The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, his heirs and the founding of modern China

by John Man

  The grasslands of Inner Mongolia are surprisingly close to Beijing on the map, a mere 250 kilometres, but a world away in practice, even today. It’s a seven-hour drive, which takes you on a steep, slow climb through the hills where the Great Wall runs, and on to Zhangjiakou. The city once marked the frontier, which is why Mongols (and foreign explorers) called it Kalgan, from the Mongolian for ‘gateway’. Now it is thoroughly Chinese, part of China’s northward thrust into its frontier province, Inner Mongolia. Herders object at their peril.

  Beyond, though, up on the Mongolian plateau, near today’s Duolun,fn1 there are still rolling grasslands and gentle hills that would delight Kublai’s soul. This was a land rich with associations, for it was Genghis’s campsite on his way south to Beijing and on his way back from its conquest. Under Kublai’s senior minister, Liu Bingzhong, the Golden Lotus Advisory Group – as his Brains Trust was called – identified the site. It was originally called Lung Gang (Dragon Ridge), so Liu and his team first had to cast a spell to evict the dragon and raise a magical iron pennant to prevent its return. A lake in the middle of the plain had to be drained and filled in before work could start. There was nothing much around to build with – hardly a tree, no stone quarries. It all had to be started from scratch, with teams of pack animals, wagon trains and riverboats carting timber, stone and marble from dozens, even hundreds of kilometres away.

  Kublai was wary of calling his new HQ a capital, perhaps preferring not to challenge the ‘true’ imperial capital, Karakorum. For the three years it took to build, and for four years thereafter, the city was known as Kaiping, being renamed Upper Capital (Shang-du) only in 1263, as opposed to Da-Du, the Great Capital (Beijing), or Dai-Du as it was in Mongol.

  English-speakers know it as Xanadu, because that’s how Samuel Taylor Coleridge spells it in his dreamy, drug-induced poem that begins:

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure dome decree,

  Where Alph the sacred river ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  So famous is the poem, so weird the imagery and so widespread the name that many assume the place is no more real than Camelot. Not only was it real – it still is.fn2

  Xanadu has changed over the years. The first time I visited, in 1996, it was a glorious wilderness: no fence, no gate and no charge. The sky was pure Mongolian blue, the breeze gentle, and the only sound a cuckoo. Waving grasses and pretty meadow flowers rose and fell gently over the billows made by eroded, overgrown walls. The ground was strewn with rubble. I gathered a few bits, awed by what I was touching – Oh my God, the dust of Xanadu! The base of Kublai’s main palace, the Pavilion of Great Peace, was still there, an earthen mound about 50 metres long standing some 6 metres high above the grass. Paths made by wandering tourists wound to the top. The front was an almost sheer earth face, punctuated by a line of holes, left by timbers used to strengthen the rammed earth. A platform of earth had survived 700 years of fierce summer downpours and rock-cracking winter frosts, yet of the building itself there was not a trace. As for the rest of the site, it was a blur of ridges and grass. I couldn’t make much sense of it.

  A few years later, in 2004, there was a new tourist camp of Mongolian gers, a fence, a rickety gate, a small entry fee, and a little museum, beside which was a glass cabinet containing an immense block of white marble, 2 metres high. It was part of a pillar, its four sides brilliantly carved bas-reliefs of intertwining dragons and peonies, symbols of both war and peace. I tried the door. To my astonishment, it opened. Feeling as privileged as a prince and guilty as a schoolboy, I ran my fingers over marble that might have been touched by Marco Polo and Kublai himself. It was proof of the magnificence of the place, and the skill of Kublai’s Chinese artists, not to mention the labour involved, for the closest source of marble was the famous marble mines of Quyang in Hebei province, 400 kilometres away.fn3

  In 2008 I came again, this time with Xanadu’s greatest archaeological expert, Wei Jian, professor at Renmin University, Beijing. It was he who had unearthed the marble column. Now it had vanished into storage. The gate had been replaced by a grand, Stonehenge-style trilithon, its supports inspired by the marble pillar. It was flanked by a huge stone bas-relief of armies and courtiers crowding in on a massive Kublai, sitting knees akimbo on his throne. An incised plaque provided a brief biography, in Mongol, Chinese and – in anticipation of mass tourism – English. But Xanadu is too far from Beijing for many tourists, and Duolun is not yet big enough to attract them. The tourist camp stood forlorn and abandoned. With Wei’s help, the site itself at last came into focus.

  The original city had three sections, all squares, nested inside each other in the style of other Chinese imperial cities. The outer wall made the biggest square of just over 2 kilometres a side, 9 kilometres in all. Brickwork about 6 metres high sloped back at a 15-degree angle to a flat top, paved, easy to patrol. Every 400 metres a U-shaped bastion stuck out, but there were no guard towers. The wall was built to assert status, not to withstand an assault, for there were no more enemies anywhere near. The outer sector was in the shape of a set-square, in the northern part of which was a park of gently undulating grasslands, where deer nibbled meadow-grass, wandering through glades of trees, drinking from streams and fountains. This was Kublai’s Arcadia, an artificial version of the Mongolian grasslands, where he could pot a deer with his bow and send falcons skimming in pursuit of songbirds. In the south-east corner of the big walled square was a smaller one, the Imperial City, containing the mud-brick or board houses for workmen, craftsmen and officials, and several temples, all laid out in a grid of streets. And inside this, a moat containing a third walled square, the Inner or Forbidden or Palace City (the names vary), containing forty-three royal residences and meeting halls with Chinese-style, curled-up eaves and glazed tiles. Various pavilions – of Crystal, Auspiciousness, Wisdom, Clarity, Fragrance and Controlling Heaven – were overshadowed by the royal palace itself, the Pavilion of Great Peace.

  Yuan poets, Marco Polo’s descriptions and modern archaeologists (principally Wei Jian himself) allow you to imagine the scene as you approach from the south, as Marco Polo did when he arrived in China in 1275.

  On your right, you pass a hill, with an ovoo, or shrine, on top. Pale in the distance, the horizon is a wave of gently sloping hills, some of them sharpened with more ovoos. Directly ahead, on the open plain, stands a straight wall, 8 metres high, blocking everything beyond except for a mass of roofs, bright with blue, green and red tiles, with one roof standing proud above the others. There are bastions, corner towers, a main gate. In the words of one poet, Yuan Jue:

  These gate towers of Heaven reach into the great void,

  Yet city walls are low enough to welcome distant hills.fn4

  Across the grassland run many tracks, crowded with bullock carts, camels and yaks, arriving full or departing empty, for it takes some 500 carts a day to supply the 120,000 inhabitants who serve Kublai’s growing court. In the distance, you might glimpse a patch of white – not sheep, but the emperor’s white horses, by the thousand. The tracks converge to make what another poet, Yang Yunfu, called ‘the broad imperial road’ leading to the city through a mass of round felt tents, horses, traders and food stalls.

  While clouds cover the Main Street sun,

  Winds blow clear the North Gate sky.

  A thousand gutters turn white snow to ice,

  And ten thousand cook stoves raise blue smoke.

  Beyond is the main entry, an arch as high as the wall, fringed by bulwarks, topped by a guardhouse with banners waving in the breeze, and a huge wooden door. Street-traders offer textiles, food and drink. You and your horsemen clatter across a moat, then on over paving stones through the entry, a tunnel of 24 metres (you can still pace it today, as I did). A road leads straight through a line of mud-brick houses for 600 metres to a second wall, a second gate. That’s the Imperial City, where the emperor, his family and his retainers l
ive in wooden houses tiled in the traditional bright blues, greens and yellows you saw from the plain, their eaves ending in circular tiles in the form of dragons, birds and animal heads. And there, stretched out on a brick-faced platform, stands the ornate two-storey building with the roof you saw from afar: Kublai’s palace, the Imperial Pavilion of Great Peace.

  The palace stood on top of the 50-metre-long platform of rammed earth, with two wings on either side embracing a courtyard, and access from below by wooden staircases. Yes, wood, because no stones have been found nearby, which means the whole palace was made of wood, like a temple, except for its tiled roof. Wei’s words recalled its glory: ‘We think it had over 220 rooms. It was a place of celebration. For instance we know they had races around the palace, with the winner being awarded a prize by the emperor. And at the full moon there were parties here, because the moon is round, perfect, harmonious, bright like Kublai’s dynasty.’

  Much has been revealed by Wei’s work. But much is still uncertain. That marble pillar, for example, which Wei found not far from the Imperial Pavilion. Perhaps it was part of the Crystal Palace, so called because it had glass windows. Perhaps it was part of a ‘marble wall’, which Rashid al-Din mentions, but which, if it ever existed, has vanished, along with much of Xanadu’s stonework. Wei even threw out the suggestion that the Imperial Palace of Great Peace has been attached to the wrong building. Only more detailed work will solve these mysteries.

  And somewhere in the parkland in the city’s northern section was the extraordinary structure which is the only reality in Coleridge’s surreal poem. There was no sacred river called Alph (though there is a river called the Shangdian, ‘Lightning’), no caverns measureless to man (this is rolling grassland, after all), no incense-trees, and the Pacific (450 kilometres away) is no less sunny than any other sea.

  But there was a stately pleasure dome, and we can track the references from dome to Coleridge. His source, which he had been reading when he fell into an opium-induced sleep, was a seventeenth-century book of travels by Samuel Purchas quoting Marco Polo’s eyewitness account, available in English since 1579. Marco describes what he calls the Cane Palace in detail:

  In the middle place of that park thus surrounded with a wall, where there is a most beautiful grove, the great Kaan has made for his dwelling a great palace or loggia which is all of canes, upon beautiful pillars gilded and varnished, and on top of each pillar is a great dragon all gilded which winds the tail round the pillar and holds up the ceiling with the head . . . it is all gilded inside and out and worked and painted with beasts and with birds very cunningly worked. The roof of this palace is also all of canes gilded and varnished so well and so thickly that no water can hurt it.

  It stood in the summer months, when Kublai was in residence, and was placed in storage the rest of the time.

  By ‘cane’ Marco meant bamboo, a word that did not yet exist in any European language. Bamboo does not grow in north China, but it does in Yunnan, which Kublai himself had conquered in 1253, three years before he started work on Xanadu. Bamboo is superb for building with – lightweight, many times stronger than oak, easy to cut, long-lasting. A bamboo palace would neatly show off Kublai’s new acquisition to steppe-dwelling northerners.

  What shape and size was this ‘great palace or loggia’? Marco does not mention a dome, but that’s what it had to be. Bamboo is a tree, and like all trees it tapers. Placed side by side, thin ends together, bamboo stems fall naturally into a circle. Marco gives the dimensions of the poles – 15 paces in length, 3–4 ‘hands’ in width. These, he says, were split lengthwise and overlapped to form long, semicircular tiles. A computerized reconstruction suggests there were 840 of them.fn5 With just a single, uniform item, Kublai had the elements of a circular roof some 30 metres across. Columns, decorated with dragons, supported the domed roof. Such a structure would act as an aerofoil, like the wing of a plane, with tremendous lift – 24 tonnes in a gale – counteracted, as Marco says, by 200 silken cords and nails of some sort (probably wooden) through the bamboo tiles. The whole structure was sealed against rain with lacquer, in the Chinese style.

  This is an informed guess, leaving many problems that will be solved only if the Cane Palace could be built for real. But assuming this virtual reconstruction is correct, the palace’s purpose becomes clear. It was a symbolic centre-point for royal occasions. Xanadu was made to bridge two worlds, Mongolia and China. But the city itself was more Chinese than Mongol, because Mongolians had no tradition of building cities. I believe that Kublai wanted a symbol of his commitment to both cultures. On the one hand, the materials and building skills were thoroughly Chinese; on the other, it has the look of a Mongolian tent, a ger. It was round, with something like a smoke-hole, and crucially it was temporary, standing only for the summer months; solid as a Chinese building, but movable as a Mongolian tent.

  It seems that Kublai’s Cane Palace, the original Pleasure Dome, could have served a unique purpose, which made it the most original creation of its time.

  The emerging capital, half Mongol and half Chinese in conception, was still too Chinese for traditional Mongols. Back in Karakorum, there were those who were jealous of Kublai’s success and muttered that he was getting above himself, too ambitious by half, dreaming of his own empire by rivalling the true capital. And far too rich. Could he perhaps be taking for himself some of the tax receipts that should by rights be coming to Karakorum? Mönkhe heard the talk, and wondered if there was any truth in it. In 1257, he sent two tax inspectors to audit Kublai’s officials. They found fault, listed 142 breaches of regulations, accused Chinese officials, even had some executed, and, with Mönkhe’s authority, took over the collection of all taxes in Kublai’s estates. What could Kublai do? He might have objected, fought back, rebelled. Instead, wisely, he conciliated, appealing to Mönkhe brother to brother. It worked. The two embraced in tears, Kublai all contrition, innocence and loyalty, Mönkhe offering forgiveness and renewed trust.

  The fact was that the two brothers needed each other. Kublai depended on Mönkhe’s support, and Mönkhe wanted Kublai to solve a problem, created by Genghis himself thirty years previously. He had been so impressed by the aged Daoist monk Changchun, the one summoned from China all the way to Afghanistan, that he had granted Changchun’s sect freedom from taxation. Daoists, once the junior religion, had revelled in their new-found wealth and status. Wealth being a wonderful source of inspiration, Daoist sects had multiplied. There were now eighty-one of them, according to one account, with ascetics at one end of the scale and at the other fortune-tellers who were hardly more than hooligans, happy to rip paintings and statues from Buddhist temples.

  Buddhists objected, equally violently. They were much strengthened by an influx of priests from Tibet, for reasons that will become clear in Chapter 16. By 1258, the Buddhists were keen to have their revenge on the Daoists. The row had to stop because otherwise there would be no stability in north China, and no secure base from which to undertake the much more important matter of the invasion of Song. Kublai was the key.

  In early 1258 Kublai convened a conference of Daoist and Buddhist leaders to knock their heads together. To Xanadu came 300 Buddhists and 200 Daoists, held apart by the presence of 200 court officials and Confucian scholars. Kublai was in the chair.

  The Daoist case rested on two documents, both of which claimed that Laozi (Lao-tsu), the Daoist sage, had undergone eighty-one incarnations, in one of which he was known as the Buddha. Therefore, they contended, Buddhism was actually a sort of sub-Daoism. It was an insulting idea, made worse by the Dao agenda, summarized in their catchphrase hua-hu (‘Convert the barbarians!’). What they did not appreciate was that Kublai was already in the process of becoming a Buddhist, having been inducted by his mentor, a young Tibetan priest known as Phags-pa, about whom we will hear a lot later.

  In fact, he did not need to bring his prejudice to bear. The Daoists were not used to debate and came over as charlatans. Phags-pa cross-questioned the senior
Daoist on the authenticity of their main ‘Convert the barbarians’ text, with its claim that their founder, Laozi, had died in India, not China. Why did Sima Jian, the great first-century historian, not mention this interesting claim or the document asserting it? Obviously (he concluded) because Laozi actually died in China and the document was a forgery. The Daoists, lacking both references and arguments, were left looking foolish. Kublai offered them one last chance. He challenged them to call upon ghosts and demons, and prove their magical powers by performing supernatural feats. Naturally, they demonstrated no powers at all.

  Kublai delivered his judgement. Buddhism was in, Daoism out. Seventeen leading Daoists were singled out for ritual humiliation, having their heads shaved; all copies of the fraudulent texts were to be destroyed; and 237 temples restored to the Buddhists. But he was wise enough not to be vindictive, for he knew he could not afford to alienate Dao’s many adherents. There would be no executions, merely a return to the status quo earlier in the century, before Changchun’s sudden elevation thirty-one years before.

  The debate sealed Kublai’s return to favour. He had imposed peace with firm executive action, displaying intelligence and moderation. Everyone approved, and he was all set for his next big tasks: the creation of Beijing as the seat of his government, and then the invasion of the south.

  fn1 Dolon Nur, Seven Lakes, as it is in Mongolian.

  fn2 Check it out on Google Earth, 42°21'37"N, 116°11'06"E.