Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  Since the residence was so large and there had been no one living there, wormwood and mugwort had grown up thick as a forest around the pavilion in the eastern courtyard, hence it was left unoccupied. Qi’s family members began experiencing nightmares, shouting to each other that they’d encountered ghosts.

  Two months passed, and one of their maidservants died. Soon afterwards, Qi’s wife went for a walk one nightfall in the east courtyard’s pavilion, but fell ill when she came back, and after several days, she also died. Family members became even more frightened and tried to persuade Qi to move elsewhere. But he wouldn’t hear of it.

  Lonely without his spouse, Qi felt dismal, like he’d been wounded. Some of the servants again began complaining to him about weird phenomena. Qi ex-ploded in anger, grabbed his nightclothes and a quilt, and left to sleep alone in the deserted pavilion, keeping a candle burning so he could watch for anything strange. Nothing happened for a long time, so he finally went to sleep.

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  Weihui: The name of a prefecture located in modern Henan province.

  Suddenly someone stuck a hand under the quilt, groping his body. Qi awoke to the sight of an old maidservant, with pointy ears and disheveled hair, who was grotesquely obese. Qi knew this was a ghost, so he grabbed her arm and flung it away from him, scornfully laughing, “You look disgusting, and I reject your advances!” Embarrassed, the maid refrained from further groping and tip-toed away.

  In a short while, a young woman with a sweet appearance emerged from the northwest corner. She rushed over to where he lay in the candlelight, furiously demanding, “Where are you from, you madman, and how dare you sleep here!”

  Qi sat up, laughing, and replied, “I’m the master of this estate, and I’ve been waiting to collect the rent on this pavilion.” Then he leapt up, naked, to grab hold of her. The young woman frantically turned to flee. Qi hastened to the northwest corner, blocking her escape route. Since she was trapped, she went over and sat on the bed.

  As he came near her, he could see by the candlelight that she was as striking as a goddess; he gradually drew her to him in an embrace. She giggled and said, “Aren’t you afraid of ghosts, madman? You’re on the verge of disaster and death!” As Qi quickly took off her clothing, she offered very little resistance.

  After they’d made love, she confessed to him, “My surname’s Zhang, and I was called A-Duan as a baby. When I came of age, I made the mistake of marrying a heartless man, whose harsh treatment of me increased my sense of disgrace, till resentment and shame brought me to an early grave, and I lay buried there for more than twenty years. This estate is built entirely upon graves and tombs.”

  “Who was that old maidservant?” he asked her.

  A-Duan replied, “She’s another ghost who serves me. When mortals move into the residence above, we ghosts become restless in our graves, so I sent her to drive you away.”

  “Then why was she groping me?” he asked.

  She laughed and explained, “Though she’s been a ghost for thirty years old, this maidservant has never had sex with a man, so you can sympathize with her feelings; however, she’s also vastly overrated herself. In any case: if your self-confidence falters, the ghosts will bully you all the more; but if your courage remains unwavering, they won’t dare attack you.”

  When they heard a neighbor’s clock strike, A-Duan put on her clothes and got up off the bed, telling Qi, “If you don’t have any misgivings, I’ll come again tonight.”

  At sunset, A-Duan appeared, and their lovemaking was even more passionately satisfying. “My wife suffered misfortune and died,” Qi told her, “and I feel so saddened by her loss, that I can’t let go of my feelings for her. Could you help call her back to me?”

  Hearing this filled A-Duan with sorrow, and she replied, “I’ve been dead for twenty years, and no one’s ever thought about me! You’re affectionately devoted indeed, and I’ll do everything in my power to help. However, I heard that she was going to be reincarnated somewhere, so I don’t know if she’s still in the underworld or not.”

  The following night, she reported to Qi, “Your wife was just about to be reborn into a high official’s family. But since in a previous incarnation she lost an earring and beat a maidservant over the matter, which provoked the maid to hang herself, your wife’s case hasn’t been resolved yet, and hence the reincarnation’s been delayed. For the time being, she’s been entrusted to the King of Remedies, in whose hall she’s being watched over by guards. I sent my maidservant to go and deliver a bribe to him, so your wife may be on her way here by now.”

  “Why are you free to do this?” he asked her.

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  King of Remedies: Another official in the vast underworld bureaucracy. See Cline and Littlejohn (9-34).

  “If those in the mortal world driven to death unreasonably went unreported,” she explained, “then the Hell King may have no way to know about them.” Just after two o’clock in the morning, the old maidservant arrived, conducting Qi’s wife.

  He grasped her hands with great tenderness, and his wife, trying to contain her tears, was unable to speak. A-Duan told them goodbye, adding, “The two of you can each tell how you’ve missed the other, and we can meet together some other evening.”

  Qi then conveyed his sympathy to his wife and asked her about the matter involving the maid who had killed herself. “Don’t worry about it,” she replied, “it’s going to be settled.” They hugged each other on Qi’s bed, then made love as happily as they always had, back when the wife was alive. From this point forward, they often met this way.

  After five days, Qi’s wife suddenly burst into tears and cried, “Tomorrow I must go to Shandong, tormented to be leaving you forever, and there’s no way out of it!” When Qi heard this, he began wiping away tears and wandering aimlessly in sorrow, feeling utterly helpless.

  A-Duan counseled them, “I have a plan that can give you a little while longer together.” Together they held back their tears and inquired about what she wanted them to do. A-Duan asked them to take ten strings of paper money and burn them beneath the apricot tree in the South Hall, as a bribe for the wife’s escorts, so they might delay their arrival a few days. Qi did exactly as she suggested.

  That night, when his wife appeared, she told him, “It’s a good thing we did as A-Duan said, for now we’ve been given ten days to be together.” Qi was very happy, and wouldn’t allow A-Duan to leave, so they all stayed together and made love in the same bed from dusk until dawn, afraid of nothing but their happiness ending.

  Seven and then eight days went by, and as they thought about the fact that their extension was almost up, Qi and his wife found themselves crying through the night. They asked A-Duan what additional ideas she might have, and she replied, “It will be difficult to influence matters once again. If you want to try it, you’ll need at least a million in underworld currency.”

  Qi burned the specified amount of sacrificial paper money. When A-Duan came to them later, she happily reported, “I sent someone to speak with the escorts on your wife’s behalf, and they were initially pretty resistant to further delay; but when they saw how much money was waiting for them, they began to see things differently. Now they’ve already found another ghost to take the place of your wife.”

  Henceforth, the women stayed with Qi during the daytime, directing him to cover up the doorways and windows, and to keep candles and lamps burning all day long. Things had continued this way for more than a year, when A-Duan suddenly fell ill, her state of mind becoming agitated, as though she’d encountered a ghost. Qi’s wife tried to comfort her, then explained to him, “This is a ghost disease.”

  “Since A-Duan’s already a ghost,” Qi said, “how then can a ghost make her ill?”

  “That’s not exactly the case here,” his wife said. “When a person dies, he becomes a ghost, but when a ghost dies, he becomes a jian. Ghosts are frightened of jians, just as people are frightened
of ghosts.”

  Qi wanted to hire a sorcerer to tend to A-Duan. His wife exclaimed, “What can a mortal do to heal a ghost? Our neighbor, an old woman named Wang, is now practicing medicine in the underworld, so I could go and invite her to come here. But it’s over ten li away, and my legs are too weak to be able to carry me that far, so I’ll have to trouble you to burn a paper horse for me.” Qi did as she asked.

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  Jian: The term comes from the Daoist magical practice of inscribing the character, jian, on magical charms to ward off ghosts. Zeitlin notes that by “constructing an additional boundary distinguishing ghosts from jian,” Pu ensures that “the old boundary separating the living from the dead is effectively superceded and erased” (195), protecting the connection between Qi, his wife, and A-Duan.

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 of a mile.

  Once the horse had been burnt, they saw A-Duan’s maidservant approach, leading a red horse with a black mane and tail. She handed Qi’s wife its reins at the courtyard entrance, and once the wife had turned the horse back around, in the blink of an eye, she vanished with it.

  After a little while, she returned, riding side-by-side with an old lady, and they tied the horse’s reins to a porch post. Old Lady Wang went inside and took A-Duan’s pulse with her fingers. Afterwards she sat down quite stiffly, and her head began to tremble.

  She then fell to the ground and lay there for a few moments, before jumping up and declaring, “I am the King of Black Mountain. The girl’s illness is very serious, but fortunately she ran into me, proving that her blessings are not inconsiderable! A ghost disease such as this one can be remedied; no harm, no harm at all! All the same, this is a dangerous illness, so you must reward me richly for my efforts with a hundred gold ingots, a hundred strings of copper coins, and a grand banquet— nothing less than that.” Qi’s wife eagerly agreed to each of the demands.

  Old Lady Wang then slumped to the ground again, and after reviving, she faced A-Duan, cursed the jian, and then was finished. Qi’s wife accompanied her to the entrance of the courtyard, offered her the horse to ride on her return journey, and the old lady happily took her leave. Upon reentering, she saw that A-Duan was no longer comatose. Qi and his wife were overjoyed, and concernedly asked her how she felt.

  A-Duan suddenly declared, “I’m afraid I may not be allowed to return to the mortal world. Whenever I close my eyes, it’s my fate to see the ghosts of those who died unjustly!” Then she burst into tears.

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  Burn a paper horse: As with the paper money that is burnt as a kind of funeral offering to the departed in the underworld, other paper items—horses, in this example, or cars, in our own time—are burnt to offer a symbolic transference of specific creature comforts into the afterlife.

  The next night, her condition took a turn for the worse, her body contorting as though shaking in terror from something she was seeing. She pulled Qi down to lie beside her and put her head on his chest, like she was frightened of something coming to grab her. Each time Qi tried to get up, she became terrified and screamed in anxiety. This continued for six or seven days, while Qi and his wife could think of nothing to do about it.

  It happened one day that Qi needed to go out for a while, and when he returned at noon, he heard the sound of his wife crying. Startled, he asked her what had happened, and learned that A-Duan had already died in her bed, leaving her body behind. When Qi lifted the quilt, there was nothing there but her neatly arranged bones. Qi, utterly distraught, took her remains, held a funeral ceremony like it was meant for a real person rather than for a ghost, and had A-Duan buried alongside the tombs of his ancestors.

  One night, his wife began crying out while she was dreaming. He shook her awake, and when he asked her what she’d been experiencing, she explained, “A-Duan came to me in my dream and told me that her husband was a jian, and was angry with her for not remaining chaste in the underworld, bearing such a grudge that he took her life, so she begged me to have a spiritual ceremony performed for her.”

  Qi woke up early the next morning, and was about to make arrangements for the ceremony. But his wife stopped him and said, “A matter involving ghosts isn’t something you have the power to handle.” Then she rose and left. Fifteen minutes went by and then she came back to report, “I’ve already had someone send for some monks and priests. But the first thing to do is to burn some paper money to cover their expenses.” Qi then did as she suggested.

  By dusk, a crowd of monks had assembled, clanging their golden cymbals and beating their drums, just as their counterparts would do in the mortal world. Qi’s wife frequently mentioned how loud she thought it was, but Qi couldn’t hear anything unusual. Once the ceremony was concluded, Qi’s wife dreamt that A-Duan had come to thank her, saying, “The injustice has been resolved, and I’m about to be reborn as the daughter of the city god. I need to trouble you to give Qi this message for me.”

  Qi’s wife lived there for three years, and while the servants were originally frightened whenever they heard her, after awhile they gradually became used to it. Whenever Qi wasn’t at home, they would report to their mistress through the opening in a window.

  One night, she turned to Qi and tearfully told him, “Since word has now gotten out about my former escorts having been bribed, they’ll be searching for me very urgently and I’m afraid it won’t be long before they come to get me.”

  A few days later, she consequently fell ill, and declared, “I love you deeply, and if my spirit could stay with you, I wouldn’t want to be reborn. Now that I’m about to bid you farewell forever, I realize it must just be our fate!” Qi quickly begged her to think of something to do. “There’s nothing to be done,” she said.

  “Will you be punished?” he asked her.

  She replied, “There’ll be some light punishment. Stealing from the living is a serious crime, while defrauding the dead is a minor one.” When her words were finished, she became still. As he watched her closely, the contours of her face and body gradually faded away into nothingness. Qi often sat alone at night in the pavilion, hoping that they would meet again, but in the end the building remained silent, and in his heart he made peace with what had happened.

  182. The Old Noodle Soup Woman

  Scholar Han and his wife had been staying in a villa for six months, and planned to return home at the end of the lunar year. One night, when his wife had gone to bed, she heard the sound of someone moving about. She looked around and noticed coal burning in the fireplace, blazing very brightly.

  Then she saw an old woman, maybe eighty or ninety years old, wrinkled and hunchbacked, with only a few thin hairs on her head. She turned to Han’s wife and asked her, “Would you like some noodle soup?” The wife was so scared, she didn’t dare answer.

  The old woman proceeded to take a pair of iron chopsticks and stir up the fire, subsequently setting a cauldron on; then she poured some water into it. Instantly, Han’s wife heard the sound of soup boiling. The old woman lifted the front of her garment and opened a bag, from which she extracted more than ten measures of noodles, and tossed them into the soup with a distinct splashing sound.

  She said to herself, “Now that’ll wait while I find a pair of chopsticks.” Then she walked out through the door. Han’s wife took advantage of the old woman’s absence and anxiously got up to grasp the cauldron, leaning over it from the edge of her bed, then in fright covered herself with her quilt and laid back down.

  A moment later, the old woman returned, and forcefully demanded what had happened to the cauldron and soup. The wife was terrified and screamed. This startled her family members awake, and the old woman vanished.

  When they lifted up the wife’s bed mat and drew close with a light to check it, they found over ten dead tortoises, heaped into a pile.

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  Over ten dead tortoises: Eberhard notes that in Chinese folklore, the tortoise is “an enigmatic a
nd highly symbolic creature,” and the word itself is considered taboo, and to avoid speaking it, the tortoise was sometimes obliquely referred to as the “dark warrior” (295-6).

  183. Jin Yongnian

  Jin Yongnian of Lijin was eighty-two years old and had never had a child. His elderly wife was seventy-eight, and had given up all hope of ever giving birth. As Jin was dreaming one night, a deity suddenly told him, “Though otherwise you would have been denied an heir, I’ve determined that since you have dealt justly in your trade, you should be granted a son.”

  When he awoke, he told his wife about it. The old woman replied, “It was just your wishful thinking. Two people like us, just about ready for our coffins, how could we give birth to a son?”

  Soon afterwards, the old woman’s belly began to tremble; and ten months later, she actually gave birth to a boy.

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  Lijin: A county located in modern Shandong province.

  184. Huaguzi

  An Youyu was a bagong from Shaanxi. The young scholar conducted himself with generous kindness in his relationships, while freeing captive animals made him happy. If he saw that hunters had captured some prey, he never considered the cost too heavy, but simply purchased them and set them free.

  On the occasion of a funeral service to be held at his uncle’s home, An went and took part in the funeral procession. Since it was dusk when he started home and his route took him through Mt. Hua, he became lost, straying from the mountain into the valley below. This made him feel terribly frightened. Off in the distance, about the length of an arrow shot, he spotted some lights and hurried towards them.