Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

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  Xiusheng: The son’s name literally means “Excellent/Elegant Scholar,” a suitably auspicious name; but xiu (秀), or “excellent/ elegant,” is here pronounced the same way as the xiu (袖) that means “sleeve,” recalling when the newborn child was drawn from Gong’s sleeve.

  Qingming: Also known as “Tomb-Sweeping” Day, Qingming (“Pure Brightness”) occurs around April 5th/6th, and is celebrated as a time to make offerings and to clear away dirt, weeds, etc. from the tombs of family and friends (see Palmer 197).

  “Peach Blossom Spring”: Utopian narrative by Tao Yuanming (365-427), in which he depicts the perfect peace of a natural environment, implicitly critiquing the sociopolitical realities of his day.

  260. Younger Brother Shang

  In Ju there lived two men by the name of Shang, a wealthy elder brother and a poor younger brother, who were neighbors living on either side of a wall. During Kangxi’s reign, there was a great famine, and the younger brother couldn’t even afford to feed his family every day.

  One day, just before noon, when his family wasn’t even bothering to light a cooking fire, the younger Shang, his stomach empty, couldn’t think of anything to do about the situation, so he just stamped his feet as he paced. His wife told him to go and inform his brother about their plight.

  “It’s pointless,” he told her. “If he was going to take pity on my poverty, he’d have done something about it before we reached this point.” His wife remained adamant, strongly reasserting her suggestion, so the younger Shang finally sent his son to go speak to his brother.

  Moments later, the son returned with empty hands. “Now you see!” Shang cried.

  His wife asked for a detailed accounting of what his uncle had said, so their son replied, “Uncle hesitated and looked over at my aunt; she told me, ‘The brothers live in their own homes, and provide the food for their own meals, so they can’t be expected to take care of each other.’” The couple had nothing to say, and for a temporary solution took a broken serving vessel and their decrepit bed, exchanging them for a bit of grain chaff to eat.

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  Ju: Name of an ancient state, now a county in Shandong province.

  Kangxi’s reign: This Qing emperor ruled from 1662-1723.

  There were three or four young toughs in their village who’d been observing the elder Shang’s abundant wealth, so one night they climbed over a wall and broke into his house. Shang and his wife, startled awake, began banging on a wash basin and crying for help. The elder Shang’s neighbors were all jealous of him, so they offered no assistance. The couple had no alternative but to yell quickly for the younger brother.

  When the younger Shang heard his sister-in-law’s cries, he wanted to rush to her rescue. But his wife stopped him, and yelled back to the sister-in-law, “The brothers live in their own homes, and have to face their own misfortunes, so they can’t be expected to take care of each other!”

  At that moment, the thieves broke down the bedroom door, seized the elder Shang and his wife, and began torturing them with their torches, while the couple screamed in torment. The younger Shang cried, “They’ve been indifferent to our suffering, but I can’t just sit here and watch my elder brother die without trying to save him!”

  Leading his son, they quickly climbed over the wall, making a big noise in their hurry. The younger Shang and his son were valiant fighters, so the juvenile toughs were afraid of them, and since they feared that others might also be coming to help, the thieves fled.

  As he examined his elder brother and sister-in-law, Shang found burn marks on their thighs. He and his son helped them to their bed, called their servants together, and then returned home. Though the older brother had been wounded, none of his money or belongings had been taken, and he told his wife, “Now that all of our things are safe, we should divide them up and give some of them to my brother.”

  “If your brother had any real love for you,” his wife exclaimed, “he wouldn’t have let us suffer like that!” The older Shang had nothing to reply to that.

  When the younger brother’s family ran out of food, he figured that surely his older brother would give him something for having helped him; but after quite some time, he still hadn’t heard from him. When his wife felt they couldn’t wait any longer, she sent their son with a bag so he could borrow something, and he returned with a dou of millet. The wife was angry that it was so little, and wanted to send it back; but Shang stopped her from doing so.

  Two months passed, and the family’s circumstances became so dire that the younger brother could no longer support his family. “There’s nothing else we can do to make a living now,” he said, “so it’d be better to try to sell our house to my brother. If he’s afraid we’ll move away, maybe he’ll refuse to accept the deed and will decide to help us out, though we can’t be sure; and even if he doesn’t, maybe he’ll offer us ten taels or so, and then we can get by.”

  His wife approved of the idea, so they sent their son with the deed to see the elder Shang. The older brother informed his wife about the offer, commenting, “My younger brother may seem unfriendly, but he’s still my brother. If he leaves, I’ll feel isolated—unless we return the deed to him and help him out.”

  “Not at all,” replied his wife. “He just said he was leaving in order to extort money from us; consequently, if you give it to him, you’ll just be falling for his scheme. Has everyone in the world who’s lost a brother died as a result? We can fortify our home sufficiently with high walls to ensure our safety. It’d be better to accept his deed, let them go where they will, and then we can also expand our home.”

  Once the older brother had settled on this, he told the younger Shang to sign over the deed to him, then he gave him some money, and the brother left. The younger Shang thereupon moved his family’s residence to a neighboring village.

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  Dou: A variable measure equal to approximately 1-1½ gallons.

  In the Shangs’ home village, the thwarted thieves heard that the younger Shang had left with his family, so they made another raid. They grabbed the older Shang, beating and torturing him cruelly, and once they’d gathered all of his possessions and money, they stopped short of killing him. As the thieves were on the point of leaving, they opened the family granary and called out to all of the poor people in the village, who came and unrestrainedly scooped up its contents, and in moments it was completely empty.

  The next day, when the younger Shang heard about the incident, he hurried to see what had happened, and found his elder brother unconscious, unable to speak; when he opened his eyes and saw his younger brother, all he could do was scratch at his bedside. Shortly afterwards, he died.

  Furious, the younger Shang filed a complaint with the local magistrate. The ringleader of the robbers had fled, and they were unable to make any arrests. Over ten people had taken grain from the granary, but since all of them were poor villagers, the prefectural chief decided there was nothing to do about it.

  The elder Shang left behind a young son who was only five years old, and since his own family was now poor, he often went to stay at his uncle’s place, refusing to return home for several days at a time; and unless the uncle accompanied him when he went home, he’d cry endlessly. The younger Shang’s wife really didn’t like the boy. Shang asked her, “Even if his father was unfair to us, what wrong has his son committed?” Then he bought the boy some steamed cakes and escorted him home.

  Some days later, without his wife knowing about it, he secretly carried a dou of millet to his sister-in-law’s house, so she could feed her son. He often did such things for them. Several years went by, and the wife of the elder Shang had to sell his fields and house so she’d have enough to get by with her son, and hence her brother-inlaw no longer had to come by.

  Following a year in which there was a great famine, and everywhere there were people starving by the roadsides, the younger Sh
ang was troubled by so many mouths to feed in his family that he couldn’t care for them all. His nephew was fifteen then, so weak from hunger that he couldn’t handle any manual labor, and thus Shang sent him to carry a basket along with his cousin as they went out and sold sesame cakes.

  One night, Shang dreamed that his elder brother, his face filled with sorrow, appeared and said to him, “It was my wife’s words that led me to doubt you, and hence I violated our relationship as brothers. You don’t dwell on our previous ill will, and you help us—which only increases my sense of anxiety and shame. Now that my home has been sold, and it’s still unoccupied, it only seems right that you should rent it. At the back of the house, there are some bricks made of grass and mud, and beneath them there’s some money hidden in a pit, so if you dig it up, you can collect a modest subsistence. My son can come live with you; I’m still angry at that sharp-tongued wife, so don’t bother about her.”

  Once Shang woke up, he thought about how strange the dream had been. He went directly to lease the home from its new landlord, and only then began digging behind it, where, as a consequence, he discovered a cache of five hundred taels. Henceforth he abandoned the sesame cake business, sending his son and nephew out to set up a shop.

  His nephew was quite intelligent and kept track of accounts errorlessly; he was also extremely honest, and always made sure to inform his uncle about every financial transaction. Shang became even more fond of him.

  One day, the nephew came weeping to Shang, begging some food for his mother. Shang’s wife wanted to refuse him; but when Shang considered what a filial son his nephew was being, he offered to give him something each month from his family’s grain reserve. Over several years, Shang’s family became even wealthier. When his older brother’s wife eventually fell ill and died, and Shang himself was growing old, he split his possessions with his nephew, dividing his family’s riches exactly in half.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “I’ve heard that the elder Shang brother was very serious about not simply giving his things away, and also that he esteemed himself an upright, righteous man. However, when he listened to his wife’s words, he became befuddled and couldn’t express his own opinion, showing no empathy for his own flesh and blood, so he died a miserly death. Alas! Nothing strange about that!

  “The younger Shang started out impoverished, but in the end had all that he needed. What, then, was his strong point? Merely that he didn’t always listen to what his wife said. Alas! One person’s behavior is not the same as another’s, and the quality of those persons’ characters can be just as different.”

  261. The Xiucai from Yishui

  There was a certain xiucai from Yishui who did his studying in the mountains. One night, two beauties appeared to him, giggling, but saying nothing, and both of them used the long sleeves of their gowns to brush off his bed, then sat down on it together, their clothing so soft that it didn’t make a sound. Shortly thereafter, one of the beauties stood up, and over a small table spread some white damask silk, on which were written several lines of calligraphy, and to which the xiucai offered no comment.

  The beauty then set a bar of silver on the table that could’ve weighed about three or four liang; the xiucai picked it up and placed it in his sleeve. The beauty lifted up the silk, grasping it in her hand as she let out a laugh, and cried, “That’s so petty, I can’t stand it!” The xiucai went to put his hand on the silver, but it was gone.

  The beauty sat beside him to show him the writing, which he simply ignored; but when she set out some silver, he snatched it the way a beggar would! Foxes may be able to appear like humans, but they are far more elegant than can be imagined.

  I was told this by a friend, and we both felt the man’s behavior was intolerable. In reply, I wrote an article titled “Vulgar Scholars.” There are shallow businessmen who pretend to talk like refined scholars. Their concern, however, is that they become rich as nobles. The xiucai was merely pretending to be a reputable scholar.

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  Xiucai: A scholar who’s passed the imperial civil service examination at the county level.

  Yishui: A county in Shandong province.

  Liang: A traditional unit of measure equal to 0.05 kilograms.

  Bystanders flatter you. They say one thing while thinking another, lying tirelessly. A host, who should take the seat that is rightfully his place, relentlessly insists on deferring to a guest. Some fellow forces people to listen to his inept poetry and prose. Another person possesses property and servants, yet still complains about being poor. Drunkards harass people verbally. Han Chinese imitate the Manchurians’ accent and speech.

  Some people’s armpit odor stinks, yet they still crowd close to others. There are people who harm others as a malicious joke. Someone else allows children who don’t know any better to attend a banquet where they grab all the fruits and delicacies. One person pretends to be just as important as the person he happens to be visiting. Some incompetent scholar manages to pass the official examination by insinuating between the lines that he’s a noble’s relative.

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  Han Chinese . . . Manchurians’ accent: A fairly subversive comment, given that it alludes to obsequious behavior by native Chinese towards the Manchurians, the latter being the invaders from the north who overthrew the Ming dynasty and supplanted it with the Qing—which had been in power for some time by the point at which these tales were written. It’s consistent with the anti-phoniness tirade Pu is launching here.

  262. The Mei Girl

  Feng Yunting was from the Taihangs. By chance he’d arrived in our prefecture, and he was sleeping during the daytime in the house where he was residing. At that time, he was young and had just lost his wife, so when it was quiet, Feng had a lot of time for his thoughts.

  As he stared off into space, he began to see the shadow of a young woman appear on the wall, as though it had been painted there. He thought that surely his meditations had provoked this illusion. But a long time passed, and there was no more activity on the wall, nor did the image disappear. It was very strange.

  When he got up to take a closer look, it seemed to become more realistic; and then when he came nearer, he could tell it was a neatly dressed girl, who appeared to be sticking out her tongue and frowning, with a rope encircling her lovely neck. While he was still trying to deal with the shock of the sight, the girl seemed to want to come out of the wall. Feng recognized she was the ghost of someone who had hanged, but it was broad daylight, so he wasn’t very frightened.

  “You must have suffered an extraordinary injustice,” Feng said to her, “and I’d do anything to be able to help you.”

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  The Taihangs: A mountain range located along the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau running through Hebei, Henan and Shanxi provinces.

  District jailer: This “unranked subofficial” served the District Magistrate as “police agent and presided over the District jail” (Hucker 506) during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

  The shadow quietly replied, “We’ve just met by chance, so I shouldn’t burden you with my heavy cares. When I reached the underworld, I found that I couldn’t pull my tongue back in, since I couldn’t remove the rope from around my neck, but if you could take out this roof beam and burn it for me, your kindness would be as admirable as a lofty mountain.” Feng promised he would remove the beam, and then destroy it.

  He called for the house’s owner to come, and asked him if he’d seen the ghost. “Ten years ago, the Mei family lived here,” the owner replied, “then one night a petty thief entered her room, and grabbed the Mei girl, but was caught and sent to the district jailer. The jailer accepted five hundred strings of cash from the thief, who falsely accused the girl of his crimes, so the jailer was on the verge of having her held and interrogated. When the girl heard this, she ran home and committed suicide by hanging herself. Subsequently, her parents died, one after the oth
er, and the residence came under other ownership. Guests often see strange phenomena, but nothing seems to be able to pacify the ghost.”

  Feng recalled the ghost’s words, and told the owner what she’d said. The owner calculated that it would be quite expensive to tear up the roof and replace the beam, and therefore he was quite hesitant; Feng then offered to contribute to the effort, to help make it possible.

  After they accomplished the task, Feng moved back into the house. The Mei girl appeared that night, effusively expressing her thanks, filling the place with a joyous atmosphere thanks to her bubbly attitude. Feng fell in love with her, and wanted to make love to her.

  Bashfully, she said with embarrassment, “My sickly ghost’s qi would harm you; if that happened, it would be worse than the district jailer’s slanders, and even the waters of the Yangzi River couldn’t wash away my shame. There’ll be a time for us to be together, but not just yet.”

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  Qi: An individual’s vital, material energy, or life essence.

  “Then when?” asked Feng. The girl smiled at him, but said nothing.

  “Would you like to drink something?” Feng asked her.

  “I don’t drink,” she replied.

  Feng declared, “What’s the fun of facing a beautiful woman when I can’t do anything about it?”

  “My whole life I played games of skill, yet my real talent was for gambling on chess games,” the Mei girl replied. “But we can’t do that if there’s just the two of us, and late at night, we’re not going to find a chessboard. If you’re bored, you can play the string game with me to pass the long night.” Feng did as she suggested.

  Elbows braced on their knees, thumbs and forefingers stretched wide to intertwine strings, they created pattern after pattern for a long time, till Feng became so baffled by the complexities of the patterns that he was at a loss about what to do next; the girl always advised him or gave him directions, such that the patterns continued changing ever more magically, till it seemed that there was no end to her skillfulness.