Beijing Audio Guide

Chapter 1 · Five Entrances in the Dark

It was still dark. His sedan chair stopped before the Meridian Gate. He lifted the curtain, and cold air rushed in. A good number of men were already standing in the square. Their dark court robes blurred into patches of ink under the lanterns. No one spoke. Now and then, someone coughed, then quickly held it back. He took his place among the civil officials. Only officials of the first through fourth ranks could stand here. He was fifty-three, near the back of the two lines: neither conspicuous nor at the end. He looked up at the gate tower but could see nothing. The drums above had not yet sounded. Five arched entrances ran across the front of the Meridian Gate in the dark. The central imperial passage was shut. It was reserved for the emperor and was never opened. He would enter through the left side gate. The wind pushed his beard aside. He folded his hands into his sleeves and heard his own breathing. Then the drums sounded. Three rolls came down from the gate tower, making the lantern flames jump. The left side gate creaked open. Beyond it, the sky had begun to turn grey-blue. The line moved. He followed the man ahead of him over the threshold.

Chapter 1 · Twenty-Seven Beds

The twenty-first day of the tenth month, in the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign. The hour of the Rabbit, before dawn. The warm chambers behind the Palace of Heavenly Purity were completely dark. The emperor slept in one of twenty-seven beds spread through nine rooms on two levels. Zhang He, an official in the Ministry of Justice and the only official known to have examined the scene, later recorded in *Zhouzai* that the upper and lower levels were joined by wooden stairs, with three beds in each room. The emperor chose a bed at random each night. Even his personal eunuchs did not know which one he would use. This was the emperor’s bedroom, the most secluded and private place in the Forbidden City. The twenty-seven beds lay in the nine warm chambers like a maze. The maze did not stop them. Sixteen palace women moved through the corridors in the dark. They carried no knives and no poison. Their only weapon was a decorative cord taken from ceremonial regalia and twisted into a rope. They pushed open the door of the warm chamber. It was dark inside. One thing helped them: the emperor had taken elixirs for years. His breath, body, and bedding were steeped in the bitter, cloying smell of cinnabar mixed with sandalwood. Following it, they felt their way to his bed. One woman slipped the rope around his neck. Another grabbed his throat. A yellow silk cloth covered his face. The others held down his hands, legs, and chest. No one spoke. In the dark there was only the soft rustle of clothing and muffled sounds from his throat. They pulled the rope. It would not tighten. They pulled again, and it still would not move. Someone reached out in the dark and felt the knot. It was a dead knot. In front of everyone, the noose had been tied into a dead knot.

Chapter 1 · Abstinence

From the Yongle reign of the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing, for nearly five hundred years, the emperor moved into a palace compound west of the Temple of Heaven for three days before every winter solstice. From the moment he entered, the kitchens stopped killing animals, no wine was set on the tables, and no one attended him in his bedchamber. He took off his dragon robe and jade ornaments. He did not hear legal cases, listen to music, meet people in mourning, or even visit the ancestral tombs. A bronze figure stood before him in the palace, holding a plaque that read, “Three Days of Abstinence.” It was said that its face was modelled on Wei Zheng, a Tang-dynasty official known for speaking frankly to the emperor. Each time he passed it during those three days, he felt that someone was watching him. There was a bell in the Palace of Abstinence. It sounded once when he entered and once when he left. The silence between those two sounds belonged to him and Heaven. No one else could keep a record of it for him.

Chapter 1 · Renshou Hall

It was 1898, the twenty-fourth year of the Guangxu reign. Renshou Hall was the main hall of the Summer Palace. The emperor received ministers and reviewed memorials there. Its arrangement resembled that of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City: a dragon throne in the centre, a screen behind it, and gilded dragons winding around the pillars. There was one difference. A yellow gauze curtain hung behind the throne. The empress dowager sat behind it. When the emperor came to the throne at the age of four, Empress Dowager Cixi had the curtain hung. From then on, the emperor spoke from the front and ministers answered below, while she listened behind the curtain to every word. She told the emperor what to say. Memorials he approved did not count until she had agreed. The curtain remained there for twenty-three years. In the summer of 1898, the emperor in front of the curtain suddenly decided he did not want to wait any longer. At Renshou Hall, he received a succession of scholars who had returned from abroad. They told him how Japan had changed its laws and how Britain had built its military strength. In 103 days, he issued more than one hundred edicts: abolishing the civil service examination, cutting redundant offices, training a modern army, and opening modern schools. On paper, the whole empire seemed to turn under his brush. At Yulan Hall, he even met privately with a man who controlled troops and asked him to surround the Summer Palace and take the empress dowager away from behind the curtain. The man left Yulan Hall and immediately carried the emperor's words to the person behind the curtain. At the end of September, the empress dowager's hand came out from behind the curtain and took away all the edicts. The brush on the desk was returned to its stand and was never used again. The reform had lasted 103 days from beginning to end. He was twenty-seven that year. He had ten years left to live.

Chapter 1 · Empire Falling

It was the seventeenth day of the third lunar month in 1644, the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign. Before dawn, civil and military officials gathered for court inside the Forbidden City. It was quiet all around. Everyone was waiting for someone else to speak. The Ming capital was already in crisis. Li Zicheng’s rebel army was approaching Beijing, and reports from the city defenses were arriving one after another. The Chongzhen Emperor was thirty-three years old. He had ruled for seventeen years, and by most accounts he was an unusually hardworking ruler. He rose early, worked late, and spent much of his reign trying to deal with problems that had been building for decades. The situation was severe on every front. Manchu forces threatened the northern border. Rebellions had spread across large parts of the country. The government was short of money, the military was weakened, and the emperor had replaced more than fifty grand secretaries and executed eleven military commanders in the hope of finding someone who could reverse the decline. Now the crisis had reached Beijing itself. At the morning audience, Chongzhen asked his ministers what should be done. No one gave him a clear answer. He asked again. Then a third time. The officials remained silent. According to later accounts, the emperor wept. For years, Chongzhen had changed ministers, dismissed commanders, issued orders, and tried to keep control of a government that was steadily losing its ability to respond. Now, with an enemy army nearing the capital, the court had little left to offer him. This was the last formal morning audience of the Ming dynasty. At Taihe Gate, there was only silence. The court was dismissed. Two days later, Beijing fell.

Chapter 1 · A Restaurant

It was 1894, the twentieth year of the Guangxu reign. Yandai Xiejie was one of Beijing's busiest places. Aristocrats of the Qing Empire filled the shores of Shichahai. The restaurants, tobacco shops, and antique dealers on this street all depended on their business. Qingyunlou stood in the middle of the street: a three-storey wooden restaurant, with sedan chairs lined up outside every evening. One meal inside cost as much as an ordinary family spent in half a year. Most people passed its door without looking in. He went there every night. He sat by the window on the second floor. The waiter did not need to ask; dishes came up on their own. Sea cucumber, sliced fish, pork intestines, one after another. Some he touched with his chopsticks only once. When the wine was warmed, he leaned back in his chair, half closed his eyes, and listened to the music below. His fingers tapped an irregular beat on the edge of the table. He did nothing. He did not attend court, command troops, trade, or run an estate. His whole life was spent using the money passed down by his ancestors, and he always had more than he needed. He did not think this life would end. His grandfather had lived this way; his father had lived this way. He assumed he would too. Thousands of people in the city were like him, scattered among restaurants, theatres, opium dens, and gambling houses. None of them thought the ground beneath them could give way.

Chapter 1 · Uprightness and Brightness

The Yongzheng Emperor gave this hall its name. The four characters, Zhengda Guangming—“uprightness and brightness”—hung from a beam inside. They meant that the Son of Heaven ruled the realm openly, with nothing concealed. Steps rose one after another before the hall. The gilded dragons on its columns were polished enough to reflect a person's image. For 140 years, Qing emperors received foreign envoys and invested the princes of tributary states here. Anyone who entered, looked up, and saw those four characters knew what kind of place it was. On 7 October, troops entered the garden. Several allied commanders were the first to walk into the Hall of Zhengda Guangming. Mud clung to their boots as they climbed the steps and walked through the hall. One looked up at the plaque but did not ask what the four characters meant. Then they sat down and spread on the tables the objects they had searched out from halls across the garden. They inspected them one by one. The most valuable were chosen and packed into sealed wooden crates marked for the Queen and the Emperor. The rest were piled in the courtyard for officers to choose from. What remained lay scattered on the ground, where soldiers bent or knelt to pick it up. *Ruyi* sceptres were pushed into knapsacks. Paintings were torn from their scrolls, with only the painted section kept. Chipped porcelain was thrown down and stepped over. Knife marks were left on the columns. Someone tried to pry a piece of gilt from the eye of a coiled dragon. After working at it for some time, he found that it was only gold leaf over wood. The sorting went on for three full days. By the evening of the third day, not a whole piece of glazed tile remained on the ground. The four characters were still on the beam. The hall was empty.

Chapter 1 · The Rickshaw in the Lane

The lane was narrow. Grey brick walls stood on both sides, and the metal-rimmed wheels of rickshaws had worn grooves into its stone paving. It was around 1927, when Beijing was still called Beiping. Xiangzi entered the city through lanes like this. He was sixteen, newly arrived from the countryside, with nothing but his strength. Pulling a rickshaw was the only work he could do. He wanted a rickshaw of his own. Then he would not have to pay a rental fee, and every copper coin he earned would be his. He did not drink, smoke, or gamble. He saved coin by coin. After three full years, he had one hundred yuan. The day he collected his new rickshaw from the shop, its paint shone and its brass fittings caught the light. He parked it in the lane and stood beside it for a long time. He pulled it for less than half a year. Outside Beijing, warlord troops were everywhere. One force arrived today; another retreated tomorrow. Defeated soldiers seized people, rickshaws, food, and livestock as they went. One day, Xiangzi took a fare out through Xizhimen. Just beyond the city, he ran into a retreating band of soldiers. They took him away, seized his rickshaw, and stripped off even his jacket. For several days, he carried artillery shells at their camp. Then he escaped under cover of night. In the confusion, he found three unattended camels in the dark and led them away. At daybreak, he sold them for thirty-five yuan. Then he walked back to Beiping, a journey that took the whole day.