A friend had sent Yüan Mei a letter with the very un-Chinese present of a crab and a duck. Two ducks and a crab would have been more conventional, or even two crabs and a duck. And by some mistake or other, the crab arrived by itself. Hence the following banter in reply:—
“To convey a man to a crab is very pleasant for the man, but to convey a crab to a man is pleasant for his whole family. And I know that this night my two sons will often bend their arms like crabs’ claws [i.e. in the form of the Chinese salute], wishing you an early success in life.
“In rhyme no duplicates [that is, don’t rhyme again the same sound], and don’t use two sentences where one will do [in composition]. Besides which, the fact that the duck has not yet turned up shows that you understand well how to ‘do one thing at a time.’ Not to mention that you cause an old gobbler like myself to stretch out his neck in anticipation of something else to come.
“You remember how the poet Shên beat his rival, all because of that one verse—
‘Sigh not for the sinking moon,
The jewel lamp will follow soon.’
Well, your crab is like the sinking moon, while the duck reminds me of the jewel lamp; from which we may infer that you will meet with the same good luck as Shên.
“Again, a crab, even in the presence of the King of the Ocean, has to travel aslant; by which same token I trust that by and by your fame will travel aslant the habitable globe.”
Yüan Mei’s poetry is much admired and widely read. He is one of the few, very few, poets who have flourished under Manchu rule. Here are some sarcastic lines by him:—
“I’ve ever thought it passing odd
How all men reverence some God,
And wear their lives out for his sake
And bow their heads until they ache.
’Tis clear to me the Gods are made
Of the same stuff as wind or shade....
Ah! if they came to every caller,
I’d be the very loudest bawler!”
He could be pathetic enough at times, as he showed in his elegy on a little five-year-old daughter, recalling her baby efforts with the paint-brush, and telling how she cut out clothes from paper, or sat and watched her father engaged in composition. He was also, like all Chinese poets, an ardent lover of nature, and a winter plum-tree in flower, or a gust of wind scattering dead leaves, would set all his poetic fibres thrilling again. It sounds like an anti-climax to add that this brilliant essayist, letter-writer, and composer of finished verse owes perhaps the chief part of his fame to a cookery-book. Yet such is actually the case. Yüan Mei was the Brillat-Savarin of China, and in the art of cooking China stands next to France. His cookery-book is a gossipy little work, written, as only such a scholar could write it, in a style which at once invests the subject with dignity and interest.