Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  208. The Dou Clan

  Nan Sanfu, from Jinyang, was a member of a family that had long been influential in the area. He owned a villa that was more than ten li from his main house, and each day he rode there on horseback to pay a visit. It happened that he ran into some rain, and at a small village along the way, he spotted a farmer’s home with gates opening into a spacious area, so he decided to stay there.

  All the villagers there regarded Nan with cowed deference. Presently, the farmer came out to invite him inside, comporting himself very respectfully. As they entered the house, Nan found the room small and narrow.

  While he was taking a seat, the farmer grabbed a broom and swept the room with attentive diligence. Afterward, the farmer made him honey-sweetened tea. It wasn’t until Nan told him to do so that the farmer himself dared to sit down. Nan asked him his name, to which he replied, “Tingzhang, and my surname is Dou.”

  Before long, they brought out wine and chicken, all offered with complete courtesy. Dou’s daughter, who was doing the cooking, from time to time would stop and stand just outside the doorway, so Nan could see about half of her body, noticing that she was about fifteen or sixteen, and incomparably charming. Nan felt aroused by her. Once the rain stopped he returned home, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

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  More than ten li: With a li equal to 1/3 mile, Nan rides over three miles each day to the villa.

  The following day, he provided gifts of grain and cloth to Dou, hoping this would allow him access to his daughter. From this time forward he often came to visit, bearing delicacies and wine, and was reluctant to leave afterwards. The daughter gradually became used to him, no longer so intimidated by his presence, and was always extra industrious when he was around. Whenever she caught Nan glancing at her, she ducked her head with a smile. Nan became even more obsessed with her, and hardly even three days went by that he didn’t show up.

  One day, Dou wasn’t at home, so Nan sat around for a long while till the daughter came out to attend to the guest. Nan caught her in his arms and tried to force himself on her. Embarrassed and annoyed, she sternly rejected him, crying, “I may be poor, but I intend to be married properly, so how can you be so arrogant to insult me this way!”

  Nan’s wife had recently passed away, so he knelt before her, hands clasped in respect, and said, “If I can gain your sympathy and love, I’ll never marry anyone else.” The daughter wanted him to pledge himself to her; Nan swore an oath to heaven, resolutely promising himself to her, and then the girl allowed him to become intimate with her.

  Henceforth Nan started watching, and whenever Dou would go out, he would come and make love to the girl. She urged him, “We can’t go on meeting secretly this way for long. Given your influence, if you’re willing to agree to a proper wedding, my parents would surely consider that honorable, and there’d be no obstacle to our harmony. You should decide quickly!” Nan promised her he would do so. But he turned his thoughts to the farmer’s family, and to the question of how he could bear to accept someone from it as his spouse, so for the time being he lied in order to postpone the wedding.

  It chanced that a matchmaker arrived to discuss Nan’s marriage into another rich and influential family, and he immediately began to waver; when he heard that the girl in question was beautiful as well as wealthy, he made up his mind to marry her. Meanwhile, Dou’s daughter had become pregnant, and she pressed Nan even more urgently that they should be married, so he simply broke off relations and stayed away.

  It wasn’t long till it came time for Dou’s daughter to give birth, and she produced a son. Her father was furious and beat her. The daughter considered her situation and told him: “Nan coerced me.” When Dou received her explanation, he sent someone to ask Nan about it; Nan immediately turned the person away, refusing any responsibility in the matter. Dou then abandoned the baby, and beat his daughter more aggressively.

  The daughter confided her torments to a neighbor woman and asked her to communicate her suffering to Nan. Nan sent her away, too.

  That night the daughter fled and searched for her abandoned son, whom she found still alive, and then took him in her arms and rushed to see Nan. When the gate was opened, she told the gatekeeper, “Just a word from your master can save my life. Even if he doesn’t care about me, won’t he think about his own son?” The gatekeeper took everything she’d said to Nan, who warned the gatekeeper not to let her in.

  The girl leaned on the gateway, crying pitifully, and by the fifth watch, they could no longer hear her weeping. By daybreak, when they looked out, they saw the baby in the girl’s arms, both dead.

  Outraged, Dou brought a lawsuit against Nan before a magistrate who knew that Nan had been in the wrong, and hence intended to find Nan guilty. Nan was so frightened that he paid a bribe of a thousand pieces of gold to be exempted from prosecution.

  The head of the great family into which Nan intended to marry had a dream that Dou’s daughter appeared to him, hair disheveled and holding a child, exclaiming, “You mustn’t betroth your daughter to that heartless man; if you do, I’ll have to kill her!” The girl’s father coveted Nan’s riches, so he went ahead and celebrated the wedding.

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  Fifth watch: The last of the five two-hour divisions of the night, approximately 3:00-5:00 a.m.

  When the bride was welcomed by the bridegroom, bringing with her a sumptuous dowry, she appeared quite lovely. Yet she seemed prone to depression, and all day long, she never looked happy about anything; when she sat on her bed, she just cried sometimes. When Nan asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t say.

  Several days passed, and when the bride’s father came to visit, he was weeping as he entered the gates. Nan wasn’t able to bring himself to ask him the reason, so they just went inside together. Once the man spotted his daughter, he said in astonishment, “I was just in the rear garden, where I saw my daughter hang herself from a peach tree; who can this be now in the room here?”

  As the daughter heard his words, there was a sudden, violent change in her appearance, then she collapsed and died. They examined her closely and discovered that it was actually Dou’s daughter. The men hurried to the rear garden, where the bride had indeed killed herself. Horrified, they went and informed Dou.

  Dou had his daughter’s tomb opened, where they discovered her coffin empty and her corpse missing. Dou’s previous anger hadn’t decreased, so he became even more lividly enraged, and took another litigation to the magistrate. The magistrate treated Dou like he was just imagining things, intending that nothing be done about the criminal neglect of Dou’s daughter. Nan again sent rich enticements to Dou, expressing his sorrow and urging him to drop his suit; the magistrate then accepted another bribe from Nan, and the suit was dismissed.

  But from that point, Nan’s family began to decline in fortune. As rumors spread of the strange events that had occurred, for several years no one dared to marry their daughters to Nan.

  Nan was so unsuccessful in remarrying that he had to travel a hundred li from home in order to become engaged to the daughter of a jinshi. Before they held the ceremony, a false rumor had been circulating among the people that the imperial court was just about to begin selecting daughters from good families to serve as palace maids, and hence those families with eligible daughters were trying to marry them off so they would be sent home to their husbands’ families before they could be selected for palace duty.

  One day, an old woman arrived ahead of a carriage, identifying herself as a member of the jinshi’s family, and the carriage’s occupant as the daughter of the jinshi. Leading the daughter into the house, she told Nan, “This business of selecting women to serve as court attendants is already proceeding rapidly, so there isn’t time for a full ceremony, and we’ve sent you your bride.”

  “Why aren’t there any wedding guests with you?” asked Nan.

  The old woman replied, “They have her dowry, so they’
re following together after us.” Then she hastily took her leave.

  Nan took a careful look at the girl’s distinguished bearing, smiling approvingly. The girl ducked her head and fiddled with her belt, exactly as Dou’s daughter had done. He felt quite uncomfortable about it, but didn’t dare say anything. The girl climbed into bed, covered herself with a quilt, then laid down her head and went to sleep. He thought this also seemed normal enough for a young bride, so he didn’t attach any significance to it.

  As daylight gave way to dusk, the jinshi’s people still hadn’t arrived, so Nan started to get suspicious. He ran his hand along the quilt to wake the girl and ask her about it, but quickly discovered that she was cold and dead. Shocked and puzzled, he had no idea how it could have happened, so he sent a servant to ride to the jinshi to report it, and the servant learned that the man had never sent his daughter to Nan. Word got around about the strangeness of it all.

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  Jinshi: A successful candidate in the highest level of the imperial civil service examination—hence, an accomplished scholar of significant means.

  At that time, there was a man named Yao Xiaolian whose daughter had recently been buried, and her tomb had been robbed overnight—besides it being broken into, her corpse was missing. When he heard about the weird occurrence at Nan’s residence, Yao paid him a visit, and the dead girl turned out to be his daughter.

  When Yao pulled down the quilt to examine her, he found her body to be completely nude. Outraged, he filed a formal complaint with the magistrate. Having dealt with Nan again and again, the magistrate decided that he was a truly wicked evil-doer, thus he ruled that Nan had broken into gravesites so he could take the corpses from them, and sentenced him to death.

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “Nan heartlessly sought to deflower and then jilt Dou’s daughter; furthermore, didn’t he originally swear to be faithful to her, but then rejected her after he’d had his way with her? When she knocked at his door, he merely listened to it; when she cried at his gate, still he just listened to it; how could someone be so cruel! That’s why his punishment was much heavier than that suffered by Li Shilang!”

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  Li Shilang: A Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.) character in the historical novel, Huo Xiaoyu (Zhu 2:708n29), who, like Dou, is unfaithful to his beloved and eventually suffers for it.

  209. Liang Yan

  Liang Yan, of Xuzhou, contracted a sickness involving his nose, and for a long time he just couldn’t stop sneezing. One day, as he lay down to sleep, his nose felt strangely itchy and he was jolted up by a huge sneeze. Something popped out of his nose and fell to the ground, looking like a small ceramic dog, no bigger than the joint of a finger.

  Liang sneezed again, and another one fell out. With four sneezes, four figures appeared. They began wiggling and moving around, then they all gathered together and sniffed at each other. Presently the strongest began devouring the weaker ones; it grew bigger as it ate each one.

  In the blink of an eye, it gobbled down the others until it alone was left, bigger than a rat. Then it stuck out its tongue and with a quick circling slurp, licked its lips. Liang was so startled, that he was about to stomp on it.

  The thing clambered up his leggings, till it reached the region of his thighs. It held onto his clothing, shaking and swaying, stuck there and unable to get down. In moments, it slipped inside his jacket, scratching him along the waist and ribs. He was so frightened that he tore off the jacket and threw it to the ground.

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  Xuzhou: The city, once known as Pengcheng, is located in Jiangsu province.

  Ceramic dog: Zhu notes that ceramic dogs, placed in the rooms of houses, were traditionally believed to help ward off demons and evil (2:710n2).

  By the time he touched the jacket, the thing had already settled under the waist of his pants, so he couldn’t get it out. He pushed at it, but it didn’t move, and when he finally pinched it, he felt a pain that ended up turning into a malignant sore; it was like he had a rat protruding from his waist, its mouth and eyes shut.

  210. Dragon Meat

  Court historian Jiang Yuxuan says, “At Longdui, where they dug into the ground several chi deep, the hole was filled with dragon flesh. Although anyone could cut off portions, they couldn’t speak the character for ‘dragon’ while taking it. If someone happened to say, ‘This is dragon meat,’ a lightning bolt would split the air, striking and killing that person.”

  Court historian Jiang has tasted this meat before, and says that they weren’t mistaken—it was truly dragon.

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  Jiang Yuxuan: Courtesy name of Jiang Yuanheng, from Jimo county, in Shandong province (Zhu 2:711n1).

  Longdui: Zhu suspects that this is a reference to Bailongdui, in the southern desert portion of the Tian Shan, a range of mountains in Xinjiang. The sand dunes look like a reclining dragon (2:711n2).

  Chi: A length equal to 1/3 meter.

  The character for ‘dragon’: This character, 龙, is pronounced “long.”

  211. The Lucheng Magistrate

  Song Guoying, from Dongping, was an education official and was appointed Lucheng county magistrate— but he was heartlessly greedy and cruel, and proved especially violent when collecting taxes, ordering offenders flogged to death, filling the court with dead bodies.

  My fellow villager, Xu Baishan, happened to be passing through Lucheng, and witnessed Song’s tyranny, so he sarcastically asked, “As the father-mother official for the local people, how are you able to maintain such a majestic show of power?”

  “Huh! I don’t deserve such praise!” Song complacently remarked. “I’m such a minor official, that though I’ve been at my post for over a hundred days, I’ve only sentenced fifty-eight criminals.”

  Six months later, Song was sitting at a table, looking over some business, when suddenly he began staring at something, stood up, and started flinching frantically, as if he was desperately trying to resist something someone was about to inflict on him. He kept saying to himself, “I deserve to die for my crimes! I deserve to die for my crimes!”

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  Dongping: A prefecture in Pu’s time, now a county in Shandong province.

  Lucheng county: Located in Shanxi province.

  Father-mother official: A popular term for the county magistrate.

  The magistrate was helped into his office, and later he was found dead there. Alas! Fortunately, an agent of the underworld happened to intervene in the administration of the real world; otherwise, the more punishment Song had inflicted, the more famous he would have become as an “excellent” magistrate, which would have meant no end to his evil deeds!

  The collector of these strange tales remarks, “When Lucheng was a still a feudal state, its people were resolute in spirit, which is why its ghosts were so imposing. Now when there’s an official wielding the magistrate’s seal willfully, there must just be some base degenerates who are complicit with the official’s abuse of power, while fawning over and flattering him. Consequently, as he flourishes, the people working under him further fatten him up by seizing money and possessions for him; then when he’s on the verge of being reported and punished, those toadies who remain, beg exemption for him.

  “As soon as an official, regardless of whether he’s greedy or not, arrives to take up an appointment, he certainly confronts the two sides of the business. While the official in power has not yet been removed, underlings ignorantly don’t dare to disobey his orders. This becomes a habit that’s passed on, an established practice, and also makes a mockery of Lucheng’s ancient ghosts!”

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  Flattering him: Literally, “zhi shi” means “licking his hemorrhoids.”

  212. Ma Jiefu

  Yang Wanshi was a zhusheng from Daming. All his life, he’d had “the fear Jichang talks about.” His wife, Yin,
was extremely overbearing, and if he disobeyed her demands even a little, she’d settle the matter by beating him shrewishly.

  Yin treated Yang Wanshi’s father, who was over sixty years old and a widower, like a slave. Wanshi and his younger brother, Wanzhong, often had to sneak food to the old man furtively, fearful lest Yin would find out about it. Since their father’s clothing was shabby, they were afraid of being ridiculed by others, so they wouldn’t let him receive any visitors.

  Yang Wanshi was forty years old and didn’t yet have any children, so he acquired a concubine, but he never dared to speak openly with her.

  The brothers were waiting to take a civil service examination at the prefectural capital, when they spotted a young man of refined appearance and clothing. They had a very pleasant conversation with him. When they asked him his name, he replied, “Jiefu, and my surname’s Ma.” Thereafter their friendship grew stronger each day, till they formalized it by burning incense while they swore an oath to become brothers.

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  Zhusheng: A scholar who succeeds in the lowest level of the imperial civil service examination.

  Daming: A prefecture in Pu Songling’s time, now a county in Hebei province.

  “The fear Jichang talks about”: Pu is referring to work by a Song dynasty (960-1279) writer, Chen Zao, whose courtesy name was Jichang, that contains allusions to the curse of being henpecked (Zhu 2:720n2).

  After they parted, they met again six months later, when Ma suddenly showed up with some servants at the Yang residence. The brothers’ father happened to be outside in the sun, picking lice from his clothing. Ma figured he must be a servant, so he told the old man his name and sent him to inform his masters that he’d come. Slipping on his ragged clothing, the old man left to announce the visitor.

  Someone told Ma, “That old fellow is the Yangs’ father.” Just as Ma was feeling terrible about this, the Yang brothers came out, informally dressed, to greet him. They walked up to the main hall, where Ma bowed in formal greeting, and asked whether he might be able to speak with their father. Wanshi declined on the pretext that the old man was ill and indisposed.