錦城鐵瓮 Brocade Walls and Iron Urn
有詩為證。詩曰：有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
There are verses to prove it. They run:
The storyteller's formula for handing over to a poem — there is a verse as evidence, and here it is. It is always a mild fiction: the poem proves nothing and exists to be admired. Two of these tags in a row, as here, is the novel clearing its throat before a set piece.
A brocade city, an iron urn, firm for ten thousand years; facing the water, leaning on the hills, every colour fresh.
Both opening images are borrowed compliments. 錦城, Brocade City, is a standing epithet for Chengdu in Sichuan; 鐵瓮, the Iron Urn, is one for Zhenjiang on the Yangtze, whose fortifications were reckoned unbreakable. The poet is saying this Indian town is as fine as one famous Chinese city and as strong as another. 臨水依山, facing water and leaning on hills, is the ideal siting for a settlement in Chinese geomancy — good defence and good fortune in four characters.
A hundred goods come through by lake, and the boats put in to market; a thousand houses sell wine, their shop-curtains hanging.
A hundred against a thousand, goods against households — the numbers are conventional and mean plenty. 沽酒 is to sell wine by measure, and 垂帘, the hanging curtain, is the wine-shop's sign: you knew a place sold drink because a cloth hung at the door. Together the two halves make the classic picture of a river town, where prosperity arrives by water.
Towers and terraces on every side, the hearth smoke spreading wide; in lane after lane, morning after morning, the merchants make their din.
The line is built on two doubled openings that answer each other, 處處 everywhere and 朝朝 every morning — one covering space and the other time. 朝 is zhāo in both characters here, morning, and not the cháo that means a court or dynasty, which is how the same character is read at its nine other appearances in this chapter. 客賈 are travelling traders, and what they contribute to the scene is noise.
No less lovely a prospect than Chang'an; even the crowing of cocks and barking of dogs is just the same.
The poem ends by naming the standard outright. 長 is cháng in 長安, Chang'an, the Tang capital the pilgrims set out from — the character is read the other way when it means an elder, which is how it appears everywhere else in this chapter. 雞鳴犬吠, cocks crowing and dogs barking, comes from an ancient description of the contented settled life, and it is the perfect last touch: the town is like home not in its palaces but in its farmyard noise.
The poem is a compliment paid in the only currency the narrator has, which is Chinese comparisons. Chengdu, Zhenjiang, Chang'an: three real cities stand in for one imaginary Indian one.
Read as description it is nearly useless — there is not a single detail here that could only be Yuhua. Read as feeling it is exact. This is what it is like to arrive somewhere foreign and find it unexpectedly familiar, and to reach for the places you know to say so.
The last line is the one that does the work. Anyone can call a city splendid. Saying that the dogs bark the same way is a claim about ordinary life, and it is the point the whole chapter has been circling since the crowd cracked its joke in the street.