Chung Kuo, The words mean "Middle Kingdom," and since 221 B.C., when the first emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, unified the seven Warring States, it is what the "black-haired people," the Han, or Chinese, have called their great country. The Middle Kingdom—for them it was the whole world; a world bounded by great mountain chains to the north and west, by the sea to east and south. Beyond was only desert and barbarism. So it was for two thousand years and through sixteen great dynasties. Chung Kuo was the Middle Kingdom, the very center of the human world, and its emperor the "Son of Heaven," the "One Man." But in the eighteenth century that world was invaded by the young and aggressive Western powers with their superior weaponry and their unshakable belief in progress. It was, to the surprise of the Han, an unequal contest and China's myth of supreme strength and self-sufficiency was shattered. By the early twentieth century, China—Chung Kuo—was the sick old man of the East: "a carefully preserved mummy in a hermetically sealed coffin," as Karl Marx called it. But from the disastrous ravages of that century grew a giant of a nation, capable of competing with the West and with its own Eastern rivals, Japan and Korea, from a position of incomparable strength. The twenty-first century, "the Pacific Century," as it was known even before it began, saw China become once more a world unto itself, but this time its only boundary was space.
Less than a day in paradise,
And a thousand years have passed among men.
While the pieces are still being laid on the board
All things have changed to emptiness.
The woodman takes the road home,
The haft of his axe has rotted in the wind:
Nothing is what it was but the stone bridge
Still spanning a rainbow cinnabar red.
—meng chiao, The Stones
Where the Haft Rotted, ninth century A. D.
PROLOGUE WINTER 2I90
Yin/Yang
Who built the ten-storeyed tower of jade? Who foresaw it all in the beginning, when the first signs appeared?
—T'lEN wen (Heavenly Questions) by Ch'u Yuan, from the ch'u tz'u (Songs of the South), second century B.C.
Yin
IN THE DAYS before the world began, the first Ko Ming Emperor, Mao Tse-tung, stood on the hillside at Wuch'ichen in Shensi Province and looked back at the way he had come. The Long March, that epic journey of twenty-five thousand li over eighteen mountain ranges and through twelve provinces—each larger than a European state— was over, and seeing the immensity of China stretched out before him, Mao raised his arms and addressed those few of his companions who had survived the year-long trek.
"Since P'an Ku divided heaven from earth, and the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors reigned, has there ever been in history a long march like ours?" he said. "In ten years all China'will be ours. We have come this far—is there anything we cannot do?"
China. Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom. So it had been for more than three thousand years, since the time of the Chou, long before the First Empire.
So it had been. But now Chung Kuo was more. Not just a kingdom, but the earth itself. A world.
In his winter palace, in geostationary orbit 160,000 li above the planet's surface, Li Shai Tung, T'ang, Son of Heaven and Ruler of City Europe, stood on the wide viewing circle, looking down past his feet at the blue-white globe of Chung Kuo, thinking.
In the two hundred and fifty-six years that had passed since Mao had stood on that hill in Shensi Province, the world had changed greatly. Then, it was claimed, the only thing to be seen from space that gave evidence of Man's existence on the planet was the Great Wall of China. Untrue as it was, it said something of the Han ability to plan great projects—and not merely to plan them, but to carry them out. Now, as the twenty-second century entered its final decade, the very look of the world had changed. From space one saw the vast Cities—each almost a continent in itself; great sheets of glacial whiteness masking the old, forgotten shapes of nation states; the world one vast, encircling city: City Earth.
Li Shai Tung stroked his long white beard thoughtfully, then turned from the portal, drawing his embroidered silk pan. about him. It was warm in the viewing room, yet there was always the illusion of cold, looking down through the darkness of space at the planet far below.
The City. It had been playing on his mind much more of late. Before, he had been too close to it—even up here. He had taken it for granted. Made assumptions he should never have made. But now it was time to face things: to see them in the long perspective.
Constructed more than a century before, the City had been meant to last ten thousand years. It was vast and spacious and its materials needed only refurbishing, never replacing. It was a new world built on top of the old; a giant stilt village perched over the dark, still lake of antiquity.
Thirty decks—three hundred levels—high, each of its hexagonal, hivelike stacks two li to a side, there had seemed space enough to hold any number of people. Let mankind multiply, the Planners had said; there is room enough for all. So it had seemed, back then. Yet in the century that followed, the population of Chung Kuo had grown like never before.
Thirty-four billion people at last count, Han and European— Hung Mao—combined. And more each year. So many more that in fifty years the City would be full, the storage houses emptied. Put simply, the City was an ever-widening mouth, an ever-larger stomach. It was a thing that ate and shat and grew.
Li Shai Tung sighed, then made his way up the broad, shallow steps and into his private apartment. Dismissing the two attendants, he went across and pulled the doors closed, then turned and looked back into the room.
It was no good. He would have to bring the matter up in Council. The Seven would have to discuss population controls, like it or no. Or else? Well, at best he saw things stabilized: the City going on into the future; his sons and grandsons bom to rule in peace. And at worst?
Uncharacteristically, Li Shai Tung put his hands to his face. He had been having dreams. Dreams in which he saw the Cities burning. Dreams in which old friends were dead—brutally murdered in their beds, their children's bodies torn and bloodied on the nursery floor.
In his dreams he saw the darkness bubble up into the bright-lit levels. Saw the whole vast edifice slide down into the mire of chaos. Saw it as clearly as he saw his hands, now, before his face.
Yet it was more than dreams. It was what would happen— unless they acted.
Li Shai Tung, T'ang, ruler of City Europe, one of the Seven, shuddered. Then, smoothing the front of his pau, he sat down at his desk to compose his speech for Council. And as he wrote he was thinking.
We didn't simply change the past, as others tried to do, we built over it, as if to erase it for all time. We tried to do what Mao, in his time, attempted with his Cultural Revolution. What the first Han Emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, tried to do, two thousand four hundred years ago, when he burned the books and built the Great Wall to keep the northern barbarians from the Middle Kingdom. We have not learned from history. We have preferred to ignore its counsel. But now history is catching up with us. The years ahead will show how wise a course we set. Or blame us for our folly.
He liked the shape of his thoughts and set them down. Then, when he was finished, he got up and went back down the steps to the viewing circle. Darkness was slowly encroaching on City Europe, drawing a stark, dividing line—-a terminator—across its hollowed geometric shape, north to south.