Translated by Fossilised Firefly.
Though a member of the Lu clan that Xue Feibai hated to the bone, this Lu Zihua proved to be far from a hideous monster. Rather, he was genteel man, modest and amiable with a pleasing voice.
“You moved away in anger after the lawsuit and shunned everyone from Shanghai. But tell me, what do you gain from all this? Why go to such lengths? Even if you hate the Lu for offending your family, the case has been settled in court on account of ‘insufficient evidence’. The Lu clan isn’t so shameless as to claim you by force. They can’t pester you anymore. No matter what, we were studymates in childhood and schoolmates as adults— even now, we’re still relatives by marriage. Isn’t it too heartless, making yourself so unapproachable?”
Feibai’s voice had turned hoarse. “What can I say? I’m heartless by nature. Do as you please, Brother Lu.”
“Ruiguan,” Lu Zihua pleaded earnestly, “I know you hate me to the core, but the affection I had for you in our student days could not have been truer. I didn’t approach and befriend you because you’re my uncle’s posthumous child. As for me writing the complaint to court, I had no other choice. I’m the only Lu who’s literate. If I didn’t write it, no one could … and yes, I admit I wasn’t always right, but I really believed that recognising your proper ancestry was the right thing to do …”
He paused and huffed a bitter laugh. “When you sued back, the County Magistrate stripped me of my scholar’s hat and cancelled my exam results. I’ve only just climbed back to where I was.1 Isn’t this revenge enough for you? Can’t you finally let go?”
Blank-faced, Feibai turned away. Su Mo rushed to him and let Feibai drape an arm over his shoulder to steady himself. It was not his turn to speak, but no one would speak for Feibai if he stayed silent. So, he said, “Mr Lu, my Master is busy and hasn’t the time to discuss the past. If you have no other business, please take your leave.”
Lu Zihua had not expected a servant to be so bold as to send off his Master’s guest. Shocked, he inspected the pair and his brows furrowed as a look of understanding gradually appeared. A while later, he nodded. “All right. Since you’re evicting me, I’ll leave immediately. But I do have an important message to convey. Please allow me to speak.” As this message did not concern himself, he spoke bluntly without beating around the bush.
“This junior has come on behalf of His Lordship the Duke to ask for a response from your honourable self. The word is that your honourable self and the Young Master Xu Qingjun have recently enjoyed each other’s congenial company and maintained a close relationship. His Lordship the Duke said, ‘I have only one younger brother, and I have always spoiled him. Mister Xue Feibai has talent as encompassing as the seas, so if the gentleman is willing to teach him, I cannot possibly ask for anything better. However, social customs in the southeast are asinine, and immoral men are fond of gossip. I fear that some rumours and slanders have damaged the gentleman’s pristine reputation. If this causes the scholarly circles to view Mister Xue with prejudice and attack him, my younger brother will be guilty of a terrible crime.’ With that, he prepared a gift of a thousand gold and entrusted me to pass his regards to your honourable self.”
His message delivered, Lu Zihua waited quietly for Feibai’s response, but all he received was a burst of cold laughter. “It seems that Brother Lu has progressed leaps and bounds since we parted ways. Now, you’re acting as the envoy of the Duke.”
“You overpraise me,” Lu Zihua said.
Feibai’s reply was frigid. “I was just packing my bags to return to Suzhou. I’m not lacking in funds so I won’t have need for His Lordship’s generous gift! Tell His Lordship that Xue Feibai is a Presented Graduate of the yellow ranks, a scholar and an official.2 If he has a message to pass, he ought to find someone respectable to speak with me. I don’t make a habit of interacting with lackeys of the rich.”
Lu Zihua’s face darkened. Seing that Feibai had turned away, he could only cup his hands in farewell. But after taking a few steps towards the door, he looked back one more time. “Ruiguan,” he sighed, soft and sudden. “I’m so regretful. If I hadn’t enticed you onto this path of vice in our youth, you wouldn’t have ended up like this, falling in with anyone without a care for his social status or the consequences of your actions ….”
Feibai’s breathing grew ever more erratic and Su Mo leapt over to push Lu Zihua out of the door before he could finish, screaming, “Get out!” He summoned the attendants and gatekeeper, all of them brandishing brooms until they drove Lu Zihua onto the street. Finally satisfied, Su Mo turned back and closed the gate behind them. Inside, Feibai was still leaning motionlessly against the door, his face corpse-pale. Su Mo spared no heed to the onlookers and rushed to wrap him in his arms. He had to call Feibai’s name multiple times before he heard a mutter: “Tell him to get lost.”
“He’s already left,” Su Mo soothed.
Feibai stared into the void and said nothing. Su Mo’s heart wrung with pain as he asked, “Was … he your first …”
An icy voice cut him off. “You can get lost too.”
Taken aback, Su Mo only thought that it was his anger speaking, but Feibai broke free and withdrew. “If I recall correctly,” he said callously, “you were also born a Lu. I never want to see anyone with this surname for the rest of my life. You can fuck off too. We won’t meet again.”
“I’ve already told you we aren’t related,” Su Mo explained anxiously. “Why are you still taking your anger out on me?”
But Feibai brooked no argument and raised his voice to call for the servants. “Take Su Mo’s rucksack and throw it outside! Prepare the carriage, I’m leaving immediately! And don’t let him follow! Once I return to Suzhou Prefecture, I’ll write to the authorities and have them remove you from the bondservant register. You’re free to go wherever you want, and it’s your choice if you want to end your life. In short, you’ve nothing to do with the Xue family any longer.”
As Feibai had a habit of saying vicious things in anger, the servants, Su Mo included, did not take him seriously at first. An attendant even advised Su Mo in private to grit his teeth and bear it, telling him “Go along with the Master for now. Once his anger dissipates, everything will be all right.”
Alas, impatience was one of Feibai’s greatest flaws. When he discovered the servants dragging their feet, he simply forwent the carriage and walked to the stables, looking for a mount himself. Of course, he had never stepped foot in there before, let alone know how to prepare the saddle and reins. Seeing his anxiousness to leave, the servants had no choice but to help him onto the horse. By now, Feibai had no care for anyone else and rode off alone with a pat on the horse’s rump. Initially, Su Mo assumed he was merely being impetuous and chased after him on horseback in case he suffered an accident. Yet Feibai remained beyond his reach even after riding ten li out of the city.3 A note arrived by postal courier that evening, instructing Su Mo to cancel the lease on the Qinhuai residence. “He’s making good on his word,” Su Mo concluded. “He’ll part ways and never see Xu Qingjun again.” Mollified, Su Mo returned to the city where he joined the servants to clean up the mess their master left behind.
He could not have expected that two days later, the housekeeper would arrive from Suzhou, settling the rent for the riverside residence and handing Su Mo two papers. “An indenture of service and a document written by Master’s own hand releasing you from servitude,” he explained. “Master said that you can ask for as much money as you want. It’ll be paid to you in silver notes.4 You must take some even if you don’t want to because from today onwards, your life or death will have nothing to do with the Xue household, and you’ll have no need to return again.”
Su Mo’s mouth dropped in shock. He stared at the housekeeper in disbelief that Feibai would things escalate to such extremes for no apparent reason. Still hoping to repair their relationship, he mounted a horse and galloped towards Suzhou Prefecture at a breakneck pace. The land route was much faster and he arrived at the prefectural city in less than a day, but he was refused entry to the Xue residence by the gatekeeper.
“Master said that you’re no longer on the bondservant register. You have no connection to the Xue clan anymore so you can’t come in. Besides, there’s no use even if you did—Master has gone to stay in the countryside.”
In the few years Su Mo spent as a servant, his attention had always been devoted to Feibai. Such single mindedness now returned to haunt him as he found himself before a dead end: having never managed household affairs, Su Mo was clueless about the Xue’s property and estates. Undeterred, his search took him through every crook and cranny of Suzhou Prefecture. When this failed, he branched out to the various counties under Suzhou’s jurisdiction, but even those inquiries proved futile. Finally, he recalled that: “Feibai’s family were originally from Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture. His properties should all be in Songjiang.”
Not a Songjiang native himself, Su Mo could only ask the Xue servants for help. Yet as luck would have it, the housekeeper had accompanied Feibai into the countryside and was nowhere to be found. Su Mo was on unfriendly terms with the remaining servants who might have helped him. It took countless pleas before someone finally told him: “The Xue family is immensely rich. They have land and properties in all three counties of Songjiang, and at least seventeen or eighteen estates. But I tell you, if Master wants to sulk in silence, he won’t let anyone find him. I say you should stay and wait in Suzhou Prefecture. Master will tire of the rural loneliness eventually and come back.”
This wait dragged on into an eternity. It was around Autumn Equinox when he returned from Jinling, but white dew had turned into frost in the blink of an eye;5 in the span of another, winter had fallen with the flying snow. Su Mo had not taken the housekeeper’s money. Days of searching exhausted his savings, leaving him homeless on the streets and struggling to survive. Out of options, he could only beg his relatives in Wujiang County for help.
A poor man with no properties to his name, Su Mo’s sole shabby hut had been taken back by his relatives after he sold himself into servitude, so he was still without a home. At last, some relatives took pity on him and advised, “Since you’ve been freed from the bondservant register, why not find a living in the village and start again? You’re not a young man anymore—it’s time to start thinking about starting a family and a career.”
There were tutoring jobs to be found mid-winter in the countryside. The only way to make ends meet was writing spring couplets and copying books.6 Though trapped in Wujiang county by his rice bowl, the Xue residence never left Su Mo’s mind. “Has Master Xue returned to Suzhou Prefecture?” he asked every few days, much to the annoyance of his neighbours.
“Master Xue has already freed you. What are you going back for! Are you trying to borrow money from him or begging him to take you back?”
Su Mo only shook his head. “No,” he thought. “The only thing I want from him is a straightforward answer. That way, if I die, I can at least rest in peace.”
But even as winter ended and spring returned, this question remained unasked. When the New Year came, the countryside around town was blanketed by snow as thick as goose down. In the temple to the village god where he was temporarily staying, Su Mo sat atop the threshold and watched the six-petalled flowers as they danced and swirled through the air.7 All of a sudden, he could not bear any longer. He stood up and left all of his meagre belongings behind. With only two cold buns in hand, Su Mo set out on foot in the direction of Suzhou city.
He fell and stumbled along the way, crossing bridges and fording rivers. His feet trampled on a jumble of broken jade and he lost himself in the relentless flurry of falling snow. When he finally arrived at the city, it was already the afternoon of the second day. He no longer detoured to Shantang Street to check if Master Xue had returned. Instead, he walked directly to Tiger Hill, his mind turning dazedly: “I remember it was also a snowy day like this. Trying to forget my woes, I walked from Wujiang to Tiger Hill to enjoy the snow. There, I met him, a karmic debt from my past life, now my fated love. From that moment onwards, I lost any hope of escape from this Sea of Suffering.”
The heavy snow, combined with the New Year season, meant that Tiger Hill was empty of tourists. A thin layer of ice had even formed over the Sword Pond, freezing its green ripples. No human presence marred the Thousand Man Rock; it was covered by a pure, white expanse, as if encased in a massive funeral shroud. Su Mo walked towards it in a trance. Half crouching and half kneeling, his finger began to draw in the snow before his mind could keep pace. By the time that he came to his senses, he realised that he had writing, not drawing, all along. There in the snow were the lyrics of “River Waters” that he had heard Feibai sing the very first time they met.
“Which way our affections flow is a seed sown in past lives; in the present, we come upon our fated bonds. How can I be the shrike that flies towards the east, deserting the west-bound swallow? How it makes me yearn and wish, my heart filled with longing, ready to grind a pestle into a needle, never shirking from weariness. See how our youth flashes past like lightning. I only hope to capture a moment of fleeting brilliance so that I won’t betray the wish I’ve carried for half my life.”
Something seemed to snap within him, and he could no longer suppress the laughter that bubbled from his chest. He laughed, loud and hearty, until tears welled from his eyes. “But in the end, the shrike still flew east, leaving behind the swallow with whom it once shared a perch. I sought to fulfil my wish, but I received nothing; I sought for clarity, for understanding, but I received nothing. The winter snow of Gusu shall be my resting place.”
Stumbling, he stood up and left Tiger Hill without another glance back. Suzhou Prefecture was dressed in the white of mourning from sky to earth. Icicles, three inches in length, hung from the roofs of houses that lined the narrow streets, their cold, sharp glint flasing in the corners of his eyes. Even the swept streets were frozen over, as slippery as crystal glass. Riding was impossible in these conditions, so the other traveller walked towards him, reins in hand. Su Mo stepped aside to make space, but the man turned around and stared at him before suddenly exclaiming, “Aren’t you the Xue’s servant, Su Mo? Why have you fallen like so?”
Footnotes
1. The examinations were structured hierarchically. You had to first pass the three Apprentice Exams (童试) before you were eligible to take the Provincial Exams (乡试), and if you passed this, you could take the Metropolitan Exam (会试) etc. If your exam results are cancelled, you’ll have to start from scratch. [Back]
2. 黄榜, when candidates complete the final level of the imperial examination, the palace exam, they are ranked and their results are publicly posted on a massive yellow scroll. [Back]
3. Roughly 5 km or 3.11 miles. [Back]
4. 银票, a form of paper currency in the Ming Dynasty with its value staked on silver. [Back]
5. White Dew (白露) is actually another solar term, although it comes before Autumn Equinox. The solar term that comes after Autumn Equinox is Cold Dew (寒露) which is followed by Frost’s Descent (霜降). [Back]
6. 春联, spring couplets are a set of vertically written poetry lines that are pasted on either side of a door/gate. They feature auspicious poetry about the upcoming New Year such as wishing for good fortune in the year to come. [Back]
7. The phrase ‘six-petalled flowers’ comes from a Tang dynasty poem by Gao Pian (高骈). The full poem is actually quite relevant to understanding Su Mo’s feelings so I’ll translate it here. [Back]
《对雪》
六出飞花入户时， 坐看青竹变琼枝。 如今好上高楼望，盖尽人间恶路歧。
Facing the Snow.
When six-petalled flowers fly through my window, I sit and watch green bamboo turn into jade stalks. Now I love to climb the tower, gazing into the distance, Where all the perilous fork roads are covered by snow.
Fossilised Firefly 
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