Adventures of the Mad Monk Ji Gong

by Guo Xiaoting

  From within the pool of white lotus

  A compelling fragrance unceasingly arises.

  The large characters of the inscription had been regilded in recent days. The three men sitting in the courtyard saw a maidservant come out of the north building, and she asked, “Venerable Su and Venerable Zhao, why are you two being so quiet today, there under that big bamboo awning?”

  The three men entered the main building and saw against the north wall a long, handsome table of flowering pear wood. In front of it was a smaller square table of the kind called an “eight immortals table,” because it was just possible for eight people to sit at it, two on each side. At one side of the room was a long settee. On the center of the pear-wood table was a crystal globe with goldfish-like dragons with phoenix tails. On the east side of the table was a fruit dish filled with many kinds of fruit. On the west side was displayed a bronze mirror on a stand. Above the table hung a scroll painting of a mountain, and beside this painting was a portrait of a woman showing only her head and shoulders. At the bottom of the portrait was the artist’s title: A Pitiful Flower. On the edge of the portrait someone had scribbled:

  Each part must be as lovely in such a winsome maid.

  The artist painted only half; then at the waist he stayed.

  How hateful that the colors could not find a clever brush

  That might persuade the artist to add what’s not portrayed.

  At either side of the two pictures, the landscape and the portrait, there was one of a pair of hanging scrolls of calligraphy. On them was written:

  One who has known the heart understands

  Fulfillment is to revel in every intimacy without distaste.

  Zhao Wenhui, who was a connoisseur of calligraphy, looked closely at the scrolls and nodded his head. “Undoubtedly they were written by a dissolute person of great talent,” he thought.

  When the three men had seated themselves, the old brothel keeper asked, “What wind has blown the venerable masters this way today? It has been a long time since you two yuanwai have been here.”

  Su Beishan replied, “We have heard that you have a beautiful person as a new guest. Would you call her out that we may see her?”

  The brothel keeper answered, “In my courtyard, all of the guests are newly arrived. I will call them out for you venerable masters to have a look.” Having said this, she called out in a commanding tone: “See guests!”

  Then they heard outside ripples of agreeable coquettish laughter that sounded refined, yet dissipated. In came four pretty young prostitutes, neatly washed and combed and brilliantly dressed. Each had moth-like eyebrows and lightly powdered and rouged cheeks. They stood before Zhao Wenhui and Su Beishan and asked their names. When they saw that the poor monk was also sitting there, they covered their mouths and giggled.

  Ji Gong said, “Good! Good! Su Beishan, how do these maidens look to you?”

  Su Beishan replied, “Very good.”

  The monk exclaimed, “These women all look good to you! I see a pretty whitened face that is simply carried on a skeleton and made to look beautiful with a little rouge. It is all killing people for profit!” So saying, he picked up a writing brush from the table and wrote on a sheet of white paper.

  A girl within the harlot’s house,

  Night after night with a new husband,

  There in the wilderness that is her chamber,

  Her white wrists pillow to a thousand men,

  Vermilion lips ten thousand men have tasted.

  Her clothes, the delicacy of her behavior

  Simply assist the falseness of her feelings.

  Those tender, sympathetic tears of hers are shed

  Because she’s brought in new,

  Thrown out when old.

  Who knows how soon?

  Zhao Wenhui and Su Beishan looked at what the monk had written and laughed, “Ha, ha!”

  Then they heard the old procuress speaking. “Are the venerable gentlemen prepared to choose whom they will have to serve them?” Pointing to each in turn, she pronounced their names, “Orchid Fragrance, Autumn Cassia, Fragrant Lotus, and Little Plum.”

  Su Beishan said, “None of these is the guest that has newly come into your home. We have heard that she is also a girl from an official family. Our reason for coming to this house of fragrances was to visit her.”

  The procuress knew that these two men were heads of the wealthiest families in Linan, so she immediately spoke out. “The venerable gentleman need not speak of the newly bought person. That finishes it! Speaking of that newly bought one is most difficult for me. To begin with, people who eat the food of this establishment will no longer do so as soon as they begin to grow old. I had a girl called Naughty Flower. When she was told to eat, she would eat a mountain of food. The great man, Wang Shangshen, bought her to be his concubine, and I managed to make a few hundred ounces of silver.

  “And then I bought another. She was from Qinling. Her father had been the magistrate of a department there and her mother had died very early. Because his work was criticized at the capital, they came here and were staying at an inn. Her father, named Yin Mingzhuan, wanted to find a place to live. Unexpectedly a confidence man cheated him out of several thousand ounces of silver. Then, after all that, he was not able to find work. He was very distressed. For three months he was sick at the inn. Father and daughter used up what money he had left and he died in debt. His daughter, Spring Fragrance, was sold into prostitution, and I used 350 ounces of silver to buy her.

  “As soon as Spring Fragrance came here and saw that I kept a house of prostitution, she became very upset and wanted to commit suicide. I talked with her and spent altogether one hundred ounces of silver making inquiries about the circumstances of her sale. Everyone said to go back to the creditors. They said that she had been sold as a concubine and that it made no difference whether or not she had been sold into a house of prostitution. Again Spring Fragrance wanted to die, but I reasoned with her. I explained how difficult it would be for me to lose 350 ounces and what a grievous thing it would be to me if she died.

  “Then she was better and said she would live here with me temporarily, simply accepting my house as a place of refuge. She said that, if I met someone who understood verses or music, he might redeem her. Of course, she would not want to leave me with less money than I had paid for her. She wrote some pieces with her own hand, and a friend of mine suggested that I might show the paper to some refined merchant or member of the gentry.”

  Su Beishan said, “Bring it and show it to us.”

  The procuress brought a paper and unrolled it. When the two yuanwai saw it, they were startled. On it was written:

  To whom may I describe my endless griefs and fears?

  Only one glad to share another’s sorrows.

  My words are not for ordinary ears,

  Each line is written with a thousand tears.

  When Ji Gong and the others had finished looking, they asked: “In which courtyard is the girl called Spring Fragrance? We want to see this person.”

  The procuress answered, “The eastern courtyard is where my girls live. The three venerable gentlemen may come with me.”

  Su Beishan and the others stood up and left the principal building. Going east, they passed through three gates. The courtyard they entered was somewhat neglected in appearance. There were buildings on three sides. The main building had a veranda in front and a small extension at the back. The men lifted up the bamboo blind over the center door in the main building and entered. On the north wall opposite the door they saw a series of four plaques.

  On the first was pictured a girl standing in a gateway. Five or six young men had stopped and were staring at the girl. Above the girl was an inscription:

  Her youthful phoenix curls wound round and round,

  The wedge-shaped comb thrust through them white as silver.

  How many passing men have looked and paused

  And stood and suffered as they watched?

>   On the second plaque was pictured a seated girl combing her hair and a young man who seemed about to leave her. The girl was looking at him as if she were reluctant to let him go. The picture was extremely expressive. The inscription on this second plaque read:

  Love that’s predestined should exist past death.

  So how can two such mutual lovers part?

  The spirit prints its picture on the flesh.

  Each knows what now is in the other’s heart.

  The third plaque showed a girl and a young man in a bedroom. They were holding hands. They were walking toward the bed and seemed about to get into it. On this picture were also four lines of characters.

  Desire now like two orchid branches meeting

  With flowers yet to open to the air.

  The delicate beauty, feeling the wind and rain of love,

  Now calls upon her master in her need.

  On the fourth plaque was a picture of a bed with a canopy of mosquito netting. Within, a young man and a girl could dimly be seen in a loving embrace. Written above again were four lines of characters.

  Joined now and all made right, the male and female phoenix

  Ascend the many-colored clouds of spring.

  She turns her head; the golden hairpin falls

  And moth-like eyebrows hide in clouds of hair.

  Flanking these plaques were two hanging scrolls of calligraphy on which was written:

  The house where a dozen hairpins are hoarded

  Welcomes three thousand guests with pearl-embroidered shoes.

  The two yuanwai observed these unusual decorations as they went in and sat down. The building was divided into three rooms by two paper-covered lattice walls. Through the door into the east section a canopied bed could be seen. The arrangement was the same on the west side. On the east wall of the center room was a scroll depicting a picture of a Chinese junk with the god of wealth and honor aboard. On the scroll was written two sentences taken from the Four Books of Confucian classics.

  If a man has wealth and rank his actions should proclaim them.

  The scholar who is poor and lowly should act as becomes one poor and lowly.

  On either side of this scroll was a scroll of calligraphy with the words:

  Confucius commended the enjoyment of music.

  He remained silent about sensual pleasures.

  The old procuress went inside the east room and was heard to say, “Miss, just now I have brought the venerable Zhao Yuanwai and Su Yuanwai to visit you. They have long wished to meet someone of your outstanding talents.”

  Then the visitors heard a charming but sad voice inside say, “Why, if these two venerable gentlemen have come to inquire about me, please take your slave out to see them.” Then, using her hand to lift the bamboo curtain, the girl came out into the center room.

  CHAPTER 17

  A young woman in distress is escorted to the Bright Purity Nunnery; driven by poverty, Gao Guoqin returns to his native place

  Now I put down my lute and raise my glass.

  The wind is rising, while the waning moon

  Brings on the month of autumn frosts.

  Our song is like that sad song that we sang

  In leaving Zhengdingfu so long ago.

  Though fate may tear the two apart,

  It cannot break the tie that binds their hearts.

  THE three men—Zhao Wenhui, Su Beishan, and Ji Gong, who were sitting in the outer room—looked up as the bamboo curtain was lifted. They saw a gentle and beautiful girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, coming out of the east room. Her hair was neatly combed and dressed into a dragon coil. She was wearing simple white mourning clothes.

  As soon as Su Beishan saw her, he knew that she was a girl from a good family. He asked her to tell the circumstances of her coming to the house of prostitution. With a most melancholy air, the girl explained from beginning to end the details of how she had sold herself in order to obtain money to bury her father, and how afterward she had been treacherously resold to the old procuress.

  The two yuanwai were exceedingly touched by her story. Zhao Yuanwai asked, “Spring Fragrance, are you able to compose poetry?”

  Spring Fragrance replied, “I have had some acquaintance with the classical style and a general understanding of some of it.”

  Zhao Yuanwai said, “If that is so, perhaps you could write a couple of impromptu verses of the kind that influences the reader’s feelings, so that I may read them.” Zhao Yuanwai had suspected after reading the first poem that she might not have written it herself. Therefore he wished to test her knowledge of the classical style.

  Spring Fragrance, however, did not ask whether that was the case. Taking a brush in her hand, she wrote a poetic sketch of a wandering musician who played the piba, or Chinese lute.

  She learned of harlots from the village girls

  And carelessly let virtue slip away.

  She hates the old songs now, that once they used to sing,

  And in her mirror looks for white hairs among the black.

  She thinks of home but knows there’s no one there,

  While tears fall, dampening her rouge.

  In towns and hamlets that she passes through,

  Wherever men are gathered with their wine,

  She lifts her piba, strikes its strings

  And with the music tells her tale.

  When she had finished writing, she handed the verse to Su Yuanwai and Zhao Yuanwai to read. They and Ji Gong praised it. Su Beishan said, “How sad it is that a person with such talent as Spring Fragrance should have fallen into the hands of a procuress!”

  “Grievous indeed, and lamentable!” added Zhao Wenhui.

  Meanwhile, they saw that Spring Fragrance, drawing a deep sigh, had again been writing, using as a reference the classical story of a great beauty who, though of obscure origins, had married an emperor. Spring Fragrance had constructed some verses with quite a different theme, but had included in her version some of the vocabulary of the famous tale.

  The business of spoiling flesh and bones

  Is a precarious and melancholy trade.

  And for the girls, a school where most will fail.

  To one, there comes a high official of the court

  Still in his robes of richest silk.

  Told just today he is disgraced and must resign,

  He comes to see a prostitute in his despair.

  But this she does not know.

  She goes to meet him on her lily feet,

  And he finds solace in her arms.

  The polished surface of her mirror shows

  That fabled beauty of most ancient times.

  She dreams of swaying empires by his side.

  ‘Tis spring. The rains have made

  The world a sea of mud.

  They marry and she learns the truth.

  Position and salary both are gone,

  And destitution lies not far ahead.

  After Ji Gong and the others had taken the poem and read it, all three exclaimed, “Good!”

  Zhao Wenhui said, “Come, come! I also will write a poem!” The old procuress brought him the writing set. Without stopping to think it over, Zhao Wenhui took the brush and wrote with a flourish:

  How in this house of lust and shame

  Can hearts like ours so fill with joy,

  Having now found Spring Fragrance here

  And heard her tale of misery?

  Her purity, her firm resolve

  She kept despite men’s treachery.

  And though she had to wait for us,

  We’ve waited long for such as she.

  Su Beishan was eager to show off his ability to write verses. What he wrote was:

  Ranking with ivory and precious gems,

  Among the luxuries our trade with Indochina brings,

  Are feathers of the brilliant kingfisher

  The magic alchemy of this bird’s small body

  Converts the iridescence of the fishes’ scal
es

  Into a gleaming blue like nothing else.

  The fish are dazzled thus and made unwary

  Of this swift bird’s most cruel and fatal beak.

  Our artisans affix bits of these blue kingfisher feathers

  To delicate gold and silver leaves and flowers.

  Such ornaments may beautify a residence of wealth,

  But chiefly they are used for crownlike hats

  Which lords and ladies sometimes wear

  And others fortunate enough to own them, too.

  Our young wastrels love kingfisher hats

  With shoulder-touching tassels on each side.

  In gowns of soft and brilliant silks

  That hide the various cruelties within their hearts.

  Masters and victims, too, of every vice,

  They come with loud and strident laughter,

  Dazzling the slaves of the procuress,

  Soon to be soiled and faded flowers.

  But our Spring Fragrance now has seen

  And heard in twice these thirty days

  More than enough of all these vicious follies.

  Ji Gong said, “I also have a line or two,” and he recited, “Today, we have indeed opened our hearts to one another.”

  Spring Fragrance, upon hearing this, broke in, “Teacher, you sir, who spend each day improving yourself, what would you have me do?”

  Ji Gong said, “Quickly, quickly open this net in which we are caught, and let this poor monk tie his broken-down sandals so that he can be on his way.” As they all heard this, they laughed together. Then the monk said, “You two yuanwai now have a chance to do a truly virtuous deed.”

  Su Beishan then asked, “Spring Fragrance, do you want to marry someone—what would you really like to do?”

  Spring Fragrance answered, “If it were possible for some good person to save me from this fiery pit, I would like to ask whether I could become a novice in a nunnery. My ancestors would be grateful to you back through three generations.”

  Su Yuanwai asked, “Procuress, what price do you want for this body?”