New Liaozhai: The Eastern Hedge
The hermit Shen Baiyi loves mums; each autumn a plain-clad Tao tends his hedge and shares his verse. Years pass, his hair turns white and hers does not — she is the chrysanthemum. When he dies, one cluster by his grave holds through winter.
New Liaozhai: The Eastern Hedge
The hermit Shen Baiyi was of a calm nature and loved chrysanthemums above all. He built a small hut beneath the eastern hedge and planted mums around it, so that in autumn they blazed like scattered stars.
Each year at their peak a plain-clad woman came to water the garden and weed, calling herself Tao, from the neighboring village. Shen talked poetry with her and found her kindred. She too could verse; once she sang "the frosted bud too frail to pin," and Shen marveled, thinking her a true friend.
Years passed; Shen's hair turned white, but Tao's face was unchanged. Doubting, he asked, and she smiled: "I am the chrysanthemum of this hedge. You love the mum, and the mum loves you, so I came to keep you company." She pointed to one plant by the hedge, white blossoms filling her hand: "My body is among them."
Shen was struck dumb. She said, "Do not fear. The mum has its blooming and withering, but feeling knows no life or death. While you are here, I am here; when you go, I keep watch."
Later Shen grew old and died without illness. His family buried him by the hut. The next autumn every mum in the garden withered but one cluster by the grave, white as snow, that held through the winter unbroken. The villagers marveled and called it the "righteous mum."
It is said: a man has one death, a mum one withering, but the bond of kindred hearts no cold or heat can take.