China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  I trembled. He watched me.

  “I shall not countermand his orders, however. You will remain here—for the time being, at least.” He paused. “Why do you suppose I am doing that? Do you think it’s because you are an exemplary student, one who shows outstanding talent for this kind of work?”

  “I hope so, honored sir,” I said uncertainly.

  “Well, it’s true that if you were useless, I’d throw you out at once. I might express surprise that Mr. Chen introduced such an unworthy person. I might even question his judgment. But of course that’s not the case. Mr. Chen has excellent judgment. The reports from your mentor, and others who are watching you—for one is always watched in the palace, you know—are really outstanding. You are considered very promising indeed.”

  “I am grateful, honored sir, and strive to please,” I murmured.

  “Yet that is not why I am keeping you.” He gazed at me. “So how can we explain this puzzle?”

  “Your foolish servant cannot say,” I answered.

  “Normally, after their basic training, we sort the new recruits into two categories. Those who show little talent are sent out to be servants in the houses of nobles and high officials in the city. Those who show promise receive further training and education for all kinds of special tasks—anything from keeping accounts to becoming musicians. They may work in any of several dozen departments. Mr. Chen, for instance, has made his career in food procurement. Once allocated, everyone’s performance is reviewed after three years, and again at six years. At the six-year review, a few may be selected to work in the household of a member of the royal family. Most eunuchs remain in quite humble jobs. About one in ten rises to official rank, as Mr. Chen has done. Long service and seniority also mean—absent some heinous crime—that the eunuch has a position for life.” He paused a moment. “I assume that you are hoping for both security and promotion to official rank. Is that correct?”

  “If I am found worthy,” I said softly, and bowed very low.

  “Well, the reason I’m keeping you here is to deny your hopes. You will remain under my eye so I can ensure that you receive no promotion and no rewards of any kind. You’ll be assigned menial tasks, in obscure corners of the Forbidden City—places where you’ll never even catch a glimpse of the emperor’s family. You’ll have to stay here as a drudge as long as you live, and when you die, you’ll be buried in the poor eunuchs’ cemetery. Because you’ll certainly never earn enough to buy your balls back. What do you think of that?”

  I stared at him in horror. I couldn’t believe my ears. “But why?” I cried.

  “Can’t you guess?” He gave me a bland smile. And then I began to understand.

  “Since I have given satisfaction, honored sir,” I said slowly, “I am wondering if this has something to do with Mr. Chen.”

  “You are correct. You have a quick brain.” He nodded. “Were the circumstances otherwise, you might go far. It’s really a pity, but there it is.”

  “Honored sir,” I ventured, “if you intend to ruin my life, would you graciously tell your servant why he is to be destroyed.”

  “I detest Mr. Chen and all persons like him.”

  “Because we were not castrated until after we had families?”

  “Exactly. You think you can have it both ways. The rest of us were denied everything you enjoyed. In compensation, we receive the protection and opportunities of service in this palace. But then interlopers like you and Mr. Chen, who’ve paid none of the penalty, come in and steal our rewards for yourselves.”

  “Do most of the palace people feel the same about us?” I asked.

  “Probably. But what matters is what I feel. Although I outrank Mr. Chen, I can’t touch him because he has tenure. But thanks to your presence, I can humiliate him. He brings in a talented protégé. He boasts about him. Excellent. I watch. Then I see to it that you get no favor or promotion of any kind. There will be nothing he can do about it. For he has no say over any department outside his own, you see. You are completely in my power.”

  “And you’re going to sacrifice me.”

  “Yes, I am. By sacrificing you, I show that his scheme to infiltrate more of his own kind into the palace will never work. Everyone will know. I shall make sure they do. Mr. Chen is going to lose face. And that will please me. More important still, married men are hardly likely to apply in the future, once they hear what happened to you.”

  It made sense. I couldn’t deny it. So everything I had gone through was for nothing. Both I and my family were destroyed. I looked at him with hatred. I couldn’t help it.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said sharply.

  “Why not?” I said. “You’re going to destroy me anyway.” I had nothing to lose. “Do you know why I came here?” I said. “My little boy was sick. We thought he was going to die. We saved him, but the medicine cost us everything we had. So I said to myself, what if he gets sick again? And then I met Mr. Chen. What would you have done in my place?”

  “This isn’t going to do you any good, you know,” he replied. I noticed he was watching me, but I couldn’t make out what he was thinking. Was there just a hint of sympathy in his eyes when I told him about my son? Did he respect me for standing up for myself? Or was he just waiting, like a cat playing with a mouse? I couldn’t guess which. Looking back on it, I daresay it could have been all three things at the same time.

  “You’re going to have a very unhappy life,” he said. “Now get out.”

  And I thought to myself: Now what am I going to do?

  1858

  In the spring of 1858, Cecil Whiteparish had taken a chance. Of course he couldn’t be certain. It was a shot in the dark.

  “It’s never worked before,” he said to Minnie, “but it just might, this time.”

  Since the expedition with Read, Cecil’s life in Hong Kong had been pretty good. His marriage to Minnie was happy. He had three children now.

  The Hong Kong missions were all thriving. As well as tracts and Bibles, their printing presses were turning out all kinds of lively Christian works. The Pilgrim’s Progress was a particular favorite. And missionary scholars were translating Chinese classics into English. “We must help our people understand this country better,” Cecil liked to say. “That’s part of our task, too.”

  Mr. Legge, the Scots Congregationalist minister, had started a seminary where Chinese converts were training to become missionaries themselves. And some of these converts were showing great promise.

  Perhaps the best of them was Hong. Hong was a Hakka. As a young village schoolmaster, he’d been attracted to the Taiping, then given that up and worked for several missions before finding Legge. “I’ve taught him well,” the Scotsman observed. “Doctrinally, he’s sound. A few more years, and he’ll make converts of his own.”

  When Hong attended the Bible classes that Cecil gave up at his house, the Whiteparish family soon adopted him. In his mid-thirties, strongly built, friendly, always glad to play with the children, he became like their favorite uncle. The family even gave him a private nickname—Daniel—after the Old Testament hero. Everyone was delighted when he married one of the Chinese converts, a lovely young woman, and they had a baby son.

  “I believe our Daniel has got everything a man could want,” Cecil remarked to Minnie at the time. But Minnie was not so sure.

  “I have a feeling,” she replied, “that there’s something we don’t know about him. Something in his past.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing bad,” said Cecil.

  * * *

  —

  Another pleasure in Cecil’s life had been the development of a new relationship with his cousin Trader. Naturally, this had all been done by letter. And so interesting did the two men find each other’s letters that as time went on, the social differences that had divided them in the past were practically forgotten. More than o
nce Cecil had remarked to Minnie: “We haven’t seen John since he came to our wedding. I’d be so glad if he came to see us here again.”

  Most surprising to John Trader had been how well informed his missionary cousin had become about all matters relating to trade. Yet it wasn’t really so surprising. For as the Hong Kong colony grew and living conditions got better, not only Western merchants gathered there, but the big Chinese operators of Canton had been coming to the island to live beside them. Missionaries, merchants, and professional men from many nations were living side by side, and an intelligent fellow like Whiteparish could not fail to be well informed about most of the things that were passing in that world.

  Cecil had been especially flattered to receive a letter from John asking for his opinion: “My two partners are suggesting,” he wrote, “that we should take on a fourth, a junior partner who might in due course be based in the port of Shanghai. What do you think?”

  He’d replied at once:

  As it happens, I visited Shanghai recently. At the time of the Opium War, it was only a walled fishing village, near the mouth of the Yangtze River, with a little fort to protect it from pirates. But now it’s growing fast. Some Triad gangs got control of the place for a while, but they’ve been kicked out. The local Chinese mandarins and the British get along rather well—we help the Chinese keep order and collect the taxes. Outside the old walled town, new French and British quarters are building fast. Quite handsome.

  The Taiping have devastated the Yangtze valley. Since their advance on Peking failed, however, they’ve been contained by the emperor’s army in the Nanjing area. But they still disrupt the river trade. They’d like to break out of Nanjing; and the emperor’s men would like to break in. But this stalemate can’t last forever. And once China is at peace and open for trade, I predict the huge wealth of the Yangtze will flow through Shanghai.

  So the South China trade will be conducted in Hong Kong, the Yangtze trade in Shanghai. You’ll need a man in each.

  With so much progress already evident in Hong Kong, and more to be hoped for, at least in China’s future, why should Whiteparish, a thoughtful missionary, be troubled by a sense of foreboding?

  He didn’t like to say it, but the truth was that he had misgivings about his own countrymen and their friends.

  For the West was growing impatient with the East. The reports he received from Trader confirmed the fact. The treaties made after the end of the Opium War—not only with Britain but with France and America, too—were not eternal. They came up for renewal during the following decade, and those renewals were now overdue.

  “The politicians say they want free trade and Christianity,” he remarked to Minnie.

  “By which they mean free trade,” she replied.

  British merchants still believed, correctly or not, that they could sell huge quantities of cotton goods to the vast population of China—which might be four hundred million people, though nobody knew.

  But it was the profounder issue that really made the men of the West impatient. It was time China entered the modern world, they insisted. Time to stop treating other countries as ignorant barbarians and servants; time to live in a world of free men and equals. They wanted change, and they wanted it now. History was on their side. The Chinese had had a whole decade to think about it. What was wrong with them?

  The new treaties would end all this nonsense. British, French, and American representatives were ready. British troops had been earmarked to accompany the diplomats. They might not be used, but they would show that the envoys meant business. The British delegation was led by Lord Elgin, a seasoned diplomat.

  Before they could go to Beijing, there were two interruptions. The first came in 1857, the sudden outbreak of violence in India against insensitive British domination, known as the Mutiny, which almost threatened Calcutta itself. The troops due to come to China had to deal with this first.

  “The one salutary result of this bloodletting,” Cecil wrote to Trader, “is that the British Empire has learnt it must seek a better understanding of the customs and religions of the local people. A useful lesson in humility.”

  The second had been the local dispute down in Canton over illegal shipping between the British and the cantankerous Chinese governor of Guangzhou, which resulted in the governor being booted out and the British, French, and Americans, for the moment at least, running the city themselves. No one showed any humility in this affair. A sense of tension remained.

  But after these interruptions the West was ready, the troops were available, and the envoys had been about to sail up the coast from Hong Kong to the mouth of the Peiho River that led up to Beijing.

  * * *

  —

  It was ten days before Lord Elgin was due to leave Hong Kong that Cecil, finding a chance to be alone with the envoy at a dinner, had raised his fears. “May I speak frankly to you, Lord Elgin?”

  “You certainly may.” Middle-aged, balding, his intelligent eyes set wide apart, the noble diplomat was known as a good listener.

  “You have seen how our missions are thriving here on the island, and how we and the Chinese get along. I am hopeful that, with patience, this kind of cooperation could spread throughout the Chinese empire.”

  “The sentiment for patience is lacking in London.”

  “I am aware. But here’s the thing. If we again impose our will by force of arms, then not only do we create enmity, but the only thing the Chinese will see is that our arms are better. They will therefore acquire similar arms, which is surely not our objective.”

  “I’m hoping not to use arms.” Elgin paused. “I may have another card up my sleeve. Tell me your opinion of the Taiping and their so-called Heavenly King. Are they Christians?”

  “They might become Christians in the future; but at present they are a cult, ruled by a man who claims to be the brother of Jesus, but who is certainly moody and possibly mad.”

  “The Chinese, however, may suppose that we and the Taiping worship the same god.”

  “They shouldn’t. But they may.”

  “So if I indicate that we might consider joining forces with the Taiping, it’ll frighten the emperor. Make him more amenable.”

  “You are devious.”

  “That is my job.”

  “Will you demand that our ambassador present his credentials to the emperor without performing the kowtow, face on the ground?”

  “Of course. No kowtow. Not appropriate in the modern age.”

  “I have a suggestion. Let the ambassador meet with a minister or a royal prince. Both men will be the representative of their monarch, but no kowtow would be called for.”

  “Intelligent. But impossible. London won’t hear of it. Question of principle.”

  “Damn the principle.”

  “I didn’t think missionaries talked like that!” Elgin smiled.

  “This one does.”

  Elgin sighed. “I’m not sure,” he said quietly, “I can do that.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a week after Lord Elgin and his party had departed, that early one morning, Cecil and Minnie heard someone hammering at the door—and were surprised to find Daniel there, apparently beside himself. “You’ve got to help me!” he cried as soon as they let him in.

  “What’s the matter?” Minnie asked.

  “I must go to Nanjing. I have to see the Heavenly King.”

  “Nanjing’s surrounded by the emperor’s army,” Cecil had pointed out. “You’ll never reach it. And even if you did, whatever makes you think the Heavenly King will see you?”

  Daniel looked at him, a little wildly, then shook his head. “You don’t understand, dear friend,” he said. “You see”—he took a deep breath—“the Heavenly King is my cousin.”

  * * *

  —

  It did not take him lon
g to tell his story. He hadn’t seen the Heavenly King for many years, since they had studied the Bible together. But they had been close. Legge knew about this, but thought it best for Hong to keep the matter secret.

  And now Daniel had had a dream. A powerful dream, in which he’d been instructed to go to the Heavenly King, correct the errors in his cousin’s understanding, and bring the Taiping truly within the Christian fold.

  “It’s my destiny,” he cried. “Suddenly my whole life makes sense.” He looked at Minnie earnestly. “I must do it. I must.”

  By noon, Cecil had spoken to Legge, who confirmed the story. But the Scottish minister was dismissive. “If the imperial army doesn’t kill him, his own cousin will. The Heavenly King has built his rule on the basis of his own warped ideas of Christianity. D’you think he’s going to like it if his long-lost cousin appears and tells him it’s all wrong? He’ll murder him.”

  “Hong understands that,” Cecil replied. “But he thinks it’s his mission, and he’s prepared to risk his life. What if he were to bring all those people to the true Christian faith? It’s not impossible. Who are we to tell him he’s wrong?”

  “I’ll take no part in this,” Legge replied. “I’d restrain the man by force, if the law allowed.” He nodded grimly. “He’ll be needing money for his journey, which I’ll not give him. Not a penny.”

  * * *

  —

  And so it was that Cecil Whiteparish took his chance. He knew it was a shot in the dark. Of course it might fail. One couldn’t be certain. “No one has put the Taiping on the right path before. But as a missionary, I cannot say that such a thing cannot be done. Perhaps Daniel is the one man who could pull it off.”