Love Endures

A little over two hundred years ago, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty became emperor. This emperor was very cruel and forced his people to come and build a Great Wall to protect his empire. Work never stopped, day or night, with the people carrying heavy loads of earth and bricks. They received very little food; the clothes they wore were threadbare.

There was a young man, named Wan Hsi-liang, among those who had come to work on the Emperor’s Great Wall. Wan Hsi-liang had a beautiful wife, whose name was Meng Chiang-nu. For a long, long time after her husband was forced to leave to work on the Great Wall, Meng Chiang-nu had no news of him, and it saddened her. One spring, when the flowers were in bloom and the trees budding, when the grass was a lush green, and the swallows were flying in pairs in the sky, her sorrow was so deep she would sing:

In March the peach is blossom-dressed; Swallows, mating, build their nest. Two by two they gaily fly.... Left all alone, how sad am I!

But even when autumn came around, there still was no news about Wan Hsi-liang. It was rumored that the Great Wall was way up north where it was so cold that one would hardly dare stick one's hands out of one's sleeves. When Meng Chiang-nu heard this, she hurriedly made cotton-padded clothes and shoes for her husband. But who should take these to him when it was such a long way to the Great Wall? She finally decided she would take the clothes and shoes to Wan Hsi-liang herself.

It was rather cold when she started out. The leaves had fallen from the trees and, as the harvest had been gathered in, the fields were empty. It was very lonely for Meng Chiang-nu to walk all by herself, especially since she had never been away from home in her life, and did not know the way; she had to ask for directions every now and then.

One evening, she failed to reach the town she was going to, so she put up for the night in a little temple in a grove beside the road. Having walked the whole day, she was very tired and fell asleep as soon as she lay down on a stone table. She awoke the next day and continued her journey.

One day, she came to a small inn by the side of a hilly road. The inn was kept by an old woman who, when she saw Meng Chiang-nu's hot face and dusty clothes, asked where she was going. When Meng Chiang-nu told her, she was deeply moved.

“Aya!" she sighed. “The Great Wall is still far away from here, there are mountains and rivers to cross. How can a weak young woman like you get there?” But Meng Chiang-nu told the old woman she was determined to get the clothes and shoes to her husband, no matter what the difficulty. The old woman was touched by the younger one's willpower. The next day, she accompanied Meng Chiang-nu over a distance to show her sympathy.

Meng Chiang-nu walked on and on and on till, one day, she came to a deep valley between the mountains. The sky was overcast with gray clouds; a strong wind was blowing that chilled the air. She walked quite a long time through the valley without, however, finding a single house. All she could see were weeds, brambles and rocks. It was getting so dark that she could no longer see the road. At the foot of the mountains, there was a river running with water of a murky color. Where should she go? Being at her wit's end, she decided to spend the night among some bushes. As she had not eaten anything for the whole day, she shivered all the more in the cold. Thinking of how her husband must be suffering in this icy cold weather, she became sad. When Meng Chiang-nu opened her eyes the next morning, she found to her amazement the whole valley and her own body were covered in a blanket of snow. How was she to continue her travel?

While she was still quite at a loss as to what to do, a crow suddenly appeared before her. It cawed twice and flew on a short distance, then sat down again in front of her and cawed again twice. Meng Chiang-nu decided that the bird was inviting her to follow its direction and so she resumed her travel; a little cheered because of the company of this living thing, she began to sing as she walked along:

Thick and fast swirl round the winter snows: I, Meng Chiang-nu, trudge, bearing winter clothes, A starving crow, alas, my only guide, The Great Wall far, and I far from his side!

Thus she walked past mountain ranges, crossing big rivers as well as small streams.

Many a dreary day had passed before she at last reached the Great Wall. How excited she was when she caught sight of it, meandering like a huge serpent over the mountains before her. The wind was piercingly cold and the bare mountains were covered with dry grass only, without a single tree anywhere. Clusters of people were huddling against the Great Wall; these were the people who had been driven here to build it.

Meng Chiang-nu walked along the Great Wall, trying to find her husband among the workers. She asked after her husband, but nobody knew anything about him, so she had to go on and on asking.

At last she learned that her husband had gone into the nearby river for water, never to return, and that he had most certainly found an escape from the hard work by becoming a beautiful fish and swimming far away.

Meng Chiang-nu began to cry so hard that the Great Wall the Emperor had built began to crumble. When the emperor heard how Meng Chiang-nu had brought down part of his Great Wall, he immediately went to see for himself. As the Emperor approached the beautiful Meng Chiang-nu, she ran away and jumped into the river that flowed near the crumpled Great Wall. There she turned into a beautiful, silvery fish and swam gracefully out of sight, deep down into the green-blue water. Determined to find her husband, she continued her search and soon discovered he had, in fact, turned into the most beautiful fish she had ever seen. Today, they can both be seen swimming happily together in the green-blue waters of the Yang Zi River.