The Daughter of Jade Climbing the Ladder

The Daughter of Jade fell from the fatherly sky to the motherly earth with a bump. Her lavender-mauve brocade robe with its wide sleeves flapping in her swift descent as her stubborn, riderless horse rode the clouds above. With the wind in his mane, he was as wild and unruly as she was, but being an Enlightened City horse he could not venture from the skies to rescue her. In falling, the Daughter of Jade had crossed the divide between Heaven and Earth.
The gateway to the Forbidden City let her slip through as if she belonged there. At sixteen, she was ripe for plucking and back home was betrothed to her princely cousin as they were both descendants of the Celestial Emperor. The gateway, however, took away her noble status, as well as her flat shoes and peony scented topknot. She landed, rather heavily, outside the rear gates, as a nobody. An unaccompanied teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood ready to be brought before an earth-born emperor. She did not know the deceased emperor's son had secretly bequeathed his ancestral duties to his mother, or that her arrival had not gone unnoticed.
From one of the palace's windows, the Empress herself had seen this young girl loitering. She studied the girl as she walked to and fro in bare feet, muttering, and felt intrigued by this stranger. What could she want? There had been no new come-of-age daughters inspected and chosen as concubines, and besides it was not Spring time, it was Autumn. She ordered her eunuchs to bring this girl immediately to her.
Unusually, the Daughter of Jade did as she was bidden and entered the Forbidden City. She obediently followed the eunuchs through the outer and inner courts and into the vast palace, until she was stood before the Empress. She prostrated and returned to her majestic stature, despite her dusty brocade robe and missing headdress. After all, as the Daughter of Jade, she was distinguished, and the Enlightened City, invisibly towering above with its Celestial Emperor, was obviously greater. Surely this Empress would know that, but then why wasn't she prostrating too?
The Empress approached the trespassing girl with steely eyes. She noted the girl's direct, unabashed gaze, her beautiful face with its creamy skin, her upright posture, and her crushed lavender-mauve robe with its butterflies. Could she be a usurper? No, the Empress dismissed the thought, the girl was too graceful and fearless. She's just like me when I was sixteen, not yet tamed. The girl tried to speak, but the Empress waved her hand and refused to listen. She must have got lost and wandered here – I'll keep her as my maid!
The eunuchs took the Daughter of Jade away to be washed and clothed in new robes, and heavily scented with jasmine. The courts hummed with her coming: The Empress has a new pet! The Daughter of Jade didn't understand as the dialect they spoke was slightly different – she thought she was being revered, not trapped into providing entertaining company and eventual death. And when she did, she did not struggle or sob. She plotted... One day the Daughter of Jade informed the Empress she had entered an awakened state where she had seen 'jade palaces in the skies, misty plains and fields of light.' Could she borrow a rope ladder to show her this magnificent celestial sight?
On the next full moon, a hemp ladder was flung up to the skies, where on the third attempt it caught on a tree that only the Daughter of Jade could see. She hastily climbed and when concealed by the mountainous fog at the top, she wobbled the rungs so that the Empress, who was then suspended between heaven and earth, plunged feet-first into the land of the Hungry Ghosts.

*Inspired by Shan Sa's Empress

Blind Hope

Hope, G. F. Watts 1886 (2nd version)

Hope was adrift on a buoy. Her inflatable dingy had suffered a puncture and collapsed, even though she had strenuously bailed out the invading water, and so she had flung herself on to a passing red buoy. She now sat hunched atop this bobbing globe and clung onto her one-stringed violin. Why she had saved this she didn't know! But she rested her chin and her head against it and plucked that one string. The sweet resonant sound eased her physical discomfort and suffering.
As she plucked the one intact string on her violin, the movement and the light breeze caused her white bandanna to slip down and cover her eyes. Better to be blind she thought. Hope had no desires to revisit the past, live in the present, or look ahead to the future; blindfolded she was truly impartial. Who knew if there would be a positive outcome to her foolish jaunt? It was easier to forget the events that led up to this and just float, and being unable to see actually made her feel more hopeful.
Life would be less hard if you could let yourself drift like this. Go with the current and not against it, but sightedness only seemed to make hope's cousin despair more probable. Hope, blinded, felt comforted; lulled by this strange situation. She calmly hung onto to the red buoy with no wild thrashes or plans of rescue. After all, she was safe having escaped her water-logged dingy and struggling now would not be helpful. She simply decided to accept whatever fate brought her.
Hope was not expectant of anything; those thoughts had left her, and since they had she had never felt more alive. Hunched on the buoy, blindfolded and plucking the sole string of her violin her senses had remarkably heightened. She heard every sound of the sea, the air smelt of brine, and her lips tasted salty. She felt the air lightly caress her bare skin and the waves wash over her feet. She was aware of the sun drying her thin, wet chemise, but shivered violently when it disappeared behind a cloud and when it finally set. The violin's faint and exquisite melancholic note was the perfect accompaniment to her new-found sensitivity. This was so much more than she had imagined the gap between hope and despair would be.
Behind the white blind, she pictured her scene in tones of green, brown and grey. She saw grey rolling mist and a placid sea and herself as a desolate girl clinging to a buoy. She was a mermaid-turned-human girl serenading the ocean and hoping to capture a passing fisherman.
Hope despaired of being found, but her despair brought hope. She envisioned how if found she would live her 'House of Life' differently. How she would weather the storms and ride her emotions; how she would breath life into her aspirations, and as she did, she felt the curtains of night draw close around her and an overhead star gaze down.
Disconcerted by the still surround, the murky starlight was comforting. Hope's world became a muddy brown. Was she bobbing or drifting like flotsam? There was no definite rise or fall, just every now and then a gentle sway or a forwards-backwards motion. The sea felt just like a pair of maternal hands rocking her to sleep. Go to sleep, go to sleep....
She fought to keep her darkened eyes open. No, she would not! Hopes don't sleep, they worry away constantly. Nag underneath, rise to the top of surface or produce stormy seas if ignored, but mostly they watch for breaks in the cloud. They are the streaks of sunlight that pierce grey skies; the brief, shy, distant smiles that are usually frowns; the fleeting recognition of beauty; and the sudden realisation that all is well. That this too will pass. Hopes seize potential.
Hope knew what she had to do. She would emulate the abstract Hopes' gone before, the ones portrayed in symbolist paintings: she would continue to pluck the one string of her violin and have the audacity to hope.

Tailor

Zhen counted buttons into batches of eight as he'd been trained to do:

Tinker, Tailor,

Soldier, Sailor,

Rich Man, Poor Man,

Beggar Man, Thief.

This old English nursery rhyme his British employer said was a neat trick, which as well as helping him count would foretell what he might fall or aspire to. To Zhen this rhyme gave him no hope at all, sitting as he was on a garment factory floor sorting buttons. A menial task for a new worker, who had been stripped of his ancestral skill.

But even as a boy, he'd loved buttons. Big, small, metal, plastic, and shiny; their different hues, textures, and shapes. Back then, he had been a respected tailor's son until his father's small enterprise died as the trade was taken over. It was not possible to complete garments in the same speed as the factories, although his work was detailed and finer. 
“Cost too much. Cost too much.” People began to say, “Needs to be cheaper.”
So with no business or merit for his boy to inherit, but with tailoring in his blood, the father sold Zhen to a factory owner whose sole business was making clothes. The labour was hard and the daily quotas were high. Stoppages were rare: the air always filled with the sounds of machines sewing seams.
At first, Zhen, as his name suggests, had been greatly impressed; astonished at the piles of jumpers, shirts and trousers that accumulated in a single day, but this he shook off when he saw the inferior quality of the cloth and the machine stitching. His father, and likewise his grandfather, would not have been content to give these to peasants.
Zhen questioned the way these clothes were being made and earned himself more tasks of counting. His employer said he would be sure to fall to the lowest rung of the rhyme: a beggar and thief. Zhen on hearing these words, instead of being deterred, was inspired to do exactly that. He begged and stole rags of cloth, sweeping them off the factory floor and bundling them under his tunic. He often walked out the factory door with his abdomen distended, but the foreman not being quick in thought or youth, dared not challenge Zhen's alteration in physique or the taking of property since verbal warnings, firings, and company medicals meant employer grumblings and extra paperwork. At the end of a long day, all the foreman wanted to do was go home to his wife, smoke and drink.
But for Zhen, working late into the night was the start of it. In a corner of his candlelit shared hostel room he repeatedly threaded his needle. Pushing and pulling the needle and its thread in and out, in and out, of different fabric. There was never enough of the wasted cloth in one colour or pattern and so he patched his collected scraps together. Floral squares and birds caged in rectangles; cranes and rivers; moons and pagodas; emperors and concubines; and Chinese characters. His fingers were nimble, his stitches were neat, and he'd soon completed his first patchwork jacket, but quickly began work on the next.
During this time, Zhen's thieving extended to buttons, zips, clasps and food. He begged from the poor, he stole from the rich, he made deals with soldiers and sailors.
He lived to reclaim his good family name: Hui as the tailor of emperors.
*With thanks to Brandon W Jones for inspiring me to stitch this piece together. Brandon W Jones is the author of All Woman and Springtime.