Through contacts, the man acquired new documentation. One government-stamped paper certified Polat’s advanced degree, and another document established him as the owner of a large trading company. A bank statement proved that he had the equivalent of nearly three hundred thousand American dollars in the bank. He received a new Chinese residence card that testified to the existence of four children. With so many kids to take care of, and so much money in the bank, Polat could be expected to return to China after a trip abroad. There was no reason for anybody in the U.S. embassy to suspect him.
He never told me about his new identity until everything had already been arranged. When he explained the plan, he emphasized that, technically, the documentation was not jiade. The papers themselves were completely authentic; it was simply the information conveyed within the documents that was false. Polat’s new life was as real as paper could get.
For the American side, it was even easier—no need for government forms or bank statements. The Cultural Exchange Company had a contact in Los Angeles, who composed a letterhead for a fictitious company and prepared an invitation. The letter was brief, vague, and written in Special English:
Dear Mr. Polat,
I’m very glad to invite you to visit United States in October 2000 for two weeks.
The purpose of this visit is to inspect our product and meetings with some American companies. There are companies in the United States that are selling such products in wholesale quantity. However, you have to see the goods and negotiate the price.
The day before the visa interview at the U.S. embassy, the consultant grilled Polat for five hours, to make sure he had his story straight. The tale accounted for every trip that Polat had ever taken, claiming them for his new identity, until even the bad ones—the spoiled grapes in Nepal, the infested clothes in Kazakhstan—became the triumphant journeys of a shrewd businessman. Every step led naturally to where he was now: a rich man, a father of four, and a business owner preparing to make a routine two-week trip to Los Angeles.
The actual interview at the embassy took less than five minutes. Afterward, Polat remembered being asked only two questions: how long did he plan to stay in the United States, and had he been born, as his passport stated, in Xinjiang? Polat answered: Two weeks, and, Yes. The official stamped his passport and said, “Welcome to America.”
ARTIFACT D
The Voice of the Turtle
THE UNDERGROUND CITY, LIKE SO MANY OTHER ARTIFACTS IN ANYANG, was rediscovered through the power of writing. During the twentieth century, this region became the most carefully excavated in China, and all of the work can be traced back to the oracle bones. Generations of Chinese—archaeologists with maps, peasants with Luoyang spades—have come here in search of the earliest known writing in East Asia.
The quest began with disease: a sick man, a sick nation. In 1899, in Beijing, a relative of Wang Yirong became ill with malaria, and a doctor prescribed a traditional Chinese medicine whose ingredients included “decayed tortoise shell.” An old shell was purchased from a local pharmacy. Before grinding up the object, somebody noticed that it was inscribed with characters that resembled ancient Chinese writing. They showed it to Wang Yirong, who was a Qing government official, a director of the Imperial Academy, and an expert in ancient bronze inscriptions. He studied the object, and then he purchased others.
Nowadays, many historians believe that this tale of malaria is apocryphal, and there are disputes about the precise date of rediscovery. But there is no doubt that Wang Yirong was the first serious collector of the inscribed shells, and he certainly purchased them from Beijing medicine shops, where the objects were known as “dragon bones.” In Chinese, scholars came to call them jiaguwen—“inscriptions on shell and bone.”
The artifacts had uncanny timing. They appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, in the post-Opium War years, as the Chinese empire was steadily disintegrating, piece by piece: north Burma and Kowloon to Britain, Tonkin and Annam to France, Korea and Formosa (Taiwan) to Japan, Manchuria to Russia. The Germans took mining rights; the French took railroad concessions. The Americans renounced outright imperialism, and their Open Door Policy sounded protective of China, but in practice it meant more of the same. More foreign missionaries, more foreign businessmen. By the end of the nineteenth century, anti-foreign anger in Shandong province had inspired ragtag bands of peasants and laborers who called themselves the Boxers United in Righteousness. They targeted foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians; there were mobs and murders. The uprising spread across the country, and the Qing government made halfhearted attempts to put it down, but secretly many leaders were pleased by the popular resentment.
Despite the instability, Wang Yirong made quick progress interpreting the oracle bone inscriptions. That was the true magic of the artifacts: from the moment of their rediscovery, they could be interpreted, unlike Egyptian hieroglyphics, which remained unintelligible for centuries until the excavation of the Rosetta Stone. Chinese characters are the oldest writing system still in use, and Wang Yirong suspected that the turtle shells might push back China’s written history even farther. He believed that the objects dated to the Shang dynasty—a period that was sometimes described as mythical by nineteenth-century foreign scholars because no Shang writings had been found, apart from some brief inscriptions on bronze vessels.
But the Boxers worked faster than Wang Yirong. They slaughtered missionaries and foreign engineers; they cut telegraph lines and tore up train tracks. By the summer of 1900, foreign armies began to gather in the treaty ports, and there were clashes with Qing forces. In June, the empire finally sided with the Boxers, declaring war on the foreign powers. In the capital, mobs besieged foreigners who had retreated into churches and embassy compounds.
As a Qing official, Wang Yirong was asked to serve as commander of some of the Boxer forces in Beijing. He accepted, reluctantly: he knew that the Qing was too weak, but he also knew that duty was more important than reason. On August 14, an army of twenty thousand foreign troops—mostly Japanese, Russian, British, American, and French—easily captured Beijing. The foreigners entered the city from the east; the empress dowager and the young emperor fled to the west, heading toward Xi’an. But for Wang Yirong, flight was not an option, and neither was humiliation. In Xila Lane, near the heart of the old city, the scholar drank poison and leaped down a well. He was accompanied in death by his wife and eldest daughter-in-law.
After the suicides, about one thousand of Wang Yirong’s oracle bone fragments were acquired by Liu E, a friend and fellow scholar.
The king, reading the cracks, said: “There will be harm; there will perhaps be the coming of alarming news.”
If we raise 3,000 men and call upon them to attack the Gongfang, we will receive abundant assistance.
In the next ten days there will be no disasters.
THE BONES CONSIST of cattle scapula and turtle plastrons. These objects were probably used because they provide a flat surface for writing (the plastron is the undershell that protects a turtle’s belly). In Shang rituals, the objects were deliberately weakened through the drilling of small notches into the back. Diviners then applied a hot object to the notches, until the surface cracked. Somehow, this moment captured the voices of the other world—departed ancestors of the Shang king, as well as various Powers that controlled the natural forces of wind and rain and flood. Sacrifices were offered, and the Shang often requested advice about upcoming events. In subsequent ages, this kind of scapulimancy was sometimes described as “the voice of the turtle.”
The cracks were interpreted by the king and other diviners, and echoes of their statements can be found in the inscriptions. We often think of writing as history, and traditional Chinese culture is characterized by its tendency to idealize the distant past. But the irony of Chinese archaeology is that the earliest known writings attempt to tell the future:
In the next ten days, there will be no disasters.
The king goes to the hunting
field; the whole day he will not encounter great wind.
Di will not put an end to this settlement.
The longest oracle bone statement is less than two hundred characters, and most are much shorter than that. Apart from some brief inscriptions on bronze vessels, this is the extent of known Shang writing. Archaeologists believe that the Shang also wrote on tablets made of bamboo, like subsequent cultures in this region—but bamboo deteriorates quickly in China’s central plains. Rainwater passes easily through the dry soil, and perishable materials don’t last long in a place like Anyang. This characteristic makes Chinese archaeology different from that in other parts of the world. Egyptian papyrus can survive for centuries, because of the arid climate. In the Near East, where ancient cultures wrote on durable clay tablets, excavations have uncovered a full range of documents: royal proclamations, tax records, schoolboy exercises. One can hear the words of Sumerian children as well as kings. But from the Shang, only the voice of the turtle still speaks:
Tonight there will be no disasters.
The king’s dream was due to Grandfather Yi.
In performing an exorcism to Father Yi, we cleave three bovines and pledge thirty decapitated victims and thirty penned sheep.
The artifacts themselves have the beauty of old ivory. Centuries underground have left them with a slightly golden hue, and the years have also separated the objects from the trappings of craftsmanship. Nobody knows precisely what kind of tool was used to create the notches in the back. The Shang writing and carving implements have never been found. It’s unclear exactly how the Shang acquired so many shells and bones. The artifacts have been completely disengaged from the act of creation, like a book sent from heaven.
LIU E DID a little bit of everything. He was a scholar and a physician; he ran a weaving factory and a salt business. He was known for his expertise in mathematics, mines, railways, and water conservancy. He advised the government on how to control the persistent flooding of the Yellow River. And he was a great collector of antiquities, which is one reason why he acquired Wang Yirong’s oracle bones. Like his friend, Liu E worked fast, publishing the first book of oracle-bone rubbings in 1903.
But also like Wang Yirong, Liu E had bad luck when it came to foreigners and politics. Later that decade, he was punished for illegally selling government-stored millet to foreigners. The charges were trumped-up, and in 1908, he was exiled to Xinjiang—China’s Siberia, the end of the world for an educated gentleman. A year later, Liu E was dead.
We should perform a beheading sacrifice at Qiu Shang.
We ritually report the king’s sick eyes to Grandfather Ding.
There will be calamities; there may be someone bringing alarming news.
A CURSE SEEMED to travel with the oracle bones; or perhaps the artifacts merely distilled a curse that had settled onto imperial China. These were hard times, as Liu E himself had explained in a novel called Lao Can Youji, “The Travels of Old Derelict.” In his introduction, Liu E wrote:
Now we grieve for our own life, for our country, for our society and for our culture. The greater our grief, the more bitter our outcry; and thus this book was written. The game of chess is drawing to a close and we are growing old.
Another victim of the curse was Duan Fang—viceroy of the Qing, provincial governor, and one of the greatest collectors of antiquities in all of China. He particularly loved ancient bronzes (some fine pieces originally from his collection now reside in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Gallery). The oracle bones also caught Duan’s attention, and reportedly he offered more than three ounces of silver for each inscribed word. A middleman working on behalf of Duan was one of the first to trace the artifacts back to Anyang.
Duan had a reputation for being open to foreigners; during the Boxer Uprising, he had sheltered a number of missionaries in Shaanxi, the province that he governed. After the foreigners put down the uprising, the Qing government was forced to apologize and pay indemnities, and they finally began to institute significant modern reforms. In 1905, an imperial edict appointed five special commissioners who would travel in Western countries, observe the foreign governments, and return with ideas about how to create a Chinese constitution. Along with another official, Duan Fang was chosen to lead a delegation to the United States and Europe.
In January of 1906, he arrived in San Francisco with an entourage of sixty, as well as 750 pieces of luggage, each of which had been labeled, in Chinese and English, HIS IMPERIAL CHINESE MAJESTY’S SPECIAL MISSION. The timing was slightly awkward. In the United States, racist exclusion laws prevented Chinese from entering the country, but President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Qing party exempt. Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks, acting as President Roosevelt’s personal representative, gave a speech to greet the delegation in San Francisco:
Of course, you will understand, as every one in the two countries does, that it is, and will be, the policy of the United States to exclude from this country the Chinese laborers. On the other hand, the other classes, including scholars especially, and the distinguished officials who are conducting the affairs of the government, it does give us, and will give us, great pleasure to welcome….
According to contemporary newspaper reports, the Qing delegation used the special exemption to smuggle in at least one Chinese laborer whom they had befriended on the boat.
The trip went well. Duan Fang was part Manchu and part Chinese—sometimes, he carried two calling cards, one for each of his family names—and he cut an impressive figure. He wore a full-length fur coat during the commission’s visit to West Point (where it was four degrees below zero, and where Duan Fang became particularly interested in an automatic door and a mechanical potato peeler). He met President Roosevelt in the Blue Room of the White House. He visited Harvard, Columbia, the United States Treasury, and Standard Oil. He stopped in Nebraska to see the state penitentiary. In Europe, he greatly admired the military uniforms, and after his return to China he adopted the practice of being photographed in the dress of the Chinese Imperial Guard.
But he also picked up some foreign habits that were less acceptable in China. He was dismissed from his post as provincial governor after being accused of disrespect during the empress dowager’s funeral in 1909. Allegedly, Duan had permitted photographers to shoot the cortege, and a cinematographer had recorded the last solemn rites. (Duan also allowed trees within the mausoleum complex to be used as telegraph poles.) After his dismissal, he accepted a position as superintendent of a new nationalized railway, funded by foreign loans. By now, anti-Qing and anti-Manchu sentiment was building, and it finally exploded in October of 1911, when battalions of soldiers mutinied in Wuhan. The revolt quickly gained momentum, and the court ordered Duan Fang to transfer imperial troops to Sichuan province.
The leader of his own army turned against him. At the end, Duan Fang reportedly tried to convince the rebels that he was actually Chinese, not Manchu; but by then it was too late to switch calling cards. The rebels beheaded him, buried the body in Sichuan, and carried the head to Wuhan: a grim symbol of their commitment to overthrow the Qing.
On the other side of the world, on a train bound for Kansas City, Sun Yat-sen read about the Wuhan uprising in a Denver newspaper. By Christmas, he was back in China; on New Year’s Day of 1912, he took office as “provisional president” of the new Chinese republic. The last Qing emperor, Puyi, abdicated on February 12. Shortly after that, Sun Yat-sen lost out in a power struggle with the warlord Yuan Shikai—a man who had married a son to Duan Fang’s daughter. But neither Yuan Shikai nor Sun Yat-sen would be strong enough to lead the nation; by 1925, both were dead. China was left to the looming threats of the future—the warlords and the foreigners and the prospect of civil war.
We will pacify the Wind with three sheep, three dogs, three pigs.
Today there will not be someone bringing bad news.
In the next ten days there will be no disasters.
FROM THE BEGINNING, Beijing ph
armacists had been smart enough not to reveal the source of their “dragon bones.” They tried to corner the market, lying about the provenance of the artifacts, whose popularity quickly spread. By 1904, foreigners started collecting, inspired by Liu E’s book. Many of these early collectors were missionaries: the Reverend Frank H. Chalfant, the Reverend Samuel Couling, the Reverend Paul Bergen. Often, they sold or donated the artifacts to museums: the Carnegie Museum, the British Museum, the Royal Scottish Museum.
It didn’t take long for fakes to appear. In the curio markets of Beijing and Shanghai, artisans learned how to engrave Shang characters into bone, and they also learned how to spot suckers. The Reverend Paul Bergen proudly presented seventy oracle-bone fragments to the White Wright Institute, but most turned out to be forgeries: jiade. Meanwhile, Chinese collectors such as Duan Fang figured out the source for genuine oracle bones and sent middlemen to Anyang. Local peasants dug like crazy. In 1904, a visiting search party clashed with residents; there was a fight and then a lawsuit. Finally, a disgusted local magistrate decided: No more excavating for oracle bones.
But a ban was useless in a place like Anyang. The peasants followed the rhythms of weather and politics: they dug for bones during the hard years, when the floods ruined crops, or a drought hung heavy, or a warlord battle interrupted the planting season. Sometimes, a discovery happened by pure luck. In 1909, a local landowner named Zhang Xuexian harvested potatoes and stumbled upon an impressive cache of scapula fragments. Villagers often said that Zhang got rich by digging for vegetables. The story spread, and finally, in 1926, a group of bandits captured Zhang and held him for ransom.
Zhang’s family had only one option for raising quick cash. They allowed other villagers to dig on their property, under the condition that all profits from oracle bones would be shared fifty-fifty. The peasants divided into three parties. After that initial division, however, there was no further attempt at central planning. Each group began to dig as quickly as possible, and all three happened to aim at a single spot beneath the earth. As they approached this invisible goal, and the trio of tunnels drew closer, the earth finally collapsed. Four men were buried alive; they were lucky to be rescued. That was the end of Zhang Xuexian’s ransom dig.
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