to Tea’, tea was to rest on the palm of the hand for some time. Woman, who possessed the Yin nature and were closer to earth, might have lowered the energy and the status of the ceremony. This is why, following the advice of the Tutor, the Head of the Nan Song house, allowing his first wife and his favourite daughter to attend the ceremony, decided not to allow other women into the sacrament of the Tea Ceremony. Having a Tea Ceremony was risky as it was: the presence of heads of other influential clans at the Tea Ceremony could be charged with problems.
It was decided that the women would be offered a healing drink ‘for all seasons’, which would be served in another ‘small’ hall, and from there, later, they would leave for home. The tea was, actually, not just tea. It was a blend of fine components, each of them symbolizing one of the five elements – earth, water, wood, fire, metal – or, correspondingly, the organs of the body – the spleen, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs – or, in another projection, the seasons —Indian summer, winter, spring, summer, autumn. The drink was made from a cherry-like fruit, a flower resembling an aster, a nut, the skin of which when soaked in hot water would produce a most refined flavour, from a little crystal, which in the boiling water would turn into a stinging jelly-fish, and from the tea leaves themselves. The drink was intended to give the guests strength to restore the energy they had spent at night and to endure the long way back home.
The men were offered a three-hour tea ceremony as a shortened morning variant. It was decided to serve only two kinds of tea – the Yunnan peach tea, a blend of fresh moist tender spring leaves, and tea harvested a bit later in the highlands by maiden beauties, who used their delicate thin fingers to roll up the leaves and their saliva to glue them into rolls. The Yunnan peach tea did not have peach leaves at all, but the peach trees that enclosed the secret tea plantation shared with the cultivated tea their special peach flavour, which would bloom only after the second brewing.
The bamboo flutes started, followed by ‘shen’, the wind instruments, the divine harps, the citharas and little ceremonial drums. To soften the atmosphere of the men’s gathering, the female Yu mode had been chosen. The most refined, tender plays of the tunes were suggestive of the coolness of a mountain stream, or of a tranquil movement of water in a valley river. In the context of female absence, it was a hymn to that water, which was delivered from a special spring up in the mountains in the vicinity of the Celestial Masters’ Small Temple.
The Tea Ceremony was a covert event; even the musicians sat behind a special partition made of ebony encrusted with mother-of-pearl. The most refined tea emanations were transforming each other. The tea did not hurry to give up its secrets, and the guests had time to enjoy every nuance of the procedure. And only the special status of warriors did not allow the men to express their exhilaration.
Well, the Tea Ceremony merits hours and hours of descriptions and scientific Taoism treatises and poems, and still its heavenly nature will remain untold, because there are no words that could describe your feelings at those moments, and the revelations you receive under the impact of the finest fields that emerge in the process of communication with a Kun-Fu-Chia Master. The fields are so fine, that they transfer over long distances and you would be able to influence events that are taking place a long way from you, if they are important to you at the moment.
This is why, in order to improve the interaction and the mutual understanding among the heads of the clans, who had armies of their own and were influential enough to unite people in a joint effort to repel the Jurchens, the Tea Ceremony was held. Besides, it was intended to reduce the possible disappointment of those whose daughters would not be chosen at all, or would be selected as second or third wives.
The music stopped. The tea-ware was taken away. The astrologists entered the hall. They were seven. Six of them seated themselves on silk cushions in pairs facing one another. The Elder remained standing and addressed the Lord and the guests.
“Illustrious Lord, the Book of Destinies reads that the deeds of your son will be sacred and multiyear, and his son, likewise, will be a happy and remarkable ruler, and he will be borne by the first wife. Her name is Bao and she is from the Li Hong family.”
Hearing this, Chen Li Hong, Bao’s father, turned pale.
The astrologist went on, “The second wife will be Chou from the Hi Lin family, and the third wife will be Ho from the Shao-Zun. The wedding ceremony for Shi and Bao will be held under the Chen (Chen, the Cart, is the last of the 28 Chinese Zodiac constellations, the last of the seven constellations of the Red Bird of the southern celestial sector), that is, in fifteen days.”
The astrologist bowed and retreated, followed by the other astrologists. Men started rising one after another; in silence they gave their ceremonial farewell honours to their Illustrious Lord, and left the hall. Thus the destiny was calculated. But they were astrologists, neither future-tellers nor Taoists. And that rescued Chen Li Hong. Still pale, he was the last to rise from his seat.
“Why? Aren’t you happy? Is my son not a worthy mate for your daughter?” asked the Illustrious Lord with a smile.
“My Lord, it’s the greatest honour for me. But she is my favourite daughter, and she is still so attached to her mother.”
“So, what? Daughters are nothing but flowers in the garden: the flowers are doomed to wither – what can you do about it? Go, hurry to inform her of the great honour and her upcoming happiness.”
Chen Li Hong stood up, offered the due ceremonial honours and left the hall in silence. While walking in the shade towards the stables, he did not utter a word, neglecting the anxious attempts of his beautiful wife to look into his eyes and read the reason for the unusual behaviour of her husband.
Chapter Four
Openly repair the gallery roads, but sneak through the passage of Chencang
Still silent, Chen Li Hong took his place in the procession, made sure that everybody was in, and signalled to move. It was a long journey to make, but fifteen days later he would have to come back to this place with his daughter. Two white stone Tigers with strange muzzles, which resembled monkeys more than tigers, were dispassionately watching the procession go. The green and grey roofs of the stone building of the country-side mansion of His Illustrious Lord were slowly disappearing behind the tops of pine trees. One farewell glance towards the mansion – and after the bend in the road all that one could see was the impenetrable forest.
It was then that Chen started realizing the desolate implications of the situation. He had a number of wives, and many daughters and sons. But his favourite wife had only one daughter. All the other children by her died in their infancy; after that she appealed to the nuns in the cloister, who gave her a herbal drink which made her unable to get pregnant.
The astrologists, who were invited upon the arrival of the daughter, were merciless. They refused the bounties offered to them in order to reserve the right to tell the truth. The estimations made on the basis of the date of conception and the date of birth undoubtedly showed that the only daughter by his beloved wife Fan had to die at the age of fifteen. But Fan was happy to hear even that, as all of her other children had not been able to live even a single full day. Bao was a reward to Fan, she was literally the greatest treasure Fan had in her life.
Fan was exceptionally beautiful, but rather simple-minded. She talked the astrologists into changing the date of her daughter’s birth so that the predictions could be favourable.
“What if the Gods see that date and give my daughter a chance?” thought Fan.
The astrologists, charmed by the beauty and guilelessness of the hostess, did what she was begging for. They wanted to soothe her pain. Chen, also, did not want to contradict his wife and allowed to be entered the re-calculated date of birth instead of the real one. One could not change destiny, but if
