Two Ex-Husbands On One Stage

Suzhou Beauty? A Beautiful Woman?

Everyone says that Suzhou was beautiful, that its gardens were the best in the world. Its beauties were everywhere, and not only did they have pretty faces, but the way they spoke in their soft Wu Nong language was even more exciting. Although the late emperor did not understand the Suzhou dialect, he loved to listen to the soft words of the Wu Nong and the slow drums, so the empress dowager stood out with her soul-stirring commentary among the many harem concubines who only played the piano, chess, calligraphy, and painting.

Now that the late emperor had been gone for many years, the empress dowager no longer had to sing folk music. She was now idle in the deep palace, but she didn’t forget her mother’s family in Suzhou and often thought about arranging the weddings of her family’s unmarried sons and daughters to pass time. The current governor of Suzhou was the son of the empress dowager’s cousin, and the family’s youngest daughter, Qin Muzhen, had come of age last year and was said to be a gorgeous woman. I didn’t know who told the empress dowager about her, but she became immediately interested and said, “Muzhen? Aijia1How Empress Dowager refers to herself. remembers that Master Pei, now the governor of Liangjiang, also has the word ‘Zhen’ in his name. Two people with the same name? This is fate.”

So, with great enthusiasm, she made a decree to marry Pei Yanzhen and Qin Muzhen, the rhyming couplet, and after the wedding, for them to raise a fat doll to put up a horizontal inscription2the auspicious words in red that were put on the door during celebratory events as this was the fulfillment of merit and virtue bringing everyone’s satisfaction.

The first time I heard about this, I was eating carp at the dinner table. My chatty little aunt spoke without holding anything back, just like pouring beans out of a bamboo tube, making me choke on a fishbone and getting it stuck in my throat. It was extremely painful to eat rice or to drink vinegar. Those home remedies weren’t helpful; instead, they only got me coughing repeatedly and made it worse. A moment ago, the vinegar that I drank went into my nose and nearly made tears fly out of my eyes.  

Later on, my elder aunt asked an experienced doctor to come and take out the fishbone after a lot of trouble. However, it seemed that the inner walls of my throat had been cut a little by the thick fishbone and became inflamed. Although I drank some medicine, it was still burning and painful. It felt like the bone was still stuck inside my throat. Even speaking one word was unbearable, so I avoided talking for a while. As I couldn’t speak, only listen and watch, it was really peaceful and quiet. 

Song Xiyuan came to my door every day. He recently sent me things, such as swords from the Qin dynasty and the Three Kingdoms and halberds from the Wei and Jin dynasties. I wondered if he had gone tomb raiding instead of working. Still, the ancient weapons he gave me were of high quality, so I asked the servant to carefully wrap them in silk and keep them in the cabinet.

Two days ago, Song Xiyuan gave me something else, but this time, it wasn’t some iron weapon that couldn’t speak. It was a wren a wren more talkative than the man himself. From dawn to dusk, it talked non-stop except for water and food. It was in high spirits, whether anyone listened to it or not, and its ability to learn could be considered top-notch. In a mere two days, it was already imitating Lu Ying’s voice perfectly. That it learned how to meow was also first-class.

Whenever it saw Tang Yuan’s hamster, it would tilt its head and meow at it with great affection, terrifying the hamster into a ball.

I couldn’t talk nowadays, but it was fun just to listen to it talking and singing from time to time.

Today, the family troupe put on a new play in the back garden. I was the only one sitting down to watch, so I placed the big wren by my side to make it more lively.

The wren was silent today, only fluttering its wings and rolling its eyes in excitement as it watched the martial arts students and the wu dans3a type of female role in Chinese opera that specialized in fighting with all kinds of weapons on the stage. After watching for a while, I felt queasy, so I reached for a cup of tea to moisten my throat. Unexpectedly, a red card slipped out of my half-open sleeve. As I picked it up and looked at it, I found that it was the wedding invitation sent by the Pei family a few days ago. The Shen family was now considered a relative of Master Pei thanks to the emperor’s golden words, so naturally, I got a copy of the invitation. It was the auspicious date for the wedding the sixth day of the next month.

I took the wedding invitation and looked at it in awe for a while. For once, I couldn’t help but feel that the wife of the Guangzhou government was half-immortal. In the past, she always told me that she had heard that Pei Yanzhen was going to marry this and that, but that whole time, she was only hearing rumors. I wondered why the empress dowager did not give her daughter, the ninth princess’ hand in marriage to Pei Yanzhen despite her infatuation with him, giving the daughter of a relative instead. Why did she do that?

The fact was, I soon realized, marriage was not just a matter of matching the eight characters. It was also about pedigree the most important thing was to make sure that both families were a perfect match.

As I was looking at the post, I saw a flash of green clothing in the corner of my eyes, and someone lifted their robe and sat down on the seat beside me. It was none other than Pei Yanzhen, the bridegroom, who was waiting to be ready. He hadn’t shown up since he received the decree that day, so he must have been overwhelmed by the arrival of his wife and had been preparing for the wedding.

My family is different from other families, I thought. Generally, after placing an invitation to the Shen family, the inviter must personally visit the house and then give my father another invitation to show his respect. Today, Pei Yanzhen must have come to my father’s door and invited him personally.

For that, I thought I owed him a greeting, and waved my hand with my finger at my throat to show that I was not at liberty to speak, then I put the wedding invitation back into my sleeve and turned my head back to watch the show.

Two people and a bird, just sitting and silently watching the show as if all of their throats also got scraped by a fishbone. When I turned around, I saw Pei Yanzhen staring at me with his two clear, lake-like eyes, ignoring the stage.

I was stunned when I suddenly heard the wren start singing beside me in a deep voice. 

 I met a beautiful woman at the foot of the Tiger Hill4Huqiu district is one of the five urban districts of Suzhou, which is named after Tiger Hill, a historically famous hill and tourist attraction

The beauty worshipped the Buddha and I asked for heaven

Hoping that a thousand miles of marriage would lead to a single thread 

Felt that I was too infatuated with love

And dreamt of the mid-autumn festival to tie a knot

The passionate moon gave me San Wu5wu region in the south of the Yangtze River as a return

The sky will never grow old, the earth will never be deserted 

Turning over the old tune to a new one

And, I wish that all the lovers in the world will be together forever

It was, word-for-word, the same Suzhou opera that had nine curves and eighteen bends, “The Edge of Laughter.” As a junior, I was given a wedding invitation to send a gift, and since my future sister-in-law was from Suzhou, I asked my family’s opera troupe to hire a couple of players to rehearse a piece of “Laughing in the Fate” by Tang Bo Hu. I didn’t expect the wren to hear it, nor that it would learn the Suzhou dialect in a superb way.

At the end of the song, it shouted, “May Lord Pei and Lady Pei be linked in marriage and have a long life together!” It had actually learned the congratulatory words from Su Niang, who sang the opera.

Pei Yanzhen stood up and looked down at me, saying coldly, “Do you truly mean that?”

I just looked at the wren standing on the shelf, wagging its head and looking at me, which was really funny, so I held the table and let out a snigger. This snigger went out of control and I couldn’t help laughing, swaying to and fro, my shoulders shaking. Maybe I laughed too much; my throat began to hurt again. The pain caused the moisture to accumulate in my eyes as if they could spill out anytime soon. I blinked hard to hold back the water mist. 

“Miao’er…” Pei Yanzhen reached out to help me, but I avoided it by pulling my sleeve away and muttering, “Take your time, Little Maternal Uncle.”

Pei Yanzhen’s long arm grabbed my hand, and I was about to get angry until he slipped a packet into it. He let go of my hand and said softly, “Miao’er, these are some herbs to relieve inflammation and moisten your throat. Decoct them every morning and evening and you’ll be fine in three days.”

I turned around, thanked him, and took the herbs. As I was walking out of the garden, I heard the wren shouting behind me, “Miao Miao, let’s reunite! Pei is not a good man!”