by Tim Symonds
I took out the first edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland which Holmes’s brother Mycroft had given me. It fell open on the book-marked page:
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’
***
General Yuán had assigned a young Mandarin by the name of Wang Feng to meet me on my arrival and take me to my quarters where Holmes was already billeted. Wang was waiting just inside the Ch’ien-Men Gate. We greeted each other formally. Every whiff of air told me why he had chosen to stand almost obscured by a row of young Pittosporum trees on sale, all in full flower. Their perfume helped to mask the overpowering stench of the roadway.
Wang Feng presented a slight and elegant figure, approaching thirty years of age, hardly five feet five in height, with a well-shaped head, large brown eyes and rather drooping eyelids and a high nose. The high brow indicated well developed intellectual qualities. The whole gave him an aesthetic air. At my bidding he clambered aboard the conveyance and we set off. It was a relief to be accompanied by someone who spoke such excellent English.
Wang was, he told me, a jiancha yushi, an Investigating Censor, district magistrate, detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one. He claimed descent from the great Judge Bao but despite this his entry into public life had been slow. He was only on the first rung, his duties confined to directing locust-exterminating or purchasing sacrificial animals, ‘and destroying old paper money’ In time he could progress from minor to ‘chung’ - ordinary: ‘Purifying troops, salt control, inspecting frontier passes, supervising trade in tea and horses. That sort of thing.’
Apropos of nothing I could discern, Wang added, ‘I am a follower of Han Fei.’
‘I would be happy to meet him during my stay,’ I replied. ‘Can you arrange it?’
His sphinx-like countenance showed the faintest shadow of a smile.
‘It might be difficult,’ came the reply. ‘He died twenty-one centuries ago.’
Behind the city wall, temples fragrant with incense awaited us. Lacquer-screened verandahs overlooked pools of lotus flowers. We passed edifices with exotic names - Rain Flower Pavilion, Precious Moonlight Tower, Palace of Accumulated Elegance, Hall of Protecting Harmony, Studio of Eternal Spring - each finished with the seven preciosities: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, ruby, emerald and coral.
We moved ever-deeper into the teeming streets. The Chinese call the Forbidden City ‘Tse-Kin-Cheng’, the Purple City. Formerly only purple mortar was permitted in building it. The colour of the roof tiles was strictly stipulated, yellow for the royal palaces, green for the princes, and grey for all the others. The courtyards and the narrow alleys were filled with cotton-clad men and women, the men whether Manchu or Han dressed alike in the Manchu robe, the Manchu women distinguished from their Han sisterhood by distinctive hairstyles, platform shoes and long robes. A jumble of blue- and yellow-tiled palaces, pavilions and apartments formed the inner precincts.
Once inside the Great Within, I was struck by the large number of eunuchs with their peculiar walk, leaning slightly forward, legs close together, taking short, mincing steps, with the toes turned outward. Rendered sexually impotent by mutilation or removal of the external genitals, they served as palace menials, harem watch-dogs, and spies for rulers in most of the ancient world kingdoms. Whether the odd walk was a physical necessity or imposed upon eunuchs as a rule of conduct to denote their station Wang could not answer. A small gaggle of them ran alongside us, eyeing me, the younger ones freshly culled from the far provinces seeing a ‘big-nose’ foreigner for the first time.
Wang pointed at a small hut just outside a gate.
‘That’s the Western Gate of the Tzu Chin Palace. Where every one of these ‘crows’...’ he pointed at the excited gaggle, ‘...were emasculated. That’s where they became eunuchs.’
He turned to observe my expression.
‘I can take you to the next cutting, if you like. There’s always a small paying audience. As a doctor, you might be interested in the process.’
With a smile, he added, ‘We have greatly refined the operation since the Egyptians. They treated the wound with ashes and hot oil. We bandage the candidate’s stomach and upper thighs to reduce blood flow to his genitalia, then we wash his private parts three times with hot pepper-water as an anaesthetic and settle him on a heated couch. Very civilized, you see.’
‘And then?’ I asked with professional concern.
‘Apprentices hold him firmly around the waist and thighs and the knifer approaches him with a small, curve-bladed knife. The candidate is asked, ‘Hou huei bu hou huei?’ - ‘Will you regret or not regret this?’. Upon the young man replying he will not regret it, the knife does its work. Both the penis and the scrotum are severed. A plug is placed in the urethra. No drinking of any sort is allowed for three days. Then the plug is removed. If urine flows from the small hole in the wound, all is well. The operation has been a success. Otherwise he dies.’
It was also vital for the eunuch to keep his organs (his ‘precious’). They would be placed in his coffin at his death in the hope of hoodwinking the gods of the underworld into believing he was a complete man: otherwise he was doomed to appear in the next world as a she-mule.
Wang added, ‘Imagine. All that for just six taels.’
He pointed at his head.
‘Six taels is what I pay to keep the front of my skull shaved and my queue braided.’
***
I absorbed the sights and sounds with the ear of a newcomer or a blind man as we travelled deeper into the near-mythical city. The clack-clack-clack of a hollow bamboo announced a foot-doctor, the rattling huan tou a barber, a charcoal-seller’s drums. We passed an elderly man with a few blue threads in his queue. At my look of enquiry Wang whispered, ‘Recently widowed’.
By contrast with the eunuchs the themes of fertility and the production of sons proliferated throughout, the palaces decorated with bats, and persimmons, peaches and cranes, motifs signifying fecundity, longevity, harmony and happiness.
My guide pointed ahead at a temple on the far side of a large bazaar.
‘Your quarters,’ he said. ‘Remember its name - The Temple of the Myriad Years. Even those born in Peking get lost. That little hut next to it is a menial house where the eunuch guarding your doors will stay.’
To my delight, Holmes was awaiting my arrival, standing at the front o four temple accommodation. We arranged for Wang to return in the afternoon.
The moment we were alone I asked, ‘Well, Holmes, have you foiled a dastardly plot? If so, let me have a few days...’ I held up the Aeroscope camera, ‘...to see the sights. Then we can start on our journey home.’
Holmes’s face fell at my enquiry.
‘Not the jot or tittle of a plot, Watson,’ came the despondent reply. ‘So far my time has been wasted. It seems unimaginable anyone could get near the Emperor or the Empress Dowager with murder in mind. There are more than 3,000 eunuchs in the Forbidden City, united only in each being as greedy, jealous, manipulative, conniving, violent and selfish as the other. They know they will receive a vast reward in jade and baubles for raising the alarm. I wager every one of them is utterly untrustworthy, only out for themselves, incapable of loyalty even to those who grease their wretched palms, but 6,000 such eyes form a formidable barrier against any assassin.’
***
Dinner was brought to our Temple rooms on platters sealed in yellow silk wrappings, allegedly the left-overs from the Empress-Dowager’s evening meal. It was said her food was served solely on silverware because poisons react visibly on its surface. We w
ere offered deer’s sinews, shark fin, shrimp eggs, fish brains, birds-nest soup, birds’ tongues, and what I discovered - too late - to be dog-meat. Macaroni was kept boiling hot on chafing-dishes on side-tables. A pearly white rice from Xiaozhan appeared daily on the lunch menu, accompanied by a vase of amber-coloured sweet wine made from glutinous rice, a speciality of the Chin-hwa district. We washed the meals down with a sort of blancmange of lotus-root flour and a jar each of special water from the Jade Spring Hills.
After breakfast the following morning, Holmes and I were sharing a pipe when a knock at the door signalled the presence of an Imperial messenger clutching a golden scroll. The High Court and Summer Palace had noted my arrival.
‘Written in the First Hand with the Vermillion Brush,’ Holmes observed.
The emissary’s hand moved puppet-like to unroll the springy parchment. We were to meet the Empress-Dowager and the Kuang-hsü Emperor at 10 o’clock at the Nei Wu Fu, the pavilion of the Imperial Household.
An hour later, each suitably attired in formal dress of frock coat and top hat, we walked to the waiting palanquin. Holmes stayed silent, replying to any question with a non-committal nod. I gazed out at the passing scene of compradors in long gowns of grey pongee silk, literary men in white grasscloth gowns, Chinese and western society women wearing hats of rice straw or blue harebell straw trimmed with costly ostrich plumes, velvet bows, osprey feathers and lace.
Soon we found ourselves among an array of flamboyant foreign dignitaries going in the same direction, carried by tasselled, braided, violet-cushioned sedan chairs of blue silk. All made way for the Acknowledged Merit in the person of a Mandarin with eight bearers and a crowd of mounted retainers, the latter holding bamboos to beat back the crowds and three-pronged forks for catching thieves by their clothing.
***
The Empress Dowager’s lair was a vast ensemble of palaces, lakes and gardens covering an area of 860 acres, almost five times the size of the Forbidden City, all meticulously sculptured by thousands of labourers into the most beautiful and harmonious views the human mind could conceive. The vermillion walls of the temples and palaces were built entirely of wood, with yellow-glazed tile roofs. Names and shapes and colours all had meanings. Yellow symbolized the sun and by extension Royalty.
We descended from our carriage. The corridors were crowded with functionaries in Court dress, civilians glittering with Orders, officers in uniform. A servant led us to an ante-chamber so opulent that it would put to shame the waiting-rooms of many of the Sovereigns of Europe.
Handshakes are an alien custom to the Chinese. Chinese and Manchu officials greet each other by clasping their hands together in front of their chests with a slight bow of the head. The full kowtow, kneeling and bowing so low as to have one’s head touching the ground, was expected for imperial audiences. A functionary informed us foreigners could go on one knee before the Ch’ing emperor, as we might before our own King. It was different for the Chinese, he explained. Neither the ‘Everlasting Lord’ (the young Emperor) nor Empress Dowager Cixi ever got into a motor-car because a chauffeur could not drive it while kneeling on both knees before them as was the obligatory custom.
We walked thirty paces into Their Majesties’ presence. Those few steps transported us from the present into a scene the mirror image of ‘The Arabian Thousand Nights And One Night’ where genies, bahamuts, magic carpets and magic lamps abounded.
The Emperor and the Empress Dowager sat at opposite ends of a low table on a dais. I looked at the woman who swayed ‘All under Heaven’. This first sight was mesmeric and overwhelming. In the Qitou manner she wore her hair - ‘Hair of the Manchu nobility’ - parted in the middle, braided and knotted into a bun to form the base of the headdress. An elaborate swaying crown studded with precious stones and jewels was held in place by gold pins and filigree - cat’s eyes, lapis lazuli from the Sar-i Sang mines in faraway Afghanistan, coral and turquoise and pearls from the Sunmgari River, diamonds from Africa.
The gown of Imperial yellow reached from the neck to the floor in the graceful Manchu fashion. It was fastened from the right shoulder to the hem with jade buttons, and brocaded so extensively with Wistaria vine in realistic colours that the yellow was scarcely visible. The Manchu shoes were richly jewelled and adorned with a hanging fringe of pearls. The stilt-like soles added six inches to her slight height. Under constant surveillance by eunuchs as numerous as the flies around the Forbidden City’s open sewers, she was hemmed in by endlessly conspiratorial mandarins and princes and ubiquitous censors ready to denounce anyone for a bribe. Her amiability was the more unexpected in the face of the heavy duties of court life, from which there was no respite. Grand Council meetings began at 4am.
On my way to Peking I had visited the southern province of Anhui where ‘The Venerable Ancestress’ was born some seventy years earlier. Her father Huizheng was a Manchu officer in the Blue Bordered Banner regiment. The future Empress Dowager was named Yehonala and later nicknamed ‘the Orchid Lady’. Who could have known the young woman from the Manchu Yehenara clan was destined to rule over the Middle Kingdom for 50 years, the supreme female overlord of a feudal society? Without the most extraordinary twists and turns of fate, rather than here, she might have lived out her life, unknown, in the provinces.
A man with the wrinkled face and skin of old parchment stood behind her in the shadows. It was the Chief Eunuch Li Lien-ying. By reputation he was a compulsive intriguer. When he spoke his voice was low and pleasant, his manners insinuating and elegant. To emphasize his importance to her, the Empress Dowager had in public presented him with the jade ‘ju-yi’, symbol of Royal power. He frequently wore the Dragon robes sacred to the use of the sovereign. He styled himself ‘Lord of nine thousand years’ - only one degree lower than the Emperor, the ‘Lord of ten thousand years’.
Li Lien-ying’s corruptly-gained wealth was enormous. He owned farms, pawn-shops and lucrative money-changing establishments. Four years later when his obituary appeared in The Times, Peking bankers estimated his worth at over two millions Sterling from the corrupt sale of official posts. On his death the apartments of this former cobbler’s apprentice were found stacked to the ceilings with dragon robes and tribute silk.
I turned my gaze to the ‘Son of Heaven’. He was clutching a jade piece to cool his palms. The sight of him roused my professional concern. He was pale and listless, with a glazed expression and a troublesome irritation of the throat. The symptoms spoke of terrible events in earlier years, giving rise to neurasthenia, the equivalent of the shell-shock often observed but seldom addressed after savage and unsuccessful military campaigns. The nostrums prepared for him by his Chinese doctors with their reverential talk of vapours and occult influences would most likely mirror the curatives offered by mediaeval European physicians.
It was then I realized the Empress Dowager was beckoning to me. Nervously I stepped forward. To my surprise she pushed away her attendants and moved a few paces from the table.
In English she said, ‘Dr. Watson, welcome to my country. I have heard much about your chronicles. They are known all across the world. I hope I can be candid with you. It is my fate that those who hate me are more articulate than those who love me. They revile me and black out my accomplishments. I feel compelled to give utterance to my thoughts which you may take away, just as a bird leaves the hand that holds it and flies to a far off place. The destiny of the Middle Kingdom has been in my hands, and mine alone, for nearly fifty years. My death cannot be far distant. When you return to England I want you to tell your people the truth about me.’
With ‘We must talk, alone. I shall send for you,’ she fell silent. Her eyes strayed towards the seated Emperor. Our brief, unexpected meeting was over. I stepped away, bowing. A hand touched my shoulder. Next to me, smiling widely, stood the General.
‘Magnificent, isn’t she?’ he whispered.
He was, he told me, promoting
the idea of declaring Tibet a Province of China the following November, to celebrate the Empress Dowager’s birthday.
‘I think the Old Buddha would like that,’ he remarked in jocular fashion. ‘After all, thirty years ago your Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India.’
***
That evening General Yuán and I dined together to discuss my findings and recommendations ahead of filing my final report. He held, he assured me, a very high opinion of Great Britain. Our ceremonial courtesies were ‘refined and civilized’, and we English ‘With our hands reaching high and our feet travelling far, we rise up like eagles and glare like tigers...’.
The main course over, his expression became serious.
‘On the subject of our Royal masters and mistresses, how is Sir Sherlock progressing? Has he discovered the existence of a plot?’
No, I told him. I repeated my comrade’s words, he had discovered ‘not a jot or tittle’ of a plot against Their Majesties.
‘In fact Holmes is becoming restless,’ I continued. ‘His bees are calling him home.’
Yuán looked relieved.
‘If the greatest detective in the whole of England sees no sign of a plot, I think we must assume the rumour-mongers were wrong.’
He said he would inform Their Majesties. He had no doubt they would agree to us setting off on the long journey home to England ‘but your departure must take place when Her Imperial Majesty has consulted the Court of Astronomers.’
The date must be of fortunate omen. That could take some time, he cautioned.
***
Back at my quarters the now redundant evening meal awaited me, a dish of lotus roots shredded and sweetened together with cabbage stewed with cucumbers and ginger. With the prospect of several days on our hands until spirits sanctioned our departure I opened a make-shift daily surgery in the cooler morning hours. The Temple’s only available consultancy room seemed to be a storage area for clocks. There were clocks everywhere, mounted or standing alone at every part of the hall, eighty-five in number. Within ten or fifteen minutes of every hour they chimed and played airs in eighty-five different ways.