Emperor Jiajing is apoplectic, his bulging eyes threatening to leap out of their sockets. His Majesty struggles against the restraints but, weakened by poisonous elixirs, he barely strains the knots.
Our sisterhood of sixteen leaps from the Emperor’s bed and dances around the Leopard Room. As we dance, we parade around His Majesty’s bed as though we are Heavenly enchantresses. As we dance, the spirits of our ancestresses descend into us, and our levity is as though we dance upon air. Amusingly, the Emperor’s serpent rears up in defiance of his master’s fury, staring with its Cyclops eye as though beguiled. As we dance, we serenade Emperor Jiajing with sacrilegious song. We sing the truth that sycophantic officials daren’t speak:
‘You are the worst Emperor the Ming Dynasty has known.’
‘The worst Emperor the Celestial Kingdom has ever known.’
‘The history books will condemn you, Emperor Jiajing.’
‘You are a tyrannical despot, atrocious and weak.’
‘Your subjects will not mourn you and your crippling taxes.’
The truth is like bamboo splints in Emperor Jiajing’s ears. His Majesty turns a livid shade of purple, and he thrashes against the foot-binding strips that fetter him to the bedposts; his groin bucking up and down and his shoulders nearly wrenching out of their sockets.
Concubine Jasmine cries, ‘Bid your kingdom farewell, Emperor Jiajing! The time has come to die!’
The sisterhood of sixteen leaps back on the vast bed, and our Son of Heaven goes limp. Now His Majesty is staring death in the face, he’s so petrified he can’t move. Splendid Jade and Autumn Rains fasten the strangling cord around his neck, and tears of desperation leak from Emperor Jiajing’s eyes. We tug on the ends of the foot-binding cloth with all our strength.
‘Pull!’ we cry. ‘Pull. . pull. . pull!’
The Emperor chokes and chokes. Enough time passes to kill a man, but still he won’t lose consciousness. We are panicking and confused.
‘The slip-knot is wrong!’ cries Concubine Melodious Songbird. ‘He is still able to breathe. We must tie it again. Quick!’
But it’s too late. Heavy boots stampede across the Great Within, and the door of the Leopard Room bursts open. Troops of armoured Imperial Guards charge in with spears.
Pandemonium. Shrieking terror and wails of dismay. Some concubines scatter by the instinct of flight to the peripheries of the chamber. Others weep piteously in each other’s arms. Enraged that the Emperor of Knives has escaped death, I pull a silver hairpin out of the hair spiralled up on my head and stab it in Emperor Jiajing’s wildly staring left eye. Blood spurts out and I smile. The Imperial Guards then drag me from the bed and slash through the fetters that lash Emperor Jiajing to the bedposts. They remove the gag from his mouth, and the Son of Heaven, more mortal than divinity, lets out a howl of agony.
They destroy us as the God of Thunder smashes tofu. They blacken our eyes, shatter our ribs and stave our skulls against the vermilion pillars. They beat us nearly to death, then haul our limp, insensible bodies out of the Leopard Room. As they drag me through the courtyard of the Palace of Heavenly Purity, my haze of excruciating pain parts long enough for me to see the saboteurs of our murder plot watching by the marble wall. Hunchback Guo and his mistress in a shawl of winter mink. Imperial Consort Bamboo. Concubine, fifth rank.
XII
On the day of the executions the Forbidden City is lost in opaque fog as the spirits of our ancestresses weave around the sixteen concubines, gathered in the courtyard by the Meridian Gate. Our ancestresses caress us and stroke our hair, soothing in whispers, ‘You have honoured us. We are proud of you. You will be rewarded in Heaven.’
A distinguished crowd attends the executions. Empresses and princes and princesses. Grand secretaries and high-ranking officials in resplendent padded silk robes. Emperor Jiajing, however, has not come. Humiliated by the empty socket of his eye, His Majesty has withdrawn into exile in the Inner Palaces. His Majesty’s third wife, Empress Bamboo, attends in his stead. High upon your throne, with the symbols of double happiness emblazoning your robe. What lurks behind your impervious mask, unknown.
The executioner swings his axe, and I weep and shake as each of my sisters is put to death. But when it is my turn to kneel before the blood-sodden chopping block, I am calm. As the axe swoops down through my neck, I do not regret departing this life.
When we are dead and dismembered, the distinguished crowd goes back to their sedan-chairs, keen to return to their stove-heated chambers, opium pipes and pots of aromatic teas. Emancipated from our remains, the sisterhood of sixteen rises up too. We soar over the Meridian Gate, where our heads are soon to be exhibited on spikes, and at the Gate of Heavenly Purity, we go our separate ways. My fifteen sisters soar onwards to the Otherworld, and I soar through the Forbidden City in pursuit of you: Empress Bamboo in her palanquin, borne upon the shoulders of gelded men. I pursue you to the Palace of Earthly Tranquillity, and linger in your chamber after your ladies-in-waiting have been dismissed.
You stand before the bronze mirror, admiring the sapphire crown in the dark tresses swept up from your widow’s peak. I weave around you in your embroidered robes. I soar through you, again and again, determined to break through the vault of your heart.
‘Concubine Bamboo. This is your elder sister, Swallow. Does your conscience pain you? Was it worth betraying us for the crown on your head?’
As you gaze in the mirror, you sense my presence. Your piercingly dark eyes light up as you smile: ‘It’s Empress Bamboo now.’
And I soar through you again and again, but your conscience remains as stone.
19. Retaliation
WANG WALKS THROUGH the night, breathing the exhaust fumes from the heavy trucks rumbling by, sending tremors through the asphalt under his feet. He walks by scaffolding and rubble and billboards of adverts promising sex appeal, glamour and success to those who can afford the latest skin-whitening cream or Nokia phone. He walks by mechanical diggers steering around a floodlit pit and men in hard hats crouched by a gas ring outside the workers’ barracks, cooking rice. He walks by the neon of a Japanese restaurant, the gate of Tuan Jie Hu Park and a pedicab driver begging a policeman not to confiscate his unlicensed vehicle. Wang walks on, through concrete, traffic and dust. Though he had set out with a strong sense of purpose, by the time he reaches the turning to the Public Security Bureau, his will falters. Better he solve his problems on his own.
Wang follows the ring road south, all the way to the China Central TV Towers. He stops and stares at the broadcasting HQ of Party propaganda and the strange architectural design of the towers leaning into each other, as though half collapsed. The city has changed radically in the decade Wang has been driving a taxi, the monuments to capitalism soaring up. Wang’s own growth, in contrast, has been stunted. China may be rising, but he is not.
Walking west to Tiananmen, he passes an entrance to the underground city, dug in the era of Chairman Mao and Soviet nuclear threat, tens of metres deep under his feet. When he was a child, his mother told him about the thousands of workers sent down with pickaxes and shovels to carve out a subterranean city under Beijing. The conscripted diggers were sworn to secrecy and how far the tunnels extend is not known (Shuxiang had said as far as the city of Tianjin). She told him she’d like to live down there one day.