by Kim Man-jung
“I have known you by reputation,” said the prince. “And yet I have never had occasion to meet you because of our various engagements. But now the Emperor has called upon me to deliver a message to you. The princess Lan-yang has come of age and it is time for her to marry. The Emperor was looking for a man who would suit her, and as he has a high opinion of you, he has chosen you to be his brother-in-law. He gave me the honor of delivering this news to you. The official announcement will come shortly.”
Shao-yu was stunned. He prostrated himself before the prince and said, “His Majesty bestows too much favor upon me, and it is said that an excess of good fortune brings disaster. Your humble servant is engaged to the daughter of Minister Cheng. Nearly a year has gone by since wedding gifts were exchanged. Please, I beg you, convey this to His Majesty.”
“I will tell him,” said the prince. “But I regret that the love the Emperor shows for you is then in vain.”
Shao-yu answered, “This is such an important matter for me that I dare not treat it lightly. I will prostrate myself outside the palace gate and gladly receive my punishment.”
Prince Yüeh said good-bye and returned to the palace while Shao-yu went immediately to Minister Cheng and told him what the prince had said. But Ch’un-yün had already told her mother and the whole house was in an anxious uproar. Minister Cheng was so full of sorrow he could not find words to speak.
“Please, do not worry,” said Shao-yu. “I know the Emperor well, and he is a wise and good man who respects the rules of ceremony and propriety. He would never force even an unworthy subject like me to go against convention. I assure you, I will not commit the crime Sung Hung refused.”15
* * *
The previous day, the Empress Dowager had come into P’eng-lai Hall and peeked at Shao-yu through the bead curtain. She had taken a liking to him and said to the Emperor, “He is exactly the man I have been seeking for Lan-yang. There is no need for further discussion.” And so the Emperor had sent Prince Yüeh to tell Shao-yu.
In his private rooms in the palace, the Emperor wanted to speak to Shao-yu of this matter himself. He decided to have another look at the poems from the previous day, and so he sent a eunuch to the female secretaries to collect all the poems Shao-yu had written for them.
All the other women had put their poems carefully away, but one had hidden her fan in her bosom and taken it to her bedroom, where she wept over it all night, unable to eat or sleep. She was none other than Ch’in Ts’ai-feng, the daughter of the inspector from Hua-chou.
After her father’s ignominious death, she had been forced to become a servant in the palace. At one time the Emperor, hearing all the women praising her beauty, had wanted her for himself as an imperial concubine, but his mother the Empress Dowager had cautioned him against it. “The girl is indeed beautiful, but remember that you ordered her father’s execution. If you are intimate with her it would violate the old convention of emperors keeping their distance from those whom they have had to punish.”
The Emperor saw the reason in his mother’s objections. The next day he called Ts’ai-feng and asked her if she could write, and when she modestly replied that she could, he appointed her as one of the female secretaries, putting her in charge of literary documents. She was also sent to tutor Princess Lan-yang in reading and composition. The princess grew to love her, and it was only a short while before they became inseparable.
That day, Ts’ai-feng had been waiting on the Empress Dowager in P’eng-lai Hall when the Emperor called on her and the other female secretaries to receive Yang Shao-yu’s poems. She recognized him immediately—how could she not? He was in her thoughts night and day, the man whose face she could not forget even in her dreams. Yet Shao-yu, not knowing that she was alive—and being in the presence of the Emperor composing poetry so furiously that he dared not look up from his work—did not recognize her.
But once Ts’ai-feng saw him, she felt as if her heart would burst. Her face flushed, and she stifled her emotions, afraid that others might notice. She could tell no one about this and there seemed to be no hope of ever seeing him again. Later, when she was alone in her room, she clutched the fan and, unable to put it down, read the poem he had written on it again and again.
Round silk fan, round as the moon;
it plays with the pale hand that holds it.
Its fragrant breeze, peace and pleasure,
restless, to and fro, across your breast.
Round silk fan, round as the moon;
it follows the pale hand that holds it.
Veiling your face, no way to move it,
no way to glimpse the beauty of spring.
She sighed, reading the first lines. “He does not know my heart,” she said. “I live in the palace, but how could I possibly be intimate with the Emperor?”
She read the second stanza and lamented again. “He may not have seen my face, but surely he has not forgotten it. The poem shows how one can be so close and yet so far.”
She remembered her old house and his poem about the willows and, overcome by sorrow, she burst into tears that stained her dress. Finally, she composed a poem of her own and wrote it on the fan beside Shao-yu’s, and when she read it over she sighed.
Just then she heard that a eunuch was coming to collect the fans and other items on which Shao-yu had written under the Emperor’s command. Ts’ai-feng trembled in fear. “What shall I do?” she cried. “I shall be killed! Surely I will be killed!”
8
STRATEGY AND TACTICS
The eunuch said to her, “The Emperor wants to see the fans again—the ones on which Minister Yang wrote the poems.”
“I am an unfortunate creature,” Ts’ai-feng said through her tears. “I wrote a reply on the fan to the poem without thinking. If His Majesty sees it, he will surely order my execution. It is better that I kill myself now to avoid disgrace. When I am dead, please see that my body gets a proper burial. Do not let them leave it for the crows.”
“What are you saying?” the eunuch replied. “The Emperor is kind and merciful. He will not consider it a serious crime. In any event, I will help you. Do nothing and just follow me.”
So Ts’ai-feng followed the eunuch, who led her to the gate and had her wait outside while he went in alone and delivered the poems.
The Emperor looked at each piece and, by and by, he found the fan with the two poems, one of them in a different hand. “Who wrote this one?” he asked the eunuch.
The eunuch told him about Ts’ai-feng and how she had resolved to kill herself. He said he had brought her and that she was waiting outside.
When the Emperor had read her poem, he said, “Tell her there is no need to kill herself. Anyone reading this can see its quality. It would be a waste to lose such talent.” He told the eunuch to fetch her, and he read the poem aloud as Ts’ai-feng prostrated herself before him.
Round silk fan, round as the autumn moon;
I recall our first night in the pavilion.
Had I known then that you would not know me,
I would not regret now—how I let you come too close.
“Tell me the truth behind this incident and I will forgive you,” said the Emperor.
Hanging her head, Ts’ai-feng told the Emperor the story of her meeting with Shao-yu when he was on his way to the capital to sit for the state examination. She told him she had recognized the minister at the party in the palace, where they had written poetry, but that he had not looked at her. “Your humble servant remembered that meeting and how he promised marriage, and foolishly wrote that stanza beneath his. I deserve to die.”
The Emperor took pity on her. “Can you recall the poem that led to your engagement?” he asked.
Ts’ai-feng quickly wrote it out and gave it to him.
“You have done wrong,” he said. “But you have great talent and the princess loves
you dearly. I will forgive you. Do not err again.”
Ts’ai-feng expressed her profound gratitude and left.
* * *
Meanwhile, Prince Yüeh had rushed back from Minister Cheng’s house to tell the Emperor that Shao-yu had already exchanged wedding gifts with the Chengs’ daughter. The Empress Dowager was there, and she was not pleased by the news. “Yang Shao-yu is a high-ranking minister of state and must know the law. How is it that he can refuse?”
“He has exchanged wedding gifts, but that does not constitute marriage,” said the Emperor. “If I speak to him, I am sure he will listen to reason.”
The next day, the Emperor summoned Shao-yu to the palace and he came at once.
“My sister is unusually gifted, and there is no man as suitable as you to be her husband,” said the Emperor. “Prince Yüeh has already told you this, but I hear that you have declined and excused yourself, saying you have already exchanged wedding gifts with the house of Minister Cheng. Clearly, you have not thought this through. In ancient times when a woman was chosen to be the royal daughter-in-law it made no difference if she was engaged—even a married woman could be chosen. Wang Hsien-chih1 spent his whole life regretting the women who had rejected him.
“We are not like the people, and the laws that govern them do not necessarily govern us, but I am the parent of the people and I would never ask you to behave in a way that is improper. Even if you break off your engagement now, Cheng’s daughter could easily find another suitor. Since you have not yet had the marriage ceremony, how can you have failed to uphold your obligation?”
Shao-yu bowed humbly and replied, “Your Majesty has not only not punished me, but has admonished me gently, the way a father corrects a son. For this I thank you sincerely. But I can only say that my situation is not like that of other people. I am only a poor scholar from a distant corner of the country and did not even have a place to sleep when I first came to the capital. It was through Minister Cheng’s kindness that I avoided loneliness.
“Not only have I sent the wedding gifts, but I have been living like Minister Cheng’s son-in-law. I have already seen his daughter’s face and we are already like husband and wife to each other. The only reason the wedding has not been celebrated is that I was too busy with affairs of state. Now that the border states are at peace and there are no concerns that trouble the nation, I was about to ask for a leave to go home and fetch my elderly mother so we could finally set a day for the wedding. But then, quite unexpectedly, I received your command.
“Now I do not know what to do. If I obey for fear of your punishment, Minister Cheng’s daughter will never marry until her dying day. If she does not become my wife, will this not reflect badly on Your Majesty’s wise reign?”
The Emperor responded, “Your argument is upright and well-intentioned, but the truth of the situation is that you and Minister Cheng’s daughter are not yet married. The Empress Dowager has decided the matter herself. She wants you very badly. She insists upon it and I cannot go against her.”
Shao-yu politely refused once again.
“The matter of marriage is very important and cannot be resolved in a single hurried meeting,” said the Emperor. “Let us play a game of backgammon2 to help pass the time.”
He ordered a eunuch to bring a board and they sat down to play against each other. They did not stop until darkness had set in.
* * *
When Shao-yu returned home, Minister Cheng met him with a sad countenance. “Today I received a command from the Empress Dowager ordering me to return your wedding gifts,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “I told Ch’un-yün to get them, and now they are all piled up in the pavilion in the garden. When we consider our daughter’s moral quandary, we two old people are helpless to do anything. I may manage to bear it, but my wife has fainted from the shock. She is unconscious now.”
Shao-yu was terribly upset by this, and he was silent for a long while. Finally, he said, “This is unjust. If I make a sincere petition to the throne, I am sure they will listen to me.”
Minister Cheng wrung his hands. “You have already defied the Emperor’s orders more than once. If you petition the throne now, you will be done for. You will be severely punished for disobedience. Your only option is to submit. And you can no longer live in the garden pavilion—it is too much of an embarrassment in this circumstance. You must leave us and find somewhere else to live.”
Shao-yu could not answer. He went to the garden pavilion and found Ch’un-yün crying there.
“It has been a long time since my mistress had me serve you,” she said in a choked voice, giving him the wedding gifts. “You have been good to me and I am grateful. But now evil spirits are jealous of our happiness and everything has gone wrong. My mistress’s marriage plans have come to naught, and now I must say good-bye to you and return to her. O blue Heaven, so far, far away, what manner of man could do such a thing?”3
“I intend to petition the throne,” said Shao-yu. “Once a woman has consented to marry, she must by convention remain faithful to her husband. How can you even speak of leaving me?”
“I am not educated, but even so, I know the three relationships that govern a woman’s life.4 But my situation is different. From the time I was a little girl, I grew up with Lady Cheng with no distinction in our social status. We swore we would live and die together, through the good and the bad. I will remain with her and follow her like a shadow. How can a shadow exist by itself?”
“Your devotion is admirable,” said Shao-yu. “But you and Lady Cheng are different. She can go east, west, north, and south—wherever she pleases—but can you follow her and marry another man?”
“You say that because you do not understand her heart and mine,” Ch’un-yün replied. “My lady has resolved to serve her parents and when they die she will go to a Buddhist temple, cut off her hair, and become a nun. She will pray to the Buddha that she not be born a woman in her next life.5 I have sworn to do the same. If you want to see me again, return your wedding gifts to my lady’s quarters. If not, then this is our last farewell in this life. In my next life I wish I could be your dog or your horse to show my devotion to you. I wish you all happiness.” She turned away and collapsed in tears against the rail of the balcony, and a moment later she stood up, bowed to him, and went into the women’s quarters.
Shao-yu sat alone in the pavilion, helpless and heartsick. He looked up into the blue sky and heaved a sigh. “I must petition the throne,” he said and, gathering his thoughts, he took up his brush and composed the following:
Your faithful servant, Yang Shao-yu, minister of the Board of Rites,6 bowing before you, humbly presents this memorial to Your Imperial Majesty.
Moral law is the first principle of rule and marriage is the first of moral laws.7 If this fundamental basis of law is disregarded, all subsequent customs and rules will fall into disorder and the nation will collapse into chaos. The institution of marriage is at the root of human ethics, and if the rules governing it are not carefully observed, then the integrity of the family will be affected, eventually to affect the welfare of the whole nation.
Your humble servant has already sent betrothal gifts to the daughter of Minister Cheng and bound himself to her family as son-in-law. It was after all this was already concluded that Your Majesty unexpectedly issued your gracious command that this unworthy commoner be chosen to be the imperial son-in-law. He is deeply distressed by this order, and fails to comprehend how this imperial command with the royal court’s approval is in keeping with the accepted laws and rites.
Can this command be allowed to stand without careful review of its appropriateness and an examination of potential ridicule of the throne? Can it be permitted without investigation? Your Majesty has sent a secret order to nullify the rites that have already been performed, but your servant, as minister of the Board of Rites, cannot countenance such an action. Your servant,
not wanting to be the cause of an action that compromises the virtue of Your Majesty’s government, humbly begs that you rescind the command. Otherwise, the moral laws will be ignored, the honor of the throne will be marred. There will be violence and discord among the people, and the whole state will fall to ruin.
Your humble servant thus implores Your Majesty to consider the moral foundations upon which the state is built and maintain order by honoring first principles, by revoking your order and allowing your servant to return to his lowly duties in peace.
When the Emperor read the petition and showed it to his mother, the Empress Dowager was furious and demanded that Shao-yu be immediately arrested and thrown in prison. But all the ministers pleaded against it.
“I know this is too severe a punishment,” said the Emperor. “But the Empress Dowager is so angry I dare not pardon him.” And he ordered Shao-yu’s arrest and imprisonment.
Minister Cheng, now disgraced, closed his gates and refused all visitors.
* * *
The Tibetans were powerful in those days, and an army of 100,000 was attacking the border regions of the empire. Their vanguard pushed as far as the bridge that spanned the Wei River not far from the northern gate of the capital.
Things grew tense in Ch’ang-an, and the Emperor called his ministers together in council. They said, “There are only a few thousand troops in the capital and those in the provinces are too far to come quickly. Your Majesty must leave for the east, for Kuan-tung, and rally the provincial troops to march and save the nation.”
The Emperor found it difficult to come to a decision on his own. “Yang Shao-yu is my best strategist and his judgment has been sound,” he said. “When I nearly erred in the past, it was he who brought the three rebel states into submission.”