by Pu Songling
Continuing his reverent obeisance, he asked her, “What goddess are you?”
With a laugh, the beauty replied, “My surname is Yan, and my courtesy name is Ruyu, and for a long time you’ve known that we were going to meet. You do me honor by looking longingly at me every day, so if I’d left without appearing to you first, I’m afraid that no one would trust the word of the ancients again for a thousand years.”
Lang, ecstatically happy, took her to his bedroom. However, though he was lying together with his beloved on the bed, he didn’t know how to make love to her. Thus he just continued his studying, directing her to sit down beside him. Yan told him to stop his reading, but he wouldn’t listen to her. “If you can’t fulfill my desires,” she declared, “it’s because of all your studying. When the imperial examination officials post the lists of successful candidates, who among them has read as much as you? If you won’t listen to me, then I’m just going to leave.”
For a little while, Lang gave up his reading. But before long, he stopped thinking about her complaint and began reciting passages again. A quarter of an hour later, when he went to look for her, he had no idea where she’d gone. He felt so agitated that it seemed he might just black out, so he pleaded and prayed to her, but he could find no signs of her anywhere.
Suddenly he remembered her former hiding place, so he picked up the History of the Han Dynasty, then carefully leafed through it to the place where he’d first found her, and there she was. He called out to her but she didn’t move, so he prostrated himself before her and repentently begged her blessings.
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Yan . . . Ruyu: The History of the Han Dynasty passage had asserted that a face, or beauty (yan 颜), like jade (ru yu 如玉), would be found in books. The beauty here has simply given Lang that assurance as her name.
Yan then stepped down from the book, warning him, “If you refuse to listen to me again, we’ll be separated forever!” Accordingly, she sent someone to bring in a chessboard and a dice game, and each day they made merry with them. But Lang wasn’t really enjoying himself.
He kept watch for whenever Yan stepped out, and then furtively he’d grab a book and start flipping through its pages. He was afraid that she’d discover what he was up to, so he secretly picked up the eighth book of the History of the Han Dynasty, then mixed in it with other books, hoping she wouldn’t be able to tell what he’d been doing with it.
One day, he was completely wrapped up in his reading when Yan arrived, though she didn’t immediately react; when he noticed her there all of a sudden, he hurriedly shut the book, but by then she’d already vanished. Fretting frantically, he began searching through through all of his books, but couldn’t find her in any of them; afterwards, he located her once again on the same page of the eighth book of the History of the Han Dynasty, but she was in a very foul mood.
In response, he abjectly prostrated himself before her, swearing that he wouldn’t go back to his studying again. Yan then stepped down from the book and began a game of chess with him, declaring, “If you haven’t mastered this game in three days, I’m going to leave again.” After playing for three days, Lang suddenly was able to win two games with Yan.
Happy then, Yan started teaching him to play stringed instruments, allowing him five days to learn to play a song. Lang practiced with his hands and watched carefully, for he had no time to waste; after training a long while, his fingers began to respond with nimble control and unconsciously he began to move in time to the music. Yan thus proceeded to drink and play with him each day, and Lang felt so happy that he forgot all about his reading.
She also freed him from staying shut up within his own gate, sending him out to mingle with other people—thus his behavior gained him a reputation for being carefree and merry. “Now you’re ready to go out and take the examination,” Yan told him.
One night, Lang told Yan, “When mortal men and women live together, they produce children; now that you’ve been living here for quite a while, why hasn’t that happened?”
With a laugh, Yan replied, “As long as you spend the whole day studying, I can say for sure that nothing’s going to happen. Now you’ve come to the chapter on husbands and wives, but you still don’t comprehend that in bed it takes two people for the husband to do his work.”
“What work?” asked Lang in surprise. Yan giggled, but didn’t say anything. Afterwards, she snuggled up close to him. The intimate contact with her made him so giddy that he remarked, “I never imagined that something which can’t be expressed in words could make husbands and wives so happy.”
As a result, he told everyone he encountered about this, and those people had to stifle their laughter in response. When Yan realized what he was doing, she chided him for it.
Lang replied, “One can’t describe it by just talking about entering tunnels or other gaps; but the happiness between a couple, something that everyone can experience, can’t possibly be something to avoid talking about.” Eight or nine months passed, and Yan gave birth to a boy, so they hired an old woman to care for the child.
One day, she told Lang, “I’ve lived with you for two years, produced a son for you, and now I can leave. If I stay too long, I’m afraid I’ll bring you misfortune, and it’ll be too late then for regrets.”
When Lang heard this, his tears began to fall and he prostrated himself, refusing to get up, crying, “Are you forgetting about our little baby?”
Yan shared his sorrow, and after a good long while, she said, “If you definitely want to keep me from going, you must toss away every last book on your shelves.”
“But they were your birthplace,” exclaimed Lang, “and they’re my whole life, so how can you say that!” Yan didn’t force the issue, but replied, “I also happen to know that it’s predestined to occur, but I just had to let you know beforehand.”
Before this took place, some members of Lang’s family who happened to catch a glimpse of Yan Ruyu were, without exception, astonished by her appearance, and since they hadn’t heard what family Lang had married into, they went as a group to find out from him. Lang couldn’t bring himself to lie about it, so instead he just remained silent on the matter.
This made people grow even more suspicious, and rumors circulated by post until finally Master Shi, the country magistrate, heard about it. Master Shi, who was originally from Fujian, had been certified as a jinshi while he was still a young man. What he heard about the young woman made him want to see the beauty for himself and consequently he sent word for Lang and Yan to be brought in for questioning.
When Yan found out about this, she went into hiding, leaving behind no traces of her whereabouts. This made the magistrate angry, so he had Lang brought before him, stripped of his clothing, then placed in shackles and beaten to force Yan out from her hiding place. Even when Lang was close to death, he refused to say a word to Shi.
The magistrate then had their maidservants beaten and managed to get something close to the truth from them. Magistrate Shi consequently figured she must be some kind of demon, so he ordered servants to drive him directly to Yan’s home. There he found the rooms filled with so many books that he couldn’t possibly search them all, so he ordered them burned; the courtyard filled with swirling smoke that wouldn’t dissipate, making the air hazy like at dusk.
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Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.
Following his release, Lang journeyed to one of his father’s colleagues, to request that his status as a scholar be reinstated. That same year he was successful in the fall examinations, and the following year he qualified as a jinshi. Yet he bore a grudge against Shi that seemed to wound him to the very marrow.
He made a shrine to Yan Ruyu, where he prayed to her each day, “If your spirit is still here, please help me obtain some kind of assignment in Fujian.” The result was that he was sent there to make inspections on behalf of the imperial censor. Lang stayed there for three months, mak
ing inquiries that turned up proof of Magistrate Shi’s abuse of authority, and hence his property was confiscated.
At that time, Lang’s first cousin, a public administrator, forceably stole a concubine away from a particular household, then rationalized that he’d purchased her to serve as a maidservant in his public office. After the case involving Shi was settled, Lang resigned his position, took the concubine from his cousin’s office, and returned her to her home.
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “The accumulation of possessions in this world provokes jealousy, and obsessive love of them causes evil: if this makes Yan Ruyu a demon, then it must make books monstrous things. The whole business was weird, and there wasn’t any good way to resolve everything; but to behave like the wicked Qin emperor and destroy Lang’s books is unforgivably cruel! Shi’s selfish passion deservedly earned him Lang’s enmity. Alas! What a bizarre tale!”
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The wicked Qin emperor: The first emperor of all China, Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.E.), was a successful sovereign in part thanks to his military’s “elite force” of “legendary” discipline: “the ferocity of its troops, who slaughtered their prisoners, inspired dread among their opponents” (Paludan 17).
416. The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal
Xu Sheng was from Yan. He’d gone with his elder brother, a successful merchant, to Fujian, but their merchandise wasn’t bringing them much income. Travelers told them that there was a great sage who’d been putting his power on display, and they were just about to go his temple to pray for support. Xu Sheng didn’t know what god this great sage was supposed to be, so he went with his elder brother to see.
They came to a temple that was connected to a magnificent pavilion. As they entered the temple and looked up at an effigy, they saw that the god had a monkey’s head and a human body, made in the image of the “great sage, heaven’s equal,” Sun Wukong. All the visitors there reverently paid their respects, as no one dared to appear insincere.
Xu Sheng, who was always honest and outspoken, laughed up his sleeve as they performed their customary obeisance to this monkey sage. The group of supplicants burnt paper offerings and incense, kowtowing and offering their prayers, while Sheng just quietly slipped out.
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Yan: Modern Yanzhou, in Shandong province.
The “great sage, heaven’s equal,” Sun Wukong: The name given to the trickster protagonist of the classic Journey to the West (xiyou ji) by Subhūti, one of the disciples of the Buddha. Sun Wukong is best known by his own self-imposed title: the “handsome monkey king” (mei houwang).
After they returned home, his elder brother scolded him for his rudeness. “Since Sun Wukong is just a legend made up by Old Man Qiu,” replied Sheng, “why treat him with so much respect like this? If this sage was really some kind of god, he’d respond to me with spears or thunderbolts, and then I’d suffer!”
When their innkeeper heard him calling out the great sage’s name, his hands began to shake and his face paled, for fear that the great sage might have heard him. Sheng observed his reaction and began making his complaints even more boisterously; when the innkeeper and others heard this, they covered their ears and ran out.
In consequence, Xu Sheng fell ill that night with a violent headache. When someone advised him to pay a visit to the great sage’s temple and apologize for his words, Sheng wouldn’t listen. In a little while, his head began to feel better, but then his leg started to ache, till in the course of the night, a large, deep-rooted ulcer formed on it, followed finally by painful swelling of his feet, so he was completely unable to eat or sleep.
His elder brother went to pray for him, but to no effect. Somebody suggested that the god was punishing him until he took back his words. But Sheng refused to believe that the great sage was responsible for his suffering. A month passed and the sore on his leg gradually seemed to be diminishing, but then another ulcer formed, tripling his torments.
A doctor came and took a knife to cut out the necrotic flesh, while the resulting blood filled a bowl to overflowing; he was afraid that the god was punishing him for what he’d said, so he just tried enduring the pain without groaning. Another month passed, and he began to return to normal. However, his elder brother then fell gravely ill.
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Made up . . . Old Man Qiu: A Shandong native, Qiu Chuji (1148-1227), whose courtesy name was Tongmi, and whose Daoist name was Chang Chunzi, was instrumental in developing the Longmen (Dragon Gate) division of the Quanzhen Daoist sect (see Zhu 3:1442n4). Xu Sheng mistakes him here for the author of The Journey to the West because of the title’s similarity to Qiu’s own travelogue account of his travels to the west, which included his meeting with Genghis Khan.
“What do you think about that!” exclaimed Sheng. “You show respect for the god and then this happens; you’re just as sick as I was, so it must not be because of Sun Wukong.” When his brother heard these words, he became very angry with Sheng, declaring that the god would vent his anger on him rather than on his younger brother and demanding that Sheng go in his place and pray for him. Sheng replied, “We’re still brothers. The day before yesterday, my body was a wreck, but I didn’t pray for recovery; now it’s my brother who’s ill, so why shouldn’t I do my duty for him?”
And while he did send for a doctor who gave his brother some medicine, Sheng didn’t follow through and pray for him. After taking the medicine, Sheng’s brother suddenly died.
Grieving so painfully that his chest and stomach felt like they were in knots, Xu Sheng purchased a coffin and laid his brother in it, then went to the temple of the great sage, shook his finger several times at the god’s effigy, and cried, “When my elder brother fell ill, he said it was because you were punishing him in place of me, but I can’t let that happen. If you’re a god, use your power over death and bring him back to life. Do this, and I’ll pay homage to you as a follower, no longer daring to utter a dissenting word to you; otherwise, I’ll employ your own sanctified method of dealing with things by returning here to reveal the truth about how you cheated my brother and put him in his grave.”
That night, he dreamt that a man beckoned for him to come along as they entered the great sage’s temple, where an angry Sun Wukong rebuked Sheng, “Since you were so ill-mannered, I took my Buddhist sword and skewered your leg; yet you still refused to repent your disrespect and kept up your contentious chatter. At first, I figured that you ought to have your tongue pulled out for your words, but then I thought that a scholar is sometimes outspoken, so I’d give you a more serious matter to consider, then I could pardon you. Your brother fell ill, but instead of relenting, you called in some quack to treat him—so if he died younger than he should have, whose fault is that? And now that my sentence has been fully carried out, you’re still making excuses for your presumptuous demands instead of learning your lesson.”
Then he sent one of his servants to deliver a plea on the elder brother’s behalf to the Hell King. The servant replied, “The spirits of the dead are reported in the register of heaven’s court three days after their demise, so I’m afraid it’ll be tough to do anything about it now.” Sun Wukong picked up a wood block, ordered a brush to be brought, and with no idea of what he was writing on it, had the servant take it afterward and leave.
A long while later, the servant returned with Sheng’s brother. He’d successfully fulfilled his task and knelt before the great sage. “What took you so long?” he demanded.
The servant explained, “The Hell King didn’t dare do anything on his own authority, thus he took the great sage’s decree and proceeded to consult the northern and southern stars, and that’s why I’m returning so late.” Xu Sheng hurriedly knelt to offer his formal thanks for the god’s benevolence.
“Now you’ve proven worthy, so you can leave together,” replied Sun Wukong. “If you can dedicate yourselves to doing good works, that should guarantee good fortune for you.” The Xu brothers felt their sorrow mix with joy as the
y left to return home together. Then Xu Sheng woke up, thinking it all very strange.
He quickly got up, opened his brother’s coffin, and discovered that his brother was just reviving, so he helped him climb out, feeling quite moved by the great sage’s exercise of power. Sheng thereafter was convinced of Sun Wukong’s deity, believing even more fervently than was common locally. But where the brothers’ finances were concerned, costs associated with the elder brother’s illness had already consumed half of what they owned; what’s more, the elder brother wasn’t all that healthy, so he remained, relatively speaking, rather sad.
One day, Xu Sheng happened to be wandering out in the countryside when suddenly a man dressed in cheap clothing came up to him and cried, “Master, what’s troubling you?” Sheng was preoccupied with his family’s hardships, so he decided to tell the man everything, summarizing all that had happened to the brothers. “There’s a scenic spot we can go take a look at,” the poorly-dressed man told him, “and it might be enough to break through your depression.”
“What spot?” asked Sheng.
The man replied, “It’s not far.” Thus Sheng went with him.
They walked about half a li past the city walls, at which point the man announced, “I have a little magic, so we can be there in just a moment.” Accordingly, the man directed Xu Sheng to grab him by the waist, and then with a nod of his head, clouds settled beneath their feet and they soared into the sky, though Sheng couldn’t tell whether they’d traveled ten li or a hundred.
Sheng was so very frightened that he shut his eyes and didn’t dare open them even a little. Instants later, the man declared, “We’ve arrived.”
Suddenly Sheng saw a glasslike world around them, gleaming with a strange-colored light, so in amazement he asked, “What is this place?”
“It’s the temple of heaven,” replied the man.
They began wandering around, each step taking them higher and higher. When they saw an old man approaching in the distance, Sheng’s companion happily cried, “Meeting up with this old fellow by chance will surely mean your good fortune!” They raised their clasped hands together and bowed in greeting.