【正确答案】 Six Chapters of a Floating Life
Shen Fu
I am by nature candid and unconstrained, but Yun was scrupulous meticulously polite. When I would occasionally put a cape over her shoulder or help her adjust her sleeves, she would invariably say, "I beg your pardon." If I gave her a handkerchief of a fan, she would always stand to take it. At first I didn't like her acting like this, and once I said to her, "Do you think that by being so polite you can make me do as you like? For it is said that "Deceit hides behind too much courtesy." Yun blushed, "Why should respect and good manners be called deceit?" "True respect comes from the heart, not from empty words." I said. "There is no one closer to us than our parents," Yun said, arguing with me now. "But how could we merely respect them in our heart while being rude in our treatment of them?" "But I was only joking." I protested. "Most arguments people have begun with a joke." Yun said. "Don't ever argue with me for the fun of it again—it makes me so angry I could die!" I pulled her close to me, patted her back, and comforted her. Her anger passed and she began to smile.
Our only neighbors were an old couple who raised vegetables for a living. Learning we had come to escape the summer's heat, they came to call on us, bring gifts of fish from the pond and vegetables from the garden. I tried to pay for them, but they would not take anything, so Yun made them some shoes, which we finally prevailed on them to accept. It was then the beginning of seventh month, with dark shadows among the green trees. There was a breeze across the water, and the songs of cicadas were everywhere. The old couple also made us a fishing pole, and I took Yun fishing in the deep shadow of the willow trees. When the sun was going down, we would climb to the top of the small hill and admire the twilight. We used to make up impromptu poems there, one line of which was "Beast-like clouds eat the setting sun, the bow-like moon shoots falling stars."