See China

A portrait of a Qing Dynasty aristocratic woman

If you take Beijing’s line one subway often enough, you probably have heard of a station called Gong Zhu Fen, or Princess’ tomb. When I first heard it four years ago, my curiosity was hooked immediately. I started asking around for information about the purported princess. The quest turned out to be unfruitful: None of those I approached had a clue; some made fun of my sentimental effort, which made me a little sad. Not for myself, but for the princess which I believed there must be. She once had it all and perhaps as well-known in her days as any big star in ours. Now as immaterial as the long-gone dynasty, anonymous like dirt, nothing about her left except a hollow name for a mundane area. Was the princess pretty and nice or ugly and mean? Who did she fall in love with and got married to? These questions flashed through my mind before they were overtaken by more urgent issues.

The other day, I came across a book about old Beijing and to my pleasure, there was a fairytale-like account of the princess tomb. Well, according to the book, the princess buried in the tomb was not a princess per se. Surprise surprise.

Qianlong, the fourth emperor of Qing Dynasty, was a figure well-known for his whimsy and infinite ability to improvise. An avid traveler too, according to the folklore. Once in a while, the emperor would find some brilliant excuses to give himself a break from his royally routine. However, according to the Chinese orthodoxy, good emperors don’t take vacation, they work, work and work. Like their modern counterparts, they liked to boast their nobility of sacrificing their lives for the well-being of the people; according to some holy rules: slack is a symptom of a weak ruler, whom no good emperor should want to be. But Qianlong is on no account a conventional emperor anyway, and he wanted to have fun. So he made a minor mistake to lead his ministers on. The ministers just walked into his trap unwitting of the scheme. They made protests as any responsible minister was supposed to do. “It is all my fault”, the emperor said with unusual sincerity, “To punish myself, I am going to impose myself to an exile to the south.” Hooray vacation!

So the emperor traveled incognito to the south. The trip was a top confidential mission because the national security was at stake, so nobody were allowed to reveal the emperor’s identity, not even himself. One day, Qianlong and his entourage, a good hunchback called Liu Yong and a greedy courtier named He Shen, were caught in a sudden spell of rain. They found refuge in a farmers’ cottage and were treated a generous feast. The farmer’s daughter was a pretty teenage girl who soon endeared herself with his majesty. The emperor offered to be her god father and the girl’s father pleasantly agreed. Qianlong gave the girl a handkerchief as a present. “In the future, if you have any trouble, go to Beijing and I, your god father, would like to help you out.” the emperor said. The girl knelt down to show her gratitude and voiced her question on where to find the god father. “Don’t you worry, dear. When you are in Beijing, just ask for the Huang…”"Huang Jia Da Yuan” (黄家大院) the hunchback chimed in, which prevented the emperor from giving out his real identity. A little explanation should be pertinent here: In Chinese, the word emperor consist two characters Huang 皇 and Di 帝, and another character 黄 sharing the same pronunciation with 皇, and it is a popular Chinese family name. Huang Jia Da Yuan means Mr. Huang’s mansion. The girl bowed to Qianlong whom she believed to be Mr. Huang.

Years later, a severe drought struck the area where the girl and her father lived and a big famine was imminent. Father decided that he should take her daughter to go to Beijing to find the Mr. Huang. Needless to say, they could find no mansion called Huang Jia Da Yuan and no Mr. Huang that even look like the girl’s god father. The father fell ill and died. After the last penny was spent, the girl had to beg for food.

One day, the girl were begging on the side of a road, a man threw her a coin. When the girl looked up and said thank you, the man who gave her the coin looked rather surprised. “Princess!” he yelled out. Turned out the man was the good guy Liu Yong. Liu reported to the emperor who had totally forgotten the episode by now. “Wouldn’t people laugh at me once they learned that?” “No, they would only respect you more as an emperor who is as good as his words, your majesty.” “Then, Ok, I guess.”

So the country girl became the princess and lived in the Forbidden City. A happy life ever after? Hardly. The palace was staffed with a snobbish crew of eunuchs and old maids whose jealousy of the girl’s luck could barely be concealed in their contempt of her rural background. The emperor, who was always busy and no longer in the same mood when he first met the girl, neglected her. The civilian princess, lonely and unhappy, died soon. She was buried in the area that is now known as Gong Zhu Fen. What started as a comedy turns out so tragic in the end.

But this is not the only version of the story. [to be continued]