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was as smooth as before.
    “I’m so glad all of you are here today. Simply by being here, you’ve already extended your first step onto the Buddhist path.”
    Wherever Yi Kong’s gaze fell, there seemed to be a face momentarily enlightened, shining with the truth.
    “Don’t belittle this first step. The journey of a thousand miles begins on the ground under your feet. But neither should you think you’ll be enlightened just by attending a seven-day retreat.”
    Suddenly Yi Kong seemed to notice me, and our eyes met before she glanced away. My heartbeat accelerated to allegro. Had she really seen me? Did she recognize me among the crowd after all these years? Would she, as before, want me to enter her temple as a nun? Now she asked the audience to meditate for five minutes before her Dharma talk. While everyone’s head was lowered and their eyes half closed, I carefully studied my nun mentor’s face, feeling my mind start to wander….

    During my adolescence and into my twenties, years when I disdained and ignored men, Yi Kong really became my only friend. In the famous novel Dream of the Red Chamber , men are compared to mud, but women to water, as they are supple, tender, and nurturing.
    When I dreamily turned the pages of the novel, sometimes I’d wonder: Would a man like the hero Jia Baoyu—refined, talented, pure, true, and nice to all the women around him—exist in real life? What about the beautiful nun Miao Yu, Wonderful Jade, who wrote poetry, secretly longed for a man, and gathered snow from plum blossom petals to brew tea for Jia Baoyu instead of fulfilling her passion for him? Oh, how I wished I were like those beautiful, brilliant women in this Dream of the Red Chamber !
    I had always preferred the company of females. Like the best kind of yunwu —cloud and mist—tea leaves picked before the rainy season, women are shapely, delicate, pleasing to look at, intoxicating to smell, enjoyable to savor. And of course, for me, the only female who embodied all this was Yi Kong.
    Although Mother knew nothing about my close friendship with the nun, she sensed the infatuation in me. Once I overheard her asking Father, “Our daughter looks dreamy. Do you think she’s in love or something?”
    I almost chuckled. How could I tell my parents that I was infatuated with a nun?
    Yet the relationship between Yi Kong and myself was not without tension, tension that had nothing to do with us, but with the villagers’ convictions. Those who worshipped Yi Kong would say, “Look at Yi Kong; she’s so beautiful, wise, compassionate, and a nun—how can she not be the reincarnation of Guan Yin?” But another group would argue, “Meng Ning came out alive from the haunted well! Who else could survive this except the reincarnation of Guan Yin?” Once two women broke into a loud quarrel right in front of the statue of Guan Yin inside the nunnery. Another time, two elderly men competed to donate offerings to us until Yi Kong insisted we return all the gifts and money.
    Mother, of course, took my side. She pinched her eyes into slits, her voice sharp and intense. “It’s easy to shave one’s head and put on a robe, but how many, like you, could survive that fall with no injury? I’m sure if she were the one who fell, her bald scalp would have cracked open like an egg hit over a wok and her brain would have splashed like vomit all over her robe!”
    I felt terribly sad. How unmerciful to fight so mercilessly over the Goddess of Mercy! Didn’t the villagers know it was Yi Kong who’d thrown the Guan Yin pendant down to me? But when I told them this, as before, they just thought I was being nice and adored me more. Sometimes I became confused. If I were really the reincarnation of Guan Yin, why couldn’t I stop Father from gambling and fighting with Mother? If Yi Kong and I were both the reincarnations of Guan Yin, why didn’t that stop the villagers’ childish disputes?
    I finally left the villagers’ squabble behind