Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 17 - Dragon Well

With a shock, I noticed a whole row of giant statues standing further back in the shadows. 

'What is this place?' I asked. 'A museum?'

A faint grey light was coming from a large doorway beyond the row of statues and a slight breeze blew away the choking cloud of incense. We stared out into a dense grey fog. 

'It's morning already?' Licia asked in a tone of wonderment. 'What happened to the night?'

'Dr Zhang and Denny must have gone this way,' I said. 'Do we wait here or go look for him?'

 'We don't know whether they are here yet,' Miguel pointed out. 'Or, they may have arrived earlier. And they probably arrived at different times.'

Licia said, 'he has no reason to come back here, has he?'

We climbed over a large, squared-log door sill and we found ourselves on a wooden bridge with ornately carved and beautifully painted railings. The fog was so dense we could see only a few metres ahead. Within a few paces the bridge rails abruptly changed direction as the bridge zigzagged into the fog. We looked around with foreboding. 

 'Funny bridge,' I said, attempting to be cheerful. The bridge zigzagged seven times before we stepped onto a stone path that led to a wooden gate, with a tiled roof, set in a high wall. I looked back at the upswept, overhanging eaves of the tiled roof. The building looked like a pagoda. The worn pebble road outside the gate was lined with high brick walls pierced at intervals with doorways, all tightly shut. There were no windows and the only living things in the half light were a few leafless branches hanging over the walls. We jogged across the road to get away from a pile of rotting garbage. 

 Licia looked back at the ornate gateway. Several pictographs were carved into the wooden lintel. 'That's Chinese writing!' she exclaimed. 'I can read two characters. They mean Dragon Well.' She took a picture with her cell phone.

'Did you go to aircraft mode?' Miguel asked. 'Cell phones waste a lot of battery power when they are out of range of a cell phone tower.'

 'Yes,' Licia replied. 'I charged it before we left and I turned everything off.'

'Well,' I said, 'now that we are here, how do we find Dr Zhang and Denny?'

'We could start by asking people if they have seen them,' Miguel suggested. 

 He looked at Licia. 'I don't know if I speak the correct dialect,' Licia said. 'I know the traditional writing hasn't changed much but there are seven main languages in China and hundreds of dialects.'

  Someone hawked and spat. A small, elderly man, with a long white beard, approached us slowly on the other side of the street. He wore a double-breasted coat fastened with tapes and a funny hat. He looked at us curiously until Miguel said tentatively, 'Hi,' and then he quickened his pace and rushed away looking frightened.

'Try Chinese next time,' I suggested. 'You scared him.'

'Yeah,' Miguel agreed. 'Say "Aiya."'

The next passerby was a tall, thin man carrying a shoulder pole with baskets dangling from each end. He stared at us suspiciously as Licia smiled and greeted him in her best Mandarin. 'Nee hau.' 

 His eyes opened wide with astonishment and he hurried away looking at us over his shoulder. 'I never saw anyone dressed like that in Ottawa?' Miguel remarked. 'Maybe it's a movie set,' Licia suggested sarcastically. 'I'll bet we find a camera crew at the next traffic light.'

'What traffic?' asked Miguel as a tiny horse walked by pulling a two-wheeled cart loaded with sacks. The wheels were disks made out of planks. The old man, slumped against the sacks, didn't even notice us.

'Well? We can't just stand here, can we?' Miguel asked.

 Licia pointed at a few more people. 'They all seem to be going the same way. Let's follow them.' Soon, we were part of a growing stream of people and they were all staring at us. Some of them were pointing and laughing at me and I suddenly realized that Licia looked like one of the locals and even Miguel didn't look out of place but I was the only Caucasian in the crowd. 

 Even our clothing looked totally out of place. Everybody else wore trousers and long coats made out of a pale-coloured, quilted fabric and the men wore scarfs twisted around their heads. Everyone seemed to be carrying something on a shoulder pole or were pulling or pushing wheelbarrows with a single large wheel in the middle. They were loaded with everything from chickens to bricks. The smell of animals and farm manure was overpowering. 

 A gang of giggling small boys made faces at us and a toothless old woman with two bamboo cages, filled with ducks, dangling from her shoulder pole, squeezed through the crowd, the ducks quacking indignantly. 

 'Quack,' Miguel replied and the ducks looked at each other before breaking into a paroxysm of excited quacking. The small boys thought that was hilarious and joined in the chorus. We looked at everyone, seeking Dr Zhang. 

 'It's hopeless,' said Miguel. 'More than half of them look like Dr Zhang.' The fog gradually lifted revealing a high grey brick wall with a tunnel-like gateway. People, pigs and horses crowded over a narrow bridge leading to the gate. On the wall, above the gate was a large barn-like building with a tiled pagoda roof. 

 'Uh-oh,' Miguel exclaimed quietly. 'Orcs.'

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