Mystery of the Chinese Fan

​The following is a true story. My in-law Patricia Dunn nee Millar has a framed Chinese fan, seen below.

She bought it from a mysterious Chinese art dealer of course. But she has no idea about the fan’s background or what the words mean. I therefore take it upon myself to uncover the mystery.
The writing on the fan is a well-known poem from a famous poet of the Tang dynasty (618−907 CE). His name is Li Shangyin (李商隐; 813−858 CE). The poem is translated with commentary below:

Note: Traditionally, Chinese is read vertically in columns from right to left. Each character corresponds to a single syllable. The characters used for the fan are Traditional Chinese, which is typically used in calligraphy even in areas where Simplified Chinese is the official writing. The pronunciation is provided in Pinyin (Chinese Romanization) together with the literal translation. The whole line is then translated according to meaning with commentary provided where necessary. 

Stanza 1: 昨夜星辰昨夜风，画楼西畔桂堂东
Zuo-ye (last night) xing-chen (starlight) zuo-ye (last night) feng (breeze), hua-lou (ornate tower, a multi-storey building with extensive carvings) xi-pan (west side) gui-tang (Osmanthus hall) dong (east).
Translation: Last night’s starlight and last night’s breeze, we met at the ornate tower’s west and the fragrant hall’s east.

Stanza 2: 身无彩凤双飞翼，心有灵犀一点通
Shen-wu (body hasn’t) cai-feng (colourful phoenix) shuang-fei (double flying) yi (wings), xin-you (heart has) ling-xi (spiritual rhinoceros) yi-dian (one hint) tong (understand).
Translation: My body had not the colourful phoenix’s soaring wings, but our hearts had the unicorn spirit and we understood each other by a wink.
Comment: The poet used the term “ling-xi” that literally means “spiritual rhinoceros.” Not only can we not locate an earlier allusion to such a mythical beast, but the rhinoceros being referred to in ancient texts was never a poetic or mythical animal. On the other hand, the Chinese unicorn known as Qilin—Anglicized Kirin, such as Kirin beer and Huawei’s Kirin chipset—was said to be able to read minds and discern lies. That is why Qilin is China’s mythical beast of the law. This Qilin myth has its origins from the Shang. The Bronze script for the word “method” which also means “law” (法; Pinyin: fa) shows the combined ideogram of “go” and pictogram of “water.” There is another pictogram of a mythical beast known as “Zhi.” This “Zhi” (廌) is the unicorn of Shang myth. The “Zhi” was said to be used in the ancient law courts to hear cases. It would touch the culprit with its horn. The name “Zhi” however went out of use and was replaced by either Xiezhi (獬豸) or Qilin (麒麟). The poet Li Shangyin created a poetic name to describe the one-horned animal and its spiritual property which also fits the rhyme and rhythm of the poem. Later interpreters have made up some strange village rumour that people believed that the rhinoceros had a white streak in its horn that was connected to its brain. It is based on nothing and totally unconvincing.  “Yi-dian-tong—one hint understood” also has many possible interpretations, but the idea is the same. “Yi-dian” is literally “one jot.” It can also mean “one nod of the head,” “a touch,” or in this case, “a hint.” “Tong” literally means “through.” If two minds are connected by a channel and thoughts readily go through this channel, it is “tong.” Through traffic is “tong.” If someone understands something thoroughly, his mind is unblocked and it is also “tong.” Xin-you-ling-xi-yi-dian-tong is a popular Chinese idiom which means that two people, usually lovers, are connected by their hearts.

Stanza 3: 隔座送钩春酒暖，分曹射覆蜡灯红
Ge-zuo (separate seats) song-gou (passing hook) chun-jiu (spring wine) nuan (warm), fen-cao (separate groups) she-fu (guessing cover) la-deng (wax lamp) hong (red).
Translation: Seated separately we passed hook tokens (drinking game) for the warm spring wine; under the bright red candle light we guessed the tokens inside the inverted bowls (drinking game).

Stanza 4: 嗟余听鼓应官去，走马兰台类转蓬
Jie-yu (alas, I) ting-gu (hear drums) ying-guan (answer officials) qu (go), zou-ma (run horse) lan-tai (orchid platform) lei (akin to) zhuan-peng (spinning weeds).
Translation: Alas, I heard the official’s drums requiring me to respond and leave you; rushing on my horse to the “Orchid Platform” (name of the Imperial Court secretary’s office and the building that housed it) like a weed spinning in the wind.

唐李商隐七律
Tang (Tang dynasty 618−907 A.D.) Li Shang Yin (name of the poet) qi (seven) lü (regulated)
Translation: Tang dynasty Li Shangyin’s seven-word regulated verse.

【无题】
Wu-ti (no title); this poem’s title is “Untitled.”

时在丙子孟夏印室居士
Shi-zai (time at) bing-zi (name of the year) meng-xia (early summer) yin-shi (seal room) ju-shi (householder)
Comment: Bing-zi is the name of the year in China’s sexagenarian cycle. Bing (丙; pictogram of a bronze bell) is the third position on the Celestial Stem, and Zi (子; meaning son and also the name of the Shang royal house) is the first position of the Earthly Branches. The Shang tribe invented this system; it is natural for the family name of the royal house to occupy the first position of the Earthly Branches. The word Zi (son) also reflects the importance the Shang placed on the duty of the son to worship his ancestors. It is almost synonymous to the Shang word Si (祀) which means ritual worship, and which occupies the sixth position of the Earthly Branches. Some forms of Si (ritual worship) are identical to the word for Zi (son). Zi is the year of the Rat and Bing-zi can be either 1936 or 1996. If the fan was purchased before 1996, then it could be a bit of an antique. The calligrapher uses a demotic script not very easy to understand. The word suggested as  “room” is uncertain. The title “householder” has a self-deprecatory undertone. But it can also mean an ordinary person who practises Buddhism or someone who lives like a hermit. 

为天(?)下(?)情侣心心相印
Wei (for) tian (?) xia (?) (heaven and underneath, means the whole world) qing-lü (lovers, literally feeling-partners) xin-xin (heart-to-heart) xiang-yin (each other sealed)
Translation: For lovers all over the world let their hearts be sealed upon each other (here is the connection between xin-you ling-xi yi-dian-tong and lovers)

画于珠山
Hua-yu (painted or drawn at) Zhu Shan (pearl-mountain)
Painted at Pearl Mountain (located near Qingdao, the old German colony at Shandong Province)

Comment:
The poet Li Shangyin (李商隐 813−858 A.D.) is from the late Tang period. He is one of the most important Tang poets. Many of his verses are popular idioms in the modern Chinese language. Even Pink Floyd has borrowed from him. He has a secret background. First the family name Li is the name of the Tang royal house. The Tang ruling house however may have been wholly Xianbei (as explained in The Unconquered) but adopted the Li name to rule as Chinese. Li is a popular name meaning “plum.” During Tang and afterwards, many foreigners were gifted the name Li by royal edict. Others simply adopted the name to claim kinship. The Li royal house of Tang dynasty having conquered China linked their lineage to that of Laozi (or Lao Tzu of Tao), whose name is Li Er (李耳). It is said that Laozi went west and left China in his old age. Tang dynasty’s founding family came from China’s north-west.
We suggest however that the name Li (李) itself hides a secret. The pictogram is a “tree” (木) with a “son” (子) underneath. It is not the pictogram of a tree with a fruit. From The Unconquered, we learn that a “tree” or “wood” under a roof is the word Song (宋). It is the name of the vassal state ruled by the royal house of Shang. The word represents a form of ancestral worship. The Oracle Bone word for Li (李) shows a “son” (子) bearing a “tree” (木) or “wood.” As explained earlier, not only is the word “son” the name of the Shang royal house, it is almost synonymous with and indistinguishable from the word for “ritual worship” (祀). In a sense the “sons” of the Shang is responsible for the worship of their ancestors. The family name Li could very well be a branch closely related to the Shang royal house.
Coming back to the poet Li Shangyin, we learn that his ancestral clan came from the area of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan (river south) province. We also know that the Shang has a very long history of living in this area. In fact, a walled city of early Shang was discovered near Zhengzhou in 1950.
By Tang dynasty in the ninth century, the Shang had become a myth. There was no physical evidence that the Shang ever existed. Some people however secretly knew that they were descendants of the Shang and they hid in plain sight. For example, the father of Song dynasty’s founder has a name that means “exalt Yin,” Yin being the name historians used to refer to Shang. Li Shangyin is even more blatant. His name means Shang-hidden, a hidden Shang. He obviously knew about the Shang unicorn Zhi, which he poetically renamed Ling-xi. There are no accidents.
So how is Li Shangyin related to our tale? In short, Li had written other poems directly related to one of China’s four classics, Dream of the Red Chamber (published about a thousand years later and soon to figure in our story). The redactor of the classical masterpiece, Cao Xueqin, descended from a secret Shang, the famous warlord Cao Cao. Dream of the Red Chamber was also named Tale of the Stone. It is about Cao Xueqin’s family in Nanjing (a.k.a. City of Stone), and the storyteller is supposed to be a heavenly stone. The book originally had 110 chapters (11 is the mystery number). One of the main mystery characters of The Unconquered is the Stone Man with One Eye. Can all these be accidental?