CHAPTER 1

I WAS born in 1763, at a time of peace and unusual prosperity, in the reign of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung, on the twenty-second day of the eleventh month, in the winter of the year of the sheep.Mine was a full-dress family, one of scholars and gentlepeople, who lived near the gardens of the Ts’ang-lang Pavilion, in the city of Soochow.

The gods, I should say, have always been more than generous to me; but, as the poet Su Tung-p’o wrote:

‘Life is like a spring dream
which ends—and leaves no traces.’

By setting down this story of my life, then, I hope to show my gratitude for Heaven’s many favours.

The first of the three hundred poems in the Classic of Poetry is a wedding song and I too shall begin with memories of my married life, letting other events follow as they may.My only regret is that as a boy I neglected my studies and acquired such a superficial education that now I find it impossible to do more than record the bare facts of my life as I remember them.Examining my work for elegance of style, therefore, would be like expecting brilliance from a tarnished mirror.

I remember that when I was a small boy I could stare into the sun with wide-open eyes.I remember, too, that I could see very clearly such minute autumn hairs as the down on plants and the markings on the tiniest insects.I loved to look closely at anything delicate or small; examining the grains of pieces of wood, the veins and patterns of leaves or the streaks and lines on some insignificant trifle , gave me an almost magical delight.

In summer when the mosquitoes were buzzing like thunder, I used to pretend they were a company of cranes dancing in the air.My imagination transformed them into real birds, into hundreds and thousands of actual cranes; and I would keep my eyes on them, entranced, until I had a crick in my neck from looking upwards so intently.Once I trapped some mosquitoes behind a thin white curtain and carefully blew smoke around them until their humming became the crying of the cranes and I could see the white birds flying through the azure clouds of highest heaven.How happy I was at that moment!

I often used to crouch in the hollow of a ruined wall or squat on my heels beside one of the raised flower terraces, my eyes on a level with the plants and grasses, and with rapt attention stare at some minute object until, in my mind, I had transformed the grass into a dense forest and the insects and ants into wild beasts.With my spirit wandering happily in this world of my imagination I would then see the small stones as towering mountains, the slight depressions in the earth as deep ravines .

One day, as I watched two insects fighting in the grass, a huge and terrible monster burst upon the scene, toppling the mountains and flattening the trees as it came.Suddenly, I saw it swallow the fighting insects with one flick of its enormous tongue! And so far away was my childish spirit at that moment that I failed to recognize the monster as just an ordinary toad.I opened my mouth and screamed with terror.When I finally came to my senses, seeing then that it was nothing but a toad, I picked the animal up, beat it several tens of times and chased it off the terrace.

Years later, in thinking of this incident, I realized that the two insects had not been fighting but that I had been witness to an act of rape.The ancient proverb says:‘Destruction follows fornication .’This would seem to apply to insects also!

Another time, while I was enjoying a secret pleasure in the garden, my egg (we call the male organ an ‘egg’in Soochow slang ), was nipped by an earthworm and soon became so badly swollen that I could not urinate.After a duck had been caught for the purpose, a servant was told to hold the animal so that the saliva from its open mouth would drip onto my swollen egg.When the girl carelessly loosened her grip on its neck for a moment, the duck tried to swallow my egg, and I—scared out of my senses—set up a tremendous hullabaloo .Tongues wagged over all this, you may be sure.

Such were the idle pastimes of my childhood.

When I was still a small boy I became engaged to a daughter of the Yu family of Chin-sha; but, as the little girl died before her eighth birthday, I eventually married one of my cousins, the daughter of my mother’s brother Ch’en Hsin-yu.My wife’s intimate name was Yuen, meaning Fragrant Herb.Her literary name, by which we often called her, was Shu-chen, Precious Virtue.

Even as a baby Yuen had shown signs of unusual intelligence and understanding.Not long after she had learned to talk her parents taught her to recite Po Chu-i’s long narrative poem ‘The Song of the Lute ’.After hearing it once or twice, the child could repeat the whole poem from beginning to end, word for word, without making a single mistake.

Yuen’s father died when she was four years old, leaving his family—wife, son, and daughter—with nothing but the four bare walls of an empty house.But as she grew up the girl became a skilful needlewoman, able to fill three mouths from the work of her ten clever fingers, and to pay the school fees for her brother, K’e-chang, when he commenced to study with a tutor.

One day, in a waste-paper basket, Yuen found a copy of The Song of the Lute .From the tattered pages of the discarded book, with her memory of the words of the poem to guide her, she learned to recognize the characters and in this way taught herself to read.Stealing moments now and then from her embroidery , she not only learned to read poetry but soon began writing verses herself.I have always particularly liked these two lines from one of her early poems:

‘Invaded by autumn, men are lean as shadows；

Fattening on frost, chrysanthemums grow lush .’

When I was thirteen I went with my mother to visit the home of her parents and there I met my cousin Yuen for the first time.Two equally ingenuous children, we were drawn to each other at once.Yuen trusted me enough, from the beginning, to show me the poems she had written.Reading them, I realized that hers was a very unusual talent, but the knowledge made me afraid that, in this world, such a clever girl would be neither happy nor fortunate.

After I returned to my own home, finding that I could not put my cousin out of my mind or my heart, I decided to talk to my mother about her.

‘In case you are thinking of choosing a wife for me soon,’I said, ‘I must tell you that I cannot marry anyone but my cousin Shu-chen.’

Fortunately for me, my mother had also grown fond of her niece.Yuen’s grace and beauty and the gentleness of her manner had so pleased my mother that she now took off her own gold wedding-ring and decided to send it to my cousin as a token of our engagement.This took place in 1775, on the sixteenth day of the seventh month of the year of the sheep.

Some months later, in the winter of that same year, when one of my girl cousins was about to be married, I once again accompanied my mother to her family home for the wedding celebrations.

Now that we were together again, Yuen and I continued to call one another ‘Younger Brother’and ‘Elder Sister Precious’, just as we had done before, although my cousin was only ten months my elder.

The house was gay, on this ceremonious occasion, with the rainbow-hued new robes of the family and the wedding guests.Yuen alone, looked her quiet, simple self, having added nothing to her everyday dress but a pair of bright new shoes.When I had admired the artistry of their embroidery and learned that she had made the shoes herself, I began to understand that Yuen was extremely capable and practical; that reading, writing, and composing poetry were only a few of her many accomplishments.

The simplicity of her robe seemed to accentuate her fragile beauty and the slenderness of her graceful figure, with its sloping shoulders and long, delicate neck.Her eyes looked very dark beneath the curving wings of her brows.Her glance sparkled with intelligence and humour, and I could find no flaw in her loveliness except that her two front teeth sloped forward ever so slightly under short upper lip; an unimportant defect, but one that was regarded as a sign of bad luck.Above all else, a clinging softness in her manner, an indefinable air of tenderness and vulnerability about her, touched my heart deeply, making me wish to stay forever by her side.

I had asked Yuen to let me read the rough drafts of her latest poems, but found, when she gave me the manuscript, that most of the verses were unfinished, being couplets , or at most, stanzas of only three or four lines.

‘Why do you never finish them, Sister Shu?’I asked her.

‘Without a teacher, I have never learned to finish them correctly,’she answered.‘I wish I had an intimate friend who would also be my teacher and help me with my poetry.’

Taking the book of poems from her hand I playfully wrote on the label:

‘Beautiful Lines in a Brocade Cover.’

I could not know, then, that hidden within those covers were the reasons for her early death!

That evening I formally escorted the bridal party to a celebration outside the city walls and before I reached home again the watchman at the water-clock had called the third watch of the night.I was feeling very hungry.Entering the house, I called a servant and asked her to bring me some meat dumplings, but the old woman came back with some dates and dried meats from the wedding feast, sweets which I do not like and will not eat.

Yuen heard my voice.She came out and pulled me by the sleeve, motioning me to follow her to her room, where I was delighted to find that she had hidden some rice-gruel and vegetables for my supper.I was raising the chop-sticks to my mouth, when I heard Yuen’s cousin, Yu-heng, calling:

‘Sister Shu.Sister Shu.Come quickly.’Yuen rose at once and shut the door.

‘I’m very tired,’she called to Yu-heng.‘I was just going to bed.’

Yu-heng pushed hard against the door and managed to squeeze into the room.When he saw me, chop-sticks in air, he grinned at Yuen and laughed maliciously .

‘A little while ago I asked you to bring me some congee ,’he said, ‘but you told me it was all gone.But now I see that you were saving it to serve to your husband!’

Tearful and embarrassed, Yuen looked as if she wanted to run away and hide.A crowd of relatives and servants, attracted by Yu-heng’s noisy laughter, began crowding into the room, joining in the fun at Yuen’s expense.I too became very excited and upset.I called my personal servant and left for my own home at once, in a very bad humour.After this distressing incident, Yuen tried to avoid me whenever I visited her home, but I understood that she was keeping out of my way because she dreaded being ridiculed again on my account. c0ZKqsuCFsL5auuSVGUPdjeZvM5Je/6lI+RhsIZRbyKYaGseReLXPNitCABZy7fS