While there is no record of any reply from Rome, Ricci was determined to collect fresh evidence to support his conjecture and to return to the question when he finally managed to reach Beijing, the city which would, if he were proved correct, correspond to the “Cambalù” (Khanbalik) where Polo had lived at the court of the “Gran Cane” (Great Khan).
The idea of moving to Beijing was always with him, and Valignano had also stressed repeatedly that the founding of a mission in the capital remained the most important goal for progress in the work of evangelization. Their hope was to obtain permission from the Son of Heaven to preach the Gospel throughout the territories of the empire. Only then, with the emperor’s endorsement, would it be possible to make thousands or even millions of converts, as Ricci sometimes dreamed.
The idea of sending a papal embassy to the emperor, which Ruggieri had left to prepare nearly ten years earlier, was now definitively abandoned, even by Superior General Acquaviva. Having considered the situation, Valignano decided to wait no longer for help from Rome and Europe but rather to assign Ricci the task of traveling to Beijing and pleading the cause of Christianity before Wanli. Who indeed would be better able than Li Madou to obtain the permits, overcome the difficulties, cope with the unexpected, and negotiate with officials to achieve this goal?
In order to provide Ricci with greater autonomy in decision making with a view to this undertaking, Valignano appointed him superior of the China mission in 1597 as successor to Duarte de Sande and immediately sent him the gifts for the emperor that had been stored in Macao. In his history of the mission, Ricci describes a mechanical table clock sent by Superior General Acquaviva that rang the hours and quarter hours in three different tones, a clock from the bishop of Manila, a Spanish painting of the Virgin, and a painting of Christ from the Italian school. It is probable that the gifts also already included8 the two glass prisms and the manicordio (a portable table harpsichord) that were to appear in the complete list of the gifts presented by the Jesuits to the emperor in Beijing.9
Having taken delivery of these items, Ricci resolved to prepare the journey to Beijing in every detail so as to avoid a second failure. Recalling the Chinese saying “The emperor is as distant as the heavens are high,” which he had often heard officials repeat in the provinces, he hoped in his heart to reach the heavens this time.
The Imperial Examinations for Entry into the Bureaucracy
Nanchang suddenly filled up with people in 1597 in the month known as the eighth moon in the Chinese calendar and September in the Gregorian. As happened every three years in all the provincial capitals, candidates for the imperial examinations arrived in the company of friends and relatives. The streets were so full of men dressed in silk that it was difficult to make any headway through the crowd. It was the first time since his arrival in China that Ricci had witnessed this sort of collective delirium of hopes, dreams, and disappointments lasting all month and culminating in the week of examinations. The Jesuit was the first Westerner to give Europeans an eyewitness account, in his letters and in his history of the mission, of the rituals and mechanisms of the periodical renewal of the ruling class.10
The squares were teeming with life. Peddlers poured in from nearby towns with produce from the country, markets sprouted everywhere, the shops filled up with goods, and fortune-tellers were to be found on every street corner ready to predict the results. There were four thousand candidates selected from the cream of the “budding talents” in the province, and only ninety-five, the quota set by law for the Jiangxi province, would graduate as juren or provincial graduate. Beginning on the nineteenth of the month and ending ten days later, the examinations were held in a huge prisonlike building surrounded by walls and four watchtowers. After being thoroughly searched, the candidates were locked in the four thousand tiny cells, furnished with a table and a bench for sleeping, to take the three written exams, each lasting two days. Kept in total isolation, they were allowed only two brushes, ink, and sheets of paper to write on. The frugal meals were served in the cells by the proctors. Any candidate falling seriously ill during the examinations was let out of the building through a gate in the outer walls and was taken home, as physicians were not allowed to enter. Conditions in the small rooms were particularly unpleasant when the weather was bad, as the openings made in the doors so that the proctors could ensure compliance with the rules exposed the candidates to wind and rain with no possibility of shelter. There was no way of copying from other candidates, and concealing notes was practically impossible, even though some highly imaginative stratagems were devised, as shown by the white undershirt covered all over with Confucian quotations now in the Gest Oriental Library at Princeton.11 Anyone caught cheating was expelled and punished, but numerous attempts were nevertheless made to break the rules and pass the examinations by dishonest means.
As it was rumored that bribery had proved successful in the past, the members of the boards of examiners were now appointed by the ministry of rites and were sent directly from the capital so as to avoid any repetition of such occurrences. The case giving rise to the most talk had taken place twenty years earlier in 1574, when the grand secretary Zhang Juzheng was accused of persuading the examiners to pass his previously eliminated son. This was never proved, however, and many suspected that the episode was just part of a smear campaign launched against the powerful and controversial guan by his political adversaries.
The candidates were required to comment on passages from the Confucian classics in accordance with set and unchangeable criteria. Written in black ink, the compositions were handed in together with the names and surnames of the candidates and their parents under personal seal. They were then copied in anonymous form in red ink by an army of scribes. A selection process involving three different groups of examiners whittled the number down to 2,000, then 1,000, and finally 190, twice the number of places available. Finally, on the 29th of the month, a fourth group of examiners chose the best 95 compositions and published the list of successful candidates in order of merit. It was a great occasion for all of them and a real triumph for the first on the list. The family of every new juren enjoyed the moment of “glory and paradise,” as Ricci put it.
The procedures for the third-level examinations held in Beijing were much the same, but the honor awaiting the three hundred jinshi or metropolitan graduates was still greater, and the first in order of merit became a sort of national hero. Li Madou took an interest in the examinations, as many members of the candidates’ families took advantage of their stay in the city to visit the “sage from the West.”
Once the excitement of the examinations was over, the city slipped back into its customary routine, and Ricci resumed his plans for the journey to Beijing. The most important thing was to make contact with authoritative guan capable of advising him on how to approach the imperial court. The Jesuit discarded the idea of seeking the aid of one of the imperial princes on learning that the emperor’s relatives were regarded with suspicion at court and their intercession would only prove counterproductive. The Jesuit then recalled Wang Zhongming, the important official he had met in Shaozhou a few years earlier. The mandarin had just been recalled to Nanjing for a second term of office as minister of rites and would certainly have contacts at the court in Beijing. Aware that Wang Zhongming might well have occasion to pass through Shaozhou and to visit the residence during one of his journeys to the island of Hainan, Ricci asked the Jesuits there—namely Lazzaro Cattaneo, assisted at the time by the Portuguese João da Rocha, the Sicilian Niccolò Longobardo, and the Chinese novice Francisco Martines—to request his help. Their situation in Shaozhou was somewhat precarious, as the hostility of the local population was now so great that they had been forced to demolish the chapel in which they gathered to pray, but the mission was still operating.
It was well into 1598 by the time Minister Wang passed through Shaozhou and was informed of the missionaries’ intentions. He promised his aid and dec
ided to leave immediately for Nanchang, accompanied by Cattaneo and Da Rocha, to discuss the undertaking with Ricci in person. Relieved to hear that Li Madou intended to pay all the expenses of the journey to Beijing himself, the guan ascertained that the gifts for the Son of Heaven were appropriate and pronounced the project of obtaining an audience with the emperor feasible. In order to help his friends, he suggested that Ricci and Cattaneo should follow him to Nanjing, where it would be possible to seek the right contacts and secure admittance to the presence of Wanli. Without further ado, the two Jesuits; their Chinese brethren Zhong Mingren and You Wenhui, respectively christened Sebastião Fernandes and Manuel Pereira; and some servants embarked with Minister Wang on June 25, 1598, leaving João da Rocha and João Soerio to hold the fort in Nanchang.
Along the “Grand Canal” to the Capital
Ricci returned to Nanjing, the city from which he had been expelled three years earlier, after a journey of two weeks. On entering the city, he realized that the distrust of foreigners perceived on the first occasion had not diminished but had indeed worsened due to developments in Korea, where fighting had started again after a truce. Despite China’s reconquest of Pyongyang and the peace negotiations already underway, the Japanese had launched a new offensive that was now in full swing, and the fear of invasion was spreading all through China. All foreigners were regarded indiscriminately as enemies, and nobody would offer the Jesuits accommodation for as long as the war lasted. To ensure his safety, Ricci stayed on the minister’s junk and traveled in a covered litter when visiting local dignitaries to ask for advice on how to obtain an audience with the emperor. The mandarins he approached explained that it was indispensable to have the relevant authorities send a memorial to the court stating the reasons for the request, but when Ricci had one drawn up by a specialist scholar and submitted it to the official responsible for forwarding it to Beijing, the guan refused to accept the document of a foreigner.
Wang then suggested that Ricci should follow him to Beijing, where he had to go for the month of celebrations organized to mark Emperor Wanli’s thirty-fifth birthday on 17 September. The mandarin would travel overland and the Jesuits on the junks carrying his baggage. This was the best opportunity Ricci could have hoped for, so they prepared for departure.
From Nanjing, a short stretch of the Yangtze led east to the Imperial or Grand Canal, running almost parallel with the coast through the provinces on the eastern seaboard to connect the south and north of China. It comprised a series of canals, each about forty meters wide, and stretches of river linked by a system of locks to create an entirely navigable waterway of 2,500 kilometers.
One of the most impressive works ever accomplished by man, the Grand Canal is a masterpiece of hydraulic engineering, a field in which the Chinese have excelled ever since ancient times due to the need for good channels of communication and efficient irrigation systems in a vast territory subject to long periods of drought. Work on the great project began between the sixth and seventh centuries ad during the Sui dynasty and continued through the following eras with the construction of new stretches and the rebuilding of older ones. It was entirely restructured from 1411 on in the Ming era, with a view to the transition of the capital to Beijing, so as to facilitate the transport of provisions for the court and the tributes of grain and rice from the southern provinces. The investment was colossal, and the improvements were radical and huge in scale. A workforce of 165,000 people was employed in the Shandong province to build the four reservoirs, fifteen locks, and one dam needed to channel water from the rivers into the Grand Canal and regulate the water levels in each of the stretches. Work was carried out farther south to free some stretches of the rapids that were responsible for at least one shipwreck a day according to the chronicles of the time.
The Imperial Canal was an endless construction project teeming with activity. Nearly fifty thousand men worked full time on its maintenance, and the transport of the tributes of agricultural produce alone required more than one hundred thousand people with over ten thousand vessels.12 Even though most of the expense for transport and maintenance was borne by the local authorities, the costs of the great waterway were a burden on the empire’s finances, and the duties paid by private merchant vessels at the stations along the way did little to offset the losses.
Ricci was fascinated by his journey through the economic and commercial heart of the empire, even though he failed to understand why the Chinese preferred this far slower and more laborious way to a short, quick voyage by sea along the coast for fear of pirates. Swift progress was in fact prevented not only by intense traffic but also by long waits at the locks to enable the transit of vessels from one stretch of river or canal to another with differing water levels. The junks were forced to line up and wait their turn at these bottlenecks for days at a time. Even though important mandarins like Wang had the right of way over merchants, delays were inevitable.
Ricci continued his journey of discovery northward through China with ever-growing interest, watching the countryside full of densely populated villages and fields of grain, rice, and millet unfold before his eyes. He never tired of recording distances and place names, making approximate calculations of the latitudes of the more important localities and noting the positions of major lakes, rivers, and mountains. He was amazed at the hundreds of vessels passing close to his at every hour of the day and night, and he observed the junks carrying perishable materials such as fruit and vegetables stop at the supply depots to stock up with ice. At one stage in the journey, his junk overtook an immensely long line of timber-carrying barges hauled by thousands of laborers on the bank. One barge after another, the line stretched along the river for nearly three kilometers by his calculations. The sailors told him that the wood was from the central-southern province of Sichuan and would be used to rebuild some pavilions of the Forbidden City destroyed in a fire two years earlier. Weighed down by their cargo, the barges would take at least a year to reach the capital.
After a month of travel and a long stretch through the Shandong province, the junks crossed the Huang He, the second-longest Chinese river (after the Yangtze), known as the Yellow River due to the deposits of loess that colored the water and kept it cloudy. Ricci recalled the Chinese phrase “when the Yellow River runs clear”—an event traditionally supposed to take place only once every thousand years—being used to indicate that something would never happen. The deposits that built up in the river along its course of 5,400 kilometers raised the level of its bed and led in the rainy seasons to the terrible floods for which it had always been known as “China’s Sorrow.”
Another month of travel brought Ricci to Tianjin, the “port of Beijing,” one day away from the walls of the capital, where it was obligatory to leave the vessels and continue overland, as the last stretch of the Grand Canal was reserved exclusively for junks carrying goods for the court.
The First Time in Beijing, the City of Dust
Ricci entered the capital of the empire for the first time on September 7, 1598, fifteen years after arriving in China and 323 years after Marco Polo reached Khanbalik, the capital of Cathay, located on the same plain not far from Beijing.
He encountered two stretches of walls on entering from the southern part of the city, the first built in 1553 to delimit the “outer city” of houses developed over the centuries in the southern section of the original city, and the second controlling access to the “inner city,” its most ancient nucleus. Consisting of a stone base and a superstructure of brick filled with beaten earth, the walls were the most imposing Ricci had ever seen, far taller and thicker than those encircling European cities. He estimated that twelve horses could have run abreast along the walkway on the top. Soldiers and eunuchs responsible for collecting excise duties were stationed at the city gates, which were closed at night and were kept under military guard. The city was built like a series of nested boxes, with the inner city surrounding the walled citadel of the Imperia
l City, the residence of the court and off limits to common mortals, and in the center of this the Forbidden City with the imperial palaces and the apartments of the reigning family, the true heart of the empire.
Cattaneo and Ricci were put up by Minister Wang, who had arrived before them, while the two Chinese novices and the servants stayed in rented accommodations. The guan had just heard that he would shortly be promoted to the post of minister of rites in Beijing and thought that it would be very easy to help his friends obtain an audience with the emperor once the appointment had been officially confirmed.
Ricci began to explore the city. He found it more austere than Nanjing, but its inhabitants initially appeared friendlier than in the south of the country. The produce on sale in the markets proved very expensive, as it was mostly imported from other provinces. He noted on walking through the streets that the curse of prostitution was even more widespread than in the other Chinese cities, and he was informed that there were as many as forty thousand whores.
Ricci soon noticed that Beijing, where it seldom rained, was enveloped in a cloud of dust that rose from the unpaved streets and mixed with a fine brown sand from the Gobi desert. The inhabitants wrapped their heads in black veils as protection against this almost imperceptible but omnipresent dust, which penetrated houses, closets, and trunks, worked its way between the pages of books, and clouded the delicate porcelain on display in the wealthier homes with a light patina. Ricci adopted the practice of covering his head, which also performed the useful function of concealing his foreign appearance.
He used the available means of public transport to explore the city, which offered the visitor a range of litters of various sizes or a horse or mule with a guide familiar with the streets and the addresses of public offices and officials. If no means of transport were obtainable for hire, it was possible to find one’s way with the aid of the guidebook that all outsiders bought on entering the city, even though it was easy to get lost in the maze of hutong, or alleys, running through the most densely populated districts. Ricci noted on entering the homes of some dignitaries and minor officials that they had the same architectural structure as the poorer dwellings. They were low buildings surrounded by walls that concealed everything inside with a wooden door and a high step to keep evil spirits out. The houses of dignitaries had decorated front doors, and pairs of stone lions symbolizing power flanked the palaces of the most important guan. The entrance provided access to a square courtyard lined with trees and wooden arcades onto which the pavilions and rooms opened, a structure recalling the peristyle houses of ancient Rome. In a mansion owned by a wealthy mandarin, there would be another door in the side of the courtyard opposite the entrance providing access to another courtyard surrounded by rooms, and so on, in a reiteration of the same elementary structure directly proportional to the owner’s wealth.
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