Four
I was fourteen when my life took a different turn. The first disturbance to the pleasant enough existence I had—with effort and some ability I believe—-forged for myself came with a drunken revelation by Wu Peng, who told me that I had become his adopted son, not because of a long-standing tradition in my family for imperial service, but because my father had sold me to Wu in order to pay off some gambling debts. Wu’s “wife” had wanted daughters-in-law to do her bidding and grandchildren by way of the two sons they’d adopted, so it was necessary for him to find someone else for imperial service. My father’s affliction had presented just that opportunity. It was a jolt to my complacency, yes, but it also forced me to call into question everything I had been told by my father, most especially what I had chosen to believe about my sister. I began to think she was dead. Perhaps, I thought, it was Number One Sister who haunted the well at my home. It was she who plagued Auntie Chang’s sleep!
One evening I was privileged to be able to stand in the shadows while the emperor’s own musicians, the Pear Garden troupe, performed for the Son of Heaven and his friends. The musicianship was inspired, and evidently met with the emperor’s approval. He did not find it necessary, as he often did, to correct them. The women—for the Pear Garden Orchestra consisted only of beautiful women—performed a piece of music that the Son of Heaven himself had written for them. It was exquisite, of course. I confess that I was beginning to think of myself as something of a connoisseur of the arts, and enthralled as I was, I drew closer perhaps than I should have, coming out of the shadows. The Son of Heaven did not seem to mind. At the conclusion of the performance, the emperor presented a silk pouch to each of the women of the orchestra in turn. Wu Peng, who had joined me, told me that all the women would receive a coin. One of them would receive a jade disk that indicated they were to share the Son of Heaven’s bed that night.
It was shortly after that performance that I received a summons to the apartment of a woman known as Lingfei. I assumed this was a name she had been given in the palace and not the one she was given at birth. Ting is the sound of tinkling jade, so I expected she might be a musician, although I could not recall having made her acquaintance. Her reputation had, however, preceded her. It was to Lingfei that other women turned for help with certain medical problems, blemishes, for example, that they felt would detract from their beauty and turn the Son of Heaven’s favor from them, or conditions of a womanly nature. There were medical experts of all kinds in the palace, of course, but the emperor’s women seemed most comfortable discussing their problems with Lingfei. I wondered what she would want with me.
I was shown into a hall, quite austerely decorated, considering it was part of the palace, and waited. I had a sense that I was being watched, that there was someone in the shadows. I could not see anyone, but there was the faint whiff of cloves that I associated with the cosmetics favored in the harem, and of sweet basil and patchouli. After several minutes of waiting, however, I decided that this was a trick of some kind, and turned to go.
“I have not dismissed you,” a voice said. I turned toward the voice to see a woman in simple dress, yet luxurious of fabric just the same, of the Western style, which is to say it lacked the long, hanging sleeves that many in the palace preferred. The only adornment to her tunic was a belt from which pieces of jade dangled, appropriate enough given her name. Her face was tinted white, her forehead, as was the fashion, yellow; her lips and cheeks were rouged, and her eyebrows were plucked, then redrawn and tinted blue-green to resemble moth wings. Her hair was piled high on her head, held in place by an elaborate hairpin from which, once again, pieces of jade hung, tinkling as she moved.
“I have an errand for you,” the woman known as Lingfei said. “I understand you can read and write. I would ask you to write down this list,” she said, gesturing to brushes and ink. When I had complied, she continued. “You will go to the lane of the apothecary, and thence to the stall whose name I will give you. Ask the proprietor to give you the powders that are listed and bring them back as soon as you can. There is more than enough money in the pouch for the purchase. You may keep for yourself what is left. There is plenty there for you to indulge your passion for dumplings and fried pastries,” she said. “There will be another coin for you if you return quickly.” With that she tossed the pouch, which resembled the ones distributed the previous evening by the emperor, toward me and disappeared into the shadows.
This was perplexing, to be sure. This woman knew far more about me than I did of her. It was true I liked the dumplings from a certain stall in the market, not far from the apothecary lane. It had been pointed out to me more than once that I was no longer the skinny child I was when I had first arrived at the Imperial Palace. How would a royal concubine like Lingfei, whose acquaintance I had just made, know that?
It was the first of many surprises during the time I knew Lingfei. It was also the first of many errands. I was regularly sent to the markets to fetch what she needed, most often to the apothecary lane. I often had to wait for some time, while she attended to some young woman or another, but it was a pleasant enough place to wait. It was many months before I summoned the courage to ask her if she would tell me about these potions, but to no avaiclass="underline" she declined, saying that time would tell whether or not I could be someone with whom she shared this information.
It took me a moment or two to get my bearings. I was in a narrow lane lined with high walls. The buildings were gray brick with gray roof tiles, so the place had a monochromatic aspect, punctuated here and there by a brighter sign and on one side by a lone red Chinese lantern that seemed to glow in this setting. It was quiet, the bustle of the street I had just left only a muffled sound behind me. Two men were sitting on the street playing chess, two birdcages hanging near them, the birds chirping away. Another man was repairing a bicycle nearby.
For a moment I just stood enjoying myself, drinking in this place so different from the new Beijing of traffic and towers. This is what Beijing used to be, a city of tiny streets like this one, called a hutong or lane. I was in a hutong neighborhood. This was the Beijing I’d loved twenty years ago, the one of little neighborhoods, and I was happy to have rediscovered it. The residents themselves run these neighborhoods, electing their own leaders, and setting the rules for everyone. Many things are shared, I was reminded, as a teenage boy came out of a doorway in his pajamas and a well-worn terry bathrobe, walked briskly along the street, and then into what was clearly marked, with the international man and woman symbols, as a public toilet. That made me smile for some reason. There were wires for electricity, and aerials for television, but there were also communal bathrooms.
It was all quite lovely, in an understated way. The rather stately gray walls of the lane were punctuated by doors, some ramshackle, others much more elaborate. In the latter case, the entrances were painted, often red, and they had lovely old door knockers. Sometimes I could look through to the courtyards beyond; in still others, my view of the interior was blocked by a decorated wall or screen, attractive in its own way.
I was enchanted. It was all coming back to me: the houses are called siheyuan, a typical northern Chinese style of home. The Forbidden City uses this same design writ large. The houses are a series of single-story buildings built around courtyards, sort of like a family compound. You go through a door, a gate really, called a “good luck gate,” and then you’re in the first courtyard. You can tell how important the person was who originally lived in the siheyuan by the number of crossbeams at the entranceway. You can see the rounded ends of the beams, some of them painted and decorated, protruding out of the gate over the door. No beam or one beam signifies a very ordinary family. Five beams and you’re in the presence of a pretty important person. Nobody got seven beams because seven is an unlucky number in China, and nine was a number reserved for the emperor.