bird loves a tree. My love for you knows no shame. Because of you, I have forsaken my honor, my will, and my future. I cannot control my legs, and have no control over my heart. Since I would climb a mountain of knives or dive into a sea of fire for you, malicious gossip means nothing to me. From the children’s song, I have learned that it is your wife who has made it impossible for me to enter the yamen and see you. I know that she comes from a respected family of high officials and that she is endowed with great learning and a talent for scheming; if she were a man, she would surely climb high in the official ranks. I readily admit that I, the daughter of an actor and wife of a butcher, cannot claim to be her peer, but I am the blind man at the door: if it is closed, I am rewarded with a bloody nose, but I gain entrance if luck is with me and it is open. I’ve lost all sense of the rules of decorum and taboos. If the main gate stands in my way, I will go around to the back; if the rear gate is closed, I will try a side door; and if that too does not admit entry, I will climb a tree and jump over the wall. So all the rest of that day I paced the area around the wall, trying to find a way into the yamen.
A half moon illuminated the rear wall and the flower garden behind it, where he and his wife strolled on most days. The limb of a tall elm tree reached out across the wall, its moonlit bark shining like dragon scales—a living, glittering creature. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the limb, which, cold to the touch, reminded her of snakes. Into her mind flashed the recollection of a time, several years before, when she had been in the field, obsessed by the desire to find a pair of snakes, and that thought produced feelings of desolation and humiliation.
Dearest Magistrate, my love for you is torture, agony you cannot possibly comprehend. And your wife, descendant of a famous official, member of an illustrious family, how can she understand what is in my heart? Madam, I have no desire to take your husband from you. In truth, I am but a sacrificial object willingly offered up for the pleasure of a temple god. Madam, can you possibly not have noticed how your husband has become a thirsty stalk of grain finally getting the spring rain it needs, all because of me? Madam, if you are the open-minded, charitable person you are reputed to be, then you must support my relationship with your husband. If you are a woman of reason and good sense, then you should not bar my entry into the yamen. Trying to keep me out, madam, will prove to be futile. You may be able to bar the way to Tripitaka, the monk who went to India to fetch scriptures, and to his disciples, the Celestial Horse and Sun Wukong, but you will fail to keep me, Meiniang, from being with Qian Ding. Qian Ding’s glory Qian Ding’s status and Qian Ding’s property all belong to you, but Qian Ding’s body Qian Ding’s smell and Qian Ding’s sweat are mine. Madam, I, Meiniang, followed my father onto the opera stage to sing and dance from an early age. My body may not be as weightless as a swallow, but I am light on my feet; I cannot fly onto eaves or walk on walls, but I know how to climb a tree. They say that when a dog is frightened it jumps over a wall, and when a cat is frightened it climbs a tree. Meiniang is neither a dog nor a cat, but I am going to climb a tree and jump over a wall. I am not afraid to demean myself, and I am perfectly capable of reversing the yin and the yang. You will not find me waiting for the moon in the Western Chamber, like Cui Yingying. No, I prefer to leap across the wall at night, like Zhang Junrui, who scaled a wall to be with Yingying; Meiniang will leap across the wall to be with her lover. Eight or ten years from now, someone may act out this Western Chamber drama in reverse.