China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

all I could see was the reflection of the stars in the cold water.

We watched the emperor’s troops heading south, of course—Manchu bannermen, Chinese troops, cavalry—a lot of them. But to tell the truth, we weren’t very confident.

—

So you can imagine that I was a bit surprised when, in the middle of all this worry and uncertainty, my father announced one evening, “I’ve found you a wife.”

“What are you talking about?” I turned to my mother. “Do you know about this?”

“She’s a girl from the village where you work,” she told me.

“Don’t tell me,” I said, “you know her mother.” But apparently she didn’t.

“I found her. She’s perfect,” my father cried with a big smile.

“Why’s that?” I asked. “Is she rich?”

“No.” My father looked at me as if I were stupid. “Her family are respectable people like us.”

“I see. Is she pretty?” I wanted to know.

“Pretty women are trouble. She’s not too bad.”

“Well, thank you very much,” I said. “And why now? I’m too young to marry.”

“That’s the thing,” said my father. “Her father’s got three other daughters. The marriage broker discovered that he’d be prepared to part with her if she comes to live in our house now, like a daughter, until you’re both older. Then we wouldn’t need to pay a bride price.” Which of course he didn’t have.

“Perhaps,” I said, “in a few years I can earn enough to afford a bride price myself. We might do better. Are there any other reasons for all this hurry?”

“The girl could help your mother,” my father said. He looked thoughtful. “And with all these troubles in the world, she might come in useful.” I’m still not sure what he meant by that.

“I want to see her,” I said.

This wasn’t difficult. Once I knew who she was and where her family lived, I found a good place where I could catch sight of her without her seeing me and hung about there after work.

She was a year or two younger than me. I’d have preferred more years between us, but you can’t have everything.

“I will obey you, Father,” I said, “but let’s just wait and see what the Taiping do.”

—

It turned out the emperor’s armies were better than we thought. Although they couldn’t break the Taiping, they managed to push them back across the plain to Nanjing. That certainly gave us heart.

But in my opinion, it was the old Yellow River that really saved us.

For in 1855, when the river broke its banks just above that plain, the water came down like a great tidal wave, right across the landscape. You wouldn’t think water from even a great river could do so much damage, but the impact destroyed entire sections of the Grand Canal between Nanjing and the Peiho River. That southern extension became unusable. It took a generation to repair the damage.

But if it was a disaster for the people living there, that flood was also a warning to the Taiping. That’s how I saw it—a warning from the ancient gods. If they ever returned to that plain, the old yellow serpent would strike them with another flood and drown them all.

And whether they were mainly afraid of the river or of the emperor’s armies, I don’t know, but the Taiping never came near us again.

The next year, the wretches were quarreling amongst themselves. One of their generals had become too popular, it seemed, with the Taiping troops, and their Heavenly King didn’t like that. So he killed the general, all his family, and twenty thousand of the general’s men as well. Just like that. It’s strange how people can preach brotherly love one day and tear you to bits the next.

—

And so I got married. Her parents had named her Rose—because the rose is the flower of Beijing—though she was rather pale to be called that, I thought. I must say, she didn’t give any trouble. She helped my mother and was very respectful to my father, which I thought was a good sign for the future. And although mothers-in-law are supposed to be like dragons, my mother was always kindness itself to Rose.

Rose and I would talk a bit in the evenings. I’d ask her how she’d spent the day, and she’d ask if I liked the food. If I said I liked the noodles, for instance, my mother would tell me, “Rose cooked them,” and give the girl a smile. That seemed to please Rose very much. She’d been living in our house only a year or so when we got married. And I have to say we were very happy together. Soon after that my master gave me full craftsman’s wages.

Our life just then was quite uneventful. The Taiping were safely down in Nanjing. We heard there’d been a Muslim revolt out in the far western provinces, but to tell the truth, ordinary peasants like us hardly knew anything about those faraway provinces—except that the empire had taken in all sorts of tribes at one time or another, and some of these people were Muslim. My father got very angry about it: “These barbarian religions are nothing but trouble,” he cried. “First the Taiping Christians, now the Muslims, they’re all the same. The emperor should forbid them all.”

As they didn’t come our way, though, we didn’t worry much.

But the British were another matter.

The first we heard, there had been trouble down in Guangzhou. The barbarians were still complaining because they hadn’t got everything in the shameful treaty their pirates had forced on us after the Opium War. Consulates in our ports weren’t enough for them. The British wanted an ambassador in Beijing, who could come barging into the emperor’s presence without even performing the kowtow, as though he were the equal of the Son of Heaven. I don’t think such a thing had happened in a thousand years, maybe two thousand.

And the barbarians wonder why we say they have no manners.

It was in the winter after my marriage that the British got