The Lonely City Closed

Chapter 13

The princess would listen to the court lady's lectures, and I would always sit in on them. After class, if there was anything I didn't understand, I would ask her. My studies were thus continued in this special way.

One night, I was reading by candlelight when I heard a soft knock at the door. I thought it was a palace maid urging me to go to sleep, but when I opened the door, I found it was the princess.

She had clearly slipped out while the maids serving her were asleep. She was only wearing her undergarments and white socks, but no shoes, on this cold winter night.

I was startled and asked her, "Why is the princess coming out at this time?"

She smiled and said, "I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"

Before I could answer, she had already run into my room, looking around curiously.

I quickly found the newest winter clothes and draped them over her shoulders, but whether or not to leave her there was a difficult question for me.

I have been promoted to the rank of senior eunuch, and therefore have a room to sleep in alone. It is by no means appropriate for me to be alone in a room with the princess late at night.

I tried my best to persuade her to go back, saying that I had no pastries here, and if she went back and woke up her wife, she could eat whatever she wanted. But she said, "Father always tells me to be considerate of the servants and not to trouble them too much. If I wake them up, they will definitely go through a lot of trouble to run to the Imperial Kitchen to get the food, and wouldn't I be going against Father's teachings? Originally, I thought that if I was hungry, I could just endure it like Father did, but my stomach felt like a partridge, and it kept rumbling and I just couldn't get rid of it. So, I had no choice but to sneak out to find you."

I asked her why she didn't take the snacks she always kept in her room, and she said she was tired of them. I was both amused and exasperated, and wanted to ask her how she knew I would have what she wanted to eat, but then I realized that she always had her own reasons, so I kept quiet and picked up two small taro from the table and asked her, "Does the princess want to eat these?"

Those are small taro from Lingnan, only slightly larger than a green jujube. As a palace attendant, I usually sleep later than my master, and the Imperial Kitchen would prepare some snacks for us. Before entering the palace, I often ate taro at home, so I chose this to fill my stomach at night.

She didn't recognize it and asked me what it was. I wasn't surprised, because she usually ate refined foods, and even when she ate taro, it was always in the form of delicate taro cakes or taro paste soup. She had never seen it like this, unpeeled.

I told her the name of the food and that it was the only edible thing I had here. She readily agreed to try it, so I took a quilt and laid it on the porch in front of the door. I asked her to come out and sit there, and then wrapped her up tightly with a quilt to keep her warm. Then I sat down next to her and started peeling taro for her.

After peeling one, I handed it to her. I saw that she was wrapped up like a big rice dumpling, with only her head able to move. At that moment, her eyes were wide open, and she looked at me and then at the taro in my hand.

I couldn't help but turn my head to the side, letting my spreading smile blend into the boundless night.

The princess struggled to reach out from under the covers to take it, but I was afraid she would catch a cold, so I quickly stopped her and put the taro to her mouth. She lowered her head and ate it little by little, like a little bird pecking at rice.

She quickly finished one, saying that this simplest food was delicious, so I continued to peel more for her, and she watched quietly from the side.

In the palace, no lamps were lit under the eaves late at night, but the clear moonlight cast overlapping shadows upon us. Though we were in silence, there was no awkwardness whatsoever.

A light snow began to fall from the sky. I was wearing a dark blue dress. With a slight thought, I stretched out my sleeve and caught a few scattered snowflakes. I smiled and asked the princess, "Does the princess know how many petals a snowflake has?"

She immediately replied, "Six-cornered!"

I said no, and held out my sleeve to her so she could count for herself. She looked at it, gasped in surprise, and abruptly pulled her hand out of the cotton cocoon that wrapped around her. She grabbed my snowflake-covered sleeve, lightly tapping it with the tip of her other finger, muttering, "One, two, three, four, five..."

“There are five-cent coins,” she concluded, then buried her head in counting again, and after a moment, she happily discovered, “There are also three-cent and four-cent coins!”

I smiled without saying a word, gently tucked the blanket around her hands, and then fed her the peeled taro. Snowflakes settled on my blue shirt sleeves, leaving a thin layer of dampness, but I didn't feel cold, even though it was deep winter.

I love seeing the princess's bright smile, and serving her fills me with joy. In this cool, dark night, she is more like my only source of light than the crescent moon.

“Huaiji,” the princess suddenly asked me, “why did you come to the palace?”

I was taken aback, unsure how to explain my family's complicated situation to her. In the end, I simply said, "Because my family is poor."

"What is poverty?" she asked, puzzled.

I then realized that the concept of poverty had not been explained in detail in her current education.

I gave her the most straightforward answer: "I don't have much money."

"I don't have much money either!" the princess sighed. "My sister only gives me twelve copper coins a day. If I lose all my coins playing dice, she won't give me any more. If I win, she will give all the money to the people I played with. In the end, I still have no money left. Am I very poor?"

"Oh, no..." I began to seriously consider how to interpret this word, "Poverty means not having enough to wear, not having enough to eat, maybe not even having enough to eat, and having to eat taro every day..."

“But taro is delicious…” the princess interrupted me, puzzled. “I want to eat taro every day from now on.”

Obviously, you gave the wrong example just now. I'm speechless. I never imagined that explaining the meaning of a word would be so difficult.

After thinking for a long time, I told her this: "If there are some things that you have, or even have a lot of, but others don't have and they really need them, then they are poorer than you. For example, a princess has many beautiful clothes, but your maids don't, so you can say they are poorer than you."

Perhaps this example isn't good enough, but for the moment I can't think of anything else she's seen or experienced to explain it to her. She's a pampered princess who has lived in the palace since birth; she couldn't possibly have seen anything truly related to poverty, and she wouldn't know what it means to be poorly clothed or to see corpses lying everywhere.

She thought for a moment, then said, "I think I understand... It means that other families have a lot of clothes and taro, but your family doesn't have that many clothes for you to wear or that many taro for you to eat, so they have no choice but to send you to the palace?"

I gave a wry smile: "I guess so."

“Then I understand!” she announced happily, and continued to tell me her insights, “Qiuhe is poorer than me because I have plenty of time to play, while she works all day and has almost no time for herself; Miss Fan, Miss Zhou, and Miss Xu are also poorer than me because I have my mother by my side, while their birth mothers are outside the palace; Lady Yu is poorer than my sister because my sister has the title of Zhaorong, while she doesn't, she's only a Jieyu, so her monthly allowance and festival rewards are not as much as my sister's... So, Lady Zhang is much poorer than ?? because ?? has the status of Empress, while she doesn't. Last time she tried to use the red umbrella on the Empress's carriage to increase the number of guards to the Empress's quota, and as a result, she was scolded to death by the ministers…”

She couldn't help but smile at this point, but then said sadly, "But Father often goes to Lady Zhang's residence, and usually only goes to Kunning Palace on the first and fifteenth of each month. So, we are poorer than Lady Zhang."

I couldn't interject on this topic, so I remained silent. The princess didn't seem to be waiting for me to speak, and continued on her own: "Where is Father? Father must have his own poverty... Oh, right, almost all the ministers who often criticize him have sons, but he doesn't..."

I became increasingly unable to offer my opinion. Finally, she mentioned herself: "Actually, I'm quite poor too, my eyes are poor... Although the maids who serve me don't have as many clothes as I do, they've seen many interesting things outside the palace and told me about them, things I didn't even know... Besides the palace, I've only been to four gardens—Yichun, Yujin, Ruisheng, and Qionglin—and Jinming Pond. I've never been to the night market in the city, and I don't even know what a hotel or teahouse is... I really want to go to the Zhouqiao night market to try the street food and the badger and fox meat in front of the Jade Pavilion. I also want to go to the Zhuque Gate to see how they make fried sheep intestines and sugar-coated cold dumplings. And I also want to go to the Xiangguo Temple's roast pig courtyard to see the big monk who sells roast pork..."

Her earlier words were quite melancholic, but her last sentence made me laugh. At Xiangguo Temple's Shaozhu Courtyard, there lived a monk named Huiming who broke the monastic rules and opened a pork shop. It was said to be very delicious, especially the roasted pork, which was famous far and wide. Now, people call Shaozhu Courtyard "Roasted Pig Courtyard." Normally, the imperial family members had the opportunity to visit Xiangguo Temple to offer incense, but seeing that meat-eating monk was indeed quite difficult.

"What's so funny!" The princess frowned, clearly displeased. "Once you're in the palace, do you think you can just go out whenever you want and see whomever you want?"

I'm truly speechless. Since entering the palace, I haven't left the palace at all, and the impressions of those bustling streets and the everyday life of ordinary people in my memory have become increasingly blurred.

“Alas,” the princess sighed, looking very troubled, “Huaiji, we are all trapped here.”

The Lonely City Closes (The Princess Who Fell in Love with a Eunuch) When we met again, I had already taken notice. 11. Cloud Shadow

Chapter word count: 4661 Update time: 08-09-13 15:34

The following spring, Consort Zhang's daughter, Youwu, fell seriously ill. By April, the imperial physicians declared that there was nothing they could do. The Emperor was deeply worried and first bestowed upon Youwu the title of Princess of Deng, and a few days later, he further promoted her to Princess Qi, placing her above Princess Fukang. However, this attempt to bring good fortune failed to ward off the illness, and soon after, the tragic news spread throughout the land: Princess Qi had passed away.

Upon hearing the news, Princess Fukang immediately burst into tears. Although she disliked Consort Zhang, she harbored no hostility towards Consort Zhang's daughter and adopted daughter, and even enjoyed playing with them. She was truly heartbroken by the loss of her younger sister.

She sobbed and said to me, "I want to go see Youwu."