One should always enjoy flowers in the company of beauties, get drunk under the moon in the company of charming friends and enjoy the light of snow in the company of high-minded scholars.
-- Epigrams of Chang Ch'ao, transl. by Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937)
Hsiang-yun among the flowers, painted by Shanghai artist Yao Yuxin in 1978 and purchased by me the same year for S$900 (more than my monthly salary of $700 as a journalist then), is from a scene from Hung-lou Meng:
"They went out to look, and sure enough found Hsiang-yun lying on a stone bench in a quiet spot behind an artificial mountain. She was sound asleep and covered with peony petals, which had floated over from all sides to scatter, red and fragrant, over her face and clothes. Her fan, dropped to the ground, was half-buried in fallen blossoms, too, while bees and butterflies were buzzing and flirting around her. And she had wrapped up some peony petals in her handkerchief to serve as a pillow. They all thought she looked both sweet and comical..."
-- Hung-lou Meng, A Dream of Red Mansions, by Tsao Hseuh-chin, ch 63
transl. by Yang Hsien Yi and Gladys Yang (1978), Vol II, p364.
The company of beauty
