Sea of Ink

by Richard Weihe

  MEIKE ZIERVOGEL / Publisher, PEIRENE PRESS

  Fact and fiction arrive at a perfect union in this exquisite novella. A beautiful story about the quiet, determined pursuit of inspiration, this is a charming and uplifting book. After reading it, I looked at the world a little differently.

  Contents

  Publisher’s introduction

  Title Page

  Sea of Ink

  Afterword

  Notes on Sources

  Picture credits

  Subscribe

  Other titles from Peirene Press

  About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  1 Having ridden through the night, the messengers reached the northern frontier at midday on the 26th of April and handed over a letter to the commanding general, Wu Sangui. It stated that the rebel leader, Li Zicheng, had invaded Peking the previous day and occupied the capital. Facing impending disaster, the emperor had hanged himself. The future of the dynasty was dangling in the air.

  The general had been given the task of securing the frontier against the Manchu people, the name the united Jurchen tribes of Manchuria had given themselves. The city of Shenyang they had renamed Mukden. From their new capital they gradually extended their power westwards into the borderland with China and as far as the Great Wall.

  Under severe pressure General Wu resorted to desperate measures: he opened the border and asked the powerful Manchus for help in a campaign against the rebel Li. The neighbours agreed at once to stand side by side with their foe. Joining forces, the armies that had only recently been enemies succeeded in driving Li from the capital. It was the 2nd of June.

  General Wu’s troops went in pursuit of the insurgents as they withdrew to the west. On the 6th of June the Manchus took Peking for themselves without encountering any resistance. Their conquest of China had begun. It was early summer, 1644. The Manchus brought the three-hundred-year reign of the Ming dynasty to an end and proclaimed the dawn of a new era.

  The south of the vast empire had not yet been taken, however.

  2 With his countless wives and concubines, the founder of the Ming dynasty had thirty-two children, twenty-six of which were sons. His seventeenth son was born in 1378. The boy was given the title of the first Prince of Ning and he established the Ning line of the imperial house. The emperor invested him with the province of Jiangxi, which lay to the south of the Yangtze river. Its capital was Nanchang, and for centuries Nanchang remained the seat of the Ning line. The prince with twenty-five brothers had many children himself. One of his innumerable descendants, Zhu Da, was born in 1626, in the eleventh generation of the Yiyang branch of the Ning line.

  This story is about Zhu Da, the Prince of Yiyang, distant descendant of the Prince of Ning, the seventeenth son of the founder of the Ming dynasty.

  As a prince, Zhu Da enjoyed a sheltered childhood in the palace, surrounded by splendour and wealth. At the age of eight he started writing poetry. Early on he also displayed a special gift for seal-cutting. He was spoilt and admired because of his talents. These were blissful years full of promise for the future.

  3 Zhu’s father worked as a painter and calligrapher. His father, too, had been a much-revered painter and scholar.

  Zhu’s grandfather had made him a scroll painting of a dragon for his bedroom. The young Zhu thought this dragon was the largest creature that had ever existed. Its sinuous body writhed in rhythmic loops and looked so lifelike that each morning Zhu was glad to see his dragon had not changed position in the picture.

  In his dreams the fire-spitting monster broke free from the paper and little Zhu had to leap into the water to save himself. He would dive under and the flames would turn to steam as they hissed on the surface. Looking up through the water, he could see the dragon’s green shimmering eyes and flared nostrils in a cloud of steam. Even in the light of the morning, the dragon looked as if it might fly away at any moment or escape by setting fire to the paper surrounding it. The monster’s scaly skin drifted between green and turquoise depending on how the light fell.

  And yet his grandfather had not used any colours, only black ink on brownish paper.

  On one of his earliest birthdays his father painted him a huge lotus flower. Zhu had never seen one of these flowers before, nor did he know its name.

  His father placed a large piece of rice paper on the ground and picked up a brush with compact bristles. He dipped it in ink and wiped off the excess on a stone shaped like a peach. Then, with one long, rich stroke of his brush, he painted a gentle curve from the bottom to the top of the paper. Beneath his hand the upper end of the line unfurled into a flower.

  At the base of the flower stem his father painted a surface of glistening grey across the entire width of the paper, occasionally allowing the brush to create darker patches. When the ink was dry he hung the painted paper on the wall.

  Now Zhu noticed the lotus flower’s slender stem shooting up from dirty, muddy water and opening its bloom in the clear spring air.

  Some leaves were floating on the water and Zhu thought he could feel a gentle breeze sweeping across the surface, faintly bending the stem and wafting the perfume of the flower into his nose.

  His father sat there calmly, frowning at the paper, and said nothing. Perhaps at that very moment he would have liked to talk about the flower that was hanging on the wall to his son, who was gazing at it wide-eyed and with lips pressed shut.

  But his father remained silent. Zhu had never heard his father speak. And yet he felt as if he knew his voice.

  They sat there beside each other, looking at the picture. All of a sudden Zhu thought he could hear a rattling from his father’s throat and he grabbed his arm. But his father had said nothing; he merely turned his head, fixed the boy with his old, watery eyes, and the line between his lips turned up a whisker at the ends.

  ‘You just gurgled then, Father,’ Zhu said. ‘Like a fish underwater.’

  He fixed his gaze on the lotus flower once more.

  The fish remained silent.

  ‘I expect you’ve told me everything already.’

  4 On one occasion his father made him step bare-foot into a bowl full of ink and then walk along the length of a roll of paper. To begin with, Zhu’s footprints were wet and black; with each step they became lighter until they were barely visible any more. Then he hopped from the paper back onto the wooden floor.

  His father took a brush and wrote at the top of the scroll: A small segment of the long path of my son Zhu Da. And further down: A path comes into existence by being walked on.

  The palace had its own workshop for manufacturing brushes and ink. Zhu liked to watch the master and his assistants at work. The open stoves made the workshop dingy and dusty. The fire, Zhu thought, so that’s where he gets his colourful dragon, and the lotus flower too.

  One day, after Zhu pleaded with him insistently, the master explained how ink is made.

  ‘To make ink we need two ingredients,’ he said, ‘soot and glue. The soot provides the colour, the glue binds it. We mix them together, working them into a kneadable paste in mortars. We then press the paste into carved wooden moulds and let it dry until it’s completely hard.’

  ‘What’s soot?’ Zhu wanted to know.

  ‘In the forest we collect resinous branches from old pine trees. We burn them in the stove. What remains afterwards is a fine black powder. This powder is the soot.’

  ‘And how do you make the glue?’

  ‘To make glue we order stags’ antlers from Dai province. We cut the horns into finger-length pieces and place these in the river. They stay in the water for twelve days and twelve nights until they’re washed through and clean. Then we put the pieces in a large pan. If you cook them for long enough they turn into a thick sludge. If you
cook them for even longer they eventually turn into glue. And the glue and soot need to be pounded thirty thousand times in the iron mortar to mix them properly.’

  The master encouraged him to peer into the huge pan where a soup with chunks of stags’ antlers was boiling away, but Zhu held his nose and turned aside fast.

  ‘That stinks!’

  ‘I agree, the smell is somewhat unpleasant. It always troubled your father, too. So he developed his own recipe.’

  The master took a small bottle from the shelf.

  ‘Here, take a sniff, Prince.’

  A pleasant, spicy aroma wafted into Zhu’s nose.

  ‘That’s a mixture of cloves, camphor and musk. We use it as a perfume. It has a stronger aroma than the glue.’

  Now the master held a second phial under his nose. Zhu was instantly taken by the fruity, heady smell.

  ‘An infusion of bark from the pomegranate tree,’ the master said. ‘Your father always adds this secret preparation. That’s why his ink is called “The envoy of the pomegranate tree”.’

  The master raised his forefinger and looked Zhu sternly in the eye.

  ‘But you didn’t hear a word from me, my prince.’

  5 At the age of thirteen, Zhu Da enrolled in Nanchang as a student for entry into the civil service. A glittering future lay before him: the life of a cultivated art-lover and man of letters, dividing his time between the study of beauty, managing provincial affairs and pleasure.

  A few years later his family chose a girl from a good family as a suitable wife for the prince. In the very first year of their marriage she gave birth to a child.

  This was also the year when the Ming dynasty came to an end and the Qing dynasty began.

  First, the capital fell into the hands of the Manchus. But after the conquest of Peking the majority of the country remained under Chinese rule. From the capital the Manchus embarked on their systematic conquest of the entire empire. It did not take them long to win over Chinese collaborators for their campaign.

  Nanking had long been regarded as a second capital city in the south. There the Ming princes were able to maintain their rule after the fall of Peking. But a struggle broke out over the succession. From among the many rivals a clique of influential officials finally named the Prince of Fu as emperor.

  The Prince of Fu preferred the easy life. His father had tracked down and killed followers of the rebel Li. The prince now sent four armies northwards to the banks of the Yangtze as protection. But the four generals fought among themselves for supremacy. Instead of forming a united front against the Manchu onslaught, the soldiers marauded and plundered their way through the villages. Only one of the generals, Shi Kefa, showed the necessary resolve in the fight against the advancing enemy, until a faction of adversaries from Nanchang toppled him from power.

  Zhu’s home city of Nanchang lay to the south-west of Nanking, in the province of Jiangxi. There the prince lived with his wife and young son in the palace.

  Dark clouds were gathering in the sky, but no storm had yet brushed the earth.

  6 The Manchus retained their organization of the Eight Banners and began stationing garrisons of banner soldiers in key places. They adopted the existing Chinese administrative system without any major changes and did not touch the landowners’ estates. They did not break their rice bowls, as the saying goes, for the Manchus were full of admiration for Chinese culture. And so it happened that scholars moved to the capital in droves to offer their services in administrative posts.

  The government in Nanking tried negotiating with the Manchus. They sent an embassy to Peking to suggest that the Manchus limit their conquests to the area north of the Great Wall. But the envoys returned with the counter-suggestion that Nanking, too, should recognize the sovereignty of the new rulers. On that condition Nanking could remain as the seat of a vassal state in southern China.

  Secretly, neither side was seriously interested in negotiations or any sort of compromise. While the envoys were still on their journey back to Nanking, the Manchus were preparing their army for the conquest of the south.

  When they attacked the city of Yangzhou on the northern bank of the Yangtze, they encountered their first meaningful resistance. General Shi Kefa defended the city heroically against the offensive by superior forces. He held Yangzhou for eight days; on the ninth, the Manchus broke through the gates.

  When they saw the soldiers flood in, the men cowered on the ground. Nobody dared take flight. They lowered their heads, bared their necks and waited for the swish of the sword. The young women tried to buy their lives with their bodies and offered themselves up to the soldiers. Some hid in rubbish heaps, smeared themselves with muck and sought to disguise themselves. But the soldiers prodded the refuse with spears until the last of them crawled out like startled rats.

  The general was taken prisoner. In his situation many would have gone over to the Manchus. But he refused and remained loyal to his former masters.

  Shi Kefa was executed in the most grisly way imaginable.

  The Chinese general Hong Chengchou was one of those who sided with the enemy. After the fall of Yangzhou he led the Qing armies further south. In the summer of 1645 they stood at the gates of Nanking. The Prince of Fu’s government collapsed under the pressure of this threat. One of his own generals handed the prince over to the Qing forces. They dragged him back to Peking and his fate was sealed. A few months later he was dead.

  Some Ming princes were still trying to prolong the rule of their dynasty. Their attempts proved futile, however. The Prince of Lu set himself up as regent in Zhejiang province. But without resources and supplies he was unable to hold out for long.

  Another, the Prince of Tang, was named emperor in August 1645. His closest ally was a former pirate, Zheng Zhilong, who had since blossomed into a wealthy businessman and official. As a military leader, however, Zheng was no match for the might of the Manchus. When he finally surrendered, the conquerors were able to cross the mountain passes he had been guarding to Zhejiang and Fujian. Now the Manchus could continue their expansion into new prefectures and provinces unopposed.

  The prince escaped to Hunan. Once there he found himself confronted by the last scattered troops of the rebel leader Li. His attempts to put together a powerful army failed. The prince fell into the hands of the Manchus and was executed on the spot.

  His younger brother managed to flee to Canton, where he lasted another two months, a shadow of the former ruling power. When the Qing troops, led by a turncoat Chinese general, finally invaded Canton, the shadow vanished too. The sun of the Ming dynasty was extinguished.

  7 When power changed hands Zhu’s father died. The Prince of Yiyang had just turned nineteen. At the court he had earned a reputation as a speaker with a sparkling wit; in debate he was indefatigable.

  Now he stared tight-lipped at his dead father and said nothing. The same image reappeared in his mind’s eye: the long stem of a lotus flower snapping in the wind and falling into the dirty water of a pond where the white bloom gradually sank.

  He did not say anything the following day, either, when his wife addressed him several times. He behaved like this on the third and fourth days, too.

  These days became weeks. Zhu had forgotten how to speak.

  One day he got up and painted a large symbol on his door: ya – dumb.

  The news of the master’s death spread amongst calligraphers and many came to express their condolences to Zhu. He received them with animated gestures and meaningful looks, but did not exchange a single word with any of them. In conversation he made use of his hands and his entire body. If he was in agreement with somebody he would nod; if not, he shook his head vigorously.

  Or he just stared into the distance.

  In the evenings he drank liquor with old friends of his father’s. They told him of the turmoil in the country and the atrocities they had seen. Suddenly Zhu got up and started laughing and crying in turn. Later he sang songs.

  At least I’m not dead,
he thought. But what use is not being dead? If I were a fish I’d simply dive down into the depths. At the moment I’m like a fish out of water.

  8 Nothing changed over the following months and years. He began to fast, physically and spiritually. It was as if he had been turned to stone. People would find him half naked, without a shirt, sitting on the floor with his legs apart, utterly still.

  When the Manchus invaded Jiangxi province and attacked the city of Nanchang, they occupied the palace. Zhu Da hurriedly separated from his wife and young son and fled to the Fengxin mountains, a few days’ ride to the north-west of the city. There he entered a monastery.

  He shaved his head and, as a monk, took the name Chuanqi. In the peace and solitude of the monastery he buried himself in the study of Buddhist teaching.

  As the last of the Mings, the Prince of Gui endeavoured to maintain rule in the south. He lived in Guandong, the province to the south of Jiangxi, but soon afterwards, in 1647, he was forced to flee to Guangxi province to the west. Following the twists and turns of the war, he spent the next dozen years drifting around south-west China, in the provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou as well. His warriors attacked wherever they could, without ever winning any ground. Over time they became worn down and once again divisions appeared within the Chinese ranks.

  The prince himself was pursued by the Qing armies under the leadership of General Wu. He finally found refuge in Burma, although there they regarded him as a foe rather than a guest and he was held prisoner for several years. Wu maintained pressure on the Burmese until they finally handed over the prince and his family. The general led them to the east, into the remote province of Yunnan, where the Prince of Gui and his son were strangled with a bowstring.

  Thus were the forces of the southern Mings wiped out. The prince’s last loyal and devoted general died of grief when he heard of his master’s downfall. Only bitterness and enmity remained.