Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

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  Kuizhou: A prefecture in Pu’s time, now part of Jujie county, Sichuan province.

  A xiucai from Luzhou named Jiang, returning home after having just failed the next level of the civil service examination, met Danan along the road and upon learning the purpose of his trip, praised him for his filial piety and invited him to be his traveling companion. When they came to Luzhou, Jiang invited Danan to his home. He stayed there for a month, which gave him a chance to make inquiries about his father all over the place.

  Someone told him that there was a merchant in Fujian named Xi, so he took his leave of Jiang, planning to head for Fujian. Jiang gave him some clothing and shoes, and Jiang’s neighbors supported Danan’s efforts to find his father, so they collected some money together to help him on his journey.

  On the road, he met two cloth dealers who were going to Fuqing, and who invited him to accompany them. In the course of their traveling, the two dealers spied Danan’s money bag, and consequently led him to a remote spot where they tied up his hands and feet, seized his bag of money, and ran off. An old man named Chen, from Yongfu, happened to be passing through the vicinity, so he untied Danan’s bonds and then took him home with him.

  Chen proved to be a rich and powerful man, and since many merchants passed through his gates, he urged them to search diligently in the north and south for Xi. Meanwhile he persuaded Danan to stay and go to school with his own sons. Danan accordingly began to live with Chen’s family and didn’t return to his wandering. However, since he’d traveled further and further away from home in the course of his search, it had become impossible for him to send any news back.

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

  Luzhou: A county located in Sichuan province.

  Fuqing: A county in Fujian province.

  Yongfu: Modern Fujian’s Yongtai county.

  When He Zhaorong had been living alone for three or four years, Shen reduced the amount of money she was allowed for her expenses and tried to force her to remarry. Zhaorong, however, remained unshakably loyal to Xi. Thus Shen sold her to a Chongqing merchant, who came to pick her up and took her home with him. That night, Zhaorong took a knife and stabbed herself with it.

  The merchant didn’t dare try to force himself on her after that, so he waited for the wound to heal, then sold her to a Yanting merchant. When she arrived in Yanting, she slashed her abdomen so seriously that one could see her internal organs through the cut. The merchant was horrified, so he had medicines applied, and when the wound finally closed up, Zhaorong begged him to allow her to become a Buddhist nun.

  “I have a merchant associate who’s impotent,” he told her, “and who’s long wanted a woman to do his sewing and whatnot. This wouldn’t be a lot different than living as a Buddhist nun, and I’d also be able to recoup a bit of what I paid for you.” Zhaorong agreed to his suggestion. The merchant helped her into a carriage and accompanied her to his associate’s home.

  When they entered his gates, the man hurried out to greet them—and turned out to be Xi Chenglie. Xi by this time had given up on his scholarly studies and become a merchant, and since he had no wife, his Yangting associate decided just to give He to Xi. Upon seeing each other, the two were overcome with amazement and recounted the hardships they’d endured, then Xi began to realize that he had a son who would still be searching for the father who’d never returned home.

  Xi consequently urged all of his fellow business travelers to be alert for any signs of Danan. He also took Zhaorong officially as his wife, no longer just a concubine. Since she had suffered such tremendous physical trauma, however, she often succumbed to illnesses and couldn’t

  do the manual work required in the household, so she recommended to Xi that he acquire a concubine. But Xi considered the old life he had back at home and refused her suggestion. She rationalized, “If I was worried about competing with someone else for your bed, I’d have already married some other man and started another family, but then how could we have ever come together as we are now? When I recall how I was treated by your wife, and all the anguish I kept secret in my heart, how could I treat another concubine that way?” Xi then advised one of his business associates to purchase a thirty-year-old concubine for him.

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  Chongqing: A city in Sichuan province.

  Yanting: A county in Sichuan province.

  Six months passed before the business associate bought an appropriate woman and brought her home to Xi. When they entered his gates, they could see that the concubine was actually Shen. Xi and Zhaorong were astonished.

  Earlier, when she’d been living by herself for more than a year after selling Zhaorong, Shen was advised by her older brother, Shen Bao, to remarry. She did as he suggested and attempted to sell her husband’s property until she was stopped by Xi’s relatives, who blocked the sale. Consequently, she was forced to sell them everything she owned, accumulating a few hundred strings of cash, which she took with her to her brother’s house, where a Baoning merchant who’d heard that she possessed a bit of money as a dowry had enticed Shen Bao with bribes, and thus tricked her into marrying him.

  Unfortunately, the merchant was old and impotent. Shen blamed her brother for her predicament and was so depressed that she tried to hang herself, then threw herself down a well, unable to bear living under such circumstances. This so angered the merchant that he took all of her money and planned to sell her as a concubine.

  Everyone who heard about this opined that Shen was too old for anyone to want to buy her. Then Xi’s business associate ran across her in Kuizhou, where she’d been transported for sale. Since she happened to be precisely the age that Xi had stipulated, the associate paid for her and brought her back.

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  Baoning: A prefecture in Pu’s time, now Langzhong county in Sichuan province.

  Upon spotting Xi, Shen felt so ashamed and scared that she couldn’t bring herself to say a word. After Xi asked his business associate about the details of the transaction, he then told Shen, “If you’d happened to marry a healthy man, you’d still be in Baoning, and we’d never have seen each other again after all this. So now this is our fate. But today I’ve bought a concubine, not married a wife, so you can start by acknowledging Zhaorong as your mistress, with the respect due from a concubine to a wife.” Shen felt utterly humiliated. “Think how you behaved back when you were my wife!” he cried.

  Zhaorong tried to persuade Xi to cease his chastisement, but Xi couldn’t stop himself from grabbing a stick so he could beat his former wife. Shen then had no choice but to acknowledge Zhaorong as the mistress of the house. However, she disdained to serve Zhaorong as she’d been ordered, and instead took care of manual labor in a different room.

  Zhaorong tolerated this behavior from Shen and didn’t force her to perform heavy house chores. Whenever Xi and Zhaorong enjoyed some wine together, Xi always called upon Shen to serve them; Zhaorong, however, would always use one of the maidservants to replace her.

  At this time, Master Chen Sizong was appointed the county magistrate in Yanting. Xi happened to get involved in a minor conflict with a village neighbor who claimed that Xi had forced his wife to become Xi’s concubine, and who subsequently filed a lawsuit to that effect. The magistrate rejected the suit, punished the neighbor, and then sent him home. Xi was pleased, and privately shared his praise of the official’s moral uprightness with Zhaorong.

  Just after one o’clock in the morning one day, a boy servant called and knocked at Xi’s door, then entered to announce, “The county magistrate has come.” Xi, startled, hurriedly looked for his clothing and shoes, but by that time the magistrate had already arrived at the back door to the sleeping quarters; Xi felt even more rattled, but had no idea why the magistrate had come.

  Zhaorong hurried out to investigate, and exclaimed, “It’s my son!” Chen then prostrated himself, choked with emotion. I
ndeed, Danan had adopted the Chen family name, and was now working as an official.

  Sometime earlier, he’d been traveling to the capital, but decided to take an indirect route in order to pass through his village, where he learned that his two mothers had both remarried, the news of which broke his heart. When Danan’s relatives learned that he had become a man of wealth, they returned all of the property they’d acquired from the Xi family. Danan left some of his servants to watch over the family home, in hopes of his father’s return.

  Following his subsequent appointment as magistrate for Yanting, he wanted to decline the position in order to continue searching for his father, but old Chen seriously advised him to stay and take up the appointment. There happened to be a certain fortuneteller that Danan solicited concerning his future. The fortune-teller informed him, “The younger one will occupy a greater position, the smaller one shall grow larger; you search for a man and you also find a woman, you seek one and you get two: how lucky you are to be an official.” Danan then accepted his new position. Since he’d been unable to locate his father and mother, he lived as an official, but he refused to eat meat or to drink alcohol.

  On the day that the neighbor had filed the suit against Xi, Danan noticed the name on the suit and wondered whether this could possibly be his father. He secretly sent someone to make discreet inquiries, with the conclusion that the man was indeed Xi Chenglie, his father. Exchanging his official garb for civilian clothing, Danan rode out at midnight.

  Upon seeing his mother, he became even more convinced of the godlike insight of the fortune-teller’s prediction. As he prepared to leave, he advised them not to spread word of their relationship to him, then he took out two hundred taels to allow his father to manage the packing of his belongings so they could return home to their village.

  When Xi and the others arrived home, the gates appeared to be brand new, servants were caring for numerous horses and other livestock, and surprisingly, the house seemed even bigger than before. Having seen how incredibly successful Danan had become, Shen behaved with even greater restraint. However, her brother, Shen Bao, foolishly filed a suit against Xi, asking the magistrate to rule that his sister should be restored as a proper wife.

  Danan performed his investigation properly, then angrily chastized the brother, “Greedy for money, you advised her to remarry, and she’s already been married to two other husbands since then, so how dare you demand that she be made a wife rather than a concubine!” Thereupon he ordered Shen Bao to be beaten soundly. As a result, the question of who should be the wife and who should be the concubine became even more firmly resolved.

  Shen and Zhaorong came to treat each other as sisters. They shared clothing, food, and drink, and kept no secrets from each other. Shen originally had been afraid that Zhaorong would treat her as an enemy, but now she felt even more mortified and regretful that she’d ever thought that.

  Xi Danan also forgot about her past transgressions and hence he ordered all of the servants to call her his taimu, despite the fact that the government didn’t support the suit that Shen’s brother had filed in order to have her declared a proper wife.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Nature can be inconceivably ingenious in turning the lives of human beings upside down! Scholar Xi was unable to keep peace between his wife and concubine, revealing himself to be a rather mediocre individual. If not for the filial piety of his son and the loyalty of his wife, how could this unexpected conclusion have ever been achieved, allowing him to enjoy wealth and honor leisurely for the rest of his life!”

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  Taimu: A term usually employed to signify “paternal grandmother,” here used simply to indicate respect, i.e., “respected mother.”

  448. The Foreigners

  In the autumn of 1689, at Lingnan, an enormous ship came floating in on the ocean waves. There were eleven men aboard it, dressed in bird feathers that were resplendent in their bright colors.

  They said of themselves, “We’re from the Philippines. When the wind capsized our ship, dozens of men died; then there were only the eleven of us who survived by clinging to this mighty mast and drifting until running aground on a huge island. For the past five years, we’ve been catching birds and insects for food during the day; at night, we’ve been down in the hold, sewing together feathers to make a sail.

  “Suddenly one day another ship drifted to the island, its scull and sail entirely gone, as though it had been attacked by ocean winds, so we refitted it to sail back home. After that, a mighty wind guided us to Aomen.”

  The provincial governor submitted a report to the emperor about the matter, then saw the men off as they returned to their country.

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  Autumn of 1689: This would have occurred during the reign of emperor Kangxi (1661-1722).

  Lingnan: This signifies the region that includes mountain ranges in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces (Fan 131n1).

  Aomen: Another name for Macao.

  449. Young Master Wei

  Young master Wei, from Xianyang, grew up in a wealthy family. He was allowed to indulge himself in wanton behavior, and any maidservants or other women who struck his sexual fancy were inevitably seduced by him. He always carried a thousand taels with him to use in case he ran into any famous prostitutes, or wished to visit some expensive establishment. If a prostitute wasn’t very attractive, he’d only stay with her a couple of nights before leaving; if she was to his liking, however, he might stick around with her for months.

  Wei’s uncle had been a distinguished official, and after he retired from his post he became fed up with Wei’s licentiousness, so he contracted for a renowned teacher, set up a room to serve as a tutoring center, then shut Wei in with other young masters to study. At night, once the teacher was asleep, Wei would climb over the wall and run off, stay out late, and then return.

  One night, he lost his footing as he was climbing over the wall, fell, and broke his arm, so the teacher came to realize what had been going on. He informed Wei’s uncle, who beat Wei so severely that he couldn’t get out of bed and had to be given medicine for his bruises. Once he began to recover, his uncle made a bargain with him: if he studied more than all of his brothers, and wrote some elegant essays, then he wouldn’t forbid to him to go out in the evening; but if he proved lazy, he’d beat him just like before.

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  Xianyang: A city located in Shaanxi province.

  As it turned out, young master Wei proved to be extraordinarily intelligent, reading faster than he was required to do. In just a few years, he was able to pass the local level of the civil service examination. He wanted to cancel the agreement his uncle had made with him, but his uncle continued to clamp down on his nighttime activities. When Wei went to the capital, his uncle had an old servant follow him, with instructions to keep record of his words and movements, and hence several years elapsed without him violating his uncle’s stipulations.

  Once he attained the rank of jinshi, his uncle finally relaxed his prohibitions somewhat. Wei continued to go to brothels, but fearing that his uncle would hear of this activity, he made a point of sneaking in through back alleys where the prostitutes usually stayed, and always used a pseudonym.

  One day, he was passing through Xi’an when he spotted a striking young actor named Luo Huiqing, who was sixteen or seventeen and performed roles in which he portrayed beautiful women. That night, Wei expressed his desire to make love with him and lavished him with gifts. He was also enchanted to hear that Luo was a newlywed, so Wei privately shared his desire for Luo’s wife to join them. Luo didn’t seem at all reluctant to agree to this, so in the evening, Luo brought his wife with him and the three of them all went to bed together.

  They met this way for several nights, and Wei began to feel genuine affection for them. Thus he planned to take them home with him to Xianyang. When he asked Luo about his family, the actor replied, “Mother died when I was quite young, but my father’s stil
l alive. The fact of the matter is that my name isn’t really Luo. When mother was young, she was a servant for the men in the Wei family, who subsequently sold her to the Luo family, and four months later, she gave birth to me. If I go back to Xianyang with you, I could look into whether there’s any news about my father.”

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  Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.

  Startled, Wei asked his mother’s surname, and the young man replied, “It’s Lü.” Wei was so unsettled that sweat started dripping down his body, for he believed that Luo’s mother must have been one of the maidservants in his own household. Hence Wei didn’t say another word.

  When the next morning arrived, he gave Luo a generous sum of money, advising him to shift into another profession. Making up the excuse that a business appointment necessitated his returning home, and that later he’d come back for Luo and his wife, Wei left with no intention of returning.

  Afterwards, he became a county magistrate in Suzhou, where there was a peerlessly beautiful prostitute named Shen Weiniang, with whom he enjoyed making love. On one occasion, he playfully asked her, “Was your first name derived from Liu Yuxi’s verse, ‘A song from Weiniang could bring even a spring breeze to a halt’?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” she replied. “My mother was a famous prostitute by the age of seventeen, and there was a young gentleman in Xianyang who had the same last name as you, who had relations with my mother for three months, concluding with their mutual agreement that they’d get married. When this young gentleman left, I was born eight months later, and my first name is actually his last name. At the time they parted, he gave my mother a pair of Mandarin ducks made from gold, and they still exist. Once he left, she heard no other news from him, which made my mother so angry and upset that she died. When I was three years old, I was taken in by Auntie Shen, who gave me her surname.”