The Man's Other Name

I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.

In the spring of 1928, in a teak-paneled study in the British concession of Tianjin, the man who had ordered the beheading of Shi Jianqiao的de爸爸bàba sat across from a Buddhist teacher and asked a question.

The teacher was a monk named Yuexi, in his fifties, a 大dà figure in the Tianjin lay community for that season.

The man across from him was Sun Chuanfang, then forty-three years old, a private citizen for less than a 年nián, with the loss of five provinces still wet behind him.

大dà. Big, or large. A 大dà figure means a big figure. 大dà is one of the most common adjectives in Chinese.

Sun Chuanfang的de question was not the question of a man who had decided to convert.It was the question of a man who had run a war and was now living in a foreign-protected villa in a city that was not his and had nothing to do during the daylight hours.

The question was, what was the point of any of it.

Yuexi did not answer the question that morning. He told Sun Chuanfang to come back the next morning, at five, before dawn.

Sun Chuanfang came back. He came back the morning after.By the end of the spring he was attending a Buddhist study group three mornings a week in a small hall behind a tea house off the British concession's southern boundary.

In 1929 the visits became daily.

Sun Chuanfang的de reading shifted. The five-province commander who had read military telegrams for twenty 年nián began reading sutras instead. The Diamond Sutra. The Lotus Sutra. The Heart Sutra.

He copied the texts out by hand, in the same disciplined script he had used to write field orders. He kept a small writing brush at his desk and spent the early hours of every morning copying.

By 1930 he had taken refuge formally. A dharma name was assigned. The dharma name was Zhi Yuan.

智 meant wisdom. 圆 meant complete, round, whole. The two 字zì together meant complete wisdom, or wisdom rounded out.

Sun Chuanfang did not use the dharma name in correspondence outside the lay community. Inside the community, the older members called him Zhi Yuan, the teacher Zhi Yuan, though he insisted he was still the one being taught.

In 1933, with another former warlord turned lay-Buddhist named Jin Yunpeng, Sun Chuanfang expanded an existing meditation hall in the southeastern corner of Tianjin into a proper lay-Buddhist association.

They called it the TianjinJushilin.

Jin Yunpeng是shìdirector, the head. Sun Chuanfang是shìboard chairman, the chairman of the board.

By 1934 the Jushilin had three thousand registered members. It ran a clinic for the poor. It ran a winter rice distribution.

It ran daily morning chanting from six to half past seven, open to anyone who walked through the front gate.

Sun Chuanfang attended every morning at six, sat on the same cushion in the second row, and chanted with the rest of them.

In the late summer of 1935, two months before he was killed, Sun Chuanfang was visited at the Jushilin by a foreign reporter who wanted to know what an old warlord had to say for himself.

The reporter wrote it down. Sun Chuanfang said: heroes in old age all return home to the Buddha. Famous generals returning to the mountains do not speak of war.

He repeated the line several times, the reporter wrote, with what appeared to be conviction.

In a different reading of his life, this would be the story of a violent man who, late, found a quieter shape for what was left of him. He gave money to a clinic. He chanted with strangers.

He did not write his memoirs. He did not give political speeches.

By the standards of China的de warlord-era retirees, who mostly went to Beijing and tried to come back, or went to Shanghai and tried to make money, he was the calmest of the lot.

China. China. Beijing. Beijing. The 京 in Beijing is the same 京 in Nanjing. North capital and south capital.

He had two daughters, who lived in his villa with him. He had no surviving sons. He had a wife who managed the household and a small staff who managed the wife.He took breakfast with the daughters at eight, after the morning chanting.

He sometimes walked along the southern boundary of the concession in the late afternoon. He read until ten and went to bed.

He was also the man who, in the autumn of 1925, had ordered a brigade commander beheaded and the head displayed for seven days at Bengbu.

He had not, in the seven 年nián since, written a public statement about that order. He had not visited the 家jiā of the executed officer. He had not sent the body home.

He had not, by every account that Shi Jianqiao的deTianjin朋友péngyou could find, even spoken Shi Congbin的de名字míngzi out loud.

On a clear morning in Tianjin, two months before the morning that would matter,Sun Chuanfang sat in the second row of the chanting hall and recited the Heart Sutra with three thousand other lay-Buddhist members of the TianjinJushilin.

Shi Jianqiao was already in the city.

In Episode Thirteen, she finds the room she 会huì live in.

That is where we start Episode Thirteen.