Meng Po's Tea for Forgotten Memories

Meng Po's Tea of Forgotten Memories 

Deity involved:​​ Meng Po (Grandma Meng), the Goddess who helps deceased souls to forget their past lives before reincarnation from Chinese mythology

“You’re back again?”

She stands on the banks of the river. Poppy flowers waver in the crispy wind. The souls of the deceased line up, their faces twisted into three-hundred-and-six types of emotions. 

The woman standing in front of me is in her sixties. Her curly hair is dyed an auburn red, trendy for women her age. Well, she won’t look like this for long.

“Sorry, who are you?” 

The woman’s face shows no sign of hatred for the unfairness of life. Maybe it's because she had lived so long, with both her kids having their own families. She might have wished for more years, but the sudden end did not appear to make her bitter.

“I think you know who I am.” I smile and wink at her. She furrows her brows. Like most older ladies, she does not appreciate the youthful and playful gesture. “Everyone crossing this bridge knows who I am. I am Meng Po, the aunty named Meng. Mortals drink my tea before moving into the Cycle of Rebirth so they can be reincarnated.”

“I know that,” she said, her voice as low as a whisper. Her big doe eyes sparkle as if being filled with tears as she stares down at the cup of tea in my hands. 

“What? You’re in doubt of my cooking skills?” I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t worry too much about it. The tea tastes like whatever you want it to taste. It’s supposed to be comforting, not cruel.”

Surprisingly, she lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Not cruel? How is a cup of leaf water that can force people about everything about this life not cruel?” 

I give a sly smile. The woman’s laughter sounds light, like a crane unfurling its wings—a bird of heaven. 

“Forgetting is not cruel,” I say. “Life is cruel. Life hurts you. It forces you to grow up because people are unkind and food is scarce. It makes you believe in love and union even when your lover is doomed to betray and break your heart. It takes everything you once held dear and crushes it beneath the palm of time. How is forgetting a life like that cruel?”

“You don’t understand.” She pinches her nose. I have seen this before. She’s looking for a fight. 

The wrinkles on her face fade a little. Her hair turns from the dyed auburn back into its natural raven black. “You never experience life. You stand there and offer that goddamn soup. You never fall in love with a single moment and use your whole life to protect it. The kiss my husband left on my neck on our wedding day. The warmth that I felt when I first held my newborn baby. The tangled limbs when I fell asleep on my sofa with my friends after a crazy night. How can you claim life is cruel when you never see the good parts?”

My smile fades. She has a point. 

“You are right,” I say. “I don’t see the point. Did you know I have a soul too? I might be the guard of the Bridge between Life and Death, the one who gives people a fresh start. But I choose to not put my soul through all the pain that comes with being alive. If I never meet someone who could break my heart, then my heart never needs to be mended. If I never know the sweetness of a kiss, then I do not need to long for a love that will ultimately leave. If I never step into the Cycle of Rebirth, I will be content. I would have been emotionless, so I would have stayed as I was intended to be—whole.”

“Then why don't you give it a try?” A flicker of hope and mischief passes through her dark dark eyes. She is willing to make a bet against a goddess, all to have a go at a rebirth with her memories intact. “Come with me. I can be a companion in your new life. Maybe not one who will never leave, but I’ll show you what it means to be alive.”

“Aw.” I lick my lips. “A sweetheart like you deserves to be preserved in a house of gold. Forever protected like a princess or a flower so that it never sees a storm.”

“Funny.” She finally relents when she realizes that she cannot bargain with Meng Po. “I’ll just take that.” She snatches the cup of tea from my hands and gulps it down. 

“Slowly,” I utter. “You don’t want to choke.”

“Screw you, asshole,” she curses me. Her skin becomes tender like a baby. “See you never.”

She steps through the bridge through the Cycle of Rebirth. 

“Hm,” I shake my head thoughtfully. “Sorry, can’t do that.”

***

The next time I see her, she tries to jump from the bridge into the River of Death. 

I sigh before bending down to lend a hand and drag her up onto the bridge. I am both amused and surprised at her indignation.  

“Ugh.” Her long dark hair that falls to her hip is soaked with shredded pieces of soul. “Bleh. That water quality definitely does not meet regulation standards. You sure you shouldn’t ask Yan Luo King to do some environmental preservation.”

“Can’t do,” I answer drily. “On the level of ghost officials, my ranking is at the very bottom. The cashier and receptionist of the Underworld Household, if you will.”

“Wait.” She pauses. “‘Ghost officials.’ Does that mean you are a ghost, too? I thought ‘Meng Po’ is more of a person than a job title.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “You really think Meng Po, an old aunty called Meng, is a real name?”

She shrugs. This time after death, she appears as a teenage girl. I don’t even want to go into it and guess what kind of tragedy has befallen her at such a young age. So much for tasting the joy of life for her. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, girls in ancient times didn't even have names. They just had their last names added with the word ‘shi’ at the end.”

“Welp,” I said. “Patriarchy is a bitch. That part didn’t change in the five-thousand years of the Middle Kingdom.”

“China, that’s what they call us now.” She chuckles, almost finding it funny for some reasons beyond her own comprehension. “So much has changed since then.”

I pause. The water of the River of Death howls as if it has noticed something is wrong. It feels like the stirring of a human heart. 

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe you should go now.” 

“Right,” she replies. “See you next time?”

I don’t give her any sign that I heard her and hand her the tea cup. I wonder if it still tastes like her favorite jasmine tea.

“Wait.” Before the tea enters her mouth, she turns towards me as if wanting to remember. “If Meng Po is just a title, what is your true name?”

I lower my head to her as if saying goodbye. “If I could win one person’s heart, I’d spend it with them until our hair turns white.”

But then, she has already forgotten everything. I know that as I watch her soul enter the Cycle of Rebirth. 

She has not always been the shape of a girl. Over millennia, I have watched her become a cricket, a magpie, and a Siberian tiger. I have watched her drown, burn, and die of old age. I have carved my gaze on her as she falls in love with men and women and those in between. I linger as she has sons and daughters and even spirits that have the blood of gods. 

And every single time, I meet her at the end of the River of Death. Me holding a cup of tea, reciting poems by the famous West Han dynasty poet Zhuo Wen Jun. 

“If I could win one person’s heart, I’d spend it with them until our hair turns white.”

She smiles politely at me, or calls me a heartless hypocrite, or accuses me of being a minion of the Yan Luo King. She bid farewell to me as a stranger, as a slightly friendly acquaintance, or a foe she swears to not forget after she reincarnates. 

Never once does she remember. 

Sometimes, she even asks my name. 

I still remember the first time I met her on the River of Death. 

She had worn the attire of the Empress of Great Han, even after being banished to the Cold Palace for decades on end. Her tears left permanent marks on her beautiful chestnut face, with two stains dripping from her eyes to her chin. She was thin like a willow branch. 

I waited for her on the River of Death. I held a bouquet of spider lilies against my chest. It’s the flower of death and poison, the flower of temptation and self-destruction. 

There was no other flower that could grow on the banks of the River of Death. Believe me, oh, believe me, I have tried. 

When her eyes landed on me, she didn’t look delighted at all. Even after I had died for her. After my body was stretched to its limit by horses that were running in five different directions. My flesh flew and tainted the city square crimson like spider lilies. The capital punishment of dynasties of the Middle Kingdom. We really are a group of people who value tradition above all. 

“Why are you still here?” Her voice was high-pitched. Years of isolation had flattened her ego and smoothed her edge. “Haven’t you done enough?”

“I have done nothing but love you,” I whispered. “You asked me to wear men's clothing, so I did. You asked me to teach you crafts of the heavenly court, so I did. You asked me to be your lover, your replacement for Liu Che, so I did.”

“But you are not him.” She covered her face with her tiny, bony hands. Jade palms, that was how we praised women with small hands. They have hands of jade, we say.

“He doesn’t love you. Don’t you see?” I begged her. The petals of spider lilies began to wilt and drop into the River of Death. Their long, thin petals looked like trails of blood dripping into the water. I felt helpless as I watched them fall. 

“The Han Wu Emperor of the Great Han dynasty. Your cousin who promised you he would build a house of gold to hide you in. Your husband who gave you the place of Empress and rewarded your royal family with even greater wealth. The great Emperor of the Middle Kingdom.” 

I laughed and threw the spider lilies into the air. The crimson blossoms sank as fast as rocks in the limey Underworld atmosphere. They never stood a chance. Flowers of infatuation and doom will never compete with the everlasting orchid of the Emperor. 

“You still love him. You will always love him.”

She stared at me as if staring into the eyes of a madwoman. As if I wasn’t the one who she held in her arms in the dead of night. In the cold palace walls where none has set food to warm her bed, except for me. 

Me, Chu Fu. The witch who seduced the Empress of Han. The one who led the Empress to use witchcraft to try to keep the Emperor by her side. 

They rarely remember me. They either paint me as a seductress or name us as the first-ever love story between two women in the history of the Middle Kingdom. 

How wrong they were. There was never a love story between me and the soul that used to be called Chen A’jiao. They named me after a type of clothing women wore. They named her after her arrogant and spoiled nature. 

A’jiao, the spoiled one. Chu Fu, her plaything to replace the Emperor. 

Maybe she is right. Women never had names in history. 

I stared while she combed through her delicately styled hair. Her hand slid across those cold black threads like it was made of jade. She was made of jade. Chen A’jiao was born into royalty and died as one as well.

“Goodbye, my princess.” 

I smiled and stepped back into the clear surface of the River of Death. The moment before I fell into the water, I saw exactly who I was. 

I was the one who would always be waiting for the woman who had forgotten me to come back. 

The River diluted my soul. It seeped into my veins, and I heard the cries of ghosts of millenniums.

Pain. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. All the emotions that humans left behind as they drank down the Meng Po’s soup. All of it was contamination in the River of Death. 

There is a saying in Old Chinese: men are made of soil, and women are made of water.

Well, from that day on I became the very water that would wash away humanity’s remorse and bring about new beginnings. 

Two thousand years have passed since then. And yet here I am. 

Oh, look. I can see her silhouette again. 

“Hello.” I smile, and my hands tentatively present the cup of tea. “Are you ready to forget?” 

She looks at me like a stranger. Again and again.