Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

  279. The Monk’s Magic

  Scholar Huang was the son of a high official. His abundant literary and artistic talent allowed him to aspire to a highly successful future. In the monastery outside his village, there lived a certain monk, who was a devoted friend of Huang.

  It came to pass that the monk told Huang that he was going traveling, but then he was gone for over ten years before he returned again. When he saw Huang, he sighed and explained, “I told you a long time ago that you’d be able to fulfill your ambitions, so why are you no further along yet? I want your lot in life to be secure, rather than weak. Please offer a bribe to the gods of the underworld. Can you put up ten thousand coppers?”

  “I can’t,” replied Huang.

  The monk told him, “You can take care of half that amount, and I’ll loan you the rest of it. Then we’ll meet again, three days from now.” Huang assured him that he would do so, and did his utmost to obtain it, pawning his possessions till he achieved the agreed upon sum.

  Three days later, the monk arrived, and proceeded to turn over the other five thousand coppers to Huang. Huang’s family had long possessed a particular well that was deep and never ran dry, and it was said to be linked to both rivers and lakes. The monk instructed Huang to bundle up the money and set it on the edge of the well, cautioning him, “Once I return to the monastery, push the money so it falls into the well. Wait about half the time it takes to cook a meal, and if a coin floats up, you should proceed to perform obeisance to the gods.” Then he left.

  Huang didn’t understand anything about the magic involved, so he considered the possibility that it might not achieve the effect he desired, and considered what a pity it would be to lose ten thousand coppers. Thus he held back nine thousand coppers, and tossed only one thousand into the well.

  After a little while, a giant bubble suddenly surfaced and loudly popped, releasing a coin as large as a carriage wheel, which floated there. Huang was utterly astonished. He began performing obeisance, then picked up four thousand more coppers and tossed them in.

  As they fell in, there came the sound of them striking the large coin, and bouncing up, but they didn’t sink because they were blocked by the large coin. At dusk, the monk arrived, and reproachfully demanded, “Why didn’t you throw it all in?”

  “I already did throw it all in,” replied Huang.

  The monk insisted, “Didn’t you believe that you could bribe the underworld officials with only a thousand coppers, and that’s why you’ve lied about it?” Huang told him the truth, and with a sigh, the monk replied, “Such miserliness is certainly not the act of a talented individual. You seem to be fated to be a tribute student your entire life; otherwise, you could progress to become a jinshi right away.”

  Huang felt crushed, and asked whether the monk would help him offer another gift. The monk, however, firmly refused to be part of it, and left.

  Huang looked into the well at the coins still floating there, then took the well rope, tied a hook to it and began lowering it—but after he did so, the big coin sank. That year, Huang finished high enough in the civil service examinations to become a tribute student, but remained stuck at that level until he died, just as the monk had said.

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  Tribute student: This status, which carried no monetary stipend, was “sometimes granted to men who did not pass the Provincial Examination but did well enough to deserve honorable mention” (Hucker 218).

  Jinshi: A candidate who passes the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “How is it that a man can buy a government appointment even in the underworld? Ten thousand coppers and one receives a rank, so the price is cheap. A thousand bought him a tribute student’s appointment, yet the price was still too high. To be a tribute student during the Ming dynasty was worth nothing!”

  280. The Allotted Lifespan

  A certain dignitary had performed quite a number of misdeeds, and though his wife always warned him that he would face karmic consequences, he never believed in karma. It happened that there was an occult practitioner who could determine what a person’s lifespan would be, so the dignitary paid him a visit.

  The occultist looked carefully at him for a long time, and then declared, “Once you have eaten twenty dan of rice, and forty dan of wheat flour, your time will come to an end.”

  The dignitary returned home and told this to his wife. He calculated that in a year, a person would’ve eaten only two dan of wheat flour, so since he should still have over twenty years before his time was up, how could anything possibly cut short his time? Consequently he behaved just as wickedly as before.

  About a year later, he suddenly fell ill with diabetes, and started eating great quantities of food, all the while continuing to feel hungry—so in the course of a single day, he’d eat more than ten days’ worth. Before even one more year had passed, he died.

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  Twenty dan . . . forty dan: Since one dan equals one hectoliter, the dignitary can eat 2000 liters, or 528.34 gallons, of rice, and 4000 liters, or 1056.68 gallons, of wheat flour.

  281. Scholar Liu

  Scholar Zho was the descendant of a Shuntian official. He was good friends with a scholar named Liu. This Liu had studied with an extraordinary individual, who practiced the art of physiognomy.

  He once told Zhou, “You’re not fated to become an official; but in terms of making lots of money, you can still accomplish that. However, I’m afraid your wife’s physiognomy suggests that she won’t be able to help you succeed in your profession.” Soon afterwards, his wife died. His household became a bleak place, since there was no longer a woman in charge of it.

  Hence Zhou went to consult Liu about selecting a new wife. He went inside Liu’s home and sat waiting for a good long while, but Liu stayed within the inner rooms and didn’t come out. Zhou called for him three times, then Liu finally came out, explaining, “I’ve spent the day looking for a good wife for you, and now I’ve located one. I was inside performing a bit of magic to solicit a matchmaker to arrange your marriage.”

  Zhou was overjoyed, and asked him about the woman. “There’s a local man,” Liu replied, “who always carries a bag with him when goes out—have you run into him?”

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  Shuntian: Modern day Beijing.

  Physiognomy: That is, foretelling one’s fortune through assessment of one’s features, complexion, and body morph.

  “I have,” said Zhou. “He’s as shabby as a beggar.”

  Liu explained, “He will be your father-in-law, so you should greet him respectfully.”

  “It’s because we’re on friendly terms that I share my secrets with you,” said Zhou, “and yet you make fun of me this way! I may have fallen on hard times, but I’m still the descendant of worthy ancestors, so how could I have declined so far as to marry a beggar’s daughter?”

  Liu replied, “You’re wrong. When different colored cattle are bred, they still produce offspring, so what’s the harm?”

  “Have you seen his daughter before?” asked Zhou.

  “No,” Liu answered. “I haven’t known him for long, and I still have to ask him his name.”

  Zhou laughed, “You still don’t know the colors of the cattle, so how can you know what the calves will be like?”

  “I’ve examined his fate,” Liu explained. “He’s vicious and base, but his daughter will be quite fortunate. Nevertheless, if you’re actually forced to join together, that will surely result in a dangerous situation, requiring sacrifices to reverse it.”

  Zhou then returned home, unwilling to accept Liu’s words of advice, and began his own search for a wife, but without any success.

  One day, scholar Liu suddenly arrived, and declared, “You will have a guest to whom I’ve already extended an invitation.”

  “Who?” asked Zhou.

  “For now, it’s better you don�
�t ask—just see that food and drink is prepared.” Zhou couldn’t tell for what reasons Liu was making his request, so he simply complied.

  Presently, the guest arrived, a soldier named Fu. Although Zhou didn’t really feel like doing so, he welcomed Fu with a hollow cordiality; but scholar Liu treated him with great respect. After a little while, wine and delicacies were set out, accompanied as well by an assortment of modest dishes.

  Liu stood up and told his guest, “Master Zhou has admired you for a long time, and has repeatedly asked me to find you, then last night we finally met. When I heard you say that within the next few days you’d be traveling on a distant journey, I immediately invited you so you could speak together, and our host quickly took care of everything else.” While they were dining, Fu expressed his concern that his horse was ill, and couldn’t be ridden into battle. Liu then ducked his head in concentration, thinking about the matter.

  Later on, once Fu had left, Liu told Zhou, “You couldn’t buy a friend like this for a thousand taels, so why did you seem so indifferent towards him?” He asked to borrow a horse from Zhou so he could ride home, and then once he’d been provided with one, he paid a call to Fu’s lodging, and offered him the horse, telling him it was Zhou’s idea. When Zhou learned about this subsequently, he was rather displeased, but nothing could be done about what had already transpired.

  A year elapsed, and Zhou was just about to leave for Jiangxi, to serve in the office of the provincial judge there. He went to consult Liu for a forecast of his future. “It’s extremely auspicious!” Liu told him.

  Zhou smiled and replied, “My only reason for going there is to make enough money to buy a beautiful wife, and if I’m lucky, don’t you suppose that what you said before will come to pass?”

  “You’ll get what you wish,” said Liu.

  When Zhou arrived at Jiangxi, it was in the throes of a great rebel uprising, and for three years he was unable to return home. After things became a bit more calm, he chose a day and followed a route homeward, but halfway there he was robbed by bandits, while seven or eight of his fellow victims, after being deprived of their money, were released and told to leave; but the bandits took Zhou and the loot back to their lair.

  The bandit leader demanded to know Zhou’s family background, and afterwards told him, “I have a daughter, and I respectfully wish her to be your wife—at once, or you will not leave.” Zhou gave no reply. This made the bandit chief angry, so he stood and fiercely ordered that Zhou be beheaded.

  Terrified, Zhou figured it would be better to go along with the leader’s proposal for now, and then when things calmed down, he could abandon the woman. Accordingly, he told the bandit chief, “I was wavering because I’m just a feeble scholar, and couldn’t follow your forces into battle; I’m afraid that I would only hinder your efforts. If you would allow my wife and I to leave here together, I would wish no greater kindness from you.”

  “I was worried that she would cause me problems,” the bandit answered him, “so it’s fine if you don’t come with us.” He led Zhou inside—and after applying her make-up, the daughter came out, so the scholar could see that she was eighteen or nineteen, and an extraordinary beauty.

  That night, the wedding ceremony was held and their subsequent intimacies surpassed all his expectations. Gathering other details when he inquired about her surname, Zhou came to realize that the man he’d seen carrying the bag on his back was her father. Hence, with a sigh, he recounted Liu’s words for her.

  Three or four days went by, and just as the bandit leader was about to see them off, they were suddenly ambushed by a large concentration of imperial troops, so all of the family members were captured and bound. There was a general and three military inspectors looking on, and once they finished cutting off the bandit chief’s head, they proceeded to Zhou.

  Zhou believed he was finished. Then one of the military inspectors looked at him closely and asked, “Isn’t this fellow named Zhou?”

  It came out that soldier Fu’s military exploits had earned him the title of army vice general. He told his colleagues, “This is a celebrated scholar from an influential family in my hometown, so he could hardly be a thief.” He untied Zhou’s bonds, and asked him how he’d come to be there.

  Zhou cunningly replied, “I happened to be returning home from the office of the provincial judge in Jiangxi, where I had married my wife, when unexpectedly along the way we fell into a trap laid by bandits, though fortunately you came along to rescue us, thanks to your soldierly excellence! But I’ve been separated from my wife, so I hope you can exert your great power further to help me locate her.”

  Fu ordered his men to line up all the captives, and then told Zhou to pick her out. He entertained the couple with food and drink, and then further assisted them by offering traveling expenses, saying, “I’ve never forgotten your former kindness regarding the horse. However, I’ve been too preoccupied with rounding up rebels to have time to prepare an appropriate gift, so please accept these two horses, equals to the one you gave me, and fifty taels, to help you return to the north.” Then he dispatched two of his men to convey authorization for them to pass, and to protect Zhou and his wife while accompanying them home.

  Along the way, Zhou’s wife told him, “My foolish father wouldn’t listen to my sincere warnings, and as a consequence, my mother died. I’ve known for a long time that today would come. I’ve been able to suffer this ignoble lifestyle day and night because when I was young, there was a physiognomy reader who told me that I could look forward one day to being able properly to inter the bones of my parents. There’s a certain pit where I’ve hidden a great deal of money, and we can retrieve it, in order to bury my father; the remainder we can take home, since there will be enough to secure a livelihood.”

  They asked their soldier escorts to wait for them beside the road, yet when the two arrived at the site, they found the houses there reduced to cinders, but from among the ashes they picked up a sword and dug down about a chi, where they found the money; once it was all recovered, they put it in a bag and then returned.

  They took out a hundred taels, gave it to the soldiers, and sent them to bury the corpse of the wife’s father; then she led Zhou to the grave of her mother, where they performed obsequies, before heading home. When they finally arrived at Shuntian, they generously rewarded the soldiers, who then left.

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  Chi: A distance equal to 1/3 meter.

  Zhou hadn’t been home in a long time, so his servants informed him that they thought he was already dead, and hence they’d felt unrestrained about helping themselves to his land, his silk, his housewares, and everything else—consequently there was nothing left. Unnerved, they all ran off; only one old woman, one younger maidservant, and one elderly male servant remained. Since Zhou had only recently escaped certain death with his life intact, he didn’t pursue the matter any further.

  He went to visit scholar Liu, but no one seemed to know where he’d gone.

  Zhou’s wife, who did more to support the family than many men could have, selected some honest, reliable men to receive grants of business capital from her, making her an equal partner in their businesses. She kept track of each and every business transaction from beneath the eaves of her own house, listening from behind her curtain; an abacus couldn’t so much as miss noting down a single bead without her pointing out the error. Inside and out, no one dared try to cheat her. In a few years, she accumulated more than a hundred partners, producing several hundred thousand taels’ profit.

  Then she dispatched men to bring her parents’ bones to her, and had them reburied with an elaborate funeral ceremony.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Matchmakers can be bribed to make their pitches, so it’s no wonder that the go-between acted like a trader. Could a bandit have such a daughter as this? We shouldn’t say that a mighty pine can’t grow up from a lowly mound of soil. And if that’s true of women, surely it’s true as well for
men!”

  282. The Miscarriage of Justice

  Scholar Zhu was from Yanggu. A frivolous young man, Zhu enjoyed playing jokes on people. When his wife died, Zhu went to consult a marriage broker. He happened to run into the wife of the marriage broker’s neighbor, and a glance told him she was gorgeous. He playfully told the old lady matchmaker, “I happened to see your neighbor, who’s ideally young and lovely, so if you’re looking for a wife for me, she’d do fine.”

  “Hire someone to kill her man,” replied the equally mischievous old woman, “and then I can ensure that you get what you’re after.”

  Zhu laughed and said, “It’s a deal.”

  Another month went by, and when the husband of the marriage broker’s neighbor went out one day to collect loan repayments, he was killed outside of town. The magistrate ordered the arrest of the man’s neighbors, who were interrogated under torture to get to the truth, but the investigation yielded no clues; except, that is, for the joking exchange that the old lady matchmaker described having made earlier, which led them to suspect Zhu.

  When men arrived to arrest him, Zhu insisted that he had nothing to do with it. The magistrate ordered the victim’s wife to be taken into custody and whipped, questioning her during the torment. The wife couldn’t stand it, so she pled guilty, despite being innocent. Then the magistrate interrogated Zhu, and Zhu told him, “She’s delicate, and couldn’t stand the torture, so her words were all fabrications. Now she’ll wrongly be sentenced to death, and what’s more, she’ll lose her chaste reputation—but even if heaven paid no attention to that, how could I bear it? I’ll confess the truth of it: I wanted to kill her husband and marry her, and it was all my doing, and the wife knew nothing about it.”

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  Yanggu: A county located in modern Shandong province.