Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  It had been guarding something, and when he lifted it up to see, he found the missing taels, gathered neatly into a pile. Moved by the animal’s loyalty, the man bought a coffin for the dog and buried it there, and people took to calling it the Tomb of the Faithful Dog.

  193. The God of Poyang

  Di Zhanchi, whose jurisdiction as a jail official included Raozhou, happened to be traveling across Poyang Lake. There was a temple on one shore to the god of the lake, so Di had his boat stop there so he could see it. Inside there was an effigy carved of Ding Pulang, commemorating his noble sacrifice, and there was also a god surnamed Di, sitting to the side of the display.

  Di declared, “This deity belongs to my own clan, so how can I let him sit off to the side!” Then he switched the Di god to the front of the display.

  Afterwards, when he’d returned aboard his boat, a powerful wind tore the sail canvas, and the mast leaned towards collapse, while Di’s family wailed frantically. Instantly, a small boat appeared, cutting through the waves; once it had drawn near the official’s boat, Di was urgently pulled aboard, followed by his family members, till they were all transferred.

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  Poyang: A lake in Jiangxi province.

  Di Zhanchi: Di, whose courtesy name was Shiqi, was a native of Yidu county, in Shandong province. He successfully passed the provincial level of the imperial civil service examination to qualify as a juren at the age of fifteen, and qualified as a jinshi, at the highest level of the examination process, when he was sixteen. His appointment prior to the one described here was as a county magistrate in Hancheng county, Shaanxi province (Zhu 1:663n1).

  Raozhou: A prefecture located in modern Jiangxi province’s Poyang county.

  Ding Pulang . . . noble sacrifice: Originally from Huangpo country in Hubei province, he came to prominence as a follower of Zhu Yuanzhang, eventual founder of the Ming dynasty, and distinguished himself by fighting to the death in a major battle beside the Poyang River (Zhu 1:663n4).

  When the Di family men aboard looked closely at the man piloting the small boat, they found that he looked exactly the same as the Di deity in the temple. Before long, the waves ceased, and as they watched, the man completely disappeared.

  194. Wu Qiuyue

  Wang Ding, whose courtesy name was Xianhu, was from Qinyou. He was a generous, vigorous person by nature, made many friends, and traveled quite often. When he was eighteen, the girl he intended to marry died. Hence whenever he made one of his long journeys from home, it was common for him to be gone for a year without returning.

  His elder brother, Wang Nai, was widely known north of the Yangzi River as a literary scholar, and the brothers’ relationship was very strong. Nai tried to persuade his brother not to continue wandering so far from home, saying that he would help him find a wife. But Ding wouldn’t hear of it, and arranged for a boat to take him to Zhenjiang, where he went to visit a friend.

  His friend, however, had gone out, so he took a room at an inn. From there he watched the river’s limpid waters, and gazed at Mt. Jin, till he began to feel quite pleased. The next day, his friend returned and invited him to shift his lodgings to his home, but Wang Ding politely refused the invitation to move.

  When Ding had been there for more than two weeks, he dreamt of a girl one night, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, whom he considered a magnificent beauty, and with whom he made love, discovering the evidence of his orgasm when he awoke later. This seemed rather odd to him, but he felt it was just a chance occurrence. That night, he experienced the dream again.

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  Qinyou: Located in Gaoyou county, Jiangsu province.

  Zhenjiang . . . Mt. Jin: Mt. Jin is located in Jiangsu province’s Zhenjiang municipality.

  This continued for three or four nights. It finally seemed so strange that Ding didn’t dare blow out his candle, and lay in bed waiting, fearful and alert. Just as soon as his eyes closed, he dreamt that the girl had appeared again; then she made love to him, and suddenly he was frightened awake. As he quickly opened his eyes, he saw a girl with the looks of a goddess, still in his arms, just as he’d dreamt.

  When she saw that Ding was awake, she suddenly appeared bashful and nervous. Wang Ding knew that she wasn’t human, but he also felt completely satisfied by her; and rather than taking the time to ask her any questions, he straightaway forced her to engage in more sex. Unable to stand it any longer, the girl told him, “You’re so frenzied when you’re like this, it’s no wonder I don’t dare tell you the truth.”

  Wang Ding finally asked her name, and she replied, “I’m Wu Qiuyue. My father’s a famous Confucian scholar, a master of divinatory magic. He’s always loved me dearly; but he forecasted that I wouldn’t live long, which is why he didn’t engage me to anyone.

  “When I turned fifteen, I died, and he buried me east of this inn, then flattened the earth over it and left no grave marker other than a stone slab next to the coffin that reads, ‘My daughter, Qiuyue, buried here without a grave mound, will marry Wang Ding in thirty years.’ It’s been thirty years, and now you’ve come. I’ve been so happy, anxiously wanting to introduce myself to you; but I feel shy, which is why I’ve availed myself of your dreams while you were sleeping.”

  Wang was also happy, and responded by begging her to make love with him again. “I needed a bit of male life energy,” she explained to him, “because I wanted to return to the living—but honestly, I can’t take any more sex just now. There’ll be no end of harmonious days together in our future, so we don’t need to do everything tonight.” Then she got up from his bed and left.

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  Confucian . . . master of divinatory magic: One of the texts of the classical Confucian canon, the Book of Changes (yijing), extrapolates future trends from patterns in the natural world.

  The next day, when she appeared again, they sat together, laughing and chatting, as comfortably content as though they’d been together their entire lives. When they extinguished the candle and climbed into bed, it was just like Qiuyue was a living person; thus when she got up later, a bit of Wang’s semen seeped out and dampened the mattress.

  One night, while the moon was shining brightly with a crystal clarity, they went for a short walk in the courtyard. “Are there also cities in the underworld?” Ding asked Qiuyue.

  “Same as the ones here,” she replied. “The underworld has a city office, not far from here—about three or four li away. However, night becomes the daytime there.”

  Ding asked, “Can living persons see the underworld?”

  “Yes, they can see it, too,” replied Qiuyue. He asked if they might go and take a look at it, and she consented. They took advantage of the moonlight and left, with Qiuyue moving as swiftly as the wind, so Wang Ding had to hurry as fast as he could just to keep up with her.

  They quickly came to a place and Qiuyue remarked, “It’s not far now.” Ding looked ahead into the distance but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Qiuyue then took some of her spit and rubbed it at the corners of Ding’s eyes, and when he opened his eyes, everything seemed so much brighter than normal that he could see in the darkness of night just as clearly as in the daytime.

  Suddenly he spotted the battlements of a town’s city walls through a cloudy haze; pedestrians on the road there seemed to be hurrying to the marketplace. Presently two yamen runners walked past with three or four people who were bound by ropes, and at the end was someone who looked strangely like Ding’s elder brother, Wang Nai. He came closer for a better view, and discovered that it really was Nai.

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  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  Yamen runners: A yamen is the government office of an official, and the “runners” were clerk functionaries, messengers, etc. employed by the official.

  Astonished, Ding asked him, “Why have you been brought here?”

  When Wang Nai saw him, he burst int
o tears and cried, “I don’t know why, they just made me their prisoner.”

  Wang Ding angrily exclaimed, “My brother is an upright, law-abiding gentleman, so why has he been brought here, trussed up like this!” Then he prevailed upon the yamen runners, hoping that they would release his brother. But they refused to do so, condescendingly defying him.

  Ding hated their attitude and wanted to fight with them. But Nai stopped him, saying, “They’ve been commanded to do this by some official, so they’re just following orders. But I don’t have any money on me, and they keep demanding bribes—otherwise things will turn out very badly for me. Please go back home and bring back a suitable sum so we can arrange something.” Ding grabbed his brother’s arm, crying loudly.

  The yamen runners became angry, violently tugging at the rope around Wang Nai’s neck till he fell down all of a sudden. When Ding saw this, he became so furious that he couldn’t stop himself from drawing his sword and lopping off the head of one of the yamen runners on the spot. The other one cried out hoarsely till Wang Ding killed him, too.

  Qiuyue was horrified and exclaimed, “You’ve killed an official’s representatives, an unpardonable crime! It’s too late; now you’re in great danger! You have to find a boat that’s heading north, then go home—but don’t take down the funeral banners—and shut the gate, so no one comes in or goes out. Stay there for seven days, then there’ll be nothing to worry about.” Wang then took his brother and engaged a small boat, urgently sailing north.

  When they got home, they saw visitors lined up at the gate to offer their condolences, and Ding realized then that Nai had died. They shut and locked the gate, and only then went inside. As Ding was watching, Nai disappeared; as he walked into the room where Nai’s body had been laid out, his brother was already reviving, and he cried, “I’m starving! Hurry and fix me some soup and pancakes.” It had been two days since Wang Nai had died, so his family members were utterly astonished.

  Ding then explained to them everything that had happened. When the seven days had elapsed, they opened the gate, took down the mourning banner, and people began to realize that Wang Nai had come back to life. Relatives and friends gathered to ask about it, but the family just made up some plausible explanations.

  Ding’s thoughts turned to how much he missed Qiuyue. Hence he went south again till he came to the old inn, where he waited by candlelight for a long time, but Qiuyue never showed up.

  As he was feeling drowsy and wanted to go to sleep, he saw a woman approach and say, “Qiuyue sent me to you: since the murderer responsible for killing the yamen runners fled from the scene, they arrested Qiuyue and took her away, and I’ve seen the place where they’re keeping her in custody, subjecting her to cruel treatment. Day after day she longs for you, hoping you’ll have schemed a way to help her.” Filled with grief and indignation, Wang Ding left to follow the woman.

  Once they’d arrived at the city and entered through the western wall, the woman pointed to a gate and said, “Here’s where she’s been sent.” Ding entered and found himself inside a large complex, where many prisoners had been placed in cells, but there was no sign of Qiuyue.

  Then they approached the door to a small holding cell, where a light inside was burning. Wang Ding drew near the window in the door so he could peer inside, and there he saw Qiuyue sitting on a bed, trying to cover her face with her sleeve while softly weeping. The two guards standing beside her began pinching her cheek and clutching at her shoes in order to mock and humiliate her. This made her cry even more pitifully.

  One guard put his arm around her neck and said, “You’re a criminal now, so why worry about defending your chastity?” Furious, Ding didn’t waste time talking, but rushed in, sword in hand, and dispatched each guard with a single blow, beheading them like he was harvesting hemp plants, then grabbed hold of Qiuyue and rushed out. Fortunately, Ding’s presence there wasn’t detected.

  When they got back to the inn, Wang Ding suddenly regained consciousness. Then as he was recalling the strange murders from his dream, he saw Qiuyue at his bed, looking at him tearfully. Startled, Ding got up and pulled her down to sit next to him, telling her all about the dream. “It was real,” Qiuyue replied, “not a dream.”

  Frightened now, Ding cried, “Then what can we possibly do about it!”

  With a sigh, Qiuyue said, “This was fated to happen. I’ve been waiting for the end of the month, the time when I was originally to be revived; but now that these things have happened, how can I wait any longer! Go quickly to the place where I’m buried, dig up my remains and then take them home with you, call out my name each day, and in three days I’ll return to life. But since I’ll be reviving earlier than predicted, my body will be weak and feeble, and I won’t be able to take care of the housework for you.”

  Once finished speaking, she started off in hasty departure. Then she turned back around and added, “I almost forgot—what if servants from the underworld come looking for me? When I was still alive, my father told me the words for a magical talisman, and said that when the thirty years were over, we should both wear copies for protection.” Qiuyue then found a brush and quickly produced two copies of the talisman, telling Ding, “One is for you to wear, and the other is for you to attach to my back.”

  He accompanied her as she went out, marking the place from which she vanished before his eyes, and then dug down about a chi, until he could see a rotted wooden coffin. Beside the spot there was a small stone slab, bearing the words that Qiuyue had described. When he exhumed the coffin, he saw that Qiuyue looked just as she had when she was alive.

  Cradling her in his arms, he took her back to the inn, with her clothing falling into tatters once it was exposed to the air. He’d already placed the talisman on her, so then he wrapped her tightly in some bedding and carried her on his back to the river’s edge; he called to a boat that was moored there, lying that his sister had suddenly fallen ill, and hence he needed to take her home to their family immediately.

  Luckily, a strong wind from the south had begun to blow, and just at daybreak they reached the village gate. He carried Qiuyue into the house and put her to bed, then went and explained everything to Wang Nai and his wife. The whole family was stunned by what they’d seen, and no one dared openly express their doubts. Ding took the bedding off from around her and began repeatedly calling Qiuyue’s name, and it was with her corpse embraced in his arms throughout the night that he fell asleep.

  By the next day, she’d gradually begun to feel warmer. On the third day she finally revived, and in a week she was able to take a few steps; she changed into some clothes and did obeisance to her sister-in-law, and in everything she was as graceful as a goddess. However, after she’d taken ten steps outside, she needed to have someone help her; otherwise, the wind would make her feel so unsteady that she was inclined to fall down. People who witnessed this thought she was still suffering from her illness, yet she seemed in their eyes even more enchanting.

  She always advised Wang Ding, “You’ve committed some grave sins, so you should try to atone for them by reciting Buddhist scriptures and showing repentance. Otherwise, I’m afraid that you won’t have a very long life.”

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  Chi: A measure equal to 1/3 meter.

  Ding, who had never before sincerely worshipped the Buddha, became a very pious convert to Buddhism. And after doing so, he remained safe and sound.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “I’d like to submit this law: ‘Anyone who kills an official’s servants will be punished three times less severely than someone who commits the crime of common murder.’ This would signal that such people are not above being killed. Hence by punishing and wiping out the official’s bad servants, the remaining ones would all be good; while it might be a rather harsh law, it couldn’t be called tyrannical. Furthermore, there originally were no specific laws in the underworld, so when there were villains like the yamen runners, swordplay could be justified to fin
ish off the offenders without seeming cruelly punitive. If public sentiment could address such cases quickly, the Hell King would be happy about it. And how guilty can a criminal be if he’s fortunate enough to escape from the underworld’s agents?”

  195. Princess Lotus

  Dou Xu, whose courtesy name was Xiaohui, was from Jiaozhou. It once happened that while he was sleeping during the day, he saw a servant in brown clothing standing in front of his bed, hesitating and glancing around anxiously, like there was something he wanted to say. Dou asked him what it was, and he replied, “Sir, I’ve been sent to invite you.”

  “Who wishes to speak with me?”

  “Someone who’s nearby,” the servant said. Dou followed as they went outside.

  They turned and passed by house walls till they came to a compound where there were a vast number of pavilions and multi-storied buildings, with rafters everywhere joining them together, and a whole complex of support columns. It seemed like it must have ten thousand doorways and a thousand gates, totally unlike anything in the mortal realm.

  Then Dou saw that the servants and officials there were women, coming and going in great numbers, each of them turning to ask the brown-clothed servant, “Has Master Dou arrived?” The servant informed them he had.

  Presently, a high-ranking official came out and welcomed Dou with great respect. As they walked up into a hall, Dou raised an issue: “We’ve never spoken together, and I’ve never come to pay my respects before. Yet I’ve been received with such warmth, I’m rather suspicious about it.”

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  Jiaozhou: Located in modern Shandong province.

  The high-ranking official told him, “Our sovereign is aware that you come from a virtuous family, and his admiration resulted in your being brought here, and he will be very glad to meet you finally, face-to-face.”