with his basket of flowers, and Han Hsiang-tzu, the flute-playing nephew of the T’ang-dynasty poet Han Yu. Next to the beach, someone had painted them all on plywood, all except Han Hsiang-tzu, whose place I took long enough to share the camaraderie of his fellow immortals. Ah, Penglai.
MUSIC OF THE IMMORTALS
The next morning, I put an end to my Penglai reverie. Instead of a boat bound for the islands of bliss, I boarded another highway bus headed west, back toward the world of red dust. It was an old bus. And it was so accustomed to driving on bad roads, it bounced and shook, just out of habit, even though the highway was paved. The road followed the coast, then turned inland, and every ten kilometers or so there was another sign announcing the approach of the industrial city of Tzupo. Tzupo was 250 kilometers from Penglai, and it took all day to get there, or nearly there. Twenty kilometers short of Tzupo’s industrial haze, I put an end to my ride among my fellow mortals and got off at another sign. The sign was in the middle of nowhere just outside the village of Lintzu, and it said that one kilometer to the north was the site of the ancient capital of the state of Ch’i.
During the first millennium BC, Ch’i was the most powerful state among all the states that contended for power in China. The success of Ch’i was in great part due to the efforts of one man, Kuan Chung. Master Kuan was the chief adviser of the state’s ruler, Duke Huan, and was responsible for developing a series of financial policies that made Ch’i the wealthiest of all the competing states. He was also reportedly the author of a treatise that bore his name, the Kuantzu. I asked directions from some farmers and found his grave in the middle of a barren field across the highway from where I got off. He was buried there in 645 BC. I was surprised his grave was still there, that it hadn’t been plowed under or moved during road construction. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. Graves are for the living. They give us a place to come to honor those who have gone and to think about the past. But there was so much traffic on the highway, I didn’t linger.
I walked back across the highway and started to walk down the road to the ancient capital of the state that Kuan Chung made so wealthy. Among the states that sought the protection of Ch’i was the small state of Lu on its southwest border. In 517 BC, Duke Chao, the ruler of Lu, was forced to flee his capital by two lesser nobles who took exception to his complaints about their cockfighting. Strange, but true. And when the duke sought sanctuary in the neighboring state of Ch’i, he brought his young adviser with him. The ruler of Ch’i at that time was Duke Ching, who was far less wise than his ancestor, Duke Huan. And the adviser who accompanied Duke Chao was Confucius, who was only thirty-five but who was already considered wise. When Duke Ching asked Confucius about government, Confucius said, “Let the prince be a prince and the minister be a minister, let the father be a father and the son be a son,” the idea being for people to live up to their roles. The Duke responded, “Well said! Indeed, when a prince is not a prince, or a minister not a minister, or a father not a father, or a son not a son, even if the state overflowed with grain, I, for one, would not be able to eat it.” Duke Ching may not have been wise, but neither was he a fool.
Some days later, the duke asked again about government, and Confucius said, “The principal of government is economy in the use of wealth.” The Duke was pleased and decided to make Confucius an adviser. But his prime minister protested, “These educators are just a bunch of unruly windbags, arrogant and self-willed. There is no controlling them. They set great store in long, expensive funerals. It would never do if this became the custom. A beggar who roams the land isn’t a man to entrust with affairs of state. This Confucius lays such stress on etiquette and codes of behavior, it would take generations to learn all his rules. To adopt his ways would not be putting the common people first.” Hence, the duke told Confucius, “I’m too old to make use of your doctrines.” And so when Duke Chao later returned to Lu, Confucius went back with him. But before he left, he left something behind – at least I hoped he did.
As I walked down the road, the farmer who had pointed me toward Kuan Chung’s grave came up behind me on his tractor and asked me where I was going. When I told him, he said he would take me there on his tractor for 5RMB. It was only a kilometer, but I didn’t feel like walking that far with my backpack. Ten minutes later I was there, and the farmer was 5RMB richer. He dropped me off at the southern section of the old city wall and pointed me toward the marker that I was hoping would be there. It commemorated the spot where Confucius heard the music of Shao. The music was composed 2,000 years earlier by the royal music master of Emperor Shun. For Confucius everything was about harmony, and he had never heard such perfect harmonies. For three months afterwards, he couldn’t think of anything else, not even food. Harmony was the principle thread in Confucius’ notion of ethics, of how people should behave. But the music of Shao was gone. I’m not sure what I was hoping to find there or hear there. All I could see was a stone on which someone had written that this was where Confucius had heard the music of Shao. But all I could hear was the wind blowing past the city’s ancient dirt walls.
Some years later, Duke Chao was invited back to Ch’i, and a state banquet was held in his honor. Naturally, Confucius came along to advise his ruler on ceremony. During the banquet, Duke Ching called for musicians to entertain his honored guest with military music. But Confucius objected: “When the rulers of two states are meeting in friendship, why should there be such barbarous noise? Let these men be dismissed.” Duke Ching had no choice but to wave his musicians away. He then called for another group of performers that included jesters, minstrels and dwarfs. Again, Confucius objected, “Commoners who beguile their lords deserve to die. Let these men be punished for such an intrusion.” Not one to quibble about such matters, Duke Ching had the performers killed on the spot. Confucius was not on many guest lists after that.
Although Ch’i was the most powerful state during that period of Chinese history, a series of ever-changing alliances kept it from conquering the other states. That honor would finally go to the state of Ch’in, which united all of China for the first time in 221 BC. But until then, Lintzu was the political and cultural center of China, and archaeologists had uncovered some incredible treasures among its ruins. Several years prior to my visit, the government built a museum there to house what they uncovered. It was only a hundred meters or so from where Confucius heard the music of Shao. But apparently the ruins of Lintzu and its new museum were not on any tourist itineraries. Other than a few museum guards, I found myself alone. As I looked through the cases of artifacts, one item that caught my attention was a bronze hippopotamus inlaid with silver and gold. Lintzu was at the southern edge of the Yellow River Delta, and in Neolithic times that area was still home to these animals the Chinese called “sea horses.” The memory of their actual form had faded but not their presence..
Near the building that housed the museum, there was another, much smaller building that housed a funeral pit that contained the bones of 600 horses. They were all lined up, as if in formation, and they were buried there alive to accompany Duke Ching in the afterlife. In his Analects, Confucius is recorded as saying, “The ruler of Ch’i possessed thousands of horses, but when he died, no one praised him as possessing a single virtue.” Indeed, when it comes to virtue, some people are just black holes.
THE RIVER’S MOUTH
Past the ancient site of Lintzu, the road continued north into the Yellow River Delta. One of the guards at the museum walked out to the road with me and helped me flag down a passing taxi. I told the driver I wanted to visit the river’s mouth. He had never been there, and he wasn’t eager to go. It was an overnight trip. But the only other vehicles I saw were trucks and tractors, and I had no choice but to persist. The negotiation dragged on for half an hour. The final bargaining chip was to agree to let his girlfriend come along and to pay for their hotel room as well.
In prehistoric times, the Yellow River emptied into the Pohai Sea much farther north, just south of Beijing. And on several occasions in historic times it even veered almost as far
