by Edi Holley
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I am a silk worm and one day I will save your life,” he replied. “Just wait and see!” Soon his brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins appeared and they all began munching the mulberry leaves.
“You are ruining my trees!” cried Princess E-hwah, and she began to weep. But the worms just kept on munching and getting fatter and puffier. Then she noticed something mysterious had happened. The worms had vanished and the garden was filled instead with round white cocoons that the worms had spun. “Now what?” she asked as she fiddled with the cocoon in her warm hands while sipping a cup of hot tea. Just at that moment, the cocoon dropped into her hot tea and began to bob around.
“Oh dear, my tea is spoiled!” she cried. Then she noticed. a small wisp of something white emerging from the end of the cocoon. She began to pull at the little wisp, and with the help of her ladies-in-waiting she pulled out a long strand and stretched it over the branches of a tree. Just at that moment her tailor appeared, ready to fit her new dress. When he saw the long strands stretched over the trees he said, “Wai-ha! I could weave this into some beautiful cloth!”
Princess E-hwa let her tailor do just that. The very next day he brought her the most beautiful crimson red dress that shimmered and swayed like water flowing all around her. All her ladies-in-waiting said how beautiful the dress was, and asked excitedly, “Can we have one too?” Princess E-Hwa was so generous she had her tailor make dresses for all the ladies. The dresses were admired by everyone who came to court. Soon the news travelled far and wide about this new wonderful fabric. As a precaution she made everyone swear not to reveal what they had seen in her garden. No one must ever find out the secret of how silk came to be. (Especially because they could sell bolts of silk At an exorbitant cost to the foreigners who came to the court to buy silk.) More and more visitors came to the ancient court of Chang An, ruled buy the princesses’ father, the emperor. They marveled at the beautiful new cloth and all the magnificent robes that were made. They noticed how the cloth seemed to whisper when it moved, and how it flowed like the water of a gently moving river.
“Where can we get some? Tell us please!” they clamored. The emperor finally consented to allow his guests to buy a few rolls of the wonderful fabric, but he would not tell them how it was made, insisting it was a royal secret. When the guests took the silk back to their homelands in the west, it caused a sensation. Everyone was amazed and wanted more. Soon caravans of thick wooly camels began to come all the way to China, crossing the treacherous Gobi Desert and making their way over high mountain passes and churning rivers, to bring silk back from the court. They would come back again and again to get more silk and would sell it back in the west to their eager customers.
Camels were the ideal transport method because they had wide splayed feet to stop them from sinking into the sand. Their noses humidified the dry desert air they inhaled, and dehumidified it when they exhaled. They could go for days without drinking. The path that they traveled became known as “The Silk Road,” although it wasn’t really a road. There were always bandits and thieves who attacked the caravans to get the precious silk. But the caravans were guarded by skillful archers with bows and arrows who galloped alongside them, mounted on their swift Mongolian ponies.
One day a handsome prince from a faraway kingdom of Xingkrakastan decided to travel to Chang An to find the “silk princess” as she had come to be known. She was even lovelier than he had imagined and so at once he asked her father for her hand in marriage. The emperor consented, knowing that it would be a very fortunate union. Later when the prince proposed to the princess in person, he told her, “You must bring the secret of the silk with you, or I will have to cut off your head.”
Princess E-Hwah had already fallen deeply in love with the prince so she came up with a very ingenious plan. On the day of her departure she ordered her ladies-in-waiting to arrange her hair in a high braid that wound around the top of her head. When her coiffure was done she secretly hid the newly-laid silkworm eggs inside the braid where no one could find them. She knew, upon orders of the emperor everyone who left the court of Chang An was searched by royal guards to be sure that no one had stolen the secret of the silk. Soon Princess E-Hwah was on her way in a royal caravan traveling on the Silk Road to Xingkrakastan. When she arrived the prince came out to meet her and immediately whispered in her ear to ask if she had done as he had asked. She smiled at him ever so sweetly and nodded.
Once she was settled in her new quarters she unpacked box after box of mulberry branches and placed the tiny black eggs on the leaves. When the eggs hatched, the worms began to munch. They munched for two weeks. E-Hwah played her Chinese lute to calm the silk worms in their new home. It was not long before they began to spin their little white cocoons. Soon the court and the halls and the wardrobes and the bedchambers were filled with silk. The prince and his bride slept on silk sheets. By the time they celebrated the birth of their first child, a tiny princess with shiny black eyes. As news of the birth traveled around the kingdom everyone called her, “the Silk Princess” in honor of her mother, E-Hwah who had brought them the secret of Silk. After hearing this story I had a greater awe when I saw a fabric tag that said, “pure silk”.
KULING
Summers in Nanging were so hot that foreigners died like flies. To escape the heat, we traveled by boat up the Yangtze river to Guling, or Kuling as we called it. It was a resort on Mount Lu in Janxi Province. Established in 1895 by Edward Selby Little as a rest resort for western missionaries. Colonial style houses, a church, school and sports facilities were built. Chinese houses were hardly visible. Most of the missionaries left in 1936 before the Japanese invaded. Prior to 1949 Chiang Kai-Shek chose Guling as his summer headquarters for his nationalist Kuomintang government. He had been introduced to the place by his wife, Soong Mei-ling, daughter of a Shanghai Methodist minister. She was a Wellesley College graduate. I saw her once in church in Kuling. I turned and saw her sitting behind me in a deep blue Chinese-silk dress with knot buttons up to her neck. She was serene and beautiful. She smiled at me–I knew exactly who she was. What a thrill for a little 13-year-old American girl.
Kuling was the most beautiful and the most wonderful place in the world. The first time we went up I remember the two-day boat trip with my mother. We traveled through the Yangtze valley and could look out at farmers harvesting crops of golden wheat, and blue-black water buffalo with wonderful curved horns by the water’s edge. On the boat there were all kinds of people, including White Russians who had escaped the Revolution. Looking up from our deck we could see the White Russian girls on the deck above us who reminded me of swans with their long slender necks and white arms dangling over the railing like wings. They let their white blond hair fly out in the wind. To me they seemed out of a fairy-tale.
At dinnertime a large fish was brought into the dining room on a platter for our communal meal. When it was half eaten, one person took their chopsticks and tried to turn it over so we could get at the soft succulent flesh on the other side. This caused much shouting and pounding on the table. Then a Chinese woman who spoke perfect English explained that it was bad luck to turn a fish over. The Chinese believed it meant the boat would sink, even though the boat had eyes painted on the prow.
When the boat finally pulled into the dock early the next morning we heard an uproar outside. Coolies had gathered and were fighting about who would take our belongings off and carry us by sedan chair up the mountain. What fun I thought. My father, with his long Norwegian legs walked up of course. He encouraged me to walk as well. But in a sedan chair I could pretend I was a princess. Then I looked down and saw a steep ravine, hundreds of feet deep. Lush green bamboo everywhere was bowing and bending in the wind, a forest of liquid under-water green. When the coolies got tired they stopped and crouched in the middle of the narrow dusty path to brew hot tea for themselves. They offered me a cup. I found it very cooling on a boilin
g hot day in the Yangtze valley. We listened to the high buzzing song of cicadas and crickets singing everywhere, birds too. In the end I tried walking just to keep my father happy.
We finally arrived at the top of the mountain. But the Daniels’ house where we were going was at the far end of the settlement of houses sprinkled around the former crater called, the “Gap”. On the main floor were windows all the way around the side that looked down on the valley. There was a large stone open fireplace. The house was simple but well built with all wooden floors. Upstairs there was one large bedroom for Dr. and Mrs. Daniels. My mother had a small bedroom and I had a very small bedroom It had a wide stone porch which looked out over the Yangtze valley, often shrouded in veils of mist. In the far distance we could see a tiny silver snake, the Yangtze River curling through the green valley. When night fell stars lit up the sky–magnificent!. My mother’s favorite was Arcturus, a large, brilliant star low in the western sky in the constellation of Bootes. When we arrived, a small gnome of a man came bowing out to greet us smiling his big toothless grin which stretched from ear to ear. Peering up at us from under his brow he looked like a vulture. His small black eyes were quick and all seeing, like a bird of prey. In no time he brought out a most delicious meal he had cooked on his charcoal brazier in a kind of wok stirring it with chopsticks in a tiny cooking area under the stairs. We, drank cha, Chinese tea, made with the fresh rain water which was conducted from the top of the ridge behind our house by a bamboo pipeline.
SNAKES
I quickly discovered there was a swimming pool down in the center of the Gap, where there were a few small shops where you could buy supplies and one shop had very pretty Chinese tea pots and cloisonné bowls. I had to race down the big stone steps to get there. The first time I was going so fast I didn’t even see a giant snake oozing slowly across the rock, camouflaged by its mottled greeny grey, brown coloring. I couldn’t stop myself in time so I went flying over it as it continued its slow slither. Then I saw ahead of me on the long wide path that stretched all the way to the other end of the Gap, Chinese men shouting and thrashing the ground with long bamboo poles, Then I saw what it was, a spectacular, super long green snake writhing and flying up into the air. They said it was poisonous. “Bu yao,bu yao!” not good.
“Bamboo snake” one of the men said, “Very dangerous…poisonous bite…and very fast!” They told me to go, go go, so I continued my journey on to the pool, where I met my friend, Janet.
She said she couldn’t swim so I offered to teach her. I loved water and I couldn’t bear it that my best friend couldn’t swim. “Just relax,” I said, “Lie back and float” She did and I put my hand under her back. Then I had a wonderful idea. If I could gradually get her out into the deep water she would realize how safe she was and wouldn’t be afraid. Very gently I pulled her deeper and deeper until I was no longer standing on the bottom but treading water. Then all of a sudden she decided to get up! When she discovered how deep the water was she panicked. I said, “Sit on my shoulders”. She did and I walked toward the shallow end, not breathing. But suddenly I noticed I WAS breathing under water! When we got to the shallow end of the pool, Janet slid off my shoulders. She was crying and wanted to go right home. I told her how sorry I was, I hadn’t realized how it would affect her.
I took a higher path to get home. I came to a small, deep fresh water pool, surrounded by long grasses and weeds. I decided to swim. Then I saw a small black head rapidly weaving toward me–a water snake! I flew out so fast and ran all the way home. I told my mother about the snakes and about breathing under water. She didn’t believe me. But it really did happen.
MANIAC
Later that month the Pickens girls, Pat, and Marjory whom we called “Maniac” (because they were from Maine), invited me to go on a picnic with them at “Paradise Pools.” They said it was so much fun because you could slide down the rocks on a fast flowing water slide. It was a long hike through wild bushes mostly. There were large rocks on the path you had to step over. Cicadas were buzzing and dragon flies and all kinds of insects flew all around us. But when we finally got there it was worth it. There was a grotto and waterfalls cascading down into a small pool surrounded by soft curling green ferns, good for swimming. The first time I climbed up the slippery rocks to slide in I cracked my head on my forehead.. Blood flowed down the side of my face and down over the rock. Maniac, Marjory, said, “Don’t panic, it’s nothing.”
Then we walked down over rocks to a lower spot where a fast stream of water rushed over flat rocks, then under an overhanging rock. I wasn’t sure I dared. Maniac was the first to leap down the slide. I looked to see if she came up on the other side. She did. It looked like fun, and so I jumped in and Swoosh! Down I went into the dark crevasse under the rock, and up I came on the other side. It was amazing, and such a rush, even more so because I had been so terrified to do it.
PRAYERS IN BLOOD
Our next hike a week later was to a very wide river that dropped down over the mountain. But to get there we had to pass through a Ginko forest near a Buddhist Monestary. The monks were on their way to prayers. We could hear their deep voices chanting. We saw some of the monks in beautiful saffron robes silently moving around. Their heads were shaved. I noticed rows of dots on their heads from their hairline back. Maniac explained that the more rows they had the higher their rank. The dots were made by burning incense down so it left a mark on their head. In their journey to enlightenment the more pain they could endure, the higher the level they would achieve. Then she told me they wrote prayers in blood on the fan shaped ginco leaves.
CHRYSANTHEMUM FESTIVAL
After our idyllic summer on Kuling we travelled back to Nanging in time for the chrysanthemum festival at the Ming Tombs just outside the city. Chrysanthemums were my mother’s favorite flower so of course we had to go. They came in every shape and color you could imagine. My mother loved the big gold balls. There were also spidery ones in different shades of lavender and white and bronze cup shaped ones. There were so many that they filled an area the size of a football stadium. We also walked out to sit on the emperor’s stone boat in the lake. We invited Mrs. Shu, our neighbor to come with us. Mrs Shu was very tall for a Chinese woman. The family was from northern China and must have had some Mongolian blood. She always wore a straight Chinese dress with knotted Chinese buttons—simple and elegant.
A few weeks later Mrs. Shu invited us, my mother and father and me to the Harvest Moon Festival, the “Seventh month of the Seventh Moon.” We joined their family, which included four tall sons, for a feast the likes of which I have never experienced since then. There was an abundance of delicious food: each course, and there were nine courses, was better than the last. We started out with tiny dim sum like tidbits, then soup, then another course and another and another and another. Between courses we were served finger bowls to dip our fingers in and then wipe them with our napkins. The food was beyond sumptuous. And remember we were living on UNRRA surplus in post war China–what a contrast.
After we ate we went outside to observe the full moon. We watched the rabbit in the moon grinding out the elixir of life. We were told the story of the three immortals who reincarnated into three poor old people and begged for food from a fox, a monkey, and a rabbit. Both the fox and the monkey gave food to the immortals. The rabbit didn’t have any food, so he said to the immortals, “You can eat me,” and jumped into the fire. The immortals were so moved by the rabbit that they sent him to the moon to become an immortal jade rabbit. Ever since the jade rabbit has stayed in the Moon Palace to accompany Chang E, a beautiful and kind woman whose great love for her husband drew her to the moon, the nearest place to earth in heaven. He poundsl medicine for those living in heaven. (Chang E was a beautiful and kind woman whose great love for her husband drew her to the moon, the nearest place to earth in heaven.)
Poems were read. We burned incense and red candles on the long table which was placed outside. Offerings of f
ruit were made to the moon goddess. We ate Moon cakes, which were yummy
Easy to make Harvest moon cookies
1 cup softened butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup ground blanched almonds
1 ½ cup s sifted all-purpose flour
Cream butter with a big spoon. Sift sugar and gradually mix with butter. Blend in vanilla and almonds, and slowly knead in flour. Refrigerate for an hour. The fun part: Roll out dough to thickness of 1/3 inch.
Use an upside down glass as a cookie cutter to cut a full moon. Then make a crescent-shaped moon By cutting the full moon into two halves and pulling at the ends until it looks like a crescent shape. To make a rabbit (a rabbit in the moon is grinding out the elixir of life) cut a rabbit shape out of paper and prss it onto the dough and trim around the shape. Bake the cookies on a greased baking sheet in a preheated 350 degree oven for fifteen minutes.
THE BEGGAR
One of the most common sights in Nanging was beggars everywhere. They were dressed in rags and held a wooden begging bowl. They would chant, “Gegga chaoba-eh, gega chaoba eh” over and over, pushing their bowl into your face so you could not ignore them, and hopefully would drop some coins into their bowl.. So one day I decided to give it a try. I dressed myself in the oldest rags I could find, smeared ashes on my face and got myself a bowl. Then I went to the kitchen door of the Shu’s house and started chanting, “Gega chaoba eh, Gega chaoba eh” Finally the maid came to the door and shouted for me to go away, but I wouldn’t and as I persisted, she soon caught sight of my blond hair and put two and two together. Then the cook and Mrs Shu came out and they had a good laugh. Then my mother found out. She was at first embarrassed, then amused and amazed that I had been so convincing.
