Chinese Short Stories
The Unending Nightmare…
His arthritis doesn’t want him to finish this report. He flexes and stretches his hands, but at 60 winters, his body has aged into periods of inability, unable to carry forth the duties entrusted to him by the Khan. Born a Han Chinese noble, he rose in Mongolian China, in charge of all communications from Western China to where the trail runs cold. He saw communication as vital to the lifeline of the Mongol Empire, educated to submit to forces beyond his retinue or command. Better to put up and benefit than rebel and be erased. His network of courtiers and messengers connected his region of Mongolian China to places he knew about only through stories. He has lived on to reflect on those stories. His children have grown to secure administrative positions. His grandchildren have been taught to obey and secure opportunities. Work within the Mongolian system. Do not anger the Khan. The Yuan emperor. Never truly a Han Chinese.
He studies until his eyes cannot bear another sentence. He writes until his hands cramp and grows stiff. He sits until his knees and back ache with pain. Moving helps, walking, and stretching his legs in his castle. He secretly waits for this regime to fall. He will not take the mantle of emperor and establish his dynasty if it does. He would rather keep his family in Western China, and establish their territory, their authority.
A powerful nobility with deep roots makes the old tree impressive to behold for others. His descendants can take prestige in the fact they will outlast this dynasty like the last. Wishful thinking for this Han-Chinese noble, undeterred that his progeny shall become the greatest of administrators and logisticians throughout Western China. He groans. His back.
Up and moving, he hears the ascent of men wearing heavy armor. They must be men, for no woman would need to arm herself so seriously. Except, he was partially correct. He notices his middle daughter, the most harmonious child, for his eldest daughter and youngest daughter, have minds of their own. The eldest runs what he cannot. The youngest will be married off to secure relations with a Mongolian noble, or warlord. These Mongolians often seem like guests, their culture too different to reconcile.
He bows to her. He raised all his daughters well. He was unfortunate to have no sons, but daughters can be very sharp in intellect, and crafty in solutions. His middle daughter meets this opinion.
She comes to her father, helping him walk, but gives him a parchment sealed by the emperor. He needs to read it. The guards, thankfully, step aside for him to pass. He breaks the seal and reads the parchment, his face caught in a pang of disbelief. The emperor required that he secure logistics between his settlement in Western China, Tibet, and Central Asia. He stares at his middle daughter, a healthy woman, and explains what he has read, although she read it alongside him. He has no one to send that he can trust other than family. He may have guards or personal servants, but loyalty can be bought by those not family. So he turns to his middle daughter and then assesses her.
He gulps. His middle daughter has to take care of him and her mother. To be the family caregiver. The eldest would administer and call the shots, as the youngest keeps her Mongolian husband happy. He tells her with honesty that she must do this. To keep all their heads on their necks.
His middle daughter balks. She does not look like a man, nor a messenger, but her father flicks at that, dismissing such worry. She needs to not bathe, cut her hair very short, and dress in peasant clothes. She can ride. She mentions her husband, the highest member of his armed retinue. But her children. She would have to leave them for this circumstance. She could ask her husband to go—
Her father shouts at such a suggestion, complaining that her opinions should be kept in her heart, not in her mouth. She quietens and with a heavy exhale, she will obey her father. She will go, doing what she can to disguise herself as a messenger, although she mentions she will need to prove to those she meets her upbringing. Her royalty. He hugs her close. The guards look at one another while the old noble sobs into his daughter’s chest. He tells her that she is his favorite. The eldest acts too haughty. The youngest is too silly. He doesn’t want a hair on her head to be harmed, but he can’t prevent harm or injury. She hugs him close and pecks his head. She promises she will survive and return.
He snorts in his tears and clears his throat. He nods. She must cut her silky long hair tonight.
Not One Step Backwards…
She hasn’t bathed in a week. She looks dissimilar from a wandering peasant strayed too far from whence she came. She even has very short hair, akin to a young man’s. But most importantly, in her ardent riding, she has made it to Tibet, a place that could take her breath away, if not dry it. At a much higher elevation than she knows, she finds her lungs to be hot, burning, and struggling when exercised too greatly.
She keeps her great satchel, a change of clothing, attached to her horse, changing horses at stables along the route to Tibet. A creation of the Mongols, always having a horse ready for transport. She rode 5 of them. One for each day, and on the 5th day, she witnessed the greatness of Tibet’s culture.
Great temples and bold monasteries with prayer wheels and yaks grazing, people dressed in clothing unlike any she had seen, but most of all, the thickness of Buddhism in Tibet. She, like her sisters, and like her parents, her grandparents, has been raised in the teachings of Confucius, as well as venerating the Chinese gods. Taoist beliefs and ideals. While the Mongols worship their gods. Another product of the Mongols. Tolerance. How women can believe in gods, a god, or philosophy while keeping their heads. She still feels an urge in her heart to express her beliefs to these Tibetans, so they understand. If they understand her at all, their language is dissimilar to hers. Their culture is dissimilar too.
She stops her horse. She carries something with her that should assist in proving her status. A signal of noble authority, although they could treat such as a thief’s stolen item. Her appearance, ragged and rumpled, doesn’t add to her status as a noblewoman, so she will need to defend her ground while speaking clearly and using proper language. Be dignified.
She meets the guards and shows them the sigil. They glare at her. One of them points at the ground and barks at her to wait. She does, reluctantly, as the other goes inside to find the translator. Dharma wheels spin and flags flutter from the dry wind. She could’ve wrapped up more. If she moves to get more clothing, the guard will attack. She won’t risk danger. This logistical endeavor has been dangerous enough for her.
The translator arrives and glares at her, requesting the sigil. She offers it and he studies it. He then stares at her with distrust in his frown. He asks her a series of questions. About her father, her royalty, and something specific to her lineage. She answers everyone without a blink and points at her luggage atop the grazing horse. The guard goes to it, which disturbs the horse as it grunts warily. Opening the luggage, the guard balks and stares at her with amazement. Her clothes seem made of fine silk and exquisite material. Commotion occurs while she folds her arms, men shouting at one another about her. Immediately, the guards and translator kneel and then kowtow to her. She has their attention.
A warm bath with a view and soon, a dinner with the local ruler, a devout Buddhist. Hospitality translates cultures and languages it so seems. She bathes, thinking about her children and husband. Her father set out conditions, but she will need to exercise persuasion. She can be persuasive, though not like her older sister, very commanding. If she were born a man, she’d be an excellent general, but instead, she reigns from home. Home. She remembers her pregnancies well. She found the second one easier than the first, her husband being around more, and not going on militaristic duties. He was even in the room when their child was born, named after his grandfather. She mulls about a third. Each child has a life’s duty. One goes into the army. One administers. One learns to cook.
But which child will be suited for what duty seems uncertain too. The eldest likes to eat. The newest likes soldiers and horses. The imagined one may be a fine administrator. She grunts, missing her husband. For more than these thoughts. He may be a general, but he has a romantic side to him shown through intellect and conversation. She has had so many conversations with him. Her parents arranged to marry her to him, though they were a good fit. When she returns from these imperial obligations, she’ll want another child. She will.
While she was pregnant, she observed those working in her father’s jurisdiction. The peasants and commoners. The traders and artisans. Justice keeps them all in line. Order. Peace can only be achieved through might and assertion.
She looks at her nails. She sighs. They don’t look like how they used to be.
Torment Unrelenting…
The negotiation went accordingly. Stronger supply lines will be established between her father’s authority and Tibet. Some tea and pleasantries later, she was back out on the road towards the next center of authority. Beyond Tibet, with dry skin and hangnails bothering her, looking like a disheveled merchant, and smelling like horse. She will ride across the Tibetan Plateau, only able to capture such natural wonder through her amazed eyes, towards Central Asia, deeper into the realm of Mongols. The Imperial Yuan Dynasty. She has paid passage to swap horses, riding for an entire day at times. All see her as a smelly, male merchant, stinking of horse. She avoids any further suspicion or any further intrigue. Highly risky for a woman, a royal woman, to be so far away from home without security.
Onto the next place of negotiation, as a traveling merchant, or someone of no importance. It’s a mask worn and removed, an inflection given and deflated, a disguise that fools who it fools, but awes who it awes. Once she reveals her true self. This nobleman's daughter with enough clout to make men either stammer or grovel. Power. Nothing else on earth could ever come close to it. She can feel it surge within her, and even the most benevolent, wisest ruler would succumb to its authority. She has had her moments of relishing power over others. How merely something wild and out-of-character could stir a fright or quiver an audience. Power corrupts and distorts.
She can see it in her older sister's eyes, how she views those below her, the true influence of authority. Men believe they have the right to rule, but men can be weak. Weak, cowardly, pathetic, spineless, and unintelligent. She has seen it all before. She has lived long enough, though not very long like her grandmothers, to see how flawed and frail men truly can be. How it simply takes one exceptionally powerful woman to cast influence over them. As her older sister will, too strong-willed for any man to court her, and likely if courted and wedded, she will pick a weak, worrisome man. Someone that she can control.
Ridiculous that male commoners and royalty pretend their behavior has not been influenced by a woman's words. Many a time she has stood up to her husband, only to be swept off her feet by her husband. This strange effect of how her confidence collides with his caring, compassionate words. Thoughts of her husband. So far from home, she rides deeper into lands that must obey authority or risk ruin. She does this because her father ordered her to do this, but even he makes her cry. She doesn't know how those people do it. How they manage to leave home and explore the world. Often never to return, and if they do, how they leave again. Such a mystery to herself.
She comes closer to the next stop, somewhere between Tibet and the lands of Central Asia. A town with a lord that will endure either lecturing or conversation, a banquet, or some gift she will demand to be sent to her father. Far away, in the same empire as them. She rides, learning how to lie better to protect her true identity, learning from merchants, some women like herself, and how to find the best prices in things, but ultimately, she rides with thoughts of the future. Whether those in power will topple her family, force her older sister into subservience, and destroy their illusions of power with it. One day, the Mongols will be gone. She will not live to see that day. She will live to see her family again, to have another child again, and to live her days as a caregiver for her father.
She enters a new town. She starts over, repeating a process of improving and bettering things.
Nearly at the Finish Line…
She has forgotten where she must go, in the steppes past any border of her homeland. The air tastes so dry, the wind so cutting, and the storms so strong, it would make any tyrant or noblewoman a visitor. A guest on this great, wide earth, spanning in many directions, aging those that go further and further into the horizon. She has broken from the path, galloping across the hills and below the vast sky, feeling freedom. That all women have the luxury of riding alone in spacious terrain, galloping atop their horses, laughing and shouting with liberty. A luxury too many may never experience. She, the middle daughter of an elderly nobleman, sworn to the Mongol Emperor, has privilege.
She dismounts her horse and takes leisure upon the grass atop a hill, watching the great clouds move across the vast, blue sky. So infatuating the sight, so powerful and true, the heavens looking at the earth, and the earth looking at the heavens. She is an intermediary, a communicator. The horse grunted and grazed on the grass, always hungry. Thirsty as well, which she realized once it slurped all the water out of her hands, multiple times. She never saw horses as anything more than transport, but since she left home, these animals have a divinity to them, shown so honestly in Mongol culture. Acknowledged by her own culture, the zodiac of the horse. She bought a horse brush in one of the rest stops along the way, and has been using it since, brushing her horse's mane while it snorts and neighs softly. They have been fascinating at times to witness and watch, though this horse has been borrowed, not owned by her, unlike the horses back at her father’s stables. She mounts the horse, continuing on her journey westwards, unsure just how far she must travel.
Even though she has been riding all day, switching several horses, close to full gallop if not cantering, she rests at an inn in a merchant town, not close enough to the main city that governs the entire region. But while keeping a low profile, one of the inn's workers, a middle child like herself, gives her good information about a place where most merchants and traders set up their business. It could be somewhere she might want to peddle her goods or look for market information. She thanks the inn worker and retires for the evening, spent from a day's worth of riding. She reeks of horse, smelling pungent, and has never looked so ugly. To her husband, she would be nearly unrecognizable, seen as some wandering merchant, or a vagrant. But in this ragged disguise of commonness, thinking about that intriguing place, she feels relief.
The detour was too good to resist. Another round of pleasantries and decorum followed by elaborate dining and resisting the advances of ambitious men seems unappealing. So unadventurous and uninteresting, spending another night not being curious, but being bored. The life of a noblewoman, waiting for the catalyst to come, which has come with her travels west, way beyond what she once knew, now takes her to this place. A small city, yet not the governing city, steeped in a history of mercantile energies. Traders and peddlers, merchants and travelers, languages never heard, and faces never seen before, make her excited, interested, and almost desiring a mischievous idea. If she never had a noble life, she would have a merchant life. A traveler from here to places like Jerusalem, Egypt, India, Rome, and Constantinople. An exhilarating life. No court, no nobles, no pleasantries, no bowing to her father. None of that. Just unpredictability.
She browses the wares and goods, seeing the bartering before her, hearing the languages, eager to understand them, but alas, knows she has duties elsewhere. Diplomatic duties. Walking around, mostly covered save her eyes, smelling slightly better with clean clothes, her old clothes being washed by the inn workers for an additional fee, she searches for something beyond mere goods and services. A shop, a place to establish a shop. She gasps once she spots a horse pulling a cart full of spices. She knows exactly what. A stables. She could own and operate stables across these merchant towns. Surely there must be more than one. But such a notion, a string of stables, would be too idealistic. She grunts at this idealism. Because it might just work. Once home, it could really work. She could build many stables. She could use her inherited wealth to create clean stables made for healthy, strong horses.
Except she sighs. Planning and action don’t always make good business partners.
This Ending to New Beginnings…
She readies herself for yet another long ride deeper into Central Asia, moving along what must be some offshoot of the Silk Road, one of the many paths taken between the East and the West, except word reaches to her of something so jarring, she struggles to even move, to comprehend what has occurred. Through talk in the inn, and chatter in the streets, change has befallen her family's status, her father, described by commoners as a Chinese noble, disposed and made irrelevant by court authority, an action that perhaps manifested into shattering her entire remaining family. All she knew and grew up with was gone by a supreme decision. A decision beyond her control, beyond her family's control.
She wishes to take them as rumors, gossip, and hearsay, but she can't. She seems stalled on her diplomatic mission, whether to continue or ride right back home, facing great danger. She idles when she should be active, she pauses when she should resume, and she makes a choice that could bring immediate rebuttal. She rides towards the nearest place of authority, any administrator's office or official's residence, hoping all truly was chatter. When she does arrive at an official's residence, requesting an audience, revealing her fine clothes and refined etiquette, her hopes have been dashed. Her name means nothing. Her titles are no longer relevant to her family. She has been reduced to that of a commoner. The news arrived only days ago, trailing behind her like some cruel, bitter shadow of fate.
She has nothing anymore, perhaps no actual family. Whether they were officially expunged, removed by heavy-handed means, or bought and shuffled elsewhere, she doesn't know. On her way back into town, she doesn't know anything anymore. She grasps at the very straws that look like bales of hay, or horse feed. Horses at the stables, this idea she had when she arrived, to run a chain of stables, but only as some wishful idea, nothing more than that, but now, harsh reality alters and twists her narrative. Her life direction. Her family may or may not be there, maybe as ghosts, maybe as people. In a flash of light, her history banishes itself from her livelihood. So she observes how the stables operate during the day, taking mental notes, and selling off her finery to gather finances for an investment. Her chain of stables, her chance at pursuing prosperity through desperation.
She, unfortunately, attracts the wrong attention, a group of ruffians who realize her coin, and rob her of it, one gets captured by a soldier, which leads to the capture of the others, but once her coin has been returned to her, the soldier tells her to be more careful with her belongings, put them somewhere safe. She acknowledges, yet cries on the inside, as nowhere feels safe now. She never felt so on her own in her whole life. She has two options with the returned coin, spend it on a new business venture, or deposit it in with a befriended, local merchant. She spends the day's remainder inquiring about stables open to sale, or what would be needed to open a new stables. She finds one willing to be purchased, a tired elder in no shape to keep the strains of business running. Her coin soon makes her the sole proprietor of the stables, an owner and potential ruler of many stables.
She wrestles with two energies in conflict inside her, grief and success, as her business grows from town to town, market to market, attracting business and profit, yet in all the weeks that follow, misery solidifies itself, a tough, painful feeling to ingest, and while she has the option of remarrying, her name now going by an alias, she feels no desire to restart what she lost. She would rather not replace the past with the same in the present, instead, she looks youthful yet grows old behind such youth, masking much emotion from all curiosity, except the world has never felt lonelier. She has relationships, connections, and perhaps friends she could associate herself with across the region, and other regions, but the company of a husband always emerges in her as a never-ending question mark.
She takes the worst and makes the best. She owns and has not been owned. She survives.
