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11 Responses to “Ancient Tales (in 11 parts)”

1. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:01 am

   

   2.
   Nuwa knelt on the beach looking out to the sea with Fuxi standing beside her holding a fishing spear, which was made by sharpening the tip of a branch, with backhooks that stopped fishes escaping, using a stone knife, which he carried in the mesh waist pouch. The sea was calm, and sunlight reflecting on its surface displayed a golden shine.

   To the left lied the river, and the bank on the other side was a low cliff, under which the neighbouring clan used to live in several caves. It was rather troublesome to get there: one first had to go upstream to where the two sides of the river were about level, and go across by walking on the submerged rocks, to reach the grassland on which the buffalo herds roamed, then walk back downstream to the cliff, and crawl down along the path cut into the cliff to reach the caves; however, inside them it was very nice, warm in winter and cool in summer, with the floor covered by soft animal hides.

   The neighbours had lived by hunting buffalos; whenever they needed food, the clan’s hunting team would set out under its commander with spears and javelins, made by tying sharp flints to straight branches, preceded by the clan’s dogs. When they see a suitable prey, the dogs would first rush up to surround it, harassing it to prevent it from escaping, and the hunters would then run up, wounding the buffalo from a safe distance by throwing javelins, making the animal tumble down from loss of blood and exhausion, so that the spearmen can approach and finish it off. They would then cut away the best pieces of meat to take back, leaving the dogs to eat their fill on the remaining carcass. What the dogs left behind would then be finished off by jackals and vultures.

   However, the caves were now empty: yesterday’s waves, reaching almost to the top of the cliff, had washed away everyone and everything, leaving behind just some heavy pots and jars, plus the jade axe their uncle used to carry. Even the spears and javelins, with their wooden handles, had been washed away along with the people. The few corpses left on the beach or among rocks were already chewed on by jackals and vultures beyond recognition.

   They brought back the axe and laid it under their clan’s sacred tree, so that the soul of their uncle returned to his birth place. A few dogs were lying around idly on the cliff; recognizing them, the dogs followed them home. With no one to take them hunting, they busied themselves catching rabbits and squirrels for food in the woods.

   After Fuxi went fishing and brought back his catch – he found a new way to catch fish with a mesh: tie strings to four corners and lay it flat in water waiting for fish to swim above it, then lift up – Nuwa scraped the scales and removed the internals with a stone knife, then wrapped the fishes with mud to bake on the fire: this way they got heated more evenly and the juice stayed inside. By the time the fishes were cooked, the mud had turned into a hard red crust, which was how their pots and jars were made. Putting a fish and some water into a pot and hanging it over the fire, and you ended up with a tasty soup.

   Now and then Nuwa would take some mud, mould it into human figurines, and bake them in the fire, then she left them standing around the sacred tree. Sometimes she cut some grooves on the backs of the figurines making up a mesh, and left them lying down as if they were sleeping on hammocks; maybe one day they would wake up, and then she would have family again.

   As before, each night they would light a fire of life, and Fuxi would carry her into her hammock, but she no longer felt secure and comforted, but was frightened that one day he too would vanish like the others; though he still stayed beside her hemmock and swayed her, it was a long time each night before she was able to fall asleep.

   All their family members, the whole buffalo hunting clan, all gone, the girls who were going to be Fuxi’s companions, the boys that would come over to the Yao pool and become her companions, all had disappeared; they would have no one to be their companions…

   Tomorrow would be the day when the sun would rise highest into the sky; tomorrow was the day to go to the Yao pool…

   She asked Fuxi: “are you leaving here to search for a companion tomorrow?”

   “That’s the way it was supposed to be, but…”

   “You go across the river tomorrow; last time I went over to the caves, I saw a girl living there by herself; she will be at their Yao pond tomorrow”

   “What about you?”

   “Dont worry about me; you must obey the ancestors’ orders and follow the tradition”

   “I will come back to see you often”

   He swung the hammock gently, and Nuwa fell asleep soon …

   The next morning, Fuxi crossed the river and reached the Yao pond. On the edge of the pond was a buffalo hide robe, and a girl was bathing in the water. He went over and held the robe in his hand, and the girl turned around. She wore a buffalo horn on her head, as a buffalo hunter clan girl was supposed to do during the fertility festival, but her face was black with charcoal and he could not see her features.

   She climbed up, wrapped the robe around herself, and led him by the hand into the woods.

2. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:02 am

   

   3.
   Fuxi and Nuwa were taking their children and dogs across the river, to visit their new neighbouring tribe, the Jinweis.

   More than 10 years ago, on the day the sun rose highest, Nuwa said farewell to her ancestors under the clan’s sacred tree, and crossed the river to the sacred rock of the buffalo hunting tribe, begging the clan’s ancestors for permission to become a member. Since neither side’s ancestors expressed anger, she darkened her face with charcoal, put on the buffalo hide robe that had been placed under the sacred rock for blessing, and wore on her head the clan emblem of buffalo horn; then went to the clan’s Yao pool to wait for her brother Fuxi, who was coming to search for a companion.

   After he had lied on top of her, the charcoal came off and Fuxi was shocked to discover that his new companion was in fact his own clan sister. That would have been against the teachings of their ancestors, but since there was no one else available to become their companions, and since he did love his sister very much, he accepted the fate accompli. It seemed however that the ancestors of both clans endorsed their action: they not only had many children, but all were healthy and smart.

   Every year when the sun rose highest in the sky, they would first present their greetings to their birth clan ancestors under the sacred tree, then to their adoptive clan ancestors under the sacred rock across the river. Afterwards they would go to the edge of the cliff, each to throw into the sea a branch picked from the sacred tree and a stone taken from beneath the sacred rock, plus figurines of buffalo, dog and fish, to show their washed away family members that they are still remembered. When the weather was particularly cold, they would go and live in the caves for a few days, and occasionally even take the dogs to hunt a young and not so fierce buffalo, just to show that they were keeping up the buffalo hunter traditions. Their oldest boy could already take a javelin and go with them to hunt.

   One day they found a new tribe had arrived across the river, also a buffalo hunting clan, in fact a very large one. Instead of living in trees or caves, they lived in tents made from tree trunks and hides, and hunted using small javelins shot out using a rope on a curved stick, able to wound a buffalo from very far away. They stuck a feather at the end of the javelin, which helped it to travel more straightly and on target; this was because their own ancestors were birds and the feathers provided their ancestors’ blessing on the arrows.

   To obtain feathers they had to shoot and kill birds, and each time this happened, they prayed for forgiveness under their sacred pole, which they set up in the middle of their camp wherever they went, and on which birds often perched. Their customary hunting grounds up north had a great fire, forcing them to go elsewhere.

   Nuwa was very pleased to see them, since her own children would soon be 14 and would need companions. The family visited the new neighbours, taking along dried fish and pottery figurines as gifts. Their hosts did not seem to appreciate the smell of the fish that much, but were very interested in the figurines, passing them around, and each turned them to different angles and looked again and again. They had not learned to make pottery, and cooked by roasting big pieces of meat on an open fire, or heating up a rock and then frying thin meat slices on them. When they made their return visit and saw Nuwa cooking using pots, they were very interested and took some back as presents, leaving their curved stick and javelins, which they called bow and arrows, behind as presents, in addition to dry meat and hide. Soon Nuwa taught them to make pottery, as well as presenting them with some dogs to help in the hunting.

   On the day when the sun rose highest and they were across the river on the other side, they found the Jinwei clan out on an open field standing in a semicircle, with a row of boys in front and a row of girls at the side; at the shout of the commander, the boys shot off arrows, and the boy whose arrow travelled furthest then went to the row of waiting girls, chose one, and led her into the woods; then the boy with the next furthest arrow, the next … By the turn of the last boy, there were no girl waiting, and the commander looked around, saw the Nuwa family, and came over to suggest that their oldest daughter should go with the boy. However, Nuwa explained that in her clan, boys that wanted to be companions of its girls need to join the clan; the commander went back to talk to the clan chief, and they saw her nod in agreement, so that the commander came over again and told the boy to go home with Nuwa.

   The boy was a bit thin and frail, and looked sad at having to leave his clan. However, Nuwa’s daughter boldly went over and took his hand to lead him home, and he looked happier, but she was only 13 and it would be another year before she could go to the woods with him.

3. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:02 am

   

   4.
   Nuwa felt old. She became a mother at 15, grandmother at 30, and now another 10 years had passed. She looked at Fuxi, who used to be so agile, but now he was not only much slower, but had also lost half his teeth. She thought of her 12 children, most of them having left with the Jinwei tribe when it returned north to its ancestral hunting grounds, snake turning into bird, dragon turning into phoenix.

   Nuwa’s clan worshiped the snake; it was by praying for the help of the snake ancestors that a girl of the clan could learn to act correctly when she was with a boy in the woods, and also ensure the smooth passage of her baby at birth. On the clan’s sacred tree there hung a clay statue of a serpent that swallowed its own tail, revealing the endless cycle of life: the end was also be beginning, and when one died, one merely started another life in a different place; it also mean thing was the same as nothing; the immortal teaching of the snake ancestors.

   Now and then they would also witness the phenomenon of black snake rising: out over the sea, a black snake circling and circling, with its head in the clouds, lifting up sea water towards the sky and throwing thunder and lightning. Nuwa’s mother said it was the snake ancestors reminding us of its power, lest we begin to neglect our duty towards them. Because it looked different, the divine serpent rising to heaven was called by the different name of dragon, and the clan called itself by the name Shenlong Divine Dragon.

   Sometimes the tail of the dragon would come ashore, and wherever it passed, trees would be uprooted and people would be lifted into the air, while the sea water, sea weed, fish, etc it lifted earlier would be dumped on the ground. This happened not along ago: the tail came ashore at the cliff across the river, and passed the Jinwei campsite, destroying all their tents and killing/injuring many people.

   Afterwards the Jinwei clan chief, the hunt commander and the chief’s aunts/sisters held a meeting, and decided to return north: since their arrival, the number of buffalos had gone down considerably, showing that our ancestors felt this was not the right place for us to stay permanently, and the dragon ancestor’s anger showed it did not welcome outsiders living here. They also talked about whether it was correct for the clan to have started eating fish and other food, instead of just meat as was their tradition, though the discussion was inclusive

   The boy that came over to Nuwa’s clan was a bit small in build and did not pick up hunting well; he also was not so steady in a boat so could not be a good fisherman. However he liked to go into the woods and fields looking for fruits and nuts that could be eaten, and knew where everything was and when it would be good to eat. Just before things were ripe enough for monkeys and birds to take, he would lead clan members out and cut down branches bearing the edible stuff, bring them back to ripen and give them out to everyone to share. These foodstuff not only provided a change of taste; the stomachs felt better with these supplementing fish and meat.

   A few Jinwei boys stayed, but all the Shenlong boys and three Shenlong girls left with the Jinweis, whose customs were different, allowing companions to be found within the clan or brought back from outside, as well as boys leaving to be companions of others.

   Nuwa made three terracotta dragons for the girls at the time they left, asking them to always honor their ancestors, and to drop branches and stones into the sea on every year’s high summer day to remember their drowned kinsmen.

4. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:02 am

   

   Heirs of the Dragon　龙的传人

   1.

   “Cold is the River Yi, whistle does the wind;
   Onward the fighter goes, never to return”

   This poem, recalling the departure of the swordsman Jinke on his doomed mission to assassinate Emperor of Qin, depicts the climate of the late Warring States period, but 2-3000 years before that, northern China was much warmer. Even in Shang times, the Huai River area still had elephants and rhinoceroses. On both shores of the Yellow River, mulberry trees grew in abundance. Only when one went to northern Hebei would the climate be too cold for mulberries, hence the name of the region “Mulberry Void” (kong-sang or qiong-sang).

   Since the founding of the Divine Dragon Shenlong tribe many years ago by the brother-sister couple Fuxi-Nuwa , its people had multiplied. In western Shangdong alone there were 81 camps of the Jinwei-Shelong tribe led by Chi-you. The Jinwei people had long ago changed their livelihood from hunting buffalos to herding them, and they had also copied the farming techniques of the Shennong (Divine Cultivator – another branch of Shenlong Divine Dragon) tribe, hence their nickname Miao (plant shoots). Some of the people drifted north to Mongolia and Manchuria, and those staying in the south migrated westward along the Yellow River, settling in the farming lands of Henan and Shanxi; some even went into the hills where the herded goats （羊）, hence the tribal names of Jiang/Qiang (姜/羌）。

   The mulberry was the sacred tree of the Shenlong tribe; before people learnt to build houses, they slept on trees, to be away from the savage beasts that came out at night looking for prey; the wood of the trees was lit for fire, and the fruits were used for food and also to make the wine needed for ceremonies and fertility festivals; the grubs that ate the mulberry leaves were found to produce silk fibre that could be weaved into a fine cloth.

   The Jinwei-Shenlong tribes believed that out in the eastern sea there was a magic mulberry tre called fu-sang, on which perched ten golden birds that took turns to fly from east to west each day, shining their light on the earth, and that 12 moons bathed in the water below the tree, each taking turns to appear once a year, making twelve months in a year coinciding with the menstruation cycles of the women; the moon was therefore the source of fertility. The princesses of the tribe prayed to the moon at night, hence their nickname Dark Maidens xuan-nv 玄女； since the girls spun and weaved silk, silk was denoted as 丝, a double 玄.

   Fertility rites were held in the mulberry forests; so the forests were where life started; when one died, one needed to return to the mulberry (sang, 桑/丧), buried under a mulberry tree in the soil, once used by founder Nuwa to sculpture humans. Those of high status had to be wrapped in silk before being placed into coffins made from a hollowed out mulberry trunk.

   One branch of the Jinwei-Shenlong tribe lived at Shang (Sang) Hill of Hebei. Here the climate was colder and mulberry trees grew sparsely. Further, this was where the Yellow River entered the sea in hundreds of branch streams, setting down the silt it bought from the western loess plateaus and continuously turning the “lost sea” into “mulberry land”; the ground was too muddy to allow planting, and the Shang tribe lived by herding, grazing their cattle on higher grounds where grass grew, and driving their herd from one location when grass ran out to another. The tribe prospered and both people and cattle multiplied; they were always on the lookout for new grazing land.

   One day the young and handsome Chief Hai, with some Shang kinsmen, drove their cattle to the Yi River in the north.

   The Yi area already had two groups of occupants. Downstream on their side was the River Lord tribe that lived by fishing; across the river was the populous Youyi tribe that cultivated extensive fields along the northern bank, living in a large walled village with a wide moat; armed men could be seen on the wall watching movements across the river.

   However, for now each of the three groups was after something different and there was no clash of interest. While the Shang folks grazed their cattle in the upstream valley, the River Lord people fished downstream, each minding their own business and greeting each other in an amicable way now and then. Occasionally they even visited each and exchanged goods. However, soon the grass on this side of the river began to run out and it was necessary to transfer the herd to the opposite bank.

   The Yi River was not wide though its water flowed rapidly, so crossing it entailed some danger. More significantly, the intentions of the people on the other side were uncertain; one needed to consider the possibility of their starting an attack while the herd and the men were halfway across, perhaps just to steal part of the cattle.

   While Chief Hai was still considering this matter, some River Lord tribe visitors came, and he asked them for details of the ford across the river. With the information, he placed the herd near the crossing to graze, and when the sun was about to set and the Youyi tribesmen were leaving the field for dinner, quickly started to drive his cattle across the river. By the time the Youyi people began to take notice, the crossing was nearly complete, and it was also getting dark.

   However, as soon as dawn broke a group of armed men came from the Youyi village, but they stuck their weapons in the soil when coming into close range to indicate their lack of hostility, and one representative came over to talk, that the cattle were only to be grazed in the valley, far away from the farm fields and the planters, to avoid tramping the crops or injuring people. Chief Hai was only too happy to agree, and indeed he and his men made every effort to keep to his promise in order to avoid trouble, so for a while peace reigned.

   The mid spring day arrived and that morning the Youyi tribesmen did not come out to do farming; instead there was from the village the sound of music playing and cymbals clanging. On the opposite bank the River Lord tribesmen were pounding drums and dropping things from boats into the river, presumably offerings for the Dragon King. Soon the Youyi villagers trooped out towards an upstream spot on the riverbank; the Shang tribesmen happened to be grazing cattle not far from there, and all of them stood on the backs of their beasts to watch.

   A lovely maiden emerged from the crowd with an priestess and a group of assistants. She knelt down on a pier at the river bank and the priestess began to chant some sort of prayer to the Dragon King, thanking him for keeping the Youyi fields well watered and fertile; she began to twist and dance as her chants became increasingly shrill and urgent; suddenly she stopped and turned to face the villagers, speaking now in a man’s voice; the villagers all knelt down and kowtowed.

   Then an assistant gave a large jar of wine to the girl to drink; when she was half way through it she was already getting unsteady, and by the time the whole jar went down she was nearly unconscious. The priestess’s assistants lifted her up and threw her into the river. She hardly struggled, and after floating for a short time she sank into the water, while the priestess sang a song praising the beautiful bride descending to the palace of the Dragon King, to enjoy eternal happiness and to bring blessings to her tribe with timely breezes and rains.

   The another lovely maiden emerged from the crowd and knelt at the pier, while the priestess sang a song praising the sacred virgin of Youyi tribe, beautiful and chaste, so honored to be the Dragon King’s bride for next year. She scooped up some water from the river and poured it on the girl, then raised her to her feet. The whole crowd now turned towards the village; as the girl turned, Chief Hai saw her face clearly and was greatly struck by her beauty, her wet dress clinging to her body displaying her curves, almost like those maidens he encountered in the fertility festival that would soon be held back home on the day when the sun would be highest.

   A beautiful girl like this ought to be at the festival, so that he could lead her into the mulberry forest and lie on her, so that his child would grow in her stomach. What a waste for a girl like this to be simply drowned. He looked towards the village. The group had by then, with music playing, gone up the village wall where a pavilion stood. This presumably was where the sacred virgin would be stationed for a year, to be thrown into the river next time. He recalled Shang tribe’s own legend about its founder Jiandi: she and her sisters, all sacred virgins, were kept on a high tower – another version said they were taking part in a fertility bathe – and heavenly king descended as the dark bird to lay an egg, which she swallowed and this made her pregnant.

   The wall was just a bit higher than a man; standing on the back of a buffalo and jumping, he would be able to grab the top of the wall, and then climb up to where the maiden was; a horrible thought – going there to steal the Dragon King’s bride, the sacred virgin of Youyi tribe – it would anger gods and men alike, and bring ill fate to the whole Shang tribe, but he could not get the thought out of his mind.

   It was getting dark, a moonless night, but a light shone on top of the village wall, an eternal light in the hall that honored the sacred vergin. It was as if the light was telling him “Come here.. come here…”

   It was not long before the Youyi tribal seniors were called to an emergency meeting: the tribe’s sacred virgin was pregnant, despite the fact that the path to her pavilion on the village wall was guarded at all times by the priestess’s numerous assistants, so that it was impossible for anyone in the village to climb up there without being discovered.

   According to the girl herself, a god from heaven descended to make her pregnant. Now if that was true, the child would be a important personage from birth; if a boy, he would be the next tribal chief; if a girl, the new tribal priestess; however, when questioned to provide details, the girl had little to tell, other than that the “god” always appeared when she was in a stage of semi-consciousness, and each time he gave her a heavenly feeling she had never experienced before, which was why she felt so certain he was a god, not a human, plus the fact that she had never seen a human so beautiful, so perfect, other than the fact that he had a small scar on his left forehead…

   Pow! the troop commander struck the ground with his palm “that cattle boy: he had a small scar on his left forehead! I saw it when I went to talk to them when they first arrived”

   “How could he have got in?” asked the tribal chief

   “Hmm… dont know… maybe he somehow climbed up” The elders trooped out to inspect the ground outside the village wall beneath the pavilion, and immediately saw several tracks of buffalo footprints coming up from the moat to the foot of the wall; fury was all around; the tribe had been humiliated in the grossest possible way and must seek immediate vengeance. However, the commander hesitated “those fellows, not many but they looked like tough fighters; maybe they could even drive the cattle to attack us; let’s do it after dark”

   That evening the Shang people were already getting ready to go home – they wanted to take part in the summer fertility festival – and had moved the herd to near the crossing and set up their tents there, so that they could start the journey first thing next morning. However, Chief Hai could not tear himself away from his tent location not far from the village, and did not move with them. When the Youyi soldiers went to look for them, they found him only, and contented themselves with just chopping off his head.

   The next morning his kinsmen, after waiting in vain, went to his tent to wake him up, and found his headless body there; coming out of the tent, they saw Youyi soldiers just emerging from the village, and decided at once to abandon their herd, crossed the river, and escaped back to the Shang tribe to seek help…

   In the mean time, the Youyi tribal elders decreed to expel the pregnant girl immediately; she was to leave the tribe and not look back, on pain of death…

   Whistle does the wind, cold is River Yi; this might not be a good description of the weather, but fitted very well how the girl felt; she walked along the river, the same river that was to have received her next year as the sacred virgin presented to the Dragon King, towards to valley. The Shang people’s tents were still on the riverbank, and she stayed the night in one, eating the food they had left behind in their hasty departure. The also left behind bow and arrows, tools, cooking utensils, and most important of all, the fire flints; with these, she could pick wild fruits and other edible plants, cook, hunt some small animals, and keep wild animals away at night by keeping her fire alight. She was pretty, but also tough enough to survive on her own, at least long enough till she figured out what to do next.

   Moving further up the valley, her sight of the village was blocked, but she could see the cooking smoke above it in the sky every day. One day, however, this did not appear, nor the next day, nor the next; puzzled, she left the valley and walked towards the village, despite the elders’ warning. It seemed to be surrounded by water. Getting closer, she found the moat and surrounding area covered in water and the gate wide open; corpses of men and animals were everywhere in the village; she realized that the Shang tribe soldiers had been back to seek vengeance and killed every living thing in sight; they even destroyed the village reservoir causing water to flood everywhere. Having put a curse on the place, they would leave it and never return.

   She was now the only person left in the once large Youyi tribe; but that did not matter; she was with child and the tribe would have descendents to make offerings to their souls, so that they would not be hungry wandering spirits; death was merely moving to another place, like the girl sent to the bottom of the river to be Dragon King’s bride; the important thing is to be remembered in this world. She lived in the village alone, taking care of her own needs, till her child was born.

   In the following year on the day when the sun was highest, she went to the village Yao Pool by herself, and waited for men of the River Lord tribe to come over and take her into the woods. She had more children, and the boys, at age 14, went across the river to join the River Lord tribe’s fertility festival, one of them becoming its commander because of his intelligence and competence; his descendents were the Youxin tribe, whose princesses married founding chiefs of Shang and Zhou states

   Many stories were told about him; it was said that he was abandoned at birth, that his mother’s tribe was destroyed by a flood but she was warned by a god to run away without looking back, but disobeyed the divine command and turned, causing gods to punish her by changing her into a mulberry tree, so that her son was found in the “hollow of a mulberry” on the bank of the river, but maybe such stories are just a misunderstanding because he was born in the area known as “mulberry void”, where mulberry trees did not grow on account of the cold.

5. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:03 am

   

   2

   “One generation to next; bad to worse” Princess Chang-e of Xuannv (Dark Maidens) Tribe sighed to herself.

   Direct descendents of Nuwa’s oldest daughter’s oldest daughter, occupying for untold years the Xuan Palace on top of Mount Kunlun, the tribe had always been pre-eminent among all the branches of Shenlong, not just because of its senior status implying its direct link to “heaven”, but also because of its pool of knowledge and wisdom. Only it and a few of its sister tribes knew the secret of keeping silkworms and spinning/weaving silk, needed to make the fine clothes that tribal chiefs wore, to distinguish themselves from lesser persons (especially after death). To obtain silk, other tribes had to defer to the Xuannvs.

   The tribe’s second secret was the Dark Maiden Arts, with one set used for themselves to retain their youth and beauty, and another set for the young men that came to participate in Xuannv tribe’s fertility rituals, making them repeatedly deposit their seeds into the Xuan maidens, to make the girls pregnant and give birth to new Xuan maidens and Xuan boys. Other tribes that also wished to have an abundant population had to send their princesses to Mount Kunlun to learn the arts.

   But the most important secret of the Xuannvs was that of the Resurrection Elixir, which could make a person dead for seven days before returning to life. Every seven years, commanders of affiliated tribes would come to Mount Kunlun with their troops, drink the Resurrection Elixir in front everyone and lay dead for seven days, rising up to take their troops home and make a grand celebration of their 7-day visit to heaven, evidence of their divine mandate.

   Many affiliated tribes lived in the neighbourhood, and when a boy of the Xuannv tribe reached the age 14, he was expelled from Mount Kunlun and had to find himself a companion at another tribe by going to its fertility festival, while boys from other tribes joined the Xuannv princesses bathing at Yao Pool beneath Mount Kunlun, hoping to get one as companion. Only after the expelled boys reached age 25, too old to take part in festivals, would they be allowed to return as farmers or guards to be of service to their tribe of birth.

   For several years Chang-e had accepted Chief Fengyi of the River Lord tribe as companion, but last year was different. While the princesses were bathing in the Yao Pool, a group of men barged in and captured all of them: they carried bows as tall as a man, and when arrows are shot from them, no shield was strong enough to block them; all the other tribes’ young men were driven away and those who tried to take a stand were killed or wounded including Fengyi who was shot in the eye.

   The men took the princesses back to their camp, where they were already holding many young girls captured from the Dafeng, Ba, River Lord and other tribes, together with slaves, members of the conquered tribes whose lives were spared so that they could be put to work. Girls from the Xuannv tribe were of course special; Chang-e, the senior princess, was naturally allocated to the camp’s chief warrior Houyi, famed for “shooting down 9 of the 10 suns” when he eliminated chiefs of 9 other sun-worshiping tribes and merged the tribes into his own.

   Once Chang-e applied her Dark Maiden arts on Houyi in bed and gave him pleasures he had never before experienced, her pre-eminent position among Houyi’s harem was assured. He kept her beside him in his tent all the time and let her listen in as matters requiring Houyi’s attention were reported to him. She soon noticed Fengmeng of the River Lord Tribe, a smart and deligent fellow, taking charge of Houyi’s hunting entourage – fighting wars and capturing women was only a occasional activity; the activity Houyi spent most time on was hunting. She also noticed that while Fengmeng maintained a pleasant demeanour as he went about his work, there was an expectant look in his eyes, as if looking for some kind of opportunity.

   One day Houyi was away from the camp; he had gone up Mount Kunlun to see the Xuannv tribal chief Western Queen Mother – hearing about the Resurrection Elixir and his interest aroused, he wanted to have a doze to try out. Fengmeng came to report something about the next hunt, and Chang-e asked him a few innocuous questions; hearing that now most of the hunting entourage were former River Lord people, she casually said “For the next hunt you could take a few days and go further out; on the other side of the forest there are some rare beasts that would be fun to hunt; take the people familiar with the terrain; those who might get lost can stay behind”.

   A few days later Houyi indeed told Chang-e that he wished to go on a long hunting expedition taking several days. Three days after they went of, Fengmeng returned with a couple of assistants in the hunting team: “Our lord has been seriously wounded by a wild boar and is unable to move; he would like the squad commanders to go to him and arrange future camp affairs”. The squad leaders hurried off while Chang-e and Fengmeng followed; as soon as the chiefs entered the woods, they were surrounded by Fengmeng’s team, and struck down by many blows from sticks and branches…

   Having returned to Mount Kunlun, Chang-e said to Western Queen Mother “Mom, things are now different; we need to find a good fighter tribe to ally ourselves with and give us protection. I hear about this group who know how to make metal; they have been killing and robbing all over the place; soon they will be coming here.”

   “So what do you suggest?”

   “There is a Yellow Dragon tribe coming from the west; they are supposed to be very strong fighters; we should get them as affiliates”

   The next morning Chang-e, together with several clan brothers and sisters, went down Mount Kunlun and went towards the west, carrying a parcel of silk cloth as presents.

6. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:03 am

   

   3.

   Originating in the Kunlun mountain range that separates the Tibetan plateau and the Tarim desert, the Yellow River winds its way north from southwestern Shaanxi to near Mongolia, turns south as its way east is blocked by the Taihang mountain range of Shanxi, till it reaches southeastern Shaanxi where it turns east again for its journey to the sea across the northern china plains; for most of its path, the soil is a fine sandy loess, whose looseness makes ploughing and planting simple, one factor that greatly contributed towards the rapid expansion of the Shenlong tribes after it took up agriculture and became Shennong.

   The slash and burn method used by the farmers to clear land for crops and to produce fertilizing ash each year was highly destructive to the native plants. As long as population was low, agriculture was carried out in isolated pockets and most of the land was covered by forest, whose roots retained the soil from being washed away by rains and river water; after the population expanded and most covering foliage was burnt away to make way for crops, soil erosion began to occur on a significant scale, with silt being carried downstream, mostly to be deposited in the sea generating an ever expanding delta, but silting of the riverbed also ocurred, leading to Yellow River frequently overflowing its banks and changing course, flooding nearby inhabited areas; this has been a perennial problem since late neolithic times. Initially a tribe so affected could simple move to another location to get away from flooding, but gradually this became more difficult as uninhabited fertile spots, not too far from the river since supply of water must be assured, were harder to find.

   The irregation work for which the Great Yu, or Yu the Chief, was well known, after his father tried and failed at the task of flood prevention through dyke building, was actually on very small scales; there were limited manpower to spare for such work, since most people could produce little more food than just enough for their own consumption, and tools were still primitive. Most of the work actually done was to dig wells: by acquiring an alternative supply of water, tribes could live on higher grounds that were less likely to suffer from flood. Some redirecting of water courses was also carried out to provide flood-prone areas, and places where flood water had already accumulated, with outflow channels to drain them, which required some surveying knowledge to judge which way water would flow when it actually came. Having such outflow channels also prevents the build up of salts in the soil through evaporation, which tends to occur if water is constantly introduced into a field without any outflow to carry out the salts coming in within the inflow – such salt build up would ultimately result in the soil becoming unusable for planting crops.

   The Great Yu was also a successful military commander, and in his campaigns he probably made good use of his irregation experience to overcome water defenses, by building canals to drain away the water allowing his army to cross the dried out channels and move in to attack.

   At the time a loose tribal alliance centered on the Xuan Palace reigned, and Yu was appointed as the successor to the then alliance chief Shun for his achievements, though Shun’s personal preference would have been his own son in law Yi, as this was the more common practice during matriarchal times with property and position passing from mother to daughter and their husbands were like hired managers, brought in by “owners” to exercise control on behalf of their wives; Shun himself was the son in law of the previous alliance chief Yao. In consideration of this wish of Shun, Yu designated Yi as the next successor; however, after Yu’s death his son Qi broke the agreement and took over as alliance chief; further, Qi was raised in his father’s tribe rather than mother’s, which too was a departure from the matriarchal practice; this transition from matriarchal to patriarchal system had been occurring for some time and Qi’s succession completed the transition process; the new succession system resulted in, rudimentary as they might be, imperial dynasties, a concept unknown before.

   ….

   Chief Yu was rushing; in front of him at some distance was Dragon Gate, a mountain pass in the Mount Tu range between the Ru River valley, which went down to the Huai River, and the Luo River valley, which went towards the Yellow River. Going from place to place to carry out the irrigation works he had been entrusted with by Xuan Palace, he had gone back and forth along this route many times.

   Today was different however; as soon as they entered the valley, they saw before them the Tu tribesmen, holding weapons, blocking the path through the woods. When they came close, they were told: “Today the Tu princesses are bathing in the Yao pond; outsiders are not allowed to pass”.

   Yu’s interest was piqued: Mount Tu tribe was a Xuannv sister tribe and its princesses were equally well known for their beauty. “I am below 20 years old; I am entitled to join fertility festivals”

   The chief of the guard team looked Yu over, and saw that the boy was well built, his skin was fair and unblemished, and his eyes bright and alert; he looked like a good seed. “Sure outsiders can take part, but not wearing outside tribe cloths; take them off and I will get someone to lead you there. But remember: you need to have the Tu vertical eye tattooed on your head first before taking part, if you are sure you can stand the pain” A few of Yu’s followers were originally showing interest, but hesitated when they heard the last part. While they were still thinking, Yu took off his clothes and went into the woods.

   He was led to an opening among the trees with a pond; a number of girls were dipping in the water, while boys were standing on the edge, also without clothes, waiting. He was introduced to the tribal shaman, who started carving a vertical eye on Yu’s forehead with a jade knife; having made the figure and rubbed the wound with permanent tattoo colour, he told Yu to join the other boys. Just then the girls came up; their leader came towards Yu, took his hand, and led him to a secluded spot among the trees; she used many of the Dark Maiden arts on him, making him deposit his seeds into her again and again.

   Afterwards he sat on the ground leaning against a tree trunk, panting. She stood up to leave, but before going off she stroked his forehead “still hurting? when I was in the water I saw you having yourself tattooed; you were not at all afraid of the pain, not even one grimace; so I knew you must be very strong” She giggled, and left.

   For several years after this, Yu undertook various irrigation works in the area, each year returning to the Tu tribe to take part in its fertility festival, renewing his encounter with the same Tu tribe princess, giving her several children; however, he had not seen any of them: Tu tribe camp was off limits to outsiders. Even when the princess was carrying his child, he could not visit her. However, as he finished this project on Tu tribe land, she would come down to bid him goodbye.

   At the end of the project a ceremony would be held, to thank his own tribe’s white bear ancestor for smoothening their way, interceding with the local soil god and water god not to get offended by their domains being disturbed and not to do anything that would impede progress. As part of the ceremony, the white bear ancestral idol must make a presence, and the white bear tribesmen will throw stones at the hairy white demon that was the cause of the floods, burying him under a pile of rocks, finally ending the ceremony with drum beats. For some reason one stone was thrown off course and hit the drum, making a loud sound. The princess and her maids were waiting in the woods for the ceremony to end; when they heard the drum beat, they thought it had already finished, and came over; thus they caught sight of the white bear ancestor idol, a sight forbidden to outsiders, thus committing a most serious tribal taboo violation; frightened, the princess turned to go, but it was already too late

   Trembling, she passed by the sacred white rock erected by the bear tribe people to commemorate their work, and felt the child in her womb stirring: she was about to give birth prematurely, a punishment from the white bear ancestor gods; lying down next to the white rock, she felt as cold as a stone while her life ebbed away. “Ask the child’s dad to come here; I am dying”. When Yu and others rushed over, the princess was already beyond help.

   In those days, it was a common event for mothers to die in child birth; decisively, Yu pulled out his sword and sliced open her belly, pulling out the baby. He raised the child to show his fellow tribesmen: “This is my son; I name him Qi (to open)”

7. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:04 am

   

   4.

   The tribal elders of the Gong tribe were holding a meeting, to discuss the order from the Zhuanxu tribe concerning fire.

   Fire was a sacred matter to all the tribes. With fire, we could turn bloody, tough flesh into tender, fragrant food, we could keep savage beasts away from campsites at night, in the spring, we could burn away vegetation with fire to clear land for planting while making a fertilizing ash, and most important of, fire turned food and other offerings to the gods into smoke, to rise to heaven for them to enjoy, so that they would be pleased to confer blessings on the people who showed them such love and devotion.

   Every tribe had a fire chief, whose job was to keep the sacred fire of his tribe burning at all times, and to distribute fire to his tribesmen when it was time to do spring planting, burning away the grass and bush; to do this at the right time, he had to know the seasons, and fire chiefs were all star watchers and calendar makers. The emissary bringing the order from the Zhuanxu was none other than Zhongli, the heaven tribe’s fire chief, who was sent to the eight Li tribes to lead them; because of his honorific title Heat Shaman Zhurong, the eight tribes were called the Zhurong Eight.

   There were originally nine Li tribes, living in 81 camps under their leader Chiyou, who however battled the Yellow Emperor and was killed. Yellow Emperor sent his son Qingyang to head the Nine Li, but later his son Zhuanxu led one Li tribe to Puyang and occupied the ancient Xuan Palace of the Shenlong tribe, and started to put his own tribe above all others. Henceforth his own tribe was the only one allowed to maintain a heavenly fire, and all other tribes could only worship the earth. Each year on the Cold Food Day they had to extinguish their tribal hearth, and obtain a heavenly flame from the Zhuanxu tribe, relighting their hearth only after the flame was delivered in the evening.

   Chief Gong, who was himself born in a Li tribe, but came to Gong as the previous chief’s son in law and successor, did not like what he heard. He looked at the clay dragon hung over the altar at the end of the hall: this was made by Shenlong founder Nuwa herself and given to her daughter when she left with the Jinwei tribe; who was to say we were not good enough to pray to heave ourselves?

   As voices of dissent were heard around the hall, Zhongli started to get upset “The Zhurong 8 have a divine mission to enforce heavenly will; we are abundant in manpower and strong in arms; you should carefully consider your stand”

   “Oh, you think you can overcome our water defenses and take our village?” The mocking voice was of that of “Little Uncle”, who was a generation above the chief, though young in age. Chief Gong glanced at him – what he said was correct, but it could have been left unsaid too; whether the Gong tribe would follow the order to extinguish fires on Cold Food Day, whether there could be some scheme to have it both ways, we could still work on some issues; there was no need to open a can of worms just yet. However, for now we could leave the discussion “Sure we will carefully consider.” He then started talking about some inconsequential matters, till it was time for the guest to take his leave.

   Some months later we found Zhongli back in the Gong area, but in his tent some distance from the town walls, in fact separated by a wide stretch of water. He sighed “O what a mess I got myself into”

   when he went around the tribes delivering the heavenly order, most tribes were awed: here was the great grandson of the Yellow Emperor, who defeated such strong enemies as Chiyou, Kuafu and Xingtian and took charge of the Nine Li, delivering an order from Xuan Palace ruled by Yellow Emperor’s grandson, how dared they disobey? but the Gongs dared, and when he looked over the town defenses, he found the wall not particularly high and the moat not particularly deep, and it should not be difficult to breach them

   however, when he led the Zhurong 8 army westward from Shangdong, crossing the north of Puyang and setting up camp at Buzhou Hill near Gong, he got the shock of his life: nor only were the water level of the Yellow River south of Gong and the Gong River on its west, much higher than he remembered, the north and east of the two were also under water: the Gong tribe, being skilled in irrigation works, had opened canals upstream and flooded the whole area. Zhongli requisitioned many boats from nearby fishing tribes, but lacking marine experience, the Zhurong soldiers were not able to row boats to the town walls carrying their weapons and equipment, under arrow shots and rock slings, to fight their way into town.

   He then arranged a siege, but the Gong people had already collected a big store of food, and inside their walls there were some farming land that could be used to produce more; and with water all around, boats could find ways to slip in and out to obtain additional supplies; as his troops were stuck in the area, food supply was not as good as it should be, and the environment was damp, so many soldiers fell sick; to make things worse, the flood water had continue to flow east and some had reached Puyang downstream, causing rumours to arise among the people there that, after the watergod was defeated by the firegod, he butted his head on the heaven pillar Buzhou Hill and caused the sky to collapse, so that water had descended from above, and everyone needed to pray to founder Nuwa to deploy again her power to again rescue her people from the flood.

   “O what I mess I got into” Zhongli sighed.

   An aide de camp rushed in “Emissaries from Xuan Palace are here”; just then the tent front hanging was thrust aside and Chief Priest Kunwu came in with his junior priests and attendants; he was holding a red silk cord.

   Zhongli had green silk cord tied around him; it was given to him by Zhuanxu when he set out on his campaign, meaning “victory or death”; when the red cord makes it appearance, it meant time for victory had run out. The decree read out by Kunwu, granting Zhongli, in view of his many services, immediate departure to a heavely existence and appointing his brother Wuhui as commander and Zhurong, confirmed this.

   Zhongli took off his green cord and handed it to Kunwu, accepting the red cord; two attendants came over and bound the red cord tightly around him, and he was taken outside the tent; his officers, including his brother Wuhui, were already waiting, and a pile of firewood had been prepared. As soon as he came out of the tent, the fire was lit, and he was taken next to it. Kunwu drew his sword, the famed Kunwu blade, and gave it to Wuhui, who thrusted it into Zhongli’s chest; as he pulled the sword out, blood ejected from the wood, and an attendant caught the flow in a gold cup; Zhongli swayed and fell on th fire, while everyone present knelt and kowtowed to him; the fire burnt brightly, and soon Zhongli turned into ash and smoke rising into the sky – Zhongli had gone to heaven for his well deserved eternal happiness.

   Kunwu handed the gold cup to Wuhui, who dipped his finger in the blood and smeared it on his lips, while the priests chanted an oath of loyalty to Zhuanxu; he then handed to cup to the officers, who all smeared blood on their lips while the priests chanted an oath to obey their commander; then Wuhui pored the blood into the river, with each soldier dipping his finger in the water and smearing his lips with it; they then cheered in unison “Long live Zhurong!”, for they had been looking forward to having Wuhui as the new commander for some time.

   As soon as the Kunwu group left, the new Zhurong gave his order: “End the siege; cross to the south of Yellow River”.

   Some of his officers did not quite understand “didnt we just swear loyalty to Zhuangxu?” Wuhui replied “The Zhurong 8 are the children of Zhuanxu; preserving Zhurong 8 is for his benefit, to make sure his descendents survive”; to deter the Gong troops from coming out to attack while the river crossing was in progress, Wuhui himself commanded the best fighter squads personally and deployed them north of the river (with boats at the ready for when they needed to make their own crossing), while the soldiers previously stationed to the north, east and west of the town were gathering, with their families, on the northern bank behind the defense line; after the bulk of the army had crossed the river, his group took to the boats and followed; the Zhurong 8 occupied Zheng on the southern bank and built a new settlement there

8. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:05 am

   

   Laozi 老子

   1.
   It was morning, and Laozi was entering his reception hall in the Zhou Archival Office for his day’s work; as he approached his official mat (chairs were not used in China before the Tang Dynasty; till then people knelt on cushions placed on mats, a practice still followed in Japan), his pupils and attendants standing on the two sides bowed low, and his chief clerk placed the manuscript he was to annotate on the low table in front of his cushion. As he seated himself, the clerk whispered
   “Your former pupil Kong Qiu will be coming to pay his respects shortly”
   “Oh yes my best student, the son of the celebrated general”
   “Except that…”
   “I know; his father was nearly 70 when he was born and people say his mother conceived him taking part in the Ni Hills Fertility Festival the year before”
   “Quite an orgy I hear”
   “It is uncommon for Zhou clansmen to pray for children at such shrines, but the Songs are not of the clan and are free to follow different customs”
   They stopped talking, as Confucius was announced and entered with two attendants. He bowed low before Laozi, while his attendants prostrated themselves on the floor; Confucius made a motion to do the same but was stopped by Laozi’s gesture in reply, indicating that Confucius was considered to be an equal rather than a subordinate
   “Pray be seated”
   “Oh Sir perhaps I ought…”
   “Not at all; once I was your teacher; now you are a learned man in your own right and might even have things to teach me; no thing is constant”
   “But ‘nothing’ is constant”
   “Ah I see you have read my new book”
   “I have indeed; a copy was presented to my Duke by the Royal Emissary; a truly profound piece of work”
   “Well it summarizes my life’s thoughts and observations, to leave behind as I retire soon from this office; I am glad you came in time to see me still here; I was hoping you could have come earlier”
   “I very much wished to, but my bereavement…”
   “My sympathies, and may the senior lady’s rest be eternally peaceful; but I believe she passed away some years ago?”
   “More than three, but we Shang desendents maintain the tradition of a three-year mourning period”
   “Ah yes the great Shangs; and your clan the Kongs keep up the traditions, just as the Songs still maintain the Shang shrine and honour their heavenly ancestors; we the Li clan, domiciled in Chen State and descended from the Great Shun, try to live up to our particular past also”

   2
   Yes the Shangs, the cattle drovers who learned to breed horses and forge bronze weapons, rode down from the north on their chariots and was all conquering; they built their great palaces and tombs in Anyang, and filled them with bronze utensils and jade artifacts; a truly impressive tribe, but they lost their mandate of heaven one day, when the son of the King’s brother in law, whom the King first promoted and then executed, led a small army to the east in vengeance and defeated the 10-times larger Shang army almost effortlessly. No thing is constant, indeed.
   History is always written by the victors. Zhou historians came up with numerous accounts of the tyranicaly rule of the final Shang King, known as Shou; he was said to drink excessively (a charged also leveled against all Shang nobility), failing to perform sacrifices to his ancestors in the correct way, listening to his concubines in making decisions relating to the state, killing his vassals over trivial issues, executing his loyal ministers who tried to provide restraining advice, using cruel forms of torture and execution, opening the belly of a pregnant woman to find out the sex of the fetus, and chopping off the feet of a man wading through the river in winter without showing fear of cold to see what’s so special about him.
   No doubt some of charges had factual basis, but one particular charge was certainly true: he was said to amuse himself by watching naked men and women chasing each other in the woods where ponds of wine and stacks of meat were available to encourage wild abandon: this approximately described the fertility festivals of the old Shenlong tribesmen, who had lived in Northern China for thousands of years before the Zhous came along, and who had already been successively ruled by the Yellow Emperor dynasty, assuming you count Yao and Shun as his family, the Xia dynastry started by Yu, and the Shang dynasty, always maintaining their old way of life, which the Zhous found hard to understand. The practical Romans and the abtract thinking Hebrews had the same uncomprehending view of the more artistic and romantic Greeks. However, the same fertility festivals continued to be held in various of Zhou vassal states where the Shenlong descendents were predominant, and occasionally even the Zhou clan people joined in. Folk poems collected by the Zhou archival office, which Confucius later edited, had many pieces of a romantic, almost erotic, nature, which later Confucian scholars, living in a more repressed age, found highly embarrassing.
   After the battle, the victorious Zhous were themselves surprised and almost unsure what to do, but the Zhou King’s brother, the Duke of Zhou, had brains for statecraft as well as war. He gathered the defeated Shang subjects at a site between the Luo and Yi rivers, made them build the new city Luoyang, storing in the town the nine great bronze cauldrons for the nine territories, and distributed farming land to the Shang subjects, after putting a strong garrison in the town and putting the King’s relatives as lords in surrounding states of Qi, Lu, Wei and Zheng, while setting up the Shang King’s brother in Song to maintain the Shang ancestral shrine. Everyone had “face” and could live in peace thereafter.
   The Duke of Zhou also devised the Zhou Conventions, specifying the right conduct for lords, knights and officials, even the King himself: he regularly received lords in audience and banquet, and went on inspection tours, to confirm their lord-vassal relationship; lords and subjects in each state together worshiped their ancestral gods, to show their family affinity; and the King/Lords all took part in the Plow Ceremony to pay respect to agriculture, the Shooting Ceremony to honour the soldier, the Drink Ceremony to bow to the Elders, the School Ceremony to honour learning and scholarship… The states sent children of lords and knights to the Zhou capital to learn from the books in the Archival Office about rituals and stately conduct, so that they went back to become state officials and perform their duty in accordance with the Zhou Conventions; unlike the Shangs, who left the various tribes to govern themselves as long as they presented the right tributes to the royal court (in bronze, jade, silk, slave workers, pretty women…), the Zhous actually had a national government
   But that too fell apart; the Kings and Lords failed in their duties, most seriously in failing to always maintain the proper system of succession, because young concubines kept trying to supersede the official heirs with their own sons; it was such a sibling conflict, with the King You driving away his heir, who then received help from his maternal grandfather, and barbarians, to fight his father, that caused the Zhous to lose their wide western territories. Today the Zhou King could only command Luoyang itself.

   3.
   “now that your bereavement is over, will you be taking up a Lu State appointment?”
   “Yang Huo suggested this to me, and I am still considering.”
   “That’s the Steward of the Ji household?”
   “That’s correct; Lord Ji has entrusted the entire clan affairs to him, and as Lord Ji is the Duke’s Chancellor, Yang Huo has also taken charge of state affairs on behalf of Lord Ji”
   “That’s quite a large role for a household steward; I believe he is well disposed towards your good self?”
   “It appears to be so; he honoured my household by paying respect to my mother at her wake – it was during this visit that I heard from him about the great banquet Lord Ji gave for all the knights of his clan, though I could not be a guest myself; immediately after the end of my bereavement, his messenger presented me with a roasted hog”
   “Now that is a major gift, the shrine offering category; I trust you were obliged by convention to pay him a visit to express thanks for the gift?”
   “Indeed, but I visited his manor when he was absent, and merely left my calling card without an audience”
   “Ah…a neutral gesture…”
   “But it so happens I encountered his entourage on the way home so we did have a conversation; he reminded me of the crime of wasted talent not put at the disposal of the state, and the pressing of time”
   “very earnest search for talent; I am sure he has high esteem for you; but you are still considering? perhaps you prefer to take up appointment in somewhat different circumstances?”
   Confucius felt somewhat nervous at the question; he glanced at his two attendants and wondered whether any of this conversation would get reported to Yang Huo one day; Yang Huo’s arrogant usurpation of the powers of his betters might soon lead to his downfall, but in the mean time one could hardly say so; now my student Yan Hui is a mere boy, scholastic and innocent, while my deputy Zi Lu might be a bit impulsive, but is surely loyal. As for Laozi’s people…
   “of course, as the recipient of a 1000 bushel state allowance, I am obliged to be of service, but my training classes may be considered sufficient service already”
   “and I have seen the material you edited for the students’ benefit; they were very well done; you have extracted the most important parts of the history, poetry and divination books and put them on just 3000 bamboo slices, so that a student can learn them all; I wish our own archive had enough students to justify that kind of effort; more students also mean more people to help out with the editing and compilation”
   “In any case, any official appointment I undertake will be in accordance with Zhou Conventions”
   “I am so glad to hear this; you know this might be considered old fashioned and bookish these days”
   “but necessary”
   “books capture the sages’ words, but not their spirits, not their deeds; we read the books, but we need to feel their spirits and trace their deeds”
   “to follow the Tao; but what is the Tao?”

   4.
   Laozi gave Confucius a toothless smile; then stuck out his tongue.
   “I see that the hard has decayed, but the soft has remained”
   “Very good; you see that jade dragon?”
   “which swallows its own tail? the end is also the beginning? the Tao goes on and on?”
   “but a step more; where does the world come from?”
   “in the beginning there was the void”
   “and from nothing arose everything”
   “now I see what you meant by ‘nothing’ is constant, because nothing is everything”
   “and therein lies the Tao; too much will turn into too little; clever is dumb; the strongest is the one who needs nothing”
   “so it would be futile for me to aspire to office?”
   “not at all; we are thing, not nothing, and we live in a world of thing; but when we have thing and do thing, our spirit should be with nothing”
   “…”
   “governing a state is like cooking a tender fish; turn it too many times, and it turns into a pile of mess”
   “…”
   “the more clever the people, the less governable is the state; only the ignorant are blissful; the wise, like yourself, are full of burden; cast off your egoistic desires and your spirits may soar free”

9. Chung Kwong
   March 26th, 2010 at 9:05 am

   

   西藏的回忆 Tibet Memories

   1.
   King Sonjanganbo was returning from his morning hunt; ahead, the Podala Palace gleamed in the sunlight – situated high on a cliff, the golden walls of the palace could be seen from miles away on the flat plateau of Lasa.
   He looked at the day’s haul being carried on the horse behind him: not bad – two mountain goats, a deer, and the rarest of rare, a wild boar; pigs do not take to the cold climate and rough scrubs of Tibetan highlands; in fact, they want tender shoots and roots, almost like humans. Goats and yaks are not as choosy; they eat anything, leaving the better plant material for human consumption.
   His wives did not approve of his enthusiasm for hunting: both the Princess of Nepal and the Princess from China were devout Buddhists who neither drank wine nor ate meat, and spent whole days reciting the sutras; it made time spent with them rather slow; in fact he spent little time with either, though by right he should be sharing their beds as often as possible so that his sons would be the grandsons of the Tang Emperor or Nepal King, which would be good for diplomacy. However, it was so much more enjoyable to spend time with Tibetan chiefs in drinking sessions, or those lovely maidens who had not been brought up so strictly.
   No, a king’s got to do what a king’s got to do; however much the princesses might disapprove of the taking of lives, a king’s job was to lead men into war, or at least, to hunt, riding on fast horses and shooting arrows. Those peasants who came from the east, up those deep river gauges, or the nomads that came from the west driving their yaks and goats, what do they know about being a king? They can worship the fire, stone, the monkey god, or snakes and dragons, refusing to change; the king has to go with whichever god whose blessing is needed to win, in war or in diplomacy. Tibet has known many gods, and right now, Buddha seems the most powerful, since both the Emperor of Tang and the princes of India worship Him; what choice does the King of Tibet have but to go along as well – but without abandoning any old gods that we used to worship; it would be unwise to offend the old even if one has to take up the new.
   And this afternoon he would have to confer with all those chanting Great Vehicle monks who thought they could save everyone else, the scholastic Lesser Vehicle monks who thought each could only save oneself , the swearing shamans who could do those firebreathing tricks, and the dragon worshipers who said their ancestor was that monkey king – about how to decorate the Great Light Temple, built for the Nepal princess, and the Lesser Light Temple, built for the Chinese princess. The fuss they would make about every little detail, and they could never agree on anything so that every little thing had to come before the King in the end.
   Yes a great king that knew everything; out in the country, peasants and herders who had not seen the two temples being built were already telling stories that he, using his magic power, constructed the two temples in one night – of course, if the king can command workmen to build what he orders, then the building arose from the king’s power; but one night.
   And stories about him being the wisest king, that when two women fought over a baby, the king judged the woman who gave up the struggle, for fear of injuring the child, as the mother; that when he was in Chang-an to seek the hand of Princess Wen-cheng, and was given the test of passing a silk thread through a nine-corner pearl, he did it with the help of an ant; that in anticipation of getting drunk at a banquet in the Tang palace, he took a ball of string and unreeled it as he went over, so that he could trace his way back at the end. All those stories he already heard as a small child in the nursery and were about great kings or sages of the past, but now had been put on him.
   Of course Sonjanganbo did achieve many things; orphaned at a young age, he managed to fight off usurpers, evil ministers, scheming relatives and foreign interferers, rebuilt the Tibetan army and reimposed sovereignty on all those baronial territories. Even the great Tang Emperor had to treat him with respect. But statecraft was such a bore.

   2.
   Tibetans say they were descended from the union of a tribe of monkeys and a tribe of witches; the monkey, they said, popped out of a stone, while the witch made fire. With fire, we turn bloody, tough flesh into tender, fragrant food, keep savage beasts at bay, burn away vegetation to clear land for planting while making a fertilizing ash, and most important, turn offerings to the gods into smoke, to rise to heaven for them to enjoy; after death, some of the people insist their bodies needed to burnt so that their souls can rise. But stones were also important; those that stand erect pointing at heaven – surely one could speak to heaven through them? corpses could be covered by a mound of rocks, and those who did bad deeds were punished by being stoned.
   Tibet used to have kings that came down from heaven to rule over people, and returned to heaven to make way for their sons who were also gods from heaven. The first king was found by the six shamans from the six tribes, who decided they needed a common king and went out in search. They found him descending the high mountain path, carried him back to the village on their shoulders and proclaimed him. The kings always returned to heaven when their sons were old enough to ride horses, so one need not put up with any one for that long. The Han people to the east of Tibet, and others, even more distant countries further east, did the same thing: heaven would send down a dragon to take their chiefs back up, when their sons were about ready to take over and old kings were no longer needed.
   But in Tibet this arrangement soon stopped, when the last king of that dynasty, who upset many people by importing different shamans from the west, and then upset even more people by asking them to leave, had a duel with a courtier and was killed in front of all the watching noblemen and soldiers; he obviously did not go to heaven in the usual way arranged by the shamans; in fact, people say the fight of the two men accidentally cut the ladder that linked heaven to earth, stopping all future kings from returning to heaven; instead, they left behind corpses that needed to be buried in soil, like the Han people did with theirs. This is what they would do with Sonjanganbo, while his soul returned to heaven to be with his ancestor gods, and tribal shamans would chant and burn offerings for all the gods.
   Now a new god, maybe the most powerful so far, needed to be included.

   3.
   “It pleases Sonjanganbo, King, Lord of Lasa, Siasion and Kamba, to decree that the Great Light Temple and Lesser Light Temple shall be decorated thus:
   On the front shall be drawn the Diamond-Steel Rod, as wished by the Chanting Monks;
   On the back shall be drawn the Praying Wall, as wished by the Scholastic Monks;
   On the left shall be drawn the swastika, as wished by the shamans and followers;
   On the right shall be drawn the mesh pattern, as wished by the tibetan natives.
   So signed and sealed on this Day of the New Year”

10. Chung Kwong
    March 26th, 2010 at 9:06 am

    

    the White Horse 白马

    1.
    Dhama was meditating under the bote tree, one of the many trees that Buddha meditated under though not the one under which he attained Nirvana; that tree was long ago enclosed inside the wall of the great temple that was built on that sacred site; the temple now attracted many pilgrims, all very much wishing to share in the enlighted way as Buddha directed.
    Except of course that Buddha said he directed no one, that each must seek one’s own enlightenment. However, that did not stop people from believing that merely by living ascetically, or chanting sutras, or touching the various relics left behind by Buddha despite his not wishing these to be elevated to the divine level, that they could share in the holiness he attained.
    Since Buddha left this world many different sects of Buddha’s followers had emerged. Some believed that Buddha meant his followers to strive for Nirvana for themselves only, that enlightenment was a small vehicle for personal use only – by releasing us from our desires we release ourselves from suffering; others believed that they can make efforts to save everyone, that Buddha left behind a system to spread enlightenment, a message that enlightened by providing understanding and knoweldge, the great vehicle.
    What did Dhama believe in? He was not sure; he was striving to find out what was true; he was seeking enlightenment for himself, merely because he did not know how to give it to others; he did not have a message.
    A shadow fell on him; he looked up to see a foreigner, obviously from an oriental country, standing in front of him, wearing the safron robe of a monk; Dhama himself wore a dark robe, not because he belonged to a dark robe sect since he was affiliated with no one; simply that he had no other clothes.
    While the stranger was struggling to form the words, Dhama anticipated him “You are looking for the Temple of the Sacred Bote?” as this is where most monks and pilgrims coming here wish to go to.
    “I..I was there already…I now want to find other holy men to talk to”
    “I am not a holy man; I am only someone looking for the way”
    “I am too; in my own country we know only one way; I come here to find all the different ways and true words of the Buddha, like Master Xuanzhuang did many years ago”

    2
    Dhama led his camel through the streets of Chang-an, dodging people, carts, horseriders, other camels…, now and then stopping by the side of the road to let the entourage of some important official through with a clear path, now and then stopping to ask someone the way to the White Horse Monastery. Most did not know; others vaguely pointed him in one direction or another. Eventually a boy said “not far; I take you there”, and led him to the place. It was a tumbled down building that must have been grand once, but had obviously been unoccupied for years.
    So this is Chang-an; and this is the White Horse Monastery, where the great monk Xuanzhuang kept the hundreds of volumes of Buddhist sutra that he bought back from India, riding the legendary white horse that, some say, was the son of a dragon king, doing penance for his sins; with a team of helpers, Xuanzhuang translated the volumes into Chinese, to spread the authentic words of Buddha; the very same words that had spread far and wide since Buddha uttered them. On Dhama’s way along the famed Silk Road, he met Tibetans, blue-eyed people and others, all professing to be followers of Buddha, even someone from a land very far to the east, separated from China by wide oceans.
    Dhama sat down beneath a shady tree, and lit a fire in his little stove to boil himself a bowl of gruel; for more than two years he had treaded from village to village, begging for alms to keep himself fed, till he met a generous wealthy man who gave him a camel and enough provision to last his whole journey; but now it had ended, in nowhere; when he set out, he did not know what he was seeking, but if he sought nothing, nothing was exactly what he found.
    “White horse is not horse”, he had read in a book about notable sayings from China “If one asks for a horse and receives a white horse, one is satisfied, but if one asks for a white horse but receives a horse of another colour, one is not, because horse is not white horse, and white horse is not horse”. Ah those rhetoricians, Chinese or Indian; one need to be careful and alert when talking to them; they can twist the meaning of words and sentences to suit any argument they wish to make. My journey has ended in nothing, but they would say, nothing is thing, because before there was the world there was nothing, and the world came from the nothing…
    He came to China seeking the White Horse Monastery, and found it, and found nothing; he had nothing else in mind to seek, but the quest had not ended; he had seen the White Horse Monastery and now must move on; seeking nothing, he wondered what he would now find…
    As he left the southern bank of the Wei River and went towards to Hua hills, he set the camel free to roam on its own, continuing on foot up the mountain paths. Feeling thirsty, he stopped by a spring to take a drink, but a young girl passing by stopped him “Master, this water is poisonous; do not drink it”, and directed him to another spring on the opposite hillside “this water is safe” She was young, and very pretty
    “but I see birds bathing in the pond beneath that spring; they do not die”
    “it is a slow poison, but people who drink daily from it would sicken and die”
    Death was no horrible thing, since you merely got reborn, as someone else, or something else; it was how you lived that mattered, whether you lived in the right way; it was merely up to you to find the way; looking up the cliff above the (drinkable) spring, he saw a small cave with a path cut in the rock leading to it and asked the girl “what is that cave used for?”; he heard that it was once used, hundreds of years ago, occupied by two hermits, brothers who were refugees from Shang tyranny who, however, objected to Zhou “rebels” usurping the Shang mandate of heaven, and refused to eat produce from any Zhou territory, thus starving themselves to death, since all territory under heaven owed allegence to the Zhou King.
    Dhama decided it was a good idea for him to live there, for a little while at least.

    3.
    Coming out of his cave at the end of the day’s meditation session, he found the girl coming up the stone path, carrying a small sack of rice. The village people had again sent her to bring alms to him.
    She had been there often, sometimes with others from the village; but while the other villagers stayed below and merely bowed to him and then watched, she was the one that came into the cave to set down his supplies: rice, vegetables, firewood, occasionally some clothing; sedentary and well fed for a change, he had even put on a little weight.
    Occasionally she would simply come without bringing anything, and sat in the cave quietly, watching him meditate. He wondered whether she too wished to become a meditating ascetic, unusual that might be for a woman, but he did not ask; whatever she wished to do with her life, whether to marry a village boy and start a family, the husband plowing and she weaving, or to live alone all her life, was for her to choose on her own. He was however happy to see her. As an ascetic, he had no use for a woman, but was pleased to see her interest in his search and, apparently, sharing in the spirit of it.
    Now and then they fell into a conversation, and he told her about his past search, about him seeing the bote tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment, now in this great temple that many pilgrims visited each day to touch the tree and see the other things Buddha left behind, such that the monks were busy running an enterprise and had no time for contemplation, which they thought unnecessary since what they were doing were already good for spreading the message of Buddha and helping others to achieve enlightenment for themselves. He also told her about the monk from China he met, who told him about Xuanzhuang and White Horse Monastery, and how he came to make the same journey of the White Horse that carried the hundreds of sutra books to China, simply to share the experience as part of his search.
    One day a couple of young men came to the cave; they prostrated themselves on the ground before him and called him master, to which he objected: Buddha did not believe in prostration and idol worship; they told him they had moved into the area from a neighbouring village after hearing about the hermit monk from the west meditating in this cave; they had built themselves a hut in a grassy alcove around the corner and invited him to live in their hut as their teacher and master, because they wished to learn from him the right way to live and to achieve Nirvana; Dhama declined, and told them that it is for each to seek his own way and he had nothing to teach them; but he commended them on their desire and wished them well.
    The boys were not at all discouraged: the master’s humble reply only revealed his depth and profundity. They stuck around but did not bother him in any way. When the village people heard that the master monk from the west now had two disciples living next to him, they began to bring alms for them too; further, the boys, with help from villagers, cleared some land on a nearby slope and made a terrace field out of it, planting some vegetables and seed grains brought by a villager, and fertilizing the crop with their own manure; soon other boys, some from very far away, began to arrive – they too heard about the strange western monk and wanted to learn from him; receiving the same rebuff but also not discouraged, they built more huts and cultivated more land; before long, a small community had been sprung up in the hills, with the villagers contributing towards its upkeep in just small ways; some of the boys even started to perform for their patron villagers chanting sessions and rituals, which were quite strange to Dhama but were presumably familiar to Chinese disciples of Buddha.
    Dhama did not involve himself in any of these activities, but now and then looked at them from a distance, often with the girl following him as he went around. Sometimes she would bring him news that yet another group of boys had arrived, and take him to where the newcomers had settled down. The community had by then spread over a wide area, and the hill slopes around the cave had become almost like another village. The earliest boys had taken on the role of planners, directing newcomers to suitable sites for huts and farm plots, organizing the distribution of seeds and tools, the storage of the vegetables and grains harvested, and cooking/eating in a mess hut which was also used for group chantings and sutra studies. Through it all Dhama, vaguely looked up to by the community from a distance, continued to lead his own separate ways.

    4.
    Another day, he was walking along the stone path and was pleased to find the girl coming to see him; as she came closer, she stumbled a little and he stretched out his hand to steady her. He found her continuing to sway forward, her soft body closely touching his bosom, her curves he could feel through her thin summer dress. Instead of springing back, she continued to lean against him, and he felt stirrings inside him he had never felt before.
    Gently he pushed her away from him, wondering if she might be suddenly feeling weak or fainting, but she looked perfectly fine, in fact radiant. She smiled at him in a way he had never seen before, and he felt the inside stirring even stronger than just now. It frightened him. She turned around to leave, but as he watched her go down the path, she turned back several times, flashing the same smile at him, till she turned the corner and he could no longer see her. Yet, he stood there on the path for a long time, till it started to get dark.
    He turned into the cave and got ready for bed, but heard a sound at the entrance. It was the girl returning. As she saw him, she removed her dress and revealed to him her silky smooth skin and jade like curves. He started to tremble and pant. Kneeling before him, she removed his trousers and placed his throbbing manhood into her mouth. In a matter of seconds, the cumulated desire of so many years, which he did not even know was there, had been drained out of him. Just as quickly, she put her dress back on and left.
    As he layed in his bed, still trembling, he remembered stories about the fox fairy that turned into beautiful maidens to seduce young men and collect their life spirits; hermits and ascetic monks would also be visited by the fairies, for the life spirits of the holy men were much more powerful than that of an ordinary young man. So this is what happened to him? A life time’s seeking and asceticism destroyed in one moment? Flesh has won over spirit?
    After a sleepless night, he went out of his cave to walk around, hoping to clear his head; the thriving village was all round him, boys going about their daily business, all disciples of the holy master from a foreign land; yet he had nothing to say to them, no part to play in their life; they at least believed in what they were doing; did he? He caught sight of the girl, and she ignored him, but was closely following the boy who started it all, whom now everyone was addressing as the “abbot”, as he very much deserved to be called. She flashed to the “abbot” the same smile shown to Dhama the day before.
    Stopping next to the poisonous spring, Dhama watched birds chirping away bathing in its water, and realized that his quest had come to an end; stooping down, he scooped up the water again and again, gulping it down…
    Many days later, villagers bringing alms found him dead in his cave; he was sitting upright in his usual meditation posture, but his soul had departed while he was meditating. To the villagers, it was obvious Dhama found nirvana.
    No one dared to touch the holy body, and it did not decay; the poison in the spring water had over many days of drinking seeped throughout his body, preserving it from the rotten elements, the perfect sacred relic for the future Hua Hills White Horse Monastery, one of the greatest monasteries of China.

11. Tarot For Love
    June 2nd, 2011 at 3:48 am

    

    Tarot really helps you to get a much better understanding of yourself. It teaches you the underlying factors which are even concealed to yourself. By doing so Tarot can bring serenity in yourself and give you a better life.