My uncle Such'un died early without an heir, and my father made me succeed his line. His tomb was situated on the Hill of Good Fortune and Longevity in Hsikuat' ang by the side of our ancestral tombs, and I was accustomed to go there with Yun and visit the grave every spring. As there was a beautiful garden called Koyuan in
  its neighborhood, Miss Wang begged to come with us. Yun saw that the pebbles on this hill had beautiful grains of different colours, and said to me," If we were to collect these pebbles and make them into a grotto, it would be even more artistic than one made of Hsuanchow stones." I expressed the fear that there might not be enough of this kind. "If Yun really likes them, I'll pick them for her," said Miss Wang. So she borrowed a bag from the watchman, and went along with a stork's strides collecting them. Whenever she picked up one, she would ask for my opinion. If I said "good," she would put it into the bag; and if I said "no," she would throw it away. She stood up before long and came back to us with the bag, perspiring all over. "My strength will fail me if I am going to pick any more," she said. "I have been told," said Yun, as she was selecting the good ones in the bag, "that mountain fruits must be gathered with the help of monkeys, which seems quite true." Miss Wang was furious and stretched both her hands as if to tease her. I stopped her and said to Yun by way of reproof, "You cannot blame her for being angry, because she is doing all the work and you stand by and say such unkind things."
  Then on our way back, we visited the Koyuan Garden, in which we saw a profusion of flowers of all colours. Wang was very childish; she would now and then pick a flower for no reason, and Yun scolded her, saying, "What do you pick so many flowers for, since you are not going to put them in a vase or in your hair?”  “Oh! what's the harm? These flowers don't feel anything." "All right," I said, "you will be punished for this one day by marrying a pock-marked bearded fellow for your husband to avenge the flowers." Wang looked at me in anger, threw the flowers to the ground and kicked them into the pond. "Why do you all bully me?" she said. However, Yun made it up with her, and she was finally pacified.
  Yun was at first very quiet and loved to hear me talk, but I gradually taught her the art of conversation as one leads a cricket with a blade of grass. She then gradually learnt the art of conversation. For instance, at meals, she always mixed her rice with tea, and loved to eat stale picked bean-curd, called "stinking bean-curd" in Soochow. Another thing she liked to eat was a kind of small pickled cucumber. I hated both of these things, and said to her in fun one day," The dog, which has no stomach, eats human refuse because it doesn't know that refuse stinks, while the beetle rolls in dunghills and is changed into a cicada because it wants to fly up to heaven. Now are you a dog or a beetle?" To this Yun replied, "One eats bean-curd because it is so cheap and it goes with dry rice as well as with congee. I am used to this from childhood. Now I am married into your home, like a beetle that has been transformed into a cicada, but I am still eating it because one should not forget old friends. As for pickled cucumber, I tasted it for the first time in your home."
"Oh, then, my home is a dog's kennel, isn't it?" Yun was embarrassed and tried to explain it away by saying, "Of course there is refuse in every home; the only difference is whether one eats it or not. You yourself eat garlic, for instance, and I have tried to eat it with you. I won't compel you to eat stinking bean-curd, but cucumber is really very nice, if you hold your breath while eating. You will see when you have tasted it yourself. It is like Wuyien, an ugly but virtuous woman of old." "Are you going to make me a dog?" I asked. "Welt, t have been a dog for a long time, why don't you try to be one?" So she picked a piece of cucumber with her chopsticks and stuck it into my mouth. I held my breath and ate it and found it indeed delicious. Then I ate it in the usual way and found it to have a marvellous flavor. And from that time on, I loved the cucumber also. Yun also prepared pickled bean-curd mixed with sesame seed oil and sugar, which I found also to be a delicacy. We then mixed pickled cucumber with pickled bean-curd and called the mixture "the double-flavored gravy." I said I could not understand why I disliked it at first and began to love it so now. "If you are in love with a thing, you will forget its ugliness," said Yun.
  My younger brother Ch' it'ang married the grand-daughter of Wang Hsuchou. It happened that on the wedding day, she wanted some pearls. Yun took her own pearls, which she had received as her bridal gift, and gave them to my mother. The maid-servant thought it a pity, but Yun said, "A woman is an incarnation of the female principle, and so are pearls. For a woman to wear pearls would be to leave no room for the male principle. For that reason I don' t prize them." She had, however, a peculiar fondness for old books and broken slips of painting. Whenever she saw odd volumes of books, she would try to sort them out, arrange them in order, and have them rebound properly. These were collected and labeled "Ancient Relics." When she saw scrolls of calligraphy or painting that were partly spoilt, she would find some old paper and paste them up nicely, and ask me to fill up the broken spaces. ①These were kept rolled up properly and called "Beautiful Gleanings. " This was what she was busy about the whole day when she was not attending to the kitchen or needlework. When she found in old trunks or piles of musty volumes any writing or painting that pleased her, she felt as if she had discovered some precious relic, and an old woman neighbor of ours, by the name of Feng, used to buy up old scraps and sell them to her. She had the same tastes and habits as myself, and besides had the talent of reading my wishes by a mere glance or movement of the eyebrow, doing things without being told and doing them to my perfect satisfaction.

1. The author was a painter, and for a time painted for his living.--Tr.

    
  Once I said to her, "It is a pity that you were born a woman. If you were a man, we could travel together and visit all the great mountains and the famous places throughout the country."
  "Oh! This is not so very difficult," said Yun. "Wait till I have got my grey hairs. Even if I cannot accompany you to the Five Sacred Mountains ① then, we can travel to the nearer places, like Huch' iu and Lingyen, as far south as the West Lake and as far north as P'ingshan [in Yangchow]."
"Of course this is all right, except that I am afraid when you are grey-haired, you will be too old to travel."
  "If I can't do it in this life, then I shall do it in the next."
  "In the next life, you must be born a man and I will be your wife."
  "It will be quite beautiful if we can then still remember what has happened in this life."
  "That's all very well, but even a bowl of congee has provided material for so much conversation. We shan't be able to sleep a wink the whole wedding night, but shall be discussing what we have done in the previous existence, if we can still remember what's happened in this life then."

1. The Five Sacred Mountains are: (1) "Taishan, the East Sacred Mountains (in Shantung), (2) Huashan, the West Sacred Mountains (in Shensi), (3) Hengshan, the North Sacred Mountains (in Shansi), (4) Hengshan, the South Sacred Mountains (in Hunan) and (5) Sungshan the Central Sacred Mountains (in Honan). --Tr.

  "It is said that the Old Man under the Moon is in charge of matrimony," said Yun. "He was good enough to make us husband and wife in this life, and we shall still depend on his flavor in the affair of marriage in the next incarnation. Why don't we make a painting of him and worship him in our home?"
  So we asked a Mr. Ch'i Liut'i of T'iaoch'i who specialized in portraiture, to make a painting of the Old Man under the Moon, which he did. It was a picture of the Old Man holding, in one hand, a red silk thread [ for the purpose of binding together the hearts of all couples] and, in the other, a walking-stick with the Book of Matrimony suspended from it. He had white hair and a ruddy complexion, apparently bustling about in a cloudy region. Altogether it was a very excellent painting of Ch'i' s. My friend Shih Chot' ang Wrote some words of praise on it and we hung the picture in our chamber. On the first and fifteenth of every month, we burnt incense and prayed together before him. I do not know where this picture is now, as we have lost it after all the changes and upsets in our family life. "Ended is the present life and uncertain the next," as the poet says. I wonder if God will listen to the prayer of us two silly lovers.
  After we had moved to Ts' angmi Alley, I called our bedroom the "Tower of My Guest's Fragrance," with a reference to Yun's name, ①and to the story of Liang Hung and Meng Kuang who, as husband and wife, were always courteous to each other "like guests." We rather disliked the house because the walls were too high and the courtyard was too small. At the back, there was another house, leading to the library. Looking out of the window at the back, one could see the old garden of Mr. Loh then in a dilapidated condition, Yun's thoughts still hovered about the beautiful scenery of the T'sanglang Pavilion.
At this time, there was an old peasant woman living on the east of Mother Gold's Bridge and the north of Kenghsiang. Her little cottage was surrounded on all sides by vegetable fields and had a wicker gate. Outside the gate, there was a pond about thirty yards across, and a wilderness of flowers and trees covered the sides of the hedgerow. This was the old site of the home of Chang Ssuch'eng at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. A few paces to the west of the cottage, there was a mound filled with broken bricks, from the top of which one could command a view of the surrounding territory, which was an open country with a stretch of wild vegetation.
①  "Yum" in Chinese means a fragrant weed—Tr

   Once the old woman happened to mention the place, and Yun kept on thinking about it. So she said to me one day, "Since leaving the Ts'anglang Pavilion, I have been dreaming about it all the time. As we cannot live there, we must put up with the second best. I have a great idea to go and live in the old woman's cottage." "I have been thinking, too," I said, "of a place to go to and spend the long summer days. If you think you' 11 like the place, I'll go ahead and take a look. If it is satisfactory, we can carry our beddings along and go and stay there for a month. How about it?  I'm afraid mother won't allow us." "Oh! I'll see to that," I told her. So the next day, I went there and found that the cottage consisted only of two rooms, which were partitioned into four. With paper windows and bamboo beds, the house would be quite a delightfully cool place to stay in.
The old woman knew what I wanted and gladly rented me her bedroom, which then looked quite new, when I had repapered the walls. I then informed my mother of it and went to stay there with Yun.
  Our only neighbors were an old couple who raised vegetables for the market. They knew that we were going to stay there for the summer, and came and called on us, bringing us some fish from the pond and vegetables from their own fields. We offered to pay for them, but they wouldn’t take any money, and afterwards Yu made  pair of shoes for each of them, which they were finally persuaded to accept.
This was in the seventh moon when the trees cast a green shade over the place. The summer breeze blew over the water of the pond, and cicadas filled the air with their singing the whole day. Our old neighbour also made a fishing rod for us, and we used to angle together under the shade of the willow trees. Late in the afternoons, we would go up on the mound to have a look at the evening glow and compose lines of poetry, when we felt so inclined. Two of the best lines were:
  "Beast-clouds swallow the sinking sun,
  And the bow-moon shoots the falling stars."
  After a while, the moon cut her image in the water, insects began to chirp all round, and we placed a bamboo bed near the hedgerow to sit or lie upon. The old woman then would inform us that wine had been warmed up and dinner prepared, and we would sit down to have a little drink under the moon before our meal. Then after bath, we would put on our slippers and carry a fan, and lie or sit there, listening to old tales of retribution told by our neighbour. When we came in to sleep about midnight, we felt nice and cool all over the body, almost forgetting that we were living in a city.
There along the hedgerow, we asked the gardener to plant chrysanthemums. The flowers bloomed in the ninth moon, and we continued to stay there for another ten days. My mother was also quite delighted and came to see us there. So we ate crabs in the midst of chrysanthemums and whiled away the whole day.
  Yun was quite enchanted with all this and said, "Some day we must build a cottage here. We'll buy ten mow of ground around the cottage, and see to our servants planting in the fields vegetables and melons to be sold for the expenses of our daily meals. You will paint and I will do embroidery, from which we could make enough money to buy wine for entertaining our friends who will gather here together to compose poems. Thus, clad in simple gowns and eating simple meals, we could live a very happy life together without going any where." I fully agreed with her. Now the place is still there, while my bosom friend is dead. Alas! such is life!
  About half a li from my home, there was a temple to the Cod of the Tungt'ing Lake, popularly known as the Narcissus Temple, situated in the Ch' uk' u Alley.  It had many winding corridors and something of a garden with pavilions. On the birthday of the God, every clan would be assigned a corner in the Temple, where they would hang beautiful glass lanterns of a kind, with a chair in the center, on the either side of which were placed vases on wooden stands. These vases were decorated with flowers for competition. In the daytime, there would be theatrical performances, while at night the flower-vases were brilliantly illuminated with candlelight in their midst, a custom which was called "Illuminated Flowers." With the flowers and the lanterns and the smell of incense, the whole show resembled a night feast in the Palace of the Dragon King. The people there would sing or play music, or gossip over their tea-cups. The audience stood around in crowds to look at the show and there was a railing at the curb to keep them within a certain limit.
  I was asked by my friends to help in the decorations and so had the pleasure of taking part in it. When Yun heard me speaking about it at home, she remarked, "It is a pity that I am not a man and can not go to see it." "Why, you could put on my cap and gown and disguise yourself as a man," I suggested. Accordingly she changed her coiffure into a queue, painted her eyebrows, and put on my cap. Although her hair showed slightly round the temples, it passed off tolerably well. As my gown was found to be an inch and a half too long, she tucked it round the waist and put on a makua on top. "What am I going to do about my feet?" she asked. I told her there was a kind of shoes called "butterfly shoes," which could fit any size of feet and were very easy to obtain at the shops, and suggested buying a pair for her, which she could also use as slippers later on at home. Yun was delight with the idea, and after supper, when she had finished her make-up, she paced about the room, imitating the gestures and gait of a man for a long time, when all of a sudden she changed her mind and said "I am not going! It would be so embarrassing if somebody should discover it, and besides, our parents would object." Still I urged her to go. "Who doesn't know me at the Temple?" I said. "Even if they should find it out, they would laugh it off as a joke. Mother is at present in the home of the ninth sister. We could steal away and back without letting anyone know about it."
  Yun then had such fun looking at herself in the mirror. I dragged her along and we stole away together to the Temple. For a long time nobody in the Temple could detect it. When people asked, I simply said she was my boy cousin, and people would merely curtsy with their hands together and pass on. Finally, we came to a place where there were some young women and girls sitting behind the flower show. They were the family of the owner of that show, by the name of Yang. Yun suddenly went over to talk with them, and while talking, she casually leant over and touched the shoulder of a young woman. The maid-servants nearby shouted angrily, "How dare the rascal!" I attempted to explain and smooth the matter over, but the servants still scowled ominously on us, and seeing that the situation was desperate, Yun took off her cap and showed her feet, saying "Look here, I am a woman, too!" They all stared at each other in surprise. and then, instead of being angry, began to laugh. We were then asked to sit down and have some tea. Soon afterwards we got sedan-chairs and came home.
  When Mr. Ch' ien Shihchu of Wukiang died of an illness, my father wrote a letter to me, asking me to go and attend the funeral. Yun secretly expressed her desire to come along since on our way to Wukiang, we would pass the Taihu Lake, which she wished very much to see. I told her that I was just thinking it would be too lonely for me to go alone, and that it would be excellent, indeed, if she could come along, except that I could not think of a pretext for her going.
  "Oh, I could say that I am going to see my mother," Yun said. "You can go ahead, and I shall come along to meet you." "If so," I said, “we can tie up our boat beneath the Bridge of Ten Thousand Years on our way home, where we shall be able to look at the moon again as we did at the Ts'anglang Pavilion. "
  This was on the eighteenth day of the sixth moon. That day, I brought a servant and arrived first at Hsukiang Ferry, where I waited for her in the boat. By and by, Yun arrived in a sedan-chair, and we started off, passing by the Tiger's Roar Bridge, where the view opened up and we saw sailing boats and sand-birds flitting over the lake. The water was a white stretch, joining the sky at the horizon. “So this is Taihu!" Yun exclaimed. "I know now bow big the universe is, and I have not lived in vain! I think a good many ladies never see such a view in their whole lifetime." As we were occupied in conversation, it wasn't very long before we saw swaying willows on the banks, and we knew we had arrived at Wukiang.
  I went up to attend the funeral ceremony, but when I came back, Yun was not in the boat. I asked the boatman and he said, "Don't you see some one under the willow trees by the bridge,watching the cormorants catching fish?" Yun, then, had gone up with the boatman's daughter. When I got behind her, I saw that she was perspiring all over, still leaning on the boatman's daughter and standing there absorbed looking at the cormorants. I patted her shoulder and said, "You are wet through." Yun turned her head and said, "I was afraid that your friend Ch'ien might come to the boat, so I left to avoid him. Why did you come back so early?" "In order to catch the renegade!" I replied.
  We then came back hand-in-hand to the boat, and when we stopped at the Bridge of Ten Thousand Years. The sun had not yet gone down. And we let down all the windows to allow the river breeze to come in, and there, dressed in light silk and holding a silk fan, we sliced a melon to cool ourselves. Soon the evening glow was casting a red hue over the bridge, and the distant haze enveloped the willow trees in twilight. The moon was then coming up, and all along the river we saw a stretch of lights coming from the fishing boats. I asked my servant to go astern and have a drink with the boatman.
The boatman's daughter was called Suyun. She was quite a likeable girl, and I had known her before. I beckoned her to come and sit together with Yun on the bow of the boat. We did not put on any light, so that we could the better enjoy the moon, and there we sat drinking heartily and playing literary games with wine as forfeit.                                               
  Suyun just stared at us, listening for a long time before she said, "Now I am quite familiar with all sorts of wine-games, but have never heard of this one. Will you explain it to me?" Yun tried to explain it by all sorts of analogies to her, but still she failed to understand.
Then I laughed and said, "Will the lady teacher please stop a moment? I have a parable for explaining it, and she will understand at once." "You try it, then! The stork," I said, "can dance, but cannot plow. while the buffalo can plow, but cannot dance. That lies in the nature of things. You are making a fool of yourself by trying to teach the impossible to her."  Suyun pummeled  my  shoulder playfully, saying, "You are speaking of me as a buffalo, aren't you?" Then Yun said,   "Hereafter let's make a rule: let's have it out with our mouths, but no hands! One who breaks the rule will have to drink a big cup. " As Suyun was a great drinker, she filled a cup full and drank it up at a draught. "I suggest that one may be allowed to use one's hands for caressing, but not for striking," I said. Yun then playfully pushed Suyun into my lap, saying, "Now you can caress her to your full." "How stupid of you!" I laughed in reply. "The beauty of caressing lies in doing it naturally and half unconsciously. Only a country bumpkin will hug and caress a woman roughly." I noticed that the jasmine in the hair of both of them gave out a strange fragrance, mixed with the flavor of wine, powder and hair lotion and remarked to Yun, The common little fellow' stinks all over the place. It makes me sick." Hearing this, Suyun struck me blow after blow with her fist in a rage, saying, "Who told you to smell it?"
"She breaks the rule! Two big cups!" Yun shouted.
  "He called me 'common little fellow.' Why shouldn't I strike him?" protested Suyun.
  "He really means by the 'common little fellow' something which you don't understand. You finish these two cups first and I'll tell you."
  When Suyun had finished the two cups, Yun told her of our discussion about the jasmine at the Ts'anglang Pavilion.
  " Then the mistake is mine. I must be penalized again," said Suyun. And she drank a third cup.
  Yun said then that she had long heard of her reputation as a singer and would like to hear her sing. This Suyun did beautifully, beating time with her ivory chopsticks on a little plate. Yun drank merrily until she was quite drunk, when she took a sedan-chair and went home first, while I remained chatting with Suyun for a moment, and then walked home under the moonlight.
  At this time, we were staying in the home of our friend Lu Panfang, in a house called Hsiaoshuanglou. A few days afterwards, Mrs. Lu heard of the story from someone, and secretly told Yun, "Do you know that your husband was drinking a few days ago at the Bridge of Ten Thousand Years with two sing-song girls?" "Yes, I do," replied Yun, "and one of the sing-song girls was myself." Then she told her the whole story and Mrs. Lu had a good laugh at herself.
  When I came back from Eastern Kwangtung in the seventh moon, 1794, there was a boy cousin-in-law of mine, by the name of Hsu Hsiufeng, who had brought home with him a concubine. He was crazy about her beauty and asked Yun to go and see her. After seeing her, Yun remarked to Hsiufeng one day, "She has beauty but no charm." "Do you mean to say that when your husband takes a concubine, she must have both beauty and charm?" answered Hsiufeng. Yun replied in the affirmative. So from that time on, she was quite beat on finding a concubine for me, but was short of cash.
  At this time there was a Chekiang sing-song girl by the name of Wen Lenghsiang, who was staying at Soochow. She had composed four poems on the Willow Catkins which were talked about all over the city, and many scholars wrote poems in reply, using the same rhyme-words as her originals, as was the custom. There was a friend of mine, Chang Hsienhan of Wukiang, who was a good friend of Lenghsiang and brought her poems to me, asking us to write some in reply. Yun wasn't interested because she did not think much of her, but I was intrigued and composed one on the flying willow catkins which filled the air in May. Two lines which Yun liked very much  were :
  "They softly touch the spring sorrow in my bosom,
  And gently stir the longings in her heart."
  On the fifth day of the eighth moon in the following year, my mother was going to see Huch' iu with Yun, when Hsienhan suddenly appeared and said, "I am going to Huch'iu, too. Will you come along with me and see a beautiful sing-song girl?" I told my mother to go ahead and agreed to meet her at Pant'ang near Huch'iu. My friend then dragged me to Lenghsiang's place. I saw that Lenghsiang was already in her middle-age, but she had a girl by the name of Hanyuan, who was a very sweet young maiden, still in her teens. Her eyes looked "like an autumn lake that cooled one by its cold splendor." After talking with her for a while, I learnt that she knew very well how to read and write. There was also a younger sister of hers, by the name of Wenyuan, who was still a mere child.
  I had then no thought of going about with a sing-song girl, fully realizing that, as a poor scholar, I could not afford to take part in the feast in such a place. But since I was there already, I tried to get along as best I could.
  "Are you trying to seduce me?" I said to Hsienhan secretly.
  "No," he replied, "someone had invited me today to a dinner in Hanyuan's place in return for a previous dinner. It happened that the host himself was invited by an important person, and I am acting in his place. Don't you worry!"
  I felt then quite relieved. Arriving at Pant' ang, we met my mother's boat, and I asked Hanyuan to go over to her boat and meet her. When Yun and Han met each other, they instinctively took to each other like old friends, and later they went hand-in-hand all over the famous places on the hill. Yun was especially fond of a place called "A Thousand Acres of Clouds" for its loftiness, and she remained there for a long time, lost in admiration of the scenery. We returned to the Waterside of Rural Fragrance where we tied up the boats and had a jolly drinking party together.
  When we started on our way home, Yun said, "Will you please go over to the other boat with your friend, while I share this one with Han?" We did as she suggested, and I did not return to my boat until we had passed the Tut'ing Bridge, where we parted from my friend and Hanyuan. It was midnight by the time we returned home.
  "Now I have found a girl who has both beauty and charm," Yun said to me. "I have already asked Hanyuan to come and see us tomorrow, and I'll arrange it for you. " I was taken by surprise.
  "You know we are not a wealthy family. We can't afford to keep a girl like that, and we are so happily married. Why do you want to find somebody else?"
  "But I love her," said Yun smilingly. "You just leave it to me."
  The following afternoon, Hanyuan actually came. Yun was very cordial to her and prepared a feast, and we played the finger-guessing game and drank, but during the whole dinner, not a word was mentioned about securing her for me. When Hanyuan had gone, Yun said, "I have secretly made another appointment with her to come on the eighteenth, when we will pledge ourselves as sisters. You must prepare a sacrificial offering for the occasion" ; and pointing to the emerald bracelet on her arm, she continued, "if you see this bracelet appear on Hanyuan's arm, you' 11 understand that she has consented. I have already hinted at it to her, but we haven't got to know each other as thoroughly as I should like to yet." I had to let her have her own way.
  On the eighteenth, Hanyuan turned up in spite of a pouring rain. She disappeared in the bedroom for a long time before she came out hand-in-hand with Yun. When she saw me, she felt a little shy, for the bracelet was already on her arm. After they had burnt incense and pledged an oath, Yun wanted to have another drink together with her that day. But it happened that Hanyuan had an engagement to go and visit she Shih-hu Lake, and soon she left.
Yun came to me all smiles and said, "Now that I have found a beauty for you, how are you going to reward the go-between?" I asked her for the details.
"I had to broach the topic delicately to her," she said, "because I was afraid that she might have someone else in mind. Now I have learnt that there isn't anyone, and I asked her, 'Do you understand why we have this pledge today?' 'I should feel greatly honoured if I could come to your home, but my mother is expecting a lot of me and I can't decide by myself. We will watch and see,' she replied. As I was putting on the bracelet, I told her again, 'The jade is chosen for its hardness as a token of fidelity and the bracelet's roundness is a symbol of everlasting faithfulness. Meanwhile, please put it on as a token of our pledge. She replied that everything depends on me. So it seems that she is willing herself. The only difficulty is her mother, Lenghsiang. We will wait and see how it turns out."
  "Are you going to enact the comedy Linhsiangpan of Li Liweng right in our home?"
  "Yes!" Yun replied.
  From that time on, not a day passed without her mentioning Hanyuan's name. Eventually Hanyuan was married by force to some influential person, and our arrangements did not come off. And Yun actually died of grief on this account.