Bodhisattva Barbarian

A Dancer from the Western Regions, A Noblewoman of the Li Clan

Two golden magpies on hairpins always sat on the dressing table before Yu Linglong's mirror. Li Xiaogong once asked with a laugh, "Why not wear the pair of twin lotuses?" She didn't answer, only turned and danced, the jade sash at her waist becoming a lone plume of smoke above the desert. Then, in the fourteenth year of Zhenguan, Li Xiaogong received one final gift while serving as governor of Guanzhou: a brocade box containing the golden magpies. Beneath them lay a fragment of the song Bodhisattva Barbarian, written in Sogdian.

"General, does the scene in this painting resemble the moment we first met?" Yu Linglong wrote in her letter. Li Xiaogong suddenly remembered the Western Regions woman in a face veil on a Chang'an street twenty years ago, adjusting her veil in a bronze mirror outside an apothecary. Now, the golden magpie in his hand gleamed coldly in the candlelight, just like the tear still glistening at the corner of Yu Linglong's eye during her final dance.

Theme: A single whirling dance from the Western Regions, half the history of early Tang