The Two Scholars

Spring had opened the slopes when two young scholars, Liu Tschen and Yuan Dschau, climbed into the Tian Tai hills to gather healing herbs. Their baskets bumped against their hips. Dew wet their shoes. After a long search they followed a side track down into a narrow valley packed with peach trees in bloom. Petals spun in the breeze and caught on their sleeves like scraps of silk.

At the valley’s heart stood a cave. Before it, under the flowering branches, waited two young women—one gowned in red, one in green. They lifted their hands as if greeting expected guests. “So you are here,” they called. “We grew weary of waiting.” Smiling, they drew the scholars inside, poured tea, then wine, and spoke of marriage as something already decided: the woman in red would wed Liu; her sister in green would wed Yuan. Half dazzled, the young men agreed. Vows were spoken in the cave that day while peach scent drifted through the entrance.

Life afterward slid along without ordinary clocks. The friends sat in the cave mouth and watched blossoms open, then drop. They bent over a chessboard until dusk. Now and then the air turned suddenly cold or suddenly warm, and they changed their robes without knowing what season it was. Thoughts of dusty roads, village gossip, and examination halls faded until those things felt like stories about other people.

Homesickness struck both husbands on the same morning, sharp as hunger. The sisters saw it before a word was said. “Once longing for the old world wakes,” they murmured, “we may not keep you.” They cooked a farewell feast, set a flask of magic wine in each man’s hands, and walked them to the valley’s rim with tears on both sides. “We shall meet again,” the sisters promised. “Go.”

Liu and Yuan hurried toward the village of their memory—and found a place they did not know. Familiar gates had vanished. New walls stood where courtyards had been. Strangers filled the lane and asked their names. “We are Liu Tschen and Yuan Dschau,” they insisted. “A few days ago we went into the hills for herbs!”

An aged servant pushed forward, studied Liu’s face, and dropped to his knees with a shout of joy. “My master—after so long! More than seventy winters have passed with no news of you.” He led Liu through a high gateway decorated with metal bosses and a knocker shaped like a lion’s mouth—the mark of a wealthy house. In the main hall a white-haired woman bent over a cane asked who the visitor was. Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren gathered in a wide ring. Liu still looked about twenty; the young folk nudged one another and laughed at the strange sight of a youthful ancestor among bent elders.

“I can turn age around,” Liu said. He poured three cups of the magic wine for his wife. Her hair darkened; the lines left her face; she sat beside him young again. Sons and older grandsons begged a taste. Even a drop stripped years from a lined cheek, and the hall filled with astonished noise.

Word of the marvel reached the emperor. He wished Liu to attend court, but Liu declined with careful thanks and sent a share of the wine as a gift instead. Pleased, the emperor granted an honor tablet naming the household a common home of five generations, and with his own brush wrote three characters wishing joy in long life.

Yuan found no such comfort. He learned that his wife and child had died years before. Many descendants still living were idle and brought him little peace. He stayed only a short while, then climbed toward the hills again. Liu spent some years among his renewed family. At last he too took his wife into the Tai mountains, and after that day the village never saw them come down the road.

Where this story comes from

“The Two Scholars” appears in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, English by Frederick H. Martens (Stokes, 1921; Project Gutenberg ebook 29939). Herb-gatherers Liu Tschen and Yuan Dschau marry the red- and green-clad women of a peach cave, then come home to find decades gone. Wilhelm’s note places the tale in the reign of Emperor Ming Di (A.D. 58–75) and compares its lost-time pattern to legends such as the Seven Sleepers.

Here the blooming peach valley marks a world whose time does not match the village’s. Liu’s wine renews his household; Yuan’s loss of his wife and child, and his disappointment with surviving descendants, send him back to the mountains.

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 — a full otherworld marriage and the shock of seventy years at home.

Reading the story closely

The shared journey splits into unequal homecomings. Liu can renew living relatives with wine; Yuan cannot bring his dead wife and child back. The gift changes bodies but does not restore the years of relationships neither man experienced.

Make two timelines, one for the scholars’ felt time and one for their families’ seventy years. Place the wine only where it actually changes events. Then compare the women in the cave, who let the men leave despite sorrow, with the families they return to. The story contains several attachments at once, and reunion with one household does not resolve every separation.

Think about it

• Why do Liu and Yuan enter the hills?
• What clues in the cave show that time is moving strangely?
• How do the two homecomings differ, and what does each man choose next?

You may also like

• The Dangerous Reward — another Wilhelm Chinese tale of gifts and hard lessons
• The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden — longing across worlds