Chapter 2

If only people did not have to grow up. Then I would have gone on believing the temple was a good place, and that it raised us because the Three Pure Ones were merciful.

But anyone who eats will grow. When I was eleven, I stumbled upon the temple’s secret.

Teacher usually slept beside us, but there were always a few nights each month when she was absent.

That day, Huiyan caught a chill while playing. By midnight, she had a high fever.

Afraid something would happen to her, I broke curfew and slipped into the eastern compound to find Teacher.

We young nuns were forbidden to enter it. After the evening hour, in particular, we were allowed only in our own rooms in the western compound.

I could have gone to the women in charge of the western compound. But the year before, a young nun who fell ill had been taken away and never returned. I was frightened. I trusted only Teacher.

I knew the paths well enough to evade the night guards. Slipping this way and that, I reached the eastern compound.

It was a place I had never entered before, full of small courtyards. An incense burner with a different pattern hung at each gate.

The incense burner in our room had a lotus pattern. I followed that pattern, and there Teacher was.

She was not alone. There was a man inside.

Strange moans drifted out. I did not know what they were; it sounded as though someone were panting beside my ear. When the noises stopped, the man said:

“They all like the young nuns. I prefer someone with experience, like you. Come, recite a passage for me.”

The scriptures we learned day after day in the scripture room fell lightly from Teacher’s lips, making the man roar with laughter.

I hid in a corner. Only after he had gone did I dare run inside. “Teacher, hurry back with me! Huiyan has a fever. She’s burning up.”

Only when I finished speaking did I notice that Teacher’s clothes were not properly fastened. The shoulder they exposed was red and purple, as though someone had beaten her.

She instinctively reached out to cover my eyes. But once she understood what I had said, she hastily wrapped her clothes around herself and led me back to the western compound, avoiding everyone along the way.

Huiyan was saved. My innocent ignorance was not.

Teacher sighed. “Perhaps it was fate that made you see that. I’ll tell you everything now. But once you’ve heard it, you must pretend you haven’t. Never let anyone know you entered the eastern compound.”

She spoke slowly. When it became too painful, she often had to stop for a long time.

She said that Yiyun Temple was a temple, and yet it was not.

We were taught to recite scriptures, but not for the Three Pure Ones. We recited them for men.

From the foot of Mount Tai to its summit, there were countless temples like this. The higher up they stood, the stricter their requirements for the girls they took in, and the more men flocked to them.

Proper female Taoists were addressed as Taoist masters.

Those of us who were not proper were known, among men who understood these things, as the nuns of Mount Tai.

Standing at the summit, Yiyun Temple was the most prized den of Mount Tai nuns.

It made the most money, and was willing to spend the longest time raising children into nuns whom its patrons could easily control.

Men came for the thrill of doing the most profane things in a sacred place.

So Yiyun Temple kept its nuns ignorant of the world, making it easier for the patrons to control them.

The head of the temple accepted no child older than six. She wanted girls who knew nothing of life, who read only scriptures day after day and grew up ignorant and cut off from the world.

We were forbidden meat and fed only enough to be half full in order to preserve that refinement and purity.

When we reached the age at which the temple’s head considered us ready to receive patrons, we could fetch the highest price.

Usually fifteen, the age of the hairpin ceremony. In truth, they were still only children.

Teacher was deeply distressed as she told me. There was shame in her voice too.

She lowered her eyes. “I don’t deserve to be called your teacher. I looked after you only so that, when I grew old and lost my looks, I would have someone to provide for me.”

Yiyun Temple did not have a particularly long history. Teacher had not been raised on the mountain. She was thirteen when she was sold there; she already understood shame and knew something of the world.

To be precise, Huiyan, the dozen children in the scripture room, and I were the first group the mountain intended to raise in this way.

So I did not understand what Teacher meant, or why she was unhappy. With wide, innocent eyes, I asked, “Is being a nun of Mount Tai bad? Is sleeping with men bad too?”