Song of the Silk Road (5 page)

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Authors: Mingmei Yip

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BOOK: Song of the Silk Road
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Among all the three thousand exquisite, flirtatious concubines in the inner palace, Emperor Xuanzong loved only one—Concubine Yang. Her beauty was reputed to be so stunning that it shamed the moon and mortified the flowers. In the following centuries, Yang was the muse of numerous poets and painters.
However, as the emperor became more and more infatuated with Yang, he also cared less and less about state affairs, until the mighty general An Lushan started a rebellion.
Pursued by An Lushan, Emperor Xuanzong fled southward with his palace guards, imperial soldiers, and a disguised Concubine Yang. Later, when the soldiers learned that Yang was among them, they refused to move forward, demanding she be put to death. They believed that Yang’s beauty and the emperor’s intemperate love caused the empire’s collapse. After a long and heated argument with his troops, the emperor realized, heartbreakingly, he had to acquiesce. And so, in the Buddha Hall under the moon—the same moon that had witnessed their sleepless nights of passion—the emperor ordered the only woman he loved to be hanged.
How ironic that China’s most powerful man, instead of protecting the woman he loved the most, helplessly watched her death forced upon him by the soldiers he had trusted the most. After Yang died, could the emperor look himself in the mirror, or wash his hands without trembling? Later, when he had sex with other concubines and heard their screams of pleasure, would this remind him of the scream from Concubine Yang when she was being strangled?
The legend was immortalized in the poet Bai Juyi’s
Changhen Ge, (A Song of Everlasting Sorrow).
I’d been required to memorize this while in high school in Hong Kong, but only now, ten years later, did I have any feeling for the story with its complex emotions.
“
Hai,
how beautiful and tragic.” I sighed. I wished I had Yang’s beauty to charm even an emperor—but definitely not her horrible fate!
Then I overheard a young Chinese man next to me muttering, “Pretty round and nice breasts.”
I was tempted to tell him that they looked like implants to me but instead dropped my eyes and quickly left the doomed beauty.
I continued to walk, soothed by lush greens surrounding me: weeping willows appreciating their own swaying images on the lake, towering cypresses extending canopies like protective arms, and a proliferation of smaller plants shooting out from the ground or resting gracefully in pots. Partly hidden in the greenery was a collage of impressions: the curve of a pavilion, a woman with bright red umbrella undulating on a winding bridge, a boulder inscribed with calligraphy.
But now my goal was to find a quiet spot to bathe in the famous spring water. Four hot pools were set aside for tourists, but I was not interested in those. I wanted to enjoy a private bath all by myself. I hoped to spot the “geographic faults and cracks 1,750 to 2,500 meters deep, with 109 degrees Fahrenheit temperature water bubbling up” promised in the guidebook.
Walking away from the palace complex and its noisy tourists, I imagined myself soaking in the healing water containing all the therapeutic minerals excellent for health, according to my reading. Perhaps after the bath, my skin would be as translucent, silk smooth, and supple as that of Beauty Yang.
I crossed a long, willow-shaded bridge and continued to walk. Now the winding, seemingly never-ending path was heavily foliaged with not a soul in sight. I inhaled the fresh air and felt happy to be alone at last.
Continuing to walk, I finally discovered a pool hidden from sight by heavy foliage and tall rocks. About the size of a Jacuzzi, with steaming water gurgling up from between cracks, the pool seemed a little paradise on earth. After looking around to be sure I was really alone, I dropped my backpack on the ground, kicked off my running shoes, peeled off my shirt and jeans, leaving my bikini underneath, then plunged in.
I sighed; the water was hot, and therapeutic, and its fragrance intoxicating. Inspired by the romantic surroundings, I tried to recreate Concubine Yang’s seductive poses by raising my leg, lifting my arms, twisting my waist, arching my back, pretending I were taking a sensuous, imperial bath with the handsome, loving emperor! Then, in a soft voice, I began to recite
A Song of Everlasting Sorrow.
One hundred charms bloomed with her smile,
Outshining every beauty in the six palaces.
Granted the privilege of bathing in the
Imperial pool,
Helped up by the maids, looking vulnerable
and virginal,
At that moment, she became the Emperor’s
favorite . . .
While I was enjoying my own performance, I was startled by a male voice exclaiming in English, “Oh, I’m sorry!”
I turned and saw with astonishment—Alex Luce.
“Alex!” I screamed, while ducking down to my neck in the warm water.
Alex’s lean physique was silhouetted motionless in the shades of trees. He looked so startled that I imagined his chestnut hair shooting out in all directions in its youthful energy.
Then, as if awakening from a trance, he mumbled, “Sorry,” then hurried out of my sight.
Shaking off the water as best I could, I slipped on my clothes and shoes, slung my backpack over my shoulder, then walked away from my supposedly private “Jacuzzi.”
Alex was standing a few feet away next to a rock, his eyes blinking under the hot sun. He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Hi, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Suddenly feeling the heat, I said, “Let’s move away from the sun.”
“I’m going to the Stele Forest. Would you like to join me?”
I nodded, unknowingly breaking my vow of solitude.
4
The Beilin Museum and Crying Guan Yin
I
had not expected that things would feel so different with Alex’s company. Now instead of trying to take advantage of the Beilin Museum to learn more about Chinese calligraphy as I’d intended, I found myself more engaged by a nice-looking twenty-one-year-old young man than by the museum’s exquisite collection of stone tablets.
As Alex and I wandered through the museum, my heart was beating wildly, not of course for the two-thousand-year-old stone tablets inscribed with poems, sacred texts, imperial edicts, and Chinese Classics, but rather for the adjacent, bewitching ball of energy next to me.
To show I was serious about the exhibits and because my aunt specified I was to read this particular stele, I drew Alex’s attention to the large stone that dominated the room—the Confucian Filial Piety Classic.
Looking at the immense black granite slab standing on a thick base carved with mythical animals and exotic plants, I felt a wave of happiness.
I always loved things big. Big bowls of rice and congee, big chunks of meat, wide slabs of fish with a huge head and eyes round like marbles. I always preferred having a big sofa to sit on, or a roomy high-backed chair where I could meditate with legs crossed. I liked to work at a wide table where next to my computer I could pile bricklike stacks of books, spread out my novel in progress, and arrange my assortment of stationery—pens and pencils in my lunch-box-sized case, boxlike pencil sharpeners, a big stapler to bind inch-thick documents, even erasers I’d certainly lose before finishing using.
I also liked Chinese calligraphy done in grapefruit-sized characters, Beethoven’s heroic Fifth and grandiose Ninth Symphonies, Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where you have to swing your head in all the four auspicious directions to take in the whole creation. . . .
Then Alex began to read the famous text aloud in Chinese, waking me from my reverie. His voice sounded studious, yet light-hearted. I half closed my eyes to let the soothing sound waves ripple against my eardrums like dragonflies skipping on water.
Do not disgrace those who gave birth to you.
Rise early and go to sleep late—to serve your parents.
Be careful of your conduct and economical in your expenditure—in order to nourish those who gave you life. . . .
When he finished, lamenting that his recitation had to meet its inevitable end like everything else, I asked softly, “You’re enjoying this?”
“Yes, very much. I would like to study this classic more.” He cast me a questioning glance. “And you?”
“I’m not fond of Confucian moralizing.” I paused to search his glowing face, then, “Not that I’m unfilial to my parents even though they’re dead.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s OK, Alex. But what makes you so interested in the filial piety classic?”
“Because I want my parents to be proud of me,” he said, blushing.
That was not really an answer to my question.
“You mean they’re not?”
Again, he didn’t answer my question directly. “They’re divorced and both remarried, so we don’t see one another very often. But once in a while Mom, Dad, and I have a big reunion.”
“That’s nice.”
“I believe they divorced because of me.”
“How?”
“It’s too complicated to tell you now. Let me take you to tea.”
I looked directly into the young man’s grayish green eyes. “Alex, you’ll soon go broke if you pay for every stranger you run into.”
A smile bloomed on his face, sweet and innocent like a child’s. “Don’t worry. Let’s have tea, please.”
I insisted that, instead of going to a teahouse—fancy or simple—we should just look for a place nearby to sit down and talk.
Outside the museum, we walked for a while and soon found a bench in a quiet corner shadowed by a heavy-foliaged tree.
We sat down. Alex looked me in the eyes and uttered softly, “Lily, I was adopted.”
The statement came as a surprise. “Oh. . . .” I didn’t know what more to say.
“It’s OK.” He covered my hand with his for a moment, then went on. “My mom and dad had been married for years, but Mom could not conceive. So they decided to adopt. Dad’s friend, a gynecologist, told him about me, a perfect baby, whose mother had a healthy pregnancy—no diseases or drugs. She was Chinese from Taiwan—a theater student.”
So he was half Chinese—I wondered, what was the other half?
He chuckled at my intense scrutiny; now his eyes appeared the same shade as the temple roof in the far distance.
“Something funny, Alex?”
“No, ironic. I was an extremely coveted baby for a couple desperate to adopt. But my own mother didn’t want me.”
“Do you know why your Chinese mother gave you up?”
He shook his head while staring at an elderly couple playing with a chubby toddler under that far-off temple roof.
“What about your biological father, you know anything about him?”
He turned back to me. “Only that he’s American.”
So Alex was Eurasian—he seemed to have gotten the best from two ethnicities.
He went on. “Even after they adopted me, my parents still tried to conceive. But it never happened, and so they began to fight and ended up divorcing. Then, somehow, they both had children with someone else.”
This was a story even juicier than my Chinese family saga novel in progress. But I hid my smile and asked instead, “Then what happened?”
“After their divorce, I lived alternately with Mom and Dad, their new spouses, and my two sort-of half brothers.”
“Do you get along with them?”
“I know my place in their families.” His voice came out low-watted.
I put my hand on his shoulder, then, feeling his body heat, quickly withdrew it.
He looked happy again. Was it due to the physical contact, brief as it was?
“Your parents nice to you now?”
Alex lowered his head, thinking. Silhouetted against the clear, distant sky, his profile was etched in the air like a haiku—simple, crisp, sharp.
“Yes and no. I believe they still care about me, but I also think they care more about their biological children, although they try not to show it.”
“Do you know where your biological mother is?”
“No. Only that after she gave me up for adoption, she went back to Taiwan.”
I remained silent, not knowing what more to say.
Suddenly his face lit up. “Soon my parents will be visiting me here in China for a few weeks.”
Poor kid, he looked so happy just to have a few weeks with his parents, not even blood relatives.
Some silence, then I asked, “Alex, what are you doing here in China?”
“Sightseeing, but mostly trying to improve my Chinese.”
Moments of silence passed, then he asked again, “Can we . . . travel together?”
“No, I can’t.”
“But why not, since you’re traveling alone?”
Yes, why not? My aunt Mindy Madison did not specify that I couldn’t make friends during my journey. I was still very tempted to have him along for company, but I hardly knew him. What if he learned about my inheritance?
Though my heart was melting, my voice came out firm. “Hey, Alex, look, you seem to be a smart young man. Very nice, too. But I’m older than you. You’re just a kid, and this is a kid’s fantasy. You need to find someone your age.”
“I am not a kid and you are not old.”
“I’m twenty-nine, and you’re only twenty-one. Alex, please, I don’t want to take care of a younger brother when I have enough problems myself.” Of course I couldn’t tell him the real reason—my inheritance. I swallowed hard.
“That doesn’t matter. I like you and want to travel with you.”
I blurted out, “Jesus, Alex! Stop being ridiculous and acting like a child!”
“Stop calling me a child!” he retorted.
A young Chinese couple walking out from the museum turned to stare at us.
A long, awkward silence.
Finally I said, “Alex, we’re basically strangers.”
“You’re a traveler, an adventurer. I am, too, so I think we’re very compatible.”
I gave him an annoyed look. “But you have no idea why I’m traveling and what I do when I’m not traveling.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
This kid was really persistent. And annoying.
“Alex, I really don’t want any company. Please accept that.”
He cast a dour glance at me, his expression frozen. “You really mean that?”
“Yes!”
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“All right then, good-bye.” He stood up abruptly and walked away.
After a few steps, Alex turned back to stare at me, his eyes fierce and sad—seemingly awaiting a signal from me to return. But I waved good-bye, hardening my heart like the thousand-year-old stone tablet we’d left behind in the museum.
I felt more than a little sad and guilty. Now I wished I hadn’t discarded Alex Luce as if he were my old calendar, or my worn-out running shoes. The kid did seem genuinely concerned about me and wanted my company. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a young man’s company, if not for his youth and beauty to feed my vanity, at least for some pleasant background noise to fill my vacuity? But I warned myself—a dessert-sweet romance should be pushed to the bottom, if not totally off, of my Silk Road menu. What I should be putting on the table now was nothing but the financially nutritious entrées—Dunhuang, Xinjiang, the Mountains of Heaven, Turpan, and finally the Go-In-But-Never-Come-Out Taklamakan Desert.
Early the next morning, I headed down to the hotel’s simple dining room, gobbled down a steaming bun and scalding hot rice soup, then went back to my room. I quickly packed, checked out, hopped into a taxi, then boarded my flight to Jiayu Guan. I thought of visiting the famous pass with its legendary Great Wall fortress and painted bricks from a thousand-year-old tomb, but I couldn’t wait to go to Dunhuang. So as soon as I got off the plane, I took a five-hour train ride to the Land of Grand Prosperity, then a bus to Mogao.
Although Dunhuang was not a required destination, I decided—before undertaking the daunting tasks on the Mountains of Heaven—to treat myself to some aesthetic relief by visiting Mogao’s exquisite Buddhist treasures.
I read that starting from the fourth century, pilgrims, scholars, and especially Buddhist monks passing through this section of the Silk Road decided to stay here to meditate and translate sutras. However, the first cave had not been built until 366 CE by a Buddhist monk who had a vision of thousands of golden dancing lights and a thousand Buddhas. Thus the Mogao Caves are also called Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.
Later, during the religious persecutions in the Tang dynasty, Buddhist monks had come here to hide both themselves and their treasures inside the caves dug by their own hands. They transported hundreds of thousands of treasures across the desert in mule carts and carried them up the cliffs on their own backs.
So long after the cave shrines were built, most of the fifteen-hundred-year-old manuscripts, sculptures, and wall paintings had miraculously remained intact as if the monks’ spirits still traveled through the dim corridors to tell us in the present day of their sufferings and triumphs.
Now, of course, all the monks had long turned into mummies—at least metaphorically—and the Buddhist hideout had become a tourist attraction.
After getting out of the big bus with the other tourists, feeling the hot wind in my face, I headed straight to the Mogao Tourist Office. At the ticket counter, to the surprise and delight of the skinny salesgirl, I asked for a three-hour private tour.
She exclaimed while giving me a once-over, “Welcome to Mogao, the Louvre of the East!”
Maybe she was wondering, how could this ordinary-dressed young woman afford such a luxury, unaware that I’d been savoring the delicious papery texture of the thick pile of
renminbi
and U.S. dollars in my pants pocket for some time now. Anyway, I figured three hours of private time should be enough to brush shoulders with beauty.
After I told Little Zhang—my young, neatly dressed guide—that I was short on time, she smiled politely. “Miss, then I’ll first take you to see something very special in cave number 108.”
She led me on a short walk before we turned a corner where the cliff face of Mogao revealed its full-fledged majesty in front of my eyes. I held my breath at the stunning site—beehivelike cave temples surrounded by the vast expanse of sand, above which sat a boundless patch of sky in royal blue. More than a thousand years ago the monks, with nothing but their bare hands and a few primitive tools, had carved out the whole mountain to build these temples in the midst of golden infinity.

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