A nostalgic look back to river and wall and Purple Mountain together with an expression of hope that better times are on the way
The Nanking plane used to leave Shanghai very early in the morning. Planes were small in those days, usually not carrying more than a score of people, and the airfield was simple and almost unorganized - still little more than a farm patch. As the machine rose, we looked down at the brown, crowded waters of the Whangpu and the high buildings along the Bund, and then for an hour we found ourselves passing over the small, neat, irregular fields that paved the way to the capital. The paddies were flooded in summer and dry and hard as iron in winter. But in the spring, when the young rice was sprouting, they looked like emeralds. In April and May, the strong, pure yellow of the blooming rape, combined with the verdant green and the light pink of blossoming fruit trees to create an effect of great brilliance. It was a beautiful, brief passage over the Yangtze delta country; I always loved it. In high summer when the great cumulous clouds of the hot, wet season towered all around us and the plane would fly through them, the journey had a feeling of magic.
Soon there would appear the low foothills which rise beside the Yangtze, partially ringing the ill-starred city of Nanking-a site so ideally suited to be the capital of China but which has so often been overtaken by disaster when accorded that honor. The hills contained a few low pine woods. Here there grew in early spring a wild anemone with a pale green furry stem. The flowers were of a strong purple, a crimson or a dark blue, and sometimes I was able to gather them. Purple Mountain, whose glowing, amethystine slopes were the favorite landmark of the city, passed below us; on the near side was the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, easily recognized by the long flight of white steps.
The road from the airport led to the splendid city wall of Nanking with its deep fortress gates - surely one of the most wonderful walls in the world. Twenty-two miles long, this wall enclosed a vast space for the town, which at that time had many sparsely settled districts. There were new streets - straight and wide - connecting the handsome government buildings and a number of university enclaves, of which Gin Ling was perhaps the most pleasing to the eye. On the campus of this woman's college, the old buildings had been skillfully adapted to modern use and the park was gracefully landscaped. South City, the old part of Nanking, was crowded and interesting to explore, especially the temples and markets. All of this section lay behind the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, those two roman tic focal points. Nanking was not easy to assess; it left a paradoxical impression that is difficult to put in words. The old and the new, the wastelands and the grand monuments, the hopeful and the tragic, were all so close one to another. A history of disappointments and calamities haunted the city; yet the future seemed to hold great promise, if only the Japanese threat could be averted and progress not brought to a halt.
As a modern capital, the city was only beginning to develop its own civic consciousness and style; as events turned out, there was not enough time to bring this growth to fruition. But there were ways in which Nanking citizens showed their preferences and indicated the way they liked to live - so close to yet so different from the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. Simple pleasures and country excursions were still possible and much favored. In summer, one of the principal pleasures was boating on Lotus Lake, which lay just outside the wall on the Purple Mountain side of town.
I recall specifically the summers of 1936 and 1937 (up to August of that latter catastrophic year) when I often visited Lotus Lake in company with friends, who were usually from the University of Nanking. We would assemble by the gate which led to the water, carrying the baskets that contained our supper. Once outside the city, standing under the wall, with the waters at our feet, and a short causeway where the pleasure craft were moored stretching ahead of us, we would begin negotiating for a boat. These were of the flat-bottomed, wide and comfortable type, offering plenty of room to sit either on the broad forward deck or in open cabin. When we had made our choice, the boatmen would push off with their long poles.
The lake itself was almost entirely covered with lotus leaves, the bright flowers showing through the subdued green of their attendant foliage. A channel was always open, however, and the pleasure boats glided along while the happy voyagers drank in the beauty of the peaceful flowers that have been of the source of so many legends and so much inspiration. The moon would rise and voices would float across the water. Sometimes a song could be heard. The air would begin to lose its sultry heat as the cool breezes of the evening stirred the water. This was an enchanted hour. There never seemed to be too many boats out. The lake was neither crowded nor solitary; it seemed always cheerful and calm and our mood was never melancholy. No sad recollections or anxious apprehensions seemed to cling to this part of Nanking. Here was no similarity to the old city of the Mustard Seed Garden.
There had been an occasion before I came to Nanking, I was told, when one of these gay evenings on the flowery water became the scene of an heroic exploit. A party had drawn up close to the wall. Some of them were touching the great gray bricks and looking up 60 feet to the crenelations outlined above, dark against the light sky of the advancing afternoon. Was it possible to climb it? Someone wondered out loud. A bold spirit replied that it shouldn't be too difficult. Others thought the climb beyond the ability of any except the most athletic. Though in his 40s the man who said the wall could be climbed felt impelled to prove his point. He was a professor and a large, heavy man; although somewhat handicapped by poor sight, he was very strong. His wife took alarm, but before she could dissuade him he had cast off his jacket, sprung from the boat and started the climb. His fingers found a grip in the crevices between the bricks; his toes dug into any foothold they could find.
A feeling of excitement and danger held those in the boat below; they all gazed upward, watching his every move. It seemed a slow climb as he carefully felt his way upward over the almost perfectly perpendicular surface of the old wall. His wife trembled with anxiety. The others showed a hushed admiration for the adventurer. About half way up, the climber began to encounter roots and bushes. These were tempting handholds but each had to be tested to see whether it would hold his weight. Had he fallen, the result might not have been tragic. But the water was very shallow. The lotus grew out of the mud which was only a few inches beneath the surface. At last he was grasping for the very top of the wall. With a whoop of triumph, he threw his leg over a crenelation and was safely up. He looked down, laughing and waving, while the boat made its way to the nearest gate where he could descend and join his party.
Even then it was not permitted to walk freely anywhere on the wall. Some places were guarded and some closed out of military necessity. Where the wall was open, it was ideal for promenades. One could look out across the fields to Purple Mountain on one side and over the city to the Yangtze on the other. How is it today? At the least, Purple Mountain still gathers to itself the deep colors of the sky and the wide brown river still winds slowly to the open waters. These will await the coming of better times, as do we all.