Marco Polo

by Laurence Bergreen

  A complementary passage addresses the female orgasm.

  The Yellow Emperor said, “How can one know that the woman is near orgasm?” The Plain Girl said: “Woman has the five signs and the five desires, and moreover the ten ways of moving her body during the act. The five signs are as follows: First, she grows red in the face. Then the man can slowly press near. Second, her nipples become hard, her nose moist. Then the man may slowly insert his penis. Third, her throat becomes dry, and she sucks back her saliva. Then the man may begin to thrust slowly. Fourth, her vagina becomes moist. Then he may sink his penis deeper. Fifth, her vaginal emissions drop between her buttocks. Then the man may move freely.”

  The Plain Girl was nothing if not outspoken.

  “By the five desires one can judge women’s response. First, if her thoughts desire the union her breathing will become irregular. Second, if her vagina desires the union her nostrils will distend and her mouth open. Third, if her vital essence wants to be stirred she will move her body up and down. Fourth, if she wants to fulfill her desire, the liquid emitted from her vagina will soak her clothes. Fifth, if she is about to reach orgasm, she will stretch her body and close her eyes.”

  The Plain Girl also suggested provocative positions for sexual intercourse, with names like the Turning Dragon (“the woman is turned onto her back”), the Tiger’s Tread (“the woman leans forward on her hands and knees with her buttocks raised”), and the Monkey’s Attack (“the man raises her legs until her knees touch her breasts and her buttocks and the lower part of her back hang in the air”)—this last said to cure or prevent a hundred ills. And so on through other positions, including Overlapping Fish Scales and the Fluttering Phoenix.

  Even in the City of Heaven, sexual expression had its limits. Kissing, considered an intimate part of sexual intercourse, was strictly forbidden in public. Male homosexuality was discouraged, though its female counterpart was tolerated, and even expected. The underpinnings of this seeming inequity had to do with the Chinese concept of yin and yang, female and male essence, and the emphasis on preserving the all-important but limited yang. It was considered necessary for the male to guard against excessive ejaculation, which would deplete his sexual energy. Prolonged arousal was held to be preferable to simple ejaculation. In this scheme of things, male homosexuality was judged a waste of yang, and thus out of harmony with the balance of nature.

  AS THEY ATTEMPTED to exert social control over Quinsai, the Mongols sought to restrain sexual expression among the populace, especially women. T’ao Tsung-i, a Yüan dynasty chronicler, sternly cautioned against relying on the questionable advice contained in “Art of the Bedchamber,” an ancient but still-popular anthology of Chinese sexual practices and philosophy. He identified no fewer than nine types of professional women who wreaked havoc on a household: the Buddhist nun, the Taoist nun, the female astrologer, the female go-between, the sorceress, the female thief, the female quack, and lastly the midwife. “Few are the households that, having admitted one of them, will not be ravaged by fornication and robbery,” he warned. “The men who can guard against those, keeping them away as if they were snakes and scorpions, those men shall come near the method for keeping their household clean.”

  Pamphlets specifying various types of scandalous behavior that corrupted a family’s moral standing circulated among households. The guides warned against the hazards of “violent debauch,” or rape; “crazed debauch” “predestined debauch,” or romantic love; “proclaiming debauch,” or boasting; and “idle debauch.” Even the production of erotica, a staple of Chinese intimate life, earned censure. Only prostitutes escaped the new wave of censorship invading the city; their trade, if anything, flourished in the face of it.

  If Marco was aware of these sexual politics, he did not refer to them in his account. Nor did he mention that other prominent feature of Chinese domestic life, foot binding. Skeptics have cited its omission as evidence that he did not visit China, or at least Quinsai. There are reasonable explanations for the lapse. Women with bound feet remained sequestered indoors, and Marco may not have been aware of them, or of the custom. Furthermore, the practice may have fallen out of favor during his time in Quinsai. The women he did observe carefully—courtesans at the public baths and on West Lake—had to be ambulatory to perform their tasks. The Venetian did take note of Quinsai’s many eunuchs—who occupied prominent places in the government bureaucracy—but only in passing.

  MARCO PREFERRED to focus on public affairs, especially Kublai Khan’s systematic approach to the occupancy of Quinsai, and the harvesting of its wealth. “After he had reduced to his obedience all the province of Mangi [Quinsai], the Great Khan has divided it into nine parts,” Marco observes, “so that each is a great kingdom. But…all these kings are there for the Great Khan and in this way, that they make each year the report of each kingdom separately to the factors of the great lord, of the revenue, and of all things. In this city of Quinsai dwells one of these nine kings, and is lord of more than a hundred and forty cities, all very great and rich.” Yet the king coexisted with the occupying Mongol forces, which seemed to Marco a model of restraint. He points out they “are from Cathay, good men at arms, for the Tartars are horsemen and do not stay except near the cities that are not in marshy places, but in those situated in firm and dry places where they can take exercise on horseback.”

  Along with them, Marco was a highly appreciative, sophisticated, and well-intentioned intruder, but an intruder nonetheless; yet he expressed no remorse about helping himself to the Mongol spoils of conquest, only wide-eyed appreciation of Chinese culture. He became yet another invader conquered by his more sophisticated and civilized subjects.

  DAILY LIFE IN QUINSAI, although punctuated by pleasure, left little time for rest. The giant city began stirring well before dawn. “About four or five in the morning,” an observer noted,

  when bells of the Buddhist and Taoist monasteries have rung, hermit-monks come down from the hills surrounding the town and go about the streets of Quinsai beating their strips of iron or their wooden resonators in the form of a fish, announcing everywhere the dawn. They call out what the weather is like: “It is cloudy,” “It is raining,” “The sky is clear.” In wind, in rain, in snow, or in freezing cold, they go out just the same. They also announce any court reception to be held that day, whether a grand or a little or an ordinary audience. In this way, the officials in the various government departments, the officers of the watch, and the soldiers whose names are on the list for the watch-towers, are all kept informed and hurry off to their offices or their posts. As for the monk announcers, they go round the town collecting alms on the first and fifteenth of each month as well as on feast days.

  To a Venetian, the scene was familiar, though reenacted on a grand scale.

  Audiences with King Facfur, in the days before the Mongols sent him into exile, took place at six in the morning, or even earlier. By seven, the day was considered well advanced, and the sound of drums reverberated throughout the city, announcing the time. Noise was constant; bureaucrats’ offices came to life with the harsh ringing of a gong or the startling ping of wooden clappers. Any government employee who was tardy or absent would be beaten.

  Although Marco refers to the phenomenon only in passing, printed books and other written materials abounded in Quinsai, almost two hundred years before the invention of movable type in Europe. Movable type existed in and around Quinsai in many forms, including clay, wood, and tin. Wood-block printing, already in use for more than three hundred years in China, was widely dispersed; it was employed especially for Buddhist sutras and other sacred texts. Because calligraphy is an integral part of Chinese arts and letters, and the Chinese written language at the time contained about seven thousand characters, handwritten manuscripts flourished side by side with books and pamphlets.

  Drama thrived, as did poetry, which appeared in public places as if composed by the hand of nature. One popular stanza, credited to Tai Fu-ku, reflected mournfully o
n the Mongol occupation of this splendid city:

  Athwart this ridge where down below the rolling river runs,

  My house in the clouds looks out over mile after mile of brooding sadness.

  How bitterly I wish that mountains blocked my wandering gaze.

  For northwards, far as the eye can reach, our conquered land seems endless.

  Another poet, Hsieh Ao, brooded on the sight of his beloved city occupied by alien invaders in his poem “On Visiting the Former Imperial Palace at Quinsai (After the Mongol Conquest)”:

  Like an ancient ruin, the grass grows high: gone are the guards and the gatekeepers.

  Fallen towers and crumbling palaces desolate my soul.

  Under the eaves of the long-ago hall fly in and out the swallows

  But within: Silence. The chatter of cock and hen and parrots is heard no more.

  The abundance of printed material—of poetry and sacred texts and almanacs and guides to sexual fulfillment, of Confucian philosophy, of ghost tales and legal codes—eluded Marco’s usually observant eye. He offered some cursory observations concerning Chinese dialects, drawing analogies to European tongues, but, at the same time, he felt that Chinese was alien to him, despite his important official position in Quinsai. “I tell you that those of this city have a language for themselves,” he says. “Through the whole province of Mangi [Quinsai], one speech is preserved and one manner of letters; yet in tongue there is difference by districts, as if, among laymen, between Lombards, Provençals, Frenchmen,…so that in the province of Mangi the people of any district can understand the idiom of the people of the next.”

  In market squares, shopkeepers opened for the day’s business, setting out their goods to lure buyers; bazaars came to life as merchants hawked their wares, or stood by as silent sentries of commerce. And on the main thoroughfare known as the Imperial Way, tiny cafés served pungent concoctions such as deep-fried tripe, aromatic chunks of duck and goose, and freshly steamed pancakes prepared in dark, makeshift kitchens. The slaughterhouses providing them with meat had been busy since three o’clock in the morning. Crowds jammed the squares to sample the wares of street peddlers, who offered hot towels for the face and rejuvenating pills for the circulation.

  By late afternoon, the pace of work in Quinsai slowed and the day drew to a close. Officials quietly streamed to their homes. The late afternoon and early evening were given over to reading, to composing literary works (something of an obsession in this hyper-refined city), playing chess, boating on West Lake, and sampling the delights of the courtesans and singing girls. These houses of pleasure stayed open until the fourth drumbeat reverberated through the dim streets: two o’clock in the morning. A few smaller markets and noodle shops did business long into the night, as Quinsai slowed but never slept. Night watchmen, ever vigilant against the twin evils of thieves and fire, patrolled the streets, but excuses from this duty were so common that the roster of absentees was called simply “the list of stomach pains.”

  Unnoticed by Marco, but crucial for understanding the tempo of city life, is the fact that Quinsai’s work “week” lasted ten days, followed by a single day of rest. A city official had the right to observe but one vacation with his family every three years; it varied in length from a fortnight to a lunar month.

  The only real respite in this arduous schedule occurred when an official’s mother or father died. According to Confucian custom, the bereaved family member took a mandatory sabbatical of three years’ duration, devoted solely to personal pursuits such as calligraphy, painting, and literature, all intended to stimulate reflection on the profound changes taking place in his life and to prepare him to take his place in nature’s inflexible order.

  Ordinary workers did not have the benefit of even these vacations; they toiled constantly throughout their lives.

  FESTIVALS afforded relief from the press of work and the obligations of family, and the greatest of all was the Chinese New Year. Within the lunar calendar, the date ranges from January 15 to February 15, and the celebration lasts the better part of a month. A snowfall during preparations for the New Year was taken by all as a good omen; the leisured few fashioned snow lions for all to admire and rode on horseback around West Lake to admire the spectral scenes of snow and ice. In kitchens throughout the city, special rice dishes were prepared to propitiate domestic deities; the feasting ended with a concoction of red beans, which was shared even with pet dogs and cats.

  In the commercial environment of Quinsai, shopkeepers, especially pharmacists, tried to benefit from the holiday. They decorated their stores with colorful streamers, painted images of heroic figures from Chinese folklore and history, and paper horses. To attract customers to their establishments, they distributed little packages of good-luck charms, while in the chilly streets, the ubiquitous peddlers worked the crowds, pushing a popular decorative thistle and firecrackers made of small shafts of bamboo filled with gunpowder (yet another technology unknown in the West). Even the beggars put on a show, impersonating popular deities and beating gongs.

  The celebrations began to build to a climax on New Year’s Eve, when housekeepers swept and washed their doorsteps, took down last year’s images of deities, and affixed new wooden amulets to the doors and red streamers above the lintel. At night, the occupants withdrew to their quarters to offer flowers, incense, and food to the gods in hopes of having a good year. These domestic customs may have been shrouded from Marco’s view, but everyone in Quinsai was aware of the huge New Year procession, which started at the Imperial Palace, with masked soldiers carrying wooden swords, as well as flags of yellow, red, black, white, and green, all of them fluttering in the damp winter air. The procession wound its way through the broader streets of the city, seeking to replace the evil influences of the outgoing year with the virtues and hopes of the incoming one.

  On New Year’s Day, King Facfur burned incense and prayed fervently for a good harvest, peace, and prosperity; delegates from every corner of his realm came to pay their respects and offer tributes.

  Still more days of observance followed, enough to occupy two full weeks, until the Festival of Lanterns began, signaling the real commencement of the New Year. For three glorious days and nights, gluttony and drunkenness ruled, while those citizens who were able to do so competed to acquire or make spectacular lanterns. The most highly prized came from Suchow; they were multicolored, round, and decorated with illustrations of animals, flowers, people, and landscapes, and were more than four feet in diameter. Other types of lanterns were fashioned from beads and feathers, gold and silver, even pearls and jade. Some, operated by a small stream of water, slowly turned; others resembled the boats gliding across West Lake.

  As the festivities dragged on, drinking increased, and the revelers ended by donning white garments for nocturnal strolls in honor of the New Moon. By dawn, the public clamor had died away and the streets were empty. In the wake of the celebration, a few scavengers armed with modest lanterns combed the squares and avenues in search of lost hairpins, jewelry, and other valuable items.

  The New Year celebrations lasted even longer in the Imperial Palace. Workmen erected a brilliantly decorated scaffolding 150 feet high to hold musicians on one level, and athletes and gymnasts on another, just below. The women of the palace danced with young eunuchs wearing turbans. After the show, the palace women—that is, courtesans and serving women—made a mad dash for the peddlers, who were delighted to sell their goods at a large premium.

  IN THE CITY OF HEAVEN, astrology ruled, and the rigorous Chinese bureaucracy applied it ruthlessly and systematically. “As soon as the infant is born in this province, the father or the mother has the day and the minute and the hour that he was born written, and in what sign and in what planet, so that each knows his nativity,” Marco relates. With these files on record, any inhabitant of the city consulted an astrologer before setting off on a long journey or undertaking a betrothal. For once, the skeptical Marco seems impressed with the expertise of the astrolog
ers, acknowledging them as “wise in their art and diabolical enchantment, so that they really tell the men many things to which they give much faith.”

  For Marco, the prevalence of astrologers in Quinsai offered a rare glimpse into the inner lives of the city’s inhabitants. He concludes that “the men of the province of Mangi are more passionate than other people, and for anger and grief some very often kill themselves. For it shall happen that some one of these shall give a blow to some other or pull out his hair or inflict some injury or harm upon him, and the offender may be so powerful and great that he is powerless to take vengeance; the sufferer of the injury will hang himself from excess of grief at the door of the offender by night and die, doing this to him for the greater blame and contempt…. And this will be the greater reason why he hung himself, namely that this rich and powerful man should honor him at death in order that he may be likewise honored in the other world.”

  MORE THAN ANY other feature of the City of Heaven, King Facfur’s castle epitomized Quinsai’s outsized scale and sophistication, but the landmark had lately fallen into decline, as Marco learned when he made the acquaintance of a “very rich merchant of Quinsai,…who was very old and had been an intimate friend of King Facfur and knew him all his life, and had seen the palace.” The merchant inspired Marco’s imagination with tales of the luxury palace. But having visited it, Marco relates that “the fine pavilions are still as they used to be, but the rooms of the girls are all gone to ruin and nothing else is seen but in traces. In the same way, the wall that encircled the woods and gardens is fallen to the ground and there are no longer either animals or trees.”

  With the old merchant’s help, Marco resurrects for his readers “the most beautiful palace where King Facfur lived, whose predecessors had a space of country enclosed that was surrounded for ten miles with very high walls and divided into three parts.” Within the castle, guarded from the eyes of the world, were the king’s personal harem—“a thousand girls whom the king kept for his service”—who coexisted peacefully with the queen of the realm.