“Professor Wen Ming, Professor Wen Ming!”

He looked back, the key to his office door pausing mid-rotation. Lin, the department secretary, waved at him from her cubicle. “The Chair requests your presence,” she said, her voice laced with urgency. “We couldn’t reach you by phone.”

Wen Ming frowned. He had met with the Chair just last week, when the Philosophy faculty convened to discuss the College’s new funding guidelines. Could this be about his proposal, The Sources of the Confucian Revolutionary Tradition? 

“Alright,” he nodded. “But allow me a moment to freshen up; I’ve been lecturing for two hours straight.”

“Please hurry.” Lin’s youthful face creased into a wan smile. “He’s waiting already.”

A serious matter, then. Wen Ming pocketed his key, adjusted his glasses. “Very well,” he said, “suppose my tea will have to wait.”

He made his way down the hallway, taking in the familiar sounds of the Philosophy Department: muffled discussions from the graduate lounge, the soft whir of the ancient copy machine. Today, though, these normally comforting sounds felt discordant, like echoes bouncing off a tunnel’s tight walls.

The Chair’s office loomed at the far end of the hallway, its heavy wooden door standing ajar. Wen Ming straightened his jacket, took a steadying breath, then rapped his knuckles against the weathered oak.

“Enter,” came the Chair’s voice, flat and clipped.

Wen Ming stepped inside, and his breath caught in his throat. The Chair, normally warm and genial, sat stiffly behind his desk, his black-clad form almost statuesque. Flanking him were Ms. Ding, the grim-faced personnel manager, and an unfamiliar man—bead-eyed, heavyset, his face vaguely recognisable from some Party function or another.

“Thanks for joining us, Professor,” the chair said, his voice devoid of warmth. “Please, sit.”

Wen Ming lowered himself into the chair across from them, a chill creeping up his spine. Something was terribly amiss; his misgivings sank from bad to worse.

“Professor Wen,” the Chair began, his tone grave, “we find ourselves in a rather difficult situation. Certain aspects of your recent lectures have raised… concerns.”

Wen Ming’s mind reeled. His lectures? He’d always prided himself on engaging students in critical thinking while staying within acceptable bounds. What could possibly—

His train of thought was abruptly derailed by the unfamiliar man. “I’m from the University Disciplinary Committee. My name is Wang,” he said, his voice stern. “We’ve received reports of your making inappropriate comparisons between our Party and the feudal dynasties. Such comments are not only academically unsound, but also detrimental to the ideological development of our students.”

Wen Ming felt the blood drain from his cheeks. This wasn’t about his research proposal; this was something far more serious.

The Chair cleared his throat. “The issue, Professor Wen, centres on your course, ‘The World of Thought in Ancient China.’ A student reported that on March 5th, you accused our government of following ba dao rather than wang dao—that it rules by might, not benevolence. There were quite a few more remarks of such kind. We are shocked that you would spread such falsehoods right here, within the very walls of this department.” 

The realisation crashed over Wen Ming: he wouldn’t leave this room unscathed. For ten years, since his appointment as an assistant professor, he had carefully honed his native line of political criticism—a critique rooted in Confucian tradition, not Western thought. He had weathered the shifting political winds for so long. Why had it become a problem now? 

Rebuttals teetered on his tongue. “But”—

The Chair raised his hand, silencing him. “Furthermore, we’ve uncovered several articles you’ve authored and distributed on WeChat. In ‘The Modern Confucius,’ for instance, you extolled the ‘rebellious spirit’ of the Six Donglin Gentlemen, drew dangerous comparisons to the events of 1989. These writings, in our view, border dangerously on sedition.”

Sedition. The grave word froze the air. What would be his punishment? Wen Ming’s hands tightened on the armrests as a chill coursed through his spine. He braced himself, pressing his shoulder blades into the chair.

“The extent of your misconduct leaves us with no other choice,” the Chair declared, his voice final. “You are no longer fit to educate the people. Ms. Ding will now present the Department’s resolution.”

“Yes.” The personnel manager cleared her throat, retrieved a document from a manila envelope. “After careful deliberation, the Philosophy Department has resolved to dismiss Associate Professor Wen Ming, born in August 1977, from his position at the Chengdu City Teachers College, effective immediately, with all benefits forfeited.” She slid the document across the table. “Here’s your copy of the release agreement, outlining the next steps. Please review, sign, and return it to me by the 18th.”

The room closed in on Wen Ming. The faces before him warped into grotesque masks, pressing him smaller, pressing him into a corner. Something snapped inside him. The dread that had gripped him began to unravel, replaced by something else—something sharper. 

“Our tradition,” Wen Ming’s voice trembled, then rose, “has always respected the value of diverse viewpoints. Think of the Guoyu; think of the Zuo Zhuan. Even the PRC Constitution—sham that it is—upholds the right to free speech.”

The Chair moved his lips, but Mr. Wang cut him off. “Wen Ming, you should consider yourself fortunate. If the rules were strictly followed, Wen Ming, you wouldn’t be sitting here now. Given your ten years of service, we’ve shown leniency by handling this internally. We could have gotten the Public Security Bureau involved.”

“Oh, really?” Wen Ming shot back, his defiance sharpening.

“Yes, really!” Mr. Wang barked, slamming his hand on the table.

“So I should thank you for firing me?” Wen Ming pounded the table, mirroring the gesture. “Thank you, then, for gagging me! And thank you, for turning my students into rats!” 

He slammed the table once more, the sting in his palm propelling him to his feet. His heart pounded in his ears as he overturned his chair and stormed out, the door crashing shut behind him. He strode down the hallway, leapt down the stairs, burst out into the open air and gasped as if surfacing from deep waters. 

The evening breeze was sweet, carrying the scent of blooming locust flowers—this was April, a time for blossoming, not endings. He slumped against a tree trunk and calmed his breath, feeling a blend of pride and regret for his outburst, dreading yet anticipating his jobless freedom. Taking a few steps forward, he glanced back at the Humanities Building. His office, now dark, hung at the right corner, the Chair’s still lit on the far left. Between them, the other offices flickered with varying degrees of illumination, a spectrum of shadow and light in the fading gold.

A tender emotion welled up in his eyes. He let it crest, blinked it away, then, without another glance back, walked into the gathering blue of dusk.

***

He called his ex-wife. “I’ve warned you—careful, careful, careful!” Jing’s shrill pierced his eardrums. “No more criticisms! No more articles!”

Then, Yan, his best friend from their PhD days. “Spread the word! Sound the alarm! Xi is tightening his grip, rolling back the clock, but we can still kick up some noise. You’ve already lost your job; one more essay won’t land you in prison.”

In the quiet of the night, visions of Confucian courage resurfaced in his mind: Kong Fu defying Qin Shihuang’s decree to burn all books under heaven; Fang Xiaoru choosing to sacrifice his entire extended family rather than pen a usurper’s inaugural edict. And Liang Shuming, “the last Confucian,” was sidelined for 25 years after denouncing Mao’s China as a “ninth circle of hell.” 

The night fevered. A pulsing wakefulness gripped him, driving him to pour his fury onto the page—the righteousness of his words, the wrongness of the College. The next evening, after a final proofread, he sent his essay to his WeChat circle of scholars and journalists. Calls began ringing; texts flooded in. Over the next week, he traced his essay being forwarded to friends’ friends, recounted his story over the phone to voices he could not match a face with. When another unknown number flashed on his screen, he answered quickly, speaking first. 

“Is this about Chengdu Teachers College?” 

“Professor Wen,” a woman’s voice responded, carrying a foreign accent. “This is Jen Perlez, Beijing correspondent for The New York Times.”

He could hardly believe it; he pinched himself and requested they switch to video, needing to confirm that this was real, that the sharp-eyed, grey-haired genie would make the world his audience. Jen’s calm intonation melt his initial unease, and soon his fury and worry poured out in torrents. She interrupted several times, asking for details and pausing to jot down them. Similar cases had been cropping up across the country, she shared as she wrapped up the interview, and she’d be in touch for a follow-up, once she found the right thread to weave them all together.

“Sure, looking forward, Goodbye,” he said, flipping right away to WeChat to relay the news—imagine the look on Mr. Wang’s face when the article broke! He tapped once, twice, three times in a row, harder and more impatiently each time, but the app refused to launch. The smiling face of the android icon froze, then vanished, replaced by the login screen. A dialogue box flashed: Your account is suspended for spreading information that violates rules and regulations.

He jabbed at the screen in frustration, desperately searching for a way to restore his account, but his effort was cut short by a sudden loud knock at the front door. Materialising as he opened the door, ignoring his gasps and barging in, were three police officers in uniform. They headed to the living room without removing their boots and made themselves at home on his couch.

“Mr. Wen,” the lead officer, a soft-bellied, bald man in his fifties, his shirt creased over his paunch, locked eyes with Wen Ming and silently commanding him to sit. “I suppose you know why we’re here.”

Wen Ming’s limbs trembled, shivers running down his spine. He fiddled with a hangnail, bracing himself for the arrest.

“We’ve come to check on you,” the officer continued lightly, savouring the shock on Wen Ming’s face. “That essay about your job—you shouldn’t have written it, or at least not spread it so widely. Hostile foreign forces and their media agents love opportunities like this to undermine us.”

The usual horseshit—but were they here to arrest him? 

The officer’s tone softened further. “This isn’t to say you can’t speak out, but one must consider the impact of one’s words. You know the Asia-Pacific Mayoral Congress is coming up, right?”

Wen Ming nodded, unsure where this was going.

“The Congress is about international friendship and cooperation. As hosts, we must ensure our guests enjoy themselves, yes? But your essay distracts from that: it diverts media attention from the event itself.”

So? 

“So, stay off your phone during the Congress. No more essays, no more complaints. In exchange, we’ll take you for a trip to Mount Tai, where Confucius, whom you study, once roamed.  A little rest for your mind.”

Wen Ming had heard of bei lüyou before—being “touristed.” When a pompous ceremony loomed, dissidents were whisked away on “vacations” to prevent embarrassment. 

“How generous.” Wen Ming muttered. “I thought bei lüyou was reserved for the stars.”

The officer grinned. “Do you know how many times your essay was shared last week? Ten forking thousand! No offense, but that’s more reads than your scholarly work has seen in a decade.”

*****

After the departure of the police, feeling both relief and regret at not being detained, Wen Ming found his thoughts drifting to the upcoming trip. The decision to go was not his, but how he would approach it was still within his control. Resistance could be silent, even passive; ignoring his companions—he would be accompanied, for sure—was a subtle rebellion. That saved energy could be channeled into the interview with Jen Perlez, or perhaps a first-person bei lüyou exposé.

Moreover, Mount Tai intrigued him. How could it not? China’s most sacred mountain for millennia, its peak the closest point to the sun, its base the gateway to the netherworld. Emperors had performed fengshan ceremonies there in homage to heaven, while countless pilgrims and poets had immortalised its majesty in verse. The more Wen Ming immersed himself in those writings, the more he longed to experience the landscape for himself.

On the appointed day, a police cruiser whisked him to the high-speed rail station, and two plainclothes officers joined him there. One was tall and reedy, and the other short and stocky, so he privately dubbed them Toothpick and Shorty. Surrendering his phone and ID, he wondered how these two, barely older than his students, had wound up as cogs of the system. But why should he care? His goal was to avoid engaging with them, conserve his mental energy, and perhaps glean some new knowledge along the way for his personal enrichment. He took a bottle of water from the conductor and washed away the noise in his mind, slipped in his earbuds and shut his eyes.

The police let him be. Silence clung to them throughout the ride, carried into their triple-occupancy suite in Tai’an that evening, and lingered the next morning in the sun-dimming, heat-trapping haze. By the time they reached the trailhead, a sticky film already covered his skin. After half an hour on the trail, the urge to rest overtook him. His two minders paused with him, their mugs oafish and eyes vacant. The magic mountain held no meaning to them; the entire journey was just another work assignment.

Turning away from them, Wen Ming’s gaze settled on a ravine cutting through the granite slopes, where a cobbled path wove through the low forest. Gigantic rocks jutted at odd angles, their flat facets adorned with vermillion inscriptions. The nearest, an essay by a Qing Dynasty scholar, celebrated the crisp spring air scented with resin. The author had just won a prose contest and, rejoicing, toasted the spirits who aided his victory. 

Wen Ming leaned against the guardrail, trying to reclaim that elation, but the officers’ hurrying shattered whatever he managed to conjure. Up ahead, a boy nonchalantly tossed a popsicle wrapper, while hawkers shouted over one another, hawking their wares in a discordant chorus. No one else seemed to care about the inscriptions; all were fixated on striking poses for yet another selfie.

How meaningless his life’s devotion was to his fellow hikers, how irrelevant. The sun bore down relentlessly as the forest thinned into scrubland, intensifying its effort to wring out sweat. When they reached the Five Pines Pavilion, the cops proposed another break before he did. He nodded in agreement but trudged forward—there was a vendor with a cooler some ten yards away. 

“Where are you going?” Shorty barked. 

Wen Ming stopped, pointing exaggeratedly toward the vendor. Wasn’t his intent obvious? His phone and ID weren’t even in his hands.

“Oh,” Shorty exclaimed. “Can you grab two waters for us, too?”

 The commanding tone irked him. To insist on noncooperation was to buy just one bottle and gulp it down on the spot, then watch the cops grumblingly drag their asses to slake their thirst. He tried to gloat but found the satisfaction soured by unbidden thoughts: what harm was there doing them a small favour? Ten yuan meant nothing—but where had this cooperative impulse come from? He turned his gaze to the vista below, the sprawling houses and tangled roads fading into the haze. Two millennia ago, the view from Mount Tai had filled Confucius with awe; today, what he saw now only tilted his gloom to a new nadir.

The gloom persisted until they reached the Eighteen Bends. The path narrowed and steepened, as if it had been squeezed between the mountain’s flanks. Gripping the guardrail, Wen Ming hauled his trembling legs upward, pausing for breath every twenty steps. For the final stretch, he was on all fours like many others, gripped by fear of toppling over and choked by the dust kicked up by those above. Only upon reaching the South Heavenly Gate did he dare to uncoil, puffing and huffing and squinting ahead. Ramshackle shops lined the flat stretch, and the sight of more tourists haggling, chatting, and photographing pushed a surge of repulsion to its peak.

The officers turned toward him, their faces glistening with sweat—how ghostly pale Toothpick had turned. Are you okay, Wen Ming almost asked, just as Shorty gestured at a signpost: the cable car, downbound. 

“I’ll fetch the tickets,” Shorty said. “You two stay put.”

Wen Ming’s brows rose at the solicitude, only to fall at the realisation that he’d be kept under watch while Toothpick rested—all for their convenience, of course. Sulking, he trudged toward a nearby pavilion, the pale cop trailing steps behind him. Exhausted yet restless, Wen Ming squatted under the shade but rose again almost immediately. The air felt too thick, oppressive. 

He stole a glance at Toothpick, whose face was now even paler, beads of sweat pooling on his sunken cheeks. Then, as if an internal tether snapped, the officer crumpled backward, his limbs splaying in a disjointed sprawl.

An impulse, almost instinctual, urged Wen Ming to help, but a fierce inner voice—a chant of “Noncooperation”—held him in place. He froze, onlookers gathering at the edge of his awareness and trading speculations: “Heatstroke?” “Can’t be epilepsy!” Each passing second intensified the shame burning in his cheeks, each effort to remain still drained away another solid part of him. Even the crown of his head started sweating; he blinked furiously to banish the sweat from his eyes. 

“What happened?” Shorty anxious voice yanked him back to the present. The dumpy cop had returned with a water bottle and tickets, eyes wide with alarm. 

“Heatstroke!” someone in the crowd called out.

“You’re not even helping?” Shorty’s accusation cut deep, but in the next breath, the officer was already beside his partner, unbuttoning the shirt and dousing the chest, dabbing the forehead and pinching acupoints. Toothpick let out a ragged belch rounds of such ministrations, a trickle of froth collecting at the corner of his mouth.

Wen Ming held himself still as the scene unfolded, even as the fallen officer sucked in shallow breaths, even as Short, now calmer, glanced up. “Help me get him to the terminal,” he said, his tone quieter. “They’ve got AC there.” 

The chant of “Noncooperation” still echoed in Wen Ming’s mind, but his body jumped of its own accord, as if propelled by a deeper need to make amends. A relief, really, to break free from the chant’s spell and act. Coordinating with Shorty, Wen Ming took a load-bearing position and propped up Toothpick, the sick man’s arm draping over his shoulder, the bony weight burdening his traipse. 

The cable car terminal perched on a cliff, with narrow path winding along the rock face providing access. The queue stretched long, but Shorty was undeterred. “Make way!” he yelled, shoving through the crowd. Angry eyes followed them; begrudgingly people stepped aside.

Not everyone. “You seem fine!” a young man snarled, his burly body refusing to budge. 

“Police!” Shorty snapped, pushing him in the chest. The man stumbled back and made way, his muttered cry of “bastard officials!” filling the vacated space.

Wen Ming’s cheeks burned with a new shame, at being grouped with his captors this time, at being mistaken for one of them. At the terminal, the attendant jumped at Shorty’s badge and rushed them inside. Iced coke was offered, followed by slices of Hami melon. Two more attendants helped settle Toothpick on a sofa, and when they departed, Shorty left with them for the bathroom.

Only Wen Ming and Toothpick were in the room now, the silence underscored by the hum of the AC. Wen Ming sank into a loveseat, catching his reflection in the tinted window. So many tourists were queuing beyond it, their faces ugly shapes, their mouths agape for air. New bodies pressed against the old ones, their sheer weight driving the line forward. 

The weight of his own inaction closed in on him only now, draining him from within. Something vital had been lost out there, his sense of moral clarity or his conviction of being on the right side. And in the hollow space left behind, he saw the other side, they, were still human, flawed, like himself, and he could be them, had been them, or was still them—his reflection now superposed atop the struggling masses. 

He did not want to see himself this way; he did not want to be seen in this light. Not by those sweating outside, not by the world under the mountain, beyond the haze—he’d now prefer not to be interviewed by The New York Times. He stood up, a notch too abruptly, and saw stars. Allowing the dizziness to pass, he slumped onto the opposite sofa, his back turned to the window, his reflection and the crowd out of sight. What a relief it was, to recline like this and let the cool air soothe the heat away, blotting out all the unpleasant memories until nothing remained but the boundless silence.