remained perpetual guests of their hapless hosts and flatly refused to conform to local customs. To the great disgust of the natives, most of the unmarried white men stayed stone drunk much of the time, occasionally abusing their hosts as well as each other in drunken brawls. But the villagers had strict standing orders from Ching Wei to make his "guests" feel at home there, so no one dared protest the behavior of these drunken louts. The first phrase I learned in the local lingo was, "Liquor is as natural to the white man as milk is to babies."
One of Ching Wei's whims, to which he devoted increasing attention over the years, was to collect a sort of menagerie of white captives to amuse him. This hobby he pursued with great enthusiasm. When I arrived, he had about fifty men in his collection; by now there are at least three hundred fifty. Each captive lives in the household of his assigned host and receives everything he needs without having to do a lick of work for it. Those with special skills—like me—lived in the main village near the mountain, where Ching Wei could beckon us at will. But basically we were free to do anything we pleased—except leave.
One of our main functions was simply to amuse Ching Wei, like a collection of exotic pets. Whenever the mood struck him, he would invite a bunch of us up to his place for a huge feast and lavish entertainment. The more drunk and disorderly his guests became, the more he seemed to enjoy their company. He himself rarely drank more than a glass or two of champagne or cognac, but it was clear from his glazed eyes and manic grin that he had something a lot stronger than booze coursing through his veins.
White men were not his only whim. He also collected exotic animals from all over the world—mostly predators—and these he kept in a zoo within the palace walls. The animals were tended by an English veterinarian specifically selected and kidnapped for that purpose. When he felt particularly perverse, he'd sometimes pit one of his pet predators, such as a tiger, against a guest or native who'd broken one of his rules.
Ching Wei also collected guns and orchids. I saw his gun room several times over the years, and I doubt there's a single type of firearm produced in the last hundred years of which he doesn't own at least one sample. That's where One-Eye got the Uzi he used to nab me.
Ching Wei's orchid collection contained over five hundred varieties. He kept an elaborate, fully automated greenhouse tended by a French orchid cultivator named Moreau, whom he also kidnapped expressly for the job. Ching Wei once explained to me the source of his endless fascination with orchids. He said the blossoms reminded him of the intricate, delicately convoluted folds of the female genitalia, each breed displaying its own unique shape, size, and colors, each blossom exuding its own individual fragrance. "Everything about the orchid is designed to arouse sexual excitement in the roving butterfly or passing bee," he'd often say while sniffing lovingly at a bloom. When you think about it, he's right.
Except for the foreign luxuries brought in from Bangkok, Dragon Mountain was entirely self-sufficient. The Shan tribes-men grew food in great abundance, with staples of rice, millet, and barley, and all sorts of fruits and vegetables for variety. For meat, Shan hunters stalked their prey throughout the surrounding mountains and valleys with vintage carbines, bringing back monkey, small deer, wild boar, water rats, civet cats, and snakes. The only domestic animals they ate were dogs and pigs, and those only on special occasions. The natives observed a strict taboo against eating beef, for the cow and buffalo were sacred animals to them, but because their white guests preferred beef above all other food, the locals were forced to butcher cattle for them. I soon learned another native term for the white man, always muttered in a tone of deep disgust: "The Beefeaters."
Security was no problem at Dragon Mountain. Ching Wei deliberately kept his domain as inaccessible as possible. The massive mountain dominated the entire region, and the village at its foot was heavily fortified. This village served as the administrative center for his entire domain and was called Poong. His palace sat high above the village, most of it carved directly into the living rock on the mountain's northern face. The palace was surrounded by five acres of elaborate gardens, and the grounds were completely enclosed within a tall corniced wall. The only access to the palace from the village was the steep path I'd taken with One-Eye the first night.
The terrain was ribbon ed with swift, torrential rivers and carpeted with jungles so thick that light rarely reached the ground. The only way into Poong from the outside world was the drawbridge I'd crossed with One-Eye the day I arrived there. To get to other villages from Poong, you first had to cross the bridge, then take one of the narrow trails that branched off into the jungle on the other side of the river. The trails were all guarded around the clock by armed sentries and trained hunting dogs. Ching Wei kept the trails so narrow and overgrown that no wheeled vehicles—not even a wheelbarrow—could negotiate them. Booby traps were planted everywhere, and only the guards knew their locations. Careless natives wandering about without permission occasionally got killed or horribly maimed by these traps.
Uninvited intruders were spotted and killed long before they even got near Poong. As for captives bent on escape, even if they miraculously managed to get by the watchful eyes of hosts, guards, and dogs, they still faced a gauntlet of uncut jungle crawling with predators, snakes, poisonous insects, and bandits. And if that didn't stop them, then the Wild Wa headhunters who infested the region did. No one had ever escaped from Dragon Mountain and lived to tell about it.
When I left the palace that night, One-Eye was waiting outside to escort me back down to the village, where he brought me to the house of my assigned host. The size of the hut and garden indicated a family of relative wealth and prestige. This was no doubt Ching Wei's idea of honoring an "old friend."
Except for a single oil lamp sputtering through an open doorway at the top of a rickety bamboo staircase, the entire house lay wrapped in darkness. An old man snoozed on a bamboo stool just inside the threshold, his back propped up against the mud and wattle wall. He wore the turban, tunic, and loose pants favored by the Shan, which, incidentally, means "the free people." One-Eye climbed the steps and woke the old man with a swift kick in the ribs, muttered something at him, then disappeared back into the darkness.
The old man blinked at me with glaucous eyes as he stood up to greet me. He stretched and yawned, then motioned me to follow him inside the house. We crossed the main room, where I noticed a few bodies stretched out asleep on reed mats. The whole place reeked of curry, garlic, and charcoal. Groping his way through a narrow hallway, which gave access to the back of the house, he led me into the room farthest in back. This was no doubt a precaution aimed at protecting his family from the white man's notorious smell, that rank, musty odor that the Chinese describe as "fox-stink."
Inside the room he lit another lamp, swept his hand around, then pointed at me and said something. I shrugged. He shrugged back. Suddenly we both burst out laughing—the unwilling guest meets the unwilling host—and I knew instinctively that we'd get along fine.
He pointed to a cot of jute webbing stretched over a wooden frame, the kind we used to call a charpoy in India. Next to it stood a crude table with a clay washbasin, a large jug of water for washing, and a smaller jug for drinking water. He lifted the lid of an old wooden chest: inside lay two moth-eaten blankets, a pair of baggy Shan pants, a wraparound sarong for wearing around the house, a bamboo cup, and a wooden bowl.
"Thank you," I said.
"San-kew?" he repeated quizzically, pointing at me. "Kiang!" he trumpeted, cocking a thumb at himself by way of introduction....
"Glad to meet you, Kiang. My name is Jack-not San-kew."
"Jacknut San-kew!" he said, nodding with approval.
"No, just Jack. Jack, Jack, Jack."
He tested the word a few times under his breath, then flashed a broad betel-stained smile to confirm it. "Jack!"
"Kiang," I pointed to him. "Jack," I cocked a thumb
