The Bamboo Bridge Chapter 6: The Three Warrior Merchants

If you have never walked the Bamboo bridge, it is a bridge of the group mind. A connection like Social media or yogic meditation where one can purchase the mystical, for a price. The truth is there are many places to buy drums and masks and costumes. But to gain access to a true head... you must walk the Bamboo Bridge.

Joyce and I brought the children and walked to a place where their was a whole city of people selling things from their boats. We hopped from boat to boat buying Tong Sui, Baos, Boba Tea, Dim Sum, and all sorts of treats that were the spirit essence of people who walked the Bamboo Bridge.

Nara and Jinn were getting bored of the boat city so we promised them we would stop at only one more boat... then we would go back to the bridge. You see children can walk the bridge... but after too much time over the waters on which the bridge goes over they will start to become water and fish food.

We came  to a boat where there was an old man fishing.

"I'm looking to get a lion head. Do you know where I can get one?"

"I have a ton of lion heads.... but right now I am fishing. I will be done in an hour.... you want to check out the boat City first?"

Unfortunately  we had to go... and so we did not buy a lion head from the first Warrior Merchant. For that was what anyone who had a boat along the bamboo bridge had to be. A warrior to defend from sharks and sea monsters and a merchant to make a living.

We walk along the Bamboo bridge again, which is a maze that always magically leads s you home when it is time. 

We saw a drunken sage balancing  on a rope that was tied with one end on the bridge and the other on a far pier. 

We called out to him. But then a fog came and we lost sight of him. We continued to walk and talked loudly about wanting to buy a lion head when it just so happened that there in front of us stood an actual lion. A horned lion, a Zhang Fei lion.

"You want a Zhang Fei Lion head like me?"

Yes I answered. Though Joyce was as yet unsure what a Zhang Fei Lion was.

"I am left over from another time and I am getting old. If you pay me. I can come to your house with a drum and an old style Kei Lun Gong as well. It would be a one time deal."

With that we paid and returned home.

Soon enough one morning a black lion head lay on our doorstep. No longer alive as a full lion. For lions cannot live in our world as they do on the Bamboo bridge before they have been awakened. 

But now we had the lion head we needed to do real dances during the next Chinese New Year season.