Enigma of China(69)

Outside, they couldn’t find a taxi. A rickshaw—or, rather, a rickshaw-like tricycle with a man pedaling in the front—pulled up to the curb. They got in, even though the seat in the back was hardly wide enough for the two of them. They were sitting close.

It started drizzling. Chen pulled up the all-around awning, as if wrapping them in a cocoon. Still, they were able to watch the shifting scene outside through a transparent curtain, shimmering in the light haze of rain.

“This is the best vehicle for sightseeing in the old city,” the tricyclist said, winding his way through side streets lined with rustic houses with white walls and black tile roofs. “If you reserve for half a day, I can give you a huge discount, taking you to East Lake and Dayu Temple, all for one hundred yuan.”

“Dayu Temple?”

“Dayu was one of the great emperors in Chinese history. He succeeded in controlling the flooding that was ravaging the country. A huge temple was recently built in his honor in Shaoxing. In fact, it’s a splendid palace.”

Lianping knew who Dayu was—he was a legendary figure in ancient Chinese history. She knew nothing, however, about the connection between Dayu and Shaoxing. In recent years, a number of cities built temples or palaces to attract tourists, making far-fetched claims of connections to legendary figures.

“I don’t think we’ll have the time,” Chen said, making the decision for both of them.

The vehicle pulled up next to Shen Garden, and they got down. They purchased entrance tickets and noticed, through the open gate, that the garden appeared to be rather deserted.

It turned out to be smaller than Lianping had expected, though it was probably just like other gardens designed in the tradition of southern landscaping. It had vermilion-painted pavilions, stone bridges, and fantastically shaped grottos in groves maintained in a style of cultivated nature that had appealed to the literati in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Not far from the entrance, she saw a billboard with a history of the garden focusing on the romance between Lu You and Tang Wan during the Song dynasty.

The garden appealed to tourists because of the romantic poems composed by Lu You that were connected to the garden. There was also a Shaoxing opera based on the classic love story, which she had heard about from her mother, a Shaoxing opera fan, though Lianping herself hadn’t seen it.

After several turns along the moth-covered path, they passed a solitary stall selling local rice wine and then came to a pavilion with a large, oblong rock beside it, the flat surface of which had two poems engraved on it and highlighted in red paint.

I

The sun is sinking behind the city wall

to the sad notes of a shining bugle.

Here in Shen Garden,

the pond and the pavilion appear

no longer to be the same,

except the heartbreaking spring ripples

still so green under the bridge,

the ripples that once reflected her arrival

light-footed, in such a beauty

as to shame wild geese into fleeing.

II

It’s forty years since we last met,

the dream broken, the scent vanished,

in Shen Garden, the withered willows

produce no more fluffy catkins.

An old man about to turn into the dust

of Mount Ji, I still burst into tears

at this old scene.

“The poems are autobiographical,” Chen said, starting in again. “In his youth, Lu You married his cousin, Tang Wan, whom he deeply loved. Because of opposition from his mother, however, they were forced to divorce, though they still cared for each other, even after each of them remarried.”

“They both remarried? Didn’t the institution of arranged marriage forbid women from remarrying?”

“Not exactly, at least in their case. Neo-Confucianism didn’t gain momentum until after Chen and Zhu in the Ming dynasty. In Lu You’s time, it was still permissible for a woman like Tang Wan to remarry.

“In 1555, they met in the garden by chance. They were both remarried by then, and they had to observe the etiquette of the time. Still, she served him a cup of yellow rice wine in her delicate hand, all that was unsaid between them rippling in the cup. Lu You wrote a ci poem, lamenting a ‘spring still so green,’ to which Tang Wan composed one in response, and died of a broken heart not long afterward. Many years later, at the age of seventy-five, he revisited the garden and wrote the lines carved in the rocks here. Their ill-starred romance added to the popularity of the poems.”

“It’s a sad story.”

“Oh, I forgot,” he said abruptly, before turning back to the path along which they had come. “Wait in the pavilion for me,” he said, as he walked away.

She stepped into the pavilion, wondering what he was up to.

Then she saw him hurrying back, carrying two cups.