Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 4

by Pu Songling

  Wang helplessly lamented what they’d said, realizing that it was too late for regrets. Yuanfeng went to his room, looked at Xiaocui’s make-up supplies and her abandoned crochet work, and cried his heart out like he wanted to die; he couldn’t force himself to sleep or eat, and thus over time he became thin and weakened.

  Wang was very worried about him, so he urged him to remarry and free himself from his suffering, but Yuanfeng wouldn’t do it. Instead, after begging an artist to paint a portrait of Xiaocui, he did obeisance to it, day and night, for almost two years.

  On one occasion, as he happened to be returning to his village and the moonlight was already bright, he found himself outside the village where there was a pavilioned garden belonging to his family, and as he rode his horse past the outer wall, he heard the sound of cheerful conversation, so he stopped his horse and had a groom hold onto the reins; he then stood up in the saddle so he could see over the wall, where there were two girls enjoying some recreation in the garden.

  Since clouds were now covering up the moon, he wasn’t able to see much in the dark, but he heard one of them in green clothing say, “You should be chased out of here!”

  “You’re in my family’s garden,” the other one, in red clothing, replied, “so just who are you wanting to expel?”

  The girl in green exclaimed, “You’re so shameless! You can’t perform a wife’s duty, you’re sent away for being annoying, but you still dare act like this belongs to you?”

  “It’s better than being an old maid who can’t even land a husband!” When Yuanfeng heard her voice, he noticed it was very similar to Xiaocui’s, so he quickly called out to her.

  The girl in green left then, saying, “I can’t argue with you about it now, because your husband’s arrived.” Afterwards the girl in red came over to him, and sure enough, it was Xiaocui. Yuanfeng was overjoyed.

  Xiaocui told him to climb over the wall and join her: “I haven’t seen you for two years, but you’ve become so skinny that I can reach right around you!” Yuanfeng held her hand, and with tears streaming down his face, he told her how deeply he’d missed her. “I know,” she told him, “but I can’t face seeing your family again. I was playing with my elder sister just now, but then I met you by chance, and I realize that it’s because our fate is something I can’t run away from.”

  When he asked her to go home with him, she said she couldn’t; but when he asked her just to stay there in the garden, she consented. Yuanfeng sent his servants to hurry home and inform his mother. Amazed, Wang’s wife jumped up, arranged for a sedan chair to carry her, and was transported to the garden, where she opened the gate with her key and entered the pavilion.

  Xiaocui hurried over and kowtowed to greet her; her mother-in-law grabbed her by the arm, her tears flowing, freely conceding she’d been mistreated previously, taking most of the blame herself as she pleaded, “If you can let bygones be bygones, please come home with us, to be a comfort for me in my declining years.” Xiaocui remained firmly insistent that she couldn’t return with them.

  Wang’s wife thought about how desolate and silent the garden pavilion was, so she offered to have several servants come out to care for her. “I don’t want to see anyone,” she replied, “except for the two maidservants who’ve always been with me, since we’ve been so close in the past that I can’t help but miss them; and if you’ll also send an old servant to be the gatekeeper, I don’t really need anything else.”

  Her mother-in-law complied just as she’d requested. She gave out the pretext that Yuanfeng was spending time in the garden recuperating from his illness, while food and other conveniences were sent each day for them to enjoy. Xiaocui continually tried to persuade Yuanfeng to marry someone else, but he wouldn’t give in.

  After more than a year, Xiaocui’s features and voice gradually began to change from what they’d been in the past, so Yuanfeng took out her portrait, which looked as completely different as if they’d been two separate people. It was very strange.

  “When you look at me these days, do you think I’m as beautiful as I used to be?” she asked.

  Yuanfeng replied, “You’re just over twenty now, and yet you seem to be aging quickly.” With a smile, Xiaocui set the portrait on fire, and before Yuanfeng could rescue it, it had already burned to ashes.

  One day, she told Yuanfeng, “In the past, when I was living with your family, your father said that I was apparently unable to bear children. Now that my inlaws are elderly and you’re single, and it’s true that I can’t give birth, I’m afraid that you’ll be left without anyone to carry on your name. Please marry some woman for the benefit of your family, so there’ll always be someone there to care for your parents, and then you can come and go as you like between there and here.” Yuanfeng did as she requested, presenting betrothal gifts to the family of Court Historian Zhong.

  As the time drew near for the wedding day, Xiaocui was busy making clothes for the bride, which were then presented to her mother. When the bride finally entered the Wang family’s gate, her speech, appearance, and bearing was absolutely identical to Xiaocui in every detail. It was very strange indeed.

  After going back to the garden pavilion, Yuanfeng discovered that no one knew where Xiaocui was. When he asked the maidservants about it, one of them took out something wrapped in red cloth, and told him, “The mistress had to return home briefly, but she asked me to give this to you, sir.”

  When he opened the cloth, he found a jade ring there, a sign for him to know that she’d not be returning, and thus he took the maidservants back home with him. Although he never, even for an instant, forgot Xiaocui, he was fortunate that whenever he saw his new bride, it was like he was meeting his old love again.

  He finally came to realize that Xiaocui had known he would marry into the Zhong family, and so, beforehand, she’d changed herself to appear like the Zhong daughter, so he would be comforted by always having her in his thoughts.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “A fox acknowledged that though it had been sheltered inadvertently, it still considered itself indebted; but how low was it for the man who’d received abundant compensation for his act to lash out verbally just because of a damaged bottle! After storming off in anger, Xiaocui came back to the garden pavilion, encouraged Yuanfeng to marry again, and then calmly departed, demonstrating that an immortal’s devotion exceeds that normally associated with mortals!”

  289. Jin the Monk

  There was a man from Zhucheng who was known as Jin the monk. His father was a rogue who sold his son for several hundred copper coins to a monastery on Five Lotus Mountain. Jin was a bit thickheaded, and unable to sit still and study, so he tended the cattle and pigs that were to be taken to market, as if he was a hired laborer.

  As soon as his teacher died, there was still some money left from what he’d earned, so he collected the remainder of it and left the monastery to become a wandering laborer. Making sheep weigh more through overwatering, and monopolizing the best ridges for grazing, he relied upon aggressive methods to succeed.

  After several years, he acquired sufficient wealth to buy farmland and a house at the village of Shuipo. The number of people working for him continued to multiply, until he calculated that there were about a thousand mouths to feed each day. He owned many thousand mu of fertile farmland in the vicinity of his village.

  He built over ten buildings, but only monks could stand to live in them; even so, there were always other people living there who were too poor to afford any property of their own, so Jin rented them housing and leased some farmland to them. Sharing a single gate, all of the houses were linked, and the people effectively living all together.

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  Zhucheng: A city located in Weifang prefecture, Shandong province.

  Five Lotus Mountain: Mt. Wulian (“five lotus”) is located near the city of Rizhao, in Shandong.

  Mu: A measure of land equal to approximately 1/6 acre.

  The mo
nks’ living quarters were inside: in front there was a public office, upon the roof beams and pillars of which they had drawn richly colorful images that caught people’s eyes; on a small table in the courtyard there was a screen so shiny that it could be used as a mirror; then behind that were private rooms, separated by red curtains with embroidery on them, with the fragrance of orchid and musk filling the air; the beds were made from carved sandalwood with exquisite mother-of-pearl inlay, and on the beds were mattresses covered in brocade, their pleated folds a zhi deep; hanging on the wall there were so many paintings by famous artists of landscapes and beauties that there seemed to be no cracks anyplace in the wall.

  When a voice cried out, several dozen men outside answered, shaking the ground like thunder. They were servants, all of them standing at attention; Jin cupped his hand to the side of his mouth to project his voice, and they all turned to listen attentively. When guests arrived without notice, the servants were able to set up more than ten separate banquets in mere moments, featuring fatty meat and sweet liquor which created an aromatic atmosphere like fog and mist.

  However, they didn’t dare bring in prostitutes, so they kept a group of young men who looked as elegant as girls with rough cloth wrapped around their heads, singing naughty songs, which people either listened to or watched in disgust. Jin came out just then, surrounded by a dozen riders bearing bows and arrows, his students, who kept bumping into each other.

  The servants there variously called Jin “uncle,” signifying that he was superior to them, “grandpa,” or “young uncle,” but never “master,” “saintly sir,” or his nickname in the monastery. When Jin’s students went out, they weren’t treated with the same deference—though with only slightly less—and they collected altogether, riding their horses like a team, behaving like they were the sons of some wealthy family.

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  Zhi: A measure equal to eight cun, or 2.67 decimeters.

  Jin at that point had acquaintances from all over, some of whom would travel a thousand li just to speak their minds and exchange ideas with him, while magistrates or high officials were always cautious in their remarks for fear of offending him. But Jin was despicable, lacking even the least bit of refinement from top to bottom. His whole life, he’d never read a single sacred text, never performed any kind of obeisance, never set foot in a temple or paid to have a copper drum beat in a temple, so neither his students nor his followers ever witnessed or heard about any of these activities.

  In Jin’s housing, there were women as exceedingly beautiful as those who lived in the capital, their facial lotions and powders all provided by him, and he wasn’t at all stingy with them since his fields had nearly a hundred renters working for him. From time to time, one of Jin’s wickedly jealous tenants would cut off a monk’s head, and bury it underneath his bed, but they never interrogated the guilty very extensively about it, simply driving them out instead, so it kept on happening.

  Jin subsequently bought a boy whose surname was different than his, and privately treated him like his son. He sent for a Confucian teacher to instruct the boy in learning the writing style required for the civil service examinations. The boy proved gifted at intellectual activities, and accordingly was enrolled in the county school; before long, he advanced sufficiently to be made a student of the Imperial College; and soon after that, went to take to take the civil service examination in the capital, where he succeeded in becoming a juren.

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  Li: A measure equal to 1/3 mile.

  The capital: Shuntian, the modern Beijing.

  Juren: A successful candidate in the imperial civil service examination at the provincial level.

  From this point on, everyone referred to Jin as a “greatly respected elder.” Once his former popular epithet, “grandpa,” gained the “greatly respected” addition, everyone began kneeling before him, behaving in the same manner as they did with members of the elder generation.

  Soon Jin died among the monks. The young man he’d bought dressed in mourning clothes and observed a period of grieving as though he was lamenting the death of his own birth parent, kneeling before Jin’s funeral tablet and referring to himself as Jin’s lonely orphan; Jin’s Buddhist followers covered his bed with mourner’s staffs; and from behind the mourner’s curtain came the sound of sobbing and weeping from the young man’s wife. Learned men and their wives, dressed in colorful attire, showed up and pulled aside the mourner’s curtain to express their condolences, while the carriages of the many arriving officials blocked the road.

  On the day of Jin’s burial, a chain of temporary awnings was constructed, with banners hanging that created shade as though from trees. They buried Jin and burned paper offerings for him that represented gold and silk; they burned several dozen paper carriages that were draped with flags; they also burned a thousand paper horses and fifty paper beauties, all very life-like.

  To ward off evil spirits, they erected giant paper effigies of the couple, Fang Bi and Fang Xiang, wearing black kerchiefs and golden armor; there was a wooden frame overhead to support them, and they sent men inside to carry out the effigies. The effigies were e-quipped with devices which made their eyelids flutter open; the eyes flashed a menacing glance, like the effigies were about to yell something. The adult observers marveled at this, while the children who were watching from off in the distance started crying and ran away.

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  Mourner’s staffs: The juzhang, the cane upon which a mourning son leans for support, symbolically, in the absence of the father. The multiplicity of them here indicates how many people supposedly looked to Jin as a kind of father figure.

  Fang Bi and Fang Xiang: Most often seen now in posters attached to doorways from which they ward off evil, the two Fangs were generals during the Shang dynasty (17th-11th centuries B.C.E.).

  Jin’s tomb was as magnificently beautiful as an imperial palace, including towers, halls, and verandas enclosed by a wall, spreading out over several dozen mu, with a thousand gates and ten thousand doorways, the entranceways so confusing that one would never be able to find the way out.

  Men crowded each other while visiting Jin’s tomb. Officials of high rank would prostrate themselves on the ground before approaching it, and then raise themselves up and bow respectfully, just like at the imperial court; or public servants would throw themselves to the ground in mourning, but without daring to bother Jin’s adoptive son, the monks, or Jin’s other followers.

  At a time when the whole country was traveling to look reverentially upon the effigies, pilgrims, out of breath and sweating from their travels, would meet each other upon the road; bringing along their wives and children, shouting for their brothers and searching for their sisters, they created noise and confusion. Mixed in with the crowd noise was the din of music accompanied by drums, with hundreds playing bells and percussion, so while people were all talking, no one could hear each other. If one looked below one’s own shoulder, the very ground was concealed from sight, since there were multitudes of people all gathered in the same place, trying to push through.

  There was a pregnant woman whose labor pains meant that she was about to give birth, so all of her female companions spread out their skirts to make a tent for her, and gathered together to protect her; but once they heard an infant’s crying, they were too busy to ask whether it was a girl or a boy, and simply cut the birth cord, then helped her up and pulled her along unsteadily as they staggered away. What a strange sight!

  After Jin’s burial, his assets were divided in two as he’d stipulated, with half going to his adopted son, and half to his followers. The filial young man took his half and bought a residence in the south; in the north, and everywhere else, monks benefited from Jin’s generosity. However, it’s said that their talking about it sometimes strained relations between them.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “This variety of Buddhism seems to be a single
belief system, unconcerned with relating the two sects and the six patriarchs, so it may well be said that it will have to find its own way to enlightenment. But listen: one who is aware of the Five Aggregates, and the Six Sources of Impurity, is called ‘a Buddhist monk’; one can preach Buddhist teachings, take a seat and practice meditation, and this is what is called being ‘a harmonious example’; to live in this world is to wander everywhere, searching for a master of whom one can ask which way to go, and this one might call ‘a harmonious encounter’; drums and bells make a noisy din, and reed pipes make their own hubbub, and this one might call ‘a harmonious performance’; ignoring the shamefulness of one’s deeds in order to engage in lechery, gambling, and other such contemptible behavior, is what one might call ‘a harmonious self-indulgence.’

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  Two sects: The Pure Land Sect, which favors the roles of bodhisattva advocates, teaches that “single-minded devotion” to the Amitabha Buddha can achieve salvation for the believer. The Chan Sect relies on neither a transcendent deity nor written scriptures, but “teaches the direct awakening of the True Self” (Perkins 48-9).

  Six patriarchs: Central figures in the early history of Buddhism in China, they include Bodhidharma, Hui Ke, Seng Can, Dao Xin, Hong Ren, and Hui Neng (Mayers 348-9).

  Five Aggregates: These five qualities collectively constitute the essence of a human being: One’s physical experience as interpreted through the five sense organs; the interface between the mind and the world external to the individual; the mind’s formulation of ideas; the mind’s processing when assessing value (e.g., right vs. wrong); and the mind’s ability to engage concepts and to learn from them.

  Six Sources of Impurity: The organs of perception that communicate impure experience include the body (touch), the ears (sound), the eyes (sight), the nose (smell), the mind (thought), and the tongue (taste).