The Golden Days

by Cao Xueqin

  While they were all still thinking, Bao-yu who had already had an idea, was so bursting with eagerness that he broke in, without waiting to be invited by his father:

  ‘There is an old poem which has the lines

  Above the flowering apricot

  A hopeful inn-sign hangs.

  For the inscription on the stone we ought to have “The Hopeful Sign”.’

  ‘“The Hopeful Sign”,’ echoed the literary gentlemen admiringly. ‘Very good! The hidden allusion to “Apricot Village” is most ingenious!’

  ‘Oh, as for the name of the village,’ said Bao-yu scornfully, ‘“Apricot Village” is much too obvious! Why not “Sweet-rice Village” from the words of the old poem:

  A cottage by the water stands

  Where sweet the young rice smells?’

  The literary gentlemen clapped their hands delightedly; but their cries of admiration were cut short by an angry shout from Jia Zheng:

  ‘Ignorant young puppy! Just how many “old poets” and “old poems” do you think you know, that you should presume to show off in front of your elders in this impertinent manner? We let you have your little say just now in order to test your intelligence. It was no more than a joke. Do you suppose we are seriously interested in your opinions?’

  They had been moving on meanwhile, and he now led them into the largest of the little thatched buildings, from whose simple interior with its paper windows and plain deal furniture all hint of urban refinement had been banished. Jia Zheng was inwardly pleased. He stared hard at Bao-yu:

  ‘How do you like this place, then?’

  With secret winks and nods the literary gentlemen urged Bao-yu to make a favourable reply, but he wilfully ignored their promptings.

  ‘Not nearly as much as “The Phoenix Dance”.’

  His father snorted disgustedly.

  ‘Ignoramus! You have eyes only for painted halls and gaudy pavilions – the rubbishy trappings of wealth. What can you know of the beauty that lies in quietness and natural simplicity ? This is a consequence of your refusal to study properly.’

  ‘Your rebuke is, of course, justified, Father,’ Bao-yu replied promptly, ‘but then I have never really understood what it was the ancients meant by “natural” .’

  The literary gentlemen, who had observed a vein of mulish-ness in Bao-yu which boded trouble, were surprised by the seeming naivete’ of this reply.

  ‘Why, fancy not knowing what “natural” means – you who have such a good understanding of so much else! “Natural” is that which is of nature, that is to say, that which is produced by nature as opposed to that which is produced by human artifice.’

  ‘There you are, you see!’ said Bao-yu. ‘A farm set down in the middle of a place like this is obviously the product of human artifice. There are no neighbouring villages, no distant prospects of city walls; the mountain at the back doesn’t belong to any system; there is no pagoda rising from some tree-hid monastery in the hills above; there is no bridge below leading to a near-by market town. It sticks up out of nowhere, in total isolation from everything else. It isn’t even a particularly remarkable view – not nearly so “natural” in either form or spirit as those other places we have seen. The bam boos in those other places may have been planted by human hand and the streams diverted out of their natural courses, but there was no appearance of artifice. That’s why, when the ancients use the term “natural” I have my doubts about what they really meant. For example, when they speak of a “natural painting”, I can’t help wondering if they are not referring to precisely that forcible interference with the landscape to which I object: putting hills where they are not meant to be, and that sort of thing. However great the skill with which this is done, the results are never quite…’

  His discourse was cut short by an outburst of rage from Jia Zheng.

  ‘Take that boy out of here!’

  Bao-yu fled.

  ‘Come back!’

  He returned.

  ‘You still have to make a couplet on this place. If it isn’t satisfactory, you will find yourself reciting it to the tune of a slapped face!’

  Bao-yu stood quivering with fright and for some moments was unable to say anything. At last he recited the following couplet:

  ‘Emergent buds swell where the washerwoman soaks her cloth.

  A fresh tang rises where the cress-gatherer fills his pannier.’

  Jia Zheng shook his head:

  ‘Worse and worse.’

  He led them out of the ‘village’ and round the foot of the hill:

  through flowers and foliage,

  by rock and rivulet,

  past rose-crowned pergolas

  and rose-twined trellises,

  through small pavilions

  embowered in peonies,

  where scent of sweet-briers stole,

  or pliant plantains waved –

  until they came to a place where a musical murmur of water issued from a cave in the rock. The cave was half-veiled by a green curtain of creeper, and the water below was starred with bobbing blossoms.

  ‘What a delightful spot!’ the literary gentlemen exclaimed.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen. What are you going to call it?’ said Jia Zheng.

  Inevitably the literary gentlemen thought of Tao Yuan-ming’s fisherman of Wu-ling and his Peach-blossom Stream.

  ‘“The Wu-ling Stream”,’ said one of them. ‘The name is ready-made for this place. No need to look further than that.’

  Jia Zheng laughed:

  ‘The same trouble again, I am afraid. It is the name of a real place. In any case, it is too hackneyed.’

  ‘All right,’ said the others good-humouredly. ‘In that case simply call it “Refuge of the Qins”.’ Their minds still ran on the Peach-blossom Stream and its hidden paradise.

  ‘That’s even more inappropriate!’ said Bao-yu. ‘“Refuge of the Qins” would imply that the people here were fugitives from tyranny. How can we possibly call it that? I suggest “Smartweed Bank and Flowery Harbour”.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Jia Zheng. He looked inside the grotto and asked Cousin Zhen if there were any boats.

  ‘Four punts for lotus-gathering and one for pleasure are on order,’ said Cousin Zhen, ‘but they haven’t finished making them yet.’

  ‘What a pity we cannot go through!’ said Jia Zheng.

  ‘There is a very steep path over the top which would take us there,’ said Cousin Zhen, and proceeded to lead the way.

  The others scrambled up after him, clinging to creepers and leaning on tree-trunks as they went. When, having descended once more, they had regained the stream, it was wide and deep and distorted by many anfractuosities. The fallen blossoms seemed to be even more numerous and the waters on whose surface they floated even more limpid than they had been on the side they had just come from. The weeping willows which lined both banks were here and there diversified with peach and apricot trees whose interlacing branches made little worlds of stillness and serenity beneath them.

  Suddenly, through the green of the willows, they glimpsed the scarlet balustrade of a wooden bridge whose sloping ramps led to a flat central span high above the water. When they had crossed it, they found a choice of paths leading to different parts of the garden. Ahead was an airy building with roofs of tile, whose elegant surrounding wall was of grey-plastered brick pierced by ornamental grilles made of semicircular tiles laid together in openwork patterns. The wall was so constructed that outcrops of rock from the garden’s ‘master mountain’ appeared to run through it in several places into the courtyard inside.

  ‘This building seems rather out of place here,’ said Jia Zheng.

  But as he entered the gate the source of his annoyance disappeared; for a miniature mountain of rock, whose many holes and fissures, worn through it by weathering or the wash of waters, bestowed on it a misleading appearance of fragile delicacy, towered up in front of him and combined with the many smaller rocks of various shapes and sizes which surr
ounded it to efface from their view every vestige of the building they had just been looking at.

  Not a single tree grew in this enclosure, only plants and herbs:

  some aspired as vines,

  some crept humbly on the ground;

  some grew down from the tops of rocks,

  some upwards from their feet;

  some hung from the eaves in waving trails of green,

  some clung to pillars in circling bands of gold;

  some had blood-red berries,

  some had golden flowers.

  And from every flower and every plant and every herb wafted the most exquisite and incomparable fragrances.

  Jia Zheng could not help but admire:

  ‘Charming! But what are they all?’

  ‘Wild-fig’ and ‘wistaria’ was all the literary gentlemen would venture.

  ‘But surely,’ Jia Zheng objected, ‘wild-fig and wistaria do not have this delectable fragrance?’

  ‘They certainly don’t,’ said Bao-yu. ‘There are wild-fig and wistaria among the plants growing here, but the ones with the fragrance are pollia and birthwort and – yes, I think those are orchids of some kind. That one over there is probably actinidia. The red flowers are, of course, rue, the “herb of grace”, and the green ones must be green-flag. A lot of these rare plants are mentioned in U sao and Wen xuan, particularly in the Poetical Descriptions of tie Three Capitals by Zuo Si. For example, in his Description of the Wu Capital he has

  agastache, eulalia,

  and harsh-smelling ginger-bush,

  cord-flower, cable-flower,

  centaury and purplestrife,

  stone-sail and water-pine

  and sweet-scented eglantine…

  And then there are

  amaranth, xanthoxylon,

  anemone, phellopteron…

  They come in the Description of the Shu Capital. Of course, after all these centuries nobody really knows what all those names stand for. They apply them quite arbitrarily to whatever seem to fit the description, and gradually all of them – ‘

  Once more an angry shout from his father cut him short:

  ‘Who asked for your opinion?’

  Bao-yu shrank back and said no more.

  Observing that there were balustraded loggias on either side of the court, Jia Zheng led his party through one of them towards the building at the rear. It was a cool, five-frame gallery with a low, roofed verandah running round it on all sides. The window-lattices were green and the walls freshly painted. It was a building of quite another order of elegance from the ones they had so far visited.

  ‘Anyone who sat sipping tea and playing the qin to himself on this verandah would have no need to burn incense if he wanted sweet smells for his inspiration,’ said Jia Zheng dreamily.’ So unexpectedly beautiful a place calls for a specially beautiful name to adorn it.’

  ‘What could be better than “Dewy Orchids”?’ said the literary gentlemen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘That would do for the name. Now what about the couplet?’

  ‘I have thought of a couplet,’ said one of the gentlemen. ‘Tell me all of you what you think of it:

  A musky perfume of orchids hangs in the sunset courtyard.

  A sweet aroma of galingale floats over the moonlit island.’

  ‘Not bad,’ said the others. ‘But why “sunset courtyard”?’ ‘I was thinking of that line in the old poem,’ said the man:

  ‘The garden’s gillyflowers at sunset weep.

  After all, you have already got “dewy” in the name. I thought the “sunset weeping” would go with it rather well.’

  ‘Feeble! Feeble!’ cried the rest.

  ‘I’ve thought of a couplet, too,’ said one of the others. ‘Let me have your opinion of it:

  Down garden walks a fragrant breeze caresses beds of melilot.

  By courtyard walls a brilliant moon illumines golden orchises.’

  Jia Zheng stroked his beard, and his lips were observed to move as though he was on the point of proposing a couplet of his own. Suddenly, looking up, he caught sight of Bao-yu skulking behind the others, too scared to speak.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he bellowed at the unfortunate boy. ‘You are ready enough with your opinions when they are not wanted. Speak up! – Or are you waiting for a written invitation ?’

  ‘I can see no “musk” or “moonlight” or “islands” in this place,’ said Bao-yu. ‘If we are to make couplets in this follow-my-leader fashion, we could turn out a couple of hundred of them and still have more to come.’

  ‘No one’s twisting your arm,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘You don’t have to use those words if you don’t want to.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Bao-yu, ‘I suggest “The Garden of Spices” for the name; and for the couplet:

  Composing amidst cardamoms, you shall make verses like flowers.

  Slumbering amidst the roses, you shall dream fragrant dreams.’

  ‘We all know where you got that from,’ said Jia Zheng:

  ‘Composing midst the plantains

  Green shall my verses be.

  We can’t give you much credit for an imitation.’

  ‘Not at all!’ said the literary gentlemen. ‘There is nothing wrong with imitation provided it is done well. After all, Li Bo’s poem “On Phoenix Terrace” is entirely based on Cui Hao’s “Yellow Crane Tower”, yet it is a much better poem. On reflection our young friend’s couplet seems more poetical and imaginative than the original.’

  ‘Oh, come now!’ said Jia Zheng. But they could see he was not displeased.

  Leaving the place of many fragrances behind them, they had not advanced much further when they could see ahead of them a building of great magnificence which Jia Zheng at once identified as the main reception hall of the Residence.

  Roof above roof soared,

  Eye up-compelling,

  Of richly-wrought chambers

  And high winding galleries.

  Green rafts of dark pine

  Brushed the eaves’ edges.

  Milky magnolias

  Bordered the buildings.

  Gold-glinting cat-faces,

  Rainbow-hued serpents’ snouts

  Peered out or snarled down

  From cornice and finial.

  ‘It is rather a showy building,’ said Jia Zheng. But the literary gentlemen reassured him:

  ‘Although Her Grace is a person of simple and abstemious tastes, the exalted position she now occupies makes it only right and proper that there should be a certain amount of pomp in her reception. This building is in no way excessive.’

  Still advancing in the same direction, they presently found themselves at the foot of the white marble memorial arch which framed the approach to the hall. The pattern of writhing dragons protectively crouched over its uppermost horizontal was so pierced and fretted by the sculptor’s artistry as to resemble lacework rather than solid stone.

  ‘What inscription do we want on this arch?’ Jia Zheng inquired.

  ‘“Peng-lai’s Fairy Precincts” is the only name that would do it justice,’ said the literary gentlemen.

  Jia Zheng shook his head and said nothing.

  The sight of this building and its arch had inspired a strange and unaccountable stir of emotion in Bao-yu which on reflection he interpreted as a sign that he must have known a building somewhat like this before – though where or when he could not for the life of him remember. He was still racking his brains to recall what it reminded him of, when Jia Zheng ordered him to produce a name and couplet for the arch, and he was quite unable to give his mind to the task of composition. The literary gentlemen, not knowing the nature of his preoccupation, supposed that his father’s incessant bullying had worn him out and that he had finally come to the end of his inspiration. They feared that further bullying might once more bring out the mulish streak in him, thereby provoking an explosion which would be distasteful for everybody. Accordingly they urged Jia Zheng to allow him a day’
s grace in which to produce something suitable. Jia Zheng, who was secretly beginning to be apprehensive about the possible con-quences of Grandmother Jia’s anxiety for her darling grandson, yielded, albeit with a bad grace:

  ‘Jackanapes! So even you have your off moments it seems. Well, I’ll give you a day to do it in. But woe betide you if you can’t produce something tomorrow! And it had better be something good, too, because this is the most important building in the garden.’

  After they had seen over the building and come out again, they stopped for a while on the terrace to look at a general view of the whole garden and attempted to make out the places they had already visited. They were surprised to find that even now they had covered little more than half of the whole area. Just at that moment a servant came up to report that someone had arrived with a message from Yu-cun.

  ‘I can see that we shan’t be able to finish today,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘However, if we go out by the way I said, we should at least be able to get some idea of the general layout.’

  He conducted them to a large bridge above a crystal curtain of rushing water. It was the weir through which the water from the little river which fed all the pools and watercourses of the garden ran into it from outside. Jia Zheng invited them to name it.

  ‘This is the source of the “Drenched Blossoms” stream we looked at earlier on,’ said Bao-yu.’ We should call it “Drenched Blossoms Weir”.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Jia Zheng. ‘You may as well forget about your “Drenched Blossoms”, because we are not going to use that name!’

  Their progress continued past many unexplored features of the garden, viz:

  a summer lodge

  a straw-thatched cot

  a dry-stone wall

  a flowering arch

  a tiny temple nestling beneath a hill

  a nun’s retreat hidden in a little wood

  a straight gallery

  a crooked cave

  a square pavilion

  and a round belvedere.

  But Jia Zheng hurried past every one of them without entering. However, he had now been walking for a very long time without a rest and was beginning to feel somewhat footsore; and so, when the next building appeared through the trees ahead, he proposed that they should go in and sit down, and led his party towards it by the quickest route possible. They had to walk round a stand of double-flowering ornamental peach-trees and through a circular opening in a flower-covered bamboo trellis. This brought them in sight of the building’s whitewashed enclosing wall and the contrasting green of the weeping willows which surrounded it. A roofed gallery ran from each side of the gate round the inner wall of the forecourt, in which a few rocks were scattered. On one side of it some green plantains were growing and on the other a weeping variety of Szechwan crab, whose pendant clusters of double-flowering carmine blossoms hung by stems as delicate as golden wires on the umbrella-shaped canopy of its boughs.