Our journey began with dragon-turtles, each carrying a stone tablet on its back, ancient characters neither Dani nor I could read.

Moving past them, willow trees bowed over the path, and morning sunlight flickered through the branches and across the stone.

To our sides, a procession of animals and soldiers lined up for the dead.

Marble lions, camels, elephants—kneeling and standing in sets of four—followed by officials with blank, patient faces.

Everything faced forward.

Everything waited.

Leaves skittered along the walkway as we moved among them, trying to keep our steps quiet.

Then, at the road that cut the Spirit Way in half, the spell broke.

“Sir, sir, sir. Ming Tomb? Yes?”

Vendors stepped into my path like they had been assigned to me, flashing photocopied maps inches from my face.

Yellow taxis nosed over the curb, ready to swallow us and spit us out at the “right” spot.

“No.”

But Dani got ignored.

They talked to me like I was the only one who could say “yes.”

I put my hand up like a shield, both to protect my wife and to signal my own stubbornness.

Then we stepped past them and onto the road. I took the lead.

~

I pulled my map from my pocket and unfolded it once. It showed the tombs linked by thin lines that looked like hiking trails in a park.

“It’s got to be just around the next bend.”

The road curved, then straightened, then curved again.

Fields gave way to trees.

Signposts appeared every few hundred steps. Each carried the same block of yellow characters.

明十三陵

I couldn’t read them, but I focused on the middle two.

十三

I took the crossing lines for something like “king,” and the three strokes for “three.” I knew there were three tombs open to visitors.

Buses passed in both directions.

I kept walking.

The sun moved higher in the sky, and still we walked.

Dani always stayed ahead. Her body moved with precision: one step, then the next.

After a long stretch, we spotted a woman drifting along the road ahead—the first person we’d seen in hours.

Dani hurried to catch her.

She stopped when we called out, but she didn’t understand enough English to answer. We tried anyway—pointing, naming places, holding out the map.

The woman pointed one way, then stopped. She pointed again, toward another road.

We followed that gesture through shantytowns, farm plots, and thin stretches of forest until the road stopped feeling like a route.

At last, when the sun reached its zenith, we stopped moving.

I sat on the curb, Dani beside me, my feet pointing in the direction I’d been leading us.

Together, we waited.

~

A taxi rolled toward us then—one car moving slowly on an empty stretch, moving in a cloud of dust.

Dani stood and waved both arms.

The driver flashed his headlights and pulled over.

He named a fare that was simple and small—just a number.

“Fourteen yuan to Dingling.”

We paid our due and climbed in.

The car turned around and carried us back through the landscape we’d spent hours misreading. The same signposts—now markers of the region, no longer a destination.

He stopped beside the entrance.

We climbed out and followed the signs inside.

A case held objects we didn’t know how to read.

A headdress sat obscured behind glass.

A label appeared in English.

Underground, the walls were coated, printed, and wallpapered with texture. Fluorescent lights hung overhead.

At the back, three sarcophagi sat like props.

Neon-orange plastic totes were stacked nearby.

A sign called them a treasure hoard.

We stood there looking at them.

Nobody said anything.

~

We crossed beside a wheat field our way back to the bus stop.

brushed my fingers across their golden tops as the last rays of sunlight slipped between the stalks.