LEGEND OF THE FAN  这是一个唐朝的故事

This is a story handed down from Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618—907).

A young man was on the way to the capital to take an examination. One day, in a bamboo forest, he meets a beautiful girl, but the girl is sitting in a carriage, he can just see her but can’t talk to her. He could not get this thought out of his mind.  At night, he stays in a little inn near the bamboo forest. The next morning, when he took a stroll out side the inn, he found a fan on a stone. This was a folding fan with some little drawing on the silk surface.

He took the fan and went along the path to find its owner. As he walked he was surprised he saw the girl who was in the carriage the day before. She was reading a book in a kiosk. Afterwards the young man went back to the Inn and wrote a poem on the fan:  “You look like a peony that sleeps in the mist, like a pear flower that ripens under the light rain. I can feel your breath even if there is a wall between us. Can you meet me at dusk at this little courtyard?”

Then he put the fan on the bench in the kiosk. On the second day, the young man went back to the kiosk, he found a new fan on the bench, and also a poem written on the fan:  “See the green willow in the distance where there is a wild river. See the petal floating on the small stream. It can hear nothing when the wind stopped. Where does the man who is in green come from?”  The man understood that the girl wrote the poem, and the girl wanted to know who he is.

He writes another poem on the fan quickly:  “Like a rare bird or dazzling red rose, they can’t be experienced alone. The window curtain blows by the night wind, the moon like a hook hangs in the sky. March is the spring days that are the most beautiful in the human world. Why are you always like the fall flower floating on the river, and never let me know where you grow?”  The next day, he went to the kiosk again, he knows the girl must have written back to him. Rather then the fan he sees the girl sitting in the kiosk.  Later the man passes his examination and the government appoints him as the local official. Of cause, the love between he and the girl is deeper and deeper.

This story is spread for hundred years, in this story, the fan is the only intermediary between the lovers, and so people see the fan as the mascot for lovers.

LAST MODIFIED: 11/11/2007

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