A Song to Drown Rivers

by Ann Liang

One could live with almost anything, so long as they had something to live for.

“Dancing is an expression of beauty, and what is beautiful is always derived from nature itself.”

Why does it seem to me that the court’s idea of a lady is a beautiful, dull shell who has no personality and makes no sound, Zhengdan had complained to me afterward.

These were the rules that shaped our lives from when we were born: Be beautiful, be charming, be the most coveted girl in the room, or else you will be nothing. For men, it was so easy; the path to power was so direct. But we had to manipulate and maneuver and claw our way to gain half of what they did.

How many women throughout history were blamed for the weaknesses of men? We made such convenient scapegoats. We were raised to be small, to be silent, to take whatever we were given and no more.

Trust was such a fragile thing; it took decades to consolidate, seconds to shatter, and a lifetime to repair again.

But a hero to many was still a villain to one.

“The men will fight for their thrones and their power and their legacies, but to them we are nothing more than crickets and ants, insignificant, expendable. We will continue to worry over the rice and soy sauce and oil, three meals a day, how to escape the cold in the winter and the heat in the high summer, the holes in the roof and the bedding and the taxes. What does it matter who wears the crown, if they will not change any of this for us?”

So long as we continue to put mortal men on thrones and hail them as gods, sacrifice our lives to their legacies, history will repeat itself.