Chinese Literature

for her discovery and a search had been made for several days, but she had never been found. No one knew that Tsui had gone off with her, nor that they were living in Tanchow.

Time sped as swiftly as an arrow, until more than a year had passed.

One morning when Tsui opened his shop, two men in footmen’s black liveries came in, sat down and told him: “Our master has heard that there is a worker named Tsui here from the capital, and he wants you to come to do some work for him.”

Telling his wife where he was going, Tsui left with the two men for Hsiangtan County. They took him to a house where he met the official, agreed to undertake the work and then started home again. On his way home he passed a traveller. This man was wearing a bamboo fibre hat, white silk coat, black and white puttees and hempen shoes, and he was carrying two bundles hanging from a long shoulder pole. When they came face to face, the traveller looked closely at Tsui. Tsui paid no attention to him, but this stranger had recognized Tsui and he proceeded to walk briskly after him.

Well might we say:

What mischievous boy sounds the clapper today, To make the love-birds fly away?

On bamboo fence the morning glories bloom,

The moon casts chequered shade on my thatched room; My crystal goblets filled with country wine,

And country dainties in jade dishes fine,

I should at last have cast all cares away,

To spend my time in mirth and laughter gay;

Though all my friends are far away or dead,

A hundred thousand soldiers I once led.

This poem was written by General Liu Chi of the Hsiung Wu Army

Area in Chinchow. After the Battle of Shunchang in 1140 A.D., Gen--

eral Liu had retired to live in Hsiangtan County in Tanchow. A famous general who had never attempted to amass wealth, he was in fact very poor. He often went to village inns to drink, and the villagers who did not know him sometimes treated him disrespectfully. “I held a million barbarian troops as nothing,’ remarked the general once. “But now these country folk hold me in contempt!”

So he wrote this poem which became known in the capital.

When the Prince of Yangho, who was then Commander of the Imperial Guards, saw this poem he was very moved. “To think that General Liu should become so poor!” he exclaimed. He ordered officers to send