The sun also rises

The round earthen fortress of Chen Family Cove had been built against a mountain, Nine Luminaries Mountain. Chen Caozhi's father, Chen Su, had given the mountain its name, saying that beneath the moon at night its clustered peaks looked like the sun, moon, and stars arrayed together, hence the name Nine Luminaries Mountain.

Nine Luminaries Mountain was not high, but the four li of mountain trail from its foot to its summit still left Chen Caozhi panting. Rain had fallen the night before, making the trail wet and slippery, and several times he had nearly slipped and fallen. Yet the lush woods and slender bamboo, the wildflowers and old vines, and the birds' lilting calls along the way all lifted the spirits and opened the heart. Truly, not one of the mountains surrounding West Lake lacked beauty.

But his physical exhaustion was very real. By the time Chen Caozhi reached the summit, he was almost too tired to straighten his back, and his legs shook uncontrollably. He hurriedly found a rock to sit on and rest. This body really was frail; he would have to toughen it up properly.

Lai Fu's younger son, Lai De, was a year older than Chen Caozhi. With thick eyebrows and large eyes, he was slightly shorter than Chen Caozhi, but his thick arms and legs made him very sturdy. Lai De had been grazing cattle at the foot of Nine Luminaries Mountain early that morning. Seeing his young master so eager to climb the mountain for exercise, he had followed him all the way up.

Seeing that Lai De neither sweated nor panted, walking over the rugged mountain path as though it were level ground, Chen Caozhi felt quite envious. He asked, "Lai De, do you know any martial arts?"

Lai De scratched his head. "I only know how to herd cattle and dig the fields. I don't know any martial arts."

Chen Caozhi chuckled, then asked, "Are there any reclusive masters living nearby who know martial arts or the Five Animal Frolics?"

"There is one," Lai De answered at once. He climbed onto a large rock at the summit, craned his neck to look north, and pointed toward the distant, misty expanse of Golden Ox Lake. "There's an old immortal on Precious Stone Mountain north of the lake who can refine elixirs of everlasting youth. He can ride the clouds and command the mist. He's incredibly powerful."

Chen Caozhi asked, "Have you seen him with your own eyes?"

Lai De shook his head. "No, I haven't, but all the villagers nearby say so. Someone even went to beg the old immortal to take him as a disciple. He knelt there for three days and three nights, but the old immortal paid him no mind and just sat there eating his elixirs-"

Chen Caozhi laughed aloud and stood up, gazing toward West Lake north of the mountain. He wondered who this old immortal Lai De had mentioned really was. Presumably, he was a practitioner of the Way of the Celestial Masters. Going around West Lake from Nine Luminaries Mountain to Precious Stone Mountain would mean a journey of more than twenty li. After some time, once he had strengthened his legs, he would take Lai De along to visit the old immortal. Perhaps he would turn out to be some famous historical figure.

North of Nine Luminaries Mountain lay West Lake, while to the south, stretching toward Jade Emperor Mountain, lay broad expanses of farmland, more than three thousand mu in all. These were all lands allotted to the Qiantang Chen Clan. Narrow ridges divided the fields, and more than twenty households were scattered along the boundary between mountain and farmland. They were all tenant farmers renting land from the Chen clan.

Lai De grinned guilelessly. "Look, young master. More than half of this great stretch of fields belongs to our West Tower. Heh-heh, what a grand sight!"

Chen Caozhi traced a circle in the air with his right hand and said with a smile, "If all the land around Golden Ox Lake belonged to our West Tower, that would be splendid."

Lai De remembered something he had overheard his parents murmuring about the night before and asked, "Young master, I heard North Tower wants to take our West Tower's fields. Is that true?"

"Nothing of the sort," Chen Caozhi said. "No one can take our West Tower's fields."

Lai De clenched his two large fists and said gruffly, "That's right. Whoever dares seize them will have to fight me to the death!" Lai De had grown up in Chen Family Cove and had long regarded the Chen family of West Tower as his own family, sharing their joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, bound together in life and death.

Mountain breezes blew in gusts, and the trees and bamboo rustled. Glimpsed between rocks and tree shadows, West Lake seemed close enough to scoop up with an outstretched hand. On the eastern horizon, countless shafts of rosy light spread as a red sun was about to burst forth.

Seeing Chen Caozhi remain silent, Lai De also stood quietly to one side. Just then, the first ray of morning sunlight shone upon them, seeming to shoot straight into the depths of Chen Caozhi's eyes. In an instant, the handsome youth gleamed like pearls and jade reflecting the sun, dazzling Lai De's eyes. Then he heard Chen Caozhi say softly:

"The sun also rises."

Over the next few days, Chen Caozhi persisted in climbing Nine Luminaries Mountain twice a day, at dawn and at dusk. Though his calves ached, such hardship was nothing to a seasoned hiker like him. He knew very well that only the first few days would be difficult; afterward, it would get better, and his body would gradually grow stronger.

Every morning, Chen Caozhi read through one section of Zheng Xuan's Mao Commentary on the Book of Songs, then practiced calligraphy with his wrist held above the desk for half a double-hour. In the afternoon, he read Ma Rong's Collected Explanations of the Analects, then practiced calligraphy for another half a double-hour, first with his left hand, then with his right. With his left hand he practiced the Declaration Memorial, and with his right, the Zhang Han Longing for Perch Calligraphy Model. He had no copy of the Zhang Han Longing for Perch Calligraphy Model to imitate and relied entirely on memory.

When Chen Caozhi read and practiced calligraphy, his nephew and niece, a pair as lovely as jade, sat obediently at the edge of the reed mat. Their two pairs of clear black-and-white eyes watched their handsome young uncle with great admiration. Especially when Chen Caozhi practiced calligraphy, producing different styles with his left and right hands, the two little ones stared with their eyes wide and softly smacked their little lips in wonder and admiration.

Run'er was very clever. No one had ever taught her to read. When her grandmother taught her elder brother Chen Zongzhi his characters, she had leaned in her grandmother's arms, watching quietly and listening quietly. Whatever characters Zongzhi knew, she knew as well. The siblings' primer was actually the Analects. They only needed to recognize the characters correctly; it did not matter if they did not understand the meaning, which would be explained a few years later.

The funny thing was that Run'er had sat opposite Zongzhi. As Zongzhi held the scroll and read character by character as their grandmother taught him, Run'er watched from across from him. She learned the characters, but she recognized them all upside down. It later took considerable effort to correct this.

Zongzhi was eight and Run'er six. They already recognized every character in the Analects, but understood none of its meaning, so Chen Caozhi explained its principles to them.

During the Wei-Jin period, official schools declined while private learning flourished, and young children depended entirely on their fathers, elder brothers, and other elders for their first lessons. This was what lay behind the saying that a family's learning had deep roots. Chen Caozhi's elder brother, Chen Qingzhi, had taught him the Analects, and now he taught it to his nephew and niece. Of course, the present Chen Caozhi understood the Analects more thoroughly than his elder brother Chen Qingzhi, and his explanations made profound ideas even easier to grasp.

Chen Caozhi's mother, Lady Li, stood outside the window, listening to the clear voices of her son and two grandchildren reading in the study, and her eyes grew moist. With such fine, studious children and grandchildren, how could our Chen family of West Tower fail to flourish!

What troubled Chen Caozhi somewhat was that there were simply too few books. He now thirsted for knowledge, yet suffered from having no books to read. Books were exceedingly precious in this era. Leaving aside the bamboo slips of earlier times, even silk and paper books were quite rare. Even with money, there was nowhere to buy them; one had to rely entirely on borrowing and copying them by hand. The hundred-odd scrolls of the Mao Commentary on the Book of Songs and the Collected Explanations of the Analects in Chen Caozhi's study had been copied by Chen Su himself years before-

People of this era sought mastery rather than quantity in their reading, with few opportunities to read widely, so thorough knowledge of just one or two classics was enough to establish a place in scholarly circles. Chen Caozhi could now recite these two classics annotated by Zheng Xuan and Ma Rong backward without faltering, and he had a basically clear grasp of their principles. But he was by no means satisfied with this, for the Analects alone had received commentaries from dozens of scholars since the Qin and Han dynasties, each seeking out mysteries and dredging up hidden depths, each offering his own views. People of the Wei-Jin period preferred to interpret Confucian classics through Xuanxue. Both the Collected Explanations of the Analects by the great Xuanxue scholar He Yan and the Explanations of Doubts in the Analects by the brilliant young Wang Bi, who pioneered the Xuanxue vogue of the Zhengshi era, interpreted the Analects through Lao-Zhuang Thought. If Chen Caozhi wanted acceptance and appreciation from the great aristocratic clans, studying the classics of Han Confucian scholars alone would not suffice. He had to study He Yan's and Wang Bi's annotated editions. Mastery of both Xuanxue and Confucianism was his goal.

But with no books to read, what could he do?

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