the alternatives of remaining in his village to take care of his aged
parents or of going to the capital in search of honors and lucrative
posts. His own wishes are to remain at home, less for his parents’ sake
than because of the beautiful wife whom he has married but two months
ago. But his father urges him to go to Ch’ang An, to use his talents,
and to gain fame and wealth. “At fifteen one must study, at thirty a man
must act.” A friend of the family, an elderly gentleman called Chang,
sides with the father against the mother, who wishes to keep her son at
home. She tells the story of a young man who had left his family to take
the examination at the capital, but who, when at last his learning had
gained him a post as superintendent of an almshouse, found his parents
as inmates in the very institution. The young wife takes no part in
the discussion at all; in fact, the elderly gentlemen seem to consider
affection for her an unmanly weakness on the son’s part. “He thinks of
nothing but love and the sweet pleasures of the nuptial couch,” says his
father. “Here it’s two months that he is married, and yet one cannot tear
him away from this place.” This represents a very common attitude in
China—I remember reading in a Peking paper in 1917 in an attack on the
vice-president of Tsing Hua College that one of his faults was that he
occasionally went walking with his wife! One of my students from Shansi
told me one day that he had been married during the summer vacation.
I asked whether his wife was with him in Peking, and when he answered
in the negative, whether he was writing to her. “Oh, no,” he said
shamefacedly, “I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
[Illustration: A CHINESE ARTIST’S CONCEPTION OF TWO PIOUS SOULS]
The father calls on the son to state what he understands by filial piety.
The son answers by quoting the “Book of Rites,” “It is the duty of the
son to take every care that in summer as well as in winter his parents
should enjoy all comforts of life. He must every evening himself arrange
the bed on which they are to sleep; every morning at the first crowning
of the cock he must inquire in affectionate terms about the state of
their health; then, in the course of the day, he must ask repeatedly
whether they are suffering from the cold or whether the heat incommodes
them. The duty of the son is to watch over his parents wherever they go,
to love those whom they love, honor those whom they honor; he must even
love the horses and dogs whom his father loves.” And he adds from the
“Sayings of Confucius”: “A son should not leave the home of his father
and his mother so long as they are still living.”
To this the father retorts with a quotation from “The Book of Filial
Piety”; “The first degree of filial piety consists in serving one’s
parents; the second in serving one’s prince, and the third in seeking
after honors.” The father persuades the son to go. His son will soon be a
mandarin, he says, and then, “The three kinds of meat (beef, mutton and
pork) and the rare foods which are offered up in the great sacrifices
will be served to me three times a day in tripods of elegant form or
in dishes of fine porcelain. That will be better than eating beans and
drinking water.”
But the mother gives expression to her grief in a metaphor praised by
Chinese commentators: “In a moment they will tear away the pearl I was
holding in my hand.” Forebodings of evil fill her heart. “Go then, my
son, but if during your absence your father and mother should die of
hunger and cold, your honor will not therefore be smirched when you
return in an embroidered robe.”
The second scene of the play transfers the action to Ch’ang An, the
old capital. With the symmetry so characteristic of all Chinese art
the action of the drama is divided almost equally between the scenes
in Tsai-yung’s native village, and those in the imperial city. We are
introduced into the palace of an imperial minister, a certain Niu,
and here through the words of a maidservant we learn of the dull,
tedious, joyless life in the women’s apartments. The author pictures
the minister’s daughter, Niu-hsi, as the model young woman who prefers
working at embroidery to playing in the open air. The servant girl on
the other hand is sad because spring (used symbolically for love) is
passing her by. In a beautiful allegory on spring and its manifestations
she gives expression to her feelings, while her mistress cites in reply
the ancient Chinese rule of conduct: “Women must not leave the interior
apartments.” The scene seems to be a protest on the author’s part against
this cruel stunting of the lives of his countrywomen.
Into Minister Niu’s house come two rival go-betweens who make offers
of marriage for Niu’s daughter in the interest of two fathers of
distinguished sons. But Niu refuses; he will accept for his daughter none
but the scholar who has won the very highest honors at the examinations.
The two women begin to quarrel and are driven off with blows by Niu’s
orders, because by fighting in his house they offend against the rites.
A marriage arranged by such wrangling old hags between young people who
meet for the first time on the day of their wedding certainly does not
offer much in the way of romance. An even more depressing picture of
the life of the young girl one gains from the manner in which Niu takes
his daughter to task for having walked in the garden. “Don’t you know
of what the principal merit of a young woman consists? I have told you
before, men are looking for women who don’t like to leave the women’s
apartments.” Everywhere the ghost of Confucius giving precepts for the
regulation of the private life down to the minutest details!
The play returns to Tsai-yung, who is now on the road to the capital in
the company of three other candidates for the examination. Each in turn
tells of the purpose of his studies. Tsai-yung outlines his principles as
follows:
“Here is the method I have adopted. When I was seated I read, when
I walked I recited from memory what I had learned. I have studied
thoroughly ten thousand chapters; I have carried on difficult studies
and researches. But as there are two things in life that one must never
lose sight of—loyalty to the prince and filial piety—I have always tried
to show myself grateful for the emperor’s benefits and to return with
thankfulness the kindness of my parents.” This speech is applauded by the
other scholars and they in turn give their answers, some of which are of
rather satirical turn, especially the one of the student who explains
that with him the essential is correct pronunciation and beautiful
penmanship!
The next scene presents a burlesque on the literary examinations. It
recalls somewhat an entrance examination given in a “prep” school I once
attended, where the older students, dressed up in frock coats and with
false beards on their faces, took the part of faculty. The examination
of freshmen consisted of the singing of hymns, the shining of shoes, and
a guessing contest as to which of the “professors” had paddled them in
the rear. The imperial examiner announces solemnly to the five hundred
candidates that the present test would not be like last year’s, when they
had been asked to write essays, one on literature, another on morals,
and a third on politics, but that he was going to ask them first, to
compose a rhyme; second, to guess a riddle; and third, to sing a song.
Needless to state, Tsai-yung passes with flying colors in this test full
of humorous puns which are, of course, untranslatable. The examiner is
made to say at the end, “Tsai-yung, I recognize the superiority of your
talents, your learning is indeed profound; you rise far above the others;
your merit is most extraordinary. Immediately I am going to apprise the
emperor of the outcome of the examinations!” This scene leads one to
suspect that the author of the play had good reasons for venting his
satire on the inane literary competitions—probably he had failed and was
therefore forced to waste his talents in a life of retirement.
[Illustration: A SCHOLAR
Chinese Character Type]
The real hero, or rather heroine, of the play now appears for the first
time, namely Tsai-yung’s young wife Wu-niang. No news has come from
the capital as to her husband’s success, a famine is ravishing the
district, and the old parents of Tsai-yung are making one trip to the
pawnshop after the other. But Wu-niang is determined to do her duty
as daughter-in-law; she is going to show filial piety to the last in
conformity with precepts such as the following, quoted from the “Book of
Rewards and Punishments”, a work which is not for sale in bookshops but
is distributed in the temples to the pious: “A daughter-in-law must serve
the father and mother of her husband as a daughter serves her father and
mother. She must show filial piety and complete obedience. If she lacks
in her duty toward them she lacks at the same time filial piety. This
crime always becomes known to Heaven, as the following story illustrates.
In the territory of Chang-Chu there were three sisters-in-law entirely
lacking in filial piety. One day they heard a clap of thunder and at the
same time they were changed: one into a cow, the second into a lamb, and
the third into a dog; their heads alone preserved the original form....
Chin-ing, the governor of that district, had an engraving made showing
the metamorphoses and had it distributed among the people to teach them a
lesson. That is how Heaven punishes!”
Wu-niang’s immediate duty is to try to make peace between her aged
parents-in-law. Tsai’s wife is not slow in telling her husband “I told
you so” in regard to the evils that have followed their son’s departure,
while Tsai naturally enough does not become any calmer for being told
what a fool he is. To appease their wrath and to supply a bit of food
Wu-niang pawns the few hairpins and other ornaments that she possesses.
While his parents are slowly dying of hunger, Tsai-yung, by his brilliant
record, has attracted the attention of the emperor himself. The latter
orders that the daughter of Minister Niu, who has been refused to many a
deserving suitor, should be given to him. Niu is overjoyed to receive as
a son-in-law the candidate accorded the highest honors and immediately
sends a go-between to arrange the affair. However, she returns to
announce that Tsai-yung refuses, because he is married and has various
obligations toward his parents. But the real reason, she whispers, is
that the bride’s feet are too long. Minister Niu flies into a rage; he
says that no one would any longer respect his position if he were to
accept this refusal. He is going to speak to the emperor about it. Small
wonder that under the circumstances Tsai-yung’s petition to the emperor
to be allowed to return home is refused; instead he is again ordered to
marry Niu-hsi in a mandate beginning with the words, “If filial piety is
the basis of all virtues, then the perfection of all morals consists in
serving one’s prince.” With tears he leaves the imperial palace and must
submit to being married against his wishes to a second wife. He regrets
that he cannot return to his parents (does not seem to feel any regrets
about Wu-niang) and breaks out into a lamentation: “High reputation is a
tie that binds; good fortune is an iron chain. Fortune and reputation are
the instruments used by Heaven to inflict tortures on mankind!”
The scene again shifts to the famine-stricken province. A mandarin
finds that a corrupt official has stolen the little grain that is to be
distributed to the poor. This commissioner is caught in the very act,
yet in typical Chinese fashion he has a ready but translucent excuse
to offer; however, when he is threatened with torture he is willing
to confess that he is a robber. This wicked official is then made to
sign a written confession of his guilt and is led off to jail. His kind
appears in hundreds of plays; in fact, he is probably the very favorite
type on the Chinese stage. The mandarin asks Wu-niang why she had come
to the court herself instead of sending a male member of the family;
a woman, he says, should not leave the inner apartments of the house.
It is interesting to note that a Chinese commentator considers this an
erroneous interpretation of the passage in the “Book of Rites”; it is
only the young girl who is not to leave the inner apartments; once a
woman is married she may do so. When the mandarin learns of Wu-niang’s
sad situation, he commands an attendant to give her three portions of the
rice embezzled by the official. Another official, who seems to be hand
in glove with the embezzler, follows Wu-niang and in a lonely place on
the road demands that she return the rice, lest he kill her on the spot.
Wu-niang offers him her clothes; if he will only not demand the food that
is to save the lives of the old people. The black-hearted villain says
that he wants the rice and does not care to expose her limbs to the fury
of the elements. Then comes the young woman’s touching answer, which
reaches perhaps the highest level of a daughter’s devotion: “What matters
it if my body be exposed to the fury of the elements, so long as I can
save the lives of my father-in-law and my mother-in-law!” The cowardly
wretch pretends to be touched and bids her go her way in peace, but as
soon as she is off her guard he snatches from the defenseless woman her
bag of rice. Fearing the reproaches of her parents-in-law Wu-niang plans
suicide, but the memory of her husband’s admonition that she watch over
his parents decides her to continue in the thankless task.
The next scenes show just how ungrateful her parents-in-law are for
her unlimited devotion. Wu-niang herself is eating roots, buds, the
bark of trees, and other things classified as material containing some
slight food values in so-called “famine food books”—a type of literature
enjoying a wide circulation in China. But her suspicious mother-in-law
fears that the young woman is eating better food than she is serving to
her, because Wu-niang eats her miserable stew in private. At one of her
meals the author, by a strange realism, has her say, “When I have eaten
this mess my hunger ceases, but then there begin pains in the intestines
much more violent than the hunger had been.” When the mother-in-law
surprises her she finds that Wu-niang had been extremely self-sacrificing
instead of selfish as she had supposed, and the shock is too much for her
weakened body; she dies.
The husband too is very much enfeebled, and when the friend of the
family, Chang, comes to call, he is mortified that he cannot rise to meet
his guest. Throughout the play there is in the speeches of practically
all the characters an urbanity and a politeness which show how deeply the
lessons of Confucius to do or say always the fitting thing have gone over
into the flesh and blood of his nationals. Wu-niang tells Chang of their
greatest cause for anguish—they have not the means to give the deceased a
proper burial. Chang then shows himself an ideal friend from the Chinese
point of view by saying, “I shall order a servant to prepare a wooden
coffin in which we shall place the body of your wife. I myself shall then
select a lucky day for the funeral, and after having had a grave dug on
the hill in the south, I shall accompany the procession.”
The scene that gives the title to the play is one in which Tsai-yung
gives expression to his tenderest emotion by playing on the lute. This
instrument is regarded by the Chinese as the noblest and æsthetically
the highest musical instrument in existence. A Chinese lover of music
cannot find words to express the delight the lute can provide.[14] As
a general thing the Chinese are ashamed to display emotion, and the
Westerner is often shocked by apparent callousness, as for example when
a person who has just lost a dear relative gives vent to a nervous
laugh instead of yielding to tears when the subject is alluded to.
Therefore it is by means of the lute that Tsai-yung gives expression to
his repressed feelings. He does this with the delicate touch employed
by Chinese painters in their impressionistic pictures and by the poets
in their suggestive verses in which, as some one has said, the i’s are
never dotted, but a definite mood is nevertheless conveyed all the more
forcefully.[15] While Tsai-yung touches the strings of his instrument
one servant fans him with an ivory fan, and a second burns incense, and
a third places his books before him. Under such ideal conditions the
Chinese scholar is quietly singing to his lute.
At this point his newly wedded wife, Niu-hsi, enters. Evidently the
relation between the two is still an extremely distant one, for his wife,
in asking Tsai-yung to sing a ballad for her, remarks that every time
she comes to listen to his music, he stops. She too has her grief which
she would like to have dispelled by sweet music. Tsai-yung begins to
play, “The pheasant in the morning begins his long flight”, and “The wild
duck separated from the companion he loves.” But these songs do not suit
Niu-hsi’s mood. She wants not a song of a disappointed lover, but one to
fit the present situation where husband and wife are together.
“My lord, in the calm of this lovely evening, in full view of this
ravishingly beautiful scenery, sing me the ballad, ‘When the storm wind
moves the pine trees.’” Tsai-yung starts to play it, but alas! as Niu-hsi
discovers, he gradually slips into the air, “When I think of returning to
my native land.”
Niu-hsi is disappointed because she cannot penetrate her husband’s
melancholy mood. He explains that he cannot play better because he has
his old lute no longer. In answer to his wife’s questions Tsai-yung
speaks of his lute with evident symbolism, telling her that he has thrown
his old lute aside but that at the bottom of his heart he loves it still.
Niu-hsi guesses the cause of her husband’s grief, but she cannot persuade
him to confide it to her. The two drink wine together and recite verses,
but when the hour becomes late Tsai-yung asks his wife to retire and
calls for his servant. Before the latter appears Tsai-yung sings to notes
of his lute about a dream in which Wu-niang had appeared to him; but, in
the words of Heine, “Es war ein Traum.”
He asks the servant to find him a trustworthy messenger whom he may send
to his native village to inquire about his parents. But before this
plan is put into operation an impostor appears, bringing an alleged
letter from Tsai-yung’s father, according to which all the family are
enjoying the very best of health. The letter gives the young scholar
great pleasure and earns its bearer a rich reward; Tsai-yung gives the
impostor some pearls and some gold for his father in addition to a letter
in which he states that he is detained at the capital, but that he hopes
to return home soon. Meanwhile, he very humbly begs forgiveness for
the long delay. The false messenger is portrayed in a monologue as the
most cowardly and the direst of villains. That it is so easy for him to
deceive Tsai-yung is not so far-fetched as it may seem to the Westerner,
for the employment of professional letter-writers is a very common
practice in China where the percentage of illiteracy is high.
Of course, the father never receives his son’s letter; on the contrary,
the next scene shows him dying of hunger. His faithful daughter-in-law
watches over him to the last. For three years Tsai-yung has been absent
without so much as sending a letter; therefore the father asks his
daughter-in-law to marry again as soon as he has died. Wu-niang replies
with a Chinese proverb, “No one can serve two masters”, and affirms her
resolve to remain faithful to her husband. He is so grateful to her that
he hopes, according to Buddhist beliefs, to be her daughter-in-law in
his next life while she is to be his father-in-law. He curses the day he
asked his son to leave home and gives to his friend Chang the injunction:
“I leave you my cane. When this ungrateful and disobedient son of mine
returns home, beat him for me with my stick and chase him out of the
house.” With these fatherly words he breathes his last.
In order to earn the money for her father-in-law’s funeral Wu-niang cuts
her hair and tries to sell it in the street. Her bald head gives her the
appearance of a nun, although she feels scarcely worthy of becoming one.
In the anguish of her poverty she runs through the streets, imploring
people not to bargain with a wretched woman in her position, but to help
her by buying the very last thing of value she possesses. The faithful
Chang meets her in the street, and, on learning her story, promises to
send to her house enough money to enable her to bury her father-in-law
properly according to the rites. She in return gives him her hair,
asking him to sell it. He accepts it, but not in order to sell it; far
from that, he is going to keep it until Tsai-yung’s return, in order to
prove to him the full extent of Wu-niang’s filial piety. This piety is
so great that when Wu-niang goes to the cemetery to erect a monument
over the grave of the deceased, a genie, touched by her devotion, comes
to her aid by calling the white monkey of the south and the black tiger
of the north to help him erect this tomb with the well-known speed and
skill that genii possess. He also advises Wu-niang through the medium of
a dream to assume the garb of a nun and to search for her husband in the
capital. Wu-niang decides to follow this advice. She plans to earn her
subsistence by taking with her Tsai-yung’s lute, in order to sing in the
villages songs in praise of filial piety. In order to be able to accord
the spirits of her parents-in-law their proper worship she paints their
portraits and carries them with her. The Octogenarian Chang totters with
Wu-niang to the edge of the village and bids her godspeed on her long
journey.
Meanwhile Tsai-yung has been acting all this time like a man in a stupor,
his wife says. Niu-hsi is pictured as a kindly young woman watching over
her husband with loving care. “What ails you?” she asks. “You have the
finest delicacies served you. You eat boiled tongues of orang-outang and
roasted leopard embryos. You wear robes of violet silk; your belt is a
belt of jade. When you go out or when you return your horse crushes under
foot all manner of flowers which people spread on your path. Your head
is shaded by an umbrella with three layers of silk. Formerly you were
only a poor scholar living in a thatched hut; now you fulfill the highest
functions in the emperor’s palace. You swim in wealth, but this wealth
is not sufficient for you; you do nothing but wrinkle your forehead and
heave sighs.”
Niu-hsi asks many more questions, but her husband refuses to reveal the
cause of his grief. But when she leaves the room Tsai-yung relieves
his feelings in a monologue which she overhears. When he has finished
lamenting his separation from his parents and his wife (the latter is
always mentioned after father and mother), Niu-hsi comes in to say
simply that she will travel with him to his native village, if that is
what he is longing for. He retorts, with the timidity found in most
scholar-heroes in Chinese plays, that he is afraid to let her father
hear of the matter and that he therefore forbids her to mention it. But
the otherwise docile and obedient wife simply overrides his wishes and
takes the matter to her father. The latter is quite willing to give his
permission for the journey; only suggests that it might be better to send
a faithful servant to bring Tsai-yung’s parents and wife to the capital.
This plan is agreed to by all except the servant who, in a somewhat
humorous scene, speaks of the evils that are sure to follow when two
wives are living under one roof. But at last he agrees to go, even though
he feels his mistress will never thank him for having obeyed on this
occasion.