Six Records of a Floating Life (Chapter one: Wedded Bliss 03)

    That night, when I came back from outside the city, whither I had accompanied my girl cousin the bride, it was already midnight, and I felt very hungry and asked for something to eat. A maid-servant gave me some dried dates, which were sweet for me. Yun secretly pulled me by the sleeve into her room, and I saw that she had hidden away a bowl of warm congee and some dishes to go with it. I was beginning to take up the chopsticks and eat it with great gusto when Yun's boy cousin Yuheng called out, "sister Su, come quick!" Yun quickly shut the door and said, "I am very tired and going to bed." Yuheng forced the door open and, seeing the situation, he said with a malicious smile at Yun, "So that's it! A while ago I asked for congee and you said there was no more, but you really meant to keep it for your future husband." Yun was greatly embarrassed and everybody laughed at her, including the servants. On my part, I rushed away home with an old servant in a state of excitement. Since the affair of the congee happened, she always avoided me when I went to her home, and I knew that she was only trying to avoid being made a subject of ridicule.

    Our wedding took place on the twenty-second of the first moon in 1780. When she came to my home on that night, I found that she had the same slender figure as before. When her bridal veil was lifted, we looked at each other and smiled. After the drinking of the customary twin cups between bride and groom, we sat down together at dinner and I secretly held her hand under the table, which was warm small, and my heart was palpitating. I asked her to eat and learnt that she was in her vegetarian fast, which she had been keeping for several years already. I found that the time when she began her fast coincided with my small-pox illness, and said to her laughingly, "Now that my face is clean and smooth without pock-marks, my dear sister, will you break you fast?" Yun looked at me with a smile and nodded her head.

    As my own sister is going to get married on the twenty-fourth, only two days later, and as there was to be a national mourning and no music was to be allowed on the twenty-third, my sister was given a send-off dinner on the night of the twenty-second, my wedding day, and Yun was present at table. I was playing the finger-guessing game with the bride's companion in the bridal chamber and, being a loser all the time, I fell asleep drunk like a fish. When I woke up the next morning, Yun had not quite finished her morning toilet.