Sorrows

Emperor Yao gave his two daughters to Shun, and then made Shun his heir. Emperor Shun was good and humble, and when he died they buried him south of Dongting Lake, on the beach at Xiaoxiang, where two rivers meet where his two wives wept. They say the spots on the bamboo by the Xiang River are from their tears. They say they became river goddesses. They are daughters of the supreme deity, Di. The tears of these rivers fill the sea, thousands of miles deep. They say that Yao disowned his son or that Shun turned his father against him. They say that Yao couldn’t turn back the floods, a dragon regarded as a fish. They say that his ministers turned against him, rats pretending to be tigers. Their sorrows are the people’s sorrows. I stand near Shun’s grave, gazing at the nine mysterious mountains, and their sadness is my sadness. Even now, anything I say can be used against me.