by Mingmei Yip
The day will come when Peach Blossom Pavilion will be torn down.
Just then I spotted another rickshaw puller trying to flee. I screamed at him to stop but to no avail. Then, by dashing in front of him and holding up a fistful of bills, I was able to force him to halt so I could jump on. I kept turning my head to see whether Peach Blossom Pavilion was still there. But all I could see was heavy smoke, as I was carried away from the Concession forever.
In December 1931, at twenty-six, I finally closed one chapter of my life and started another. I married Richard Anderson, boarded the ocean liner President Cleveland, and left my mother's cold mountain for America's Gold Mountain.
Epilogue
i 'that's it, Grandmama! You just left your mother behind and married that old man?" Jade Treasure asks me with eyes widened.
"Jade, that `old man' was your great-grandfather."
She makes a face. "Sorry, Grandmama. Then what happened to Great-great-grandmama?"
I smile. "After I settled in San Francisco, my mother wrote and this time I did receive her letters. Unlike those written to me over a decade ago, these were short, only a line or two telling me about her work in the temple, or asking me about my new life. She survived the Japanese occupation but died a few years later in 1948, just before Mao Tse-tung's victory and the closing of the nunneries by the Communists." I pause for a brief moment, then go on, "I hope she had finally attained the enlightenment she had strived for so hard."
Jade asks, "Then what about you and Grandpapa, were you happily married ever after?"
I think for a while. "Boringly ever after, if you want me to be honest for the memoir."
"Boringly-ever-after," Jade mouths while scribbling this precious piece of information on her notepad.
I peek at Leo. I'm sure now he wants very much to pull his fi ancee into his arms and kiss her on those pink, sensuously pouted lips.
Jade looks up at me with her-or my-big, dark eyes. "Grandmama, why did you choose to marry an old barbarian?"
This time I scold her for not showing proper respect for my late husband, her great-grandfather.
"Grandmama, but that's exactly what you call Americans!"
I pick up my tea and take a sip, while appreciating the lovely lines of my great-granddaughter's lips, resembling a temple's curved crimson eaves. "All right," I put down my cup, "the reason I married a barbarian is because your great-grandfather was a most honorable man. He always treated me as an equal. During our years of marriage, he worshipped me like a queen, so I bowed to him as if he were a king."
"But did you ... love him?"
"Not in the beginning, but later, yes. We came to understand each other very well."
I take a long sip of my longevity brew. "Your great-grandpapa lived to ninety-five, forty-odd years after we'd gotten married. Since he had a lot of money, he helped me open the Elegant Orchid Art Gallery, where I taught arts-painting, calligraphy, the qin."
Leo leans forward and asks, "What kind of people came?"
"Mostly rich tai tai. Also a few whom I suspect somehow heard about my mysteriously prestigious past."
Jade and Leo's pens press and scratch on the notepads as if they were unbearably itchy, dying to be relieved. When they finish, my eyes are lingering on my oil portrait-painted seventy-five years ago in the final days of my career as the last eminent poet-musiciancourtesan in Shanghai, China.
Jade points to my immortalized self. "Grandmama, do you like this painting?"
"I like what it is and what it reminds me of."
Now Leo's eyes caress the twenty-three-year-old me. Then he turns to the ninety-eight-year-old me and smiles sunnily. "Popo, you were such a great beauty."
It's always pleasurable to tease this naive American boy, so I ask, "Were? So you're telling me that now I'm but an ugly old hag?"
He looks so stunned that I burst into laughter.
Jade smacks him hard on the shoulder. "Leo, watch what you say to Grandmama! "
I wave Leo a dismissive hand. "All right, all right, my big prince, don't panic. Of course now jade is the most beautiful woman." I wink. "How can she not be? Since she's inherited my beauty."
The young faces break into two blossoming lotuses. Then Jade asks, "Grandmama, how do you feel about having been a ..."
My spoiled American princess actually looks embarrassed. I've already guessed her question. "My darling, you want to know whether I feel ashamed or proud to be a ming ji, right?"
The two heads eagerly nod, like two balls buoying on a sea of happiness-enjoying the tales of my suffering.
I let out a long sigh. "Hai, that's the question! All right. I was lucky. Though I was given to a prostitution house, it was of the highest level. And there I met Pearl without whom I'd never have learned the pipa-or the qin. As for the stinking males, sometimes it was pretty hard to be with them. But now it hardly matters, for they've all gone to the Yellow Springs. But my four-hundred, now turned five-hundred-year-old qin with its three-thousand-year-old melodies is still with me." I pause; my eyes land on the slender instrument hanging on the wall. My pure land. Always.
I pause to search the two young faces. "You know what it is that I feel most proud of in my whole life?"
Jade leans forward, thrusting out her chest. "Your talent in the arts?"
I shake my head.
"Your qin playing?"
I shake my head again, then search their eyes while remaining silent.
"What then? Grandmama, please don't tease us all the time!"
"Ah," I chuckle, "but unfortunately, `teasing' is the main part of my training as a ming ji. Although it might get a little rusty after seventyodd years, I don't think I can get rid of it completely."
"Grandmama!" Jade protests again.
Leo puts a loving hand on her thigh while addressing me, "Please tell us, Popo."
"All right, all right." I pause for yet another moment before I say, carefully choosing my words, "The one thing I feel most proud of myself is not what I did do, but what I didn't-. . .
Jade widens her eyes. "Grandmama, what is there that you didn't do?"
"I didn't . . ." This time I pause to change my breath. "Put a bullet into Big Master Fung's heart."
She makes a face, reading from her notes. "Oh yes, of course, it's because of your mother's talk about Buddhist compassion that your bullet was directed to Fung's ear instead of his heart."
I continue, "Anyway, Fung died of a stroke shortly after the incident. And I believe this was because I'd shot him."
"But you missed!"
"He was killed by his own bad Karma."
"Wow!" Jade exclaims. "Perfect!"
Leo asks, "Were you happy when you heard that he died?"
I think for a while before I answer, "Not happy, but sad."
Both Jade and Leo make a face. "Sad?"
"I didn't feel sad about him, but about human life. The strange workings of fate."
Another long silence during which my two yin yang kids are busy capturing my feelings and reminiscences in words.
When they finish, jade throws me an unexpected question. "Grandmama, how come after you'd eaten all the infertility soup in Peach Blossom you were still able to have my grandma?"
"Because I also ate all Qing Zhen's longevity soup on the mountain!" I laugh. "The real reason was because your great-grandfather was very rich, so he was able to send me to the most expensive hospitals and best doctors for treatment. Or because I also saw the most famous herbalist in Chinatown, who treated me with expensive herbs like bong hua to warm my blood, dong gui, bird's nests, and special wild ginseng from Tianshan."
"Dong gui and bird's nest, yuck!" Jade exclaims, while earnestly writing down these expensive herbs on her cheap paper. When she finishes, she looks up to search my face. "Grandmama, after Grandpapa died, you must still have been very attractive. Why didn't you marry again?"
"Jade, are you kidding? After all these men in my life, weren't they enough? Besides ..." I pause; my thoughts f
ly back to my pure love-the young, handsome, mountain-dwelling, concoctionbrewing, alms-receiving (or street-begging), qin-playing Taoist monk. "I had, albeit very briefly, my true love in life-Qing Zhen."
The impossibly young and beautiful couple exchange smiles. Their youthful passion makes me feel sweetly sad. Now scenes of me and Qing Zhen, like excerpts from a silent movie, flash across my mind. I still remember clearly how his long, glossy hair fell over his face under the moonlight; how he touched me with his mystical hands, transforming me from an unfeeling prostitute to an eager lover; how he moaned and screamed and squirmed when he reached sexual nirvana ... All these seem so fresh in my mind though seventy-six years have passed!
The ancient sage was right-one day spent in the mountain is a thousand years passed in the world.
I wonder, as I have for so many years, if Qing Zhen is still alive. If he is, he should be one hundred and six! Then he would truly have succeeded in becoming an immortal. If he hasn't lost his mind from drinking that concoction with the dead bird floating in it, does he still think of me from time to time?
"Grandmama, are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine, why?"
"Because you're crying!" Jade says; then she plucks a couple of tissues to wipe my face. I imagine her gentle hand is that of my onehundred-and-six-year-old lover.
With my tears dried, the three of us sit in silence, busy sipping tea and nibbling the dim sum jade and Leo brought from my favorite restaurant, the Emperor's Wok. Like an empress, I feel great content surrounded by the familiar sounds of laughter, bickering, rattling plates, clicking chopsticks, smacking lips, and noisy sipping of the longevity brew.
My family reunion. At last.
If only Pearl were here.
"Jade," I point to the chest next to the TV, "in the bottom drawer, there's a manila envelope, can you get it for me?"
She dashes away then back and, putting on the air of a filial, submissive Chinese daughter, hands me the envelope with both hands.
"Thank you, jade," I say, pulling out a picture from the envelope.
The photograph shows a youth standing in a daring pose, wearing a white Western suit, a hat, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses (although the gold doesn't show in the black-and-white picture), and shiny, black-and-white leather shoes. The legs are apart, one in front of the other; one hand is on the hip while the other touches the brim of the hat. A cigar and a mischievous smile dangle from the sensuous lips to complete the decadent dandy look.
Jade pipes up, her voice thrilled, "Wow, cool! Who's he? Is he.. Qing Zhen?"
"No, Qing Zhen's a monk and he never cared about pictures. All my fond memories of him are stored in my head," I say, then caress the handsome youth in the picture. "This is Teng Xiong."
Jade exclaims, "Shoot, I should have guessed! "
Leo chimes in, "She really looks like a man!"
I think of the woman who loved me so well but whom I could never completely love back. She had escaped to live in her own eccentric way, only to be captured by her ruthless husband, my father's murderer, Fung. She'd wished she could have died cuddling with me in the bell under the moonlight, but had ended up being shot by the husband she hated. I remember how, as we parted, she told me that she hoped we'd meet again in a future life. Perhaps we would after I finally board the immortal's journey, not too long from now, and perhaps then I'd desire her kind of love.
I sigh inside, then pull out another picture. The two yin yang heads lean forward to look.
"Awesome!" Jade exclaims. "Who is she, so beautiful like a movie star!"
"Pearl, my blood sister," I say proudly, tears brimming in my eyes.
Pearl is now staring back at me with her lips in the perfect shape of a crescent moon and her eyes smiling-as if she's envious of my longevity and my beautiful Jade Treasure and handsome soon-tobe great-grandson-in-law Leo Stanley. Yes, maybe I'm lucky to be still eating, sleeping, laughing, crying-and fortunately or unfortunately-not coupling, in the yang world. However, there won't be much time left before I'll join her in the yin sphere. Ironically, the thought doesn't make me sad.
After all, waiting for almost a century, I'll finally be able to join my beautiful, talented, ming ji blood sister.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
PEACH BLOSSOM PAVILION
MINGMEI YIP
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The questions and discussion topics that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of this book.
Discussion Questions
1. How do you feel about Precious Orchid's mother giving away her own child?
2. When Precious Orchid is put into cruel circumstances, what means does she use to cope?
3. What do you think about the bond between Precious Orchid and Pearl? Given that they are very different, what qualities do they appreciate in each other?
4. In the early part of the story Pearl is stronger than Precious Orchid, while ultimately Precious Orchid survives the harsh life and Pearl does not. Is Precious Orchid simply luckier or does she have inner resources that Pearl lacks?
5. Do you think Pearl's suicide is an heroic act or an act of cowardice?
6. What does the existence of official contests for prostitutes tell you about attitudes toward women in pre-modern China?
7. How would you characterize Precious Orchid's relationship with men: the monk Qing Zhen, Big Master Fung, the Military Chief Ouyang, the oil portraitist Jiang Mou, and Richard Anderson, her eventual husband? And with women: Pearl, Teng Xiong, Spring Moon, and her mother, Aunty Ah Ping?
8. Why does Precious Orchid decide to sneak away from the monk Qing Zhen?
9. Why doesn't Precious Orchid's mother acknowledge her daughter when they reunite in the nunnery?
10. Why at the last moment does Precious Orchid fail to kill her father's murderer?
11. Why does Precious Orchid decide to marry Richard Anderson? Does she feel real love or does she have another motive?
12. What role does playing the qin occupy in the novel?
13. How does the calligraphy that Precious Orchid shows to Mama and De change the balance of power between them?
14. What does the yellow butterfly symbolize?
15. Can you identify Buddhist themes in the novel such as nonattachment, non-distinction, compassion, and non-killing?
16. Why do you think Precious Orchid, at the end of her life, is ambivalent about the disappearance of the artistic courtesan culture?
17. Compare the fates of the different women in the novel: Precious Orchid, Pearl, Teng Xiong, Red Jade, Spring Moon, Aunty Ah Ping, Mama, and Wonderful Kindness Abbess (Precious Orchid's mother)? To what extent was each able to exert some degree of control over her life?
Table of Contents
Prologue
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART SOUR
Epilogue