"Hou Ye built for his wife her beautiful palace in the moon, and he arranged to visit her there. It is when he comes to see her on the night of the fifteenth of every month that she is largest and fullest. When he goes away she grows paler and paler, and she does not grow bright again until it is time for his visit once more."
"Does Heng O truly come down to earth tonight, Lao Lao?" Yu Lang asked when the old woman ended her story of the Moon Lady.
"I have heard that she does, Precious Pearl," said Grandmother Ling. "They say she goes everywhere and that she listens to the wishes of those who do her honor. But take care, little Yu Lang! If you utter a wish, be sure to speak clearly. There is a story about an old woman who lived long, long ago and who once saw the Moon Lady. When the Queen of the Night appeared before her, the old woman was so dazzled by her bright beauty that she could not speak a word. Heng O asked what she wished, but the woman was silent. At last she pulled herself together enough to move her trembling hand up and down over the lower part of her face. By so doing she meant to show the Moon Lady that she wished only for rice to put into her mouth.
"'Well, it seems very strange, but if that is what you want you shall have it, ' the Moon Lady promised. You see, Heng O had quite misunderstood the old woman's meaning. This was clear the next morning, for there was no more rice than before in the old woman's eating bowl. But when she raised her hand to her mouth she found to her dismay that the Moon Lady had covered her face with gray whiskers. And she had to wait for a year, until Heng O's next birthday, before she could wish her beard off again."
XXVI
CHENG'S FIGHTING CRICKET
ONE AUTUMN DAY, as soon as they had finished their lessons with Scholar Shih in the Court of Learning, Ah Shung and his cousins hurried along the paths of the Garden of Sweet Smells. The boys ran on tiptoe, and no one said a word lest he should frighten the little brown crickets for which they meant to hunt.
"Hark! Over there!" Ah Shung whispered as a faint chirping was heard upon the little rock mountain in the midst of the garden. The boy poked with a twig among the stones that had been laid up to make the tiny hill. A dark brown insect ran out and, quick as a flash, Ah Shung held before it a small trap of woven bamboo.
"I have him! I have him! And he is a big one," he called to his cousins. The other boys gathered round and peered into the trap.
"He's as big as the one I caught yesterday," one of Ah Shung's cousins cried. "Now we can fight them."
"Fu says we should wait until they have been in their cages a few days," said Ah Shung, "and Fu knows all about cricket fights. He has seen great battles in the city and he has won money there by betting as to which cricket would win."
Fu, the number one servant, was a good friend of all the children inside the red gate of the Lings. He had himself made the bamboo cricket traps for the boys and had told them where to look for the special kind of crickets that fight. He even got them some grains of rice and bits of green lettuce to feed their tiny prisoners.
There was excitement among the children and amusement among the grownups as the boys made their plans for their cricket fight. Their fathers showed them how to tie stiff hairs to the ends of small bamboo sticks. They explained how these were used to tickle the wee warriors until they were angry enough to strike out. Wang Lai, the nurse, brought the boys a round wooden bowl upon whose rough bottom the crickets' feet would not slip and slide.
The Old Old One had the place of honor at the stone table in the garden, upon which the fighting bowl was set down. Since the autumn day was cool, she was wearing a jacket lined with light fur, and the children were warm in suits well padded with cotton.
All the members of the family gathered to watch the great fight. Even the men laid aside their books and their writing brushes and left their library on the Courtyard of Politeness to give advice to their small sons as to how best to manage their crickets.
Ah Shung and his cousin opened the door of their cricket traps and shook their tiny fighters gently out into the bowl. Each brown cricket was only about an inch long. At first they stood still, as if they did not know what to do. Then the boys tickled their feelers with the stiff hairs on the ends of their bamboo sticks. The crickets grew cross. They rubbed their front wings together, making angry chirping noises. Then they dashed into the fight. They rushed at each other. They locked their tusks together. Over and over they rolled on the bottom of the wooden bowl while the spectators cheered.
What a shout there was when Ah Shung's cricket pushed the other brown fighter over upon his back so that he could not get up! The boy clapped his hands and cried, "Mine wins! Mine wins!"
"But my cricket is not through yet," Ah Shung's cousin declared. "Give him time to rest and he will yet beat."
"It is not for nothing that we say men are 'as brave as a cricket,' " said Grandmother Ling. "A cricket will fight so long as he has breath. So while we wait for these two to rest up for their next battle I will tell you a story about the marvelous cricket which brought fame and fortune to a poor man named Cheng who lived in a small village.
"This all took place long ago, when cricket fighting was even more loved by men than it is today. The Emperor who then sat upon the Dragon Throne so enjoyed seeing battles between these fighting insects that he demanded, as taxes, crickets instead of money or rice.
"One year the governor of a certain district sent as a present to the Son of Heaven a splendid fighting cricket. So bravely did it battle against all its enemies that the Emperor was delighted, and he commanded this governor to send him each autumn many others just like it.
"Now the governor could not fulfill the Emperor's order himself and so, in his turn, he commanded the head of each little village to get crickets for him. In one of these villages the headman was this Cheng. He was a poor man who had tried many times to pass the examinations for a better office, but who always had failed. When he received the governor's order for a fine fighting cricket he wrung his hands sadly. 'I might as well throw myself in the river!' he cried to his wife. 'The rich men from the city pay such high prices for crickets that it would take all we have inside our gate to buy even one from the cricket hunters.'
"'Then you had best go out and catch one yourself,' Cheng's wife replied. Poor Cheng took a bamboo tube and a little trap like Ah Shung's and went out to the grave mounds, where the crickets were most likely to be. He poked about under the stones. He looked under the bushes. He peered into every hole he saw in the ground. But when he returned to his home the three puny creatures inside his bamboo tube were so weak that when the governor saw them he ordered poor Cheng to be given one hundred blows of the bamboo rod. And he commanded him to bring a really good fighting cricket before the moon ended.
"Poor Cheng's back was so sore that he could not spend long hours searching for a cricket. His wife thought and thought as to how she could help him. At last she gathered together a few pennies and went to seek out the new fortune teller who had lately come to the village. When she returned to her home she bore in her hand a piece of white paper upon which there was drawn the picture of a hill behind the temple. At the foot of this hill there were shown a heap of stones and a hopping toad.
"'Ai-yah, my husband,' she wailed, 'I have thrown our money away. The only thing I got in return for it is this silly picture which the fortune teller made with his hair pen.'
"'Not so silly as you think,' said Chang when he saw the paper. 'No doubt this is telling me where to find a fine cricket. That temple is the very one to the east of our village. I shall go there at once.'
"Cheng left his bed and hobbled to the hill behind the old temple. Beside the pile of stones, which the drawing had shown, he took his seat, and he watched and he watched for the cricket to appear. 'Ai, I might as well look for a mustard seed,' he said to himself, for no little brown insect could he find among the stones.
"But just then out of the bushes there came a fat toad. Chang rose from his seat and followed the creature as it hopped under a bush. When
the man drew back the branches he saw on the ground a cricket so splendid that his heart jumped for joy. After a little trouble he captured it and put it gently inside his tube of bamboo.
"How the Cheng family nursed that cricket! They fed it on chestnuts and meat. They brought it water clear as a crystal from a faraway spring. And they tended it carefully against the time when the governor should send a messenger for it.
"But Cheng had a small son, about the age of Ah Shung. And one day, my children, when his mother was away washing clothes in the stream, the naughty boy uncovered the bowl in which the precious cricket was kept. With a mighty spring the insect leaped out of his prison. The boy ran after it, but, try as he would, he could not catch it, and the insect escaped.
"When Cheng came home that evening he flew into a fury when he heard the cricket was gone. He called for his son, but no trace of the child could be found. They searched and they searched, and at last they discovered his body at the bottom of a deep well. They thought at first he was drowned. Later they saw he still breathed, although they could not rouse him out of his slumber.
"The father thought more about his lost cricket than his sleeping boy. All through the night he sat gazing at the empty bowl. The sun was lighting the sky when suddenly he heard the faint chirp of a cricket just outside the house door. Cheng first thought the insect might be his own splendid lost cricket, but he soon saw it was a smaller one, of a poor reddish-brown color. He was about to let the cricket go when it suddenly hopped up on his sleeve. 'After all, it is a handsome little fellow,' he said, and he decided to keep it.
"'I will just try it out, even though it is small,' he thought, and so he arranged for a fight with a neighbor whose crickets were noted for winning in the village cricket fights. That neighbor laughed when he saw Cheng's small red-brown insect. He showed him how much bigger and stronger his dark-brown fighters looked, and he scoffed so loudly that poor Cheng was ready to give up the fight.
"'But we may as well have some amusement,' Cheng said. 'Let us fight just the same, and if my cricket is wounded it will be no great matter.'
"So they put the two crickets into a fighting bowl. Cheng's cricket lay quite still. It was not until it had been tickled and tickled with the pig's hair that it even moved. Oh, but then you should have seen that little red-brown cricket! It gave one mighty leap and attacked the other cricket so bravely and fiercely that the larger cricket would have been killed if the fight had not been stopped. The little red-brown cricket stood up on its hind legs and chirped with joy at its splendid victory.
"Cheng was about to pick his cricket up when a rooster walked over toward the bowl. It started to snap the cricket up in its beak when the tiny fighter leaped on his comb and held on tight with its tusks while the rooster squawked with pain. Joy filled the heart of Cheng and he put his cricket away in a cage of bamboo and took it to the governor. That important person was not at all pleased at the sight of such a small red-brown insect, and when Cheng told him of the bravery of his little fighter, he would not believe him. Not until it had beaten all the fighting crickets in the governor's palace was he convinced that this cricket of Cheng's was fit to send to the Emperor.
"The governor put Cheng's cricket in a cage made of ivory and jade, and he took it himself to the Dragon Throne. Never had there been seen such a fighter at the Emperor's court. A cricket that could beat enemies three times his size! A wee insect that could get the best of a rooster! It was found that Cheng's cricket even would dance when music was played. So of course it had a place of honor in the Emperor's palace.
"In return for his gift, the governor received from the Emperor magnificent presents of horses and silks, and in his turn he rewarded Cheng, from whom the marvelous cricket had come. He persuaded the judge to pass Cheng in his next examinations, and he gave him a much better position than that of headman of the village.
"Best of all, in a short time Cheng's son, who had been sleeping for many a day, opened his eyes.
"'Where am I?' were the first words the boy spoke. 'I must have been dreaming. I thought the gods turned me into a cricket and that I fought a great fight here in our village. It seemed to me that I even conquered a rooster. Then I went to a far place where I fought other crickets and where I lived in a cage of ivory and jade.'
"The boy's father knew then that the Emperor of Heaven had sent his son's spirit into the little red-brown cricket in order to save him from death. Cheng did not forget to give thanks for the return of his son's soul, nor for the good luck that each passing year brought. In a short time he grew rich. He had houses and fields, and he became the most important person in his neighborhood. And all because of a little red-brown cricket even smaller than these in our fighting bowl."
XXVII
THE MAID IN THE MIRROR
I SHALL NEVER LEARN to make word pictures so well as you, Lao Lao," Ah Shung sighed as he watched his grandmother's hand moving over the strip of thin white rice-straw paper which lay on the table before her.
"Ah yes, Small Bear, you will perhaps write even better if you work well with Scholar Shih in the Court of Learning," the old woman replied. "And Yu Lang also must soon begin to learn how to hold the hair pen. Even though she is a girl, I intend that she shall be taught to read and to write, just as I was. Others may be satisfied with teaching their girl children to keep house, to embroider, and to play on the lute. But a dull needle will not go through cloth half so swiftly as a bright one, and Yu Lang, as well as her brothers, needs to sharpen her wits."
The Old Old One was noted for her skill with the Four Gems of the Library, as she called her paper and her rabbit-hair brush, her ink stone of carved gray stone with its little well filled with water, and her sweet-smelling ink stick of dried lampblack and pine oil. She knew how to dip her ink stick in the water just long enough for it to make a smooth black paste when she rubbed it on the little ink-slab. Years of practicing with the brush had given her great skill in making the delicate strokes of the word pictures which the Chinese use in their writing.
"You should have seen my father use the hair pen," Lao Lao said to the children who stood beside her table watching her make one stroke upward, another downward, a third straight across. "He could copy the writing of the best scholars in the empire so neatly that you could not tell one from the other. To keep his brush-hand firm and limber when he was not writing, he often held in it two walnuts which he kept moving around and around. I can remember their clicking noise now, as they rubbed against one another. Sometimes my father allowed me to feel their smooth polished shells which so much rubbing had turned to the color of golden mahogany."
Grandmother Ling herself enjoyed copying the finely made word pictures in the old books in her study. She copied also the paintings on silk which were rolled up in her treasure chests. Often she made paintings out of her own mind, a rock or a mountain, a graceful stalk of bamboo or a spray of plum blossoms.
"You have not been doing well lately, Schoolmaster Shih tells me, Ah Shung," the Old Old One said as she dipped her brush in the fragrant ink paste. "You must work better. Remember, none holds so high a place as the scholar. The wealthiest man in the empire is not so important as one who has great learning. Also learning brings riches. If you study hard enough to pass the Emperor's examinations when you are older, high position and wealth will always be yours. So it was with young Lu. But, of course, he had to help him the lovely maid in the mirror."
The boy and the girl both pricked up their ears at the mention of a maid in a mirror. That sounded as though there might be a story near the door of the Old Old One's memory. But they did not dare to ask for it so long as their grandmother's hand was moving over the paper. They knew one false motion might spoil her whole page. But they breathed sighs of relief when she laid down her brush and sat back in her chair.
"You would like to hear that story?" Lao Lao asked, smiling at their shining eyes. "Well, my fingers are cramped. The brush no longer moves surely. I will tell the tale to you, and perhap
s Ah Shung will remember it when things do not go well for him in our Courtyard of Learning.
"Lu was a young man who lived in days long gone by. His family were not rich, but they had determined that their son should be given as much schooling as any other youth in their city. They saved every penny in order that he might have the best teachers, and they watched each step he took along the road to the cells where the Emperor's examinations were held.
"Now, Lu was young and Lu sometimes was lazy. And there came a time when he did not work very hard over his books and his brushes. No matter how earnestly his father explained that once the examinations were passed he would be given a high position, Lu was not interested. He let his books lie closed and he spent his whole time in games with his friends or walking with his bird under the trees along the bank of the river.
"One summer day, as this idle young man strolled there with his bird cage in his hand, he met a maiden who said her name was Feng Hsien. She was of such shining beauty that both the sun and the moon seemed dim beside her. Feng Hsien smiled shyly at Lu. They exchanged words of greeting. And straightway the young man knew that he would have her for his wife or he would never be wed.
"Again and again Feng Hsien and Lu met on the river bank, and sweet were the hours they spent talking together. But one day, when it was time for them to part, the maiden grew sorrowful. 'Our meetings must end,' she said to the youth. 'You are wasting your days. You do not open a book. You do not lift the hair pen. The paste is dry on your ink stone. I shall not come again until you have passed your examinations. But I have brought you a present by means of which you sometimes may see me.' And she handed Lu a shining mirror just like that one that hangs over my bed."
The old woman pointed to a round disk of thin white metal which was hung up on the wall by its flat handle. There was so little glass in those days that most of the Chinese mirrors were made of polished metal instead. Lao Lao believed that this mirror helped to keep her safe from bad spirits. Often she had explained to the children that the spirits cannot bear to see their own faces. At the first glimpse of the silvery surface of the mirror they fly away in great haste. It is because of this that Lung-Er, the youngest Ling grandchild, always had a tiny glass mirror sewed upon his red cap. One could never tell when one might meet a bad spirit and it was well to take every care to drive it away. All these things flashed through Lao Lao's mind, and she paused for a moment. Then she went on with her story again.
Tales of a Chinese Grandmother Page 15
