Li Yu - The Carnal Prayer Mat

Convinced by her reasoning, the Master agreed to the match and chose an auspicious date for the wedding. Despite the matchmaker's report and the immortal's poem, Vesperus still felt some qualms, not having seen Jade Scent himself. Not until the wedding night, when, after exchanging their bows, they entered the bridal chamber and he got a close-up view of her, did he exult in his good fortune.

What was the bride's beauty like? Here is a new lyric testifying to it:

(To the tune "Remembering the Maid of Qin")

What was the new couple's pleasure like as they joined together in marriage? Here is another new lyric:

(To the tune "Spring in the Jade Bower")

Jade Scent's looks were indeed unrivaled anywhere in the world-on that score Vesperus had nothing to complain of. But he did have one grave disappointment. Abundant as her beauty was, she fell short in terms of passion and failed to please her husband to the full. Due to her father's strict upbringing and the severe example set by her mother, she had never been exposed to any of the more licentious aspects of life. Her reading, in particular, had been confined to The Lives of Virtuous Women and The Girls' Classic of Filial Piety , [32]both of which were full of strictures against the very acts that Vesperus had in mind. As a result there was a good deal of her father in her speech and attitudes, for which her husband dubbed her "the puritan maid." As soon as he said anything in the least suggestive, she would blush furiously and leave the room.

Vesperus happened to be particularly fond of daytime sex, because the sight of his partner's genitals added to his own excitement, but on the several occasions he tried to pull down his wife's trousers, she screamed at the top of her lungs as if he were trying to rape her, and he was forced to desist. As for nighttime sex, although she acquiesced, she conveyed the distinct impression that she did so only because she had no choice. Her distress affected his enjoyment too. Because she was unwilling to try any novel or exotic techniques, Vesperus found himself able to practice only the Doctrine of the Mean. [33]When he proposed Fetching the Fire from the Other Side of the Mountain, [34]she protested that it violated the taboo on a wife's turning her back on her husband, and when he suggested Dousing the Candle, [35]she objected that it inverted the principle of the husband's superiority.

If he did manage, much against her will, to hoist her legs over his shoulders and then, by herculean efforts, to reach a climax of pleasure, she would refuse even to call out "dearest" or "darling," almost as if she lacked the power of speech-let alone beg for mercy so as to enhance his powers. Vesperus was greatly upset, and reflected to himself, What a shame such a strikingly beautiful girl should so entirely lack the pleasure of active participation and lie there like a statue! Where's the pleasure in that? There's nothing else for it; I'll just have to put in some time educating her out of this behavior.

Visiting the art dealer's, he bought an album of exquisite spring-palace pictures by the hand of Academician Zhao Mengfu of the Yuan dynasty. [36]There were thirty-six pictures in all, after the line in the Tang poem, "In the thirty-six palaces all is spring." He brought them home and put them in her bedroom, meaning to look through them with her and get her to understand that sexual intercourse is not a single entity but takes a multitude of forms for our enjoyment. "It is obvious from this book that those techniques I showed you were not invented by me but were practiced long ago by the ancients. I've brought you these model examination answers to prove my point."

As she took the album from him, Jade Scent had no idea of its subject matter, but assumed it contained landscapes or flower paintings. On opening the album, she saw that the two opening pages bore a title in large script: PICTURES FROM THE HAN PALACE. There were many virtuous women in the Han Palace, she thought, and these must be their portraits; let me see what they looked like, to have been able to do the virtuous things they did.

But when she turned to the third page and saw a man and a woman copulating stark naked on top of an ornamental rock, her face flushed and she lost her temper:

"Where did you get such pernicious stuff? Just having it here is enough to pollute a lady's chamber. Have the maid take it out at once and burn it!"

Vesperus put out a hand to restrain her. "This is a rare item worth a hundred taels that I borrowed from a friend. If you can afford to repay him, go ahead and burn it. If you can't, kindly put it down and let me enjoy it for a day or two before I have to give it back."

"If you want to improve your mind, do it by looking at famous paintings or calligraphy! What's the point of looking at this sort of frivolous stuff?"

"If this were a frivolous thing," said Vesperus, "the artist wouldn't have painted it, nor the collector have paid a large sum to buy it. It is precisely because it is the most serious subject since the Creation itself that literary men have chosen to paint it, mount it on silk, put it on sale in the art shops, and preserve it in libraries-all for the purpose of advising posterity on the right models of behavior. Otherwise, in the course of time, all knowledge of the mutual reinforcement of yin and yang would gradually be lost, husbands and wives would spurn each other, reproduction would cease, and humankind would eventually become extinct. The reason I borrowed it was not just to look at it myself, but to let you understand that this principle is what makes it possible to conceive and give birth, and also to prevent you from being misled by a puritanical father into never bearing any children. Why get so upset?"

"I simply don't believe this behavior is respectable. If it were, why didn't the ancients who established our code of ethics have people practice it openly by daylight in front of others? Why did they insist on its being done secretly at dead of night in dark places as if we were burglars? That shows it's not respectable."

Vesperus laughed. "You can't be blamed for these opinions. It's all your father's fault, for keeping you locked up inside the house without an experienced woman friend to tell you about sex. That's why you're so abysmally ignorant. You think I'm the only man in the world who's romantically inclined, and that all the women in the world are as puritanical as you are and never do it in the daytime but insist on waiting until night. You don't realize that every couple does it in the daytime and that every time they do so, they're open and aboveboard about it and let people know. Tell me this: if men and women didn't do it in the daytime, how did the artist learn about these techniques? How did he paint the figures so marvelously, getting them so lifelike that it excites us just to look at them?"

"Well, my parents are husband and wife, too. Why don't they do it in the daytime?"

"Tell me, how do you know they don't?"

"If they did, I would surely have come upon them while they were doing it. How do you explain the fact that in all my fifteen years I've never once done so? I've neither seen them nor heard them."