A scholar of Shuntian came from a poor family. In a year of famine he went with his father to Luoyang. He was slow-witted: at seventeen he could barely put an essay together. But he was handsome and graceful, could jest with wit, and wrote an excellent letter, so people who met him never guessed there was nothing inside. Before long his father and mother died one after the other, leaving him all alone, and he made his living teaching small children by the Luo River. In the village at that time there was an orphaned girl of the Yan family, descended from a scholar of note. She had been clever from childhood. While her father lived he had taught her to read, and whatever she went through once she remembered. At ten or so she learned from him to write verse. “We have a lady scholar in the family,” he said. “A pity she can’t wear the cap1.” He doted on her and meant to choose her a husband of rank. When he died her mother held to the same aim, but three years passed without a match, and then her mother died too. Someone urged her to marry a good scholar; she agreed, but nothing had come of it yet. Just then a neighbour’s wife came over the wall to chat with her. The woman had some embroidery thread wrapped in a piece of written paper. The girl opened it and saw it was a letter in the scholar’s hand, sent to the neighbour’s husband. She read it over and over and liked it. The neighbour’s wife saw what she was thinking and whispered, “He’s a handsome, graceful young man, an orphan just like you, and about your age. If you take a fancy to him, I’ll have my man bring the two of you together.” The girl gazed at her and said nothing. The woman went home and told her husband what she had in mind. He had long been friends with the scholar, and when he told him, the scholar was delighted. He had a gold crow ring left him by his mother, and asked his friend to take it to her. A day was set, the wedding performed, and they were as happy together as fish in water. But when she saw his essays she laughed. “You and your writing seem like two different people. At this rate, when will you ever pass?” Morning and evening she urged him to study, as strict as a teacher. At dusk she would be first to trim the candle and sit at the desk chanting her texts, to set her husband an example, and she did not stop until the water clock marked the third watch. After a year and more of this he had a fair command of examination essays; but he sat the examinations twice and failed twice. His hopes and his name were ruined, there was not enough to eat, and in his desolation he wept and wailed. She scolded him. “You are no man — that cap is wasted on you! If I could trade my hair-knot for a cap, I’d pick up the blue and the purple2 like a blade of grass!” He was already downcast, and at his wife’s words his eyes flashed with anger. “You women in your chambers, who never set foot in the examination hall, think rank and riches are like drawing water and boiling rice gruel in your kitchen! Put a cap on your head and I dare say you’d be no better than anyone else!” She laughed. “Don’t be angry. When the examinations come, let me change my clothes and go in your place. If I fail as you have, I’ll never dare look down on the scholars of the world again.” He laughed too. “You’ve never tasted the bitter bark yourself; you really ought to try it. Only I’m afraid you’d be found out, and the neighbours would laugh at us.” “I’m not joking,” she said. “You’ve told me you have an old family house in Yan. Let me dress as a man and go back with you, passing as your younger brother. You left there in swaddling clothes — who could tell I’m not?” He agreed. She went into the bedroom and came out in a man’s cap and gown. “Look at me. Will I pass for a man?” He looked: she was every inch a handsome youth, the kind who admires his own shadow. Delighted, he took leave of everyone in the village. His friends gave him small parting gifts; he bought a lean, lame donkey and brought his wife home on it. His cousin, the son of his father’s younger brother, was still living. Seeing his two young cousins, both as handsome as jade, he was overjoyed and looked after them morning and night. And when he saw them working hard from before dawn till late at night, he loved and respected them all the more. A little page with cropped hair was hired to wait on them; after dark they always sent him away. For funerals and celebrations in the village, the elder brother went out and did the honours; the younger stayed behind lowered curtains with his books. In half a year hardly anyone had seen his face. When visitors asked to meet him, the elder brother always made excuses for him. They read his essays and stared in amazement. Some pushed open the door to corner him; he would give a single bow and slip away. Those who glimpsed his looks and bearing were all smitten. So his name was soon on everyone’s lips, and great families vied to take him as a son-in-law. When the cousin raised the matter, he only smiled. Pressed again, he said, “I have vowed to climb the blue clouds. Until I pass the examinations I will not marry.” When the education commissioner came on his tour, the two went in together. The elder brother failed again. The younger came out first, went on to the provincial examination and placed fourth at Shuntian; the next year he became a jinshi3. He was appointed magistrate of Tongcheng, where he governed well, and before long was promoted to seal-holding censor of the Henan circuit, as rich as a prince. Then, pleading illness, he begged leave to take his old bones home, and was allowed to retire to his village. Visitors crowded the gate, but he turned them all away. From licentiate to high office he had never spoken of marrying, and there was no one who did not think it strange. After he came home he gradually took on maids. Some suspected him of carrying on with them, but the cousin’s wife watched and found nothing improper. Before long the Ming dynasty fell and the empire was thrown into chaos. Then the younger brother said to the cousin’s wife, “I’ll tell you the truth: I am your young brother-in-law’s wife. My husband was a good-for-nothing who couldn’t make his own way, so in a fit of pique I did it myself. I was terrified of its getting out — of the Son of Heaven summoning me to explain, and the whole land laughing.” The cousin’s wife did not believe it. Off came a boot, and the foot was shown4 to her; only then was she astonished. She looked into the boot and found it stuffed with old cotton wadding. So Mrs. Yan had the scholar take over her title, and shut her door and lay low, a hen once more. But she had never borne a child, so she paid out of her own money to buy him a concubine. She said to him, “When a man rises to high place, he buys concubines to wait on him. I held office for ten years and was still alone. What blessing have you, that you sit back and enjoy beauties?” The scholar said, “Thirty handsome young men5 — please buy them for yourself.” The story was passed around as a joke. By then the scholar’s parents had been granted titles by imperial favour several times over. The gentry came to call and treated him with the courtesies due a censor. But he was ashamed to bear a title won in the women’s quarters and was content to remain a licentiate; all his life, it is said, he never rode in an official’s sedan chair under a canopy.