My Second Half of the Night

I am Princess Ziwei.

There’s a “Princess Ziwei” on television, a “Princess Ziwei” in Qiong Yao’s novels, and a “Princess Ziwei” in history too. I believe everyone carries their own private “Princess Ziwei” somewhere in their heart. I won’t bother getting to the bottom of my own identity here—that’s a job for postmodernist writers. But because I have appeared, all the other Princess Ziweis must step aside—no matter how delicate and lovely they are, how poetic, how radiantly noble, or how low and vulgar. I, the narrating I, am Princess Ziwei—at least here, at this moment.

Some of you probably already know certain things about me—for instance, that I’m the offspring of Qianlong and a woman from the south of the Yangtze, a woman you might also know by the name Xia Yuhe. This illegitimate identity cost me no small amount of youth and energy to come to terms with. Who wouldn’t want to be of dragon’s blood? Especially when I am, goddammit, the offspring of that lecherous old man Qianlong—I am his seed! Written into my DNA! Oh right, nobody knew about DNA back then.

In the early days at the palace I lived through hell on earth. The Empress, a woman whose own sex life clearly wasn’t working out, could never stand the sight of me, always calling me little vixen, little slut. You might say I had a bit of love in my life—pah, a man like Erkang, aside from his decent birth, I couldn’t care less about him. So many times I was already sick with his sentimentality, and he’d only pour more oil on the fire, more hemp onto the hemp, until my whole body felt wrong. What kind of line is “Ziwei, I love you so much it hurts; when you hurt, I hurt too; when you hurt, I hurt even more”? The man couldn’t even tell top from bottom! His younger brother Ertai was far more capable than him—able to give me several orgasms in one night. I remember the night before he was to leave with the Tibetan woman, he kissed my feet softly and asked, “Do you like me better, or Erkang?” I hated answering questions like that; not a single drop of blood in me wanted to hear such a foolish question. As a child of the dragon, what right did I have to enjoy love at all? I couldn’t help a bitter laugh, pulled my foot back, and slapped him hard.

Actually, the one I loved was Granny Rong.

That night, she stood behind the Empress, together with a pack of other grannies, as they stormed into the Shufang Studio. The Empress’s phoenix cape was beautiful, but to my eyes, Granny Rong stole all of its splendor. Just as the first time I ever saw her, she never so much as cracked a smile, like a stern mother. Her sharply defined eye sockets and her perpetually knit brow—yes, it looked so much like my mother’s face whenever I’d done something wrong as a child. The Empress, leading the group, came to a stop, and the eunuch’s pale yellow lantern fell squarely on Granny Rong. On her ashen face there appeared traces of tenderness; in that whole frozen atmosphere of the Shufang Studio, her expression was just like my mother’s gentle face by lamplight in her final hours. I suddenly wanted to cry, because I thought of my dead mother—as if she were standing right there under the lamp, beckoning to me, “Come, Ziwei, come sit by your mother.”

Lost in thought, I wandered, dazed, into the courtyard. Caixia grabbed me in alarm and said, “Ziwei, are you really going? That’s the Palace of Earthly Tranquility! So many maids who made mistakes simply vanished there—like a meat dumpling thrown to a dog, gone without return!”

Damn it, I admit I was a little out of it, but I still had a mind of my own. I was, after all, a woman of some literary talent—why would I need a little maid like her lecturing me! Still, hearing the words “made a mistake,” something stirred in me. I had indeed made so many mistakes—my very existence was a mistake, and also a riddle. My identity, that identity as a dragon-born princess, was itself still unverified, and yet I had so dramatically turned a working girl from the south into a “princess”… The more I thought about it, the more foolish my mother seemed to me, and the more I felt I had wronged her—she’d been fucked by that man, and then spent her whole life waiting for that cock, hating for a lifetime, longing for a lifetime, resenting for a lifetime!

Thinking of this, I lowered my head and said to Caixia in my most delicate voice, “What the eunuch says is right—how could lowly maids like us defy the Empress’s decree?” With that, I set off toward the Palace of Earthly Tranquility. The small flutters of surprise and tension I used to feel before punishment as a child quietly surged up in my heart again; as a girl I always used to wonder, would it be a wooden rod today, or a long whip… How I longed for freedom, and freedom was exactly what the soul gained in the midst of punishment!

As for what happened once I entered that dark chamber—heh, I won’t repeat it; I imagine plenty of people have already told that story at length.

Time slipped into the second half of the night, or more precisely, from the moment the Empress left. My body felt as if it were waking up; cuts both large and small had opened all over it, breathing quietly there in the dim chamber. I will never forget the air in that room—the smell of blood mixed with sweat, and with the Empress’s spit. They blended strangely together in that small room, like a strong man soothing my disordered thoughts. Mother, whatever wrongs, whatever faults I owe you, give them all to me at once. Come and punish me now!

Granny Rong grew tired; her aging body simply couldn’t keep up such physical labor for so long. The filial son of the Han dynasty, Han Boyu, wept upon sensing his mother no longer had the strength to beat him—and now my own tears fell without my willing it. Granny Rong stepped slowly over, propped my face up with her foot, and said, “Little slut, crying already over this much pain? The Empress has gone soft and didn’t want to frighten her—I haven’t even gotten serious yet.”

I wanted very much to speak, but my body, already drained, had no strength left for words, and could only let out a few whimpers. Hearing this excited Granny Rong; she stripped off some of her clothing until she wore only a pair of underpants and a bellyband, and came toward me holding a long, soft whip. In my heart I cried out countless times, “Mother, I won’t do it again, I was wrong.” But strangely, in the midst of this beating I had no power to resist, I felt a sense of redemption like nothing I’d ever known. What I feared most now was that the whipping might suddenly stop—how then could I go on dragging this body laden with sin through the world?

After so much crying out, my throat grew dry and raw, and my whimpers gradually turned into a hoarse rasp. Granny Gui, standing to one side, stopped Granny Rong, saying, “I think she’s thirsty—let’s give her something to drink.” With that, the two of them broke into lewd laughter. I watched as Granny Rong straddled my body, lifted her underpants right above my face, and slowly squatted down; her thick pubic hair tickled me. She pressed her opening directly to my mouth, and a stream of hot urine shot into it. I had never imagined what such a thing would taste like, but the flow was too much, and before I could really savor it, it had hurried down into my stomach.

After a short rest, Granny Gui took her turn. She said, “You filthy whore, now that you’ve drunk our nectar, you can speak, can’t you.”

I loved being called a whore, because I damn well was one. I had used my body, my organs, to think through so many questions—like how to please men. So I answered with a soft “mm-hm.”

Granny Gui went on, “Since you admit you’re a whore, then keep saying it—say you’re a whore, a whore through and through. You’re not a woman, you’re not delicate little Ziwei, you’re a whore. A filthy whore, a rotten whore, a whore coveting power, a whore eyeing money, a whore flaunting her charms to seduce men. You’re a thoroughly rotten piece of goods.”

Granny Rong walked over with a strange grin on her face, hiked up her pants, and spat hard right onto my face. Turning to Granny Gui, she said, “A whore like her is good at talking, with two mouths working at once. The upper mouth uses sweet words to seduce, the lower one uses that act to seduce. Why bother saying all this to her? She’s a born whore.” She picked up her covered teacup, took a sip, then gave my belly another kick, gritting her teeth: “I’ll kick this cheap slut’s womb to death!” By that point I felt nothing at all, really—body and language alike had stopped giving me any sensation.

They grew tired and sat down to rest. Granny Gui said, “Tell me, we’re both women too—why aren’t we whores?”

Granny Rong laughed, lowered her face, then lifted it again and said, “We’ve got two mouths too, so we’re whores as well. Just old whores, that’s all.” With that, she and Granny Gui burst out laughing together. I wanted to laugh too, because there was a sense of shared guilt in it. But what I was enjoying was entirely a happiness born of losing sensation altogether—even laughter could only flicker through my mind. Inside, I was crying out again, “I’m a whore! I’m a whore! My mother was a whore too! Ha, anyone with two mouths is a whore!”

Granny Gui slipped her hand into Granny Rong’s bellyband, pinched her breast, and sighed, “Ah, an old whore now, no good anymore, even the tits have gone flat. A couple more years and you won’t even be able to piss.”

Granny Rong suddenly grew worked up: “Isn’t that the truth! A man can grow old and still play with little whores, but a woman spends her whole life waiting on that one damn man. All that talk of ‘rushes tough as silk, boulders that never shift,’ all that ’though seas run dry and stones decay, to the very ends of the earth.’ Some whores are rotten right down to the bottom of their hearts!” I knew my mother often said that line, that she loved that old bastard Qianlong with unwavering devotion—but in this moment, I gave in. In the dim light of that dark chamber, in that space steeped in the mingled smell of sweat and blood, Granny Rong seemed like a deity, whipping me, instructing me, enlightening me. The sum of most of the first half of my life didn’t add up to this brief second half of one night.

I knew then that I had fallen in love with her.

That fool Erkang poked his head up at the window and glanced at me; in fact I saw him too, I just couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge him. I never wanted to be delicate little Ziwei again—I wanted to be a whore unlike any other. Granny Rong and the others finished their work too early, leaving me alone in the dark, dim chamber. This is fate: my whole life, born of a whore, to die a whore, never to be changed back again.

This was my second half of the night. Perhaps you’ll find that afterward I went on being just the same as before. But do you know? I have spent the rest of my life cherishing the memory of that whipping and that torment from that one night.