In search of an old pretender
James Lees-Milne
THE EMPTY THRONE by Tony Scotland Viking, f16.99, pp. 186 Until recently Tony Scotland was known as one of Radio 3's star announcers and comperes. Foi 20 years his mellifluous voice was familiar to countless listeners who rejoiced in what used to be called the Queen's English. In the interest of our pre- vailing neo-plebeian culture, however, he with others has been made redundant by the BBC overlords. But even the BBC can- not prevent a man from shifting nimbly from the uttered to the spoken word.
The Empty Throne is an account of the author's search for the Pretender to the imperial throne of China. The search was undertaken out of sheer curiosity. The author received no commission and no financial backing. He spoke no Chinese. He travelled to Pekin by the cheapest flight and when he got there lived the hard way.
Readers will be bewildered but must not be deterred by the appalling ambiguity of Chinese names and spelling, notwithstand- ing the author's brave attempts at explana- tion in preliminary notes. For our easy comprehension, therefore, each character is called by his or her popularly given name, translated into literal English. Thus the infamous Empress Dowager is referred to as Beneficent Indulgence, the author's chief intermediary in Pekin as Red Uni- verse, and his interpreter, guide and com- panion throughout as Loud Report.
From the moment of his arrival in the suffocating June heat of 1991 until the accomplishment of his quest a month later, the story is one of Alice in Wonderland dot- tiness where the expected seldom happens and the unexpected brings astonishing rewards. The People's Republic of China is clearly still half Third World feudal and half computer-misunderstanding. Being Marxist, it is of course hopelessly incompe- tent and corrupt.
Everywhere Tony Scotland went his quest was greeted with astonishment, sometimes with downright opposition and hostility on political grounds — Professor Wang, ardent party member on whom much depended, proved to be obstructive and venal — but usually with amused and cautious prevarication. Into his own picaresque adventures Tony Scotland has woven a telling history of the last Emperor P'u-yi's dreadful fate, bandied from pillar to post during and after the second world war by Chinese and Japanese alike, finally to be brain-washed into a humiliating sur- render as a party hack. The author was accompanied by the ineffably absurd and endearing Loud Report, good-natured, amorous, muddle-headed, accident-prone, malaprop, a sort of behind-the-curtain Sancho Panza. Scotland has made him into a character as lively and memorable as Sir George Sitwell's butler, Moat.
Eventually, out of the blue, the author alighted upon P'u-yi's' fifth wife and widow, Li Shu-hsien, known as Aunt Li, in retirement in a Pekin suburb. Intrepid Aunt Li evidently succumbed to the author's charm in that she disclosed much family gossip, entertained him in her single room-cum-kitchenette flat, even encourag- ing him to be photographed holding the last emperor's casket of ashes at the Hall of Revolutionary Heroes on Eight Treasure Mountain. At last, after some haggling with a 'director', he met the Pretender, a distinguished septuagenarian who, having been a road sweeper, now earns a modest wage as a calligrapher. To him Scotland put five permitted questions, and a few more off the cuff.
The Empty Throne will, I predict, become a minor classic. It is written in a rousing style, hilarious and sad by turns, and is absolutely gripping.
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