daomingsi, dongshancai.

the butterfly lovers

"In dreamlike splendor the pair danced and weaved higher and higher into the heavens. Were the butterflies not the unfortunate couple, now rejoined in the afterlife?"

...

There once was a girl during the Tang Dynasty who wanted to do more than she was expected to at the time, and she found a way to overcome it.

Her name was Dong Shancai, and what she wanted most was to learn. Her father was different from the other fathers at the time, and when she was young, he had taught her to read and write, which only made her want to go out in the world to learn even more.

But in ancient China, it was unheard of for a girl to attend schools. Mostly because there wasn't one school that would accept a female student. So Shancai cut off her hair, binded her chest, and did the utmost to disguise herself as a man. She then traveled the long and treacherous journey to an academy in Hangzhou city.

At the academy, she met a boy.

This was the kind of boy opposite from everything she would consider in an ideal man. He was rude, obnoxious, and full of himself. So she ignored him for a while and immersed herself in her studies— after all, that was what she'd come to the academy for.

But she couldn't ignore him forever.

Especially as when he wasn't with his three other equally obnoxious friends, he would follow her around, doing his utmost to annoy her. Well, she thought it was to annoy her, but later she would realize it had to do with something a little different.

Slowly, though she would deny it if you asked, she began to become used to his constant presence. She even grew to be fond of him. But it was hard for her sometimes; acting like a man in front of him, and seeing the confusion in his eyes when she tried showing the slightest bit of affection towards him. Because of her appearance, he misunderstood her each time.

At least there was the small comfort for her in talking to him about everything else, things that were safe in those times to talk about between two men. In time she grew to love this man. . . and Shancai felt that he loved her back, too, and so it was one day when she was nearing the end of her schooling that she decided to risk telling him the truth.

However, before even noon that day came a messenger from her family to the school. This messenger told her that she was urgently needed at home, due to her father's sudden illness.

It was a long and bittersweet trip back home, and at the midpoint of the way, Si— which was what the boy she had grown to love was called— dropped the pretense of accompanying Shancai all the way back, and bade her goodbye.

Shancai tried to hide her tears at his farewell, but he noticed, and his jaw clenched in pain.

"Little brother, why do you cry? We will surely meet again." But there were tears in Si's eyes as well. There was something about this boy that made him feel like he was losing something great by telling him goodbye.

...

Little did he know that Shancai hadn't disguised herself as a man to learn at the academy for so many years for nothing. In addition to falling in love with him, she had also grown much smarter. Right before the journey back home, she had begged her favorite teacher, an old woman named Yu Sao, to inform Si of her secret and why she could never have divulged it before.

A few days after her departure, Yu Sao stayed true to her promise to Shancai, and told Si everything that Shancai had wanted him to know: not just that she was actually a woman, but of her love for him and how she believed that they would never be truly parted.