He held a cup of tea out for me, but I refused with a slight wave of my hand.
“No?”
“It's too hot out.”
Mr. Jiang smiled. “There's nothing better for the heat, madame, than a nice hot cup of tea. It'll leave you feeling refreshed in no time, you'll see,” he insisted, passing the cup to me. I took it, and he settled back in the chair with his own. “When I was a boy, we used to act out the tragedy of the Prince of Gui. The neighbors would always give my brother, my friends, and me a few coins after our street performances, even if we'd done a really bad job.” He laughed silently, remembering. “I must say, though, that in time we became quite good.”
“Get to the point, Lao Jiang!” the Irishman exclaimed. I couldn't help but wonder what two such different men had in common. Luckily, the antiquarian didn't seem bothered by the interruption and continued his story as I took a sip of my tea, surprised by the lovely, fruity flavor. I immediately started to perspire, of course, but quickly the sweat cooled, leaving me feeling fresh all over. The Chinese were quite intelligent, and they did drink some excellent herbal teas.
“Before you hear the legend of the Prince of Gui, there are a few things you need to know about a very important part of our history, Mme De Poulain. A little over two thousand years ago, the Middle Kingdom as we know it today did not exist. Our territory was divided into various kingdoms that fought bitterly; that time is thus known as the Warring States Period. According to historical records, the man who would become the first emperor of a unified China was born in the year 259 b.c. His name was Yi Zheng, and he ruled over the kingdom of Qin.9 After coming to power, Prince Zheng began a series of glorious battles that led him to take over the kingdoms of Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yin, and Qi in just ten years, thus founding the country of Zhongguo or the Middle Kingdom, so called because it is situated in the middle of the world. In turn, the prince adopted the title Huang Ti or ‘August Sovereign,’ which is how we address our emperors to this day. People added the modifier Shi, which means ‘First,’ so the name he was known by throughout history was Shi Huang Ti or ‘First Emperor.’ His enemies, however, called him the ‘Tiger of Qin.’ “As he said this, Mr. Jiang opened the hundred-treasure chest, took out the half a gold tiger with inscriptions along its back that Fernanda and I had been examining that morning, and set it on the table. “Since he liked the name, he adopted the tiger as his military insignia. It was not a compliment, however; in reality his adversaries called him that because of his ferociousness, his ruthless heart. As soon as Shi Huang Ti had all of China under his absolute control, he initiated a series of important economic and administrative reforms, such as standardizing weights, measures, and currency,” Mr. Jiang said as he placed the round piece of bronze with a square hole in the middle on the table, “the adoption of a single writing system— the one we still use today”—he set the minuscule Chinese book, the peach pit, and the pumpkin seeds with ideograms on them next to the coin—”a centralized system of canals and roads,” he continued, placing a small cart drawn by three bronze horses on the table, “and, most important of all, he began construction on the Great Wall.”
“Quit beating around the bush, Lao Jiang!” Paddy shouted impolitely. I looked over at him with absolute contempt. His manners were unbelievable!
“In short, Mme De Poulain, insofar as we are concerned,” Mr. Jiang went on, “Shi Huang Ti was not only the first emperor of China but also one of the richest, most important, powerful men in the world.”
“And this is where the little chest comes in,” the Irishman pointed out with a grin.
“Not yet, but we're getting there. When Prince Zheng came to the throne, he ordered that work start on his royal mausoleum. This was normal practice at the time. Once he was no longer the prince of a small kingdom but Shi Huang Ti, the great emperor, that initial project was enlarged until it attained massive proportions: Over seven hundred thousand workers were sent from all over the country to make it the biggest, most luxurious, most magnificent burial tomb ever. Millions of treasures were buried with Shi Huang Ti upon his death, as well as thousands of living people: hundreds of childless imperial concubines and the seven hundred thousand workers who'd been involved in construction. Everyone who knew where the mausoleum was located was buried alive, and the place was shrouded in secrecy and mystery for the next two thousand years. An artificial hill with trees and grass was built over the tomb, which was forgotten, and this whole story became part of the legend.”
Mr. Jiang stopped in order to softly set his empty cup on the table.
“Excuse me, Mr. Jiang,” I murmured, confused, “but what does the first emperor of China have to do with this chest?”
“Now let me tell you the story of the Prince of Gui,” the antiquarian replied. Paddy Tichborne snorted, bored, and tossed back the last of the whiskey he had emptied into his glass. “During the fourth moon of the year 1644, Emperor Chongzen, the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, was being hounded by his enemies and hanged himself from a tree in Meishan, Coal Hill, north of the imperial palace in Peking. This brought an official end to the Ming dynasty and gave rise to the current dynasty, the Ch'ing, of Manchu origin. The country was in chaos, the public treasury in ruins, the army disorganized, and the Chinese people divided between the old and new ruling houses. However, not every Ming had been exterminated. There was one last legitimate heir to the throne: the young Prince of Gui, who had managed to flee south with what remained of a small army of followers. At the end of 1646, the Prince of Gui was proclaimed emperor in Zhaoqing, province of Canton, and given the name Yongli. The chronicles have very little to say about this last Ming emperor, but we know that from the moment he took the throne, he was constantly on the run from Ch'ing troops until finally, in 1661, he had to ask the king of Burma, Pyé Min, for exile. The king reluctantly agreed and then humiliatingly treated him like a prisoner. One year later, General Wu Sangui's troops set up along the Burmese border, ready to invade if Pyé Min didn't hand over Yongli and his entire family. The Burmese king didn't hesitate, and General Wu Sangui took Yongli to Yunnan, where he was executed along with his entire family during the third moon of the year 1662.”
“And you, madame,” Paddy Tichborne interrupted, slurring, “will be wondering how the first emperor of China and the last Ming emperor are connected.”
“Well, yes,” I admitted, “but what I'm really wondering is how all this is connected to the hundred-treasure chest.”
“You needed to know both stories,” the antiquarian indicated, “in order to comprehend the importance of our discovery. As I said, the old legend of the Prince of Gui, also known as Emperor Yongli, which is told to children from the time they're born, the same one I acted out with my friends for a few copper coins, is a part of Chinese culture. Legend has it that the Ming possessed an ancient document indicating where to find the mausoleum built by the first emperor, Shi Huang Ti, as well as how to get inside without falling into the traps set for tomb raiders. That document, a beautiful jiance, was secretly passed from emperor to emperor as the state's most valuable object.”
“What's a jiance?” I asked.
“A book, madame, a book made of bamboo slats bound with string. Until the first century a.d., here in China we wrote on shells, rocks, bones, bamboo slats, or pieces of silk. Then, around this time, we invented paper made of plant fiber, but jiances and silk were still used for a while longer. In any event, according to the legend of the Prince of Gui, on the night the prince was proclaimed emperor, a mysterious man arrived in Zhaoqing. An imperial messenger had come from Peking to deliver the jiance. The new emperor had to swear to protect it with his life or destroy it before it could fall into the hands of the new reigning dynasty, the Qing.”
“And why didn't they want it to fall into Qing hands?”
“Because they're not Chinese, madame. The Qing are Manchus, Tartars. They come from the north, on the other side of the Great Wall. As usurpers of the divine throne, possessing the secret
of the First Emperor's tomb and seizing the most important treasures and objects would undoubtedly have legitimized them in the eyes of the people and the nobility, who were not so easily persuaded. In fact—and pay close attention to what I'm about to say, madame—a similar discovery even today would be so crucial, if it were to occur, that it could result in the end of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Republic and the restoration of the imperial system. Do you see what I'm trying to say?”
I frowned in an attempt to concentrate and grasp the magnitude of what Mr. Jiang was saying, but it was difficult to do as a European ignorant of the history and mentality of the so-called Middle Kingdom. Certainly the China I barely knew, the China of Shanghai with its Western way of life, its love of money and pleasure, didn't seem likely to take up arms against the Republic in order to return to a feudal past under young Emperor Puyi's absolutist government. And yet it was reasonable to assume that Shanghai was the exception rather than the rule with regard to Chinese life, culture, ancestral customs, and traditions. Outside of this Westernized port city, there was surely a vast country, as big as a continent, still anchored to the old imperial values. After all, it was highly unlikely after two thousand years of living a certain way that things would have changed in just a decade.
“I do, Mr. Jiang. And I gather that possibility has become a reality due to something related to the hundred-treasure chest, correct?”
Paddy Tichborne stumbled up to get another bottle of scotch off the bar. I drank the last of my tea, tepid by then, and set the cup on the table.
“Precisely, madame.” The antiquarian nodded, smiling. “You've touched on the last and most important point I wanted to make. Now is when the plot truly thickens. According to the legend of the Prince of Gui, on the night before the king of Burma handed Yongli and his entire family over to General Wu Sangui, the last Ming emperor invited his three closest friends to dinner: Wan the scholar, Yao the physician, and Yue Ling the geomancer and fortune-teller. He said to them, ‘My friends, since I am going to be killed and the Ming lineage ends forever once I and my young son and heir are dead, I must give you a very important document. The three of you are to protect it on my behalf. The night I was enthroned as Lord of Ten Thousand Years, I swore that should a time like this come, I would destroy an important jiance that has been in my family's possession for many years and contains the secret of the First Emperor's tomb. I do not know how we came to possess it, but I do know that I am not going to keep the promise I made. One day a new, legitimate Chinese dynasty must regain the Dragon Throne and expel the Manchu usurpers from our country. And so I give you these.’ Taking the jiance and a knife,” the antiquarian continued narrating, “he cut the silk threads that held the bamboo slats together, creating three pieces, and gave one to each of his friends. Before parting company with them forever, he told the men, ‘Disguise yourselves. Assume other identities. Go north; leave General Wu Sangui's armies behind until you reach the Yangtze. Hide the pieces in different places along the length of the river so that no one can unite the three parts until a time comes when the sons of Han can retake the Dragon Throne.’ ”
“Well, he certainly made it difficult!” I exclaimed, startling Tichborne, who had remained standing with a full glass once again in his hand. “If no one else knew where the Prince of Gui's three friends hid the pieces, they could never be put back together. What madness!”
The antiquarian nodded. “That's why it was a legend. Legends are lovely stories that everyone believes are false, tales told to children, a script for the theater. No one would ever have thought to look for three sets of bamboo slats that are over two thousand years old all along the shores of a river like the Yangtze, which is some four thousand miles long from its source in the Kunlun Mountains of central Asia to the estuary here in Shanghai. But—”
“Fortunately, there's always a but,” the Irishman added before taking a noisy slurp of whiskey.
“—the story is true, madame, and the three of us know where the Prince of Gui's friends hid those pieces.”
“What? We do?”
“We do, madame. Here in this chest is an invaluable document that recounts the well-known legend of the Prince of Gui, with a few important differences from the popular version.” Reaching out his right arm, the antiquarian placed the hand with one gold nail on the miniature edition of the Chinese book and pushed it toward me, separating it from the other objects he'd taken out of the chest earlier in our conversation. “For example, it clearly mentions where the prince told his three friends to hide the slats, and the choice is certainly very logical from the Ming point of view.”
“But what if it's false?” I objected. “What if it's just another version of the legend?”
“If it were false, madame, what other object in this chest could have motivated three imperial eunuchs to come here from Peking? What else could bring two menacing Japanese dignitaries to my store accompanied by Pockmarked Huang? Remember, Japan still has a powerful emperor on the throne who is unquestioned by his people and has demonstrated more than once that he's willing to back an imperial restoration by becoming militarily involved in China. In fact, for years he's provided millions of yen to certain princes loyal to the Qing in order to maintain Manchu and Mongol armies that continue to harry the Republic. The Mikado wants to make that fool Puyi a puppet emperor under his control and thus take over all of China in a single, masterful move. You can be absolutely sure that uncovering the tomb of the First Emperor of China would be the definitive blow. All Puyi would have to do is claim it as a divine sign, say that Shi Huang Ti blesses him from heaven and recognizes him as his son or some such thing in order for hundreds of millions of poor peasants to humbly throw themselves at his feet. People here are very superstitious, madame; they still believe in mystical events like that. And you foreigners, the Yang-kwei, would undoubtedly be massacred and expelled from China before you could ask yourselves what was happening.”
“Yes, but, Mr. Jiang, you're forgetting one minor detail,” I protested, feeling somewhat offended that the antiquarian had used the pejorative expression Yang-kwei, or “foreign devils,” to refer to me as well. “You told me the chest came from the Forbidden City. Your agent in Peking acquired it after the first fire at the Palace of Established Happiness. I remember because I liked that name; it seemed so poetic. If Puyi could do everything you say with help from the Japanese if the chest were in his possession, why hasn't he done it already? Unless I was misinformed, Puyi lost power over China in 1911.”
“In 1911, madame, Puyi was six years old. He's now eighteen and recently married, which means he has come of age. If the revolution hadn't occurred, this would have meant the end of his father's regency, that ignorant Prince Chun, and Puyi's rise to power as Son of Heaven. It would have been absurd to think about the restoration before now. Indeed, there have been attempts in the intervening years, all of which amounted to ridiculous failures, as ridiculous as the very fact that four million Manchus want to continue governing four hundred million sons of Han. The Qing court lives in the past, maintaining the old customs and ancient rituals behind the high walls of the Forbidden City, and doesn't realize there's no longer any place for True Dragons or Sons of Heaven in this country. Puyi dreams of a kingdom full of Qing queues,10 a time that will fortunately never return. Unless, of course, a miracle should occur, such as the divine discovery of the lost tomb of Shi Huang Ti, the first great emperor of China. The common man is fed up with power struggles, military governors who become warlords with private armies, and internal disputes throughout the Republic, not to mention that there is a strong pro-monarchist party, spurred on by the Japanese, the Dwarf Invaders, that sympathizes with the military because it disagrees with the current political system. If, madame, you combine Puyi's recent age of majority and his open desire to regain the throne with the discovery of Shi Huang Ti's sacred mausoleum, you'll see that conditions are ripe for a monarchical restoration.”
I was moved by Mr. Jiang's words and, above all, by
the zeal with which he spoke. Without realizing it, I may have looked at him more intently than decorum allowed. If my first impression of him had been that of an authentic mandarin, an aristocrat, I was now discovering a man passionately devoted to his thousand-year-old race, heartbroken by the decline of his people and his culture, and full of disdain for the Manchus who had governed his country for nearly three hundred years.
Tichborne had remained very quiet, busy filling his glass only to quickly empty it again. So unsteady on his feet that he'd been leaning against the living-room wall for the last few minutes, he let out a thunderous guffaw.
“Puyi must have got quite the fright when he discovered he'd lost the chest that could have given him back the throne—all because he ordered an inventory of his treasures!”
“Now I'm more certain than ever,” Mr. Jiang interjected, “that the Old Roosters who came to my store hired the Green Gang and sought assistance from the Japanese consulate when they discovered that it wasn't so easy to recover the document containing the true story of the Prince of Gui.”
“So what are we going to do?” I inquired anxiously.
The Irishman pushed himself off the wall, smiling all the while, as the antiquarian narrowed his eyes to study me closely.
“What would you do, madame, if in your current financial situation there was a way for you to get a few million francs?” he asked. “Note I said millions, not thousands.”