Rose of Evening

The narrator opens with a Dragon Junk festival along the Yangtze-kiang on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. They hollow a dragon out of wood, paint scaly armor on it, and decorate it with gold and bright colors. A carved red railing runs around the boat, and its sails and flags are silk and brocade. The stern, called the dragon’s tail, rises ten feet above the water, and from it a board is tied with cloth so that it floats on the river. Boys sit on that board and turn somersaults, stand on their heads, and do all kinds of tricks. Being so close to the water is very dangerous, and the narrator describes parents being paid in advance to release the organizers from blame if a performer drowns. Payment does not remove adults’ responsibility for children’s safety. Farther south, pretty girls are chosen for the board instead of boys.

In Dschen-Giang lived a widow named Dsiang with a son called Aduan. By the age of seven he was more skilful than any other boy, and as his fame grew, so did his earnings, so that he was still being hired for the festival at sixteen. But one day he fell into the water below Gold Island and drowned. He was his mother’s only son, and she mourned him, and that seemed to be the end.

Aduan, however, did not know he had drowned. Two men took him along with them into a new world beneath the Yellow River, where the waves rose steeply all around like walls. In a palace sat a man in armor and helmet. “That is the Prince of the Dragon’s Cave,” said his guides, and told him to kneel. The prince seemed mild and kind. “A clever lad like this can be useful,” he said. “Let him join the willow-branch dance.”

Aduan was taken to a large group of buildings, where a crowd of boys about fourteen years old greeted him. An old woman came in—“Mother Hia!” they all cried—and sat down to watch Aduan’s tricks. Then she taught him the dance of the flying thunders of the Tsian-Tang River and the music that calms the winds on Lake Dung-Ting. When cymbals and kettledrums rang through the courtyards, the noise was deafening; then everything would fall silent again. Mother Hia expected him to need many lessons and taught him patiently, but he understood everything at once. “This boy is as good as our own Rose of Evening,” she said, pleased.

The next day the prince reviewed all his dancers. First came the dance of the Ogres, performed in devil masks and scaly robes, with cymbals as big as tables and drums so large four men could barely reach around them. Their thunder drowned out everything, and huge waves shot up to the sky and fell back like scattered starlight. The prince quickly stopped them and called the nightingale dancers, lovely girls of sixteen whose soft flutes stilled the roaring waves in an instant, until the water lay clear as crystal to its deepest depths. They withdrew to the western courtyard.

Next came the swallow dancers, all young girls. One of them, about fifteen, danced the dance of giving flowers with flying sleeves and swinging hair, and as her clothes fluttered, flowers of every color tumbled from their folds and whirled around the courtyard in the wind. When she too went off to the western courtyard, Aduan watched her from the corner of his eye and fell deeply in love. His friends told him her name was Rose of Evening.

Then the willow-branch dancers were called, and the prince wanted to test Aduan, so he danced alone—joyful or fierce as the music changed, every glance up or down keeping the beat. The delighted prince gave him a robe of five colors and a carbuncle set in gold fish-beard threads to wear in his hair. Aduan bowed his thanks and hurried to the western courtyard, where all the dancers stood in their ranks. He could only look at Rose of Evening from a distance, but she looked back. Little by little he edged to the end of his line, and she drew closer, until they stood just a few feet apart. The rules allowed no breaking of ranks, so they could only gaze at each other.

Last came the butterfly dance for boys and girls together. When all the dances were over, the dancers marched out in step. Aduan hurried ahead of his group while Rose of Evening lagged behind hers. She turned her head, saw him, and on purpose dropped a coral pin from her hair. He snatched it up and hid it in his sleeve.

Back in his quarters, Aduan grew sick with longing and could neither eat nor sleep. Mother Hia brought him treats, checked on him several times a day, and stroked his forehead, but nothing helped. “The birthday of the King of the Wu River is coming,” she fretted. “What shall we do?”

At dusk a boy from the butterfly dancers came and sat on the edge of his bed. “Are you sick over Rose of Evening?” he asked casually. Aduan, startled, asked how he knew. “Because Rose of Evening is in the same state,” the boy said with a smile. Aduan sat up and begged for help. “Can you walk?” “If I try hard,” said Aduan. The boy led him south through a gate, around a corner to the west, and through another gate into a lotus field of about twenty acres. The lotuses grew on dry, level ground, with leaves as big as mats and flowers like umbrellas, and fallen petals lay a foot deep beneath the stalks. “Sit here a while,” said the boy, and left.

After a time a beautiful girl pushed the flowers aside and stepped out. It was Rose of Evening. Shy and happy, they told each other how they had longed for one another and spoke of their lives before. They weighed down lotus leaves with stones to make a snug hideaway and promised to meet there every evening. Aduan went back, and his sickness left him.

A few days later they all went with the prince to the birthday festival of the King of the Wu River. When it was over, the dancers returned home—all but Rose of Evening and one nightingale dancer, whom the king kept to teach the girls of his own palace. Months passed with no news, and Aduan was in despair. Mother Hia visited the Wu River god’s castle every day, so Aduan told her Rose of Evening was his cousin and begged to go along just to see her once. She took him and let him stay a few days at the river god’s lodge, but the women of the castle were so strictly guarded that he could not catch a single glimpse of her. He returned in sorrow.

Another month passed, and Aduan’s despair deepened. Then Mother Hia told him that Rose of Evening had entered the river intending to end her life. Overcome with grief, he tore his festival robe and left with his gold and pearls, intending to die too. Fear of punishment kept him from returning to the palace. After struggling against the magical boundary, he finally passed into the water.

Suddenly, without getting wet, he was swimming on the surface of the river, and the human world rose before his dazzled eyes. He swam ashore, and walking along the bank, he thought of his old mother. He took a boat home. When he reached his village, the houses all seemed to belong to another world.

The next morning, as he entered his mother’s house, he heard a girl’s voice under the window: “Your son has come back!” It sounded like Rose of Evening—and when she came to greet him beside his mother, it truly was she. In that moment their joy wiped away all their sorrow. But in his mother’s mind grief and doubt, fear and gladness tumbled over one another a thousand ways.

In the river king’s palace, Rose of Evening had believed that she would never see Aduan again and had entered the water intending to die. But the waves lifted and rocked her until a passing boat picked her up. Asked where she came from, she thought quickly. She had once been a famous singing girl of Wu who had fallen into the river, and her body had never been found, so she could not go back to that old life. “Madame Dsiang of Dschen-Giang is my mother-in-law,” she said. The travellers paid her passage there. The widow at first said there must be some mistake, but the girl insisted and told her whole story. Though charmed by her beauty, the widow worried that she was too young to live as a widow. But the girl was respectful and hard-working, and seeing how poor the household was, she sold her pearls for a high price. The old woman was very pleased with her.

Now that Aduan was home, Rose of Evening could hardly contain her happiness, and even his mother began to hope her son had not died after all. She secretly dug up his grave—but his bones were all still there. When she questioned Aduan, he realized for the first time that he was a departed spirit. Afraid that Rose of Evening would turn from him if she knew he was not a living man, he made his mother promise to say nothing. She told the village that the body pulled from the river had not been her son. Still, she feared that Heaven might not send a spirit any children. Yet in time she held a grandson in her arms, and he was just like any other baby, and her joy overflowed.

Gradually Rose of Evening guessed the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me at once?” she said. “Spirits who wear the robes of the dragon castle wrap themselves in a soul-covering so thick that no one can tell them from the living. And with the lime made from dragon horn kept in the castle, the bones can be joined so that flesh and blood grow over them again. What a pity we couldn’t get some while we were there!”

Aduan sold his pearl to a merchant from foreign lands for an enormous sum, and the family grew very rich. Once, on his mother’s birthday, he and his wife danced and sang to please her. Word reached the Dragon Prince, who planned to carry Rose of Evening off by force. Alarmed, Aduan went to the prince and declared that he and his wife were both departed spirits. They examined him, and since he cast no shadow, they believed him, and Rose of Evening was not taken from him.

Where this story comes from

“Rose of Evening” belongs to the closing section of literary fairy tales in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, English translation by Frederick H. Martens (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). Martens’s preface praises it as one of the book’s “idyllic love-tales,” and Wilhelm’s note calls it one of the most idyllic of Chinese art fairy tales.

Wilhelm also points out that the idea of a departed spirit casting no shadow has parallels in Norse and other European fairy tales. The opening presents the narrator’s account of dangerous child performances at a Dragon Junk festival. It should not be taken as a description of every Dragon Boat celebration or as approval of the arrangements it describes. This retelling compresses the details of the lovers’ self-destructive actions while preserving their passage between worlds.

Read the original: Richard Wilhelm, ed., The Chinese Fairy Book, 1921 (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: a young performer’s drowning, bereavement, suicidal despair, lovers acting on that despair and a threatened forced removal. Their supernatural reunion is a fantasy outcome, not a promise that death offers a path to love or safety.

Reading the story closely

The palace celebrates the dancers’ skill but controls their movement: they cannot leave their ranks, and Rose is retained in another ruler’s household. The dropped pin and the butterfly dancer’s help create small openings within that control. Mother Hia cares for Aduan’s health, yet his fear of punishment for a ruined costume shows how insecure that care feels to him.

Trace the material signs that change what people believe: the coral pin, the bones in the grave, the rich clothing and the missing shadow. The same hidden condition first seems to threaten his marriage and later protects it from the prince. Rose’s response to learning the truth also matters: she asks why he hid it, challenging his assumption that honesty would cost him her love.

Talk about it

• What different dances do the dancers of the Dragon’s Cave perform, and what does each one do to the water?
• How do Aduan and Rose of Evening let each other know how they feel without breaking the rules?
• How does Aduan prove to the Dragon Prince that he is a spirit?

Related stories

• The Flower-Elves — another poetic Wilhelm tale of spirits and blossoms
• The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden — lovers separated between worlds
• The Little Mermaid — another love story beneath the water