Anchee Min: The Last Empress

I was speechless.

"I'd like to believe that the missionaries are good men and women," my son continued, "that only their code of morals is defective. I agree with Uncle Prince Kung that Christianity lays too much stress on charity and too little on justice. Anyway, it's not my problem, and you shouldn't try to make it mine."

"Foreigners have no right to bring their laws to China. And that is your problem to fix, son."

"The business of running the nation makes me sick, period. Sorry, Mother, I have to go."

"I am not done yet. Tung Chih, you don't know enough to know what to do yet."

"How could I not know enough? You have made the court's papers my textbooks. I have been considered weak as far back as I can remember. You are the wise one, the all-knowing Old Buddha. I don't send spies to invade your rooms and empty out your closets. But that doesn't mean I'm stupid and know nothing. I love you, Mother, but-" He stopped and then broke down sobbing.

In the darkest moments of my life, I would go to An-te-hai and ask him to comfort me. I was beyond shame.

It would be unimaginable for any woman to stand the thought that her body was being touched by a eunuch, a creature from the underworld. But I felt as low as the eunuch.

That night, An-te-hai's voice soothed me. It helped me escape reality. I was taken to distant continents to experience exotic voyages. Excitement would fill An-te-hai's expression as he blew out the candles and came to lie by my side on the bed.

"I have found my hero," An-te-hai whispered. "Like me, he was an unfortunate one. Born in 1371 and castrated at the age of ten. Luckily, the master he served was a prince who was good to him. In return he rendered outstanding service and helped the prince become the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty…"

The sound of a night owl quieted, and the moonlit clouds stood still outside the window.

"His name was Cheng Ho, the greatest explorer in the world. You can find his name in every book of navigation, but none reveals his identity as a eunuch. No one knew that his profound suffering was what made him extraordinary. The ability to endure hardship that only I, a fellow eunuch, can understand."

"How do you know Cheng Ho was a eunuch?" I asked.

"I discovered it by accident, in the Imperial Registration Record of Eunuchs, a book nobody else would care to read."

In Cheng Ho An-te-hai recognized an achievable dream. "As the admiral of the Treasure Fleet Cheng Ho headed seven naval expeditions to ports all over Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean." An-te-hai spoke in a voice of passion. "My hero traveled as far as the Red Sea and East Africa, exploring more than thirty nations in seven voyages. Castration made him a broken man, but it never stayed his ambition."

In the darkness An-te-hai walked to the window in his white silk robe. Facing the bright moon, he announced, "I shall from now on have a birth date."

"Haven't you one already?"

"That was a made-up one, because no one, including myself, knew when I was born. My new birthday will be July 11. It will be in memory and celebration of Cheng Ho's first naval expedition, which set off on July 11, 1405."

In my dream that night, An-te-hai became Cheng Ho. He was dressed in a magnificent Ming court robe and was out on the open sea, heading toward the distant horizon.

"…He flaunted the might of two generations of Chinese emperors." An-te-hai's voice woke me. Yet he was in deep sleep.

I sat up and lit a candle. I looked at the sleeping eunuch and suddenly felt crushed as my thoughts fled back to Tung Chih. I had an urge to go to my son and hold him close.

"My lady." An-te-hai spoke with his eyes shut. "Did you know Cheng Ho's fleet included more than sixty large ships? A crew nearly thirty thousand strong! They had one ship to carry horses, and another one carried only drinking water!"

Nuharoo summoned me on the eighth anniversary of our husband's death. After our greeting, she announced that she had decided to change the names of all the palaces in the Forbidden City. She began with her own palace. Instead of the Palace of Peace and Longevity, its new name would be the Palace of Meditation and Transformation. Nuharoo said that her feng shui master advised that the names of palaces occupied by females should be changed once every ten years in order to confuse the ghosts who came to haunt their old palaces.

I didn't like the idea, but Nuharoo was not the type of person to compromise. The problem was that if we changed the name of a palace, the names that went along with it also had to be changed-the palace's gates, its gardens, its walkways, its servants' quarters. Nevertheless, she forged ahead. Nuharoo's gate was now the Gate of Reflection instead of the Gate of Restful Wind. Her garden was now called the Spring Awakening instead of the Magnificent Wilderness. Her main walkway used to be the Corridor of Moonlight and now was the Corridor of a Clear Mind.

To my mind, the new names were not as tasteful as the old ones. The old name for Nuharoo's pond, Spring Ripple, was better than its new name, the Zen Drops. I also liked Palace of Gathering Essence better than Palace of the Great Void.

For months Nuharoo spent her time working on the names. More than one hundred title boards and nameplates were taken down and new ones created and installed. Sawdust filled the air as the carpenters sanded the boards. Paint and ink were everywhere as Nuharoo ordered the calligraphers, whose style she found deficient, to redo their work.

I asked Nuharoo if the court had approved her new names. She shook her head. "It would take too long to explain the importance to the court, and they wouldn't like it because of the expense. It's better that I don't bother them at all."

She started to call the palaces by their new names on her own. It caused great confusion. None of the Imperial departments, which would take orders only from the court, were notified. The gardeners had great difficulty figuring out where they were supposed to work. The palanquin bearers went to the wrong places to pick up and drop off their passengers, and the supply department made a mess sending items to incorrect addresses.

Nuharoo said that she had invented an excellent new name for my palace. "How do you like 'the Palace of the Absence of Confusion'?"

The name had always been the Palace of Long Springs.

"What do you expect me to say?"

"Say you love it, Lady Yehonala!" She called me by my formal title. "It's my best work. You have to love it! My wish is that the new names will inspire you to retire from the world to pursue calmer pleasures."

"I'd be more than happy to retire tomorrow if I could forget about the threat of being overthrown."

"I am not asking you to quit the audiences," Nuharoo said, patting both of her cheeks with her silk handkerchief. "Men can be wicked and their behavior should be monitored."

It amazed me that she didn't really mean it when she had told me to leave the business of governing to men. What struck me was how she achieved power by appearing to want nothing to do with it.

I was glad that most of the palaces that underwent name changes were the inner quarters occupied by concubines. Since there was no official record of the changes, everyone except Nuharoo continued to call the buildings by their old names. To avoid offending her, the word "old" was tacked on to all the names. For example, my palace was referred to as the Old Palace of Long Springs.

Eventually Nuharoo grew tired of the game. She admitted that the new names were confusing. Her house eunuchs got so mixed up that they lost their way while trying to carry out her orders. She meant to send her lotus-seed cake to me, but it ended up on the gatekeeper's table.

"The eunuchs are too stupid," Nuharoo concluded. So everything was changed back to the way it had been, and the new names were soon forgotten.