by AnonYMous
A love-crazed pair die in a single moment;
Two crazed spirits head for the courts of hell.
When Yuan Shou and his wife saw that both their son and Paria were dead, they stroked the bodies and sobbed bitterly. At once they sent servants to call Mistress Du and take the news to friends and relatives, who came to mourn in great numbers. Among the mourners were Jia Ming and Wei Bi, who, like the others, were astonished to hear that Paria had chosen to die with her husband. Yuan Shou brought out the “Eternal Farewell” that Paria had left behind at her death and showed it to everyone, and they were deeply moved. Some of them took it upon themselves to copy it out, and in the teahouses and taverns of the city it became a sensational topic of discussion.
Let me turn to Mistress Du, who was not in the least distressed to receive the message that her husband had died. Calling for a sedan chair, she went to the house on Old Lane. When she found Yuan You’s and Paria’s corpses lying on the same bed in Paria’s room, she flew into a rage and ordered her servants to take Paria’s body off the bed and lay it on the floor. Then, affecting a tragic voice, she sobbed, “Husband! You treated your wife as a stranger and spent all your time lusting after this witch. That’s what brought on your illness and caused your death in this place. Here am I, with no children and no one I can depend on. What am I to do?” Putting on her mourning garments, she noticed that Paria was dressed in new clothes and told her maid to strip Paria’s body and wear the clothes herself. She also told the maid to dress Paria in her own threadbare garments.
While Mistress Du was in the middle of her rampage, Yuan Shou had sent a servant to the coffin shop to collect the coffin made for Yuan You. He also bought a twelve-board coffin with a flower design intended for Paria’s laying-in. But the two coffins had no sooner been carried in than Mistress Du realized one of them was to hold Paria. “This vile witch brought my husband to his death,” she raged. “Take her body out this instant and throw it in the wilds so that pigs and dogs can gnaw on her bones and eagles tear at her heart and liver. Even that would not be enough to satisfy me. You spent a lot of money on her coffin—well, she’s out of luck!” She ordered the coffin taken back to the shop.
She ignored the pleas of Yuan You’s parents, who became so distraught that they fumed and sobbed. Then her women relatives tried to intervene. “Enmity stops at death,” they urged. “Your own family bought that coffin for her. It’s already been paid for and delivered. How can you justify sending it back? Think of it as a kind deed you’ve done. Let it be!”
“If they don’t do as I say and take that coffin back, I’ll dash my brains out right here and now, and then you can put me in that coffin instead of her. Once my eyes are closed, you can buy whatever chestnut or sandalwood coffin you like for her. I won’t see it, so I won’t get angry.” She banged her head against the coffin and rolled on the ground, raging on and on without a pause. When the women saw how badly she was behaving despite their advice, they ceased trying to stop her.
Yuan Shou was afraid she really might try to kill herself, so he choked back his anger and told the men who had brought the coffin to return it to the shop. Mistress Du’s brother, Du Fuyu, insisted on taking charge. He told Yuan Shou to buy a cheap coffin and quickly lay Paria’s body in it. Yuan Shou, who had been moved by Paria’s wholehearted devotion to his son, as well as by her determination to die with him, had intended to place her coffin beside his and then, at the funeral, to have both coffins brought out and buried together in the family tomb. But when he saw the manic way in which Mistress Du was behaving, he could not very well keep her coffin at home but had to have it carried outside West Gate. On the west side of Dutian Temple he bought a grave site and had her buried there. Later he called in Buddhist and Daoist priests and yin-yang masters and had Yuan You laid in his coffin, which he kept in the house on Old Lane. After the laying-in, the friends and relatives knelt down before the coffin.
A contemporary poet was impressed by the fact that Paria, although originally a courtesan, had so passionate a nature as to sacrifice herself in order to die with her husband. Hers was a rare case in the world of prostitution, he believed, and what she did was an extraordinary act. He wrote an old-style poem about her:
Prostitutes come from houses of ill fame;
Even if they marry, they rarely succeed.
Has any such marriage lasted to the end?
A sacrifice like hers is rare indeed.
How sad that she fell into prostitution!
With a touch of rouge, a flowerlike face,
Her singing would rival the songbird’s notes,
Her dancing summon the phoenix’s grace.
As a girl of only fourteen summers,
In this milieu a wonder to behold.
Young blades who loved her talent and beauty
Would not have begrudged a fortune in gold.
From the time she promised her love to Yuan,
She was determined to marry, she swore,
But gaily emerging from degradation,
She heard every day the she-lion’s roar.2
Her delicate beauty suffered abuse;
Where can a cure for jealousy be found?
Fierce winds set the willow floss dancing,
And showers strewed blossoms over the ground.
Too listless to powder her tear-stained face,
The shame and sorrow she contrived to bear.
Through bitterly cold nights she could not sleep,
And in her room she yielded to despair.
“Pretty face, sad fate”—as sad as can be.
While he was too weak to rise from his bed,
She devotedly nursed and tended him,
Pleading with the gods to die in his stead.
Worried that his life was nearing its end,
On her own personal savings she freely drew.
Marry again while you’re young, he told her.
If you go, she answered, I’ll go with you.
In secret she mixed opium with liquor;
As she swallowed it down her face changed hue.
Without a care she threw herself away,
Hoping in the next life to wed anew.
That the world should hold such a love-crazed pair,
Who shared a bed in life and died as one!
The boat’s oar startles the ducks into flight;
The axe falls, the trees entwined are undone.
With the ducks in flight and the trees undone,
The dream is cut short and the hour is late.
Alas!
If whores can follow their men to the grave,
Shame on the wellborn who take a new mate!
There were others, too, who took her actions as the subject of their poetry and exchanged countless poems with their friends, but it is impossible to do justice to them here.
Yuan Shou could not bear the thought that, after Paria had given up her life to die with her husband, he had not been able to lay her body in a good coffin. He waited until the hundredth day after Yuan You’s funeral and then invited the local warden and neighbors to sign a joint petition to confer on Paria a title of posthumous nobility. They took their petition to the director of studies and the magistrate of Jiangdu county and formally requested that the honor be conferred.
If you are wondering whether the petition was granted, please turn to the next chapter.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A convict is sent into exile in accordance with the law,
And a heroic woman’s tablet is enshrined by the emperor’s grace.
Because Paria had sacrificed her life to die with her husband, Yuan Shou had been filled with admiration for her and had invited the warden and the neighbors to join him in presenting a petition to both the director of studies and the magistrate of Jiangdu county. The officials accepted the petition and within a few days approved it, each appending a statement of his own findings. They then prepared a document to submit to the prefect of Yangzhou, the intendant of th
e Huaiyang circuit, and the Jiangning lieutenant governor of the province. Each of these men appended his own statement and sent it on to the governor, the director of studies, and the governor-general of Liangjiang, who made a joint submission to the emperor. After Yuan Shou had received the officials’ endorsement, he wrote out an announcement on yellow paper entitled “Petition Requesting Bestowal of Honor by Emperor Endorsed by Three High Officials,” stuck it on both sides of his gate, and awaited news of the emperor’s response.
Let me turn to Wu Zhen, who had been locked up in the Ganquan county jail for over a year. One day the governor of Jiangsu received an urgent warrant from the Ministry of Justice. His office then drew up a document and sent it on to Ganquan county. On receipt of it, the magistrate promptly told his clerk to prepare both full and summary reports with signed comments and detailed two men to serve as prisoner escorts. (Their names were none other than Zhang Qian and Li Wan.1) Next morning he authorized the jail warden to check the name and transfer the prisoner, then issued a warrant and gave it to the escorts to take to the prison and fetch him. Wu Zhen had learned the day before that the warrant was due to arrive and had sent word home in time. Hearing that the escorts had come for him, he brought his baggage and clothes out of his cell. The escorts took him to the jail warden’s office to wait until the warden mounted his tribunal, checked Wu Zhen’s name, examined his manacles, and issued money for rations. He sealed up the warrant and the two reports and handed them to the escorts, then left the tribunal. The escorts brought Wu Zhen out of the jail, called a porter to carry his baggage, and took him out of the city by way of South Gate.
Wu Zhen’s wife, Mistress Wang, and their two sons—the elder eleven years old, the younger just nine—accompanied by her two brothers had stationed themselves at the end of the road to greet him. His brothers-in-law invited Wu Zhen and the escorts to a quiet restaurant, where they and the escorts drank wine while Wu Zhen and his wife sat off to one side. “It was foolish of me to dally with a courtesan and incite someone’s hatred,” said Wu Zhen. “I was framed, and now I’m on my way into exile, leaving you on your own while still a young woman.” He pointed to his two sons. “Our brats are still very young. You’ll need to be strict with them and see that they work hard at their studies. When they grow up, they must learn to behave properly. Don’t let them go near any brothels. If they don’t obey you, you can use what is happening to me today as a warning. I doubt that after this I’ll ever be able to come home again; if we are to meet again, it will have to be in the next life, and I leave all of the family responsibilities in your hands. But now my heart is beating too wildly, and I can’t say any more.” His eyes filled with tears.
Mistress Wang and the two boys cried their eyes out. At length, fighting back her tears, she said, “Don’t worry about the family. I’ll do everything in my power to support them. I only hope that after a year or so there’ll be an amnesty and we can be reunited. See you take good care of yourself on the road. When you get there, send me a letter to put my mind at rest.” She began sobbing again. Her brothers came over to calm her, and she and Wu Zhen finally stopped their crying. The brothers consoled Wu Zhen for a while, then led him over to their table.
“I’m asking you to look after the family for me,” said Wu Zhen. “My two boys will be relying on you for discipline.”
“Don’t worry,” they said. “We’ll make a point of looking after things. Take good care of yourself on the journey.” They urged Wu Zhen and the two escorts to eat and drink. The brothers then paid the bill, and Mistress Wang gave her husband clothes for the different seasons as well as money for travel expenses, and he handed the clothes to the porter to carry and tucked the money away. He and his wife clung to each other, reluctant to part, while the escorts kept urging him to leave. Finally he steeled himself and left the restaurant with them, followed by the porter.
Before they had gone far, Jia Ming and Wei Bi, who had only just heard the news, came rushing up from behind to see him off. After offering much comforting advice, they each gave him a farewell present and said good-bye with tears in their eyes, then watched as he set out on his journey. Afterward they went back into the city and parted company.
Mistress Wang and her sons, crying brokenheartedly, watched Wu Zhen’s figure recede into the distance until they could see him no longer. Her brothers comforted them, and then Mistress Wang went back to her home in the city, to bring the boys up and look after the household, and that is where I shall leave her.
When the governor-general, the governor, and the director of studies had received the submission from the Jiangning lieutenant governor, they prepared a joint petition to the emperor. It was remitted to the Ministries of Rites and Revenue and then, following clarification, resubmitted to the emperor, who, with his great benevolence, issued an order giving permission for Paria’s tablet to be enshrined and providing public funds for the construction of a memorial arch. The ministerial order left the capital and made its way from one office to another until it arrived at the Jiangdu yamen. On receiving it, the magistrate sent runners to summon Yuan Shou to court and gave him money from the treasury. The sum allocated for constructing the arch was originally thirty taels, but each office had deducted its charges. Yuan Shou signed a receipt for what remained and took it home with him. Adding some of his own money, he bought materials, hired workmen, and started construction of the arch. He also borrowed funeral articles and insignia, a sedan for the spirit tablet, and so forth. When everything was ready, he selected an auspicious date for the enshrinement. Friends and relatives were informed in advance. When Jia Ming, Wei Bi, and the friends and relatives heard the news, they all brought presents. On the day itself, the neighboring streets were packed with people, both men and women—an exceptionally lively scene.
Let me turn to Mu Zhu, Yuan You’s cousin. He lived in the Mu Family Village on the south side of Huo Family Bridge, where he worked on the family farm. He had taken a wife, who had recently given birth to a son, and Mu Zhu had been meaning to visit the jeweler’s on New Victory Street in the city to buy a silver chain and bracelet for the baby. It so happened that Yuan Shou had sent someone to inform the Mu family of the date of the enshrinement, and Mu Zhu’s father had promptly prepared congratulatory presents and told Mu Zhu to go to the city for two purposes: to convey congratulations to the Yuan family, and also to buy the chain and bracelet for his grandson. Mu Zhu was elated at the prospect and changed into a completely new outfit—hat, clothes, shoes, and socks—before heading for the city. When he reached the main street outside Old Lane in the Old City, he found crowds of men and women jammed tightly together. He didn’t know what the occasion was, but he was forced to observe the scene from a shop doorway. He heard a gong and saw two pairs of tall papier-mâché and bamboo-splint lanterns on which the words “By imperial order, gracious permission for enshrinement” were written in red ink. Then came several pairs of placards signifying the officials’ rank with embossed gold characters on a vermilion background, reading, “Candidate for Director of Studies,” “Graduate of Provincial Military Examination,” and “Candidate for Battalion Commander,” “Dame of Candidate for Assistant County Magistrate,” and the like. There were also two placards reading, “Keep away” and “Silence,” four “Clear the road flying tiger” banners, as well as civil and military insignia. There were also two pairs of yellow signboards with red characters reading, “By imperial order, gracious permission for enshrinement.” There were many insignia of rank, a yellow silk umbrella with a gold button, a yellow parasol with a dragon painted on it, and four censers giving off a faint scent. Behind came eight men wearing pale yellow summer hats with red buttons on top and uniforms of yellow cloth, carrying a covered yellow sedan on which an incense table had been set. Behind the sedan were guards and runners, red umbrellas and green parasols, a pair of silver maces, as well as drummers and flutists playing. There were also men from the garrison on two pairs of horses, and a junior officer wearing a brimless silk
hat with a gold button on top and a military uniform riding a lead horse. He was followed by four artemisia braziers.
There were many relatives and friends in bright clothes and caps, each holding Ten Thousand Year incense as they walked proudly by. There were also two servants carrying a pair of large round horn lanterns on which was written “Title of Dame imperially conferred.” Behind came four laborers wearing red summer hats without tassels and black uniforms, who were carrying a red sandalwood sedan with carved designs. From its four corners hung small square glass lanterns. Inside the sedan was a spirit tablet of nanmu with pale blue characters that read, “Tablet of the Lady Zhen,2 virtuous wife of Youying, Master Yuan, on whom according to precedent the title of an Official of the Eighth Rank is conferred. By imperial order to honor her chastity, permission graciously given to build an arch and enshrine her tablet.” Directly behind the sedan came a host of different insignia.
No sooner had the procession passed by than the many spectators who had come to see the exciting spectacle began to voice their opinions. One said, “The tablet in that sedan just now was that of a woman by the name of Paria. She not only sacrificed herself at the time of her husband’s death, she also had a talent for expressing herself. I’ve read her ‘Eternal Farewell,’ which is genuinely moving. She’s the most remarkable person ever to come out of the brothels. What a pity she was denied a good coffin and a worthy end to her life! But by living in this glorious age, thanks to His Imperial Majesty’s great benevolence, her name will be passed down through the ages—a case of posthumous fame.”
“I’ve seen a lot of jealous women,” said the second one, “but I’ve never seen anyone to equal Yuan You’s wife. It’s all very well to be jealous and quarrel with your husband during his lifetime, but after her husband’s death she transferred her anger to Paria. She stripped off Paria’s clothes and didn’t dress her properly for the laying-in or allow her a good coffin. Such vicious behavior puts her beyond all other jealous viragoes. And now today Paria is being given this honor! I just wonder what sort of end the wife will come to.”
