The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei

by Roy, David Tod

  I am obliged to Young Master Li Kung-pi

  from the Northern Capital,

  Who sustains me in his household, and

  views me as a bosom friend.

  Dipped in fresh sauce, I enjoy consuming

  half a field of scallions;

  Wrapped in thin pancakes, I stuff myself

  with half a load of leeks.

  Your humble servant has always been

  addicted to intemperance;

  And enjoys drinking wine throughout

  the time from 4:00 to 6:00.

  Should my teeth hurt,

  I only resort to grinding them;

  Should my belly swell,

  I merely resort to massaging it.

  To sate myself, I have been known to

  consume three pecks of rice;

  To amuse myself, I have been known to

  swill a large crock of wine.

  I am exceedingly grateful to my patron,

  but have no way to repay him;

  In the life to come I will be reborn as

  a watchdog to guard his home.

  Should a housebreaker show up and try

  to make a hole in his wall;

  I will rise to the occasion by taking

  a bite out of his scrotum.

  If you want to know why I would take

  a bite out of his scrotum;

  It is because I am not as expert at

  using my limbs as my mouth.9

  On this occasion, no sooner did Li Kung-pi set eyes on Meng Yü-lou’s tall and slender figure than, before he knew it;

  His heart was agitated and his eyes disturbed.

  It seemed to him that:

  Such a vision is not exhaustible;

  Such a view exceeds comprehension.

  From his mouth no word was uttered,

  In his heart he thought to himself,

  “I wonder whose household that woman belongs to, and whether she has a husband or not?”

  Turning to the “ball clubber” Trifler Chang, who was a member of his entourage, he called him over and whispered to him, saying, “You go over to that elevated slope and see if you can find out whose household those three women dressed in white belong to. If you succeed in discovering the truth of the matter, come back and report to me.”

  Trifler Chang, deferentially covering his mouth with his hand, assented and promptly flew off on this errand.

  It was not long before he returned and proceeded to:

  Whisper into his ear in a low voice,

  saying, “Thus and so, they are womenfolk from the household of Hsi-men Ch’ing in front of the district yamen. The oldest of them is surnamed Wu and is his sister-in-law. The one who is petite in stature is his First Lady Wu Yüeh-niang. The one with the tall and slender figure and a few white pockmarks on her face is his Third Lady, whose name is Meng Yü-lou. The latter two of them have both chosen to remain in his household and maintain their widowhood.”

  When Li Kung-pi heard this, he felt particularly attracted to Meng Yü-lou and generously rewarded Trifler Chang for his efforts. But no more of this.

  Wu K’ai, along with Yüeh-niang and the others, continued to enjoy the scene for what seemed like half a day until:

  The sun began to be swallowed by the hills,

  when he directed Tai-an to gather up the food boxes and urged Yüeh-niang to get into her sedan chair and proceed home. Truly, it is the case that:

  The young man grasps his brocade bridle and flaunts

  his silken sleeves in drunkenness;

  The silk-clad young lady lifts aside the embroidered

  curtain the better to gaze at him.

  There is a poem that testifies to this:

  The shadows of the flowers under the willows

  hold down the dust on the road;

  Each time one sets out to enjoy them

  one’s pleasure is renewed.

  Those with affinities will meet though

  separated by a thousand li;

  Those without affinities will not meet

  though face to face.

  We will say no more, for the moment, about how Yüeh-niang and the others returned home.

  To resume our story, that day, back at home, Sun Hsüeh-o and Hsi-men Ta-chieh, having nothing else to do during the afternoon, went out and stood by the front gate. It just so happened that:

  As providence would have it,

  a peddler unexpectedly came along shaking the clapper by which he alerted housewives to his presence. In those days, peddlers who dealt in cosmetics, ornamental trinkets, and mirror polishing all alerted housewives by shaking such clappers.

  Upon hearing the sound of the clapper, Hsi-men Ta-chieh said, “My mirror is tarnished,” and told P’ing-an to go stop the peddler so he could polish her mirror for her.

  The peddler put down his burden and said, “I am not a mirror polisher but deal in gold and silver objects, head ornaments, and trinkets.”

  As he stood there in front of the gate, he stared fixedly at Sun Hsüeh-o:

  Looking her over from top to bottom.

  Sun Hsüeh-o responded by saying, “As for you, if you are not a mirror polisher, you can take yourself off. What reason is there for you to stare at me that way?”

  The man then said, “Sister Hsüeh-o, and the young lady of the household, I guess you no longer recognize me.”

  “You look familiar,” said Hsi-men Ta-chieh, “but I don’t seem able to remember who you are at the moment.”

  “I am Lai-wang,” the man replied, “whom the master drove out of his household.”

  “Where have you been all these years?” asked Sun Hsüeh-o. “Why haven’t we seen you? You’ve managed to gain quite a bit of weight.”

  “Upon leaving the master’s household,” replied Lai-wang, “I returned to my native place in Hsü-chou but was at loose ends and unable to find regular employment. So I joined the entourage of a gentleman who was leaving for the capital to take up an official position. Unexpectedly, while we were en route, his father died, and he had to return home in order to observe the mourning rituals for his parent. I therefore sought employment in the jeweler’s shop of Silversmith Ku, where I have been learning the craft of working with precious metals, engraving patterns on larger vessels, as well as head ornaments and other objects. These last few days, business has been slack, so Silversmith Ku has sent me out on the street with a carrying pole to peddle some miscellaneous objects. When I saw you all standing in the entranceway, I did not dare to accost you, lest you accuse me of venturing to:

  Dawdle at your door or loiter at your gate.

  If you had not called me over today, I would not have made myself known to you.”

  “Though I scrutinized you for what seemed like half a day,” said Sun Hsüeh-o, “I failed to recognize you. As an old member of the household, what were you afraid of?”

  She then went on to ask, “What sort of merchandise are you selling in that load of yours? Bring it inside so we can have a look at it.”

  Lai-wang then proceeded to carry his load into the courtyard and open up the coffers, extracting a variety of head ornaments and incised gold and silver artifacts from the boxes inside them. The patterns displayed upon them were works of exquisite craftsmanship. Behold:

  A solitary wild goose holds reeds in its beak;

  A pair of fish sport among the aquatic plants.

  A peony blossom is artistically incised

  with specks of gold;

  The chalcedony head of a hairpin is as

  lustrous as a flame.

  There are also:

  A pair of lions playing with a brocade ball,

  And a file of camels bearing costly tribute;

  Cap ornaments made to delineate the

  Palace of the Moon,

  Hair clasps carved to represent the

  Peach Blossom Spring.

  The pins holding the hair on left and right,

  Depict pears and persimmons10 on one side
and

  a clump of lychees on the other;

  The pins worn on the part in front and back,

  Depict the Goddess Kuan-yin sitting with her

  legs crossed on her Lotus Throne.

  There are also:

  Frigid sparrows contending for plum blossoms,11

  And male phoenixes flirting with their mates.

  Truly:

  The chatelaines are studded with

  evenly spaced emeralds;

  The cap buttons are fashioned from

  glaucous precious stones.

  After examining these samples for a while, Sun Hsüeh-o said to Lai-wang, “If you have any other ornaments for sale, bring them out so I can see them.”

  Lai-wang then brought out another box containing artificial flower ornaments to be worn on the hair over the temples, cap ornaments of kingfisher blue in the shape of bird’s wings, and an assortment of cricket-shaped stickpins. Hsi-men Ta-chieh picked out for herself two pairs of flower ornaments for the hair over her temples, and Sun Hsüeh-o selected a pair of emerald-green phoenix hairpins, and a pair of brooches representing the motif of goldfish pierced with willow twigs.12 Hsi-men Ta-chieh then proceeded to weigh out the silver for her purchase and give it to him, but Sun Hsüeh-o, who owed him one tael and two mace of silver for the two items she had selected, requested that he come back early the next morning to collect her payment.

  She then went on to explain, “Today, the First Lady is not at home, having gone to the family graveyard, together with her infant child and the Third Lady, in order to burn paper money at Father’s grave.”

  “While I was at home last year,” said Lai-wang, “I heard that Father had died and that the First Lady had given birth to a son. I imagine he must have grown somewhat bigger by now.”

  “The First Lady’s child is only a year and a half old right now,” said Sun Hsüeh-o. “The members of our household, both high and low, treasure him like a pearl on a piece of jewelry, and our future prospects are dependent on him.”

  As they were talking, Lai-chao’s wife, “The Beanpole,” came out and poured a cup of tea for him to drink. Lai-wang accepted the tea and responded to her with a bow.

  Lai-chao himself also appeared and, after chatting with him for a while, said, “You ought to come back tomorrow in order to pay your respects to the First Lady.”

  Lai-wang then picked up his carrying pole and departed.

  That evening, when Yüeh-niang and the others arrived home in their sedan chairs, Sun Hsüeh-o and Hsi-men Ta-chieh, together with the maidservants, all kowtowed to her. Tai-an felt unable to keep up with the bearers who were carrying the food boxes, and therefore hired a donkey for himself and took care of dismissing the bearers when they arrived home.

  Yüeh-niang told Sun Hsüeh-o and Hsi-men Ta-chieh about their meeting with Ch’un-mei that day, saying, “It so happens that she had taken the trouble to arrange the burial of her mistress from the P’an family behind the Temple of Eternal Felicity, though we knew nothing about it. She came to burn paper money at her grave today, and we happened:

  By some fortuitous fluke of fortune,13

  to run into her there, and renew our acquaintance. Before this, we had already consumed a vegetarian repast provided by the abbot, but afterwards, Ch’un-mei also had two tables set up and directed her servants to lay out the contents of forty or fifty partitioned boxes containing delicacies of every kind, and to decant the wine. It was more than we could hope to consume. When she saw Hsiao-ko, she also presented him with a pair of her own hairpins. She was as friendly as could be. When she got up to go, she was:

  Attended by three or five servants,

  and rode in a large sedan chair, followed by a crowd of retainers. Moreover, she appears to have grown taller than she was before, and is whiter and plumper as well.”

  “She has also chosen not to:

  Alter her normal demeanor or forget her former status,”

  remarked Sister-in-law Wu. “In the days when she was employed in your household, I noticed that her conduct was more proper and her speech more dignified than that of the other maidservants, and that she seemed to possess the potential for better things. One can see today the truth of the saying that:

  Good fortune serves to stimulate the intelligence,

  and may result in this kind of prosperity.”

  Meng Yü-lou also chimed in, saying, “Our elder sister may not have asked her about it, but I did, and it turns out that she is pregnant, not having menstruated for the last six months, and that her baby is due in the eighth or ninth month. The commandant is utterly delighted by this. Thus, what Auntie Hsüeh reported to us turns out to be true after all.”

  After they had talked about this for a while, Sun Hsüeh-o said, “While Mother was not at home today, Hsi-men Ta-chieh and I were standing at the front gate when we caught sight of Lai-wang. It turns out that he has been here learning the craft of working with precious metals and was peddling a load of gold and silver articles and costume jewelry, though we did not even recognize him at first. Upon realizing who he was, we bought several items of costume jewelry from him. He asked about you, Mother, and I told him that you had gone to burn paper money at your husband’s grave.”

  “Why didn’t you ask him to wait until I returned home?” asked Yüeh-niang.

  “We told him to come back tomorrow,” responded Sun Hsüeh-o.

  As they were sitting there, and talking together, whom should they see but the wet nurse Ju-i, who came forward and said to Yüeh-niang, “Ever since I arrived home with the little child, for what seems like half a day, he has been in a coma from which he has not awakened. The breath coming out of his mouth is cold, while his body feels:

  As scalding as boiling water and as hot as fire.”

  When Yüeh-niang heard this, she hastened in consternation to pick the baby up from the heated k’ang and give him a kiss. Sure enough, she found that he was covered with cold sweat, though his whole body felt feverishly hot.

  Losing her temper, she took Ju-i to task, saying, “Whore that you are, you’ve let the child catch a chill in the sedan chair.”

  “I had him wrapped up tightly in a quilt,” protested Ju-i. “How could I have exposed him to the cold?”

  “If it wasn’t that,” continued Yüeh-niang, “you must have exposed him to a fright by taking him to visit that dead woman’s grave. I told you not to take him there, but you ignored my instructions and insisted on taking him with you anyway.”

  “Luckily,” responded Ju-i, “Sister Hsiao-yü can bear witness that I merely carried him with me to take a look at the grave and then came back. Since when did I expose him to any fright?”

  “Don’t give me any more of your lip,” responded Yüeh-niang. “What need was there for you to go look at her grave in the first place, and thereby expose him to a fright?”

  She then called in Lai-an and instructed him, saying, “Go at once and summon Dame Liu.”

  It was not long before Dame Liu showed up.

  After taking his pulse, and feeling his body, she pronounced, “He is suffering from a colic brought on by encountering an evil spirit. I will leave you two doses of cinnabar pills which you should help him to wash down with some ginger extract.”

  She then directed the wet nurse to hold him in her arms and go lie down on the heated k’ang. It was halfway through the night before he broke out into a cold sweat and his fever began to abate. Dame Liu was then provided with a serving of tea, given three mace of silver as compensation for her services, and requested to return the next day to see how he was doing. What with the:

  Opening of gates and closing of doors,

  the whole household was thrown into a state of consternation for half the night.

  To resume our story, the next day, Lai-wang came back to the gate of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s residence carrying his load of merchandise as before and bowed to Lai-chao, saying, “Yesterday, Sun Hsüeh-o selected a number of my products for herself and promised tha
t if I would return today she would pay me the silver she owed for them, and also arrange a meeting with the First Lady.”

  “You had better leave for the time being and come back another day,” said Lai-chao. “Yesterday, when the First Lady came home, her infant son had fallen ill, and they had to call in the medical practitioner Dame Liu to prescribe medicine for him. As a result, the household has been in a state of disruption and suffering from acute anxiety all night long. Only today does he appear to have gotten somewhat better. Under the circumstances, how could anyone have the spare time to weigh out silver for you?”

  As they were speaking, who should turn up but Wu Yüeh-niang, Meng Yü-lou, and Sun Hsüeh-o, who were in the act of seeing off Dame Liu and caught sight of Lai-wang as they came to the front gate. Lai-wang proceeded to kneel down on the ground and kowtow twice to Yüeh-niang.

  “It’s been some time since we saw you last,” said Yüeh-niang. “Why haven’t you come by to pay us a visit?”

  Lai-wang told her what had happened to him during the interim and explained that although he had wanted to come, he had not felt comfortable doing so.

  “As a former member of the household,” said Yüeh-niang, “what were you afraid of? Moreover, your master is now dead. Originally it was simply because that whore from the P’an family engaged in:

  Setting fires with one hand, and

  Pouring water on them with the other,

  fabricating tales about people behind their backs, that your good wife was driven to commit suicide by hanging herself, and you were framed for something you didn’t do and condemned to be banished to your native place. But now, Heaven has refused to countenance her, and she is gone for good.”

  “It’s not something I want to talk about,” said Lai-wang. “It suffices that you understand it as well as you do.”

  After they had spoken for a while, Yüeh-niang asked him, “What kind of wares are you offering for sale? Get them out so I can take a look.”

  When he had done so, she selected several head ornaments for herself, the cost of which came to three taels and two mace of silver, and weighed the payment out for him on a scale. She then invited him to enter through the ceremonial gate into the rear compound and told Hsiao-yü to fetch a jug of wine and a platter of savories for him. Sun Hsüeh-o, who was in charge of the kitchen, personally saw to heating up a large bowl of pork and brought it out for him to eat. When he had had his fill of wine and food, he kowtowed to them in gratitude and went back out to the front gate.