If I dropped my gaze to street level, I would see cats and dogs, but I would not mistake them for the scavengers of Suvediye or Balkh or anywhere else. Most of the Kithai cats were small and handsomely colored, all-over dun except for brown ears and paws and tail, or silvery-gray with extremities almost indigo-blue, and the cats’ tails were oddly short and even more oddly kinked at the very tip, like hooks for hanging them up with. Some of the dogs running about resembled tiny lions, bushy-maned, with pushed-in muzzles and bulging eyes. Another breed looked like no thing ever seen before on this earth, except maybe an ambulatory tree stump, if there ever was such a thing. Indeed, that kind of dog was called shu-pei, meaning “loose-barked,” for its skin was so voluminously too large for it that none of the dog’s features was perceptible, nor even its shape; it was only a grotesque, waddling heap of wrinkles.
Yet another breed of dog I saw employed in a way I almost hesitate to tell, for I would probably not believe anyone else telling of it. That dog was large, of a reddish and bristly pelt, and was called xiang-gou. Every one wore a harness like a pony, and walked with great care and dignity, because its harness had an upstanding handle, by which the dog led a man or woman. The person holding to the handle was blind—not a beggar, but a man or woman going forth on business or to the market or just for a stroll. It is true. The xiang-gou, meaning “leader-dog,” was bred and trained to lead a blind master about his own premises, without a stumble or collision, and just as confidently through teeming crowds and clashing cart traffic.
Besides the sights, there were the sounds and smells, which sometimes proceeded from the same source. On every corner was a stall or handcart selling hot cooked foods for the outdoor workers or busy passersby who had to eat on the run. So the smell of fish or meat morsels frying came to one’s nose simultaneously with the sizzle coming to one’s ears. Or the faint garlicky smell of miàn boiling was accompanied by the slurping of its eaters shoveling the pasta from bowl to mouth with nimble tongs. Khanbalik being the Khan’s own city, it was continuously patrolled by street cleaners wielding brooms and buckets. So it was generally free of noxious odors like that of human excrement—more so than any other Kithai city, and ineffably more so than cities elsewhere in the East. The basic odor of Khanbalik was a mingled smell of spices and frying oil. To that, as I walked by different shops and market stalls, were variously added the smells of jasmine, cha, brazier smoke, sandalwood, fruits, incense, occasionally the fragrance of a passing lady’s perfumed hand-fan.
Most of the street noises went on incessantly, day and night: the chatter and jabber and singsong of the constantly talking street people, the rumble and clatter of wagon and cart wheels—and as often the jingly music of them, for many carters strung little bells to slide along the spokes of their wheels—the thud of horse and yak hoofs, the lighter patter of asses’ hoofs, the shuffle of camels’ big pads, the rustle of the straw sandals worn by the ceaselessly scampering porters. That continuous blend of noise was frequently punctuated by the wail of a fish vendor, or the howl of a fruit vendor, or the thwock-thwockof a poultry vendor pounding on his hollow wooden duck, or the reverberating boom-boom-boomthat was one of the city drum towers sounding the alarm of a fire somewhere. Only now and again would the street noise diminish to a respectful hush—when a troop of palace guards came trotting through, one of the men playing a fanfare by beating on a sort of lyre of brass rods, the others swinging quarterstaffs to clear the way for the noble lord coming behind them on horseback or being carried in a palanquin.
Sometimes, above the street noise—literally above it—could be heard a thin melodious fluting in the air. The first few times, I was puzzled by it. But then I realized that at least one in every flock of the city’s common pigeons had been banded with a little whistle that sang as it flew. Also, among the more ordinary pigeons was a very fluffy sort I have never seen anywhere else. In its flight it would suddenly pause in midair and somehow, like a tightrope tumbler but without a tightrope, it would topple end for end, merrily making a perfect somersault in the air, and then fly on as sedately as if it had done nothing wonderful.
And if I lifted my gaze even higher above the city roofs, on any breezy autumn day I would see flocks of feng-zheng flying. These were not birds, though some were shaped and painted like birds; others were made to resemble immense butterflies or small dragons. The feng-zheng was a construction of light sticks and very thin paper, and to it a string from a reel was tied. A man would run with the feng-zheng and let the breeze take it, and then, by subtle twitches at his end of the string, he could make it ascend and fly and swoop and curvet in the sky. (Myself, I never could master the art of it.) The height of its ascent was limited only by the amount of string on the flyer’s reel, and sometimes one would go up almost out of sight. Men liked to engage in feng-zheng battles. They would glue on their string an abrasive grit of powdered porcelain or Muscovy glass and then let their feng-zheng fly, and try to guide them so that one’s string would saw and cut another’s, and make that contraption come tumbling down from the sky. The flyers and other men would make heavy wagers on the battle’s outcome. But women and children liked to fly the feng-zheng just for enjoyment.
In the nighttimes, I did not have to make any special effort to observe the peculiar things that happened in the Kithai sky—for my head would be jerked up, volente o nolente, by the noises of those things. I mean the violent booms and bangs and sputters of the artificial lightnings and thunders, the so-called fiery trees and sparkling flowers. As in so many other Eastern countries, in Kithai too every day seemed to mark some folk holiday or anniversary requiring celebration. But only in Kithai did the festivities go on into the night, so there would be reason to send those curious fires flying skyward to burst into brighter fires and then into corpuscles of multicolored fire drifting down to the ground. I regarded the displays with admiration and awe, which was not lessened when later I discovered how those marvels were effected.
Outside the cities, Kithai’s variegated landscape also differed from those of other countries. I have already described a few of Kithai’s distinctive terrains, and will speak of others in their turn. But let me here say this. While I lived in Khanbalik I could, whenever I wished to spend a day in the country, command a horse from the palace stables and in just a morning’s ride go to look at something to be seen in no other landscape on this earth. It may be a relic of total uselessness and vainglory, but the Great Wall, that monster serpent petrified in the act of wriggling from horizon to horizon, is still a fantastic feast for the eyes.
I do not mean to give the impression that everything in Kithai, or even within the Khan’s capital city, was all beautiful, easy, rich and sweet. I would not have wished things so, for an unrelieved niceness can be as tiresome as the monotonously grand landscape of the Pai-Mir. Kubilai could have located his capital in a city of more temperate climate, for instance—there were places to the south that enjoyed perpetual springtime, and some much farther south that basked in perpetual summer. But the people who lived in such places, I found when I visited them, also were boringly bland. The climate of Khanbalik was very like that of Venice: springtime rains, winter snows and a sometimes oppressive summer heat. While its inhabitants did not have to contend with the mildewing dampness of Venice, their houses and clothes and furnishings were pervaded by the yellow dust forever being blown from the western deserts.