Ten tokens of love for ancient Chinese maidens

Zhang Ji, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote in his poem Reply of a Chaste Wife that “So I know return your tow shining pearls with a tear on each, Regretting that we did not meet while I was still unwed.” The “shining pearls” exactly refer to earrings. Isn’t it true that earrings pass through sadness as tokens of love? Zhang Huilian, of late Yuan Dynasty, mourned for her deceased husband in a Bamboo Branch Gamut poem, highly likely a result of seeing a thing and thinking of the person, “I recall you bought me shining pearls, I got up combing hair and darkening eyebrows. Where are you my love, I sit lonely dread to see twin butterflies.”

After the Jinkang Crisis of the Song Dynasty, Emperor Huizong sent Cao Xun, an official, to flee back to the area under the Southern Song regime, in the hope that Zhao Gou, his son who succeeded the throne, would save his life with troops. Cao Xun brought along personal belongings of some close kin of Zhao Gou, as evidences. One of them was an earring of Zhao Gou’s wife. When Zhao Gou was Prince Kang, he was in deep love with his wife. The earring might evoke passions of Zhao Gou, seeking momentary ease, to save his kinsfolk out of tribulation. However, the country and family had experienced radical changes. Emotions would change along with actual situations. Zhao could not take back half of his country, not to mention a wife “having lost her chastity”. The piteous princess had to keep the other earring and live the rest of her life hopelessly in tears.

5. Perfume satchel

There is a long history about the use of perfume satchels. Perfume satchels were also known as sachets, perfume tassels, perfume bags, perfume balls, rubando and pouches. Perfume satchels could be dated back to the pre-Qin period. According to The Book of Rites. The Pattern of the Family, “Sons, in serving their parents, From the left and right of the girdle, they should hang their articles for use；…… They should all bang at their girdles the ornamental (bags of) perfume …. Thus dressed, they should go to their parents and parents-in-law.” In other words, when young fellows went to see their parents and the elders, they had to wear “the ornamental (bags of) perfume”, or woven perfume bags, to show respect. Since perfume satchels are personal belongings, lovers will present them to each other as gifts, to express their inner feelings.

When An Lushan and Shi Siming, generals of Tang Dynasty, raised a rebellion in the Central Plains in 755, Emperor Xuanzong fled with Yang Guifei, a magnificent concubine, to the West. When the troops arrived at Maweipo, the soldiers stopped, demanding to have Yang Guifei, the femme fatale, killed. The emperor gave in, letting Yang to assume by herself the blame for the chaos of war. Yang was hanged and buried in a hurry. When the capital was recovered later, Emperor Xuanzong silently had her body re-buried. The eunuch handling the mission found that the concubine’s tomb was left only with white bones, except for the perfume satchel intact in the bosom. He fetched the perfume satchel and brought it back to the emperor. The abdicated emperor, into senility, saw the perfume satchel and was reminded of the owner. The glees of singing and dancing at the Lishan Palace had elapsed, leaving only the perfume satchel to remind the deep love of old days. He put the perfume satchel into his sleeve, bursting into tears. Eighty years later, Zhang Hu, a poet, sighed with feelings, and wrote down the poem Taizhen Perfume Bag, in which “Gold thread embroidery and small perfume bag, leave sweet-smelling to the princess at the bosom sad. Who will unbind it for the emperor, eternal regret tie the state of mind.”