My Wife Has Come to Pay Her Respects

[A little short story I put together on a whim]

-- On my wedding day, it was my wife who came to offer her congratulations.

Before passing the imperial examinations, Chen Ju had already taken a wife.

So when he announced his happy news again, everyone assumed he meant to marry another woman, taking her as a second wife.

But Chen Ju only shook his head and patiently explained to them one by one:

"I, Chen, have always had only one wife."

Everyone knew that, of course. They all knew that a man who remarried could only take a secondary wife at most. There could only be one legal wife.

But Chen Ju stubbornly denied it all the same, repeating:

"In my whole life, I have married only one woman, and I will marry only her."

So everyone fell silent. They knew that the newly qualified scholar Chen had always been a stubborn traditionalist, and a bookish man at that. He probably looked down on them.

But none of them knew who his wife was, or where she was now. They assumed he was like most men, leaving his wife in the countryside while taking another in the capital.

Yet the day after his wedding celebration, Chen Ju seemed to have gone mad. He told everyone that he had seen his wife again, that he had seen his wife again.

Theme: Never forget your original resolve.