Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

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  Bagong: The Confucian schools throughout the empire sent one or two students, designated senior licentiates, every twelve years to be admitted to the National University that was “maintained at the dynastic capital by the Directorate of Education” (Hucker 359).

  Shuntian: Modern Beijing.

  How could our names have been as similar as this?: A reference to their first names, since the meng portion of Mengxian means “eldest,” while the zhong portion of Zhongxian means “second” or “middle,” references most frequently to birth order.

  When the examination was over, they didn’t waste a moment, but arranged for themselves to be driven to Zhongxian’s hometown. Just as they arrived at the family’s gate, the servants greeted their master with word that his parents had been missing since the previous night. Mengxian and Zhongxian were quite upset.

  Zhongxian went inside and asked for details from his wife, who told him, “Last night, we were sharing a cup of wine together, when your mother remarked, ‘You and your husband are young and inexperienced. Tomorrow his elder brother will arrive, and then we won’t have anything to worry about.’ Early this morning, when I entered their room, it was quiet, and no one was there.”

  When the brothers heard this, they were suddenly overcome with anxiety. Zhongxian wanted to go out searching for them; but Mengxian insisted that it would be pointless, so they stayed there. In the interim, they learned that Zhongxian had passed the provincial level of the civil service examination.

  Since their ancestors’ graves were in Shanxi, Zhongxian accompanied his elder brother when he went home. Still hoping that their parents remained somewhere in the mortal world, they made inquiries about them everywhere they went, but in the end, there were no signs of them anywhere.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Boring a hole into a bedroom was a foolish act; drilling through a cliff, in order to berate an old man, was simply crazy; an immortal, however, made the two possible by wanting to reward a young scholar with immortality for his filial devotion. But since Huo and Qing’e lived among mortals, engaging in carnal activity and giving birth to children, why couldn’t they also just live and die among them? Then for thirty years they repeatedly abandoned children time and again—why weren’t they ever prevented from doing that? That’s really strange!”

  270. The Oracle Mirror

  The Zheng brothers of Yidu were both literary scholars. The older Zheng established a reputation for himself early on, so his parents always lavished their love on him, and by extension on his wife as well; the younger son fell short of his brother’s accomplishments, so they weren’t very happy with him, and also disliked his wife, looking down on her as if she was their social inferior: the parents’ differing attitudes towards the brothers created emotional barriers on both sides.

  The younger brother’s wife often told her husband, “You’re every bit the man that he is, so why won’t you fight when your wife’s insulted?” Then she refused to let him sleep with her. This made the younger Zheng brother feel indignant, motivating him to become so diligent and keen in his studies that he also developed a reputation for himself. Although his parents regarded him more positively than they had before, in the end they still favored his elder brother.

  The younger brother’s wife was quite fervent in her ambitions for her husband, and since it was time that year to hold the provincial civil service examination, on New Year’s Eve she secretly consulted an oracle mirror to foretell the younger Zheng’s future. There happened to be two men who were standing up, playfully pushing each other, and one of them told the other, “You’d better go cool off!”

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  Yidu: A county in Shandong province.

  When the wife got home, she couldn’t figure out whether it had been an inauspicious or auspicious omen, so she stopped thinking about it.

  After the examination was over, the two brothers returned home. At that time, the summer weather was still scorching, and the two wives were in the kitchen, where it was really hot, preparing food for their field workers.

  Suddenly, a messenger called at their house, announcing that the elder brother had passed the examination. His mother hurried to the kitchen and shouted to the elder brother’s wife, “My oldest son has passed the imperial examination! You’d better go cool off.” The younger brother’s wife was angry and despondent, weeping as she cooked.

  Just then, there was another messenger, announcing that the younger brother had also been successful. His wife flung aside the stick for rolling out pancakes, and stood up, exclaiming, “I’d better go cool off, too!” Because she was feeling so excited at the time, the words unconsciously came out of her mouth; afterward, as she thought about it, she realized that the oracle mirror had been referring to the examination results.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “If a man is so poor that his parents stop treating him as a respected son, there’s a reason for it! In this household, there originally wasn’t any resentment aroused by the treatment; however, the younger brother’s wife stirred up her husband, and her irritated response to disappointments goaded him. Tossing her rolling stick aside and standing up, she experienced the kind of wonderful feeling that rarely ever occurs!”

  271. The Cattle Plague

  Chen Huafeng lived on Mt. Meng. Due to the oppressive midsummer heat, he had just taken refuge beneath a tree out in the open country. Suddenly a man ran up to him, his neck all wrapped up, and hurried into the shade, carrying a stone in both hands to sit on, then frantically began fanning himself while his sweat ran down in a constant stream.

  Chen stood up respectfully to greet him, and said with a smile, “If you’d just get rid of all that wrapping around your neck, you wouldn’t need to fan yourself to keep cool.”

  “I could take it off easily enough,” the man replied, “but it’d be difficult to put it back on again.”

  They proceeded to share an enjoyable, earnest discussion, as the man seemed cultured and refined to Chen. Afterwards, the man explained, “Right now, I wish for nothing more than a cup of cool wine with a delicate fragrance to swallow down the length of my throat, briefly deflecting the summer heat.”

  Chen laughed and said, “This is an easy matter to handle, so I should be able to help you out.” They shook hands, and then he told the man, “My house is nearby, if it pleases you to detour your steps in this direction.” The traveler laughed, and followed him.

  When they arrived at Chen’s house, he took out some wine that had been stored in a stone cave and was so cold, it made their teeth chatter. This greatly pleased the traveler, who drank ten cups of it altogether. The day was already approaching dusk, when the sky suddenly turned to rain; as a result, Chen set up a lamp in the room, and his guest began removing the cloth from around his neck, without any apparent unease.

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  Mt. Meng: Located in Fei county, Shandong province.

  While they were speaking, Chen grew suspicious when he noticed in the lamplight that the traveler’s brains appeared to be leaking out. Before long, his guest was dead drunk, asleep on a bed.

  Chen moved the lamp over to steal a closer look at him, and saw that there was an enormous hole behind his ear, the size of a small cup; there were several layers of membranes criss-crossed over it, like the latticework for a window; a soft leather flap hung down over the membrane latticework, while to Chen’s astonishment, the inside looked completely empty, so he surreptitiously took a hairpin and observed, as he poked aside the membranes, that there was something inside resembling a tiny cow, which immediately flew out, damaging the window before it vanished. Even more shocked, he didn’t dare poke around any further.

  Then, just as he wanted to direct his steps in the opposite direction, the traveler began waking up. In alarm he cried, “You caught a glimpse of what I’m hiding! You let the cattle plague out, so how are we going to deal with it?”r />
  Chen respectfully asked him what he meant, and the traveler replied, “Since it’s no longer a secret, there’s no point in me covering it up. To tell you the truth, I’m the god of livestock disease. If the cattle plague is released, I’m afraid that all of the cattle for a hundred li will become unfit for breeding.”

  Since Chen raised cattle for a living, he was terribly shaken when he heard this, so he did obeisance to his guest, begging him to stop the plague magically. The traveler replied, “I’m inevitably to blame for it, so what magic do I have to ward it off? Only kushen can effectively dissipate the plague, so you should spread the efficacious herb widely, and not just think of yourself.”

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  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  When he finished speaking, he thanked Chen and headed outside his host’s gate. Then he picked up handfuls of earth and heaped them into a pile, saying, “Each time you use one ge of this, it’ll effectively keep away the plague.” Then he folded his hands respectfully in farewell, and vanished.

  Chen hadn’t been home long before his cattle started becoming sick, and the pestilence broke out. He wanted to keep the secret of the herb’s effects to himself, sharing it only with his younger brother.

  The younger brother wanted to test the immortal traveler’s preventative earth. But Chen went ahead and applied the kushen to the cattle, though this didn’t prove effective in stopping the disease. He had two hundred head of cattle, and almost all of them dropped dead from it; he lost all but four or five old cows that had hung back, rather than go near the dead ones. In his heart, Chen felt vexed and powerless.

  Suddenly he remembered the pile of dirt and took some in each hand, thinking that surely it couldn’t really have any effect, yet for the time being he overlooked his doubts and tossed some around. Once the night had passed, their remaining cattle were able to stand up. It dawned on him that when he didn’t trust in the dirt’s preventative power, the immortal had punished him for his selfishness.

  Over several years, their cattle bred in great numbers, till in time there were as many as there had been before.

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  Kushen: The Sophora flavescens is used in China as an insecticide; it shares the same species as the Chinese Scholar Tree (Sophora japonica).

  Ge: A measure of volume equal to 1/10 pint.

  272. Uncle Jin

  In Huiji, there was a temple dedicated to the Plum Virgin. This female immortal, who was surnamed Ma and lived with her relatives in Dongwan, never married, for her intended husband died while he was still young, and afterwards she remained faithful to him, refusing to wed, till she died thirty years later. At her clan’s ancestral temple, they called her the Plum Virgin.

  In 1656, there was a scholar in Shangyu named Jin, who was on his way to take an examination, when he passed by this temple, and upon entering the temple grounds, he found himself pacing back and forth, deep in thought. That night, he dreamt that a maidservant appeared to him, reporting that the Plum Virgin had extended an invitation to him. Jin consequently followed her.

  When they entered the temple proper, the Plum Virgin, who was standing beneath the building’s eaves, waiting for them, smiled and said, “Receiving you here allows me to devote myself to you, an opportunity I’ve truly longed for. If you don’t disapprove of my humble inexperience, I hope you’ll let me serve you as a concubine.” Jin hesitantly agreed.

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  Huiji: Located in Shaoxing, in modern Zhejiang province.

  Dongwan: An ancient place name, perhaps situated in modern Shandong province’s Yishui county (Zhu 2:937n2).

  Shangyu: A county located during the Qing dynasty in Shaoxing prefecture, Zhejiang province.

  The Plum Virgin accompanied him outside and told him, “You should leave for the time being. When I’ve made the proper arrangements, then we can be together.” Jin woke up and all was as it had been.

  That same night, members of the Ma family who were living there dreamt that the Plum Virgin had instructed them, “Scholar Jin, from Shangyu, is now my husband, so you should make a statue of him.” When various members of the Ma clan exchanged their opinions about this, they discovered that they’d all experienced the same dream. The family head was afraid that making the statue would tarnish the Plum Virgin’s reputation for chastity, and hence they didn’t do as she’d requested.

  Before long, the entire family fell ill. Terribly frightened, they made the requested statue in Jin’s image and placed it to the left of the Plum Virgin’s effigy. Once the task was completed, scholar Jin told his wife, “The Plum Virgin has invited me to stay with her.” Then, after donning formal clothing and cap, he died.

  His wife, filled with bitter hatred, visited the temple, where she pointed at the Plum Virgin’s effigy, cursing and berating her; then she climbed up to the altar, slapped the effigy’s cheek three or four times, and subsequently left. Now the members of the Ma clan refer to the other statue as Uncle Jin.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “She never married, and she protected her virginity, so one cannot say that she was unchaste. After being a ghost for hundreds of years, she changed her mind about retaining her chastity, so why should she restrain herself from behaving brazenly? Generally speaking, the soul and spirit of a chaste virgin might be at rest in the clay statue that people erected for her; but the reason this temple effigy seemed to possess a mysterious power is because of all the ghosts and foxes who imbued it with a kind of immortality.”

  273. The Magistrate of Zitong

  Jinshi Chang Dazhong was from Taiyuan. He was being considered as a candidate for a special position in the capital. The previous night, he had a dream in which the God of Literature presented him with a visiting card. When he checked it, it proved to be the visiting card of the magistrate of Zitong. Chang considered this very odd.

  Just then, he had been returning home to perform the funeral services for his parents, during which time he ceased to be considered a candidate for the special position—but then, after returning home, he experienced the same dream. Silently he thought to himself, doesn’t that mean that I’ll receive the position described on the card?

  Then, shortly afterwards, that’s precisely what happened.

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  Zitong: A county in Sichuan province.

  Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.

  Taiyuan: Originally a prefecture, now the name of a city in Shandong province.

  274. The Ghost’s Saliva

  A certain Li was taking a daytime nap, when he saw a woman step out from the wall, her hair wildly disheveled, hanging down in front so it covered her face; when she passed in front of the window, she took her hand and brushed back the hair, exposing her face, which was bloated, black, and horribly ugly. Li was terrified, and wanted to run away.

  The woman unexpectedly climbed onto his bed, gripped his head powerfully, and put her lips on his, then took her tongue and transferred some of her saliva, which was cold as a chunk of ice as it dripped down his throat. He didn’t want to swallow it, but he was unable to draw breath past it, and as he swallowed it, its stickiness clogged his throat. He tried to take a breath, but his mouth felt like it was full, till finally the air rushed down his throat.

  This went on for quite some time, until the air was finally cut off and he couldn’t breathe. He heard the sound of someone passing through his gate outside, and the woman finally took her hands away and left.

  At that point, Li’s stomach began swelling, and he gasped as it filled out, till by some ten days later he was no longer able to eat. Someone advised him to take some purgative ginseng and gourd soup, and then examine what he vomited up—thus after doing so, he spat up something that looked like an egg white, and subsequently recovered from his affliction.

  275. Island of the Immortals

  Wang Mian,
whose courtesy name was Minzhai, was from Lingshan. He had a creative imagination, and repeatedly achieved the top score in examinations, so he was highly ambitious and proud; he enjoyed criticizing and rebuking others, and many people felt humiliated by his hectoring.

  It chanced once that he encountered a Daoist, who looked closely at him and commented, “You appear to be an esteemed individual, yet your honors and rank will be forfeited by your arrogant treatment of others. Depending upon how wise you are, if you reverse your path and cultivate yourself, you still can ascend to the status of the immortals.”

  With a sneer, Wang replied, “The fortune that belongs to me alone is unknowable—besides, how can there be any immortals in the world!”

  “Why respond so contemptuously?” the Daoist asked him. “You need look no further, for I myself am an immortal.” Wang then roared with derisive laughter. “I’m certainly very ordinary. But if you come along with me when I leave, you’ll immediately be able to see a great many immortals.”

  “Where exactly is this place you mean?” Wang asked.

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  Lingshan: Located in northeast Jiaonan county, Shandong province.

  The Daoist answered, “It’s very close.” Then he took a stick, straddled a section of it, and held one end of it out to Wang, telling him to ride it the way he was. Insisting that Wang close his eyes, the Daoist cried, “Rise!” Wang felt the stick become as wide as a five dou bag, then they soared up into the air as it began to fly, and when he surreptitiously rubbed his hand along the stick, its bark felt like rows and rows of scales. This so frightened him that he didn’t dare move his hand again.

  In moments, the Daoist cried, “Stop!” Then as he dispatched with the stick, they found themselves settled within an enormous home, consisting of multiple levels and an extended pavilion, like an emperor’s residence. There was a raised platform that was more than a zhang high; on top of the platform stood a palace with eleven columns that were incomparably majestic.