Health thus attended to, Burton sidestepped the taxi driver who wanted to take him wherever he wanted to go, and headed west on foot along the rather prosaically named Dong Dajie or East Street, past the restaurants selling steamed dumplings and buns from their front windows, past the many clothing shops, most still boarded up for the night, past the banks with their charming English signage—like “Evening Treasure” for their night depository chutes—and then past the man washing the sidewalk in front of the establishment with the inspired English moniker of Sunny Half Past Eight Friend Changing Club. The street was not crowded at all, and as always I was worried Burton would see me. And as always, he never looked back.
When he came to the Bell Tower, he paused only briefly to look at the impressive and beautifully colored structure before taking an escalator down to the subterranean passages that linked the major streets of the city’s central square. During the time that Xi’an, then known as Chang’an, was the capital of the T’ang dynasty, it may well have been the most populous city in the world. These main thoroughfares would have been extraordinarily wide, particularly the main north-south street, wide enough, indeed, for the emperor to leave his Imperial Palace to the city’s north, and make his way south to go about imperial business. City residents would have had to cross huge drainage ditches that lined these impressive avenues. Then they used bridges built over the ditches; now we pedestrians are sent underground to avoid the traffic, and from the underground passage can choose to surface north, south, east, or west of the Bell Tower.
Burton chose to continue moving west, surfacing right near the Drum Tower on the west side of the intersection. He kept to the same street, now called Xi Dajie, or West Street. Suddenly, though, he paused for a few seconds, causing me to find cover behind a staircase leading to a shopping plaza. Then Burton turned north.
I continued to follow him into a quite extraordinary market area. There were tea shops and grocery stores, dumpling stalls, and vendors of piles of sweets of some kind. As we went deeper into the market, the lanes became narrower. Gradually the signs that were in Chinese were replaced, or at least supplemented by signs in Arabic, and the women covered their heads. The smells were now that of mutton. We had entered the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an. Burton stopped to purchase a ticket, and entered a mosque. After a few minutes, I did the same.
Xi’an’s mosque, purportedly the largest in China, a fact I did not doubt, was a soothing, quiet place, with lovely arches that integrated Arabic and Chinese design, pleasant wooden buildings and gates, old gnarled trees, stone stela and fountains. It seemed to me to be a place best suited to quiet contemplation, too quiet, of course, if you happened to be following someone. I had to be very careful not to be seen.
It was also a perfect place for a clandestine meeting. Just in front of the prayer hall, Burton stopped and waited. I held back and watched. For a few minutes he did nothing other than stamp his feet against the cold and pull his scarf tighter around his neck. At one point he removed his surgical mask, there being no germ-ridden person in sight, and his breath could be seen against the cold air. About five minutes after we got there, a man of indeterminate age, not young but not old either, strode right past me and went up to Burton. I ducked into one of the side halls and waited. In a moment or two, I could hear their voices coming toward my position and strained to hear. They stopped right outside the hall in which I was cowering. To my profound irritation, they were speaking Chinese. I had no clue what they were talking about, only that they both sounded angry, as if they were negotiating something and it was not going well. I did manage to catch a glimpse of the face of Burton’s acquaintance, enough that I thought I would recognize him if I saw him again. A moment or two later, they moved on, leaving me wondering whether to wait or go. When I screwed up the courage to look out, neither man was to be seen. Burton had managed to slip away again.
I did go looking for him. One of the covered souks in the Muslim Quarter had a high preponderance of shops selling what were purported to be antiques, and that was as likely a place as any to pick up Burton’s trail, if he was following his now normal routine of asking about the silver box and handing out his business card with an accompanying request for them to get in touch if they had it to sell or knew someone who did. When that proved fruitless, I had another idea: the antique market just outside the Baxian Gong. Presumably Burton would be hitting every antique market or stall in town.
The Baxian Gong is a Taoist temple located not far outside the eastern city gates of Xi’an and dedicated to the Eight Immortals. Across a narrow road from the temple is an antique market that is held every Sunday and Wednesday, and Sunday it was. To get to it, you go out the eastern gate at the end of Dong Dajie, then turn left and walk along the outside of the city walls where a narrow urban park has been created between the walls and the moat. On this cold and bright Sunday, a group of older men sat together and listened to their birds singing away in cages that they had hung from branches of the trees along the path. A group of men and women were practicing tai chi. Farther along there was a group of musicians playing traditional instruments and singing. They appeared to be rehearsing, and it was inspiring. I would have liked to just watch and listen, but I was a woman on a mission.
At the northern-most east gate, I crossed the busy roadway that runs parallel to the walls and headed into a much quieter and older district. Guidebooks tend to refer to the area outside the eastern gates and around the temple as shabby, but I didn’t see it that way. What I view as shabby are the rows of hugely unattractive high-rise apartment buildings that tower over the city walls. But slip past them, and you will find real people doing real things, shopping for food, having their bicycles repaired, visiting the cobbler, consulting the doctor.
I had some difficulty finding the Baxian Gong, despite having a map. I took several wrong turns, and nearly got flattened by a man on a scooter, but every corner revealed something new. There were piles of brightly colored plastic washtubs piled up in front of one shop, mountains of oranges and green onions at another. There were pyramids of eggs of the most beautiful soft-blue hue, each one in its own tiny straw nest. The butcher had his meat hanging from hooks outside his shop. Dumplings steamed away in bamboo baskets. All along the street there were fires in old metal drums over which people cooked noodles or steamed vegetables as their customers chatted as they waited.
The market at the Baxian Gong is not large, and definitely not fancy. In a courtyard across from the temple, vendors have laid cloths and bamboo mats on the ground and simply spread out their wares. It was a far cry from the antique markets I usually frequent, but I liked it just fine. The amazing thing was that, unlike Beijing, there really were antiques here. There was old jade and porcelain, some bronzes, beautiful drawings and scrolls; in short, many very attractive objects. There were very few foreigners here, maybe one or two other than me, and vendors kept shouting “Lookie, Mother” at me over and over as I stepped past their displays. One woman in Mao jacket-and-pants with a faint scar across her left cheek was particularly persistent, actually grasping my sleeve tightly at one point. In truth, she had some very interesting merchandise, and I was tempted to buy, but there was also a sign warning purchasers that we required an export stamp if we wished to take any purchase out of the country. What I didn’t see was either a T’ang box or Burton Haldimand. I seemed to have lost him completely.