Empress Orchid - Anchee Min [27]
Father’s grave was on the side of the mountain facing the northwest part of Peking. His coffin lay under knee-high grass. The graveyard keeper was an old man who smoked a clay pipe. He told us not to worry about robbers. “The dead are known for their debts in this area,” he said, and advised that the best way to pay our father respect was to purchase a lot higher up on the hillside, in the sunnier area.
I gave fifty taels to the man and asked him to guard my father from wild dogs, who dug up the bodies for food. The man was so shocked by my generosity that he dropped his pipe.
Gifts in huge boxes from the Imperial palace arrived. Every inch of our house was filled. The boxes were piled on the tables and beds. There was no place to sit or sleep. Still the gifts kept pouring in. One morning, six Mongolian horses were delivered. There were paintings, antiques, bolts of silk and embroidery from Soochow. Besides magnificent jewelry, splendid garments and headwear and shoes were given to me. My mother was given gold tea sets, silver pots and copper basins.
The neighbors were ordered to lend us their homes for storage. Large pits were dug in the ground around the neighborhood to serve as coolers, to stock meat and vegetables for the coming celebration banquet. Hundreds of jars of century-old wine were ordered, plus eighty lambs, sixty pigs and two hundred chickens and ducks.
On the eighth of the month the banquet was held. The head eunuch, who was in charge, invited a thousand people, among them nobles, ministers, court officials and Imperial relatives. Each guest was served twenty courses, and the meal lasted three days.
My time, though, was unbearable. I could hear the singing, laughing and shouting of drunkards through the walls, but I was not allowed to join the banquet. I was no longer permitted even to expose myself to light. I was shut in a room decorated with red and gold ribbons. Dry squashes painted with children’s faces were hung around the room, and I was told to stare at the faces to boost my fertility.
My mother brought me food and water, and my sister came to keep me company. My brother was being trained by the head eunuch to perform my father’s duty—to see me off when the day came. Every six hours, a messenger sent by the Emperor updated my family on what was going on in the Forbidden City.
I didn’t learn until later that Nuharoo had been the choice not only of the Grand Empress but of the clan elders as well. The decision that she would be the Empress had actually been made a year before. It had taken the court eight months of debate to reach the conclusion. The honorary treatment given Nuharoo’s family was five times what mine received. She was going to enter the Forbidden City through the center gate while the rest of us would go through a side gate.
Many years later people would say that I was jealous of Nuharoo, but I wasn’t at the time. I was overwhelmed by my own good fortune. I couldn’t forget the flies covering my father’s coffin and my mother’s having to sell her hairpin. I couldn’t forget the fact that I had been engaged to cousin Ping. I couldn’t thank Heaven enough for what was happening to me.
In the small red room I wondered what my future would hold. I had so many questions regarding how to live my life as Emperor Hsien Feng’s fourth concubine. But my biggest question was, who is Emperor Hsien Feng? As a bride and groom we hadn’t even spoken.
I dreamed about becoming His Majesty’s favorite. I was sure that all the concubines dreamed the same dream. Would there be harmony? Would it be possible for His Majesty to distribute his essence equally among us?
My experience growing up in the Yehonala household offered no help in preparing my way. My father had had no concubines. “He couldn’t afford one,” Mother once joked. In fact my father didn’t need one—he couldn’t get enough of my mother. I used to think that this was the way it should be, a man and a woman entirely devoted to each other. No matter how much they might suffer, having each other was happiness itself. This was the theme