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lived together happily ever after. . . .
    The story mentioned the term thirsty illness, but only once.
    Xiangru stammered, but he was an excellent writer. He suffered from thirsty illness (xiaoke ji). Since he married into the Zhuo family, he was rich. He did not commit himself to an official career. . . .
    The sketch then moved on to Xiangru’s literary career and did not touch on the subject of his thirsty illness again. Given the seminal significance of Shiji , the story came to be retold in a number of literary versions, proving to be archetypal in its influence on the late genre of scholar-beauty romance.
    Chen then started checking through anthologies and collections. One of the earliest literary versions of the love story appeared in Xijing Zaji, a collection of anecdotes and stories.
    When Sima Xiangru returned to Chengdu with Zhuo Wenjun, he was poverty-stricken. He pawned his sushuang feather coat to Yang Chang and bought wine for her. She threw her arm round his neck and burst into tears. “I have always lived in affluence. Now we have to pawn your clothes for wine!” After much discussion, they set about selling wine in Chengdu. Wearing no more than short pants, Xiangru himself washed the utensils. He did so to embarrass Zhuo Wangsun. Wangsun was overwhelmed by shame and provided handsomely for Wenjun, thus making her rich.
    Wenjun was a beauty. Her eyebrows were as delicate as the mountains seen from a distance; her face as charming as a lotus flower; her skin was as soft as frozen cream. She had been widowed at the age of seventeen. She was loose in her ways. So impressed by Xiangru’s talent, she trespassed the grounds of rites.
    Xiangru had previously suffered from thirsty illness. When he went back to Chengdu, he became so enamored of Wenjun’s beauty that he had a relapse of the illness. Therefore he wrote the rhapsody “Beauty” to satirize himself. However, he could not mend his way and finally died of the illness. Wenjun wrote an elegy for him, which is extant today.
    In the Xijing Zaji version, Chen observed, the term thirsty illness appeared in a context quite different from the Shiji ’s. Instead of beginning from the beginning, the later tale started with the plight of the couple on their return to Chengdu, leaving out the romantic part and highlighting their materialistic motives. Xiangru was portrayed as a mercenary conspirator, and Wenjun, though a beauty, was a woman of suspect morals.
    A substantial difference came in the semantics of thirsty illness : here, it was an illness caused by love. Xiangru was aware of the cause and effect, trying to satirize himself out of it, but to no avail. He died of his passion for Wenjun.
    So here the meaning of thirsty illness was close to Bian’s—a consequence of romantic passion. That was what Bian jokingly meant by the romantic poet’s “kind of thirsty illness.”
    Chen opened Ocean of Words , the largest Chinese dictionary, in which thirsty illness clearly meant diabetes. “It is so named because the patient feels thirsty, hungry, urinates a lot, and looks emaciated.” A medical term carrying no other association whatsoever—exactly the same as its use in Shiji .
    He pulled over other reference books, thinking about the superstitious beliefs about sexual love in ancient China. As far as he could remember, the Taoist opposed sexual love—or, to be more exact, ejaculation—on the grounds that it deprived a man of his essence.
    Whatever the philosophical or superstitious influence, an association between love and death appeared on the thematic horizon of the literary version. The romance thus contained within itself an “other,” which decried the romantic theme.
    Also, the later version’s Wenjun appeared as a frivolous and sinister woman. Chen copied in his notebook a sentence: “So impressed by Xiangru’s talent, she trespassed the grounds of rites.” He underlined the word rites, thinking of a Confucian quotation, “Do all