Читать книгу Tales of a Chinese Grandmother - Frances Carpenter - Страница 12

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INSIDE THE BRIGHT RED GATE

THE TWO HALVES of the bright red gate in the gray wall had been opened for the day. Old Chang, the blue-gowned gatekeeper of the Ling household, had already wiped clean the glossy red varnish that covered their wood sides. He was now busy polishing the brass bird-heads from whose beaks hung heavy rings that served as gate handles.

"The Old Mistress will come soon. The gate must be in order," the man muttered to himself as he slowly rubbed the yellow metal.

Outside, along the narrow street of the Chinese city, between the gray walls that rose high on each side of it, men were passing back and forth on their early morning errands. Inside this red gate people were stirring. All the low one-story houses built round the Ling courtyards were coming to life.

In one of the inner courts two children, a boy named Ah Shung, and his sister, Yu Lang, stood before a door that opened upon a covered veranda under a curving roof of gray tiles.

"We are here, bowing before you, Grandmother," the boy said as he rapped on the wooden door frame.

"Are you well, Lao Lao?" asked the girl who was standing just behind him.

"Ai, Little Bear. Ai, my precious Jade Flower, it is you. Have you eaten already?" a voice called from within.

The two children bowed low as the old woman came to the door and stood there for a moment looking them over. Ah Shung and Yu Lang admired their grandmother. She was the oldest and thus the most important person they knew. In their land, where age was treated with such great respect, everyone wished to be thought as old as possible. The name their grandmother liked best to be called was "Lao Lao," which means "Old Old One."

In her elegant garments of dark silk lined with soft squirrel fur this old Chinese grandmother made a fine figure. She was not very tall, but from the tip of her carefully combed gray hair to the tiny points of her wee satin shoes she seemed to the children the very picture of a great lady.

Lao Lao was wearing a short coat, all of plum color with a beautiful pattern of flowers woven in its silk threads. Her long blue skirt almost covered the loose fur-lined silk pantaloons which she had on underneath. Her embroidered satin shoes, which could just be seen below her heavy silk skirt, were not more than four or five inches long, for her feet had been squeezed into tight stiff bindings after the old Chinese fashion. A gold pin was thrust through the coil of gray hair that lay flat against her neck, carved pieces of precious green jade-stone hung from her ears, and gold bracelets and rings adorned her hands and her wrists.

As she looked at her grandchildren the old woman's slanting eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her strong, kindly face lighted up as she asked them about the breakfast they had just eaten in the family hall.

Ah Shung and Yu Lang were handsome Chinese children. Their skin was creamy yellow and their black eyes were set aslant above their high cheekbones. They were well dressed, as was proper for children of the wealthy Ling family. Both wore their black hair long, in neat braids down their backs. These children lived many years ago, before new ways came to the Flowery Kingdom of China. In those old days all Chinese men and boys, as well as young girls, wore their hair in such long braids or queues. Ah Shung's forehead was shaved high and smooth, while his sister's brow was hidden by a straight fringe of hair cut square above her slanting black eyes. Near its end the little girl's shining black braid was wound neatly for several inches with some bright scarlet thread.

The coming of winter had brought with it the "Small Cold," as the Chinese sometimes call the first chilly days. About the doors and the windows, cracks in the houses had been sealed up with paper to keep out the cold winds. Fires were burning under the brick beds and in little brass or iron stoves set out in the rooms. But these did not give nearly enough warmth, so everyone had put on several suits of thick clothing.

Both Ah Shung and Yu Lang had on short jackets and long trousers of thick wadded cotton. The little girl's pantaloons hung loose about her tiny feet, while her brother's were wrapped tightly about his ankles, just above his shoes of dark cloth. Over his padded suits Ah Shung had on a long gown of heavy blue cloth, and on top of this a short jacket of black. Yu Lang's outer garments were of padded silk of gay colors. Her pantaloons were leaf green and her jacket bright blue. Like her grandmother's, the little girl's feet were tightly bound up so as to make them seem small.

"Call Fu," the old woman said to her maid, Huang Ying, who was helping her down the two stone steps that led out into the courtyard. "I am ready to look to the household. Ah Shung and Yu Lang may walk beside us as we go."

"Fu is here, Aged and Honorable Lady," said a soft voice at her side. A tall man stood before her, bowing respectfully, his hands at his sides. It was Fu, the number one servant, who had charge of all the men and women who tended the wants of this family of Ling. Each of the other servants looked up to Fu because he knew how to read and even to write a little. The only one who thought herself more important than Fu was old Wang Lai, the number one nurse. She had cared for the father of Ah Shung and Yu Lang when he was a child, and she always let people know that she had served the Ling family even longer than Fu.

Inside the bright red gate Grandmother Ling ruled like an empress. Every few days, leaning heavily upon the arm of one of her maids, she would toddle on her bound feet through the courtyards which lay one behind the other inside the high gray walls. She looked into every corner, for, as she used to say to the children, "When the mistress shuts her eye, the maids fall asleep."

At the red gate the Old Mistress, as the servants called her, stopped to chat with Chang, the gatekeeper. They stood out of the wind, behind a tall screen made of bricks which faced the red gate and sheltered the entrance court from the curious gazes of passers-by. Ah Shung and Yu Lang ran around to the street side of the screen. They wanted to look at the painted green dragon that twisted and turned across its broad face. The huge beast seemed to be trying to catch in his claws a round scarlet ball which their grandmother told them was meant to be a flaming pearl.

"That wall keeps off the bad spirits that fly about us through the air," Ah Shung explained for the thousandth time to his sister. "The Old Old One says the spirits that ride on the wind have to go straight. They cannot turn corners. So when bad spirits fly in through the red gate, they meet this strong screen. They must go back. And the sight of our good dragon sends them flying out faster than they came in."

Grandmother Ling and many other Chinese believed in spirits, both good and bad. They took greatest care to protect themselves from them. To be doubly safe, this family had set up a second spirit screen inside the round Moon Gate that led from the entrance yard to the courtyard beyond it.

The Old Mistress inspected the entrance court carefully. She looked at the houses on each side of the red gate where Chang and some of the other men servants lived. She peered into the near-by courts where the horses and traveling carts were kept and where several little two-wheeled carriages called "jinrikishas" were lined up, waiting until the men of the family should wish to go out. She talked with the sturdy riksha men, each of whom trotted as fast as a horse between the shafts of his small carriage when he pulled it along smoothly over the streets of the city.

Ah Shung and Yu Lang followed their grandmother through the Moon Gate, the round opening cut in the lower white wall that separated the entrance court from the courtyard beyond. They made their way around the white spirit screen there and then crossed the paved courtyard. Bits of green grass were growing up between the gray paving bricks, and huge china flowerpots, filled with dwarf evergreens, lined the way to the steps of the gray one-story houses that were built with verandas upon the open square.

The children admired especially the low brick building that faced the Moon Gate. This was the hall where important guests were received. Its roof of gray tiles was more gracefully curved at the corners and its latticework windows, backed with white paper to let in the light, were more beautifully made than those of any of the other houses inside the red gate. Little wind bells that hung under its eaves tinkled in the strong breeze. The smaller houses on either side of this courtyard served as library and study for the men of the family. Ah Shung and Yu Lang always behaved particularly well when they were called to meet visitors in this Courtyard of Politeness.

The two children felt more at home in the second courtyard beyond the entrance court. This was the first of the family courts. In its central building was the hall where everyone gathered for meals and where close friends were received. Here Grandmother Ling had her own apartment, and on one side were the rooms of some of the older children of the family. A house on the left in this courtyard was given over to the parents of Ah Shung and Yu Lang, and the children themselves occupied, with their nurse, the low building along its other side. Their father was the oldest son of Grandmother Ling. So, of course, he had a better house on a more important court than his younger brothers, who lived with their wives and their children in the two smaller courts behind.

The Ling household was large. As was the custom, all the grown-up sons and their families lived here together inside the same walls. Many servants were needed for so many masters. Indeed, such great numbers of people lived inside the Ling gate that it seemed almost like a town.

"Sky-well" is the meaning of one Chinese name for a courtyard such as those where Ah Shung and his sister passed their days and their nights. No doubt the Chinese give it this name because the courtyard is so shut in by houses and walls that the only outside thing to be seen is the sky overhead.

There were many gray brick houses built around the Ling sky-wells. There was the Hall of the Ancestors where, this family believed, the spirits of their forefathers dwelt, their own special places shown by little red tablets of wood, each marked with a name in glistening gold. There was the schoolhouse where Scholar Shih, the family teacher, lived and where all the children inside the red gate had their daily lessons. There was the house where the men-cooks prepared the family food, and then there were all the small houses where the men and the maid servants slept.

"We shall end our walk in the Garden of Sweet Smells," said Grandmother Ling as they went through a gate, shaped like a flower vase, cut in the white wall. Giving orders to the number one gardener, the old woman walked slowly along its neat little paths, over a tiny humpbacked bridge of white stone that rose above the pool where dragon-eyed goldfish with long flowing tails were swimming about in the clear water. She noted some rocks sliding out of their places in the tiny mountain that had been built up in the center of the garden, and she found that a tile had fallen from the roof of the garden pavilion where the family often drank tea on warm summer days.

"Go now to the schoolmaster, Ah Shung," Lao Lao commanded as she came again to her own courtyard. "A boy who does not learn is like a knife with a dull edge. See that you work well. And you, Precious Pearl," she said to Yu Lang, "come with me for an hour with the embroidery needle."

The boy and his sister did not see each other again until the midday meal. Then all the Ling family came together. At midday, and again each evening, the great family hall rang with their chatter and laughter as they took their places about the tables. At the family table Grandmother Ling sat in the place of honor. Her chair was just in front of a high narrow side table of shining carved wood. Upon this, between two tall scarlet candles, stood the statue of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, whose name is Gwan Yin. From painted scrolls, hung upon the gray wall above her head, two of the Ling forefathers, dressed in rich robes of red and blue, looked down with calm faces upon the family gathered beneath them. About the table with its red cloth sat Grandmother Ling's three sons and their wives and their older children. Ah Shung and Yu Lang and their younger cousins from the other courts ate with the nurses at smaller tables at the sides of the room.

Maid servants moved to and fro, bringing bowls of steaming white rice and dish after dish of meat and salted vegetables to eat with it. There was chicken, pork, and fish, turnips, carrots, and cabbage, and a kind of bean cheese. All these different foods were lifted from the thin blue eating bowls with the two little sticks which served these children instead of forks. Foreigners call these Chinese eating-sticks "chopsticks. " This really means "quick sticks."

"We come to the table to eat, not to carve," Grandmother Ling would say when someone told her of the queer customs of other lands, where people used knives and forks. So all the food of this household was cut up into small pieces before it was set on the table. Grandmother Ling used her own little chopsticks of ivory and silver like a pair of tongs. She picked up her food daintily and she popped it into her mouth without losing a grain of rice or a drop of good sauce.

Ah Shung and Yu Lang ate quickly. Their chopsticks of bamboo flew back and forth between their bowls and their mouths. They ate a great deal at breakfast, as well as at midday and in the evening. At four in the afternoon they had an extra meal of tea and steaming hot dumplings. Grandmother Ling would have thought they were ill if they had not stuffed themselves full or if they had laid down their chopsticks before their rice bowls were empty.

The Old Old One often had special food served to her in order to give her the strength she needed in her old age. She liked swallow's-nest soup, flavored with the sticky gum with which these birds put their nests together. She sometimes had a stew made from a certain kind of chicken whose bones were black as coal. Into this stew she liked to sift some powdered deer's horn which she thought an excellent tonic. White peony root, chopped very fine and cooked with the chicken, made it even better. As a relish she often ate pickled eggs, that had been kept so many years that they had turned to black jelly; and the tea with which she quenched her thirst was flavored with jasmine flowers.

Nothing was too fine for the Old Mistress. She came first with everyone inside the red gate. Since their father was dead, her grown-up sons asked her advice about everything they did, and they even received their spending money from her. Grandmother Ling had as much to do with the children as their own mothers. They learned more in the hours they spent at her side than they did in the schoolroom.

Ah Shung and Yu Lang were very fond of their grandmother. No one knew so many splendid stories as she. When she was a child her father had had her taught to read and to write just like her brothers. With her soft rabbit-hair brush and the sweet-smelling black paste upon her ink stone she could make even more beautiful Chinese words than Scholar Shih, who was now teaching the children to write. She could read from the paper books, with their delicate covers and their soft pages filled with up-and-down rows of strange black word pictures.

After their evening meal the Lings sat for a time drinking bowls of hot liquid which had the same delicate color as a yellow-green bamboo leaf. This was their tea, which they took instead of water.

"We are to go into Lao Lao's room tonight," Ah Shung said to his sister and cousins as he emptied his tea bowl. The boy's black eyes glistened. He liked nothing better than the family gatherings in his grandmother's apartment when often poems were read and stories were told.

Grandmother Ling knew many tales about dragons and unicorns, about firebirds, or phoenixes, that were born in the sun, and the Heavenly Dog that tried to swallow the moon. She knew about spirits that ruled the wind and the water. She knew about foxes that turned into people, and about the Jade Rabbit that dwelt in the moon. Gods that flew up to heaven, men who lived forever, and beautiful maidens from the Heavenly Kingdom were found in her stories.

In the days when Ah Shung and Yu Lang dwelt inside the red gate of the Lings', the Chinese people really believed in spirits and gods and such fairy-tale creatures. Even today many Chinese are not sure that they do not exist. Lao Lao, who told these strange stories, and these children, who listened, had never a doubt but that they were true.