The Porcelain Tower, Or, Nine Stories of China
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%is<ii^>^ 3 1735 060 217 449 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Dar. PR5349 S286 Darlington Atemorial Litrary T-'ki'/d. 5^.^ .:^x^ ,,W^^j^ //^c^%o////iS'^/^/2^ ^.^ . ; LIFE IN CHINA. PORCELAIN TOWER OR, NINE STORIES OP CHINA. COMPILED FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES. By " T. T. T." To raise a tower your arts apply, And build it thrice three stories high; Make every story rich and fair With blocks of wood, in carvinga rare ; With such its ruder form conceal. And make it strong with plates of steel. From the Song of the Pagoda, Jy—SheLorh. EMBELLISHED BY J. LEECH. PHILADELPHIA: LEA AND BLANCHARD. 1842. ^ 5 ^' TO HIS FRIENDS IN GENERAL, AND TO THE PUBLIC IN PARTICULAR, THE ACCOMPANYING SPECIMENS OF REAL CHINA ARE RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED, BY THEIR MOST OBSEQUIOUS SERVANT THE MANUFACTURER, WHO TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY OF INFORMING ALL PARTIES, (and PARTICULARLY SMALL TEA-PARTIES,) THAT HIS "services" ARE ALWAYS AT THEIR COMMAND. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Fum-Fum and Fee-Fee before the Em- peror, Frontispiece. Ho-Fi caught in his own trap, - page 8'2 Din-Din suspended in his office, - 57 ^ Hyson flailed by his father, ) - 112 Si-Long's arrival at the Philosopher's, 124 Faw-Faw and Fee-Fee united, ') - 233 - Fum-Fum smoking his own tail, ) 260 " Hey-Ho discovers Fun, " ' ) ^^^ Fun lowered from the window, ) - 2S5 1^ CONTENTS. Page Invocation, , . , . viii Preface, ..... x THE FIRST STORY. Ho-Fi of the Yellow Girdle, . 13 THE SECOND STORY. Kublai Khan ; or The Siege of Kinsai, . 60 THE THIRD STORY. Fashions in Feet; or the Tale of the Beautiful To-To 86 THE FOURTH STORY. Hyson and Bohea, . 107 THE FIFTH STORY. Porcelain Bath, The , , , .119 THE SIXTH STORY. The Emperor Hwang-te; or the Plough and the Loom 163 THE SEVENTH STORY. Marriage in a Mask; or the Cunning Shaver, Chin, 185 THE EIGHTH STORY. The Student of Hanlan ; a Tale of Opium-Smoking 229 THE NINTH STORY. The Feast of Lanterns, , , . 262 Notes, . .307 INVOCATION TO THE MUSE OF TEA. Muse of the Central Land, whose soothmg power Celestial bards drink in at twilight's hour; Who, cheerful promptress of discourse and smiles, Deign'st even to dwell in these barbarian isles, A household spirit still at hand to serve us, And make our poets warm, our prosemen nervous; Thou from thine oft-filled urn who dost deliver A stream more potent than Castalia's river. And even, great Muse of Tea! canst strength impart To milk and water;—hear, where'er thou art! Perchance even now in this my seventh good cup; Ah! if it be so, let me stir thee up. Oh! let me not thine aid in vain require! Inspire thou me, whilst I thy breath inspire. List to my prayer, and let me be possess'd Of rich " outpourings" strained from thy full chest; Brace, if thou canst, my strings, and give them tone, And fill my leaves with virtues like thine own. PREFACE. Recent events have directed towards the Chinese a degree of inquiry, which, however strange it may be that we should have been wanting in attention to the politest of all people, they never before excited among the dwellers in the West. Few, except those engaged in the China trade, had troubled themselves to learn much beyond what was instilled into them at school from the pages of Goldsmith and Guy, con- cerning the Celestial Land and its no less celestial inhabitants, when the startling fact of a war break- ing out,—a war which might probably involve thq ruin and death of some thousands of our own country- men, and of some hundreds of thousands of our brethren in the East, and still more the rise in the price of tea,—excited a sudden and general anxiety to know something of the character and resources of the four hundred millions whom we had sent our two cock-boats and a walnut-shell to conquer. Demand always produces supply; this, at least. PREFACE. though denied by some,—mendicants, creditors, and rakish young gentleman,—who have brought it to the test of the JVovmn Organon, is a favourite axiom with many of our poUtical economists: and au- thentic works, giving detailed accounts of the coun- try and its peculiar people, have lately been poured in upon us until the booksellers' houses are almost converted into China shops. Many of the tomes which have thus been carted into the literary market are very excellent library volumes; but furniture which is adapted for the study, is, for the most part, too heavy for the drawing-room or boudoir. We were sorry to observe that so excellent and well-bred a people as our Chinese, if not excluded from, were at least little regarded in those apartments into which the Chinese only could convey additional refinements; and the belief that this resulted chiefly from the gravity of the attire in which they have usually appeared in this country, was our induce- ment to try the experiment of presenting them in a livelier dress. The dress, however, in which they are here pre- sented, though the colours are lively and the fabrics light, arc made up exclusively, as will be perceived, of real Chinese materials. We will confess that it was at first our intention to assume the credit of the PREFACE. XI entire fabrication ; but we feared that King's Col- lege* might detect us ; and we have deemed it po- litic, therefore, to acknowledge our obligations to the Celestial writers, and in all other particulars to adhere strictly to truth. We would have it understood, then, that the fol- lowing stories have been compiled from various original sources; and though, consistently with our purpose, now abandoned, of making over to our- selves the fee-simple of this literary property, we have altered the style, that the Chinese authors might not be detected thereby,—we have neverthe- less, scrupulously adhered to the course of the nar- ratives, to the characters of the agents, and to what- ever might be essential for conveying just notions of the manners and customs, and minds of our brethren in the pigtailed East. The title of the volume is adopted from a work, nearly similar in plan, by Klam-Klae; but the title is all we have borrowed from that writer, as we did not find his stories worth the labour of translation. It may be as well to observe here, that the pago- das in China are either of seven or nine stories in height, and that the celebrated Porcelain Tower, of Nanking consists of Nine Stories. * There is a Professor of Chinese at Kinii's College. THE PORCELAIN TOWER. HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE.* O wretch, tliat with malignant fang, Woulds't seek t'inflict some mortal pang; Bethink thee well how bowstrings twang, How swords do smite and hemp doth hang I Slang. More graceful than the bamboo, and fairer than rice, was So-Sli, the daughter of the philosopher Poo-Poo. Her foot was no * The story of Ho-Fi is selected from among the romances of the well-known Hou-de-Kaw-Lim ; a writer as prolific and various as our own Anon. He resembles that writer, too, in the ill for- tune which has militated against his obtaining the fame due to his genius and industry, from the authorship of all his inost excellent works having been uniformly claimed by unprincipled and shameless persons, who have succeeded in tearing the bam- boo-sprigs from his brows. He is still living, though arrived at a patriarchal age. No library can be considered complete without a collected edition of his works. 2 ; 14 THE PORCELAIN TOWER. longer than her finger, so that when she walked she tottered in the most engaging manner, and was obliged to seek the support of a reed or of a hand-maiden.* So light was her form, and so lovely was her face, and so helpless was her air, that when she appeared abroad she attracted the notice of all, as a straw which a juggler of Shanghi balances on the tip of his nose. Her brows were arched like the feathers in the tail of the domestic bird of the river ; her eyes were smaller than the kernels of the almond, and were free from the disfigurement of lashes her hair was like a cobweb of the black spiders of Chen-si ; her nose was small, and beautifully flat ; her lips w^ere as two large pink caterpillars which the cooks of Pecheli have prepared in the banquet for the Son of Heaven. The fame of her loveliness had spread throughout the province Kiang-Si, and many a manly spirit yearned towards her, even upon the report of her beauty. * See note, A, HO-FI OF THE YELLOW GIRDLE. 15 Many were the solicitations made to her father for the hand of the lovely So-Sli ; and he mischt have married her to mandarins, both civil and military, as many as he pleased. But old Poo-Poo was a sage and a philan- thropist, and had devoted himself much to the investigation of causes of human happi- ness and misery, and had determined that marriage might be highly conducive to one or to the other, according as it should be, or should not be, conducted upon scientific principles. Of the scientific principles upon which marriaore should be conducted, he had formed a theory of his own ; and it had been a source of the deepest regret to him that he had not devised his theory until after his own marriage.