Chapter One Wedded Bliss                         Part1 Part2
Chapter Two The Little Pleasure of Life   Part1 Part2
Chapter Three Sorrow                                Part1 Part2
Chapter Four The Joys of Travel              Part1 Part2

                        
                        
Chapter Two
THE LITTLE PLEASURES OF LIFE
    I remember that when I was a child, I could stare at the sun with wide, open eyes. I could see the tiniest objects, and loved to observe the fine grains and patterns of small things, from which I derived a romantic, unworldly pleasure. When mosquitoes were humming round in summer, I transformed them in my imagination into a company of storks dancing in the air. And when I regarded them that way, they were real storks to me, flying by the hundreds and thousands, and I would look up at them until my neck was stiff. Again, I kept a few mosquitoes inside a white curtain and blew a puff of smoke round them, so that to me they became a company of white storks flying among the blue clouds, and their humming was to me the song of storks singing in high heaven, which delighted me intensely. Sometimes I would squat by a broken, earthen wall, or by a little bush on a raised flower-bed, with my eyes on the same level as the flower-bed itself, and there I would look and look, transforming in my mind the little plot of grass into a forest and the ants and insects into wild animals. The little elevations on the ground became my hills, and the depressed areas became my valleys, and my spirit wandered in that world at leisure.
    One day, I saw two little insects fighting among the grass, and while I was all absorbed watching the fight, there suddenly appeared a big monster, overturning my hills and tearing up my forest--it was a little toad. With one lick of his tongue, he swallowed up the two little insects.  I was so lost in my young imaginary world that I was taken unawares and quite frightened. When I had recovered myself, I caught the toad, struck it several dozen times and chased it out of the courtyard.  Thinking of this incident afterwards when I was grown up, I understood that these two little insects were committing adultery by rape. "The wages of sin is death." so says an ancient proverb, and I wondered whether it was ,rue of the insects also. I was a naughty boy, and once my ball (for we call the genital organ a "ball" in Soochow) was bitten by an earthworm and became swollen. [Believing that the duck's saliva would act as an antidote for insect bites,] they held a duck over it, but the maid-servant, who was holding the duck, accidentally let her hand go, and the duck was going to swallow it. I got frightened and screamed. People used to tell this story to make fun of me. These were the little incidents of my childhood days.
   When I was grown up, I loved flowers very much and was very fond of training pot flowers and pot plants. When I knew Chang Lanp'o, I learnt from him the secrets of trimming branches and protecting joints, and later the art of grafting trees and making rockeries. The orchid was prized most among all the flowers because of its subdued fragrance and graceful charm, but it was difficult to obtain really good classic varieties. At the end of his days, Lanp'o presented me with a pot of orchids, whose flowers had lotus-shaped petals; the centre of the flowers was broad and white, the petals were very neat and even at the "shoulders," and the stems were very slender. This type was classical, and I prized it like a piece of old jade. When I was working away from home, Yun used to take care of it personally and it grew beautifully. After two years, it died suddenly one day. I dug up its roots and found that they were white like marble, while nothing was wrong with the sprouts, either. At first, I could not understand this, but ascribed it with a sigh merely to my own bad luck, which might be unworthy to keep such flowers. Later on. I found out that some one had asked for some off-shoots from the same pot, had been refused, and had therefore killed it by pouring boiling water over it. Thenceforth I swore I would never grow orchids again.
    Next in preference came the azalea. Although it had no smell, its flowers lasted a longer time and were very beautiful to look at, in addition to its being easy to train up. Yun loved these flowers so much that she would not stand for too much cutting and trimming, and, consequently, it was difficult to make them grow in proper form. The same thing was true of the other flowers.
    The chrysanthemum, however, was my passion in the autumn of every year. I loved to arrange these flowers in vases instead of raising them in pots, not because I did not want to have them that way, but because I had no garden in my home and could not take care of them myself. What I bought at the market were not properly trained and not to my liking. When arranging chrysanthemum flowers in vases, one should take an odd, not an even, number and each vase should have flowers of only one colour. The mouth of the vase should be board, so that the flowers could lie easily together. Whether there be half a dozen flowers or even thirty or forty of them in a vase, they should be so arranged as to come up together straight from the mouth of the vase, neither overcrowded, nor too much spread out, nor leaning against the mouth of the vase. This is called "keeping the handle firm." Sometimes they can stand gracefully erect, and sometimes spread out  in  different  directions. In order to avoid a bare monotonous effect, they should be mixed with some flower buds and arranged in a kind of studied disorderliness. The leaves should not be too thick and the stems should not be too stiff. In using pins to hold the stems up, one should break the long pins off, rather than expose them. This is called "keeping the mouth of the vase clear." Place from three to seven vases on a table, depending on the size of the latter, for if there were too many of them, they would be overcrowded, looking like chrysanthemum screens at the market. The stands for the vases should be of different height, from three or four inches to two and a half feet, so that the different vases at different heights would balance one another and belong intimately to one another as in a picture with unity of composition. To put one vase high in the centre with two low at the sides, or to put a low one in front and a tall one behind, or to arrange them in symmetrical pairs, would be to create what is vulgarly called "a heap of gorgeous refuse." Proper spacing and arrangement must depend on the individual who has an understanding of pictorial composition.
    In the case of flower bowls or open dishes, the method of making a support for the flowers is to mix pitch and refined resin with elm bark, flour and oil, and heat up the mixture with hot hay ashes until it becomes a kind of glue, and with it glue some nails upside down on to a piece of copper. This copper plate can then be heated up and glued on to the bottom of the bowl or dish. When it is cold, tie the flowers in groups by means of wire and stick them on those nails. The flowers should be allowed to incline sideways and not shoot up from the centre; it is also important that the stems and leaves should not come too closely together. After this is done, put some water in the bowl and cover up the copper support with some clean sand, so that the flowers will seem to grow directly from the bottom of the bowl.
    When picking branches from flower-trees for decoration in vases, it is important to know how to trim them before putting them in the vase, for one cannot always go and pick them oneself, and those picked by others are often unsatisfactory. Hold the branch in your hand and turn it back and forth in different ways in order to see how it lies most expressively. After one has made up one's mind about it lop off the superfluous branches, with the idea of making the twig look thin and sparse and quaintly beautiful. Next think how the stem is going to lie in the vase and with what kind of bend, so that when it is put there, the leaves and flowers can be shown to the best advantage.
    If one just takes any old branch in hand, chooses a straight section and puts it in the vase, the consequence will be that the stem will be to stiff, the branches will be too close together and the flowers and leaves will be turned in the wrong direction, devoid of all charm and expression. To make a straight twig crooked, cut a mark half-way across the stem and insert a little piece of broken brick or stone at the joint; the straight branch will then become a bent one. In case the stem is too weak, put one or two pins to strengthen it. By means of this method, even maple leaves and bamboo twigs or even ordinary grass and thistles will look very well for decoration. Put a twig of green bamboo side by side with a few berries of Chinese matrimony vine or arrange some fine blades of grass together with some branches of thistle. They will look quite poetic, if the arrangement is correct.
In planting new trees, it does not matter if the trunk comes up from the ground at an angle, for if let alone for a year, it will grow upwards by itself. On the other hand, if one lets the stem come up in a perpendicular line, it will be difficult later on for it to have a dynamic posture.
As to the training of pot plants, one should choose those with claw-like roots coming above the surface of the ground. Lop off the first three branches from the ground before allowing the next one to grow up, making a bend at every point where a new branch starts off. There should be seven such bends, or perhaps nine, from the lower end of a tree to its top. It is against good taste to have swollen joints at these bends, or to have two branches growing directly opposite each other at the same point. These must branch off in all directions from different points, for if one only allows those on the right and left to grow up, the effect will be very bare, or "the chest and back will be exposed," as we say. Nor, for instance, should they grow straight from the front or behind. There are "double-trunked" and "treble-trunked trees which all spring from the same root above the ground. If the root were not claw-shaped, they would look like planted sticks and would on that account be disqualified.
    The proper training of a tree, however, takes at least thirty to forty years. In my whole life, I have seen only one person, old Wan Ts' aichang of my district, who succeeded in training several trees in his life. Once I also saw at the home of a merchant at Yangchow two pots, one of boxwood and one of cypress, presented to him by a friend from Yushan, but this was like casting pearls before swine.
    Outside these cases, I have not seen any really good ones. Trees whose branches are trained in different horizontal circles going up like a pagoda or whose branches turn round and round like earthworms are incurably vulgar.
    When arranging miniature sceneries with flowers and stones in a pot, design so that a small one could suggest a painting, and a big one the infinite. One should make it so that, with a pot of tea, one could lose oneself in a world of imagination; and only this kind should be kept in one's private studio for enjoyment. Once [ planted some narcissus and could not find any pebbles from Lingpi for use in the pot, and I substituted them with pieces of coal that looked like rocks. One can also take five or seven pieces of yellow-brimmed white cabbage of different size, whose core is white like jade, and plant them in sand in an oblong earthen basin, decorated with charcoal instead of pebbles. The black of the charcoal will then contrast vividly with the white of the cabbage, quite interesting to look at. It is impossible to enumerate all the possible variations, but if one exercises one's ingenuity, it will be found to be an endless source of pleasure. For instance, one can take some calamus seeds in the mouth, chew them together with cold rice soup, and blow them on to pieces of charcoal. Keep them in a dark damp place and fine little calamus will grow from them. These pieces of charcoal can then be placed in any flower basin, looking like moss-covered rocks. Or one can take some old lotus seeds, grind off slightly both ends, and put them in an egg-shell, making a hen sit on it together with other eggs. When the little chickens are hatched, take the egg out also and plant the old lotus seeds in old clay from swallows' nests, prepared with twenty percent of ground asparagus. Keep these then in a small vessel filled with river water, and expose them to the morning sun. When the flowers bloom, they will be only the size of a wine cup, while the leaves will be about the size of a bowl, very cute and beautiful to look at.
    As to the planning of garden pavilions, towers, winding corridors and out-houses, the designing of rockery and the training of flower-trees, one should try to show the small in the big, and the big in the small, and provide for the real in the unreal and for the unreal in the real. One reveals and conceals alternately, making it sometimes apparent and sometimes hidden. This is not just rhythmic irregularity, nor does it depend on having a wide space and great expenditure of labour and material. Pile up a mound with earth dug from the ground and decorate it with rocks, mingled with flowers; use live plum-branches for your fence, and plant creepers over the walls. Thus one can create the effect of a hill out of a flat piece of ground. In the big, open spaces, plant bamboos that grow quickly and train plum-trees with thick branches to screen them off. This is to    show the small in the big. When a courtyard is small, the wall should run in a series of convex and concave lines, decorated with green, covered with ivy and inlaid with big slabs of stone with inscriptions on them. Thus when you open your window, you seem to face a rocky hillside, alive with rugged beauty. This is to show the big in the small. Contrive so that an apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space and a closet-like door forms the entrance into an unexpected courtyard. This is to provide for the real in the unreal. Let a door lead into a blind courtyard and conceal the view by placing a few bamboo trees and a few rocks before it. Thus you suggest something which is not there. Place low balustrades along the top of a wall so as to suggest a roof garden. This is to provide for the unreal in the real.
    Poor scholars who live in crowded houses should follow the method of the boatmen in our native district who make clever arrangements with their limited space on the sterns of their boats by devising certain modifications, such as making a series of successive elevations one after another, and using them as beds, of which there may be three in a little room, and separating them with papered wooden partitions. The effect will be compact and wonderful to look at, like surveying a long stretch of road, and one will not feel the cramping of space. When my wife and I were staying at Yangchow. we lived in a house of only two beams, but the two bedrooms, the  kitchen and the parlour were all arranged in this method, with an exquisite effect and great saving of space. Yun once said to me laughingly, "The arrangements are exquisite enough, but after all, they lack the luxurious atmosphere of a rich man's house. "It was so indeed.
    Once I visited my ancestral tombs on the hill and found some pebbles of great beauty, with faint tracings on them. On coming back, I talked it over with Yun, and said, "People mix putty with Hsuanchow stones in white stone basins, because the colours of the two elements blend. These yellow pebbles of this hill, however, are different, and although they are rugged and simple, they will not blend in colour with putty. What can we do?  Take some of the worse quality," she said, "pound them into small pieces and mix them in the putty before it is dry, and perhaps when it is dry, the colour will be uniform."
    So we did as she suggested, and took a rectangular Yi-hsing earthen basin, on which we piled up a mountain peak on the left coming down in undulations to the right. On its back, we made rugged square lines in the style of rock paintings of Ni Yunlin, so that the whole looked like a rocky precipice overhanging a river. At one corner we made a hollow place, which we filled with mud and planted with multi-leaf white duckweed, while the rocks were planted with dodder. This took us quite a few days to finish. In late autumn, the dodder grew all over the hill, like wistarias hanging down from a rock. The red dodder flowers made a striking contrast to the white duckweed, which had grown luxuriantly, too, from the pond underneath. Looking at it, one could imagine oneself transported to some fairy region. We put this under the eaves, and discussed between ourselves where we should build a covered terrace by the water, where we should put a garden arbour, and where we should put a stone inscription: "Where petals drop and waters flow.” And Yun further discussed with me where we could build our home, where we could fish, and where we could go up for a better view of the distance, all so absorbed in it as if we were moving to live in that little imaginary universe. One night, two cats were fighting for food and fell down over the eaves and accidentally broke the whole thing into pieces, basin and all. I sighed and said, "The gods seem to be jealous even such a little effort of ours."  And we both shed tears.
    To burn incense in a quiet room is one of the cultivated pleasures of a leisurely life.  Yun used to burn aloes-wood and shuhsiang [a kind of fragrant wood from Cambodia]. She used to steam the wood first in a cauldron thoroughly, and then place it on a copper wire net over a stove, about half an inch from the fire. Under the action of the slow fire, the wood would give out a kind of subtle fragrance without any visible smoke. Another thing, the "Buddha's fingers" [a variety of citron] should not be smelt by a drunken man, or it would easily rot. It is also bad for the quince to perspire [as under atmospheric changes], and when it does so, one should wash it with water. The citron alone is easy to take care of, because it is not afraid of handling. There are different ways of taking care of the "Buddha’s fingers" and the quince which cannot be expressed in so many words. I have seen people who take one of these things, which have been properly kept, and handle or smell it in any old way and put it down again roughly, which shows that they do not know the art of preserving these things.
In my home I always had a vase of flowers on my desk." You know very well about arranging flowers in vases for all kinds of weather," said Yun to me one day. "I think you have really understood the art, but there is a type of painting commonly called ' insects on grass blades, 'which you haven't applied yet. Why don't you try?"
    "I'm afraid," I replied, "that I cannot hold the insect's legs still. What can I do?"
    "I know a way, except that I am afraid it would be too cruel," said Yun.
    "Tell me about it," I asked.
    "You know that an insect does not change its colour after death. You can find a mantis or cicada or a butterfly; kill it with a pin and use a fine wire to tie its neck to the flowers, arranging its legs so that they either hold on to the stem or rest on the leaves. It would then look like a live one. Don't you think it is very good?"
    I was quite delighted and did as she suggested, and many of our friends thought it very wonderful. I am afraid it is difficult to find ladies nowadays who show such an understanding of things.