and singing platforms;13
In the three markets a cloak of mist,
Faintly enshrouds the green gauze windows
and vermilion gates.14
Pair by pair, the strolling beauties
return to their boudoirs;
One by one, the young scholars close
the blinds in their studies.15
As Han Tao-kuo entered the crossroads of the city he debated with himself whether or not to go, as he had originally intended, straight to the house of Hsi-men Ch’ing. But since he had learned that Hsi-men Ch’ing was already dead, and it was also late in the day, he decided, instead, to go to his own home to spend the night and consult with his wife before going to Hsi-men Ch’ing’s place the next day. Thereupon, he and Wang Han, whipped up their donkeys and proceeded straight to their house on Lion Street. The two of them dismounted their donkeys, dismissed the bearers that had come with them, and called for the door to be opened, after which Wang Han proceeded to carry their luggage and saddlebags inside.
When the maidservant caught sight of them, she reported to Wang Liu-erh, saying, “Father has come home.”
The woman welcomed him inside, where he paid obeisance to the Buddha and the spirit tablets of his ancestors, brushed the dust from the journey off his clothes, and saw to the disposition of the saddlebags and luggage in the parlor. Wang Liu-erh helped him off with his outer garments, and saw him into a seat, while the maid provided him with a serving of tea.
Han Tao-kuo first told her about the events of his journey and then went on to say, “I ran into Brother Yen the Fourth along the way, who told me that the master has died; and just now, as I arrived at the city wall, I also ran into Chang An, the caretaker of the master’s ancestral graveyard, who was propelling a pushcart loaded with wine and rice on his way to the graveyard. He told me that tomorrow is the day for the seventh weekly commemoration of his death. So the report turns out to be true. He seemed well enough when I left, so tell me, how did he happen to die?”
Wang Liu-erh said:
“Weather is characterized by unexpected storms;
Man is subject to unpredictable vicissitudes.
Who can be sure that nothing will happen to him?”
Han Tao-kuo then proceeded to open up the saddlebags, which contained clothing and other valuables that he had purchased while in Chiang-nan, and emptied the two pouches containing the thousand taels of silver. One sealed packet at a time, he dumped them on the surface of the k’ang, and when he opened them, they were seen to contain nothing but glistening “snowflake” silver.
Turning to his wife, he said, “These are the thousand taels of silver that I realized by selling off part of the cargo on the road. In addition to which, there are two packets containing a hundred taels that I made for myself on the side. It’s already late today, but I can deliver them to his place tomorrow morning.”
He then went on to ask his wife, “After I had left, did he continue to patronize you or not?”
“While he was still alive,” she said, “everything was all right. But are you really planning to deliver this silver to his place?”
“That’s just what I want to discuss with you,” Han Tao-kuo responded. “How would it be if we kept some of it for ourselves, and sent the other half to his place?”
“Phooey!” his wife exclaimed. “What a simpleton you are! It’s time to stop being so foolish. Now that he’s already dead, and no one from here is still over there, what further connection do we have with him? Rather than delivering half of the silver to his place and running the risk of their raising a ruckus over the whereabouts of the rest, it would be better to be:
Once ruthless, ruthless to the end,
and use this thousand taels of silver to hire mules for ourselves and abscond to our daughter’s place in the Eastern Capital with it. There’s no reason to worry that our kinsman’s place in the grand preceptor’s mansion will be unable to accommodate us.”
“That would require us to abandon this house of ours,” said Han Tao-kuo. “It won’t be possible to dispose of it on such short notice. How about that?”
“What a feckless creature you are!” retorted his wife. “Why don’t we get your younger brother Han the Second to move in, and leave him with some silver to look after the place? Then, if anyone from Hsi-men Ch’ing’s household comes looking for you, he can tell them that our daughter in the Eastern Capital has sent for the two of us. They would hardly have the:
Seven heads and eight galls,
to come looking for us in the grand preceptor’s mansion. And even if they did, we would have no reason to be afraid of them.”
“But I have always been favorably treated by His Honor,” said Han Tao-kuo. “To exhibit such a change of heart would constitute a violation of Heavenly principle.”
“It has always been the case that:
To abide by Heavenly principle is
to face starvation,”
responded his wife. “Given the way he has taken advantage of me in the past, for us to make use of these few taels of his silver is hardly wrong. I remember how, when his body was lying in state in the coffin chamber, I prepared an offertory table, replete with the meat of the three sacrificial animals, and went with the best of intentions to burn paper money on his behalf. But his principal wife, that undutiful whore, refused to come out and greet me for what seemed like half a day, while she kept to her room insulting me egregiously, and putting me in a predicament in which I could neither leave, on the one hand, nor sit down, on the other. Later his third wife came out and offered to sit down with me, but I refused to stay and came home in my sedan chair. When I think of that situation, it seems only right that I should spend a few taels of his silver.”
This single conversation had the effect of reducing Han Tao-kuo to silence. That evening the two of them settled on their plan. The next day, at the fifth watch, they summoned Han Tao-kuo’s younger brother, Han the Second, arranged with him, thus and so, to look after their house, and provided him with ten or twenty taels of silver to cover his expenses.
This Trickster Han expressed himself to be:
Willing a thousand times if not ten thousand times,
saying, “Elder brother and sister-in-law, go your way. You can leave everything to me.”
Han Tao-kuo decided to take his young servant Wang Han and the two maidservants with them to the Eastern Capital and proceeded to hire two large carts, onto which they loaded their trunks and other valuables. After waiting until daybreak, they went out the West Gate of the city and headed for the Eastern Capital. Truly:
Breaking to pieces the jade cage,
the phoenix flies away;
Smashing apart the metal padlock,
the dragon breaks free.
We will say no more at this point about how Han Tao-kuo and his wife set out for the Eastern Capital, but return to the story of Wu Yüeh-niang.
The next day, she took her son, Hsi-men Hsiao-ko, along with Meng Yü-lou, P’an Chin-lien, Hsi-men Ta-chieh, the wet nurse Ju-i, and her son-in-law Ch’en Ching-chi, and set out for their ancestral graveyard to burn paper money on behalf of Hsi-men Ch’ing. While they were there, the caretaker Chang An told Yüeh-niang how he had run into Han Tao-kuo the day before.
On hearing this, Yüeh-niang remarked, “If he is back, why hasn’t he reported in at our place? No doubt he will do so today.”
After burning the paper money at his grave site, and sitting there for a short time, they headed back home, and she sent Ch’en Ching-chi to Han Tao-kuo’s house to ask him where he had left the boat.
The first time he knocked at the gate there was no response, but the second time, Han the Second came out and said, “My niece in the Eastern Capital has summoned my elder brother and my sister-in-law to come visit her. I don’t know where the boat is located.”
When Ch’en Ching-chi reported this to Yüeh-niang, she was not able to let it go at that and sent Ch’en Ching-chi on a donkey to ride along the side of the canal and
try to locate the boat. Three days later, he arrived at the dock in Lin-ch’ing and found Lai-pao on the boat.
Lai-pao asked, “Hasn’t Han Tao-kuo arrived yet? He set out for home ahead of me with a thousand taels of silver.”
“Who has seen anything of him?” responded Ch’en Ching-chi. “Chang An encountered him on his way into the city, and the next day, after leaving the graveyard, the First Lady sent me to ask after him. It seems that the two of them have absconded to the Eastern Capital, taking their possessions and the silver with them. At present, Father is dead, and the seventh weekly commemoration of his death has been concluded, but the First Lady is unable to let it go at that and sent me out to look for the boat.”
Han Tao-kuo Appropriates the Goods and Flees Far Away
As for Lai-pao, though:
From his mouth no word was uttered,
In his heart he thought to himself,
“That god-damned creature! It turns out he was deceiving me into the bargain. No wonder he sold off a thousand taels worth of goods along the way. He was up to his nefarious schemes. Truly:
Though our faces may be only inches apart,
Our hearts are separated by a thousand li.”
At this juncture, Lai-pao, on learning that Hsi-men Ch’ing was already dead, decided to take the same course as Han Tao-kuo. He therefore proceeded to entice the young scamp Ch’en Ching-chi into drinking with him in the various entertainment places on the dock and enjoying himself with the courtesans there. Meanwhile, he surreptitiously removed eight hundred taels worth of merchandise from the boat and arranged to store it under seal in a local inn.
One day, after the customs duty had been paid and the boat had been allowed to proceed through the barrier to the port on the New Canal, the remainder of the cargo was transhipped and loaded into carts to be transported to Ch’ing-ho district, where it was duly unloaded into an anteroom on the eastern side of the courtyard. At that time, after Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death, the silk floss store on Lion Street had been closed, and Kan Jun and Ts’ui Pen had sold off the remaining merchandise in the silk goods store across the street from the Hsi-men residence, turned the proceeds over to Yüeh-niang, and returned to their homes. The house there was also sold, and only the pawnshop and the pharmaceutical shop at the front of the Hsi-men residence remained open, under the management of Ch’en Ching-chi and Fu Ming.
Lai-pao’s wife Hui-hsiang had a four-year-old son named Seng-pao, and Han Tao-kuo’s wife Wang Liu-erh had a niece who was three years old. The two families had betrothed them to each other by exchanging cuttings from the lapels of their blouses16 without Yüeh-niang knowing anything about it.
When Lai-pao had finished unloading the merchandise, he put the blame for the missing silver entirely on Han Tao-kuo, saying, “He first sold off two thousand taels worth of goods and then set out ahead of me to take them home.”
Yüeh-niang repeatedly urged him to go to the Eastern Capital and question Han Tao-kuo about the whereabouts of the silver, but he adamantly refused, saying, “I can’t do something like that. Who could presume to force his way into the grand preceptor’s mansion, and:
Devote himself to stirring up trouble,
without running the risk of retaliation? You would do better to recite the Buddha’s name, rather than:
Inviting lice onto your own head to scratch.”
“But kinsman Chai Ch’ien is beholden to us for arranging his match with Han Tao-kuo’s daughter,” protested Yüeh-niang. “Surely he would be inclined to respond favorably to us.”
“His daughter is now the favorite in his household,” said Lai-pao, “and she is far more likely to side with her own parents than with us. We would do well to keep this matter to ourselves. If word of it should leak out, it would not redound to our credit. As for these few taels of silver, the best thing to do would be simply to write them off and forget about it.”
Yüeh-niang, consequently, urged him to get together with the potential purchasers and dispose of the remaining piece goods to them. When he did so, Yüeh-niang had Ch’en Ching-chi take charge of the scales and bargaining, but the buyers rejected the proposed prices, took their money, and left.
Lai-pao then said to Ch’en Ching-chi, “Son-in-law, you don’t yet understand the vicissitudes of trade, but I have considerable experience traveling on the rivers and lakes and understand how the markets work.
It is better to sell at a loss,
Than it is to forfeit the sale.
Now that these goods are here, we might as well settle for whatever price we can get for them. If you insist on:
Pulling your bow all the way taut,
You risk the loss of your customer,
and only show that you don’t know how to conduct business. I’m not being pretentious, but you’re still young, and:
Don’t perceive the way things work.17
I’m not sticking my elbow into other people’s business, but it seems to me that the best we can do is to sell off the goods and make an end of it.”
Upon hearing this, Ch’en Ching-chi, in a fit of pique, simply decided to wash his hands of the matter. Lai-pao, accordingly, without waiting for instructions from Yüeh-niang, reached over and grabbed the abacus out of his hands, called back the customers, and sold off the remaining goods for something over two thousand taels of silver. He then handed the proceeds, one packet at a time, to Ch’en Ching-chi to turn over to Yüeh-niang and saw to the removal of the merchandise from the premises.
Yüeh-niang offered to reward him with twenty or thirty taels of silver for his household expenses, but he ostentatiously refused to accept it, saying, “You had better keep it for yourself ma’am. Now that your husband is dead, you are like stagnant water, without any source of livelihood. What reason is there to dispose of your property this way? Keep it for yourself. I really don’t need it.”
One night, when Lai-pao had been outside drinking himself into a stupor, he walked into Yüeh-niang’s room, leaned on the bedrail of the k’ang, and addressed her, saying, “Ma’am, you have lost your husband while still in the springtime of your youth and are left alone with no one to care for but your infant son. Do you not feel lonely?”
Yüeh-niang said not a word in response to this overture.
One day, a letter arrived from Majordomo Chai Ch’ien in the Eastern Capital, indicating that he had learned of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death. He also said that Han Tao-kuo had informed him that there were four attractive young women left in the household who were adept at playing musical instruments and singing, and he offered to purchase them for whatever price might be asked so they could be transported to the Eastern Capital to wait upon the grand preceptor’s elderly wife.
This letter reduced Yüeh-niang to a state of panic, and she summoned Lai-pao to consult with him about whether he thought it would be better to comply with this request or not.
When Lai-pao came into her room, he did not address her with appropriate respect but said, “You are only a woman, and don’t understand how things stand. To fail to comply with this request would be to invite disaster. This is all due to the heedlessness of your dead husband, who was given to showing off his munificence. Whenever he invited people over for a drink he would call out the household musicians to entertain them, a fact that could not but become widely known. It is hardly surprising that Han Tao-kuo’s daughter, in the course of waiting upon the elderly wife of the grand preceptor in her mansion, should mention it to her. The situation is just as I said it was the other day. And now, sure enough, this problem has come up. If you don’t agree to his request, he’ll have the prefectural or district yamen send people to demand them by name. By that time it will be too late for you to do anything but hand them over to him with both hands. The best thing to do at present, without having to surrender all four of them, is to compromise by sending off two of them, as a means of saving your face.”
Yüeh-niang pondered this suggestion for some time and decided that Lan-hsiang from Meng Yü-lou’s
quarters and Ch’un-mei from P’an Chin-lien’s quarters could not be spared, and that Hsiu-ch’un, who was looking after Hsiao-ko, also could not be dispensed with. But when she asked Yü-hsiao and Ying-ch’un from her own quarters, they expressed a willingness to go. Consequently, she had Lai-pao hire a pair of vehicles to accommodate the two maidservants and accompany them to the grand preceptor’s mansion in the Eastern Capital. What she could not have anticipated was that the rascal Lai-pao would seize the opportunity to rape the two girls en route.
One day, when they arrived in the Eastern Capital and met with Han Tao-kuo and his wife, Lai-pao filled them in on everything that had happened first and last.
Han Tao-kuo thanked Lai-pao, saying, “If my kinsman had not looked after our interests by dissuading them from pursuing us, even though we have nothing to fear, they might well have sent someone to the Eastern Capital to seek us out.”
When Chai Ch’ien saw that the two girls, Ying-ch’un and Yü-hsiao, were both attractive young women, one of whom was adept at playing the psaltery, and the other at playing the samisen, and that they were only sixteen or seventeen years old, he had them move into the mansion in order to wait on the grand preceptor’s elderly wife and agreed to pay for them with two ingots of silver worth fifty taels apiece. Lai-pao pocketed one of these ingots for himself and turned only one of them over to Yüeh-niang when he arrived home.
Lai-pao Cheats His Master and Ignores His Benevolence
He also endeavored to intimidate Yüeh-niang, saying, “If I had not agreed to accompany them, not even this ingot of silver would have been forthcoming. You don’t have any idea of what wealth and distinction Han Tao-kuo and his wife are enjoying in the grand preceptor’s mansion. They are housed in a dwelling of their own where they have:
Slaves and maidservants at their beck and call, and
Are always waited on by five or three servants.
Majordomo Chai Ch’ien addresses Han Tao-kuo as Your Honor, and their daughter, Han Ai-chieh, goes into the mansion every day to wait on the grand preceptor’s elderly wife:
The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei Page 10