Explore Chapter 5 of 'Moment in Peking' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
Yao Si'an arrived in Tai'an in mid-October. The journey back to Hangzhou was too far, so he decided to take Mulan back to Beijing. The Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu had still not returned from their flight, but Prince Qing and Li Hongzhang had been ordered to negotiate peace with the foreigners. Since several high-ranking Qing officials had already reached an understanding with the consulates of the foreign powers in Shanghai, the conflict was confined to the north. Meanwhile, Yuan Shikai continued to keep Shandong free from conflict with the foreigners, allowing Yao Si'an to travel safely. Beijing was ultimately saved from large-scale slaughter and looting, and order was gradually restored, all thanks to the blessings of the famous courtesan Sai Jinhua. In the thirteenth year of Guangxu's reign (1887), when Sai Jinhua was fourteen, she was already a concubine of Hong Jun, the Qing ambassador to Russia, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, and had accompanied her husband to Berlin. Her husband was thirty-six years older than she. He died in the nineteenth year of Guangxu (1893), and she returned to China, where she became renowned as a singing girl. At the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, she came to Beijing. After the German minister Clemens von Ketteler was murdered in Beijing, several German soldiers were roaming the Eight Great Hutongs outside Qianmen when they discovered a courtesan who could speak German. They reported this to the allied commander Count von Waldersee, and Sai Jinhua became his lover. Sai Jinhua persuaded Beijing merchants to sell food to the foreign soldiers, and she saved many Chinese civilians from being killed, raped, or robbed by the foreign troops. The people were immensely grateful to her, and despite her being a woman, they addressed her with the masculine honorific "Second Master Sai." On the day Yao Si'an arrived in Tai'an, he had his daughter pay homage to Mr. Zeng and Mrs. Zeng as if they were her new parents. He personally moved two chairs to the center of the hall, invited Mr. Zeng and Mrs. Zeng to sit, and had Mulan kneel before them. He placed a red felt rug on the floor for Mulan to kneel on. Recognizing the solemnity of the ceremony, Mr. Zeng and Mrs. Zeng donned formal attire. Yao Si'an himself bowed to the Zeng couple, acknowledging that their families were now "closely connected families." Under such ties, women from either family could meet men from the other. Yao Si'an then hosted a banquet. Two nights earlier, the Zeng family had already hosted a welcoming banquet for Yao Si'an, so there was no need for a return invitation. Three days later, when Yao Si'an was about to leave, the Zeng family hosted a farewell banquet. Old Madame Zeng also received Mulan's obeisance, after which Mulan addressed her as "Grandmother" and Mr. Zeng and Mrs. Zeng as "Father" and "Mother." Mulan had never felt so important in her life. Manniang and Mulan were heartbroken to part. Mulan had asked to visit Manniang's home. Manniang initially declined politely, saying her home was too modest. However, when Zeng Wenpu went to Jinan for the autumn military maneuvers and grand review and to visit the Governor, he took Mulan along and introduced her again to Manniang's parents. Although the sisterhood between Manniang and Mulan was a secret and simple pact between them, he half-jokingly presented Mulan as Manniang's "little sworn sister." Mulan saw that Manniang's home was humble and plain. She stayed for a simple meal, during which Manniang's mother repeatedly apologized for the lack of formality. Now they were truly parting. The boys watched Mulan get into the sedan chair, but Manniang refused to come to the door because she was already crying her eyes out. The boys shouted to Mulan that they would see her in Beijing in the spring. Manniang knew that when the Zeng family returned to Beijing next spring, she would not go with them, because she was not a "child bride" - she was merely a relative by marriage, and she was approaching the age when she must avoid young men. Although she was a cousin to the Zeng family and visited often, she had to keep a proper distance as much as possible. On the day of White Dew, an incident in the garden caused a change in Manniang. Her innocent feelings had awakened. The more she loved Pingya, the more she forced herself to be reserved and distant. Although Pingya rarely saw her, whenever he caught her alone, he would complain. Once, he intercepted her alone in the corridor, blocked her way, and took her hand. But Manniang withdrew her hand and said, "If others see us, they'll gossip." She hurried away. Pingya stood rooted, unable to move. Every glance of Manniang's eyes, every tone of her voice, every moment he was near her - he treasured them all. Manniang naturally grew into a classical Chinese maiden. Such maidens are born beautiful and captivating, yet they retreat and are conservative. Though they may occasionally show affection, they are cunning and stingy with their favors. They are beautiful, but distant, elusive, and inscrutable. Their concealment is cunning. Their fleeting glances are also cunning. The magic of their youthful passion grows stronger through avoidance. Hidden in their boudoirs, they peer out from behind curtains, seeing their suitors without being seen. They listen to family conversations from the inner room and peek from behind screens. When among others, they steal many glances but never look a man straight in the face. Mulan's father had always been especially fond of her, but now he truly regarded her as the apple of his eye. Her return from the brink of death felt like a resurrection. During the months before the Yao family returned to Beijing from Hangzhou, those months and the many long talks between father and daughter deepened their bond. Their residence had survived the looting intact, probably because it was located in the central part of the eastern city, while the worst destruction was in the south and southeast districts. However, the date tree under which ancient Shang and Zhou bronze vessels were buried had died. Only their villa in the Western Hills had been thoroughly ransacked. Dreadful tales from Beijing were endless. Mulan saw burned houses, collapsed walls, and the fire and bullet scars on the Qianmen gate tower - all harrowing sights. When Mulan's mother and the rest of the family returned from Hangzhou to Beijing in March, Mulan was hailed as a heroine. Her mother's attitude toward her had completely changed. No longer did she let Jin'er dress and bathe her; she personally took care of Mulan's dressing and hair, and had her share a bed with Mochou in her own room. Coral repeatedly lamented that on that fateful day she should not have left Mulan in the carriage, causing such a calamity, and became more attentive to Mulan than before, always trying to please her. Everyone begged Mulan to tell and retell her experiences. She told about the Red Lanterns, the Boxers, Lao Ba, and the English song she had learned. Tiren only liked the song and learned it quickly. She also told them about falling from the date tree, their private school, and the trip to Mount Tai. Most importantly, she talked about Manniang, so everyone from Master Yao and his wife down to Qingxia, Luo Da, and several maidservants knew about Manniang in Shandong. Mochou listened to her sister's stories with wide-eyed wonder, showing her newly grown front teeth, and thought Mulan was truly remarkable. As a result, the family began to treat Mulan as a mature, responsible daughter, while Tiren's position as the eldest son gradually weakened. Mulan also began to take care of Mochou and little Afei. By age fourteen, she had reached full maturity and had learned to endure her brother's bullying, which was part of a girl's basic education. A girl's attitude should be forbearance and steadiness, not being too greedy in life, and accepting that men enjoyed more freedom and could behave foolishly. The Zeng family returned to Beijing in early April, and thereafter the two families became closer, with the children visiting often. They exchanged gifts at every New Year and festival. Mulan insisted that the Zeng family take medicine from their drugstore without paying, and the Zeng family accepted. Every winter solstice, Mrs. Yao sent the best ginseng to Mrs. Zeng. Chinese pharmacies sold not only medicine but also tonics and various delicacies - bird's nests and shark fins from Southeast Asia, Yunnan ham, Guangdong tiger-bone liquor, Suzhou drunken crab - all shipped along with herbs. So the Yao family frequently sent gifts to the Zeng family year-round. However, the gift boxes never returned empty; the Zeng family reciprocated seasonally. Both families were wealthy, so maintaining friendship this way was comfortable and easy. One day, Mulan and her sister were invited to the Zeng family for lunch, accompanied by a maidservant named Zhao Ma. After lunch, they stayed for tea. Zhao Ma's husband had an errand for her, and she said she would return at five o'clock to pick them up. Mulan told her not to bother; she knew the way home. It was only a fifteen-minute walk along a wide avenue, and nothing could happen. On the way home, Mulan and her sister saw a street performer doing a strongman act and selling medicine on the dirty sidewalk of Hatamen Street. The man, bare-chested, was about to chop a four-to-five-inch thick sandstone slab with the edge of his hand. After cutting the slab, he began hawking ointment for knife wounds and also for falls and bruises. Then he took a green cloth, turned it over and over for the crowd to see, spread it on the ground, and from underneath produced a steaming bowl of shrimp noodles. At that time, well-bred young ladies were not supposed to appear on the street unaccompanied. But Mulan was only fourteen, and her sister twelve; they could not resist the secret joy of roaming the streets freely. After watching the strongman's medicine show and magic tricks, they were delighted and walked on. They saw a vendor selling candied hawthorn sticks - just the winter treat - and their mouths watered. They each bought a skewer with only five berries glazed in sugar, and ate them with childish bliss. Further on, there was a peep show, also called a "Western view," showing enlarged pictures of Boxers and foreign steamships. The sisters paid and sat down to watch, still chewing their candied hawthorns. While absorbed in the show, Mulan felt a hand grip her arm hard. The candied hawthorn dropped from her hand. She turned and saw it was her brother Tiren. Before she could speak, he slapped her face. "What are you doing here?" Tiren demanded. "We're going home! Why did you hit me?" Mulan retorted angrily. "Of course I should hit you," he replied. "You girls are about to become street tramps. The moment you leave the house, you lose all dignity." "Why can you go out and we can't?" "Because you're girls, that's all. If you're unhappy, I'll tell Mother." Mulan was furious. "Go ahead and tell Mother. You have no right to slap my face! You have no such right! Our parents are still alive!" To defend herself, she added, "I'll tell Father what you've been doing." Tiren walked away, leaving the sisters alone. Feeling wronged and angry, they found their way home. The more they thought about it, the more they felt they had been unjustly humiliated. What was most intolerable was being lectured and slapped by Tiren, who was himself no model of propriety. How could he presume to correct them? Would Tiren tell their mother? What they had done was not entirely right, but it was no great sin. Children always liked peep shows. Didn't they eat candy at home? They decided to wait and see what Tiren would do. At dinner, Tiren said nothing. Mulan threatened to tell their father about what he had done, perhaps meaning the slapping, but perhaps more, because Tiren had other things that should not come to their father's attention. Tiren feared no one except his father. So he thought it wise to keep silent. This petty bullying by their brother only made the sisters closer and made them ponder the difference between men and women. From then on, Mulan became more interested in her father's discussions about "the new woman," foot-unbinding, gender equality, and modern education. Such fantastic Western ideas were already unsettling China. Tiren was not only spoiled and corrupt; he was actually losing his position in the family. In fact, Tiren was an "illegitimate child," born five months after his parents' marriage. His mother was the daughter of a fan-shop owner in Hangzhou, a respectable middle-class merchant. When she met Yao Si'an, he was thirty and she was twenty. After they had an affair, Yao's father insisted that his son marry the girl, as she was from a proper family. After negotiations, the girl's family demanded that the man never take concubines. Since both families feared scandal, they could not press the demand too seriously. As previously mentioned, Yao Si'an had been wild and dissipated in his youth, doing whatever he pleased. Later, he reformed thoroughly, became indifferent to business, and immersed himself in the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi. At one point, a swindler promised to teach him alchemy, and he lost a huge fortune to that fraud. Although illiterate, Mrs. Yao had to start checking accounts and collecting rents; soon her brother took over managing those affairs. She had married into wealth, living in a large house in the city with male servants and maidservants - more than she had ever had at home - and was initially unaccustomed to such luxury. Having never enjoyed these things herself, she indulged her son with everything. But she lacked the education and temperament of a refined woman and did not know how to raise a son in a wealthy family. From childhood, she let Tiren grow up surrounded by maidservants, even allowing him to slap them in her presence. Like many illegitimate children, Tiren was handsome, with fair skin like his father, and when he was good, he was clever and charming. His parents allowed him to gallop a wild horse through the city streets. The boy always thought himself above the rules that other boys followed; at a friend's house, he would leave the dinner table halfway to go chat with maidservants. His mother indulged him to the point that he believed he was the sole heir to the Yao fortune, and that his life was worth ten ordinary lives. By the time he was nearly fifteen, Mrs. Yao realized that her son was thoroughly spoiled, but it was too late to change. The father's attitude was completely different. He thought Tiren was just like his younger self. He knew he himself had been spoiled and had caused many troubles. But the stricter the father was with his son, the harder it was to see him, because the son avoided him. So Yao Si'an, as a father, had made his son so afraid of him that he dared not approach. A few months before they fled the Boxers, Tiren cut another boy's face with a knife, the wound extending to the neck, causing heavy bleeding. His father tied him to a tree in the yard and beat him half to death. This made Tiren fear and hate his father even more. After the beating, Tiren lay in bed for ten days. Mrs. Yao said to her husband in front of her son: "I know he needs discipline. But if something happens to him, what meaning is there in my life? Who will support me in old age?" After that, the couple's views on raising Tiren diverged completely. The father regarded his son as a "curse" and let him be, resigned to possible ruin. Neither approach was correct: either letting him be or strict discipline, causing either physical pain or emotional distress. Traditional Chinese belief held that fear harmed the body; if one's vital energy was blocked or one was frightened, various illnesses could arise. Soon afterward, the mother also began to see her son as an "enemy" from a previous life, as if he had come to squander the family property. That was the common view: an unfilial son was fate. The father, from the philosophical perspective of rise and fall, also saw it as fate. Mulan's position was pulled in two opposite directions: as Tiren's importance diminished, her own merits made her more valued. Mrs. Yao was strict with her daughters, just as she was lenient with her son. She was strict to give them a traditional education, as was proper. In this, she considered herself reasonable. Her daughters were born and raised in wealth, but they could not stay at home forever and enjoy that wealth. They would marry into other families, rich or poor, high or low. So they must possess women's primary virtues: thrift, diligence, dignity, propriety, humility, obedience, good household management, and skills in child-rearing, cooking, and sewing. But in the contrast between the treatment of sons and daughters, the Yao family went far beyond others. Mulan and Mochou, at age eight or nine, had to learn to sit upright with their legs pressed together, while Tiren never sat properly; he would tilt the chair so that two legs were on the floor and put his feet on the table. The maidservants might be idle, but Mulan and her sister had to wash their own underwear (of course, dried in a private place where no male guest could see), help in the kitchen - kneading dough for steamed buns, rolling out flatbread, making shoes, cutting and sewing clothes. The only thing they didn't have to do was pound rice, push the millstone, or grind flour, as that would roughen their hands. They had to learn women's social customs: how to give gifts, how to tip delivery servants, memorize all festivals and seasonal foods, etiquette for weddings, funerals, and birthdays, seniority rankings, and the many names of relatives on both paternal and maternal sides - uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, and their children. But women's intelligence handled these complex relationships without difficulty. At fourteen, Mulan could tell at a glance, from the markers on the mourners behind a coffin, how many sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, and sons-in-law the deceased had. Mulan knew how many days after a wedding the bride returned to her parents' home, how many days later the bride's younger brother visited the groom's family, and what four dishes would be served at that visit at which time. She understood that the bride's brother could only taste the dishes, not eat heartily. This was living knowledge, both interesting and useful. Mrs. Yao increasingly consulted Mulan and had her write things down - for example, what items were packed in which boxes - to aid memory. This made Mulan a great helper for her mother; for instance, she no longer had to remember what gifts were given or received during the last Dragon Boat Festival. Moreover, Mulan began learning how to decoct medicine, moving from pure experience to understanding the principles of Chinese medicine. She knew that crab and persimmons should not be eaten together because crabs are cold in nature and persimmons are hot. She could identify medicines by their appearance and taste. She became familiar with commonly used Chinese household medicines and their interactions with food. Yet Mulan also had some abilities that most women lacked: first, she could whistle; second, she could sing Beijing opera; third, she collected antiques and could appreciate them. She learned the first skill from Sunya in Shandong and perfected it in Beijing. Her father encouraged and cultivated the other two talents. Mulan's mother always saw her father as a corrupting influence. For instance, when Mulan's mother discovered her daughter whistling after returning from Shandong, she was shocked, thinking it unladylike. But her father said, "What harm is there? Whistling is no great offense." She practiced and taught her sister in the back garden, and eventually her mother gave up. Jin'er also learned to whistle, but as a maidservant, she never dared to do it in front of Mrs. Yao. The father's corrupting influence was most evident in teaching his daughter Beijing opera. Imagine a father teaching his daughter to sing! Music, dance, and acting were entirely the domain of prostitutes and performers; in Confucian eyes, they were lowly matters, if not outright immoral. Curiously, those Confucian scholars themselves loved Beijing opera. But Yao Si'an disliked Confucianism. He was a free-spirited Taoist, unconcerned with orthodox traditions. Although he had given up drinking and gambling, he was still obsessed with Beijing opera. No one in the Yao family, from the master down to the maidservants, failed to love Beijing opera. Mrs. Yao often took Coral and the children to a private box at the theater, with maidservants attending to pour tea, watch belongings, and fill the water pipe. The mistress and children drank tea, cracked melon seeds, and chatted. Listening to so much opera, even laypeople would learn to mimic their favorite arias and gestures. But this was normally restricted to men. Yao Si'an, however, taught his daughters to act, almost as if deliberately opposing his wife and social conventions. Such was the broad-mindedness of Mulan's father; he was among the first to embrace new ideas that gradually changed Chinese society. By age sixteen, Mulan often accompanied her father to the Longfu Temple fair to hunt for antiques. Thus, Mulan grew up in an environment of wisdom and intellectual education. If we were to distinguish the influence of her parents, her mother gave her worldly wisdom, and her father gave her knowledge. Mochou followed behind, making greater progress in wisdom than in knowledge.