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With his sharp eyes, the determined Wu spots a bundle that has dropped into the crevice of a rock. As he unfolds the crackling paper, we assume at first that the object within is a tattered remnant of the coffin lining, but it turns out to be a silk painting of some value.
Yellow Hair is not about to give up now; he is determined to track down the stonecutters. But after this most recent assault, I am no longer battle hungry. It is nearly dark. The tall grass, the height of two people, is sending off a deathlike aura. Although my life is not particularly enjoyable, it is worth more than a piece of tarnished metal from an unidentified grave. All along, I have had a vague notion that the lion wasn't really from the Han, and this feeling is even stronger now that the object is owned by other people.
Old Wu, of course, concurs with me on this matter and analyzes the situation: "If we keep going, we'll cross over into the next county anyway; those Leizhou wanderers have allies everywhere, who will certainly be lying in ambush for us. Better to wait for the danger to pass before making any plans." His commentary is thorough; his logical deduction beyond reproach.
Yellow Hair swears loudly but has no recourse but to give up the chase.
By this time, the sky is completely black.
The brass lion has escaped alive: in retrospect, how can that tattered rag ever make up for the loss of the lion? When we shake it open, it is dirty and black, and what is left is sprinkled with holes and mildew, perhaps stained by bodily fluids and muddied to such an extent that we ca
Our great plan to offer up a national treasure has become a pipe dream. All that remains is a topic that gets revisited again and again, bringing a strain of sadness to the tedium of the life of educated youth.
I still can't understand why those men would abandon their hard-earned salary for a brass object, cutting themselves off from the possibility of ever working in this region again. Is it worth it? They won't ever be able to cash it in to feed their families.
Although time is magnanimous to brass, fate can change people's lives in an instant. Our dreamlike era comes to a dreamlike end, and we take leave of this far corner of the world, each of us forging his own path.
Yellow Hair throws his energies into a machine-tool factory, producing blades that slice through iron as easily as if it were mud. If people slice their fingers, however, they will not bleed-a quality that suits Yellow Hair's temperament.
Old Wu's great intelligence sweeps from the imperial examination system to the philosophy department at the university, where he continues to research isms and ideologies.
As for me, I become intoxicated with literature, paint a few pictures, and taking advantage of the literary wasteland, make a name for myself, to my great surprise. And so I have continued to write. At times, I reminisce and ask if I should excavate the story of the lion but always fail to put it in writing. I have a little talent, it is true, but I am a purist, and were I to romanticize the rise and fall of the sleeping lion, I could legitimately be accused of cheap vulgarity.
But how to forget such an event? The sleeping lion was lost for a thousand years before seeing the light of a single day; then it was lost again, this time never to return.
Only gradually do I learn how difficult the discipline of art can be, and how very cruel its means of sorting talent. A person like me who has read little must rely on diligence of effort, must browse through the classics of every school of thought if he is to dream of "scholarization." One day as I skim through the pages of a book, I find something that stops me cold: people in the great Western Han dynasty were unaware that lions even existed; moreover, only during the last years of the Eastern Han did our Chinese ancestors see one of these strange creatures for themselves. It was, of course, presented to officials in the remote area that is now Xinjiang, meaning that the palace residents never knew anything about it. How could a lion have migrated to Hainan so quickly to take a long nap?
Only an amateur would say that the brass lion was from the Han; I have always had my doubts. Who knows what dynasty and what era it really belongs to? Chinese history is so long that the thought of dating the piece is daunting.
I still ca
And then one day, I get a chance to visit the ancient capital of Xi'an, to see firsthand the stone engravings of the Han, objects simple and vigorous in their very antiquity. On observing the six-steeds engraving of the Tang dynasty, I note that horses, like women, had to be fat to be beautiful-a sign of a prosperous dynasty. This triggers something in my memory, and I think back to the brass lion, the king of beasts, which was not terribly fierce and which, because it was sleeping, neither bared its teeth nor stretched its claws. Weak eras have sickly aesthetic visions; perhaps the lion belonged to Southern Song? It couldn't be Yuan, who knew only of bows and of shooting vultures and were happy in their yurts and thus never placed much stock in decorating imperial palaces or princely manors. It's possible that the date was even later.
On my trip to the ancient capital, I seek out one of my good friends, a famous scholar from Central Shaanxi province. His writing is serene and elegant; he lives alone; he is slightly younger than I but much more celebrated. He hosts a feast at his home and entertains me graciously. During our conversation, apart from the art of writing, of course, I rave about the objects of the ancient capital, expressing regret over the toils of time. He tells me that there is now a national law prohibiting people from plowing deeper than three feet anywhere within a radius of seven miles of the city. I am a bit nervous. Who knows whether several feet beneath my chair lie the ashes and bones of the burner of books and burier of scholars Qin Shihuang? Or the place where Empress Wu Zetian asked her favorite lord, Zhou Xing, to enter an urn and subsequently roasted him? My friend goes on to say that tiles from Qin and Han can be found throughout the area; when he went down to the countryside to (sample the life there, his landlady even gave him some Han pottery. In the future, when he has a chance, he will let me have some antiques. I am overjoyed; I think of those machine-assembled decorations on our shelves at home, made of aluminum, paragons of shallow taste.
I hurry out onto the balcony to view the two crude pots, un-glazed, the designs full of carefree abandon. Alas, I am truly a descendant of the southern barbarians: for the life of me, I ca