| AGAIN at the suggestion of One-Eyed Wong I will provide some basic information for barbarians which civilized people may skip. |
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| The correct name for the only completely civilized nation on earth is Chung-kuo, which literally means the Central Country, and which figuratively means the only country in the world that lies directly beneath Heaven. China is a barbarian term which is derived from the first Duke of Ch'in, who conquered the country in the Year of the Rat 2,477 (221 BC) and who was a remarkable reformer. Mass murderers are usually reformers. |
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| "We are being strangled by our past," said the Duke of Ch'in. "We must make a new beginning." |
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| He then proceeded to erase the past by burning every single book, with the exception of technical works, in all China. The Burning of the Books is the single most infamous event in Chinese history, and since the scholars were burned along with the books whole areas of skill and knowledge simply vanished from the face of the earth. The duke disapproved of certain religious cults: temples, priests, and worshippers went up in flames. The duke disapproved of frivolous folk tales and popular myths: professional storytellers were beheaded. The duke disapproved of the teachings of Confucius (a barbarism for Kung Fu-tse), the leading Confucianists were decoyed into a ravine and crushed by falling boulders, the disciples were strangled, and the penalty for possession of one line of the Great Learning was death by slow dismemberment. |
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| (Years later when it was safe the few surviving scholars split into two groups: the first began writing down the Confucian texts from memory; the second began pulling out hidden manuscripts that they proclaimed to be originals. An astonishing number of those "originals" turned out to be clever forgeries designed to advance the scholars' pet theories in the name of the Master, and the dispute over the authenticity of Confucian texts will probably rage throughout eternity.) |
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| But burning and beheading and strangling and crushing and dismembering take time. They are not efficient methods of getting rid of large numbers of people, and the Duke of Ch'in loathed inefficiency. His solution was a masterstroke. |
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| "I shall build a wall!" he cried. |
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| The intellectuals and religious leaders and anyone else who disagreed with the duke were herded into work gangs and marched off to the desolate north where they died by the millions laboring on a monument which barbarians call the Great Wall of China, and which Chinese call the Longest Cemetery in the World. Still more millions were whipped and starved to death as they constructed the duke's private residence: the Castle of the Labyrinth, which was actually thirty-six castles connected by intricate passageways. The idea being that the duke would have thirty-six imperial bedrooms to choose from, and assassins could never know where he slept. |
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| Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny. There was a vast labyrinth carved by the tide in the cliff beneath the duke's castle, and the duke encouraged tales of a terrible monster that stalked the passageways, devouring everything in its path. The duke even went so far as to order the greatest craftsman in China to fashion him a frightening mask: a great golden mask of a snarling tiger. He wore the mask on all public occasions. The terrified peasants called him "the Tiger of Ch'in", and so effective was that mask that the succeeding Dukes of Ch'in continued to wear it for eight hundred years. (One-Eyed Wong tells me that the barbarian rulers of Crete wore the mask of a bull for the same reasons.) For fourteen years China was one vast scream, but then the duke made a bad mistake. He raised the peasants' taxes to the point where they had no choice but to rebel. He had confiscated their weapons but he had not confiscated their bamboo groves, and when the Duke of Ch'in saw twenty million needle-sharp bamboo spears marching toward him he hastily abandoned the empire and barricaded himself in the Castle of the Labyrinth. There he was invulnerable. It was tacitly agreed that Ch'in was a state within the state, so emperors came and emperors went, but the dukes seemed destined to go on forever. |
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| The first Duke of Ch'in had been attempting to replace all previous philosophies of government with one of his own, and all one needs to know about it is contained in the famous first paragraph of the duke's Book of Legalisms "Punishment produces force. Force produces strength. Strength produces awe. Awe produces virtue. Thus virtue has its origin in punishment." The dukes that succeeded him cared only for money, and their methods of acquiring it were crude but effective - the annual tax trip, for example. Once a year the reigning duke chose a village at random and burned it to the ground. A collection of severed heads was placed upon the ends of pikes. Then the army set forth through the villages of the duke's domain with the severed heads leading the way, and the eagerness with which the peasantry lined up to pay taxes was a source of great gratification to the Duke of Ch'in. |
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| Some three hundred years after the first duke lost his empire the reigning duke had a vision. It is said that he suddenly jumped from his throne during a meeting with his chief ministers, shot a hand into the air, and bellowed the immortal words: |
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| "Corpses cannot pay taxes!" |
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| This divine revelation produced a change in the moneymaking techniques of the Dukes of Ch'in. They still carried severed heads around on pikes, of course, but instead of stealing the money of the wealthy they persuaded the wealthy to give it to them. Like all great ideas it was simplicity itself. The Dukes of Ch'in transformed their gloomy coastal town into the greatest pleasure city in China. Every luxury and vice known to man was available in Ch'in, and fifty percent of every transaction went into the coffers of the dukes. In every place of business there was an iron chest with the duke's tiger emblem stamped upon the lid, which was placed beside the cashbox. Half of the customer's money went into the cashbox and half into the chest. Of course somebody had to collect the duke's share: his position was the Assessor of Ch'in, which had to rank high among the most miserable jobs in the whole world, and that leads me to a very important character in this account. |
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| When I arrived in Ch'in the assessor was a little fellow who was festooned with chains of keys which jangled as he walked, and who had watery pink-rimmed eyes and a long pink nose which twitched in permanent terror. Of course he was called the Key Rabbit. |
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| "Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear!" he whimpered as he trotted into wineshops and gambling dens and brothels. The Key Rabbit searched through his thousands of keys for the right one, opened the iron chest, counted the coins, checked with spies to make sure that no cheating had taken place, checked the records to make sure that the amount was not suspiciously low, pocketed the loot, relocked the chest, and trotted off to the next place of business. It was generally agreed that if the duke's share was off by so much as a penny the Key Rabbit's head would also be off. |
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| "Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear!" whimpered the Key Rabbit as he pattered down the street. He was followed by a platoon of soldiers and two carts: one to carry the sackfuls of loot and the other to carry the massive volumes that listed every law, rule, and regulation of the duke's domain. He needed them. Magistrates could impose sentences, but only the Assessor of Ch'in could impose fines, and it was generally agreed that if the Key Rabbit missed a fine point of law that cost the duke a penny he would shortly be missing his head. |
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| "Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear!" whimpered the Key Rabbit as he trotted at sunset toward the Castle of the Labyrinth. The duke's clerks counted the loot, but more often than not the Key Rabbit would be forced to stay in the treasure chambers all night, recounting what the clerks had counted in order to make sure that none of them had pocketed a penny. And when the duke set forth on his annual tax trip who accompanied him to determine how much was owed by each village? The Assessor of Ch'in, of course, and it was generally agreed that if the Key Rabbit failed to squeeze the last possible grain of rice from the peasantry he would also fail to keep his head. |
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One would think that the Key Rabbit had enough to worry about. But no: in a moment of insanity he had married, and it was the wife of the Key Rabbit who was to steal my heart. And break it, as you shall see.
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