Kublai Khan did not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo said when he described the cities he passed on his journeys, but the emperor of the Tartars did listen to the report of this Venetian youth more than he listened to any other envoy or explorer. Reports are more attentive and interesting.In the life of an emperor, expanding the territory by conquering other people's land not only brings pride, but also feels lonely and relaxed, because the awareness will soon give up the idea of ​​knowing and understanding the new territory.Dusk comes, the air after the rain smells of elephants, the ashes of sandalwood in the stove grow colder, and the mountains and rivers painted on the earth's plane quiver in lazy curves with a dizziness, reporting the rout of the enemy's army When the books were rolled up, and the seals were unsealed, the summation of the unknown monarch willing to pay yearly tribute of gold, silver, leather, and tortoiseshell, a sense of emptiness weighed down.We now find, in despair, that this empire, which we have so far held so precious, is but an endless, shapeless ruin, a gangrene of corruption which has spread beyond our scepter to heal, and the victorious conquest of the enemy , but make us inherit their far-reaching curse.Only Marco Polo's report could have enabled Khubilai Khan to discern in doomed walls and towers a pane finely patterned enough to escape termite infestation.

city ​​and memory one From there, walk east for three days, and you will come to Diomera, a city of sixty silver cupolas, bronze statues of all the gods, leaden streets, a crystal theater, and a The golden rooster that crows every morning on the tower.The traveler is familiar with these beauties because he has seen them in other cities.Yet the city has a special quality that if one arrives here one evening in September, when the days are short, when all the fruit shops are lit with multicolored lights at once, and when a woman calls from a terrace somewhere, With an "Ah!" he envies and envies others: they believe that an identical evening has been spent before, and that they were happy then.

City and Memory II If a person walks on the wasteland for a long time, he naturally expects to reach the city.Finally, he arrived at Isidora, where buildings have spiral staircases studded with spiral seashells, where men make perfect telescopes and violins, where foreigners hesitate in the face of two women. There's always a third female to be found, and cockfights here can turn into bloody brawls for gamblers.It was these things that he had in mind as he looked forward to the city.Isidora, therefore, was the city of his dreams: with one difference.In the dreaming city he was a young man; when he arrived at Isidora he was an old man.At the foot of the square wall, the old men sat silently watching the young men go by; he sat beside them.Desire has become memory.

city ​​and desire one There are two ways to describe Dorothea: you could say that its walls rise from four aluminum towers, that its seven gates have spring-operated drawbridges that span the moat, which feeds into four blue canals, Divide the city vertically and horizontally into nine areas, each with 300 houses and 700 chimneys.Remember that girls of the right age in each district have to marry teenagers from another district, and the parents of the two will exchange two patented commodities - bergamot, sturgeon roe, astrolabe, amethyst - and then you can From these facts, deduce the city's past, present and future to find any answers you want to know.Or, you could say, like the camel rider who led me: "When I was very young, I came here one morning, and there were a lot of people hurrying to the market in the street, and the women had nice teeth and Looking straight into your eyes, three soldiers are blowing trumpets on a high platform, the wheels are turning around, and the colorful flags are fluttering in the wind. Before that, I only knew deserts and caravan roads. In later years, I Looking back on the vast desert and the caravan roads; I know now that this road was but one of many that had led me to Dorothea that morning."

City and Memory Part 3 O magnanimous Kublai Khan, it is in vain for me to describe Caira, the city of its many towering fortresses.I can tell you how many steps there are in the streets that rise like stairs, how curved the arcades are, what kind of zinc sheets are on the roofs; but I already know, and that means telling you nothing.It is not these things that make up the city, but the relationship between its spatial area and historical events: the height of the lamppost, the distance between the swinging feet of the hanged usurper and the ground; the ropes between them, the streamers tied along the road during the queen's wedding parade; how high the fence is, how the cheating man leaps over it at dawn; The gutters go by; how far the firearms of the gunboats that suddenly appeared outside the strait have a range, how the shells blast off the gutters; the cracks in the fishing nets, how the three old men sitting on the pier repaired the nets and exchanged it has been said a hundred times The story of the gunboat and the usurper--some say he was the Queen's bastard son, abandoned on this dock as a baby.

The tide of memory continues to flow, and the city soaks it up like a sponge and swells up.Describing today's Cela should include all of Cela's past: yet the city will not reveal its past, it will only hide it like palm prints, written on street corners, in window panes, on the banisters of stairs, On the antenna of the lightning rod and on the flagpole, each link presents traces of scratching, carving, and graffiti in turn. City and Desire II After a three-day journey south, you come to Anastasia, where many canals from the same source water the city, and over which many kites fly.Now I should list the goods that can be bought here for money: agate, mahua, chrysoprase, and other kinds of chalcedony; Mention should also be made of the women who bathed in the garden pools, and it was said that they sometimes invited strangers to take off their clothes and play with them in the water.But even having said this, the true nature of the city has not yet been revealed, for although the description of Anastasia will arouse your desires one by one and force you to suppress them at the same time, but one morning, when you come to In the heart of Anastasia, all your desires will wake up and surround you.On the whole, you will feel that all desires will not be lost in this city, that you yourself are a part of the city, and because it loves things you don't like, you have to be content to live in this desire.Anastasia, the treacherous city, has this power sometimes called malevolence, sometimes good; if you spend eight hours a day cutting onyx, onyx, and chrysoprase, your labors create Form, desire also creates form for your labor; and when you think you are enjoying Anastasia, you are really only its slave.

city ​​and marker one For days you have walked among trees and stones.Your eyes seldom rest on an object, and only after recognizing it as a sign of another: footprints in the sand indicate the passage of a tiger; swamps announce a vein of water; hibiscus flowers signify winter end ofEverything else is silent and replaceable; trees and stones are just trees and stones. The journey finally reached Tamara.You go deeper down the street, lined with walls full of sticking out signs.What you see is not the object itself but the image of the object that signifies other objects: the tweezers are the dental office; the earcups are the tavern; the halberds are the barracks;Statues and shields painted with lions, dolphins, towers, stars: something—who knows what? —things marked by lions or dolphins or towers or stars.Other signs warn you that certain things are not allowed in certain places (driving into an alley, urinating behind a kiosk, fishing with a fishing rod from a bridge) or that you are permitted to do certain things (watering zebras, hitting wooden balls, burning relatives and friends corpse).The statues of the gods on the temple doors all indicate their respective attributes-horn, hourglass, jellyfish-so that believers can see clearly so as not to misread prayers.Buildings without signboards or images were recognizable by their shape and position in the city: palaces, prisons, mints, schools, brothels.The same is true of the goods displayed on the stalls, "their value is not in the commodity itself, but in something else represented as a sign: an embroidered headband represents elegance, a gilded sedan chair is power, books are learning, anklets are prostitution. Yat. You walk through the streets and they seem to be pages full of words: the city says everything you have to think about, asks you to repeat what it has said, and when you think you are visiting Tamara, you are actually However, it is recording the nouns it uses to dissect its various parts.

Whatever the city really is, whatever hides or hides beneath the thick signboards, you don't see it when you leave Tamara.Outside the city, the land stretched empty towards the horizon; the sky opened, and clouds flew by swiftly.Chance and wind determine the shape of the cloud, and now you start to try to figure out some outlines: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant... City and Memory IV Zola rises beyond six rivers and three mountains, a city no one who has seen will ever forget.But not because it leaves some unusual image in your mind like other memorable cities.The special things about Zola stick in your memory bit by bit: the streets it adjoins, the houses on either side of the streets, the doors and windows on the houses, and so on, but the things themselves aren't particularly beautiful or rare.The secret of Zola lies in how to make your eyes follow the patterns one by one, just like reading a musical score, and no note should be missed or changed position.Those who are familiar with the structure of Zola, if they can’t sleep at night, can imagine themselves walking on the street, identifying the striped canopy of the barber shop followed by the copper bell, followed by the pool with nine fountains, the glass tower of the planetarium, the vending machine. There are melon stalls, stone statues of hermits and lions, Turkish baths, corner coffee shops and paths leading to the bay.This unforgettable city is like a suit of armor, like a beehive, with cells for what each of us wants to remember: names of famous men, virtues, numbers, assortments of plants and minerals, dates of battles , horoscope, speech.Some kind of similarity or contrast can be found between each idea and each turning point, which directly helps us remember.Therefore, the most learned people in the world are those who have memorized Zola.

I was going to visit the city, but I couldn't: to make it easier to remember, Zola was forced to stand still and remain the same forever, and so withered, crumbled, disappeared.The earth has forgotten it. City and Desire Part 3 There are two ways to get to Despina: by boat or by camel.The city shows one face to the land traveler, and another face to the water traveler. On the horizon of a plateau, when a camel rider sees skyscraper spires, radar antennas, fluttering red and white windsocks, and belching chimneys, he thinks of a ship; A city, but still see it as the ship that will take him out of the desert, a ship about to unmoor, its unspreading sails already filled with the wind; or as a steamboat with a throbbing boiler on its keel and he thought of the many ports, the foreign cargo unloaded by cranes at the docks, the sailors of different ships beating each other's heads with bottles in taverns, and he thought of the lighted windows on the ground floors of buildings, each of which had a woman in it. Comb your hair.

In the mist of the coast the sailor made out the outline of the swaying camel, with its embroidered saddle, trimmed with shiny tassels, between its speckled humps; he knew it was a city, but still it Seen as a camel with wineskins, bags of candied fruit, jujube wine and tobacco leaves hanging on his body, he even saw himself leading a long caravan leaving the sea desert to the fresh water under the shade of scattered palm trees. An oasis, toward a palace with thick whitewashed walls and tiled courtyards, where barefoot girls dance with their arms waving, their faces half hidden under veils.

Each city takes its shape from the desert it faces; such is Despina to the camel traveler and sailor, the frontier city between the two deserts. Cities and Signs II Travelers returning from Zierma vividly remember: a blind black man yelling in a crowd, a madman swinging on the cornice of a skyscraper, a woman walking a leopard.In fact, many of the blind men who tapped their canes on the cobblestones of Zilma were Negroes; in every skyscraper someone was going mad: all the madmen spent hours on the cornices; Playful and nurturing.It is a cumbersome city; it keeps repeating itself in order to be remembered. I, too, came back from Zilma: my memory includes many hydrogen balloons flying at window level; many street shops tattooed sailors, and underground trains crowded with sweating fat women.But my companions swear that they have only seen a hydrogen balloon float over the top of the city, only a tattoo artist arranges steel needles and ink and tattoos sailors sitting on stools, and only sees a fat woman Fanning on the train platform.Memory is also a burden: it turns signs over and over in order to affirm the city's existence. one of the skinny cities Isura, the city of a thousand wells, is said to have been built on a deep lake underground.Within the scope of the city, the surrounding residents only need to dig a deep vertical hole to draw water, but they cannot go beyond this area.Its green perimeter meets the dark outline of the subterranean lake; the unseen determines the seen; beneath the rocky chalk sky, the shore-lapping waves lurk, the impetus of every animal in the sun. Thus, Isola has two forms of religion. Some believe that the city god dwells in the depths, in black lakes that feed underground streams.Others believe that the gods are in the buckets hoisted by slings over the head of the well, in the rolling blocks, in the capstans of the waterwheels, in the pump handles, in the pools on stilts on the roofs, in the soft waters of the aqueducts. In the bends, in all the water jets, vertical pipes, pistons and drains, even in the weathercocks on top of the Isola Sky Terrace, it's a city that stretches completely upwards. The envoys and tax officials sent to the frontier provinces to inspect the frontier provinces immediately went to the Magnolia Garden to meet the Khan after returning to Kaiping Mansion, and Kublai Khan listened to their lengthy reports while strolling under the shade of the Magnolia tree.Among the envoys were Persians, Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Turkmens; the emperor was a foreigner to every subject, and the empire had foreign eyes and ears to prove to Kublai its exist.The envoys, in a language the Khan could not understand, reported news they had received in a language they could not understand: the thick, muddy and harsh voices revealed how much tax the empire had collected, the names of officials who were dismissed and executed, and the drought. How long and wide is the canal that leads to the river from time to time.However, when the young Venetian made a report, the communication between him and the emperor belonged to another way, and Marco Polo had just arrived.Knowing nothing of the languages ​​of the Levant, he could express himself only by gestures, movements, exclamations of astonishment, the sound of birds and beasts, or things he took out of his travel bag—ostrich feathers, pea guns, quartz— They are lined up in front of them, like playing chess.Every time after completing missions for Kublai Khan and returning home, this clever foreigner would impromptu pantomime for the emperor to figure out: the description of the first city is that a fish broke free from the long mouth of a cormorant and fell into the net; A naked man ran safely across the fire; the third was a skull with green moldy teeth clamping around a round white pearl.The Khan understood his gestures, but he wasn't sure how they had anything to do with the city; he never knew whether Ma was trying to explain the adventures of his journey, or the exploits of a city's founder, or an astrological prophecy. , or a rebus or anagram of metaphorical names.Yet, obscure or clear in meaning, every object Marco displays has the power of a badge, seen once and never forgotten or confused.In Khan's mind.The empire is reflected by a desert whose grains are unstable and interchangeable data, in which the images of every city and every county that reside in the Venetian crossword puzzle appear. Marco Polo continued to perform missions, and as the seasons changed, he learned the idioms and tribal dialects of the Tatar nation.His reports were the most accurate and detailed available today, answering any question, satisfying every curiosity, the best the Khan could hope for.However, every time he received news of a certain place, the emperor remembered the original gesture made by Marcus or the object used to represent the place.The new material gets new meaning from that badge graphic, and adds new meaning to the badge.Perhaps, Kublai Khan thought, the empire was nothing more than a zodiac chart of mental illusion. "If one day I am familiar with all the emblems," he asked Marco Polo, "will I be able to truly own my empire?" The Venetian replied, "Khan, don't think so. On that day you will be but one badge among many,"