From
Esoteric Transmitted
Records of the Bizarre
by Lha Er-sun
It is difficult indeed to distinguish the orthodox from the eccentric, and the true and from the false. Yet the Grand Historian of the great Han Dynasty, Si-ma Chian, having undertaken to record the strange lives and occult doings of magicians and diviners, charlatans and raconteurs – how can I feel shame in doing the same? What in these accounts of ghosts, spirits, swordswomen, and prophetic dreams are lies pretending to be veracity, what is self-deluding hum-buggery, and what is merely degenerate and garbled history, I cannot say. Yet it is to be hoped that the narration is not without truth, and that some learning, or some pleasure, may come of it.
STRANGE PREGNANCY
A daughter-in-law of the Li clan, previously a virtuous and chaste young woman, began to dream of having intimate relations with a giant red-gold carp. Her husband was away on military duty in the borderlands. Night after night she fell into these dreams, until she began to waste away. A doctor of arcane arts was summoned, who exorcized the fish-monster.
More than a year later it became obvious that the woman was pregnant. She said that this time she had been visited at night by the dream spirit of her distant husband. The family, fearing the scandal that would arise when a wife whose husband had been absent so long gave birth, consulted the doctor again.
‘Destiny has mated her with the giant carp,’ the doctor said. ‘This time he assumed the guise of her husband and crept into her room at night. He is the father of the girlchild she carries.’ On his advice, they took the woman to the shores of Cavegarden Lake and, dressing her in bridal clothes, set her on a flower-decked raft and floated her out into the mists of the great waters.
THE TALKING BIRD
Ma Lao-tou of Dun-huang purchased an unusual parrot from the far west. Its wit was keen and its words flowed eloquently; it stood far above the usual run of talking birds. One day he overheard it in conversation with a Chinese parakeet from the Loong mountains that belonged to his daughter. ‘Alas,’ the parrot said. ‘I am in truth the daughter of a Chinese general, changed into the form of a bird. How can I ever return to the home of my parents?’ At first. Ma Lao-tou did not believe the bird, but the parakeet spoke up and confirmed its words. Shortly thereafter, the parrot disappeared.
HAUNTING A MADAM
In the Kai-yuan reign period of the Great Tang, there was a certain dancing girl of foreign origins who was possessed by a ghost. The ghost sent her into a fit, speaking through the girl’s mouth and demanding that she and another entertainer be sent off to the imperial capital. But the mistress of the household where the girls lived refused. The girls were afraid to defy the ghost’s command, and begged, but to no avail. Soon, however, the ghost began to haunt the madam’s dreams, wailing and moaning, until she was half dead of fatigue. So she allowed the two to go, and the ghost never bothered her again.
THE GREEDY DEMON
Once, in the city of Liang-jou, a government clerk summoned an old woman named Chen. He threatened to have her arrested for nonpayment of taxes, so she was forced to sell her two daughters to a trader in order to pay the necessary fees. With great weeping, they separated, and the trader took the girls away to the east. When this Chen approached the official to make payment, he received the silver and suddenly transformed himself into a wild-haired female demon with bloody eyes and vanished. As to why the demon wanted the silver, no one knows.
A PERSIAN MERCHANT’S SPIRIT-JOURNEY
During the reign of the Brilliant Emperor, a wealthy Persian merchant was travelling to Chang-an. Along the way he met a young musician, who became so enamoured of the Persian that she courted him with enchanting songs upon her lute. He, in turn, was pleased by the musician’s beauty, and soon they were intimate. When it came time for the Persian to leave the young woman and travel on, she begged him to take her with him to Chang-an. He told her it was impossible and returned to his inn, where he began his preparations for departure. The musician’s lute fell silent, and she stayed alone in her room and wept.
No sooner had he begun to pack, however, than his companion, a younger Persian gentleman, fell deathly ill. His soul left his body, and in the wink of an eye it found itself before the tribunal of an important celestial official in the service of the Jade Emperor.
‘I have a message to be delivered to your friend,’ the august official commanded. ‘The lute player is a spirit banished from heaven, and it is necessary for her to go to Chang-an. If he takes her with him, he will have good fortune and will acquire great riches. However, if he fails to do this, all his trade goods will be confiscated, and he will be imprisoned.’
Now, the younger Persian, being a foreigner, did not know he should respect the words of the heavenly official. To show his indifference, he yawned, whereupon the guards beside the tribunal took him into the courtyard and flogged him. After they opened three great wounds upon his back, the Persian youth fainted.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself back at the inn, his friend standing over his bed and watching him with concern. The youth related what had happened, but the older man did not believe him until he turned over, revealing three faint scars down the length of his back. The scars had not been there before, so, fearing that the musician was no ordinary mortal, they took her to Chang-an, where they acquired considerable wealth, just as the celestial official had said.
THE PRESCIENT MUTE
Gao Li-bo was travelling with a companion and several slaves. One of them, a young girl named Bao-bei, was mute. Very early one morning, as the party lay sleeping in a small inn in Loong-yo, not far from Tibetan-held territory, the mute began to shake the shoulders of the slave beside her. The second slave awoke, and the mute began to signify with her hands that the entire party should depart as quickly as possible. Not knowing what to do, the second slave wakened the master. So urgent were the mute’s signals and the other slave’s pleas that the party arose and, with some grumbling, quit the inn. The next day they learned that soon after they left, a party of Tibetan raiders had swept down from the mountains, burned the inn, and murdered everyone within.
A PROPHECY
A certain young woman called Chen Yu was accepted as a novice in the Taoist retreat of Darkdazzle Vista. Because her name meant ‘nephrite’, she was given the religious name Jade Clarity. After donning the cap and robes of holy orders, she began to collect numinous fungi and rare herbs, hoping to discover an elixir of immortality. Ignoring her teacher’s warning of caution, she roamed the wild lands, trying every mysterious new plant she found.
Not long after Jade Clarity began her experiments, she came across a cluster of thin whitish mushrooms growing in a clump of cow dung. Not disdaining them, she mixed them with other efficacious substances and swallowed the potion. Another Lady of the Tao found her laughing wildly and wandering through the sacred precincts and wrote down her words. It is not known whether they came true or not, but they remain preserved at Darkdazzle Vista today:
When the ice horse plunges to the river.
The silent shell shall spread its lips and speak.
When pearl and jade have met beneath the waves.
The child of wood shall weave a heavenly web.
These tales are from a collection compiled by Lha Er-sun (?-ad 946), a courtier of the short-lived Later Jin dynasty (ad 936-46), during the period of political turmoil following the fall of the Tang. Lha’s literary work demonstrates once again the fertility of the disputed territory along the border between history and fiction.
Little is recorded concerning the compiler’s career, except that Lha encouraged the founder of the Later Jin to reward his Mongol allies with lands located between the two nations. Unfortunately, after Lha persuaded the next emperor that tribute need no longer be paid to those same bellicose neighbours, they destroyed the Later Jin.
Chang-an
And so, spread across a plain abundant with crops and tumuli, the city, eastern termi
nus of the Silk Road, centre of the empire, residence of the Son of Heaven. Chang-an, they call it. Everlasting Peace, though it will not be spared destruction, and it is far from peaceful. Quite the contrary, it is alive; in every alley, in every courtyard, eyes hungry or gluttonous cast about for more – food or pleasure or power or fame – just as your eyes consume this page. A hundred ten-thousands, a million pairs of eyes are gathered within the city walls, and nearly as many just outside. The Imperial Palace stands properly centred within the great north wall, where the emperor can look southwards (as the compass needle points always south) over the huge block of government offices, over the rolling mass of the city, over all the Great Tang, all Under Heaven.
You too can take a look. The saying goes: Chang-an is like a giant chessboard, its orderly layout reflecting the order of an empire, and a cosmos, ruled with righteousness. Nine broad boulevards run through it north and south; twelve wide avenues range east and west. They help stop the spread of fires, dividing the city into wards, each walled and gated and closed at night. Within these walls of pounded earth twist labyrinths of lanes, smudged with cooking-smoke and the fumes of nightsoil and the human passions. Each ward bears its own proud and hopeful name: Golden Walls, Lustrous Virtue, Gleaming Cottages, Eternal Tranquillity. The glimmering waters of the artful Serpentine wind through the great park in the city’s southeast comer. To walk across the giant square within the walls would take two brisk hours, if there were no crowds.
Do you suppose that this city cares only for its wealth and worldly power? See: It has four Zoroastrian fire tabernacles, a Nestorian church and a Manichaean one, nearly twenty Taoist vistas, and close to a hundred Buddhist temples. Above the temple rooftops – roofs of chapels, of meditation chambers, of bell and drum towers, of walkways leading from the dormitories to great halls where statues of stone or gold stare down at worshippers – rise pagodas housing cherished relics.
Come closer. Over here is the precious ancient tower, baoguta, called Great Wildgoose Pagoda, of the Gentle Mercy Temple; every three years, the forty or fifty scholars who pass the national examination flourish their names upon its bricks in the light of the springtime sun. Thousands have come to the capital to take the examination, and for these few the way has been opened to success as government officials. The tower rises impassively into the clouds, delicate bells hanging from the tawny brick eaves of storey after storey, its cylindrical spire encircling the whole cosmic round. From the upper windows even your mundane eye can make out the steep rise of the blue Jin-ling mountains guarding the city to the south.
Down in the southwest quadrant huddle the single-storey houses of the poor. Gaze northwards instead, to the fashionable wards east of the great central boulevard. In one of them, a spinach pedlar rambles door to door. He spies through one crimson gate a garden pavilion by an artificial lake, its pillars brightly painted, the brackets supporting its roof splendidly carved. An old gentleman in fine robes plays chess there with a crony, and a sweeper shoos the pedlar off. Next door he sees an empty courtyard and a heap of sun-dried bricks that was once a proud ancestral shrine; they will be used again soon to build a prince’s archery hall, or a grand tomb outside the city for the father of an official whose star is on the rise. The pedlar doesn’t stop. In the adjoining lane he passes a neighbourhood apothecary’s shop. At a Buddhist convent that was once the mansion of a devout princess, the old nun who supervises the refectory smiles distantly at the pedlar. After a little haggling, she purchases half his load.
The bright welcoming flags of a few cafes sprinkle the busiest areas. Has one of them caught your eye? Observe how, in a teashop near a city gate, a painter and an architect argue happily with a civil engineer, while a scabby child squats outside the teashop door begging with his one arm. Remember this and look to the two Teaching Quarters close to the Imperial Palace, training schools for stunning dancers and musicians favoured by the Brilliant Emperor himself.
Would you like to see the shops? A sign marks the entrance to each market lane: ironmongers, jewellers, butchers, dealers in bridles and saddles, sellers of scales. Here the flower vendors gather, and here is the bazaar of the silk merchants, where your fingers might slide over rosy-soft ‘dawnclouds tussah’ from Korea, or nubbly pongee, or bombazine made of the short threads left when wild moths break free of their cocoons, or even the chilly icesilk spun by frostmoths amid the unmelting whiteness of the mountain at the centre of the world. In the two great marketplaces – the east and the west – you can gawk at a contortionist bending round till his elbows rest against the backs of his knees, smell the rich oniony oil of wheat cakes frying, laugh at a dancing bear called Blackplum, buy rice shipped a thousand miles north along the Grand Canal, toss a copper to a kinky-haired juggler from the barbarous tribes south of Viet, or listen to the warning stories of a pious Buddhist monk whose master has returned with new Teachings of the Law from the birthland of The Thus-Come-One, far to the west. A Scholar of the Tao struts past, pausing only to crack a ribald joke with his stooped assistant trotting along behind. Some other holy man, a foreigner with a bulbous nose who worships fire or brings tales of an outlandish murdered god, moves slowly through the jostling crowd, gaping: newly arrived.
Here’s another new arrival, someone (you may think) rather more like yourself, educated, sensitive, a lover of literature and rather more given to contemplation than to action, but no doubt a bit worldly nonetheless. His eyebrows are long and fine; he has a scholar’s hands. His tousle-haired manservant follows him on a donkey, but he himself rides a big roan horse of excellent bloodlines, though a few years past its prime; his mother pawned a fine old necklace to buy that horse, and the glittering tasselled saddle.
Young Feng – Feng Literary Victor, his parents call him –knows about his mother pawning her necklace, but right now his mind is on other things. His narrow squeak in passing the province-level civil service examination, for one. He studied hard – fairly hard anyway – never expecting to come off quite so badly, and feels now like an impostor who is bound to be caught out sooner or later. He has come north to Chang-an to try to pass the national examination, his one chance to get the prestige arid income accorded a government official and his family. But he will be competing against the best young men of all the empire, and some not young at all, dogged greybeards who have been memorizing texts by moonlight for years. Only the bony-ribbed Top Scholar Star, flourishing his inkbrush up in his splendid seat in the Great Dipper, knows who will succeed.
Feng is in no hurry to make his attempt. First he will settle into Chang-an and recover from his long journey. He plans to take advantage of the months left before the examination is given to review the classics, and maybe write up a story or two that could catch the attention of a patron, some old scholar-official who will see that a man of imagination deserves a good position.
Stories are, in fact, what young Feng really likes, far more than poetry or essays; the problem is how to find that patron. His family has no connections in the capital. Even the rich clan back home that his father serves as tutor are (he sees it clearly now, as he pulls his horse aside to make way for a shouting runner followed by two pages on matched black mares and a scarlet palanquin) mere provincials, country bumpkins. Where might a young scholar with limited means and a taste for the less elevating sort of literature get to know an official who would put in a good word for him when the right time comes?
Where indeed? Feng and his mirthful servant have ridden about the city for hours now, eyes wide. The young scholar is too excited to seek out just yet the lodgings his father recommended. He is passing along the wall that closes off the Imperial City and the palace to its north and east. Within lies (he knows) the great audience room where the Son of Heaven holds morning levee, within lies a network of halls and walkways and bedchambers and shady pavilions, within lies a succession of hidden gardens. Sitting in the smallest pavilion, beside a clump of rustling bamboo, there might be (he thinks) the newest of the palace ladies, her face ex
quisitely and pointlessly made up (for with so many in the imperial harem no lover will see her), wisps of hair trailing as she leans over the rail to stare into a smooth pond and sigh. She would be a girl – still virgin of course – of distinguished family, though not too distinguished, a girl of refined sensibilities and unawakened desire. She might pluck a leaf from the bamboo and drop it into the pond, watching it drift towards the weir-dam and over and down into the culvert beneath the garden wall. Then she might pluck another leaf, and another, and begin to write on them brief melancholic poems, and drop these leaves too into the water. And Feng would find them, up there, just ahead, where the water pours out from under the wall, and he would snatch them up and marvel at the delicacy of the tiny handwriting, and read the poems, and weep.
At the comer, where the water flows into the gutter, Feng peruses it carefully, but what floats in it is not bamboo leaves, only fish scales and a few shreds of vegetable skins from a kitchen floor someone has scoured. Another text better left unread. He kicks his heels into the flanks of the roan horse, guiding it around a farmer with a wen on his neck, stooped under two baskets filled with wild-eyed, outraged hens. The servant, who has a slight potbelly, laughs and clucks at one of the hens, but Feng pays him no mind. He has come to the north gate of the Pingkang Ward. Tales of the winehouses here, the talented women, and the merry roistering during the night watches, have made their way as far as his provincial home. Now the stories whisper to him, with a sound like tears dropping into a pool, like a writing-brush sighing words onto a leaf. He has studied hard since he was five years old. He did pass the provincial examination, after all. A meeting with a discerning and powerful official in the reception room of a winehouse is not impossible. Perhaps he will just stop and take a cup.
Silk Road Page 17
