The gate in the fence opens to the gaping entrance under the mountain.  I walk through.  The scorching heat of the day lingers in the dead of night as if a looming, fire-breathing dragon hovers over me. The scream begins to grow inside of me as my steps quicken… the hot licks of fire breath grabbing at my heels as I run up the steps and then, down into the resounding courtyard.  I tighten my vocal chords. I close my mouth to keep in the scream and open my eyes instead. I become deeply aware.  I am quiet… very quiet… and wary… I walk like an Indian through a forest of men’s bodies, fallen logs upon the paving stones. They sleep on mats in their clothes with light covers. Some sleep on the platform under the flagpole… others on the ping pong tables. I skirt around them noiselessly… quickly. I keep on the move.

Soon I come to the crane maze. I lower my head to walk under the scaffolding through the dirty, suffocating cotton barriers.  I watch every step in the dark… avoid every pipe strewn in the middle of the walkway… step over every electrical cord. I scurry like a night creature circling past even more sleeping bodies.

The men have been drilling for almost a month. Digging a hole to China, perhaps? Huge water pipes appear… some disappear… and there is a slosh of chocolate water in the maw of the ditch that sings a bawdy song full of nasty humor. I puzzle the pipes together in my own makeshift course of excavation as I sink by imagining invisibility. The drill bit never stops day or night except when something breaks, and then, I see sparks and a welder. I sleep in spite of the drilling at night. It is the first thing that I hear in the morning… my own personal neighborhood bully… incessant and waiting for me just around the corner in the morning on the way to work.

I pass sun-stained men sitting on their haunches… a permanent squat. A xylophone of ribs stick through their bony chests. They watch the drill bit all day sometimes resting their haunches on low woven stools, reading newspapers. They watch the drill bit all night.  It is at night, as the hours pass, that I wonder what they really think. They rarely seem to talk. We exchange furtive glances, but I can’t figure out the expressions in their eyes. No one says anything.  I can tell they wouldn’t know what to do if I struck up a conversation. I would like to say that my Western version of friendliness would overcome the bewildering features of my walk in this twilight zone of men living “womenless,” but, somehow, I know instinctively that it is best to pass on without expression.

I cling to the darkness of the sycamores by the side of the walkway as I approach the last of the steps, and hear the flutter of the “ji liao” on the pavement. Death has silenced the piercing cry of yet another locust and, upside down, it is in its death throes near my feet… it’s wiggling legs pointed to the starry sky. By tomorrow, others will have taken its place and the cry and the destruction will be pitiless in the scorching sun… an army of locusts… an army of lonely countryside men.

No one except an invisible, silent Japanese woman and me live here now. I rarely see her.  I walk through the empty, dark halls to my remote third floor apartment. No one has heard me so quiet am I. That is what I tell myself. I can hear noises about. The men are sneaking into the empty apartments to take showers. I can hear them shuffle on the floor tiles.  Water runs in the bathrooms. They are quiet. They do not talk, but they are a presence. I slip the key into the lock… slide through the door sideways. I lock it and put a chair under the knob. The painters had come last week and tried the door several times each day.  Would they steal?  Would they hurt me? Probably not… all a paper dragon suspended in a mind working overtime. Perhaps they just wanted to see how I lived. As I passed them scraping the sickly white paint from the walls, I could hear murmurs under their breaths to each other, “There’s the laowai.” I am disconcerted in this twilight zone of heat and dark nonetheless… a world where men leave their families to work in the city, eat “baozi” for breakfast, lunch and dinner, sleep where they can and clean up as they must, hunt for a place to relieve themselves, take naps in the scorching noon day sun. I bring in my bags of groceries in designer shoes… smelling of perfume, turn on the air conditioning, wash my sheets, use my own toilet, wash my face, slather on expensive moisturizer, comb my meticulously dyed hair, check my email, watch cable TV, listen to CD’s, eat popcorn and drink store-bought jasmine iced tea. My life is filled with the junk of excess… the corrosion of “my… my… my.”

I pass the trash collector, Teacher Zhang, when daylight comes. I have struck up an acquaintance… just a few words in Chinese that is now increasing, “Hello… it’s so hot… you have so much work.” He smiles and offers me a cigarette. He sorts through a mountain of other peoples’ trash on a good day. He is a sweet man, woebegone in his tattered and dirty, trailing green shirt and holey shoes. Sometimes I see him there with his wife and child… sitting in the hot sun all day under a canvas that he has Gerry-rigged with scarred bamboo poles. He has a friend who drives a taxi and, sometimes, I hop in and go off to the here and there of my life in China. I pass the gardeners in their broad straw hats. They spray the roses… water the new trees. They are lost in thoughts of preserving new growth in the relentless heat and battling the rose bores… the Japanese beetles. Are they really lost in thoughts? Who am I to say?Perhaps they have no thoughts at all…

…and, even though I am a wandering, gardenless soul again, I do have thoughts. I am lost in the unbearable heat of summer… surreal nights living among the men… the locusts screaming at a higher pitch each day. I walk down the dusty hill past Sweet Annie growing like a weed up against the corroded wrought iron fence.  Something in me wants to pull it up and plant it in a pot. I feel its pull. I feel its force. It has the nostalgic fragrance. The further I walk away from it, the more I am content just to let it be.

Soon, cool nights will come. The dragons will fly away.