by Pu Songling
Once he’d bid farewell to Lu, Qiu Fu returned home, where he prostrated himself on the ground in remorse. Daniang helped Shao take a seat in the main hall, where she grasped her cane as she queried her son, “If you’re ready to face the punishment that’s coming to you, then you can stay; otherwise, since you’ve already wasted what was yours, leaving you nothing to pay for even the simplest food, you should just leave.”
Fu wept as he prostrated himself, begging to be beaten. Daniang tossed away a stick she was holding, as she scolded him, “Being beaten is insufficient punishment for selling your wife. Unless you can demonstrate that you’ve abandoned your old ways, you’ll just repeat the offense and be forced to appeal to the government authorities all over again.”
She sent someone to go inform Jiang Qizhan that Fu had returned. Jiang’s daughter sneered, “Why would I care anything about the Qiu family—and you can tell them I said so!”
Though Daniang saw to it that Fu was given what he needed to survive, she made him do manual labor as though he was just another menial servant. Fu simply did the work without complaining, and if he was entrusted with any money, he was always very careful with it. Daniang kept watch on his responsible behavior, then informed her stepmother, begging her to find a way to bring Jiang’s daughter home again.
Shao didn’t think it possible to persuade her to return. “I disagree,” said Daniang. “If she was willing to remarry, then why would she have tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself with the hairpin? She wants to return, but can’t let herself, so this is just anger speaking.”
She insisted that Fu go with her to the Jiang family and accept full responsibility for his actions in person. Jiang Qizhan and his wife proceeded to give Fu quite a tongue-lashing. Daniang had warned him earlier to remain kneeling submissively, and then after his in-laws were finished castigating him, he asked his wife to come out and see him.
He pleaded several times with her, but she adamantly refused to come out; Daniang finally went to look for her, grabbed her, and brought her out. The woman then pointed at Fu, spitting and cursing, while Fu sweated it out, ashamed, and said nothing in his own defense. Finally, his mother-in-law pulled him up off the ground.
When Daniang politely asked her when she would be ready to return home, she replied, “All along, sister, you’ve shown me kindness on so many occasions, so now when you ask this of me, how can I possibly refuse you? But I’m afraid you can’t protect me if he tries to sell me again! Since he’s already severed himself from me, proving what a black-hearted scoundrel he is, why would I want to live with him? Please arrange for me to have a room to myself, so I can go offer my service to mother-inlaw, because I’d rather live like a nun.” Daniang offered further apologies on behalf of her brother, then arranged to come get her the following day.
The next morning, when she brought Jiang’s daughter home in a carriage, Shao was already there at the family’s gate, kowtowing. The sobbing young woman prostrated herself before her mother-in-law.
Daniang persuaded them both to stand up, set out some wine to cheer them up, and then instructed Fu to sit down at a side table, holding up her wine cup as she said, “I suffered misfortunes in the past, but never because I was focused solely on my own desires. Now that my brother has repented his actions and his chaste wife has come back, please allow me to hand the family account books back to you; I brought nothing with me when I arrived, and I’ll take nothing with me when I leave.” Fu and his wife both stood up from their tables, startled, before kowtowing to her in supplication until Daniang no longer insisted on turning everything over to them.
It wasn’t long before the obvious miscarriage of justice involving Qiu Lu was overturned, and not many days after that, his land and confiscated property were all returned to him. Wei Ming was amazed by this turn of events, but couldn’t see what he could do about it, infuriated that he had no more schemes ready to carry out against the Qiu family.
When it happened that a neighbor to the west of them had a fire break out, Wei Ming, who pretended that he was rushing to help put out the flames, instead secretly took the opportunity to light Lu’s house on fire and since the wind was blowing violently, the fire spread until the home was almost entirely consumed; only the room belonging to Fu and two or three others escaped the blaze, so the family was forced to move everyone into them. Lu arrived home not long after that, so their reunion with him combined feelings both of joy and of loss.
After receiving Lu’s letter of divorce earlier, Fan Qizhan showed it to Huiniang. Her response was to weep bitterly, tearing the letter to pieces and flinging them to the ground. Her father realized that this indicated her loyalty to Lu, so he didn’t force her to find another husband. When Lu returned home, he discovered that Huiniang hadn’t remarried and he jubilantly hurried to her parents’ house. Fan Qizhan knew about the recent calamity and tried to persuade Lu to stay with the Fan family, but Lu felt he couldn’t, so he took his leave and went home.
Daniang fortunately had some money stashed away, which she took out for the family to use for rebuilding the house. While Fu was working on the project with his spade, digging the cellar, he spotted some buried money and that night, with Lu joining him, among the rubble they discovered an enclosed cavity completely filled with gold. Thanks to this, they could afford to hire workers for a major reconstruction, so pavilions and other buildings began to spring up, as majestic as what one might associate with a noble family.
Qiu Lu believed strongly in the general’s sense of justice, so he put together a thousand taels to secure his father’s release. Fu asked to be allowed to deliver the money to the general and with some hardy servants dispatched to accompany him, he left to carry out the task. Lu, meanwhile, did his best to welcome Huiniang home.
Before long, Qiu Zhong and Qiu Fu returned together and there was jubilation at the family’s gates. As long as she’d been living in her stepmother’s home, Daniang had forbidden her sons from coming to see her, afraid that people might think that she had ulterior motives for being there. Qiu Zhong then proceeded to divide the family property three ways: between his sons and his daughter.
Daniang refused to accept her share. Fu and Lu both tearfully implored her, “We wouldn’t have anything today, if not for you!” This put Daniang’s mind at ease and she accepted. They sent servants to pick up her sons, so they could all move in and live together.
Some people asked Daniang, “They weren’t even your own mother or brothers, so why were you so concerned about Shao, Fu, and Lu?”
“To know that one has a mother, while never knowing that one has a father,” Daniang answered them, “is the way of the beasts—but why should a human being live that way?” When Fu and Lu heard her reply, their tears began to flow and they sent workers to take care of beautifying her residence, just as they had already done with their own.
Wei Ming realized that he’d been plotting and conniving against the Qiu family for over ten years, yet with every disaster they suffered, their fortunes merely increased and this recognition left him feeling mortified and regretful. In consideration of the family’s affluence and status, he thought about trying to improve his relations with them, so he went to pay a visit to Qiu Zhong, taking some gifts with him as he left.
Qiu Fu wanted to turn Wei Ming away from their door; his father, however, couldn’t bear to reject Wei’s attempt at reconciliation, so Zhong accepted his gifts of a chicken and some wine. Though the chicken’s feet had been tied together with a thin strip of silk, it got loose and ran headlong into the cooking stove; it then dashed back out of the stove, all ablaze, setting fires throughout the entire building while the servants simply watched it without taking any action.
In no time, however, some of the firewood in the kitchen that had been ignited by the flaming chicken flared quickly there, to the family’s anxiety and amazement. Fortunately, there were plenty of people pointing at new outbreaks, and others rushing around to put them out in the rest of the house, but everything that had been
in the kitchen was burned up. The brothers both commented that Wei Ming’s gifts had proved pretty unlucky.
Afterwards, on the occasion of Qiu Zhong’s birthday, Wei Ming brought another gift, arriving with a sheep in tow. He wasn’t allowed to bring it inside, so it was tied to a tree in the family’s courtyard. That night, there was a young servant in the household who had been beaten by some of his fellow servants, and in anger he hurried to the tree, untied the sheep’s rope, and used it to hang himself.
The brothers sighed, and exclaimed, “Wei Ming’s gifts are no better than his attempts to ruin us!” From that point forward, even if Wei was extremely solicitous, they never again dared to accept his gifts, no matter what he offered by way of trying to make up for the past.
Years later, as an old man, Wei Ming was so poor that he was forced to become a beggar, but every week, the Qiu family gave him some clothing and grain, repaying his former misdeeds with kindness.
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Wow! Everything must conform to its basic nature. The more that Wei Ming attempted to cause the Qiu family harm, the more the family’s fortunes increased. But what could the cheater do, for isn’t it even stranger that when the Qius accepted his respect and gifts, calamities resulted? This evidently is why the waters of Robber’s Spring are always slippery and dirty.”
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Robber’s Spring: A spring located in northeast Sishui county, Shandong province.
405. Cao Cao’s Tomb
Just outside Xucheng, where the river waters are particularly turbulent, there’s a dark, forbidding cliff. Right about midsummer, a man happened to enter the river to bathe when suddenly, as though he’d just been slashed with a knife, his corpse came floating up, and afterwards, another man also became a victim in this manner. People quickly spread news of this disturbing mystery.
When the county magistrate heard about the incident, he dispatched a large group of men who dammed up the river’s waters at the site, diverting the flow away so the area could drain. They were able then to see a shadowy cave at the base of the cliff, and just inside it there was a revolving wheel, edged with dangerously sharp knife blades.
Upon removing the wheel, they were able to enter the cave where they discovered a small stone stele, with Han dynasty-era characters engraved on it, and as they examined it carefully, it claimed to be marking the tomb of Cao Mengde. The coffin they found there had fallen apart, scattering the bones that had been inside it, and any gold or jewels that had been buried there had already been taken.
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Cao Cao’s Tomb: The exact location of the tomb of the Three Kingdoms period strategist, prime minister, and would-be imperial usurper, Cao Cao (155-220 C.E.), has long been a mystery, though arcehologists claimed in December 2009 to have discovered the tomb site in Xigaoxue, a village in Henan province’s Anyang county.
Xucheng: Another name for Xuchang, a city in central Henan province.
Han dynasty: Spanning from approximately 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “The legend says in verse, ‘Seventy-two false tombs were dug, / Surely his corpse must be buried in one of them.’ But who knows whether he was buried in any of these seventy-two? His scheme might have protected him for some period of additional years, but it couldn’t protect his bones from decaying, so what did playing this trick actually gain him? Alas, while it may seem wise to try to conceal the truth, in this case it simply made Cao Cao look like a fool!”
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Cao Mengde: Mengde was Cao Cao’s courtesy name.
Seventy-two false tombs: This fragment from a verse legend, concerning multiple graves dug to conceal Cao Cao’s real one, dates back to the Song dynasty (960-1279 C.E.).
406. Grand Secretary Longfei
Scholar Dai, from Anqing, was rather insensitive and slovenly in behavior. One day, as he was drunkenly returning home, along the way he met his cousin, scholar Ji. Since things looked rather fuzzy to him when he was intoxicated—and he’d somehow forgotten that his cousin was dead—he asked him, “Where are you keeping yourself these days?”
“I’m already a corpse—have you forgotten that?” he replied.
This startled Dai, but he didn’t feel scared and he was still drunk enough to inquire, “So what do you do in the underworld?”
“I work for His Excellency, the Hell King,” replied Ji.
“Concerning the fortunes and misfortunes of the mortal world,” wondered Dai, “can you tell for certain what’s going to happen?”
“That’s my job, so of course I know,” Ji explained. “But with so much information to keep track of, it’s hard to keep everything in mind. Then three days ago, I happened to be looking through a particular ledger when I came across your name.” Dai quickly asked what his name was doing there, and Ji replied, “I won’t lie to you—if your name is there, you’re going to be brought down into the underworld.”
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Anqing: A prefecture in Anhui province during Pu Songling’s life, Anqing is now a city.
Terrified, Dai suddenly sobered up and frantically begged Ji to help him out of his predicament. “It’s not within my authority to do something like that,” Ji told him, “so the only thing that can save you is to perform good works. The ledger is full of your misdeeds, so unless you achieve some kind of great charitable deed, you won’t be able to escape underworld prosecution. But what can a poor xiucai possibly afford to do? Even if you were to perform one good deed each day for a year, it wouldn’t be enough to help you balance out your past deeds—it’s too late for that now. However, if you heed this warning and act accordingly, perhaps in time you’ll be released from hell.”
Dai’s tears fell as he heard Ji’s words, after which he prostrated himself and pitifully implored Ji to help him; when he raised his head to look up, Ji had already disappeared. Frantic with worry, Dai returned home. After this revelation, he purified his heart and changed his ways, not daring to slip back into his old behavior.
Before all this, Dai had been carrying on an affair with his neighbor’s wife and though the neighbor heard rumors about the affair, he didn’t immediately seek redress, hoping instead to catch them in the act. But now that Dai had decided to change his ways, he cut off all illicit visits to the woman; the neighbor waited for him, but Dai never came, which simply piqued the neighbor’s anger.
One day, when the two happened to meet out in the fields, the neighbor tricked him while they were chatting into taking a look into a dried-up well and when Dai did, the neighbor pushed him into it. Since the well was several zhang deep, the neighbor was sure that Dai must be dead. Dai, however, revived at midnight, sat and began shouting for help, but he got no response.
The neighbor, afraid that Dai might survive and regain consciousness, went back to the well that night to listen; when he heard Dai’s cries, he quickly started throwing stones down the well. Dai squeezed close to the side of the well, afraid to make the slightest sound. The neighbor knew that he wasn’t dead, so he began digging up dirt and proceeded to fill it in until the well was nearly full.
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Xiucai: A successful candidate in the county level of the imperial civil service examination.
Zhang: A length equal to 3.33 meters.
The darkness at the bottom of the well was pitch black and truly no less eerie than the underworld itself. There was nothing to eat there, so Dai figured he wouldn’t last long. He crawled around the well gradually, but every time he moved three paces from its center he was surrounded by water, so with nowhere to go, he returned to sit in his original spot.
At first, his stomach felt quite hungry, but after awhile he simply forgot all about it. Since he couldn’t very well do any good deeds down in the well there, he simply started reciting a number of Buddhist sutras. After doing so, he began to notice a phosphorescent light fli
ckering at the bottom of the well. He expressed sympathy for the brightness, saying, “I’ve heard that such luminescences are really the ghosts of those who died unjustly; even though I probably only have a limited time left to live and my doom is most likely certain, if we can just talk together, it’ll keep me from feeling so lonely.”
Then as he watched, the flickering phosphorescence gradually began floating up and out of the water; in each of these lights there was a human-like presence about half the height of an ordinary person. Dai asked them how they’d come to be there and they replied, “Long ago, this was a coal pit. When the owner started having coal dug out, the work disturbed an ancient tomb, so Grand Secretary Longfei put an end to it by filling it with water, drowning the thirty-four men working in the pit. We’ve been here ever since as ghosts.”
“Who was this Grand Secretary Longfei?” asked Dai.
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Grand Secretary Longfei: The grand secretaries were “officials of great power in the central government,” charged with “tutoring the Heir Apparent and assisting the Emperor with his paperwork”; their primary function “came to be recommending imperial action on memorials and preparing edicts after an imperial decision was reached” (Hucker 466-7). Longfei (龙飞), literally “flying dragon,” also means “to ascend the throne.”
“I don’t know,” replied the ghost. “Though he must have been a learned scholar, and now he’s a private advisor to the city god—but he also pities us for having been innocent victims, so every few days he brings us some watery congee. It’s just that our bones will never be free from the frigid water down here. If you ever find yourself walking the mortal world again, we beg you to dredge up our bones and bury them in proper graves, which would be considered a great kindness in the underworld.”
“If there’s a way for me to do that, then what you ask would be no problem,” Dai told him. “But I’m stuck in the dark here, at the bottom of a deep well and it seems unlikely I’ll ever see the sky again!” Then he started teaching the ghosts the Buddhist sutras he knew, twisting clods of dirt like prayer beads, till they were able to remember several of them. He couldn’t tell the time of day, whether it was day or night: whenever he felt tired, he simply went to sleep, and whenever he awakened, he sat up and began chanting the sutras.