Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 6

by Pu Songling

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  Imperial college: Hucker explains that the imperial college, or taixue, was related to the Directorate of Education and the teaching institution that it supervised, “officially named School for the Sons of the State” (478).

  It was said that Yuesheng’s wife, who was from the Che family, was extremely virtuous and possessed of the same moral excellence as Huan Shaojun and Meng Guang. Yuesheng, however, was a resolutely dour individual. His father angrily told him, “You still have some twenty years of hard times that you haven’t yet faced, and if I give you a thousand taels, you’ll use them all at once. Unless the time comes that you’re at the end of your rope, don’t expect to be given anything!” Yuesheng began demonstrating what seemed like sincere filial piety and brotherly love, and also made sure that he didn’t mention the money again.

  Before long, old Li’s condition deteriorated and he died. Fortunately for Yuesheng, his older brother was a good man, providing alms to monks to say prayers for their father, and didn’t contest the finances of their father’s estate. Yuesheng was innocently naïve and tried to avoid comparing their shares, hospitably treating his guests to drinks and overseeing the preparation of meals by urging his wife three or four times a day to cook things for them, yet he paid almost no attention to the business that was the source of his family’s livelihood.

  In the village, hooligans took advantage of him. Over the course of several years, his family’s fortunes began to decline. As his financial difficulties emerged, he depended upon his older brother for handouts, enabling him to get by.

  After his brother succumbed to an old ailment and died, his assistance was sorely missed, for Yuesheng found himself cut off from his source of food. When the autumn crops were taken from the fields to the threshing ground and then used to pay off the spring plantings, there was hardly anything left over. Thus he was compelled to sell off some of his few mu of farmland just to survive, even further reducing his means of earning any money.

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  Huan Shaojun and Meng Guang: Huan helped her husband, Bao Xuan, move up the social ladder and become an official, modestly sacrificing her privileged background and possessions for life with him (Mou 89). Meng Guang, a woman of the Eastern Han period, is “known for her respectful treatment of her husband, even when he was reduced to menial labor” (Chang et al. 1999: 394).

  Then after a few more years, when his wife and his eldest son both died, he began to feel bored. He went to buy the wife of a sheep broker named Xu, in hopes of receiving some small bit of feminine charity from her; but she was tough and unyielding, insulting him at every opportunity, so he no longer dared even to show his face at funerals or weddings of his relatives and friends.

  Suddenly one night, he dreamt that his father appeared and told him, “Now that you’ve suffered all this, you can legitimately say that you’ve come to the end of your rope. If you wish to know the location of the money pit, now you can.”

  “Where is it?” asked Yuesheng.

  “Tomorrow I’ll let you know,” replied his father. The dream seemed very strange to him when he awakened, but he attributed it to his having been poor for a long time.

  The next day, as he was outside repairing a wall, he dug down and discovered a large cache of taels. Then he realized what his father’s words meant when he alluded to when there would be “fewer people around,” signifying a future time when a number of his family members had already died.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Yuesheng, my poor friend, is a straightforward fellow and doesn’t fake anything. We were like brothers, sharing happiness and sadness. Then several years passed, his village was more than ten li away from my home village, and I just didn’t hear anything from him. When I happened to pass through his village, I didn’t try to make any inquiries about him.

  “Yuesheng’s suffering had reasons that others will never know. Suddenly I heard that he’d found the thousand taels and I felt happy for him. Alas! His father’s last words, which he heard before he understood their meaning, proved true. He really spoke like an immortal!”

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  Mu: A measure equal to 1/6 acre.

  462. The Boatmen of Laolong

  At the time that master Zhu Huiyin was the provincial governor in Guangdong, he received a series of reports from itinerant merchants regarding the unexplained disappearances of a number of their colleagues. They’d traveled a thousand li together, and while no corpses of their purportedly dead fellow merchants had shown up, there’d been absolutely no news of them—and though the reports just kept coming, governor Zhu was unable to get to the bottom of the matter.

  When the disappearances first began to be reported, officials issued warrants calling for the arrest of the individuals responsible; but once so many of them accumulated, they were finally set aside and forgotten. When governor Zhu assumed office, he started investigating the cases that had been open for a long time, with the reports revealing that more than a hundred people had died, among whom those from a thousand li away weren’t even mentioned by name.

  Seriously concerned by the problem, Governor Zhu’s constant thinking about it even kept him awake at night. He had his staff make continual inquiries, but next to nothing came of them. Consequently, he purified himself by bathing carefully, then took an official report to the temple of the city god.

  Shortly afterwards, he was napping in his study when suddenly he saw a bureaucrat, holding a tablet of some sort, enter the room. “What official are you?” asked Zhu.

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  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  “I am Liu, from the city god,” answered the man.

  “So what do you have to say?”

  Liu replied in verse:

  “The hair of the temples is snow-dappled,

  Rain clouds appear on the horizon,

  Wood floats in the water,

  A door is set in the wall.”

  Once he’d finished speaking, he left immediately.

  Upon awakening, governor Zhu puzzled over the text without being able to understand it. He tossed and turned all night, till suddenly it came to him: “’Snow-dappled’ means old; the ‘rain-clouds’ are dragons; the ‘wood’ in the water is surely a boat; the ‘door’ in the wall also signifies a profession: it must be ‘the boatmen of Laolong’!”

  In northeast Guangdong, near Xiaoling and Languan, there actually was a river crossing known as Laolong that flowed southward to the sea, and hence had to be forded when entering Guangdong. Governor Zhu sent a military detachment with confidential instructions to arrest the ferrymen at Laolong, which resulted in the capture of more than fifty men, and even without being tortured, all of them confessed their guilt.

  It turned out that they were actually brigands who posed as ferryman for a cover so they could trick their customers into coming aboard, then either drug them with a paralytic or knock them out with narcotic incense, then rob them while they were unconscious; but afterwards they’d cut open their victims’ stomachs and insert a stone, so they could sink the bodies to the bottom of the river. What a heinous crime!

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  The hair of the temples . . . the boatmen of Laolong: The images in the verse suggest specific characters that are then combined to reveal the identity of the murderers. Old (lao 老) and dragons (long 龙)—which are often associated with rainstorms—yield the location, Laolong (a port in Longchuan county, Guangdong province), while hu (户), a synonym for door (men, 门) here, also means profession, and hence combines with the boat reference to reveal the perpetrators.

  After the criminals had been apprehended, people from far and near leapt for joy, celebrating and singing the praises of provincial governor Zhu for successfully bringing them to justice.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Cutting open the stomachs to insert stones for sinking the bodies is an egregiously heinous crime, so the previous governor was acting like a statue of wood or clay to shut away t
he inquiries simply because there had been so many such cases of concern—is Guangdong such a singularly dark place that the light of inquiry doesn’t shine there! When governor Zhu took up his post, spirits responded to his inquiry, so the unpunished dark deeds were brought to light in such a strange manner! The governor may not have possessed four eyes and two mouths, yet the victims’ pain preyed on his thoughts until finally he took action. When other officials go out, swords and halberds are used to open the road for them, and when they enter their offices, orchid and musk are burned for them, allowing them to live respectfully and decently: yet they’re actually no different than the boatmen of Laolong!”

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  May not . . . possessed . . . four eyes and two mouths: That is, governor Zhu was merely human.

  463. The Qingcheng Wife

  Gao Mengshuo, from Fei county, recalls that when he was the territorial prefect in Chengdu, there was a particularly strange criminal case. It began when a merchant from the west traveled to Chengdu, where he married a widow from Mt. Qingcheng. Immediately afterwards, he needed to return home to the west and didn’t get back to Chengdu until over a year later.

  When the couple went to bed together that night, the merchant died very suddenly. His business associates found this very suspicious and informed prefect Gao, who shared their skepticism and theorized that the wife might have been having an affair, so he had her interrogated. She was subjected to a violent thrashing, but in the end said nothing to implicate herself.

  As the case files were being put together, it became clear that there was little in the way of real evidence against the wife, so she was simply put in prison while the case remained open. After Gao had arranged this, someone in his court happened to fall ill, so an old doctor was summoned to treat him. Gao mentioned the case to him as they were chatting together, and upon hearing the details, the doctor quickly asked, “Did the woman happen to have a particularly pointy-shaped mouth?”

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  Fei county . . . Chengdu: Fei county is located in Shandong province, while Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province.

  Mt. Qingcheng: A site of importance in Daoist tradition, located northwest of Chengdu.

  “Why do you ask?” inquired Gao.

  At first, the doctor didn’t respond, but when Gao kept repeating his question, he replied, “There are several villages encircling Mt. Qingcheng, and many of their women engage in sex with snakes, so the girls they give birth to have pointed mouths and also have snake’s tongues in their vaginas. When these women have sex with a man, their snake tongues emerge and enter the man’s penis, causing him immediately to die.”

  Gao was astonished to hear this and had a hard time believing it possible. “There’s a witch living not far away who has herbs that can provoke the woman’s lust,” the doctor told him, “so her snake tongue will emerge, and then we can see for ourselves.”

  Gao did as the doctor suggested and sent the old woman to administer her herbs—causing the snake tongue to emerge, and alleviating the prefect’s suspicions that the woman had intentionally murdered her husband. The case documents were then turned over to the prefectural headquarters. Prefect Gao’s superiors all upheld his ruling of accidental death in the investigation, so the widow was subsequently absolved of all guilt and released from prison.

  464. The Owl

  There was a graduate of the imperial academy, living in Changshan, who was an unusually greedy fellow. In the thirty-fourth year of Kangxi’s reign, he was directing military operations at a fort on the western frontier, using the local people’s horses and mules to transport provisions for his troops. This administrator forced them to let him use their private animals, thus the entire area became void of livestock.

  Zhoucun was filled with merchants who had arrived there by horse cart. The administrator then commanded a group of his strongest men to seize control of the animals that the merchants had used for transport, which amounted to a few hundred horses. The merchants went all over the territory, but there was no place for them to lodge a complaint.

  At the time, all the territorial magistrates were away on official business elsewhere in the province. It happened that three county magistrates—Dong from Yidu, Fan from Laiwu, and Sun from Xincheng—found themselves staying at the same inn. There were also two merchants from Shanxi who greeted the magistrates at the inn’s gates and proceeded to deliver a formal complaint to them. They protested that their four pack mules had been stolen from them, that they were far from home and couldn’t return without the animals that made their business possible, so they implored the magistrates to delay their own travels long enough to help them.

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  Changshan: In Pu’s time, a county in Shandong province (its name was later changed to Zouping).

  Thirty-fourth year: Kangxi was emperor 1661-1722, so the year would be 1694-5.

  Zhoucun: A district in the modern city of Zibo, Shandong province.

  Yidu . . . Laiwu . . . Xincheng: Yidu is now the city of Qingzhou; Laiwu is still a county; and Xincheng is now called Huantai. All three are located in Shandong.

  The three officials sympathized with the men’s plight and promised to help them. Together, then, they went to see the fort’s administrator. He played his official part well by graciously entertaining them. After they’d been treated to some wine, the group explained why they had come. The administrator refused to acknowledge their comments. The others then reiterated their accusations more vehemently.

  The administrator offered them more wine, urging them to drink up as he deflected their concerns by remarking, “I have a particular riddle, and if you can’t provide an answer, you have to drink more wine as your penalty. There’s something in the sky, something on the ground, and an ancient personage—you have to identify each, then declare what the personage is holding, say something appropriate for that personage, and answer any questions that are raised.”

  Accordingly, magistrate Dong replied, “The moon is in the sky, Kunlun is situated below it, and the ancient is Liu Bolun. If asked what he’s holding, he’d reply, ‘That’s a wine cup in my hand.’ If asked to say something about what’s in his hand, he’d comment, “The dao of this wine cup mustn’t be divulged.”

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  Kunlun: Besides the actual Kunlun Mountains (connecting Xinjiang province and Tibet), there is also the single Mt. Kunlun of Chinese mythology, home to a variety of deities and Daoist immortals.

  Liu Bolun: Better known as Liu Ling (221-300), this Daoist intellectual disdained court life in favor of the simple pleasures of rural living and alcohol consumption. The comment that magistrate Dong attributes to him is both consistent with Liu Ling’s reputation and a criticism of the fort administrator for trying to distract the visiting magistrates with a drinking game.

  Then magistrate Fan exclaimed, “There’s the Moon Palace in the sky, the inner residence of the imperial palace below, and Grand Duke Jiang is the ancient. He’s holding a fishing pole, and his appropriate comment is, ‘I hope someone will take the bait.’”

  Magistrate Sun chimed in, “In the sky there’s the Milky Way, on earth below is the Yellow River, and the ancient is Xiao He. He’s holding a large book containing righteous statutes, appropriately remarking, ‘A corrupt official leaves a corrupt legacy.’”

  Looking shamefaced, the administrator seemed lost in thought for a long time, then he declared, “I have a response, too. In the sky there’s Lingshan, on earth there’s Taishan, and the ancient is Han Shan. He’s holding a broom, and appropriately remarks, ‘Everyone sweeps their doorsteps at the first snowfall.’” The magistrates looked at each other in embarrassment.

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  Grand Duke Jiang: Better known as Lü Shang (11th-century B.C.E.), who served at court faithfully for two decades, then pretended to be insane in order not to have to serve an unjust ruler. Folklore has it that he patiently fished while waiting to be recalled to service. His comment here is a thinly veiled suggestion t
hat the administrator should take their hints about changing his ways.

  Xiao He: The Chinese statesman (d. 193 B.C.E.) considered one of the three great heroes of the early Han dynasty for the brilliant advice he offered Liu Bang (later known as Emperor Gaozu).

  Lingshan . . . Taishan: Lingshan is a proverbial abode of Daoist immortals, and Taishan is a Daoist sacred mountain, located in Shandong province.

  Han Shan: The renowned 9th-century C.E. poet, whose name literally means “cold mountain,” wrote lyrics that resonate with Daoist teachings.

  Suddenly a proud young man walked in, dressed in a rich-looking robe, and courteously greeted the others. They urged him to take a seat and the administrator filled a large wine cup for him. With a laugh, the young man said, “I’m not drinking any wine just now. I heard the refined responses from all of you, and I was hoping to offer my own humble attempt.” The others all invited him to do so.

  The young man then replied, “In the sky is the Jade Emperor, below on earth there’s our own emperor, and the ancient is the Hongwu emperor. He’s holding a sword that’s three chi in length, and he’s commenting, appropriately, ‘A greedy administrator should be flayed.’” This made the three magistrates all burst into laughter.

  The administrator viciously sneered, “What makes you think you can come here and say something like that, you crazy punk!” He ordered his servants to grab the youth. The young man proceeded to leap onto a table, changed into an owl, launched himself through a curtain and flew outside, then alighted on a tree in the courtyard and looked back into the room, making a laughing sound.

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  Looked at each other in embarrassment: The administrator has made an aesthetically-pleasing symmetrical response, repeating the three-stroke character shan (山, mountain) in each of his three identifications. He has also failed to acknowledge the balance, and the implicit critiques, in the magistrates’ responses (the broom reference even suggests that he’s “swept” them aside).