Ch’en Ching-chi only frowned at this, without saying anything.
“You old beggar,” said Auntie Hsüeh, “why do you have nothing to say?”
“Don’t call him brother-in-law,” said Ch’un-mei. “That’s over and done with. Just address him as Uncle Ch’en, that’s all.”
“My worthless mouth deserves to be slapped,” responded Auntie Hsüeh. “It is prone to make such mistakes. In the future, I will simply address you as Uncle.”
On hearing this, Ch’en Ching-chi couldn’t help breaking into a laugh, saying, “That really touches my heart.”
Auntie Hsüeh, affecting a bout of silliness, ran up to him and gave him a blow, saying, “Just look at the fine way this old beggar talks. I’m not the one you’re after. So how could I ever hope to touch your heart?”
Even Ch’un-mei broke out laughing at this.
Before long, Yüeh-kuei brought in a serving of tea and snacks for Auntie Hsüeh, after consuming which, she picked up her box of trinkets and prepared to go, saying, “I will do my best to locate an appropriate young woman for you, and if I do so, will come to let you know.”
“We will not skimp,” stated Ch’un-mei, “on the bride price, preserved fruit, festive red silk, gifts of wine, head ornaments, and clothing for her trousseau, as long as she is an attractive girl from a good family, who might appropriately become a member of our household.”
“I understand,” said Auntie Hsüeh. “I guarantee that she will live up to your expectations.”
After some time, Ch’en Ching-chi finished his meal and went back to the front compound.
Auntie Hsüeh, who was still sitting there, asked Ch’un-mei, “When did that gentleman come here?”
Ch’un-mei then proceeded to tell her the story of how he had become a Taoist acolyte and went on to say, “It was I who located him, and have passed him off as a relative of mine.”
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” exclaimed Auntie Hsüeh. “You really have an eye for the future.”
She then went on to say, “I have heard that on your birthday, a while ago, the lady from his former household came to visit you.”
“She took the initiative by sending gifts to me,” said Ch’un-mei. “It was only then that I sent a card inviting her to come for a visit, and she sat around for the better part of the day before going home.”
“I was busy on that occasion,” said Auntie Hsüeh, “preparing the bridal chamber for one of my customers, which took me all day. I had wanted to come see you but was under such pressure I was not able to do so.”
She then went on to ask, “Did Uncle Ch’en see the lady from his former household?”
“He would hardly have agreed to see her,” said Ch’un-mei. “He got into quite a quarrel with me over the fact that I even invited her. I said that I had merely done a favor for her household, but he accused me of lacking resolution. He said, ‘There is no reason to doubt that it would have been preferable if Wu Tien-en had been allowed to beat the page boy P’ing-an into implicating the First Lady in a scandal, so that she would have been dragged into court. What did it have to do with you, that you should choose to do her a favor, in spite of the fine way she treated us in the past?’ ”
“What you said makes sense,” opined Auntie Hsüeh. “When you get right down to it, people:
Should not be preoccupied with old enmities.”
“Since I had received gifts from her,” said Ch’un-mei, “not to have invited her for a visit would have been unacceptable.
It is better to overlook another’s unkindness,
Than it is to commit unrighteous acts oneself.”
“It is no wonder,” opined Auntie Hsüeh, “that you are blessed with such good fortune, when you possess such a good heart.”
Thereupon, having chatted for what seemed like half a day, Auntie Hsüeh picked up her box of trinkets, took her leave, and departed.
Two days later, she came back and reported that Battalion Commander Chu, who resided inside the city, had a fourteen-year-old daughter, Miss Chu, whom he was prepared to marry off because her mother was dead. Ch’un-mei, however, felt her to be too young and was not interested. Auntie Hsüeh then suggested Ying Po-chüeh’s second daughter as a possibility, and reported that she was twenty-one years old. Ch’un-mei rejected this suggestion as well, on the grounds that since Ying Po-chüeh was now dead, she would be in the hands of his elder brother, who would not provide her with anything much in the way of a dowry. She therefore told Auntie Hsüeh to return the cards with the horoscopes of these two candidates.
Several days later, Auntie Hsüeh returned with some artificial flowers in hand and pulled a card with the horoscope of another prospect out of her sleeve. The inscription on the crimson satin surface of the card read: “The eldest daughter of the prosperous dry goods merchant, surnamed Ko, who is nineteen years old, was born in the year of the cock, at midnight on the fifteenth day of the eleventh month, and her personal name is Ts’ui-p’ing.”
Auntie Hsüeh then described her, saying, “She is as pretty as a picture, is petite in stature, has a face shaped like a melon seed, possesses a congenial and elegant disposition,15 is as clever as can be, and her mastery of needlework and suchlike feminine accomplishments goes without saying. Her parents are both alive, and her father has the equivalent of ten thousand strings of cash in capital, operates a dry goods store on Main Street, and does business in Su-chou, Hang-chou, and Nanking. It is an incomparably fine family, and the beds and curtains, and the trunks containing her trousseau, are all manufactured in Nanking.”
When Ch’un-mei heard this, she said, “If it’s as good a match as all that, we might as well agree to it.”
She then told Auntie Hsüeh to go ahead and transmit the needed documents, and she promptly set out to do so. Truly:
If you want to seek an alluring beauty
from a brocaded boudoir,
You must rely entirely upon a red leaf
to be a good go-between.16
There is a poem that testifies to this:
The Weaving Maid, positioned at her loom,
attaches the fragrant silk;
An affinity between widely divided people
suffices to connect them.
In Heaven above, the Herd Boy is matched
with the Weaving Maid;
In the human realm, the man of talent
weds an alluring damsel.
When Auntie Hsüeh delivered the nuptial documents, and the family of Ko Ts’ui-p’ing’s father, the prosperous dry goods merchant, saw that they came from the household of Commandant Chou Hsiu, they were happy to accept the proposal and engaged another go-between named Auntie Chang to go with Auntie Hsüeh in order to arrange the match. Ch’un-mei, for her part, made up two parcels of tea leaves, dumplings, and candied fruit and sent off Sun Erh-niang in a sedan chair to deliver these betrothal gifts to the Ko family home and conclude the match by presenting Ko Ts’ui-p’ing with an engagement ring.
Upon her return, she said to Ch’un-mei, “She really appears to be a worthwhile young woman. She has an attractive demeanor, is as lovely as a flower, and her family is of an appropriate status.”
Ch’un-mei thereupon selected an auspicious day for the formal betrothal ceremony, and prepared gifts including sixteen platters of preserved fruit, tea, and pastries; two platters of noodles to celebrate the putting up of her hair; two platters of pearls and trinkets; four jugs of wine; two sheep; a fret for her coiffure; a lavish set of gold and silver hair ornaments, pins, and bracelets; two velvet gowns; and clothing for the four seasons; in addition to bolts of cotton fabric; and a betrothal present of twenty taels of silver. But there is no need to describe this in detail.
The yin-yang master selected the eighth day of the sixth month for the wedding ceremony, when the bride would be brought over the threshold.
Before that date, Ch’un-mei asked Auntie Hsüeh, “Is her family going to supply any maidservants as part of her dowry?”
“T
hey will supply beds and curtains as part of her trousseau,” said Auntie Hsüeh, “along with gilt lacquer cabinets and so forth, but there will be no maidservants included in the dowry.”
“It would be more convenient in that case,” said Ch’un-mei, “if we were to purchase a twelve- or thirteen-year-old maidservant to serve in her room, empty the commode, pour bathwater, and so forth.”
“I know of two families,” said Auntie Hsüeh, “who are offering to sell their girls as maidservants. I’ll bring one back with me tomorrow.”
The next day, sure enough, she brought a young girl back with her and explained, “She has been working as a maidservant in the household of the merchant Huang the Fourth’s son, and this year she is just twelve years old. Huang the Fourth and Li the Third, along with Lai-pao, who was formerly employed in your household, have all been imprisoned for misappropriation of official funds, until such time as they can make reparation. It is now more than a year since they were incarcerated, and they have been forced to dispose of their possessions, and sell off their houses. Li the Third has passed away, and his son, Li Huo, has been incarcerated in his stead. Lai-Pao’s son, Seng-pao, has run away and is said to be serving someone as a groom.”
“Are you referring to the servant we knew as Lai-pao?” asked Ch’un-mei.
“He is no longer known as Lai-pao,” said Auntie Hsüeh, “but has changed his name to T’ang Pao.”
“If this girl has been employed as a maidservant in Huang the Fourth’s family,” said Ch’un-mei, “how much do they want for her?”
“All they are asking for is four and a half taels of silver,” said Auntie Hsüeh. “They are anxiously awaiting it in order to help them repay the misappropriated funds.”
“Four and a half taels is too much,” said Ch’un-mei, “but I am willing to pay three taels and five mace of silver for her.”
She then paid over the sum of three taels and five mace worth of “snowflake” government silver, wrote out a contract for her, and changed her name to Chin Ch’ien-erh.
To make a long story short, on the eighth day of the sixth month, Ch’un-mei dressed herself up with a phoenix cap adorned with pearls and trinkets on her head, and a full-sleeved scarlet robe, encircled with a girdle featuring a plaque of green jade inlaid with gold. Riding in a large sedan chair borne by four bearers, and accompanied by drums and lanterns, she set out to fetch the daughter of the Ko family, preside over the bridegroom’s ritual presentation of a goose to the bride’s family, and bring her over the threshold in marriage. Ch’en Ching-chi rode on a large white horse with ornate silver trim on the saddle and bridle and was accompanied by soldiers who shouted to clear the way. He wore a scholar’s cap on his head, a round-collared robe of black velvet, with a pair of white-soled black boots on his feet, and his head was adorned with two floral ornaments of gold. Truly, it was a case of:
The Legal Couple Openly Come Together by Candlelight
Encountering sweet rain after a prolonged draught;
Meeting an old acquaintance when traveling abroad;
Enjoying the candlelit night in a nuptial chamber;
Finding oneself on a list of successful graduates.17
Each time such things are refurbished
they will be as good as new.
When the wedding procession arrived back at the commandant’s residence, and the bride descended from her sedan chair, she wore a scarlet gold-flaked bridal veil. Dressed in her wedding finery she accepted a ritual mouthful of rice, before entering the main gate, holding a “precious vase” in her arms. The yin-yang master then conducted her into a decorated hall where she proceeded to pay her respects before the family shrine, after which, she was taken to the nuptial chamber. Ch’un-mei saw to it that the two of them sat down together within the bed curtains, and then she came out again. After the yin-yang master had performed the ceremony of scattering auspicious symbols of fertility upon the nuptial bed, he left upon receiving his gratuity, and the drummers that had been hired for the occasion also went their ways.
After Ch’en Ching-chi had sat within the bed curtains with Ko Ts’ui-p’ing for a while, he mounted a horse and went to his father-in-law’s home to thank him for the gift of his daughter. Upon his return he was quite drunk. That evening, being:
A woman of beauty and a man of talent;
They indulged their newlywed passions,
Enjoying the clouds and rain together.
Truly, it is a case of:
When spring touches the apricot and peach trees,
their new buds burst into red flower;
When the breeze plays among the willow fronds,
they are made to bend their green waists.
There is a poem that testifies to this:
To encounter close up such a paragon
of feeling and romance;
Is a consummation that: “Without good fortune
one cannot enjoy.”
Wherever has Lieh-tzu allowed the wind
to carry him;
When night after night the beauty of the moon
shines in the willow branches.18
That night, Ch’en Ching-chi and the young lady Ko Ts’ui-p’ing found themselves to be highly compatible. The pair of them were like:
Mandarin ducks beneath the quilt;
Phoenix mates within the curtains.
Like fish sporting in the water,
They enjoyed sharing loving cups.
On the third day after the wedding, in the rear hall of the commandant’s headquarters, Ch’un-mei prepared a feast, hung up decorative bunting, hired musicians to provide:
Drum music, pipes, and song,
and invited friends and relatives to attend a wedding reception. But there is no need to describe this in detail.
Every day, Ch’un-mei invited the two of them to her quarters so they could share their meals, and they addressed each other as cousins, constantly:
Getting up and sitting down together.
Not a single one of the maidservants, wet nurses, or servants’ wives chose to object to this. It so happens that Ch’un-mei had fixed up a suite of three rooms on the western side of the front courtyard to serve as his quarters. Inside, she had provided a curtained bedstead, replastered the walls so that the rooms were as spotless as snow grottoes, and suspended blinds. The library on the outside served as his study and was also furnished with a bed and a couch, tables and mats, and a collection of old books. The letters and calling cards sent and received by the commandant, as well as the documents presented by other bureaucratic offices, all passed through his hands and were either listed in registers, or stamped by him with official seals. The brushes, inkstones, and other appurtenances needed by a writer were all available to him, and the shelves were loaded with books. Ch’un-mei would come out to the library from time to time in order to sit down and talk with him, and they ended up engaging in intercourse with each other on more than one occasion. Truly:
In the morning he attends feasts in Golden Valley,
In the evening he favors beauties in ornate houses.
But do not consider these to be occasions for joy,
Time’s flowing light only chases the sunset clouds.19
If you want to know the outcome of these events,
Pray consult the story related in the following chapter.
Chapter 98
CH’EN CHING-CHI OPENS A TAVERN IN LIN-CH’ING;
HAN AI-CHIEH ENCOUNTERS A LOVER IN A BORDELLO
If the heart is content even a thatched cottage seems ample;
If one’s feelings are calm even vegetable roots smell sweet.
The fewer worldly desires one has the more beneficial it is;
When human relations are tepid they are more likely to last.1
If one depends on others in order to attain one’s ambitions;
In trying to avoid trouble one will deal with local tyrants.2
One may achieve an exalted level of distinction for the day;
; But it will end with inevitable extinction in years to come.
THE STORY GOES that, one day, Commandant Chou Hsiu, and the prefect of Chi-nan prefecture Chang Shu-yeh, in command of their infantry and cavalry, completed a successful campaign against the outlaws in Liang-shan Marsh; and the thirty-six leaders of the band, under the command of their chieftain Sung Chiang, along with their more than ten thousand followers, agreed to accept the offer of an imperial amnesty, so that peace was restored in the affected territory. When this was reported to the throne, the Emperor was greatly pleased and promoted Chang Shu-yeh to the positions of censor-in-chief and pacification commissioner of Shantung, and Commandant Chou Hsiu to the post of commander-general of Chi-nan, with the responsibility for patrolling the waterways and hunting down the bandits in his jurisdiction. The Emperor also decreed that the meritorious officers who had participated in the campaign should all be promoted one grade. Since Ch’en Ching-chi’s name had been listed in the roster, he was raised to the rank of counselor, with a salary of two piculs of rice per month, and the right to distinguish himself by wearing an official cap and girdle.3
During the middle decade of the tenth month, Commandant Chou Hsiu, with his imperial commission in hand, led the infantry and cavalry under his command on their way home and sent a messenger ahead to report the situation to Ch’un-mei and let the household know about it. Ch’un-mei was as pleased as could be and sent Ch’en Ching-chi, along with Chang Sheng and Li An, to go outside the city to welcome him. A feast was prepared in the reception hall of their residence, to celebrate his official promotion, and the number of his fellow officials and others who came to offer congratulations and proffer gifts was so great they could hardly be counted. When the commandant alighted from his horse and came back to the rear hall, Ch’un-mei and Sun Erh-niang were there to receive him and pay their respects. Ch’en Ching-chi divested himself of his commoner’s costume, put on a scarlet round-collared gown, an official cap, black boots, and a girdle with a rhinoceros horn plaque, and came out with his new wife Ko Ts’ui-p’ing. When the two of them had paid their respects to him, and the commandant saw that she was a good-looking girl, he rewarded her with a set of clothing and ten taels of silver, which she could use to make head ornaments for herself. But no more of this.
The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei Page 52