ass windows of the bus station, Stein pointed it out to his companion: it was like a bundle of kindling, like a fine, lukewarm rug that spread out before their feet for a couple of minutes, then it withdrew and faded away into the grimy flagstones — in a word, nothing, but nothing else came up which could have influenced his decision, only this sudden sunlight in front of the ticket counter; so he got the ticket on the basis of a feeling, two for Shaoxing, he said, gesticulating, just one way, the interpreter explained from behind him, smiling apologetically when the women at the ticket counter really didn’t want to understand why the European with the big nose who knew how to ask for a ticket refused to answer the question: just one way, or round-trip; yes, just one way, one way, he kept repeating when he understood the question; then they got onto the bus, and set off from the single slum in Hangzhou in a southerly direction, and the route was to Shaoxing, the one-time Shanyin, the definitive name of which was settled upon by Emperor Gaozong[97] — in his happiness, as is rumoured, at the victory he had reaped over the Jurchens: Let the name of this place be Shaoxing, he proclaimed, and the imperial clerks were writing it down with their wondrous brushes onto the wondrous imperial documents, let its name be ‘Resurgent Prosperity’, dictated Gaozong in 1230 ce, and so it became, from then on, the name of the city, to which — for reasons unknown, in the characteristic good cheer of aimless, careless, thoughtless decisions — he became so attached, suddenly, just like the sunshine, explained Stein, but, well — the interpreter asked — What do you want so much in Shaoxing? and Stein just pointed outside, through the bus window, at the sun that was shining, and spoke not a single word, like someone who knew something; he did not, however, know anything, he just kept smiling, and enjoying the warm sunshine after the torturous weeks of cold and dark, enjoying the fact that the sun was shining at all, and warming him up, as he said happily when they arrived and asked enthusiastically, Can you feel it? he asked his companion who also was growing ever-more cheerful, can you feel the warmth? — and, really, it has grown warm, so that when, having picked out a hotel and settled down, they quickly start off towards the city, to Jiefang Bei Lu, they slowly begin to take off the outer items of clothing, at first the raincoats which no longer make any sense, for the pure sky was shining above, then the sneakers, intended for mountain climbing and against the cold, which they have been wearing for the past few weeks, since their arrival in Nanjing and the exasperating experience of the unusual May conditions, so that when they reach the first significant structure near the city centre, both are wearing T-shirts, and to their greatest surprise, as far as the residents of Shaoxing go, all of them are dressed just as lightly, as if it were May; they look around happily, as if it were really finally May here, to the south, quite a distance below the Yangtze. That certain first significant structure is hardly 200 or 300 metres from that point where they had just turned out onto the main street, having left their fairly shabby hotel, and it is not merely significant, but they are at a loss for words, they are struck down, as they find the Dashan pagoda[98] — for this is what they see — in a state of perfection, the seven graceful storeys built from brick still standing, have been standing since 1004 ce; they gape at the walls, originally painted white but, of course, due to the city buses continually passing its perimeter — ornamented at a later date — now nearly completely blackened: it stands, they stretch their necks upward, it stands, in the most beneficial neglect, which means that the Dashan is quite simply a part of life here; this will be immediately clear to them: it is not partitioned off, it is not promulgated, it is not cordoned off, there is no ticket booth out in front, and this is betrayed by the fact that, in addition to the bus routes passing right by, the local youth — possibly coming here from the outskirts of the city — have scribbled all over the inner walls, and that these youths, judging by this, possibly spend their evenings here as well, perhaps stroll around here on those evenings or those days, because there is no fence nor is there a doorway on the ground floor, only four openings in the octagonal ground plan where the entrances would be, so one can go in and out freely, everyone, including the local youths from the outskirts of the city, who, without the slightest idea of what they are doing, have scribbled all over the walls — until someone will dare to say out loud, beneath these dense scrawls, what has been carved into the plaster: namely, that the Dashan pagoda has remained a part of everyday life, and, looking at the walls, that this everyday life is full of all kinds of dangers, it has remained a part of this life, they determine, and it withstands those words on its walls just as it withstands the grime of the filthy exhaust fumes from the immediate area, it withstands the fact that anyone can go inside and anyone can roar past at full speed, just as it has withstood, for the past thousand years, how the outer precincts — with its crude emissaries and its grimy and stinking buses — have permeated within and rumbled alongside it, for a thousand years. They go on, and over the next few days they visit everything listed on the piece of paper pressed into their hands at the eastern bus station of Hangzhou when they said goodbye to the friend of Tang Xiaodu: they go to the house where Lu Xun, the great reformer, was born, then to where Lu Xun later lived, and finally to the private school where Lu Xun finished his grade school studies at the end of the Imperial era; they visit the atelier of Xu Wei,[99] the Ming-era painter, they take the No. 3 bus to the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi,[100] they look at the imperial tomb of the Yue Kingdom,[101] recently excavated and to this day the only proof of its existence, then they take the No. 2 bus and look at the presumed burial place of King Yu,[102] the legendary water conservationist, they go up to the roof of the Song-era Yingtian pagoda[103] in the city centre, they stroll through the living alleyways of the city densely interwoven with canals, they examine everything, they look at everything, they go to all the places on the list, and then they lie down in their beds in the hotel at the end of one day or another because, although they are dead tired, they cannot sleep, for they simply cannot believe on the first, on the second or on the following days — although, it is obvious from the very first instant — that Shaoxing has been forgotten, that Shaoxing has been left out of the Great Modern Revival, it has been decided that Shaoxing is not needed — that Shaoxing is intact, that Shaoxing has remained: a very poor, an enchanting, a left-behind, peaceful and modest stratum from the past, sunken into quiet provinciality, Shaoxing has remained, even if it is difficult to determine — as they try every evening in the hotel room — exactly which stratum of the past it is; because when they were outside by Chi Brook, in the valley of Kuaiji Mountain,[104] south-west of the city, where they spent a half day in the shrubbery garden of the Orchid Pavilion of Wang Xizhi, the greatest calligrapher of all times, giving themselves over to the nearly natural tranquillity of the unforgettable beauty preserved on the steles commemorating the mountain, the brook and a former poetry competition of world renown,[105] they felt that Shaoxing irrevocably belonged to the fourth century. But on the following day, when they again visited the buildings associated with Lu Xun, and were enchanted by that noble simplicity of Chinese tradition created by the internal order — maintained until the great downfall — of the noble houses in the provincial small towns south of the Yangtze, then they said, no, Shaoxing was the seat of China before its downfall. And it was like that afterward too — if they were in the tiny studio of Xu Wei, with its delightful garden, then they felt that everything had come to a standstill in the Ming dynasty; if every afternoon, as it faded into evening, they walked, until they were exhausted, along the alleyways lurking alongside the narrow little canals, if, on these narrow streets, they mixed in with the thronging multitudes, if during these strolls their hearts stopped at one or another sight, so that they were not able to move on in the crowd for minutes — for example, they could not bear to stop looking at an old man who came out of the door of his wretched little house in his underwear and T-shirt, carrying a wash basin filled with water, because he did not wish to splash around inside, or because inside it would have been too small for splashing around, he began his evening wash, amid the people thronging here and there, and thoroughly, from head to toe, as if he were outside completely alone: that day they had to say that that man with his wash basin had come from the Qing dynasty, and when he finished, he dried himself off with the towel and went back inside — and it was always like that, that is how things were in Shaoxing, because everywhere they went something perpetually occurred that stopped them in their tracks: another time they watched, amid a group of old people, near the mausoleum of King Yu, a performance of an itinerant opera society; they came upon it completely by chance; afterward, these old people from the neighbourhood — as the last aria died away, and the actors began to disassemble the stage — they quickly picked up their chairs, put them on their backs and, bent a little under their weight but with, what was, for Stein and the interpreter, unforgettable tranquillity, they began to trudge home in the twilight; yet another time they observed the smaller landing piers of the narrow, oblong-shaped water vessels, half-canopied and covered with tar — originally used for transporting cargo, they somehow seemed more like transporters of souls, and so they referred to them as ‘death gondolas’, and they realized that the sculler lads were looking at them as if they were not used to foreigners, that is, every single day, every single hour they experienced something that brought them joy, the profound recognition of which could be formulated by saying that Shaoxing lives but its life is not connected to the year of the second millennium, not even to the twentieth century, but to the China of old in which, from King Yu until the late Qing dynasty, somehow everything is there simultaneously — and in wholeness, the interpreter says, now having decided to put off their departure, to remain one more day, they set off into the city, but now they do not want to see anything new, only the grave of King Yu and the Orchid Pavilion and the Dashan and the houses of Lu Xun and the scullers and the atelier of Xu Wei again and again, they do not want anything new now, only the old, the things they know already, they traverse the same little streets over and over again, and then one day they are struck by the feeling that they have begun to step in those same places as if they were at home, they nearly begin to turn a corner without looking, as if they do not need to think what is there where they are going — and then Stein says to the interpreter: Time to go, they must pack up, they leave, finally depart, take their backpacks and disappear, but never, never should they speak of this place to anyone, nor should they be silent about it too conspicuously, but they must faultlessly conceal the fact, they must perfectly dissimulate, so that no one will ever realize — that Shaoxing exists.