This chapter comes from The Story of the World, Vol. III, by Susan Wise Bauer, ©2004 Peace Hill Press. Reproduction or distribution in any format is strictly prohibited.
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Chapter 20: The Imperial East
Emperor Chi’en-lung’s Library
The streets of Peking, far, far to the northeast of India, are still and dark. The inn-fires are banked for the night; travelers sleep motionless in their rooms. The Forbidden Palace, the walled and secret city-within-a-city where the emperor and his royal family live, is blanketed with quiet. On the walls, the watchmen doze, standing with their backs against the red walls.
But deep inside the Forbidden Palace, the emperor’s windows glow with lamplight. Chi’en-lung, the fourth Manchu emperor of China, is bent over his desk, a brush in hand and a scroll in front of him. Carefully, he inks the brush and strokes down, sideways, and over. Another Chinese character has been added to his poem!
Chi’en-lung leans back and gazes at the painting that hangs on the wall across from him. A branch of blossoming plum sweeps across the paper, each flower and twig outlined with exquisite care. The Chinese artist who painted this plum branch, Zou Fulei, has been dead for three hundred years. But Ch’ien-lung can still read the poem Zou Fulei brushed onto the painting’s left side:
In this tumbleweed shack, where can I seek spring’s return?
I charge the chilly toad to keep the old plum company.
As laments of mist subside, my empty room grows cold,
Traces of ink preserve the shadows that come to my window.
Zou Fulei’s poem tells how he painted the branch: as he sat in his bare room, the moon—a mysterious bright place where a magical toad was thought to live—cast the shadow of a plum branch against the paper windows. Zou Fulei copied the pattern onto his painting!
The emperor is composing four more lines to round out the old artist’s poem. He stares back at his paper, at the line he has just finished.
In a single breath, the springtime goes but must return
He bends back over the paper and adds,
But who has conveyed these tidings to the chilly plum?
He smiles, pleased with his poem. When I finish this poem, he thinks to himself, I’ll copy my own lines onto the right-hand side of Zou Fulei’s painting. His lines and mine will live forever!
Chi’en-lung, emperor and poet, is the grandson of the great Manchu emperor K’ang-hsi. He has already governed his grandfather’s empire for years. In the decaying Ottoman empire, the Tulip King has already fallen; Mohammad Shah still sits on his shabby throne, watching the power of the English in India grow.
But China is stronger and richer than ever. Chinese soldiers watch for rebellion, ready to crush resistance. Painters and poets flourish under the benevolent guidance of the court. Chinese porcelain, painted in rich glazes of copper red, green, and rose, is prized all over the world.
Chi’en-lung rises and walks to the window. He gazes out over the dark gardens and halls of the Forbidden City, past the walls that protect the palace, out toward the dark rooftops and streets of Peking. This city, on the northeast edge of the Chinese empire, is the largest city in the world. Over a million people live in Peking! Chi’en-lung’s empire stretches from the border of Russia down to the Himalayan mountains that separate China from India.
Chi’en-lung wants the whole world to know the greatness of China. And although the countries all around can see China’s huge size and marvel at the millions of people who live within its borders, the emperor knows that China’s greatest accomplishment—its books of poems and philosophy, its novels and histories—are still scattered throughout this vast country, hidden away in libraries.
In 1772, after he had been on the throne for over thirty years, Chi’en-lung decided to gather all of China’s greatest literature together in one enormous collection. He appointed two scholars to head up this task. They hired dozens more. For years, these scholars traveled throughout China, examining the libraries of every town and the private collections of every rich man. Finally, they assembled a list of all the great Chinese books written.
The scholars and Chi’en-lung studied these lists together. After weeks of discussion, they settled on a final selection of the most important books in four categories: classics, history, philosophy, and literature. Now, an even greater task loomed: These works had to be copied out into a single huge set!
Copying out Chinese books was more complicated that copying English books. The English alphabet has twenty-six letters, and with those letters, you can form every word in English. But Chinese has symbols for different sounds and words. A Chinese dictionary published in the days of Chi’en-lung listed over forty thousand of these symbols! A Chinese artist had to master eleven distinctive brush strokes in order to form these characters properly. Beautiful calligraphy was considered so difficult that no foreigner could ever master it.
Artists began to copy out the collected works. The set of books turned out to have 36,275 volumes. And Chi’en-lung wanted seven copies of the set! That meant calligraphers would have to write out a quarter of a million volumes total.
Ten years after the search for books began, the first copy of the series was finally completed. It was given the Chinese name Ssu-ku ch’üan-shu, which means “The Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature.” It took five more years to finish all seven copies of the Complete Library. Four copies were placed in the four imperial palaces; the last three were put in libraries where scholars could study them.
But even while scholars were saving all of these books, preserving them for centuries to come, Chi’en-lung ordered other books destroyed. He knew that many Chinese still resented the rule of the Manchu, who had come down from the north so many years ago and claimed the Chinese throne.
So the scholars who made lists of China’s great books were also given the job of looking for any books which made unflattering remarks about the Manchu dynasty. They made lists of these books and brought them to the emperor. Chi’en-lung wanted these books destroyed! For the next fourteen years, he sent command after command to governors in every province of China, ordering them to check and recheck every library for these banned books and to burn every copy found. The emperor of China loved books—but he loved his power even more.
The Land of the Dragon
Chi’en-lung ruled China for sixty years. All this time, strong Western countries were grabbing more and more land for themselves. Spain ruled over much of South America and some of North America too. France owned land in North America. England had colonies in North America—and now it was spreading into India as well!
Meanwhile, China was doing plenty of grabbing of its own! The center of the Chinese empire lay around the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers, where the ancient Chinese civilization had first grown. This “China of the Eighteen Provinces” was home to millions of Han Chinese and Manchu people.
But this “center” was only part of China.
Imagine that you’re standing on the roof of the Forbidden Palace, looking out over the endless roofs of Peking. You hear a swish behind you. You turn—and see that an imperial dragon has landed behind you. This imperial dragon, the symbol of the emperor’s power, has five toes on each foot. His body is long and snakelike; his tail is the tail of a fish. He dips his head, crowned with the sharp antlers of a deer. His eyes glow red!
You climb aboard the scaly body. He bends his snaky neck around to see whether you’re comfortable, and sees that you’re too small to straddle him comfortably. So, obligingly, he shrinks a little. Imperial dragons can change size whenever they like. They can also turn themselves into waterspouts and whirl across the sea; you hope this dragon won’t turn himself to water while you’re aboard!
The dragon flaps its wings and rises. You’re sailing over those endless rooftops, toward the north, with the rising sun behind you. The red light falls first on the walls of Peking and then on hills and mountains, carpeted with rough scrubby trees and long wiry grass. Ridges and peaks pass beneath you. You’re flying over the Uplands of China, where peasants farm rice on the warm southern sides of the mountains, and wheat in the drier north.
But then the hills and fields drop away into a flat brown plain. The dragon swoops down. You see sand beneath you, yellow and white, shifting in the howling winds. A sand rat scuttles away into its hole. A vulture, hunched on a single low tree, flaps resentfully away as the dragon approaches. You’re flying over the Gobi Desert, a huge dry plain—and the edge of Mongolia, homeland of the descendents of Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde.
Beneath you, a group of nomads comes out of their felt yurts and looks up, mouths open with amazement. They recognize the dragon, because now Mongolia belongs to China! Chi’en-lung’s grandfather K’ang-hsi invaded Mongolia and forced its government to pay allegiance to him. Now, Mongolia sends tribute every year to the Chinese emperor. The dragon flies further north, leaving the desert behind. Ahead of you lies Mongolia’s capital city, Ulan Bator. The dragon banks along its walls and turns southwest. As you leave Ulan Bator behind, you peer down at its streets; Chinese soldiers patrol the alleys, watching for any sign of rebellion!
Now you soar further south, toward the lands where Turkish tribes fought to spread the Turkish empire. But the glory days of the Ottoman Turks are gone. China now rules over part of this Turkish land; it is called Chinese Turkestan. Below you, the dome of a mosque glitters white in the sun. These Turks are still Muslim—but they pay allegiance to the Buddhist emperor of China. In the forests beyond the mosque, you see a white puff of dust. The dragon swoops down again, so that you can see the war band of Chinese soldiers, headed deep into Turkestan. The Turks are restless; Chi’en-lung fights continually to keep them under his control!
You’ve traveled halfway along China’s borders; now the sun stands overhead, and the dragon is beginning to turn back toward the east. Below you lies the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest! It casts its shadow over the land to its north. This ancient country, Tibet, is a mysterious and little-known place; old people whisper of a hidden kingdom in its snowy mountains, called Shangri-La. Those who live in Shangri-La are never hungry; no one grows old in Shangri-La, and no one dies!
The Tibetans are a peaceful people, governed not by a king but by a Buddhist monk called the Dalai Lama who rules alongside a Mongol prince. China hasn’t completely conquered this southern land, but the emperor is scheming to add it to his collection of countries. Just a few years ago, the Mongol prince who was supposed to help the Dalai Lama rule fought with other Mongols who wanted to control Tibet. The emperor sent Chinese soldiers into Tibet to protect the Dalai Lama. Those Chinese soldiers are still in Tibet, even though the revolt is over. Their leaders, two Chinese officials called “High Commissioners,” are “helping” the Dalai Lama rule. Slowly, the High Commissioners are gaining more and more power!
You leave Tibet behind and fly further to the east and the south. Here, a huge piece of land juts down from the Chinese mainland into the ocean. You are so high that you can see the water on both sides: the Bay of Bengal on the western side of this land and the South China Sea on the east! The land below you sparkles silver and red. The dragon swoops down once more so that you can see the country of Burma, on the Bay of Bengal’s edge. Rivers wind between mountain peaks, slowly widening out into flat glittering flood plains where men and women stoop over the rice fields. The sun, now beginning to sink behind you in the west, shines brightly on houses made of red glazed brick and of timber with bright tin roofs. In the streets of the villages, men in blue robes and women with gold and jade in their hair walk toward the Buddhist temple. But you see Chinese soldiers marching toward the north of Burma, ready to fight. The emperor is worried about Burma. It’s growing a little too powerful! In the next three years, those soldiers will invade Burma four times; they’ll never own the country, but the people of the north will be forced to pay tribute.
You fly straight across toward the South China Sea, and a long thin country that lies along its edge: the country of Vietnam. Chinese soldiers trudge north through wet rice fields, headed home. For years, China has been trying to take over Vietnam. For the moment, the invasion has failed. The royal family of Vietnam has driven the Chinese invaders out once more! The imperial dragon snorts in frustration. He veers suddenly out over the water, almost dumping you into the surf below. You cling to his neck, hoping that he won’t dissolve into a waterspout! But he’s just headed out toward an island that lies off China’s coast: the island of Taiwan. Here, the Chinese effort to conquer its neighbor has succeeded! Taiwan has become part of China’s southern province, Fukien. You see boats sailing from the mainland toward the Chinese coast. Chinese settlers are streaming into Taiwan; the island’s population has swelled by half a million people. The dragon expands a little with pride. He veers inland to show you one more successful Chinese conquest: the country of Korea, now paying tribute to the emperor.
When the dragon sets you gently down back on the rooftop of the Forbidden Palace, you have traveled around the edges of the largest empire in the world. At this time, perhaps nine hundred million people live in the world; over three hundred million of those people belong to the Chinese empire. France and Spain and England are powerful countries—but one-third of all the people in the entire world live under the flag of the imperial Chinese dragon!