Peony in Love

They still seemed new. When Yi gave them to Ren, my poems were forgotten as his grief swelled and spilled from his heart and eyes.

In that instant, I understood: I had to get my project published. The women writers who’d been collected two thousand years ago, the women writers my parents had gathered for our library, and the women of the Banana Garden Five were remembered and honored because their works had been published. I whispered my idea to Yi, and then I waited.

A few days later, she gathered up her wedding jewelry and folded it into a silk scarf. Then she went to Ren’s library, laid the scarf on the table, and waited for him to look up. When he did, he saw her heavyhearted look.

Concerned, he asked what the problem was and how he could help.

“Sister-wife Tong wrote a commentary about the first half of the opera and Sister-wife Ze wrote about the second. You gained a reputation because of their words. I know you tried to deny responsibility, but their names have remained hidden and forgotten nevertheless. If we don’t reveal the truth and make my sister-wives known to the public, won’t they feel unfulfilled in the afterworld?”

( 2 5 4 )

“What would you like me to do?” Ren asked cautiously.

“Give me permission to publish the completed commentary.”

Ren wasn’t as positive as I’d hoped he’d be. “That’s an expensive un -

dertaking,” he said.

“Which is why I’ll use my bride-price jewelry to pay for the printing,”

Yi responded. She folded back the pieces of silk to reveal her rings, neck-laces, earrings, and bangles.

“What will you do with those?” Ren asked.

“Take them to a pawnshop.”

It wasn’t proper for her to go to a place like that, but I’d be with her, guiding and protecting her.

Ren pinched his chin thoughtfully and then said, “It still won’t be enough money.”

“Then I’ll pawn my wedding gifts too.”

He tried to talk her out of such an undertaking. He tried to be a strict and forceful husband.

“I don’t want you or any of my wives to be labeled a fame-seeker,” Ren sputtered. “Female talent belongs in the inner chambers.”

Comments like these were not like him, but Yi and I remained unfazed.

“I don’t care if they call me a fame-seeker, because I’m not,” she countered easily. “I’m doing this for my sister-wives. Shouldn’t they be acknowledged?”

“But they never sought fame! Peony left nothing to suggest she wanted to have her words read by outsiders. And Ze absolutely didn’t want to be recognized.” He added, trying to compose himself, “She knew her place as a wife.”

“And how they must regret it now.”

Ren and Yi went back and forth. Yi listened to him patiently but didn’t shift from her position. She was so determined that he finally revealed his real concern.

“The commentary brought Peony and Ze to no-good ends. If something happened to you—”

“You worry too much about me. By now you must see that I’m stronger than I look.”

“But I do worry.”

I understood that and I was concerned for Yi too, but I needed this.

And so did Yi. In all the years I’d known her, she’d never asked for anything for herself.

( 2 5 5 )

“Please say yes, Husband.”

Ren took Yi’s hands and stared hard into her eyes. At last, he said, “I’ll say yes on two conditions: that you eat properly and get enough sleep. If you start to ail, you must give it up that instant.”

Yi agreed and immediately set to work, copying everything from the Shaoxi edition with Ze’s and Yi’s writing into a new volume of The Peony Pavilion to give to the woodblock printers. I insinuated myself into the ink and used my fingers as the hairs of her calligraphy brush as they flowed across the page.

we f i n i sh e d one evening at the beginning of winter. Yi invited Ren to join her in the Clouds Hall to celebrate. Even with a fire in the brazier, cold pervaded the room. Outside, bamboo snapped in the frozen air and a light sleet began to fall. Yi lit a candle and warmed wine. Then the two of them compared the new pages with the original. This was meticulous work, but I watched—awed and breathless—as Ren turned the pages, stopping here and there to read my words. Several times he smiled. Was he remembering our conversation in the Moon-Viewing Pavilion? More than once his eyes misted. Was he thinking about me alone in my bed, desperate with longing?

He took a breath, lifted his chin, and expanded his chest. His fingers rested on the last words I’d written as a living girl— When people are alive, they love. When they die, they keep loving—and he said to Yi, “I’m proud of you for completing this.” When his fingers caressed my words, I knew he’d finally heard me. Gratification at last. Euphoria, elation, ecstasy.

Looking at Ren and Yi, I saw they were as jubilant and blissful as I felt.

A few hours later, Yi said, “It must have started to snow.” She walked to the window. Ren picked up the new copy and joined her. Together they opened the window. Heavy snow cloaked the branches with sparkling powder that looked like pure white jade. Ren whooped, then grabbed his wife and ran with her outside into the flurries, where they danced and laughed and fell into the drifts. I joined in their laughter, pleased to see them so carefree.

Something made me turn just in time to see sparks fly from a candle and fall on the Shaoxi edition.

No! I flew across the room, but I was too late. The pages ignited.

Smoke billowed out of the room. Yi and Ren came running. He grabbed the wine jar and threw the contents on the fire, which only made things ( 2 5 6 )

worse. I was frantic, horrified. I didn’t know what to do. Yi grabbed a quilt and doused the flames.

The room went dark. Yi and Ren fell to the floor, panting from their exertions, crippled by dismay. Ren wrapped his arms around his sobbing wife. I sank down next to them and curled myself around Ren, needing his comfort and protection too. We stayed that way for several minutes.

Then slowly, tentatively, Ren felt around the room, found the candle, and lit it. The lacquered desk was badly charred. Wine flowed in every direction onto the floor. The air was heavy with the odors of alcohol, burnt goosedown, and smoke.

“Could it be that my two sister-wives don’t wish their writing to remain in the human world?” Yi asked, her voice shaking. “Did their spirits bring this about? Is there a demonic creature whose jealousy seeks to destroy this project?”

Husband and wife stared at each other in dismay. For the first time since their marriage, I retreated up to the rafters, where I hung on to a beam and shivered in misery and despair. I had allowed myself to hope, and now I was shattered.

Ren helped Yi to her feet and ushered her to a chair.

“Wait here,” he said, and went back outside.

He returned a moment later with something in his hands. I slipped back down from the rafters to see what it was. He held the new copy of the commentary that Yi had prepared for the printers.

“I dropped this when we saw the fire,” he said, showing it to Yi. She came to him and together we watched anxiously as he brushed the snow from the cover and opened it to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. Yi and I sighed in relief. It was fine.

“Perhaps this fire was a blessing and not a bad omen,” he said. “We lost Peony’s original writings in a fire long ago. And now the volume I bought for Ze has been destroyed. Don’t you see, Yi? Now all three of you will be together in only one book.” He took a breath, and added, “You have all worked so hard. Nothing will stop this from being published now. I’ll make sure of that.”

A hungry ghost’s tears of thanks mingled with those of her sister-wife.

The next morning, Yi ordered a servant to dig a hole under the plum tree. She gathered up the ashes and burnt fragments of the Shaoxi edition, wrapped them in raw silk damask, and buried them under the tree, where they joined with me and served as a reminder of what had happened and how carefully I— we—needed to proceed.

( 2 5 7 )

.

.

.

i th ou g h t i t would be a good idea for a few others to read what we’d written before it went out into the larger world. The readers I trusted most—and the only ones I knew—were in the Banana Garden Five. I left the compound, went down to the lake, and joined them for the first time in sixteen years. They were even more famous than when I’d clung to them during my exile. Their interest in the writings of other women had grown with their success. So it wasn’t hard for me to whisper in their ears about a woman who lived on Wushan Mountain who had a unique project she was hoping to publish, or that they would respond with enthusiasm and curiosity. A few days later, an invitation arrived for Yi to join the Banana Garden Five on one of its boating trips.

Yi had never gone on an excursion or met women of such accomplishment or standing. She was apprehensive, Ren was optimistic, and I was anxious. I did my best to make sure Yi would be received positively. I helped her dress in a simple and modest manner, and then I hung on to her shoulders as she walked through the compound.

Just before we stepped into the palanquin to take us to the lake, Ren said, “Don’t be nervous. They will find you charming.”

And they did.

Yi told the women in the Banana Garden Five about her dedication and conviction, and then she read them the poems I’d written and showed them the copy of The Peony Pavilion that held our writings in the margins.

“We feel as if we know Chen Tong,” said Gu Yurei.

“As if we’ve heard her voice before,” added Lin Yining.

The women on the boat even wept for me, the lovesick maiden who didn’t know death was coming.

“Would you be willing to write something that I could include in the pages at the end of our project?” Yi asked.

Gu Yurei smiled, and said, “I would love to write a colophon for you.”

“And so would I,” chimed in Lin Yining.

I was delighted.

Yi and I visited several more times, so the women would have a chance to read and discuss what I’d written with my sister-wives. I didn’t interfere in any way, wanting their interpretation to be purely their own. Finally, there came a day when the women pulled out brushes, ink, and paper.

Gu Yurei looked out across the lake to where the lotus were in bloom, and then she wrote:

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Many readers in the women’s quarters, such as Xiaoqing, have had true insight into The Peony Pavilion. I regret that none of their commentaries have been transmitted to the world. Now we have the combined commentary of three wives of the Wu household. They explain the play so fully that even the meanings hidden between the lines are understood.

Isn’t that a great good fortune? So many women hope to find a community—a sisterhood—of others like themselves. How lucky for these three wives that they found that in their writing.

I drifted over to Lin Yining and saw her write: Even Tang Xianzu himself could not have commented on his play so well.

Responding to those who thought Liniang was improper and sent a bad message to young women, she added:

Thanks to the work of the three wives, Liniang’s name is vindicated. She is within all bounds of propriety, and her elegant legacy lingers.

To those who might not agree, she had harsh words: Those bumpkins will not be worth talking to.

Nor did she have much patience for those who wished to send women back to the inner chambers, where they couldn’t be heard.

Here we have three wives, all talented, who have succeeded one another in making this commentary, which is so monumental that, from now on, anyone in this vast world who wants to perceive wisdom or master literary theories has to begin with this book. This great enterprise will last to eternity.

Imagine how I felt when I read that!

i n th e com i ng weeks, Yi and I took our copy of The Peony Pavilion with the notes in the margins to other women like Li Shu and Hong Zhize.

They too decided to put brush to paper and record their thoughts. Li Shu ( 2 5 9 )

wrote that she shed tears when she read it. Hong Zhize remembered as a small girl sitting on her father’s lap and hearing Ren confess that he hadn’t written the first version of the commentary but that he was trying to save his wives from criticism. She added:

I regret that I was born too late to meet the first two wives.

Now that Yi and I were taking excursions, I saw just how brave and courageous these women writers were to acknowledge and defend our project. The world had changed. Most men had determined that writing was both a threat and an unladylike activity. These days, few families were proud to have their womenfolk publish. But Yi and I were not only pushing ahead, we were bringing in other women to support us.

We found an artist to do woodblock illustrations, and Yi asked Ren to write a preface and a question-and-answer piece about the project in which he told the truth as he saw it. With every word he wrote, I saw that he loved me still. Then Yi copied my poems into the margins of Ren’s text:

I am so touched by these stanzas that I enclose them here, hoping future collectors of women’s writings will benefit from their remaining balm and fragrance.

In this way, Yi put me next to my husband forever, another gift that was so great I didn’t know how I could ever repay her.

By this time, Ren had fully caught our passion for the project. He began to join us when we went to meet with different vendors. What a joy it was for the three of us to be together in this way, but truthfully we didn’t need his help.

“I want finely wrought woodblocks for the text,” Yi told the fifth merchant we visited.

These were shown to us, but I was uncomfortable with the expense. I whispered in Yi’s ear, she nodded, and then asked, “What do you have that’s secondhand that I can use again?”

The merchant gave Yi an appraising look and took us to a back room.

“These woodblocks are practically new,” he stated.

“Good,” Yi said, after she’d inspected them. “We’ll save money without sacrificing quality.” This is what I’d told her to say, but then she added ( 2 6 0 )

something new. “I’m also thinking about durability. I want to make thousands of copies.”

“Madame,” the merchant said, not even trying to hide his condescen-sion, “you probably won’t sell any copies.”

“I’m hoping for many editions with many readers,” she shot back tartly.

The merchant appealed to our husband. “But, sir, there are other important projects that could use these blocks. Wouldn’t it be wiser to save them for your work?”

But Ren wasn’t concerned about his next volume of poetry or the criticism that was coming after that. “Do your job well and we’ll come back for the next edition,” he said. “If you don’t, another firm on the street will help us.”

The negotiation was intense, a good price was reached, and then we went to find a printer, select good inks, and decide on the layout. Everything that had been written in the margins or between the lines was moved to the top of the page, with the text of the opera below. When the setting of the woodblocks was complete, everyone—including Ren’s young son—participated in checking for mistakes. Once everything was sent to the printer, all I had to do was wait.

( 2 6 1 )

The East Wind

“ON THE EAST WIND HEARTBREAK COMES AGAIN,” liniang had sung, and now it came to the Wu family compound. Yi had always been physically frail, and she’d worked hard for many months. Even though I’d watched out for her, and Ren had made sure she ate properly, illness overtook her. She retreated to her room. She accepted no visitors. She lost her appetite, which in turn caused her to lose weight and energy. Very quickly—too quickly—she no longer had the strength to sit in a chair; she now lay in her bed, looking emaciated, worn out, and ex-hausted. It was the middle of summer and very hot.

“Is it lovesickness?” Ren asked, after Doctor Zhao examined his new patient.

“She has a fever and a bad cough,” the doctor intoned grimly. “It might be water-lung sickness. It could be blood-lung disease.”

He cooked an infusion of dried mulberries, which Yi drank. When it did nothing to ease her lungs, he poured powdered sea sparrow down her throat to scare away the yin poisons that lurked there, but Yi continued to fade. I urged her to call on the inner strength that had kept her alive all these years, but the doctor grew increasingly bleak.

“Your wife is suffering from qi congestion,” he said. “The oppression in her chest is causing her slowly to suffocate and lose her appetite. These things must be corrected immediately. If she grows angry, her qi will rise up and smash open the congestion.”

Doctor Zhao had tried this with me many years ago and it hadn’t ( 2 6 2 )

worked, so I watched in dismay as they dragged Yi from the bed and yelled in her ears that she was a bad wife, an incompetent mother, and cruel to the servants. Her legs hung limp beneath her torso. Her feet slid along the floor behind her as they pushed and pulled her, trying to irritate her into barking at them to stop. She didn’t oblige. She couldn’t. She had too much goodness in her. When she started vomiting blood, they put her back in bed.

“I can’t lose her,” Ren said. “We were meant to grow old together, spend a hundred years together, and share the same grave.”

“All that is very sentimental but not terribly practical,” the doctor reasoned. “You must remember, Master Wu, that nothing in the world is permanent. The only permanent thing is impermanence.”

“But she has lived only twenty-three years.” Ren groaned in despair. “I had hoped we’d be like two birds soaring in flight for many years to come.”

“I’ve heard that your wife has been indulging herself with The Peony Pavilion. Is this so?” Doctor Zhao asked. When told that, yes, it was, he sighed. “I’ve confronted problems caused by this opera for too many years. And for too many years I’ve lost women to the disease that oozes from its pages.”

The whole family followed dietary restrictions. The diviner came to write charms and the like, which were burned. The ashes were gathered and given to Willow, who took them to the cook. Together they brewed a decoction made from boiled turnip and half the ashes to relieve Yi’s cough. A second brew was made of weevil-eaten corn and the other half of the ashes to lower Yi’s fever. Madame Wu lit incense, made offerings, and prayed. If it had been winter, Ren would have lain in the snow to freeze himself, come to the marital bed, and pressed his chilled body next to Yi’s to cool her down. But it was summer, so he did the next best thing.

He went out into the street to find a dog and put it in Yi’s bed to suck out all the illness. None of these things worked.

Then strangely, over the next few days, the room turned cold, and then colder. Thin mists gathered along the walls and under the windows. Ren, Madame Wu, and the servants draped quilts over their shoulders to keep warm. The brazier roared, but Ren’s breath came in great white clouds from his mouth, while only the lightest vapor escaped Yi’s lips. She stopped moving. She stopped opening her eyes. She even stopped coughing. Long were her slumbers, deep her stirrings. Still, her skin burned.

But it was summer. How could it be so cold? At any deathwatch, ghosts ( 2 6 3 )

are suspected, but I knew I wasn’t causing any problems. I’d lived with Yi since she was six and, apart from her footbinding, had never caused her pain, sorrow, or discomfort. Rather, I’d protected her and given her strength. I lost all optimism and fell into heartsickness.

“I wish I could say that fox spirits were protecting your wife,” Doctor Zhao said in resignation. “She needs their laughter, warmth, and wisdom.

But already ghosts have gathered to take her. These spirits are filled with disease, melancholy, and too much qing. I hear their presence in your wife’s erratic pulse. It’s disordered like tangled threads. I feel their presence in her burning fever as they boil her blood as though she were in one of the hells already. Her heart fluctuations and flaming qi are sure signs of ghost attack.” He bowed his head respectfully before adding, “All we can do is wait.”

Mirrors and a sieve were hung in the room, limiting my movements.

Willow and Madame Wu took turns sweeping the floor, while Ren swung a sword this way and that to scare away whatever vindictive ghosts were lurking, waiting to steal Yi from life. Their actions kept me up in the rafters, but when I looked around the room I didn’t see any creatures. I lowered myself straight down to Yi’s bed, avoiding the swinging sword, sweeping women, and refractions from the mirror. I put my hand on her forehead. It burned into me hotter than coals. I lay down next to her, let down the protective shields I’d built around myself these past years, and let all the coldness that I’d trapped inside myself come to the surface and seep into her in an effort to lower her fever.

I hugged her close. Spirit tears dripped from my eyes and cooled her face. I had raised her, bound her feet, cared for her when she was ill, married her out, and brought her son into the world, and she had honored me in so many ways. I was so proud of her—for being a devoted wife, a caring mother, a . . .

“I love you, Yi,” I whispered in her ear. “You have not only been a wonderful sister-wife, but you saved me and made sure I was heard.” I hesitated as my heart swelled and nearly burst from the pain of mother love, and then I spoke the truth of my heart. “You have been the joy of my life.

I love you as though you were my daughter.”

“Ha!”

The sound was cruel, triumphant, and definitely not human.

I swirled up, careful to avoid the swinging sword, and there was Tan Ze. Years in the Blood-Gathering Lake had left her hideous and deformed.

( 2 6 4 )

Seeing my shocked look, she laughed, which caused Willow, Ren, and his mother to stop their actions and shiver with fright and Yi’s body to heave and shake with a bout of brutal coughing.

I was too stunned to speak for a moment, too terrified for those I loved to think quickly. “How are you here?” Such a stupid question, but my mind was in turmoil, trying to figure out what to do.

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Her father knew the rites, and he was rich and powerful. He must have hired priests to pray for her and given them long strings of cash, which were then offered to the bureaucrats who supervise the Blood-Gathering Lake. Once released, she could have become an ancestor, but she’d obviously chosen a different path.

A swoosh of Ren’s sword sliced away a piece of my gown. Yi moaned.

Anger roiled up inside me. “I’ve been burdened by you my whole life,”

I said. “Even after I died, you caused me trouble. Why did you do that?

Why?”

“I caused you trouble?” Ze’s voice grated like a rusty hinge.

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” I confessed. “I’m sorry I killed you. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I can’t accept all the blame. You married Ren. What did you think would happen?”

“He was mine! I saw him on the night of the opera. I told you I’d chosen him.” She pointed a finger at Yi. “Once this one is gone, I’ll finally have him to myself.”

With that, many of the events of the last few months became clear. Ze had been here for a while. After Yi found my poems, Ze must have caused the book holding the pages she’d torn out of the commentary to fall from the shelf, shifting Ren’s attention back to her and stealing my poetry from his eyes. She must have drawn Yi to comment on what she’d written in the margins of the opera. The freezing temperatures on the day the Shaoxi edition burned also had to have been caused by Ze, but I hadn’t understood what I was seeing because I was too entranced by Ren and Yi dancing in the snow. The cold in Yi’s bedchamber . . . Yi’s illness . . . and even farther back in time, when the boy had been born. Had Ze been inside Yi, trying to strangle the boy with his cord, yanking it tighter and tighter around his neck even as I tried to loosen it?

I took my eyes off Ze, trying to figure out where she’d been hiding all this time. In a vase, under the bed, in Yi’s lungs, in her womb? In the doctor’s pocket, in one of Willow’s shoes, in the decoction of weevil-eaten ( 2 6 5 )

corn and ashes used to bring down Yi’s fever? Ze could have been in any or all of those places and I wouldn’t have known, because I hadn’t been looking for her.

Ze took advantage of my distraction by swooping down and sitting on Yi’s chest.

“Remember when you did this to me?” she screeched.

“No!” I screamed. I reached down, grabbed Ze, and pulled her back into the air.

Willow dropped the broom and covered her ears. Ren swirled and caught Ze’s leg with the sword. Spirit blood splattered the room.

“Ren loved you,” Ze reproached me. “The two of you never met and yet he loved you.”

Should I tell her the truth of that? Would it matter now?

“You were always in his mind,” she went on mercilessly. “You were the dream of what could have been. So I had to be you. I remembered hearing about your lovesickness and how you turned away food—”

“But I shouldn’t have stopped eating! That was a terrible mistake.”

But even as I spoke, a memory of a completely different sort came to my mind. I’d always dismissed Doctor Zhao as stupid, but he had it right all along. Ze was jealous. He should have forced her to eat the jealousy-curing soup. And then I recalled a line from the opera: Only women who are spiteful are jealous; only those who are jealous are spiteful.

“I remember,” Ze went on. “I remember it all. You taught me what the consequences of not eating would be. So I wasted away to become you—”

“But why?”

“He was mine!” She broke away from me, sank her black nails into the rafter, and hung there like a disgusting creature. She was a disgusting creature. “I saw him first!”

Ren dropped to his knees next to Yi’s bed. He held her hand and wept.

Soon she would be flying across the sky. At last, I fully understood my mother’s sacrifice for my father. I would do anything to save the daughter of my heart.

“Don’t punish this insignificant wife,” I said. “Punish me.”

I edged toward Ze, hoping she would forget about Yi and come after me. She loosened her grip on the rafter and breathed a noxious cloud of filth in my face.

“How best to do it?” In her voice I heard the little girl who was so selfish—no, insecure, I realized now, when it was too late—that she couldn’t let anyone else speak for fear it would take attention away from her.

( 2 6 6 )

“I’m sorry I forgot to let you eat,” I tried again, hopelessly, helplessly.

“You aren’t hearing what I’m saying. You didn’t kill me,” she gloated.

“You didn’t crush me. You didn’t steal my breath. I stopped eating, and for once I had total control over my destiny. I wanted to starve that thing you put in my belly.”

I recoiled from the shock of her words. “You killed your baby?” When a satisfied smile came over her face, I said, “But he did nothing to you.”

“I went to the Blood-Gathering Lake for what I did,” she admitted,

“but it was worth it. I hated you and told you what would hurt you the most. You believed it and look what you’ve become. Weak! Human!”

“I didn’t kill you?”

She tried to laugh again at my ignorance, but sadness poured from her mouth. “You didn’t kill me. You didn’t know how.”

Years of sorrow, guilt, and regret rolled off me, fell away, and disappeared into the cold air around us.

“I was never afraid of you,” she went on, seemingly oblivious to how unburdened and light I suddenly was. “It was the memory of you. You were a ghost in my husband’s heart.”

From the first time I’d seen Ze, a part of me had felt sorry for her. She had everything and nothing. Her emptiness had left her unable to feel anything good—from her husband, her father, her mother, or me.

“But you’ve been a ghost in his heart too.” Again I edged forward. If she hated me so much, she’d come for me eventually. “He couldn’t abandon either of us, because he loved us both. His love for Yi is just a continuation of that. See how he stares at her. He’s imagining how I must have looked all alone with my lovesickness and remembering how you looked when you were dying.”

But Ze wasn’t interested in reason, and she certainly didn’t care for what she could see with her own eyes if she’d chosen to look. Both of us had been doomed because we’d been born girls. We’d both struggled on the precipice between being worthless or valuable as a commodity. We were both pathetic creatures. I hadn’t killed Ze—the relief of that!—and I didn’t believe she truly wanted to kill Yi.

“Look at him, Ze. Do you really want to hurt him again?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I let our husband take credit for what we did with The Peony Pavilion, ” she admitted, “because I wanted him to love me.”

“He did love you. You should have seen the way he mourned.”

But she wasn’t listening to me. “I thought I could beat you in death.

My husband and our new sister-wife made offerings to me, but you know ( 2 6 7 )

this family has always been insignificant.” I waited, knowing the word she would use next. “Mediocre. Fortunately, I had my father to buy me out of the Blood-Gathering Lake, but once I was free, what did I find?” She pulled at her hair. “A new wife!”

“And look what she did for you—for both of us. She heard our words.

You were in the margins of The Peony Pavilion as much as I was. And you helped Yi with part two. Don’t deny it.” I moved closer to Ze. “Our sister-wife helped Ren to see he could love us all—differently but completely.

Our project is going to be published. Isn’t it a miracle? We’re all going to be remembered and honored.”

As Ze’s tears began to flow, the ugliness of years spent in the Blood-Gathering Lake washed away, as did her anger, bitterness, spite, and selfishness. Those emotions—so persistent and strong—had followed her into death. They’d covered her terrible unhappiness. Now defeat, sadness, and loneliness oozed out of her like worms from the ground after a spring rain until Ze’s true essence—the pretty girl who inhabited her dreams and longed to be loved—appeared. She was not a demon or a ghost at all. She was at once a brokenhearted ancestor and, at last, a true lovesick maiden.

I called on the inner strength of my mother and grandmother, reached out, and put my arm around Ze. I didn’t let her argue. I just pulled her with me, skirting around Willow’s sweeping, avoiding the mirrors, and slipping past the sieve. Ze and I went outside, and then I released her. She floated above me for a few seconds; then she turned her face skyward and slowly disappeared.

I went back inside and watched with great joy as Yi’s lungs emptied of fluids, she gasped for breath, and Ren sobbed in gratitude.

( 2 6 8 )

Shimmering

T H E T H R E E W I V E S ’ C O M M E N TA RY was p u b l i s h e d at t h e end of winter in the thirty-second year of Emperor Kangxi’s reign in what would have been my forty-fifth year in the earthly realm. It was an immediate and enormous success. To my amaze-ment and unabashed delight, my name—and those of my sister-wives—

became known across the country. Collectors like my father sought out my book as something unique and special. Libraries purchased it for their shelves. It went into elite homes, where women read it again and again.

They cried at my loneliness and my insights. They wept over their own lost, burned, or forgotten words. They sighed for the things they wished they’d written, about spring love and autumn regrets.

Pretty soon their husbands, brothers, and sons picked up the book and read it too. Their interpretation and experience of it was completely different. What could make a man feel more like a man than the idea that another man’s work had attracted and mesmerized women—not just the three of us, but all the lovesick maidens—to such an extent that we’d stopped eating, pined away, and died? It made them feel strong and superior and helped restore to them more of their lost manliness.

When New Year’s Eve arrived, Yi joined the family to clean, make offerings, and pay debts, but I could see her mind was elsewhere. As soon as those duties were done, she scurried through the compound to the room where my dummy bride was kept. She entered the room, hesitated for a minute, and then she reached into her skirt, pulled out a knife—a forbid-

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den object in the days leading up to the New Year—and knelt next to the dummy. I watched in shock as she cut off the dummy’s face. She removed the clothes, put them in a neat pile, and then carefully sliced open the dummy’s stomach.

My emotions were thrown into tumult: I had no idea why she wanted to harm my dummy, and Ren would be furious if he found out, but if she pulled out my ancestor tablet she would see what was missing. I hovered next to her, with hope surging through me. Yi reached into the body and extracted the tablet. She quickly brushed away the straw and left the room with my tablet and the painted face. But she hadn’t really looked at the tablet.

She stepped down from the corridor and into the garden, and then made her way to the plum tree where I lived. She set the tablet on the ground and then went back to her room. She returned with a small table.

She went away again. This time she came back with one of the commercially produced copies of The Three Wives’ Commentary, a vase, and some other items. She put my tablet and portrait on the table, lit candles, and then made offerings of The Commentary, fruit, and wine. And then she worshipped me as an ancestor.

What I mean is, I thought she worshipped me as an ancestor.

Ren stepped out onto a balcony and saw his wife making supplication.

“What are you doing?” he called down to her.

“It’s the New Year. We’ve made offerings to others in your family. I wanted to give thanks to Liniang. Think how she has inspired me . . . and your other wives.”

He laughed at her simple ways. “You can’t worship an imaginary character!”

She bristled. “The spirit of the cosmos dwells in everything. Even a stone may serve as the home of a creature; even a tree may serve as the dwelling of a spirit.”

“But Tang Xianzu himself said Liniang never existed. So why do you make offerings to her?”

“How can you or I judge whether Liniang existed or not?”

It was New Year’s Eve, a time when no arguing should occur for fear it will upset the ancestors, so he gave in. “You’re right. I’m wrong. Now come up here and join me for tea. I’d like to read to you what I wrote today.”

He was too far away to see the face painted on the piece of paper or ( 2 7 0 )

what was inscribed on my tablet, and he didn’t ask where she’d found these objects to substitute for Liniang.

Later, Yi returned to the plum tree to put away the things she’d brought out. I watched sadly as she carefully sewed my tablet back inside the dummy, dressed it, and arranged the paper face so it looked exactly as it had before the ceremony. I tried to fight my disappointment, but I was devastated . . . again.

It was time for her to know about me. I was the one who’d helped her, not Liniang. I remembered what Yi had written in the margins of the opera: A ghost is merely a dream and a dream is nothing but a ghost. This sentiment convinced me that the only way I was certain not to frighten her was to meet her in a dream.

That night, as soon as Yi fell asleep and began roaming, I stepped into her dream garden, which I instantly recognized as the one from Liniang’s dream. Peonies bloomed all around me. I walked to the Peony Pavilion and waited. When Yi arrived and I revealed myself, she did not scream or run away. In her eyes, I was dazzlingly beautiful.

“Are you Liniang?” she asked.

I smiled at her, but before I could tell her who I was a new figure appeared. It was Ren. We had not met this way since I first died. We stared at each other, unable to speak, overcome by emotion. It was as if no time had passed. My love for him permeated the air around us, but Yi was there and I was afraid to speak. He glanced at my sister-wife and then back to me.

He too was hesitant to say anything, but his eyes were filled with love.

I picked a sprig from the plum tree and handed it to him. Remembering how Liniang’s dream had ended, I whirled away in a whoosh, scoop-ing up all the petals from the garden and then letting them cascade on Ren and Yi. Tomorrow night, I would enter Yi’s dream again. I’d be ready if and when Ren came. I would find my voice and tell him . . .

In the earthly realm, Ren woke up. Next to him, Yi’s breathing caught and then caught again. He shook her shoulder.

“Wake up! Wake up!”

Yi opened her eyes, but before he could say anything she hurriedly told him of her dream.

“I told you Liniang existed,” she said happily.

“I just had the same dream,” he said. “But that wasn’t Liniang.” He grasped her hands and asked urgently, “Where did you get the tablet to use in your ceremony yesterday?”

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She shook her head and tried to pull away her hands, but he held them tight.

“I won’t be angry,” he said. “Tell me.”

“I didn’t take it from your family altar,” she admitted softly. “It wasn’t one of your aunts or—”

“Yi, please! Tell me!”

“I wanted to use a tablet for someone whom I thought best represented Liniang and her lovesickness.” Seeing his intensity, Yi bit her lip. Then finally she confessed. “I took the tablet from your Peony, but I put it back.

Don’t be angry with me.”

“That was Peony in your dream,” he said, quickly getting out of bed and grabbing a robe. “You called her to you.”

“Husband—”

“I’m telling you it was her. She couldn’t visit you like that if she were an ancestor. She has to be . . .”

Yi started to get up.

“Stay here,” he ordered.

Without another word, he left the bedchamber and ran down the corridor to the room that housed my dummy. He knelt beside it and put his hand over where my heart would have been. He stayed that way for a long time and then slowly—as slowly as a groom on his wedding night—he unbuttoned the frogs that held closed my wedding tunic. Never once did he take his eyes away from the dummy’s eyes, and never once did I look away from him. He was older now. Gray hair salted his temples and permanent creases etched the skin near his eyes, but to me he would always be man-beautiful. His hands were still long and thin. His movements were still languid and graceful. I loved him for the joy and happiness he’d brought me as a girl living in the Chen Family Villa and for the love and loyalty he’d shown Ze and Yi.

When the dummy’s muslin body was exposed, he sat back on his heels, scanned the room, but didn’t see what he needed. He felt his pockets and found nothing. He took a breath, reached down, and ripped open the dummy’s stomach. He pulled out my tablet, held it before him for a moment, and then wet his thumb with his tongue and used the moistness to wipe away the dirt. When he saw no dot, he clutched the tablet to his chest and hung his head. I knelt before him. I’d suffered twenty-nine years as a hungry ghost, and now looking up at him, I saw those years play out across his features in seconds as he guessed at the tortures of my existence.

He rose, took the tablet with him to his library, and called for Willow.

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“Tell Cook to slaughter a rooster,” he ordered brusquely. “When she’s done, bring me the blood immediately.”

Willow didn’t question this. As she passed me on her way out of the room, I began to weep in relief and gratitude. I’d waited so long to have my ancestor tablet dotted, I’d given up believing that it would ever happen.

Willow returned ten minutes later with a bowl of warm blood. Ren took it from her and dismissed her, and then he went to the table, set the bowl down, and made obeisance to my tablet. As he did this, something began to stir in me and a heavenly fragrance infused the room. Tears filled his eyes as he stood and dipped his brush in the blood. His hand was steady as he reached out and dotted my tablet just as Mengmei had done to prove his love for Liniang.

Instantly, I was no longer a hungry ghost. The soul that had been harbored in my ghostly form split in two. One part found its proper place in the tablet. From there I would be able to watch over my family from close proximity. The other part was once again free to continue on to the afterworld. I’d been resurrected—not to life, but finally and fully to Ren’s first wife. I’d returned to my rightful place in society, in my family, and in the cosmos.

I glowed—and with me the whole compound shimmered with happiness. And then I was floating away to complete my journey to become an ancestor. I looked back at Ren one last time. It would still be many years before my beautiful poet joined me in the plains of the afterworld. Until then, I would live for him in my writings.

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Author’s Note

i n 2000, i wrote a short piece for V OGUE magazine about Lincoln Center’s full-length production of The Peony Pavilion. While doing research for that article, I came across the lovesick maidens. They intrigued me, and long after I wrote the article I kept thinking about them.

We usually hear that in the past there were no women writers, no women artists, no women historians, no women chefs, but of course women did these things. It’s just that too often what they did was lost, forgotten, or deliberately covered up. So when I had a moment here or there, I looked up whatever I could find about the lovesick maidens and came to learn that they were part of a much larger phenomenon.

In the mid-seventeenth century, more women writers were being published in China’s Yangzi delta than in all the rest of the world at that time.

By that I mean there were thousands of women—bound-footed, often living in seclusion, from wealthy families—who were being published.

Some families published a single poem written by a mother or daughter whom they wanted to commemorate or honor, but there were other women—professional women writers—who not only wrote for large public audiences but also supported their families with their written words. How could so many women have done something so extraordinary and I didn’t know about it? Why didn’t we all know? Then I came across The Three Wives’ Commentary—the first book of its kind to have been published anywhere in the world to have been written by women—three wives, no less. With that, my interest turned into an obsession.

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There are several elements here—Tang Xianzu’s opera, the lovesick maidens, the history of The Three Wives’ Commentary, and the societal changes that allowed it to be written. I know they’re rather complicated and overlap a bit, so please bear with me.

tang x i an z u set The Peony Pavilion in the Song dynasty (960–1127), but he was writing about the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a time of artistic ferment as well as political turmoil and corruption.

In 1598, with the completion of the opera, Tang became one of the most important promoters of qing—deep emotions and sentimental love.

Like all good writers, Tang wrote what he knew, but that didn’t mean the government necessarily wanted to hear it. Almost immediately, different groups advocated for the opera’s censorship, because it was considered too political and too lascivious. New versions appeared in quick succession, until eventually only a paltry eight out of the original fifty-five scenes were performed. The text suffered even worse treatment. Some versions were abridged, while others were revised or totally rewritten to fit society’s changing mores.

In 1780, during the Qianlong reign, opposition to the opera escalated and it was blacklisted as “profane.” But it wasn’t until 1868 that the Tongzhi emperor issued the first official ban, labeling The Peony Pavilion debauched and ordering all copies burned and all productions forbidden.

Censorship of the opera has continued right up to today. The Lincoln Center production was temporarily delayed when the Chinese government discovered the content of the restored scenes and barred the actors, costumes, and sets from leaving the country, showing once again that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Apart from sexual liaisons between two unmarried people and criticism of the government—both serious in their own ways, I suppose—

why has the opera been so upsetting? The Peony Pavilion was the first piece of fiction in the history of China in which the heroine—a girl of sixteen—

chose her own destiny, and that was both shocking and thrilling. It entranced and fascinated women, who, with rare exceptions, were allowed to read the opera but never see or hear it. The passion this work aroused has been compared to the fanaticism for Goethe’s Werther in eighteenth-century Europe or more recently, in the United States, for Gone With the Wind. In China, young educated women from wealthy families—typically between the ages of thirteen and sixteen and with their marriages already ( 2 7 6 )

arranged—were particularly susceptible to the story. Believing that life imitates art, they copied Liniang: They gave up food, wasted away, and died, all in hopes that somehow in death they might be able to choose their destinies, just as the ghost of Liniang had.

No one knows for sure what killed the lovesick maidens, but it may have been self-starvation. We tend to think of anorexia as a modern problem, but it isn’t. Whether it was female saints in the Middle Ages, lovesick maidens in seventeenth-century China, or adolescent girls today, women have had a need for some small measure of autonomy. As scholar Rudolph Bell has explained, by starving themselves young women are able to shift the contest from the outer world—in which they have no control over their fates and face seemingly sure defeat—to an inner struggle to achieve mastery over themselves and their bodily urges. As the lovesick maidens were dying, many of them—including Xiaoqing and Yu Niang, who appear in this story—wrote poems that were published after their deaths.

But these writing women—whether lovesick maidens or members of the Banana Garden Five—didn’t just appear, and later disappear, in a vac-uum. China underwent a dynastic change in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Ming dynasty fell and Manchu invaders from the north established the Qing dynasty. For about thirty years, the country was in chaos.

The old regime had been corrupt. The war had been brutal. (In Yangzhou, where Peony’s grandmother died, 80,000 people were reputed to have been killed.) Many people lost their homes. Men were humiliated and forced to shave their foreheads as a symbol of subservience to the new emperor. Under the new regime, the imperial scholar system faltered, so that the way men had traditionally gained prestige, riches, and power suddenly had no value. Men from the highest levels of society retreated from the government and from scholarly life to take up rock collecting, poetry writing, tea tasting, and incense burning.

Women, who were pretty low on the totem pole to begin with, suffered greater hardship. Some were traded and sold “by weight, like fish,” and pound for pound had less value than salt. Many—like the real Xiaoqing or like Willow in the novel—became “thin horses” and were sold as concubines. But some women had very different and much better destinies.

With so much else to worry about, men left the front gate open and women, who had long lived in seclusion, went out. They became professional writers, artists, archers, historians, and adventurers. Other women—

in what might be considered an early form of the book group—gathered together to write poetry, read books, and discuss ideas. The members of ( 2 7 7 )

the Banana Garden Five (and later Seven), for example, went on excursions, wrote what they saw and experienced, and were still considered fine, noble, proud, and upstanding women. Their success couldn’t have happened without the growth in female literacy, a healthy economy, mass printing facilities, and a male populace that was, for the most part, distracted.

But not all this writing was happy or celebratory. Some women, like Peony’s mother, left poems on walls that then became popular among the literati for their sadness and for the voyeuristic curiosity of reading someone’s thoughts near the moment of death. These, along with the writings of the lovesick maidens, carried with them a kind of romanticism that combined the ideals of qing with the allure of a woman wasting away from disease or childbed fever, being martyred, or dying alone in an empty room longing for her lover.

Chen Tong, Tan Ze, and Qian Yi were real women. (Chen Tong’s name was changed because it matched that of her future mother-in-law; their given name has not survived.) I have tried to remain as true to their story as possible—so true that often I was constrained by facts that seemed too fabulous and coincidental to be real. For example, Qian Yi used an ancestor tablet from the household to conduct a ceremony under a plum tree to honor the fictional character of Du Liniang, who then visited her and Wu Ren in a dream. But as far as I know, Chen Tong never met her husband-to-be, nor did she come back to earth as a hungry ghost.

Wu Ren wanted all three of his wives to be acknowledged, but he was also mindful of protecting them, so the cover of the book read Wu Wushan’s Three Wives’ Collaborative Commentary of The Peony Pavilion.

Wushan was one of the style names he used when writing. The names Tan Ze, Qian Yi, and Chen Tong did not appear except on the title page and in the supplementary material.

The book was published to great acclaim and was widely read. In time, however, the tide turned and praise was replaced by bitter and often biting criticism. Wu Ren was accused of being a simpleton so eager to promote his wives that he lost sight of propriety. Moralists, who’d been against The Peony Pavilion for years, advocated for censorship of the opera through familial admonishment, religious tenets, and official bans. They proposed burning all copies of The Peony Pavilion—along with all complementary works such as The Commentary—as the most efficacious way of eliminat-ing the offending words once and for all. Reading such books, they reasoned, could cause women—who were silly and unsophisticated by ( 2 7 8 )

nature—to become dissolute and heart-dead. Mostly, though, they remembered that only an ignorant woman could be considered a good woman. The moralists told men to remind their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters that there was no “writing” or “self ” in the Four Virtues.

The very things that had inspired women to write, paint, and go on excursions were turned against them. The return to ritual meant only one thing: a return to silence.

Then the arguments shifted again, zeroing back in on The Three Wives’

Commentary. How could three women— wives, no less—have had such insights about love? How could they have endeavored to write something so learned? How was it that they’d gathered together all the editions of the opera for comparison? Why had the original manuscripts written by Chen Tong and Tan Ze been lost to fires? This seemed awfully convenient, since the three wives’ calligraphic styles could not be compared. In the supplementary materials, Qian Yi wrote that she had made an offering to her two predecessors under a plum tree. She and her husband also described a dream where they’d encountered Du Liniang. Could these two not separate fact from fiction, the living from the dead, or waking from dreaming?

People could come to only one conclusion: Wu Ren wrote the commentary himself. His response: “Let those who believe, believe. Let those who doubt, doubt.”

In the meantime, order had to be restored across the realm. The emperor made several proclamations, all aimed at bringing society back under control. Clouds and rain, it was announced, should occur only between man and wife and the basis for it could come only from li and not qing. No more confidential women’s books would be produced, so that when a girl went to her husband’s home at marriage she would have no knowledge about what would happen on her wedding night. The emperor also awarded fathers complete control over their female offspring: If a daughter brought shame on her ancestors, he had the right to hack her to pieces. Very quickly, women were pushed back inside behind closed doors, and there they more or less remained until the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was formed in 1912.

i n may 2 0 05, ten days before I went to Hangzhou to research the three wives, I got a call from More magazine, asking if I would write a piece for them about China. The timing was perfect. In addition to going to Hangzhou, I visited small water towns in the Yangzi delta (many of which ( 2 7 9 )

seem to have been frozen in time a hundred or more years ago), sites that are referred to in the novel (Long jing’s tea farms and various temples), and to Suzhou (to be inspired by the great garden estates).

The thrust of that article had to do with finding my inner lovesick maiden. I have to admit it wasn’t very hard, because I’m obsessed most of the time, but the assignment forced me to look inward and examine what I felt about writing and the desire women have to be heard—by their husbands, their children, their employers. At the same time, I thought a lot about love. All women on earth—and men too, for that matter—hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, and gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.

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Acknowledgments

th i s i s a h i stori cal nove l , and i woul dn ’t have b e e n able to write it without the wonderful research of many scholars. For place and time, I’d like to thank George E. Bird, Frederick Douglas Cloud, Sara Grimes, and George Kates for their memoirs and guides to Hangzhou and China. For information about Chinese funerary rites, beliefs about the afterworld, the three parts of the soul, the abilities and weaknesses of spirits, and ghost marriages (which are still performed today), I’d like to acknowledge Myron L. Cohen, David K. Jordan, Susan Naquin, Stuart E.

Thompson, James L. Watson, Arthur P. Wolf, and Anthony C. Yu. Although sometimes Justus Doolittle and John Nevius—both nineteenth-century travelers to China—could be somewhat patronizing, they nevertheless did thorough jobs of documenting Chinese customs and beliefs. V. R. Burkhardt’s Chinese Creeds and Customs is still a useful and practical guide to these subjects, while Matthew H. Sommer’s book, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China, thoroughly delineates the regulation of sexual behavior and men’s and women’s rights in the Qing dynasty.

Lynn A. Struve has found, translated, and cataloged first-person accounts from the Ming–Qing transition. Two of these stories formed the Chen family’s experience in Peony in Love. The first comes from an account given by Liu Sanxiu, who was taken captive, sold a few times, and eventually became a Manchu princess. The second is a hair-raising account given by Wang Xiuchu about the massacre in Yangzhou. His fam-

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ily’s experience brutally explores the difference between volunteering to sacrifice yourself for your family and being volunteered because you’re believed to have less value. (For the novel, I have reduced the ten-day massacre to five.)

In recent years, there has been some wonderful scholarship done on women in China. I’m indebted to the work of Patricia Buckley Ebrey (women’s lives in the Song period), Susan Mann (women’s lives and education in the eighteenth century), Maureen Robertson (women’s lyric poetry in late imperial China), Ann Waltner (on the woman visionary T’An-Yang-Tzu), and Ellen Widmer (Xiaoqing’s literary legacy). I was highly amused—and dismayed—by a list in a recent Shanghai Tattler of the twenty criteria for becoming a better wife. Although written in 2005, many of these suggestions found their way into the novel as advice for women to make their husbands happy in the seventeenth century. For those interested in reading more about footbinding, I highly suggest Bev-erley Jackson’s classic Splendid Slippers, as well as Dorothy Ko’s brilliant and illuminating Cinderella’s Slippers and Every Step a Lotus. In addition, Dr.

Ko’s knowledge about Chinese women’s lives in the seventeenth century, and the three wives in particular, is impressive and inspiring.

Cyril Birch’s translation of The Peony Pavilion is a classic, and I am grateful to the University of Indiana Press for giving me permission to use his beautiful words. Just as I was writing the final pages of the novel, I was lucky to see a lovely nine-hour version of the opera, written and produced by Kenneth Pai, performed in California. For more scholarly approaches to the opera, I’m indebted to the work of Tina Lu and Cather-ine Swatek.

Judith Zeitlin of the University of Chicago has been like a fairy god-mother to this project. We began with a lively e-mail correspondence about The Three Wives’ Commentary. She recommended articles she’d written on Chinese female ghosts, spirit writing, self-portraits as reflections of the soul, and the three wives. I was extremely lucky to meet with Dr.

Zeitlin in Chicago and spend an incredible evening talking about lovesickness, women’s writing, and ghosts. Not long after that, a package arrived in the mail. She had sent me a photocopy of an original edition of The Commentary, owned by a private collector. Dr. Zeitlin never hesitated to share her expertise or assist me in getting help from others.

Translations vary tremendously. For Chen Tong’s deathbed poems, what the three wives actually wrote, Wu Ren’s account of events sur-

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rounding the commentary, Qian Yi’s remembrances of her dream about Liniang, the words of praise written by the book’s admirers, and all other supplementary material that was published with The Three Wives’ Commentary, I have used translations by Dorothy Ko, Judith Zeitlin, Jingmei Chen (from her dissertation “The Dream World of Love-Sick Maidens”), and Wilt Idema and Beata Grant (from The Red Brush, their impressive and comprehensive 900-plus-page collection of women’s writing in imperial China).

In addition to The Peony Pavilion material, I’m also grateful to the scholars listed above for their translations of the writings of so many other women writers of that period. I have tried to honor those women’s voices by using words and phrases from their poems, much as Tang Xianzu created pastiches culled from many other writers in The Peony Pavilion. Peony in Love is a work of fiction—all mistakes and changes from the real adventures of the three wives are my own—but I hope I have captured the spirit of their story.

Thank you to the editors of More and Vogue, whose assignments book-ended this project. Photographer Jessica Antola and her assistant, Jennifer Witcher, were wonderful traveling companions as they followed me almost everywhere I went on my research trip to China. Wang Jian and Tony Tong served as proficient guides and translators, and Paul Moore once again handled my complicated travel plans. I’d like to give special acknowledgment to author Anchee Min, who arranged for me to meet Mao Wei-tiao, one of the most famous Kunqu opera singers in the world. Ms.

Mao showed me, through an interesting combination of movement and stillness, the depth and beauty of Chinese opera.

Thanks as well go to: Aimee Liu, for her knowledge about anorexia; Buf Meyer, for her provocative thoughts about ancestral emotions; Janet Baker, for her fine copyediting; Chris Chandler, for his unending and patient help with the mailing list; and Amanda Strick, for “man-beautiful,” her love of Chinese literature, and for being such an inspiring young woman.

I’d like to thank Gina Centrello, Bob Loomis, Jane von Mehren, Ben-jamin Dreyer, Barbara Fillon, Karen Fink, Vincent La Scala, and, well, everyone at Random House for being so kind to me. I’ve been very lucky over the years to have Sandy Dijkstra as my agent. She’s simply the best.

In her office, Taryn Fagerness, Elise Capron, Elisabeth James, and Kelly Sonnack have all worked tirelessly on my behalf.

Final thanks go as always to my family: to my sons, Christopher and ( 2 8 3 )

Alexander, for always cheering me on; to my mom, Carolyn See, for believing in me and encouraging me to persist and remember my worth; to my sister, Clara Sturak, for her good and kind heart; and to my husband, Richard Kendall, who asked thoughtful questions, had great ideas, and is very brave about my being away from him so much of the time. To him I say, This and all eternities.

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About the Author

Lisa See is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the widely acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the

2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in

Los Angeles. Visit the author’s website at

www.LisaSee.com.

About the Type

This book was set in Bembo, a typeface based on an old-style Roman face that was used for Cardinal Bembo’s tract De Aetna in 1495. Bembo was cut by Francisco Griffo in the early sixteenth century.

The Lanston Monotype Machine Company of

Philadelphia brought the well-proportioned letter forms of Bembo to the United States in the 1930s.

Table of Contents

Book design by Victoria Wong