Classically Romantic--The Chinese View of Love

"I'll write no love letter and no poem-I'll just send a white kerchief to tell you my thoughts. When you receive it, look at it this way and that: The warp is all threads, and the weft is all threads. Who will understand what is in my heart?" (Ming dynasty folk song; "threads" is a pun on "yearning").

During the May 4th Movement, which set old traditions against new, the poet Xu Zhimo pursued "free love" with Lu Xiaoman, arousing a controversy which has not died down to this day. （courtesy of Hsin Chao Publishing）

In an age when no-one ever said "I love you" right out loud, how did the Chinese express their love? Within the framework of marriages ordained by "one's parents' command and the words of the matchmaker," what philosophy of love emerged among the Chinese? What image of love is reflected in the love poems and love songs passed down over the last several thousand years?

"Amidst the swirling sea of humanity, I shall seek the only companion of my soul; if I find her, I am lucky; if I find her not, such is my fate, that is all." So wrote the poet Xu Zhimo in 1923 in a letter to Liang Qichao, the teacher who had been his greatest mentor. Liang knew that Xu was a faithful believer in "romantic love," but he warned him: "Alas! Where is there a perfect universe?" Young people loved to talk of romantic love, but such transcendent love could never be found. Furthermore, would such love make one happy in the future? As hard to grasp as a shadow, it had already caused so many people immeasurable suffering.

Xu Zhimo decided that in freedom he wished to seek a new life, real happiness and true love. Hence he was willing to bring down society's approbation on his head by divorcing the wife his parents had ordered him to marry, and beginning a passionate romance with Lu Xiaoman. . . .

"Quietly I go, as quietly I came. A wave of my sleeve; I take nothing with me, not even a cloud." The poet died in 1931 in a plane crash, but debate over his love story continues even to this day.

To love is to be free

At the time of the May 4th Movement, Chinese culture was disintegrating. The Westernization movement was seen as the road to national salvation. Everything Western was new, everything Chinese was old, and the old and the new were opposed and as incompatible as fire and water. The new ideal of "free love" attacked the traditional concept of marriage dictated by "one's parents' command and the words of the matchmaker." Writers such as Hu Shi and Lin Yutang tried their hardest to "pull away" from this tradition, while the younger generation simply "cut loose and ran." On the eve of her wedding, Jiang Biwei, the daughter of a rich and powerful family, eloped to Japan with painter Xu Beihong. Fearing public scandal, her parents announced that their daughter had died suddenly, and buried a coffin full of stones with all attendant pomp and ceremony.

"My love is unconditional. I am willing to sacrifice everything for it; it is like a blinding lightning flash which must burn the whole of society and consume my body." In author Yu Dafu's love letter to Wang Ying-xia, his scorching passion burns like a fire, just like his contemporaries' idea of love.

In the struggle to break free from several thousand years of repression of individual personality, fighting for the right to love whom one pleased was the same as fighting for freedom. Ignited by the spark of the May 4th Movement, the ideal of romantic love which valued freedom more than life spread like wildfire among China's intellectuals. But before the May 4th Movement, during "several thousand years under the old moral code of feudal society," what had "love" been like? Did our old ancestors perhaps not know what feelings were? Let us look at the folk song Heavens! written 2000 years ago in the Han dynasty, by an author of whom we don't even know the name.

"Heavens! I want to know and understand you, life without end. Until the mountains are levelled into plains, until the rivers run dry, until thunder rolls in winter and snow falls in summer, and heaven and earth are joined. Only then would I be parted from you."

This deeply enamored writer could not suppress her boiling passion; every word and every line proves unequivocally and movingly that this member of "Generation A" was not an ounce less determined to pursue love than Xu Zhimo or Yu Dafu.

The oldest of love songs

In The Book of Songs, many ancient love songs from even earlier times describe young men and women inviting each other to laugh and chat by the riverside in spring, or girls throwing peaches and plums to their favorite boys to declare their love-evidently the spirit of "free love" was already alive 3000 years ago. In those ancient and far-off days, we hear boys and girls in love yearning for each other and singing: "A day without seeing you is like three months"; we see a young man, unable to find his loved one, saying: "Not seeing my love, I'm scratching my head and pacing back and forth." A girl waiting for her love sings in coquettish anger: "If you really missed me, you would lift your robes and wade across the River Zhen. If you don't want me, do you think no-one else does? Who do you think you are, you silly little idiot?" But what she was really thinking was: "Why don't you hurry up, you fool!"

Whether it be the pain of yearning, the joy of being together or the nervousness of a secret meeting, every facet of the love stories of modern youth was experienced by our ancestors long ago. Professor Sun Chung-hsing of National Taiwan University's sociology department, who started Taiwan's first course in the "sociology of love," puts it in a nutshell: "What The Book of Songs provides is emotional education!"

The ancient love songs express love with a natural innocence. Many Chinese folk songs which deal with love, including those of later eras from the Wei and Jin to the Ming and Qing, allude to love with the imagery of nature. "Peach leaves grow among more peach leaves; the peach leaves are connected to the peach tree's root. It is the joy between two who love that makes me so willing to do for you all I can." That's how love is-an impulse which springs from one's inborn, basic nature and follows a natural course. Du Liniang, the main female character in The Peony Pavilion, stresses: "I've always loved to follow my nature"-love doesn't take strenuous practice or an act of will. It allows two living beings to exchange true mutual affection.

The living die, the dead come to life

Just as only those who have been drunk know the strength of alcohol, only those who have loved know love's power. When "romantic" love breaks out, what are the feelings of the parties affected? In the Ming dynasty story "The Oil Peddler and the Plum Flower Girl" (included in the collection Lasting Words to Awaken the World), the usually unruffled soul of the leading male character Qin Zhong is as if struck by lightning: "He stood dumbstruck for an age, his whole body limp and numb"-is that not what people today mean when they say someone is "love-struck"?

When romantic love strikes, it is most often in this earth-moving, soul-shattering way, and is something people are willing to live and die for. In the Tang dynasty novel Qiannu's Spirit Journey, the main female character Zhang Qiannu has played together with her cousin Wang Wenju from childhood, but her parents promise her to another. Thereupon Qiannu falls ill and cannot rise from her bed, but her soul follows Wenju and they live together for five years, until they return home and her soul is finally reunited with her reawakened body. For love to cause Qiannu's soul to wander sounds like a ghost story. But Professor Yueh Heng-chun, formerly of NTU's Chinese department, believes this story is a brilliant allegory about romantic love: "If true love is missing from a person's life, although alive they will be as if dead, or else they will be whole in body but spiritually deficient." So laments Yueh in her article "Romantic Love and Classical Love."

However, in romantic love stories, the soul leaving the body is just beginners' stuff. In the Ming dynasty story The Peony Pavilion, Du Liniang can think only of Liu Mengmei, the lover of her dreams. Pining for him, she sickens and dies. But when Liu Mengmei stumbles across a picture of her, he and her departed soul fall in love, and she comes back to life. In his foreword, the writer, Tang Xianzu, says explicitly that love can transcend the corporeal form of life, and transcend time: "No-one knows whence love comes, yet it continues inexhaustibly. It may cause the living to die, or bring the dead to life." After The Peony Pavilion appeared, it became popular reading throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties. Jin Fengdian of Yangzhou loved the book so much that she had a copy buried with her; when Yu Erniang of Louzhou read it, she died of a broken heart. . . .

To make you happy for a day. . .

But of course the marvellous nature of love need not be expressed only through such fantastic stories, for it is to be seen everywhere in realist fiction and true stories too.

From the moment the Man from Yingyang falls in love with Li Wa in the Tang dynasty Story of Li Wa, his whole life revolves around this love, and he casts off ambition, work, fame and fortune like an old shoe. In the end he is thrown out by his family and lives in the street, where he survives by singing funeral songs. But he still never loses the courage to love. "I would work my whole life through to make you happy this single day." This kind of romantic love springs naturally from human nature, and its essence is not in formal things like gifts of flowers or dinners by candlelight-its romance is in "two lives touching with nothing separating them." "This is not something you can learn in class, it's something which can only happen to you by good fortune, not by design," says Professor Ko Ching-ming of NTU's Chinese department.

But it is the very strength and uncontrollable nature of romantic love which has caused it to be so often condemned by the wise and the good since ancient times as "excess." When the flood of passion rises above the danger mark, it creates disturbance and disorder among individuals and society. Our ancient ancestors knew only too well how active and vital love can be at its most primitive, so it is hardly surprising if they regarded it as a raging flood or wild beast, and tried to "preserve Heaven's order by eliminating human desire."

Hence although love was eulogized by the ancients, whenever it came into conflict with the social system, love led to tragedy. "In order to protect the social system, classical love stories could most often only unfold in dark corners, and were either very short or had a beginning but no ending," says Professor Tseng Chao-hsu of the Chinese department at National Central University, who has written more than 10 books about love.

The words of parents and matchmaker

As the social system became established, even as far back as in The Book of Songs we can see that when a man wished to take a wife, custom already required asking one's parents' permission and the formal involvement of a matchmaker, but the prospective partners still had a very large measure of autonomy. But later, in the book Mencius, we find that: "Those who do not await their parents' command and the words of the matchmaker. . . will debase their parents in the eyes of all." Thus premarital love began to be forbidden.

This requirement for the involvement of parents and matchmakers is "something seen throughout the world," says Associate Professor Yu Te-hui of the Institute of Ethnic Relations and Culture at National Dong Hwa University. Whether in Africa, Europe or America, in the preindustrial age most marriages required the blessing of parents. Marriage was a social and functional institution which affected land inheritance and bolstered strategic alliances, especially in the upper strata of society. Even today this still holds true, and the idea that love and marriage should go together is one that has arisen only in recent times.

A shadow as painful as death

The book Commandments for Women by Ban Zhao of the Han dynasty prescribes that after the age of seven, girls and boys should not eat together, and especially after the age of 10, girls should be confined to the inner quarters. For young ladies even to stroll in the garden is regarded as a sign of a wanton streak. The result of this was that in "talented boy meets beautiful girl" stories, if they did not meet through the boy rescuing the damsel in distress, or by chance while praying at temples, or else swear their undying love secretly in back gardens, then it would be a "wall and rider" affair: over the top of the garden wall the girl would glimpse a young man passing on horseback, and they would fall in love. But the opportunities for marriage on the basis of such chance encounters were rare. In most cases, those women with the opportunity to be in the company of men and to fall in love with them were of two kinds: ghosts, foxes and other spirits, who transcended society, and female entertainers, who lived on its fringes.

In the case of the ghosts and spirits, the stories mostly sprang from the sexual fantasies of men, for they could gratify sexual desires without the need to take on any commitment. But relationships with female entertainers were sure to end in tragedy. In the Tang dynasty, brothels were places where the rich and powerful met and mingled, and the entertainers were not only stunningly beautiful, but were also accomplished in every kind of artistic skill and social grace, including "poetry and calligraphy, conversation both serious and humorous, singing and dancing, playing musical instruments and appreciating tea." "These female entertainers, many of whose names are recorded in the history books, were highly sensitive to art, love and life, and can be described as the female artists of those days. They were entertainers, not prostitutes," says Tseng Chao-hsu.

But although romantic involvements with these entertainers were not frowned upon, to marry one and bring her home was out of the question according to the social mores of the time. In the Tang short story The Story of Huo Xiaoyu, when Xiaoyu and Li Yi are deliriously in love, however much Li Yi swears: "I would rather die than give you up; I swear by Heaven to keep my promise to you, live or die," Xiaoyu is very clear as to her own status and the frailty of his assurances. She begs abjectly: "I am only 18 years old, and my Lord is 22. In eight years you will reach marrying age. I hope that until then, I may give you all the love of my life." After that she plans to cut off her hair, become a nun and renounce love. But pitifully, very soon afterwards Li Yi is married, to a daughter of one of the five great clans of the Tang dynasty.

Not only was marriage to a girl of high birth de rigueur for career and social advancement-Tang dynasty statutes expressly forbade marriage between partners of different social rank. Thus however enamored literati might be, in the face of marriage and career, the vast majority were not too averse to giving up on love. The few who were really prepared to "exchange the vanity of fame and fortune for a life of wine and song" did not even include Liu Yong, the writer of the aforegoing lines.

"Chinese people's way of thinking has always been to avoid conflict, so when lovers are thwarted, where Western stories would end with them dying for the sake of love, in Chinese love stories the most poignant moments are in their parting," says Tseng Chao-hsu. "No tears; let our parting be secret! No words, remember me in silence! Except for our two hearts, none shall know. . . . The muddy river will some day run clear; our black hair will some day turn white. Only by parting in silence and in secret will our hearts accept that we will never meet again." The poet Bai Juyi's Secret Parting expresses a pain of parting in life as bitter as the separation of death.

Social order outweighs love

Although love in its basic nature transcends cultures and national boundaries, in the opinion of Professor Lee Yuan-chen of the department of Chinese at Tamkang University, within different social structures and cultural value systems, love is expressed in different ways. For instance, in countries which trace their cultural roots back to Greek civil society, personal freedom is valued highly, and the love stories of Greek legend emphasize individual choice and struggle in relationships between male and female. But in China, with its social system rooted in agriculture, the greatest importance has traditionally been attached to clan harmony and social order, with individual freedom generally subordinated to these. This is even true in legend: the Cowherd and Weaver Girl are so enamored that they forget to till and weave, so even though the Weaver Girl is the daughter of the Emperor of Heaven, she still has to be punished, and can only meet her love once a year on the Bridge of Magpies.

From the differing versions of The West Chamber over different eras, we can see even more clearly Chinese people's identification with social values. The West Chamber had its origins in The Story of Yingying by Yuan Zhen of the Tang dynasty. In the original version Student Zhang first seduces Yingying, then abandons her. After abandoning her he calls her a "temptress," yet the people of the time praised Zhang for having recognized his mistakes and reformed. But what started out as quite a realistic story, by the Yuan dynasty and beyond became a soap opera with a harmonious happy ending.

In the wake of The West Chamber, a large number of books appeared in the Ming dynasty in the "talented boy meets beautiful girl" genre. They all follow the structure of The West Chamber, with a gifted scholar and a beautiful maiden who fall in love at first sight and then, flouting conventional morality, sleep together. Next their straight-laced parents, a rich merchant or a snobbish madame appears, to put a stop to their relationship. But if only our hero can make a name for himself by coming first in the imperial civil service examination, although the couple have transgressed the moral code, they are allowed to return to the straight and narrow, and may even be formally wed with the blessing of the emperor and embark on a blissful marriage.

Among these stories in which emotion so far outstrips reason-including The Peony Pavilion, in which the living die and the dead come to life-the d幯ouement never goes beyond the formula of success in the examinations. From this we can see that in traditional society, however great an individual's thirst for love, though it might transcend time it could not transcend the constraints of family and society. Even Jia Baoyu in The Dream of the Red Chamber, who "gains enlightenment through love" in the end still has to succeed in the examinations and produce progeny to continue his family line before he can follow his own wishes and become a monk. Such endings are both happy and tragic, for they never go outside the conventional standards of life in the material world. Even today, many parents are tied to the notion that "in books one will naturally find a face as pretty as jade," and admonish their children to "study hard-once you pass the exams and get into university, there'll be plenty of pretty girls!"

"Our love comedies start by challenging morality to embrace love, but they always end with people betraying love in order to shoulder their social responsibilities"-Sun Chung-hsing feels that love is shabbily treated, and in his classes often deconstructs these "great" love stories. "Why is coming first in the imperial exams, or becoming the wife of a high official, the only option? Could Student Zhang really not have eloped with Yingying to the mountains or woods, where they would be free to live as they pleased? If Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai wanted both to be faithful to love, but not to go against social mores, was to 'die for love' really the only way out?" Sun Chung-hsing tries to get students to break free from traditional stereotyped modes of thinking.

Lovers struck asunder

Once one falls into modes of thinking which seek only to satisfy the demands of the ethical and legal system, even when love between husband and wife is not in doubt, they may still suffer the fate of being "lovers struck asunder." Examples are Jiao Zhongqing and Liu Lanzhi in the Han dynasty story The Peacocks Fly Southeast; the Song dynasty patriotic poet Lu You and Tang Wan; or Shen Sanbai and Yunniang in the Qing-dynasty Six Chapters of a Floating Life. The path of love for people in olden times was often rocky and strewn with pitfalls, and hedged about by an ossified social order and moral code.

When the poet Lu You was 20 years old he married his cousin Tang Wan, his mother's niece. The couple loved each other deeply, but Tang Wan's mother-in-law took a dislike to her and insisted that Lu You divorce her. At first the couple deceived Lu's parents and continued to meet outside the family home, but his mother discovered this and put a stop to it, so that the two could only each remarry. Years later they met by chance in the Shen Garden by Yuji Temple. With her husband's permission, Tang Wan sent a servant to bring Lu You wine and food. The melancholy and forlorn Lu You, unable to suppress his sorrow, took up his brush and wrote on the wall a poem the sadness of which has echoed down the ages: "Delicate pink hands; yellow wine. The city is full of the colors of spring; willows hang over the garden wall. The east wind [Lu's mother] blows cold; joy is fragile, melancholy fills my heart. Years of lonely separation. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Spring comes as before, but we are desolate and thin; tear tracks, red-rimmed eyes, the handkerchief wet through. The plum blossoms fallen, the pools and pavilions deserted. Though our eternal promise still lives, I cannot even write to you. No! No! No!"

Many decades later, when he was in his eighties, Lu visited the Shen Garden again. By then the garden had changed ownership, and the calligraphy on the wall had almost faded away. Lu wrote: "In the garden flowers bloom; half of them I knew before. May the lady rest in peace, and not lament our fleeting dream." Even then he could not believe that the bonds of fate between himself and Tang Wan had been so weak! No doubt their love had been immortalized in the ink marks on the wall, the flowers and trees in the garden and in Lu's poems, but simply because of his mother's opposition it had become a tragedy which haunted him all his life, and which others surely contemplate with horror. Similarly, after Yunniang falls ill and dies, an anguished Shen Sanbai warns posterity: "Tell all husbands and wives in the world not to hate each other, but neither to be too close, for it is said: 'Loving marriages are not fated to last.' Perhaps I can serve as a warning to others."

Love which spreads wings and soars

But perhaps what is crucial to love, which decides life's happiness or otherwise, is not rebellion or compromise, but how to maintain a love of natural emotion while living peaceably and prospering in the mortal world. Love is not just sentimentality; more importantly, it is an exercise in "searching for one's true self."

"The Chinese don't believe in taking roads of no return. Love is like the sea, which may buoy up the boat, but may also overturn it. Surely a love which destroys everything, good or bad, is not the only great love? Surely rebelling against society is not the only way? Love is a very important part of life, but society is the space in which people live, and it must be asked how someone can lead a fulfilled life outside of society." Ko Ching-ming points out a different way of thinking: the power of love ought not only work in opposition to the structure of society. The Song dynasty literary giant Su Dongpo could be thoroughly sentimental, yet didn't he write works of eternal value? People glorify the tragic side of love, but forget that love can also "raise the quality of life," like the pair of birds singing in harmony in the poem The Calling Waterfowl in The Book of Songs, or the lovers in an anonymous ancient poem who say: "We want to be a pair of calling cranes, to spread our wings and soar."

The Han-dynasty scholar Master Mao, in his preface to The Book of Songs, says: "Start from feelings; control them with morality," stressing that what comes first is true emotion from within, which is the motive power in life; the constraints of ritual and etiquette are meaningless without it. Love should be the most complete expression of emotion and character and should be flesh-and-blood, but it cannot develop to the full without moral character and restraint. If one says that having a moral code is wrong, this is only so if people think only of society's rules and forget true feelings. For instance, in The Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Baoyu believes that girls are water and boys are mud, and when girls touch mud they are made dirty. But the fault is not with men, but in the fact that when a girl marries and becomes someone's wife, she often falls into the rigid and demeaning round of the life society dictates for her, and so loses the innocence and genuineness of her "natural life" as a girl. Again, Xue Baocha should have made an ideal wife for the son of a family of high standing, but because she is unable to communicate with Jia Baoyu on a spiritual level, although she gains social rank, she finds no sympathetic resonance, but instead only a cold, empty shell.

Indirect, with infinite yearning

The Chinese insistence on morality and harmony has certainly destroyed many potential happy marriages. But when, in the face of the setbacks and buffets of real life, people are forced to suppress their emotions, these filter into the deepest parts of life and give rise to a warmth and sincerity which are lasting and inexhaustible-an inward, hidden "classical love."

Lin Ching-su, who teaches at the Wen Tzao Ursuline Junior College of Modern Languages, observes: "For love to be repressed is frustrating, but such a setback gives rise to a still deeper affection. Compared with romantic love, which casts a radiance all around, classical love is discreet and refractive." "Roundabout and indirect, with infinite yearning, is the real Chinese way of love," writes the great philosopher Tang Chun-yi.

For example, in Tao Yuanming's Prose Poem on Stilling the Passions, love makes his character "perplexed and unsettled, with ever-changing mood." But he never expresses his tumultuous feelings openly. Instead, after many tortuous mental struggles, he sighs lightly and says: "I wish I were the collar of your blouse, to smell the fragrance of your beautiful head. Sad the clothes you discard at evening, lamenting the endless autumn night." Thus he expresses his infinite yearning.

The east wind fades, the flowers wither

Lin Ching-su remembers her grandfather recounting how in his youth, when it was the rule that the males of the family would eat first, he and his brothers would stealthily hide pieces of meat under their bowls to give to their own wives. This was no sign of "passion," but certainly not one of "coldness" either. If one says that people in the modern age identify with the "boiling passion" of romantic love, then classical love is like water simmering on a slow flame.

In an untitled poem, Li Shangwen writes: "Meeting is painful, and parting too. When the east wind's strength passes, the hundred flowers wither. The spring silkworm spins silk until she dies; only when the candle is burnt down does it cease to shed tears." Romantic, passionate love usually consumes rather than nourishing, and tragic love is usually of this kind. "Such boundless enthusiasm will surely destroy all his vitality," wrote Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther.

"Romantic love is the beginning of love. One is infatuated at the first glance, and leaps up to heaven in one bound; in classical love, one glance is not enough-it takes much effort to have and to hold love." This is how Ko Ching-ming distinguishes their natures. People are often bedazzled by the earth-shaking "sacrifices" of romantic love, but Ko believes that classical love, which "succeeds" by day-to-day effort, morning and night, is even more special. This is the deep and subtle spirit of "joy without excess."

Perhaps this is why in the West there is the saying, "marriage is the tomb of love," whereas the Chinese, in a society built on the Confucian moral code, feel that "marriage is the beginning of love." When love is defined only as romantic passion, what is loved is often only an ideal in life, a romantic state of mind-not one's real, flesh-and-blood partner. "When the definition of love only includes the romantic part, the process of seeking love is mistaken for the entirety of love. If one then goes on to believe that our ancestors knew nothing of love, or that there is no love between husband and wife or between mother and father, that belittles the richness of love," says Sun Chung-hsing.

Moreover, "when one reins in passion with morality, one discovers that apart from each other, love can have even more possibilities," says Professor Cheng Pei-kai of the history department at Pace University in the USA, taking the argument a step further. The mutual respect and privacy stressed by Chinese husbands and wives is aimed at creating an "ordered" life. With order, this love can benefit not just two people, but everyone. Marriage is like a video game-when the first round is won, the second, harder round has just begun!

May we be married in every incarnation

It is said that fate matches one with the same partner "through three incarnations"-- though the oceans may dry up and the rocks may crumble, this love will never die. In The Book of Songs it is written: "To hold your hand, to grow old with you"; and a popular saying also goes: "May we two grow old together." On the night of the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (the Chinese equivalent of St. Valentine's day), the romantically enamored Sanbai and Yunniang, facing the glittering Milky Way, place incense, candles, fruit and vegetables on an altar along with their two seals, one cut in intaglio and the other in relief, with the words "May we be husband and wife through every reincarnation." Lovers always hope for assurance that their feelings can last forever.

What gentle, indirect classical love demands is cultivation in real life, day in and day out. But how did our ancestors nourish their love to last through their life together?

Li Qingzhao of the Song dynasty and her husband Zhao Mingcheng both loved to study ancient inscriptions on bronze and stone. In his student days, Zhao would often pawn the clothes off his own back to buy scraps of inscription rubbings and fragments of books written on bamboo strips. When he brought these home along with some snacks, he and his wife would sit shoulder to shoulder, poring over them all night. Later, because of political struggles, they went to live in Zhao's native place, and experienced poverty once again. But Li Qingzhao didn't mind having no pearls or jade to wear. In the spirit of Tao Yuanming's "Words on Returning" the couple called their study the "Hall of Returning." There they would pass the time testing each other's memories by quoting a sentence from the classics to see if the other could say from which book, which chapter and which page it came; the winner would drink tea before the other. Often they were so overcome with merriment that they spilt the tea down themselves. Their cultured concern for each other was not merely a literary game of wordplay and erudition, but extended into every part of life.

When we look at Sanbai and Yunniang in "Home Life," what it describes is not some high-saluting, genteel conversation, but simply how the couple arrange their little house to make it not seem too small, how they make a screen of climbing plants to keep it cool in summer, or how Yunniang borrows a peddler's shoulder pole so that when Sanbai goes to some scenic spot with his friends, they can take along some warm food and hot tea. The writer simply talks about the necessities of everyday life, yet in an interesting way which brings out how they practice the art of living, how they communicate their feelings to each other, and how their lives blend together.

Life is the proving ground of love

In the Ming dynasty storyteller's script Remarkable Happenings Past and present, there is a little story called "Song Jinlang Refinds His Wife, Featuring a Worn-Out Felt Hat." Song Jinlang is engaged to Yichun, the daughter of a boatman. Song's house burns down, so the boatman puts him up on his boat. When the boatman tells his wife to fix Song something to eat, the wife replies that there is rice, but it is cold. Yi-chun says simply: "There's hot tea in the pan." When it starts to rain, the old boatman says: "Here's an old hat, give it to the lad to wear." At this, with nimble fingers Yichun plucks a needle and thread from her hair and sews up the tears in the hat, which she tosses onto the boat's tarpaulin, telling Song Jinlang to take it. In this little fragment of life we see no cloying sentiment or sweet nothings, nor even a single word of intimate talk. But from a few small, considerate actions we can glimpse the infinite tenderness which Yichun is hiding in her heart. Tseng Chao-hsu believes the secret of Chinese-style love is that it is "genteel and discreet"--it is hidden but not congested, as natural as the blowing of the wind or the flow of running water. Behind the little bit of tenderness which is revealed is an enormous hidden reserve of affection, which is why it is inexhaustible.

Nothing can change our love

In her Commandments for Women, Ban Zhao of the Han dynasty expresses the view that a husband's love for his wife is a kind of "benevolence," and dogmatically proposes that the wife should naturally feel gratitude for this benevolence, so a husband may divorce his wife, but a wife may not divorce her husband. This gave rise to the greatest principle for harmonious relations between Chinese husbands and wives--that of conjugal love based on gratitude.

But if this conjugal love were simply a one-sided affair of gratitude and uncomplaining forbearance of humble woman to exalted man, it would hardly still be spoken of with admiration to this day. "In the Chinese conception, love between family members is seen as the highest form of love, so the purpose of love is inevitably to build greater family affection," says Cheng Pei-kai.

Like family affection, which is based on bonds of blood, love born of gratitude does not fade and disappear like romantic passion--it is a reciprocal, mutual compassion. This conjugal love and mutual sympathy is not born of marital duty or constraints, but is active and spontaneous. It is a lifelong sense of gratitude and of being moved, whereby "until we die and turn to dust, we will never lose our mutual sympathy." "Ten years separate us, one alone in life, the other in death. Though not striving to remember, I can never forget you. Your lonely grave lies a thousand leagues hence; I have no place to tell you of my desolation. If we met you would not know me, my face wrinkled, my temples white as frost. At night comes a dream: suddenly I am back home; at the little window you are combing your hair. We look at each other without speaking; I weep a thousand tears. Every year brings such a day of heartbreak. A moonlit night, a little pine on a ridge." Su Dongpo wrote this poem--a ci set to the tune Jiang Cheng Zi--in memory of his wife who had died ten years earlier. In these lines there is no ornate and flowery language, but amid his words' simplicity and tranquillity there is a sense of gratitude. Perhaps his wife was not able to commune with him spiritually in the same way as his beloved concubine Chaoyun, but for many years she had taken care of his parents back home, and appreciation of her support in troubled times still filled Su Dong-po's heart.

Wei Huicong of the Tang dynasty was the daughter of a high official, yet after she was married to the poet Yuan Zhen, they lived the life of "an impoverished husband and wife for whom everything is sorrow." But when Yuan Zhen finally rose to fame and fortune, his wife fell ill and died. Yuan Zhen wrote: "All I can do is to hold vigil through the night, to make up for the scant joy you knew while alive." The classical love between husband and wife reveals an inexhaustible, gentle sincerity, as expressed in these words, spoken by a young wife to her husband who is about to depart on military service: "Nothing can change the love between us. . . . If you live, come back to me; if you die, I will remember you always."

Chinese style love, genteel and discreet

In The Book of Songs, we see passionate romantic love, but also gentle, sincere conjugal love. In the poem The Woman Says: "The Cock is Crowing, " we overhear a snatch of pillow talk between a young husband and wife 3000 years ago. The wife tells the husband that the cock is crowing, and it is time for him to get up to go hunting. The husband, who is still sleepy, replies some-what lazily that it is not yet light. A little later, the wife again urges her husband to rise, for the morning star is already shining. This time the husband wakes up properly and tells his wife: "The big ducks and geese are circling and soaring. I must hurry out and shoot some." Before he leaves, the wife gives him encouragement by saying that when he shoots a big goose she will cook it to make a fine meal, and together they can enjoy delicious food and good wine. They will grow old together as harmoniously as the music of the qin and se (two zither-like instruments) playing together--what a peaceful and wonderful life! The husband is moved by his wife's attentiveness and takes an ornament from his body as a gift in gratitude for his wife's deep affection. The mutual tenderness revealed in their conversation warms one's heart even today.

Love is love in beggars and in kings

"The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall; the fly her spleen, the little spark his heat. . . . Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs, and love is love in beggars and in kings." With deft imagery and boundless imagination, this medieval English love song uses the flowers and trees, insects and fish to symbolize love. Just like the poems in The Book of Songs, it has both the innocence of romantic love and the deep sentiment of classical love.

Sixty years ago in southern Taiwan, at a time when marriage between people of the same surname was considered incestuous, in a conservative Hakka village Chung Lihe openly declared his love to his cousin Chung Ping. In the face of society's disapproval they left their home behind and went to mainland China, where hand in hand they created their Lishan Farm. Never betraying or abandoning one other, they stayed together into their old age. This too is a story of both romantic and classical love.

The intensity of romantic love, the reticence of classical love--these are not the fashions of a single age, nor the monopoly of East or West, but the way love expresses itself in individual lives. Every love illuminates a human life with all its setbacks, and tells its story. Still ringing in our ears is Tseng Chao-hsu's repeated admonition: "Never think you have understood love!" For people in olden times or new, and in any country of the world, how to sing a melodious and moving song of love which lingers in the air is a lesson which takes a lifetime to learn.

[Picture Caption]

Behind the many-layered mask of Confucian morality, what is the face of classical love? (The Peony Pavilion; photo by Hsu Pin)

"One's parents' command and the words of the matchmaker"--our ancestors did not see marriage as the tomb of love, but as its beginning.

During the May 4th Movement, which set old traditions against new, the poet Xu Zhimo pursued "free love" with Lu Xiaoman, arousing a controversy which has not died down to this day. (courtesy of Hsin Chao Publishing)

"My clothes grow looser, but I don't mind; for you I would waste clean a way." On St. Valentine's Day, why are some left out in the cold?

The Chinese stress the group over the individual, and value social order . The Cowherd and Weaver Girl were so wrapped up in the joys of love that they forgot their social responsibilities, and in punishment they w ere condemned to meet only once a year on the Bridge of Magpies over the "Silver River" (the Milky Way). (from Chinese Popular Prints)

When cool dude meets awesome babe, is the attraction between them romant ic love? And when talented scholar encounters beautiful maiden, is their enchantment classical love? (above: Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai; photo by Hsu Pin)

Do women pursue love and marriage, and men career and fortune? Is love r eally all of woman, but only half of man?

Though the seas dry up and the rocks crumble, this love will never die. Or is it enough simply to love, no matter if it will last?

Figures decorating the "Lovers' Temple" in Peitou, Taipei. Phrases like "fate decides love through three incarnations," or "husband and wife for seven lives" expre ss the notion that love can transcend time and even death.

Sticking together through thick and thin. Indirect, classical love is redolent with unspoken meaning.

Bold and passionate, with bodies entwined. Young lovers openly cast a radiance of love all around them. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)

"My clothes grow looser, but I don't mind; for you I would waste clean a way." On St. Valentine's Day, why are some left out in the cold?

The Chinese stress the group over the individual, and value social order . The Cowherd and Weaver Girl were so wrapped up in the joys of love that they forgot their social responsibilities, and in punishment they w ere condemned to meet only once a year on the Bridge of Magpies over the "Silver River" （the Milky Way）. （from Chinese Popular Prints）

When cool dude meets awesome babe, is the attraction between them romant ic love? And when talented scholar encounters beautiful maiden, is their enchantment classical love? （above: Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai; photo by Hsu Pin）

Do women pursue love and marriage, and men career and fortune? Is love r eally all of woman, but only half of man?

Though the seas dry up and the rocks crumble, this love will never die. Or is it enough simply to love, no matter if it will last?

Figures decorating the "Lovers' Temple" in Peitou, Taipei. Phrases like "fate decides love through three incarnations," or "husband and wife for seven lives" expre ss the notion that love can transcend time and even death.

Sticking together through thick and thin. Indirect, classical love is redolent with unspoken meaning.

Bold and passionate, with bodies entwined. Young lovers openly cast a radiance of love all around them. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）