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

morning was overcast but warm. As we rumbled slowly through the northwestern suburbs, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the scene. I was too busy wondering why Mr. Liu seemed so confident that the Noble Consort Yi would fall.

“This is the road to paradise,” the fellow sitting next to me cried, and several of the other eunuchs nodded and smiled.

Despite what Mr. Liu had said about everyone’s hating me, the other palace people in the cart had all been very friendly. I suppose I might have wondered why, but I didn’t.

The narrowing road wound between wooded slopes. The distance from the suburbs to the Summer Palace was only a few miles. Although we traveled at a snail’s pace, we still passed through the gateway before noon. And I found that the fellow’s words had been true: We were in paradise.

How can I describe it, the most beautiful place in the history of the world? People call it the old Summer Palace now, but the palace itself, the emperor’s residence, was just one compound in the Yuanmingyuan—the Garden of Perfect Brightness. And when we say garden, we don’t mean a walled enclosure, but a huge park, a landscape with lakes, islands, and wooded hills, sprinkled with temples, villas, pagodas—everything to delight the eye and calm the soul. Nor was the Yuanmingyuan the only garden. There were two or three other great parks adjoining it so that the emperor’s paradise went on for miles.

That first day when we entered, I felt as if I’d walked inside a landscape painting—the kind where mountains rise out of the mists into the silent sky, curved bridges hang over the empty void, and scholars contemplate in tiny hermitages, perched high on distant rocks.

People talk about yin and yang as the two forces of the universe. We say that yang is the male force, the bright sun, the blue heavens, and so forth, while yin is the female, the earth, the moon, shadow. Like man and wife, yang and yin complement each other; each needs the other to exist. And our sages showed great wisdom when they also declared that there is a little yin in yang and a little yang in yin. For inside the famous yin-yang circle, we see that each of the two interlocking shapes contains a dot of the opposite color. Yang and yin must be in balance, or there can be no harmony in the world.

So it didn’t take me long, once I came to know the Yuanmingyuan, to understand its purpose. For it was nothing less than to be the yin to the yang of the Forbidden City.

The mighty symmetry of the vast fortress was all about the emperor’s power, which shines, golden as the sun; the huge round temple, with its blue roof, where the Son of Heaven made sacrifices to the gods; the animals and figures on the corners of every roof that showed the exact status of the building in the city’s perfect Confucian order. All these were tokens of the manly yang, which belongs to the sky.

But the paradise of the Summer Palace evoked the spirit of the yin. This wasn’t a walled fortress, but nature’s landscape. The various buildings were dotted here and there, sometimes half hidden in the trees in the most picturesque manner. Nor was each building strictly regular. The different parts seemed to have grown up together in the most informal way, almost by chance.

There was art in all this. One might say the hand of man arranges the chaos of nature, and that this is the yang within the yin. Indeed, it’s true that some of the hills and lakes in the Yuanmingyuan were artificial. But it wasn’t so simple. Like the painter and the calligrapher, the landscape designer must sense the spirit of the place and allow that spirit to permeate and fill his mind. This is the negative capability of the yin. Then, almost without positive thought, he allows the spirit to guide his hand.

—

She sent for me the next morning. The emperor and his family lived in a waterside compound by what they call the Front Lake. This was just like a rich man’s summer villa, really, but more spread out, with a lot of courtyards.

After I’d done her nails, she asked me, “Are the other palace people treating you kindly?” I said that they were. She looked a bit surprised, but she didn’t make any comment. Then one of the older eunuchs appeared and asked if she wished to walk outside with her ladies, and she said yes. So I assumed I should withdraw. But she motioned me to follow them.

The royal compound faced the Front Lake, which was a large body of water. Behind the compound, however, lay the Back Lake, which was also a good size. This being my first day on duty, I hadn’t had a chance to look at this lake, and so as we walked towards it, I was quite curious.

“Lacquer Nail’s never seen the Back Lake,” the Noble Consort said to the old eunuch. “Tell him about it, and we shall all listen.” So after bowing low and clearing his throat, the old man began.

“The Back Lake has for many generations been the delight of the Son of Heaven.” He called the words out in a high singsong voice, as if he were reading out a royal proclamation. I noticed several of the ladies looking amused, but nobody interrupted him. “As well as its waters, which contain many golden carp and other fish of great rarity, the lake is blessed with nine islands, which are reached by footbridges of wonderful beauty. Each island, some small, others larger, has its own particular character. Over there…”—he indicated an island not far off—“you see the Island of the Peony Terrace, where there are over a hundred kinds of peony and where many of the emperors have composed notable poems. Over there…”—he pointed to another—“is the Island of the Green Wutong Tree Academy, where