of Ah Shung and Yu Lang, and the children themselves occupied, with their nurse, the low building along its other side. Their father was the oldest son of Grandmother Ling. So, of course, he had a better house on a more important court than his younger brothers, who lived with their wives and their children in the two smaller courts behind.
The Ling household was large. As was the custom, all the grown-up sons and their families lived here together inside the same walls. Many servants were needed for so many masters. Indeed, such great numbers of people lived inside the Ling gate that it seemed almost like a town.
"Sky-well" is the meaning of one Chinese name for a courtyard such as those where Ah Shung and his sister passed their days and their nights. No doubt the Chinese give it this name because the courtyard is so shut in by houses and walls that the only outside thing to be seen is the sky overhead.
There were many gray brick houses built around the Ling sky-wells. There was the Hall of the Ancestors where, this family believed, the spirits of their forefathers dwelt, their own special places shown by little red tablets of wood, each marked with a name in glistening gold. There was the schoolhouse where Scholar Shih, the family teacher, lived and where all the children inside the red gate had their daily lessons. There was the house where the men-cooks prepared the family food, and then there were all the small houses where the men and the maid servants slept.
"We shall end our walk in the Garden of Sweet Smells," said Grandmother Ling as they went through a gate, shaped like a flower vase, cut in the white wall. Giving orders to the number one gardener, the old woman walked slowly along its neat little paths, over a tiny humpbacked bridge of white stone that rose above the pool where dragon-eyed goldfish with long flowing tails were swimming about in the clear water. She noted some rocks sliding out of their places in the tiny mountain that had been built up in the center of the garden, and she found that a tile had fallen from the roof of the garden pavilion where the family often drank tea on warm summer days.
"Go now to the schoolmaster, Ah Shung," Lao Lao commanded as she came again to her own courtyard. "A boy who does not learn is like a knife with a dull edge. See that you work well. And you, Precious Pearl," she said to Yu Lang, "come with me for an hour with the embroidery needle."
The boy and his sister did not see each other again until the midday meal. Then all the Ling family came together. At midday, and again each evening, the great family hall rang with their chatter and laughter as they took their places about the tables. At the family table Grandmother Ling sat in the place of honor. Her chair was just in front of a high narrow side table of shining carved wood. Upon this, between two tall scarlet candles, stood the statue of the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, whose name is Gwan Yin. From painted scrolls, hung upon the gray wall above her head, two of the Ling forefathers, dressed in rich robes of red and blue, looked down with calm faces upon the family gathered beneath them. About the table with its red cloth sat Grandmother Ling's three sons and their wives and their older children. Ah Shung and Yu Lang and their younger cousins from the other courts ate with the nurses at smaller tables at the sides of the room.
Maid servants moved to and fro, bringing bowls of steaming white rice and dish after dish of meat and salted vegetables to eat with it. There was chicken, pork, and fish, turnips, carrots, and cabbage, and a kind of bean cheese. All these different foods were lifted from the thin blue eating bowls with the two little sticks which served these children instead of forks. Foreigners call these Chinese eating-sticks "chopsticks. " This really means "quick sticks."
"We come to the table to eat, not to carve," Grandmother Ling would say when someone told her of the queer customs of other lands, where people used knives and forks. So all the food of this household was cut up into small pieces before it was set on the table. Grandmother Ling used her own little chopsticks of ivory and silver like a pair of tongs. She picked up her food daintily and she popped it into her mouth without losing a grain of rice or a drop of good sauce.
Ah Shung and Yu Lang ate quickly. Their chopsticks of bamboo flew back and forth between their bowls and their mouths. They ate a great deal at breakfast, as well as at midday and in the evening. At four in the afternoon they had an extra meal of tea and steaming hot dumplings. Grandmother Ling would have thought they were ill if they had not stuffed themselves full or if they had laid down their chopsticks before their rice bowls were empty.
The Old Old One often had special food served to her in order to give her the strength she needed in her old age. She liked swallow's-nest soup, flavored with the sticky gum with which these birds put their nests together. She sometimes had a stew made from a certain kind of chicken whose bones were black as coal. Into this stew she liked to sift some powdered deer's horn which she thought an excellent tonic. White peony root, chopped very fine and cooked with the chicken, made it even better. As a relish she often ate pickled eggs, that had been kept so many years that they had turned to black jelly; and the tea with which she quenched her thirst was flavored with jasmine flowers.
Nothing was too fine for the Old Mistress. She came first with everyone inside the red gate. Since their father was dead, her grown-up sons asked her advice about everything they did, and they even received their spending money from her. Grandmother Ling had as much to do with the children as their own mothers. They learned more in the hours they spent at her side than they did in the schoolroom.
Ah Shung and Yu Lang were very fond of their grandmother. No one knew so many splendid stories as she. When she was a child her father had had her taught to read and to write just like her brothers. With her soft rabbit-hair brush and the sweet-smelling black paste upon her ink stone she could make even more beautiful Chinese words than Scholar Shih, who was now teaching the children to write. She could read from the paper books, with their delicate covers and their soft pages filled with up-and-down rows of strange black word pictures.
After their evening meal the Lings sat for a time drinking bowls of hot liquid which had the same delicate color as a yellow-green bamboo leaf. This was their tea, which they took instead of water.
"We are to go into Lao Lao's room tonight," Ah Shung said to his sister and cousins as he emptied his tea bowl. The boy's black eyes glistened. He liked nothing better than the family gatherings in his grandmother's apartment when often poems were read and stories were told.
Grandmother Ling knew many tales about dragons and unicorns, about firebirds, or phoenixes, that were born in the sun, and the Heavenly Dog that tried to swallow the moon. She knew about spirits that ruled the wind and the water. She knew about foxes that turned into people, and about the Jade Rabbit that dwelt in the moon. Gods that flew up to heaven, men who lived forever, and beautiful maidens from the Heavenly Kingdom were found in her stories.
In the days when Ah Shung and Yu Lang dwelt inside the red gate of the Lings', the Chinese people really believed in spirits and gods and such fairy-tale creatures. Even today many Chinese are not sure that they do not exist. Lao Lao, who told these strange stories, and these children, who listened, had never a doubt but that they were true.
II
HOW PAN KU MADE THE WORLD
YOU MAY OFFER my guests ginger, Ah Shung, and you may offer sugared lotus seed, Yu Lang," Grandmother Ling said to the children when the family gathered in her room after the evening meal. Huang Ying, the old woman's favorite maid servant, went to a tall mahogany cabinet that stood against the wall, and from its carved wooden shelf she lifted down a small blue-and-white bowl which she put into the boy's hands. She gave to Yu Lang a china jar with a scene on its sides done in all the five colors: red, yellow, blue, black, and white.
The children held these out politely in both their hands. They bowed as they offered them to the Old Old One, who sat very straight
