Learning
DURING THE NEXT THREE YEARS, SNOW FLOWER VISITED EVERY
couple of months. Her sky-blue tunic with the cloud pattern gave way to another outfit of lavender silk with white trim—an odd color combination for a girl so young. As soon as she entered the upstairs chamber, she changed into an outfit that my mother had made for her. In this way we were old sames on the inside and on the outside as well.
I had yet to go to Snow Flower’s home village of Tongkou. I didn’t question this, nor did I hear the adults in my home discuss the strangeness of the arrangement. Then one day when I was nine, I overheard Mama query Madame Wang about the situation. They were standing outside the threshold, and their conversation carried up to me at my spot by the lattice window.
“My husband says we are always feeding Snow Flower,” Mama said that day in a low voice, hoping no one would hear. “And her visits cause us to haul extra water for drinking, cooking, and washing. He wants to know when Lily will visit Tongkou. This is the usual way.”
“The usual custom is for all eight characters to be matched,” Madame Wang reminded my mother, “but we both know that a very important one was not. Snow Flower has come to a family that is below her.” Madame Wang paused, then added, “I did not hear you complain of this when I first approached you.”
“Yes, but—”
“You clearly don’t understand the way things are,” Madame Wang continued indignantly. “I told you from the beginning that I hoped to find a match for Lily in Tongkou, but a marriage could never happen there if a potential bridegroom happened to glimpse your daughter before the wedding day. Furthermore, Snow Flower’s family suffers because of the girls’ social imbalance. You should be grateful that they haven’t demanded an end to the laotong agreement. Of course it is never too late to make a change, if that is what your husband truly desires. It will only mean more awkwardness for me.”
What could my mother do except say, “Madame Wang, I misspoke. Please come inside. Would you care for some tea?”
I heard Mama’s shame and fear that day. She could not jeopardize any aspect of the relationship, even if it placed an added burden on our family.
Are you wondering how I felt, hearing that Snow Flower’s family didn’t feel I was her equal? It didn’t disturb me, because I knew I didn’t deserve Snow Flower’s affections. I worked hard every day to make her love me as I loved her. I felt sorry—no, embarrassed—for my mother. She had lost a lot of face with Madame Wang. But the truth is, I didn’t care about Baba’s concerns, Mama’s discomfort, Madame Wang’s stubbornness, or the peculiar physical design of Snow Flower and my relationship, because even if I could have visited Tongkou without my future husband seeing me, I felt I didn’t need to go there to know about my laotong’s life. She had already told me more about her village, her family, and her beautiful home than I could ever have learned just by seeing them. But the matter didn’t end there.
Madame Wang and Madame Gao always fought over territory. As the go-between for people in Puwei, Madame Gao had negotiated a good marriage for Elder Sister and had found a suitable girl from another village for Elder Brother. She had expected to do the same for Beautiful Moon and me. But Madame Wang—with her ideas about my fate—had changed not only my course and that of Beautiful Moon but Madame Gao’s as well. Those moneys would no longer go into her purse. As they say, a miserly woman always nurses revenge.
Madame Gao traveled to Tongkou to suggest her services to Snow Flower’s family. It didn’t take long before word of this reached Madame Wang. While the disagreement had nothing to do with us, the confrontation took place in our house when Madame Wang came to pick up Snow Flower and found Madame Gao eating pumpkin seeds and discussing the logistics of Elder Sister’s Delivering the Date ceremony in the main room with Baba. Nothing was said in front of him. Neither woman was that unrefined. Madame Gao could have avoided the quarrel altogether if she’d simply left when her business was done. Instead, she walked upstairs, plopped down on a chair, and began bragging about her matchmaking expertise. She was like a finger poking at a boil. Finally, Madame Wang couldn’t take any more.
“Only a she-dog in heat would be demented enough to come to my village and try to steal one of my little nieces,” Madame Wang snapped.
“Tongkou is not your village, Old Auntie,” Madame Gao answered smoothly. “If it is your village to master, why do you come sniffing around Puwei? By your reckoning, Lily and Beautiful Moon should be mine. But do I cry waa-waa like a baby over this?”
“I’ll make fine matches for those girls. I will for Snow Flower too. You couldn’t do better.”
“Don’t be so sure. You did not do so well for her elder sister. I’m better suited, given Snow Flower’s circumstances.”
Did I mention that Snow Flower was in the room hearing these words, being talked about as if she and her sister were bags of inferior rice being haggled over by unscrupulous merchants? She had been standing by Madame Wang, waiting to go home. In her hands she held a piece of cloth she had embroidered. She twisted it in her fingers, stretching the threads. She didn’t look up, but I could see that her face and ears had turned bright red. At this point, the argument could have escalated. Instead, Madame Wang reached out a veined hand and placed it gently on the small of Snow Flower’s back. Until that time I hadn’t known that Madame Wang was capable of either pity or backing down.
“I do not speak to gutter women,” she rasped. “Come, Snow Flower. We have a long journey home.”
We would have put this episode from our minds, except that those two matchmakers were at each other’s throats from then on. When Madame Gao heard that Madame Wang’s palanquin had arrived in Puwei, she’d dress in her overly bright clothes, rouge her cheeks, and come nosing around our house like a—well, like a she-dog in heat.
BY THE TIME
Snow Flower and I turned eleven, our feet had completely healed. Mine were strong and noticeably perfect at just seven centimeters long. Snow Flower’s feet were slightly larger, while Beautiful Moon’s feet were larger still but exquisitely shaped. This, along with Beautiful Moon’s good house learning, had made her very marriageable. With our footbinding behind us, Madame Wang negotiated the Contracting a Kin phase for all three of our marriages. Our eight characters were matched with our future husbands’ and engagement dates selected.
Just as Madame Wang predicted, the perfection of my golden lilies led me to a fortuitous betrothal. She arranged for me to be married into the best Lu family in Tongkou. My husband’s uncle was a jinshi scholar, who had received much land from the emperor as an enfeoffment. Uncle Lu, as he was called, was childless. He lived in the capital and relied on his brother to oversee his holdings. Since my father-in-law served as headman of the village—renting tracts to farmers and collecting rents—everyone assumed my husband would become the future headman. Beautiful Moon was going to marry into a lesser Lu family nearby. Her betrothed was the son of a farmer who worked four times as many mou as Baba and Uncle. To us, this seemed prosperous, but it was still far, far less than what my future father-in-law controlled on his brother’s behalf.
“Beautiful Moon, Lily,” Madame Wang said, “you two are as close as sisters. Now you will be like my sister and me. We both married into Tongkou. Though we have both suffered misfortune, we are lucky to have spent our whole lives together.” And truly, Beautiful Moon and I were grateful that we would continue to share everything, from our rice-and-salt days as wives and mothers to sitting quietly as widows.
Snow Flower had to marry out of Tongkou, but she would be close by in Jintian—Open Field Village. Madame Wang guaranteed that Beautiful Moon and I would be able to see Jintian and possibly even Snow Flower’s window from our new lattice windows. We didn’t hear much about the family Snow Flower was marrying into, except that her betrothed was born in the year of the rooster. This concerned us, because everyone knows this is not an ideal match, since the rooster wants to sit on the horse’s back.
“D
on’t worry, girls,” Madame Wang assured us. “The diviner has studied the elements of water, fire, metal, earth, and wood. I promise this is not a case where water and fire will have to live together. Everything will be fine,” she said, and we believed her.
Our grooms’ families delivered the first gifts of money, candy, and meat. Aunt and Uncle received a leg of pork, while Mama and Baba received an entire roasted pig, which was cut up and sent to our relatives in Puwei as gifts. Our parents reciprocated with gifts to the grooms’ families of eggs and rice to symbolize our fertility. Then we waited for the second stage to begin, when our future in-laws would Deliver the Date for our weddings.
Imagine how happy we were. Our futures were settled. Our new families were higher than our own. We were still young enough to believe that our kind hearts would win over any difficulties with our mothers-in-law. We were busy with our handiwork. But most of all we were glad to be in each other’s company.
Aunt continued to teach us nu shu, but we also learned from Snow Flower, who brought new characters with her every time she visited. Some she got from sneaking peeks at her brother’s studies, since many nu shu characters are only italicized versions of men’s characters, but others came from Snow Flower’s mother, who was extremely well versed in our women’s secret writing. We spent hours practicing them, tracing the strokes with our fingers on each other’s palms. Always Aunt cautioned us to be careful with our words, since by using phonetic characters, as opposed to the pictographic characters of men’s writing, our meanings could become lost or confused.
“Every word must be placed in context,” she reminded us each day at the end of our lesson. “Much tragedy could result from a wrong reading.” With that admonition expressed, Aunt then rewarded us with the romantic story of the local woman who invented our secret writing.
“Long ago in Song times, perhaps more than one thousand years ago,” she recounted, “Emperor Song Zhezong searched through the realm for a new concubine. He traveled far, finally coming to our county, where he heard of a farmer named Hu, a man of some learning and good sense who lived in the village of Jintian—yes, Jintian, where our Snow Flower will live when she marries out. Master Hu had a son who was a scholar, a very high-ranking young man who had done well in the imperial exams, but the person who most intrigued the emperor was the farmer’s eldest daughter. Her name was Yuxiu. She was not an entirely worthless branch, for her father had seen to her education. She could recite classical poetry and she had learned men’s writing. She could sing and dance. Her embroidery was fine and delicate. All this convinced the emperor that she would make a fine royal concubine. He visited Master Hu, negotiated for his clever daughter, and soon enough Yuxiu was on her way to the capital. A happy ending? In some ways. Master Hu received many gifts and Yuxiu was guaranteed a courtly life of jade and silk. But, girls, I tell you that even someone as bright and cultivated as Yuxiu could not avoid that sad moment of departure from her natal family. Oh, how the tears poured down her mother’s cheeks! Oh, how her sisters wept in sadness! But none of them were as sad as Yuxiu.”
We’d learned this part of the story well. Yuxiu’s separation from her family was just the beginning of her woes. Even with all her talents, she could not keep the emperor amused forever. He grew tired of her pretty moon face, her almond eyes, her cherry mouth, while her talents—as noteworthy as they were here in Yongming County—were insignificant compared to those of the other ladies of the court. Poor Yuxiu. She was no match for palace intrigues. The other wives and concubines had no use for the country girl. She was lonely and sad but had no way to communicate with her mother and sisters without others finding out. An incautious word from her could result in decapitation or being thrown into one of the palace wells to silence her forever.
“Day and night, Yuxiu kept her emotions to herself,” Aunt went on. “The wicked women of the court and the eunuchs watched her as she quietly did her embroidery or practiced her calligraphy. All the time they made fun of her work. ‘It’s too sloppy,’ they’d say. Or, ‘Look how that country monkey tries to copy men’s writing.’ Every word that came from their mouths was cruel, but Yuxiu was not trying to copy men’s writing. She was changing it, slanting it, feminizing it, and eventually creating entirely new characters that had little or nothing to do with men’s writing. She was quietly inventing a secret code so she could write home to her mother and sisters.”
Snow Flower and I had often asked how Yuxiu’s mother and sisters had been able to read the secret code, and today Aunt wove her answer into the story.
“Perhaps a sympathetic eunuch slipped out a letter from Yuxiu that explained everything. Or perhaps her sisters didn’t know what the note said, tossed it aside, and in its skewed state they saw and interpreted the italicized characters. Then, over time, the women of that family invented new phonetic characters, which they grew to understand from context, just as you girls are learning to do right now. But these are the kinds of particulars that men would care about.” She delivered this reprimand sternly, reminding us that these questions weren’t our concern. “What we should carry away from Yuxiu’s life is that she found a way to share what was happening beneath her happy surface life and that her gift has been passed down through countless generations to us.”
For a moment we were quiet, thinking of that lonely concubine. Aunt began to sing first and the three of us joined in, while Mama listened. It was a sad song, one reputed to have come straight from Hu Yuxiu’s own mouth. Our voices poured out her sorrow:
“My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart,
An invisible rebellion that no man can see.
Let our life stories become tragic art.
Oh, Mama, oh, sisters, hear me, hear me.”
The last notes floated out the lattice window and down the alley. “Remember, girls,” Aunt said. “Not all men are emperors, but all girls marry out. Yuxiu invented nu shu for the women in our county to keep our ties to our natal families.”
We picked up our needles and started embroidering. The next day, Aunt would tell us the story again.
THE YEAR SNOW
Flower and I turned thirteen our learning came at us from every direction, and we were expected to help in all the usual ways. Where Snow Flower’s womenfolk had excelled in teaching her the refined arts, they had failed miserably with the domestic arts, so she shadowed me as I did my chores. We rose at dawn and started the cooking fire. After Snow Flower and I washed the dishes, we mixed the pig’s meal. At midday, we went outside for a few minutes to pick fresh vegetables from the kitchen garden; then we made lunch. Mama and Aunt once did all these tasks. Now they supervised us. Afternoons were spent in the women’s chamber. When evening came, we helped prepare and serve dinner.
Every minute of every day involved lessons. The girls in our household—and I include Snow Flower in this—tried to be good students. Beautiful Moon was best at making thread and yarn, tasks that Snow Flower and I had no patience for. I liked to cook but was less interested in weaving, sewing, and making shoes. None of us liked to clean, but Snow Flower was terrible at it. Mama and Aunt didn’t chastise her as they did my cousin and me if we didn’t sweep the floor well enough or didn’t get all of the dirt out of our fathers’ tunics. I thought they were lenient with Snow Flower because they knew she would have servants one day and would never have to do these things herself. I looked at her failure differently. She would never learn to clean properly, because she seemed to float above and apart from the practicalities of life.
We also learned from the men in my family, though not in the way you might expect. Baba and Uncle would never teach us anything directly. That would have been improper. What I mean is that I learned about men through Snow Flower’s actions and the way Baba and Uncle reacted to them. Congee is one of the easiest things to make—just rice, a lot of water, and stirring, stirring, stirring—so we let Snow Flower make this for breakfast. When she saw that Baba liked scallions, she made sure that an extra handful was added
to his bowl. At dinner, Mama and Aunt had always silently put the plates on the table and let Baba and Uncle serve themselves; Snow Flower circled the table, keeping her head lowered and offering each dish, first to Baba, then Uncle, then Elder Brother, then Second Brother. She always stood just far enough away not to be too intimate but at the same time to exude graciousness. I learned that through her small attentions to them, they refrained from shoveling food in their mouths, spitting on the floor, or scratching their full stomachs. Instead, they smiled and talked to her.
My desire for knowledge went far beyond what I needed to know in the upstairs women’s chamber, in downstairs areas, or even with the study of nu shu. I wanted to know about my future. Fortunately, Snow Flower loved to talk, and she talked a lot about Tongkou. By now she had traveled often between our two villages and had learned the route well. “When you go to your husband,” she told me, “you will pass over the river and through many rice paddies, heading for the low hills that you can see from the edge of Puwei. Tongkou nestles in the arms of those hills. They will never falter and neither will we, at least that’s what my baba says. In Tongkou, we are protected from earthquake, famine, and marauders. It is feng shui perfect.”
Listening to Snow Flower, Tongkou grew in my imagination, but this was nothing compared to how I felt when she talked about my husband and my future in-laws. Neither Beautiful Moon nor I were present at the discussion that Madame Wang had with our fathers, but we were familiar with the basics: Everyone who lived in Tongkou was a Lu, and both families were prosperous. These things interested our fathers, but we wanted to know about our husbands, our mothers-in-law, and the other women in our upstairs chambers. Only Snow Flower could give us the answers.