302 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
In “Prelude to the Oriole’s Song,” Wu Wenying compares his romantic encounter
with those in other well-known stories: the first, of two young men—Liu Chen
and Ruan Zhao—who fall in love with two fairy maidens on Mount Tiantai, and
the second, the love affair between Zhang Cheng and a courtesan named Yang
Aiai. Brocade Maid is Yang Aiai’s maidservant, who acts as secret go-between for
her mistress.28 As with the textual and historical allusions that Jiang Kui uses in
“Dappled Shadows,” there is no explicit comparison in “Prelude to the Oriole’s
Song” of these figures with the poet’s own experience. The next two lines suc-
cinctly describe the love as experienced by Wu Wenying and his beloved after their
encounter. Although the “spring” symbolizing their love and passion was vast,
their shared “dream”—their actual time together—was all too limited. The line
“Rouged tears falling soaked your singing fan and gold-thread gown” can, but does
not necessarily, refer to the lovers’ final parting. It likely alludes to the song “Gold-
Thread Gown,” during whose performance the courtesan deeply understands that,
since time passes quickly, their dreamlike existence together will soon be over, and
so she sheds tears. In this way, the line anticipates the theme of separation in the
third stanza. Wu Wenying concludes the second stanza with a strophe that subtly
describes the joy of being together. As the lovers enjoy each other’s company, they
turn over the beautiful sunset to the “gulls and egrets,” since they are too absorbed
to enjoy it. With the exception of the first line, “Ten years at West Lake,” the whole
of the second stanza is made up of fragments of experience from the poet’s own
life and from legend. These juxtaposed fragments, while they belong to the past,
have in fact lost their pastness and appear immediate and timeless, expressing the
poet’s inner state.
The third stanza describes the pang of separation from four angles. It begins
with a vignette of the place—possibly Suzhou—where the poet stayed as a so-
journer after separating from his beloved. “The river country” must refer to Su-
zhou rather than to Hangzhou because the latter was a bustling capital city in the
Southern Song, and thus the word “country” would not have been appropriate.
This opening corresponds to “Ten years at West Lake,” which begins the second
stanza and at the same time echoes the feelings of lament for spring, for time
passing and separation, and for living the life of a wanderer. In the next four lines,
Wu Wenying uses a series of flashbacks to recall his revisits to haunts of former
days and the death of his beloved. This is followed by an abrupt shift to a beauti-
ful recitation of his beloved’s enchantments and the night spent together on the
spring river. On one level, this third strophe is a supplement to the section in the
previous stanza about the summons to Fairy Creek. His arrival at her place, his
first impressions of her, and their first night together must remain memorable
images. It should be noted that wavelike glances and hill-like eyebrows must not
be taken as clichés, because they hold a special significance for Wu Wenying. In
the song lyric “Suochuang han” (The Carved Lattice Window Is Cold), which de-
scribes in some detail the poet’s first meeting with and final parting from this
important woman, there is the line “One glance, good enough to exchange for a
thousand pieces of gold.”29 Further, in another song lyric, set to the tune “Jiangdu