Chapter 31: CH 31

Of course, one had to make a chrysanthemum poem at the Chongyang Poetry Gathering.

A common activity of the Chongyang Festival or Double Ninth Festival is appreciating chrysanthemums. In Chinese culture, chrysanthemum is a symbol of being noble. In the Period of the Three Kingdoms, it was custom that Emperors bestowed these flowers to his courtiers. There is a famous poem by Tao Yuanming of the Eastern Jin Dynasty that loved chrysanthemums the most. He lived in a dark and corrupted society and his character, just like chrysanthemum, was unsullied and righteous. More of his story can be read here: https://keatschinese.com/china-culture-resources/appreciating-chrysanthemums/ 

Pengyan flipped through four different articles, sorting through left and right before finally picking out a short poem related to chrysanthemums.

The original novel was about a poor scholar who was studying at a Buddhist temple and because of his bitter life experience, chanted a desolate and somber little poem. Suddenly in the evening, a beautiful woman appeared in the monastery, bringing with her a spring breeze, and gave him gold and silver to send him to the capital to take the examinations.

Later, the scholar became the zhuangyuan that year and went back in search of the woman. The woman revealed that she was a cultivated fox demon turned human and had fallen in love with his poetic talent and was willing to become his concubine. The fox demon said that as a beast, she was not worthy enough to marry him and thus helped him marry the Prime Minister’s daughter and then afterwards, retiring into the woods after succeeding.

Zhuangyuan (狀元, lit. “top thesis author”), the jinshi who ranked first overall nationwide.

Regardless of the plot, at least the poems written by the male protagonist were related to the Chongyang Festival and it would not be out of place or abrupt at the poetry gathering.

Cui Xie tried to analyze based on the poem: the wall of the Buddhist temple, the cold dew of the wild grasslands, the poet hand-picking a white chrysanthemum in half bloom, the artistic sentiment created by gazing upon the chrysanthemums while recalling one’s hometown. Imitating the modern-style of meticulously and heavily colored comics, he drew a page-sized background for the portrait of the beauty.

As for the beauty’s portrait, he secretly closed the door of his study and furtively opened the file on the hard disk located in—Chinese Geography—Hong Kong—Ancient Hong Kong —Extinct Creatures, and found a bewitching fox spirit that played the heroine in the movie, meticulously and seriously drawing down the woman’s figure.

His painting was not particularly realistic, but the proportions of the figures were correct, the lines concise and smooth. Even considering the convenience of printing, using only the simplest lines and contours to draw the silhouette, the painted figures still had bright eyes and well-defined features. In addition to the movie star’s expression and style, the vivid shape seemed ready to appear at the call.

Ready to appear at the call (idiom): on the verge of coming out into the open, vividly portrayed (artistic depiction)

Halfway through, Pengyan practically wanted to snatch the portrait from him and examine it carefully. He stiffly restrained himself for the rest till half an hour passed, waiting for Cui Xie to finish inscribing the painting with a poem and adding the final touches. After Cui Xie was finally done, Pengyan pounced forward, squinted at the finished work for a long time.

In the portrait, a beautiful woman leaned against a dilapidated bamboo fence, the right hand tucked in the sleeved exposing pink and rosy fingertips as well as a pair of delicate hands that clutched a slanting, pure white chrysanthemum. A few unattended wild chrysanthemums crawled up the side of the fence, a field of weeds extended from the front into the distance and a dark brick red wall of the ancient temple was exposed in the corner of the portrait. And as for the beauty, both cheeks were dusted with rouge, powder sprinkled on the forehead and she wore a small topknot hairstyle on her head. The beauty was wearing a gold-inlaid bijia, a goose yellow silk ribbon fastened at the waist, which contrasted with the beauty’s natural stature consisting of sloping shoulders and a slender waist. The whole person was like a thin, but elegant and supple chrysanthemum.

Bijia(比甲):  a sleeveless and collarless vest with two sides split to the knee; style longer than that of the later vest, generally to the hip or knee, some longer, less than a ruler from the ground; main function is to keep warmth

Perhaps the dress style was most similar to the first picture, but of course with a few differences.

At present, regardless whether a scholar painted a painting or engraved a portrait, the beauties in the picture all had thin eyebrows and soft eyes, their facial features light and pure. Where would one see such vivid and fresh portraits of beautiful women?

Pengyan could not help but give a second glance to Cui Xie, asking in amazement, “Just how did da-ge draw this portrait, it looks almost alive!” It looked extremely lifelike, wasn’t it painted according to those embroidered-like colored portraits? 

Cui Xie was not surprised by Pengyan’s reaction, nor was he worried that people in the Ming Dynasty, who were used to a particular style of slender eyebrows and delicate eyes would dislike such lifelike portraits of people. During the Wanli reign, Zeng Jing, in his exchanges with western missionaries, he assimilated the West’s oil painting characteristics and the painted portraits were as exquisite as a living person. Not only was it fashionable and trendy in the current era, Zeng Jing also founded a painting school that would hand down these techniques until the Qing Dynasty.

Wanli: reign name of Ming Emperor (1573-1619), the 14th Emperor named Zhu Yijun

Zeng Jing: Chinese painter during the Ming Dynasty, best known as a portrait painter

Moreover, this painting was completely painted using the traditionally meticulous brushwork techniques. The face and hands were drawn using more realistic proportions and scale, there were no other dubious aspects other than it being extremely good-looking.

As for Pengyan’s question, Cui Xie had long prepared the answer in his heart. Unperturbed, he curled his fingers and beckoned him to come here, dragging out his sentence, “I actually painted according to people, according to what I am most familiar with and something that I can see every day…”

“I know!” Pengyan exclaimed, “Da-ge, did you paint the portrait according to your own likeness? No wonder you painted this so smoothly, you look at that face in the mirror every day, how could you not be familiar with it? But it is still not as good-looking as you, you…”

As he talked, he realized that Cui Xie had turned his eyes slightly upward, looking at him helplessly.

“I guessed wrong? Could it be a sister in our residence?” He carefully recalled the appearance of the maids and the aunts of the Cui family. Cui Xie did not wait for him to think it through, stretched out his hand and squeezed Pengyan’s face, teasing, “The person I look at everyday, isn’t it you? Look in the mirror, look at those pairs of big eyes, that small face, the curvature of the hairline on the forehead, doesn’t it all resemble you?”

Cui Xie’s response had caused Pengyan to falter and look at his reflection in the mirror for a long time, but in the end, he still felt like something was amiss. He held the mirror towards Cui Xie and looked at him, saying in a simple and stubborn manner, “I still feel that the portrait resembles you. When you hooked your finger and beckoned to me just now, the smile was the same as the beauty in the picture, just like that….just one glance at that expression, one can tell that face is harboring evil designs.”

“….I spoil you for nothing.” What nonsense was this kid speaking, could he really be so ill-intentioned?

Cui Xie put away the dried painting paper and handed it to the artisans in the rear courtyard to study and print.

As soon as the portrait was unfurled, everyone was amazed. The artisans spread the painting flat on the table, leaned close and looked at it carefully and couldn’t help but ask like Pengyan had earlier, “How did Young Master draw such a painting? It is no different to giving birth to a new person?”

Cui Xie grinned and said, “Just painted according to real people. I go out with Pengyan everyday, and seeing that face so often it ended up being burned into my mind, so I just painted according to his likeness. Anyways, he is handsome and looks like a beauty if he were to change clothes and hair style.”

Lin Jinbiao straightforwardly said, “Little Brother Pengyan does not look like this, he looks quite honest, but he is not so attractive.”

Cui Xie did not want to bother with him anymore.

Several artisans studied it for a while, taking transparent oil paper and tracing the outline from the portrait onto it, separating it into several layers to engrave. Cui Xie had taken into account the difficulty when he had filled in the color. The color of the clothes was only applied once and shadows were rarely used. The majority of the color separated blocks only needed to be printed once, only the face and hairline were a bit more troublesome. When printing, one should rub one’s fingertips lightly to make the pigment spread out and blend the color.

But this technique had only been handed over to them a mere few days ago.

The artisans had been practicing for many days and had long grown proficient in the technique. The printed beauty looked flushed and intoxicating, the hair like a cloud. Not only was it better-looking than the characters printed in the ordinary embroidered versions, even in the pictures of beauties sold on the market, there had never been such a lifelike character!

It is a pity that such a picture would be printed as an embroidered image in a novel. If it was printed as a drawing print, there was bound to be someone who bought one sheet for one silver tael!

When the printing was finished, Cui Xie was still at the academy and could not come back to make the executive business decision, so a few of the artisans found Shopkeeper Ji to discuss it.

Shopkeeper Ji instructed and left behind his son to watch the bookstore. When he arrived at the workshop, as soon as his eyes rested on the embroidered pictures and the pages of lightly colored printed portraits, flicking a small abacus in his mind a few times, he instantly calculated which one would be more profitable and more worth printing. 

The cost of engraving was high and the speed of manufacturing was slow, not as fast as the drawing print that would have faster monetary returns. Judging from his eyesight that had been doing business for many years, if this portrait was printed on a drawing print, order a box that cost one or two taels of silver; or even embellish and gild the box with gold and silver, selling it for two or three tails of silver, those young masters of those big families would also be willing to buy it!

He currently bore the crime of privately renting the rear courtyard of the bookstore and Cui Xie hadn’t completely forgiven him yet, only saying that he would address it after looking at the accounts at the end of the year. As a result, he felt fear and trepidation from the bottom of his heart, the desire to work hard to make money was stronger than anyone else. Seeing the expectant expressions of the artisans, he slapped his hands on the table, gritted his teeth and said, “You all wait, once Boss comes back, let me bring up this matter!”

fear and trepidation (idiom): in reverence before your majesty/ruler

When Cui Xie came home in the evening, he first saw Shopkeeper Ji’s beaming expression, the man smiling from ear to ear. Along with Shopkeeper Ji, there was a stack  of paper of all different dimensions, tbe portraits of the beauties printed on light yellow and light cyan drawing prints. The big prints were horizontally printed, the paper thinner than an A4-sized paper. Some prints had the portrait printed on the left side of the paper, some were on the right and some were in the middle; the small print was smaller than A5-sized paper, and it looked like a postcard after the portrait was printed onto it; there was also a normal embroidered picture printed on white mulberry paper.

When he looked at the sample drafts, Shopkeeper Ji rubbed his hands, standing beside him and patiently waited. It wasn’t until Cui Xie set down the samples that a bright light began to shine in those old eyes and he asked with a taut smile, “What does the Boss think of these prints? This old man has already calculated the accounts, if we print a set of such prints, we do not need to print more——”

Shopkeeper Ji wagged his finger, “For a set of four prints, selling it for one or two taels of silver is not a problem! If you print a few more copies, the profit can be doubled. Those outside who sell portraits of beauties do not have as good-looking characters. If you print the portraits on high-quality paper, those cultured scholars and officials, I’m afraid they will all want to buy to add to their personal collections or gift it to others, one person can be sold several sets!”

Cui Xie slowly nodded, went to the study to find a brush, and on several of the prints, he wrote the newly learned poem, 《Min Yu Xiao Zi》

Min Yu Xiao Zi (闵予小子) was a poem in the Sacrificial Odes of Zhou in the Classic of Poetry. It is when located in the Eulogies section and in the decade of Min You Xiao Zi. This was an eulogy by which the Zhou King praised his ancestors and requested their blessings in return.

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Here is a translation:

Alas for me, who am [as] a little child,

On whom has devolved the unsettled State!

Solitary am I and full of distress.

Oh! my great Father,

All thy life long, thou wast filial.

Thou didst think of my great grandfather,

[Seeing him, as it were,] ascending and descending in the court.

I, the little child,

Day and night will be so reverent.

Oh! ye great kings,

As your successor, I will strive not to forget you.

The postcard did not have any space left to write characters on it, so he did not take pity and just wrote on top of the beauty, disdainfully said, “Blocked the brush. The postcards are not easy to use, just print the large prints. It is better if the character is printed on the left. Don’t use black ink for the traces, use an ocher watermark instead. The inscribed poem should be printed lighter and engrave a seal below—”

He thought about it, the poem belongs to someone else and he hadn’t printed these himself, so he simply used the name of the study, which could be regarded as an anti-theft seal: “Engrave a Zhirong Study seal about this big, and using small seal script will be fine.”

Small seal script ( 小篆, xiǎozhuàn): archaic form of Chinese calligraphy used for seals.

Shopkeeper Ji loudly answered and asked him in a hopeful tone, “When will the Boss draw more portraits of beautiful women?”

Today, the Boss had a few more homework assignments than usual, and momentarily, he had no free time to draw beautiful women, so he waved his hands and said, “No  need to rush at the moment. No matter how good the prints are, the novel must be printed. Tell the artisans to hurry and engrave the printing blocks, print out a dozen or more prints before the Chongyang Poetry Gathering and that should be fine. As for the remaining, just take it easy.”

His painting skill had only touched the surface of the transcendental modern painting techniques and in truth, his training and knowledge of the fundamentals was sorely lacking. If these sets of prints truly became popular, soon, there would soon be pirated copies of imitate portraits and it was possible that someone would soon develop another method of color drawing and printing. At that time, there will be a new beauty to knock out this old one.

It was still necessary to rely on stories to support the characters, so that true and diehard fans would fork out the money.

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On the day of Chongyang in September, the academy had a school holiday.

Senior shixiong Yue Su, Luo Jin, Wang Si and the other seniors had long donned newly-made snow-white zhiduo and picked Cui Xie up in a carriage, heading over to the Shen Family Residence on the top of Solitary Hill to attend the Poetry Gathering.

Shixiong: senior male fellow student, apprentice/disciple; peers of the same generation often refer to this (male only)

Zhiduo (直裰): refers to two types of traditional robes wore by either the casual zhiduo worn by scholars or the priests zhiduo. The casual zhidou was popular in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, worn both by scholars, officials and commonors. The features included: the bottom of the robe reached below the knee, overlapping collar, a through center back seam run down the robe, lateral slit on each lower side, and without a hem.

Cui Yuan had set up the carriage early, and stored Chongyang cakes, chrysanthemum wine, boxes of colorful pastries, beef jerky and water. It was like a family outing, the preparations were comprehensive and pleasant. Cui Xie held onto the box full of the newly made prints and put it in the carriage, letting Pengyan follow after him.

Yu shixiong commented, “The Shen family has its own servants to receive guests, you can just leave your old servant and child servant at home, just ride with us in our carriage.”

Cui Xie smiled and declined, “There is no one in my residence today, and it is not very interesting to just leave them at home. If it is truly forbidden to bring others into the poetry gathering, I will just instruct the father and son duo to play in the mountains for a day.”

Everyone else could attend the poetry gathering to broaden their perspective, but only Zhao Yinglin was strictly monitored under the gaze of his entire family. He could only follow his father and grandfather to the temple to burn incense. As he stood at the gate to bid farewell to his fellow schoolmates, that secretly bitter gaze fell onto Cui Xie’s face, nearly burning a hole in the other boy’s face.

Yue and Wang shixiong did not dare to look at him, and looked at Cui Xie secretly. Cui Xie looked back at Zhao Yinglin calmly, cupped his hands in salutations and said, “Brother Yinglin, don’t worry, I will copy the poems and bring them back for you.”

He abruptly turned around and climbed into his own carriage. Several of the seniors got into the big carriage of the Yue family. The coachman drove his horse out of Qian’an county’s north gate, 

Crushing the waning grass and yellow flowers underneath the entire journey, heading towards the Solitary Hill located northeast of the city.

Outside, the autumn scenery possessed a scholarly and artistic air. The young scholarly youth, Pengyan, lifted the curtain, leaning on the window’s edge to look at the scenery. People like Cui Xie who had once clicked on the webpages to view all the different beautiful landscapes of the world were naturally not interested in these roadside deserted landscapes. He closed his eyes and recited Han Yu’s 《Lamentations for Mr. Ouyang》.

Han Yu: Tang dynasty essayist and poet, advocate of classical writing

《Lamentations for Mr. Ouyang》: is from Han Yu’s collected works and is a piece written where he laments the passing of Mr. Ouyang or Ouyang Zhan. Han Yu claimed that Ouyang Zhan was the first scholar of national standing to emerge from the southeast.

Memorizing and memorizing, the carriage suddenly shook and a bright, cheerful and laughing voice came from the window, “Isn’t this the old servant from the Cui residence? Is your Young Master in the carriage? Stop for a moment, let me talk a few words with Brother Cui!”’

Penyan turned his head and said, “Da-ge, our carriage was stopped by someone.” He stretched out his head and looked out, frowning, “I don’t recognize the person. He is wearing a crimson zhezi, riding a black like stained horse, not very neat or bright.

Zhezi or daopao: set ot taoist robes but are worn by men regardless of religious background. It is a full-length, wide-sleeved robe with side slits beginning below the waits and a belt fastens around the waist.

Cui Yuan’s polite and nervous voice sounded outside, asking who that person was. Yue shixiong in the carriage in the front brought out some scholarly arrogance and took out his status as a tongsheng as well as the Shen Residence’s gathering invitation, warning them that they could not offend them lightly.

Tongsheng: candidate who has passed county exams but not yet the college level exam

Cui Xie leaned over the carriage’s window and took a look outside. The man outside had already beaten him to it and rode the horse to the outside of the carriage. He beamed and said, “Little Brother Cui, I did not expect I would meet you here. Initially I wanted to pick a pony to give to you a long time ago, but these days my father has been a bit fierce in disciplining me. I haven’t been able to go out for quite some time and did not have any horses worthy of you. To be able to meet here today, this is also our fate—”

The man glanced at his companion behind him and grinned, “My family has a villa just near here and there are some racing horses there. Why don’t you come and ride with us, go hunting and have fun for a day? Wouldn’t it be better than having to attend the poem meeting with those sour scholars!”

Only then did Cui Xie recognize that the valiant and formidable-looking youth in front of him was that Official Wang Xiangzhen who had been beaten black and blue that day. He could not help but feel the urge to laugh at the thought of his colorful face that day. Cui Xie forcibly restrained himself, dismounted from the carriage, bowed to him and politely replied, “I have an appointment with the seniors and it is not good to cancel an appointment midway. If Brother Wang is interested, let’s make another appointment in the future.”

Wang Xiangzhen immediately flipped off the horse to receive his bow and smiled happily, “If this is the case, then go first. But, I will definitely visit your Fu in the future! Even if it is just for you helping this gege moving house, this gege must personally thank you——Just wait, I will look for you in two or so days after finding a good horse!”

Gege: older brother

府(fu): is a compound, house or mansion.

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