Ding, dong!

Compared to the peaceful hush of the winter breeze, the distant chiming bronze bells carried a resonance to be revered, and one might say they held the deepest chime on such a fateful day, one where spring was only beginning to blossom.

It was the fifth day of the first lunar month in the Year of the Earth Tiger.

How then would this not be an auspicious day, when it was meant to harness the potent chi of the new year and the awakening earth?

Inside a private chamber located to the east, there was a faint scent of incense from the main hall. The room was made of wooden walls, where a child dressed in plain and unadorned silk, who had yet to grow taller, with innocent yet striking features, sat on a low stool facing a mirror. A tray holding a comb and cloth rested nearby. The seeping light filters through paper-covered latticed windows, casting soft patterns on the floor.

From the outside, two voices could be heard in conversation.

“You always were the one he ran to.” It was a monotone yet calm voice of someone respectable, and the boy was familiar with it. “Jiazha, it's not something that we take lightly, but I know something. This is your wish for your final act of filial love, isn't it? Though this is abrupt, I feel like you've had a conversation with him already.”

The woman named Jiazha giggled, but it was like the gentle and blooming spring, just like her gracious name. “Let me have this, Hanwei. After today, he belongs to the ancestors.”

Then, a laugh echoed, one that did not belong to the man named Hanwei, nor did it resemble Jiazha’s, for it was masculine and a bit hoarse. The stranger said, “Are you seriously letting her in again? The other elders will say my grandnephew Jiawei is still a child!”

“Uncle, my Weiwei will officially enter his coming of age and become a nobleman, though I might say he is too young for such...” Jiazha’s voice quickly faltered, as if she yearned to be part of her son’s last day as a child. “Let this be my farewell for his youth.”

“Fine then! Go on, go on!” The uncle seemed defeated, which made Hanwei chuckle. “Even if I said this would not be appropriate, how could I object when your husband supports such ridiculousness?”

After a while, the woman entered, dressed in a cross-collared blouse and a skirt of plain indigo linen, topped with a yellowish ceremonial robe. Her skin was as white as snow yet as dazzling as springtime, while her hair was tied in a high bun secured with a jade hairpin. Her eyes glimmered with yearning, and she carried the grace of a swan when beheld. With her plum lips and high nose, one might say her face resembled that of her son, who now looked at her through the mirror.

The servant lowered his head and stepped aside to give way to the noblewoman.

“What took you so long, Mother Jiajia?” The boy named Jiawei had eyes tamed like a lamb, his youth not yet taken from him, and when he met his mother’s gaze, there seemed to be something torn between them.

Soon, she began to comb his long yet prideful hair, which had been soaked earlier at the start of the morning ceremony, and his body and spirit had been purified through a performed ritual bathing in a private quarter, as if his own youth had been shed from him.

Jiazha then murmured, “My Weiwei, you know I’m not supposed to enter this chamber, right?”

Not only did her voice falter, but even her soft combing did, her fingers brushing through the strands of his hair.

“I know, and I understand.” Jiawei calmly steadied his composure, never allowing it to waver. “Like the wind that comes and goes, yet leaves no trace of where it has been. What happens here stays here.”

“Everyone present will turn a blind eye, even your father.” Jiazha sighed in relief, but it perhaps lay in the truth that her son was abundant in wisdom. “Your elders are still against this, and they do not acknowledge it…”

“I do not regret it, Mother.”

When Jiazha hearkened that, she couldn't resist to curve her lips in joy. “Neither do I.”

Even Jiawei was mindful that this practice was to be treated as something quite solemn and profound, and Jiazha shouldn’t have been present in the eastern chamber during his hair preparation, as Confucian rituals greatly emphasized gendered roles, where men handled the outer rites and women remained within the inner domestic sphere. Wai could never be nei.

After all, this wasn’t the hairpin ceremony, where a married female relative would typically be the one to comb the girl’s hair. By contrast, this was Guan Li, which should’ve been conducted by a male relative, such as his elders, as it symbolized the transition under male ancestral authority, with the rite following patriarchal customs.

“Even if this were a dream, or another life, I’d always choose you as the one to comb my hair, Mother.” Jiawei smiled too, but there was something reminiscent in it. Could this be a thought of a bittersweet past? 

He might’ve thought so.

“Then let Mother Jiajia make your hair honorable and virtuous.” With every stroke, Jiazha almost let her tears fall from the corners of her eyes. “If I’m to send you into adulthood, then you should be one worthy of reverence. Let them look at you with glory, and shine, and make your mother proud.”

Jiawei blinked slowly as he nodded. “Not only am I twelve, Mother, but even our lineage’s ancestral records say that I can be compared to our great ancestor Jiang Li, and to those noblemen who shared the same fate as me. Didn’t Great Ancestor Jiang Li wear the Guan at the age of twelve?”

Indeed, there are records in the classics that this ceremony had already been practiced since the Dan dynasty and was retained thereafter. Based on the regulations of Dan, males underwent Guan Li at the age of twenty. However, emperors and nobles sometimes performed it earlier so that they could assume roles in governance. Within their bloodline, two notable figures were his great ancestor Jiang Li, who wore the Guan at the age of twelve, and the other was Jiang Yue, who wore it at the age of fifteen.

After his hair was fixed and tied into a topknot, Jiazha held his shoulders and looked at him with a yearning smile.

“Now, now, look at you, Weiwei.” She cupped his cheeks. “It would’ve been nice if I’d been there, right?”

Jiawei hushed his mother. “It’s not your fault, Mother Jiajia.”

“You’re just as striking as your father Hanwei.” Jiazha kissed his forehead. Even with her hands cradling his cheeks and her lips brushing his skin, there was a faint distance, a warmth Jiawei couldn’t quite feel. “When you marry, may it be a woman you’ll love and devote yourself to, and may she love you just the same.”

Something prickled in his chest, like a thousand cuts more terrifying than death.

“I don’t think I’ll ever marry in this life, Mother.”

“Who knows about that? No one can surely tell, not even you.”

“But... would it have been worth it if...” Jiawei, who hadn’t even grown in that moment, felt his tongue falter, his throat dry, and he evaded his mother’s stare. “Forget about it.”

Jiazha gripped Jiawei’s hand.

“It would be worth it.”

When their exchange came to a close, and the moment gave way to what must follow, standing near the eastern stairs, Hanwei then proclaimed, “On this auspicious day, I present my son for the capping. He has reached the age of maturity, and with your presence, we begin!”

Jiawei was escorted by his assistant as he emerged from the eastern chamber into the ancestral hall, walking along the center and proceeding along the central axis of the hall. It was said to be the invisible line that bound the living to the ancestors.

He advanced until he reached the appointed position at the center.

There, he faced north. The ancestral tablets rested at the northern end, presiding over the rite. To face north was to place oneself before the lineage, to be judged and acknowledged by those who came before.

Jiawei then performed his bows in proper order. He bowed deeply to the ancestral tablets, then turned slightly to the east and bowed to the Great Guest, and lastly turned west and bowed to his father and the assembled elders.

But...

When he lifted his head and locked eyes with the Great Guest, whose eyes were bright and button-like, Jiawei’s expression became peculiar.

The Great Guest wore a black one-piece robe, a shenyi, which elevated her amber complexion, one that seemed to harmonize with heaven and earth. Her hair was plain yet formal, arranged in a bun and secured with a modest hairpin. The fabric was of fine silk, but not ostentatious, with a dark blue knee covering and a simple silk belt that lent quiet dignity to her bearing. Blue socks and dark blue shoes completed her attire.

Such simplicity and innocence, an apple of the eye.

His lips twitched as he noticed how young the Great Guest was, as if she were regarded as an elder at such a young age, which was utterly preposterous.

Not only that—

How could the Great Guest be a young lady in the first place?