So, did Pu Songling have a dream lover? And who is this dream lover of his? In fact, Pu Songling's dream lover was his friend Sun Hui's concubine Gu Qingxia. However, as the saying goes, "A friend's wife is not to be deceived". How could Pu Songling, a great literary figure, have any improper thoughts about his friend's concubine? In fact, looking through the relevant historical materials can see the beginning and end of this little-known sad and miserable love affair. To say the least, we have to start from Pu Songling's friend Sun Hui. Sun Hui, the word tree hundred, and the word An Yi, is Pu Songling's hometown. In 1671, Pu Songling was invited to Baoying County, where Sun Hui was the magistrate, to be the guest of honor. Sun Hui's concubine, Gu Qingxia, not only sang and danced well, but also liked to recite poems and make couplets. When Sun Hui met with his friends, he often brought Gu Qingxia with him. It was at this time that Gu Qingxia began to appear in Pu Songling's poems.
That year, Pu Songling wrote at least four poems about Gu Qingxia, even from these four poems can be seen in Pu Songling's love for this beautiful girl in Jiangnan. "For the selection of the trousseau poem a hundred, the tone of each piece of musk orchid cozy. The warbler's voice is truly unique, and I am happy to pay Ke'er to sing and listen to them." Pu Songling once chose one hundred poems from the Tang Dynasty for Gu Qingxia's trousseau, so that she could recite them as if they were yellow warblers singing. Pu Songling called Gu Qingxia "Ke'er", and "Ke'er" means someone who satisfies one's heart. Gu Qingxia did not disappoint Pu Songling's ardent expectations. Pu Songling said in "Listening to Qingxia's Poetry": "The sound of her voice is so beautiful that it refreshes the heart. Like a willow in March, I listened to the oriole in the wine." This is a poetic depiction of Gu Qingxia's poetry. Pu Songling felt that listening to Gu Qingxia's poetry was like listening to the oriole's cries. As you can imagine, Gu Qingxia was quite young, had a good voice and a good form, like a birdie.
Soon after, Pu Songling wrote "another long sentence": "The flag pavilion painted wall is lower, Yash is still stained with powder and dai fragrance. I would rather have a confidant for a thousand years, and I love to sing about the color of the trees hidden in Zhaoyang." This poem still describes Gu Qingxia's poetry, and there is a line stating that "Qingxia loves to hold the clouds at an angle". This shows that Pu Songling listened to Gu Qingxia's poetry not once or twice, but many times, and he knew which poem Gu Qingxia liked to recite the most. The reason why Pu Songling liked to listen to Gu Qingxia's poems is that he was in love with this talented girl from Jiangnan.
Besides, Sun Hui, a man of suave and elegant, surrounded by a group of concubines, he was also looking for flowers everywhere, often indulged in the intoxication of paper, "phengqi a faction of embracing the red makeup", "the young girl to help on the ivory bed", to do his concubines is actually very painful, like the As Pu Songling wrote in one of the poems in the "Playing for Sun Shubai" series: "It is the second watch of the night, where is Tanlang drunk on Yaoxiang? Lingbo dew wet and lethargic, leaning against the dangerous fence to see the moonlight." This is undoubtedly writing about Gu Qingxia's feelings: she hoped that Sun Hui would treat her with more care and warmth, but Sun Hui did not do so. In his mind, no matter how young and beautiful Gu Qingxia was and how good she was at writing poems and composing poems, she was just one of his several ordinary concubines. Sun Hui could go outside to admire the "beautiful woman's voice" and "laughingly put the golden hairpin on the jade pot", he could go home to other concubines' rooms and make love to them, and he could also make eyes with the maids, just as Pu Songling wrote in another stanza of "Playing for Sun Shubai": "The cunning maid does not understand the hatred of the east wind, and laughingly breaks the flower branches to play with Jade Lang."
Sun Hui is a woman of the world, a wide range of love affairs, Gu Qingxia can only be in loneliness alone in the room. Sun Hui has too many concubines and they are jealous of each other, and this embarrassing situation even appears in Pu Songling's poems. He wrote in "The Feast of the Hundred Households": "I have an erection in the back room, and it does not hurt to open a bottle and drink. Who is Zhao Yan? He is the one who allows his eyes to send him away." As long as Sun Hui looked at any woman, the other women made a scene, and drinking at the family banquet was not painful. Sensitive, weak Gu Qingxia in such a "sea of jealousy" in the storm, how helpless, how pitiful.