Prelude -- Continued
Let us now turn our attention to a small inn called “Happy Friends Inn” situated on Yongxingsi Street in the western quarters of Beijing.The name of this inn might come from the old saying “How happy we are, when we meet friends from afar!” In the backyard of this small inn there were a dozen rooms exclusively for examination candidates who traveled to the capital for the imperial exams. At the time, business was rather slow since it was long before the imperial exams were administered. Four square dinner tables suitable for seating eight people were placed in the three façade rooms; further north was a private room for diners; east to the façade was a long counter where liquor, cooked meat and sundry goods were sold. The waiters had gone back to their hometown in the countryside for Spring Festival. The inn was operated by an innkeeper whose family name was He and several young apprentice waiters. On the morning of the eighth day of the first lunar month, a “plop” was heard when the door planks were taken down and a man collapsed into the inn.
Hearing the cries of the waiters, the innkeeper He Guizhu slipped into his pants right away, kicked the chamber pot under the bed and hurried outside with the backs of his shoes trodden down. He found a young man in his early twenties wearing a ramie hat attached with a tiny piece of tin. His pigtail was as long as two chi and his half-cun long dusty hair must have grown for two months without having a haircut. Locks of tattered cotton looking like dirtied lamb fat popped out of his wadded gown as if it had been riddled with the bullets of a shotgun. His haggard face looked purplish yellow like the color of ginger. His eyes were tightly shut and his body was already completely frozen. He Guizhu couldn’t help sighing. “Ah, what a sin! But this is not an unusual occurrence. Send his body to the crematorium at Zuojiazhuang in the suburbs. What an unlucky day!” he retorted as he spat on the ground.
The waiters scurried to find a frayed mat to wrap the young man in it and were about to carry him away on a battered door plank. At this moment, the sound of the door curtain lifting at the back of the inn was heard, and out walked a man who said: “Wait a minute!”
They turned around and saw a man about thirty years old standing steadily in the middle of the door. He was dressed in a black satin skull cap and a black dog-skin, dark brown silk mandarin jacket over a grey long woolen gown. His woolen boots had a sole of many layers and a bright conspicuous ridge that stood out. The innkeeper quickly broke into a smile and smiled obsequiously to the man. “Good morning, second uncle. It is only a poor scholar frozen to death outside the door.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Let me take a look at him first,” the man said, stepping forward and squatting on the heels. He put his hands under the young man nose and picked up his hands to feel his pulse. “He is not completely dead yet! Hurry up and boil a bowl of ginger soup. No, just get him some warm liquor!” The waiters looked at each other in bewilderment and not one of them moved an inch. He Guizhu hastened to remind them: “You heard the uncle’s order. What are you still standing around for?”
The man who walked out was from Yangzhou and his name was Wu Ciyou. As a candidate who had passed the provincial level exam, he was a talented scholar well-known on both the North and South sides of the Yangtse River.He was born into a rich family and several of his forefathers had held high official positions. The innkeeper He Guizhu used to work as a servant for his family. During the reign of the Emperor Chongzhen, the elderly master Wu was afraid that, due to his family’s prominent background, his own family members would become conspicuous political targets amidst the ongoing turmoil and chaos of successive wars. He hence required all his family members and servants to seek refuge with their relatives. But He Guizhu, whose father was a son of family servants, had no relatives beyond his master’s family. The elderly master had compassion on He Guizhu and helped him set up a small inn in Yangzhou. When Manchu forces crossed the Shanhaiguan Pass into China, Shi Kefa put up a fight against them in Yangzhou. However, the city of Yangzhou was finally taken over and awash with blood after the massacre of its residents. Not being able to stay there any longer, He Guizhu moved to Beijing. After the Qing Dynasty was founded, Wu Ciyou, a former student of Hou Fangyu, submitted to divine will and passed the imperial exams at both the county and provincial level. The elderly master Wu, however, was adamant in his support for the Ming Dynasty, vowing that he would never live off the Qing government. He shut himself at home and immersed himself in studying the Tao Te Ching. When he came to the capital to take the imperial exam, Wu Ciyou happened to run into He Guizhi and naturally stayed at the Happy Friends Inn. Although their relationship was no longer of a servant-master nature, He Guizhu was still quite courteous to the son of his old master.
By now they had taken the frozen young scholar into the inn. A dozen minutes after a bowl of hot yellow millet wine was poured into his throat, the young man opened his eyes slightly and closed them again. Wu Ciyou breathed a sigh of relief. “Prepare the room next to mine so he can lie down and take a few days’ rest.”
He Guizhu could not help being hesitant with this order. “The young master is really being too much! Not only has he saved this man’s life, but now he also wants to keep him alive… To hell with him! I will by no means cover his expense. The people from Yangzhou will have to pay for it at last.” Seeing that the innkeeper was reluctant to give a hand, Wu Ciyou said, “Better save one life than build a seven-story pagoda. Besides, it’s just not right to stop halfway when trying to save a man’s life.” He Guizhu hastily responded, “Ok, we'll do as we are told.”
