Daylight on Iron Mountain Read Free Page B

1046 through to 771 BC , when they were swept away in their turn. Their successors were the Ch’in, who, after 260 years of striving against their neighbouring states, finally unified their great land; their young king, later known as Ch’in Shih Huang-ti, defeating their opponents one by one. The Han in 230 BC , the Chao in 228 BC , the Ch’i in 226 BC , and then the Wei in 225 BC . The Ch’u were defeated in 223 BC and finally the Yen in 222 BC .
    Two hundred and sixty years of warfare. It seemed an implausibly long time. Yet so it had been. The ‘Warring States’ period, had been the last time China had been divided for any great length of time, and from its chaos hadcome the determination to unify the land; one that every successive emperor strove to achieve. There was of course, the
San-kuo
period, the ‘Three Kingdoms’ as it was known, and the
Wu Tai
, the ‘Five Dynasties’, but those had been mere blips forty-four years and fifty-three respectively since which time there had been the Tsin, the Sui, the T’ang, the Sung, the Kin and Southern Sung, the Yüan, the Ming and the Ch’ing, not to mention the
Ko Ming
under Mao and Deng. Dynasties that lasted centuries, and then fell, to be replaced by other dynasties in an endless progression.
    And was that pattern broken?
    Shepherd stopped, looking about him. Before its latest troubles, this had been a thriving city of ten million souls. Why, even back in the second century BC , it was said that more than a million inhabited its mighty walls a figure, Shepherd mused, that was larger than his own country’s population at that time. China had, indeed, a long and great history. He could understand just why, in its dealings with such as the Americans, it looked on them as uncultured children and their land as ‘the land without ghosts’. No wonder the Chinese thought of them as soulless barbarians.
    The thought amused him. He had met many Americans in the last year or two, and knew that the Chinese view of them was mistaken. Jiang Lei knew it too. But Tsao Ch’un persisted in that view. He had no time for them.
    It was Tsao Ch’un’s zealots, his
Pu Shou
or ‘radicals’, who had kept America down these past twenty years, snipping off the green shoots of recovery as they appeared. Reducing the once mighty American empire to a gaggle of contesting kingdoms. Only now those quarrelling nations were uniting. At the very last they had begun to show some fighting spirit. Some
spunk
, as they liked to call it!
    It was that which had delayed him. That which, he knew, he would have to raise with Tsao Ch’un before he went from here. Raise and resolve. Because, if he was right, then America was about to become a problem.
    The bell tower was directly above him now, its massive walls dominating the centre of the ancient city, pushing up into the sky. If any single structure spoke of ancient China’s might, it was this. This and the city’s massive walls.
    It spoke of a power and magnificence unmatched in history. Why, you could run a marathon around those forty-foot-high walls, perhaps stopping at each of the great watchtowers that studded its length. Or at one of the four massive gatehouses set at the four directions of the compass,that soared into the blue, like the bell tower.
    Only now, with spectacular incongruence, a dozen and more high-rise Western hotels broke up that skyline. As if here and here only, the future had collided with the past.
    ‘Amos! Up here!’
    Shepherd looked up, shielding his eyes against the early morning sun. It was Tsao Ch’un, leaning out from the upper balcony of the tower.
    ‘Wait there! I’ll come up!’
    Climbing up, he wondered why Tsao Ch’un had summoned him today. And why here, where modern China Chung Kuo had begun? Was this meant to be some kind of lesson? Or, maybe more to the point, an explanation of events a setting of things in their historical context. Flying in, he had found himself impressed by the great mounds of