CHINESE GOLDFISH

Evening Star, Issue 20958, 24 November 1931, Page 7

CHINESE GOLDFISH

A STORY OF FILIAL PIETY AH ORGANISER OF INDUSTRY When Yang Wen Tsung’s father was dying he besought his eldest son to venerate his ancestors and to keep the family united, and Yang Wen Tsung has done both. The age of twenty-five found him the very competent and respected head-servant of the newlyarrived Secretary of the Legation at Peking, writes a correspondent of 1 The Times.’ When not engaged upon his domestic duties he spent his time at the small house in a, neighbouring quarter of the town which he shared with his mother and two younger brothers, and where, as an addition to his wages and to the commissions that, liko all other self-respecting Chinese, he made on every transaction of the lions.'.old where lie was employed, he bred and traded in fancy goldfish. One of his brothers served in a modern porcelain shop in Chien-men street. The other, still a boy, was seeking employment. Now Yang Wen Tsung was intelligent. He knew that among the admirable things of heaven and earth wealth came first between godliness and cleanliness~if it didn’t come first—and it took him only about a week to discover that Mrs X; the Secretary’s wife, had a little money of her own to spend, which, he was shocked to think, was accumulating quite uselessly at the hank. Thrift was excellent in poor Chinese families, but was derogatory to a well-to-do European household, and Yang Wen Tsung suspected that the X’s were living on Mr X’s pay. He liked them so natch that he really was very much upset about it. It was the secretary’s duty from time to time to accompany his Minister to Nanking, which city the Republican Government had chosen as the capital. People said that this decision had been arrived at in order to be as far removed as possible from the Foreign Legations, for, though the representatives of the Powers were usually polite and sometimes quite pleasant, they were very exacting. So one day the secretary proceeded with his Minister to Nanking while his wife remained at their abode in the Legation compound. She missed, her husband, and at times was dull. One morning, a few days after the secretary’s departure, Yang Wen Tsung entered the drawing room carrying an attractive glass bowl full of water, in which swam a perfectly enchanting C' : nese goldfish, a creature of superlative beauty. It had a shiny iridescent body and a tail, or, rather, two or three tails, several inches too long, that floated idly. behind it. Its eyes protruded, and it had one fin too many—or too few. At the bottom of the bowl was a collection of delicious agate pebbles from out of which arose a delicate tree of pink coral, while a thread of emerald green weed grew from the opening of a pearly shell. It was a work of art, and, what is rare in works of art, its principal feature was alive. “I think,” said Yang Wen Tsung, “lady like goldfish. Little plesent”—the Chinese fail to pronounce the letter R—“from old glandmother. She belong very old, more bundled years.” Mrs X was delighted, and sent Yang Wen Tsung’s aged grandmother—she had died long before Yang Wen Tsung. was born—a present of

money, which he hesitated quite a long time to accept on her behalf. But fate was unkind. The goldfish pined and was evidently unhappy. Mrs X consulted Yang Wen Tsung. “I think,”' he replied, “little goldfish vely sad—no have got little fliend—vely lonely, vely solly.” So Mrs X charged him to buy a companion fish, and that week’s housekeeping book contained the entry: One first-class number one goldfish, 3 dollars. But the new arrival was too late to restore the invalid to health. The first goldfish died. To avoid a second tragedy Yang Wen Tsung purchased another. It was of three colours and had no dorsal fin, so it cost 4 dollars 50 cents because it was very rare. Before tbe secretary returned to Peking Mrs X possessed a complete collection of eleven varieties of fantastic goldfish that were kept, in pairs, in enormous porcelain bowls in the verandah. These bowls came, of course, from' the shop in which Yang Wen Tsung’s brother served, on a commission basis. A boy, too, had been added to the household staff to feed the fish, change the water, and drive away predatory cats. As a matter of fact, ho was Yang Wen Tsung’s youngest brother. But it was soon evident that the fish required trained supervision, and an old Chinese lady-doctor—Yang Wen Tsung’s mother, by the way—came round for an hour "or two every morning for a small fee to prescribe the medicines that Yang Wen Tsung’s uncle, chemist, supplied. To-day Mrs X breeds Chinese goldfish, and is striving, at Yang Wen Tsung’s instigation, to raise a new variety that will bring her fame by its' being named after her. There are no more big porcelain bowls at the shop in Chien-men street, but the merchant has ordered a fresh consignment. From far-away rivers Yang Wen Tsung procures for Mrs X those rare, expensive kinds of water-w'eed sa necessary, he says, for the alimentation of first-class goldfish, but which in reality the little children of his widowed sister gather in the shallows of the city moat. It is they, too, who dig out of the family manure heap the grubs which Yang Wen Tsung assures Mrs X are those of butterflies only found on the shores of the lakes of the Summer Palace, which play, he asserts, so important a part in the determination of the colour scheme of the goldfish that devour them. For a time it was a hand-barrow with creaking wheels that brought the special water from a spring far beyond the city walls until Mrs X, learning from Yang Wen Tsung the hardship that its transport entailed upon his long-deceased brother-in-law, bought a small mule and cart. Every morning and evening there arrives a load of water from the municipal tap in the next street, tbe cart and mule being employed between times in the lucrative trade of transporting merchandise in the vicinity of tbe railway station, which accounts for the perspiration of man and beast. When from time to time Yang Wen Tsung kneels before tbe ancestral tablets of his family he calls the gods to witness that he is obeying tbe injunctions of his revered parent and as a dutiful son is keeping the family united.