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Tag: Mow Fung

  • Hessian Sack

    Hessian Sack

    Some weeks passed. Detective Forster, in his modest office at the Stawell Police Barracks, untied the hessian sack and spread its contents across his desk before Mow Fung. The coat and waistcoat had both been slit cleanly down the back, likely to ease their removal from the body; a white twilled shirt with blue spots, an undershirt, and a fragment of a wideawake hat lay beside them, all stiffened and blackened with blood.

    “These were recovered near where the corpse was found,” he said. “I’m showing them around the district, starting with the publicans, to see whether anyone can put a name to them. Ever clap eyes on them?”

    “Not easy to say. Clothes are clothes,” Mow Fung said.

    “The spotted shirt? Pale hat?”

    Mow Fung drew an exaggerated grimace of doubt.

    “Not so unusual. Could belong to anyone. You are going down to the Chinese camp after this, I suppose?”

    As it happened, that was precisely Forster’s intention.

    “What makes you say that?”

    “Police always look there first. I hear talk – they say the murder was done in the camp, and the body carried east to where the head was taken off. That ground lies midway between the camp and Stawell – four miles. Convenient.”

    He gave a wry smile. “Naturally, it must be the Chinese camp. Many more men live in Stawell – but they are good white men.”

    “No call to get prickly, is there? There have been disturbances in the camp. It draws the rougher element, that much is certain. I can’t say I blame a man for drifting there. There’s precious little diversion in the bush.” Forster, Melburnian by origin, retained something of the city’s broader tolerance.

    “Who is to say the owner is the same?” Mow Fung said. “Blood on shirt and vest – but none on trousers. They were not discovered together, correct?”

    “I believe I am the one paid to ask questions,” Forster said mildly, “but there is no harm in your knowing that they were not found in the exact same place. I recovered the trousers roughly four hundred yards from the body and the other items.”

    “The blood on the coat is faint. There has been little rain of late. It may be animal blood, or human. We shall never know. Anything is possible. But if the murder were done in the Chinese camp, why take the body east toward Stawell to dispose of it, when there are many deep mines much closer to the west?”

    “A reasonable observation. Still, someone in the camp may have seen these garments before, when their unfortunate owner was still walking about in them. If you are heading home, I wonder whether you might accompany me to one or two establishments there – since you were good enough to lodge the deceased on behalf of the Victoria Police. That is, if your good lady would not object to your being away from business a little longer.”

    “Why do you want me to come?”

    “Only that you’ve got more English than many of the men down at the camp, and some of them are apt to clam up – or go to ground – when a policeman turns up. Despite what you say, there may be one or two uneasy consciences there.”

    “Perhaps some understand English better than you suppose, but prefer not to speak to policemen.” He glanced at Forster’s plain clothes. “It is wise not to wear the uniform – it softens the impression. My wife will manage the pub. I had intended to return as I came – on Shank’s mare, as they say.”

    • • •

    Forster drove them out of the township in a trap, along the track, through the dust and glare beneath the blazing sun. The landscape grew strange once the town fell behind them and its ordered shapes yielded to the scrub. Each, sooner or later, noticed the black mat of flies on the other’s back, where they pressed and jostled to feed on sweat and the salt of human skin, in their obscene communion. Best to leave them; disturb them and they rose in a thick, droning swarm.

    The dull thud of the horse’s hooves, the creak of the trap, and the rattle of the harness were swallowed by the silent bush, as though sound itself were absorbed into the vast, listening earth. Holes appeared in patches of bare orange soil already surrendering to growth – the signs of earlier incursions. Here and there, mounds of excavated dirt lay heaped about deepening shafts, like oversized crab-castings along a shore. The human crustaceans who dug here twenty or thirty years ago were gone, many returned to the earth whence they came, having taken what was of value and left their detritus here. Thus history ends where it begins. Or only in these parts?

    Rear view of Forster and Mow Fung riding in a trap across an abandoned goldfield, their backs dark with swarming flies as the dusty track threads through pockmarked earth.

    The two continued along in a silence punctuated by the discordant cry of a single bird.

    “Did he say ‘Ballarat’?” Mow Fung said with a delighted start.

    “Not too far from home, enjoying his day-trip like us, maybe.” Forster chuckled. Grey butcherbird, probably. He had read that places were sometimes named for the cries heard there. “They say that Ballarat means ‘resting place.’”

    “Those shafts are Chinese ones,” Mow Fung said. “Round holes with no corners for evil spirits to hide in. Also, round is better than square, because the sides won’t fall in so easy, and you don’t need much timber. A European does not have to worry about ghosts and spirits, does he? Too rational for them, so they cannot harm him,” he added with a small laugh.

    The camp’s heyday lay twenty years past, when gold gravel was struck midway between Stawell and Deep Lead, one of the richest alluvial fields in Victoria. Before long most of the gold was taken, leaving only enough to sustain a dwindling community of oriental fossickers. Of late, the diamond drill had kindled hopes of renewal, and the New Comet Company had even set up in Deep Lead; yet a recent regulation barred Chinese from employment on non-Chinese leases.

    “A rough, strongly built man – there are many such men working on the railway these days,” Mow Fung mused. “If he is not known in Stawell, then he must have come from elsewhere, perhaps to work on the new line.”

    “They are indeed a transient breed.”

    Shops and dwellings huddled together, walls and a variety of roofs clad in boards all askew, yet which somehow in their chaos attained a harmony all their own; frail but sound constructions lining a street not wider than a cart track.

    To Forster, this time too, everything seemed Chinese, from curious fabrics and wares in the windows to the cats and dogs yawning and scratching in patches of shade. Mow Fung exchanged a few words in his own tongue with a plump, amiable woman shaking a mat as Forster pulled up the rig. Her two infants played with a top in the dust at her feet and squealed in high, lilting tones, miniature editions of their mother. The newcomers stirred a hubbub in the nearby buildings, and within a minute a dozen Celestials had poured out and gathered around the trap to inspect the garments Forster had displayed on the seat, while he fended off the more enthusiastic who reached to handle them.

    “Nobody recognizes these things,” Mow Fung said.

    They proceeded down the street, Forster leading the horse and trap.

    “What a pong. For God’s sake, that’s a great patch of human dung beside that place!”

    “Dried out, it makes good fertiliser,” said Mow Fung. “We Chinese have had to learn that practice, because Chinatowns are usually built below the main town, at the bottom of a hill where sewage and rubbish wash down. Very smelly, though. The newspaper editor often worries that diphtheria will not kill us here, but will drift over to Stawell instead.”

    They stopped before the joss house, a low timber building with a sloping roof. A faint scent of incense drifted from within. Mow Fung went over to pay his respects, bowing and disappearing through the open door.

    “No good,” he said when he came back out, holding a paper lantern. “Somebody knocked off some ritual ornaments. Terrible omen.”

    “What’s that you’ve got?”

    “Kongming. Sky lantern.”

    Forster made a noncommittal grunt. “Right. Say no more.”

    Mow Fung shrugged. “My mother used to say, ‘If you want to become full, admit the emptiness.’ Lao Tzu said the same. It means don’t think too much – listen once in a while.”

    “Steady on. It’s too hot for philosophy.”

    At the far end of the street, a group of men loitered smoking in front of a building.

    “Miss Lili Chan’s Jade Phoenix,” Forster said. “Its reputation precedes it, and not in a good way. Sly grog and opium. Fantan croupier of prodigious luck – or suspect dexterity.”

    “Good friend. Lady of fine quality,” Mow Fung said.

    Heavy curtains enclosed the parlour, parted here and there to admit thin slivers of light. As Forster looked about to gain his bearings, portions of the room surfaced briefly before retreating again into shadow. He had been expected; nothing illicit met the eye. A girl seated on the end of a couch plucked on an instrument resembling a pear-shaped lute, producing a languid, elusive strain. Beside her a man leaned with his head slumped insensibly against the shoulder of a young female, who smoked a long pipe and fanned herself with a bored look. Some men sat around a table playing pai-gow with black dominoes marked in red and white, wagering from little heaps of matchsticks.

    Lili Chan herself emerged from a curtained doorway in a loose-fitting, mercerised cotton changpao. The matte black fabric gave a restrained rustle as she crossed the room. For an instant Forster thought he saw a light-coloured shock of hair before the curtain slipped back into place. She took a cheroot from a lacquered box on the mantel shelf, inserted it into a cigarette holder and signalled to a brawny attendant to light it for her, before at last addressing the two men.

    Lily Chang in a loose black thick-cotton changpao stands in the Jade Phoenix parlour before a curtained window, half-lit in shadow.

    “Detective Forster,” she said. “I assumed our paths would cross again. I take it this is not a social visit.” With a smile, she nodded to Mow Fung.

    “Business has a way of intruding,” Forster said. “Even in agreeable surroundings.” He tapped the hessian at his side.

    “Intriguing. Even so, perhaps you will still allow me to extend some hospitality.”

    She gestured to a young woman, who brought a small tray with porcelain cups and set it on the low table. Lili Chan took a seat without hurry. After a brief hesitation, Forster and Mow Fung did the same.

    Tea was poured from a pot painted with blossoms and winding script. Forster sipped from courtesy; the brew proved lighter than he expected. The murmur of Chinese between Lili and Mow Fung faded into the notes of the lute. Her garment fell in precise folds from her shoulders; the high Mandarin collar framed her face and lent her bearing a formal gravity. A diagonal opening crossed her chest, secured with subtle braided knots. Though the room held the day’s heat, she inhabited a cooler plane altogether. She offered him neither word nor glance, yet he was aware of being measured.

    Then the voices were quiet and he heard only the sparse notes of the lute. She drew on the cheroot, inclined her face and, exhaling the smoke through her mouth and nostrils, looked at him fully for the first time.

    Forster opened the sack and laid the clothing on the table. “You have seen these before?”

    Her eyes moved once across the cloth. “No.”

    “You are quite certain. Perhaps someone else present?”

    “I do not recognize these things,” she repeated. “Nor do my employees, for I do not.”

    At the door, Forster offered her a smile and nod.

    “I understand there was some trouble in the camp last week,” he said. “You see much in this street, Miss Chan. If any part of it bears upon my inquiry, I would be obliged to hear of it.”

    “The temple was robbed by a vagrant from Stawell, a European. I explained to the priest, Mow Fung, that there was no need for the law. The stolen goods were recovered, and mercy shown. Too much to drink. He returned everything when he sobered up and regretted his deed.”

    Outside, Forster turned to his companion. “Priest?”

    Mow Fung looked bashful. “I only consecrate a few things here and there, make rain, tell fortunes, guide the dead, heal boils, such matters…”

    • • •

    Forster found John Campbell, publican of the Royal Hotel at Glenorchy, in his back office. He placed the sack on the table and took out the clothes, one by one. Campbell watched without moving, then gave a short, humourless snort.

    “I know these,” he said. “I’ve seen them worn.”

    Forster waited.

    “Two railway hands, December – navvies off the Dimboola works. Twelfth to the fourteenth, in the one room. Burns was one – smooth-tongued. His mate called himself Charley Forbes. Big red-bearded fellow. ‘Scotty,’ they called him, though he said he was Irish.”

    Campbell touched the coat, as if confirming a weight.

    “He wore this. Coat and hat – same sort. Burns did the talking. Held the money. Kept him close.”

    Forster wrote.

    “They came down by train?”

    “From Horsham, they said.”

    Campbell’s mouth tightened.

    “They ran out of money here. Lost it at cards and drank what was left. When it came time to pay for the room, Burns left a watch with my barman as security – said once the debt was met it was to go on to Stawell, care of Phelan, the storekeeper.”

    Forster noted the name.

    Campbell reflected for a second and added, “I saw Burns at the Stawell races a few days after Christmas. I asked after Forbes. Burns said he’d gone up to New South Wales with an old mate.”

    Forster gathered the clothes together.

    “That’ll do,” he said. “And if you’re pouring, I’ll take that whisky now.”

    • • •

    A few days later, Forster reached the railway camp outside Dimboola, closing in on his phantoms.

    “Painter and his son?” Forster said.

    “Ain’t here …” the foreman began.

    The discharge came with a dull whomp! – sudden and overwhelming, as loud as a cannon, yet muffled by the tons of dirt and rock. The vibration struck the stomach as quickly, if not quicker, than the eardrums. Forster jumped and got through the “Holy–” before tons of dislodged rock thundered down out of sight around the bend.

    “… Jesus!” He blanched and stepped quickly into the cover of the embankment, underneath which a line of navvies was gathered in loose formation, with some standing and others seated in the dust or on rails and stacked sleepers. A drizzle of stones pattered beyond the shelter of the embankment and a cloud of dust surged round the bend. A few seconds of silence followed, the men watching the detective regain his bearings.

    “Who’s opened his bloody tucker bag?” one of them drawled, earning a chortle or two. Forster looked over and was met by steely, sullen faces and a few grins bordering on sneers.

    “Should’ve mentioned that,” said the poker-faced foreman. “Bit of blasting this morning.”

    Evident the copper was put out. Didn’t much enjoy being the butt of a joke.

    “The detective is lookin’ for the Painters?” he called. “Where are they?”

    “Morning off,” came a reply. “Doubler yesterday.”

    A whistle-blast came from around the bend.

    “You men get back to work now,” the foreman said.

    He showed Forster to one of the tents at the workers’ campsite some hundred yards off. Two men dressed identically in grimy singlets and shorts, Richard and John Painter, father and son, sat on stools drinking tea, either side of an upended wooden fruit box that served as a table.

    At Forster’s direction, they examined the clothing, identical smokes drooping from the corners of nearly identical mouths. Coat in two pieces, almost the same colour as the grass in which it had been found. Waistcoat also in two halves, the buckle and strap suggesting it had been quite new before lying exposed for a month or more. The blue twilled shirt, comparatively new, a button torn out – that button found in the vicinity. Relics of the wideawake hat. All the garments except the wideawake more or less saturated with what looked like blood. He had not brought the trousers, which were found down a mine shaft some distance from the body; he reckoned they were probably the dead man’s too. Less distinctive, though; harder to identify positively.

     The Painters hummed and harred, seeming to communicate to each other in their own language of undecipherable mutters and growls, scratching their beards and shaking their heads deep in thought. The detective waited. Just as his nerves began to wear thin, the two men sucked in a breath as one, glanced at each other over their cups of tea, and shook their heads.

    “Yep,” said the elder.

    He opened his mouth to continue.

    Painter the elder sits in a canvas tent beside an upturned fruit-box table, tea and battered cups among cards and ash.

    “Teeth, Father. Company. Manners.”

    Painter the elder fumbled for his dentures on top of the fruit box between them, alongside some grimy playing cards, three battered tin cups – two half-filled with tea – an overflowing ashtray, and half a browning apple.

    “Reckon we know this bloke,” the father said. “Or knew him, you might say.”

    “The feller who owns these here clothes,” the son said. “Know him pretty bloody well. Knew him.”

    “Worked with him, God rest his soul,” the father said. “Nice chappie, broth of a boy. Bit slow. Addicted to the drink.”

    “Never once saw him drunk, Father.”

    “Never seen him drunk? You must be jokin’.”

    “Who said he’s dead?” Forster said.

    “Been reading the papers, that’s all. The body at Four Posts,” said the son. “Terrible thing, shocking. Must’ve been him.”

    “What was his name, then?” Forster said.

    “Scotty, they called him,” the son said. “But Charley Forbes was the proper name.”

    “Charley Forbes,” the father agreed. “Charley Forbes.” Tutted.

    “You’re certain these belonged to Charles Forbes?”

    “We know this coat by where it’s mended,” the father said. “This bit of stitching on the breast here.” He pointed a finger, the hand had a slight tremor in it now.

    “This here stitching on the breast,” the son said. “Charley burnt a hole in it with his pipe, so he stitched it up like this. Couldn’t be more certain it’s the very coat. I never saw him burn it, but I saw it stitched.”

    “Not a bad piece of stitching, really,” the father said, bending closer. “Quite sure as to the identity of this coat. No question.”

    “No question,” said the son. “Ain’t seen him since him and Burnsey took off together, a bit before Christmas.”

    “What’d he look like?”

    “Broad-shouldered, stout fellow. Large, flowing beard.”

    “Sandy coloured.”

    “Well, light sandy coloured, I’d say. Beard was lighter than the hair on his head, which was a dark sandy colour.”

    “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right there, Father. Light sandy coloured beard. Dark sandy coloured hair on his head.”

    “Sandy complexion, wouldn’t you say, Son?”

    “That’s right, Father, very sandy.”

    “And this other character, his mate?”

    “Robert Burns,” said the son. “Like the Scottish poet.”

    “That Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that,” quoth the father, and lapsed into vacant thought, his head nodding involuntarily.

    “Old Jake seen him over at Murtoa the other day, getting off the train,” the son said.

    “Burnsey?” Forster said. “Where’s this Jake?”

    “Shot through.”

    “Where to?”

    “Goodness bloody knows. Just cleared out the other night.”

    From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2026

  • Errand on Cemetery Road

    Errand on Cemetery Road

    This universe grants the deceased a period of forty-nine days to cross through the boundary zone, a number that unites the tiny and the vast. The shaman – was that him? – did not want to disturb the soul’s awareness, for in this state, newly released from corporeality, swept into the perceptual and spiritual turmoil of the afterlife, it may be just as vulnerable to the perception of a benevolent spirit as it would be to a zombie or ghoul. Often, the soul does not even know it is dead. It drifts in a tenuous form, a molecule in a maelstrom.

    Judgment halls materialise and dissolve. The Hall of Unfelt Regrets, for those who failed to grieve as prescribed: sorrows issued retroactively: wrong order, not transferable. Griefs spooned from repurposed billy cans. Gallery of the Unlived Life. Corridors of one’s could-have-beens: concert cellist version; loving version; not-quite-so-cruel version. “Hey you over there! No touching the dioramas,” warns one of the sullen docents. Dropping to his knees, Forbes notes that beneath the dust, there is an old rolled-out mat from a public school in Nhill, for percussion band time. Depot of Ungiven Names. Filing cabinets disappear in the smoke of raging bushfires. A clever-man with pencil and ochre offers to look up his name, charging three truths and the last sound he heard. Canteen of karmic simulacra selling one’s true desires: pies that are warm but hollow; love that tastes of copper. Waiting Room of the Second Chance That Will Not Be Offered Again. You are told your name is next, and then that it’s not. You were never meant to be here.

    I Ching Hexagram 20 – Kuan (Contemplation), symbolizing observation and insight.

    And on and on. The so-called guide – our Mow Fung? – surely not – regains his composure. In a flash of inspiration, he traces in the red dust the trigrams: penetrating wind above, receptive earth below, summons in his heart the image of a single willy-willy, spiralling upward. Two unbroken yang lines above, four broken yin lines beneath: making the Yi Jing hexagram Kuan, whose power lies in observing and contemplating. When the wind blows over the earth, it stirs everything up, compelling us to observe.

    He envisaged the breeze sending ripples across the surface of a pool, and the soul was drawn to it. Upon that trembling mirror, a flickering image began to congeal. A voice, at first muted and reverberant, gathered itself into clarity …

    • • •

    “Kids’ll be real happy to see you after all this time. I reckon I’d like to see their faces, I’d get a kick out of that. I keep forgettin’ their names. What was it – Thomas you said, yer eldest? Thomas, that’s it, wasn’it? Sounds like a right little wag, that Tom, bright little bugger. I reckon I remember you saying something about him, something you said once, can’t recall now. What was it again, mate? He loves cricket, don’t he? I read up on the Australian Eleven playing over there in England, you know, how they’re doing and all that. I reckon I could tell him all about that, and learn him a few shots, like, keep a straight bat and everything.”

    Forbes tilted his head. “Me uncle learned me real good, but I was better at bowlin’ than battin’ in my day, mate. I’m tall, see, like you, only a bit taller even, so I’m a good fasty, and I can spin a bit too. Here, hold on a bit, let me catch me breath and light up me pipe,” he said.

    “Just bloody do it and catch up. We ain’t got all day for twaddle,” Burns said, thinking, You’ll not call my kid bugger again, you swine.

    The prattle of a halfwit grates no end out here in the Christmas heat. If a man had a gun, he’d be tempted to pull it out and blow the imbecile’s head off, or else his own, just to put a stop to it, let the cicadas have their go, unspoiled by jabbering gibberish that’s meant to mean something but is, in truth, no more than babble.

    The cicadas sing their soaring song beyond words; they sing of the heat, of their deaths not far off, of nothing: of an instant that deafens, and is, to them, filled with serenity and quiet.

    Going by Phelan the produce merchant’s in Patrick Street, Burns stuck his head in the door and called out, “G’day Jim, back later to sort it through with ye, mate!”

    Real hail-feller stuff. Could’ve been a right good salesman or a writer in one of them rags. Got the gab for it. Better still, something in the line of politics, probably. Manly grin like that, he thought, pausing to nod at his reflection, shoulders squaring, who wouldn’t vote for you? Noble – well, masculine – profile, intelligent forehead, its own mould of nobleness. He had that swaggerin’ way with him that the sheilas fall over for while other blokes can’t do nothing else but only stand by and admire. Well, he never got that far, but not through any fault of his own, and in his own way, everything he touches, he leaves his mark there. Walks into a room and they all know who’s the real man here, the stallion, all them pissing little geldings, them sheep and goats. It’s all got to do with knowing yer the number one, tougher and smarter than the next man.

    Up to the corner, and there was the pub on the main street, Fergus’s European. Across the intersection he strode, Forbes trailing in the wide, empty expanse, generous enough for a dozen willy-willies of dust and fine horse-dung. A three-dimensional cruciform emptiness rose into a vaulted silence. High above, at a faraway level past reason, a single white veil of cirrus cloud cut a lilac-tinged rupture in the pale blue surface of the sky.

    Aerial view of a street intersection in Stawell, Victoria, with a historic pub on the corner and surrounding buildings under bright daylight.

    He left Charley out on the front veranda blathering to Ben Wellington, a rum-looking old codger with one good eye and one sightless milky-blue, and his mate on the bench. The better to work his magic, to go in alone.

    The sawdust on the pub floor had darkened to a fine grey grit. Burns scuffed it without thinking, left a faint swirl behind him.

    “No, Burns, I know you.” Fergus the publican: a stout man with lambchop side-whiskers, brawny arms under rolled-up sleeves. Choleric, a real Admiral of the Red. The pressure of his blood thrust forth the veins and squeezed beads of perspiration from the pores of his fleshy red phizog.

    “Oh, come on, George, do a cove a favour for once. Just for a night or two. I always give you what I owed you, y’know that.”

    “That’ll be the day. Look, where is he, anyway?”

    “Just out the front, jawing with some old bastards. You should be paying him to stay here to babysit ’em. They thrive on that rot he goes on with. Good entertainment for ’em. Works out well for everyone around, you and all. Pulling his leg keeps them from fightin’ and breakin’ your place up.”

    “Look here, I don’t mind if they all get the hell out altogether. More strife than they’re worth.”

    “Do us a favour, mate, for old times. What about that trench I dug you the other month?”

    “Other year. You know full well I’ve paid you back ten times over. Favours. What rot. Well, where’d he stay last night, anyhow?”

    “Hunter’s Ball and Mouth.”

    Forbes wandered in with a “G’day squire,” and stood grinning at Fergus over the bar.

    “Jeez, ’at one-eyed feller out there knows about the nags. Blue-eyed Dick in the fourth, he reckons.” Chortled madly for who knows why? – unwritten prerogative of a simple mind.

    “Why doesn’t he stay there again, then?”

    “Truth is, I want to get him off the grog. I brought him here for the purpose of having him sober.”

    “What are you going to do?”

    “We are going to Dunkeld to dig some dams.”

    “Bloody Carter Brothers,” Forbes said. “Got three running in the Horsham Cup next week. Lion, Silvis or sompthin, and – what the hell was it? Rosebunch or summit, shit –” He slouched back to the front door. “Was that Rosebunch, Mr. Wellington, was it? Oh, my stars, that’s right. An’ who was that one you tipped me for the Cup? Ah, that’s it, that’s the one!”

    Slouched back to the bar.

    “What are you standing there looking at us like a putty-brain for, yer great galoot? Here, give us a couple of mugs of yer best tangle-foot, thanks mate.”

    Fergus looked at Burns, who shrugged and coughed up two deaners, which rang light on the bar and came to rest together with a clink. Fergus poured out three pots of ale and listened impassively to Burns’s account of their affairs. They would have gone today but were waiting for a watch to come down from Glenorchy, which was being kept for a debt they owed. They sent a telegram yesterday to release it.

    “Rosebud it was,” Forbes said, wiping the moisture from his top lip onto the back of his hand. “Rosebud, that Carters’ nag, but he reckons put a quid on Lady Emily. Lady Emily for the Cup by two lengths, he reckons. Four-year-old. Five? No, four it was, he said. I believe I’ll catch the train up there next week and have a quid or two on her.”

    Burns turned back to Fergus.

    “We got money and more to come. We have ordered thirty quid worth of goods from Mister Phelan and are waiting for them to take them to the station. Else we’d have already gone. Now, I’m at home for a few more days with the missus and kids, and I want him –” sideways thumb at Forbes – “to stay here where I can keep an eye on him.”

    “Yeah, but remember,” Forbes reminded his mate, “I have to come down and meet the missus and young Tom and play cricket and all that.”

    Poor bloody woman, Fergus thought. Burns kept quiet about the appointment, praying it might go away.

    “So I only need a cheque for thirty quid to pay Phelan, temporary like, I’ll get it back to you in no time flat. I just sold a farm for six-hundred quid, and we’re off to acquire another.”

    “There’s land open for selection between Stawell and Glenorchy, didn’t you even know that?” Forbes stared at Phelan, incredulous.

    “There’s an idea!” Burns said. “We take enough for ourselves and leave a portion for you.”

    “Beauty!” Forbes said. “Not bad interest on a thirty quid loan, eh?”

    A low animal urge stirred in Burns’s gut and surfaced as a long, lascivious moan.

    “Real fetchin’, Eliza,” he said. “Looking real fetchin’ today.”

    The young woman behind the bar with a tray full of glasses for the sink, flashed a smile and slipped past behind her father.

    “Gotta love them freckled bushfire blondes, George. Lost the baby fat, though. Don’t work her too hard, mate.”

    Fergus, fidgeting, took a gulp.

    “If her husband hears you, you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.”

    Ben Wellington limped in and sat down further up the bar. Forbes sidled over – “You don’t want to be a Jimmy Woodser, mate, up north that’s what they call a chap what breasts a public bar and tips the finger alone” – and got him started again on the horses.

    “Vandermoulin and Tallyho the four-year-olds didn’t do no good at Ararat, but McSweeney’s five-year-old Too Late, he’ll be a goer in the handicap hurdles. Paul McGidden has been training him over at Longerenong Pastoral Run. Bloody good trainer, had a runner in the Melbourne Cup, couple years back.”

    “What about Blue-eyed Dick, Mister Wellington, what you reckon there?”

     “I reckon I ain’t heard of him.”

    “You know, Blue-eyed Dick out of Little Nell and Off His Kadoova, you know.”

    “No, I reckon I ain’t heard of ’im, not around the Wimmera I ain’t.”

    • • •

    “Life is strange,” mused he who was once called Mow Fung – the not-shaman. Not easy to hold onto your identity in hell. “We live it forwards but understand it backwards. To develop through the gua, Kuan needs alert observation with clarity. You must restore the eternal while residing in the temporal, both of which move in opposite directions. You must observe closely, in order to tell the real from the false. Hold on to the real and get rid of the false. It is like the shrine ritual. First you wash the dust off your hands, before you make your offering. You have a little shrine made of dust.”

    Dust enveloped the wandering shade, who withdrew into a groan, but as though anticipating a truth in what was to come, forced its awareness back into the play of shadow puppets before them.

    • • •

    Burns rented the place from Phelan the merchant, for whose business his wife took on laundry and sewing. It was a fair-sized block along from the police station, with a parched backyard, tired dwelling, and fence nigh on splintering to ruins; most of its palings were askew or off their rails.

    Forbes arrived mid-morning and introduced himself to Florence, who told him Burns had gone down the street to fix up some business or other with Phelan the merchant. Burns had mentioned nothing to her about Forbes, but she absorbed his sudden existence with the same anaesthetised calm that filtered the world for her, a symptom of a weariness deeper than the heavy years he’d burdened her with. Once, she’d indulged his fancies of a grand future shaped by his quality and wisdom, and once she used to pine for his return, until even that became a sham and vanished not long after the last echoes of his pretended love fell silent.

    The children grew accustomed to his increasingly lengthy absences, but continued to anticipate his returns. He was always going to bring them a present next time, and they learned to believe there was commitment beneath the promise, initially. They were not lies exactly, but a seductive flicker – something like love or care – that expires without sufficient fuel. They would whisper and giggle to each other in their beds at the bedspring squeaks and concupiscent slurps that ornamented the darkness after he showed up, until soon it would be still again, as usual.

    Forbes made himself useful picking up the abundant dog droppings with the short-handled shovel, disposing of them near the coal heap in the back corner away from the shed, where she told him. The dog was off with the kids and their mates, down to the creek to swim and pick blackberries. She sat darning on the veranda, watching the visitor. When the wind blows over the earth, it stirs everything up, compelling us to observe. Some took her for slow, because of how she never rushed to reply, on the occasions she deigned to. Her needle moved as though with a will of its own; her gaze was like a still pool. Ah, a receptive surface.

    She still had her, the tiny wooden thing. The Dew Doll. She sensed that, tucked away in the dresser, nestled under old muslin and petticoat lace, among the few precious things she kept, the doll had stirred – as it did only once in a blue moon. It came back to her now, from years ago, the one time she’d wandered over to Deep Lead. The man who ran the curious shop in the Chinese camp had given it to her laughing, when she showed an interest, stroking it, for some reason not wanting to let it go. He couldn’t tell her much, only that it was old. Later the doll started to put ideas straight into her head, and she knew they were right. Things she should do, or say, or leave unsaid. What would go missing. Who to beware. The slip stuck to the back with mulberry paste bore the date some poor baby had died. Between the coiled silk buns of its hair, there was a hole with paper pushed deep inside, which the doll said she shouldn’t try to take out. The doll knew when the dew was going to gather – a rare thing in this country – and would let Florence know, so she could carry her out beside the shed, to feed on it. She’d wake up knowing. The doll had stirred. There’d be dew.

    A handmade Dew Doll in the back of Florence’s drawer, partially hidden among folded cloth; its eyes are faintly red, and its body is bound with twine.

    Forbes found a tin of rusty nails in the shed and set out to mend the fence, a task that drew more curses from him than it would from an average man. After each outburst, he’d flash her a wide, bashful grin and a demonstrative shrug. She’d nod back to him with her tranquil, closed-mouth smile. She was struck by the thought: There is something odd about this childish, well-meaning man. I know! He does not realize he is already dead. But there are others close by who do.

    He liked her drawl and what he took to be her patient attitude, which tended to suppress his frantic exuberance and draw out his contemplative side. When he finished, by a miracle the fence was still standing, and he joined her on the veranda, sitting on the step near her feet in the dog’s spot. Imagining she had an interest in his history with her husband, or more accurate to say, play-acting that she had, he traced through an idealised version of their shared narrative over the past months, since they’d started working together on the line at Naracoorte, on the South Australian border, where he’d stayed at Bridget Enright’s boarding house. Seven bob a week, he got.

    “A well and respected place it was, no drink of any sort sold, not like them what the bloody shanty-keepers run, which sells the vilest, horrible adulterations of all kinds, hideous compounds, they are, made only of chemicals, some sort of blend which costs about sixpence. Full of navvies, mostly slopers only there for a skinful – that’s blokes who’ll get fleeced and then decamp without fulfilling their dues, like. Mugs game to take a hiding and then pay for it, of course.”

    Better be careful what he says there, Bridget took a bit of a shine to Burnsie. Of course, when he detoured, Florence immediately knew the truth, but nothing could have been of less significance to her, it had all been sour for so long. Pretty, pretty doll …

    Then they’d headed back over this way to Dimboola. He told her about his mates the Painter brothers and Johnson. Burnsie’s – Robert’s – mates too, of course, though he had a bit of a run-in once or twice with the older one. Told her about his old sweetheart Hessie Hesslitt, who lives over at Mandurang now, but last saw her four or five years ago at Hamilton. As nice as could be, but ran off with some slicker, of course. Florence only tutted, nodded and made gentle wordless sounds as she worked, which warmed the pit of Forbes’s stomach, though there was no such intention.

    He was afflicted by a loss of words, so he took a folded-up newspaper page from his pocket, with the aim of entertaining her further.

    “Robert helps me with these sometimes – explains, you know, helps me read. You get some real informative stuff out of them. This one’s what’s called ‘Answers to Correspondents’ – that’s these jokers who send in questions for things they don’t know about, see …”

    She made one of her pleasant sounds, high-pitched and undulating, but smooth-like, to show she was interested.

    “… so you pick up a lot of good stuff. Take this, for instance, I’ve already read it once or twice, it’s from someone calls ’emself Cornstalk – they’ve got all sorts of names: In writing to the Queen, what form do you use, and to where do you address your letter? What do you reckon, Florence? Well, here’s the answer. We presume you want to write a petition. The form is ‘To Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of Indias: May it please your Majesty,’ and end, ‘And your petitioner will ever pray.’ Address through the Secretary of State for the Colonies.’ I reckon the Queen’ll be hearing from old Cornstalk before long, eh?”

    A placid smile on Florence’s face, shaking her head tutting, her eyes cast down on her darning. Pretty, pretty …

    “Here you go. Kiara asks the distance from Echuca to Sydney, and the cheapest route, and the cost. Answer: The cheapest route is via Melbourne. Train fare, seventeen shillings; steamer, thirty shillings to Sydney – Shit! – Distance overland, five hundred and forty miles. Echuca … That’d be, um, up there near bloody er –”

    A cattle dog mix heralded the arrival of four of Florence’s offspring, trotting around the corner to greet the woman and sniff at the man, before inspecting changes to its scent-map of the backyard and urinating at the door of the shed. The three boys and a girl stared at Forbes dumbly, and he similarly back, turning suddenly shy. Hearing one referred to as ‘Tom,’ he summoned some bravado and forced a grin.

    “G’day young’un. I know all about you from yer old man, mate. Bloody good little cricketer he said you was, tyke,” but the boy drew himself up and stared wordlessly back, before spitting on the ground and strutting after his siblings into the house.

    “Rough nut, eh?” Forbes mumbled, but Florence was bent away from him, gathering up her work.

    Forbes was smoking his pipe in the falling light when Burns showed up with Phelan and a gallon of brandy, which Phelan had sold Burns and been invited to come along and help drink it. The three set to and lasted into the small hours.

    “Rotten coppers down the street got it in for me,” said Burns towards the end, “so I snapped a couple of their saplings they were trying to grow out the front. Here’s what I’m gunna do, Flo heard it from a Chinese witchdoctor. You go to the cemetery and scrape up a handful of dirt next to a grave. Then you take that and spread it in front of someone’s door, where they won’t see it, so they tramp it all through the house. Brings them real bad luck that won’t never go away unless you get a witchdoctor to come and fix it up.”

    • • •

    The not-shaman says, “We must watch closely. Sometimes, the last thought a person has before dying, if it is a strong, clear, and pure one, will open up an aperture from this dark place, through which he may escape this suffering and chaos by going straight into the spirit world. If not … well, we will just have to wait and see and do our best.“

    He detected a resigned sigh, interpreting it as a constructive sign.

    • • •

    About noon the next day, humping their swags and thirty quid worth of supplies, the two men left to make their selection of the land off the old Glenorchy Road and then head for Dunkeld to do the dam. The kids had taken off at sparrow’s twit somewhere with the dog. Florence had watched Burns go to fetch Forbes from the pub that morning, then turned back to go through the stuff Phelan brought her.

    “Fergus ain’t here, we must wait and give him his twenty-seven bob for the room,” Forbes said.

    “Too right,” Burns said. “No, we’ll just slope, do the disappearing trick. He’s a mug, old George – ripe for rolling over.”

    “Do the old Jerry Diddler, eh? I’m up for it, mate.”

    They skirted Main Street and went along Cemetery Road. Burns thought he may as well duck into the cemetery reserve to take care of his little errand, while Forbes stood cockatoo out front under a tree, smoking his pipe. The shadows cast by the headstones were short and sharp in the sun, like a grinful of broken teeth. When he came out, Burns patted his trouser pocket and nodded at Forbes.

    Burns walks away into the cemetery, his back to the viewer; Forbes leans against a tree in the foreground, smoking a pipe.

    Who should they see fifty yards away, down Mary Street, but George bloody Fergus; he only chucked them a wave, as they turned back into Main Street. Burns had his sly piece of business to see to at the police barracks – in and out. Then they made for the old Glenorchy Road cutting a shortcut through some timbered bushland and struck out for Deep Lead.

    Burns, in no mood for conversation, tolerated Forbes’s whistling, fatuous comments, and laughter inspired by the few birds who had braved the heat to fly or call out. Some Headache Birds had lobbed in to mate and sang out heedless of the two.

    Sleep Didi, sleep. Sleep Didi, sleep. Sleep Didi, sleep, one carried on monotonously.

    Forbes laughed carelessly.

    “Sleep maybe!” he called back in imitation as they tramped. Burns bent over to do up the lace on his boot, then hung back as they went along.

    A flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos burst through the dry grey-green treetops in front of them. Raucous, chattering screeches, sharp squawks and whistles, then quieter murmurings as they settled on their branches.

    Abruptly, a lone, hidden Jacky Winter said his piece, as he watched the two turn down a track towards the Four Post Diggings in ironbark country.

    Plicky-plicky-plicky … Plicky-plicky-plicky …

    “Peter, Peter, Peter!” Forbes called, to be answered by the pretty, lilting ditty of a Scarlet Robin –

    Wee-cheedallee-dalee – then quiet, then tick, tick, tick, and a rapid burst of scolding chatter.

    From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2025

  • Ginseng Poachers

    Ginseng Poachers

    Once the blackened remains of his aerostatic globe were retrieved, Dinwiddie took to his bunk, afflicted with a profound dread usually reserved for the condemned. He shook, perspired, quivered, and palpitated; so much so that Pu-erh, apprehensive of her own fate, having been placed in charge of the Scot by the Qianlong Emperor himself, summoned a team of imperial physicians and acupuncturists. Their examination of his tongue revealed flaws in the state of his kidneys, bladder, intestines, stomach, spleen, lungs, heart, gall bladder, and liver. Moreover, its shape and colour pointed to a severe deficiency in Qi; red dots suggested heat or inflammation in his blood; and the thick coating was indicative of an allergic disorder compounded by digestive imbalance. He was dosed, moxibusted with mugwort, and cupped, scraped, tickled and pricked to the point of tears and bellows.

    He may as well have reclined sunning himself in the Imperial Garden, for Lord Macartney’s overtures to the Emperor had crashed and burned as completely as the globe, with tangible repercussions for the delegation. Macartney, preoccupied with weightier matters, had never much cared for Dinwiddie’s pet project in any case, and failed to notice its absence from the exhibition.

    Dinwiddie resurrected himself and managed to prepare for the official event. The Emperor was contemptuous, tarrying for less than five minutes before repairing to the quarters of his latest concubine. After his disdainful exit, Pu-erh conveyed his comments to the scowling Lord Macartney and deflated Dinwiddie:

    “Your air pump is of little interest, though the telescope might amuse children. He finds your planetarium infantile too – not unlike the sing-song clocks hawked in the Canton marketplaces,” she said. “The Emperor already owns a superior model, anyway, presented as a personal gift by a German delegation. It is true your giant lens can melt a copper coin, but will it melt his enemy’s city? He believes not.”

    The next day, she was summoned to the Dragon Throne. She kowtowed three times as she approached. The imperial ministers, secretaries, and scribes were in attendance, assisting the Emperor draft a reply to King George’s letter. Her attendants delivered the sketches and notes she and her agents had compiled regarding the scientific instruments.

    The Qing Emperor, in his Bright Yellow court robes.

    “You have performed your duties exemplarily, our flower,” the Emperor said. “Our indulgence of the foreign delegation, exasperating though it was, has nonetheless proved edifying in certain significant respects. Their ships are capable and well-armoured, their weapons powerful beyond our anticipation. It is useful to glean these odds and ends regarding the abilities of their scientists and craftsmen. Oh, that fellow, that worm …”

    “Lord Macartney,” prompted an advisor at his side.

    “That’s it – Macartney. I will never forget that spotted mulberry suit of his – the enormous diamond star, medals festooning his chest, and that hat – that ridiculous plume of feathers! The very image of presumption and self-importance. What a … peacock! But bumbling as a poacher setting snares in the Imperial Garden!” He let out a hearty laugh, provoking a ripple of hilarity among the ministers.

    “Insufferable dunce and fop. Humming and hawing about the significance of rituals and this and that, how he should bow and the rest of it. Disdains kowtowing to our Throne indeed, but performed some silly sort of jig instead. And they wouldn’t leave! They would like to have remained in Jehol the whole summer long! Those English have incurred my great displeasure – no more favours for them. Mark that, a ministerial edict for you: No more favours. Allow them two days to gather their paraphernalia, then escort them from the capital forthwith. The nonsense of this king, his wild ideas and hopes. Ah, that is apt! make a note. Come, take this down,” he said, flicking his fingers at the nearest scribe. “We shall draft the edict:

    “Your England is not the only nation trading at Canton. If other nations, following your bad example, wrongfully importune my ear with further impossible requests, how will it be possible for me to treat them with easy indulgence? Yes, good, and while I think of it, that point about letting in their proselytizers … Regarding your nation’s worship of the Lord of Heaven … Ever since the beginning of history, sage Emperors and wise rulers have bestowed on China a moral system and inculcated the code of Confucius, which from time immemorial has been religiously observed by the myriads of my subjects. There has been no hankering after heterodox doctrines.

    “Well and good,” he said, looking down at Pu-erh and granting her a broad, warm smile. It was the first smile of any sort, indeed, that she had ever received from him. “Foreign ideas and fancies can breed serious disharmony, can they not, our petal? The last thing we need is exposure to them. What was it that my father used to say? ‘Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow into your ruin,’ or something to that effect. By the way, how is your beloved Bright Yang? Has he returned with the tiny elephant and soldiers?”

    She averted her eyes and slowly shook her head.

    “You see, I know more than I let on,” he said. “I even heard scraps of a crazy rumour that the barbarians can fly! The nonsense that gets around. Never mind, he was unworthy of you, that Bright Yang. Yet fear not, a woman as intelligent as yourself must be much sought after. Is such a brilliant flower, however plain, worth more than the prettiest concubine? No, she is worth ten of them, and not just for lacking their vacant minds. Stupidity makes a concubine restful. But you, dear petal, you keep us guessing. Oh, that is not quite well put, is it? Naturally a pretty concubine is all the better when graced with an astute mind, is she not? How old are you, our petal? When were you born?”

    She told him, and he slowly shook his head.

    “That is what I have heard tell, but would you truly have me believe in the gold elixir of immortality? Have no qualms, our enlightened one, you need not seduce me with the fairy tales of your sect. Despite my patronage of Tibetan Buddhism and my abiding friendship with the Dalai Lama, I do not entertain the slightest aversion to your affections for the Tao, though its religion and philosophy I neither believe nor understand. Alas, there are far too few of you left in the upper echelons, though I’m told that some of your rural cults are regaining popularity amongst the poorer, lower-class folk. No matter, you have earned our fond indulgence, and may rely upon it to the end of your span under Heaven.”

    Again he shed the glow of his smile upon her, or so it seemed, enhaloed as it was in the golden rays reflected from the Dragon Throne.

    If Pu-erh had never doubted the Emperor’s enduring patronage, she did now. Another warm smile deepened her unease. He dismissed her and returned to work on his epistle to the British.

    “The beginning and middle are good,” he said, “but the end needs attention. Where were we? Ah yes … I do not forget the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea, nor do I overlook your excusable ignorance of the usages of our Celestial Empire. I have consequently commanded my Ministers to enlighten your Ambassador on the subject, and have ordered the departure of the mission. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera … Now for a firm conclusion: Should your vessels touch the shore, your merchants will assuredly never be permitted to land or to reside there, but will be subject to instant expulsion. In that event your barbarian merchants will have had a long journey for nothing. Do not say that you were not warned in due time! Tremblingly obey and show no negligence! Yes, that should do it! Inscribe this missive on yellow silk of the finest quality, deliver it to the mulberry peacock and impose my edict upon him to begone in two days’ time, at the risk of your heads!” He uttered the final phrase in an ominous tone that echoed in the hall, then smiled broadly.

    Lord Macartney received the yellow silk epistle, mercifully unreadable to him, and departed China ignominiously, his retinue and exhibition articles hastily boxed. Aboard the Lion as she set sail from Macao, he stood on deck with her captain.

    “Are they ignorant that a couple of our English frigates would outmatch his entire antiquated fleet?” Macartney said bitterly.

    “From what I have seen,” the captain said, “it would take no more than half a summer. Half a dozen broadsides would block the so-called Tiger’s Mouth, which guards the waterway into Canton.”

    “The population would be condemned to starvation. The Empire of China is much overrated. He is a crazy old man of war, kept barely afloat these past hundred and fifty years, which through its impression of bulk has managed to overawe its neighbours. Ah, he’s rotten at the timbers …”

    “Through and through, m’lud. It won’t be long. He’ll drift as a wreck and surely be dashed asunder on the rocky shore.”

    “The tyranny of a handful of Manchu tartars over three hundred millions of Chinese, who will not endure their condition for much longer. Still, we must forbear while a ray of hope remains for the success of gentle measures. At any rate, left to its own devices, I believe the dissolution of this imperial yoke will precede my own.”

    Two British ships, the Lion and another, leaving China under full sail.

    The captain watched the lord’s back as he paced away, then turned discreetly from the breeze, to shake his head, light his pipe, and allow himself a wry face at the tales of his superior’s disastrous mission, which were attaining satirical proportions amongst members of the envoy and crew.

    • • •

    Approaching twilight, two unexceptional sojourners tramped down the dusty track that skirted the flank of Timeless Mount – a poised woman and a mustachioed youth – both clad in plain, weather-worn robes, the modest dress of those who have forsaken rank. Though travel-marked, they bore the composed, abstracted air of those returned from beyond time’s keeping.

    As they neared a fork in the path, one arm climbing higher, the other tracing a ridge eastward before dipping into dense forest, three grizzled bandits in big boots and hats came up behind them.

    “Oi! What’s your hurry, peasants?” one of the bandits growled and the two turned to face them, bowing low and repeatedly, out of old acquaintance with peril.

    The one who had spoken snorted his satisfaction at what he perceived as their humility, blind as he was to the absence of fear in it. “You can chuck down all that stuff,” he said, jerking a thumb, the other hand gripping the hilt of his goose-wing sabre, as he limped toward them. The pilgrims eased their carry-poles from their shoulders to the ground. “Toady, have a look-see what we got ’ere.”

    One of his henchmen, distinguished by the angry boils covering one side of his face, did immediately as ordered, dropping to his knees before the packages and opening them up. Periodically, he scratched at his face, his boils themselves seeming to have boils.

    “Clothes and stuff, pretty nice, silk even!” he said, holding up a deep blue scarf patterned with peonies. “Now, what have we got ’ere in this box? All this writing-stuff and little statues and books and bells and little pots, and all sorts of other useless rubbish.”

    “What about food?” said the third bandit, urgently, his eyes wide.

    “Hold on, Yongyan, give me a minute. We got some carrots, rice, and beans. Not much chop.”

    “Better than nothing,” said the third bandit, a man more corpulent than hardened. “We got more back at camp, anyway.”

    “Pack it all up, you two, and let’s be off.”

    Down from the track they stumbled with their prisoners, pushing through the bamboo until they came to a small cleared area with a fire-pit and the rough wherewithal of a bandit’s trade: a meagre stack of weapons – spear, pike, sword, and a musket – and a dismal pile of loot, which they may as well have obtained by begging: a modest heap of bronze coins, a studded leather belt, an old bamboo flute, an abacus, a compass, a wooden figurine of the Buddha, a drawstring burlap pouch, and other odds and ends.

    Pu-erh and her son sat in silence, loosely restrained by a rope, observing the men as they cooked up the food, ate, and passed around a flagon of rice-whisky. She was adorned with not one extra wrinkle since we last saw her, all that indeterminate period before, though her little boy Mow Fung was matured into an adolescent fellow of lean frame and quiet grace.

    “Better give them a bit,” the leader said through a mouthful. “Might be the last meal they ever have before getting all sliced up into bits and pieces and their heads chopped off.” His guffaws dwindled when she fixed him in her level gaze.

    “Your name, sir?” Pu-erh said politely to the one with boils, who leaned over to them with two wooden plates of beans. She and her son had already freed themselves from their restraints without any fuss. The bandit had removed his headwear, and even in the dim light one could see that the boils continued up from the side of his face and across half his cranium.

    “He’s called Ugly Toad,” the leader said. “The other one goes by Yongyan the Hungry. And me? Wang the Eviscerator.” He lifted his sabre from the ground beside him and waved it in the air. “And this ’ere’s what does the evisceratin’. So you better watch your p’s and q’s, got it? Are you from around hereabouts? We’re new ourselves, lookin’ for a good place to set up a proper hideout and all that. Heard there’s treasure up on that next mountain, Time’s Heavenly Sanctuary Blah-Blah-Something-or-Other, so we figured we might head up there a ways.”

    “That would seem an unfavourable location for those of your profession,” she said.

    “Oh it would, would it?”

    “Certainly, unless you would enter the lair to look for the tiger.”

    “Allow me to be the best judge of that,” he said. “But go on, proceed, tell us a bit about it, since you seem to know so much about everything. What is it you do around this neck of the woods, scratch the dirt, I suppose?”

    “Simple hermits. We study and improve ourselves; distill the gold elixir; wander from village to village; tend the hidden temple; heal boils; make rain; exorcise ghosts; give blessings; heal boils (it’s a recurring problem); prophesy destinies; interpret the countryside; create and burn talismans for good or ill fortune …”

    “Ar, got it,” said the leader and guzzled from the flask. “Quacks. What a coincidence. You know, before this we worked as ginseng poachers in Fusong County up at Changbai Mountain. Not much fun, I can tell you. You get those Manchus after you, because it’s their sacred place, you see; and then you get the black bears too. If it’s the Manchu, you run like the wind, for your head’s at stake. If it’s the bear, you don’t run or fight, whatever you do, but play dead and freeze, and be good at it, too, because they’ll push and prod you around to see if you’re faking, and if you are, they’ll more than likely take your head off before they gobble you up. Here, I’ll show you one of my gut-wounds, still septic it is after all that time. Pretty nice, eh? Well, I never made a peep, you better believe it, though he licked all over my face and blew his rank breath up my nostrils. The ginseng takes a lot of poaching indeed – but if you know what you’re doin’ it’s worth more’n silver. Sometimes, if you’re lucky you’ll hear a special little birdie singing, what’s telling you the ginseng is there; and if it is, it’s so fiddly to get it out you might as well not even try. The root can disappear or run away, too, because it’s magic. It’s just the exact shape of a human and it’s got the mountain spirit in it, so you have to lasso it by the sprouts with red cotton thread with the ends weighed down with two bronze coins. Then you tie it up to a sort of special trap until you dig it out without breaking any of it, which is next to impossible anyways. We’ve saved two in that little sack, which is about all we got out of the exercise. To tell the truth, we haven’t been much chop at working as bandits, either, but that’s another story.”

    “Gold elixir …” said Yongyan the Hungry. “Any alcohol in it?”

    “In the modern day, it’s generally understood as a potion of immortality formed within,” Pu-erh said. “Hence the term inner alchemy. The gold elixir is the innate knowledge and power of the mind – a fusion of vitality, energy, and spirit: the forces of creativity, motion, and consciousness – refined through rigorous observance of the Tao. By contrast, external alchemy follows the example of one of the Eight Immortals, Iron-Crutch Li. Its goal is to concoct a pill of immortality by combining ingredients like lead, mercury, cinnabar, and sulphates, then firing them in a furnace. Unfortunately, the ingestion of such pills often results in death. Some lesser practitioners attempt to raise their consciousness through crude experiments with plant extracts.”

    “Deviant practices,” Mow Fung said, with the shadow of a smile, closing his eyes. The bandits stared, then glanced at one another, slack-jawed.

    “He don’t say too much, do he?” said Wang the Eviscerator at last.

    “Those days are gone,” Pu-erh sighed, “when condemned prisoners were made available as subjects for such experiments. As for these mountains, they are favourable to our alchemical purpose: the pursuit of the elixir. For here, tucked in a valley that time forgot, lies a village where months pass as years and the people scarcely age.”

    “Heal boils, do you say?” said Ugly Toad.

    None of the bandits paid any attention as Mow Fung retrieved the bamboo flute and moved to the edge of the clearing without a word, where he sat down cross-legged again and began to play.

    The campfire crackled. He ad-libbed lento through melodic variations once taught to him by the Imperial Music Master, as a favour to Pu-erh. In theory, they formed a transcendent framework based on the King Wen sequence of I Ching hexagrams from the late Shang Dynasty, embodying a microcosm of the universe.

    Mow Fung playing his flute in the dark bamboo grove, with Pu-Erh and the poachers in the background

    Without effort, the young man lent the intrinsically dry exercise a style idiomatic to the flute, evoking in everyone present an impression of a lonely moon suspended in a frosty autumn night sky, though not one of them made mention of it.

    As he played, he reflected on dim memories of his infancy in the Forbidden City, and on the blurry period that followed, living their lives in hiding and reclusion among caves and forests, and in the infinite seclusion of the mountain. How the years had flown since they fled, when one looked back, while seeming, minute to minute, to progress in ordinary time – so that he, an apparent “youth” – had lived the span of perhaps two lifetimes for one of his corporeal age.

    “You might as well keep that thing,” Yongyan said. “None of us could get a note out of it.”

    “What was that you were saying about boils a while earlier?” Ugly Toad asked quietly. “I’ve been having trouble with these for years. Getting worse rather than better, I’m afraid.”

    “Those little blemishes?” Pu-erh said. “Why, you can hardly notice them. They’re really not worth bothering about too much, do you think?”

    He gave her a meek and appreciative grin. “I’ve tried all sorts of remedies from quacks all over the countryside, but they’ve only made things worse.”

    She took a dab of unguent from one of several minuscule clay pots stacked into her carry-sack and told him to apply it. Though scarcely more than a smear, it seemed to warm in his fingers and swell slightly as he rubbed it in – not diminishing, but softly renewing itself. After a long while, she told him to save what remained for daily use. There would always be enough, she said, so long as he didn’t try to measure it.

    “Feels better already,” Ugly Toad said to Wang the Eviscerator. “You should try it, you know, for your belly.”

    “Well, you do realize I was only kidding about cutting you up into bits…” Wang said to her through his toothless grin.

    “I knew your capabilities the moment we met,” she said, “and I was doubtful they include the eviscerating of unarmed victims. Unfortunately, the unguent is only a salve, a stop-gap measure. Cures for both your complaints will require substantial time and involved procedures. Take heed that if you leave your bear-wound as it is to heal, you will assuredly die. Moreover, if you lead your party to seek treasure on the upper mount as you implied was your plan, the three of you will surely perish all the sooner.”

    The following morning the five took the lower path, hiking along the ridge and descending into thick forest. They entered a narrow trail that soon forked into a dozen offshoots, each of which branched again and again into near-identical tracks, until they found themselves in a bewilderment of forks and false turnings. Only Pu-erh and Mow Fung seemed to know the way. At last, near midday, they emerged before a dilapidated temple, half-lost in the undergrowth.

    “Rest now,” said Pu-erh. “We will return before nightfall.”

    The temple and its crumbling attendant building sat on a ledge where the land dropped away into a mist-filled void. Behind it, cliffs fell sheer to silence, visited only by haughty eagles who wheeled and nested in the inaccessible crags.

    The three bandits felt a rush of exhilaration at the sight – a sensation unlike any they had ever known. They settled in to await the return of their two guides or perhaps some wandering monk. An overwhelming solemnity fell over them, as though from this high place one might commune with the Eight Immortals – whoever they were.

    “We were looking for a hideout, and we have found one,” said Wang.

    “Without knowing the way, no one could ever get in,” said Toad.

    The void was an immense auditorium of silence, from whose depths came the thin cry of a hawk.

    “… or out, for that matter, you might say,” said Yongyan.

    “You don’t think …”

    The three cast glances at each other, before settling down for a smoke.

    “How could you suggest such a thing?”

    From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2025

  • 7. Document 17 (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    7. Document 17 (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Document 17: Manifestation Series

    The unicorn is injured, why did it come? My way is finished.

    ⁓ Attributed to the Zuozhuan, on the death of Confucius, 479 BCE (adapted)

    This account, drawn from the lower ledgers in the Registry of Misperceived Wonders (Third Vault), concerns the imperfect ascent of a crown, a sign mistaken for itself, the brief elevation of a foreign scholar, and a haunting sigh. The report commences with an account of the journey of the foreign envoy from the White River, just south of Tongzhou, to the Forbidden City. The route is as well-trodden as the tropes that embellish it, so for present intents, the passage has been elided.

    Lord Macartney received with restrained annoyance the news of the extension of his itinerary a further 160 miles, extending the journey into Tartary. He was already preoccupied with the Chinese administration’s requirement that he perform full-body kowtows to the Emperor, since he was not required to humble himself in this way even before his own monarch, good King George III. He nevertheless resigned himself to attempting an approximation. Bright Yang set him at ease with a broad smile and copious applause, assuring him that his impromptu flourishes, bows and scrapes such as he demonstrated, which were worthy of the most extravagant dandy, would more than satisfy the Qianlong Emperor, who was, in any case, a most amiable fellow once you got to know him.

    Lord Macartney, an Ulster Scot consummately qualified for ambassadorial duty, departed from the capital with the majority of his entourage, leaving behind much of the valuable equipment that he had dragged to the ends of the earth as presents for the Emperor, in the care of his tiring – in both senses – travel companion, another Scot: astronomer, physicist, inventor and philosopher, one dour James Dinwiddie.

    Two European men in 18th-century dress. Lord Macartney One stands tall and reserved, hands on hips. Dinwiddie leans forward, gesturing animatedly.

    One of the marvels intended to evoke the amazement of the Chinese Emperor was a clockwork planetarium of Dinwiddie’s own devising, which had taken him thirty years to build and was acclaimed “the most wonderful mechanism ever emanating from human hands.” Dinwiddie’s second love among the collection of marvels was a hot air balloon, an “aerostatic globe” of his own design, with room for two aeronauts. Although he had never gone aloft in one before, which had proven to be a perilous feat throughout Europe, he had become obsessed with the idea of becoming the first to do so in China, and to float high above the Emperor, his court, and the citizenry of Peking, who would all be rendered agog in disbelief. Such would be his historical legacy, he foresaw: even above his planetarium and extensive philosophical tracts, it would be foremost amongst his life’s works.

    Other items in the display included reflecting telescopes, burning lenses, electrical machines, air pumps, and clocks; brass artillery, howitzer mortars, muskets, and swords; a diving bell, musical instruments, magnificent chandeliers, and vases; Wedgwood china, paintings of everyday English life, scenes of English military victories by sea and land, and royal family portraits. The cost amounted to fourteen thousand pounds – in those days a formidable sum.

    On the journey to Peking with the envoy, Sun Pu-erh took stock of the information she gathered and started a series of detailed sketches of the devices most relevant to her Emperor’s wishes, in particular the military and scientific machines and artefacts. She employed spies and draftsmen to aid in the task. Bright Yang, on the other hand, was absorbed in tales that had flourished among the populace as the envoy made its way up along the White River – tales in which, perhaps, the twelve-year-old son of Lord Macartney’s secretary had a hand, aided by his smattering of Chinese. From the point of view of the child, similar to that of the rural populace in this regard, the official inventory of planetarium, lenses, lustres and so on, was not overwhelming, hence stories grew up that hidden inside the cargo were the actual marvels to be revealed to the Emperor: an elephant no bigger than a cat; a battalion of miniature, living British grenadiers, each only twelve inches tall but perfect in the most minute detail, down to fingernails, eyelashes, and intelligence; and a magical pillow that transported one to faraway countries while one slept.

    A sentry reported to Pu-erh that Bright Yang was last observed with one of the lower-ranking concubines, following a narrow path into a bamboo grove, half-clothed and crying out in abandon, in full pursuit of the elephant and grenadiers. She raised an eyebrow expressing initial surprise at the news, then appeared to be none too bothered. Mow Fung, however, observant of such minutiae as only an infant is capable, noticed that, still relatively expressionless, she was now infected with an occasional little sigh, which she would immediately stifle before anyone else but him could notice. He was quite entertaining, she thought.

    A Chinese man in casual robes pursues a nude woman into a bamboo grove, vanishing into shadow and greenery.

    The exaggerated local publicity surrounding the English marvels spread widely among the populace along the way, causing no end of anxiety for both Macartney and Dinwiddie, in fear that their exhibition might fail to meet the Emperor’s expectations. Macartney could do nothing but fret as the journey continued north. Dinwiddie, at least, could busy himself in preparation for the exhibition and his historic balloon flight.

    During his weeks of preparation and waiting in the Forbidden City, he developed an infatuation with the refined, demure, though persistently aloof Sun Pu-erh. She seemed to observe everything through her inscrutable dark eyes, while her long, strategic locks, neither concealing nor clearly inviting access to his imagined fortress of her womanhood, were enough to elicit certain untoward thoughts in his own inflamed mind. He found himself drawn helplessly to the mysterious, dark, exotic femininity he’d read about in travellers’ tales and believed expressed itself in her every word and gesture.

    He took her aside into the corner of a storage room to confess his feelings.

    “D’ye mind I stroke your bonnie raven hair, lassie?”

    She glanced over his large hairy nose, irregular ears, bushy eyebrows, and red whiskers – none of which appealed to her in the slightest – and gave a wry smile. To his mind, it was an encouraging one, so he gave her a wink and proceeded with his whimsy.

    “Looks like silk, but feels a wee bit like the mane o’ a horse,” he confided.

    In an effort to further his suit, such as it was, he professed a warm affection for her young son Chung, our very own Mow Fung of that era, a child blessed with a nature to be seen and not heard, one who would sit and watch him assemble his complex and precious marvels, without ever touching a thing.

    “E’s a fine wee bairn,” he said. “I daresay I got three o’ ma own, and not one o’ em surpasses him in manners, nort be a long short.

    A young Chinese boy gazes intently at a model planetarium; blurred adults adjust the mechanism in the background.

    “Now, the absence of the Emperor, along with almost the entire British delegation, gives us a rare chance to put my aerostatic globe through its paces and to mount a rehearsal that will allow everyone concerned to practise their roles. I’ll hold off, for the moment, from testing the discharge of fireworks from the craft, but will reserve that for the great day itself. We’ll hae nae beasts flung frae the heavens, nor French contraptions named “parachute.” Yon Blanchard – the great pretender tae philosophy, carnival-showman – may cast his ducks at Providence as he pleases! Rather, we shall save such spectacles for the day itself, to maximise the impression upon the Celestial Court that the potentialities – at once military and philosophical – of floating skyward in a silk-lined basket constitute nothing less than the definitive mark of a truly enlightened society.”

    Pu-erh was invested with the imperial power to authorise such a project, and so it was done. The day approached for Dinwiddie to test-fly his globe.

    “I will require a few of my assistants to set up the apparatus,” he said. “Is there a secure location? Best to maintain the highest level of discretion in order to preserve the element of surprise for His Nibs – ahem, His Celestial Majesty the something-or-other Emperor – ahem – when I reveal the aerostatic globe before him in all its magnificent sublimity.”

    “Sire,” said Pu-erh. “I know a perfect place for your preliminary ascent. It is located in the north-west corner of the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City, close to a Taoist shrine that is under my own humble administration. High walls, a few trees and structures, some open space.”

    “Sounds ideal, my cherub. There we shall discover what shall transpire, according to the scientific method. P’raps a hydrogen one would’ha been better, but a difficulty – not insurmountable, mind ye – to manufacture the hydrogen right here. For all purposes, this beauty should amply suffice.”

    The day before the planned launch, Dinwiddie’s team transported the apparatus from a storage room to the secluded north-west corner of the Imperial Garden. Our young Mow Fung stood apart from the proceedings, contemplating them beside Pu-erh, who observed silently, committing each step to memory in minute detail.

    The envelope was suspended between two masts and tethered by six ropes, each gripped by a man. Dinwiddie ignited a pyre that had been placed beneath it, contained within a structure designed to focus the rising hot air into the mouth of the envelope, which expanded, revealing bright patches of red, blue, white, black, and gold. When fully inflated, the glory of the sphere, suspended in the air by its own force, was manifest: the English coat of arms, with a shield of the Empire and crown of the Monarch supported by a fierce lion and a noble, tethered unicorn. Beneath the arms, the motto Dieu et mon droit shone out in gold, proclaiming the divine majesty of King George III.

    The envelope was detached from the masts and jockeyed into position beside the northernmost gate – the Gate of Divine Might – where the wicker basket stood in readiness. The two were lashed together with ropes, the silk slackening and filling by turns in the uncertain air.

    The basket carried a burner to maintain the heat in the canopy above, with a supply of charred wool for fuel.

    Dinwiddie cleared his throat and hushed his assistants for a spot of oratory. Adjusting his wig with the gravity of a sermon, he murmured, half to the heavens, “If Providence has pit China in the traupic, it’s no but that Britain micht instruct her frae the firmament.”

    The balloon wheezed politely in assent.

    At a shrill blast of Dinwiddie’s whistle, Pu-erh stepped forward as planned and was helped into the wicker-basket.

    “Come along, laddie, dinna dawdle,” said Dinwiddie, lifting the boy in beside his mother, before climbing in himself. “Just a gentle ascent – straight up a wee ways, stay for a few minutes, and straight back doon. Cast off, lads!” he cried.

    The craft began to descend immediately the ropes were loosed, so Dinwiddie struck a spark and stoked the wool-burner. In response, the globe bobbed to a halt.

    “Too muckle ballast!” he cried. “Out wi’ ye, laddie!”

    He took Mow Fung bodily and cast him over the edge into a pair of arms that happened to be there. The craft crawled upwards, reaching a height of about six feet – and there it stayed, hovering, obstinately refusing to rise any further.

    “Ye be-luddy deevil o’ a thang!” he roared. “Off wi’ more ballast! Quick, gi’ out, gi’ out, gi’ off!”

    Fixing him with a cool, level look, Pu-erh climbed out of the basket and took hold of a stay rope, guiding herself roughly to the ground. The craft began to ascend, slowly, and all on the ground dropped their ropes.

    “Na! Dinna do that! Dinna do that!” Dinwiddie called down, but it was too late.

    The balloon rose quickly to a point above the thirty-foot wall and was caught in a stiffening breeze. It took on momentum and, without any stays, sailed over the top of the wall, just beside the Gate of Divine Might.

    As the wind took hold, Dinwiddie realised there was nothing to do but go over the edge himself. He slid down to near the end of a rope, but found himself still too far from the ground to let go.

    Fortunately, as the craft drifted across the broad moat of the Forbidden City, the wind died down just enough for the balloon to descend, dragging his body through the water and giving him a chance to escape into the mud of the opposite bank.

    The balloon gained height again and took off on an unmanned flight for several miles above Peking. The envelope caught fire from the furnace, and many perceived it as a dragon descending from heaven, to wreak havoc on the Manchu Qings.

    Among the populace, alarm spread at the sight of the unicorn, glistening in the evening light – so closely resembling a legendary beast of their own, whose arrival had been anticipated for centuries. Archers fired upon the apparition as it bobbed and limped across the sky, striking sacred spots upon its body.

    Snatches of an ancient song arose amid the cries of terrified onlookers, first muttered, then taken up by others:

    The unicorn’s hooves!
    The duke’s sons assemble,
    Woe for the unicorn!

    The unicorn’s forehead!
    The duke’s cousins gather,
    Woe for the unicorn!

    The unicorn’s horn!
    The duke’s kinsfolk arrive,
    Woe for the unicorn!

    A fire-engulfed hot air balloon, embossed with the British coat of arms featuring a lion and unicorn, plunges from the sky under a gale of arrows, fired upon by amassed warriors.

    When the craft crashed flaming into a field on the outskirts of Peking, it was set upon by peasants wielding spades, shovels, picks, and knives. No one was harmed in the incident, except that during the incineration of the balloon’s remains, all the hair on the head of one of its attackers was entirely burned off.

    Dinwiddie was conveyed back to his quarters, where Pu-erh and her son were waiting. He waved them aside and, devastated and speechless, took to his couch for days, avoiding them both for the remainder of his stay in Peking.

    Mow Fung noticed that from this time on, his mother tacked a tiny new gesture to the end of her occasional, apparently unprovoked sigh: a barely perceptible shake of the head. She would now say just one word to herself:

    “Men.”

    Addendum. Filed: Gate of Divine Might, 1793:
    The foregoing episode is absent from the official papers of the Embassy, and from all Celestial memorials of the same year. No explanation is recorded, nor could one be; the event appears to have been extinguished at the instant of its occurrence. A trace persists only in a marginal entry among provincial gazetteers, describing the sudden descent of a flaming lion beyond the northern wall of Peking: a visitation later interpreted as the passing shadow of an immortal qilin (the “unicorn” of the translated song).

    The entry adds that similar portents were recorded in antiquity, when a qilin was said to have announced the birth of Confucius, the Sage of Lu, and another to have appeared before Emperor Wen of Han. In Han and later commentaries, the song “The Hooves of the Unicorn,” long preserved in classical commentaries, was linked to the death of Confucius himself, for it was said that the capture and wounding of a qilin in Lu marked the end of his era. By analogy, the chronicler proposed that this fiery apparition might signify the renewal of imperial virtue, or else its exhaustion. Whether this was mass illusion, actual omen, or mere transcription error cannot now be determined.

    © Michael Guest 2025

  • 6. Jade Volume (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    6. Jade Volume (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Jade Volume

    There is a mountain in the northern reaches of central China, known by devotees as Time’s Heavenly Sanctuary an Infinity above the Jagged Rocks. To the uninitiated, the summit lies at a distance no greater than a rice husk from the utterly impossible. And yet the region dazzles with natural vistas and unimaginable beauty. Many have tried to get to the higher elevations, but most failed. This is the realm not of mankind, but of the eagle, the heavenly tiger, and also the mischievous monkey who toys with the mind.

    Below, a wide, pure, meandering river traverses a pristine landscape that extends into unknown territory, amid countless acres of giant bamboo, their upper branches seeming to beckon the breeze. The skies above are the sapphire blue of heaven. Hearts lift at the sight, and there are climbers so intoxicated by the vision that they hurl themselves in ecstasy to their doom – clearing the sheer cliffs and smashing against the rough boulders below. It is no wonder that, to a remaining few, Time’s Heavenly Sanctuary an Infinity above the Jagged Rocks is believed the holiest of holy places and, indeed, not to be slighted without profound risk.

    Abstract watercolor landscape featuring red mist and glowing light in the foreground, with blue-grey watercolor waves suggesting water and fog. Evokes a mythic Chinese mountain scene from the Jade Volume chapter.

    The path winds upward through groves of giant bamboo, past shadowed outcrops and long-forgotten steps. Midway up the mountain’s flank, obscured by foliage and time, stand the ruins of a small, ancient temple – crumbling, barely visible through a thick curtain of green. Though seemingly deserted, the sacred fonts are kept full, and the stone steps swept clean.

    Inside, a modest offering of a simple rice-ball and bamboo shoot invariably awaits the intrepid visitor. To come so far demonstrates a purity of heart that is well rewarded. To accept the offering in proper humility opens the senses to the contrast between the essences of darkness and light – a rare clarity amid the world’s illusions. But should the offering be taken improperly, or worse, scorned in any infinitesimal degree … then the shattered remains of the fallen, far below the cliffs, bear silent witness to the error.

    Slightly below the temple’s ledge, until a century or two ago, burial tunnels were dug into the side of the sheer cliffs, extraordinarily deep, hand-carved tunnels in which it was the tradition to inter beings deemed noble of mind and spirit. It is said that, for the adept, the tunnels lead into a subterranean network that joins together all the holiest mountains in China, though not in the form of a physical labyrinth. Rather, access can be had only by an astral body, guided by the lines of an ancient map inscribed by the Tao on the shell of a certain large tortoise. Gravediggers would once upon a time swing down on ropes and steer one’s coffin into place in the cliff. Unsurprisingly, some of these erstwhile aerial ferrymen perished alongside their cargo, a worthy sacrifice for which they accrued what some call good Karma.

    And still the mountain ascends.

    Above this middle sanctuary of shrine and tomb, the mountain veils its final secrets. The temple, perched on a precarious ledge far above the valley, is not the summit. Beyond it, higher still and hidden from even the boldest climbers, lie the archives. Cascades of shining white water shield the opening to the cave, mighty enough to wash intruders away like ants. To human eyes, from all but an angular perspective of higher insight, the entrance appears no greater than a long, narrow crack in impenetrable stone.

    Seldom indeed will visitors appear at these elevations – whether temple, tomb, or the archive beyond – in a living, physical form – but when they do, they find awaiting them the welcoming rice-ball and fresh bamboo shoot. Quite the mystery. Either there are ways to attain such heights known only to the peasants who reside in hovels dotting the mountain here and there, shrouded in mist, or else a supernatural force is at work. We adhere to the former explanation because, no matter how sheer the cliffs or tangled the paths on the way to enlightenment, there are always those who will dare to ascend and untangle them, even among us simple monks and peasants.

    Yet there are also tales of hazardous spiritual journeys undertaken in order to consult the archive, in which an adventurer-adept awakens from trance to find the rice-ball and bamboo shoot in his mouth – rotten and crawling with maggots. And this although no flies exist above the treeline! The scenario is horrific, and it invariably concludes on the boulders at the foot of the cliffs.

    The archive is a forest of books dating back to the earliest ‘butterfly’ volumes, constructed from vertical strips of bamboo, each inscribed with a line of text, and linked together into concertina-folded pages. The works kept in the archive are expertly arranged, meticulously ordered and colour-coded, their calligraphy flawless, their ink illustrations brilliant in economy. Naturally, they are dusty and draped in thick wreaths of spider web, for they are seldom taken up in the hand of a reader.

    In the present day, the name of Chung Mow Fung yields only a single footnote, in a ‘recent’ volume from two or three centuries ago, referencing parentage under a different name. This name, however, is barred from formal publication, for it was altered by edict of the Tao, as made clear and manifest in the Forty-Ninth Hexagram: Revolution (革 – Gé). As Fire meets Metal (the lake), producing illumination, so too are personal desires refined into unselfishness. What is obsolete is shed like a snake’s skin; acquired pollution is burned away, revealing the essence of primal, unified awareness. The spirit aligns with its path. The great person changes like a tiger.

    Abstract watercolor of a fiery metallic I Ching hexagram, glowing against a watery background. Symbolizes transformation or revolution..

    It was not uncommon for those of the Mow Fung line to alter their names – a necessary measure during those periods when the study of the Tao fell into disfavour with ascendant militant ideologies. When he settled on the southern continent, Chung had been his family name; however, local officials, in their ignorance, reversed the order. That moment marks the point at which we locate our pivotal index for extracting the lineage, and so the name becomes, in the final analysis, arbitrary. Yet the Mandarin denotation, Admirer of the Phoenix, perhaps remains apt. After all, how may we pin down a karmic ripple or trace an Akashic echo by means of a single name? Naturally, such terms are merely Buddhist and Hindu approximations, and useful metaphors at best, for, as Lao Tzu correctly observes, the true Way is named only tentatively: Tao.

    So much for names. The Tao does not trouble itself with the consistency of library catalogues.

    Although the familial lines extend back centuries into various narratives concerning the most enlightened individuals, this and further changes in name make certain crucial connections obscure, such that the specific ancestry becomes a matter of interpretation and even, in the worst cases, divination. It is like pursuing the strands of a fog. Any identifiable and named individual will not necessarily correlate with the line of the Mow Fung who occupies our current interest.

    Some traditions suggest that Mow Fung is not so much a reincarnation as a resonance – a particular pattern in the Tao reasserting itself under a familiar-seeming name: a node through which the Tao’s intent briefly shimmers. That such a resonance might walk, speak, or even misbehave is not so much a mystery as a habit of the Way.

    Perhaps he never attained enlightenment, nor will his descendants, his temperament being of a too weak, too dark, too yin-flavoured humour and given to excesses of the flesh: notably, unmindful congress and the ingestion of hallucinogens. Unfortunately, even such faults are not as uncommon as the reader might like to think, even among the membership of our venerable community of ancestors, among whom number not only sages and adepts, but also a handful of artists and poets whose conviction in their own genius outpaced any objective manifestation.

    It is gathered from the relevant volume that this ‘earlier’ Mow Fung was the son of an accomplished civil servant who, after becoming a father, subsequently became a eunuch in the imperial court of the Qianlong Emperor, where he enjoyed a cheerfully untroubled life. Nicknamed, with some irony, Ma Tan-yang, or “Bright Yang” he achieved a degree of enlightenment, thanks to the tutelage of his wife. She, Sun Pu-erh (“One Hearted”), was a child prodigy and a brilliant scholar and seer, trained in a clandestine temple of the Taoist School of Complete Reality (now officially suppressed, but only on paper) and endowed with unsurpassed expertise in the study of Confucius.

    Traditional Chinese watercolor painting of two court officials in ceremonial robes, standing before a decorative phoenix tapestry. Represents Pu-erh and Bright Yang from the Jade Volume, styled as Taoist immortals.

    Moreover, she was a brilliant exponent of foreign languages, which she studied under the tutelage of a Jesuit missionary and painter named Giuseppe Castiglione. She was an adept of high degree, directly descended from the female Wu, the most powerful sorcerers of all time, and engaged as a high adviser in the imperial court. Her husband was charged with supervision of the Emperor’s concubines, who instructed him in the most up-to-date nuances in fashion and cosmetics, in exchange for tutoring them in all sorts of corporeal practices in which he was expert (see Indigo Volume XXXXIV of Late Tang Dynasty Collection, and Emerald Volume XXVII of Song Dynasty Collection).

    •

    One day the Emperor summoned Sun Pu-erh and her foolish young husband Bright Yang to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, in the Forbidden City. Sitting on his Dragon Throne, which marked the centre of the universe, he assigned them a mission. Backed by a magnificent screen of gold, he appeared a multi-coloured, superhuman gem. His voice echoed around and among the six huge gilded columns immediately before him, each encoiled by his own five-clawed dragon. Touch one if you wish to die. The ruler of a round-eyed, red-haired, ghostly-skinned barbarian rabble from a far-flung isle had requested that he receive a delegation. The chieftain, who called himself King George III of England, a territory he described in terms so overblown as to border on hilarious arrogance, wished to discover the wonders of the Great Qing, for the betterment of his own ‘civilization’, which the Emperor understood to be the lowliest among all those in Europe.

    “His baser wish is that we grant certain concessions to his barbarian merchants. Hitherto, all European nations, including those of his own realm, have carried on their trade with our Celestial Empire, as permitted solely at the port of Canton, a restriction he now seeks to overturn.

    “What is the meaning of this word ‘king,’ anyway?” the Emperor said, looking at Pu-erh, who had memorized all 11,099 volumes of the encyclopedia housed in the Hall of Literary Glory.

    She bowed her head and replied.

    “Perhaps related to another word they use, ‘kin,’ implying he is the father of their extended family,” she said. “They say also that ‘the lion is king of beasts,’ referring to their imperial symbolism. Evidently there are no lions there, are there? Perhaps they seek to differentiate themselves from Caesar, derived elsewhere as Czar or Kaiser. I imagine it all originates in Roman times ”

    “Cease!” the Emperor said curtly, and continued:

    “His letter is illiterate. You see, here he addresses us as ‘the Supreme Emperor of China … worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands thousand years.” He coughed lightly, tittered, and cast a glance at the ceiling – augustly decorated with framed images in jade, ruby, and gold leaf: dragons, qilin, phoenixes, and other fabulous beings from the four corners of the earth and beyond – while an imitative titter rippled among the courtiers.

    Close-up watercolor portrait of the Qianlong Emperor in Qing Dynasty regalia, with a stern expression. Painted in stylized ink-brush style evoking Chinese portraiture traditions.

    “However, despite his clumsy expression, we take note his respectful spirit of submission,” he said, raising his hand to cut short the disturbance. “We determine that he is sincere in his intentions.

    “It behooves us here at the centre and apogee of the world to cast our light before such peoples, backward peoples, but those who have nevertheless drawn themselves up to attain a state in which they manage to discern the magnanimity with which we bend towards them and allow them to participate in our beneficence, and therefore shall we acquiesce to these requests. Never mind how meagre their offering, we shall treat them with generosity and luminosity. After all, it is our Throne’s principle to treat strangers from afar with indulgence and exercise a pacifying control over barbarian tribes, the world over. Make a special note,” he ordered his scribes, who were taking down his words.

    “His delegation of a hundred men will arrive in China at any moment now, concluding a year’s voyage from the far-flung regions of barbarians, by way of several countries even more primitive than their own, in the Americas and in Asia. Naturally, we are already well informed about all parts of Asia, thanks to our numerous voyages of discovery and trade, so we require no enlightenment from this English impertinence. Ha! In the year 1405,” he said, his voice rising, “during the Ming dynasty, Admiral Zheng He discovered America – seventy-five years before the Spaniards. And during his seven expeditions, he mapped the entire globe: the Mediterranean, Africa, the Americas, and even Australia.” He looked again at Sun Pu-erh, who bowed her head.

    “I have seen it in an archive in the Pavilion of Literary Profundity,” she said.

    “We have had little need since those times for forays abroad. Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders. Make a special note, underlined,” he commanded the scribes.

    “Since the barbarians have developed some abilities in seamanship, they now scramble to us,” he continued. “We remain loath to admit them – all the more, given the skirmish playing out somewhere over there in those parts, some minor uprising …” He looked at Pu-erh, who bowed her head.

    “The French Revolution,” she said. “King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette beheaded, and so on.”

    “Correct, what they call the French Revolution. Well, we don’t want that sort of nuisance over here, do we?” He looked at Pu-erh, who lowered her gaze and said nothing.

    “At any rate, the weather has become unseasonably warm in the capital, and we have decided to repair to our summer palace and mountain resort in Jehol. You two will meet the ambassador, one Lord George Macartney, en route to Peking, and advise him of our change in plans. His entourage will rest for three days before proceeding north for an audience with us. Pay close attention to any equipment or paraphernalia he must leave behind during his sojourn. He intends to amaze us with certain marvels of English invention. Though we anticipate little worthy of attention, we wish to see recorded, in fine detail, the technical principles of any scientific apparatus – particularly weapons or devices of use in the art of war – that they intend to demonstrate.

    •

    The couple travelled by palanquin with a modest retinue. They found the envoy, news of whose approach had long preceded it, at the town of Tongzhou, a canal terminus.

    Traditional-style watercolor painting of Chinese river junks with sails lowered, depicted on a calm, shallow river. Illustrates the halted imperial convoy near Tongzhou in the Jade Volume.

    The thirty-seven imperial junks that had carried it thus far along the shallow White River could go no further, although the military escort would continue. Armed with bows, swords, and rusty-looking matchlocks, the troops marched in single file, beneath standards made of green silk with red borders and enriched with golden characters. Long braids, tied at the end with a ribbon, hung down their backs from beneath their shallow straw hats.

    A wonderful rigmarole attended the transfer of Lord Macartney’s cargo to a convoy of carts, wooden wheelbarrows, and coolies – those labourers pressed into toil for wages scarcely worthy of the name – for the next leg of the trip to Peking. The spectacle inspired in many of them the words from ancient songs, to which they lent their voices while they toiled:

    Do not work on the great chariot –You will only get dust in your mouth.
    I sing of those who are far away,
    And sorrow clings like a cloak.

    The great chariot groans with its load –
    And saps the strength from my bones.
    I think of those who are gone,
    and my heart is cut open again.

    The great chariot creaks at the axle –
    It cannot bear the weight.
    I remember those who fell blinded by the dust,
    On the side of this distant road    .

    Some of the labourers were given a taste of the whip by their military guards, who perceived seditious intent in the stanzas.

    Thus concludes the scroll of the Jade Volume. The continuation has – most vexingly – been mislaid in a dark corner by one of those accursed archival monkeys, necessitating a brief but unavoidable interruption in our unfolding.

    Michael Guest © 2025

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