MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

The first news that Michael and Jacob had of the dragon of Chinatown was provided by an acquaintance of them called Clive. Clive frequented Chinatown because of a bad addiction he had: he was an opium smoker. That addiction would end up driving him crazy and leading him to be enslaved by an ant colony from Prospect Park. However, in 1937, he was still not crazy, so when he told Michael and Jacob about the dragon, they believed him. According to Clive, the dragon was hidden in the basement of an opium den called “Yinglong”. Clive said he had heard its grunts and grinding of teeth, and sometimes he saw tongues of fire escape under the door that gave access to the basement. Once, he was smoking next to the basement door when the Chinese in charge opened it, and then he could see it: a huge bug-eyed dragon with horrible jaws and more than eight yards long. When he asked the Chinese, he was told that there was nothing to worry about and, laughing, they added that it was the den’s pet. Mic...

In the year 1937, the "On Leong", one of the tongs or Chinese secret societies of New York City, declared war on a rival tong, the "Hip Song", because of a dispute regarding the length of the queue   that Chinese men should wear. At that time there lived in Chinatown a reputed Chinese magician named Cao Xing who felt a great affinity for Jewish culture. To the point that he used to walk around Jewish neighborhoods disguised as an orthodox jew with a long false beard, long false payots, long false hair and a long false brain that enabled him to speak and understand Yiddish with the exception of some loose words like fridn, kvetch or mishposheh. Thanks to this good characterization, he had managed to make friends with a Williamsburg rabbi called Weinman. This rabbi instructed him in the Kabbalah and, at the request of Cao Xing (who when disguised as a Jew was called Gershom Alishpensky), taught him the secret procedure for building a Golem  with the strength of three...