by Pu Songling
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Meng Guang . . . flatter her husband: The virtuous Meng, who married scholar Liang Hong out of mutual admiration, is described in the Records of the Han as a woman of astounding physical strength, who nevertheless “dwelt contentedly in a lowly station,” and demonstrated “the respect in which she held her husband by ‘raising the rice bowl to a level with her eyebrows’” when they ate together (Mayers 165).
Chai couldn’t take it any longer, and feeling great indignation, he rushed in to pull Shao away from her. Jin was harassing the concubine verbally while chasing and beating her. Outraged, Chai snatched the whip away from Jin and turned it back on her, splitting open a section of skin on her face, so she backed off. Henceforth, the couple behaved like enemies.
Chai tried to forbid Shao from going to see Jin. Shao, however, refused to listen, and got up early the next morning, crawling on her knees to wait outside Jin’s room. Jin pounded her bed and cursed furiously, telling her to go away, and refusing to listen to Shao’s response. That night she gnashed her teeth, deciding to wait until Chai went out, and then she’d vent her anger on Shao. Chai figured this would be the case, so he declined all public contacts, and shut his gates, attending neither funerals nor weddings.
Jin was unable to do as she’d planned, so she simply flogged her maidservants, taking her anger out on them, and making things unbearable for them. From the point that the husband and wife severed their relationship, Shao also no longer dared spend the night with Chai, and consequently he had to sleep alone. When Jin heard this, she took a degree of consolation from it.
There was one of the elder maidservants who was quite clever, and occasionally would have conversations with Chai, so Jin suspected that they’d become intimate, and tormented the woman with particular cruelty. When there was no one else around, the maidservant often experienced anger-induced headaches and cursed aloud that Jin was to blame.
One night, when it was the maidservant’s turn to serve Jin and stay overnight in her room, Shao advised Chai that he should forbid the maidservant from going: “Murdererous intent is written all over her face—there’s no predicting what she’ll do.”
Deciding to speak with her, Chai summoned the maidservant and sounded her out by asking, “What’re you planning to do?” This scared the maidservant, who couldn’t think of anything to say. Chai became more suspicious, had her clothing searched, and discovered a sharp dagger. The maidservant had no comment, but simply prostrated herself and begged to die.
Chai just wanted to have her whipped as punishment, but Shao stopped him, explaining, “I’m afraid that when your wife hears of this, the maidservant’s life will be in danger. Her intended crime cannot be forgiven, but it would be better to sell her since that would save her life, and we’ll also profit from it.” Chai concurred. Soon, someone came looking to purchase a concubine, and they hurriedly sold off the maidservant.
Jin blamed her husband for not informing her of his intentions, and became even more angry with Shao, verbally abusing her with increasing malevolence. Chai was also upset with her, declaring to Shao, “You brought this trouble down on us. If we’d just killed her before, there’d be no problem now!” When he finished speaking, he walked out.
Jin was puzzled by his comments, and interrogated all of the servants, but it seemed that none of them knew anything about it; she asked Shao, but Shao also said nothing. Jin began to feel even more irritated and livid, grabbing at Shao’s robe and reviling her unrestrainedly. Chai then went to see Jin, and explained the whole matter to her. She was shocked, and turned to Shao with milder words; in her heart, however, those words turned angry over the fact that Shao didn’t explain everything to her earlier. Chai mistakenly believed that her grudge towards Shao had been settled with his explanation, and hence no longer felt like he needed to protect Shao.
When it happened that he had to take a long trip, Jin summoned Shao and scolded her, “Attempting to murder a master is an unpardonable crime, so what were you thinking when you let her go?” Shao felt jittery and couldn’t think of what to say to her.
Jin then took up a red-hot iron to burn Shao’s face, wishing to destroy her looks. The maidservants all cried out against the injustice. At the sound of each of Shao’s howls of pain, the servants all wept, offering to die in her place. Jin then stopped branding her and took up needles, stabbing her more than twenty times in the upper torso before she quit and left.
When Chai returned home and saw the wounds on Shao’s face, he became enraged and wanted to go hunt for Jin. But the concubine grabbed at his robe and told him, “I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I originally stepped into this hell of suffering. At the time I agreed to marry you, how could I have thought that life in your home would be perfect? I knew that I was ill-fated, so I’m counting on my experiences here to deflect some of heaven’s anger. I just have to keep my mind on enduring it all, and my time will come; if she’s offended once again, the hole that’s already been filled in will be dug up all over again.”
Then she applied some medicinal powder to the various wounds, and in several days they had healed. As she was holding a mirror, she suddenly laughed and exclaimed, “Today you should congratulate me, because your wife has burned off the sign of my pending misfortune!” She returned to taking care of things for Jin every day, just as she had formerly.
When Jin had witnessed the group of servants weeping for Shao, she realized that they would abandon her to serve her husband instead, so she began to feel rather mortified and regretful, and often called for Shao to do things with her, while her speech and facial expressions became calm and friendly.
After more than a month, she fell ill all of a sudden, and had trouble drinking or eating. Chai was sorry that she wasn’t dying, and he refused even to inquire about her condition. Several days later, her belly began to stretch tight like a drumhead, and the constant, day-and-night pressure exhausted her. Shao cared for her without even taking time to sleep or eat, and Jin increasingly appreciated her kindness. Shao told her she knew certain principles of medicine that could help her; Jin was aware of just how cruel she’d been to her formerly, and suspecting that Shao was still carrying a grudge because of it, she thanked her, politely declining the help.
Jin had always kept the servants tightly under control, so they did precisely as she dictated; after she became ill, they all felt free and unmonitored, and hence they stopped attending to their work. Chai personally had to handle the manual labor, and the chores were very hard indeed, while the household supplies of rice and salt were close to depletion. At this point, giving it careful thought, he acknowledged the importance of Jin to the household, so he engaged a doctor to treat his wife.
Jin kept telling people that her condition was caused by “excessive anger,” and for that reason the doctor took her pulse, determining that her vital energy was stagnant. In all, several doctors treated her, but they were all ineffective, and as a result she was soon close to death. Then just as some medicine was being boiled for her, Shao drew near and said, “With this kind of medicine, a hundred packets of it won’t be enough, and you’ll only make the condition worse.” Jin refused to believe her.
Shao secretly arranged for someone who was obtaining other medicines to exchange them for medicines of her own prescription. Moments after taking them, Jin experienced three bowel movements, as if her illness was letting up. Then she began mocking the absurdity of Shao’s previous claims, and between moans cried out, “How about that, ‘Lady Hua Tuo’?” Shao and a crowd of maidservants all started laughing.
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Vital energy was stagnant: The proper flow of qi, or life energy, is crucial in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Chapter 39 of The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine reveals that happiness causes qi “to flow and disperse freely,” allowing the ying (nourishing) qi and the wei (defensive) qi to “permeate throughout”; anger impedes this flow, and “in severe cases, can
cause vomiting of blood and dysentery” (149).
When Jin asked them why, they proceeded to tell her the truth of what had been done. In tears, she said, “I’ve received every possible care from you every day, but I haven’t acknowledged it! From now on, please take over the household management, and everyone will carry out whatever they hear from you.”
Before long, Jin recovered from her illness, so Chai arranged a celebration for her. Shao carried in a pot of wine and served it to them; Jin stood up and took the pot from her, then linked arms with Shao and pulled her down to sit next to her, her love for Shao a strange departure from her previous sentiments. Late that night, when Shao found a pretext for leaving the dinner party, Jin sent two maidservants to bring her back, and coerced Shao into keeping her company in her bed. From then on, they always consulted where any business was concerned, and they always ate together, just like they were sisters.
Shao soon gave birth to a son. After the birth, she was often sickly, and Jin looked after her lovingly, like she was caring for her own mother. Later on, Jin suffered a heart attack, and when, pain-wracked, she tried to get up, her face was all blue, and she felt so bad, she wanted to die.
Shao quickly went to obtain a number of silver acupuncture needles, and by the time she got back, Jin was close to suffocating, so Shao began pressing needles into acupuncture points, immediately causing the pain to stop. More than ten days later, she suffered a relapse, and the needles were applied again; six or seven days passed, and then the pains returned. Even though the treatments went smoothly and were effective, and the great pains didn’t come back, Jin was often worried and fearful that they might recur.
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‘Lady Hua Tuo’: An allusion to Hua Tuo (second century C.E.), a doctor of nigh-supernatural skill, reputed to have cured the scheming Prime Minister, Cao Cao, “of a cerebral disease by means of acupuncture” (Mayers 73).
She dreamt one night that she came to a place that looked like a temple, and there was a hall where spirits were all walking around. One of the spirits asked her, “Is your name Jin? Since you committed so many different kinds of offenses, your alloted lifespan was cut short; in recognition of your repentence, however, you’ve been subjected only to minor censures, rather than to calamity. You killed the first two concubines, and for this you must pay. What crime has Shao committed, that you should be so cruel and vicious to her? You punished her with lashings, but that was already repaid when Chai struck you; you still owe her for a burning and twenty-three needle stabs, and these three bouts of illness that you’ve experienced are just a fraction of what’s remaining, so aren’t you figuring it’ll take much more illness to wipe out your debt? Count on your next bout tomorrow!”
She woke up terrified, hoping it was just a nightmare and hence wouldn’t come true. After she’d eaten, the sickness returned indeed, and the pain was much more intense. Shao came to her and applied her acupuncture needles, and immediately Jin recovered. Dubious, Shao declared, “If my skill can stop your pains, why can’t I uproot the illness? Please let me try moxibustion. It’s not that this can’t burn out the festering disease—I’m just afraid that you won’t be able to stand it.”
Jin recalled what had been said to her in the dream, and therefore she wasn’t at all reluctant. As she was groaning while enduring the moxibustion, she was thinking silently to herself that she still owed nineteen needle stabs, yet since she didn’t know if that would make the disease go away, perhaps it would be better to endure them all at once, to absolve her for the concubines and afterwards relieve her of her suffering.
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Moxibustion: Traditional method of treating illness in which herbs, including wormwood, are rolled into a cone shape, placed on a piece of ginger or garlic (or a layer of salt) on the patient’s skin, then ignited and allowed to burn down, to open up blocked qi (Perkins 333).
When Shao was finished with the burning, Jin entreated her to apply all of the needles. “How can I just arbitrarily apply them all over?” Shao asked her, smiling.
Jin replied, “You don’t have to trouble yourself about where to put them, just as long as there are nineteen punctures.” Shao laughed that she couldn’t do that. Jin pleaded even more strongly with her, getting up enough to kneel on her bed. Shao finally just couldn’t bear to do it to her.
Jin consequently told her all about the dream. Accordingly, Shao placed the needles along the energy channels of Jin’s body, making the number of punctures that she’d specified. At that point she was completely healed, and never suffered again from the affliction. Jin was fully penitent, and no longer treated the servants viciously or with angry expressions.
The son, whose name was Yuejun, was peerlessly handsome and kind. Shao always said, “This boy has the physiognomy of someone destined for the Hanlin Academy.” At the age of eight he was considered a child prodigy, and when he turned fifteen, he was named a jinshi and taught for the Hanlin Academy. At the time, Chai and Jin were forty, while Shao was thirty-two or thirty-three.
When Shao went back home in a carriage to visit her parents, their fellow villagers all felt honored. After Shao’s father had sold her to Chai, and the family had suddenly become rich, other scholars avoided associating with him; following her visit, however, they began coming to see him again.
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Energy channels: The meridians through which qi flows in the body. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine notes that people “who are depressed or bitter”—like Jin—“often develop conditions in the channels and collaterals. One should use acupuncture and moxibustion to treat this” (99).
Hanlin Academy: An elite occupational placement for scholars, whose livelihood consisted of performing tasks for the emperor and his court (such as writing letters, literary compositions, etc.). The name, Hanlin, or “forest of writing brushes,” alludes to the scholars’ imperial vocation as writers.
Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Women are by nature cunning and jealous. If the concubine deliberately puts on make-up and beautiful clothes, enhancing the relationship with her husband, she surely provokes many complaints from the first wife. Alas! Here’s the source of the concubine’s misfortune. If she patiently accepts her fate, behaves in accord with the limits of her position, and never gives up her determination to live selflessly, no matter how much she’s tortured, how could a wife agree to have her cudgeled or cut? What’s more, the concubine goes so far as to save the life of the first wife, who only then begins to regret her previous actions. Alas! Everyone, finally, has a heart! A certain amount of compensation was agreed upon, with nothing more added to it in order to stop her suffering, and heaven even pardoned her. Taking into consideration that good deeds were repaid with evil—it should have been the reverse! Whenever I’ve seen a foolish couple, who’ve had to deal with illness for some time, invite some ignorant sorcerer to stick pins into them, or to burn their skin, I’ve often blamed them inside—yet now I begin to understand them.”
There was a man in Fujian who took a concubine into his household, and that night when he entered his wife’s bedroom, he didn’t dare appear anxious to leave for the concubine’s room, so he pretended to take off his shoes and was about to climb into bed. His wife exclaimed, “Cut it out! You don’t have to pretend!”
The husband then started anxiously pacing back and forth, so the wife adopted a stern countenance and told him, “I’m not jealous like some women, so there’s certainly no need to act that way.” The husband accordingly left.
Meanwhile the wife lay there alone, tossing and turning, unable to get to sleep, till she finally got up and went to hide outside the concubine’s door, to eavesdrop. However, she only heard faint sounds, and couldn’t clearly make out what they were saying; she could only identify the concubine saying “father.”
“Father,” then, the Fujian man called.
When the wife had listened for more than fifteen minutes, she fainted, feeling congestion in her chest, and collapsed, noisily knocking her head against the door. The husband was startled and got up, opened the door, and the wife’s unconscious body toppled over into the room. He cried for the concubine to bring a light, and they discovered it was his wife.
He quickly helped her up and gave her something to drink. Her eyes fluttered open, and with a groan, she said, “You were calling for someone’s father!” Such jealousy is laughable indeed.
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“Father” . . . someone’s father: The joke is that the wife is so completely in denial that she’s hearing them say ba, “father” (爸)—rather than the ba that Pu has written (罢), meaning “enough” or “satisfied,” or some moaning approximation of it.
259. Gong the Immortal
There was a Daoist surnamed Gong—no first name—and I don’t know where he came from. Once he asked to see Prince Zhu Tanfeng, but the gatekeeper wouldn’t let him through. Some high-ranking eunuch came out, and Gong bowed to him, his hands clasped respectfully, as he made his request. When the eunuch saw how indigently dressed he was, he had his servants chase Gong away; shortly afterwards, though, he came back.
The eunuch grew angry, and the servants chased Gong, throwing punches at him. Once they had chased him to a deserted place, the Daoist chuckled to himself, took out two hundred gold taels, and asked them to turn the money over to the eunuch: “Please inform the eunuch that I don’t wish to see the prince; but I heard that the back garden has flowers and trees, and a tower that’s one of the most surpassingly distinguished anywhere, so if he could guide me on a tour of it, I’d be ever so grateful.” Then he took some silver and bribed the servants with it.
