Floating World Bitten Peach

Xiu didn't believe the

zhaoguzhe

, the caretaker of the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—men's pleasure house—in Nantung, and he was confused by what the zhaoguzhe was telling him. Since the winter the zhaoguzhe had been suffering under a constant cough, and he had become quite sour. Xiu thought that the old man must be teasing him. He had been training for the bitten peach culmination in the clouds and rain act and was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the spring festival, as was Bolin, another one of the

jinan

, the male pleasure house courtesans in training.

Xiu's training and preparation had been exacting, and he had already pleasured with the kiss of the

yang chu

—a man's member—act, with the release of the man's seed, most of the important and famous men who would be bidding at the seed sowing ceremony to become the favored one to bite his peach and take him into his first clouds and rain. He had perfected and, for a price, would perform any act with a client but the client's penetration of his channel and release of his seed. When that had been done, Xiu's peach would irrevocably have been bitten and he would be fully taken into the Floating World and no longer marketable as a virgin.

But all contact with these

jen

—men—had been under the watchful eyes of the zhaoguzhe of the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia in Nantung to ensure that he remained pure of the clouds and rain and did not lose his

chenchieh

, his chastity, until the bitten peach ceremony. The zhaoguzhe had said Xiu had done admirably well since he had nearly given himself to the former

baoan

—house protector—several seasons before.

Xiu had learned well the wiles and enticements that had been taught him to please a patron without blemishing the peach, and the bidding and the bidders themselves were in a frenzy of anticipation.

But one night, weeks before the spring festival, the zhaoguzhe said Xiu's time had come early—and that of Bolin as well—and Xiu and Bolin were roused before dawn the next day and bathed and shaved clean of everything but a silken skein of pigtailed hair at the back of their heads. They also were perfumed, powdered with the enticement powder, and—when what Xiu thought was just one of the zhaoguzhe's cruel training exercises and teases turned to the horror of possibility—shown that they would be clothed in brocaded hanfu—robes—shimmering red for Xiu and deep blue for Bolin—that were being saved for their clouds and rains ceremonies.

That was when the zhaoguzhe told Xiu of the

kueilo

, the foreign ghosts, who were reported to be fierce sailing warriors from the far north and who had appeared off the mouth of the Yangtze River inside a monstrous

chu'an

—vessel—floating beneath a billowing cloud. At first, the zhaoguzhe had said, it was believed that this was the vessel of the pirate Ming Lei, who had been worrying coastal shipping in the region, but it was since said to be that of tall, large, and rough men from the north—from the land of Jin.

At first Xiu didn't believe him or understand what this had to do with Bolin or him.

"This is far greater than the spring festival, Xiu," the zhaoguzhe had said. "This spreads the renown of Nantung and the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia all the way to the feet of the Emperor of Jin."

Xiu said that he neither knew nor cared about this faraway land or its ruler, but the zhaoguzhe slapped him for his pouting insolence and continued.

"The Duke of Shi has been put into a quandary, and he has come to me for a solution. This is an opportunity of generations. And you could not be more honored if your chenchieh could be renewed every spring for the highest bidder. In fact, with the favoring of the Duke of Shi, the bidding on you should go up now, even when you no longer are virginal, although I will have to do some fast training and preparation of another for the spring festival. Of course, if you become insolent with me, I could just give you to the Duke of Shi. He would be pleased to deflower you in ways you cannot imagine one man will do to another."

Xiu shuddered at the thought of being given to the ruler of the prefecture, the Duke of Shi, as he was reputed to be a very cruel and demanding sexual predator. But when he opened his newly rouged lips to speak, the zhaoguzhe saw the expression on his face and slapped him again, sending clouds of white powder into the air and a flurry of house servants scurrying about to repair the damage to their hours of work on Xiu's face. As luck had it, Xiu still was naked in the wake of the powdering. He would have had better luck if he already had been wound into his red brocade hanfu. The old zhaoguzhe would not have dared ruin those with the spray of white powder. As it was, he was wasting a fortune. The intoxicating, yang chu-hardening powder was a dear commodity.

"I have received overtures from the Jin men on the vessel that they have heard of the house and wish to taste the delights we have here. There was, of course, a veiled threat that if we didn't entertain them with our best, they would burn the nanleshijia. When I reported this to the Duke of Shi and he, in turn, reported it to the King of Wu in Gusu, the king suggested that we entangle the intruders from Jin until he can decide what they are seeking by sailing this far south. I was directed to provide my best jinan to the kueilo. You and Bolin are my best morsels. The king has hinted that if you are successful, you may be bought at a high price for the nanleshijia of the court in Gusu. If you are not successful, I may turn you out into the streets of Nantung, where the fishermen of the town will know what to do with you."

Xiu remained unimpressed. He often had been threatened with the randy fisherman of the town below the cliff on which the men's pleasure house pavilions were perched. And Xiu thought the contact with the King of Wu sounded like fantasy. The house had invested too much in Xiu and Bolin, Xiu thought, for this to be a real threat. At the worst, he would be sold to some dried-up ancient with no seed, flatulence, and a limp yang chu—and that was likely to happen in the spring ceremony anyway.

"We are to provide delay," the zhaoguzhe stubbornly reiterated to Xiu. "You and Bolin are to make the kueilo who appear for you to dally as long as possible. The Duke of Shi does not know if the vessel is a

shangchu'an

or a

chunch'an

, a merchant ship or a war ship. There have been rumors of these kueilo appearing at the fringes of the Central Kingdom, but never here. In either case, they must be made to turn away or go down to the depths of the sea. The Duke of Shi has sent queries to the King of Wu, but the situation is momentous; he must know as soon as the king decides if he can simply kill them or not."

Xiu adopted his humblest look and kowtowed at the zhaoguzhe's feet, searching for the seam where the zhaoguzhe's teasing would collapse. "But I don't understand, caretaker. Why are they coming here to Nantung? We are simply the pleasure resort for the prefecture of Yangzhou. What do we have to do with such momentous affairs?"

The zhaoguzhe patiently tried to explain, which began to make Xiu worry. He didn't usually sustain his teasing this long—or back it up with an expensive costuming. Such reasonableness was not in keeping with the zhaoguzhe's nature. "Panicked for delaying tactics, the emissary to the monster vessel from the Duke of Shi saw the eyes of the kueilo's

ch'uanchu

, ship's captain, light up at the offer of a respite of clouds and rain at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. When the kueilo captain said he was not interested in a bitten peach—a used jinan—the emissary, knowing of the bidding war on you and Bolin for the spring seed sowing ceremony, spoke of the purity and ripeness of you two. The kueilo captain was said to have become so interested that the interest showed on his body and the emissary was half afraid he himself would be seeded on the spot."

Still Xiu did not believe the zhaoguzhe. Still he thought this was some sort of conditioning joke he was enduring. That it was all part of the ritual. What did the outer world have to do with their small pleasure house high on the cliffs over the bend in the Yangtze River?

But later that afternoon, as Xiu reclined on pillows on the veranda of the Vermilion Pavilion overlooking the sea, trying his best not to transfer any of the enticement powder to the red brocade of his ceremonial robes, he began to believe. He could not believe what he was seeing at first. A giant sea bird slowly appeared from around the eastern point of rocks and glided toward the harbor of the town of Nantung, guided in by a red barge of the Duke of Shi that Xiu recognized from the lord's earlier visits to the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. The kueilo sea bird was a towering, black-wood vessel driven by billowing clouds of white gossamer.

Xiu shuddered at the thoughts of the visits to the nanleshijia by the Duke of Shi, and of the screams of his jinan brothers behind closed doors during his visits, and of some of them being so ruined they had no longer been able to serve the house for any clients except for the rough villagers below the hill. The zhaoguzhe had always tried to hide the jinan in training who would be most profitable for the house when their bite of the peach came, but he wasn't always able to fool the lord. Xiu certainly remembered how distressed the one he had loved, Niu, the house's former baoan, had been when he had stopped here during his own escape from service to the lord. And Xiaodan, sweet little Xiaodan, who had been taken away to the lord's castle and never heard from again.

Bolin was by Xiu's side, in robes of darkest sapphire blue. He shrank from the sight of the giant, floating bird and began to breathe heavily. But Xiu, the more adventuresome of the two, was mesmerized by the sight. And aroused. Xiu had always been scolded for his fantasies and attraction to danger, but these were the same traits that had won him the premier position here, at the pinnacle of empowerment for a jinan. There was no more luxurious life or power over powerful men than the life of a clouds and rain master.

As Bolin's nervousness grew with the far-off vision of inhumanly large figures in strange, black, close-fitting clothing roping down into the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia launch that had been sent out to their vessel to fetch them, Xiu's interest and curiosity grew.

He now had to believe that the zhaoguzhe had not been teasing him.

For what seemed to be hours but was only a short time, the two could hear the kueilo being ceremoniously welcomed in the reception rooms below them. They heard the wheedling, smooth tones of the zhaoguzhe, covered by a raucous cacophony of hard, guttural sounds from the kueilo. It was obvious that neither understood the other, but as the voices of the foreign ghosts grew louder and their speech slurred, Xiu and Bolin understood that the zhaoguzhe had managed to place them under the spell of the house's special wine, spiced to loosen nerves and cares and enervate the yang chu.

And then two of them were there in the entrance to the Vermilion Pavilion, one on each side of the zhaoguzhe, and with a semicircle of slack-jawed and murmuring tunic-clad house servants behind them.

They were both monstrous. The taller of the two, quite evidently the ch'uanchu—ship's captain—was a

hungmao

, a red-haired devil. Xiu had read of such in the classics, but these two were monsters from beyond the pale. The obvious leader of the two, the ship's captain, stood there, a full head taller than the zhaoguzhe. And such a head it was. Fully encircled with bright red, curly hair—on top and down the sides and under his chin and his nose. Broad shouldered and thin waisted, he was swathed in a clinging sweat-soaked, rough tunic and leggings and heavy fur-lined boots, which were not just exotic, but they also must be stifling in the heat of the nanleshijia's subtropical province. Xiu could smell him from where he stood, a pace in front of the trembling Bolin. A meat eater. Underneath the hair and clothing, Xiu could see that the man was of palest hue, the source of the name that had been given to these recent interlopers on the world of the Central Kingdom—

the

world. That name was "ghost."

The other man, not much taller than the zhaoguzhe, but much thicker, all hard muscle, in the body and similarly clothed to the other kueilo, stood beside and slightly back from the hungmao, another signal of who was the most important. This second foreign ghost had hair of the tawniest gold, not an auspicious color. Legends had reached the village of Nantung of other such golden-haired spear and shield-brandishing men visiting from the outside, across the deserts to the west, naked but for short skirts around their middles and sandals on their feet in times past. But all of the stories of them said that they had been famous for their cruelty and that they had been absorbed and destroyed as they deserved. This second kueilo standing before them, one step back from his ch'uanchu, exuded this sense of cruelty. He had a gold ring in one ear and a black patch over one eye, and a leering stare that bore right through Xiu and Bolin.

Bolin shrank behind Xiu, but Xiu looked up—indeed they were built so tall and broad that one had to look up—at the kueilo with disdain and with a haughtiness that Xiu had been taught drove some men wild with wanting. Xiu felt all tingly, ready for the challenge that the zhaoguzhe had claimed that the King of Wu had set for him—and that Xiu was more than half way to believing now that the strange, overpowering kueilo had been produced. Xiu had been shown drawings of kueilo like this before. They were all depicted as pelted with hair and with monstrous yang chus. Xiu wasn't sure about the hair but he was enticed by extraordinarily large yang chus.

Both men smelled to high heaven. Before Xiu could stomach even pleasuring either one of them in a kiss of the yang chu act, he declared haughtily, they would have to be cleaned. And Xiu told the zhaoguzhe so in no uncertain terms. His eyes flashed, but he realized, Xiu was sure, that there were limits to what either Xiu or Bolin could do with an unwashed meat eater. Besides, as Xiu was soon to find out, the zhaoguzhe had already anticipated that need.

As soon as Xiu spoke, the eyes of both kueilo focused on him and both smiled that smile he had already seen a hundred times at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. They both wanted him. But it was the exotic pale blue eyes of the hungmao ch'uanchu that Xiu met with his, and both knew in an instant the pairings were settled.

If Xiu had known beforehand what would happen then, he would have acted differently. But the future, even the immediate future, was not for solitary

Chungkuojen

—Chinese man—like Xiu to know—this was knowledge reserved to the King of Wu or at least one no lower in the order than the Duke of Shi.

The zhaoguzhe motioned for Xiu and Bolin to rise and part. Xiu was waved toward the eastern chamber off the Vermilion Pavilion and Bolin toward the western chamber. The zhaoguzhe nudged the hungmao toward the east and the golden-haired kueilo toward the west, which they both immediately acknowledged and acceded to. The house servants split behind the zhaoguzhe, one half gliding toward the eastern chamber and the other half toward the western chamber.

Xiu heard Bolin mutter a cut-off exclamation as he and the golden-haired kueilo both reached the entrance to the western chamber. This was unheard of—for a clouds and rain master to say anything at this stage of the act—and Xiu's head snapped around at the sound. The golden-haired kueilo had already laid hands on Bolin. When Bolin involuntarily shrank away from him, the golden-haired kueilo backhanded him across the cheek with such a mighty blow that Bolin was propelled through the entrance of the western chamber. The golden-haired kueilo turned and gave the house servants moving in his direction a menacing look that stopped them dead in their tracks, and they retreated, backing away from him and bowing low at the waist.

Xiu's eyes went to the zhaoguzhe for reaction. Under normal circumstances, he would have used his martial arts skills to neutralize such a crass and out-of-control patron. But, though Xiu could see that zhaoguzhe's jaw was set and his body tensed on the edge, he did nothing. The zhaoguzhe looked stricken and he held a hand to his chest like he was in pain. The look he gave to Xiu conveyed that there was nothing he could do—that what was unfolding here was being played on a larger stage than their nanleshijia. That's when Xiu knew without a doubt that this was a reality. That all the zhaoguzhe had said about the directive from the King of Wu and the importance of delaying the kueilos' return to the Kingdom of Jin was true. True and necessary. Important. Perhaps vital to maintaining civilization as the mere pawns in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia knew it.

The sounds from the western chamber were rending. The tearing of cloth—which Xiu could see was tearing equally at the emotions of the zhaoguzhe, something Xiu could well understand, knowing the price of a spring ceremonial robe—the crude gruntings of the kueilo in immediate and full rut, and the cries of Bolin, cries that were unthinkable in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—except perhaps when the Duke of Shi visited. But the bones the lord was tossed were of much less valuable flesh than either Xiu or Bolin. To sacrifice the virginity of such as Xiu and Bolin was unprecedented.

Xiu and the zhaoguzhe stood there, looking at each other and then at the hungmao—the captain of the Jin vessel—standing between them and giving them a sneer of a smile and winks. They knew in no uncertain terms that the clouds and rain had already started in the western chamber and that Bolin's chenchieh—his chastity—was as good as undone. The peach had not just been bitten. It was being gobbled up, with the sweet nectar of Bolin flowing down the golden-haired kueilo's naked thighs—such was what the cries of the tender jinan were conveying from the western chamber. Xiu knew that any delay was now entirely his to provide, although the looks the hungmao gave him and the hands he was placing on Xiu's curves within his ceremonial robe brought doubt into Xiu's mind on what he alone could do.

At the doorway to the eastern chamber, Xiu turned and looked up into the pale blue eyes of the hungmao and tried to convey with every fiber of his being that foreign monster would have him but not in the way and at the pace that the golden-haired kueilo was having Bolin. He seemed to understand, and Xiu was heartened to get the impression that he took his pleasures—and gave the client his pleasure—at a much more easy pace than his compatriot did.

At the interior end of the eastern chamber was a bathing tub with steaming water in it. At the open end of the pavilion, overlooking the curve in the Yangtze River, was a pallet of red silk with mountains of red silk pillow cushions, the home of the clouds and rain, where Xiu was now resigned that he would become a bitten peach—that he was about to lose his chenchieh.

The hungmao stood in the center of the room, an amused look on his face, and his arms outstretched and legs in a wide stance, as the house servants slowly but methodically figured out how to unclothe him. The zhaoguzhe stood in the doorway from the Vermilion Pavilion, watching the hungmao being disrobed. Even though he was trembling from some infirmity, he would stand there and observe until the completion of the first clouds and rain. It was his duty to do so—to observe and record the time and place of Xiu's loss of the chenchieh that the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia prized so highly. It would be marked in vermilion ink, the highest honor—at the pleasure of the Duke of Shi. Even higher than a link to the spring festival seed sowing ceremony would have been. It added stacks of

hsienchien

, cash, to Xiu's worth for each subsequent clouds and rain assignation.