Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 3

by Pu Songling

  “I was afraid that if I told you before, you might send away their mother,” Lin replied. “Now that we’ve established her as the mother of your children, is there any chance you could still send her away?” Qi was greatly moved, and made no attempt to stop his tears from falling. Then they welcomed Haitang to return home with them, where they grew old together, as husband and wives.

  In ancient times, when women were as virtuous as Lin, they were said to be sacred beings!

  228. Elder Sister Hu

  The home of Yue Yujiu, in Yidu, was haunted by an evil fox spirit that was always flinging clothing and furniture over Yue’s wall into the neighbor’s yard. Yue had been saving a trailing kudzu vine, and he decided it was time to take it down and eat it; he could see that it was still tied up, and held in place just as it had been before, but when he untied it to take a closer look, though it appeared solid from the side, it was actually hollow, and he realized that the inside had been eaten out of it. Things like this kept happening all the time, till his family members just couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Thus they began swearing at the spirit. Yue warned them to stop, saying, “I’m afraid the fox will hear.”

  The fox, which was sitting on a ceiling beam at the time, replied, “I already have heard.” From that point forward, the evil spirit became even more wickedly mischievous.

  One day, Yue and his wife were lying in bed and hadn’t yet gotten up, when the fox pulled their quilt off and ran away with it. Their bodies uncovered, the two lay on their bed staring off into space, lamenting and wishing it wasn’t so.

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  Yidu: A county located in Shandong province.

  Kudzu vine . . . make use of it: If the “fleshy inner cores” of the kudzu are “cut into pieces, crushed in cold water, and the starch allowed to settle,” the starch can be refined through repeated soakings in cold water “and dried to make a fine white flour” (Peterson 182).

  Suddenly they saw an attractive woman crawl in through the window, and toss some clothing on their bed. When they looked at her more closely, they could see that she wasn’t very tall; her own clothing was a deep red color, with a snow-white waistcoat. Yue got dressed and said, “Lofty celestial, you’ve made your mind up to visit us once again, so let’s agree to stop bothering each other. I’d like to have you as my daughter—how would you feel about that?”

  “My teeth are longer than yours,” the fox replied, “so wouldn’t that make you look rather ridiculous?” Then he asked her if they might treat each other as siblings, and then she agreed. Thereafter, they ordered their servants to refer to her as Elder Sister Hu.

  At that time, in Yanzhen, the eighth son of high official Zhang’s family had a fox taking up residence in one of his pavilions, but she didn’t bother people. “Do you happen to know her?” Yue asked Elder Sister Hu.

  She replied, “She’s my family’s favorite aunt, so how could I not know her?”

  “Your favorite aunt hasn’t been bothering people,” Yue told her, “so can’t you do something about it?” Elder Sister Hu wouldn’t listen, however, annoying people just as she used to do. She still wasn’t behaving like a really wicked spirit to others, and even limited her mischief just to Yue’s daughter-in-law: the fox frequently took her shoes, stockings, hairpins and earrings, and tossed them out in the road; and at each meal, she always hid a dead rat, or some filthy manure, in her bowl of congee.

  Yue’s daughter-in-law always threw the bowl out and angrily scolded the fox, but didn’t actually pray that she would stop doing it. Yue wished the fox well, and said, “My children have all called you their auntie, so why won’t you show them the same respect?”

  Elder Sister Hu explained, “Tell your son to divorce his wife and make me your daughter-in-law, so then we can live in peace together.”

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  Elder Sister Hu: This is another play on the character for fox (狐), which is pronounced just like the name she is assigned (胡). Yanzhen: Also in Shandong province, near Zibo.

  “What makes this lewd fox so shameful, that she thinks she can act like a human being and contend for my husband?” the daughter-in-law scornfully cried.

  She was sitting on a bamboo clothes hamper at the time, when suddenly they observed a dense smoke issuing from beneath her bottom, as hot as if it was coming out of a bamboo steamer. Upon opening the hamper to investigate, they discovered that all of the skirts inside it had been reduced to cinders; of the few items that remained intact, all of the clothing was underwear.

  Then when she called on Yue’s son to leave his wife, he wouldn’t do it. Several days went by, and she urged him again to do it, but he refused, just as before. The fox angrily took a stone and threw it at him, splitting open his forehead, and causing the blood to gush out so much that he almost died. Yue felt more imperiled than ever.

  Li Chengyao, who was from West Mountain, and skilled at magic, agreed to help them out if they paid him. He took gold paint and drew characters on some red silk to make a talisman, and after three days it was completed. Then he took a mirror and fastened it onto a stick, holding it like a handle, till the mirror began to shine throughout the house. They sent a boy out to look around, and then to hurry and tell them what he saw.

  When he returned to them, the boy reported, “It looks like there’s a dog hiding on the wall.” Li drew near it, gesturing and scolding, and drew another talisman to punish it.

  Afterwards, he came limping into the courtyard, spoke a brief incantation, and from inside the house they could see a dog and a pig appear simultaneously, their ears back and their tails still, like they were listening for a teacher’s instructions. Li gestured and cried out, “Begone!” The two ran away in a panic, one after the other.

  Then when Li spoke another incantation, a flock of ducks arrived, and when he gestured at them, they, too, left. Shortly afterwards, some chickens showed up. Li pointed at one of the chickens, shouting loudly at it. The other chickens then all ran off, while this lone chicken prostrated itself, crossing its wings with a yowl, and then cried, “I wouldn’t dare!”

  Li declared, “This is the thing that you would have made a toilet god.” The family members all began claiming at once that they had done no such thing. “This toilet god’s power still persists,” Li told them.

  Because of this comment, they tried to recall in the previous three years, before the pranks began, any strange phenomena that might have coincided with the day the incidents started. They searched everywhere, and by chance spotted some hay on the rafters in the stable. Li took some of the hay and threw it into a fire. Then he brought out a jar of wine, chanted three incantations and three curses, till the chicken stood up again and ran off.

  From the mouth of the wine jar they heard the words, “Alas, Yue Silang! Several years from now, your problems will return.” Yue pleaded with Li to do something about the dangerous prediction; but Li was unable to help him, so he gathered his things and departed.

  Someone noticed there was a series of bottles hanging along Li Chengyao’s wall, their mouths stopped up, each one containing a fox. People say that he went to each one in order and released what was inside it, and consequently as the fox spirits came out and caused someone trouble, Li would obtain a promise of gold from those individuals for recapturing them, and afterwards he amassed quite an amazing fortune, so they say.

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  A toilet god: He Mei, the concubine of Tang dynasty official Li Jing, was murdered in the toilet on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in 687 C.E., the third year of female emperor Wu Zetian’s reign, by the official’s first wife. The celestials in heaven, pitying He’s innocence, made her the toilet god (Zhu 2:823n9). Li Chengyao’s comment acknowledges that Yue wants the fox dead.

  Yue Silang: Apparently Silang is the courtesy name of Yue Yujiu.

  229. Xihou

  Scholar Man, who was from Changhua, operated a school in Yuhan
g. By chance he happened one day to be heading from his house to the marketplace, and was passing below a pavilion on a neighboring street when suddenly a lichee husk fell and hit him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw a girl leaning over the side of the pavilion, a seductive-looking beauty, seemingly unaware that his gazing at her was driving him wild. She looked down, smiled at him, and then went inside.

  Man inquired about the pavilion’s occupant, and learned that she was a courtesan named Jia Xihou. She had a lofty reputation and price, so he decided that she couldn’t possibly be interested in him. He returned home to his study in deep thought, and wasn’t able to fall asleep all night long.

  The next day, he went back and presented a visiting card, so they met, talking and laughing merrily, which made him all the more fascinated with her. He looked for any pretext to borrow money from his fellow scholars, then held back a certain amount of it, which he conveyed to the girl cordially upon his arrival at her pavilion.

  As they were lying on pillows together, he used his talents to improvise a poem, reciting to her,

  The lamp shines brightly in the darkness of the night,

  While from the bedside, low voices murmur over the scent of sweet perfume.

  Tomorrow you’ll dress, comb your hair and put on your make-up,

  And you won’t think of me again.

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  Changhua . . . Yuhang: Changhua is part of modern Hangzhou prefecture, in Zhejiang province, as is Yuhang.

  Xihou abruptly cried, “Even if I’m just a lowly prostitute, I’ve often wished I could give my heart and service to someone. You don’t have a wife, but now that you’ve examined me carefully, don’t I seem like someone who could manage a household?”

  Man was absolutely delighted, and repeatedly asserted this to her, insisting that they should make permanent plans. Xihou was also overjoyed, and told him, “I’ve always felt that it wasn’t hard to create poems— but every time I came to this empty place, wanting to compose one, I was afraid of that its quality might cause someone to make fun of me. Now, if you’re satisfied that we should form a family together, it’ll be my good fortune if you’ll please teach me.” Then she asked Man, “How much real estate does your family own?”

  “A half qing of low-yield farmland,” he replied, “a run-down house with just a few rafters, and that’s all.”

  Xihou told him, “After I go home with you, we’ll stay together as much as possible, and you won’t have to teach school again. Forty mu of land is enough for us to cultivate ourselves, ten of which can be planted in mulberries, from which we can weave five pi of silk, and then have some extra money left after paying taxes. We can shut up the house and stay inside together, with you reading while I weave, leisurely writing poetry and drinking wine we can pass the time—no one in a thousand noblepersons’ households could live so well!”

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  “The lamp shines brightly . . .”: This poem is a qiyanshi, a poem composed of seven characters per line.

  A half qing: Since a qing is equal to 6.667 hectares, Man owns about 8.24 acres of poor farmland.

  Forty mu: A mu equals .0667 hectares, so Xiahou’s describing about 7 acres of land.

  Pi: A measure of bolts of cloth.

  “What would it cost to free you from your courtesan status?” asked Man.

  “It depends on how greedy the old madam wants to be,” Xihou replied, “for how can there ever be enough money to feed her? However, two hundred taels should be enough. How aggravating that I’m too young to have known how to accumulate money for myself—I gave it all to my mother as soon as I got any money. If you can manage a hundred taels, we shouldn’t have to worry about the rest.”

  “I feel awful about it,” Man told her, “but I know I could never come up with a hundred taels by myself. I have a close friend, an official in Hunan, who’s repeatedly invited me to come and visit him, but it’s too far away from me, so I’ve been afraid to make the trip. Now that there’s a compelling reason, I should go and ask for his assistance. I figure it would take three or four months, but then I could return home again—and with luck, enduring that will mean that we can be together.” Xihou agreed with his suggestion.

  Man then closed up his school and began traveling south, but by the time he arrived in Hunan, his friend had already been removed from office. Man had to ask to stay at someone’s house, since all of his traveling expenses had run out and his purse was absolutely empty, so he was unable to secure any financial assistance from his friend.

  Down on his luck, Man knew it would be difficult to get home, so he went to the nearby town and took up teaching again. Even after three years, he still couldn’t afford to return home.

  It happened that Man punished one of his pupils with a beating, so the pupil went and drowned himself. His landowner father, pained by the loss of his son, then brought a suit against the teacher, who was arrested and imprisoned. Fortunately, there were some other people who sympathetically found teacher Man guiltless in the matter, and in time they were able to collect some money for him, so he wouldn’t have to suffer the privations of being imprisoned any longer.

  Xihou began to think that Man had changed his mind about her, so she shut the household’s doors to all visitors. Xihou’s mother knew why she was doing this, but since she was unable to get her to change her mind, she just went along with Xihou’s idea.

  There was a wealthy merchant who was impressed with Xihou’s reputation as a courtesan, so he found an old woman to act as his representative, and she communicated his avid interest to Xihou, noting that he was generous and reluctant to take no for an answer. But Xihou explained that she couldn’t do business with him.

  The merchant then began wandering throughout Hunan, making polite inquiries to find out what had happened to Man. By this time, the suit against him was about to be dropped, so the merchant offered a monetary bribe to ensure that the matter was taken seriously, and that Man would be held in custody for a long time. The merchant then returned home and told the old woman, “Scholar Man has already starved to death.”

  Xihou suspected that the merchant wasn’t really telling the truth. “You won’t discuss the possibility that scholar Man is already dead,” the old woman told her, “but even if he wasn’t dead, you’ve been living like the wife of a poor teacher—wouldn’t it be better to be wearing brocade clothing and eating fine foods?”

  Xihou replied, “Scholar Man may be poor, but he’s very dignified; I truly wouldn’t want him to see me going back to that sordid business. For now, I must keep my word, or I’ll prove unworthy of his trust in me!” The merchant continued to convey his urgings to Xihou, pretending, in order to end Xihou’s hopes that she’d ever see him again, that scholar Man had arranged upon his death for a letter to be sent to her. When she received the letter, she wept pitifully all night long.

  Xihou’s mother told her, “I’ve raised you since you were a child, and I’ve looked after you very diligently. You’ll be an adult in another two or three years, and then you won’t be as valuable. If you won’t become a prostitute, and you won’t marry, how are you going to make a living?”

  Xihou had no alternative, so she married the merchant. He provided her with an abundance of extravagant clothing and jewelry. A year went by, and a son was born.

  Not long afterwards, Man, having been exonerated and released due to the assistance of his pupils, came to realize that the merchant had been responsible for his being imprisoned. However, no matter how hard he pondered the matter, he couldn’t figure out the reason for the merchant’s action. His pupils generously gave him some traveling expenses, and so he returned home.

  When he arrived and heard that Xihou was already married, Man’s heart was broken, his spirit crushed, causing him such bitter torment that he went to the marketplace and begged an old woman who was selling broth there to inform Xihou that he was alive.

  Xihou felt an intense grief, but then she realize
d that from the very first, the merchant had known the truth, and everything had been part of his cunning schemes. When the merchant went out on business, Xihou hugged their son, squeezing him to death, then grabbed her possessions and fled to Man’s house; she didn’t take anything that she’d received from the merchant’s family.

  After returning home, the merchant then angrily went to see an official. The official recognized the story behind the matter, and rejected the merchant’s lawsuit.

  Alas! The Marquis of Shou returned home to the Han, so was Xihou’s action to return to Man any different? But killing her son in order to leave also makes her one of the world’s most cruel persons!

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  Marquis of Shou: A title given to Guan Yu by Cao Cao in Chapter 25 of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in an attempt to steer him away from returning to his oath brother, Liu Bei, a descendant of the Han royal family, to whom Lord Guan returned faithfully after performing minimally requisite service for the nefarious Cao Cao.

  230. Three Wolf Tales

  There was once a butcher returning home at sundown, after having sold his meat. Suddenly a wolf appeared, looking into his basket from above, to see the meat inside it, drooling saliva from its mouth as it approached, step by step, wagging its tail, for several li. Startled, the butcher showed the wolf his sword, which made the wolf back up a bit; but when the butcher started walking away, the wolf followed him.

  The butcher didn’t have a strategy for dealing with the beast worked out, but thought to himself that what the wolf really wanted was the meat, so he had no choice but to hang it up in the trees, and then retrieve it in the morning to sell. Thus he put the meat on a hook, raised it up to hang from a tree, and indicated that he was going away empty-handed. The wolf consequently stopped following him. The butcher then proceeded to take the path back home.

  The next morning, when he returned to retrieve the meat, he saw from a distance that there was something large hanging on the tree, the size of a dead man, and the hunter was quite startled. After getting over the initial shock, he drew close and could see that it was a dead wolf.