Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

  On one point, however, wives were only slightly more secure than concubines within the domestic hierarchy: if prompted by sufficiently severe economic woes, husbands were free to sell either or both of them. Qing penal code authorized husbands to sell wives or concubines if they had been adulterous (with no burden on the husband’s part to prove her guilt other than his testimony), and though there was “no formal mechanism to stop a husband or father-in-law from selling a primary wife, this was rare. The concubine was likely to go first in cases of poverty, and wives would only be sold in destitution,” although there are recorded cases of women being sold “for being stupid or ‘loose’” by reputation (Sinn 156). The title character of “Liu Xing” (liu xing) observes an impoverished man, driven to desperation by a famine, offering to sell his wife to sesame oil shop owner Ma for a mere 300 coppers, a little less than 1/3 silver tael. Ma’s response to Liu about the matter reveals precisely how unsettled a woman’s position remained, even once she was sold into a household: “What’s in it for me to buy her? If the price is low enough, I can sell her in turn; otherwise, he should just stop trying.” Rather than viewing the wife as a person, Ma sees her in strictly financial terms as either a commodity/asset, or as a liability (another mouth to feed). While the surly Liu is initially indifferent to the transaction, he quickly tires of the dickering and gives the man 300 coppers while telling him to keep his wife. Pu’s displeasure with Ma’s mercenary position is reflected by the fact that this act later saves Liu from a near-fatal encounter: in the underworld, one of the Hell King’s clerks tells Liu that if not for this generous deed, “your execution would have been ordered for today, and you’d have been reincarnated as a beast.”

  Most of these elements of the domestic commodification of wives and concubines appear in “Chang’e” (chang’e), with Pu introducing supernatural resolutions to secure the perpetuation of the male protagonist’s family line, while avoiding the economic exploitation of the story’s female characters. Zong Zimei and his father meet an old woman, and the beautiful Chang’e, living in the woods; but the father hustles Zimei away when the woman offers him Chang’e for his wife, old Zong laughing politely as he seriously warns his son, “One word can cost a thousand taels!” It’s an accurate assessment—for the old woman had originally taken the mysterious beauty into her home, “considering that someday she could sell her for a high price indeed”—and a year later, after his parents die, when Zimei returns, the old woman demands precisely that exorbitant bride-price (rationalizing “I need to dress her properly, which is why I expect a thousand taels for the proposal”). Unable to come up with the five hundred taels she requests up front to secure the marriage contract, Zimei begins taking gifts to Diandang, a neighbor’s attractive daughter. Upon learning why he declined to marry her, Chang’e hands over a quantity of gold taels to Zimei, and Diandang volunteers to become his second wife (a seemingly generous proposal until her non-human identity is later revealed). As implicit acknowledgment of their inherent value, the two women are supposedly kidnapped by bandits (Chang’e) and Manchurians (Diandang), and after he persistently works to locate and to care for them, Zimei is rewarded with the truth (Chang’e is a goddess, and Diandang is a fox). Finally, Chang’e miraculously gives birth to the male heir Zimei so anxiously desires. Capping the happy resolution, Pu appends his own sense of what Zimei’s experience would feel like: “if there was an immortal in my house, I trust that I’d be euphorically happy, that my troubles would disappear, that I’d grow as a scholar, and I wouldn’t die.”

  He doesn’t mention that the “strangest” part of the bargain is Chang’e paying her own bride-price.

  Notes

  1 One social consequence of gender imbalance—a cultural product of preference for sons in families—was the familial expectation that every daughter would marry, with sanctioned polygamy a consequence of demographic pressures. During the Qing dynasty, the marriage market also became more competitive, as “declining odds of success in the examination system and rising opportunities for money-making in the commercial economy brought nouveaux-riches families into competition with elite scholarly families whose fortunes were declining” (Mann 12).

  2 But another “strange” wrinkle in some of Pu’s tales is the reversal of readers’ social expectations regarding marriage norms. Scholar Feng isn’t automatically predisposed to marry a princess in “The Eighth Great King” (ba dawang)—he’s loyal to the wife he married when he was formerly poor—but Prince Suzhuang insists, so Feng’s wife puts together a gift to secure the marriage (with expectation that the princess would become the “proper,” or primary wife): but his gifts contain so “many precious stones and gems of many types,” amazing the royal family with “the extent of Feng’s resources,” that Prince Suzhuang sends Feng home—with the princess to serve as his concubine.

  3 This may sound more than a little like a form of prostitution—because it is, though without the stigma one might expect to find associated with it. A woman in the Qing era might be sold into slavery by any combination of factors, including “the pressures of the market, poverty, violence, and coercion,” so it’s not unrealistic to see a woman work as a prostitute in order to survive, and eventually attempt to gain more (relative) control over her status “by marrying a commoner as his concubine” (Mann 43). Notice, for example, that Pu associates no disapprobation or dishonor with the prostitute characters in “Gong the Immortal” (gong xian) and “The Mei Girl” (mei nü).

  4 Shao’s scholarly family, which has fallen on hard times, gladly accepts the thousand taels Chai offers for the daughter through a matchmaker, though Shao’s mother admits “we’re afraid that we’ll be shunned by other scholars!” The gobetween, old lady Jia, reassuringly reminds the mother, “If she enters his gates and delivers him a baby boy, his wife can do nothing about it!” Jin’s shrewish behavior toward concubines is echoed in “Lü Wubing” (lü wubing), when Sun Qi is coerced by his family into marrying the daughter of Minister of Personnel Wang, and the Wang daughter proves heartlessly cruel to Sun’s beloved concubine, Wubing.

  The Tales

  249. Scholar Leng

  Scholar Leng of Pingcheng was pretty slow-witted when he was young, and by the time he reached the age of twenty, he still hadn’t mastered even one of the literary classics. Suddenly one day a fox appeared to him, and they became friends. They frequently could be heard speaking together all night long, but when the scholar’s brother asked him about what was going on, Leng refused to reveal anything.

  They continued like this for many days, till all of a sudden Leng suffered a kind of mental derangement: whenever he turned to the subject of literature, he would shut his door so he could be alone; before long, family members heard uproarious laughter coming from inside. When they peeked in at him, they saw him incessantly moving his hand, drafting something on some writing paper. Once he was finished composing, the flow of his written thoughts proved exquisitely skillful.

  Within the year he was admitted to a county school, and the following year he was awarded a scholar’s grant by the government. Whenever he took an examination, he would begin laughing so hard that the sound reverberated through the walls, which is why he gained a reputation as “the Laughing Scholar.” Fortunately, his superior, the provincial education commissioner, left the examination site without ever having heard him do this.

  Later, it happened that the next education commissioner was serious and formal in his manners, always sitting with perfectly disciplined posture while he was being addressed. Suddenly he heard the sound of Leng’s laughter and became angry about it, deciding that he was going to assign Leng some kind of punishment. The official supervising such matters felt that Leng was simply insane.

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  Pingcheng: A county located in Shandong province.

  When the education commissioner’s anger had relented a bit, he dismissed Leng, and then decided to remove Leng’s name from the list of scholars who’d pass
ed the local level civil service examination. From then on, Leng indulged in poetry composition and wine drinking with a crazy fervor. He authored four volumes of what he called his “lunatic drafts,” and they proved to be extraordinarily brilliant when compared to ordinary compositions.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Laughter behind closed doors—there’s little difference between it and the moment that might bring a Chan Buddhist to enlightenment! His roaring laughter brought forth literature, which is itself pleasurable, so how could someone like this have been stripped of his recognition? How could it be anything but preposterous for some official to act this way!”

  Teacher Sun Jingxia went to visit a friend. When he arrived outside the friend’s window, he couldn’t hear anyone speaking inside, but as he listened he caught the sound of a jeering laugh, and in moments there were several more. Hence Sun figured his friend must be teasing someone.

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  Bring a Chan Buddhist to enlightenment: Chan Buddhism, the branch that is known as Zen Buddhism in Japan, believes that enlightenment, the end of suffering, is a recognition of the difference between one’s ordinary self and one’s Buddha nature, and can come as a direct result of concentrated meditation, rather than the study of scriptures. Hence gongan, or “cases made public” (the Japanese koan), are meditative prompts, often anomalies, that force thought outside linear norms. “Laughter behind closed doors”—invisible but powerful in its ability to influence others’ feelings—might be seen as one such gongan.

  When he entered and looked around, he found his friend alone in the house. It seemed very strange. Then with a boisterous laugh, his friend declared, “Just now, there was nothing going on here, so I was silently telling myself funny stories.”

  A local scholar owned a donkey that was contrary and pretty worthless. Whenever the scholar met an acquaintance on foot along the road, he folded his hands in greeting and apologized, “I’m sorry, but we’re so busy that I don’t have time to hop off, so don’t be angry at me!” But before his words were even finished, the donkey would already have flopped down in the road, time after time the same way.

  The scholar felt quite humiliated, so he set up a plan with his wife, sending her out to pretend to be an acquaintance. He then mounted the donkey, and when they ran into his wife he greeted her humbly as always, speaking the words he always spoke when encountering someone he knew. Consequently, the donkey flopped down. Then the scholar took a pointy awl and gave it a sharp poke.

  It happened that about that time, the scholar and his wife had a friend come to visit them, and just as he was about to announce his arrival, he heard the scholar’s words from inside, saying, “We’re so busy that I don’t have time to hop off, so don’t be angry at me!” After a short while, the words were repeated again.

  The visitor felt this was pretty odd, so he knocked on the door to ask the scholar what he’d been talking about, and when the scholar recounted what had happened with the donkey, they laughed till their sides shook.

  These two stories deserve to be paired with the tale of Scholar Leng’s laughter whenever it’s told.

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  Gave it a sharp poke: Apparently, this variation in the usual pattern proves sufficient disincentive to break the donkey of its longstanding habit.

  250. Punishing a Lewd Fox

  There was a certain scholar who purchased a residence that had frequently been afflicted by a fox. In no time at all, he had to begin putting up with the creature’s many destructive acts, which included putting dirt into the household’s noodle soup.

  One day, a friend of the scholar happened to come by to pay a visit while the scholar, coincidentally, was not at home, and when sunset arrived, the scholar still hadn’t returned home. The scholar’s wife laid out a banquet for their guest, and soon they were tended by maidservants as they enjoyed the spread of food and pastries.

  The scholar, who was always uninhibited, liked to keep a certain aphrodisiac on hand, and it’s not certain when the fox put the aphrodisiac into some rice congee, but when the wife ate it, she began to sense a kind of muskiness in the air. She asked a maidservant about it, but the maidservant said she hadn’t noticed anything.

  By the time they finished eating, the wife felt like she was burning up, and couldn’t stand it; she tried hard to restrain herself, becoming more and more driven by desire. Meanwhile she couldn’t think of anyone within her household to go after, except for the guest who was staying there, so she went and knocked at the door to the study.

  The friend asked who was knocking, so she told him. When he asked why she was doing so, she didn’t reply. “I value your husband’s sense of morality and justice as a friend,” he apologized, “so I couldn’t dare do anything that might brutishly betray him.” The wife remained reluctant to leave.

  The guest then scolded her roundly, exclaiming, “You don’t deserve my dear friend’s literary talent or his conduct!” After a pause, he spat at the study’s window. The wife felt greatly ashamed and finally withdrew.

  She thought to herself: Why am I acting this way? Suddenly she recalled something fragrant in one of the bowls at dinner—couldn’t it have been an aphrodisiac? She then checked the package of aphrodisiac and discovered that it was in everything on the table, including the serving vessels.

  She knew that cold water could counteract it, so she simply drank some. Instantly, she felt herself returning to normal, embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to restrain herself earlier. Though in time she felt stable and normal once again, the damage had already been done.

  More and more, she began to fear that heaven knew about it, and held her responsible for what she’d tried to do, so she tried to undo the shame by hanging herself with her silk belt. A maidservant sensed what she had done and rescued her, just as her breathing had already slowed to a halt. After some time had passed, she began to breathe weakly. Sometime during the night, the friend had fled.

  When the scholar returned home late the next afternoon and saw his wife in bed, he asked her what was wrong, but she was speechless, though she expressed herself with voiceless tears. The maidservant told him what had happened. Terribly shaken, the scholar began interrogating her in more detail.

  The wife then sent her away, and began to explain just what had happened. The scholar sighed and said, “This is due to my own wanton desires, so why should you be blamed? We’re fortunate to have such a good friend; if he were otherwise, how could I behave as if nothing had changed!” Thereupon, he took great pains to reject his bad habit, and the fox was successfully wiped out.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “People warn each other that poisons shouldn’t be stored in the house, while no one cautions against storing aphrodisiacs at home, which is like saying that people should reasonably be afraid of sharp blades, but not of making love. They don’t realize that the aphrodisiac is more toxic than the poison! But the one keeping it does so just to appeal to his wife! And then it provokes jealousy from the spirits; furthermore, aren’t people likely to become more debauched by keeping aphrodisiacs around?

  A certain scholar went to take an examination in his home prefecture, so by the time he returned home it was already dark, and since he’d brought back some lotus seeds, water chestnuts, and lotus roots, he went inside his house and spread them out on a table. Then he took some rattan to moisten so he could make something with it, putting it to soak in a large serving vessel filled with water.

  All of his neighbors noticed that he’d just returned home, so when they brought over wine to celebrate his completion of the exam, the scholar quickly set the vessel with the rattan on his bed and came out to greet them, directing his wife to set up a banquet, and to pour their guests’ drinks.

  When they’d finished their drinks, the scholar went back inside, quickly took a candle to check on the rattan in the vessel on his bed, but found all of the water inside it to be gone. He asked his wife ab
out it, and she replied, “I served it together with the water chestnuts and lotus roots to our guests, so why are you asking about it?”

  The scholar remembered there had been dark bits of something mistakenly mixed into the dishes she’d laid out, and that no one present had any idea what it was. Then he couldn’t stop himself from laughing, as he cried, “You silly old woman! You don’t know what it is, and then you serve it to our neighbors?”

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  Rattan . . . make something with it: There are old traditions of rattan having been shaped into sexual aids and then soaked in water to stiffen it. By a kind of sympathetic magic, the inference here is that the soaking water was a kind of aphrodisiac, and hence the neighbors ingested it in their meal to comic effect.