Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

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  Mid-Autumn Festival: Held on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, a day of offerings to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e.

  Amazed, Guo stood there for a long time, then he followed the pathway and returned home. The next day, he developed a painful stomache ache; his excrement was a green color, like the patina on weathered copper, and in addition, anything that came in contact with it was dyed green—it also had no smell, and in three days it was gone.

  When Guo went back to examine the site where everything had taken place, he found some bits of food and bone strewn about, and shrubbery all around, but no pathway. Once the Mid-Autumn Festival arrived, Guo wanted to keep his promised appointment, but his friends warned him not to go. If he’d ventured to go there again to meet the Green Lady, surely something even more strange would have happened, so what a pity it is that he lost his nerve!

  264. The Dead Monk

  A certain Daoist was said to have been wandering till nightfall, when he stopped to stay at a rural monastery. He noticed that the monk’s room there was bolted from the inside, so the Daoist took a rush-filled cushion out on the veranda, and sat cross-legged on it. In the still of the evening, he heard the sound of the door opening.

  He turned and saw a monk come out, covered with bloodstains from head to foot, but the monk seemed not to see the Daoist, so the Daoist pretended not to see him, either. The monk straightaway entered the main hall, stepped up to the Buddhist altar, embraced the head of the Buddha effigy, laughed, and then after a long while, finally left.

  The next morning, when the Daoist went to look at the outer door, he found it bolted from the inside, just as it had been before. This seemed quite odd, so he went into the local village to tell others what he’d witnessed. The people there then went to the monastery and opened the door to check what was inside, where they saw the monk on the ground, dead, his mat and trunk overturned, and hence they knew that he’d been the victim of a robbery.

  The Daoist expressed his suspicions that there was a reason for the ghostly monk’s weird laughter; together they went and examined the Buddha effigy’s head, noticing that there was a small mark in back of it, and when they dug out the material there, they found thirty gold taels hidden inside. They subsequently used the money to pay for the monk’s burial.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “There’s a proverb that goes, ‘Wealth is linked to one’s death.’ Truly! A man saves, and receives interest for accumulating property, but then when he doesn’t know to which heir he should bequeath his money, we think he’s just stupid; however, a monk also accumulates it without knowing whether he’ll have an heir to take it! While he was alive, this monk was unwilling to enjoy the use of it, and once he died, he was still looking after it and laughing about it—it’s a pity he was a slave to wealth like that. As the Buddha said, ‘A man doesn’t take a single coin with him when he dies, he just takes the wickedness that he won’t let go of.’ This monk could be called just such a man!”

  265. A-Ying

  Gan Yu, whose courtesy name was Biren, lived in Luling. His parents died when he was still young. He was left alone with his younger brother, Jue, whose courtesy name was Shuangbi, and who was only five years old when he had to depend upon his elder brother to raise him. Gan Yu naturally felt fraternal love for his brother, and cared for Jue like he would a son.

  As Jue gradually grew up, he developed a strikingly handsome appearance and an aptitude for literature. Yu’s love for him became even greater, and he would always say, “My younger brother’s so unique that he needs an absolutely perfect match.” Thus it was that when the time came to select a wife for Gan Jue, Gan Yu was unable to find a suitable marriage candidate for his brother.

  It happened that Yu had been studying at Kuangshan Monastery. That night, just as he’d gone to bed, he heard a woman’s voice outside his window. He stole a peek and saw a group of young women seated on the ground, all extraordinary beauties, enjoying a picnic while several maidservants poured wine for them. One of the beauties said, “Lady Qin, why hasn’t A-Ying arrived?”

  “She was coming yesterday from Hanrong,” replied a beauty seated below her, “when some villain wounded her right arm, and she couldn’t travel to be with us, which she regrets.”

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  Luling: A prefecture located in Jiangxi province.

  Kuangshan Monastery: Located on Mt. Lu, in Jiangxi province.

  Hanrong: A pass located in Henan province.

  One of the young women revealed, “Last night I had a terrible nightmare, and I’m still sweating in fear and shaking over it.”

  The girl seated below them shook her hand disapprovingly and exclaimed, “Don’t describe any of the details! Tonight we’re enjoying a happy reunion with our sisters, and comments about being frightened will spoil the mood.”

  “What’re you so scared about!” the young woman smiled. “Aren’t there tigers and wolves that could snatch you in their mouths and run away? If you don’t want me to talk about it, you’ll have to sing us a song, and urge all of us to drink some more wine.”

  The girl then began to sing in a sultry voice, “Yesterday while the peach blossoms were opening, I wandered idly where my beloved shouldn’t have kept his date for our spring outing. Tell my neighbor to the east, my female companion, to wait for a while, and not to press me to hurry, for I shall come right after I put on my phoenix-head shoes.”

  As she finished singing, the others all expressed their appreciation for her performance. They had just begun chatting and laughing again, when suddenly a powerful-looking man intruded threateningly, his eyes shining like a falcon’s, his looks sinister.

  The young women all cried, “The demon’s here!” They fled in a frenzy, like a flock of birds scattering. But the beauty who’d been singing was now paralyzed with fear, so he seized her as she was crying dolefully, struggling with all her strength. The brute roared in anger and bit her hand, severing a finger which he then chewed up like a morsel of food.

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  Phoenix-head shoes: The phoenix is traditionally the emblem of the empress, and a wedding dress bearing an embroidered phoenix in effect allows the bride to become empress for a day (Eberhard 236); the song suggests that the young lady had an intimate rendezvous with her beloved, which is why she needs to re-don her shoes.

  The beauty fell to the ground unconscious, and lay there as though dead. Gan Yu felt such pity for her that he couldn’t bear it, so he drew out his sword and confronted the attacker, aiming at the man’s thigh; he landed a thrust there, causing the intruder great pain and forcing him to flee.

  Yu carried the wounded girl inside, her face pale as dust, her sleeve drenched with blood; and when he examined her hand, he found that her right thumb had been bitten off. He tore some silk to serve as bandage wrappings. The beauty finally began to groan, and declared, “Rescuing me from such a fate was so brave, how can I ever repay you?”

  When Gan Yu had originally been watching her, he’d already begun to think of discussing Gan Jue with her, and so he explained his intentions. “Because of that beast,” she replied, “I’ll never be able to hold a dustpan and broom now. But I’ll help to find your brother another wife.” When Yu inquired about her surname, she replied, “I’m from the Qin family.” Yu then spread a large quilt over her, while she rested to recuperate; he took his own bedding elsewhere.

  At daybreak he went to see her, but found the bed already empty, so he figured that she’d gone home. He went to ask about her in the nearby village, but no one recognized her name; his relatives and friends helped him expand the search over a wider area, but none of them could obtain any reliable information about the girl. When he went home, he described to Gan Jue what had happened, and regretted that they’d been unable to find her.

  One day, as Gan Jue happened to be wandering through the countryside, he passed a young lady who was about sixteen, and
quite lovely, and when he turned around to look at her, she smiled at him, like she was just about to say something. Then she glanced around before proceeding to ask him, “Aren’t you the Gan family’s younger son?”

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  To hold a dustpan and broom: That is, to become a wife.

  “That’s right,” he replied.

  “Your father contracted for you to marry me,” she informed him, “so now why are you turning your back on the agreement, in favor of a pact with the Qin family?”

  Jue replied, “I was young when my parents died, but no one in my family has heard about such an agreement, so please tell me about your family, and then I can return home and ask my elder brother about it.”

  “You don’t need to bother with that,” the girl said, “for if you just give me the word, I’ll consider myself married to you.” Gan Jue explained he was forced to refuse, until he could consult Gan Yu. “What a stubborn scholar!” the girl laughed. “Are you really so afraid of your brother? My surname is Lu, and I’m from the village of Wang at the eastern mountain. I’ll wait for your response for the next three days.” Then she left.

  When Jue returned home, he told his brother and sister-in-law everything the girl had said. “That’s a big lie!” exclaimed Gan Yu. “Father had died by that time, and I was over twenty years old, so if something had been arranged, how could I not have heard about it?” The more he considered how the girl had been wandering around by herself out in the wilds, and then had spoken to a man with no one else around, the more vulgar he took her to be.

  He continued, asking about her looks. Gan Ju’s face and neck blushed red, and he didn’t utter a word. His sister-in-law smiled, and said, “I guess she must be a real beauty.”

  “How would a boy know the difference between beauty and ugliness?” Yu retorted. “Even if she were attractive, she’s certainly not as beautiful as Qin; we’ll wait for the Qin family first, and then, if necessary, it won’t be too late to arrange an engagement with the Lu girl.” Jue remained silent and withdrew.

  After several days, Gan Yu was on the road home, when he ran across a girl who was in tears. He lowered his riding lash and reined in his horse, and with even just a slight glance, he could tell that she had no equal for beauty in the mortal world. Yu sent a servant to find out who she was, and she answered, “Some time ago, I was betrothed to the younger son of the Gan family; because my family is poor, and we had to move our residence to a place far away, we couldn’t send any news. When we returned recently, we heard that his family was of two minds, and intended to back out of the previous agreement. I’m going to ask Uncle Gan Biren: how can he just abandon me?”

  Yu was pleasantly surprised and told her, “Gan Biren happens to be who I am. My late father made some agreement long ago, and truly, we knew nothing about it. My home’s not far from here, so please come with me and we’ll discuss matters when we get there.” Then he stood beside her, teaching her how to handle the horse’s reins, and they set off homeward at a walk.

  The girl explained, “My name is A-Ying, and there are no brothers in my family, so only my older cousin Qin lives with me.” It dawned on Gan Yu that this Qin was the girl he’d been looking for. He wanted to tell everyone in his family about her, but A-Ying steadfastly refused to allow it.

  Yu was secretly overjoyed that his younger brother would have such a beautiful wife, but he worried that his neighbors would criticize her for daring to travel by herself to her husband’s home. In the course of time, she came to be noted for her dignified behavior, as well as for her delicate and obligingly friendly speech. She took care of matters for Gan Yu’s wife respectfully, and hence her sister-in-law also admired her for helping out.

  At the Mid-Autumn Festival, Gan Jue and his wife prepared an intimate dinner, and the wife sent an invitation for A-Ying to join them. Jue was disappointed that she’d have to leave. The girl sent the messenger back alone, saying that she’d arrive there directly; but then she sat back down, laughing and talking for a good long while, indifferent to any obligation to leave.

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  Mid-Autumn Festival: Held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, the harvest-related festival celebrates the autumn moon, as family members eat mooncakes by moonlight and celebrate with candle-lit paper lanterns.

  Jue worried about making their sister-in-law wait for so long, so he urged her to hurry on her way. A-Ying, however, just laughed, and in the end made no move to leave.

  At daybreak, just as A-Ying was finishing putting on her make-up, her sister-in-law arrived and asked with concern, “When we were together last night, why were you so out of sorts?” A-Ying responded with a slight smile.

  Jue felt there was something rather strange about this, so he verified the seeming contradiction with his sister-in-law. She was quite shaken: “Unless she’s some kind of evil spirit, how could she have appeared in both places?”

  Gan Yu was also startled, and said through the curtain separating them from the girl, “Our family has been virtuous for generations, so please harbor no ill-will against us if you’re some kind of demon—I beg you to leave us quickly, and please don’t kill my brother!”

  “From the very beginning, I wasn’t a human being,” A-Ying replied, abashed, “and solely because your father made the agreement long ago, my elder Qin sister advised me to marry you. Realizing that I could never give birth to children for Jue, I wanted all along to leave, but I didn’t because I’ve become so attached to you all, and you and sister-in-law have treated me so warmly. Now that you’ve become suspicious of me, perhaps I should bid farewell.” In the blink of an eye, she changed into a parrot and flew away.

  Originally, when the Gan brothers’ father was alive, he had raised a parrot that was very intelligent, and always gave it treats personally. When Gan Jue was four or five years old, he asked his father, “Why are you raising that bird?”

  “I’m about to arrange for her to be your future wife,” his father replied playfully. If the parrot happened to be running low on food, his father would call for Jue and exclaim, “If you don’t go get her something to eat, your wife, my daughter-in-law, is going to starve!” All the rest of the family members also joked with him this way. Later on, the lock on the parrot’s cage broke, and it flew away.

  It became clear, finally, that this was the engagement A-Ying had been talking about. But even though Gan Jue fully realized his wife wasn’t human, he couldn’t get her out of his mind; his sister-in-law also missed her greatly, sobbing morning and night. Gan Yu regretted what he’d said, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Two years later, he had Gan Jue betroth a girl from the Jiang family, even though Jue wasn’t content with the idea. The brothers had an older cousin who was a local official in Guangdong, and Gan Yu had gone to Guangdong to visit him, but while a long time had elapsed, Yu still hadn’t returned home.

  It happened that their home region was beset by bandits, and wherever they entered a village, half of it would be utterly destroyed. Jue was so frightened that he led his family members into the mountains to escape. Men and women from all over converged on the mountains, and none of them knew who any of the others were.

  Suddenly they heard the low voice of a woman, and it sounded a lot like A-Ying’s. Jue’s sister-in-law hurried him closer so he could check her out, and he verified that it was A-Ying. Jue, rapturously happy, seized her arm and wouldn’t let go.

  The girl then told her travel companion, an elder sister, “Go on ahead—I need to go see my sister-in-law, who’s just come.” As she approached, her sister-in-law saw her and felt choked with emotion. A-Ying tried to comfort and to persuade her, over and over again, insisting, “This isn’t a good place for you.” Hence she advised them to go home. The group of them feared that the bandits might show up there, but A-Ying firmly argued, “There’s nothing to worry about.” Then she joined them as they all returned home.

  A-Ying picked up
a pinch of dirt and placed it on the lintel of the doorway, cautioning them that if they wished to be safe, they mustn’t go out, then sat and spoke with them for awhile, before turning around and wanting to go home. Her sister-in-law, quickly grabbing her by the wrist, told two maidservants to hold her right and left feet, so A-Ying had no alternative but to stay put.

  However, she absolutely would not return to Gan Jue’s part of the family house; Jue tried a number of times to get her to change her mind, and then she just agreed to go along with him. A-Ying’s sister-in-law kept telling her that Jue wasn’t happy with his new wife. A-Ying then got up early to help Jiang dress, and when she finished combing Jiang’s hair, and applying her make-up, people noticed that she was many times more attractive; thus it was that in three days, she unexpectedly became a genuine beauty.

  A-Ying’s sister-in-law thought this a rare thing indeed, and accordingly remarked to her, “I haven’t been able to produce a son. I’ve been wanting to purchase a concubine for Gan Yu, but haven’t had the time. I don’t know—could you make over one of our maidservants into a beauty?”

  “There isn’t anyone who can’t be transformed,” A-Ying replied, “and moreover, if she’s attractive to start with, it’s an easy matter.” Then she looked over all of the maidservants, but only one of them possessed a dark, ugly face, indicating that she was suitable for producing a son. She told that maidservant to bathe, and afterwards to take certain powders and medicines and apply them, and thus after three days, her complexion lightened up; twenty-eight days later, a glossy tone suffused her skin, till it became surprisingly attractive.

  As the days went by, they simply kept the doors shut and sat together chatting happily, disregarding the banditry and conflagration outside. One night, they heard noises rising from all directions, surrounding the house, and determined that they should stay where they were. In moments, they heard men and horses outside their gates making an uproar, and after a succession of such chaotic clamors, they all left.