Ts'ai Yen and her Poem of afflication

Ts'ai Yen (蔡文姬, late second -early third century), also known as Ts'ai Wen-chi, was a poet and composer. Ts'ai Yen was the daughter of the eminent poet and statesman Ts'ai Yung(133-192), who died in prison after his associate, the frontier general Tung Cho (d.192), rebelled against the central government.

Ts'ai Yen was born shortly before 178 CE, and was married at the age of sixteen according to the East Asian age reckoning (corresponding to the age of 15 in Western reckoning) to Wei Tsongdao in 192 CE. Tsongdao died soon after the wedding, without any offspring.

After the deaths of her father and her first husband, Ts'ai Yen was caught in the upheavals of the Tung Cho Rebellion; in 192 she was captured by a raiding party of barbarian mercenaries, who carried her off to become the wife of a chieftain of the Southern Hsiung-nu. When this chieftain died she was married again, to his son by a previous marriage. Ts'ai Yen bore her husband-in-exile two sons and lived among the Hsiung-nu until about 206, when she was ransomed by Ts'ao Ts'ao (155-220), who had finally succeeded in establishing control over the floundering Han court. Ts'ai Yen was escorted back to China, but was forced to leave her children behind with the nomads. When she returned to the court Ts'ao Ts'ao gave her a fourth husband, the statesman Tung Ssu. Although her clan, of which Ts'ai Yen found herself to be the sole survivor, had been restored to its official status by Ts'ao Ts'ao, the lady was ostracized at court because of her family connections and her multiple marriages, considered shameful by the Chinese aristocracy.

This was not the end of her troubles, as recorded in her biography in the Hou Han Shu, "Biography of the Wife of Tung Ssu" ("Tung Ssu chi chuan"). Eventually Tung Ssu offended Ts'ao Ts'ao and was condemned to death. His wife, fully aware of her notoriety, challenged Ts'ao Ts'ao's decreee before the court and asked him if he would provide her with yet a fifth husband. Tung Ssu was spared. Ts'ai Yen's identification as "the wife of Tung Ssu" in her official biography would seem to suggest that this incident definded the historical figure for later generations, but in fact the power of the lady's plea for her husband rested on the known facts of her long exile and political victimization.

A number of poems have been written to immortalize Cai Wenji's life story including her own. One of these, was Liu Shang's (c. AD 770) "Hujia Shiba Pai" ("Eighteen Songs on a Nomad Flute").

Ts'ai Yen's biography, compiled between 424 and 445, includes the poem in five-character-line shih meter, "Poem of afflication ("Pei-fen shi"). A second peom, of the same title and subject matter but written in sao meter is also included, but it never enjoyed the popularity of the poem in shih meter.

These are sample lines from her Poem of affliction, describing the suffering on the way to her new home, the cold and and threatening landscape of Southern Hsiong-nu:


So bitterness and pain were mixed as the blows came down.
By day we wailed and cried as we trudged along,
By nigh we grieved and groaned as we sat down.
If we wished to die, we were unable to manage it;
If we wished to live, we were hardly able to do that, either.

Four Metropolitan Graduates

Once upon Ming Dynasty, there were four friends named Máo Péng, Tián Lún, Gù Dú, and Liú Tí. They all passed Imperial Civil Service Examinations, and received the "Metropolitan Graduate" degree. This was the highest degree of the time, as the candidates were interviewed by the Emperor himself, so the degree also called "Received Scholar" or "Promoted Scholars" (进士, Jìn Shì).

All of them were apointed important magisterial posts. Graduate Máo Péng was appointed as Inspector of Eight Prefectures, Tián Lún  the Inspector of Jiāngxī Province (same as Provincial Governor), Gù Dǔ the Governor of Xìnyáng City, Liú Tí the magistrate of County Upper-Chài, which was at the next lower bureaucratic level than Xìnyáng, also in Hénán Province. Before the four graduates went to their office, they bid fareware to their Supervisor (who was also their examiner, according to the tradition), and went to Twin-Pagoda Temple after the celebration feasts. The four friends knelt down in front of the altar, and sworn to the Buddha to be incorruptible officials who would uphold the law.

There's a saying, a Taoist finds the true Way of Life and immortalised, all his pat chicken and dogs rise to the Heaven. Graduate Tián has an older sister who was married to a Yáo family in County Upper-Chài where Graduate Liú was the Governor. Both of the Yáo brothers, Yáo Tíngchūn and Yáo Tíngméi, were married and lived with their widowed mother. Learning that her brother's success, woman Tián became very arrogant. She turned out to be such a shrew that her mother-in-law couldn't stand any longer, so she separated the big family to three. The woman Tián thought the family separation wasn't fair, so their relationship was even getting worse.

It was the Yáo Tíngchūn's birthday, his mother let her younger son Tíngméi prepare a family feast, and invited Tíngchūn to celebrate his birthday, but woman Tián refused to go. Yao Tíngchūn came back drunden, and praised his sister-in-law Yáng Sūzhēn better behavior, who knows all the rules of propriety. Isn't it foolish to praising another woman in front of his own wife? Of course, this made his wife very angry, and they had a big row. At the time she secretly laid out a deadly trap to kill her brother-in-law, in order to revenge and possess all the family property.

The next day, the woman Tián pretended to feel sorry for her bad behaviour and wanted to make an apology. She invited her brother-in-law Tíngméi to have a drink, and poisoned him to death.

Because Tíngméi's widow Yáng Sùzhēn no longer had a husband, her older brother Yāng Chūn came to take her back to her father's house. However in fact Older Brother Yáng Chūn had conspired with the murderous Woman Tián, and had arranged to sell Yáng Sùzhēn as a wife to a cloth merchant named was Yáng Chūn. On the road she was therefore forcibly given over to Yáng Chūn to be his wife.

Yáng Sùzhēn was very unwilling and fought and quarreled with Yáng Chūn. Just then along came the Graduate Máo Péng, passing by on an inspecting tour on behalf of His Majesty, the Emperor, under the disguise of a fortune-teller. He asked why they were carrying on so. When Yáng Sùzhēn told of how her husband had been murdered and she had been sold, Yáng Chūn was moved to great sorrow and abandoned his plans to marry her. Instead they vowed that they would become sworn siblings. The GraduateMáo was very sympathized for Yang's ordeal and therefore wrote a complaint letter for her.

The two sworn siblings and the Graduate Máo travelled together to report the outrage at the local Yamen, where the magistrate was none other than Graduate Liú, who, however, was out making merry and was unavailable for ordinary business. So, they went to the Yamen at Xìnyáng city, which was at the next higher bureaucratic level.

When the two sworn siblings arrived at Xìnyáng City, they were set upon by a criminal gang, and became separated. Yang was rescued by a nearby inn-keeper Sòng Shìjié, who had once worked at the Xìnyáng Yamen. When Innkeeper Sòng heard her story, he was very sorry for her, and took her as an adopted daughter. She still had the letter that Graduate Máo had written for her, and Innkeeper Sòng helped her get it to the Yamen, where the magistrate was none other than the Graduate Gù, who immediately issued warrants for the arrest of Woman Tián and Yáng Qīng.

The Graduate Tián hasn't yet gone to report his post in Jangxi Province and temporarily remained at home. His older sister was arrested and been taken away, then his mother asked him to write a letter to Graduate Gù to get her daughter released. Graduate Tián was reluctant to do so, but could stand his mother's entreat with many tears, he wrote a letter along with 300 taels of silver as well to be carried by a trusted messenger to Graduate Gù in Xìnyáng City. When the messenger arrived in Xìnyáng, he put up at Sòng's inn. Something about him made Sòng suspicious, and in the night Sòng made a small investigation and discovered, read, and copied the secret letter. He knew that if the letter and the money reached Graduate Gù, then his adopted daughter's case would be lost.

When Gù received the letter (and the money), he immediately released Woman Tián, and he had Yáng Sùzhēn beaten and imprisoned for making a false accusation. Just for good measure, Innkeeper Sòng was also given 40 strokes for helping her.

Some time later, an Imperial Inspector chanced to come through Xìnyáng, and Sòng bumped accidently  into the cloth merchant Yáng Chūn, who was separated with his sworn sibling Yáng Sùzhēn, they together managed to get a complaint to the Inspector, tell him of the murder by Woman Tián, and how Woman Tián and Yáng Qīng had sold Yáng Sùzhēn, and how the Graduate Tián had bribed Graduate Gù. And Sòng provided a copy of the letter he had copied.

The Imperial Inspector was none other than Received Scholar Máo, who had originally met Sùzhèn and had drafted her original complaint. He took on the case, had Woman Tián and Yāng Qīng punished, and, with great sadness, brought about the dismissal of the corrupt Graduates, his own one-time friends Tián, Liú, and Gù.

(This story is from a Chinese Opera 四进士 Sì Jìnshì, or Four Metropolitan Graduates. Part of the plots was adopted from David K. Jordan's translation (without asking for permision, ^_^

The picture was screen printed from a comic book, edited by  小戈, and illustrated by 张锡武, published in 1960).

Food Handed out in Contempt

During a great dearth in Qí, Qián-áo had food prepared on the roads, to wait the approach of hungry people and give to them.

(One day), there came a famished man, looking as if he could hardly see, his face covered with his sleeve, and dragging his feet together.

Khián-áo, carrying with his left hand some rice, and holding some drink with the other, said to him, 'Hey, Poor man! come and eat.'

The man, opening his eyes with a stare, and looking at him, said, 'It was because I would not eat "Hey come and eat's" food, that I am come to this state.'

Qhián-áo immediately apologised for his words, but the man after all would not take the food and died.

When Zēng-zǐ heard the circumstances, he said, 'Was it not a small matter? When the other expressed his pity as he did, the man might have gone away. When he apologised, the man might have taken the food.'