THE LIFE OF THE YOUNG TAU TI

Josef Maria Mayer

"If someone wanted to weigh my sorrow
And my woe put on the scale,
It would be heavier than the sand of the sea.
What wonder, when I bring confused speeches!
The arrows of God hit me
And they distraught my mind with their poison. "
(Job 6:1-4)



PROLOGUE

I, the poet, was in spirit once on a remote mountain in the morning mist and read in an old book and read the lines: "There was a man of Ramathaim-zofim, of mount Ephraim ..." And there I was caught at once on the floating bridge and dream I came to heaven. There led me a celestial being in the house of the high priest, who appeared to me in the form of an elderly man with a long white beard, on his head he wore a tiara, a silk cap with bluish silk ribbons, in his right hand he held a jade-staff, he was in reddish silk dressed majestically, with a blue cape around his shoulders. Friendly, he shared with me the manna and gave me a cup of fermented wine. He confided in me a secret: "Above all the spirits is a goddess named Ma..." After I heard this, the heavenly angel led me on a cloud slowly through the sky widths, and we came to the morning star. Then she said to me: "You see your homeland China, now to you will be given the grace of the Most High Goddess, to see your homeland, because what you realize on earth as seas and mountains, this is China, and as the only building is the Great Wall recognizable. Then you'll get into the Middle Kingdom, to look Tau Ti in his existence. I'll be with you, and when you'll have everything recognized, write the report and then leave it to posterity." We floated along slowly down on a cloud and approached the seas and mountains. We came to earth near the Yellow Sea, near the Great Wall, where the first gate was closed on earth. We floated as genii through space and time, and I wrote the story down as a work of love: this is the life of the young Tau Ti.

PROCLAMATION

After the young lady Ma-Ma went to bed and fell asleep, something strange happened with her. She was alone, her husband I-Se was in fact rode on a donkey into the city to negotiate with dealers there. Ma-Ma slept on the comfortable resting mat after she took a snooze potion. In the dream, she felt as if she woke and was awake in a dream. As she sat in front of a mirror, next to her on a copper candelabra lit a candle, she had lit a fire-staff. In the mirror she saw the reflection of the flame which was very quiet. She was sitting in the lotus position in front of the mirror and meditates on the reflection of the flame. The flame was like a mandorla, in which she saw the figure of a beautiful young man who had a tree in his back and his arms spread wide, his head was tilted at an angle and full of suffering and smiling gentle-kind at the same time. On the head the young man wore a crown of thorns flowers around. Then the man disappeared from the mandorla, and Ma-Ma saw a new picture in the mandorla in the mirror, again those youth, the tree in his back, suffering in his face, he transformed himself and was all heart and filled the Mandorla completely. And Ma-Ma felt deeply connected with this heart, with this light, that becomes a mother's womb, she looked in it an embryo and saw herself as this embryo. And more clearly she saw the unborn. Suddenly the picture changed in the firelight in the mirror, and she saw the back came closer to herself, without moving, this picture came closer. At the same time she felt like something was in her back, an invisible being. She heard a voice in the room: "I never was so near to you like now." She was emotionally overwhelmed inside when she felt a great love. Then she fell to the ground and lay there with her arms outstretched. Then she saw a glowing celestial shimmer in space, crooned in a soft voice: "Arise, Ma-Ma!" She sat up and looked at the figure: as a white flowing silk robe wrapped with wide sleeves, girded with a red silk ribbon down hanging on the side, the black hair of a silky luster, the face like peach skin. In one hand the celestial being held a red primrose. With a melodious voice spoke the heavenly being: "My name is: Who is perfect and complete – I bring to you good news. Do you remember how you fell when stars like dew fall down to you as one of the seven sons? Another child wish your vacation? Now I am come to tell you that a child you are going to bring to life, O Ma-Ma. You'll call him Tau Ti. He will be the Son of Heaven in China. The Goddes bless you." Then wet the heavenly angel her with a drop of dew, the main Ma-Ma, and led her into the bathroom, where she scooped some water out of the tub and washed her feet, and Ma-Ma asked the heavenly angel: "You washes me the hands?" And she washed her hands and said: "You were a part of the heaven." Then she went back to glow in the mirror, the celestial angel still spoke: "Now I am leaving." Ma-Ma began to cry loudly like a cave, and she wanted to follow in the beautiful heavenly fields. Then she fell into a swoon. And the next morning she woke up with the dawn. She talked to no one about this dream, it seemed to herself too wonderful. Only slowly she found herself back into life. She lit a candle in front of the mirror every day, which was covered by a gauze veil. Soon after, she noticed that she was pregnant with a child.

DEATH OF THE MOTHER

I-Se and Ma-Ma were in Baxian, which is near the Bo Hai, the Bay in the north of the Yellow Sea Huang Hai. Ma-Ma was born on the island Cheju-Do, which is located in the Yellow Sea, near the Strait of Tsushima. I-Se had come from the south country. When they married, was high the flood of the Yellow River, the Huanghe, after the levee breach. Then they had lived in Baxian, where vast forests are, and had seven sons. But after that heavenly appearance was different the pregnancy than usual, nine moons she went with increasing happiness and was, as a dewdrop draws circles in the water, inside joyful, that she might have died of happiness. The birth was at home in Baxian, she layd in bed, where bricks were stacked mats and about silk pillows embroidered with brocade, as she lay. There were a midwife and a doctor and I-Se, and Ma-Ma’s mother, grandmother Pau. The child came out of her womb, Ma-Ma even fainted. The nurse had the child that came down the head first into the world, carefully combined with hands on the head and pulled gently. The physician separated him from the umbilical cord, and his hand was not shaking. The doctor gave the child to the grandmother Pau that washed it in a small pan and then wrapped. The diaper was committed from the wedding veil of Ma-Ma. The child lay there, with closed eyelids, whimpering. Three days later, Ma-Ma still could not rise from the bed, and, increasingly, she sank into slumber until she died on the third day. I-Se, who found her, feels that she was quite cold. The whole house broke out into loud weeping. After the funeral, at the funeral-meal, I-Se gave to comfort the mourners from the wine Kan-Peh. All seven children were there, Tam, Fu, Tsing, Meng, Sung, Jin, Ping and the youngest, they spoke proverbs as a memory of Ma-Ma. And three moons later came to the place Baxian the priest of the chapel of mercy and grace. He was already old and had white hair and went with a wooden staff, which had just begun to sprout these wondrous day. He came with a purple overhang, girt in a long blue dress, and on the belt was an onyx stone. So he came into the house of I-Se and Grandma Pau. And they set a pool on of white fine china and beautifully patterned, where a young lady was painted between branches, the black hair tied up, the whitish robe flowing down, held together by a red ribbon that fell down on the long side. In this pool was warmed water, and on it swam pink peach blossoms. The book from heaven, earth and man gave the old priest a word: "Tao is the Mother."

CONFUCIUS SAYS

Ma-Ma led her pedigree up to the Xia Dynasty. As she was visited in a dream, it is also described in the Autumn Annals of Confucius, there it is, namely: "Margrave of Cheng was Wen and had a second wife, named Chi of Yen. In her dream she saw once a messenger of heaven. He gave her an orchid and said, I am one of your ancestors and you will bear a son who seems equal to the Lan-orchid. He also will be the smell of the country and the people will trust him and love him like the flower. - And later she sought the Margrave, since he gave her an orchid and wanted to approach her, but she rejected him gently and said, Your servant is without talent. Should still be granted to her the happiness for to bring you a son, no one would believe that you have testified him yourself. Must she presume to submit this flower as a proof to the people?  - Yes, he said. Afterwards she bore the Margrave and called him Mu Lan Orchid." As far as the annals.

FUNERAL CEREMONY

It was morning light as the old granny Pau had set out to get a coffin, incense, candles, some silver shoes, papers, how they are to burn down at funerals. After her return, she lit a copper lamp for the dead and placed it on the head of the body, this lamp is held by a kneeling figure of stone. The dress of the dead Ma-Ma was made from many jade plates, they were held together by gold wire. In the evening there was a feast for all the mourners, and the next day reads the pious priest of the Convent of Mercy and Grace the funeral liturgy for Ma-Ma’s soul. On the third day appeared a troop and carried the coffin to the walls of the place. Several neighbors gave the convoy, pulled ahead in a litter of white, they grieve deeply. After the coffin arrived at the place outside the walls of earthly transformation, the coffin to Mother Earth was handed over. It was followed by a crowd at the monastery of mercy and grace, at the expense of I-Se, the wine ends. Oh! During the consolation-meal granny Pau held a memorial speech, she said:. “Like they say in the old Book of Songs: The fish goes into the traps, fish and grinding is included in the traps, the Lord has wine enough and good wine! Fishes go into the traps, carp and flounder go into the traps, the Lord has enough and good wine. O how things were plentiful at that time and for the high Lord’s pleasure!" Then gave I-Se wine from the cans, Kan-Peh, which is made from the sorghum grain. They emptied all the cups, the seven sons, and they were overcome a sudden with the Spirit of the Most High Goddess, that they urged each of the seven, to say the mourners a consolation award. First arose Tam, he spoke the words: "Oh, my mother was my confidence and hope from my youth!" Then spake Fu: "For many, I'm a sign of deep mourning, but my mother's soul may be the praise of my lips every day." Tsing rose and said: "To me my mother was a stronghold to which I was always able to escape, she was my refuge and my high mountain." This is what Meng stood up and said: "Oh, my mother left me lagging, I want she may not be far from me. The Goddess come in need to help me!" Sung rose and said: "In my mind I see the true mother, and always tell her works and deeds that I can’t count no more." Now Jin stood up and said: "From my youth has passed me my mother, and even now I know of her miracles to talk." Finally Ping stood up and said: "From the womb of my mother the goddess has pulled me, I will forever honor her with love." After the seven sons had spoken, the guests were silent for a time, lost in sadness. The earth and the corn were there to comfort with hot wine. Thus they drank themselves to comfort, the afflicted, no longer needed anything but Ma-Ma. They emptied the cup of green wine. A few moments later I-Se got up from his seat, he stood in a white mourning dress, bowed by the burden of sorrow and sadness. He spoke with his well-tuned voice: "There was a lack to me earlier and the wine lacked me, now the sacrificial wine delicious fills the cup, how to enjoy it in May, when it will again delight my heart. The tables are full of food, but tears of children and guests wet the feed. Oh I want to talk well, but my voice fails. I want to see, but it breaks my eyes to see the lovely one in the high body room laid out, already it is at night, and white flowers bloom on her dust in the wide country, but lonely is the calm, far off the view, my early morning is unmanageable, but the void comes out of the gate, soon to return to the deep darkness, to the heavenly realms." So said I-Se.

GRANNY PAU AND TAU TI

Tau Ti was only six months old when the family moved from Baxian to the near place Anci, a few miles further north, where I-Se built with the help of his seven sons a house. They had piles dug into the earth and laid the foundations, erect the walls and pulled a high wall all around. They burned stones, they coated on to the guide along a number on the other. Ping had special joy, for he had as a small child on the sea-shore found clay and turned snakes and them one above the other wound, let it dry in the sun, then smoothed out, so he has made beautiful vases, which he with dry immortelles in Grandma's house situated. They had pines cut down and then cut edges, they built the roof, which they covered with tiles and ceramics. Also, do not forget to leave space in the wall for the door and the window. At the threshold they found a pair of posts, there was the high door mounted. On all sides of the house were beautiful windows. Now there were two apartments in one, and each apartment had a door. I-Se lived in the larger house with the children, Tau Ti lived in a smaller house with granny Pau. Tau Ti quickly grew in the old park, which flourished in Anci next to the house, the garden, wich I-Se had created. Granny Pau with her white hair and the kimono from Japan said, "Tau Ti, you can play in the garden." Then she covered her face with a thin layer of rice powder. She smoothed out of the wrinkles. Her beautiful face had frozen into a mask looked petrified, if not the narrow eyes, almond-shaped, would have been enlightened. Powerful heavy branches of a magnolia spread close to the entrance to the house of the beloved Grandma. Surrounded on all sides by a low wall, stood in the middle of that beautiful park a ginko tree unshakable. There was a panel on that wall of stone, engraved with this inscription: "This tree’s leaf is to taste the secret meaning, as it was built in the wise man." Many fruit trees were planted in the garden, the garden was separated by a moat from the beautiful cultivated park.

THE SWAN LAKE OF XIAN

At the Swan-lake of Xian a stone stele was set up with these characters. "The majesty of Xian should it receive, because I ask him about the three black swans from Swan Lake, three white Nephrit-stones ​​I want to donate for the black swans wich are black as beautiful shimmering girls hair. Their shadows fall in the transparent Swan Lake. They clean their wings near the Jade-tree. During the nights they sleep quietly in the glow of the moon on the water, at dawn they leisurely swim with peach blossoms out. The black swans I want to the property and want in the Huanghe play with them and in the Yellow Sea. The Majesty would please give me in this regard a sign. "

JOURNEY TO CHEJU-DO

Tau Ti played with the neighbor-girl Jiu. Her father was an architect and invited them to sail on the Bo Hai once. They had previously played with dolls, shadow games they had played. In the garden a bee had crawled into his ear, a little later he had fever for three days, no winding impregnated with chitin could relieve the fever, as he was speaking incoherently: "The mountains will collapse, the earth is breaking up!" Hailed, he began to sing sweet. The father of Jiu had a little junk. He hoisted the red sails and pulled the anchor up, and with the west wind they went to sea. "Since we have a headwind, we have to cross," the father said, "then wind is always alternately from the right and left of the sail. This is Yin and Yang. The ancients called our country: mountains and seas. As I have now told you of Yin and Yang by the wind over the sea, so it explains the ancients with the light on the mountain. Because the side of the mountain that brightens the sun is Yang, the dark side is Yin." Then said Tau Ti: "The sun moves, but then the sun is on the other side, the sun is there, where was previously shadow." Jiu stood beside Tau Ti and showed to the coast, that accompanied them on the right: "What else is there?" The father said, "The last place there is Penglai, called the island of immortals and spirits, so there are blissful genii. But we do not know where that island of the blessed is, there in the country is only a watchtower." The wind was fierce and the waves rose higher on the hull. Yet the junk got over it. They had a headwind and crossed. Jiu's Father said to Tau Ti, while he had the sailor’s hat set on his head, and said to Jiu, which stood at the bow, the blackish hair blowing in the wind: "The waterways of Tsushima we will not cross, and the island of Cheju-do we do not reach today. It will be dark soon, we need to rest." Tau Ti was sad, "but there my mother came into the world, and I was there for so long time no longer. I want to see but my dear mother’s home where she was born." They made at the right hand in the coastal port stopover. It was a cabin on board, there slept the old man's daughter. Tau Ti wanted to stay outdoor under the stars. Even the evening star rose, which is named after the dead of night the morning star. They slept on the junk. Guests raised the anchor and hoisted the sail, floated the junk out of the harbor. They came past the dockside beach. Unresponsive was the father because he was charmed by a young lady who walked on water, walked on the beach, dressed in fine white summer silk, she pulled her hair’s arrow up from the hair and shook her braid and grabbed it and pulled her hair on that they damp down to the bottom fell down. The junk but continued the ride, and then the beautiful view of the lady lost in hazy distance. Soon they were driven out from Bo Hai onto Huang Hai, the Yellow Sea in the east. Tau Ti's infinity time passes very quickly. Tau Ti and Jiu sat in the cabin on mats of bamboo and played chess. "The sixty-four fields," said Tau Ti, "correspond to the I Ching hexagrams." Jiu asked: "Have you ever pulled a yarrow oracle?" - "Yes, once I took the fifty stalks, and one I've put away for our Goddess, the highest. Then I got the yarrow stalks from one hand to the other and counted repeatedly. And so I learned from the first man and the Son of Heaven, the last man." - "Let’s go away from superstitious magic", spoke an inner voice softly in Tau Ti. The junk now began violently to rock on, the father shouted from above, "quickly come out, I can see a dragon!" In fact, the waves rose high, they splashed spray on the ship deck. "Soon we retain the water up to his neck," cried Tau Ti through the loud roar of the waves. Since the waves set up like walls, a main rose, golden, red like dawn, the tail was like a rainbow, iridescent in chroma. The monster reappeared under and the sea calmed down. A rainbow remained for a time in the sky. "This is a good sign," said Tau Ti, "now the monster has a shot blocked. That the dragon does not destroy us, this is because: We are in league with the King Father of the East." At the mast hung on the crossed wood the red sails and blew in the breeze. They continued their journey to Cheju-do. Already there was a narrow strip of land on the horizon, Tau Ti spread his arms longing and floated with the feet above the floor, the planks, offered with euphoria his heart to heaven. Now ran the port to the west. To the north they saw the Lighthouse Yösu who looked far across the waterway from Tsushima to the island Cheju-Do. The captain and Jiu wanted to go into the village to drink on the terrace of the during summer pavilion tea and to eat something, but Tau Ti said, "meal and drink is not my point, on the eastern edge of the island I want to breathe, where my mother used to sing." They discussed that they wanted to be again at the junk at the ninth hour. Tau Ti walked the path paved by stones beautiful and set of planks, eventually lost in the wilderness, to sands through the meadows in beautiful curves. To the sides were pits of the rabbits, then he came through a dark pine forest, where the yellow light of the sun along the edges of the shadows shone. He went over a hill and came to the eastern edge. Since Tau Ti was dropped to his knees, weeping flooded his heart as he thought of his mother, who was no longer on earth. Closing his eyes moist, he spoke in his mind with the Goddess. There it was at once a light around him, as if around the purest snow, and he said, "Awake, Most High Goddess! O send a consolation in my sorrow! Behold, my soul is bowed to the sand, my body is like dust, I'm not more than nothing. Arise from the heavenly realms! Come on, save me from my life in misery to thy mercy's sake!" How fast it was evening, Tau Ti went back the path where many ginseng plants like small miracles grew. He dug a ginseng root and did it in his pocket. He walked down the path to South Beach where he picked up shells and black seaweed and the seaweed rolled up like black hair and put it in the shells, like a snake in a open grave. Then he closed the shells and handed them over to the sea. Now he congratulated himself. Yet his narrow eyes were moist, sadness was the mood of his soul. He went back to the junk, the father received him with his daughter Jiu. They went back to the ride, crossed the quiet wide water. The captain stayed with enough wind on a moonlit night awake for overnight, Tau Ti and Jiu retreated in the cabin, there was a lamp burning with a dark tinge. Tau Ti was asleep when he heard in his sleep a lovely gentle voice who called him and he spoke, "Here I am." Then he awoke and went out and spoke to the Goddess: "Here I am. Speek, goddess of the heaven, for your servant is listening." His eyes were opened, and he looked over his near-round, and a green and white full moon was shining with light, as enlightened as the moonlight. A beautiful sweet face, the skin such as peach skin, narrow eyes as almonds, half hidden under eyelids with eyelashes, eyebrows were finely drawn bows, and the mouth was raspberry, a smile on her lips, black hair flowed around the figure of light and surrounded her completely from head to toe, her feet were like Sea-lilies, all enlighted by moonlight, a swan nestling in the shadow of her hair by her feet, and then spoke a loving voice, "Tau Ti, I am Heaven’s Goddess! I have chosen thee and purified thee, as one purifies silver. Verily, I say, the hope of all poor is not lost forever. O my child, I love you, and my grace and my mercy will accompany you all your life. If you give up your mind, when you have accomplished what you have to do in this world, then you will find in my love your everlasting joy." The open kingdom of heaven shut again. Tau Ti fell overwhelmed down and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

JIU IN THE GARDEN

Then they finally arrived in Anci. Tau Ti stayed overnight in the house of the architect, so he did not have to wake up his grandmother Pau. The next morning the wife of the architect, Lan Orchid, prepared a delicious breakfast. She made millet in honey and cherry juice for the children, while for the older ones there was the dark plum boiled broth. Then Tau Ti and Jiu went into the garden to play ping-pong. He looked to the beautiful Jiu, in white silk with phoenix pattern, in the same band she wore a butterfly in her hair, she wore sandals, bright as the morning dew in the light shimmering on the green grass. With both hands she held a cup of red juice and sat down and drank, there was a smile on her face. Oh, when her face smiled, than was silent his own soul. A white cloud in the blue sky she was in her childlike purity. Tau Ti took leave with well-chosen and proper words of thanks from the father of Jiu and the orchid Lan. Three weeks later they moved to the beautiful Southern land, in a house in Canton, which was surrounded by orange trees.

THE FULL MOON FESTIVAL OF AUTUMN

It was near the feast of the moon in autumn. I-Se called Tau Ti to come into the house, he comes through the front door, which was called: the gate of heaven. I-Se came out of the inner chamber of the house through the water beaded curtain. He was dressed in a dark robe, a cast-cap sat on his head and wrapped was a purple sash around the waist. There were sitting at the table Tam, Fu, Meng, Jin and Sung. They sat in front of the jade cups with rice wine, on wich floated chrysanthemum flowers. The highly praised by all for his beauty, Tam raised his voice, "Now we are almost complete, only Tsing and Ping are missing. Ping is still in the pastures, the asses are gone away, so he is trying to lead them back to the pasture. The area is unsafe, since the Emperor Tsao has declared a war. Since that time, no one knows: who is the imperial mercenary and who is predator from the gang of Dschi the robber, who calls himself after the famous Chih, who lived three thousand years ago in the time of the Yellow Emperor. On the way must now Ping be careful when he pursued the fleeing asses that he does not fall into the hands of bandits, because then he would lose his life. Better to lose the asses. Alas," sighed Tam, "also Tsing we miss. He fights in the army in the far north against the Mongol barbarians, but we have sent a messenger with a cylinder seal, if he gets leave to our family party. Perhaps he has already made the trip. Three more days, then seems to be the full moon. Then we will all be together." Tam said this. The old granny Pau came in, dressed in a silk robe, with a headdress made of yellow Kashmir, which fell over her narrow shoulders. She said: "Beloved, I just washed my hands in innocence, my three chickens I've slaughtered, they were victims. When the end comes, then comes the end, I'm to pluck the feathers of the chicken, then prepare them for a delicious meal. So we'll eat chicken with sweet and sour sauce and rice. Dear I-Se, I'm getting old. A man's life does not last like a stone. Too, I have the elixir of eternal youth not found. So, my I-Se, you should look for a servant who looks after your household. 'Cause if you cut wood or your sons work in the field or are on the campaign, you can not even take care of the household. If I tell you this as elder, then I hope that you take my advice to your heart." So she spoke and smiled. Ping came back the next day, he brought the donkeys back to the pasture. He said: "A man of the Emperor had found them and recognized the brass plates on the ears, to whom they belong. He brought them to me and  said: If I found the asses of my enemy, I must bring them back to him. - That is right in the sense of virtue doctrine of our Master Kung Fu Tse. I myself went with the donkeys to the pasture, when I met on the way a hiker who said: I want to go to the seer, to learn the way of immortality from him. - Well, the donkeys are introduced. Now we are just Tsing missing, then the family is complete again." On the next day a messenger came from the far north. It was a day before the full moon. The messenger saluted the family worthy: "I want to bring you a message, let me say in reverence, as Tsing issued. We were at the Tianshan Mountain, where we fought with shield and sword. Great is the desert in extreme heat, but we soon found an oasis and beautiful pasture land. Two thousand years ago there were grazing different strains the flocks of goats. The Emperor Tsao sent an army to clear the land. After the border was secured from the barbarian land, they put down the swords and other departments attended plowshares. We formed a division of scouts, Tsing led them, I went to his side. So we walked through the pine forest on the southern mountains. Tired heads and high temperatures. There appeared more and more often in the yellow fields a jute. In the distance was a waterfall. Then we went together up, ascenting the Bogdashan, the high mountain. This mountain rose in the sky with snow-capped peaks, where clouds flew. Tsing headed the scout troop, he led us to the Heavenly Lake. I said to him, Well, we're here away from the war fronts, there you may lose your life by the sword. - And Tsing said, The Goddess forbid that I did not want to gird the sword. Do open your ears, the afterlife shows itself. The people are in this life pure nothing, they crawl through the dust. Closer to heaven, behold, the sky is reflected in the Tianchi window. But only a thief comes into the house through the window, I wanted to go through the gate. - That lake was fed by melt water that came down from above. We were at the Lake of Heaven, Tian Chi. Three thousand years before our time the Emperor gave a rich feast for the Mother of Heaven, which was at this lake. We drank some wine Kan-Peh and ate a little bit. Tsing girded himself with his shirt and swam in the lake. He was already in the middle, but he suddenly exclaimed: Heaven, help me! But than he sank. I do not know what pulled him down, but he no longer appeared." Thus spoke the messenger. And all the congregation burst into noisy tears. Ping sat at the right hand of the silent I-Se, and cried: "Oh my dear brother, why have you left me alone, darling!" They dined something melons and raisins that the messenger had brought them from the north. Tam held the decanter in his hand and gave I-Se wine in the cup, he puts the cup, and emptied it at once and said, "How glorious is the sky over the Middle Kingdom, the power is in the heaven! I now want to make a sacrifice. Now is probably Tsing by Ma-Ma beyond the Yellow Springs in the fiels of the ghosts." Thus spoke I-Se. Tau Ti said, "I heard the venerable Se, the noblest of the guitars is heard by the saints in heaven. I wish once again to emphasize the Goddess' blessing and pluck the Se. I heard the blind seer, that it has a nice body of wood and strings of fish gut." On the next day, it was the day of the autumn Moon Festival, Ping went with his brother Tau Ti outdoors. They were standing there in the flower beds of chrysanthemums, flowers of autumn, as the peony is flower of sweet springtime. They went in the near Park Village Anci, there were the Wu-tung trees and dropped the gold-red foliage. At the stone lantern they sat down on the grass down, onto a granite column was the lamp body of amygdaloid, on the canopy of pure nephrite. Ping said, "Well, of the vases I will say. Our forefathers and mothers left us a legacy that ranges from the sacred bronzes to fine porcelain vases, which are glazed on different sorts. Fishes and birds is called a transparent finish." Ping said this. Then said Tau Ti: "Once upon a time I'll see sacred bronze in the sky." They were sitting in front of the house on the terrace, and Jin came through the water beaded curtain of the inner door, through the bamboo curtain of the outer door, his black hair was smooth, a curl Jin had set up like a snake and he spoke to Tau Ti, "Surely there is, located close to the Yellow Sea, a place that has been called Ji, near Tongxian. There is now the prophecy that there the Forbidden City is to be built. I, Jin, was there once. There are legends that the Queen Mother of the West, Hsi Wang Mu, had a daughter who was called Ji. She often stayed at Heaven and came for a day to a young man on the earth." So Jin said, sometimes it is in Anci early getting cool in the fall, so they lay on the Moon Terrace brushwood bundled. And Jin said, "Heaven’s dearest daughter Ji is very nice. I want to dedicate her a porcelain vase with a plum blossom branch, quite soft painted with manganese, the vase is called Mei Ping." Tau Ti grieved because of the death of his brother Tsing, drowned in the high Heaven’s Lake. Tau Ti sponge under the eyelids a tear, the tear rolled down his cheek, the peach red cheek. He said: "At the ankles of the mountain to the summit sounded horn and drum. The enemy surrounded us with a thousand men, we remained steadfast and did not depart. Our defense was like a solid wall, our will was like a fortress. Beyond the lap rose missiles like New Year’s missiles, the army of the Gentiles was on the run, disappeared in the dead of night." He went into the house, where he was welcomed by granny Pau: “Yao, Shun and Yu, the old worthy patriarchs, may bless you. Heaven’s canopy is above you." She came from the mirror, and her face was like a white mask, and Tau Ti found that the ninety-nine year old lady was unsurpassed in noble grace, and she said, "I was thinking recently about my mother, she had a crane; when she looked at him she spoke an oracle: Tao is embodied in Te, the eternal wisdom in life’s power. But now, O my son, go and dress thee." Tau Ti went to his room, chose the simple black linen on top and dress, a green collar band of silk, with silver ornament he layd a meander around the neck, also he put on a cloth of raspberry-cashmere. His black hair onto the forehead falls to the black eyebrows. His eyes were narrow and dark deep. He had with innocence wrinkles around the eyes, under the eyes shadow fields rallied often his tears, the cheeks were soft as peach skin, the nose was a little pale, his lips rosy from the color of raspberries, it was a deeply sad expression to the lovely mouth. The black hair hung with a streak down to the cheek, equally, it clung to the main as black silk cloth, the ears were hidden under the hair. He took from the table a brass scissors and cut his fingernails, washed his hands and smelled the mimosa, which he in a vase had available. He went with fanatical frenzy in his soul from the small room. Granny Pau had cut a full moon out of paper. Long time she had operated arts and crafts, embroidered approximately circular frame, spun, woven, for which she had the wool from the shepherds. "Let's go," she said on the terrace, were already sat I-Se and his sons. Tau Ti held the paper moon in the hand, with a nail he fastened it to a beam. Then spoke I-Se: "Dear old granny Pau, for your wise advice I've converted me, see that I want to set a servant for a housekeeper. She will come into this house tomorrow." Grandma Pau said: "As it is said in the poems: The empty bed is hard to keep alone." The jade cups were on the table and a marble decanter of fermented wine, on whose mirror swam fragrant chrysanthemum flowers. On the table stood a bronze turtle, whose upper lid could be dismantled, it was a little incense in it. I-Se wore on his little finger a golden ring, whereupon there was a brilliant, but which was hollowed out, a lid was incorporated, he was able to open the stone and take a white pulver to the wine. He waved and the wine was poured, almonds were in the food pans. Tau Ti sat absently lost and stared like a rabbit on the serpent, to the moon, who was in and around the sky. They took it not too exactly with the seating arrangements, otherwise it is so, as the Master says: With good reason: the right is the place of honor, with an evil cause the left is the place of honor. Tau Ti to the right side sat granny Pau and I-Se. Tau Ti said, "My father, can you find a young woman that is similar Ma-Ma?" Then his eyes sink. He slept.

SU-NGO

Three days later, Su-ngo came into the house. In the morning Tau Ti raised and anointed his scales on elbows, knees and head. He pulled his clothes on, put on the red knee bands, went out and sang this song: "A pair of ducks calls croaking, they have on the island a nest. How quiet is the beautiful maiden, she is the dear bride of a prince. Lilies swim manifold there, we long after the roses right and left. How quiet is the beautiful maiden, bell and drum sound." Su-ngo, the young maiden, finally came into the house. Su-ngo, the white goose, spoke of her origin: She came from the coastal town of Lu Cheng, the plains of the deer, where the inhabitants once saw a white deer and interpreted this as a sign of happiness. Near this coastal town is a mountain, the northern mountains of the white wild goose, and there was Su-ngo born. She went there often in the mountains, where the highest peak is called the peak of the goddess. Every fall draw all the wild goose flocks there, on a lake they hibernate. At the summit of the Goddess, there are three waterfalls. Su-ngo had prsented herself and I-Se had taken her. From now on, they said to the rooms: pure scent chambers. Su-ngo was like a mango. She was the pearl of the high peaks of the goddess. In the hair she wore the needle of marriage maturity. She had grown into a petite slender maiden of great beauty. Wafer thin and delicate as butterfly sensors were her eyebrows, like a phoenix moderately shining her eyes. She had an oval face, and cheeks like the peach blossoms in May. The bones were tender as jade, without any blemish shimmering the skin that was smooth as ice. With dainty lotus steps she walked like a wave in the air as  the sea swallow floats. She came to the threshold of her scent chamber, then they held that place for a heavenly stay. She was Chu-Nu, which means virgin. In her pale green silk dress one morning Su-ngo stepped out of the door, as she had blue eye shadow applied as fine dust, which shimmered. Tau Ti gave her a cylinder seal, which was by Sung made, he stated: "O praise worthy Su-ngo! Behold, two children invite you today at the ninth hour of the early night to the park near the pear trees where we then want to sing your praise! Two secret lovers." As Su-ngo was launched in the beautiful art of a joke, it was the ninth hour in the beautiful park of the pear trees. The route went past the magnolia tree and the Ginko-tree, led along the water fountain, which sprang from the stone and as a trickle a little more rolled off. There was a stream bed of rocks and scrub, and grasses waving in the wind. The birds called from the dark clouds, dew fell from the high branches. The birds of the sky sung one immortal song. Then came Su-ngo in the beautiful park of the pear trees, where the Wu-tung-tree stood and the paper mulberry tree. She thought of the tree of knowledge, since she already saw the green pear trees, even the young and the old crooked. Under the young tree, through his tops shimmered in the silver moonlight, stood Tau Ti and Sung. She looked at them, silent and tense. As they sang this song: "You are like the moon, the moon must appear anywhere in time and show the tides, and must be a sign to the passage of time and if one expects festival and celebration of the lunar light, it is the light, which increases off and on again, it's like the tides, as it grows and changes wonderful, a banner it is for the sky crowd when it begins to glow in the firmament of heaven. Anyone classified in the sense of determining when we sing some song, still it is not enough to praise the beauty, the beauty of heaven and earth. O praise the most beautiful of the daughters of men!" But in the inner chamber, the chamber said: I smell the new wife of I-Se, Su-ngo: "Sit at my side." In the night he saw the beauty. And in the morning Tau Ti knocked with his jade scepter to the gate and asked, "What are you doing?" Su-ngo was pregnant. She gave birth to a child, it was a girl, she named her Li-Li. Su-ngo said: "When I weaned the baby, she can play very nice games with Tau Ti in the garden." As a victim of the goddess offered Su-ngo a yak-cow, a bushel of rice and wine. As Su-ngo said: "I like that wonderful child Li-Li, you shall take the worm on your arms, mother." As Su-ngo was pleased, her beauty bloomed like a white bloom on the plum tree in snowy winter. "I bow my head to the floor in front of the mercy of Heaven," said she, "my mouth is not closed. No rock is solid as the rock of the goddess. Deeds and words are weighed by our goddess in heaven. Yeah, gird the weak with strength; they who suffered hunger, no longer shall be hungry, and they who suffered thirst, no longer shall thirst. Who kills and makes alive the dead wich were once taken down, they rise up to the immortals. The poor sit with princes and law prevails at all ends of the earth, that is the power of the goddess of Heaven, and the main human child will be exalted in bliss." So sang Su-ngo and rejoiced the child Li-Li. Colored lanterns shone through the night, because it was winter and the New Year came and went and then came again the bilge!

EMPEROR TSAO

It was at the time of the Emperor Tsao in Luoyang, the residence at the Huanghe. He headed his own family tree from the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang Ti, and said, he took him to his sparse model. He knew that the Yellow Emperor once brought the Middle Kingdom a lot of achievements, such as the use of fire and of the plow and also the loom of silk. The Emperor reads oftem the secret lore of the Yellow Emperor, his conversations with the celestial girl Su Nü, music and love were the themes. Tsao also knows how the Yellow Emperor talks with the Heavenly girl Tsai Nu, the girl in the rainbow dress, dressed in dragonfly wings. And finally had been handed to him the conversations with the Saint Tien Lao about returning to the source of being. Secret Books of tradition, in wich you often like to read, Emperor Tsao! And this was his solace in sorrow, for he was the embodiment of melancholy. Although some thought that at the time of the Yellow Emperor, there was not yet the Chinese font, but all knowing testified: the secret book was written in the heavenly scripture. Finally, the Yellow Emperor had finished his humble and pious life and rose to the heavenly realms of the goddess. The Emperor could not read at all times secret traditions, namely he had to fulfill his imperial duties well, he was the head of the imperial troops. The residence in Luoyang was a great palace where many mandarins and scholars lingered and his whole army staff.

PING

Inside the palace residence of the emperor lived Tsao with his children, Mei-Shan, the daughter, and Gen, the son. Now came to the residence of the Emperor Tsao brother Ping, the brother of Tau Ti. Ping was convened in place of his deceased brother to Emperor Tsao's imperial forces. There he became the head of the imperial bodyguards. Emperor Tsao had amassed wealth to his fame, some gems were particularly close to his heart. He had transported the youth Ping to the guardian of his treasure. Before him there lay the Star Sapphire, Star of Asia, Star of Manchuria, and the diamond and the ruby ​​of the Great Mogul of Bengal. And Ping, beautifully decorated as a lover of beauty, fell into temptation. With the sword he divided the treasure chest and took the gems. Then he discovered the guards. "That's he!" they cried, they captured him with rods. The emperor had him thrown into prison. Four guards of four soldiers monitored him. He should be beheaded and later shall be established his head on the wall to deter the enemies. So Ping was kept in prison. Meanwhile, the family heard about that, they cried, sacrificed incense to the goddess, that the goddess have mercy on him and helps Ping in need that night before Emperor Tsao wanted to behead Ping the next morning. Ping slept quietly between two soldiers. In front of the gate of the prison the guards stood, when he heard something like a nightingale singing, he woke up and looked in. It was a heavenly genius near him, "My name is Ji, I am the daughter of Heaven." A purple scent she hovered, and when she floated, little bells rang softly. Her face was sweet, her voice was like a song. A gleam shone softly in the cell. She stood Ping to his side and said, "Get up quickly!" The chains fell from his limbs. She said, "Do your sash around, put on the shoes and follow me." So he did. Ji said, that heavenly girl: "Hang your cloak of white lamb fleece around and follow me." So now went out Ping and knew not that it was true that this was done by Ji, he thought, to see a deceptive appearance. But they went right through the guards and came to the bronze gate and went to Luoyang. And above the gate was written Tian Men: gate of heaven. They walked along, as Ji left Ping the boy, she was floating on a purple cloud easily. "Ji, Ji, whence do you float?" Ping cried. He said to himself in tears, "It seems to me from heaven came the beautiful Ji, according to the command of heaven she helped me out of the hand of the great Emperor Tsao. The people will not see on the wall my head. I’m not like Turandot, whose love was doomed, my head will be increased in other ways." As he so cools and concentrated himself, he made his way to his girlfriend Erl Nu, who lived on the coast of the Yellow East Sea, in Penglai City, she lived there with her only son, who was a fisherman and was named An-To. She sat there and drank tea. She collected porcelain flowers, teapots and vases. Ping came to the farm gate and knocked, then came a maid to hear who was there. And when she knew Ping by his voice, she did not open the gate for joy, she ran in, and said to Erl Nu: "Ping is there!" But Erl Nu thought, the maid would be out of her mind, who insisted that Ping was there. Because she thought that the maid had only seen his genius. Ping but another time knocked at the gate, when Erl Nu opened the yard gate and was horrified, for he was very run down. Ping waved his hand: "The ride has exhausted me, the dust has disfigured me." And then he told the people how he was freed from prison. "I just do not want to bring you in danger, I will disappear in the underground. Soon send to I-Se and the family a message." Ping then walked away. He came on his ride to Baxian and Anci, but he did not enter, so as not to endanger I-Se. But he saw on the way Tau Ti, who went there with a bamboo flute. Ping reached out and grabbed Tau Ti and kissed him, and then he hurried on crying. "O Tau Ti, my young brother, you have ravished my heart!" Ping sighed. He had still in his ears the play of the bamboo flute when he arrived in the town of Sui-zhong and ate a bowl of rice with chopsticks, then sat a cup of wine to his lips and drained it. Thus was fulfilled Su-ngo’s speech: "The hungry are no longer hungry, the thirsty will nevermore thirst." The imperial troops but were close on his heels. All around were many fierce battles. In Suizhong Ping went around, saying: "The Tao of heaven is the sense of heaven, I want to do the one that is better than the ten thousand things. Heavenly Lady, may you save me from this severe distress." As he walked to the gate of the city and saw the war, many people were around him, but did not beheld him. The Emperor Tsao had commanded: "Bring us soon the guardian of the treasure, who wanted to steal the gems!" And the imperial troops approached the place. Fighting spread across the whole country. The wood devoured more on that day of the people than the sword devoured. The trees fallen forward in the fight. Ping was riding on his black horse, met the imperial troops, when he fled, followed quickly by the riders. He came to the walls of Suizhong, he exclaimed: "With your help I can jump over walls, Heavenly Mother!" He climbed the wall, his horse ran away from him, he came across a ivory wall, wanted to jump down on the other side again, stuck his feet in ivy and hung his head and fell to the very bottom of the wall. Then saw him one of the residents who reported this to the head of the imperial troops, who came riding rapidly induced, in one hand a spear, which he pierces Ping in the heart, as he hung on the wall still alive. Tau Ti said, "The God-man once came and indulged himself to death for us devotedly with passion!" So Tau Ti sat in the garden, where the trees were two: the Ginko and the Magnolia. How sang the swallow from the roof of the embassy? From cornices she exclaimed, "Look, a messenger comes, a man alone." The boy said: "This is a good messenger." The messenger said, "Ten thousand multiple peace!" and bowed his head to the ground, for he immediately saw the future Son of Heaven in Tau Ti. And Tau Ti asked, "How is my brother Ping?" For he saw the messenger like the messengers of the Emperor Tsao, he realized the tiger seal, the emperor regarded as a sign and issued to messengers. And the Chinese man from the Han people spoke thus: "It shall be the enemies of my lord the Emperor Tsao’s fate like it is the fate of the young Ping issued. Now is he dust, now the grave is his legacy. So shall it go with all those who shake the spear, and go to all nations, shaking the head’s hair on you!" Tau Ti was like an earth quake. He went up to his room and locked the door, lost in thought and lost in pain, in sorrow as in a lake. "Oh, Ping, Ping, O my brother, O my brother Ping! Would mother nature, I would have gone there for you as you have died, oh were I dead in your place!" His grandmother Pau heard his sobs. She thought to herself: "Look, the Son of Heaven cries and carries a heavy sorrow about his brother." That day was a sadness when Tau Ti grieved for his brother, and his face was covered, he cried, "Ah Ping, my brother Ping, Ping, oh my brother!"

TAM AND Y-MA

In May Tau Ti sang the words of the poet with the name morning-star, because Tau Ti sang: "We are not yet drawn through the Jade Gate." When a car was heard on the other side of the house, he thought: "A messenger has come!" And there was a young messenger who brought a letter to Tam. Tam the beautiful broke the seal with his long slender fingers. A phoenix rose with rose feathers. Tam had a hot lover: Y-Ma, said she, was the lotus of Hindostan. She wrote: "O my lotus, O my swan-sea, moonstone and pearl mica I found in the Himalaya. Like a mirror frame of the moon aura, clouds like an island of childhood, I have a child in Hindostan, I have planted vegetables to nourish my child. You know the phrase: The nourishing Mother is a signature of Heavenly Tao, I wish you can read how could read the Yellow Emperor, that you get old like Dsu Peng Ching, who was two hundred ninety-nine years old. I wonder if a silk worm in the sycamore tree thinks that a silk robe is woven out of his cocoon filaments. O atrium of the holy chambers, which can be seen where the high heaven is opened, when the clouds rain pours off, where a rainbow oscillates as a bridge. Do you remember our daughter Hua Ho, the lotus flower? She is like a flame of despair when she breaks out: O the ocean is for ever gone home! - The loins of the mind are girded, just as the Middle Kingdom is girt with the Great Wall. There is much in me that leads to meditation and silence, when calm returns and the movement is sleeping in my backbone. There is a sign that a God-man comes, he will then descend to the dead. Located I have on the Himalaya the most beautiful jasper. Whoever has for Heaven’s door Tian Men the keys? I walk to the Kauriala Lake and see the lotus flowers on the waves. Almighty you of my poor soul, I'm like a beggar for love! O drunkards talk after this long night of showers of stars! Distinctive what a wonderful morning. Faretheewell, Y-Ma."

SU-NGO AND LI-LI

"How do I know that the love of life is not an illusion? How do I know if I hate the grim death, that I am not a man who left his home in childhood and then forgotten the way back? The probably genuine person is he who takes love for his death." Tau Ti heard the ringing of the chains at the ankles of the fine Su-ngo, because he was an apple's throw away from the gate. In a wicker basket on the small magnolia tree was Li-Li, Su-ngo’s daughter, alas, the beautiful. There came Su-ngo by the water beaded curtain and came through the gate into the open garden, she was dressed in pale green silk, the sleeves hung down over her hands. Tau Ti then went into the house where he took a mango for Su-ngo. She folded her hands, bowed, thanked him with her sweet voice, ecstatic smile on her sweet lips. And Li-Li whimpered in the wicker basket. Tau Ti drew out the small jade flute and played for Li-Li a song, the song: I'm still on the rock. It is well known that the old songs were expression of the spirit, who had opened their ears, they saw the spirit as he was placed within the changing nature of personality.

LUOYANG

Tau Ti took a donkey and traveled alone to Luoyang. The trees scattered their flowers, the sycamore trees and the Wu-tung trees, the phoenix trees and papyrus trees. Finally, he arrived in Luoyang. Even in the gray antiquity times were settlements here. Three thousand years before our time in front of a stele was erected here this: "To my goddess I am silent, to the rock." The capital of nine dynasties had the imperial capital Luoyang. Gigantic was the library. There was the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the book of the true Nanhua, the Spring and Autumn Annals, wich the former Kung Fu Tse collected, a commentary on the Annals, the Dso Chuan, the Book of Rites, which of silk and precious stones speaks, deed books, books on herbs, Pan Tsao, Historical Records by Sima Qian, the writer of the history of the Han, the kingdom of talks, the three classics of poetry (the Nineteen Venerable poems, three hundred odes and the elegies of Chu), the collection of two and twenty thousand and fifty thousand poems by poets. A self-made book still had Tau Ti, with writings of the secret Wisdom. Luoyang was called peony city. The walkway to the balustrade went Tau Ti. The two poets Du Fu and Li Tai Bo will one day live here. In the shadow of Xian, Luoyang bloomed long time before, the city of peonies. Justice and mercy and grace forever rule over Luoyang. Tau Ti settled on the Yellow river, fragrant peonies to his mind, in the water mirror he saw his brother Fu, who went to Luoyang and was like a butterfly hovers, he was walking in the pine forest near the library. There he saw an old lady sitting, tied up the snow-white hair to the node, with a golden hairpin in the hair. In her, he recognized the noble mother of the Emperor Tsao. In awe of her was his soul. He did not want to disturb the silence. Silence was his keyword. So he went to the grove where the rustling bamboo stood. There, the emperor often reads his favorite poets. Because he loved the poetry that soothed his mind, he allowed the young poets in the Middle Kingdom, in its vicinity to reminisce, to sing in silence. Well saw the Emperor Tsao the young Fu come, he was followed by his two children, Mei-Shan and Gen. Their words were carried by the wind to the ears of the listening Fu: "O my dear sister Mei-Shan, I'll leave you soon," said brother Gen. "My dear brother, Gen, why we must part?" said sister Mei-Shan. Then said Gen: "From my father I received the order to ride westwards with an imperial force. I will draw the Silk Road through the Jade Gate, through the land of the Persians in the land of Judah."

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE STONE ONYX

Gen said: "In Judah I was once a scout, the friend of my childhood was Shih, the stone. We rode, rock and stone, in Judah, I walked with my lovely Selima there on Mount Sina. The mountain rises to the cloud’s sea.  Up there is, such as a white board made of jade, a scripture that tells of the seldom stone onyx. I rode with Selima to the Tigris, where the stone should be found, Shoham, well I heard a thousand times, this stone was a diamond, but it was different. We did not walk at that time on the Tigris, we would have to walk across the water. And so we did not get the gem, because the onyx was at the banks on the other side. Well, I want my sword girded, I want to undress, to find the stone, my sister, O my sister Mei-Shan, I foresee: I'm like a rock in the fight, standing with my dear friend Shih, the stone. The Persians will gather for battle, their horses' hoofs will hit the dust, but ten thousand Li away at the dear home is the Emperor's army to go out into the fight. We encamp on the Tigris. We want to find this stone onyx. The grace of the goddess of heaven may be with us, the almighty goddess is with us, we are out of the hand of the enemies, the store crowding around us. Yet we shall clap our hands! pull back the Persians in the battle, and lather their thoroughbred horses, and our imperial squad is struck. Many people can flee into the tents hid from sight. Significance is the defeat. Thirty-three thousand of our Emperor’s troops will fall, so falls a high camphor tree. Then came our young brother Renmin, tore his robe and threw himself in the dust! And again came upon us the Persians and stole away the stone onyx and took him to their capital city Susa, where they found the gem next to the statue of her lilylike beautiful protectress Susanna, but we walked in the counsel of our goddess to Susa, we saw the statue of the lily Susanna on the ground in the dust in front of the stone onyx. Again we were repulsed, and then we came upon the Persians, as we saw the portrait of Susanna beheaded to the stone onyx. The spilled waters in the temple were the separated hands of Susanna, and the torso of the statue stood there alone in the room. It was the hand of the Most High Goddess heavily on the Persians, blue bumps she hit them on their toes. We have now carried the stone Shoham with us and rode back home to China, to bring the Emperor Tsao the stone. Along the way along the Silk Road we came across Samarkand where our troops the Scythians hit, the country cried: Alas, the Han come with the onyx stone into the country, so they kill me! Oh, my hair is swimming in blood, my heart is jumping, like a stone egg breaks in the sea! - Thus spake the wild country’s soul. O my sister, Mei-Shan, listen, we bring the stone onyx to China and call it by another name, we bring him to our great emperor. We rode past Alma Ata to the lake Issyk-Kul, where we washed our hands in innocence, and girded up the loins of our mind, then moved along the Tarimhe flowing through the wide Tarim-vale, located across the Taklamakan desert. There we saw the beautiful lake Miran, into which the Tarimhe flows. A phoenix hovering over the waters. From there we went to the mountain Yadradagze Shan. From there, the Yellow Stream takes the long run. I stood at the source of the Yellow river, five thousand feet above the sea level. The Yellow Stream will soon flow into two united lakes, and together there with the Yellow river we went the long way from the mountains down to the sea, the center in the beautiful Middle Kingdom we realized, as we moved through Xian. Fidelity is the daughter Xian, sure is my loyalty to the grave’s city. So now the prayer to the Almighty Goddess says on a tablet, what the Most High Goddess gives to the emperor. Then we came to the city of Xian, the city of our Emperor Tsao, Luoyang. O my sister, Mei-Shan, I must leave now, to accomplish what was said. Everything in the eternal Now is finished. – So said Gen. His sister Mei-Shan went away.

THE POETRESS S’EARL

Innocence has a friend in heaven! Tau Ti looked in the Yellow river’s water, which was a reflection of a distant event. It was on the sea. Space and time were a point. Tau Ti looked into the point, as a look at the flame of a candle in the mirror, and meditates about it. That was his vision, which he recorded with the mind of young grief and young virtue: With his two brothers he was riding, and Sung and Meng rode along the coast of the Yellow Sea on the Shantung Peninsula. There, one day Heaven’s Champion with the yellow turban will sow the seeds of his silent teachings. Meng riding on a red horse and Sung on a white horse, as they flew by. At the edge of the sea, they kept close to the city Penglai, where they saw the green seaweed hanging on the shore rocks. Meng said: "What I now have in mind, are beds, bowls, earthen vessels, wheat, flour, almonds, beans, lentils, peas and honey." Sung said: "We want to ride to the poetress S’earl. A misdemeanor is punishable by death to talk to an old sorceress. She lived so close in the village with her son, the fishermen An-To." Sung said: "This should be just fine with me, we will ride into the town Penglai. You know, the island of Peng-lai-shan is the island of the blessed, the immortal spirits, after which this place is named. The island is located in the Yellow East Sea. Here at the coast of Shantung I wanted often to make a trip to the fabled island Peng-lai-shan." The poetress S’earl came from her father's side from Kyrgyz, she has had a time studied in Alma Ata, where Tao, the Mother of creation, nourished her with the word in the air of love, she thought of her mother, who was buried in the beautiful Sera Sela Monastery. S’earl said to Sung: "We want to build us a thousand erudite speeches around the ears." Then said Sung to S’earl: "We want ten thousand sweet songs to sing with the beauty of the voice and strike the lyre’s strings." Outside the window hopped a Siamese cat through the bed of thyme. They drank jasmine tea and saw the porcelain mimosa, which was collected by the beautiful S’earl. "Me," said S’earl, "I am so inclined to climb the holy mountain Taishan today." Stone sleeps in the morning’s red wood of the east. “The Taishan Mountain is also named one of the five revered mountains of China," replied the young Sung. And S’earl pulled her new coat over, sewn from many webs, including the fleece of a purple little vixen. Then they went into the open fields. Suddenly S’earl took the new coat, tore it into twelve parts and said, "You take nine parts to you! They should call the kingdoms of the Empire, you may take to your heart Xian!" They walked towards the Eastern Mountain.

ON THE HOLY EASTERN MOUNTAIN

One of the five revered mountains is the Eastern Mountain, before three thousand years the Emperor came here to make offerings. Designed as with brushstrokes of a skilled master in height and width, the mountain turned into the landscape in front of the soul. Ayaya! how beautiful were the many waterfalls and temples and pavilions of the mountain. A witness in the sea of ​​silence is the Eastern Mountain, testifies to the duration of this land of Mountains and Seas: China. It was a warm day in the merry smiling month of May. "Who in ancient times was once well as a master, he was sublime, mysterious and wise", Lao Tse said. The people among them, the people under S’earl and Sung, moving the fine silk fans incessantly, but in the height played a cool breeze in the branches of cypresses. Now they came to a platform where a pavilion was mounted on a red base of pine wood with ivory columns, it was a green-roofed brick and over the pavilion was the azure sea of ​​the sky. Fantastically colorful curved cornices were in the back of Sung. And around the pavilion was a long wall, with ivy draped beautifully to the ground, and the wall was with finely chiselled pearl mica decorated brilliantly. The masonry was always open to the wind with small gates. The gates were open as heart-shaped leaves or as the absence of small heart-shaped stones. Dew on the lips, Sung spoke: "How beautiful you are, S’earl, how beautiful you are, your long hair is beautiful like black silk." Sung and S’earl came from a temple and stood on the mountain, they saw suddenly a boy of nine years before them. Because Tau Ti’s spiritual body had been executed, he carries the spirit of the sky. But they did not recognize him. Through the air and the amount Sung and S’earl were tired all of a sudden, they fell to the stone bed, just like the dew of the morning falls down. Tau Ti in his spiritual body rose to continue. Like drunken slumber was his soul, he said, not knowing what he was talking about: "Soon a man will overcome this world. I wave the clouds of the sky, the morning sky above the sea." So Tau Ti spoke in his soul’s dream, and now he spoke so to the rocky wall: "Music and food attract hikers, but no one stands still when the word of Tao is preached." Tau Ti looked in the southeast in a beautiful view the summit of the dawn. Then the handsome boy climbed to the summit of the Most High Goddess, and Tau Ti sang: "O Mother in Heaven, Tao, Most High Goddess, holy mountains are created by you, the gates are dear to you, I see myself open the sky and it seems to me the pure glory! Yes, my mistress seems to me Love! The Most High Goddess will come on the boat of the clouds of heaven." Now, the spiritual body of Tau Ti went back to Sung and S’earl and awakens them both, "Can you not watch one hour with me?"

MO-SU

Tau Ti rose with electricity from a deep meditation, riding on his donkey to Kaifeng and played his new bone flute. Then he himself began to sing, it was like there is the good spirit of the words, because he rode on twin hills and meadows strewn floret, as he sang a song at the Yellow Stream. He soon moved into Kaifeng, where to the right of the gate was a peach tree, a plum tree on the left, both standing in flower. Tau Ti began to speak: "A city will be in all its beauty, jade-ways crisscross through in wise policy, jasper walls girding down the city, a dozen towers stand upright on the sides, thirty-three districts are there to hear the sounds of ten thousand musical instruments." So he rode on his donkey through the gate in Kaifeng. Now he came to the home of Mo-su, located on the white peace bridge. Mo-su was a friend of his father. Mo-su was sitting in the hall with a scroll in his hand, on which was written: "Be as wise as serpents, truly as doves." Tau Ti had a homemade book in his pocket with the oracles of antiquity and the oracles of his young master. This book he pressed to his heart in fear and laid his head on it. Tau Ti entered the house, he bowed in front of the old Mo-su, who confronted Tau Ti with kindness and said, "I have a surprise for you, my dear son Tau Ti, come into the open garden." They went into the garden. The road was lined with pine trees and cypresses. In addition to a round ornamental pond, therein swimming the goldfish, lay a great luminous miracle stone called the floral heart. In a picturesque pose between trees and bushes were half hidden little beautiful pavilions. In the middle of the garden stood on the lush the beautiful pavilion of peace with the vermilion balustrade and cornice silver, beautiful swinging up roof over roof. To the sites were arcades, behind the house were the inner chambers. A powerful front porched to the courtyard inside. To this all looked Mo-su and Tau Ti, which came in the white pavilion of peace. There, and that was the surprise, sat Su-ngo and her little daughter Li-Li. "Tau Ti!" Su-ngo said and hugged him. "Look, I read just about the inventor of paper. Cai Lun was in fact an eunuch at the court of the Emperor. Someday Cai Lun was thinking of using tree bark, hemp and fishing nets instead of bamboo as a material for writing. He was highly praised for his talent. He was later embroiled in intrigues between his empress and his emperor, what has had decisive consequences for him: Because of that Cai Lun went to his house and took a bath and combed his hair and put on his robe and emptied a deep cup with poison." So said Su-ngo in the pavilion of peace, the beauty spoke to Tau Ti. Then he asked the pretty Su-ngo, what had happened to the family. Her face was like the delicate complexion of the flower of a strawberry tree in the spring, her eyes were like bright stars that shine through the dark night with the green wave of the color of the first willows in spring, heart-shaped and cherry red lips, her eyebrows crescent narrow, the dimples charming as tinged with purple. So beautiful was she. Probably odour was in the room. Mo-su sat quietly with a whistle in the pavilion, as Su-ngo raised to flight, the white goose told this: "In anger and fury erupted recently I-Se, because Tam had violated the respect of antiquity (I want not more to tell) so that I-Se Tam wanted to kill. But there came in weakness of age our granny Pau in and cried: If you are killing Tam, kill me first! - The power of Grandma demanded absolute obedience, so that the father and the head of the clan had to submit to her. Thy will be done! called I-Se, and threw himself to the ground, hit his forehead on the hard stones and asked for forgiveness. The grandmother turned away, she walked away, I accompanied her with Li-Li. She and Tam went to the other side, eventually I-Se went with her and followed like a servant and asked the grandmother for forgiveness." So said Su-ngo to Tau Ti, she said this in the white pavilion of peace. Tau Ti and Mo-su, Su-ngo and Li-Li, they all sat down together to eat, sat down at a round table in the courtyard. There stood an empty chair to the side. Tau Ti asked Mo-su what this was but a beautiful chair. "Well," said Mosu, "I got it from my master once, once at the day I-Mau in the second month, every year on the day I-Mau, I sit on this chair, otherwise the seat will remain vacant." Now she took the meal: The beef was cut in pieces, the fish in a delicate fish sauce, flavored with ginger, glutinous rice, plums delicious with vinegar. Mo-su and Su-ngo drank green wine, Tau Ti and Li-Li drank pear juice. Well, said Tau Ti, flooded with compassion: "Out on the streets I saw beggars, they do not have enough money to buy a tap. We wanted to give to the poor." - "The beggars all days are still in the city," said Mo-su, "but you are my guests only today because I wanted to watch, that all be fullfilled." The small child Li-Li drooled, Su-ngo cleaned her with a towel the face. They went to bed soon. Before going to bed Tau Ti stood at the sink in front of the mirror, and while he drew with the slender hands fresh water in his face, he sang this song: "From the lips of children and infants are you, Mother in heaven, praised, whose fingers work is the sky, the moon, the sun and the many stars. I think of the beautiful human child and think of the child’s child. I want probably stick the beloved Su-ngo peach blossoms in her hair, and the child's child I gave bells to match the music, Li-Li, I want to be a lily, I want to nourish her with lychee and songs." Tau Ti closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep, as through the gate of death, and he went on to the Yellow Springs. Mo-su also went into his ear’s room, hanging a scroll on the wall with this sign: "Therefore thus gird up the loins of your mind, and be sober, set your hope on the grace of the goddess who offered herself to you truly." Li-Li also hovered in her dream, alone, Su-ngo embedded naked. To Mo-su came in his dream a vision: A beauty seemed to come through a gate that was closed. A transparent body like jade, inexpressibly rich in beauty, with black hair. A chill came over the old Mo-su, "I am leaving," persuaded the beautiful and disappeared. Tau Ti, with the main on his secret book, Tau Ti dreamed this: The Most High Goddess said: "Let their table be made a catch net. So the root but is good, it is good with the fruit also." In the dream floated the spirit of Tau Ti and saw the Yellow Sea, the Most High Goddess was there, dressed in white silk, so they walked over the sea, the waves played about her feet. She was holding a beautiful baby in her arms, she said: "O my dear child Tau Ti, this child will one day be the son of thy soul, thou shalt call him Prince. The Prince will build the Forbidden City." Then stood the goddess of heaven, and than she sat cross-legged, because the sea was her seat, the beautiful hair glossed as of anointing oil. So they came up with the waves on the land, where they arrived on the shore’s stones, she holds in her right hand a pastoral staff of a Tung-tree, which she puts on, fastened a narrow boards across of sycamore wood, on which was written: "The Most High Goddess is the deity of China!" There she stood at the cross, enlighted of the dawn, the white-robed goddess went away again across the Yellow Sea.

THE GIRL MAHANAJIM

Tau Ti went through Kaifeng, where the children were begging for alms, strangers from the distant Judah. A girl sat by the roadside and held in her hand a homemade stringed instrument. Her face was white as a snow mountain in the midday sun. Tau Ti spoke to her: "What do you have for a miraculous tool in the hands?" The girl said, "I built it by myself. Behold, the body is the shell of a turtle, the fretboard is wood, the strings of fish intestinal. But I also have other tools at my home." - "What's your name and where are you from?" - "My name Mahanajim and I live in Kaifeng, I was born in the far Judah." - "Mahanajim, that's a nice name." - "I once made an instrument, I hollowed with the ax a tree, strung the opening with a pig's bladder that you could also use it as a drum, hauled the wood with seven strings that you could also use it as a guitar. Then I have yet another instrument: I once found a skull at night in the moonlight, because a spider had pulled a thread through the skull to the grave edge, now easily the wind blew, and moved by the balmy air, drowned the spider thread, of the skull was then the amplified tone, so I heard the singing of mother nature. I took the skull with me, then went with a bow and arrow and shot a swallow. I made from the intestines of the swallow the strings". Thus spoke Mahanajim. Tau Ti said, "Mahanajim, you stroke the strings very nice. Tell me, what are there for instruments in Judah?" And she said: "There is the harp, the lyre with ten strings and the strings play with eight strings and the Gittith and the flute." Tau Ti spoke: "In the Middle Kingdom, there are the musical instruments as the old Se, the noble lyre, the Zengh, that can only play a champion, the Chin, on which are playing Tao’s disciples, the pipa, a kind of Chinese lyre then. There is also the jade flute and the bone flute and the bamboo flute. Then there are the bells of bronze, the sound-stones, the musical stones. (And it spoke Kung Fu Tse: The master of music stone Siang went away over the wide Yellow Sea)." Tau Ti said to Mahanajim, and spoke, "What would be left to say, but I see Mo-su, Su-ngo and the pushing Li-Li, because they want to walk through Kaifeng. But tell me more quickly, will you stay in China or will you go away? " - "I'm staying here, I do not know why I was born once in the distance." - "Then we can see each other once again." So Tau Ti spoke feelingly and went away.

DIVINE VISION OF THRONES

Tau Ti went away from Kaifeng, the Yellow Stream wandering along, the Huanghe, then up the Grand Canal, the level of the East through. And where the stream meets the Yellow Emperor’s channel, he held his yellow cap fast, because a storm came up. It was around him like wings noise, a cloud came by, a fire, brilliance and luster it was round about, and the middle of the fire was as brass. There appeared to him a heavenly angel! She hid her hands in long sleeves. It seemed to him at once, as if she had four faces, above the main a candle flame. They came to a big sky car, the wheels were of turquoise and the car was a crystal canopy. And when they move, it sounds more powerful as water of the Yellow Sea. She showed Tau Ti a sparkling star sapphire on the clear head, the star sapphire was like a throne, on which sat the Goddess, and she was from the hips upwards as copper. And to Tau Ti spoke the angel: "Open thy mouth, and eat what I give to thee." The angel handed him a paper out. The angel sayd, "My child, you shall devour this paper." He did it, it was in his mouth like a peach. The angel sayd, "I have made your forehead as a diamond. What I'm talking now, listen with your heart." As the goddess lifted up, below was a noisy din, there was a noise, there was a blade, as the wheels rolled. The Goddess let him back on the ground and moved to her heavenly chariot.

BLESSED TOA

Tau Ti heard of a Blessed by the name of Toa, who was a young man on earth, at the resting place of Xian. Suddenly he saw a Heavenly Angel who passed away gently at him, he looked after her with astonishment. Now Toa had sued the goddess, because he did not find her in Xian, but the divine robes were still there. "Oh, if I were to die my death in Xian," called Toa, and looked around and saw multitudes in the valley of saints, with peach blossoms in their hair, then torn from the powers of the heaven’s harmony. Toa walked down the flowing transition to sing in the valley of Xian his tears. And wonderful he felt his soul floating. Not long since he saw his homeland of China glow, as you can see the morning star in the sky, he saw and marveled. A Heavenly Angel named Moa led his soul ascended, as Toa said: "Why did I cry, Heavenly Angel, where you kidnap me?" The Heavenly Angel, silent for the first time, spoke to Toa. And the Heavenly Angel was silent the second time, "Help me, I'm sinking!" Toa called again. The Heavenly Angel was silent the third time. It was like purple glow on her cheeks, she was paler than snow. Together in silence, they floated down on a cloud with the wings of the wind. Just they saw the earth from a distant still, but open graves. Toa spoke: "This is Xian, the valley of death." Then spoke Moa: "There is a stele with the characters: Oh the battle dust darkened the clouds and oceans. Grass and tree shaken by death’s touch. The stars lost their shine, the moon suddenly was hidden by a black cloud. White bones were mighty mountains." Then spokee Toa: "How is it to me? I see it shine, I mean, I do see the Most High Goddess." Moa spoke: "Yes, you see the Most High Goddess." Then spoke Toa: "Bring me to her!" Spoke Moa: "Soon! Down to earth from heaven’s blessed realm." And Toa came with the ghost to the Himalaya, where the Tibetans had gathered, where the highest peak Qomolongma-feng was called the Third Goddess. Toa had fled first, but Moa kept him with warm arms. And Toa stood before the Almighty Goddess herself! There were assembled the blessed.

SA-MUAN

Tau Ti rode on to Tongxian, because he wanted to visit Sa-Muan, who was his father's wonderful friend. "Ten thousand beings, they achieved their existence through the One," stood on the gate of the city and was a saying of Lao Tse. Tau Ti entered the front gate of the house of Sa-Muan and came into the house and greeted there: "Tsing-an! Peace to this house!" Pin, the son of Sa-Muan, had Tau Ti seen outside the house, as he had been in a high sycamore tree, he hastily jumped down from the tree like a squirrel. Soon Tau Ti sat with Sa-Muan in the house during lunch. Sa-Muan was used in the service of the Emperor Tsao and worked as a magistrate. He was girded with a silken sash of purple cloth, his mother had made him a robe, he also wore a blue coat. Now the three ate together, drank some tea and washed with a damp cloth over the face and their hands. Then they divided the snow-white rice, they eat swallow nests, shark fins and sea cucumbers. Then it was filled with fish and eel noodles, filled with chrysanthemums and lobster stuffed with bamboo shoots. The chicken was cut into fish shape and decorated beautifully with shrimps. Then they stood up and Sa-Muan took the drunken-making rice wine in a jade cup. Tau Ti here has even nosebleeds. Sa-Muan gave him a silk cloth dipped in cold water, that the bleeding was stilled, the busted vein closed. Tau Ti went into his room and saw that everything was in order. His knife stuck in the sheath, the book was in the pocket of his coat, the bone flute in the silk sash. Now Sa-Muan entered the room and said, "Once you will read what the Yellow Emperor wrote about the way to immortality and eternal life in eternal youth." It was dark outside, the night was like velvet, Sa-Muan lit a candle in the room, a stone lantern which glimmered in the room like starlight. Sa-Muan soon fell into a deep dream and heard a solemn voice admonish: "Those who honor me, I will honor again, but those who despise me, I will despise. The time cometh, that I may cut off the arm of thy father's arm. There should be no more old people in the house that is yours, no one than is old. I will not take victims away from the altar of every house, that your eyes can not be faint. Pin but is your own son and will die." Well, Tau Ti was in his dream a butterfly, a mourning cloak, proclaims in May. He pleaded for the highest Mother, he pleaded for the supreme Goddess in heaven, which was a shield for him forever. He heard a wonderful voice, "O Death, O Death, I will be a poison to you!" That was a comfort in his suit soul. And his soul was singing this song: "From the sky a bright dew was falling. I'll be alone in the desolate mountains. From afar shimmer the stone lanterns gently, a ship floating over the Yellow Sea in the East. Two bamboo woods are crossed beaten at the place where I washed my hands sober of all sins. Alas no letter reached me, no one takes pity on my poor soul! Where swifts on the cornices nest, I stand alone based on the staff. I look up to the constellation of the Cowherd and look up to the constellation of the Northern Bushel. For you I want to be a shepherd, and you do not put your own light under a bushel. The path extends to the city of the Phoenix!" With an anxious trembling soul Tau Ti woke up early in the morning, as Pin already jumped around in his red shirt. Sa-Muan came out of his room and said: "I'm sick in my soul…"

THE STONE OF HEAVEN

I am very far ridden into south-western China, through Tibet, up the stairs of the magnificent Himalaya, to the high frontier town Pedo Shankou. Then I went back over the Western Mountains Kunlun, the mythical mountains, rode southward to the Tarim valley along the Yellow Stream, rode along and came to Xian, China's daughter, as she slumbers at the Swan Lake of Xian! There I was, in the morning, there slept a white swan. I wanted to hear the swan song! For near the death the singing of the swan is beautiful, the idea being probably near the true beauty of the high tone of bliss. Now I was in the area of ​​Xian and rode towards Luo-yang. I met half-way the Emperor Tsao with his troops. Now I will tell of the stone which once lay between the Tigris and Euphrates, called Shoham, we call it the stone of heaven. It is the property of the Emperor Tsao. It surveyed the tangerine lots of what to do with the Stone of Heaven because of the will of heaven and at what place the stone should be placed. When they had read a strange word: "The Spirit of heaven is watching at the north-gate." The mandarin understood the word and asked heaven again, then he read this word: "Take five golden boils and five golden mices." The mandarin didn’t understand this word, and asked heaven again. The third time was the word as follows: "O daughter of Xian, Xian, O daughter! Blessing the heaven gives. A car was made for the path to the hidden secret: Heaven take an umbrella, the earth is as a car, so you descend through the clouds, flying up to the Milky Way and then rise to a high spiritual level. Before the creative mind and spirit is free from common expectations, you can reach the heavenly fields, where it progresses, the feet do not use quickly, but without haste slightly ahead, use the rain to pave the way of the wind, the dust blow off, the flash makes you look to the thunder chariot wheels. The way floats you up, in the power of the white road to bathe. From there float on, passing the gate, passing through the gates of immortality.” For example, there was the car of our Emperor, not pulled by horses, but cows, milk cows pull that car, on which no yoke had come so far, and their calves were on pasture. So now put the mandarin those celestial stone in an ivory chest, and set it on the car. In a box made entirely of ebony he kept the other gems of the Emperor, the sapphire of Asia, the diamonds of Manchuria and the ruby ​​of the Great Mogul of Bengal. These were the emperors stones as a sign of friendly neighborhood, to his great imperial power. I even have a collection of stones from China, including the Tibetan Turquoise. But it was the chest with the stone of heaven on the emperor's carriage. Always the cows went straight to Xian and always on the same paths along the Yellow stream, they shouted and not depart to the right hand nor to the left. Farmers in Xian far surrounding were all busy with the corn harvest, with the blades cast out the wheat into the air, to separate the grain from the chaff, they swept with brooms the corn together. Later, the women will remove the chaff of individual grains that escaped the cleaning process, while others weigh the grain on a scale. There are still corncobs from the last harvest time in the courts, they are strung up in one. Ropes of trees hanging from the cornice, stored on the roof of the farmhouse. And a young man came in and stroked the strings of the Chin and sang this song: "O Yellow stream, O Yellow stream, O vein of China, O thou stone of heaven, O thou cup of the Emperor! The keys to the gate of the north were lost? Were they not flooded by silence and blood? O pastors and brothers and sisters, is extinguished the lantern in the imperial park? From the field’s peace of the water buffalo to the shimmering shores of my song it sounds. O black swan of Xian! O snow geese and mandarin ducks of Xian! My country, I'm like a purple lance, O daughter China, your scent climbs on to me by my roots, even to the shell, which I completely blank, even to the word, the last drops of dew. Anyone without a sword (as sharp as the mind’s tongue) keeps his blood, the olive-tree near the corn grew, the shape distributed his meal, under the roots are preserved the dead, they rest in peace at the Yellow source." So sang the boy and stroked the strings of his chin, on which play Tao-disciples like the people in the field, as they beheld the chariot of the Emperor with the chest, they cried: "Barbarians beat heads down, we strike the strings for reception of the Emperor." The Mandarin, as the car in Xian arrived, lifted the chest with the Stone of Heaven from the car and set it on a rock. The large rock is witness of their deed. He there is still to see today, the corn field of the daughter Xian, the stone of heaven on the rock of the daughter Xian. Then the Emperor said to the twelve mandarins and the seventy-two bodyguards and said to the people: "Oh, if you still would only turn wholeheartedly to the gorgeous heavenly goddess! Put away the evil spirits and set your heart only to the deity and serve her alone!" They all came together in the early morning. “Do not let off to plead for us to the Goddess, that we are in her protection!” The Yellow stream water poured out in front of the Great Goddess, where at the rock said China, said the farmers of the corn fields to the Emperor Tsao: “We are plagued by hordes of foreign devils." Then the Emperor Tsao lit an incense offering, poured milk from a cup in the shape of a poppy capsule to the praise of the glory of the heavenly goddess. On this day, but the Manchus came along on horses and brandishing their swords over the heads. Yet the Most High Goddess let it thunder from the sky, mighty thundered with a great sound over the Manchus on the same day so that they were terrified and fled., the imperial troops followed the Manchus to the Great Wall and beat them at the first gate on earth. During this gate was the main pass of the wall, near the Yellow Sea., where they built in memory of this glorious day a peace fortress, they had four turreted gates on sixty-eight loopholes for archers. The extension of the citadel to the Yellow Sea is famous under the name: The head of the Old Dragon, because the enemies have been crushed at this point, it is the eastern end of the Great Wall..

SHANG KIU AND HIS WIFE BI

Tau Ti said, "See, it's a wise man named Shang Kiu here in town, he is a disciple of the wise Kung Fu Tse and says the truth. So I will go to meet him, maybe he tells me the way ahead, I have to go in this world of dust." Then said Gen, the rock, the son of the Emperor: "I know from the book of this prophecy, I even pulled the lots the way, it gives a sign, that the name Gen is the mountain, the stone and the small, the right way, the door from closing, eternal live." Both walked together through Tongxian, but soon they separated from each other again. The writer of the history at the court of the Han dynasty had just arrived, named Sima Qian, he wrote the Annals. Gen, the emperor's son, should introduce him to the halls of the emperor, so he departed from Tau Ti. Then Tau Ti went to school, because some girls came over on the way. Tau Ti was entranced by her beauty in their finery draining from the faces, with peach cheeks, he thought to be on the morning star. Others also came over, they were wrapped in linen, with a wooden cross on their shoulders, there hung buckets of water, they were namely drawing water. They said to him, "Do you want to have a teacher?" They called Kiu Shang namely a sage and a true holy man. The sages and saints are similar, full of silence in their mind, they are similar to the hermit and the blessed immortals. Tau Ti stopped in his boyish shyness before the charm of the young beautiful girls, he lowered his eyes, then looked at them gently, watching the wet shaft with fine batting of the dawn, because that were the most beautiful girls. And Tau Ti entered the house of the true holy man Shang Kiu. Shang Kiu roses, for he heard his beloved concubine, who went the aisle, her step was like small bells, as was her singing voice, she enchanted the atmosphere with her lovely presence. She was his concubine, whose name was Bi, which means grace. He wanted just to offer the green spring tea when she came in the room in her beauty of the dawn, in her beautiful shapely body prevalence in union garb. She whispered Shang Kiu in his ear that she was indisposed at the time, she had in fact her Yüa-djing, the monthly period in which overflows the fountain of her blood. Then she went away with a pale face in her chambers. Shang Kiu again raised his soft voice, he said to Tau Ti, the teacher listened to the admirable patience, slightly confused by the enchanted female-scented atmosphere. Then Shang Kiu said: "Listen: sacrifice yourself to materialize you, spoke Lao Tse, therefore: Receive to be a wise man. This is what I call the gates, I call this the key to the book of this prophecy, but keep attention, O my tongue, because uneasy is my heart. My dear son, no one listened so patiently as you, because of that I am well pleased. Yet my concubine Bi there seems not to be well, so I have to deviate from my plan. I know no-one, who wisdom and virtue loves so much as a beautiful girl’s face." Bi just came out of her room, her face was like an open blank book, as white as snow, overflown by a blush of shame. She was still young, about fifteen years young. She wore her hair tied up, wearing a hairpin from the wood of phoenix tree by the nodes, she wore the white dress waving to the ground and a red silk ribbon wrapped around her waist. She had so fine a narrow face with bright eyes and a lovely smile on her lips, as red as raspberries her lips, her teeth were pearls or ivory. She kept her slender body upright and moving gracefully. The voice was of grace, very bewitching, enchanting, she said: "Shang Kiu, I feel uncomfortable today, we have no medicine in the house, please bring me the milk of the red flower." Then Shang Kiu spoke in a soft voice: "Who is not willing to serve his second wife, a teacher is not worthy to be her disciple." He took his silky purple cape, waved Tau Ti who followed him. Tau Ti took his yellow cap, so they went out. On the road of Tongxian the teacher said to the student, "I want the next days ride to Qufu, where Kung Fu Tse teaches in his temple. As I have already closed up my heart, I saw from the first moment that you wanted to learn. I ask you to introduce my masters learning as much as you could learn from him, he has carefully studied in the ancient writings, he is the heir of the holy primordial world." Tau Ti said, "That would be a great honor for me to see master Kung Fu Tse face to face, the Ancient of Days. I knew that he preached virtue and true love of mankind. This is good for the order of the human community. I asked the Master to take myself for a disciple. Yet I'm also a longing for the swan-sea of ​​Xian, the daughter Xian." Thus spoke Tau Ti, still undecided as the scale when they fluctuate. But then he said, "I will see the daughter Xian and then I will hear Kung Fu Tse, going to learn in the Holy Temple of Qufu!" Then said Shang Kiu, “I have no rest, because the wellbeing of Bi is in my heart like a roiling sea, where a rock sought steadfastness. A passionate person is not good for the instruction in virtue. Let us seperate, for I want to get the white milk of the red flower for Bi, while you go your own way, I want to see you in three days if you want to come to Qufu to hear the master about human love." Then Tau Ti stood alone on the path of Tongxian. An old man on a white horse rode there, he had snow-white hair, a long beard down to the navel, white eyebrows, the eyes narrow almost reddish. He saw Tau Ti, smiled and said: "My son, behold, your beautiful country!" With this word disappeared the white old man. Tau Ti was amazed and wandered his way further into the house of Sa-Muan, the Justice of Peace. Sitting in front of a stack of files, he made statements and notes. "Du Wang," he noted simply, "was king of the south. Ay, Tau Ti, I have to examine just one case," he said, "grateful I gave it back to Sima Qian, the writer of the annals of the Han period. For he has compiled the annals infinite, including the present. Now is writen the fifty-third chapter in the annals. Well, I have an extract made for my case," said Sa-Muan. Then said Tau Ti: "O Sa-Muan, if you still have time, breathing creature, tell me about the case. Has it something to do with Man Wang, the King of the south? I would also once travel in the south since I heard from Hainan Island at the end of the world. O the end of the world!"

TAU TI ON THE SWAN LAKE OF XIAN

Tau Ti rode and came to the Swan-lake of Xian, he sighed: "Once a poet will come in the future of the Tang period, the great poet lives near Xian on the green side of a gentle hill." Well, Tau Ti looked at the swan-lake. On the way to the smell of cinnamon trees blooming and blossoming almond trees mixed with sweet flavor. Softly in the pines rustled the wind. The water shone brightly dark, sometimes quietly and sometimes moved. In the distance could be seen the Li Mountain, which hold more distant mountains veiled by clouds. Tau Ti, a lonely wanderer, known by none, looking after the fallow deer narrow tracks. There were singing birds, chickadees and orioles. The soft waves were silver. The wind in the bamboo purred and rustled. Trees stood on the path and he loved the flowers. Suddenly he heard the wail of the distant mountain monkeys. And a lonely boat was swaying on the waves on the shore between reeds and rushes. Between flowering and white willows was a hut, called mourning hut. Flying white seagulls came with a loud call, quiet dazzling swimming ducks, mandarin ducks, a symbol of harmony, and on the grasses of the bank were wild gooses, white gooses and snow gooses. At the sight thought Tau Ti of Su-ngo, where was she now? The trees on the lake such as green jade, golden shimmering. Tau Ti went down on the rocks to the water. And there he saw a beautiful Black Swan, who came up and swam close to the shore with his head held high, in black plumage, a white feather fell into the water. Then sung the swan. Tau Ti felt it in his soul, he saw the swan's red eye and felt his eyelid’s drop. And the moment the swan seemed to sing: "Tau Ti, take the white feather of the black swan!" Tau Ti took it. The swan dived down into the main still water, disappeared in a weeping willow branch that leaned out over the silvery water. Tau Ti saw dew on the trees on the other side, magnolias and hibiscus trees he saw. And over the lake called the cicada. That's when he discovered the pavilion at the Swan-lake with beautifully curved ledges on the pillars of ivory white. A fragrance of some flowers was over the lake. Suddenly Tau Ti appeared in a vision the Goddess of Mercy! The beautyful goddess was clad in a robe like dawn over her shoulder and there hung down on both sides yellow silk ribbons, she was decorated with beads and white shells. But her face was like snow, milky rice powdered with a mask. In her hands she held two compartments spread, with mimosa flowers and almond blossoms, painted on fine white silk to bamboo sticks. And with that she waved at him and said, "Come here, Tau Ti, come here, you can walk on the water, if you only have confidence!" Tau Ti walked across the water quickly to the Goddess, and he even wondered what was happening, he saw where he was, and he fainted and fell into the water, because the water stood up to his neck, he cried: "Help me!" She came like a ghost hovering over the water and grabbed Tau Ti on his shoulder with her right hand and saved him out of the waters. Then he was on the other side again. The Goddess disappeared after she had kissed him on his forehead. He have had doubt about the appearance, if he would not have been on the other side. The black swan of sorrow beats his wings, and then swam the majesty there, with the blood-red beak from which the water dripped like morning dew.

TIAN OF BANPO

Tau Ti jumped back on his horse and rode, immense wonders in the soul, to Xian, and said, "O goddess of China, as long as you want, I will endure the suffering. Let me just be in your grace, to use my time under the sky! I am decided to you." Remote was the Li Mountain, where the body of Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China, was buried. Tau Ti spoke the words: "I know well, such as the imperial wrath and anger raced through his veins as he sought immortality, he found death in Xian long ago. I see the Banpo village, where I will feed me, and want to take the rods, a porcelain bowl of rice. Then once I drink water from the source. The hungry or thirsty flesh you can breastfeed, but I will be longing for Love: I never found love on earth! When did I took a human being with tenderness in warm arms? Long ago was that. How long do I have to wait for the fulfillment of sacred promises? I am like a prisoner, my existence is in the dungeon, I hear myself sighing the stones of the prison walls, the dew of tears running down inside down in me. Where is help and consolation? I am hurt in my soul, and lonely I wander. May I not die from the dust of the earth? If only I were in the covenant of death, death would keep me in chains! The water of death is in my heart, I dived to the Yellow sources. A heaven there, is he mercifull? Will I be able to walk on water and be accepted in the redness of the morning pass completely and find love in the morning? Who gives me an answer? People talk all but only lie when they do not even completely be silent. What I think is deception. Stillness was my soul and tolerate, I am born as a man of sorrows, I walk my path, trap, walk and falling again, take me along and plunge into the dust, and then it tears me up when people give me to drink, which is bitter, they give me something to eat, oh, that tastes flat to me from talking to a nobody, but after that for me is the sense as it was a closed circle well against the sky, it was fulfilling blissful happiness, I'm so mad and lost in the world and return, I want to immerse myselve in the bliss of eternal love!" He sighed. "I want to measure the cities of Xian, see the beautiful gates, go through the door of high walls." Five thousand meters away from Xian an old village was located, Banpo. This was there three thousand years before our time. Because at the time of the Xia, the first dynasty, was here in the old Banpo the people of the Mothers. Well, Tau Ti stood in the magnificent houses. There sat an old lady in white silk mourning in front of the house in a wicker chair, which was woven from willows. Then she saw Tau Ti and said, "Are you hungry, boy?" As affirmed Tau Ti, she said. "Come, my son, I give you a little good for the body." Then he came into the house, there stood at the window, waving the red cloth, a young girl. The air overflows the beauty gently. She was wearing a greenish robe and stood lost in thought as in a dream. The old lady hand him Dim Sum, which means Little Heart, which is a Cantonese specialty. Before dinner she offered him jasmine tea. The young girl raised her voice, and the voice’s charm vied with the design of grace. So was her word. "I was in Peixian a few days ago; Peixian, located in the south, the birthplace of an emperor, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang engraved in a stone. I read in a book authored by him an even song. And I experienced a Celestial Being in Peixian because I made myself a poem about it. Shall I recite it? " And then cried the old lady from the kitchen: "Pian, can you help me?" The girl exclaimed: "I want just our friend recite my new song, o Nian." The girl Pian went to a closet, where stood a vase of clay, and took a piece of paper out of the closet. She knew the brush, dipped in the ink to run across the paper, because the characters were beautifully curved. She read her song, and he was all ears. She sang: "It seemed to me as if I were sprung from the inner life of my Heavenly Mother and staggered into the ether rooms, an erring child I had to cry, running in tears, I fell down in the lap of the Mother. Colorful chalices sweet flowers bordered mean tears, I penetrated all the chalices and trickled down through the flowers, the flowers, deeper, deeper, into the womb, the veiled source of all being." So read the fine Pian her poem she had written in Peixian. Tau Ti reflected how he could distinguish the poet, and he thought of the white feather, which gave him the black swan in Xian. She rejoiced and kissed him, which was very pleasant to him, for she was of exquisite beauty and sweet grace and smelled like rose petals. The kiss of the dreamer stayed on her cheek like a drop of dew on a leaf. Now the old lady Nian gave him rice with cassava in a pot with a travel food and a cup of orange soda. He warmly thanked, bowed to beauty and age, bowed down to the ground his head, put his yellow hat and went. He flew with the mold to Xian. As he stood in front of the wall where the door of the East was, there stood a stele with this inscription: "Yes, the sun turns into darkness, the moon into blood." In his purple robe the wind played coming from the hills. Once again he remembered the tenderness and deep sympathy wasted on him. He already saw the eastern gate in the wall of Xian. Then sang his gentle soul, with peony fingers he gently stroked the strings of the Chin, the lyre, this was his song: "Do you, O gate, get far, o Goal? The Son of the Most High Goddess will now move in Xian! " The excitement came over Tau Ti, with Peony fingers he gently stroked the chin at the east gate of Xian. Tau Ti was in his purple robe, the yellow cap on the black head, and went to the beautiful park of the festivities, which spread around a lake in the east of Xian. There are many beautiful pavilions where nesting swifts. So it is said: "We wanted to be a couple of swifts, we build a nest on the Noble’s house." Tau Ti left Xian, jumped on his white horse and flew away, because he wanted to see the area around the city of Xian. So he came to the village of Banpo, he arrived at a pavilion museum. As you could see the old kilns from ancient times, devices made of stone, terracotta and tools made of bone. In prehistoric times ceramic fishes were visible with swallowtails and incised mark: earliest writing. Then Tau Ti swung back onto the mold with the orange cover and the silver bridle, he dashed swiftly. More than on the horse power and on the legs of the man the goddess had pleasure on the beautiful solid castle in the north of Xian, it was the grave of Jing Di, the fifth Han emperor. It is a beautiful area where thousands more graves were created. Tau Ti went through his mind: "You're like a gravedigger in secret, they pass over you and do not know you."

THE ASTRONOMER HENG CHANG

Then he saw a red cloud of dust, a horseman appeared and came close to him, greeted him with a greeting of peace: "Tsing an! I am Chang Heng, the astronomer of the Emperor Tsao." The famous man of the Han dynasty had a yellow hat on his black silky hair. He blinked out of his narrow eyes through the daylight and spoke: "I have just returned from Xian, where I was at the ruins of the palace city of the emperor Shi Huangdi. In his time they built a magnetic gate, so that no one could walk through the door with guns. Efang was the north gate of the palace, which was entirely built of lodestones. And when the hall burned down, the iron magnetic door stood still." Thus spoke the great astronomer Chang Heng. Tau Ti and he rode together along the Yellow Stream, the sorrow of China. Then they came to that place where the Yellow Stream flowed along the Grand Canal. There sat the canal anglers, and a cheer was heard: "Yu-liau! I have it! I have caught the silver fish, which has a pearl in its mouth!" Tau Ti and the imperial astronomer rode a little further south, then spake Chang Heng: "I have invented a large seismograph, which is now the centerpiece of the Imperial Observatory. My seismograph can recognize the thunder on the Earth's surface to the distance of ten thousand li accurately. The mechanism is concealed in a copper kettle. The Emperor is so informed about any earth upheaval in the Middle Kingdom." Thus spoke Chang Heng, astronomer of the noble Emperor Tsao. They rode southward then on the Grand Canal, the connection between the yellow and the blue river, the Yangtze-kiang in the south. Tau Ti rode on the beautiful gray horse, which him had been given by Sa-Muan, Chang Heng rode a fine black horse, wich was called Tsian Li-Ki, which means one thousand miles runner. The silver bridle leather the reins, the mane flying in the wind. Then they fell from canter to trot, then spake the astronomer: "I've got a celestial globe invented." They both rode through a small village where the scene just was fair, stalls were on the road, the booths were painted colorful and beautiful. At a small shack it looked like this: A great picture painted the palace city on the slopes of mountains, and that was Beijing. The road leading to the palace, and in front stood on both sides peacocks, and sleek vases stood on the green. Surrounded was the palace of peach trees, roses had blossomed in every direction, and in the fifth cardinal direction the palace stood. In Beijing, near the mouth of many waters, the courtyard of the Middle Kingdom is held one day, the kingdom ruled from there. Above water led a beautiful bridge, on the other hand rose from the green the white city Taidu. Forward on the paths, flanked by beautiful vases with flowers, were to be seen painted people. There was to see a fine lady in a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a young man. The lady wore a long blue dress to the shoes with red phoenix pattern embroidered apparel, and in one hand she held a stretched red shield, the wood on her narrow shoulder leaning, the canopy for protection over her head, made of transparent paper. And in the other hand: a fan with peony finely painted as a red and a rosy bloom side by side flourished and before it a moth floating in balmy breezes, painted on white silk and stretched on bamboo sticks, and so she fanned herself cooling. The cheeks were peach cheeks, one would be tempted to say also so soft, reddish anyway. In the blue-black hair red jewelry of jade. The boy who pulled the chariot of the venerable lady at a bar had a smile on his face, a straw hat on his head and a robe of linnen. Along the way was a girl in blue clothes, the skin of the face and hands of peach purity, white and red aspirated. At her sides were two young men, and both the hair tied up, but one of them had a yellow hat on his head, a hole in its center top where the bun looked out to the air. All was painted in sweet grace, green meadows, white vases and red peach trees. So this was Beijing with the Forbidden City. Tau Ti and Chang Heng step further on, came to a stall, where a girl who worked there said to Tau Ti: "Do you want to try this? It is baked shell." And as she handed the shell with meat in it, it tasted very delicious, so he enjoy it and he said that to the girl. She came from the Mekong, the current in the south, had a face yellow white and dark eyes, a small mouth and white pearls in the smiling teeth. Since all kinds were offered, wich dim sum was called, Small Heart, delicacies came such as spring rolls and fried clams. He pulled with the small wooden skewer the meat from the shell, Tau Ti took it in remembrance, because the girl had given him this dish. Then Tau Ti said to himself: "From whose hand have I taken a gift to have so blinded my eyes? Then I'll give it back.” They went to the next stall further, the horse with the reins to a leader. Then Tau Ti and Chang Heng swung back on their horses, rode down the Grand Canal. Chang Heng said these words: "We will soon meet a troupe of our glorious Emperor Tsao, to whom I will come." And Tau Ti spoke these words: "I want to ride to the master of the temple and to listen the antiquity teaching of Kung Fu Tse." Then they already saw the troop of their emperor. And with the Emperor Tsao were his son Gen, the magistrate Sa-Muan and the scientist Mo-su. Gen the rock said to the troops: "Well, I led you through the Jade Gate, the silk road up and down, delivered you from the hands of all the kingdoms that oppressed you. Do you have now discarded the Most High Goddess, who always was above you with her grace and mercy, and do you say: An emperor should rule us? Now therefore present yourselves before the Emperor with your signs." Then, Emperor Tsao let interrogate the lot. Gen took the yarrow sticks and counted them, and Sa-Muan writes the result in a book. And there appears: Among them was a man who had killed another man. They looked after the scholar Mo-su and did not find him. And as they surveyed the lot again, they saw that even this case was described in the annals of the writer of the chronicles. The Emperor Tsao said these words: "You carry the case before us." And all the people shouted, and said: "Long live the Emperor!" The magistrate Sa-Muan sent for the writer of the chronicles, Sima Qian, who had studied the history of his people in every vicissitude of right and wrong and had everything written down in the annals, he just wrote the fifty-third book, always ink stains on the index finger of his right hand, black as the night the ink stains. Now all the people went with Sima Qian, where their mercy goddess had touched the hearts. And now reported the writer of the history in front of Emperor Tsao and before the people the story of how he has survived from ancient times. Then came Chang Heng and Tau Ti to the camp, where their paths separated, because Tau Ti wanted to go to the master of the temple, the wise Kung Fu Tse, to hear his teaching there. The astronomer rode through the camp of the Emperor Tsao, who set up a throne. Chang Heng went before the emperor, and saluted respectfully: "Gue hsia!" The Emperor said: "Kneel down, then we want to hear you talk." Chang Heng spoke: "Bu gan dang! Too much honor!" Then said the noble Emperor: "We now want to ask in our nothingness the inclined instruction, We would graciously remove the reeds of our ignorance that obscure the mind's eye, how it stands now with the construction of the Imperial Palace of Beijing?" Chang Heng cleared his throat and began to speak the word: "I was in Xian, the palace ruins to study exactly, especially the magnetic door, which was built by Shi Huangdi in Efang. And then I rode around to you encountered here because you asked your advisor, your astronomers and master of all the arts of mechanics to build you a classic palace. Now I met on the way a young man, who was traveling, to listen to Kung Fu Tse in Qufu. And with this young man I was tried, the strings playing to listen about the princess which had been given by an Emperor of China to the fierce Hun prince of peace. I have since pulled a batch, a roll of paper from a bowl of copper, saying: Man gets in trouble at a bare tree, one goes through the darkest valley without fear. The Hun Khan might a lion tearing at the well, and the hand of iniquity shall deliver me a lion. Forgive me, I digress. Drawings I made for this classic palace, the coins and the pearls but I've wasted, I must confess, to a lovely beggar, Mahanaim with name who was sitting in places of Kaifeng, but I have plans, noble emperor, to build palaces you in the afterlife." The Emperor Tsao was suddenly sad, melancholy dripped from his cheek as dew. And then he got up and said: "They bring us the jade carving, depicting the goddess on the shell. You now, Our astronomer, kneel, an beg her mercy." So did Chang Heng. The Emperor Tsao said: "We build a palace as you want it, in the afterlife!" And there came the rock Gen with a sword next to Chang Heng and at a sign from the Emperor he struck him down with the sword and divided him vertical. He was dead. The great Emperor Tsao anointed his remains and wrapped and buried him in a linen. They arise an honorable stele on which was written: "Now rests Chang Heng, in the afterlife he builds a palace for our emperor." Also soon have had a good painter painted his picture as he looks on an angle measure in his hands and a celestial globe in his coat. Twelve stars as colorful flowery plains in the bilge time. Tau Ti was riding on his white horse to Qufu, where aforetime was born the master Kung Fu Tse, the holy man. He saw in the distance already the battlements of the city, he rode through a green landscape. There came in a time a rider on a red horse, the lance erect, so that the horsemen dashed toward our youth. And he spurred the mold, since he flew back over the land, the rider on the horse followed him, there was Qufu, in the southeast were almond trees. The rider on the red fox came, the lance into the side of the mold piercing, the mold collapsed, Tau Ti fell off the horse's back into the blood. Since the rider on the red horse rode it, its yellow crest blowing in the wind, he disappeared with a crazy laugh.

TAU TI AND CONFUZIUS

Tau Ti rose from the blood pool and went to walk in Qufu, from which it was the southeast. He complained to his horse. But then he was all woven into the beauty of the grounds. Now he came to a river, the Nishan flowed from the grotto. Tau Ti sang a dirge, and stressed the fish gut strings to his chin-lyre. That was the end of the day, my reader, Tau Ti has rested then. But in the morning the golden wings of the dawn blow, he took a dip in the clear water cave, threw the purple cloak on his shoulders and put on the yellow hat and wandered on to Qufu. An old man came by with a white beard and white eyebrows, who led a donkey with him. Then the old man spoke these words: "This is the foal of an ass, and no one sat on it, so sit down and ride slowly into Kung Fu Tse’s city." There were beautiful blooming trees along the way, rowan berries hanging in the trees, some fell on the path, so that the road looked like a carpet laid out of oranges. Then the old man said: "The bird’s berries can be eaten by the birds, but for the people they are poison; therefore hold you to the northern noodles, the southern rice. How does speak Lao Tse: For food and music they stop, but no wants to hear from Tao." They had arrived the city. It was the master Kung Fu Tse, who stood in the middle of his temple. Tau Ti bowed his head before him to the ground. In a long red dress with a blue belt he was clothed to the gray hat. His beard was black as yet in his youth and later served in the chest, his face was dignified, and his ear gleamed lovely like apricot blossoms. Then he waved his right hand and said: "Peace, peace, beloved kid, I have to work for the kingdom of heaven, what can man do to me? A man should be childlike in love and let his love flow over. Why are you sad, my friend, as if everything in the world is without divine word, but now the sky used your master as a bell in the morning to hear the truth, that's no bad love. The interior of the small children I would heartily know. Who can go differently through the gate, why people do not walk on that straight path?" Then Kung Fu Tse waved his right hand and spoke this words: "We want to meet in my woods, I prefer as long back." Then departed the Reverend. Tau Ti left the temple and went from the apricot tree to the forest of the Master, where he spoke with Heaven. Now he came back with Kung Fu Tse, the Holy One. Tau Ti his head bent to the ground. The Master raised his voice, waved and said: "Peace, peace, O my dear child! One day I visited the lady Nan, my students were discontented, because I said, Have I done wrong about this, so let the high Heaven hate me. And once asked a wise disciples, if anyone would be able to redeem all mankind, what would that a man be? I said: Not only a virtuous one, he would be a divinely one. Once, dawned on me, he would go with me down, had I no longer seen the noble prince, he was my most revered model that was my dream and waking always remembered, I am a person who forgets all the sadness in the joy of recognition and so do I not realize that I am approaching the old age.What is the clear source of my knowledge? The deity has witnessed the spirit in me. My dear child, do you think I have secrets? I do not have secrets in front of you. My whole change is open, I see the God-man. It was not in life granted to me, I would be satisfied whem I had seen good people. Once little kids wanted to see me, but my disciples held them back, then I said, Let the little children come to me! When dying swans - there are plaintive songs, and when people die - the speeches are good. My disciples said: Humanity's last! It is not difficult in death, I'm only at the destination, Tau Ti, my child, I do not think, Celestial Beings are hard to find now. Be silent! Soon we will meet again in the kingdom of heaven."

DEATH OF OMA PAU

Well, Tau Ti was sitting alone at a grotto. He was now twelve years old and the teachings of his master were all still in his ears. His soul was silent to his goddess, who was based on white jade. As emerged from the far distance a cloud of dust, a messenger came in on a dapple gray, a red fox on his hand. "Tau Ti!" so said the messenger, "I bring you a message." The messenger then submitted to the youth a cylinder seal, and Tau Ti took it and read: "My dear child, the grandmother Pau died last night, in the light of the full moon, she still spoke in front of the Dormition about the grandson, looked at your genius at her deathbed, and she heard your lyre sing songs from the big sleep. How fast you can, come forth. Your father." Tau Ti took the Chin and the bag and swung on the red fox and rode to Anci, where his father's house was, with the Messenger of Qufu. Three days later they were there. In front of the house parted the messenger from Tau Ti, and he came into the house to mourn alone. I-Se greeted him, and he stood to the side of the still beloved beautiful Su-ngo. It were the first days of spring, everywhere mourned the flowers, the dew of the morning was like heaven’s tears. I-Se said: "Your grandmother Pau is already buried, my dear. Rest from your long ride in her house. There is still your room. I'll see you later." So disappeared I-Se with his beautiful sweet Su-ngo through a bamboo curtain into the house, a fragrance of sandal oil was everywhere. Tau Ti went to the apartment of his grandmother and went into his room. Three years it stood empty. He lit a red candle and sat down on a chair. His soul was sad. He took the Chin and stressed the fish gut strings and sang: "O goddess of the Heaven, mistress, why did I just leave? Listen, I cry, but remote is my help, my Goddess, to thy mercy hoped our mothers, and they trusted thee, and thou didst deliver them." Then it was night and the candle burned down, Tau Ti fell asleep in his grief. There he saw before him the face of the grandmother, she was in a shape before him, and touched him, and they embraced both. She had spiritual immortality! And as a hoax gripped him like a wobble, it was as if they were floating on clouds, where throngs of immortals and spirits with sweet bells sound and lovely singing songs, rolled over stars, he looked into infinity before the mistress of heaven, splendid in her glory, a lamb on her arms. As they hovered over, there were ten thousand stars sown in space, among them rolled wild weather. Spake granny Pau to him: "Tens of thousands of people are indulging in her womb, the mother Beijing will be the children’s beloved guardian-angel, the people will be happy in bliss walls, in jade-pavillions, in streets of gold and pearl gates." Then sang Tau Ti inspired this song: "In heaven is much grace and mercy, and plenteous redemption with this deity proceeds, it becomes our Middle Kingdom. I do not speculate about too high things which are too wonderful for my soul. Surely, my heart is still and quiet, like a child with his mother. Just as a small child with his mother, so is my soul. China, hope to the Most High Goddess for evermore!"

THE SHEPHERD TAU TI

Now he was called to a shepherd of the flock of sheep of I-Se. So he went to the western mountains, the fabled Kunlun, he went with the carved rod. He had taken a branch of the almond tree and the bark removed, so that it was white. Overturned and girded at the loins with the belt of leather, with the yellow cap on his head and his purple coat on, he went to the clear water streams and knelt down, drank, raised his head, washed his hands, he washed the temptations out of his ear. Then he lay down on a soft mossy hill and looked at the sky. It was such a beautiful May day in this country’s infinite prime, Tau Ti saw immersed in a cloud of orange coloration. He saw the stream trickle and cypress trees on the banks of the modest funeral be in loveliness and grace as sleek black with silver flames shine like a moon. And as the song of the flock of birds awoke, one oriole sang in a pine tree, he saw a beautiful girl floating on, and when she came near, he saw how pretty she was, very young and pretty. Her hair was put on the head to a node, it was black and shone like oil. Her eyes were narrow as almonds. The beautiful girl approached. She said to him: "My name is Tao Yeh, that is peach leaf. I love you! I saw you many times already sad lonely out here in the world of dust, that transforms the way!" Tau Ti looked at her, and he fell into a raging rapture: "Tao Yeh, I only see your sweet wonderful floating almond eyes, then melts my bones like a candle, and my blood is too sweet cinnamon tea." And then he touched her very tenderly a black streak from the forehead. So she took him with her hands, the skin was soft as a swan’s down. Then she said quietly with a mischievous smile: "Oh, I'm longing to eat the Peking duck with you once. But now let us go along the way." Ahead fluttering like a butterfly with purple coloring on the wings and eyes of deep blackness. Previously he had gone after butterflies, but his beloved grandmother had told him he should not wipe away the dust of the wings. They went together. Soon, they stopped at a fountain. And once he leaned his weary head gently on her white shoulder. Love had graciously accepted a celestial human design, and lovely was her body, like a snow-white vase, and a peach branch was with pink-red flowers in the vase. She took some water from the well and gave him a berry from the miracle plant called purple pearl. And then there came back some strength in him, his breath circulated from the heels up to the head. The hair above the crown now feels refreshingly sweet freshness, and he sighed: "Tao Yeh, how beautiful you are!" Tau Ti and this beautiful maiden clung their hands like brother and sister, they went on the way to the Kunlun, and they arrived at a rocky grotto, as said the lovely maiden: "A song from the book of songs I wanted to sing, but I does not know the song of the doe, which calls remotely, or from the lily floating on the water." Tau Ti looked at her with the deep mirrors of his soul, and said, "The songs in the realms of spirits and saints are certainly a thousand times and ten thousand times more sublime and lovely than our songs. When the spirits on the island of the blessed Peng-lai sing songs then rises the soul certainly louder in ecstasy. And there is the eternal youth? An eternal bliss? O Most High Goddess, grant me the grace of eternal bliss!" Tau Ti his hands folded over his chest, and Tao Yeh touched him with tenderness on one side, as a shiver through him went like bliss, his heart blossomed like a primrose. Then he sighed in longing and hope: "Oh yes, I would like to go to the goddess in heaven!" And the lovely girl hugged him and kissed him on the lips with raspberry lips, the mouth on his mouth, because of that he jumps up like a fish for a moment, even happy in the waters. And then she sat down on a stone and said:. "My dear, sit by my side, sing me a song, I know that you know very nice songs." Tau Ti sat down and played a sweet melody on his flute, then he sang to the tune of the song of lilies this song: "Be merciful, goddess of love, for my soul trusteth in thee, under the shadow of thy wings I've safe refuge. I call to the heavens above, to the Most High Goddess, which leads my case to a good end." So sang Tau Ti. As he had done it, Tao Yeh sung. Beautiful she clapped her hands, smiled at him sweet and lovely that the heart passed him on fire and flood, and like a phoenix flows on a cloud with a longing of the heart. And they rose again, transformed the pastoral realm through, infinity extended the Western Mountains Kunlun, also through it the clouds floated white, green was the foliage of the trees like a sea, and almond trees were blooming along the way, purple butterflies fluttered back and forth through the air. Tau Ti and Tao Yeh indulged on the path to the shepherd's cottage. Then said Tau Ti: "The hut is occupied by the old shepherd, Chi Pu Tei is his name. He taught me how to get the sheep out leaves out of the pen and how to gather them again in the evening time. But he is not in the hut, he wanders, to look after the lambs, if they are all still there." And the two walked in the footsteps of teen sheep. And he said: "In the next valley feed the kids, the yak cattle are located west in the pasture, also recently passed a swineherd, who lives off of an old sorceress who at night turns into a black crow. The swineherd went to a feast, where shepherds gathered with the hunter, I know well, he lives with a beautiful woman, he shoots a bow and arrow. He now had chased a deer to celebrate, they ate and drank and sang. Yet there is the shepherds hut, we just need to go through the grove of tung oil trees." The beautiful maiden smile transfigured and said: "My dear dreamer, let us go like hunters, swineherd and shepherd resting. We want to walk over that hill, over gleams of tung oil trees." And there they were in the grove and saw from a distance by the silver and green near the shepherds Chi Pu Tei. His hair was white as snow, and his beard far welled him down to the navel, but on his white head he wore a golden silk cap. His face was still youthful, fresh white and purple flowering, so that he looked young with his old age, as he had have in his life eternal youth, because he used the Tao, which is embodied in the Te, the Word in itself in Life embodied, as Lao Tse spoke the words: "I do not know the name, and that's why I call it Tao, and She was in the beginning of the world." As the shepherd Chi Pu Tei was approaching the two lovers, the beautiful girl with her boy, she greeted, as it did not provide the Confucian ritual, but his humility typed him, and said, "Peace, peace, dear ones! How happy I am to see my lovely student in the company of a lovely one here, O beautiful girl." The old shepherd smiled and said to Tau Ti: "Hey, Tau Ti, do you love her? So walk out to the grazing lambs, Tau Ti, did you are fond of the Blessed?" Tau Ti was very surprised that he asked that twice, because of the way his soul but had inwardly already known and knows that Tau Ti was the inner man of love and longing for grace completely surrendered. Then said Tau Ti: "O Chi Pu Tei, you can imagine that I've had her already loved before I saw her, only because I do trust in the goddess who sent me a girlfriend who fits the dream of my desire for love." - "Now pasture with your blessed soul the shepherdess of sheep!" As the shepherd said this, Tau Ti awoke as from a dream, as he sat at the sides adorable peach leaf, the Blessed with the name as she was modestly called, because she was more like a peach blossom! Tau Ti and Tao Yeh clapped their hands. Blessed are the people that can clap their hands. A little later, as appeared in the celestial sphere the dawn in the east above the curved horizon of the Middle Kingdom, the two lovers were alone. Above the green grass floated a white tag with purple clouds of golden shimmer, and they were hungry. Tao Yeh folded her hands across her chest and talks inside to the supreme mother. Then came all of a sudden from the sky a white cloth and it tasty dish beautifully prepared, a Peking duck. Tao Yeh spoke: "How I longed to take with you the Peking duck, now it is fulfilled, Tau Ti." There were bowls of jasmine tea from porcelain with red swallow pattern of manganese. They had food and drink of the heavenly deity with love’s smile, and she dabbed with her fingers the thankgiving’s sign in the gentle breezes. Tao Yeh spoke: "My friend, now I part from you, I wish you all good and beautiful." She gave him three kisses of sweet love. Her hair, shimmering in the yellow sunlight, looked like brass, and she shook it loose over her shoulders back, because it looked like tongues of flames. This can a singer say, not a poet, as she then fled across the green grass in the creek, over wich the water floated, as she past the cinnamon wood, the cypress and the tung oil trees, she fled in her lovely shimmering shape, remained there from the peach trees flowers, light pink flowers in her hair hanging, and flowers spring up in her footsteps, primroses, violets, and like green leaves over the sea she floated away into her world of pure beauty. Oh, double sad was Tau Ti’s soul, he sat down on a rock and took the Chin and ran with his peonies fingers over the strings, and he sang this song: "O Most High Goddess, you are the people's mother, how glorious is your name over the land that proves your glory in heaven. From the mouthes of children you have prepared praise to thee." Now there was Tau Ti with his yellow hat, with floating purple cloak and leather belt with brass-colored, with Chin and flute in his pocket, went the young man on his shepherd's staff. He came in a green plane in the fabled West Kunlun Mountains. He arrived in a grove of flowering trees and went ways of light flowers and came to a shimmering fountain in the middle of the grove of trees, the fountain of mercury seemed of pure substance on the vermilion earth, pure and bright, he saw the silver flood trickle through channels. Shadows of naked girls were in the water with elated joy, they flowed back and played love’s sports, rejoiced in white water joys. Golden rain shone as white willows, it was considered metal, but it was wood. Low hung the lascivious arms of greenish tendrils writhed on the ground and tapped into the water, as if to sip by the floods, and they were dabs of silver dew, flowers very delicate, crystalline drops seemed to weep. Infinite streams flowed from the fountain, sweet and nice to see it fade away, and jumped back on. Upright seemed the fountain to add a sail across the lake, the banks were green with tears bamboo, shade-giving from the sun's rays, which are embedded on mossy cushions and swam in the water. The dawn spread dewy golden wings, as called our youth: "O Most High Goddess, you take from me me the chains of life, protect the emperor of the kingdom with the peach tree of eternal life. I was sitting like that herd grazing. O the soul’s yearning! Like flames labor moved my heart. When I lost a lamb in the mountains, so I showed it to a dream when I in the shadow of the tree with the fruits of live asleep." So Tau Ti spoke and sat on a hill and saw the rosy clouds of morning, when an heavenly messenger came gloriously to him, a sword and a white flag bearing, dressed as a shepherdess, and she said: "Hail, arise, Tau Ti, finally let the flock, I call you to another office. Take this flag, gird this sword. I'll bring you from Xian to Beijing, to be the Emperor." Thus spoke the maiden, and thus spoke Tau Ti: "How can I overcome myself under such a deed, a delicate young man, not familiar with the business of ruling?" And as he had said this, the messenger said: "To the child's mind everything is possible, the Goddess is with you, and she will give it to you this way. I will guard you until you are moved from Xian to Beijing, Xian is to be your castle, suggest there your tent." She said this and did close Tau Ti’s eyelid, and when he looked up, the sky was populated by immortal and blessed spirits, who held red peonies, and sweet tones faded in balmy breezes. And the grace of the Goddess said, "Who serves, may follow me here, he is beyond all time deified." Sweet melody the blessed sung. The Heavenly Messanger now let the robe fall of the Shepherdess, and in her glory from the third heaven, she stood in the gleam of the morning, and she wore golden clouds ascend, slowly dwindling in the heavens of eternal bliss. Now went Tau Ti to the shepherd’s hut to take farewell of the old shepherd, to follow the divine call to Xian. Then he took the seven things: the sword, the Chin, the knife, the pen, the book, the gold and silver chopsticks, knee bands tied to red in color and walked away.

THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR

The Emperor Tsao spoke in Luoyang’s Peony Grove, attained the imperial dignity, and sat on the imperial throne, he fought with his enemies round about: in the north he fought with the Huns and the Manchus and Mongols, in the east with the Japanese pirates, in the south with the Indians and with the Persians in the west, Kyrgyz and Uyghur. And where he went, the peace won victory. And he performed many brave deeds and overcame Bengal, Mandalay and delivered them to the Middle Kingdom from the hands of those who exploited them. The Emperor's sons were Gen the rock and Chin, the head of the vanguard, and Ling the hill. And his daughters were: Yellow Moon Hsin-gan, the firstborn, and Mei-Shan, the sister mountain, the younger. The Imperial Lord married again, the noble lady was called Tai Tai, she came from Taiwan, where the Paiwan tribe settled in the mountains of the island. And Tai-Tai was not only as beautiful as intimately as beautiful as the night of space, she was also as wise as a serpent, and when she slipped through the palace, the doors, who looked at her, felt the bliss of the Blessed. At the imperial court was the captain Cheng, daredevil he was, and the son of the Prince of Chen, who was a better poet than ruler and the lute pipa invented the immortal verse: "Not I rejected the origin the world, the people of the world rejected me." The Emperor's mother was also at court, she was called Nian Nian and was like the silver stream of the firmament, from an imperial race, her tribe tree attributed to the Yellow Emperor, who had once been instructed by an heavenly girl in colorful dress of the rainbow in divine matters, by Tsai Nu, and by the girl of simplicity, well versed in music and poetry, the girl Su Nü, he had been instructed in matters of humanity. These were the ancestors of Nian Nian, the Empress-mother. But it was hard fighting against the Huns, as the Emperor Tsao lived. And where the emperor found a brave man, he took him into his service. But he stayed on the court in Luoyang, he loved to walk in the peonies grove where all the beautiful people walked the yard, and there he indulged his Tai-Tai, who was swarmed by young poets, tangerines and painters, and there at the court also was Sima Qian, immortal fame after death certain. Then said the Emperor Tsao: "Well, we want to hear how your work has progressed in the annals." Sima Qian said: "My last book is near completion happily. But I'm writing a book just for kids, with which your majesty may be blessed." And smiled to Tai Tai and said: "Childlike innocence I love, because from the mouth of children the Most High Goddess will prepare her own praise. And as it once said by Lao Tze, the world has a Mother, and who recognizes the mother and recognizes his own childhood, is in the downfall of his body without danger. Also I want to acknowledge my childhood and let me teach a child." It was at the imperial court in Luoyang, the Empress went into the grove peonies and said: "Where is my favorite Djin?" The concubine, who was with her, said: "I watched as he disappeared into the pavilion of poetry in the bamboo-valley." Tai Tai went with her concubine in the valley, entered the red pavilion of poetry with green roofs and cornices of gold decorated with wave ornaments, they went in and found the young Djin with mandarins speaking and wondered not a little of his extraordinary wisdom. "O Xian, I love the pavilions of bliss and happiness of refreshing, it's great to keep your lonely water that stays hot by my Goddess!"

ASSUMPTION

Now rose Tau Ti and came to a star where a Heavenly Angel saw him, greeted him and spoke the words: "Come and see!" There was such a star in a grove of tung oil trees, nearby the wine press, and pressed into a vat oil was collected. And the Heavenly Angel scooped with a ladle of oil and poured it over the head of Tau Ti. Then spoke the Heavenly Angel: "If you goest on, you will meet the genii who have come down from the high place, before them pipa sounds, tambourine, Chin, flute, and they sing in rapture, the spirit of the Most High Goddess will then come upon you, you get into ecstasy, as you will be converted, and become a new man, O Tau Ti!" The Heavenly Angel said this. "Now, when you arrive at these signs, then do what gets in your hands. Tau Ti, the Most High Goddess is with you!" Tau Ti went on to a star as the goddess gave him another heart. And as Tau Ti went further, a troop of spirits came into raptures loudly playing music, and they saw that Tau Ti was also in ecstasy, they listened as he sang with enthusiasm: "With my Goddess I jump over the Great Wall! As I came to a crossroads, I fell down, and a heavenly being appeared to me and took my old heart out of my chest and put me a new heart in my bosom, that was like diamond, like burning coal, because I heard the roots grow, and the rice fields, I looked into China's future. With my Goddess I jump over the Great Wall!" Now rose Tau Ti and ascended the eternal ether. "Why did the Goddess forsaken me?" He sighed inwardly, he loved his Goddess, his Mother. Now he saw a bright star, there was around a sea of crystal clarity, and noise resounded through his soul, there came an Heavenly Angel, of the Celestial Empire, the Angel of China! The Celestial Being stood on a star and flew over the crystalline sea of ​​the sky, a sweet sea of ​​sound, with the breath of dawn. She stood in a long flowing white dress on that floating star, and many green silk ribbons fluttered around her, and surrounded her whole body, and blew out of the movement, and in her hair strings of pearls woven, shining like mother of pearl, other bands hung like a crystalline veil full dawn on her chest, where she wrapped in white linen holding a child in her arms. The Heavenly Angel said: "My dear child Tau Ti, look, I still keep the unborn, I also keep you with my mercy. So many words you'll hear about me, talked by the liars. But know this: Remember it since prehistoric times to China’s people the Most High Goddess had spoken. Three thousand years before our time pleading the Yellow Emperor to her, and her grace and mercy was with the emperors Yao, Shun and Yu. The Most High Goddess is your deity, one deity, and thou shalt have no other gods beside her." Now Tau Ti saw a hall that was close to a hill on which a cross was made of raw wood of one vertical and one horizontal rod of shimmering brass. Then came a beautiful girl, very pretty to behold, wearing a stone in her hair, like mother of pearl glistened, she was dressed in a long red silk scarves, she spoke with a voice that was like a chime, so sweet melodious lovely: "My name is I-Ma and I will describe to you the heavenly music. Look there," said I-Ma sweet heavenly words, "the tung oil trees on the rolling hills, the house of white jade there, this is the house of the Most High Goddes, thy Goddess! Do you see the bright light that comes from the sacred lamps and consecrated candles? Refer to the magnificent garments that bear the high priest, take exercise the steam perfumed incense. Listening to the voices and flute sounds, the bone flute sounds from the hill ago, all the trees seem to wake up. But mostly loves the Most High Goddess the sound of the Chin, it is the wish of the Master to stand by to govern with a Chin in arms the Middle Kingdom. Behold, know the musicians to sing tribute hymns to the Goddess to the Pipa. Many hermits who have arrived in the kingdom of heaven, can quite wonderful melodies play on the Se, the old instrument. This songs are so beautiful, so sensual! Petitioners may incense ignite. The Mistress of the Heavens sings favorite songs of love because her heart is full of infinite love, that she already had taken the seat in heaven, because heaven is alone in her love’s fulfillment!" And I-Ma cheered: "Aya!" and was silent. As a guard came up with drunken transition and led Tau Ti through the hall and through the red door outside. There stood in a park with lakes and wonders fishing Tau Ti, as he sang this song of consolation: "O Most High Goddess, to thee I trust always, may you let me never be confounded. Call me, thou incline thine ear unto me, and help me in haste! Whether you give me a white stone, and a strong city in the kingdom of heaven for the sake of your name, lead me. Thou therefore receive me from any net, that they throw out to catch me, because you are my strength and my virtue. Into your hand I commit and commend my spirit, for you released me, O Mother in Heaven, Mercy and Grace, Goddess of Love! I thank you for your love’s goodness, because I can finally smile once again, you looked at my misery and took me in need, o Goddess on great waters. Be merciful to me, and take you to myself, in man’s heart I'm already forgotten as a dead man. Like a gravedigger, I'm in hiding, they walk over me and do not know my soul, but I, Mother in heaven, hope on you, I sing: You're my beautiful Goddess of Love!" Tau Ti stood in front of the red door, and all this was heavenly palace, in the lush climes he went there, over the five lakes with wonderous birds, there came to him the heavenly girlfriend I-Ma with a bowl of myrrh in her hands, she poured the myrrh over the head of Tau Ti, as it flowed down in his black hair. "You take me as your girlfriend from heaven, I'm inclined to you from my heart." In the garb of pink red silk I-Ma walked beside him and held him by the right hand and said: "There you see the Milky Way, it is milk from the mother's breast. Do you see the white trail as blowing a veil, a pure path of heavenly dew? This is a stellar stream, and some say, the wild goose, white goose and snow goose pull on the path. Hereafter see the constellation Cygnus, and a constellation also called by the barbarians lyre, but we call it the Chin. On one side is the constellation weaver, and on the other side is the constellation shepherd. Separated they were by the star power, and magpies were on a day in a bridge for two. And once they gave each other gifts, so you can find in front of the shepherds the spindle and before the weaver the yoke." The girlfriend I-Ma loveed the Phoenix and pointed their fingers to the red cloud of morn, on which they both settled now and slowly floated on the soft sloughs. As I-Ma hugged her darling Tau Ti with her white arms and pressed him to her milk-white breasts.