Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  Haiqiu asked him, “Are there any well-known female performers in the area?”

  “None,” replied Haogu.

  Haiqiu was quiet for a good long while, then he told the boy servant who was with them in the study, “Go call for the person who’s waiting outside the door, and then you can usher her in here.”

  _______________________________

  Guangling: Site of the modern Jiangsu province city of Yangzhou.

  “Song of the Protector Spirit of Fufeng”: A song by China’s most celebrated poet, Li Bai, also known as Li Bo (699-762 C.E.). Fufeng, an ancient prefecture, is part of modern Shaanxi province.

  The boy went out, and then they noticed that there was a woman keeping a discreet distance as she stood outside the doorway. The boy conducted her in, and she appeared to be about sixteen, as striking as a goddess. Peng Haogu, surprised by her beauty, guided her to a seat. She wore a short cape that was the yellow of willow trees, and her fragrance filled the room.

  Peng Haiqiu conveyed this greeting to her: “A thousand li is quite an arduous journey.” The woman smiled enthusiastically. Haogu thought this a rather strange reaction, and consequently asked what it meant. Haiqiu explained, “Since you were suffering without any beautiful women here, I had to call her from a boat on West Lake to come here.”

  Then, speaking to the woman, he said, “Just now, when you were on the boat, you were singing ‘The Unfaithful Gentleman’s Song,’ an excellent number. Please repeat it for us.” She then sang,

  There was an unfaithful gentleman,

  Who led his horse to a pool for a wash.

  Then his voice faded away,

  And the sound of his horse disappeared;

  There was clear sky high above the river,

  And a small moon appeared over the mountains.

  He turned to leave, but never returned,

  So in his courtyard, I await a new dawn.

  I can’t complain that he’s left so often,

  Yet I worry how few happy reunions there have been,

  And wonder: where’s he sleeping now?

  Nothing’s stirring in the wind.

  If there isn’t even a chance to gain a title there,

  Don’t go to Linqiong!”

  _______________________________

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  West Lake: Located in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province.

  Peng Haiqiu drew a jade flute from inside one of his leggings, and accompanied her as she sang.

  When the song was over and Haiqiu finished playing his flute, Peng Haogu sighed and couldn’t stop admiring the music, declaring to his guest, “West Lake is over a thousand li away, and in the space of a breath you were able to invite someone to come, so doesn’t that mean you must be a god?”

  “I wouldn’t dare be called a god—I merely have the ability to see courtyards from a great distance,” Huaqiu replied. “This evening, West Lake is so exceedingly beautiful that we can’t avoid having a look at it, so can you follow me to travel there?”

  Haogu was careful in his response, since he wanted to see more of this strangeness, so he agreed, “That would be very fortunate.”

  “What would you like to take, a boat, or a horse?” Haiqiu asked him.

  Haogu thought that sitting aboard a boat would be pleasant, so he replied, “I’d enjoy a boat ride.”

  “It’s a great distance to summon a boat here,” said Haiqiu, “but there must be a ferry in the Milky Way to use.” Then he looked up into the sky and called out, “Bring a boat, bring a boat! We’re waiting to go to West Lake, and we won’t be stingy about paying for it.”

  Before long, a gaily decorated boat appeared in the sky and floated down to them, with mist and clouds encircling it. The three of them then climbed aboard. They saw a man holding a short oar; he was rowing with it, and the oar was embellished with thick rows of plumes, like a kind of feather fan. With a wave of its feathers, a cool breeze began blowing gently. By degrees the boat lifted up into the sky, and they began heading southward, whizzing along like an arrow.

  _______________________________

  Linqiong: Located in modern Sichuan province’s Qionglai county. Literary notable Sima Xiangru (179–117 B.C.E.), was invited to stay as a guest with Zhuo Wangsun’s family in Linqiong, and then ended up seducing and running off that night with Zhuo’s daughter, Zhuo Wenjun (Zhu 2:701n18); hence the emblematic association of the site with illicit love.

  Fifteen minutes later, the boat landed in a body of water. They heard string and wind instruments playing raucously, and the sound of clamorous voices. They looked into the distance outside the boat, as the moon shone over the mist and rolling waves, to see many other boats crowded into the lake. The boatman stopped the movement of his oar, and allowed his boat to drift where it would. As they looked around carefully, they realized that they really were at West Lake.

  Peng Haiqiu went to the rear of the cabin, where he obtained some rare delicacies and excellent wine, and happily poured the wine as they sat drinking. After a little while, a large turreted boat began to approach them, until it pulled close to them and came alongside. They peered out the window to take a look, and saw two or three men in it, playing chess and laughing loudly.

  Haiqiu swiftly grabbed one of their drinking vessels and turned to the singer, saying, “Let me toast you with this, to see you off.” The woman then took a drink from it, while Peng Haogu, reluctant to let her leave, paced nervously, terrified at the thought of her leaving, even standing with one foot on the other.

  The woman peered at him encouragingly, which touched Haogu even more. He begged her for date in the future. “If you like me,” the woman replied, “just ask people about me—my name is Juanniang, and everyone knows me.”

  Peng Haiqiu took Haogu’s silk scarf and instructed the woman, “You’ll meet again in three years.” Then he stood up, took the woman’s hand in his, and exclaimed, “Hail the celestial! Hail the celestial!” As a reply came from the neighboring boat’s window, Haiqiu grasped the woman’s hand, helping her as she boarded the other boat; while the window and its frame appeared to be as flat as a saucer, the woman entered it, with snake-like movement, encountering no difficulties.

  _______________________________

  Playing chess: Here, the game is weiqi, or “encirclement chess” (with black and white stones, like the Japanese Go), rather than the conventional Chinese chess board (xiangqi) with its specific playing pieces.

  From the neighboring boat, Haogu heard the words, “Juanniang’s come to her senses.” Their boat then began to move away. From a distance he saw that the other boat was already at anchor, and that in the midst of it, people who’d lost their keenness to play kept leaving one after another. Then he told Peng Haiqiu that he wanted to go ashore, gazing off towards it.

  By the time they’d discussed the matter, the boat had already reached the land. Consequently, Haogu disembarked, feeling like he’d walked several li to reach the shore. Haiqiu followed behind him, leading a horse, and told Haogu to take it. After approaching to hand it over, he then left, saying, “Wait here until a pair of riders come.”

  A long time passed, but no one arrived. There were virtually no passersby; he looked up at the moon setting in the west, the sky brightening with the approach of dawn. He had no idea where Qiu had gone.

  He held onto the horse as it kept moving around, back and forth, disoriented. With a shake of its reins, he led it over to where the boat was moored, where he discovered that the men from the boat had all vanished. He thought about the fact that the bag at his waist was empty, which made him all the more worried.

  As the sky grew very bright, he noticed a small sack on the horse that he’d missed earlier; exploring its contents, he found three or four silver taels. He bought something to eat so he could focus on waiting, since he hadn’t realized it was almost noon. He decided it might be better for him to make some brief inquiries about Juanniang and to begin searching for wh
ere Qiu had gone. He asked around about someone by the name of Juanniang, but no one knew her, and it began to turn bleak and chilly.

  The next day, he decided to leave. The horse fortunately proved to be a fine steed with no apparent weaknesses, and half a month later he finally arrived home. Before, when the three men left Haogu’s place, the servant boy reported to the family that Haogu had died. The whole household was in mourning, everyone crying that he’d never return. When Haogu did return, he tethered his horse and went inside.

  His family members, amazed and overjoyed, gathered to ask him about it, so Haogu told them about all the strange things that had happened. Because he began thinking about having come back alone, he was afraid that scholar Qiu’s family would hear about it and send someone to interrogate him about the disappearance of Haiqiu, so Haogu admonished his family members not to let word get out about the matter.

  While he was speaking, he explained how he’d come across his horse. The others figured that an immortal must have lost the animal, so they decided to visit the stable for a closer look at it. When they came to it, the horse suddenly shrank, and in its place there was scholar Qiu, eating grass, his reins and halter hanging over the side of a horse trough.

  Extremely shocked, the group called for Haogu to come and see for himself. When he saw Qiu with his head hanging down in a pen, his face as gray as a corpse, Haogu asked him about it, but Qiu didn’t say a word— both eyes opening and shutting, and that was all.

  Feeling sorry for him, Haogu untied the reins and helped Qiu, who was acting like he’d lost his very soul, onto a bed. He poured Qiu some thin gruel, and gradually he was able to swallow it. By midnight, he’d began to revive a bit, and he anxiously wanted to relieve himself; with Haogu’s assistance he went out and did so, till there were several clods of horse manure on the ground beneath him. Then he took a few sips of something to drink, and finally he was able to talk again.

  Haogu came near the bed to ask what had happened to him, and Qiu replied, “After I’d gone ashore, the fellow who was my guide began making sarcastic remarks to me. We came to an open area where he playfully patted me on the neck, causing me to lose my bearings and become disoriented, and then I fell to the ground. Though I lay there only a few moments, I had already become a horse. I could feel that I was conscious, but I couldn’t speak. It was a great humiliation, and I literally couldn’t tell my wife and children, so I beg you not to tell anyone about it!” Haogu promised to say nothing, then told a servant to take a horse and accompany him home.

  Peng Haogu was unable to forget about his feelings for Juanniang. Three more years passed, and his elder sister’s husband took over as the assistant prefectural magistrate in Yangzhou, so he decided to go and visit them.

  In Yangzhou, there was an official’s son named Liang, a relative by marriage to the Peng family, who gave a feast and invited Haogu to come drink with him. There were several geji performers, and when they were all present, they courteously greeted their host. When Liang asked for Juanniang, servants informed him that she’d taken ill. Liang angrily exclaimed, “She’s too proud of her reputation, so you can just tie her up with a rope and bring her here!”

  When Haogu heard Juanniang’s name, he was startled into asking Liang who she was. “This prostitute is the number one performer in Guangling,” Liang explained. “Because she has a bit of reputation, she’s haughty and impertinent.” Haogu suspected she must just be a woman with the same name as Juanniang; yet his heart palpitated anxiously, and he desperately wanted to have at look at her.

  Soon, Juanniang arrived, and Liang exploded, angrily rebuking her. Haogu scrutinized the woman, and indeed it was the very woman he’d seen at the Mid-Autumn Festival. He told Liang, “This woman and I have long been friends, so it’s fortunate that I’ve come, and I hope you’ll forgive her for making you angry.” Juanniang turned around and looked carefully at Haogu, seeming equally surprised to see him.

  _______________________________

  Yangzhou: Located in Jiangsu province.

  Geji: Women who performed specifically for the imperial court, for area officials, or for affluent families by singing and dancing.

  Liang was too busy to question them any further, and ordered that wine be poured for his guests. “Do you still remember ‘The Unfaithful Gentleman’s Song’?” Haogu asked her. Juanniang, even more surprised, stared at him briefly before launching into the old song. When Peng Haogu heard her singing it, it was as if he’d returned to the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

  The drinking continued till quite late, so Liang ordered the performers to serve his guests in their bedrooms. Haogu grabbed Juanniang’s hand and said, “Three years ago we made an appointment to meet again; is that why you’ve come now?”

  “On that day, West Lake was filled with my followers,” Juanniang recalled, “and I’d not drunk many goblets of wine, when suddenly it was as if I’d become tipsy. I passed out for a while, and then some person picked me up and carried me to a village. A boy led me inside your house; there were people inside at a banquet, and you were one of them. Afterwards, when we were taking a boat to West Lake, you accompanied me past the window sill, courteously holding my hand. Whenever I try to focus my thoughts on what happened that day, it’s like it was a daydream; and your silk scarf that was taken as a guarantee, to this moment still remains hidden away somewhere.”

  Haogu told her what had happened since then, and they sighed together. Juanniang released his hand to embrace him, her throat choked with emotion, and declared, “Peng Haiqiu has already served as an able matchmaker, so don’t abandon me to the world of prostitution, but take me out of this sea of woes.”

  “We made a pact on that boat,” Haogu answered, “that the day would come when our hearts would never be apart. If Haiqiu hadn’t intended this, he wouldn’t have filled the bag on the horse with money so freely.”

  207. Geomancy

  The family of Song Junchu, an assistant minister in Yizhou, respected geomancy; even the women in his family studied books on the subject, and understood its principles. When Master Song died, his two sons tried to determine an auspicious burial site for him. Whenever they heard of someone practicing geomantic magic, they didn’t hesitate to travel a thousand li, in order to compete with others to engage his services.

  As a result, the two recruited over a hundred geomancers; every day they rode with the brothers all over the countryside, split into two groups, coming and going in all directions, like separate armies. When a month had passed, each group had located an auspicious plot of ground, with one brother claiming that his spot would result in family descendants becoming noblemen, and the other brother claiming that his would produce a prime minister within the family.

  Neither brother could get the upper hand, and because they were each exasperated with the other for not going along with his proposed location, they each set up their own gravesites with ceremonial altars and colorful banners, getting both places all ready for use. The coffin arrived in a carriage at a fork in the road between the two sites, and there the brothers each led a contingent of his followers to fight for it, struggling from dawn till sunset, without being able to settle the matter.

  _______________________________

  Assistant minister: Or vice minister (see Hucker 427).

  Yizhou: A prefecture located in Shandong province’s Linyi county.

  Geomancy: Divining the future, in terms of good or bad fortune, by employing earth as a casting medium (interpreting the shape caused by tossing down a handful of dirt; construing dots or lines placed randomly on the ground; reading the shapes of geographical features; etc.). In Chinese culture, geomancy is expanded to include the reading of auspicious landscape configurations (fengshui).

  Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.

  Guests who’d come for the burial finally just left. The pallbearers, exhausted from lifting the coffin onto their shoulders so many times, decided not to wait around any longer and just set it down on the
roadside.

  Because of all this, they didn’t bury Master Song, but instead gathered workers to build a shelter to house the coffin, to protect it from the wind and rain. When the elder brother constructed a building next to it, and housed servants there the guard the coffin, the younger brother constructed a building on the other side, like his brother’s; when the elder brother built something else, the younger brother did the same: in three years, they managed to establish a village there.

  After many years, the brothers also died; their wives began to plan together, making every effort to resolve the burial of their father-in-law, working out what needed to be done, riding together through the countryside to examine the two sites their husbands had selected. The women declared them both unsatisfactory, and put up matching funds that they used to entice a geomancer to propose another site.

  They directed him always to make a map, indicating which way the coffin should face, whenever he found other sites, so they could decide whether to approve them or not. With each passing day he made several maps, but the women found fault with all of the sites he proposed.

  After more than ten days, the geomancer finally found an area that the women approved. When the elder brother’s wife saw the map, she exclaimed, “This one’s a worthy site.” She showed it to her sister-in-law.

  “Burying father-in-law in this spot will produce a military graduate,” the younger brother’s wife said.

  Three years after they finally buried Master Song, his eldest grandson did indeed pass the provincial level examinations for military officers.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “There may be a science to the practice of geomantic magic; but blind devotion and credulity is foolish. Furthermore, with the brothers’ exasperation leading to conflict with each other and to the coffin being left by the roadside, while failing to discuss their filial duty, how could they hope to find a place to secure good fortune for their father’s descendants! The accord of these sisters-in-law was truly refined, and worthy of being taught to others.”