Six Records of a Floating Life (Chapter one: Wedded Bliss 15)

    Yun was quite enchanted with all this and said, "Some day we must build a cottage here. We'll buy ten mow of ground around the cottage, and see to our servants planting in the fields vegetables and melons to be sold for the expenses of our daily meals. You will paint and I will do embroidery, from which we could make enough money to buy wine for entertaining our friends who will gather here together to compose poems. Thus, clad in simple gowns and eating simple meals, we could live a very happy life together without going anywhere." I fully agreed with her. Now the place is still there, while my bosom friend is dead. Alas! such is life!

    About half a li from my home, there was a temple to the God of the Tungt'ing Lake, popularly known as the Narcissus Temple, situated in the Ch'uk'u Alley. It had many winding corridors and something of a garden with pavilions. 

    On the birthday of the God, every clan would be assigned a corner in the Temple, where they would hang beautiful glass lanterns of a kind, with a chair in the center, on the either side of which were placed vases on wooden stands. These vases were decorated with flowers for competition. In the daytime, there would be theatrical performances, while at night the flower-vases were brilliantly illuminated with candlelights in their midst, a custom which was called “Illuminated Flowers." With the flowers and the lanterns and the smell of incense, the whole show resembled a night feast in the Palace of the Dragon King. The people there would sing or play music, or gossip over their tea-cups. The audience stood around in crowds to look at the show and there was a railing at the curb to keep them within a certain limit.

    I was asked by my friends to help in the decorations and so had the pleasure of taking part in it. When Yun heard me speaking about it at home, she remarked, "It is a pity that I am not a man and cannot go to see it." "Why, you could put on my cap and gown and disguise yourself as a man," I suggested. Accordingly she changed her coiffure into a queue, painted her eyebrows, and put on my cap. Although her hair showed slightly round the temples, it passed off tolerably well. As my gown was found to be an inch and a half too long, she tucked it round the waist and put on a makua on top.

  "What am I going to do about my feet?" she asked. I told her there was a kind of shoes called "butterfly shoes," which could fit any size of feet and were very easy to obtain at the shops, and suggested buying a pair for her, which she could also use as slippers later on at home.

    Yun was delighted with the idea, and after supper, when she had finished her make-up, she paced about the room, imitating the gestures and gait of a man for a long time, when all of a sudden she changed her mind and said,"I am not going! It would be so embarrassing if somebody should discover it, and besides, our parents would object." Still I urged her to go. "Who doesn't know me at the Temple?" I said. "Even if they should find it out, they would laugh it off as a joke. Mother is at present in the home of the ninth sister. We could steal away and back without letting anyone know about it."