Chinoiseries

Like the patter of rain on the crisp leaves of autumn are the tiny footfalls of the fox-maidens.

On the fifth day of the fifth month the statesman Küh Yuen drowned himself in the River Mih-lo. Since then twenty-three centuries have passed, and the mountains wear away. Yet every year, on the fifth day of the fifth month, the great Dragon Boats, gay with flags and gongs, search diligently in the streams of the Empire for the body of Küh Yuen.

When Kang Yi had been long dead the Empress decreed upon him posthumous decapitation, so that he walks forever disgraced among the shades.

When he had tasted in a dream of the Ten Courts of Purgatory, Dr. Tsêng was humbled in spirit and passed his life in piety among the foothills.

While two ladies of the Imperial harem held before him a screen of pink silk, and a P’in Concubine knelt with his ink-slab, Li Po, who was very drunk, wrote an impassioned poem to the moon.

Like this frail and melancholy rain is the memory of the Emperor Kuang-Hsu, and of his sufferings at the hand of Yehonala. Yet under heaven was there found no one to avenge him. Now he has mounted the Dragon and has visited the Nine Springs. His betrayer sits upon the Dragon Throne. Yet among the shades may he not take comfort from the presence of his Pearl Concubine?

At the Hour of the Horse avoid raising a roof tree, for by the trampling of his hoofs it may be beaten down; And at the Hour of the cunning Rat go not near a soothsayer, for by his prescience he may mislead the oracle, and the hopes of the inquirer come to naught.