by Lyn Hamilton
“All I know,” Auntie Chang said, “is that your father was very angry with her when she stayed out all night. He guessed, and I knew, that there was a young man involved. Your sister had fallen in love with a member of the Gold Bird Guard, one posted to the station at one of the eastern gates. That is why she had no worries about staying out on the streets after the ward had closed. Your father had other plans for her. She was an accomplished musician, and he wished to enhance his status through her, persuading someone in the Imperial Palace to accept her. If the emperor liked her, then your family would rise in status. They might be invited to the palace, become a confidant of the most senior mandarins.”
“Is that what happened then? She is somewhere in the palace?”
“I do not know,” she replied. “I know only that she left with your father. He came back. She did not. That is what also happened to you. Unlike you, I have neither seen nor heard of her since. Your mother never mentions her at all, never utters her name. Nor will she permit others in the household to do so.”
It had never occurred to me until that moment that I should be searching for my sister where I myself labored, in the harem of the Son of Heaven. From there it was, I suppose, a fairly easy leap to suspicions about Lingfei. On every occasion that I saw her, I looked carefully at her features, searching for something that would tell me whether or not she was indeed Number One Sister. There were two difficulties. One was that she always wore makeup in my presence. The other was that I had not seen my sister in almost ten years. Indeed, I had been only five years of age when she left us. Her face was not clear to me, except perhaps in my dreams. I listened most carefully to Lingfei’s voice, but that told me nothing. Hers was the voice of a mature woman, not the young girl’s voice I recalled.
I had more and more opportunity to study her, however. After several months of doing errands for her, she asked me if I would write something for her, I thought it would be a letter to her family, perhaps, which would resolve my dilemma, but it was not. Instead I began writing what I soon realized was a very detailed formula for making artificial pearls. I gave no indication that I understood it, although I did try to memorize it, pearls being a rather valued commodity in the harem.
I was disappointed by her request, however. My sister had learned how to write just as I and my brothers had, so this seemed to indicate quite conclusively that Lingfei was not the woman I sought. I was desolate, until she told me that I had saved her many hours of writing, and allowed her to consult the notes resulting from her experiments. That could only mean that she could read, and I went forward with renewed hope. She asked me to come back two days hence.
From that day on, I spent at least one day a week with Lingfei, writing for her. I would sit cross-legged on one of her wooden couches with my writing table before me while she paced the room, stopping occasionally to consult her notes. Most of the formulas I wrote were for medicines, I decided, for the treatment of various ailments resulting from an excess of either yin or yang, caused by wind, cold, heat, damp, dry, and fire. She told me when I questioned her that she had been a Taoist nun before she caught the Emperor’s eye, and had studied with a master. These formulas that I was writing for her were based on her notes of that time, and the work she had done with the master, and also her observations from the treatment of the women in the harem. It was the first of several confidences that she shared with me.
Different city. Same routine. At least it was a really interesting place. Xi’an and its environs are considered by many to be the cradle of Chinese civilization, and justifiably so. With a history that stretches back at least four thousand years, and its status as capital of several Chinese dynasties, including that of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, it is a wonderful repository of art and culture. Best known worldwide as the home of the magnificent terra-cotta army of Qin Shi Huangdi, it is a city that seems to me to have managed the transition to the new economic reality better than Beijing, having preserved the old with the new to a much greater extent, as compared to the wholesale leveling of much of old Beijing. It is a walled city, although the urban area has expanded way beyond the walls.
Burton had chosen a hotel within the beautiful old city walls, a little east of the Bell Tower, which would have been the center of the ancient city, positioned where the main north-south and east-west axes meet. He headed out of his hotel around 9 AM when this part of town was just waking up. Once out the front door he stopped briefly to add a surgical mask to his attire, which already included a hat pulled down over his ears, a long scarf that was wound around his neck a couple of times, azure of course, and heavy jacket and gloves. It was cold, that’s for sure, and for once the surgical mask did not look entirely out of place. Xi’an’s air is unfortunately highly polluted, and even some Chinese wore masks.
Health thus attended to, Burton sidestepped the taxi driver who wanted to take him wherever he wanted to go, and headed west on foot along the rather prosaically named Dong Dajie or East Street, past the restaurants selling steamed dumplings and buns from their front windows, past the many clothing shops, most still boarded up for the night, past the banks with their charming English signage—like “Evening Treasure” for their night depository chutes—and then past the man washing the sidewalk in front of the establishment with the inspired English moniker of Sunny Half Past Eight Friend Changing Club. The street was not crowded at all, and as always I was worried Burton would see me. And as always, he never looked back.
When he came to the Bell Tower, he paused only briefly to look at the impressive and beautifully colored structure before taking an escalator down to the subterranean passages that linked the major streets of the city’s central square. During the time that Xi’an, then known as Chang’an, was the capital of the T’ang dynasty, it may well have been the most populous city in the world. These main thoroughfares would have been extraordinarily wide, particularly the main north-south street, wide enough, indeed, for the emperor to leave his Imperial Palace to the city’s north, and make his way south to go about imperial business. City residents would have had to cross huge drainage ditches that lined these impressive avenues. Then they used bridges built over the ditches; now we pedestrians are sent underground to avoid the traffic, and from the underground passage can choose to surface north, south, east, or west of the Bell Tower.
Burton chose to continue moving west, surfacing right near the Drum Tower on the west side of the intersection. He kept to the same street, now called Xi Dajie, or West Street. Suddenly, though, he paused for a few seconds, causing me to find cover behind a staircase leading to a shopping plaza. Then Burton turned north.
I continued to follow him into a quite extraordinary market area. There were tea shops and grocery stores, dumpling stalls, and vendors of piles of sweets of some kind. As we went deeper into the market, the lanes became narrower. Gradually the signs that were in Chinese were replaced, or at least supplemented by signs in Arabic, and the women covered their heads. The smells were now that of mutton. We had entered the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an. Burton stopped to purchase a ticket, and entered a mosque. After a few minutes, I did the same.
Xi’an’s mosque, purportedly the largest in China, a fact I did not doubt, was a soothing, quiet place, with lovely arches that integrated Arabic and Chinese design, pleasant wooden buildings and gates, old gnarled trees, stone stela and fountains. It seemed to me to be a place best suited to quiet contemplation, too quiet, of course, if you happened to be following someone. I had to be very careful not to be seen.
It was also a perfect place for a clandestine meeting. Just in front of the prayer hall, Burton stopped and waited. I held back and watched. For a few minutes he did nothing other than stamp his feet against the cold and pull his scarf tighter around his neck. At one point he removed his surgical mask, there being no germ-ridden person in sight, and his breath could be seen against the cold air. About five minutes after we got there, a man of indeterminate age, not young but not old either, strode right p
ast me and went up to Burton. I ducked into one of the side halls and waited. In a moment or two, I could hear their voices coming toward my position and strained to hear. They stopped right outside the hall in which I was cowering. To my profound irritation, they were speaking Chinese. I had no clue what they were talking about, only that they both sounded angry, as if they were negotiating something and it was not going well. I did manage to catch a glimpse of the face of Burton’s acquaintance, enough that I thought I would recognize him if I saw him again. A moment or two later, they moved on, leaving me wondering whether to wait or go. When I screwed up the courage to look out, neither man was to be seen. Burton had managed to slip away again.
I did go looking for him. One of the covered souks in the Muslim Quarter had a high preponderance of shops selling what were purported to be antiques, and that was as likely a place as any to pick up Burton’s trail, if he was following his now normal routine of asking about the silver box and handing out his business card with an accompanying request for them to get in touch if they had it to sell or knew someone who did. When that proved fruitless, I had another idea: the antique market just outside the Baxian Gong. Presumably Burton would be hitting every antique market or stall in town.
The Baxian Gong is a Taoist temple located not far outside the eastern city gates of Xi’an and dedicated to the Eight Immortals. Across a narrow road from the temple is an antique market that is held every Sunday and Wednesday, and Sunday it was. To get to it, you go out the eastern gate at the end of Dong Dajie, then turn left and walk along the outside of the city walls where a narrow urban park has been created between the walls and the moat. On this cold and bright Sunday, a group of older men sat together and listened to their birds singing away in cages that they had hung from branches of the trees along the path. A group of men and women were practicing tai chi. Farther along there was a group of musicians playing traditional instruments and singing. They appeared to be rehearsing, and it was inspiring. I would have liked to just watch and listen, but I was a woman on a mission.
At the northern-most east gate, I crossed the busy roadway that runs parallel to the walls and headed into a much quieter and older district. Guidebooks tend to refer to the area outside the eastern gates and around the temple as shabby, but I didn’t see it that way. What I view as shabby are the rows of hugely unattractive high-rise apartment buildings that tower over the city walls. But slip past them, and you will find real people doing real things, shopping for food, having their bicycles repaired, visiting the cobbler, consulting the doctor.
I had some difficulty finding the Baxian Gong, despite having a map. I took several wrong turns, and nearly got flattened by a man on a scooter, but every corner revealed something new. There were piles of brightly colored plastic washtubs piled up in front of one shop, mountains of oranges and green onions at another. There were pyramids of eggs of the most beautiful soft-blue hue, each one in its own tiny straw nest. The butcher had his meat hanging from hooks outside his shop. Dumplings steamed away in bamboo baskets. All along the street there were fires in old metal drums over which people cooked noodles or steamed vegetables as their customers chatted as they waited.
The market at the Baxian Gong is not large, and definitely not fancy. In a courtyard across from the temple, vendors have laid cloths and bamboo mats on the ground and simply spread out their wares. It was a far cry from the antique markets I usually frequent, but I liked it just fine. The amazing thing was that, unlike Beijing, there really were antiques here. There was old jade and porcelain, some bronzes, beautiful drawings and scrolls; in short, many very attractive objects. There were very few foreigners here, maybe one or two other than me, and vendors kept shouting “Lookie, Mother” at me over and over as I stepped past their displays. One woman in Mao jacket-and-pants with a faint scar across her left cheek was particularly persistent, actually grasping my sleeve tightly at one point. In truth, she had some very interesting merchandise, and I was tempted to buy, but there was also a sign warning purchasers that we required an export stamp if we wished to take any purchase out of the country. What I didn’t see was either a T’ang box or Burton Haldimand. I seemed to have lost him completely.
Still, I kept looking, not because I thought I was going to see Burton, but because I was enjoying myself. To either side of the informal stalls were antique shops, and I visited every one of these. I tried asking about a silver box, but no one could understand me, even when I took out the photograph of George’s box and waved it in front of them. Only in Beijing could I manage such a task in English. I was envious of Burton for his facility with the language.
Burton wasn’t in the temple itself, either. He would have liked it, too, especially a hall devoted to Sun Simiao, a master pharmacist of the T’ang dynasty, and one of the earliest practitioners of Chinese medicine, now worshipped as a Buddha-like god. Sun Simiao was the first to write on the subject of medical ethics, and wrote several texts on medicine with many, perhaps thousands, of formulations for just about whatever might ail you. Apparently he was a sickly child, and managed to cure himself along with everybody else. The walls of the hall were covered in a colorful mural that depicted scenes from the sage’s life. All in all, he seemed to me to be Burton’s kind of guy.
Beyond his more conventional medical talents, though, Sun Simiao was an alchemist who secluded himself on Zhong Nan Mountain to perform practices that would allow him to become immortal. He also believed in exorcism. He wrote a text on these subjects called, more or less, “Essential Instructions from the Books on the Elixirs of the Great Purity,” which was probably based on texts called Taiqing Jing or “Book of Great Purity,” one of the first books anywhere on alchemy, now lost to us. These formulations quite possibly included elixirs that contained mercury and arsenic, which the master pharmacist was said to have administered to himself. Apparently it worked. Legend has it that his corpse had not begun to decompose some months after he died.
This alchemy business I found interesting, given the T’ang box. I’d thought the formula for the elixir of immortality contained in the box was unusual at best, laughable at worst. But clearly no one in T’ang times would have agreed with me. Its loss was more than just the theft of a valuable object, as I had begun to realize that night at Dr. Xie’s celebration. It clearly was an artifact of some great importance, and I felt sad not just for Dory, not just for China, but really for all of us who value the past. I also realized that I had known only two people who were true experts on T’ang China and would not think it odd if I asked them about alchemy. One was Dory Matthews, and it was too late to ask her. The other was Burton Haldimand. To ask him would take much swallowing of pride on my part. I wasn’t sure I was up for it.
Burton was not answering his phone when I got back to the hotel. This annoyed me even more, if that was possible. I chose to deal with this aggravation by going out for the rest of the day, visiting the truly awe-inspiring terra-cotta warriors of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi who reigned from 221 to 210 BCE. The terra-cotta warriors are a World Heritage site, deservedly so. They are as spectacular as you might imagine them to be, row upon row of hundreds of men, all life-size and no face the same: generals, archers, light infantry, heavy armored soldiers, cavalry complete with horses, and in a special place, two wonderful chariots for the emperor. The actual mausoleum of the emperor, the place where presumably his body was laid to rest, has never been opened. All we can see is a pyramid-shaped structure near Mount Li. The historian Sima Qian reported, however, that a whole world had been created for the First Son of Heaven, with representations of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers dug and filled with mercury, flowing somehow mechanically, the heavens above him complete with representations of the constellations. Automatic crossbows were set to kill any tomb robbers. It would be a difficult place to break into. Whether as a tomb robber or an archaeologist, the hazards would be many. Even at the time it was a decidedly unhealthy place to be. Qin Shi Huangdi’s successor had the first emperor’
s childless concubines buried with him, and all who worked on the enormous tomb were sealed in it to die. Protecting him through all eternity were the terra-cotta warriors we see today.
Qin Shi Huangdi believed in immortality, and may have taken far too much of the elixir that was supposed to guarantee it. He was reported to have sent several expeditions in search of an island where the Immortals dwelt. The Immortals lived, if that’s the right verb, in special places befitting their status, secret islands or underground cities or, for Taoists especially, on mountaintops. None of these expeditions of Qin Shi Huangdi’s came back. One has to wonder why. Perhaps they couldn’t resist the temptation of escaping the emperor, who was undoubtedly not the most benevolent of rulers.
All in all, Qin Shi Huangdi didn’t have much luck in the immortality department if the stories of his death many miles from home are anything to go by. Rather than making the leap and leaving his clothes behind, his corpse was put into his carriage and began the journey back to the palace. Those in charge did not want anyone to know he had died, so they packed the carriage with rotting fish to cover the smell of rotting emperor. It was an ignominious end, I suppose, for the man who had united China.
Still the warriors are a remarkable sight, and I felt immeasurably better when I got back to the hotel. This pleasant feeling lasted for about ten minutes. Burton still wasn’t answering his phone. After fuming for a while, both about Burton and the sheer uselessness of this trip to Xi’an from a silver-box point of view, I decided that once again the only approach was to go directly to Burton’s room. I’d managed to inveigle the room number from the hotel operator, again with the colleague-from-Toronto story. By the time I’d left to see the warriors, I’d asked her to put me through to him so often that I’m sure she was glad to just give me the number so I’d go away.
