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2007-07-31 16:07:16
Vincent (Beat LA.)
THE DEER AND THE CAULDRON
The First Book
A Martial Arts novel
by Louis Cha
Translated and edited
by John Minford
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PROLOQUE
In which Three Ming Loyalists discuss the Manchu Persecution, the Ming m
History, the Beggars Guild, and the Triad Secret Society
The Deer and the Cauldron
Along a coastal road somewhere south of the Yangtze River, a detachment of
soldiers, each of them armed with a halberd, was escorting a line of seven
prison carts, trudging northwards in the teeth of a bitter wind. In each of the
first three carts a single male prisoner was caged, identifiable by his dress as a
member of the scholar class. One was a white-haired old man. The other two
were men of middle years. The four rear carts were occupied by women, the
last of them by a young mother holding a baby girl at her breast. The little girl
was crying in a continuous wail which her mother's gentle words of comfort
were powerless to console. One of the soldiers marching alongside, irritated by
the baby's crying, aimed a mighty kick at the cart.
'Stop it! Shut up! Or I'll really give you something to cry about!'
The baby, startled by this sudden violence, cried even louder.
Under the eaves of a large house, some hundred yards from the road, a
middle-aged scholar was standing with a ten- or eleven-year-old boy at his side.
He was evidently affected by this little scene, for a groan escaped his lips and
he appeared to be very close to tears.
'Poor creatures!' he murmured to himself.
'Papa,' said the little boy, 'what have they done wrong?'
'What indeed!' said the man, bitterly. 'During these last two days they must
have made more than thirty arrests. All our best scholars. And all of them
innocents, caught up in the net,' he added in an undertone, for fear that the
soldiers might hear him.
That girl's only a baby,' said the boy. 'What can she possibly be guilty of? It's
very wrong.'
'So you understand that what the Government soldiers do is wrong,' said the
man. 'Good for you, my son!' He sighed. They are the cleaver and we are the
meat. They are the cauldron and we are the deer.'
'You explained "they are the cleaver and we are the meat" the other day, papa,'
said the boy. 'It's what they say when people are massacred or beheaded. Like
meat or fish being sliced up on the chopping-board. Does "they are the
cauldron and we are the deer" mean the same thing?'
'Yes, more or less,' said the man; and since the train of soldiers and prison carts
was now fast receding, he took the boy by the hand.
'Let's go indoors now,' he said. 'It's too windy for standing outside.'
Indoors the two of them went, and into his study.
The man-picked up a writing-brush and moistened it on the ink-slab, then, on
-a sheet of paper, he wrote the character for a deer.
The deer is a wild animal, but although it is comparatively large, it has a very
peaceable nature. It eats only grass and leaves and never harms other animals.
So when other animals want to hurt it or to eat it, all it can do is run away. If it
can't escape by running away, it gets eaten.'
He wrote the characters for 'chasing the deer' on the sheet of paper.
That's why in ancient times they often used the deer as a symbol of Empire.
The common people, who are the subjects of Empire, are gentle and obedient.
Like the deer's, it is their lot to be
cruelly treated and oppressed. In the History of the Han Dynasty it says "Qin
lost the deer and the world went chasing after it". That means that when the
Qin Emperor lost control of the Empire, ambitious men rose up everywhere
and fought each other to possess it. In the end it was the first Han Emperor
who got this big, fat deer by defeating the Tyrant King of Chu.'
'I know,' said the boy. 'In my story-books it says "they chased the deer on the
Central Plain". That means they were all fighting each other to become
Emperor.'
The scholar nodded, pleased with his young son's astuteness. He drew a picture
of a cauldron on the sheet of paper.
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