Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)

by Roberts, Moss

The performer pondered his problem with an air of dejection. Then he said, “Here’s what I think. It is early spring, and the snow is thick. In the world of men there are no peaches to be found. But in the gardens of the Western Queen Mother, the land of perpetual bloom, where the peaches ripen once every three thousand years, nothing fades or falls. So we may find peaches there. We shall have to steal them from the very heavens!”

  “How can we climb to heaven?” cried the boy.

  “The technique exists,” said the father, opening his bamboo box. He took out a coil of rope several hundred feet long, freed one end, and threw it up in the air, where it remained suspended as if hanging from something in the sky. The further he threw it, the further it rose, until it vanished among the clouds. When the rope was fully played out, the man called to his son, “Come here. I’m old and tired—too heavy and clumsy to go. You’ll have to make the climb.” Handing the rope to his son, the man said, “If you hold onto this, you can manage it.”

  The son looked reluctant and complained, “My dear father, this is absurd. Do you expect such a slender line to support me thousands of feet in the air? What will keep my bones together if it should break midway?”

  But the father pressed him, “I’ve already made the mistake of agreeing to fetch the peaches. It’s too late for regret. I must trouble you to take the trip. Don’t complain, and if we can get away with the fruit, we are sure of a reward of a hundred silver pieces—enough to find you a lovely wife.”

  And so the boy took the rope and began to squirm up it. As he shifted his hands, his feet followed, the way a spider moves along its web, until he had slowly made his way into the emptiness of cloudy space and could be seen no more.

  After a long while, a peach the size of a bowl dropped to earth. Delighted, the performer took it and presented it to the officials. They took their time passing it around for inspection; they seemed uncertain whether it was a real fruit or a fake one.

  Suddenly the rope fell to the ground. Alarmed, the performer said, “We’re ruined! Someone up there has cut the rope. Where will my son find safety?”

  Moments later, something landed on the ground. He looked: it was the boy’s head! In tears the man held it up in both hands and cried out, “The theft of the peach must have been discovered by the watchmen! My son is done for!” A moment later a foot dropped from the skies. In another instant the limbs fell down this way and that, until all the pieces were scattered on the ground. In great sorrow the performer picked up each piece and put it into his bamboo box. When he was done he closed the lid.

  “I am an old man who had only this one son, and he traveled by my side all my days. Little did I dream, when he took my order, that such a bizarre fate would befall me. Now I must carry him to his resting place.” Having spoken thus, the performer ascended the steps of the hall and kneeled. “For the sake of a peach,” he said, “I have lost my son. If you would pity this humble soul and contribute something to the funeral expenses, I will be ever vigilant to repay you—even from the beyond.”

  The awed officials each gave some money, which the performer took and tied to his waist. Then he knocked on the bamboo box and shouted, “You can come out, sonny boy, and thank the donors.” A tumbleweed head lifted the cover as a lad emerged and kowtowed to the officials. It was the same boy!

  I learned later that the White Lotus Sect could perform this strange trick, and it would not surprise me if the two performers were descended from them.

  —P’u Sung-ling

  TALES OF FOLLY AND GREED

  The Magic Pear Tree

  A farmer came from the country to sell his pears in the market. They were juicy and fragrant, and his sales were booming, when a Taoist priest wearing tattered scarves and coarse cotton clothes appeared at the wagon and begged for some fruit. The farmer shooed him away, but he refused to leave. The farmer’s voice rose until he was screaming and cursing.

  “Your wagon holds hundreds of pears,” said the priest, “and I ask for only one. That’s no great loss, sir; why get so angry?”

  The crowd tried to persuade the farmer to part with a bruised pear and be rid of the man, but the farmer indignantly refused. At last a market guard saw that the uproar was getting out of hand and put up a few coins for a piece of fruit to throw to the priest.

  Hands clasped above his head, the priest thanked the guard. Then he turned to the crowd and said, “We who have left the world find man’s greed hard to understand. Let me offer some choice pears to all you good customers.”

  “Now that you have your pear,” someone said, “why don’t you eat it yourself?”

  “All I needed was a seed for planting,” replied the priest. And holding the fruit in both hands, he gobbled it up. Then he took the little shovel that he carried on his back and dug several inches into the ground. He placed the seed in the hole and covered it with earth.

  The priest called for hot water, and a bystander with a taste for mischief fetched some from a nearby shop. The priest poured the water over the seed he had planted. Every eye was now on him.

  Behold! a tiny shoot appeared. Steadily it increased in size until it became a full-grown tree, with twigs and leaves in unruly profusion. In a flash it burst into bloom and then into fruit. Masses of large, luscious pears filled its branches.

  The priest turned to the tree, plucked the pears, and began presenting them to the onlookers. In a short while the fruit was gone. Then with his shovel the priest started to chop the tree. “Teng! Teng!” the blows rang out in the air until finally the tree fell. Taking the upper part of the tree onto his shoulders, the priest departed with a relaxed gait and untroubled air.

  During all this the farmer had been part of the crowd, gaping with outstretched neck and forgetting his business. But when the priest departed the farmer noticed that his wagon was empty. And then the suspicion came to him that it was his own pears which had been presented to the crowd. Looking more carefully, he saw that a handle had been chopped off the wagon. In vexation he searched until he found it lying discarded at the foot of a wall. And now he realized that the pear tree he had seen cut down was the handle of his wagon.

  Of the priest there was no sign at all, but the marketplace was in an uproar of laughter.

  —P’u Sung-ling

  The Wine Well

  The temple named after Lady Wang is in a nook of the Hofu hills, which stand some ten miles to the west of my own county. When she lived is no longer known, but the elders have passed down the following story.

  The old woman made her living brewing wine. Once when a Taoist priest stayed at her home, she served him freely—giving him as much to drink as he asked for. Eventually he drank several hundred jars without paying, but the old woman never mentioned it.

  Then one day the priest said to the woman, “I have been drinking your wine without having the money to pay you, but allow me, if you would, to dig a well for you.” He set to and constructed the well, and a stream of the purest wine gushed forth. “This is to repay you,” said the priest. And he went his way.

  After that Lady Wang no longer brewed wine; she simply took what flowed from the well to satisfy her customers. And since it was far finer than her previous brews, customers came in droves. Within three years she earned tens of thousands of coppers, and her household became wealthy.

  Unexpectedly the Taoist priest returned. The old woman thanked him profoundly. “Was the wine satisfactory?” asked the priest. “Good enough,” replied the woman, “but it left no dregs to feed my pigs.” The priest smiled and wrote these lines on the wall:

  The heavens may be great,

  But greater is man’s greed.

  He made the well, she sold the wine,

  But said, “No dregs for feed.”

  Then he left, and the well ran dry.

  —Chiang Ying-k’e

  Gold, Gold

  Many, many years ago there was a man of the land of Ch’i who had a great passion for gold. One day at the crack of dawn he went to the mar
ket—straight to the gold dealers’ stalls, where he snatched some gold and ran. The market guards soon caught him. “With so many people around, how did you expect to get away with it?” a guard asked.

  “When I took it,” he replied, “I saw only the gold, not the people.”

  —Lieh Tzu

  Stump Watching

  A farmer of Sung saw a rabbit dash into a tree trunk standing in the middle of his field. The rabbit broke its neck and died. From that day, the farmer left his plowing and kept watch by the tree trunk in hopes of getting another rabbit. The farmer never got another rabbit, but he did become the laughingstock of Sung.

  —Han Fei Tzu

  Buying Shoes

  There was a man of Cheng who was going to buy himself shoes. First he measured his foot; then he put the measurements away. When he got to the market he discovered that he had left them behind. After he found the shoes he wanted, he went home to fetch the measurements; but the marketplace was closed when he returned, and he never got his shoes. Someone asked him, “Why didn’t you use your own foot?” “I trusted the measurements more than my foot,” he replied.

  —Han Fei Tzu

  The Missing Axe

  A man whose axe was missing suspected his neighbor’s son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his axe while he was digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor’s son, the boy walked, looked, and spoke like any other child.

  —Lieh Tzu

  Overdoing It

  A man of Ch’u in charge of sacrifices to the gods gave his assistants a goblet of wine. One apprentice said to the others, “This isn’t enough for all of us. Let’s each draw a snake in the dirt, and the one who finishes first can drink the wine.” They agreed and began drawing. The first to finish his snake reached for the goblet and was about to drink. But as he held the wine in his left hand, his right hand kept on drawing. “I can make feet for it,” he said. Before he was done, another man finished drawing and snatched the goblet, saying, “No snake has feet.” And he drank up the wine.

  —Chan Kuo Ts’e

  The Horsetrader

  A horse dealer had an excellent animal for sale, but at the market it attracted no customers. So he went to see the famous horse trainer Po Lo. “In three days no one has noticed my superb horse,” he said. “What I’d like you to do is to walk around the horse and inspect it, then walk away—but look back. For this I’ll give you a morning’s profit from my other sales.” Po Lo circled the horse and examined it, walked away, but looked back; and within the day the horse was sold for ten times what it was worth.

  —Chan Kuo Ts’e

  The Silver Swindle

  The art of swindling is becoming ever more ingenious. There was an old man of Chinling who took some silver ingots to the money changer’s shop at the North Gate Bridge, intending to exchange them for copper coins. He made a point of haggling over the silver content, talking on and on, until a young man came in from outside. The young man’s manner was most respectful. He hailed the old man and said, “Your son had some business in Changchou that I was involved in. He gave me a letter and some silver ingots to deliver to you. I was on my way to your residence when I happened to see you in here.” The young man handed over the silver, saluted the old man, and left.

  The old man tore open the letter and said to the money changer, “My eyesight is not good enough to read this letter from my son. Could I trouble you to read it to me?” The money changer complied. The letter dealt with petty family matters and closed with the words, “The accompanying ten taels of fine silver is for your household needs.” Looking pleased, the old man said, “Why don’t you give me back my silver? Never mind about testing the silver content. According to my son’s letter, these fine silver ingots he has sent me weigh exactly ten taels, so let’s exchange them for the copper cash.”

  The shopkeeper put the new silver on the scales and saw that its weight was 11.3 taels. He supposed that the son had been too busy to check the weight when he sent the letter and had written ten taels as an approximation. “The old man can’t weigh it himself,” the shopkeeper reasoned. “I may as well let the error stand and keep the difference.” So he gave the old man nine thousand copper cash, the current rate of exchange for ten taels of fine silver.

  The old man hauled his coppers away. Soon another customer in the shop began snickering. “It looks like the boss has been cheated. That old man has been a con artist in fake silver for years. I spotted him when he came in, but I was afraid to mention it with him in the shop.”

  The money changer cut open the silver and found that it was lead inside, which upset him terribly. He thanked the stranger and asked him the old man’s address. “He lives about a mile from here,” said the customer, “and there’s still time to catch up with him. But he’s my neighbor, and if he finds out I’ve given him away, he’ll get even somehow. So I’ll tell you where to look, but leave me out of it.”

  Naturally the shopkeeper wanted the man to go with him. “If you’d only take me to the neighborhood and point out his place, you could leave. The old man would never know who told me.” The stranger was still reluctant to become involved, but when the shopkeeper offered him three taels of silver, he agreed as if he had no choice.

  Together the money changer and the stranger went out of the Han Hsi Gate. Far ahead they could see the old man placing coppers on the counter of a wineshop and drinking with some others. Pointing, the stranger said, “There he is! Grab him quickly; I’m going.” The money changer ran into the wineshop, caught hold of the old man, and began to beat him. “You dirty crook! You changed ten taels of silver-coated lead for nine thousand good copper cash.”

  Everyone gathered around. Unruffled, the old man said, “I exchanged ten taels of silver that my son sent me. There was no lead hidden inside. Since you claim that I used fake silver, show it to me.”

  The money changer held up the split ingot. The old man smiled. “This isn’t mine,” he said. “I had only ten taels, so I got nine thousand coppers in exchange. This fake silver seems to weigh more than ten taels; it’s not the silver I had to begin with. The money changer has come to swindle me!”

  The people in the wineshop fetched scales to weigh the silver, which indeed came to 11.3 taels. Turning angry, the crowd ganged up on the money changer and beat him. Thus for a moment’s greed he fell into the old man’s trap. He went home bruised and burning with resentment.

  —Yüan Mei

  The Family’s Fortune

  A tradesman so poor that he barely scraped a living picked up a chicken’s egg one day and excitedly told his wife, “Here is the family’s fortune!”

  “Where?” asked the wife.

  “Right here,” said the man, showing her the egg, “but it will be ten years before we become rich. I’ll take this egg and have the neighbor’s setting hen hatch it. Out of that brood I’ll bring a female chick home to lay eggs. In one month we can have fifteen chickens. In two years as the chickens give birth to chickens, we can have three hundred. They should fetch ten pieces of silver in the market, and with the money I’ll get five calves. In three years when the calves reproduce, I’ll have twenty-five. When the calves’ offspring give birth in another three years, I’ll have one hundred and fifty. This should bring in three hundred pieces of silver. If I use the money to make loans, in three years more I’ll have five hundred pieces of silver. Two-thirds of this to buy a house, one-third to buy servants and another wife—and you and I can enjoy our remaining years to the end. Won’t that be wonderful?”

  All the wife heard was that her husband was thinking of buying another wife. Angrily she flung the egg away, smashing it and crying, “Let’s not harbor the seed of disaster!” Enraged, the husband beat her soundly and took her before the magistrate. “This wretched woman,” he said “has ruined the family’s fortune at a single stroke. She should be executed.” The magistrate asked the location of the fortune and the circumstances of the
loss. The husband began with the egg and described all that had happened.

  The magistrate said, “An evil woman has destroyed a great family fortune in one blow. She deserves to be executed.” And he ordered the woman boiled alive.

  But the woman protested loudly: “Everything my husband has told you concerns things yet to come. Why should I suffer a boiling for that?”

  “The concubine that your husband spoke of buying was also something yet to come,” said the magistrate. “Why should you have become so jealous?”

  “True enough,” said the woman, “but one cannot move too soon in taking precautions against disaster.” The magistrate smiled and released her.

  Alas! This man schemed from greed, and his wife smashed the egg from jealousy. Both were minds under delusion. The wise man, free of desire, recognizes that even what exists is delusion; how much more so is that which has yet to come!

  —Chiang Ying-k’e

  The Leaf

  A poor man of Ch’u read in the book of science and learning known as the Huai Nan Tzu: “The mantis preys upon the cicada from behind a leaf that renders him invisible.” So he looked in a tree for such a leaf and saw a mantis holding one and waiting for a cicada. The man snatched at the leaf, but it fell to the foot of the tree, where so many other leaves had fallen that he could not find the one he wanted. He swept up several bushels of leaves and returned home with them.