Chinese Ghost Stories

by Lafcadio Hearn

  How far had he proceeded? He knew not; the journey among those countless columns, past those armies of petrified gods, down lanes of flickering lights, seemed longer than the voyage of a caravan, longer than his pilgrimage to China! But suddenly, inexplicably, there came a silence as of cemeteries; the living ocean seemed to have ebbed away from about him, to have been engulfed within abysses of subterranean architecture! He found himself alone in some strange crypt before a basin, shell-shaped and shallow, bearing in its center a rounded column of less than human height, whose smooth and spherical summit was wreathed with flowers. Lamps similarly formed, and fed with oil of palm, hung above it. There was no other graven image, no visible divinity. Flowers of countless varieties lay heaped upon the pavement; they covered its surface like a carpet, thick, soft; they exhaled their ghosts beneath his feet. The perfume seemed to penetrate his brain—a perfume sensuous, intoxicating, unholy; an unconquerable languor mastered his will, and he sank to rest upon the floral offerings.

  The sound of a tread, light as a whisper, approached through the heavy stillness, with a drowsy tinkling of pagals, a tintinnabulation of anklets. All suddenly he felt glide about his neck the tepid smoothness of a woman’s arm. She, she! his Illusion, his Temptation; but how transformed, transfigured!—preternatural in her loveliness, incomprehensible in her charm! Delicate as a jasmine-petal the cheek that touched his own; deep as night, sweet as summer, the eyes that watched him. “Heart’s-thief,” her flower-lips whispered—“heart’s-thief, how have I sought for thee! How have I found thee! Sweets I bring thee, my beloved; lips and bosom; fruit and blossom. Hast thirst? Drink from the well of mine eyes! Wouldst sacrifice? I am thine altar! Wouldst pray? I am thy God!”

  Their lips touched; her kiss seemed to change the cells of his blood to flame. For a moment Illusion triumphed; Mara prevailed!… With a shock of resolve the dreamer awoke in the night—under the stars of the Chinese sky.

  Only a mockery of sleep! But the vow had been violated, the sacred purpose unfulfilled! Humiliated, penitent, but resolved, the ascetic drew from his girdle a keen knife, and with unfaltering hands severed his eyelids from his eyes, and flung them from him. “O Thou Perfectly Awakened!” he prayed, “thy disciple hath not been overcome save through the feebleness of the body; and his vow hath been renewed. Here shall he linger, without food or drink, until the moment of its fulfillment.” And having assumed the hieratic posture—seated himself with his lower limbs folded beneath him, and the palms of his hands upward, the right upon the left, the left resting upon the sole of his upturned foot—he resumed his meditation.

  Dawn blushed; day brightened. The sun shortened all the shadows of the land, and lengthened them again, and sank at last upon his funeral pyre of crimson-burning cloud. Night came and glittered and passed. But Mara had tempted in vain. This time the vow had been fulfilled, the holy purpose accomplished.

  And again the sun arose to fill the world with laughter of light; flowers opened their hearts to him; birds sang their morning hymn of fire worship; the deep forest trembled with delight; and far upon the plain, the eaves of many-storied temples and the peaked caps of the city-towers caught aureate glory. Strong in the holiness of his accomplished vow, the Indian pilgrim arose in the morning glow. He started for amazement as he lifted his hands to his eyes. What! was everything a dream? Impossible! Yet now his eyes felt no pain; neither were they lidless; not even so much as one of their lashes was lacking. What marvel had been wrought? In vain he looked for the severed lids that he had flung upon the ground; they had mysteriously vanished. But lo! there where he had cast them two wondrous shrubs were growing, with dainty leaflets eyelid-shaped, and snowy buds just opening to the East.

  Then, by virtue of the supernatural power acquired in that mighty meditation, it was given the holy missionary to know the secret of that newly created plant—the subtle virtue of its leaves. And he named it, in the language of the nation to whom he brought the Lotus of the Good Law, “TE”; and he spoke to it, saying:

  “Blessed be thou, sweet plant, beneficent, life-giving, formed by the spirit of virtuous resolve! Lo! the fame of thee shall yet spread unto the ends of the earth; and the perfume of thy life be borne unto the uttermost parts by all the winds of heaven! Verily, for all time to come men who drink of thy sap shall find such refreshment that weariness may not overcome them nor languor seize upon them;—neither shall they know the confusion of drowsiness, nor any desire for slumber in the hour of duty or of prayer. Blessed be thou!”

  And still, as a mist of incense, as a smoke of universal sacrifice, perpetually ascends to heaven from all the lands of earth the pleasant vapor of TE, created for the refreshment of mankind by the power of a holy vow, the virtue of a pious atonement.

  The Tale of the Porcelain God

  It is written in the Fonghoshin chuan, that whenever the artist Cang Gong was in doubt, he would look into the fire of the great oven in which his vases were baking, and question the Guardian-Spirit dwelling in the flame. And the Spirit of the Oven-fires so aided him with his counsels, that the porcelains made by Cang Gong were indeed finer and lovelier to look upon than all other porcelains. And they were baked in the years of Kangxi—sacredly called Ren Huangdi.

  WHO first of men discovered the secret of the Gaoling, of the Baidunzi—the bones and the flesh, the skeleton and the skin, of the beauteous Vase? Who first discovered the virtue of the curd-white clay? Who first prepared the ice-pure bricks of dun: the gathered-hoariness of mountains that have died for age; blanched dust of the rocky bones and the stony flesh of sun-seeking Giants that have ceased to be? Unto whom was it first given to discover the divine art of porcelain?

  Unto Bu, once a man, now a god, before whose snowy statues bow the myriad populations enrolled in the guilds of the potteries. But the place of his birth we know not; perhaps the tradition of it may have been effaced from remembrance by that awful war which in our own day consumed the lives of twenty millions of the Black-haired Race, and obliterated from the face of the world even the wonderful City of Porcelain itself—the City of Jingdezhen, that of old shone like a jewel of fire in the blue mountain-girdle of Fouliang.

  Before his time indeed the Spirit of the Furnace had being; had issued from the Infinite Vitality; had become manifest as an emanation of the Supreme Tao. For Huangdi, nearly five thousand years ago, taught men to make good vessels of baked clay; and in his time all potters had learned to know the God of Oven-fires, and turned their wheels to the murmuring of prayer. But Huangdi had been gathered unto his fathers for thrice ten hundred years before that man was born destined by the Master of Heaven to become the Porcelain God.

  And his divine ghost, ever hovering above the smoking and the toiling of the potteries, still gives power to the thought of the shaper, grace to the genius of the designer, luminosity to the touch of the enamelist. For by his heaven-taught wisdom was the art of porcelain created; by his inspiration were accomplished all the miracles of Taoyu, maker of the Jiayuji, and all the marvels made by those who followed after him:

  All the azure porcelains called Yuguo Tianjing; brilliant as a mirror, thin as paper of rice, sonorous as the melodious stone Qing, and colored, in obedience to the mandate of the Emperor Shizong, “blue as the sky is after rain, when viewed through the rifts of the clouds.” These were indeed, the first of all porcelains, likewise called Zhaiyao, which no man howsoever wicked, could find courage to break, for they charmed the eye like jewels of price;

  And the Ruyao, second in the among all porcelains, sometimes mocking the aspect and the sonority of bronze, sometimes blue as summer waters, and deluding the sight with mucid appearance of thickly floating spawn of fish;

  And the Guanyao, which are the Porcelains of Magistrates, and third in rank of merit among all wondrous porcelains, colored with colors of the morning—sky blueness, with the rose of a great dawn blushing and bursting through it, and long-limbed marsh-birds flying again
st the glow;

  Also the Geyao, fourth in rank among perfect porcelains, of fair, faint, changing colors, like the body of a living fish, or made in the likeness of opal substance, milk mixed with fire; the work of Xing Yi, elder of the immortal brothers Zhang;

  Also the Dingyao, fifth in rank among all perfect porcelains—white as the mourning garments of a spouse bereaved, and beautiful with a trickling as of tears—the porcelains sung of by the poet Son Dongbo;

  Also the porcelains called Biseyao, whose colors are called “hidden,” being alternately invisible and visible, like the tints of ice beneath the sun—the porcelains celebrated by the far-famed singer Xin Yin;

  Also the wondrous Shuyao, the pallid porcelains that utter a mournful cry, when smitten—the porcelains chanted of by the mighty chanter, Tushao Ling;

  Also the porcelains called Qinyao, white or blue, surface-wrinkled as the face of water by the fluttering of many fins. … And ye can see the fish!

  Also the vases called Jihongqi, red as sunset after a rain; and the Totaiqi, fragile as the wings of the silkworm-moth, lighter than the shell of an egg;

  Also the Jiajing, fair cups pearl white when empty, yet, by some incomprehensible witchcraft of construction seeming to swarm with purple fish the moment they are filled with water;

  Also the porcelains called Yaopian, whose tints are transmuted by the alchemy of fire; for they enter blood-crimson into the heat, and change there to lizard-green, and at last come forth azure as the cheek of the sky;

  Also the Jizhouyao, which are all violet as a summer’s night; and the Xingyao that sparkle with the sparklings of mingled silver and snow;

  Also the Xuanyao, some ruddy as iron in the furnace, some diaphanous and ruby-red, some granulated and yellow as the rind of an orange, some softly flushed as the skin of a peach;

  Also the Zuiqiyao, crackled and green as ancient ice is; and the Zhoufuyao, which are the Porcelains of Emperors, with dragons wriggling and snarling in gold; and those yao that are pink-ribbed and have their angles serrated as the claws of crabs are;

  Also the Wuniyao, black as the pupil of the eve, and as lustrous; and the Hutianyao, darkly yellow as the faces of men of India; and the Wugongyao, whose color is the dead-gold of autumn-leaves;

  Also the Longgangyao, green as the seedling of a pea, but bearing also paintings of sun-silvered cloud, and of the Dragons of Heaven;

  Also the Jinghuayao, pictured with the amber bloom of grapes and the verdure of vine-leaves and the blossoming of poppies, or decorated in relief with figures of fighting crickets;

  Also the Kangxi Niancangyao, celestial azure sown with star-dust of gold; and the Qianlong Niantangyao, splendid in sable and silver as a fervid night that is flashed with lightnings.

  Not indeed the Longwangyao, painted with the lascivious Bixi, with the obscene Nannü sixie, with the shameful Zhunhua, or “Pictures of Spring”; abominations created by command of the wicked Emperor Muzong, though the Spirit of the Furnace hid his face and fled away;

  But all other vases of startling form and substance, magically articulated, and ornamented with figures in relief, in cameo, in transparency—the vases with orifices belled like the cups of flowers, or cleft like the bills of birds, or fanged like the jaws of serpents, or pink-lipped as the mouth of a girl; the vases flesh-colored and purple-veined and dimpled, with ears and with earrings; the vases in likeness of mushrooms, of lotus-flowers, of lizards, of horse-footed dragons woman-faced; the vases strangely translucid, that simulate the white glimmering of grains of prepared rice, that counterfeit the vapory lace-work of frost, that imitate the efflorescences of coral;

  Also the statues in porcelain of divinities: the Genius of the Hearth; the Longping who are the Twelve Deities of Ink; the blessed Laozi, born with silver hair; Kongfuzi, grasping the scroll of written wisdom; Guanyin, sweetest Goddess of Mercy, standing snowy-footed upon the heart of her golden lily; Shinong, the god who taught men how to cook; Fo, with long eyes closed in meditation, and lips smiling the mysterious smile of Supreme Beatitude; Shoulao, god of Longevity, bestriding his aerial steed, the white-winged stork; Putai, Lord of Contentment and of Wealth, obese and dreamy; and that fairest Goddess of Talent, from whose beneficent hands eternally streams the iridescent rain of pearls.

  And though many a secret of that matchless art that Bu bequeathed unto men may indeed have been forgotten and lost forever, the story of the Porcelain-God is remembered; and I doubt not that any of the aged Rouyan liaogong, any one of the old blind men of the great potteries, who sit all day grinding colors in the sun, could tell you Bu was once a humble Chinese workman, who grew to be a great artist by dint of tireless study and patience and by the inspiration of Heaven. So famed he became that some deemed him an alchemist, who possessed the secret called White-and-Yellow, by which stones might be turned into gold; and others thought him a magician, having the ghastly power of murdering men with horror of nightmare, by hiding charmed effigies of them under the tiles of their own roofs; and others, again, averred that he was an astrologer who had discovered the mystery of those Five Xing which influence all things—those Powers that move even in the currents of the star-drift, in the milky Tianhe, or River of the Sky. Thus, at least, the ignorant spoke of him; but even those who stood about the Son of Heaven, those whose hearts had been strengthened by the acquisition of wisdom, wildly praised the marvels of his handicraft, and asked each other if there might be any imaginable form of beauty which Bu could not evoke from that beauteous substance so docile to the touch of his cunning hand.

  And one day it came to pass that Bu sent a priceless gift to the Celestial and August: a vase imitating the substance of ore-rock, all aflame with pyritic scintillation—a shape of glittering splendor with chameleons sprawling over it; chameleons of porcelain that shifted color as often as the beholder changed his position. And the Emperor, wondering exceedingly at the splendor of the work, questioned the princes and the mandarins concerning him that made it. And the princes and the mandarins answered that he was a workman named Bu, and that he was without equal among potters, knowing secrets that seemed to have been inspired either by gods or by demons. Whereupon the Son of Heaven sent his officers to Bu with a noble gift, and summoned him unto his presence.

  So the humble artisan entered before the Emperor, and having performed the supreme prostration—thrice kneeling, and thrice nine times touching the ground with his forehead—awaited the command of the August.

  And the Emperor spake to him, saying: “Son, thy gracious gift hath found high favor in our sight; and for the charm of that offering we have bestowed upon thee a reward of five thousand silver liang. But thrice that sum shall be awarded thee so soon as thou shalt have fulfilled our behest. Hearken, therefore, O matchless artificer! it is now our will that thou make for us a vase having the tint and the aspect of living flesh, but—mark well our desire!—of flesh made to creep by the utterance of such words as poets utter—flesh moved by an Idea, flesh horripilated by a Thought! Obey, and answer not! We have spoken.”

  Now Bu was the most cunning of all the Peisegong—the men who marry colors together; of all the Huayanggong, who draw the shapes of vase-decoration; of all the Huisigong, who paint in enamel; of all the Tiancaigong, who brighten color; of all the Shaolugong, who watch the furnace-fires and the porcelain-ovens. But he went away sorrowing from the Palace of the Son of Heaven, notwithstanding the gift of five thousand silver liang which had been given to him. For he thought to himself: “Surely the mystery of the comeliness of flesh, and the mystery of that by which it is moved, are the secrets of the Supreme Dao. How shall man lend the aspect of sentient life to dead clay? Who save the Infinite can give soul?”

  Now Bu had discovered those witchcrafts of color, those surprises of grace, that make the art of the ceramist. He had found the secret of the fenhong, the wizard flush of the Rose; of the huahong, the delicious incarnadine; of the mountain-
green called shanlü; of the pale soft yellow termed xiaohuangyou; and of the huangjin, which is the blazing beauty of gold. He had found those eel-tints, those serpent-greens, those pansy-violets, those furnace-crimsons, those carminates and lilacs, subtle as spirit-flame, which our enamelists of the Occident long sought without success to reproduce. But he trembled at the task assigned him, as he returned to the toil of his studio, saying: “How shall any miserable man render in clay the quivering of flesh to an Idea—the inexplicable horripilation of a Thought? Shall a man venture to mock the magic of that Eternal Molder by whose infinite power a million suns are shaped more readily than one small jar might be rounded upon my wheel?”

  Yet the command of the Celestial and August might never be disobeyed; and the patient workman strove with all his power to fulfill the Son of Heaven’s desire. But vainly for days, for weeks, for months, for season after season, did he strive; vainly also he prayed unto the gods to aid him; vainly he besought the Spirit of the Furnace, crying: “O thou Spirit of Fire, hear me, heed me, help me! How shall I—a miserable man, unable to breathe into clay a living soul—how shall I render in this inanimate substance the aspect of flesh made to creep by the utterance of a Word, sentient to the horripilation of a Thought?”