Written in 1926 and later included in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, this recollective essay looks back on childhood through two sharply different scenes: the Herb Garden behind the family home, and the Sanwei Study where formal learning began. One is open, vivid, and full of secret delight; the other disciplined, solemn, and yet not without its own hidden pleasures.
Behind our house there was once a large garden, said to be called the Herb Garden. Long ago it was sold, together with the house, to descendants of Zhu Wengong, and seven or eight years had already passed since I last saw it. Perhaps in truth it held little more than wild growth. But at that time, to me, it was paradise.
There is no need to dwell first on the green vegetable beds, the smooth stone curb of the well, the tall honey locust tree, or the dark red mulberries. Nor need one begin with the cicadas chanting from the leaves, the plump yellow wasps crouching on cauliflower blossoms, or the nimble skylark suddenly shooting up from the grass into the sky. The narrow strip along the low mud wall alone contained inexhaustible amusement.
There the mole crickets hummed softly, and the crickets seemed to play their instruments. If one lifted a broken brick, a centipede might appear beneath it. There were also blister beetles; press a finger to their backs and with a sharp little sound they would spray out a puff of smoke from behind. The vines of polygonum multiflorum and muben twined together. The muben bore fruit like lotus pods; the polygonum had swollen roots. It was said that some of those roots resembled the human form, and that if one ate them one might become an immortal. Because of this I often pulled at them, root after root, dragging them up in long connected strands. I even damaged the mud wall by doing so, yet never once found a root shaped like a person. If one did not mind the thorns, one could also pick raspberries there—little clustered balls like coral beads, sweet and tart, and in both color and taste far better than mulberries.
The tall grass, however, was forbidden ground, for rumor said a huge red snake lived in the garden.
Nurse Chang had once told me a story. In earlier days, she said, a scholar was studying in an old temple. One summer night, while sitting out in the courtyard to enjoy the cool air, he heard someone call his name. When he answered and looked around, he saw a beautiful woman’s face above the wall. She smiled at him and vanished. He was delighted—but the old monk who came later to chat in the night saw through the matter at once. There was a strange look on the scholar’s face, the monk said; he must have encountered the “beautiful snake,” a creature with a woman’s head and a snake’s body, able to call a person by name, and if that person answered, it would come at night and devour his flesh.
Naturally the scholar was frightened half to death. The old monk, however, told him not to worry and gave him a little box, saying that if he placed it beside his pillow he could sleep soundly. Though he did as instructed, he could not sleep at all—which was hardly surprising. At midnight it came indeed: sha sha sha! Outside the door there rose a sound like wind and rain. Just as he was trembling into a ball, he heard a sudden whoosh, and a streak of golden light shot out from beside the pillow. At once the noise outside ceased, and the light flew back and folded itself once more into the box. What was it? The old monk explained afterward that it was a flying centipede, which could suck out a snake’s brains. In this way the beautiful snake had been destroyed.
The moral of the story was clear enough: if some unfamiliar voice calls your name, you must never answer.
That tale impressed on me how dangerous the world could be. On summer evenings, when people sat outside to enjoy the cool, I often felt uneasy and did not dare look toward the top of the wall. More than anything I longed for a flying centipede in a little box like the old monk’s. Whenever I passed the grassy parts of the Herb Garden, I often thought of it. Yet to this day I have never obtained such a treasure. On the other hand, I never encountered either the red snake or the beautiful snake. Strange voices calling my name were common enough, but none turned out to belong to such a creature.
In winter the Herb Garden was rather dull—unless it snowed. Once snow had fallen, it became another place entirely. Making snow figures by pressing one’s whole body into the snow, or shaping snow arhats, required appreciative company, and this abandoned garden was too deserted for such pleasures. So bird-catching became the proper occupation.
A light dusting of snow would not do. One had to wait until the ground had been covered for a day or two, when the birds had long since found nowhere to forage. Then one swept away a patch of snow to expose the earth, propped up a large bamboo screen with a short stick, scattered husks beneath it, tied a long cord to the stick, and withdrew to a distance holding the string. When the birds came down to peck and walked beneath the screen, a quick pull would bring it down over them. Most often the catch was sparrows, though there were also white-cheeked birds we called “Zhang Fei birds,” irritable creatures that could not be kept alive even overnight.
This method had been taught by Runtu’s father, but I was never much good at it. I would plainly see the birds go in; I would pull the cord and run over, only to find nothing at all. After half a day’s effort I might catch no more than three or four. Runtu’s father, by contrast, could capture several dozen in half a day, stuffing them into a forked bag where they fluttered and knocked against one another. I once asked him why I lost what he gained. He only smiled quietly and said that I was too impatient: I never waited until they had gone fully to the middle.
I never understood why my family decided to send me away to school—and to the strictest school in the whole city, no less. Perhaps it was because I had damaged the mud wall while digging up polygonum roots. Perhaps because I had thrown bricks onto the neighboring Liang family’s beams. Perhaps because I had leapt down while standing on the well curb. Who could say? In any case, one thing was certain: I would no longer be able to spend my days in the Herb Garden.
Farewell, my crickets! Farewell, my raspberries and muben vines!...
Not quite half a mile to the east, across a stone bridge, stood my teacher’s house. One entered through a black-lacquered bamboo gate; the third room was the schoolroom. In the center hung a plaque bearing the words Sanwei Study. Beneath it was a painting of a very large spotted deer lying beneath an ancient tree. There was no tablet of Confucius, so we bowed to the plaque and the deer instead. The first bow counted as reverence to Confucius; the second, as reverence to the teacher.
During that second bow, the teacher returned the courtesy kindly from where he stood nearby. He was a tall, thin old man, his beard and hair all white, and he wore large spectacles. I respected him deeply, for I had long heard that he was the most upright, simple, and learned man in town.
Somewhere I had heard that Dongfang Shuo too had been profoundly learned, and that he knew of a strange insect called guai zai, formed from resentment in the air and dissolved when doused with wine. I very much wanted to know the story in detail, but Nurse Chang did not know it, since after all she was not erudite. Now at last I had a chance to ask someone who surely would know.
“Sir, what exactly is this insect called guai zai?...” I asked in haste, after finishing my lesson in the unfamiliar text and just as I was about to withdraw.
“I don’t know!”
He seemed distinctly displeased, even a little angry.
Only then did I realize that students were not supposed to ask such things. Their business was only to study the books. Since he was an old scholar of great learning, he surely could not truly have been ignorant; when he said he did not know, it must simply have meant he was unwilling to explain. Older people were often like that. I had encountered it more than once.
So I did nothing but study. At noon we practiced calligraphy; in the evening we matched lines. At first the teacher was very strict with me, though he later grew gentler. Still, the amount I had to read increased bit by bit, and the paired passages also lengthened, from three-character lines to five-character ones, and finally to seven.
There was also a small garden behind the Sanwei Study. It could not compare with the Herb Garden, but it still allowed some freedom. There one might climb onto the flower terrace to snap off wintersweet blossoms, or look on the ground and in the cassia tree for cicada shells. Best of all was catching flies and feeding them to ants, all in perfect silence. But if too many of us went into the garden and stayed too long, that would never do. From inside the schoolroom the teacher would shout:
“Where has everyone gone?”
Then we had to return one by one. Even going back together was improper. He had a ruler for striking, though he did not often use it; there was also a rule requiring students to kneel as punishment, though that too was not common. Usually he merely fixed us with a glare and barked:
“Read!”
At that command everyone would open his throat and begin reciting. The noise was astonishing. One chanted, “Is benevolence far away? If I desire benevolence, then benevolence is here.” Another read, “To mock a man for missing teeth is to say his dog-hole gapes wide.” Another intoned, “Top nine: the hidden dragon should not act.” Another still muttered, “Its soil below and above, its tribute bundled cogon grass, oranges, and pomelos”... The teacher himself also read aloud. After a while our own voices would gradually sink and fade into silence, while his alone continued, sonorous and emphatic:
“An iron ruyi, wielded with elegant abandon—an entire gathering startled!~~~~; a golden goblet, overturned in splendor and profusion—ah, a thousand cups and still not drunk!~~~~...”
I suspected this must be a magnificent piece of writing, for whenever he reached this passage he would smile, raise his head, and rock it backward, farther and farther, utterly carried away by the sound.
When the teacher became absorbed in his reading, the moment suited us perfectly. Some boys would make little theatrical amusements by fitting paper armor over their fingernails. I myself drew pictures. With a kind of thin paper called Jingchuan paper, I would place it over the illustrated figures in novels and trace them one by one, much as one copies model characters in calligraphy by writing over their shadows. As the books we studied multiplied, so too did my drawings. I learned little enough from the books, but I produced quite a harvest of pictures. The largest groups came from the illustrations in Tales of the Bandits and Journey to the West, enough to fill a whole volume.
Later, because I needed money, I sold them to a wealthy classmate. His father kept a shop dealing in tinfoil offerings, and I have heard that he himself later took over the business and was not far from becoming a local gentleman. Those drawings must surely be long gone by now.
September 18.