Old Town
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37 The immortal opening scene of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms when the three heroes, Liu Bei, Guan Yü, and Zhang Fei, swear an oath of brotherhood in Zhang’s peach orchard to defend the collapsing Han dynasty against the forces of insurrection.
38 The traditional Qingming (literally “Clear and Bright”) Festival occurs close to the spring equinox. While it is intended primarily to celebrate the coming of spring, it is also the time when Chinese families visit the burial plots of their departed family members and ancestors in a gesture of filial piety.
39 Traditionally, the solemn color of yellow, associated with the emperor and written prayers to the gods, was the color of the paper used by people who traveled to the capital to present their petitions.
40 “ABC,” Chinese slang for “American-born Chinese.”
41 Not out of snobbery or sexism, but rather from compassion for the animals that were killed there and the horror at hearing their dying cries.
42 That banquet with the Macbeth-like treachery explained in Footnote 5.
43 Bo Le was a legendary judge of superior horses and could identify one able to run a thousand leagues.
44 An enormously powerful organ of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, responsible for career positions in post-1949 China.
45 During the Northern Wei dynasty (CE 386–584), the girl Hua Mulan joined the army disguised as her aged father to fight nomadic invaders on the frontier. This beloved tale of filial piety had already been filmed several times in China by the time this Mid-Autumn Festival banquet took place at the West Gate church.
46 Ninth Brother’s whimsical allusion to an event in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The last ruler of the state of Shu, the feckless Liu Shan, surrendered to the kingdom of Wei and went into exile in Loyang, where he behaved as if he had forgotten he was the lord of a defeated state. On one occasion he was given a banquet by an important Wei minister, who insultingly ordered the musicians play traditional Shu melodies to gauge his reactions. Liu Shan’s entourage were saddened to hear these and asked if he, Liu, did not miss Shu, to which Liu replied, “I’m having too much fun to long for Shu.”
47 Together with his brother Chen Guofu, Chen Lifu (d. 2001) headed what was known as the CC Clique of the Guomindang Party, undoubtedly its strongest and most influential political faction and one that represented the most conservative and uncompromisingly anticommunist elements of Chinese society. Chen Lifu also headed the dreaded Central Bureau of Intelligence and Statistics, one of the two main police bodies in Guomindang China.
48 The official Chinese rendition of this Turkic name is “Kashi.” Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established on October 1, 1955, with its capital at Urumqi. This vast territory in China’s far northwest is bounded externally by Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and India.
49 Sandor Petofi (1823-1849), a famed Hungarian poet and martyred guiding spirit of the 1848 Revolution.
50 Dashanlan is Beijing’s famed and venerable commercial street, just south of Qianmen (“Front Gate”). Some of its shops date back several hundred years. Douzhi is one of Beijing’s signature dishes, a pungent soup made from fermented mung beans. Beijing people say it is only palatable to “real Beijingers.” Not true.
51 Mandarin ducks are the traditional Chinese symbol of lifelong marital love and fidelity. “A flash of thirsty pleasure”—again Li Yu’s poem, “Waves Washing on Sand.” See chapter 6, footnote 24.
52 Liu Hulan (1932–1947), a young girl in Shanxi Province beheaded by Guomindang forces during the Civil War for refusing to identify Communist Party members among her fellow villagers.
53 Though destruction of the “Four Olds”—old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas—was one of the stated goals of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), this movement actually started in 1964.
54 Another reference from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ma Su was a brilliant military strategist from the Kingdom of Shu, and much admired by Zhuge Liang, himself an incomparable strategist, who nonetheless ordered him decapitated for an arrogant blunder which cost Shu the battle of Jieting (228 CE).
55 A mao is one-tenth of a yuan.
56 Jiang Qing (1914–1991), the last wife of Chairman Mao Zedong, played a major role in fomenting the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as a leader of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and the influential “Gang of Four” radical ideologues. Feared, reviled, and widely (if exaggeratedly) blamed for all the destructive chaos of the Cultural Revolution, her power ended with the death of Mao on September 9, 1976. Arrested shortly after this, she was tried in 1980 and given a death sentence that was never carried out. In mid-1991 she was released on medical grounds. Jiang Qing reportedly committed suicide days after her release.
57 Lin Biao (1907–1971), an important communist military commander during the Guomindang-Communist Civil War, and subsequently a key figure in promoting the personality cult of Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution, Lin emerged as the nation’s paramount military leader and was officially designated as Mao’s successor. Then, in 1971, Marshal Lin, together with his wife and son, were reported to have died in a plane crash in Mongolia while fleeing China. The exact circumstances of his death have never been definitively established, though rumors of plots and coups abound to this day. Along with Jiang Qing, Lin Biao has been a scapegoat for the worst aspects of the Cultural Revolution.
58 A series of political campaigns throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, aimed at rusticating urban rightists, intellectuals, certain party members on the wrong side of internal political struggles, and, finally, the increasingly violent Red Guards and rebel factions, “to learn from the peasants.”
59 From The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Hua Tuo was a celebrated physician who met his end in 207 CE for refusing to treat Cao Cao, the great regional warlord and founder of the Kingdom of Wei.
60 The controversial Wu Zetian (c. 625–705 C.E.) ruled Tang dynasty China through her husbands and sons from 665 to 690, when she then founded a new Zhou dynasty with herself as China’s first empress-ruler. This lasted until her overthrow by coup in 705. The Empress Wu appears to have been a harsh but capable ruler in times of great upheaval.