First Impressions: The Old Man of the Sea by Shen Fu
Shen Fu was a writer and government clerk/ scholar who lived
around the time of the Qing dynasty. This memoir, The Old Man of the Moon, is a
delicate and tender narration of his marriage to his wife Chen Yun, who he
lovingly calls Yun. The book is so short that it is hard to imagine that it can
be so wonderful. You first think that maybe it is the novelty of the world that
draws you in. After all, who’s really familiar with 18th Century
China? But it’s the beats and flush of first love, deepening bond, the innocent
cruelty of the blows of life – all of them timeless, all of them inevitable.
Shen Fu and his wife bond over their love of poetry. There
are such beautiful quotes and couplets throughout the book. (As the poet Su
Tung-po wrote, “All things are like spring dreams, passing with no trace.” Or
a line from a poem The Mandolin Song, “We grow thin in the shadows of
autumn, but chrysanthemums grow fat with the dew.”)
Shen Fu records his marriage against the great dynastic
regime of Emperor Chien Lung. That’s how he even marks the important events,
keeping the emperor’s rule as a token. (This was in the 39th year
of the reign of the Emperor Chien Lung, on the 16th day of the
seventh month.) These are times when women are not really allowed to read
or venture out to visit certain public spaces. So, in this context, Shen Fu’s
marriage to Yun is an anomaly. He teaches her to read, makes her dress up as a
man so that they may visit a temple together, play games where they create a
poem line by line looking at cicadas or jasmines or mountain peaks or the moon
in her magnificent moodiness. They have these little picnics in a garden called
The Pavilian of the Waves where the wholesomeness of their lives just shines. (“I
closed the window and we took wine into the bedroom. The flame in the lamp was
as small as a bean, and the curtains around the bed cast shadows that writhed
like snakes.) The descriptions of their daily quotidian lives are so nourishing
that even Shen Fu recognizes that to be a certain foreboding to tough times.
In the course of their marriage, they decide to live far out
in the countryside for a short while. They live off the land, wear cotton
clothes, have a clean but small cottage, sweet helpful neighbors who bring them
vegetables and fish from the ponds as gifts. It’s a marriage so intimate that Shen
Fu notes the marriage of their children only in passing. As if, he would have
skipped this detail entirely if this was not a memoir of his life.
The book gets its name from a myth that the moon has an old
man with white hair but a baby face. He has a Book of Marriages balanced on his
stick. He is the one who decides who will get together. Shen Fu and Yun, in one
of their picnics, decide to pray to him that they may be husband and wife in
the future lives as well. And you can see why. Shen Fu records their marriage
as an education of sorts. Yun teaches him to appreciate simple bean curds
tossed in sesame seeds and pickled cucumbers. Both are dishes that Shen Fu
hates but after some persuasion, comes to love them. That’s how the marriage
and life is in the beginning…built day by day, morsel by morsel.
Yun also seeks out a concubine for Shen Fu to round off
their marriage and this, for one reason or another, is when the life starts to
fall apart.
Yun falls sick and they come upon hard times. There is
penury, debtors, cold harsh winters endured without coat or wines, and
relatives that must be approached for money and some of them do not respond
with grace. Towards the end, Yun and Shen Fu leave their children behind after
making sure that they are taken care of. They go off to live with a friend and
things seem to improve for a while. And then one thing leads to another and Yun
falls sick again, never to recover. It is not clear whether Shen Fu regains his
finances again or what his relationship with his children are. Do they understand
their parents leaving them behind and going away? We don’t know.
There’s a bit in the book when Shen Fu feels that he is
immortal in a very mortal life. But his changing circumstances feel like
different incarnations, phases that he must endure, to come out on the other
side.
There is such quiet dignity in the way hardships are
described. They are as mindfully written about as the good times. Something I
had really appreciated in Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, another exquisite
book set in 19th Century China. It’s as if the people in the book,
that is the author and everyone he met, accepted life like a Chinese garden. Even
the pain and hardships are carefully kept like the rockeries to provide beauty
and balance. (It reminded me of the Stoic philosophy of Amor Fati – Love of
fate and the term I heard in context of dhyana – Prasaad buddhi – accept the
tough parts with grace because Grace is truly where it comes from.)
Yet, there is no dismissal of the pain of loss. The heart
breaks many times over in the course of the story. But it breaks with an inner
and enduring knowledge with the final lines of the work: “I would advise all
the husbands and wives in the world not to hate one another, certainly, but
also not to love too deeply. As it is said, “An affectionate couple cannot grow
old together.” My example should serve as a warning to others.”
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