The Last Empress - Anchee Min [18]
"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!"
7
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