Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

  Since there is “no such strong prejudice against a woman having a share in her husband’s public work as exists in Japan” (Tseng 78), Pu builds upon the prudent advice in the feminist-Confucianist texts and portrays women who are conventional in fulfilling their domestic duties but highly unconventional in their ability to participate successfully in economic affairs, ordinarily considered a male bastion. The title character of “Bai Qiulian,” for example, helps her merchant/scholar husband, Mu Changong, make a fortune thanks to her ability to anticipate commodity prices. Sheng Yunmian performs her mother-inlaw’s household labor in “Chen Yunqi,” attending to the receiving and paying of all bills, leading Zang to credit her with the fact that the family is “warmly-dressed and well-fed.” After a man named Ma marries the title character of “Huangying,” she proves so prosperous in business dealings that she acquires an adjacent property, splitting her time between the two households. Her husband has no desire to be wealthy, but Huangying refuses to be poor; she resolves their dispute by providing separate accommodations for Ma so she can focus on business.

  Although there are occasionally some related drawbacks to the unions, Pu’s stories involving marriages (or even just sincere relationships built on emotional commitments) between mortal men and supernatural women (fox fairies, ghosts, the spirits of fauna or flora, etc.) often build upon economic success stories (with a rags-to-riches rise for deserving men, frequently impoverished scholars) like the ones above to create an idyllic domestic fantasy, as in “Chu Suiliang.” Chu, a fox immortal, repays a debt from another lifetime to Zhao, curing him of a seemingly fatal illness. Then she responds like a wife, but with magical speed and efficacy: elaborate blankets and quilts appear upon his bed, lights brighten the cottage as a silvery glow reflects off of “scrolls of paper that were stuck to the walls like mirrors,” transforming everything in the house and covering a small table with delicacies and wine. To complete the fantasy, they laugh and drink together, then at nightfall, “they made love and slept in the same bed, like husband and wife.”

  Pu is far from an untrammeled optimist, however, when it comes to the subject of women as helpmates and problem solvers, reflecting the sterner voice of the feminist-Confucianist literature where undutiful or unfilial wives/mothers are concerned. In Book Five (“On Serving the Parents”) of the Analects for Women, the Song sisters offer this admonition: every woman “should revere her parents. Every morning get up early and inquire after their health,” serve “food when they are hungry, and bring tea when they are thirsty,” particularly avoiding the example of “those obstinate and unfilial women who are clamorous” (Wang 329). Supernatural punishment awaits the wife in “Du Xiaolei,” who is so unfilial that she puts dung beetles in the dumplings that she gives her blind mother-inlaw, rather than the meat purchased by her husband for that purpose. When the wife turns spontaneously into a pig, the county magistrate dispatches men “to take the pig and exhibit it everywhere as a warning to people against unfilial behavior.” The friction between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is a relatively common feature in Chinese literature, perhaps as the “normal consequences of living and working so closely together, competing for the affection of the son” (Gross and Bingham 89). “The Taiyuan Court Case” (taiyuan yu) features a scrupulous daughter-in-law opposing an atypical mother-in-law who carries on a sordid affair with a village troublemaker. The daughter-in-law tries to dissuade the man from staying all night with the mother-in-law, so in retribution her angry mother-inlaw files a complaint against her, claiming that she’s the adulterous woman. A canny magistrate ferrets out the truth, with the mother-in-law and her lover appropriately punished.

  The behavior of unfaithful or shrewish spouses, petulant and self-serving, is the antithesis of the principles and responses modeled in the feminist-Confucianist texts. To maintain harmony in the home, the astute wife learns to bend with the wind, to trade compliance for high regard. Thus the Analects for Women in Book Seven (“On Serving the Husband”) judiciously advises wives not to show resentment towards a husband’s annoyance with her, but to “withdraw and beg him” to be calm: “Restrain your anger and remain silent. Don’t learn from those foolish women who are incessantly quarrelsome.” The woman must also protect her spouse’s physical integrity: “Prepare and serve all food diligently. Don’t let hunger and thirst cause him to become thin and miserable” (Wang 334).

  These lessons are pointedly reiterated in “Jinse,” where scholar Wang’s wife, “particularly haughty and arrogant,” surrenders care of her husband to her servants; while she enjoys exquisite tidbits of expensive food, the servants give Wang the cheapest possible fodder and “broken chopsticks to use.” Having had enough of such treatment, Wang decides to hang himself—till Jinse magically appears and takes him to her home inside a cliff. When he continues to harbor suicidal intentions there, a maidservant chides him, “All I have to look forward to in our household is washing the clothes, cleaning out the toilets, feeding the dogs, and carrying the dead to burial,” yet she performs what she considers to be her duty. Jinse eventually reveals to the long-suffering Wang that she’s an exiled immortal, and her elder sister, Yaotai, “has come from far away at my invitation to consolidate our marriage and to act as our home manager until I can follow you to our home.” Announcing himself the happiest man in the world, Wang declares, “Some homes have shrewish women and still others are narrow and small; since I’m so fortunate, it seems that I have no choice but to cling cravenly to life.” By choosing life over self-pity, Wang proves himself worthy of the harmony that his wife foolishly rejected by failing to exercise her domestic authority responsibly. Pu’s canny female characters, on the other hand, understand the wisdom from the feminist-Confucianist tradition that could have given the wife a harmonious home and saved her marriage: the man who thinks himself master of the home may be completely satisfied, but he’s only half right.

  Notes

  1 It’s easy to misconstrue this as the simple byproduct of living in a largely agrarian culture. But consider the social custom of footbinding, the male fetishizing of women’s small feet that provoked the deformation of the feet of millions of little girls and “began at least a thousand years ago” (Jackson 10), following the end of the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). In poorer families, farmers’ wives—even with bound feet—often assisted their husbands in the fields in addition to performing conventional cooking, spinning, and weaving (Ayscough 40-1).

  2 On the relationship of wives and concubines in the household, see the volume two essay, “Purchasing Posterity: Wives and Concubines as Domestic Commodities in Pu’s Tales” (xxi-xxviii). Even with a stable hierarchy in place, however, there’s no guarantee that it will withstand the tests of emotional subjectivity as “Scholar Ji” (ji sheng) suggests when the title character’s desire for two women, Zheng Guixiu and Zhang Wuke, almost destroys him and the two young women.

  3 When the husband was away for an extended time (studying, visiting, or on business), or deceased, the wife became the voice of authority in the household (tempered by other male relatives). The epitaph of a Song dynasty wife, Lady Shao, notes that following her husband’s death, she “called the household together and laid down the rules so that the family could continue in harmony. No one was to usurp her rule.” To ensure that her husband’s directives for them all were remembered and followed, “she had them carved on a screen” (Zheng 21).

  The Tales

  413. Feng the Carpenter

  Provincial governor Zhou Youde initiated the remodeling of a former prince’s residence into an office for various government ministries. At that time, he had assembled a group of workers, and among them was a carpenter named Feng, who was working his shift, staying overnight there at the site.

  Just as he was about to go to sleep that night, he suddenly noticed that the window shade was halfway open so the moonlight was shining in as bright as daytime. In the distance, standing on a short wall, there was a red chicken; as he fixed his eyes on it
, the chicken flew down to the ground.

  Presently a young woman appeared, and with the shade up, Feng was able to sneak a glance at half of her body. He suspected that she was about to have a secret liaison with someone about her same age; he listened quietly, but everyone else there was already fast asleep. His heart pounding selfishly, he secretly hoped she’d mistakenly come to the wrong place.

  In a little while, the young woman passed by his window and walked straight into his heart. Overjoyed, Feng happily kept quiet and didn’t utter a sound while they made love, after which the young woman left. From then on, she came to him there night after night.

  _________

  Provincial governor Zhou Youde: With jurisdiction over Guangdong province, Zhou helped to return families to their homes in 1669, after they’d been forced out by a 1661 government edict (known as the Great Evacuation 遷界令), aimed at suppressing Ming loyalists who were trying to challenge the authority of the Qing dynasty.

  Initially, she remained circumspect as before, but after a while, she decided to speak openly to him. “I didn’t come here by mistake,” she explained, “but, with all respect, I came to be with you.” The two of them began making passionate love every day.

  Later on, once the work there was finished and Feng was starting out to return home, he found the young woman already waiting for him in the open countryside beyond the offices. Feng lived in a village that wasn’t very far from that town, so the young woman followed after him. When they entered his home, however, none of Feng’s family members could see her, and he began to realize that she wasn’t human.

  He continued his relationship with her for a few months, and as his vigor gradually began to dwindle he started to feel increasingly more frightened, so he sent for a sorcerer to drive her away, but the man’s efforts were completely unsuccessful.

  One night, the young woman came in, her clothing and make-up seductively attractive, and faced Feng as she declared, “Everything that happens in this world is fated; if I’m meant to come, you won’t be able to stop me, and if I’m meant to leave, you won’t be able to hold onto me. Now I’ll do as you wish and leave.” Then she disappeared.

  414. Huangying

  Ma Zicai was from Shuntian. For generations, his family had been fond of chrysanthemums, but Ma Zicai was especially so. Whenever he heard that there were some distinctive species for sale, he’d head off to purchase some specimens without hesitating, even if it meant traveling a thousand li.

  One day, a guest from Jinling who was staying in his home happened to comment that his first cousin had one or two species that couldn’t be obtained in the north. With gleeful anticipation, Ma quickly put together the things he’d need for a trip, then accompanied his guest to Jinling. The guest did everything he could to track down the unusual chrysanthemums, and was able to secure two rooted cuttings for him, so Ma wrapped them up and tucked them away like they were precious gems.

  As he was returning home, Ma ran into a graceful-looking, relaxed young man, who was riding a donkey behind a carriage that was painted blue-green. As he drew closer, they began chatting. The young man told him, “My name’s Tao.” His speech was quite refined. Hence when he asked Ma where he’d been, Ma told him the purpose of his trip. “There are no differences among the various species,” said Tao, “except for the ways in which they’re watered and cultivated.”

  _________

  Shuntian: Former name for Beijing.

  Even if . . . a thousand li: Zeitlin notes the similarity of this line to sentiments expressed in the opening couplet of Pu’s poem, “Admiring Chrysanthemums in Sun Shengzuo’s Studio, the Tenth Month”: “My old love of chrysanthemums has become an obsession, / To seek a lovely variety I’d travel a thousand miles” (93-4). Technically, a li is equal to 1/3 mile.

  Jinling: Former name for Nanjing.

  Accordingly, they began to discuss approaches to the art of raising chrysanthemums. Ma was very pleased by this, and asked, “Where were you going just now?”

  “My sister’s become fed up with Jinling,” replied Tao, “so she wants to look for someplace north of the Yellow River to live.”

  Ma happily told him, “Even though I’m poor, I could offer you a place to stay at my humble cottage. If you wouldn’t mind the rustic simplicity, you wouldn’t have to trouble yourself with finding someplace else to stay.” Tao hurried over to the carriage and turned to report the offer to his sister.

  From inside the carriage, a young woman pushed aside its curtains to speak with him, revealing that she was about twenty and a matchless beauty. She looked at her brother and remarked, “The cottage can be small, but the courtyard needs to be rather large.” Ma assured them that this was the case, and hence they both agreed to come home with him.

  South of the residence there was an abandoned vegetable garden, with a tiny shack that had only three or four rafters, which Tao found ideal, and said that they’d move in there. In the morning he went to the northern courtyard, where he tended to Ma’s chrysanthemums. They’d started to dry up and wither, so he pulled them out by the roots and replanted them, invariably bringing every last one of them back to life.

  Thus the brother and sister lived a simple, ascetic life there, but when Tao joined Ma for a meal, Ma noticed that there wasn’t even a cooking fire burning in their little dwelling. Ma’s wife, Lü, who was also fond of Tao and his sister, began frequently taking gifts of food over to their friends. Tao’s sister, whose name was Huangying, was a refined conversationalist, and whenever she passed Lü’s room, she’d stop in to chat and help Lü out with her sewing.

  Tao one day told Ma, “Your family is secure but not very well off, and I ask myself how I can keep allowing my dear friend to fill my mouth and belly all the time. So my plan now is to sell chrysanthemums to make a living.”

  Ma was a plain-speaking man, so when he heard Tao’s words, he considered the idea beneath his friend, and told him, “I took you for a sophisticated person of high character, someone who could live contentedly in poverty, but now what you’re proposing to do would turn the chrysanthemum garden into a marketplace, a disgrace to the yellow flowers there.”

  Tao smiled, and replied, “It’s not greedy for someone to earn enough to feed himself, and flower selling is a perfectly respectable occupation. While a person shouldn’t be devoted solely to acquiring wealth, it certainly makes no business sense to strive to be poor, either.” Ma had nothing to say in response, so Tao got up and went outside.

  From that point forward, whenever Ma discarded damaged stems and inferior plant stock, Tao picked them all up and took them away. Thereafter, he no longer came over to sleep or eat in Ma’s house, unless he was specifically invited to do so.

  Soon afterwards, just as the chrysanthemums were beginning to bloom, Ma heard a noisy clamour outside his gate that sounded like what one would hear in a marketplace. Thinking this strange, he went out to take a peek at what was going on and saw market vendors buying flowers, loading their carts to carry them away, bustling past each other as they filled the road. The flowers were all of strange varieties that Ma had never seen before.

  He was put off by Tao’s crass commodification of the flowers and wanted to sever all contact with him; but then he became angry that Tao had kept all the most beautiful specimens for himself, so he marched to the entrance to the courtyard, intending to denounce his behavior. As he did so, Tao emerged, grasped Ma by the hand, and pulled him inside.

  Ma observed that the abandoned courtyard for a space of half a mu was filled with chrysanthemum beds, and for several rafters’ length outside the little shack, there wasn’t an empty spot of ground. Whenever Ma had previously dug up and removed damaged stock, Tao had taken each cutting, put it back into the ground, and nurtured it; these produced enough viable plants to cover fifty mu, all of which were forming beautiful blossoms of excellent quality: and as he thought about it, Ma recognized that all of the flowers had been cultivated from those that he’d pulled out and thrown away.<
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  Tao entered the little shack, brought out wine and food, then set up a banquet beside the flower beds, announcing, “Though I’m poor, I refuse to live abstemiously, and fortunately this morning I’ve collected a little money so I can certainly provide us enough wine to enjoy ourselves.” In a little while, a voice from inside the shack called for “Third Brother,” with Tao answering and going inside. Presently he returned to offer Ma some choice delicacies, all of which were of superlative taste.

  Accordingly, Ma asked him, “If you’ve got some wealth, why haven’t you betrothed your sister yet?”

  “It’s not the right time,” replied Tao.

  “What time do you mean?” he inquired.

  “Forty-three months from now.”

  Ma pressured him further: “What are you talking about?” But Tao just smiled and didn’t elaborate. The festivities didn’t finally break up until they’d both had their fill of food and drink.

  The night passed, and when Ma came to pay Tao a visit the next morning, the new flowers that he’d just planted were already a chi tall. Thinking this strange indeed, he earnestly begged Tao to explain his technique to him. “It’s not something that I can put into words,” explained Tao; “at any rate, you don’t intend to make your living from it, so what use would it be to you?”

  _________

  Mu: An area equal to approximately 1/6 acre.

  Chi: A length equal to 1/3 meter.

  Then after several days, when the front entrance and courtyard were finally somewhat quiet, Tao took some mats woven from marsh grasses and wrapped his chrysanthemums up in them, then tied them into bundles, carried them over to several carts, and left with them.