Voices in Time

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Why are there misfortunes in life? They are usually the retributions for one’s own sins, but this was not so with me! I always have been friendly, frank, and open, and kept my word to others, but these qualities only became the reasons for my troubles. My father, the Honorable Jiafu, was also a most generous gentleman, anxious to help those in trouble, to assist anyone in need, to marry off other people’s daughters and to bring up their sons. There are countless examples. He spent money like dirt, most of it for other people.

When my wife Yun and I were living at home, we could not avoid pawning our belongings if we had unforeseen expenses; at first we somehow found ways to make ends meet, but later we were always in need. As people say, “Without money, you cannot both run a household and mix with friends.” First our circumstances aroused talk among local gossips, and later scorn from our family. The ancients were right: “Lack of talent in a woman is a virtue.”

Although I was the eldest son in the family, I was the third child, and so at first everyone called Yun “third lady.” Later, however, they suddenly started calling her “third wife.” It began as a joke but then became usual practice, so that everyone from the elders to the servants was calling her “third wife.” I wonder, was this the beginning of the disagreements in our family?

In 1785 I was working for my father at the Haining government offices. Yun usually enclosed notes to me in letters from home, so one day my father said to me, “Since your wife can handle brush and ink, she can write your mother’s letters for her.” But sometime later there was some gossip at home, and Mother suspected Yun of writing something improper about it in one of her letters. After that she did not let Yun take up the brush for her.

When Father noticed that later letters were not in Yun’s handwriting, he asked me whether she was ill. I wrote and asked her about it, but Yun did not reply.

After a while Father grew quite angry about this and said to me, “Apparently your wife will not condescend to write letters for your mother!” It was not until I returned home that I realized the cause of the misunderstanding, and I wanted to put things right for Yun.

She hurriedly stopped me, however, saying, “I would rather have Father blaming me for this than to have mother unhappy with me.” So things were not cleared up after all.

In the spring of 1790, I was again working for my father, at the secretariat at Hungjiang. A colleague of my father’s named Yu Fuding had brought along his family to live there with him.

One day my father said to Fuding, “I have led a hard life, often away from home. I would like to have someone to live with me and serve me, but I have not been able to find anyone. If my son respected my wishes, he would find me someone from our home county so that our dialects would be the same.”

Fuding passed this on to me, and I secretly wrote to Yun telling her to find someone. She did, a girl named Yao. As father had at that time not yet accepted her, however, Yun decided it would be best not to tell my mother about what was going on. When the girl came for my father to meet her, Yun made up a story saying that she was a neighbor’s daughter who was visiting. And when my father sent me to bring her formally from her home to his residence, Yun again listened to the advice of others and made up a story saying that my father had admired her for some time.

When mother learned what had happened she was outraged. “But this is the neighbor’s daughter who came for a visit,” she said. “How can he marry her?” Yun had made mother angry with her too.

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