Emperor Chin
Said the fairy God- mother , " QED ..your wish will be granted
here and now. "
So with a wave of her magical wand ,she turned ChinTse Hwang
or Emperor
Chin into a book- loving emperor .
Back to the Chin Dynasty........
Emperor Chin sat in his luxurous chamber in his summer palace.
" Your majesty ..ten- thousand years old .ten-thousand years
old. It's is Your
majesty's wishes that these books be brought here
for your order to be burnt .
" knelt the general , bowed to the ground.
So the emperor quickly glanced at the the big heapsof
books before him ;
history , poems , novels, documentaries etc. He was about
to order those books
to be burnt as those were the sorces of books the scholars
read and turned
against him. Those books surely must be burnt for his
peace of mind and who
dared say no .!
Suddenly he caught sight of a red covered book with a
painting of a pretty lady
on the cover . So he ordered the book to be brought to
him . It was titled , " Phenix
flew south-eastward ."
The prefix poem rather caught the emperor's fancy for his heart
was struck by an
unknown earning all of a sudden.( We all know the fairy-godmother
magic wand
had done it ! )
IN THIS ERA OF THE DRAGON
WE BECOME LOVERS
BUT WHEN THE EASTERN WINDS BLOW
WE FLY EACH OUR WAYS
TWO WORLDS APART
The emperor said , " Wait a moment . Don't burn these books
. Bring them to the
library and don't circulate them no more. They are for
my own amusement. "
So night after night , the emperor wouldn't stir out of hisbook
chamber but stayed
there to read , read, read the books , one after the
other..His concubines began
to be so jealous of those books , " Will they be burnt
quickly
so the emperor will look on us with favour again ! "
So the books were not burnt if the fairy- godmother magic worked
and we would
have a lot , lots more ancient books from those time before
the Chin Dynasty .
The literary world would be richer if such books were
not burnt. Think of how
many more poets apart from Li Bai , whose work we can
read and appreciate !
There would have been more of those classics written painstakingly by
scholars ,
night after night, under the moonlight,or lit by small oil
lamps .
Agatha Lai
