Women, Resistance and Revolution by Sheila Rowbotham

Author:Sheila Rowbotham [Rowbotham, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

When the Sand-Grouse Flies to Heaven

For a fortnight Hsi Men remained with Cinnamon Bud in the house of joy. Not once did he show his face at home.

His five wives felt shamefully forsaken and cast aside. All but Gold Lotus could patiently bear this misfortune. Gold Lotus however could not endure the absence of her mate. Each day she carefully curled her hair, and powdered and rouged her face, and polished as a well-cut-gem she stood at the door of the pavilion and longingly watched for his coming.

She sends him a message which Cinnamon Bud snatched, thinking it was from some new love of his.

Whether in the pale twilight,

Or in the sunlit day,

My thoughts are of him.

I feel such anguish

As one hardly feels

At the sight of the beloved lying dead.

I grieve for him,

And am like to die of sorrow.

Lonely is the pillow,

Dimly flickers the lamp.

The moon looks in

Through the half open window.

Alas! how can I, wretched one,

Survive the frosty night?

But Hsi Men tore it into shreds and kicked the boy who brought it angrily and sent him home.

Sadly, Gold Lotus went back to her pavilion. The time passed with intolerable slowness. An hour seemed to her a month. At last she made up her mind. Hsi Men would not come home that night, she was certain. As soon as it was dark she sent her two maids to bed. Then Gold Lotus went into the park, as though she were going to take one of her nightly strolls. But this time she had a definite goal: the cottage of the young gardener, Kin Tung. Quietly she invited him to come to her pavilion. She let him in, carefully bolted the door, and set wine before him. She pressed him to drink until he grew tipsy. Then she loosened her girdle, disrobed, and abandoned herself to him.

Eternal rules she disregards,

Rules that nature herself proclaims:

The high must ever shun the low,

Noble from the base be strictly severed.

Emboldened by her desires,

She fears not her master’s wrath.

Hot with unbridled desire

She obeys only her own voice.

In the park of the hundred flowers

She allows her base impulse to rule her,

Making a brothel of the house

Where chastity should prevail.

Hsi Men learns of what she has been doing. The boy is beaten until he is covered with blood. The hair is torn from his head and he is cast out of the house. He takes a horse whip to Gold Lotus and brings it down on her. She manages to lie convincingly, and her maid supports her story. He spares her and Gold Lotus goes to an old wise woman herbalist for help, who sends her to an astrologer. She gives his spells to her husband.

Two days later Gold Lotus and Hsi Men were on the best of terms and enjoying themselves like little fishes in the water. But, worthy reader, it is not without reason that a married man is warned against letting his wife have secret dealings with … Tao priests and soothsayers, with nurses and matchmakers.

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