Country Driving [59]
Unlike other foreign scholars, Spindler has found evidence that the Ming Great Wall actually worked as a defensive structure. One such incident occurred in 1555, when thousands of Mongols attacked at Shuitou, a village northwest of Beijing. The Ming had recently improved the Shuitou walls, which held firm, turning back the raiders. Throughout the years, there were many other such instances of successful defense. In one account from the late sixteenth century, a Chinese officer describes the aftermath of a victory:
On the day when we stuck the severed heads of the barbarians on poles, there was a soldier named Zhan Yu who cut off a piece of barbarian flesh, walked over to his comrades, and said, “Anyone who raids us deserves this fate.” There was another soldier named Zhao Pian who cut off two pieces of flesh from the neck of a dead raider and ate them raw, telling his comrades, “I hate anyone who harasses our civilians and causes trouble for us soldiers and will eat their flesh!” As their commander, I was pleased to have such brave and loyal soldiers.
Nobody in the world knows the Ming Great Wall as thoroughly as Spindler, and once I asked him what the structures say about China. “When I give lectures, people always ask me that,” he said. “What does this say about China, that China built these walls? My answer is basically: Nothing. It’s very disappointing to them. But it’s just one manifestation of what China has done. It’s just a way they defended themselves.”
Spindler hates any symbolic use of the Great Wall. In his view, it’s become such an easy metaphor that people are more inclined to interpret than they are to research. And he believes that it’s unfair to take such a specific structure and use it to explain something as complex as Chinese civilization. “The way I look at it, this was a boundary that was often attacked,” he said. “They had to have some kind of border-defense system. And it was combined with diplomacy, with trade, with raids into Mongol territory.”
For the Ming, walls were simply one part of a complex, multipronged strategy, but nowadays it’s easy to take the fortifications out of context. They are still impressive, and any tourist can take a walk along the ramparts, whereas the Ming archives, and their details about other aspects of foreign policy, are much more difficult to access and understand.
Spindler continued: “People say, Was it worth it? But I don’t think that’s how they thought at the time. You don’t get a nation-state saying, ‘We’re going to give up this terrain’ or ‘We’re going to sacrifice x number of citizens and soldiers.’ That’s not a calculus they used. An empire is always going to try to protect itself.”
I FOLLOWED THE MING walls northwest to Jiayuguan, the fort at the end of the Hexi Corridor, and then I drove to Dunhuang. The town is famous for the Buddhist art of its caves, and for the massive sand dunes that stand nearby. But I kept driving—after so much time on the road I couldn’t bear to linger at tourist sites. I was heading to a place called Subei when the police stopped me at a checkpoint. The roadblock had been set up at a desolate intersection, not far from the border of Qinghai Province.
“License,” an officer said sternly, and then he looked inside. “Waah! Where did you come from?”
“Beijing,” I said.
“You’re not from Beijing!”
“I’m American, but I live in Beijing.”
“Look at this!” he called to the other officers, grinning. “This guy’s a foreigner!”
Three of them huddled around the City Special. They seemed barely more than children—skinny guys in their twenties dressed in oversize uniforms. The first cop studied my document and exclaimed, “It looks just like a Chinese license!”
“It is a Chinese license,” I said. “I couldn’t drive here if I only had an American license.”
“Do you have your American license?”
I handed it over, and the cops passed it around—undoubtedly