But like every child, I had stories to tell. Curved in my memory is how my grandma stressed or skipped every word in the tale of the eighth goddess. Needless to say that I tossed and turned while listening to my grandma's feeble yet resounding voice, though I could never grasped the true meaning of her words. Maybe the story was so told that it could not be condensed or deciphered, like Chinese life--sad to the bone marrow but kept on going with remarkable resilience.

In China, many people know that Heaven only has seven goddesses attending the seven holy flowers--peony, red rose, lotus flowers, azalea, white rose, lily, chrysanthemum. But what they don't know or have forgotten is that there used to be eight goddesses attending eight flowers. Narcissus was once a heavenly beauty and Bayan Har, the Goddess of Narcissus, the youngest and the most beautiful. This is the story no body ever tells. I know this because I was told while sick and dying. I survived my fate and they could not take the story away from me.

Bayan Har's bad fortune started on an annual trip to the earth. You could say that it was Bayan Har's fault because when the eight sisters from the heaven met a goat shepherd named Qinling who lived on the Yellow Earth Plateau in central China, Bayan Har fell in love with him. Goddesses are not allowed to have human passion, you see. If she had kept her passion inside her little heart, nothing would ever have happened. But she was beside herself. Bad things usually happen when one loses control, so I was told. One starry night, Bayan Har walked out of her heavenly chamber, descended to Qinling and got married with the shepherd.

This made Wangmu Niangniang extremely mad. The invincible queen mother was a tyrannical keeper of the goddesses. What Bayan Har did was of course considered unspeakably licentious, and immediate action was taken and heavenly troops were mobilized. For the powerful Mother of the Jade Emperor two days was all it was needed, Bayan Har was captured and expelled to the mountainous west of China, hundreds of miles away from the Qinling Mountains and her shepherd.

It is really hard to determine whether it was good fortune or bad, one heavenly day equals to an earthly year. Two heavenly days were plenty for the goddess' children to be born. The secret is that nobody knows whether the children were short or tall, ugly or beautiful, boys or girls, and those who knew have kept their mouths shut till death takes over their desire and ability to speak.

It was so long ago that time has erased Bayan Har from people's memories. Only the mountains in the west still bear her name. It was far and cold.

The west of China was too cold for Narcissus flower to bloom. Bayan Har was turned into a rock and she can only stand in that bitter cold gazing toward the east. Standing day and night, tears stream down from her freezing cheeks.

When streams came down from Western Mountains, they were small. But small streams poured together, that was how the big river came into form. The river was sent by the goddess to nurse the Yellow Earth Plateau where her children live.

But the fierce river also cut right through the yellow earth and tore the chest of the plateau apart. Bleeding, the plateau colored the river and the crystal-clear tears of the Goddess of Narcissuses became muddy. The muddy color thus became the name of the river. The Yellow River, my child.

Wangmu Niangniang was smart enough to know why the river ran to the east. This display of passion had to be stopped, you see. So she led a parade of her seven goddesses to the wilderness between the Qinling Range and Bayan Har Range. A classic episode of "scaring monkeys by killing the chicken" was put into motion by the almighty: as she stamped her three-inch golden lotus (bond foot), lightning struck and thunder rolled, forest wailed and the ocean surged in distance, a huge mole-hill sprouted from nowhere to stand in the way of the Yellow River and forced the river to re-route as it takes a hard left turn to the north, all the way to Mongolia where there are no trees.

The Yellow River carries a mission of love, for its formation is to nurture the yellow earth and its people. Thus the river stubbornly stays around the yellow earth. That left turn and many other bumps and turns forced by mole-hills and mountains only allow the river more time to wind around the Yellow Earth Plateau. The River comes back, my child, forced or willed, all the way from Mongolia to reach its original route at the Tongguan Pass.

But, the river of that embarrassing color are not allowed to embrace the Qinling Mountains.

December, 1994