The trails of lost time

Xanadu
A Journey
Hasnat Abdul Hye
Pen & Ink

THIS is a travelogue by a former senior civil servant of Bangladesh. He was the sixth foreigner 'during this century' to travel to Xanadu. The book, published in 1999, is an account of the adventurous journey made in 1998 through moments of agony and ecstasy. Hye travelled to Xhangdu after Dalrymple (1989) and Alexander (1993) made the same journey. Previously, the writer had visited Beijing in 1979.
On 11 March, Hasnat reached Beijing from Kansa in Osaka, Japan. By noon, on the same day, he was on his way by car to Zhang Jiakuo.He arrived there in five hours, and made a night halt. He started for Inner Mongolia the following morning and returned the same day to the hotel Yin Bin. On March 13, he returned to Beijing and then moved to Bangkok, to return home to Bangladesh.
According to Hye, 'Xanadu is a kind of pilgrimage for ardent devotees, at the end of which awaits nothing spectacular but simply the satisfaction, the spiritual bliss of having arrived. Having accomplished this what more do I need?'
The writer compares his few minutes' walk away from Xanadu palace with his earlier information from the American Geographical Review and Caroline Alexander's The Way to Xanadu: The Search for the Sources of Coleridge's Kubla Khan. Approaching Xanadu from the south the writer reached the stone wall of the Imperial City. Now without stones, the entrance to the middle square was 'the two bosomy peaks' and ahead was the brick wall of the inner most square where the Forbidden City and the royal palace were situated. He found 'no identifiable relics of the past', just some pieces of stones, marble and glazed tiles.
Vast steppes and wave-like mountains surround Xanadu. 'These do not make me feel lonely and tense. I have reached Xanadu, the destination of my desire.' The writer was disappointed as he expected to see trees, shrubs and thick undergrowth. Instead, there were barren grassland and uneven earth walls. The place was not only in ruins but also in laid waste more by man than nature.
The book comes in 200 pages with a route map of 600 kilometers, from Beijing to Xanadu. There is a sketch of Xanadu Palace and surrounding garden a reproduction from Geographical Review, 1925. The appendix has a write-up on Kublai Khan and the Mongols with a reproduction of the great Mongol and his vast empire. The twenty coloured photographs consist of images of Nei Mengu, Inner Mongolia and marble plaque on the outer wall of Xanadu placed in 1997.The photograph of the palace ground and the stone bowls, the writers' companions to whom the book is dedicated and a photograph of the shepherd who was his voluntary guide are also included. The references and index support the writing.
The opening chapter of the book is Beijing. Before getting started, the writer hears that '…they were still trying to find out the place.' The name of the place is strange to them; it is not in the official map or travel guide. Xanadu, situated in Inner Mongolia, is the English name for Shangdu or Yenshangtu. For the Chinese, Manjala means Bangladesh. These are humorously described amid the built-up tension of uncertainty.
The thick traffic and Alexander's air route via Hothot to Xanadu is described in Leaving Beijing. The writer travelled through the Badling Express. He recalled the use of the bicycle some twenty years ago; vehicles of all sizes now have replaced that.
Outside Beijing it is more rural and cold. The next direction was To Zhang Jiakuo, big industrial town after Beijing and then on to the coal-producing town of Shensi amid humor on the name Hye (of the writer). Hoaila was another coal-producing town on the way. The designs at the petrol stations were similar to the paintings on the rickshaws in Dhaka.
The night halt was at Yin Bin Hotel, which in Chinese means Welcome. Green tea and Sichuan cuisine are part of hospitality; there is a funny description of the bathroom and the elevator. One of the television channels was showing a programme on the 100th birth anniversary of Chou En Lai. There was no mention of Mao Tse-tung, though in 1998 it was his party that was in power (and still is).
Xanadu as seen by others, mentions nearly all the travellers after Marco Polo, who trod the path to this once magnificent palace by river Shangtu, which is river Alph in the poem. In the early 17th century, Samuel Purcha wrote 'Pilgrimage', a collection of travel tales that Coleridge used as a source for his famous poem and there is a passage based on Marco Polo's 'The Travels', an autobiographical work.
John Livingstone's 'The Road to Xanadu' is a literary criticism of Coleridge's work. The British diplomat Dr Bushel's report maintains the Mongols name for Xanadu was 'Chao Naiman Sume Khotan---- the town of 108 temples.' There is no mention of the poem. However, the raised platform of Kublai Khan is connected to Lamaist Buddhists. There were tense conditions, on the border region where Xanadu lies, between the Chinese and the Russians and travel by foreigners was very much restricted. Dalrymple and his companion travelled by train to Xanadu, situated 100 miles away from Peking.
In Leaving Zhang Jiakuo, the writer humorously notes the ceiling fan had letters that meant Welcome President Jiang Zemin when '...he already comes…he already gone.' Outside was the statue of a young girl with a clock that showed the same fixed time.
As the bicycle in the past, the tracksuit now had become a Chinese symbol. On the endless road his companion commented, 'You have to run faster and faster to be in the same place', to which the impatient repartee was 'ghorar dim.' Throughout the journey, the writer suffered from cold feet and pain from his past injury caused by a nail.
In Towards Nei Mengu, the countryside unfolds, and the cantonment-like towns of Chaipai, with a sanitized look, and Hubei appear close to the border of Inner Mongolia. The whole region is very beautiful, surrounded by mountain ranges and frozen lakes.
Situated in Nei Mengu is Xanadu. This is an autonomous region. After the fall of the Mongols in 1368, there was an attack by the Ming dynasty of China. During the 17th century, the Chinese-Russian rivalry became intense. In 1913, the principle of autonomous Mongolia came into effect.
Approaching Xanadu was in freezing cold, eight hours past Zhang Jiaku. It was in steppes and hills, over bare barren land with no telephone lines. Among the human settlement was a village with earthen walls and thatched roofs, in the surroundings were vegetable patches. The writer's companions had no travel experience and yet there was no sign of annoyance on their part. There is a funny description of the geese and Wang Liandi, one of the writer's companions
Next, they move towards Zhinglanchi and Duolon, which are close to Xanadu. As the car stops, the writer jumps out in a hypnotic state and observe a pair of hillocks that are like the 'feminine physique' and comes close to Coleridge's description of the palace as the 'pleasure dome.' The area of the palace is anywhere between sixteen to five square miles to beyond the eye estimation.
In Xanadu the writer recalled his prior knowledge of the place consisting of three enclosures, big, medium, and small. The Forbidden City and the Palace were situated in the inner most portion. The imperial city was the administrative site with more than 100 Buddhist and Taoist temples and Muslim mosques. A watercourse ran around part of the city. The writer climbed to the top of the inner wall, as the outer limits lead to the raised platform. Kublai Khan's throne is 'now being fenced off by barbed wires.' He was not only a warrior but also a connoisseur of aesthetics. Xanadu was the destination of the writer's desire --- 'the poem that has brought me here.' His companion described him as 'a strong poet'.
Reading the book is like nearly travelling to Xanadu, brushing through history. But then, the reader wonders, why could I not read this narrative in vernacular and enjoy even more the humorous writing?

Farida Shaikh is a critic and member, The Reading Circle .