SAI WENG SHI MA

Based on the tale “Sai Weng Shi Ma（塞翁失马）”

from Huai Nan Zi (《淮南子》）

塞翁失马

〇

“Look! It’s Ta Yun! He’s back!” A young man yells excitedly at his father. 

“Wait. . ., what is with him?”

Illustration by Maria Ovchinnikova

一

One year ago, when Feipeng was riding his beloved horse Ta Yun, the horse suddenly started to bounce violently and cast him off from his back without any sign.

Feipeng let go the reins immediately after he felt his back hit the ground. He is a gifted rider and his fast reaction protected him from being hurt badly. But still, being thrown away from a strong and crazy steed is nothing like an easeful walk in his father’s garden. It’s totally something else. As a rider he should have been used to falling like this, but the fact that it was the very first time that Ta Yun shook him off confused him. The horse’s hoofs were only two inches away from stepping on his nose and his heart throbbed like the Hun’s war drums. He could even hear the drumrolls. They were not from the war, but from his chest. 

After the shock was over, Feipeng began to feel the pain spreading from his back to all other parts of his body like series of sea waves. He could barely move himself. Lying on the ground he saw his beautiful niveous horse Ta Yun run to the Sun like Tian Ma, a kind of divine horse living in the heavenly palace. He once read of them in his father’s book collection. Running towards the Sun, Ta Yun had already passed the wreckage of the Great Wall around the border. It was the trace of the everlasting war between the Hun and the Chinese Empire. His father never let him go near the ruin: “The Huns live on the other side of it.” Under the sunlight, the obsoleted golden bricks of the Great Wall shined as if they were newly built. Feipeng once heard from his father that the bricks were torn down from the statue of the Great Leader in the capital far south. “The immortal Great Leader,” his father sneered. Thinking of his father, Feipeng spoke to himself: “I don’t know how he will punish me for losing Ta Yun.”

Feipeng barely knows his father. Like all other old and stubborn fathers in this huge empire, he doesn’t talk a lot to his son. He became even more silent after Feipeng’s mother’s death. But he is also not like the other old guys in the village. Normal frontiersmen do not have a shelf full of book collections and they don’t bother nursing the flower garden like his father does almost every day. The only thing Feipeng knows about his father is that he named Feipeng after a poem in Shijing（《诗经》)

自伯之东，

首如飞蓬。

岂无膏沐，

谁适为容？

Feipeng doesn’t read much, he only understands it is a poem about war. “The two of us live in a border village, but I never went to a war myself. Maybe father once did.” Feipeng thought about this on his way back home. His father is a mystery to him.

“Father—, I’m back.”

“Oh.”

“As always. He never speaks a second word. He never asks if…” thought Feipeng. But his thought was interrupted.

“It’s okay,” said his father.

“What?”

“It is okay that you lost Ta Yun.”

“But what? How did you know?” Feipeng was astounded.

“It could be a good thing.” Of course, his father didn’t answer the question. 

二

“Look! It’s Ta Yun! He’s back!” Feipeng yells excitedly at his father. His surprise is overwhelmed right away by a question: “Wait. . ., what is that black thing with him?”

“It’s a black horse. Called Zhu Yue.”

“Wait a second, you know the horse?”

“Not before.”

From his face Feipeng can tell that his father won’t answer any other questions from him. With unsolved confusion he walks slowly to his once missing friend. It’s about the same place where Ta Yun fled away. This afternoon his father suddenly asked him to bring them here at dusk. Without giving him any reason of course. Against the setting sun he once again sees the shining golden bricks of the Great fallen Wall. One year has passed, but nothing has changed in the meadow. The setting sun, the wreckage, the empire, and his father. The only difference is that this time he is welcoming his beloved horse, not losing it, but along him is an unexpected black friend.

“Father, do you know where it comes from? It’s much stronger than our Ta Yun,” Stroking the sturdy muscle buried by its smooth and soft hairs, Feipeng asks his father.

“It’s from the Hun,” he replies briefly.

“But why is it with Ta Yun?”

His answer is silence. 

But Feipeng is a simple-minded optimist, he neglects the silence and starts considering to ride the beautiful black horse. “The color of it is as black as father’s ink. The one he uses to write his letters. I never know where the letters are sent. Like I never know where dad comes from. I’m only allowed to call him dad in my daydream. But I’m allowed to ride Ta Yun however. Oh, Ta Yun! It’s so good to have you back. And you even brought a friend back with you. Zhu Yue, Zhu Yue, Zhu Yue…Isn’t it a name from Shijing like mine? Shijing, Shijing, Whatever! I know the name means chasing the moon. But I’m not following the moon. I’ll ride it, straight to the sun. The sun, the shining firing ball where…”

“Don’t you ever think about it!” 

Still lost in his thought, Feipeng responses blankly: “Wh…what?”

“You will fall from it and break your leg,” his father adds.

Feipeng doesn’t understand what his father means. He is driven by the simple thought to chase the sun, like the ancient giant once did. But he forgets the end of the story.

Feipeng ignores his father’s warning and mounts the ink-colored horse Zhu Yue. There is nothing as shiny as the Sun, not even the shiny golden bricks from the statue of the Great Leader. People in the village say that he is an immortal god. But Feipeng remembers what his father once said: “He is nothing more than the numerous peasants in this dying empire.” He can’t comprehend it, but what he does comprehend is that the light from the immortal sun is much more brilliant than the fallen statue. 

“Charge!” He shouts out loudly and rushes straight towards the falling sun. Seeing Feipeng completely ignoring his warning, his father firstly wants to ride Ta Yun and stops him. But he is not as good a rider as his son. Moreover, he thinks that he is not able to stop what is meant to happen. He stops and decides to watch his son instead. Against the radiance from the setting sun, Feipeng looks like an empire knight fighting the so-called “evil” Hun. Feipeng’s father knows that evilness of the enemies is nothing but propaganda, but he doesn’t understand that an empire knight is the least man his son wants to be. What he desires is only the brilliance of the sun. 

Soon enough, Feipeng arrives at the brick piles that once were the Great Wall and the Great Leader. “Doesn’t Great mean eternity?” Feipeng asks himself, confused. But he has no answer to his question. Under the ever-burning Sun, he doesn’t see any Greatness but only piles of fallen bricks.

“Dad never allows me to cross the border. I will do it with Zhu Yue today to reach the sun. Across the border is Zhu Yue’s home. But where is mine?” Standing in the ruins Feipeng ponders silently. He is not good at thinking deeply, and he is well aware of it. After a while he decides just to finish what he started. He steers the horse to see his father’s face once again and turns it towards the territory of the Huns. “This could be the last time I see you as Feipeng, my father. Tomorrow I will become part of the Sun.” He kicks the horse.

Hum. Hum. Hum… 

Hundreds of meters from the ruin, Feipeng’s father sees his son turning his back to him with a sound of thunder. He knows it’s not the thunder that he hears, but the rumble of the Hun’s war drums. He saw them once during the War. 

“So—, that’s it.” Far away he catches a bright sight of the excited Zhu Yue suddenly trying to shake his son off its back and fly at where the war drums roar. Maybe because of the shock from the drumroll, this time Feipeng is too slow to let the rein go. He is dragged by the black horse for a few seconds until the lower part of his body bumps into a hard rock and breaks his leg.

The drumroll continues and the Sun shines at the fallen bricks just like any other day in the meadow. The father sighs and goes to pick up his son.

亖

An army recruiting officer arrives at the border village of the father and the son.