Nalan Rongruo, courtesy name Xingde, began learning horseback riding and archery at five. At ten, he was composing poetry; by fourteen, he had mastered literature and could remember anything he read.
He seemed like an immortal descended from the heavens, arriving through the snow. Blessed with an exceptional family background, he was still forced to part from his first love, who never returned his feelings. He thought he could spend his life in perfect harmony with the person he fell in love with at first sight, but in the year he loved her most, he held back his tears as he sent her to her grave.
In despair, he wrote, “I am a sorrowful soul in this mortal world. Who knows why your tears fall so freely?” The Nalan family was at the height of its power, yet the person he loved was beyond his reach. This love would live only in memory; even then, he had already been lost in the moment.
Who could have known that this peerless scholar, gifted in letters and arms, wisdom and courage, with poetry and song always at his fingertips, would have the background others envied and, in his twenties, the very age when others were still striving, become a favorite of the Kangxi Emperor? The life others could only dream of was his for the taking. Yet he disliked the corruption of officialdom and would not join in its filth. His feelings were sincere, and he spent his life hopelessly caught in love. His deep devotion took him in the prime of his life. The saying that deep love shortens one's life could not be more true.
Whether by coincidence or the depth of his love, he died on the same date, in the same month, as his late wife, eight years later, bringing his brief, tragic life to an end.
