King Zhou Offends Nüwa

K ing Zhou was the last ruler of the house of Shang, and by every measure that counts before a story turns, he was a strong one — quick-minded, quick-handed, strong enough to face a wild beast with his bare hands and clever enough to talk his way out of any argument he could not win by force. His empire was six hundred years old and running well enough. Then one spring his prime minister Shang Rong came before the throne with a small piece of court business: the fifteenth of the third month was the sacred birthday of the goddess Nüwa, who had guarded the realm since before the realm had a name, and it would be fitting for the Son of Heaven to visit her temple and offer incense. It was the kind of errand that ends nothing and begins everything. The king agreed. King Zhou was the last ruler of the Shang, a man of quick wit, wide learning, and great physical strength. In the spring his chief minister Shang Rong came before him and said, "Tomorrow, the fifteenth day of the third month, is the sacred birthday of the Lady Nüwa; I beg Your Majesty to go in person to the Nüwa Palace and offer incense." The king consented.

The temple stood in fresh paint and morning light, and the king made his offering the way a king makes any offering, without much thought. Then a gust of wind came through the hall and lifted the gauze curtain hung before the goddess's image, and King Zhou looked up into the face of Nüwa. Whoever had made the statue had made it too well. The features were exact and living, the colors seemed to breathe, and the whole figure had the stillness of a woman about to turn her head. The king forgot where he was standing. Something in him came loose and reached, and what rose in him was not reverence. He stood in a goddess's own house and wanted her the way a man wants a woman. At the temple the king offered incense. Suddenly a gust of wind lifted the curtain before the goddess's image, revealing her likeness — her features fine and lovely, wreathed in auspicious light, of surpassing beauty, lifelike as though living. At the sight King Zhou's spirit reeled and a lustful thought rose up in him.

He called for brush and ink and wrote a poem on the pale plaster of the wall. It admired her the way a man admires a prize — the phoenix bed-curtains and their gilt ornament, the far green hills of her painted brows, the sleeves like drifting cloud, the pear blossom wet with rain, the peony veiled in mist — and then it arrived, in its last line, at the thing he actually meant: if a beauty like this could only be made to move and breathe, he would carry her home to the palace to wait on the king. His ministers went pale. Shang Rong ventured that perhaps such a poem should not be left on the wall of a goddess. The king waved it off. He thought he had paid the statue a compliment. The king called for brush and ink and wrote a poem upon the whitewashed wall. It praised the phoenix-canopy and its gold-worked adornments, the distant hills of her brows in kingfisher green, the dancing sleeves against a rosy gown, pear blossoms bearing rain in their delicate beauty, peonies wreathed in mist — and closed: "If only this bewitching one could be made to stir, I would take her back to the Palace of Lasting Joy to wait upon the king." His chief minister Shang Rong remonstrated, but the king made light of it and returned to the palace.

“Three animals and an instrument, called up to bring down an empire.”

Nüwa had not been home. On her own birthday she had gone up to the Fire-Cloud Palace to pay her respects to the three great sovereigns of antiquity — Fuxi, the Yan Emperor, and Xuanyuan — and only now came riding her cloud back to her temple. She saw the poem before she was through the door, and read it once. Then the goddess who had mended the broken sky stood in her own defiled house and understood that the Son of Heaven, whose dynasty she had sheltered for six hundred years, had used her altar to set down his lust. Her anger came up cold and total. A ruler was supposed to hold the realm together with his own virtue; this one had spent his on an obscene little verse to a statue, and signed it. Now the Lady Nüwa, on her birthday, had gone to the Fire-Cloud Palace to pay homage to the three sages — Fuxi, the Yan Emperor, and Xuanyuan — and had returned. Lifting her head, she saw the lines of the poem on the whitewashed wall and, in great anger, cursed him: a ruler without the Way, who had dared to defile her.

She did not mean to argue with him. She rose to strike the king down where he sat. But as her cloud came over the palace at Zhaoge, a force pushed up from the rooftops and barred her way — the plain fact of the Shang's remaining time, made solid in the air. She looked down and read it: the house of Shang still held twenty-eight years of the mandate of heaven. The number was not hers to overrule. A goddess can be insulted, and a goddess can want revenge, and still the count of a dynasty's allotted years is a ledger even she has to honor. She turned her cloud around and went home with the anger still in her and nowhere to put it. She meant to punish him at once. But as she approached, an aura barred her cloud-path. Looking down, she perceived that King Zhou still had twenty-eight years of fortune remaining and that she could not act rashly; so she returned for the time being to her palace, displeased at heart.

So she found another way. Back in her palace she called a servant-child to bring the golden gourd from the inner hall and set it down in the courtyard below the steps. She lifted its lid and pointed one finger, and a ribbon of white light rose out of it and stood in the air. Along that light, summoned out of the old tomb of Xuanyuan where they had been cultivating their powers in secret, came three spirits, and they knelt before her. One was a fox that had lived a thousand years. One was a pheasant with nine heads. One was the spirit of a jade pipa, a lute grown old enough to take a woman's shape. Three animals and an instrument, called up to bring down an empire. In her palace she called the page Caiyun to fetch the golden gourd from the rear hall and set it beneath the vermilion steps. She raised the lid and pointed with her hand; a shaft of white light issued forth, and the three spirits of Xuanyuan's tomb appeared and did obeisance. One was a thousand-year fox spirit; one a nine-headed pheasant spirit; one a jade pipa spirit.

Nüwa gave them their orders. Hide what you are, she told them, and slip into human bodies inside the palace. Get close to the king and rot his heart from the inside — turn his judgment, ruin his court, hollow out his reign — so that when King Wu of Zhou rises against him the throne is already falling. Do not harm the common people; the ruin is meant for the king and his house alone. And when it is finished, she promised them, you too will have your reward: you will be raised into the ranks of the gods. The three spirits bowed and went. It is the first move of the whole long war — a wounded goddess, an unkillable king, and three monsters sent into a palace with the promise of heaven waiting on the far side of the wreckage. She charged them: "You three may conceal your demon forms and lodge yourselves in the palace to confound the king's heart; when King Wu marches against Zhou, aid in bringing it to success. You must not harm the multitude of living beings. When the work is accomplished, you too shall attain the true fruit." The three spirits received the command and departed.