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Peach Blossom Pavilion
Mingmei Yip
Behind the doors of the pavilion, a world of sensuality and intrigue awaits…Xiang Xiang’s life as an innocent girl is about to change beyond recognition.Falsely accused of murder, Xiang Xiang's father is executed, and her mother forced into a Buddhist nunnery. Xiang Xiang, alone and friendless at thirteen years old, is tricked into entering the Peach Blossom Pavilion, where she is given the name Bao Lan – Precious Orchid.There she is trained in the fine arts of womanhood, studying music, literature, painting, and more importantly, the art of seduction and pleasuring men; and becomes one of China’s most successful courtesans.However, Precious Orchid is determined to avenge her parents and sets out on a journey that includes passion, adventure, danger, fame, and finally, her chance to achieve the justice she has sought so long.An enchanting tale of opulence and desire, perfect for fans of Anchee Min and Memoirs of a Geisha.
Peach Blossom Pavilion
Mingmei Yip
Copyright (#ulink_cd7351bb-aea8-5fa1-9c77-200c58232016)
Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Mingmei Yip 2008
Cover photographs © Natalia Campbell / Getty Images (woman); myu-myu / Getty Images (bird); Shutterstock.com (http://www.shutterstock.com); Kevin Hua Long Jiang / Getty Images (background).
Mingmei Yip asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007570126
Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007570133
Version: 2014-07-25
Dedication (#ulink_d33c7b5a-713a-56e6-b57a-3777392b4049)
For Geoffrey, Who gives me both the fish and the bear’s paw.
When there is action above and compliance below, this is called the natural order of things.
When the man thrusts from above and the woman receives from below, this is called the balance between heaven and earth.
–Dong Xuanzi (Tang dynasty, AD 618–907)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u8f6e9ec6-7448-5951-a331-e518b45840b4)
Title Page (#uf70b3b48-d409-5c87-8c9b-e23813394587)
Copyright (#u6334894e-ae25-5a9f-a1ec-4d0d5893827e)
Dedication (#u509fdfee-c89d-5c6f-bc05-a67ef984a377)
Epigraph (#u395f5183-59d6-54d1-81fd-0892697716f1)
Prologue (#u101d299e-94ca-5cd1-8a7f-d6d28fb918a6)
Part One (#u812d7b8c-dd9c-532b-8d61-e0adadba517a)
1. The Turquoise Pavilion (#u8ce50361-82e1-5a55-9a34-f02829e618a3)
2. The North Station (#ua5537127-76cb-5300-866b-e8e060108d64)
3. The Dark Room (#ue76109fb-6cab-562b-8b23-f3fdfb6d85bf)
4. The Elegant Gathering (#uf29ce47e-e374-5a83-8c2f-f97d8d8d4e13)
5. Spring Moon (#u026b27b0-954d-536a-abc9-6eb66d83d381)
6. A Lucky Day (#u61ae2184-b131-50a4-b1dc-ccbdfd932300)
7. The Jade Stalk and the Golden Gate (#u9a0f5756-a581-5923-aaab-5dbf1358013e)
8. The Haunted Garden (#u9d882e6b-4d86-5c09-b95b-c4fccdcbfe8f)
9. The Art of Pleasing (#u93df184c-00fa-59e1-8837-1e19f212f396)
10. The Longevity Wrinkles (#uc81c5cc7-fba7-5a4d-9b52-9c12e2fb26df)
11. Rape of the Rock (#litres_trial_promo)
12. Beat the Cat (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Life Went On (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Mr. Anderson (#litres_trial_promo)
15. The Prestigious Prostitute (#litres_trial_promo)
16. Red Jade (#litres_trial_promo)
17. The Ways Out (#litres_trial_promo)
18. The Jade Stalk Refuses to Salute (#litres_trial_promo)
19. Last Journey in the Red Dust (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)
20. Chinese Soap Opera (#litres_trial_promo)
21. Melting the Ice (#litres_trial_promo)
22. American Handsome (#litres_trial_promo)
23. The Escape (#litres_trial_promo)
24. The Bandits (#litres_trial_promo)
25. This Woman Is Not My Husband (#litres_trial_promo)
26. The Monk and the Prostitute (#litres_trial_promo)
27. The Encounter (#litres_trial_promo)
28. Separation (#litres_trial_promo)
29. Replaying the Pipa (#litres_trial_promo)
30. Flight to Heaven (#litres_trial_promo)
31. The Reunion (#litres_trial_promo)
32. Back to Shanghai (#litres_trial_promo)
33. Revenge (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Four (#litres_trial_promo)
34. Ginseng Tea (#litres_trial_promo)
35. Back to Peking (#litres_trial_promo)
36. The Nun and the Prostitute (#litres_trial_promo)
37. An Unexpected Visitor (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_26ce8f11-d6ae-5ba7-afbd-d0895515c757)
Precious Orchid (#ulink_26ce8f11-d6ae-5ba7-afbd-d0895515c757)
The California sun slowly streams in through my apartment window, then gropes its way past a bamboo plant, a Chinese vase spilling with plum blossoms, a small incense burner, then finally lands on Bao Lan – Precious Orchid – the woman lying opposite me without a stitch on.
Envy stabs my heart. I stare at her body as it curves in and out like a snake ready for mischief. She lies on a red silk sheet embroidered with flowers in gold thread. ‘Flower of the evil sea’ – this was what people in old Shanghai would whisper through cupped mouths. While now, in San Francisco, I murmur her name, ‘Bao Lan,’ sweetly as if savouring a candy in my mouth. I imagine inhaling the decadent fragrance from her sun-warmed nudity.
Bao Lan’s eyes shine big and her lips – full, sensuous, and painted a dark crimson – evoke in my mind the colour of rose petals in a fading dream. Petals that, when curled into a seductive smile, also whisper words of flattery. These, together with her smooth arm, raised and bent behind her head in a graceful curve, remind me of the Chinese saying ‘A pair of jade arms used as pillows to sleep on by a thousand guests; two slices of crimson lips tasted by ten thousand men.’
Now the rosy lips seem to say, ‘Please come to me.’
I nod, reaching my hand to touch the nimbus of black hair tumbling down her small, round breasts. Breasts the texture of silk and the colour of white jade. Breasts that were touched by many – soldiers, merchants, officials, scholars, artists, policemen, gangsters, a Catholic priest, a Taoist monk.
Feeling guilty of sacrilege, I withdraw my nearly century-old spotty and wrinkled hand. I keep rocking on my chair and watching Bao Lan as she continues to eye me silently. ‘Hai, how time flies like an arrow, and the sun and moon move back and forth like a shuttle!’ I recite the old saying, then carefully sip my ginseng tea.
‘Ahpo, it’s best-quality ginseng to keep your longevity and health,’ my great-granddaughter told me the other day when she brought the herb.
Last week, I celebrated my ninety-eighth birthday, and although they never say it out loud, I know they want my memoir to be finished before I board the immortal’s journey. When I say ‘they,’ I mean my great-granddaughter Jade Treasure and her American fiancé Leo Stanley. In a while, they will be coming to see me and begin recording my oral history.
Oral history! Do they forget that I can read and write? They treat me as if I were a dusty museum piece. They act like they’re doing me a great favour by digging me out from deep underground and bringing me to light. How can they forget that I am not only literate, but also well versed in all the arts – literature, music, painting, calligraphy, and poetry – and that’s exactly the reason they want to write about me?
Now Bao Lan seems to say, ‘Old woman, please go away! Why do you always have to remind me how old you are and how accomplished you were?! Can’t you leave me alone to enjoy myself at the height of my youth and beauty?’
‘Sure,’ I mutter to the air, feeling the wrinkles weighing around the corners of my mouth.
But she keeps staring silently at me with eyes which resemble two graceful dots of ink on rice paper. She’s strange, this woman who shares the same house with me but only communicates with the brightness of her eyes and the sensuousness of her body.
I am used to her eccentricity, because she’s my other – much wilder and younger – self! The delicate beauty opposite me is but a faded oil painting done seventy-five years ago when I was twenty-three.
And the last poet-musician courtesan in Shanghai.
That’s why they keep pushing me to tell, or sell, my story – I am the carrier of a mysterious cultural phenomenon – ming ji.
The prestigious prostitute. Prestigious prostitute? Yes, that was what we were called in old China. A species as extinct as the Chinese emperors, after China became a republic. Some say it’s a tragic loss; others argue: how can the disappearance of prostitutes be tragic?
The cordless phone trills on the coffee table; I pick it up with my stiff, arthritic hand. Jane and Leo are already downstairs. Jane is Jade Treasure’s English name, of which I disapprove because it sounds so much like the word ‘pan fry’ in Chinese. When I call her ‘Jane, Jane,’ I can almost smell fish cooking in sizzling oil – Sizzz! Sizzz! It sounds as if I’d cook my own flesh and blood!
Now the two young people burst into my nursing home apartment with their laughter and overflowing energy, their embarrassingly long limbs flailing in all directions. Jade Treasure flounces up to peck my cheek, swinging a basket of fruit in front of me, making me dizzy.
‘Hi, Grandmama, you look good today! The ginseng gives you good qi?’
‘Jade, can you show some respect to an old woman who has witnessed, literally, the ups and downs of a century?’ I say, pushing away the basket of fruit.
‘Grandmama!’ Jade mock protests, then dumps the basket on the table with a clank and plops down on the sofa next to me.
It is now Leo’s turn to peck my cheek, then he says in his smooth Mandarin, ‘How are you today, Popo?’
