Everything Under the Sky by Matilde Asensi

However, not every Ming had been exterminated. There was one last legitimate heir to the throne: the young Prince of Gui, who had managed to flee south with what remained of a small army of followers. At the end of 1646, the Prince of Gui was proclaimed emperor in Zhaoqing, province of Canton, and given the name Yongli. The chronicles have very little to say about this last Ming emperor, but we know that from the moment he took the throne, he was constantly on the run from Ch'ing troops until finally, in 1661, he had to ask the king of Burma, Pyé Min, for exile. The king reluctantly agreed and then humiliatingly treated him like a prisoner. One year later, General Wu Sangui's troops set up along the Burmese border, ready to invade if Pyé Min didn't hand over Yongli and his entire family. The Burmese king didn't hesitate, and General Wu Sangui took Yongli to Yunnan, where he was executed along with his entire family during the third moon of the year 1662.”
    “And you, madame,” Paddy Tichborne interrupted, slurring, “will be wondering how the first emperor of China and the last Ming emperor are connected.”
    “Well, yes,” I admitted, “but what I'm really wondering is how all this is connected to the hundred-treasure chest.”
    “You needed to know both stories,” the antiquarian indicated, “in order to comprehend the importance of our discovery. As I said, the old legend of the Prince of Gui, also known as Emperor Yongli, which is told to children from the time they're born, the same one I acted out with my friends for a few copper coins, is a part of Chinese culture. Legend has it that the Ming possessed an ancient document indicating where to find the mausoleum built by the first emperor, Shi Huang Ti, as well as how to get inside without falling into the traps set for tomb raiders. That document, a beautiful jiance, was secretly passed from emperor to emperor as the state's most valuable object.”
    “What's a jiance ?” I asked.
    “A book, madame, a book made of bamboo slats bound with string. Until the first century a.d., here in China we wrote on shells, rocks, bones, bamboo slats, or pieces of silk. Then, around this time, we invented paper made of plant fiber, but jiances and silk were still used for a while longer. In any event, according to the legend of the Prince of Gui, on the night the prince was proclaimed emperor, a mysterious man arrived in Zhaoqing. An imperial messenger had come from Peking to deliver the jiance. The new emperor had to swear to protect it with his life or destroy it before it could fall into the hands of the new reigning dynasty, the Qing.”
    “And why didn't they want it to fall into Qing hands?”
    “Because they're not Chinese, madame. The Qing are Manchus, Tartars. They come from the north, on the other side of the Great Wall. As usurpers of the divine throne, possessing the secret of the First Emperor's tomb and seizing the most important treasures and objects would undoubtedly have legitimized them in the eyes of the people and the nobility, who were not so easily persuaded. In fact—and pay close attention to what I'm about to say, madame—a similar discovery even today would be so crucial, if it were to occur, that it could result in the end of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Republic and the restoration of the imperial system. Do you see what I'm trying to say?”
    I frowned in an attempt to concentrate and grasp the magnitude of what Mr. Jiang was saying, but it was difficult to do as a European ignorant of the history and mentality of the so-called Middle Kingdom. Certainly the China I barely knew, the China of Shanghai with its Western way of life, its love of money and pleasure, didn't seem likely to take up arms against the Republic in order to return to a feudal past under young Emperor Puyi's absolutist government. And yet it was reasonable to assume that Shanghai was the exception rather than the rule with regard to Chinese life, culture, ancestral customs, and