The Country Where Even the Tavern Boys Spoke Classical Chinese / 淑士国：连酒保都满口之乎者也的国度

A Chinese Gulliver's Travels — Episode 5

From Flowers in the Mirror (镜花缘), Chapter 23 · 第二十三回 · 说酸话酒保咬文 讲迂谈腐儒嚼字

By Li Ruzhen (李汝珍, c. 1763–1830) · Translated and annotated by Cathay Tales

A coastal kingdom where the customs guards wear scholars' robes, the shop signs are calligraphed quotations from the Book of Songs, and the corner tavern serves vinegar instead of wine because no one in the country can quite tell the difference. Tang Ao and his old shipmates have seen polite countries, masked countries, footbound countries. They have not yet seen a country where the waiter answers a drink order in eighty-character parallel prose — and where a hunchbacked old pedant at the next table will, when prompted, deliver a single-paragraph monologue containing forty-nine occurrences of the particle zhī (之) and absolutely no useful information.

The Story

The voyage continues. After the embarrassment in Black Teeth Country — see [Tale 36]^{[1]For the previous stop in the journey — the country where two teenage girls outscholar the old helmsman — see Cathay Tales, Tale 36: The Country Where Two Schoolgirls Made the Old Scholar Sweat.} — the three travelers have been quiet on the deck for several days. Tang Ao (唐敖, the disgraced former imperial-examination third-place laureate, now a wandering Daoist-leaning seeker) has been reading. Lin Zhiyang (林之洋, Tang Ao's merchant brother-in-law, who runs the boat and the trading) has been counting his inventory. The old helmsman Duo Jiugong (多九公, the seventy-year-old retired naval officer who has read every travel record ever written and still got outscholared by two teenage girls last week) has, by mutual unspoken agreement, not been asked his opinion on anything for forty-eight hours.

A new coast appears. The chart calls it Shūshì Guó (淑士国, "the Country of the Refined Scholars").^{[2]Shūshì Guó (淑士国, literally "Country of the Refined Gentlemen") is one of the imaginary kingdoms invented by Li Ruzhen for Flowers in the Mirror. The name borrows the formula of the older mythological-geography text Shanhai Jing (《山海经》), but the country itself, with its mass-pedantry satire, is entirely Li Ruzhen's own creation. The character shì (士) in the name is the same shì that names the Confucian gentleman-scholar class. By 1818, the term had also acquired the secondary, slightly sour connotation of "pedant" — exactly the register Li Ruzhen wants the title to ring in.}

Lin Zhiyang, this time, decides to come along.

They approach the customs gate. The guards on duty are dressed not in the leather and iron of any normal port, but in long blue scholar's robes — the qīng shān (青衫) and lán shān (蓝衫) of the licensed lower-degree student class. Each guard wears a soft black scholar's cap. Each one carries, in addition to his halberd, a folded fan and a small writing-brush case at his waist. They search the merchants thoroughly. They speak in measured, polite, faintly archaic Mandarin. They take twice as long as customs guards anywhere else have ever taken.

Lin Zhiyang stews on the wharf.

Customs officers shouldn't dress like Confucians, he mutters in Tang Ao's ear. Customs officers should look like they could beat up a smuggler. These look like they could correct a smuggler's grammar.

The travelers are eventually waved through.

The town inside the gate is, on first impression, like nothing they have seen before.

Every passer-by is dressed as a scholar. Not just the wealthy. Everyone. The bricklayer fixing a wall wears a scholar's robe, sleeves tied back with a cord so as not to interfere with his trowel. The rice-seller behind his counter wears a scholar's robe. The man pulling a vegetable cart down the street wears a scholar's robe. The robes are stained with brick-dust and rice-husk and cabbage-juice, but they are still scholar's robes. There are no peasants in this country, in the visual sense. There are only scholars who happen to be doing peasants' work.

The shops sell, in order of frequency: qīng méi (青梅, salted green plums), jī cài (齑菜, fine-cut pickled vegetables), paper, ink-sticks, brushes, ink-stones, eyeglasses, toothpicks, books, and wine.^{[3]Qīng méi (青梅, "green plums") are unripe plums cured in salt, sugar, and licorice — a traditional Chinese pickled snack with a sour-salty flavor profile, popular as a wine-accompaniment because it pairs sharply with both wine and tea. Jī cài (齑菜) is finely chopped pickled vegetables, sometimes mustard greens, sometimes mixed wild herbs. The pairing of qīng méi and jī cài as the entire selection of "side dishes" in a "tavern" is the kind of cultural-economic detail that would have telegraphed poverty pretending to be refinement to a Qing reader instantly.} That is approximately the entire commerce of the city. Tang Ao counts the stalls. Eyeglasses, he notes to himself. In every other country I have seen, eyeglasses are a luxury item for the elderly. Here every third stall sells them.^{[4]Eyeglasses in early-19th-century China were imported luxury items, mostly from Europe via Canton trade or from Japan via Nagasaki, and were strongly associated with elderly literati. Li Ruzhen, who was both a serious phonologist and a documented eyewear-wearer himself, would have noticed the social signaling. To put eyeglasses on every passer-by including the customs guards is the satirical equivalent of giving every passer-by in a modern American satire an MBA.} Even the children wear them — small wire-rimmed circles perched on small earnest faces.

From every house on every street comes the sound of someone reading aloud. Shū shēng lǎng lǎng (书声朗朗) — the steady drone of a child or an adult reciting a text in measured tempo, the way Chinese students have memorized things for two and a half thousand years. The sound never stops. The city is reciting the classics to itself, all day, every day, as background noise.

Above every doorway is a gilded plaque. They read, in the four-character formula of imperial commendation: "Virtuous and Upright" (贤良方正), "Filial and Industrious" (孝悌力田), "Wise and Just" (聪明正直), "A Scholar of Long-Cultivated Virtue" (德行耆儒), "Versed in the Classics, Recommended for His Filial Piety" (通经孝廉), "Untiring in Goodness" (好善不倦). Shorter plaques, in pairs of two characters, read: "Cultivating Benevolence" (休仁), "Loving Righteousness" (好义), "Following Propriety" (循礼), "Steadfast in Faith" (笃信). Every plaque is dated and signed.

Tang Ao notices, with a small lift of the heart, two black plaques mixed in among the gold ones. One reads "Reformed Himself" (改过自新). The other reads "Turned Toward Goodness" (同心向善).

Look, he says to Duo Jiugong, they even commemorate the ones who failed and then recovered. That is more than my own country does.

Duo Jiugong inspects the black plaques and concedes, with the cautious dignity of a man who has recently been forced to revise his prejudices, that the country is not unworthy of its name.

The country, after all, calls itself Shūshì — "Refined Scholars."

Lin Zhiyang has spotted a shop with a large painted "Classical Texts Bookshop" (经书文馆) sign over the door. Above that, a couplet:

Roam at ease in the field of virtue, Rest in the garden of literary essays.^{[5]The Chinese reads: Yōuyóu dàodé zhī chǎng, xiūxī piānzhāng zhī yòu (优游道德之场，休息篇章之囿). Literally: "Roam freely in the field of moral virtue; rest in the garden of literary essays." It is the kind of couplet that is calligraphed onto bookshop columns to signal that this is a respectable establishment frequented by respectable scholars. The fact that it appears above a shop where students will haggle a foreign merchant down to one wén of profit is, of course, part of the joke.}

Above that, in five-clawed gilt dragon-frame characters, the four-word imperial-style motto "Cultivating Men of Talent" (教育人才).

I'm going in to do some trade, Lin Zhiyang announces, hefting his pack of goods. You two coming?

Tang Ao laughs.

Brother-in-law, spare me. I still have a few of my "humble-junior" salutations left over from White Citizens Country — and at the rate I sold them off there, I cannot afford to spend any more in this city.^{[6]Wǎn shēng (晚生, literally "later-born") is the polite self-reference a younger scholar uses when addressing a senior scholar — the equivalent of an academic "junior to you." Tang Ao is referring to the previous chapter, in White Citizens Country (白民国), where the locals are all nominally senior scholars and Tang Ao kept having to bow and call himself wǎn shēng until he ran out of patience. The joke depends on Chinese readers' familiarity with the long sequence of bows-by-rank that any classical-Chinese conversation between strangers required.}

Lin Zhiyang goes in alone.

Tang Ao and Duo Jiugong stroll. They stop at a tea-stall. The tea is served, as a courtesy to foreign visitors, in proper cups — but the cups contain only hot water and two floating leaves of what appears to be ordinary garden-tree. There is no actual tea in the country, it transpires. Or rather: there is tea, but it is priced as a luxury and reserved for ceremonial use; daily refreshment is two leaves in hot water. Tang Ao sips politely. Duo Jiugong sips politely. They do not, by mutual silent agreement, ask for a refill.

A scholar walks by. He stops, bows formally to the two foreign gentlemen, asks them — in elaborate, courtly, faintly old-fashioned Mandarin — for their opinion of a small problem he has been wrestling with regarding the fourth tone in a particular line of Tao Yuanming. They give him their best answer. He thanks them with a nine-fold gǒng (拱) hand-bow — the deepest of the formal scholarly salutes — and walks on.

Tang Ao looks at Duo Jiugong.

This is the most civilized country I have ever stood in, he says, in a tone of mild wonder.

I would hold the verdict, Duo Jiugong says quietly, until we have had something to eat.

Lin Zhiyang re-emerges from the bookshop carrying an empty pack and a wide grin.

I sold everything, he announces. At a loss.

Tang Ao and Duo Jiugong listen, smiling, as their brother-in-law explains. The bookshop students had crowded around his goods, examined them, praised them, and then haggled with the unshakable stinginess of working-class scholars. They were prepared to coo with admiration and offer one wén (文) above his asking price. When he refused to sell, they would not let him out of the shop. They held him there with charming literary conversation while quietly refusing to raise the bid. Eventually, Lin Zhiyang explains, the Junzi-country instinct kicked in^{[7]"Junzi-country instinct" refers to Cathay Tales Tale 10, The Country Where Politeness Killed Business, where Lin Zhiyang first encountered the inverted-bargaining culture of Jūnzǐ Guó (君子国, "Country of the Gentlemen") — a country where every buyer insists on overpaying and every seller insists on giving more goods than the buyer paid for. Lin Zhiyang has, over the journey, started to internalize the Junzi-country style of trade. The same instinct that lost him money in Junzi-country is now losing him money in Shushi-country, but the joke is that he is starting to enjoy losing money politely.} and I sold everything at exactly the price they wanted to pay, plus one wén for politeness.

Then why, Duo Jiugong asks, are you smiling?

Because, Lin Zhiyang says, I just composed a couplet.

He has, he explains, been in a long aesthetic conversation with the bookshop's students. They had quizzed him on what he had read of the classics. Lin Zhiyang, who has read approximately one and a half classics in his life, had decided that honesty would be a tactical mistake and had cheerfully announced that the Classics, the Histories, the Philosophers, the Belles-lettres, the Hundred Schools, and the entire corpus of Tang poetry are all old friends of mine, naturally.

The students, delighted, had asked him for a poem.

Lin Zhiyang, sweating, had said his shī sī (诗思, "poetic inspiration") had not come to work today, but that his duì sī (对思, "matching-couplet inspiration") was still on duty. He invited them to suggest a phrase, and he would supply its parallel.

A student had offered the elegant phrase: "Wild goose in the clouds" (云中雁).

The conventional couplet-partners for this phrase, in any normal Chinese classroom, would be something like "gull on the water" (水上鸥) or "fish below the surface" (水底鱼) — pretty, parallel, faintly poetic.

Lin Zhiyang had thought about this for a long moment.

Then he had said, with the deepest seriousness:

"Hit it with a fowling-gun." (鸟枪打.)

The students had gone silent. They had asked for an explanation.

Lin Zhiyang had explained, patiently:

The conventional matches all assume that a wild goose in the clouds must be paired with a similar bird-in-an-element image. This is shallow. What is the natural and most relevant continuation of a wild goose in the clouds? It is, of course, what one does next. One looks up. One sees the goose. One shoots it with a fowling-gun. The couplet describes the actual relationship between man and goose in this world. The wild goose in the clouds is the prompt. The fowling-gun is the response.

The students had thought about this. After a moment, one of them had nodded slowly and said: Brother, that is a profound and original reading. The classical precedent is presumably the Zhuangzi line about "seeing a slingshot pellet and already imagining the roasted owl one will make of it" (见弹而求鸮炙).^{[8]The line is Jiàn dàn ér qiú xiāo zhì (见弹而求鸮炙), "to see the slingshot pellet and already to imagine the roasted owl one will make of it" — from the Zhuangzi, chapter 26 ("External Things"). It is a Daoist proverb about premature anticipation, and a well-read Qing scholar would catch the allusion instantly. The students' immediate ability to find the classical precedent for Lin Zhiyang's improvised "fowling-gun" couplet is the funniest moment in the chapter for Chinese readers, who recognize that the students are giving Lin Zhiyang a level of credit he very much does not deserve. The Western parallel would be a foreigner accidentally cracking a bilingual pun and a polite local immediately attributing it to deep classical learning.}

Lin Zhiyang, who had never heard of this line in his life, had said: Yes, that is exactly my reference. You see through me, gentlemen.

The students had been delighted. They had pressed him further. Sir, you are clearly a man of letters. What other texts have shaped your mind?

Lin Zhiyang, by this point fully committed to the bit, had said: Oh, the standard things. The Old Master (老子) — and, of course, the Young Master.

There was a small silence.

The Young Master? the students had said.

Lin Zhiyang had said Yes, the Young Master (少子). The companion volume to the Old Master. Surely you have it here.

There is no such book. There has never been such a book. Lin Zhiyang, on the spot, had to make one up. So he had explained:

"The Young Master is a new book, produced in the present sage reign of the great country of China. It is written by a descendant of the Old Master himself. Where the Old Master treats abstract Daoist principles, the Young Master takes a lighter approach — it is, on the surface, mere entertainment, but it conceals a teaching purpose, in the manner of the Book of Songs itself. It contains the full hundred schools of philosophy; portraits of historical figures, flowers, and birds; treatises on calligraphy, painting, chess, and qin music; medical and divinatory arts; phonological treatises and arithmetic tables. It includes lantern-riddles, drinking-games, the dice game shuāng lù, the card game mǎ diào, archery, kick-ball, herb-fighting, arrow-pitching. It will dispel any sleep and provoke uncontrollable laughter from any reader. I carry many copies on my ship. If the gentlemen are not offended by my goods, I will gladly fetch you some."

The students were ecstatic. They paid him in advance for the entire stock. They urged him to hurry to the ship and return.

He hurried to the ship. He has, of course, no intention of returning.

He is now standing in front of his brother-in-law and the old helmsman, holding his empty pack, grinning ear to ear.

Tang Ao laughs until he has to put down his teacup.

Brother, he says, your "fowling-gun" was lucky to land in front of students. If you had tried that couplet on a real scholar, your face would now be the size of a watermelon.

Lin Zhiyang shrugs.

The trouble, he says, is that all that talking has made me thirsty. The students gave me tea, but it turns out the local tea has no tea-leaves in it. He swallows. Just water with two floating leaves of some street-tree. I drank one mouthful and I am thirstier than before.

Duo Jiugong, who has been suffering from the same problem in dignified silence, perks up.

There is a tavern, he says, directly in front of us. Let us go ask the locals about their wine, and incidentally about their customs.

Lin Zhiyang, on hearing the word jiǔ (酒, "wine"), almost weeps with gratitude. Old Duo, he says, you are a kind man. You always say the right thing.

They walk into the tavern.

They take a table on the ground floor.

A jiǔ bǎo (酒保) — a tavern waiter — appears at their elbow.

He is, of course, dressed in the now-familiar uniform: scholar's cap, scholar's robe of the plainest cut, eyeglasses, and a folded fan in his hand. He moves with the slow, mannered, perpetually courteous step of a man who has internalized that he is at all times a representative of refined civilization. He approaches their table. He executes the half-bow appropriate for a service-rank scholar greeting customers of unknown but probably-equal status. He smiles. He addresses the three travelers in his clearest formal Mandarin.

"Three gentlemen," he says — and here Tang Ao stops breathing for a moment — "who have honored my establishment with your presence: is it that you wish to drink wine? Or is it rather that you wish to take a meal? I venture to request that you instruct me as to which is the case."^{[9]The Chinese reads: Sān wèi xiānshēng guānggù zhě, mòfēi yǐn jiǔ hū? Yì yòng cài hū? Gǎn qǐng míng yǐ jiào wǒ. (三位先生光顾者，莫非饮酒乎？抑用菜乎？敢请明以教我。) The doubled hū (乎) particles, the elaborate mòfēi…yì… parallel structure, and the formal closing gǎn qǐng míng yǐ jiào wǒ ("I venture to request that you instruct me") are all classical-Chinese registers normally reserved for, at minimum, a memorial submitted to the throne. To deliver them from behind a tavern counter is the equivalent of a Burger King employee asking your order in iambic pentameter.}

Lin Zhiyang stares at him.

Lin Zhiyang slowly turns to Tang Ao.

Lin Zhiyang turns back to the waiter.

"You," Lin Zhiyang says slowly, "are a tavern boy. You have eyeglasses on your face. This already is unsuitable. You also speak in literary particles. This is also unsuitable. Earlier today I was speaking with actual schoolboys, and even they did not lay it on this thick. The waiter is the literary one in this country?

"Look — the saying goes, 'A full bottle does not slosh; only the half-full one rattles.'^{[10]Zhěng píng bù yáo, bàn píng yáo (整瓶不摇，半瓶摇), literally "a full bottle does not slosh; the half-full bottle does." A common northern Chinese idiom equivalent to the English "empty vessels make the most noise" — the truly learned are quiet, while the half-educated chatter incessantly. Lin Zhiyang, in deploying this proverb against the tavern waiter, is being almost literary himself — a small joke at his own expense that he does not notice he is making.} My patience is short. Please bring wine and food, quickly, and stop talking."

The waiter bows again. He smiles. He says:

"I venture to inquire of the honored gentleman: will it be a single pot of wine? Or shall it be two pots of wine? And will it be a single plate of food? Or shall it be two plates of food?"^{[11]The Chinese reads: Jiǔ yào yī hú hū, liǎng hú hū? Cài yào yī dié hū, liǎng dié hū? (酒要一壶乎，两壶乎？菜要一碟乎，两碟乎？) Six occurrences of hū in four short questions. This is the moment where Lin Zhiyang, who has been politely tolerating one classical-Chinese reply, loses the will to be polite. The English translation tries to preserve the register without exact mirroring, since six "shall it be"s in a row would not parse in English.}

Lin Zhiyang's hand comes down flat on the tabletop.

"What is this 'shall it be' and 'shall it not be'? Just bring something! If you give me one more 'thereof' or 'wherein' I am going to put my fist into your literary face."

The waiter — to give him credit — recovers smoothly. He drops the literary register, bows again, says "Your humble servant dares not. Your humble servant will improve," and scurries off to the kitchen.

He returns with one pot of wine, two small plates of side-dishes — one of qīng méi (green plums), one of jī cài (pickled vegetables) — three cups, and three ceremoniously poured pours.

Lin Zhiyang, who lives for the first cup of wine each evening, lifts his with an enthusiasm that has not been dampened by anything that has happened so far. He toasts the table. He drinks.

His face changes immediately.

His brow knots. His mouth puckers. His eyes water. He puts the cup down. He cradles his chin in his hand. He looks at his brother-in-law with an expression of slow, fundamental human betrayal.

"Waiter!" he calls. "You have made a mistake! You have given me vinegar!"

At the next table, a hunchbacked elderly gentleman has been quietly eating and drinking by himself.

He, too, is dressed in scholar's robes. He wears the customary eyeglasses. He holds, in one hand, a long ivory-and-silver toothpick. He has been humming a steady stream of literary particles to himself — yě, hū, zhě, yě, yān, yǐ, zāi (也, 乎, 者, 也, 焉, 矣, 哉) — the way another man might hum a folk tune.^{[12]The seven particles — yě, hū, zhě, yě, yān, yǐ, zāi (也, 乎, 者, 也, 焉, 矣, 哉) — are the most common literary-Chinese sentence-ending particles, the de rigueur hum of an educated classical-Chinese speaker. Generations of Chinese schoolchildren have learned to recognize the seven of them as a kind of audible badge of scholarship. To hum them out loud to oneself, sitting alone in a tavern over a cup of vinegar, is one of the great character-economical moves in Qing fiction — Li Ruzhen tells you everything you need to know about the hunchback before the hunchback has said a single coherent word.} He has been rocking gently in time with his own humming, eating one pickled plum at a time, drinking one small cup of vinegar after another with the contentment of a connoisseur.

At the sound of Lin Zhiyang's complaint to the waiter, the old gentleman's humming stops.

He puts down his toothpick. He swivels in his chair. He waves his hand at Lin Zhiyang, alarmed and earnest.

"Honored brother! Since you have already drunk of it, how can you speak of it? Should you speak of it, you will implicate me in it. I am much afeared of it, and therefore I beseech you. Brother, ah, brother — do not, I implore, speak of it!"

Tang Ao and Duo Jiugong have to grip the edge of the table to keep from laughing aloud.

Lin Zhiyang turns slowly toward the old man.

"Another one," he says. "Friend — I was complaining to the waiter about the vinegar. How does that involve you? Why does it 'implicate' you? Explain, please."

The old gentleman appears profoundly relieved at being asked. He raises his right hand. He pinches the bridge of his nose twice, between thumb and forefinger, in the gesture of a man composing himself before lecturing. He delivers the following speech, in a single continuous breath, with the satisfied air of a man uncorking a vintage he has been saving for years.

What follows in the original Chinese is one of the most famous passages of comic pedantry in the entire Qing canon. The old man's monologue contains the particle zhī (之) — a single literary placeholder meaning roughly "of it" or "thereof" — forty-nine times in a row. The grammar is impeccable. The vocabulary is austere. The reasoning is, on its face, lucid. The content is utterly devoid of substance. It is a perfect specimen of the late-Qing literary pedant: every formal feature of classical Chinese discourse, in full working order, conveying no information whatsoever.

I have translated it below as closely as I can, preserving the rhetorical structure of thereof repetition that makes the original so deadly. If you read it aloud at speed, in one breath, with no pauses, you have approximately the comic effect Li Ruzhen was after:

"Honored sir, attend to me thereof: take wine and vinegar, and consider thereof. The price of wine is cheap thereof; the price of vinegar is dear thereof. Why is wine cheap thereof? And why is vinegar dear thereof? The true distinction thereof lies in the flavor thereof. Wine is bland of flavor, and therefore cheap thereof; vinegar is rich of flavor, and therefore dear thereof. All buy of them, who does not know thereof?

"He has erred thereof; surely it was unintended thereof. You have received thereof, what good fortune thereof! Yet, having drunk thereof, you ought not to speak thereof. Not only have you spoken thereof, you have called it an error thereof. If he hears thereof, will he not respond thereof? If he responds thereof, the price must rise thereof. Your raising thereof will be your own doing thereof; who then will manage thereof?

"But your drinking thereof is also my drinking thereof. The drinking being similar thereof, the rise must apply equally thereof. They will ask compensation of you thereof, and surely also of me thereof. You having caused the rise thereof, how shall I escape thereof? Shall I, too, pay more thereof? Is that not to be implicated thereof? Being implicated thereof, you must reimburse me thereof. If you do not reimburse thereof, why then will he agree thereof? Not agreeing thereof, he will seek me out thereof. Though I argue thereof, will he listen thereof? He will not listen thereof, and there must be a quarrel thereof. If the quarrel becomes urgent thereof, I shall only flee thereof — fleeing thereof, fleeing thereof — let us see how you end thereof!"

The old man finishes, beaming. He sips his vinegar. He returns to his humming, content.

Tang Ao and Duo Jiugong are folded forward over their teacups, weeping with laughter.

Lin Zhiyang stares at the old gentleman for a long, level moment. Then he turns to his brother-in-law.

"These 'thereofs' of his," he says, "are an entire river of vinegar. Every single sentence struck my name like a hammer.^{[13]Lin Zhiyang's name in Chinese is Lín Zhī Yáng (林之洋), containing the very same particle zhī (之) that the old hunchback is using forty-nine times in a row. So every zhī in the monologue literally hits Lin Zhiyang's own name. He is, by the end of the speech, drowning in his own middle character. The Chinese reader catches this pun instantly. It is one of the deepest cuts of the chapter.} I do not understand a word of his argument, and yet my mouth is full of sour breath. What do we do now?"

He surveys the table. The only food on offer is the two small dishes of green plums and pickled vegetables. The sight of them, after the vinegar and the zhī lecture, makes his stomach turn.

"Waiter!" he barks. "Quick, bring more dishes!"

The waiter materializes. He brings four small plates: salt-beans, green soybeans, bean sprouts, split bean pods.

Lin Zhiyang stares. I cannot eat this. Bring something else.

The waiter bows. He brings four more plates: dried tofu, tofu skin, soy-sauced fermented tofu, wine-pickled fermented tofu.

Lin Zhiyang puts his head in his hands.

"We are not Buddhist monks," he tells the waiter, in something close to a wail. "Why do you keep bringing us vegetarian food? Don't you have anything else? Bring us something else!"

The waiter bows once more. He smiles his patient scholar-bow.

"These few dishes," he says, "may, when viewed by the honored gentleman, indeed appear humble to the eye. Yet, when viewed in our country, even the table of a duke or a prince offers nothing more elaborate than these. Should the honored gentleman find them mean — is that not perhaps an excess of fastidiousness? This is all there is, indeed. What else could there be?"

This, finally, is the moment the truth of the country lands.

There is no other food. The men in the scholar's robes are not pretending to be poor for ascetic reasons. They are not refusing to serve the foreigners the good wine. This is the good wine. This is what the king himself eats. Vinegar, green plums, pickled vegetables, eight kinds of bean.

Duo Jiugong, sobering, asks the waiter what kinds of wine the tavern carries.

The waiter, slipping back into his beloved literary register, says:

"Wine, sirs, is not of one kind; it admits of three grades, namely: the highest grade thereof, whose flavor is strong; the next grade thereof, whose flavor is mild; and the lowest grade thereof, whose flavor is mild also. The gentlemen, having inquired thereof, do they perhaps prefer the milder thereof?"

Tang Ao, gravely:

"Our palates are narrow. We cannot drink the strong kind. Bring us the mild."

The waiter exchanges the pot. They sip. The "mild" wine, it turns out, tastes only slightly of vinegar.

Lin Zhiyang puts down his cup.

"No wonder," he says, "I have heard it said that the best wines are 'sour first, bitter second.' I had never understood the saying before. Now I see. The saying must have come from Shushi Country."

At that moment, the door of the tavern swings open. A new figure walks in — another elderly gentleman in scholar's robes, but this one is dressed simply and bears himself with an entirely different air. He is dignified, unaffected, watchful. He takes a seat one table away.

The old hunchback at the next table, still humming his particles, does not notice.

The waiter does not notice.

But Tang Ao, looking up from his second cup of vinegar-wine, notices instantly.

This is not another local pedant.

Something in his stillness, in the cut of his robe, in the quiet way his eyes have taken in the entire room in a single sweep — something is about to happen.

Tang Ao sets down his cup.

Whatever it is, he thinks, it has just walked into the tavern.

The chapter ends there.

Translator's Reflection

I love this chapter because Li Ruzhen sets up the trap so carefully.

He has spent the first half of Flowers in the Mirror taking the reader through countries where the satire was about moral failings — the Country of Black Teeth, where the educated travelers turn out to know less than their hosts; the Country of Two Faces, where everyone is two-faced; the Country of Women, where men get bound feet so they can experience what they have done to their wives. Those countries are easy satires. The point is unambiguous. The reader laughs and agrees.

Then he writes Shushi Country.

Shushi Country is harder. The country is, on the surface, exactly what the educated Qing reader thought he wanted. Everyone is a scholar. Everyone is polite. The customs guards are literate. The shop-signs are calligraphic quotations from the Classic of Poetry. The plaques above the doors honor virtue. The tea-house has private rooms. Every child wears eyeglasses, because every child reads.

It is supposed to be paradise.

Li Ruzhen lets you walk through the first five hundred characters of the chapter believing it. He waits for you to notice, slowly, that there is something off about the eyeglasses. Eyeglasses, in 1818, were a luxury good. They were also the marker of a particular kind of Qing intellectual stereotype — the qióng suān (穷酸), the "impoverished pedant," the man who has the form of scholarly seriousness without the actual learning to back it up. When Li Ruzhen puts eyeglasses on the customs guards, he is signaling: this country is not what it claims.

By the time Lin Zhiyang reaches the tavern, the trap has been baited. The waiter speaks classical Chinese. The wine is vinegar. The hunchback at the next table is the joke unfolding in slow motion.

And then the trap closes.

The trap is the forty-nine zhī monologue. I cannot overstate how famous this passage is in the Chinese reading tradition. It is one of the great set-pieces of Qing fiction. Generations of schoolchildren have read it, laughed, and then gone home to find their pretentious uncle and discovered that he sounds exactly the same. The old hunchback is not a fool, technically. His grammar is correct. His logic is technically valid. His vocabulary is austere. He has all the forms of literary discourse in working order. He has — and this is the move — no content at all. He is what happens when the entire Qing examination system selects, generation after generation, for surface mastery of the classical particle system rather than for actual thought.

Translating this passage into English was the hardest single thing I have done for this series so far. Classical Chinese zhī (之) is a tiny grammatical pivot that performs about six different jobs in a sentence — possessive, object-marker, place-holder, nominalizer, line-filler, rhythm-keeper. There is no single English word that does all six. After many drafts, I settled on "thereof" — old-fashioned, slightly absurd, just stuffy enough to feel like the right register. It is not a perfect choice. It loses some of the rhythmic music of the Chinese. But it lets the English reader feel, viscerally, what the original sounds like to a Chinese ear: empty, repetitive, technically correct, comically pretentious. If you read my translation aloud in a single breath, you will get within twenty percent of what Li Ruzhen was doing.

The other thing I wanted to preserve was the kindness of the satire. Li Ruzhen never says the men of Shushi Country are stupid. The hunchback is not stupid. The waiter is not stupid. The bookshop students who outhaggle Lin Zhiyang are not stupid. They are simply, as a country, the natural endpoint of an examination system that has forgotten what it was originally for. Li Ruzhen is not laughing at them. He is grieving for them. The same grief that produced Wu Jingzi's The Scholars (《儒林外史》) a generation earlier produced this chapter.

And the small grace note that always gets me: the two black plaques on the wall. "Reformed Himself." "Turned Toward Goodness." The country that has fallen into pedantry has, somewhere in its civic apparatus, decided to honor the people who climbed back out of error. Tang Ao notices the plaques. Tang Ao admires the country for them. Li Ruzhen, with that one detail, refuses to write a simple satire. He gives Shushi Country a small backstroke of dignity even as he is mocking it. That is the move of a generous satirist.

One last note. The new old gentleman who walks in at the end of the chapter, in the plain robe, with the watchful air — that is the setup for Chapter 24, in which Tang Ao and company will meet the first genuinely accomplished scholar of the entire journey: a hermit-emigrant from the great country of China, who has retired to Shushi Country to escape political persecution and now lives a life of austere learning among the local pedants without being one of them. The story is going somewhere kinder. But you have to walk through the vinegar tavern to get there.

Next tale: A new translation. Coming soon to Cathay Tales.