Xi’an Daming Palace

I live very close to Daming Palace, so I often take a stroll there after dinner. Nowadays, people visit Daming Palace with light and happy hearts. It’s now called Daming Palace Park.

The old urban villages have been demolished, and the park has been renovated. The former political and cultural heart of the nation is now a faint echo of the past. By the side of Taiye Pond still stands a bronze statue of an imperial consort; the Danfeng Gate remains imposing. How many have walked from Danfeng Gate to Xuanwu Gate? No one bothers with such a silly, meaningless question.

The first time I went to Daming Palace, what struck me most was an artwork. It was a horse, welded from steel rebar. Beneath a clear blue sky, rusted and streaked, its legs filled with pebbles tossed by children. It looked as if a living horse from the Tang dynasty had traveled through time, leaving only its skeleton. Standing motionless in the park, utterly out of place. Pitiful, it tugged at the heart. The artist meant to convey this exact ache—time slips by, and Daming Palace is no longer the Daming Palace it once was. Scarred and riddled with wounds, its glory has faded.

The fate of Daming Palace is bound tightly to the fate of people, to the fate of this nation. At the very beginning, Daming Palace was called Yong’an Palace. It is said that Li Shimin built it as a place for his father, Li Yuan, to spend his retirement, but before the Yong’an Palace was finished, Li Yuan passed away.

Thus the destiny of Daming Palace was destined to alter. Why was it renamed Daming Palace? Legend has it that it was inspired by a saying of Wei Zheng: “With bronze as a mirror, one can straighten his attire; with history as a mirror, one can recognize the rise and fall of states; with people as mirrors, one can reflect on gains and losses.” So Yong’an Palace was changed to Daming Palace.

Daming Palace is indeed vast. Located on Longshou Plateau, it overlooks Xi’an. It equals four Forbidden Cities, three Versailles, twelve Kremlins, thirteen Louvres, fifteen Buckingham Palaces, and five hundred football fields. Seventeen Tang emperors handled state affairs and received foreign envoys here. It can be said that Daming Palace witnessed the resplendent glory of the great Tang.

The good times did not last; later, Daming Palace was destroyed by war. Enduring wind and rain, it eventually became an urban village in Xi’an—dirty and chaotic. No one in that place would have imagined it was once a royal ground, where the palatial majesty of the Tang dynasty once stood.

“The moon of Qin still shines on the passes of Han; our warriors gone on the long march have never returned.” “Broken halberds buried in the sand, iron not yet rusted away, I polish them to read the bygone dynasties.” “Green hills still stand, but how many sunsets have turned crimson?” “The face is gone, nowhere to be found; the peach blossoms spring breeze still smiles.” I cannot think of better lines than these to describe my feelings at this moment.

That is Daming Palace. Its fate has not yet ended, which is why the urban village was torn down and the palace’s appearance restored. Now, Daming Palace is a free park for everyone to visit. Elderly folks sing there, lovers whisper, children run. It has finally let go of its busyness, let go of its burdens, and embraced relaxation. Once relaxed, it looks youthful.

So the Daming Palace you see now is a youthful Daming Palace. A Daming Palace reborn. But its fate is still not over. Things bound to human beings are never easily finished. Because humans are complicated. Only when it is utterly forgotten—by people and by time—will Daming Palace perhaps truly return to the soil of nature.

Two people share a fate similar to that of Daming Palace. This brings to mind two tombs I’ve known for a long time: the tomb of Meng Tian and the tomb of Fusu. Meng Tian was a great general of the Qin dynasty. His tomb is right on the campus of our Suide No. 1 Middle School, but no one ever pays attention to it.

It was when studying Jia Yi’s “On the Faults of Qin” and reading, “Thus he sent Meng Tian to build the Great Wall in the north and guard the border; he drove the Xiongnu more than seven hundred li away; the barbarians dared not come south to herd their horses; warriors dared not bend their bows in revenge,” that I first felt reverence for this general. Before that, I hadn’t even known such a figure existed.

And yet he rests right beneath our school building. His tomb is huge, like a small hill. Many young couples in love or students doing morning reading like to climb this little hill. I also heard from the elderly that after Meng Tian was forced to commit suicide, his 300,000 soldiers each brought a handful of soil, and that accumulated into this hill. This hill and the tomb of Prince Fusu face each other from afar—more than a thousand years have passed. The men are gone, leaving the living with deep sighs.

In recent years, Suide has also paid more attention to preserving cultural relics. So Meng Tian Square was built beside Suide No. 1 Middle School. Now more people should know about Meng Tian.

A great figure, a great representative place, always seems glorious and beautiful when alive. But when it meets its end, sorrow and tears are hard to hold back.

Rules of the human world—sentiment, loyalty, faith, power, wealth—are like webs. In high school I once told a classmate, “If I were Meng Tian, I would have risen in revolt. I would have made Prince Fusu the emperor.” Now, looking back, I just chuckle. The difficulties of that time were unique, and people then had their own ways of thinking. Yet whether it’s Fusu or Meng Tian, the grief and inner turmoil they felt—even we today can sense it.

Walking from Danfeng Gate to Xuanwu Gate is exhausting. As mentioned, Daming Palace is huge. But those who come to exercise will feel invigorated. I hope that people now strolling through Daming Palace can learn an important life lesson from this park: to live lightly, to live freely, to escape the binds of all those webs.

Compared with the thousand-year rise and fall of Daming Palace, the human lifespan is far too short. And compared with the eons of the universe, Daming Palace is nothing.

The mood while walking in Daming Palace must be one of relaxation. Bring that mood into your work, into your life. We should be like shooting stars—brief, but always shining brightly, streaking brilliantly across the sky! So that those who see us feel joy. Perhaps they might even gaze upon our face and make their most beautiful wishes.

— Excerpted from the work of independent scholar, poet, and writer Ling Dunzhe.