549Ch’e Che 唓、嗻, the names of two guardian door-gods of the imperial ancestral temple, the eastern one caalled Ch’e, and the western one called Che. Wang Shih-fu 王實甫 (13th or early 14th century AD), West wing (Hsi-hsiang chi 西廂記), has the words: “So sorrowful I’m suddenly in a panic, I’m so thin I’m Ch’e and Che.” In that, they’re used as a metaphor for being “as skinny/emaciated as demons”. Presumably the two door-gods were depicted as very emaciated demons.
550chung-shih 中使, Middle/Imperial Commissioner, a term for a man specifically serving in the proximity of or sent as an envoy of the emperor. Shen Yȕeh 沈約 (441 - 513), Sung history (Sung-shu 宋書), says: “All the tun-pi’s arrived, and the Middle Commissioners gazed at each other.”
551chung-kuan 中官:
i) the title of a ministry, Middle Ministry, along with Spring Ministry (Ch’un-kuan 春官), Summer Ministry (Hsia-kuan 夏官), Autumn Ministry (Ch’iu-kuan 秋官) and Winter Ministry (Tung-kuan 冬官). A note by Fu 服 to Tso Ch’iu-ming 左丘明 (6th - 5th century BC) (dub. attr.), Tso’s commentary (Tso-chuan 左傳), “Chao 17 nien”, says: “The Middle Ministry [Minister] was [the head of] the Huang-yȕn (Huang-yȕn-shih 黃雲氏).”
ii) Middle Mandarin, a term like Capital Mandarin (Ching-kuan 京官). Ou-yang Hsȕan 歐陽玄 (1273 - 1357) and others, Sung history (Sung-shih 宋史), “Li-chih”, says: “All the stars of Middle Mandarin and Outer Mandarin (Wai-kuan 外官) amount to 687.”
iii) a term for a eunuch mandarin. Fan Yeh 范曄 (398 - 445) Latter Han history (Hou Han shu 後漢書), “Chu Mu chuan”, says: “Present-day Middle Mandarins are intimately close to the emperor, and by stealth seized state power.”
iv) Mid-year Office, one of the five seasonal Offices of calendrical experts in the T’ang dynasty Astrological Service (T’ai-shih-chü 太史局).
552ti-ch’ao 邸抄, Appanage-capital-residence Copy.
553Hsi-ching 西京, Western Capital. Emperor High-ancestor (Kao-tsu 高祖, reigned 206 BC - 195 BC), founder of the Han dynasty, made Ch’ang-an 長安 his capital, while Emperor Shining-warrior (Kuang-wu-ti 光武帝, reigned 25 - 57) made Lo-yang 洛陽his capital, so people called Lo-yang the Eastern Capital, also calling it Tung-tu 東都, likewise meaning Eastern Capital or Eastern Metropolis, Ch’ang-an being referred to as the Western Capital (Hsi-ching 西京). The Eastern Han dynasty itself was later also referred to as the Eastern Capital (Tung-ching 東京). Fang Ch’iao 房喬 (579 - 648) and others (eds.), Tsin history (Chin-shu 晉書), “Ju-lin chuan”, says: “When it came to Emperor Warrior (Wu-ti 武帝 [reigned 140 BC - 87 BC]), the Confucian literati were esteemed, and by the time of the Eastern Capital, that vogue hadn’t fallen away.” The Sui and T’ang dynasties also set up their Eastern Capital (Tung-ching), once changing its name to Eastern Capital (Tung-tu), it being located at the same spot as the old Han dynasty one.
554pai-yü 白羽, White Feather, White-feather imperial command-missive.
555Hung Sheng gives a note that this line derives from a poem by Tu Mu杜牧 [803 - 852].
556Pa-chen 八陣, Eight Battle-arrays. Li Ch’ȕan 李筌 (T’ang dynasty), Venus female-force classic (T’ai-pai yin-ching 太白陰經), says: “The Yellow Emperor set up the forms of the Eight Battle-arrays: The H|eaven Battle-array (T’ien-chien 天陣) occupies the position ch’ien 乾, and is the Heaven Gate (T’ien-men 天門), the Earth Battle-array (Ti-chen 地陣) occupies the position k’un 坤,and is the Earth Gate (Ti-men 地門), the Wind Battle-array (Feng-chen 風陣) occupies the position hsȕn 巽, and is the Wind Gate (Feng-men 風門), the Cloud Battle-array occupies the position k’an坎, and is the Cloud Gate (Yȕn-men 雲門), the Flying-dragon (Fei-lung 飛龍) occupies the position chen 震, and is the Flying-dragon Gate (Fei-lung-men 飛龍門), the Warrior-wings (Wu-yi 武翼) occupies the position tui兌,and is the Warrior-wings Gate (Wu-yi-men 武翼門), the Birds-gliding (Niao-hsiang 鳥翔) occupies the position li 離,and is the Birds-gliding Gate (Niao-hsiang-men 鳥翔門), and the Wriggling-coiling (Wan-p’an 蜿盤) occupies the position ken and is the Wriggling(creatures)-coiling Gate (Wan-p’an-men 蜿盤門). Heaven, Earth, Wind and Cloud [Gates] are the Four Main-gates (Ssu Cheng-men 四正門), and Dragon, Tiger, Birds and Wriggling (creatures) [Gates] are the Four Wondrous/Odd Gates (Ssu-ch’i-men 四奇門). The ch’ien, k’un, ken and hsȕn are the Closed Gates (he-men 闔門), and k’an, li, chen and tui are the Open Gates (K’ai-men 開門).”
Collected information on miltary stratagems (Ping-lüeh tsuan-wen 兵略纂聞) says: “The Yellow Emperor created his Eight Battle-arrays Method (Pa-chen-fa 八陣法) according to the Well-field (Ching-t’ien 井田) [system of organising farm-land], and used it to conquer [the supernatural monster] Ch’ih-yu 蚩尤. The only famous generals of ancient times who understood this method was Grand Lord Chiang (Chiang T’ai-kung 姜太公, traditionally fl. ca. 1050 BC), Sun Wu-tzu 孫武子 (fl. ca. 500 BC), Han Hsin 韓信 (?BC - 196 BC), Chu-ke Liang 諸葛亮 (181 - 234) and Li Ching李靖 (571 - 649).
It was Chu-ke Liang who named the Eight Battle-arrays Heaven, Earth, Wind, Cloud, Dragon, Tiger, Bird, and Wriggling-creature. This was the most ancient naming of the Eight Battle-arrays. Such names as Square (Fang 方), Round (Yȕan 圓), Female-animal (P’in 牝), Male-animal (Mu 牡), Floating Chü (Fu-Chü 浮沮), and Wild-goose Rows (Yen-hang 雁行), Some say that the Eight Gates (Pa-men 八門), sometimes called Battle-array Gates (Chen-men 陣門), are to be distinguished as Rest (Hsiu 休), Wound (Shang 傷), Life (Sheng 生), Block (Tu 杜), Sunlight (Ching 景), Death (Ssu 死), Alarm (Ching 驚) and Opening (K’ai 開). These were both later theories.
557Hung Sheng gives a note that this line derives from a poem by Liu Yü-hsi劉禹錫 [772 - 842].
558Hung Sheng gives a note that this line derives from a poem by Ts’ao T’ang 曹唐 [fl. ca. AD 867].
559Hung Sheng gives a note that this line derives from a poem by Tu Fu 杜甫 [712 - 770].
560i.e. his willie and balls weren’t there.
561Wen-ch’ȕan-tien 溫泉殿, Warm-springs Palace-hall, the name of a T’ang dynasty imperial palace-hall located on Mount Li (Li-shan 驪山) in Shensi province.
562i.e. love-making in bed.
563i.e. vagina.
564i.e. genital labia.
565i.e. sexual fluid.
566i.e. mons Venus.
567i.e. wants to have vigorous sex with her.
568i.e. semen.
569P’ing-ch’ih 平池, Smooth/Level Pond. .
570Ju-yi-ch’e 如意車, As-one-wishes Carriage, the name of an imperial carriage. Used for casual roaming as the mood takes one. Or marked by pleasing comfort.
571Hung Sheng here gives a note saying that this line derives from a poem by Tu Fu 杜甫 [712 - 770].
572Hung Sheng here gives a note saying that this line derives from a poem by Wang Chien 王建 [fl. ca. 751 - 835].
573Hung Sheng here gives a note saying that this line derives from a poem by Pai Chü-yi 白居易 [772 - 846].
574Hung Sheng here gives a note saying that this line derives from a poem by Li Pai 李白 [701 - 762].
575This refers to China’s most famous Love myth, about the undying Love between two supernatural beings, the star-gods Herdboy/Oxboy/Ox Beau/Cowboy/Oxherd (Niu-lang 牛郎), also called Ox-leader (Ch’ien-niu 牽牛) and the Weaving-damsel (Chih-nü 織女), summed up by Liang Yin-yȕn (Six Dynasties):
East of the River of Heaven [i.e. the Milky Way] there was a Weaving-damsel who was the daughter of God, the Emperor of Heaven, and who year in year out used to toil away at loom and shuttle, weaving cloud-brocade Robes of Heaven.
Pitying her because she dwelled on her own, the Emperor of Heaven gave his consent for her to marry Oxherd from west of the River of Heaven. But after she was married, she gave up weaving. Angered, the Emperor of Heaven ordered her to return to the east of the River [Milky Way], but allowed them to meet each other once a year.
576Chi-hsi 七夕, Seventh Night, the name of a Chinese festival for
lovers, a sort of Valentine’s Day, taking place on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month of the lunar year. Legend had it that on that evening/night the two star-gods Oxherd (Niu-lang 牛郎) and Weaving-damsel (Chih-nü 織女) meet each other. Weaving-damsel was skilled at weaving (chih-jen 織紝), and in old times women would “welcome” her by threading needles and setting forth melons and fruit (kua-kuo 瓜果), this being called Love-luck-begging (Ch’i-ch’iao 乞巧). Tsung Lin 宗懍 (ca. 500-ca. 563, of the Liang dynasty), Record of the seasons of Ching and Ch’u (Ch’ing Ch’u sui-shih chi 荊楚歲時記), says:
“The Seventh Day of the Seventh Month is the night (yeh 夜) when Oxherd and Weaving-damsel meet each other. On that night (hsi 夕), womenfolk knot coloured silk and thread seven-eyed needles (ch’i-k’ung-chen 七孔針) , the needles sometimes being made of gold, silver, brass or stone, and set out “small-table bamboo-mat wine-parties” (chi-yen 几筵) with wine, dried meat, melons and fruit, in the middle of courtyards, so as to Beg Love-luck, and if ‘happiness spiders’ (hsi-tzu 喜子) [Tetragnatha praedonii, a tiny, slender-bodied, dark-brown, long-legged spider] weave their webs on the melons, it’s regarded as ‘an auspicious sign of response to prayers’ (fu-ying 符應).”
577wu-ch’ȕeh 烏鵲, magpies (or “crows and magpies”). These two lines refer to the Magpie Bridge (Wu-ch’ȕeh-ch’iao 烏鵲橋. On the lunar calendar Seventh Night of the Seventh Month, a sort of Valentine’s Day, myth has it that magpies fill up a space to make a bridge across the Milky Way, called Heaven River (T’ien-he 天河) in Chinese, to form a bridge, to enable the goddess Weaving-damsel (Chih-nü 織女) to cross over it for a once-a-year tryst with her lover the god Oxherd (Niu-lang 牛郎). It’s also called Ch’ȕeh-ch’iao 鵲橋, Magpie Bridge.
Records of customs (Feng-su chi 風俗記) says: “On the Seventh Night, when Weaving-damsel is due to cross the Milky Way, magpies are sent to make a bridge.” He Ching-ming 何景明 (1483 - 1521) has a poem with the lines: “The Magpie Bridge teeters high and the Milky Way twists and turns, As Weaving-damsel and Ox-leader meet each other by night.”
Lo Yȕan 羅願 (1136 - 1184) says: At the beginning of autumn, on the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month, magpies’ heads for no apparent reason all become bald. Legend has it that that, on that day, the River Drum [the Oxherd star-god] and the Weaving-damsel star-goddess have their meeting east of the River of Heaven, the Milky Way, and the magpies are put into service as a bridge for him to cross over by, which is why all their hair comes out.
The River Drum asterism consists of three stars: , α and ϒ, in Aquila. It’s situated north-west of the Chinese Ox Constellation, and south of the Milky Way, facing the Weaving-damsel Constellation, which is north of the main Milky Way star α of Aquila, the second star of the River Drum, called the Great General (Ta Chiang-chȕn 大將軍), being known in the West as Altair, and is a standard first-class star, deep yellow in colour, in Chinese tradition commonly called the Hauled Ox or Ox-hauler Star (Ch’ien-niu hsing 牽牛星). Assembled understandings of Calendrical Studies (Li-hsȕeh hui-t’ung 曆學彙通) says: “The River Drum is the drum of the Army of Heaven (T’ien-chȕn 天軍), and the big star at the centre of it’s called the Grand General, with his two minor generals (Hsiao Chiang-chȕn 小將軍) either side of him, he also being called the Ox-hauler/ Hauled-ox Star. the flags to the right and left being the Flags of the River Drum [He-ku Ch’i-piao 河鼓旗表].” He-ku is also found written as He-ku 何鼓, “Carried-on-the-back/Humped Drum”, the He 何 being interpreted as he 荷, “to carry on the back/shoulders”, “to hump”, and the Hauled Ox Star also said to be called the Bearing/Humping Drum (Tan-ku 擔鼓) in the language of Ching 荊 and Ch’u 楚.
578These few lines are an adaption of lines from Ch’in Kuan’s 秦觀 (1049 - 1101) poem Magpie Bridge immortals (Ch’ȕeh-ch’iao hsien 鵲橋仙).
579i.e. AD 752.
580Shuang-hsing 雙星, Paired Stars:
i) Double Star, binaries, an astronomical term.
ii) a collective term for the stars Oxherd/Ox-hauler (Ch’ien-niu 牽牛) and Weaving-damsel (Chih-nü 織女). Li Chȕn-min’s 李俊民 (fl. ca. AD 1217) poem Seventh Night (Ch’i-his 七夕) has the lines: “By the Milky Way the Paired Stars frequently gather and disperse, one time each year things happen anew.” Ma Tsu-ch’ang馬祖常 (1279 - 1338) in his In imitation of T’ang dynasty palace-lyrics (Ni T’ang kung-tz’u 擬唐宮詞) has the line: “At the Milky Way on the Seventh Night the Paired Stars pass over.” So it was passed down that the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month of the Old Calendar was the Paired-star Festival (Shuang-hsing-chieh 雙星節).
Yi Shih-chen 伊士珍 (Yȕan dynasty) (attr.), Record of God’s Library Cave-paradise (Lang-huan chi 瑯嬛記), says: “Ch’en Plump (Ch’en Feng 陳豐) and Ke Po 葛勃 often exchanged communications by letter, but never found a means of having a love-tryst (huan-hui 歡會). On the Seventh Day of the Seventh Month, Plump sent Po ten green-lotus seeds (ch’ing-lien-tzu 青蓮子), and before Po had finished eating them all, he dropped one of the seeds into a basin of water, and the following morning a twin-peduncled flower (ping-ti-hua 並蒂花) bloomed on the surface of the water, not withering till after several days. After that, their fellow-villagers changed the Paired-stars Festival to the Paired-lotuses Festival (Shuang-lien-chieh 雙蓮節).”
581Hua-sheng Chin-p’en 化生金盆, Life-creating Gold-basin. Hua-sheng 化生:
i) “to be born”, “to be created”, “to be magicked into life”. Anon. (6th century BC or earlier), Changes classic (Yi-ching 易經), “Hsi-tz’u”, says: “When male and female copulate, all the ten thousand creatures are magicked into life/ created.”
ii) “to magick life”, “to create life”. Wang Chien 王建 (fl. ca. 751-835), Palace lyric (Kung-tz’u 宮詞), has the line: “Water laps the Gold Basin see birth magicked.” Records of the year’s seasons (Sui-shi chi-hih 歲時紀事) (date?) says that it was the popular custom on the Seventh Night (Ch’i-hsi 七夕) to model the shapes of babies out of wax, and float them in water as a game, and as something propitiously conducive to women’s giving birth to a child, this being called hua-sheng.
iii) Aupapaduka, metamorphic as with moths from a chrysalis, or with devas, or in hells, or the first beings in a newly evolved world, being one of the Four Giving-births/ Four Forms of Birth/ Catur-yoni (Ssu-sheng 四生) mentioned in Buddhist scriptures.
582On the Seventh Night, people would catch good-luck spiders and put them in litle boxes, and the next morning would see how many webs they’d woven. If there were a lot, that would bode well for the Love-luck Begging.
583Used for fertility prayers. The chin-p’an chung-tou 金盤種豆, planting/growing beans in a gold dish”, refers to the custom of soaking mung beans (lü-tou 菉豆), red beans (hsiao-tou 小豆) and/or wheat (hsiao-mai 小麥) in a dish, and when the sprouts are three or four inches high, twining them round with coloured silk-threads. This was called Planting/ Growing Birth/ Life (chung-sheng 種生).
584Ch’iao-yen 巧筵, Love-luck Feast, name of the party held on the Love-luck-begging (Ch’i-ch’iao 乞巧) festival.
585Hua-sheng-p’en 化生盆, Birth-magicking Basin, see note above.
586Hsin-hsiang 心香, Heart Incense, intended here as a name of a kind of incense, actually a Buddhist term meaning “the incense of the mind”, “innermost religious devotion as felt when burning incense as an offering to Buddha”.
587T’ien-sun 天孫:
i) Heaven’s Granddaughter, the name of a star (goddess), i.e. Weaving-damsel (Chih-nü 織女).
ii) Heaven’s Grandson/ Grandchild, a term for the grandson/grandchild of an emperor. Chiao Yen-shou 焦延壽 (Han dynasty), Changes forest (Yi-lin 易林), says: “Emperor’s sons (ti-tzu 帝子) and Heaven grandsons are located with the sun and moon.”
iii) a title used by Japanese emperors.
iv) the founder-ruler of the Ryukyu (Liu-ch’ou 琉球) state was called Lord Heaven’s Grandson (T’ien-sun-shih 天孫氏).
“As the snow on the hills, flake-white,
As moon mid clouds,
clear lunar-bright”, ...
I hear that you’ve proven untrue,
Thus come to bid you ever adieu.
Today, o’er a gallon of wine, we meet,
And tomorrow morning part
by the stream of the moat.
There on the imperial moat bank,
I’ll trip fretting to and fro,
And the water of the moat
will ever eastward flow.
Comfortless, forlorn, am I:
I’ll wed and then no more need cry.
How lissom luring the bamboo rod sways,
How sleekly gliding
the fish-tail thither hies.
If a man prizes love’s honour and chivalry,
What need has he
to ply coins and money!
Cho Refined-lady was the lover and wife of the famous poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju 司馬相如 (179 BC-117 BC), and their romance together is one of the most celebrated of Chinese culture. In Wu Chȕn 吳均 (469 - 520), Miscellaneous notes of the Western Capital (Hsi-ching tsa-chi 西京雜記), it says, “Hsiang-ju was going to get engaged with a woman of Mao-ling to make her his secondary wife, and Cho Refined-lady composed White-hair lay by way of farewell before she would commit suicide, and so Hsiang-ju dropped his plan.”
Appendices and Endnotes Page 34