by Tam King-fai
upon a heightened moment, where a line of poetry from the Tang poet
Cen Shen triggers in her a host of complex feelings that one comes to
associate with home. One observes the same kind of creative process at
work in many other essays in this anthology as well.
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174
A Garden of One’s Own
Home (1936)
¹0WUMº PM WXQK aW] I[[QOVML UM PI[ JMMV WV Ua UQVL NWZ I TWVO
time, and it wouldn’t hurt to tell you, I think, that this assignment
from you has actually become a heavy burden to me. Every day, I mull
over the best way to approach it. You were right when you said that I
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your own cleverness! Do you think you can get a glimpse of a person’s
true demeanor from a mirror alone? Do you think you can discover
the substance of a person’s life and the essence of his character from
a description of his home life? What a pity it is that I don’t even like
looking at myself in the mirror, and that, though you know that I stay
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food I eat, and what clothes I wear when I am at home!
What should I write about, then? The situation of the average
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comforts and sorrows that home life bestows upon a person? Whether
everyone does or should have a family? Whether home is something to
be cherished or abhorred? These questions all get intertwined with each
other in my mind, driving me to distraction. As the old novels would put
it, this topic is haunting me like a nightmare.
I came out tonight with my mind all entangled in these thoughts.
See how clear the sky is at this time, as clear as if it had been washed!
The moon is like a discus thrown up to the sky by a Greek youth in
antiquity, or a breastplate left there by an ancient warrior, radiating a
cold and dazzling glow as the stars around it shine their brilliant light
onto it. At this moment, I am on the lake, and the boat is moving along
the shadows of the hill. Under the dark blue sky, clusters of trees adorn
the islands that are scattered over the vast white water. I imagine what
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huts in the quiet moonlight, boatmen lay down in front of the oil lamp
on the stove. The women sat behind it, and the boatmen could not help
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must have felt much more secure than what we can hope for nowadays
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at Cai Shi Ji living in their boats. All of their daily activities—eating,
resting and working—are done in the small cabin. Floating from place
WXTIKMPM_PWTMLIaTWVOLWPMaÅVLQMVRWaIJTMWZZaQVO'1PQVS
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Fang Lingru
175
of your topic again. It was so easy and simple for you to come up with
PMWXQKJ]QN aW]OWIPMILIVLI[SIÅ[PMZUIVPMIJW^MY]M[QWV¸
a small question, really—he will look at you, his eyes wide, and not
know what to say.
than just the bookworm types have come out to admire the moon.
Dignitaries and bankers are here to look at the moon during the Mid-
Autumn Festival, their cars lined up by the bridge. To do that, one has
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ZML KIVLTMTQOP ÆQKSMZQVO IVL QVKMV[M [UWSM ZQ[QVO ITT W^MZ PM KQa ?M
_W]TLM^MVPMIZPMKZIKSTQVOWN ÅZMKZIKSMZ[KWUQVONZWUPMLQ[IVKM
This is indeed a solemn night, a night that belongs to the deities. All the
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are so many people on the lake, it is not as chaotic as during ordinary
times. One by one, the boats glide by gently and slowly. Sitting in the
boats are people of all descriptions: Some are murmuring to themselves,
some are whispering to each other, some are tilting their heads back
to soak in the moonlight, exposing their pallid faces. Young people,
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7MºPMZWXQKITTW^M[WVO
At this moment, a boat that I have not seen before comes by with a
dimly lit glass lamp hanging on its deck. Under the lamp, three or four
people are sitting around playing guessing and drinking games. There
is another person sitting all by himself on the bow. His face is a patch
of darkness and it is impossible to make out what he looks like. I hear
the sound of chanted poetry coming from this dark shadow. He chants
with a drawn-out sound, the pitch relatively low in the beginning, but
rising gradually. After it reaches the peak, it slowly dies down again,
until it disappears half in moaning and half in sighing. Listening to the
dying cadence, you can imagine a small hill in an ancient painting, half-
shrouded in mist. There is a winding stream, too, splashing drops of
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all the while, like the shadow of a lone wild goose in the sky gliding in
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because the sound itself is half real, half imaginary. While half of it is still coming from the person’s mouth, half of it has already burrowed its
way into our dreams.
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176
A Garden of One’s Own
on horseback, we lack paper and a writing brush/ Please tell my people
I PWUM PI 1 IU [INMº1 You will see, therefore, that on this happy
festival, somewhere on this vast lake are a few broken souls trying to
drown their sorrows in wine under a dim light in the back cabin of their
boats. They have left their families and their hometowns—only heaven
knows what kind of a life they are leading. On this night, for these two
ancient doleful poetic lines to come bursting from their hearts, their
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in a corner concealed in reeds or withering lotus leaves, someone else
may also be thinking of home. When he hears the chanting, will he be
able to hold back his tears and stop himself from sobbing? Will it take
many soothing words from his friend to calm his quivering heart? How
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to realize its meaning? Now I know that, however heavy a burden it may
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us, like a snail crawling sluggishly with its heavy shell on its back. All
> of a sudden, I seem to get a glimpse of a clear vision of something. As
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1
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to the Capital).
2
@QV9QRQ·¹9QVOa]IVº1VPM<]VMWN Qing Yu An).
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qr
Liang Shiqiu
For many readers, Liang Shiqiu (1903–1987) is forever linked with
xiaopin wen, in large part due to the popularity of his Yashe xiaopin. His essays are characterized by the kind of wit that one associates with the
English familiar essay. Most of the titles of his essays concern human
situations and daily objects, which he explores from a variety of angles,
citing relevant anecdotes and literary references to illustrate his points.
The three essays anthologized here are works of this kind.
Liang received his education at Tsinghua College, before going to
Colorado College and Harvard University in the US to further his
studies. When he was at Columbia University, he studied under Irving
Babbitt, whose philosophy on New Humanism he brought back to
China. As a professor of English, Liang advocates a belief in the
transcendence of literature over social classes. Such a view of literature
puts him at odds with leftist writers, with whom, chief among them Lu
Xun, he carried a bitter long-standing debate.
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have translated single-handedly the complete plays of Shakespeare—
a monumental endeavor that took him some thirty-seven years to
complete.
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178
A Garden of One’s Own
Middle Age (1949)
The hands of a clock or watch move slowly—so slowly that one hardly
notices. Age is like that, too. It advances imperceptibly, year after year,
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age. By then, there are probably two things you cannot help observing.
First, obituaries arrive with no letting up: Some of your more impatient
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quite a bit. At the same time, you suddenly notice hordes of young
people cavorting before your eyes, and you wonder where they have
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their strong, steady gait and youthful, merry faces, looking as if they
were on their way to a wedding. Meanwhile, most of your own peers
have long since gone into hibernation, handing the whole world over
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middle age.
It used to be that the back covers of magazines often carried an
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wan and sallow man, who stooped, his hand on the small of his back.
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people. But this picture often sprang up in the minds of middle-aged
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WVQKXQTT[ºPIQUXTQKIQWVPMaN]TTa]VLMZ[WWL1N IXQTTIZUILMNZWU
the trunk of a yellow pine might on occasion bend and even collapse,
how much more likely would this be for the human spine, made as it is
of twenty-six little bones?
There is not a single young person alive who does not enjoy looking
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is an opportunity not to be passed up; he always feels he is on the
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and admiring oneself slowly fades with time. Then, one day, when you
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engraved on your forehead, clear and forceful like the brush strokes of
the famous artist Wu Daozi.1 You will still think they only show when
1
Wu Daozi of the early eighth century was an important Tang dynasty painter.
He is famous for the murals he painted on palace walls.
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Liang Shiqiu
179
you raise your eyebrows, but there they are even when you look down.
Careful examination reveals that the hair on the top of your head has
begun to move to the area beside your cheeks and under your chin. The
most shocking sight of all is of the few white hairs around your temples.
They should not be taken lightly! Even if you are the proverbial scrooge
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_WZTLº PM QUM PI[ KWUM W [MMT aW]Z ZM[WT^M IVL OM ZQL WN PW[M
white hairs. And thus will your hair be pulled out, roots and all, perhaps
with even a little glob of shiny skin attached to the end. But it’s all in
vain—time won’t let you go easily by!
The average woman is even more anxious than a man when she
gets to middle age. Who among young women is not as full and lustrous
as a milky white grape, likely to burst at the slightest touch? Who
among them is not as agile and delicate as a swallow that hops and skips
about so nimbly? At the arrival of middle age, however, things begin
to change. The curves are still there, but nothing is quite right. What
should curve in now bulges out, and what should protrude outward
now caves in. The white grape has turned into a honeyed date, and the
sparrow has become a quail. The part of a woman’s body that receives
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the lines crisscrossing and overlapping with each other. There may not
be too many of them, but they leave nothing uncovered, until her whole
face gradually assumes the appearance of a very well-developed railway
map.
It is quite enough that wrinkles appear that could never be ironed
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IV MIZPMV _ITT IOM KIV IT_Ia[ ÅVL [WUMPQVO W UISM Q _WZ[M
easiest solution, perhaps, is to paint with make-up another face on top
of one’s own. Yet, before applying and removing cosmetics, one cannot
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The muscles of a woman’s body are no match for gravity, either. As
soon as she reaches middle age, they hang down loosely in clumps from
her face and around her ankles. I’ve heard that many Western women
2
A story from Liaozhai zhiyi ( Strange Tales Recorded in the Studio of Idleness), a seventeenth-century collection of supernatural tales, in which the ghost of a woman, lacking skin,
has to have it painted on her face.
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180
A Garden of One’s Own
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up their puffed-up muscles. Others simply stay away from fatty and
starchy food and tighten up their belts, trying to starve themselves back
to youth. How effective these measures are, I have no idea.
Don’t think that when you reach middle age, you’ve come to the
end of your life. No, as with mountain climbing, at middle age you’ve
only reached the peak. Turn around and you will see crowds of young
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XMZ[XQZIQWV ÆW_QVO ]V_QXMLº
rocks that once tripped you up, and many traps that once ensnared
aW] IVL ]ZVML aW] QVW I ¹NZWO I PM JW\WU WN PM _MTTº3 When I think back on my younger days, I remember the times I behaved like
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banging its head continuously against the window, hoping to go out into
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things clearly when one is on the peak. As one looks ahead, one sees the
downward slope that by comparison, is far easier to traverse.
Shi Nai’an wrote in his preface to Outlaws of the Marsh, ¹1N WVM
is still unmarried at thirty, one should foreswear marriage; if one has
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matters, and there is not much to lose if one is not married or not an
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seems to suggest that, before forty, one merely sees previews of the real
show to come. I think the whole matter hinges upon one’s health. Those
who have grown up on the coarsest kind of corn bread and rice cakes
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almost entirely sapped. How can they think of marrying, and what is
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pills. I have also seen men and women who are blessed with good health
