by Pu Songling
“I did this because I wanted the money,” replied Jia, “but not in order to hoard it somewhere. Do you take me for some kind of miser?” This response satisfied Zhen, and thus he departed.
Jia took the enormous piece of silver to pay for his supplies and began distributing the coffins and jackets as he’d agreed, so that in three years he completed his end of their agreement. Zhen suddenly appeared, took his hand and declared to him, “You’ve been true to your word! After I left you, the god of fortune sent a petition to the heavenly emperor, who revoked my status as an immortal; but then he received word of your munificence, and now fortunately your charitable deeds have removed the charges against me. I hope you’ll continue to do such good works and not turn away from them.”
“What kind of place do you occupy in the celestial sphere?” Jia asked him.
Zhen replied, “I’m a Daoist fox. Because my status was originally quite minor, I mustn’t become involved with anything wicked, which is why for my entire life I’ve been careful not to behave recklessly or wildly.” Jia set out some wine and they drank as happily as they had in the past. Jia lived to be over ninety, with Zhen the fox coming to visit his home regularly through the years.
There was a certain man from Changshan who sold medicine that could counteract poison, and even if someone had been at death’s door, taking the man’s remedy would always save the person’s life; but he kept his concoctions secret and wouldn’t pass the recipes along to his relatives. One day, a person he was acquainted with was arrested and said something about him, so he was apprehended, too.
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Changshan: A county located in Zhejiang province.
His brother-in-law took some food to the prison for him, into which he’d covertly placed poison. He sat waiting while the man finished eating, and once he was done, the brother-in-law told him that he’d poisoned it. The medicine man wouldn’t believe him.
In a little while, as his stomach felt violently upset, he became extremely worried, and cursing, cried, “Quick, you bastard! I have medicine at home, but it’s too far away for me to wait for it; hurry into town and look for a cotton rose seed pod, grind it into powder, then mix it with clear, fresh water in a small cup and bring it to me!” The brother-in-law proceeded to do as the man had instructed him.
By the time he’d prepared the ingredients and returned, the man was already vomiting and experiencing diarrhea so badly that he just wanted to die, so he quickly tossed down the concoction and immediately felt relief. In this way, he passed along the recipe. This was also just how it was with Zhen the fox and his mysterious stone.
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Cotton rose: The hibiscus mutabilis has hips, or seed pods, that resemble those of the lotus, and can be used medicinally (Zhu 3:1301n30).
390. The Cloth Merchant
There was a certain cloth merchant who came upon a ruined monastery in Qingzhou, and when he saw how decayed the main building and grounds were, he sighed sadly. A monk, who’d been standing to one side, remarked, “If someone wished to perform a good deed now and have an entranceway to the main building constructed, surely the Buddha’s face would shine its light on him.” The merchant generously said he’d personally take charge of the matter.
This made the monk very happy, so he invited him into the abbot’s room, where he treated the merchant cordially and attentively. Afterwards, they examined the inside and outside of the main hall and pavilions, and the monk begged his guest to help renovate them, too; but the merchant declined, explaining that he simply couldn’t afford it.
The monk then made his request more forcefully, his speech and facial expressions turning angrily threatening. This frightened the merchant, who then asked the monk to accept all of the money he had with him and as a result, when they walked back outside, concluding this startling reversal of his behavior, the monk accepted the merchant’s money.
Just as the man was about to leave, the monk stopped him and said, “You gave up your money, but you really didn’t want to do it—so why don’t I help you get used to the idea? Maybe it’d be easier for me to take the first action.” Then he grasped his sword and drew closer to confront his visitor.
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Qingzhou: Located near the eastern seaboard of Shandong province.
The merchant lamented his reluctance, but the monk wouldn’t back down; the merchant then begged to be allowed to hang himself instead, and the monk agreed to it. The monk forced him into a dark room and told him to be quick about it.
It happened that a naval commander was passing outside the monastery just then and while he was still some distance from the outer walls, he saw a woman in a red skirt enter the monks’ quarters, which seemed rather suspicious to him. He dismounted from his horse and entered the monastery, then searched all over, but finally was unable to find her.
When he came to the dark room and sternly demanded that its pair of locked doors be opened, the monk said he couldn’t possibly do so, since there was a demonic spirit locked up inside. The commander grew angry, chopped at the doors till they opened and then went inside, where he found the merchant hanging from the room’s beam.
He quickly rescued the man, who revived moments later while the commander asked him how he was feeling. Then the commander shackled the monk and asked him where the woman in red was hidden, but in fact there was no such woman, so perhaps the Buddha was responsible for her appearance and disappearance. The commander killed the evil monk and then returned the merchant’s money to him.
The cloth merchant donated even more than that amount of money to have the monastery repaired, and thereafter people flocked there to burn incense in devotion to the Buddha. Zhao Fengyuan, who distinguished himself in the civil service examination system, said he knew all about these events.
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Zhao Fengyuan: Zhu identifies him as a scholar flourishing during the reign of Kangxi (1661-1722). Zhao was appointed an official public school martial arts instructor while still a juren, a successful candidate in the imperial civil service examination at the provincial level (3:1303n10).
391. Peng Erzheng
Master Han Gongfu of Yucheng told me, “I was riding down the road next to Peng Erzheng, who was also from Yucheng, when suddenly I turned my head his way, but I couldn’t see him any longer and there was no one riding his donkey. However, I heard him shouting with great urgency for someone to save him, so I listened carefully and the voice seemed to be coming from inside one of his travel bags.
“I leaned closer, looking with great caution at the bag which had grown heavy but hadn’t fallen from his donkey. He was trying to get out, but the bag’s opening had been sewn shut quite heavily; I took a knife and cut the threads until I was able to see Peng lying at the bottom of the bag. After I got him out, I asked him how he’d come to be inside there, but he had no idea himself.
“It seems that there was an evil fox spirit in his home who must have done it—things like this happen all the time, so they say.”
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Yucheng: A county located in Shandong province.
392. Hexian
Master Wang Ruiting, of Changshan, could predict the future through divination. He drew his predictions from a spirit called Hexian, who claimed to be a disciple of LüǚChunyang, and some people said that Hexian was a crane that had been ridden by the immortal Lü.
Whenever Wang made an appearance, he always enjoyed discussing literature and writing poetry with people. Li Zhijun, later a Court Historian, took Wang as his teacher, so Wang criticized and marked the practice literary essays he had Li write to ensure that his reasoning was clear and definite; when Li passed the examination to become a jinshi thanks to Hexian’s efforts, a great many scholars began consulting Hexian. However, when he passed judgment on the challenging subject matter of their work, he relied more upon reason than on predictions of their future happines
s or misfortune.
In the year 1691, Zhu Wenzong came to Jinan to supervise the civil service examination, and once it was over, Zhu’s friends went and asked Wang to have Hexian forecast which of the exam candidates would succeed. Hexian requested the candidates’ compositions, and marked them one by one. Seated among them was a confident Li Zhijun, from Leling, who appeared to be deep in thought, an extremely studious scholar, and hence everyone had high expectations for him; so when Li submitted his essay, a copy of it was handed to the diviner to evaluate.
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Changshan: Located in modern Shandong province’s Zouping county.
Lü Chunyang: Better known as Lü Dongbin, one of the Eight Daoist Immortals.
Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination.
Jinan: Capital of Shandong province.
Wang concentrated and announced, “Top rating.” After a little while, he wrote down the words of Hexian: “Just now, I judged scholar Li regarding his essay. Unfortunately for the scholar, it appears that the examiner has assigned him a fourth class rating, rather than a first class. It’s so strange! The quality of his essay and his actual score don’t match at all, so could it be that Zhu Wenzong doesn’t know how to grade correctly? Everyone please wait here for a while, and I’ll try to go find out what happened.”
Shortly thereafter, he wrote again, “I went back to the site of the examination, where I found Zhu Wenzong busy, with papers scattered everywhere, and though I anxiously searched with particular thoroughness, the essay just wasn’t there. Everything had been handed over to six or seven assistants, scholars living on government grants, who checked the references in the essays for Zhu, and I discovered that their previous lives had no roots at all—they were simply floating along, hungry ghosts, begging for food.
“They’d been shut up in darkness for eight hundred years, which had damaged the vitality of their eyes, so when they entered the human world after being underground for such a long time, coming out into the world was such a strange sight that it took time to adjust to the light. Among the assistants grading the examination, one or two seemed to have had previous human lives, but they were assigned to other tasks, so I’m afraid that doesn’t clarify anything about the essays.”
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Leling: A county in Shandong province.
Hungry ghosts: One of the six states of being in Buddhist belief into which an individual’s soul is born (the other five being humans, heavenly beings, the demigods, the animals, and the hellishly-tormented). The hungry ghosts are characterized by perpetual cravings and hunger pangs.
When the candidates asked Hexian, through Wang, to use his powers of divination to settle the matter, Wang wrote Hexian’s response: “The art of divination is powerful, but even if I tell you everything I know about the problem, how does that indicate what should be done about it?” Once the candidates were clear about Hexian’s position, they went and told Li what he’d said.
Li was quite startled, so he took his work to Court Historian Sun Ziwei, to solicit his opinion. Sun praised his essay and dismissed Li’s concerns. Li considered Sun a consummate craftsman as a writer, so this opinion made him feel much better and he didn’t worry about Wang’s words any longer.
Afterwards, it was revealed that Li was, indeed, assigned a fourth class evaluation. Court Historian Sun was astonished at his low score, so he picked up Li’s essay and read it again, reiterating his impression that there were no mistakes to point out in it. He commented, “The local examination assessor is usually someone with his own degree of literary reputation, so surely he won’t stand for something this preposterous. One would have to be a drunkard not to recognize the quality of this essay.”
The candidates were even more convinced of Hexian’s spirit powers, so they all worshipfully burnt incense in obeisance to him. Wang then wrote the words, “Scholar Li should not feel ashamed or cease writing due to this failure. If he keeps writing many more such examination essays, exposing his talents, then by next year he’ll be able to score the highest rating.” Li subsequently did just as his teacher suggested.
Though his intellect had already been recognized by public officials for some time, the matter of the unfinished essay still made Li feel anxious. The next year, it turned out that he did indeed achieve the highest ranking, verifying the accuracy of Hexian’s prediction.
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Sun Ziwei: Also known as Sun Rang, Sun qualified in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination in 1685 (Zhu 3:1307n24).
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “There are many individuals like this Li with similar experiences, which makes it easy to understand why an ugly woman in the capital won’t have an empty bed at night. Alas!”
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Ugly woman . . . empty bed: There seem to be two possibilities here, given the capital as a site of civil service examinations, the presence of many officials in the capital, and the fact that the disappointments associated with negative results on the exams were so devastating and so numerous (as vastly more candidates failed than ever succeeded): it points either to the flawed ability of officials in the capital to distinguish good from bad, or to the likelihood that after failing the exams, men will be looking for consolation even with individuals whom they might not turn to otherwise.
393. Niu Tongren
Niu Tongren went to his deceased father’s room, where he saw the old man lying in bed, asleep, and realized that it must be a fox. “A fox I can stand,” he cried angrily, “but why despoil the integrity of my family’s veneration for our father! Now that Lord Guan has been accorded the authority of an emperor, how can he allow this kind of outrage to happen!”
Accordingly, he made a prayerful petition to the Jade Emperor, who shortly thereafter accused Guandi of not fulfilling his duty.
A long time went by, till suddenly Niu heard the voice of Guandi call to him from the sky. “Scholar Niu,” he scolded in outrage, “how can you be so impertinent! Why should I be charged with expelling a fox from your home? If you hadn’t complained, I wouldn’t have been blamed for shirking my duty.”
Then he ordered Niu to be punished with twenty lashes of a whip, which nearly tore the flesh from the scholar’s legs.
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Niu went to his father’s room: Zhu (3:1309n1) notes that this story exists only in a fragmentary form, which is why it’s missing the usual description of the protagonist’s full name and home.
Lord Guan . . . emperor: In 1615, the Three Kingdoms-era hero, Guan Yu, already long revered as Guangong (Lord Guan), was granted the imperial title (帝, di) by Ming emperor Wanli (Little and Eichman 258). See also Sondergard and Collins (50-73).
Jade Emperor: The supreme deity in Daoist belief.
Moments later, a black-faced general delivered a fox that was all bound up, dragged it over to Niu and then left, so the scholar saw to it that the evil spirit was subsequently removed.
After three years, a military official’s daughter in Jinan was plagued by a fox, and even after trying a hundred solutions, the family was unable to drive it away. The fox told her, “My entire life, the only thing I’ve ever feared was Niu Tongren.” The military official had no idea where this Niu was from, so he was unable to look for him.
It happened that the Commissioner for Education arrived to monitor the provincial level civil service examination—which Niu by chance had come to Jinan to take, and when some soldiers somehow offended him, Niu angrily went to complain to a military official. When the military official heard his name, he felt so overjoyed that he treated him with great respect and reverence. He stood and ordered the arrest of the offending soldiers, who were bound up, brought in, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Once this was completed, the official explained everything to Niu. The scholar had no alternative but to pet
ition Guandi for assistance.
Presently, he saw a golden-armored god alight at the official’s house, next to which there appeared a fox whose face suddenly changed into something more dog-like, and then began running around and around the house, howling as it fled. When it came back around on one of its circuits, the god grabbed it and threw it down a flight of steps.
“Guandi decided not to have you executed before,” exclaimed the god, “but now that you’ve transgressed again, there’s no pardoning you!” He tied the creature around the neck of his horse, then rode away.
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A black-faced general: This could be Guan Yu’s sworn oath brother, Zhang Fei, who’s often represented in Beijing opera with a black mask. Guan Yu is portrayed iconically in Chinese art as being very ruddy-complected. The golden-armored god who appears subsequently is also not Guandi.
Jinan: The capital of Shandong province.
394. The God’s Daughter
Scholar Mi was a native of Fujian, but I’ve forgotten his first name, as well as his home town and prefecture. It happened that when he entered another prefecture on one occasion, drunk as he passed the business district, he heard flute and drum music playing as loud as thunder inside some stately gates. He asked someone what was going on, and was told that there was a birthday banquet in progress, although the front entrance and courtyard were absolutely deserted.
Mi heard many sounds of music and song, and he always loved music when he was drunk, so without asking what family was celebrating the birthday, he headed back down the street to the morning market, where he found something he could offer as a gift and then just barged right in. Probably due to the fact that he was wearing very simple clothing and a plain cap, someone asked him, “How are you related to the old man?”