by Pu Songling
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Kunuo: A particular kind of rice wine (Zhu 3:1317n54).
Gouchen’s star: A reference to Polaris and the immediately surrounding constellation (Ursa Minor in the West), associated with the star-god, Gouchen (Little and Eichman 235).
The following day, he arrived again with the young lady, who looked just like an ordinary woman. Three days later, the lady bestowed gifts upon Mi’s brother and his wife, as well as upon their family’s maidservants, young and old. In testimony to her filial nature, she even treated her sister-in-law like her mother-in-law.
Several years passed without the couple producing any children, but when others tried to persuade them to acquire a concubine, Mi proved unwilling to do so himself. It happened that Mi’s elder brother was a merchant at Jianghuai, where he purchased a young woman and returned to Mi with her. The woman’s name was Gu Boshi, her looks and her voice both quite sweet, so the couple were both pleased by her. Mi noticed that there was a pearl clasp in her hair, extremely similar to the one that he’d been given years earlier; when she took it off so he could examine it, he discovered it to be the very same clasp.
Thinking this extraordinary, he asked her about it and she replied, “In the past, there was a beloved concubine of the provincial governor who died, so her maidservant stole this clasp and sold it in the marketplace, where my late father, suspecting its true value, bought it and brought it home. I loved it. Since my father had no son, and I was his only child, he consequently gave the clasp to me.
“After my father died, the family fell apart, and I was sent away to be raised by an old woman also named Gu. This old lady Gu was my aunt, and when she saw the pearl hair clasp, she continually wanted to sell it, yet I threatened to jump into the well if she did, so that’s how I come to have it here and now.”
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Weaving Girl’s star: The Weaving Girl in folk tradition is the daughter of the Jade Emperor and the Queen Mother of the West. When she descended to earth and married a cowherd, her mother pulled a hairpin from her hair and drew a line in the air which became “the Milky Way that divided the lovers on the two sides of the shore” (Yang and An 221), but every lunar July 7th (rather than than 9th as described here), the beloveds are allowed to reunite for one night.
The couple sighed, “Ten years the thing’s been gone, and now it can return home to its owner, so maybe it was simply fated.”
The goddess took out another hair clasp just like the first one and remarked, “For the longest time, this thing hasn’t had a mate!” Thus she gave it to Boshi, sticking it in her coiled hair. After Boshi walked away, she began inquiring from other household members about the lady’s family background, wanting to know everything about her, but Mi’s servants all avoided saying anything about it.
Later, Boshi told Mi in private, “When I took a close look at your lady, I could tell that she wasn’t a mortal; I could see the presence of divinity in her eyebrows. Yesterday, when she put some flowers in my hair and I leaned closer to take a look, I could tell that her beauty started with her skin texture, which wasn’t like that of a common woman who ages.” Mi laughed at this. Boshi remarked, “You won’t tell me anything, so I’m just going to have to test it. If she’s really a goddess, I guess if I need anything, I can just go burn some incense to her when no one else’s around and she’ll know all about it.”
With exquisite craftsmanship, the lady was embroidering stockings which Boshi admired lovingly, so she didn’t dare interrupt her and hence went to her bedroom where she burnt incense and prayed to her. When the lady woke up the next morning, as she was checking in her trunk, she took out a pair of stockings and sent a maidservant to deliver them as a present to Boshi.
Once Mi saw them, he couldn’t help laughing. The lady asked him why he found it so funny, so he told her that Boshi had prayed for them. “What a clever girl!” cried the lady. Since she was wise, the lady grew to love Boshi tenderly; and Boshi also grew ever more respectful towards her, perfuming and bathing herself every day before dawn, especially in order to visit the lady. After Boshi gave birth to twin boys for Mi, the two women each raised one of them.
When Mi was eighty years old, the lady’s looks were still the same as ever. In time, Mi became ill, so the lady summoned craftsmen of talent, directing them to construct a coffin that was several times the normal size. After Mi died, she didn’t weep; while their sons and daughters were making all the proper funeral arrangements, the lady had already crawled into the coffin and died. The couple were subsequently buried together. To this day, they call that site, “The Tomb of the Mighty Coffin.”
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “The daughter was a goddess, and once Boshi learned this, what else could she do but pray to her? To understand true wisdom, one must first have the soul of a goddess!”
395. Xiangqun
Second Brother Yan was from Yanan, in Shaanxi. He went to live together with his brother, who was sincerely devoted to him. At the age of thirty, his elder brother died without an heir; after that, Yan’s sister-in-law also died. Yan mourned them faithfully, continually thinking that if only he had two sons, he could designate one of them as the inheritor of his brother’s property.
Yan had only one son to raise, but then his wife died. Afraid that a second wife might have no regard for his son, Yan decided to buy a concubine to care for him. In the neighboring village there was a maidservant for sale, so Yan went to see her, but wasn’t satisfied by what he found, which left him feeling depressed and frustrated, so he joined friends and drank with them until he was quite inebriated, then returned home.
Along the road, he ran into his former classmate, Liang, and after they politely shook hands, Liang invited Yan to his home. Because he was drunk, Yan forgot that his classmate had previously died, so he went along with Liang. As they entered his gate, Yan became suspicious, so he asked Liang about it. The other man told him, “I’ve just recently moved into this next place.”
They went inside and were hoping for some home-brewed wine, but it was all gone, so Liang advised Yan to remain seated and wait for him while he took a jug and went to buy some more to drink. Yan subsequently went and stood outside the gates to wait for him.
He saw a woman on a donkey pass by with a servant boy who might have been eight or nine years old following her, and the boy’s features looked exactly like those of Yan’s elder brother. This really unsettled him, so he quickly composed himself and called out to the woman, “What’s the boy’s name?”
“It’s Yan,” she told him.
Second Brother Yan was even more startled, so he asked the boy directly, “What’s your father’ name?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. By the time the boy finished speaking, they’d arrived at the gates, so the woman climbed down from the donkey and they went through the gates with Yan. In a little while, an old woman who came out to peek at them turned out to be the wife of Yan’s elder brother. She was astonished to learn that her husband’s younger brother had come there. Yan prayed to the Buddha for deliverance, then followed her.
He figured that their house must have collapsed, but had been rebuilt, so he asked her, “Where’s my elder brother?”
“He’s gone to collect payment on a debt and hasn’t returned home yet,” she explained.
“Who’s the woman on the donkey?” he asked.
She told him, “That’s your elder brother’s concubine, Gan, who’s given him two sons. The elder’s name is A-Da, and he hasn’t returned yet from the marketplace; the one you’ve already seen is A-Xiao.” Yan ended up sitting around for a long time, and as he’d started to sober up, he began to realize that everyone he was seeing were ghosts. He wasn’t frightened by the fact, however, since he’d always felt very close to his brother.
His sister-in-law then warmed enough wine for all of them. Yan urgently wanted to see his brother, so A-Xiao was sent to look for him. After a good while, the boy re
turned home in tears and informed them, “The Li family claims he owes them something he can’t repay, so in response they’ve made trouble for father.”
When Second Brother Yan heard this, he took A-Xiao and rushed back to the site of the problem, where he saw two men holding his brother down on the ground. Yan, furious, raised his fists and waded into them, successfully knocking them down. He quickly bent to his brother’s rescue and helped him up, by which time his brother’s enemies had already begun to run away. Hence he chased one of the men down and grabbed him, beating him countless times in a sound thrashing before he let him up again.
Yan grabbed his brother’s hand, stamping his feet and groaning in anguished grief; his brother then joined him in weeping. After they returned to his brother’s home, the whole family expressed their gratitude to Second Brother, then they all enjoyed food and drink together while the brothers celebrated.
Before long, a young man entered the house, looking to be sixteen or seventeen years old. Yan’s brother identified him as A-Da and had him come over to pay his respects to his uncle. Yan drew him close, then tearfully turned to his brother to say, “Big brother, now that you’re dead, you have two sons, but there’s no one to sweep your grave clean; I’m your brother and a widower, and don’t have enough sons to make one your heir, so what should I do?” Yan’s elder brother shared his sorrow.
Then Yan’s sister-in-law told him, “We’ll send A-Xiao to go with you, and he’ll take care of things.” A-Xiao heard this, prepared to comply by taking his uncle’s elbow, so sentimentally attached to him that he didn’t want to leave him. Yan tried to comfort him, but merely felt even sadder himself.
“Would you like to come with me?” asked Yan.
“I’d be happy to come,” replied A-Xiao. Yan thought that even if the ghost wasn’t human, it was better than having no one to care for his brother’s memory, so he felt relieved. “Once you leave here,” the elder brother told Second Brother Yan, “don’t pamper him, but feed him proper food like real meat and expose him to sunlight from noon until the middle of the day. As a boy who’s six or seven, he’ll experience the changing of the seasons, his body will begin to grow, and he’ll be able to marry a wife who’ll give birth to children; but I’m afraid he won’t live to be very old.”
While he was speaking, he noticed a young woman eavesdropping outside the gates, who seemed both charming and gentle. Yan suspected that she might be his brother’s daughter, so he went to ask him about her. “That’s Xiangqun,” he told him, “my concubine’s younger sister. She’s single and has no home to return to, so she’s been in my care for the past ten years.”
“Has she already been betrothed?” asked Yan.
“Not yet,” his brother responded. “Recently, there’s been a proposal for her from a farm family in the village east of here.”
Xiangqun, who was just outside the window as her brother-in-law spoke these words, softly exclaimed, “I’m not marrying some cowherder from a farm family.” Yan wanted to pursue this matter further, but it simply wasn’t convenient just then for him to express himself more frankly.
Later on, his brother stood and had a bed set up in his study, so Second Brother settled down to sleep there. Yan really didn’t want to stay, but because he felt so strongly about Xiangqun and was thinking about what to do about his brother’s decision, he went over to the study to lie down. At the time, it was early spring, so the air was still cold and though it was early morning, there was no fire burning there in the study—hence Yan was shivering and got up.
He lit a candle and sat in the cold room, thinking how he wished he had a little something to drink, when presently A-Xiao pushed open the door and entered, carrying in a cup of broth and a bowl of wine, then set them down on a table. Yan was quite pleased and asked, “Who told you to bring this?”
“Xiangqun,” he replied. When the wine was almost gone, the boy took the ashes from the fire, dumped them into a basin, then set it underneath the bed.
“Have your parents gone to bed?” Yan asked.
A-Xiao informed him, “They’ve already been asleep a long time.”
“And where do you sleep?”
“With Xiangqun, in her bed,” he replied. A-Xiao waited until his uncle was asleep, then shut the door behind him and left.
Yan began considering all of Xiangqun’s positive qualities and began to admire her even more; then he thought of how she’d be able to comfort A-Xiao as she lay there, which made him desire her still more, so he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep all night long. He got up in the morning and told his brother, “I have no spouse, so I hope I can trouble you to look into the matter for me.”
“My family isn’t a poor one,” his brother remarked, “so there should be many options for you to select from. But here among the dead, even if there happens to be a particular beauty, I’m afraid she won’t bring you any benefits.”
“The ancients believed in having ghost wives, so what harm can there be in it?” asked Second Brother.
His brother realized what was going on, and consequently said, “Xiangqun is also a beauty. But you’d have to take a large acupuncture needle, probe for a pulse and then poke her to make sure that there was blood coming out, because only then would it be okay for you to take her as your wife—why be in such a rush to do so?”
“So Xiangqun could be there to comfort A-Xiao,” replied Yan, “and I’d certainly benefit from that.” His brother, however, shook his head.
Yan kept pleading with him that he wanted to move forward quickly, till finally his sister-in-law declared, “I’ll grab Xiangqun and give her a strong stab as a test and if there isn’t any blood to be found, we can just give up on the matter.”
Then Yan’s sister-in-law took a big needle in hand and they went outside, where they ran into Xiangqun, and once the sisterin-law seized her wrist, soon there was a mark on it, damp with her blood. Upon hearing what her brother-in-law, Yan’s elder brother, had advised, Xiangqun had already tested herself. Yan’s sister-in-law then released her grip with a laugh, and told Yan’s brother, “She’s apparently been interested in this lout for some time, so why should you worry about her?”
The brother’s concubine grew angry when she heard this, hurried to find Xiangqun, and poked her sister with her finger in chastisement, scolding, “What a shameless hussy! So you want to elope with the master’s brother? I refuse to go along with her wish!” Xiangqun, becoming embarrassed and angry, wept like she wanted to die, while the whole family seemed quite agitated.
Yan felt terribly ashamed, so he said farewell to his brother and his sister-in-law in order to leave with A-Xiao. “Second Brother, you’re going away for the time being,” said his elder brother; “but if A-Xiao isn’t allowed to return, I’m afraid that his vitality will suffer.” Yan, however, guaranteed that A-Xiao would not be coming back.
After returning home, Yan pretended that A-Xiao was older than he was and made up a story that his elder brother Yan had sold off a particular maidservant before his death, and that the boy was his brother’s son, born posthumously. Everyone thought A-Xiao looked exactly like Yan’s elder brother, so they believed that he was indeed his son. Yan taught him to read and made him stand out in the sun while reading at noon.
While at first the boy appeared to be troubled, as time passed, he began gradually to appear more relaxed. In June, his study desk became hot enough to burn one’s skin, yet A-Xiao just joked about it and continued to read without the slightest complaint. Because he was very intelligent, he was always able to finish half a volume by sundown, yet by the time his uncle came to check on him for the night, he’d be able to recite the entire text. Yan took great comfort from this.
Then since he couldn’t get Xiangqun off his mind, he lost all interest in saving money to visit prostitutes or to buy a maidservant.
One day, a pair of sisters arrived to discuss marriage plans for A-Xiao, which made Second Brother feel quite upset, since he didn’t have a wife himsel
f. Suddenly Gan, A-Xiao’s mother, appeared outside his gates and called out, “Uncle, don’t think it strange, but I’ve accompanied Xiangqun here. I thought she was behaving shamelessly before, thus I deliberately embarrassed her. But you have an outstanding moral character, and if I don’t allow her to marry you, who else can I wish her to marry?”
When he saw Xiangqun standing behind her, Yan’s heart filled with joy. He respectfully offered his sister-in-law a seat; he was told that he had a guest waiting in the hall, and as he went off, the women hurried back outside. After a little while the Xiangqun reentered, reporting that Gan had left.
Xiangqun unpacked her bags and then entered the kitchen, took a knife and cutting board, and filled the room with the sound of her chopping meats and vegetables. Presently, minced meats were set out, along with other appealing dishes.
Once the visiting guest had left, Yan returned and saw Xiangqun attractively dressed up, sitting and waiting for him, so then they bowed to each other, completing the marriage rites. Since they’d arrived late in the day, Xiangqun wanted to sleep with A-Xiao like before. “I want to warm you with my body temperature,” Yan told her, “but you should go to him.”
Accordingly he had Xiangqun’s things placed in another room, and when he visited her later that night, they toasted each other with a cup of wine to celebrate their happy reunion. Xiangqun raised A-Xiao as though he was her own child, which made Yan think her more virtuous than ever.
One night, the couple were enjoying themselves in intimate conversation, when Yan playfully asked, “Are there any great beauties in the underworld?” Xiangqun thought for a good long time, then replied, “I haven’t seen her. Yet everyone says our neighbors’ daughter, Wei Lingxian, is beautiful; indeed, her looks are fairly common, so she mainly depends on dressing up to enhance them. She’s long been my friend, though in my heart, I disapprove of her for her lust. If you want to see her, I can set it up instantly. But you mustn’t get involved with her.”