Qiu Xiaolong - Enigma of China

“I wanted to surprise you, Lianping.”

“You certainly did that. I thought you’d abandoned me. But you must have already had plans for the day.” She waited, her brows tilting when he failed to respond immediately.

“We have the afternoon to ourselves,” he said. “Later, we could rent a black-awning boat, like in Lu Xun’s stories, and sail into the eventide.”

At the moment, she couldn’t recall any stories about a black-awning boat sailing into the dusk, but it was enough to be walking in the park with him.

“Sorry I missed the morning event,” he said.

“No big loss for you. You know how boring conference speeches can be,” she said.

The elderly gateman of the park didn’t even look up from the local newspaper he was reading with intense absorption. He just waved them in after Chen dropped the tickets into the green plastic box. They were just another tourist couple wandering around looking for something interesting to do on a rainy afternoon.

The park matched the description in the brochure Lianping had glanced through. There were pavilions with tilted eaves, white stone bridges arching over green water, and verdant bamboo groves scattered here and there, with memories of the area’s history whispering through it all.

Wang Xizi, a celebrated calligrapher, spent most of his life in Shaoxing during the Jin dynasty in the fourth century. He was commonly called the sage of calligraphy, unrivaled in caoshu, the semicursive script. His most renowned work was the “Preface to the Poems Composed at the Lanting Orchid Pavilion,” an introduction to the poems composed by a group of writers during a gathering at Lanting. The original calligraphy was long lost, but some finely traced copies and rubbings remained.

“Look at these statuettes of white geese in the green meadow. There are so many stories about them in classical Chinese literature,” Chen said in high spirits. Perhaps his mood was due to the change of scenery, Lianping thought. She didn’t think he was trying to impress her. There was no need for him to do so. “According to one legend, Wang learned how to turn the brush from watching the geese parading around here.”

She wasn’t that intrigued by these stories, which were from so long ago and far away. Chen was walking close to her, though, and that made all the difference. But Xiang was coming back, something she decided not to think about at the moment.

Despite the many legends about the park, they were the only tourists there. They sauntered over to a stream embosomed in trees and bamboos, where a fitful breeze brought down a flutter of glistening raindrops from the green boughs above.

“It’s here. This is Lanting,” he exclaimed. “Wang and the other poets gathered at this stream, engaged in a wine-poem game.”

“A wine-poem game?”

“They let wine cups flow down from the head of the stream. If a cup came to a stop in front of someone, he had to write a poem. If he failed to do so, he had to drink three cups as punishment. The poems were then collected, and Wang composed a preface to the collection. He must have been very drunk, flourishing his brush pen inspired by the exquisite scene. That preface marks the very peak of his calligraphy.”

“That’s incredible.”

“Many years later, in the Tang dynasty, Du Mu wrote a poem about the scene. ‘ Regretfully we cannot stop time from flowing away. / Why not, then, enjoy ourselves in a wine game by the stream? / A blaze of blossom appears, indifferent, year after year. / Lament not at its withering, but at its burgeoning .’”

“I’ve never read it, Poet Chen. That’s a marvelous poem, but the last line is a little beyond me.”

“When I first read the poem, probably at your age, I didn’t understand the ending, either. Now I think I do. When it first blooms, it’s still full of dreams and hope, but there’s nothing you can do to slow the journey from blooming to withering. That’s something to lament.”

She was intrigued by his interpretation. She tried to conjure up the ancient scene of the poets reading and writing here, but she failed.

“The times have changed,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

It was engaging to have him talking like an experienced guide, she thought as they strolled in sight of a yellow silk banner streaming in the breeze over an antique-looking hall. The banner read, “Calligraphy and Painting-Free to People Who Really Appreciate Chinese Art.”

“Free?” she said. “Perhaps people here at Lanting still practice art for art’s sake, like in ancient days. We might find a scroll of the poem you just recited to me.”

They entered the hall. The front part of it had been turned into an exhibition room, with scrolls hanging from the walls. To their puzzlement, each of the scrolls was marked with a price, not exorbitant but not cheap, either. Behind a glass counter near the entrance, a man wearing an umber-colored Chinese gown stood up, grinning. He read the question in their eyes and said, “They’re free. We just charge for the cost of making them into scrolls.”

“Exactly. Writers and artists cannot live on the northwest wind,” Chen commented. “If you add up all the paintings and calligraphies in this hall, you couldn’t buy one square meter in the subdivision of Binjiang Garden.”

“Ah yes, the Binjiang Garden in Pudong. The paper mansion that the Yus burned at the temple was in that subdivision,” Lianping said.

Another peddler emerged from the back room of the hall, gesticulating, swearing, and pushing on them a brocade-covered box containing brush pens, an ink stick, an ink stone, and a jadelike seal.

“There are four treasures of our ancient civilization. They are instilled with the feng shui of the culture city. An absolute must for the ‘scholar and beauty’ romance,” the peddler said, making his unrelenting sales pitch.

They left quickly, like a fleeing army.

“It’s more commercial than I thought,” she said with a touch of regret. She was intrigued by the peddler’s reference to the “scholar and beauty romance,” which was a popular genre in classical Chinese literature.

“It’s too close to Shanghai to be any different, and day trippers like us don’t help. Here, there, everywhere, green grass spread out to the horizon .”

The line probably referred to commercial activities, Lianping thought. But he didn’t have to cite a Tang dynasty line for that. He was extraordinarily exuberant, coming across not unlike one of those scholars in a classical romance, eager to sweep a young girl off her feet with allusions and quotations.

“Let’s go to Shen Garden,” he suggested. “It might be quiet there, without the commercial hustle and bustle.”

“The other garden shouldn’t be too far away,” she said as they walked out of the park, “but I don’t know how to get there.”

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.”