The Imperial Alchemist

by A. H. Wang

  She guides the car down the meandering coastal road and sees that they are driving along the most famous section of the highway: Qing Shui, or Clearwater, Cliff. Georgia admires the rugged beauty of the coastline, where lush, untouched, forest-covered mountain meets the sea. The sheer cliff face descends almost vertically from the peak of the mountain right down to the Pacific Ocean, an impressive two-kilometre drop. This section of the road stretches for twelve kilometres alongside the turquoise seas, forming the most beautiful and the most dangerous drive on the island. The narrow and winding road is infamous for causing drivers to veer off path, and many superstitious travellers now throw joss paper money out the window as they drive along, a bribe for the spirits of the dead to ensure a safe journey for the living.

  Georgia imagines how the coast would have appeared to sailors of Emperor Qin’s time, traversing the seas through the ocean mist to suddenly come upon the steep, verdant mountains looming ahead of them. It’s not difficult to imagine that the island would have been thought as Penglai Mountain.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” Charlie says, stretching in the seat beside her. He seems to have finished his morning meditation.

  “It is,” she agrees. “I haven’t been to Taroko Gorge in years. I forget how stunning this area is.”

  “Me too,” answers Charlie. “My friend—the owner of the cabin—loves to come here to surf when he gets the time. He swears it is one of the top twenty surf spots in the world.”

  Georgia smiles in response, and they fall into a comfortable silence, both watching the sublime landscape unfolding before them as Georgia drives on. Not long after, they make a turn off the highway to head straight for their destination: Buluowan Terrace.

  Flat land is scarce in the extreme landscape of Taroko National Park. Buluowan Terrace, however, is one location within the gorge blessed with sprawling plains. Formerly inhabited by the Truku Tribe, Buluowan means ‘echoes of the canyon’ in the native language. It’s located downstream of Liwu River, a two-tiered fluvial terrace divided into the Upper and the Lower, with a height difference of thirty metres between the two. Today, catering to the bustling tourist trade, the Lower Terrace now houses the Tourist Centre of Taroko National Park, as well as an exhibition centre of the Trukuan history.

  “So here is something that puzzles me,” Charlie says as they arrive at the parking lot. “I always thought that the Truku tribe arrived in Taroko much later than Naaya’s people.”

  “They did,” Georgia says, exiting the air-conditioned interior of the car and feeling the August heat engulf her. “The Truku people actually migrated here from further inland about three hundred years ago. But the terrain at Buluowan lends itself to settlement and would have been home to a variety of people over the centuries. The flat land makes it easy to cultivate crops, it’s sheltered by mountains in all directions, and it’s also abundant in flora and fauna. So there would have been plenty of food all year round. It’s also right next to the river, which would have been a reliable resource for transport and water.”

  It is still early in the morning and the parking lot is almost deserted, save for the few hikers keen to get a head start on the many walking trails that the park offers. Charlie and Georgia leave the parking lot and walk towards the lower terrace. Constructed of logs, the tourist and exhibition centre blends perfectly into its surroundings. Lush green lawns spread over the terraces, and the mountain ranges loom high above them, surrounding the entire plateau. Standing in front of the visitor centre, Georgia takes a deep breath as she absorbs the tranquil beauty surrounding her.

  She sits down on the wooden step and pulls the notebook out of her bag, sifting through the contents. It takes a few moments to find what she is looking for.

  “Here,” she says to Charlie, “this is the drawing that Naaya made of her home before she left.”

  He nods, looking down at it. “That was one of her favourite drawings. I would catch her gazing at it at times, and the sadness in her eyes would just break my heart.”

  Georgia looks at the drawing more closely. “Here’s where the two terraces meet,” she says, pointing.

  She stands again, trying to locate herself in relation to the perspective of the drawing. She moves about the plateau for a while, holding the drawing up before her. Surveying the mountains surrounding them, she compares the skyline with the lines on the drawing. Then she walks all the way up to the Upper Terrace as she continues her search.

  “Look.” She stops when she sees what she’s looking for, the rise and fall of the peaks matching exactly the marks depicted on the drawing.

  Charlie peers from behind her, seeing her discovery. He inhales sharply. “I cannot believe it. This is it. You found it, Georgia!”

  She grins, feeling the familiar rush of excitement that comes with a significant discovery on an excavation site. She walks swiftly back to the tourist centre office. It’s not due to open for another few hours, but there’s a map of Taroko National Park pinned up outside. Her mind works rapidly as she studies it.

  “Let’s get a map and a pen. I have an idea where we need to go.”

  55

  They manage to find a souvenir shop and café on the premises that is open early to cater to hikers. On one of the stands, Georgia locates the same park map that’s pinned up outside the office.

  She sits down at a table, unfolding the map and spreading it out. Charlie walks over with their takeaway coffees, settling in the seat beside her. He hands her the pen he has borrowed from the cashier.

  “Right now, we’re here,” she says, circling the Buluowan Terrace on the map. “In Naaya’s writings, she describes the day she found the cave. She crossed the main river—that’s the Liwu river next to us right now—and collected some of the herbs on the shore there.”

  She draws lines on the map, visualising Naaya’s path in her mind. “Then she headed west, crossing a creek that ran from the northern peaks, climbing along the northern face of the gorge.”

  Georgia traces her pen to the west, encountering Badagang River, which originates from the north and meets the east-west Liwu River.

  She feels her pulse quicken. “Then, she carried on along the Liwu River due west… and she fell into the cave before she got to this second creek from the north.”

  Her pen continues the line to the left, stopping just before the second, unnamed creek, and she marks the spot with an ‘X.’

  Charlie and Georgia both stare at the map, silent as they contemplate the location deep within the mountains.

  “How are we going to get there?” Charlie finally asks, voicing Georgia’s own concern.

  This isn’t going to be easy, Georgia realises as she chews on her lower lip. What’s more, it’s probably going to be dangerous. The Taroko region is well known for its unstable terrain. With all the water burrowing in and out of the rocks, corroding the structure over time, it would be more like standing on a sponge than solid ground. All visitors are advised to stick to the designated hiking paths, and tourists are encouraged to wear hard hats whenever they walk along the gorge. Every year, there are reported casualties due to rock falls.

  Georgia shakes her head at the mounting obstacles in her mind. She looks into Charlie’s eyes, feeling resolve strengthening instead.

  “We’ll trek,” she replies.

  It takes several days to prepare for their journey, and they make frequent visits to the nearby Hualien and Taitung townships to source essential camping gear and food for the trip. Georgia gathers as many satellite images of the area as she can, hoping this will assist their search. She tries to call Sarah at the office for her help, but the woman never seems to be at her desk.

  They plan out their route carefully, deciding to take the Zhuilu Old Trail for a large section of their journey. Justifiably famous within hiking circles, Zhuilu Old Trail is the most spectacular walking trail in Taroko Gorge. Once part of a garrisoned path built by the Japanese during the colonial period in the early twentieth century, it is a sinuous path
snaking through tunnels, between steep mountainous peaks, and over azure rivers. The hike derives its name from the most hair-raising section of the trail, where the extremely narrow track hugs the sheer face of the 1,100-metre-high Zhuilu Cliff. Nothing but thin air separates the hiker and the vertiginous drop to the Liwu River below.

  The trail begins at the Swallows Grotto near the Buluowan Terrace, starting with a three-kilometre vertical climb, then runs west along the northern wall of the gorge, and ends ten kilometres later at the Zimu Bridge. The path is long and narrow, its cliff terrain precipitous, and hiking it requires a good degree of fitness, as well as permits from the local police department and the national park office. There are frequent rock falls in the area, especially during the typhoon season. Every year, at least some part of the path will be closed due to damage from the treacherous weather.

  Luckily for them, the trail has now reopened again after almost a year of closure.

  As they wait for the mandatory few days for the trail permits to be processed, they decide to stay at the accommodation next to the tourist centre. The themed lodging is located on the upper terrace, and consists of wooden cabins designed to resemble a traditional Truku tribal village. Staffed by members of the Truku tribe, the hotel offers tourists an indigenous experience of Buluowan. It is well-known for hosting Truku-themed dinner parties every night.

  Now, waiting for dinner to start, Georgia sits on the lawn in front of her room, ticking off the list of essential equipment they have composed for their trip. Finally, everything seems to be in order. Their trail permits arrived just a few hours ago, and they’ll be able to set off early in the morning tomorrow.

  Yet she gets the inexplicable feeling that she has left something off the list. It worries at the edges of her mind, something intangible that she cannot pinpoint, and it’s making her feel anxious and unsettled.

  Georgia knows that this is probably just her feeling apprehensive about the trip. The trek they are planning will be no small feat. If it were up to her, she’d have preferred to have more support, more time, more equipment, and more information for the journey. The need for secrecy is paramount, however, and with the limited resources at hand, they’ll be attempting the journey on their own.

  Nevertheless, she feels that she needs to at least tell somebody what they are about to do, before they go out of mobile phone reception range. Just in case they don’t make it back at all.

  Georgia searches through her bag and pulls out her phone. She has not turned it on since the day they escaped from the mercenaries at the Grand Hotel in Taipei. Somewhere in the back of her mind is the nagging fear that doing so would somehow make her locatable. But all of her address books, emails, and important data are on the little device, and not having access to it for the past two and a half weeks has made life very difficult.

  She also wants to get Sarah on the phone, and though she’s committed the office number to memory long ago, she somehow cannot conjure Sarah’s mobile number in her mind. She blames it on her ever-increasing reliance on her smartphone.

  Georgia looks at the device, arguing with herself that the chances of it being traced are pretty slim. She reasons that from the movies she has seen, it always takes several minutes to trace a call.

  Then she chides herself for thinking like Sarah. You’ve been watching too many spy movies.

  Pressing the ‘on’ button, she waits patiently for the phone to boot up. All at once, it starts beeping and vibrating as the backlog of messages comes flooding in. She ignores them and brings up Sarah’s number instead, bringing the phone to her ear as she presses ‘call’. There is a brief silence on the other end of the line, followed by the sound of Sarah’s voice.

  “You have reached Sarah Wu, I can’t come to the phone right now…” the voice mail message begins.

  “Damn it, Sarah.” Georgia hangs up.

  Where the hell are you?

  At that moment, far away from the mountains of Taroko, a tiny red light blinks to life on the large flat screen.

  Hank bolts upright, his eyes glued to the screen as he quickly taps a few keys on the keyboard. The satellite image zooms in on the transponder, showing its location.

  A wide grin spreads across his face.

  Gotcha.

  Rising quickly from his workstation, Hank grabs his tablet and rushes out of the room. He hurries up the sprawling staircase to the second floor, taking two steps at a time. Stopping in front of a double mahogany door, he catches his breath as he taps on the door twice.

  “Enter,” Lambert’s voice calls from within the room.

  Turning the knob, Hank walks into the spacious office. His boss is seated in his usual spot, behind the stately desk and frowning at something on his screen. He has not even bothered to look up or acknowledge his assistant’s presence. Hank can tell from his demeanour that he is not in the mood to be disturbed.

  “Sir,” Hank says, barely containing his excitement. “I have located Professor Lee.”

  Finally looking over, Lambert asks, “Where?”

  “She’s in the mountains on the east coast of Taiwan, sir.” Hank taps at the screen of his tablet, bringing up the map to show Lambert. The little red light blinks rhythmically on the image.

  Lambert takes the tablet and looks down on the map. “What on earth is she doing there?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Hank admits. “But I will go and find out.”

  He pauses, waiting for further instructions from his boss. When it doesn’t come, he takes it as a silent assent.

  “I will keep you updated, sir.” He turns to leave the room.

  “Hank.”

  Hank stops in his tracks, apprehension rising within him. “Yes, sir?”

  “Get the jet prepared. Cancel all of my appointments for the next week,” Lambert says, now looking back at his screen. “I’m coming with you.”

  56

  “I’m curious,” Georgia says as they are settling into their seats for dinner. “How many different countries have you lived in?”

  Georgia and Charlie are in the main dining room of their hotel, a large space decorated with traditional Truku tribal carvings. A wall of windows gives them sweeping view of the hotel compound: rustic wooden huts with a backdrop of lush green mountains, the warm glow of lanterns coming on one by one as the light wanes in the gorge. Guests enter the dining room in droves, each ushered to their assigned seats as everyone waits patiently for the festivities to start.

  “I have not counted.” Charlie smiles at her. “I have lived everywhere, really. I used to go for long voyages before air travel was invented. I would embark on whichever ship was leaving the dock that day, and get off months after at a completely new place. But recently, I have stuck around Asia—it just feels more like home.”

  “That must have been amazing,” she observes, wondering at the complete freedom the lifestyle offers. Then she shakes her head incredulously. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, being able to experience all of humanity’s history over the last two thousand years. There’s just so much you can tell us, help us solve all the mysteries we’ve not been able to find an explanation for.”

  “Frankly, I think some things are best to remain as mysteries.” Charlie shrugs. “In any case, humans have a habit of rewriting history as they see fit. At the end of the day, they will believe what they choose to believe in.”

  She frowns. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that history is a completely subjective topic,” he explains. “Look at our history of conflict with each other, for instance. It all depends on who won the war—that determines who the ‘bad guy’ was in the end. Every culture and every country has its own version of events, and not all of them are based on facts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the Mongol Empire, for one,” Charlie points out. “According to most of the world, the Mongols were a savage, warmongering tribe that raped and pillaged their way through Asia and Europe. But this view is hardly complete nor corre
ct, and people do not realise that developments which happened under the Mongol rule actually laid the foundation for the modern world.”

  “Do you mean how they fostered trade along the Silk Road?”

  Charlie smiles. “I am referring to all of the ideals that the Mongols stood for: secular politics, religious coexistence, public schooling, international law, and free commerce. All of the paradigms that we take for granted today did not exist in the world at the time; especially in the West, where people still lived in feudal systems and the Church continued to persecute Jews and pagans. It was the Mongols’ enlightened approach that paved our way to the civilisation that we live in today.”

  Georgia nods, considering his point. It is true that the Mongol Empire, and East Asian cultures in general, have been unjustly slandered through propaganda spread by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment writers, and by European colonisers a century later who were eager to persuade the public of the ‘Yellow Peril.’ Ironically, without the Mongols and their trade routes, vital inventions such as the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder would never have made their way from China to the West. Thanks to these critical technologies, Europe experienced a true rebirth. Or, if you will, the Renaissance.

  Every year at the beginning of the semester, Georgia covers some of these ideas in her lectures for the first year students, and most of the time students are shocked when they learn the truth of Genghis Khan and his legacy. They are also equally astonished that the world still continues to subscribe to such a xenophobic view of a visionary race.

  “Did you meet him?” Georgia asks. “The Great Khan?”

  Charlie smiles. “No, I was living in Europe at the time. Back then, the world was a collection of kingdoms mostly separate from each other. The Asians knew nothing of Europe, the Europeans nothing of the Americas. No one even dreamed that Australia existed. But despite all of this, news of the Mongols and their formidable power did eventually arrive in Europe. That was the accomplishment of Genghis Khan. He forged links between the East and the West, and began the creation of this globalised culture we now live in.”