Su Dongpo also wrote a lyric poem:
The red blossoms fade, green apricots grow small. When swallows fly, green waters wind around homes. Willow floss on the branches is blown away again and again—at the ends of the earth, where are there no fragrant grasses?
A swing within the wall, a road beyond it. Travelers outside the wall, a beauty laughing within. Her laughter gradually fades, her voice grows quiet; the sentimental are troubled by the heartless.
The scene described in this poem was of a passerby hearing the laughter of a young girl swinging behind a wall. Unable to resist, he stopped and imagined the sight.
From the age of twelve, girls were confined to their chambers. Occasionally, they could hear the songs of peddlers hawking goods through the streets. Some especially curious girls would take a mirror and hide in the shadows near the main gate, peeking at the people coming and going.
A single wall did more than prevent contact between unrelated men and the women of the household—it created two entirely different ways of life. While The Peony Pavilion was being performed within the commander's residence, the common people had celebrations of their own. Puppet theater was popular throughout the Fujian–Zhejiang–Chaoshan region, and the greatest difference between these puppets and European ones was not merely their clothing and appearance.
Puppets were mentioned in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. European puppets were believed to have originated in ancient Greece; even when they performed religious subjects, the stories were mythological. Chinese puppets, however, were first used in funerary rites—or rather, they were burial offerings that took the place of living people.
Using living people as burial offerings was exceedingly cruel. Even after Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, died, concubines were still buried with