Yuan Dadu was exceptionally prosperous, the largest city in the East at the time, and the current capital of the Yuan Dynasty.
Designed by Han Chinese from the north, the city was imposing and magnificent, embodying the grandeur of an eastern dynasty.
Yet although northern Han Chinese had designed the city, Dadu's garrison proved quite obstructive toward Jiang Yang and his party.
Clearly, almost all of Jiang Yang's guards were refugees from the Song in the south whom he had taken in. Most of the troops guarding the city had fought Song soldiers before, so their bearing was naturally familiar.
Of their five cartloads of goods, the guards insisted on seizing one.
Just then, a Han Chinese hereditary lord appeared beside the city gate with his guards. Rather than helping Jiang Yang and the others out of their predicament, however, he wore a look of loathing.
His family had originally been Han Chinese hereditary lords whose hearts lay with the southern realm. His grandfather had been willing to submit to the Song Dynasty, only to be betrayed by the Song army, and the entire army accompanying him had been wiped out.
Afterward, who knew what price they had paid before they could retain their hereditary lordship and troops under the Yuan Dynasty.
His sisters had become other men's concubines, and his father had led horses for others. Without bowing low and making themselves small, how could they have reached their position today?
Watching one of Jiang Yang's men argue with the gate guards, his face flushed as he claimed to have come from France in the West, the lord could not help sneering.
"What a well-traveled, knowledgeable southerner. You even know of France in the far west. But this is the Mongols' Great Han, the Yuan emperor's Dadu. Even if