in Peter’s thigh. Disoriented by the surprise attack, Peter failed to anticipate the Soldier’s next move, a blow to the mouth.

“Whatever you learned might work in a tournament, but on the street it won’t get you anywhere. Your practice is all right for the old men in the square,” the Soldier sneered at Peter.

“But Tuishou is about exchanging energy, it’s about knowing yourself and another person. It’s an exercise that can help make you a better human being. Connect with someone else. It’s a mental path, for achieving spirituality and peace. What’s more important than that? I don’t care about self-defense or fighting in the street,” Peter replied, as he touched the side of his mouth that had been hit.

“Well, then, become an alternative medicine guru, do Qigong, but stay away from martial arts. Come on, let’s have another go at it, another round of Tuishou,” the Soldier said, still full of energy.

This time, as the men faced each other, you could feel the tension between them; their breathing was heavier now. Once again, Peter stepped forward with his right leg and stretched out his arms. The Soldier, however, remained with his feet and legs positioned in parallel, stretching out only his arms to make contact. Peter tried to relax his shoulders and just as he stepped forward, the Soldier yanked his cousin’s arm with his left hand, pushed him to the ground and sharply elbowed Peter in the nose. Then, with both hands, he took one of Peter’s legs, lifted him up into the air like a rag doll, and then let him fall with a loud thud.

“This is the future,” the Soldier said as Peter writhed in pain on the ground, touching his nose, which was probably broken. “Martial arts combined with modern combat techniques.”

The blood flowed from Peter’s nose as he struggled to sit up. I could see him in profile and saw that the nose was not in its normal position. Mrs. Tang rushed over to him.

“All right, soldier, enough is enough,” she said. “You’ve shown us all how strong you are, you’ve pushed my son to the ground to prove it. You’ve made your point, you’re the stronger one, what more do you want?”

“Good question. What I want is to be the director of the Tang International School of Traditional Martial Arts. I believe I am the only person capable of assuming the role.”

“Well, that matter has already been settled. My husband, with his board of directors, made that decision some time ago. I was hoping to announce the news tomorrow, but it’s fine, I’ll do it now. We have decided that the martial arts instructor Phillip Armstrong will assume the directorship of the school. He has done an outstanding job as the head of our United States school. He’s seasoned, he’s a hard worker, he has a black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan, but most of all he is a man who embodies the values we have cultivated and wish to communicate to the world.”

“But he isn’t family. The school has to be run by someone from the family. Why would you give it to a foreigner? Someone who doesn’t share our last name?”

“That’s exactly the point we need to open ourselves up to new possibilities, focus on the school’s objectives, strategy, study methods, and the curriculum, in terms of martial arts and health, too. You’ll be on the board that decides all of that. But the worldwide director will be Phillip Armstrong,” said Mrs. Tang, looking him in the eye.

“Well, I think you’ve made the wrong decision. And I’m not interested in being part of the school in that capacity,” replied the Soldier, who turned and began walking away, but not before going over to his cousin and offering to fix his nose.

“I think it’s broken,” Peter said.

“Well, considering how much that must hurt right now,” said the Soldier, “with all that blood, now would be an interesting time to talk about spirituality and all those things you like so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“The path of martial arts is filled with suffering, injury, fear. Your problem is that you’ve always focused on spirituality as something theoretical, removed from real life. Are you feeling any of that peace or harmony right now? At this moment you’re focused on the blood, on the pain that’s growing larger inside of your nose, on not being able to breathe, on having to breathe through your mouth, full of saliva and blood. If you can somehow manage to feel spirituality through all that, I would sign up to be your student in a heartbeat. Now do you want me to fix your nose or not?”

“All right.”

The Soldier knelt down, took Peter’s hand and began to give it a kind of massage. As the minutes passed their breathing fell into rhythm. First, the Soldier began to slow down his inhaling, every breath longer and longer, letting more and more time pass between each inhalation, and Peter did the same. They closed their eyes, I don’t remember for how long, and with his left hand the Soldier continued to massage Peter’s hand. With his right hand, he took Peter’s nose and in a few swift, confident motions, set it back in place, exactly as it had been before the fight. Then he took out a handkerchief and wiped the blood off his cousin’s face.

“You’ll be as good as new in a week,” he said, and walked away.

SHANGHAI 1

My return to Shanghai was uneventful, except for the excess baggage fee I had to pay for bringing back so many kilos of books, boxes and papers that had belonged to Master Tang. My apartment was empty. My wife and children were enjoying their summer vacation in France visiting my in-laws, taking advantage of the time off from school. My refrigerator was bare, so I ordered a pizza with anchovies. That’s always a controversial pizza order: some people despise anchovies on their pizza, others adore it; I’m in the latter group and, since I was alone, this was my moment. I thought about putting on a movie, the kind I can never watch when the family is all here a Bruce Lee marathon, maybe. He ismy idol. But no, I had to be disciplined, I had to start working on this biography, or at least create some kind of order out of those three boxes Mrs. Tang had given me. So I went over to my desk, piled up all the material, and opened the first box. Inside was a bundle of papers, some of them white, others more cream-colored, yellowing from the passage of time. Most of them were in English, but some had Chinese characters. On the first pages I found drawings of the human body done in graphite pencil. In one of the margins there was a detailed explanation of howqi, (energy) works on each part of the human body, and how that energy might flow through an arm, both internally and externally, at the same time. There were footnotes with more details, about how the circulation of qi could prevent illness and even heal wounds. After that came a number of pages with stories of real-life cases that Master Tang had treated. For one of them, involving tendinitis in the arm, he had written a description of the injury, characteristics of the patient, and treatment, which consisted of daily Tai chi chuan practice, Qigong exercises as well as acupuncture for unblocking his pathways. There were other case studies, of patients with things like sleep disorders, depression, and other ailments. One told the story of a man who had had his meniscus operated on, and the rehabilitation of his knee had improved tremendously thanks to the exercises Master Alfred had given him. Maybe, I thought, I could include a chapter in the biography about his experiences treating and healing people. I could devote another chapter to his years as a movie star in Hong Kong in the sixties and seventies he had appeared in a number of martial arts movies, and had also served as a choreography consultant for fight scenes in Hollywood movies.

I opened the second box, which was full of photos, about forty in all. Some were black and white, others in color. The first one was of Master Tang as a young man, with a group of students. Another photo showed him in a boat; in the background you could make out Victoria Peak, the highest in Hong Kong. I doubted that Mrs. Tang would allow me to delve into the more private aspects of her husband’s life. I knew, for example, that he loved to sit close up to the television as he watched the news, and that he picked his nose with his index finger and then stuckhis findings under his chair. I caught him many times doing that. I remember, too, all the times he would fart right in the middle of a meal because he refused to hold in gas. Bad for the intestines, he said, quite seriously and I agree with him. Those kinds of details might make for a more intimate, human biography, but from the sense she gave me, Mrs. Tang wanted a more idealized image, so that he might be remembered as just that an idol.

The third box contained books, four to be exact: the anonymous I Ching, or Book of Changes; The Art of War, by Sun Tzu; Confucius’ Analects, and the diary of Mateo Ricci, from 1583 to 1610.

What kind of connection could exist between a bunch of old black-and-white photos of Master Tang and The Art of War? Perhaps he had started losing his mind a bit over the past few months, and just tossed all his memories into these boxes. I opened the I Ching, an old, well-worn edition published in Havana, Cuba. It was bilingual, Spanish-Mandarin, which was odd; Master Tang didn’t speak Spanish. A few pages were marked up with little hand-drawn triangles; some them were drawn in black ink, and on other pages the triangles were upside down.

On the first page I found a dedication written in English:

“May the black tulips live on.”

Just then, I moved rather clumsily and knocked over a cup of tea sitting on my desk. I collected the papers as fast as I could, but the bottom of one of the boxes ended up getting soaked. As I turned it over quickly, to keep the papers from getting wet, a bunch of things tumbled out: first some dust, then a dead spider and then, a tiny journal with a dark brown leather cover. I opened it, and on the first page was a paragraph written in green ink. I assumed they were Master Tang’s words. This is what it said:

After dedicating my life to the martial arts, and very possibly reaching the end of that life, I have asked myself time and again why I have devoted myself to this practice. I must admit that there was a question of ego. I did seek fame and money, yes, but that wasn’t the real path. I believe I dedicated my life to the martial arts in order to heal myself from the fears that tormented me. There was a time when my life was full of excess, but the possibility of returning to the path, of training, was always there waiting for me. And it gave order to my life, to my eating, my sleeping. My friend Bruce Lee was right when he said that ‘the medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning’. I believe he was talking about the path of the martial arts, because that is what has also helped me to go on.

The tone of his words surprised me. Master Tang had always been so pragmatic, so categorical when it came to taking action, making decisions. I never would have imagined this kind of existential doubt. He loved to laugh at the silliest things; he had an almost childish sense of humor. When anyone went to him with a real life problem, he would respond with a curt, practical solution and then change the subject. The first time I went to see him at his house in Kunming, for example, I told him I was a lawyer but didn’t want to go on working at a law firm. I was very confused about my life, my future. He looked at me and told me I had to have some form of income, no matter what: as a banker, a trader, whatever. And then he said to me, this time what I am going to tell you is free. But the next time you come, you’re going to have to pay for the week of training, which includes meals, lodging and 8 hours of martial arts practice. And for that you have to have a job, so that you can pay for my classes. I could let you take them for free, but I wouldn’t really be doing you a favor, he said.

At that, he got up and invited me in to watch television with him. As I write this now, I realize that that was exactly what I needed at that moment: down-to-earth, practical advice.

On the following page in the journal, there was another drawing, of a big library. It had been done in black pencil, with perspective, which made the library look as if it went on forever and forever, with the books growing tinier and tinier. Some of them had been colored in red, yellow, green. Had Master Alfred Tang drawn it? I had no knowledge of him being such a talented illustrator. For a moment or two I sat there staring at the drawing; all those contrasting colors gave it a special kind of beauty. Then I started to flip through the rest of the journal: it was full of random phrases, some in Latin, others in Italian and English. On one page I found a little picture pasted in, of two missionaries, with the word “Ricci” written underneath. I googled the name and found various notable people. Most definitely he was not referring to the footballer who played for a club in southern Italy. Nor was he an Argentine trumpet player. This has to be the picture of the sixteenth century Italian missionary, Mateo Ricci.

I decided to call Master Tang’s daughter, who I had seen at the funeral, to find out if she knew anything about the things that I had found.

I dialed an English mobile phone number.

“Hello, Elizabeth? This is Lucas. Are you still in China with your mother?” I asked.

“Hello!” she replied. “Yes, well, we’re settling a few things but if all goes according to plan I’ll be leaving for England by the weekend. What’s the matter? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. I don’t know if your mother told you, she gave me a few boxes that belonged to your father, because she asked me to write his biography.”

“Yes, she told me. How is that going? Have you gotten started?”

“Well, there’s a lot of material, loose papers and things, but I found a little notebook, with a leather dust jacket. On the inside there’s drawing, of an incredible, endless library, and a picture of the Italian missionary Mateo Ricci. And some phrases in different

languages. On the last page of the journal there’s a tiny map of China, from the seventeenth century. Would you have any idea what this might all be about?”

There was a long silence from Elizabeth’s end. For a moment I thought she had hung up.

“Elizabeth? Are you still there? I can’t hear ”

“I’m here, yes, I’m sorry. I thought my father had burned that little journal. What did you say? You found it in one of the boxes?”

“Yes, at the bottom of one of them. Why would your father have wanted to burn it?”

“Oh, because he was just obsessed with it, his entire life. For a long time he had been consumed with anguish because he couldn’t find it.”

“But why? It mattered that much to him?”

“Listen, that little book you found contains my father’s research into the topic of the black tulips. My father was convinced that they really existed. But he was practically the only person who thought so.”

“Could you please explain this to me? What on earth are the black tulips?”

“It’s believe to be a collection of anonymous books. I grew up hearing my father tell this story. He was sure that they had been stored, hidden somewhere in China. My mother, would always tell him to stop wasting his time, that they were a myth, a fantasy, and that all they did was distract him from his work as a martial artist.”

“Did anyone ever find these books?”

“I actually don’t know, to tell you the truth. But hang on, I have an idea: let me call you back in about an hour my father had a friend who was also obsessed with those books, and I can give you his number. How would that be?”

“That would be fantastic. I’ll wait for your call.”

Elizabeth kept her word. Exactly one hour later she called me back and gave me the name and number of her father’s friend, who was a professor in Shanghai.

I called the professor and we agreed to meet the next day at 7pm, at a restaurant that specialized in Shanghainese cuisine.

When I arrived, at 6:59pm on the dot, the waiter led me to a table where the professor was already waiting for me. We shook hands and right away exchanged cards. He studied mine and began reading out loud:

“Lucas Vascones, sales manager at Musical Enterprise Limited for China and Hong Kong. You sell pianos?” he asked.

“That’s right. I work in the sales department of a French-Chinese company that manufactures pianos,” I said.

Next, I took a look at the card he had given me. Professor Yang, of the faculty of history and philosophy at Fudan University, Shanghai. He was a thin man, short, somewhere between sixty and seventy years old, and he used big coke-bottle eyeglasses. His face was pocked with little scars, little holes that were probably the scars of an acne-ridden youth.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation to dinner,” I said. “I know you must be very busy.” He peered at me through his thick lenses and nodded his head, ever so slightly.

“Elizabeth told me that you were a friend of her father’s, is that right?” I asked.

“Yes. To be more precise, we shared a passion for Chinese philosophy, and for certain classic texts in particular.”

“How fascinating. I understand that both you and Master Tang were very intrigued by the idea of locating the library of the black tulips.”

All of a sudden the professor seemed uncomfortable. He looked left and right, and began fidgeting in his chair, as if searching for a better position. In a dry voice he said, “I have to ask you to please be very careful when you talk about this.”

“If you’d like we can move to a private room.”

“Please, if you don’t mind.”

The restaurant manager swooped in and set us up a small private room that we would have to pay a surcharge to use. We sat down and ordered a few dishes. Once the waiter finished taking our order he left, and without looking me in the eye the professor asked me what I really knew.

“I don’t know anything. Master Tang’s widow gave me some boxes so that I could get started researching his biography. In the boxes I found a little journal filled with notes, there was a drawing of an incredible library and an image of the Jesuit priest Mateo Ricci.”

“I don’t know if I should believe you, but you’ve come on Mrs. Tang’s recommendation, so I am going to assume you’re telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I’m just surprised that Master Tang would have left the instruction to give you those boxes with all that information. But I suppose he trusted you.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m surprised myself. I stopped training with him a long time ago the last time I’d seen him was over ten years ago. Maybe there were very few people he trusted, and since I have no relationship to his circle of friends...”

“He must have had a good reason. I think that by the end, in the last years of his life, he had stopped trusting people. I would even say that he became something of a hermit. Everyone in his inner circle wanted something from him: money, contacts, or some kind of involvement in the martial arts school. Now that I think about it, that’s probably why he chose you, because you’re so removed from that world of power. Well, anyway, let’s move on, get down to specifics. Firstly, we’re not talking about a library, it’s a book collection.”

“What kind of collection?”

“Mateo Ricci died in Beijing in 1610. Now, you know who Mateo Ricci was, correct?”

“I read a bit about him just today, on the Internet.”

“Let’s start with some historical background,” he said, now in a more professorial tone. “In 1582, a Jesuit missionary named Mateo Ricci arrived in China, to the port of Macau. The Catholic church had sent a group of missionaries to spread the Christian faith in Asia. Ricci began by learning the local language and studying classic Chinese texts and Confucianism. Now, at the time China was a very sophisticated culture but also very closed as a nation. Its authorities believed China was the center of the world, and both neighbors and foreigners were regarded as barbarians. Slowly but surely, Ricci created a space for himself in that Chinese society. He put together the first Portuguese-Mandarin dictionary, created a map of the region, and brought knowledge of astronomy, algebra, and western sciences to China. His influence grew as the years went by, and eventually he gained access to the Ming dynasty’s Imperial Court in Beijing. Several prominent Chinese officials even converted to Christianity because of Ricci’s influence. At some point after

1600, Mateo Ricci received an invitation to start a Jesuit mission in Henan province. He sent a delegation of missionaries there, and they settled in several villages in the province.”

“Is this all true? Did all this really happen?” I asked.

“Yes, all true. You’ll find the information in any book on Asian or European history. Mateo Ricci was a key figure in the evangelization of Christianity in China.” He paused for a moment before going on. “As I was saying, the missionaries were scattered across several different provinces. Many of them began to learn and speak fluent Mandarin, the official language, as well as other, more local dialects. Following Mateo Ricci’s footsteps, they studied Confucianism, Buddhism, even Taoism, most of all to use some concepts from those traditions to help teach the Christian word.”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Professor, but it couldn’t have been very popular in the Catholic realm of those days to borrow concepts from other religions in order to teach Christian beliefs, or was it?”

“No, not at all. That was where Ricci’s problems began, because when he arrived in China, the relationship between missionaries and locals was one of equals. Nobody was superior to anyone else, and those two worlds, the eastern and the western, respected each other, even though the Chinese empire regarded these foreigners as barbarians. But they were barbarians who, in some way, aspired to learn this age-old culture of theirs. In point of fact, the Jesuits actually brought some important mathematical and astronomical concepts, different theories and experiences, to China. It was an age of incredible cultural and intellectual exchange.”

“But the missionaries’ objective was to fulfill their Christian mission, wasn’t it? To teach the word of Christ?”

“What would you say if I told you,” said the professor with a smile, “That these priests, in addition to their missionary work, also healed people?”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘heal’?”

“Well, according to certain written sources, the missionaries acted as healers.””

“The Catholic missionaries were healers?”

“That’s right. There are documents that describe how certain priests supported and tried to cure students, psychologically and sometimes physically, when they failed to pass China’s legendary civil service exam. Such a failure would often plunge young men into depression and sometimes even suicide.”

“I could be wrong but I don’t think that healing is in line with the objectives of a missionary.”

“One of the objectives of those missions was to heal, because when you break a leg obviously you need to see a doctor. Obviously that is an act of healing, correct? Well what do you think happened to these young people who failed their exams, the ones who became deeply depressed? Is helping them less important than the help a doctor gives someone who has fractured a leg? Are you a Christian?”

“That’s a hard question to answer, the truth is I haven’t gone to mass in a long time, I’m not a very exemplary follower of the faith.”

“But were you raised as a Christian?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then according to what you learned as a child, couldn’t faith in God be construed as a kind of belief in something supernatural? Something that will help you and give you strength to move forward? To find some form of peace? Well, I believe that that peace is one of the objectives of healing.”

“Hmm…I do see your point. But did the church accept those acts of healing?”

“Well, do remember, we are talking about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inquisition was still alive and well in Europe, and apparently certain acts were accepted for example, acts of healing in the name of Christianity. But there were other acts that were not accepted, and those were kept secret. So, when the Jesuits would write about them in their journals and diaries, they did so with false names, and in languages like Portuguese and Italian rather than Latin.”

“What other kinds of acts are you talking about, exactly?”

“Everything relating to exorcism, for example, was carried out in utter secrecy, even though they were done in the name of God. Unfortunately, Ricci died in 1610 in Beijing, and all his writing, all the diaries and records he kept of the missionaries’ experiences in China remained in his private office.”

“And? What happened to them?”

“After Ricci’s death, the priest Nicholas Trigault brought the documents he found back to Italy but only the ones that were in line with the Vatican’s teachings. He translated some of the documents, and Ricci’s travel writings, into Latin.”

“What do you mean ‘the documents he found’? Did some of the diaries and other accounts get stolen?”

“This is where the speculation begins. There are a lot of theories about that. My theory, which very few people share, is that all the information that wasn’t in line with Rome was kept locked away in the home of a prominent figure in the Ming court, someone who had converted to Catholicism. This official’s home would have served as a kind of safe house for books and other writing. On the other hand, there was also a small group of Chinese officials who knew what was going on in other places like Japan, India and Southeast Asia. Meaning, they had access to other experiences in the region, and some books and writings were accepted and protected.”

“Protected from whom? From some group? From the Inquisition?”

The professor laughed at my comment, as if touched by my ignorance.

“Lucas, the problem isn’t groups, or theories of power, or conspiracies, even though I know they are so popular these days. The problem is one of simple human greed. How many works of art have been stolen, just to be sold to the highest bidder? How many books have been snatched from libraries and served up as paybacks to political authorities, military officers, or other powerful figures? I’ve never believed in conspiracy theories the real issue is avarice, envy, wrath, resentment. That’s why I think that this official took the risk of protecting Mateo Ricci’s books.”

Suddenly he fell silent. Maybe he realized he was telling me too much. His eyes were now looking intently at something, I didn’t know what. After a few more moments, he told me that he had spent his entire life searching for that collection of books.

“As you can see,” he said, still looking off into the distance, “my quest has not been very fruitful. The opposite, I’d say. It’s been more or less a failure, but I always keep thinking

that just around the corner, a bit of luck might come my way. Mrs. Tang told me that I could trust you. So, if you have the time, why don’t you come to my house for a visit tomorrow? I have something I want to show you.” 3

Professor Yang’s house was in Puxi, a neighborhood in the old French concession of Shanghai. It was in a passage with houses, all built by a French architect in the 1930s. As I walked through the front door, I felt as if I were entering another world: on the walls hung photographs and paintings, images of a bygone China. He invited me up to the second floor, and the narrow, wooden staircase creaked as we ascended. We entered his study where, resting against one of the walls, was a large white screen. The professor turned on an old projector that was set up on his desk, and we sat down on two very traditional, nineteenth century wooden chairs. After a moment or two, images began to appear on the screen. First, a very young Master Tang exhibiting some martial arts movements, chops in the air, round kicks. I’d never seen him so agile, and he laughed and made jokes in a Cantonese that I couldn’t understand. After a few seconds, the strains of cha-cha-cha music became audible. Master Tang positioned himself directly in front of the camera and began to move to the rhythm of the music, one-two-three cha-cha-cha, swaying his hips vigorously, almost like a robot. He would try to keep up, but over and over he would miss the beat. His movements were clearly too structured, too stiff. He would repeat the words, “one-two-three, cha-cha-cha” over and over again.

“Stop, stop,” he said. “This song is too slow, don’t you have another one? I want to win this competition!”

A man’s voice answered him in Cantonese, and the camera stopped moving. It seemed that Master Tang didn’t realize that it was still on as he raised his arms to stretch out, and then resumed gyrating his hips.

The music started up again. This time it was a song by Benny Moré. Master Tang started up again with the cha-cha-cha steps, moving his hands histrionically, too fast. “One, two, three, spin. One, two, three, spin.”

“Stop the music, stop the music,” Master Tang called out. “These turns are no good, they’re coming out all wrong, I think my timing is off,” he said to the person holding the camera. “Maybe I should practice with Vicky?”

From behind the camera a man’s voice shouted, “Vicky!” After a few seconds, a tall woman in a snug, dark green qipao appeared on the screen, her back to the camera. I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was up in a bun. Master Tang took her by the waist and together they began to dance to the rhythm of the cha-cha-cha. She moved slowly, like a cat waking up. As her hips swayed gracefully to the music, she spun around and I caught a glimpse of her face, pale white with red-stained lips. Her eyes were clearly Asian in shape, but their color was a beautiful shade of green. She looked serious, impassive, perhaps a bit distant, as if she were lost in a memory. She kept time easily, effortlessly, as if she’d been dancing cha-cha-cha all her life. She led Master Tang, showing him what to do.

They kept dancing together, and spun around twice as Benny Moré kept on singing, as strong and soulful as ever. Master Tang then let go of her hips, so that now, their hands

were their sole point of contact. On the back of the qipao was a little triangle cutout where you could see her skin. Another spin around, another glimpse of her face. This time there was nothing remote about her; in fact, you could see that a little smile had formed on her lips.

They stopped dancing, and Master Tang disappeared, leaving her alone in front of the camera.

“Now, look at me, because you’re moving to another beat,” she said in a decisive tone of voice. “It’s as if you were dancing salsa. Please, can you change the music and put some salsa on? I want Alfred to feel the difference.” This time she spoke in English.

Salsa music began to play; I couldn’t tell who was singing, but the melody was familiar. Was it Orquesta Aragón? I couldn’t tell. In any case, the woman began dancing again, moving gracefully, keeping time with her swaying hips. I looked at the professor, not quite believing what I was watching. He smiled.

“She’s marvelous, isn’t she?” he said. “That’s Vicky Cifuentes Zhang. I believe she is one of the keys to finding the black tulip collection.”

“What do you mean?”

All the information we’ve gathered over the years points to her. I know that she was the mistress of a Guangdong businessman who fell desperately in love with her and gave up everything for her: wife, family, friends, and properties. He went off with her and they lived all over the world. This businessman, you see, had two great passions well, three. One of them was Vicky, the other was wine, and the third was books. They say he had a collection of over fifty thousand books. He loved collecting old first editions, the kind of authors that history had forgotten about. Because in the end one remembers only certain writers, those that had the luck, the right timing, call it whatever you want, to become part of history. Most writers, sadly, end up forgotten, with a few books published that nobody reads. And the obsession of this businessman was to collect the works of all these forgotten writers, and the black tulip collection is among those forgotten books.”

“And how did this businessman come into possession of the black tulip collection?”

“It’s just a hypothesis, but what I learned was that he had hired someone to source books for him in China, the rest of Asia and in other parts of the world, too. So, this person would buy books and then bring them to the businessman. That’s how I believe he must have gotten hold of the collection.”

“And where is this businessman’s library now?”

“Almost nothing is left of his main collection. He took some books on his last trips, made some donations to schools and institutions, and the rest of the books were probably looted, burned, you know…like so many other books throughout history.”

“So then, this is nothing more than a beautiful legend?”

“Well, history does tend to leave certain clues. A few years back, a private collector in New York contacted me to verify the authenticity of a book. Now, I’m not an expert in authentication. But when the man described the book in question, I said yes immediately. It was one of the books in the collection. Would you believe I actually held it in my hands: I read it, smelled it. An extraordinary experience.”

“So the collection exists?”

“Yes, it exists. The complete collection is probably scattered all over the world by now, but I had the great fortune to touch and read at least one of the volumes in it.”

“But who put this collection together in the first place? Mateo Ricci?”

“I’m not sure. The prologue of the book that I saw and held talks about friends and admirers of Ricci’s work. The objective of this collection of the black tulips would have been to bring together all of Ricci’s writing, along with that of some of his followers, free of censorship.”

“And why the name Black Tulips?”

“Ricci drafted a number of maps of China and its coast. They were so strange and exotic that someone called them ‘black tulips,’ which are extremely rare flowers in China. That’s the origin of the name. It’s something of a tribute to Ricci and his work.”

The professor said nothing for a few moments. He just lowered his head and stared at his hands for a while. He was thinking, thinking hard. Then, without looking up at me, he started speaking again.

“The truth is, I don’t have anyone to help me with this search. All I had was Alfred Tang. For decades we worked together trying to find these books, but now he’s dead. So I’m all alone. I guess you could say this is the great hobby of my life, and I like the idea of sharing hobbies, so if you would be interested and willing to get involved and work on this with me, I’d be happy to accept you as my assistant.”

Without missing a beat, I said yes.

“All right, then, what next?” I asked.

“For the moment why don’t you start by reading Mateo Ricci’s diary, to get familiar with the historical context,” he said, as if I were another student in his university. “There are two other things you can do, simultaneously. Firstly, there’s a little seminar on Mateo Ricci that’s being held in Macau, you should go to that. A number of experts on his life and work will be presenting there,” he added.

The prospect of spending my own money to go to Macau, to a seminar that sounded like an excruciating bore, did not excite me much. But I just nodded my head yes.

“And what would be the second thing?” I asked, expecting something even more tedious than researching someone from the sixteenth century.

“Here,” he said. “Take this. It’s Vicky Cifuentes Zhang’s address. She’s still alive, lives in Hong Kong. You must go and visit her, see what information you can find out from her. I’ve gone a few times but unfortunately her head’s not all there. At this point she seems to have only vague recollections of her life, but who knows? Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”