Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk Read online

  Death to all who conspire to murder the vernacular!

  Whenever I see a schoolchild poring raptly over some crudely printed Children's World or the like, I remember what excellent children's books there are in other countries and naturally feel sorry for Chinese children. Yet, when I think back to my classmates' and my own childhood, I cannot but regard today's children as lucky and sadly mourn our youth now gone for ever. What did we have to read? Any book with a few illustrations was banned by our teacher, the “elder” then responsible for “guiding the youth,” and we would be reprimanded for reading it or even have our hands caned. When my young classmates got bored to death by reading nothing but “Man is by nature good,” they could only turn surreptitiously to the first page to look at the monstrous picture of Kui Xing entitled “The Star of Literature Shines on High,” to satisfy their innate childish love for beauty. Day after day this was all they had to look at, yet still their eyes gleamed with growing comprehension and delight.

  Outside school, restrictions were relatively less rigid, in my case at any rate, for no doubt it was different for different people. I could read openly in front of others The God Wenchang Rewards Virtue and Records of the Jade Calendar, both illustrated stories about due deserts being meted out for good and evil in the unknown realms, showing the God of Thunder and the Goddess of Lightning in the sky, the Ox-head and Horse-face devils in the nether regions. So not only was it against the rules of Heaven to “leap into midair,” even a slip of the tongue, a wrong thought in passing, would meet with the appropriate retribution. Nor would this be a question of “personal resentment,” for there gods and ghosts held sway and “justice” governed; thus it would be useless to give a feast or kneel to beg for mercy, there would be simply no way out at all. In the Chinese cosmos it is fearfully difficult to be a man, and equally difficult to be a ghost. Nonetheless there is a better place than earth, a place free from “gentlemen” and “gossip.”

  To play safe, one must not praise the nether regions. This applies particularly to those who like to flourish a brush-pen in present-day China, under the rule of “gossip” and at a time when “consistency between word and deed” is advocated. We should take warning from previous examples. I have heard that in answer to a girl's question M. Artsybashev once said: Finding happiness in life itself is the only way to go on living; those who can find none would be better dead. Then a fellow called Mikhailov wrote a letter deriding him: “... In this case, in all sincerity I advise you to take your own life; for in the first place this would be logical, in the second it would show that you are as good as your word.”

  Actually this argument is an attempt at murder, and that is how Mikhailov found his happiness. Artsybashev simply poured out a stream of complaints but he did not kill himself. What became of Mr. Mikhailov we do not know. This particular happiness slipped through his fingers, but perhaps he found something else in place of it. Certainly “In times like these, courage is the safest course; passion entails no danger.”

  Still, I have after all already praised Hell, and it is too late to retract. Though this lays me open to the charge of “inconsistency in word and action,” at least I can defend myself on the strength of the fact that I certainly never accepted half a cent as subsidy from the King of Hell of any lesser devils. So when all's said, I may as well go on writing.

  All those pictures I saw of the nether regions were in old books belonging to my family, not in books of my own. The very first picture-book I acquired, a gift from one of my elders, was The Picture-Book of Twenty-Four Acts of Filial Piety. Though only a slim volume it had pictures with captions above them, and fewer ghosts than people; moreover it was my personal property, so I was delighted with it. The stories in it were apparently known to all, even to illiterates like Mama Chang, who would launch into a long account after just one glance at a picture. But my initial elation was followed by disappointment, for after asking people to tell me these twenty-four stories, I realized how hard it was to be “filial.” This completely dashed my original foolish hope of becoming a “filial son.”

  Are men by nature good? This is not a problem we need go into now. Yet I still remember vaguely that as a boy I never really wanted to be unfilial, and was really keen to be a good son to my parents. But I was young and ignorant, and to my mind being “filial” meant nothing more than obedience, carrying out orders and, when I grew up, seeing that my aged parents were well fed. After getting this textbook on filial piety, I realized my error: it was tens or hundreds of times more difficult.

  Of course there were some examples one could emulate, like Zilu's carrying rice or Huang Xiang's fanning the pilow. Nor would it be difficult to hide tangerines in my pocket as Lu Ji had done, so long as some bigwig invited me to a meal. When he asked: “Why are you, a guest, pocketing tangerines, Mr. Lu Xun?” I would kneel to reply: “My mother loves tangerines. I would like to take her back some.” Then the bigwig would be filled with admiration and, sure enough, my name would be made as a filial son with a minimum of trouble.

  “Weeping to Make the Bamboo Put Out Shoots” presented more of a problem, for my sincerity might not move Heaven and Earth to such an extent. Still, even if my tears failed to produce bamboo shoots, it would mean no more than a loss of face, whereas “Lying on Ice to Find Carp” could really prove a matter of life and death. The climate in my native parts is so temperate that in the depth of winter only a thin layer of ice forms on the water, but if a child however light lay on the ice—crack!—the ice would be bound to break and I would fall in before any carp had time to swim over to me. Of course, filial piety practised in disregard of one's own life will make God work unlooked-for miracles. But I was too young then to understand such things.

  The two stories I found hardest to understand, even reacting with aversion to them, were “Old Lai Zi Amuses His Parents” and “Guo Ju Buries His Son.”

  I can still remember my different reactions to both: the old man lying on his back before his parents, and the child in his mother's arms. Old man and child alike were holding a rattle. This is really a delightful toy. Known in Peking as a “small drum,” the ancients called it tao. According to Zhu Xi, “The tao is a small drum with ears on both sides which beat against the drum when the handle is shaken.” This is what makes a rattle. Still such a thing was out of place in Old Lai Zi's hand, he should instead have been leaning on a stick. His whole behaviour was bogus, an insult to children. I never looked a second time at that picture. As soon as I reached that page I would quickly turn over.

  I lost track long ago of that Picture-Book of Twenty-Four Acts of Filial Piety. The copy now in my possession has illustrations by the Japanese Oda Umisen. The account of Old Lai Zi in this is as follows: “Aged seventy, he did not call himself old but habitually wore motley garments and gambolled like a child before his parents. He also often carried water up to the hall, and would pretend to trip up and fall, then cry like a baby to amuse his parents.” The account in my old copy was probably similar. What disgusted me was his pretending to trip up. Most small children, whether disobedient or filial, don't like being hypocritical, and when listening to stories they don't like being told lies. Anyone who pays the least attention to child psychology knows this.

  However, if we look up older texts, we find Old Lai Zi was not such a hypocrite. Shi Jueshou's Accounts of Filial Sons relates: “Old Lai Zi... habitually wore motley colours to please his parents. Once when mounting the steps to the hall with water fetched for them to drink he fell down and, in order not to distress them, lay there and cried like a baby.” (See Book 413 of The Imperial Encyclopedia of the Taiping Era.)This sounds more reasonable than the present-day account. Who knows why gentlemen of a later age had to change him into a hypocrite before they could rest easy in their minds? When Deng Bodao abandoned his son to save his nephew, I fancy he simply “abandoned” him, nothing more; but again muddle-headed men had to claim that, unwilling to let it go at that, he needs tie his son to a tree to stop the boy from
overtaking them. Like “taking delight in what is nauseating,” this presentation of inhumanity as morality vilifies the ancients and perverts posterity. Old Lai Zi is a case in point. Regarded by Neo-Confucian gentlemen as an ideal example of impeccable character, in the minds of children he is dead and done for.

  But as for Guo Ju's son playing with his rattle, he really deserves compassion. In his mother's arms he is smiling gleefully, yet his father is digging a hole in which to bury him. The caption says: Guo Ju of the Han Dynasty was poor, and his mother denied herself food to give it to his three-year-old son. Guo told his wife: we are too poor to provide well for my mother, and our son is depriving her of food. Should we not bury him? But Liu Xiang's Lives of Filial Sons gives another, rather different, version. It says that Guo Ju, a rich man, gave all his property to his two younger brothers; his son was a new-born babe, not a three-year-old. The conclusion is similar: “He dug a pit two feet deep and found a crock of gold on which was written: This is Heaven's reward for Guo Ju. Let no officials confiscate it, no men seize it!”

  At first I broke into a real cold sweat for that child, not breathing freely again until the crock of gold had been dug up. But by then not only did I no longer aspire to be a filial son myself, I dreaded the thought of my father acting as one. At that time our family fortunes were declining, I often heard my parents worrying as to where our next meal was to come from, and my grandmother was old. Suppose my father followed Guo Ju's example, wasn't I the obvious person to be buried? If things worked out exactly as before and he too dug up a crock of gold, naturally that would be happiness great as Heaven; but small as I was at the time I seem to have grasped that, in this world, such a coincidence couldn't be counted on.

  Thinking back now, I see what a simpleton I was really. This is because today I understand that no one in fact observes these old fetishes. Despatches and telegrams galore urge us to preserve order and morality, but seldom indeed do we see gentlemen lying naked on the rice or generals alighting from their cars to carry rice. Besides, now that I am a grown man, having read a few old books and bought a few new ones—The Imperial Encyclopedia of the Taiping Era, Lives of Filial Sons of Old, The Population Problem, Birth Control, The Twentieth Century Belongs to the Children and so forth—I have many arguments to oppose being buried. It is simply that times have changed. In those days I really was rather apprehensive. For if a deep hole was dug but no gold discovered, if rattle and all I was buried and covered with earth, which was then firmly tramped down, what way out could there possibly be? Although I thought this might not necessarily happen, from that time on I dreaded hearing my parents deplore their poverty and dreaded the sight of my white-haired grandmother, feeling that there was no place for the two of us, or at least that she represented a threat to me. Later on this impression faded from day to day, but vestiges of it lingered on until at last she died—this doubtless is something that the Confucian scholar who gave me The Picture-Book of Twenty-Four Acts of Filial Piety could never have foreseen.

  May 10

  ■ The Fair of the Five Fierce Gods

  In addition to New Year and other festivals, we children looked forward to the temple fairs in honour of certain gods. But because my home was rather out of the way, not till the afternoon did the processions pass our door, by which time the retinue had dwindled away until there was almost nothing left of it. Often, after hours of craning our necks and waiting, all we saw was some dozen men running hastily past carrying an effigy of a god with a golden, blue or crimson face. And that was all.

  I always hoped that this procession would be bigger and better than the last, but the result was invariably more or less the same. And all I was left with was a souvenir bought for one copper before the god passed by—a whistle made of a bit of clay, a scrap of coloured paper, a split bamboo, and two or three cock's feathers. This whistle, known as a “tootle-toot,” produced a piercing blast, and I blew it lustily for two or three days.

  Now when I read Zhang Dai's Reminiscences, I am struck by the splendour of temple fairs in his time, even if these Ming Dynasty writers do tend to exaggerate. The practice of welcoming the dragon king in praying for rain still continues, but it is very simply done, with only some dozen men carrying a dragon and making it twist and coil, while village boys dress up as sea monsters. In the old days they acted plays, and it was most spectacular. Here is Zhang Dai's description of a pageant with characters from Shui Hu Zhuan (Water Margin):

  “... They went out in all directions to find one fellow who was short and swarthy, another who tall and hefty, a mendicant friar, a fat monk, a stout woman and a slender one. They looked for a pale face too and a head set askew, a red moustache and a handsome beard, a strong dark man and one with ruddy cheeks and a long beard. They searched high and low in the town, and if they failed to find any character they went outside the city walls, to the villages and hamlets in the hills, even to neighbouring prefectures and counties. A high price was paid to the thirty-six men who played the heroes of Liangshan; but each looked his part to the life, and they went out in force on horseback and on foot....”

  Who could resist watching such a lifelike pageant of the men and women of days gone by? The pity is that such brave shows disappeared long ago along with the Ming Dynasty.

  Though these processions were not prohibited by the authorities—unlike women's long gowns in Shanghai today or the discussion of politics in Peking—still, women and children were not allowed to watch them, and educated people or the so-called literati seldom went to look on either. Only layabouts and idlers would gather before the temple or yamen to watch the fun; and since most of my knowledge of these festivities comes from their accounts it is not the firsthand observation so much valued by researchers. I do, however, remember once witnessing a rather fine show myself. First came a boy on horseback called the Announcer. Then, after a considerable interval, the High Pole arrived. This was a great bamboo pole to which a long banner was attached, and it was carried in both hands by a huge fat man dripping with perspiration. When in the mood he would balance the pole on his head or teeth, or even on the tip of his nose. He was followed by stilt-walkers, children on platforms carried by men, and other children on hobbyhorses. There were people dressed in red like felons too, loaded with cangues and chains, some of whom were also children. To me each part was glorious and each participant extremely lucky—I very likely envied them this chance to show off. I used to wish I could have some serious illness, so that my mother would go to the temple to promise the god that I would masquerade as a felon.... So far, though, I have failed to have any association with these processions.

  Once I was to go to Dongguan Village for the Fair of the Five Fierce Gods. This was a great occasion in my childhood, for this fair was the grandest in the whole county and Dongguan Village was very far from my home, more than twenty miles by boat from the town. There were two remarkable temples there. One was the Temple to Lady Mei, the virgin mentioned in the Tales of Liao Zhai who remained unmarried after the death of her betrothed and became a goddess after she died, but then appropriated someone else's husband. On the shrine, sure enough, the images of a young man and woman were smiling at each other, counter to all the laws of propriety. The other was the Temple to the Five Fierce Gods, the very name of which was strange enough. According to those with a passion for research, these were the Wu Tong Gods. There is no conclusive proof of this, however. The images were five men who did not look particularly fierce, and behind them sat five wives in a row, this intermingling of sexes falling far short of the strict segregation practised in Peking theatres. In fact, this was counter to all the laws of propriety too; but since these were the Five Fierce Gods, nothing could be done about it. They were obviously an exception to the rule.

  Since Dongguan Village was a long way from the town, we all got up at dawn. The big boat with three windows fitted with shell-panes booked the night before was already moored in the harbour, and to it our men started carrying the chairs, food, a stove f
or brewing tea, and a hamper of cakes. Laughing and skipping, I urged them to get a move on. Suddenly from their respectful expression I knew there was something up. I looked round and saw my father standing behind me.

  “Go and fetch your book,” he said slowly.

  The book he meant was the Rhymed History which served as my primer. I had no other book. In our district children started school when their years were odd not even: that is how I know I must have been seven at the time.

  With trepidation I fetched the book. He made me sit beside him at the table in the centre of the hall and read to him sentence by sentence. Inwardly quaking, I read to him sentence by sentence.

  Two sentences made one line, and I must have read twenty or thirty lines.

  “Learn them by heart,” he said. “If you cannot recite them correctly, you will not be allowed to go to the fair.”

  This said, he stood up and walked into his room.

  I felt as if someone had doused me with icy water. But what could I do? Naturally I had to read and re-read, and force myself to memorize—I would have to recite it too.

  “In the beginning was Pan Gu,

  Born of primeval void;

  He was the first to rule the world,

  The chaos to divide.”

  That is the kind of book it was. The first four lines are all I can remember. I have forgotten the rest, including of course the twenty or thirty lines I was forced to memorize that day. I remember hearing it said at the time that studying the Rhymed History was more useful than studying the Thousand Characters or the Hundred Surnames, for from it you could learn the outline of all history past and present. It is naturally a very good thing to know the outline of all history past and present. My trouble was that I couldn't understand a word. “In the beginning was Pan Gu”—to me this was mere gibberish. I read on and learned it by heart.