Siqi served her young mistress for nine years, half her life. Outsiders thought the young mistress timid and dull, but only Siqi knew she was a celestial maiden who could laugh and cry, kind and generous to the servants. Someone so good deserved the very best.
But in the end, Siqi failed to stay by her young mistress’s side. The cicadas sang merrily in the summer heat, and the feelings between the young lovers could no longer be restrained. Pan You’an was as handsome as his name suggested, with a refined and elegant air, and the two of them became lovers.
When their secret was exposed, Siqi was driven out of the Jia household. She had no regrets and accepted what she had done, unlike her cowardly cousin, who couldn’t take responsibility and ran away, leaving her behind.
But this world would never let her live. On a rainy autumn day, Siqi’s cousin, whom she despised for his cowardice and silence, did as the world wanted and smashed his head against a wall.
Blood ran from his forehead, and Siqi could no longer keep her eyes open. Suddenly, she remembered the poem her young mistress had recited to her one winter day.
“I did not choose the life of a courtesan. It seems I was misled by my past life. Flowers bloom and fall in their own time, all thanks to the master of spring.
“Even if I leave, I must leave in the end. How can I stay? If I could adorn my hair with wildflowers, don’t ask where I’ll go.”
At the time, she had thought courtesans were so pitiful, with someone like a god controlling whether they lived or died.
Now she saw that she, too, had a master of spring: Pan You’an, who betrayed her, so Siqi could not live; the world’s condemnation, clinging to a bit of love between a man and a woman until she had to die to preserve her chastity; her father and husband; and the rules of family and propriety.
She only hoped that Miss Yingchun would have no such master of spring, and that wildflowers would cover the fields, with no one asking where she would go.
Theme: Condemning the harm inflicted on people by feudal ethics
