“I comprehend nothing, I understand nothing.”
Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian [1]
There are many tales told about the mystical land called China. Whether Borges or some historian of old, the West knows nothing of true China, and it is not hard to see why when modern China tramples their own traditions toward ‘prosperity.’ Beneath the myriad bio-spheres and earth lie the vigilant terra-cotta soldiers. Nearby is the burial mound of the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang. Rumors and traditional tales say that within his tomb are nefarious traps impossible to survive. There are said to be rivers of mercury, pathways lined by verdant tobernite and reflective asbestos chrysotile, and even guardians at least ten feet tall carved of pure cinnabar and with orpiment weaponry. The artisans were poisoned by these substances and all died inside the necropolis. One guardian took one hundred carvers’ lives, trapping them to fuel its eternal vigil over the beloved emperor. Were you ever able to breach his eternal sanctum, the First Emperor would raise himself, a resplendent apparition of glory incomprehensible to contemporary sensibility, and his guardians would fling spears of orpiment, flaked with thallium, at your limp and diseased cadaver – or so superstitious farmers say.
Qin Shihuang is famous as the First Emperor of China. In fact, the name Qin Shihuang (秦始皇) means First Emperor Qin. But it is as a general he acquired his suzerainty. Through military might he unified and ended the Warring States period. I need not tell you that such power does not often die quietly.
He commissioned an army of clay to be taken into the afterlife, so that he could conquer it as well. It was done to perfection and buried around his inhumed catacombs. It was not until 1974 that some Shaanxi farmers opted to dig their fields deep in preparation for the winter ahead and struck what they thought were pots from an ancient dynasty. At first they presumed that the pottery was likely from the Tang Dynasty, since their land was rumored to have been settled mostly during the mid-Tang period. However, when they went to dig the pot fully out, they saw that it was a head: eyes carved expertly with pupils and lacrimal glands, cheekbones high and distinctive, with a solid jaw and a clean shaven face.
Soon they found the whole body, though it was in several pieces, but it was clear to see that this was a warrior. The local Communist Party officials arrived the next day with the curator of the Shaanxi History Museum only to find the farmers had uncovered three warriors and suspected far more still interred. The curator looked at the soldiers each closely and remarked that by their garb and mannerisms, they were surely the lost army of Qin. The farmers showed the curator two more heads just unearthed. Each face was unique; not one of the five was remotely similar. At the curator’s request, the governor of Shaanxi sent word to Beijing of the discovery and a need for assistance. In response, museum resources in Ningxia, Hubei, Henan, and Guizhou – all nearby provinces – were redirected to assist uncovering the pit of Qin soldiers and putting them back together. The mission was highly successful and one can visit the museum that was erected there, now a United Nations World Heritage Site.
No one knows of the First Emperor’s afterlife, but on a trip to the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an (formerly Chang’an), one German scholar was shown a book written in small seal script (one of the most ancient ways of writing Chinese). However, the book was not dated very old, or at least not as old as it should have been. The museum curator had the book tested for its age and it was concluded after three separate tests that the book was from either the late Sui (581-618 CE) or early Tang Dynasty (619-907 CE). The few scholars who knew the existence of this text had a tentative agreement that it was most likely written during the breakdown of the Sui Dynasty.
An expert of Ancient Chinese sent from the National Museum in Beijing translated it into modern simplified Chinese. The German asked and was permitted by the curator – who had to override the translator’s authority as he said Beijing would not want a 洋鬼子 (foreign devil) to see it – to translate it into German, and soon an Australian sinologist got the Chinese from the German and translated it into English. I was shown a fragment of this translation about two months ago.
It says:
That side held splendor for none but Him. The conqueror was conquered as the power of creation turned against him. Beware the tomb – the Jade Emperor rules all.
Though we cannot be certain, it would appear that whoever wrote this purported to know the ultimate fate of Qin Shihuang in the afterlife itself.
Soon after this fragment was made available to me, I sent a request to the Australian for a full translation. A month passed by without a response. I was not sure what to make of this because he had seemed so eager when he shared the fragment. A month of waiting was far too long. I wrote to another sinologist at the university where he worked to inquire about his location. It was a week before she replied. She said the university was at a great loss, and she provided me with a link to his obituary in a Melbourne newspaper. Sudden heart attack, it said, had killed him over a month ago, just days after he shared this fragment with me.
When I made the connection to the German, I quickly called his personal phone. His wife picked up after four rings. Sudden heart attack, she said, about four weeks ago. From all accounts he was passing through the English Garden Park in central Munich when he gripped his chest, then fell over the railing into the Isar River and drowned. It took a whole day to find his corpse upstream. But if not for the heart attack he would not have fallen into the river. I told her I was very sorry for her loss. However, I knew it was no coincidence.
The curator in Shaanxi had been replaced by special order of the Politburo in Beijing. It seemed everyone who touched that book disappeared. Two heart attacks and one disappearance was more than enough evidence for me to see what was happening. But I needed that book. It might be dangerous, I thought, but it is truly an artifact of Chinese culture the Communist Party does not like. That makes it all the more important to preserve.
When I inquired of the new curator of her predecessor’s whereabouts and the condition of what I now called the Sui-Qin Fragments, her response was,
Dear Sir ——,
I am sorry to say that the previous curator has been missing now for three months. By special order of the Politburo and by appointment of President Xi Jinping, I have taken his position, and I can say as a matter of fact that the text you are inquiring about – this so-called Sui-Qin – does not, nor has ever, existed. You may feel free to visit our online records and verify that it has never been part of our collections.
As part of my professional duties as the curator of Shaanxi History Museum, I request that you stop inquiring about a nonexistent text. Serious research into Chinese history is done daily here and in other regional and national museums in China. And I would remind you that I have the power to have you investigated and barred from entering China should you continue your present course of action. An historian ought to be able to recognize his own obsession.
Sincerely,
黄笑梅
Huang Xiaomei
Such a response from the curator of a provincial museum was astounding, to say the least. But I took the letter merely as a warning to disregard. The Sui-Qin is too precious to waste time to wariness. The letter did not say explicitly that I may not explore my interests outside of China if I could be covert, and so I flew to Munich under the pretense of a business meeting to meet with the German’s widow. She was very quiet, reserved; she knew that China did not like something about the Sui-Qin and refused to read her late husband’s translation. But she handed over to me what, until that point, were the hidden Chinese and German translations of the text.
On my return flight to New York, I read the Chinese and made note of three specific passages. The first is:
Within the mudded necropolis, amidst rivers of mercury and trees of lead, rests a sarcophagus, inside of which the First Emperor’s bones dissolve; for you see, the air is not air but is shimmering death.
The second:
His warriors guard him yet, and by some technological mastery kill on sight.[2]
The third and final:
The Jade Emperor, the Lord of Primordial Beginning, laughs still at Qin’s smallness, and so too does the Lord of Numinous Treasure, while quietly above lies the recumbent Lord of the Way and Its Virtue. The very power that gave Qin his eternal army was now before him, laughing and judging him forevermore.
It is easy to see that this text was about Qin Shihuang’s state in his burial chambers. But this would, of course, mean that this man had found his way inside of the most mysterious and protected place in China. The scholars were right. This text must have been written during the end of the Sui Dynasty. Only during such turmoil as the crumbling of a whole dynasty could someone find their way into the most enigmatic tomb in the world. The Sui fell because of multiple military failures and an economy that suffered under expansive construction policies. Yang was assassinated by his ministers and thus became the last emperor of the Sui. A wealthy northerner named himself Emperor Gaozu of the Tang soon thereafter. A little known fact about this dynastic shift is that the military was far reduced in size because peasants had practiced breaking their own limbs in order to avoid the Sui’s mandatory conscription. The normal protections for Qin’s burial mound lapsed for perhaps a few months as the Tang established itself.
But the question still remains: Why does the People’s Republic of China not want people to read this text? In my expert opinion, I believe that it is because the text lends a certain legitimacy to ancient Chinese beliefs. A resurgence of focus on traditional culture, like Daoism and Confucian practices, in China would be negative for their capitalist goals. Why would a rural person travel as a migrant worker to build the modern monuments of China if, in the end, the Politburo’s arrogance will place them at the feet of the Jade Emperor? Why should they be the communist (with Chinese characteristics) army as the terra-cotta was for Qin? I do not know for sure if this is why the Chinese want the fragments hidden and buried like Qin. The Sui-Qin could be a collection of ancient fantasy, or the secret works of a lone Daoist monk asleep on his holy mountain among mysticism and mist. The Journey to the West and the poetry of Li Bai and Du Fu are permitted. The Sui-Qin should be, too.
I am alone certain that this book is important for this purpose: a renaissance of true Chinese cultural identity, the undoing of the Cultural Revolution – the reversal of Mao.
But now I realize that the woman sitting just across the aisle from me is writing something down in Chinese, and when I look at her she stares back. I look back down at the Sui-Qin and realize I had softly muttered all of the Chinese as I translated each fragment. My heart starts to beat hard. I cover the Sui-Qin and look straight ahead, then say in Chinese:
“Why are you here?”
“Your Mandarin is very beautiful,” she says. “Where did you learn?”
I turn to look at what she wrote. I had dictated the Sui-Qin to her the entire time. She wrote in a rigid simplified script comprised of jagged strokes and cursory accents that only someone with little respect for Chinese calligraphy would use.
“You are not getting the Sui-Qin,” I say.
She keeps a glare on me almost as tasteless as her script.
“That’s too bad. But it isn’t up to you.”
“There is still an hour until we land in New York. It isn’t up to either of us yet.”
“How did you translate, 气非气也，却是闪死, into English?” When I do not answer, she peeks at my notebook with eyes like glinting obsidian. “Ah! ‘The air is not air but is shimmering death.’ That is lovely.”
“I will not give you the text.”
“Come now,” she says. “Is this the way to spend your final moments?”
My heart starts to race even harder.
“The written word will not be silenced by you. I know you are a Communist Party thug,” I say.
“No, I am not. You misread my interest,” she says. “It is best you do not know who I am, but I need you to give me the Sui-Qin Fragments. I am not the danger. You have already faced the danger – and failed.”
“What do you mean?”
I noticed myself beginning to sweat and breathe heavily.
“No one else has seen but me.” She lowers her voice, and says, “Sitting five rows behind you is a man. He is ex-FSB. Do not look. Here, look at this photo of my daughter.”
She shows me a picture of a young girl with long black hair on her smartphone.
“Look at her hair. He is in the reflection,” she says.
The man has a shaven head and thick brows. He is reading the in-flight magazine.
“You mean to tell me,” I say, “that man is former Federal Secret Service, a Russian assassin? How can I trust you?”
“You don’t have to. Say he isn’t. Even then, you need to give me the Sui-Qin. Its safety requires it. If you don’t think so, touch the back of your neck.”
I am hesitant, but I reach behind my neck. There is something there. I pull it out with a wince and hold it before me. It is an inch long needle.
“That needle is a vector for one of three things,” she says: “Succinylcholine, in which case you are about to undergo myocardial infarction; aconitine, which will severe neuronal activities before we land; or it is something less clever, like arsenic or thallium. However, my bet is on the succinylcholine.”
My chest hurts and I have trouble breathing. I check myself for a pulse and feel nothing.
“It’s the succinylcholine. You have less than thirty seconds before you feint. The ex-FSB has taken precautions. I checked – the AED is missing. So here’s the deal,” she says. “I have a portable AED, but in exchange you need to give me the Sui-Qin. For protection, I promise. Though I hardly think my intent matters anymore. Make your choice. If you don’t accept, you will die and he might take the Sui-Qin.”
I stare at her as black spots start to appear.
“Here,” I say, handing her all of the versions of the text. “Take it back to China. But give it to the people.”
I grasp my heart. The person next to me asks if I am alright, and as I am about to black out the woman says in harsh Chinese:
“I have no AED.”
[1] Xingjian, Gao. Soul Mountain. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2000. 506. Print.
[2] Despite the Beijing Ancient Chinese specialist’s translation, he probably translated ‘technological mastery’ from ‘magic’ or ‘mysticism.’
The Necropolis of China | Copyright 2016
AARON RECORDS 