The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei

by Roy, David Tod

  Auntie Hsüeh started to turn the sacrificial offerings over to a servant to take inside when Ch’en Ching-chi asked, “Where do they come from?”

  Auntie Hsüeh greeted him with a bow and said, “Son-in-law, don’t pretend that you don’t know. Your mother-in-law has sent me to present these things as an offering to your deceased father, and also to return your wife, Hsi-men Ta-chieh, to you.”

  “Some fucking excuse for a mother-in-law!” exclaimed Ch’en Ching-chi.

  “To paste up the effigies of the Gate Gods on

  the sixteenth of the first month,

  Is to be half a month too late.5

  Only after the corpse of the deceased has been buried in the grave does she bother to offer a sacrifice on his behalf.”

  “My good son-in-law,” responded Auntie Hsüeh, “your mother-in-law points out that a widow is as helpless as a legless crab. It is only because she did not know that the coffin of her kinsman had been brought home that she has been late in her response. Don’t hold it against her.”

  While they were speaking to each other, what should they see but Hsi-men Ta-chieh’s sedan chair, which was being set down at the door.

  “Who is that?” Ch’en Ching-chi demanded to know.

  “Who else would it be?” responded Auntie Hsüeh. “Your mother-in-law is not feeling well. On the one hand, she is returning Hsi-men Ta-chieh to you, and on the other hand, she is respectfully offering to burn paper money on behalf of your father.”

  “Take that whore back where she came from forthwith!” Ch’en Ching-chi exclaimed abusively. “Better persons than she have died:

  By the ten thousands and the thousands.6

  What would I want with the likes of her?”

  “As the saying goes,” responded Auntie Hsüeh,

  “To marry a husband is to accept a master.

  How can you talk that way about her?”

  “I won’t have anything more to do with that whore!” said Ch’en Ching-chi. “Why aren’t you taking her away?”

  Seeing that the bearers of the sedan chair were just standing there without making a move, Ch’en Ching-chi stepped out and gave them a couple of kicks, saying, “If you refuse to take her away, I’ll break the legs of you beggars and pluck out the hair on her temples.”

  When the bearers of the sedan chair saw that he was bent on kicking them, they felt compelled to pick up the sedan chair and head for home without delay.

  By the time Auntie Hsüeh succeeded in calling out Ch’en Ching-chi’s mother, née Chang, the sedan chair had already been carried away, and she had no alternative but to take up the sacrificial offerings and return to report the situation to Wu Yüeh-niang.

  Yüeh-niang nearly fainted with rage on hearing about it and said, “What an unprincipled short-life of a jailbird! Originally, your family, because of its legal troubles, sent you here to hide out in your father-in-law’s household, which has maintained you for all these years. And now you are:

  Requiting kindness with enmity,

  and have the nerve to maintain that my dead husband was only bent on sequestering your valuable property. Having first created a scandal, you are now trying to:

  Cast me in the role of a stinking rat,

  while you persist in:

  Letting off your hot stinking farts of protest.”

  She then turned to Hsi-men Ta-chieh and said, “My child, you have seen with your own eyes that neither his father-in-law nor his mother-in-law have shortchanged him in any way. But the fact is that:

  While you live you are a member of his family;

  If you die you will become his family’s ghost.7

  There is no way I can continue to keep you here. You must go back to him tomorrow. There is no reason to be afraid of him. He will hardly thrust you down a well. No matter how foolhardy he may be, he is not likely to kill you. One can scarcely allege that there is no imperial law to be applied to him in this world.”

  We will say no more of the events of that evening.

  The next day, Yüeh-niang had Hsi-men Ta-chieh put into a sedan chair and told Tai-an to escort her to Ch’en Ching-chi’s residence. Who could have anticipated that Ch’en Ching-chi was not at home at the time but had gone to the cemetery to add earth to his father’s tomb in order to make a higher grave mound.

  His mother, née Chang, was a woman of breeding and agreed to receive Hsi-men Ta-chieh, saying to Tai-an, “When you return home, convey my gratitude to our kinswoman for her sacrificial offerings, and ask her to make allowances for my son, who had too much to drink yesterday, which accounts for his rude conduct. I will do what I can, little by little, to admonish him.”

  So saying, she offered Tai-an some refreshments before gently inducing him to return home.

  That evening, when Ch’en Ching-chi returned from the graveyard and saw Hsi-men Ta-chieh, he fell to kicking and beating her as he cursed her, saying, “You whore! What are you doing back here? Do you still have the nerve to accuse me of scrounging for food off your family? Your family still has possession of the trunks of valuables that we entrusted to you, and which enabled your family to achieve its considerable wealth, so how can they claim to have been supporting their son-in-law for nothing? Better persons than you have died by the thousands. So what would I want with a whore like you?”

  Hsi-men Ta-chieh responded in kind, saying, “You shameless jailbird! You unprincipled jailbird! When that whore was expelled from the household and got herself murdered, you felt helpless to do anything about it and have been taking it out on me.”

  Ch’en Ching-chi reacted by grabbing hold of the hair on top of her head and beating her as hard as he could with his fists. When his mother came over and tried to intervene, he gave her a shove that knocked her onto the floor.

  His mother, screaming with rage, shouted, “What a jailbird you are! Your eyes are so red you don’t even recognize your mother.”

  That evening, Ch’en Ching-chi once again sent Hsi-men Ta-chieh back to the Hsi-men household, saying, “If you fail to recover your dowry and the trunks of valuables that my family entrusted to them, whore that you are, I will see that your life is put to an end.”

  Hsi-men Ta-chieh was so intimidated by this threat that she stayed at home and did not venture out again. There is a poem that testifies to this:

  On first acquaintance, their mutual trust

  was not unmingled with doubt;

  Though their feeling for each other seemed

  to be utterly without limit.

  Who could have known that even the best of

  things are subject to change;

  Even a single thought may turn out to be

  the harbinger of resentment.8

  Hsi-men Ta-chieh remained so intimidated that she stayed at home, without daring to go out.

  One day during the third month, on the Ch’ing-ming Festival, Wu Yüeh-niang prepared incense and candles, imitation gold and silver paper money for the dead, offerings, including the three sacrificial animals, wine and delicacies, and the like, and had them put into two large food boxes to be carried to the family graveyard five li outside the city wall and presented at Hsi-men Ch’ing’s recently created tomb. She left Sun Hsüeh-o, Hsi-men Ta-chieh, and the maidservants behind to look after the house, while taking with her Meng Yü-lou, Hsiao-yü, and the wet nurse Ju-i, who was carrying the infant Hsiao-ko, as they proceeded in their sedan chairs to the site of the family graveyard. She also invited the venerable couple, her brother Wu K’ai and his wife, to accompany them.

  As they emerged from the city gate, behold:

  The suburban fields stretch into the distance;

  A landscape replete with blossoming fragrance.9

  The flowers are red and the willows are green;

  Wellborn young ladies and wandering gentlemen,

  Pass hither and yon in their unbroken streams.

  Among the four seasons of the year,

  None of them is superior to spring,

  With its all-
surpassing loveliness.

  Its days are designated glorious days,

  Its breezes are called genial breezes,

  Expanding the willow buds,

  Opening the flower hearts,

  Blowing the fragrant dust.

  When the weather is warm it is called genial;

  When the weather is cool it is called chilly.

  The horses ridden then are called rare steeds;

  The sedan chairs are called fragrant vehicles;

  The roads walked on are called fragrant paths.

  The dust that ascends is called fragrant dust.

  The thousands of flowers that begin to bloom,

  And the myriad grasses that engender sprouts,

  Are called the harbingers of spring.

  The spring splendor shimmers,

  Its pure vistas are pleasing.

  The tiny peaches cluster,

  Their visages decorated voluptuously;

  The slender willows sway,

  Their waists supple as palace ladies.

  The warbling of the orioles,10

  Breaks off one’s midday dreams;

  The chirping of the swallows,

  Betokens their spring sadness.

  As the days begin to lengthen,

  Yellow goslings bathe in the warm streams;

  As the waters start to spread,

  Green ducklings cavort amid the fragrance.

  Across the water one glimpses an estate

  of someone unknown;

  Where a swing is suspended on high amid

  misty green willows.

  Indeed, the springtime scene is truly marvelous. When the spring season arrives, the prefectures, subprefectures, districts, and circuits all see to it that every village, garrison, township, and market within their jurisdictions is provided with areas that are worth visiting.11 There is a poem that testifies to this:

  During the Ch’ing-ming Festival mists

  hover everywhere;

  In the suburbs the breezes waft shreds

  of paper money aloft.

  People laugh and people sing amidst

  the fragrant meadows;

  Sudden clearing and sudden showers12

  beset the apricot blossoms.

  Amid the flowering crab apples the

  songbirds give voice;

  Beside the willow-lined embankment

  the drunkards snooze.

  Red-rouged beauties compete for places

  on the painted boards;

  Tugging the gaudy ropes they resemble

  immortals in flight.13

  On the Ch’ing-ming Festival a Widow Visits the New Grave

  To resume our story, by the time the sedan chairs of Wu Yüeh-niang and the others arrived at the family graveyard at Wu-li Yüan, Tai-an, who had gone ahead of them with the food boxes, had already made his way to the kitchen and arranged for the fire in the stove to be lighted, and for the chef who had been hired for the occasion to prepare the foodstuffs. But no more of this.

  When Yüeh-niang, Meng Yü-lou, Hsiao-yü, and the wet nurse Ju-i, who was holding Hsiao-ko in her arms, arrived at the country estate, they sat down in the parlor and consumed a serving of tea while they waited for Sister-in-law Wu to arrive, but she failed to show up. Meanwhile, Tai-an went to the sacrificial platform in front of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s tomb and set up the offertory tables replete with the meat of the three sacrificial animals, the soup and rice, and other ceremonial offerings and also laid out the paper money to be burned to the dead.

  All they could do was to wait, but it turned out that Sister-in-law Wu had been unable to hire a sedan chair. It was not until around ten o’clock in the morning that she and her husband Wu K’ai, who had succeeded in hiring a couple of donkeys, finally arrived.

  “If you were unable to hire a sedan chair, Sister-in-law,” said Yüeh-niang, “there really must not have been enough of them available on this festival occasion.”

  After consuming a serving of tea, and changing their clothes, they proceeded to the front of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s tomb to present their sacrificial offerings and sweep the grave. Yüeh-niang was holding five sticks of incense in her hand, one of which she kept for herself, one of which she handed to Meng Yü-lou, and one of which she gave to the wet nurse Ju-i, who was carrying Hsiao-ko in her arms. The other two she handed to her elder brother Wu K’ai and his wife.

  After placing her stick of incense in the burner, Yüeh-niang bowed deeply before the tomb and said, “Brother:

  While alive you were a human being;

  Once dead you have become a spirit.

  Today, on the Ch’ing-ming Festival during the third month, your devoted wife Wu the Third, your Third Lady Meng Yü-lou, and your infant son Hsiao-ko have respectfully come to burn paper money before your grave, in the hope that you will assure him a long life of a hundred years, so that he will be able to offer sacrifices and sweep your grave in the future. Brother, you and I were man and wife for all that time, and when I recall your looks, and the way you used to talk to me, I am overcome with sorrow.”

  Tai-an then set the paper money on fire. There is a song to the tune “Sheep on the Mountain Slope” that testifies to this:

  As the paper money burns out,

  I can’t help stamping my little feet.

  During the whole period I was your wife,

  We never exchanged hostile words with each other.14

  I really looked forward to living in harmony

  with you until our old age.15

  Who could have anticipated that you would

  abandon me halfway?

  Originally, the sentimental hopes for

  the future were mine,

  But though you bequeathed us a fortune

  as solid as a brass ladle,16

  Our child is still young,

  And mother and son have been left

  a widow and orphan.

  How will we manage to get by?

  It is just like running into a rainstorm

  during a journey,

  Or encountering a windstorm halfway to

  one’s destination.

  The male and female mandarin ducks have

  been forced to part;

  The exotic fruits have been plucked

  before they were ripe.

  I cry out to my good-natured brother,

  “On recalling your carriage and deportment,

  How can I help sighing in distress?”

  Continued to the tune “Every Step Is Captivating”:

  The ashes of the paper money I have

  burned swirl about,

  But I do not see the face of my husband.

  I cry out, “My young husband,

  You have abandoned our delicate son,

  And left me all alone.

  If the two of us have no marital affinity,

  How will we ever be able to see

  each other again?”

  Meng Yü-lou then stepped forward, stuck her stick of incense in the burner, bowed deeply, and wept to the tune “Sheep on the Mountain Slope”:

  As the paper money burns out,

  My eyes are filled with tears.

  I cry out to mankind and to Heaven,

  You have abandoned me with no place to go.

  I really looked forward to remaining with you

  until our hair turned white.

  Who could foresee that en route the flowers

  would wither and the moon fade?17

  The First Lady has a male child, so her

  future prospects are good;

  But I have been abandoned so that the fallen

  tree no longer provides shade.

  With whom am I to carry on?

  To keep lonely vigil amid empty bed curtains,18

  Is more than I can stand.

  I’m unable to reach the inn ahead, or make it

  back to the village behind.

  I suppose my fallen leaves have returned to the root,

  And I must har
vest my garden and reap my just reward.

  I cry out to my youthful brother,

  “If I ever see you again, it can only be

  an encounter in a dream.19

  It’s enough to grieve me to death.”

  Continued to the tune “Every Step Is Captivating”:

  I can only weep and wail until I am

  stupefied with grief.

  Once gone there are no tidings of you.

  You have left me with no future in sight,

  no future in sight.

  You were in the springtime of your youth,

  And I was still captivating to behold;

  How upsetting it is.

  It has wasted my flowery visage

  and moonlike features.

  After Meng Yü-lou had finished burning her incense, the wet nurse Ju-i, holding Hsiao-ko in her arms, also knelt down to present her incense and kowtowed; after which Wu K’ai and his wife proceeded to burn their incense in turn. When these formalities were concluded, they were ushered into the summerhouse on the country estate, where a table and mats had been set up, and food and wine prepared. Yüeh-niang arranged for Wu K’ai and his wife to occupy the positions of honor, while she and Meng Yü-lou sat along one side, and Hsiao-yü, the wet nurse Ju-i, and Lan-hua, the senior maidservant in the Wu household, sat on the other. The wine was then poured, but we will say no more, for the moment, about how they proceeded to drink it.

  To resume our story, that day Commandant Chou Hsiu also went to visit his ancestral tombs. Before this, during the preceding night, Ch’un-mei had slept with the commandant and pretended to have had a dream from which she awakened in tears.

  The commandant asked in consternation, “What are you crying about?”

  Ch’un-mei replied, saying, “I dreamt that my former mistress came to me in tears and wanted to know why, since she had nurtured me so generously over the years, I was not planning to go and burn paper money on her behalf at the time of the Ch’ing-ming Festival and the Cold Food Festival.20 That is why I wept on waking up.”