Mistress Wang sells her daughter because of poverty;
Ailin tries to seduce her brother-in-law out of lust.
Jia Ming and Phoenix were smoking opium and chatting together when suddenly they heard an old woman outside asking for Phoenix. She came into the reception room, where Maid Gao asked her name, where she was from, and what business she had with the mistress. “My surname is Yang,” she said, “and I used to live next door to your mistress. I heard today that she was back in Yangzhou, and I’ve come to pay her a visit.”
From her room Phoenix heard a voice that sounded familiar. Pulling back the door curtain, she looked out and recognized Mistress Yang, a former neighbor who must now be in her sixties. She went out to welcome her. “Are you Mistress Yang?”
The old woman gazed at her for a moment before replying, “Can you be Miss He? Why, Madam, what a beauty you’ve grown into! If I’d seen you anywhere else, I wouldn’t have recognized you.” Phoenix led her into her room, where Mistress Yang saw Jia Ming and asked, “And is this gentleman your husband?”
“This is Master Jia. Now, no more questions. Take a seat!” Maid Gao offered tea and filled the pipe with tobacco. Phoenix and Mistress Yang chatted about all the things that had happened in the many years since they had last met. Phoenix sent someone out to buy pastries and also asked her to stay for lunch.
They spent a long time talking and then, when Mistress Yang learned that Phoenix had no children, she said, “Madam, my mother lives in the country, and she has a neighbor whose husband died and left her with four daughters. The three older ones were all married off as child brides, but she still has the youngest one with her. The girl is five years old and not at all bad looking, but her mother can’t afford to keep her at home. She would like to have someone adopt her and is asking for just a few thousand. Madam, why not spend a few strings of cash and bring the girl into your household as security?1 Before long you’re bound to have a fine little boy of your own, and then I’ll come over for a dish of eggs.”
A feeling of excitement came over Phoenix. “Yes, do speak to Mistress Wang about it. Bring the girl over any day you please. If she’s really not bad looking, I’ll take her.”
“I’ll see to it,” said Mistress Yang as she took her leave. “Thank you, Madam.”
“Did I hear you say you were going to buy a child?” asked Jia Ming. “If this woman brings you one and you like the look of her, don’t, whatever you do, let on that you’re buying her for yourself; just say you’re buying her for some stranger. People like you oughtn’t to spend their money raising children for others. After some time, just as the child is beginning to have some prospects, her birth parents will come storming in and claim her back again. I’ve seen it happen ever so many times!”
“I know that,” said Phoenix.
A few days later, Mistress Yang came back, accompanied by a village woman in her forties wearing ragged clothes and holding a girl of four or five by the hand.
Mistress Yang went into Phoenix’s room and whispered to her, “Madam, it’s about that matter we discussed the other day. The girl and her mother are here. Come out and see them.”
Phoenix took Jia Ming by the hand and led him out of the room. In the reception room they found a village woman with unbound feet. Beside her was a little girl without a trace of smallpox. She looked captivating—hollow-eyed, with long eyelashes and a pinched little face, probably because the meals at home were none too regular. When the woman saw them come out, she got to her feet and addressed them as “Sir” and “Madam.”
“Please sit down,” said Phoenix. To the child she said, “How old are you?”
“Five,” said the girl.
“What’s your baby name?”
“Rota.”
“Have you had the smallpox, Rota?”
The woman answered for her. “She had it at the age of two. Thanks to the bodhisattva, it was only a short-term rash.”
Phoenix was delighted with the little girl. She went into her room and fetched some fruit for her. She also sent someone out to buy pastries for them all. When they had finished, Mistress Yang said, “Well, Madam, now that you’ve seen her, do you fancy her?”
“She’ll do well enough. I’m not buying her for myself, you understand, but for a stranger from out of town who has asked me to act for him. Adoption will mean cutting off all contact with her mother. I’m wondering how much she would want?”
“She told me she would want eight thousand cash for a complete separation with the agreement recorded in writing.”
“I’ll give her four thousand,” said Phoenix.
Mistress Yang put it to the woman, who thought the offer too low. Mistress Yang tried again and again to work out a compromise. At length she advised Phoenix to offer six thousand, which the woman accepted. A scribe was called in from the street to draw up a bill of sale, which read as follows:
The undersigned, Mistress Zhang of the Wang family, hereby enters into an agreement to sell her daughter. Her husband is dead and she has no sons or relatives but is left with a daughter whose childhood name is Rota. She is five years old at the present time and was born in the mao hour of the fourth day of the fourth month. Because of famine, the family is poor and the mother is unable to support the girl. She is now willing through the mediation of a neighbor to sign an agreement selling the girl to a stranger from other parts. She is to receive six thousand cash in strings of nine hundred and eighty. After the sale, she will sever all relations with the girl. If something untoward should occur, each will submit to heaven’s will. The purchaser will take the girl home and raise her, and later, when she has grown up, he will be allowed to make her his daughter or maid or concubine or the wife of some other man chosen by him, all of this without interference from Mistress Zhang.
The girl is not engaged to marry anyone, nor has there been any prenatal marriage arrangement, nor has she been already adopted either by members of her family or anyone else. Should there be any relatives or others who dispute this statement, that will be the concern of the undersigned, not of the purchaser. As proof, I hereby make this contract to sell my daughter. Let it stand as permanent evidence.
The scribe wrote the date on the back of the document and handed it to Jia Ming, who read it and then watched as Mistress Zhang with tears in her eyes attached her thumbprint. Mistress Yang, whose name was listed as mediator, signed with a cross and gave the bill of sale to Phoenix to put away. Next Phoenix paid the six thousand cash to Mistress Yang, who passed it on to Mistress Zhang. She wrapped the packet of money in a tattered blue cloth apron and slung it over her shoulder. Then, with tears in her eyes, she looked at the little girl and said, “Rota, dearie, you play in here while I go out to the street and buy you some fruit.” The little girl would not let her mother leave but clung, sobbing, to the hem of her clothes. Her mother steeled herself, pushed the child away, and went off with the money over her shoulder. Phoenix invited Mistress Yang to stay for lunch and gave her a thousand cash as a token of gratitude.
When the little girl saw her mother leaving, she sobbed even more loudly than before. Phoenix led her into her room, where she gave her fruit and cookies and tried in a hundred different ways to soothe her, and eventually she did stop crying. Phoenix had the child’s hair combed and dressed, her braids tied with a red ribbon, and her face washed and powdered. She also ordered the dressmaker to make new clothes for her from head to toe. After the little girl had changed into the new clothes, the ragged ones were put away. Phoenix also told Maid Gao to make her new shoes and stockings.
Jia Ming gave her a new name, Orchid, and from then on the whole household called her Orchid. After a few days, she grew accustomed to her new surroundings and did not cry anymore. At night she slept with Maid Gao. Whenever Jia Ming had nothing to do in the evenings, he would cut red paper into squares and write characters on them for Orchid to memorize, then teach them to her once or twice. She turned out to be naturally intelligent, able to memorize ten to twenty characters a day, and, when tested the following day, to remember every one. For this reason Jia Ming and Phoenix doted on the child.
One day Mistress Lin came to give Phoenix a pair of shoes that she had made. On arriving in the house, she noticed Orchid and asked Phoenix about her. Phoenix told Orchid to call the lady auntie and explained the child’s presence. She urged her sister to make the girl a pair of cloth shoes to wear when her feet were bound, and as she left, Phoenix passed her several hundred cash behind Mistress Dai’s back. (After her sister became a regular visitor, Phoenix always helped her out with gifts of money, large or small.) When the sister had finished the shoes for Orchid, she brought them over, and Jia Ming took up the calendar and chose an auspicious day for the foot-binding.
Since the sister was such a frequent visitor, Mistress Dai knew that Phoenix must be giving her money, and she often picked a quarrel with her daughter-in-law. But these are trivial matters, about which I cannot go into detail.
One afternoon a sedan chair arrived in the lane, followed by a porter carrying baggage, and the bearers asked the way to Phoenix’s house. A woman in her twenties stepped out of the chair and went inside to the reception room, while the porter brought in the baggage and Maid Gao hurried to Phoenix’s room to report the arrival. When Phoenix came out, she recognized her sister-in-law. Ailin had worked in the Qingjiang brothel, and now, because Phoenix and her family had left for Yangzhou, she, too, had caught a boat for Yangzhou and taken a sedan chair from the Bianyi Gate dock.
The two women greeted each other, and Phoenix invited Ailin into her room, where she saw Jia Ming and asked, “Who is the gentleman?”
“This is your brother-in-law Jia.”
Ailin greeted Jia Ming and took a seat. Phoenix paid the bearers and porter, and told Maid Gao to check the baggage that the porter had brought. Mistress Dai came in, having heard Ailin’s arrival from her room, and mother and daughter began telling each other all that had happened since they parted. Then, after talking for a while, Mistress Dai went out again. Jia Ming noted that Ailin seemed to be about the same age as Phoenix but was not as attractive—she had a dark complexion and her feet were a good deal larger. Phoenix invited her to lie down on the bed opposite Jia Ming and satisfy her opium habit. She also told Maid Gao to clean the room across the way and carry Ailin’s baggage into it, putting up a bed curtain so that Ailin could sleep there.
One afternoon several days later, Phoenix was in the reception room talking to Mistress Dai. Jia Ming had lit the opium lamp and was smoking in Phoenix’s room when Ailin came in. “Come and have a smoke,” said Jia Ming.
“You go on smoking, Brother-in-Law.” She approached the bed, but instead of lying down in the empty space opposite Jia Ming, she lay on top of him, pressing her cheek against his. Jia Ming was holding the pipe with a pellet of opium in it, but she snatched the pipe away from him and stuck it in her own mouth and proceeded to smoke in front of the lamp.
“If you want to smoke, go and lie down opposite,” said Jia Ming. “If you lie on top of me and a certain green-eyed person comes in, she’ll resent it.”
“She doesn’t own you, you know! Why can’t we make up to you, too? I don’t know how many good clients of mine she lured away from me in Qingjiang, and I never said a word. We’re on the best of terms, she and I. So long as you show some gumption, she can’t afford to be jealous.” As she said this, she began kneading his legs, and Jia Ming, who was ticklish, wriggled here and there trying to escape her. Locked together, they rolled about on the bed.
At first, when she saw Ailin going into her room, Phoenix thought nothing of it, but when she heard giggling coming from the room, her suspicions were aroused and, without saying anything to Mistress Dai, she pulled aside the door curtain and marched in. At the sight of Ailin on top of Jia Ming, she was overcome by rage. “My dear,” she said to Ailin, “you needn’t be so furtive about it. Let me be your matchmaker.”
For a moment Ailin thought she was serious and gave a slight smile, but Phoenix marched up to the bed and, pushing Ailin aside, straddled Jia Ming herself and seized him by the ear. “A thieving tomcat never changes its ways! When you used to whore about in other places, I spoke to you about it, and you swore to my face that with me you’d cut out all the lies and excuses. Today I’ve caught you red-handed and you can’t lie your way out of it. Since you two want each other, I won’t play the spoiler. You and I can part just as easily as we came together. Find yourself some other place at once and take her there. Well, that’s that, but you did betray the trust that I placed in you. For your sake I’ve had countless squabbles with my mother-in-law and husband. To give just one example, whenever I had my period2 and kept you with me overnight, they had all sorts of nasty things to say. When you weren’t here, I had quarrel after quarrel that I never let on about because I was trying to please you. I didn’t realize that all the things you said to me were false. You deceived me into believing they were true, and I gave my other clients the cold shoulder and fawned over you. I was really hoping we would be together for life, but you go and fall for anyone who takes your fancy!” She sobbed as she said this, then butted her head wildly against his and rolled about from side to side, raging and ranting without a pause. Again and again Jia Ming attempted to explain, but she refused to believe a word he said.
Upset by Phoenix’s reaction, Ailin fled into her mother’s room, where she gave a one-sided version of what had just happened. Mistress Dai leapt to her daughter’s defense, rushed into the reception room, and began enumerating Phoenix’s various misdeeds: she had slandered Ailin, she couldn’t stand her living there—a string of wild charges. This drove Phoenix into an even worse state of depression, and she sobbed and raged for two whole days. Jia Ming swore vow after vow, consoling and accommodating her in every conceivable way, and her anger gradually subsided.
Ailin now felt distinctly ill at ease in the house, and she spoke to her mother about accompanying her to Suzhou, where she planned to resume her trade. Mistress Dai then had another row with Phoenix as she demanded their travel expenses. Only after Jia Ming had put up several thousand cash for their travel—and also covertly sent Ailin a few ounces of opium—did the women finally set off.
If you are wondering what happened after that, please turn to the next chapter.
