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

into a fight with the governor of Guangzhou, who wouldn’t let them into the city. Suddenly we heard that they’d seized him and taken over that city.

Actually, some people in Beijing were quite amused, because that governor was known to be a most objectionable character. All the same, such behavior couldn’t be tolerated.

Next, the watermen sailing up the canal were telling us, “The British are coming.” They came right up the coast. And then we heard: “They’ve taken the forts at the mouth of the Peiho River. They control the canal.” But what really frightened us was when people started saying, “They’ll join up with the Taiping rebels in a Christian army and sweep up to Beijing.” Would anyone be able to stop them? We didn’t think so. Would they turn out the emperor? What would that mean?

My father got very depressed. “The Mandate of Heaven is being withdrawn,” he said. “There’ll be chaos. There always is when that happens. We’ll all be killed. Then there’ll be a British emperor or a Taiping one. We may even be forced to be Christians, whatever that means.”

“It won’t happen,” I said. I don’t know how I was so sure, but I was.

—

I believed it then, and despite all I’ve seen in my life, I still believe it now: Our kingdom is eternal. When you think of the thousands of years of our history, the wisdom we’ve learned, our arts and inventions…Why, even our writing’s a miracle: Every character is like a little world. And when it comes to the finer things of life, everything’s made to last.

Those lacquer boxes I love to hold—the ones with the deep patterns cut into them and the many layers of lacquer hardened like a stone—they’ll last as long as the Grand Canal or the Great Wall. Sometimes, when I look at those boxes, I think they’re how a great city must look, seen from the eye of Heaven. Walls within walls, streets and avenues, palaces and temples, houses and courtyards, all packed tight as a geometric pattern on a box. Dynasties come and go, war and disease, famine and flood. But Nanjing and Beijing are still standing; and even if they weren’t, the idea of them would still be there, preserved like a garden, in every lacquer box.

You can’t destroy a great idea. That’s what I believe.

—

Patience is the key. And that’s what the emperor’s servants showed now. Just as they had before, they negotiated with the British, promised enough to satisfy them, and persuaded them to go back to Guangzhou. They also granted one new concession.

It seemed the British were hurt that all our official documents called them barbarians. We had to promise not to call them barbarians anymore.

Of course they are. So we went on calling them barbarians amongst ourselves. And since they couldn’t speak Chinese, they didn’t even know, which shows how foolish their request was in the first place!

—

That autumn my son was born. I think it was the best day of my life. You might say it changed everything.

The first time I held the baby in my arms, I remember I started to count his fingers and toes, and Rose looked at me and said, “What are you doing?” And I replied, “I’m just making sure he has the right number of fingers and toes.” And she said, “What will you do if he hasn’t?” and I said, “I don’t know.” “Well,” she asked, “has he?” “Yes,” I said proudly, as if this were a great achievement. “He’s perfect.”

Then I looked down at his little face, and he looked just like my father. So I walked outside where nobody could hear, and I whispered to my son, “You may look like your grandfather, but you’re going to work hard and be a big success.” That’s the first thing I ever said to him. He may not have understood, but I thought it was important to say it right away.

We called him Zi-Hao, which means Heroic Son.

I loved being a father. Sometimes the baby would cry in the night because he needed to burp, and if I woke up and Rose was asleep, I’d pick him up and rock him in my arms until he felt better. Several times my mother appeared and told me, “You shouldn’t be doing that. It’s woman’s work.” And she’d make me go back to sleep while she rocked the baby. But I didn’t mind doing it at all. I think those were some of the happiest moments I ever knew.

One day I had just taken a piece of work I had completed to the storeroom when the master appeared. He asked in a friendly way after my family and then told me that he was awarding me a small pay raise. “I’m now paying you the top rate for what you do,” he said, “and you have earned it. In due course, as you master more complex work, you’ll be paid accordingly.”

Naturally, I bowed deeply and thanked him.

“Is the baby letting you get any sleep?” he asked with a smile.

“Enough, master,” I said, and I told him how my mother made sure of this, and how I liked holding my son, even in the middle of the night. “You know how I love the finer things in life, like these,” I said, indicating the work all around us, “but I never realized I’d love my child even more.”

“It was the same with me,” he replied with a nod. Then he gave me a strange look. “But you must take care,” he said. “However attached you are to a child, you will lose some of them. We all do. Just treasure them all the more while they are here.”

I understood what he said, of course, but I didn’t really listen. I mean, you don’t, do you?

Another good thing about the birth of Zi-Hao was the effect it had on my wife. She put on a little weight, and it suited her. I don’t mean she