Chapter 56 — The Dragon Boat Festival
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
In the eighth year of Chengping, Dou Yan was nine. Her sixth uncle, Dou Heng, had placed on the spring examination list, taking the thirty-sixth place in the second tier; and the previous September, her eldest uncle's ninth son, Dou Huanchang, had passed the provincial examination. Truly a double portion of good fortune—the whole household was beside itself with joy, especially the Second Dowager. Two of her three sons were now metropolitan graduates, and the old saying held good: good news lifts the spirits.
Dou Yan had spent the past few years at the Eastern Dou residence, and during the hottest days of midsummer she would plead the heat as an excuse to go to the country estate and stay a while with Grandmother.
Yi, the daughter of her fifth cousin's wife, came looking for Dou Yan. "Tell me, should we make a few sachets?"
At the Dragon Boat Festival there was a custom of filling sachets with mugwort leaves and the like to give as gifts.
"Work it out with Shu," Dou Xin said. "I always go along with whatever you two decide."
Since she was not one of the Eastern Dou, and had no wish to return to the Western Dou, she regarded herself as a guest lodging among the Dou. Hence she was courteous to everyone, mild and polite to all, and with money enough to keep up relations with those kinsfolk and to smooth over the serving women, so that from top to bottom of the Dou household there was no one who did not praise her to the skies.
Shu was the eldest daughter of her third cousin's wife—that is, Dou Yan's younger sister—two months older than Yi and two months younger than Dou Yan.
Yi sighed. "If only Fifth Aunt were still here!"
Fifth Aunt was Dou Ming.
After Wang Shuying entered the household, the Second Dowager had kept Dou Ming at her side. Gradually Dou Ming grew distant from Wang Shuying. In the seventh year of Chengping, Wang Xingyi was still in his post as Governor of Shaanxi, but the Wang family had moved to the capital. Wang Shuying had no choice but to write to her mother, Lady Xu, who, on the pretext of missing her grandchild, sent people to fetch Dou Ming to the capital for a short stay. Grandfather consented. The Second Dowager could hardly insist on keeping her. Counting the days, Dou Ming had already been in the capital for more than half a year.
Yi had always got on well with Dou Ming, and instead felt that Dou Yan was forever currying favor with the grown-ups, and so had never been close to her.
Experience from her past life had taught Dou Yan this: you cannot please everyone, and since that is so, all the less should you go out of your way to please those who do not like you.
She smiled faintly. "Why not write a letter to Dou Ming? Ask her when she means to come back to Zhending."
Only Yi in the whole household had noticed that Dou Yan always called Dou Ming by her full name. Once she had brought it up before the Second Dowager, half in jest and half in challenge, and Dou Zhiwei had explained: "If I called her Sister Ming, people would take her for one of your generation."
But why could she not call her little sister?
She wanted to ask, but her own wet nurse plucked at her jacket. And then, as soon as she was home, the wet nurse quietly told her: "Concubine Wang was raised from concubine to wife; the Fourth Young Lady is a daughter of the legal wife."
Yi thought nothing of it.
What of being born of a concubine?
Was she not still a young lady of the Dou?
But she was curious all the same. "Why is it that in our family only the Seventh Granduncle's concubine bore children?"
The wet nurse hemmed and hawed. "That is because only the Seventh Granduncle has no son."
She had a feeling the wet nurse was still keeping something from her. But just then Wu Ya arrived, and she ran off happily to see Wu Ya, and the matter slipped her mind.