CHAPTER ELEVEN
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round….
“WHEN ONE is gone riding for three days, then one finds the most noble and magnificent city that for its excellence, importance, and beauty is called Quinsai, which means the City of Heaven,” Marco Polo records. “It is the greatest city that may be found in the world, where so many pleasures may be found that one fancies himself to be in Paradise.”
Marco had arrived at the apogee of Chinese civilization, a city so advanced, so beautiful, so filled with sensual pleasures that he would scarcely be able to convince skeptical Europeans that it was not some insubstantial vision, but as real as Venice. Like Venice, Quinsai was built around a series of canals in which boats of every type jostled against each other. No wonder Marco believed that he had arrived in a more highly evolved version of his native city.
Hangzhou, as the city is known today, captivated Marco as did no other place in Asia. For the first time, he encountered the grandeur of China at its most advanced, unspoiled by the Mongols. In Quinsai, he arrived at a breathtaking future, as unreal to him as some science fiction fantasy would be to a time traveler of today, yet it was tangible and vital. For once, he saw himself not just as a wayfarer but as an explorer, and he set out take the measure of this urban marvel. “I, Master Marco Polo,” he proclaims, “was in this city many times and determined with great diligence to notice and understand all the conditions of the place, describing them in my notes.”
The inhabitants of Quinsai resisted opening hearth and home to a foreigner such as Marco, who, in their eyes, represented the invading Mongols. Also, he had never acquired an understanding of Chinese. As a result of those barriers, much of the city’s inner life, spiritual and sexual, eluded his inquiry. Yet his curiosity impelled him to learn more about the city and its people than any other European before him.
He never offered a full account of why he went to the great capital, or what duties he performed there. Most likely, he served as a tax assessor and collector not long after Kublai Khan’s trusted general, Bayan, conquered the city. In some versions of the Travels,Marco claims that he held the post of governor of Hangzhou, and skeptics of his account have seized on this as a prime example of his tendency to inflate his experience outrageously. Yet in other versions, Marco says only that he visited the city repeatedly in his capacity as a tax assessor, and sat on a city council. Both assertions are plausible. In any event, his dazzling descriptions of the city speak for themselves.
How did a Venetian manage to infiltrate and decode the immense, advanced, and complex city? His forays into alien cultures often yielded mixed results, yet his account of Quinsai demonstrates a mastery of detail and uncanny accuracy. The answer is that he received expert help, as he explains: “I will follow the account of it [Quinsai] sent in writing by the queen of the realm to Bayan, the conqueror of the province, when he was besieging it. This was for him to pass on to the Great Khan, so that, learning of its magnificence, he might not let it be sacked or laid waste.” In other words, Marco enjoyed access to the flow of Mongol intelligence about the city. He is silent concerning the language of this valuable document. It may have been in Persian, which he knew well, or in one of the Mongol tongues with which he was familiar. In either case, his consideration of Quinsai is more than a patchwork of quotations; he brought his own observations to bear, so that he could confidently state, “It is all true, as I, Marco Polo, later saw clearly with my own eyes.”
MARCO LAUNCHES INTO a fervid account of Quinsai, a city “so large that in circuit it is…a hundred miles around or thereabouts, because the streets and canals in it are very wide and large.” Proceeding to bring this unknown metropolis to life for his skeptical Western readers, he says, “Then there are squares where they hold market, which on account of the vast multitudes that meet in them are necessarily very large and spacious.”
The more Marco pondered this metropolis, with its canals and bridges and constant waterborne traffic teeming with commerce on a scale that his readers would not have believed possible, the more eloquent his reportage became. “It has on one side,” he continues, “a lake of fresh water [West Lake] that is very clear, and on the other there is an enormous river which, by entering by many great and small canals that run in every part of the city, both takes away all impurities and then enters the lake…. This makes the air very wholesome; and one can go all about the city by land and by these streams. The streets and canals are so great that boats are able to travel there conveniently and carts to carry the things necessary for the inhabitants.”
Marco stumbles when he comes to estimate the number of bridges in the City of Heaven: “There is a story that it has 12,000 bridges, great and small, for the most part of stone, and some are built of wood. And for each of these bridges, or for the most part, a great and large ship could easily pass under the arch of it; and for the others smaller ships could pass. But those that are made over the principal canals and the chief streets are arched so high and with such skill that a boat can pass under them with a mast, and yet there pass over them carriages and horses, so well are the streets inclined to fit the height.” The actual number of bridges in Quinsai came to 347, not 12,000 as Marco states, a discrepancy that would furnish the doubters with ammunition. But as the context makes clear, “12,000 bridges” is not meant to be taken literally. He simply wants to impress upon readers that there were more bridges in Quinsai than he could tally, more, even, than in Venice. “And let no one be surprised if there are so many bridges,” he goes on, “because I tell you that this town is all…lagoons as Venice is, and also all surrounded by water, and so it is needful that there may be so many bridges for this, that people may be able to go through the town both inside and out by land.”
Nor were bridges the only engineering marvel of Quinsai. The city’s enormous moat was “perhaps forty miles long.” Marco relates that it was made “by order of those ancient kings of that province so as to be able to draw off the river into it every time that it rose above the banks; and it serves also as a defense for the city, and the earth that was dug out was put on the inner side, which makes the likeness of a little hill that surrounds it.”
Marco again strained credulity with his description of Quinsai’s sprawl, although it was entirely accurate. “There are ten principal open spaces, besides infinite others for the districts, which are square, that is, half a mile for a side,” he writes. “And along the front street of those there is a main street forty paces wide, which runs straight from one end of the city to the other with many bridges that cross it level and conveniently; and every four miles is found one of those squares such as have two miles (as has been said) of circuit.”
He took note of Quinsai’s celebrated Grand Canal—“a very broad canal that runs parallel to the street at the back of the squares”—without realizing that he was gazing upon the longest artificial waterway in China. The Grand Canal connected major rivers from Quinsai to Cambulac, a distance of a thousand miles. It was an ancient artery, at least a thousand years old by the time Marco visited. Originally a casual network of waterways, the Grand Canal became a unified entity after an inspection tour undertaken by Emperor Yang Ti of the Sui dynasty in AD 604. Over the next six years, three million laborers expanded the Grand Canal, largely by hand. The sacrifice was enormous; half the workforce perished, and eventually the Sui dynasty collapsed as a result. But the canal survived.
BY EUROPEAN STANDARDS, Quinsai’s varied population was as incredible as its size. Marco tells of a profusion of people and goods that would have amazed those accustomed to life on a more intimate scale: “Three days a week, there is a concourse of from forty to fifty thousand persons who come to market and bring everything you can desire for food, because there is always a great supply of victuals; of game, that is to say, of roebuck, red-deer, fallow-deer, hare, rabbit, and of birds, partridges, pheasant, francolin, quail, fowl, capon, and more ducks and geese than can be told; for they rear so many of them in [West] Lake that for one Venetian groat”—a thick silver coin of modest value, whose name derived from the Italian grosso, or large—“may be had a pair of geese and two pair of ducks.”
As Marco wandered past the market stalls, rubbing shoulders with enough shoppers to populate several European cities, he marveled at the profusion of goods on display, the likes of which he had never seen in the West—“all sorts of vegetables and fruits, and above all the rest immense pears, which weigh ten pounds apiece, which are white inside like a paste, and very fragrant; peaches in their seasons, yellow and white, very delicate.”
The abundance of fresh produce available was exceeded only by the quantity of fish. Each day, Marco reports, it arrived fresh from the “Ocean Sea up the river for the space of twenty-five miles,” all of it supplemented by equally succulent fish from West Lake, although this was not as desirable, “because of the impurities that come from the city” polluting the lake water. “Whoever saw this quantity of fish would never think that it could be sold, and yet in a few hours it has all been taken away, so great is the multitude of the inhabitants who are used to live delicacies; for they eat both fish and flesh at the same meal.”
DESPITE MARCO’S tendency to embellish, the City of Heaven was emphatically real. Contemporaneous accounts by outsiders who managed to reach Quinsai all emphasized the city’s overwhelming size, prosperity, and beauty, and acclaimed Quinsai the greatest in all the world.
The Persian historian Vassaf, writing about Quinsai in 1300, described very much the same city Marco experienced and loved—its great size, broad streets, and abundance.
Quinsai, which is the principal city of the country of Matchin and which seems a paradise of which the sky forms the ground, extends in length so that its circumference is approximately twenty-four parasangs [about fifteen kilometers]. Its pavement is made of baked bricks and stones; it contains many houses and buildings built in wood and decorated with beautiful paintings of all kinds. From one end of the city to the other three post stations have been established. The largest of the streets is, it is said, threeparasangs in length, and contains sixty pavilions of a uniform architecture, sustained by pillars of the same proportions. The revenue from the tax on salt amounts daily to 700 balichs of tchao [paper money]. The number of people who exercise different professions is truly prodigious: it has been calculated that there are thirty-two thousand cloth dyers; one can judge from that about the other kinds of industry. Seven hundred thousand soldiers and an equal number of inhabitants are recorded in the offices of numbering and on the registers of the chancellorship. In addition, the city contains seven hundred temples which resemble fortresses, each inhabited by a number of priests without faith, monks without religion, as well as by a multitude of workers, guards, servants, idolaters with their families and people of their suites. All these men are not mentioned in the census, and they are not subject to the payment of taxes and levies. Forty thousand soldiers are devoted to guarding the city and serving as sentinels.
Confirming Marco Polo’s impressions, Vassaf wrote:
For the comfort of this immense population, boats and barks of all kinds circulate continually on the waters in such a great number that imagination cannot conceive an idea of it, and the more so because it would be impossible to calculate their numbers.
A very different visitor, Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan friar, arrived forty years after Marco Polo’s time, and, like Marco, cast off all restraint in describing the wonders he experienced there.
It is the greatest city in the whole world. It is a hundred miles around, and in all this great space there is no empty area which is not fully inhabited by people; and there are many houses which have ten families or more; this city has many suburbs and more people than any other city. It has ten principal gates, and adjacent to each of its gates are eight large cities, much larger than the city of Venice; and from these gates to these cities, run continuous roads, so that a man can well go six or eight days and it will seem that he has only gone a little way, because he will always have gone among towns and houses.
Like Marco, Odoric saw Quinsai as the Asian Venice, but bigger and better.
This city is located on a low plain, between lakes, seas and swamps, like the city of Venice. There are more than seven thousand bridges, and at each bridge there are people guarding it on behalf of the Khan.
Odoric estimated that Quinsai was home to 850,000 households, which made for a population of over a million and a half, just as Marco claimed. “Whoever would write of this city would fill a great book,” the friar concluded, unaware that Marco Polo’s chronicle had already fulfilled this prophecy. “But in brief it is the greatest that there is in the world and the most noble.”
The most celebrated traveler in the Muslim world, Ibn Battutah, is said to have arrived in Quinsai in 1340, more than fifty years after Marco. By that time, the City of Heaven had become even larger, with a more visible European population, including prominent Jewish and Muslim communities. “We entered the said city, which is divided into six towns; each has its separate wall, and a great wall circles all of them. In the first town live the guards of the city with their commander,” he wrote.
The next day we entered the second town through a door called the Door of the Jews; this town is inhabited by the Israelites, the Christians, and the Turks, adorers of the sun; they are very numerous. The Emir of this town is Chinese, and we spent the second night in his house. The third day, we made our entry into the third town, and this is occupied by the Moslems. It is beautiful; the markets here are disposed as in the Islamic countries; it contains mosques and muezzins; we heard the latter call the faithful to midday prayer when we entered the town.
The ethnic variety of Quinsai, unremarked by earlier visitors, reflected the ascendancy of the Mongols, who invited “the Israelites, the Christians, and the Turks” to settle and trade in the great city.
THE CITY OF HEAVEN’S celebrated joie de vivre centered on the numerous public bathhouses and their courtesans. The locals, both men and women, availed themselves of the cold-water baths, “recommended for health,” as Marco slyly notes, while foreigners made use of the hot baths, where alluring serving maids offered their clients more than simple hygiene. These women, reeking of “sumptuous perfumes,” he says, “are very clever and practiced in knowing how to flatter and coax with ready words and suited to each kind of person, so that the foreigners who have once indulged themselves with them can never forget them…. It comes to pass that when they return home in front of they say they have been to Quinsai, that is, the City of Heaven, and count the hours until they be able to return there.”
Combining a market and a brothel, Quinsai also had the air of a perpetual carnival. One memoirist who came of age there never forgot the man who trained his fish to perform.
He has a large lacquer bowl in front of him in which swim turtles, turbots, and other fish. He beats time on a small bronze gong and calls up one of the creatures by name. It comes immediately and dances on the surface, wearing a kind of little hat on its head…. There is also an archery expert who sets up in front of the spectators a big wheel a yard and a half in diameter, with all sorts of objects, flowers, birds, and people painted on it. He announces that he is going to hit this or that object, and having started spinning it rapidly, he shoots his arrows through the midst of the spectators. He hits the exact spot he has declared he will hit. He can even score a hit on the most precisely defined spots of the spinning target, such as a particular feather in a particular wing of a bird.
The memoirist wandered in a daze among snake charmers blowing on little pipes, luring their hideous charges from the bamboo baskets where they coiled in darkness; and a Taoist monk who carried a trap filled with multicolored shellfish, which he claimed he had hypnotized. Boxers abounded, as did chess players, poets, writers of light verse, acrobats, and magicians. A Chinese record of the era lists five hundred and fifty-four performers who appeared at court, grouped into fifty-five categories, including kite flyers and ball players, magicians and singers, impressionists, archers, and bawdy raconteurs.
THE GREAT rectangular palaces looming over this frenzied activity caused Marco to tilt his head upward, to take in their lush gardens, “and nearby them, houses of artisans who work in their shops.” He writes that “at all hours are met people who are going up and down on their business, so that to see a great crowd anyone would believe that it would not be possible that victuals are found enough to be able to feed it; and yet every market day all the squares are covered and filled with people and merchants who bring them both on carts and on boats, and all is disposed of.”
He sensed the order underlying this apparent chaos, the existence of twelve principal crafts or trades: “And each trade of these twelve has twelve thousand stations, that is to say, twelve thousand houses for each.” Each house contained “at least ten men to exercise those arts, and some fifteen, and some twenty, and thirty, and some forty.” Taken together, the men’s commercial activities generated a staggering amount of wealth, more than Marco expected any European to credit. “There are so many merchants, and so rich, who do so much, and so great trade, that there is not a man who could say or tell the truth about them that should be believed, they are so extraordinary a thing.” Generating unimaginable wealth, these princes of commerce did not work “with their hands,” but all lived “as delicately and cleanly as they were kings and barons.” And the women of Quinsai were equally refined, “very delicate and angelic things,” in Marco’s estimation. These ethereal creatures were “very delicately reared,” and they dressed “with so many ornaments of silk and of jewels that the value of them could not be estimated.” He was awed by the inhabitants’ splendid homes, “very well built and richly worked.” He breathlessly reports, “They take such great delight in ornaments, paintings, and buildings, that the sums they spend on them are a stupendous thing.”
In describing the inhabitants, Marco gropes for superlatives: “The native inhabitants of the city of Quinsai are peaceful people through having been brought up and habituated by their kings, who were of the same nature. They do not handle arms nor keep them at home. Quarrels or any differences are never heard or noticed among them. They do their merchandise and arts with great sincerity and truth. They love one another so that a district may be reckoned as one family on account of the friendliness that exists between the men and the women by reason of the neighborhood. So great is the familiarity that it exists between them without any jealousy or suspicion of their women, for whom they have the greatest respect; and one who should dare to speak improper words to any married woman would be thought a great villain. They are equally friendly with the foreigners who come to them for the sake of trade, and gladly receive them at home, saluting them, and give them every help and advice in the business they do.”
NO MATTER HOW festive Quinsai seemed, it was a city under military occupation. The inhabitants, Marco says, “do not like to see soldiers, nor those of the Khan’s guards, as it seems to them that by reason of them they have been deprived of their natural kings and lords.”
Despite his allegiance to Kublai Khan, Marco came to consider the Mongol presence in Quinsai a stain upon the fine silken fabric of Chinese society. No less than sixty thousand Mongol guards were billeted throughout the city, ostensibly to protect its wooden houses from the ravages of fire; in reality, they formed an army of occupation. “After the Great Khan took the city,” Marco relates, “it was ordered that on each of the twelve thousand bridges ten men are on guard night and day, under a covering, that is, five by night and five by day. And these [men] are to guard the city that none should do evil things, and that none should dare think of treason, nor make his city rebel against him.”
The khan’s zealous sentries “never sleep, but always stay on watch.” Each of their huts contained a “tabernacle with a large basin and a clock,” by which they marked the passing of the hours with military precision. Some guards patrolled the city streets, not to preserve safety but to spot minor infractions and make life miserable for those responsible. Should anyone “keep a light lit or fire after the hours allowed,” he would be severely punished. The guards’ presence was sufficiently intimidating to keep everyone indoors, even when self-preservation dictated otherwise. Should a fire break out, “no dweller in the city would have the courage to come out of the house at nighttime nor to go to the fire, but only those to whom the goods belong go there and these guards who go to help, and they are never less than one or two thousand.”
Any fire, no matter how insignificant, imperiled everyone in the city built of wood. “It would run the risk of burning half the city,” Marco reports. In response, the guards maintained a sophisticated alarm system. On a nearby hill stood “a timber tower commanding the whole city,” and on that tower was hung “a great wooden board, which a man holds and strikes with a mallet to signal in case of fire.” In practice, the guards on the watchtower sounded the alarm at any hint of “tumult or uproar” reaching their ears from the city below.
Marco’s precise observations about the danger of fire in daily life find confirmation in records showing that nearly every year brought a fire emergency. During the thirteenth century, the city suffered especially devastating losses in 1208, 1229, 1237 (thirty thousand homes burned in this conflagration), and finally 1275, on the eve of the Mongol occupancy. Perhaps the most severe loss occurred on April 15, 1208, when a fire broke out in the district occupied by the government. Over the course of the next four days more than 58,000 houses burned across an area of three square miles, causing countless fatalities. In the succeeding months, the government billeted more than five thousand people left homeless in various Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, and even in boats floating on West Lake. No wonder Quinsai took few precautions against invaders from distant lands, such as the Mongols, when fires close to home proved a much deadlier menace.
Merchants stored their wares in fireproof buildings. Owned by wealthy families and the local nobility, the warehouses occupied lots surrounded by sinuous water channels, which protected them from flames and robbers alike. The owners rented them out by the month, charging hefty fees but including a night watchman in the bargain. Despite these precautions, city dwellers lived in constant fear of sudden infernos, and the tiniest show of sparks, a fast-spreading rumor, or a sound, however soft, resembling the alarm on the watchtower could set off a panic. And if a fire did break out, looting posed an additional hazard. When caught, the “fire followers,” as the looters were known, faced swift and sure justice under martial law.
In the same spirit of protection and oppression, the Mongol guards detained anyone who ventured abroad late at night. They dispatched the poor and crippled to public shelters and hospitals, but if the object of their scrutiny was healthy, they compelled him “to do some work.”
THE MONGOLS insinuated themselves into Quinsai, as they did with other prize cities they had conquered, by replacing Chinese notes with their own paper money. Marco observed Mongol notes being minted. “One takes the innermost bark of the mulberry tree and lays it together and makes of it the same as one does with us, paper of which one makes sheets, as one does our paper,” he reports. “The sheets one tears after the shape of a penny on which one prints the stamp and mark of the Great Khan. The money is taken for everything that will buy and sell.”
Next, the Mongols constructed their own style of roadway through the heart of the city. “Because the couriers of the Great Khan could not travel quickly with horses over paved streets,” Marco explains, “a part of the street at the side is left without pavement for the sake of the couriers.” The couriers mingled with the city’s ordinary traffic, which consisted of “long carriages covered and furnished with hangings and cushions of silk, in which six people can sit.”
Even in occupied Quinsai, life continued as before. Military skills and technology mattered less than commerce, literature, drama, poetry, painting, crafts, or charitable pursuits. Here the Mongols, their lust for conquest for its own sake apparent to all, confronted a superior civilization, and their response was paradoxical yet predictable: they emulated those whom they conquered, hoping to rise to the level of their subjects. The result was the most civilized and elegant of war zones.
MARCO SAMPLED the temptations offered by the numerous “boats and barges” skimming across the surface of West Lake, “for enjoyment and to give one’s self pleasure; and in these there can stay ten, fifteen, and twenty, and more persons, because they are fifteen to twenty paces long with broad and flat bottoms, so that they sail without rocking on either side.”
The exquisite West Lake vista resulted from centuries of careful maintenance. Nine miles in circumference, and only nine feet deep, the lake served as the focal point for the city, the quintessential Chinese landscape, and the inspiration for countless works of art. It symbolized the soul of China, and was guarded like the national treasure that it was. Military patrols, unmentioned by Marco but noted in other sources, conducted constant surveillance of West Lake to maintain tranquility and hygiene, lest it become fouled with spoiled food and waste. It was strictly forbidden to deposit refuse in the lake, or even to attempt to cultivate common plants such as the lotus or water chestnut. As Marco, or any other pleasure seeker, floated out on the water of West Lake, the crowded city receded, and the surrounding mountains loomed ever larger, while the eye was constantly drawn to the striking pagoda erected on Thunder Point three hundred years before Marco’s arrival. This soaring octagonal tower, 170 feet high, seemed to connect Heaven and earth.
The idyllic setting served as the perfect backdrop for the women of Quinsai. “Every one who likes to enjoy himself with women or with his companions takes one of the boats,” Marco notes. And the boats are “always kept adorned with beautiful seats and tables and with all the other furniture necessary for making a feast.” In his description, they resemble the elegant gondolas plying the canals of Venice, only grander, and more luxurious. “Above, they are covered and flat, where men stand with poles that they stick into the ground (for the lake is not more than two paces deep) and guide the barges where they are ordered. The covering on the inside part is painted with different colors and patterns, and likewise all the barge; and there are windows round about that they can open and shut, so that those who stay seated…may be able to look this way and that and delight the eyes with the variety and beauty of the places to which they are taken.” The result is refined euphoria, “for their mind and care is set on nothing else but bodily pleasure and enjoyment in feasting together.”
The concept of recreation for the masses was as new to Marco as it would have been to his readers, and he portrays an entire city in the thrall of pleasure: “Barges like these are found on the lake at all times with people who go for enjoyment; for the inhabitants of this city never think of anything else after they have done their work or business but to spend part of the day with their ladies, or with courtesans.”
MARCO HINTS that the women of Quinsai—courtesans and others—were bolder and more sensually aware than their Western counterparts. True enough: by Western standards, Quinsai fostered an outré culture in which sexual behavior often centered on female pleasure. It was believed that whenever a couple had intercourse, the woman should, if possible, experience orgasm; the man, however, was encouraged to reach orgasm only on special occasions, the better to preserve his vital essence—his semen. In addition, male masturbation was strongly censured as a waste of semen, but female masturbation was subtly encouraged. Sex toys designed to aid women in reaching orgasm were common in Quinsai and were widely discussed and written about in popular sex manuals, usually in the form of spurious dialogues involving historical figures.
“The Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty” was over a thousand years old by the time of Marco’s arrival in Quinsai, but it was still quoted in more recent sex primers. One passage addresses the timeless issue of male potency, and offers a commonsensical solution.
The Yellow Emperor said, “Sometimes it happens that in the exercise of coitus, my Jade Stalk does not want to rise. When that happens, I turn red from the shame of humiliation, and my brow becomes moist with sweat. However, as I burn with blazing desire, I shake my member with my hand, so that it might rise. Please instruct me as to what to do on such an occasion.” The Plain Girl said: “What Your Majesty inquires about is a common suffering of all people. This is [because they forget] that every time a man wishes to copulate, there is a certain order of things that must be followed. In the first place, the man must harmonize his mood with that of the woman, and then the Jade Stalk will rise.”
A complementary passage addresses the female orgasm.
The Yellow Emperor said, “How can one know that the woman is near orgasm?” The Plain Girl said: “Woman has the five signs and the five desires, and moreover the ten ways of moving her body during the act. The five signs are as follows: First, she grows red in the face. Then the man can slowly press near. Second, her nipples become hard, her nose moist. Then the man may slowly insert his penis. Third, her throat becomes dry, and she sucks back her saliva. Then the man may begin to thrust slowly. Fourth, her vagina becomes moist. Then he may sink his penis deeper. Fifth, her vaginal emissions drop between her buttocks. Then the man may move freely.”
The Plain Girl was nothing if not outspoken.
“By the five desires one can judge women’s response. First, if her thoughts desire the union her breathing will become irregular. Second, if her vagina desires the union her nostrils will distend and her mouth open. Third, if her vital essence wants to be stirred she will move her body up and down. Fourth, if she wants to fulfill her desire, the liquid emitted from her vagina will soak her clothes. Fifth, if she is about to reach orgasm, she will stretch her body and close her eyes.”
The Plain Girl also suggested provocative positions for sexual intercourse, with names like the Turning Dragon (“the woman is turned onto her back”), the Tiger’s Tread (“the woman leans forward on her hands and knees with her buttocks raised”), and the Monkey’s Attack (“the man raises her legs until her knees touch her breasts and her buttocks and the lower part of her back hang in the air”)—this last said to cure or prevent a hundred ills. And so on through other positions, including Overlapping Fish Scales and the Fluttering Phoenix.
Even in the City of Heaven, sexual expression had its limits. Kissing, considered an intimate part of sexual intercourse, was strictly forbidden in public. Male homosexuality was discouraged, though its female counterpart was tolerated, and even expected. The underpinnings of this seeming inequity had to do with the Chinese concept of yin and yang, female and male essence, and the emphasis on preserving the all-important but limited yang. It was considered necessary for the male to guard against excessive ejaculation, which would deplete his sexual energy. Prolonged arousal was held to be preferable to simple ejaculation. In this scheme of things, male homosexuality was judged a waste of yang, and thus out of harmony with the balance of nature.
AS THEY ATTEMPTED to exert social control over Quinsai, the Mongols sought to restrain sexual expression among the populace, especially women. T’ao Tsung-i, a Yüan dynasty chronicler, sternly cautioned against relying on the questionable advice contained in “Art of the Bedchamber,” an ancient but still-popular anthology of Chinese sexual practices and philosophy. He identified no fewer than nine types of professional women who wreaked havoc on a household: the Buddhist nun, the Taoist nun, the female astrologer, the female go-between, the sorceress, the female thief, the female quack, and lastly the midwife. “Few are the households that, having admitted one of them, will not be ravaged by fornication and robbery,” he warned. “The men who can guard against those, keeping them away as if they were snakes and scorpions, those men shall come near the method for keeping their household clean.”
Pamphlets specifying various types of scandalous behavior that corrupted a family’s moral standing circulated among households. The guides warned against the hazards of “violent debauch,” or rape; “crazed debauch” “predestined debauch,” or romantic love; “proclaiming debauch,” or boasting; and “idle debauch.” Even the production of erotica, a staple of Chinese intimate life, earned censure. Only prostitutes escaped the new wave of censorship invading the city; their trade, if anything, flourished in the face of it.
If Marco was aware of these sexual politics, he did not refer to them in his account. Nor did he mention that other prominent feature of Chinese domestic life, foot binding. Skeptics have cited its omission as evidence that he did not visit China, or at least Quinsai. There are reasonable explanations for the lapse. Women with bound feet remained sequestered indoors, and Marco may not have been aware of them, or of the custom. Furthermore, the practice may have fallen out of favor during his time in Quinsai. The women he did observe carefully—courtesans at the public baths and on West Lake—had to be ambulatory to perform their tasks. The Venetian did take note of Quinsai’s many eunuchs—who occupied prominent places in the government bureaucracy—but only in passing.
MARCO PREFERRED to focus on public affairs, especially Kublai Khan’s systematic approach to the occupancy of Quinsai, and the harvesting of its wealth. “After he had reduced to his obedience all the province of Mangi [Quinsai], the Great Khan has divided it into nine parts,” Marco observes, “so that each is a great kingdom. But…all these kings are there for the Great Khan and in this way, that they make each year the report of each kingdom separately to the factors of the great lord, of the revenue, and of all things. In this city of Quinsai dwells one of these nine kings, and is lord of more than a hundred and forty cities, all very great and rich.” Yet the king coexisted with the occupying Mongol forces, which seemed to Marco a model of restraint. He points out they “are from Cathay, good men at arms, for the Tartars are horsemen and do not stay except near the cities that are not in marshy places, but in those situated in firm and dry places where they can take exercise on horseback.”
Along with them, Marco was a highly appreciative, sophisticated, and well-intentioned intruder, but an intruder nonetheless; yet he expressed no remorse about helping himself to the Mongol spoils of conquest, only wide-eyed appreciation of Chinese culture. He became yet another invader conquered by his more sophisticated and civilized subjects.
DAILY LIFE IN QUINSAI, although punctuated by pleasure, left little time for rest. The giant city began stirring well before dawn. “About four or five in the morning,” an observer noted,
when bells of the Buddhist and Taoist monasteries have rung, hermit-monks come down from the hills surrounding the town and go about the streets of Quinsai beating their strips of iron or their wooden resonators in the form of a fish, announcing everywhere the dawn. They call out what the weather is like: “It is cloudy,” “It is raining,” “The sky is clear.” In wind, in rain, in snow, or in freezing cold, they go out just the same. They also announce any court reception to be held that day, whether a grand or a little or an ordinary audience. In this way, the officials in the various government departments, the officers of the watch, and the soldiers whose names are on the list for the watch-towers, are all kept informed and hurry off to their offices or their posts. As for the monk announcers, they go round the town collecting alms on the first and fifteenth of each month as well as on feast days.
To a Venetian, the scene was familiar, though reenacted on a grand scale.
Audiences with King Facfur, in the days before the Mongols sent him into exile, took place at six in the morning, or even earlier. By seven, the day was considered well advanced, and the sound of drums reverberated throughout the city, announcing the time. Noise was constant; bureaucrats’ offices came to life with the harsh ringing of a gong or the startling ping of wooden clappers. Any government employee who was tardy or absent would be beaten.
Although Marco refers to the phenomenon only in passing, printed books and other written materials abounded in Quinsai, almost two hundred years before the invention of movable type in Europe. Movable type existed in and around Quinsai in many forms, including clay, wood, and tin. Wood-block printing, already in use for more than three hundred years in China, was widely dispersed; it was employed especially for Buddhist sutras and other sacred texts. Because calligraphy is an integral part of Chinese arts and letters, and the Chinese written language at the time contained about seven thousand characters, handwritten manuscripts flourished side by side with books and pamphlets.
Drama thrived, as did poetry, which appeared in public places as if composed by the hand of nature. One popular stanza, credited to Tai Fu-ku, reflected mournfully on the Mongol occupation of this splendid city:
Athwart this ridge where down below the rolling river runs,
My house in the clouds looks out over mile after mile of brooding sadness.
How bitterly I wish that mountains blocked my wandering gaze.
For northwards, far as the eye can reach, our conquered land seems endless.
Another poet, Hsieh Ao, brooded on the sight of his beloved city occupied by alien invaders in his poem “On Visiting the Former Imperial Palace at Quinsai (After the Mongol Conquest)”:
Like an ancient ruin, the grass grows high: gone are the guards and the gatekeepers.
Fallen towers and crumbling palaces desolate my soul.
Under the eaves of the long-ago hall fly in and out the swallows
But within: Silence. The chatter of cock and hen and parrots is heard no more.
The abundance of printed material—of poetry and sacred texts and almanacs and guides to sexual fulfillment, of Confucian philosophy, of ghost tales and legal codes—eluded Marco’s usually observant eye. He offered some cursory observations concerning Chinese dialects, drawing analogies to European tongues, but, at the same time, he felt that Chinese was alien to him, despite his important official position in Quinsai. “I tell you that those of this city have a language for themselves,” he says. “Through the whole province of Mangi [Quinsai], one speech is preserved and one manner of letters; yet in tongue there is difference by districts, as if, among laymen, between Lombards, Provençals, Frenchmen,…so that in the province of Mangi the people of any district can understand the idiom of the people of the next.”
In market squares, shopkeepers opened for the day’s business, setting out their goods to lure buyers; bazaars came to life as merchants hawked their wares, or stood by as silent sentries of commerce. And on the main thoroughfare known as the Imperial Way, tiny cafés served pungent concoctions such as deep-fried tripe, aromatic chunks of duck and goose, and freshly steamed pancakes prepared in dark, makeshift kitchens. The slaughterhouses providing them with meat had been busy since three o’clock in the morning. Crowds jammed the squares to sample the wares of street peddlers, who offered hot towels for the face and rejuvenating pills for the circulation.
By late afternoon, the pace of work in Quinsai slowed and the day drew to a close. Officials quietly streamed to their homes. The late afternoon and early evening were given over to reading, to composing literary works (something of an obsession in this hyper-refined city), playing chess, boating on West Lake, and sampling the delights of the courtesans and singing girls. These houses of pleasure stayed open until the fourth drumbeat reverberated through the dim streets: two o’clock in the morning. A few smaller markets and noodle shops did business long into the night, as Quinsai slowed but never slept. Night watchmen, ever vigilant against the twin evils of thieves and fire, patrolled the streets, but excuses from this duty were so common that the roster of absentees was called simply “the list of stomach pains.”
Unnoticed by Marco, but crucial for understanding the tempo of city life, is the fact that Quinsai’s work “week” lasted ten days, followed by a single day of rest. A city official had the right to observe but one vacation with his family every three years; it varied in length from a fortnight to a lunar month.
The only real respite in this arduous schedule occurred when an official’s mother or father died. According to Confucian custom, the bereaved family member took a mandatory sabbatical of three years’ duration, devoted solely to personal pursuits such as calligraphy, painting, and literature, all intended to stimulate reflection on the profound changes taking place in his life and to prepare him to take his place in nature’s inflexible order.
Ordinary workers did not have the benefit of even these vacations; they toiled constantly throughout their lives.
FESTIVALS afforded relief from the press of work and the obligations of family, and the greatest of all was the Chinese New Year. Within the lunar calendar, the date ranges from January 15 to February 15, and the celebration lasts the better part of a month. A snowfall during preparations for the New Year was taken by all as a good omen; the leisured few fashioned snow lions for all to admire and rode on horseback around West Lake to admire the spectral scenes of snow and ice. In kitchens throughout the city, special rice dishes were prepared to propitiate domestic deities; the feasting ended with a concoction of red beans, which was shared even with pet dogs and cats.
In the commercial environment of Quinsai, shopkeepers, especially pharmacists, tried to benefit from the holiday. They decorated their stores with colorful streamers, painted images of heroic figures from Chinese folklore and history, and paper horses. To attract customers to their establishments, they distributed little packages of good-luck charms, while in the chilly streets, the ubiquitous peddlers worked the crowds, pushing a popular decorative thistle and firecrackers made of small shafts of bamboo filled with gunpowder (yet another technology unknown in the West). Even the beggars put on a show, impersonating popular deities and beating gongs.
The celebrations began to build to a climax on New Year’s Eve, when housekeepers swept and washed their doorsteps, took down last year’s images of deities, and affixed new wooden amulets to the doors and red streamers above the lintel. At night, the occupants withdrew to their quarters to offer flowers, incense, and food to the gods in hopes of having a good year. These domestic customs may have been shrouded from Marco’s view, but everyone in Quinsai was aware of the huge New Year procession, which started at the Imperial Palace, with masked soldiers carrying wooden swords, as well as flags of yellow, red, black, white, and green, all of them fluttering in the damp winter air. The procession wound its way through the broader streets of the city, seeking to replace the evil influences of the outgoing year with the virtues and hopes of the incoming one.
On New Year’s Day, King Facfur burned incense and prayed fervently for a good harvest, peace, and prosperity; delegates from every corner of his realm came to pay their respects and offer tributes.
Still more days of observance followed, enough to occupy two full weeks, until the Festival of Lanterns began, signaling the real commencement of the New Year. For three glorious days and nights, gluttony and drunkenness ruled, while those citizens who were able to do so competed to acquire or make spectacular lanterns. The most highly prized came from Suchow; they were multicolored, round, and decorated with illustrations of animals, flowers, people, and landscapes, and were more than four feet in diameter. Other types of lanterns were fashioned from beads and feathers, gold and silver, even pearls and jade. Some, operated by a small stream of water, slowly turned; others resembled the boats gliding across West Lake.
As the festivities dragged on, drinking increased, and the revelers ended by donning white garments for nocturnal strolls in honor of the New Moon. By dawn, the public clamor had died away and the streets were empty. In the wake of the celebration, a few scavengers armed with modest lanterns combed the squares and avenues in search of lost hairpins, jewelry, and other valuable items.
The New Year celebrations lasted even longer in the Imperial Palace. Workmen erected a brilliantly decorated scaffolding 150 feet high to hold musicians on one level, and athletes and gymnasts on another, just below. The women of the palace danced with young eunuchs wearing turbans. After the show, the palace women—that is, courtesans and serving women—made a mad dash for the peddlers, who were delighted to sell their goods at a large premium.
IN THE CITY OF HEAVEN, astrology ruled, and the rigorous Chinese bureaucracy applied it ruthlessly and systematically. “As soon as the infant is born in this province, the father or the mother has the day and the minute and the hour that he was born written, and in what sign and in what planet, so that each knows his nativity,” Marco relates. With these files on record, any inhabitant of the city consulted an astrologer before setting off on a long journey or undertaking a betrothal. For once, the skeptical Marco seems impressed with the expertise of the astrologers, acknowledging them as “wise in their art and diabolical enchantment, so that they really tell the men many things to which they give much faith.”
For Marco, the prevalence of astrologers in Quinsai offered a rare glimpse into the inner lives of the city’s inhabitants. He concludes that “the men of the province of Mangi are more passionate than other people, and for anger and grief some very often kill themselves. For it shall happen that some one of these shall give a blow to some other or pull out his hair or inflict some injury or harm upon him, and the offender may be so powerful and great that he is powerless to take vengeance; the sufferer of the injury will hang himself from excess of grief at the door of the offender by night and die, doing this to him for the greater blame and contempt…. And this will be the greater reason why he hung himself, namely that this rich and powerful man should honor him at death in order that he may be likewise honored in the other world.”
MORE THAN ANY other feature of the City of Heaven, King Facfur’s castle epitomized Quinsai’s outsized scale and sophistication, but the landmark had lately fallen into decline, as Marco learned when he made the acquaintance of a “very rich merchant of Quinsai,…who was very old and had been an intimate friend of King Facfur and knew him all his life, and had seen the palace.” The merchant inspired Marco’s imagination with tales of the luxury palace. But having visited it, Marco relates that “the fine pavilions are still as they used to be, but the rooms of the girls are all gone to ruin and nothing else is seen but in traces. In the same way, the wall that encircled the woods and gardens is fallen to the ground and there are no longer either animals or trees.”
With the old merchant’s help, Marco resurrects for his readers “the most beautiful palace where King Facfur lived, whose predecessors had a space of country enclosed that was surrounded for ten miles with very high walls and divided into three parts.” Within the castle, guarded from the eyes of the world, were the king’s personal harem—“a thousand girls whom the king kept for his service”—who coexisted peacefully with the queen of the realm.
The girls of the harem, Marco says, entertained both king and queen with elaborate erotic games involving the animals and lake within the walls of the enclosure: “Sometimes he [the king] went with the queen and some of the girls for recreation about the lake on barges all covered with silk, and also to visit the temples of the idols.”
Later, the frolicking commenced: “The other two parts of the enclosure were laid out with woods, lakes, and most beautiful gardens planted with fruit trees, where were enclosed all sorts of animals, that is, roe-deer, fallow-deer, red-deer, hares, rabbits; and there the king went to enjoy himself with his damsels, some in carriages and some on horseback, and no man went in there. And he made the damsels run with dogs and give chase to these kinds of animals; and after they were tired, they went into the woods that faced one another above the lakes, and leaving the clothes there they came out of them naked and entered the water and set themselves to swim some on one side and some on the other, and the king stayed to watch them with the greatest delight.”
Amid his tale of sensual abandon, Marco conveys a strict warning: “Sometimes he [the king] had food carried into those woods that were thick and dense with very lofty trees, waited on by the damsels. And with this continual dalliance with women he grew up without knowing what arms might be—which in the end brought it about that through his cowardice and incompetence the Great Khan took all the state from him with the greatest shame and disgrace.”
The powerful moral was not lost on Marco, who took it as a cautionary tale for the people of Quinsai, whom he perceived as dangerously prone to self-indulgence. One day, he relates, “a fish was found lying on the dry land across the bed of the river that was something wonderful to see, for it was a hundred paces long, but the bulk by no means corresponded to its length. It was indeed all hairy, and many ate of it, and many of them died.” Marco claims to have seen the head of this giant, poisonous fish on display in a “certain temple of idols”—that is, a Buddhist temple. And the annals confirm the event, recording that a hundred-foot-long whale was indeed stranded in shallows of the Fu-ch’un River near Quinsai in 1282, followed soon after by another cetacean. The annals also show that foragers placed ladders against one of the stranded creatures, climbed onto its back, and butchered it for food—a daring act that, as Marco tells his listeners, turned out to be a lethal mistake, for they all died from eating the flesh.
FINALLY, Marco gets down to business: the city’s lucrative salt monopoly. He calculates the revenue of “the salt of this town” and moves on to sugar, claiming that the value of the province’s sugar was “more than double that which is made in all the rest of the world.” That was not all: the “spicery…is without measure.” And they all contributed to the khan. “All the spiceries pay three and a third percent; and of all goods they pay also three and a third percent. And from the wine that they make of rice and of spices they have a very great revenue also, and from charcoal. And from all the twelve crafts…they have, each craft, twelve thousand stations; from these crafts they have very great revenues, for they pay duty on everything.”
He reveals how trade worked in Quinsai: “All the merchants who carry goods to this city by land and carry them away from it to other parts, and those also who carry them away to sea, pay in the same way—a thirtieth of the goods…, which takes three and a third percent; but those who carry merchandise to it by sea and from far countries and regions, as far as from the Indies, give ten percent. Moreover, of all the things that grow in the country, produce coming both from animals and from the land, and silk, a tenth part is applied to the lord’s government.” Not surprisingly, this revenue “amounts to untold money.”
Marco assures his readers that the khan had one object when he collected these tremendous revenues, the well-being and safety of the people of his empire: “For the great profit that the great lord has from this country he loves it much and does much to guard it carefully and to keep those who dwell there in great peace.” In practice, that meant he used the revenues to pay for the mercenaries to occupy the cities and towns of the province, especially Quinsai. Marco puts this exploitation in the most favorable light: “The Great Khan has all those revenues spent on arms that guard the cities and countries, and to alleviate the poverty of the cities.”
MARCO’S SOJOURN in the City of Heaven ended abruptly, inexplicably. He gives no reason for his departure, not even a date for this watershed event. Perhaps his tenure as an official of the Mongol government terminated with an embarrassment, a charge of corruption, or a jealous rival getting the better of him. In any event, he found himself expelled from Quinsai and its myriad pleasures, no longer a tax assessor, and once more a wayfarer.
He took comfort in reuniting with his father and uncle, and in resuming his former identity as a private merchant. Trekking with them through “mountains and valleys,” he arrived in South China, where the people, although idolaters—that is, Buddhists—were “subject to the rule of the Great Khan” and so posed no obvious threat to the traveler in their midst. But to his disgust, Marco realized that “they eat all coarse things and they also eat human flesh very willingly, provided that he [the deceased] did not die a natural death.” Their preferred meat came from those who died by the sword, rather than from disease, and, Marco says, they considered this “very good and savory flesh.”
The warriors’ battle costumes were as fearsome as their eating habits: “They have their hair cut off as far as the ears, and in the middle of the face they have themselves painted with azure like the blade of a sword.” In keeping with their wrathful visage, they were “the most cruel men in the world,” for, Marco notes, “I tell you they go all day killing men and drink the blood, and then they all eat them.” Worse, “they are always eager about this.” Their presence was sufficient to distract Marco from the lions roaming the mountain escarpments. From time to time the animals leapt upon wayfarers like Marco and made a meal of them. He found a semblance of safety from these dangers by joining a caravan of merchants, predominantly Buddhists and silk traders. No matter what their religion, they guided Marco through the region unharmed, if not untroubled.
LION TRAPPING was common in the area, and Marco set about learning the technique as a matter of survival. The requirements were simple enough: parallel trenches and, as bait, an unlucky dog. When deployed correctly, they produced dramatic results.
“Two very deep pits are made one beside the other,” he writes. “It is true that between some ground is left perhaps for the width of one ell; and on the other side of the pits a high hedge is made, but nothing at the ends. At night, the owner of the pits will tie a little dog on the ground in the middle, and leaving him there will go away. Then the dog tied like this, when left by the master, will not cease to bark; and the dog shall be white. The lion, hearing from whatever distance thence the voice of the dog, will run to him with much fury, and when he shall see him gleaming white, wishing to leap hastily to catch him, will fall into the pit. In the morning, the master of the pits will come and will kill the lion in the pit. Then the flesh will be eaten up because it is good, and the skin will be sold, for they are very dear.”
Marco also recorded a way to capture a type of fox that he called a papione, which gnawed on sugarcane, damaging that valuable crop. Here is his recommended method for catching these four-legged pilferers: “They have great gourds that they cut in the knob at the top, making a mouth for the entry of a width calculated so that one of the papiones may put his head in with force.” To make certain that the papione would not damage the neck, the hunters drilled holes around it and threaded twine through the openings to strengthen it. To entice papiones to the gourd, the hunters placed a wad of tempting fat at the bottom, and distributed the traps around the perimeter of the caravan. “When the papiones come to the caravan to take something away, they perceive the smell of the fat in the gourds and go up to them, and, wishing to put their heads in, cannot. But pressing violently from greed for the food inside they force the head to enter. Then, being unable to draw it out, they lift and carry with them the gourds because they are light; and then they do not know where to go.”
The poor creatures wandered blindly until the merchants caught them.
IN THE CITY that Marco called Fugiu, his uncle Maffeo struck up a friendship with a “certain wise Saracen”—that is, a Muslim—and remarked to him about a “certain manner of people whose religion no one understands.” These were not Buddhists, from the looks of things, because there were no Buddhas, or idols, in evidence. Nor did they appear to be Muslims. Neither were they Zoroastrians, for they did not worship fire. One can see Maffeo suggesting to the wise Saracen, “May it please you that we go to them and speak with them; perhaps we will learn something about their life.” So they went, solely from curiosity, but their questions unsettled the objects of their inquiry, who feared that the three curious merchants were plotting to “take away their religion from them.”
“Do not be afraid,” Maffeo and Marco urged, “for we did not come here for your harm at all but only for good and the improvement of your condition.”
They returned the next day, slowly ingratiating themselves with the locals, “asking them about their business,” until they came upon the answer to the riddle. These secretive and suspicious people were, after all, Christians, “for they had books, and these Masters Maffeo and Marco reading in them began to interpret the writing and to translate from word to word and from tongue to tongue, so that they found it to be the words of the Psalter”—the Book of Psalms.
Astonished by this discovery of lost Christians in China, they asked how they came by their faith. “From our ancestors,” the locals replied.
Inspecting one of their temples, the merchants saw “three painted figures, who had been three apostles of the seventy who had gone preaching through the world; and they said that they were those who had taught their ancestors in that religion long ago, and that that faith had already been preserved among them for seven hundred years”—that is, since the sixth century—“but for a long time they had been without preaching and so were ignorant of the chief things.” Their curious allusion to three apostles refers, perhaps, to Peter, James, and John, who accompanied Jesus on particularly exalted and disturbing occasions, such as the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The origins of this isolated sect’s faith were lost in time, yet Marco acknowledged their connection.
“You are Christians and we are likewise Christians,” Maffeo and Marco declared. “We advise you to send to the Great Khan and explain to him your state, that he may come to know you and you may be able freely to keep your religion and rule.” The mysterious Christians, although accustomed to living among hostile “idolaters,” followed this bold suggestion and dispatched a delegation of two men to Kublai Khan.
Marco and Maffeo told the men to present themselves to a “certain man who was head of the Christians at the court of the Great Khan.” But the request, rather than smoothing the petitioners’ way to recognition as Christians, inspired masses of Buddhists to claim them as their own. There followed a “great argument in the presence of the lord. Finally, the lord being angry, making all go away, ordered the messengers to come to him, asking them whether they wished to be Christians or idolaters.” The petitioners timidly replied that if the Great Khan would not take offense, they wished to be considered Christians, like their ancestors. Kublai Khan approved, insisting that they all “must be addressed as Christians.”
With that assurance, they made their full strength known. The sect, far from being a small band of spiritual nonconformists, included “more than seven hundred thousand families,” says Marco, all of them now safely assigned to the Christian camp, their identity officially confirmed, and their right to worship guaranteed by Kublai Khan and the might of the Mongol Empire.
Having helped to usher these lost Christians into the Mongol fold, Marco was again left to his own devices, doomed to wander the Silk Road to the end of his days in the service of Kublai Khan—or so it seemed. He could not have imagined what lay in store for him, as events occurring thousands of miles away began to shape his destiny.