Along the River Read Online Free

tall, adorned with jeweled pins and tiny jade combs. Her bathroom is full of pots of powders and rouges, tweezers to remove eyebrow hairs, fine combs and tiny scissors.
    Besides having beautiful eyes, fair skin and an alluring figure, Niang has small bound feet barely three inches long. Baba calls them his perfect golden lotuses. She takes tiny steps and she sways in a really graceful way when she walks. She has more than two hundred pairs of shoes, which she displays on a special shelf in her room. The shoes are made of silk and come in all the colors of the rainbow, with matching cloth soles. Many are embroidered with elaborate pictures of birds, flowers and leaves. She changes her shoes three or four times a day and wears shoes even when she sleeps at night.
    Legend has it that swarms of matchmakers approached her parents when Niang was a young girl. At that time, foot-binding was not as popular as it is today, and Niang was one of the very few marriageable young girls who had small feet. The longer my lao lao (maternal grandmother) held out, the more unbelievable the offers that came in. Nobody was good enough. It was rumoured that the Crown Prince himself had expressed interest. Unfortunately, he already had a main (big) wife, but he offered to take Niang into his Imperial Palace as one of his little wives or concubines. This Lao Lao refused to allow. But if Niang had married the Crown Prince, Lao Lao could have become the mother-in-law of a future emperor!
    “The years rolled by and suddenly Lao Lao realized that Niang was twenty-five. Most girls are married by the time they are fifteen, and although Niang was still beautiful, people had stopped asking to marry her. Then one day, Lao Lao heard rumours that Baba’s wife, my birth mother, had suddenly passed away. Besides having no wife, Baba had the added advantage of not having even a single concubine. This was highly unusual for a man in his position but would obviously make life easier for the new woman in Baba’s life, whoever she might be. Although Baba was not an Imperial Prince, he came from a good family and was a Han Linscholar. The very next day, Lao Lao summoned the best matchmaker in the capital city to arrange the marriage.
    According to my nai ma , they had a lavish wedding with more than five hundred guests. From the beginning of the marriage, Niang had very little energy and spent most of her time in bed. At first, everyone thought she was pregnant. Months and years went by, but no baby appeared. Gradually, it was accepted that Niang suffers from some sort of mysterious illness that nobody talks about.
    Niang and I were both born in the Year of the Goat, two cycles or twenty-four years apart, but she seldom acknowledges my presence when we are in the same room. I’m simply not important to her. Unlike her, I’m not beautiful. Unlike Gege, I’m not a boy. Whenever we are alone, she often says and does cruel things to me. At best, she treats me like part of the furniture. It’s been like this for nearly as long as I can remember.
    DR. ALLEN : So who looked after you if your niang was always ill?
    CC/MEI LAN : I was looked after by Nai Ma, who shares my room and has been with me for as long as I can remember. Baba once told me that Nai Ma had been hired by my own mama, before she died. Nai Ma is a peasant woman from the countryside. She has large feet, buckteeth and a pockmarked face, but she works hard. Niang says she is ugly, but Nai Ma and I love each other. Perhaps it’s because I’m not beautiful either—I have a foot that’s all twisted and I can’t move very gracefully.
    Although Nai Ma can hardly read, she was the one who persuaded Baba to include me when Baba hired Teacher Lai to be Gege’s private tutor. It was because of Nai Ma that I learned to read and write from an early age.
    When I was five years old, Teacher Lai gave Gege and me a separate notebook each, together with a little brush. He told us to make drawings of our daily life