From the historian's notes

Chang'an, 745

China · East Asia · April 745 · spring

What it was high

probably the largest city on Earth — commonly estimated near a million people inside and around the walls; a planned grid of walled wardslaid out 582-583 as Sui Daxing, renamed Chang'an under the Tang

That year

• Yang Yuhuan invested as Guifei; her relatives begin their rise — the gossip of every wine shop 745 highcourt event, citywide talk
• An Lushan holds great frontier commands in the northeast and is rising in imperial favor — the rebellion that ends this world is ten years out mid-740s highinvisible in the streets; everything in the city assumes permanence

Who held it high

Tang dynasty at its High Tang zenithEmperor Xuanzong, four decades on the throne; the chancellor Li Linfu runs the bureaucracyin this very year Yang Yuhuan is formally invested as Guifei — Precious Consort; the court's center of gravity is visibly shifting toward her family. The era name changed to Tianbao three years ago

Its name high

Chang'an (長安, 'perpetual peace')Written in Chinese characters

The date, there medium

Tianbao 4era name plus year: Tianbao 4, under the sexagenary cycle; months are lunarThe city runs on drums: dusk drums roll from the towers and every ward gate swings shut, dawn bells open them; night curfew (the watch patrols the empty avenues) is real and enforced. Inside wards, life continues by lamplight. Palace clepsydras exist; ordinary people live by drum, bell and temple.

Money medium

bronze cash — kaiyuan tongbaothe coin itself (wen); 1,000 strung together make a guan; silk bolts serve for large paymentsunknown — Tang commodity prices survive in scattered registers but vary wildly by year and region

Weather medium

April: mild days, cool nights, and wind off the loess plateau that yellows the air with fine dust some daysspring dust-bearing winds from the loess lands are a perennial feature — confidence: medium

Things

Objectskaiyuan tongbao bronze cash on strings; bolts of silk used as money for large sums; polished bronze mirrors; camel saddles and bells; Buddhist rosaries; writing brushes and paper — paper is everywhere here, centuries before Europe has itFoodhu flatbreads (the fashionable 'western' bread, sesame-studded); mutton; steamed cakes; grape wine alongside rice ale; apricots and spring greens; lychees are the consort's famous southern luxury, relayed at speed; tea — spreading as a drink but not yet codified; the Classic of Tea is a generation awayClothsilk gauze and brocade; hemp for commoners; Central Asian patterned weaves; women fashionably wear hufu — 'barbarian' riding dressGetting aboutcamels and camel trains; ox carts; horses — women ride astride in public in this generation; curtained carriages for the grandIn the aircamel and dung on the avenues; incense from temple wards; mutton fat and sesame from cookshops; wet spring dust

What she'd hear

The street speaks Middle Chinese — modern Mandarin would not pass; her Chinese must be learned to period or worn as a foreigner's accent. Sogdian is the market lingua franca of the caravan trade; Japanese and Korean student-monks are around. Her cover as a Silla/Japanese visitor makes imperfect Chinese an asset instead of a flaw.

Where she could stand

• West Market — the international market: Sogdian, Persian and other western merchants, wine shops, moneylenders, camel trains unloading
• Big Wild Goose Pagoda at the Ci'en monastery — brick pagoda built 652 to house the scriptures Xuanzang carried back from India
• Qujiang pond — pleasure grounds at the city's southeast corner — spring outings, banquets of successful examination graduates
• a ward gate at dusk — the gates of the residential wards close at the drums; the avenue empties in minutes
• a wine shop with a western hostess — Serindian wine houses with Sogdian serving-women, sung about by the poets of exactly this generation

Researched for this card · confidence high