The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen

by Paul Sochaczewski

  But what about Prince Aisin Giorro Pu Jie? I asked, referring to the younger brother of Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor whose life was featured in Bertolucci’s film, who died in Beijing in 1994.

  “Pu Yi was Ching dynasty. Manchurians. Invaders. My family are Chinese,” Emperor Elmer said.

  His genealogy, printed on the back of his CV, told a contorted tale of usurped emperors and invaders, and of exiled royalty who emigrated to Hawaii. Shaky about Chinese family trees, I asked around and found that Elmer has been a bit, er, creative, with his historical narrative. One scholar thought that the emperor “learned his history from a fortune cookie.”

  But hey, call me a dreamer. What if…I invited Elmer for lunch, figuring that, just in case he was who he said he was, it couldn’t hurt to be pals with the Big Guy.

  Elmer ordered chop suey from the University of Hawaii’s cafeteria. I had a hamburger.

  Elmer wasn’t too clear about his strategy for gaining the throne. He wants to visit China, for the first time, to see his people. “Can you find funding for me?” he asks. He wants to bring western ideas to the Middle Kingdom, particularly the religion of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Chinese are Semites,” he explains obliquely. “Direct descendants of Noah.”

  I suggest it might be useful for American-born Elmer to learn a few phrases of Mandarin. “Uh?”, the emperor-to-be grunts, which is the way he acknowledges new, seemingly apparent ideas, as in “This is how you network.” “Uh?”

  He bridles at the suggestion that he also might brush up a bit on Chinese politics and customs. He gets edgy. I’ve overstepped his royal space.

  I ask him, respectfully, I hope, what qualifications he has to lead 1.2 billion people.

  Elmer waves the genealogy. He went to college for four years but left before getting a degree, muttering, “It was a fake sexual harassment case.” He adds: “I’m stable, level headed. Have good common sense. I hope it’s tough for someone to take advantage of me.”

  He doesn’t think that China is ready for a democratic movement. What about the current generation of Chinese leaders? “They’re doing the best they can.”

  “President [George H.W.] Bush had about the right kind of China policy,” he adds. But he’s down on Henry Kissinger. Elmer points out that he once handed a letter to Kissinger, who was visiting Honolulu, asking for support. To Elmer’s surprise, Kissinger spent all his time in Hawaii without seeking the emperor’s counsel about how Sino-American relations would improve once Elmer took over the throne. So much for Kissinger’s renowned geopolitical acumen.

  Obviously chutzpah is a useful quality in a wannabe emperor. While speaking with Elmer I was reminded of Joshua Abraham Norton, a 19th century English Jew who sold supplies to San Francisco gold rushers and then declared himself Emperor of America.

  In 1859 Norton walked into the offices of the San Francisco Bulletin and presented them with this single sentence, which they ran on the next edition’s front page:

  “At the preemptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton…declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these US, and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested to hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.”

  It was signed “Norton I. Emperor of the United States.”

  Like Elmer, Norton I had a common touch: he abjured seclusion and luxury, attending every public function by foot or bicycle. If he noticed someone performing some kind act he might spontaneously ennoble them, from which practice the expression “Queen for a day” was obtained.

  In return for his noble generosity restaurants offered the emperor free dinners; he was given three seats at every theatrical performance (one for himself and one each for his famously well-behaved dogs, Bummer and Lazarus). The city itself paid for his uniforms, Bay Area newspapers published his proclamations and he had his own currency printed, which was accepted widely. He had a habit of levying taxes by walking into the offices of an old business friend and announcing an imperial assessment of ten million dollars or so, but could quickly be talked down to a cigar and small change. When he was arrested by an overzealous policeman “to be confined for treatment of a mental disorder” virtually every newspaper published editorials denouncing the action and Norton was released with a lengthy public apology from the chief of police.

  Norton sent frequent cables to fellow rulers offering surprisingly well-informed advice. King Kamehameha of Hawai’i (then the Sandwich Islands) was so taken with the Emperor’s insight and understanding that towards the end of his life Kamehameha refused to recognize the U.S. State Department, saying he would deal only with representatives of Norton’s Empire.

  When Norton I died in 1890 ten thousand people lined up to view his mortal remains; his funeral cortege was three kilometers long. At 2.39 pm, during his funeral, San Francisco experienced a total eclipse of the sun.

  Elmer could use some heavenly miracles since his claim to the throne is in danger of disintegrating unless he gets some support.

  Elmer explains that he has high-placed relatives in the Hawaiian political and social world. “But they won’t help me,” he says. “They’re jealous. Afraid of my power. And the CIA wants to assassinate me.” I agree not to use his real name.

  We meet a couple of other times but since Elmer has no phone and no fixed domicile it is difficult to set up appointments.

  Although we lose contact, I read about China’s political travails with renewed interest. Could it happen? I can’t recall a communist state turning democratic and then deciding to re-establish a monarchy. Even Great Britain is toying with the idea of giving Queen Elizabeth the boot. But in Geneva, King Michael of Romania is talking comeback. It works in sports, and it works in politics. Emperor Elmer. He’s tanned, rested and ready. Emperor Elmer. I like the sound.

  Chapter 4

  THE GIRL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

  Thirty years on, searching for the girl whose eyes said, “I’m going to surprise you.”

  LADAKH, India

  In 1979 I took a black and white photo of a young girl in Ladakh. She was perhaps ten. She wore a rough robe of homespun wool, she carried a slate on which she used a stick dipped in muddy water to write her alphabets, she carried a simple brown canvas army-style book bag slung over her shoulder.

  I have no idea what she was thinking, but to me her gaze says, quietly, “Watch me. I’m going to surprise you.”

  I sought her out in April 2005.

  There was a slight problem though. I didn’t remember where I had taken the photo.

  One of the benefits of being a somewhat organized pack rat is that I keep my old journals. I found my notes from the trip 26 years earlier. At a town I had identified as Bongzo, I had written about a little girl, whose “hands were rough with ingrained dirt, the texture of sandpaper.” We had arithmetic as a common language, and I wrote “2 + 2” and watched her stroke the numeral “4”. I gave her a ball point pen. “The girl’s eyes lit for a moment with immediate recognition,” I had written. “After realizing the pen was for her she grabbed it and in one motion hid it inside her homespun robe.”

  In 2005 I was in the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh for a weekend, to write an article about the golf course in Leh, which, at 3,445 meters, is the world’s highest. I had a free day, and understanding my esoteric interests, my guide Tashi Chotak Lonchey had taken me to the monastery which I had visited 26 years earlier (yes, one of the monks was still alive and he recognized himself in a photo). After a cup of butter tea we decided to drive several hours to visit a sacred forest, an ancient juniper tree grove in Hemis Shukpachan. After driving for about an hour we passed a small village and I saw a sign that said �
�Basgo”. “Maybe this is the place where you took the picture,” Tashi suggested. Bongzo? Basgo? Close enough to be worth a stop.

  None of it looked familiar. My only thought was that in 1979 my friend David and I must have stopped here for a tea break during a bus ride to Ridzong Monastery further along the same road.

  Tashi and I stopped at a large house near the road and showed a blowup of the young girl’s photo to an old woman. “It could be Tsewang,” she said after some thought. “Her husband Tashi Angchok is just up the street.”

  We found Tashi Angchok working at the family restaurant. He offered us tea as he studied the photo. “The smile looks similar to my wife’s,” he said. But the problem was that his wife, Tsewang Dolma, the reputed girl in the photo, wasn’t around the day we stopped by since she teaches at Tridho, a one-class school some three hours away, near the Chinese border.

  He took the picture to his mother-in-law, and came back with a handful of old photos showing his wife as a young girl. The mother said that my photo seemed to be that of her daughter, but she wasn’t too sure.

  We still had a long program ahead of us that day, so we left the photo with Tashi Angchok, told him we would be back at the end of the afternoon, went to explore the sacred forest in Hemis.

  It was almost sundown when we got back to Basgo.

  “It’s her,” Tashi said confidently.

  We asked how he knew.

  “I showed the picture to Tsewang’s sister but didn’t say ‘is this Tsewang?’ I simply asked ‘do you know this girl?’” he said, quite proud of his reporting skills. “She said ‘yes, that’s my little sister.’”

  So, just like that I had found a family who has invited me to dinner next time I’m in Ladakh. Then I’ll get a chance to actually have a conversation with this girl, now a grown woman, whose photo and spirit has graced my home for a quarter of a century.

  Chapter 5

  KILL MOSQUITOES ‘TIL THEY’RE DEAD

  Choreographing the singing chicken, goat and twin rabbits

  JAKARTA, Indonesia

  Incense is far from a simple commodity. It’s an essential component of Indonesian meditation. But add a swig of insecticide, manufacture it into coils that emit an insect-defying smoke, and you get that wonderfully Asian invention dubbed the mosquito coil. Ridding the world of little devils, in either case.

  Back in the 1970s, Hennoch Tampi, one of my clients in the Jakarta advertising agency in which I worked, wanted a new campaign for his three mosquito coil brands. In the visual and not always-literate marketplace they were named after the animals represented on the packs: Kambing (Goat brand, so called because it has a picture of a goat on the front), Ayam (Chicken) and Dua Kelinci (Double Rabbit).

  I felt I owed him a Big Idea. After all, he was the first to feed me rat curry, a major treat in his hometown of Manado.

  We did lunch at the Executive Club.

  “How about we maybe get some famous comedians to slap each other all night because they can’t sleep because there are so many mosquitoes because…” he suggested.

  I saw greatness beckoning. “Here’s what we do,” I said, scribbling on the linen tablecloth. “The film starts with an animated scene of a mosquito control tower sending mosquito fighter plane-warriors to attack a peaceful human village. Who comes to save them? Why the heroes of the mosquito war – Super Kambing, a human goat dressed like Superman but with horns; Abdul Ayam, a giant chicken looking like a refugee from Aladdin’s lamp; and Titi and Tati, the two rabbits. Together they beat up the mosquitoes and save the village.”

  “Is that it?” Hennoch asked, somewhat disappointed.

  “Oh, I forgot. They sing.” And I made up a jingle while nibbling chocolate mousse.

  He loved it so much he paid for lunch. Now I really owed him.

  First I flew to Singapore and saw my buddy Horace Wee. Whenever I had a jingle idea I sang it to Horace and he would grimace, strum on his guitar and say “surely this what you had in mind.”

  The film was combination live action and animation - the cartoon mosquito villains would be added later. I gave the role of Super Kambing, the goat superman, to my kung fu instructor, a Bruce Lee protegé. He asked that filming not interfere with his special armed forces assignment. “I’m bodyguard to the Ambassador,” he said.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “Yours. The American.”

  His buddy was a perfect Abdul Ayam. We told him he looked very nice in his turban and balloon pants.

  Now for Tity and Tati.

  I liked to hold casting sessions in the office. It amused my colleagues to have would-be commercial stars prancing around.

  We found Titi, the first rabbit pretty easily. But no Tati, and we were on the fourth casting call and shooting was set to start in a few days. Then a very pretty Arab lady arrived, a minor film actress, together with a friend.

  “Can you do kung fu?” I asked the actress.

  “No.”

  “Karate?”

  “No.” She added, “And I won’t wear skin-colored tights.”

  “Well, then you must be able to dance.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Yes. Disco.”

  She didn’t get the job. But the Arab woman’s friend, Yeti, was great. She had rabbit-like curves and had been a gymnast.

  “Have you ever been in a film?” I asked.

  “No, and I don’t want to.”

  I looked her straight in the eyes with my most intense, but sincere, gaze. “Yeti,” I said “I can make you a star.”

  The shooting went smoothly. We had asked the prop man to get white smoke coming from the end of the fake 2½ meter mosquito coil. So before every take he puffed on two packs of cigarettes and stuffed them into the hollow end of the model mosquito coil.

  During the mosquito attack a terrified mother clutching a baby looks up at the sky and implores, “Who can save us?” And we figured we’d have a great shot because the kid would be crying her eyes out. All little kids cry when they’re put in front of the lights and surrounded by strangers. Well this mellow kid wouldn’t stop laughing and gurgling. “THE MOSQUITOES ARE COMING! WE’RE DOOMED! SAVE US!” people screamed. “Gurgle, gurgle,” gurgled the baby. “Go on Tony, I told the Australian director. “Pinch the kid.”

  “I can’t,” he answered. “I’ve got a kid her age. I hate to see little girls cry. You pinch her.”

  The two rabbits were terrific. They swung on vines and punished an imaginary giant mosquito with flying kicks.

  There’s one scene in the commercial in which a little old lady chases the fleeing mosquito villains with a broom. Of course there were no mosquitoes for her to chase during the shoot since they were to be animated and added later.

  “Now Ibu, in this scene you’re really angry,” I explained. “You’re chasing after these real bad mosquito villain guys.” Here we were asking a four-toothed, sixty-something woman, who had probably seen about two commercials in her life, to give a performance Dame Edith Evans would have had trouble with. “You can’t really see the mosquitoes, Mother, but I want you to chase them down this path just the same. They’re about this big,” I said, holding my hand as high as her shoulder. “Pretend they’re there.” And she did, with gusto.

  The grand finale of this epic comes after all the mosquitoes have been run out of town and the villagers cheer their four heroes. After the first take, Titi, Rabbit Number One, was furious. Some boys in the front row of celebrating villagers were, well, taking liberties. We moved the naughty boys to the back and the little old ladies to the front. Kambing the Goat picked up the baby and swung her over the crowd. The baby was supposed to be happy and gurgling, safe in the hands of the friendly giant who killed mosquitoes and saved the village. The formerly happy kid bawled and screamed. Never mind. It was a long shot, and with a bit of luck we wouldn’t see her face. Film was expensive and the cast of dozens was getting restless.

  “All right you barnyard animals, SING!” Tony shouted.

  “I’m
Super Kambing,” the goat man bellowed.

  “I’m Abdul Ayam,” the chicken crooned.

  “We’re Dua Kelinci,” the rabbits trilled.

  “And we’ve come to kill mosquitoes ‘til they’re dead.”

  Chapter 6

  LIFE: ENDLESS KARMIC LOOP OR ONE CHANCE FOR GUSTO?

  Philosophy on the trail in Upper Mustang, Nepal

  LO MANTHANG, Upper Mustang, Nepal

  On a bluff in Kagbeni, at the entrance to the Kingdom of Mustang, a tantalizing sign warns: “Stop. You are now entering the restricted area of Upper Mustang.”

  Our vantage point in this medieval-feeling town overlooks the Kali Gandaki River. We look up the wide, graveled river bed towards distant villages where patches of green barley offer evidence of civilization in this arid landscape. We gaze at the ancient salt route that winds along the river’s banks. The track, accessible only by foot, pony or yak, connects the lowlands of India and Nepal with the isolated mountain plateaux of Central Asia. Before we can enter Upper Mustang we first must show our trekking permits to the Nepalese authorities; then we are through, and it feels like we have entered a hidden gate, a forbidden time warp. The snow-capped peak of Nilgiri Mountain, part of the Annapurna range, is at our backs. We are headed north, towards Tibet.

  For three of us in the group, the trek to the Kingdom of Mustang in northern Nepal is the start of an adventure.

  For Tashi, however, it is an emotional homecoming.

  Our friend Tashi, a smiling, stocky Tibetan refugee who became a naturalised Nepalese citizen, was born some 40 years ago in a nameless valley near Lo Manthang, the capital of Upper Mustang and our destination five days hence.