百花羞家書 The Family Letter
不孝女百花羞頓首百拜大德父王萬歲龍鳳殿前，暨三宮母后昭陽宮下，及舉朝文武賢卿臺次：拙女幸托坤宮，感激劬勞萬種。不能竭力怡顏，盡心奉孝。乃於十三年前八月十五日良夜佳辰，蒙父王恩旨，著各宮排宴，賞玩月華，共樂清霄盛會。正歡娛之間，不覺一陣香風，閃出個金睛藍面青髮魔王，將女擒住，駕祥光，直帶至半野山中無人處，難分難辨，被妖倚強，霸占為妻。是以無奈捱了一十三年，產下兩個妖兒，盡是妖魔之種。論此真是敗壞人倫，有傷風化，不當傳書玷辱。但恐女死之後，不顯分明。正含怨思憶父母，不期唐朝聖僧亦被魔王擒住。是女滴淚修書，大膽放脫，特托寄此片楮，以表寸心。伏望父王垂憫，遣上將早至碗子山波月洞捉獲黃袍怪，救女回朝，深為恩念。草草欠恭，面聽不一。逆女百花羞再頓首頓首。不孝女百花羞顿首百拜大德父王万岁龙凤殿前，暨三宫母后昭阳宫下，及举朝文武贤卿台次：拙女幸托坤宫，感激劬劳万种。不能竭力怡颜，尽心奉孝。乃于十三年前八月十五日良夜佳辰，蒙父王恩旨，着各宫排宴，赏玩月华，共乐清霄盛会。正欢娱之间，不觉一阵香风，闪出个金睛蓝面青发魔王，将女擒住，驾祥光，直带至半野山中无人处，难分难辨，被妖倚强，霸占为妻。是以无奈挨了一十三年，产下两个妖儿，尽是妖魔之种。论此真是败坏人伦，有伤风化，不当传书玷辱。但恐女死之后，不显分明。正含怨思忆父母，不期唐朝圣僧亦被魔王擒住。是女滴泪修书，大胆放脱，特托寄此片楮，以表寸心。伏望父王垂悯，遣上将早至碗子山波月洞捉获黄袍怪，救女回朝，深为恩念。草草欠恭，面听不一。逆女百花羞再顿首顿首。
逐句解 Line by line
The unfilial daughter Hundred-Flowers-Shy bows her head and makes a hundred obeisances before the Dragon-and-Phoenix Hall of her great and virtuous royal father, Ten Thousand Years; and beneath the Resplendent-Sun Palace of the queen-mothers of the three chambers; and at the desks of the worthy ministers, civil and military, of all the court:
She writes to her father in the form of a state memorial, not a note home, and the salutation alone tells you how far away she feels. 不孝女, "unfilial daughter," is the conventional self-abasement; 頓首百拜 is "knocking my head, bowing a hundred times." Then three addressees in strict descending order: the 龍鳳殿, her father's Dragon-and-Phoenix Hall; the 昭陽宮, the queen-mothers'; and the ministers' 臺次, their desks. 舉朝 (朝 = cháo) is the whole court.
This unworthy daughter was fortunate to be born of the palace of the Earth-queen, and is grateful beyond measure for the ten thousand toils of her rearing. Yet she could not exert her strength to gladden her parents' faces, nor exhaust her heart in the service of filial duty.
拙女 is "this clumsy daughter," another ritual belittling; 坤宮, "the palace of Kun" — Kun being the earth-trigram, and so the female principle — means the queen's palace, hence "born of the queen." 劬勞 is the toil of parents in raising a child, and it comes straight out of the 詩經, where a grown child mourns that the labour can never be repaid. 盡心 takes 盡 as jìn.
Now, thirteen years ago, on the fine night and fair hour of the fifteenth of the eighth month, by the gracious command of her royal father, each palace was bidden to set out a banquet, to delight in the moon's splendor and share together in the grand gathering of that clear night.
Now the date, and it is the same date the reader already heard in the cave — but this time from inside. 八月十五 is Mid-Autumn, the full-moon festival; 良夜佳辰 is "a fine night, a fair hour." 著各宮排宴 takes 著 as zhuó, to order or command; 共樂 reads 樂 as lè, to enjoy. The happier she makes the evening sound, the worse the next sentence will be.
In the very midst of the merriment, unlooked-for, there came a gust of fragrant wind, and out flashed a demon-king with golden eyes, an indigo face, and green hair, who seized your daughter, mounted an auspicious light, and bore her straight off to a wild and unpeopled place among the hills. There, powerless to resist, she was forced by the demon and made his wife against her will.
And there it is. 一陣香風, a gust of fragrant wind, is this novel's standard warning that something supernatural is arriving — sweet smell first, monster second. 金睛藍面青髮, golden eyes, indigo face, green hair, is the Yellow-Robe Ogre with the handsome disguise off. 將女擒住 uses 將 (jiāng) to seize; 半野山中 takes 中 as zhōng; 霸占為妻 (為 = wéi) is "usurped as a wife" — the verb is the one used for seizing land by force.
And so, helpless, she has endured thirteen years, and has borne two demon-children, wholly of a monster's seed. To speak of it is truly to corrupt the bonds of kind and to injure decent custom, and it were unfit to send a letter that would only bring dishonor.
The hardest sentence in the letter, and the one that nearly stopped her writing it. 捱 is to endure, to drag out an existence one is not living so much as getting through. 妖兒 (兒 = er) are the demon children. Then she passes judgement on herself in two set phrases: 敗壞人倫, to wreck the proper bonds between people, and 有傷風化, to injure public decency — the second is still the phrase Chinese reaches for when something is an offence against common morals. She is applying the language of a public scandal to her own rape and captivity, and concluding that she ought not to write at all.
But she feared that, once dead, her fate would never be made known. Even as she nursed her grief and longed for her father and mother, it chanced that a holy monk of Tang was likewise seized by the demon-king. So your daughter, with falling tears, wrote this letter, boldly set the monk free, and entrusted to him this scrap of paper to declare the little of her heart.
What overrules the shame is a specific fear: 不顯分明 (分 = fēn), that once she is dead nobody will ever know what became of her. 片楮 is "a scrap of paper" — 楮 (chǔ) is the paper-mulberry, the tree, standing in for the sheet made from it. 寸心, "an inch of heart," is the humble word for one's own feelings. The letter and the monk's release are not two acts but one.
Prostrate, she begs her royal father to look upon her with pity, to dispatch a chief general with all speed to the Wave-Moon Cave on Bowl Mountain, to take the Yellow-Robe Ogre and rescue his daughter back to the court — for which she would be deeply grateful. Written in haste and wanting in respect; there is more than a letter can say. The disobedient daughter Hundred-Flowers-Shy bows her head again and yet again.
The close is all epistolary formula, and the formula is doing something. 伏望 is "prostrate, I beg"; 遣上將 (將 = jiàng, a general) asks for troops by name; 深為 (為 = wéi) is "deeply." 草草欠恭，面聽不一 — written in haste, wanting in courtesy; more to be told face to face than one letter can hold — is a stock sign-off, and here it is also true. She signs 逆女, "disobedient daughter," which is even harder on herself than the 不孝女 she opened with.
The family letter is a formal set-piece cast in the shape of a court memorial: the elaborate tripartite salutation to father, queen-mothers and ministers; the ritual filial self-abasement (不孝女, 拙女); the 詩經 vocabulary of parental toil (劬勞) and duty unpaid. Inside that decorous frame she retells the abduction of thirteen years ago — the Mid-Autumn banquet, the gust of fragrant wind, the golden-eyed ogre — this time from the victim's side, so that the reader finally hears the inside of a captivity glimpsed only from the doorway in the cave.
Its emotional crux is shame. She writes against her own judgement, because the truth she has to tell — that she was forced, that she has borne two children of a monster's seed — is by her own standards a defilement that wrecks the bonds of kind and would only bring dishonour on the house. She sends the letter anyway, and the reason she gives is that she is afraid of dying unaccounted for. That tension, between the daughter's disgrace and the daughter's plea, gives the document its force, and it is also the hinge of the plot: by turning a private, shameful captivity into a public wrong and a filial appeal, the letter converts a demon's household into a matter of state, to be answered with an army — or, as it turns out, with two monks and a rake.