collective action of women, organizing from the point of their femaleness, their class, and their commitment to the idea of a society in which there would be no indignity, and in which no one would be despised or ignored. Subsequently this tradition of revolutionary feminism has been obscured. All that remains is the memory of the other feminism that came from the top down, and which was concerned to accommodate privileged women within capitalism. But persistently, against incredible odds and often with opposition from men, the same kind of demands, which immediately raised many questions often ignored by male revolutionaries about ways of living together, about authority in the family, about the toys children first learn about the world from, recur.
At the same time all the women involved, whatever their class, found themselves fighting the enemy within as well as the enemy without. They had to overcome their own silence, their own paralysis, their way of shrugging off the responsibility for the world to the men. There was no denying this for them. They couldn’t fight just for bread, because their own hearts had been starved for so long they hardly knew how to begin:
Sisters, don’t say you can’t do anything …
No more lack of confidence
No more hesitation.
Let us ask ourselves clearly this question,
What do we want?
We want total and complete liberation.
Let them mock us, a day will come when they will no longer laugh. Is this day far away?
What does it matter.
We will have difficulty, suffering, struggles.
Happiness will be for our sisters, for the women born after us.
Women reply to men who ask ‘What do you want? What are you trying to do?
‘We want to reconstruct a new world with you, where peace and truth will reign, we want justice in every spirit, and love in every heart.’ 37
CHAPTER 7
When the Sand-Grouse Flies to Heaven
For a fortnight Hsi Men remained with Cinnamon Bud in the house of joy. Not once did he show his face at home.
His five wives felt shamefully forsaken and cast aside. All but Gold Lotus could patiently bear this misfortune. Gold Lotus however could not endure the absence of her mate. Each day she carefully curled her hair, and powdered and rouged her face, and polished as a well-cut-gem she stood at the door of the pavilion and longingly watched for his coming.
She sends him a message which Cinnamon Bud snatched, thinking it was from some new love of his.
Whether in the pale twilight,
Or in the sunlit day,
My thoughts are of him.
I feel such anguish
As one hardly feels
At the sight of the beloved lying dead.
I grieve for him,
And am like to die of sorrow.
Lonely is the pillow,
Dimly flickers the lamp.
The moon looks in
Through the half open window.
Alas! how can I, wretched one,
Survive the frosty night?
But Hsi Men tore it into shreds and kicked the boy who brought it angrily and sent him home.
Sadly, Gold Lotus went back to her pavilion. The time passed with intolerable slowness. An hour seemed to her a month. At last she made up her mind. Hsi Men would not come home that night, she was certain. As soon as it was dark she sent her two maids to bed. Then Gold Lotus went into the park, as though she were going to take one of her nightly strolls. But this time she had a definite goal: the cottage of the young gardener, Kin Tung. Quietly she invited him to come to her pavilion. She let him in, carefully bolted the door, and set wine before him. She pressed him to drink until he grew tipsy. Then she loosened her girdle, disrobed, and abandoned herself to him.
Eternal rules she disregards,
Rules that nature herself proclaims:
The high must ever shun the low,
Noble from the base be strictly severed.
Emboldened by her desires,
She fears not her master’s wrath.
Hot with unbridled desire
She obeys only her own voice.
In the park of the hundred flowers
She allows her base impulse to rule her,
Making a brothel of the house
Where chastity should prevail.
Hsi Men learns of what she has
At the same time all the women involved, whatever their class, found themselves fighting the enemy within as well as the enemy without. They had to overcome their own silence, their own paralysis, their way of shrugging off the responsibility for the world to the men. There was no denying this for them. They couldn’t fight just for bread, because their own hearts had been starved for so long they hardly knew how to begin:
Sisters, don’t say you can’t do anything …
No more lack of confidence
No more hesitation.
Let us ask ourselves clearly this question,
What do we want?
We want total and complete liberation.
Let them mock us, a day will come when they will no longer laugh. Is this day far away?
What does it matter.
We will have difficulty, suffering, struggles.
Happiness will be for our sisters, for the women born after us.
Women reply to men who ask ‘What do you want? What are you trying to do?
‘We want to reconstruct a new world with you, where peace and truth will reign, we want justice in every spirit, and love in every heart.’ 37
CHAPTER 7
When the Sand-Grouse Flies to Heaven
For a fortnight Hsi Men remained with Cinnamon Bud in the house of joy. Not once did he show his face at home.
His five wives felt shamefully forsaken and cast aside. All but Gold Lotus could patiently bear this misfortune. Gold Lotus however could not endure the absence of her mate. Each day she carefully curled her hair, and powdered and rouged her face, and polished as a well-cut-gem she stood at the door of the pavilion and longingly watched for his coming.
She sends him a message which Cinnamon Bud snatched, thinking it was from some new love of his.
Whether in the pale twilight,
Or in the sunlit day,
My thoughts are of him.
I feel such anguish
As one hardly feels
At the sight of the beloved lying dead.
I grieve for him,
And am like to die of sorrow.
Lonely is the pillow,
Dimly flickers the lamp.
The moon looks in
Through the half open window.
Alas! how can I, wretched one,
Survive the frosty night?
But Hsi Men tore it into shreds and kicked the boy who brought it angrily and sent him home.
Sadly, Gold Lotus went back to her pavilion. The time passed with intolerable slowness. An hour seemed to her a month. At last she made up her mind. Hsi Men would not come home that night, she was certain. As soon as it was dark she sent her two maids to bed. Then Gold Lotus went into the park, as though she were going to take one of her nightly strolls. But this time she had a definite goal: the cottage of the young gardener, Kin Tung. Quietly she invited him to come to her pavilion. She let him in, carefully bolted the door, and set wine before him. She pressed him to drink until he grew tipsy. Then she loosened her girdle, disrobed, and abandoned herself to him.
Eternal rules she disregards,
Rules that nature herself proclaims:
The high must ever shun the low,
Noble from the base be strictly severed.
Emboldened by her desires,
She fears not her master’s wrath.
Hot with unbridled desire
She obeys only her own voice.
In the park of the hundred flowers
She allows her base impulse to rule her,
Making a brothel of the house
Where chastity should prevail.
Hsi Men learns of what she has
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