Morning Cloud, Evening Rain

A dream is not a dream A butterfly not a butterfly In the cloud, a pining spirit A myth in the dream’s red chamber

It’s dawn. Our cruise ship has passed the roaring Qutang Gorge and entered Wushan on the Yangtze. The deck is finally empty after an all-night party of drinking and gambling. I sneak past the sleeping guard to do yoga on the area reserved for the first-class passengers. When I look up from a back bend, she appears before me like an apparition, her slender waist and full hips shimmering through a silk gown, her painted toes curving through golden slippers, blond curls hugging her breasts.

Her beauty takes my breath away, though I am supposed to detest her—a woman dressed to give pleasure to anyone who can pay. Yet she pulls me like the moon. The melancholy between her eyebrows makes my heart throb with pain.

Below the deck, the tour guide is knocking on the first-class cabins, her shrill voice cutting through the metal floor. “Get up. We’re reaching Wushan Goddess Peak. Your tour counts for nothing unless you see the goddess.” When no one stirs, she shouts, “I’ve done my job. Don’t regret it later. Don’t ask for a refund.”

I smile as I listen to the commotion downstairs. She knows how to move people. Money is the engine that drives China forward.

Thick clouds hang on the mountains, shrouding the river, the boat, and the girl in white silk. How did she get here? Since I boarded this three-star boat yesterday afternoon, I have combed though the first-, second-, and third-class passengers who live along the Three Gorges, or used to, before they were removed for the dam construction. I should have known better: why would any locals squander their money touring their homeland?

The girl couldn’t have boarded the ship with us. I’d have spotted her right away.

Light peeks out of the clouds, casting her shadow on the river. Even her shadow is beautiful and forlorn. It points north to a steep mountaintop, where mist hugs the shoulders of a slender rock. Is that the Wushan goddess the guide has been bragging about, the crown jewel of our three-day tour? Everything else pales after her, she told Dan. I was struck by the enthusiasm in her gleaming eyes. She’s a shrewd businesswoman. What’s her interest in a rock that doesn’t have much commercial value except that it provides her with a job?

We disliked each other the minute we met. I detest her heavy makeup and elaborate hairdo, her tight T-shirt and jeans that show every inch of her robust curves, her shrill voice and the purple bags under the bulging eyes revealing her oversexed lifestyle.

Likewise, she seems to hate everything about me: my blunt questions, my casual traveler’s clothes, my fluent English and my American colleague. The minute we boarded, she pulled Dan to her side, announcing in her broken English that it was her duty to give him, the only foreigner on board, her personal attention. Dan laughed when I translated her words into comprehensible English. She glared at me with her watery eyes: Just watch how I snatch the meat right out of your wrinkled mouth, you arrogant hag!

“There she is, everyone, our goddess, our Chinese Venus!” the guide shrieks through a megaphone. The deck is packed. Dan stands next to her, craning his neck to locate the peak. She takes his hand and points it to the north shore. “There, the slenderest one. Doesn’t it look like a girl facing clouds? Isn’t she beautiful?”

There seems to be someone in the folds of the mountain With eyes that hold laughter and pearls of smile.

She starts singing “Shangui” from Qu Yuan’s Nine Songs, a ritual performance for gods and kings from two thousand years ago. Shangui is a goddess who roams the Three Gorges, gathering herbs as she waits for her wandering warrior—“her wandering warrior—the God of...