Tales of a Chinese Grandmother

Home > Other > Tales of a Chinese Grandmother > Page 10
Tales of a Chinese Grandmother Page 10

by Frances Carpenter


  "But the most important heavenly gift which the Chin Emperor had to help him was his magic whip. It seems the Jade Emperor looked down from his palace high in the sky, and pitied the toiling wall builders whom Chin treated so cruelly. He secretly gave each workman a magic cord to bind about his wrist and the Only First could not understand why the work went so much faster. The stones flew into place and the men no longer complained.

  "When at last the Emperor discovered these magic cords he seized every one of them and he braided them into a long lash for his whip. With this magic whip he forced the mountains to help him. He made the rivers stand still while the Wall crossed their beds. He lashed the rocks until drops of red blood oozed out of their sides. In places these red rocks can be seen to this day.

  "All went well with the Wall. On and on it was pushed, over the mountains and far to the north into the great desert.

  "Now among the army of wall builders there was a certain prince whom the Emperor hated because he was kind to the workmen. One day this prince disappeared. He was never seen again. At the same time, at his home, his princess wife had a dream that all was not well with her husband. The dream troubled her so that she set out for the Wall, to find out for herself if her husband was safe.

  "In a cart which had large wheels fit for travel over rough country she rode and she rode until she came to the place where the wall builders were working. But alas, her husband was not among them, and no one would tell her what had become of him. She decided to seek out the Emperor himself, and so she went to his palace.

  "'O Son of Heaven, O Lord of Ten Thousand Years,' she implored, 'tell me where my dear husband is.'

  "'Ai, there was an accident,' the Emperor replied. 'Your husband was killed when the Wall fell in upon him. But do not fear for yourself, Fair Princess. I find you charming. You shall dwell here in my palace as my most cherished wife.'

  "The princess cried out in horror. Something told her that the Tiger Emperor had himself killed her husband and that he would have no more pity upon her in her sorrow than he had on the poor people who toiled on his Wall, day in and day out.

  "'Sooner will I go to the Dragon King,' the princess declared when the Emperor tried to lead her into his inner court. She broke away and threw herself into the lake beside which his splendid palace was built.

  "Under the lake the princess soon found herself standing before Lung Wang, the great Dragon King. 'Do you bring news, Princess?' Lung Wang asked. 'Tell me, how goes the Wall that the Emperor is building?'

  "'It goes on and on,' the princess replied. 'With his magic whip the cruel Tiger Emperor drives all before him. And the wall builders die like so many flies. Even my husband has been sent to the World of Shadows because of the Wall. Have pity, good Dragon King. Send one of your spirits to help my poor people.'

  "'Without his magic whip the Emperor could do nothing,' the Dragon King said. 'Now, my wife is beautiful and my wife is clever. I shall send her to the earth to steal the whip from that tiger-man. Then the Wall will be stopped and your people set free.'

  "The very next day there appeared in the Emperor's palace a new princess as fair as the pear trees in spring. She quickly became the Only First's favorite, and he spent all his time away from the Wall in her apartment. With sweet words she flattered him, and with soft music from her fifty-stringed lute she lulled him to sleep.

  "The Only First never let his magic whip out of his hand, and he bound it to his wrist whenever he slept. But all things are possible to dragons, Ah Shung, and it did not take the Dragon Queen long to unfasten the knots and to steal the magic whip, as the Dragon King had commanded.

  "When the cruel Emperor woke, he found to his horror that his whip had disappeared, and with it the fair princess. All his fury and threats could not bring the magic whip back. The mountains no longer moved at his command. The rivers no longer held their waters back for him. The stones no longer rolled down to the Wall. And so the work stopped and the Wall never was finished."

  "Is that story true, Lao Lao?" Yu Lang asked the Old Old One.

  "Who knows that, Little Precious?" Grandmother Ling replied, shaking her head. "But to this day the Long Wall stops there in the desert. Other Emperors worked upon it. But none completed the mighty horseshoe of stone and earth which the Only First planned to build."

  XVII

  THE WONDERFUL PEAR TREE

  THE GARDEN OF SWEET SMELLS behind the Ling courtyards was gay with color on this summer afternoon. Flowers of many hues bloomed in the fat porcelain pots set here and there along its neat paths, and pink lotus lilies floated upon the Pool of the Goldfish. But quite as bright as the petals of the garden flowers were the children in their summer suits of thin cotton and silk. Small Dragon, the youngest of all the Ling grandchildren, looked like a giant poppy in his jacket and trousers of bright red, and the little girls in their pinks, blues, and greens made Grandmother Ling think of the butterflies that flitted about in the warm summer sun.

  The Old Old One, clad in a pale lavender gown of thinnest silk, sat fanning herself upon a stone bench by the side of the pool. Her slanting black eyes beamed with pleasure as she watched her grandchildren playing round its edges.

  Ah Shung had just come into the garden. On his way from the Court of Learning he had stopped in at the little low house that served as a kitchen, for a chat with his friends, the two merry men cooks. And as usual, he had come away with a handful of cakes.

  "Cakes! Cakes! Ah Shung is eating cakes!" the children cried to each other, and they made a rush for the boy."

  "These are mine," Ah Shung cried. "They are small! Wang Lai will bring for you a great bowlful. She is even now on her way. " The boy was not really selfish. But he could not help teasing his playmates a little. He ran away from them, holding his cakes clutched tight in his hand. Up this path, down that one, the children pursued him.

  At last they trapped Ah Shung in the very middle of the white humpbacked bridge that rose over the Pool of the Goldfish. There was a playful scuffle. Then a shout arose. The cakes had been knocked out of Ah Shung's hand and had fallen in a shower of crumbs into the water. The red dragon-eyed goldfish snapped up the crumbs hungrily, almost before Ah Shung knew what had happened. His grandmother, who had been watching the little play, burst into a merry laugh at the change in the boy's face.

  "The goldfish won in that battle!" she called out to him. "But do not feel badly, Small Bear; Wang Lai will come with the cakes for us all. You will just have to wait like the others. You only received the reward you deserved for being so stingy. It happened with you as with the stingy fruit peddler in the tale of the wonderful pear tree. Come, rest here beside me, and I will tell you about him."

  "Long, long ago, on a summer afternoon when the sun shone as brightly as it does today, this stingy fruit peddler halted his wheelbarrow at the side of the road which ran between two large towns and upon which many people were always going and coming. He had tied an umbrella to the top of a pole so that it shaded his baskets of luscious brown pears. 'The day is hot. It is dusty,' he said to himself. 'Travelers will be thirsty. I shall sell every one of my ripe juicy pears.'

  "All sorts of men passed the wheelbarrow of this fruit peddler. Some had money to buy pears, and went on their way licking their lips. Others could not spare even a few pennies. They could only look thirstily at the baskets on the wheelbarrow under the umbrella.

  "In the midst of the afternoon there came along an old man dressed like a farmer. He wore a blue jacket and blue trousers which were dusty and dirty, as though he had just finished his work. Over one shoulder he carried a hoe, and he looked very tired. His forehead had not been shaved for many days, and his untidy queue grew out of a little forest of bristles. He looked as though he had allowed the rains to wash his face and the winds to comb his hair for him.

  "But if you had examined him closely, my children, you would have seen that there was something strange about this old man. His eyes were brighter and his face finer than those of the other
farmers who passed along the crowded road. But the fruit peddler saw only that he was shabby and that he was too poor to buy his wares.

  "'O Worthy Fruit Peddler,' the old man said as he paused before the wheelbarrow, 'I am thirsty. I have no money to buy your pears, but I feel sure that you will be glad to spare one for a man of such a great age as mine.'

  "'Depart, Worthless Beggar,' the stingy fruit peddler cried. 'My pears are for sale. I do not give them away to every rascal who stops before my wheelbarrow.'

  "'I am old. My tongue is aching with thirst,' the aged farmer insisted. 'I do not ask for a fine pear. Give me the poorest, the smallest one, in your baskets, and I will call down blessings upon you.'

  "'Why should I need your blessings, Old Wretch? Get you gone before I beat you!' The fruit seller shouted so loud that the noise drew a crowd about his wheelbarrow.

  "'For shame, fruit peddler,' said a bystander, 'this farmer is old and weary. He is thirsty and poor. Give him a pear! One small pear will bring you but little money, and it will give him refreshment. You will be repaid by the satisfaction your kind action will give you.' The other bystanders echoed his plea, for they, too, felt pity for the tired, dusty old man.

  "'You are generous with my property,' the stingy fruit peddler cried angrily. 'I give no pears away. I should not gain satisfaction by such a foolish action. If you care so much for this old fool, why do you not give yourselves that satisfaction you speak of by buying a pear for him with your own money?"

  "The same bystander who had spoken first laid down a few copper coins and selected a large pear from the fruit peddler's basket. He put it into the hands of the thirsty old farmer, who received it with a bow and with polite words of thankfulness.

  "So unusual was the appearance of the old farmer that the crowd lingered while he ate the ripe juicy pear down to the core. Then, to their surprise, he picked out all the seeds and turned them over and over in the palm of his hand. One of them he selected, and the others he threw away.

  "'You have been so kind to me, Honorable Gentlemen,' he said to the crowd, 'that I shall now show you something which you have perhaps never seen and which may amuse you.'

  "Taking up the hoe which he had laid down by the roadside, the old man dug a hole in the earth. In this he placed the seed which he had chosen with such care. He scattered earth over it and pressed it down with his foot.

  "'For my little play I have need of a pot of hot water. Does any one here know where I might get such a thing?' he asked of the crowd, which by this time were much interested in his curious actions. One young man who was fond of a joke and who lived near by brought him a kettle from his own kitchen. The old farmer sprinkled the ground with the hot water, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, a tiny green shoot appeared in the earth where the seed had been planted.

  "A few moments more and it was a pear tree almost a foot high. And as the crowd stood by, dumfounded, it grew and it grew, until it was as tall as the pear tree here in our garden. Before their very eyes buds appeared, the tree burst into bloom, the blossoms fell off, and the fruit formed. The little pears swelled and swelled. They grew brown and soft, and lo, they were ripe!

  "By this time the crowd was so great that it blocked the highway. More and more people gathered as the news of the strange happening spread through the neighborhood.

  "'You young lads whose legs are more nimble than mine, climb up the tree,' the old farmer said. 'Pick the ripe fruit and hand it down to us thirsty ones.' The young men stripped the branches. Everyone in the crowd was given a pear. Even the stingy fruit peddler, who had left his wheelbarrow to watch, ate of the fruit from the wonderful pear tree.

  "When the fruit had been eaten the old farmer raised his hoe and with two or three blows he cut down the pear tree. It fell to the ground and, as the crowd watched, its leaves seemed to shrivel and its branches grow smaller. At last the only part left was the slender tree trunk. The old farmer picked this up and, using it as a staff upon which to lean, he went on his way with a low bow to the crowd, who stood speechless with wonder. So quickly was it over that they would scarcely have believed it had happened if there had not remained in their hands the cores of the pears they had eaten.

  "But hardly had the old farmer gone out of sight than there came a sharp scream from the stingy fruit peddler. 'My pears! My pears!' he cried. 'They have all disappeared. All my money spent for those pears and now they are gone! It was that wretch of a farmer. He must have been a fairy. Ai, ai, it was my pears he used to deck his wonderful tree.'

  "'If that is true,' said a bystander, 'the old man rewarded you well. You deserved nothing less for your treatment of him.' But the stingy fruit peddler did not hear. He was already running along down the road as hard as he could, in search of the old farmer."

  "Did he find the old farmer, Lao Lao?" Yu Lang asked eagerly.

  "No, Precious Pearl, he did not," replied her grandmother. "The only thing he found was the old farmer's staff, the trunk of the pear tree. And that staff, my children, was really the pole to which the fruit seller had tied his umbrella in order to shelter his fruit."

  "And were the pears on the wonderful tree really those from the baskets of the stingy fruit peddler, Lao Lao?" Ah Shung asked curiously.

  "How could I know that, Small Bear?" said Grandmother Ling. "But whether they were or whether they were not, the old man was surely a fairy who had taken the form of a farmer. Perhaps he had been sent just to give the stingy peddler a lesson in his duty to his fellows. The Jade Emperor of Heaven is kind. And to those who do not pity the poor and who do not have respect for the aged he is sure to send punishment of one sort or another."

  "I think that fruit peddler must have given away a pear now and then after that lesson," Ah Shung said as he jumped down off the stone seat.

  His grandmother smiled as she replied, "And I should think that Ah Shung must have learned that it's better to share his cakes with his cousins than to throw them all to the goldfish."

  XVIII

  HOW THE EIGHT OLD ONES CROSSED THE SEA

  ALMOST EVERY GATE in the city there were new red good-luck papers and, beside them, little bunches of Indian grass whose sharp swordlike leaves would be sure to frighten away the wicked spirits. Inside each sky-well behind the red gate of the Lings there was hurry and bustle, for it was the Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, the day for the Feast of the Dragon Boats, the holiday Ah Shung and Yu Lang liked best of all holidays, except, of course, the New Year.

  The children found it hard to wait until it was time to ride in the procession of little jinrikishas that went from their red gate to the lake just outside the high city wall. How exciting it was to be dressed in their very best holiday suits! How fine their mother and their grandmother looked in their gowns of light-colored silks, with their green jade earrings, and with flowers tucked beside their smooth coils of hair! And what a fairy place was the lake shore! Hundreds of fat boats, called "junks," with trimmings of gay flowers, were anchored among its water lilies and lotus plants.

  One of those fat flower-decked junks was the pleasure boat of the Ling family, and it was from its deck that they were to watch the dragon-boat races which were about to begin.

  "Here they come! Here they come! Here come the dragon boats!" Ah Shung had spied several long narrow boats whose curving ends were carved in the shape of splendid dragons. Some thirty young men sat behind their paddles, which stuck out on each side like the legs of a centipede. One boatman sat astride the neck of each dragon and waved a flag back and forth to show which way to go.

  As the first race began, shouts rose from the gay crowds along the lake shore and from the eager watchers on the anchored boats. Flags flew. Fans fluttered. Even the dignified gentlemen, in their elegant gowns and caps of dark silk, forgot to be calm and jumped up from their deck chairs to see who would win. Tied to a tall bamboo pole set up on a boat at the end of the course was a bundle of rich silk, the prize for that dragon boat which should be first to reach it.

>   Race after race, shouting and cheering. Cups of hot jasmine tea passed again and again to quench summer thirst, and a lunch which included small cone-shaped rice cakes wrapped in palm leaves filled the day with joy for Ah Shung and little Yu Lang. When the last dragon boat had reached the last goal, the people on shore sought the shade of the willow trees and made happy groups upon the grassy slopes. The Ling family lingered upon the deck of their boat. It was pleasant there in the path of the breeze which blew over the lake and cooled the hot summer day. And there was much to talk about—the speed of the dragon boats, friends who could be seen on the neighboring pleasure junks, and, above all, the good rains sure to be sent by the dragons who lived in the lake and who must have been pleased with the honor done their boats this day.

  "Do you know, my children, how the dragon boats first came to be?" the Old Old One asked Ah Shung and Yu Lang, who were sitting on some cushions close to her chair on the deck of the pleasure junk.

  "Tell us again, if you please, Lao Lao. I have forgotten," Yu Lang said, as she wiped the crumbs of a rice cake from her lips.

  "It was long, long ago, when our country was still divided into different kingdoms," Grandmother Ling began. "In one of these kingdoms there lived a poet whose name was Chu Yuan. He was a court minister as well as a poet, and he helped rule the land. All was peaceful and happy under his guidance, and everyone loved him. But also in this kingdom there lived another minister who was as wicked and greedy as Chu Yuan was good and unselfish. He flattered the king, and, little by little, he turned him away from the path of good works down which Chu Yuan had led him. They spent money like water, did the king and his greedy minister, and they sowed seeds of unhappiness among the people.

 

‹ Prev