I visited Meng Jiangnv temple on this vacation too. That reminded me the famous love tale about Meng Jiangnv.
It is told that in Qin dynasty, there was a family named Meng. One day, the household sowed a gourd plant but it soon grew over the wall to a yard of another family named Jiang and had a gourd there. The gourd split in the middle when it was mature and a plump white baby was lying in it. They gave her a name- Meng Jiangnv. When she was a teenager, all the relatives and neighbors around 5 kilometers recognized her due to her smart and good personality and the ability to play musical instruments and write articles and poems. The old parents loved her like a pearl on their hands.
Over that period, Emperor Qin desperately dispatched his soldiers to everywhere to search labor for building the Great Wall. Amid the labor was Wan Xiliang an intellectual. He fled from home and by happenstance jumped over a wall into Meng’s back garden while Meng Jiangnv was wandering there with her maid. Meng Jiangnv took a glance at the gourd plant where Wan was hiding in and found him there. She was worried and called the maid for help, and yet Wan got out from the plant and bowed to her front:” Miss, Miss, don’t worry, I am an refugee running away from being captured, please help me.”
Meng Jiangnv peered at him from head to toe, finding that he was a handsome white-faced acknowledged young man. Then she reported that to her parents who met him later and permitted his hiding in their house. During the days he stayed in Meng’s house, Meng Jiangnv and Wan Xiliang fell in love with each other and got married finally.
Along with the saying “ Weather is often unpredictable, so is the luck of human beings.” , the lovely couple broke up by an official who abruptly entered the house and cuffed Wan away within less than three days from the wedding.
Meng Jiangnv’s heart was shattered, and yet who on earth could take this bad news for granted? Not only can she wait at home, for it had been a year since she last saw her husband, but she was so worried about him that she made a cloth for him and determined to find him by herself. Along the way, she mounted over lines of mountains and waded through strips of rivers, with cold bread and cold water as her food. She slept in a shabby temple for one night and was helped by some kind-hearted people, among whom an old woman who had almost saved Meng Jiangnv’s life is worth mentioning. One day, in a fatigue, with a cold and shivering body, Meng Jiangnv fainted. When she woke up from a warm bed, she realized that she was rescued by someone. Later, an old woman met her with a bowl of warm ginger soup in her hands. Meng was very appreciated and cried “ Many thanks to you, I’ll remember your kindness for ever. And yet my husband was captured to build the Great Wall, I have to continue looking for him once I feel a little better.” Despite the persuasion from the old woman to let her stay, Meng Jiangnv stepped on her journey of finding her husband soon later.
Through countless struggles, Meng arrived at the Great Wall at last. However, when she asked the workers for helping her find her husband, they told her he was dead as a result of exhaustion and hunger.
“Where is his corpse?” Her tears burst out.
“Many have died, the overseer asked us of burying them beneath the Great Wall.”
As soon as the voice faded, Meng Jiangnv cried badly, hands beating hard to the wall. Workers surround her were moved, their tears dropped. Suddenly, a cracking sound came out from the Great Wall, and a large chunk of the wall collapsed exposing a pile of human bones inside. “Which are my husband’s”, Meng Jiangnv thought. Soon a method which her mother taught her came to her mind. That is a loved one’s blood can seep into the beloved one’s bones. Then she bit her finger and let the blood spray on the bones. At last she recognized her husband’s bones and cried even more badly.
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