REMEMBRANCE 1

The summer sunlight in the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar (June in Gregorian calendar) was very hot and blazing. The wind blew so hard it dried the skin instead of chilling out. Dust was whirling, making eyes sore. Ignoring that annoyance, Zhu Su kept steering his horse, moving along the magnificent corpse's parading entourage to the palace mausoleum, Ming Xiao Ling.

People were crying along the way. Even those who did not cry were showing gloomy expressions. Today was indeed the national day of mourning. The death day of the Ming Emperor.

The Hongwu Emperor died at the age of 71, after suffering from a chronic illness due to aging that was totally incurable.

Zhu Su himself, neither cried as his father's concubines and his younger sisters did, nor made a sigh of sadness like some of his brothers or niblings acted. He just kept silent. Because he was not certain of his true feelings.

Too many feelings dismayed in his mind. His mind was totally in a mess right now, yelled and shrieked, puffed up his mind, and choked his chest.

The long and exhausting trip to the palace mausoleum located far outside the city was unable to eliminate the hassle in Zhu Su's mind. In fact, his tiredness made his misery more severe.

The main point was, he was not sure whether he was sad with the death of his father, or not.

In front of him, the funeral train containing his father's enormous coffin was being pulling by dozens of people, it kept on going forward. His eyes caught a view of Zhu Yunwen, who did not stop showing an extremely depressed expression. Zhu Yunwen was his nephew from his eldest brother who would eventually be the next Ming Emperor, since his father - the emperor's eldest son - had died of illness. Turning to the right, Princess Lin'an and Princess Ningguo, his younger sisters, were sobbing. It was clear that they felt lost with the emperor's departure.

Zhu Su did not feel the same.

And the reality made him much more distressed.

Did it mean, he did not love his father?

"The Crown Prince, please enter Da Ming Gate!"

Zhu Yunwen stepped down from his horse. That twenty-one-year-old young prince began to walk through the gates of the palace mausoleum.

"The princes, please enter Da Ming Gate from the Left Door!"

Zhu Su got off his horse. Walking in the second line after Zhu Di, he followed the instruction from the mourning ceremony leader.

"The princesses... the ministers... officials..."

One by one, the whole entourage entered into the mausoleum. Zhu Su looked at the gigantic tomb standing before him. Ming Xiao Ling was a very magnificent palace, specifically designed to house the remains of the emperor. Its magnificent was no less than the palace where he ruled at Yingtian. Behind the mausoleum, the mountain stood tall. Mountain was chosen as funeral area since it was following the philosophy of I Ching * . In I Ching, the Mountain was the representation of Trigram Geng, and associated with Termination, Rest, and Tomb. This majestic mountain was undoubtedly tranquil. The sound of chirping birds could be vaguely heard from between the grove of trees.

Fu Huang, have you been resting in peace right now?

"Do kowtow to pay respect for four times!"

All princes, princesses, ministers, and other members of the entourage knelt down and touched the ground with the forehead for four times.

"The Crown Prince, please take the wine and present it to the altar."

Instead of paying attention to Zhu Yunwen who became the ritual leader and represented them in carrying out ritual ceremonies, Zhu Su had his mind wander around, looked back on his days with his father when the emperor was still alive.

...

* I Ching = The I Ching or Yi Jing, usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. I Ching is used in a type of divination called cleromancy, which uses apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the text, in which hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching is a matter of centuries' debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and have been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as Yin and Yang and Wu Xing (Five Elements).