Fact, fiction mingle in tale of China’s first emperor

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This article was published 20/02/2016 (3867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CANADIAN playwright and author Jack Winter fashions an elaborate fantasy detailing the life of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi. Like a set of handcrafted nesting boxes, Tales of the Emperor contains an overall story that is then broken into detailed aspects of the emperor’s life and times, as told by various characters who served him.

Winter has won many awards for his plays and work in film. He has taught literature, modern theatre and creative writing at York and Bristol universities. From 1961 to 1967, he was resident playwright at Toronto Workshop Productions (TWP), where he wrote seven stage plays. In a second tenure with TWP, he wrote another five.

Winter has also published five books of poetry, a literary memoir, 2012’s The Tallis Bag, and a collection of his TWP plays in 2013.

In writing Tales of the Emperor, Winter researched the archival material available relating to the first emperor who lived from 260 to 210 BC, and who is said to have united China in 221 BC and founded the Qin dynasty.

Qin Shi Huangdi was king of the state of Qin. Rather than keeping the title of king, he ruled as the first emperor of the Qin dynasty. The title of emperor (huangdi) would continue to be given to Chinese rulers for the next 2,000 years.

In the book’s first chapter, Winter states that during the first emperor’s rule, a cultural tradition of inventing the past or “writing history” existed. He is then honouring this tradition within his book as he blends the few historic facts passed down through generations with what he imagines were some of the emperor’s accomplishments, personal fears and dreams. While at times it’s clear Winter is drawing parallels between his imagined life of the emperor and modern-day concerns, he skilfully interweaves fact and fiction.

The first emperor is credited with overseeing what can be called one of the world’s wonders — the buried terracotta army of 8,000 warriors with horses and chariots discovered in Shaanxi province in 1974 — each clay image life-size and bearing a unique countenance and expression. This army was created to guard the first emperor is his afterlife.

The musician Kao is one of the emperor’s servants who adds his commentary to the history. Following his involvement in an assassination attempt on the emperor Kao, now deafened, he retreats to Cold Mountain where he writes poetry.

Some poems are reflections on his past life and memories. One of the briefest and most light-hearted is: Our Epitaph Lovers bedward bound so gaily, Do not pass our ashes palely.

Grasp this urn and shake twice daily.

While Qin Shi Huangdi is said to have ordered state walls to be unified to form the Great Wall of China, Winter’s emperor orders a great trench be constructed. This consists of one wall that’s visible to his subjects, and a second wall lying parallel to the first one and made from the soil excavated by those building the first wall. Between the two structures lies a trench. In places, a roof covers the trench, which could lead to the two walls being joined to form one great wall. Winter imagines Peh Yi, a popular musician in the first emperor’s court, writing a love song about how the wall separated the king of the Westland’s daughter and son of the Eastland queen until the two lovers managed to dig holes in the wall only to be crushed as it collapsed upon them.

Later in his life, Qin Shi Huangdi feared death and desperately sought the fabled elixir of life, which would supposedly allow him to live forever.

While the first emperor didn’t achieve immortality, his life story is resurrected through Winter’s imaginative writing. Tales of the Emperor is an admirable achievement, although it’s likely to primarily appeal to those familiar with Winter’s previous work and others with a yen to explore what life might have been like when Qin Shi Huangdi lived over 2,200 years ago.

 

Andrea Geary is a reporter with Canstar Community News.