Lu Xun Complete Works/en/Baicaoyuan
From Herb Garden to Three-Flavor Study
From the Herb Garden to the Three-Flavor Study
Behind our house lay a large garden, known since time immemorial as the Herb Garden. It has long since been sold together with the house to the descendants of Master Zhu Wengong, and even since my very last visit seven or eight years have elapsed. It would seem that indeed nothing but weeds grew there; but in those days it was my paradise.
No need to mention the emerald-green vegetable beds, the smooth stone well-curb, the towering honey-locust trees, the purple-red mulberries; no need to mention the cicadas droning their long songs among the leaves, the plump bumblebees squatting on the rape blossoms, the nimble skylarks that would suddenly dart straight up from the grass into the sky. Just the strip along the low mud wall all around offered endless delights. Oil beetles sang softly here, crickets played the piano. Turn over a broken brick and you might find a centipede; there were also blister beetles—if you pressed their backs with your finger, they would make a popping sound and shoot a puff of smoke from their rear orifice. Vines of the polygonum plant and magnolia intertwined; the magnolia bore fruit like lotus pods, and the polygonum had swollen, tuberous roots. It was said that some polygonum roots resembled the human form, and eating them could make one immortal. So I constantly pulled them up, pulling and pulling without end, and had even damaged the mud wall on account of this, yet never found a single root that looked like a person. If you weren't afraid of thorns, you could also pick raspberries—little balls assembled from tiny coral beads, both sweet and sour, far superior to mulberries in color and taste.
One did not venture into the tall grass, for it was said that a large red-banded snake lived in the garden.
Old Mama Chang had once told me a story: Long ago, a scholar lived in an ancient temple, studying hard. One evening, as he was enjoying the cool air in the courtyard, he suddenly heard someone calling his name. He answered and looked around, only to see the face of a beautiful woman peering over the top of the wall, smiling at him before she vanished. He was delighted. But an old monk who came by for an evening chat saw through the matter at once. He said the scholar's face bore a demonic shimmer—he must have encountered the "Beautiful-Woman Snake," a monster with a human head and serpent's body that could call out people's names; should one answer, it would come at night to devour one's flesh. Naturally the scholar was frightened half to death, but the old monk said there was nothing to worry about and gave him a small box, saying he need only place it beside his pillow and he could sleep in peace. He did as told, yet could not fall asleep—naturally he could not. At midnight, it came indeed: rustle, rustle, rustle! Outside the door it sounded like wind and rain. Just as he was shaking with terror, he heard a sharp hiss, a beam of golden light shot from beside his pillow, and suddenly there was not a sound outside; the golden light flew back and settled into the box. And then? The old monk explained that it was a flying centipede, capable of sucking out a snake's brain, and the Beautiful-Woman Snake had been killed by it.
The moral at the end was: If a strange voice calls your name, you must never, ever answer.
The story made me keenly aware of how perilous it was to be human. On summer evenings when I sat outside to cool off, I was often anxious and did not dare look toward the wall, and I desperately wished for a box with a flying centipede like the old monk's. Walking past the shrubbery in the Herb Garden, I often thought the same. But to this day I have never obtained one—though I have never encountered a red-banded snake or a Beautiful-Woman Snake either. Strange voices calling my name were common enough, of course, but none of them belonged to a Beautiful-Woman Snake.
In winter the Herb Garden was rather dull; but when the snow fell, everything changed. Making snow-prints (pressing one's entire body into the snow) and building snow Buddhas required an audience, and this was a deserted garden where no one came, so that was unsuitable. One could only catch birds. A thin layer of snow would not do; the snow had to have covered the ground for a day or two, and the birds had to have gone a long time without finding food. You swept clear a patch of snow, exposing the earth, propped up a large bamboo sieve with a short stick, scattered some chaff underneath, tied a long string to the stick and held it from far away. When the birds came down to peck and walked under the sieve, you pulled the string and trapped them. But mostly one caught sparrows; occasionally there were white-cheeked "Zhang Fei birds"—fiery-tempered creatures that would not survive the night in captivity.
This method had been taught to me by Runtu's father, but I could barely manage it. I would clearly see them go in, pull the string, run over to look—and find nothing. After a whole morning's effort, I would have caught no more than three or four. Runtu's father, on the other hand, could catch dozens in half a morning, all fluttering and thumping inside his forked bag. When I once asked him the secret of his success, he just smiled quietly: "You're too impatient. You don't wait until they've walked to the middle."
I do not know why my family decided to send me to a private school, and moreover to the one reputed to be the strictest in the whole city. Perhaps because I had damaged the mud wall pulling up polygonum roots, perhaps because I had thrown bricks over the partition wall into the Liang family's courtyard, perhaps because I had stood on the stone well-curb and jumped off … there was no knowing. In short: I would no longer be able to visit the Herb Garden often. Ade, my crickets! Ade, my raspberries and magnolias! …
Going out the door and heading east, after less than half a li, across a stone bridge, one arrived at my teacher's house. Through a black-lacquered bamboo gate and into the third room, which was the study. In the center hung a tablet inscribed: Three-Flavor Study; beneath it was a painting of a very fat sika deer reclining under an ancient tree. There was no tablet of Confucius, so we bowed to the plaque and the deer. The first bow counted as paying respects to Confucius, the second to the teacher.
During the second bow, the teacher would kindly return the greeting from the side. He was a tall, thin old man, his beard and hair already streaked with white, and he wore large spectacles. I treated him with great respect, for I had long heard he was the most upright, unpretentious, and erudite man in the city.
I do not know where I had heard it, but Dongfang Shuo had also been very learned; he knew of an insect called "Guaizai"—born from the vapors of injustice, which dissolved when doused with wine. I was eager to learn this story in detail, but Old Mama Chang did not know it, for she was, after all, not sufficiently learned. Now I had my chance: I could ask the teacher.
"Sir, this insect 'Guaizai'—what is it all about? …" I asked hastily, just as I had finished reciting my new text and was about to withdraw.
"I don't know!" He seemed quite displeased, and there was even anger on his face.
Then I understood that a student should not ask such things, but only read; for as a learned old Confucian scholar, he could not possibly not know—when he said "I don't know," he meant he did not wish to say. Older people often behaved this way; I had encountered it several times before.
So I just read, practiced calligraphy at noon, and did antithetical couplet exercises in the evening. The first few days the teacher was very strict with me, but later he grew milder; however, the books he assigned grew steadily more numerous, and the couplet exercises gradually lengthened, from three-word to five-word and finally seven-word verses.
Behind the Three-Flavor Study there was also a garden, small though it was, where one could climb up the flower terrace to pick wintersweet blossoms or search on the ground or in the osmanthus trees for empty cicada shells. The finest activity was catching flies to feed to ants, quietly, without a sound. But when too many classmates spent too long in the garden, it was no good—the teacher would shout from the study:
"Where has everyone gone?!"
Then they would trickle back one by one; coming back all at once was not acceptable either. He owned a punishment ruler, but rarely used it; there was also a rule about kneeling as punishment, but he rarely applied that either. Usually he just glared at you and called out:
"Read!"
Thereupon everyone would read at the top of their lungs, a veritable din of voices. One read "Is benevolence far away? If I desire benevolence, benevolence is at hand," another "He who mocks the gaps in other's teeth opens wide the dog-hole," yet another "Nine above, the hidden dragon, do not act," another "This soil, above and below, with adjustments, the tribute of rush bundles, reeds, tangerines, and pomelos" … The teacher himself read too. Then our voices would grow quieter and quieter, until only he was still reading aloud:
"The iron scepter, conducting with such panache—the whole assembly marveled, oh! The golden goblet, drunk with abandon, ah—a thousand cups, yet not drunk, ha! …"
I suspected this was an extraordinarily fine piece of writing, for at this passage he would invariably begin to smile, raise his head, sway it to and fro, and lean further and further back, further and further.
When the teacher was utterly lost in his reading, it suited us perfectly. Some of the boys would put paper helmets and armor on their fingertips and stage plays. I drew pictures: using a paper called "Jingchuan paper," I would lay it over the woodcut illustrations in novels and trace each figure, just as one traces characters when practicing calligraphy. The more books I read, the more I drew; the books went unread, but the drawings mounted up—the largest collection was of illustrations from "The Water Margin Sequel" and "Journey to the West," filling a thick volume. Later, needing money, I sold them to a wealthy classmate whose father ran a tinfoil shop; I hear he has since become the shopkeeper himself and is on the verge of rising to the rank of a gentleman. Those drawings must be long gone by now.
September eighteenth.