Part 16

The child once more took the blocks and illustrated how one who was so poor as to be unable to furnish himself with candles, confined a fire-fly in a gauze lantern using that instead of a lamp. At the same time he explained that another who was perhaps not able to afford the gauze lantern, studied by the light of a glowworm.

"K'ang Heng," said the child, as he put the blocks together in a new form, "had a still better way, as well as more economical. His house was built of clay, and as the window of his neighbor's house was immediately opposite, he chiseled a hole through his wall and thus took advantage of his neighbor's light.

"Sun K'ang's method was very good for winter," continued the child as he rearranged the blocks, "but I do not know what he would do in summer. He studied by the light reflected from the snow.

"Perhaps," he went on as he changed the form, "he followed the example of another who studied by the pale light of the moon."

"What does that represent?" I asked him pointing to a child with a bowl in his hand who looked as if he might have been going to the grocer's.

"Oh, that boy is going to buy wine."

The Chinese have never yet realized what a national evil liquor may become. They have little wine shops in the great cities, but they have no drinking houses corresponding to the saloon, and it is not uncommon to see a child going to the wine shop to fetch a bowl of wine. The Buddhist priest indulges with the same moderation as the official class or gentry. Indeed most of the drunkenness we read about in Chinese books is that of poets and philosophers, and in them it is, if not commended, at least not condemned. The attitude of literature towards them is much like that of Thackeray towards the gentlemen of his day.

The child constructed the picture of a Buddhist priest, who, with staff in hand, and a mug of wine, was viewing the beautiful mountains in the distance. He then changed it to one in which an intoxicated man was leaning on a boy's shoulder, the inscription to which said: "Any one is willing to assist a drunken man to return home."

"This," he went on as he changed his blocks, "is a picture of Li Pei, China's greatest poet. He lived more than a thousand years ago. This represents the closing scene in his life. He was crossing the river in a boat, and in a drunken effort to get the moon's reflection from the water, he fell overboard and was drowned." The child pointed to the sail at the same time, repeating the following:

The sail being set, He tried to get, The moon from out the main.

I noticed a large number of boat scenes and induced the child to construct some of them for me, which he was quite willing to do, explaining them as he went as readily as our children would explain Old Mother Hubbard or the Old Woman who Lived in her Shoe, by seeing the illustrations.

Constructing one he repeated a verse somewhat like the following:

Alone the fisherman sat, In his boat by the river's brink, In the chill and cold and snow, To fish, and fish, and think.

Then he turned over to two on opposite pages, and as he constructed them he repeated in turn:

In a stream ten thousand li in length He bathes his feet at night,

While on a mount he waves his arms, Ten thousand feet in height.

The ten thousand li in one couplet corresponds to the ten thousand feet in the other, while the bathing of the feet corresponds to the waving of the arms. Couplets of this kind are always attractive to the Chinese child as well as to the scholar, and poems and essays are replete with such constructions.

The child enjoyed making the pictures. I tried to make one, but found it very difficult. I was not familiar with the blocks. It is different now, I have learned how to make them. Then it seemed as if it would be impossible ever to do so. When I had failed to make the picture I turned them over to him. In a moment it was done.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Chang Ch'i, the poet," he answered. "Whenever he went for a walk he took with him a child who carried a bag in which to put the poems he happened to write. In this illustration he stands with his head bent forward and his hands behind his back lost in thought, while the lad stands near with the bag."

We have given in another chapter the story of the great traveller, Chang Ch'ien, and his search for the source of the Yellow River.

In one of the illustrations the child represented him in his boat in a way not very different from that of the artist.

Another quotation from one of the poets was illustrated as follows:

Last night a meeting I arranged, Ere I my lamp did light, Nor while I crossed the ferry feared, Or wind or rain or night.

The child's eyes sparkled as he turned to some of those illustrating children at play, and as he constructed one which represents two children swinging their arms and running, he repeated:

See the children at their play, Gathering flowers by the way.

"They are gathering pussy-willows," he added.

In another he represented a child standing before the front gate, where he had knocked in vain to gain admission. As he completed it he said, pointing to the apricot over the door: