For example, in the middle of all the many tables stood a tall artificial tree, crafted of silver, its multiple limbs and branches and twigs hung with beaten-silver leaves that fluttered gently in the hall’s artificial breeze. Around the tree’s silver-barked trunk were coiled four golden serpents. Their tails were twined among the upper branches and their heads snaked downward to poise, open-mouthed, above four immense porcelain vases. The vases were molded in the shape of fantastic lions with their heads thrown back and their mouths also wide. There were some other artificial creatures in the room; on several tables, including the one at which we guest Polos sat, was a life-sized peacock made of gold, its tail feathers finely articulated and colored by inlaid enamels. Now, the mystery about those objects was this. When the Khan Kubilai called for drink—and only when he called aloud, not when anyone else did—those several animals of precious metals did wondrous things. I will tell what they did, though I scarcely expect to be believed.

“Kumis!” Kubilai would bellow, and one of the golden serpents coiled about the silver tree would suddenly gush from its mouth a flow of pearly liquid into the mouth of the lion vase set below. A servant would bring the vase to the Khakhan’s table and pour the beverage into his jewel-encrusted goblet and the goblets of other guests. They would sip and verify that it was indeed the mare’s-milk kumis, and they would all clap their hands in applause of that marvel, and immediately another marvelous thing would occur. The golden peacock on the table—and every golden peacock in the room—would likewise applaud, raising and beating its golden wings, erecting and fanning out its splendid tail.

“Arkhi!” the Khakhan would shout next, and the second serpent on the tree would disgorge its measure into the second lion vase, and a servant would bring the drink and we all would find it to be that finer and tastier grade of kumis called arkhi. And we would applaud and so would the peacocks. And those animated creatures, the liquor-spouting serpents and the exuberant birds, they worked, mind you, without any human agency. I several times went close to observe them, both while they were performing and while they were at rest, and I could find no wires or strings or levers that might have been manipulated from a distance.

“Mao-tai!” the Khakhan would shout next, and the whole activity would be repeated, from serpent spout to lion vase to peacock fanning. The liquor dispensed by the third serpent, mao-tai, was new to me: a yellowish, slightly syrupy beverage of a tingling flavor. The Mongol diner at my elbow cautioned me to beware of its potency, which he demonstrated. He took a tiny porcelain cup of the liquor and applied to it the flame of one of the table candles. The mao-tai caught fire with a sizzling blue flame and burned like naft oil for a good five minutes before it was consumed. I understand that mao-tai is a Han concoction somehow expressed from common millet, but it is an uncommon beverage—as fiery a fuel to the belly and the brain as it is to any open flame.

“Pu-tao!” was the fourth command the Khakhan shouted to the serpent tree; the word pu-tao means grape wine. But to the consternation of all us guests, nothing happened. The fourth serpent simply hung there, sullenly dry, and we sat gaping, almost fearful, wondering what had gone wrong. The Khakhan, though, sat grinning with secret glee, enjoying the air of suspense, until he demonstrated the last and most magical magic of the apparatus. Not until he shouted “Pu-tao!” and then added a shout of either “hong!” or “bai!” would the fourth serpent begin to gush, and according to Kubilai’s command it would dispense red (hong) or white (bai) wine, at which we guests erupted in a storm of cheers and applause, and the golden peacocks beat their wings and fanned their tails so wildly that they shed flakes of golden feathers.

The banquet guests that night, except for the visitors being welcomed, comprised the highest lords and ministers and courtiers of the Khanate, plus some women whom I took to be their wives. The lords were a mixture of nationalities and complexions: Arabs and Persians as well as Mongols and Han. But of course the women present were the non-Muslim Mongol and Han wives; if the Arabs and Persians had wives, they were not permitted to dine in mixed company. All the men were finely garbed in brocaded silks, some wearing robes, as did the Khakhan and other Mongols and the native Han, some wearing their silks in the form of Persian pai-jamah and tulband, and others wearing their silks as Arab aba and kaffiyah.

But the women were even more gorgeously arrayed. The Han ladies all had powdered their already ivory faces to the whiteness of snow, and wore their blue-black hair in voluminous piles and swirls atop their heads, pinned up there by long jeweled implements they called hair-spoons. The Mongol ladies were of slightly darker complexion, a sort of fawn color, and I was much interested to see that these women, unlike their plains-dwelling nomad sisters, were not coarsened to leather by sun and wind, nor were they bulkily muscular of body. Their coiffures were even more complex than that of the Han women. Their hair, ruddy-black instead of blue-black, was braided onto a framework to make it swoop in a wide crescent at either side of the head, rather like sheep horns, and those crescents were festooned with dangling brilliants. Also, though they wore the same simple, flowing gowns as the Han women, the Mongol ladies added to the shoulders of them some curious high fillets of padded silk that stood up like fins.

At the Khakhan’s table with him sat members of his immediate family. Five or six of his twelve legitimate sons were ranged at his right. On his left sat his first and chief wife, the Khatun Jamui, then his aged mother, the Dowager Khatun Sorghaktani, then his three other wives. (Kubilai had also a considerable and constantly varying consort of concubines, all younger than his wives. The current contingent sat at a separate table. By his concubines, Kubalai had another twenty-five sons, and God knows how many legitimate and bastard daughters besides, from all his women. )

The whole dining area was divided so that the male guests occupied the tables to Kubilai’s right and the females those to his left. Closest to the Khakhan’s table, within easy speaking distance, was the table appointed for us Polos, and with us was seated a Mongol dignitary to converse with us, interpret for us when necessary, explain to us the unfamiliar dishes and drinks served, and so on. He was a fairly young man—exactly ten years older than myself, it turned out—who introduced himself as Chingkim, saying he held the office of Wang of Khanbalik, which was to say the Chief City Officer or Magistrate. That office being equivalent to a European city’s mayor—or podestà, in the Venetian term—I gathered that we Polos were entitled to only a minor functionary as our table companion.

The Khakhan more formally introduced us to others of his lords and ministers seated at nearby tables. I will not attempt to list them all, for they included so many persons of so many different degrees of authority, and so many bore titles which I had never heard in any other court, or ever even heard of—the Master of the Black-Ink Arts (nothing but the Court Poet), the Master of the Mastiffs, Hawks and Chitas (the Khakhan’s Chief Huntsman), the Master of the Boneless Colors (nothing but the Court Artist), the Chief of Secretaries and Scribes, the Archivist of Marvels and Wonders, the Recorder of Things Strange. But I will mention by name some lords who seemed to me curiously out of place in a supposedly Mongol court—for example, Lin-ngan, whom we already knew, was one of the supposedly conquered Han, but held the fairly important post of Court Mathematician.