The Heat

Critical support for Comrade The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling

Greetings from my backyard in South Philadelphia, where it is currently 86° Fahrenheit, or 30° centigrade, or approximately 48 farthings, though you should probably check my math on the last one, at 7 in the morning. We used to spend summers in Ireland when I was a kid, and I always felt very superior to the people who protested loudly that they were melting at anything over 25 Celsius, but this shit is hot and it’s only getting hotter, and so obviously it’s time to translate part of Chapter 27 of Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, though not that part.

“Taking the Breeze by a Palace Pond” (宮沼納涼圖), Anonymous, Song dynasty. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

There are in this world three sorts of people who fear the heat, and three who do not.

First is the farmer out in the countryside, who spends his days tilling furrows or pacing ridges, pushing the plough or dragging the harrow; who twice a year must gather up whatever grain remains in the storehouse to pay the taxes; who during the cruel rainless days of high summer can only look out over his unwatered fields as his mind boils over with anxiety.

Second is the traveling merchant, who spends long years far from home peddling safflower and gromwell, beeswax and herbal teas; whose bindle weighs heavy on his shoulder and whose barrow sinks into the road as he pushes; whose journey takes him from hunger to hunger and thirst to thirst, sweat streaming down his face and soaking his clothes as he searches in vain for a single square inch of shade.

Third is the soldier stationed at the frontier, heavy helmet on his head and iron armor on his body, who when thirsty must lick the blood from his sword; who must take such rest as he can on the pommel of his saddle; whose campaigns keep him long years away from home; whose clothes crawl with lice; whose wounds fester; on whose bodies there remains no patch of unbroken skin.

These three types of people fear the heat. And what are the three types of people who do not?

There are those who dwell within the inner precincts of the imperial palace, where amid waterside gazebos and breezy pavilions, meandering streams flow into pools and babbling springs feed ponds; where jade ornaments, large and small, set off intricately carved pieces of rhinoceros ivory; where jasper balustrades overlook plantings of the rarest flowers and crystal basins overflow with agates and corals; where on quartz-inlaid writing desks are arrayed inkstones of the finest, writing-brushes with ivory stems, note-papers and cakes of ink with impeccable pedigrees, crystal brush-racks and white-jade paperweights; where boredom can be dispelled with poetry, and hangovers by a nap in the southerly breeze.

Or the nobility and the women of the imperial house, the members of wealthy families and prominent households, where days are spent in the shade of cool garden grottoes and pavilions, in breezy studios or waterside follies; where the hanging curtains are woven of shrimp’s whiskers and the bedcurtains of mermaid’s silk, all perfumed by hanging pomanders of jasmine; where cool mats woven in rippling patterns of bamboo and coral pillows carved with mandarin ducks are laid out on mother-of-pearl bedsteads, surrounded by spinning fans; where in basins of ice water float plums and melons, red caltrops and snowy lotus-roots, bayberries and sweet olives, apples and water chestnuts; where all around serving-maids stand at the ready with fans, and every one of them as pretty as a flower.

Or the Daoist priests in their temples and the Buddhist monks in their monasteries, secure in scripture halls that pierce the clouds and bell towers that scrape the stars; where in idle moments they might retreat to the abbot’s cell for an explication of nirvana or a recitation of the Scripture of the Yellow Court, or perhaps visit their monastic gardens to pick exotic fruits or the Peaches of Immortality; where in moments of boredom they can have an acolyte play the zither for them in the shade of the pines; where a hangover is nothing that can’t be fixed by a good chat and a laugh over chess with friends in the shade of the willows.

These are the three types of people who don’t fear the heat. As the poem says:

The cruel heat of the sun scorches the land —
Grain half-withered, millet sere.
The hearts of the farmers roil with fear,
While high above, the nobles wave their fans.