Still, I kept looking, not because I thought I was going to see Burton, but because I was enjoying myself. To either side of the informal stalls were antique shops, and I visited every one of these. I tried asking about a silver box, but no one could understand me, even when I took out the photograph of George’s box and waved it in front of them. Only in Beijing could I manage such a task in English. I was envious of Burton for his facility with the language.
Burton wasn’t in the temple itself, either. He would have liked it, too, especially a hall devoted to Sun Simiao, a master pharmacist of the T’ang dynasty, and one of the earliest practitioners of Chinese medicine, now worshipped as a Buddha-like god. Sun Simiao was the first to write on the subject of medical ethics, and wrote several texts on medicine with many, perhaps thousands, of formulations for just about whatever might ail you. Apparently he was a sickly child, and managed to cure himself along with everybody else. The walls of the hall were covered in a colorful mural that depicted scenes from the sage’s life. All in all, he seemed to me to be Burton’s kind of guy.
Beyond his more conventional medical talents, though, Sun Simiao was an alchemist who secluded himself on Zhong Nan Mountain to perform practices that would allow him to become immortal. He also believed in exorcism. He wrote a text on these subjects called, more or less, “Essential Instructions from the Books on the Elixirs of the Great Purity,” which was probably based on texts called Taiqing Jing or “Book of Great Purity,” one of the first books anywhere on alchemy, now lost to us. These formulations quite possibly included elixirs that contained mercury and arsenic, which the master pharmacist was said to have administered to himself. Apparently it worked. Legend has it that his corpse had not begun to decompose some months after he died.
This alchemy business I found interesting, given the T’ang box. I’d thought the formula for the elixir of immortality contained in the box was unusual at best, laughable at worst. But clearly no one in T’ang times would have agreed with me. Its loss was more than just the theft of a valuable object, as I had begun to realize that night at Dr. Xie’s celebration. It clearly was an artifact of some great importance, and I felt sad not just for Dory, not just for China, but really for all of us who value the past. I also realized that I had known only two people who were true experts on T’ang China and would not think it odd if I asked them about alchemy. One was Dory Matthews, and it was too late to ask her. The other was Burton Haldimand. To ask him would take much swallowing of pride on my part. I wasn’t sure I was up for it.
Burton was not answering his phone when I got back to the hotel. This annoyed me even more, if that was possible. I chose to deal with this aggravation by going out for the rest of the day, visiting the truly awe-inspiring terra-cotta warriors of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi who reigned from 221 to 210 BCE. The terra-cotta warriors are a World Heritage site, deservedly so. They are as spectacular as you might imagine them to be, row upon row of hundreds of men, all life-size and no face the same: generals, archers, light infantry, heavy armored soldiers, cavalry complete with horses, and in a special place, two wonderful chariots for the emperor. The actual mausoleum of the emperor, the place where presumably his body was laid to rest, has never been opened. All we can see is a pyramid-shaped structure near Mount Li. The historian Sima Qian reported, however, that a whole world had been created for the First Son of Heaven, with representations of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers dug and filled with mercury, flowing somehow mechanically, the heavens above him complete with representations of the constellations. Automatic crossbows were set to kill any tomb robbers. It would be a difficult place to break into. Whether as a tomb robber or an archaeologist, the hazards would be many. Even at the time it was a decidedly unhealthy place to be. Qin Shi Huangdi’s successor had the first emperor’s childless concubines buried with him, and all who worked on the enormous tomb were sealed in it to die. Protecting him through all eternity were the terra-cotta warriors we see today.
Qin Shi Huangdi believed in immortality, and may have taken far too much of the elixir that was supposed to guarantee it. He was reported to have sent several expeditions in search of an island where the Immortals dwelt. The Immortals lived, if that’s the right verb, in special places befitting their status, secret islands or underground cities or, for Taoists especially, on mountaintops. None of these expeditions of Qin Shi Huangdi’s came back. One has to wonder why. Perhaps they couldn’t resist the temptation of escaping the emperor, who was undoubtedly not the most benevolent of rulers.
All in all, Qin Shi Huangdi didn’t have much luck in the immortality department if the stories of his death many miles from home are anything to go by. Rather than making the leap and leaving his clothes behind, his corpse was put into his carriage and began the journey back to the palace. Those in charge did not want anyone to know he had died, so they packed the carriage with rotting fish to cover the smell of rotting emperor. It was an ignominious end, I suppose, for the man who had united China.
Still the warriors are a remarkable sight, and I felt immeasurably better when I got back to the hotel. This pleasant feeling lasted for about ten minutes. Burton still wasn’t answering his phone. After fuming for a while, both about Burton and the sheer uselessness of this trip to Xi’an from a silver-box point of view, I decided that once again the only approach was to go directly to Burton’s room. I’d managed to inveigle the room number from the hotel operator, again with the colleague-from-Toronto story. By the time I’d left to see the warriors, I’d asked her to put me through to him so often that I’m sure she was glad to just give me the number so I’d go away.
The door was open when I got there, a housekeeping cart right outside. The maid was scrubbing the bathroom. I took a quick peek inside. The room was empty. There was no suitcase, no portable air filter buzzing away, no tea apparatus, no clothes, no toiletries in the bathroom. The slug had slipped away from me again!
I stomped back to my room. First I called Air China and tried to get on a flight back to Beijing the next day. That didn’t work, but I could get out the following day. Then I called the hotel in Beijing to tell them when I was coming back. The woman at the desk asked me to hold for a moment, and then came back on the line to tell me there was a message flagged to my room. She had it still, given that they didn’t want to put it in the room until I returned. It was in a sealed envelope. I asked her to open the envelope and fax it to me at my present location. She agreed to do that right away.
While I waited for the contents of the mysterious sealed envelope to be put into my hands, I went to the hotel bar. The lobby was a hive of activity. The staff was putting up Christmas decorations, garlands were being strung from every pillar and post, an enormous fake tree already fully decorated was being set into place, and Christmas carols, sung by Chinese children, were being piped through the whole place. This did not improve my mood. The bar didn’t either. It was the off-season, December now, and the bar, despite the frenzy of Christmas cheer elsewhere in the hotel, was far from a happening place. In fact, it was empty. I ordered a glass of the house red, something nonspecific from a company called Dragon Seal. If I thought wine would help, it didn’t, but there was nothing that was going to make me happy that evening, that much was certain.
As I sat there in solitary splendor, the staff whispering to each other over in a corner, occasionally casting glances my way, I gave myself a stern talking to. First off, I told myself to calm down. Why exactly was I in Xi’an? What exactly had I hoped to accomplish? Why was I letting Burton Haldimand get to me? Yes, he was scum—lying, deceitful scum, that is—obsessed with getting that silver box ahead of anyone else, including me. Why, though, was I falling into the trap of becoming just as obsessed as he was? Rob tells me that occasionally I am like a little dog with a bone. That’s his polite way of telling me that at times I can be stubborn, willful, and occasionally even obsessed beyond all reason with something. It seemed to me that where Burton Haldimand and the silver box were concerned, this was one of those times. I told myself to take a few deep breaths and let it go.