Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

  Along the way, they met an influential family who hired Qionghua to come work for them while Le recuperated at an inn. A boy who was eight or nine years old was begging for something to eat there, though he didn’t look to Le like a beggar. Upon asking the boy for particulars about himself, Le discovered that he’d been forced to leave home by his stepmother. He consequently felt sorry for the lad. The boy was reluctant to leave the inn, desperately begging Le to help him, so Le then agreed to take the child home with him.

  When he asked him his name, the boy replied, “My surname is Yong, my first name is A-Xin, and my mother is from the Gu family. I once heard her say that she’d been married to Yong for six months when she gave birth to me. My real father’s surname was Le.” Le was quite startled to hear this.

  He didn’t really believe that the boy could be his own son, since he’d only slept with his wife once. When he asked A-Xin where Le, his father, was from, the boy answered, “I don’t know. But before she died, my mother gave me a letter and advised me not to lose it.” Le hurried to peruse the letter. He discovered that it was the letter he’d written years earlier, when he sent his wife back home to the Gu family.

  In shock, Le exclaimed, “You’re really my son!” He checked the date of the boy’s birthday and took great comfort in the fact that he’d been reunited with his son. But with his household resources becoming more scant by the day, after his son had been living with him for two years, he was compelled gradually to sell off his remaining land till finally he couldn’t afford livestock or even a boy servant.

  One day, Le and A-Xin were cooking something to eat when suddenly a beautiful woman appeared to them, and when Le looked closely at her, he realized that it was Qionghua. “What are you doing here?” he asked, startled.

  With a smile she replied, “We pretended to be married when we traveled together, so what kind of question is that? Formerly, I didn’t come with you because of the old woman I was hired to look after; but now she’s dead. I was worried that if I didn’t get married, there’d be no one to protect and to care for me; but if I did marry, then I wouldn’t be able to remain virginal: but since you don’t want a sexual relationship either, it would be fine to marry you, which is why I wasn’t afraid to travel a thousand li to join you.” As soon as she’d rested a bit, she proceeded to fix A-Xin something to eat. Le was elated by the turn of events.

  That night, he and A-Xin slept together as usual, while Qionghua was provided with a room of her own. The boy treated her like his mother, and Qionghua similarly took pleasure in caring for A-Xin.

  When Le’s relatives heard the news, they all came to offer their congratulations. As the visitors arrived, Qionghua was always able to feed them, but Le didn’t ask how she was able to afford doing so. Qionghua gradually began using some of her own gold and pearls to buy back the land that Le had previously been forced to sell, additionally acquiring servants and livestock, as the family grew more prosperous day after day.

  Le continually told Qionghua, “Whenever I’m drunk, you must stay away from me and be sure that I don’t see you.” Qionghua would smile and promise to do so.

  One day, when he was quite tipsy, he urgently shouted for Qionghua. She came out, dressed in colorfully attractive attire. Le stared at her for some time, then began leaping and dancing for joy like he’d gone crazy, crying, “Now I get it!” He sobered up instantly. He felt that his world was full of promise, that the home he was living in was actually a magnificent construction, and in moments he changed his patterns of behavior.

  Henceforward, he no longer went into town to do his drinking, preferring instead to drink at home in Qionghua’s company. She, meanwhile, would eat her vegetarian fare and sip tea.

  _________

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  One day, after Le had gotten a little drunk, he asked Qionghua to massage his legs and as she did so, she observed scars there that resembled a pair of red lotus flowers protruding slightly above the surface of his skin. They were quite extraordinary. Le chuckled and told her, “If those flowers that you’re looking at grow any larger, it’ll be a sign for us to part company after the twenty years we’ve been together as false husband and wife.” Qionghua believed this to be true.

  Once A-Xin was married, Qionghua gradually began turning the household management over to A-Xin’s bride, and went to live with Le in one of the other courtyards. Every three days, A-Xin and his wife would visit them, and unless some bit of household business had proven particularly difficult, they didn’t bring any of it up when spending time with them. They arranged for two maidservants to wait on the older couple: one’s sole duty was to warm up Le’s wine for him, while the other’s only task was to make tea for Qionghua.

  It happened one day that Qionghua went to A-Xin’s portion of the home and consulted with her daughter-in-law there for a good long while, then the two went together to see Le. As they walked through the doorway to his room, they saw him sitting, barefooted, on his bed.

  Upon hearing them enter, he opened his eyes, gave a little smile, and exclaimed, “It’s so good that you’ve come!” Afterwards, he closed his eyes again.

  Qionghua, shaken, asked him, “What is it, what’s happened?” She looked closely at his legs, where the red lotus flowers had indeed grown larger. She tried to get him to respond, but he’d already stopped breathing.

  Placing both of her hands on the lotus scars, Qionghua offered blessings as she said, “I followed you for a thousand li, and that was certainly no easy matter. I still have things to teach your son and daughter-in-law, and you still have a bit of your own work to complete. It wouldn’t mean more than an extra two or three years, so why not wait a little while before you go?”

  Shortly thereafter, Le suddenly opened his eyes, laughed, and replied, “You have your affairs to attend to, so why drag somebody else along to be your companion? Oh well, I guess I’ll let you detain me awhile.” By the time Qionghua loosened her grip on his legs, the lotus scars had already returned to their former size. Afterwards, Le began laughing and talking like normal.

  Three years passed and Qionghua was approaching the age of forty, but she still looked like a woman of about twenty. All of a sudden she told Le, “When mortals die, other people pick up and handle their bodies, which is both inelegant and untidy.” Then she directed some workers to build them a pair of coffins.

  Surprised, A-Xin asked her why she was doing this, and she replied, “That’s not for you to know.”

  Once the workers had finished their tasks, Qionghua bathed, and after putting on her make-up, she told A-Xin to bring his wife: “I’m about to die,” she explained.

  “For several years,” A-Xin tearfully declared, “we’ve depended upon you, mother, and you’ve taken care of us so we were neither cold nor hungry. You haven’t yet experienced your share of ease and comfort, so why leave us now?”

  “Your father has saved up a fortune for you to cover what you’ll need,” explained Qionghua, “from servants to livestock, and everything that was taken from your father by the relatives has been restored, but not by anything I’ve done. I’m simply a heavenly maiden who scatters flowers, and who happened to experience a span of mortal life, so after living in mortal form for the past thirty years, my time here has now expired.” Then she stepped into her coffin.

  No sooner had she done so than her eyes closed and she ceased to breathe. A-Xin cried out for his father, but unbeknownst to him, his father was also dead and already dressed in his funeral clothing. A-Xin wailed piteously in his grief. Le was placed in his coffin, then both coffins were set in the family hall and were left uncovered for several days in hope that the couple might revive again.

  _________

  Heavenly maiden who scatters flowers: A common motif of offering in Buddhist art, the heavenly maidens, known as Devatas in India and as Tennyo or Tennin in Japan, are frequently pictured in illustrations of the sutras, strewing lotus flowers that become the seats for pious Buddhists.
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  All at once, a brilliant light began shining from Le Zhong’s legs, illuminating the entire hall. From within Qionghua’s coffin, a fragrant mist began flowing out till everyone who was anywhere near the family’s home became aware of it. Once the coffins were finally closed, the fragrance and light gradually began to diminish.

  After their bodies were buried, the younger relatives of the Le family began to covet Le Zhong’s possessions, so they plotted together to drive A-Xin away by filing a suit with the local official. The official was unable to tell their lies from the truth and hence ruled that they should receive half of all Le’s possessions. Though A-Xin had no experience in this kind of affair, he took the matter to the prefectural court, where it remained for a long time without a ruling.

  Years earlier, Gu Wenyuan had arranged for his daughter to marry into the Yong family, but when the Yongs moved to Fujian a year later, there was no news from them and hence Gu lost contact with them. He had no son, so as he grew old, he began to miss his daughter terribly, but when he went to visit his son-inlaw’s home, he discovered that his daughter had died and his grandson had been driven away from home. Gu proceeded to involve local officials in the matter. Yong was so afraid of legal repercussions that he tried to bribe Gu into forgetting about it, but Gu refused the money, insisting instead upon receiving custody of his grandson. They searched exhaustively, but without finding any traces of him.

  One day, Gu happened to be standing in the road when he saw a colorful carriage approaching, so he stepped aside to let it pass. From inside the carriage, a beautiful woman called out, “Isn’t that old Master Gu?” Gu affirmed that it was indeed. She then declared, “Your grandson happens to be my son, and currently lives with the Le family, so there’s no need to bring suit against Yong. But since your grandson’s facing some trouble at the moment, you’d better hurry and go help him.”

  Gu wanted to ask her for more details, but by then the carriage had already vanished. He then accepted the bribe money from Yong and went on to Xi’an.

  By the time he arrived, the suit challenging A-Xin as Le’s heir was already in motion. Gu went before the presiding official, informed him of the date on which his daughter was sent home to him, and the date on which she remarried, as well as the year and month of his grandson’s birth, clearly revealing the whole truth. All of the greedy Le relatives were consequently whipped and chased from the court, thereby settling the case.

  Upon returning to the Le home, Gu related how he’d learned about things through his encounter with a beautiful woman in a carriage on a particular day, and they realized that it had been the same day on which Qionghua had died.

  A-Xin helped his grandfather move in with his family, giving Gu his own cottage and a maidservant, too. When he was more than sixty years old, Gu became father to a son, and with A-Xin together took good care of the infant.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Refusing to eat meat and living in contemplative isolation is what life is like for a Buddhist. A genuine Buddhist is naïve and innocent. Le Zhong was paired with a beauty who proved upon closer examination to be a spotlessly pure companion, one who would never agree to sexual intimacy. She slept beside him and served him for thirty years, sometimes as though she loved him and sometimes not, for this was truly how a bodhisattva would seem to an ordinary mortal—alas, we mortals cannot guess at what the final results were!”

  443. Xiangyu

  At Laoshan’s Xiaqing Temple, the evergreen trees are two zhang in height with a diameter of ten wei, and even the tree peonies are more than a zhang tall, their flowers as brightly colored as brocade fabric. Scholar Huang, from Jiaozhou, came to stay at Xiaqing Temple while studying.

  One day, from his window he observed a young woman dressed in white, standing among the flowers. He was curious about what a woman was doing in the Daoist temple. He hurried outside, but she’d already run away. Thereafter, he spotted her this way several times.

  Finally he decided to hide himself in a thicket of trees and wait for her to show up. In a little while, the young woman arrived in the company of a woman dressed in red, and even while they were still some distance away from him, they appeared to be extremely pretty. As they came closer, the girl in red suddenly backed away, exclaiming, “There’s a stranger here.” At that, Huang came forward, surprising the girls to such a degree that they ran off, their sleeves and skirts fluttering behind them, creating a fragrant breeze as they ran past a short wall; then without a sound, they disappeared.

  _________

  Laoshan: Mt. Lao, in Shandong province ner the Yellow Sea and the city of Qingdao. A Daoist center sine the Western Han dynasty, it was the site at one time of nine palaces, eight temples, and over seventy convents/monasteries.

  Zhang: A measure equal to 3.33 meters.

  Wei: A measure equal to five cun, or 1/6 meter; the trees thus have a diameter of approximately 1.66 meters.

  Tree peonies: These native Chinese woody perennial relatives of flower peonies grow to be 3-7 feet tall. Pu’s Xiaqing peonies, then, are extraordinarily tall examples.

  Jiaozhou: A prefecture in Pu’s time, now Shandong province’s Jiao county.

  Filled with love and adoration for them, Huang sat beneath a tree and proceeded to compose a poem:

  The painful yearning between lovers can be limitless,

  Yet the expression of that emotion is as brief as a tiny flame.

  I’m afraid that my beloved will be swept away by General Sha,

  And then where will I find her, my unparalleled lady?

  He returned then to his study, deep in thought.

  Suddenly he was pleasantly surprised to see the young woman walk into his room, so he welcomed her enthusiastically. She smiled as she explained, “You were as aggressive as some kind of bandit before, so naturally I was frightened of you; but I didn’t realize that you were also a sensitive poet, so there’s no harm in us seeing each other.”

  When Huang inquired about her background, she replied, “My name is Xiangyu, and I used to belong to a brothel. But a Daoist priest has had me shut up in the mountain, and I truly don’t want to be here.”

  “What’s this Daoist’s name?” demanded Huang. “I’ll free you of his filthy attentions.”

  “There’s no need,” she explained, “for he hasn’t forced me to do anything with him. Besides, I’ve taken advantage of it to meet a distinguished poet, and if that meeting grows into an intimate relationship between us, it’ll be a beautiful thing.”

  _________

  General Sha: Han Yi, the male lover in Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.) author Xu Yaozuo’s Tale of Lady Willow, learns that his beloved has fallen into the hands of the powerful General Sha Zhali.

  Xiangyu: Literally, “fragrant jade.”

  “Who was the woman dressed in red?” he asked her.

  “Her name’s Jiangxue,” replied Xiangyu, “and she’s my sworn sister.” Then the two proceeded to make love.

  They woke up as the red rays of dawn were already appearing. Xiangyu quickly got up and declared, “In my greedy happiness, I forgot all about the dawn.” She slipped on her clothes and shoes, then announced, “I made up a poem to complement yours, so don’t laugh:

  ‘Our night of passion is now over,

  The morning sun’s already at the window.

  My love for you is a swallow perched on a roof beam,

  And if I wait there long enough, we’ll be together.’”

  Huang grasped her wrist and proclaimed, “You’re beautiful and intelligent, and I’m so in love with you that I can forget everything else. If I spend a single day away from you, it’ll feel like we’re a thousand li apart. Please seize any chance you have to join me—don’t wait until night.” Xiangyu promised she would do so. From that point forward, whether day or night, the two were always together.

  Huang often had Xiangyu invite Jiangxue to join them, but she always declined, which Huang found rather exasperating. “Jiangxue’s different, stand-offish,�
� explained Xiangyu, “not outgoing like me. If I’m not too impatient, I may be able to persuade her calmly to come.”

  One night, Xiangyu came in, obviously upset, and told Huang, “I can’t stay with you any longer, so do you still want Jiangxue to come? We’ll be separated forever now.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked her.

  She took her sleeve to wipe the tears from her eyes as she replied, “This was simply fated—but I couldn’t just tell you that directly. Before now, your poem was simply a fine piece of writing, but now its casual forecast is coming true. All I can do is recite my own verses, ‘The beauty has already been taken by Sha Zhali / And the hero won’t run into a clerk Gu.’” When he asked her additional questions, she said nothing more, choked by her tears. Xiangyu was unable to sleep at all that night, and left early the next morning.

  _________

  Jiangxue: Literally, “crimson snow.”

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  Huang was baffled by it all.

  The next day, a man from Jimo named Lan, who’d entered the temple for some sightseeing, was quite pleased when he happened upon a white tree peony there, so he proceeded to dig it up and take it with him. Huang subsequently began to consider the possibility that Xiangyu was actually a flower spirit, and deeply regretted the fact that Lan had removed the plant.

  Several days passed, then he heard that while Lan had transplanted the flower to his home, it seemed to be withering more each day. Lamenting this turn of events, Huang quickly immersed himself in the task of writing fifty poems about the peony, weeping copiously every day over the hole left by the peony’s removal.

  One day, he was coming back to his study from doing this when he looked back and saw Jiangxue crying beside the hole. He approached her quietly, and she didn’t try to run away. Grasping her sleeve, he joined with her, openly weeping. When they were finished, he invited her to his room and she followed after him.