The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 1

Wind and moon, loveless¹

A maiden of Yue plucks lotus blooms by the autumn shore,
Her narrow sleeves of light gauze half-reveal twin bracelets of gold.
She bends to see her reflection, the flower mirrors her face.
Her maiden heart and the silken threads vie in their tangling.

At Jichi Creek² wind and waves rise with the dusk,
Mist heavy, smoke light, she can no longer see her companions.
Faint songs fade as the homeward oars draw far away,
And parting’s sorrow trails along the southern shore.

A soft, lilting song drifted over the mist-veiled lake. It came from a small boat, where five girls sang and laughed as they rowed among the lotus, gathering the pods. Their song was a ci³ to the tune “Butterflies Love Flowers”,⁴ by the great Northern Song lyricist Ouyang Xiu,⁵ and it described just such a scene, a maiden of Yue⁶ gathering lotus. In a mere sixty characters it set down the season, the hour, the place and the scenery, and the maiden’s looks, her dress, her ornaments and her heart, every one as clear as if seen with the eyes. The second stanza did still more, weaving narrative into the landscape and feeling into the narrative, moving from near to far, its meaning lingering on without end.

Ouyang Xiu had served many years as an official in Jiangnan,⁷ and the hills of Wu and the waters of Yue, with all their tenderness and intimate feeling, had flowed into his lyrics. Everyone in the Song, from great officials and nobles to the humble folk of the lanes, delighted in singing ci, so that when Liu Yong⁸ wrote a new lyric it was sung wherever there was well water.⁹ And on the banks of Jiangnan, when willow sprigs were broken in spring and lotus gathered on the autumn lakes, the songs that went with them were very often Ouyang Xiu’s.

It was the reign of Emperor Lizong¹⁰ of the Southern Song, and the place was South Lake¹¹ in Jiaxing.¹² The Mid-Autumn Festival¹³ was drawing near. The lotus leaves were beginning to wither and the seeds had grown plump. The singing carried to the ears of a Daoist nun on the shore. She had stood a long while, silent and still, beneath a row of willows, and the evening breeze stirred the hem of her apricot-yellow Daoist robe and the myriad soft strands of the horsetail whisk¹⁴ thrust into her collar. Her thoughts rose and fell in surges. Truly, as the song had it, her maiden heart and the silken threads vied in their tangling. She listened as the singing drifted further off. The girls had moved on to another of Ouyang Xiu’s “Butterflies Love Flowers” lyrics, and a gust of wind brought two lines faintly to her ears:

Wind and moon are loveless. Hearts change in secret.
Old journeys are like dreams, and all that remains is a hollow ache…¹⁵

No sooner had the song faded than a burst of silvery giggles followed.

The nun heaved a long sigh and lifted her left hand to gaze at the palm, which was covered in blood.

“What is there to laugh at?” she murmured to herself. “The silly girls are only singing any old how. They have not the least idea of the pain of longing in those words, or of their sorrow.”

More than a hundred feet behind her, an old man in a dark green robe, with a long beard, had also stood motionless all this while. Only when those two lines, “Wind and moon are loveless, hearts change in secret. Old journeys are like dreams, and all that remains is a hollow ache,” came drifting over did he let out a sigh, very soft, very faint.

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The little boat glided over a lake like green glass. Of the five girls aboard, three were about fifteen or sixteen, and the other two only nine. The two little ones were cousins on their mothers’ side. The elder, surnamed Cheng, had the single given name Ying.¹⁶ The younger was surnamed Lu and named Wushuang.¹⁷ There was half a year between them.

Still singing, the three older girls rowed the little boat out of the lotus leaves. “Look, cousin,” said Cheng Ying, “that old uncle is still here.”

She pointed towards a figure beneath the drooping willows.

The man’s hair was a wild tangle and his beard stuck out as bristly as a hedgehog. Hair and beard were both a glossy black, so he could not be very old, yet his face was so deeply lined that he looked like a man of seventy or eighty. He wore a long gown of blue cloth, and around his neck hung an infant’s brocade bib, embroidered with a cat pouncing on a butterfly, now old and tattered.

Lu Wushuang said, “That strange man has been sitting there for ages. Why doesn’t he move at all?”

Cheng Ying said, “Don’t call him strange, call him ‘old uncle’. If you call him strange, he’ll get angry.”

Lu Wushuang laughed. “Isn’t he strange? Old as he is, he wears a bib round his neck. If he gets angry and his beard sticks straight up, that’ll really be something to see.”

She picked up a lotus seedpod from the boat and hurled it at the man’s head.

The boat was several dozen feet from the strange visitor, but young as she was, Lu Wushuang had a good deal of strength in her arm, and her aim was true. “Cousin!” cried Cheng Ying.

She tried to stop her, but it was too late. The seedpod flew straight at the stranger’s face. He tipped his head back and caught it in his teeth, and without lifting a hand he curled his tongue round it, clamped down and began to chew with gusto. The five girls watched him wolf it down, husk and all, without shelling a single seed or minding the bitterness. They looked at one another and burst into giggles, and rowing in closer, they climbed ashore.

Cheng Ying walked up to the man, tugged at his lapel, and said, “Old uncle, those aren’t good to eat that way.”

She took a seedpod from her pouch, split it open and shelled out a dozen or so seeds. Then she peeled the green skin from each, picked out the bitter core, and put them in the stranger’s hand. He chewed a few and found them fragrant, fresh and sweet, nothing like what he had just eaten. His mouth split in a grin at Cheng Ying and he nodded. She shelled a few more and gave him those too. He tossed them into his mouth, chomped them up, then turned his face to the sky and said, “Follow me!”

With that, he strode off towards the west.

Lu Wushuang tugged at Cheng Ying’s hand. “Cousin, let’s go after him.”

The three other girls were timid.

“Let’s go home quickly,” they urged. “If you wander too far, your mother will scold you.”

Lu Wushuang pursed her lips and made a face. Seeing that the strange visitor was moving very quickly, she said, “Fine, don’t come then.”

She released her cousin’s hand and ran after him. Cheng Ying had come out to play with her cousin and could not very well abandon her and return alone, so she had no choice but to follow. The three other girls, though several years older, were all shy and fearful. They called out a few times, but the strange visitor and the two girls had already disappeared behind a grove of mulberry trees.

The strange visitor moved very fast. Seeing that the two girls’ short legs could not keep up, he stopped and waited a few times at first, but eventually grew impatient. Suddenly he turned around, stretched out his long arms, tucked one girl under each armpit, and raced forward. The two girls heard only the whistling of wind past their ears as the stones and grass along the path flew by before their eyes. Lu Wushuang grew frightened and cried, “Put me down, put me down!”

The strange visitor paid her no heed and only ran faster. Lu Wushuang twisted her head up and bit down hard on the edge of his hand. He merely knocked his palm against her teeth, and they ached dully. She had to let go, but her mouth was not idle: she screamed and shouted for all she was worth. Cheng Ying, though, never made a sound.

The strange visitor ran on for a while longer, then set the two girls down. They were in a burial ground. Cheng Ying’s small face had turned deathly pale, while Lu Wushuang’s was flushed bright red.

Cheng Ying said, “Old uncle, we want to go home now. We’re not playing with you any more!”

The strange visitor stared at her and said nothing. In his eyes Cheng Ying saw grief and desolation, a kind of pity and hurt for himself, and a rush of sympathy rose in her before she knew it. Softly she said, “If no one will play with you, come back to the lake tomorrow and I’ll shell lotus seeds for you.”

The strange visitor sighed. “Yes, ten years. For ten years, no one has played with me.”

Suddenly a murderous gleam flashed in his eyes, and he demanded fiercely, “Where is He Yuanjun?¹⁸ Where has He Yuanjun gone?”

Cheng Ying was frightened by his sudden ferocity. In a small voice she said, “I… I… I don’t know.”

The strange visitor seized her arm and shook her several times. Lowering his voice, he rasped, “Where is He Yuanjun?”

Cheng Ying was so frightened she was close to tears. They brimmed and rolled in her eyes, but not one fell.

Footnotes

1. 风月无情 – Fēngyuè wúqíng. Chapter title. Lit. “Wind and moon are without feeling.” From the ci line 风月无情人暗换, “wind and moon are heartless, and people change unseen”. ↩

2. 鸡尺溪 – Jīchǐxī. Small waterway in the Jiangnan region whose name evokes the rustic, pastoral landscape of the water towns south of the Yangtze. ↩

3. 词 – cí. Literally “lyric” or “song-words.” A classical Chinese poetic form with irregular line lengths, composed to fit a prescribed melodic pattern (tune title). See Wikipedia. ↩

4. 蝶恋花 – Dié Liàn Huā. One of the most famous ci poem title patterns in classical Chinese poetry, dictating the metre, rhyme scheme, and number of characters per line. Many poets, including Ouyang Xiu and Liu Yong, wrote to this pattern. Title evokes romantic imagery: butterflies drawn to flowers as lovers are drawn to one another. ↩

5. 欧阳修 – Ōuyáng Xiū. (1007–1072) One of the greatest literary figures of the Northern Song dynasty. Statesman, historian, essayist, and poet, he was a leading figure in the Classical Prose Movement. His ci poetry was celebrated for its emotional depth and lyrical beauty. See Wikipedia. ↩

6. 越女 – Yuènǚ. Yue was an ancient kingdom in the Jiangnan region (present-day Zhejiang and northern Fujian). Yue maidens were famed in classical Chinese poetry for their beauty, and the region was known for its lotus-filled lakes. ↩

7. 江南 – Jiāngnán. Prosperous region south of Yangtze River, continued from LOCH era. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 柳永 – Liǔ Yǒng. (c. 987–1053) A renowned Northern Song ci poet known for his romantic, colloquial style. Immensely popular in his day, his lyrics were said to be sung in every wineshop and by every well. See Wikipedia. ↩

9. 有井水处皆歌 – yǒu jǐngshuǐ chù jiē gē. Famous saying about Liu Yong’s popularity. Wells were gathering places where people drew water and exchanged news, so the phrase means his lyrics were sung wherever people gathered. ↩

10. 宋理宗 – Sòng Lǐzōng. (r. 1224–1264) The fourteenth emperor of the Southern Song dynasty. His reign saw the beginning of the Mongol conquest of China. See Wikipedia. ↩

11. 南湖 – Nánhú. Scenic lake in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, famed for its beauty and for the Mist and Rain Pavilion on its shores. ↩

12. 嘉兴 – Jiāxīng. City in northern Zhejiang Province, known for its South Lake and its role as a key location in Jin Yong’s novels. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 中秋 – Zhōngqiū. Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month and associated with family reunions and moon-viewing, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. ↩

14. 拂尘 – fúchén. Horsetail whisk: a handle with long, soft fibres attached. In Daoism it is a symbol of spiritual authority, and in wuxia fiction it is often wielded as a flexible weapon capable of entangling and disarming opponents. ↩

15. 风月无情人暗换 – fēngyuè wúqíng rén àn huàn. Line from Ouyang Xiu’s ci poem that captures the central theme of this chapter. “Wind and moon” is a classical metaphor for romantic love and the pleasures of youth, and the line laments that love is ultimately heartless. It gives the chapter its title. ↩

16. 程英 – Chéng Yīng. Her name meaning “heroine” or “outstanding”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 陆无双 – Lù Wúshuāng. Her name meaning “peerless” or “without equal”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

18. 何沅君 – Hé Yuánjūn. Her name meaning “Yuan River lord”; 沅 names the Yuan River and 君 means lord or gentleman. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩