The Warning Voice Read Online Free PDF Page A

laughing. ‘That’s quite all right. Coincidences over names are the commonest thing in the world.’
    The woman sat down again and continued:
    â€˜A time came when this old Sir Wang sent his son off to the capital to sit for the examinations. One day, while the young man was on his journey, there was a great downpour of rain and he was forced to seek shelter in a near-by grange. Now it so happened that the owner of this grange was a former acquaintance of old Sir Wang’s called Li, and this old Sir Li invited the young man to spend a few days with him at the grange, accommodating him in his own study. Sir Li had no son of his own, but he had an only daughter called Chuluan, a very accomplished young lady who excelled in everything she turned her hand to, whether it was performing on the
qin
or playing Go or painting or calligraphy –’
    â€˜I can see why it’s called
The Phoenix Seeks a Mate,’
said Grandmother Jia. ‘You don’t need to tell me what the story’s about, I can guess already. “Feng” means “phoenix” and “Chu-luan” means “little hen phoenix”. Obviously it’s thestory of how Wang Xi-feng seeks to make this Li Chu-luan his wife.’
    â€˜I believe Your Old Ladyship has heard this story before,’ said the blind woman, smiling.
    â€˜Her Old Ladyship has heard everything,’ someone told her. ‘And what she hasn’t heard she can guess.’
    â€˜These stories are all the same,’ said Grandmother Jia, ‘– so tedious! Always the same ideally eligible young bachelors and the same ideally beautiful and accomplished young ladies – at least, they are
supposed
to be ideal, but there’s certainly nothing ideal about their behaviour – in fact there’s nothing very ladylike about them at all. Invariably, we are told how well-born they are. Their father has been a Prime Minister, or a First Secretary at the very least. They are always their father’s only child and the apple of his eye. They are always amazingly well-educated, a model of decorum, a regular paragon of all the virtues – that is, until the first presentable young man comes along. As soon as
he
appears on the scene – it doesn’t matter who or what he is – all their book-learning and the duty they owe their parents fly out of the window and the next moment they are “making their plans for the future” and generally carrying on in a way that would bring blushes to the cheek of a cat-burglar – certainly not in the least like respectable, educated young ladies. You would hardly call a young woman who conducted herself like that a “paragon”, however many books she might have read – any more than you would acquit a young fellow charged with highway robbery on the grounds that he was a good scholar. The people who make up these stories give themselves the lie every time they open their mouths.
    â€˜And for another thing: if these young women really belonged to cultivated, aristocratic households in which the girls and their mothers were all educated people, then even allowing for the somewhat reduced circumstances owing to their father’s early retirement, you can be sure there would still be plenty of nannies and maids in attendance on them. So how is it that in all of these stories there is only ever a single confidante who knows what her young mistress is getting up to? What are all the other servants supposed to bedoing all this time? Of course, this is only another example of the way in which these stories contradict themselves.’
    There was some laughter from the assembled company and someone complimented Grandmother Jia on her perceptiveness in exposing the underlying falseness of these stories.
    â€˜There’s always a reason for it,’ the old lady went on. ‘In some cases it’s because the writer is envious of people so much better off than