More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
This is a story of a magical stone. It is a story told to me by my grandmother. It is also the story of how I got my name.
When I finally slipped out, my mother told me, she imagined drinking salt water, the liquid sliding all the way down her body and pooling in my own mouth, so that I would always know how to find my way to the sea.
I learned that the ink brush, ink stick, paper, and inkstone were called the Four Treasures of the Study.
What makes good handwriting?
to be a good human. In calligraphy, you must have respect for what you are writing and who you are writing for. But above all, you must have respect for yourself.
English letter I. Companion sound in Chinese: love. I, in English, to represent the self. Love 愛, in Chinese, a heart to be given away. I, in English, an independence, an identity. Love, in Chinese, a giving up of self for another. How funny, I think, that these two sound-twins should represent such different things. It is another truth I am learning about English and the people who created it.
Luck is just readiness that meets opportunity.
I unwrap the heat-filled memories of my childhood, hoping they will warm me.
He likes to do this, ask me questions he already knows the answers to. It is his way of offering me kindness.
queue
Master Wang once told me that men with long queues respect their bodies and their ancestors’ bodies, and so this is how I know that Lum must be a decent man.
kept my eye on the men around me, tracing their movements and mannerisms. It always began with the body. The feet, two roots firmly planted into the earth. The legs, demanding, capable, built for walking, and kicking, and running, and striding, and leaving whenever you wanted and going anywhere you
My mother was gentle. Your intentions were good, she said, but your actions betrayed you. From now on, Daiyu, you must learn that the two cannot ever be separate. No matter what your intentions may be, you also must think of your actions and act from a place of truth. Relying on just one does not make you a good person. Do you understand?
My intentions and my actions were worlds apart. I will always be the girl tearing the grasshopper into pieces.
For all her tragic beauty, her sympathetic past, Lin Daiyu the idol was not perfect. She used the sadness of her childhood and the horror of her death to ingrain herself in history as the faultless, motherless, loverless girl. Poor Lin Daiyu, people would say, shaking their heads. Just one tragedy after another. A child can only take so much. But in the actual words of the story, Lin Daiyu was no angel. She could be petty and cruel. She could whine and scream and cry, and she could be ruthless and inconsiderate. The other characters in the story were blinded by her tragedy and so, too, was
...more
Your intentions and your actions must always match, Daiyu.
I want to be thick and strong and straight, my lines as black as ink, my corners sharp and neat. I want to be someone I can be proud of. Not someone ruled by fate, but someone who can be certain that her life is a result of the choices she has made. This is the kind of person I want to be: the perfect line.
Daiyu 黛玉. The dai is black, the yu is jade.
I had written the character for black before, imprisoned in that room back in Zhifu. Back then, I never thought about how the character for black is also a part of my name. The same mouth and soil sit on top of the same fire. The same fire that can be found in Swallow’s name. Then the yu. An emperor with a dash inside. My name is made out of fire, of earth, of emperors. I am a precious piece of jade, a dark swath of greatness. The characters of my name burn themselves into my thigh. I ask myself if I can live up to my name. Not Lin Daiyu’s name but my name.
Outside the store, we place oranges, pears, melons, wine. An offering to Chang’e, the goddess of the moon. The story is this: Chang’e was the wife of the archer Houyi.
One year, ten suns rose in the sky and their collective heat crippled the earth. Houyi, with his great skill, shot down nine of those suns. Impressed with his work, the Queen of Heaven sent him the elixir of immortality, which would transport the drinker to heaven and turn him into a god. Not wanting to leave his beloved Chang’e behind, Houyi gave her the elixir for safekeeping. But they were not safe, of course they were not safe. That is how these stories go. An apprentice of Houyi’s, named Pengmeng, overheard the plan. One afternoon, while Houyi was out hunting, Pengmeng broke in and forced
...more
I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of no longer living.
There is no rule for dealing with injustice, for true danger. There is no rule for the uncertainty of being. Everything he taught me was about art, and I had applied that to my entire life. But there was no lesson for where I am now.
Do you have somewhere else you can go?
Remember what I taught you? In calligraphy, as in life, we do not retouch strokes. We must accept that what is done is done.
The last of the Four Treasures of the Study, the inkstone, is most important because it allows the calligraphy to begin—in order for the ink to become ink, it must first be ground against the inkstone.
Lin Daiyu. I am, I should say, happy to see her. It has been so long. During her time in my body, she has grown peaceful and even more beautiful than I remember. Her skin and hair glow with health and good rest. Her eyes are tinted with sleep but still dear. She is happy to see me, too, but then her eyes shift to the man holding the rope.
Let us have a drink, he says, when we meet again.
May you suffer, Lum bellows. Every one of you.
Is my life my own? Or have I always been destined for tragedy because of my name?
