China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Mei-Ling thought for a moment. “I know it’s what you’ve always wanted,” she said softly. She paused. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is the Heavenly King insane?”

  She noticed that Nio hesitated. “I don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I think maybe great men often seem a little mad. They see things we don’t. You have to look at what he’s achieved. He has a kingdom. He may yet take the whole empire. It’s ready to fall.”

  “You say that because you want it to be true.”

  “I know.”

  “He could win and still be crazy.”

  Nio was considering this proposition when, glancing across the water, he gave a small start and pointed. “Who’s the child?”

  Across the pond, Mei-Ling’s mother-in-law could be seen emerging from the gate of the house, leading a small girl by the hand.

  “That’s our daughter,” she said. “She came less than a year after your last visit.” She smiled. “I’d always wanted a girl.”

  “You must be happy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband doesn’t mind having a girl?”

  “He dotes on her.”

  The old woman and the little girl had stepped onto the bridge.

  “She looks just like you!” Nio exclaimed.

  “So people say,” Mei-Ling answered. “Mother says that when she’s a little older, we should have her feet bound. She could make a fine marriage.”

  “Hakka women don’t bind their feet,” said Nio with a frown.

  “Nor do the Manchu women. But it’s the only way she can have a better life than ours.”

  The answer didn’t seem to satisfy Nio. “When we take over, things will be different,” he said.

  But even while her eyes rested on her daughter, Mei-Ling’s mind had moved elsewhere. “Are you going to marry, Little Brother?” she suddenly asked.

  “Some time ago, I did take a wife. The Heavenly King gave her to me.”

  “That is good. Have you children?”

  “There was a child, but it died at birth. My wife died, too.”

  “I am sorry. Did you love her?”

  “We weren’t together long.” He gave her a sad smile. “Not like I love you, Big Sister.”

  “That’s different.” She shook her head. Her Little Brother was a middle-aged man, yet just for a moment he had sounded almost like a child.

  “When this is over,” he said, “I shall retire and settle down. Take a wife. Have a family. The Heavenly King has promised me.”

  “Good. I hope it is soon.” She was still staring across the water, but now she turned to him. “Does it haunt you? All that you’ve seen. The men you have killed.”

  “I am a soldier.”

  She nodded slowly. He could not speak of it. She understood.

  They buried the silver he had brought. Then they went to where his horse was tethered, and he said goodbye and rode away through the trees. And Mei-Ling gazed after him, feeling as helpless as a mother parted from her child.

  ◦

  By the time this reaches you, Cousin Cecil, Lord Elgin will already be close. I had the opportunity to converse with him for some time just hours ago, and hasten to share what I learned while it is still fresh in my mind.

  He’s doing his duty by going back, but hopes he won’t be in China long. His object, he confirmed to me, is quite simply to ratify the treaty he already made, by whatever means are necessary. Whether that proves easy or difficult remains to be seen. He will be accompanied by the French envoy, Baron Gros. The two will support each other.

  But it was when we touched upon the larger issues that I found him most interesting. Would we be content, I asked him, to let the crumbling old Manchu dynasty collapse? What about the Taiping, nominally Christian as they may be? Would he want the foreign powers to take over, as we recently did in Canton? He was careful not to be specific, but he did make a general point, which I share with you.

  We need a Chinese government, he said, that is strong enough to make treaties and keep order. But no stronger than that. Perhaps a government that can rule only if we help them. That may be ideal. But on no account do we want a China that is powerful enough to inconvenience us. Remember what Napoleon said: China is a sleeping giant. When she awakes, the world will tremble.

  I wonder what you think.

  March 1860

  Guanji was nearer thirty than twenty, and it was the first time that anyone hadn’t been impressed with him. Unfortunately, the person in question held the key to his future career.

  There was no doubt about it: The Mongolian brigade general who had arrived to command the Zhapu garrison didn’t think much of him or his attainments. He told him so.

  When he saw Guanji ride his horse, he remarked, “A boy of seven from the steppe would outlast you.” When he saw him shoot his bow and arrow, he merely said, “Pretty.” As for the fact that Guanji had assiduously studied and achieved his juren status in the imperial exams, the Mongolian’s eyes narrowed to a slit, thin as a knife to cut a throat, while from his mouth came a snort of contempt.

  “He’s an oaf, a vulgarian,” Uncle remarked. “You know his nickname, don’t you? Genghis. Because he seems to think he’s Genghis Khan. All the same,” he cautioned Guanji, “he’s your commander, he belongs to the Mongol Plain White Banner, which gives him prestige, and he has influence, so you need a good report from him.”

  “What can I do?” Guanji had asked.

  “Keep your head down and do your duty. Don’t try to ingratiate yourself. He’ll despise you for it. But be absolutely thorough.”

  The Mongolian was thickset and strongly built, with a wide, intelligent face. He always smelled of snuff, which he took from a small cylindrical snuffbox with an ivory spoon. He never wasted words, but his orders were always clear, and for three months Guanji carried them out quickly, efficiently, and to the letter.

  At the end of that time, Genghis had rewarded him with one remark. “You know the trouble with you? You’ve never been face-to-face with death. To see another man in front of you, looking straight into your eyes, and know that only one of you is going to live. That’s the moment of truth.”

  Guanji carried the thought with him and wondered what he could do about it.

  * * *

  —

  He might have grown up as the pet of the old warriors in the garrison and been made to understand that the development of his Manchu identity was his only chance of success in life, but it had been the news that his cousin and big sister Ilha had been killed with all her family at Nanjing, back in 1853, that had finally decided the course of his life.

  That had been the shock. That had been the rage. That had been the sense of loss that could not be assuaged. That had been the memory that came to him late in the night, when his shoulders hunched in hatred and he stared ahead into the dark and conjured up dreams of vengeance in time to come.

  A grim determination had gathered, set, and hardened within him, like a lodestone. He’d focused himself entirely. Everything he did was in pursuit of twin goals: to reach high office under the Manchu emperor; and to destroy the Taiping rebels.

  The intimations that something spiritual might be lacking in his life, which had come to him from time to time during his schooldays, were not entirely snuffed out. In the course of his studies for the imperial exams, aided by his uncle and his scholar friends, he had been able to drink a little at the great fountain of Chinese culture. Indeed, after he took the exams, the examiners told him privately that had he studied for a few more years, he might well have earned this degree that as a Manchu bannerman he was entitled to, and which it was now their pleasure to bestow.

  By the time he reached his mid-twenties, therefore, as a rising young Manchu officer in the Bordered Yellow Banner, he was take
n very seriously in his native garrison of Zhapu.

  “In a while,” his uncle said, “it may be time to find you a wife. I’d like to see you receive a promotion first, though.”

  Guanji agreed. All he needed, he thought, as the emperor’s army slowly tightened its circle around the Taiping’s Heavenly Kingdom, was a chance to join the army outside Nanjing and to distinguish himself. He made applications, but had so far been refused.

  “No job is more important than keeping the supplies coming through Zhapu to Hangzhou,” he was told. And he knew this was true.

  When the terse Mongolian brigade general had arrived to take charge, Guanji had hoped that it might be a prelude to action. He answered directly to Genghis, so the opportunity was excellent, if only he could impress him.

  If he could just encounter a moment of truth.

  * * *

  —

  The orders arrived without warning. Guanji was talking to old bannerman friends in the Zhapu garrison one morning when the brigade general suddenly appeared and beckoned him.

  “The Taiping rebels have broken out of Nanjing. They’re headed for Hangzhou. Seven thousand men under General Li. We’re to reinforce the garrison defending the place. I want four hundred riflemen, fully equipped, ready to march in two hours.”

  “At once, sir.” Guanji hesitated, just a moment. Did he dare ask?

  “You’re coming, too.”

  * * *

  —

  They followed the line of the canal leading from Zhapu to the northern edge of Hangzhou. The men with their smart uniforms and pigtails looked sharp and eager. They were well drilled.

  Guanji rode beside the Mongolian. “I’d have thought,” he ventured, “that the Taiping might come in larger numbers.”

  “Seven thousand good troops could take Hangzhou,” Genghis grunted.

  “They say that their General Li wears spectacles.”

  “Don’t underestimate Li. He knows his business.”

  Guanji didn’t interrupt the brigade general’s thoughts after that, until they made their bivouac for the first night of the eighty-mile march.

  * * *

  —

  It was on the fourth evening that they came to the great city of Hangzhou. An officer with half a dozen mounted men met them upon the road and led them to the first of the two gates on the northern wall of the city, which opened to receive them and immediately closed again once they were in. To their right they saw the inside wall of the garrison quarter. Guanji smiled.

  Genghis noticed. “Why smile?”

  “My old school, sir.”

  The Mongolian said nothing.

  Inside the garrison, to Guanji’s pleasure, they were allocated quarters in the school hall. The men were fed and soon asleep. Guanji also was ready to turn in. But Genghis was not. “Take me up on the city wall,” he demanded.

  While the garrison enclave was separated from the rest of the city on its northern, southern, and eastern sides by a strong, high curtain wall, with small gates giving access to the city streets, its western border was the city wall itself. And this section of wall contained a single stout gateway that gave onto a broad stretch of open ground, dotted with trees, beyond which lay the placid waters of the great West Lake. The gateway contained a staircase up onto the ramparts.

  They mounted together in the darkness and looked over the battlements.

  The entire space from the gate to the lakeshore had been occupied. A hundred campfires were burning there. One could even see shadowy figures by the glow of the fires.

  “Taiping,” said the Mongolian. “A detachment of ’em, anyway.”

  “It looks as if they mean to assault this gate and take the garrison.”

  “They may try,” agreed Genghis. “They’ll have to kill you and me first,” he added.

  * * *

  —

  Guanji awoke at dawn to the sound of gunfire. A lot of guns—though it seemed to be coming from down at the southern end of the city. He’d hardly leaped up before the brigade general appeared.

  “It’s begun. There’s a council of war. Assemble the men and wait till I return.”

  An hour passed. When the brigade general finally got back, he was looking grim. He told Guanji to stand his men down and then to follow him. A few minutes later they were back on the wall where they’d been the night before.

  The Taiping, whose fires they had seen in the darkness, were drawn up in formation two hundred yards away. There were about a thousand of them. With their long hair down to their shoulders, swords and guns at the ready, they looked fearsome. Their red-bordered yellow war banners were streaming in the wind.

  Genghis looked at them impassively. He put a little snuff on the back of his hand and sniffed. “The commanders here are fools,” he remarked. He didn’t say why. Then he turned to study the view to his left.

  Below the garrison quarter there was a broad thoroughfare leading to the next western gate. On the other side of the thoroughfare was the big yamen of the city prefect, a collection of buildings and courts surrounded by a brick-and-plaster barrier, built for privacy rather than defense, and with a parade ground in front of it. Immediately after the prefect’s yamen lay a maze of streets, where merchants’ mansions, craftsmen’s workshops, temple precincts, and great labyrinths of poor folks’ hovels clustered and bustled, and crumbled all together in the typical tightly pressed chaos of an ancient Chinese city. This continued about a mile until the southern rampart.

  “The Taiping have breached the wall in the southwest corner.” He pointed. Guanji could see troops and Taiping banners on the West Lake shoreline at the end of the city wall. “They’ve been pouring in. Of course, the local militia was there to oppose them. What do you suppose happened?”

  “Hard fighting I should think, sir.”

  “Most of the militiamen started running away.” The brigade general nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe they panicked. Maybe the Taiping had already infiltrated them. Probably both. Care to guess the next move?”

  “I suppose the Taiping are working their way towards us.”

  “The townspeople are furious. They’ve filled the streets. Told the militia if they don’t fight, they’ll string ’em up. And they’ve started attacking the Taiping themselves, with their bare hands if necessary. Quite a lot of Manchu in this city.”

  “The Manchu will fight,” said Guanji proudly.

  “Hmm. Seems the women are fiercest. They’ve already hanged a dozen militiamen, and they’re hacking at the Taiping with chopping knives.” He nodded with amused satisfaction, then turned to Guanji. “Why are Manchu women better street fighters than Han Chinese women?”

  “It’s the warrior spirit in our blood,” said Guanji proudly.

  “You’ve had too much education. Rots the brain. Keep it simple.”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Feet! In any city, more than half the Han women have got bound feet. They can only hobble about. Manchu women don’t bind their feet. So they move ten times as fast.”

  “You’re right, sir,” Guanji acknowledged. “I’m a fool.”

  “They won’t be able to stop them, you know. It’ll be a bloody business down there. First thing they’ll do is kill every civilian they find—men, women, and children. Spreads terror. Then they’ll tell the rest: ‘Join us or be massacred.’ Ever seen anything like that?”

  “Once, at Zhapu, when I was a little boy. I’m afraid thousands of people are going to die.”

  “Not thousands. Tens of thousands. Think about it. There must be well over half a million people crowded into this city. Say they kill only one in ten. That’s fifty thousand. It’s not the open battles where most of the lives are lost. It’s in the cities.”

  “Are we going to help them?”

  “The fools at the council wanted me to. I managed t
o hold ’em off.”

  “You don’t think we should, sir?”

  “I’ve got four hundred riflemen. What’s their best terrain?”

  “Open field of fire, sir. From behind cover, if possible.”

  “And what do you see down there? An anthill. House-to-house fighting. The worst kind of battle there is. I could lose half my men in a morning. The local people will do better sneaking up on them, because they know every nook and cranny of the place.” He smiled grimly. “Let the Manchu women slit the Taiping throats at night.”

  Guanji pondered. “If we made a sudden sally out of the garrison gate, we could hit those Taiping in front of us, on the open ground, and then retreat back inside the garrison.”

  “We could. There may not be much point.”

  “You don’t think they mean to attack the garrison, sir?”

  “When General Li shows you his men, it’s for a reason. You have to ask, why does he do it? What does he want me to think? What does he want me to do? Yesterday he showed us his men threatening the garrison. Then he attacked the other end of the town. His men are still outside the garrison. All that tells you is that he wants us to think they’ll attack it.”

  “Do you have an idea what his game really is, sir?”

  The Mongolian grunted, took some more snuff, and didn’t reply.

  But even Genghis couldn’t keep his men out of a street fight that day. At noon, he was overruled. By that time the southern part of Hangzhou was under Taiping control, and the rebels were feeling their way northward. “What would the emperor say if we do nothing?” the gathered commanders asked themselves. A show of force was called for. At the very least, the rebels must be stopped before they reached the prefect’s yamen and the Manchu garrison.

  About a thousand men, Manchu bannermen of the Hangzhou garrison and the four hundred rifles from Zhapu, were ordered forward. The Mongolian drew his men up in a long line on the space in front of the yamen, where he also erected a stout barricade, but he was obliged to sacrifice a company of fifty men to form one of the columns that were to march into the narrow streets of the city to probe and engage the enemy.