The traveler Meng Kun was someone I met on the road while returning from Nepal to Haidong. At the time he was dressed in rags and claimed to have come out of Rear Tibet, though no one knew how long he had been wandering alone on the plateau. His Arc’teryx backpack, worth more than two thousand yuan, was empty except for a scrawny little puppy. He ran an international youth hostel in Yading, Daocheng, and lived an easy, carefree life, spending each year roving everywhere in search of adventure. In November, when I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed south to escape the winter, I happened to get a call from him and so went to stay at his inn. By then the tourist high season in Daocheng was already over and all the staff had been given leave. Every day Meng Kun and I slept late into the morning, stayed awake until the moon rode high overhead, and talked of heaven and earth in perfect contentment.

One night the town lost power. So we went into the storeroom, brought out a brazier, set a vigorous charcoal fire, and drank the barley liquor brewed by the local Tibetans. Meng Kun’s inn was in Tibetan style, with a flat roof, whitewashed walls, and an interior made entirely of wood. We drank and talked, and before we knew it the hour had passed deep into the night. The barley liquor had a long, lingering strength. Meng Kun rolled over and fell asleep, and I, unable to resist the drink either, closed my eyes and drifted in and out of a half-sleep.

In that hazy state between dreaming and waking, I gradually felt a fierce heat spread over my whole body, as though I were sleeping inside a brick kiln roaring with flame. I opened my eyes in a daze and was instantly shocked. Somehow the brazier had been knocked over, and glowing coals lay scattered all across the floor. Almost everything in that inn was made of wood. A single spark could have brought about a great fire. I was just trying to struggle upright and call for help when I saw a little dog Meng Kun kept rearing itself in the middle of the flames, tongue out, licking at the fire. Whenever the blaze lifted its head even slightly, the dog would leap at it, first pressing it down with its body and then licking it up with its mouth, as though drinking milk. My head was throbbing, but seeing that the fire remained under the puppy’s control, I fell back asleep.

The next morning, when I awoke, the brazier was still lying upside down on the floorboards, yet there was not the slightest trace of fire in the room. The puppy was asleep in the ashes, breathing contentedly. I went close and looked at it carefully. It was indeed the same puppy Meng Kun had brought back from Rear Tibet years before. Even now it was not very large. Its coat was mottled, its appearance altogether unremarkable, like the offspring of a Tibetan mastiff and an ordinary village dog. When Meng Kun awoke, I told him what I had seen the night before. He laughed and said, “If one runs a Tibetan-style inn, how could one fail to think about fire prevention? In the old days, Tibetan temples were mostly built of wood, and without devices like the waterwheels of the Central Plains, once fire broke out the monks could do little. Later someone brought from India a kind of little dog, mastiff-like in form but smaller and short-haired. When crossed with Tibetan mastiffs, it produced offspring that fed on fire. People gave them the elegant name ‘fire-warding beasts,’ and they were often kept in temples and aristocratic estates. Nowadays the fire-warding beast has nearly disappeared. This one of mine I half begged and half wrested in trade from a small temple in Rear Tibet, giving up nearly all the gear on my back for it. Its bloodline is already much too mixed. It can only eat small flames now. A great blaze it would never be able to suppress.”

I had studied Tibetan Buddhism for years, yet had never known that such a living thing as the fire-warding beast even existed. The Tibetan lands are vast; who knows how many mysteries are still hidden there. Fire-warding beasts, like Tibetan mastiffs, have been carried away one by one by outsiders and are now on the brink of vanishing. I truly do not know whether it is better for such secrets to be known by the world, or not known at all.