A Song to Drown Rivers

The legendary Xi Shi is associated with water. Her early job is said to have been washing silk or gauze in the river, and it is said that when the fish see her reflection on the water’s surface, they are so stunned by her beauty that they forget how to swim. Ann Liang builds on these references to water when talking about Xishi’s beauty, and the changeable nature of water—peaceful and violent, beautiful and dangerous—operates as a motif symbolizing the multifaceted character of Xishi herself. 

Water signals the beginning and end of the story. Xishi’s narrative comes full circle as Fanli save Xishi’s life by a river at the beginning, then fails to save her when she is drowned in the same spot at the end. Between these bookends, water impacts the plot in many ways. Xishi facilitates Goujian’s attack on the Wu kingdom by convincing Fuchai to build a waterway. She accomplishes this manipulation while on a romantic boat ride with the Wu king. The beauty of the lake amplifies Xishi’s own beauty, and just as the fish forget how to swim, Fuchai forgets how to keep his kingdom safe. 

The scalding of Fuchai on this trip by boiling water suggests that, like Xishi herself, water is both beautiful and dangerous. In this moment, water becomes a danger to Xishi herself as her sympathy for his pain causes her to wavers in her hate for him. The water brings them together in a way that is dangerous for Xishi emotionally and for the mission.

While at peace with Fanli, the man she loves, Xishi is depicted sitting by a tranquil, still pond. The quiet water reflects the peace and contentment she feels with Fanli. Similarly, their dream fate (and one of the true outcomes according to some legends) involves sailing calmly around Lake Tai on a fishing boat, enjoying the scenery and the tranquility of sailing. The calm water reflects the peace of their true love.

Jiang also uses the motif of water when Xishi is encountering strife and death in imitation of the river water that will eventually kill her. When she sees Fanli in King Fuchai’s court, she could “hear the violent rushing of blood in [her] ears, like the sound of ten thousand rivers flowing at once” (207). When she is about to kill Fuchai, she again hears the river water rushing violently. The sound of the river that causes her death accompanies any stressful situation for Xishi and is the final hurdle she overcomes in the last pages when she swims across the Yellow River, a name for the underworld, to reach Fanli.

Liang also uses water to emphasize The Fruitless Destruction of War when Xishi compares what is happening to the flow of history. She says, “[M]y life [was] caught in the tides of something so much greater than I was” (216). Like the water of the river she dies in, Xishi has no power over the tides of war and history in which she is swept up.