Year of the Tiger

Chuckie’s game is The Sword of Ill Repute, the same game Lao Zhang plays. That’s how I met Lao Zhang, actually, through Chuckie. Lao Zhang was throwing a party at this space off the 4th Ring Road, and he’d invited his online friends to attend. Chuckie hadn’t really wanted to go. He didn’t approve of Lao Zhang’s gaming style. ‘Too peaceful!’ he complained. ‘He don’t like to go on quest, just sit in teahouse and wine shop and drink and chat all the time.’

Me, I was tired of virtual reality and thought an actual party might be fun. I’d thought maybe I was going crazy, sitting in that apartment all the time. I was having a lot of nightmares, not sleeping well, and I needed to get out.

So we went to the party, which was at this place called the Airplane Factory (because it used to be an airplane factory). When we got there, a couple of the artists were doing a piece, throwing dyed red mud at each other and chanting slogans every time they got hit. A DJ was spinning tunes while another artist projected images on the blank white wall: chickens being decapitated and buildings falling down and Mickey Mouse cartoons. At some point, this fairly lame Beijing punk band played, though I had to give them points for attitude.

I wandered around on my own, not talking to anybody, because even though I’d wanted to come, once I got there I felt awkward and nervous, like I couldn’t have been more out of place. Eventually I saw Chuckie standing over by this installation piece, a ping-pong table that lit up and made different noises depending on where the ball hit. That’s where the beer was, iced for once, in plastic tubs.

Chuckie was talking to this big, stocky guy with a goatee and thick eyebrows, wearing paint-splattered cargo shorts, an ancient Cui Jian T-shirt, and a knit beanie. The guy had just opened a bottle of Yanjing, and instead of drinking from it, he gave it to me, eyebrow half-cocked, grinning. There was something about his smile I liked, something about how it included me, like we were already sharing a joke. ‘You’re Chuckie’s roommate,’ he said. ‘Chuckie says you’re crazy.’

That was Lao Zhang.

Now I’m thinking: talk about a pot/kettle scenario, ’cause here’s Chuckie, pacing around the living room, muttering about how some jiba ex-friend of his has ripped off his virtual sword.

Chuckie grabs his backpack and heads for the door.

‘Hey. Where are you going?’

‘Matrix,’ Chuckie mumbles.

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s where Ming Lu is.’

‘So, what are you going to do?’

‘Make him pay.’

‘Hey, Chuckie, wait a minute. Just … wait.’

He pauses at the door. ‘What?’

‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’

Chuckie swings his backpack over his shoulder. ‘That Qi sword is worth 10,000 kuai! I’m going to make him pay me for it!’

‘You’re kidding.’

Ten thousand yuan is no small sum of money. It’s over fourteen hundred dollars. More money than I make in a month. More money than Chuckie makes a month doing his freelance geek gigs, I’m pretty sure. He’s a genius with computers, but he’s always getting canned for spending too much time online doing things he shouldn’t.

‘I don’t kid about this!’ Chuckie yells, wild-eyed. ‘I’m going!’

‘Hey, Chuckie, wait a minute. Deng yihuir,’ I repeat in Chinese for emphasis. ‘Was there anybody looking for me this morning? Some foreigners? In suits?’

Chuckie pauses by the door and frowns. ‘Oh. Some guys came by a couple hours ago. I said you weren’t around.’

‘What did they want?’

‘They didn’t say.’ He shrugs his backpack onto his other shoulder and opens the door.

‘Wait a minute,’ I say again. ‘What kind of guys?’

‘I don’t know,’ Chuckie replies, clearly frustrated. ‘Foreigners in suits, like you said.’ And he starts to leave.

‘Wait, I’ll come with you.’

I throw on some fresh clothes, replenish my backpack with clean underwear, which I always do in case I end up crashing somewhere else, which, objectively, happens kind of a lot. Then I grab my passport and retrieve the roll of cash that I’ve hidden in a balled-up T-shirt tossed in the corner of my tiny closet.

When I come out of my room, Chuckie is pacing in a little circle by the door, looking like he’s ready to bolt.

So am I. I don’t want to stay in this apartment. Not for another minute.

Matrix is a couple miles away, so we hop on a bus that’s so packed, I hardly move when it jerks and squeals and halts – it’s like I’m surrounded by human airbags.

Our destination is a couple of blocks from the bus stop, just east of Beida, short for Beijing University. Chuckie’s pissed off and walking so fast that I can barely keep up.

‘He’ll be there,’ Chuckie mutters, ‘that little penis shit. He’s always there right now.’

‘You don’t say “penis.’’’

Chuckie looks confused. ‘Penis means jiba, right?’

‘Yeah, but you should say, like, “fucking,” or “dickhead.” It sounds better.’

We pass the new Tech center covered with LED billboards and the latest weird-shaped mirror glass high-rise that resembles some gargantuan star cruiser squatting on a landing pad; practically everything they’ve built in Beijing the last ten years looks like part of a set in the latest big-budget science fiction movie.

Matrix Game Parlor takes up most of the ground floor of a six-story white-tile storefront that’s probably slated for demolition in the near future, since it must have been built way back in the eighties. It’s a maze of navy blue walls, computer terminals, and arcade games, and though most of the serious gamers are wearing headsets, a lot of the casual players aren’t, so there’s this cacophony of cartoon explosions and thumping bass lines and corny synthesized orchestras. Plus everybody’s cells are going off all the time with these loud polyphonic ringtones, and nobody talks quietly into their cells; they yell, like they don’t trust that the person on the other end will hear them otherwise, and I’m already thinking I want out of here. And even though they’ve passed laws in China against smoking in public places, everyone smokes in this place, so I’m following Chuckie through the maze and this blue smoke haze that’s lit up by neon screens and intermittent strobe lights, and I’m starting to cough. I always have a little bronchitis from the pollution here, and I just can’t handle the smoke any more.

I used to smoke. Everyone around me did back then. That’s what we’d do, me and my buddies, we’d smoke cigarettes and crack jokes to keep each other loose, just laugh at shit, you know? You had to laugh at all the shit sometimes.

Embrace the Suck, we used to say.

‘There he is!’ Chuckie hisses.

I recognize Ming Lu. He’s this short, fat guy shaped more or less like a dumpling with limbs and a head. Right now he’s sitting in front of a terminal littered with junk food, using a fancy joystick, probably his own, to manipulate his avatar. I figure he’s probably either killing or fucking someone, from the exultant expression on his face.

Chuckie grabs Ming Lu’s T-shirt by the collar and slaps him upside the head.

Ming Lu whirls around blindly, glasses askew, scattering his shrimp chips.

‘What –? Who –?’

‘You mother fucking dog’s bastard!’ Chuckie screams.

As I start to form a mental picture of that scenario, I lose track of the argument entirely. For one thing, the two of them are talking way too fast for me to follow, and Ming Lu has this Sichuan accent that gets pretty thick when he’s excited and being slapped around by somebody. For another, I glance over my shoulder and see, dimly through the smoke haze, two guys heading in our direction. Foreign guys in suits.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Ming Lu is babbling, ‘but I had to!’

I don’t think. I run.