China Read online

  ALSO BY EDWARD RUTHERFURD

  Russka

  Sarum

  The Princes of Ireland

  The Rebels of Ireland

  Paris

  New York

  London

  The Forest

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2021 by Edward Rutherfurd

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cover images: Engraving by Wilson after View of the Tchin-Shan, or Golden Island by William Alexander © Fine Art Photographic Library/Corbis via Getty Images; ornamental frame © ArpornSeemaroj/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Michael J. Windsor

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rutherfurd, Edward, author.

  Title: China : the novel / Edward Rutherfurd.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020034783 (print) | LCCN 2020034784 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385538930 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385538947 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385543927 (open market)

  Subjects: LCSH: China—History—19th century—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6068.U88 C48 2021 (print) | LCC PR6068.U88 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020034783

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020034784

  Ebook ISBN 9780385538947

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  In respectful memory of

  ARTHUR WALEY, CH,

  Poet and Scholar,

  whose translations of the Chinese classics have been an inspiration to me for fifty years

  CONTENTS

  Map of the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace

  Map of China

  Author’s Note

  RED SUN YELLOW RIVER

  OPIUM

  MACAO

  HONG KONG

  THE WINDOW

  NEMESIS

  ZHAPU

  THE PALACE

  TAIPING

  MOMENT OF TRUTH

  SUMMER PALACE

  IN DUTY BOUND

  THE MISSIONARY

  JINGDEZHEN

  WEST LAKE

  YELLOW RIVER

  BOXERS

  THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN

  Afterword

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  China is first and foremost a novel, but it takes place against a background of real events.

  When historical figures appear in the narrative, the depictions are my own, and I hope they are fair. All the principal characters, however—Trader, Charlie Farley, the Odstock brothers, Nio, Shi-Rong, Mei-Ling, Lacquer Nail, Mr. Liu, Mr. Ma, Guanji, their families and friends—are fictional.

  I wish to acknowledge my special debt to the following authors and scholars on whose huge research, often in primary sources, this novel has relied.

  General Introductions: John Keay for the most readable introduction to China’s history; Caroline Blunden and Mark Elvin for their Cultural Atlas of China, a wonderful resource book; and Marina Warner for her vivid illustrated life of the “Dragon Empress.”

  Specialist Works: Julia Lovell for the Opium War of 1839; Peter Ward Fay, for further details of the war and the opium trade; and for the use of opium in China, Zhang Yangwen. Details of a eunuch’s life were provided by Jia Yinghua’s life of Sun Yaoting, of concubinage and servitude by Hsieh Bao Hua, of a servant’s life by Ida Pruitt’s account of Ning Lao T’ai-t’ai. For my descriptions of foot-binding I have relied upon the works of Dorothy Ko. For introducing me to the complex subject of the Manchu, I am grateful to Mark C. Elliott, and above all to Pamela Kyle Crossley, whose detailed investigation of three generations of a single Manchu family made it possible for me to create the fictional family of Guanji. For details of the Summer Palace, I owe thanks to Guo Daiheng, Young-tsu Wong, and especially to Lillian M. Li’s work on the Yuanmingyuan. In describing the imperial justice system and the law of torture, I relied upon an excellent monograph by Nancy Park. For the feng shui and characteristics of villages in southern China, I am indebted to an article by Xiaoxin He and Jun Luo. When writing on the Taiping, I drew upon the studies by Stephen R. Platt and by Jonathan Spence. I am especially grateful to Diana Preston for her day-by-day account of the siege of the legations during the Boxer Rebellion that gave me such rich material to work with.

  I must add my personal thanks to Julia Lovell for her wise and helpful counsel in setting me on my path; to Dr. James Greenbaum, Tess Johnston, and Mai Tsao for helpful conversations; to Sing Tsung-Ling and Hang Liu for their careful cultural readings of my initial drafts; and to Lynn Zhao for her thorough historical vetting of the entire manuscript. Any faults that remain are mine alone.

  My many thanks are due to Rodney Paull for preparing maps with such exemplary care and patience.

  Once again I thank my editors, William Thomas at Doubleday and Oliver Johnson at Hodder, not only for making such a wonderful team, but for all their great kindness and patience during the long and technically difficult writing of the draft. I also wish to thank Michael Windsor in America and Alasdair Oliver in Britain for their two very different but equally splendid cover jacket designs. My many thanks also to the team of Khari Dawkins, Maria Carella, Rita Madrigal, Michael Goldsmith, Lauren Weber, and Kathy Hourigan at Doubleday,

  My many thanks, as always, to Cara Jones and the whole team at RCW.

  And finally, of course, I thank my agent, Gill Coleridge, to whom for the last thirty-six years I owe an incalculable debt of gratitude.

  Names: The Chinese place names in this book are mostly given in their modern form, except in a few cases where Western characters use the names Canton and Peking in conversation, as they would have done in the nineteenth century.

  January 1839

  At first he did not hear the voice behind him. The red sun was glaring in his face as he rode across the center of the world.

  Forty miles since dawn. Hundreds to go. And not much time, perhaps no time at all. He did not know.

  Soon the huge magenta sun would sink, a melancholy purple dusk would fall, and he would have to rest. Then on again at dawn. And all the time wondering: Could he reach his father, whom he loved, and say he was sorry before it was too late? For his aunt’s letter had been very clear: His father was dying.

  “Mr. Jiang!” He heard it this time. “Jiang Shi-Rong! Wait!”

  He turned his head. A single rider was urging his horse along the road. After the glare of the red sun in his eyes, it took Jiang a moment to see that it was Mr. Wen’s servant, Wong. What could that mean? He reined in his horse.

  Wong—a small, plump, bald man who had originally come from the south—ran the house for the aging scholar, who trusted him completely, and he’d taken young Jiang under his wing as soon as he’d come to stay there. He was perspiring. He must have been riding like an imperial messenger to catch me, the young man thought.

  “Is Mr. Wen all right?” Jiang asked anxiously.

  “Yes, yes. He says you must return to Beijing at once.”

  “Return?” Jiang looked a
t him in dismay. “But my father’s dying. I have to go to him.”

  “You have heard of the lord Lin?”

  “Of course.” All Beijing had been talking about the modest official, little known before, who had so impressed the emperor that he had been given a mission of great importance.

  “He wants to see you. Right away.”

  “Me?” He was a nobody. Not even that. An insignificant failure.

  “Mr. Wen wrote to the lord Lin about you. He knows the lord Lin from when they were students. But Mr. Wen did not tell you, did not want to raise your hopes. When the lord Lin did not reply…” He made a sad face. “Then this morning, after you left, Mr. Wen received a message. Maybe the lord Lin will take you on his staff. But he needs to see you first. So Mr. Wen tells me to ride like a thousand devils to get you back.” He looked at the young man intently. “This is a big chance for you, Jiang Shi-Rong,” he said quietly. “If the lord Lin is successful in his mission, and you please him, the emperor himself will hear your name. You will be on the path to fortune again. I am happy for you.” He made a little bow to indicate the young man’s future status.

  “But my father…”

  “He may be dead already. You do not know.”

  “And he may be alive.” As the young man looked away, his face was a picture of distress. “I should have gone before,” he muttered to himself. “I was too ashamed.” He turned to Wong again. “If I go back now, it will cost me three days. Maybe more.”

  “If you want to succeed, you must take chances. Mr. Wen says your father would certainly want you to see the lord Lin.” The messenger paused. “Mr. Wen told the lord Lin that you speak Cantonese. Big point in your favor—for this mission.”

  Shi-Rong said nothing. They both knew it was thanks to Wong that he could speak the servant’s Cantonese dialect. At first it had amused the young mandarin to pick up some everyday expressions from Wong. He’d soon discovered that Cantonese was almost like another language. It also used more tones than Mandarin. But he had a good ear, and over a year or two, chatting to Wong every day, he’d begun to speak enough to get by. His father, who had a low opinion of the people of the south, had been ironically amused when he heard about this achievement. “Though I suppose it could be useful, one day,” he allowed. But Mr. Wen counseled him, “Don’t despise the Cantonese language, young man. It contains many ancient words that have since been lost in the Mandarin we speak.”

  Wong was looking at him urgently. “Mr. Wen says you may never get a chance like this again,” he continued.

  Jiang Shi-Rong gazed towards the red sun and shook his head miserably.

  “I know that,” he said quietly.

  For a minute neither of them moved. Then, with a heavy heart, the young man silently began to ride his horse along the road, back to Beijing.

  * * *

  ◦

  By the end of that night, five hundred miles away, in the coastal lands west of the port then known to the outside world as Canton, a mist had drifted in from the South China Sea, shrouding the world in whiteness.

  The girl went to the courtyard gate and looked out, thinking herself alone.

  Despite the dawn mist, she could sense the presence of the sun, shining somewhere behind the haze; but she still couldn’t see the edge of the pond, just thirty paces in front of her, nor the rickety wooden bridge upon which her father-in-law, Mr. Lung, liked to watch the full moon and remind himself that he owned the pond and that he was the richest peasant in the hamlet.

  She listened in the damp silence. Sometimes one might hear a soft splash as a duck stuck its head in the water and then shook it. But she heard nothing.

  “Mei-Ling.” A hiss from somewhere to her right.

  She frowned. She could just make out the shape of the bamboo clump that stood beside the path. Cautiously she took a step towards it.

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s me. Nio.” A figure appeared beside the bamboo and came towards her.

  “Little Brother!” Her face lit up. Even after the years of absence, there could be no mistaking him. He still bore the telltale scar across his nose and cheek.

  Nio wasn’t exactly her brother. Hardly a relation at all, one might say. He came from her grandmother’s family, on her mother’s side, who belonged to the Hakka tribe. After his mother and sisters died in a plague, his father had left him with Mei-Ling’s parents for two years before he’d married again and taken the boy back.

  His name was Niu, properly speaking. But in the dialect of his native village, it sounded more like Nyok, though one could hardly hear the final k. So Mei-Ling had compromised and invented the name Nio, with a short o, and so he’d remained ever since.

  Long before his father had taken him back, Mei-Ling had adopted Nio as a brother, and she’d been his big sister ever since.

  “When did you arrive?” she whispered.

  “Two days ago. I came here to see you, but your mother-in-law told me not to come again. Then she came to your parents’ house and told them not to let me near you.”

  “Why did she do that?”

  Although Nio, at fifteen, was only a year younger than Mei-Ling, she noticed that he still looked rather childish. He stared at the ground for a moment before confessing: “It may have been something that I said.”

  “Why are you here, Little Brother?”

  “I ran away.” He smiled, as if this were a thing to be proud of.

  “Oh, Nio…” And she was about to ask for details when he indicated that there was someone watching from the gate behind her.

  “Wait at the entrance to the village tomorrow morning,” she told him hurriedly. “I’ll try to come at first light. If I don’t, then come again the next day. Run now. Quick, quick.”

  As Nio vanished behind the bamboo, she turned.

  * * *

  —

  The oval-faced young woman stood by the gate. Willow was her sister-in-law. They called each other Sister, but all resemblance between them ended there.

  Her name signified the graceful willow tree. Without her superior clothes, however, and the makeup she carefully applied to her face, she might have been thought rather plain. Willow came from a rich peasant family in the next county named Wan, and although she had married Mr. Lung’s elder son, the hamlet people politely referred to her, in the customary manner, as the Woman Wan. In keeping with the Wan family’s more leisured status, Willow’s feet had been bound when she was a girl, so that she now walked with the fashionable totter that marked her out from the poor peasants like Mei-Ling, whose family labored in the fields.

  Willow was a little taller and affected a slight, elegant droop, as though bowing in a ladylike manner. Mei-Ling was small and stood straight on her natural feet, like the working peasant girl she was. She’d also been known, ever since she was a tiny child, as the prettiest girl in the hamlet. If her parents hadn’t been so poor, they might have bound her feet and dressed her in fine clothes and sold her to a merchant in one of the local towns as a junior wife or concubine. But pretty though she was, no one could ever have imagined she would marry a son of Mr. Lung.

  In fact, most people thought the marriage was a scandal. Her mother-in-law had been furious.

  There was one other difference between them. Willow had given her husband one child already—although, to his parents’ displeasure, it was only a girl. Fortunately, however, she was now five months pregnant again.

  As they went back into the front courtyard of the Lung house, Willow looked at Mei-Ling languidly.

  “I know who that was.”

  “Oh?”

  “That was your cousin, Nio. I know all about him. You call him Little Brother.” She nodded slowly. “Everyone in the house knows he’s here, but we weren’t allowed to tell you.”

  “Not even my husband?”

  “He wanted t
o. But he was afraid you might try to see Nio and get into trouble. He was trying to protect you. That’s all.”

  “Are you going to tell Mother?”

  “You can trust me, Sister.”

  There was a small orange tree in the courtyard. As Willow reached it, she paused.

  “Don’t try to see him, Sister. If Mother finds out, she’ll whip you. Or something worse.”

  * * *

  ◦

  It was early afternoon in Calcutta that day when a one-horse hackney cab, carrying two young Englishmen, made its way into the pleasant suburb of Chowringhee. The blinds were drawn fully down to keep out the harsh light—for although this was India’s cool season, it was still brighter and hotter than most summer days in Britain.

  Charlie Farley was a cheerful fellow. At cricket, which he played well, he had enough height to command respect. His face was somewhat round and seemed to be getting rounder as his fair hair receded from his brow. “I’m not bald yet,” he’d cheerfully remark, “but I’ll be bald in time for tea.” His pale blue, bespectacled eyes were amiable, but by no means stupid. Not only at cricket, but in life generally, he played with a straight bat.

  His friend John Trader was slightly taller, his hair the color of black olives, slim, rather handsome. But his intense cobalt-blue eyes didn’t look happy.

  “This is all a terrible mistake,” he said in a gloomy voice.

  “Nonsense, John,” said Charlie Farley. “I told the colonel you’d saved my life. He’ll be very civil to you.” A few moments later, the wheels of the cab crunched onto the gravel of a short driveway. “Now, we’ll just drop those letters with my aunt Harriet and be on our way. So try and look happy.”