Dusk had arrived. Pang Liangji still wanted to stay for a drinking session, but thinking of the endless complicated wedding preparations that never seemed complete, he reluctantly boarded his sedan chair and returned home surrounded by stewards and servants. Huo Qi Lang promised to scout the bridal procession route in advance and followed along.
Once these noisy, clamoring fellows left, the inn immediately quieted down. Wei Xun visibly relaxed. Despite his supreme martial arts, his hearing was unguarded—being harassed by two chattering fellow disciples for half the day, if they hadn’t left, he might not have been able to restrain himself from violently ejecting them.
Bao Zhu felt he wasn’t the type to obediently attend someone else’s wedding either. Extremely curious, she asked: “What great favor do you owe that wastrel exactly?”
Wei Xun was like a lynx with raised ears and bristled fur, blinking alertly. He stood up saying: “Your bronze mirror still hasn’t been polished, and didn’t you say someone would come tomorrow to do your hair? Better quickly take it out…” Before she could react, a blue shadow flashed and he fled at high speed.
If this person wanted to escape, all the bailiffs in the city combined couldn’t catch him. Left hanging, Bao Zhu became even more suspicious. She turned to grab Shisan Lang for questioning: “You tell me—why was Pang Liangji expelled from the sect?”
Shisan Lang frantically waved his hands: “That happened before I joined. The senior brothers and sisters avoid talking about it—I know nothing.” He then recited phrases about “monks not telling lies,” leaving Bao Zhu unable to grab his ears and force answers from him.
Outside, rain began pattering down again. Bao Zhu went to check on Yang Xingjian’s room and saw him still lying unconscious on the bed with no change. After eating dinner with Shisan Lang, she was about to return to her room to rest when a middle-aged man in worn scholarly robes entered the inn to escape the rain.
The innkeeper seemed to know him and poured him a pot of boiling water, saying: “With rain today, there’s no business in the shop.”
The man shook his head with a bitter expression, placing an old folding fan and a gavel on the table. From his chest he pulled out his own tea leaves and put a pinch in the pot.
Seeing this man’s attire, Shisan Lang knew he was a storyteller. First he was happy for a while, then realizing the man had no business and wouldn’t speak, apparently they wouldn’t hear free stories, he became quite disappointed.
Bao Zhu asked puzzledly: “Why does this man carry a gavel too? He doesn’t look like an official.”
Shisan Lang explained with a smile: “This is a storyteller. That wooden block is a prop he uses when telling stories, not for judging cases.”
Hearing this, Bao Zhu also became interested and asked him: “What stories can you tell?”
Seeing her noble and prestigious bearing, the storyteller quickly set down his teacup and said: “What would the young lady like to hear? For martial tales, this humble person knows ‘Dead Zhuge Liang Frightens Living Zhongda’ and other Three Kingdoms stories. For literary tales, there are ‘The Tale of Yingying,’ ‘The Tale of Li Wa,’ and ‘The Tale of Liu Yi.'”
Bao Zhu had Shisan Lang grab a handful of copper coins for him and said: “Pick the most popular one to tell.”
The storyteller, observing that Bao Zhu was at the age when romantic feelings budded, figured he’d tell a love story between young people to please her. He flicked open his folding fan and began telling “The Tale of Li Wa.”
Though there was often entertainment of listening to stories and watching plays in the palace, since it was for imperial clan appreciation, most were refined historical and religious stories. Even romantic plays were extremely elegant and euphemistic. Folk storytelling didn’t belong in refined halls—to attract customers with common tastes, it couldn’t be so cultured.
“The Tale of Li Wa” was written by Bai Xingjian, Bai Juyi’s younger brother, themed around the romance between Chang’an courtesan Li Wa and a young gentleman from Xingyang. The original work had beautiful language and dramatic, twisting plot. After folk adaptation, it added many explicit episodes from brothels, including lines like “jade towers, ice mats, mandarin duck brocade, powder melting, fragrant sweat flowing on mountain pillows” and “mandarin ducks dancing with entwined necks, emerald love-bird cages”—words absolutely no one would dare recite before a princess.
This was Bao Zhu’s first time hearing such narration. Half-understanding, she couldn’t help blushing and feeling flustered, yet the story itself was gripping and made her unable to resist wanting to continue listening.
The storyteller left a hook after each segment, stopping to drink tea and rest. Bao Zhu immediately opened her purse generously. With autumn rain intermittent outside and originally no business, he was lucky to encounter such a generous customer. Though only two people were listening, the storyteller enthusiastically continued, and before they knew it, the sky had turned completely dark.
Independent performers in inns, taverns, and eateries allowed shop owners to collect proportional venue fees. Seeing the storyteller had business, the owner even provided them with an oil lamp for illumination.
In the dim night with flickering candlelight, just as Bao Zhu was immersed in the legendary story’s twisting plot, from the misty, heavy rain curtain gradually emerged the silhouette of a woman.
She held a worn oiled paper umbrella and cradled a pipa, appearing silently outside the inn entrance. Tall and slender with snow-white skin, her features suggested Xianbei or barbarian ancestry. She wore a faded five-panel skirt, loosely pinned hair in a cicada-wing style with only a bone hairpin inserted in her black tresses. Her attire looked quite destitute. Though charming and seductive, her eyes showed age—possibly in her thirties, maybe her forties.
The woman approached with swaying steps, closed her paper umbrella to lean against the wall dripping, brushed raindrops from her body, found a chair in the corner and sat down quietly. She occasionally covered her chest like Xi Shi holding her heart, coughing and gasping, her delicate frail constitution inspiring pity.
Hearing coughing sounds and thinking a customer had arrived, the shop owner came out for a look. Seeing such a woman, he was unwilling to serve her—didn’t even give her water—and turned back inside.
The storyteller, parched from speaking, drank some hot tea and glanced toward the woman. He said quietly to Bao Zhu: “When they get old, they’re quite pitiful too. No matter how beautiful they were when young, once aged with no one to redeem them, they can only survive as wandering women. If they fall ill, they just wait to die.”
Bao Zhu had already looked at the woman several times because of her beauty. Hearing the storyteller say this, she asked puzzledly: “What are wandering women?”
The storyteller chuckled, unconsciously revealing contemptuous expression: “Brothel women like Li Wa who, when old and without fixed residence, wander the streets soliciting customers—those are wandering women.”
Bao Zhu was quite startled. Palace banquets also had official courtesans performing song and dance—family members of guilty officials enslaved in the palace—but this was her first time seeing a civilian prostitute. She didn’t know how others identified them. Did single, beautiful women walking alone at night indicate some special meaning?
Out of curiosity, she looked a few more times. The woman looked back, and when their eyes met, she came over gracefully holding her pipa, sat across from her, and asked with tender affection: “Would the young lady like to hear music? This slave is skilled at playing pipa.”
Her voice was seductively soft, one sentence with eighteen curves, the ending trembling delicately as if scratching into one’s heart. Even Bao Zhu inexplicably blushed. But after saying this, the wandering woman frowned and covered her mouth with her sleeve, coughing lightly, her expression wan and showing exhaustion.
Seeing someone competing for his only customer, the storyteller immediately drove her away with disgust: “Consumptive ghost, don’t get so close! If your dirty flesh soils the chair, how can others sit?”
The wandering woman wasn’t angered, smiling sweetly: “Sir, don’t be so stingy. We’re all scraping by on the streets—let this slave also gain some advantage.”
Bao Zhu thought so-called prostitutes serving customers meant making a living by accompanying people in entertainment, song and dance. Hearing her recommend pipa, she said: “Then play a tune for us to hear.”
The wandering woman agreed with a smile, taking a five-stringed pipa from a waterproof leather bag to hold in her arms. The storyteller snorted coldly, put down his folding fan and began drinking tea, treating it as intermission.
The wandering woman drew her hands from her sleeves. Surprisingly, she didn’t use a plectrum, relying only on her fingers to pluck the strings. Bao Zhu saw these hands were weathered, a size larger than ordinary women’s, with prominent veins on the backs and long, strong fingers. She kept no long nails, using only fingertips on the strings, producing clearer sound than plectrums—truly remarkable.
Since Emperor Xuanzong, the imperial family greatly favored music and dance. Masters from across the realm were gathered in the palace, countless musicians studying techniques diligently. Bao Zhu’s mother, Noble Consort Xue, was Tang’s finest music master, most skilled in dance and pipa. Though Bao Zhu herself hadn’t studied, she had extremely high appreciation levels for these arts.
The wandering woman played “Green Waist,” a widely popular pipa piece known from court to commoners—everyone who played pipa learned it. Originally accompaniment for women’s soft dance emphasizing lightness and grace, under this wandering woman’s fingers it had a forceful, rhythmic quality with unique charm.
While playing, the wandering woman said with endless melancholy: “This slave’s voice was originally excellent too, but unfortunately was once violently injured by a heartless young gentleman, damaging the lung meridians. During rainy, overcast weather like this, I cough incessantly and can no longer sing.”
Hearing her pitiful account, Bao Zhu felt sympathetic and asked: “There are really such iron-hearted people who bear to strike such a delicate woman as you?”
The wandering woman said in mournful tones: “Yes, this slave originally admired that young gentleman devotedly, intended to test him with sincere honesty, but was hurt in heart and body—truly unbearable to recall.”
The pipa’s tone shifted to lingering pathos, extremely mournful, as if entangling the outdoor autumn rain into the strings. Bao Zhu couldn’t help associating it with the recently heard Tale of Li Wa, fantasizing about this woman’s romantic entanglements with her heartless lover.
The sky had turned completely dark. Though oil lamps were lit indoors, it remained dim and unclear. Bao Zhu had good eyesight and carefully examined the wandering woman’s pipa, noticing though the instrument seemed somewhat old, it had unusual features.
On ordinary pipas, the center of the soundboard where plectrums strike has a three-to-four-inch wide leather-covered area called the striking surface or striking leather. These surfaces often bore exquisite, beautiful designs—themes included landscapes, Buddhist auspicious paintings, and so forth.
This wandering woman’s pipa striking surface depicted blood-red cluster amaryllis flowers with two skeleton figures embracing in the flower cluster—one wearing a woman’s gauze skirt, one wearing a man’s silk robe, doing something unclear.
The neck and tuning pegs were usually made of rosewood or mulberry wood, but this wandering woman’s pipa used white bone for these parts. The sinew strings also didn’t look like ordinary pheasant sinew—made from some unknown animal’s tendons, appearing pale and ghostly strand by strand.
The more Bao Zhu looked, the stranger it seemed. Suddenly remembering something odd—since this wandering woman entered, Shisan Lang, who had been listening intently to stories, hadn’t made another sound. She turned to look at him and was surprised to discover the little monk covered in cold sweat, head bowed with eyes closed, hands pressed together, murmuring low sutra recitations. Listening carefully, it was actually the demon-dispelling Shurangama Mantra.
Noticing this, Bao Zhu felt shocked and suspicious. Looking back at the wandering woman again, she saw among the misty hair arrangements, the only white bone hairpin was carved into a hollow skull head. Immediately she felt the hair on her neck standing up one by one, feeling this woman was thoroughly ghostly from top to bottom, inside and out—even the pipa music wasn’t right.
The pipa sound gradually weakened, like a wisp of ghost wailing from the yellow springs. When the entire piece ended, the wandering woman raised her head, gazing at Bao Zhu with tender sorrow, asking softly: “Young lady, was this slave’s performance satisfactory?”
Her crow-black hair pressed against snow-white skin, her eyes emitting an extraordinarily green light. Bao Zhu was frightened with hair standing on end, not knowing how to respond. In her panic, she forgot to fabricate lies and stammered the truth: “The playing was… acceptable, just this pipa’s tone sounds somewhat muffled, like… like something’s hidden inside.”
The woman froze, her expression changed dramatically, and she smiled coldly: “You are indeed somewhat different from others.”
Before her words ended, Bao Zhu suddenly felt cold wind invading her flesh, with icy, murderous air striking her face.
A strange woman appearing quietly in the rainy night, holding a sinister pipa, emanating cold killing intent throughout her body.
Author’s Note: [Tang Dynasty Human Sinew White Bone Skull Erotic Five-String Pipa] Features: Occasionally emits musical sounds when idle.
Five-string pipas were only popular until the Tang dynasty, afterward replaced by four-string pipas. Based on mural historical references, they were played using diamond-shaped plectrums.
Bao Zhu hasn’t seen erotic art and doesn’t know what those two figures are doing.
The folk storytelling adaptation of “The Tale of Li Wa” is fictional by the author. “Jade towers, ice mats, mandarin duck brocade, powder melting, fragrant sweat flowing on mountain pillows” comes from late Tang’s Niu Qiao, with slight chronological displacement.
“Mandarin ducks dancing with entwined necks, emerald love-bird cages” comes from Yuan Zhen’s “Thirty Rhymes at the Meeting,” also from the famous “Tale of Yingying.”