The Chrysanthemum Spirit

By the banks of the Huai River stood a little town called Qiuling, where the folk, come each Double Ninth, would pin chrysanthemums in their hair and float cups of chrysanthemum wine upon the water, as was their wont.

There lived a young scholar of the surname Lu, orphaned early and poor, who had rented a small chamber in the western cloister of the temple to read for the examinations. Year followed year, and the examinations followed him only with failure; his purse grew thin, and his sole comfort was a wild chrysanthemum of his own planting set in an earthen pot by the window - its frost-edged petals a pale goose-yellow, though whence it came he could not say. Lu watered it with the dregs of his tea and, of nights, read his verses aloud to it.

In the autumn of a certain year he failed once more. Returning home, he sat in dejection beside the flower and sighed: 'Thou and I are both creatures of the frost. Thou canst yet bloom, while I have not advanced a single step. It is my fate!' So saying, he wept.

That night the moon was white, and a faint light stirred within the pot. From the heart of the blossom a maiden rose by slow degrees - clothed as in the first hoarfrost, a small yellow chrysanthemum thrust in her hair, her face quiet and gentle. Lu started up in alarm; the maiden made him a courtesy and said: 'Sir, be not afraid. I am the spirit of this very chrysanthemum. Touched that you have tended me through my fallings, I came to speak one word with you.'

Lu said: 'Can a chrysanthemum speak?' She smiled: 'Where the breath of heaven wakes early in grass or tree, there spirit may stir. Three years have I dwelt in this pot, and watched you, sir, by your lamp, warming your frozen fingers to copy your books without cease - and I honoured you in my heart. Now that the examinations have wronged you again, I feared your spirit might break, and came to comfort you.'

Lu asked: 'What is the span of a chrysanthemum's life?' She answered: 'My shape is lent by autumn. When autumn deepens, the root sinks; when the frost grows heavy, the soul returns home. It is not death, but a going back to my root. Wait but till next Double Ninth, and the shoot will spring again, and I with it. Yet partings among men are seldom so faithful as the turning of the seasons.'

Lu's face fell, and he would have kept her. She shook her head: 'I cannot tarry long in the dust of the world. A flower without earth will wilt; a spirit parted from its root will scatter. Only remember this, sir: to read is not to chase office - office is but its chance companion. Let the heart be clear, and the road will widen of itself.'

Thenceforward, on every moonlit night, the maiden would appear and discourse with Lu upon poetry and the ways of the world. The temple monk, rising late, spied a light in the western cloister and thought it strange; he peered, but saw only Lu seated alone, muttering his lines, and nothing more - and took it for fox-fire, and gave it no further heed.

So half a year passed. With winter the rime fell often, and the potted chrysanthemum withered by degrees. The maiden came to take her leave, her face already faint: 'The autumn is spent; I must go. Care for yourself, sir.' Lu held her hand and found it cold as dew; his tears fell. She dipped a finger in his tears and touched it to the soil of the pot, saying: 'Keep this thread, and next year you shall know me.' Then the light went out, and the chrysanthemum was quite dead.

The next autumn Lu came home from his failure at the examinations, and true enough a new shoot had broken from the pot; within the month the yellow petals were as before. On a moonlit night the faint light rose again, and there was the maiden, smiling: 'How fares my sir?' Lu said: 'My heart is at ease. The examinations - I leave them to chance.' She said: 'Well spoken.'

After this Lu laid aside the pursuit of office and took up the teaching of village boys, earning enough by the year to keep himself. Each Double Ninth he would pour a cup for the chrysanthemum and say: 'My friend is here.' When men asked him why, he only smiled and would not answer.

The Chronicler of the Strange says: Plants have no knowing, yet they keep faith with the covenant of frost and cold; men nurse some small wish, and commonly break it by the way. Lu, disappointed of office, found his rest among the furrows - and this was the chrysanthemum's teaching. Among those who scramble for rank and pay, are there not many who fall short of a single autumn flower in faithfulness? And thus the spirits of things are no demons, but a kind of friend and teacher.