Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

  With a mournful sigh, she remarked, “We’ve been like sisters since we were children, and now suddenly we’re torn apart! When I hear how this has grieved you, it simply increases my own tears for her, so perhaps she’ll be moved by them to revive; but her qi has already been dispersed by death, so she’ll never join the two of us in happy conversation again.”

  _________

  Clerk Gu: A yaya (押衙) was “a non-official hireling used for menial work in units of territorial administration” (Li 123n82), and is sometimes translated as “lackey.” This particular Gu appears in Xu’s Tale of Lady Willow as a “highly righteous and loyal official” (Liu, Karl, and Ko [n.p.]n150) who proves helpful to Han Yi.

  Jimo: A county in Pu’s time, part of Qingdao in modern Shandong province.

  “It’s my own unlucky destiny that has brought about this misfortune to my sweetheart,” commented Huang, “and that also prevented me from enjoying the company of both of you beauties. I used to pester Xiangyu all the time to have you come, to allow me to convey some sense of my regard for you, so why didn’t you join us?”

  Jiangxue told him, “I simply figured that where young scholars are concerned, ninety percent of them are fickle; I didn’t realize that you’d be so faithful to your lovers. But while I can make love with you, you mustn’t get carried away. I can’t handle engaging in sex with you all the time.” Once she’d explained these thoughts, she informed Huang of her intention to leave.

  “With Xiangyu gone now,” he told her, “neither sleep nor food appeals to me any longer. If I could prevail upon you to stay with me for a little while, it would comfort me greatly, and then it wouldn’t feel like I’ve been abandoned!” Jiangxue thus stayed with him that night, then left the next morning.

  Several days went by without her return. As cold rain began spattering his window, Huang found himself missing Xiangyu terribly, tossing and turning in bed, his tears soaking his pillow and sleeping mat. He got up and dressed, then carried in a lantern and proceeded to write another poem in the style of his earlier one:

  In the mountain courtyard, rain falls at dusk,

  Dripping down the curtains as I sit before my tiny window.

  With my thoughts fixed on that person I cannot see,

  Tears fall down my cheeks all night long.

  Then he recited the poem aloud.

  _________

  Qi: The universal life energy that is vital to the individual’s health, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine.

  Suddenly someone outside his window remarked, “You’ve made a poem, so now another must be paired with it.” As he listened to the voice, he realized it was Jiangxue’s. He opened the door so she could come in.

  After reading over Huang’s poem again, Jiangxue composed her own:

  Where’s that beloved’s sleeve?

  Alone, his candle shines through the window.

  The mountain’s empty but for one man,

  Joined there only by his own shadow.

  Huang’s tears fell as he read her verses, but then he reproached her for not coming sooner to see him.

  “I can’t respond with the same passion as Xiangyu,” she told him, “but I can offer you a little comfort for your loneliness.” Huang wanted to make love with her. “We can be happy together, but not necessarily like that,” she explained.

  Henceforth, anytime Huang found himself feeling dejected, Jiangxue would always come to see him. Upon her arrival, they’d feast together, then read poems to each other, and when it came time to decide whether she should sleep there overnight or leave, Huang always acceded to Jiangxue’s preference.

  He told her, “Xiangyu was my beloved wife, and you are my dear friend.” Whenever they were together, he’d ask her, “Which of the tree peonies in the courtyard are you? If you’ll show me where you are, I can transplant you to my home, so you can avoid what happened to Xiangyu when that villain seized her and took her away, then you’ll be safe for the rest of your life.”

  “It would be hard to move me from my native soil,” she explained, “so there’s no point in me telling you which plant is mine. If Xiangyu, your wife, was unable to stay with you, how could a mere friend possibly do so!”

  Huang refused to listen to her, just grabbed her arm and took her outside, where they stood before each of the tree peonies while he asked her, “Is this one yours?” Jiangxue said nothing, but covered her mouth to keep from giggling.

  Before long, during the twelfth lunar month, Huang returned home to celebrate the end of the year. During the second month of the new year, he suddenly dreamt that Jiangxue appeared to him and anxiously reported, “I’m facing a great catastrophe! You must hurry and come if you ever want to see me again; if you take your time, it’ll be too late.” He woke up, feeling strange, but hurriedly directed servants to ready a horse, then galloped off to Laoshan.

  The Daoists at Xiaqing Temple were in the process of constructing another building, but an evergreen tree was obstructing their progress, so their work leader was about to take an axe to it. Huang rushed forward and stopped him.

  That night, Jiangxue appeared and thanked him. Huang smiled as he replied, “Since you didn’t tell me the whole truth earlier, you brought yourself to this state of affairs! Now I know which tree you are; if you don’t come to me, I’ll burn some mugwort to create a smudge and clear your jingluo.”

  “I was sure you’d try something like this,” Jiangxue said, “so that’s why I didn’t dare tell you earlier.”

  The two sat together for a little while before Huang remarked, “Now that I’m here with my good friend, my thoughts are even more fixed on my lovely wife. It’s been a long time since I wept for my dear Xiangyu, so will you go with me to join in mourning her?” The two then went to the hole where the tree peony had been extracted, and cried together over it. An hour passed, then Jiangxue ceased her weeping, and urged Huang to stop crying, too.

  Several nights later, Huang was sitting by himself when a laughing Jiangxue entered and announced, “I have happy news for you: the flower god has been moved by your devotion, so Xiangyu will be allowed to grow once again on the temple grounds.”

  _________

  Mugwort . . . Jingluo: Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris) is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, burnt to create a healing smoke, or smudge. The jingluo are the body’s energy channels; when they’re blocked, the flow of blood and qi is impeded, resulting in imbalances that manifest as illness.

  “Where?” Huang asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “but probably not far away.”

  The next day, as Jiangxue got out of bed, he told her, “I came here to be with you, so please don’t leave me all alone.” Jiangxue smiled reassuringly. Two nights went by, however, without her return.

  Huang went out and hugged the evergreen tree, shaking it, stroking it, and frequently calling out to it, but there was no response. Then he went back, grabbed a lantern and some clumps of dry mugwort, preparing to burn them near the tree.

  Jiangxue rushed in, tore the weeds from him and tossed them aside, crying, “If you do such an evil thing as this, wounding me, you’ll never see me again!” Huang smiled and embraced her. Before the two could even sit down together, Xiangyu gracefully walked in. As soon as Huang saw her, tears sprang from his eyes and he immediately moved to take her hand. While he did so, Xiangyu also took Jiangxue by the hand, and the three of them stood there, sobbing together.

  As they sat down, Huang was shaken by the fact that Xiangyu’s hand felt like it had no substance, so he asked her about it. She tearfully answered him, “Before this, I was a flower spirit, and hence my body felt solid; now I’m a ghost, and so my essence has been scattered. But since we can be together for now, don’t dwell on what’s real—just think of it as a pleasant dream.”

  “It’s so great that you’ve come!” exclaimed Jiangxue. “Your husband’s demands for sex have been annoying me to death.” Then she left.

  Xiangyu interacted and laugh
ed with Huang like before; but whenever he held her close, it was as though her body was nothing more than a shadow. Huang felt worried and sad. Xiangyu also seemed unhappy, and told Huang, “You should take some bits of dried bai lian root, and a little sulfur, add them to a cup of water, then apply them to me each day, and a year from now your kindness will be recompensed.” Then she was gone.

  The next day, he went to the site at Xiaqing Temple where Xiangyu’s tree peony had been planted—and noticed that a sprout had already appeared. Thus Huang cared for it each day, cultivating it, and made a fence around it for protection. Xiangyu expressed her gratitude during frequent visits.

  But when Huang revealed his plan to transplant the peony to his home, she told him he mustn’t, explaining, “I’m weak now and I couldn’t survive being uprooted again. Everything has a particular spot in which it thrives, and when I originally appeared, it was never intended that I should grow at your home; to violate my destiny would simply reduce my lifespan again. Yet we love each other tenderly, and if you can just accept that, our day will come.”

  Huang was also upset that Jiangxue wasn’t coming to visit. “I’m sure that if you really want her to visit, I can persuade her to do so,” said Xiangyu.

  Then she had Huang carry a lantern to the evergreen tree, where she plucked a strand of grass, measured it against her palm, then placed it along the trunk of the tree, measuring up from the bottom to a point that was four chi and six cun above its base—then while she pressed the point, she had Huang take his fingernails and tickle it there.

  Instantly, they saw Jiangxue appear from behind the tree, laughing and scolding, “So you’ve come with your cruel helper!” They tugged at her to come inside with them.

  _________

  Dried bai lian roots: The Japanese peppervine (Ampelopsis japonica) is a woody mountain shrub with a grapevine-like appearance, and in Traditional Chinese Medicine its root is dried for use in decoctions, or powdered for topical application, employed because of its antifungal and antibacterial properties to remove toxins or to regenerate wound tissue.

  Four chi and six cun: A chi is equal to 1/3 meter, and a cun to 1/3 decimeter, so Xiangyu is measuring to a point slightly more than five feet from the base of the tree.

  “Don’t worry!” Xiangyu told her. “You’ll only have to serve my husband temporarily, and in a year we won’t trouble you any further.” After this, Jiangxue came more frequently to spend time with Huang.

  Huang continued monitoring the flower sprout and it flourished as he fed it more fertilizer each day, till by the end of the spring, it had grown to about two chi in height. When he had to return home, he gave some money to a Daoist priest at the temple to continue cultivating the peony tree all the while he was away.

  In April of the following year, he returned to Xiaqing Temple and found the peony tree about to blossom; when he proved reluctant to leave it until it opened up, the plant began shaking like it was about to burst open. In a little while, its blossom opened into a flower the size of a platter, and sitting with dignity in the flower’s pistil was a beauty no larger than the width of three or four fingers; in a twinkle, she gracefully climbed down, revealing herself to be Xiangyu.

  With a laugh, she exclaimed, “I’ve endured wind and rain while waiting for you—you certainly took your time getting here!” Then they went inside.

  Jingxue came in with them, saying to Xiangyu with a smile, “I played the part of a wife every day for you, but now it’s my good fortune to resign that role and simply be your friend.” Then they enjoyed chatting and dining together. At midnight, Jiangxue left. Huang and Xiangyu slept together, then proceeded to live together in loving harmony, just as before.

  After Huang’s mortal wife died, he returned to Laoshan to stay. By that time, the stem of Xiangyu’s tree peony was already as big around as an arm. Huang often pointed to it and said, “Someday, I’ll entrust my spirit to this place, to grow here at your left side.”

  Xiangyu and Jiangxue laughed and replied, “Don’t forget about that.”

  Ten years passed, then Huang suddenly fell ill. His son came to see him, sincerely sorrowful. Huang smiled at him and declared, “This means a new life for me, not death, so what’s there to be sad about!” He told the Daoist priest, “Sometime soon, when a red peony springs up below the tree peony, then puts out five leaves, that’ll be me.” Thereafter he didn’t say another word. His son took a carriage to return home, then Huang died.

  The following year, a red peony stalk did indeed appear there with the specified number of leaves. The Daoist thought it very strange, and gave the plant additional water. In three years, the plant had grown to be a few chi tall, with a circumference large enough that it required two hands to reach around it, yet it didn’t blossom.

  When the old Daoist died, his pupils didn’t realize how much he had treasured the big plant, so they cut it down. The white tree peony consequently grew dry and withered till it died; before long, the evergreen tree died, too.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Affections can be so strong that even spirits can share in them. If a flower spirit can become a ghost, and a mortal man can take a spirit form, isn’t that proof of the depth of their affections? One departs, and two others die as a consequence: if they hadn’t been utterly faithful to him, they wouldn’t have died for their love. If Huang had been unable to remain loyal to them, it would have proven that his affections weren’t sincere. Confucius once was reading about wild cherry trees, when he said, ‘he wasn’t really thinking of her’—how true!”

  _________

  Confucius . . . wild cherry trees: In Analects 9.31, Confucius responds to a poem in which a narrator ponders a wild cherry tree’s flowers, but laments that his beloved’s home is “so very far away”: “The Master said, ‘He wasn’t really thinking of her, or how could she be far away?’” (133).

  444. The Three Immortals

  A scholar on his way to Jinling to take the imperial civil service examination was passing through Suqian when he met three other scholars who’d already passed the examination at the county level, so he enjoyed a broadminded, free-ranging discussion with them and then bought some wine to prolong their harmonious exchange. Each of the others introduced himself: one was named Jie Qiuheng, one was Chang Fenlin, and the other was Ma Xichi.

  Drinking uninhibitedly made them all quite jolly, so they lost track of the fact that it was already dusk. Jie remarked, “We haven’t been very courteous hosts, yet here we are, enjoying your generous treats—it’s just not proper. Our humble home isn’t far away, so you can stay there for the night.” Chang and Ma stood up, clutched at the scholar’s lapels and called for his servant, and then everyone left together.

  As they came to a hill that was north of town, the scholar suddenly observed a courtyard, with a clear stream winding past its gates. Upon entering, he noticed that the building was the very epitome of cleanliness. Jie called for a boy servant to light some lanterns, then ordered them to help find a place for their scholar guest’s servant.

  _________

  Jinling: Now known as Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province. Suqian: A county in Jiangsu province.

  “In the olden days, we’d have become friends by exchanging our writings,” noted Ma, “so now since the day of the examinations is near, we mustn’t waste this evening’s opportunity. We should prepare four examination topics, then each draw one, and after we’ve finished writing our essays on them, we can drink some more.”

  Everyone agreed to his plan. Each of them thought of an essay topic, wrote it down and placed it on the table, then picked up another one and began to outline and write his composition. By the second watch, they’d all finished, so once they’d finally completed their essays, they exchanged them and started reading.

  When he examined the essays by the other three men, the scholar was so profoundly impressed that he wrote out copies of them, which he then concealed. His hosts offered him some fine wine, generously urgi
ng him to drink up, though he didn’t feel like he was getting drunk.

  The hosts then led their guest to another courtyard, where he could take his rest. The scholar was definitely intoxicated, so much so that he couldn’t even take off his shoes and clothing but just collapsed onto the bed.

  By the time he awakened, the rising sun was already high in the sky, and as he looked around, seeing neither courtyard nor building, he found himself and his servant to be lying in a mountain valley. He was astonished. He saw a cave nearby, with a little stream trickling alongside it. The scholar was surprised and utterly perplexed. He checked inside his robe, discovering that his copies of the other three essays were still there.

  When he subsequently hiked down from the mountain and made inquiries among the locals, he learned that the site was called the “Cave of the Three Immortals.” Inside it there were three creatures, a hermit crab, a snake, and a toad, that came outside the cave from time to time and hence were observed by the locals.

  _________

  Second watch: The second of the five two-hour divisions of the night spans 9:00-11:00 p.m.

  After the scholar entered the examination hall, he found that the three assigned writing topics were exactly the same ones that the three immortals had written about, and he proceeded to pass the examination with the highest score.

  445. The Ghost Clerks

  In Licheng county, two government clerks were sent to a particular town on magistrate Han Chengxuan’s commands, conducting business for their prefecture, and then at the end of the year they started homeward. On the road, they met two men also dressed in the clothing and insignia of clerks, heading in the same direction, so they began conversing together.

  The other two identified themselves as government clerks in Jicheng. The Licheng clerks commented, “We know eighty or ninety percent of the clerks in Jicheng, but we’ve never heard of you two our entire lives.”

  “To tell you the truth, we’re ghost clerks for Jicheng’s city god,” the others responded. “We’re on our way now to take some official documents to the Emperor of Taishan.”