It happened that the Emperor had recently issued an order commanding the governors of outside provinces to confer with him at the capital at least once a year.
At this time the young man’s father, who was governor of Ch‘ang-chou, had recently arrived at the capital to make his report. Hearing of the competition, he and some of his colleagues discarded their official robes and insignia, and slipped away to join the crowd. With them was an old servant, who was the husband of the young man’s foster-nurse. Recognizing his foster-son’s way of moving and speaking, he was on the point of accosting him, but not daring to do so, he stood weeping silently. The father asked him why he was crying, and the servant replied, “Sir, the young man who is singing reminds me of your lost son.” The father answered: “My son became the prey of robbers, because I gave him too much money. This cannot be he.” So saying, he also began to weep and, leaving the crowd, returned to his lodging.
But the old servant went about among the members of the troupe, asking who it was that had just sung with such skill. They all told him it was the son of such a one; and when he asked the young man’s own name, that too was unfamiliar, for he was living under an alias. The old servant was so much puzzled that he determined to put the matter to the test for himself. But when the young man saw his old friend walking towards him, he winced, turned away his face, and tried to hide in the crowd. The old man followed him and catching his sleeve, said: “Surely it is you!” Then they embraced and wept. Presently they went back together to his father’s lodging. But his father abused him, saying: “Your conduct has disgraced the family. How dare you show your face again?” So saying, he took him out of the house and led him to the ground between the Ch‘ü-chiang Pond and the Apricot Gardens. Here he stripped him naked and thrashed him with his horse-whip, till the young man succumbed to the pain and collapsed. The father then left him and went away.
But the young man’s singing-master had told some of his friends to watch what happened to him. When they saw him stretched inanimate on the ground, they came back and told the other members of the troupe.
The news occasioned universal lamentation, and two men were despatched with a reed mat to cover up the body. When they got there they found his heart still warm, and when they had held him in an upright posture for some time, his breathing recommenced. So they carried him home between them and administered liquid food through a reed-pipe. Next morning, he recovered consciousness; but after several months he was still unable to move his hands and feet. Moreover, the sores left by his thrashing festered in so disgusting a manner that his friends found him too troublesome, and one night deposited him in the middle of the road. However, the passers-by, harrowed by his condition, never failed to throw him scraps of food.
So copious was his diet that in three months he recovered sufficiently to hobble with a stick. Clad in a linen coat,—which was knotted together in a hundred places, so that it looked as tattered as a quail’s tail,—and carrying a broken saucer in his hand, he now went about the idle quarters of the town, earning his living as a professional beggar.
Autumn had now turned to winter. He spent his nights in public lavatories and his days haunting the markets and booths.
One day when it was snowing hard, hunger and cold had driven him into the streets. His beggar’s cry was full of woe and all who heard it were heart-rent. But the snow was so heavy that hardly a house had its outer door open, and the streets were empty.
When he reached the eastern gate of An-i, about the seventh or eighth turning north of the Hsün-li Wall, there was a house with the double-doors half open.
It was the house where Miss Li was then living, but the young man did not know.