Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

  Yunqi then revealed these thoughts to Zang. She directed the young women to burn incense together, to be sure that they wouldn’t later regret their words, and then to have Zhen go forward with the ceremony to make Sheng his wife, too.

  When the two of them were about to go to bed, Sheng told him, “I’m twenty-three years old and still a virgin.” Zhen didn’t believe her. But after they’d made love and he found a red stain on the mattress, he realized it had been true.

  Sheng explained, “I’m happy about being your wife, but not because I couldn’t willingly live alone; honestly, what goes on in the bedroom makes me blush for shame, and doing what they do in brothels seems unbearable to me. But I want to take advantage of one thing—putting my name in your personal records—as a way of caring for your mother, to make myself her servant. You’ll have to enjoy this bedroom activity with Yunqi.”

  Three days later, grabbing her bedding, she came to attend on Zang, who tried to send her away, but Yunmian wouldn’t leave. Yunqi got up early to pay her respects to Zang, occupying Yunmian’s bed there, which forced Yunmian to go back to Zhen’s room. Henceforth, every two or three days, Yunqi and Yunmian changed places, becoming accustomed to this as their normal routine.

  Zang enjoyed playing chess, but back when she’d been running the house all by herself, she’d been too busy to play. After managing household logistics effectively, during the day when there was no other business to attend to, it pleased Yunqi to play chess with her mother-in-law. They’d end up hanging up a lantern and making some tea, then the two could be heard playing musical instruments, till at midnight they’d finally go their separate ways. Zang told everybody that “When my son’s father was alive, I wasn’t nearly as happy as I am now.”

  Yunmian attended to the receiving and paying of bills, and every record or account was presented to Zang. Curious, Zang remarked to Yunqi one day, “You’ve often said that you were orphaned as a child, so who taught you to play chess?” Yunqi laughed and then revealed the truth.

  Zang laughed as well: “Originally, I didn’t want my son to marry a Daoist,” she replied, “but now he’s actually married two of them.” Suddenly she remembered what had been said about Zhen when he was little, that he would make a Daoist his wife one day, leading her to recognize that one can never escape one’s fate.

  Zhen took another examination, but failed it. “Our family doesn’t have a lot besides three hundred mu of low-yielding farmland,” his mother told him, “yet we’re lucky that Yunmian’s supervising that, guaranteeing every day that we have enough to be warmly-dressed and well-fed. Your two wives have made us very happy, so you shouldn’t wish for wealth or rank.” Zhen agreed with her.

  Later, Yunmian gave birth to a daughter and a son, while Yunqi had a daughter and three sons. Zhen’s mother lived to be eighty years old before she passed away. All of her grandsons were admitted to government schools; by the time she died, her eldest grandson, Yunmian’s son, was already a successful candidate in the imperial civil service examination at the provincial level.

  _________

  Mu: A measure equal to 1/6 acre; thus Zhen owns fifty acres of marginally-fertile farmland.

  428. The Scribe of Epistolary Communications

  In Youji, there was a certain minor official who had quite a number of wives and concubines. But the most obnoxious thing he did involved the nicknames by which they were called, for he disliked them so much that he assigned derogatory replacements for them: Nian he called Sui, Sheng he called Ying, and Ma he called Dalü; then he mocked Bai by calling her Sheng, while An he called Fang. Regarding letters coming and going from his office, he didn’t react in a particularly objectionable manner if he saw their original nicknames appear in the letters, but he grew angry if any of his family members used them orally when speaking with the outside world.

  One day, while a certain Scribe of Epistolary Communications was reporting to the official, he mistakenly used the women’s old nicknames, which made the official so enraged that he took his inkstone and struck the man, killing him instantly.

  _________

  Youji: Located in Shandong province.

  He assigned derogatory replacements: Sui might be construed as calling attention (presumably negatively) to the woman’s age (岁 can signify years of age); Ying (硬) means hard, stiff, or tough; and Dalü (大驴) means “Big Donkey.” Bai (败) means “to be defeated,” so his name for her is self-aggrandizing, as though she’s now “victorious” (sheng, 胜) for having become part of his family; An (安), which means “content” or “peaceful,” is replaced with the demeaning Fang (放), which here means “put out to pasture” or “shunted aside.”

  Three days later, as the official was lying down in a drunken stupor, he saw the scribe enter the room, grasping a visiting card in his hand, so the official demanded, “What’re you doing here?”

  “‘Ma Zi’an’ has come to pay his respects,” the man replied.

  Suddenly the official awakened, realizing that this was the ghost of the man he’d killed, so he quickly got up, pulled out a sword, and started waving it around. The man chuckled at this, flung the card down on the official’s bedside table, then abruptly vanished.

  When the official went to examine the card, he discovered that it read, “Ma Zi’an pays his respects as someone close to the gentleman official’s family.” The official was such a ludicrous man that he was ridiculed by the scribe, giving the ghost the last laugh!

  On Oxhead Mountain, there was a monk who called himself Tiehan, while others called him Tieshi. He had put together a collection of forty poems, and anyone who looked at them couldn’t help but burst into laughter. He carved himself two title seals to put on the manuscript: one read “The Scoundrel’s Travels,” and the other “The Simple-Minded Rascal.”

  But when the office of the prince of Xiushui printed the collection, it titled the poems, “Oxhead Mountain’s Forty Farts.” The office subtitled the collection, “Farted by the Scoundrel’s Travels or the Simple-Minded Rascal.” One doesn’t even have to read the poems—the titles are already enough to make one laugh.

  _________

  “Ma Zi’an pays his respects”: The message on the ghost’s visiting card constructs a properly-styled greeting message by using the five nicknames that the official originally tried to change. This may seem like small revenge, but the ghost scribe’s presence, combined with his implicit criticism of the official’s treatment of his family, should compel the official to change his ways. Oxhead Mountain: Located in Jiangning county, Jiangsu province, near Nanjing.

  Tiehan . . . Tieshi: Tiehan means “iron-willed person” or “strong fellow”; Tieshi would mean something rather less heroic—like “iron dung.”

  Xiushui: Modern Jiaxing county, in Zhejiang province.

  429. The House Centipede

  At the threshold of a door in scholar Zhu Yusan’s home, there lived a house centipede that was a few chi in length. Whenever it encountered wind or rain upon venturing outside, it would spin back around and go lie on the floor like a strip of white silk. While this house centipede was shaped like an ordinary centipede, it couldn’t be seen in the daytime, and at night it always came out whenever it smelled raw meat being cut up.

  Some people say that centipedes can’t see, but they’re very greedy all the same.

  _________

  Zhu Yusan: Zhu (3:1484n1) suggests that this may be the same person as Zhu Wen, a resident of Zhejiang province’s Shimen county, who passed the imperial civil service examination at the highest level during the reign of emperor Kangxi (1662-1723).

  House centipede: An insectivore, any of a number of centipede species from the family Scutigeridae, normally up to 35 millimeters in length, with fifteen pairs of legs.

  Chi: A length equal to 1/3 meter.

  430. The Examination Official

  There was a certain schoolmaster who was extremely hard of hearing, and who had once had a good relationship with a fox; the fox would whisper i
nto the man’s ears, and then he could hear. Whenever he paid a visit to a high official, he would take the fox along and the official wouldn’t even realize that the schoolmaster was hard of hearing.

  After five or six years of this, the fox said farewell and took its leave of the schoolmaster, advising him, “You’ve been like a puppet, and if it wasn’t for me helping you, your auditory sense would be useless. Rather than being blamed for something due to your being deaf, you’d better leave your position first.”

  Since the schoolmaster longed to keep his position, he couldn’t bring himself to change his plans as the fox was recommending, but he also couldn’t help but misconstrue and respond strangely when conversing with the higher officials. Thus when the provincial examination official wanted to drive the schoolmaster out of the civil service examination, the schoolmaster decided to plead with other candidates to intercede for him.

  One day, the examination official was supervising in the examination hall, and once the roll had been called, the official left the room to sit with other schoolmasters. Each of them went up to him while he was checking off the list of examination candidates and tried to intercede with the official on behalf of the deaf schoolmaster.

  After awhile, the examination official with a laugh asked the deaf schoolmaster, “Why are you the only one who doesn’t need to submit a pledge for your students?” The schoolmaster was at a loss about what he’d said.

  Someone sitting near him elbowed him and put a hand into his boot as a gesture of what the examination official was hinting. The schoolmaster sometimes sold sex pamphlets for his relatives and hid them in his boots so he could have them handy anytime to sell. Because he saw the examination official smiling at him, he thought they were what he was asking for. He respectfully bowed to him and replied, “Those are the best you can find for eight coppers—I wouldn’t dare just give them to you.”

  The examination official swore at him and stormed out, subsequently removing the schoolmaster from his position.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “This unorthodox schoolmaster certainly mastered the art of the bribe, yet remained independent and unsullied in doing so. The examination official who asked for a bribe should accept the sex pamphlet as a perfectly appropriate response to his request. It’s just an injustice that the schoolmaster was expelled from his position!”

  Master Zhu Ziqing’s essay, “The Servant’s Ear,” declares that, “In Donglai, there was an individual named Chi who scored at the top of the civil service examination and served as education commissioner in Yishui. Since he was by nature given to bouts of abrupt craziness, it was common for his colleagues, when they were all gathered around him, to become entirely silent; Chi would slowly take a seat, and in moments, without his realizing it, all of his senses would become simultaneously engaged, as he’d laugh and weep at the same time with an air of superiority. But if he happened to hear the sound of someone laughing, he’d suddenly stop.

  _________

  Zhu Ziqing: Also known as Zhu Xiang or Zhu Xiangcun, began receiving important appointments (Zhu 3:1486n17) during the reign of emperor Kangxi (1662-1723).

  Donglai: Located in northern Shandong province.

  Yishui: A county in Shandong province.

  “By spending almost nothing on himself each day, he accumulated more than a hundred taels, which he buried in the study of his home, without his wife and son knowing anything about it. One day, as he was sitting there alone, his hands and feet suddenly began moving, and moments later, he declared, ‘Though I’ve made myself sick with self-deprivation, and suffered horribly by going hungry, it wasn’t really easy to save up so much money, and now it’s stashed in my study. But what would happen if someone knew about it?’ Thus he returned to the study to check on it. A servant was standing there outside it, but the official didn’t think anything about it.

  “The next day, after education commissioner Chi finally emerged from the study, his servant entered, dug up the money, grabbed it and left. Two or three days passed, and the official’s thoughts grew so troubled that he dug out the hole and looked inside it, discovering that it was already empty. Suddenly he started pounding his chest and stomping his feet, sighing bitterly like he wanted to die.”

  The men working in the teaching profession can be said to take many different shapes.

  431. The Black Ghosts

  Li Zongzhen, of Jiaozhou, somehow purchased the service of two black ghosts who were as dark as paint. The hide on their feet was so thick and coarse that they could walk on a road made entirely of knife points without receiving any harm.

  Li sent the ghosts some prostitutes to be their companions, and one of them gave birth to a son with white skin, so a colleague’s servant said in jest that the baby couldn’t be the ghost’s. The black ghosts became suspicious and consequently killed the son—but when they discovered his bones to be entirely black, they regretted their action.

  Master Li often ordered the ghosts to dance for him, and the sight was really something impressive.

  _________

  Jiaozhou: Modern Shandong province’s Jiao county.

  432. Zhicheng

  The water spirits in Dongting Lake often borrow the boats there. When they find an apparently empty boat, its mooring rope suddenly unties itself, and the boat starts floating away. Once they hear music being played in the air around them, however, the boatmen crouch and hide in some corner, listening with their eyes shut tight, not daring to look up, no matter where they’re going. After the drifting finally stops, they discover their boat tied up exactly where it had been before they started moving.

  A scholar named Liu, who was heading home after having failed a civil service examination, had gotten drunk, so he decided to lie down in a boat. A sheng suddenly started playing music. The boatmen started shaking the scholar, but he wouldn’t wake up, so they quickly went and hid themselves in the hold of the boat.

  Presently, a man came aboard and seized Liu. The scholar was still very drunk, so he allowed the hands to hold him down as he went back to sleep. In a little while, there was a noisy clamor like that of drums and instruments. As Liu began to stir a bit, he sensed a great variety of pleasant aromas, and upon glancing around, he found the boat filled with beautiful girls. He knew that this was strange, so he kept his eyes shut.

  Soon, someone called for Zhicheng. Accordingly, a maidservant approached and stood near Liu’s cheek, wearing green stockings and purple slippers, as slender and petite as a finger. He was immediately attracted to her and began furtively nibbling at her stockings.

  _________

  Dongting Lake: Located in Hunan province, best known as the original site of dragon boat racing.

  Sheng: A Chinese, oboe-like reed pipe.

  After a little while, the girl went to move, but felt something tugging at her that made her stumble. Someone in authority asked what had dragged her down, then noticed the cause. The person turned angry, ordering the scholar to be taken away and executed. Consequently, warrior guards appeared, grabbed and bound Liu, then raised him up.

  The scholar then looked into the face of a man with a majestic countenance and a sovereign’s headdress. As he was being walked away, Liu commented to the regal man, “I’ve heard that the Lord of Dongting is named Liu—and I’m also a member of the Liu clan; you also, I believe, once failed an imperial examination, and now I’ve failed one, too; and while Your Lordship met the daughter of the Dragon King here and became an immortal, I was simply playing around with a young serving woman, yet I’m now a condemned man: what an inequity of fortunes!”

  When the sovereign heard this, he ordered that the scholar be brought back, and asked him, “Are you a xiucai, yet failed the exam?” Liu acknowledged that he was indeed such a person. The regal individual then instructed him to take writing materials and compose a poem on the theme “the wind in her hair, the mist in her hair.” Liu had been considered a skilled poet in Xiangyang, so he slowly began working out the composition
in his head, then picked up a brush and sat there with it for a good long time.

  Standing above him, the sovereign challenged, “Why would anyone think you a talented writer?”

  As he wrote, Liu explained, “It took ten years to complete the ‘Poem on the Three Capitals,’ and therefore I realize that for a literary work to be highly valued, it must not be produced hastily.” The royal gentleman smiled upon hearing this.

  _________

  Xiucai: A scholar who has successfully passed the imperial civil service examination at the county level.

  Xiangyang: Now the name of a county in Hubei province.

  As the day drew on towards noon, Liu finally copied out the poetic manuscript. When the sovereign read it, he was utterly delighted, exclaiming, “He’s truly a literary genius!” Then he offered Liu some wine. In moments, many different rare delicacies were also suddenly available.

  When Liu turned to say something, a clerk carrying an account book burst in to report, “The register of those to be drowned has been prepared.”

  “How many people are listed there?” asked the monarch.

  “One hundred and twenty-eight persons,” replied the clerk.

  The sovereign then inquired, “Who’s been given the charge of carrying this out?”

  “General Mao and General Nan,” the clerk answered him.

  When Liu stood up to say farewell while the others prepared to leave, the sovereign offered him a hundred catties of gold, then grasping a crystal measuring rod in hand, he advised the scholar, “There are a number of incidents waiting to happen in the lake’s shallows, but if you’re holding this, you can avoid them.”

  Suddenly Liu saw men and horses spread out across the surface of the lake, then the regal figure stepped down from the boat into a carriage; they subsequently vanished, and after quite some time, everything became quiet again.