Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

were a couple of settees covered with indigo homespun, and a small bamboo table in between. It wasn’t quite as antique-looking as he’d hoped, but it was cozy.
    There was cabin room for four, but there wasn’t another customer waiting at the moment. Chen offered to hire the sampan for the two of them and pay the difference. The sampan man agreed readily. He was a jolly one, in his fifties, with a weather-beaten face as rugged as in an oil painting, yet with a shrewd light in his eyes. He pulled out, standing on the stern and speaking with a loud voice:
    “You’re a lucky man, sir, with such a beautiful girlfriend sitting beside you. Indeed, a romantic spring day in the same boat with her is worth every penny you’re paying.”
    Chen smiled without commenting. He seated himself opposite Shanshan. She looked at him, her hands on the table. Her eye glinted with something hard to identify, yet appealingly enigmatic. In classical Chinese literature, there was a stock phrase describing “autumn waves” rippling in a beauty’s eye. She was still so young that the waves in her eyes were spring rather than autumn. There was a red paper cutting stuck to the cabin wall behind her, he noted. The cutting, though slightly torn, was a recognizable pattern of fish and flower, symbolic of passionate love and fruitful marriage.
    The sampan moved further out, swinging a little from time to time, riding in a channel marked on both sides by poles stuck upright in the water.
    She took off her trench coat, her white shoulders flashing against the somber background. Picking up a cup from the table, she poured some water from the bottle she carried with her.
    “You’re so careful.”
    “You can’t be too careful these days.”
    “That sounds like a line I read long ago.”
    “Again? You’re so into poetry,” she said with a teasing smile that illuminated her vivacious face. “Are you always such an impossible romantic as a tourist?”
    “I don’t know, but as a tourist, I’ve always wanted to spend a day on the lake,” he acknowledged. “And there’s a more pressing reason, of course—I wanted to be with you.”
    His words just now sounded like an echo of something he’d read long ago, though it could have been prose and not a poem. He found it easy to slip into the role she’d assigned him.
    “Shall we go to the Three Celestial Islets?” the sampan man said. “With all the Taoist temples, pavilions, pagodas, jade and crystal towers there, it is filled with really heavenly scenes.”
    “The Three Celestial Islets is a tourist attraction next to the park,” she said. “According to one interpretation, the islets look like a turtle from across the water. It’s always packed with tourists.”
    “No, I’m not the typical tourist,” Chen said. “I can’t help but think of some lines from Su Shi: Only it could be chilly there, / in the jade and crystal towers. / Incomparable to dancing here / in the human world. ”
    “You’re absolutely right,” the sampan man said. “My boat is dancing at your command.”
    “What are you thinking now?” Shanshan said.
    “Well, some other lines come to mind: Water flows in the rippling / of her eyes. / Hills rise in the knitting of her brows. / Where is a traveler going to visit? / The enchanting landscape / of her eyes and brows . That’s not my poem, but one by Wang Guan, a Tang dynasty poet. For him, spring and beauty are one, that’s why the poem ends like this: When you catch up with spring, / south of the river, make sure / to stay with her . So I’m staying here with you.”
    “You are overwhelming me,” she said with a light, wistful smile. It was no longer fashionable to quote poetry in today’s society, but it didn’t seem to irritate her.
    “What a poet you are!” the sampan man cut in, having overheard their conversation. “Would you like to hear a couple of sampan songs?”
    “Sampan songs?”
    “Yes, a time-honored convention here,” the sampan man responded with a broad grin. “Remember the love songs in the stories about Tang Bohu?”
    Tang was a legendary romantic scholar and painter in the Ming dynasty. There was a singing boatman in those stories, Chen recalled.
    The sampan man began to sing in his deep voice with a strong Wu accent, a song celebrating the eternal theme of love:
    Red peach blossoms blaze
    all over the hills,
    with the spring water
    of the river flowing around.
     
    The flower color will easily fade,
    my lord, like