Exploring Women’s Lives Through Letters: A Ming Healer’s Tale
The letters to “Little Plum” are imagined correspondence from Li Zhenyan, a late Ming–dynasty healer, to her youngest sister. Through them, I explore women’s daily lives and history.
To my darling “Little Plum”,
You will laugh when I tell you this. It sounds like the sort of story people embroider after the fact. But I assure you, I noticed nothing unusual at first.
I had gone, as I often do, to the home of Madam Xu. Her knees trouble her more in damp weather, and the rains have been stubborn this season. I brought the warming paste I make for her joints, the one that smells faintly of ginger and old paper. You remember it. She swears it works better if I sit and talk while it sets.
That afternoon, there was a guest.
He was not introduced to me in any formal way—only as “a friend passing through.” He sat quietly near the window, listening more than speaking. His clothes were plain for a man of learning, and his manner was courteous but unassuming. I assumed him to be another scholar passing the time while waiting for better appointments, as so many do.
Only later did I understand who I had met.
You should know this, sister: women often meet important men without being told they are important.
We are called to the room because someone’s hands ache. Maybe their sleep has gone astray or their temper has grown sharp with age. We are not there to impress, so no one thinks to announce titles.
While I worked, Madam Xu complained about her joints and about her daughter-in-law in the same sentence. She lamented that young women today read too many romances and forget their duties. The guest smiled at all that, just slightly.
He then asked me, politely, whether I believed emotions could cause illness.
I told him yes. Of course they can. What else would grief do if not lodge itself somewhere in the body? What else would longing become if it had nowhere to go?
He nodded as if this were not new to him, but necessary to hear aloud.
When I returned the next week, Madam Xu finally said his name: Tang Xianzu.
You have heard it, I’m sure. Even in our quieter circles, people whisper about his play The Peony Pavilion. Some say it makes young women restless. Some say it teaches dangerous ideas—that feeling can outweigh obedience, that dreams deserve attention.
I smiled at that.
He did not speak of his work directly. Instead, he asked me whether I thought a woman could fall ill from denying her own nature.
I said I had seen it happen.
He seemed pleased by that answer, though I do not know why.
Later, when I thought about it, I realized something important—something I want you to remember.
Men like Tang Xianzu write about emotion as discovery.
Women live it as maintenance.
We are the ones who soothe fevers brought on by sorrow.
We are the ones who hear confessions disguised as complaints.
We are the ones who notice when silence becomes heavier than noise.
When men write plays about longing, people debate whether it is moral.
When women feel longing, we decide whether it will break us—or teach us how to survive.
Before he left, Tang Xianzu thanked me—not for my medicine, but for my candor. He said, “If more people listened to the body, fewer would fear the heart.”
I do not know if he will remember me. I suspect not. That is the way of such meetings.
But I will remember him—not because he is famous, but because he listened as though what I said mattered. Which, sister, is rarer than any published play.
Write soon. Tell me whether the rains have reached you yet, and whether Mother still pretends her joints do not ache.
Your elder sister,
Zhenyan
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