Jason Jones Samples Cuisine

Jason Jones gave a sigh of relief as he entered Kongwen - by his guidebooks' report, the center of supernatural activity in Manchuria. He had gotten really, really sick of walking over the last few days. He walked a little distance further, looking around, but not forgetting to hold his shoulder bag carefully, though theft seemed less common in this smaller city. After a minute of travel past shouting hurrying pedestrians and street vendors - one of the latter shoving what looked like an adult magazine in his face. Somewhat discomfited, Jason looked elsewhere, a moment later seeing what he'd been looking for - a bicycle vendor!

Jason pulled out his phrase dictionary as he walked over to the vendor. "多少价是否成本?" he stuttered out, pointing at a bike that looked around his size. (How much for that?) The vendor smiled broadly, pointing to a sign next to him. In thick block type, it reads "150元 20$". Jason put the dictionary away and paid up, receiving a bright yellow bicycle for his money. He walked it through the thicker crowds, buying potstickers on the way (he was hungry!), and then began bicycling back to where he'd seen the centaurs.

When he'd gotten near the site of the fight, he stopped to eat his potstickers. Fortune did not favor him. The wind turned just as he was about to take a bite, and a wave of foul-smelling industrial odors from the north filled Jason's nose. In surprise and revulsion, he dropped his potsticker on the ground. "Dang you, ammonia!" he shouted to the unheeding sky, and biked onward.

He learned that it's harder to track centaurs than he'd realized - and harder if you're bicycling on a Chinese forgery while you're trying to do so.

Twilight had fell by the time Jason reached his destination. The centaur he was following seemed to have realized that Jason, or someone else, might follow him. Jason came very close to falling off a small cliff that the centaur had circled around for seemingly just that purpose, and several times had to hunt around near rocky ground (that didn't hold tracks) before he could continue following the trail. But the potstickers that he managed to eat kept his mood up (they were delicious! - though he wasn't quite certain what meat was in them), and he arrived at the centaur campfire in a good mood.

Four centaurs squatted around the campfire, roasting some sort of meat. Two were - definitely female - the other two were male. All of them looked up as Jason approached, then looked down again. "Go away," one said in a thick accent.

This was not what Jason had anticipated. He'd expected a fight, or at least anger - not this apathy. He said, "I want to find the monsters."

This provoked a reaction. The centaur who'd spoken before - who, Jason suspected, was the one who fled him after the first fight - laughed sharply. "You want find - monsters? You kill Zhang. You kill Won. Now we starve." Staring unbelievingly at Jason, the centaur said, "They take you to monsters!"

Jason looked around the campfire with new eyes. The centaurs were dreadfully thin in comparison to the ones he'd seen in America, and the meat they were cooking was pitifully small if it was to be split between them. A twinge of remorse wakened in his heart, but he pushed it aside. The centaur who had spoken was jabbering to the others in fast-paced Chinese, and in the moment of inattention, Jason looked to the sky. A speck of blue moved slowly across the white clouds. He laughed - bringing the centaurs angry gazes back to him. Jason gulped. He needed a plan.

Thinking quickly, he opened his satchel bag and took out his remaining potstickers, wrapped in a waxed paper bag. "You get this, and - some dollars - if you lead me to the monsters. Not prisoner. Not captive. OK?"

The talking centaur raised himself wearily to his feet. "OK. You give us food now," he dictated.

Jason hesitated, then handed over the bag. Each centaur took a potsticker, gulping it down greedily. One of them ripped a chunk off the roasting meat, handing it to Jason. "You guest now. No kill. Eat."

Jason looked at the meat with a great deal of uncertainty. Then, slowly, he bit down and ripped off a chunk.

It could have been worse.

-

Jason Jones slept uneasily that night. The ground was rough beneath him. The chill of the night was unfamiliar to him. And he worried that the centaurs would betray him after all, and take him bound to their "Great One."

The next day, he set out with his centaur guide, riding his bright yellow bicycle. He was off to find the monsters.