Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China Read Free Page B

scented, as was considered appropriate for a visit to a temple.  Once inside, she knelt before the giant statue of the Buddha.  She kowtowed several times to the wooden image and then remained kneeling before it, her hands clasped in prayer. As she was praying, her father arrived with General Xue.
     
    The two men watched from the dark aisle.  My great grandfather had planned well.  The position in which my grandmother was kneeling revealed not only her silk trousers, which were edged in gold like her jacket, but also her tiny feet in their embroidered satin shoes.
     
    When she finished praying, my grandmother kowtowed three times to the Buddha.  As she stood up she slightly lost her balance, which was easy to do with bound feet.
     
    She reached out to steady herself on her maid's arm.  General Xue and her father had just begun to move forward.  She blushed and bent her head, then turned and started to walk away, which was the right thing to do.  Her father stepped forward and introduced her to the general.  She curtsied, keeping her head lowered all the time.
     
    As was fitting for a man in his position, the general did not say much about the meeting to Yang, who was a rather lowly subordinate, but my great-grandfather could see he was fascinated.  The next step was to engineer a more direct encounter.  A couple of days later Yang risking bankruptcy, rented the best theater in town and put on a local opera, inviting General Xue as the guest of honor.  Like most Chinese theaters, it was built around a rectangular space open to the sky, with timber structures on three sides; the fourth side formed the stage, which was completely bare:  it had no curtain and no sets.  The seating area was more  like a cafe than a theater in the West. The men sat at tables in the open square, eating, drinking, and talking loudly throughout the performance.  To the side, higher up, was the dress circle, where the ladies sat more demurely at smaller tables, with their maids standing behind them.  My great-grandfather had arranged things so that his daughter was in a place where General Xue could see her easily.
     
    This time she was much more dressed up than in the temple.  She wore a heavily embroidered satin dress and jewelry in her hair.  She was also displaying her natural vivacity and energy, laughing and chatting with her women friends.  General Xue hardly looked at the stage.
     
    After the show there was a traditional Chinese game called lantern-riddles.  This took place in two separate halls, one for the men and one for the women.  In each room were dozens of elaborate paper lanterns, stuck on which were a number of riddles in verse.  The person who guessed the most answers won a prize.  Among the men General Xue was the winner, naturally.  Among the women, it was my grandmother.
     
    Yang had now given General Xue a chance to appreciate his daughter's beauty and her intelligence.  The final qualification was artistic talent.  Two nights later he invited the general to his house for dinner.  It was a clear, warm night, with a full moon a classic setting for listening to the qin.  After dinner, the men sat on the veranda and my grandmother was summoned to play in the courtyard.  Sitting under a trellis, with the scent of syringa in the air, her performance enchanted General Xue.  Later he was to tell her that her playing that evening in the moonlight had captured his heart.  When my mother was born, he gave her the name Bao (~I'm, which means "Precious Zither."
     
    Before the evening was over he had proposed not to my grandmother, of course, but to her father.  He did not offer marriage, only that my grandmother should become his concubine.  But Yang had not expected anything else.
     
    The Xue family would have arranged a marriage for the general long before on the basis of social positions.  In any case, the Yangs were too humble to provide a wife.  But it was expected that a man like General Xue