Six Records of a Floating Life (Chapter one: Wedded Bliss 12)

    My younger brother Ch'it'ang married the grand-daughter of Wang Hsichou. It happened that on the wedding day, she wanted some pearls. Yun took her own pearls, which she had received as her bridal gift, and gave them to my mother. The maid-servant thought it a pity, but Yun said, "A woman is an incarnation of the female principle, and so are pearls. For a woman to wear pearls would be to leave no room for the male principle. For that reason I don't prize them. She had, however, a peculiar fondness for old books and broken slips of painting. Whenever she saw odd volumes of books, she would try to sort them out, arrange them in order, and have them rebound properly. These were collected and labelled "Ancient Relics." When she saw scrolls of calligraphy or painting that were partly spoilt, she would find some old paper and paste them up nicely, and ask me to fill up the broken spaces. These were kept rolled up properly and called “Beautiful Gleanings." This was what she was busy about the whole day when she was not attending to the kitchen or needlework. When she found in old trunks or piles of musty volumes any writing or painting that pleased her, she felt as if she had discovered some precious relic, and an old woman neighbourof ours, by the name of Feng, used to buy up old scraps and sell them to her. She had the same tastes and habits as myself, and besides had the talent of reading my wishes by a mere glance or movement of the eyebrow, doing things without being told and doing them to my perfect satisfaction. 

    Once I said to her, "It is a pity that you were born a woman. If you were a man, we could travel together and visit all the great mountains and the famous places throughout the country. 

“Oh! This is not so very difficult," said Yun. "Wait till I have got my grey hairs. Even if I cannot accompany you to the Five Sacred Mountains then, we can travel to the nearer places, like Huch'iu and Lingyen, as far south as the West Lake and as far north as P'ingshan (in Yangchow).”

“Of course this is all right, except that I am afraid when you are grey-haired, you will be too old to travel.”

“If I can't do it in this life, then I shall do it in the next.”

“In the next life, you must be born a man and I will be your wife.”

“It will be quite beautiful if we can then still remember what has happened in this life."

“That's all very well, but even a bowl of congee has provided material for so much conversation. We shan't be able to sleep a wink the whole wedding night, but shall be discussing what we have done in the previous existence, if we can still remember what's happened in this life then.”