Hang the white cloth outside the city for me. Three hundred dye vats once stood in Luancheng. Now all are brim…
Hang the white cloth outside the city for me.
Three hundred dye vats once stood in Luancheng. Now all are brimming with blood and fire. The secret formulas have gone south with the craftsmen, yet the last bolt of white cloth has come at last to this, a flag of surrender, perhaps soon to serve as my own shroud.
I am ashamed. Yesterday the court's transfer order arrived, every line stamped in vermilion to congratulate me on my promotion. So in the end, the bones of a whole city are worth no more than a single phrase in another man's mouth: losses in battle.
When the white flag is raised, I ask only that you listen to the wind. If you hear the clatter of looms, perhaps it is my wife opening a new dye shop by the Bridge of Oblivion. She always said that in her next life, she would dye the color of first dawn.
My story began with making spring garments in Luancheng, and now it ends with clothing Luancheng in mourning white.
That too is a kind of ending.