It must be a privilege indeed to be an Empress.
I heard this all the time, from ladies of the Court and fish wives selling their wares. When they looked at me, they saw the magnificent food or the gorgeous robes or even the leisurely walks in the imperial peach and jasmine gardens. Of course, I enjoyed the calligraphy sessions and poetry recitals immensely. I even loved the delicacies presented in such artistry and beauty that they were art, not food.
I sat beside the Emperor, smiling demurely and waving politely to our subjects when we toured the towns and villages in our jewelled palanquins.
A charmed life, they told me. I had a charmed life.
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When I worked at my father’s workshop, crafting metal ore into tools, weapons and ornaments, I wore homespun clothes and was often barefoot. I would stand beside Father while he plunged burning-hot metal and beat it into a sword commissioned by one of the lords and nobles of the Court. Father didn’t mind having me in the workshop; he grinned, and taught me certain skills like curling of pliant metal and making of simple but efficient machines. We made water wheels and pulleys to carry the baskets of rice and grain.
It was in the workshop that my would-be husband found me, perspiring and curling filaments of metal into a brooch. It was to be a gift to a lady of the palace.
Later, when his visits became more regular, I learned that he was not an ordinary man.
“Daughter,” my father told me one day, when we sat eating a simple meal of rice and pickled cabbage hearts. “My daughter, you are fortunate to have the emperor shower such attention upon you.”
I stared at my father, at his honest sun-tanned and soot-covered face. “Emperor?”
“Yes, my dear daughter.”
Realisation sank in, deep and painful. I had hot tears in my eyes.
“But I will miss you and Mother.”
Father looked at me and simply said: “Remember us.”
In the summer, I, Leizu, was betrothed to the Yellow Emperor.
In the next spring, I was married in a lavish ceremony and welcomed into the palace.
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At first, I chafed at the restrictions and rules, so many of them! How to sit, how to bow, how to eat, how to use utensils without having the long sleeves of my garment touch the table, how to…so many how-tos. I missed the heat of the workshop, the smell of the ores and metal, and Father’s songs while he worked. Ti oh oh, ti oh oh. The sky is dark, the storm is coming.
My husband was kind and considerate. We often conversed long into the night about poetry and art, fragrant tea on the lacquered table between us. We talked about the metal workings and new inventions. I tried to hide my impatience; my fists gripped the fabric of my robes so tightly I swore I made tears. I itched to visit the workshops while the men worked. The empire was growing rapidly. Zhong Guo was indeed becoming the centre of the earth. Middle Kingdom.
So I negotiated, politely, for concessions. I wanted to have my workshop made. I wanted to have an orchard planted, so that I could grow berries and other fruits.
Two Winter Solstices passed, and I grew restless. While the palace busied itself with Spring Festival preparations, I longed to be out in the orchard enjoying my tea. While the maids and servants amused themselves with the making of jiao zi, I pretended to join the fun, folding the dumplings with my bare hands, but my heart was elsewhere. I was spiritless.
I painted. I wrote. I must have bored my trusted lady-in-waiting, Wang Li, to tears with my insipid poetry. I sang too, to her dismay, yet she was accommodating even when I was impatient and short-tempered.
I wanted to go out into my orchard.
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“Leizu, Leizu, my dear wife, can you please sit down?” my august husband said mildly. I was pacing up and down the chambers. It was Yuan Xiao, the fifteenth day of the New Year. The full moon gleamed, a big white pearl in the night sky. Lanterns in various shapes and sizes hung on trees and string. They bobbed in the breeze. Outside the palace walls were the sounds of laughter and celebration.
“I can’t sit down,” I told him. “I am restless tonight.”
Up and down, up and down, wringing my hands, staring off the balcony.
“Are you having your monthly course?” My husband chuckled. Women’s problems amused him.
“My monthly course hasn’t arrived yet…” I muttered irritably and stopped in my tracks, mouth open, my heart fluttering. I felt as if I discovered something momentous happening within me. A revelation.
And so it was: I had conceived. Eight moons later, I gave birth to a boy I named Changyi.
My little prince grew fat and content with the milk from my breasts. For a while, I was happy to bask in the glow of motherhood. I told him stories, whispered to him songs. He would have his grandfather’s hands.
When Changyi turned one, I started feeling that itch-in-the-heart again.
I visited the orchard, pleased with the grove of shang shu growing with such health and vitality. While Changyi played with his nanny and Wang Li beside the pond of colourful carp, I sat beneath the trees, admiring the ripening berries and the leaves turning gold in the sun, my cup of hot jasmine tea in my hands and a plate of nibbles to whet my appetite. Wang Li, the sun flashing in her hair, came to dance and distract me.
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My garments were rough, pretty as they were. It suited me to try to find ways to make fabrics more comfortable. I pored over books in my husband’s library.
I found herbs that gave dyes. I also found that fabrics could be made from the spun coats of goat, sheep and yak. The women who laboured with the spinning of the fur worked most of the day, turning the rough fibres into yarn and then into thread. The process was time-consuming, tiring. I hated to see the women so exhausted after a day’s work.
With Wang Li in tow, I scoured the countryside, picking weeds and herbs. I dried them how my mother did in her kitchen, hanging in bushels, letting the wind dry them. I made tinctures, mixtures and solutions out of those dried weeds and herbs. Some worked as dyes. Some became medicinal.
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I sat beneath the grove of trees, staring idly into the jasmine tea, wondering what I should do to help the women.
Changyi squealed. He had tripped over and his nanny rushed over to comfort him. Wang Li came running. She had a soft spot for Prince Changyi, and often gave him tasty treats and cloth toys she had sewn during her free time.
I rose, anxious, but the women waved me away. I sighed. I would lose Changyi as he grew older: to the world of men and politics, where truths are lies, lies are lies and smiles are daggers in disguise. His trusting face would hide under a mask and his real self under layers and layers of selves. Sometimes, men willingly forgot their real seIves. At night, before we slept, I called him another name, a milk name, which I would use only in his presence. A reminder of who and what he was.
As I lifted my cup of jasmine tea, now cooled by neglect, I was surprised to see a white ball inside it. But no, not a ball, rather a cocoon of some sort, wrapped tightly like dragon beard candy. Curious, I poked it. It was soft, still dripping with tea, and I found the end of a fine thread, similar to the ones I used for embroidering. Daringly, I began to unwind the thread, delighting at the feel of it, at the resilience, around my fingers. It would not break. It was strong. I unraveled it until an egg-like object was revealed. It broke open to show a curled and shrunken worm.
Heart pounding, I looked up into the tree, and saw white-coloured caterpillars eating the green leaves. Further up, I saw the white cocoons.
I had to sit. My knees felt weak. I pulled experimentally at the fine white thread. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I have found something.
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I observed the caterpillars for a month or so. They grew plump from the leaves, spinning white threads when they were about to change. After a few weeks, moths emerged and repeated the cycle again.
Encouraged, I began to pick the white cocoons, much to Wang Li’s consternation. I had her bring a cedar wood tub filled with boiling water; the steam filled the air like white clouds to Heaven.
I plunged myself into this activity, this discovery. In my head, I heard Father’s singing and felt the heat of the workshop.
I harvested the threads from the boiled and soaked cocoons, pulling and twisting them with my fingers until they formed a substantial reel. The dead caterpillars were actually quite tasty, though Wang Li thought they were disgusting. I laughed and laughed.
“They are smooth and strong,” I told Wang Li. “Touch it, feel it, stretch it!”
My ideas spun like bright fire, like the threads from the white caterpillars. While my august husband slept, I sat by the moon-lit and candle-lit table, sketching with a charcoal stick. Dawn broke to a drawing of something.
My husband watched while I began constructing the machine. The court ladies thought I had gone insane. Perhaps I had. But it was a lovely sort of insanity that filled my veins with brightness; I stood at the threshold of something new, something daring. I stripped to my undergarments and went barefoot. My orders were simple: fetch the most resilient wood, string and metal. Men and women ran in and out of the palace.
When the machine was done, I stepped back, wiping my forehead.
“What is this?” My husband asked me, tentatively, as if I would break with mere words.
“To make the lives of women easier,” I said, sipping tea from a porcelain cup. “Didn’t you see the women labouring to make threads?”
To show that the machine wasn’t frightening, I demonstrated it, following the design and pattern in my head. The harvested thin thread from the cocoons was stronger when twisted. I showed them how to turn the thread into cloth, working the levers and moving the pedals. The machine made a lot of sound, like the clanging of temple bells, but the result took their breath away.
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I wrote my idea down, turning it into a book. My husband, the Emperor, praised me and said that I was a brilliant woman.
Didn’t he see that in me when I worked in my father’s workshop?
We began to cultivate more of the shang shu and the caterpillars. I started a nursery in the palace where I supervised the feeding, the harvesting and the production of the threads. I also learnt how to plant cuttings from the trees and coaxed roots from them. As I grew more knowledgeable, I went into the villages to teach the women how to turn the threads into wonderful fabric. Some villages became centres of this new invention, turning the threads into fabric that subsequently became beautiful robes that slid on skin like water.
Imagine my fury when I found out my husband had taken credit for this discovery. I stormed at him, angry, and too betrayed to feel otherwise.
“How dare you?” I shouted and kicked out with my foot, causing the rosewood table to topple over. “How dare you, how dare you?”
“Leizu, Leizu,” my husband, the lying traitorous bastard, tried to placate me. “I wanted to share your knowledge.”
“Share your knowledge, my foot. You took credit for it,” I yelled. “You turned it into your invention.”
I was incensed. Without a word, I left the palace with my silkworm books, a squirming unhappy Changyi in my arms, and Wang Li who agreed to accompany me.
My father was surprised to see me. My mother gasped and welcomed me into her arms. She smelled of cooked rice and steamed sweet potato.
“What happened?” my father asked, still soot-covered, the honest hardworking man I had known since I was a little girl.
“I will tell you over rice and picked cabbage hearts,” I said, shrugging off my rich Empress robes, feeling the heat of the workshop on my face. Changyi giggled in my mother’s arms. Wang Li gazed around shyly and looked at me with trusting, adoring eyes. I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Such gentle and soft lips.
A charmed life.
Indeed, it was a charmed life. I am putting it behind me.
I now live my own life.
“Charmed Life” by Joyce Chng