Li Hsein sat before the door of her house, a shapeless huddled figure without form or outline. Once she had been famed for her beauty throughout the length of Canton. The poet who wrote Songs to the Peonies must have been thinking of just such a girl when he wrote, "She was of a loveliness to overthrow kingdoms." But now her youth had faded like an old sunset, and even the blush of evening had departed, leaving her wrinkled, scarred and old, her skin yellow and coarse as goose-flesh. The years, like great black ships, had floated silently out to sea and Li Hsein was left alone, a forgotten, broken old stout woman whose loveliness had once been almost legendary.
Her family too had all died, some of grief, some of age, some of subtle illnesses, but they were gone. They had passed through the great door which marks the beginning or the end according to one's point of view. Li Hsein alone remained, Li Hsein and the gorgeous yellow, carmine-splashed fan. Now as she sat by the doorway and the night blackness was drawn by the gods of the mountains like a great blanket up from the plains, the alley in which she dwelt almost vanished into the night mystery which is Canton. Only one shaft of light from within the house still cleft the blackness as though struggling for life. It was a flickering yellow glow and it fell upon the fan shimmering off in a maze of fantastic colors of blended orange shades, yellow and vivid red. It was as though the fan resented the light and flung it back into the alleys. And Li Hsein, a shapeless mass, sat and crooned, forever waving the fan, crooned in a cracked harsh voice, broken melodies, unintelligible gibberish which might have been curses or prayers.
The shifting cycles of time are rather odd to contemplate. A few years and one is flung from one cycle of existence into another. The change is almost as great as the transition from one planet to another. In China the position of woman is on a very low plane, not much better than that of cattle or dogs. She is never allowed to walk beside her husband on the street, seldom is permitted to eat at the same table with him, and if she displeases him he is quite within his rights to beat her into insensibility. But none of these customs applied to Li Hsein. She looked down upon men. She openly sneered at them and they did not resent it. In all of China she was the one free woman.
When she smiled, men could not resist her. Tales are told of how Lu Wong, who was a great merchant, satisfactorily married and a blessing to his mother, left his ancestral home because Li Hsein smiled at him. He neglected his business, his large tea plantations and his banking offices. Failure crashed down to smite him, and when his wealth was gone, gone
