“Uncle Day, when you get sleepy you shouldn’t struggle.
Auntie Night, when you’re worn out, you ought to go to bed.
You shouldn’t rub your eyes and spite each other.
Neighbors need boundaries, little walls, not too high.
We can make new time if only you’ll agree.
We’ll set fences between you: Dusk and Dawn.
“And as for you, Uncle Winter and Auntie Summer,
you should do the same and not rub up against each other
ruining our rice with mistimed warmth and blasts of cold,
hail and sleet, too much rain or parching heat.
Let’s set new seasons between you, just little ones, low walls.
As Winter tires, we’ll have Spring, and as Summer fades, Fall.
That is my idea. In the night people and animals shall
sleep and during the day we’ll work and play.
In Spring we’ll sow and in the Fall harvest.
Then you can stop this nasty wrangling and enjoy yourselves.
Then we shall all be grateful to you, blessing
each day and each night, every season and every year.”
The Bronze Lantern
After he united the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, Yang Jian took the title Emperor Wen of Sui. His memory is revered for the peace and prosperity of his reign; China had seen nothing like it for three centuries. The Emperor is said to have had only two concubines, the fewest of any of China’s emperors. Wen cherished and respected his wife; he took on the concubines, says one historian, only on her death and chiefly for form’s sake. In any case, Wen’s energies were focused elsewhere. Though he united the country by force and stratagem, his greatest talent was not for war but administration. According to tradition, nothing was beneath the Emperor’s notice. One credulous writer insists that Wen knew exactly how many grains of rice were harvested each year in every province. Aiming to bring order out of conflict, the Emperor issued many rules: he fixed the price of each grade of jade, prescribed the ingredients of ink and how many bristles should go into each writing brush, standardized measures of weight and distance and struck a single currency for North and South. Wen set limits on the power of landlords and organized a professional police force. He personally reviewed the decisions of provincial magistrates and ordered the most corrupt beheaded until only honest ones were left.
To diminish the long-established tensions between North and South, Emperor Wen adopted a policy of homogenization. His encouragement of the spread of Buddhism may have owed less to the doctrine’s appeal to him personally than to its effectiveness in unifying and pacifying his subjects. He built temples in a new style that resembled the traditional architecture of both North and South, yet was identical to neither. For the same reason, he introduced Northern cuisine into the South and vice versa, promoted new fashions, furniture, roof ornaments, shoes, and landscape painting.
The Tang minister Fang Xuan-ling’s memoirs record several conversations with Chen Hsi-wei, the Sui peasant-poet. Fang includes what the poet told him about the origins of The Bronze Lantern. According to Hsi-wei the Emperor’s policy of transmuting discord into harmony is what lies behind the collection of poems. Its author, Ban Juyi, has always been identified as Wen’s chief court poet. As such, his primary job would have been to extol the Emperor and his reign and, indeed, there is plenty of that sort of thing in the Lantern. A good example, is “The First Hour and the Last,” the brief prelude that opens the collection:
The sun leaps up each morning
To drink the still mists.
Each night the pale moon floats
Over the still lakes.
The verses’ political significance is obvious: the sun and moon are Emperor Wen; day and night, mists and lakes, stand for North and South. The reiterated word still suggests the happy unity and serenity of the Emperor’s reign.
The new documents also suggest the real identity of the supposed court poet Ban Juyi and the origin of his book. Here is a reconstruction of the story.
Shortly after his victory over the South, Emperor Wen summoned the two foremost poets of each kingdom, Chu Juyi and Ban Zhouyi. When the two men, youthful Ban and aged Chu, had come into his presence and had made the customary gestures of submission, he politely invited them to get to their feet. He held out his hand to the elder poet, the one from the South, and addressed him first.
“Chu Juyi, it is an honor to meet you. I have long admired your work. The poetry you write in the South is eloquent, smooth, and subtle. You may well boast of its purity. However, to be frank, the verses of you Southerners tend to be rather languorous and the subjects you choose are often frivolous, even, if you will pardon such a harsh word, decadent.”
It may be imagined that Chu was not well pleased to hear this.
To the Northern poet, his friend Ban, the Emperor said, “Our Northern poetry is vigorous, its language plain and earthy. It has weight and seriousness. However, to be candid, it is also rather austere and unrefined; it suffers, alas, from a lack of elegance.”
The two poets, conscious of representing two distinct and hostile traditions, must have had to work hard not to frown.
But the Emperor at once mollified them by quoting their own verses to them from memory.
“Chu Juyi, I am particularly touched by your famous poem about the dead wife’s tortoise-shell comb:
Any darker and I would have missed the one hair left.
As the sun set, I plucked it from the tortoise-shell teeth.
Graceful as the stroke of Po Chu-i’s brush
Your still-warm hair curled up in my palm.”
Chu smiled.
“Ban Zhouyi, you know well how I love both you and your poems, especially those about the terrible wars we have at last brought to an end. I must say none is better than your most recent effort, the one about Kunnei:
Just here one army made camp around General Fung’s pavilion,
The other hard by the Duke of Shizu’s scarlet tents.
Here in the fields of Kunnei, once known for cabbages
and millet,
Just here, the plows now turn up more bones than dirt,
What remains of Fung’s archers and all Shizu’s spearmen,
Of the cowards and brave men.”
Ban was flattered to think that the busy Emperor had made time to read his poem, quite overwhelmed that he had memorized it.
Wen fell silent for a while, as if to do justice to the verses he had recited. Then he went over to an inlaid table and idly picked up a dagger lying on it. As if musing aloud, he said, “Bronze, as you know, is made by mixing copper with tin. If the smith measures correctly, then the result is something brighter and stronger than either.”
After these words, the Emperor dismissed the poets, confident that their sensitive minds would understand him.
Hsi-wei and the Funeral
Chen Hsi-wei had been wandering through the interior for three years, making poems and straw sandals, when he decided it was time that he saw the ocean. Even his dangerous mission to the South had never brought him near the sea. And so he set out for the province of Yangzhou.
For several reasons Hsi-wei made his destination the city of Jiangdu. First, as the capital and largest city in the province, all roads led to it. Second, while the city did not lie on the coast, it was only a few days from it, less if Hsi-wei could persuade a bargeman to give him passage down the Yangtse. These were reasonable, disinterested considerations, but there was another, a more personal reason.
When, as a peasant lad, he returned from his successful mission to the Emperor’s army in the South, Hsi-wei had been offered rewards of money and land by the First Minister himself. These he had turned down, instead asking to be educated. This request astonished everyone, but the Minister the same day had agreed and place
d him under the authority of Shen Kuo. Master Shen resented being told to teach a peasant lad and made no secret of it; however, he was hardly in a position to refuse an order from the First Minister, no matter how absurd or disagreeable. There was, however, no accompanying command to treat the boy with any kindness, respect, or to encourage his efforts. Shen Kuo was proud of being the second son of a provincial governor and of the esteem he enjoyed at court; he had tutored many high officials and more of their sons. In his opinion, a peasant like Hsi-wei could not be educated at all, or if, by dint of great pains and superhuman patience such a boy could be made semi-literate, he would never accomplish anything of note.
“Your head’s as dense as a granite tombstone; it’s no wonder they chose to chisel that message on it,” he often said to Hsi-wei. Another of his favorite sayings was this: “Trying to make you understand poetry is like teaching astrology to a dog.” To improve Hsi-wei’s calligraphy—which, to tell the truth, never rose much above bare legibility—Master Shen delivered one blow of his thick rod for each inelegant stroke of the brush. Every stage of Hsi-wei’s progress was thus accompanied by discouragement, insults, and whacks; yet progress there was, even if Shen Kuo declined to acknowledge it. When Hsi-wei dared to show Shen his first efforts at writing verse, the teacher was perplexed. On the one hand, he was unable to conceal that Hsi-wei’s compositions had shaken his prejudice. On the other hand, he thought the poems poor and explained why in detail. But Hsi-wei went on studying the classics and gradually his writing improved to such a degree that Master Shen, without praising a single line, began to circulate them at court. He did not hide from Hsi-wei that he did this and explained it was not to show off the boy’s talent—according to him, Hsi-wei had no talent—but to advertise his own skill.
In Chingchi Province, Hsi-wei crossed paths with a young under-magistrate on his way from the capital to take up his first post in Kunnei. He had heard the story of the peasant boy who became a vagabond poet. He was delighted to meet Hsi-wei and politely asked if he might see some of his recent poems. As for Hsi-wei, he was eager for news about matters in the capital. It was then that he learned Master Shen had fallen out of favor. According to the under-magistrate, he had struck one of his pupils, a spoiled, lazy, and insolent boy. But this boy happened to be the nephew of the Second Minister and Lord of the Imperial Stables. He had run straight to his aunt to complain, and the aunt had taken it up with the uncle. So, it was arranged that Shen Kuo, who was far from young, would be permitted to retire to his native town. He was said to have a fine villa there where he housed his first wife. This was in Jiangdu. Under the circumstances, Hsi-wei considered that his old master might welcome a visit. He even imagined the old man asking to read some of the poems his pupil had written since they had last seen each other, three years before.
In those days Jiangdu was a peaceful town, without soldiers on the streets or camps in the squares. This was in the time of Wendi, long before his willful son became the wicked Emperor Yang and fled there seeking the protection of the Xiaoguo Army, whose generals promptly had him assassinated. In those days there were beautiful pavilions on the lake shore and fine villas in the hills; business flourished along the riverfront, lined with docks and crammed with barges. But when he arrived Hsi-wei took note that there was no shortage of poverty in Jiangdu. There were many beggars, swarms of famished urchins, and an extraordinary number of stray dogs, packs of them.
Hsi-wei found a tavern by the river that had what the keeper grandly called an inn behind it. This was just a weathered shack divided into three tiny rooms. But the rooms were cheap and Hsi-wei took one of them. He then saw to his own business, putting up his sign by a warehouse, and quickly had six orders from dock men for themselves, plus three more for children’s sandals. Then he set about inquiring after the villa of Shen Kuo. The poor could tell him nothing but a man in a silk gown whom Hsi-wei accosted as he was coming out of a temple shocked him with the news that, just two days before, the esteemed Shen Kuo had passed away. Hsi-wei asked about the villa but the gentleman, being in a hurry, merely pointed in the direction of a hill and rushed off. Feeling deeper grief than he had expected, Hsi-wei climbed the hill. He had to ask directions three more times before he found the villa where he arrived just as the sun was setting. The wake was already in its second day.
The house was pretty, not excessively large but well proportioned, with ornamental trees surrounding the front courtyard where Hsi-wei saw a group of men gambling. These would be family members serving as guardians of the deceased. As they had to hold their vigil through every night of the wake, the tradition of gambling was adopted to keep them alert.
The men, intent on their game, took no notice of Hsi-wei as he strode up to the doorway, across which hung a white cloth. Because Shen Kuo had died at home, the coffin would be placed inside the house. Had he died in Chang’an or elsewhere then the coffin would be set outside the house. A brass gong had been hung to the left of the entrance to signify that the deceased was male. As Hsi-wei drew back the cloth and entered the house, Hsi-wei saw that the statues of the household gods had been wrapped in red paper and there were no mirrors to be seen. Clearly, the funeral rites were being carried out punctiliously, which would have pleased Shen Kuo.
The vestibule led straight into a large room where the three-humped coffin had been set on a stand a foot above the floor. An old woman in a white robe—the first wife—sat by the corpse’s right shoulder. At the left sat a man of about Hsi-wei’s age dressed in black with a sackcloth hood hanging from his neck. His expression made a contrast with his mother’s. The widow looked stricken by her loss, but the son appeared bored and fed up, as if he would much prefer to be outside with the gamblers. Shen Kuo had never mentioned a son.
The room was anything but quiet. A mechanical wailing rose from a gaggle of women gathered behind the widow while children clad in blue tumbled around the room, squealing and shouting at one another. Perhaps yesterday their mothers had tried to control them, but now nobody bothered. At the foot of the coffin lay three bowls of food, dried out now, two fading wreaths, and a painting of the deceased. This portrait was painted on rough wood and poor in quality. Hsi-wei had the impression it had been hurriedly executed after the death.
Seeing that the wake was being conducted so strictly according to custom, Hsi-wei did what late-comers were supposed to. He got down on his knees and crawled up to the coffin then peered in. There lay his master in his formal court robe over which a light blue cloth had been spread. His face was covered by a yellow one. Hsi-wei imagined it as stern and, notwithstanding the propriety of the rites and the cost of the extended wake, disapproving.
An altar had been set up against the far wall. On it, sticks of incense smoked beside a white candle. Between these sat a large porcelain platter full of ashes, the remains of joss paper and prayer money. At the end of the altar sat the heavily carved donation box. Hsi-wei got to his feet, fished for some coins in his leather pouch, then made his way carefully around the boisterous children to the altar.
The son glanced once at Hsi-wei’s rough clothing and turned away contemptuously. The widow examined Hsi-wei more quizzically, then, seeing him deposit coins in the donation box, nodded with surprising energy. She motioned him to her. “You’re a stranger. You knew Shen Kuo in Chang’an?”
“Yes, in the capital. I was his pupil.”
Her face brightened. “What a tribute to Shen Kuo that you’ve come so far and so quickly to pay him respect. And how fitting. I can see that in your haste to arrive you’ve lacked the time to change out of your traveling clothes.” This was intended as a reproach, though couched as an excuse. Hsi-wei thought it best to allow her to believe what she wanted. “It was two weeks ago,” she said with a sigh. Then, frowning, she nodded toward the wailing women. “My daughter-in-law over there confessed to me that she had dreamt of snow.”
“Of snow?
The widow dropped her eyes. “But sur
ely you know that to dream of teeth or snow foretells a death in the family?”
Not only the splendor but the duration of funeral rites depends on the wealth of the deceased. Shen Kuo’s widow proudly informed Hsi-wei that her husband, the second son of a provincial governor, did not die a poor man.
“This morning a courier arrived, sent by the Second Minister himself.” She turned to indicate the donation box on the altar behind her and told Hsi-wei exactly how much money was in it, not counting his own few coins.
“Please stay in the city if you can. The burial will be in three days.”
Hsi-wei realized that of all those boys Shen Kuo had taught, now men of position and accomplishment, he alone had shown up and that was more or less by accident. “Of course,” he said.
“And perhaps,” the widow added in a whisper that failed to soften her words, “you’ll take the time to dress more decorously.”
After it grew dark a monk came into the house. Behind him were three men, one holding a gong, another a flute, the third a trumpet. The son handed money to each after which the monk went to the altar and began to chant sutras, accompanied by the musicians. Hsi-wei recalled this ritual from his childhood when he was taken to the wake of Mr. Wu, the wealthiest man in his village. In that case, there had been only a one-day wake and only a gong. After death, his father had explained to him, a soul faces many obstacles, even torture for the sins committed in life. The wealthy help their deceased by paying for the chanting of holy texts which can smooth the soul’s passage into heaven. Everything is easier for those with money, even being dead.
Hsi-wei spent the following days making sandals, for which he received three more orders. On the day of the funeral he cleaned himself up as best he could.
Hsi-wei Tales Page 13