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a descendant.’
    Did he have to fear once more that he would remain without descendants?
    He wanted to obey Confucian law and continue his line.
    So now he entertained the idea of starting a family again.

 
    19 He went to his pupils and told them he would be leaving the monastery.
    After appointing his successor he removed his priestly robe and burnt it.
    He tied together his picture album, packed away his collection of paintbrushes and ink and went down into the valley.
    He looked back at the mountain and the Monastery of the Green Cloud. He had spent twenty years there, reconstructing the building and introducing his own strict rules. More than one hundred monks had been instructed by him.
    The year was 1680 and now, over fifty years old, he wanted to reconnect with the past. He thought of the old saying: Falling leaves return to their roots.
    But what was he now? Where was home to him? What was his name? He needed to find answers to everything.
    He had placed all his pictures and painting things in a few sandalwood boxes which his pupils had given him as a leaving present. Inside he found pieces of paper on which each of the pupils had written some farewell words. They moved him greatly.
    As he was crossing a river one evening he was set upon by highwaymen. Because the boxes were heavy, the highwaymen may have thought that they contained jade and gold. They stole the whole lot without opening them.
    This incident troubled him for many weeks and during this time he kept his distance from other people, speaking to nobody.
    He strove to recall his pupils’ words from memory, to write down everything and thereby recover his lost treasure piece by piece. The only possessions that remained were a brush and Pan Gu’s balls of ink, for he always carried these next to his body.
    And not a single day passed when he did not paint or fill paper with calligraphy. Now, however, he merely signed his pictures with the character lü . Lü meant ass. Bald ass was a nickname for monks.

 
    20 In the same year that he returned to Nanchang he married for a second time. She was a beautiful woman from a modest background to whom he did not disclose his true origins.
    As a wedding present he gave her a fan which he had painted. On the fan was a large, round moon, beside it a branch with a single blossom and beneath were the words: Words spoken by kindred souls have the fragrance of orchids.
    That same day he painted another picture in his album. Below it he wrote the lines: Above Nanchang in the middle of autumn the moon stands alone. At midnight smoke rises from the censer in the form of a dragon. The dream vanishes in a dark cloud. The beautiful lady wears a long silk ribbon. The wind blows, but cannot catch it.
    He signed this picture with yet another new name which now he used alongside Lü: Poyun Qiaozhe – woodcutter of the evaporated clouds.
    But he and his young bride did not find happiness together. He felt as if he were floating in a dark cloud, and what he could see through it seemed dismal and unreal. He remained restless.
    He placed a card on his desk as a reminder and a warning. On it were the words: Life and death matter.

 
    21 Acquaintances old and new tried to win him for their artistic circles. They organized poetry and music evenings in the hope that he would come.
    Such events had become especially popular with the new ruling magistrates. And so one day Poyun Qiaozhe was invited by the venerable magistrate Hu Yitang to a poetry banquet, an invitation which would have required great diplomatic skill to decline. So he went along.
    The host had hung every wall with empty sheets of paper. When all had assembled and plenty of wine had been passed round, he had one of his guests blindfolded: a young painter. The painter was taken from wall to wall and challenged to paint characters – made-up ones, but different each time. And each time the guests had to invent a name for the shape created by his brushstrokes. They came up