by Tam King-fai
Middle School, where he spent two productive and meaningful years.
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46
A Garden of One’s Own
A Memory (1934)
In the middle of the Qiantang River, there suddenly emerged a long
sandbar. It was about three or four li wide, dividing the river in two.
People traveling between Hangzhou and Xixing had to take two ferries,
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for three or four li.1 When they reached the other side of the sandbar, they then had to catch another ferry to reach the other shore. This
went on for the major part of a year. People said that such an unusual
phenomenon had not been seen for a hundred years.
I will never forget that day: It was the eighteenth day of the ninth
month by the old calendar.2 I was on my way to Shanghai from White
Horse Lake. As I had some business to take care of in Hangzhou, I
decided not to go by way of Ningbo, but through Hangzhou instead.
On the long journey from Cao E to Xixing, I could already hear people
talking about the sandbar in the Qiantang River, saying things such
I[ ¹
the city,3 IVL VW_ PMZM IZM _W 9QIVIVO :Q^MZ[º 7Z ¹2][ JMNWZM PM
Taiping Rebellion,4 a sandbar also rose up from the river, but it didn’t
remain for as long as this one. No wonder the world is in such turmoil
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fascinated by what I heard.
When I got to the Xixing side of the river, it was about four o’clock
in the afternoon, and sure enough, I saw a sandbar above the water in
the middle of the river, and a lot of people and rickshaws going back
and forth on it. After I got on the ferry, I suddenly remembered that it
was the eighteenth day of the ninth month, and, judging by the custom
people had of coming on the eighteenth day of the eighth month to
watch the tide come in on the river, the tide would probably come in at
1
Li, a measurement of length, about one-third of a mile.
2
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3
The reference is unclear. This may be a general remark on the expansion of
Hangzhou city. Whereas, in the past, West Lake lay outside the city limits, now, as the city grew, West Lake had become part of the city itself.
4
A revolt that took place in the mid-nineteenth century led by Hong Xiuquan, a
frustrated scholar who suffered under the illusion that he was the son of God.
of the Manchu rule that required men to shave the tops of their heads.
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Xia Mianzun
47
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QKIUMQV_PQTM1_I[_ITSQVOWVPM[IVLJIZ'º1KW]TLV¼PMTXNMMTQVO
worried. A few of the passengers also spoke of the tide, and we came to
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WVWPM[IVLJIZJ][IaWVPMNMZZaQV[MIL]VQTPMQLMZMKMLM[º
When the ferry got to the sandbar, dozens of rickshaw pullers
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[WWV 0]ZZa ]X IVL OM QVº 5W[ WN PM XI[[MVOMZ[ R]UXML ]X WVW
the sandbar. Even those who had agreed just a short while before to
stay behind ended up going away in rickshaws. Besides me, there were
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came to accost us, the pullers speaking in Xiaoshan dialect. Some said,
¹
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?M _WZS PMZM M^MZa LIa¸[PW]TLV¼ _M SVW_'º 1V PM MVL IOIQV[ W]Z
better judgment, the few of us remaining on the ferry also stepped into
rickshaws.
Still worried that we might be caught by the tide while aboard the
rickshaws, we couldn’t wait to get to the ferry pier ahead of us. Who
would have guessed that when we were only halfway there, the ferry
would have already pulled up the gangplank in preparation for sailing
away! The pier in the middle of the river was a temporary one and did
not have a receiving lighter, and once the ferry had gone, there was no
boat for us to get into. At that moment, the people around us started
[PW]QVO¹
rickshaws were heading in the direction of the shore, leaving only the
three or four on which we were riding on the sandbar. The only thing to
do was turn back to the pier from which we had come. Fortunately, the
ferry that was there to take passengers from Hangzhou to Xixing had
not yet left.
Right around us, all was quiet, and we could hear the thundering of
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When we jumped onto the gangplank, we could see the head of the
tide. The passengers on the ferry put down another plank to widen the
gangway, and together they pulled up the rickshaws as well. The tide
had reached us by then, and was surprisingly high. The ferry bobbed
up and down violently, but at that instant, we had forgotten the danger
of the waves and instead felt deeply the joy of being alive and the
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48
A Garden of One’s Own
sympathy of the human world.
After the tide passed, the ferry took off for Xixing. Like students
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itself once again heading for Hangzhou from Xixing. It was getting dark,
and we could vaguely make out the lights on the other side of the river.
The tide had covered the sandbar and the Qiantang River had again
become one. The ferry could now go directly to the pier in Hangzhou,
and there was no need to get rickshaw rides in the middle of the river.
When the ferry got to the point where the sandbar had been, one of our
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out the depth of the water. Little did he expect that the punt would go
all the way down into the water without touching the bottom.
¹
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_W]TLPI^MPIXXMVMLW]['º
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PQVSIJW]Qº
I had to agree with them.
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Xia Mianzun
49
Winter at White Horse Lake (1933)
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PMV 1 ÅZ[
moved to White Horse Lake that I came to appreciate most profoundly
what winter was like. Since that time, White Horse Lake has become
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Chunhui Middle School’s new building stood tall on the other side
of the lake, and on this side there were several new bungalows at the
bottom of the hill, where my family and Mr. Liu Xinru’s lived. Apart
from us, though, there was no one else within two or three li. We moved from busy Hangzhou to this desolate hilly area toward the end of the
eleventh month, and for us, that was like casting ourselves into the polar
region.
The wind howled there nearly every day, much like the howl of
a tiger. The houses, though newly built, were shoddily made, and the
wind that came through the gaps in the windows and the door was
extraordinarily piercing. Even after we had covered the gaps with layers
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the hinges and joints. When the wind was particularly strong, we would
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whole family would nestle under the quilt and listen in silence to the
bellowing of the wind and the roiling of the water in the lake.
The little room against the hill was least exposed to the wind and
served as my study. I often pulled my Russian hat farther down over
my head and worked there under the kerosene lamp until late at night.
The pine trees roared in the wind and the window looked out to the
NZW[a UWWV _PQTM [Y]MISQVO ZI[ [K]ZZQML IJW] WV PM L][a ÆWWZ )
moments like this, I felt deeply the poetic sense of bleakness. Unwilling
to go to bed, I would sit there all alone poking at the ashes, imagining
myself to be a character in a landscape painting indulging in deep and
quiet reveries.
Nowadays, there are trees all around White Horse Lake, but in
those days, there was not a single tree, and one could get a complete
and unobstructed view of the moon and sun from the moment they rose
from behind one set of hills to the moment they set behind another.
When the sun was out, and as long as there was no wind, it would be so
warm that it wasn’t like winter at all. We would all sit in the courtyard
and bask in the sun, and would even eat lunch outdoors as we would
have dinner in the summer. Wherever the sun moved, so would we
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50
A Garden of One’s Own
with our stools and chairs. When the wind struck suddenly, we would
grab our chairs and stools and scurry back into the house like refugees,
quickly closing the door. On a normal day, the wind would come toward
the evening and cease at midnight. When there was a storm, though, the
wind would continue day and night, not stopping for two or three days.
On the coldest days, the ground would look sickly white like cement, the
hills would be frozen into a dull purple, and the lake would be covered
with a veneer of dark blue.
I never found snow a nuisance. On snowy days, it would be
particularly bright indoors, and there was almost no need to light the
lamps at night. The snow would remain on the distant hills for half a
month, and all we had to do was raise our eyes and look out the window
to take in its beauty. But this was the south, after all, and it only snowed
once or twice every winter.
What I remember of winter in White Horse Lake is the wind.
Geography explains why it was so windy. On all sides of the lake are
hills, except for a gap of half a li on the north shore that seems almost like a wide bag opened on purpose to welcome in the wind. The scenery
of the lake region is not much different from that of other average
scenic places, but its wind is unique. Anyone who has been to White
Horse Lake knows just how much wind there is and how strong it is.
The wind has always been an important element in our impressions
of winter from long past, and the wind of White Horse Lake is all the
more out of the ordinary.
And now we have lived as lodgers in Shanghai for a long time.
When we occasionally hear the wind late at night, we speak of White
0WZ[M4ISM[IaQVO¹1_WVLMZPW_[ZWVOPM_QVLQ[PMZMWVQOPº
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qr
Zhou Zuoren
Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967) is the younger brother of Lu Xun. The two
shared the goals of the New Culture Movement, collaborating on a
number of projects when they were students in Japan, before parting
ways for political and literary reasons. Lu Xun proceeds to exploit the
polemical use of literature while Zhou defends the independence of
TQMZI]ZM NZWU XWTQQK[
which this anthology is entitled, comes from an essay of Zhou’s of the
same title.
Together with Mao Dun, Zheng Zhenduo, Xu Dishan, and Ye
Shengtao, Zhou is a founder of the important group Literary Study
Society ( Wenxue yanjiu hui). He also joined Lu Xun, Sun Fuyuan, and Lin Yutang in founding the group Yusi.
During the Second World War when the Guomintang evacuated from
Beijing, Zhou stayed behind and became the president of Peking
University. Later, he also accepted an appointment from the Japanese
puppet government as the Librarian of Peking University, for which he
was later charged with treason and was subsequently imprisoned.
Zhou stresses the personal side of the essay, to such an extent that
it is sometimes difficult to separate the literary persona from the
autobiographical writer. The three essays in this anthology therefore
have an intimate tone, with two of them written in letter form and the
third one as a short piece of reminiscence.
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52
A Garden of One’s Own
Black-Canopied Boats (1922)
Dear Zirong,
I learned from your letter that you will be visiting my native region
and that you want me to give you some pointers. To tell you the truth,
what is really memorable about my hometown is not the place itself. But
since I was born, grew up, and spent more than ten years there, I do
know something about it, and that is why I am writing to acquaint you
with the place.
What I want to tell you about has nothing to do with the local
customs of the area, of which there are too many to relate in a single
letter. In any case, they will be immediately obvious once you are there
to see for yourself, and there is no need for me to dwell on them here.
What I would rather tell you about is a very interesting thing: boats. In
your own hometown, you travel most of the time in rickshaws, trams,
or cars, but where I come from, these are not to be found. Except in
the city or up in the mountains, where people ride in sedan chairs,
people gen
erally use boats to get around. There are two kinds of boats:
ordinary black-canopied ones and white-canopied boats, which for the
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and hence I won’t say anything about it.
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in the shape of a half-circle and are made of bamboo strips and leaves
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a pane that provides shade from the sun. The pane is also semi-circular
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These scales are about an inch in diameter and nearly transparent.
They are like glass, which are quite durable and allow some light to
KWUM PZW]OP IVL IZM PMZMNWZM KITTML ¹ZIV[XIZMV QTM[º
transparent tiles, which give the boat its name, refer to the two-tiled
panes in the middle cabin and the third pane in the back cabin. There
are usually two oars in the back and a bamboo punt in the front, which
1
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UMVVOWIº
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Zhou Zuoren
53
is used to steady the boat. On the bow is painted a set of eyes and
eyebrows that look like those of a tiger, but it seems to be smiling and
looks rather comical and not scary at all.
The white canopies have somewhat different features. The canopy
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the cabin is wide enough for a square table, which can seat four people
in a game of mah-jongg—you must have learned this game already?
placed on the bottom of the boat, your head is only two or three inches
from the top of the canopy. You can rest your hands on the bulwark on
both sides, or even outside the boat. Sitting on this kind of boat is like
sitting right on the water, and when the boat nears the shore, the earth
is close to your eyes and nose. If you run into strong winds and large
