In the last years of the Southern Dynasty, Emperor Wen of Sui Emperor Yang Jian successfully annexed Southern Chen and Northern Qi and established the Sui Dynasty. At this time, there were still several small countries in the south, and Chen was one of them, and the capital of the country was located in the prosperous Jiankang, which is now Nanjing. The Sui Dynasty had long set its sights on these small states in the south, ready to unify the whole of China.
Xu Deyan, as a close minister of Chen Shubao, the emperor of Chen State, was fortunate to marry the emperor's sister Princess Lechang as his wife, and the two were deeply in love and loved each other very much. However, at that time, Chen's internal affairs were corrupt, and the trend of unification of the world was irreversible. Xu Deyan was deeply worried and foresaw that the country would eventually suffer a catastrophe.
One day, he said to his wife with a sad face: "There may be a war soon, and I will have to protect the emperor, and I am afraid that our husband and wife will be forced to separate." But as long as we are alive, there will always be a time to meet again. We should leave a token as a proof of our reunion in the future. After speaking, Xu Deyan took out a round bronze mirror, divided it into two, kept half for himself, and handed the other half to his wife, telling her to keep it properly, and said: "If we are separated, on the fifteenth day of the first month of each year, we will ask someone to take this half of the mirror to the market to sell." As long as I live, I will go and seek to reunite with you on the basis of this half of the mirror. ”
Soon, Emperor Wen of Sui, Yang Nuanran, who had already unified the north, sent troops to attack Jiankang, the capital of Chen, and Chen was destroyed, the king was killed, and Xu Deyan was forced into exile. Princess Lechang was given as a captive to the minister Yang Su as a concubine.
Xu Deyan, who was in exile, heard that his wife was in Daxing, Kyoto, in Sui, which is now Xi'an, Shaanxi, and rushed there to inquire about his wife's whereabouts. In the dead of night, he would always take out that half of the mirror and reminisce about the good times he spent with his wife. And Princess Lechang, although she lives a rich life in Yang Su's official mansion, she always thinks about her husband in her heart, and often touches the half of the mirror and reminisces about the past.
Finally, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month has arrived. Xu Deyan rushed to the bustling market and saw an old man selling half a copper mirror at a high price. Since no one was willing to pay a premium for half a mirror, the old man wandered the market. Xu Deyan pretended to be interested in buying, and when he looked closely, it was really his wife's half of the mirror. It turned out that this old man was a servant of the Yang Mansion and was entrusted by Princess Lechang to come to find a husband. So, Xu Deyan wrote a poem and handed it to the servant to bring back. The poem reads:
The mirror has gone but no one has returned, and Chang'e's shadow has only disappeared.
The implication of this poem is that the mirror and the person have left, but the mirror has returned and the person has not returned. Just as there is no shadow of Chang'e in the moon, only the light of the bright moon.
After Princess Lechang saw her husband's half-sided bronze mirror and poems, she thought that she and her husband were close to the end of the world, and it was difficult to see each other, and she was grief-stricken, her face was haggard, and she didn't think about tea and dinner. Yang Su asked again and again, only to learn the reason, and was also moved by the true feelings of the two. He immediately sent someone to summon Xu Deyan into the mansion and set up a banquet to celebrate. Everyone in the house was amazed by the reunion of Xu Chen and Yang Su's magnanimity and adult beauty. After the banquet, the husband and wife returned to their hometown in Jiangnan hand in hand. This good story has been widely sung, so there is an allusion to "reuniting after breaking the mirror", which has been passed down to this day.