The Journeyer - Jennings Gary - Страница 223
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The Han word mian-tzu meant literally “face,” the face on the front of one’s head. But, because the Han seldom let their faces show much surface expression of their feelings, the word had come to mean the feelings going on behind those faces. To insult a man or humiliate him or best him in a contest was to cause him to “lose face.” And the vulnerability of his feeling-face persisted beyond the grave, into uttermost eternity. If a son dared not behave in any way to shame or sadden the feeling-faces of his living elders, how much more reprehensible it would have been to hurt the disembodied feeling-faces of the dead. So all the Han ordered their lives as if they were being watched and scrutinized and judged by all their forebear generations. It might have been a worthwhile superstition, if it had spurred all men to attempt feats that their ancestors would applaud. But it did not. It made them only anxious to evade their ancestors’ disapproval. A life entirely devoted to the avoidance of wrong seldom achieves anything exceptionally right—or anything at all.
Vakh.
3
THE city named Su-zho, through which we passed on our way south, was a lovely city, and we were almost loath to leave it. But when we reached our destination, Hang-zho, we found it an even more beautiful and gracious place. There is a rhyming adage which is known even to faraway Han who have never visited either of the cities:
Shang ye Tian tang,
Zhe ye Su, Hang!
Which could be translated thus:
Heaven is far from me and you,
But here for us are Hang and Su!
As I have said, Hang-zho was like Venice in one respect, being girt all about by water and riddled by waterways. It was both a riverside and a seaside city, but not a port city. It was situated on the north bank of a river called the Fu-chun, which here widened and shallowed and fanned out, eastward of the city, into many separate runnels across a vast, spreading, flat delta of sand and pebbles. That empty delta extended for some two hundred li, from Hang-zho to what was, most of the time, the distant edge of the Sea of Kithai. (I will shortly make plain what I mean by “most of the time.”) Since no seaborne vessels could cross that immense sandy shoal, Hang-zho had no port facilities, except what docks were necessary to handle the comparatively few and small boats that plied the river inland from the city.
All the many main avenues of Hang-zho were canals running from the riverside into the city and through it and round about it. At places those canals broadened out into wide, serene, mirror-smooth lakes, and in those were islands that were public parks, all flowers and birds and pavilions and banners. The lesser streets of the city were neatly cobbled, and they were broad but tortuous and twisty, and they humped themselves over the canals on ornate, high-arched bridges, more of them than I could ever count. At every bend in every street or canal, one had a view of one of the city’s many high and elaborate gates, or a tumultuous marketplace, or a palatial building or temple, as many as ten or twelve stories high, with the distinctive curly Han eaves projecting from every single story.
The Court Architect of Khanbalik had once told me that Han cities never had straight streets because the Han commonfolk foolishly believed that demons could travel only in straight lines, and foolishly believed that they were thwarting the demons by putting kinks in all their streets. But that was nonsense. In truth, the streets of any Han city—including both the paved and the watery ones of Hang-zho—were laid out in deliberate emulation of the Han style of writing. The city’s marketplace—or each of the marketplaces, in a city like Hang-zho that had so many—was a straight-edged square, but all the surrounding streets would have bends and curves and sinuosities, gentle or abrupt, just as do the brush strokes of a written Han word. My own personal yin signature could very well be the street plan of some walled Han town.
Hang-zho was, as befits a capital city, very civilized and refined, and it exhibited many touches of good taste. At intervals along every street were tall vases in which the householders or shopkeepers put flowers for the delight of the passersby. At this season they were all brimming with glowing, dazzling chrysanthemums. That flower, incidentally, was the national symbol of Manzi, reproduced on all official signboards and documents and such, revered because the exuberant florets of its blossom are so reminiscent of the sun and its sunbeams. Also at intervals along the streets were posts bearing boxes labeled—so my scribe told me—“Receptacle for the respectful deposit of sacred paper.” That meant, he told me, any piece of paper with writing on it. Ordinary litter was simply swept up and removed, but the written word was held in such high regard that all such papers were taken to a special temple and ritually burned.
But Hang-zho also was, as befits a prosperous trading city, rather gaudily voluptuous in other respects. It seemed that every last person on the streets, except for travel-dusted new arrivals like us, was luxuriously garbed in silks and velvets, and jingling with jewelry. Although admirers of Hang-zho called the city a Heaven on earth, people in other cities enviously called it “the Melting-Pot of Money.” I also saw on the streets, in full daylight, numbers of the sauntering young women-for-hire whom the Han called “wild flowers.” And there were many open-fronted little wine shops and cha shops—with names like the Pure Delight and the Fount of Refreshment and the Garden of Djennet (that one patronized by Muslim residents and visitors)—some of which shops, said my scribe, actually dispensed wine and cha, but all of which mainly traded in wild flowers.
The names of Hang-zho’s streets and landmarks, I suppose, ranked somewhere between the tasteful and the voluptuous. Many of them were nicely poetic: one park island was called the Pavilion from Which the Herons Take Flight at Dawn. Some names seemed to record some local legends: one temple was the Holy House That Was Borne Here Through the Sky. Some were tersely descriptive: a canal known as Ink to Drink was not inky, but clear and clean; it was lined with schoolhouses, and when a Han spoke of drinking ink, he was referring to scholastic study. Some names were more lavishly descriptive: the Lane of Flowers Worked with Colorful Birds’ Feathers was a short street of shops where hats were made. And some names were simply unwieldy: the main road going from the city inland was labeled the Paved Avenue Which Winds a Long Way Between Gigantic Trees, Among Streams Falling in Cascades, and Upward at Last to an Ancient Buddhist Temple on a Hilltop.
Hang-zho was again like Venice in not allowing large animals into the center of the city. In Venice, a rider coming from Mestre on the mainland must tether his horse in a campo on the northwest side of the island, and go by gondola the rest of the way. We, arriving at Hang-zho, left our mounts and pack asses at a karwansarai on the outskirts, and went leisurely on foot—the better to examine the place—through the streets and over the many bridges, our slaves carrying our necessary luggage. When we came to the Wang’s immense palace, we even had to leave our boots and shoes outside. The steward who met us at the main portal advised us that that was the Han custom, and gave us soft slippers to wear indoors.
The recently appointed Wang of Hang-zho was another of Kubilai’s sons, Agayachi, a little older than myself. He had been informed by an advance rider of our approach, and he greeted me most warmly, “Sain bina, sain urkek,” and Hui-sheng too, addressing her respectfully as “sain nai.” When she and I had bathed and changed into presentable attire, and sat down with Agayachi to a welcoming banquet, he seated me on his right and Hui-sheng at his left, not at a separate women’s table. Few people had given much notice to Hui-sheng in the days when she had been a slave, because, although she had been then no less comely, and had dressed as well as all court slaves were made to do, she had cultivated the slave’s demeanor of unobtrusiveness. Now, as my consort, she dressed as richly as any noblewoman, but it was her letting her radiant personality shine forth that made people notice her—and approvingly, and admiringly.
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