Explore Chapter 1 of 'late-blooming-osmanthus' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
Elder Brother: Suddenly receiving this letter from me, you might be surprised, or you might even fail to recall who this sender Weng is. But on second thought, you are not an official, and your circumstances are hardly much better than mine, so it is unlikely you have forgotten me. For only those who are noble or in excellent circumstances would do such a thing.
Two weeks ago, I went down the mountain to purchase wedding clothes and furniture. It had been a long time since I last visited the city. When I did, it was truly like the immortal Ding Lingwei returning as a crane after centuries; everything seemed novel, as if I were reborn into a new world. Passing by a bookstore, I looked up and saw several volumes of biographies and critiques about you. Stepping inside to inquire, I learned that your works had accumulated to eight or nine volumes. Buying all your books and those about you to read, it felt like meeting you again after more than a decade, with your voice and smile vividly recalled. I couldn't help myself. I read them over and over. The more I read, the more I longed to write to you and see you once more. But due to many years of not reading newspapers, being ignorant of worldly affairs, and not touching pen and ink-a twist of fate-I resolved several times yet dared not realize this wish. Now it's better. The preparations for my wedding are nearly eighty percent complete. My elderly mother plans to go to the city early tomorrow morning and has already gone to bed. My poor widowed sister, exhausted from the day's labor, seems to have fallen into dreamland. So I can quietly practice this long-unused pen and fulfill this wish I've cherished for over half a month.
Picking up the pen to write, I truly don't know how to begin. So many years have passed since we parted without communication. After reading your works, the feelings stirred in my heart are so complex. At this moment, the thoughts swirling in my mind, which I long to share with you, are indeed more numerous and chaotic than the Twenty-Four Histories; they are as hot and intense as the inner layers of a volcano about to erupt, so fervent and turbulent that I can scarcely find a beginning.
Since we parted at the Bōsō Peninsula, it must have been over ten years now! I still remember that sunny winter morning when you stood alone in the cold wind seeing me off as I returned to Tokyo. Isn't the protagonist in your work 'Southward Migration' based on me? After that year, I was overwhelmed by a chest illness and had no chance to see you again or write a single letter, so I returned home. Of course, I dropped out of school midway. When there was no hope of survival, how could I care about future livelihood or worldly accomplishments? How could I care about external learning and cultivation? You know the youthful vigor and grand ambitions I had up to that point. Among classmates from the same grade and hometown, only you and I were closest. You were the only one I lived with longest in the same boarding house. It was you who often advised me to study less and take better care of my health, preparing to serve the nation and humanity in the future. Besides you, no one else would pull me to stroll in suburbs like the Tama River, Inokashira Park, or Musashino on sunny days. Those pleasant years in high school, I only need to close my eyes to see them clearly now. Reading your early works makes these memories even fresher. The reason I want to write to you more as I read your works lies in recalling these past events. These are shared memories between us. I cannot write them as well as you, and even if I don't write, you must remember, so I won't elaborate. What I plan to report to you in detail is the decade-long life of convalescence in the mountains after returning home that winter.
That winter, I coughed up blood and went with you to the Bōsō Peninsula to escape the cold. Unexpectedly, I met that girl suffering from tuberculosis-was it Masako? I even forgot her name-unwittingly sparking that harmful love affair for both. After you saw me back to Tokyo, I stayed for over a week before returning home. Our old home is on Wengjia Mountain, about twenty li from the city, as you know. Settling back, I wasn't shocked or alarmed by my illness. But the blood streaks in my phlegm, my pale face, and emaciated body terrified my mother, who had been a widow for years. My short-lived father died of the same disease. So she sought gods and buddhas everywhere, gathered herbs and sought doctors, too anxious to even eat simple meals. The white hair on her head seemed to increase daily. As for me, love had failed, and studies were abandoned. Having little ambition left in life, I let her arrange things. Though I couldn't fulfill filial duties actively, I complied passively. In the first year back home, I hardly stepped outside. I tried all sorts of strange herbal medicines and peculiar remedies. But oddly, this fatal illness I thought hopeless seemed divinely aided and suddenly lightened by the second summer after returning. Night fevers ceased, night sweats stopped, and blood streaks in phlegm disappeared long ago. My mother's joy was, of course, immense. Even my sister, who boiled medicine, sewed clothes, and handled all chores for me, unfolded her worried brows like spring weather, showing her uniquely delightful smile. By early summer, I stopped taking medicine. With some energy, I could even go with them to pick tea and vegetables around the hills, helping with small tasks.
In the autumn of that year-the third year after returning home-two tragicomedies, both joyful and sorrowful, occurred simultaneously in our family. First, my sister's marriage. Second, the dissolution of my engagement in the city. My sister was nineteen then. The groom's family was a wealthy rural household just over a mountain ridge. When they proposed, it was because our ancestors were generations of scholars, so they sought a marriage with a cultured family. The engagement had been set for four or five years. At first, my mother thought my sister too young and refused immediate marriage. Later, due to my illness, it was postponed for two or three years. This time, my illness had recovered, but my sister was already of marriageable age. When the groom's family proposed, my mother agreed. It fulfilled one of her own worries. As for my engagement, it was arranged by my father the year before his death with a fairly renowned old family in the city. At that time, I was still young, and our family's real estate was considerable. Moreover, I was a talented scholar, destined to be nurtured for study and life, so that old family agreed to the marriage. From today's perspective, this marriage was obviously us striving to climb high. In Hangzhou custom, families who could only afford porridge must marry daughters to families who could afford rice. Also, rural girls marrying into the city are common, but young ladies from wealthy city families rarely marry down to the countryside. So this engagement was fundamentally amiss from the start. After my father's death, our family spent much on funeral expenses. Year after year, the three of us-mother and children-lived off dwindling resources. Relatives inevitably exploited us orphans and widow. Mother was kind but ineffective. When selling fields and hills, she didn't know market prices, largely letting clansmen manipulate deals. Due to these reasons, by the year I passed the government scholarship exam to study in Japan, our generations-old scholarly family on Wengjia Mountain had only a house, some hills, and a few barren fields left to barely sustain food and clothing. When I first went abroad, they kindly sent me some travel funds. During winter and summer breaks when I returned, they sent the original matchmaker to urge marriage. But then my fatal illness struck, and my studies halted. So over two or three years, contact between them and us naturally ceased. In late autumn that year, soon after my sister's marriage, the girl's family suddenly sent the original matchmaker to tell Mother, 'Your eldest son is ill, so marriage is unsuitable. Their daughter has resolved to remain unmarried for life. Thus, this engagement should be dissolved.' Opening a package, they returned the gold and jade Ruyi scepters and red-green betrothal cards exchanged during our betrothal ceremony to Mother. My kind, honest mother, though ineffective, was fiercely proud of our family honor. Hearing the matchmaker's words, she was stupefied, and tears immediately began to roll down her cheeks. Fortunately, I was there to console her with mixed reasoning. Finally, with tears, she retrieved the girl's return gifts and the full horoscope papers, handing them back to the matchmaker. After the matchmaker left, she went to my father's grave behind the hill and wept bitterly. Until evening, when clansmen and neighbors pulled her back, she still streamed tears and sniffles, sobbing heartbrokenly. This bizarre episode of the broken engagement only pleased me-it was no big deal. But to her old-fashioned mind, it seemed the Weng family's generational dignity had been stripped bare. Since then, for nearly a decade, she and I lived in silent, lonely gloom, facing each other desolately, until the winter before last when my brother-in-law died and my widowed sister returned. Our days were like purgatory.
Speaking of my widowed sister, she truly had ill fortune in a past life. Though tall and strong, her nature remained that of an innocent, lively child. The year she married, when returning after the wedding, she smiled as if back from a city trip. But after the double full moon, returning at year-end, she who never knew sorrow shed tears to Mother. Her husband's father was decent, but the mother-in-law was nagging and stingy, the sisters-in-law sharp-tongued and mean, and the husband wild and violent. She had no moment of peace day or night. Labor was habitual from home, not a hardship. The hardest was the incredibly frugal life where using an extra match drew rebuke. The two sisters-in-law hurled barbs and venomous remarks left and right, blaming my mother's refusal to let them marry earlier for their brother's dissolute habits and keeping a mistress outside-all my sister's fault. After marriage, the groom's habits worsened. He spent more time with his old lover in the city than in the bridal chamber. This, too, was blamed on my sister. The mother-in-law said she couldn't serve a man; the sisters-in-law said she couldn't advise or deceive. Sometimes the father-in-law, pained, defended her. The mother-in-law would shrill, 'You old thing! Do you want to preserve our face or not? You old fool, accusing me of shameful conduct!' Living such an unnatural life, my brother-in-law caught a sudden illness and died two summers ago. So my sister was burdened with the blame for her husband's death. Young and widowed, the father-in-law treated her more politely. But the mother-in-law seized this as evidence of improper intimacy. Quarrels every few days were minor; several times at midnight, the old couple made a noisy uproar with weeping and cursing. After one particularly severe scolding and pressure, my sister firmly moved back home. Since her return, not only did my mother gain a great helper, but the oppressive atmosphere at home eased considerably.
This summarizes the life I've led at home over the past decade since parting from you. Usually, I didn't even go to the city. In snow-filled winters, my mother and I stayed indoors for months. After my sister returned, life changed slightly. Last year, we produced one or two hundred jin of tea from the long-neglected roasting business. My health, after over a decade of rest, seems somewhat assured. Starting this year, I even joined a small tutorial school at Yan Gong Temple on the mountain, becoming a primary school teacher. But life is not to be disturbed. Slight disturbances, like rolling stones downhill, bring continuous changes. Because I teach and we barely managed to start a small venture at home, this summer someone actually proposed marriage again. The bride is an old maiden from a neighboring village, twenty-seven years old. Her family isn't wealthy but comfortably off. This bride, having read books since childhood and attended school in the city, has passable looks-I once glimpsed her at a market years ago. Thus, being neither too high nor too low a match, she idly passed her splendid youth. The honorary principal at my school-also a clansman-was an old relative of hers, so he acted as the matchmaker to tie the engagement knot. Accustomed to solitude and not particularly robust, marriage might trigger my old illness, so I flatly refused at first. But my elderly mother, with undiminished ambition, still wants me to marry and bear worthy children who would bring honor to the family to revive our long-fallen reputation. So this marriage, like taking herbal medicine during illness, was forced upon me. As for me, already middle-aged, I see through everything. Adding to this over a decade of idleness and inaction, I feel nothing in this world matters much. I might as well drift casually, since my days are numbered. If it pleases Mother, I can sacrifice a little opinion. Thus, the marriage proposal matured smoothly in short time. Now the wedding date is set: the twelfth of September in the old calendar.
It was for this wedding that I went to the city to shop and discovered you, my old friend unseen for years. So on the wedding day, I want to invite you here for the wedding feast to chat about the past. From your diaries and works, your life seems like that of itinerant monks and Taoist priests. Spare some time to stay in this quiet countryside for a few days-it might please you. Come, you must come. We can reminisce about our irrevocable youth.
There's movement in my mother's room. Dawn must be near. This letter cost me a whole night's time and effort. Staying up all night is an experience I haven't had in over a decade since returning home. Just for this zeal of mine, I think you won't have the heart not to come.