구운몽: 버들 노래

When Soyu reached Huayin in Huazhou, the spring willows hung green along the roadside. A neat two-storey house could be seen through the willows, and Soyu stopped in his tracks at the lovely sight. Soyu composed a poem in praise of the willows and recited it aloud in a clear voice.

Upstairs in that house lived Jin Chaebong, the daughter of Censor Jin, and the sound of the poem woke her from an afternoon nap. Chaebong opened the window and looked out, and her heart was deeply stirred at the sight of the fine young man reciting. When their eyes met, Chaebong blushed and quickly shut the window.

Chaebong thought to herself, "If I let a man like this go by, I will regret it all my life." Her father was away in the capital and could not be asked, so Chaebong decided to find the courage herself. She wrote a poem in reply, gave it to her old nurse, and asked her to find the young scholar and deliver it.

Soyu was overjoyed when he received Chaebong's poem, and he solemnly promised to marry her. The two of them agreed to meet again the next day and make their engagement formal. Soyu went back to his inn, and he lay awake all night thinking of Chaebong, his heart racing.

But at dawn came the sound of drums and shouting in the distance, and a rebel army came pouring into the town. People scattered in every direction without even time to gather their things, and Soyu fled with his servant deep into the Lantian mountains.

In the mountains Soyu met a Taoist sage, who taught him to play the geomungo zither and the bamboo flute. When he came down from the mountains some days later, the town had been burned, and nothing but traces were left of Censor Jin's house. When he asked around, people told him that Censor Jin had been punished for helping the rebels, and that Chaebong had been taken away somewhere. Soyu stood weeping beneath the willows, then went home to his mother with a heavy heart.