Mandarin Gate (39 page)

The excited cries of the sheep began to stir the passengers who had been sleeping in the bays of the other trucks. The rear flaps were flung open and bright faces appeared. Cries of joy and prayers of thanks rippled through the dropka as they began unloading packs of supplies. One of the first to jump down was Chenmo, her face beaming. She gave Shan a shy embrace. “Uncle Lokesh says I will be the clan’s nun now. I told him I could never get a robe and he said it is what is in your heart that makes you a nun, not what you wear.” She touched the abbess’s gau, now hanging from her neck, and turned to help a young boy out of the truck.

As Shan helped empty the first truck, the professor and Sansan appeared, hoisting packs on their backs.

“I’m sorry,” Shan said, “but there is no time for you to help them find a camp. We have to be back in the valley by daybreak.”

Yuan’s smile was as wide as the landscape. “In the spring come and find us,” he said. “There is a festival for the lambing.”

Shan stared at his friend in disbelief. “Think this through, Yuan. You have no idea of the hardship.”

“Someone needs to record all their stories. The world needs to know. The shepherds who have been forced to towns need to know. There used to be an honored profession among the nomads, that of the traveling letter writer, who would write messages to share among the clans. Maybe that will be my new job.”

“Do you have any idea how harsh the winter will be?”

“Jigten’s mother has promised to show us how to make thick felt blankets. She has been steadily recovering since learning she was returning home. She says once she is back in her homelands she can make proper medicines for Sansan and her.”

Sansan grabbed Shan’s hand, squeezing it tightly, then darted away to help another child out of the truck.

“Please,” Shan said to Yuan. “You are too old.”

The professor gazed after his daughter. “Meng came by our house. She told us the arrest order could not be avoided for much longer. If they took Sansan it would be at least five years, more likely ten. At my age I would never see her again. This way we are together, living a new adventure, making a difference for these people. Meng made it possible, my friend,” Yuan added.

Shan looked away, into the night sky, fighting another wave of emotion. He had not seen Meng again. When he had gone to the police post the constables had reported she had abruptly taken a new assignment on the Mongolian border. She had left a report with them, that stated that she and Shan had found that Major Liang and Norbu were engaged in smuggling. Once Norbu’s disappearance was discovered it would be enough to protect Shan from Liang if the major tried to find him.

Yuan reached into the truck one last time and hoisted out a familiar bundle. Shan helped him balance the bound ancestral tablets onto his shoulder. “This one has done more traveling than any of us,” he said with a laugh.

“The old bandit is ready for a new adventure,” Shan said.

“All of us old bandits,” Yuan replied with a shine in his eyes.

At last came the sheep, leaping to the ground the moment Lung Tso and Genghis lowered the tailgate, some running among the shepherds as if by instinct, others darting into the night, toward the rich grass below.

From somewhere in the distance the deep voice of an owl echoed, sounding like a prayer horn.

Shan did not know if it was the flight of their animals or the growing spell of the vast moonlit land before them but he saw a new wildness enter the eyes of the dropka, a feral skittishness. As they began filing down the path Lokesh stood at the side, touching each one, blessing each with a quick, joyful prayer. Chenmo led several in song as they descended the slope.

The professor and Rapeche paused, waiting for the last of the party to pass before finally raising their hands to Shan in farewell. Then they turned and became two more of the wary shadows that merged with the night, leaving the world behind.

ALSO BY ELIOT PATTISON

THE INSPECTOR SHAN NOVELS:

The Skull Mantra

Bone Mountain

Beautiful Ghosts

Water Touching Stone

Prayer of the Dragon

The Lord of Death

Bone Rattler

Eye of the Raven

Ashes of the Earth

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The dismantling of Tibet by the Chinese government over the past two generations is one of the darkest chapters of Asia’s long, rich history. While examples of more technically advanced, militarized nations overwhelming smaller countries can be found in nearly every century, the scope of Beijing’s conduct in Tibet, and the scale of the damage inflicted, has few parallels in any age. Tibet didn’t just have a vibrant spiritually centered culture, it had what by any objective criteria must be characterized as an entirely separate civilization, with vital centuries-old frameworks of medicine, literature, education, government, and religion that were unlike any in the world. Our entire planet lost something very important in the battles in which mountain warriors fought with muskets and swords against machine guns, and monks resisted with prayers against aerial bombs and artillery shells.

The suffering of the Tibetan people didn’t end with the loss of a million lives and thousands of temples in the original occupation of their country. I am sometimes asked whether in my Shan novels I exaggerate Beijing’s behavior in Tibet for dramatic effect. The answer is a steadfast no. The reality is dramatic enough. Armies of soldiers and police still crush every hint of political resistance. Armies of bureaucrats are dedicated to dismantling Tibetan society, teaching Tibetan children to chant only Beijing’s mantras, monitoring political usage of the Internet, regulating monks, and seizing the religious artifacts that were once fixtures of Tibetan life. These pages reflect how Beijing has in recent years turned up the heat, sharply swelling the ranks of Tibetans in remote internment camps, in part by arresting the family members of those suspected of engaging in dissidence. Monasteries that were once surrounded by shrines are now ringed by surveillance cameras. Undercover agents trained to pose as monks were introduced years ago, and are routinely employed to detect disloyal behavior in monasteries. The government has also launched a program to relocate over a million nomad shepherds into what it calls “productive” lives far from their ancestral lands.

For those who wish to learn more about the tragedies, and heroism, arising out of the modern Tibetan experience there are several excellent overviews, including John Avedon’s
In Exile from the Land of the Snows
, David Patt’s
Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands
, Tsering Shakya’s
The Dragon in the Land of the Snows
and Mary Craig’s
Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet
, as well as poignant personal chronicles such as
Born in Lhasa
by Namgyal Lhamo Taklha,
The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk
by Palden Gyatso with Tsering Shakya,
In the Presence of My Enemies
by Sumner Carnahan, and
Ama Adhe: The Voice That Remembers
by Adhe Tapontsang and Joy Blakeslee. For those who wish to play a more active role, the International Campaign for Tibet offers many opportunities.

One of the great paradoxes of Beijing’s role in Tibet is that the traditional culture of the Chinese people themselves was built on a family-centered spiritualistic life that was similar in many ways to that of Tibetans. Many Chinese, in fact, remain active practitioners of Buddhism, or follow the spiritual traditions of Confucianism and Taoism. Their government’s treatment of Tibetan and other ethnic groups often weighs heavily on the conscience of individual Chinese.

In a very real sense that conscience was once collectively expressed in the mandarin censors alluded to in
Mandarin Gate
. Attaining the rank of a mandarin official in imperial China required years of study and examination, so rigorous that many did not attain office until well advanced in age. The censors were a highly ethical, elite subset of these mandarins, charged with watching over the government. It was in their nature, and inherent in their office, to confront other officials over injustice and corruption and, like other mandarins who fell out of favor, they were sometimes banished to remote mountainous regions for their efforts.

Internal exiles like the professors of Baiyun therefore do not just have real-life counterparts in the remote western lands of modern China, they share their fate with many others who historically ran afoul of the government. Chinese culture was enriched in the process, since more than a few of these outcasts took up lives as hermit poets. The bittersweet verses of such exiles as Su tung-po, an official banished for criticizing the emperor in 1097, can still wrench the heart and would certainly resonate with Shan and the professors of the Vermilion Society.

Tales of those who have been thus abandoned by history are so plentiful at the roof of the world that they almost seem ingrained in the landscape. While there is much ugliness to be found in the behavior of the government in today’s Tibet, the power of that rugged landscape sometimes seems to eclipse it—and certainly the stark beauty of their land is only enhanced by the enduring strength of the Tibetan people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIOT PATTISON
is the author of
The Skull Mantra
, which won the Edgar Award and was a finalist for the Gold Dagger. Other books in his critically acclaimed Shan series include
Water Touching Stone, Bone Mountain, Beautiful Ghosts, Prayer of the Dragon,
and
Lord of Death
. Pattison is a world traveler and frequent visitor to China, and his numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published around the world.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

MANDARIN GATE.
Copyright © 2012 by Eliot Pattison. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Series design by Jeanette Levy

Jacket photo-illustration by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Jacket photographs: temple and landscape © erwinf./Shutterstock; figures walking ©
iStockphoto.com/hadynyah

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ISBN 978-0-312-65604-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-01208-1 (e-book)

First Edition: November 2012