The portrait of the fashionable poet of the day is always to be seen painted on the fan; thus Lu-Fong Oun, the popular poet of the thirteenth century, was surnamed Buddha of the Thousand Families, because his portrait was to be seen everywhere, and because his light and graceful verses could be understood by everybody. It is a very usual thing to compare a friend to a fan, because of his refreshing influence on the mind. A woman who fancies that her husband’s heart is hers no longer will compare herself, as we shall see, to a fan cast aside in the autumn.
A favourite named Pan-Tie-Tsu, beloved at one time by Emperor Hiao-Tcheng, seeing herself deserted, sent a fan to her master, on which she had written the following lines:—
“I have just woven with my own hands this white silk,
White as the snow and as the ice.
I cut it to make a fan of it,
Round as the full moon is.
I would wish that it might be with you wherever you may go,
And that the air it gives you may, from time to time, refresh your memory.
I foresee, however, that when autumn comes,